Selwyn made one vital error—he mistook facts for truth. He forgot that a sequence of facts, each one absolutely accurate in itself, may, when pieced together, create a fabric of falsehood.
There were many contributing influences to Austin Selwyn's denunciation of Britain that morning. Although he had ordered sentiment and prejudice to leave his mind unclogged, these two passions cannot be dismissed by mere will-power.
He was keenly moved by the meeting with Dick Durwent, and, almost unknown to himself, his love for Elise was a smouldering fever whose fumes mounted to his head. Love is so overpowering that it overlaps the confines of hate, and his hunger for her was mixed with an almost savage desire to conquer her, force homage from her. And she was English!
In addition to these undercurrents affecting his thoughts, there was the dislike towards England which lies dormant in so many American breasts. Gloss it over as they will, no politicalententecan do away with the mutual dislike of Americans and Englishmen. It is a thing which cannot be eradicated in a day, but will die the sooner for exposure to the light, being an ugly growth of swampy prejudice and evil-smelling provincialism that needs the darkness and the damp for life.
Mingling these subconscious elements with those of logic and reason, Selwyn wrote for two days, almost without an hour's rest, and when it was finished 'The Island of Darkness' was a powerful, vivid, passionate arraignment of England, the heart of the British Empire. It was clever, full of big thoughts, and glowed with the genius of a man who had made language his slave.
It lacked only one ingredient, a simple thing at best—Truth.
But that is the tragedy of idealism, which studies the world as a crystal-gazer reading the forces of destiny in a piece of glass.
A week later, in the early afternoon, Selwyn was going up Whitehall, when he heard the sound of pipes, and turned with the crowd to gaze. With rhythmic pomposity a pipe-major was twirling a staff, while a band of pipes and drums blared out a Scottish battle-song on the frosty air. Following them in formation of fours were five or six hundred men in civilian clothes, attested recruits on their way to training-centres.
With the intellectual appetite of the psychologist, Selwyn looked searchingly at the faces of the strangely assorted crowd, and the contrasts offered would have satisfied the most rapacious student of human nature.
His eyes seized on one well-built, well-groomed man of thirty odd years whose slight stoop and cultured air of tolerance marked him a ''Varsity man' as plainly as cap and gown could have done. Just behind him a costermonger in a riot of buttons was indulging in philosophic quips of a cheerfully vulgar nature. A few yards back a massive labourer with clear untroubled eye and powerful muscles stood out like a superior being to the three who were alongside. Half-way a poet marched. What form his poesy took—whether he expressed beauty in words, or, catching the music of the western wind, wove it into a melody, or whether he just dreamed and never told of what he dreamed—it matters not; he was a poet. His step, his dreamy eyes, the poise of his forehead raised slightly towards the skies, were things which showed his personality as clearly as the mighty forearm or the plethora of buttons bespoke the labourer or the costermonger.
With a great sense of pity the American watched them pass, while the skirl of the bagpipes lessened in the distance. In spite of the dissimilarity of type, there was a community of shyness that embraced almost every one—a silent plea not to be mistaken for heroes. As they passed the Horse Guards and saw the two sentries astride their horses still as statues (their glorious trappings, breastplates, helmets, and swords, the embodiment of spectacular militarism) an apologetic, humorous smile was on the face of almost every recruit. The sight was a familiar enough one to the large majority, but in the presence of those grim, superb cavalrymen they felt the self-conscious embarrassment of small boys about to enter a room full of their elders.
In its own way it was Britain's mob saying to Britain's Regulars that it was to be hoped no one would think they imagined themselves soldiers in the real sense of the word.
But to Selwyn the noise of their marching feet on the roadway had the ominous sound of the roll of the tumbrils, bearing their victims to the guillotine.
The procession was nearly ended and he was about to turn away, when his eye was attracted by a peculiar pair of knees encased in trousers that were much too tight, working jerkily from side to side as their owner marched. Although his face was almost hidden by reason of his vagabond hat being completely on one side, it was not difficult to recognise the futurist, Johnston Smyth. He appeared to be in rare form, as an admiring group of fellow-recruits in his immediate vicinity were almost doubled up with laughter, and even the grizzled Highland sergeant marching sternly in the rear had such difficulty in suppressing a loud guffaw that his face was a mottled purple.
And marching beside the humorist, with a slouch-cap low over his eyes, was the lad who was known as 'Boy-blue.'
As this tale of the parts men play unfolds itself a passing thought comes.
From the standpoint of fairness, economics, and efficiency, conscription should have been Britain's first move. But nations, like individuals, have great moments that reveal the inner character and leave beacons blazing on the hills of history.
In a war in which every nation was the loser, Britain can at least reclaim from the wreckage the memory of that glorious hour when the Angelus of patriotism rang over the Empire, and men of every creed, pursuit, and condition dropped their tasks and sank themselves in the great consecration of service.
What is the paltry glory of a bloody victory or the passing sting of a defeat?
War is base, senseless, and degrading—that was one truth that Selwyn did recognise; but what he failed to see was that in the midst of all the foulness there lay some glorious gems. When battles are forgotten and war is remembered as a hideous anachronism of the past, our children and their children will bow in reverence to that stone set high in Britain's diadem—THEY SERVED.
In a small South Kensington flat a young woman was seated before a mirror, adding to her beauty with those artifices which are supposed to lure the male to helpless capitulation. Two candles gave a shadowy, mysterious charm to the reflection—a quality somewhat lacking in the original—and it was impossible for its owner to look on the picture of pensive eyelashes, radiant eyes, and warm cheeks without a murmur of admiration. She smiled once to estimate the exact amount of teeth that should be shown; she leaned forward and looked yearningly, soulfully, into the brown eyes in the glass. With a sigh of satisfaction she lit a cigarette from one of the candles, and leaning back, watched the smoke passing across the face of the reflection.
'Hello, Elise!' said the beauty casually, as the door opened and EliseDurwent entered, dressed in the uniform of an ambulance-driver.
'You'll find the room standing on its head, but chuck those things anywhere.'
'Going out again?' asked the new-comer, stepping over several feminine garments that had been thrown on the floor.
'Just a dance up the street—in Jimmy Goodall's studio. Listen, old thing; do put on some water. I'm croaking for a cup of tea.'
Without any comment, Elise went into the adjoining room, used as a kitchen, while the voluptuary dabbed clouds of powder over her neck and shoulders. With a tired listlessness, Elise returned and sank into a chair, from the back of which an underskirt was hanging disconsolately.
'You didn't do the breakfast-dishes, Marian.'
'Didn't I? Oh, well, they're not very dirty. Had a rotten day at the garage?'
'It was rather long.'
