"His throat's better, miss--my lady. But he's very weak. These

active-minded little boys----"

"I know; I know," interrupted the girl hastily. "When will he know me?"

The nurse hesitated. How could she tell? The relations always _did_ ask
senseless questions. The Persian kitten, now grown to be a cat less
Persian than had been expected, came into the room, and the nurse took
it up and put it out. "He always comes; he's a perfect nuisance," she
observed. "They get so used to places, cats, don't they?"

Brigit nodded. "I'll go and change," she said. "I'll be back in a few
minutes."

"Better take something to eat, my lady. The danger of infection is
great, you know, and the tireder one is----"

"I know."

When she came back, Brigit found her mother installed in the room while
nurse had her tea. Lady Kingsmead was a good nurse, greatly to her
daughter's surprise, and all her affectations seemed to have been left
in her dressing-room with her false hair.

The three women took turns sitting up with the invalid, but he
recognised none of them. It was a very long night, and only the greatest
determination kept Brigit awake during her watches, for she was
extremely tired after her journey.

But at last day came, and with it a short return of consciousness.
"Where's Bicky?"

"Here I am, Tommy darling," she answered, taking his hand. "Are you
better, love?"

"Yes, I think so. Where's my violin?"

She fetched it, and he went to sleep, his wasted hand lying across the
strings.

When he next spoke it was to talk utter nonsense about a flying-machine,
an account of which he had read in a newspaper.




CHAPTER TEN


Poor little Tommy's passion for knowing things showed up very clearly
the next few days, his over-active brain working hard propounding to
itself question on subjects that Brigit had never heard him even
mention. And one of the most pathetic subjects was that of her relations
with her mother. "If Brigit would only come back and live here again,"
he said over and over again, "like other fellows' sisters. Things are so
much pleasanter when she is here."

"I'm here, Tommy darling," she told him a hundred times, but he only
shook his head and frowned gently. "You are very nice, and I like your
hands, because they are cool and dry, but you are not Bicky. Bicky is
beautiful."

His mother, on the contrary, the child always recognised, and his manner
to her was almost protecting.

"Don't cry, mother," he would say. "I'm not so bad, really I'm not. You
had better go and lie down, or you will not look pretty to-night."

His idea of evenings was, of course, of a time when mothers must look
their best at any cost, and when no mother ever stayed upstairs.

Every evening, therefore, he could not rest until Lady Kingsmead had
gone "to dress."

Brigit had never known how much the little fellow noticed the details
of dress, and so on, but now she learned, for his remarks about his
mother usually took the form of appreciation or dislike of some
particular toilette.

"Wear pink, mother--it suits you best--and pearls. The diamonds make you
look older."

Poor Lady Kingsmead, more lovable in her distress than her daughter had
ever seen her, obeyed him humbly, and promising to wear pink, or
whatever the colour might be, crept away to her bedroom and cried until
she was scarcely recognisable.

Two days passed thus, the doctor coming many times and shaking his head
doubtfully over questions about his patient. "The throat is much
better--the danger from that is quite past; but--the fever does not go
down, and I can't quite tell what the complication is. He is too young
to have had a mental shock, so I can only assume that the too great
activity of his mind is now against us. I understand that he has been
studying very hard?"

This Brigit denied, but the doctor, on insisting, was told to interview
Mr. Babington, and to the girl's amazement she learned that only a day
or two before he was taken ill Tommy had betrayed the fact that for
weeks he had been in the habit of spending part of each night in the
disused chapel, practising on his violin.

"He is quite mad about his music," the young man mourned. "I never could
get him to take the least interest in anything else, and as he always
worked as little as possible for me, I could not understand his looking
so tired, until, finding that he had heard the stable clock strike four,
and knowing that one cannot hear the clock from his room, I pinned him
down and he told me."

Brigit's eyes filled with tears.

The chapel, disused for many years, had evolved into a sort of
lumber-room, and she could see, in her imagination, the pathetic picture
of her little brother fiddling away among the piled-up boxes and old
furniture, trying to hasten the moment when his beloved master would
find him worthy of personal instruction.

It was all clear to his sister. Left alone, the child's whole
strength--far more strength than he should have been allowed to
expend--had gone to his passion for his violin, and now, unless a change
for the better should come very soon, he must die, burnt with fever. And
the fault would be hers. For the first time she felt the meaning of the
word "duty." Tommy had been her duty, and she had neglected him.

