With wide-eyed anxiety, Graham, having driven straight back, waited for
the doctor's verdict. The two young men stood alone in the little
sitting-room. With a touch of delicacy, which they were quick to notice,
Nellie Pope made no attempt to follow them in.
"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. God 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 passage. 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 God, 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 passage. "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 damned 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!