Melissa’s headache, however, had other and, as speedily developed,
less spiritual reason, than concern for Murdock’s clearness of vision.
It was a dull, persistent heavy headache and had endured two days,
coiled sluggishly within her eye-sockets before apprehension touched
her and she looked about for cure other than copious doses of aspirin
and a cool wet cloth across the forehead. Recurrent slight shivers of a
peculiar and inner chill reinforced the headache ... equally recurrent
waves of an unreasonable and flickering heat. Melissa’s back ached
steadily and abominably. Every muscle in her body ached as if she had
been stretched upon a rack. Depression enveloped her like a fog. She
had a great fire built and sat before it wrapped in a woolly bathrobe,
wondering pitifully if she were sickening for mortal illness.
Kathleen upon the third day of these fairly obvious symptoms, took
command and called in a doctor, from an office a block away.
“Ye’ll be havin’ flu--or I’m much mistaken!” said Kathleen.
She was not much mistaken--Doctor Wolfe, a Teutonic blond,
rough-mannered, said the same, with a trifle more circumlocution,
perhaps. Making play with the usual tubes and earpieces. Listening at
Melissa’s chest--peering down her throat--taking her pulse--frowning
sharply at her tongue.
“You should have been in bed,” said Doctor Wolfe--“a week ago!”
Melissa lifted blood-shot eyes and managed a frightened smile.
“I’ve never been ill in my life.”
“You’re ill now,” he assured her brusquely.
“Am I--going--to die?” asked Melissa.
“Not if you do as I tell you,” said Doctor Wolfe. He added, writing
busily upon a little pad after the fashion of doctors the world over
... “I’ll send you in a nurse.”
“Oh--” moaned poor Melissa--“am I as sick as that?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Doctor Wolfe, a little more kindly--he was not
after all impervious to the pathetic charm of Melissa’s slim, wilted
person, huddled among cushions on the couch, hot-cheeked, heavy-eyed,
rumple-headed.
“You don’t want to be sick up here in this apartment all by
yourself--do you? I’ll get you some one I know. Some one who’ll take
good care of you.”
“Is it flu?” asked Melissa faintly.
“You’ve got a bad throat--and one or two other things,” evaded the
doctor. With Kathleen out, in the hallway, he was brutally frank.
“She’ll be lucky if it isn’t pneumonia. Get her to bed at once--give
her the first dose of that prescription I gave you, as soon as the
drugstore can fix it up. See that she’s kept covered. Are you her maid?”
“I’m a maid in the house here,” said Kathleen simply. “I go off at
three but I’ll stay till the trained nurse comes. The poor lamb! ...
Some wan ought to be told--but she ain’t got kith nor kin that ever I
see!”
“No relations nor friends?” inquired Doctor Wolfe, stroking his chin
thoughtfully. “No one at all? That’s odd!”
“There’s the Marchesa, of course,” offered Kathleen. “Had I better let
the Marchesa know?”
“Who’s the Marchesa?”
“The Marchesa di Ricci,” said Kathleen, cocking her head and tilting
her round pink chin with a touch of pleasurable snobbery. “She’s the
old lady whose nevvew owns this apar-r-tment. He owns the house, Mister
Roderick does--only he’s away in Japan, now ... and Miss Wayne sub-let
...”
“I see--I see!” said Doctor Wolfe. Indubitably before a Marchesa and
a Mister Roderick he took on a touch of deeper interest in the case.
“Miss Wayne any relation to the old lady?”
“Not that I know of,” said Kathleen doubtfully. “But g-r-reat friends!”
“Better tell her, then,” said Doctor Wolfe. “I’ll send a nurse over at
once and look in again myself this evening.”
He went away, swinging a little black bag and whistling under his
breath “Du bist wie eine Blume” ... an unconscious tribute perhaps
even at such an unpropitious time.
Kathleen put Melissa to bed none too soon, piled blankets to her chin
and administered directly it arrived, the Doctor’s medicine.
After which--for Melissa herself--arrived very shortly oblivion of
an unreal and pain-shot sort. Fathoms deep she sank, shivering and
burning, into an abyss of turgid slumber. Her limbs were clogged. She
dreamed of weights, of chains, at wrist and ankle. She dreamed of
a dead thing bound upon her breast--a dead thing that yet cruelly,
violently ached. She dreamed of flames licking her face, threatening
her eyes. She opened those eyes beneath the clammy contours of
an ice-cap and heard an unfamiliar voice say quietly--“It’s all
right--don’t throw your covers off now ...”
“Yours of the seventeenth instant received,” replied Melissa, speaking
rapidly--“and in reply should like to say ... tomato soup, a lamb
chop and apple tapioca--no cream, please! Country boys like them fine
looking....”
