by Sara Seale
“Your slant might be more accurate than his. These able medical men can often be very blind when it comes to their own kith and kin, you know. Let’s go in here and have a cup of coffee,” Matron said, and Lucy, in some surprise, followed her into a little cafe.
Mary Morgan, although she could put the fear of God into her underlings, was an adept at drawing individuals out. Lucy talked and the morning slipped away; tables filled up and emptied again, but still they sat on in the bow window that over-looked the High Street, and Matron watched the passers-by and did not appear to be listening very carefully.
“And what of you, Lucy? How are you making out with the distinguished Bartlemy Travers?” she asked suddenly, and Lucy replied vaguely, stammering a little and leaving broken little sentences to hang unfinished in the air.
Mary sighed sharply. She had always had a weakness for Lucy with her enquiring eyes and gentle mouth and her unconscious plea that life should be good to her, and, watching the stippled sunlight in the street, she was reminded of other springs, when she, like Lucy, had hoped for much and been passed by.
“You’re not already regretting your hasty action, then?” she asked with a smile. “It was hasty, you know.”
“But I thought, at the time, you approved, Matron.”
“Oh, yes, I approved, in the rather peculiar circumstances, but things don’t always work out as we hope, you know. Perhaps you were too young, too inexperienced, and yet those very qualities—” Mary broke off, leaving the sentence as unfinished as Lucy’s own.
“Bart should take you out more—introduce you to people,” she said briskly. “The doctor’s wives are full of curiosity, you know. They would like to call.”
“Oh, no!” Lucy exclaimed with more honesty than tact. “He doesn’t want other women at Polvane. He’s had no need for any social life, he says, and I—well, I’ve never known it.”
“Nonsense!” Mary said impatiently. “No one should be as self-sufficient as that. Get him to bring you to the Hospital Ball on the first of May. It’s an annual affair, you know, and anyone connected with the hospital is expected to put in an appearance.”
“I can’t,” said Lucy, looking a little dazed, “imagine Bart dancing.”
“Can’t you? Well, you don’t have to dance—just be gracious for an hour or so and then retire, like royalty.”
Lucy flushed a little at the acid dryness in Matron’s voice, but her eyes were suddenly bright and expectant.
“Oh, do you think—?” she began like a child with a vision of an almost unbelievable treat in store, and Mary’s tired eyes softened. Once, long ago, she had looked like that, but the vision had melted away in her too-eager grasp.
“Ask him,” she said, gathering up her handbag and shopping basket. “Look at him as you’re looking at me now, and ask him. He always buys tickets, anyway.”
II
Bart had his consulting-rooms in one of the Regency crescents which graced the town with their ‘curving rows of elegant houses, an Adam fanlight over each front door. Lucy had never been there before and she would not have thought of visiting him unbidden now, had it not been for the impulse of the moment, and the childish fear that all the tickets for the ball might be sold. But when she had rung the bell and been admitted by an efficient receptionist whom she had never seen before, she realized she was in another world, a world of clinical austerity far removed from frivolities, a world of soft carpets and subdued voices and the impersonal atmosphere of any professional waiting-room.
“Have you an appointment?” she was asked, and was immediately tempted to say she had made a mistake in the address and go.
She heard herself replying with more assurance than she felt:
“I wondered if I could see my—my husband for a few moments when he’s free. I’m Mrs. Travers.”
Behind her glasses, the elderly woman’s eyes looked their surprise, but she only said cautiously, “Certainly, Mrs. Travers. Will you wait in here, pleased.”
Two women were talking in muted tones by an electric fire. They broke off to stare at her curiously, then resumed their conversation, and Lucy sat on the edge of a chair and gazed about her at the unfamiliar surroundings. This was Bart’s real world, she thought, a world to which women might be admitted because, for him, they were merely case numbers. She began to feel like a case number herself, as she waited, and was aware of the raised eyebrows of the two women when the receptionist opened the door and said, “Mrs. Travers, please.”
Although she had driven in with him only that morning, for a moment Bart seemed like a stranger. The dark clothes emphasized his height and the sombre furnishings of the room were a fitting background for his grave regard. He had risen courteously to greet her, but he had about him the impersonal air he would reserve for his patients, and Lucy felt chilled.
“What is it, Lucy? Have you run out of money?” he said.
She stood, twisting her gloves in her fingers, suddenly overwhelmed by the enormity of trespassing on his time with such trivialities.
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. I—I shouldn’t have come.”
He frowned at her quickly.
“I don’t imagine you came here for no reason at all. Did you want a lift home, later on? I don’t quite know when I shall be free, and I’ve no time, I’m afraid, to offer you lunch.”
“Of course not. I—I didn’t come for that.”
He glanced at his watch impatiently.
“I can give you just three minutes,” he said, and she found herself stammering out her absurd request with the desperate baldness of a cornered child.
His black eyebrows drew together in a straight, uncompromising line as he listened and she saw his mouth tighten.
“Do you mean to tell me you’ve come here during my consulting hours just to ask me that?” he said grimly.
“It was an impulse. I should have waited, I know, but I met Matron and—”
“Oh, so Mary Morgan’s put you up to this?”