'You're a chump for doing it. Working for your country's all very well, but wait until after the war and see if the girl who's spoiled her hands has a chance with the men. Why don't you wangle leave like I do? You can pull old Huggin's leg any day in the week—and he likes it. All you have to do is to lean on his shoulder and say you won't give up—you simplywon't. Aren't men a scream?'
'I suppose so,' said Elise after a pause. 'Who is your cavalier to-night?'
'Horry.'
'Horace Maynard?'
'Absolutely. You know him, don't you, Elise?'
'Yes. He was visiting at our place in the country when war broke out.When is he going back to France?'
'Monday.'
'He's been dancing pretty constant attendance, hasn't he?'
'Ra-ther. He says if I don't write him every day after he buzzes back, he'll stick his head over the parapet and spoil a Hun bullet.'
'Those things come easily to Horace.'
'Oh, do they? I notice he doesn't go to you to say them.'
'No,' said Elise with a smile, 'that is so. Think of the thrills I miss.'
'Now don't get sarcastic. If Horry wants to make a fuss over me, that's his business.'
'What about your husband at the front?'
'My husband and I understand each other perfectly,' said the girl, glancing critically at the picture of two parted, carmined lips in the mirror. 'He wouldn't want me to be lonely. He knows I have my boy friends, and he's not such a fool as to be jealous. You want to wake up, Elise—things have changed. A woman who sticks at home and meets her darling hubby at night with half-a-dozen squalling kids and a pair of carpet slippers—no thanks! The war has shown that women are going to have just as much liberty as the men. We've taken it; and I tell you the men like us all the better for it.'
'You think that because every man you meet kisses you.'
'Elise!'
'Good heavens! Don't they?'
'Well, I never! Anyhow, what if they do? Is there any harm in it?'
Elise smiled and shook her head. 'None, my dear Marian,' she said. 'There is no possible harm in it. There's no harm in anything now. The old idea that a woman's purity and modesty—— But what's the use of saying that to you? Of course you're right. Who wants to stay at home with a lot of little brats, if you can have a dozen men a week standing you dinners, and mauling you like a bargee, and'——
'Elise!'
'There's the water getting near the boil.' Elise rose with a strange little laugh and looked at a yellow silk stocking which dangled over the side of a wicker table. As if trying to solve a conundrum, she glanced from it to the shapely form of the young woman at her toilet. 'When the war's over,' she said ruminatingly, 'and our men find what kind of girls they married when they were on leave'——
'There you go again. For Heaven's sake, Elise, if you can't attract men yourself, don't nag a girl who does. You're positively sexless. The way you talk'——
'There's the water. When Horace comes I don't want to see him.'
'I guess he can live without it,' said the patriotic, leave-wangling war-worker, with an angry glance at Elise as she disappeared into the kitchen. Catching a glimpse of the frown in the mirror, she checked it, and once more leaned towards the reflection as if she would kiss the alluring lips that beckoned coaxingly in the glass.
Marian had gone, radiant, and exulting in her radiance; and Elise sat by the meagre fire trying to take interest in a novel. Although she had found it easy to be confident and self-assertive when the other girl was there, the solitariness of the flat and the silence of the street undermined her courage. The dragging minutes, the meaningless pages. . . . She wished that even Marian were there in all her complacent vulgarity.
Although she had drawn many people to her, the passing of the years had left Elise practically friendless. It was easy for her to attract with her gift of intense personality; but the very quality that attracted was the one that eventually repelled. The impossibility of forgetting herself, of losing herself in the intimacies of friendship, made her own personality a thing which was stifling her life. Since she was a child she had craved for understanding and sympathy, but nature and her upbringing had made it impossible for her to accept them when they were offered. Lacking the power of self-expression, and consequently self-forgetfulness, her own individuality oppressed her. It was like an iron mask which she could not remove, and which no one could penetrate.
Going to London soon after the outbreak of war, she had been taken on the strength of a motor-ambulance garage; and to be near her work she had leased a small flat in Park Walk, sharing it by turn with various companion drivers. Although her desire to be of service was the prime reason of her action, it was with unconcealed joy that she had thrown off the restraints of home. Freedom of action, a respite from the petty gossip of her mother's set, had loomed up as the portals to a new life. The thought of sharing the discomforts and the privileges of patriotic work with young women who had broken the shackles of convention was a prospect that thrilled her.
To her amazement, she discovered that the feminine nature alters little with environment. It was true, her new companions had broken with all the previous conceptions of decorum, but they had used their newly found liberty to enslave themselves still further with the idea of man-conquest. Officers—callow, heroic, squint-eyed, supercilious, superb, of any and every Allied country—officers were the quarry, and they the hunters. To love or not to love? Their talks, their thoughts, their lives concerned little else. They fought for the attentions of men like starving sparrows for crumbs.
In such an environment, where she had hoped to lose the burden of persistent self, Elise found emancipation farther away than ever. Theabandonof the others first created a reversion to prudery in her breast, and then developed a cynical indifference. The others treated her with friendly insouciance. Had she been ill, or had she met with an accident, there was probably not one who wouldn't have proved herself a 'ministering angel.' As it was, they largely ignored her, indulging the instinct of inhumanity which so often is woman's attitude towards woman.
So she sat alone, the Elise who had always been so resolute and independent, feeling very small and pathetic, yearning for far-off things—utterly lonesome, and a little inclined to cry.
The words of the book grew dim, and her thoughts drifted towards Austin Selwyn. He had been contemptible! A pacifist! His idealism was a pose to try to ennoble utter cowardice. At a time when men's blood ran high he had prated of brotherhood, and peace, and suggested that the infamous Hun had a soul! How she hated him! . . . And when she had finished with that thought her heart's yearning returned more cruelly than before.
That evening by the trout-stream when she had seen Dick hiding in the bush, Selwyn had caught her when she had almost swooned. He had gripped her arms with his hands, and, quivering with emotion, had lent his strength to her. At the memory the crimson of her cheeks deepened. They had been so close to each other. His burning eyes, his lips trembling with passion—what strange impulse in her heart had made her thrill with a heavenly exhilaration? For that instant while his hands had gripped her a glorious vista had appeared before her eyes—a world of dreams where the tyranny of self could not enter. For that one instant her whole soul had leaped in response to his strong tenderness.
She tried to dismiss the recollection as an admission of cowardice engendered of the night's mood. But she could not do away with the memories which lingered obstinately. Not since the days when Dick had offered his blind loyalty had any one tried to understand her as Austin Selwyn had done. She was grateful for that. She might even have valued his friendship if he had not been so despicable that awful night. To insult her with his talk of pacifism, and then, heedless of her intensity, to propose to her! She could not forgive him for that. She was glad her words had stung him!
