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At five o'clock he was to meet Francey at the gates, and, as though she had some magic gift of relief, he strained towards that time, his head between his hands, his ears counting the seconds that dripped heavily, drowsily from the moon-faced clock. And then she did not come. Outwardly it was only one more trifle, capable of simple explanations.
Miss Christine's on our side, aren't you, Miss Christine? And oh, Connie, there's a pastrycook's round the corner where they make jam-puffs like they did when I was a kid " "I'll put the kettle on," Francey said, nodding to him. She passed close to Robert. She even gave him a quick, friendly touch. He could almost hear her say, "Tag, Robert!" but he would not look at her.
She came riding out of the mists of his fancy into light, a living reality that he could take hold of, and set up in his empty temple. She was not his mother, nor Francey, nor God, but she was everything that in their vague and different ways these three had been to him before he lost them. She was something to be worshipped, to be died for, if necessary, with joy and pride.
For it was the best house in the street, and, of course, the Doctors Robert and Francey Stonehouse would have to have the best. And once they quarrelled about nothing at all, or about everything they hardly knew. It was an absurd quarrel, which blazed up and went out again like fire in stubble.
The room would not let him forget that Francey held money, which he had had to squeeze his life dry to get, lightly and indifferently. She gave it with both hands. She had always had enough, and it seemed to her a little thing.
"Of course, it's only right and natural that you should talk of nothing but yourself." He stammered breathlessly. "I didn't think I'm sorry " "Do you suppose you're the only person who does what they say they're going to do?" "What not not a doctor, Francey?" "Not yet. I'm two years behind you. This will be my first year in the Wards.
But I get that sort of stuff at home, and if I get it here I don't know what I'll do." "Oh, you're right, too," Robert muttered. "It's not my business." Cosgrave appealed sadly to Francey. "He's wild with me. But a picnic you'd think any human being might go on a picnic " "You're going," she answered quietly, "and Robert too." He did not take up the challenge. He was too miserable.
"We might walk back to my rooms and talk in peace. Oh Francey Wilmot? I don't know much. She went abroad finished her course very late she was always a bit of a dilettante. People with money usually are." Cosgrave said no more. He knew all he wanted to know. It saddened him. Somehow he had counted on that half-divined romance, had played with it in his fancy as with a kind of vicarious happiness.
There was No. 10 in A Ward, a raddled woman of the streets who had been brought in the night before as the result of a crime passionnel, and whose injuries had been the subject of long deliberations. Even before they had reached the hospital archway Robert and Francey agreed that Rogers' air of mystery was simply a professional disguise for complete bafflement.
But the chapter of their real friendship, with all its inarticulate romance and tenderness, was closed finally. Stonehouse kept the photograph on the table of his consulting-room. He believed that it amused him. Still he could not work at night. He resumed his haunted prowlings through the streets. But he took care that he did not pass Francey Wilmot's house again. He knew now that he was afraid.