“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Barny is ill. He’s very ill. If Dick’s to do any good we must get him here at once. Are you going, Mr. Fletcher?”
Not trusting herself to say any more, she turned away and went across to the keep. Muffy, having driven all the children upstairs, was busy boiling water for hot bottles. When she saw Ellen she began immediately to scold.
“Now what are you rushing about for? There’s nothing you can do. You go and have a lay down—I would.”
“I will in a minute. I’ve sent for Dick. Don’t you think that is wise?”
Muffy nearly dropped the kettle she was holding.
“Oh, Miss Ellen!”
This was the last straw. Even Muffy seemed to have gone mad.
“Oh, Miss Ellen, dearie, you don’t mean it?”
“Mean it? Of course I mean it. What … why do you look at me like that? For heaven’s sake what is the matter with you all? Why shouldn’t I send for him? What have you been saying about him?”
“Oh dear, oh dear! You’ll break my heart. Oh, Miss Ellen, don’t go on like this, not with me, for I can’t bear it. It isn’t as if we didn’t all know, my lamb.”
“What?”
Ellen’s heart sank. She grew whiter and whiter, until Muffy caught her arm, fearing that she might fall. But she was not going to faint. She looked round for a chair and sat down before she spoke again.
“Didn’t know … what do you know? What are they saying?”
“About … Dr. Napier … and that lady …”
“That lady?” repeated Ellen, in tones of unmistakable astonishment. “What lady? … Do you mean Madame Koebel?”
Muffy began to speak and then checked herself. This was sincere. This astonishment was genuine. It had taken Ellen by surprise.
“Madame Koebel? What are they saying, Muffy? Tell me at once.”
“That it’s her that’s come between you …”
“Muffy! Who says such a thing? How could anybody be so wicked?”
And this, this indignation was genuine too. A whole number of things broke in upon Muffy’s mind at once, and the miserable bewilderment of the past three days began to clear up. Like all the others she had been quite baffled by Ellen’s behaviour. Now she saw it all. Ellen did not know. She believed, possibly, in her own story of a walking tour. She had the whole shock of discovery before her.
“What do they say, Muffy? That we … that we quarrelled? That he went away because of that? Because of a quarrel?”
“Some such talk,” agreed Muffy desperately.
“But you didn’t think so?”
“I didn’t know, dear. It seemed queer, his going off like that.”
They stared helplessly at one another. Each was busy in her mind, rearranging facts, feeling for the truth.
Muffy thought:
“So that’s why she’s been bearing up so well. She hasn’t been worried, all this time, not a scrap. She thinks he’s … and supposing she’s right. Perhaps he really…. No! You can’t get over what Dr. Lindsay saw, with his own eyes. She’s wrong. And she’ll have to know it …”
And Ellen thought:
“So that’s why they’ve all been so quiet about his going. All of them. But they can’t all … even Guy Fletcher. When I asked him to go, he must have thought … oh, it’s intolerable! Louise made it up. It’s too bad of her. I hate Louise.”
When at last she could speak, her anger against them all was poured out upon the head of the unfortunate Muffy.
“How can you? How dare you? Didn’t I explain? He told me he was going. He doesn’t like it here, and no more do I. It’s a … a horrible place. Louise and Maude made this up. I know. They aren’t happy unless they’re inventing something or other, and interfering and trying to pretend everything is like a book or something. But you, Muffy! Fancy you believing them! You know us both. You know me and Dick. You couldn’t have thought there was anything of that sort between us. How could you? I shall never forgive you, never! Never.”
She began to shake and tremble and sob.
“A husband and a wife, Muffy, a husband and a wife, when they love each other, they don’t … they don’t quarrel about that sort of thing. They trust each other. I could never … he could never…. Oh, you’re all horrible!”
“Miss Ellen, my lamb, my precious, don’t! Don’t cry like that. Don’t excite yourself. Not now. It’s bad for you. It’s bad for your baby.”
