CHAPTER XIV
GUIDE, HOST AND NURSE
When I got back to my rooms after leaving Mrs. Faulkner and Nina I found a note from Owen asking me to go and see him at once. Since he had, until then, avoided me in every possible way I guessed that something serious had happened, and when I got to his rooms in Lomax Street, I found him in bed with a cough which ought to have frightened his landlady instead of making her in a very bad temper. He was, however, more worried about the interruption to his reading than anxious about himself, and he said flatly that he could not afford to have a doctor. I tried to cheer him up—but you can't cheer up a man with a cough—and I told him I would come to him whenever he wanted me, and made him promise he would send for me if I could do anything for him. He did not seem to have a single friend in Oxford, and the loneliness of the man made me feel absolutely wretched.
I went to a very confidential chemist who knew nearly every man who had ever been at Oxford, and everything under the sun, and explained to him what sort of cough Owen had. He understood instantly, and said that he would send a mixture which worked miracles, but I could not get Owen off my mind at once, and when Jack Ward came in very late to see me I sat up talking to him until a most unrighteous hour, with the result that I lay in bed the next morning until I was perfectly tired of my scout coming to call me.
A letter from my mother was on my table in which she said that I was on no account to allow Nina to interrupt my reading, but I had only just finished breakfast, when Mrs. Faulkner and Nina came into my rooms. Mrs. Faulkner fixed her eyes on the tea-pot and said nothing; Nina, however, asked if everybody in Oxford breakfasted at eleven o'clock. I had not expected them, and was consequently a little flurried; the truth is that I was not properly dressed, which handicapped my movements considerably. Decency compelled me to keep my legs under the table, until I could slip into my bedder. I was not in a condition to treat visitors who goaded at my laziness with any courage; tact was the only thing possible. In my agitation I did not notice that Nina had put on the clock quite twenty minutes, and when she asked me if I was going to sit in front of the marmalade for the rest of the day, I had to reply that I thought it was rather a good place to sit. I had managed to hide myself behind the table-cloth when I stood up to wish them good-morning, but I simply did not dare to move again.
Mrs. Faulkner fluttered round the room looking at photographs; the bare knees of the Rugger XV. compelled her to say that she did not think them at all nice. I put my legs farther under the table and felt like blushing. She began to suspect that I was hiding something, and I am afraid she was the sort of woman who did not understand, until she had discovered them, that there are some things which had better remain hidden. She tried little tricks to entice me from my seat, and even came and examined the table-cloth, which was ordinary enough, though she said it was a beautiful one. I did not see how a white table-cloth could be beautiful, but I clutched it most fervently and her ruse failed. She then asked me if a plate which had cost elevenpence-farthing was Wedgwood, and asked me to take it off the wall so that she might see the mark on the back. I told her I had bought it at the Japanese shop and mentioned the sum it cost, but she declared that I had got a bargain and she must have it down. I replied that it was a fixture, though I meant that I was, and that no one had ever been known to find a bargain in a Japanese shop. Then she grew plaintive; "I think you might please me in this, Godfrey," she said.
The time had come for me to take Nina into my confidence. Mrs. Faulkner's eyes were fixed on the plate and her back was turned to me; I poked out one leg tentatively and Nina understood. There was one splendid thing about Nina, you could always rely upon her in a crisis. She took up a chair at once and said that she would get the plate down; she added that unless I sat still after meals I might have very bad indigestion, but that was too much for Mrs. Faulkner.
"I shouldn't think Godfrey has had indigestion in his life," she said. "I don't believe he has ever heard of pepsine. He is in a disgracefully bad temper; there is nothing else the matter with him as far as I can see."
"He was a very delicate child," Nina answered, "and has always been quite disgracefully spoilt. He never does anything which he doesn't like." I felt that Nina was over-playing her part, but I could not defend myself.
"It is so nice having Nina here to do things for me," I said meekly; "and I hope you don't mind me treating you as if you are a relation," I added to Mrs. Faulkner.