CHAPTER XXII
Though the most agile of mock cats cut capers behind the foot-lights, and though forty fairies in green and crimson fluttered their gauzy wings under the paste-board trees, Gwen Murchison sat silent and solemn-eyed beside her father, while her brother shouted over the vagaries of Selina the Cook. The glitter, the kaleidoscopic color, the gaudy incidentalism of the mummery could charm only a transient light into Gwen’s eyes. She sat beside Murchison, with one hot hand in his, her face shining like a white flower out of the depths of the crowded balcony.
“Daddy, I’m so tired.”
They were in the theatre arcade with a great electric light blazing above their heads. People were pouring from the vestibule. A line of trams and cabs waited in the roadway to drain the human flood streaming out into the night.
“Tired, little one?”
“So tired, daddy! My head, it does ache.”
Under the glare of the electric arc Murchison’s face had a haggard look as he took Gwen up like a baby in his arms. Jack was hanging to his mother’s hand, garrulous and ecstatic, a slab of warm chocolate browning his fingers.
“Let’s go in the tram, mother.”
Catherine was following her husband’s powerful figure, as he pushed through the crowd with Gwen lying in his arms. Murchison had hailed a cab, a luxury that he had not allowed himself for many a long week. The wife caught a glimpse of her husband’s face as he turned to her. There was something in his eyes that made her look at Gwen.
“I say, daddy, how that old—”
“Quiet, dear, quiet.”
The boy’s shrill voice died down abruptly. He looked puzzled, and a little offended, and began cramming chocolate into his mouth. Murchison had opened the cab door.
“Gwen?”
Catherine’s eyes interrogated her husband.
“Get in, dear; can you take her from me? The child is dead tired.”
Gwen appeared half asleep. Her eyes opened vaguely as her father lifted her into the cab.
“My head aches, muvver.”
“Does it, dear?” and Catherine’s arms drew close about her; “we shall soon be home.”
“In with you, Jack.”
The boy scrambled into a corner, fidgeted to and fro, and stared at his mother. Murchison followed him, closing the door gently, and putting up both windows, for the night was raw and cold. The cab rumbled away over the Wilton cobbles, the windows clattering like castanets, the light from the street-lamps flashing in rhythmically upon the faces of Catherine and her children. Murchison had sunk into his corner with a heavy sigh. The cab had a sense of smothering confinement for him. With the crunching wheels and the chattering windows, he was too conscious, through the oppressive restlessness of it all, of Gwen’s tired and apathetic face.
“Don’t, Jack, don’t—”
The child stirred in her mother’s arms with a peevish cry. Her brother, who had devoured his chocolate, had squirmed forward to tickle his sister’s legs.
“Sit still.”
Murchison’s voice was fierce in its suppressed impatience. Jack crumbled into his corner, while his mother soothed Gwen and stroked her hair. A distant church clock chimed the quarter as the cab turned a corner slowly, and stopped before the blank-faced villa. Murchison climbed out and took Gwen from his wife’s arms. He unlocked the door, and laid the child on the sofa by the window, before returning to pay the man his fare.
“How much?”
“Two bob, sir.”
Murchison felt in his pockets, and brought out a shilling, a sixpence, and two half-pennies. The little cash-box in Catherine’s desk had to be unlocked before the cab rattled away, leaving a solitary candle burning in the front room of Clovelly.
In half an hour the two children were in bed; Gwen feverish, restless, Jack reduced to silence by his father’s quiet but unquestionable authority. Murchison examined Gwen anxiously as she lay with her curls gathered up by a blue ribbon. He made her up a light draught of bromide, sweetened it with sugar, and persuaded the child to drink it down. Master Jack Murchison was ordered to lie as quiet as a mouse. Then Catherine and her husband went down to a plain and rather dismal supper, cold boiled mutton, rice-pudding, bread and cheese.
When the meal was over, Catherine glided up-stairs to look at Gwen. She found both children asleep. Jack curled up like a puppy, the girl flushed, but breathing peacefully. In the dining-room Murchison had drawn an arm-chair before the fire, and was stirring the dull coal into a blaze. He glanced uneasily over his shoulder as he heard his wife’s step upon the threshold. Catherine was struck by his lined and thoughtful face.
“Well?”
“Both asleep.”
Her husband continued to stir the fire, his eyes catching a restless gleam from the wayward flicker of the flames.
