“What a charming puppy!” Dr. Frost said. “But what’s he done to his paw?”
“Didn’t Mr. Manningham tell you?” Bella said. “Well, it doesn’t matter.” She turned to Elizabeth. “Do you think Mr. Manningham would trust Dr. Frost to see that Cerberus does not come to any harm? Or should I ask you, Dr. Frost?”
Dr. Frost was a dog lover. “I shouldn’t have thought the little fellow would have come to harm with either of us,” he said. “Certainly he’s devoted to you.”
“I’m interested to hear you say that, Doctor,” Bella said. “Down, Cerberus, down!” She patted the hearthrug. “Down, boy!”
The puppy was by no means fully trained, but he settled on the rug and curled up. “I can see you like dogs, Doctor.”
“Man’s best friend.”
At this point, she realized later, she should have abandoned the conversation about dogs. But she couldn’t. The whole of her life centered on this puppy. “Then you can understand,” she said. “Thank God for that!”
She leaned forward and began to pour out all that had happened since the ghastly morning after Cerberus was caught in the trap. She knew that her muscles were becoming tense; her fists were clutched white over the knuckles. She hammered on the dining room table and her eyes began to blink nervously.
Dr. Frost was a normal dog lover who threw sticks into the Round Pond and backed away from the shower of spray when his retrieving “best friend” dropped them on the grass and then shook the water from its coat. He was at first alerted as a doctor, and then became alarmed by the passion with which Bella spoke about Cerberus and her husband. A dog was only a dog after all, while a husband belonged to a higher order of creation.
When he was called on to follow a story of extreme complexity about who came in when, what doors were locked and what open, bottles of wine fetched from the cellar which the next morning were found to be still there, he withdrew his attention. He recalled the good doctor who had taught him at Guy’s: “Listen first, gentlemen, to the tone of the voice of the patient. Diagnostically it will tell you, in nine cases out of ten, if not in ninety-nine out of a hundred, more than a notation of the patient’s report of symptoms. Eavesdrop on undertones.”
With Mrs. Manningham, there were overtones, quite recognizably, of acute hysteria coupled with paranoid delusions. The symptoms were similar to those of her first collapse, complicated by the intrusion of the puppy, of course, a substitute for the baby the poor woman had lost. Nor was it strange that she should put on the husband the blame for the social disease. Though, as a sensitive woman, of course, she did not mention this, it clearly colored the whole of her attitude toward Manningham.
You must not distress yourself unduly about the puppy, Mrs. Manningham,” he said. “I’ll have a word with Mr. Manningham and recommend him to reconsider. But I do think you need a tonic, which I will make up in my dispensary and have sent around.”
“When you say ‘tonic,’ you really mean a sedative,” Bella said. “I hope that you do not want to reduce me to the state of stupefaction you achieved before.”
“Dear me, no!” Dr. Frost reassured her, reflecting that he could achieve a similar state of sedation by a medicine different in appearance.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
If Dr. Frost spoke to Mr. Manningham about Cerberus, Jack certainly did not mention it to Bella, nor did Bella venture to raise the question. It was bad enough that Jack had discovered her vulnerability; to remind him would be madness.
That evening at dinner, Jack’s thoughts had turned in a new direction. “Dr. Frost has prescribed for you more excursions abroad,” he said. “So for tomorrow evening I have taken stalls for ‘Dorothy’ at the Prince of Wales Theatre. We shall dine first at the East Rooms of the Criterion Restaurant. I have reserved a table. I hope that you will look your best.”
“This is a surprise.”
“Not the less pleasant, I trust, for being so?”
“Will we have company?” Bella did not credit her husband with accepting the doctor’s suggestion merely because it had been made. He seldom acted without at least one selfish motive. “Have you invited your important American from Brown’s Hotel?”
“Who?” He seemed to have forgotten the existence of the gentleman from New Orleans, whom it had been so urgent for him to meet. “No, this is just a jaunt for you and I.”
