Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 276
As he ascended the pulpit he thought he saw the white bonnets of a group of nurses in the dim distance of one of the aisles, but he did not see Glory and he dared not look again. His text was, “My kingdom is not of this world.” He gave it out twice, and his voice sounded strange to himself — so weak and thin in that hollow place.
When he began to speak his sentences seemed awkward and difficult. The things of the world were temporal and the nations of the world were out of harmony with God. Men were biting and devouring each other who ought to live as brothers. “Cheat or be cheated” was the rule of life, as the modern philosopher had said. On the one side were the many dying of want, on the other side the few occupied with poetry and art, writing addresses to flowers, and peddling — in the portraiture of the moods and methods of love, living lives of frivolity, taking pleasure in mere riches and the lusts of the eye, while thousands of wretched mortals were grovelling in the mire.... Then where was our refuge? ... The Church was the refuge of God’s people ... from Christ came the answer — the answer — the ——
His words would not flow. He fought hard, threw out another passage, then stammered, began again, stammered again, felt hot, made a fresh effort, flagged, rattled out some words he had fixed in his mind, perspired, lost his voice, and finally stopped in the middle of a sentence and said, “And now to God the Father—” and came down from the pulpit.
His sermon had been a failure, and he knew it. On going back to the sacristy the Reverend Golightly congratulated him with a simper and a vapid smile. The canon was more honest but more vain. He mingled lofty advice with gentle reproof. Mr. Storm had taken his task too lightly. Better if he had written his sermon and read it. Whatever might serve for the country, congregations in London — at All Saints’ especially — expected culture and preparation.
“For my own part I confess — nay, I am proud to declare — my watchword is Rehearse! Rehearse! Rehearse!”
As for the doctrine of the sermon it was not above question. It was necessary to live in the nineteenth century, and it was impossible to apply to its conditions the rules of life that had been proper to the first.
John Storm made no resistance. He slept badly that night. As often as he dozed off he dreamed that he was trying to do something he could not do, and when he awoke he became hot as with the memory of a disgrace. And always at the back of his shame was the thought of Glory.
Next morning he was alone in his room and fumbling the toast on his breakfast table, when the door opened and a cheery voice cried, “May I no come in, laddie?”
An elderly lady entered. She was tall and slight and had a long, fine face, with shrewd but kindly eyes, and nearly snow-white hair.
“I’m Jane Callender,” she said, “and I couldna wait for an introduction or sic bother, but must just come and see ye. Ay, laddie, it was a bonnie sermon yon! I havena heard the match of it since I came frae Edinburgh and sat under the good Doctor Guthrie. Now he was nae slavish reader neither — none of your paper preachers was Thomas. My word, but you gave us the right doctrine, too! They’re given over to the worship of Beelzebub — half these church-going folks! Oh, these Pharisees! They are enough to sour milk. I wish they had one neck and somebody would just squeeze it. Now, where did ye hear that, Jane? But no matter! And the lasses are worse than the men, with their fashions and foldololls. They love Jesus, but they like him best in heaven, not bothering down in Belgravia. But I must be going my ways. I left James on the street, and there’s nae living with the man if you keep his horses waiting. Good-morning til ye! But eh, laddie, I’m afraid for ye! I’m thinking — I’m thinking ... but come and see me at Victoria Square. Good-morning!”
She had rattled this off at a breath, and had hardly given time for a reply, when her black silk was rustling down the stairs.
John Storm remembered that the canon had spoken of her. She was the good woman who kept the home for girls at Soho.
“The good creature only came to comfort me,” he thought. But Glory! What was Glory thinking? That morning after prayers at the hospital he went in search of her in the out-patient department, but she pretended to be overwhelmed with work, and only nodded and smiled and excused herself.
“I haven’t got a moment this morning either for the king or his dog. I’m up to my eyes in bandages, and have fourteen plasters on my conscience, and now I must run away to my little boy whose leg was amputated on Saturday.”
