Hal's uneasiness concerning Lorraine and Alymer Hermon was swallowed up almost immediately on Lorraine's return, by a sudden alarming change in Basil Hayward. The first time she went to Hol oway after Doris's elopement, she saw the decided symptoms of change, and her report to Dudley caused the latter once more, on his own responsibility, to request Sir John Maitland to pay a visit to the little flat.
Sir John's report was the reverse of reassuring, and they all felt the end was at hand. Dudley went to Hol oway nearly every evening, and sometimes stayed until the middle of the night, to sit up with the sick man.
Hal went from the office in the afternoons, two or three days each week. When she was there the tenant from Flat G went home to snatch a short rest, in case a bad night lay ahead.
Ethel went quietly on her way, looking as if already a sorrow had wrapped her round before which human aid and human sympathy were powerless.
She went to the office as usual, and did her usual work, in nervous dread from hour to hour lest a telephone call should summon her in haste. She scarcely spoke to any one but Hal; and not very much to her; but it was evident in a thousand little ways that she liked to have her near.
With Dudley a new sort of coldness seemed to have sprung up. He was self-conscious ill at ease with her now; anxious to show his sympathy, yet made awkward by his self-sown notion that he was antagonistic to her. Ethel did not notice it very much. All her thoughts were with Basil.
Hal saw it and was troubled. She was afraid the slight misunderstanding might grow into a barrier that it would be extremely difficult to break down later on. However, she could only watch anxiously at present, and try in smal ways to smooth out the growing difficulty.
Basil himself was the most consistently cheerful of al . He believed that he was near the end of his long martyrdom, and that in another sphere he would be given back his health and strength.
He had seemed very worried at first about Doris and Dudley, but gradual y he became philosophical over it, and hoped the future would bring united happiness to Dudley and Ethel. He consigned her to Dudley's care and Hal's.
To Dudley he merely said:
"I know you'll always be a good friend to chum. I'm thankful she wil at least have you."
Dudley did not say much in reply, but he looked sufficiently unhappy, and withal so glad of the service, that it spoke volumes.
To Hal he said:
"Chum is very fond of you, Hal. You'll keep an eye on her, won't you?
Perhaps there is no one else but you who can."
Quick tears shone in Hal's eyes.
"Of course I wil ... two eyes.. I don't know that I shall let her out of my sight at all."
Other evening, because Dudley was so often at Hol oway, Hal went to dinner with the Three Graces. Dick often fetched her from the office, and they went back together. Now that she had become interested in the East End, they had schemes to talk over, and she and Quin were never weary of discussing odd characters there, and odd histories, and plans for different amusements.
Dick joined in a times, but was very busy with his new book.
Alymer Hermon had grown strangely quiet. At intervals, for the sake of old times, he and Hal sparring matches, but if, as wat not very usual, he happened to be at home, he was inclined to do little else but lounge and smoke, and watch her while presumably reading a paper.
Hal did not notice it particularly. She had many other things on her mind just then, and Alymer only fil ed a very smal corner. She was glad he was progressing so satisfactorily. He was well started up the ladder now, and though he had had no single big chance to distinguish himself once for al , it was general y regarded as merely a matter of time. She fancied she did not meet him so much at Lorraine's, but as she did not go nearly so often herself, on account of the Hol oway visits, she could not real y know.
But she noticed that Lorraine also was a little different - a little more reserved and likewise quieter. She seemed still to be ailing a good deal, and to have lost interest in her profession.
Yet she did not seem unhappy. On the contrary, Hal thought her happier than usual in an undemonstrative, dreamy sort of way. She was interested in the East End social evenings, and on one occasion went herself.
She was also interested in Basil Hayward, and motored up with lovely flowers for him; but she talked far less of the theatre, and seemed indisposed to consider a new part.
"I want a real long rest this summer," she had said, "free from rehearsals and everything."
In mid-June Sir Edwin was married, with a great deal of display, and much paragraphing of newspapers. The day before the wedding, Hal received a beautiful gold watch and chain from him.
"Do not be angry, and do not send it back," he wrote. "Keep it and wear it in memory of some one who was known to you only, and who has since died. To me, it is like honouring the memory of my best self if I can persuade you thus to perpetuate it. Good-bye, Little Girl; and God bless you."
Hal kept the watch and wore it, and the only one who demurred was Alymer Hermon. It was spoken of at the Cromwell Road flat one evening, when he was present but taking no part in the conversation. Dick admired it, and she told him it had been given to her recently.
Qin was not there, and a moment later Dick was cal ed away to speak to some one at the telephone. Alymer looked up at Hal suddenly, with a very direct gaze.
"Lorraine told me Sir Edwin gave you the watch the other day. I don't know how you can keep it, much less wear it. You ought to throw it into the Thames."
Hal flushed up angrily.
"Of course I'm interested in your opinion on the matter," she said,
"but I had not thought of asking for it."
Hermon flushed too, but he stood his ground.
"It would be the opinion of most men."
"Most men 'don't appeal to me in the least. I am quite satisfied with my own opinion in this matter."
"Stil , I wish you wouldn't wear it," he urged, a little boyishly.
"The man has shown himself a cad. He was in a tight corner, and he let a woman buy him out."
"And don't most men take help from a woman at some time or other?"
He winced, but answered sturdily:
"Not monetary help. Besides, he didn't worry much about getting you talked of, did he?"
Hal was just going to make a sarcastic retort, when Dick reappeared, and the matter was dropped.
But when she came to think of it afterwards, she could not but a little struck at Alymer's attitude, and wondered why he had taken so much interest in her action.
A few days later Basil Hayward died.
