CHAPTER XXXVIII

When I opened my eyes I was lying in bed, with a hot jar at my feet, and the pungent irritation of smelling-salts in my nostrils. Uncle George was in the room, and there was a stranger there also. I knew what had taken place, and, if I hadn’t remembered, there was an atrocious pain in my head to remind me. I put up my hand and discovered my head was bandaged.

“Well,” said the stranger, drawing closer. “How do you feel now?”

“My head’s pretty sore,” I answered.

He mixed me something in a glass and I drank it. Uncle George came over and began to ask questions, but the doctor pulled him away. “Leave him to go to sleep now: he’ll be better able to talk in the morning. It might have been a nasty thing. I’ll look in to-morrow.”

I had closed my eyes, and when I opened them again I was alone and in the dark. A ray of moonlight floated through the window and lay across the floor where George’s bed had been, but the bed itself was gone, and I wondered languidly how they had been able to take it away without my hearing anything. In spite of an abominable headache I felt drowsy――perhaps it was the effect of whatever drug I had taken――and I must very soon have lost consciousness.

The first person I saw in the morning was Uncle George, who carried me in my breakfast. My head still ached, though not nearly so violently. While I drank a cup of tea Uncle George sat in silence, his eyes fixed on me, with an expression of anxiety that was almost comic. As for me, I felt better, and, when Uncle George had removed the tray, I allowed him to tell me how sorry he was, but without replying or giving him any encouragement. I could see he was dying for me to say something, but I thought a little suspense would not do him any harm, so I maintained a discreet quiet. Secretly I was glad, for this disagreeable adventure gave me just what I had needed, but I was far from letting Uncle George know that.

“She wasn’t responsible,” said Uncle George, dejectedly, and plunging straight to the heart of the subject. “You know she has to take drugs sometimes on account of the pain she suffers, and they have an effect upon her. I tell you this in confidence, and that last night she had taken more than she intended to, and didn’t really know what she was doin’. But you must forgive her, Peter. And then she is jealous of you――I may as well tell you everything――she is jealous when she thinks of the difference between you and George, and that you will be a gentleman, while George and the others’ll have to get along as best they can――and times are so bad, and there’s so few openings for lads nowadays. This drug she had taken――――” He stopped and his eyes fastened on mine appealingly.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked, smoothing down the sheet.

Uncle George moved nervously in his chair, but did not reply.

“I’m going home to-day,” I went on.

“Home? You’ll be waiting for a day or two――till you get quit of this pain in your head, won’t you? And then there’s your examination! Will they take marks off if you get a doctor’s certificate?”

“A certificate for what?”

“That you can’t go in for the examination.”

“I’m going in for the exam. And I’m certainly going home.”

Uncle George, who had never ventured to remonstrate with me on any subject whatever since my arrival, and who treated me as, if anything, slightly older than himself, did not begin now. “And what will you tell them?” was all he asked.

“Would you like me to say I fell downstairs?” I suggested innocently.

Uncle George fidgeted. “I don’t want you to tell a lie,” he made answer, which was a pretty big one for him.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” I observed, pleasantly.

Uncle George considered this. “I suppose there’s times, maybe, when it’s best not to tell all the truth,” he brought out lamely.

“This is one when I should think it would be best not to tell any of it,” I replied.

Uncle George was silent. I was not letting him off particularly easily.

“There must, however, be two lies told,” I pursued. “The first by me, and the second by you, in a letter saying you can’t take me back after the holidays――that you haven’t room――any reason you like.”

“But won’t you come back?” asked Uncle George, dolefully. “You were always quite comfortable, quite happy till――till this accident. And it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been knocking George about. I don’t know what he had done on you.”

“I was never happy,” I said impatiently. “Either you or Aunt Margaret will have to write as I say, or I’ll tell my father exactly what happened. This accident, as you call it, very nearly did for me: and it’s only one thing out of a lot.”

“Your poor aunt wants to come and tell you how sorry she is.”

“My poor aunt needn’t bother. I know exactly how sorry she is. If it had been the ceiling that had fallen on me and killed me outright, I don’t fancy she’d have minded much――except for the mess.”

Uncle George regarded me mournfully. “You’re very unforgiving,” he said. “I know you’ve a right to say hard things, but――――”

It seemed to me that this was going a bit too far. “What do you mean by unforgiving?” I asked. “Haven’t I promised not to tell?”

“It’s not that,” said Uncle George.

“What is it then? Do you want me to sacrifice myself simply that you may make so much a week out of me? Don’t you know that Aunt Margaret has always hated me like poison? Don’t you know she is pretty constantly under the influence of whatever it is she takes, though you speak as if this were the first time? I’m not such a fool that I can’t see what’s going on. She’s always prying about my things and reading my letters. Besides, in the very beginning, you know as well as I do that I came to live here expecting to have a room to myself and not to be stuck with George.”

Uncle George did not reply, but he looked as he sat there, with his gray head bent, the picture of dejection.

“I’m sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings, Uncle George, for you’ve been always very kind and decent to me, and if there was no one here but you and Alice I would come back certainly. But as it is, I can’t; I really can’t. I wanted to leave at Christmas, only my father wouldn’t let me.”

As I watched him lift his mild, sheep-like face, and go out, I pitied him――almost enough to have promised to do what he wanted, which would have been idiotic. “If he’d had any sense,” I told myself, “he’d have clapped Aunt Margaret into a ‘home’ or an asylum, or whatever it is, long ago. But he’s too soft-hearted to do anything but make himself miserable.”

During the morning little Alice came in several times to see me. The doctor also called and examined my head, into which he had put a couple of stitches last night. It was only a scalp wound, he said, and thought I might go back to Newcastle that afternoon if I felt up to it.

At dinner-time George appeared, looking very sheepish, and shuffling his feet. “How are you?” he asked. “Ma says you’re goin’ home this afternoon, so I thought I’d drop in an’ say good-bye. I’m sorry about this. It’s my fault, an’ it’s rotten for your exam. I only read one letter. I went to ma’s work-basket for the scissors, an’ I saw it there lying open, an’ I read it without thinking. That’s the God’s truth, whether you believe it or not, an’ there was nothin’ in it you need mind.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” I answered.

“All the same it’s damned putrid luck about the exam.”

“It can’t be helped. Besides, I’m going to have a shot at it.”

“Well, I’ll have to cut on. So long, Peter.” He grinned as he held out a big hand, which, like his face, was covered with freckles.