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Upas Tree, A Christmas Story for all the Year, The

<h3>CHAPTER XII</h3> <h4>A FRIEND IN DEED</h4> Precisely how long she remained alone in her sitting-room, Helen never knew; but it cannot have been the long hours it seemed, seeing that Simpkins did not appear to fetch the tea-tray, nor did Nurse send down any message from the nursery. Helen had wept herself into the calm of exhaustion, and was trying to decide what her next move should be, when the hoot of a motor sounded in the park. In another moment she heard it panting at the door. Then the bell pealed. With the unfailing instinct of her kind, to hide private grief and show a brave front to the world, Helen flew to the mirror, smoothed her tumbled hair, put away her damp handkerchief; and, standing calmly beside the mantel-piece, one foot on the fender, awaited her unexpected visitor. She heard voices in the hall, then Simpkins opened the door and tried to make an announcement, but some unseen force from behind whirled him away, and a broad-shouldered young man in an ulster, travel-stained and dishevelled, appeared in his stead, shut the door upon Simpkins, and strode into the lamplight, his cloth cap still on the back of his head, his keen dark eyes searching Helen's face eagerly. His cap came off before he spoke to her; but, with his thick, short-cropped hair standing on end, a bare head only added to the wildness of his appearance. He stopped when he reached the tea-table. "Where's Ronnie?" he said, and he spoke as if he had been running for many miles. "My husband is in the studio," replied Helen, with gentle dignity. "What's he doing?" "I believe he is playing his 'cello." "Oh, lor! That wretched Infant! Is he all right?" "So far as I know." "What time did he get here?" "At half-past four." The dishevelled young man glanced at the clock. "Oh, lor!" he said again. "To think I've travelled night and day and raced down from town in a motor to get here first, and he beat me by an hour and a half! However, if he's all right, no harm's done." He dropped into Ronnie's chair, and rumpled his hair still further with his hands. "I must try to explain," he said. Then he lifted a rather white, very grubby face to Helen's. His lips twitched. "I'm dry," he said; and dropped his face into his hands. Helen rang the bell. "Bring whisky and soda at once," she ordered, the instant Simpkins appeared in the doorway. Then she crossed over, and laid her hand lightly on her visitor's broad shoulder. "Don't try to explain," she said kindly, "until you have had something. I am sure I know who you are. You appear in all sorts of cricket and football groups in Ronnie's dressing-room. You are Ronnie's special chum, Dick Cameron." Dick did not lift his head. As a matter of fact, at that moment he could not. But, though his throat contracted, so that speech became impossible, in his heart he was saying: "What a woman! Lor, what a woman! Ninety-nine out of a hundred would have offered me tea—and tea that had stood an hour; and the hundredth would have sent for a policeman! But she jumps instantly to whisky and soda; and then walks across and makes me feel at home. Eh, well! We shall save old Ronnie between us." She administered the whisky and soda when it appeared; sitting gently beside him, in exceeding friendliness. The rugged honesty of the youth appealed to her. His very griminess seemed but an earnest of his steadfast purpose, and suited her present mood of utter disillusion with the artistic and the beautiful. Dick's look of keen alertness, his sense of forceful vigour, soon returned to him. He stood up, surveyed himself in the glass, then turned with a rueful smile to Helen. "It was both kind and brave of you, Mrs. West," he said, "not to send for a policeman." Helen laughed. "I think I know an honest man when I see him, Dr. Dick. You must let me use the name by which I have always heard of you. Now, can you explain more fully?" "Certainly," said Dick, getting out of his ulster, and sitting down. "But I must begin by asking a few more questions. Did you get your cousin's letter yesterday morning? It was absolutely essential you should receive it before Ronnie reached home. I hoped you would act upon it at once." Helen gazed at him, aghast. "I did receive my cousin's letter," she said. "Was it quite explicit, Mrs. West?" "It was absolutely explicit." "Ah! Then on that point I admit I have wronged him. But you must excuse me if I say that I am inclined to consider your cousin a liar and a scoundrel." Helen's face was white and stern. "I am afraid I have long known him to be both, Dr. Dick." "Then you will not wonder that when I found he was not keeping his word to me, and bringing Ronnie home, I dashed off in pursuit." "Was there ever any question of his returning with my husband?" It was Dick's turn to look perplexed. "Of course there was. In fact, he gave me his word in the matter. I mistrusted him, however, and the more I thought it over, the more uneasy I grew. Yesterday morning, the day he was to have crossed with Ronnie, I called at his flat and found he was expected back there to-day. I should dearly have liked to wait and wring his neck on arrival, but naturally Ronnie's welfare came first. I could not catch the night boat at the Hague, but I dashed off via Brussels, crossed from Boulogne this