Part 7

"Lord, how you startled me!" she said, "the ostymopat came this morning. A stout gentleman with whiskers. Very nice, too, and American. But bless you, Mr. Sault, he'll never do any good to Christina, though I wish he could, for I'm up and down those blessed stairs from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed. He'll never cure her. She's had ten doctors and four specialists, and she's been three times to St. Mary's hospital; to say nothing of the Evelyna when she was a child and fell out of the perambulator that did it. Ten doctors and four specialists--they're doctors, too, in a manner of speaking, so you might say fourteen."

Sault never interrupted his landlady, although his forbearance meant, very often, a long period of waiting.

"Can I see Christina, Mrs. Colebrook?" he begged.

"Certainly you can, you needn't ask me. She'll be glad to see you," said Mrs. Colebrook conventionally. "I thought of going up myself, but she has always got those books. Do you think so much reading is good for her--?"

"I'm sure it is."

"But--well, I don't know. I've never read anything but the Sunday papers, and they've got enough horrors in 'em--but they actually happened. It isn't guesswork like it is in books. I never read a book through in my life. My husband--! Why, when he passed away, there was enough books in the house to fill a room. He'd sooner read than work at any time. He was a bit aristocratic in his way."

Sault had come to understand that "aristocratic" did not stand, as Mrs. Colebrook applied the word, for gentleness of birth, but for a loftiness of demeanor in relation to labor.

He made his escape up the stairs. Christina was not reading. She lay on her back, her hands lightly folded, and she was inspecting the end bed-rail with a fixity of gaze that indicated to Ambrose how far she was from Walter Street and the loud little boys who played beneath her window.

"I have nothing for you today--I haven't been baking."

She patted the bed and he sat down.

"The osteopath has been, I suppose mother told you? She has the queerest word for him, 'ostymopat'. Yes, he came and saw, or rather, he prodded in a gentle, harmless kind of way, but I fancy that my spine has conquered. He didn't say very much, but seemed to be more interested in the bones of my neck and shoulders than he was in the place where it hurts. He wouldn't tell me anything, I suppose he didn't want to make me feel miserable. Poor, kind soul--after all the uncomplimentary things that have been said about my spinal column!"

"He told me," said Ambrose, and something in his face made her open her eyes wide.

"What did he say--please tell me--was it good?"

He nodded and a beatific smile lightened his face.

"You can be cured; completely cured. You will walk in a year or maybe less. He thinks it will take six months to manipulate the bones into their place; he talked about 'breaking down' something, but he didn't mean that he would hurt you. He just meant that he would have to remove--I don't know what it is, but it would be a gradual process and you would feel nothing. He wants your mother to put you into a sort of thin overall before he comes."

He lugged a parcel from his pocket. "I bought one--a smock of thick silk. I thought you had better have silk. He works at you through it, and it makes his work easier for him and for you if--anyhow, I got silk, Christina."

Her eyes were shining, but she did not look at him. "It doesn't seem possible," she said softly, "and it is going to cost a lot of money--cost you. The silk overall is lovely, but I wouldn't mind if I wore sackcloth. You great soul!"

She caught his hand in both of hers and gripped it with a strength that surprised him.

"Evie is quite sure that I am in love with you, Ambrose--I lied to her when I said I never called you Ambrose. And, of course, we are in love with one another, but in a way that poor Evie doesn't understand. If I was normal, I suppose I'd love you in her way--poor Ambrose, you would be so embarrassed."

She laughed quietly.

"Love is a great disturbance," said Ambrose, "I think Evie means that kind."

"Were you ever in love that way? I have never been. I think I love you as I should love my child, if I had one. If you say that you love me as a mother, I shall be offended, Ambrose. Do you think it will really happen--will it cost very much?"

"A pound a visit, and he is coming every day except Sunday."

Christina made a calculation and the immensity of the sum left her horror-stricken.

"A hundred and fifty pounds!" she cried. "Oh, Ambrose--how can you? I won't have the treatment. It is certain to fail--I won't, Ambrose!"

"I've paid a hundred on account. He didn't want to take it, but I said I would only let him come on those terms. I wasn't speaking the truth--I'd have let him come on any terms. So you see, Christina, I've paid, and you must be treated!"

"Hold my hand, Ambrose--and don't speak a word. I'm going for a long walk--I haven't dared walk before."

She resumed her gaze upon the bed-rail and he sat in silence whilst she dreamed.

Evie returned at ten o'clock that night and heard Christina singing as she mounted the stairs. "Enter, sister, has mother told you that I am practically a well woman?"

