XI
A little over twenty-four years before, Nellie Pope had been born to two honest, hard-working country folk. They lived in a village of about two dozen cottages a stone"s throw from the great cross cut by the Romans on the chalky side of Chiltern Hills, in England. Her parents" quiver had already been a full one and there was indeed very little room in it for the new arrival. Eight other boys and girls had preceded her with a rapidity which must have surprised nature herself, bounteous as she is.
The father, a deep-chested, brown-bearded, very ignorant, but good-natured man, worked all the year round on a farm. His wages were fourteen shillings a week. The wife, who had been a domestic servant, added to the family pot by taking in washing and, if able, helping at the big house when guests were there. Neither of them had ever been farther away from their native village than the town which lay in the saucer of the valley, the steeple of whose church could be seen glinting in the sun away below.
Little Nellai, as she was called, was thrown on her own resources from the moment that she could crawl out of the narrow kitchen door into the patch of garden where potatoes grew and eager chickens played the scavenger for odd morsels of food. Her eldest sister was her real mother, and it was she who daily led her little brood of dirty-faced children out into the beech forest which stood in strange silence behind the cottage. The monotonous years slipped by one after another, enlivened only by a death or a birth or a fight, or a very occasional jaunt to the town in one of the farm wagons, perched up on a load of hay or wedged in between sacks of potatoes. Little Nellai"s pretty face and fair hair very soon made her a pet of the lady at the big house, and it was from this kind, but mistaken person, from whom she obtained the seeds of discontent which at the early age of sixteen sent her into the town as a "help" in the kitchen of a man who kept a garage. It was from this place, on the main road to London, that Nellie Pope saw life for the first time and became aware of the fact that the world was a larger place than the little village perched up so near the sky, and caught the fever of discovery from the white dust that was left behind by the cars which sped to London one way, and to Oxford the other.
During this first year among shops and country louts, Nellie became aware of the fact that her pretty face and fair hair were very valuable a.s.sets. They procured her candies and many other little presents. They enabled her to make a choice among the young men with whom to walk out.
They won smiles and pleasant words not only from the chauffeurs of the cars which came into her master"s garage to be attended to, but also from their owners. Eventually it was one of these--more unscrupulous than most--who, staying for a few days at the "Red Lion," carried Nellie away with him to London, after several surrept.i.tious meetings in the shady lane at the back of the churchyard. There it was that she saw life with very naked eyes, pa.s.sed quickly from one so-called protector to another, was taken to the United States by one of a troupe of gymnasts, and then deserted. For two years she had been numbered among the night birds who flit out after dark--a member of the oldest profession in the world. There were, however, no moments in her life--hard, terrible and sordid as it was--when she looked back with anything like regret at those heavily thatched cottages which stood among their little gardens on the side of the hills. She could put up with the fatigue, brutality and uncertainty, the gross actuality of her present life, with courage, cheerfulness and even optimism, but the mere thought of the deadly monotony of that peaceful village, where summer followed winter with inexorable routine, made her shudder. The first pretty frock which had been given her by the lady of the big house had begun the work. The candies and the little presents from the country louts had completed it; and here she was, still very young, with a heart still kind and with a nature not yet warped and brutalized,--a danger to any community in which she lived, the deliberate spreader of something so frightful that science and civilization stood abashed in her presence.
Vanity has much to answer for, and out of nature spring many plants whose tempting berries are filled with poison.
It was in the bed of this wretched little woman that the unconscious Peter slept that night.
It was ten o"clock in the morning when the weary girl faced another day.
She didn"t grumble at the fact that she had been frequently disturbed and had watched many of the hours go by while she attended to Peter with something of the spirit of a Magdalen. She kept repeating to herself: "Poor boy! Poor boy! I wonder what his mother would say if she saw him like this."
She bathed his head, listened with astonishment to his babbling, and tried to piece together his incoherent pleading with Ranken Townsend and his declarations to Betty of his everlasting love. She listened with acute interest to the broken sentences which showed her that this great big man-boy was endeavoring to stir up his father to do something which seemed to him to be urgent and vital, and she wondered who Graham was, and Nicholas.
