Christmas has come and gone. The little girls left us a fortnight before, and the flat felt very quiet without them, but I busied myself arranging for the fray. The tree was a huge success; so was the dinner next day. Nevertheless, I shed tears on my pillow when I went to bed, for if a solitary woman is ever justified in feeling “lone and lorn,” it is certainly at the season when everybody who possesses a family rushes to it as a matter of course.
It was very gratifying to have made other people happy, but I had a hungry longing to be made happy myself. By an unfortunate coincidence, neither Kathie’s greeting, nor Charmion’s, nor Delphine’s, arrived until the twenty-seventh, and Aunt Eliza’s turkey never arrived at all, having presumably lost its label, and been eaten by the postman as treasure trove. The one and only parcel from a distance came from—Mr Maplestone! He had called the week before, and asked permission to send evergreens from the “Hall”. He said it was so difficult to get holly with berries on it in town, and all children loved red berries. Presumably his trees grew crackers as well as berries, for about a dozen boxes of the most gorgeous varieties were enclosed in the crate. There was no letter, but just a card with “For the children,” written in a corner.
On Boxing Day I made Winifred and Marion write letters of thanks—a weary process from which they emerged splattered with tears and ink.
“Why are you laughing, Miss Harding?” they inquired resentfully. I did not tell them that I was chuckling at my own cleverness in avoiding a personal acknowledgment. I did not know that the Squire had ever seen my writing, but he might have done. No risks should be run.
Delphine and her husband are settled at Davos, and he is beginning to improve. She writes sweet little letters, and I’m sure this illness has arrived at a providential moment. The shock of realising that her Jacky’s life was in danger was like a lightning flash lighting up a dark landscape. In its blaze she saw revealed the true value of things, and the sloping path on which her feet were set. I don’t expect her to grow up all at once, settle down to all work and no play, and behave as though she were forty instead of twenty-two; I don’t expect the Vicar to give up being absent-minded and exacting; but I do honestly believe that it will do him good to have his shock, and that he is just enough to realise his own share of the blame. Then they will kiss and begin again, and things will go better, because there will be understanding to leaven love.
Talking of understandings, there was a marvellous calm in the flat overhead for some nights in early January, and Bridget informed me that Mr Nineteen had been taken to a nursing home to have an operation. Since our tragic encounter, Mrs Nineteen (her real name is Travers) and I have exchanged furtive bows when we have met in the hall. I always felt guilty, and anxious to “make it up,” and had an instinct that she felt the same, though neither had the courage to speak; but, of course, after the operation I had to stop and inquire. She flushed, and said, “Pretty well, thank you. The doctors are satisfied, but it will be a long cure.” A week later I met her coming in with a book under her arm. She had been “reading aloud. Her husband felt the time so long. For an active man, it was a great trial to lie in bed.” To judge by her face, it was an exhausting experience to his wife to sit by his side. I said impetuously: “If Mr Travers would allow me, I should be so glad to read aloud to him sometimes, when you are not able to go. I am fond of reading aloud; I believe I do it pretty well.”
“I don’t,” she said dejectedly. “It makes me yawn. John says I mumble.” She looked at me sharply, distrustfully. “You are very kind, but—it’s too much! Why should you—”
“I’d like to, if you will let me. I—I was rude to you—that day! I’ve been remorseful ever since. If you’d allow me to do this, I should feel that I was forgiven.”
“You spoke the truth,” she said shortly. “And I brought it on myself. I had no business to complain about those poor children, knowing why they were here; but there are some moods in which one is bound to have a vent. You hurt my pride, of course, but—it’s not the first time!” She bit her lip, turned aside for a moment, then added quickly, “I didn’t tell John!”
“Thank you. I’m glad of that. He’ll be more willing to let me come. Please tell him that I’m so sorry to have disturbed him, and want to ‘make up’ by helping him while he is ill. My time is my own. I can go any day—at any time—to read any book.”
She made no promise, and for several days seemed to avoid meeting me face to face, then one morning she came to the door and asked to see me. Some business had arisen which necessitated a day out of town. Her husband dreaded being left alone. Did I really mean my kind offer, and if so would to-morrow afternoon—
I went. He is a dark, sharp-featured man, with thick eyebrows and a chronic scowl. He also looks shockingly ill, and is growing a beard. The combination is enough to strike terror into the feminine soul. The very maid who opened the door looked pityingly at me when I pronounced his name; as for his nurse, she fairly bounced with relief when I was announced. Her expression said as plainly as words, “I’ve had my turn—now you can have yours!”