Minutes passed. The fire would not answer to any attention, but sulkily lived out its little hour. The evening seemed interminable.
It was shortly after ten o'clock when there was a knock at the door, and Elise hurried to open it, thinking there might be a message from the garage.
'It's only me, Elise,' said a familiar voice.
'Oh!—Horace,' she laughed. 'What's the trouble? Did Marian leave anything behind?'
'No. I was just absolutely fed up; and when she told me you were here alone, I thought I'd jolly well come down and talk to you.'
'Good! Come in. You mustn't stay long, though. Please don't notice this horrible mess.'
In sheer pleasure at the breaking of the solitude, her vivacity made her eyes sparkle with life. Her sentences were crisp and rapid, and as she led the young officer to a seat by the fire it would have been difficult for Elise herself to think that a few minutes before she had been helplessly and lonesomely on the brink of tears.
'How is the dance going on up the street?' she asked, as Maynard inserted a cigarette between his lips without lighting it.
'It's a poisonous affair.'
'Poor boy!'
'I'm fed up, Elise. I'm—I'mgorged. When I heard you were down here, I said, "By George! I'll go and see her. I can talk to Elise. She's got some sense."'
'What a thing to say about a woman!'
'Don't chaff me, Elise. I can't stand it. I'm frightfully upset—really.'
'What has Marian been doing to you?''
'Nothing, except making a blithering ass of me. You know, I was fearfully keen on her, and I've passed up all sorts of fluff so as to do the decent; but when that brute Heckles-Jennings advised me to-night to be sure and sit out a dance with Marian because she was such hot stuff, he said . . . Of course, he's an outsider and all that, and I told him to go to hell—but you don't blame me for feeling cut up, do you, Elise?'
'Didn't you know she was that kind?'
'What kind?'
'Oh—the—the universal kisser—the complete osculator—the'——
'I say'——
'But surely you don't think you are the only one she has made a fool of?To begin with, there's her husband in France—a brother-officer, Horace.'
Maynard wriggled uneasily, sliding down the chair in the movement until his knees were very near his chin.
'He's a rotter, Elise.'
'Do you know him?'
'N-no. But Marian says he absolutely neglects her. He's one of those cold-blooded fish—doesn't understand her a bit. After all'—the extra vehemence shifted him another few inches, so that he presented an extraordinary figure, like the hump of a dromedary—'women must have sympathy. They need it. They'——
'Oh, Horace!' Elise burst into a laugh. 'Are there really some of you left? How refreshing! Why don't you put it on your card: "2nd Lt. Horace Maynard, Grenadier Guards, soul-mate by appointment"?'
'I wish you wouldn't laugh like that.'
He was a picture of such utter dejection that, checking her mirth, Elise laid her hand on his arm. 'Sorry, Horace. You know, if it hadn't been for this war we might never have known howniceour men are. I only wonder how it is that the women have the heart to make such fools of you.'
The unhappy warrior pulled himself up to a fairly upright posture and tapped his cigarette against the palm of his hand. 'I'm glad,' he said with a slight blush, 'that you don't quite put me down as a rotter. I don't know what's come over us all. Before the war, when you met a chap's wife—well, hang it all!—she was his wife, and that was all there was about it. But nowadays'——
'I know, Horace, it's a miserable business altogether—partly war hysteria, and partly the fact that women can't stand independence, I suppose. Marian's a splendid type of the female war-shirker. You know she's married; yet, because she lets you maul her'——
'I say, Elise!'
'——and she murmurs pathetically that her husband in France neglects her—at least, that's what she tells you. When she was dressing to-night Marian said that she and her husband absolutely trusted each other.'
'By Jove! You don't mean that?'
'She also said that all men, including you, were a scream. Probably she considers you a perfect shriek.'
Trembling with indignation, Maynard suddenly collapsed like a punctured balloon and relapsed dejectedly into his recumbent attitude. 'What an ass I have been!' he lamented sorrowfully. 'What a sublime ass! And Marian—the little devil!'
'Rubbish!'
'Eh? I suppose you think I am an idiot for—— Well, perhaps you're right.'
For a couple of minutes nothing was said, and the melancholy lover, with his chin resting on his chest, ruminated over his unhappy affair.
'Hang it all!' he said at last, hesitatingly, 'when a chap gets leave from the front he's—he's sort of woman-hungry. You don't know what it feels like, after getting away from all that mud and corruption, to hear a girl's voice—one of our own. It goes to the head like bubbly. It's a—a dream come true. There's just the two things in your life—eight or nine months in the trenches; then a fortnight with the company of women again. It's awfully soppy to talk like this'——
'No, it isn't, Horace. It's the biggest compliment ever paid our women. I only wish we could try to be what you boys picture us. That's what makes me feel like drowning Marian every few days. Horace, I'm proud of you.'
She patted his hand which was grasping the arm of the chair, and he blushed a hearty red.
'Elise!' He sat bolt-upright. 'By gad! I never knew it until this minute.Youare the woman I ought to marry. You are far too good and clever and all that; but, by Jove! I could do something in the world if I had you to work for. Don't stop me, Elise. I am serious. I should have known all along'——
'Horace, Horace!' Hardly knowing whether to laugh or to cry, Elise put her hand over his mouth and checked the amorous torrent. 'You're a perfect dear,' she said, 'and I'm ever so grateful'——
'But'——
'But you mustn't be silly. This is only the reaction from Marian.'
'It's nothing of the sort,' he blurted, putting aside her hand. 'I—I really do—I love you. You're different from any other girl I ever met.'
'My dear, you mustn't say such things. You know you don't love me as you will the right girl when you meet her.'
He got out of the chair by getting over its arm. 'I beg your pardon,Elise,' he said, not without a certain shy dignity. 'I meant every wordI said—but I suppose there's some one else.'
'Only a dream-man, Horace.'
'What about that American?'
'What—American?' Her agitation was something she could hardly have explained.
'That author-fellow at Roselawn. He was frightfully keen on you. I remember half-a-dozen times when he would be talking to us, and if you came in he'd go as mum as an oyster, and just follow you with his eyes. Ishethe chap, Elise?'
'Good gracious!'—she forced a laugh— 'why, I don't even know where he is.'
'Don't you? He's in London; I can tell you that much. Last month in France I ran across that Doosenberry-Jewdrop fellow—-you know—the futurist artist.'
'Do you mean Johnston Smyth?'
'That's the chap.'
'I didn't know he was in France.'
'Rather. I thought your brother would have told you.'
'My brother?' There was not a vestige of colour in her cheeks. 'What do you mean?'