He understood her, but he came back in the evening and was resolved to face it out.
“What did you think of last night, Glory?” Then she put on a look of blank amazement.
“Why, what happened? Oh, of course, the sermon! How stupid of me! Do you know I forgot all about it?”
“You were not there, then?”
“Don’t ask me. Really, I’m ashamed; after my promise to grandfather, too! But Wednesday doesn’t count anyway, does it? You’ll preach on Sunday — and then!”
His feeling of relief was followed by a sense of deeper humiliation. Glory had not even troubled herself to remember. Evidently he was nothing to her, nothing; while she ——
He walked home through St. James’s Park, and under the tall trees the peaceful silence of the night came down on him. The sharp clack of the streets was deadened to a low hum as of the sea afar off. Across the gardens he could see the clock in the tower of Westminster, and hear the great bell strike the quarters. London! How little and selfish all personal thoughts were in the contemplation of the mighty city! He had been thinking only of himself and his own little doings. It was all so small and pitiful!
“Did my shame at my failure in the pulpit proceed solely from fear of losing the service of God, or did it proceed from wounded ambition, from pride, from thoughts of Glory — —”
But the peaceful stars were over him. It was a majestic night.
VII.
“Martha’s Vineyard.
“Dear Auntie Rachel: Tell grandpa, to begin with, that John Storm preached his first sermon on Wednesday last, and, according to programme, I was there to hear it. Oh, God bless me! What a time I had of it! He broke down in the middle, taking stage fright or pulpit fright or some such devilry, though there was nothing to be afraid of except a bandboxful of chattering girls who didn’t listen, and a few old fogies with ear-trumpets. I was sitting in the darkness at the back, effectually concealed from the preacher by the broad shoulders of Ward Sister Allworthy, who is an example of ‘delicate femaleism’ just verging on old-maidenism. They tell me the ‘discoorse’ was a short one, but I never got so many prayers into the time in all my born days, and my breath was coming and going so fast that the Sister must have thought they had set up a pumping-engine in the pew behind her. Our poor, heavy-laden Mr. Storm has been here since then with his sad and eager face, but I hadn’t the stuff in me to tell him the truth about the sermon, so I told him I had forgotten to go and hear it, and may the Lord have mercy on my soul!
“You want to know how I employ my time? Well, lest you should think I give up my days to dreams and my nights to idleness, I hasten to tell that I rise at 6, breakfast at 6.30, begin duty at 7, sup at 9.30 P.M., gossip till 10, and then go into my room and put myself to bed; and there I am at the end of it. Being only a probationer, I am chiefly in the out-patient department, where my duties are to collect the things wanted at the dispensary, make the patients ready to see the surgeon, and pass them on to the dressers. My patients at present are the children, and I love them, and shall break my heart when I have to leave them. They are not always too well looked after by the surgeon, but that doesn’t matter in the least, because, you see, they are constantly watched by the best and most learned doctor in the world — that’s me.
“Last Saturday I had my first experience of the operating theatre. Gracious goodness! I thought I shouldn’t survive it. Fortunately, I had my dressings and sponges to look after, so I just stiffened my back with a sort of imaginary six-foot steel bar, and went on ‘like blazes.’ But some of these staff nurses are just ‘ter’ble’; they take a professional pleasure in descending to that inferno, and wouldn’t miss a ‘theatre’ for worlds. On Saturday it was a little boy of five who had his leg amputated, and now when you ask the white-faced darling where he’s going to he says he’s going to the angels, and he’ll get lots of gristly pork up there. He is too.
“The personnel of our vineyard is abundant, but there are various sour grapes growing about. We have a medical school (containing lots of nice boys, only a girl may not speak to them even in the corridors), and a full staff of honorary and visiting physicians and surgeons. But the only doctor we really have much to do with is the house surgeon, a young fellow who has just finished his student’s course. His name is Abery, and since Saturday he has so much respect for Glory that she might even swear in his presence (in Manx), but Sister Allworthy takes care that she doesn’t, having designs on his celibacy herself. He must have sung his Te Deum after the operation, for he got gloriously drunk and wanted to inject morphia in a patient recovering from trouble of the kidney. It was an old hippopotamus of a German musician named Koenig, and he was in a frantic terror. So I whispered to him to pretend to go to sleep, and then I told the doctor I had lost the syringe. But— ‘Gough bless me sowl!’ — what a dressing the Sister gave me!
