Robin was coming down to Grote to spend with his mother his last day in
England, for to-morrow he and Jim were both going out for their first
period of active service in France. She had been at her post since the
end of October, and had been too busy all day to think of much except
the work which so incessantly occupied her, and too tired when that was
over to think, with the more conscious part of her brain, of anything at
all. She had brought her whole attention and will to performing her
duties adequately, and her greatest reward had been that she had been
able to forget herself. Next to that ranked the commendation of her most
efficient matron. But at present her work had not become for her a
labour of love. Her pride was involved in its being well done; apart
from that it was still more of an anodyne than a duty or a joy.
She had got up very early on this day after Christmas Day, for Robin
would arrive by car in the middle of the morning, and she wanted to get
through as much as possible of the day’s work before his advent, so that
she should be freer for him. She had already arranged for the catering
of the day: she had seen to the giving out of clean linen: she had
unpacked a consignment of cigarettes and distributed their allowance to
her patients. Just now she was going round the wards to see that the
breakfasts were what they should be, and was talking to a man for whom
to-day there was no breakfast, as he had to have an operation during the
morning. He was a quiet, well-mannered young fellow, no older than
Robin, smooth-faced and curly-haired, and he had to lose a leg. But it
was the operation itself that he dreaded most.
He looked at her as she said good-morning to him with brown, frightened
eyes.
“Can’t they put it off a day or two yet, sister?” he asked. “It seems
easier this morning.”
She sat down on the edge of his bed.
“I’m afraid not, Jaye,” she said. “You must make up your mind to it. And
they do such wonders now: you’ll be able to walk about as well as any of
us, when they’ve given you your new leg.”
“’Tisn’t that, sister,” said he. “It’s the operation itself. I’m
frightened of that.”
“But there’s nothing to fear, my boy,” said she. “You’ll go to sleep,
nothing more than that, and when you wake you’ll be tucked up again, and
as comfortable as possible.”
Somehow those frightened eyes, the white young face, the thin hands
smote her with a new and acute compassion, a thing that touched her
emotions, not her reasonable self. Often and often she had felt so sorry
for these men who had faced peril so gallantly, and pain so bravely, but
their peril and pain had never yet penetrated her like this. The boy had
been so good, too, uncomplainingly bearing so much. She had a special
feeling for him, for the grim matron had relaxed into a joke the other
day, as they stood together by his bed, and declared that Jaye was in
love with her, an opinion with which the man in the next bed, when
appealed to, cordially agreed.
“So you mustn’t be afraid, Jaye,” she said. “You have borne pain so well
all these days, and very soon now you will be free from it, and be
getting quite strong again.”
He struggled with his reticent shyness a moment.
“I shouldn’t mind if you’d come with me, sister,” he said, “and be there
while they’re doing it.”
Helen had never been present at any operation: it was not part of her
duties, and the idea of it horrified her. Then she remembered that it
would be perfectly possible for her to go with him to the
operating-room, and remain there until he was under the anæsthetic. Then
she would leave him, and return when he was back in bed again, before he
had come round. She would not like going into the operating-room, and
seeing the anæsthetic administered; even that would be horrible, but she
did not hesitate in her answer.
“Why, of course I will,” she said, “if it would give you any comfort,
Jaye. I will go and tell the surgeon I am coming with you.”
The boy’s face brightened.
“Thank you very much, sister,” he said. “I shan’t mind now.”
On her way down to the operating-room, she met the bearers coming up for
Jaye, and told them to wait a moment, while she spoke to Mr. Brinton.
She arranged this with him in a moment, and went back to the ward.
“Now they’re ready for us, Jaye,” she said, and he was lifted on to the
stretcher.
“Got your girl with you, old chap,” said the man in the next bed. “Good
luck.”
“Back again soon,” said Jaye cheerfully.
