CHAPTER V
The Angel of Life
Coplestone was the first of our tenants who had taken his house throughme, and I was extremely proud of him. It was precisely the pride of themighty hunter in his first kill; for Coplestone was big game in his way,and even of a leonine countenance, with his crested wave of tawny hairand his clear sunburnt skin. In early life, as an incomparable oar, hehad made a name which still had a way of creeping into the sportingpapers; and at forty the same fine figure and untarnished face were awalking advertisement of virtue. But now he had also the grim eyes andstubborn jaw of the man who has faced big trouble; he wore sombre tiesthat suggested the kind of trouble it had been; and he settled downamong us to a solitude only broken in the holidays of his only child,then a boy of twelve at a preparatory school.
I first heard of the boy's existence when Coplestone chose the papersfor his house. Anything seemed good enough for the "threereception-rooms and usual offices"; but over a bedroom and a play roomon the first floor we were an hour deciding against every pattern in thebooks, and then on the exact self-colour to be obtained elsewhere. Itwas at the end of that hour that a chance remark, about the eveningpaper and the latest cricket, led to a little conversation,insignificant in itself, yet enough to bring Coplestone and me intotouch about better things than house decoration. Often after that, whenhe came down of an afternoon, he would look in at the office and leaveme his _Pall Mall_. And he brought the boy in with him on the first dayof the midsummer holidays.
"Ronnie's a keen cricketer at present," said Coplestone on thatoccasion. "But he's got to be a wet-bob like his old governor when hegoes on to Eton. That's what we're here for, isn't it, Ronnie? We'regoing to take each other on the river every blessed day of theholidays."
Ronnie beamed with the brightest little face in all the world. He hadbright brown eyes and dark brown hair, and his skin burnt a delicatebrown instead of the paternal pink. His expression was his father's, butnot an atom of his colouring. His mother must have been a brunette and abeautiful woman. I could not help thinking of her as I looked at thebeaming boy who seemed to have forgotten his loss, if he had everrealised it. And yet it was just a touch of something in his face, asomething pensive and constrained, when he was not smiling, that gavehim also such a look of Coplestone at times.
But as a rule Ronnie was sizzling with happiness and excitement; and itwas my privilege to see a lot of him those hot holidays. Coplestone didnot go away for a single night or day. Most mornings one met him and hisboy in flannels, on their way down to the river, laden with their lunch.But because the exclusive society of the best of boys must eventuallybore the most affectionate of men, I was sometimes invited to join thepicnic, and on Saturdays and Sundays I accepted more than once. Those,however, were the days on which I was nearly always bespoke by UvoDelavoye, and once when I said so it ended in our all going off togetherin a bigger boat. That day marked a decline in Ronnie's regard for me asan ex-member of a minor school eleven. It was not, perhaps, that headmired me less, but that Delavoye, who played no games at all, hadnevertheless a way with him that fascinated man and boy alike.
With Ronnie, it was a way of cracking jokes and telling stories, andtaking an extraordinary interest in the boy's preparatory school, sothat its rather small beer came bubbling out in a sparkling brew thatCoplestone himself had failed to tap. Then Uvo could talk like aninspired professional about the games he could not play, about bookslike an author, and about adventures like a born adventurer. In Egypt,moreover, he had seen a little life that went a long way in the telling;conversely, one always felt that he had done a bigger thing or two outthere than he pretended. To a small boy, at all events, he wasirresistible. Had he been an usher at a school like Ronnie's he wouldhave had a string of them on either arm at every turn. As it was, a lesssensible father might well have been jealous of him before the holidayswere nearly over.
But it was just in the holidays that Coplestone was at his best; whenthe boy went back in September, we were to see him at his worst. In thebeginning he was merely moody and depressed, and morose towards us twoas creatures who had served our turn. The more we tried to cheer hissolitude, the less encouragement we received. If we cared to call againat Christmas, he hinted, we should be welcome, but not before. Wewatched him go off bicycling alone in the red autumn afternoons. We sawhis light on half of the night; late as we were, he was always later;and now he was never to be seen at all of a morning. But his grim eyeshad lost their light, his ruddy face had changed its shade, and erelongI saw him reeling in broad daylight.
