“Dick!” her voice came over the water. “Is that you?”
“It’s Guy Fletcher, Mrs. Napier.”
“Oh, how do you do? Is my husband there?”
“Yes. But he’s coming later. We’ve to go on without him.”
“But …”
The boat bumped against a little flight of steps and he clambered down beside her. The population of Killross all gathered at the edge of the quay to watch them push off.
“But I thought I saw him. Where is he? Why …”
“He asked me to tell you that he’s coming later. To explain. He doesn’t want us to wait for him.”
The oars splashed and they drew away from the quay and its lights, and the murmuring knots of men.
“He has bad news,” explained Guy in a low voice. “And he told me to tell you. A patient has died …”
“Mrs. Briggs!”
“He never told me her name. I thought it was Thring.”
Ellen seemed puzzled by this, but she said at last:
“No, no! It must be Mrs. Briggs. Thring was the doctor in charge of the case, and he asked Dick … was it a woman with appendicitis?”
“Oh, then you knew all about it!”
“Only that Dick was very … and she’s dead! What happened?”
“He operated too late.”
“I see. Does he … does he think it was his fault?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“Is he very much upset?”
“Horribly.”
“O-o-oh …”
It was a long sigh that she gave. She said no more. There was silence save for the splashing and creak of oars.
He felt that she knew, had grasped the whole story, which Dick had told him. And in her silence, as she sat beside him in the boat, she communicated to him that mood of overwhelming sadness, that resignation which comes immediately after some terrible disaster, before the mind has had time to recover from its shock and to resist.
He knew her better than he knew Dick, for he had met her several times at the Lindsays’. He admired her extravagantly, even more that he admired Louise. There was something in her gentle voice and blonde dignity which very nearly raised her to his ideal of what a woman should be. She filled a niche in his mind which had been empty until they met. At the end of the avenues of his thought he would often see her strolling, as she had once strolled over the grass in New College Garden on an afternoon in May; a gentle, gracious creature in a white dress, living for ever in a garden. And he had always known that, in the face of disaster, her stillness would prevail. No discord could ever touch her, and no discord could touch him when he was with her. He left off feeling sick. The painful story, which he had been obliged to hear, was over at last, and the drunken panic was over. He had left it behind him with Dick in Killross.
The world was very terrible: it was full of sad things, ill done. A dead woman, a fine career cut short, how many times before had this not happened? He thought of it remotely, philosophically, like some book that he had read.
There was nothing to disturb or exasperate him in Ellen’s silence, her long sigh. Only he felt that he would never again be able to think of sorrow without re-living this moment of twilight and peace, as they crossed the lake, towards a clear star trembling above the trough of the haunted glen.
It was too dark to see more of the island than a vague mass of shadows, travelling nearer. Lights began to shine among the trees, and there was an imperceptible current of sound in the air. It quickened into music.
“But what is that?” asked Guy. “Isn’t it someone singing?”
Ellen roused herself and said that it was probably Madame Koebel, and indeed he had recognised that voice himself almost before the words were out of her mouth.
“Koebel? Elissa Koebel?”
“Yes. This is the landing stage. Can you see? There’s a path goes here up the slope.”
She led him up to the north gate, and the singing grew fainter, for it came from the windows on the west side of the castle. He could hear, instead, the soft whisper of the wind among the trees, a new sound after his long walk across the bare mountains. Ellen was fumbling at the gate, which had been shut and barred.
“How tiresome!” she exclaimed. “They can’t have told the servants to leave it open for us. And there’s no bell. We must go round and shout through the drawing-room window.”
He followed her, under the dark walls and round a tower, to the little terrace which ran along beneath the three great windows on the western side, overlooking the lake. They were all open to the warm night and they were set low in the wall, so that he could see through them into the great caverns of the room. He caught sight of the back of Gordon’s head, glimmering like a white egg. An unseen piano was playing a soft prelude.
“We’ll wait till she’s finished,” whispered Ellen.
The sweet voice rose up again and Guy lent against the wall to listen.
Du bist die Ruh
Der Friede Mild!
It was unbelievable! For this was the air which had always drifted through his mind when he thought of Ellen. It was the image of Ellen made into music, of that stillness and calm which could heal the wounds of the spirit. To that image, to that tranquillity, he could for ever return and be safe. Completely happy he stood at the window and listened, thinking of the shadowy lake and the star hanging low in the east, and Ellen’s sigh. He wished that this moment would last for ever.
At the end of the first verse he went on a little way down the terrace and saw through the next window the clear profile of Louise bent eagerly forward. It was too eager, too uncalm. Still he could not see the singer or the piano, so he went on to the third window and blinked a little as the glare of the candles fell upon his eyes. At the tall white column that must be Elissa Koebel he blinked still more. For here again was orange peel on the top of Snowdon, and by his own restlessness he had put an end to the moment which he had desired to preserve. He should have stayed still by the first window, contemplating only the top of Gordon’s head.
