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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sing, the true meaning of the Rock of Ages. Receive Niagara into your life and soul as a possession, and thank G.o.d 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 j.a.pan and see a little people n.o.bly 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 pa.s.sably 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed, "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 rea.s.suringly; 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 a.s.sured, 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 b.u.t.tons, 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 a.s.souan."
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 gla.s.ses. 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 gra.s.s, 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."
CHAPTER XIII
THE ANSWER OF THE SPHINX
Moonlight in the desert.
Jane ordered her after-dinner coffee on the piazza of the hotel, that she might lose as little as possible of the mystic loveliness of the night. The pyramids appeared so huge and solid, in the clear white light; and the Sphinx gathered unto itself more mystery.
Jane promised herself a stroll round by moonlight presently. Meanwhile she lay back in a low wicker chair, comfortably upholstered, sipping her coffee, and giving herself up to the sense of dreamy content which, in a healthy body, is apt to follow vigorous exertion.
Very tender and quiet thoughts of Garth came to her this evening, perhaps brought about by the a.s.sociations of moonlight.
"The moon shines bright:--in such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise--"
Ah! the great poet knew the effect upon the heart of a vivid reminder to the senses. Jane now pa.s.sed beneath the spell.
To begin with, Garth"s voice seemed singing everywhere:
"Enable with perpetual light The dulness of our blinded sight."
Then from out the deep blue and silvery light, Garth"s dear adoring eyes seemed watching her. Jane closed her own, to see them better.
To-night she did not feel like shrinking from them, they were so full of love.