Suddenly she was wide awake. The lamp had burnt down to a low rim of light. Martin was coughing in the other room. Coughing! She had never heard such a cough, something inhuman and strange. She stood up, her hands clutched. She waited. Then, as it continued, growing fiercer and fiercer, so that in spite of the closed door it seemed to be in the very room with her, she could bear it no longer.
She opened the door and went in. The room was lit by a candle placed on a chair beside the bed. Martin was sitting up, his hands clenched, his face convulsed. The cough went on--choking, convulsing, as though some terrible enemy had hands at his windpipe. He grasped the bedclothes, his eyes, frightened and dilated, staring in front of him.
She went to him. He did not look at her, but whispered in a voice that seemed to come from miles away:
"Bottle ... over there ... gla.s.s."
She saw on the wash-hand stand a bottle with a medicine gla.s.s behind it. She read the directions, poured out the drops, took it over and gave it to him. He swallowed it down. She put out her arm to steady him and felt his whole body tremble beneath her hand. Gradually he was quieter. Utterly exhausted he slipped back, his head on the pillow.
She drew her chair close to the bed. He was too exhausted to speak and did not look at her at all. After a while she put her hand on his forehead and stroked it. He did not draw away from her. Slowly his head turned towards her. He lay there in the crook of her arm, she bending forward over him.
Her heart beat. She tried not to be conscious of his closeness to her, but her hand trembled as it touched his cheek.
Still he did not move away. After, as it seemed to her, a long time he was asleep. She listened to his breathing, and only then, when she knew that he could not hear, she whispered:
"Oh, Martin, I love you so! Dear Martin, I love you so much!"
She blew out the candle and, her arm beneath his head, sat there, watching.
CHAPTER II
HOBGOBLINS
The dawn had made the dark room grey when Maggie, stiff and sore from the strained position in which she had been sitting, went up to her room. She had intended not to go to bed, but weariness overcame her; she lay down on her bed, dressed as she was, and fell into a deep, exhausted slumber.
When she woke it was broad daylight. She was panic-stricken. How could she have slept? And now he might have gone. She washed her face and hands in the horrible little tin basin, brushed her hair, and then, with beating heart, went downstairs. His sitting-room was just as she had left it, the unwashed plates piled together, the red cloth over the window, the dead ashes of the fire in the grate. Very gently she opened his bedroom door. He was still in bed. She went over to him. He was asleep, muttering, his hands clenched on the counterpane. His cheeks were flushed. To her inexperienced eyes he looked very ill.
She touched him on the shoulder and with a start he sprang awake, his eyes wide open with terror, and he crying:
"What is it? No ... no ... don"t. Don"t."
"It"s all right, Martin. It"s I, Maggie," she said.
He stared at her; then dropping back on to the pillow, he muttered wearily as though he were worn out after a long struggle:
"I"m bad ... It"s my chest. There"s a doctor. They"ll tell you ... He"s been here before."
She went into the other room and rang the bell. After a time Mrs.
Brandon herself appeared.
"I"m afraid Mr. Warlock is very ill," said Maggie, trying to keep her voice from trembling. "He"s asked me to fetch the doctor who"s been here to see him before. Can you tell me who he is and where he lives?"
Mrs. Brandon"s bright and inquisitive eyes moved round the room, taking in the blue china, the hyacinth and the lamp. "Certingly," she said.
"That must be Dr. Abrams. "E lives in Cowley Street, No. 4--Dr. Emanuel Abrams. A good doctor when "e"s sober, and the morning"s the best time to be sure of "im. Certingly "e"s been in to see your friend several times. They"ve been merry together more than once."
"Where is Cowley Street?" asked Maggie.
"First to the right when you get out of the "ouse, and then second to the left again. No. 4"s the number. It"s most likely "e"ll be asleep.
Yes, Dr. Abrams, that"s the name. "E"s attended a lot in this "ouse.
Wot a pretty flower! Cheers the room up I must say. Will you be wanting another fire?"
"Yes," said Maggie. "Could Emily see to that while I"m away?"
"Certingly," said Mrs. Brandon, looking at Maggie with a curious confidential smile--a hateful smile, but there was no time to think about it.
Maggie went out. She found Cowley Street without any difficulty. Dr.
Abrams was up and having his breakfast. His close, musty room smelt of whisky and kippers. He himself was a little, fat round Jew, very red in the face, very small in the eye, very black in the hair, and very dirty in the hands.
He was startled by Maggie"s appearance--very different she was from his usual patients.
"Looked just a baby," he informed Mrs. Brandon afterwards.
"Mrs. Warlock?" he asked.
"No," said Maggie defiantly. "I"m a friend of Mr. Warlock"s."
"Ah, yes--quite so." He wiped his mouth, disappeared into another room, returned with a shabby black bag and a still shabbier top hat, and declared himself ready to start.
"It"s pneumonia," he told her as they went along. "Had it three weeks ago. Of course if he was out in yesterday"s fog that finished him."
"He was out," said Maggie, "for a long time."
"Quite so," said Dr. Abrams. "That"s killed him, I shouldn"t wonder."
He snuffled in his speech and he snuffled in his walk.
Before they had gone very far he put his hand on Maggie"s arm; she hated his touch, but his last words had so deeply terrified her that nothing else affected her. If Martin were killed by going out yesterday then she had killed him. He had gone out to escape her. But she drove that thought from her as she had driven so many others.
"The pneumonia"s bad enough," said the little man, becoming more confidential as his grip tightened on her arm, "but it"s heart"s the trouble. Might finish him any day. Tells me his father was the same.
What a nice warm arm you"ve got, my dear--it"s a pleasant day, too."
They entered the house and Dr. Abrams stayed chatting with Emily in the pa.s.sage for a considerable time. Any one of the opposite s.e.x seemed to hare an irresistible attraction for him.
When they went upstairs the doctor was so held by his burning curiosity that it was difficult to lead him into Martin"s bedroom. Everything interested him; he bent down and felt the tablecloth with his dirty thumb, then the soil round the hyacinth, then the blue china. Between every investigation he stared at Maggie as though he were now seeing her for the first time. At last, however, he was bending over Martin, and his examination was clever and deft; he had been, like his patient, used to better days. Martin was very ill.
"The boy"s bad," he said, turning sharply round upon Maggie.
From the speaking of that word, for six days and six nights he was Maggie"s loyal friend and fellow-combatant. They fought, side by side, in the great struggle for Martin"s life. They won; but when Maggie tried to look back afterwards on the history of that wrestling, she saw nothing connectedly, only the candle-light springing and falling, the little doctor"s sharp eyes, the torn paper of the wall, the ragged carpet, and always that strange mask that was Martin"s face and yet the face of a stranger, something tortured and fantastic, pa.s.sing from Chinese immobility to frenzied pain, from pain to sweating exhaustion, from exhaustion back to immobility.
On the eighth day she rose, as a swimmer rises from green depths, and saw the sunshine and the landscape again.
"He"ll do if you"re careful," said Dr. Abrams, and suddenly became once more the curious, dirty, sensual little creature that he had been at first. Her only contact with the outer world had been her visits to the neighbouring streets for necessaries and one journey to the bank (the nearest branch was in Oxford Street) to settle about her money. But now, with the doctor"s words, the rest of the world came back to her.
She remembered Paul. She was horrified to realise that during these days she had entirely forgotten him. He, of course could not write to her because he did not know her address. When she saw that Martin was quietly sleeping she sat down and wrote the following letter:
13A LYNTON STREET, KING"S CROSS, April 28th, 1912.