Chapter XI: In a Sick-Room

WHEN she reached Mrs. Norman's room, the Colonel himself opened the door. He looked very grave and sad, but his eyes brightened a little at the sight of Tomina.

"Come in," he said. "It is good of you to come. She will like to see you. And remember, if she can't answer you, she can hear you."

"Oh dear!" gasped Tomina. "I'm frightened. I shall not be able to talk!"

But she followed him into the big room, which was bright with flowers. The windows opened down to the ground, and near one of them was a large and comfortable couch, upon which the sick woman lay.

Tomina had seen her last flitting about at the flower-show. Now she looked upon her lying flat and helpless, and she gave an involuntary shiver as she stepped up to the side of the couch.

"Mother dear, this is Miss Gavin; she has come to see you."

He pulled forward an easy-chair, which Tomina took.

Mrs. Norman's bright, restless eyes fixed themselves on Tomina's face.

Tomina began to talk recklessly—

"I meant to come before, Mrs. Norman, but you know I'm never good at visiting, and the less one has to do, the less one does. I'm so lazy by nature, and the days seem to fly. You wouldn't believe how busy that carrier's van keeps me. And I am seriously considering what I shall do when the cold weather comes. Do you think I could have it heated with hot water pipes? Or would that be too stuffy?"

Colonel Norman stood leaning against the side of the window.

"How would you heat it?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know—by gas or electricity."

"Then you would have to have a stove or boiler. It would be rather an expensive idea. You might in that case just as well turn your van into a motor. I wonder you don't do that!"

"Perish the thought! I've come down here to get away from motors. It would spoil everything. I should get to Damerton in ten minutes instead of two hours, and all my road adventures would disappear. Fancy, Mrs. Norman, on my last journey to market, I took a bride and bridegroom to church! My whole van was convulsed with excitement. The bridegroom was sixty, the bride fifty. They were old sweethearts, had outlived all their near relations, and had been waiting for forty years for 'better times' to be married. And at last, the bridegroom was lucky enough to be offered the post of lodge-keeper by Mr. St. Vincent at Corring. I had a finger in the pie, for the bride had made several trips in my van, and somebody told me her story, and I thought the long waiting was so pathetic that I happened to mention it to Mr. St. Vincent when I met him out one day, and he found a niche for them at once. I'm invited to tea at the Lodge to-morrow. You should have seen their dear old faces in my van! They sat hand-in-hand like children. But, oh, it seemed such a waste of years, all their youth and strength gone!"

"Yes," said Colonel Norman slowly, "waiting is weary work. But a man feels it is worth it, if he knows that he will obtain his desire in the end."

The pink colour rose in Tomina's cheeks; she moved in her chair and addressed herself pointedly to Mrs. Norman.

"And so, you see, my van gets very interesting with such things happening in it. But last Tuesday a dreadful thing happened. A lad came in with a sack over his shoulders, and the sack was heaving and squealing to such a degree that I told him he must put it in the rack outside. He was trying to do this when it toppled over, came undone, and three small pigs fled squealing down the road. My dog Thor gave chase, a motor came by, and in the confusion, two pigs were run over and killed. The lad got two pounds from the motorist, and he came back delightedly swinging the dead pigs by the legs, and saying he only gave fifteen shillings each for them, and now his mother would have bacon enough to last for a month!"

Tomina laughed as she ended this story.

But Mrs. Norman's eyes never changed their eager, intent expression.

She went on talking about the villagers and her van. Colonel Norman helped her by his responses. But at last, Mrs. Norman's eyes wandered to her son's face, her lips moved. Tomina only heard an incoherent murmur, but her son, bending his head, nodded and smiled and seemed to understand.

Then she rose to go.

Mrs. Norman's eyes turned pleadingly to her face.

"Miss Gavin will come again, mother, I hope. Perhaps next time you will be able to talk to her. You're getting on splendidly, you know."

A nurse who had been in the inner room came forward, and Colonel Norman accompanied Tomina along the broad corridor. He was surprised and distressed when suddenly Tomina burst into a violent fit of tears.