At length one day she made a further discovery.

She was sitting by the bed, and for over an hour the child had lain
still, his eyes half shut. It was five o'clock and a dark afternoon, so
that the room was full of shadows.

Suddenly Tommy turned and looked at her.

"Brigit," he asked, recognising her for the first time, "are you in love
with Joyselle?"

For a full minute she could not answer, and then said very gently,
"Darling Tommy--you know me?"

"Yes, yes, of course I know you. But--_are_ you? Carron and mother think
so."

"Do they, Tommy? Well--I love him dearly--and so do you, don't you?"

"I don't mean _that_," he returned, with a gesture of impatience; "I
mean the way people are who are going to marry each other."

His eyes, so huge in his wasted face, looked eagerly at her.

"Carron and mother think you do," he repeated, "and it makes me sorry."

She did not answer for a long time, and then she said humbly, not
knowing how far he understood that whereof he spoke, and therefore
obliged to feel her way, "Tommy dear--you forget _petite mère_."

"No, I don't--but she is _old_."

"She is younger than he."

But ill though he was, Tommy's sense of humour was still alive. "_That_
doesn't matter! Oh, Bick, darling, I am so tired! And I do hope you
aren't--I mean, _that_."

So, of course, she lied, and the little boy went to sleep, his hand in
hers.

When, an hour later, she went to her room, she found a wire from Théo,
announcing their arrival in London, and in spite of herself her spirits
rose. Things must be better now that _he_ was near her.

But things were not better, and the doctor, the next morning, looked
very grave. "I think it bad to allow him to have his violin," he said;
"it excites him and increases the fever. And--I think I should like a
consultation."

Lady Kingsmead burst into tears and hurried from the room, but Brigit
wrote a telegram, as dictated by the old doctor who had brought the boy
into the world, to a famous physician in London, and a groom was sent
galloping to the station to send it.

"Who is this person he always takes me for?" asked the doctor, polishing
his glasses. "This morning he insisted on my--on my playing for him. I
have never played anything except the cornet, when I was a young man.
I--it very nearly upset me, Lady Brigit. I love Tommy."

Brigit flushed. "Wanted you to play the violin?" she returned.

"Yes. He has not done so until this morning for several days, but he
quite insisted to-day."

"It must be--Joyselle. We--we know him very well, and Tommy adores him."

As she spoke the nurse came in.

"Would you mind coming, my lady? He is very restless and insists on
trying to play. I can't quiet him at all----"

They went back into the sick-room and found Tommy sitting up in bed,
holding his violin in the position for playing, and scolding in a sharp
staccato voice because he couldn't find his bow.

"Tommy, dear," Brigit said quietly, suddenly seeing her way clear, "I am
wiring the Master to come to see you. He will play for you. Now give me
your violin and lie down like a good boy."

Under the impression that she was Mrs. Champion, the housekeeper, but
perfectly satisfied with her words, he gave up the fiddle obediently and
lay down. The doctor nodded his approval and left a few moments later to
send the telegram to Joyselle. And Brigit sat down by the bed and
waited.




CHAPTER ELEVEN


The weather had changed suddenly, and although it was only the 14th of
September, it was cold and cheerless that afternoon.

Brigit, who had been sent out for a walk, tramped steadily down the road
towards the village, her hands in her jacket pockets, her chin buried in
her little boa.

Tommy was very ill; the London doctor had confirmed old Dr. Long's
opinion: an over-developed mind in an under-developed body. These words
in themselves were not very alarming, but Brigit's heart had sunk as Sir
George uttered them.

"Is he--is he going to die?" she asked abruptly. Sir George hesitated.
"We scientists are supposed to be atheists, my dear young lady," he
returned, looking at his watch, "but I believe in God. And in all
reverence I can say in this case that only He can tell. Lord Kingsmead
is very weak, and I greatly dislike the abnormal activity of his brain,
but--God is good. So let us hope."

Then the great man had gone.

By the 5.10 express Joyselle was coming. He had been out of town the day
before, and the delay had been maddening. But now he was coming, and
Brigit pinned her faith to the effects of his presence with savage
fanaticism.

