Part 3 (2/2)
”Let me recommend you to be quiet and rest. Be quite quiet. You will be all right when you have slept on it. Mrs. Nightingale--that's the lady you saw just now; this is her house--will see that you are properly taken care of.”
Then the man tried to speak; it was with an effort.
”I wish to thank--I must thank----”
”Never mind thanks yet. All in good time. Now, what do you think you can take--to eat or drink?”
”Nothing--nothing to eat or drink.”
”Well, you know best. However, there's tea coming; perhaps you'll go so far as a cup of tea? You would be the better for it.”
Rosalind junior, or Sally, slept in the back bedroom on the first-floor--that is to say, if we ignore the bas.e.m.e.nt floor and call the one flush with the street-door step the ground-floor. We believe we are right in doing so. Rosalind senior, the mother, slept in the front one. It wasn't too late for tea, they had decided, and thereupon they had gone upstairs to revise and correct.
After a certain amount of slopping and splas.h.i.+ng in the back room, uncorroborated by any in the front, Sally called out to her mother, on the disjointed lines of talk in real life:
”I like this soap! Have you a safety-pin?” Whereto her mother replied, speaking rather drowsily and perfunctorily:
”Yes, but you must come and get it.”
”It's so nice and oily. It's not from Cattley's?”
”Yes, it is.”
”I thought it was. Where's the pin?” At this point she came into her mother's room, covering her slightly _retrousse_ nose with her fresh-washed hands, to enjoy the aroma of Cattley's soap.
”In the little pink saucer. Only don't mess my things about.”
”Headache, mammy dear?” For her mother was lying back on the bed, with her eyes closed. The speaker left her hands over her nostrils as she spoke, to do full justice to the soap, pausing an instant in her safety-pin raid for the answer:
”I've been feeling the heat. It's nothing. You go down, and I'll come.”
”Have some eau-de-Cologne?” But, alas! there was no eau-de-Cologne.
”Never mind. You go down, and I'll follow. I shall be all right after a cup of tea.” And Sally, after an intricate movement with a safety-pin, an openwork lace cuff that has lost a b.u.t.ton, and a white wrist, goes down three accelerandos of stair-lengths, with landing pauses, and ends with a dining-room door staccato. But she isn't long gone, for in two minutes the door reopens, and she comes upstairs as fast, nearly, as she went down. In her hand she carries, visibly, Johann Maria Farina.
”Where on earth did you find that?” says her mother.
”The man had it. Wasn't it funny? He heard me say to Dr. Vereker that I was so sorry I'd not been able to eau-de-Cologne your forehead, and he began speaking and couldn't get his words. Then he got this out of his pocket. I remember one of the men at the station said something about his having a bottle, but I thought he meant a pocket-flask. He looks the sort of man that would have a pocket-flask and earrings.”
Her mother doesn't seem to find this inexplicable, nor to need comment. Rather the contrary. Sally dabs her brow with eau-de-Cologne, beneficially, for she seems better, and says now go; she won't be above a couple of minutes. Nor is she, in the sense in which her statement has been accepted, for she comes downstairs within seven by the clock with the dutiful ratchet movement.
When she came within hearing of those in the room below, she heard a male voice that was not Dr. Vereker's. Yes, the man (whom we still cannot speak of by a name) was saying something--slowly, perhaps--but fairly articulately and intelligibly. She went very deliberately, and listened in the doorway. She looked very pale, and very interested--a face of fixed attention, of absorption in something she was irresolute about, rather than of doubt about what she heard; an expression rather out of proportion to the concurrent facts, as we know them.
”What is so strange”--this is what the man was saying, in his slow way--”is that I could find words to tell you, if I could remember what it is I have to tell. But when I try to bring it back, my head fails.
Tell me again, mademoiselle, about the railway-carriage.” Sally wondered why she was mademoiselle, but recognised a tone of deference in his use of the word. She did as he asked her, slightly interrupting her narrative to make sure of getting the tea made right as she did so.
”I trod on your foot, you know. (One, two, three spoonfuls.) Surely you must remember that? (Four, and a little one for the pot.)”
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