"Oh, it's awful! I can't help it! She's like an animal fixed in a trap. I saw a rabbit once. And her eyes! Oh, it's dreadful! Why do such things happen? I was—beginning—to feel—that God did care for us, and now how can one feel it?"

Nobody, to hear her chattering away, would have realised the strain it was to her to do so; now the reaction had come, and she seemed to lose all self-control. In her abandonment of fright and grief, she caught hold of the Colonel, and the next moment his arm was round her, and her head was resting on his shoulder.

It seemed the natural refuge to her. Years ago she had found the comfort of his quiet strength.

"Poor little girl! It was too much to ask of you! But you have entertained my mother so well. She said to me that she wanted you to talk on. I did not realise you were feeling it so. It is hard to see her so helpless, but the doctors say that she is not in pain, and I am very hopeful that she will recover her speech."

Then Tomina remembered herself, and drew away from him. Her effort to regain her lofty dignity was almost comical.

"I don't know what I am doing! I am so upset. I never have been accustomed to sick people, and she looks as if she is dead except for her eyes. They haunt me!"

She shuddered and sobbed.

Colonel Norman drew her into his mother's boudoir, placed her in an easy-chair, and left her.

That moment when she rested in his arms had been precious to him, but he knew that he must not take advantage of her helplessness now. He soon returned.

Tomina by this time had become her normal self again, though she looked white and shaken.

"I am a nice person to visit an invalid!" she said as she stood up, and declared she was quite well and must be going.

"Are you driving yourself?"

"Oh yes, of course I am. I hate being driven by any one else."

"Then I am afraid you will hate my doing it, but I am not going to let you drive yourself back. I will speak to the nurse for a moment."

He went back to his mother's room.

"Now he's getting masterful!" said Tomina. "What a poor fool I am, to behave like this!"

She looked round the pretty dainty room. There was Mrs. Norman's writing-desk still open and her notes and letters still scattered as she had left them. A piece of needlework was hanging out of her work-basket. A novel was lying open where she had left it. Tomina wondered that maids had not tidied the room; she did not know that Colonel Norman had given orders that this room was to be untouched till he had time to put things away.

"It's so awfully, so frightfully sudden," she murmured. "Her whole life has been shattered and altered in a moment! And yet her son takes it quite calmly. Can he really feel? I suppose men don't feel like women. And it's a good thing that they do keep their heads. What must he have thought of me losing mine so completely!"

She did not look at him as he re-entered the room. She had pulled down her veil and felt quite composed, though her hands still slightly trembled, and the Colonel was quick to note it.

"I will drive you back," he said. "You must let me do it, please."

Tomina said not a word. She meekly followed him downstairs. And when they were driving off, he with the reins in his hand, she said slowly—

"I own I have brought this upon myself; if my nerves weren't all to pieces, I should never have given way so ridiculously. But I really ought not to have come."

"Oh, please don't say that! Don't rob my poor mother of the hope that you will come again. She did enjoy your visit so."

"I can't come again," said Tomina, shortly. "I wonder that you can expect it after the exhibition I have made of myself!"

"I am afraid we are all selfish," said Colonel Norman. "You are looking at it from your side. I am looking at it from ours—and—" here a fit of recklessness took possession of him—"I only wish you would make 'an exhibition' of yourself, as you call it, a little oftener. I had a happy five minutes, I can tell you!"

Tomina's eyes glowed.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she said passionately.

There was a tense silence between them.

Then he said very quietly—

"If tears have to be shed, Tomina, my only wish is that I could have the drying of them. But we won't quarrel. You have been your sweet little self to-day, and the memory of you in my mother's room will be a pleasant one. If it pleases God for her to make a good recovery, I think we may possibly go abroad. The doctor advises change of air and atmosphere as soon as she is able to move. It will not fret her so much if she is away from her surroundings at home. She has always been so active—my poor little mother!"

"And who will look after your place?"

"I may let it and put an agent in; I have pulled things together a bit, but it seems hopeless."