“I am bothered about the child, Kate.”
“Yes.”
She turned a chair from the table.
“This last month—”
“You have noticed the change?”
“Yes, dear.”
“So have I.”
He rested his elbows on his knees, and sat close over the fire, moving the poker to and fro as though beating time.
“She has lost flesh and color. There is a swollen gland in the neck, too. This beast of a town, I suppose, with its dirt and smoke. Thank God, the boy seems fit enough.”
He spoke slowly, yet with an emphatic curtness that might have suggested lack of feeling to a sentimentalist. Catherine sat in silence, watching him with troubled eyes.
“Do you suspect anything?”
“Suspect?”
He turned sharply, and she could see the nervous twitching of his brows.
“Anything serious? Oh—James, don’t keep me in ignorance.”
She slipped from her chair, and sat down beside him on the hearth-rug, leaning against his knees.
“The child is out of health, dear. It may mean anything or nothing. I am wondering”—and he stopped with a tired sigh—“whether we can give her a change of air.”
“Dear, why not?”
She met his eyes, and colored.
“That is—”
“If we can find the money.”
Catherine pretended not to notice the humiliating bitterness in his voice.
“It can be managed. I think mother would take Gwen. I’m sure she would take her.”
Murchison smiled the unpleasant, cynical smile of a man unwilling to ask a favor.
“Grandparents are always more merciful to their grandchildren,” he said; “I suppose because there is less responsibility.”
Catherine reached for his hand, and drew it down into her bosom.
“I will write at once, James, if you are willing.”
“I have no right to object.”
“Object!”
“Beggars are not choosers.”
“James, don’t.”
“I realize my position, dear, and I accept it as a law of nature.”
Her face, wistful with a wealth of unshed tears, appealed to him for mercy towards himself.
“Don’t let us talk of it. Oh, James, why should we? Then, I may write to mother?”
“Yes.”
She knelt up and kissed him.
“Beloved, if Gwen should die!”
Life was a somewhat monotonous affair at Dr. Tugler’s dispensary. Method was essential to the management of such a business, for there was more of the commercial enterprise in Dr. Tugler’s profession than a wilful idealist could have wished. Surgery hours began at eight, and Dr. Tugler’s was a punctual personality. Day in, day out, he bustled into the red-windowed front room as the hand of the clock came to the hour. Nothing but the most flagrant necessity was permitted to interfere with the precision of his practice. And since John Tugler did not spare his own body, it was not reasonable that he should spare those who worked for hire.
It was March 2d, a Tuesday, with a wet fog clogging the streets, when James Murchison arrived at the dispensary as the clock struck nine. The front room, packed as to its benches, steamed like a stable. The indescribable odor that emanates from the clothes of the poor made the air heavy with the smell of the unwashed slums.
Dr. Tugler glanced up briskly as the big man entered, screwed up his mouth, nodded, and jerked an elbow in the direction of the clock.
“Bustle along, Mr. Murchison. There are half a dozen cases waiting for you in the surgery.”
Murchison said nothing, but passed on. His face had a white, drawn look, and he seemed to move half-blindly, like a man exhausted by a long march in the sun.
Tugler looked at him curiously, frowned, and then rattled off a string of directions to an old woman seated beside him, her red hands clutching the old leather bag in her lap.
“Medicine three times a day—before meals. Drop the drink. Regular food. Come again next week. Shilling? That’s right. Next—please.”
The old woman’s sodden face still poked itself towards the doctor with senile eagerness.
“I ’ope you won’t be minding me, sir, but this ’ere—”
Dr. Tugler became suddenly deaf.
“Next, please.”
There was something in the atmosphere suggestive of a barber’s shop. A robust collier was already waiting for the old lady to vacate her chair.
“I was goin’ to ask you, doctor—”
“This time next week. We’re busy. Good-morning, Smith; sit down.”
The woman licked a drooping lip with a sharp, dry tongue, looked at the doctor dubiously, and began to fumble in her bag.
“I’ve got a box of pills ’ere, sir, as—”
“Hem.”
Tugler cleared his throat irritably, and appeared surprised to find her still sitting at his elbow.
“Pills?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What for?”
“The bowels, sir.”
“Need ’em?”
“Well, sir, as I might say, sir, I’m obstinate, very obstinate—”
“Let’s look at the box.”
“You don’t be thinkin’, doctor, there’s any ’arm?”
