Persons with real force of purpose carry about with them something that
charges unconsciously the atmosphere of others. Paul ‘felt’ this woman.
The first impact of her presence, as has been seen, came almost as a
shock. The ‘shocks,’ however, did not continue—as such. Her influence
worked in him underground, as it were.
She slipped easily and naturally into the quiet routine of the little
household in the Grey House under the hill, till it seemed as if she had
been there always. Margaret had insisted at once that there could be no
‘Missing’ and ‘Mistering’; Dick’s niece must be Joan, and her brother
Paul; and the more familiar terms of address were adopted without effort
on both sides.
The children helped, too. They were all in the same Society, and before
a week had passed she had heard all the ‘aventures,’ and entered into
the discovery of new ones, even contributing some herself with a zest
that delighted Paul, and made him feel wholly at his ease with her. It
was all real to her; she could not otherwise have shown an interest; for
sham had no part in her nature, and her love for these fatherless
children was as great as his own, and similar in kind.
‘You have given their “Society” a new lease of life,’ she told him; ‘you
are an enormous addition to it.’
‘Enormous—yes!’ he laughed.
‘Enormously useful at the same time,’ she laughed in return, ‘because
you not only increase their imagination; you train it, and show them how
to use it.’
‘To say nothing of the indirect benefits I receive myself,’ he added.
And, after a pause, she said: ‘For myself, too, it’s the best kind of
holiday I could possibly have. To come down here into all this, straight
from my waifs in London, is like coming into that Crack-land you have
shown them. I wish—I wish I could introduce it all to my big sad world
of unwashed urchins. They have so few chances.’ A sudden flash of
enthusiasm ran over her face like sunlight. ‘Perhaps, when they come
down here next week for a day’s outing, we might try!—if you will help
me, that is?’ She looked up. Something in the simple words touched him;
her singleness of aim stirred the depths in him.
He promised eagerly.
‘When it’s out,’ she added presently, ‘I’m going to give copies of your
book of aventures to some of them. A good many will understand——’
‘You shall have as many as you can use,’ he put in quickly, with a
thrill of pleasure he hardly understood. ‘I’m only too delighted to
think they could be of any use—any _real_ use, I mean.’
There was something in the simple earnestness of this woman, in the
devotion of her life to an unselfish Cause, that increased daily his
dissatisfaction with himself. She never said a word that suggested
self-sacrifice. A call had come to her, turning her entire life into an
instrument for helping others—others who might never realise enough to
say, ‘Thank you’—and she had accepted it. Now she lived it, that was
all. The Scheme that had provided the call, too, was Dick’s. It was all
conceived originally in that big practical, imaginative heart of the one
intimate friendship he had known. Moreover, it concerned children, lost
children. The appeal to the deepest in himself was thus reinforced in
several ways. More and more, beside this quiet, determined woman, with
her singleness of aim and her practical idealism, his own life seemed
trivial, cheap, selfish. She had found a medium of expression,
self-expression, compared to which his own mind was insignificant.
From the ‘Man who splashed on the Deck’ to Joan Nicholson was a far cry;
as far almost as from the amœba to the dog—yet both the man and the
woman knew the relief of Outlet. And, now, he too was learning in his
own time and place the same truth. Nixie had brought him far. Joan,
perhaps, was to bring him farther still.
Yet there was nothing about her that was very unusual. There are scores
and scores of unmarried women like her sprinkled all along the quiet
ways of life, noble, unselfish, unrecognised, often, no doubt, utterly
unappreciated, turning the whole current of their lives into work for
others—the best they can find. The ordinary man who, for the mother of
his children seeks first of all physical beauty, or perhaps some worldly
standard of attractiveness, passes them by. Their great force, thus
apparently neglected by Nature for her more obvious purposes, runs along
through more hidden channels, achieving great things with but little
glory or reward. To Paul, who knew nothing of modern types, and whose
knowledge of women was abstract rather than concrete, she appeared, of
course, simply normal. For all women he conceived as noble and
unselfish, capable naturally of sacrifice and devotion. To him they were
all saints, more or less, and Joan Nicholson came upon the scene of his
life merely as an ordinarily presentable specimen of the great species
he had always dreamt about.
But it was the first time he had come into close contact with a living
example of the type he had always believed in. Here was a woman whose
interests were all outside herself. The fact thrilled and electrified
him, just as the peculiar nature of her work made a powerful and
intimate appeal to his heart.
