Juggernaut Part 54

"Best fiddlesticks!" he retorted sharply. "Good Lord, why should I have a private physician? I'm not the King. Thank heaven you told me this. I shall let her know at once that I don't intend to make use of him. She must let him go."

"My dear, do be careful!" his aunt implored him. "You know how dreadfully sensitive she is; don't risk hurting her feelings! It would be such a poor return for all her kindness."

"Leave it to me; I'll do it very tactfully. Really, it's too much! If I'm going to be ill, I must be allowed to choose my own physician and pay the bill myself. It's not that I haven't confidence in this man, but somehow I can't bear his personality."

They fell into silence, each busy with disturbing thoughts. Even Miss Clifford did not know to what an extent Roger was concerned over this matter of Esther's whereabouts. The complete uncertainty, linked as it was with the doctor's guarded implications, had strung him up to a pitch of nerve-racking apprehension. Moreover, not until this had happened did he fully realise what Esther meant to him, how differently he regarded her from any other girl he had ever known. Could it possibly be true that she was in some obscure way slightly unbalanced?

If he shut out the thought from his mind, he felt himself at once faced with another equally unpleasant--that never-annihilated possibility that she had gone off with Holliday somewhere. Perhaps she was with him now, in Monte Carlo, or Nice, Paris even. Therese would not know, of course. Arthur would be careful to keep it from her. The mere idea of it made him writhe, while he felt his skin flush all over as though a fire flared up inside him.

The door behind him opened quietly, and Therese came in, dressed for dinner.

"How damp it is this evening!" she said, s.h.i.+vering slightly. "Chalmers must bring up some more wood for the fire. I am glad you are in, Roger; I have been so unhappy about you. Are you feeling better?"

"Yes, thank you, Therese, I rather think this bout isn't going to amount to much after all. It looks like a false alarm."

"Ah, that would be too marvellous! Perhaps you have a very strong--what do you call it?--const.i.tution. Dido, darling, will you be an angel and fasten this strap for me? Aline is out on an errand."

She leant over so that her sister-in-law need not rise. Her dead-black, filmy gown had wide transparent sleeves that fell back to show her white arms, she wore no ornaments except her row of l.u.s.trous pearls. She looked fragile and lovely, her hair loosely waved with the artlessness of a child's, her grey eyes with their flecks of gold wide and clear, like the eyes of a beautiful Persian cat.

"Therese," Roger said abruptly. "Sit down, I want to suggest something to you."

She patted the old lady's shoulder for thanks and sat down in the blue damask _bergere_ beside the fire, looking up at him expectantly.

"Yes, certainly; what is it?"

"Therese, you mustn't misunderstand what I am going to say. It's awfully difficult. The fact is, I've only just realised you are keeping Sartorius here on my account. You'll think me incredibly stupid, but I supposed he was staying on as a--a guest."

"Well?" she returned, quite tranquilly, though watching him closely, he thought.

Mechanically she put out her hand to take a cigarette from the table, keeping her eyes on his. He bent forward with a match for her, and the perfume from her hair, her skin, her dress met him in a cloying wave.

Why, in spite of all, did he shrink from that scent? He couldn't explain it, it wasn't exactly unpleasant....

"Well," he replied, finding it hard to proceed, "now that I do understand, I must really beg you to get rid of him. I'm not ill enough to need any physician's undivided attention, and besides"--he hesitated, then took the plunge--"I feel I've got to get away. Since Father's funeral this house seems to get on my nerves. I'm horribly depressed. Do you know what I mean?"

Expecting to see her face cloud with the look of resentful suspicion he knew so well he was agreeably surprised when she merely smiled faintly and replied:

"My dear, of course I know! It is most natural. I too would like to get away. Why don't you go to a nursing-home for a bit?"

Both he and his aunt could hardly believe their ears. Therese was surely becoming much more reasonable than formerly.

"Perhaps, it depends on how I feel. It's jolly decent of you to understand. Of course it's nothing but nerves----"

"Oh, my dear, don't trouble to explain! As if I didn't know what nerves are! I don't suppose, in that case, you will want Sartorius?"

