Something in his tone brought Nellie Pope in quickly.
He was standing with his hand on the big brass knob of the bed. "You
told me that this was a nursing home," he said.
The girl laughed. How should she know what Peter had done with his
life--of the ideal that he kept so steadily in front of him? She only
knew the other kind of men. "So it is," she said. "It's _my_ home and
I've had to be your nurse. Pretty well put, I think. Don't you? 'Ow
d'you feel, dearie? A bit groggy on your pins?"
The girl's cockney accent, her made-up face, her cheap, smart clothes
were noticed by him for the first time. Her insinuating, cheerful manner
and that sort of hail-fellow-well-met intimacy that was all about her,
came to him with a new and appalling meaning. He had been spoken to by
just such women in London after dark, and on Broadway and its side
streets as he passed. They belonged to the night life of all great
cities. They were the moths who came out attracted by the glare of
electric light. Good God! What was he doing in that place?
The keen remembrance of this woman's inestimable kindness, the supreme
lack of selfishness which had inspired her to bend so frequently over
his bed, the charity of her treatment of him as he lay ill and helpless,
made him anxious above everything else not to hurt her feelings. But
there were things that he must know at once,--urgent, vital things which
might affect all the rest of his life. There was Betty his
love-girl--the girl who was to be his wife--who was waiting for him with
the most exquisite and whole-hearted trust----
"I want you to tell me how I came here," he said.
Nellie Pope went over to the dressing-table. "That's easy," she replied
lightly, adding a new coat of color to her lips. "The night before last,
not having 'ad any luck, I was 'aving a last look round and 'appened to
be in Forty-eighth Street just as you staggered out of a 'ouse on the
arm of a young gent. I reckoned 'e didn't 'ave any use for me, being
outside 'is own place, but I passed 'im the usual greetin' from force of
'abit, just as 'e 'ad called up a taxi. With a funny look on 'is
face,--a curly smile I called it to meself,--'e suddenly gave me orders,
lumped you into the cab, blind to the wide, and told me to get in and
take you 'ome, and 'elp meself to any money you 'ad on you. Well, I did,
and the next instalment of the serial you know as well as I do. Feeling
weak, old dear?"
Peter sat heavily on the foot of the bed.
Nellie Pope went on,--simply and naturally, like one who is glad to
talk, glad to hear her own voice, indescribably, pathetically glad to be
in the company of a man who asked for nothing, who was not a guest, but
a friend--a fellow-creature down on his luck. "Me and Graham," she
said,--"and, I say, what a good-looking boy that is, and fairly devoted
to you, dearie,--well, 'im and me think that you must 'ave done
something to get the goat of this young feller. 'E doped you, that's
certain, and then passed you off on me. Enjoyed the joke, as it were,
too, according to what I noticed. Is that likely?"
Peter didn't answer. The joke--? Back into his mind came the many things
that Kenyon had said to him at Oxford: "You need humanizing, old boy.
You want to be hauled off that self-made pedestal of yours. One of these
days you'll come to an unholy crash--" Back into his mind also came
Kenyon's taunts made to him as he stood with his back to the fireplace
in the library the night after they had returned from having seen Ita
Strabosck: "You're blind! Blind! I tell you, and in that room sits a man
whose patients you may become."
Utterly ignorant of the feeling of revenge which had surged through
Kenyon's brain after Belle had been saved by the Doctor, it was borne
in on Peter, as he sat on the bed of this poor little night-bird, that
Kenyon had set out on purpose--with calculated deliberation--to make him
human, as he called it, before he returned to England. He had made him
drunk in order to carry out the joke. He had given him something to
render him insensible, well knowing that in no other way could this
fiendish desire be fulfilled.
"What time is my brother coming?" he asked.
Nellie Pope was busy daubing powder on her face. "Not until about nine
o'clock," she said. "'E and me talked it over this morning. The idea is
that you're coming in on the train that arrives at the Grand Central at
eight-forty-five. Now don't forget this. You stayed the night in your
friend's apartment, but you couldn't see 'im off the next morning
because you'd taken on a bit of business for 'im which meant going out
of town. Your brother is going to meet you at the station. That's the
story. And you're going 'ome together. 'E went back to get one of your
bags. 'E will sneak it out of the 'ouse and bring it round here. Oh, I
think we're pretty good stage managers, 'im and me. You see, the notion
is that Ma mustn't be upset. Poor little Ma!"
"What's to-day?" asked Peter, whose whole body seemed suddenly to have
been frozen.
"Sunday, dearie."
"Then I've been here two nights?"
"That's so," said the girl.
Peter was consumed with a desire to explore the apartment. He wanted to
discover whether there was another bedroom. "Are you comfortable here?"
he asked, a little clumsily.