“Yesterday was visiting-day, and when the friends of the patients come even an hospital can have its humours. They try to sneak in little dainties which may be delicious in themselves, but are deadly poison to the people they are intended for. Then we have to search under the bedclothes of the patients, and even feel the pockets of their visitors. The mother of my little boy came yesterday, and I noticed such a large protuberance at her bosom under her ulster that I began to foresee another operation. It was only a brick of currant cake, paved with lemon peel. I hauled it out and moved round like a cloud of thunder and lightning. But she began to cry and to say she had made it herself for Johnnie, and then — well, didn’t I just get a wigging from the Sister, though!
“But I don’t mind what happens here, for I am in London, and to be in London is to live, and to live is to be in London. I’ve not seen much of it yet, having only two hours off duty every day — from ten to twelve — and then all I can do is to make little dips into the park and the district round about, like a new pigeon with its wings clipped. But I watch the great new world from my big box up here, and see the carriages in the park and the people riding on horseback. They have a new handshake in London. You lift your hand to the level of your shoulder, and then waggle horizontally as if you had put your elbow out; and when you begin to speak you say, ‘I — er—’ as if you had got the mumps. But it is beautiful! The sound of the traffic is like music, and I feel like a war-horse that wants to be marching to it. How delightful it is to be young in a world so full of loveliness! And if you are not very ugly it’s none the worse.
“All hospital nurses are just now basking in the sunshine of a forthcoming ball. It is to be given at Bartimaeus’s Hospital, where they have a lecture theatre larger than the common, and the dancing there is for once to be to a happier tune. All the earth is to be present — all the hospital earth — and if I could afford to array myself in the necessary splendour, I should show this benighted London what an absolute angel Glory is! But then my first full holiday is to be on the 24th, when I expect to be out from 10 A. M. until 10 P. M. I am nearly crazy whenever I think of it, and when the time comes to make my first plunge into London, I know I shall hold my breath exactly as if I were taking a header off Creg Malin rocks.... Glory.”
VIII.
On the morning of the 24th Glory rose at five, that she might get through her work and have the entire day for her holiday. At that hour she came upon a rough-haired nurse wearing her cap a little on one side and washing a floor with disinfectants. Being in great spirits, Glory addressed her cheerfully.
“Are you off to-day too?” she said.
The nurse gave her a contemptuous glance and answered: “I’m not one of your paying probationers, Miss — playing probationers I call them. We nurses are hard-working women, whose life spells duty; and we’ve got no time for sight-seeing and holiday-making.”
“No, but you are one of those who ruin the profession altogether,” said a younger woman who had just come up. “They will expect everybody to do the same. This is my day off, but I have to do the grate, and sweep the ward, and make the bed, and tidy the Sister’s room — and it’s all through people like you. Small thanks you get for it either, for a girl may not even wear her hair in a fringe, and she is always expecting to hear the matron’s ‘You’re not fit for nursing, Miss.’”
Glory looked at her. She was an exquisitely pretty girl, with dark hair, pink and ivory cheeks, and light-gray eyes; but her hands were coarse, and her finger nails flat and square, and when you looked again there was a certain blemished appearance about her beauty as of a Sévres vase that is cracked somewhere.
“Do you say you are off to-day?” said Glory,
“Yes, I am; are you?”
“Yes, but I’m strange to London. Could you take me with you — if you are going nowhere in particular?”
“Certainly, dear. I’ve noticed you before and wanted to speak to you. You’re the girl with the splendid name — Glory, isn’t it?”
“Yes; what is yours?”
