Clive tore open the letter and read:
“Dear Mr. Busby,
“Mary Wakefield is staying with me. I think it would be a good thing if you were to come and see her. She doesn’t know I am writing to you but I am sure she is still very attached to you. If you come let it be today and please ask for me.
“Sincerely,
“Muriel Craig.”
XIX
AT THE CRAIGS’
MARY HEARD THE light but decisive tap on the door twice before she could drag herself from the well of sleep into which she had sunk. At first she could not remember where she was. Why was she lying on the floor? Had she fainted and fallen there? The knock came again and a voice.
“Miss Wakefield! Mary! May I come in?”
Mary staggered to her feet. She was aching in every muscle.
“Just a moment,” she called. She threw the comforter on to the bed and opened the door. Her eyes, glazed by exhaustion and deep sleep could scarcely focus on the figure in the doorway, so trim, so alert.
“What a draught!” exclaimed Muriel Craig. “It’s a wonder you weren’t blown out of the bed. But you didn’t lie down! Goodness! I was sure you’d lie down and have a sleep.”
“I sat in that nice big chair,” said Mary, “with the comforter wrapped round me. I slept like a log.”
“Really.” The word somehow expressed disapproval. “You look completely washed out and chilled. Let me feel your hand. Why, it’s icy. And you must be starved too. I kept lunch back as long as I could to give you a chance to rest but now my father’s clamouring for it. You can’t imagine what my life is! Between his demands and his nurse’s I’m driven almost crazy.”
She had seated herself to wait for Mary who would have given a good deal to tidy herself in privacy. Her hands shook as she opened her portmanteau and took out her brush and comb.
“What nice hair you have,” Muriel Craig said, as Mary’s silky hair flew before the brush. “And fine too, though not so fine as mine. Mine is a perfect nuisance, it’s so fine. These peculiarities are a nuisance, aren’t they? It’s the same with my instep. It’s so high I have a terrible time getting shoes to fit me. After this I think I shall have them made to order.”
“What a nuisance,” said Mary.
“Of course, some people admire them. But I don’t.” She put forward a perfectly shod foot and studied it with great concentration. “Another trying thing is my tiny waist. Have you noticed it? I never can get my skirtbands to fit properly. Dressmakers are so stupid … I had not heard that Mrs. Whiteoak was home from her visit till I met you. Did she have a nice time?”
“I think so.”
“I like the simple way you do your hair. It suits you … I suppose her son came with her?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Should you like to go to the bathroom and wash your hands?”
She led the way and waited in the passage for Mary, who felt a little refreshed after bathing her face in warm water. They descended the stairs together. Mr. Craig was already seated at table with his nurse and excused himself from rising.
“You’ll have to pardon my bad manners,” he said.
“Oh, Mr. Craig,” exclaimed his nurse, “your manners are beautiful.”
“Nurse says my manners are beautiful,” he remarked to Mary. “Some people are easily pleased, aren’t they?” He wanted to talk all through the meal about his illness and the wonderful care he had had. He was confused as to which hand should hold his knife and which his fork, till the nurse put him right with her air of whimsical encouragement. Her beady eyes sparkled at all his little jokes but his daughter’s pale gaze seemed to try to ignore him.
Mary felt more unreal than ever she had felt in all her life. Her brain was numbed and she was grateful for Mr. Craig’s little jokes, for them she could understand and smile at. He could not say enough in praise of Doctor Ramsey and his treatment of him.
“There’s a fine man,” he said, in his slow, rather thick voice. “There’s a grand man. And he’s got a grand son-in-law, too. Mr. Philip Whiteoak. Do you know him?”
“Miss Wakefield has been governess to Mr. Whiteoak’s children, Father,” his daughter put in impatiently. “Surely you knew that.”
“Forgot,” he muttered.
“Naughty forgetful man!” cooed the nurse, patting his hand.