Coplestone had taken to the bottle--and as a strong man takes toeverything--without fear or shame. Yet somehow I felt it was for thefirst time in his life; so did Delavoye, but on other grounds. I did notbelieve he could have been the man he was when he came to us, if thiscurse had ever descended on Coplestone before. Yet he seemed to take itrather as a blessing, as a sudden discovery which he was a fool not tohave made before. This was no case of surreptitious, shamefacedtippling; it was a cynically open and defiant downfall, at once anoutrage on a more than decent community, and a new interest in manyadmirable lives.
Soon there were complaints which I was requested to transmit toCoplestone in his next lucid interval. But I only pretended to have doneso. I thought the complainants a set of self-righteous busybodies, and Ivastly preferred the good will of the delinquent. That was partly onRonnie's account, partly for the sake of the man's own magnificent past,but partly also because his present seemed to me a fleeting phase ofsheer insanity, which would end as suddenly as it had supervened. Theform was too bad to be true, even if Coplestone had ever shown itbefore; and there was now some evidence that he had not.
Delavoye had come down from town with eyes as bright as Ronnie's.
"You remember Sawrey-Biggerstaff by name? He was second for theDiamonds the second year Coplestone won them, and he won them himselfthe year after. I met him to-day with a man who lunched me at theUnited University. I told him we had Coplestone down here, and askedhim if it was true that he had ever been off the rails like thisbefore, only without breathing a word about his being off them now.Sawrey-Biggerstaff swore that he had never heard of such a libel, orstruck a more abstemious hound than Harry Coplestone, or ever heard ofhim being or ever having been anything else! So you must see what it allmeans, Gilly."
"It means that he's never got over the loss of his wife."
"But that happened nearly three years ago. Ronnie told me. Why didn'tthe old boy break out before? Why save it all up for Witching Hill?"
"I know what you're going to say."
"But isn't it obvious? Our wicked old man drank like an aquarium. Hisvices are the weeds of this polluted soil; they crop up one after theother, and with inveterate irony he's allotted this one to the noblestcreature on the place. It's for us to save him by hook or crook--orrather it's my own hereditary job."
"And how do you mean to set about it?"
"You'll be angry with me, Gilly, but I shan't be happy till I see hishouse on your hands again. It's the only chance--to drive him into freshwoods and pastures new!"
I was angry. I declined to discuss the matter any further; but I stuckto my opinion that the cloud would vanish as quickly as it had gathered.And Coplestone of all men was man enough to stand his ground and live itdown.
But first he must take himself in hand, instead of which I had to ownthat he was going from bad to worse. He was a man of leisure, and hedrank as though he had found his vocation in the bottle. He was alonely man, and he drank as though drink was a friend in need and notthe deadliest foe. He was the only drunkard I ever knew who drank withimpenitent zest; and I saw something of him at his worst; he was moreapproachable than he had been before his great surrender. All Octoberand November he kept it up, his name a byword far beyond the confines ofthe Estate, and by December he must have been near the inevitableclimax. Then he disappeared. The servants had no idea of hiswhereabouts; but he had taken luggage. That was the best reason forbelieving him to
be still alive, until he turned up with his boy for theChristmas holidays.
It would be too much to say that he looked as he had looked lastholidays. The man had aged; he seemed even a little shaken, but not morethan by a moderate dose of influenza; and to a casual eye theimprovement was more astounding than the previous deterioration,especially in its rapidity. His spirits were at least as good as theyhad been before, his hospitality in keeping with the season. I ate myChristmas dinner with father and son, and Delavoye and I first-footedthem on New Year's morning. What was most remarkable on these occasionswas the way Coplestone drank his champagne, with the happy moderation ofa man who has never exceeded in his life. There was now no shadow ofexcess, but neither was there any of the weakling's recourse to theopposite extreme of meticulous austerity. A doctor might have forbiddeneven a hair of the sleeping dog, but to us young fellows it was a joy tosee our hero so completely his own man once more.