The first thing that she did when she was dressed and had put the kettle on her gas stove to boil, was to hunt through Peter"s pockets to find out who he was. It was obvious to her that he was not so much a customer as a patient. She was a little afraid of accepting the whole responsibility of his case. The only letter she found was one signed "Graham," headed with the address of an office in Wall Street. In the corner of it was printed a telephone number. Graham, it was plain to her, was a Christian name. She could find no suggestion of the surname of the writer or of the man who lay so heavily in the next room.
"I dunno," she said to herself. "Something has got to be done. That boy"s in a bad way. "E"s as "ot as a pancake and I shouldn"t think "e"s used to drink by the way "e takes it. Suppose hanything should "appen to "im "ere. I should look funny. What "ad I better do?"
What she did was to have breakfast. During this hasty meal she thought things over--all her hard-won practicality at work in her brain. Then she put on her befeathered hat and her white gloves, a second-best pair of shoes, and went out and along the street, and into the nearest drug store. Here she entered the telephone booth and asked for the number that was printed on Graham"s note. By that time it was just after nine o"clock. Having complied with the sharp request to slip the necessary nickel into the slot, an impatient voice recited the name of the firm.
"I want to speak to Mr. Graham," she said. "No such name--? Well, keep your "air on, Mister. I may be a client--a millionaire"s wife--for all you know. I"m asking for Mr. Graham and as "e"s a friend of mine, and probably your boss, I"m not bothering about his surname. You know that as well as I do--Do I mean Mr. Graham Guthrie? Well, yes. Who else should I mean?" She gave a chuckle of triumph. "All right! I"ll "old on."
In a moment or two there was another voice on the telephone. "How d"you do?" she said. "I"m holding a letter signed by you, to "Dear Peter,"--Ah! I thought that would make you jump--It doesn"t matter what my name is. What"s that--? Yes, I _do_ know where he is. I"ve been looking after "im all night. Come up to my place right away and I"ll be there to meet you. Dear Peter is far from well." She gave her address, and feeling immensely relieved left the box. But before she left the store she treated herself to a large box of talc.u.m powder and a medium-sized bottle of her favorite scent, paying the bill with Peter"s money. She considered herself to be fully justified.
On the way home she dropped into a delicatessen shop and bought some sausages, a bottle of pickles, a queer German salad of raw herring chopped up with carrots and onions, and carried these away with her. On her way up-stairs--the bald, hard stairs--she was greeted by a half-dressed person whose hair was in curl-papers and who had opened her door to pick up a daily paper which lay outside. "h.e.l.lo, Miss Pope!
Anything doing?" "Yes," said Nellie Pope, "the market"s improving," and she laughed and went on.
Peter was still lying inert when she bent over him once more. She felt his head again, put the covers about his shoulders, pulled the blind more closely over the window, and after having put the food away returned to make up her face. She wasn"t going to be caught looking what she called "second-rate" by this Mr. Graham Guthrie when he came.
There being no need to practice rigid economy at that moment, she gave herself a gla.s.s of beer and sat down to pa.s.s the time with her magazine, in which life was regarded through very rosy spectacles.
When finally she opened the door, in response to a loud and insistent ring, her answer to Graham"s abrupt question: "Is my brother _here_?"
was "Yes; why shouldn"t he be?" She didn"t like the tone. The word "here" was underlined in an unnecessarily unpleasant manner.
XII
"What"s my brother doing here?" asked Graham.
"What d"you s"pose? Better go and ask "im yourself."
"Where is he?"
"In bed, if you must know." The girl answered sharply. She found her caller supercilious. She followed him into the bedroom, telling herself that this was a nice way to be treated for all the trouble that she had taken.
Graham bent over the bed. "Good G.o.d!" he said. "What"s the matter with him?"
"Drink!" said the girl drily.
"Drink! He never drinks."
"Then "e must "ave fallen off the water-wagon into a barrel of alcohol and opened "is mouth too wide. Also "e"s got a fever."
Graham turned on the girl. "How did he get here?"
"In a cab. You don"t s"pose I carried "im, d"you?"
"Where"d you find him?"
"I didn"t find "im. Some one gave "im to me as a present--a nice present, I must say."
"Don"t lie to me!" cried Graham. "And don"t be impudent."
