“Well,” he said, “well, I think we’ve got you out of the wood, Mrs. Ambrey. Quite out of the wood.”
“Oh yes, I’m sure you have,” she murmured.
“So that at the end of this week — say Friday, if you like—”
“Why, — oh — that’s — the day after tomorrow—”
“Yes. If you’re ready to go home — you’ve been up every day for a few hours lately, haven’t you?”
“Yes, indeed I have. I feel quite — quite my self again. I shall be glad to go home. Though I’ve been wonderfully comfortable, and well looked after here.”
“They run the place quite well,” condescended the doctor. “The cooking is good, I’m told, and the beds comfortable.”
“Very comfortable. I’ve slept better here than I — than I’ve slept for years, I think.”
“But you ought to sleep well everywhere — at your age.” He did not say it with a smile, as though he meant to pay her a compliment about her youthful appearance, but gravely, rather as though rebuking her.
“I don’t, exactly, mean that I don’t sleep well as a rule,” stammered Mrs. Ambrey. “But I’m, perhaps, an unusually light sleeper. I wake very easily. Here, I’ve just fallen asleep and then never stirred again until the nurse came. It’s not quite like that at home.”
“Perhaps at home you let yourself get overtired,” he suggested, still gravely. “It’s the trouble with modern women, of course. They rush from one thing to another, living on their nerves the whole time. Do you find that you’re away from home most days?”
“No. We live in the country, you know. We hardly ever go away except just in the summer, to take the children to Scotland, or somewhere even nearer. I do a good many things in the country, I suppose, but not more than anybody else — much, much less than some of my friends, who go a great deal to London as well.”
“I see. I somehow fancied — Let me see, it was the — the tragic death of a sister that made you break down?”
“Yes.” She looked at him as she said it, and noticed that now she did not want to cry at the mention of Anna.
“Very sad, very sad — and a great shock, no doubt. But you have your husband — your children. You have children?”
“Oh yes. Five children.”
“That’s excellent.” Dr. Gardner rubbed his hands together, and for the first time a gleam of satisfaction showed in his pale eyes. “That’s excellent. I’m an old-fashioned man, Mrs. Ambrey. I should like to see every woman with a family of six or seven children — or more, for that matter. Motherhood is a woman’s natural function. I was one of twelve myself, and I’m happy to say that I’ve got nine children. But it’s quite the exception, nowadays, to find a large family. Women are selfish — afraid of what ought to be their very highest duty.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Ambrey was moved to protest. “But when the parents have very little money, do you think they ought to go on having children? It seems improvident, doesn’t it?”
“My dear Mrs. — er — Mrs. Ambrey, when I was a boy at my father’s place in Shropshire forty years ago, the wages of the agricultural labourers came to about twelve shillings and sixpence a week. And their wives managed with that, and brought up nine or ten children, and kept them clean and decent and healthy. But in those days they did without wireless, and motor-bicycles, and ready-made finery from the shops. If women understood the meaning of unselfishness in these days — which they certainly don’t — it would be easy enough for them to manage, too.” He seemed almost angry.
“And in cases where the woman is delicate — when it’s a great strain on her?”
Surely, surely, a doctor would respond to that. Men might be unimaginative, but he, in his professional capacity, must have seen so many women suffer, lose their health, their youth, their beauty, prematurely. But he frowned heavily.
“A lot of that strain is fancifulness, you know. Of course, I’m not pretending that childbirth is anything but what it is — an occasion of physical suffering — although, nowadays, both the suffering and the risk have been reduced to a minimum. But I confess it always makes me indignant to hear a woman say, as so many of them do, that to have a child takes a whole year out of her life. The bearing and rearing of children is a woman’s life. It’s what she was created for. I can say these things to you, because you’ve given five children to the world, and I daresay—” He paused.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Ambrey hurriedly. “But I often think of women who haven’t got money enough, and who perhaps are not as strong as I am. You know, I’ve never been ill before.”
“You haven’t been ill now,” said the doctor brusquely. He got up and went and stood at the window. “A temporary breakdown of the nervous control, owing to a sudden shock, such as the death of your poor sister, is not an illness. There is nothing organically wrong with you at all. And there is no reason why you shouldn’t go home this very moment, if you want to.”
“Friday, you said.”
“Quite — quite. Friday will do excellently. It was only a figure of speech, to say you might go to-day. I meant to say, that you must understand, you’re quite well — quite strong. It’s only a case of resuming everyday life now.”
“Yes, yes, I see. I may do — do everything the same as before?”
“Well, yes. Don’t overdo things, you know — going from one end of the county to another by car, as you women do, and dancing half the night.”
“I don’t go to dances.”
“No? A very good thing, too. Dancing is all very well for young girls, but the way women of all ages have taken it up rather sickens me.”
“Can I — can I garden?”
“Of course,” said the doctor impatiently. “Do anything you like within reason. Rest, if you feel you’re tired.”
