QUEEN
Then Lady Queenie Paulle entered rather hurriedly, filling the room
with a distinguished scent. All the men rose in haste, and there was a
frightful scraping of chair-legs on the floor. Lady Queenie cheerfully
apologised for being late, and, begging no one to disturb himself,
took a modest place between the chairman and the secretary and a
little behind them.
Lady Queenie obviously had what is called "race". The renown of her
family went back far, far beyond its special Victorian vogue, which
had transformed an earldom into a marquisate and which, incidentally,
was responsible for the new family Christian name that Queenie herself
bore. She was young, tall, slim and pale, and dressed with the utmost
smartness in black--her half-brother having gloriously lost his life
in September. She nodded to the secretary, who blushed with pleasure,
and she nodded to several members, including G.J. Being accustomed
to publicity and to seeing herself nearly every week in either _The
Tatler_ or _The Sketch_, she was perfectly at ease in the room, and
the fact that nearly the whole company turned to her as plants to the
sun did not in the least disturb her.
The attention which she received was her due, for she had few rivals
as a war-worker. She was connected with the Queen's Work for Women
Fund, Queen Mary's Needlework Guild, the Three Arts Fund, the Women's
Emergency Corps, and many minor organisations. She had joined a
Women's Suffrage Society because such societies were being utilised by
the Government. She had had ten lessons in First Aid in ten days, had
donned the Red Cross, and gone to France with two motor-cars and a
staff and a French maid in order to help in the great national work
of nursing wounded heroes; and she might still have been in France had
not an unsympathetic and audacious colonel of the R.A.M.C. insisted on
her being shipped back to England. She had done practically everything
that a patriotic girl could do for the war, except, perhaps, join a
Voluntary Aid Detachment and wash dishes and scrub floors for fifteen
hours a day and thirteen and a half days a fortnight. It was from
her mother that she had inherited the passion for public service. The
Marchioness of Lechford had been the cause of more philanthropic work
in others than any woman in the whole history of philanthropy. Lady
Lechford had said, "Let there be Lechford Hospitals in France,"
and lo! there were Lechford Hospitals in France. When troublesome
complications arose Lady Lechford had, with true self-effacement,
surrendered the establishments to a thoroughly competent committee,
and while retaining a seat on the committee for herself and another
for Queenie, had curved tirelessly away to the inauguration of fresh
and more exciting schemes.
"Mamma was very sorry she couldn't come this afternoon," said Lady
Queenie, addressing the chairman.
The formula of those with authority in deciding now became:
"I don't know exactly what Lady Lechford's view is, but I venture to
think--"
Then suddenly the demeanour of every member of the committee was
quickened, everybody listened intently to everything that was said;
a couple of members would speak together; pattern-designing and the
manufacture of paper ships, chains, and flowers ceased; it was as
though a tonic had been mysteriously administered to each individual
in the enervating room. The cause of the change was a recommendation
from the hospitals management sub-committee that it be an instruction
to the new matron of the smaller hospital to forbid any nurse and
any doctor to go out alone together in the evening. Scandal was
insinuated; nothing really wrong, but a bad impression produced
upon the civilians of the tiny town, who could not be expected to
understand the holy innocence which underlies the superficial
license of Anglo-Saxon manners. The personal characters and strange
idiosyncrasies of every doctor and every nurse were discussed; broad
principles of conduct were enunciated, together with the advantages
and disadvantages of those opposite poles, discipline and freedom. The
argument continually expanded, branching forth like the timber of
a great oak-tree from the trunk, and the minds of the committee
ran about the tree like monkeys. The interest was endless. A
quiet delegate who had just returned from a visit to the tiny town
completely blasted one part of the argument by asserting that the
hospital bore a blameless reputation among the citizens; but new
arguments were instantly constructed by the adherents of the idea of
discipline. The committee had plainly split into two even parties.
G.J. began to resent the harshness of the disciplinarians.