Early in January came a frost--a thrilling frost--with skating on thegravel-pit ponds beyond the Village. It was a pastime in which I hadtaken an untutored delight, all the days of my northern youth, and now Iput in every hour I could at the clumsy execution of elementary figures.But Coplestone had spent some winters in Switzerland, and he was a pastmaster in the Continental style. Ordinary skaters would form a ring towatch his dazzling displays, and those who had not seen him in theautumn must have found it hard to credit the whispers of those who had.His pink skin regained its former purity, his blue eyes shone like fairylamps, and the whole ice rang with the music of his "edge" as he spedcareening like a human yacht. It was better still to watch him patientlyimparting the rudiments to Ronnie, who picked them up as a small boywill, and worked so hard that the perspiration would stand upon thesmooth brown face for all that wondrous frost. It froze, more or less,all the rest of those holidays, and the Coplestones never missed a dayuntil the last of all. I was hoping to find them on the ice at dusk, ifonly I could manage to get away in time, but early in the afternoon UvoDelavoye came along to disabuse my mind.
"That young Ronnie's caught a chill," said he--"I thought he would.It'll keep him at home for another day or two, so the ill wind may blowold Coplestone a bit of good. I'm feeling a bit anxious about him,Gilly; wild horses won't drag him from this haunted hill! Just at thismoment, however, he's on his way to Richmond to see if he can getRonnie the new _Wisden_; and I'm sneaking up to town because I know it'snot to be had nearer. I was wondering if you could make time to look himup while we're gone?"
I made it there and then at the risk of my place; it was not so oftenthat I had Ronnie to myself. But at the very gate I ceased to thinkabout the child. A Pickford van was delivering something at the house.At a glance I knew it for a six-gallon jar of whisky--to see poorCoplestone some little way into the Easter term.
Ronnie lay hot and dry in his bed, but brown and bright as he had lookedupon the ice, and sizzling with the exuberance of a welcome that warmedmy heart. He told me, of course, that it was "awful rot" losing the lastday like this; but, on the other hand, he seemed delighted with hisroom--he always was delighted with something--and professed himselfrather glad of an opportunity of appreciating it as it deserved. Indeed,there was not a lazy bone in his little body, and I doubt if he hadspent an unnecessary minute in his bedroom all the holidays. But theyreally were delightful quarters, those two adjoining rooms for which nopaper in our stock had been good enough. Both were now radiant in asky-blue self-colour that transported one to the tropics, and certainlylooked better than I thought it would when I had the trouble ofprocuring it.
In the bedroom the blue was only broken by some simple white furniture,by a row of books over the bed, and by groups of the little eleven inwhich Ronnie already had a place, and photographs of his father at oneor two stages of his great career. I was still exploring when an eagersummons brought me to the bedside.
"Let's play cricket!" cried Ronnie--"do you mind? With a pack ofcards--my own invention! Everything up to six counts properly; all oversix count singles, except the picture cards, and most of them get youout. King and queen are caught and bowled, but the old knave's Mr.Extras!"
"Capital, Ronnie!" said I. "Shall it be single wicket between us two, orthe next test-match with Australia?"
Ronnie was all for the test, and really the rules worked very well. Youshuffled after the fall of every wicket, and you never knew your luck.Tom Richardson, the last man in for England, made sixty-two, while somewho shall be nameless went down like ninepins in the van. In the nexttest (at Lord's) we elaborated the laws to admit of stumping, runningout, getting leg-before and even hitting wicket. But the red kings andqueens still meant a catch or what Ronnie called "a row in your timberyard." And so the afternoon wore on, until I had to mend the fire andlight the gas; and then somehow the cards seemed only cards, and we putthem away for that season.
I forget why it was that Ronnie suddenly wanted his knife. I ratherthink that he was deliberately rallying his possessions about him inphilosophic preparation for a lengthy campaign between the sheets. Inany case there was no finding that knife, but something much moreinteresting came to light instead.
I was conducting the search under directions from the bed, but I was outof sight behind the screen when I kicked up the corner of loose carpetand detected the loosened board. Here, thought I, was a secretrepository where the missing possession might have been left by mistake;there were the actual marks of a blade upon the floor. "This looks alikely place," I said; but I did not specify the place I meant, and thenext moment I had discovered neither knife nor pencil, but the soiled,unframed photograph of a lovely lady.
