by Francis Iles
“Oh, yes. Yes, of course. I’d forgotten.” It was a poor attempt. Julia said nothing.
On Friday afternoon Madeleine was waiting for him.
He had not meant to reproach her; just utter a mild expostulation. But there was no need. Madeleine at once began to reproach herself. “Edmund, will you ever forgive me?”
“Forgive you, dear? There’s nothing to forgive.” He climbed into the punt beside her.
But she would not let him kiss her till she had explained properly. “I was terribly disappointed. And I knew you’d think me a beast. I was a beast. A devil!” The extent of her self-vituperation seemed extravagant for so minor an offence. “But I simply couldn’t help it, dear. Honestly. I had to go to the Bournes.’ ” Her big eyes searched his in appeal for forgiveness. She looked as solemn as if she were confessing to something really dreadful.
“Of course, darling.” He wanted to kiss her badly.
“It would have looked so funny if I’d refused. They’d have known I wasn’t going anywhere else.” Madeleine had apparently not finished apologising yet, although any faint misgivings Dr. Bickleigh might have harboured had long ago disappeared. “I had to go, you see, for both our sakes. Did you hate me very much, Edmund?”
“Good gracious, no. I thought it must be something like that.” And, as Madeleine was really looking as if she would not be content unless he did reproach her, he added mildly: “Just wondered why you didn’t leave a note, perhaps. That’s all.”
“Oh, I couldn’t, dear.” Madeleine appeared quite shocked. “What would the servants have thought?”
There is no one more sensitive to other people’s opinions of him than a doctor; he has to be, for other people’s opinions of him are his bread-and-butter or the lack of it. But Dr. Bickleigh did feel that this was carrying deference to them a little too far.
The next instant he felt guiltily disloyal for having thought so. “Oh, yes; of course. Never thought of that.”
“Then you really do forgive me?”
“Of course I do. Though there’s nothing to forgive.”
At last he was allowed to kiss her.
Dr. Bickleigh noticed with relief that there was no hint in Madeleine’s manner of the mood of a week ago. He thought he understood that now: it was just a first reaction on the part of so pure and high-souled a girl to having let another woman’s husband make love to her. Certainly her behaviour was being most satisfactory at the moment.
He judged the time propitious to bring out his great news.
“Darling, I’ve got something wonderful to tell you. I told Julia last night about Us. I thought you wouldn’t mind really, and—”
“You told her! About us!”
Madeleine’s voice was shrill, and her face had gone suddenly quite white.
“Yes.” Dr. Bickleigh was startled by the abrupt change in her, and tried to hurry on with his explanation. “I hated the idea of anything underhand about Us, you see, and I thought it over and—”
“But I told you not to. You promised not to—you promised.”
“No, darling, I didn’t,” Dr. Bickleigh had to remonstrate. “I very carefully—”
“You did promise!”
“No, really, I—”
“You did! You beast, Edmund! How dare you, when I didn’t want you to! You promised not to. It’s—it’s horrible of you.” Dr. Bickleigh had attributed Madeleine’s change of colour to concern on behalf of Julia: he now saw that it was due to sheer rage.
Madeleine began (there is really no other word for it) to storm at him.
During the next few moments it transpired, and with force, that Madeleine was seriously annoyed. The unfortunate Dr. Bickleigh learnt a number of things about himself which he had always suspected to be true, but had hoped Madeleine didn’t. Obviously he had done something not merely foolish, but incredibly mean and underhand—because Madeleine told him so, not once, but several times. His humble protestations that he had only been trying to do the right thing, because he detested any hole-and-corner business in connection with her, carried no weight at all. He was, instead, a cad, a blunderer, and the villain of the piece. Of all this Madeleine, in her new rôle of Truth Stepping out of the Well, informed him with surprising emphasis. Dr. Bickleigh knew that Madeleine could not be wrong and he must therefore be all these things; but he did wish he knew how he had proved it merely by trying for once to be honest.
