“Sir Richard said definitely to-day that everything has now been tried,” said the nurse sadly, for both the day and the night nurse had grown fond of their odd little patient. “I think they always knew it was hopeless.... I fear she is growing suspicious. She cried a good deal of last night, and only slept for a couple of hours. Nurse Calderon said she thought she heard her whisper to herself in the night: ‘Oh, God! I can’t! I can’t! Let me get better!’ Poor little thing! It’s too horrible, and, of course, everything will—will get worse.”
Claudia, who had read up the progress of such cases in a medical book she had found in Gilbert’s library, gave assent. She knew that the end of such cases is the abject humiliation of human flesh where so many of the functions of the body are paralysed. The account had made her feel sick in the reading, and she shrank from the thought of all that lay before the girl—she was little more—who lay in the bedroom beyond.
Claudia opened the bedroom door full of misgivings, her heart very heavy as the thought of Fay’s night vigil, so that she was unprepared for the sight that met her gaze. The room always was a bower of flowers, generally coloured ones, for Fay said bluntly that white ones reminded her of a funeral; but this afternoon it presented an unusually gay aspect. The apartment was almost gaudy, and at first Claudia did not take in why it was so bright. Fay was propped up among a nest of pillows, her tiny face, very little changed, hidden under an enormous black hat with three great blue feathers floating over it. The bed was strewn with hats, the chairs were littered with them. Pink cardboard boxes of various sizes stood everywhere.
“Darling, you’ve come in the nick of time,” called out Fay excitedly. “Isn’t this a duck of a hat? You see, I must have some new hats. I shall be better soon now, and it’s no good getting up and finding you’ve got nothing to put on your cocoanut. And Madame Rose has got all her new models for the summer. This is French. You can see that with half an eye, can’t you? I call it shick, don’t you? Something like a hat.”
A dark-eyed Jewess, who had evidently brought the hats, was standing at the foot of the bed, and broke in with:
“Straight from Parry, Miss Morris,” she said glibly, though it was evident that it had been concocted in some cheap London warehouse. “Very latest thing. Real style there. I thought of you as soon as I saw it. It’s too good for anyone else, I said.”
“Ah! did you? Give me the hand-glass. I want to see how my dial looks under it. Ugh! like an under-done muffin left out in the rain. Give us over the rouge and the powder-puff. And the bunch of curls out of the drawer. Where’s that eyebrow pencil I had this morning? I rub the blessed stuff off on the pillow. There! that’s better, cocky. Now I’ve got a bit of bloom. We’re not forty and in the cupboard yet, thank the Lord! It saves a lot of trouble if you’ve got dark eyebrows. Yours don’t rub off and get smeary, do they?”
“It’s curious,” smiled Claudia, removing one of the hats in order to sit down, “that your eyebrows are so light when your hair is so dark.”
Fay gave a whoop that showed her lungs were not affected.
“You dear holy innocent! Did you think my hair was really this colour? Not much. The hair-dresser does it, and jolly expensive it is. My hair, as a child, was a silly soppy sort of light shade, so I improved on it. I’m much more effective with black hair. Makes a bit of a contrast. Got the idea out of a story where a man was raving over blue eyes and black hair. First of all, I tried red. But it’s so difficult with hats and all the boys call you Ginger.”