"Don't put too high hopes--"

"Shut up! I'm a well woman I tell you. In a year I shall walk into your medicine shop and sneer at you as I pass. Have you brought home any candy? 'Sweets' is hopelessly vulgar, and I like the American word better. And you look bright and sonsy. Did you see the god?"

"I wish you wouldn't use religious words, Christina, just when we are going to bed, too. I wonder you're not afraid. Yes, I saw my boy."

"Have you a boy?" in simulated surprise. "Evie, you are a surprising child. Whom does he take after?"

"Really, I think you are indecent," said her sister, shocked. "You know perfectly well I mean--Ronnie."

"Oh, is he the 'boy'? To you girls everything that raises a hat or smokes a cheap cigar is strangely boyish. Well, is he nearly dead from his midnight labors?"

"I'd like to see you write a long article for the newspapers," said Evie witheringly.

"I wish you could. You may even see that. Tell me about him, Evie. What is he like--what sort of a house has he?" She waited.

"He lives in a flat, and, of course, I've never seen it. You don't imagine that I would go into a man's flat alone, do you?'"

Christina sighed. "There are points about the bourgeoisie mind which are admirable," she said. "What does 'bourgeoisie' mean? The bourgeoisie are the people who have names instead of numbers to their houses; they catch the nine twenty-five to town and go home by the five seventeen. They go to church at least once on Sunday and their wives wear fascinators and patronize the dress circle."

"You talk such rubbish, Christina. I can't make head or tail of it half the time. I don't see what it has got to do with my not going in to Ronnie's flat. It wouldn't be respectable."

"Why didn't I think of that word?" wailed Christina. "Evie."

"Huh?" said Evie, her mouth full of pins and in an unconscious imitation of one who, did she but know it, held her soul in the hollow of his hands.

"Where do you meet your lad--I simply can't say 'boy'?"

"Oh, anywhere," said Evie vaguely. "We used to meet a lot in the park. As a matter of fact, that is where I first saw him, but now he doesn't go to the park. He says the crowd is vulgar and it is you know, Christina; why I've heard men addressing meetings and saying that there wasn't a God! And talking about the king most familiarly. It made my blood boil!"

"I don't suppose the king minds, and I'm sure God only laughed."

"Christina!"

"Well, why not? What's the use of being God if He hasn't a sense of humor? He has everything He wants, and that is one of the first blessings He would give Himself. Where do you meet Ronnie, Evie?"

"Sometimes I have dinner with him, and sometimes we just meet at the tube station and go to the pictures." Christina pinched her chin in thought.

"He knows that girl who came to see you, Miss Merville. I told him about her visit, and he asked me if she knew that I was a friend of his, and whether she had seen me. She rather runs after him, I think. He doesn't say so, he is too much a gentleman. I can't imagine Ronnie saying anything unkind."

"But he sort of hinted," suggested Christina.

"You are uncharitable, Christina! Nothing Ronnie does is right in your eyes. Of course he didn't hint. It is the way he looks, when I speak about her. I know that he doesn't like her very much. He admitted it, because, just after we had been talking about her, he said that I was the only girl he had ever met who did not bore him--unutterably. His very words!"

"That was certainly convincing evidence," said Christina, and her sister arrested the motion of her hair brush to look suspiciously in her direction. You could never be sure whether Christina was being nice or unpleasant.

II

Ronald Morelle had once been the victim of a demoralizing experience. He had awakened in time to hear the church clock strike nine, and for the space of a few seconds, he had suffered the tortures of hell. Why, he never discovered. He had heard the clock strike nine since then, in truth he had been specially wakened by François the very next morning, in the expectation that the tolling of the bell would recall to his mind the cause of his abject fear. But not again did the chimes affect him. He had made a very thorough examination of his mind in the Freudian method, but could trace no connection between his moments of terror and the sound of a bell. "A nightmare, as an unpleasant dream is called, may be intensively vivid, yet from the second of waking leaves no definite memory behind it," said a lesser authority.

He had to rest content with that. He had other matters to think about. Steppe, an unusual visitor, came to his flat one morning. Ronnie was in his dressing-gown, reading the morning newspapers, and he leaped up with a curious sense of guilt when the big man was announced.

"You dabble in press work, Morelle, don't you?" Ronnie acknowledged his hobby.

"Do you know anybody in Fleet Street--editors and such like?"

"I know a few--why, Mr. Steppe?"

Steppe lit a cigar and strolling across the room looked out of the window. He carried the air of a patron to such an extent that Ronnie felt an interloper, an uncomfortable feeling to a man still in pajamas.

"Because we've got to beat up a few friendly press criticisms," said Steppe at last. "The financial papers are raising merry hell about the Klein River diamond flotation and we have to get our story in somehow or other. You don't want to be called a swindling company promoter, huh? Wouldn't look good, huh?"