The operating-room was her husband’s sitting-room. The floor had been
tiled, and was curved where it joined the walls, so that no angle could
harbour dust. The walls had been stripped and covered with a glazed
paper; in the corner was a white enamel basin with taps above it, and in
the centre of the room a bed of plate-glass. By the window was a table
on wheels, covered with a cloth. In front of it was Mr. Brinton,
examining something beneath it. As they entered he replaced the cloth.
At the head of the bed was the anæsthetist, and by him a cylinder with a
pipe attached to it, communicating with a small frame lined with
india-rubber. By it stood a bottle and a wire mask. A couple of nurses
were in the window, talking to the doctor.
The latter came forward.
“Upon my word, here’s a spoilt fellow,” he said, “getting Lady Grote to
sit by him. Now, my boy, this is much the worst moment of all, when
you’ve got to lie down on that bed. After that there’s nothing to mind
at all. Let’s have a feel at your pulse.”
He stood there a moment, and said in a low voice to the anæsthetist:
“A bit nervous. Send him off with gas and give ether afterwards. Now,
you’ve passed the worst of it, Jaye.”
The anæsthetist took up the india-rubber mouthpiece, attached to which
was a tube with a tap, that hissed as he turned it on for a moment.
“There!” he said, “let me hold that for you, over your nose and
mouth.... Yes, just like that.... That’s capital. Now breathe it in”--he
turned on the tap again--“breathe it in greedily in long breaths. And
when you’ve taken twenty long breaths--mind you count them--just say
‘twenty,’ and we won’t bother you any more.”
The two nurses were still talking to each other in the window. One of
them laughed at something the other was saying, and then took a step
towards the table covered with a cloth, and stood with it in her hands.
Mr. Brinton, meantime, was putting on a sort of white smock-frock over
his waistcoat, for he had taken off his coat. Helen remembered having
seen that sort of smock coming from the sterilizing room. But the other
nurse still smiled to herself and rubbed the tips of her fingers
together, like a girl enjoying something amusing. She was rather a
tiresome girl, Helen thought; she had mentioned the other day that she
thought it was unladylike for women to smoke, and she had distinctly
“bridled” when the joke of Jaye being in love with Lady Grote had been
hinted at.
The gas made a slight hissing. Jaye was breathing greedily, as he had
been told to do, and the surgeon had not yet buttoned the snow-white
cuffs round his wrist, when the doctor took a step forward, and pulled
up one of Jaye’s eyelids.
“That’s all right,” he said.
The anæsthetist dropped the india-rubber mouthpiece and took up the wire
mask. He sprinkled on it some of the contents of the bottle that stood
by it on the floor, and laid it over Jaye’s face.
Mr. Brinton nodded to Lady Grote.
“Thank you very much, Lady Grote,” he said. “I thought we should have
some difficulty with him. But he’s gone off now. I’ll send word to you
when we shall want you again.”
Quite suddenly, Helen knew that it was not in the power of a decent
woman to go away. She had promised Jaye to stop with him, while the
operation was going on. She had meant to go away as soon as he was under
the anæsthetic, but now she could not. She loathed the thought of what
was coming, but she could not cheat that still, unconscious form that
lay on the glass bed. She had made a promise.
“I shall stop, please,” she said.
“I would recommend you not to,” said Mr. Brinton. “We shall all be busy:
if you faint nobody will be able to attend to you.”
“I shan’t do anything of the sort,” she heard her voice saying.
Instantly the suave, polite Mr. Brinton became a perfectly different
person, sharp and peremptory.
“Do as you like,” he said. “Now, then, move the bed up to the window,
there’s better light. Are you ready with the sponges, nurse?”
Instantly the whole room sparkled with swift, deft energy, energy quiet
and contained and fearfully alert. The doctor stripped off Jaye’s pyjama
trousers, and Mr. Brinton looked at him a moment. Then, with forefinger
and thumb, he felt his way down the thigh of his right leg till he came
to the knee. That was swollen into a monstrous hump, and on the side of
it was the gangrenous wound. He felt his way very carefully up again to
about the middle of the thigh.
