The Christian Part 9

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," said Glory. Her own eyes were swimming in big tear-drops.

"Don't you? What a funny girl you are! But your education has been neglected, my dear."

It was a combination van and hea.r.s.e with the coffin under the driver's box, and John Storm (as the only discoverable mourner) with the undertaker on the seat inside.

"Will ye be willin' ter tyke the service at the cimitery, sir?" said the undertaker, and John answered that he would.

The grave was on the paupers' side, and when the undertaker, with his man, had lowered the coffin to its place, he said, "They've gimme abart three more funerals this morning, so I'll leave ye now, sir, to finish 'er off."

At the next moment John Storm in his surplice was alone with the dead, and had opened his book to read the burial service which no other human ear was to hear.

He read "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes," and then the bitter loneliness of the pauper's doom came down on his soul and silenced him.

But his imprisoned pa.s.sion had to find a vent, and that night he wrote to the Prime Minister: "I begin to understand what you meant when you said I was in the wrong place. Oh, this London, with its society, its worldly clergy, its art, its literature, its luxury, its idle life, all built on the toil of the country and compounded of the sweat of the nameless poor! Oh, this 'Circe of cities,' drawing good people to it, decoying them, seducing them, and then turning them into swine! It seems impossible to live in the world and to be spiritually-minded. When I try to do so I am torn in two."

X.

On the following Tuesday evening two young men were dining in their chambers in St. James's Street. One of them was Lord Robert Ure; the other was his friend and housemate, Horatio Drake. Drake was younger than Lord Robert by some seven or eight years, and also beyond comparison more attractive. His face was manly and handsome, its expression was open and breezy; he was broad-shouldered and splendidly built, and he had the fair hair and blue eyes of a boy.

Their room was a large one, and it was full of beautiful and valuable things, but the furniture was huddled about in disorder. A large chamber-organ, a grand piano, a mandolin, and two violins, pictures on the floor as well as on the walls, many photographs scattered about everywhere, and the mirror over the mantelpiece fringed with invitation-cards, which were stuck between the gla.s.s and the frame.

Their man had brought in the coffee and cigarettes. Lord Robert was speaking in his weary drawl, which had the worn-out tone of a man who had made a long journey and was very sleepy.

"Come, dear boy, make up your mind, and let us be off."

"But I'm tired to death of these fas.h.i.+onable routs."

"So am I."

"They're so unnatural--so unnecessary."

"My dear fellow, of course they're unnatural--of course they're unnecessary; but what would you have?"

"Anything human and natural," said Drake. "I don't care a ha'p'orth about the morality of these things--not I--but I am dead sick of their stupidity."

Lord Robert made languid puffs of his cigarette, and said, in a tearful drawl: "My dear Drake, of course it is exactly as you say. Who doesn't know it is so? It has always been so and always will be. But what refuge is there for the poor leisured people but these diversions which you despise? And as for the poor t.i.tled cla.s.ses--well, they manage to make their play their business sometimes, don't you know. Confess that they do sometimes, now, eh?"

Lord Robert was laughing with an awkward constraint, but Drake looked frankly into his face and said:

"How's that matter going on, Robert?"

"Fairly, I think, though the girl is not very hot on it. The thing came off last week, and when it was over I felt as if I had proposed to the girl and been accepted by the mother, don't you know. I believe this rout to-night is expressly in honour of the event, so I mustn't run away from my bargain."

He lay back, sent funnels of smoke to the ceiling, and then said, with a laugh like a gurgle: "I'm not likely to, though. That eternal dun was here again to-day. I had to tell him that the marriage would come off in a year certain. That was the only understanding on which he would agree to wait for his money. Bad? Of course it's bad; but what would you have, dear boy?"

The men smoked in silence for a moment, and then Lord Robert said again: "Come, old fellow, for friends.h.i.+p's sake, if nothing else. She's a decent little woman, and dead bent on having you at her house to-night.

And if you're badly bored we'll not stay long. We'll come away early and--listen--we'll slip across to the Nurses' Ball at Bartimaeus's Hospital; there'll be fun enough there, at all events."

"I'll go," said Drake.

Half an hour later the two young men were driving up to the door of Mrs. Macrae's house in Belgrave Square. There was a line of carriages in front of it, and they had to wait their turn to approach the gate.

