Her instinct was keen--"And see you, Mervyn, it will be better for Morris, too! If you go, why should he speak? What is confession without a culprit? Come! you can write to him from Blackborough.
Come--or there is no more me for you from to-night."
When Morris Pugh returned from the temple that is made without hands an hour later, the house lay very still in the moonlight. He paused at his brother"s door to listen. There was no sound. So he pa.s.sed on to his own room, took his father"s Bible, his mother"s picture, the few odd pounds he had in the house, and so pa.s.sed downstairs again to the writing-table in the study, where he had thought out so many sermons, so many appeals to his wandering flock. But it was neither a sermon nor an appeal which he set down on paper and left lying where Mervyn would see it next morning. Rather was it a confession, for this is how it ran:--
"Wisdom has come to me among the eternal hills, brother. Go your way.
Be one of the saints in light. I will go mine since I cannot stay and remain silent. May G.o.d in His mercy preserve you always from the judgment of men, and give you His Grace."
It lay there all night with the moonlight shining on it. Then the moonbeams faded and the greyness of the false dawn found it lying there still.
But the breath of the real dawn winning its way through the door opened by the housekeeper who came to set the room in order, tilted it into the waste-paper basket, whence swiftly it made its way to the fire by the hands of tidiness.
Thus Mervyn would have had no chance of seeing it, even if he had been there.
But he was not.
CHAPTER XIX
Peter Ramsay put down the letter with a low whistle and stood staring at his half-packed portmanteau. Then he took up the letter again and re-read it.
There was no doubt about it! The governing body of St. Helena"s Hospital for Children offered him the appointment of resident physician at a salary of 600 a year.
But where the deuce was the hospital?
Egworth. That was one of the suburbs of Blackborough; the most desirable suburb, for it stood on a hill, and so above the smoke-pall of the factory city. But he remembered no hospital there. Once upon a time some speculator had built a huge framework of a place that was to have been a hotel, or a hydropathic, or something of the sort, on the site of the old manor house at the very top of the rise. He remembered Phipp"s Folly, as it was called, with its cold deserted look-out of roughly-glazed windows; but of hospitals--nothing.
It must be some small place. Yet still 600 a year was liberal.
"If you would prefer to see the hospital before making a decision the authorities will be happy to show you over, and I may mention that the governing body will be in committee on the 18th of this month, and could give you an interview."
Thus wrote the secretary.
The 18th? That was to-day. The letter had been delayed, partly because he had changed his lodgings, partly because he had run out of town from Sat.u.r.day to Monday to see a friend before leaving for Vienna. Of course he could put off his journey for a day or two and still arrive easily before the date he had originally fixed.
On the other hand, as it was but a two hours" run to Blackborough, why should he not go down by the 12 o"clock luncheon train, and be back in time to start, if need be, by the Oriental express in the evening? No reason at all. He would do this, and he might find time, even if St.
Helena"s proved to be a fraud, to look in at St. Peter"s into the bargain.
"St. Helena"s Hospital," said the cabman at the station confidentially, "that"ll be the no"o one as the Syndicate "as bin makin" out o" Phipp"s Folly."
Out of Phipp"s Folly! So that was it; quaint certainly. "I suppose so," he replied; "they must have been pretty nippy about it."
Cabby"s face fell. "Nippy," he echoed, "Nippy ain"t in it. They"ve "ad workmen over from the States and fitters from Germany, an" a regular cordon round the place to prevent union men havin" a look in. One thing is, it must have cost "em a pot of money--but--but they done it!
And they do say as it is fust cla.s.s, and the old gardens a sight. So pop in, sir. I"ll have you there in twenty minutes, if you"ll give me three shillin"."
The three shillings were promised and Peter Ramsay spent those twenty minutes in pleasurable excitement. This was something out of the common. If it had been well done Phipp"s Folly might be an ideal hospital, and there was something stimulating, something which stirred the imagination in this sudden development. Of course money could do everything, but how seldom money was spent in this way; for money in _esse_ always had that postulate of more money in _posse_ behind it.
