John Ingerfield | Page 9

of experience. A glance into one or two of the
squalid dens where these people live tells her that if her patients are to
be saved they must be nursed away from their own homes; and she
determines to convert the large counting-house--a long, lofty room at
the opposite end of the wharf to the refinery--into a temporary hospital.
Selecting some seven or eight of the most reliable women to assist her,
she proceeds to prepare it for its purpose. Ledgers might be volumes of
poetry, bills of lading mere street ballads, for all the respect that is
shown to them. The older clerks stand staring aghast, feeling that the
end of all things is surely at hand, and that the universe is rushing down
into space, until, their idleness being detected, they are themselves

promptly impressed for the sacrilegious work, and made to assist in the
demolition of their own temple.
Anne's commands are spoken very sweetly, and are accompanied by
the sweetest of smiles; but they are nevertheless commands, and
somehow it does not occur to any one to disobey them. John--stern,
masterful, authoritative John, who has never been approached with
anything more dictatorial than a timid request since he left Merchant
Taylors' School nineteen years ago, who would have thought that
something had suddenly gone wrong with the laws of Nature if he had
been--finds himself hurrying along the street on his way to a druggist's
shop, slackens his pace an instant to ask himself why and wherefore he
is doing so, recollects that he was told to do so and to make haste back,
marvels who could have dared to tell him to do anything and to make
haste back, remembers that it was Anne, is not quite sure what to think
about it, but hurries on. He "makes haste back," is praised for having
been so quick, and feels pleased with himself; is sent off again in
another direction, with instructions what to say when he gets there. He
starts off (he is becoming used to being ordered about now). Halfway
there great alarm seizes him, for on attempting to say over the message
to himself, to be sure that he has it quite right, he discovers he has
forgotten it. He pauses, nervous and excited; cogitates as to whether it
will be safe for him to concoct a message of his own, weighs anxiously
the chances--supposing that he does so--of being found out. Suddenly,
to his intense surprise and relief, every word of what he was told to say
comes back to him; and he hastens on, repeating it over and over to
himself as he walks, lest it should escape him again.
And then a few hundred yards farther on there occurs one of the most
extraordinary events that has ever happened in that street before or
since: John Ingerfield laughs.
John Ingerfield, of Lavender Wharf, after walking two-thirds of Creek
Lane, muttering to himself with his eyes on the ground, stops in the
middle of the road and laughs; and one small boy, who tells the story to
his dying day, sees him and hears him, and runs home at the top of his
speed with the wonderful news, and is conscientiously slapped by his

mother for telling lies.
All that day Anne works like a heroine, John helping her, and
occasionally getting in the way. By night she has her little hospital
prepared and three beds already up and occupied; and, all now done
that can be done, she and John go upstairs to his old rooms above the
counting- house.
John ushers her into them with some misgiving, for by contrast with the
house at Bloomsbury they are poor and shabby. He places her in the
arm- chair near the fire, begging her to rest quiet, and then assists his
old housekeeper, whose wits, never of the strongest, have been scared
by the day's proceeding, to lay the meal.
Anne's eyes follow him as he moves about the room. Perhaps here,
where all the real part of his life has been passed, he is more his true
self than amid the unfamiliar surroundings of fashion; perhaps this
simpler frame shows him to greater advantage; but Anne wonders how
it is she has never noticed before that he is a well-set, handsome man.
Nor, indeed, is he so very old-looking. Is it a trick of the dim light, or
what? He looks almost young. But why should he not look young,
seeing he is only thirty-six, and at thirty-six a man is in his prime?
Anne wonders why she has always thought of him as an elderly person.
A portrait of one of John's ancestors hangs over the great
mantelpiece--of that sturdy Captain Ingerfield who fought the King's
frigate rather than give up