“But he’s beastly difficult to say no to,” he added. “You mean to somehow, but you don’t.”
“I expect he’s trying to manage you,” Mr. Roper cleverly hinted.
This decided Maurice once and for all. He refused all further invitations. He had a terror of being managed, and though he always was managed, gusts of this fear would seize upon him at any effort to influence him in any direction favorable to himself. He was never in the least uneasy at being managed to his disadvantage.
Baffled in his main direction, Winn turned his mind upon the subject of Mr. Roper. Mr. Roper was slippery and intensely amiable; these were not the qualities with which Winn felt himself capable of direct dealing. He would have liked to destroy Mr. Roper, and he thought that the situation might eventually arrive at this point; but until it did, he saw that he had better leave Mr. Roper alone. “You can’t do anything with a worm but tread on it,” he said to himself, and in hotels people had to be careful how they trod on worms. There was still Mrs. Bouncing, but a slight study of that lady, which took place in the hall after dinner, put this possibility out of the question. She called Winn a “naughty man” and suggested his taking her tobogganing by moonlight.
Mr. Bouncing was a side issue, but Winn, despite his own marriage, held the theory that men ought to look after their wives. He felt that if there had been any question of other men he could have managed Estelle; or, even short of managing Estelle, he could have managed the other men. It occurred to him now that perhaps Mr. Bouncing could be led to act favorably upon the question of his wife’s behavior.
Mr. Bouncing could not walk at all; he could get out to the public balcony in the sun, and when he was there, he lay with the “Pink ’Un” and “The Whipping Post” on his lap and his thermometer beside him. All he asked was that he should have his hot milk regularly four times a day. He hardly talked to anybody at all. This was not because it made him cough to talk – it didn’t particularly; he coughed without being made to – but because he had exhausted his audience.
There was only one subject left to Mr. Bouncing, and that was his health; after he had told people all his symptoms, they didn’t want to hear any more and there was nothing left to talk about. So he lay there in the sunshine thinking about his symptoms instead. There were a good many of them to think about, and all of them were bad.
Mr. Bouncing was surprised when Winn sat down to talk to him, and he explained to him at once exactly what the doctors thought of his case. Winn listened passively, and came back the next day at the same time.
This surprised Mr. Bouncing still more, and little by little the subjects between them widened. Mr. Bouncing still talked about himself, but he talked differently. He told Winn things he had never told any one else, and he was really pleased when Winn laughed at a joke he showed him in “The Pink ’Un.”
“You can laugh,” he said almost admiringly. “I daren’t, you know; that’s one of the things I’m told not to do, but I often wish some one would come here and laugh at the jokes for me. It’s quite an effort for me sometimes not to burst out; and then, you see, hemorrhage! I knew a poor chap who literally died of it – died of laughing. They might put that in the ‘Pink ’Un,’ mightn’t they?”
Winn said he thought one might die of worse things.
“Yes, I know,” agreed Mr. Bouncing, “but I’m not going to be caught like that. I dare say you don’t know, but I believe I’m the worst case in the hotel. I’m not quite sure; that’s what worries me. There’s a Mrs. Maguire who stays in bed. I’ve made all sorts of inquiries about her; but people are so stupid, they don’t know the right symptoms to ask about, and I can’t go in and look at her, can I? And my wife won’t. She says one death’s-head is enough for her and I quite see her point. Perhaps Mrs. Maguire’s case is partly nerves. My wife thinks I’m very nervous. So I am, you know, in a way. I have to be careful; but, Lord! when I see the things people do up here! The risks they take! You, for instance. I’ve seen you do heaps of things that are perfectly deadly; and yet there you are getting better. Funny, isn’t it?”
Winn said it was funny, but he supposed one must take his chance.
“Yes, I know; that is what people keep saying,” Mr. Bouncing admitted. “You can take it if you’ve got it; but my point is, if you haven’t got it, you can’t take it, can you? Now, as far as I can see, looking back from the start, you know, I never had a dog’s chance. It’s years since I went out in a wind without an overcoat on, and once in the very beginning I got my feet wet; but for the last five years I’ve been as careful as a girl with a new hat. I think I shall live till the spring if I don’t get influenza. I hope you’ll remember not to come near me if you feel a cold coming on.” Winn assured him that he would. “I asked Dr. Gurnet the other day,” Mr. Bouncing went on musingly, “if he thought I should ever be able to walk to the post-office again – I used to get there and back last winter, you know – but he wouldn’t give me a direct answer. He said he thought I could rely on the hotel porter. He’s not quite definite enough – Dr. Gurnet. I told him the other day how difficult it was to get up in the morning, and he said, ‘Well, then, why not stay in bed?’ But I’m not going to do that. I believe you go quicker when you stay in bed. Besides, I should be dull lying there in bed. I like to sit here and watch people and see the silly things they do. That young boy you sit at table with – he won’t come to any good. Silly! He thinks my wife likes him, but she doesn’t; it’s just that she must have her mind taken off, you know, at times, poor thing. I like to see her amused.”
“And what about you?” asked Winn. “It seems to me she might better spend some of her time amusing you.”
Mr. Bouncing pointed to the “Pink ’Un.”
“I’ve got plenty to amuse me,” he explained, “and you mustn’t think she doesn’t look after me. Why, the other day – when I had the high temperature, you know, and stayed in my room – she came to the door after she’d been skating, and said, ‘Still coughing?’ That shows she noticed I was worse, doesn’t it?”
“I’m sure she must be awfully anxious about you,” Winn assented with more kindliness than truth. “But do you care for her knocking about so with young Rivers and that chap Roper? It seems to me she’s too young and too pretty. If I were you, I’d call her in a bit; I would really.”
Mr. Bouncing leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. This always made Winn a little uneasy, for when Mr. Bouncing’s eyes were shut it was so difficult to tell whether he was alive or dead. However, after a few minutes he opened them.
“They are five minutes late with my hot milk,” he said. “Do you mind just getting up and touching the bell? And you’ve got such a sharp way of speaking to waiters, perhaps you wouldn’t mind hauling him over the coals for me when he comes?” Winn complied with this request rapidly and effectively, and the hot milk appeared as if by magic.
Mr. Bouncing drank some before he returned to the subject of his wife.
“Yes,” he said, “I dare say you would call her in. You’re the kind of man who can make people come in when you call. I’m not. Besides, you see, she’s young; she’s got her life to live, and, then, ought I to have married her at all? Of course I was wonderfully well at the time; I could walk several miles, I remember, and had no fever to speak of. Still, there were the symptoms. She took the risk, of course – she was one of a large family, and I had money – but it hasn’t been very amusing for her, you must admit.”
Winn didn’t admit it, because it seemed to him as if it had been extremely amusing for Mrs. Bouncing, a great deal more amusing than it had any right to be.