“Harm! Bread and ginger. Take the lot. Sit down, Smith,” and Dr. Tugler’s emphasis ended the discussion with the finality of fate.
When the room had cleared, and the last bottle had been passed through the dispensary window, that opened like the window of a railway booking-office into the alley at the side of the shop, Dr. Tugler marched into the surgery where Murchison had finished syringing the wax out of an old man’s ears.
“Overslept yourself, Murchison? I must buy you an alarum, you know, if it happens again.”
Murchison was washing his hands at the tap over the sink.
“No,” he said, “I was up half the night.”
John Tugler, cheerful little bully that he was, noticed the sag of the big man’s shoulders, and the peculiar harshness of his voice.
“Get through with it all right?”
Murchison stared momentarily at Dr. Tugler over his shoulder, a glance that had the significance of the flash of a drawn sword.
“It was not one of your cases,” he said.
“Private affair, eh?”
“My child is ill.”
“Your child?”
“Yes; I’m a bit worried, that’s all.”
Murchison turned the tap off with a jerk, rasped the dirty towel round the roller, and began to dry his hands as though he were trying to crush something between his palms. Dr. Tugler thrust out a lower lip, looked hard at Murchison, and fidgeted his fists in his trousers-pockets.
“What’s the matter?”
The big man’s silence suggested for a moment that he resented the abruptness of the question.
“Can’t say—yet.”
“Serious?”
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
Dr. Tugler frowned a little, stared hard at the ventilator, and pulled his hands out of his pockets with a jerk.
“Look here, Murchison, you’ve lost your nerve a little. I’ll come round and have a look at the youngster. You had better knock off work to-day.”
“Thanks, I’d rather stick to it. You might see the child, though. I—”
“Well?”
Murchison had turned his face away, and was standing by the window, fumbling with his cuff links.
“I don’t like the look of things. I don’t know why, but a man’s nerve seems to go when he’s doctoring his own kin.”
“That’s so,” and Dr. Tugler nodded.
“Then you’ll come round?”
“Supposing we go at once?”
“It’s good of you.”
“Bosh.”
And Dr. Tugler turned into the front room, took his top-hat from the gas bracket, and began to polish it with his sleeve.
CHAPTER XXIII
A March wind blew the dust and dead leaves in eddies through the breadth of Castle Gate as Dr. Steel’s brougham drew up before the timbered front of a Jacobean house. The mellow building with its carved barge-boards and great sweeping gables bore the date of 1617, and still carried a weather-worn sign swinging on an iron bracket. For the last fifty years the ground floor had been used as a grocery shop, a dim, rambling cavern of a place fragrant with the scent of coffee and spices. The proprietor, Mr. Isaac Mainprice, a very superior tradesman who dabbled in archæology, had refrained from gilt lettering above the door; nor did the quaint leaded windows glare with advertisements, whiskey bottles, and Dutch cheeses. Every one within ten miles of Roxton knew Mr. Mainprice. His prosperity did not need to be flaunted upon his windows.
“Good-day, madam. Terribly windy. Permit me.”
Mrs. Betty had swept across the pavement in her sables, an opulent figure wooed by the March wind. Mr. Mainprice had fussed forward in person. He bowed in his white apron, swung a chair forward, and then dodged behind the counter. The shop was empty, and three melancholy assistants studied Mrs. Betty from behind pyramids of sweetmeats and packages of tea, for the face under the white toque had all the imperative fascination of smooth and confident beauty.
Mrs. Steel drew out a little ivory memorandum-book, and glanced at it perfunctorily, before looking up into Mr. Mainprice’s attentive face. He was a weak-eyed, damp-haired man, with a big nose and a loose, good-tempered mouth. A patch of red on either cheek seemed to suggest that theépiciercultivated an authoritative taste in port, sherry, and Madeira.
“I want some jellies and soups, Mr. Mainprice.”
“Certainly, madam.”
“There are a few poor people my husband attends. I want to help them with a few little delicacies.”
Mrs. Betty’s drawl was most confidentially sympathetic, and Mr. Mainprice ducked approvingly behind the counter.
“What brand, madam? Lazenby’s, Cross & Blackwell’s—?”
“Oh—the best—what you recommend.”
“Thank you, madam.”
“Let me see,” and Mrs. Betty’s eyes wandered with an air of delightful innocence about the shop; “I like the glassed jellies best. Six. Yes, six. And six tins of desiccated soup.”
