by A. J. Cronin
“You seem to have planned it all very thoroughly.”
“But of course, darling.”
“It doesn’t quite follow that Bertram’s going to be as easy as I am.”
“But you’ll ask him,” cried Nancy quickly.
There was a pause while Katharine’s expression relented further. “All right,” she said at last.
“You darling!” With a final crashing chord Nancy rose from the piano and flung her arms round Katharine’s neck. “Oh, I knew you’d do it. I counted on you. I’m so happy! I know that when you take a thing in hand, it’s as good as done.”
She drew back, contemplating Katharine with sincere affection and gratitude. She hugged her again, then switched her regard towards the tiny platinum watch on her wrist. Immediately her look became regretful.
“And now I must fly. I promised to meet Chris at eleven. He’s such a dear I hate to keep him waiting. Go to-day, won’t you, Katharine—to Bertram? Or to-morrow if he’s not in town. Good-bye, darling, and thanks a million.”
When Nancy had gone, Katharine stood for a minute in rather mixed reflection. One part of her observed that Nancy was making kind yet calculating use of her, the other acknowledged that no demand of Nancy’s could ever overtax the willing service of her love. It was true she had some influence with Bertram and, if Nancy’s information were correct, might possibly persuade him. Though it cost her independent nature dear to ask such a favour, she felt that Nancy was relying on her, that she must do it for her sake. At this her brow cleared, and with an impulsive movement she went to the telephone. She hardly expected Bertram to be in London at the week-end, but from Winter, his man, she could at least find out his engagements for the coming week.
It was, in fact, Winter’s voice that answered—his booming tones were unmistakable—yet when Katharine made her inquiry, he answered, with some slight hesitancy and a suggestion of mystery, that his master was at home.
“Good!” exclaimed Katharine. “Then tell him, Winter, that I’m coming round to see him.”
“Oh, no, Miss Lorimer,” protested Winter. “ You can’t possibly see him.”
“But why? He isn’t engaged all day.”
“I’m afraid so, Miss Lorimer. You see, he’s—he’s indisposed.”
“Indisposed?” Winter’s manner was baffing Katharine. She demanded outright: “What’s wrong with him?”
Silence of hesitation at the other end. Then, with majestic reluctance: “ If you must know, Miss Lorimer, Mr Bertram has toothache.”
There was something so sepulchral in Winter’s pronouncement of the malady that Katharine had to laugh. Quickly, rather than hurt his feelings, which she knew to be highly organized, she hung up the receiver. But her intention to make the visit remained, since if something were to be done for Nancy, it had better be done at once.
Towards three o’clock, therefore, by which time she judged Bertram’s neuralgia might have subsided, she left her flat and set off briskly in the direction of Portman Square.
She pressed the doorbell at No. 16a, and Winter answered her ring in person, standing tall, thin, and funereal above her.
“I’m sorry, Miss Lorimer,” he began, and she saw that he was uncertain about admitting her.
But before he could summon his decision she was in the hall, smiling at him reassuringly, murmuring:
“It’s all right, Winter, I’ll find my way in!”
She marched past the perturbed manservant towards the study, which, from her familiarity with Bertram’s habits, she knew must now contain him.
In this she was right, but more by chance than judgment, for Bertram was not working at his desk but sat instead, in a plaid dressing gown, crouched over a heaped coal fire, his head encased in a Shetland shawl, his attitude the ludicrous personification of misery.
“Why, Bertie!” exclaimed Katharine spontaneously. “ Is it as bad as all that?”
“Worse,” he mumbled. Then after a silence he painfully screwed round his head and surveyed her with a jaundiced eye. “ What the devil are you doing here?”
Though her heart went out to him in sympathy, there was about him in his present situation, dishevelled, beshawled, and swollen-cheeked, something so irresistibly reminiscent of the comic strip that Katharine had to fight down an awful tremor of mirth. Hurriedly she declared:
“I just dropped in for a minute. And I’m so glad I came. You must let me do something for you.”
“You can’t,” he mumbled mournfully. “ I don’t want to be disturbed. I told Winter.”
