“The queer thing about it, miss,” Steptoe was saying to Barbara, “is that I didn’t ’ear no noise. My winder is just above the front door, two floors up, and it was open. I always likes an open winder, especially when the weather begins to get warm—makes it ’ealthier like, and so––”

“Yes, but tell me just how he is.”

“That’s what I’m comin’ to, miss. The minute I see what an awful styte we was in, I says, Miss Walbrook, she’ll ’ave to know, I says; and so I called up. Well, as I was a-tellin you, miss, I couldn’t sleep all night, ’ardly not any, thinkin of all what ’ad ’appened in the ’ouse, in the course of a few months, as you might sye—and madam run awye—and Mr. Rash ’e not ’ome—and it one o’clock and lyter. Not but what ’e’s often lyter than that, only last night I ’ad that kind of a feelin’ which you’ll get when you know things is not right, and you don’t ’ardly know ’ow you know it.”

“Yes, Steptoe,” she interposed, eagerly; “but is he conscious now? That’s what I want to hear about.”

Steptoe’s expression of grief lay in working up to a dramatic climax dramatically. He didn’t understand the hurried leaps and bounds by which you took the tragic on the skip, as if it were not portentous. In his response to Miss Walbrook there was a hint of irritation, and perhaps of rebuke.

“I couldn’t sye what ’e is now, miss, as the doctor and the nurse is with ’im, and won’t let nobody in till they decides whether ’e’s to live or die.” Rocking himself back and forth in his chair he moaned in stricken anticipation. “If ’e goes, I shan’t be long after ’im. I may linger a bit, but the good Lord won’t move me on too soon.”

Barbara curbed her impatience to reach the end, going back to the beginning. “Well, then, was it you who found ’im?”

“It was this wye, miss. Knowin’ ’e wasn’t in the ’ouse, I kep’ goin’ to my winder and listenin’—and then goin’ back to bed agyne—I couldn’t tell you ’ow many times; and then, if you’d believe it I must ’ave fell asleep. No; I can’t believe as I was asleep. I just seemed to come to, like, and as I laid there wonderin’ what time it was, seems to me as if I ’eard a kind of a snore, like, not in the ’ouse, but comin’ up from the street.”

“What time was that?”

“That’d be about ’alf past one. Well, up I gets and creeps to the winder, and sure enough the snore come right up from the steps. Seems to me, too, I could see somethink layin’ there, all up and down the steps, just as if it ’ad been dropped by haccident like. My blood freezes. I slips into my thick dressin’ gown—no, it was my thin dressin’ gown—I always keeps two—one for winter and one for summer—and this spring bein’ so early like––”

“But in the end you got down stairs.”

“If I didn’t, miss, ’ow could I ’a’ found ’im? I ain’t one to be afryde of dynger, not even ’ere in New 326 York, where you can be robbed and murdered without ’ardly knowin’ it—and the police that slow about follerin’ up a clue––”

“And what happened when you’d opened the front door?”

“I didn’t open it at once, miss. I put my hear to the crack and listened. And there it was, a long kind of snore, like—only it wasn’t just what you’d call a snore. It was more like this.” He drew a deep, rasping, stertorous breath. “Awful, it was, miss, just like somebody in liquor. ‘It’s liquor,’ I says, and not wantin’ to be mixed up in no low company I wasn’t for openin’ the door at all––”

“But you did?”

“Not till I’d gone ’alf wye upstairs and down agyne. I’m like that. I often thinks I’ll not do a thing, and then I’ll sye to myself, ‘Now, perhaps I’d better, and so it was that time. ’E’s out, I says, and who knows but what ’e’s fell in a fynt like?’ So back I goes, and I peeps out a little bit—just my nose out, as you might sye, not knowin’ but what if there was low company––”

“When did you find out who it was?”

“I knowed the ’at, like. It was that ’at what ’e bought afore ’e bought the last one. No; I don’t know but what ’e’s bought two since ’e bought that one—a soft felt, and a cowboy what he never wore but once or twice because it wasn’t becomin’. You’ll ’ave noticed, miss, that ’e ’ad one o’ them fyces what don’t look well in nothink rakish—a real gentleman’s fyce ’e ’ad—and them cowboy ’ats––”

“Well, when you saw that hat, what did you do?”