“Harding?” he said graciously. “Oh, yes! You are the woman who bangs the doors.” He let me read for two hours on end, and then said, “Stupid book. I can’t think how they ever get published!” but when I left, he asked, “When will you come again?” which was as far in the way of thanks as it is possible for him to get.
For the next three weeks I went constantly to the Home, and never once did that man say a gracious word. If I arrived late, he growled and said, “Thought you were never coming! Hardly worth beginning at all.” If I was early, his greeting was, “I was just having a nap! Haven’t closed my eyes since two this morning, and now you have roused me up!” If I read a book, he preferred a newspaper. If I read a newspaper, it crackled, and worried his head. If I made a remark, he disagreed; if I was silent, “Was there no news?—nothing going on to tell a poor wretch tied to his bed?” If I said he looked better, he would have me to know that nurses and doctors alike were deluding him with lies. He knew for a fact that he was dying fast. If I said he looked tired, he felt better than he had done all the week. It was impossible to please him—impossible to win a smile or a gracious word. Never have I met a human being so twisted and warped in mind. To go into his room is like entering a black tunnel—one leaves it with the feeling of breaking bonds. The matron of the Home is a brisk, capable woman, with a face full of kindly strength; we generally met and exchanged a few words on stairs or landing, and it was easy to see that her patience was wearing thin. There came a day when she met me with a red face, beckoned me into her private room, and poured forth a stream of angry confidences.
“I really must speak to some one about Mr Travers. His poor wife has enough to bear. I can’t trouble her. The man is insufferable; he upsets the whole house. His nurse has just been to me in tears. Nothing will please him. He rings his bell all day, and half the night, and for nothing—literally nothing! Just an excuse to give trouble. We have honestly done our best—more than our best. With such a patient it is easier to give in than to protest, but I’m beginning to think we’ve been wrong. He is not getting on as quickly as he should. I believe his temper is keeping him back.”
“I’m sure of it! You are an expert at healing, and I’m a beginner, but I’m a great believer in the power of the mind. He is poisoning himself.”
“He is poisoning every one else! I can’t submit to have my whole house upset. If he were fit to be moved, he should be out of it to-day. It’s all I can do to be civil, and not blaze out, and tell him what I think!”
“I shouldn’t try!”
“What?” She looked at me sharply. “Ah! You agree? You feel the same? You think I dare?”
“I do. I go a step further, and say it’s your duty. He is a bully, and probably no one has ever dared to show him how he appears to other people, but for the time being you are in command; while he is here, he is supposed to obey. Give it to him hot and strong! Tell him that he is injuring himself, and is a misery to every one else—that you are only keeping him, because it would do him harm to be removed.”
“It’s true!” she cried. “It’s every word true. The man is a miasma.” She stared at me in sudden amaze. “Why do you laugh?”
“Oh, I was just thinking! Thinking of a man whom I used to denounce as bad-tempered! A dear, kind, thoughtful, unselfish Englishman with a—a bluster! I can never call it temper again, after knowing Mr Travers! He has taught me a lesson.”
She laughed, too, and shrugged her shoulders.
“Oh, that! I like a man with a will of his own, and the pluck to speak out. A ‘bluster,’ as you call it, clears the air, and is quite a healthful influence; but this other!— Well, Miss Harding, you have given the casting vote. When are you coming again?”
“Thursday afternoon, I think. Mrs Travers is busy then. Has to go out of town.”
“That’s all right! Then I’ll have it out with him before lunch, and leave you to calm him down in the afternoon.”
“Oh—mean!” I cried, but she only laughed, opened the door, and hustled me into the hall. Evidently her mind was made up.
When Thursday afternoon arrived, it found Miss Harding entering the ogre’s bedroom with a smile tightly glued on her lips, and a heart beating uncomfortably fast beneath her ugly flannel blouse. From the bed a pair of gimlet-like eyes surveyed her sharply, pale lips twisted, and showed a snarl of teeth. He volunteered no remark, however, and I wasted not a second in opening my book, and beginning to read as a refuge against conversation. I could feel the scrutiny of his eyes on my face, but I read on steadily, never looking up for nearly an hour, when the story came to an end.
“Have you had enough reading for to-day, or would you care to hear one of the articles in this review?”
He glared at me, and said coldly:—
“So you are in the conspiracy, too! Women are all alike! Sitting here, all smiles and flummery to my face, and then going away to abuse me behind my back!”
