“Martha's Vineyard.
“Dear Auntie Rachel: Tell grandpa, to begin with, that John Storm preached his first sermon on Wednesday last, and, according to programme, I was there to hear it. Oh, God bless me! What a time I had of it! He broke down in the middle, taking stage fright or pulpit fright or some such devilry, though there was nothing to be afraid of except a bandboxful of chattering girls who didn't listen, and a few old fogies with ear-trumpets. I was sitting in the darkness at the back, effectually concealed from the preacher by the broad shoulders of Ward Sister Allworthy, who is an example of 'delicate femaleism' just verging on old-maidenism. They tell me the 'discoorse' was a short one, but I never got so many prayers into the time in all my born days, and my breath was coming and going so fast that the Sister must have thought they had set up a pumping-engine in the pew behind her. Our poor, heavy-laden Mr. Storm has been here since then with his sad and eager face, but I hadn't the stuff in me to tell him the truth about the sermon, so I told him I had forgotten to go and hear it, and may the Lord have mercy on my soul!
“You want to know how I employ my time? Well, lest you should think I give up my days to dreams and my nights to idleness, I hasten to tell that I rise at 6, breakfast at 6.30, begin duty at 7, sup at 9.30 P.M., gossip till 10, and then go into my room and put myself to bed; and there I am at the end of it. Being only a probationer, I am chiefly in the out-patient department, where my duties are to collect the things wanted at the dispensary, make the patients ready to see the surgeon, and pass them on to the dressers. My patients at present are the children, and I love them, and shall break my heart when I have to leave them. They are not always too well looked after by the surgeon, but that doesn't matter in the least, because, you see, they are constantly watched by the best and most learned doctor in the world—that's me.
“Last Saturday I had my first experience of the operating theatre. Gracious goodness! I thought I shouldn't survive it. Fortunately, I had my dressings and sponges to look after, so I just stiffened my back with a sort of imaginary six-foot steel bar, and went on 'like blazes.' But some of these staff nurses are just 'ter'ble'; they take a professional pleasure in descending to that inferno, and wouldn't miss a 'theatre' for worlds. On Saturday it was a little boy of five who had his leg amputated, and now when you ask the white-faced darling where he's going to he says he's going to the angels, and he'll get lots of gristly pork up there. Heistoo.
“Thepersonnelof our vineyard is abundant, but there are various sour grapes growing about. We have a medical school (containing lots of nice boys, only a girl may not speak to them even in the corridors), and a full staff of honorary and visiting physicians and surgeons. But the only doctor we really have much to do with is the house surgeon, a young fellow who has just finished his student's course. His name is Abery, and since Saturday he has so much respect for Glory that she might even swear in his presence (in Manx), but Sister Allworthy takes care that she doesn't, having designs on his celibacy herself. He must have sung hisTe Deumafter the operation, for he got gloriously drunk and wanted to inject morphia in a patient recovering from trouble of the kidney. It was an old hippopotamus of a German musician named Koenig, and he was in a frantic terror. So I whispered to him to pretend to go to sleep, and then I told the doctor I had lost the syringe. But—'Gough bless me sowl!'—what a dressing the Sister gave me!
“Yesterday was visiting-day, and when the friends of the patients come even an hospital can have its humours. They try to sneak in little dainties which may be delicious in themselves, but are deadly poison to the people they are intended for. Then we have to search under the bedclothes of the patients, and even feel the pockets of their visitors. The mother of my little boy came yesterday, and I noticed such a large protuberance at her bosom under her ulster that I began to foresee another operation. It was only a brick of currant cake, paved with lemon peel. I hauled it out and moved round like a cloud of thunder and lightning. But she began to cry and to say she had made it herself for Johnnie, and then—well, didn't I just get a wigging from the Sister, though!
“But I don't mind what happens here, for I am in London, and to be in London is to live, and to live is to be in London. I've not seen much of it yet, having only two hours off duty every day—from ten to twelve—and then all I can do is to make little dips into the park and the district round about, like a new pigeon with its wings clipped. But I watch the great new world from my big box up here, and see the carriages in the park and the people riding on horseback. They have a new handshake in London. You lift your hand to the level of your shoulder, and then waggle horizontally as if you had put your elbow out; and when you begin to speak you say, 'I—er—' as if you had got the mumps. But it is beautiful! The sound of the traffic is like music, and I feel like a war-horse that wants to be marching to it. How delightful it is to be young in a world so full of loveliness! And if you are not very ugly it's none the worse.
