Love Stories Part 20

"I'm afraid I'm about killing her," he said to the Staff Doctor one day; "but it's my chance to make a man of myself--now or never."

The Staff Doctor was no fool and he had heard about the orchids.

"Fight it out, boy!" he said. "Pretty soon you'll quit peeling and cease being a menace to the public health, and you'd better get it over before you are free again."

So, after a time, it grew a little easier. Grant was pretty much himself again--had put on a little flesh and could feel his biceps rise under his fingers. He took to cold plunges when he felt the craving coming on, and there were days when the little pavilion was full of the sound of running water. He shaved himself daily, too, and sent out for some collars.

Between the two of them, since her return, there had been much of good fellows.h.i.+p, nothing of sentiment. He wanted her near, but he did not put a hand on her. In the strain of those few days the strange, grey dawn seemed to have faded into its own mists. Only once, when she had brought his breakfast tray and was arranging the dishes for him--against his protest, for he disliked being waited on--he reached over and touched a plain band ring she wore. She coloured.

"My mother's," she said; "her wedding ring."

Their eyes met across the tray, but he only said, after a moment: "Eggs like a rock, of course! Couldn't we get 'em raw and boil them over here?"

It was that morning, also, that he suggested a thing which had been in his mind for some time.

"Wouldn't it be possible," he asked, "to bring your tray in here and to eat together? It would be more sociable."

She smiled.

"It isn't permitted."

"Do you think--would another box of orchids----"

She shook her head as she poured out his coffee. "I should probably be expelled."

He was greatly aggrieved.

"That's all foolishness," he said. "How is that any worse--any more unconventional--than your bringing me your extra blanket on a cold night? Oh, I heard you last night!"

"Then why didn't you leave it on?"

"And let you freeze?"

"I was quite warm. As it was, it lay in the hallway all night and did no one any good."

Having got thus far from wedding rings, he did not try to get back.

He ate alone, and after breakfast, while she took her half-hour of exercise outside the window, he sat inside reading--only apparently reading, however.

Once she went quite as far as the gate and stood looking out.

"Jenks!" called Billy Grant.

Jenks has not entered into the story much. He was a little man, rather fat, who occupied a tiny room in the pavilion, carried meals and soiled clothes, had sat on Billy Grant's chest once or twice during a delirium, and kept a bottle locked in the dish closet.

"Yes, sir," said Jenks, coming behind a strong odour of _spiritus frumenti_.

"Jenks," said Billy Grant with an eye on the figure at the gate, "is that bottle of yours empty?"

"What bottle?"

"The one in the closet."

Jenks eyed Billy Grant, and Billy eyed Jenks--a look of man to man, brother to brother.

"Not quite, sir--a nip or two."

"At," suggested Billy Grant, "say--five dollars a nip?"

Jenks smiled.

"About that," he said. "Filled?"

Billy Grant debated. The Nurse was turning at the gate.

"No," he said. "As it is, Jenks. Bring it here."

Jenks brought the bottle and a gla.s.s, but the gla.s.s was motioned away. Billy Grant took the bottle in his hand and looked at it with a curious expression. Then he went over and put it in the upper bureau drawer, under a pile of handkerchiefs. Jenks watched him, bewildered.

"Just a little experiment, Jenks," said Billy Grant.

Jenks understood then and stopped smiling.

"I wouldn't, Mr. Grant," he said; "it will only make you lose confidence in yourself when it doesn't work out."

"But it's going to work out," said Billy Grant. "Would you mind turning on the cold water?"

Now the next twenty-four hours puzzled the Nurse. When Billy Grant's eyes were not on her with an unfathomable expression in them, they were fixed on something in the neighbourhood of the dresser, and at these times they had a curious, fixed look not unmixed with triumph.

She tried a new arrangement of combs and brushes and tilted the mirror at a different angle, without effect.

That day Billy Grant took only one cold plunge. As the hours wore on he grew more cheerful; the look of triumph was unmistakable. He stared less at the dresser and more at the Nurse. At last it grew unendurable. She stopped in front of him and looked down at him severely. She could only be severe when he was sitting--when he was standing she had to look so far up at him, even when she stood on her tiptoes.

"What is wrong with me?" she demanded. "You look so queer! Is my cap crooked?"

"It is a wonderful cap."

"Is my face dirty?"

"It is a won---- No, certainly not."

"Then would you mind not staring so? You--upset me."

"I shall have to shut my eyes," he replied meekly, and worried her into a state of frenzy by sitting for fifty minutes with his head back and his eyes shut.

So--the evening and the morning were another day, and the bottle lay undisturbed under the handkerchiefs, and the cold shower ceased running, and Billy Grant a.s.sumed the air of triumph permanently.

That morning when the breakfast trays came he walked over into the Nurse's room and picked hers up, table and all, carrying it across the hall. In his own room he arranged the two trays side by side, and two chairs opposite each other. When the Nurse, who had been putting breadcrumbs on the window-sill, turned round Billy Grant was waiting to draw out one of the chairs, and there was something in his face she had not seen there before.

"Shall we breakfast?" he said.