I
The step of Ambrose Sault was light and there was a buoyancy in his mien when he came into Mrs. Colebrook's kitchen, surprising that good lady with so unusual an appearance at an hour of the day when she was taking her afternoon siesta.
"Lord, how you startled me!" she said, "the ostymopat came this morning. A stout gentleman with whiskers. Very nice, too, and American. But bless you, Mr. Sault, he'll never do any good to Christina, though I wish he could, for I'm up and down those blessed stairs from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed. He'll never cure her. She's had ten doctors and four specialists, and she's been three times to St. Mary's hospital; to say nothing of the Evelyna when she was a child and fell out of the perambulator that did it. Ten doctors and four specialists—they're doctors, too, in a manner of speaking, so you might say fourteen."
Sault never interrupted his landlady, although his forbearance meant, very often, a long period of waiting.
"Can I see Christina, Mrs. Colebrook?" he begged.
"Certainly you can, you needn't ask me. She'll be glad to see you," said Mrs. Colebrook conventionally. "I thought of going up myself, but she has always got those books. Do you think so much reading is good for her—?"
"I'm sure it is."
"But—well, I don't know. I've never read anything but the Sunday papers, and they've got enough horrors in 'em—but they actually happened. It isn't guesswork like it is in books. I never read a book through in my life. My husband—! Why, when he passed away, there was enough books in the house to fill a room. He'd sooner read than work at any time. He was a bit aristocratic in his way."
Sault had come to understand that "aristocratic" did not stand, as Mrs. Colebrook applied the word, for gentleness of birth, but for a loftiness of demeanor in relation to labor.
He made his escape up the stairs. Christina was not reading. She lay on her back, her hands lightly folded, and she was inspecting the end bed-rail with a fixity of gaze that indicated to Ambrose how far she was from Walter Street and the loud little boys who played beneath her window.
"I have nothing for you today—I haven't been baking."
She patted the bed and he sat down.
"The osteopath has been, I suppose mother told you? She has the queerest word for him, 'ostymopat'. Yes, he came and saw, or rather, he prodded in a gentle, harmless kind of way, but I fancy that my spine has conquered. He didn't say very much, but seemed to be more interested in the bones of my neck and shoulders than he was in the place where it hurts. He wouldn't tell me anything, I suppose he didn't want to make me feel miserable. Poor, kind soul—after all the uncomplimentary things that have been said about my spinal column!"
"He told me," said Ambrose, and something in his face made her open her eyes wide.
"What did he say—please tell me—was it good?"
He nodded and a beatific smile lightened his face.
"You can be cured; completely cured. You will walk in a year or maybe less. He thinks it will take six months to manipulate the bones into their place; he talked about 'breaking down' something, but he didn't mean that he would hurt you. He just meant that he would have to remove—I don't know what it is, but it would be a gradual process and you would feel nothing. He wants your mother to put you into a sort of thin overall before he comes."
He lugged a parcel from his pocket. "I bought one—a smock of thick silk. I thought you had better have silk. He works at you through it, and it makes his work easier for him and for you if—anyhow, I got silk, Christina."
Her eyes were shining, but she did not look at him. "It doesn't seem possible," she said softly, "and it is going to cost a lot of money—cost you. The silk overall is lovely, but I wouldn't mind if I wore sackcloth. You great soul!"
She caught his hand in both of hers and gripped it with a strength that surprised him.
"Evie is quite sure that I am in love with you, Ambrose—I lied to her when I said I never called you Ambrose. And, of course, we are in love with one another, but in a way that poor Evie doesn't understand. If I was normal, I suppose I'd love you in her way—poor Ambrose, you would be so embarrassed."
She laughed quietly.
"Love is a great disturbance," said Ambrose, "I think Evie means that kind."
"Were you ever in love that way? I have never been. I think I love you as I should love my child, if I had one. If you say that you love me as a mother, I shall be offended, Ambrose. Do you think it will really happen—will it cost very much?"
"A pound a visit, and he is coming every day except Sunday."
Christina made a calculation and the immensity of the sum left her horror-stricken.
