Chapter XXV

Melissa’s headache, however, had other and, as speedily developed, less spiritual reason, than concern for Murdock’s clearness of vision. It was a dull, persistent heavy headache and had endured two days, coiled sluggishly within her eye-sockets before apprehension touched her and she looked about for cure other than copious doses of aspirin and a cool wet cloth across the forehead. Recurrent slight shivers of a peculiar and inner chill reinforced the headache ... equally recurrent waves of an unreasonable and flickering heat. Melissa’s back ached steadily and abominably. Every muscle in her body ached as if she had been stretched upon a rack. Depression enveloped her like a fog. She had a great fire built and sat before it wrapped in a woolly bathrobe, wondering pitifully if she were sickening for mortal illness.

Kathleen upon the third day of these fairly obvious symptoms, took command and called in a doctor, from an office a block away.

“Ye’ll be havin’ flu--or I’m much mistaken!” said Kathleen.

She was not much mistaken--Doctor Wolfe, a Teutonic blond, rough-mannered, said the same, with a trifle more circumlocution, perhaps. Making play with the usual tubes and earpieces. Listening at Melissa’s chest--peering down her throat--taking her pulse--frowning sharply at her tongue.

“You should have been in bed,” said Doctor Wolfe--“a week ago!”

Melissa lifted blood-shot eyes and managed a frightened smile.

“I’ve never been ill in my life.”

“You’re ill now,” he assured her brusquely.

“Am I--going--to die?” asked Melissa.

“Not if you do as I tell you,” said Doctor Wolfe. He added, writing busily upon a little pad after the fashion of doctors the world over ... “I’ll send you in a nurse.”

“Oh--” moaned poor Melissa--“am I as sick as that?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Doctor Wolfe, a little more kindly--he was not after all impervious to the pathetic charm of Melissa’s slim, wilted person, huddled among cushions on the couch, hot-cheeked, heavy-eyed, rumple-headed.

“You don’t want to be sick up here in this apartment all by yourself--do you? I’ll get you some one I know. Some one who’ll take good care of you.”

“Is it flu?” asked Melissa faintly.

“You’ve got a bad throat--and one or two other things,” evaded the doctor. With Kathleen out, in the hallway, he was brutally frank.

“She’ll be lucky if it isn’t pneumonia. Get her to bed at once--give her the first dose of that prescription I gave you, as soon as the drugstore can fix it up. See that she’s kept covered. Are you her maid?”

“I’m a maid in the house here,” said Kathleen simply. “I go off at three but I’ll stay till the trained nurse comes. The poor lamb! ... Some wan ought to be told--but she ain’t got kith nor kin that ever I see!”

“No relations nor friends?” inquired Doctor Wolfe, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “No one at all? That’s odd!”

“There’s the Marchesa, of course,” offered Kathleen. “Had I better let the Marchesa know?”

“Who’s the Marchesa?”

“The Marchesa di Ricci,” said Kathleen, cocking her head and tilting her round pink chin with a touch of pleasurable snobbery. “She’s the old lady whose nevvew owns this apar-r-tment. He owns the house, Mister Roderick does--only he’s away in Japan, now ... and Miss Wayne sub-let ...”

“I see--I see!” said Doctor Wolfe. Indubitably before a Marchesa and a Mister Roderick he took on a touch of deeper interest in the case. “Miss Wayne any relation to the old lady?”

“Not that I know of,” said Kathleen doubtfully. “But g-r-reat friends!”

“Better tell her, then,” said Doctor Wolfe. “I’ll send a nurse over at once and look in again myself this evening.”

He went away, swinging a little black bag and whistling under his breath “Du bist wie eine Blume” ... an unconscious tribute perhaps even at such an unpropitious time.

Kathleen put Melissa to bed none too soon, piled blankets to her chin and administered directly it arrived, the Doctor’s medicine.

After which--for Melissa herself--arrived very shortly oblivion of an unreal and pain-shot sort. Fathoms deep she sank, shivering and burning, into an abyss of turgid slumber. Her limbs were clogged. She dreamed of weights, of chains, at wrist and ankle. She dreamed of a dead thing bound upon her breast--a dead thing that yet cruelly, violently ached. She dreamed of flames licking her face, threatening her eyes. She opened those eyes beneath the clammy contours of an ice-cap and heard an unfamiliar voice say quietly--“It’s all right--don’t throw your covers off now ...”

“Yours of the seventeenth instant received,” replied Melissa, speaking rapidly--“and in reply should like to say ... tomato soup, a lamb chop and apple tapioca--no cream, please! Country boys like them fine looking....”