Maynard scratched the back of his head. 'Smyth told me,' he said, wondering at the cause of her agitation, 'that Dick and he enlisted together some months ago. By Jove! I remember now. He told me that this American fellow put them up at his rooms in St. James's Square one night. Smyth didn't know who Dick was until they got to France. He was travelling under the name of Sherlock, or Shylock, or Sherwood'——
'I—I thought Dick was in China.' She wrung her hands nervously. 'You didn't see him?'
'No. That's all I know about him, except that he was transferred to some other battalion than Dinglederry Smyth's.'
She went over to a table and took a piece of notepaper from a drawer. 'Mr. Selwyn used to belong to the R.A.C.,' she said quickly. 'Would you do me a favour, Horace dear?'
He murmured his desire to be of service in any capacity. Hesitating a moment, she wrote hurriedly:
'4th March 1915, 2lA PARK WALK.
'DEAR MR. SELWYN,—Will you please come and see me as soon as you can? I am not on night-duty this week.—Yours sincerely, ELISE DURWENT.'
She sealed the envelope and handed it to Maynard. 'Please find out from the R.A.C. where he is, and ask them to send this note to him. I am ever so grateful, Horace.'
'I suppose,' he said, looking at the envelope, 'that this means the—the finish of my chances?'
She answered the question by wishing him good luck in France, but there was a strange tremulousness in the softly spoken words.
He put out his hand shyly. 'Good-night, old girl,' he said, smiling with a sort of rueful boyishness.
She took his proffered hand, and then, obeying an impulse, stooped and pressed her burning cheek against it. 'Good-night, Horace,' she said softly. 'I hope you'll come back safe to be a fine husband for some nice girl.'
When he had gone, and his footsteps died away, she returned to the table. Burying her face in her hands, she fought back the tears which surged to the surface. Her love for Dick, her own loneliness, a mad joy in the thought of seeing Selwyn again, a motherly pity for Maynard, a fury towards Marian, an incomprehensible yearning—she felt that her heart was bursting, but could not have said herself whether it was with grief or with joy.
From the time that Austin Selwyn received the note there was nothing else in his mind—as in Elise's—but the coming meeting. As playwrights planning a scene, each went through the encounter in prospect a dozen times, reading into it the play of emotions which was almost certain to dominate the affair. Although completely ignorant of her motive in writing to him, Selwyn invented a hundred different reasons—only to discard them all. Nor was Elise more able to satisfy herself as to the outcome of the meeting. It was not his actions that were difficult to forecast, but her own. Would her dislike of him be intensified? Would she experience again the momentary rapture of that summer afternoon?
It was fortunate that another lover had appeared for Marian, so that the desertion of Maynard did not leave her moping untidily about the place. She was one of those women who are so singularly lacking in self-sufficiency that, except when in the company of men, they are as fiat as champagne from which the sparkle has departed.
It so happened, therefore, that Elise was again alone the following evening, dreading Selwyn's arrival, yet impatient of delay.
A few minutes after eight she heard him knock, and going to the street door, opened it for him. The night was a vapourish, miserable one, blurring his figure into indistinctness, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse, as though the damp tendrils of the mist had penetrated to his throat.
Answering something to his greeting, she led him through the hall into the sitting-room. He paused as he entered. Without looking back, she crossed to the fireplace, and kneeling down, stirred the fire.
'May I help?'
'No, thanks. I prefer to do it.'
Her answer had followed so swiftly on his question that he stopped in the act of stepping forward. She looked over her shoulder with a swift, searching glance.
His face was a tired gray, and the silk scarf thrown about his neck looked oddly vivid against the black evening-clothes and overcoat. But if his face suggested weariness, his eyes were alive with dynamic force. The intensity of the man's personality strangely moved Elise. She felt the presence of a mind and a body vibrating with tremendous purpose—a man who drew vitality from others, yet charged them in return with his own greater store.
To her he seemed to have divorced himself from type—he had lost even the usual characteristics of race. With the thought, she wondered how far his solitary life had effected the transition, if his idealism had brought him loneliness.
'Won't you sit down?' she said hesitatingly.
He acquiesced, and took a seat in the chair from which Maynard had run the emotional gamut the previous evening.
'You look pale,' she said, drawing a chair near the fire. 'I hope you have not been unwell.'
'No—no; it is merely that I have been so little out of doors. I could not gather from your note what kind of work you were engaged in. I see you are an ambulance-driver. I congratulate you.'
His voice conveyed nothing but polite interest in an obvious situation. With over-sensitive apprehension she listened for any suggestion of sarcasm that lay behind his words, but she could detect nothing beyond mere impersonal courtesy—that, and a far-off weariness, as of one who has passed the borders of fatigue.
'I wrote to your mother,' he said, 'when I heard of your elder brother's death. It must have been a great grief to you all.'
She did not answer him. His manner was so cold that he might have been deliberately disposing of a number of prepared comments rendered imperative by the laws of polite intercourse.
'Why didn't you let us know you had seen Dick?' she said abruptly.
'Then—you have heard?' He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
'Only last night, by the merest accident. He might have been killed in France, and we should never have known about it.' Her words were resentful and swift. 'Will you please tell me about him?'
Omitting the incident of Archibald's tavern, Selwyn told of the chance meeting with Dick, the encounter with Johnston Smyth, the night at the rooms in St. James's Square, and the subsequent glimpse of them marching through Whitehall.
'Your brother asked me to say nothing,' he said calmly. 'That is one of the reasons why I did not let you know.'
'Had Dick changed at all?' she asked, trying to make her words as listless as his. 'I wish that you would tell me something that he said. You must know more about him than just'——
'I don't think he had changed,' said Selwyn; and for the first time his voice was tinged with compassion. 'He spoke of you with a kind of worship. I suppose you know how he idolises you.'
His dark eyes looked at her through partially closed eyelashes, but only the manner in which her fingers compressed the fold of her skirt betrayed the turmoil of her feelings.
'Is that all you can tell me?'
'That is all.' He made no attempt to elaborate the conversation or to introduce any new theme. The scene which had promised to be so dramatic was actually dragging with uncomfortable silences. She waited long enough for him to speak, but when he remained silent—it was a sardonic silence to her—she rose from the chair with the manner of one who has determined to bring an interview to a close.
'Thank you for coming so promptly,' she said. 'I am most grateful for your kindness to Dick—and I know enough of the law to realise that you were taking a risk in hiding him.'
'It was nothing at all,' he said. He looked at her for an indication that her questions were at an end.
'I hope you will be able to get a taxi,' she ventured helplessly.
