Winnie could think of nothing better to say than ‘Ought I?’ but it was quite enough for her to say. It was the manner, and not the matter, that told. Winnie was too superior altogether, and that throaty accent of hers irritated her parents past all bearing. It reminded her father too painfully of the days when he had been a slave in a bank, and it forced home upon her mother the knowledge that her criticism of her clothes had been sincere, and it gave her an uncomfortable feeling that Winnie knew what she was talking about. It was Mrs Marble that found speech first.
‘Yes, you did ought,’ she said. ‘You owe us the clothes on your back, and all that fine schooling you’ve had, and – and everything else. So there!’
Winnie had lost her temper thoroughly by now.
‘I do, do I?’ she said. ‘Well, I shan’t owe you anything else, so there! I’ll go away now, this minute, if you’re not careful. I will, I tell you.’
She may have thought that this threat would be sure of silencing them, and making them sorry for what they had said; but she had left out of her reckoning the temper they were in, and the fact that they might not take her literally. Nor was she to know that there was one member in the house who might not be too sorry if she were to carry out her threat – someone who found it very worrying to have to guard his own backyard from his own daughter.
‘Pooh!’ said Mr Marble.
‘I will, I tell you. I will. Oh –’ And then Winnie stamped her foot at them as they stood there and turned and fled upstairs to her own room. Downstairs they heard the key turn in the lock.
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Mrs Marble, now that it was over. ‘I’ll go up to her, shall I?’
‘No,’ said Marble, ‘she’s only gone to have a good cry. Didn’t you hear her lock her door?’
But Winnie was not having a good cry. She had made her decision in red-hot mood, with a precipitation after her calm deliberation that was characteristic of her. She dragged out her trunks from under her bed and began to pile her clothes into them feverishly. It was all done before she had time to think.
Then she washed her face in cold water and re-powdered carefully. Now that her mind was made up there was nothing that could change it. She put on her hat, her very nicest hat, before the mirror, and walked downstairs again. Before her mother could come out into the hall to make her peace she had gone out, with the front door slamming behind her.
‘Gone for a walk,’ was Marble’s terse explanation when his wife tearfully reported this to him. ‘Gone for a walk to get over it. She’ll come back soon as right as rain.’
She was back sooner than they expected, however, and she came back in a cab. They heard her key in the door, and a moment afterwards they heard her directing the cab-driver upstairs to where her trunks lay. As the true import of this came home to her Mrs Marble hurried into the hall, wringing her hands.
‘Winnie, Winnie,’ she wailed. ‘We didn’t mean it, really we didn’t. Winnie, dear, don’t go like this. Will, tell her she mustn’t.’
But Mr Marble was silent. Winnie had come into the sitting-room to them, defiance in her eyes. They could hear the laboured steps of the cab-driver bringing down the first trunk.
‘Will, tell her she mustn’t,’ said Mrs Marble again.
But Mr Marble still said nothing. He was drumming with his fingers upon the arm of his chair. He was thinking, as hard as his confused mind and the tumult of his thoughts would allow. There was absolutely no denying the fact that it would be more convenient to have Winnie out of the house. One never knew, never. All the books said that it was the little things that gave one away, and the fewer people there were about to notice such things the better. Perhaps Mr Marble would not have considered this in connection with Winnie, but during that quarrel there was something that forced it upon him. Once more it was that dread family likeness. Winnie had looked rather like John, that time when he had come blundering into the sitting-room; and she had looked rather like young Medland, too. It had shaken him badly.
The heavy steps of the cab-driver were heard re-descending the stairs. They paused outside the door, and he coughed apologetically.
‘Two trunks and a ’atbox, mum. Is that right?’
‘Quite right,’ said Winnie, in her throatiest, most musical voice.
And still Mr Marble said nothing.
‘Good-bye,’ said Winnie. The throatiness disappeared like magic; there was a little break in her voice. It would have taken very little to have diverted her from her purpose.
Mrs Marble looked at her husband; waited for him to speak. All she could do was to wring her hands and choke in her breathing. Still Mr Marble did not speak. Winnie could bear it no longer. She swung round on her heel and ran out of the room, down the hall and out to the waiting cab.