“No, not exactly. I’m sorry, Bart. I’ll go away, now.”
He took her by the shoulders and swung her round to face the strong light from the window. Her eyes looked frightened.
“You behave, sometimes, as if you thought me some kind of ogre,” he said unexpectedly. “Would it give you so much pleasure to attend this tiresome function, Lucy?”
“Yes,” she said simply, and he smiled a little frostily. “And why couldn’t all this have waited till this evening?”
“I thought the tickets might be all sold,” she said, and he suddenly threw back his head and laughed.
“What a child you are!” he exclaimed. “I’ve had the tickets for weeks. I take them as a matter of course each year.”
“But you never meant to go?”
For a moment his eyes were grave and a little accusing, reminding her, perhaps, of the reason, then he replied evasively:
“I hadn’t thought about it, but I think, perhaps, I owe you a concession, as things are.”
Her face lit up.
“Then you will take me?”
“Yes, but if you ever come wasting my time again with frivolous demands, you’ll quite likely get a different answer,” he said severely, and rang his bell for his next patient to be shown in.
For Lucy the small victory took on an absurd importance. She chattered to Paul, and even to Bart, about the dress she would buy, admitted to both that it was the first grand occasion she had ever attended and asked endless questions as to whom she was likely to meet! Paul, as always, was an obliging listener, but Bart would sometimes answer tersely, and, remembering that the last time he had probably graced this annual affair it had been to show off the lovely Marcelle, her own pleasure became dimmed. Would not all these people who had known the first Mrs. Travers quiz her and marvel at Bartlemy Travers’ second choice, or did they already know that he had only re-married for the sake of his son, and so be a little pitying?
She spent many of these bright spring days in the
garden, planning with old Abel the flowers which Bart had said she might grow, and an odd friendship slowly ripened between them. Lucy felt at home with the old man as she never did with Smithers or Gaston and, although he said little, she felt he liked her. He would teach her, as he had already taught Pierre, the old Cornish rhymes of his own boyhood, churning couplets, skipping songs, counting games and charms to ensure good luck for almost everything.
“Do you know a charm for wedlock?” she asked him once, and he looked at her with the bright glance he had given her that very first morning.
“No call for that, m’dear, you’ve wed to maister of Polvane, see?” he said, as if that fact were a charm in itself, and perhaps it was, thought Lucy, for, with the coming of spring it was easy to believe in miracles and she would be grateful, she knew, for very little.
It was Abel who described for her the old rites of the Cornish Spring Festival which had almost died out, the Hobby Horse, the Furry Dance, danced by the mummers through the town, the Morning Song which had so many verses that many were already lost in antiquity. Lucy listened as round-eyed as Pierre, and Bart, occasionally interrupting these dissertations, would listen, too, and watch her eager, changing expression with an odd little air of sadness.
“You still have all a child’s delight in pageantry and mime,” he told her. “I hope you never lose it. It goes, with the light of heart.”
“Do you think so?” she asked him gravely. “I wish I could have seen one Spring Festival before it all died out.”
“Oh, they still keep up an imitation junketing in certain parts for the tourist, but it isn’t the real thing,” he answered carelessly, and remembered with vividness the mummers coming to Polvane when he had been only Pierre’s age. There had been a girl among them, very like Lucy, who had danced bare-footed on the lawn, her long legs flashing white in the spring sunshine. He had always remembered her.
“You’ll have your own May Day celebrations, Lucy,” he said with an odd gentleness as though he wished to console her for something of which she had been deprived.
“Oh, yes!” she cried, clapping her hands, and thinking of the exquisite dress which now hung in her wardrobe, and the pride she knew she would feel when Bart publicly proclaimed her as his bride, so her disappointment was double-edged when he told her only the day before that he would be unable to come.
“Oh, Bart!” she cried, and stood there before him, looking stricken.
“Never mind, my dear, Cinderella shall go to the ball. I’ve detailed Paul to deputize for me—more fun for you, really.” He spoke with the kindly reassurance he might have offered to a child, and did not understand the expression in her troubled eyes.
“Is it nothing you can get out of?” she asked tentatively.
“I’m afraid not. An emergency has cropped up and I have to consult with a specialist, who’s coming from Bristol, and most likely will operate the same evening.”
She turned from him with the first sign of rebellion he had ever known in her.
“It will always be the same,” she said, and as he turned her round gently to face him, he saw there were tears in her eyes.
“What can it matter to you?” he asked in some surprise. “I’m not asking you to stop at home.”
“It does matter,” she said, and broke away from him and ran out of the room.
He seemed preoccupied at dinner that evening, and Lucy herself was unusually silent. The heady excitement that had been with her all day had been quenched by Bart’s indifference, and in its place was the sad knowledge that she had been building on a dream. Old Abel had hypnotized her with his tales of the Spring Festival. Tomorrow was May Day and she had been half prepared for the ghosts of the Hobby Horse, the Teazer and the mummers to come prancing round the lawns of Polvane at daybreak, a fitting start to a day which, for her, was to end in such glory. But now the glory had gone. The Hospital Ball was, as Paul had laughingly told her, nothing more than a provincial dance attended by dowdy doctors’ wives and their no less mundane husbands, and Bart would never see her in the beautiful dress she had chosen with such care.