That Julia had not minded at all, Madeleine brushed aside as beneath notice. Apparently she ought to have minded, and so it had been a piece of outrageous cruelty to tell her.
Altogether Dr. Bickleigh left her that afternoon (or, rather, was left; for it was certainly Madeleine who did the leaving) in a state of considerable bewilderment.
If variety is the spice of love, Dr. Bickleigh might have reflected that he was certainly getting his own well seasoned.
4
THE NEXT day he did not see her, nor the next. Julia preserved a tactful silence in face of his evident moodiness. On the Monday, Madeleine was not on the lake, nor could he find her in the wood. In desperation he went up to the house, regardless of the parlourmaid’s possible condemnation.
The parlourmaid, so far from displaying any signs of disapproval, welcomed him like an old and valued friend. Miss Cranmere, she informed him, was in the drawing-room: would he come in? He would, and did.
Madeleine received him sorrowfully, as one uncertain whether to take the lost sheep back into the fold or not. The sheep apologised with humility for his lapse (that he was apologising really for having been honest occurred apparently to neither of them), and went on apologising, so long and so humbly, that in the end Madeleine forgave him for what he had not done and opened the door of the fold once more. “But, Edmund,” she told him very gravely before letting him quite in, “if you ever break another promise to me . . . if you make me feel I can’t really trust you . . .”
Dr. Bickleigh forbore to point out that he had not broken a promise at all yet, for by this time he had quite accepted the accusation and believed in it as firmly as she did.
The way thus cleared, they were able to discuss Julia’s remarkable offer.
Madeleine agreed that it was noble, generous, more than they could ever have expected, anything he liked; but, though showing moderate pleasure, she certainly did not share the doctor’s immoderate enthusiasm. He could not understand why. Here was the path being cleared for their feet, and Madeleine could only smile sadly and say how nice it was, and how kind of Julia. He pressed her, but could get no satisfactory answer.
At last she told him.
“Oh, Edmund, I never thought I should have to marry a divorced man.”
This point of view astonished Dr. Bickleigh. Why did she mind that? For religious reasons?
Oh, no. It was not a matter of religion. Madeleine hoped she was not so narrow-minded as all that.
Why, then?
“You know people talk so. It’s horrid.”
“But, my darling, surely you don’t mind what silly people say, so long as we’re happy?”
“No, dear, of course I don’t. But it’s not very nice, is it?”
Dr. Bickleigh did not point out that she had already set the Wyvern’s Cross tongues wagging by coming to live at The Hall alone, because if her charming innocence on that head were dispelled she would probably import an aunt or something equally in the way. Instead, he tried to soothe her with comforting facts.
“Well, I should have to give up this practice, of course. We can settle down somewhere else where no one will know. Or go abroad, darling. Or anything, so long as we’re together and you’re happy.”
In that case, Madeleine agreed, things might not be so bad; but she remained disappointingly unenthusiastic.
Not that she seemed to love him any the less. Once he had been taken back into the fold the shepherdess withheld none of its privileges. But it was disconcerting that she should interrupt some of their most intimate moments with the wailing cry: “Oh,
Edmund, if only you weren’t married. You don’t know how I hate the idea of divorce.”
Dr. Bickleigh did know. Madeleine seemed to take pains that he should.
However, she asked him to stay to dinner, and on the whole he spent a very wonderful and holy day.
There was only one other small thing which disconcerted him. Julia had remarked the other evening that a little later on, when things were less tempestuous, she would call on Madeleine and discuss the situation sensibly. When Dr. Bickleigh casually mentioned this after dinner, Madeleine was vehement in her opposition. Such a thing was sordid; it was embarrassing; it was altogether impossible. Dr. Bickleigh, who had thought it most sporting of Julia, and entirely in keeping with the way in which he wished the whole situation to be handled, was surprised, but knew now better than to argue; he hurriedly changed the subject. But he was perturbed. If Julia had said she was going to call, she would call; and if Madeleine, as she protested she would, refused to see her when she did call, what was going to happen? He left the question to look after itself.