Upon her face there was an expression of sensuous rapture. He hated expressions of rapture. There was too much of her. She was too tall and too white, her hair was too long and her eyes too large. Yet he could not look away, any more than he could shut his ears to Dick’s story. She had ruined the beauty of his mood and he was quite helpless.
Good heavens! What a woman!
He could scarcely have told why it was that he detested her so immediately, and why she seemed so evil to him. Of her beauty he was scarcely aware, for he had come from beauty of another sort. Snatched from an excess of spiritual rapture, he could only see in that face and form the incarnation of unrestrained sensuality, the symbol of that discord between the body and the soul which had always been his greatest torment. And the song, which had so entranced him, took on a new meaning now that he could see her. It became unholy as the song of Circe, luring her victims to a brutish end. Yet he must stare and listen, until the dreadful moment came when she saw him there, returned his gaze with a wanton leer, and sang, he was convinced, directly at him. That was too much. He fled and rejoined Ellen, who was standing at the end of the terrace, looking out intently over the water.
“Isn’t that a boat coming?” she asked.
It was. The splash of oars drew nearer.
“It’s Dick,” she said quickly. “Mr. Fletcher, will you please say nothing to the others about this … about what has happened. It will be worse if they know.”
And she called, low and clear:
“Dick!”
“Hullo-o-o-o!”
The answer came back across the hidden water, from all the mountain sides. In the castle the music had stopped. There was a clamour of voices and Louise, carrying a candle, appeared at one of the windows.
“Is that Dick? Has Dick come?”
“Yes. We’ve come. But, Louise, the gate is shut.”
From far, far away, perhaps from the Haunted Glen itself, came the last ghostly
echo:
“Hullo-o-o-o!”
13
THE noise and bustle, the coming and going in the castle yard, the hasty preparation of a meal, all this gave Ellen time. Dick had been clever. Or perhaps merely fortunate. Nobody knew that he had not arrived with Guy Fletcher and herself. It was not likely that anyone to-night would take her aside and ask what was the matter with him. The two men, eating cold meat in the hall, were mere belated travellers, and the household were too busy beholding them as such to perceive that something was very wrong with one of them. She would have time, before to-morrow, to stave off questions by supplying facts in advance.
She must tell them that poor Mrs. Briggs was dead, and that Dick was very sad about it, because they had been his friends. Coming from a heartrending scene, his spirits were not, perhaps, quite as good as usual. Doctors have to live through very sad things sometimes, but it is much worse for them when the people are personal friends. Dick had been so fond of Dr. Briggs.
She was very much frightened, and fear had quickened her imaginative powers to an unusually vivid degree. She saw that the real trouble must never be known. Dick must not be shut up in this narrow place with a lot of people who knew what was on his mind. The island was so small, the castle so constricted, that an idea, a suggestion, could grow and flourish there like a plant in a hothouse. It would receive strength from every mind which harboured it, and from every comment made upon it. It would grow in the daytime, in the enforced publicity of their life, and it would grow secretly at night when they all retired to their several turrets and talked things over. The suggestion would come back and back at Dick, who had first made it, like the echoes of his shout on the lake. This was the worst place for him to be in, at such a crisis. They must not say or think that he had lost his nerve, that he blamed himself, and that he was playing with the idea of retirement. If they said it, or thought it, the thing was much more likely to happen.
The danger piled up before her, rising and curving like the crest of a huge wave. But it had not yet broken. It was still merely a thought in Dick’s mind. She might still, by some heroic effort of will, defy it and make it turn backward. She must cling to her faith in Dick; the immovable belief that this calamity was not his fault and that only overstrain could have brought about that wavering of moral courage which attacks all sensitive people in positions of responsibility. She must imbue him with her faith; she must be for him an extra source of strength. And she must keep the others at bay.
Convinced of the need to act quickly, she left the hall, where Gordon and Barny were watching the travellers eat, and went out into the courtyard. A good deal was happening there. Maids were running about with blankets for a bed that was to be made up for Guy Fletcher in Kerran’s room. Lights twinkled from windows on all sides of the little quadrangle and people hurried from one door to another.
Louise was sitting on the edge of the well in the middle, quite obviously remote from all this humdrum bustle. Ellen went up to her at once.
“Oh, Louise …”
“Elissa has gone. She wouldn’t stay to be introduced to-night, but she’s coming early to-morrow.”
“Louise, poor Dick has had such a sad time. One of his patients, one of Dr. Thring’s patients, has died. He’s so much distressed …”
“Good gracious! Is this the first time he’s ever had a patient die?”
“No, but these people were personal friends.”
“Oh, who?”
When Ellen explained the status of Dr. Briggs, Louise jerked her head impatiently.
“I thought you meant somebody I know. I’m sure it’s very good of Dick …”
“But I wanted to explain why he’s in such low spirits. Will you just not talk about it. And tell Gordon and the others not to either.”
“My dear Ellen! Do I ever encourage ‘shop’?”
“No. I know. But the sooner he forgets about it the sooner he’ll be able to enjoy it all here.”
