The Open Question Part 44

"_Mrs. Mary Burne, 21 Rue Blanche._"

CHAPTER XVI

Driscoll was better next morning, and able to eat breakfast. Gano had got into the habit of making coffee in the invalid's room in the morning as well as at night. Driscoll had waked with an appet.i.te.

"Ha! cream! Did Mary bring that?"

"Mary?"

"Yes; Mrs. Burne."

"No; I got it. I thought we deserved cream to-day."

"How long was Mary here?"

"Oh, pretty late, I should say."

"H'm! That woman's had a d.a.m.ned hard time," Driscoll said, ruminating between his sips of coffee; "does those colored things for the _Semaine Ill.u.s.tree_. She's drawn ever since she was a baby. Never had a lesson in her life till two years ago. I met her at Julien's. She was working like the devil."

"Making up for lost time?"

"Yes, poor girl! Married a brute of a Melbourne ship-builder when she was seventeen. Stood him till three years ago, and then--Lord! the audacity of these women--came to Paris to study art, if you please.

Thirty, and never had a lesson in her life!"

He laughed, and held out his coffee-cup.

"Ship-builder dead?" asked Gano, filling it up.

"Dead! No! alive and kicking, or I'd have made her marry me."

"Lord! the audacity of these men," laughed his friend.

When Driscoll got definitely worse, Mrs. Burne stayed with him through the day, and Gano sat up with him at night.

"If you _can_ do it, it's best so," she said, simply.

"Of course--of course," agreed Gano, hastily, his Puritan mind involuntarily considering the proprieties, even in these haunts.

"You see, while you sleep I can look after him, and do my work too if I have daylight. You can write by lamplight."

And the practical sense of the arrangement shamed his first interpretation of her plan. He found himself during their brief meetings, morning and evening, watching the woman with a deepened interest.

"Am _I_ in love with her, too?" he wondered, as he caught himself following with something like envy her ministering to his friend.

But all she did was strangely lacking in any hint of the supposed relation between Driscoll and herself. There was infinite gentleness in her, but no happy confusion. Gano never saw in her quiet eyes that look he was always dreading to surprise.

"She doesn't care about him in the way he thinks, poor devil!" he said, at last, to himself.

The only time he ever ventured to speak of her goodness to the sick man, "Oh, Mr. Driscoll has been kind to _me_," she said. "He got me my place on the _Semaine Ill.u.s.tree_."

Why, it was a sheer case of extravagant grat.i.tude! Gano was conscious this explanation pleased him.

"How's the club getting on?" Driscoll asked her one evening, as she was leaving.

Gano was spreading out his writing materials on the rickety table.

"Oh, all right," she said, pinning her brown hat firmly on her coil of black hair.

"_You_ haven't had the honor of being admitted to the club," said Driscoll, laughing and nodding over at Gano. "_You_ aren't considered worthy."

"_You_ weren't considered worthy," said Mrs. Burne, smiling faintly, "but you would come."

"And if I adopted the same tactics," suggested Gano.

"No, no," she said, hastily; "it's really only for women."

She hunted about for her gloves. It was the first time Gano had ever seen a look of embarra.s.sment on the calm face.

"What kind of a club?" he asked.

"A--debating club," she answered. "Good-night."

"Ha, ha, ha! I like that."

But she was gone with a look of pleading cast on Driscoll as she went--a look that was like a prayer.

Gano felt absurdly piqued to know more, not of the foolish club, but of this fellow-being.

"You say you've been?"

He fitted a new pen in the holder.

"Oh yes; but they didn't do anything very remarkable the night I was there. They meet in Mary's lodging. There were only three then. She says there are sixteen now, two or three of 'em men, in spite of it's being 'only for women.' Can't think where she puts 'em."

"What did they debate?"

"Oh, some rot about social duties. They really go to sit by a fire and get a cup of hot tea. But it's a very good thing," he added, with a sudden rush of loyalty. "It's grown out of Mary's keeping one or two women from going the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire."

His desire to "guy" the club seemed to have gone out with the founder's going. The same thing had happened before.

"Lots of English and Americans let loose here, you know, without a _notion_--"

He made an expressive movement of his big hands.