Driving home late that night, he was able to see the interview in perspective. Instantly it became plain that Madeleine’s dislike of marrying a divorced man was not captious at all, but simply entrancing. Naturally to her flowerlike mind the idea had been an obnoxious shock. But she would get used to it. She must.
5
JULIA DID call on Madeleine.
She called about a fortnight later. During that time the course of true love had been running more smoothly. Things seemed to have settled down. Madeleine was particularly charming and affectionate, and Dr. Bickleigh had been living in high heaven. The Merchester tournament came and went, and for four days Dr. Bickleigh did not see her at all, for he was too busy to get over there; she and Denny Bourne reached the semi-finals, when they were beaten by a Davis Cup player and his partner, but even then not disastrously. Madeleine could hardly talk about anything else when she saw him next. Dr. Bickleigh, who had no idea that she attached so much importance to games, was charmed by yet another side of his many-faceted young woman. He entered light-heartedly into her mood, and they spent one of the happiest afternoons they had had together.
Julia’s call shattered heaven in ugly fragments.
She did not give the least hint that she had been until the evening. Then, as they were sitting in the drawing-room, she looked up from her crochet-work and said abruptly, “Edmund, I called on Miss Cranmere this afternoon.”
“Oh, yes?” said the doctor apprehensively. Julia’s tone was ominous.
“I rang her up in the morning to make the appointment. She was out, so I left the message. When I got there, the maid said she was ill in bed and could not see me.” Julia paused.
“Ill?” echoed Dr. Bickleigh, alarmed.
“As ill as you or I. However, I insisted, and she saw me.” From Julia’s voice it was possible to gather that she was cutting quite a long story short here. “She received me in a white cotton nightgown,” she continued surprisingly, “and a red flannel dressing-gown.” She paused again significantly.
“Oh, yes?” said Dr. Bickleigh vaguely, not seeing the significance. Cotton was perhaps not the material he himself would have chosen for a nightgown, but it was only another example of the charming unsophistication of Madeleine’s tastes. “Did she?” he added, as Julia still seemed to be waiting for something.
“Well, does that convey nothing to you?”
Dr. Bickleigh, who was not disposed to share his opinion of Madeleine’s simple unfleshliness, shook his head.
“Why does a gairl who could afford to have her nightgowns of triple ninon and gold lamé dressing-gowns wear cotton and red flannel?” demanded Julia sternly. “I’ll tell you, Edmund. Because she wants even the housemaid to think her that sort of gairl.”
“What?” asked the bewildered doctor.
Julia took off her glasses, polished and replaced them, an invariable portent of serious speech. “Edmund, I’m not one to mince my words. What I have to say will pain you, and I am sorry for that; but it has got to be said. My interview with Miss Cranmere this afternoon was most instructive. I don’t propose to tell you even the gist of it; certainly not the foolish things that were said; only what it has opened my eyes to. Edmund, I am sorry to have to say so, but that gairl is a hypocrite.”
“Julia!” exclaimed Dr. Bickleigh, colouring angrily.
“A hypocrite,” repeated Mrs. Bickleigh calmly. “She hasn’t the least feeling for you; she is merely amusing herself. She has not the faintest intention of marrying you, even if you are ever free. Did you even know that she is conducting a flirtation with Denny Bourne every bit as violent as the one with you? She is a poseuse of the very worst description. She is acting the whole time. If she had her living to make she would be on the stage at once. She is obviously hysterical, and yet at the same time I could detect in her a callous calculation which quite disgusted me. Her selfishness is inconceivable; nothing interests her but herself and her own silly emotions. In short, I should call her utterly untrustworthy, egotistical to the point of mania, and the most dangerous kind of liar there is—the liar who can deceive not only other people, but herself as well.
“Naturally,” added Julia, as if anxious to be fair, “I did not discover this all at once. It only dawned on me gradually, and at first I could not believe it. Then I began to test her, and discovered that she was worse than I suspected. It was not a pleasant process, but necessary for both our sakes. I may say that of course Miss Cranmere has no idea of my opinion of her.”