“I have some tact. Is that Muffy? Oh, Muffy! Don’t shut the big gate because Madame Koebel is coming early to-morrow, early before breakfast …”
And that was the best that could be done with Louise. But it would be safer to speak to Maude as well, so as to make sure that the authorised version had been published in both towers. Ellen hurried into the keep. She was afraid of Maude and of Maude’s intuitions. She pulled herself together for a battle when she heard Maude say:
“Oh! Poor Dick!”
(Not poor Mrs. Briggs, but poor Dick!)
“They were such great friends, he and Dr. Briggs. Dr. Briggs was Dick’s best man …”
“I know. And they do so hate losing baby cases, don’t they? It’s the responsibility. They hate it like poison if anything goes wrong. I suppose they feel that a woman having a baby isn’t just like some idiot who’s gone and got ill. At least, a doctor friend of mine once put it that way to me. He said that’s why so many of them won’t take baby cases. It isn’t the work, it’s the worry.”
There were so many things to annoy Ellen in this comment that she lost count of them. For one thing, why must all the family, even Maude, who had some medical experience, believe that Dick spent his time doing what they called “baby cases”? Could they really not grasp the difference between gynæcology and obstetrics? But since Dick was always complaining that he had the same difficulty with the lay committee of the hospital she must perhaps make allowances.
“This wasn’t a confinement,” she explained. “It was appendicitis. But it’s so terrible for poor Dr. Briggs …”
Maude nodded understandingly, and then exploded another mine.
“Such a pity! Especially just now.”
“Just now?”
“You’re the last person he’ll want to unburden himself to about it, I should think. I do hope to goodness it won’t start him off worrying about you. It does sometimes.”
“About me? What nonsense. I’m perfectly well.”
“Oh, yes. But I mean he’d much better forget about babies and baby cases for a bit, so it’s a pity … I beg your pardon, Muffy? What did you say?”
Muffy, who was stooping over a chest of blankets, had said something which sounded like fiddle. But at Maude’s question she had an attack of deafness, and made no reply at all. Maude’s smile grew wider and wider.
“I wish you wouldn’t go on about baby cases,” said Ellen irritably. “Obstetrics is only a very small part—I think he says about five per cent—of all Dick’s important work. He …”
“I know. But this woman was going to have a baby, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. But she …”
“And you’re going to have a baby. That’s all I meant. It’ll be more difficult for him to forget …”
Ellen fled into the courtyard.
What nonsense Maude talked! Dick never worried about her. Her condition could not possibly come between them in this matter. It was absurd. She was with child, and another woman, also with child, had died. But it was not possible that these two ideas could have any sort of connection in Dick’s troubled mind.
The mere suggestion was a shock and made her feel suddenly self-conscious. To face any other people that night was more than she could manage. She went quickly across the quadrangle to her own tower, took a candle from the shelf at the bottom of the staircase, and went up to the quietness and order of her cold bedroom.
Here, reassuringly, she had all her own things about her. Her brushes and combs were disposed neatly on the dressing-table. The two beds, side by side, were turned down and ready. Across one of them lay her night-dress, with its freshly-laundered frills of Swiss embroidery. Across the other lay an ornamental pair of pyjamas, borrowed from Kerran until Dick’s luggage could be brought from Dunclough. She felt a moment of happiness and hope at the sight. At least, she had got him near her again. Whatever he had suffered during their separation he would at least have some solace and companionship now.
Bed, she thought, was a very good invention. Being married would
be much more difficult if one did not go to bed every night. For twelve years now she had been going to bed with Dick, and she could not remember what it had felt like to sleep contentedly alone. They liked being near to one another. They liked falling asleep and waking up in one another’s company. Reason and argument might fail them sometimes, but the marriage bed remained, a symbol of the unexpressed affection and loyalty which bound them together, of the delight which they took in one another, a passion which would live on, after they were dead, in the bodies of their children. “That side of marriage,” her mother had called it, when, shamefacedly, and with difficulty, she had broached the subject to her growing daughters. But her mother had been wrong. Going to bed was not at the side at all; it was plumb in the middle of everything.
Quickly, and shivering a little because the room was cold, she undressed herself and put on the long, frilly night-dress, with its collar that buttoned up closely round her neck. When Dick came up and knocked, she was brushing her hair in front of the glass.
Almost before he had shut the door behind him he began asking her about the children, plying her with questions so fast that she scarcely got time to answer. But he did not look at her, and the quiet of the room was shattered by a desolate uneasiness. While he talked he rapidly undressed, splashed his head in the wash-basin, put on Kerran’s pyjamas and climbed into bed. She plaited back her hair neatly and went round to sit beside him.
“You can’t think,” she began, almost shyly, “how horrid it’s been here without you.”
He did look at her then, for a moment, long enough to let her see the fear in his eyes. And then he looked away, saying something quite meaningless about being glad, himself, to have got away from London.
Ellen felt quite giddy, as if she had been in a lift that was going down too fast. For it seemed to her almost as if there had been dislike as well as fear in the look he had given her. She thought:
“He doesn’t love me any more.”
A Long Time Ago Page 15