The nurse had already removed the cloth from the covered table, and Mr.
Brinton looked at it. He took up a knife with a bulged edge to it,
looked once more at the patient, and cut.
“Sponge,” he said sharply, “and be ready with forceps. Fine pair of legs
the boy has got.”
“Half-back for Fulham,” said the anæsthetist. “He did good work in the
League matches last year. They would never have got into the final
otherwise. I was playing on the other side. We should have won except
for him.”
“Hopping-race for the future, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Brinton. “Pull his
jacket up.”
Helen had seen the first incision, and the whole thing seemed to her the
most heartless exhibition she had ever witnessed. They were talking
about football ... when here was this poor boy---- And then a sudden
illumination came to her. They were not heartless at all; they were
simply employed in their work, doing the best they could, making life
instead of death. It was natural they should talk about a League match:
it was one of those humanities that enabled you to face the grim work of
healing.
A button had torn loose as the nurse took the edge of Jaye’s pyjama
jacket out of the way, and the whole of his body was exposed, strong and
supple and charged with the potentiality of its manhood. Soon he would
be a truncated thing, an object of pity. And why? Just because he had
faced the peril and the pain. He had been willing, even as Robin had
been willing, to fight for the inviolable law. He had done it for
her.... Suddenly Jaye began to talk. For a moment Helen almost shrieked
at the idea that he had come out of the anæsthetic, and was conscious
again with that great gash in his leg, and a half-dozen of forceps
clinging like leeches to the severed veins and arteries. Then she
remembered having heard that people under an anæsthetic talked, and
listened to a mumble of obscene things. Surely the nurse who had thought
it unladylike to smoke, would be paralysed by this....
And then she saw her mistake. Nurse Killick had a bunch of small sponges
in her hand, and paid no more attention to what Jaye was saying than she
would have given to the whistling of the wind. She was just an operation
nurse now: all that she existed for was to have a sponge ready when Mr.
Brinton called for it. Close beside her were wads of sterilized
cotton-wool, and nothing else except her particular department had the
smallest meaning for her. The patient might say what he pleased: it fell
on deaf ears. All that Miss Killick had to attend to, and all that would
subsequently concern her, was the physical welfare of Jaye, not this
farrago of things which his decent responsible self held in check. Then
as suddenly as if a tap had been turned off he was silent again.
* * * * *
There was a pause in the surgical work as the patient was turned over on
to his right side, and then it began again. The surgeon was standing
between Helen and the work on which he was engaged, and she saw nothing
now of what was going on. But presently the sound of sawing began, and
with a spasm of contempt for herself, she felt her hands growing cold
and damp, and a sick, empty feeling rising into her throat. At that she
laid hold of her courage and clung to it with clenched fingers,
determined not to brand herself in the eyes of those busy, skilful folk
as a woman without stability or control. Slowly she regained possession
of herself, for presently she _must_ be herself again, when Jaye came
round, and before that sawing noise ceased she was mistress of her
nerves.
“Take it away,” said the surgeon suddenly, and one of the nurses wrapped
up something in a sheet. The ligatures were tied and forceps removed and
counted, and the flap of skin bound over the stump. Finally the surgeon
turned round, went to the basin by the wall and washed his hands. As he
dried them, he turned to her, the suave, polite Mr. Brinton again.
“You seem to have stood that very well for your first operation,” he
said. “You’ll be able to stand by with sponges and ligatures next time.”
* * * * *
She went up to the room where they took Jaye, and put him to bed still
unconscious. But before long he came round, and she had her reward.
“Hullo, sister,” he said faintly, “when are they going to begin?”
“But it’s all over, Jaye,” she said. “You’re back in bed, and you’ll
have no more trouble.”
“And were you there all the time?” he asked.
“Of course. I told you I should be.”
“Thank you, sister,” said the boy.
* * * * *
Robin had arrived some minutes before, and presently she went down to
him.