"Well, I----" He broke off, embarra.s.sed, scarcely able to keep the amazement out of his voice.

"Because I think he wants to run down to Algiers for a little rest.

He's only staying to please me."

The matter had cleared up in the simplest fas.h.i.+on. Roger felt a rush of slightly ashamed grat.i.tude towards his step-mother, feeling a little reluctantly, as he had done once before, that he had misjudged her.

Confused by her kindly impulses he stooped to pick up the wisp of a handkerchief she had let fall to the floor. As he laid it in her lap she uttered a sharp little cry.

"Roger--your hand! Let me see, please. Why, it's bleeding again!

Aren't you doing anything for it?"

He allowed her to examine it, while his aunt adjusted her spectacles and moved nearer to see.

"My dear, that is bad! I'd almost forgotten it, but it isn't healing at all, it looks quite inflamed."

"It's a beastly nuisance, it keeps catching in things and tearing open again. I haven't had a bandage on it since----" He left the sentence unfinished, for it had brought up memories of Esther. "Oh, well, it's nothing serious. Still, I had better let Sartorius attend to it, I suppose--sterilise it and so forth. Don't you think? He was after me this morning about the risk I was running of getting it infected, but I wouldn't wait."

He was pleased to have thought of this; he felt it made a sort of amends to Therese for the blow he had dealt her--if it was a blow. He was glad to see that she looked slightly gratified, it mitigated his guilty feeling.

"It is just as well to look after that sort of thing," Miss Clifford remarked placidly. "I can't help recalling poor Smithers, one of your father's foremen, who got a scratch from a bit of wire on one of the looms and died two weeks later of blood-poisoning."

As she spoke the door to the hall opened and the doctor came in, greeting the three with his usual phlegmatic calm. His presence put an immediate pall on the conversation which Miss Clifford made an effort to lift.

"Any news?" she inquired. "I suppose you have had no word from our Miss Rowe?"

He turned a speculative eye upon her, pausing a moment as if trying to recall who Miss Rowe could be.

"Miss Rowe!" he repeated vaguely, moving towards the fire. "No, I have heard nothing. But then I have no reason to believe she will take the trouble to communicate with me."

The slight emphasis on the final word annoyed Roger, who glanced at the doctor keenly, wondering what was in the man's methodical, unemotional mind. Was he keeping something back? Did he know more of Esther than he was willing to say? It had not occurred to him until now.

Therese made a sudden graceful and impulsive movement.

"Doctor--will you be good enough to look at Mr. Clifford's hand? I am sure his thumb should be attended to at once: it really is in a shocking state."

Roger held out his injured hand for inspection. Very deliberately the big man adjusted the nearest lamp so that its rays shone where he wished them, then he bent his head and frowningly examined the wound.

He took so long about the matter that Miss Clifford put down her knitting to watch. Could anything be wrong? Roger himself began at last to wonder. He submitted quietly while Sartorius felt his arm at intervals exploringly up to the shoulder, but he began to feel a little impatient when the examiner took hold of his face to turn it to the light and with a tentative finger commenced to prod his jaw.

"No peculiar sensation there, I suppose?" the doctor asked as he touched the muscles just in front of the ears.

"No, certainly not."

What was the man getting at? It was exceedingly tiresome. At last the inquisition ended; the doctor straightened his tall bulk and spoke, non-committally, but with raised eyebrows.

"I must certainly disinfect it at once. That at least one can do."

This remark and the tone in which it was uttered were both so far from rea.s.suring that Miss Clifford hastened to inquire: "Has it become infected in any way, do you think?"

"I trust not. I trust not. I fancy some dirt or grit has got into it, and no wonder; still ... will there be time to see to it before dinner?

It really shouldn't be left."

"Oh, it is only ten minutes past eight," replied Therese, glancing at the clock, "and I ordered dinner for half-past."

"Very well, I will attend to it now."

When the doctor was out of the room Roger laughed a little, examining the raw, inflamed fissure on his thumb.