There it had lain under the movable bit of board, which had made acertain noise in the moving. That same second Ronnie bounded out of bed,and I to my feet to chase him back again.
"Who told you to look in there? Give that to me this minute!No--no--please put it back where you--where you found it!"
His momentary rage had already broken down in sobs, but he stood over mewhile I quickly did as he begged and replaced the carpet; then I tuckedhim up again, but for some time the bed shook under his anguish. I toldhim how sorry I was, again and yet again, and I suppose eventually mytone betrayed me.
"So you know who it is?" he asked, suddenly regarding me with dry brighteyes.
"I couldn't help seeing the likeness," I replied.
"It's my mother," he said unnecessarily.
His manner was curiously dogged and unlike him.
"And you keep her photograph under the floor?"
"Yes; you don't see many about, do you?" he inquired with precociousbitterness.
There was not one to be seen downstairs. That I knew from my glimpse ofthe photograph under the floor; there was nothing like it on any of thewalls, nothing so beautiful, nothing with that rather wild, defiantexpression which I saw again in Ronnie at this moment.
"But why under the floor?" I persisted, guessing vaguely though I did.
"You won't tell anybody you saw it there?"
"Not a soul."
"You promise?"
"Solemnly."
"You won't say a single word about it, if I tell you something?"
"Not a syllable."
"Well--then--it's because I don't want Daddy to see it, for fear----"
"--it would grieve him?" I suggested as the end of his broken sentence.And I held my breath in the sudden hope that I might be right.
"For fear he tears it up!" the boy said harshly. "He did that oncebefore, and this is the last I've got."
I made no comment, and there were no further confidences from Ronnie. Somany things I wanted to know and could not ask! I could only hold mypeace and Ronnie's hot hand, until it pinched mine in sudden warning, asthe whole house lept under a springy step upon the stairs.
"Not a word to anybody, you know, Mr. Gillon?"
"Not one, to a single soul, Ronnie!"
But it was a heavy seal that was thus placed upon my lips; heavy as leadwhen I discussed the child with Uvo Delavoye; and th
at was almost everyminute that we spent together for days to come.
For Ronnie became very ill.
* * * * *
In the beginning it was an honest chill. The chill turned to that refugeof the General Practitioner--influenza. Double pneumonia was its last,most definite stage; the local doctor made no mistake about that, andCoplestone appealed in vain against the verdict, before specialists whocame down from London at a guinea a mile.
It was a mild enough case so far. The boy was strong and healthy, andcapable of throwing off at least as much as most strong men. He was alsoa capital little patient--and Coplestone was a magnificent patient'sfather. He did not harry the doctors; he treated the elderly Scotchnurse like a queen; he was not always in and out of the sick-room byday, and he never set foot in it during the night. In the daytimeDelavoye took him for long walks, and I would sit up with him at nightuntil he started nodding in his chair.
The first night he said: "You must have some whisky, Gillon. I've got anew lot in." And when I said I seldom touched it--"I know you don't, inthis house," he rejoined, with his hand for an instant on my shoulder."But that's all right, Gillon!--Do you happen to know much about Dr.Johnson?"
"Hardly anything. You should try Uvo."
"Well, I don't know much myself; but I always remember that when thepoor old boy was dying he refused the drugs which were giving him allthe peace he got, because he said he'd made up his mind to 'render uphis soul to God unclouded.' Now I come to think of it, there's not muchanalogy," continued Coplestone with a husky laugh. "But I know I'drather do what Dr. Johnson wouldn't than go up clouded to my little ladif ever he--wanted me!"
And he took about a teaspoonful from a mistaken sense of hospitality,but no second allowance as the night wore on. The next night I was ableto refuse without offending him; after that the decanter was nevertouched. Yet once or twice I saw the stopper taken out in sheer absenceof mind, only to be replaced without flurry or hesitation.
Self-control? I never knew a man with more; it came out every hour thatwe spent together, and before long it was needed almost every minute.One day Delavoye dashed into the office in town clothes and with atragic face.
"They want a second nurse! It's come to that already," he said, "and I'mgoing up about it now."
"But isn't that the doctor's job?" I asked, liking the looks of him aslittle as his news.