Ellen dried her eyes and controlled herself.
“I know. I mustn’t. But how can people … Louise is married. Maude is married. They must know that a husband and a wife … I mean marriage … that kettle’s boiling over.”
Muffy stopped and filled the stone bottle. Her tears fell on her shaking hands.
“Louise and Maude are very wicked,” continued Ellen more calmly. “They don’t behave properly to their husbands. I’ve often thought they don’t. But you might have known better, I really think you might.”
“But it does happen sometimes,” ventured Muffy. “Not all men are true, nor all women either.”
“There are bad people in the world, I daresay. But that has nothing to do with it. There are lots of ways that people can be untrue to each other. I think it’s being untrue to one’s husband to have horrible, vulgar suspicions and quarrels. It’s being untrue to be rude to him and speak in a scornful way in front of other people, like Louise does. It’s being untrue to complain of him behind his back, like Maude does. I think all that is very bad. I don’t think a marriage is a proper marriage when such things are going on.”
Muffy straightened herself, and wrapped up the hot bottle in her apron. She saw that Ellen was more indignant at the aspersion on herself than at the tacit accusation against Dick. Her thoughts were so far from any possibility of unfaithfulness that she was merely furious with them all for suspecting her of making a jealous scene.
She did not know what to say, and she decided at last to say nothing. This dreadful business could wait for a little while, until they knew whether Dick was really coming back.
“Don’t let’s ever speak of it again,” concluded Ellen coldly. “I think you’ve all been letting yourselves get into quite a hysterical state, shut up in this horrid little hole. You take over that bottle, and I’ll bring the other as soon as the second kettle has boiled.”
She kept up a demeanour of stately displeasure until Muffy had stumped out of the keep, and then she began to cry again. Her rage was stimulated by the terrible fright she had had when Muffy talked about everybody knowing. For two pins, she told herself, she could have gone and slapped all their faces. The wish to slap somebody was uncontrollable, and when all the children came bawling downstairs the floodgates of her wrath were opened.
“This is a perfect bear garden. A bear garden!”
The children had never heard of a bear garden before, and thought it a good trope. Charles broke into ill-timed laughter.
“Oh!” said Ellen. “Oh, you little plague!”
She slapped every child within reach and marched out of the tower. It was a good thing that Guy Fletcher could not see her.
28
FOR Guy was doing his great act of service. He said, as soon as she left them:
“Since she has asked me I shall go. I’ll see that he gets her message.”
“It’s no use, Guy,” protested Louise; “it’ll only put you in an odious situation. You can’t interfere in a thing like this, and I’m surprised you should want to, considering that you’ve said yourself it’s none of your business.”
“Who else can go?” asked Gordon. “I would if I could, but you know perfectly well …”
“Nobody can go. It’s not necessary. A doctor has been sent for from Killross.”
Ellen’s calm announcement had exasperated Louise. For three days she had been saying that Ellen must be made to see the truth, and nobody would agree with her. She did not want to admit that Dick would probably come back, if he knew the state of the case,
and she did not want to admit that Barny was ill enough to make such an errand necessary. It was not a situation which fitted in well with the facts as she had arranged them.
“If she thinks she can whistle him back on this excuse …”
Gordon and Guy both protested. They were sure that Ellen had only been thinking of Barny.
“And we don’t even know where they are. What are you going to do? Are you going to the cottage?”
Guy did not know. He had thought vaguely that he might go to Killross and send a message by a third party to Dick. But Louise made small work of this idea.
“How do we know they are at the cottage? I don’t expect they are for a minute. They may have gone back to England. And you don’t want to spread the news of this business in Killross. Goodness knows there’s probably been enough gossip already. No. If you go you’d better go straight to the cottage and find out if they’re still there. And I wish you joy of it.”
This was a horrible suggestion to Guy, but he had to agree that it was the best course, and that much time would be lost if he sent a message from Killross. Nor had Louise quite finished with him.