morning, reached London forty minutes too late for the 3 o'clock train to Hollymead. There was no other until five, and that a slow one. So I taxied off to a man I know in town who owns several cars, borrowed his fastest, and raced down here, forty miles an hour. Even then I got here too late. However, no harm has been done. But you will understand that prompt action was necessary. What on earth was your cousin's little game?" "It is quite inexplicable to me," said Helen, slowly, "that you should have any knowledge of my cousin's letter. Also, you have obviously been prompt, but I have not the faintest idea why prompt action was necessary." "Didn't your cousin give you my message?" "Your name was not mentioned in his letter." "Did he tell you of Ronnie's critical condition?" "He said Ronnie told him he had never felt fitter in his life, and added that he looked it." Dick leapt to his feet, walked over to the window, and muffled a few remarks about Aubrey Treherne, in the curtains. Nevertheless Helen heard them. "Is—Ronnie—ill?" she asked, with trembling lips. Dick came back. "Ronnie is desperately ill, Mrs. West. But, now he is safely at home, within easy reach of the best advice, we will soon have him all right again. Don't you worry." But "worry" scarcely expressed Helen's face of agonised dismay. "Tell me—all," she said. Dick sat down and told her quite clearly and simply the text of his message to her through Aubrey, explaining and amplifying it with full medical details. "Any violent emotion, either of joy, grief or anger, would probably have disastrous results. He apparently came to blows with your cousin during the evening he spent at Leipzig. Ronnie gave him a lovely thing in the way of lips. One recalls it now with exceeding satisfaction. When I saw your cousin afterwards he appeared to have condoned it. But it may account for his subsequent behaviour. Fortunately this sort of thing— "Dick glanced about him appreciatively—"looks peaceful enough." Helen sat in stricken silence. "It augurs well that he was able to stand the pleasure of his home-coming," continued Dr. Dick. "He must be extraordinarily better, if you noticed nothing unusual. Possibly he slept during the night-crossing. Also, I gave him some stuff to take on the way back, intended to clear his brain and calm him generally. Did he seem to you quite normal?" Then Helen rose and stood before him with clasped hands. "He seemed to me quite normal," she said, "because I had no idea of anything else. But now that I know the truth, of course I realise at once that he was not so. And, oh, Dr. Dick, I had a terrible scene with Ronnie!" Dick stood up. "Tell me," he said. "I told Ronnie that he was utterly, preposterously, and altogether selfish, and that I was ashamed of him." "Whew! You certainly did not mince matters," said Dr. Dick. "What had poor old Ronnie done?" "He had talked, from the moment of his return, of very little save the 'cello he has brought home. He had suggested that it might amuse me to put it into a bassinet. Then when at last tea was over, he proposed, as the most delightful proceeding possible, that we should adjourn to the studio, and that I should sit and listen while he made a first attempt to play his 'cello—which, by the way, he calls, the 'Infant of Prague,' explaining to me that it is the nicest infant that ever was." "Oh, that confounded Infant!" exclaimed Dr. Dick. "I have hated it from the first! But really, Mrs. West "—he looked puzzled—"all this was no doubt enthusiasm misplaced. But then Ronnie always is a perfect infant himself, where new toys are concerned. You can hardly realise how much he has looked forward to showing you that 'cello. His behaviour also proved a decided tendency to self-absorption; but there the artistic temperament comes in, which always creates a world of its own in which it dwells content, often at the expense of duties and obligations connected with outer surroundings. We all know that this is Ronnie's principal failing. But—excuse me for saying so—it hardly deserved quite so severe an indictment from you." Helen wrung her hands. Suddenly Dr. Dick took them both, firmly in his. "Why don't you tell me the truth?" he said. Then Helen told him. She never could remember afterwards exactly how she told him, and no one but Helen ever knew what Dr. Dick said and did. But, months later—when in her presence aspersions were being cast on Dick for his indomitable ambition, his ruthless annihilation of all who stood in his way, his utter lack of religious principle and orthodox belief—Helen, her sweet face shadowed by momentary sadness, her eyes full of pathetic remembrance, spoke up for Ronnie's chum. "He may be a bad old thing in many ways," she said; "I admit that the language he uses is calculated to make his great-aunt Louisa, of sacred memory, turn in her grave! But—he is a tower of strength in one's hour of need." <hr style='width: 45%;' /> "No," said Dick, after a while, gazing straight before him into the fire, his chin in his hands; "I can't believe Ronnie knew it. He was just in the condition to become frantically excited by such news. He would have been desperately anxious about you; wild that you should have gone through it alone, and altogether absorbed in the idea of coming home and seeing his child. The Infant of Prague would have had its shining nose put completely out of