“Polly Love.”
At ten o’clock that morning the two girls set out for their long day’s jaunt.
“Now where shall we go?” said Polly.
“Let’s go where we can see a great many people,” said Glory.
“That’s easy enough, for this is the Queen’s birthday, and — —”
Glory thought of Aunt Rachel and made a cry of delight.
“And now that I think of it,” said Polly, as if by a sudden memory, “I’ve got tickets for the trooping of the colours — the Queen’s colours, you know.”
“Shall we see her?” said Glory.
“What a question! Why, no, but we’ll see the soldiers, and the generals, and perhaps the Prince. It’s at ten-thirty, and only across the park.”
“Come along,” said Glory, and she began to drag at her companion and to run.
“My gracious, what a girl you are, to be sure!”
But they were both running in another minute, and laughing and chattering like children escaped from school. In a quarter of an hour they were at the entrance to the Horse Guards. There was a crowd at the gates, and a policeman was taking tickets. Polly dived into her pocket.
“Where are mine? Oh, here they are. A great friend gave me them,” she whispered. “He has a chum in one of those offices.”
“A gentleman,” said Glory with studied politeness; but they were crushing through the gate by that time, and thereafter she had eyes and ears for nothing but the pageant before her.
It was a beautiful morning, and the spring foliage of the park was very green and fresh. Three sides of the great square were lined with redcoats; the square itself was thronged with people, and every window and balcony looking over it was filled. There were soldiers, sentries, policemen, the generals in cocked hats, and the Prince himself in a bearskin, riding by with the jingle of spurs and curb-chain. Then the ta-ra-ta-ta-ra of the bugle, the explosive voice crying, “Escort for the colour!” the officer carrying it, the white gloves of the staff fluttering up the salute, the flash of bayonets, the march round, and the band playing The British Grenadiers. It was like a dream to Glory. She felt her bosom heaving, and was afraid she was going to cry.
Polly was laughing and prattling merrily. “Ha, ha, ha! see that soldier chasing a sunshade? My! he has caught it with his sword.”
“I suppose these are all great people,” whispered Glory.
“I should think so,” said Polly. “Do you see that gentleman in the window opposite? — that’s the Foreign Office.”
“Which?” said Glory, but her eyes were wandering.
“The one in the frock-coat and the silk hat, talking to the lady in the green lawn and the black lace fichu and the spring bonnet.”
“You mean beside that plain girl wearing the jungle of rhododendrons?”
“Yes; that’s the gentleman that gave my friend the tickets.”
Glory looked at him for a moment, and something very remote seemed to stir in her memory; but the band was playing once more, and she was wafted away again. It was God save the Queen this time, and when it ended and everybody cried “All over!” she took a long, deep breath and said, “Well!”
Polly was laughing at her, and Glory had to laugh also. They set each other off laughing, and people began to look at them, and then they had to laugh again and run away.
“This Glory is the funniest girl,” said Polly; “she is surprised at the simplest thing.”
They went to look at the shops, passing up Regent Street, across the Circus and down Oxford Street toward the City, laughing and talking nonsense all the time. Once when they made a little purchase at a shop the shopwoman looked astonished at the freedom with which they carried themselves, and after that they felt inclined to go into every shop in the street and behave absurdly everywhere. In the course of two hours they had accomplished all the innocent follies possible to the intoxication of youth, and were perfectly happy.
By this time they had reached the Bank and were feeling the prickings of hunger, so they looked out a restaurant in Cheapside and went in for some dinner. The place was full of men, and several of them rose at once when the two girls entered. They were in their out-door hospital costume, but there was something showy about Polly’s toilet, and the men kept looking their way and smiling. Glory looked back boldly and said in an audible voice, “What fun it must be to be a barmaid, and to have the gentlemen wink at you, and be laughing back at them!” But Polly nudged, her and told her to be quiet. She looked down herself, but nevertheless contrived to use her eyes as a kind of furtive electric battery in the midst of the most innocent conversation. It was clear that Polly had flown farthest in the ways of the world, and when you looked at her again you could see that the balance of her life had been deranged by some one.