“For quite a spell I didn’t do nothink. I was all blood-curdled, as you might sye. But by and by I creeps out, and down the steps, and there ’e was, all ’uddled every wye––”

His lip trembled. In trying to go on he produced only a few incoherent sounds. Reaching for his handkerchief, he blew his nose, before being able to say more.

“Well, the first thing I says to myself, miss, was, Is ’e dead? It was a terrible thing to sye of one that’s everythink in the world to me; but seein’ ’im there, all crumpled up, with one leg one wye, and the other leg another wye, and a harm throwed out ’elpless like—well, what was I to think? miss—and ’im not aible to sye a word, and me shykin’ like a leaf, and out of doors in my thin dressin’ gown—if I’d ’ad on my thick one I wouldn’t ’a’ felt so kind of shymeful like––”

“You might have known he wasn’t dead when you heard him breathing.”

“I didn’t think o’ that. I thought as ’e was. And when I see ’is poor harm stretched out so wild like I creeps nearer and nearer, and me ’ardly aible to move—I felt so bad—and I puts my finger on ’is pulse. Might as well ’ave put it on that there fender. Then I looks at ’is fyce and I see blood on ’is lip and ’is cheek. ‘Somethink’s struck ’im,’ I says; and then I just loses consciousness, and puts back my ’ead, as you’ll see a dog do when ’e ’owls, and I yells, ‘Police!’”

“Oh, you did that, did you?”

“I’m ashymed to sye it, miss, but I did; and who should come runnin’ along but the policeman what in the night goes up and down our beat. By that time 328 I’d got my ’and on ’is ’eart, and the policeman ’e calls out from a distance, ‘Hi, there! What you doin’ to that man?’ Thought I was murderin’ ’im, you see. I says, ‘My boy, ’e is, and I’m tryin’ to syve ’is life.’ Well, the policeman ’e sees I’m in my dressin’ gown, and don’t look as if I’d do ’im any ’arm, so ’e kind o’ picks up ’is courage, and blows ’is whistle, and another policeman ’e runs up from the wye of the Havenue. Then when there’s two of ’em they ain’t afryde no more, so that the first one ’e comes up to me quite bold like, and arsks me who’s killed, and what’s killed ’im, and I tells ’im ’ow I was layin’ awyke, with the winder open, and Mr. Rash bein’ out I couldn’t sleep like––”

“How long did they let him lie there?”

“Oh, not long. First they was for callin’ a hambulance; but when I tells ’em that ’e’s my boy, and lives in my ’ouse, they brings ’im in and we lays ’im on the sofa in the libery, and I rings up Dr. Lancing, and––”

But something in Barbara snapped. She could stand no more. Not to cry out or break down she sprang to her feet. “That’ll do, Steptoe. I know now all I need to know. Thank you for telling me. I shall stay here till the doctor or the nurse comes down. If I want you again I’ll ring.”

Lashing up and down the drawing-room, wringing her hands and moaning inwardly, Barbara reflected on the speed with which Nemesis had overtaken her. “If he wasn’t here—or if he was dead,” she had said, “I believe I could be happier.” As long as she lived she would hear the curious intonation in Aunt Marion’s voice: “He’s dead?—after all?” It was in that after all that she read the unspeakable accusation of herself.

Waiting for the doctor was not long. On hearing his step on the stair Barbara went out to meet him. “How is he?” she asked, without wasting time over self-introductions.

“It’s a little difficult to say as yet. The case is serious. Just how serious we can’t tell to-day—perhaps not to-morrow. I find no trace of fracture of the cranium, or of laceration of the brain; but it’s too soon to be sure. Dr. Brace and Dr. Wisdom, who’ve both been here, are inclined to think that it may be no more than a simple concussion. We must wait and see.”

Relieved to this extent Barbara went on to explain herself. “I’m Miss Walbrook. I was engaged to Mr. Allerton till—till quite recently. We’re still great friends—the greatest friends. He had no near relations—only cousins—and I doubt if any of them are in New York as late in the season as this—and even if they are he hardly knows them––”

The doctor, a cheery, robust man in the late thirties, in his own line one of the ablest specialists in New York, had a foible for social position and his success in it. Even now, with such grave news to communicate, he couldn’t divest himself of his dinner-party manner or his smile.

“I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Miss Walbrook, at the Essingtons’ dinner—the big one for Isabel—and afterwards at the dance.”

