Part 90 (1/2)

”But is there any real danger?” Edwin murmured.

”Well,” said Osmond, bringing up his regiments, ”as I understand it, there are three types of influenza--the respiratory, the gastro-intestinal, and the nervous. Which one is it?”

Charlie laughed, and prodded his father with a forefinger in a soft region near the shoulder, disturbing his balance. ”You've been reading the 'BMJ,'” he said, ”and so you needn't pretend you haven't!”

Osmond paused an instant to consider the meaning of these initials.

”What if I have?” he demanded, raising his eyebrows, ”I say there are three types--”

”Thirty; you might be nearer the mark with thirty,” Charlie interrupted him. ”The fact is that this division into types is all very well in theory,” he proceeded, with easy disdain. ”But in practice it won't work out. Now for instance, what this kid has won't square with any of your three types. It's purely febrile, that's what it is. Rare, decidedly rare, but less rare in children than in adults--at any rate in my experience--in my experience. If his temperature wasn't so high, I should say the thing might last for days--weeks even. I've known it.

The first question I put was--has he been in a stupor? He had. It may recur. That, and headache, and the absence of localised nervous symptoms--” He stopped, leaving the sentence in the air, grandiose and formidable, but of no purport.

Charlie shrugged his shoulders, allowing the beholder to choose his own interpretation of the gesture.

”You're a devilish wonderful fellow,” said Osmond grimly to his son.

And Charlie winked grimly at Edwin, who grimly smiled.

”You and your 'British Medical Journal'!” Charlie exclaimed, with an irony from which filial affection was not absent, and again prodded his father in the same spot.

”Of course I know I'm an old man,” said Osmond, condescendingly rejecting Charlie's condescension. He thought he did not mean what he said; nevertheless, it was the expression of the one idea which latterly beyond all other ideas had possessed him.

THREE.

Janet came into the room, and was surprised to see Edwin. She was in a state of extreme fatigue--pale, with burning eyes, and hair that has lost the gracefulness of its curves.

”So you know?” she said.

Edwin nodded.

”It seems I've got to go to bed,” she went on. ”Father, you must go to bed too. Mother's gone. It's frightfully late. Come along now!”

She was insistent. She had been worried during the greater part of the day by her restless parents, and she was determined not to leave either of them at large.

”Charlie, you might run upstairs and see that everything's all right before I go. I shall get up again at four.”

”I'll be off,” said Edwin.

”Here! Hold on a bit,” Charlie objected. ”Wait till I come down.

Let's have a yarn. You don't want to go to bed yet.”

Edwin agreed to the suggestion, and was left alone in the breakfast-room. What struck him was that the new situation created by Hilda's strange caprice had instantly been accepted by everybody, and had indeed already begun to seem quite natural. He esteemed highly the demeanour of all the Orgreaves. Neither he himself nor Maggie could have surpa.s.sed them in their determination not to exaggerate the crisis, in their determination to bear themselves simply and easily, and to speak with lightness, even with occasional humour. There were few qualities that he admired more than this.

And what was her demeanour, up there in the bedroom?

Suddenly the strangeness of Hilda's caprice presented itself to him as even more strange. She had merely gone to Ealing and captured Charlie.

Charlie was understood to have a considerable practice. At her whim all his patients had been abandoned. What an idea, to bring him down like this! What tremendous faith in him she must have! And Edwin remembered distinctly that the first person who had ever spoken to him of Hilda was Charlie! And in what terms of admiration! Was there a long and secret understanding between these two? They must a.s.suredly be far more intimate than he had ever suspected. Edwin hated to think that Hilda would depend more upon Charlie than upon himself in a grave difficulty.