"Um!" said Dr. Harding. "A very close shave from pneumonia. He can"t be moved yet, unless, of course, you"d like me to send for an ambulance.
That"s up to you."
Graham shook his head. "No," he said. "I don"t want that. I think he"d better be--I mean I don"t want my father--Oh, well, I dare say you understand."
"Yes," said Dr. Harding, "I"m afraid I do. G.o.d knows what the percentage of disaster is from men having soused themselves like that. It seems to me that your brother, who had obviously caught a severe chill, must have set out deliberately to make himself drunk, and mixed everything in sight."
Graham held his peace. But his blood tingled at the knowledge that he had given Kenyon something that he would never forget and which would make it necessary for him to remain in the seclusion of his state-room for some days at least.
The young doctor sat down and wrote a prescription and went on quickly to tell Graham what to do. Finally he rose. "I"ll look in again this evening," he said. "You"ll be here, won"t you? Of course we shall get him all right in a couple of days or so,--that is, right enough to go home,--but----"
"But what?" asked Graham.
"Well," said Dr. Harding, "I may have to leave the rest of the treatment to your father." He shook his head several times on his way to the door. He had taken one or two close, examining looks of Nellie Pope.
"Mr. Guthrie, you"re wanted."
Graham turned sharply. Nellie Pope, waiting until the doctor had gone, put her head in at the door. "Come on in," she said. "Come on in!"
Graham followed her into the bedroom and bent over Peter. Opening his eyes with some difficulty, as though they hurt him, Peter looked about.
The room was strange. The face of the girl was strange. The whole thing seemed to belong to a dream. Then he recognized his brother. "You got away, then," he said.
"Got away?"
"Yes. By Jove, what a blaze! The last time I saw you, you were carrying mother along the pa.s.sage. I could hardly see you for smoke. I got Betty out into the street and dived back into the house. Father was the only one left. Good G.o.d, what awful flames! The library was red hot. I got into the middle of it, choking and yelling for father, when something fell on my head. Is he--dead?"
"No," said Graham. "He"s all right."
A little smile broke out on Peter"s face and he sighed and turned over and went to sleep again.
Nellie Pope made a comical grimace. "I don"t wonder that "e"s been dreaming about a fire," she whispered. She arranged the covers over Peter"s shoulder with a deft and sympathetic hand, and then took Graham"s arm and led him out into the pa.s.sage. "You"ve got your work.
Push off. I"ll see to the medicine when it comes. Don"t you worry. Get back as soon as you can, and while you"re away I"ll look after "im like a sister. I like "im, poor boy! My goodness! why don"t somebody put the lid on all the distilleries? Half the troubles in the world "ud be prevented that way!"
Very reluctantly Graham acted on the girl"s suggestion that he should return to his office. He was in the middle of very important work. He held out his hand. "You"re a d.a.m.ned good little sort," he said, "and I"m intensely grateful."
Nellie Pope"s eyes filled with tears. It had been a long time since she had been treated so humanly or had her hand so warmly clasped. But she screwed out a laugh and waved her hand to Graham as he let himself out.
She spent the rest of the day in and out of the bedroom. With her eyes continually on her clock, she devoted herself untiringly and with the utmost efficiency to looking after her patient. To the very instant she gave him his medicine and said cheery, pleasant things to him every time she had to wake him up to administer it. It was an odd and wonderful day for her, as well as for Peter,--filled with many touches of curious comedy, the comedy of life--and many moments of queer pathos. Once she had to listen to a little outburst of incoherent love, when Peter insisted on telling her what an angel Betty was. Once she was obliged to hear what Peter had to say about his father, from which she gathered that this man was responsible for the burning house from which this boy had only just been able to escape alive, having saved his family. The obsession of fire remained with Peter until the evening, when he woke up with a clear brain, and having taken his medicine, looked at her with new eyes.
"What"s all this?" he asked quietly. "Where am I, and who are you?"
"Oh, that"s all right," said Nellie Pope.
"Is it? Are you a nurse?"
"Yes," she said.
"Is this a hospital?"
"Yes,--that is, a nursing home," she said.
"Oh!" said Peter. "Where"s Kenyon?"
"I don"t know, dearie."
"What on earth was that filth that he gave me to drink? I carried the books into his room, and then I"m hanged if I can remember--I"ve got a most frightful headache. Every time I move my head seems to split in half. How long have I been here? Was I poisoned, or what?"
"Now don"t you talk or you"ll get me into trouble. You go off to sleep like a good boy. You"ll be all right in the morning."
"Shall I? That"s good." And he heaved a big sigh and obeyed. It was extraordinary how sleep came to his rescue.
He was still asleep when Graham came back at six o"clock. Nellie Pope opened the door to him. ""E"s getting on fine," she said. "You can take that line out of your forehead. "E"s been talking quite sensibly to me.
What I don"t know about your father and your family isn"t worth knowing."