"He _must_ help him," she repeated over and over again; "he loves him
so."

The darkness of the day was congenial to her; sunshine would have seemed
an insult. She reached the village, with its little straight street and
modern red-brick inn, and passing through it turned to the left towards
the station. It was only three, and Joyselle could not arrive for two
hours; yet she felt that she was going towards him.

A motor rushed past her, covering her with dust and causing her to
clench her hands in anger. "Beastly thing!" she said aloud.

Then out of the cloud of dust emerged--Joyselle, on foot, his
violin-case in his hand.

"You!"

"Yes. I--couldn't wait, so I cut an engagement and took the 1.45,
Brigit--how is he?"

He was flushed with the effort of rapid walking in a long coat and his
hat was on one side. He was smoking, and forgot to ask her leave to
continue. Small things were swept from his mind by his evident anxiety.

"He is--very bad. But--oh, it was good of you to bring your violin!"

"Of course I did. If anything on earth can quiet him, that will. What
_is_ the trouble now that the throat is better?"

"I don't know. He thinks and thinks, and can't sleep, and the fever will
not go. In a grown person I suppose they'd call it brain-fever."

"Poor little boy."

They had passed the village and struck out on the straight road by the
park.

"I--I have missed you, Victor," she burst out suddenly, looking round
and laying her gloved hand on his arm.

"Hush!" he answered in a stern voice.

A second later he broke the silence by asking her if Tommy drank milk.

"No," she returned sullenly, "he hates it."

"That is a pity."

When they reached the gate and turned into the avenue she found to her
surprise that her eyes were full of tears. She had slept very little for
nights, and her nerves were upset. She wanted a personal word from him,
a look, but he gave her none.

"Théo sent you his love," he announced presently. "He is coming down
to-morrow. How is your mother?"

"All right. Victor--are you glad to see me?"

She stood still as she spoke, but he walked on, and she had to rejoin
him as he answered in a matter-of-fact voice:

"Of course I am, my dear child."

His mouth she saw was set and determined. Feeling as though he had
struck her, she went on in silence, and the silence remained unbroken
until they had reached the house.

"I may go to him at once?" Joyselle asked her, as Burton helped him take
off his coat.

"Yes."

They went upstairs together, and outside the door of the boudoir he
paused and took the violin out of its case.

Tommy, who was talking very loud about Alexander the Great, stared at
him without recognition.

"Allô, Tommy; here I am," Joyselle began, taking the boy's hand. "Come
to scold you for being ill and worrying us all."

"I don't want you--not that it isn't very kind of you to come. I
want--him. And he won't come."

Joyselle frowned at Brigit, who was about to speak. "Well--I am going to
play for you, and it may amuse you till he does come."

He tuned his violin and began to play.

Brigit sat down by the bed and laid her hand in Tommy's.

It was a simple nursery melody that Joyselle played:

"_Il etait une bergère, hé ron ron ron, petit pa-ta-pon_----" She had
known it all her life, but to Tommy, who had always sternly refused to
have anything to do with the French governesses his mother had got for
him, it was new.

He listened with an intent frown, the fingers of his left hand curled
inwards and moving as though he were trying to follow the air on
imaginary strings.

Then as Joyselle went on to the delightful Pont d'Avignon, his hand
relaxed, and he closed his eyes for a moment.

The room was nearly dark, and rain beat in gusts on the windows.

"_Fais dodo_," sang the fiddle softly, "_fais dodo._"

"I like that. Play it again. Ah, Master--it is you. I am so glad----"

Joyselle did not stop, but he smiled down at the boy as he played on
very softly. "Of course it is I. I am delighted to see you so much
better. Do you know 'Ma Normandie'? This is it----"

Tommy moved a little and settled his head more comfortably.

The boudoir was in an angle of the house opposite to which, a floor
higher, was the gallery. As he played, someone in the picture-gallery
turned on the electric lights, and one long shaft, coming through the
window, shone down on the player's head.

"See the Halo, Bicky?" asked the boy in a natural voice. "Isn't he
splendid?" Then he added, with the frown she so dreaded: "Take me away
before they begin to clap, will you?"

"No clapping allowed, Tommy," Joyselle assured him quietly. "Know this?"

And he played on.

