Parker Steel dropped into his Roxton tailor’s that same afternoon to have a summer suit fitted. The proprietor, an urbane and bald-headed person with the deportment of a diplomat, rubbed his hands and remarked that professional duties must be very exacting in the heat of June.
“Your colleague, I understand, sir—Dr. Murchison, sir—has had an attack from overwork; sunstroke, they say.”
“What! Sunstroke?”
“So I have been informed, sir.”
“Indeed!”
“Or an attack of faintness. Dr. Murchison is a most laborious worker. Four buttons, thank you; a breast-pocket, as before, certainly. Any fancy vestings to-day, doctor? No! Greatly obliged, sir, I’m sure,” and the diplomat dodged to the door and swung it open with a bow.
Parker Steel found his wife reading under the Indian cedar in the garden. She was dressed in white, with a red rose in her bosom, the green shadows of the trees and shrubs about her casting a sleek sheen over her olive face and dusky hair. Poets might have written odes to her, hailing the slim sweetness of her womanliness, using the lily as a symbol of her beauty and the Madonna-like radiance of her spiritual face.
She glanced up at her husband as he came spruce and complacent, like any Agag, over the grass.
“Murchison has had a sunstroke.”
“What! Who told you?”
“Rudyard, the tailor.”
The book was lying deprecatingly at Mrs. Betty’s feet. Her eyes swept from her husband to dwell reflectively on the scarlet pomp of the Oriental poppies.
“Do you think it was a sunstroke, Parker?”
Her husband glanced at his neat boots and whistled.
“What a melodramatic mind you have,” he said.
CHAPTER IX
James Murchison’s motor-car drew up before a row of buildings in Mill Lane, a series of brick boxes that were flattered with the name of “Prospect Cottages.” So far as prospect was concerned, the back yard of a tannery offered no “patches of purple” to the front windows of the row, and the breath that blew therefrom had no kinship to a land breeze from the Coromandel coast. In blunt Saxon, Mill Lane stank, and with the whole-heartedness of a mediæval alley. Over the gray cobbles that dipped between the houses to the river came a glimpse of the foam and glitter of the mill pool and the dull thunder of the wheels and water hummed perpetually up the narrow street.
Murchison swung open the gate, and in three strides stood at the blistered door of No. 9 Prospect Row. A painted board hung beside the door bearing a smoking chimney “proper,” and for supporters two bundles of sweep’s brushes that looked wondrous like Roman fasces. The letter-press advertised Mr. William Bains as a sweeper of chimneys, soot merchant, and extinguisher of fires. The little front garden was neat as a good housewife’s linen cupboard, with double daisies along the borders, and nasturtiums, claret, crimson, and gold, scrambling up pea-sticks below the window.
A stout woman, who smelled of soup, opened the door to Murchison and welcomed him with the most robust good-will.
“Good-morning, doctor; hope I ’aven’t kept you waiting. Step in, sir, if you please.”
Murchison stepped in, bending his head by force of habit, as though accustomed to cottage doorways. Mrs. Bains in a starched apron made way for him like a ship in sail. She was a very capable woman, so said her neighbors, black-eyed, sturdy, with a nose of the retroussé type, and patches of color over her rather prominent cheek-bones.
“You’re looking better, doctor, excuse me saying it. I can tell you you gave us a bit of a shock when you went off in that there dead faint on Tuesday.”
Mrs. Bains was a woman with a sanguine temper, a temper that made her an aggressive enemy, but a very loyal and active friend. Her black eyes twinkled with motherly concern as she watched Murchison pull off his gloves and stuff them into his hat.
“They tell me that I have been working too hard,” he said, with a smile.
“Lor’, sir, you do work; you don’t do your cooking with no pepper. I was taking it to myself, sir, the power of worry we’ve give you over the child.”
“A good fight is worth winning, Mrs. Bains. I am proud of the victory.”
“And I reckon none else would ’a’ done it, and so says the neighbors. Will you step up-stairs, sir? Don’t mind my man, he’s just scrubbing the soot off ’im.”
A pair of huge fore-arms, a gray flannel shirt, and a red face covered with soap-suds saluted Murchison from the steaming copper in the scullery.
“Good-mornin’, sir; ’ope you’re well.”
“Better, Bains, thanks. Washing the war-paint off, eh?”
“That’s it, sir,” and the sweep grinned good-will and sturdy admiration; “the kid’s doing fine, I hear.”
“Could not be better, Bains.”
“I reckon you’ve done us a rare good turn, sir.”
Murchison’s eyes smiled at the man’s words.
“I’m glad we won,” he said; “a child’s life is worth fighting for.”
“It be, sir, it be,” and the sweep swished the soap-suds from his face till it shone like the sun brightening from behind a cloud.
Murchison climbed the stairs to the front bedroom, a room liberally decorated with cheap china and colored texts. The patient, a little girl, christened Pretoria by her patriotic parents, lay on the bed beneath the window. The satiny whiteness of the child’s skin contrasted with the cherry-pink night-gown that she wore. It had been a case of diphtheria, a case that would probably have ended in disaster before the days of serum. Murchison had sat up half one night, doubtful whether he would not have to tracheotomize the child.
“Hallo, Babs, how’s that naughty throat?”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and chatted boyishly to Pretoria, whose shy eyes surveyed him with a species of delighted adoration. The hero worship that children give to men is pathetic in its ideal trustfulness.
“I’m better, thank you, sir.”
“That’s right; you are beginning to know all about it, eh? Tongue fine and red. She’ll be a talker, Mrs. Bains. Taking her milk well, yes. Keep her lying down.”
Mrs. Bains’s big, red hands were fidgeting under her white apron.
“Begging your pardon, doctor, but the child’s been a-bothering me since you called last, to know whether she mayn’t give you some flowers.”
Mrs. Bains reached across the bed to where a cheap mug on the window-sill held a posy of pink daisies.
“They’re just common things,” said the sweep’s wife, with an apologetic smile.
The child’s hand went out, and there was a slight quivering of the bloodless lips.
“For the doctor, with Pretoria’s love.”
Murchison took the flowers tenderly in his strong, deft hand.
“Who’s spoiling me, I should like to know? Aren’t they beauties? Supposing I put two in my button-hole? Thank you, little one,” and he bent and kissed the child’s forehead.
“You won’t drop ’em in the street, sir?”
The pathetic touch of unconscious cynicism went to the man’s heart.
“What, lose my flowers!