“Ah, my darling,” she said, “I’m late, but I couldn’t help it. Robin,
we’re going to have such a nice day. I’ve got nothing more to do in the
hospital till this evening. I got up at six o’clock in order to get
through my work before you came.”
He kissed her.
“You are rather a trump,” he said. “Do you know, when you began I
wondered whether you would stick to it. You smell of ether, mother.”
“Do I? Give me a cigarette, then. Robin, how very rude of you to wonder
if I would stick to it.”
He laughed.
“You didn’t stick to the muffler-knitting very long,” he said.
“No, that’s true. I want to ask you something. Were you ashamed of me
last autumn for not working at something?”
“Oh, it wasn’t my business,” said he.
“That’ll do: that’s enough. And how is your Jim?”
“My Jim? I think he’s yours. He told me to give you his love, if I
thought you wouldn’t mind. I didn’t think you would.”
“My dear, how kind of him! Why didn’t you bring him down with you?”
“Because I wanted you all to myself, of course.”
She put her arm through his.
“Oh, Robin,” she said, “I should have been so disappointed if you had
brought him. But I didn’t want to tell you not to. I thought perhaps you
would, and I should have hated you for not wanting me all to yourself.
And how is Miss Diphtheria Coombe? Is that her name?”
“Yes. She sent her love to you, too, and asked when you would talk over
settlements with Mommer.”
“What a liar you are, darling,” said she. “I don’t know where you get it
from. Whom else have you been seeing?”
“I saw Lady Gurtner--oh, I think she’s Gardner now--yesterday: I dined
with her. She asked me to dinner nine times, so at last I went. One does
go in the end.”
“Dinner-party?” asked his mother.
“Yes: about twenty. Not a single one of them had I ever seen before
except that horrid friend of yours, what’s his name?”
It could not be Kuhlmann, so she tried Boyton.
“Yes,” said Robin. “He gave me a bad taste in the mouth. He was making
odious insinuations about the Gurtner-Gardners, implying German
sympathies. If you go and dine with people you shouldn’t do that.
Because if you believe what you say, you’ve got no business to be
there.”
“I quite agree. I knew Mr. Boyton had been saying things of the sort,
and since then I haven’t seen him. What did you do after dinner?”
“We danced. There was a band and a great supper, as if it had been a
regular ball. But only about a dozen people came.”
“Aline is not a very clever woman,” remarked his mother. “I warned her
not to give a ball.”
Robin hesitated a moment.
“Have you had any sort of row with her?” he asked.
“She was a good deal vexed with me when I saw her last, more than a
couple of months ago,” she said.
She longed to ask if Aline had said anything unfriendly about her, but
that was just the sort of thing she never did ask. Robin would tell her
if he thought fit.
“I gathered as much,” he said. “I’m sorry I went, but what was I to do?
As I say, she asked me heaps of times, and I thought she was a friend of
yours.”
Again it would have been very simple to have said: “Did she appear not
to be?” but Helen left that question unuttered.
“Poor Aline,” she said, “I’m sorry her ball did not go off well.”
“Yes: it upset her. It must be horrid to stand at the top of your stairs
and wait for people who don’t come. Is that enough about them, do you
think?”
“Yes: just this one thing more,” she said. “I’m glad you went. Aline
would like it. Now, Robin, will you take me for a walk? I’m still
breathing ether, and I want to get rid of it.”
“Yes, but why are you so full of ether?”
“I attended an operation this morning. One of these poor boys had to
have his leg off, and he had taken rather a fancy to me, and wanted me
to be with him.”
“How horrible for you. Didn’t you hate it?”
“Loathed it, but I couldn’t help myself, could I?”
“You might have gone away, as soon as he was under the anæsthetic.”
“I meant to, but when it came to, I just couldn’t.”
Robin smiled at her with the beautiful mouth Miss Jackson admired so
much.
“And he’d actually taken a fancy to you, had he?” he asked. “I expect
they’re all in love with you. Lord! I should flirt with you if you
weren’t my mother.”