“I — I always find—” she heard herself laughing — an odd little sound. “It seems rather absurd, I know, but I generally find that I sleep better by — by myself. I don’t know if you’d advise—”
“Good Heavens, my dear lady, I don’t advise on those sort of questions!” He laughed, an irritated laugh, she thought vaguely—” I’ve told you that there’s nothing the matter with you now, and that you can resume everyday life, in every respect.” She looked at him dumbly, and he stared down at her — rather contemptuously, she thought.
“You must think of your husband, as well as yourself, after all. You know what a man’s like — what he’ll expect from his wife — better than I can tell you, no doubt. And from what you’ve told me” — he glanced at the photograph of the children, and smiled suddenly—” from what you’ve told me and from that very charming picture there, I take it that there is — in short, that your husband is fortunate in possessing what old-fashioned people used to call a dutiful wife.”
For an instant his eyes held hers, and then he put out his white, well-cushioned hand.
“Good-bye, Mrs. Ambrey. I needn’t see you again before you go — in fact, I expect to be in the country to-morrow and the day after—”
“Thank you—” she began breathlessly.
“Not at all — not at all. I wish I could have done more, but Nature — the best doctor—”
He shook her hand, bowing, and was gone.
Mrs. Ambrey lay back with her eyes closed.
She heard a voice, very far away, say something: “Then I can’t ever go back to the night-nursery again,” and then realized, with astonishment, that it was her own voice that had spoken.
What on earth had she meant?
Nothing.
She could, of course, go to the children’s night-nursery whenever she pleased. In two more days, now, she would be softly entering it to say “Goodnight” to them.
It was such a pretty room, too — luxurious, almost, and with a fire always, in winter.
Not a bit like the night-nursery in which Elly and Anna, a long time ago —
At that, a thought hovered on the threshold of her consciousness, like a bird with beating wings, and she fel
t frightened, and was glad that the nurse came in again, talking.
From then until the day on which she was to leave the nursing home Mrs. Ambrey encouraged the nurses to talk to her.
She thought how pleasant and friendly they all were, even if their conversation did seem rather foolish and futile.
They were so sympathetically excited, too, about her return to her husband and children.
“Won’t the kiddies be thrilled!” was the favourite exclamation of the little fair-haired nurse.
It was she who helped Mrs. Ambrey to dress, after her last lunch in the nursing home bedroom.
Her husband was to fetch her in the car at three o’clock.
At ten minutes to three, the little nurse had taken up her station at the window, and was chattering hard.
Mrs. Ambrey sat in the armchair, near the bed, and sipped at the cup of tea that had, as usual, been insisted upon by the nurses.
“I’m longing to see what Major Ambrey is like, you know! It seems quite queer, never to have seen him, since the day he brought you here. Won’t he be pleased at the difference?”
“He’ll be delighted. I’m so looking forward to surprising him.”
“Of course. And then getting back to your lovely home—”
“I am very lucky,” said Mrs. Ambrey suddenly.
“Well, I should say so! Oh — oh! — There’s a car stopping now — a long, blue one — with a chauffeur—”
“That’s ours!” Her voice was breathless.
“And there he is — getting out. Ever so tall, isn’t he? A regular soldier—”
There was a silence, and when the little nurse could see no more, she drew back with a sigh of satisfaction, and turned round. Her face altered with almost ludicrous swiftness, and she sprang forward, as the choking screams of hysteria broke from the small, suddenly rigid figure in the armchair.
THE GESTURE
I
“I AM going home to-morrow,” she said with pale lips.
Marbury looked quite as unhappy as she had meant and expected him to look.
“Must you, Eve? It will all be quite different without you.”
“The weather must break, anyhow, in a day or two. This is quite unnatural, for Belgium,” she returned flippantly.
Heat shimmered across the wide, cobbled place. The striped red cotton umbrellas over the little fruit and flower stalls alternated agreeably with the neat green trees that stood in straight lines, like toy trees, out of a box.
“Nobody else is going home until next week. The Roumanians, even, and the Lithuanians — they have the longest journeys — they’re staying for the final Conference on Saturday.”
“I can’t help it,” Eve said. “I shall go home to-morrow.”
And the words that she had been trying not to say, said themselves.
“I can’t afford to stay. I oughtn’t really to have come.”
Marbury turned a dazed face towards her. “But,” he said incredulously. “Do you mean that — that you find it expensive?”
He positively blushed as he said it, and Eve realized that the question, to him, with the Belgian franc standing at 175, sounded preposterous.
“I truly mean,” she replied, smiling carefully, “that to me certainly, and I think quite probably to most of us, every penny counts. I don’t know how many of the delegates have had their expenses paid — most of them, I should imagine — but I came on my own, thinking I could probably work up an article, or a short story, and make my expenses that way. So I shall — but in the meanwhile, some money on which I’d counted hasn’t turned up, and I’ve heard to-day that it isn’t due for another three months. I’d made a mistake. You know, I depend entirely, and my mother almost entirely, on what I can earn by my writing.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
He looked terribly startled, she saw.
She smiled at him again.
