THE BIG THING

I

"Nine o'clock, sir."

The pert young housemaid entered Philip's bedroom, deposited a basin of hot water beside his bed, drew up the blinds, surveyed Tite Street, Chelsea, in a disparaging fashion, and announced that it was a nice day for the ducks.

Philip, gathering from this observation that the weather was inclined to be inclement, replied sleepily but politely that rain made little or no difference to his plans at present.

"I dare say," retorted the housemaid. "But it's me afternoon out. And please, sir," she added, recollecting herself, "Miss Marguerite wants to know if you are ready for your breakfast."

"Thank you," said Philip. "In a very few minutes."

When the housemaid had departed, he sat up in bed as completely as splints and bandages would permit, and prepared for breakfast. Then he lay back in bed and waited, with his eyes fixed unwinkingly upon the door.

Presently there was a rattle of silver and crockery outside, accompanied by a cheerfully whistled tune, and breakfast entered upon a tray.

Behind the tray came Peggy Falconer, who had been Philip's hostess now for the best part of three weeks.

She greeted her patient with a maternal smile, and enquired:—

"Slept well?"

"Very well, thank you."

"Leg troublesome?"

"No. It seems to be joining up in first-class style now."

"Concussion all gone?"

Philip knuckled his head vigorously all over, to show that his skull was once more free from dents.

"In that case," announced Peggy, "I may possibly let you have some letters to read. But I shall wait until the doctor has seen you."

Philip, who had no desire whatever to receive letters,—nor would have, until Fate separated him again from Miss Peggy Falconer,—thanked his hostess meekly, and proceeded to decapitate an egg.

"Do you feel strong enough to receive a visitor to-day?" continued Peggy.

"Who? Tim?"

"I didn't mean Tim, though I haven't the slightest doubt that he will call," said Peggy, with an enigmatic smile. "This is a new visitor—Miss Leslie. She used to be mother's greatest friend, and—and she has always been very good to me. I should like you to know her."

At this point the conversation was interrupted by a roar from the foot of the stairs.

"That is Dad," explained Peggy, quite needlessly.

Montagu Falconer invariably adopted this method of announcing his readiness for breakfast. A commotion upon the ground floor merely signified to Philip the intelligence that it was about half-past nine, or half-past one, or eight in the evening.

"I am afraid I am keeping you," he said.

"Quite right," assented Peggy. "You are. Eat up your breakfast like a good little boy, and perhaps I will come and see you again later."

And she sped out of the room and down the stair, to quell a bread-riot. A woman with two men on her hands is, indeed, a busy person.

Philip munched his breakfast in utter content. He was convalescent now, though the first week or so had been a bad time. He was only intermittently conscious, and his injuries had combined to render sleep a nightmare and wakefulness a throbbing torment. But he would have gone through it all again, and yet again, cheerfully, provided he could have remained in the hands of his present nurse. In the dim and distant past he had recollections of another attendant,—a deft and capable lady in a blue-and-white uniform,—but she had disappeared long ago (friction with the master of the house being the cause), and his whole illness and recovery were summed up to Philip in the single word, Peggy.

For the Big Thing had happened. Philip was in love. His long-expected Lady had come to him at last—or rather, come back to him, after an interval of years—grown up into a slim, elfin, brown-eyed piece of Dresden china. She had gathered him up, crushed and broken, from the middle of a Surrey highway, and had conveyed him straight to her home in Chelsea, to be nursed and mothered back into coherent existence. This, be it noted, in the face of a strongly-worded and most enthusiastic eulogy (from her parent) of the public hospitals of the metropolis.

But Peggy had been quite firm.

"Dad," she said, "I don't think you quite realise that he has saved your life."

"If he has," said Montagu Falconer magnificently, "he shall be suitably rewarded."

Peggy eyed her progenitor dispassionately.

"If you are thinking of tipping him half-a-sovereign," she said, "I advise you not to. I happen to know him. Now don't be a silly old curmudgeon, but go and see if the ambulance is coming."

Montagu obeyed, grumbling. There were only two women of his acquaintance who did not fear him, and Peggy was one. In fact, Peggy feared nothing, except spiders and the revelation of her own feelings.

II

"And how is the tibia of Theophilus this morning?"

Timothy, entering the room like a gust of ozone, sat down heavily by the patient's bedside and slapped the counterpane heartily.

"Just making both ends meet," replied the owner of the tibia, shrinking nervously towards the wall.

"Good!" said Timothy. "And is it well with the solar plexus?"

"Try again," said Philip.

Timothy paused, thoughtfully.

"I was under the impression that it was the solar plexus," he said in a troubled voice. "I know it was a heavenly body of some kind. Ah, I have it. The semilunar cartilage! How is the semilunar cartilage this morning?"

Philip reported favourably.

"Cavities in the cranium now permanent, I gather?" continued Tim sympathetically. "Prospect of ultimate mental weakness confirmed—what? Never mind! I'll get my late boss to provide you with a permanent post under Government."

"My skull," replied the patient mildly, "is all right, except when you make such an infernal noise."

Timothy was contrite at once.

"Noise? Tut-tut! Am I making a noise? This will never do. Nervous and irritable patient—eh? Must be kept quiet. I see. We will get some tanbark down outside. Street Cries Prohibited! and so on. But how are you getting along generally, old thing? How are all your organs? Fairly crescendo, I trust."