“It wasn’t Winter’s fault. And look here, Bertie…”
“Can’t look anywhere,” he interrupted. “Toothache, damnable face-ache. Let me alone. I couldn’t buy an antique now to save my life.”
“I haven’t come here to sell you an antique.”
“You haven’t come here for nothing. I know you. On a Sunday, too. Out you get, Katharine!”
“No, I won’t,” she answered determinedly, and took a step towards him. “ It’s absurd to see you suffering like this. Haven’t you seen a dentist?”
“Hate dentists. Never had any time for them. Hate the whole crew. Besides …” he groaned delicately, held rigid by a sudden wave of his affliction. When it had subsided, he lay back, spent, on the chair and explained: “Abscess, I think. Can’t inject. Can’t do anything.”
“You can have it out,” said Katharine in some astonishment.
“Out!” He jumped, almost, in his chair. “ Without an injection? In cold blood? Out! Oh, Lord, does the woman think I’m made of iron? Out! Oh, dear Lord, forgive her!”
With a shudder he turned his back and, holding the afflicted cheek tenderly, began to rock himself gently to and fro.
Katharine studied him with genuinely affectionate concern, reflecting, perhaps a little tritely yet none the less truly in the circumstances, how like children men could be, especially when bereft of feminine government. She exclaimed:
“Let me have a look at it, Bertie.”
“No, thanks.”
“But you must. It’s too ridiculous for you to go on suffering.”
Firmly she advanced towards him. His eyes, sole mobility of his stricken face, rotated towards her wildly. But she was too much for him. Crouched like a spaniel threatened by the whip, he groaned again and surrendered, opening his mouth, exposing a dark stump of molar set in an area of angry gum.
When she had satisfied herself as to the trouble, Katharine took up her place on the hearthrug and contemplated him severely. “Look here, Bertie, it’s insanity leaving this. You’ve got to have it out at once.”
“You can’t,” he remonstrated feebly. “You can’t inject.…”
“Gas,” returned Katharine laconically.
He paled under the shawl, which with an effort of self-preservation he had resumed. “ Gas?”
“Yes, gas, Bertie!”
He made a last effort to escape. “I can’t have an anaesthetic. The very idea’s enough for me. I’ve never had an anaesthetic in my life.”
“Well, you will now,” said Katharine in her most final and formidable tone. “I’m going to phone up Dr Blake, and you’re going to have this wretched tooth out right away.”
“No, no. Don’t you dare! If I have gas, I’ll pass out for good. I’m better … I’m absolutely all right now. Oh! Oh…!”
He was struggling up in his chair, protesting, when another wave of anguish caught him and laid him back again, vanquished and at her mercy.
Katharine eyed her old friend with a compassionate yet unrelenting gaze; then she went out of the room and down to the hall, where she rang Dr Blake, her own surgeon dentist, who lived just round the comer in Queen Anne Street, and asked him to come round at once. From Winter, who hovered near, a troubled and cadaverous shadow, she demanded hot water and clean towels.
Katharine remained in the hall until Dr Blake arrived.
“You must be firm, Doctor,” she admonished him. “ No nonsense about putting this off.�
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“Not on your life, Miss Lorimer,” he answered with a smile. “ I never put off till to-morrow what ought to come out to-day.”
Upstairs they found the wretched victim prostrate with the premonition of his fate, too far gone even to raise a feeble protest. It took barely a minute to prepare the apparatus. Bertram darted one look at its dark cylinders and coils of red tubing and shivered as if chilled by an icy blast.
“You’re going to finish me,” he muttered. “ I’ll never come through it.”
“Rot!” said Blake breezily.
“Don’t I—don’t I want a special chair or something?” faltered Bertram.
“Not on your life,” said Blake more breezily than ever. It seemed to be a favourite expression. He rolled up his right cuff expertly. “Just loosen your collar and sit up pretty.”
A ghastly grin spread over Bertram’s face. “ Sit up pretty,” he cackled. “If I wasn’t a dying man, I would laugh.”
