“Well, please go and do so at once.”
The girl hurried out of the room. “We’re frightfully understaffed, you know,” explained the doctor. Patricia looked at him, summed him up. She was half mad with anxiety; but she spoke without a trace of emotion. “May I use your telephone, doctor?” “Certainly.” She pulled the instrument towards her; called up her father’s number. . . .
The nurse, returning white-faced, thermometer in hand, heard her say:—“Is that Jenkins speaking? . . . This is Mrs. Jameson. . . . Then you must put me through to his consulting-room. . . . Is that you, pater? . . . Did you get my wire? . . . I’m at the hospital now. . . . No, he’s very ill, and I want you to come down at once. . . . It’s pneumonia, I think. . . . In half-an-hour. . . . Thanks awfully, pater.”
She hung up the receiver; turned to Captain Territt. “It is pneumonia, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so. The temperature’s rather high.”
“How high?”
“A hundred and four point one, under the arm.” Doctor and Sister hurried out of the room. . . .
She waited their return; waited miserably; visioned Peter fighting for breath as she had seen her brother Jack fighting for breath, years and years ago, in the night-nursery at Harley Street. And she, his wife, could do nothing; must sit there powerless. All the relief at knowing him saved from the firing-line, all the rosy expectations of his coming to Sunflowers, faded like silly dreams. Supposing they had only brought him home to die!
Heron Baynet, entering with the quiet unhurried step of the professional consultant, hardly recognized his daughter: her face was so drawn with agony—love-agony of which he had never dreamed her capable.
“Am I in time?” he asked, doubting the answer.