For the first time he smiled, and she reddened with mortification. He had been so cool and unyielding, so bloodless, that he had forced her to a disadvantage. She knew he could not be ignorant of the strain of the affair on her, yet he had done nothing to ease it. If she could have projected her mind into his, she would have seen that his conduct was as inexplicable to himself as to her. He knew he was hurting her. Perhaps it was because her warm lips and crimson cheeks were creating a torment in his soul that he could not curb the impulse to wound her. It may have been the subconscious knowledge that where one can hurt one can conquer that dominated his actions. While she resented the invulnerability with which he guarded his own feelings, it is probable that any different attitude on his part would have brought forth a more active unkindness on hers. When men and women love, strange paradoxes are found.
They went to the door together, and in the brighter light of the hall Elise saw for the first time that he was considerably thinner, and that his brow was like marble. She felt a little stab of pity for him, forgetting his own lack of sympathy towards herself; she caught a faint realisation of what he must have endured for it to have marked him so indelibly.
'Don't you think,' she said, 'that you ought to go to the seaside for a while? You are not looking at all well.'
His lips grew firmer, but there was a curious look in his eyes as he turned towards her. 'I have work to do here,' he said crisply.
'I know—but surely'——
'In London,' he said—and there was a suggestion of the fanatic's ecstasy in his voice—'it is impossible to forget life. I don't want my mind soothed or lulled. You can always hear the challenge of the human destiny in London. It cries out to you everywhere. It'—— He had held his head erect, and had spoken louder than was his custom; but, checking himself, he made a queer, dramatic gesture with his hands.
The fire of his spirit swept over her. Once more she stood close to him, as she had done so many times in her thoughts. She did not know whether she loved or detested him. She was fascinated—trembling—longing for him to force her to surrender in his arms—knowing that she would hate him if he did. She gave a little cry as Selwyn, almost as if he read her conflicting thoughts, took her arms with his hands once more.
'If we had both been English,' he said, and his voice was so parched that it seemed to have been scorched by his spirit, 'or if we had met in other times than these, things might have been different. I know what you think of me for the work I am doing, but it would be as impossible for me to give it up as for you to think as I do. We come of two different worlds, you and I. . . . I am sorry we have met to-night. For me, at least, it has reopened old wounds. And it is all so useless.'
She made no reply; but as his eyes were lowered to her face, and he saw once more the trembling lips, her unsoiled womanliness, her whole vivid, lonely, gripping charm, a look of suffering crossed his face. He realised the hopelessness of it all, but the admission was like tearing out a thread which had been woven into the whole scheme of his being.
'We both have our work to do,' he said wearily, letting his arms drop to his side.
'Good-night.'
She answered, but did not give him her hand. With a repetition of the farewell he left her, and she walked musingly into the room again. She felt a flush of anger at his daring to say their friendship was impossible, when she had not even suggested that it could ever be resumed. His vanity knew no bounds. She was furious at having let him hold her as he did—even more furious with the knowledge that she would not have resisted if he had kissed her.
Two summers came and went, and the little park in St. James's Square rested once more beneath its covering of autumn leaves.
Selwyn, who was still occupying the rooms of the absent New Yorker, was looking over his morning mail. The thinning of his hair at the temples was more pronounced, and here and there was the warning of premature gray. He had lost flesh, but his face had steadied into a set grimness, and his mouth had the firmness of one who had fought a long uphill fight.
Looking through a heavy mail, he extracted a letter from his New York agent:
'Oct. 2nd, 1916.
'DEAR MR. SELWYN,—You will be interested to know that the extraordinary sensation caused by your writings in America has resulted in the sale of them to Mr. J. V. Schneider for foreign rights. They have been translated, and will shortly appear in the press of Spain, Norway, Holland, and the various states of South America.
'It would be impossible for me to forward more than a small percentage of the comments of our press on your work, but in my whole literary experience I don't remember any writer who has caused such a storm of comment on every appearance as you. As you can see by the selection I have made, the papers are by no means entirely favourable. I feel that you should know that you are openly accused of pro-Germanism, of being a conscientious objector, &c., &c.—all of which, of course, means excellent advertisement.
'I have had many inquiries as to whether you would care to conduct a lecture-tour. There is a Mr. C. B. Benjamin, who is financially interested in Mr. Schneider's affairs, and who is willing to pay you almost anything within reason, if you care to state your terms.
'Of course, the most discussed article of all is "The Island of Darkness," in which you accuse Britain of contributing so largely towards bringing about the present war. The German-American organisations and the strong Irish section here were especially jubilant, and every one concedes that it has awakened a great deal of resentment against Britain that had been forgotten since the beginning of the war. Even your detractors admit that "The Island of Darkness" will live as a literary classic.
'Your first ten articles have been made into book form under the titleAmerica's War, and are selling most satisfactorily. The first edition has gone into 40,000 copies. The attached clipping from theNew York Expressis fairly typical of the reception given the book by the pro-Entente press.
'Your September statement will go forward to-morrow with cheque covering foreign rights, royalties, &c.—I am, Mr. Selwyn, yours very truly,
With hardly more than a merely casual interest, Selwyn glanced at the clipping attached to the letter. It was from the editorial page of theExpress.
'In 1912 Austin Selwyn was known as a younger member of New York's writing fraternity. He had done one or two good things and several mediocre ones, but promised to reach the doubtful altitude of best-sellership without difficulty. To-day Selwyn is the mouthpiece of neutrality. He has preached it in a language that will not permit of indifference. He has succeeded in surrounding his doubtful idealism with a vigour that commands attention, even if not respect. Right in the heart of London he is turning out insidious propaganda which is being seized upon by every neutral American who has his own reasons for wanting us to keep out of war. It would be absurd to say that one man's writing could in itself sway a great nation, but nevertheless it is a vehicle which is being used to the limit by every pro-German agency in this free land.
'Truly we are a strange people. We have a President who deliberately cuts his political throat with a phrase, "too proud to fight;" but because we think Wilson is a greater man than he himself knows, we sew up the cut and send him back for another term. In the same way, although every red-blooded American has in his heart been at war with Germany since theLusitania, we permit this man Selwyn to go on cocaining the conscience of our people until our flag, which we have loved to honour, is beginning to be a thing of shame. He should be brought back from England and interned here with a few "neutral" German-Americans. He certainly can write, and perhaps from confinement he might give us a secondDe Profundis. His book,America's War, which is now on the market, is a series of arguments showing that America is at war with the causes of the war. It is a nice conceit. Our advice is to add the book to your library—but don't read it for ten years. In that time it will be interesting to see the work of a brilliant mind prostituted (and in this we are placing the most charitable construction on Mr. Selwyn's motives) by intellectual perversion.'
Without the expression of his face undergoing any change, Selwyn carefully placed the letter on his file, and took from the envelope a number of American press clippings. Choosing them at random, he contented himself with reading the headings:
'Author of "The Island of Darkness" again hits out.'
'"Britain has thrived on European medievalism," says Austin Selwyn.'
'More hot air from the super-Selwyn.'
'Selwyn is the spokesman for enlightened America.'
'Masterful thinker, masterful writer, is the author of "The Island ofDarkness."'
'What does Selwyn receive from Germany?'
'The arch-hypocrite of American letters.'
With a shrug of his shoulders he threw them to one side. 'A pack of hounds,' he muttered, 'howling at the moon!'
He leaned back in his chair and pondered over the written word that could leap such spaces and carry his message into countries which he had never seen. It was with a deeper emotion than just the author's pleasure at recognition that he visualised his ancestor leaving Holland for the New World, and the strange trend of events which was resulting in the emigrant's descendant sending back to the Netherlands his call to higher and world citizenship.
Still ruminating over the power that had become his, he noticed a letter, on the envelope of which was written 'On Active Service,' and breaking the seal, found that it was from Douglas Watson, written at a British hospital in France. As Selwyn read it the impassiveness of his face gave way to a look of trouble. For the first time in many months there was the quick play of expression about his lips and his eyes that had always differentiated him from those about him.
At the conclusion of the letter he put it down, and crossing to the French windows, leaned against them, while his fingers drummed nervously on the glass. With a gesture of impatience, as though he resented its having been written at all, he picked up the letter once more, and turning the pages, quickly reached the part which had affected him so:
'They tell me I'm going to lose my arm, and that I'm out of it; but they're wrong. I'm going back to America just as soon as they will let me, and I'm going to tell them at home what this war is about. And, what's more, I'm going to tell them what war is. It isn't great armies moving wonderfully forward "as if on parade," as some of these newspaper fellows tell you. It's a putrid, rotten business. After Loos dead men and horses rotted for days in the sun. War's not a thing of glory; it's rats and vermin and filth and murder. Three weeks ago I killed a German. He hadn't a chance to get his gun up before I stuck him with my bayonet like a pig. As he fell his helmet rolled off; he was about eighteen, with sort of golden hair, and light, light blue eyes. I've been through some hell, Austin, but when I saw his face I cried like a kid. To you that's another argument for our remaining neutral. To me that poor little Fritzie is the very reason America should have been in it from the first. Can't you see that this Prussian outfit is not only murdering Frenchmen and Russians and Britishers, but is murdering her own men as well? If America had been in the war it would have been over now, and every day she holds back means so many more of the best men in the world dead.
'For the love of Mike, Austin, clear your brains. I have seen your stuff in American papers sent over to me, and it's vile rot. Tomorrow they're going to take my left arm from me, but'——
Selwyn crumpled the letter in his hand and hurled it into the fireplace. Plunging his hands into his pockets, he paced the room as he had done that night when Watson had called to tell him he was going to enlist. He was seized with an incoherent fury at it all—the inhumanity of it—the degradation of the whole thing. But through the formless cloud of his thoughts there gleamed the one incessant phrase 'about eighteen, with sort of golden hair, and light, light blue eyes.' Why should that groove his consciousness so deeply? He had heard, unmoved, of the death of Malcolm Durwent. A month ago he had read how Captain Fensome, of Lady Durwent's house-party, had been killed trying to rescue his servant in No Man's Land. The sight of Dick Durwent and Johnston Smyth marching away had been only a spur to more intensive writing. Then why should that haltingly worded sentence lie like ice against his heart?
A sharp pain shot through his head.
Stopping his walk, he leaned once more against the windows, and rested his hot face on the grateful coolness of the glass.
What, he questioned, had he accomplished, after all? He had gained the ears of millions, but the war was no nearer a close. America was neutral—that was true.But why was America neutral? Had he falsely idealised his own country? Was her aloofness from the world-war the result of a passionate, overwhelming realisation of her God-deputed destiny, as he had imagined?
Hitherto he had paid no attention to the writings in the English press chronicling the passing of the world's gold reserve from London to New York. He had ignored the evidence of nation-wide prosperity from the Atlantic coast to San Francisco. All such things he had dismissed as unavoidable, unsought material results of America's spiritual neutrality.
Yet, while the wheels of prosperity were turning at such a pitch, there was a boy lying dead—about eighteen.
He beat his fist into the palm of his hand. Who was this Schneider who had purchased the foreign rights of his articles? What sort of a man was this Benjamin who wanted him to lecture? Were they, as he had supposed, men of vision who wished to co-operate in achieving the great unison of Right? . . . Or were they . . . ?
The thought was hideous. Was it possible that those writings, born of his mental torture, robbing him of every friend he valued—-was it thinkable that they had been used for gross purposes?
His fingers again played rapidly against the windows as he wrestled with the sudden ugly suspicion. At last, utterly exhausted, he sank into a chair.
'There is only one thing I can do,' he said decisively; 'return to America at once. If, as I have thought, her neutrality is in tune with the highest; if my fellow-countrymen are imbued with such a spirit of infinite mercifulness that from them will flow the healing streams to cure the wounds of bleeding Europe, then I have carried a lamp whose light reflects the face of God. . . . But if . . .'
That night a glorious moonlight silvered the roof-tops of old London, touching its jumbled architecture with fantastic beauty.
Vagrant towers and angular church spires, uninspired statuary, and weary, smoke-darkened trees shed their garments of commonplaceness and shimmered like the mosques and turrets of an enchanted city.
It was one of those nights that are sent to remind us that Beauty still lives; a night to challenge our mad whirl of bargaining and barter, to urge us to raise our eyes from the grubbing crawling of avarice; a night to awaken old memories, and to stir the pent-up streams of poetry lying asleep in every breast.
It was a moonlight that descended on Old England's troubled heart as a benediction. Her rivers were glimmering paths winding about the country-side; her villages and her heavy-scented country lanes shared its caress with open meadows and murky cities. The sea, binding the little islands in its turbulent immensity, drew the night's beauty to its bosom, and the spray of foam rising from the surf was a shower of star-dust leaping towards the moon.
As a weary traveller drinks thirstily at a pool, Selwyn wandered about the streets trembling with emotion in the breathless ecstasy of the night. All day the conjured picture of the German boy, guilty of no crime save blind devotion to his Fatherland, had haunted him like the eyes of a murdered man. It had robbed him of the power of constructive thought, and stopped his writing with the decisiveness of a sword descending on his wrist; it had made the food on his table tasteless, and given him a dread of the solitude of his rooms.
