XIV
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!