His face, full of tender solicitude, was, Brigit thought, almost
divinely beautiful as she watched it. And by some curious freak of the
down-falling light only his head and shoulders were visible, and seemed
almost to be floating in the gloom. Never had he been so handsome, and
never so pitilessly remote. He had forgotten her; he had forgotten love;
he was not even the Musician--he was a Healer, a being miles above and
beyond her and her weak human longing.

Tommy's eyes had closed, and the low music went on and on. The room was
now quite dark, save for the light that encircled Joyselle's head. It
was like a wonderful picture, and the innate nobility of the man
obliterated for the time all else from his fine face.

Tommy was asleep, and still the music went on.

"_Salut demeure chaste et pure_," he was playing now, and Brigit
recalled with a great heart throb the evening she had met him in the
train. "_Salut demeure_----" The high note, pure and thrilling, lingered
long, and then, as it had come, the light went, and it was dark.

The music ceased, and there was a long pause. Then, without a word,
Joyselle left the room, closing the door softly behind him.




CHAPTER TWELVE


The morning of the fifth day after his arrival Joyselle went downstairs
early, and out into the garden.

He looked, as he felt, very tired, for he had been with Tommy most of
the time, day and night, and played until even his great strength was
nearly exhausted.

For Tommy had clung to his presence in a very piteous way, crying
weakly, since the fever had gone, every time the Master left the room,
restless and unable to sleep unless played to, capricious and naughty
about his food unless the Master sat by him while he ate.

Many children are disquietingly good during serious illness, and Tommy
had been very patient while at his worst; but once on the road to
recovery, the natural imp in him revived and flourished, making the road
a hard one for his fellow-travellers.

There had been a phase when he smuggled his food under the bedclothes,
pretending with diabolical cleverness to eat it; when the milk left by
his side was poured out of the window the moment he had been left alone.
But Joyselle, discovering these crimes, had taken to sitting by the boy
when his meals were brought, and with him Tommy was almost painfully
eager to be good.

The danger, Dr. Long declared, was now over, and within a week the
invalid was to be moved to Margate.

In a few hours Joyselle was returning to town, and he was glad, for the
strains, more than one, to which his stay had subjected him, were
telling on his nerves.

The rose-garden, even in mid-September, was a pleasant place, and as he
walked along its broad grass paths the violinist wished it were July,
and that the fine standard roses might be in bloom. He loved flowers,
and with the curiously rapid assimilation of superficial knowledge
common to artistic natures, had picked up a considerable amount of
rose-lore at the house of some friends in Devonshire.

There was one big yellow rose on a bush near the middle of the garden,
and bending over it, he buried his nose in it.

"Victor!"

Brigit had joined him unheard, and stood looking at him, her hand held
out. "Let me give you that rose."

But he shook his head. "No, let it die there. It is so beautiful among
the leaves. You are up early."

"Yes. I saw you from the window, and brought you your letters." She
handed him several as she spoke.

"Thanks."

"And--I want to thank you for staying. It is you, and only you, who have
saved Tommy."

He nodded gravely. "I love Tommy. We must not let him overwork again,
Brigit."

"No."

Joyselle turned over his letters without looking at them. "Did Théo
speak to you the other day about--our--that is to say, his plan?"

Her face stiffened. "No."

This was the first time she had succeeded in seeing Victor alone during
all the five days of his stay. Unobtrusively but effectively he had
avoided her, shutting himself, when he was not in the sick-room, in his
own room, under the pretext of fatigue or correspondence. And she had
not submitted to this without repeated efforts to foil his intentions.

Again and again she had made little plans to catch him alone, but she
had invariably failed, and as the days passed and she realised his
strength of determination, a dull, slow fire of anger had begun to burn
in her.

Théo, who had been down twice, had found her manner very unsatisfactory;
she was strikingly different from what she had been in Falaise, and the
young man was puzzled and hurt. While Tommy was still very ill he had
borne with her change of mood with great patience, but the time was
coming when he must demand an explanation. All this she felt and
resented.

She looked, as she stood by the rose-bush, very tired, and older than
her years, but she looked remarkably handsome; pallor and heavy eyelids
did not disfigure her as they do most women.

Joyselle took out his silver box and made a cigarette.