“If he won’t come? What then?”
“We’ve no cause to think so badly of him as that,” broke in Gordon. “And Guy, you needn’t say she sent you. You can say I did. I take the whole responsibility.”
Guy looked from one to the other in helpless appeal. He could scarcely believe that he had ever volunteered to go upon so odious an expedition. But a hint of mockery in Louise’s eye stiffened his resolve and he said:
“Well, if I’m going I’d better go now.”
“There’s no time to be lost,” agreed Gordon.
As Guy passed out of the gate he thought he heard a laugh from Louise and a sharp word of expostulation from Gordon. He realised what a ridiculous figure he would cut in the tale which she might tell about it afterwards. Disgust nearly stifled him, and it seemed as if even Ellen was hardly worth all that he was enduring for her sake. But he forced himself to go on. He got out a boat and set off across the lake.
There remained Barny’s illness. That was real, and that was urgent; he found himself invoking it, now that Ellen’s image had begun to fail him. For try as he would, he could not at the moment recall her to her proper place, pacing serenely through the avenues of his thought. He tried to remember all the virtues which he had been accustomed to ascribe to her, and all the beautiful ideas which had been associated with her name. But it would not do. She would not mount her pedestal. She had certain attributes of which he could not approve. If she had remained passively tragic it would have been so much better. But by sending him on this errand, by involving him in this sordid business, she had displayed a certain toughness, an earthy commonsense, which shattered his dream. It was no doubt a practical thing to do, but he wished that she had not done it. She was insensitive, and that was an unpardonable flaw. The ideal woman, whom he had never met, must have at least as much sensibility as he had himself, together with all the tranquil temper which he himself, on account of his sensibility, could never possess. How any one woman was ever to combine those qualities he did not know, but until to-day he had really believed that such a combination might exist in Ellen.
But Barny was very ill. There was no doubt about that. And for his sake it would be wrong to hope that Dick and Elissa might have left the cottage.
It seemed probable that they had not, for he saw, even before he landed, that there was smoke coming out of their chimney. He pulled up his boat and picked his way over the puddles to the door.
But he had to knock twice before anyone came. At last he heard the sound of a chair being pushed back. Steps crossed the room and the door was opened by Dick, who very nearly shut it again when he saw who was there.
“What do you want?” he asked in a very surly voice.
Guy looked past him and said coldly:
“The Lindsays have sent me. Barny is very ill. His wife thinks it is acute appendicitis and there is said to be no doctor in the district. They are all in great distress, and it is suggested that you had better come back to the island at once.”
“Appendicitis!” exclaimed Dick, opening the door a little wider. “Barny? He would! Come in a minute …”
“No, thank you,” said Guy, who would rather have walked into a cage full of cobras.
Dick repressed a smile.
“I’m alone. There’s no one here.”
“I won’t come in, thank you.”
“Have it your own way. Why do they think it is appendicitis?”
Guy described the symptoms and Dick made an impatient sound of assent.
“Is there any rigidity?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t think it’s one of their scares?”
“Hardly. I don’t think they would have sent me if they hadn’t thought it urgent.”
“No. I don’t think they would.”
Again a grim smile flickered for a moment across Dick’s face.
“But how …” he began. “Does my … does my wife know you’ve been sent?”
“It was her suggestion, originally,” said Guy, with a little hesitation.
“Hmph. I see. I wish you’d come in. This wants considering. Did they tell you not to come in?”
Guy went in, reluctantly, and stood just inside the door. For one moment he had hoped that Elissa was gone for good, but he now saw her slippers sprawling on the floor, and the remains of a meal for two people still on the table. The whole room was squalidly untidy.
“This wants considering,” repeated Dick. “What’s to be done?”
“I can’t see that it does. He is really very ill. It’s urgent.”
“How do things stand over there? Gordon told everyone that he saw me here, I suppose?”
