Prelude to Waking

I first met Merlin in Chicago. We were there on cognate business. I had
my flipper shattered early in the war and through my diplomatic
connexions, and being a bright young man, was told-off to cross the
Atlantic in the cause of inducing the mighty Republic to mop up her
military glory on the Allies' side of the Western Front.

Merlin, being a bright young woman, had achieved the Balkan Fronts during
some of the first great battles and retreats, and had been persuaded to
collect North American funds for the Women's War Hospitals. This, she
explained, took much more courage than to cross the Plain of Kossovo in a
blizzard, to gather up human fragments under shell-fire around Bitolj, or
to go on retreat from Ushtsche to Podgoritza over a trail where the howl
of the wolves sometimes blotted out the sound of the pursuing guns, where
the lorries decorated the sides of the icy precipices, and where the weak
dropped out continuously: but there is an immolating streak of Puritanism
in Merlin. It makes her on occasion see duty where every instinct rebels,
and this, plus her adoration of the Serbs, sent her on that pilgrimage.

She was whoppingly successful at drawing-room meetings. She is the kind
of person by whom the rich love to be slanged, and all American cities
are as rich in rich women as a Christmas cake in plums, most of them
Nonconformistically industrious in good works. True, some of them
accomplish little beyond the sentimental evaporation consequent upon
sitting in luxurious halls or "parlours" listening to talks about the
unsavoury conditions of less efficient and less enterprising nationals,
but the harvest was high for Merlin.

In a toy theatre, artistic and luxurious as a jewel box, on a certain
evening, some war lions--French, Belgian and British--were undergoing
entertainment, and a Miss Giltinane and I had been yarded to wave the
Union Jack. During the obsequies (of enjoyment) my interest was aroused
by overhearing a cool British voice insisting, "I haven't time to undergo
any private entertainment, really I haven't, though...."

One of Chicago's Great Ladies, who was offering the entertainment, had
other things besides wealth, and the wit to show them. "You cute little
piece of audacity!" she exclaimed. "Only a Britisher would have the nerve
to be impatient with a woman of my dollars, even in such a bewitching
way. Let's elope for the evening!"

"But what about my hospitals? If you could see those poor darling Serbs
staggering along a trail of death and destruction, shivering with
malaria, with nothing in their knapsacks but a sodden hit of
bread--nearly all holes! I'm tied on this ghastly collection wheel."

"I'll give you the biggest donation of anyone in Chicago," said the Great
Lady, "if you'll slip right out now and spend the evening with me."

"Righto! That's a bargain. I'm engaged," said Miss Giltinane. Off they
went together, the rich woman with a protecting arm around the poor one,
and agreeing that the merely rich should be compelled to wear their
earrings in their noses to the end that the likes of Miss Giltinane and
the Great Lady should not be misled into wasting time on the likes of
such, i.e. the merely rich.