THE DOCTOR'S PRESCRIPTION
The Honourable Jane Champion stood on the summit of the Great Pyramid
and looked around her. The four exhausted Arabs whose exertions,
combined with her own activity, had placed her there, dropped in the
picturesque attitudes into which an Arab falls by nature. They had
hoisted the Honourable Jane's eleven stone ten from the bottom to the
top in record time, and now lay around, proud of their achievement and
sure of their "backsheesh."
The whole thing had gone as if by clock-work. Two mahogany-coloured,
finely proportioned fellows, in scanty white garments, sprang with the
ease of antelopes to the top of a high step, turning to reach down
eagerly and seize Jane's upstretched hands. One remained behind, unseen
but indispensable, to lend timely aid at exactly the right moment. Then
came the apparently impossible task for Jane, of placing the sole of
her foot on the edge of a stone four feet above the one upon which she
was standing. It seemed rather like stepping up on to the drawing-room
mantelpiece. But encouraged by cries of "Eiwa! Eiwa!" she did it; when
instantly a voice behind said, "Tyeb!" two voices above shouted,
"Keteer!" the grip on her hands tightened, the Arab behind hoisted, and
Jane had stepped up, with an ease which surprised herself. As a matter
of fact, under those circumstances the impossible thing would have been
not to have stepped up.
Arab number four was water-carrier, and offered water from a gourd at
intervals; and once, when Jane had to cry halt for a few minutes'
breathing space, Schehati, handsomest of all, and leader of the
enterprise, offered to recite English Shakespeare-poetry. This proved
to be:
"Jack-an-Jill
Went uppy hill,
To fetchy paily water;
Jack fell down-an
Broke his crown-an
Jill came tumbling after."
Jane had laughed; and Schehati, encouraged by the success of his
attempt to edify and amuse, used lines of the immortal nursery epic as
signals for united action during the remainder of the climb. Therefore
Jane mounted one step to the fact that Jack fell down, and scaled the
next to information as to the serious nature of his injuries, and at
the third, Schehati, bending over, confidentially mentioned in her ear,
while Ali shoved behind, that "Jill came tumbling after."
The familiar words, heard under such novel circumstances, took on fresh
meaning. Jane commenced speculating as to whether the downfall of Jack
need necessarily have caused so complete a loss of self-control and
equilibrium on the part of Jill. Would she not have proved her devotion
better by bringing the mutual pail safely to the bottom of the hill,
and there attending to the wounds of her fallen hero? Jane, in her
time, had witnessed the tragic downfall of various delightful jacks,
and had herself ministered tenderly to their broken crowns; for in each
case the Jill had remained on the top of the hill, flirting with that
objectionable person of the name of Horner, whose cool, calculating way
of setting to work--so unlike poor Jack's headlong method--invariably
secured him the plum; upon which he remarked "What a good boy am I!"
and was usually taken at his own smug valuation. But Jane's entire
sympathy on these occasions was with the defeated lover, and more than
one Jack was now on his feet again, bravely facing life, because that
kind hand had been held out to him as he lay in his valley of
humiliation, and that comprehending sympathy had proved balm to his
broken crown.
"Dickery, dickery, dock!" chanted Schehati solemnly, as he hauled
again; "Moses ran up the clock. The clock struck 'one'--"
THE CLOCK STRUCK "ONE"?--It was nearly three years since that night at
Shenstone when the clock had struck "one," and Jane had arrived at her
decision,--the decision which precipitated her Jack from his Pisgah of
future promise. And yet--no. He had not fallen before the blow. He had
taken it erect, and his light step had been even firmer than usual as
he walked down the church and left her, after quietly and deliberately
accepting her decision. It was Jane herself, left alone, who fell
hopelessly over the pail. She shivered even now when she remembered how
its icy waters drenched her heart. Ah, what would have happened if
Garth had come back in answer to her cry during those first moments of
intolerable suffering and loneliness? But Garth was not the sort of man
who, when a door has been shut upon him, waits on the mat outside,
hoping to be recalled. When she put him from her, and he realised that
she meant it he passed completely out of her life. He was at the
railway station by the time she reached the house, and from that day to
this they had never met. Garth evidently considered the avoidance of
meetings to be his responsibility, and he never failed her in this.
