CHAPTER TEN
Poor little Tommy's passion for knowing things showed up very clearly the next few days, his over-active brain working hard propounding to itself question on subjects that Brigit had never heard him even mention. And one of the most pathetic subjects was that of her relations with her mother. "If Brigit would only come back and live here again," he said over and over again, "like other fellows' sisters. Things are so much pleasanter when she is here."
"I'm here, Tommy darling," she told him a hundred times, but he only shook his head and frowned gently. "You are very nice, and I like your hands, because they are cool and dry, but you are not Bicky. Bicky is beautiful."
His mother, on the contrary, the child always recognised, and his manner to her was almost protecting.
"Don't cry, mother," he would say. "I'm not so bad, really I'm not. You had better go and lie down, or you will not look pretty to-night."
His idea of evenings was, of course, of a time when mothers must look their best at any cost, and when no mother ever stayed upstairs.
Every evening, therefore, he could not rest until Lady Kingsmead had gone "to dress."
Brigit had never known how much the little fellow noticed the details of dress, and so on, but now she learned, for his remarks about his mother usually took the form of appreciation or dislike of some particular toilette.
"Wear pink, mother—it suits you best—and pearls. The diamonds make you look older."
Poor Lady Kingsmead, more lovable in her distress than her daughter had ever seen her, obeyed him humbly, and promising to wear pink, or whatever the colour might be, crept away to her bedroom and cried until she was scarcely recognisable.
Two days passed thus, the doctor coming many times and shaking his head doubtfully over questions about his patient. "The throat is much better—the danger from that is quite past; but—the fever does not go down, and I can't quite tell what the complication is. He is too young to have had a mental shock, so I can only assume that the too great activity of his mind is now against us. I understand that he has been studying very hard?"
This Brigit denied, but the doctor, on insisting, was told to interview Mr. Babington, and to the girl's amazement she learned that only a day or two before he was taken ill Tommy had betrayed the fact that for weeks he had been in the habit of spending part of each night in the disused chapel, practising on his violin.
"He is quite mad about his music," the young man mourned. "I never could get him to take the least interest in anything else, and as he always worked as little as possible for me, I could not understand his looking so tired, until, finding that he had heard the stable clock strike four, and knowing that one cannot hear the clock from his room, I pinned him down and he told me."
Brigit's eyes filled with tears.
The chapel, disused for many years, had evolved into a sort of lumber-room, and she could see, in her imagination, the pathetic picture of her little brother fiddling away among the piled-up boxes and old furniture, trying to hasten the moment when his beloved master would find him worthy of personal instruction.
It was all clear to his sister. Left alone, the child's whole strength—far more strength than he should have been allowed to expend—had gone to his passion for his violin, and now, unless a change for the better should come very soon, he must die, burnt with fever. And the fault would be hers. For the first time she felt the meaning of the word "duty." Tommy had been her duty, and she had neglected him.
At length one day she made a further discovery.
She was sitting by the bed, and for over an hour the child had lain still, his eyes half shut. It was five o'clock and a dark afternoon, so that the room was full of shadows.
Suddenly Tommy turned and looked at her.
"Brigit," he asked, recognising her for the first time, "are you in love with Joyselle?"
For a full minute she could not answer, and then said very gently, "Darling Tommy—you know me?"
"Yes, yes, of course I know you. But—are you? Carron and mother think so."
"Do they, Tommy? Well—I love him dearly—and so do you, don't you?"
"I don't mean that," he returned, with a gesture of impatience; "I mean the way people are who are going to marry each other."
His eyes, so huge in his wasted face, looked eagerly at her.
"Carron and mother think you do," he repeated, "and it makes me sorry."
She did not answer for a long time, and then she said humbly, not knowing how far he understood that whereof he spoke, and therefore obliged to feel her way, "Tommy dear—you forget petite mère."
"No, I don't—but she is old."
"She is younger than he."
But ill though he was, Tommy's sense of humour was still alive. "That doesn't matter! Oh, Bick, darling, I am so tired! And I do hope you aren't—I mean, that."
So, of course, she lied, and the little boy went to sleep, his hand in hers.
When, an hour later, she went to her room, she found a wire from Théo, announcing their arrival in London, and in spite of herself her spirits rose. Things must be better now that he was near her.
But things were not better, and the doctor, the next morning, looked very grave. "I think it bad to allow him to have his violin," he said; "it excites him and increases the fever. And—I think I should like a consultation."
Lady Kingsmead burst into tears and hurried from the room, but Brigit wrote a telegram, as dictated by the old doctor who had brought the boy into the world, to a famous physician in London, and a groom was sent galloping to the station to send it.
"Who is this person he always takes me for?" asked the doctor, polishing his glasses. "This morning he insisted on my—on my playing for him. I have never played anything except the cornet, when I was a young man. I—it very nearly upset me, Lady Brigit. I love Tommy."
Brigit flushed. "Wanted you to play the violin?" she returned.
"Yes. He has not done so until this morning for several days, but he quite insisted to-day."
"It must be—Joyselle. We—we know him very well, and Tommy adores him."
As she spoke the nurse came in.
"Would you mind coming, my lady? He is very restless and insists on trying to play. I can't quiet him at all——"
They went back into the sick-room and found Tommy sitting up in bed, holding his violin in the position for playing, and scolding in a sharp staccato voice because he couldn't find his bow.
"Tommy, dear," Brigit said quietly, suddenly seeing her way clear, "I am wiring the Master to come to see you. He will play for you. Now give me your violin and lie down like a good boy."
Under the impression that she was Mrs. Champion, the housekeeper, but perfectly satisfied with her words, he gave up the fiddle obediently and lay down. The doctor nodded his approval and left a few moments later to send the telegram to Joyselle. And Brigit sat down by the bed and waited.