“All hospital nurses are just now basking in the sunshine of a forthcoming ball. It is to be given at Bartimaeus's Hospital, where they have a lecture theatre larger than the common, and the dancing there is for once to be to a happier tune. All the earth is to be present—all the hospital earth—and if I could afford to array myself in the necessary splendour, I should show this benighted London what an absolute angel Glory is! But then my first full holiday is to be on the 24th, when I expect to be out from 10 A. M. until 10 P. M. I am nearly crazy whenever I think of it, and when the time comes to make my first plunge into London, I know I shall hold my breath exactly as if I were taking a header off Creg Malin rocks.... Glory.”
On the morning of the 24th Glory rose at five, that she might get through her work and have the entire day for her holiday. At that hour she came upon a rough-haired nurse wearing her cap a little on one side and washing a floor with disinfectants. Being in great spirits, Glory addressed her cheerfully.
“Are you off to-day too?” she said.
The nurse gave her a contemptuous glance and answered: “I'm not one of your paying probationers, Miss—playing probationersIcall them. We nurses are hard-working women, whose life spells duty; and we've got no time for sight-seeing and holiday-making.”
“No, but you are one of those who ruin the profession altogether,” said a younger woman who had just come up. “They will expect everybody to do the same. This is my day off, but I have to do the grate, and sweep the ward, and make the bed, and tidy the Sister's room—and it's all through people like you. Small thanks you get for it either, for a girl may not even wear her hair in a fringe, and she is always expecting to hear the matron's 'You're not fit for nursing, Miss.'”
Glory looked at her. She was an exquisitely pretty girl, with dark hair, pink and ivory cheeks, and light-gray eyes; but her hands were coarse, and her finger nails flat and square, and when you looked again there was a certain blemished appearance about her beauty as of a Sèvres vase that is cracked somewhere.
“Do you say you are off to-day?” said Glory,
“Yes, I am; are you?”
“Yes, but I'm strange to London. Could you take me with you—if you are going nowhere in particular?”
“Certainly, dear. I've noticed you before and wanted to speak to you. You're the girl with the splendid name—Glory, isn't it?”
“Yes; what is yours?”
“Polly Love.”
At ten o'clock that morning the two girls set out for their long day's jaunt.
“Now where shall we go?” said Polly.
“Let's go where we can see a great many people,” said Glory.
“That's easy enough, for this is the Queen's birthday, and——”
Glory thought of Aunt Rachel and made a cry of delight.
“And now that I think of it,” said Polly, as if by a sudden memory, “I've got tickets for the trooping of the colours—the Queen's colours, you know.”
“Shall we see her?” said Glory.
“What a question! Why, no, but we'll see the soldiers, and the generals, and perhaps the Prince. It's at ten-thirty, and only across the park.”
“Come along,” said Glory, and she began to drag at her companion and to run.
“My gracious, what a girl you are, to be sure!”
But they were both running in another minute, and laughing and chattering like children escaped from school. In a quarter of an hour they were at the entrance to the Horse Guards. There was a crowd at the gates, and a policeman was taking tickets. Polly dived into her pocket.
“Where are mine? Oh, here they are. A great friend gave me them,” she whispered. “He has a chum in one of those offices.”
“A gentleman,” said Glory with studied politeness; but they were crushing through the gate by that time, and thereafter she had eyes and ears for nothing but the pageant before her.
It was a beautiful morning, and the spring foliage of the park was very green and fresh. Three sides of the great square were lined with redcoats; the square itself was thronged with people, and every window and balcony looking over it was filled. There were soldiers, sentries, policemen, the generals in cocked hats, and the Prince himself in a bearskin, riding by with the jingle of spurs and curb-chain. Then the ta-ra-ta-ta-ra of the bugle, the explosive voice crying, “Escort for the colour!” the officer carrying it, the white gloves of the staff fluttering up the salute, the flash of bayonets, the march round, and the band playing The British Grenadiers. It was like a dream to Glory. She felt her bosom heaving, and was afraid she was going to cry.