When he began to speak his sentences seemed awkward and difficult. The things of the world were temporal and the nations of the world were out of harmony with God. Men were biting and devouring each other who ought to live as brothers. “Cheat or be cheated” was the rule of life, as the modern philosopher had said. On the one side were the many dying of want, on the other side the few occupied with poetry and art, writing addresses to flowers, and peddling — in the portraiture of the moods and methods of love, living lives of frivolity, taking pleasure in mere riches and the lusts of the eye, while thousands of wretched mortals were grovelling in the mire.... Then where was our refuge? ... The Church was the refuge of God’s people ... from Christ came the answer — the answer — the ——
His words would not flow. He fought hard, threw out another passage, then stammered, began again, stammered again, felt hot, made a fresh effort, flagged, rattled out some words he had fixed in his mind, perspired, lost his voice, and finally stopped in the middle of a sentence and said, “And now to God the Father—” and came down from the pulpit.
His sermon had been a failure, and he knew it. On going back to the sacristy the Reverend Golightly congratulated him with a simper and a vapid smile. The canon was more honest but more vain. He mingled lofty advice with gentle reproof. Mr. Storm had taken his task too lightly. Better if he had written his sermon and read it. Whatever might serve for the country, congregations in London — at All Saints’ especially — expected culture and preparation.
“For my own part I confess — nay, I am proud to declare — my watchword is Rehearse! Rehearse! Rehearse!”
As for the doctrine of the sermon it was not above question. It was necessary to live in the nineteenth century, and it was impossible to apply to its conditions the rules of life that had been proper to the first.
John Storm made no resistance. He slept badly that night. As often as he dozed off he dreamed that he was trying to do something he could not do, and when he awoke he became hot as with the memory of a disgrace. And always at the back of his shame was the thought of Glory.
Next morning he was alone in his room and fumbling the toast on his breakfast table, when the door opened and a cheery voice cried, “May I no come in, laddie?”
An elderly lady entered. She was tall and slight and had a long, fine face, with shrewd but kindly eyes, and nearly snow-white hair.
“I’m Jane Callender,” she said, “and I couldna wait for an introduction or sic bother, but must just come and see ye. Ay, laddie, it was a bonnie sermon yon! I havena heard the match of it since I came frae Edinburgh and sat under the good Doctor Guthrie. Now he was nae slavish reader neither — none of your paper preachers was Thomas. My word, but you gave us the right doctrine, too! They’re given over to the worship of Beelzebub — half these church-going folks! Oh, these Pharisees! They are enough to sour milk. I wish they had one neck and somebody would just squeeze it. Now, where did ye hear that, Jane? But no matter! And the lasses are worse than the men, with their fashions and foldololls. They love Jesus, but they like him best in heaven, not bothering down in Belgravia. But I must be going my ways. I left James on the street, and there’s nae living with the man if you keep his horses waiting. Good-morning til ye! But eh, laddie, I’m afraid for ye! I’m thinking — I’m thinking ... but come and see me at Victoria Square. Good-morning!”
She had rattled this off at a breath, and had hardly given time for a reply, when her black silk was rustling down the stairs.
John Storm remembered that the canon had spoken of her. She was the good woman who kept the home for girls at Soho.
“The good creature only came to comfort me,” he thought. But Glory! What was Glory thinking? That morning after prayers at the hospital he went in search of her in the out-patient department, but she pretended to be overwhelmed with work, and only nodded and smiled and excused herself.
“I haven’t got a moment this morning either for the king or his dog. I’m up to my eyes in bandages, and have fourteen plasters on my conscience, and now I must run away to my little boy whose leg was amputated on Saturday.”
He understood her, but he came back in the evening and was resolved to face it out.
“What did you think of last night, Glory?” Then she put on a look of blank amazement.
