X
A YEAR AND A DAY
We got Paul out of that dreadful lodging and into a private ward at St. Faith's. I'll never forget the way Smeaton helped. We had the very best advice, but all the doctors shook their heads over him. Some old adhesion of the lung, they said, that, under normal conditions, he might have lived till eighty and never suspected, but which privation, or a chill, or a blow, or perhaps all three, had fretted to malignity. There'd have to be an operation. It wasn't what is called a desperate one, was well within the competence of modern surgery in an ordinary case, but everything was against poor Ingram. Webber, who was watching the general condition, took no responsibility for the operation, and Tuckey, who was to do the cutting, took no responsibility for the result. As a division of responsibility, it was the neatest piece of work, I think, I have ever seen.
"It's not really strength he lacks," said Webber, after his last visit before the critical morning. "It's thevivida vis, the desire of life, that isn't there. Two grains of hope would be worth all the oxygen and beef-juice and brandy we could pump into him in a month."
I didn't confide to Webber that I'd already told Paul sixty thousand pounds was waiting till he was well enough to claim it, without seeing one shade of pleasurable emotion come into the tired, drooping eyes. As for Fenella, her name was never mentioned between us. I don't think he had any idea how much he had told me in that dark room at Chalk Farm, and I did not remind him. I had reason, soon enough, to bless my forbearance, for day followed day, and no answer to my telegram reached me. At Park Row I had found a sullen reluctance to give any information at all. She was travelling—she was on the sea—had left no instructions for forwarding. But a journalist is not to be thrown off the scent by a sulky and probably venal little slavey. Two telephone calls put me into possession of Lumsden's probable movements, and I knew I had not gone very far astray in sending the telegram to his care at Cowes. I never doubted for an instant that it had reached her hands. No; she had sought advice where advice, perhaps, was already backed by natural authority, and had decided that, under the circumstances——You see what I mean? It is true she might have written or wired asking for news. But trying to repair life's errors is a thankless task. Through the breach we are patching up the whole salt, dark ocean of destiny comes pouring and thundering about our stunned ears.
I slept little on the night before Paul's operation, and was up and moving restlessly about my rooms before the sun had risen. Who is it says, "Help cometh with the morning?" The Bible, probably. Anyway, I know I was heartened by seeing the rosy glow on the curtained windows opposite. It is a strange thing that I, who was to have no share in the day's great business, was probably up the first. Paul, I hope, was asleep, and I am sure Tuckey and Webber were. How far easier is work than waiting! The one has its seasons—a life may be wasted in the other.
I was looking out my sitting-room window, thinking this and many a deep solemn thought besides, when a big car, covered so thickly with mud and dust that its color could not be distinguished, and with the unmistakable appearance of having been driven far and furiously, swung—one might almost say dropped—into the crescent. I knew it was she. Oh, how I loathed myself for my doubt! I had the door open before she could put her foot on the steps.
She flashed into my face one mute, awful question in which I could tell the anguish of hours was concentrated, and I gave her the mute reply which says, "Not yet."
"Oh, thank God! thank God!" she said, and clasped her hands across her breast. The man in the car, stooped above the steering-wheel, did not move once nor look round.
"Can I see him now? Will he know me?"
"You won't be let see him till nine. The operation is at eleven, and there's hope. He was conscious last night but very weak. I can tell you no more."
If I sound harsh or cold, lay it to the charge of the man at the wheel.
I went on. "Shall I arrange for you to see him at nine?"
"Is it far?"
"Just across the river."
"I'll call back at quarter to nine, and you must take me."
She climbed into the car without looking at me again, and next moment was gone. Across the road I counted six blinds drawn to one side.
Lumsden never asked whether the man he had brought her a hundred and thirty miles to see was dead or alive. His face was set like a stone. In the main road he turned it to her, a mere dusty mask.
"Where do you want to go now?"
"Go to my house. I'll get you a drink and some breakfast. You must be half dead."
He headed the car for Knightsbridge without a word, and while Frances, sleep struggling with surprise in her bemused brain, was fulfilling her humble rôle in the romance by poaching two eggs over the electric stove, they sat in the dining-room on opposite sides of the table. She had filled a long, thin glass with the beverage his heart loved, but he only sipped it, which was not like Bryan, and turned the tumbler thoughtfully round and round. He avoided her eyes. He had seemed to avoid them all the way up.
