The Halo Part 48

Tommy ill! Poor little boy, with all his joy of life and enthusiasms, struck down by diphtheria! Why could it not be she instead?

But it was not the girl's nature to waste time in useless reflections when any possible course of action lay before her.

Ringing, she sent for M. Berton, the proprietor, and finding that a train left in half an hour, threw her belongings into her box and a few minutes later was in a ramshackle cab clattering stationwards. She left a note for Theo, but she was sincerely glad that time was too short for her to make any attempt to see either him or Joyselle. They had faded into the background of her mind, and in the foreground stood, piteous and appealing, poor little Tommy.

It was a gruesome journey, never to be forgotten, and made more bearable by several little acts of kindness on the part of her fellow-travellers, as such journeys are apt to be.

Brigit never again saw the fat Jewish commercial traveller who rushed from the train at some station, and nearly missed the train in his efforts, successful at last, to get her some tea; but she never forgot him. Neither did she ever forget a woman in shabby mourning who insisted on giving her a packet of somebody's incomparable milk chocolate.

And for hours and hours and hours the trains (for she had to change twice) rushed on through the slow-dying autumn evening and night, and part of the next day. Then at last London--a rush in a hansom to Victoria from Charing Cross, and the familiar little journey homewards.

It was about three o'clock when she reached Kingsmead, and raining hard.

"'Is lords.h.i.+p is--still alive, my lady," Jarvis told her, choking a little, "but--pretty bad, my lady." Tommy had always laughed at Jarvis'

manner, but Brigit liked it now.

The drive seemed endless, but at length there was the lodge, and the carp-pond, and the tennis-court, and--the beautiful old house, all blurred in the driving rain.

"Her ladys.h.i.+p is upstairs, my lady." And Brigit ran up the shallow, red-carpeted steps. But who was this old woman wrapped in a white shawl.

"Brigit----"

It was Lady Kingsmead, and Brigit, looking at her mother, almost fainted for the first time in her life.

"How is he?" she gasped, leaning against the wall and wondering why it was so unsteady.

"He--his throat is better, but--he is very weak and--delirious. His brain, they say, is--over-active." Poor Lady Kingsmead burst into tears, wiping her eyes on the fringe of her shawl.

Brigit patted the strangely shrunken head compa.s.sionately. "Don't cry, mother," she said. "Is he in his room?"

"No--in the boudoir. His chimney smokes so in the autumn, you know."

Tommy lay in his own bra.s.s bed in the silken nest of his mother, a white-capped nurse by his side. The little boy's face was flushed and his head tossing restlessly to and fro on the embroidered pillows.

"There's no use," he was muttering. "I tell you, it's quite silly to waste time; you should have begun long ago. He always said so, and he's right."

Brigit sat down by him. "Here's Bicky," she said, "with the Master's love for you, Tommy."

"He's gone away. Ratting with the Prince of Wales. Let's play his fiddle before he comes back. I've got that last exercise beautifully--only my little finger is so beastly short. If I'd been whipped when I was a kid it might have grown--there it goes! Hi, Pincher, after him!"

The nurse rose and moistened her patient's lips with water.

"How is he, nurse?" asked Brigit shortly.

"His throat's better, miss--my lady. But he's very weak. These active-minded little boys----"

"I know; I know," interrupted the girl hastily. "When will he know me?"

The nurse hesitated. How could she tell? The relations always _did_ ask senseless questions. The Persian kitten, now grown to be a cat less Persian than had been expected, came into the room, and the nurse took it up and put it out. "He always comes; he's a perfect nuisance," she observed. "They get so used to places, cats, don't they?"

Brigit nodded. "I'll go and change," she said. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Better take something to eat, my lady. The danger of infection is great, you know, and the tireder one is----"

"I know."

When she came back, Brigit found her mother installed in the room while nurse had her tea. Lady Kingsmead was a good nurse, greatly to her daughter's surprise, and all her affectations seemed to have been left in her dressing-room with her false hair.

The three women took turns sitting up with the invalid, but he recognised none of them. It was a very long night, and only the greatest determination kept Brigit awake during her watches, for she was extremely tired after her journey.

But at last day came, and with it a short return of consciousness.

"Where's Bicky?"

"Here I am, Tommy darling," she answered, taking his hand. "Are you better, love?"

"Yes, I think so. Where's my violin?"

She fetched it, and he went to sleep, his wasted hand lying across the strings.

When he next spoke it was to talk utter nonsense about a flying-machine, an account of which he had read in a newspaper.

CHAPTER TEN

Poor little Tommy's pa.s.sion for knowing things showed up very clearly the next few days, his over-active brain working hard propounding to itself question on subjects that Brigit had never heard him even mention. And one of the most pathetic subjects was that of her relations with her mother. "If Brigit would only come back and live here again,"

he said over and over again, "like other fellows' sisters. Things are so much pleasanter when she is here."

"I'm here, Tommy darling," she told him a hundred times, but he only shook his head and frowned gently. "You are very nice, and I like your hands, because they are cool and dry, but you are not Bicky. Bicky is beautiful."

His mother, on the contrary, the child always recognised, and his manner to her was almost protecting.

"Don't cry, mother," he would say. "I'm not so bad, really I'm not. You had better go and lie down, or you will not look pretty to-night."

His idea of evenings was, of course, of a time when mothers must look their best at any cost, and when no mother ever stayed upstairs.

Every evening, therefore, he could not rest until Lady Kingsmead had gone "to dress."

Brigit had never known how much the little fellow noticed the details of dress, and so on, but now she learned, for his remarks about his mother usually took the form of appreciation or dislike of some particular toilette.

"Wear pink, mother--it suits you best--and pearls. The diamonds make you look older."

Poor Lady Kingsmead, more lovable in her distress than her daughter had ever seen her, obeyed him humbly, and promising to wear pink, or whatever the colour might be, crept away to her bedroom and cried until she was scarcely recognisable.

Two days pa.s.sed thus, the doctor coming many times and shaking his head doubtfully over questions about his patient. "The throat is much better--the danger from that is quite past; but--the fever does not go down, and I can't quite tell what the complication is. He is too young to have had a mental shock, so I can only a.s.sume that the too great activity of his mind is now against us. I understand that he has been studying very hard?"

This Brigit denied, but the doctor, on insisting, was told to interview Mr. Babington, and to the girl's amazement she learned that only a day or two before he was taken ill Tommy had betrayed the fact that for weeks he had been in the habit of spending part of each night in the disused chapel, practising on his violin.