in spite of the amusing defection of his host, saxonstowe had fully enjoyed the short time he had spent under the damerels’ roof. mrs. berenson had amused him almost as much as if she had been a professional comedian brought there to divert the company; darlington had interested him as a specimen of the rather reserved, purposeful sort of man who might possibly do things; and haidee had made him wonder how it is that some women possess great beauty and very little mind. but the recollection which remained most firmly fixed in him was of sprats, and on the first afternoon he had at liberty he set out to find the children’s hospital which she had invited him to visit.
he found the hospital with ease—an ordinary house in bayswater square, with nothing to distinguish it from its neighbours but a large brass plate on the door, which announced that it was a private nursing home for children. a trim maid-servant, who stared at him with reverent awe after she had glanced at his card, showed him into a small waiting-room adorned with steel engravings of biblical subjects, and there sprats shortly discovered him inspecting a representation of the animals leaving the ark. it struck him as he shook hands with her that she looked better in her nurse’s uniform than in the dinner-gown which she had worn a few nights earlier—there was something businesslike and strong about her in her cap and cuffs and apron and streamers: it was like seeing a soldier in fighting trim.
‘i am glad that you have come just now,’ she said. ‘i have a whole hour to spare, and i can show you all over the place. but first come into my parlour and have some tea.’
she led him into another room, where biblical prints{150} were not in evidence—if they had ever decorated the walls they were now replaced by sprats’s own possessions. he recognised several water-colour drawings of simonstower, and one of his own house and park at saxonstowe.
‘these are the work of cyprian damerel—lucian’s father, you know,’ said sprats, as he uttered an exclamation of pleasure at the sight of familiar things. ‘lucian gave them to me. i like that one of saxonstowe park—i have so often seen that curious atmospheric effect amongst the trees in early autumn. i am very fond of my pictures and my household gods—they bring simonstower closer to me.’
‘but why, if you are so fond of it, did you leave it?’ he asked, as he took the chair which she pointed out to him.
‘oh, because i wanted to work very hard!’ she said, busying herself with the tea-cups. ‘you see, my father married lucian damerel’s aunt—a very dear, nice, pretty woman—and i knew she would take such great care of him that i could be spared. so i went in for nursing, having a natural bent that way, and after three or four years of it i came here; and here i am, absolute she-dragon of the establishment.’
‘is it very hard work?’ he asked, as he took a cup of tea from her hands.
‘well, it doesn’t seem to affect me very much, does it?’ she answered. ‘oh yes, sometimes it is, but that’s good for one. you must have worked hard yourself, lord saxonstowe.’
saxonstowe blushed under his tan.
‘i look all right too, don’t i?’ he said, laughing. ‘i agree with you that it’s good for one, though. i’ve thought since i came back that—— ’ he paused and did not finish the sentence.
‘that it would do a lot of people whom you’ve met a lot of good if they had a little hardship and privation to go through,’ she said, finishing it for him. ‘that’s it, isn’t it?’{151}
‘i wouldn’t let them off with a little,’ he said. ‘i’d give them—some of them, at any rate—a good deal. perhaps i’m not quite used to it, but i can’t stand this sort of life—i should go all soft and queer under it.’
‘well, you’re not obliged to endure it at all,’ said sprats. ‘you can clear out of town whenever you please and go to saxonstowe—it is lovely in summer.’
‘yes,’ he answered, ‘i’m going there soon. i—i don’t think town life quite appeals to me.’
‘i suppose that you will go off to some waste place of the earth again, sooner or later, won’t you?’ she said. ‘i should think that if one once tastes that sort of thing one can’t very well resist the temptation. what made you wish to explore?’
‘oh, i don’t know,’ he answered. ‘i always wanted to travel when i was a boy, but i never got any chance. then the title came to me rather unexpectedly, you know, and when i found that i could indulge my tastes—well, i indulged them.’
‘and you prefer the desert to the drawing-room?’ she said, watching him.
‘lots!’ he said fervently. ‘lots!’
sprats smiled.
‘i should advise you,’ she said, ‘to cut london the day your book appears. you’ll be a lion, you know.’
‘oh, but!’ he exclaimed, ‘you don’t quite recognise what sort of book it is. it’s not an exciting narrative—no bears, or indians, or scalpings, you know. it’s—well, it’s a bit dry—scientific stuff, and so on.’
sprats smiled the smile of the wise woman and shook her head.
