1 Abruptly, as the strung ball snaps back to its wooden cup, Aliette's soul returned to its body.
Waking, she knew that she had fallen asleep by the open window; that somebody was knocking on the outer door of the flat, somebody who called insistently, "Mr. Cavendish, Mr. Cavendish. I've a message for you, Mr. Cavendish."
Her heart thumping, her head still muzzy with dreams, Aliette ran across the sitting-room, out into the hall; unchained, unlatched the door. The night-porter stood before her. His shirt was open at the neck; she could see the veins in his throat throb to his words: "Is your husband awake, madam? He's wanted on the telephone. His mother's house. It's very urgent."
"Mr. Cavendish is asleep." Aliette's heart still thumped, but she spoke quietly enough. "I'll go and wake him. Wait here, please."
She darted back to the door of their bedroom; knocked; opened. The light by the bed still burned, showing her lover's face just roused from the pillow.
"Am I wanted?" he asked.
"Yes, dear." Aliette controlled her nerves. "Bruton Street's asking for you on the telephone. I'm afraid your mother's been taken ill."
"I'll be down in a second." He was out of bed and into his dressing-gown before she could stop him. She thought, "If it's bad news, he'll have to go to Bruton Street. He'll have to get dressed." She said, "You'd better get some clothes on. I'll go down and find out exactly what's the matter."
After a second's hesitation, he decided, "You're right"; and made for his dressing-room. Aliette went back to the outer door. The night-porter still waited. She asked him, "Who telephoned?"
"A servant, I think."
"Did she say why she wanted to speak to my husband?"
"No. Only that it was very urgent."
"Is the lift still working?"
"Yes, madam."
"Then I'll come down immediately."
Aliette's mind, as she followed the slippered man along the cold stone corridor to the lift-shaft, worked rapidly. If Julia Cavendish had been taken ill--and obviously Julia Cavendish must have been taken ill--the sooner she and Ronnie got to Bruton Street the better.
She asked the porter, "What's the time?"
He told her, "Three o'clock."
"Can you get me a taxi?"
"I'll do my best, madam."
The lift was working badly. The slowness fretted her imagination. Suppose Julia Cavendish were--more than ill; suppose she were--dead?
At last they reached the ground-floor. The night porter, flinging back the iron gates, let her out and made for the street. Aliette, running to the telephone-box, picked up the receiver.
"I want to speak to Mr. Cavendish, Mr. Ronald Cavendish. Is that Mr. Cavendish?" Kate's voice sounded stupid, excitable, over the wire.
"No, it's Mrs. Cavendish. Is that Kate?"
"Yes, Mrs. Ronnie."
"Mr. Cavendish will be down in a minute. What's the matter?"
"Mrs. Cavendish has been taken ill. She's very bad indeed. She told us to telephone for Mr. Ronnie."
"You telephoned for a doctor?"
"Oh yes, Mrs. Ronnie. We did that first thing. But Sir Heron's out of town."
"Then you should have telephoned to another doctor."
"We never thought of that." Obviously the maid had lost her head. "We thought we'd better telephone Mr. Ronnie first. That's what she said we was to do."
"Wait." Aliette thought swiftly. "Isn't there a doctor in Bruton Street?"
"Oh yes, Mrs. Ronnie. Dr. Redbank."
"You'd better send for him immediately. Don't waste time telephoning. Go yourself. . . . And, Kate, you can tell Mrs. Cavendish that Mr. Ronald and myself will be round in less than half an hour. Can you give me any idea what's the matter with Mrs. Cavendish?"
"I don't know, Mrs. Ronnie, but Smithers says she's very bad indeed. Smithers says she woke up with her mouth full of blood. Smithers says she doesn't know how she managed to ring her bell----"
The parlor-maid would have gone on talking, but Aliette cut her short with a curt: "You're to go and fetch the doctor, Kate. You're to go and fetch him at once. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Mrs. Ronnie."
Aliette hung up the receiver; turned to find Ronnie, apparently full dressed, at her side; explained things to him in three terse sentences; saw his face blanch; ran for the lift; swung-to the lift-gate; pressed the automatic button; reached her own floor, her own flat; twitched a fur coat from its peg; remembered something Mollie had once told her about hemorrhages; darted into the kitchen; snatched what she wanted from the refrigerator; wrapped a dish-cloth about it; darted back to the lift.
Downstairs, Ronnie waited impatiently. "The taxi's here," he said.
They leaped into the taxi.
2
The shock of unexpected ill-news held both lovers rigid, speechless, as their vehicle, an old one, rattled and bumped over Putney Bridge; and when at last Aliette spoke it was of those trivial things with which human beings console themselves against the threat of disaster. "How on earth did you manage to get dressed so quickly?"
