"If you don't tell me what it is--I'll--I'll spill it on the floor," I
said.
Helen stepped forward quickly.
"You'll take it from me, Ted, won't you?" and she offered the spoon.
"It's a sedative, dear--we had to give you such quantities of stimulants
to counteract the poison."
Calm returned, and I meekly licked the spoon.
"Take her away!" I whispered to Helen, rolling my head toward the
aggressively efficient Miss Conover, who was tidying the room
energetically.
"Ted, dear, you are getting well now. You must get used to strangers
about you, especially when they have been so kind to you as Dr. Sinclair
and Miss Conover," and Helen patted my shoulder.
Miss Conover joined in: "Didn't I tell you, Miss Helen, they was a whole
lot easier to get on with delirious than convalescent? You was wishing
for him to come out of it, but you ain't had my experience. I'd rather
put a straight jacket on a nut than fetch a pipe and tobacco for a man
the day before his hospital discharge."
Helen looked down at me with her eyes dancing, and the black murder that
had been swelling up in me, during Miss Conover's disquisition on the
care of men, subsided.
"I'll send her away, Ted," she said, kissing me. "I believe this time
you are right."
Mr. Claybourne came in, radiating cheerfulness.
"Well, Ted, old man, how's the boy?" he shouted.
"Quietly, dad, quietly," reproved Helen.
"He's that touchy! It's only the effect of the fever. They are nearly
always like that afterwards. Why, I've seen 'em pass away growling at
everybody right up to the finish," Miss Conover threw in for good
measure.
"I'm very grateful to you, Mr. Claybourne," I stammered, ignoring the
nurse.
"Oh, tell all that to Helen," he laughed. "She's responsible, anyway.
Come, little girl, it's two o'clock, and there's a big turkey and
fixin's waiting downstairs. You'll have to leave Ted awhile to eat
Thanksgiving dinner with your dad."
"There's a dramatic choice for you, Helen--parental love and duty versus
self-sacrifice beside the pallid cot of the lowly and sick," I smiled at
her.
"Dad, Ted's recovering a sense of humour--it's a little clumsy and
conceited still, but it's coming back! Dad,--why can't we have this room
cleared and our table set up here? You know Ted hasn't seen a
Thanksgiving turkey since he was a little boy. They don't have
Thanksgiving in England--and it seems so mean to go downstairs and stuff
all by ourselves!"
Mr. Claybourne looked doubtfully about the room. I sympathized with his
feelings, for a sick room is the last place one would choose for a
banquet.
"That would be too much like writing _Hamlet_ in a charnel house. Can't
you carry me downstairs? and I'll sit with Leonidas before the fire
while the rest of you gorge," I urged.
"How about that, Miss Conover?" Claybourne asked. Miss Conover looked at
me, and I suspected revenge to be brooding in her eye. Helen added her
entreaty, and the nurse wavered.
"I suppose there'll be less trouble in the end if we carry him down,
though what Dr. Sinclair will say, goodness knows," Miss Conover
conceded grudgingly. "But it'll only be for an hour, and then no more
talk or visitors today."
"Agreed," I cried; "any price you say, nurse."
"Miss Conover," she corrected.
"I beg your pardon--good nature made me careless." Helen giggled. I was
rolled up in dressing gown and blankets and carried downstairs by Mr.
Claybourne, Helen and Miss Conover followed with pillows and
miscellaneous glassware. Leonidas took a sniff at me and then greeted me
with the most exuberant enthusiasm, knocking over at least one piece of
furniture by the sheer power in his wagging tail. I had an armchair
before a fire of crackling hickory logs; there was a small table beside
me, with some of Helen's violets in a little vase in the centre.
Helen, her father, and Miss Conover sat at their gaily decked table, on
which was a mountain of autumn fruit piled about an enormous pumpkin.
The maid brought in a turkey as big as a boar's head. Mr. Claybourne
busied himself with opening a bottle of champagne. Helen insisted that
the turkey be placed before me and helped me carve the first slice
before it was removed to Mr. Claybourne's seat.
"Isn't it a shame you can't eat any of it," Helen cried. Just then I did
not care to. To tell the truth, the smell of the food made me feel so
ill I was not certain I could stick the dinner out. But I knew better
than to give Miss Conover an inkling of this. "It isn't as if one could
make a dash for the upper deck, either," I thought to myself. At a
critical moment the nurse placed some jellied bouillon before me and
threatened forcible feeding. "One inch nearer with a spoonful of that
stuff, and there'll be a real catastrophe," I murmured inwardly. I
violently waved it away. Helen flew to my rescue. "I think if we leave
Ted quite alone, he'll eat it by himself when he feels like it," she
advised Miss Conover.
"The doctor ordered him to eat it," the nurse stubbornly contended.
Helen conquered her, and I was left, not exactly at peace, but in a
state of armed neutrality within. By concentrating my attention on the
dancing flames in the chimney I kept the internal factions quiet.
