A Long Time Ago

by Margaret Kennedy

  “Ah, he’ll be all right! Ah, don’t worry about him! He’ll be as snug as a bug in a rug this time to-morrow. Bridgie, me gerrl, I’ll have another double Scotch and the gentleman’ll be taking the same. Ah, what’s the hurry? Isn’t there lashins of time?”

  It seemed that Barny was as good as dead, for the patriarch was determined to operate. He had brought with him some chloroform and an immense amount of cutlery, which he displayed on the bar counter and explained to his horrified companion.

  Kerran looked at the ancient, bone-handled scalpels, the unwieldy curved needles, all of them blunt and rusty, the stiff-jointed artery clips, and thought of a wood-carving set which he had once had as a boy and which had been left out by accident for six weeks in the rain.

  “What are those things in bottles?” he asked timidly.

  “Sure, they’re sutures,” explained Dr. Moore, adding that they were perhaps a wee bit dried up.

  “But you won’t operate if you think this attack has a chance of subsiding?” pleaded Kerran.

  “Ah! Not at all. We’ll have it out in the flick of an ass’s tail, the way he’ll never feel the miss of it.”

  This, at least, was the account of his adventures which Kerran gave to Guy and Gordon as they sat round the dining-room fire, and when they accused him of exaggeration he insisted that it was all substantially true, though he might have touched it up a little here and there. He had been horribly frightened and had almost begun to hope that the old gentleman might drink himself into a coma before ever they left Killross. But at last they had come on to the island to find that Kerran’s worst fears had been groundless, since Dick was already in charge of the case. Their arrival was opportune. Dick, after one incredulous glance at the wood-carving set, had said that it must do, for that he dared not wait any longer. He operated immediately and it seemed, to the three men who waited, that he was taking his time about it.

  “If anybody had told me yesterday that I should be ready to fall on Dick’s neck to-night I’d have called him a liar,” said Kerran.

  “It was a great relief,” agreed Gordon. “We all thought Barny was dying. Poor Maude! Her distress! I must say I was ready to forgive everything when I heard the children calling out that he had come.”

  “The children …?”

  “Yes,” said Guy morosely. “They saw the boat coming and all rushed down to meet us.”

  “Oh!”

  Kerran laughed in spite of himself, but Gordon said gravely that the children should not have been there.

  “No. I should think not. It would have been more tactful to keep the little ones out of it. ‘No children run to greet their sire’s return,’ as it were …”

  “We couldn’t help it,” explained Gordon in distress. “Nobody thought of the children at such a time.”

  He disliked Kerran’s flippancy and repeated, more than once, that the children ought not to have been there.

  “And what then …” asked Kerran. “Hark! Is that anyone coming?”

  He went to the door. But it was only a maid crossing the courtyard. The light, burning in a window of Barny’s tower, could tell them nothing: a canopy of suspense still hung over the castle. Kerran came back, looking at his watch.

  “I never knew these things took so long.”

  Guy remembered that he had thought this himself, not so very long ago. And for the first time that day the significance of the walk from Dunclough to Killross flashed into his mind. The fellow had then been threatening to retire: had declared himself unable to operate any more. But he must have got over all that. Guy was sure that he had felt no doubts of his own ability during that queer interview down at the cottage. In the panic and flurry at the castle he had been cool and firm. He had taken charge of them all. And he had gone off to operate, without proper instruments, without a skilled anæsthetist, without sterilised dressings, as calmly as if he had had all the resources of John’s at his command. It was strange. It was disquieting. The Dick of three weeks ago ought not to compare so unfavourably with the Dick of to-night. To Guy it was like an exaltation of evil.

  “I suppose,” Kerran was saying, “that he’ll stay now, anyhow, till Barny is out of the wood; and we take it that the walking tour was a success, if a trifle wet.”

  Gordon agreed. Their belief in Dick was assured; they quite expected that Barny would get out of the wood.

  “But afterwards … I suppose the best thing that could happen would be a … a … reconciliation?”

