It was a deliberate lie, glibly told; he would have told fifty, though the recording angel had stood in the next room with his pen dipped in the ink. What was it to him? He remembered that she lay there saying always: “I am better.”
The landlady put his supper in the little parlour where he had sat in the morning. When it was on the table she sat down in the rocking-chair, as her fashion was to knit and talk, that she might gather news for her customers in the taproom. In the white face under the queer, deep-fringed cap she saw nothing of the morning’s traveller. The newcomer was communicative. She was a nurse by profession, she said; had come to the Transvaal, hearing that good nurses were needed there. She had not yet found work. The landlady did not perhaps know whether there would be any for her in that town?
The landlady put down her knitting and smote her fat hands together.
If it wasn’t the very finger of God’s providence, as though you saw it hanging out of the sky, she said. Here was a lady ill and needing a new nurse that very day, and not able to get one to her mind, and now—well, if it wasn’t enough to convert all the Atheists and Freethinkers in the Transvaal, she didn’t know!
Then the landlady proceeded to detail facts.
“I’m sure you will suit her,” she added; “you’re just the kind. She has heaps of money to pay you with; has everything that money can buy. And I got a letter with a check in it for fifty pounds the other day from some one, who says I’m to spend it for her, and not to let her know. She is asleep now, but I’ll take you in to look at her.”
The landlady opened the door of the next room, and Gregory followed her. A table stood near the bed, and a lamp burning low stood on it; the bed was a great four-poster with white curtains, and the quilt was of rich crimson satin. But Gregory stood just inside the door with his head bent low, and saw no further.
“Come nearer! I’ll turn the lamp up a bit, that you can have a look at her. A pretty thing, isn’t it?” said the landlady.
Near the foot of the bed was a dent in the crimson quilt, and out of it Doss’ small head and bright eyes looked knowingly.
Then Gregory looked up at what lay on the cushion. A little white, white face, transparent as an angel’s with a cloth bound round the forehead, and with soft hair tossed about on the pillow.