Thank God Mary was quick-witted.
“The 2nd is very near. Why do you make such sudden plans, Dick? I can’t go home without seeing you. I think I’ll come straight to Hill Street.”
“All right,” I said, “do as you please.” I rang off and looked at Medina with a wry smile. “What fussers women are! Do you mind if my wife comes round here? She won’t be content till she has seen me. She has come up with a crazy notion of taking down a surgeon to give an opinion on the child’s appendix. Tommy rot! But that’s a woman’s way.”
He clearly suspected nothing. “Certainly let Lady Hannay come here. We’ll give her tea. I’m sorry that the drawing-room is out of commission just now. She might have liked to see my miniatures.”
Mary appeared in ten minutes, and most nobly she acted her part. It was the very model of a distraught silly mother who bustled into the room. Her eyes looked as if she had been crying and she had managed to disarrange her hat and untidy her hair.
“Oh, I’ve been so worried,” she wailed, after she had murmured apologies to Medina. “He really has had a bad tummy pain, and nurse thought last night that he was feverish. I’ve seen Mr. Dobson-Wray, and he can come down by the four-forty-five. … He’s such a precious little boy, Mr. Medina, that I feel we must take every precaution with him. If Mr. Dobson-Wray says it is all right, I promise not to fuss any more. I think a second opinion would please Dr. Greenslade, for he too looked rather anxious. … Oh, no, thank you so much, but I can’t stay for tea. I have a taxi waiting, and I might miss my train. I’m going to pick up Mr. Dobson-Wray in Wimpole Street.”
She departed in the same tornado in which she had come, just stopping to set her hat straight at one of the mirrors in the hall.
“Of course I’ll wire when the surgeon has seen him. And, Dick, you’ll come down at once if there’s anything wrong, and bring nurses. Poor, poor little darling! … Did you say after the 2nd of June, Dick? I do hope you’ll be able to get off. You need a holiday away from your tiresome family. … Goodbye, Mr. Medina. It was so kind of you to be patient with a silly mother. Look after Dick and don’t let him worry.”
I had preserved admirably the aloof air of the bored and slightly ashamed husband. But now I realised that Mary was not babbling at large, but was saying something which I was meant to take in.
“Poor, poor little darling!” she crooned as she got into the taxi. “I do pray he’ll be all right—I think he may, Dick. … I hope, oh I hope … to put your mind at ease … before the 2nd of June.”
As I turned back to Medina I had a notion that the poor little darling was no longer Peter John.
XVII
The District-Visitor in Palmyra Square
During the last fortnight a new figure had begun to appear in Palmyra Square. I do not know if Macgillivray’s watchers reported its presence, for I saw none of their reports, but they must have been cognisant of it, unless they spent all their time in the nearest public-house. It was a district-visitor of the familiar type—a woman approaching middle age, presumably a spinster, who wore a plain black dress and, though the weather was warm, a cheap fur round her neck, and carried a rather old black silk satchel. Her figure was good, and had still a suggestion of youth, but her hair, which was dressed very flat and tight and coiled behind in an unfashionable bun, seemed—the little that was seen of it—to be sprinkled with grey. She was dowdy, and yet not altogether dowdy, for there was a certain faded elegance in her air, and an observer might have noted that she walked well. Besides the black satchel she carried usually a sheaf of papers, and invariably and in all weathers a cheap badly-rolled umbrella.
She visited at the doctor’s house with the brass plate, and the music-teacher’s, and at the various lodging-houses. She was attached, it appeared, to the big church of St. Jude’s a quarter of a mile off, which had just got a new and energetic vicar. She was full of enthusiasm for her vicar, praised his earnestness and his eloquence, and dwelt especially, after the way of elderly maiden ladies, on the charm of his youth. She was also very ready to speak of herself, and eager to explain that her work was voluntary—she was a gentlewoman of modest but independent means, and had rooms in Hampstead, and her father had been a clergyman at Eastbourne. Very full of her family she was to those who would hear her. There was a gentle simplicity about her manners, and an absence of all patronage, which attracted people and made them willing to listen to her when they would have shut the door on another, for the inhabitants of Palmyra Square are not a courteous or patient or religious folk.
Her aim was to enlist the overworked general servants of the Square in some of the organisations of St. Jude’s. There were all kinds of activities in that enlightened church—choral societies, and mothers’ meetings, and country holiday clubs, and classes for adult education. She would hand out sheaves of literature about the Girls’ Friendly Society, and the Mothers’ Union, and suchlike, and try to secure a promise of attendance