“Drink up your wine, Lucy.” His voice cut across her thoughts, making her jump, but, as she reached for her glass, she realized that his injunction, was automatic. He was not really paying attention to what she drank, but sat wrapped in his own meditations, although every so often he glanced across at her as if she vaguely troubled him.
He sat down after dinner to write letters, and Lucy wandered round the shelves, looking for something to read. She found an old book on witchcraft and immediately became absorbed, for now she found the origins of many of Abel’s rhymes and charms. She did not realize that the scratching of Bart’s pen had ceased until she became aware that he was watching her, a little puzzled frown between his eyebrows.
“What are you reading?” he asked, as she blinked up at him abstractedly.
“A book all about charms,” she said. “Listen, Bart—this is one to find out what kind of a husband you are going to get. You must lie in another county and knit the left garter about the right-legged stocking and you say as you knit:
This knot I knit,
To know the thing I know not yet,
That I may see
The man that shall my husband be,
How he goes, and what he wears,
And what he does all days and years.
Then, in your dream, you will see him.”
“Sounds a bit involved,” he observed, but he did not smile. “Lucy—have I cheated you?”
“Cheated me? How?”
“By tying you up in a loveless marriage.”
She closed the book gently, letting it lie in her lap and did not look at him.
“No, Bart,” she said. “And—and perhaps there are several ways of loving.”
“Perhaps there are. Sometimes you trouble me, you know.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps because you haven’t turned out quite what I expected.”
“But what did you expect?” she asked serenely. “You married me because for some reason you didn’t want to employ me for Pierre. You told me so yourself.”
“Damn it, Lucy, you make me sound a cold-blooded monster!” he exclaimed angrily. She said nothing, and he recognized the fleeting look of apprehension which came into her eyes when he snapped at her.
“Sorry,” he said. “You’re quite right, of course. What are you wearing tomorrow night?”
“White,” she answered, looking surprised, for he seldom expressed much interest in her clothes.
He got up abruptly from his desk and crossed the room to a small safe in the wall. She watched while he opened it and saw him extract a flat jeweller’s case from among several others.
“Wear these with the new dress,” he said, and tossed the case into her lap. She opened it because she did not know what else to do and gazed down at the string of exquisitely matched pearls with their old-fashioned but delicately designed diamond clasp.
“Well?” he said impatiently, as she did not speak, “You haven’t any jewellery of your own, have you?”
“No,” she said, “but—” All those jeweller’s cases stacked away in the safe; she had not known they existed. Did he expect her to borrow his first wife’s jewels because she had none of her own?
“But what?” he asked, frowning, then shut the, door of the safe and came to sit on the arm of a chair by the fire.
“The pearls belonged to my mother,” he, said casually. “She would have liked you to wear them.”
The change in her face was startling. The soft color flooded her cheekbones and she lifted the pearls from their bed of velvet and held them lovingly against her face.
“Oh!” she said softly.
“Did you think I was offering you Marcelle’s leavings?” he demanded with a touch of bitterness, and she looked up at him with eyes that were apologetic but unable to deny the truth of this.
“However insensitive I may seem, I don’t expect you to take
over what another woman has left,” he said.
“I wouldn’t, anyway, do justice to them,” said Lucy simply. “She—she was very beautiful, wasn’t she?”
“Very beautiful.”
“I don’t expect—I mean, you and I—well, it’s different, isn’t it?”
“You’re still my wife, Lucy—at any rate in the eyes of the world,” he told her gravely.
III
Paul was to stay the night at Polvane to obviate going back into Merrynporth to change, and despite her disappointment at Bart’s absence, Lucy found her excitement mounting as she dressed for the dance with elaborate care. It was, after all, the first grand occasion in a life which had been starved of normal gaieties, and she was wearing a dress which no working girl could ever have afforded. She had had to call upon Paul to zip her up the back, but had pushed him out instantly, saying that he must not look yet. She twisted, now, in wonder before the old-fashioned pier-glass in her room, marvelling at the miracle of frothy billowing lace, the little nipped-in waist and stiffly boned bodice, and Bart’s pearls, creamy against the whiteness of her skin. I really don’t, she told herself with satisfaction, look like old Miss Heap’s companion, or anyone else’s, and for the first time she made the descent down the gracious, curving staircase without the ghost of Marcelle to haunt her.
Paul was already waiting in the hall, and as he looked up at her, he gave a low whistle.
“My! Is this something, or isn’t it! Stay where you are, Lucy—we must have an audience for this,” he exclaimed, and shouted for Gaston and Smithers. They came and stood side by side gazing up at her. Gaston burst into explosive ejaculations of admiration and even Smithers cracked his finger-joints one after another, his Adam’s apple jerking up and down with emotion.
Lucy slowly descended the stairs and stood revolving, so that they could admire every aspect of the frock.
“Will I do?” she asked them anxiously, and, just for tonight, she forgot their latent hostility and their unspoken comparisons with the dead Marcelle.