The Dawn of Reckoning

by James Hilton

  He said nothing until they were almost in the village. Then he began suddenly: “I was visiting a case at Marsh Farm. I saw your car unattended and your clothes inside it, and guessed you’d be stupid enough to swim…In March…and at ebb-tide!…Are you quite mad?”

  “Quite,” she answered. “Aren’t you?”

  He ignored her.

  “I want you to realise that but for pure chance you would have been drowned…Now you’re almost home. I shan’t come in with you, and you needn’t tell your adventure to anybody if you don’t want—I never shall. Have a glass of brandy when you get in—I suppose you’ve got plenty of the filthy stuff in the house…It’ll steady you. And don’t swim again till June…Good-bye. You can take the car up the drive yourself, no doubt…Good bye…”

  He opened the door and stepped out, raised his hat perfunctorily and was off.

  IV

  She pleaded a bad headache and went to bed early that evening. Rather to her astonishment Philip, whom she had expected to be too deeply immersed in his books to take much notice of her indisposition, showed himself greatly concerned about it. “There’s so rarely anything the matter with you, Stella,” he said uneasily. “Suppose I ‘phone Ward to come round?”

  She could not help smiling at the thought.

  “No, no, Philip. I’m all right, really. Just a headache, that’s all. I shall be fit as anything after a night’s sleep.”

  When she was left alone she thought things out very carefully. She decided, not without reluctance, that she had been abominably rude and ungrateful to Ward for what had undoubtedly been the saving of her life. To balance matters he had been abominably rude to her, treating her exactly like a misbehaving child. That may have excused, but it did not altogether justify her own rudeness. Very gradually, as her mind pondered on it, she became sorry. And she was sorry that she was sorry, she told herself quaintly, because she hated apologising.

  It had come to that. She knew she would have to apologise. Whether she liked or disliked him (and she was by no means sure which), he had saved her life at great discomfort and perhaps risk to himself, and she had rewarded him by surliness. She must apologise, even if she detested him.

  >

  The next morning, after about an hour at the writing-desk in her bedroom, she evolved the following:

  “Dear Dr. Ward,—I feel I must write and tell you how sorry I am for being such a beast yesterday. You certainly saved my life, and though you don’t want any thanks for it, it was rather wicked of me to be so rude to you. I hope you’ll forgive me, and in return I promise I won’t bathe any more till the weather’s much warmer. I have adopted your suggestion and not told anybody about my extremely naughty escapade.—Yours sincerely,

  Stella Monsell.

  “P.S.—I hope your suit dried all right—if not, you really ought to let me have the pleasure of buying you another.”

  She read it over several times and decided that it possessed exactly the right mixture of contrition and jauntiness. After all, an apology did not necessarily mean a humiliation.

  After completing her dressing she went down stairs. Mrs. Monsell was talking to a caller, and the subject of the discussion was, as she could overhear, Ward.

  “He’s going away almost immediately,” said Mrs. Monsell. “He’s joined an expedition to the South Pole. Now isn’t that just the sort of hare-brained thing you’d expect him to do?”

  Stella descended upon them. “The South Pole?” she echoed incredulously, and Mrs. Monsell smiled.

  “Yes, my dear, the South Pole. He was offered the job three weeks ago and asked for time to decide. Last night he sent a telegram accepting. The sister of Doctor Challis’s butler told my maid, so it’s absolutely authentic.”

  “And when did you say he was going?” Stella’s voice, perfectly controlled, sounded no more than one of casual interest.

  “As soon as he can get away, I suppose. The expedition sets out in a week or two. You’d better ask him the details yourself, my dear, if you want to see him off.”

  V

  What did it matter to her whether he were going to the South Pole or not? She tried to think.

  Of course it might be no more than a rumour. She could not help wondering about it. Was he really going? She felt that if she knew for certain she could let the matter drop, but that as long as the question was unsettled she must go on pondering over it.

  She said to Philip as soon as she saw him: “I say, have you heard the latest rumour—Ward’s going to the South Pole?”

  Philip looked up with his usual attitude of slow astonishment. “Good heavens! You don’t say so! What for?”

  “To discover it, of course,” she replied succinctly. “What else should he go there for?”

  Philip slowly realised the situation. “You mean to say he’s joined that expedition they’re talking about in all the papers?”

  “I don’t know anything about the expedition they’re talking about in the papers. But, according to a rumour round the town, Ward has got a job of doctor to the party. Do you mean to say you haven’t heard anything about it at all?”

  Even yet he had not completely conquered his astonishment. He sank into an easy chair and scratched his head with an expression of bewilderment that was increased rather than decreased by further reflection.

  “I certainly haven’t. He never mentioned any thing of the kind to me. Though I must confess—it’s just the sort of thing he would do.”

  “Is it?—Is it?” Her query was almost plaintive.

  Philip went on: “He’s keen on danger and excitement. Personally I question whether information about the Pole is worth the expenditure of human life and energy.”

  “Life?—But you don’t necessarily die, do you?”

  “Many men have died. I—yes, I question whether it’s worth it. It was different in the days of Frobisher and Magellan when—”

  She replied a trifle impatiently: “My dear Philip, it’s not a bit of use talking like that to me—you know I’ve never heard of Frobisher and—and the other fellow.”

  “Really?—Well, I can soon explain. Frobisher was—”

  “Oh, don’t—not now,” she said hastily. “Some other time, Philip—when I’m more in the mood for learning things.”

  He glanced at her oddly and resumed his books.

  VI

  Gradually she formed a plan of action. It was Wednesday, and Wednesday was Doctor Challis’s day for giving consultations. She was a great favourite of his, and he, moreover, was the sort of doctor to whom you could go and complain very vaguely of being just “not quite up to the mark,” whereupon he would be immediately sympathetic, and would dismiss you with a pontifical blessing and a battle of iron and quinine. And at a hint about his young assistant’s plans for the future he would most probably tell the complete story.

  Hence Stella’s visit that afternoon. Over an hour she sat in the gloomy waiting-room of the surgery, endeavouring to extract a forlorn interest from the two-year-old Graphics that lay in a tumbled and dog-eared heap on the table. She had not reckoned on having to wait. Usually Doctor Challis was avail able straightaway, but this afternoon the waiting-room was full when she entered it; there were women with children and babies, and one or two rather shabbily-dressed men, not at all the kind of clientêle that she had expected Doctor Challis to possess.

  She sat down on the edge of the table, since none of the chairs were vacant. The room was fearfully depressing. It seemed to her that there was a hostility to her in the room; that the people in it were all disliking her. She knew that many of them were politically opposed to Philip; and she knew also that during the election campaign a good deal of play had been made out of the fact that she was a “foreigner.” She dangled her legs nonchalantly, not caring about the dour looks that she received. These people seemed to think that a surgery waiting-room was like a church—a sacred edifice. After she had waited half an hour she wished fervently that she hadn’t come. But she thought that, having wa
ited so long, she might as well stay on.

  At last it came her turn, and the trimly-dressed maid conducted her along devious corridors of the doctor’s old house, and finally to the glass door of what looked like a conservatory. The door was opened for her and she stepped inside.

  The man facing her was not Doctor Challis, but Ward himself.

  VII

  “Good afternoon,” he began, in the abrupt voice that was so wildly different from Doctor Challis’s suave mellifluous tones.

  His grey eyes narrowed till he seemed almost to be closing them tightly. She noticed little insignificant things about him—that he wore a brown suit (not the one that had been drenched the day before), that he had had his hair cut shorter than ever, and that his teeth as he showed them momentarily were white as chalk.

  “I—I thought it was Doctor Challis’s day,” she said, hardly conquering her surprise.

  “Doctor Challis has given up seeing patients. Have you any objection to seeing me instead?”

  “Oh no, not at all.”

  “Very well, please sit down, and tell me what is the matter.”

  She took the chair nearest her, and he sat down in a swivel office chair behind a pedestal desk and fingered a pencil.

  “I’m not feeling very—great just at present,” she began, hesitatingly.

  He answered briskly: “I should think not. You oughtn’t to expect to feel great the day after you’ve been half drowned.”

  The opportunity came. She lurched forward to take it “By the way, I ought to tell you—I’m I’m sorry for the way I behaved yesterday. It was very—ungrateful of me—to—to—”

  He held up his hand imperiously. “No, no, you mustn’t do that. I’m not here to receive apologies. So far as I’m concerned, none are needed…I’m here to attend to your physical ailments. Tell me exactly what they are.”

  She was floundering. She said the first thing that came into her head. “I get—palpitation. Here.” She touched her heart. Some sudden perception of comedy assailed her for the moment, so that she was hard put to it to prevent herself from bursting into peals of laughter.

  “Probably due to your adventure yesterday. Or else indigestion…I’ll sound your heart if you like.”

  He reached out his hand and was on the point of pressing the bell-knob to summon the nurse. Panic seized her. “No—it—it doesn’t matter. I’m sure my heart’s all right.”

  “In the right place, for instance?”

  She stared at him and saw the narrow slits of his eyes screwed round into the tiniest of wrinkles. He was laughing at her. That drove away her panic and made her righteously indignant. What right had a doctor to poke fun at his patients?

  “I’ll write you out a prescription,” he went on, opening a note-book. “It is what we call ‘the usual.’ It is for people who suffer from the distressing complaint of having nothing at all the matter with them. Quite an epidemic of it in Chassingford since I came.”

  “Then perhaps it’s a good thing you’re going. You are going, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am going.”

  He put down his pencil with an air of finality and handed her the scribbled prescription.

  She took it and crumpled it into her handbag. “Are you going to the South Pole?” she asked with uncompromising abruptness.

  “I hope so…”

  “You hope you are going?”

  “I hope I get there.”

  She rose from her chair and held out her hand. The interview had to be finished somehow, and the thought of the crowded waiting-room urged her to be brief, now that she had found out what she wanted.

  “Well—good-bye. I wish you luck…When are you going?”

  “Monday week…Thank you for your good wishes. By the way, did you come in your car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like to do somebody a good turn?”

  “It depends.”

  He went on “My last patient before you was a little boy brought by his mother. He has a bad ankle, and no doubt his mother will be carrying him all the way home. They live at Firs Cottages, on your way back. If you should overtake them it would be an act of kindness to—”

  “Of course I’ll give them a lift,” she said eagerly.

  “You will?—Good.”

  His eyes widened and his face became less severe. “Give my best wishes to Philip,” he added, opening the door for her and ringing for the maid. “I shall call to see him before I go…Good-bye…”

  “Good-bye…”

  She walked out briskly to her car. In the middle of the High Street she overtook the mother carrying her little boy, and only her promise to Ward made her pull in at the kerb and offer them a lift. She saw people staring curiously, especially when the woman, surprised out of her senses, had to have the offer shouted at her several times. In the end she accepted suspiciously, as if she had fears of being kidnapped with her offspring. The latter meanwhile was sucking sweets and making sticky finger-marks on the upholstery of the car. When Firs Cottages were reached the whole population turned out en masse to see the remarkable scene of disembarkation. Stella was desperately uncomfortable. It seemed such ostentatious philanthropy—all who had seen it would be certain she had done it for show. And Stimpson, the chauffeur at the Hall, would want to know the origin of the sticky marks.

  When she drove up to the Hall a few minutes later she was quite miserable, thus falsifying the dictum that a good deed makes the doer happy.

  * * *

  CHAPTER VIII

  I

  Ward accepted an invitation to dinner the following Tuesday.

  Stella’s fixed intention—which she freely admitted to herself—was to make as deep an impression on him as she could. He had humbled her and been rude to her as no other man had; it was almost as if he alone, out of all the men she had ever met, had failed to respond to her attractiveness. Not that she particularly wanted to attract him, but that curiosity and pique urged her to find out whether he were really adamant.

  She dressed herself with unusual care, and in a frock which she knew made her look enchantingly pretty—a delicate thing of black and gold that clung closely to her and enhanced the rounded slimness of her body. In her mind she had the whole of that evening accurately mapped out. She would sit between him and Philip at dinner, and afterwards, in the drawing-room, she would sing at the piano—plaintive little Hungarian songs which, if he had a spark of music or poetry in him, would kindle him to flame as they never failed to kindle her.

  In all this she was certain there was no disloyalty to Philip. She even said to Philip before Ward arrived: “Don’t I look pretty?—Don’t you think I shall make the doctor fall madly in love with me?”

  Philip smiled. “Probably he’s done that already. Most people have.”

  “Even you?” she hinted.

  “Of course.”

  “All your love is of course. Kiss me, then—of course…”

  He kissed her gently, and she stared at him after wards with wistful, half-mocking eyes. “You strange old Philip…” she whispered. “What a nuisance I am to you…and shall be…”

  II

  That evening was unforgettable, but in a way that no one could have foreseen. All the day a great wind had been blowing from the sea, and at night it increased to a gale. Men coming in from the east reported that the sea was very rough (a rare occurrence on the coasts near by), and in the open road outside the Hall gates the taste of the salt spray was on the wind that raced past. Ward, when he arrived, said that several times on the short journey he had been nearly blown off his machine.

  All during dinner the gale howled down the chimneys and shrieked through the tall trees in the garden. Then suddenly, over the coffee and liqueurs, there came a tremendous whistle of wind followed by the clamour of smashing glass and splintering wood. Philip started to his feet, upsetting his liqueur-glass over the table-cloth. Stella rushed to the window. Only Mrs. Monsell and Ward remained in their places, apparently quite calm.<
br />
  “A tree’s fallen on top of the conservatories,” Stella cried, pulling aside the window blinds.

  Mrs. Monsell sipped her coffee. “Really? Is that all?—Well, don’t let it interrupt a pleasant party.”

  At At that moment the door opened and Venner entered. “Another liqueur for Mr. Philip,” said Mrs. Monsell, imperturbably, nodding to him.

  But the old fellow shuffled forward and seemed most unprofessionally disturbed about something.

  “Excuse me, madam, but one of the big elms has fallen on the conservatory and—”

  “Yes, Venner, we know all about it. Don’t worry yourself.”

  “But—you’ll excuse me, madam—one of the maids—was there, madam, when it fell, and is—is injured—”

  It was Ward then who interrupted. He bounded out of his seat like a sharp flash. “I’ll go,” he said quietly to the company in general. And he added to Venner, in a voice at once curt and courteous: “Please show me the way.”

  III

  The girl had been walking through the conservatory when the tree fell, and a splinter of glass had fallen on her arm, cutting it severely. When Ward reached her, followed closely by Stella, she was sitting in a chair in the kitchen, very pale-faced, and with one of the men-servants dabbing at her arm with handkerchiefs. Her dress was soaked with blood, and blood ran down her arm and dripped off her finger-tips on to the floor.

  “Telephone for an ambulance,” said Ward as soon as he saw her. Stella was about to run off to the telephone in the hall when he beckoned to her to stay. “No, let one of the servants do that. You stay here and help me. Does the sight of blood make you sick?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Fetch me a towel.”

  She got one for him, and for the next few minutes both were busy applying a tourniquet, he directing and she obeying him.