Polly was laughing and prattling merrily. “Ha, ha, ha! see that soldier chasing a sunshade? My! he has caught it with his sword.”
“I suppose these are all great people,” whispered Glory.
“I should think so,” said Polly. “Do you see that gentleman in the window opposite?—that's the Foreign Office.”
“Which?” said Glory, but her eyes were wandering.
“The one in the frock-coat and the silk hat, talking to the lady in the green lawn and the black lace fichu and the spring bonnet.”
“You mean beside that plain girl wearing the jungle of rhododendrons?”
“Yes; that's the gentleman that gave my friend the tickets.”
Glory looked at him for a moment, and something very remote seemed to stir in her memory; but the band was playing once more, and she was wafted away again. It was God save the Queen this time, and when it ended and everybody cried “All over!” she took a long, deep breath and said, “Well!”
Polly was laughing at her, and Glory had to laugh also. They set each other off laughing, and people began to look at them, and then they had to laugh again and run away.
“This Glory is the funniest girl,” said Polly; “she is surprised at the simplest thing.”
They went to look at the shops, passing up Regent Street, across the Circus and down Oxford Street toward the City, laughing and talking nonsense all the time. Once when they made a little purchase at a shop the shopwoman looked astonished at the freedom with which they carried themselves, and after that they felt inclined to go into every shop in the street and behave absurdly everywhere. In the course of two hours they had accomplished all the innocent follies possible to the intoxication of youth, and were perfectly happy.
By this time they had reached the Bank and were feeling the prickings of hunger, so they looked out a restaurant in Cheapside and went in for some dinner. The place was full of men, and several of them rose at once when the two girls entered. They were in their out-door hospital costume, but there was something showy about Polly's toilet, and the men kept looking their way and smiling. Glory looked back boldly and said in an audible voice, “What fun it must be to be a barmaid, and to have the gentlemen wink at you, and be laughing back at them!” But Polly nudged, her and told her to be quiet. She looked down herself, but nevertheless contrived to use her eyes as a kind of furtive electric battery in the midst of the most innocent conversation. It was clear that Polly had flown farthest in the ways of the world, and when you looked at her again you could see that the balance of her life had been deranged by some one.
After dinner the girls got into an omnibus and went still farther east, sitting at opposite sides of the car, and laughing and talking loudly to each other, amid the astonishment of the other occupants. But when they came to mean and ugly streets with green-grocers' barrows by the curbstone, and weird and dreary cemeteries in the midst of gaunt, green sticks that were trying to look like trees, Glory thought they had better return.
They went back by the Thames steamboat from some landing stage among the docks. The steamer picked up passengers at every station on the river, and at London Bridge a band came aboard. As they sailed under St. Paul's the boat was crowded with people going west to see the celebrations in honour of the birthday, and the band was playing And her Golden Hair was hanging down her Back.
At one moment Glory was wild with delight, and at the next her gaiety seemed to be suddenly extinguished. The sun was setting behind the towers of Westminster in a magnificent lake of fire, and it seemed like the sun going down at Peel, except that the lights beneath, which glistened and flashed, were windows, not waves, and the deep hum was not the noise of the mighty sea, but the noise of mighty millions.
They landed at Westminster Bridge and went to a tearoom for tea. When they came out it was quite dark, and they got on to the top of an omnibus. But the town was now ablaze with gas and electric lights that were flinging out the initials of the Queen, and Whitehall was dense with carriages going to the official receptions. Glory wanted to be in the midst of so much life, so the girls got down and walked arm in arm.
As they passed through Piccadilly Circus they were laughing again, for the oppression of the crowds made them happy. The throng was greatest at that point and they had to push their way through. Among others there were many gaily-dressed women, who seemed to be waiting for omnibuses. Glory noticed that two of these women, who were grimacing and lisping, had spoken to a man who was also lounging about. She tugged at Polly's arm.
“That's strange! Did you see that?” she said.