"I don't see how I come into it," said Ronnie.

"You don't, huh? Of course you don't! Have you ever seen anything but a shop girl's ankles? You--don't see! You're a director, so is Merville. You've drawn directors' fees. I'm not a director--it doesn't matter a damn to me what they say."

The name of Jan Steppe seldom appeared amongst the officers or directors of a company. He had his nominees who voted according to the orders they received.

"What makes it so almighty bad is that I was floating the Midwell Traction Corporation next week. We'll have to put that back now, but it will keep. What are you going to do?"

"I don't know exactly what to do," said Ronnie. It was the first time he had ever been called upon to justify his directors' fees. "I know a few men--but I doubt if I can do anything. Fleet Street is a little rigid in these things."

"Get an article in somewhere," ordered Steppe peremptorily. "Take this line: That we bought the Klein River Mine on the report of the best engineer in South Africa. We did. There's no lie about that. Mackenzie--he's in a lunatic asylum now. And the report was in his own handwriting, so there won't be a copy. And you needn't mention that he is in a lunatic asylum, most people think he is dead."

"Didn't he write to us complaining that we only put an extract from his report into the prospectus?"

"Never mind about that!" snarled Steppe. "I didn't come here for a conversation. He did write; said that we'd published a sentence away from the context. He didn't think I was going to put the worst into the prospectus, did he? What he said was, that the Klein River Mine would be one of the richest in South Africa if we could get over difficulties of working, which he said were insuperable. He was right. They are. The only way to work that mine is with deep sea divers! Now, have this right, Morelle, and try to forget Flossie's blue eyes and Winnie's golden hair. This is business. Your business. You've got to take that report (Moropulos will give it to you, but you mustn't take it from the office) and extract all that is good in it. At the general meeting you have to produce your copy and read it. If anybody wants to see the original, refer 'em to Mackenzie. You've got to make Klein River look alive and you haven't to defend it, d'ye hear me? You've got to handle that mine as though you wished it was yours, huh? No defence! The hundred-pound shares are at twelve; you've got to make 'em look worth two hundred. And it is dead easy if you go the right way about it. Ask any pickpocket. The easiest way to steal a pocketbook is to go after the man that's just lost his watch. Make 'em think that the best thing they can do is to buy more Klein Rivers and hold them, huh? You've got to think it, or you won't say it. Get this meeting through without a fuss, and there's a thousand for you."

"I'll try," said Ronnie.

Yet, it was in no confident mood that he faced a hall-full of enraged stockholders a week later. The meeting was described as "noisy"; it ended in the passing of a vote of confidence in the directors. Ronnie was elated; no other man but Steppe could have induced him to present a forged document to a meeting of critical stockholders, and when Klein Rivers rose the next day to seventeen, he was not as enthusiastic as Dr. Merville, who 'phoned his congratulations on what was undoubtedly a remarkable achievement.

He spoke of nothing else that day, and Beryl basked in reflected approval. Her father knew nothing. He wondered why Ronnie, whom he did not like overmuch, called with greater frequency. He had too large an experience of life to harbor any misconception as to his second cousin's private character, although he would, in other circumstances, have passively accepted him as a son-in-law. Men take a very tolerant view of other men's weaknesses. The theory that the world holds a patch of arable land reserved for young men to put under wild oats, and that without exciting the honest farmers whose lands adjoin, is a theory that dies hard as the cultivated fields increase in number.

He did not regard Ronnie as a marrying man, and with the exception of a few moments of uneasiness he had had when he noted Beryl's preference for his associate's society, he found nothing objectionable in the new interest which Ronnie had found. But he wished he wouldn't call so often.

Dr. Merville might, and did, dismiss Ronnie's errant adventures with a philosophical _sua cuique voluptas_--he found himself taking a more and more lenient view of Ronald Morelle's character. A man is never himself until he is idle. Successions of nurses, schoolmasters and professors shepherd him into the service of his fellows, and the conventions of his profession, no less than a natural desire to stand well with the friends and clients he has acquired in his progress, assist him in maintaining something of the appearance and mental attitude which his tutors have formed in him. Many a man has gone through life being some other man who has impressed him, or some great teacher who has imparted his personality into his plastic pupil.

The first instinct of a man lost in the desert is to discard his clothes. The doctor, wandering in this financial waste, began to discard his principles. He was unconscious of the sacrifice. If, in the course of his professional life he had made a mistaken diagnosis, or blundered in an operation, he would have known. If at school he had committed some error, he would have been corrected. Now, though this he did not realize, he was, for the first time in his life, free from any other authority than his own will and conscience. He fell into a common error when he believed, as he did, that standards of honor and behavior are peculiar to the trades in which they are exercised and that right and wrong are adaptable to circumstances.