She said a good deal more--along the same rather tangled lines--muttering other things quite as indistinguishable and sometimes just plaintively groaning. From somewhere a long way off, she heard her own groans and they vaguely terrified her. By that time daylight had gone and the bedroom was shadowy and still.

There was a personage with a white cap who came and went after a while beside the bed. Melissa, not entirely unaware of this newcomer, addressed her sometimes as Mrs. Robinson--sometimes as Granny....

“Granny--you liar!” said Melissa once--and added a string of gutter-snipe profanity. “You white-headed, black-hearted liar!” ...

“There, there!” soothed the white-capped one undisturbed. Adding, to Kathleen standing frightened in the doorway--“The nicest of them do that. Funny! Might have heard it sometime in the street--no telling. Who’s Granny?”

“God knows!” said Kathleen, crossing herself. “Not a relative has ever come near her.” ...

Then, there was sun once more, streaming in at the eastern windows, only sun was as good as a sword-thrust through Melissa’s poor eyes, so she lay with a cold compress across them and the person in the white cap kept the shades drawn low.

Kathleen came and went very softly. No swishing of mop, no cheerful bustle of broom and dust-pan for Kathleen now.

“The poor lamb!” was Kathleen’s cry. “And her all soul alone!--The poor sick lamb!”

On the second day appeared the Marchesa, plumes nodding on a smart new bonnet, her mouth more brightly rouged than ever.

Miss Kenning, the day-nurse met her in the living-room, invited her to sit down, and regarded her primly. Against Miss Kenning’s starched white immobility, crisp brown hair and smooth pink cheeks, the Marchesa assumed the aspect of something of Hogarth’s which had been left out in a variety of weathers and only inadequately retouched.

“How is Miss Wayne this morning?” inquired the Marchesa. She reared a lorgnon set in brilliants and stared at Miss Kenning regally.

“She has still a good deal of temperature,” admitted Miss Kenning.

“Flu, I suppose?” said the Marchesa.

Miss Kenning began the customary polite evasion.

“Yes--or no!” snapped the visitor.

“Er--yes,” said Miss Kenning considerably startled.

“Kathleen tells me she’s been out of her head.”

“A little--most of the time.”

“Has she--spoken of any one in particular?” inquired the Marchesa sharply.

“Why--there’s some one she calls Granny....”

“That’s me!” said the Marchesa, feminine reticence weaker than curiosity.

“Oh--” said Miss Kenning.

“What are you oh-ing about?” demanded the Marchesa grimly.

Miss Kenning with her mind full of white-headed, black-hearted liars and other less mentionable fauna merely opened her mouth and shut it again.

“I’m going in to see her,” said the Marchesa rising.

“I’m sorry,” Miss Kenning began....

“Open that door!” said the Marchesa, and Miss Kenning opened the door.

She said to Kathleen later--“I thought if Miss Wayne called her Granny--I didn’t quite feel I could keep her out.”

Which was no more than true. She hadn’t quite felt she could keep the Marchesa out--but that, as a feeling, had less to do with Melissa’s calling the Marchesa Granny, than Miss Kenning implied.

As for the Marchesa herself, she went into Melissa’s room very softly--more softly than might have been expected of those ridiculous little French heels, drew a chair to the bedside and sat down.

Melissa, lying slim and straight and still, with one white arm outside the covers, an ice-cap pressed down upon her brows, her dark hair streaming out across the pillow, looked pitifully young--and defenseless.

“Well, my dear!” said the Marchesa, with, for her, unbelievable gentleness.

Melissa opened her big dark eyes, bigger and darker than ever in the shadow of the ice-cap and groaned--no other comments.

“I’m sorry to see you so ill,” said the Marchesa--“you are not to worry about--anything--understand? You must have a night nurse, too--and as many doctors as you like.”

“I loathe doctors,” said Melissa feebly but viciously. “Don’t bring any damned doctor in here--I won’t see him!”

Miss Kenning had come into the room. Standing at the foot of the bed she put a finger to her lip, looked at the Marchesa and frowned. The Marchesa sat silent. Melissa lay silent. The room was full of silence of a distinctly uneasy sort. Out of which Melissa presently began again--without opening her eyes this time, and rubbing one hand restlessly back and forth across the coverlet.

“You will come back--in a little while--won’t you? ... it’s so hot in this room! ... you haven’t any coat on--that’s why? Get up--get up and come here! I want to look at you close--you’re all blurred. Please--please get up and come here.... Oh, I’m so hot! I want you to hold my hand....”

Miss Kenning stirred but the Marchesa shot her an imperious look, put her own hand over Melissa’s and held it tight. Then she leaned forward, listening intently. Melissa, with her hand in the Marchesa’s was still for a little. Only a little....