Dr. Bickleigh had sat like a small statue, the only sign of his feelings the gradual suffusion of his face. Now he jumped to his feet and, almost out of his mind with rage, leant over his wife. “Look here,” he articulated thickly, “if you think that these damned lies of yours are going to make me—”
“Sit down, Edmund, and don’t be childish. You know perfectly well that I invariably speak the truth; lying simply doesn’t interest me. This is a shock for you, I know, and I am ready to make allowances. Now listen, please. In other circumstances I should have remained silent and left you to find all this out for yourself, as in due time you will. But I don’t consider that in this case that would be fair, because, having altered my decision of a week or two ago, I think you are entitled to the reason for it. In other words, I am not prepared to divorce you for the sake of that gairl.”
“Oh—that’s what you’re getting at, is it?”
“It is, Edmund, and I mean it. It would only mean quite unnecessary unhappiness for you, and when you’ve got over this infatuation you’ll realise that. I’m sorry you should think it pique on my part, as apparently you do; you ought to know me well enough by this time to realise that I should not give way to anything like that. Besides, I am quite prepared to keep my promise in the future. If you ever do meet a gairl, a nice gairl, who—”
“Oh, shut up, you—,” screamed Dr. Bickleigh, and rushed out of the room.
Julia sat for a moment regarding the banged door; then took up her crochet-work again.
6
POSSESSED APPARENTLY by some mechanical relict of himself, who performed the normal functions of opening the garage doors, starting up the Jowett, and avoiding the left-hand gatepost after the awkward corner from the stable-yard, Dr. Bickleigh succeeded in making his way without scathe to The Hall. It was a Thursday, and therefore a Madeleine dies non, but that did not even occur to him. He drove in a rigid trance of fury.
What he intended to do at The Hall he had no idea. He just had to see Madeleine, and, incidentally, scotch this abominable calumny.
Madeleine was at home, and alone. She rose as he was shown into the drawing-room, and, immediately the door was closed, uttered one word: “Julia!”
Dr. Bickleigh nodded.
“She didn’t like me. I felt it. I can always feel that sort of thing. Edmund—what has she been saying?”
Dr. Bickleigh took her in his arms and kissed her. He felt as if he could never let he
r go. “Oh, nothing much.” No need to distress poor Madeleine with what Julia had really said. “I just felt . . .”
“Oh, Edmund, I was wanting you, too. Was she very horrid?”
“We just had a bit of a tiff. Nothing much. Was she beastly to you this afternoon?”
Madeleine’s eyes filled with tears. She turned her head away.
“Not very sympathetic.”
“You’ve been crying.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my darling.”
“But what did she say, Edmund?”
“Oh, nothing much, really. Some nonsense about you and young Bourne.”
Madeleine looked up quickly. “Denny? What?”
“I don’t know. That you’d been flirting with him, or something.”
“At Merchester?”
“She didn’t mention Merchester.”
“Edmund—did you believe it?”
“My darling, of course I didn’t.”
Madeleine gazed at him, her eyes larger than ever. “Well, I did.”
“Flirted with Denny?” Dr. Bickleigh exclaimed.
“Yes; at Merchester. Well, not flirted with him. Just let him be attentive in public. On purpose.”
“But, dearest, why?”
Madeleine looked her gravest. “For your sake, Edmund. I thought people might be beginning to talk about us. So I—well, I’m afraid I rather encouraged poor Denny. People were looking at us quite a lot. I don’t think they’ll talk about us any more.”
“My wonderful darling!” It seemed the most self-sacrificing thing he had ever heard. Julia’s beastly mind . . .
“Are you cross with me?”
“Cross! I could kiss your dear feet. But, Madeleine . . .”
“Yes?”
“You’re not—fond of him, are you?”
“Fond of him?” Madeleine smiled tolerantly. Men are so foolish. “Why, he’s only a boy.”
“Is he fond of you?”
“I think he could be. But I shan’t let things go as far as that.”
“It’s me you really love, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Edmund,” Madeleine said solemnly. “It’s you I really love.”