Here the door opened, and Winter entered, stepping gravely forward with a basin in his hand like a surgeon apothecary bent on blood. It was the last straw. Bertram shut his eyes tight. As Blake slipped the rubber mask over his face, he blubbered:
“Hold my hand, Katharine. And for God’s sake hold it tight.”
Three minutes later he opened his eyes and stared glassily at Blake, who, whistling gently, was re-packing his instruments. Winter and the basin had vanished, and so, it dawned on Bertram, had the tooth, the agony, the nightmare in its entirety. The miracle overcame him. He remained passive until the dentist had gone. Then he sat up and considered Katharine with a slow, unpainful smile.
“It’s you,” he declared. He reassured himself as to his relief by tapping his cheek; then he smiled again, rather sheepishly. “Wonderful stuff, that gas. I was pretty plucky about it, though, wasn’t I?”
“You were splendid, Bertie.”
“I wasn’t … Oh, well, hang it all, it isn’t a very pleasant thing to face up to. It isn’t everybody who would do it. I mean the anaesthetic and everything.”
“Yes, you did marvellously. It was a quite nasty tooth.”
Here, following her gaze, he discovered the tooth, which lay on a swab of cotton wool on the table beside him. He picked it up and contemplated it with pride.
“Well! Well! A great septic molar, too. Better out than in, eh, Katharine? Thank the Lord I had the nerve to go through with it.”
Looking up suddenly, he caught her steady gaze upon him, and all at once he paused like a boy detected in the jam cupboard. He gave a guilty blink. His face fell slowly. Then his eyes twinkled, and with real enjoyment he began to laugh. He laughed a long time.
“Oh, Lord, Katharine, what a funk I was in! And what a brick you were to force me into it. If you hadn’t, I’d still be suffering blue hell!” He reached out and pressed the bell. “Now we’re going to have some tea. I’m hungry. My appetite’s ferocious. Would you believe it, I haven’t had a thing all day!”
She shook her head. “No, I’m going to have the tea, Bertie. You’re going to have some nice, nourishing soup.”
“Ha! Ha! Good idea. I need nourishment. I feel as if I’d eaten nothing for a week.”
Later, when Winter had padded in and out, and Bertram, with a napkin tucked round his chin, was splashing his way through a bowl of bouillon, he suddenly declared:
“You know, Katharine, you’ve missed your vocation. You ought to have been a nurse or a doctor. No, on my oath, you ought to have been somebody’s wife. Mine, for example.” He waved his spoon vigorously. “ That’s an idea. Marry me, Katharine, and make an honest man of me at last.”
She simply smiled at him, taking no notice, and he ran on:
“What can I do for you, then, if I’m no use to you as a husband? Only one thing’s impossible. You mustn’t try to sell me anything. I’m down to the bone over my new show.”
Katharine took a deep breath. Though she would have deliberately broached the subject, this opening, together with his gratitude, gave her an opportunity she could not fail to take. “ I do want to ask something of you, Bertie and it’s over your new show. Give my niece, Nancy Sherwood, a part in it.”
The intensity rather than the nature of her request drew him up. He finished his soup slowly. “ Mmm,” he said at length. “So that’s it. She’s put you up to it, Katharine. Clever little devil.”
“She is clever, Bertie,” Katharine said quickly. “And you know she can act.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “ She’s pretty good.” He paused. “And she’s got pluck. I heard all about her little do at the B. B.C. the other day. Those things get around.” He paused again. “Mmm! But suppose we wait a bit. In a year or two she’ll have more experience.”
“There won’t be a year or two,” Katharine declared earnestly. “She’ll be married and settled down long before that. She wants to make good now—you know how it is, Bertie—to feel that she’s not a failure, to finish with the knowledge of having done something.”
He looked at her askance. “ Oh, yes?”
“Besides,” she went on quickly, “ I want her to be in America when I’m there. It’s got to do with her future, her happiness, with everything that really matters.”
There was a silence. He stroked his chin reflectively and was some time before replying, but at last he took a sudden decision. “All right, Katharine; for your sake I’ll do it. There’s a good part she can have. It’ll suit Nancy down to the ground. It’s hers. Tell here to look me up at the office to-morrow.”