As the days passed, and they came to know one another better, she told
him frankly about the small beginnings of her work, and then how Dick’s
idea had caught her up and carried her away to where she now was.
‘There was so much to be done, and so much help needed, that at first,’
she admitted, ‘my own little efforts seemed absurd; and then he showed
me that if everybody talked like that nothing would ever be
accomplished. So I got up and tried. It was something definite and
practical. I let my bigger dreams go——’
‘Well done,’ he interrupted, wondering for a moment what those ‘bigger
dreams’ could have been.
‘——and chose the certainty. And I have never regretted it, though
sometimes, of course, I am still tempted——’
‘That was fine of you,’ he said. He realised vaguely that she would
gladly, perhaps, have spoken to him of those ‘other dreams,’ but it was
not quite clear to him that his sympathy could be of any avail, and he
did not know how to offer it either. To ask direct questions of such a
woman savoured to his delicate mind of impertinence.
‘There was nothing “fine” about it,’ she laughed, after an imperceptible
pause; ‘it was natural, that’s all. I couldn’t help myself really. Human
suffering has always called to me very searchingly. _Au fond_, you see,
it was almost selfishness.’
He suddenly felt unaccountably small with this slip of a woman at his
side, tired, overworked, giving all her best years so gladly away, and
even in her ‘holidays’ thinking of her work more than of herself. He
noticed, too, the passing flames that lit fires in her eyes and
illumined her entire face sometimes when she spoke of her London waifs.
Pity and admiration ran together in his thoughts, the latter easily
predominating.
‘But you must make the most of your holiday,’ he said presently; ‘you
will use up your forces too soon——’
‘Perhaps,’ she laughed, ‘perhaps. Only I get restless with the feeling
that I’m wanted elsewhere. There’s so little time to do anything. The
years pass so quickly—after thirty; and if you always wait till you’re
“quite fit,” you wait for ever, and nothing gets done.’
Paul turned and looked steadily at her for a moment. A sudden beauty,
like a white and shining fire, leaped into her face, flashed about the
eyes and mouth, and was gone. Paul never forgot that look to the end of
his days.
‘By Jove,’ he said, ‘you _are_ in earnest!’
‘Not more than others,’ she said simply; ‘not as much as many, even, I’m
afraid. A good soldier goes on fighting whether he’s “fit” or not,
doesn’t he?’
‘He ought to,’ said Paul—humbly, for some reason he could hardly
explain.
They had many similar talks. She told him a great deal about her rescue
work in London, and he, for his part, became more and more interested.
From a distance, meanwhile, his sister observed them curiously,—though
nothing that was in Margaret’s thoughts ever for a single instant found
its way either into his mind or Joan’s. It was natural, of course, that
Margaret, the reader of modern novels, should have formed certain
conclusions, and perhaps it would have been the obvious and natural
thing for Joan and Paul to have fallen in love and been happy ever
afterwards with children of their own. It would also, no doubt, have
been ‘artistic,’ and the way things are made to happen in novels.
But in real life things are not cut always so neatly to measure, and
whether real life is artistic or not as a whole cannot be judged until
the true, far end is known. For the perspective is wanting; the scale is
on a vaster loom; and of the threads that weave into the pattern and out
again, neither end nor beginning are open to inspection.
The novels Margaret delighted in, with their hotch-potch of duchesses
and valets, Ministers of State and footmen, libertines and snobs, while
doubtless portraying certain phases of modern life with accuracy, could
in no way prepare her for the Pattern that was being woven beneath her
eyes by the few and simple characters in this entirely veracious
history. And it may be assumed, therefore, that Joan had come into the
scenery of Paul’s life with no such commonplace motive—since the high
Gods held the threads and wove them to their own satisfaction—as merely
to marry off the hero.
And if Paul did not fall in love with Joan Nicholson, as he might, or
ought, to have done, he at least did the next best thing to it. He fell
head over ears in love with her work. And since love seeks ever to
imitate and to possess, he cast about in his heart for means by which he
might accomplish these ends. Already he possessed her secret. Now he had
only to imitate her methods.
He was finding his way to a bigger and better means of self-expression
than he had yet dreamed of; while Nixie, the _dea ex machina_, for ever
flitted on ahead and showed the way.
It remained a fairy tale of the most delightful kind. _That_, at least,
he realised clearly.