The prospect of such an excursion undertaken not for pleasure but as a forced therapy depressed her. “What should I wear?” she asked. “I have nothing suitable.”
“Your black silk evening gown and your cameo brooch. You know how well they set one another off. Come, my dear, I expected more enthusiasm; not very flattering to your husband, when at considerable expense, to say nothing of the sacrifice of an evening . . .”
“If it were less of a sacrifice on your part,” Bella said, “I should find it more of an enjoyment on mine. Why don’t you take someone whose company would give you pleasure? I should appreciate a quiet evening at home.”
He wiped his lips and folded his napkin. “Dr. Frost would be disappointed to hear you speak like that.” He stood up. “As for me, I would hate to have to repeat a well-meant invitation in the form of a command. So I must ask you, will you accept the excursion in the spirit in which it was proffered?”
She inserted her napkin in its ring and rose. “I do not see what else I can do.”
“One thing, I might suggest,” Manningham said, “take your medicine as prescribed. On the bottle, you will observe, ‘Three Times a Day After Meals.’ ”
Bella shook the bottle and poured out a dessert spoonful. Its taste was bitter, different from Dr. Frost’s earlier mixture but equally unpleasant. She shuddered. “It is horrible.”
“Most medicine is,” Jack observed. “It would not be good for you otherwise.”
They went upstairs to the drawing room to take coffee and pursued a desultory conversation about the light opera “Dorothy” and the haute cuisine of the East Rooms until suddenly Mr. Manningham looked up at the wall behind Bella. “What the deuce?
Bella turned and saw on the wall a bright patch of paper, about eighteen inches by twelve, where hung usually a watercolor of the Bridge of Sighs. “Where can the picture have gone? Do you know, Bella?”
She felt herself blushing. “No. Of course, I do not.”
“Then perhaps you would call a servant.”
She went and pulled the bell. Her heart beat more quickly. It was beginning again, another of these scenes produced by, or productive of, her disease. She sat down again and sipped her coffee. Her hands were trembling.
Bella’s back was to the door and she did not turn when Nancy came in. That it was Nancy, and not Elizabeth, she did not have to be told; she could read it in the glint in Jack’s eyes.
“Ah, Nancy!” he said. “It appears that something else is now missing. Perhaps you could cast your eyes round the room. Do you observe . . . ?”
The ponderous approach was more than Bella could stand. “Mr. Manningham means, do you know where the picture of The Bridge of Sighs is, Nancy?”
“It was there when I dusted this morning, sir,” Nancy said. “Of that I am certain.”
“Could you go down and ask Elizabeth whether she has removed it for some reason?” Jack smiled. “If it is not too much trouble.”
“It’s no trouble for you, sir,” Nancy answered, returning the smile.
Jack waited until the door was closed. Then he said, “Do you believe in poltergeists, my dear?”
“Mischievous spirits? I’ve always thought their phenomena were associated with hysterical children. No, I don’t believe in them, not as spirits.”
“I just wondered because I understand that you have been troubled by various noises. Spirit rappings and so on.”
“You had this from Nancy, I suppose?”
“She was worried.”
“But also misinformed. I can assure you that I have heard no spirit rapping.”
As she said this, she was
aware of a strange feeling, a sort of contraction of the muscles of her forehead, which passed almost as suddenly as it came. But she was unsettled by it. She had missed something that her husband had said, and only came back to hear him saying “. . . not hysterical children, hysterical people, though of course hysteria is commoner in pubescence.” Jack’s face lit up. Nancy must have come back. Bella thought sadly that she had never, not even in Hampstead, made Jack’s face light up in the way that this saucy little wench did.
“What news, Nancy, from belowstairs?”
“Elizabeth don’t know nothin’ about it, sir.”
“Quite certain? Well, thank you, Nancy. Very kind of you!” And as the door closed again, he turned to Bella. “It’s quite a mystery, then. Unless, of course, it might be a poltergeist.”
Bella had to close her eyes. The contraction of the muscles felt like two hands inside her head were pulling the muscles tight, relaxing them and then pulling again. There was also a humming in her ears.
