CHAPTER XVIII

A DAY OF DESPAIR

Mr. Lascelles is worse. This morning the nurse said, in quite an ordinary sort of voice, something about "If he pulls through----"

"If!----"

Meaning he may not.

If he doesn't, I shall want to murder that nurse. I am sure it is her fault.

No, it isn't; it's the fault of that Miss Gates, the woman we met that lovely time on the road when he took me on his motor-cycle to the Junction.

It was she who sent down this nurse from her (Miss Gates's) nursing-home that she has for wounded officers at the Junction. Why didn't she send somebody better? Somebody who knew what ought to be done? Somebody who'd let _us_ in to attend to him? I know he'd rather see one of our familiar faces than that unpleasant-looking feline in the blue-and-white print who thinks she's Everybody! Already she's found fault with the bathroom, _and_ with the soda-water. All she's fit for is to nurse wounded Germans; I can't think why they don't set her to it. That would certainly be _her_ "bit." She's enough to make _anybody_ have a relapse.

You know, he _did_ make a face at her....

But he's too ill even to make faces, now. Isn't it awful? He doesn't know what he's saying. He mutters and mutters in a voice that isn't his a bit I could hear it right from the mat outside, where I was standing. Once he called out quite loudly, "Mother! I want you! Where are you, Mother? _Mother_!"

And I had to swallow down a lump in my throat as big as an ostrich egg as I stood there on the mat listening to him. For, you know, his mother died when he was eleven-and-a-half.

"Mother!" he called again, and I couldn't bear it.

I dashed downstairs as quietly as I could ... I don't know what to do with myself. I don't want to go out, I'm afraid of meeting people in the village who will ask me how he is, and I should so hate having to hear myself say that I thought he was still in danger.

I've been walking all over the house, from the Lair, where Evelyn sits silently knitting, to the drawing-room, where Aunt Victoria sits silently staring at her patience cards, but doesn't care any longer whether it "comes out" or whether it doesn't come out. All she cares is whether Mr. Lascelles is going to pull through.

I left her and wandered aimlessly out into the kitchen, where cook was baking bread. At least cook would talk, I thought.

Cook did talk. She let loose a flow of it before I could say a word.

"Have you noticed all the signs there's been about, Miss Rattle, that there's going to be a death in the house?" she began, while I stood there petrified. "Yesterday that blessed dog howling outside for no reason that you could see! To-day a single magpie flew over the field in front of the house just as I was hotting the breakfast-plates, and the first thing in the morning if I didn't see a hare run across the garden-path! Always means something, that does. Always!"

"Cook! You sound as if you were hoping it meant----"

Without listening to me, cook went on, shaking her head lugubriously over her kneading-crock, in which her plump, pinky arms were plunging up and down.

"Ah, poor dear young gentleman! I expect he's doomed! You mark my words, Miss Rattle," said cook. "A short life and a merry! After all, he died doing his duty, just the same as if he had gone out to the front and stopped a German bullet there, as he calls it. Well! I suppose they will have a reel military funeral for him, the first there has ever been here!"

And she shook her head again and sighed with a gloom that she seemed--yes! she seemed to enjoy it!

For if there is one thing that cook seems to love it is going to what she calls "a burying"; even _his_! I was speechless with horrifiedness at her.

"There is always a silver lining to every cloud," she went on with gusto. "There is that good black crêpe toque I had for when my pore sister-in-law was took; now that will come in lovely. Haven't had it on above four times, and I should like to wear it, to show kind of respect, as you might say, to poor dear Mr. Lascelles. For I am sure your auntie, Miss Rattle, would be quite agreeable to letting us have the afternoon off for the ceremony, don't you think so?"

Here I lost my speechlessncss. "You awful woman!" I cried. "You perfect ghoul!" For I also lost my temper. Worse than I had ever lost it before, except that one time before I got to know Mr. Lascelles when I slapped his face in the dining-room. (Oh, how could I!) If I'd had a grenade in my hand then, I should have flung it at cook's capped head.

Fortunately, all that I had in my hand was a bunch of rather passé yellow chrysanthemums and laurustinus branches, which I had taken out of the bowl on the hall table, meaning to burn them in the kitchen fire.

I flung them at cook instead, wet stalks and all! You know how horrid wet chrysanthemum stalks are when they have been in water for some time?

Cook was so taken aback that, for the first second, she didn't realise what had happened.

"Good heavens above!" I heard her gasp out of the middle of that handful of decaying foliage. "Whatever's this?"

"As you are so fond of funerals," I heard myself cry furiously, "there's some flowers to make a wreath!"

Then I tore out of the kitchen again and fled to the Lair.

Evelyn was still there, knitting. I flung myself on the ground at her knee, and buried my face in her lap.

Then I burst into tears. Loud, bitter tears, just like a child of three.

I cried as if my heart would break.

"Oh, Evelyn! Oh, Evelyn!"

I must say dear old Evelyn was perfectly beautiful to me at this juncture. She threw down her knitting and put her arms round me and petted and comforted me as if she understood everything that I was feeling. She didn't even once ask me what I was crying about: she didn't tell me not to cry. She fished my hankie out for me, she gave me the comfortablest part of her shoulder to rest my head on.

For I must say that when anybody's really in trouble my eldest sister is so _nice_ that you wouldn't believe she was in the least _good_! You know what I mean!

"Oh, Evelyn, if he dies," I sobbed brokenly. "If he dies!---- Beast! Little _beast_!"

"Rattle, darling! Don't call him names, now----"

"Call him names? Him? I mean _me_," I almost bellowed. "Little beast that I've been to him ever since he came here, Evelyn! S-s-snubbing him at every tut--turn! And saying such cuck--_cruel_ things about bank-clerks and red hair and how he ought to be in the Bub--Bantam's Battalion and have c-c-corn strewed for him in the trenches because he was so small! Oh, _oh_! How could I? And then that awful day when I qu--quarrelled with him in the dining-room and----"

"Slapped his face," I was just going to gulp out, but in the nick of time I remembered that the others knew nothing about all that.

Evelyn whispered soothingly: "But, Rattle, you've been _so_ much nicer to him lately. I've noticed that. Ever since the day you went to the Junction in his side-car, you've been quite--quite friends, comparatively, with Mr. Lascelles. Haven't you, now?"

"Not enough! Not enough to make up for all the times before!" I wept. "And, oh, supposing he dies!"

"I don't believe he is going to," said Evelyn firmly. "He's got youth on his side, the doctor said! I've a feeling he's going to be all right!"

"Oh! If only I could have that feeling, too!"

"He'll recover," Evelyn persisted, rubbing her cheek against my hair. "He'll pull through."

"Oh, if he does, I--I--I shall be such a perfect angel to him that he won't know me!" I sobbed. "And if he doesn't get well ... Evelyn, Evelyn! I shall wish that I was dead, too!"