“Why, what happened? Oh, of course, the sermon! How stupid of me! Do you know I forgot all about it?”
“You were not there, then?”
“Don’t ask me. Really, I’m ashamed; after my promise to grandfather, too! But Wednesday doesn’t count anyway, does it? You’ll preach on Sunday — and then!”
His feeling of relief was followed by a sense of deeper humiliation. Glory had not even troubled herself to remember. Evidently he was nothing to her, nothing; while she ——
He walked home through St. James’s Park, and under the tall trees the peaceful silence of the night came down on him. The sharp clack of the streets was deadened to a low hum as of the sea afar off. Across the gardens he could see the clock in the tower of Westminster, and hear the great bell strike the quarters. London! How little and selfish all personal thoughts were in the contemplation of the mighty city! He had been thinking only of himself and his own little doings. It was all so small and pitiful!
“Did my shame at my failure in the pulpit proceed solely from fear of losing the service of God, or did it proceed from wounded ambition, from pride, from thoughts of Glory — —”
But the peaceful stars were over him. It was a majestic night.
VII.
“Martha’s Vineyard.
“Dear Auntie Rachel: Tell grandpa, to begin with, that John Storm preached his first sermon on Wednesday last, and, according to programme, I was there to hear it. Oh, God bless me! What a time I had of it! He broke down in the middle, taking stage fright or pulpit fright or some such devilry, though there was nothing to be afraid of except a bandboxful of chattering girls who didn’t listen, and a few old fogies with ear-trumpets. I was sitting in the darkness at the back, effectually concealed from the preacher by the broad shoulders of Ward Sister Allworthy, who is an example of ‘delicate femaleism’ just verging on old-maidenism. They tell me the ‘discoorse’ was a short one, but I never got so many prayers into the time in all my born days, and my breath was coming and going so fast that the Sister must have thought they had set up a pumping-engine in the pew behind her. Our poor, heavy-laden Mr. Storm has been here since then with his sad and eager face, but I hadn’t the stuff in me to tell him the truth about the sermon, so I told him I had forgotten to go and hear it, and may the Lord have mercy on my soul!
“You want to know how I employ my time? Well, lest you should think I give up my days to dreams and my nights to idleness, I hasten to tell that I rise at 6, breakfast at 6.30, begin duty at 7, sup at 9.30 P.M., gossip till 10, and then go into my room and put myself to bed; and there I am at the end of it. Being only a probationer, I am chiefly in the out-patient department, where my duties are to collect the things wanted at the dispensary, make the patients ready to see the surgeon, and pass them on to the dressers. My patients at present are the children, and I love them, and shall break my heart when I have to leave them. They are not always too well looked after by the surgeon, but that doesn’t matter in the least, because, you see, they are constantly watched by the best and most learned doctor in the world — that’s me.
“Last Saturday I had my first experience of the operating theatre. Gracious goodness! I thought I shouldn’t survive it. Fortunately, I had my dressings and sponges to look after, so I just stiffened my back with a sort of imaginary six-foot steel bar, and went on ‘like blazes.’ But some of these staff nurses are just ‘ter’ble’; they take a professional pleasure in descending to that inferno, and wouldn’t miss a ‘theatre’ for worlds. On Saturday it was a little boy of five who had his leg amputated, and now when you ask the white-faced darling where he’s going to he says he’s going to the angels, and he’ll get lots of gristly pork up there. He is too.
“The personnel of our vineyard is abundant, but there are various sour grapes growing about. We have a medical school (containing lots of nice boys, only a girl may not speak to them even in the corridors), and a full staff of honorary and visiting physicians and surgeons. But the only doctor we really have much to do with is the house surgeon, a young fellow who has just finished his student’s course. His name is Abery, and since Saturday he has so much respect for Glory that she might even swear in his presence (in Manx), but Sister Allworthy takes care that she doesn’t, having designs on his celibacy herself. He must have sung his Te Deum after the operation, for he got gloriously drunk and wanted to inject morphia in a patient recovering from trouble of the kidney. It was an old hippopotamus of a German musician named Koenig, and he was in a frantic terror. So I whispered to him to pretend to go to sleep, and then I told the doctor I had lost the syringe. But— ‘Gough bless me sowl!’ — what a dressing the Sister gave me!
