Condensed Novels: New Burlesques Part 4

As I stood once more dazed and petrified, he took me firmly by the ear and led me into the hall, closing the door behind him. This reopened presently, wide enough to permit him to thrust out my hat, overcoat, umbrella, and overshoes, and then closed against me forever!

I never saw him again. I am bound to say, however, that thereafter my business increased, I recovered much of my old practice, and a few of my patients recovered also. I became rich. I had a brougham and a house in the West End. But I often wondered, pondering on that wonderful man's penetration and insight, if, in some lapse of consciousness, I had not really stolen his cigar case!

GOLLY AND THE CHRISTIAN,

OR

THE MINX AND THE MANXMAN

By H-LL C--NE

BOOK I

Golly Coyle was the only granddaughter of a vague and somewhat simple clergyman who existed, with an aunt, solely for Golly's epistolary purposes. There was, of course, intermediate ancestry,--notably a dead mother who was French, and therefore responsible for any later naughtiness in Golly,--but they have no purpose here. They lived in the Isle of Man. Golly knew a good deal of Man, for even at the age of twelve she was in love with John Gale--only son of Lord Gale, who was connected with the Tempests. Gales, however, were frequent and remarkable along the coast, so that it was not singular that one day she found John "coming on" on a headland where she was sitting. His dog had "pointed" her. "It's exceedingly impolite to point to anything you want," said Golly. Touched by this, and overcome by a strange emotion, John Gale turned away and went to Canada. Slight as the incident was, it showed that inborn chivalry to women, that desire for the Perfect Life, that intense eagerness to incarnate Christianity in modern society, which afterward distinguished him. Golly loved him!

For all that, she still remained a "tomboy" as she was,--robbing orchards, mimicking tramps and policemen, b.u.t.tering the stairs and the steps of houses, tying kettles to dogs' tails, and marching in a white jersey, with the curate's hat on, through the streets of the village.

"Gol dern my skin!" said the dear old clergyman, as he tried to emerge from a surplice which Golly had st.i.tched together; "what spirits the child DO have!" Yet everybody loved her! And when John Gale returned from Canada, and looked into her big blue eyes one day at church, small wonder that he immediately went off again to Paris, and an extended Continental sojourn, with a serious leaning to theology! Golly bore his absence meekly but characteristically; got a boat, disported like a duck in the water, attempted to elope with a boy appropriately named Drake, but encountered a half gale at sea and a whole Gale in John on a yacht, who rescued them both. Convinced now that there was but one way to escape from his Fate--Golly!--John Gale took holy orders and at once started for London. As he stood on the deck of the steamer he heard an imbecile chuckle in his ear. It was the simple old clergyman: "You are going to London to join the Church, John; Golly is going there, too, as hospital nurse. There's a pair of you! He! he! Look after her, John, and protect her Manx simplicity." Before John could recover himself, Golly was at his side executing the final steps of a "cellar-door flap jig" to the light-hearted refrain:--

"We are a simple family--we are--we are--we are!"

And even as her pure young voice arose above the screams of the departure whistle, she threw a double back-somersault on the quarterdeck, cleverly alighting on the spikes of the wheel before the delighted captain.

"Jingle my electric bells," he said, looking at the bright young thing, "but you're a regular minx--"

"I beg your pardon," interrupted John Gale, with a quick flush.

"I mean a regular MANX," said the captain hurriedly.

A singular paleness crossed the deeply religious face of John. As the vessel rose on the waves, he pa.s.sed his hand hurriedly first across his brows and then over his high-b.u.t.toned clerical waistcoat, that visible sign of a devoted ascetic life! Then murmuring in his low, deep voice, "Brandy, steward," he disappeared below.

BOOK II

Glorious as were Golly's spirits, exquisitely simple her worldly ignorance, and irresistible her powers of mimicry, strangely enough they were considered out of place in St. Barabbas' Hospital. A light-hearted disposition to mistake a blister for a poultice; that rare Manx conscientiousness which made her give double doses to the patients as a compensation when she had omitted to give them a single one, and the faculty of bursting into song at the bedside of a dying patient, produced some liveliness not unmixed with perplexity among the hospital staff. It is true, however, that her performance of clog-dancing during the night-watches drew a larger and more persistent attendance of students and young surgeons than ever was seen before.