"Impudent!" cried Nellie Pope, shrilly. "Here, you"d better watch what you"re saying. I don"t stand any cheek, I don"t, neither from you nor anybody else, and I"m not in the habit of lying. I tell you I was made a present of "im. I was told to take "im "ome by a young fellow on Forty-eighth Street, who "ad called up a cab."
"Forty-eighth Street,--are you sure?"
"Well, if I don"t know the streets, who does? The young fellow was a gent. He didn"t talk, he gave orders. He was tall and slight and he "ad kinky hair. Quite a nut. English, he was, any one could tell that."
"Good G.o.d!" thought Graham--"Kenyon." He sat down on the bed as though he had received a blow in the middle of his back. Only an hour before he had telephoned to Kenyon to say good-bye and wish him a pleasant crossing, and all that he said about Peter was that they had seen each other the night before. "No doubt he"s all right," he had said, in answer to Graham"s anxious question. What did it all mean? What foul thing had Kenyon done?
Graham had been up all night waiting for his brother. He had good news for him. He had pulled himself together and gone to see Ranken Townsend during the time that Peter had been walking the streets. To the artist he had made a clean breast of everything, so that he might, once for all, set Peter right in the eyes of his future father-in-law. That was the least that he could do. He had carried away from the studio in his pocket a short, generous and impulsive letter from the artist, asking Peter"s forgiveness for not having accepted his word of honor. Armed with this, Graham had waited while hour after hour slipped by, growing more and more anxious as Peter did not appear. At breakfast he told his mother--in case she should discover that Peter had not returned--that he had stayed the night in Kenyon"s rooms, as they had much to talk about and one or two things to arrange. He had been in the house when Kenyon had rung up, apologizing for being unable to come round, and thanking Mrs. Guthrie for her kindness and hospitality.
And there lay Peter inanimate and stupefied. In the name of all that was horrible, what had happened? Graham got up and faced the girl again.
"You mustn"t mind my being abrupt and rude," he said. "I"m awfully sorry. But this is my brother, my best pal, and I"ve been terribly anxious about him, and you don"t know--n.o.body knows--what it means to me to see him like this."
"Ah! Now you"re talking," said Nellie Pope. "Treat me nicely and there"s nothing I won"t do for you. If you ask me--and if I don"t know a bit more about life than you do I ought to--I have a shrewd idea that your brother was made drunk,--that is, _doped_. "E was quite gone when "e was put into the cab, and from the way that kinky-headed chap laughed as we drove off together,--I mean me and your brother,--I should think that "e "ad it in for him, but of course I don"t know hanything about that.
Perhaps you do."
Graham shook his head. "No," he said; "I don"t know anything about it either. But what are we going to do with him, that"s the point? He"s ill, that"s obvious, and a doctor ought to see him at once."
"That"s what I think," said the girl, "and I don"t think "e ought to be moved, "e"s so frightfully "ot. "E might catch pneumonia, or something.
What I think you"d better do is to call up a doctor at once, get him to give your brother a dose and give me directions as to what to do. "E can stay "ere until "e"s all right again, and I"ll nurse "im."
"Yes, but why should you----?"
"Oh, bless you, that"s all right. I"m glad to have something to do. Time hangs heavy. Besides, the poor boy is just like a baby. I like "im and you needn"t be afraid that I shall try to get anything out of "im, because I shan"t."
Graham s.n.a.t.c.hed eagerly at the proffered a.s.sistance. He was intensely grateful. "Have you a telephone here?" he asked.
Nellie Pope laughed. "What d"you take me for?" she said. "I"m not a chorus lady. When I want to use the "phone I pop round to the drug store and have a nickel"s worth. That"s how I got on to you."
Graham caught up his hat and left the apartment quickly. One of his college friends was a doctor and had just started to practice. He would ask him to come and see Peter. He agreed with the girl that it would be running a great risk to move Peter, and he was all against taking him home in his present condition. It would only lead to more lies and would certainly throw his mother into a dreadful state of anxiety.
While he was gone, Nellie Pope set to work to tidy up the bedroom. She put her boots away in a closet, got out a clean bedspread, rubbed the powder off her mirror and arranged her dressing-table. This doctor, whoever he was, should find her apartment as tidy as she could make it.
It was a matter of pride with her. She still had some of that left. One thing, however, she was determined about. The doctor must not be allowed to look too closely at her.