“You darling. But I’m a little old for you, aren’t I? You’d better stick
to Miss Diphtheria.”
“She’s so damned respectable. She wouldn’t let me kiss her. Now, you’re
not respectable: you don’t mind.”
Helen thought she had disciplined herself into acquiescing in Robin’s
going out to France, had got used to it. But at the sight and the touch
of him on this his last morning in England, her fortitude wavered like a
blown flame. For the moment she could not face it at all.
“Ah, Robin, Robin!” she said.
He guessed what was in her mind, for the two read each other like open
books.
“There never was such a mother,” he said. “Now let’s go out.”
* * * * *
It was the mildest of mid-winter days: all the autumn had been warm,
too, and chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies still lingered, though
already the squills and aconites, first messengers of the spring, had
opened their blue bells and their yellow stars. Overhead the pale azure
of the winter sky was flecked with little wrinkled clouds, as if some
quiet sea had retreated, leaving the marks of breaking ripples on the
ribbed sand. There was a chirruping of sparrows in the house-eaves, and
a chatter as of razor-stropping from varnished starlings in a hawthorn
bush, where they were lunching on the red berries, which they threw
about in the rudest manner. Below the terrace the beech-woods, with
trunks powdered by the green lichen growth of the autumn, and branches
round which hovered a faint purple haze, clothed the steep hill-side
down to the river.
At the bottom of the avenue the water, running high with rains, had
flooded part of the valley, and the lowest of the trees stood mirrored
in it. A pheasant with burnished copper back got up from the rough
grass, and rose above the beeches with downward beating wings, and a
rabbit scuttled silently into the fringe of undergrowth. Across the
river the red roofs of the villages gleamed among the bare elms, and no
more peaceful winter day could have been imagined. Only above the house
there drooped the Red Cross flag, and in the loggia were sitting half a
dozen blue-clad men with slings or crutches, and a nurse moved about
among them. And yet all England was becoming one camp, one arsenal to
brew the beer of war.
“Pheasant!” said Robin. “They’ve got peace on earth this autumn,
anyhow.”
“I know. I wish it was the other way about. Oh, Robin, would you like to
shoot this afternoon? I told the keeper to come up to see.”
“Well, then, I shouldn’t. I’ve told you once why I came down here.”
“I thought I should like to hear it twice,” said she.
Robin threw back his head. “I Came To See You!” he shouted.
“That will do beautifully. I think you’ve deafened me. You can stop and
dine here, can’t you, and drive back afterwards?”
“Rather!” said Robin hoarsely. “That was my plan. I’ve broken a vocal
chord. May I have an operation, and will you sit by me?”
“Operation for acute idiocy,” said she.
“Yes, inherited. Mother’s side.”
She looked at him a moment in silence, summing him up, reckoning what he
was to her.
“Robin, one of the next things I want to be is a grandmother,” she said
at length. “Do manage it for me before very long. Nobody else in the
world can do it except you.”
“All right,” said he. “I’ll go and propose to Diphtheria, if you like.
But if we’re to be married to-day, I must go back to town before
dinner.”
“Then it must be put off. Oh, there’s the men’s dinner-bell. I shall
have to go in for ten minutes and see that everything is right.”
“Mind you’re not longer,” said he.
* * * * *
The winter twilight closed in early, and after tea she had to leave him
again to see to her duties, but they dined together, and she had nothing
more to do in the hospital, which she could not delegate for once, until
he would have to leave. Not until his car was round did either of them
speak of what was coming, but talked exactly as they would have talked
if weeks of quiet, unsundered life were in front of them. Then, at this
last moment, she slipped from her chair and knelt by his side, as he sat
in front of the fire in her white sitting-room upstairs where they had
dined.
“Robin, there is only one word from me to you, and even that is
unnecessary, for you know it already. My whole heart is yours, my
darling, and it goes with you ever so bravely, and is always by your
side, praying God to protect and bless you, and let you come back to me.
