“Get a job and live for it,” answered the nurse. “Here’s luck!”
IV
Joyce was sleeping—“as sound as a bell,” said the nurse. Bertram had finished his dinner alone, hating his loneliness, and the deliberately cheerful way in which he had to answer the chatty remarks of Edith, the maid, who waited on him with a sense of drama in the house, and a desire to express comradeship. In his heart, though he liked the girl, he wished her at the devil, because of his fretted nerves, and refused a second serve of fruit jelly with an impatience which he tried to disguise by a “Thank you very much, Edith. Nothing more—for goodness’ sake!” Then he went into his study, shut the door, and tried to settle down at his desk to some writing. He had no concentration of mind. The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece annoyed him desperately. It had been playing tattoos in his brain during those hours when its fast little ticking seemed to be hurrying Joyce’s life away. Well, she was all right now, thank God, unless the nurse and doctor were lying to him. He went over to the mantelpiece, took up Joyce’s photograph, and kissed it. He would try to be less irritable and get a grip on that absurd temper of his. Then he swore softly because the telephone bell rang again. That was about the tenth time in the last hour. Joyce’s friends desired to know how she was getting on. Why the deuce didn’t they have the decency to leave him alone, and to leave the telephone alone, at such a time?
“Is that Mr. Pollard? Oh, forgive me, but can you tell me how dear Joyce is getting on?”
That was the usual way of putting it. His answers were brief. “Quite well, thanks!” then a slam down with the receiver. He wasn’t going to give them any details.
A man’s voice had spoken to him on the ’phone. “That you, Bertram? . . . Oh, I’m Kenneth Murless. How’s Joyce?”
What right had Kenneth to ask such a question at such a time? It was like his impertinence! . . . And yet, somehow, because of Joyce, who liked Kenneth, he felt constrained to give a civil answer.
“Getting on well.”
“Give her my love, old man,” said Kenneth’s voice on the wire; “say I’m frightfully sorry about her loss.”
His love! Bertram’s face flushed deeply as he stood by the plaguey instrument. That was going a bit too far!