“That! Oh, that's nothing. It's done every day,” said Polly.
“What does it mean?” said Glory.
“Why, you don't mean to say—well, this, Glory—— Really your friends ought to take care of you, my dear, you are so ignorant of the world.”
And then suddenly, as by a flash of lightning, Glory had her first glimpse of the tragic issues of life.
“Oh, my gracious! Come along,” she whispered, and dragged Polly after her.
They were panting past the end of St. James's Street when a man with an eye-glass and a great shield of shirt-front collided with them and saluted them. Glory was for forging ahead, but Polly had drawn up.
“It's only my friend,” said Polly in another voice.—“This is a new nurse. Her name is Glory.”
The man said something about a glorious name and a glorious pleasure to be nursed by such a nurse, and then both the girls laughed. He was glad they had found his tickets useful, but sorry he could not see them back to the hospital, being dragged away to the bally Foreign Office reception in honour of the Queen's birthday.
“But I'm coming to the ball, you know, and,” with a glance at Glory, “I've half a mind to bring my chum along with me!”
“Oh, do,” said Polly, partly covering the pupils of her eyes with her eyelids.
The man lowered his voice and said something about Glory which Glory did not catch, then waved his white-kid glove, saying “Ta-ta,” and was gone.
“Is he married?” said Glory.
“Married! Good gracious, no; what ridiculous ideas you've got!”
It was ten minutes after ten as the girls turned in at a sharp trot at the door of the hospital, still prattling and chattering and bringing some of the gaiety and nonsense of their holiday into the quiet precincts of the house of pain. The porter shook his finger at them with mock severity, and a ward Sister going through the porch in her white silence stopped to say that a patient had been crying out for one of them.
“It's me—I know it's me,” said Polly. “I've got a brother here out of a monastery, and he can't do with anybody else about him. It makes me tired of my life.”
But it was Glory who was wanted. The woman whom John Storm had picked up out of the streets was dying. Glory had helped to nurse her, and the poor old thing had kept herself alive that she might deliver to Glory her last charge and message. She could see nobody, so Glory leaned over the bed and spoke to her.
“I'm here, mammie; what is it?” she said, and the flushed young face bent close above the withered and white one.
“He spoke to me friendly and squeedged my 'and, he did. S'elp me never, it's true. Gimme a black cloth on the corfin, my dear, and mind yer tell 'im to foller.”
“Yes, mammie, yes. I will-be sure I—I—Oh!”
It was Glory's first death.
John Storm had been through his first morning call that afternoon. For this ordeal he had presented himself in a flannel shirt in the hall, where the canon was waiting for him in patent-leather boots and kid gloves, and his daughter Felicity in cream silk and white feathers. After they had seated themselves in the carriage the canon, said: “You don't quite do yourself justice, Mr. Storm. Believe me, to be well dressed is a great thing to a young man making his way in London.”
The carriage stopped at a house that seemed to be only round the corner.
“This is Mrs. Macrae's,” the canon whispered. “An American lady-widow of a millionaire. Her daughter—you will see her presently—is to marry into one of our best English families.”
They were walking up the wide staircase behind the footman in blue. There was a buzz of voices coming from a room above.
“Canon—er—Wealthy, Miss Wealthy, and—er—the—h'm—Rev. Mr. Storm!”
The buzz of voices abated, and a bright-faced little woman, showily dressed, came forward and welcomed them with a marked accent. There were several other ladies in the room, but only one gentleman. This person, who was standing, with teacup and saucer in hand, at the farther side, screwed an eyeglass in his eye, looked across at John Storm, and then said something to the lady in the chair beside him. The lady tittered a little. John Storm looked back at the man, as if by an instinctive certainty that he must know him when he saw him again. He was engulfed in a high, stiff collar, and was rather ugly; tall, slender, a little past thirty; fair, with soft, sleepy eyes, and no life in his expression, but agreeable; fit for good society, with the stamp of good breeding, and capable of saying little humorous things in a thin “roofy” voice.
“I was real sorry I didn't hear Mr. Storm Wednesday evening,” Mrs. Macrae was saying, with a mincing smile. “My daughter told me it was just too lovely.—Mercy, this is your great preacher. Persuade him to come to my 'At Home' Tuesday.”