I went to church in the big ward yesterday, on Christmas morning, and
there was a jolly verse in the Psalms that made me think of you: ‘Good
luck have thou with thine honour,’ it said.... My dear, the treasure of
my heart!”
He leaned forward to her and kissed her.
“It has been the best day of all the days,” he said. “I don’t believe
we’ve ever loved each other so much. Absolutely top-hole. And now I’m
going. Don’t come down with me, mother. I want to say good-bye to you
here in your white room. It’s you. I shall see the last of you together.
And as I leave the room, I shan’t look back.”
His lip quivered for a moment.
“And we’re brave and gay, both of us,” he added. “Good-bye.”
There were no spoken words between them after that, just a whisper
passed between them, and in a couple of minutes he had left her.
Presently there came the sound of his motor-wheels crunching the gravel.
* * * * *
From that hour there began in Helen Grote a change, vital and immense,
in the spirit in which she devoted herself to the hospital. Her pride
had hitherto demanded of her that she should do her work as perfectly
and conscientiously as she was able, and there was no actual difference
now in the quality of her performance of it. But now love began to
inspire it, in that the men she looked after had been injured in the
cause for which Robin was now in France. They and he were
fellow-workers, she was looking after members of his brotherhood; more
than that, she even at times seemed to herself to be directly serving
him, for all those who fought were part of a corporate body, individuals
who could not be dissevered from each other. Faintly at first, but with
increasing splendour, even as dawn floods the sky and heralds the day,
dimming the stars and turning the moon to ashes, so the New Spirit
permeated her, extinguishing the lesser lights of self-respect which
demanded of her an efficient performance, and filling the inter-stellar
darkness with the glory of the sun not yet risen upon the earth.
She walked as in clear shadow, with the brightness still high and far
above her, for often her heart was faint, and her soul was utterly
lonely and quivered with apprehensions that she would not of her best
will give a home to; but visible above her, brightening as it descended
the stair of heaven, dawn stepped down towards the earth with luminous
feet. And if sometimes her pulses were feeble with fear, there were
other moments when they beat strong with the impulse of some new
perception....
* * * * *
Often the light of this new dawn was hidden, so thickly clouded over
that the emptiness and rebellion of those autumn months seemed to have
returned, with this added, that Robin was now out in the peril of the
storm, and any day or hour might bring some news which would drive dawn
altogether from the sky. But she no longer sought relief from that
thought in running away from it, but in plunging herself into all that
could most intimately bring home to her the horror of war. Her soul’s
escape lay not in trying to hide her eyes and screen herself from it,
but by going with open vision into the very thick of it. Constantly her
work bored, discouraged and disgusted her: she would feel for whole days
together that the stupidest woman in the world could do all she was
doing with no less efficiency than she, and that a finer sympathy than
hers would have gilded routine with splendour.
Here was the discouragement: that she was doing the best she could, but
that anybody else would have easily done better; but that served, thanks
to the spirit which was now beginning to inspire her devotion, not as a
hindrance to her labours, but as a spur to their complete performance,
and her humility exalted her. So too with the boredom and disgust that
at times assailed her over menial and repeated tasks: she did not slur
over them or delegate them to others, but only struggled with her own
littleness in thinking anything little. Her life, which once she had
consecrated, as with vows, to her own amusement, vows that, when the war
broke out, she sacrificed everything to keep, had slid from under her
own hands, and shook itself free of the benumbing touch of her own
self-centred aims.
To-day she made no fresh vows, she did not even trouble to repudiate the
former ones, or register a new intention. She simply went straight
forward with industry and simplicity. She had never been the least
inclined to introspection, and did not waste time or energy in dwelling
with regret on the years she had so devoted to her own satisfaction;
indeed, if she had stopped to examine herself, she would have found no
shred of regret hidden away in the cupboards of her mind. The past was
over and done with, and, after all, she had enjoyed her years
enormously. It was foreign to her nature to regret what had yielded her
so much pleasure.
