Chapter VIII

In the first days of an intended tour he had taken a slight cold. He had to leave for Birmingham on the morrow, and he reached it chilled and shivering. To sing was out of the question. He remained in the hotel, and ordered hot drinks and additional blankets. Next morning he woke with a cough, and sent for a doctor; but the cough grew worse in spite of medical aid, and when he was joined by a companion whom he had been expecting, he was found in bed with pneumonia.

He was asleep when David arrived. In the sitting-room the companion was having dinner. David accepted her presence without astonishment. She said she supposed he must be hungry, and told him to ring the bell; he answered that he was not hungry in the least. She had peroxide-of-hydrogen hair, and painted cheeks, and a coarse voice. He sat in an armchair by the fire, and looked at her.

"How soon shall I be able to go in?" he asked, trembling.

"They'll tell 'im you're here when 'e wakes up," she said, with her mouth full. "You'd better have something to eat, you know. 'David' your name is, isn't it?"

"Yes. I couldn't eat anything, thank you. Who is taking care of him?" He knew already that the companion wasn't.

"The doctor sent round two nurses from the hospital--a day nurse and a night nurse. He's in a bad way. You should see how thin 'e's got."

"Will he--get well?" inquired his son, with a jerk.

"Let soap so," said the woman. She refilled her glass, and emptied the bottle. "Have some champagne?"

He shook his head. "I wish he'd wake."

"You better had," she rejoined; "there's nothing like champagne when you're feeling low." The waiter reappeared with the sweets. "Bring up another bottle," she said, "and a green chartrooze. I don't think I'll take any of those. What's that one--the floppy thing with the pink-and-white stuff on it?"

The waiter murmured that it was trifle.

"No, I don't want any." She made a wretched pun, and told him to pass her the cigarettes. The box was a silver one that belonged to the sick man; the boy winced to see her careless hand thrust in it. He wondered what the waiter thought of her, wondered that his father wasn't ashamed--and knew a gust of self-reproach for condemning him to-night. A lump rose suddenly in his throat, his eyeballs pricked; he stared hard at the fire in a struggle to keep back the tears that were starting.... To his shame he felt one trickling down his cheek.

"Don't you smoke?" asked the woman.

"Not now," he muttered, and knew that his voice had betrayed him.

She turned to him surprised. "What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing," he said angrily; "what should there be?"

In the road, a piano-organ reeled out a cadenza, and then stopped short. After the sharp silence that ensued, the roll of the traffic seemed to fill the room. The cork popped, and he drank his wine at a draught.

"Go on."

"I don't want any more."

"Sure?" She tilted her glass. "Well, here's to Temperance, and down with champagne!"

Though he no longer watched her, he was intensely conscious of her presence; it weighed upon his senses, he resented it with every nerve. The odour of her cigarette permeated his thoughts while he waited, and he fancied that he could hear her breathe.

The nurse came in, and said that Lee was asking for him. She warned him not to remain more than a few minutes. The sight of her strengthened the boy. As he followed this clean-faced woman in her sober dress, a tinge of confidence lightened his apprehension.

Lee had altered painfully. His words were whispers. In the first moments there seemed something unreal in seeing him lying there so weak.

"Davie."

"Father."

"Sit down."

"Why didn't you wire before, father?"

"It was time enough."

"You're getting on nicely, they say."

"Perhaps."

"Do they know at home?"

Lee bent his head. "The papers. But I don't want her here. I told her she needn't come."

"But she may, and----"

"Oh no; she won't want to."

There was a pause. Then he said in firmer tones:

"This is a bad business, sonny."

"It'll be all right."

"Have you seen Julia?"

"The woman in there? Yes."

"She's a good sort, Julia--looks after everything. Most of 'em would have cleared out and left me."

David wondered what awaited her elsewhere. He turned very cold--the illusion frightened him, for in health Lee had had no illusions.

"A good sort," murmured the man, "eh?"

"Yes," said the boy, faintly.

"She's got a friend here now--comes in to see her sometimes--but it must be very slow for her; not many women would have stopped. See that she's comfortable, Davie."

"I'll see to it, father."

Lee closed his eyes, and his thoughts wandered through the years to a morning when he followed a widow about Brighton, and overtook her on Marine Parade. The sun shone out to him again, and he heard the wash of the waves on the beach. He came back to David.

"If I don't pull through, it'll be an awful mess," he said. "God knows what I owe I I wish I'd put a bit by for you."

"You'll have plenty of time to put by in, father. Don't talk nonsense about not pulling through; in a month you'll be as strong as ever."

The woman who was called Julia opened the door, and whisked over to the dressing-table.

"Sorry to bother," she said; "there's another bill from the chemist's come in; I've got no money left."

"Take some," said the dying man. "Where do you keep the key?"

She unlocked the drawer, and whisked out again. There had been a rustle of bank-notes.

"A good sort, Julia," he repeated; "looks after everything. I must give her something, Davie.... There's my scarf-pin somewhere about--it'll do for her tie."

David left him soon, mindful of the nurse's instructions, and at nine o'clock the doctor paid another visit.

"I should like to have a physician down from town, if you don't mind," stammered the lad; "the best we can get."

"Just as you please," said the practitioner, stiffly. "But the treatment in these cases----"

David felt shy, and was annoyed with himself for being so. The sense, inherited and acquired, of racial inferiority cowed him as he opposed his opinion to the authoritative stranger's.

"Yes, if you don't mind, I should like a physician," he insisted, after an inward struggle. Embarrassment lent a ring of defiance to his voice, and the doctor thought him a cub.

So the telegram was written, and the cub went out with it himself.

When he returned to the sitting-room, Julia was playing cards for coppers with a faded woman in shabby black, who was presented to him as "Mrs. Hayes." A brandy bottle and a syphon stood between the glasses on the table; and when Mrs. Hayes won a shilling she tittered: "Lucky at love, unlucky at cards, my dear!" As she put on her bonnet, she gave a start. "There! I meant to 'ave bought sixpenn'orth, against my being bad again in the night, dear," she exclaimed; "the pubs 'll be shut by now!" And then her hostess summoned the waiter, and Mrs. Hayes carried another bottle home under her cape.

It was in these surroundings, rather more than a week after the consultation, that the tenor died.