"I can't help it if it is, Gilly! I must lend a hand somehow or _I_shall crack up. It's little enough one can do, besides being day-nurseto poor old Coplestone, and this afternoon he's asleep for once. What agreat chap he is, Gilly, and will be ever after, if only we can pull thelad through and then get them both out of this! But it's two liveshanging on one thread, and that cursed old man of mine trying all heknows to cut it! I'll euchre him, you'll see. By hook or crook I'll balkhim----"
But white clouds were tumbling behind the red houses opposite, andDelavoye dashed out again to catch his train, like the desperate leaderof a forlorn hope, leaving his dark eyes burning before mine and hiswild words ringing in my ears.
Quite apart from the point on which he was never sane, he seemed to havelost the otherwise level head on which I had learnt to rely at anycrisis; but Coplestone still kept his, and him I admired more and more.He still took his exercise like a man, refrained from harrying nurse ordoctor, showed an untroubled face by the sick-bed, but avoided the roommore and more, and altogether during the terrible delirious stages.
"If I were to stay there long," he said to me once, "I should make ascene. I couldn't help it. There are more things than one to cloud yourmind, and I've got to keep mine unclouded all the time."
He kept it very nearly serene; and his serenity was not the numbness ofdespair which sometimes wears the same appearance; for I do not thinkthere was a moment at which Coplestone despaired. He had much too stouta heart. There was nothing forced or unnatural in his manner; hisfeelings were not deadened for an instant, yet not for an instant wouldhe give them rein. Only, our sober vigils cut deeper lines than hisexcesses before Christmas, and every night left him a hard year older.
We spent them all downstairs in his study. Neither of us was achess-player, and I was all unversed in cards, but sometimes we playeddraughts or dominoes by the hour, as though one of us had been Ronniehimself. Often we talked of him, but never as though there were anyquestion of his eventual recovery. Coplestone would only go so far as tobemoan the probability of an entirely lost hockey term, and his eyewould steal round to the photograph of last year's hockey eleven atRonnie's little school, in a place of honour on the mantelpiece, whereindeed it concealed one of his own most heroic trophies.
Fitted and proportioned like half a hundred others on the Estate, thatstudy of Coplestone's is one of those Witching Hill interiors that timecannot dismantle in my mind. It was filled with the memorials of abrilliant boyhood. There were framed photographs of four Cambridgecrews, of two Eton eights, of the Eton Society with Coplestone to thefore in white trousers, of the "long low wall with trees behind it" andof the "old grey chapel behind the trees." There were also a number ofparti-coloured caps under suspended oars, and more silver in the shapeof cups, salvers, and engraved cigarette boxes than his modest staff ofservants could possibly keep clean. Over the mantelpiece hung the rulesof the Eton Society--under glass--with a trophy of canes decked withlight blue ribbons.
"It all looks pretty blatant, I'm afraid," said Coplestoneapologetically. "But I thought it would interest Ronnie and perhapshound him on to cut me out. And now----"
He stopped, and I hoped he was not going on, for this was when Ronniewas at his worst and the second nurse had arrived.
"And now," said Coplestone, "the little sinner wants to be a dry-bob!"
I have not naturally a despondent temperament, but that night I for mypart was wondering whether Ronnie would ever go to Eton at all. Thedelirious stage is always terrifying to the harrowed ignoramus watchingby the bed; it is almost worse if one is downstairs, trying not tolisten, yet doing little else, and without the nurse's calm voice andexperienced eyes to reassure one. That was how I spent that night. Thedelirium had begun the night before, and been intermittent ever since.But Coplestone was not terrified; he kept both nerve and spirits like ahero. His thought for me brought a lump into my throat. Since I refusedto leave him, I must take the sofa; he would do splendidly in the chair.He did better than I could have believed possible. He fell peacefullyasleep, and I sat up watching his great long limbs in the loweredgas-light, but always listening while I watched.
Ronnie had not the makings of his father's fine physique. That was oneof the disquieting features of the case. He was fragile, excitable,highly strung, as I felt his poor mother must have been before him. Andhe was tragically like his hidden portrait of her. I saw it as often asI was permitted a peep at Ronnie. What had she done amiss before shedied? That was perhaps the chief thing I wanted to know about her, butafter my pledge to Ronnie I felt unable even to discuss the poor soulwith Delavoye. But she was only less continually in my mind than Ronniehimself, and to-night it seemed she was in his as well.