“Oh, of course,” Barbara corroborated, though with no recollection of the encounter. “I knew it was 330 somewhere, but I couldn’t quite recall—So I felt, when the butler called me up, that I should be here––”

“Quite so! quite so! You’ll find Miss Gallifer, who’s with him now, a most competent nurse, and I shall bring a good night nurse before evening.” The professional side of the situation disposed of, he touched tactfully on the romantic. “It will be a great thing for me to know that in a masculine household like this a woman with knowledge and authority is running in and out. The more you can be here, Miss Walbrook, the more responsibility you’ll take off my hands.”

“May I be in his room—and help the nurse—or do anything like that?”

“Quite so! quite so! I’m sure Miss Gallifer, who can’t be there every minute of the time, you understand, will be glad to feel that there’s someone she can trust––”

“And he couldn’t know I was there?”

“Not unless he returned unexpectedly to consciousness, which is possible, you understand––”

Her distress was so great that she hazarded a question on which she would not otherwise have ventured. “Doctor, you’re a physician. I can speak to you as I shouldn’t speak to everyone. Suppose he did return unexpectedly to consciousness, and found me there in the room, do you think he’d be—annoyed?”

It was the sort of situation he liked, a part in the intimate affairs of people of the first quality. “As to his being annoyed I can’t say. It might be the very opposite. What I know is this, that in the coming 331 back of the mind to its regular functions inhibitions are often suspended––”

“And you mean by that––?”

“That the first few minutes in which the mind revives are likely to be minutes of genuine reality. I don’t say that the mind could keep it up. Very few of us can be our genuine selves for more than flashes at a time; but a returning consciousness doesn’t put on its inhibitions till––”

“So that what you see in those few minutes you can take as the truth.”

“I should say so. I’m not in a position to affirm it; but the probabilities point that way.”

“And if there had been, let us say, a lesser affection, something of recent origin, and lower in every way––”

“I think that until it forged its influence again—if it ever did—you’d see it forgotten or disowned.”

She tried to be even more explicit. “He’s perfectly free, in every way. I broke off my engagement just to make him free. The—the other woman, she, too, has—has left him––”

“So that,” he summed up, “if in those first instants of returning to the world you could read his choice you’d be relieved of doubts for the future.”

Having made one or two small professional recommendations he was about to go when Barbara’s mind worked to another point. “You know, he’s been very excitable.”

“So I’ve understood. I go a good deal to the Chancellors’. You know them, of course. I’ve heard about him there.”

“Well, then, if he got better, is there anything we could do about that?”

“In a general way, yes. If you’re gentle with him––”

“Oh, I am.”

“And if you try to smooth him down when you see him beginning to be ruffled––”

“That’s just what I do, only it seems to excite him the more.”

“Then, in that case, I should say, break the conversation off. Go away from him. Let him alone. Let him work out of it. Begin again later.”

“Ye-es, only—” she was wistful, unconvinced—“only later it’s so likely to be the same thing over again.”

He dodged the further issue by running up to explain to the nurse Miss Walbrook’s position in the house, and as helper in case of necessity. By the time he had come down again Barbara’s anguish was visible. “Oh, doctor, you think he will get better, don’t you?”

He was at the front door. “I hope he will. Quite—quite possibly he will. His pulse isn’t very strong as yet, but—Well, Dr. Brace and Dr. Wisdom are coming for another consultation this afternoon; only his condition, you understand, is—well, serious.”

Barbara divined the malice beneath Steptoe’s indications, as he conducted her upstairs. “That was the lyte Mrs. Allerton’s room; that’s the front spare room; and that’s our present madam’s room—when she’s ’ere—heach with its barth. I’m sure if Miss Walbrook was inclined to use the front spare room I’d be entirely 333 welcome, and ’ave put in clean towels, and everythink, a-purpose.”

When Rash’s door was pointed out to her she tapped. Miss Gallifer opened it, receiving her colleague with a great big hearty smile. Great, big, and hearty were the traits by which Miss Gallifer was known among the doctors. Healthy, skilful, jolly, and offhand, she carried the issues of life and death, in which she was at home, with a lightness which made her easy to work with. Some nurses would have resented the intrusion of an outsider—professionally speaking—like Miss Walbrook; but to Miss Gallifer it was the more the merrier, even in the sickroom. The very fact of coming to close quarters with the type she knew as a “society girl” added spice to the association.