“Certainly, madam. The large size?”
“Yes. Will you have them made up into different parcels? I will take them in the carriage.”
“Certainly, madam.”
Mr. Mainprice nodded sharply to the three melancholy assistants, and then bent over the counter to scribble in his order-book.
“Very windy weather, madam.”
Mrs. Betty glanced up brightly at the suave, thin-whiskered face, and smiled. She had a great variety of smiles, and Mr. Mainprice was an intelligent person, and a man who was not ashamed of wearing a white apron. Moreover, he was an excellent patient, the father of five tall and unhealthy daughters, and the sympathetic husband of a neurasthenic wife.
“Terribly windy,” she agreed. “This is a dear old house, but I suppose it is rather draughty.”
“No, madam, no, we find it very comfortable. I have had double windows fitted to the upper rooms.”
“They make such a difference.”
“Such a difference, madam.”
There was a short pause. Mr. Mainprice was a nervous man. He had a habit of sniffing, and of opening and shutting his order-book as though it was imperative for him to keep his hands occupied.
“Dr. Steel is very busy, madam?”
“Oh, very busy; so much influenza.”
“I am afraid, madam,” and Mr. Mainprice elongated himself over the counter with a waggish side twist of the head—“I am afraid we selfish people don’t show Dr. Steel much mercy.”
Mrs. Betty laughed.
“I believe you yourself have been particularly wicked this winter, Mr. Mainprice.”
“I must plead guilty, madam.”
“You are quite well now, I hope?”
Mr. Mainprice frowned, and half shut one eye.
“Nearly well, madam. I ventured out last night without orders.”
“The Primrose League Concert?”
“Now, madam, you have found me out!”
Mrs. Betty and theépicierregarded each other with a sympathetic sense of humor.
“We were there, Mr. Mainprice, and I was so annoyed because Dr. Steel was called away just before your daughter sang.”
“Indeed, madam,” and Mr. Mainprice sniffed with nervous satisfaction.
“The best item on the programme. Such a sweet contralto, and such musical feeling. I remember poor Mrs. Murchison used to sing some of the same songs. Of course she never had your daughter’s artistic instinct.”
Mr. Mainprice colored, and looked coy.
“The girl has had first-class lessons, Mrs. Steel. I believe in having the best of everything. I have been very fortunate, madam, and though I ought not to mention it, money is no consideration.”
The grocer straightened his back suddenly, with a mild snigger of self-salutation.
“Money well spent, Mr. Mainprice—”
“Is money invested, madam. Exactly. And a good education is an investment in these days.”
Two of the melancholy assistants were carrying the parcels to Mrs. Betty’s carriage. She rose with a rustle of silks, her rich fur jacket setting off her slim but sensuous figure. Mr. Mainprice dodged from behind the counter, and preceded her to the door.
“If it will be any convenience, Mrs. Steel, we can deliver the parcels immediately.”
“Thank you, I want to see the people myself. I like to keep in touch with the poor, Mr. Mainprice.”
The grocer’s weak eyes honored a ministering angel.
“Exactly, madam. Permit me—”
He edged through the door with a nervous clearing of the throat, blinked as the wind blew a cloud of dust across the road, and escorted my Lady Bountiful to her carriage.
“What address, madam?”
“Thank you so much, Mr. Mainprice, the coachman knows.”
And Mr. Mainprice stood on the curb for fully ten seconds, watching Dr. Steel’s brougham bear this most charming lady upon her round of Christian kindness and pity.
It is wise in this world to cultivate a reputation for philanthropy, though like the priestly dress it may be a mere sanctity of the surface. Few people are honest enough to be open egotists, and to attain our ends it is necessary to skilfully bribe our neighbors’ prejudices. Though self-interest is the motive power that keeps the world from flagging, it is neither discreet nor cultured to blatantly acknowledge such a truth, for without a certain measure of hypocrisy life would be a sorry scramble. That man should be taught to love his neighbor as himself is both admirable and inspiring, and yet no one who respects his banking account could ever seriously accept so unbusiness-like a theory. There was more shrewd, honest, and unflinching truth-telling in Hobbes than in the vaporings of a flimsy sentimentalism.
