"What was they trying to do?" somebody said in a high indignant voice, "kill somebody?"
Alice looked up. Fred was standing silently beside the car. She felt as if she had a hmidred things to say to him, and none of them were necessary. She smiled feebly. The world shook down, became a litde less chaotic. Soon the doctor came.
Innes was damaged—three ribs. The car was not, except for a crumpled fender that had touched a fence. Fred maneuvered it away from the pit, on the brink of which it hung. And it went back up the hill to the Whitlock house, carrying Innes, carrying Alice, back again.
Inside, the Whitlock girls were sitting in the parlor. Josephine, who was sweeping up the last of the glass fragments from the hall, sent curious glances in their direction. It was not then- custom to sit together in the evening. It was unusual to see all three of them sitting together Hke that, unless there was an argument or something. She guessed they were still thinking about Mr. Innes's being here and the doctor and all. Because they weren't talking. They never did talk much to each other. It took somebody from outside to start their tongues. Usually, the minute the outsider was gone, they fell apart, each sister into her own mind, kind of. They were apart now, but it was funny the way they kept on sitting in there, all three of them. Josephine felt puzzled and groped for what puzzled her.
When the two cars came. Dr. Follett's following, Gertrude heard them first.
She said, "Is that the car?" Her voice lilted. Josephine sat back on her haunches, turning her round eyes toward the door.
Isabel said, with quick, nervous attention, "That sounds like Innes!"
Maud's eyes ran from one to the other and then to Josephine's listening pose in the hall.
"What's the matter? Anything happen?" she said. Her tongue came out to touch her lower lip.
Josephine couldn't help feeling that something, somehow, had taken the edge off the surprise.
Fred and the doctor got Innes upstairs. The upper hall of the Whitlock house ran around two sides of the stairwell, and another branch went toward the front of the house near the bathroom door. K you turned to the left at the top of the stairs, passed a door, then an old-fashioned mahogany chest of drawers against the wall, you came to a second door which led to a room over the kitchen wing, a large room with tliree sides to the weather, that had been Stephen Whitlock's own. Papa's room, they called it. It was furnished as it had been for him, full of enormous pieces. The big bed was mahogany, with solid ends. The curviQg headboard towered high. Here they put Innes. The room was chilly. Isabel sent Mr. Johnson to do something about the heat. She, herself, kicked open the register in the floor.
Dr. Follett paid no attention to the three sisters. Isabel was twittering, Gertrude stiff, Maud a solid lump in the door. He set to work on his patient. Alice found herself trembling in reaction. She asked if they shouldn't send for his mother.
Gertrude said, "Yes, of course. The telephone is in the hall, my dear. Tell me, Alice, does he look bad?"
"Yes. He looks dreadful," Alice said with a mean desire to shock her. The pale woman closed her colorless eyes. Alice passed Maud in the doorway. Maud was watching the doctor. Her gaze licked at his busy back. She was grinning.
AMce went down stairs, clinging to the railing. Josephine was on her way from the fitchen with a kettle and a basin. She told Ahce one had only to ask the operator. So Alice asked. After she had spoken to Susan Innes, she sat down on the bottom step. What a mess! Fred passed her, coming down. He put his hand on her shoulder for a second.
"O.K?"
"I'm shaking like a leaf," she said. "Where are you going?"
"Doc wants his bag."
"I guess we'll stay here, won't we?"
"Looks like it."
"It's funny," Alice said "I had a premonition."
"Yeah. So did I."
Alice rested her head against the banister while he was briefly gone. She thought to herself that Innes, ill,
belonged to his family. After all, she had contracted for an Innes in full health. It was annoying of him to keep getting hurt, one way or another. Innes was a nuisance. When Fred came in with the doctor's bag, the doctor's voice at the head of the stairs called down.
"Can you run down to my office and get a few things my wife will have ready?"
"Sure." Fred was cheerful and unshaken enough to run errands.
"Tell her the bottom drawer. Ask anybody where I Hve."
"I'll find it. You want diis, don't you?"
"I'll take the bag up," Alice said crossly, dragging herself to her feet She thought angrily: Well, if I have to be cheerful and a pillar of strength, O.K., O.K.
'Thanks," Fred said carelessly. He put the bag down and went off. He didn't see why she shouldn't be cheerful and strong. That was annoying, too. People of his class, Alice thought meanly, have no nerves.
Then Susan Innes came panting in. She was an old lady, and she'd climbed the hill too fast. Her face was pinker than ever. She was all hot and upset. She was an old darling, AHoe thought, poor lamb, all hot and bothered. So Alice found herself saying soothing words and helping her upstairs. As the old lady's weight fell on her arm, Alice felt cool and strong. Well, I'm young, she thought, damn it.
They mounted into what seemed like a crowd, through which the doctor came directly to Susan. "He's going to be aU right. Nothing to worry about. He's very nervous, of course. I'll soon strap him up and hell have a little phenobarbital and go off to sleep. Be feeling much better by tomorrow. Now, Susan . . ."
Susan said, "Where is he, doctor?''
She went with him to her son.
Alice found herself facing the Whitlock girls, who stood almost in a line. There was Isabel, fumbling at the neck of her dress with her sharp-nailed left hand. There was Gertrude, stiff and tall, locked in her colorless world of sound. There was Maud, fat ankles wide apart, her mad garment hanging every which way, her eyes shifting busily from Alice to her sisters. She looked as if thought were running
in her head like a squirrel in its cage. Alice tossed her own head and marched mto the bedroom. She crossed toward the big bed. Susan was bending there. Her voice murmured like a lullaby.
The doctor said, "My bag?"
"Oh, gosh," said AUce. "I forgot. YU. get it."
The house was confused. Alice was confused. Her mind seemed unable to seize upon and foUow out a thread of action. Susan's coming had made her forget the bag. Now, as she went out of the room again, she forgot the sisters. They were gone. They had melted away like a chorus whose turn was over. But Alice forgot them.
She paused to try to pull herself together. I might as well, she thought, for all the notice I get. Be cool. Be strong. Perhaps it was a question of doing one thing at a time. First, get the doctor's bag. Then ask what more she could do. Stop floating around like a fool. Stop being batted this way and that. Take stock. What happens next? She put one foot in front of the other, deliberately taking thought to do so. She started for the head of the stairs.
It was just at that moment that she heard the soimd. The house was full of sound, of course. Behind her, in the sickroom, she could hear the doctor's voice and Susan's. From somewhere came the soimd of running water. There was movement on the floor below, faint sounds of walking. Yet this one new sound seemed to echo alone in the isolated quiet of the hall in which she stood. It came from below, she thought.
An odd soimd. A queer little chuckle in the throat. A little caw of excitement. It was a sound no one would make on purpose. She felt that it came directly from thought. Spontaneous. Unconscious. There was voice behind it, even though it was less a voice than a stirring in the throat. It was queer.
Alice came to the head of the stairs and started down. She found nobody there, in the downstairs hall. She picked up the doctor's bag and took it back with her. One thing at a time.
Innes was talking. He must be in pain. Ifis ribs hurt him. He had come out of the dazed state, and he was talking in a high-pitched, frantic voice. Alice closed the door