With nerves that contracted at every untoward sound, he had gone out at dark, and gradually the peacefulness of the night had soothed and calmed him as the dew of dusk cools the earth after the heat of a summer's day. The familiar strains of Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' came to his mind, and as he walked he idly traced the different movements of the music in the moods of the evening's witchery.
His steps, like his thoughts, pursued a tangled course, and led him into the prosaic brick-and-mortar monotony of Bayswater, but the moon was lavish in her generosity, and strewed his path with glinting strands of light. He paused in a quiet square to get his bearings. There was the heavy smell of fallen leaves from the gardens on the other side of the railing.
His mind was still playing the slow minor theme of the sonata's opening movement.
Suddenly the air was shattered with the noise of warning guns. As if released by a single switch, a dozen searchlights sprang into the sky, crossing and blending in a swerving glare. There was the piercing warning of bugles and the heavy booming of maroons.
Dazed by the swiftness of it all, Selwyn leaned against the low iron fence. A Boy Scout whirled past on a bicycle, his bugle hoarse and discordant; an old woman went whimpering by, hatless, with a protesting child in her arms; an ambulance, clanging its gong, rounded the corner with reckless speed; a mightier searchlight than any of the rest swept the sky in great circles.
It seemed only a matter of seconds, though in reality much longer, when the American heard a faint crunching sound in the distance, followed by a deep, sullen thud. In rapid succession came three more, and the defence guns of London burst into action, changing the night into Bedlam.
Still motionless, he listened, awe-struck, to the din of the weird battle with an unseen foe, when the cough of exploding shells in the air grew appreciably louder. Raising a whirlwind of dust, a motor-car swerved dangerously into the square, and with a roar sped up the road, carrying to their aerodrome three British airmen. As if driven by a gale, the battle of the clouds drew nearer and nearer, the whine and barking of the shells like a pack of dogs trying to repel some monster of the jungle.
There was a deafening crash.
Selwyn was thrown against the fence, and almost buried beneath a shower of bricks and earth. With the roar of a rushing waterfall in his ears, and blood streaming from a wound in his forehead, he sank to his knees and for a moment lost consciousness; but mastering his weakness, he staggered to his feet and looked wildly about. On the other side of the street, where there had been a house, there was a smoking chaos. A little crowd had appeared seemingly from the bowels of the earth, and a woman was shrieking horribly.
Selwyn wiped his forehead with his hand and gazed stupidly at the blood which covered it. The roar of the guns was louder than it had yet been, and from a few streets away came the crunch of another bomb, shaking the earth with the explosion which followed. Selwyn leaned impotently against a post, and a quivering uncanny laugh broke from his lips. It was all so grotesque, so absurd.Human beings didn't do such things. It was a joke—a mad jest. He held his sides and laughed with uncontrollable mirth.
Then his whole form became rigid in a moment. A man had shouted something. There had been a wail from the crowd. Was it true? Some one buried alive—a little girl?
With a blasphemous curse Selwyn staggered across the road, and roughly elbowing his way through the crowd, found a solitary policeman, hindered by willing undirected hands, digging in the wreckage as best he could, while a couple of women sobbed hysterically and wrung their hands.
Those who watched hardly knew what had happened, but they saw a hatless, bleeding figure appear, and, with the incision of snapping hawsers, question the policeman and the weeping women. They heard his quick commands to the men, and saw him jump into the centre of the debris. With the instantaneous recognition of leadership his helpers threw themselves to the work with a frenzy of determination. Lifting, digging, pulling with torn hands and arms that ached with strain, they struggled furiously towards the spot where it was known the girl was buried. They were like starving wolves tearing at the carcass of an animal. They yelled encouragement and fought through the chaos—and still the stranger whipped them into madness with his cries.
There in the smoke and the choking dust Austin Selwyn shook in the grip of the greatest emotion he had ever known. A girl was buried—a fraction of a minute might mean her life. With hot breath and pulses on fire, he led his unknown men through the choking ruins to where one small, insignificant life was imprisoned.
An ambulance sounded its gong, and drew up by the crowd; the storm of the guns continued to rage, but no one thought of anything but the fight of those men for one little unknown life.
At last. They had uncovered a great iron beam which had struck on a stone foundation and left a zone of safety beneath. Eager hands gripped it, dragging it aside, and there was hardly a sound as the stranger lowered himself into the chasm. A minute later he reappeared, and a shout broke from the on-lookers. He was carrying a little form in his arms.
But when they saw his face a hush fell on every one. She was dead.
Wild-eyed, with the ghastliness of his pallor showing through the coating of grime and blood, Austin Selwyn stood in the ruins of the house, and the brown tresses of the child fell over his arm.
Kind hands were stretched out to him, but he shook them off angrily.He was talking to the thing in his arms—muttering, crooning something.
Slowly he raised his face to the skies. In the glare of the searchlights a gleaming, silvery, oblong-shaped form was turning and twisting like an animal at bay. They heard him catch his breath; then their blood was frozen by a choking, heart-rending cry of agony and rage.
It was the cry of the crystal-gazer who has had his crystal dashed from his eyes, to find himself in the presence of murder.
The crowd remained mute, helpless and frightened at the spectacle, when they saw a young woman approach him, a woman dressed in the khaki uniform of an ambulance-driver.
'Austin,' they heard her say, 'please give me the little girl.'
With a stupid smile he handed the child to her, and she laid it on a stretcher. When it had been taken away, she took Selwyn's hand in hers and led him, unresisting, to the ambulance.
Early next morning, in a large military ward of a London hospital, Austin Selwyn woke from a sleep that had been charged with black dreams, and tried to recall the events leading to his present whereabouts.
By slow, tortuous process he reconstructed the previous evening as far as the moment when he had heard the warning guns. After that the incidents grew dim, and faded into incoherency. He seemed to remember rushing somewhere in a motor-vehicle. He distinctly recalled seeing a policeman in Trafalgar Square. Yes, that was very clear—quite the most vivid impression of the whole night, indeed. He would hang on to that policeman.
With the care of an Arctic explorer establishing his base before going farther intoterra incognita, he attached the threads of his wandering mind to that limb of the law, and groped in all the directions of his memory's compass. But it was of no avail. Tired out with the futile efforts he had made, his bandaged head sank back in the pillows, and the vivid policeman in Trafalgar Square was reluctantly surrendered as a negligible means of solution.
When he next awoke, it was to the sound of many voices. There were two that were very close—one on either side of him, in fact. Affecting sleep, Selwyn listened carefully.
'Wot's that you say, Jock?' said a Cockney voice to his left.
'I was obsairvin',' said the other, 'that Number Twenty-sax is occupied this mornin'.'