Tomina was a strangely contradictory person. After having carefully kept out of Colonel Norman's way all this time, and refused to have anything to do with him, the knowledge that she would soon see him no more brought a forlorn, miserable feeling into her heart.

"I suppose," she mused, by way of explanation to herself, "that in a quiet monotonous life like mine at present, even disagreeables have a certain amount of excitement and zest!"

Colonel Norman went on talking.

"Mrs. Francis was telling me yesterday that she has some nieces who are looking out for a house in this part. Their father has just died and left them a good deal of money, and they want to take a furnished house till they can find a place that suits them. She is going to write to them about it."

"Oh," said Tomina, indifferently, "I dare say she'll be glad to have them settled near her. I really think that if your mother has Mrs. Francis to go and see her that will be quite sufficient company for her. You mustn't expect me again."

"But I do," said Colonel Norman. "My mother and I will both count the days till you come again."

"That is nonsense. Oh, here we are! Well, I'm much obliged to you. I won't ask you in, because I know you will want to get back quickly."

Tomina sprang lightly out of the trap before the Colonel could get a chance of helping her; then a blank look swept over her face.

"How are you going to get back? You'd better take the trap and get the man at the inn to send for it."

"Oh no. I shall walk. I shall enjoy it. I haven't taken a walk for three weeks or more. I'll leave the trap at the inn on my way."

Then he held out his hand.

"I can't thank you enough. I'm so sorry it distressed you, but it's your warm heart that makes you feel it so. If you could come one day next week, I should be grateful to you."

Tomina's objection died away on her lips.

"I'll try to come," she said, a little unsteadily.

And then she went indoors.

"He has to bear seeing her lying like that all day long, and she is his mother. It won't hurt me to see her for half an hour; and I shan't have a chance of going much longer."

"Why, ma'am, whatever have you been doing with yourself?" exclaimed Susan.

Tomina dropped herself upon her comfortable chintz couch.

"I've been visiting the sick, Susan. It's the most awful thing that I've ever done in my life. And if I had my way, I'd never do it again!"

"Oh, ma'am!" gasped Susan. "Why, some ladies just adore doin' it! My Miss Wadhurst, she would be near as good as Mrs. Herbert herself in goin' to the sick. You'll be meanin' Mrs. Norman, I reckon. Is she so bad, ma'am?"

"I don't think she could be worse. Don't let us talk of it, Susan. She haunts me. Has Harry come back yet?"

"Yes, and I've taken the liberty of locking him in his bedroom. He put out his tongue at me and grabbed hold of two fresh buns I'd taken straight out of the oven, and he ate them before my eyes when I told him not to!"

"Very naughty!" said Tomina.

But she felt a longing for the child's merry talk and laughter, and released him.

A little later, she and he were playing ball in the garden, and when Susan begged her not to tire herself, she said—

"Anything to keep me from thinking, Susan! I do too much thinking for my own comfort. Harry is my salvation."

So far Tomina had not been troubled with many visitors; if they came once they did not come again, but young Tracy St. Vincent took to calling very often now. He generally had some excuse, and because he was different from the majority of the country squires, and because he so humorously described and bewailed his various difficulties, Tomina did not snub him, and he began to hope that his visits were more than welcome. He came up to her one afternoon in tearing haste.

"Miss Gavin, take pity on me! My keeper wants me to preserve my pheasants. My predecessor never did. The villagers have been making a way through my woods to the church. It's a short cut, and my keeper says I must close it. Do you know anything about the rights of way? My gardener says I'll earn the ill-will of all my tenants if I do it. He and the keeper are at daggers drawn—I don't know whom to please. My life is becoming one big struggle to please everybody, and I end by pleasing no one."

"Oh," said Tomina, carelessly, "I shouldn't worry! Please yourself first; that is what I do. It answers best."

"I begin to find that you are a fraud," said Tracy, taking a seat on the grass beside her chair.

She was sitting in the garden as usual. An open book was in her lap, but she had not been reading. She found it even difficult now to bring back her thoughts to her present company.