When she heard next clearly, Jack was leaning forward slapping the backs of her hands. “Bella! Bella!”
“Um?”
“You didn’t hear a word I was saying.”
“Yes. Yes, of course, I did.”
“Then tell me.” His big, bearded face, with lips which lay corrugated like large earthworms within the hair, thrust close. “What did I say?” It was more like the mask of some South American Indian dancer than the face of her husband. “What did I say?”
She covered her eyes with her hand. “I don’t know. Please, I don’t know. Please, leave me alone, please!”
Dimly she saw her husband go to the chimney-breast and pull the bell cord.
Later, it might have been seconds, minutes or hours, Jack and Nancy were trying to hoist her out of her chair. She did not wish to move. But Jack kept saying, “You are not well, my dear. The sooner you are in bed the better.”
They propelled Bella between them up the stairs and into her bedroom. Her strength and senses ebbed. She thought, “Let them do what they want as long as I can sleep.” She was too weak even to be frightened.
The next morning her husband came up to her bedroom before he went down to breakfast. He was quite like his old self, very tender. He had brought up from the drawing room below a pot of pink chrysanthemums and set it on her dressing table where she could see it from her bed reflected three times. “Four pots in all,” he remarked fancifully.
He kissed her on the forehead, smoothed back a lock that had fallen loose, and sat down on the bed, playing with her fingers. “You had a bad spell last night,” he said, “but you look more yourself this morning, my dear. Do you feel it?”
She nodded gratefully. “But frail, you know.” Under his gentleness she blossomed like the desert after the rains. “I cannot remember very much, I fear.”
“You do remember the picture missing from the wall, though?” She nodded. “I think that I have found the explanation. The picture was between the cupboard and the wall.”
Bella was puzzled. But she wanted above all the continuation of this long-lost affection. She looked at the black hairs marching in columns down the back of his fingers.
“Amnesia,” he said, “the loss of memory. There must be lapses.” He bent forward towards her. He was still a very handsome man. Her concentration on his coarsening had been unfair. In the years of their marriage, she had aged faster than he.
“I am not sure that I understand,” she said.
“Last night I saw it for myself. I’ve been so busy I haven’t devoted to my wife the time I should, and I realize that now. But the watch, the painting, the accounts and all the other little things . . .”
“What things?”
“Oh silly things,” he said. “I have not mentioned them just because I did not want to distress you.” He held up his hand. “Yes, I know that I have appeared intolerant, but to look for one’s keys, or rings or pencils, even one’s handkerchiefs, and then to find them in the bottom of your sewing box.”
“I can’t believe it!”
He squeezed her hands affectionately. “When they were in the bottom of your sewing box, it was easy enough to extricate them. Why make a fuss, when you became so distressed at the slightest thing? Especially when at other times I recognize that I have been perhaps immoderately short-tempered.”
“You must not say that, Jack,” Bella said. “I fear that more often it is I, who have deliberately provoked and said wounding things. I know it. But then I was so unhappy.” She smiled at him. “But I am not now, darling. I am sorry.”
“So am I sorry, too. I did not appreciate how ill you were. I thought you were doing it out of deliberate malice; you know how overly punctilious you can be: ‘A place for everything, everything in its place.’ But this is not malice. It is a terrible frailty. I see that now. I realize how distressed you must have been, my dear Bella, at hot-tempered references to your poor mother’s infirmity.”
“Do we have to talk of that?”
“Only,” he said, as he heard Nancy put down the breakfast tray outside the door, “don’t forget that Mrs. Jameson could give you chapter and verse about the sins of the fathers being visited on the children.” He kissed the backs of both of her hands and went to the door. “And here is Nancy, looking brighter than the morning, which, indeed, would not be difficult, since it is raining cats and dogs. And she’s bearing a breakfast fit for a goddess; that is, if goddesses eat breakfast.”
Bella smiled, if a trifle wanly. It was the first time that Jack had wooed her since he bent over and felt the baby stirring inside her.
