Peter Ramsay looked round the wide rooms whose walls were almost all cupboards, which was heated by a self-feeding stove, where the doors and drawers shut automatically, and the very wash-hand basin tilted itself empty, with a distinctly annoyed smile. "I don't believe even I could be untidy in it," he said grudgingly, "But if you will excuse me, nurse--who are the Governing Body?"
"Oh! there are several gentlemen, I believe; but I only know the one name--Lord Blackborough. I have not seen him. He is to be here to-day, however--it is their first Committee meeting, you know."
"It--it was built by a Syndicate, wasn't it?" asked Helen.
"Yes; by a Syndicate. I don't think Lord Blackborough had anything to do with it. These are your--that is, the matron's rooms."
Helen gave a little cry. They were the replica of her rooms at the Keep, even to the row of flower-pots on the window-sills and the little niche for her _prie-dieu_ chair. What a memory he had--and what an imagination!
"They must have spent any amount of money over it," continued the buxom little nurse, "for everything is quite perfect--on a small scale of course--I mean in comparison with the London hospitals; but none of them, so far as I know, is half so well equipped for children. It will be a pleasure to work here."
She threw open the door of a ward and introduced Nurse Mary, an elderly woman also in the quaintly Dutch dress.
"There are only four cots in each ward," said Sister Ann, "and they have all a wide balcony on to which the cots can be wheeled, and every ward in thus part of the house is practically self-supporting." She threw open another side door in the landing. "The bath-room and the nurses' room are over there and this is the pantry. There is a lift from the kitchen."
Everything in truth was perfect, and Peter Ramsay gave a great sigh of content over the marble operating-room with its glass casing, its endless silver-plated taps, and tubes, and sprays, and levers.
"I believe," he said suddenly, excitedly, "It is a replica of Pagenheim's--yes! I am certain that is his new adjustor--" He was deep in the mechanism in a moment.
"There were German or Austrian workmen at it, I know," said Sister Ann beaming over with content, "But it is absolutely complete, isn't it?"
Truly it was complete in every detail. A very gem amongst hospitals, a very pearl of places where disease and death could be faced at close quarters. Yes! even to the little marble mortuary where carven biers stood waiting under the shadow of a great white cross.
"We must see number 36," said Helen to Dr. Ramsay, "It was built for him remember, as well as for us."
The plural pronoun gave Dr. Ramsay a little thrill which he shook off impatiently.
"That is the worst part of it," he said, "I am by no means sure about No. 36."
But the first sight of the boy who was playing draughts with his nurse in a great wide play-room with a lift from it to the winter-garden below, set him wondering if in very truth he could not set those crooked things straight.
"The Secretary's compliments, please," said the hall porter when they found themselves back in the vestibule, "and the Governing Body will be glad to see you, when you are disengaged."
They looked at one another. They had lingered over their inspection; it was already close on four o'clock, and if the Oriental mail had to be caught Peter Ramsay must leave at the half hour.
If?...
It did not take him long to decide. He thought of the appeal in those words "Don't say 'No,' unless you dislike the place." He would not at any rate go to Vienna that night.
"I am disengaged now," he said, looking at Helen Tresillian, "if you are."
So they followed their guide down a passage to the right wing of the house where he knocked at a door labelled Secretary's Office. A small man sadly humpbacked, but with a quick, intelligent face and a most determined chin, rose as they entered and bowed.
"If you would kindly step within," he said, opening an inner door, "Dr. Ramsay and Mrs. Tresillian, sir."
The door closed behind them and--and----
Ned Blackborough jumped up from a comfortable chair by the fire and came forward with outstretched hands.
"By George! I was nearly asleep. What a time you've been! I thought you must have gone away disgusted."
"My dear Ned!" gasped Mrs. Tresillian, "you don't surely mean that you--you only--are the Governing Body?"
"If you will sit down and pour us out some tea," he said coolly, pointing to a little table laid out by the fire, "I will tell you what I am--or rather what I am not--for I have been most things this last month. I had no idea it would have been such a business."
He might have said he had had no idea it would cost so much money, but he did not, for to him the only use of money was to spend it. So as they drank their tea, he told them how the idea had come to him before Christmas, when Helen had first told him of No. 36 and the discussion concerning the pot of beer had begun. How he had rushed everybody, bribing everybody to unheard-of haste. Just a month, he said, from start to finish; but he had had to get bricklayers, plasterers, painters over, by wire, from the States, and buy all the fittings in Germany. It was very unpatriotic, of course, but what could one do when the Trades' Unions would only allow a man to lay one-half the number of bricks in a day that the Americans laid, and when English firms talked of Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the general holiday dislocation of trade? He never could have done it but for Woods, the little dumpity who had introduced them. The man was an old watchmaker who had lost employment through the Swiss competition, and who had had the pluck to spend his last pound or two in going over to Geneva to see how it was that the foreigner could work cheaper. He, Ned, had come across him in the park one night and had lent him--only lent him, of course, with no hope of ever seeing him or it again--a sovereign!