Mr. Claybourne ran through his series of champagne toasts, repeating all
the funny ones we had heard last time. He was eager for me to have one
sip, but Helen stood firm. Miss Conover sat in stern disapproval of the
champagne, her glass inverted before her, as if to emphasize with a kind
of crystal exclamation point her opinion of such proceedings.
"Where is Miss Hershey?" I asked, as soon as I had the stomach for such
a question.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Ted. She's dining out with an ex-governor of
Georgia--I believe a third cousin twice removed of her mother's aunt, or
some complicated Southern family relationship like that."
"I thought she said he was her cousin," Mr. Claybourne corrected. Helen
winked at me; Miss Hershey would have called it "unmaidenly."
"I believe all Southerners who are anybody are each other's cousins,
dad. Anyway, she said they didn't pay much attention to Thanksgiving in
the South, and she preferred not to be here."
"The bloody shirt again, eh?" said Mr. Claybourne.
"I can't imagine Miss Hershey in a bloody shirt," I murmured.
"Really Mr. Edward!" Miss Conover exclaimed, half rising from the table.
Helen laughed. "I don't think such remarks is nice," Miss Conover
continued.
"H'm," said Mr. Claybourne, evidently wondering what it was all about.
"How's your foot, Ted?" Helen called out.
"There's nothing the matter with Ted's foot, is there?" said Mr.
Claybourne.
"Not a thing!" snapped Miss Conover.
"There's your answer, Lady Grey Eyes," I laughed.
"What are we talking about?" Mr. Claybourne inquired.
"It's just a private joke between Ted and me, dad. You wouldn't
understand," Helen explained.
"Then I don't think it's very polite of you to refer to it before
others," her father grumbled. "I'm surprised at you, Ted."
"My opinion exactly," Miss Conover hastened to agree.
The tension was broken by the arrival of the maid with three kinds of
pie--mince, pumpkin, and cranberry. Upon the later arrival of coffee,
Miss Conover got up from the table.
"Time's up," she announced. "We'll carry Mr. Edward upstairs."
"A bargain's a bargain, and I'll go quietly," I said, "but damn it all
just the same."
"Edward, will you oblige me by not swearing before Helen," Mr.
Claybourne declaimed.
"I beg your pardon--and Helen's, if she wants it. Happiness has a bad
effect on my manners."
They put me away in the dark room....
* * * * *
In the morning Knowlton dropped in to see me on the way to the office.
Dr. Sinclair had called first and expressed approval of my progress. He
also gave permission to talk business for half an hour, which was why I
had Knowlton summoned by telephone.
"Well, Ted, our friend nearly did for you," he said with his diabolic
grin, as he drew a chair alongside my bed. "I certainly was scared until
the doc said he thought he could pull you through." I knew that for
Knowlton to admit this much was for him to confess he had passed through
an emotional crisis. Of course the way he put it was part of the
"hard-headed" pose of all our race, whether English or American. It is
the half-unconscious way in which we hide our sentimentality when the
latter collides with reality.
"Thanks, Knowlton," I replied; "it would be awkward for the business if
I got out ahead of time." I could not resist teasing him this much.
"Wasn't just what I meant, Ted," he said, squirming uncomfortably.
"Well, I guess it doesn't matter. The point now is that the Owens people
sent us a crackerjack, A-number-one man, and he analyzed the Texas
formula in a jiffy, so to speak. Prospero lost us only four days, and
the Owens man has speeded us up so we have made that good. He costs like
hell, though, and as soon as you can get out again, Ted, I'll let him
go."
"When will I be back, do you think?"
"Not until after Christmas--and then no more night work. We'll move you
back to the day-shift. It's a damned nuisance."
"It's something of a nuisance for me, too," I said, "having your pet
employee trying to murder me. I hope you appreciate it has been
inconvenient."
Knowlton grinned: "Good boy, Ted, that's the stuff. Never lose your
nerve."
"Why did Prospero do it?--that's what I can't understand."
"Paranoia, Ted--delusion of persecution: he worked with you, so he chose
you for his best hallucination. Thought you were stealing his great idea
about electricity direct from coal."
"How do you know? Did he leave a confession sticking out of his right
boot?" I tried what I imagined to be sarcasm.
"No, but he used to tell me all about it. Said you dogged his every
step. I warned you, Ted, to look out for him. I never thought he'd pull
anything off in the factory with three hundred workmen all around.
Outside, I judged you were pretty safe--besides, his time was 'most up.
I guess I was a little careless, Ted."
"What did the police say? Were they interested?"
"Not much, after they heard my story. The Chief is a good friend of
mine--I play pinochle with him Saturday nights. He thinks it just as
well for you to look in at the Coroner's office some day when you are
all right--just to dictate a little account of how it happened. He wants
it to complete his records."