She said a good deal more--along the same rather tangled
lines--muttering other things quite as indistinguishable and sometimes
just plaintively groaning. From somewhere a long way off, she heard her
own groans and they vaguely terrified her. By that time daylight had
gone and the bedroom was shadowy and still.
There was a personage with a white cap who came and went after a
while beside the bed. Melissa, not entirely unaware of this newcomer,
addressed her sometimes as Mrs. Robinson--sometimes as Granny....
“Granny--you liar!” said Melissa once--and added a string of
gutter-snipe profanity. “You white-headed, black-hearted liar!” ...
“There, there!” soothed the white-capped one undisturbed. Adding, to
Kathleen standing frightened in the doorway--“The nicest of them do
that. Funny! Might have heard it sometime in the street--no telling.
Who’s Granny?”
“God knows!” said Kathleen, crossing herself. “Not a relative has ever
come near her.” ...
Then, there was sun once more, streaming in at the eastern windows,
only sun was as good as a sword-thrust through Melissa’s poor eyes, so
she lay with a cold compress across them and the person in the white
cap kept the shades drawn low.
Kathleen came and went very softly. No swishing of mop, no cheerful
bustle of broom and dust-pan for Kathleen now.
“The poor lamb!” was Kathleen’s cry. “And her all soul alone!--The poor
sick lamb!”
On the second day appeared the Marchesa, plumes nodding on a smart new
bonnet, her mouth more brightly rouged than ever.
Miss Kenning, the day-nurse met her in the living-room, invited her
to sit down, and regarded her primly. Against Miss Kenning’s starched
white immobility, crisp brown hair and smooth pink cheeks, the Marchesa
assumed the aspect of something of Hogarth’s which had been left out
in a variety of weathers and only inadequately retouched.
“How is Miss Wayne this morning?” inquired the Marchesa. She reared a
lorgnon set in brilliants and stared at Miss Kenning regally.
“She has still a good deal of temperature,” admitted Miss Kenning.
“Flu, I suppose?” said the Marchesa.
Miss Kenning began the customary polite evasion.
“Yes--or no!” snapped the visitor.
“Er--yes,” said Miss Kenning considerably startled.
“Kathleen tells me she’s been out of her head.”
“A little--most of the time.”
“Has she--spoken of any one in particular?” inquired the Marchesa
sharply.
“Why--there’s some one she calls Granny....”
“That’s me!” said the Marchesa, feminine reticence weaker than
curiosity.
“Oh--” said Miss Kenning.
“What are you oh-ing about?” demanded the Marchesa grimly.
Miss Kenning with her mind full of white-headed, black-hearted liars
and other less mentionable fauna merely opened her mouth and shut it
again.
“I’m going in to see her,” said the Marchesa rising.
“I’m sorry,” Miss Kenning began....
“Open that door!” said the Marchesa, and Miss Kenning opened the door.
She said to Kathleen later--“I thought if Miss Wayne called her
Granny--I didn’t quite feel I could keep her out.”
Which was no more than true. She hadn’t quite felt she could keep the
Marchesa out--but that, as a feeling, had less to do with Melissa’s
calling the Marchesa Granny, than Miss Kenning implied.
As for the Marchesa herself, she went into Melissa’s room very
softly--more softly than might have been expected of those ridiculous
little French heels, drew a chair to the bedside and sat down.
Melissa, lying slim and straight and still, with one white arm
outside the covers, an ice-cap pressed down upon her brows, her dark
hair streaming out across the pillow, looked pitifully young--and
defenseless.
“Well, my dear!” said the Marchesa, with, for her, unbelievable
gentleness.
Melissa opened her big dark eyes, bigger and darker than ever in the
shadow of the ice-cap and groaned--no other comments.
“I’m sorry to see you so ill,” said the Marchesa--“you are not to worry
about--anything--understand? You must have a night nurse, too--and as
many doctors as you like.”
“I loathe doctors,” said Melissa feebly but viciously. “Don’t bring any
damned doctor in here--I won’t see him!”
Miss Kenning had come into the room. Standing at the foot of the bed
she put a finger to her lip, looked at the Marchesa and frowned.
The Marchesa sat silent. Melissa lay silent. The room was full of
silence of a distinctly uneasy sort. Out of which Melissa presently
began again--without opening her eyes this time, and rubbing one hand
restlessly back and forth across the coverlet.
“You will come back--in a little while--won’t you? ... it’s so hot
in this room! ... you haven’t any coat on--that’s why? Get up--get
up and come here! I want to look at you close--you’re all blurred.
Please--please get up and come here.... Oh, I’m so hot! I want you to
hold my hand....”
Miss Kenning stirred but the Marchesa shot her an imperious look, put
her own hand over Melissa’s and held it tight. Then she leaned forward,
listening intently. Melissa, with her hand in the Marchesa’s was still
for a little. Only a little....