But the fellow had come back and had repaid the sovereign! He had written a pamphlet on his views and sold it in the streets. So?--so they had joined hands, being of the same way of thinking.
"I was awfully afraid when we were down at Plas Afon, Helen," he said, "that the thing would get blown upon; what with all the telegrams and the people who came to see me."
"But you told me," she replied reproachfully, "that it was mostly about that strike at the works."
"So it was--partly," he answered with a smile. Then he looked grave.
"I'll tell you what, I've been busy this last fortnight, and no mistake."
"With the strike," she asked quickly.
"Yes! with the strike," he answered after a pause. "I went into the whole thing from the beginning, and I found that those particular factories had been working at a loss for the last three years. I showed the accounts to the men, and pointed out that under the circumstances no master could be expected to accede to a demand for a rise in wages. They wouldn't listen--I suppose, really, they couldn't listen, so I closed the works, gave them each a month's pay in their pockets, and told them I hoped they'd find a better master. I couldn't do anything else in common fairness. It comes to that in the end."
He walked to the window moodily and looked out, then turned to them with one of his sudden brilliant smiles.
"And you, good people? What have you decided; but perhaps I had better give you a short outline of what St. Helena's Hospital is to be."
"In the first place, Woods is to be the Secretary and Treasurer, and all that sort of thing, with a staff under him. There is to be no governing body, but the money will be vested in a trust, and the whole staff of the hospital shall form a general committee. This will ensure the appointment of really reliable persons all through. Sister Ann--you saw her--she has every diploma under the sun, and is as hard as nuts--is, for the present, head under you, Ramsay, of the nursing department. You are head, for the present, of the medical and surgical, with help as required, and Helen here is to boss the whole lot of you in housekeeping--it is really what you are cut out for, you know, Helen, though you did fuss over the _chauffeur_ dinners."
"But I don't quite see why," began Peter Ramsay argumentatively, "all this has to be done. If it was to provide me----"
Ned Blackborough interrupted him. "It was to supply you--and the world," he said almost sarcastically--"with a place in which there were no vested interests. It was to provide you--and a few other working men and women--with a place here they could work without let or hindrance, where they were responsible for the whole show--yes!
even for those who were to come after them. Don't bring in any one, Ramsay, because he is a brilliant operator; pay him, if you like, to come in and operate, but keep your staff good men and true, who will try to secure an apostolic succession of good men and true. Then--then no one will quarrel over a pint of beer! Do you accept?"
"I accepted from the very beginning, Ned," said Helen quickly; "the moment I saw the Newfoundland dog, I----"
Ned laughed. "I thought of bringing your father's retriever; but he wasn't warranted with children--so I got that bumbler."
Peter Ramsay was taking his turn at the window, looking out with eyes that had a blur in them. Suddenly he wheeled----
"Yes! I accept, Lord Blackborough, and--and may Heaven do so and to me and more also if----"
He wrung Ned's hand instead of finishing his sentence.
Lord Blackborough threw himself into the armchair and stretched out his legs in relief.
"_Nunc dimittis_," he said, "and now for a few details. You won't be able to start, of course, for some time. The place is fairly dry, having been roofed over, you remember, but some of the partition work is a bit damp, though we've had it all dried as well as we could, and your rooms are dog dry. So is Number Seven ward. But for a while you will have to go slow. Sister Ann, Woods, and the housekeeper--I hope you will like her, Helen; if you don't give her the sack, for she will have her vote in the housekeeping committee, though of course the under servants won't--or, at any rate, only on certain points. You will find Woods has it all worked out, however, he has a head like an American roll-top desk. Well! those three can manage, so if you want any special fit-up Oh! by the way, I've left the instruments to you, Ramsay, except the ordinary ones. Woods has enough in hand to pay----"
"And what is to become of you, Ned," asked Helen anxiously, noting a certain jumpiness of insouciance in her cousin's manner, a certain, almost uncanny, clearness in his eyes. "Are you going back to New Park?"
"Ye gods and little fishes! No!" he ejaculated. "Do I look, Helen, like a churchwarden, or any one else who would find comfort in Turkey carpets? I, my dear child, am going to find rest unto my soul in my own way. I--I am going to the Grecian Archipelago!"