A tall, dark girl, with gentle manners and a beautiful face, came slowly forward, put her hand into John's, and looked steadily into his eyes without speaking. Then the gentleman with the eyeglass said suavely, “Have you been long in London, Mr. Storm?”
“Two weeks,” John answered shortly, and half turned his head.
“How—er—interesting!” with a prolonged drawl and a little cold titter.
“Oh, Lord Robert Ure—Mr. Storm,” said the hostess.
“Mr. Storm has done me the honour to become one of my assistant clergy, Lord Robert,” said the canon, “but he is not likely to be a curate long.”
“That is charming,” said Lord Robert. “It is always a relief to hear that I am likely to have one candidate the less for my poor perpetual curacy in Pimlico. They're at me like flies round a honey-pot, don't you know. I thought I had made the acquaintance of all the perpetual curates in Christendom. And what a sweet team they are, to be sure! The last of them came yesterday. I was out, and my friend Drake—Drake of the Home Office, you know—couldn't give the man the living, so he gave him sixpence instead, and the creature went away quite satisfied.”
Everybody seemed to laugh except John, who only stared into the air, and the loudest laughter came from the canon. But suddenly an incisive voice said:
“But why sharpen your teeth on the poor curates? Is there no a canon or a bishop handy that's better worth a bite?”
It was Mrs. Callender.
“I tell ye a story too, onlymineshall be a true one.”
“Jane! Jane!” said the hostess, shaking her fan as a weapon; and Lord Robert stretched his neck over his collar and made an amiable smile.
“A girl of eighteen came to me this morning at Soho, and she was in the usual trouble. The father was a wicked rector. He died last year leaving thirty-one thousand pounds; and the mother of his unfortunate child—that is to say, his mistress—is now in the Union.”
It was the first sincere word that had been spoken, where every tone had been wrong, every gesture false, and it fell on the company like a thunderclap. John Storm drew his breath hard, looked up at Lord Robert by a strange impulse, and felt himself avenged.
“What a beautiful day it has been!” said somebody. Everybody looked up at the maker of this surprising remark. It was a lady, and she blushed until her cheeks burned again.
A painful silence followed, and then the hostess turned to Lord Robert and said:
“You spoke of your friend Drake, didn't you? Everybody is talking of him, and as for the girls, they seem to be crazy about the man. So handsome, they say; so natural, and such a splendid talker. But then, girls are so quick to take fancies to people. You really must take care of yourself, my dear.” (This to Felicity.) “Who is he? Lord Robert will tell you—an official of some kind, and son of Sir something Drake, of one of the northern counties. He knows the secret of getting on in the world, though he doesn't go about too much. But I've determined not to live any longer without making the acquaintance of this wonderful being, so Lord Robert must just bring him along Tuesday evening, or else——”
John Storm escaped at last, without promising to come to the “At Home.” He went direct to the hospital and learned that Glory was out for the day. Where she could have gone, and what she could be doing, puzzled him grievously. That she had not put herself under his counsel and direction on her first excursion abroad hurt his pride and wounded his sense of responsibility. As the night fell his anxiety increased. Though he knew she would not return until ten, he set out at nine to meet her.
At a venture he took the eastward course, and passed slowly down Piccadilly. The façade of nearly every club facing the park was flaming with electric light. Young men in evening dress were standing on the steps, smoking and taking the air after dinner, and pretty girls in showy costumes were promenading leisurely in front of them. Sometimes, as a girl passed, she looked sharply up and the corner of her mouth would be raised a little, and when she had gone by there would be a general burst of laughter.
John's blood boiled, and then his heart sank; he felt so helpless, his pity and indignation were so useless and unnecessary. All at once he saw what he had been looking for. As he went by the corner of St. James's Street he almost ran against Glory and another nurse in the costume of their hospital. They did not observe him; they were talking to a man; it was the man he had met in the afternoon—Lord Robert Ure.
John heard the man say, “Your Glory is such a glorious——” and then he lowered his voice, and appeared to say something that was very amusing, for the other girl laughed a great deal.