"You remind me," went on Tracy, "of a naughty child bent on shocking her elders. Have you been brought up in a very strict and priggish atmosphere? And don't you know that your character in this neighbourhood is that of a very generous and self-denying philanthropist?"

"It's a pity you believe all you hear," said Tomina. "My atmosphere from childhood has been that of pleasure seeking and pleasure finding. Do you mind steering clear of personal subjects? I'm rather sick of myself to-day, and would like to be taken miles away."

Tracy felt snubbed.

"I want your help."

"But I'm afraid I can't give you it. You will never have any peace until you decide upon your own course of action, without any reference to outsiders."

"I believe you're right!" Tracy sat up. "It's hard lines on me! I'm not at home in my surroundings. There's no getting away from that fact, and that makes me diffident. Are you going to stay the winter here?"

"Oh yes, I think so," said Tomina. "I'm making an experiment, you know. I must try a year at least."

"I want you to come over to lunch with me one day."

Tomina looked at him with twinkling eyes.

"A luncheon party?"

"No, of course not. I don't want anybody else."

"But there are conventions to be considered," said Tomina, "and I find that if Mrs. Grundy has died in London, she's very much alive in the country. I have learnt that in listening to my passengers' conversation in the van."

"Oh, dash conventions! I'll ask Mrs. Francis to come, too. I wonder if she would? I fight shy of her brother. He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, as if I'm a counter-jumper."

"Do ask Mrs. Francis," said Tomina, sweetly; "she will be able to advise you about everything. She knows this part. It is her county, but it is not mine."

"All right, I will. Now, when can you come? Next Wednesday?"

"But I am not coming at all. I don't go out to luncheon parties."

Tracy stared at her. Then he stood up.

"You're annoyed to-day. I wonder who has been vexing you?"

Tomina laughed.

"I am dull, I own. I am not in a talking mood, but I am not annoyed with any one. I never find it worth while."

"Oh, I wish I had an even temper!" said Tracy, a little viciously. "But I haven't. I lose my temper fifty times a day. And I shall soon wish for my town life again. Possessions and property bring a horrible lot of worry. I'm not cut out for this job, as I've told you before. I envy you your nest of a place here. I think a man can't run a big house properly. It needs a woman."

"But you have a housekeeper."

"Yes, she's just arrived, and is a terror. She means to take me in hand and reduce me to a state of pulp. I was very cross with her this morning. I think it did her good. She altered my arrangements in my study, the only room in which I feel at home, and said no gentleman would live in such a pig-sty. I lost my temper and let her have it. I do think you might come over one day. I want to alter the gardens. I'd give anything for your advice."

"I'm not a gardener. Don't be huffy with me. I'm a regular stay-at-home. Doctor's orders. If you get Mrs. Francis, she will be a real help, for she's up in all that sort of thing and I'm not. I have no hobbies. I sometimes wish I had."

"I don't want Mrs. Francis. I want you. I met her, by the way, as I came along just now. She was walking with that stiff-starched Norman. You know him, don't you? I somehow can't cotton to the men down here, they're all such stick-in-the-muds!"

"Colonel Norman used to be a very keen soldier," said Tomina, with rising colour, "and he is quite a town man. He was always up there a few years ago."

"Yes, but this country makes us all go to sleep, doesn't it? All my suggestions as regards innovations are squashed at once. If you live in the country, you must be a sporting man; anything but sport is ejected at once—"

Tomina stifled a yawn, and young Tracy saw it. He got up reluctantly.

"You are going to snub me now, like the rest of them," he said, trying to look pathetic, "you won't come to my place, and you don't want me at yours."

Tomina laughed.

"I own I am miserable to-day, but I assure you that you are a favoured visitor. I generally say that I'm not 'at home' to any one, and you've been to see me twice within the last week."

Tracy took his leave partially comforted by this view.

And when he had gone, Tomina heaved a sigh of relief.

"The only point of interest in his conversation was a disagreeable one," she murmured to herself. "Why is every one bent on acquainting me with the fact that 'she' is with 'him?' They are always together!"