Once or twice she went on a visit to houses where she knew him to be
staying. He always happened to have left that morning, if she arrived
in time for luncheon; or by an early afternoon train, if she was due
for tea. He never timed it so that there should be tragic passings of
each other, with set faces, at the railway stations; or a formal word
of greeting as she arrived and he departed,--just enough to awaken all
the slumbering pain and set people wondering. Jane remembered with
shame that this was the sort of picturesque tragedy she would have
expected from Garth Dalmain. But the man who had surprised her by his
dignified acquiescence in her decision, continued to surprise her by
the strength with which he silently accepted it as final and kept out
of her way. Jane had not probed the depth of the wound she had
inflicted.
Never once was his departure connected, in the minds of others, with
her arrival. There was always some excellent and perfectly natural
reason why he had been obliged to leave, and he was openly talked of
and regretted, and Jane heard all the latest "Dal stories," and found
herself surrounded by the atmosphere of his exotic, beauty-loving
nature. And there was usually a girl--always the loveliest of the
party--confidentially pointed out to Jane, by the rest, as a certainty,
if only Dal had had another twenty-four hours of her society. But the
girl herself would appear quite heart-whole, only very full of an
evidently delightful friendship, expressing all Dal's ideas on art and
colour, as her own, and confidently happy in an assured sense of her
own loveliness and charm and power to please. Never did he leave behind
him traces which the woman who loved him regretted to find. But he was
always gone--irrevocably gone. Garth Dalmain was not the sort of man to
wait on the door-mat of a woman's indecision.
Neither did this Jack of hers break his crown. His portrait of Pauline
Lister, painted six months after the Shenstone visit, had proved the
finest bit of work he had as yet accomplished. He had painted the
lovely American, in creamy white satin, standing on a dark oak
staircase, one hand resting on the balustrade, the other, full of
yellow roses, held out towards an unseen friend below. Behind and above
her shone a stained-glass window, centuries old, the arms, crest, and
mottoes of the noble family to whom the place belonged, shining thereon
in rose-coloured and golden glass. He had wonderfully caught the charm
and vivacity of the girl. She was gaily up-to-date, and frankly
American, from the crown of her queenly little head, to the point of
her satin shoe; and the suggestiveness of placing her in surroundings
which breathed an atmosphere of the best traditions of England's
ancient ancestral homes, the fearless wedding of the new world with the
old, the putting of this sparkling gem from the new into the beautiful
mellow setting of the old and there showing it at its best,--all this
was the making of the picture. People smiled, and said the painter had
done on canvas what he shortly intended doing in reality; but the tie
between artist and sitter never grew into anything closer than a
pleasant friendship, and it was the noble owner of the staircase and
window who eventually persuaded Miss Lister to remain in surroundings
which suited her so admirably.
One story about that portrait Jane had heard discussed more than once
in circles where both were known. Pauline Lister had come to the first
sittings wearing her beautiful string of pearls, and Garth had painted
them wonderfully, spending hours over the delicate perfecting of each
separate gleaming drop. Suddenly one day he seized his palette-knife,
scraped the whole necklace off the canvas with a stroke and, declared
she must wear her rose-topazes in order to carry out his scheme of
colour. She was wearing her rose-topazes when Jane saw the picture in
the Academy, and very lovely they looked on the delicate whiteness of
her neck. But people who had seen Garth's painting of the pearls
maintained that that scrape of the palette-knife had destroyed work
which would have been the talk of the year. And Pauline Lister, just
after it had happened, was reported to have said, with a shrug of her
pretty shoulders: "Schemes of colour are all very well. But he scraped
my pearls off the canvas because some one who came in hummed a tune
while looking at the picture. I would be obliged if people who walk
around the studio while I am being painted will in future refrain from
humming tunes. I don't want him to scoop off my topazes and call for my
emeralds. Also I feel like offering a reward for the discovery of that
tune. I want to know what it has to do with my scheme of colour,
anyway."