There was only one man he knew----
A quick wonder was checked by the swift turn of the cab through the wide open iron gates, while the new gravel of a broad semicircular sweep crisped under the wheels. But there was nothing to tell of recent work in the green lawns with their old spreading cedars, which lay between the two gates. And the facade itself! What an enormous improvement those wide balconies were, and how useful they might be.
The whole place had an air of having been in use for years, and as the cab stopped a hall porter in livery came alertly down the porch steps, followed by a hall boy. That was a trifle too much for a good thing!
No! there was another cab driving in by the other gate which explained the boy.
Peter Ramsay paused to give a general look round. Certainly so far as the outside went, nothing could be more perfect. What a splendid playground for the children the garden would be sloping away in varying degrees of wildness to a real dingle at the further foot of the hill. And that gla.s.s palace attached to the left must be a winter garden. On this warm day the doors were open and Dr. Ramsay could see swings, see-saws, rocking-horses, tall flowering shrubs, and--yes!
birds, actually birds feeding on the floor or flying about, apparently content.
Close to the porch against the half-bas.e.m.e.nt story, he could see through the glazed doors rows of perambulators, invalid carriages, and advancing to meet him with welcoming wave of the tail was a magnificent Newfoundland dog, evidently intended to be an important factor in the establishment.
There was imagination everywhere.
"Dr. Ramsay!" came an astonished voice at his elbow. He turned to see Mrs. Tresillian pausing in the very act of giving two shillings to her cabman.
"Mrs. Tresillian," he echoed, "how--how very----"
She stepped forward and looked at him--he stepped forward and looked at her. Then with one voice they both said:
"Ned! I felt it was Ned!"
Helen Tresillian gave a sigh of relief. "I have been wondering, ever since I got this," she held out a letter, and Dr. Ramsay mechanically held out his also, "who it could be who was offering me this place of matron, and now--dear me! How silly of me not to think of Ned before.
But you see I have been away in Scotland--I only came back to-day--and I had not heard any Blackborough news since I was here before Christmas--so I could hardly guess, could I?" She cast a glance around her. "But this is Ned, of course. It is like a fairy tale. Let us go in and see it. I expect it is--perfect."
They went up the steps, solemnly followed by the Newfoundland, the hall porter, and the hall boy; but on the threshold Helen paused.
"Isn"t it like a fairy tale?" she repeated. ""And in an instant there appeared a most beautiful hospital all fitted with cots and medicine bottles and nurses"--Ah! here comes one of them. How quaint--but oh!
how sensible!"
It was rather a buxom little person who came out from a side-door.
Something both in her fair smiling face and her dress recalled an old Dutch picture. Her neat white stockings and black rubber-soled, heelless shoes were well seen below a dark-blue cotton dress, full in the skirt, loose in the body, just fastened round the throat without any attempt at a collar, and ending short above the elbow. On her head, almost completely covering her smooth fair hair, she wore a white linen cap gathered in to tightness with a narrow tape tied at the back.
Dr. Ramsay gave a big sigh. "By George!" he murmured, "that"s workmanlike if you like."
"I was to give you these," said the newcomer holding out two notes, one addressed to "Peter Ramsay, Esq., M.D., F.R.C.S., Medical Officer (designate)," the other to "Mrs. Tresillian, Matron (designate), St.
Helena"s Hospital, Egworth."
"It is from Ned," said Helen softly, handing him hers when she had read it. "I expect he has written you the same--I think he is certain to have written just the same."
They were in fact the same, word for word, short, and very much to the point.
"Dear Ramsay (or Helen),--I have built this hospital for you and No. 36 in the Queen"s Ward. You will find him waiting for you in No. 7 overlooking the garden. He is at present sole occupant of the hospital. I hope you will accept the responsibility of killing or curing him. If you don"t I must find someone else as St.
Helena"s Hospital--which by the way has a permanent endowment of 200,000--cannot possibly remain without a doctor or a matron. So don"t say "No," unless you really dislike the place. Yours,
"Blackborough."
The tears for some reason or other came into Helen"s eyes, and even Peter Ramsay winked. It was a fairy tale indeed.
"These are your rooms sir," said the little Dutch nurse, "The Governing body desire me to say they would be pleased to alter them in any reasonable way you might desire."