Now Mrs. Betty had no more love for a washerwoman sick with a carbuncle on her neck than she had for an old and mildewed boot. Poverty and the inevitable sordidness thereof were more than distasteful to her, and yet she was so far sound in her worldly philosophy as to dissemble her distaste for expediency’s sake. It is never foolish to be suspected of generosity. And in Roxton, where the ladies counted one another’s yearly record as to hats, it was necessary to assume some sort of benignant attitude towards the heathen or the poor. Betty Steel, as the leading physician’s wife, recognized the power of judicious and moral self-advertisement. She had lived down her mischievous desire to shock the good people who paid her husband’s pleasant bills. No doubt she derived some delicate satisfaction from playing the fair lady in her furs, and from conferring favors on her humbler neighbors. The sense of superiority is always pleasant. That man is a liar who describes himself as utterly indifferent to obloquy or favor.
Mrs. Betty stopped at a florist’s shop on her way and bought three bundles of Scilla flowers. The golden blooms made a kind of splendor beside her sable coat. Colonel Feveril, Roxton’s most antique dandy, passed as she returned towards her brougham, and the brisk sweep of the soldier’s hat saved her the trouble of remembering her mirror.
At the top of one of the alleys leading to the river, Dr. Steel’s wife disembarked upon her errand of mercy. A small boy whipping a top on the narrow sidewalk served as a porter for the carrying of her jellies. One or two greasy heads were poked out of the pigeon-holes of windows. Mrs. Betty, demure and sweet as any Dorcas, knocked at the door of No. 5.
“Good-day, Mrs. Ripstone.”
An elderly woman in a faded blue flannel blouse had thrust a beak of a nose round the edge of the door.
“Good-day, ma’am.”
The thin, hard face offered no very fulsome welcome.
“How is your husband? Dr. Steel told me yesterday that he was a little better.”
Mrs. Ripstone’s lethargic eyes rested for a moment on the small boy carrying the parcels. Mrs. Betty herself bore the golden flowers.
“Much obliged, ma’am; my ’usband is doin’ as well as can be expected. Will you step in? We ain’t particular tidy.”
Mrs. Betty stepped in, and sat down calmly on a very rickety chair.
“I have brought you a little soup, and two glasses of jelly.”
“Much obliged to you, ma’am.”
The two women looked curiously at each other. They were utterly unlike in any characteristic. Mrs. Betty in her furs looked like a Russian countess in the hovel of a peasant.
The room was unconditionally dirty, and smelled of burned fat. There was nothing to admire in it, nothing to provide the lady with a subject for enthusiasm.
“I am glad your husband is better, Mrs. Ripstone.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
The woman in the blue blouse stood stolidly by the table. Mrs. Betty’s words made no evident impression on her. It was as though she regarded the visit as a necessary evil, and was only persuaded to be polite by such tangible blessings as might accrue.
“Have you any children?”
Mrs. Ripstone stared.
“Ten, ma’am.”
Her brevity was expressive.
“You must be very busy.”
“I am that, ma’am.”
“Are they all grown up?”
“Grow’d up?”
“Yes.”
“Well, ma’am,” and the woman in the blue blouse gave a peculiar smile, “if you’ll listen you’ll ’ear the baby ’ammerin’ a tin pot in the yard.”
The reek of the burned fat began to prove too powerful for Mrs. Betty’s sensitive soul. She and Mrs. Ripstone seemed out of sympathy. Conversation languished. The lady, with all her cleverness, was wholly at a loss what to say next.
Two minutes had passed when Dr. Steel’s wife rose. She smiled one of her perfunctory smiles at the woman in the blue blouse, and turned with a rustling petticoat towards the door.
“I hope your husband will like the soup, Mrs. Ripstone.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Good-afternoon.”
“Good-afternoon, ma’am.”
The woman watched Mrs. Betty to her carriage, and then closed the door with an expression of rather sour relief. She turned to the flowers and parcels on the table, untied the string, and examined the contents.
“Wonder what she’s left ’em for;” such was Mrs. Ripstone’s solitary and cynical remark.
In her carriage Mrs. Betty was holding an enamelled scent-bottle to her nose.
“I wonder why they are so dirty and so reserved,” she thought; “I don’t think that woman was the least bit grateful. I don’t like the poor. Anyway, I have done my duty.”
The west was wreathed with the torn crimson of a wind-blown sky at sunset when Mrs. Betty drove home from her essay in almsgiving. St. Antonia’s spire, a black and slender wedge, seemed to cleave the vastness of the flaming west. The tall elms about the church were very restless with the wailing of the wind.
