MRS DUBEDAT Absolutely. I do not give my trust by halves.

RIDGEON I know that. Well, I am going to test you — hard. Will you believe me when I tell you that I understand what you have just told me; that I have no desire but to serve you in the most faithful friendship; and that your hero must be preserved to you.

MRS DUBEDAT Oh forgive me. Forgive what I said. You will preserve him to me.

RIDGEON At all hazards. [She kisses his hand. He rises hastily]. No: you have not heard the rest. [She rises too]. You must believe me when I tell you that the one chance of preserving the hero lies in Louis being in the care of Sir Ralph.

MRS DUBEDAT [firmly] You say so: I have no more doubt: I believe you. Thank you.

RIDGEON Good-bye. [She takes his hand]. I hope this will be a lasting friendship.

MRS DUBEDAT It will. My friendships end only with death.

RIDGEON Death ends everything, doesnt it? Good-bye. With a sigh and a look of pity at her which she does not understand, he goes.

ACT IV

The studio. The easel is pushed back to the wall. Cardinal Death, holding his scythe and hour-glass like a sceptre and globe, sits on the throne. On the hat-stand hang the hats of Sir Patrick and Bloomfield Bonington. Walpole, just come in, is hanging up his beside them. There is a knock. He opens the door and finds Ridgeon there.

WALPOLE Hallo, Ridgeon!

They come into the middle of the room together, taking off their gloves.

RIDGEON Whats the matter! Have you been sent for, too?

WALPOLE Weve all been sent for. Ive only just come: I havnt seen him yet. The charwoman says that old Paddy Cullen has been here with B. B. for the last half-hour. [SIR PATRICK, with bad news in his face, enters from the inner room]. Well: whats up?

SIR PATRICK Go in and see. B. B. is in there with him.

WALPOLE goes. RIDGEON is about to follow him; but SIR PATRICK stops him with a look.

RIDGEON What has happened?

SIR PATRICK Do you remember Jane Marsh’s arm?

RIDGEON Is that whats happened?

SIR PATRICK Thats whats happened. His lung has gone like Jane’s arm. I never saw such a case. He has got through three months galloping consumption in three days.

RIDGEON B. B. got in on the negative phase.

SIR PATRICK Negative or positive, the lad’s done for. He wont last out the afternoon. He’ll go suddenly: Ive often seen it.

RIDGEON So long as he goes before his wife finds him out, I dont care. I fully expected this.

SIR PATRICK [drilyJ It’s a little hard on a lad to be killed because his wife has too high an opinion of him. Fortunately few of us are in any danger of that.

SIR RALPH comes from the inner room and hastens between them, humanely concerned, but professionally elate and communicative.

B. B. Ah, here you are, Ridgeon. Paddy’s told you, of course.

RIDGEON Yes.

B. B. It’s an enormously interesting case. You know, Colly, by Jupiter, if I didnt know as a matter of scientific fact that I’d been stimulating the phagocytes, I should say I’d been stimulating the other things. What is the explanation of it, Sir Patrick? How do you account for it, Ridgeon? Have we over-stimulated the phagocytes? Have they not only eaten up the bacilli, but attacked and destroyed the red corpuscles as well? a possibility suggested by the patient’s pallor. Nay, have they finally begun to prey on the lungs themselves? Or on one another? I shall write a paper about this case.

WALPOLE comes back, very serious, even shocked. He comes between B. B. and RIDGEON.

WALPOLE Whew! B. B.: youve done it this time.

B. B. What do you mean?

WALPOLE Killed him. The worst case of neglected blood-poisoning I ever saw. It’s too late now to do anything. He’d die under the anaesthetic.

B. B. [offended] Killed! Really, Walpole, if your monomania were not well known, I should take such an expression very seriously.

SIR PATRICK Come come! When youve both killed as many people as I have in my time youll feel humble enough about it. Come and look at him, Colly.

RIDGEON and SIR PATRICK go into the inner room.

WALPOLE I apologize, B. B. But it’s blood-poisoning.

B. B. [recovering his irresistible good nature] My dear Walpole, e v e r y t h i n g is blood-poisoning. But upon my soul, I shall not use any of that stuff of Ridgeon’s again. What made me so sensitive about what you said just now is that, strictly between ourselves, Ridgeon has cooked our young friend’s goose.

JENNIFER, worried and distressed, but always gentle, comes between them from the inner room. She wears a nurse’s apron.

MRS DUBEDAT Sir Ralph: what am I to do? That man who insisted on seeing me, and sent in word that his business was important to Louis, is a newspaper man. A paragraph appeared in the paper this morning saying that Louis is seriously ill; and this man wants to interview him about it. How can people be so brutally callous?

WALPOLE [moving vengfully towards the door] You just leave me to deal with him!

MRS DUBEDAT [stopping him] But Louis insists on seeing him: he almost began to cry about it. And he says he cant bear his room any longer. He says he wants to [she struggles with a sob] — to die in his studio. Sir Patrick says let him have his way: it can do no harm. What shall we do?

B. B. [encouragingly] Why, follow Sir Patrick’s excellent advice, of course. As he says, it can do him no harm; and it will no doubt do him good — a great deal of good. He will be much the better for it.

MRS DUBEDAT [a little cheered] Will you bring the man up here, Mr Walpole, and tell him that he may see Louis, but that he mustnt exhaust him by talking? [WALPOLE nods and goes out by the outer door]. Sir Ralph, dont be angry with me; but Louis will die if he stays here. I must take him to Cornwall. He will recover there.

B. B. [brightening wonderfully, as if Dubedat were already saved] Cornwall! The very place for him! Wonderful for the lungs. Stupid of me not to think of it before. You are his best physician after all, dear lady. An inspiration! Cornwall: of course, yes, yes, yes.

MRS DUBEDAT [comforted and touched] You are so kind, Sir Ralph. But dont give me m u c h hope or I shall cry; and Louis cant bear that.

B. B. [gently putting his protecting arm round her shoulders] Then let us come back to him and help to carry him in. Cornwall! of course, of course. The very thing! [They go together into the bedroom].

WALPOLE returns with the NEWSPAPER MAN, a cheerful, affable young man who is disabled for ordinary business pursuits by a congenital erroneousness which renders him incapable of describing accurately anything he sees, or understanding or reporting accurately anything he hears. As the only employment in which these defects do not matter is journalism (for a newspaper, not having to act on its description and reports, but only to sell them to idly curious people, has nothing but honor to lose by inaccuracy and unveracity), he has perforce become a journalist, and has to keep up an air of high spirits through a daily struggle with his own illiteracy and the precariousness of his employment. He has a note-book, and occasionally attempts to make a note; but as he cannot write shorthand, and does not write with ease in any hand, he generally gives it up as a bad job before he succeeds in finishing a sentence.

THE NEWSPAPER MAN [looking round and making indecisive attempts at notes] This is the studio, I suppose.

WALPOLE Yes.

THE NEWSPAPER MAN [wittily] Where he has his models, eh?