"Ronnie is coming to dinner tonight, isn't he? You know I shall not be here, my dear? I promised Steppe I would spend the evening with him. I wish you would tell Ronnie how pleased we all are at his very fine speech. I never dreamed that he had it in him--Steppe talks of making him chairman of the company."

"I thought he was that."

"No--er--no. The chairman is a man named Howitt--a very troublesome fellow. Steppe bought him out before the meeting. Ronnie was only acting chairman."

"I thought you were a director, daddy?" She was curious on this point and had waited an opportunity of asking him why he had not been present at the meeting.

"I am--in a sense--but my nerves are in such a state just now, that I simply couldn't bear the strain of listening to a crowd of noisy louts jabbering stupid criticism. The company is in a perfectly sound position. You can see that from the way the stock has jumped up in the past few days. These city people aren't fools, you know."

She wondered if it was the "city people" who were buying the stock or were responsible for the encouraging rise in Klein River Diamonds. More likely, she thought, the buyers were the people who knew very little about stock exchange transactions.

Ronnie arrived as the doctor was going out, and they met in the street before the door. "It was nothing," said Ronnie modestly, "they were rather rowdy at first, but after I had had a little talk with them--you know how sheep-like these fellows are. I discovered from Steppe who was likely to be the leader of the opposition, and I saw him before the meeting. Of course, he was difficult and full of threats about appointing a committee of investigation. However--"

"Yes, yes, you did splendidly--you'll find Beryl waiting for you. Er--Ronnie."

"Yes?"

"Don't unsettle her--she is in an enquiring mood just now, especially about the companies and things. I shouldn't talk too much about Klein Rivers. She is a very shrewd girl. Not that there is anything about Klein Rivers that is discreditable."

"I never talk business to Beryl," said Ronnie. Which was nearly true.

He found her in the drawing-room and took her into his arms. She was so dear and fragrant. So malleable in his skilled hands now that the barrier of her suspicion had been broken down.

III

In the middle of the night, Ambrose Sault turned in his narrow bed and woke. He was a light sleeper and the party walls of the tiny house were thin.

He got out of bed, switched on the light of a portable electric lamp which stood within reach of his hand and, thrusting his feet into slippers, opened the door. The house was silent, but a crack of light showed under Christina's door.

"Are you awake, Christina?" he asked softly. "Is anything wrong?"

"Nothing, Mr. Sault."

It was not Christina. There was no hint of tears in her voice. Ambrose went back to his bed, and to sleep. He knew that he had not been mistaken either as to the sound that had awakened him or the direction from whence it came. For one terrific moment he had thought it was Christina and that the new treatment which had already commenced was responsible for the loud sobs which had disturbed his sleep. He was sorry for Evie. He was easily sorry. A cat writhing in the middle of the street, where a too swift motor-car had passed, wrung his heart. A child crying in pain made him sweat. When he saw a man and a woman quarrelling in this vile neighborhood, he rushed from the scene lest the woman be struck.

"What did he get--up for," whispered Evie, "he is always--interfering."

"The wonder to me is that the whole street isn't up," said Christina. "What is the matter, Evie?"

"I don't know--I'm miserable." Evie flounced over in her bed. "I just had to cry. I'm sorry."

Christina was very serious; she too had been awakened by the hysterical outburst. It carried a meaning to her that she had the courage to face.

"There is nothing wrong, is there, Evie?" No answer.

"I can't be all the help to you that I should like, darling, and I am a pig to you at times. But I get tetchy myself, and it is a bore lying here day after day. You would tell me if there was anything wrong, wouldn't you?"

"Yes," whispered the girl.

"I mean, really wrong. If it was anything that--affected your health. Nothing would make you wrong in my eyes. I should just love you and help you all I could. You know that. It isn't wise to keep some secrets, Evie, not if you know that there is somebody who loves you well enough to take half your burden from you."

"I don't know what you're driving at," said Evie in a fret, "you don't mean--? I'm a virgin, if that is what you mean," she said crudely.

Christina snorted. "Then what in hell are you snivelling about?" she demanded savagely. She was not unreasonably irritated.

"I haven't--seen--Ronnie--for a week!" sobbed the girl.

"I wish to God you'd never seen him," snapped Christina and wished she hadn't, for the next minute Evie was in bed with her, in her arms.

"I'm so unhappy--I wish I hadn't met him, too--I know that it isn't right, Chris--I know it isn't--I know I shall never be happy. He is so much above me--and I'm so ignorant--such--a--such a shop girl."

Christina cuddled the slim figure and kissed her damp face. "You'll get over that, Evie," she said soothingly.

"But I love him so!"