In ordinary circumstances of health and vigour, Burnham and Mrs Lorton
possessed dispositions of quite singular vivacity, looked upon life as a
fairly good, if rather practical joke, and were fully disposed to
consider happiness their _metier_. Being modern, they sometimes
concealed their original gaiety, as if it were original sin, and
pretended to a cruel cynicism; yet at heart, it must be confessed, they
were as lively as poor children playing in the street. But when they
went to Westgate, influenza had had its fill of them, and the infinite
pathos of the world, and of all that is therein, appealed to them with a
seizing vitality. Burnham, on the Thursday, was moved to tears at
Birchington Station by the sight of a mother and eleven children missing
the last train to Margate. Harriet Lorton, on the following Friday, had
hysterics at Victoria, when she perceived a young lady drop a cage
containing a grey parrot, and smash the bird's china bath upon the
platform. The fact that the parrot had been actually taking its bath at
the moment, and was left by the misfortune in much confusion and no
water, struck her so poignantly as nearly to break her heart. She wept
in a first-class carriage all the way down, and arrived at Westgate,
towards ten o'clock, in a state of complete collapse.
Mr Burnham was in bed drinking a cup of soup at this time. He heard the
luggage being carried up, but did not suspect whose it was.
Nevertheless, the ravages of disease led him to consider the slight
noise and bustle a personal insult, and he lay awake most of the night
brooding upon the wrongs of which he, erroneously, believed himself to
be the victim.
It was on the next morning that the two invalids met back to back in a
shelter with glass partitions upon the lawn.
Mrs Lorton, smothered in wraps, had taken up her position on the bench
that faces Westgate without noticing a bowed and ulstered figure, shod
in brown boots, sitting in a haggard posture on the reciprocal bench
that faces the sea. Nobody was about, for it was not the season, and Mrs
Lorton began slowly to weep on account of the loneliness. It struck her
disordered fancy as so personal. Creation was sending her to Coventry.
At her back the tears ran over Burnham's handsome countenance. He was
staring at the sea, and thinking of all the people who had been drowned
in water since the days of the Deluge. He wondered how many there were,
and cried copiously, considering himself absolutely alone and free to
give vent to his feelings, which struck him as splendidly human.
When two people weep together one of them usually weeps louder than the
other, and, on this occasion, Burnham made the most noise. He became,
in fact, so uproariously solicitous about the drowned men and women whom
he had never known that Mrs Lorton gradually was made aware of the
presence of another mourner who was not a mute. She turned round and
beheld a back convulsed with emotion. Its grief went straight to her
heart, and, casting her own sorrow and her sense of etiquette to the
wind--which blew bracingly from the north-east--she tapped upon the
glass screen that bisected the shelter.
Burnham took no notice. He was too deeply involved in grief. So Mrs
Lorton knocked again, with all the vigour that incipient convalescence
gave to her. This time Burnham was startled, and turned a hollow face
upon her. They stared at each other through the intervening glass for a
moment in wild surprise, the tears congealing upon their cheeks.
Beyond Burnham Mrs Lorton saw the whirling white foam of the sea. Beyond
Mrs Lorton Burnham saw the neat villas of Westgate. It struck them both
as a tremendous moment, and they trembled.
Remember that they were very weak.
At last he, conceiving naturally that she had recognised and desired to
summon him, walked slowly round to her side of the shelter, and held out
to her a wavering hand.
"Good heavens!" he ejaculated. "The last person I--"
"You!" said Mrs Lorton. "How astonishing! What on earth--"
He seized the opening she gave him with all the ardour of the
whole-souled influenza patient.
"I have been ill," he said with a deep pathos, "very, very ill. My
symptoms were most extraordinary."
He sank down heavily at her side, and continued, "I doubt if any one has
endured such agony before. It began on a Sunday with--"
"So did mine," Mrs Lorton interrupted with some show of determination.
"You cannot conceive what it was like. I had pains in every limb, every
limb positively. The doctor--"
"Of course I went straight to bed," he remarked with firmness. "I knew
at once what was wrong. But mine was no ordinary case. Talk of
thumbscrews! Why--"
"For nights I tossed in agony," she went on with a poignant self-pity,
so much engrossed that she never noticed the brown boots which on other
occasions had so deeply offended her. "Morphia and eucalyptus were no--"
"He said it was pneumonia, double pneumonia," Burnham concluded
emphatically. "How I came through it I shall never know." His smile at
this point was wan, and seemed to deprecate existence. "I suppose there
is still some work for me to do. At the same time, I--"
"Mine was also double!" Mrs Lorton said with distinct tartness,
condemning privately his arrogance, and noticing the boots with a
strange feeling of sudden and unutterable despair.
"It is all so much worse for a woman," she added vaguely, with some idea
of out-doing him, such as she had felt once or twice at dinner parties,
when her epigrams had been smarter than his.
"The strong possess a greater capacity for suffering than the weak,"
Burnham retorted. "Medical science tells us that--"
"Please spare me the revelations of the dissecting-room," she cried
bitterly; "I am in no condition to bear them."
She glanced at him with pathetic eyes, and added, "I ought to have gone
to Margate."
"I ought to have gone there too," he said.
"Really, you make the conversation sound like one of Maeterlinck's
plays," she rejoined. "Do be more original."
The reproach cut him to the heart. He never knew why, but he felt so
much injured that he with great difficulty restrained his tears.
"Women can be very brutal," he said moodily, biting his lips, and
wondering how many authors it was necessary to read in order never to be
at a disadvantage with a clever woman.
Mrs Lorton was conscious that she had hurt him, and instead of being her
nice, natural self and glorying in the fact, she experienced a sense of
profound pity that gave her quite a tightened feeling about the left
side. However, she only said, "Men can be very selfish"--a generality
that many people consider as convincing as a bomb--and got up to go.
"I am staying at the St Mildred's," she remarked. "It is the dull
season, so I am the only person there at present."
"I beg your pardon," Burnham said, also getting upon his feet, "I am
there too. My number is 12 and I have a private sitting-room. I do not
feel up to the coffee-room yet."
Mrs Lorton turned as pale as ashes with vexation. She had no private
sitting-room, and had ordered dinner in the coffee-room for that very
evening.
She felt herself at a disadvantage as they walked in a gloomy silence
towards the beach.