IX
By a coincidence, the two men arrived at ten minutes to twelve. They found Nancy in a rather pathetic state of excitement. She had been running up and down stairs and from one room to another and she met them with the elaborate calm of one about to give himself up to a capital operation.
"We have a nice day for it, anyway," she said bravely. Any agreeable condition, however remote it might at first appear from the business at hand, was welcome. "Tell me," she asked Tom, "do you think I"m dressed suitably?"
"Perfectly."
"Some social workers go down in the slums in the worst old clothes they can find, but I"ve heard that the people down there like to see nice things, so I compromised. This is just a gingham dress, you see, but I"m wearing my pearls."
"I should think that"s just right. Didn"t Henry, the Labour expert, help you?"
"Oh, I didn"t bother him. He"s not interested, you see."
Leofwin, who had been fidgeting around for an opening, now burst forth.
"I came early," he said, "to find out if I can"t do the lungs too; I"ve been practising them along with the heart, you know, and I think it might go well dashing them in somewhere. What?" Leofwin"s "what"s" were noteworthy. They were in a higher key than the rest of his conversation, which was itself high, and he drew them out to almost exquisite lengths.
They were nearly all that was left of his week-end with the patron in Suffolk.
"Oh, dear me, no," replied Nancy with considerable spirit.
"I think you will like my heart," he continued undismayed. "I"ve been doing them all morning. I dug up some priceless old Beaux Arts crayons.
It will be nice when we get to the brain. It"s awfully romantic, I find," and he gave Nancy a killing smile. She gazed at him placidly and then turned to Tom. "What time is it?" she asked.
"Nearly twelve."
At this point Edmund drove up, and with renewed palpitations the party proceeded to the Mill.
As they pa.s.sed in through the gates Tom noticed with sickening dread a huge sign in flaming letters, "ARE YOU PHYSICALLY FIT? _Mr. Reynolds of Woodbridge Will Address You----_" They were met by Bob Whitman, a hearty young man who had just been made an officer of the Company. He stared at Leofwin in amused bewilderment.
"Mr. Balch is helping me with the diagrams," explained Nancy. "And now where do we go?"
"Well, you"d better just sit here for a minute or two until they get settled with their lunches. I"ll take you to where you go; and what"s more, Nancy, I"ll introduce you!" Nancy received the word "introduce" as a surgical case receives the initial injection of morphine. The first step had been taken, and nothing could save her. "As for you, Tom, your lecture room"s over there, and I"ll get the foreman to introduce you."
"Don"t think of it," said Tom quickly, "I"ll just introduce myself; get to be one of them, you know what I mean. Just one of the boys."
"Well, Miss Whitman, let"s you and I get to be just one of the girls,"
t.i.ttered Leofwin.
"I think we might as well go in," said Nancy without noticing Leofwin"s jest, which appeared singularly hollow.
"You"re sure you don"t want some one to start you off, Tom?" asked Bob.
Tom was certain of it; and before entering his room, he waited until Nancy"s party had disappeared around the corner. He then opened the door and, going over to a man who was ruminating vacantly upon a huge chunk of bread, sat down. "There"s going to be some sort of lecture here, today, isn"t there?" he asked.
"I dunno," replied the man.
"Yeah, there is," spoke up a hand nearby. "I seen it on a sign this morning. Some guy from the college."
"That"s what I thought," said Tom. "I thought I"d just come in and see what he had to say. Can"t stay very long, though," he added, looking at his watch. Then after a pause, "Pretty nice place you got here."
"Oh, it"s good enough, I guess."
The room was a large one, filled with three or four dozen tables bearing complicated-looking machinery. There were twenty or thirty men sitting around solemnly chewing their food.
"Pretty slow now, isn"t it?" asked Tom.
"Yeah, they laid off about a hundred last week."
"This laying-off stuff would have gone bigger a couple of years ago--in the army--wouldn"t it?"
"I"ll say it would."
"Have a cigarette?" said Tom. "What outfit were you in?"
The prospect of free cigarettes and army talk, which already in less than three years had taken on a romantic glow, attracted the other men, who, as they finished their lunches, came up and joined the circle. Tom was holding forth in the centre; and when Bob Whitman glanced in on his way home he could see that Tom, by making his talk informal, was getting it across in great style.
Once, during the conversation, Providence seemed to offer an opportunity of bringing in his lecture in such a way that no one would guess he was giving it.
His conscience bothered him a little, and he plunged ahead. One of the men told how his bunkie at Base Six in Bordeaux had died of heart failure when under ether. In a somewhat parched voice Tom started to explain how this could come about, but in no time he was talking gibberish. "The aorta," he heard himself saying, "is the big main artery which comes out of one of the ventricles," and then he noticed the dazed look on the men"s faces and, floundering hopelessly, managed to laugh it off. Well, he had tried to talk to them, anyway, and by consulting his watch he found that half an hour had gone by.
After his third cigarette--he had come plentifully supplied--he looked at his watch again. He could go at last! It was ten minutes to one, and Nancy had probably finished long ago. "Apparently this guy isn"t coming today. I"ve got to run along. Well, I"ve enjoyed this talk a lot," and with an inclusive smile and wave of the hand he went.
Nancy wasn"t back in the car, and starting off in the direction they had taken, he soon came to her room. There must have been a hundred women in it and it was Leofwin, not Nancy, who was talking to them.
Tom opened the door quietly and sat down on a stool in the rear. Nancy, pale and helpless, was sitting on one side of a resplendent circulatory system drawn to ill.u.s.trate the subtleties of the designer"s art.
"You will observe, ladies," Leofwin was saying in his purest Suffolk manner, "that shading is done with the crayon well back, like this." He made a few swift lines on the corner of the System and looked up with his bright, inquisitive smile. "Now are there any questions?" There was a stony silence, amid which the one o"clock whistle blew.
The foreman, left in charge by Bob, rose. "I"m sorry, Miss Whitman, but I"m afraid we"ll have to stop today."
The worker"s friend and sister bowed to him and, clutching her notes and her bag, with firmly set lips and eyes fixed, marched to the door.
Leofwin followed, bowing pleasantly right and left, to the intense gratification of his audience, and the trio retired.
"Jolly, wasn"t it?" said Leofwin. "I"m sorry, though, we couldn"t have had more time. I didn"t get to foreshortening at all. However, I think I probably helped them a good deal. Sometime I"d like to tell them about etching, you know, and aqua--and mezzotints."
Nancy received her a.s.sistant"s remarks in complete silence. She was even unable to do more than nod a good-bye to him. But she shook Tom"s hand in parting, and, with an air that might augur the worst, she asked him to come and see her on the next afternoon.
Nancy was particularly charming, Tom thought when he was again with her, and what was even more to the point, he found that they were to be alone. She got his tea ready without difficulty--he was flattered that she remembered his formula--and they settled back for a good talk and laugh.
"I wasn"t civil to him, but I really don"t care! Did you ever know a more dreadful person?"
"Never. He"s awful. But, tell me, how did it go until he took charge?"
"Why, not so badly. But, oh, Tom I heard about you!"
Tom flushed. "What did you hear?"
"Well, Bob was here last night and he said he saw you through the window. He told us how you got them all around you and how you might have been talking about anything." She was wholly admiring.