“Still at Martha's.
“Quite right, dear Aunt Anna, the terms 'authority' and 'obedience' must
be known and honoured. Only, when it is a case of put a penny in the
slot and out comes the word of command, you can't exactly feel that way.
The board of directors put the penny into the slot of this institution,
and the word of command, so far as I am concerned, comes out of the
mouth of Ward Sister Allworthy. I call her the White Owl. She is five
feet ten, and has big round cheeks which sometimes I should dearly
love to slap--as mothers slap their 'childers' when they administer a
humiliating punishment.
“So you think you notice 'a certain want of aptitude'? Well, I don't
think I am naturally a bad nurse, Aunt Anna. The patients like me,
and they don't die of the dumps when I am about. Only I can't practise
nursing by the rule of three, and as a consequence I get myself
reported. Sister Allworthy has reported me three times, bless her!
Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed, and now she threatens to have me up
before the matron. That dear soul has difficulties of locomotion, being
buried under the Pelion on Ossa of a mountain of fat. She inhabits a
cave of Adullam on the edge of the Inferno--i. e., the 'theatre'--below
stairs, and has a small dog with a bad heart and broken wind always
nagging on her knee. I call her the Chief Broker in Breakages and Head
Dealer in Diseases, and she is only seen once a day when she comes round
to take stock. You have to be nice with her Majesty,' for she can haul
you up at the weekly board, and put a score against you in the black
book, and send you away without a certificate. If that happens, a girl
who expects to earn her living as a nurse has never any particular need
to pray, 'In all time of our wealth, good Lord deliver us.'
“But, oh, my dear grandfather, what do you think of our John Storm
now? After uttering the lamentations of Jeremiah and predicting all the
plagues of Egypt, he has gone off to hold his peace--that is to say, he
has gone to make his 'Retreat,' which, being interpreted, means praying
without ceasing, and also without speaking, eighteen hours a day, six
days at a spell, and sometimes sixty. When he comes back reeking with
all that holiness I shall feel myself such a miserable sinner----
“Soberly, I could cry to think of it, though, and when I remember that
perhaps I was partly to blame----
“It was this way: In that 'ter'ble discoorse' I told you he had
scotched the snake, not killed it, and his vicar (I call him Mr.
Worldly Wiseman), finding that his ladies and nobility went out like the
Pharisees, one by one, told our poor John he was ill and stood in need
of instant rest. It looked like it certainly, and the trouble must have
been a sort of human rabies in which the poor victim bites at his best
friends first. He came here with his lower lip hanging like an old
dog's, and I was so stupid as not to see that he was being hunted like a
dog too, and only told myself how ugly and untidy he had grown of late.
But the Sister had just before been showing me her tusks again, and
being possessed with a fury, I gave it him world without end. He was
very unreasonable though, and seemed to say that I must have no friends
and no amusements that were not of his choosing, and that after spending
my days walking through the inside of this precious hospital I must
spend my nights walking round the outside of it. Being a woman of like
passions with himself, I had a 'ter'ble dust' with him on the subject,
and the next I heard was that he was going to make Retreat in a kind of
English-church monastery somewhere in the city, where he would 'try
to disentangle' himself 'from the world' and see what he 'ought to do
next.' He sent me his blessing with this message, and I sent him back
mine--a less holy one, but he'll make it do.
“I thought you would remember Mr. Drake's mother, dear Auntie Rachel.
Yes, he is fair also, and wears his hair brushed across his forehead,
much as you see in the portraits of Napoleon. In fact, he is a sort of
fair-haired Napoleon in nature as well.
“He took me to the theatre the other evening, and that was the great
event I intended to tell you about. It was quite a proper sort of place,
and nobody behaved badly except Glory, who kept talking and preaching
and going silly with excitement all the evening through, with the result
that everybody was staring mewards and wanting to turn me out.
“Since then Mr. Drake's friend, Lord Bob, who knows all the actors on
earth seemingly, has taken us 'behind,' and we have seen a rehearsal.
Things don't look quite the same behind as before, but nothing in the
world does that, and I wasn't a bit disenchanted. In fact, I found
everything delightfully romantic and amusing, and really I do not think
it _can_ be so very wicked to be an actress. Do you?
“My friend Polly Love was with us. Polly is a probationer also, and
sleeps in the cubicle next to mine, and after the rehearsal we went to
the gentlemen's chambers to tea. I can hear what Aunt Anna is saying:
'Goodness gracious! you didn't do that, girl?' Well, yes, I did though.
In the interest of my sex I wanted to see how two boys could live in
rooms all by themselves, and it's perfectly shocking how well they get
on without a woman. Of course I wasn't such a silly as to let wit about
that, but after I had examined their sitting-room and cross-examined its
owners on its numerous photographs (chiefly feminine) and tried how it
feels to hold their big pipes between one's teeth, I whipped off my hat
at once and began to put things straight for them, and then I made the
tea.
“By this time the gentlemen had changed into their jackets, and I sent
them flying around for cups and saucers and sugar basins. It turned out
that they had only one teaspoon in the place, and when anybody wanted
to stir her tea she said, 'Will you oblige me with _spoon_ please?'
What fun it was! We laughed until we cried--at least one of us did--and
eventually we managed to break the teapot and a slop basin and to
overturn a standing lamp. It was perfectly delightful!
“But the best sport was after tea was over, and Glory was called on
for imitations of the people we had seen at the theatre. Of course she
couldn't imitate a man when she was in a woman's frock, so being as
bright as diamonds that night and twice 'as impudent as a white stone,'
[* A Manx proverb] she actually conceived the idea of dressing up in
man's clothes. Naturally the gentlemen were enchanted, so I hope Auntie
Rachel isn't terribly shocked. Mr. Drake lent me his knickerbockers and
a velvet jacket, and Polly and I went into the bedroom, where she helped
me to find the way to put them on. With my own blouse and my own hat
(I am wearing a felt one now with a broad brim and a feather), and _of
course_ my own slippers and stockings, I made a bogh of a boy, I can
tell you. I thought Polly would have died of delight in the bedroom,
but when we came out she kept covering her face and crying, 'Glory, how
_can_ you!'
“I'm afraid I sang and talked more than was good for the soul, but it
was all Mr. Drake's doing. He declared I was such a marvellous mimic
that it was simply a waste of time and the good gifts of God to go on
hospital nursing any longer. And I do believe that if anything happened,
and the need arose, he would----
“Only fancy Glory a public person, and all the world and his wife going
down on their knees to her! But then it's fearful to think of being an
actress, isn't it?
“After all such glorious 'outs' I have to go 'in' to the hospital, and
then comes my fit again. Do you remember my little boy who said he was
going to the angels, and he would get lots of gristly pork up there? He
has gone, and I don't think I like nursing children now. Oh, how I long
to go out into the world! I want to shine in it. I want to become great
and glorious. I could do it too, I know I could. I have got it in me,
I am sure I have. Yet here I am in a little dark corner crying for the
sunshine!
“How silly this is, isn't it? It sounds like madness. My dears, allow me
to introduce you to some one--
“Glory Quayle, 'March Hare and Madwoman.'”