Graham tiptoed into the bedroom, drew a chair up to the side of the bed and sat down. And while he waited for the time to arrive for Peter"s next dose many strange things ran through his brain,--his own precocity--his own desire to be smart and become a man of the world--his own evening in the little shabby theatrical lodgings in Oxford with Kenyon--his dealings with Ita Strabosck--the night he had spent in his bed-room when Peter took his razors away--that awful hour when he sneaked into his father"s laboratory and under the pressure of great trouble forged his name. The only thing that gave him any sense of pleasure out of all this was the fact that he carried in his pocket a warm and spontaneous letter from Ranken Townsend, which he knew would be better to Peter than pints of medicine.
And while he sat watching, Nellie Pope ate her sausage in the kitchen and finished the instalment of the love story in her magazine.
What a world, O my masters!
XV
It was late when Graham let himself into his father"s house that night.
He had done many things that day. He had also been through much anxiety.
He felt that he deserved the right to turn in at once and sleep the sleep of the just. But Kenyon had said that Belle had been alone in his rooms the night before and the queer expression that had come into his eyes as he made the remark lived most uneasily in Graham"s memory. He now knew Nicholas Kenyon to be a skunk--an unscrupulous individualist devoid of loyalty, incapable of feeling true friendship and in every way unfit to have any dealings, unwatched, with a girl unless she was in his own set or belonged to the same cla.s.s as the two chorus girls for whom he had waited outside the stage door of the Oxford Theatre.
He was well aware of the fact that Belle had been something more than merely attracted by Kenyon. He had even hoped that she might be engaged to be married to him, being very proud to believe that some day soon she might become the wife of the man under whose spell he, like all the rest of the family, had fallen. Now, however, in the light of Kenyon"s hideous treatment of Peter, he saw his one-time hero with eyes from which all the glamour of his appearance had disappeared and he was filled with an overwhelming desire to see Belle at once and make it clear to her, bluntly and finally, that she must clear Kenyon out of her mind as a house is rid of vermin. Belle was, as he well knew, a high-spirited, amazingly imperious, independent girl, with strong emotions. She was not one who would be turned lightly, or even driven, out of a line of thought. She was, on the contrary, as difficult to treat as an unbroken filly and could only be managed with the lightest of hands. If she really and truly loved Kenyon and still believed in him, he knew that he could not say anything that would prejudice him in her estimation, even by telling her what he had done to Peter. She would be able to produce reasons, however far-fetched, to make that incident seem less ugly. There was, however, the chance--just the chance--that she would be open to conviction. After much inward argument and hesitation he decided to go up to Belle"s room, and if she were not asleep, to have a little talk with her and find out how the land lay, and if he could see any possibility of adding to his punishment of Kenyon to do so by putting him in his true colour before Belle.
It took him some time to come to this decision and screw up his courage to face Belle. For nearly an hour he paced up and down the quiet library, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Belle was likely to tell him to go and hang himself if she considered that he was b.u.t.ting into her private affairs. He knew this,--no one better. He had often done so before. He decided, however, to run this risk and, in the hope that she might still be up, went upstairs and stood for a moment listening outside her door. He could hear no sound in her room, no movement, no creak of a drawer being opened or shut. He knocked softly and waited,--was just going to knock again when the door was opened.
With her beautiful black hair done for the night and a pink kimono over her night-dress, Belle stood in the doorway with an expression of surprised inquiry in her eyes. These two had not taken the trouble to be very good friends for some years.
"Oh, it"s you, Graham," she said, but made no move.
"It"s awfully late, I know; but, if you"re not too tired, may I come in?" Graham hated himself for being self-conscious. It seemed absurd with his own sister. He wished then that he had not been quite so selfish and self-contained since he had considered himself to be a man, and had gone out of his way to keep up his old boyish relations with Belle.
He was a little surprised when she said, "Come in, dear," and made way for him. He noticed quickly as soon as she stood under the light that her eyes were red and swollen, and that there was a most unusual air about her of gentleness and dejection. He noticed, too, with immense relief, that a large photograph of Kenyon in hunting-kit which he had seen standing on her dressing-table had been taken away. A good sign!
The room was very different from Ethel"s. It had nothing of that rather anaemic ultra-modern air so carefully cultivated by the younger girl. On the contrary, everything in it was characteristic of Belle. It was full of ripe colours and solid comfort. A ma.s.s of silver things jostled each other untidily on the dressing-table. A collection of monthly fashion papers with vivid decorative covers lay on a heap on a chair, and a novel, open in the middle, had been flung, face down, on the sofa. There was no attempt at carefully shaded lights. They were all turned on and were reflected from the long gla.s.ses in a large mahogany wardrobe. The carpet all round the dressing-table was bespattered with white powder.
"I was reading when I heard your knock," she said,--"at least I was pretending to read. Sleep was miles away."
Graham sat down, hanging a pair of stockings over the arm of the chair.
"Why?" he asked.
"Oh, I don"t know, I"ve been thinking,--for a change. It"s such a new thing for me that it knocked sleep out of my head. Not nice thoughts, either."
She seemed glad to talk, Graham thought. "Anything the matter, Bee?" he asked.