In Parker Steel’s dining-room there was an air of warmth and luxury, a sense of deep shelter from the blustering melancholy of the dying day. The table was laid for tea, a silver kettle singing above the spirit-lamp, a plate of hot cakes on the trivet before the piled-up fire. It was the hour of soft, slanting shadows, and of the wayward yet sleepy flickering of the flames. Betty swept into the room with the sensuous satisfaction of a cat. The thick Turkey carpet muffled her footsteps like the moss of a forest “ride.”
At the window, his figure outlined by the gold and purple of a fading sky, she saw her husband standing motionless, his head bent forward over an out-stretched hand. He appeared to be examining something closely in the twilight. She could see his keen, clear profile, intent and a little stern.
“Parker, Parker, the cakes are burning!”
Her husband turned with a start, taken unawares, like the hero of Wessex in the swineherd’s hut. Betty Steel had glided towards the fire.
“Preoccupation—thy name is man! Parker, quick, your handkerchief. The dish is as hot as—Say something, do.”
Before the glow of the fire she noticed the irritable frown upon her husband’s face.
“Most worried of men, what is the matter?”
“Matter!”
“Fate cannot touch us, the cakes are saved. Misery, Parker! Quick, the kettle!”
The silver spout was spouting hot water over Mrs. Betty’s treasured Japanese tray. Her husband with a “damn the thing,” turned down the cap of the spirit-lamp with a spoon.
“What an infernal fool that girl Symons is!”
Mrs. Betty drew a chair forward with her foot, reached for the tea-caddy, and glanced whimsically across the table at her much grieved mate.
“The king did not try to shift the responsibility, Parker.”
Dr. Steel sat down abruptly, with the air of a man in no mood for persiflage.
“What were you studying so intently?”
“I?”
“Learning palmistry?”
Parker Steel helped himself to one of the hot cakes.
“Oh, nothing,” he said, curtly.
His wife laughed.
“What a retort to give a woman!”
The physician shifted his chair.
“Really, Betty, am I to go into a lengthy dissertation on every trifle because you happen to be inquisitive?”
“Tell me the trifle, and you shall have your tea.”
“I was looking at a chilblain on my finger.”
“What admirable bathos, Parker! I might have taken you for Hamlet soliloquizing for the last time over Ophelia’s tokens.”
“Oh, quite possibly,” and he began to sip his tea; “you have forgotten the sugar. What execrable memories you women have!”
CHAPTER XXIV
“Daddy, my head, my head!”
“Lie quiet, little one. Hold her hands, Kate. Drink it all down, Gwen.”
“I can’t! Daddy, my head, oh, my head!”
Dr. John Tugler, standing before the nursery window, bit one corner of his mustache, and stared hard at the chimney of the steam-mill trailing a plume of smoke across the dull gray of the sky. The monotonous cooing of a dove came from a wooden cage hung in the back yard of the next-door house. A hundred yards away an iron railway bridge crossed the canal, and the thunder of each passing train made peace impossible in the little villa.
Dr. Tugler pulled down the blind.
“Beast of a back room,” he thought; “they must wring the neck of that confounded bird.”
He turned, and stood looking in silence at the two figures bending over the little bed. Catherine had one arm under the child’s head, and was smoothing back the hair from Gwen’s forehead. The child’s eyes were closed, her face flushed. Tugler saw her turn restlessly from her mother’s arm, as though the least touch was feverishly resented.
“Don’t, don’t—”
“There, dear, there!”
The look in the mother’s eyes betrayed how sharply such an innocent repulse could wound.
“Come, Gwen, darling.”
“I should let her rest, dear.”
Murchison’s voice was peculiarly quiet. He was standing at the foot of the bed, bending forward a little over the bar, his eyes fixed on the face of the child.
Dr. Tugler moved softly from the window. His habitual bluster had disappeared completely. His full blue eyes looked dull and puzzled.
“Not much of a room—this,” he said, apologetically, touching Murchison’s elbow.
The father turned and looked at him with the slow and almost stupid stare of a man suffering from shock.
“I suppose it isn’t.”
“We can move her to the front room.”
Catherine had caught John Tugler’s meaning. She was kneeling beside the bed, her eyes fixed on the little man’s plebeian but good-natured face.
“Move her, Mrs. Murchison.”