'Ow yus, so it is. I was 'oping as 'ow me pal the Duke of Mudturtle would buy the plice next to mine. But he don't look a bad cove, wot you can see under 'is farncy 'ead-dress.'
'I dinna think he can be o' the airmy. His skin's as pale as a lassie in love.'
'In the army, Jock? Don't hinsult 'im. 'E's one of the 'eroes of the 'ome front—hindispensibles, they calls 'em.'
'Weel, weel, noo,' expostulated the Scot, 'dinna tak' ower muckle for granted. We canna a' gang tae the war, or wha wud bide at hame an' mak the whusky?'
'By Gar!' said a third patient opposite, sitting up suddenly and speaking in the disjointed but strangely musical dialect of the French-Canadian, 'she is a wise feller, dis Scoachie.'
'Bonn swoir, Frenchy,' said the Cockney graciously. ''Ow alley you mantenongs?'
'Verra good, Tommee. How is de godam bow bells?'
'Well, the last toime I sees me old side-kick the Lord Mayor, 'e says as 'ow they was took by a Canadian for a soovenir.'
'Na,' said the Scotsman reprovingly; 'I'm thinkin' yon's exaggerated.'
'By Gar!' said the French-Canadian. 'See, the orderly come now with water for shav'. Back in de bush or on de long portage I shav' once, twice, perhaps tree time a month. Always before I meet my leetle girl I shav'. But when I say good-bye and go to war—by gollies! de army make me for do it every day. My officier, he say, "What for you no shav' dis morning?" "Sair," I say, "I no kees de Boche—I keel him." He say noding to dat excep', "Look at you. I shav' every day. Do you preten' I doan' fight?" "Well," I say, "if de cap feets you, smoke it." And for no reason he give me tree time extra for carry de godam ration.'
At this stage the arrival of wash-basins interrupted further anecdote and philosophy, and the entire ward became animated with soldiers performing their ablutions, some sitting up in bed, others on the edge of their beds, and a few so weak that they could just turn painfully on their side and wait for other hands to help.
A burst of hearty greetings told Selwyn that some one must have entered the ward, and a few minutes later he felt the presence of a nurse beside him.
'Good-morning,' she said, gently touching him on the shoulder. 'How is your head feeling?'
He opened his eyes and looked into the face bending over his. 'I think it's all right,' he said weakly. 'But, nurse, won't you tell me how I got here?'
She dipped a cloth into a basin and bathed his hands and face.
'You were hit by a piece of shrapnel in last night's air-raid. I wasn't on duty when you came in, but the night-sister said you were quite delirious—though you seem ever so much better this morning, don't you? I'll take your temperature, and after you've had some breakfast I'll put a new dressing on your wound.'
She was just going to insert the thermometer between his lips, when he stopped her with his hand. 'Nurse,' he said, 'why was I brought here—among soldiers?'
'Because every hospital is filled to overflowing. The casualties are so heavy just now.' Her voice was still kind, but there was a look of resentment in her eyes at his question.
'Please don't misunderstand me,' said Selwyn wearily. 'It is only the feeling that I have no right here. This cot should be for a soldier, and I'm a civilian. I'm an American, and—and if you only knew'——
'Just a minute, now, until we get this temperature, and then you can tell me all about it.'
With his lips silenced, but his doubts by no means so, he watched her move down the ward in commencement of the countless duties of her day. She was a woman of thirty-three or thirty-four years, still young, and possessed of a womanliness that softened her whole appearance with a tranquil restfulness. But beneath her eyes and in the texture of the skin faint wrinkles were showing, thinly pencilled protests against overwork, that no treatment could ever eradicate. On the red collar of her uniform was a badge which told that she had gone to France with the first little army of Regulars in 1914.
Noting her calloused hands and the too rapid approach of life's midsummer, Selwyn watched her, and wondered what recompense could be offered for those things. In ordinary life, given the privileges and the opportunities which she deserved, she would have been another of those glorious English women whose beauty is nearest the rose. She would have been a wife to grace any home, and as a mother her charm would have been twofold. But for more than two years incessant toil and endless suffering had been the companions of her days, and the not over-strong body was giving to the ordeal.
But as his heavy thoughts drifted slowly through this channel, he saw grinning patients who were well enough get out of bed to help her. As if she carried some magic gem of happiness, her soft voice and deft touch brought smiles to eyes that had been scorched in the flames of hell. Men looked up, and seeing her, believed once more in life; and hope crept into their hearts. Men in the great shadowy valley murmured like a child in its sleep when a ray of morning sunshine, stealing through the curtains, plays upon its face.
And of the many things which Selwyn learned that day, one was that those ministering angels, those women of limitless spirit and sympathy, have memories of mute, unspoken gratitude, beside which the proudest triumphs of the greatest beauties are but the tawdry, tinsel glory of a pantomime queen.
After the nurse had taken the thermometer from Selwyn and marked his temperature on a chart which she placed beside him, breakfast was brought in, and he was propped up with pillows.
'Guid-mornin',' said the Highlander. 'I hope ye're nane the waur o' your expeerience.'
'Not 'im,' broke in the Cockney, eating his porridge with great relish.'It done 'im good.'
'I am very well,' said Selwyn haltingly. 'I hope my arrival did not disturb any of you last night.'
At the sound of his carefully nuanced Bostonian accent there was a violent dumb-play of smoothing the hair and arranging the coats of pyjamas, while one Tommy placed a penny in his eye in lieu of a monocle.
'I was 'oping,' said the Cockney, with a solemn wink to the gathering, 'as 'ow Number 26 would be took by a toff, and, blime, if it ain't! It were gettin' blinkin' lonesome for me with only Jock 'ere and Frenchy opposite, who ain't bad blokes in their wy, but orful crude for my likin'.'
'Where did it hit ye?' asked the Scot encouragingly.
'On the head,' said Selwyn, pointing to his bandage.
'Mon, mon, that's apt to be dangerous.'
'Nah then!' cried the Cockney, reaching for his temperature-chart, 'we'll open the mornink proper with the 'Ymn of 'Ate. In cise you don't know the piece, m'lud, you can read it off your temperacher-ticket. Steady now—everybody got a full breath? Gow!'
With great zest all the patients who were able to sit up broke into a discordant jumble of scales as they followed the course of their temperatures up and down the chart. Gradually, one by one, they fell out and resumed their breakfast, until the Scotsman was the only one singing.
'Ye ken,' he said, pausing temporarily and looking at Selwyn, 'yon should be rendered wi' proper deegnity.' With which explanatory comment he finished the last six notes, and solemnly replaced the chart on the ledge behind him, as if it were a copy of Handel'sMessiah.