"He was talking to me about it," he went on, disregarding the final
quality of her negative. "And I find it very good. It is that Tommy
should live much with--_you_--when you are married. Your mother does not
know how to bring him up; he is delicate and high-strung, and Théo is
very fond of him."

"I am not going to marry Théo!" she burst out, exasperated beyond
endurance.

He looked up. "Are you mad?" he asked quietly.

"No. But--you seem to be trying to make me mad. I can't understand you,
Victor."

"Can't you, Brigit? I should think it was very easy. You remember what
we agreed at Falaise? That----"

"That I was to marry Théo and 'live happy ever after'? Oh, yes, I
remember. But do you remember how miserable you were the day before--and
the day of--the wedding? And why that was?"

He was silent for a moment.

"Yes," he answered humbly. "I know. I was--jealous."

"Well--and you expect me to be happy and content while you behave as you
are doing now? You never speak to me; you never look at me; you fly from
me as if I were an infectious disease. It is--unbearable," she ended
passionately. "I can't bear it."

He smoked in silence for some seconds. "I am--sorry to have hurt you,
Brigit."

"Sorry to have hurt me! I don't believe you love me. If you were
jealous, so am I! I will _not_ be treated like this."

His white face was like a mask. "I am sorry," he repeated, with a kind
of dogged patience.

"Then if you are--be good to me. I love you, Victor."

He met her eyes and his did not falter in their steady gaze. "Please do
not excite yourself," he said very gently, "and--I think I will go in
now. It must be breakfast time."

Driven beyond her own control by his tone, she caught his arm and
pleaded with him, her voice harsh and broken, and she could not stop,
although she saw that she was, besides annoying him, injuring herself in
his eyes.

"Please--Brigit----"

"Then tell me that you love me. You can't have stopped--it is only a
week since the wedding--I--can't bear this----"

But her mistaken line of conduct brought its inevitable punishment.
"This is--absurd," he said coldly, "and--undignified. I told you at
Falaise that I was ashamed of myself for being jealous of my son. It was
monstrous and hideous. I think I have been not quite in my right mind
for some time. But I have a strong will and can force myself to
anything----"

"And you are forcing yourself to kill your love for me----"

"No. I am trying to learn to love you as a--a daughter, and I am
beginning to succeed. But if you insist in making scenes like this----"
He broke off and gave his shoulders an expressive shrug. "It is--not
womanly."

Then, breaking the yellow rose from the bush, he drew its stem through
his button-hole and strolled leisurely away, whistling under his breath.




CHAPTER THIRTEEN


For two days Brigit Mead remained in her room, refusing to see anyone.
Tommy, who had reached the period when convalescents sleep most of the
time, was told that she was resting, and that he must be very good and
eat a great deal, with a view to surprising her by his progress when she
reappeared.

But the girl was not resting.

Up and down the two rooms she paced, day and night, her face set, her
hands clenched, talking aloud to herself sometimes, sometimes silent,
always thinking, thinking, thinking of Joyselle.

Had he ceased to love her, or was it merely a pose, or--ten thousand
theories occurred to her, to drive her perilously near madness in her
solitude. Things he had done, words he had said, characteristics she had
observed in him, all these things flashed into her mind, upsetting and
confirming each and every theory with an utter lack of logic, but with
pitiless conclusiveness.

And the longer she thought the more hopeless things grew. Théo himself
she dismissed with furious impatience; his letters remained unopened, an
affectionate wire of congratulation on Tommy's improvement she did not
answer. He and everyone else were swept aside by the flood of emotional
analysis regarding Joyselle that, in its headlong course, threatened to
carry her reason with it.

"If I had been married," she thought over and over again with cruel
shrewdness, "things--would have been different, and then he _could_ not
have escaped."

She wrote to Joyselle long letters full of incoherent self-accusations,
and made appeals for pity, but she knew that he would not answer her,
and so burned the letters.

She could not eat; did not even try, and the little sleep she got from
sheer exhaustion, after tramping up and down for hours, was heavy and
unrestful. Lady Kingsmead came to her door once or twice, but was not
allowed to enter, and went away unprotesting. And then, the third
morning, Dr. Long insisted on seeing her.

"Humph! Tired, are you? You look it. Tommy is going to Margate
to-morrow. You had better go too."

"Is my mother going?"