‘it doesn’t matter what it is—dry or delicious, dull or enlivening,’ she remarked sagely, ‘the people who’ll lionise you won’t read it, though they’ll swear to your face that they sat up all night with it. you’ll see it lying about, with the pages all cut and a book-marker sticking out, but most of the people who’ll rave to your face about it wouldn’t be able to answer any question that you asked them concerning it. lionising is an{152} amusing feature of social life in england—if you don’t like the prospect of it, run away.’
‘i shall certainly run,’ he answered. ‘i will go soon. i think, perhaps, that you exaggerate my importance, but i don’t want to incur any risk—it isn’t pleasant to be stared at, and pointed out, and all that sort of—of——’
‘of rot!’ she said. ‘no—it isn’t, to some people. to other people it seems quite a natural thing. it never seemed to bother lucian damerel, for example. you cannot realise the adulation which was showered upon him when he first flashed into the literary heavens. all the women were in love with him; all the girls love-sick because of his dark face and wondrous hair; he was stared at wherever he went; and he might have breakfasted, lunched, and dined at somebody else’s expense every day.’
‘and he liked—that?’ asked saxonstowe.
‘it’s a bit difficult,’ answered sprats, ‘to know what lucian does like. he plays lion to perfection. have you ever been to the zoo and seen a real first-class, ai diamond-of-the-first-water sort of lion in his cage?—especially when he is filled with meat? well, you’ll have noticed that he gazes with solemn eyes above your head—he never sees you at all—you aren’t worth it. if he should happen to look at you, he just wonders why the devil you stand there staring at him, and his eyes show a sort of cynical, idle contempt, and become solemn and ever-so-far-away again. lucian plays lion in that way beautifully. he looks out of his cage with eyes that scorn the miserable wondering things gathered open-mouthed before him.’
‘does he live in a cage?’ asked saxonstowe.
‘we all live in cages,’ answered sprats. ‘you had better hang up a curtain in front of yours if you don’t wish the crowd to stare at you. and now come—i will show you my children.’
saxonstowe followed her all over the house with exemplary obedience, secretly admiring her mastery of{153} detail, her quickness of perception, and the motherly fashion in which she treated her charges. he had never been in a children’s hospital before, and he saw some sights that sent him back to sprats’s parlour a somewhat sad man.
‘i dare say you get used to it,’ he said, ‘but the sight of all that pain must be depressing. and the poor little mites seem to bear it well—bravely, at any rate.’
sprats looked at him with the speculative expression which always came into her face when she was endeavouring to get at some other person’s real self.
‘so you, too, are fond of children?’ she said, and responded cordially to his suggestion that he might perhaps be permitted to come again. he went away with a cheering consciousness that he had had a glimpse into a little world wherein good work was being done—it had seemed a far preferable world to that other world of fashion and small things which seethed all around it.
on the following day saxonstowe spent the better part of the morning in a toy-shop. he proved a good customer, but a most particular one. he had counted heads at the children’s hospital: there were twenty-seven in all, and he wanted twenty-seven toys for them. he insisted on a minute inspection of every one, even to the details of the dolls’ clothing and the attainments of the mechanical frogs, and the young lady who attended upon him decided that he was a nice gentleman and free-handed, but terribly exacting. his bill, however, yielded her a handsome commission, and when he gave her the address of the hospital she felt sure that she had spent two hours in conversation—on the merits of toys—with a young duke, and for the rest of the day she entertained her shopmates with reminiscences of the supposed ducal remarks, none of which, according to her, had been of a very profound nature.
saxonstowe wondered how soon he might call at the hospital again—at the end of a week he found himself kicking his heels once more in the room wherein noah, his family, and his animals trooped gaily down the slopes{154} of mount ararat. when sprats came in she greeted him with an abrupt question.
‘was it you who sent a small cart-load of toys here last week?’ she asked.
‘i certainly did send some toys for the children,’ he answered.
‘i thought it must be your handiwork,’ she said. ‘thank you. you will now receive a beautifully written, politely worded letter of thanks, inscribed on thick, glossy paper by the secretary—do you mind?’
‘yes, i do mind!’ he exclaimed. ‘please don’t tell the secretary—what has he or she to do with it?’
‘very well, i won’t,’ she said. ‘but i will give you a practical tip: when you feel impelled to buy toys for children in hospital, buy something breakable and cheap—it pleases the child just as much as an expensive plaything. there was one toy too many,’ she continued, laughing, ‘so i annexed that for myself—a mechanical spider. i play with it in my room sometimes. i am not above being amused by small things.’
after this saxonstowe became a regular visitor—he was accepted by some of the patients as a friend and admitted to their confidences. they knew him as ‘the lord,’ and announced that ‘the lord’ had said this, or done that, in a fashion which made other visitors, not in the secret, wonder if the children were delirious and had dreams of divine communications. he sent these new friends books, and fruit, and flowers, and the house was gayer and brighter that summer than it had ever been since the brass plate was placed on its door.
one afternoon saxonstowe arrived with a weighty-looking parcel under his arm. once within sprats’s parlour he laid it down on the table and began to untie the string. she shook her head.