For the first few seconds Barbara found her breeziness a shock. She had expected something subdued, hushed, funereal. Miss Gallifer hardly lowered her voice, which was naturally loud, or quieted her manner, which, when off duty, could be boisterous. It was not boisterous now, of course; only quick, free, spontaneous. Then Barbara saw the reason.

There was no need to lower the voice or quiet the manner or soften the swish of rustling to and fro, in presence of that still white form composed in the very attitude of death. If Barbara hadn’t known he was alive she wouldn’t have supposed it. She had seen dead men before—her father, two brothers, other relatives. They looked like this; this looked like them. She said this to herself, and not he, because it seemed the word.

But by the time she had moved forward and was standing by the bed Miss Gallifer’s businesslike tone became a comfort. You couldn’t take such a tone if you thought there was danger; and in spite of the hemming and hawing of the doctors Miss Gallifer didn’t think there was.

“Oh, I’ve seen lots of such cases, and I say it’s a simple concussion. Old Wisdom, he doesn’t know anything. I wouldn’t consult him about an accident to a cat. Laceration of the brain is always his first diagnosis; and if the patient didn’t have it he’d get it to him before he’d admit that he was wrong.”

Barbara put the question in which all her other questions were enfolded. “Then you think he’ll get better?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Would you be surprised—the other way?”

“I think I should—on the whole. Pulse is poor. That’s the worst sign.” She picked up the hand lying outside the coverlet and put her finger-tips to the wrist, doing it with the easy nonchalant carelessness with which she might have seized an inanimate object, yet knowing exactly what she was about. “H’m! Fifty-six! That’s pretty low. If we could get it above sixty—but still!” Dropping the hand with the same indifference, yet continuing to know what she was about, Miss Gallifer tossed aside the index of the pulse as wholly non-convincing. “I’ve known cases where the pulse would go down till there was almost no pulse at all, and yet it would come up again.”

“So that you feel––?”

“Oh, he’ll do. I shouldn’t worry—yet. If he 335 wasn’t going to pull through there would be something––”

“Something to tell you?”

“Well, yes—if you put it that way. I most always know with a patient. It isn’t anything in his condition. It’s more like a hunch. There’s often the difference between a doctor and a nurse. The doctor goes by what he sees, the nurse by what she feels. Nine times out of ten the doctor’ll see wrong and the nurse’ll feel right—and there you are! You can’t go by doctors. A lot of guess-work gumps, I often think; and yet the laity need them for comfort.”

Making the most of all this Barbara asked, timidly: “Is there anything I could do?”

“Well, no! There isn’t much that anyone can do. You’ve just got to wait. If you’re going to stay––”

“I should like to.”

“Then you can be somewhere else in the house so that I could call you—or you could sit right here—whichever you preferred.”

“I’d rather sit right here, if I shouldn’t be in the way.”

“Oh, when you’re in the way I’ll tell you.”

On this understanding Barbara sat down, in a small low armchair not far from the foot of the bed. Miss Gallifer also sat down, nearer to the window, taking up a book which, as Barbara could see from the “jacket” on the cover, bore the title, The Secret of Violet Pryde. It was clear that there was nothing to be done, since Miss Gallifer could so easily lose herself in her novel.

Not till her jumble of impressions began to arrange 336 themselves did Barbara realize that she was in Rash’s room, surrounded by the objects most intimate to his person. Here the poor boy slept and dressed, and lived the portion of his life which no one else could share with him. In a sense they were rifling his privacy, the secrecy with which every human being has in some measure to surround himself. She recalled a day in her childhood, after her parents and both her brothers had died, when their house with its contents was put up for sale. She remembered the horror with which she had seen strangers walking about in the rooms sanctified by loved presences, and endeared to her holiest memories. Something of that she felt now, as Miss Gallifer threw aside her book, sprang lightly to her feet, hurried into Rash’s bathroom, and came out with a towel slightly damped, which she passed over the patient’s brow. She was so horribly at ease! It was as if Rash no longer had a personality whose rights one must respect.

But he might get better! Miss Gallifer believed that he would! Barbara clung to that as an anchor in this tempest of emotions. If he got better he would open his eyes. If he opened his eyes it would be, for a little while at least, with his inhibitions suspended. If his inhibitions were suspended the thing he most wanted would be in his first glance; and if his first glance fell on her....