Yet everybody loved her! Even her patients! "If it amooses you, miss, to make me tyke the pills wot's meant for the lydy in the next ward, I ain't complyning," said an East End newsboy. "When ye tyke off the style of the doctor wot wisits me, miss, and imitates his wyes, Lawd!

it does me as much good as his mixtures," said a consumptive charwoman.

Even thus, old and young basked in the radiant youth of Golly. She found time to write to her family:--

DEAR OLD PALS! I'm here. J'y suis! bet your boots! While you're wondering what has become of the Bright Young Thing, the B. Y. T. is lookin' out of the winder of St. Barabbas' Hospital--just taking in all of dear, roaring, dirty London in one gulp! Such a place--Lordy! I've been waiting three hours to see the crowd go by, and they haven't gone yet! Such crowds, such busses,--all green and blue, only a penny fare, and you can ride on top if you want to! Think of that, you dear old Manx people! But there--"the bell goes a-ringing for Sarah!"--they're calling for Nurse! That's the worst of this job: they're always a-dyin' just as you're getting interested in something else! Ta-ta!

GOLLY!

Then her dear old grandfather wrote:

I'm wondering where my diddleums, Golly, is! We all miss you so much, deary, though we don't miss so many little things as when you were here. My dear, conscientious, unselfish little girl! You don't say where John Gale is. Is he still protecting you--he-he!--you giddy, naughty thing! People wonder on the island why I let you go alone to London--they forget your dear mother was a Frenchwoman! If you see anything your dear old grandfather would like--send it on.

GRANFER.

Later, her aunt wrote:--

Have you seen the Queen yet, and does she wear her crown at breakfast?

You might get over the area railing at Buckingham Palace--it would be nothing for a girl like you to do--and see if you can find out.

To these letters Golly answered, in her own light-hearted way:--

DEAR GRANKINS,--I haven't seen John much--but I think he's like the Private Secretary at the play--he "don't like London." Lordy!

there--I've let it out! I've been to a theayter. Nurse Jinny Jones and me scrouged into the pit one night without paying, "pertendin'," as we were in uniform, we had come to take out a "Lydy" that had fainted.

Such larks! and such a glorious theayter! I'll tell you another time.

Tell aunty the Queen's always out when I call. But that's nothing, everybody else is so affable and polite in London. Gentlemen--"real toffs," they call 'em--whom you don't know from Adam--think nothing of speaking to you in the street. Why, Nurse Jinny says--but there another patient's going off who by rights oughter have died only to-morrow. "To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow," as that barn-stormer actor said. But they're always calling for that giddy young thing.

Your GOLLY.

Meantime, John Gale, having abruptly left Golly at the door of St.

Barabbas' hospital, tactfully avoiding an unseemly altercation with the cab-driver regarding her exact fare, pursued his way thoughtfully to the residence of his uncle, the First Lord of the Admiralty. He found his Lords.h.i.+p in his bath-room. He was leaning over the bath-tub, which was half full of water, contemplating with some anxiety the model of a line-of-battle s.h.i.+p which was floating on it, bottom upward. "I don't think it can be quite right--do you?" he said, nervously grasping his nephew's hand as he pointed to the capsized vessel; "yet they always do it. Tell me!" he went on appealingly, "tell me, as a professing Christian and a Perfect Man--is it quite right?"

"I should think, sir," responded John Gale, with uncompromising truthfulness, "that the average vessel of commerce is not built in that way."

"Yet," said the First Lord of the Admiralty, with a far-off look, "they all do it! And they don't steer! The larger they are and the more recent the model, the less they steer. Dear me--you ought to see 'em go round and round in that tub." Then, apparently recalling the probable purpose of John's visit, he led the way into his dressing-room. "So you are in London, dear boy. Is there any little thing you want? I have," he continued, absently fumbling in the drawers of his dressing-table, "a few curacies and a bishopric somewhere, but with these blessed models--I can't think where they are.

Or what would you say to a nice chaplaincy in the navy, with a becoming uniform, on one of those thingummies?" He pointed to the bath-room.

