Part 45 (1/2)

”She oughtn't to do that,” said Varney after a time.

”Of course she ought n't to. Yet it's natural enough in a way. Of course, I'm blaming myself, too--like the mischief--I'd had so many warnings, you know. Little Hare is blaming himself. And Mr.

Carstairs--poor old fellow! I'll show you his letters when--the light's a little better for reading. They're fine, honestly. Of course, he wanted to come on right away, but I wouldn't let him.”

Silence again.

”So you see how many of us,” continued Peter, nearing his awkward climax, ”have been worried, _personally_, about this--trouble. And how much, well--how much--happiness is bound up in your getting well. And by the way--I declare I nearly forgot Miss Carstairs--I declare!”

There was a long silence, which Peter resolved not to break. Through the shuttered window, the distant bells chimed faintly into the room. The sick man's stray arm moved restlessly on the coverlet, but otherwise he lay quite still.

At length Varney said: ”When did you see Miss Carstairs? She hasn't--been here--?”

But poor Peter's errand was not so easy as that. He had no glad shaft of promise with which to pierce that deadly Nessus-coat of apathy.

”She couldn't come here, old chap,” said Peter, very gravely. ”You hadn't heard, of course. Miss Carstairs is very ill.”

”Miss Carstairs is very ill,” repeated Varney, not inquiringly, but like a child saying over a lesson.

”Awfully ill,” said Peter encouragingly. ”It seems that she came home Thursday night a little after seven, looking very pale and badly, but insisting that there was nothing the matter. She sat upstairs with her mother until about eight, when somebody called her down to the telephone. Well, she didn't come back. So after a while Mrs. Carstairs sent down to find out why. The maid found her in the hall--in fact, on the floor, I believe. She had fainted, you know. Yes--that was it.

Fainted dead away--poor little girl.”

After what seemed an eternity of waiting, Varney asked: ”What was it--do you know? At the telephone?”

”Yes. It was Mrs. Marne. She called up Miss Carstairs in the first excitement of--of your accident, it seems, and I'm afraid she gave a very exaggerated and alarming account, you know. They put her to bed,”

continued Peter clearing his throat, ”and there she's been ever since.

The great shock, you know. Mrs. Marne saw her this morning--the first time she had been admitted. It's all quite sad. Quite sad. We'll talk of it again when--you're feeling a bit stronger.”

Varney, who had lain like a statue for two days and nights, had begun moving a little under the coverlet, stirring first one swathed leg, then the other, as though seeking vainly to s.h.i.+ft his position. Now he said at once: ”I want to hear now.”

Peter gave a deep sigh. He thought, and rightly, that this was the best thing that had happened yet.

”Well, it's all very strange, Larry. When I said that it was the shock of the accident that had made her ill, I did not tell the whole truth.

It seems that she is suffering from a terrible hallucination about it.

She feels in some strange way that the responsibility for all this--is hers. She told Mrs. Marne that she was responsible for your being on the road that night, and that she had been unfair about something or other, and that but for that the--trouble would never have happened. I don't pretend to understand it. But feeling as she does now--if anything were to--to go wrong, the poor child would count herself--she would count herself--”

”Don't!” said Varney very clearly and distinctly.

His face looked all at once so ghastly that Peter's heart stopped beating. He thought in a horrible flash that the end had come, and that he, Peter Maginnis, had brought it by tearing at the worst wound his friend had. His clumsy diplomacy fell from him as at the last trump. He dropped on his knees beside the bed with a groan.

”For G.o.d's sake, Larry, don't leave _that_ mark to a child like her.

Don't give us all _that_ sorrow to carry to our graves--”

But Varney had pulled his arms free and was clutching wildly at his head-bandages with heavily swathed fingers.

”You needn't worry about me,” he said in a sharp anguished voice. ”Great Scott! What's--what's wrong with my _head_! It's killing me.”

He recovered with a speed which puzzled the old Hunston doctor even more than his previous lethargy had done. Five days later he was well enough to be lifted downstairs to the small back piazza, and here he lay blanketed up in a reclining chair for half the sunny afternoon.