“Remember,” he said. “Tonight we take dinner at the East Rooms, Bisque d’Ecrevisses, Tournedos à la Béarnaise and Bombe Pralinée. You must take the morning easy.”
Bella felt so weak that this rally sounded to her like a threat. When she saw the medicine bottle on the breakfast tray, it even looked like one.
Nancy made as if to remain with her while she ate breakfast. Bella seemed to detect in the girl a further change. Nancy did not immediately leave when told there was no need for her to wait. Hitherto Jack’s authority had, of course, always been supreme as master of the house when he was present; but alone, Bella had expected that her orders would be implicitly obeyed. A change had started with the banishment of Cerberus, which could not be countermanded in Jack’s absence. Its extension was subtly shown when Nancy came to collect the tray.
“You haven’t taken your medicine, madam,” Nancy said.
“I don’t think I will,” Bella answered. “I think it was that which made me feel so strange last evening.”
“Oh, but you must, madam,” Nancy said, taking the bottle and shaking it well before filling the dessert spoon.
“I don’t want it, thank you, Nancy!” Bella concentrated in her voice and look all the authority she could muster.
But Nancy was not deterred. “Oh, come along, madam,” she said, as if coaxing a child. “You wouldn’t want Mr. Manningham to be upset, now, would you?”
“Is there any need for him to know?”
“Oh, but he must, madam. So it’s either me tell him or you. Would you like me to call him, madam?” Perhaps Nancy did not intend it as a threat but to Bella it sounded like one.
Bella took the spoon and swallowed the filthy concoction, screwing her face up with distaste.
Nancy laughed. “Oh, you do pull such faces,” she said. “Just like my little brother and castor oil!” She put the tray aside on a table and came back to tidy the bed. “An’ now we’ll tuck you up real cozy; so you can have a good snooze an’ wake up fresh for tonight.”
There was in the girl’s voice the sort of babying banter, commonly used by nurses to the sick, which Bella had always found annoying; but coming from someone as young and unqualified as Nancy, it was downright insulting. She felt a surge of anger and would have spoken severely to the maid if she had not felt at the same time so confused and burdened with weariness. Rage rose like a blister and then burst silently
as Nancy gathered up the tray and triumphantly left the room.
Whatever was in the medicine made Bella feel drowsy and strange. She was almost asleep when Jack returned, having finished his own breakfast. “The maid tells me, my dear, that you were complaining of Dr. Frost’s mixture,” he said affably.
“Not complaining,” Bella said. “I just feel that it is not making me better, perhaps even the reverse.”
He came and sat again upon her bed. “Sometimes things have to get worse before they can grow better, you know. But as I am going out now and shall be passing the doctor’s house, I will look in and see him. It is possible that a medicine that may benefit one constitution may disagree with another. I will put it to him. And if he agrees, he will no doubt suggest a change. You do not after all have to take another dose until after luncheon, and I shall return by noon.”
She smiled in gratitude. “You know what is the best best tonic, of all, Jack?”
He did not answer her.
“It is your gentleness. I have become so confused. I cannot belive that, in moments of aberration, I do these silly things without knowing or remembering anything.”
“Except,” he said, running the tip of his index finger down the slender bones that stood out on the back of her thin, almost emaciated hands, “that we have the independent evidence of the maidservants.”
“I was going on to say, dear, that if I am ill, as it seems I must concede, then I am all the more in need of gentle forbearance, Jack.”
He nodded.
“So would you mind, supposing that later I still feel as seedy as I do now, if we postponed our excursion to another evening?”
He stood up wearily and walked across to the window, then turned. “If the decision lay in my hands,” he said, “you know that I would agree no matter what the inconvenience of canceled arrangements, but this again is for the doctor to say. ‘It is of the essence to take Mrs. Manningham out of herself,’ he remarked to me yesterday. ‘This hysteria is hypochondriacal.’ I will lay the matter before him. He may well agree to a postponement. But if be doesn’t, you must promise me that you will make an effort, Bella. It is not fair to a physician to consult him and then not follow his advice.”
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