"Stay," he continued, as he pa.s.sed his hand over his perplexed brows, "now I think of it--you're quite unorthodox! Dear me! that wouldn't do.

You see, Drake,"--he paused, as John Gale started,--"I mean Sir Francis Drake, once suspended his chaplain for unorthodoxy, according to Froude's book. These admirals are dreadfully strict Churchmen. No matter! Come again some other time," he added, gently pus.h.i.+ng his nephew downstairs and into the street, "and we'll see about it."

With a sinking heart, John turned his steps toward Westminster. He would go and see Golly; perhaps he had not looked after her as he ought. Suddenly a remembered voice, in mimicking accents, fell upon his ear with the quotation, "Do you know?" Then, in a hansom pa.s.sing swiftly by him, Golly, in hospital dress with flying ribbons, appeared, sitting between Lord Brownstone Ewer and Francis Horatio Nelson Drake, completely grown up. And from behind floated the inexpressibly sad refrain, "Hi tiddli hi!"

This is how it happened. One morning, Jinny Jones, another hospital nurse, had said to her, "Have you any objection, dear, to seeing a friend of another gent, a friend of mine?"

"None in the least, dear," said Golly. "I want to see all that can be seen, and do all that can be done in London, and know the glory thereof. I only require that I shall be allowed to love John Gale whenever he permits it, which isn't often, and that I may be permitted to write simple letters to my doting relations at the rate of twelve pages a day, giving an account--MY OWN account--of my doings. There!

Go on now! Bring on your bears."

They had visited the chambers which Lord Brownstone and Drake occupied together, and in girlish innocence had put on the gentlemen's clothes and danced before them. Then they all went to the theatre, where Golly's delightful simplicity and childish ignorance of the world had charmed them. Everything to her was new, strange, and thrilling. She even leaned from the carriage windows to see the "wheels go round."

She was surprised at the number of people in the theatre, and insisted on knowing if it was church, because they all sat there in their best clothes so quietly. She believed that the play was real, and frequently, from a stage box, interrupted the acting with explanations.

She informed the heroine of the design of the villain waiting at the wings. And when the aged mother of the heroine was dying of starvation in a hovel, and she threw a bag of bonbons on the stage, with the vociferous declaration that "Lord Brownstone had just given them to her--but--Lordy!--SHE didn't want them," they were obliged to lead her away, closely followed by an usher and a policeman. "To think," she wrote to John Gale, "that the audience only laughed and shouted, and never offered to help! And yet look at the churches in London, where they dare to preach the gospel!"

Fired by this simple letter, and alarmed by Golly's simplicity, John Gale went to his clerical chief, Archdeacon Luxury, and demanded permission to preach next Sunday. "Certainly," said the Archdeacon; "you shall take my curate's place. I shall inform the congregation that you are the son of Lord Gale. They are very particular churchmen--all society people--and of course will be satisfied with the work of the Lord, especially," he added, with a polite smile, "when that work happens to be--the Lord Gale's son." Accordingly, the next Sunday, John Gale occupied the pulpit of St. Swithin. But an unexpected event happened. His pent-up eagerness to denounce the present methods of Christianity, his fullness of utterance, defeated his purpose. He was overcome with a kind of pulpit fright. His ideas of time and place fled him. After beginning, "Mr. Chairman, in rising to propose the toast of our worthy Archdeacon--Fellow Manxmen--the present moment--er--er--the proudest in my--er--life--Dearly beloved Golly--unaccustomed as I am to public speaking," he abruptly delivered the benediction and sat down. The incident, however, provoked little attention. The congregation, accustomed to sleep through the sermon, awoke at the usual time and went home. Only a single Scotchwoman said to him in pa.s.sing: "Verra weel for a beginning, laddie. But give it hotter to 'em next time." Discomfited and bewildered, he communed with himself gloomily. "I can't marry Golly. I can't talk. I hate society. What's to be done? I have it! I'll go into a monastery."

He went into a monastery in Bishopsgate Street, reached by a threepenny 'bus. He gave out vaguely that he had got into "Something Good, in the City." Society was satisfied. Only Golly suspected the truth. She wrote to her grandfather:--