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“Come along, Ruth,” said his wife. “We must make ourselves scarce. Good night again, Derek.”
Ruth laid a gnarled finger on her lips and tiptoed elaborately to the door. There she turned and blew him a kiss.
He heard them greet Sir John Phillips briefly and go upstairs. In his relief at being rid of his sister, O’Callaghan felt a wave of good-fellowship for John Phillips. Phillips was an old friend. It would be a relief to tell him how ill he felt — to learn how ill he really was. Perhaps Phillips would give him something that would help him along for the time being. He already felt a little better. Very likely it was a trifling thing after all. Phillips would know. He turned to the door with an air of pleased expectancy. Nash opened the door and came in.
“Sir John Phillips, sir.” Phillips entered the room.
He was an extremely tall man with an habitual stoop. His eyes, full-lidded and of a peculiarly light grey, were piercingly bright. No one ever saw him without his single eye-glass and there was a rumour that he wore it ribbonless while he operated. His nose was a beak and his under lip jutted out aggressively. He was unmarried, and unmoved, so it was said, by the general tendency among his women patients to fall extravagantly in love with him. Perhaps next to actors medical men profit most by the possession of that curious quality that people call “personality.” Sir John Phillips was, very definitely, a personage. His rudeness was more glamorously famous than his brilliant ability.
O’Callaghan moved towards him, his hand extended.
“Phillips!” he said, “I’m delighted to see you.”
Phillips ignored the hand and stood stock-still until the door had closed behind Nash. Then he spoke.
“You will be less delighted when you hear my business,” he said.
“Why — what on earth’s the matter with you?”
“I can scarcely trust myself to speak to you.”
“What the devil do you mean?”
“Precisely what I say. I’ve discovered you are a blackguard and I’ve come to tell you so.”
O’Callaghan stared at him in silence.
“Apparently you are serious,” he said at last. “May I ask if you intend merely to call me names and then walk out? Or am I to be given an explanation?”
“I’ll give you your explanation. In two words. Jane Harden.”
There was a long silence. The two men stared at each other. At last O’Callaghan turned away. A kind of mulish huffiness in his expression made him look ridiculous and unlikeable.
“What about Jane Harden?” he said at last.
“Only this. She’s a nurse at my hospital. For a very long time her happiness has been an important thing for me. I have asked her to marry me. She has refused, over and over again. To-day she told me why. It seems you made capital out of a friendship with her father and out of her present poverty. You played the ‘old family friend’ combined with the distinguished philanderer.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie, O’Callaghan!”
“Look here— ”
“I know the facts.”
“What sort of tale have you listened to!”
“One that brought me here to-night angrier than I ever remember myself before. I know the precise history of your — your friendship with her. You amused yourself, evidently. I dislike overstatement but I believe it would be no overstatement if I said, as I do say, that you’ve ruined Jane’s life for her.”
“Damn’ sentimental twaddle!” said O’Callaghan breathlessly. “She’s a modern young woman and she knows how to enjoy herself.”
“That’s a complete misrepresentation.” Phillips had turned exceedingly white, but he spoke evenly. “If, by the phrase ‘a modern young woman,’ you mean a ‘loose woman’ you must know yourself it’s a lie. This is the only episode of the sort in her life. She loved you and you let her suppose she was loved in return.”
“Nothing of the sort. She gave me no reason to suppose she attached more importance to the thing than I did myself. You say she’s in love with me. If it’s true I’m sorry. I don’t think it’s true. What does she want? It’s not— ” O’Callaghan stopped short and looked frightened. “It’s not that she’s going to have a child?”
“Oh, no. She has no actual claim on you. No legal claim. Evidently you don’t recognize moral obligations.”
“I’ve sent her £300. What more will she want?”
“I’m so near hitting you, O’Callaghan, I think I’d better go.”
“You can go to hell if you like. What’s the matter with you? If you don’t want to marry her there’s an alternative. It ought to be quite simple — I had no difficulty.”
“You swine!” shouted Phillips. “My God— ” He stopped short. His lips moved tremblingly. When he spoke again it was more quietly. “You’d do well to keep clear of me,” he said. “I assure you that if the opportunity presented itself I should have no hesitation — none — in putting you out of the way.”
Something in O’Callaghan’s face made him pause. The Home Secretary was looking beyond him, towards the door.
“Excuse me, sir,” said Nash quietly. He crossed the room with a tray holding glasses and a decanter. He put the tray down noiselessly and returned to the door.
“Is there anything further, sir?” asked Nash.
“Sir John Phillips is leaving. Will you show him out?”
“Certainly, sir.”
Without another word Phillips turned on his heel and left the room.
“Good night, Nash,” said O’Callaghan.
“Good night, sir,” said Nash softly. He followed Sir John Phillips out and closed the door.
O’Callaghan gave a sharp cry of pain. He stumbled towards his chair and bent over it, leaning on the arm. For a minute or two he hung on, doubled up with pain. Then he managed to get into the chair, and in a little while poured out half a tumbler of whiskey. He noticed Ruth’s patent medicine lying on the table beside him. With a tremulous hand he shook one of the powders into the glass and gulped it down with the whiskey.
CHAPTER III
Sequel to a Scene in the House
Thursday, the eleventh. Afternoon.
The Home Secretary paused and looked round the House. The sea of faces was blurred and nightmarish. They were playing that trick on him that he had noticed before. They would swim together like cells under a microscope and then one face would come out clearly and stare at him. He thought: “I may just manage it— only one more paragraph,” and raised the paper. The type swirled and eddied, and then settled down. He heard his own voice. He must speak up.
“In view of the extraordinary propaganda— ”
They were making too much noise.
“Mr. Speaker— ”
A disgusting feeling of nausea, a kind of vapourish tightness behind his nose.
“Mr. Speaker— ”
He looked up again. A mistake. The sea of faces jerked up and revolved very quickly. A tiny voice, somewhere up in the attic, was calling: “He’s fainted.”
He did not feel himself pitch forward across the desk. Nor did he hear a voice from the back benches that called out: “You’ll be worse than that before you’ve finished with your bloody Bill.”
“Who’s his doctor — anyone know?”
“Yes — I do. It’s bound to be Sir John Phillips— they’re old friends.”
“Phillips? He runs that nursing-home in Brook Street, doesn’t he?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Somebody must ring Lady O’Callaghan.”
“I will if you like. I know her.”
“Is he coming round?”
“Doesn’t look like it. Tillotley went to see about the ambulance.”
“Here he is. Did you fix up for an ambulance, Tillotley?”
“It’s coming. Where are you sending him?”
“Cuthbert’s gone to ring up his wife.”
“God, he looks bad!”
“Did you hear that fellow yell out from the back benches?”
“Yes. Who was it?”
“I don’t know. I say, do you think there’s anything fishy about this?”
“Oh, rot!”
“Here’s Dr. Wendover — I didn’t know he was in the House.”