John's soul was now fairly in revolt, and he wanted to stop, to order the man off and to take charge of the two nurses as his duty seemed to require of him. But he passed them, then looked back and saw the group separate, and as the man went by he watched the girls going westward. There was a glimpse of them under the gas-lamp as they crossed the street, and again a glimpse as they passed into the darkness under the trees of the park.
He could not trust himself to return to the hospital that night, and his indignation was no less in the morning. But there was a letter from Glory saying that his poor old friend was dead, and had begged that he would bury her. He dressed himself in his best (“We can't take liberties with the poor,” he thought) and walked across to the hospital at once. There he asked for Glory, and they went downstairs together to that still chamber underground which has always its cold and silent occupant. It is only a short tenancy that anybody can have there, so the old woman had to be buried the same morning. The parish was to bury her, and the van was at the door.
He was standing with Glory in the hall, and his heart had softened to her.
“Glory,” he said, “you shouldn't have gone out yesterday without telling me, the dangers of London are so great.”
“What dangers?” she asked.
“Well, to a young girl, a beautiful girl——”
Glory peered up under her long eyelashes.
“I mean the dangers from—I'm ashamed in my soul to say it—the dangers from men.”
She shot up a quick glance into his face and said in a moment, “You saw us, didn't you?”
“Yes, I saw you, and I didn't like your choice of company.”
She dropped her head demurely and said, “The man?”
John hesitated. “I was speaking of the girl. I don't like the freedom with which she carries herself in this house. Among these good and devoted women is there no one but this—this——?”
Glory's lower lip began to show its inner side. “She's bright and lively, that's all I care.”
“But it's not allIcare, Glory, and if such men as that are her friends outside——”
Glory's head went up. “What is it to me who are her friends outside?”
“Everything, if you allow yourself to meet them again.”
“Well,” doggedly, “I am going to meet them again. I'm going to the Nurses' Ball on Tuesday.”
John answered with deliberation, “Not in that girl's company.”
“Why not?”
“I saynotin that girl's company.”
There was a short pause, and then Glory said with a quivering mouth: “You are vexing me, and you will end by making me cry. Don't you see you are degrading me too? I am not used to being degraded. You see me with a weak silly creature who hasn't an idea in her head and can do nothing but giggle and laugh and make eyes at men, and you think I'm going to be led away by her. Do you suppose a girl can't take care of herself?”
“As you will, then,” said John, with a fling of his hand, going off down the steps.
“Mr. Storm—Mr. Storm—Jo—Joh——”
But he was out on the pavement and getting into the workhouse van.
“Ah!” said a mincing voice beside her. “How jolly it is when anybody is suffering for your sake!” It was Polly Love, and again her eyelids were half covering her eyes.
“I'm sure I don't know what you mean,” said Glory. Her own eyes were swimming in big tear-drops.
“Don't you? What a funny girl you are! But your education has been neglected, my dear.”
It was a combination van and hearse with the coffin under the driver's box, and John Storm (as the only discoverable mourner) with the undertaker on the seat inside.
“Will ye be willin' ter tyke the service at the cimitery, sir?” said the undertaker, and John answered that he would.
The grave was on the paupers' side, and when the undertaker, with his man, had lowered the coffin to its place, he said, “They've gimme abart three more funerals this morning, so I'll leave ye now, sir, to finish 'er off.”
At the next moment John Storm in his surplice was alone with the dead, and had opened his book to read the burial service which no other human ear was to hear.
He read “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” and then the bitter loneliness of the pauper's doom came down on his soul and silenced him.
But his imprisoned passion had to find a vent, and that night he wrote to the Prime Minister: “I begin to understand what you meant when you said I was in the wrong place. Oh, this London, with its society, its worldly clergy, its art, its literature, its luxury, its idle life, all built on the toil of the country and compounded of the sweat of the nameless poor! Oh, this 'Circe of cities,' drawing good people to it, decoying them, seducing them, and then turning them into swine! It seems impossible to live in the world and to be spiritually-minded. When I try to do so I am torn in two.”