‘Charing Cross,’ she said to the driver, huskily.
Mrs Marble only reached the gate when they were fifty yards away – beyond recall.
It was all very stupid and silly, and afterwards it seemed as if it might have been avoided – but it really might not.
15
And now began the darkest period in all Annie Marble’s unhappy life, the last few weeks before its unhappy end. The shadows had massed about 53 Malcolm Road, and as they clustered round ready for the last act of the tragedy poor Annie grew more and more conscious of their presence.
Winnie was gone; of that they could be sure now. They had waited a week in suspense; then they had begun to advertise for her. Discreet little advertisements in the personal columns of the papers – ‘Winnie. Come back to 53. Everything forgiven. Father and mother.’ That was the most they could do. For a brief half-second while they had been debating what to do there had arisen a hint that they might call in the police, but it vanished at once like a breath of cold air, leaving them looking dumbly at each other without meeting each other’s eyes.
Poor Annie spent anxious hours wondering what had happened to her daughter. There was only one thing that she thought possible, and that was that she was leading ‘a life of shame’ with one or other of the finely dressed men she knew. At this late period Annie remembered the flocks of men who had hovered – and more than hovered – about them during those days at the Grand Pavilion Hotel. She was sure that it was this that had happened. Neither she nor her husband knew that Winnie had had all that money with her when she left; nor, thinking the worst as they inevitably did, did they give her credit for her coolness of head that she could summon to her aid if necessary. Annie Marble thought she had driven her daughter into prostitution. It was the bitterest drop she had to swallow.
It was spring, and drifting through the air came the plague. Perhaps it was the self-same plague that had swept across England during the last years of the reign of Edward III; certainly the same plague that had killed its thousands in war-torn France in 1814, and claimed the life of an empress; the same plague that had decimated Europe the last spring of the war, taking more victims than had the war itself; the same plague that, sometimes virulent, sometimes almost negligible, had shown itself every spring since. The disease at which some people still scoff, but which is, nevertheless, deadly: influenza.
It was in the air, and seeking victims. Those who troubled too little about their health; those who were for the moment out of sorts; those who were depressed, or worn with anxiety – they were the victims the plague sought.
And Annie Marble was depressed and worn with anxiety. She was fretting about Winnie, and this was the last straw added to the intolerable burden under which she laboured. Will had returned almost entirely to his old ways; once again he passed his time in the sitting-room, peering drearily through the windows into the backyard. The whisky bottle was continually at his side; the words he had for his wife grew fewer and fewer. Sometimes he could still rouse himself sufficiently to pay her a little attention, and bring a flash of sunshine into her life, but the occasions were rare. Poor Annie!
Then one morning Annie was
not well. She had a headache, and she was thirsty. At first she was able to let it pass unheeded; it would go away during the morning, she thought, or at least it would be gone by to-morrow. So she began her day’s work, but when it was half completed she felt that she had to sit and rest for a space. The rest seemed to do her good, and she thought to complete the cure by going out to do her shopping. She put on her coat and hat, but even as she went downstairs dizziness came over her and she was forced to acknowledge herself beaten. With an effort of will she went into the sitting-room, where her husband was staring gloomily through the panes.
‘Will,’ she said, collapsing into a chair, ‘I don’t feel very well.’
That roused her husband a little, to ask what he could do, and what was the matter. It ended in Mr Marble going forth to do the shopping, leaving her to rest. It was tacitly understood between them, before he left her, that she was to rest in the sitting-room, whence she could keep an eye through the windows.
And the next day Annie felt worse than ever. But even in her illness she found something to comfort her. Marble was a little alarmed, and he showed it in the concern he evinced about her. He asked how she was very gently, and he tried to minister to her in a clumsy man’s fashion. Poor Annie was quite flustered and pleased, despite her sickness, by the attention he paid her. As he guided her to a chair and propped her back with cushions where it hurt, and asked what else he could do, she was almost glad she was ill. For she had refused to stay in bed. That was like her. If she could stand, she would get out of bed. And she could not only stand, but she could walk, when her dizziness permitted it. She was in a high fever, but to that she did not pay much attention. But she agreed, nevertheless, that it might perhaps be advisable that Will should do the shopping that day. He even volunteered that he should, and sallied out, shopping basket in hand, and a little list of things that were needed. He had forgotten one or two items the day before.