Her face flooded with a warm colour. Delighted, she rose and took both his hands. “Thank you, Bertie!” she cried. “ That’s something I’ll never forget.”
“That’s all right. Come to think of it, Nancy’ll make a good set-off to Paula Brent, who’s playing lead.”
His manner, deliberately offhand, did not conceal his gratification that she should be pleased.
Shortly afterward she took her leave. An indescribable elation filled her as she walked home, bent on telephoning Nancy the instant she reached Curzon Street. Her American visit took on a new complexion, was coloured by a vivid sense of anticipation. She had always wanted to take the trip with Nancy. And it was, she reflected with a little inward glow, in some strange fashion an added happiness that Madden would be going, too.
Chapter Seven
The Forenoon of their departure was raw and foggy, with infrequent blinks of a dull red sun which loomed like a heavy eye upon the rim of the yellow sky.
There were four of them in the reserved compartment as the train tore its passage to Southampton through stretches of dreary chimney pots, for Charley Upton had the sentimental habit of seeing Katharine off on her transoceanic ventures.
Madden and Upton, in opposite corners, were getting acquainted through the medium of a polite conversation on the merits of the American football game, while Nancy, her fur coat upon the rack and her new dressing case beside her, ran excitedly through the illustrated weeklies in the hope of finding pictorial news of her intimates or herself. It had been a disappointment to her that Bertram and the rest of the Dilemma company were not coming on the Pindaric, but sailing two days later on the Imperial, a faster and, as Nancy did not fail to indicate, a smarter ship. But now she had got over it—in her own phrase, recovered from the blow.
Katharine was unusually lighthearted, pervaded by a glow of optimism, and acute appreciation of the fact, evident yet sometimes overlooked, that it was good to be alive. Also, it was good to have friends—Bertram in particular had been extraordinarily kind—and to be going away with Madden and Nancy. Her thoughts raced ahead. In these next few weeks she would sell the miniature to Brandt, bring her business worries to an end, see Nancy’s happiness assured. Suddenly she became aware of her niece leaning towards her.
“Look Katharine,” said Nancy with a conscious little laugh. “They’ve shoved in this of me. Do you think it’s good?”
Turning, Katharine studied the illustration which Nancy held out to
her, a recent and very lovely studio portrait. It was a profile taken from an odd angle and lighted most strikingly, the chin uptilted, the hair flung back, winged like the head of a flying Hermes.
“Yes, it’s terribly good,” Katharine acquiesced warmly. “And quite original.”
“It’s not vanity,” said Nancy suddenly. “It’s just that it’s important from my point of view. You know, keeping oneself before the public and all that.”
Madden and Upton both admired the photograph, Upton especially commenting on the likeness.
“This question of likeness,” Katharine interposed on an impulse, “it’s very queer how it turns out.” After a moment she continued: “For example, here’s something that people have said is like me. How it can be I don’t know. But you can judge for yourselves.”
Snapping open the small jewel case which lay beside her, she produced the miniature and offered it for their inspection. In a sudden silence the tiny Holbein went from hand to hand.
Madden looked at it a long time, then with an intake of his breath he declared: “It certainly is like you, Katharine. And it’s a darn lovely little picture, too.”
Upton, peering over Madden’s shoulder, agreed, and added: “How much is that going to cost some infatuated American?”
“Twenty thousand pounds,” Katharine smiled, “I hope.”
“And I wouldn’t say it wasn’t worth it,” said Madden seriously. “It’s got real class.”
At her end of the compartment Nancy laughed. “Perhaps you’re thinking of having it yourself, Chris,” she suggested.
“Sure,” Madden answered pleasantly.
Then he smiled and handed back the miniature to Katharine, who locked it back in her case.
At this point Upton looked at his watch, an action less habitually dependent on the passage of time than on Charley’s cordial inclination towards food or drink. “What about a spot of luncheon?” he inquired. “I’m pretty sharp set myself. I’ve ordered it for twelve o’clock. We’ve got a special table in the dining car.”