When Jane heard the story, she was spending a few days with the Brands
in Wimpole Street. It was told at tea, in Lady Brand's pretty boudoir.
The duchess's Concert, at which Garth had heard her sing THE ROSARY,
was a thing of the past. Nearly a year had elapsed since their final
parting, and this was the very first thought or word or sign of his
remembrance, which directly or indirectly, had come her way. She could
not doubt that the tune hummed had been THE ROSARY.
"The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,
Are as a string of pearls to me;
I count them over, every one, apart."
She seemed to hear Garth's voice on the terrace, as she heard it in
those first startled moments of realising the gift which was being laid
at her feet--"I have learned to count pearls, beloved."
Jane's heart was growing cold and frozen in its emptiness. This
incident of the studio warmed and woke it for the moment, and with the
waking came sharp pain. When the visitors had left, and Lady Brand had
gone to the nursery, she walked over to the piano, sat down, and softly
played the accompaniment of "The Rosary." The fine unexpected chords,
full of discords working into harmony, seemed to suit her mood and her
memories.
Suddenly a voice behind her said: "Sing it, Jane." She turned quickly.
The doctor had come in, and was lying back luxuriously in a large
arm-chair at her elbow, his hands clasped behind his head. "Sing it,
Jane," he said.
"I can't, Deryck," she answered, still softly sounding the chords. "I
have not sung for months."
"What has been the matter--for months?"
Jane took her hands off the keys, and swung round impulsively.
"Oh, boy," she said. "I have made a bad mess of my life! And yet I know
I did right. I would do the same again; at least--at least, I hope I
would."
The doctor sat in silence for a minute, looking at her and pondering
these short, quick sentences. Also he waited for more, knowing it would
come more easily if he waited silently.
It came.
"Boy--I gave up something, which was more than life itself to me, for
the sake of another, and I can't get over it. I know I did right, and
yet--I can't get over it."
The doctor leaned forward and took the clenched hands between his.
"Can you tell me about it, Jeanette?"
"I can tell no one, Deryck; not even you."
"If ever you find you must tell some one, Jane, will you promise to
come to me?"
"Gladly."
"Good! Now, my dear girl, here is a prescription for you. Go abroad.
And, mind, I do not mean by that, just to Paris and back, or
Switzerland this summer, and the Riviera in the autumn. Go to America
and see a few big things. See Niagara. And all your life afterwards,
when trivialities are trying you, you will love to let your mind go
back to the vast green mass of water sweeping over the falls; to the
thunderous roar, and the upward rush of spray; to the huge perpetual
onwardness of it all. You will like to remember, when you are bothering
about pouring water in and out of teacups, 'Niagara is flowing still.'
Stay in a hotel so near the falls that you can hear their great voice
night and day, thundering out themes of power and progress. Spend hours
walking round and viewing it from every point. Go to the Cave of the
Winds, across the frail bridges, where the guide will turn and shout to
you: 'Are your rings on tight?' Learn, in passing, the true meaning of
the Rock of Ages. Receive Niagara into your life and soul as a
possession, and thank God for it."
"Then go in for other big things in America. Try spirituality and
humanity; love and life. Seek out Mrs. Ballington Booth, the great
'Little Mother' of all American prisoners. I know her well, I am proud
to say, and can give you a letter of introduction. Ask her to take you
with her to Sing-Sing, or to Columbus State Prison, and to let you hear
her address an audience of two thousand convicts, holding out to them
the gospel of hope and love,--her own inspired and inspiring belief in
fresh possibilities even for the most despairing."