“Yesterday was visiting-day, and when the friends of the patients come even an hospital can have its humours. They try to sneak in little dainties which may be delicious in themselves, but are deadly poison to the people they are intended for. Then we have to search under the bedclothes of the patients, and even feel the pockets of their visitors. The mother of my little boy came yesterday, and I noticed such a large protuberance at her bosom under her ulster that I began to foresee another operation. It was only a brick of currant cake, paved with lemon peel. I hauled it out and moved round like a cloud of thunder and lightning. But she began to cry and to say she had made it herself for Johnnie, and then — well, didn’t I just get a wigging from the Sister, though!
“But I don’t mind what happens here, for I am in London, and to be in London is to live, and to live is to be in London. I’ve not seen much of it yet, having only two hours off duty every day — from ten to twelve — and then all I can do is to make little dips into the park and the district round about, like a new pigeon with its wings clipped. But I watch the great new world from my big box up here, and see the carriages in the park and the people riding on horseback. They have a new handshake in London. You lift your hand to the level of your shoulder, and then waggle horizontally as if you had put your elbow out; and when you begin to speak you say, ‘I — er—’ as if you had got the mumps. But it is beautiful! The sound of the traffic is like music, and I feel like a war-horse that wants to be marching to it. How delightful it is to be young in a world so full of loveliness! And if you are not very ugly it’s none the worse.
“All hospital nurses are just now basking in the sunshine of a forthcoming ball. It is to be given at Bartimaeus’s Hospital, where they have a lecture theatre larger than the common, and the dancing there is for once to be to a happier tune. All the earth is to be present — all the hospital earth — and if I could afford to array myself in the necessary splendour, I should show this benighted London what an absolute angel Glory is! But then my first full holiday is to be on the 24th, when I expect to be out from 10 A. M. until 10 P. M. I am nearly crazy whenever I think of it, and when the time comes to make my first plunge into London, I know I shall hold my breath exactly as if I were taking a header off Creg Malin rocks.... Glory.”
VIII.
On the morning of the 24th Glory rose at five, that she might get through her work and have the entire day for her holiday. At that hour she came upon a rough-haired nurse wearing her cap a little on one side and washing a floor with disinfectants. Being in great spirits, Glory addressed her cheerfully.
“Are you off to-day too?” she said.
The nurse gave her a contemptuous glance and answered: “I’m not one of your paying probationers, Miss — playing probationers I call them. We nurses are hard-working women, whose life spells duty; and we’ve got no time for sight-seeing and holiday-making.”
“No, but you are one of those who ruin the profession altogether,” said a younger woman who had just come up. “They will expect everybody to do the same. This is my day off, but I have to do the grate, and sweep the ward, and make the bed, and tidy the Sister’s room — and it’s all through people like you. Small thanks you get for it either, for a girl may not even wear her hair in a fringe, and she is always expecting to hear the matron’s ‘You’re not fit for nursing, Miss.’”
Glory looked at her. She was an exquisitely pretty girl, with dark hair, pink and ivory cheeks, and light-gray eyes; but her hands were coarse, and her finger nails flat and square, and when you looked again there was a certain blemished appearance about her beauty as of a Sévres vase that is cracked somewhere.
“Do you say you are off to-day?” said Glory,
“Yes, I am; are you?”
“Yes, but I’m strange to London. Could you take me with you — if you are going nowhere in particular?”
“Certainly, dear. I’ve noticed you before and wanted to speak to you. You’re the girl with the splendid name — Glory, isn’t it?”
“Yes; what is yours?”
“Polly Love.”
At ten o’clock that morning the two girls set out for their long day’s jaunt.
“Now where shall we go?” said Polly.