“That’s not true!”
I cried hotly. “At least, it’s a very unfair representation. There was no necessity for me to come here at all. I have done it because you were a neighbour, and ill, and I wanted to help you—and even more to help your wife. As for ‘smiles and flummery,’ as you express it, there has been no chance of anything so friendly. You have allowed no chance!”
“You don’t deny, I suppose, that you joined with matron in abusing me as a monster of wickedness?”
“I said you had the worst temper I had ever met. So you have. I said I believed that you poisoned yourself, as well as every one near you. So I do. All the more credit to me for giving you so much of my time.”
He lay silent, staring into my face. It was plain that the man had received a shock. For once in his life he had been shown a picture of himself as others saw him, and in the seeing something had been hurt—conscience, vanity, amour-propre—it was impossible to say which, and now his brain was at work, trying to assimilate the new thought. All the time I had been reading, he had been pondering and raging. Probably he had not heard a single word.
“You women,” he began again. “You women! Talk of ministering angels—all very fine for a few days, while the novelty lasts—after that a poor beggar can suffer tortures, and get nothing but revilings for bad temper. Would you be an angel of meekness if you had to go through what I am bearing now?”
“I should probably be exceedingly difficult and fretful. At times! There would be other times—especially when I was getting better—when I should feel overflowing with gratitude, and should say so, to the people who had been patient with me through the bad times!”
“Words! Words!” he snarled scornfully. “Men judge by deeds. If you want my character, you can hear it from the men with whom I have had to do. I am a Churchman. I go to church every Sunday of my life. I was once Vicar’s churchwarden for three years.”
Poor Vicar! What those three years must have been! I have known whole parishes “set by the ears” by just one warped, self-opinionated man, who put his own pet theories before anything else, and went about sowing dissension—splitting up a hitherto united people into two opposing camps. I said, with an air of polite inquiry:—
“And—did you part good friends?”
He did not answer, but the expression on his face was eloquent enough. I knew, without being told. Suddenly he broke out at a fresh tangent.
“I suppose my wife—”
I held up my hand authoritatively.
“No, please! Don’t blame your wife. She has never mentioned you, except to pity and sympathise. Her one thought has been for you—how to help, how to please. Of course, Mr Travers, the people here and myself have only known you lately, and this illness must have been coming on for some time. Probably it has—well, it has made you bad-tempered, hasn’t it? But your wife knew you before, when you were loving and gentle, so her judgment must be more true.”
With my usual “softness” I was beginning to pity the poor wretch, and to try to let him down gently; but once again his face was eloquent. At the words “loving and gentle,” an involuntary grimace twisted the grim features. Memory refused to reproduce the picture. He said abruptly:—
“My wife is a good woman. That virago of a matron told me this morning that if she’d been in her place, she’d have run away years ago. Well, Mary has stuck to me. She doesn’t want to go! It’s not always the softest-spoken men who make the best husbands. That Hallett fellow, whom Thorold is so thick with—he belongs to my club; I knew something about him when I lived in America long ago. How do you suppose he treated his wife?”
“His wife? He hasn’t got a wife!”
“Oh, hasn’t he? Not now, perhaps. But he had! A little of him went a long way. She ran away from him on her honeymoon. What do you think of that? What kind of a man can he have been to make a woman leave him in a month?”
Something happened inside my head. There was a shock, a whirl, a blinding darkness, followed by a flash of light. Mr Travers had said “America,” and the word had a terrible significance. I sat stunned into silence, and Mr Travers obviously gloated over my discomfiture.
“Pretty condemning, eh? She was an heiress—pots of money. Fine-looking girl, too. I saw her once. Too pale and washed out for my taste, but with an air. Forget her name—something high-flown and romantic, like herself. Well, she left him, and that was the end of it. Never heard a word of her since.”
Romantic name—an heiress—fine-looking—pale. One by one the clues accumulated—step by step the evidence mounted up. I said faintly:—
“Has he tried?”
“Tried to find her? Searched the world! Almost went off his head, I believe. He’d made a mess of it, of course, but he was crazy about her—broken his heart ever since. You can see it in his face. My wife has no patience with her. She’d married for better or worse. Whatever happened, she was a poor thing to throw up the sponge in a month. What’s the matter? You look faint.”
“I—I am! I must go. Some other day,” I gasped vaguely. I went out into the passage, and sat down on an oak chest. The world seemed rocking around me. I was so stunned that I could not feel!