‘you have been spending money on one or other of my children again,’ she said. ‘i shall have to stop it.’
‘no,’ he said, with a very shy smile. ‘this—is—for you.’
‘for me?’ her eyes opened with something like{155} incredulous wonder. ‘what an event!’ she said; ‘i so seldom have anything given to me. what is it?—quick, let me see—it looks like an enormous box of chocolate.’
‘it’s—it’s the book,’ he answered, shamefaced as a schoolboy producing his first verses. ‘there! that’s it,’ and he placed two formidable-looking volumes, very new and very redolent of the bookbinder’s establishment, in her hands. ‘that’s the very first copy,’ he added. ‘i wanted you to have it.’
sprats sat down and turned the books over. he had written her name on the fly-leaf of the first volume, and his own underneath it. she glanced at the maps, the engravings, the diagrams, the scientific tables, and a sudden flush came across her face. she looked up at him.
‘i should be proud if i had written a book like this!’ she said. ‘it means—such a lot of—well, of manliness, somehow. thank you. and it is really published at last?’
‘it is not supposed to be published until next monday,’ he answered. ‘the reviewers’ copies have gone out to-day, but i insisted on having a copy supplied to me before any one handled another—i wanted you to have the very first.’
‘why?’ she asked.
‘because i think you’ll understand it,’ he said; ‘and you’ll read it.’
‘yes,’ she answered, ‘i shall read it, and i think i shall understand. and now all the lionising will begin.’
saxonstowe shrugged his shoulders.
‘if the people who really know about these things think i have done well, i shall be satisfied,’ he said. ‘i don’t care a scrap about the reviews in the popular papers—i am looking forward with great anxiety to the criticisms of two or three scientific periodicals.’
‘you were going to run away from the lionising business,’ she said. ‘when are you going?—there is nothing to keep you, now that the book is out.’{156}
saxonstowe looked at her. he was standing at the edge of the table on which she had placed the two volumes of his book; she was sitting in a low chair at its side. she looked up at him; she saw his face grow very grave.
‘i didn’t think anything would keep me,’ he said, ‘but i find that something is keeping me. it is you. do you know that i love you?’
the colour rose in her cheeks, and her eyes left his for an instant; then she faced him.
‘i did not know it until just now,’ she answered, laying her hand on one of the volumes at her side. ‘i knew it then, because you wished me to have the first-fruits of your labour. i was wondering about it—as we talked.’
‘well?’ he said.
‘will you let me be perfectly frank with you?’ she said. ‘are you sure about yourself in this?’
‘i am sure,’ he answered. ‘i love you, and i shall never love any other woman. don’t think that i say that in the way in which i dare say it’s been said a million times—i mean it.’
‘yes,’ she said; ‘i understand. you wouldn’t say anything that you didn’t mean. and i am going to be equally truthful with you. i don’t think it’s wrong of me to tell you that i have a feeling for you which i have not, and never had, for any other man that i have known. i could depend on you—i could go to you for help and advice, and i should rely on your strength. i have felt that since we met, as man and woman, a few weeks ago.’
‘then——’ he began.
‘stop a bit,’ she said, ‘let me finish. i want to be brutally plain-spoken—it’s really best to be so. i want you to know me as i am. i have loved lucian damerel ever since he and i were boy and girl. it is, perhaps, a curious love—you might say that there is very much more of a mother’s, or a sister’s, love in it than a wife’s. well, i don’t know. i do know that it nearly broke{157} my heart when i heard of his marriage to haidee. i cannot tell—i have never been able to tell—in what exact way it was that i wanted him, but i did not want her to have him. perhaps all that, or most of that, feeling has gone. i have tried hard, by working for others, to put all thought of another woman’s husband out of my mind. but the thought of lucian is still there—it may, perhaps, always be there. while it is—even in the least, the very least degree—you understand, do you not?’ she said, with a sudden note of eager appeal breaking into her voice.
‘yes,’ he answered, ‘i understand.’
she rose to her feet and held out her hand to him.
‘then don’t let us try to put into words what we can feel much better,’ she said, smiling. ‘we are friends—always. and you are going away.’
the children found out that for some time at any rate there would be no more visits from the lord. but the toys and the books, the fruit and flowers, came as regularly as ever, and the lord was not forgotten.