"O Mummie! Mummie--darling! My very, very, own little Mummie!"
God knows what had taken me upstairs, except the awful fascination ofsuch wanderings, the mental necessity of either hearing them or knowingthat they had ceased. On the stairs I felt so thankful they had ceased;it was in the darkened play-room, now a magazine of hospital appliances,kettles, bottles, and the oxygen apparatus; it was here I heard thejoyous ravings of his loving little heart--here, on the thresholdbetween his own two rooms, that I even saw him with his thin arms lockedround the neck of the young nurse who had taken over the night duty.
His thin arms locked round the neck of the young nurse.]
She heard me. She came to the door and stood in silhouette against thecheerful firelight of the inner room. Its glow just warmed one side ofher white cap and plain apparel, then glanced off her high whiteforehead and made a tear twinkle underneath.
> "He thinks I'm his mother," she whispered--"and I'm letting him!"
I went out and pulled myself together on the landing, before sneakingback into the study without waking Coplestone.
In the morning I was dozing behind my counter without compunction, forthe vigil had been an absolutely sleepless one for me, when the glassdoor opened like a clap of thunder, and in comes Delavoye rubbing hishands.
"The doctor's grinning all round his head this morning!" he crowed. "Youmay take it from me that there's a lot of life in our young dog yet."
"What's his temperature?"
"Down to a hundred and a bit. One thing at a time. They've scotched thatinfernal delirium, at all events."
"Since when?"
"Some time in the night. He's not talking any rot this morning."
"But he was fairly raving after midnight. I went up and heard himmyself."
Uvo broke into exulting smiles.
"Ah! Gilly," said he, "but now we've got an angel abroad in the house.You can almost hear the beating of her wings!"
"Is that your own, Uvo?"
"No; it's a bit of a chestnut in these days. But it was said originallyof the angel of death, Gilly, and I mean the opposite sort of angelaltogether."
"The young nurse?"
"Exactly. She's simply priceless. But I knew she would be."
"You knew something about her, then?"
"Enough to bring her down on my own yesterday, and blow the doctor! Buthe's all for her now."
So, indeed, was I; for though a tear is nowhere more out of place thanon the cheek of a trained nurse, yet in none is it such welcomeevidence of human interest and affection. And there was the tender tactof the pretence to which she had lent herself before my eyes; even as amemory it nearly filled them afresh. Yet I could not speak of it toCoplestone, and to Delavoye I would not, lest I were led into betrayingthat which I had promised Ronnie to keep entirely to myself.
Nurse Agnes we all called her, but I for one hardly saw her again, saveon the daily constitutional in grey uniform and flowing veil. The factwas that the improvement in Ronnie was so marked, and so splendidlysustained, that both his father and I were able to get to bed again. Theboy himself had capital nights, and said he looked forward to them; onthe other hand, for final sign of approaching convalescence, he becamejust a little difficult by day. Altogether it was no surprise to me tolearn that two nurses would not be necessary after the second week; butI was sorry to hear it was Nurse Agnes who was going, and I thought thatUvo Delavoye would be sorrier still.
There was something between them. I felt sure of that. His rushing upto town to fetch her down, the absurd grounds on which he had pretendedto justify that officious proceeding, and then his candid enthusiasmnext day, when his protege had shown her quality, all these weresuspicious circumstances in themselves. Yet by themselves, at such atime, they might easily have escaped one's attention. It was a more thansuspicious circumstance that brought the whole train home to me.
I was getting my exercise one mid-day when there was nothing doing;suddenly I saw Nurse Agnes ahead of me getting hers. Her thin veil flewabout her as she stepped out briskly, but I was walking quicker still;in any case I must overtake her, and it was a chance of hearing moregood news of Ronnie; for we never saw anything of her at night, exceptin firelit glimpses through the sick-room door. Evidently these were notenough for Uvo either; presently I espied him sauntering ahead, and whenNurse Agnes overtook him, instead of my overtaking her, he hardly tookthe trouble to lift his hat. But they walked on together at a pacebetween his and hers, while I waited in a gateway before turning back.