"Go to New York City and see how, when a man wants a big building and
has only a small plot of ground, he makes the most of that ground by
running his building up into the sky. Learn to do likewise.--And then,
when the great-souled, large-hearted, rapid-minded people of America
have waked you to enthusiasm with their bigness, go off to Japan and
see a little people nobly doing their best to become great.--Then to
Palestine, and spend months in tracing the footsteps of the greatest
human life ever lived. Take Egypt on your way home, just to remind
yourself that there are still, in this very modern world of ours, a few
passably ancient things,--a well-preserved wooden man, for instance,
with eyes of opaque white quartz, a piece of rock crystal in the centre
for a pupil. These glittering eyes looked out upon the world from
beneath their eyelids of bronze, in the time of Abraham. You will find
it in the museum at Cairo. Ride a donkey in the Mooskee if you want
real sport; and if you feel a little slack, climb the Great Pyramid.
Ask for an Arab named Schehati, and tell him you want to do it one
minute quicker than any lady has ever done it before."
"Then come home, my dear girl, ring me up and ask for an appointment;
or chance it, and let Stoddart slip you into my consulting-room between
patients, and report how the prescription has worked. I never gave a
better; and you need not offer me a guinea! I attend old friends
gratis."
Jane laughed, and gripped his hand. "Oh, boy," she said, "I believe you
are right. My whole ideas of life have been focussed on myself and my
own individual pains and losses. I will do as you say; and God bless
you for saying it.--Here comes Flower. Flower," she said, as the
doctor's wife trailed in, wearing a soft tea-gown, and turning on the
electric lights as she passed, "will this boy of ours ever grow old?
Here he is, seriously advising that a stout, middle-aged woman should
climb the Great Pyramid as a cure for depression, and do it in record
time!"
"Darling," said the doctor's wife, seating herself on the arm of his
chair, "whom have you been seeing who is stout, or depressed, or
middle-aged? If you mean Mrs. Parker Bangs, she is not middle-aged,
because she is an American, and no American is ever middle-aged. And
she is only depressed because, even after painting her lovely niece's
portrait, Garth Dalmain has failed to propose to her. And it is no good
advising her to climb the Great Pyramid, though she is doing Egypt this
winter, because I heard her say yesterday that she should never think
of going up the pyramids until the children of Israel, or whoever the
natives are who live around those parts, have the sense to put an
elevator right up the centre."
Jane and the doctor laughed, and Flower, settling herself more
comfortably, for the doctor's arm had stolen around her, said: "Jane, I
heard you playing THE ROSARY just now, such a favourite of mine, and it
is months since I heard it. Do sing it, dear."
Jane met the doctor's eyes and smiled reassuringly; then turned without
any hesitation and did as Flower asked. The prescription had already
done her good.
At the last words of the song the doctor's wife bent over and laid a
tender little kiss just above his temple, where the thick dark hair was
streaked with silver. But the doctor's mind was intent on Jane, and
before the final chords were struck he knew he had diagnosed her case
correctly. "But she had better go abroad," he thought. "It will take
her mind off herself altogether, giving her a larger view of things in
general, and a better proportioned view of things in particular. And
the boy won't change; or, if he does, Jane will be proved right, to her
own satisfaction. But, if this is HER side, good heavens, what must HIS
be! I had wondered what was sapping all his buoyant youthfulness. To
care for Jane would be an education; but to have made Jane care! And
then to have lost her! He must have nerves of steel, to be facing life
at all. What is this cross they are both learning to kiss, and holding
up between them? Perhaps Niagara will sweep it away, and she will cable
him from there."
Then the doctor took the dear little hand resting on his shoulder and
kissed it softly, while Jane's back was still turned. For the doctor
had had past experience of the cross, and now the pearls were very
precious.
So Jane took the prescription, and two years went by in the taking; and
here she was, on the top of the Great Pyramid, and, moreover, she had
done it in record time, and laughed as she thought of how she should
report the fact to Deryck.
Her Arabs lay around, very hot and shiny, and content. Large backsheesh
was assured, and they looked up at her with pleased possessive eyes, as
an achievement of their own; hardly realising how large a part her
finely developed athletic powers and elastic limbs had played in the
speed of the ascent.