But the past was over and done with in this sense also, that she felt
there was no going back to it. Already, even though but a few months had
passed since August, for her the cleavage seemed complete, and if she
looked forward to the day when the war was over, and leisure and
security returned, she could not think herself back into the spirit of
the days when Grote was a temple consecrated to the splendour and
extravagance and desires of herself and her world. Perhaps it would be
so; but she did not busy herself with such speculations, for in the
conditions and with the occupations in which she now lived, she came to
regard the old life as something phantasmal. All that was truly real, so
far as reality concerned her, was comprised in the wards and workrooms
of the hospital, and in a certain unlocated trench in France.
Robin was there somewhere: that was never wholly out of her mind.
Whatever her occupation was, that fact stayed and regarded her.
Sometimes it gave her strength and resolution, sometimes it made her
hand falter and her knees fail, but in one aspect or another it was
always there. She had moments in which she forgot everything else, when
among her letters she would find the thin envelope, with its Army Post
Office stamp and its rather faint pencilled inscriptions: she had
moments of sick suspense when a telegram was brought her. On one such
occasion she felt herself unable to open it, and, giving it to the
matron, waited, feeling sure that it brought some intolerable message,
until that not unsympathetic person asked her whether the consignment of
cigarettes, to which it referred, had arrived. Miss Hawker had clearly
guessed the cause of her being asked to open it, for she said, “It’s a
mere waste of good anxiety to anticipate trouble, Sister.”
But as constant as the consciousness that Robin was away in France, and
much more real, was the consciousness that Robin was here and was hers,
and could not be parted from her. He partook of an immortal quality, and
though for herself she had always looked forward, without fear and
without any further expectation, to the moment when the great fish would
gulp her down, as she floated all water-logged on the surface of spent
life, she could not apply the same image to him, or to her relations
with him. The image of her thought was at first vague and veiled, but it
began to assume a firmer outline, as of a conviction in process of
crystallization.
* * * * *
In front of this background, the life full of boredoms, and
discouragements and disgusts went on its busy way. Independent of that
which worked behind them, turning them to something that was in its
essence gold, there were encouragements and surprises as well. Among
these were the events of the evening of the New Year. The men had asked
if they might give an entertainment to the staff, doctors and nurses,
and housemaids and servants, and Helen had expressed her cordial assent.
Thereafter for three days the lives of the staff, especially the female
portion of it, had been rendered quite intolerable from sheer overwork.
All was wrapped in mystery, but for the sake of the entertainment those
of the staff who could sew were bidden to make blouses, and shirts and
scarves, and all the appurtenances of dress, which, it might have been
thought, wounded men in hospital would certainly not have required. An
eye had to be kept on seven-tail bandages; anything that could be
converted into “attire” of any kind was requisitioned. Every member of
the staff, of course, had been told in confidence what the _pièce de
résistance_ of this entertainment was to be, but the fact that everybody
knew, having been confidentially informed, kept the secret safe and
inviolable.
A stage had been constructed at the end of the long dining-room (this
was Helen’s responsibility as regards the entertainment), and for the
rest, everybody knew (though nobody knew) precisely what was going to
happen. But during those three days Helen was in strong request, and
she had to see that there was a curtain broad enough to cover the
stage--two would do, to be parted in the middle, but this would be less
satisfactory--a piano somewhere in front of the stage, and a practically
unlimited amount of furniture. If there was a printing-press in the
house, so much the better (there wasn’t): if not, her typewriter could,
with industry, produce enough programmes to go round. She, above all,
must be under an inviolable seal of secrecy.
The evening arrived, and in the front rows, immediately before the
curtain, were those whom the doctor in charge permitted to be carried
down recumbent from the wards. Behind them were seats for the staff, and
the rest of the audience consisted of the minority who were not
otherwise engaged, either directly, as entertainers, or, hardly less
usefully, as scene shifters or dressers. The first part of the programme
consisted of songs and recitations, all charged with the highest degree
of sentiment, except a comedian, who made the most unblushing references
to matrimony, mothers-in-law and high cheese. It concluded with a
horn-pipe danced by two men with one leg apiece. They had arms
interlaced round each other’s necks, and roared with laughter
themselves.
