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.