On the following Tuesday evening two young men were dining in their chambers in St. James's Street. One of them was Lord Robert Ure; the other was his friend and housemate, Horatio Drake. Drake was younger than Lord Robert by some seven or eight years, and also beyond comparison more attractive. His face was manly and handsome, its expression was open and breezy; he was broad-shouldered and splendidly built, and he had the fair hair and blue eyes of a boy.
Their room was a large one, and it was full of beautiful and valuable things, but the furniture was huddled about in disorder. A large chamber-organ, a grand piano, a mandolin, and two violins, pictures on the floor as well as on the walls, many photographs scattered about everywhere, and the mirror over the mantelpiece fringed with invitation-cards, which were stuck between the glass and the frame.
Their man had brought in the coffee and cigarettes. Lord Robert was speaking in his weary drawl, which had the worn-out tone of a man who had made a long journey and was very sleepy.
“Come, dear boy, make up your mind, and let us be off.”
“But I'm tired to death of these fashionable routs.”
“So am I.”
“They're so unnatural—so unnecessary.”
“My dear fellow, of course they're unnatural—of course they're unnecessary; but what would you have?”
“Anything human and natural,” said Drake. “I don't care a ha'p'orth about the morality of these things—not I—but I am dead sick of their stupidity.”
Lord Robert made languid puffs of his cigarette, and said, in a tearful drawl: “My dear Drake, of course it is exactly as you say. Who doesn't know it is so? It has always been so and always will be. But what refuge is there for the poor leisured people but these diversions which you despise? And as for the poor titled classes—well, they manage to make their play their business sometimes, don't you know. Confess that they do sometimes, now, eh?”
Lord Robert was laughing with an awkward constraint, but Drake looked frankly into his face and said:
“How's that matter going on, Robert?”
“Fairly, I think, though the girl is not very hot on it. The thing came off last week, and when it was over I felt as if I had proposed to the girl and been accepted by the mother, don't you know. I believe this rout to-night is expressly in honour of the event, so I mustn't run away from my bargain.”
He lay back, sent funnels of smoke to the ceiling, and then said, with a laugh like a gurgle: “I'm not likely to, though. That eternal dun was here again to-day. I had to tell him that the marriage would come off in a year certain. That was the only understanding on which he would agree to wait for his money. Bad? Of course it's bad; but what would you have, dear boy?”
The men smoked in silence for a moment, and then Lord Robert said again: “Come, old fellow, for friendship's sake, if nothing else. She's a decent little woman, and dead bent on having you at her house to-night. And if you're badly bored we'll not stay long. We'll come away early and—listen—we'll slip across to the Nurses' Ball at Bartimaeus's Hospital; there'll be fun enough there, at all events.”
“I'll go,” said Drake.
Half an hour later the two young men were driving up to the door of Mrs. Macrae's house in Belgrave Square. There was a line of carriages in front of it, and they had to wait their turn to approach the gate. Footmen in gorgeous livery were ready to open the cab door, to help the guests across the red baize that lay on the pavement, to usher them into the hall, to lead them to the little marble chamber where they entered their names in a list intended for the next day'sMorning Post, and finally to direct them to the great staircase where the general crush moved slowly up to the saloon above.
In the well of the stairs, half hidden behind a little forest of palms and ferns, a band in yellow and blue uniform sat playing the people in. On the landing the hostess stood waiting to receive, and many of the guests, by a rotary movement like the waters of a maelstrom, moved past her in a rapid and babbling stream, twisted about her, and came down again. She welcomed Lord Robert effusively, and motioned to him to stand by her side. Then she introduced her daughter to Drake and sent them adrift through the rooms.
The rooms were large ones with parquet flooring from which all furniture had been removed, except the palms and ferns by the walls and the heavy chandeliers overhead. It was not yet ten o'clock, but already the house was crowded, and every moment there were floods of fresh arrivals. First came statesmen and diplomatists, then people who had been to the theatres, and toward the end of the evening some of the actors themselves. The night was close and the atmosphere hot and oppressive. At the farther end of the suite there was a refreshment-room with its lantern lights pulled open; and there the crush was densest and the commotion greatest. The click-clack of many voices cut the thick air as with a thousand knives, and over the multitudinous clatter there was always the unintelligible boom of the band downstairs.