"The old school trick." Ronnie masked his anxiety with the semblance of a laugh. "Trousers and an overcoat." But sheer anxiety forced the next words to his lips. "What do you think can have happened?"
"From what Kate said, it sounded as though your mother had had a hemorrhage."
"A hemorrhage," repeated Ronnie. And then, under his breath, as though trying to convince himself, "But she can't have had a hemorrhage."
The taxi rattled on down a gray and empty King's Road, bringing back to Aliette's mind the memory of that other drive she had taken in vision-land.
"What's that?" asked Ronnie suddenly, pointing to the dish-cloth at her feet.
"Ice. There's just a chance they won't have any."
They swung out of King's Road into Sloane Street. Under the lights of Knightsbridge, Ronnie, looking sideways at his mate, marveled at the composure of her face; marveled that her brain should have acted so swiftly in crisis. His own brain felt impotent, dumb. His heart hung like a nodule of ice in his breast. The nodule of ice sank into his bowels, turning his bowels to water. The Wixton imagination pictured his mother helpless, in agony. He thought, "Suppose we're too late. My God, suppose we're too late."
"I don't expect there's any immediate danger." Aliette, fighting for her own composure, guessed the unspoken thought in her lover's mind. "Servants always exaggerate."
Ronnie wrenched down the window, leaned out. "Hurry," he called to the driver, "hurry." The old taxi rattled to speed. Hyde Park corner flashed by--Piccadilly.
"Don't worry, dear," Aliette managed to whisper. "The doctor will be there by now."
Ronnie sat silent. It seemed as though, for the moment, he had forgotten her presence. Nor could she be angry with him for that forgetting. "His mother," she thought; "his mother!"
At last they made Bruton Street. Outside the open front door, waiting for them, stood Kate. Kate, the immaculate cap-and-aproned Kate, was in tears. "Oh, Mr. Ronnie," she sobbed, "I'm so glad you've come. I'm so glad you've come."
"Doctor here?" Julia Cavendish's son, usually so affable with servants, snapped out his question as though he had been speaking to a defaulter.
"Yes, Mr. Ronnie. I fetched him myself. He's with your mother now. He wants cook to go out and get some ice, but cook don't know," the domestically precise English vanished under stress of emergency, "where to get no ice."
"Lucky you thought of bringing some." Abruptly, rudely almost, Ronnie snatched the dish-cloth from Aliette's hand; and she watched him disappear, three at a bound, up the green-carpeted stairs.
"Kate," she said quietly, "tell the taxi-driver to stop his engine and wait. We may want him for something."
3
Ronnie, a little out of breath, found himself, on the second landing, confronted at the closed door of his mother's bedroom by his mother's woman, Smithers. Smithers was still in her dressing-gown--her hair disheveled, but her black eyes unpanicked.
"You can't go in, sir. The doctor's with her."
"I've got the ice." He made to push past the woman, but she put a hand on his arm.
"I'll take it to him, sir. Your mother said you wasn't to go in."
"Why not?"
"Because of the blood. After the doctor came, she said you wasn't to see her till I'd put clean sheets on the bed. It's a hemorrhage, sir."
"I know. Let me go in." Again Ronnie tried to push past the woman. Again she restrained him. Her black eyes seemed strangely hostile, resolute.
"It's a hemorrhage," she repeated fiercely, "and it's her own fault. Time and again I've told her she ought to heed what Sir Heron said. But she wouldn't. She wouldn't give in." Then, accusingly, "Because she didn't want you and Mrs. Ronnie to know."
"Know what?"
"That she had the consumption."
"Consumption!" The word struck Ronnie like the lash of a whip. He saw accusation--an accusation of selfishness--in the woman's hostile eyes. Those eyes knew his whole story. He wanted to say to them: "We hadn't an idea. Honestly, we hadn't the slightest idea." Sir Heron Baynet's reported diagnosis recurred to his mind. "She isn't ill, but she has a tendency to illness." Either the specialist had made a mistake, or else---- He realized, with a heart-rending clarity, that Julia must have purposely concealed her danger, because--because of his own troubles.
The bedroom door opened noiselessly, and a clean-shaven intellectual face inspected him through gold-rimmed glasses.
"Are you the patient's son?" asked Dr. Redbank; and then, seeing the dish-cloth in Ronnie's hand, "Is that the ice?"
"Yes. Can I come in?"
"If you like. But please understand she mustn't talk."
Ronnie followed the man into the bedroom, and closed the door quietly behind him.
Save for the glow of the bed-lamp, the room was in darkness. Making his way round the foot of the bed, Julia's son saw, in the light of that one lamp--the shade of it was crimson, crimson as those telltale marks on his mother's pillow--his mother's face.
The face lay on the stained pillow, pallid, motionless, the hair awry, the mouth half-open as though in pain. On the chin and on the half-open lips, blood ............