While he was gone, Annie sat in the drawing-room. Her mouth was dry, and there was an unpleasant taste in it, and her head felt queer, and there was a strange sort of doubtfulness about things when she looked at them. There were pains in her body and joints, too. But, for all that, she still felt the joy of her husband’s loving attention.
But Will had hardly gone when the postman dropped a letter through the door with his double knock. It was the eleven o’clock postman – he who brought the continental mail. Annie walked weakly to the door and picked up the letter, and went back weakly to the drawing-room. Not until she had sat down did she look at the envelope – she was not sure enough of her legs to read it standing up. But she was very interested as to what it might be. For perhaps it might be news of Winnie.
The envelope was addressed most queerly. The writing was large and sprawling. The first letter of the address was a big ‘A’. The second was an ‘M’. The third was a ‘W’. The letter was obviously from foreign parts, for the address ended ‘Angleterre’ and Annie knew that meant ‘England’ in a foreign tongue. Thus –
A. M. W. Marble,
53 Malcolm Road,
Dulwich,
Londres,
Angleterre.
Annie looked at the envelope a long time. Clearly the ‘A’ and the ‘M’ referred to her – was she not Ann Mary Marble? The ‘W’ and the absence of any ‘Mrs’ bothered her. But it might be usual in letters from abroad to leave out the ‘Mrs’ and being from abroad it might contain news about Winnie just as much as if it had been posted in England. Annie opened it, and took out the letter. It took several seconds for the import of the first few words to pierce home to her, but as soon as she had grasped their meaning she sank back half fainting in her chair. The letter was in English, and it began ‘My dearest, darling Will’.
Recovering herself, Annie read the remainder of the letter. She could not understand some of it – the cruel satire of it was beyond her, dulled as her mind was by her fever, and what she did understand left her heartbroken. All through the letter the writer addressed Will in terms of the most flamboyant affection; it made some reference which she did not understand to her, Annie, and it ended by asking for money – ‘the same as you sent me before, darling’.
Annie sat still, the letter crumpled up in her hand. There was no address on the letter, and the signature was rather illegible and consisted of a French word. But she knew from whom the letter came. It might have been instinct, or it might have been recognition of the style, but she knew. The tears which might have helped her were denied her by the fever. All she could do was to sit and think distortedly over everything. So Will did not love her, after all her dreams and hopes. Instead, he was writing to this Frenchwoman, and sending her money. All this tenderness of his, and the passion he had shown a little while back – just after she had gone, Annie realized with a sob in her throat – were mere pretences. With strange prescience she guessed that it was to keep her in a good temper when he found that she knew about his secret. A half-formed resolution rose in the maelstrom of her thoughts that she would betray him at the first opportunity, but she put it aside unconsidered. She loved him too much. Her heart was broken, and she was very, very unhappy.
She sat there all alone, for what seemed like hours.
Later came Marble, but she roused herself at the sound of the key in the door sufficiently to thrust the letter into the bosom of her dress, and when he came to ask how she was she managed to gasp out ‘I think I’m ill. Oh –’ Then she fell forward in the chair. She was ill, very ill. Marble helped her up to bed, to the big gilt bed where the cupids climbed eternally, with its lavish canopy-rail and bulging ornament. But when she had recovered sufficiently to undress she thrust the letter into her little private drawer before calling to him in her cracked, fevered voice for his help.