"I think we should remember," he said in his modest voice, "I think we
should remember that we are dealing with adult men and women."
The libertarians at once took him for their own. The disciplinarians
gave him to understand with their eyes that it might have been better
if he, as a new member attending his first meeting, had kept silence.
The discussion was inflamed. One or two people glanced surreptitiously
at their watches. The hour had long passed six thirty. G.J. grew
anxious about his rendezvous with Christine. He had enjoined
exactitude upon Christine. But the main body of the excited and happy
committee had no thought of the flight of time. The amusements of the
tiny town came up for review. As a fact, there was only one amusement,
the cinema. The whole town went to the cinema. Cinemas were
always darkened; human nature was human nature.... G.J. had an
extraordinarily realistic vision of the hospital staff slaving through
its long and heavy day and its everlasting week and preparing in
sections to amuse itself on certain evenings, and thinking with
pleasant anticipation of the ecstasies of the cinema, and pathetically
unsuspicious that its fate was being decided by a council of
omnipotent deities in the heaven of a London hotel.
"Mamma has never mentioned the subject to me," said Lady Queenie in
response to a question, looking at her rich muff.
"This is a question of principle," said somebody sharply, implying
that at last individual consciences were involved and that the
opinions of the Marchioness of Lechford had ceased to weigh.
"I'm afraid it's getting late," said the impassive chairman. "We must
come to some decision."
In the voting Lady Queenie, after hesitation, raised her hand with the
disciplinarians. By one vote the libertarians were defeated, and the
dalliance of the hospital staff in leisure hours received a severe
check.
"She _would_--of course!" breathed a sharp-nosed little woman in the
chair next but one to G.J., gazing inimically at the lax mouth and
cynical eyes of Lady Queenie, who for four years had been the subject
of universal whispering, and some shouting, and one or two ferocious
battles in London.
Chair-legs scraped. People rose here and there to go as they rise in
a music hall after the Scottish comedian has retired, bowing, from
his final encore. They protested urgent appointments elsewhere. The
chairman remarked that other important decisions yet remained to be
taken; but his voice had no insistence because he had already settled
the decisions in his own mind. G.J. seized the occasion to depart.
"Mr. Hoape," the chairman detained him a moment. "The committee hope
you will allow yourself to be nominated to the accounts sub-committee.
We understand that you are by way of being an expert. The
sub-committee meets on Wednesday mornings at eleven--doesn't it, Sir
Charles?"
"Half-past," said Sir Charles.
"Oh! Half-past."
G.J., somewhat surprised to learn of his expertise in accountancy,
consented to the suggestion, which renewed his resolution, impaired
somewhat by the experience of the meeting, to be of service in the
world.
"You will receive the notice, of course," said the chairman.
Down below, just as G.J. was getting away with Christine's
chrysanthemums in their tissue paper, Lady Queenie darted out of the
lift opposite. It was she who, at Concepcion's instigation, had had
him put in the committee.
"I say, Queen," he said with a casual air--on account of the flowers,
"who's been telling 'em I know about accounts?"
"I did."
"Why?"
"Why?" she said maliciously. "Don't you keep an account of every penny
you spend?" (It was true.)
Here was a fair example of her sardonic and unscrupulous humour--a
humour not of words but of acts. G.J. simply tossed his head, aware of
the futility of expostulation.
She went on in a different tone:
"You were the first to see Connie?"
"Yes," he said sadly.
"She has lain in my arms all afternoon," Lady Queenie burst out, her
voice liquid. "And now I'm going straight back to her." She looked
at him with the strangest triumphant expression. Then her large,
equivocal blue eyes fell from his face to the flowers, and their
expression simultaneously altered to disdainful amusement full of
mischievous implications. She ran off without another word. The glazed
entrance doors revolved, and he saw her nip into an electric brougham,
which, before he had time to button his overcoat, vanished like an
apparition in the rainy mist.