Nellie Pope was rather flattered at his interest and so genuinely
delighted to see this great big man-boy on his feet again that she could
have broken into a dance. "Come and 'ave a look at my suite," she said,
laughing at the word she chose. "You know the bedroom,--I don't think
you'll forget that in a 'urry. On the right I 'ave the sitting-room
which I only use for my customers, preferring to sit in the kitchen,
which we now come to." She led him into it, with her hand on his
arm--she was apeing the manner and the phraseology of the guide. "In
this bright little apartment, beautifully furnished with a gas stove and
dresser--not exactly Jacobean--a plain, but serviceable Deal table and a
nice piece of linoleum which 'as worn very well, the sometimes popular
Miss Nellie Pope passes most of 'er leisure. 'Ere she cooks her own
meals and washes up after 'erself,--she's a very neat little thing,--and
before going out on the long trail in all weathers, reads about life
with a big L in the magazines, in which 'eroes with curly 'air, who
stand about six-feet-six, make 'onest love to blondes with 'eads like
birds' nests, who are nearly always about six-feet-one, and never fail
to wear silk stockings,--and there you 'ave it. A charming suite for a
single lady who earns 'er own living. The only drawback to it is that
the rent 'as to be paid monthly in advance, and the blighter who
collects it gives no grace. This is the sort of thing: 'Say! Got that
rent?' 'Well--' 'Come on now, ain't got no time to waste here. Pay up
or get out--' I tell you what it is, dearie, there's a little Florida in
Hell for them men who let out apartments to us girls, and the heat there
is something intense." She laughed, but there was a curious quiver to
it.
Behind all her badinage and cheery pluck Peter could see a vein of
terror which touched his sympathies. Poor little painted, unfortunate
thing! Was there no other way in which she could live and keep her head
above water? He sat down and leaned on the table with his elbows. "Will
you tell me," he said, "what brought you to this?"
"Brought me to it?" Nellie Pope shot out a laugh. "You dear, funny old
thing!" she said. "Nothing brought me it. I chose it."
"Chose it! Chose _this_?"
"Yes, this! A great many of us choose it. It's the easiest way. That
shocks yer, doesn't it,--you who come from a comfortable home and whose
sisters 'ave everything they want. But, you listen to this and don't be
too fast to pass judgment. I was one of a big brood of unnecessary kids.
My father earned fourteen shillings a week by grubbing in the earth from
daybreak till sundown and my mother took in washing. We lived perched up
on a 'ill among a dozen dirty little cottages. What was the outlook for
me? Being dragged up with meat once a week and as a maid-of-all-work
down in the town, being ordered about by a drab of a tradesman's wife,
with not enough wages to buy a new 'at and a little bit of finery for
Sundays, and then be married to a lout who got drunk regularly every
Saturday night and made me what mother was,--a dragged, anaemic, dull
animal woman, working up to the time I 'ad a baby and working directly
afterwards,--no colour, no lights, no rush and bustle, no decent clothes
to put on, no independence. Yes, I chose it, and if I 'ad my time over
again I should choose it again. See! It's the easiest way. Oh, yes, we
die young and nobody knows where we're buried, but we've 'ad our day,
and it's the day that every woman fights for, the same as every man. Oh,
by the way, 'ere's your purse!" She pushed it over to Peter.
"My purse?" he said.
"Yes; don't you recognize it? It hasn't got so much in it as it 'ad,
because I was told to 'elp meself, and I did. I 'ave jotted down what I
'ave taken; 'ere's the account." She held out a piece of paper on which
Peter could see a list of spendings, which included a taxicab fare and a
nickel for telephoning. At the end of it there was an item entitled
"Fee, thirty dollars."
Peter shuddered. He pushed the remainder of the money back to her across
the table. "Please keep it," he said.
Nellie Pope laughed again. She was full of laughter. "I hoped you'd say
that," she said. "It'll come in mighty useful."
Peter felt in his pocket and took out his cheque-book. He looked about
and saw a bottle of ink and a pen on the dresser, with a piece of
dilapidated blue blotting-paper. Watched with peculiar interest and
excitement by Nellie Pope, he got up, went over to the dresser and
wrote a cheque. "Will you accept this?" he asked. "I wish I could make
it larger. But if it was ten times the amount it couldn't possibly cover
my gratitude to you. You've been awfully kind to me. Thank you, Nellie."
He held it out.
The girl took it and gave a little cry. "Five hundred dollars! Oh, Gawd!
I didn't know that there was so much money in the world." She burst into
tears, but went on talking. "Mostly I can't afford to cry, because it
washes the paint off my face, and it's very expensive. But what do I
care, with this blooming cheque in my 'and? I shall be able to take a
little 'oliday from business and, my word, that's a treat. God makes one
or two gentlemen from time to time, 'pon my soul he does. Put it there,
Peter." She held out her hand with immense cordiality and gratitude, and
Peter took it warmly.
But he had discovered what he wanted to know. There was only one bed in
that apartment, and back into his mind came Kenyon's words. "Blind!
Blind!--both of you--and in that room sits a man whose patients you may
become."