"A hundred and fifty pounds!" she cried. "Oh, Ambrose—how can you? I won't have the treatment. It is certain to fail—I won't, Ambrose!"
"I've paid a hundred on account. He didn't want to take it, but I said I would only let him come on those terms. I wasn't speaking the truth—I'd have let him come on any terms. So you see, Christina, I've paid, and you must be treated!"
"Hold my hand, Ambrose—and don't speak a word. I'm going for a long walk—I haven't dared walk before."
She resumed her gaze upon the bed-rail and he sat in silence whilst she dreamed.
Evie returned at ten o'clock that night and heard Christina singing as she mounted the stairs. "Enter, sister, has mother told you that I am practically a well woman?"
"Don't put too high hopes—"
"Shut up! I'm a well woman I tell you. In a year I shall walk into your medicine shop and sneer at you as I pass. Have you brought home any candy? 'Sweets' is hopelessly vulgar, and I like the American word better. And you look bright and sonsy. Did you see the god?"
"I wish you wouldn't use religious words, Christina, just when we are going to bed, too. I wonder you're not afraid. Yes, I saw my boy."
"Have you a boy?" in simulated surprise. "Evie, you are a surprising child. Whom does he take after?"
"Really, I think you are indecent," said her sister, shocked. "You know perfectly well I mean—Ronnie."
"Oh, is he the 'boy'? To you girls everything that raises a hat or smokes a cheap cigar is strangely boyish. Well, is he nearly dead from his midnight labors?"
"I'd like to see you write a long article for the newspapers," said Evie witheringly.
"I wish you could. You may even see that. Tell me about him, Evie. What is he like—what sort of a house has he?" She waited.
"He lives in a flat, and, of course, I've never seen it. You don't imagine that I would go into a man's flat alone, do you?'"
Christina sighed. "There are points about the bourgeoisie mind which are admirable," she said. "What does 'bourgeoisie' mean? The bourgeoisie are the people who have names instead of numbers to their houses; they catch the nine twenty-five to town and go home by the five seventeen. They go to church at least once on Sunday and their wives wear fascinators and patronize the dress circle."
"You talk such rubbish, Christina. I can't make head or tail of it half the time. I don't see what it has got to do with my not going in to Ronnie's flat. It wouldn't be respectable."
"Why didn't I think of that word?" wailed Christina. "Evie."
"Huh?" said Evie, her mouth full of pins and in an unconscious imitation of one who, did she but know it, held her soul in the hollow of his hands.
"Where do you meet your lad—I simply can't say 'boy'?"
"Oh, anywhere," said Evie vaguely. "We used to meet a lot in the park. As a matter of fact, that is where I first saw him, but now he doesn't go to the park. He says the crowd is vulgar and it is you know, Christina; why I've heard men addressing meetings and saying that there wasn't a God! And talking about the king most familiarly. It made my blood boil!"
"I don't suppose the king minds, and I'm sure God only laughed."
"Christina!"
"Well, why not? What's the use of being God if He hasn't a sense of humor? He has everything He wants, and that is one of the first blessings He would give Himself. Where do you meet Ronnie, Evie?"
"Sometimes I have dinner with him, and sometimes we just meet at the tube station and go to the pictures." Christina pinched her chin in thought.
"He knows that girl who came to see you, Miss Merville. I told him about her visit, and he asked me if she knew that I was a friend of his, and whether she had seen me. She rather runs after him, I think. He doesn't say so, he is too much a gentleman. I can't imagine Ronnie saying anything unkind."
"But he sort of hinted," suggested Christina.
"You are uncharitable, Christina! Nothing Ronnie does is right in your eyes. Of course he didn't hint. It is the way he looks, when I speak about her. I know that he doesn't like her very much. He admitted it, because, just after we had been talking about her, he said that I was the only girl he had ever met who did not bore him—unutterably. His very words!"
"That was certainly convincing evidence," said Christina, and her sister arrested the motion of her hair brush to look suspiciously in her direction. You could never be sure whether Christina was being nice or unpleasant.