Part 43 (1/2)

Providence denied to both that subtle joy, and they got to the mutton chop and chipped potato stage of convalescence in childlike ignorance of each other's misfortune.

There must certainly have been a curious community of mind between them, for both their doctors ordered them to Margate, and they both took rooms at Westgate. Now a similar taste in seaside places is undoubtedly an excellent foundation for eternal friends.h.i.+p. Let the world crumble in atoms, two people who both like Westgate will still find something to talk about amid the confusion occasioned by the dissolution of kingdoms.

Jack Burnham arrived at the St Mildred's Hotel on a Thursday, with his man.

Harriet Lorton came on the following Friday, with her maid.

Neither had any notion of the other's proceedings until they met back to back, as you shall presently hear.

II

In ordinary circ.u.mstances of health and vigour, Burnham and Mrs Lorton possessed dispositions of quite singular vivacity, looked upon life as a fairly good, if rather practical joke, and were fully disposed to consider happiness their _metier_. Being modern, they sometimes concealed their original gaiety, as if it were original sin, and pretended to a cruel cynicism; yet at heart, it must be confessed, they were as lively as poor children playing in the street. But when they went to Westgate, influenza had had its fill of them, and the infinite pathos of the world, and of all that is therein, appealed to them with a seizing vitality. Burnham, on the Thursday, was moved to tears at Birchington Station by the sight of a mother and eleven children missing the last train to Margate. Harriet Lorton, on the following Friday, had hysterics at Victoria, when she perceived a young lady drop a cage containing a grey parrot, and smash the bird's china bath upon the platform. The fact that the parrot had been actually taking its bath at the moment, and was left by the misfortune in much confusion and no water, struck her so poignantly as nearly to break her heart. She wept in a first-cla.s.s carriage all the way down, and arrived at Westgate, towards ten o'clock, in a state of complete collapse.

Mr Burnham was in bed drinking a cup of soup at this time. He heard the luggage being carried up, but did not suspect whose it was.

Nevertheless, the ravages of disease led him to consider the slight noise and bustle a personal insult, and he lay awake most of the night brooding upon the wrongs of which he, erroneously, believed himself to be the victim.

It was on the next morning that the two invalids met back to back in a shelter with gla.s.s part.i.tions upon the lawn.

Mrs Lorton, smothered in wraps, had taken up her position on the bench that faces Westgate without noticing a bowed and ulstered figure, shod in brown boots, sitting in a haggard posture on the reciprocal bench that faces the sea. n.o.body was about, for it was not the season, and Mrs Lorton began slowly to weep on account of the loneliness. It struck her disordered fancy as so personal. Creation was sending her to Coventry.

At her back the tears ran over Burnham's handsome countenance. He was staring at the sea, and thinking of all the people who had been drowned in water since the days of the Deluge. He wondered how many there were, and cried copiously, considering himself absolutely alone and free to give vent to his feelings, which struck him as splendidly human.

When two people weep together one of them usually weeps louder than the other, and, on this occasion, Burnham made the most noise. He became, in fact, so uproariously solicitous about the drowned men and women whom he had never known that Mrs Lorton gradually was made aware of the presence of another mourner who was not a mute. She turned round and beheld a back convulsed with emotion. Its grief went straight to her heart, and, casting her own sorrow and her sense of etiquette to the wind--which blew bracingly from the north-east--she tapped upon the gla.s.s screen that bisected the shelter.

Burnham took no notice. He was too deeply involved in grief. So Mrs Lorton knocked again, with all the vigour that incipient convalescence gave to her. This time Burnham was startled, and turned a hollow face upon her. They stared at each other through the intervening gla.s.s for a moment in wild surprise, the tears congealing upon their cheeks.

Beyond Burnham Mrs Lorton saw the whirling white foam of the sea. Beyond Mrs Lorton Burnham saw the neat villas of Westgate. It struck them both as a tremendous moment, and they trembled.

Remember that they were very weak.

At last he, conceiving naturally that she had recognised and desired to summon him, walked slowly round to her side of the shelter, and held out to her a wavering hand.

”Good heavens!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. ”The last person I--”

”You!” said Mrs Lorton. ”How astonis.h.i.+ng! What on earth--”

He seized the opening she gave him with all the ardour of the whole-souled influenza patient.

”I have been ill,” he said with a deep pathos, ”very, very ill. My symptoms were most extraordinary.”

He sank down heavily at her side, and continued, ”I doubt if any one has endured such agony before. It began on a Sunday with--”

”So did mine,” Mrs Lorton interrupted with some show of determination.

”You cannot conceive what it was like. I had pains in every limb, every limb positively. The doctor--”

”Of course I went straight to bed,” he remarked with firmness. ”I knew at once what was wrong. But mine was no ordinary case. Talk of thumbscrews! Why--”

”For nights I tossed in agony,” she went on with a poignant self-pity, so much engrossed that she never noticed the brown boots which on other occasions had so deeply offended her. ”Morphia and eucalyptus were no--”