Most of the guests looked tired. The men made some effort to be cheerful, but the women were frankly jaded and fagged. Bedizened with diamonds, coated with paint and powder, laden with rustling silks, they looked weary and worn out. When spoken to they would struggle to smile, but the smiles would break down after a moment into dismal looks of misery and oppression.
“Had enough?” whispered Lord Robert to Drake.
Drake was satisfied, and Lord Robert began to make their excuses.
“Going already!” said Mrs. Macrae. “An official engagement, you say?—Mr. Drake, is it? Oh, don't tell me! I know—Iknow! Well, you'll be married and settled one of these days—and then!”
They were in a hansom cab driving across London in the direction of Bartimaeus's Hospital. Drake was bare-headed and fanning himself with his crush hat. Lord Robert was lighting a cigarette.
“Pshaw! What a stifling den! Did you ever hear such a clitter-clatter? A perfect Tower of Babel building company! What in the name of common sense do people suppose they're doing by penning themselves up like that on a night like this? What are they thinking about?”
“Thinking about, dear boy? You're unreasonable! Nobody wants to think about anything in such scenes of charming folly.”
“But the women! Did youeversee such faded, worn-out dummies for the display of diamonds? Poor little women in their splendid misery! I was sorry for yourfiancée, Robert. She was the only woman in the house without that hateful stamp of worldliness and affectation.”
“My dear Drake, you've learned many things, but there's one thing you have not yet learned—you haven't learned how to take serious things as trifles, and trifles as serious things. Learn it, my boy, or you'll embitter existence. You are not going to alter the conditions of civilization by any change in your own particular life; so just look out the prettiest, wittiest, wealthiest little woman who is a dummy for the display of diamonds——”
“Me? Not if I know it, old fellow! Give me a little nature and simplicity, if it hasn't got a second gown to its back.”
“All right—as you like,” said Lord Robert, flinging out the end of his cigarette. “You've got the pull of some of us—you can please yourself. And here we are at old Bartimaeus's, and this is a very different pair of shoes!”
They were driving out of one of London's main thoroughfares, through a groined archway, into one of London's ancient buildings with its quiet quadrangle where trees grow and birds sing. Every window of the square was lighted up, and there was a low murmur of music being played within.
“Listen!” said Lord Robert. “I am here ostensibly as the guest of the visiting physician, don't you know, but really in the interests of the little friend I told you of.”
“The one I got the tickets for last week?”
“Precisely.”
At the next moment they were in the ballroom. It was the lecture theatre for the students of the hospital school—a building detached from the wards and of circular shape, with a gallery round its walls, which were festooned with flags and roofed with a glass dome. Some two hundred girls and as many men were gathered there; the pit was their dancing ring and the gallery was their withdrawing room. The men were nearly all students of the medical schools; the girls were nearly all nurses, and they wore their uniform: There was not one jaded face among them, not one weary look or tired expression. They were in the fulness of youth and the height of vigour. The girls laughed with the ring of joy, their eyes sparkled with the light of happiness, their cheeks glowed with the freshness of health.
The two men stood a moment and looked on.
“Well, what do you think of it?” said Lord Robert.
Drake's wide eyes were ablaze, and his voice came in gusts.
“Think of it!” he said. “It's wonderful! It's glorious!”
Lord Robert's glass had dropped from his eye, and he was laughing in his drawling way.
“What are you laughing at? Women like these are at least natural, and Nature can not be put on.”
The mazurka had just finished, and the dancers were breaking into groups.
“Robert, tell me who is that girl over there—the one looking this way? Is it your friend?”
Lord Robert readjusted his glass.
“The pretty dark girl with the pink-and-white cheeks, like a doll?”
“Yes; and the taller one beside her—all hair, and eyes, and bosom. She's looking across now. I've seen that girl before somewhere. Now, where have I seen her? Look at her—what fire, and life, and movement! The dance is over, but she can't keep her feet still.”
“I see—I see. But let me introduce you to the matron and doctors first, and then——”
“I know now—I know where I've seen her! Be quick, Robert, be quick!”
Lord Robert laughed again in his tired drawl. He was finding it very amusing.