“Let’s go where we can see a great many people,” said Glory.
“That’s easy enough, for this is the Queen’s birthday, and — —”
Glory thought of Aunt Rachel and made a cry of delight.
“And now that I think of it,” said Polly, as if by a sudden memory, “I’ve got tickets for the trooping of the colours — the Queen’s colours, you know.”
“Shall we see her?” said Glory.
“What a question! Why, no, but we’ll see the soldiers, and the generals, and perhaps the Prince. It’s at ten-thirty, and only across the park.”
“Come along,” said Glory, and she began to drag at her companion and to run.
“My gracious, what a girl you are, to be sure!”
But they were both running in another minute, and laughing and chattering like children escaped from school. In a quarter of an hour they were at the entrance to the Horse Guards. There was a crowd at the gates, and a policeman was taking tickets. Polly dived into her pocket.
“Where are mine? Oh, here they are. A great friend gave me them,” she whispered. “He has a chum in one of those offices.”
“A gentleman,” said Glory with studied politeness; but they were crushing through the gate by that time, and thereafter she had eyes and ears for nothing but the pageant before her.
It was a beautiful morning, and the spring foliage of the park was very green and fresh. Three sides of the great square were lined with redcoats; the square itself was thronged with people, and every window and balcony looking over it was filled. There were soldiers, sentries, policemen, the generals in cocked hats, and the Prince himself in a bearskin, riding by with the jingle of spurs and curb-chain. Then the ta-ra-ta-ta-ra of the bugle, the explosive voice crying, “Escort for the colour!” the officer carrying it, the white gloves of the staff fluttering up the salute, the flash of bayonets, the march round, and the band playing The British Grenadiers. It was like a dream to Glory. She felt her bosom heaving, and was afraid she was going to cry.
Polly was laughing and prattling merrily. “Ha, ha, ha! see that soldier chasing a sunshade? My! he has caught it with his sword.”
“I suppose these are all great people,” whispered Glory.
“I should think so,” said Polly. “Do you see that gentleman in the window opposite? — that’s the Foreign Office.”
“Which?” said Glory, but her eyes were wandering.
“The one in the frock-coat and the silk hat, talking to the lady in the green lawn and the black lace fichu and the spring bonnet.”
“You mean beside that plain girl wearing the jungle of rhododendrons?”
“Yes; that’s the gentleman that gave my friend the tickets.”
Glory looked at him for a moment, and something very remote seemed to stir in her memory; but the band was playing once more, and she was wafted away again. It was God save the Queen this time, and when it ended and everybody cried “All over!” she took a long, deep breath and said, “Well!”
Polly was laughing at her, and Glory had to laugh also. They set each other off laughing, and people began to look at them, and then they had to laugh again and run away.
“This Glory is the funniest girl,” said Polly; “she is surprised at the simplest thing.”
They went to look at the shops, passing up Regent Street, across the Circus and down Oxford Street toward the City, laughing and talking nonsense all the time. Once when they made a little purchase at a shop the shopwoman looked astonished at the freedom with which they carried themselves, and after that they felt inclined to go into every shop in the street and behave absurdly everywhere. In the course of two hours they had accomplished all the innocent follies possible to the intoxication of youth, and were perfectly happy.
By this time they had reached the Bank and were feeling the prickings of hunger, so they looked out a restaurant in Cheapside and went in for some dinner. The place was full of men, and several of them rose at once when the two girls entered. They were in their out-door hospital costume, but there was something showy about Polly’s toilet, and the men kept looking their way and smiling. Glory looked back boldly and said in an audible voice, “What fun it must be to be a barmaid, and to have the gentlemen wink at you, and be laughing back at them!” But Polly nudged, her and told her to be quiet. She looked down herself, but nevertheless contrived to use her eyes as a kind of furtive electric battery in the midst of the most innocent conversation. It was clear that Polly had flown farthest in the ways of the world, and when you looked at her again you could see that the balance of her life had been deranged by some one.