  Guy gave an unhappy start and Gordon shook his head.

  “That doesn’t depend on us.”

  “It does in a way. At least we can do nothing, say nothing, to prevent it. If they, Dick and Ellen, seem to have come to some agreement, we can hold our tongues and forget the business as quickly as we can.”

  “But surely …” protested Guy.

  Both men turned to look at him in surprise. He flushed and faltered. It was, after all, no business of his.

  And then, inexplicably, the canopy of suspense was lifted. They were aware, they knew not how, that the operation was over. The night seemed to shake itself, and an inaudible sigh of relief went over the waiting castle. Steps crossed the courtyard just as all the men leapt to their feet.

  “Ah, Louise! How … how …”

  “All right,” said Louise.

  She came wearily towards the fire. “He’s coming round. Dick seems to think he’s all right.”

  “Have a brandy and soda,” said Kerran. “It’ll do you good.”

  “Well, then, I think I will.”

  She made a face as she took the drink, and then she gave them what details she could.

  “No. I wasn’t there. He had Ellen and Maude and Muffy and that dreadful old man, and he said any more untrained people would only get in his way. But I waited outside, in case they wanted anything. I gather that it was only just in time. Dick said he’d have never done it unless he’d thought so, under those conditions.”

  “Ellen?”

  “Oh, dear, yes! From the way they both behaved you’d have thought he’d just gone out for a walk. Where, by the way, do you suppose that old man is to sleep? We must in decency keep him for the night.”

  “Under the dining-room table,” suggested Kerran. “I expect that’s where he generally sleeps.”

  “He’ll want something to eat. They all will. I’d better go and see about it.”

  She went out again into the courtyard and Guy followed her, nerving himself to make his little speech.

  “I think I’ll say good-night now, if there is nothing more that I can do. And … hadn’t I better go tomorrow? I feel I’m probably in the way, while your brother is so ill.”

  Louise nodded indifferently.

  “I’m very sorry you should go so soon. But as things are perhaps it would be better.” She added with a touch of malice: “Thank you for all you’ve done. You seem to have staged a reconciliation.”

  Guy flushed and turned away from her.

  He went across to his tower room and began to pack his things. In a tooth-mug on the window-sill there was still the bog myrtle which Ellen had picked two days ago. He took a sprig of it and put it, after a moment’s thought, into a copy of the Golden Treasury which he carried about with him. He spent a little while finding the right place, for he had forgotten the name of the poem. But at last the remembered words caught his eye:

  “… there must surely be

  The face not seen, the voice not heard,

  The heart that not yet—never yet—ah, me!

  Made answer to my word.”

  His friendship with the Annesleys was over, and he was never to see Ellen again. Within a year he took a post in a northern university. He married a vivacious brunette, much more like Louise than Ellen, and he continued to worry about evil. Once, on a visit to London, he caught sight of Dick in a box at the opera, and was shocked to recognise, in this thickening, middleaged man, the handsome villain whom he had known at Inishbar.

  And lo
ng, long afterwards he chanced to find some crumbling leaves of myrtle in a book. He could not remember how they came to be there, but the words, when he re-read them, gave him a moment’s pang.

  They were still so true.

  30

  ONE by one they all went to bed. Only Dick and Maude watched by Barny’s bedside all through the night, and Muffy sat in the keep, listening, in case they should call for her. Lights twinkled a little in the tower windows and went out.

  The rain had stopped and the night was clearing. A few small stars twinkled doubtfully through the clouds over the courtyard. Each time that Muffy came to the door of the keep the quality of the darkness seemed to be thinner. The world was swinging over into morning. Yet the transition from night to day happened, as it always does, when no one was looking. She went to the door and it was dark. Ten minutes later it was grey.

  Barny, emerging slowly from his drugged quiescence, made a bad patient. He had shown great fortitude before the operation, but none now that he knew it was over. He was very thirsty and they would not give him anything to drink for fear that he might be sick. He kept on imploring them to let him be sick, rather than prolong this torture. Dick had little patience with him, and left him to Maude, who might have been born for such a moment, who could meet Barny’s unreasonable reproaches with boundless sympathy, simply because they were unreasonable. She was an excellent nurse. Towards morning Barny began to threaten that he would get out of bed and find himself a drink.

