CHAPTER XXXII
When I got out the streets were already buzzing with a rumor that no extra had as yet proclaimed. The House of Representatives had followed the Senate in voting for war, and the President was about to sign the declaration.
But I forgot this on arriving at the flat, for Lovey was propped up in bed, with his thin nose in the air, making little sniffs.
“I smell it, Slim,” he smiled, as I entered. “Kind of a coffee smell it is now, with a dash o’ bacon and heggs.”
“That smell is always round this flat, Lovey,” I said, trying to be casual. “It’s all the breakfasts you and I have eaten—”
“Oh no, Slim. You can’t be mistook in this; and besides—” He made a sign to the man nurse who for the past week or two Cantyre had sent in from one of his hospitals. “You clear out, d’ye ’ear? I want to talk to my buddy, private-like.”
The man strolled out to the living-room, whispering to me as he passed: “There’s a change in him. I don’t think he’ll last through the night.”
“Come and sit ’ere, sonny,” Lovey commanded as soon as we were alone. “I’ve got somethin’ special-like to tell ye. Did ye know,” he went on, when I was seated beside the bed, “as I’d seen Lizzy—and she ’adn’t her neck broke at all. She was lovely.”
“Where?” I asked, to humor him.
“Right ’ere—right beside that there chair that you’re a-sittin’ in.”
“When?”
“Oh, on and off—pretty near all the time now.”
“You mean that she comes and goes?”
“No; not just comin’ and goin’. She’s—she’s kind o’ ’ere all the time, only sometimes I ain’t lookin’.” His face became alight. “There she is now—and a great long street be’ind ’er. No, it ain’t a street; it’s just all lovely-like, and Lizzy with ’er neck as straight as a walkin’-stick—and not a drinkin’-woman no more she don’t look—it’s kind o’ beautiful like, Slim, only—only I can’t make ye understand.”
Sighing fretfully over his inability to explain, he lapsed into that state of which I never was sure whether it was sleep or unconsciousness.
The coma lasted for a great part of the night. Sending the nurse to lie down, I sat and watched, chiefly because I had too much on my mind and in my heart to want to go to bed. Every two or three hours Cantyre stole in, in his dressing-gown, finding nothing he could do. Once or twice I was tempted to ask him what he thought of Christian’s talk, but, fearing to break the spell it might have wrought in him, I refrained. He himself didn’t mention it, nor did he seem to know that I had observed his impulsive, shaking hands.
On one of the occasions when he was with me Lovey opened his eyes suddenly, beginning to murmur something we couldn’t understand.
“What is it, old chap?” Cantyre questioned, bending over him and listening.
But Lovey was already articulating brokenly. It tooktwo or three repetitions, or attempts at repetition, for Cantyre to be in a position to interpret.
“What’s he trying to say?” I inquired.
Cantyre pretended to arrange the bottles on the table beside the bed so as not to have to look at me.
“He says, or he’s doing his best to say, ‘I didn’t say nothink but what was for everybody’s good.’”
It was on my lips to retort, “Perhaps he didn’t.”
I left that, however, for Cantyre, who went back to his rooms without comment.
He returned in the small hours of the morning, and once more we sat, one on one side of the bed and the other on the other, in what was practically silence. All I could say of it was that it had become a sympathetic silence. Why it was sympathetic I didn’t know: but the unclassified perceptions told me that it was.
When Lovey opened his eyes again it was with the air of not having been asleep or otherwise away from us.
“I saved ye, Slim, didn’t I?”
“Yes, Lovey, old man, you did.”
“Kep’ straight so as you would keep straight too?”
“Yes, Lovey.”
“Ye’d never ’a’ done it if it ’adn’t been for me?”
“No, Lovey.”
“And I’d never ’a’ gone away from ye, Slim. I was just a—a-frightenin’ of you. I didn’t mean no ’arm at all, I didn’t.”
“I know, Lovey.”
He fixed his glazing eyes upon me as he said, “I told ye my name wasn’t Lovey, didn’t I?”
“No, but that doesn’t matter.”
“No, that doesn’t matter now. We’re fellas together, so what’s the diff?... I don’t care where we sleeps to-night,so long as you’re there, sonny.... Greeley’s Slip is good enough for mine, if I can snuggle up to you, like.... Ye don’t mind, do ye?”
I put my arm round his shoulder, raising him.
“No, Lovey, I don’t mind. Just snuggle up.”
“’Old me ’and, sonny.”
I took his hand in mine as his head rested on my shoulder.
He gave a long, restful sigh.
“Lizzy says it’s an awful nice place where she is, and—”
I felt him slipping down in bed; but Cantyre, who knew more of such cases than I did, caught him gently round the loins and lowered him.