"Leave my organs alone, curse you!" growled the invalid.

"Certainly," said Timothy soothingly. "Organs and Street Cries Prohibited! We'll have a notice to that effect pinned up on your bedroom door. It will please Falconer. By the way, how is—er, Miss Falconer, this morning?"

Thereafter the conversation pursued a line far remote from Philip's health. Needless to say, the impressionable Timothy had fallen an instantaneous victim to Peggy. Striding about the room, absently munching some grapes which he had brought as a present for Philip, Timothy embarked upon a whole-hearted panegyric of his present adored one, heedless of the fact that the same panegyric had been delivered, mutatis mutandis, to the same audience by the same rhapsodist many times before.

Philip lay back and listened contentedly—nay, approvingly. He experienced no feeling of jealousy. No man, he considered, could know Peggy Falconer without loving her, so why blame Timothy?

"Have you noticed the neat little way she puts her head on one side, and smiles right up at you, when she wants something done that you don't want to do?" enquired the infatuated youth.

"What sort of thing?" asked Philip, glad to discuss Peggy in any aspect.

"Oh, going away, and things like that," said Timothy, naÏvely. "And her complexion, and her arms—my word! Have you seen her in evening kit? Fancy you knowing her when you were kids! I suppose you were great pals?"

"I dare say," admitted the reticent Philip.

"Only in a childish sort of way, though, I suppose?" pursued Timothy, with a touch of anxiety.

Before his suspicions could be allayed there came a vigorous but rhythmatic tattoo played upon the tiny brass knocker of the door.

Tum-ti-tum-ti-tiddle-i-um, Tum-ti-tum-ti-tum-tum!
Officers' Wives getting pudding and pies,
Soldiers' Wives get skilly!

it said. This was Peggy's regulation way of announcing to her patient that she was about to enter the room. When her hands were full she whistled it. Philip knew every beat of it by heart.

After the usual brief interval the door opened and Peggy entered, to announce to Timothy, with her head upon one side in the manner which he had just described with so much tenderness and enthusiasm, that it was time for him to depart.

"I have another visitor," she said.

The newcomer proved to be a gigantic Scotswoman, of forty or more, with humorous blue eyes and a slow, comprehending smile.

"This is Miss Leslie, Philip," announced Peggy. "Mr. Rendle, I want to show you our front door. The exterior is greatly admired."

III

Miss Leslie sat down in the chair vacated by Timothy, and remarked, in a soft Highland drawl: "It is very shocking, being left alone with a young man like this."

She smiled, and Philip's heart warmed to her at once. He felt instinctively that Miss Leslie was going to be a less bewildering companion than Miss Babs Duncombe, for instance.

"My only excuse for my unmaidenly conduct," continued the visitor, "is that I am a very old friend of Peggy's. I have known her ever since she was so high." She indicated Peggy's infant stature by a gesture.

"So have I," said Philip proudly. "Did you know?"

No, Miss Leslie did not know: Peggy had not told her; so Philip, with wonderful fluency for him, explained the circumstances under which he had first entered the house of Falconer.

Miss Leslie chuckled.

"It would be a fine ploy for Montagu," she said, "scarifying a little boy. But I am glad you met Peggy's mother, if only for five minutes."

"She was very kind to me during those five minutes," remarked Philip.

"She was my greatest friend," said Miss Leslie simply. "But she has been dead for seven years now. I suppose you knew that?"

Philip nodded: Peggy had told him.

So the conversation proceeded comfortably, understandingly. Jean Leslie was one of those women in whose presence a man can put his soul into carpet-slippers. It was not necessary to select light topics or invent small-talk for her benefit. She appeared to know all about Philip, and the Brake, and the accident. She also gave Philip a good deal of fresh information about Peggy and her father.

"I hoped," she said, "that when Montagu was made an A.R.A. he would be less of a bear. But he is just the same. Success came too late, poor body. He is as morose and pernickety and feckless as ever. Peggy is hard put to it sometimes."

"I expect you help her a good deal," remarked Philip, with sudden intuition.

Miss Leslie smiled grimly.

"Yes," she said, "I put my oar in occasionally. Montagu dislikes me, I am sorry to say. He is not afraid of Peggy,—nor she of him, for that matter,—but she is too soft with him: so whenever I see her overdriven I just step in and get myself disliked a little more. But he usually comes to me when he is in trouble, for all that. I am the only person who has any patience with him."

After that they talked about London, and Philip's work, and the future of automobilism. Miss Leslie apparently saw nothing either "pathetic" or "quaint" or "tragic" in a man liking to talk about what interested him. At any rate, she drew him out and lured him on. For all her spinsterhood, Jean Leslie knew something of masculine nature. She knew that the shortest way to the heart of that self-centred creature Man is to let him talk about himself, and his work, and his ambitions. So Philip discoursed, with all his shyness and reticence thawed out of him, upon subjects which must have made his visitor's head ache, but which won her heart none the less. That is the way of a woman. She values the post of confidante so highly that she will endure a man's most uninteresting confidences with joy, because of the real compliment implied by their bestowal.

"I am a silly sentimental old wife," she mused to herself afterwards, "but it warmed my heart to have that boy turning to me for advice on things I knew nothing about. It would be good for him, too. He would never talk like that to Peggy; he would be afraid of wearying her. I do not matter."