V
Barbara was lying in the tiny room with the eye-shaped window that would not open. The stove had gone out in the studio, and the air was heavy with cold and dampness. On the piano lay some remnants of manuscript music torn up on the previous evening by Jamie.
Barbara opened her eyes: “Is that you, my bairn?”
They had never heard Barbara call her that before—the great, lumbering, big-boned, long-legged Jamie.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“Come here close …” The voice drifted away.
“I’m here—oh, I’m here! I’ve got hold of your hand. Look at me, open your eyes again—Barbara, listen, I’m here—don’t you feel me?”
Stephen tried to restrain the shrill, agonized voice: “Don’t speak so loud, Jamie, perhaps she’s sleeping;” but she knew very well that this was not so; the girl was not sleeping now, but unconscious.
Mary found some fuel and lighted the stove, then she started to tidy the disordered studio. Flakes of flue lay here and there on the floor; thick dust was filming the top of the piano. Barbara had been waging a losing fight—strange that so mean a thing as this dust should, in the end, have been able to conquer. Food there was none, and putting on her coat Mary finally went forth in quest of milk and other things likely to come in useful. At the foot of the stairs she was met by the concierge; the woman looked glum, as though deeply aggrieved by this sudden and very unreasonable illness. Mary thrust some money into her hand, then hurried away intent on her shopping.
When she returned the doctor was there; he was talking very gravely to Stephen: “It’s double pneumonia, a pretty bad case—the girl’s heart’s so weak. I’ll send in a nurse. What about the friend, will she be any good?”
“I’ll help with the nursing if she isn’t,” said Mary.
Stephen said: “You do understand about the bills—the nurse and all that?”
The doctor nodded.
They forced Jamie to eat: “For Barbara’s sake … Jamie, we’re with you, you’re not alone, Jamie.”
She peered with her red-rimmed, shortsighted eyes, only half understanding, but she did as they told her. Then she got up without so much as a word, and went back to the room with the eye-shaped window. Still in silence she squatted on the floor by the bed, like a dumb, faithful dog who endured without speaking. And they let her alone, let her have her poor way, for this was not their Calvary but Jamie’s.
The nurse arrived, a calm, practical woman: “You’d better lie down for a bit,” she told Jamie, and in silence Jamie lay down on the floor.
“No, my dear—please go and lie down in the studio.”
She got up slowly to obey this new voice, lying down, with her face to the wall, on the divan.
The nurse turned to Stephen: “Is she a relation?”
Stephen hesitated, then she shook her head.
“That’s a pity, in a serious case like this I’d like to be in touch with some relation, someone who has a right to decide things. You know what I mean—it’s double pneumonia.”
Stephen said dully: “No—she’s not a relation.”
“Just a friend?” the nurse queried.
“Just a friend,” muttered Stephen.