Footmen in gorgeous livery were ready to open the cab door, to help the guests across the red baize that lay on the pavement, to usher them into the hall, to lead them to the little marble chamber where they entered their names in a list intended for the next day's _Morning Post_, and finally to direct them to the great staircase where the general crush moved slowly up to the saloon above.

In the well of the stairs, half hidden behind a little forest of palms and ferns, a band in yellow and blue uniform sat playing the people in.

On the landing the hostess stood waiting to receive, and many of the guests, by a rotary movement like the waters of a maelstrom, moved past her in a rapid and babbling stream, twisted about her, and came down again. She welcomed Lord Robert effusively, and motioned to him to stand by her side. Then she introduced her daughter to Drake and sent them adrift through the rooms.

The rooms were large ones with parquet flooring from which all furniture had been removed, except the palms and ferns by the walls and the heavy chandeliers overhead. It was not yet ten o'clock, but already the house was crowded, and every moment there were floods of fresh arrivals.

First came statesmen and diplomatists, then people who had been to the theatres, and toward the end of the evening some of the actors themselves. The night was close and the atmosphere hot and oppressive.

At the farther end of the suite there was a refreshment-room with its lantern lights pulled open; and there the crush was densest and the commotion greatest. The click-clack of many voices cut the thick air as with a thousand knives, and over the mult.i.tudinous clatter there was always the unintelligible boom of the band downstairs.

Most of the guests looked tired. The men made some effort to be cheerful, but the women were frankly jaded and f.a.gged. Bedizened with diamonds, coated with paint and powder, laden with rustling silks, they looked weary and worn out. When spoken to they would struggle to smile, but the smiles would break down after a moment into dismal looks of misery and oppression.

"Had enough?" whispered Lord Robert to Drake.

Drake was satisfied, and Lord Robert began to make their excuses.

"Going already!" said Mrs. Macrae. "An official engagement, you say?--Mr. Drake, is it? Oh, don't tell me! I know--_I_ know! Well, you'll be married and settled one of these days--and then!"

They were in a hansom cab driving across London in the direction of Bartimaeus's Hospital. Drake was bare-headed and fanning himself with his crush hat. Lord Robert was lighting a cigarette.

"Pshaw! What a stifling den! Did you ever hear such a c.l.i.tter-clatter?

A perfect Tower of Babel building company! What in the name of common sense do people suppose they're doing by penning themselves up like that on a night like this? What are they thinking about?"

"Thinking about, dear boy? You're unreasonable! n.o.body wants to think about anything in such scenes of charming folly."

"But the women! Did you _ever_ see such faded, worn-out dummies for the display of diamonds? Poor little women in their splendid misery! I was sorry for your _fiancee_, Robert. She was the only woman in the house without that hateful stamp of worldliness and affectation."

"My dear Drake, you've learned many things, but there's one thing you have not yet learned--you haven't learned how to take serious things as trifles, and trifles as serious things. Learn it, my boy, or you'll embitter existence. You are not going to alter the conditions of civilization by any change in your own particular life; so just look out the prettiest, wittiest, wealthiest little woman who is a dummy for the display of diamonds----"

"Me? Not if I know it, old fellow! Give me a little nature and simplicity, if it hasn't got a second gown to its back."

"All right--as you like," said Lord Robert, flinging out the end of his cigarette. "You've got the pull of some of us--you can please yourself.

And here we are at old Bartimaeus's, and this is a very different pair of shoes!"

They were driving out of one of London's main thoroughfares, through a groined archway, into one of London's ancient buildings with its quiet quadrangle where trees grow and birds sing. Every window of the square was lighted up, and there was a low murmur of music being played within.

"Listen!" said Lord Robert. "I am here ostensibly as the guest of the visiting physician, don't you know, but really in the interests of the little friend I told you of."

"The one I got the tickets for last week?"

"Precisely."

At the next moment they were in the ballroom. It was the lecture theatre for the students of the hospital school--a building detached from the wards and of circular shape, with a gallery round its walls, which were festooned with flags and roofed with a gla.s.s dome. Some two hundred girls and as many men were gathered there; the pit was their dancing ring and the gallery was their withdrawing room. The men were nearly all students of the medical schools; the girls were nearly all nurses, and they wore their uniform: There was not one jaded face among them, not one weary look or tired expression. They were in the fulness of youth and the height of vigour. The girls laughed with the ring of joy, their eyes sparkled with the light of happiness, their cheeks glowed with the freshness of health.

The two men stood a moment and looked on.