“I want you--” muttered Melissa--“to stay--I don’t want you to go away
at all. I can’t see you--when you’re gone. I can’t hear you.... I want
you to talk to me. I want to look at the back of your head--I’ve never
seen the back of your head--and it makes such a difference....”
Across the bed the Marchesa uncannily bright-eyed cocked an inquisitive
glance at Miss Kenning. Her painted lips shaped--“Who?”
“Old vulture!” thought Miss Kenning and merely shrugged.
Clinging to the Marchesa’s hand, Melissa murmured huskily--“If you’d be
you--I’d be me--and what we couldn’t do!... I’m going to wait.... It’s
no good my trying--I’ve got to wait....”
“Ah-ha!” said the Marchesa to herself and leaned a bit nearer.
“I’ll wait--” said Melissa unsteadily--“you will come back--won’t you?
... call that rickshaw man--he has the tea!”
Having thus laid her secret treasure in the Marchesa’s greedy palm,
Melissa drifted off into a troubled sleep and the Marchesa, slipping
her fingers free and rising, followed Miss Kenning once more into the
outer room.
“Does she ask for some one called Roderick?” inquired the Marchesa
curtly.
Her masterful inflection procured her an answer--“Mister Roderick,”
corrected Miss Kenning stiffly.
“H’mph!” said the Marchesa. “Much?”
“Pretty often,” admitted Miss Kenning, who possessed a certain amount
of curiosity upon her own side. “Is it some one she knows?”
“Would she be talking about him if it weren’t?”
“Talking _to_ him,” corrected Miss Kenning. “She talks to him for
hours. She usually thinks he has his coat off--and she seems to connect
him in some way with the furnishing of this apartment. Could he be the
decorator?”
“He might--but I doubt it,” said the Marchesa.
“Well--whoever he is--she seems to be crazy about him,” Miss Kenning
offered bluntly. “She’ll be quiet, any time she thinks he’s sitting
there holding her hand. I’ve had to do it a good deal.”
“Upon my word!” said the Marchesa. She glanced about Mister Roderick’s
sitting-room, sniffed and--suddenly--sighed. “Of all the incredible
things--I might have known ... well ... poor child!” Which was for the
Marchesa sentiment unheard-of. She added almost at once--“What’s your
honest opinion--is she dangerously ill?”
“Why--the doctor doesn’t think so, to-day,” said Miss Kenning
cautiously. “He thinks in some ways--she’s better. You see--as I told
you--some people run a high temperature more easily than others--and
go out of their heads with a fairly _slight_ temperature--so there you
are! Has Miss Wayne any--ah--worries--that might aggravate things for
her, do you know?”
“Quite possibly she has,” said the Marchesa--herself not too reckless
with information. In the doorway, however, she turned, an odd look of
decision upon her face.... “Next time she asks for Mister Roderick ...
tell her he’s coming back ... very soon.”
“I see,” said Miss Kenning with professional calm.
“I shall cable for him to-day,” continued the Marchesa loftily. She was
riding the crest of a great moment, playing a beautiful scene up to the
hilt. She might have preferred a more extensive and less antagonistic
audience but the white-capped, white-uniformed, young woman before
her was better than nothing, beside being from moment to moment more
visibly impressed.
“Miss Wayne is to have everything she needs,” decreed the Marchesa,
Royalty itself in her voice and air. Thus might great Catherine
have stooped to ensure the happiness of a faithful female retainer.
Catherine was in the Marchesa’s mind--doubtless--Marie Antoinette--Mary
Stuart--one or two other notable women.
“I shall come in again--some time to-morrow....”
Miss Kenning replied that that would be nice.
“Roderick will be simply dumbfounded!” observed the Marchesa, and went
away full of little flickering smiles. Like fire in dry grass. The
dumbfounding of Roderick in itself offered to her agile intelligence,
no unworthy project.
Upon her limousined way to the cable office the Marchesa composed a
masterpiece. “Return earliest possible date proposition awaiting you.”
Which proposition of course was Melissa--lying fever-dazed beneath her
blankets and ice-caps.
If Melissa could have seen the Marchesa sending that cable! Licking her
lips over it. Purring with satisfaction. Being a great lady, and a dea
ex machina, and a Delphic oracle all rolled into one.
Melissa at the time saw nothing very clearly, beyond a quiet young man,
with a cigarette between his fingers, a slight smile upon his mouth,
standing now at the window, looking out across the Park ... now before
the fire with one hand upon the mantelshelf ... now beside the bed,
looking down, laying his strong cool fingers over her tired and burning
ones.
“Don’t go away ... please, Mister Roderick--don’t go away!” begged
Melissa, and Miss Kenning sighed and settled closer in her chair,
shifted a cramped wrist and murmured something soothing.
Vicarious emotion was not Miss Kenning’s forte. She considered that she
would be glad when Melissa’s fever dropped and this sob-stuff was over.