Once Aboard the Lugger Part 7

Magnificent Arrival Of A Heroine.

I.

Until three o'clock George sat in an operating theatre. An unimportant case was in process: occasionally, through the group of dressers, surgeons and nurses who filled the floor, George caught a glimpse of the subject. He watched moodily, too occupied with his thoughts--three more months of dependency--to take greater interest.

One other student was present. Peacefully he slumbered by George's side until the ring of a dropped forceps awakened him. Noting the cause, "Clumsy beast," said this Mr. Franklyn; and to George: "Come on, Leicester; my slumber is broken. Let's go for a stroll up West."

In Oxford Street a pretty waitress in a tea-shop drew Mr. Franklyn's eye; a drop of rain whacked his nose. He winked the eye; wiped the nose. "Tea," said he; "it is going to rain."

He addressed the pretty waitress: "I have no wish to seem inquisitive, but which table do you attend?"

The girl jerked her chin: "What's that to you?"

"So much," Mr. Franklyn earnestly told her, "that, until I know, here, beautiful but inconvenient, in the doorway I stand."

"Well, all of 'em." She whisked away.

"You're badly snubbed, Franklyn," George said. "This rain is nothing."

A summer shower crashed down as he spoke; a mob of shoppers, breathless for shelter, drove them inwards.

"George," said Mr. Franklyn, seating himself, "your base mind thinks I have designs on this girl. I grieve at so distorted a fancy. The child says prettily that she attends 'all of 'em.' It is a gross case of overwork into which I feel it my duty more closely to inquire."

George laughed. "Do you always spend your afternoons like this?"

"As a rule, yes. I have been fifteen years at St. Peter's awaiting that day when through pure ennui the examiners will pa.s.s me. It will be a sad wrench to leave the dear old home." He continued, a tinge of melancholy in his voice: "You know, I am the last of the old brigade.

The medical student no longer riots. His name is no longer a byword; he is a rabbit. Alone, undismayed, I uphold the old traditions. I am, so to speak, one of the old aristocracy. Beneath the snug characteristics of the latter-day student--his sweet abhorrence of a rag, his nasty delight in plays which he calls 'hot-stuff,' his cigarettes and his chess-playing--beneath these my head, like Henley's, is b.l.o.o.d.y but unbowed. Forgive a tear."

The shower ceased; the tea was finished; the pretty waitress was coyly singeing her modesty in the attractive candle of Mr. Franklyn's suggestions. George left them at the game; strolled aimlessly towards the Marble Arch; beyond it; to the right, and so into a quiet square.

Here comes my heroine.

II.

The hansom, as George walked, was coming towards him--smartly, with a jingle of bells; skimming the kerb. As it reached him (recall that shower) the horse slipped, stumbled, came on its knees.

Down came the shafts; out shot the girl.

The doors were wide; the impetus took her in her stride. One tiny foot dabbed at the platform's edge; the other twinkled--patent leather and silver buckle--at the step, missed it, plunged with a giant stride for the pavement.

"Mercy!" she cried, and came like a shower of roses swirling into George's arms.

Completely he caught her. About his legs whipped her skirts; against him pressed her panting bosom; his arms--the action was instinctive-- locked around her; the adorable perfume of her came on him like breeze from a violet bed; her very cheek brushed his lips--since the first kiss it was the nearest thing possible to a kiss.

She twisted backwards. Modesty chased alarm across her face--caught, battled, overcame it; flamed triumphant.

Fright at her accident drove her pale; shame at the manner of her descent--leg to the knee and an indelicacy of petticoats--agitated she had glimpsed it as she leapt--flushed her crimson from the line of her dress about her throat to the wave of her hair upon her brow.

She twisted back. "Oh, what must you think of me?" she gasped.

He simply could not say.

CHAPTER VII.

Moving Pa.s.sages With A Heroine.

I.

George could not say.

His senses were washed aswim by this torrent of beauty poured unexpected through eyes to brain. It surged the centres to violent commotion, one jostling another in a whirlpool of conflict. Out of the tumult alarm flashed down the wires to his heart--set it banging; flashed in wild message to his tongue--locked it.

The driver in our brains is an intolerable fellow in sudden crisis. He loses his head; distracted he pulls the levers, and, behold, in a moment the thing is irrevocably done; we are a coward legging it down the street, a murderer with b.l.o.o.d.y hand, a liar with false words suddenly pumped.

A moment later the driver is calm and aghast at the ruin he has contrived. Why, before G.o.d, did he pull the leg lever?--the arm lever?--the tongue lever? In an instant's action he has accomplished calamity; where suns.h.i.+ne laughed now darkness heaps; where the prospect smiled disaster now comes rolling up in thunder.

These are your crises. Again, as now with George, the driver becomes temporarily idiot--stands us oafishly silent, or perhaps jerks out some stupid words; remembers when too late the quip that would have fetched the laugh, the thrust that would have sped the wound. He is an intolerable fellow.

"Oh, what must you think of me?"

That pause followed while the driver in George's brain stood gapingly inactive; and then came laughter to him like a draught of champagne.

For the girl put up her firm, round chin and laughed with a clear pipe of glee--a laugh to call a laugh as surely as a lark's note will set a hedge in song; and it called the laugh in George.

He said: "I am thinking the nicest things of you. But have you dropped from the skies?"

"From a _cab_," she protested.

She turned to the road; back to George in dismay, for the catapult, its bullet shot, had bolted up the street--was gone from view.

"Oh!--I _was_ in a cab?" she implored.

George said: "It _looked_ like a cab. But a fairy-car, I think."

A pucker of her brows darkened the quick mirth that came to her eyes.

She cried: "Oh, don't joke. She will be killed."

"You were not alone?"

"No--oh, no! What has happened to her?"