“He ought to be put to bed at once ... he might collapse.”
“He’s collapsed,” said Mrs. Beatup in the indifferent voice of shock.
“But he must be kept warm—I’ll heat a brick in the oven. Harry, you and Mr.——”
“—Kadwell,” put in the soldier, with a bold look into Nell’s eyes.
“Mr. Kadwell—please carry him up to bed. Can you manage him up the stairs?”
“Reckon we’ll have to,” said Harry. “Stand clear, mother.... Got his shoulders, Mus’ Kadwell?—I’ll taake his legs.”
They had a dead weight to carry to the upper floor, but Harry, though short, was a strong, stuggy little chap, and Steve Kadwell was enormous. He stood four inches over six foot and was proportionately hullish of girth. He was a handsome man, too—as he passed Nell, she noticed his brawny neck and great rolling quiff of fair, curly hair; she also noticed that he looked at her in a way no other man had done. The lamplight fell becomingly on her pretty scared face, and suggested with soft orange lights and melting shadows the curves of her little breast. At first she was pleased by his frank admiration, then something in it made her feel ashamed, and she drew back angrily into the shadow.
5
Nell had to stop away from school till the end of the term, for Mrs. Beatup could not possibly nurse her husband without help; indeed, Nell’s help was often not enough. A broken leg in itself was serious damage for a man of Mus’ Beatup’s age and habits, and into the bargain his alcoholic deprivations brought on an attack of delirium tremens about the fifth day of his illness. For this both Nell and her mother were inadequate—Nell was sickened and terrified by this horrible travesty of a human being that shook the springs in her father’s bed, and Mrs. Beatup made him worse by trying to argue with him and taking as a personal affront his assertions as to the maggoty condition of the pillows. Harry had to spend two days away from the fields in the combined office of nurse and policeman, and on one occasion when even his strength was not enough to keep Mus’ Beatup in bed, Kadwell of Stilliands Tower prolonged an evening’s call of enquiry till the next morning.
Young Kadwell often called to enquire, and made himself useful in various ways. He was on a fortnight’s sick-leave, after an outbreak of his old wound. He had been sniped during some patrol work at Loos in 1915, and though once more fit for service had been kept in England ever since. At present he was quartered at Eastbourne, but expected soon to be sent back to France.