Mammon and Co Part 33

Jack rang the bell, and sent for Kit's maid. The two brothers remained together in the hall without speaking till she came down again.

"Her ladys.h.i.+p will see Lord Evelyn now," she said.

Toby went up the staircase behind the woman. They came to Kit's door, and having tapped and been answered, he entered.

The blinds, as he had seen from the street, were down, and the room in low half-light. The dressing-table was close in front of the window, and in the dim rose light that filtered through the red stuff, he could at first see nothing but a faint sparkle of silver-backed brushes and bottles. Then to the right of the window the bed became outlined to his more accustomed gaze, and from it came Kit's voice, rather gentler and lower-pitched than its wont.

"Toby, it is dear of you to come to see me," she said. "But isn't it stupid of me? Directly after seeing Lily yesterday I came back here, and tripped on those steps leading from Jack's room. I came an awful bang. I must have been stunned, for I remember nothing till I found myself lying on the sofa here. Oh dear, I've got such a headache!"

Toby found himself suddenly encouraged. Of all moral qualities, he was disposed to put loyalty the first, and certainly Kit was being magnificently loyal. Her voice was perfectly her own; she did not say that she had stumbled over something of Jack's, still less that he, as Toby knew, had knocked her down. He drew a chair up to the bedside.

"It is bad luck, Kit," he said; "and really I am awfully sorry for you.

Is your head very bad?"

"Oh, it aches!" said Kit; "but it was all my own fault. Now, if anyone else had been to blame for it, I should have been furious, and that would have made it ache worse." She laughed rather feebly. "So one is saved something," she went on, "and even with this head I am duly grateful. It is a day wasted, which is always a bore, but otherwise----"

And she stopped abruptly, for the glibness of her loyalty was suddenly cut short by a pang of pain almost intolerable, which pierced her like a sword. She bit the bedclothes in her determination not to cry aloud, and a twenty seconds' anguish left her weak and trembling.

"I wanted to see you, Toby," she said. "Just to tell you how, how----"

And she paused a moment thinking that her insistence on the fact that her accident was no one's fault but her own, might seem suspicious--"how glad I was to see Lily yesterday!" she went on. "I wonder if she would come to see me; ask her. But you must go now; I can't talk. Just ring the bell as you go out. I want my maid."

She stretched a hand from under the bedclothes to him, and he took it with a sudden fright, feeling its cold feebleness.

"Good-bye, Kit," he said. "Get better soon."

She could not reply, for another sword of pain pierced her, and he went quickly out, ringing the bell as he pa.s.sed the mantelpiece.

Jack was still in the hall when he came downstairs again, and he looked up in surprise at the speed of Toby's return.

"She fell down, she told me," he said. "You were quite right, Jack--not a word."

Jack had not time to reply when Kit's maid hurried downstairs into the hall.

"What is it?" asked Jack.

"Her ladys.h.i.+p is in great pain, my lord," she said. "She told me to send for the doctor at once."

Jack rang the bell and looked up at Toby blankly, appealingly.

"Go into your room, Jack," he said. "I'll send for the doctor, and do all that."

A footman was sent off at once for Kit's doctor, and Toby sat down at a writing-table in the hall and scribbled a note to his wife, to be taken by a messenger at once to his house. If Lily was not at home, he was to find out where she had gone and follow her. The note only contained a few words:

"MY DEAREST: Kit is in trouble--worse than I can tell you. Come at once to her. She wants you.

"TOBY."

When he had written and sent this, he went back to Jack. The latter was sitting at his table, his face in his hands, doing nothing. Toby went up to him.

"Come, Jack," he said, speaking as if with authority, "make an effort and pull yourself together. Get to your work, or try to. There is a pile of letters there you haven't looked at. Read them. Some may want answers. If so, answer them. I have sent for Kit's doctor, and for Lily."

Jack looked up.

"It isn't fit that Lily should come here," he said.

Toby thought of Kit's visit the afternoon before, and Lily's refusal to him to say anything of what it had been about. That it had been private was all she would tell him, and not about money. And as they were sitting alone in the evening he thought he saw her crying once.

"I think it is very possible she knows," he said. "Kit had a private talk with her yesterday. Wait till she comes."

Jack rose from his seat.

"Oh, Toby, if you had only telegraphed for me from Stanborough, instead of packing him off!"

"I wish to G.o.d I had!" said Toby drearily.

Jack took up his letters, as Toby had told him, and began opening them.

There was one from Mr. Alington enclosing a cheque. He barely looked at it. Money, his heart's desire, had been given him, and the leanness of it had entered into his soul. But seeing the sense of Toby's advice to do something, he answered some of these letters, mechanically and correctly.

Before long Lily was announced, and Toby rose quickly, and went out into the hall to meet her.

"Ah, Toby," she said, "you did quite right to send for me. They just caught me before I went out. You needn't tell me anything. Kit told me all."

Toby nodded.

"Will you see Jack?" he asked.

"Yes, if he would care to see me. Ask him whether he will or not."

But Jack had followed Toby, and before he could answer had come out of his room.

"It is awfully good of you to come, Lily!" he said. "But go away again.

It is not fit you should be here."

"If Kit wants me, I shall see her," she said. "Please let her know that I am here, Jack."

"It isn't fit," said Jack again.

"I think differently," said Lily gently. "Please tell her at once, Jack."

Jack looked at her a moment in silence, biting his lip nervously.

"Ah G.o.d!" he cried, suddenly stung by some helpless remorse and regret, and without more words he went upstairs to see whether Kit would see her. He could not bring himself to go into the room, but asked through the maid. Soon he appeared again at the head of the stairs, beckoning to Lily, who was waiting in the hall below, and she went up. He held the door of Kit's bedroom open for her, and she went in.

The room was very dark, and, like Toby, it took her a few seconds before she could distinguish objects. From the corner to the right of the rose-square of the window came a faint moaning. Lily walked across to the bedside.

"Kit," she said, "my poor Kit! I have come."

There was silence, and the moaning ceased. Then came Kit's voice in a whisper: