Malice Aforethought

by Francis Iles

  Their friendship grew amazingly. There is some bond between sitter and artist which makes both feel that they share in common all sorts of things which just can’t be defined, but anyhow they do share them. The conversation had passed with easy inevitability from the general to the particular, and from the particular to the intimate. Without actually saying as much, Dr. Bickleigh had yet somehow informed Madeleine that he was acutely unhappy in his marriage. And Madeleine, equally without putting it into words, had conveyed both her knowledge of this fact and her deep sympathy with the sufferer.

  They exchanged other confidences. Taking for granted (between two friends who now knew each other so well) that his wife did not understand the first thing about him, Dr. Bickleigh confessed sincerely, in response to Madeleine’s adroit questioning, that always there had been a void in his life through lack of an understanding comrade (feminine gender) with whom he could share the thoughts and hopes that can be divulged to only one other person in the world, that he knew he was missing thereby one of the sweetest joys life can offer, and that he had practically given up as hopeless any expectation of filling that void. Whereupon Madeleine, radiating grave concern, had hinted (without any questioning) that she too had suffered through lack of just the same thing; that nobody in her family really understood her own delicately balanced mind, with its modest love of beauty and desire to find artistic self-expression, which was why she had been driven to living now quite alone; and what was the use of riches if one had no sympathetic soul with whom to share them?

  Each of them spoke with intense seriousness about themselves, about each other, and about life; and each had acknowledged with sober pleasure a kindred spirit in the other.

  “You have such a wonderfully understanding nature, Miss Cranmere,” Dr. Bickleigh told her, much moved.

  “I think there are some people so in tune with one that one just understands them instinctively,” returned Miss Cranmere, with a grave, understanding smile.

  Sensible of the growing pregnancy of the atmosphere, Dr. Bickleigh worked for a few minutes in silence. His heart swelled as he reflected how wonderful Madeleine was. If only he could have married a girl like her! But it was too late now. Besides, there could be no other girl like her. Madeleine Cranmere was unique.

  He felt senselessly apprehensive, of what he did not quite know. Relations never remain stationary. His with Madeleine must either progress or recede. That they should recede was now unbearable; but that they should progress . . .

  The portrait, which he had been literally praying might be an astonishing success, was not going well. There was a likeness, but only a surface one. He had not been able to hint at that wonderful sympathy, to catch that look of unearthliness, that sober spirituality, which seemed to characterise Madeleine. It was a flat thing.

  In a gust of petulant despair he threw his charcoal into the empty fireplace. “It’s no good,” he burst out. “I can’t get you. Not the real you.”

  Madeleine did not smile encouragement, as an ordinary girl might have done. She looked at once as if all the burdens of artistic inachievement were upon her too. “May I see it?”

  “If you want to. But . . .” He moved away and stared out of the window, disgusted with his failure. Other girls he had drawn had taken it as a compliment when he had confessed himself unable to portray them satisfactorily (why, he had never been able to understand), but of course Madeleine would not be foolish like that. She would just be very disappointed. And too honest to conceal it.

  Madeleine walked over to the easel and contemplated the half-finished drawing long and attentively. Dr. Bickleigh’s sick anxiety as he waited for her condemnation was almost unbearable. He had long ago forgotten all about their respective ages. It was no longer a man of thirty-seven waiting for the criticism of a young girl of twenty-two, whose powers of judging half-finished charcoal drawings might, to put it at its least, be immature; it was the creator offering the work of his hands to the one person in the world for whom it had been shaped.

  “It’s clever,” at last said Madeleine quietly. The confidence of her tone might have made one suppose that the one thing of which she had made a life’s study was the judging of half-finished charcoal drawings. Dr. Bickleigh discovered that he had been actually holding his breath, and expelled it in a surge of relief.

  “Do you really think so? I say, that’s . . . It’s wonderful to hear you say that.”

  “Very clever,” Madeleine continued slowly, still examining the picture, her head a little on one side, her broad white forehead just furrowed, her expressive eyes narrowed. “But, then, I think your work is clever.” She spoke without any of that easy enthusiasm which the conscientious craftsman dreads more than the most damning criticism; her words carried the impression of a balanced judgment carefully formed and as carefully weighed after formation. There was not a suspicion of flattery in her flattery.

  Dr. Bickleigh could only beam in silence.

  “But I don’t see what you mean by not being able to ‘get’ me. I think it’s exactly like me.”

  In his eagerness Dr. Bickleigh came and stood close behind her, studying his work over her shoulder.

  “Oh, yes, it’s like you. But that isn’t the point. Anyone with a bit of a knack could draw something that would be like you. I was trying to get at you. I mean . . . show where you differ from everyone else. Why you’re you, and could never be anyone who isn’t you. No, that’s idiotic. It’s difficult to explain, but . . . Well, I mean, your expression, that particular look you have, your wonderful . . .”

  “I think I understand,” Madeleine said gently, and walked over to the window. “And I think you have got at me,” she added in a low voice, looking out over the rain-drenched lawn, now glistening in a burst of sunshine.

  Dr. Bickleigh followed her. His heart was thumping and his mouth had gone dry. “Not the real you,” he said. “That’s just the one the world sees—the outside, everyday you. I was trying to show the inside one—the one you hide from everyone. Except for a tiny glimpse now and then . . . to some lucky person.” I’m beginning to make love to her, he thought desperately; I mustn’t—I mustn’t; it’ll spoil everything; she’d hate it; she’d never speak to me again; besides, what coarseness . . . with her. But something drove him on.

  Madeleine was still gazing out of the window. “And you imagine . . . there is such a ‘me’?”

  “I don’t imagine,” said Dr. Bickleigh hoarsely. “I know.” I mustn’t, his brain repeated mechanically, to the rhythm of his pounding heart, I mustn’t make love to her. I mustn’t. “And I think . . . I think I’ve been privileged . . . to catch . . . one or two of those glimpses.” His knees seemed to have lost all their strength.

  Madeleine did not turn her head. “Perhaps . . . you have,” she said, almost inaudibly.

  There was a full minute’s silence. Dr. Bickleigh’s mind whirled hither and thither. She could not mean . . . she did not understand what she was implying . . . he must not, must not, must not . . .

  Suddenly a desperate calmness fell on him. He rushed on his fate. “I suppose you know what I’m doing?”

  Madeleine turned and looked him full in the eyes. “Yes. I know.”

  “I’m making love to you.”

  “Yes.”

  The next instant she was in his arms.

  “Madeleine!”

  “Oh, Edmund!”

  3

  DR. BICKLEIGH’S first impulse had been to tell Julia that he and Madeleine loved one another. In such an affair as this, subterfuge and concealment seemed out of place. To hide it from his wife would be to bring it down to the level of those other ignoble little liaisons which he now so bitterly regretted. On the highest peak of exaltation himself, Dr. Bickleigh meant all the circumstances of his incredible new happiness to remain there too.

  Rather to his surprise, it was Madeleine who was against this course. It was foolish, she pointed out, to act precipitately. They must be quite, quite sure of themselves before
they took any steps which might prove irrevocable. In the meantime, it would be unkind to Julia to cause her more suffering than was necessary.

  “We mustn’t think of ourselves, dear,” she said very earnestly. “We have each other after all, but . . . your poor wife. I know exactly what you feel, and I feel it too; you understand me well enough, surely, to realise that I detest anything underhand as much as you do. But we mustn’t consider our own feelings; we must think of hers.”

  And Dr. Bickleigh agreed that they must sacrifice themselves for Julia’s peace of mind. They talked about her a good deal, called her “poor Julia,” and were very sorry for her indeed.

  Nevertheless, driving home just in time for evening surgery, he regretted the decision. It would have been a wonderful expression of the sober exhilaration that possessed him to walk straight in to Julia and tell her everything; a magnificent gesture. He saw himself breaking the news to her with quiet dignity—no recriminations, no cheap triumph at her expense. But after that the vision faded out. He simply could not see Julia’s reactions to his news. She had such a width of choice.

  One thing, however, Dr. Bickleigh did determine: he would be as honest with her as he possibly could. Except so far as was necessary to preserve the one vital secret, no lie should pass his lips at all. He actually hoped Julia would give him the opportunity to be honest.

  Julia did. As he was hanging up his hat in the dark little lobby at the back of the hall she came out of the drawing-room and looked in her short-sighted way in his direction. “Is that you, Edmund? You were not in to tea.” It never worried Mrs. Bickleigh to state self-evident facts. “Where were you?”

  “I was at The Hall,” replied Dr. Bickleigh. He looked her full in the face for a few moments to give her every opportunity of a reply if she wished to make one, and then walked down the passage and into his consulting-room.

  Julia turned back into the drawing-room without a word.

  Dr. Bickleigh’s mood of unworldly exaltation lasted right through surgery and until the gong rang for dinner. Then it began to ebb a little. But there was enough of it left to enable him to confront Julia, if not with the quiet dignity he had pictured, at any rate with defiance. He recognised the defiance, and it irked him. He had been feeling for the last few hours so very, very far above Julia and all she stood for; it was annoying to find now that he had to face her much as a defiant mouse would face a cat. However superior to any number of cats a mouse may feel in its own hole, it requires a good deal of self-suggestion to maintain this opinion in the presence of the cat. Dr. Bickleigh had to keep on reminding himself of the miracle that Madeleine loved him, and that Julia therefore mattered rather less than nothing to anybody.

  Julia, however, did not call his defiance into play. She made no reference to his visit to The Hall. It was as if the scene before surgery had not happened at all. She was not even silent, speaking to him no less and no more than usual. In every respect she behaved in her perfectly normal manner. This made Dr. Bickleigh uneasy. It was unlike Julia, he felt, and therefore ominous; never having defied her commands before, however, he did not know in the least what would be like her on such an occasion. It did not occur to him that, having encountered an unprecedented situation, Julia herself might be at a loss, and uncertain how to deal with it. It never would have occurred to Dr. Bickleigh that his wife was even capable of being at a loss.

  The same game of polite make-believe followed them into the drawing-room after dinner. Dr. Bickleigh played it tensely, with growing disquiet, nervously fingering the waxed ends of his little moustache; Julia apparently was not playing it at all. A country doctor does not have so many evening calls as his townsman colleagues (can it be that people are more considerate in the country than in towns?), and Dr. Bickleigh was accustomed to spend his evenings in the drawing-room with his wife, he over a book from the library in Merchester and she with a piece of embroidery or crochet work; Julia did not care for reading. Julia did not care for the wireless, either, so that they had no set; Dr. Bickleigh had often tried to persuade her just to give it a trial, but she was quite sure she would not like it. Now, as she spoke from time to time of this and that, and he looked up from his book to answer her (not being a reader herself, Julia always seemed to make a point of letting anyone else do so for no more than five minutes without interruption), Dr. Bickleigh was wishing that a call would reach him and take him out of this anxious room, out of the house; something serious—a road accident, a midder-case even, that would keep him out for some time. But of course no call came.

  Only once did Julia make any remark that might be construed as having the slightest reference to the all-important subject. “Edmund,” she said abruptly, “I have a very severe headache. Please get me something from the surgery to relieve it.”

  “Yes, of course.” Dr. Bickleigh bounded to his feet, glad of any action, however insignificant. “Aspirin?”

  “You know very well that aspirin doesn’t suit me.”

  “Yes, yes; I remember. I’ll get you something else.”

  He went to the surgery and stood there, delaying. A definite dread of going back to the drawing-room possessed him. It was inconceivable that Julia was going to pass over the whole thing like this. No, she was saving it up; playing her damned game of cat-and-mouse; knowing perfectly well what he was feeling. And if she had one of her headaches this evening too . . . Dr. Bickleigh knew those headaches.

  He usually treated them with a preparation of phenacetin (the suggestion of aspirin had been a nervous lapse of memory), but to-night . . .

  A sudden thought struck him, and he laughed out loud. Taking down a jar of tablets, he shook two out into his palm, dropped them into a measure, added water, and began to dissolve them. There were advantages in being a doctor. A nice little dose of morphia should make Julia far too sleepy to be able to do justice to her subject to-night. He pounded the tablets with a glass rod.

  When they were quite dissolved, he paused for a moment. Should he . . . ? No, Julia’s powers of resistance were above the normal. Better make sure while he was at it.

  He took down the jar again, shook out two more tablets, and dropped them into the measure too. Not even Julia would be able to resist a full half-grain.

  Dr. Bickleigh was right. Within twenty minutes Julia found herself so sleepy that she was compelled to go upstairs to bed.

  With a smile Dr. Bickleigh pushed aside his book and gave himself up to living through, again and again, the events of the afternoon.

  That night he had a new vision ready-made: not merely life without Julia, but life with Madeleine. As a sleep-compelling medium this vision was a failure.

  4

  JULIA’S STRANGE reticence lasted through breakfast the next morning. Her manner during the meal was as ominously normal as at dinner the evening before. Dr. Bickleigh felt, when he left the house for his morning round, that he was leaving a thunderstorm clamped in a small box inside it. He wondered fearfully, and yet with a strange little thrill, how long the clamps would hold. He dreaded the inevitable battle and at the same time almost welcomed it.

  He went through his morning’s work in a dreamy daze, living only for the afternoon.

  So completely had all thought of Ivy disappeared that he did not at first even recognise her when he caught sight of a female figure signalling to him at the side of the road, and pulled up automatically.

  “Teddy!” she said mournfully, as he came to a stop abreast of her.

  “Why, hullo, Ivy.” No little stab of apprehension, no exasperation; seldom can a man have felt more at his ease in the presence of a recently discarded mistress. Dr. Bickleigh was surprised to notice how completely master of the situation he felt. It was a new sensation to him, and a delightful one.

  Ivy nervously tucked a stray curl under her small blue hat. “I knew Mrs. Belstone’s ill, and I thought you’d be coming this way. I’ve been waiting nearly an hour.”

  “Yes?”

  “Teddy, I must speak to you.�
��

  “I’m very busy, Ivy.”

  “You’re always busy now when I want to see you.” Her lower lip began to tremble. Dr. Bickleigh watched it with detached interest. How curious that a lip should wobble rapidly to indicate emotion. It wasn’t poetic, it wasn’t even pathetic (had he really once thought it was?); it was just ludicrous.

  “I really am busy,” he said patiently, “but that doesn’t say I can’t spare five minutes. Jump in. I’ll take you on a bit with me.”

  “We oughtn’t to be seen together,” she hesitated.

  “Jump in.” He opened the door for her. Ivy got in, with a glance up and down the road. He let in the clutch and the car moved forward. “Well?” he smiled. “What is it, Ivy?” He felt as if she were a small child. It was a shame to have to hurt her, but it had got to be done. He would be as merciful as he could.

  “Oh, Teddy.”

  He pretended to be absorbed in driving along the narrow road, to give her time to collect herself. It was quite plain what she wanted to say: he no longer loved her—did he? And this time he was not going to deny it. A clean break had got to be made; a clean, honest break. Any other course now was unthinkable.

  Well, may as well get it over. But not in public. They were passing through a small wood now, and Dr. Bickleigh turned the car along a track that led into it. He drove till they were out of sight of the road, and then came to a halt.

  “Now then, Ivy.”

  “Teddy!”