"Will you come with me to—to the hospital?" she asked, when the silence had begun to weigh upon her.
"No. I don't want to see him."
"Bryan, since we're to be married, I think I'd best tell you what I wouldn't tell that night at Mount Street. Do you remember?"
"Yes. Well?"
"Dear, there's no reason, when you see him, you should feel anything but just a great, deep pity for all his unhappiness. I don't know why I didn't tell you this before. I think it was your doubting him drove me mad. And you're quite right in saying I've changed myself on purpose. It was because, after I learned the world a bit, I saw what a fraud I really was. All those little girl's ways you liked so much—they're very pretty, I dare say, but they're shams for me, anywhere off the stage. I had no right to them. I'm only what the world calls a 'good girl'—I'm only a girl at all, because he was merciful and—spared me. He must have been a very good man."
"Or a very cold one? Which?"
"Well. I'm not going to try to answer that, Bryan. It's what you call yourself an 'unseemly question'."
"You're a strange creature."
"Oh no, I'm not, Bryan. Not a bit different really to heaps and heaps of other women. I used to think I was once, at Sharland, because I didn't seem to have the other girls' ways or their curiosity. But I know better now. Do you remember Lord—the old lawyer beast that we went to the White City with? He took me on the launches, and when we were alone, he leaned over and told me—oh, something I can't even tell you, Bryan—now. He said it in French first and then, in case I didn't know what it was in French, he translated it into English. Those are the things that make usloatheyou, Bryan—deep, deep, deep, down in the little bit of us you never reach. But I only giggled, as any other girl would have done, any other girl who felt the same as me. And now he'll always remember me as—the woman who laughed."
"You're all a mystery."
"Not half as much as is pretended, Bryan. The mystery comes about because we don't tell the truth. Married women don't tell it, even, to one another, and it's thought shocking to tell a girl things that the first man she meets will tell her if she lets him. I hear more than most, 'cos I'm not one thing nor the other, and every one thinks I'll tell them things back, and then they'll find out what's puzzling them about us two. And we never tell you. How dare we? We find a set of rules ready made for us—by you. You take the men we really want from us because you're stronger than they are, or richer, or even braver than they are, and since it's the way you settle things among yourselves, and since you're satisfied with what you get by it, we pretend we're satisfied too. But it's one thing to conquer them, Bryan, and it's another thing to conquer us. I'll tell you a little woman's secret: No nice girl ever gives herself up quite to a man unless there's a little ofher motherin him. There was an awful lot in Paul. I found it out."
"A bit of an old woman, in fact?"
"Oh! I see I can't teach you. It doesn't matter. So you see, dear," in a different voice and raising her head, "there's not much left for you. But what there is I'd rather you had than any one else. Ilikeyou, Bryan—I like youso."
"And you think I ought to be satisfied with that?"
"Well, you know what you said a year ago."
"Yes—a year ago, but not now. Yesterday perhaps, but not this morning. It's the old Scots law limit—a year and a day. Often the wisdom that doesn't come in the year comes in a night. You're too deadly wise, Flash; too utterly disillusioned. I never could stand it. There'd be nothing to teach you; nothing to break down. You believe you've taken my measure, and every time I tried to lift our lives out of the mud, I'd feel you were laughing at me—down in that little bit you've just told me of. It may be as you say, all a make-believe, but, by G—d! it doesn't do to have both know it. What do you want most, really? Your liberty?"
She did not answer or raise her head.
"Well, you can have it." He got up and took his cap off the table. "Good-bye."
She didn't speak until he had his hand on the handle of the door. And then—
"Bryan, I've never let you kiss me. You can now if you like."
He spun round on his heel, as though some one had given him a blow between the shoulders. For a moment she thought he was going to strike her, or humble her pride to death. A foul name seemed to be actually forming itself on his lips. But he came across the room, and took her in his arms, and held her a long while.
"Take care, please," she said, breathlessly, "you're hurting me—a little."
Then he let her go.
"Oh, Flash!" he said hoarsely. "Doesn't that mean anything to you? Doesn't that tell you something?"
She was looking in the mirror at a little red mark where he had pressed the earring into her neck.
"Good-bye," he said again, and she heard the hall door slam. And then the throb of the motor began to rattle the windows in their frames.
She fell upon her knees and buried her face in her hands.