“Yes. But you are said to be walking, over in the mountains. That is what everyone has agreed to say.”
“Oh, I see. That puts a sort of face on it. Who invented that?”
“She did.”
“Ellen? Good God!”
Dick was greatly astonished by this, but he did not ponder on it for very long. He returned to Barny.
“I suppose I ought to go.”
Guy said nothing. His face suggested that Dick’s moral problems were beyond his power to decipher, and that the word “ought” upon such lips was an incongruity.
“I must go,” concluded Dick.
His belongings were scattered over the cottage, and he began to collect them and stuff them into his haversack. As he did so he talked, plying Guy with rapid questions and running over all the possibilities of getting hospital supplies in a hurry. For, as he pointed out, he could not in the worst event operate upon Barny with a carving knife.
“I’d better go straight back and have a look at him first. And if I do have to do anything in a hurry you must go down to Killross and telegraph. What is the nearest town? Or could we hire a motor in Killross, do you think? I suppose not. I’ve always told them that appendix of Barny’s might give them trouble. But he wouldn’t have it out. Do you see my boots anywhere?” Guy’s curt replies were meant to silence him, but he ignored their tacit reproof and went tramping up into the half-loft to find his boots It was as if he had succeeded in putting aside the whole question of his own misconduct, from the moment that he announced that he must go. He made Guy feel foolish, and it seemed possible that he might, when he got to Inishbar, make everybody feel foolish. He even had the effrontery to come and lean over the balustrade of the half-loft and say:
“Have you got a pencil? I shall have to leave a note to explain where I’ve gone.”
“I’ll wait outside,” said Guy hastily. “I’ll wait down by the boat till you’re ready.”
Not for anything would he remain a moment longer in the abode of evil. Already he had been contaminated past belief with this hunting for boots and borrowing of pencils. There was moral squalor, for him, in the very chairs and tables, the unwashed dishes and the tracks of m
ud on the floor. The place was no better than a pigsty, a fit shelter for beasts. He got himself out into the clean, sweet air of the evening and saw a cloaked figure coming along the road which looked very like Elissa. By dint of a somewhat undignified scuffle, he escaped into the birch trees before she got near enough to hail him.
A horrible suspicion had crossed his mind: the fear that Ellen might be going to take Dick back. If she did, he would never, never forgive her. She must forfeit, for all time, her claims to be the ideal woman. He might, with an effort of will, have just allowed her to sacrifice her pride enough to send for Dick simply to save her brother. But more than that he could never permit. The reality of Elissa’s cottage, with its dust and confusion, the slippers on the floor, had been too sordid. If Ellen could ever condone this swinish amour, then her memory also must become tarnished.
For twenty minutes Guy wrestled with the threat of disillusionment. He tried to tell himself that such a thing could never be. He tried to recapture that moment when they had walked in the burnished sunlight, by the lake, when she had given him the bog myrtle. For it had seemed to him then that she must be very near to heaven. The expression in her eyes had been heavenly. And she had asked him something, he could not remember, about the immortality of the soul. And he had come to the very edge of self-betrayal. He had thought that he loved her.
A shout from the lake-side roused him from his torment. Dick had come out of the cottage and was waiting by the boat.
29
KERRAN appeared soon after dark with an old gentleman whom he had run to earth at Ballymacrennan, ten miles from Killross. This was no doubt the “museum piece” of whom Barny had heard, and the reports of his age had not been exaggerated. Kerran guessed him to be nearer ninety than eighty, and afterwards insisted that he had not been a doctor at all, probably, but a vet. His brogue was disarming and according to himself he thought nothing of removing an appendix—did it every day of the week, in fact. But Kerran’s heart had sunk so low by the time they got to Killross that he slipped off and telegraphed to Dublin for another opinion, while Dr. Moore settled down to an interlude of refreshment in the inn.
A Long Time Ago Page 24