The second part of the programme unveiled the complete mystery about the
need for female attire, for it consisted of a revue. There was no plot
of any kind, as Helen had already learned was the proper thing in
revues, but there were numberless topical allusions to every member of
the staff except herself, and these in the main constituted the dramatic
action. But the weight of the occasion fell on the sumptuous ballet,
that was a perpetual decoration both to eye and ear. When a parody of
the hospital surgeon appeared, armed with a wood-saw and a
meat-chopper, they sang, “Here comes the knifey-man;” when the
anæsthetist glided on with the ghost-walk, and a football-bladder under
his arm, this galaxy of bass-voiced maidens sang, “Hush-a-bye, baby.” In
the intervals they danced, and never was there seen so light-hearted a
chorus. Some had slings, some were bandaged, some were on crutches, but
all were amazingly attired in the height of feminine fashion.
But still, not even after the ballet-girls had been recalled till they
were surfeited with success, was there any allusion to Lady Grote. She
would rather have liked them to laugh at her, too; the dignity of not
being laughed at did not quite compensate in her mind for the fun of
being derided. It was very nice of these boys not to laugh at her, but
she felt that somehow she had not found the way to their hearts, in not
having presented some ridiculous feature to them. But the whole feeling
lasted no longer than lasts a breath in the frosty air, for as soon as
the chorus ceased to be recalled, it was her nervous duty to say what is
called “a few words.”
The curtain had at last been drawn again without the renewal of applause
that demanded a fresh appearance of the chorus, and she was waiting for
the turning-up of lights that should precede the “few words,” when it
was drawn back again, and the stage-manager appeared. The chorus was
trooping in at the back of the room, and he waited till they had all
entered.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we’ve made fun of you all, and if
you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have, why--you’ve enjoyed it as much as
us. But there’s one of you as we haven’t said a word about yet, for you
can’t laugh at such as her. We’ve laughed at the surgeon, and the
doctors and the nurses, and everyone, because they’ve been jolly good
to us, and at the same time have worried us with their knives and their
dressings, and their beastly medicines, and we thought it fair to get
our own back over that, and now to thank them very kindly for their
care. But there’s just one other as we can’t make fun of, because of her
blessed love and goodness, and if anybody here doesn’t know whom I’m
talking about, why, he don’t deserve to be here at all. I won’t even
name her name, but she’ll be so good as to keep her seat, while everyone
else in this room will just stand up and give her three of the biggest
cheers as ever was, and wish her of the best.”
The whole speech was an utter surprise to her, and as she listened, her
own “few words” completely deserted her. When nobody laughed at her,
though they ridiculed everyone else, she had but determined to do
better; now it appeared that she had done, in their opinion, so very
much better than she had any idea of. And when, at the end of the
cheering, she rose, she felt no touch whatever of the sentimentality
which is supposed to choke a speaker’s voice when he returns thanks for
handsome remarks. She felt merely grateful, grateful and surprised not
in the region of the cheap emotions, but in her heart. They were pleased
with her, and she loved her reward. She had no more inclination to choke
and falter than has the man who has lain awake through a night of pain
the desire to sob at the rising of the sun.
* * * * *
The supper was a swift affair, for the matron had ordained that
everybody must go straight to bed the moment that midnight struck, and
the laughter and the tramp of feet on the oak staircase were silent
again a quarter of an hour afterwards. Helen had often passed through
the hall, where now she stood after bidding the men good-night, when the
house was still, feeling unutterably lonely. To-night she did not feel
that.
She passed through the dining-room where the entertainment had taken
place on her way to her room. There were letters for her, but none from
Robin, and the rest would wait until the morning. At this moment he and
the men who had tramped and laughed their way to bed were the only
people who had any significance for her. She warmed her heart at that
dear firelight.