“You see, you’re Miles Marbury. Your very first play was a success, wasn’t it? I don’t see how you could possibly understand about little people, like us, who get ten refusals from editors for every acceptance. Even the novelists — except the very best ones — can’t hope to make in a year what you probably make in a month. As for the journalists — like myself—” she shrugged her shoulders.
“I know, of course,” he stammered, “that I’ve been tremendously lucky. Looking back, now, I’m amazed at the run my play had — the first one, I mean. Of course, after one successful play, it’s easy enough to get the next taken.”
He was genuinely modest.
Eve liked that about him very much. It was so unusual in a man who had achieved both a reputation and a fortune before his thirty-fifth year.
His was the outstanding personality at the Conference. Even the French and the Belgians admitted that.
The women had tried hard to annex him — every one of them, from the beautiful Greek delegate who wore a black lace scarf twisted round her head in Madonna fashion, to the wife of the Dutch delegate — a colossal woman, able to speak nine languages fluently.
Eve, alone, had succeeded in attracting his attention seriously.
She guessed that this was partly because he was not the type of man to interest himself in a married woman. He genuinely preferred girls — Eve was sure that he thought of her as a girl, although she was thirty. But he probably supposed her to be about twenty-five.
She was the youngest woman at the Conference, and might quite reasonably have claimed to be the best-looking one — for the Greek lady was fat.
Also, she was English, and Miles Marbury, quite certainly, would count that the first essential of his ideal woman.
Finally, by a piece of purest good luck, they were staying at the same hotel.
Eve had gone there because her Belgian friend, Marthe de Lattre, with whom she was to have stayed, had been unable, at the very last minute, to receive her, and there had been no other room available in any of the hotels that she knew about.
It was too expensive for her. She had only spoken the truth in telling Marbury that she could not afford to remain on in Brussels until the end of the Conference. Even the restaurant meals, and the expeditions to Antwerp and Bruges, in which everyone had joined, had cost more than she could afford.
Eve had always been poor, and she had always been extravagant.
Her own extravagance, every now and then, would rise up and terrify her.
What would happen to her, unless she married, in twenty years’ time?
Her mother was always urging her to marry, for Eve was attractive to men.
What her mother did not realize, Eve knew very well, was that in the newspaper world (world of Fleet Street) an affair very, very seldom culminated in a proposal of marriage. The men she knew, and with whom she went about, either were married already, or else did not want to marry at all. They could not afford marriage.
Miles Marbury was different.
He could afford anything he liked, within reason, and it was obvious that he needed a wife. Already, he was half in love with Eve. So was the Irish delegate, a young fellow who wrote Keltic poetry for which nobody ever paid.
Eve liked O’Reilly, and she liked Miles Marbury, but she was not in love with either of them.
“I say, don’t go to-morrow,” pleaded Marbury, “there must be some way —— —”
He hesitated, and she saw quite well what was in his mind.
“I’m going to pack!” she cried, and jumped up laughing, and went into the hotel, and up to her bedroom on the third floor. Once she was inside, with the door shut, the smile died away altogether from her face. She sat down on the bed, and gazed at her reflection in the gilt-framed mirror over the hearth.
Her pale, pointed little face was framed in loose, soft waves of brown hair. It had been an expensive permanent wave — but a very successful one. Her eyes were enormous — dark-grey, set in beautiful, curved black lashes. Her nose was aristocratic-looking, and her mouth provoking.
She even had a dimple.
>
But of what use were natural advantages, if one never got any real opportunities for making the most of them?
Eve’s straight, delicate brows met in a frown. Ten years earlier, she had been romantic. Now, she knew that she was hard, acquisitive, eager to attain security at any cost. The-only security, for women of her type, lay in marriage with a rich man. Marbury was her opportunity.
She had not expected, nor meant, to have to go home so soon, but she was too acute not to have seen almost instantly that her change of plans might serve her very well.
It requires resolution for a woman to turn her back on the man that she means to marry, Eve reflected, but it is often the surest way of bringing him to the point of a proposal.
She took out her mother’s letter and read it again.
“I’m glad you’re having a nice time, dear, but do be careful with your money. I can’t send you another penny, and there are lots of bills waiting here. The money from Uncle Philip won’t come till October. I don’t know why you think it’s due any earlier, for it isn’t. And there’ll be plenty of use for it when it does turn up. You know we’re behind with the rent.”
Eve knew, of course.
She sat and frowned at the letter.
It was obvious that she must go home. It would be no fun to stay on in Brussels without any money, and besides, she knew that whether she had it or not she would be certain to spend money. The things in the shop-windows — frilly, or glittering, or glowing with colour, were irresistible to her.
“This really is a bargain... it’d be a shame to miss such an opportunity.... I’ll manage somehow... do without something else....”
That was the way she fell.
Eve sighed, and packed her suitcase, and her new scarlet hat-box, round and shiny. She could go to the Congo Museum with the others this afternoon, and have tea out there, and she could go to the Opera with them that night — Denis O’Reilly had invited her to a seat in the loge — and early next morning she must pay her bill, send for her last taxi, and take her place in the 8.20 a in train to Ostende. By five o’clock she would be in London again — by six o’clock, in her own suburb.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 559