Perhaps it was not altogether disinterested in the gentleman to look at his watch, and accept its warning that nothing short of hysterical haste would catch his train for him. However, the grey mare said, through her official representative in the gig behind her, that we should do it if the train was a minute or so behind. So possibly he was quite sincere.
CHAPTER XXV
CONCERNING CAVENDISH SQUARE, AND ITS WHEREABOUTS IN THE EARLY FIFTIES. MRS. FITZHERBERT AND PRINCESS CAROLINE. TWO LONG-FORGOTTEN CARD-PACKS. DUMMY, AND HOW MR. PELLEW TOOK HIS HAND. GWEN'S PERVERTED WHIST-SENSE. THE DUST OF AGES, AT ITS FINEST. HOW IT TURNED THE TALK, AND MOULDED EVENT. HOW GWEN'S PEN SCRATCHED ON INTO THE NIGHT
esthetic Topography is an interesting study. Seen by its light, at the date of this story, Oxford Street was certainly at one and the same time the South of the North of London, and the North of the South. For whereas Hanover Square, which is only a stone's throw to the south of it, is, so to speak, saturated with Piccadilly—and when you are there you may just as well be in Westminster at once—it is undeniable that Cavendish Square is in the zone of influence of Regent's Park, and that Harley and Wimpole Streets, which run side by side north from it, never pause to breathe until they all but touch its palings. Once in Regent's Park, how can Topography—the geometric fallacy apart—ignore St. John's Wood? And once St. John's Wood is admitted, how is it possible to turn a cold shoulder to Primrose Hill? Cross Primrose Hill, and you may just as well be out in the country at once.
But there!—our impressions may be but memories of fifty years ago, and our reader may wonder why Cavendish Square suggests them.
He himself, probably very much our junior—a bad habit other people acquire as Time goes on—may consider Harley Street and Wimpole Street just as much town as Hanover Square, and St. John's Wood—even Primrose Hill!—as on all fours with both. We forgive him. One, or possibly we ought to say several, should learn to be tolerant of the new-fangled opinions of hot-headed youth. We were like that ourself, when a boy. But let him have his own way. These streets shall be unmitigated Town now, to please him, in spite of the walks Dr. Johnson had in Marylebone Fields. To be sure, Marylebone Fields soon became Gardens then-abouts, like Ranelagh, and you drove along Harley Street to a musical entertainment there, with music by Pergolesi and Galuppi.
The time of this story is post-Johnsonian, but it is older than its readers; unless, indeed, a chance oldster now and then opens it to see if it is a proper book to have in the house. The world in the early fifties was very unlike what it is in the present century, and that isn't yet in its teens. It was also very unlike what it had been in the days when the family mansion in Cavendish Square, that had not had a family in it then for forty years, was as good as new. It was so, no doubt, for a good while after George the Third ceased to be King, because the thorough griming it has had since had hardly begun, and fields were sweet at Paddington, and the Regent could be bacchanalian in that big drawing-room on the first floor without any consciousness that he had a Park in the neighbourhood. Oh dear—how near the country Cavendish Square was in those days!
By the time Queen Victoria was on the throne the grime had set in in earnest, and was hard at work long before the fifty-one Exhibition reported progress—progress in bedevilment, says the Pessimist? Never mind him! Let him sulk in a corner while the Optimist dwells on the marvellous developments of which fifty-one was only symptomatic—the quick-firing guns and smokeless powder; the mighty ships, a dozen of them big enough to take all the Athenians of the days of Pericles to the bottom at once; the machines that turn out books so cheap that their contents may be forgotten in six months, and no one be a penny the worse; the millionaires who have so much money they can't spend it—heaps and heaps of wonders up-to-date that no one ever feels surprised at nowadays. The Optimist will tell you all about them. For the moment, let's pretend that none of them have come to pass, and get back to Cavendish Square at the date of the story, and the suite of rooms on the second floor that had been Sister Nora's town anchorage when she first made Dave Wardle's acquaintance as an unconscious Hospital patient, and that had been renovated since her father's death to serve as a pied-à-terre until she could be sure of her arrangements in the days to come.
Her friends were not the least too tired, thank you, after the journey, to be shown the great drawing-room, on which the touching incident in the life of a Royal Personage had conferred an historical dignity. "I think—" said she "—only I haven't quite made up my mind yet—that I shall call this ward Mrs. Fitzherbert, and the next room Princess Caroline. Or the other way round. Which do you think?" For one of her schemes was to turn the old family mansion into a Hospital.