So that was it! I was delighted for Uvo's sake; I tried to feeldelighted altogether. At any rate he had chosen a wonderful nurse, butreally I had seen so little of the girl ... if that was the word forher. In the apparent absence of other objections, I was prepared for adistinct grievance on the score of age.
However, she was going. That was something, and Uvo did not seemparticularly cut up about it after all. But he brought the cab for herhimself when the time came; he did not come in; but I saw him throughthe window as I sat at draughts once more with Coplestone, because itwas a Saturday afternoon and Ronnie was not quite so well.
"This must be for Nurse Agnes," I said innocently. "It seems a pity sheshould go so soon."
"But she's not going yet!" cried Coplestone, upsetting the board. "She'sgoing this evening; the other nurse told me she was. Of course I've gotto see her before she goes!"
"I fancy that's her cab," said I, unwilling to give Delavoye away, butfeeling much more strongly that Nurse Agnes had saved Ronnie's life.
"I didn't hear the bell," said Coplestone.
"Still, I believe that's Nurse Agnes on the stairs."
I had heard one creak, but only one, and the nurse was on tip-toeoutside the door as Coplestone opened it. She might have been a thief,she seemed so startled.
"Why, nurse, what do you mean by trying to give me the slip?" he said inhis hearty voice. "Do you know they all tell me you've saved my littlechap's life, and yet I've hardly seen you all the time? You'd alwaysfixed him up for the night by the time I'd finished dinner, and I'vebeen so late in the morning that we've kept on missing each other atboth ends. You've got to spare me a moment now, you know!"
But Nurse Agnes would only stand mumbling and smiling in the half-lithall.
"I--I mustn't lose my train," was all I heard.
And then I realised that even I had only heard her voice once before,and that now it did not sound the same voice. It was not meant to soundthe same--that was why--I had it in a flash. And in that flash I sawthat Nurse Agnes had been keeping out of our way all these days andnights, keeping us out of her way by a dozen tacit little regulationswhich had seemed only proper and professional at the time.
But a fiercer light had struck Coplestone like a lash across the eyes.And he started back as though stung and blinded, until Nurse Agnes triedto dart past the door; then his long arm shot out, and I shuddered as hedragged her in by hers.
"You!" he gasped, and his jaw worked as though he had been knocked outin the ring.
"Yes," she said coolly, facing him through her veil; "and they're quiteright--I've saved your boy for you. Do you mind letting me go?"
I forced my way past the pair of them, and rushed out to Delavoyewaiting with the cab.
"Who is she? Who on earth is this nurse of yours?" I cried withoutrestraint.
He drew me out of earshot of the cab-man.
"Has Coplestone spotted her?"
"This very minute--but who is she?"
"His wife."
"I thought she was dead?"
"No; he divorced her three years ago."
"Who told you?"
"Ronnie."
"And you never told me!"
"I promised him I wouldn't tell a soul."
The little rascal! He had bound us both; but there was a characteristicdifference as between Delavoye and me, and the feelings that we inspiredin that gallant little heart. Whereas I had surprised its secret, Ronniehad confided in Uvo of his own free will and accord.
"And it was he who begged me to bring her, Gilly, when he was at hisworst! He said it was his one hope--that she could pull himthrough--that he knew she could! So I found her, and she did. She wasn'treally a nurse, but she was his mother; she was his Angel of Life."
"Will she be forgiven?" I asked, when we had looked askance at thestudy windows, that gave us back only the wavering reflection of shrubsand of the chimneys opposite.
"Will she forgive?" returned Uvo sardonically. "It's always harder forthe one who's in the wrong, and there's always something to be said forhim or her!"
"Does she know that her husband needs to be saved as well?"
"Hush!" said Delavoye. The door had opened. Coplestone came out upon thestep, and stood there feeling in his pockets.
I held my breath; and the only creature who counted just then, in allthat road of bleak red houses, and in all the wintry worl
d beyond, wasthe great shaken fellow coming down the path.
"You might give this to the cabby," said he, filling my palm with loosesilver. "Just tell him we shan't want him now!"