Hal was not there at the time, but Dudley had not come home at al the previous night, and she was afraid that his friend was worse. In the afternoon she had been detained at the office, and she hardly liked to go up to Hol oway in the evening without knowing if she was wanted.
So she sat anxiously waiting for Dudley. When at last he arrived he looked haggard and worn and il . Hal stood up when he came in, and waited for him to speak.
"It's all over," he said, and sank into his chair as if he were dead-beat.
Hal's hart ached with sympathy. She felt instinctively there was more here than grief for a friend whose death could only be regarded as a merciful release.
She was right. For the last three weeks Dudley and Ethel had been in almost daily contact beside the dying man's bed. Silently, devotedly they had served him together.
But while Ethel was occupied only with the sufferer, Dudley, in the long night-watches, had seen at last what manner of woman it was he had passed by for the pretty, shallow, selfish little sister.
Ever since the elopement, three months ago, he had been changing. It had been the bitter blow that had stabbed him awake. In some mysterious way new aspects, new ideas, new understanding, began to develop, where before had been chiefly a narrow outlook and rigid conformity.
It was though in the fulfil ing of her work, Life had harrowed his soul with a bitter harrowing, that it might bring forth the better fruit in its season. The harrowing had seared and scarred, but aldready the new richness was showing, the new promise of a nobler future.
The Al -wise Mother works very much in human life as she does in nature
- topping off a hope here, and a hope there; ploughing, pruning, harrowing the soil and branches of the mind and spirit, that they may bring forth rich fruit in due season.
The life that she passes by unheeded, leaving it only to the sunshine and wind and rain, often grows little else but rank vegetation, and develops rust and mould - never the crops that are life-giving and life-sustaining to the world; never the great thoughts, great deeds, wide sympathies, that raise mankind to the skies.
But for Dudley the harrowing was not yet finished. Perhaps, indeed, no moment of all had been quite so bitter as the sense of his utter unworthiness and utter incapability to help Ethel in her hour of direst need.
The mere thought unnerved him for the little he might have done. He was so imbued with the idea of his helplessness, that he could only stammer a few broken sentences she seemed scarcely capable of hearing.
He had but one consolation. Towards the end, the sick man, suddenly opening his eyes, looked round for his sister, and seeing she was absent, had regarded Dudley with his whole face ful of a question.
Dudley leant down to him.
"Yes, old chap," he asked tenderly. "What is it?"
"Ethel... chum... you wil try and help her?"
Then Dudley, with his new understanding, had grasped al that the dying man hoped.
"I love her," he said very simply. "I have been a blind fool, but I am awake now. I shal give my life to trying to win her."
"Oh! thank God... thank God," Basil whispered. "It is certain to come right some day - don't lose heart. You have made me very happy."
He sank into stupor after that, and spoke no more, except for a whispered "Chum", just before he died.
Then it was that the ful flood of Dudley's bitterness seemed to close in upon him, for his tortured mind translated Ethel's stunned grief into veiled antipathy to his presence; and when there was nothing left for him to see to, he went home for Hal.
In his chair, with his head bowed on his hands, Hal thought he had aged years in the last three months.
"What shal I do?" she asked. "Shal I go to Ethel?"
"Yes - will you? She doesn't want me. I feel as if she hated my being there now. But if you would go -?"
"It is your imagination, Dudley. Things have all got a little topsy-turvy since Doris went, but presently you wil see you were mistaken. Don't lose heart too quickly."
But he refused to be comforted, and merely shook his head in silent desolation.
"You'll stay with her if she wants you?" he asked.
"Yes, I'll stay"; and she went away to get her hat.
As she mounted the stairs in Hol oway, the door of Flat G opened as if some one within had been listening for her, and a stealthy head peeped out. Then a hand beckoned.
Hal crossed the landing and went inside the door. The poor music-teacher's face was swol en almost past recognition with crying.
""What am I to do?... what am I to do?" she moaned, rocking herself backwards and forwards. "There was only one thing in al the world that made my life worth living, and now it is gone."
She sobbed bitterly for a few minutes, softened by Hal's sympathetic presence, then she told her brokenly:
"They're all mourning. Every single soul in this dreary building.
Considering he never left the flat, it's wonderful - wonderful; but he knew al the children, and they al knew him. And if you know the children you know the fathers and mothers.
"Little Splodgkins, as we always called him, has been sitting like a small stone effigy on the stairs outside his door. He has patrol ed the whole staircase for days, keeping the other children quiet. I told Mr. Hayward, and he sent him a message. He said, 'Tell him to grow up a fine man, and fight for his country, and not to forget me before we meet again.' The little chap fought back his tears when I gave him the message, and he said: 'Tel him, I thaid dammit, tho I wil .'
But they're young, and they've got each other, most of the other folks here, and I've got nothing - nothing. Miss Pritchard, I can't go on again the same - I can't - I can't."
"You must help Miss Hayward, at any rate for a time," Hal told her; "if you didn't you would be failing him now; and even little Splodgkins doesn't mean to do that."
"No, of course you're right. I can light the fire for her in the afternoon and put the kettle on. It isn't much to be alive for, but he'd say it was worth while. He'd say, 'What would she do without a G
in the alphabet?' wouldn't he? I must remember. And now you must go to her. It's worse for her than me, only that she's stil got al her life before her, and she's very attractive, while I never seemed to please any one in my life but him."
"Yes; I must go now," Hal said; "but I'll come and see you again. Come down east with me next Wednesdayn evening, to a social evening in the slums, wil you? They're so interesting. We'll have tea together first. I'll arrange to take you, and then you'll meet Dick."
"Good-bye for the present."
Then she crossed the landing, wondering with a sinking heart how she could ever hope to comfort Ethel.