“At once?”
“Yes. She must be kept absolutely quiet; no light, no noise.”
Catherine looked at him almost helplessly. A train was clanging over the iron bridge, and the caged dove cooed irrepressibly, a living symbol of vexatious sentimentalism.
“There will be less noise in the front room.”
Her husband nodded.
“We can have straw put down.”
“And tell the next-door people to strangle that confounded pigeon.”
“I will ask them.”
“And remember, no light.”
A shrill cry came from the sick child’s lips, as though driven from her by some sudden flaring up of pain.
“My head, my head! Muvver—”
Catherine’s hands flashed out to Gwen, hovering, as though fearing to touch the fragile thing she loved. She tried to soothe the child, a woman whose wounded tenderness overflowed in a flood of broken and disjointed words. Her husband watched her, his firm mouth loosened into a mute and poignant tremor of distress.
Tugler touched him on the shoulder.
“Let’s go down.”
Murchison straightened, and followed the doctor to the door. He looked back for a moment, and saw Catherine’s head, a dull gleam of gold above the child’s flushed face. A strange shock of awe ran through him, like the deep in-drawing of a breath before some picture that tells of tears. His vision blurred as he closed the door, and followed John Tugler slowly down the stairs.
Both men were silent for a moment in the little front room of Clovelly. Tugler had taken his stand between the sofa and the table, and was watching Murchison out of the angles of his eyes. He was accustomed to dealing with ignorant people, but here he had to satisfy a man whose professional education had been far better than his own.
“Why didn’t you tell me of this before, Murchison?”
“Tell you what?”
“About the child.”
Murchison glanced at him blankly.
“Well, it was my own affair.”
“Didn’t like to bother any one, eh? You never ought to have kept the youngster in this beast of a town. I could have told you a lot about Wilton if you had asked.”
John Tugler, like many amiable but rather coarse-fibred people, was often most brusque when meaning to be kind. Moreover, he had a certain measure of authority to maintain, and for the maintenance of authority it was customary for him to wax aggressive.
“I tried to get the child away.”
Murchison spoke monotonously, yet with effort.
“We wrote to her grandmother, but the old lady was ill, and put us off with excuses. The child was only ailing then. It was a matter of money. The only money I could lay my hands on was a small sum deposited with the post-office in the child’s own name. And when I got the money—I saw that it would be no good.”
The florid little man looked sincerely vexed.
“You ought to have mentioned it,” he said—“you ought to have mentioned it. I’m not so damned stingy as not to give a brother practitioner’s child a chance.”
Murchison lifted his head.
“Thanks,” he said. “I suppose it is too late now?”
His eyes met Dr. Tugler’s. The grim question in that look demanded the sheer truth. John Tugler understood it, and met it like a man.
“We can’t move her now,” he said.
“No.”
It is incredible what meaning a single word can carry. With Murchison that “no” meant the surrender of a life.
Dr. Tugler stared out of the window, and rattled his keys.
“Did you notice the squint?” he asked, softly.
“Yes.”
“And the retraction of the head? She’s been sick, too: cerebral vomiting. Damn the disease, I’ve seen too much of it!”
Murchison’s face might have been sculptured by Michael Angelo.
“Then you think it is that?” he asked, dully.
“Tubercular meningitis?”
“Yes.”
John Tugler nodded.
There was a short and distraught silence before the little man picked up his hat. He smoothed it gently with the sleeve of his coat. Murchison stood motionless, staring at the floor.
“Look here, Murchison.”
He glanced up and met the other man’s dull eyes.
“You can’t work to-day. It doesn’t signify. And about the cash—”
“Thanks, but—”
“Now, now, we’re not going to quarrel, are we? The work’s been pretty thick this winter. I’m rather thinking you’ve done rather more than your share. It would make things more comfortable, now—wouldn’t it?”
Murchison gave a kind of groan.
“It’s good of you, Tugler.”
“Oh, bosh, man! Am I a bit of flint? Call it another pound a week. It isn’t much at that. I’ll send you a fiver on account.”
He gave his hat a last rub, crammed it on his head, and walked hurriedly towards the door.
“It’s good of you, Tugler. I—”
“All right. I don’t want it talked about.”
The little man was already in the hall, and fumbling for the handle of the front door. He opened it, slipped out like a guilty debtor, and crunched down the gravel, swearing to himself after the manner of the egregious male.