For a second he hesitated then he shook his head firmly. "No, no!" And, so saying, he went slowly down the stairs.
In the lounge hall below, the figure of a woman could be seen standing. The figure of a young woman. A fact which cost the figure's owner, Lady Craig, resolute massage, iron dieting, and much expense. Vaguely Lindrum wondered, as he had often done before, why she went to so much trouble, for, as she turned her face toward him, its years showed as fifty in some magical way, in spite of smoothed skin and red-brown hair. She was very nearly an ugly woman, but she looked as though she had plenty of that quality we call character.
"Is anything the matter, Robert?" she asked quickly. She had known Lindrum as a tow-headed baby. "You're not really anxious about him, are you?"
"Yes, I am, this morning," he said gravely. "No remedies of mine seem to help him for more than a day or two. That was a bad relapse he had last week, and it looks to me as if it might be about to repeat itself."
"You don't think he is going to die, do you?" She spoke in hushed tones. Her eyes, cool and emotionless, were fixed on him.
"Of course he isn't!" he almost snapped. "Why should he?"
"Jura fears the worst," she said quietly. "I don't know why—but I think she is nerving herself to lose him." This time her eyes were on the floor.
"There's no reason whatever why he shouldn't recover—none!" Lindrum spoke forcefully.
"That's good news." She gave him one of her meaningless smiles. "Jura is over-anxious, doubtless. Just as we all are."
But it struck him that her whole manner was much more indifferent than it had been when Ronald Craig first fell ill. Then, her concern had been undeniable and very great. Yet at first his illness had only seemed to be a passing chill.
"I think you ought to press the arsenic in his tonic." She spoke idly, with no imperative in her voice. Emily Craig had traveled much in Africa, and like many another, she had found that arsenic often helped where quinine was of little use.
II
Lindrum knew this, and murmured some vague assent. He said good-by and walked out to his car. He was just climbing in, when he thought of Craig's letter. For a second he could not recollect what he had done with it. Then he remembered laying it down on the landing table while he made some alteration in the nurse's diet list. He ran up the stairs in search of it. The door of the nurse's bedroom was open. She was standing in the room, the letter was in her hand. Catching sight of the doctor she came out quickly, holding it up.
"You dropped this, didn't you? Countess Jura found it lying on the landing. I thought I saw you lay it down a moment ago, and was just going to run after you with it."
He thanked her, took it, and hurried down to his car again. He drove as if he were practising to break the record—or his neck. At his gate he stopped, left the machine to look after itself, and leaning his arms on the top of his gate, stood looking at the building as though he had never seen it before.
It was a pretty house. Roses surrounded it, roses climbed up on it, virginia creeper covered it from end to end. Yes, it was charming. But, could it find favor in the eyes of Countess Jura? Though she did not remember them, the houses where she had lived as a baby—before 1917—had been palaces. Alexandra Alexandrowna, penniless though she was, was a cousin of the Kalkoffs, kin by marriage to the dead tsar himself. She was about to make a very wealthy marriage, though not a smart one. She was no wife for a doctor. Even if—even supposing...
The nurse's words stung him afresh. They were only a repetition, aloud, and by an independent witness—for what motive could bias her?—of what he had not dared to tell himself explicitly, but what he had known since he first saw them together, and that was that the Russian girl did not care for Ronald Craig. That she really disliked him. But that, in spite of that dislike, she was going to marry him. Unless something intervened...Lindrum tried to whip up some scorn for the girl who was prepared to sell herself with her eyes open. Those enigmatic long eyes of amber seen through smoke. But Lindrum could not find any scorn in his heart for Jura. He knew that with her lack of training, her fragile build, she could no more support herself than can a young canary turned out of its gilded cage. He told himself that generations of cage-birds had gone to her making, and that she must find another cage or die. And a gilded cage, of course...yet Lindrum felt that in her heart of hearts, in the center of that wayward, difficult-to-understand complexity that was Alexandra Ivanoff, she really cared for him—Bob Lindrum.
The nurse could have told him that Jura no more loved him than she did Ronald Craig, or at best only substituted a tepid liking for an active dislike. Lindrum would not have believed her. He felt sure that if Jura were free, she would choose him. But she was not free.
He flung the gate open, and stormed into the morning room. Lunch was laid in the deep bay window that opened onto the lawn. Two beds of roses almost encircled it. In the space between, across the grass, a clump of delphiniums seemed like a part of the deep-blue sky above them. On the dull ebony table, sprays of Dorothy Perkins, in a bowl of the same soft azure, nodded their heads to their luckier sisters outside. The mats were blue and green raffia. The cream china was flecked with blue. A little silver, a little glass, all very ordinary but brightly shining, made up a most attractive picture. Lindrum eyed it moodily. The ebony of the table was painted deal. The silver was plate; the glass, just glass. Craig was said to have bought some of the imperial china for his bride to be...
His sister came in. Agatha Lindrum was a handsome girl, but with something rather bitter in her face. Good at every game; keen rider to hounds, first-class dancer, she was intensely interested in the women's work of the village. With her many interests, she seemed to radiate vitality, and yet it struck the doctor that she looked very tired. For the first time he noticed that she had artificially touched up cheeks that used to be as fresh as a rose. Well, small wonder if she felt cabined. And, unfortunately, there was now no leaving for her. Drivng her mother in town, she had had a bad smash, and since then Mrs. Lindrum walked only with the help of a stick and a supporting arm. Agatha had wasted no words in self-reproach; she took her mother home when she was able to be moved, and was her constant companion.
"If I put up a bottle for Craig, Agatha, will you see about it at once? I'm trying something different."
"I'll take it up myself. The boy has started on his rounds."
She went to put her things on. Or, rather, she started toward the door. Something heavy moved outside. A stick could be heard thumping along. Mrs. Lindrum came in, leaning heavily on the arm of the servant, her cane in her other hand. She was a handsome woman, with a rather imperious air. Catching her eye, one did not wonder at the signs of good housekeeping on every side. It was a most autocratic eye.
"Dearest, you should have waited for me!" her daughter scolded her affectionately, as she hurried off.
"Is anything wrong?" Mrs. Lindrum asked, turning to her son. He was surprised at the question.
"Wrong? With Agatha? Not that I know of. Why?"
"She looked—worried, I thought." The reply was guarded.
"You're thinking of me," he retorted. "I look worried. I am worried. Over Craig."
"Is he very ill? You don't think he's going to die, do you? I mean—I mean—" She stopped with an expression that showed that she had not meant to phrase her thought in just those words.
"Certainly not!" her son said with energy. "Only his illness is a bit baffling." This was the third time this morning that the question of Craig's death had been mentioned. And the third time that in refuting the suggestion as absurd, he had had a vague, most uncomfortable feeling that the vehemence of his denial gave no pleasure. Mrs. Lindrum took his arm and grasped her stick.
"I'll sit out in the garden for a while," she murmured, and he placed her carefully in her favorite deck-chair.
In about ten minutes he hurried back