  “We must tie him down,” said Dick impatiently, “if this sort of thing goes on. You can’t hold him for ever.”

  Maude shook her head.

  “He won’t,” she said. “I’ve seen them like this before.”

  “Have you? I’m glad I’m not a nurse.”

  Barny eyed Dick with malignant dislike.

  “Has anybody told you you’re a swine yet?” he asked. “If I’m sick it’ll be from the sight of you. Why don’t you go back to your …”

  “Hush, Barny dear! If it hadn’t been for Dick …”

  “Thinks I ought to be grateful to him, does he? I’m not. We’re going to see that Ellen gets a divorce, and he needn’t think that this’ll make any difference.”

  Barny relapsed into weary mutterings about cads and swine and the indignity of having one’s appendix removed by a physician-accoucheur. He seemed to take this last very much to heart and feared that it might get known in the Temple.

  Maude said to Dick:

  “Go down for a bit and smoke a pipe in the courtyard. You must want one and I can manage him alone. I’m used to this sort of thing.”

  “All right,” said Dick. “But don’t give him anything whatever to drink. I don’t want to start that vomiting again.”

  “My dear Dick! As if I should.”

  After the sick room, with its reek of chloroform and antiseptics, the air of the courtyard was like nectar. Dick’s footsteps echoed against the sleeping walls with a hollow sound, so that he found himself trying to walk softly. It was nearer to-day than he had thought and the stars were waning in the square of pale sky overhead.

  He sat down on the edge of the well and lit his pipe. He was tired, but his mood was chiefly one of satisfaction over a difficult job well done. They had got Barny through it, though he had hardly dared to touch that appendix, fearing it would rupture before he got it out.

  “Damned good thing I opened him up when I did,” he thought. “But how Thring will laugh when I tell him! Only he’ll never believe in the old …; nobody could who hadn’t seen him. I wish Clarke had been there. He can imitate a brogue.”

  He began to think of all that they must do to-morrow, the drugs and appliances that he would need and the steps that he must take to get them quickly. Barny’s angry reproaches affected him not at all. Later on there would be trouble, he supposed. He would have to face the consequences of what he had done. But he was not sure what these would be, and, at the back of his mind, there was already a certain confidence in his own capacity to deal with them. To-night he had put through a difficult job successfully and that was quite enough for the moment.

  He yawned and saw with amazement how quickly the light was growing. Everything in the courtyard was now visible, though without colour. Muffy’s white apron glimmered at the door of the keep and the candle which she held burned wanly. She was calling to him, in an echoing whisper:

  “Dr. Napier … how is he?”

  “Going on splendidly. You can go to bed now, if you like, Muffy. We shan’t want anything more.”

  “Dr. Napier! Can I speak to you for a minute, please?”

  She wanted him to come with her into the keep. He left the cool air reluctantly and went into the warm dusk of firelight and guttering candles. Muffy offered him a cup of coffee, which he took mechanically.

  “Oh, sir … are you coming back to her … to Miss Ellen?”

  He made a gesture to stop her. He did not want to go into all that yet.

  “This isn’t the time to talk of it, Muffy.”

  “I know, sir. But there’s something I’ve got to tell you. I’ve not had the chance before, but I must tell you at once. You see, sir, she doesn’t know.”

  “Doesn’t know?” he asked confusedly.

  “Not a thing, poor lamb. The others, they’ve been putting it about that you went on a walking tour. But Miss Ellen, she believes it.”

  “Believes … believes …”

  “I’m certain of it. She told me so. I could hardly credit my own ears, but it’s true.”

  “But how can she …”

  This was important. He must attend to it.

