CHAPTER XII
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."