Next day she was worse. Marble bent over her anxiously as she lay there in the gaudy bed. She tossed about, from side to side, and she hardly knew him. There were only those two in the house, and he was worried. Worried to death. Of sick nursing he knew nothing. There was not even a clinical thermometer in the house. If she were to die –! But he refused to consider her dying. There would be one fewer in the secret, it is true, but the disadvantages would be overwhelming. And there would be questions asked if she were to die without receiving medical attention. Come what might, he must fetch a doctor. He must bring a stranger into his house, the house that he guarded so urgently. There was no help for it, no help for it at all. He saw that she had all his intelligence could suggest that she might want, and then slipped away quietly downstairs and out to where the nearest brass plate hung at a gate. A white-capped maidservant took his message and told him that the doctor would be round shortly.
Dr Atkinson was a thin rat of a man, with sandy hair and eyebrows, neither young nor old, with a keen glance behind his pince-nez. He felt her pulse, took her temperature; he noticed her troubled breathing and the way she tossed and turned in the bed. She was nearly delirious; indeed, her speech was confused, and twice she muttered something that he just did not catch. He turned and looked keenly at Marble.
‘Who’s looking after her?’ he asked.
‘I am,’ said Marble – a trifle sullenly, Atkinson thought, later.
‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes. My daughter’s – away at present.’
‘Well, you’d better get somebody in. Some neighbour or somebody. She’ll need careful attention if we’re to avoid pneumonia.’
Marble looked at him blankly. Get somebody in? Have someone else in the house, poking and prying about? And Annie, there, nearly delirious! Marble had caught a word or two of what she had muttered, of what Atkinson had not heard, and it set him trembling.
Atkinson was looking round the room, with its queer furnishing of gilt. He was trying to estimate the income of this man who apparently did not go to work.
‘What about a nurse,’ he said. ‘I’ll send one in, shall I?’
&n
bsp; Marble found his tongue.
‘No,’ he said, with overmuch vehemence – he was sadly overtried. ‘I won’t have a nurse. I can do all the nursing myself. I won’t have a nurse.’
Atkinson shrugged his shoulders.
‘Well, if you won’t, you won’t. But she’ll need very careful nursing, I tell you that. You must –’ he went on to outline all that Marble must do. But all the time he was debating within himself over this strange man who lived alone with his wife in a poky house furnished like Buckingham Palace, whose daughter was ‘– away, at present’, who did no work, and who was violently opposed to having anyone nurse his wife.
And Marble guessed at his curiosity, and cursed at it within himself, with the sweat running cold under his clothes.
‘Right, I’ll look in again this afternoon,’ said Atkinson.
He did. He looked in again twice a day during all the next week.
And during that week Marble fretted and wore himself to pieces under the burden of all his troubles. Everything was madly worrying. Atkinson alone, with his sharp eyes everywhere, was enough to madden him, yet to add to it all the great worry of his life returned to him and nagged at him more than ever he had known it before. Marble found his harrassed mind returning continually to work out hateful possibilities; whether or not Atkinson might find something out; whether he had heard anything of what Annie was continually muttering; what the neighbours, as well as Atkinson, thought of his refusing to call in the assistance of anyone else. He knew that they were all interested in what went on in his house, he knew how they sneered enviously at all his fine possessions, and at Annie’s clothes and Winnie’s grand manner – and they were probably burningly interested in what had happened to Winnie, though by good luck they might think she was still at school.
Annie herself worried him, too. She was a ‘difficult’ patient. She would hardly speak to him, and would turn from him in horror on those occasions when she was most nearly delirious. She needed a great deal of attention. Marble had to struggle to do invalid cookery for her – he, who had never so much as touched a saucepan in his life. He had to do it well, too, for that brute Atkinson was continually coming in, and more than once he demanded to see and taste the concoctions he had prepared for her. Marble struggled along with Mrs Beeton, the same Mrs Beeton as Annie had lingered over for his sake, and attended to the tradesmen who once more came calling – Marble had to allow that; Atkinson was too sharp for him to attempt to do the shopping and leave his patient. Rushing from the kitchen to the door, and from the door to the bedroom, whenever Annie rang the handbell that stood by the bed, and from the bedroom back to the kitchen, Marble wore himself out. It was rare that even two attempts brought success to his unskilful cookery; he seemed to be cooking all the time.
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