joint. I don't believe Ronnie ever had your letter. Write to the Poste Restante at Leipzig, and you will receive it back." "Impossible," said Helen. "He opened and read it that evening in Aubrey's flat. He told Aubrey the news, and Aubrey mentioned it in his letter to me." Dick looked grave. "Well then," he said, "old Ronnie is in an even worse case than I feared. I think we should go at once and look him up. I told my friend's chauffeur to wait; so, if further advice is needed to-night, we can send the car straight back to town with a message. Where is Ronnie?" "He took his 'cello, and went off to the studio. I heard him shut the door." "Show me the way," said Dr. Dick. With his hand on the handle of the sitting-room door, he paused. "I suppose you—er—feel quite able to forgive poor old Ronnie, now?" he asked. The yearning anguish in Helen's eyes made answer enough. They crossed the hall together; but—as they passed down the corridor leading to the studio—they stopped simultaneously, and their eyes sought one another in silent surprise and uncertainty. The deep full tones of a 'cello, reached them where they stood; tones so rich, so plaintively sweet, so full of passion and melody, that, to the anxious listeners in the dimly lighted corridor, they gave the sense of something weird, something altogether uncanny in its power, unearthly in its beauty. They each spoke at the same moment. "It cannot be Ronnie," they said. "It must be Ronnie," amended Helen. "There is no one else in the house." "You go in," whispered Dick. "I will wait here. Call, if you want me. Don't startle him. Go in very softly. Be very—er—you know?" Helen moved forward alone. She laid her hand upon the handle of the studio door. She wished the weird music within would cease for one moment, that she might feel more able to enter. Cold shivers ran down her spine. Try as she would, she could not connect that music with Ronnie. Somebody else was also in the studio, of that she felt quite certain. She nearly went back to Dick. Then—rating herself for cowardice—she turned the handle of the door and passed in. Dick saw her disappear. Almost at that moment the 'cello-playing ceased; there was a crash, a cry from Helen, a silence, and then—a wild shriek from Helen, a sound holding so much of fear and of horror, that Dick shouted in reply as he dashed forward. He found himself in a low room, oak-panelled, lighted only by the uncertain flame a log-fire. The door by which Dick had centered was to the left of the fireplace. On the wall at the farther end of the room, opposite both door and fireplace, hung an immense mirror in a massive gilt frame. On the floor in the centre of the room lay Ronnie, unconscious, on his back. The chair upon which he had been sitting and which had gone over backwards with him, lay broken beneath him. His 'cello rested on his chest. He gripped it there, with both his hands. They fell away from it, as Dick looked at him. Ronnie's wife knelt on the floor beside him, but she was not looking at Ronnie. She was staring, with white face and starting eyes, into the mirror. Her left arm, stretched out before her, was rigid with horror, from the shoulder to the tip of the pointing finger. "Look, Dick!" she shrieked. "Oh, heavens! Look!" Dick flashed up the electric light; then looked into the mirror. He saw himself loom large, dishevelled, grimy, travel-stained. Then he saw Ronnie and the Infant in a dark heap on the floor, and the white face of Ronnie's wife, kneeling beside him with outstretched arm and eyes upon the mirror. On the other side of Ronnie, in the very centre of the scene, stood a queer old chair of Italian workmanship, the heads of lions completing its curved arms, on its carved back the fleur-de-lis of Florence, its seat of padded leather, embossed in crimson and gold. This was all Dick saw, excepting the leaping flames of the fire beyond. And even as he looked, Helen's arm fell to her side; he saw her turn, lift the Infant off Ronnie's breast; and, bending over him, draw his head on to her lap. Dick turned from the mirror. The scene in the room was identical with the reflection, in all points save one. The Florentine chair was under Ronnie. It had fallen with him. Its back was broken. Not until he had lifted his friend from the floor did Dr. Dick see the panelled fleur-de-lis of Florence, nor the crimson and gold of the embossed leather seat. As he and Helen together loosed Ronnie's collar and tie, she whispered: "Did—you—see?" "This is no time for staring into mirrors," said Dr. Dick, crossly. "I saw that I need a good wash; and you, some sal-volatile! But we shall have plenty to do for Ronnie before we can find leisure to think of ourselves. Send a couple of men here; sturdy fellows whom you can trust. Order that car to the door; then bring me a pencil, a sheet of note-paper and an envelope. There is just one man in the world who can help us now, and we must have him here with as little delay as possible." When Helen had left the room, Dick glanced furtively over his shoulder into the mirror. The Italian chair, in the reflection, now lay broken on the floor! "Hum!" said Dr. Dick. "Not bad, that—for an Infant! Precocious, I call it. We must have that 'cello re-christened the 'Demon of Prague'!" <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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