In a moment he had learnt the chief facts. Hilda had gone up to London,
dragged Charlie out of Ealing, and brought him down with her to watch
over her child. Once more she had done something which nobody could
have foreseen. The train--not the London express, but the loop--was
late. The pair had arrived about half-past ten, and a little later Dr
Stirling had fulfilled his promise to look in if he could. The two
doctors had conferred across the child's bed, and had found themselves
substantially in agreement. Moreover, the child was if anything
somewhat better. The Scotsman had gone. Charles and Hilda had eaten.
Hilda meant to sit up, and had insisted that Janet should go to bed; it
appeared that Janet had rested but not slept in the afternoon.
Charlie took Edwin into the small breakfast-room, where Osmond Orgreave
was waiting, and the three men continued to discuss the situation. They
were all of them too excited to sit down, though Osmond and--in a less
degree--Charlie affected the tranquillity of high philosophers. At
first Edwin knew scarcely what he did. His speech and gestures were not
the result of conscious volition. He seemed suddenly to have two
individualities, and the new one, which was the more intimate one,
watched the other as in a dim-lighted dream... She was there in a room
above! She had come in response to the telegram signed `Edwin!' Last
night she was far away. To-night she was in the very house with him.
Miracle! He asked himself: "Why should I get myself into this state
simply because she is here? It would have been mighty strange if she
had not come. I must take myself in hand better than this. I mustn't
behave like a blooming girl." He frowned and coughed.
"Well," said Osmond Orgreave to his son, thrusting out his coat-tails
with his hands towards the fire, and swaying slightly to and fro on his
heels and toes, "so you've had your consultation, you eminent
specialists! What's the result?"
He looked at his elegant son with an air half-quizzical and
half-deferential.
"I've told you he's evidently a little better, dad," Charlie answered
casually. His London deportment was more marked than ever. The
bracingly correct atmosphere of Ealing had given him a rather obvious
sense of importance. He had developed into a man with a stake in the
country, and he twisted his moustache like such a man, and took out a
cigarette like such a man.
"Yes, I know," said Osmond, with controlled impatience. "But what sort
of influenza is it? I'm hoping to learn something now you've come.
Stirling will talk about anything except influenza."
"What sort of influenza is it? What do you mean?" And Charlie's
twinkling glance said condescendingly: "What's the old cock got hold of
now? This is just like him."
"But is there any real danger?" Edwin murmured.
"Well," said Osmond, bringing up his regiments, "as I understand it,
there are three types of influenza--the respiratory, the
gastro-intestinal, and the nervous. Which one is it?"
Charlie laughed, and prodded his father with a forefinger in a soft
region near the shoulder, disturbing his balance. "You've been reading
the `BMJ,'" he said, "and so you needn't pretend you haven't!"
Osmond paused an instant to consider the meaning of these initials.
"What if I have?" he demanded, raising his eyebrows, "I say there are
three types--"
"Thirty; you might be nearer the mark with thirty," Charlie interrupted
him. "The fact is that this division into types is all very well in
theory," he proceeded, with easy disdain. "But in practice it won't
work out. Now for instance, what this kid has won't square with any of
your three types. It's purely febrile, that's what it is. Rare,
decidedly rare, but less rare in children than in adults--at any rate in
my experience--in my experience. If his temperature wasn't so high, I
should say the thing might last for days--weeks even. I've known it.
The first question I put was--has he been in a stupor? He had. It may
recur. That, and headache, _and_ the absence of localised nervous
symptoms--" He stopped, leaving the sentence in the air, grandiose and
formidable, but of no purport.
Charlie shrugged his shoulders, allowing the beholder to choose his own
interpretation of the gesture.
"You're a devilish wonderful fellow," said Osmond grimly to his son.
And Charlie winked grimly at Edwin, who grimly smiled.
"You and your `British Medical Journal'!" Charlie exclaimed, with an
irony from which filial affection was not absent, and again prodded his
father in the same spot.
"Of course I know I'm an old man," said Osmond, condescendingly
rejecting Charlie's condescension. He thought he did not mean what he
said; nevertheless, it was the expression of the one idea which latterly
beyond all other ideas had possessed him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------