  “I don’t know, sir. I suppose she just didn’t put two and two together, like the others did. And then, you know, Mr. Lindsay went over, but nobody was going to tell her that, stand to reason. We all thought she knew already. We all thought she was just passing it off. But it’s not so, sir. She thinks you’ve been true to her, if I might take the liberty of putting it like that. And she’d kill anyone who said anything different.”

  Dick struggled amidst his other preoccupations, making the attempt to take this in.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure as I stand here. She told me. She’d had her suspicions of what they were saying, you know, though she’d no notion of the real thing. She thought we had made out that there must have been some difference between the two of you, to make you go off so suddenly. Some quarrel about that … that lady. And she said: ‘Never let me hear you suggest such a thing,’ she said. She was in a real taking. ‘A husband and a wife,’ she said, ‘is quite above that sort of thing.’ I couldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t heard her. So you see, sir …”

  She stopped and began to twist her apron, looking anxiously into his face.

  Dick took some time to see. Fatigue and concentration had made him slow-witted. He found it hard to bring his mind to this extraordinary idea. But, after asking Muffy a few more questions, he began to be convinced.

  “It was very stupid of her,” he commented, more to himself than Muffy.

  She flared up at this.

  “Stupid you may call it. I don’t. What should she know of such things, so good as she is? It’s written in the Bible, Dr. Napier, if you care to look. ‘Love thinketh no evil,’ it says. It wouldn’t come to her to think badly of you, because she looks up to you as a wife should do. If you think that stupid, then I’m sorry for you. She couldn’t think evil of you, sir, unless she was to hear it from your own lips.”

  “I know.”

  But some women, he thought, just as loving, might have guessed. Ellen’s stupidity, Ellen’s goodness, her love, how were these things to be disentangled? Had she failed to guess because she was good or because she was stupid?

  “So you see, sir …” persisted the anxious Muffy.

  “Yes, I see.”

  “But do you? You haven’t thought yet. What I mean is that she’s still got it all to go through, worse than we thought, unless … unless …”r />
  “Unless what, Muffy?”

  “Unless you see to it that she’s spared.”

  This was going on rather far for Dick. He was conscious of relief and thankfulness, because Ellen had not suffered. He was even dimly aware of the importance of this news. He knew that he would have been much more moved by it if he had not been so sleepy and so busy. Both his relief and his hope were languid.

  “You want me,” he said with an effort, “never to tell her? To remain here, and behave as if nothing had happened?”

  “That’s right, sir. You will, won’t you?”

  “I don’t know, Muffy. That’s not a question I can answer now.”

  “It would kill her if she knew. It really would. She’d never understand. She’d think you couldn’t love her.”

  “Do you think I do?”

  “I don’t doubt it, sir. But then I’m an old woman. I wouldn’t have seen it that way, not when I was Miss Ellen’s age.”

  “No,” agreed Dick. “You’re right. She’d never understand.”

  “And there’s more than her to think of. There’s her baby. The shock …”

  “I know.”

  “If she must be told, couldn’t you wait …”

  “But the others? They all know. If I don’t tell her, they will …”

  “Oh, no, sir. They’ll do what’s best for Miss Ellen. If they see you’ve come back to her they’ll not say anything to upset her. They know she mustn’t be upset, same as we do. Least said, soonest mended, they’ll think. And it’s not known to anyone outside the family barring Mr. Fletcher.”

  “He won’t talk.”

  “No. He seems a nice gentleman. And they’ll have all written to Mrs. Annesley, sure to. But she never interferes. She won’t want anything but to see Miss Ellen happy.”

  Dick surveyed with detachment these possibilities.

  It appeared that he was not ruined after all. All he had to do was to hold his tongue. Home, wife, and children were still his, and he might go back to his work in the autumn with an untarnished name. Ellen’s relations could not be expected to like him very cordially again, but they would keep their feelings to themselves. He did not much care. He had no great opinion of Ellen’s relations. And he would continue to think badly of himself. The episode had done him no credit at all. But even this was a bearable prospect. His opinion of himself could stand a good deal of wear and tear. The passing folly which has not ruined a life can be leniently dismissed.