And Jane stood there, sound in wind and limb, and with the exhilarating
sense, always helpful to the mind, of a bodily feat accomplished.
She was looking her best in her Norfolk coat and skirt of brown tweed
with hints of green and orange in it, plenty of useful pockets piped
with leather, leather buttons, and a broad band of leather round the
bottom of the skirt. A connoisseur would have named at once the one and
only firm from which that costume could have come, and the hatter who
supplied the soft green Tyrolian hat--for Jane scorned pith
helmets--which matched it so admirably. But Schehati was no connoisseur
of clothing, though a pretty shrewd judge of ways and manners, and he
summed up Jane thus: "Nice gentleman-lady! Give good backsheesh, and
not sit down halfway and say: `No top'! But real lady-gentleman! Give
backsheesh with kind face, and not send poor Arab to Assouan."
Jane was deeply tanned by the Eastern sun. Burning a splendid brown,
and enjoying the process, she had no need of veils or parasols; and her
strong eyes faced the golden light of the desert without the aid of
smoked glasses. She had once heard Garth remark that a sight which made
him feel really ill, was the back view of a woman in a motor-veil, and
Jane had laughingly agreed, for to her veils of any kind had always
seemed superfluous. The heavy coils of her brown hair never blew about
into fascinating little curls and wisps, but remained where, with a few
well-directed hairpins, she each morning solidly placed them.
Jane had never looked better than she did on this March day, standing
on the summit of the Great Pyramid. Strong, brown, and well-knit, a
reliable mind in a capable body, the undeniable plainness of her face
redeemed by its kindly expression of interest and enjoyment; her wide,
pleasant smile revealing her fine white teeth, witnesses to her perfect
soundness and health, within and without.
"Nice gentleman-lady," murmured Schehati again: and had Jane overheard
the remark it would not have offended her; for, though she held a
masculine woman only one degree less in abhorrence than an effeminate
man, she would have taken Schehati's compound noun as a tribute to the
fact that she was well-groomed and independent, knowing her own mind,
and, when she started out to go to a place, reaching it in the shortest
possible time, without fidget, fuss, or flurry. These three feminine
attributes were held in scorn by Jane, who knew herself so deeply
womanly that she could afford in minor ways to be frankly unfeminine.
The doctor's prescription had worked admirably. That look of falling to
pieces and ageing prematurely--a general dilapidation of mind and
body--which it had grieved and startled him to see in Jane as she sat
before him on the music-stool, was gone completely. She looked a calm,
pleasant thirty; ready to go happily on, year by year, towards an
equally agreeable and delightful forty; and not afraid of fifty, when
that time should come. Her clear eyes looked frankly out upon the
world, and her sane mind formed sound opinions and pronounced fair
judgments, tempered by the kindliness of an unusually large and
generous heart.
Just now she was considering the view and finding it very good. Its
strong contrasts held her.
On one side lay the fertile Delta, with its groves of waving palm,
orange, and olive trees, growing in rich profusion on the banks of the
Nile, a broad band of gleaming silver. On the other, the Desert, with
its far-distant horizon, stretching away in undulations of golden sand;
not a tree, not a leaf, not a blade of grass, but boundless liberty, an
ocean of solid golden glory. For the sun was setting, and the sky
flamed into colour.
"A parting of the ways," said Jane; "a place of choice. How difficult
to know which to choose--liberty or fruitfulness. One would have to
consult the Sphinx--wise old guardian of the ages, silent keeper of
Time's secrets, gazing on into the future as It has always gazed, while
future became present, and present glided into past.--Come, Schehati,
let us descend. Oh, yes, I will certainly sit upon the stone on which
the King sat when he was Prince of Wales. Thank you for mentioning it.
It will supply a delightful topic of conversation next time I am
honoured by a few minutes of his gracious Majesty's attention, and will
save me from floundering into trite remarks about the weather.--And now
take me to the Sphinx, Schehati. There is a question I would ask of It,
just as the sun dips below the horizon."