Annie lived in a nice house, and had a little maid. Paul ran gaily up the steps. He expected his mother laughing in the hall, but it was Annie who opened to him. She seemed distant to him. He stood a second in dismay. Annie let him kiss her cheek.
“Is my mother ill?” he said.
“Yes; she's not very well. Don't upset her.”
“Is she in bed?”
“Yes.”
And then the queer feeling went over him, as if all the sunshine had gone out of him, and it was all shadow. He dropped the bag and ran upstairs. Hesitating, he opened the door. His mother sat up in bed, wearing a dressing-gown of old-rose colour. She looked at him almost as if she were ashamed of herself, pleading to him, humble. He saw the ashy look about her.
“Mother!” he said.
“I thought you were never coming,” she answered gaily.
But he only fell on his knees at the bedside, and buried his face in the bedclothes, crying in agony, and saying:
“Mother—mother—mother!”
She stroked his hair slowly with her thin hand.
“Don't cry,” she said. “Don't cry—it's nothing.”
But he felt as if his blood was melting into tears, and he cried in terror and pain.
“Don't—don't cry,” his mother faltered.
Slowly she stroked his hair. Shocked out of himself, he cried, and the tears hurt in every fibre of his body. Suddenly he stopped, but he dared not lift his face out of the bedclothes.
“You ARE late. Where have you been?” his mother asked.
“The train was late,” he replied, muffled in the sheet.
“Yes; that miserable Central! Is Newton come?”
“Yes.”
“I'm sure you must be hungry, and they've kept dinner waiting.”
With a wrench he looked up at her.
“What is it, mother?” he asked brutally.
She averted her eyes as she answered:
“Only a bit of a tumour, my boy. You needn't trouble. It's been there—the lump has—a long time.”
Up came the tears again. His mind was clear and hard, but his body was crying.
“Where?” he said.
She put her hand on her side.
“Here. But you know they can sweal a tumour away.”
He stood feeling dazed and helpless, like a child. He thought perhaps it was as she said. Yes; he reassured himself it was so. But all the while his blood and his body knew definitely what it was. He sat down on the bed, and took her hand. She had never had but the one ring—her wedding-ring.
“When were you poorly?” he asked.
“It was yesterday it began,” she answered submissively.
“Pains?”
“Yes; but not more than I've often had at home. I believe Dr. Ansell is an alarmist.”
“You ought not to have travelled alone,” he said, to himself more than to her.
“As if that had anything to do with it!” she answered quickly.
They were silent for a while.
“Now go and have your dinner,” she said. “You MUST be hungry.”
“Have you had yours?”
“Yes; a beautiful sole I had. Annie IS good to me.”
They talked a little while, then he went downstairs. He was very white and strained. Newton sat in miserable sympathy.
After dinner he went into the scullery to help Annie to wash up. The little maid had gone on an errand.
“Is it really a tumour?” he asked.
Annie began to cry again.
“The pain she had yesterday—I never saw anybody suffer like it!” she cried. “Leonard ran like a madman for Dr. Ansell, and when she'd got to bed she said to me: 'Annie, look at this lump on my side. I wonder what it is?' And there I looked, and I thought I should have dropped. Paul, as true as I'm here, it's a lump as big as my double fist. I said: 'Good gracious, mother, whenever did that come?' 'Why, child,' she said, 'it's been there a long time.' I thought I should have died, our Paul, I did. She's been having these pains for months at home, and nobody looking after her.”
The tears came to his eyes, then dried suddenly.
“But she's been attending the doctor in Nottingham—and she never told me,” he said.
“If I'd have been at home,” said Annie, “I should have seen for myself.”
He felt like a man walking in unrealities. In the afternoon he went to see the doctor. The latter was a shrewd, lovable man.
“But what is it?” he said.
The doctor looked at the young man, then knitted his fingers.
“It may be a large tumour which has formed in the membrane,” he said slowly, “and which we MAY be able to make go away.”
“Can't you operate?” asked Paul.
“Not there,” replied the doctor.
“Are you sure?”
“QUITE!”
Paul meditated a while.
“Are you sure it's a tumour?” he asked. “Why did Dr. Jameson in Nottingham never find out anything about it? She's been going to him for weeks, and he's treated her for heart and indigestion.”
“Mrs. Morel never told Dr. Jameson about the lump,” said the doctor.
“And do you KNOW it's a tumour?”
“No, I am not sure.”
“What else MIGHT it be? You asked my sister if there was cancer in the family. Might it be cancer?”
“I don't know.”
“And what shall you do?”
“I should like an examination, with Dr. Jameson.”
“Then have one.”
“You must arrange about that. His fee wouldn't be less than ten guineas to come here from Nottingham.”
“When would you like him to come?”
“I will call in this evening, and we will talk it over.”
Paul went away, biting his lip.
His mother could come downstairs for tea, the doctor said. Her son went upstairs to help her. She wore the old-rose dressing-gown that Leonard had given Annie, and, with a little colour in her face, was quite young again.
“But you look quite pretty in that,” he said.
“Yes; they make me so fine, I hardly know myself,” she answered.
But when she stood up to walk, the colour went. Paul helped her, half-carrying her. At the top of the stairs she was gone. He lifted her up and carried her quickly downstairs; laid her on the couch. She was light and frail. Her face looked as if she were dead, with blue lips shut tight. Her eyes opened—her blue, unfailing eyes—and she looked at him pleadingly, almost wanting him to forgive her. He held brandy to her lips, but her mouth would not open. All the time she watched him lovingly. She was only sorry for him. The tears ran down his face without ceasing,