The examiner looked at him, puzzled. "I'm very sorry," he said again gently. "Your mother, isn't it? Have you plenty of friends in London?"
"Thank you; Professor Brooks has been very kind; so has the doctor who attends her. As for friends, there's nothing any one can do."
"Well, if there should be, will you let me know? And as for the examination, don't worry about that; you'll pass it next year. You have the makings of a good doctor."
Theo, meanwhile, had taken Berlin, Paris, and Vienna by storm. The enthusiasm aroused by his playing might have turned a wiser head; but his nature was singularly free from petty vanity and self-conceit, and the effect which success produced on him was not what might have been expected in the case of an impressionable lad of eighteen suddenly springing from obscurity to fame. For the first month or two it amused him; he sent home delicious pen and ink caricatures of himself as "the last new Mumbo Jumbo" enthroned, with a lion's mane, still short and stubbly, sprouting behind long, asinine ears; or as a gawky country bumpkin, grinning through a violin bow for the delectation of spectacled musical critics and fearsome society dowagers.
Very soon the favours of the public began to disgust him. "The people stare at me," he wrote, "as if I were a gorilla in a cage; and clap when I come on, till I feel inclined to say: 'Here we are!' like a circus clown, and turn a back somersault off the platform. It's utterly hopeless to try to play decently; how can you get anywhere near to your music with an audience that is only thinking about which leg you stand on and how you part your hair? And I hate the women! They click their fans all through the concert out of time; and afterwards they come up to you in low-necked frocks and tight stays; and talk about their souls, with just yards of satin and velvet kicking about the floor under your feet that you'd give your best G string to be able to pick up and hide their shoulders with. I know they ill-treat their servants."
The next letter contained a cheque, and a figure dancing on one leg for joy. "Darling mummy," the hurried pencil scrawl began: "here are grapes and carriage drives to go on with. Hauptmann" (the impresario) "has stumped up some money, and there'll be plenty more soon. Hurry, hurry, hurry and get well, and wear the lace I'm sending by this post. You're never to scrimp and save and go without things any more; and old Jack Sobersides can buy all the skeletons he wants."
"Mother," Jack said, as he laid the letter down, " it is cruel to keep him in the dark any longer."
Slow tears gathered under her closed eyelids; even the exertion of reading a letter was too much for her now, and her voice was tremulous with utter weariness.
"You may tell him if you like, dear; it can't injure his success now." She broke off, then added nervously: "And... Jack..."
"Yes, mother?"
"You'll be sure and tell him it's... not such a bad case. You know the word 'cancer' always gives people such a shock; and of course it might easily be worse. And then the morphia is a great help..."
"Yes, I'll tell him."
He wrote, asking Theo to come home as soon as his concert engagements permitted, and telling him, not the whole truth, but enough to prepare him for hearing the rest. A telegram came in answer; Theo was on his way home, leaving the impresario to apologise to an excited Parisian audience.
When the truth was told him at last he bore it with more dignity and patience than Jack had expected to see. The shock seemed to have awakened in him some dormant strain of his mother's character. In her presence he never lost his self-control; but Jack, coming into his room late at night, found him sitting by the window in a crouching posture, white and panic-stricken. He sprang up at the coming of the grave, protecting presence, and clung to Jack's hand like a scared child.
"Oh, I'm so glad you've come! I... was afraid."
Jack sat down with him on the edge of the bed, putting an arm round his shoulders to stop their nervous shivering. He could not understand; to him, grief was a different thing from this; but he had the large humility of the physician, and was content to watch and give what help he could, if need be, without understanding. Theo looked up after a
little while; he was still white, but the shivering had stopped, and his teeth no longer knocked together when he spoke.
"You are good to me, old fellow," he said; "and I'm keeping you up when you're so tired."
"That's all right; I'm used to being up."
"Jack, are you never afraid, never?"
"I don't understand. Afraid of what? "
"Of death."
Jack's brow drew itself down into an ugly line.
"Well," he said slowly, "if one's going in for being afraid, there are worse things than death to be afraid of."
"I don't mean one's own death — that's nothing; I mean..."
"Other people's? Yes, that is worse; but one gets accustomed, in time."
"No, not quite that. I mean... the everlasting presence, the idea of it, always there, always waiting for everything you love. I... never thought of it till now; it's like a pit dug under one's feet, saying: 'Tread over me if you dare.' It is as if we must go through all our life and be afraid to love; if the gods should see, they will take away the thing we love."
Jack sat still, thinking, the sad lines deep about his mouth.
"It doesn't matter," he said at last. "If nothing worse than death happens to the people that a fellow loves, he's lucky. It seems to me death makes a pretty poor show, considering all the bother people have over dying. Anyhow, what's the use of worrying your head about that? Look here, Theo; if you get the horrors, or the blues, or anything, don't sit alone this way; hold on tight to me and I'll pull you through somehow."
"Haven't you ever horrors and blues of your own without mine? And, besides, I can't hold on to you all my life."
"Why not? What else am I there for? I can't play the fiddle."
Theo rose with a sigh, stretching both arms above his head.
"You may thank the gods for that," he said, as he let them fall. "Did you know old Hauptmann has wired again? He wants me back in Paris to-morrow night for the Beethoven concerto at the Chatelet."
"Yes, and you must go and play your best; it will disappoint mother if you don't. Now tumble into bed, and be asleep in five minutes; you must start early to get in to town for the boat train. I'll call you; I shall be up in any case, to look after mother."
Whether Theo's playing of the concerto next evening was up to his best level or no, it was good enough to satisfy both audience and impresario. He ground his teeth a little under the rain of applause that followed; his nerves were overstrung to the pitch that makes any sound appear a menace and any crowd a ravening beast. The excited audience, shouting, staring, clapping hands and waving programmes, horrified and sickened him; he shut his eyes despairingly.
"Bis! Bis!" they yelled at him. "Bis!"
His breath came in quick pants of distress; he was almost ready to clap both hands over his ears and shut out the sound. It struck upon him like a blow, like sacrilege; it was as if he must cry out to them: "Stop! Hush,
for shame! I can't play; my mother is dying."
He turned to leave the platform, but on the steps the impresario thrust the violin into his hands. He pushed it back.
"I can't... I'm tired..."
"Give them something — anything — quick! or we shall never be done to-night. It's the only way to stop them."