“I want you--” muttered Melissa--“to stay--I don’t want you to go away at all. I can’t see you--when you’re gone. I can’t hear you.... I want you to talk to me. I want to look at the back of your head--I’ve never seen the back of your head--and it makes such a difference....”

Across the bed the Marchesa uncannily bright-eyed cocked an inquisitive glance at Miss Kenning. Her painted lips shaped--“Who?”

“Old vulture!” thought Miss Kenning and merely shrugged.

Clinging to the Marchesa’s hand, Melissa murmured huskily--“If you’d be you--I’d be me--and what we couldn’t do!... I’m going to wait.... It’s no good my trying--I’ve got to wait....”

“Ah-ha!” said the Marchesa to herself and leaned a bit nearer.

“I’ll wait--” said Melissa unsteadily--“you will come back--won’t you? ... call that rickshaw man--he has the tea!”

Having thus laid her secret treasure in the Marchesa’s greedy palm, Melissa drifted off into a troubled sleep and the Marchesa, slipping her fingers free and rising, followed Miss Kenning once more into the outer room.

“Does she ask for some one called Roderick?” inquired the Marchesa curtly.

Her masterful inflection procured her an answer--“Mister Roderick,” corrected Miss Kenning stiffly.

“H’mph!” said the Marchesa. “Much?”

“Pretty often,” admitted Miss Kenning, who possessed a certain amount of curiosity upon her own side. “Is it some one she knows?”

“Would she be talking about him if it weren’t?”

“Talking _to_ him,” corrected Miss Kenning. “She talks to him for hours. She usually thinks he has his coat off--and she seems to connect him in some way with the furnishing of this apartment. Could he be the decorator?”

“He might--but I doubt it,” said the Marchesa.

“Well--whoever he is--she seems to be crazy about him,” Miss Kenning offered bluntly. “She’ll be quiet, any time she thinks he’s sitting there holding her hand. I’ve had to do it a good deal.”

“Upon my word!” said the Marchesa. She glanced about Mister Roderick’s sitting-room, sniffed and--suddenly--sighed. “Of all the incredible things--I might have known ... well ... poor child!” Which was for the Marchesa sentiment unheard-of. She added almost at once--“What’s your honest opinion--is she dangerously ill?”

“Why--the doctor doesn’t think so, to-day,” said Miss Kenning cautiously. “He thinks in some ways--she’s better. You see--as I told you--some people run a high temperature more easily than others--and go out of their heads with a fairly _slight_ temperature--so there you are! Has Miss Wayne any--ah--worries--that might aggravate things for her, do you know?”

“Quite possibly she has,” said the Marchesa--herself not too reckless with information. In the doorway, however, she turned, an odd look of decision upon her face.... “Next time she asks for Mister Roderick ... tell her he’s coming back ... very soon.”

“I see,” said Miss Kenning with professional calm.

“I shall cable for him to-day,” continued the Marchesa loftily. She was riding the crest of a great moment, playing a beautiful scene up to the hilt. She might have preferred a more extensive and less antagonistic audience but the white-capped, white-uniformed, young woman before her was better than nothing, beside being from moment to moment more visibly impressed.

“Miss Wayne is to have everything she needs,” decreed the Marchesa, Royalty itself in her voice and air. Thus might great Catherine have stooped to ensure the happiness of a faithful female retainer. Catherine was in the Marchesa’s mind--doubtless--Marie Antoinette--Mary Stuart--one or two other notable women.

“I shall come in again--some time to-morrow....”

Miss Kenning replied that that would be nice.

“Roderick will be simply dumbfounded!” observed the Marchesa, and went away full of little flickering smiles. Like fire in dry grass. The dumbfounding of Roderick in itself offered to her agile intelligence, no unworthy project.

Upon her limousined way to the cable office the Marchesa composed a masterpiece. “Return earliest possible date proposition awaiting you.” Which proposition of course was Melissa--lying fever-dazed beneath her blankets and ice-caps.

If Melissa could have seen the Marchesa sending that cable! Licking her lips over it. Purring with satisfaction. Being a great lady, and a dea ex machina, and a Delphic oracle all rolled into one.

Melissa at the time saw nothing very clearly, beyond a quiet young man, with a cigarette between his fingers, a slight smile upon his mouth, standing now at the window, looking out across the Park ... now before the fire with one hand upon the mantelshelf ... now beside the bed, looking down, laying his strong cool fingers over her tired and burning ones.

“Don’t go away ... please, Mister Roderick--don’t go away!” begged Melissa, and Miss Kenning sighed and settled closer in her chair, shifted a cramped wrist and murmured something soothing.

Vicarious emotion was not Miss Kenning’s forte. She considered that she would be glad when Melissa’s fever dropped and this sob-stuff was over.