“I can tell you someone who admires him,” Mr. Craig said. “My daughter. That girl there. But she won’t get him. He’s not going to take a second wife, Doctor Ramsey tells me. He’s devoted to the memory of his first wife.”
Muriel Craig’s face had grown angry red, but she was silent.
“And that’s right too, isn’t it, Miss Wakefield! I’m sure you don’t approve of second marriages. Neither do I. I had a wonderful wife. What you’d call a perfect helpmate. But … she wasn’t sympathetic. I’d never have come through this sickness without sympathy.”
“You’re very much better, aren’t you?” said Mary.
“Better! Why, I’m coming on like a house afire.”
He made a wide gesture that overturned his glass of milk. The nurse quickly began to mop it up with her table napkin.
“Naughty boy!” she chuckled.
He caught a string of her apron in his hand. “Tied to her apron strings — that’s what I am!” he declared dramatically, addressing the ceiling.
The first pumpkin pie of the season was on the table and a large dish of purple grapes. Muriel Craig was too angry to touch either. As soon as Mary and she could escape she led Mary to the verandah. They sat down side by side in the hammock.
“My father talks like an old fool,” Muriel said vehemently. “He’s always trying to be funny and he certainly doesn’t succeed, except in the eyes of that imbecile nurse. Don’t you dislike her?”
Mary could say with truth that she did not see much to like in her.
“It’s so nice to have you here,” said Muriel, putting an arm about her and gently swaying in the hammock. “I have very few real friends.”
After a silence in which Mary desperately tried to think of something worth saying, Muriel remarked:
“You have such a nice skin it seems a pity you put powder on it. My mother always said to me, ‘Muriel, you have a flawless complexion. Don’t ever powder your face,’ and I never have. Would you like me better with powder?”
“I admire you as you are.”
“It’s a good thing someone admires me.”
“I think everyone I know admires you.”
“Do you think Philip Whiteoak does?” Her large clear eyes looked straight into Mary’s.
Mary laughed. “He would scarcely confide that to me.”
“He might. Doesn’t he ever confide in you?”
“I was at Jalna to look after his children — not as his confidante.”
“But you liked him, didn’t you?”
“Oh, yes. He is very kind.”
“Very kind! Dear me.” Her arm tightened about Mary. “I think you might confide in me. I think you might tell me what the trouble was and why you left Jalna so suddenly.”
“Mrs. Whiteoak and I had words.”
“Heavens! I’ll wager you came off badly. I’d be afraid of her. Do tell me about it.”
Mary’s colour rose. “I really can’t.”
“Was it just you two alone?”
“Yes.”
“And he didn’t know about it?”
“No.”
Muriel put forward her foot and sat in concentrated admiration of her instep before she said, in a thoughtful tone:
“I know someone who is badly smitten on you. But of course everyone knows that.”
Mary looked enquiring.
“Clive Busby. Someone — I forget who it was — told me you were engaged. But you’d never be running off like this, if you were engaged to him. But you could be, if you wanted to. I’m sure of that. One day I met him at a garden party — it was given by some of the officers of the Queen’s Own Rifles — and w
hen I told him how much I admired you his eyes positively shone. Oh, he’s terribly smitten! Don’t tell me he hasn’t proposed.”
“I’m not telling you anything,” Mary said coldly. “I’m not at all a communicative person. I hope you don’t mind.”
“But I do mind! I want us to swing here together in the hammock and pour out our feelings. I’ve written the letter to my friend in New York and it’s posted.”
“Thank you. That is kind.” Mary put her hand to her eyes. Muriel Craig’s head, enormously magnified, was floating before them. “I’m ashamed to say it but — I must go and lie down again. I feel a little dizzy. It’s very silly of me.”
Muriel sprang up. “Rest is what you need and rest you shall have. And right in bed too.”
In her abundant energy she all but dragged Mary up the stairs. She prepared the bed for her while Mary changed into a dressing-gown, Muriel talking all the while but now of her difficulties with her father and his nurse. She covered Mary with the satin “comforter,” patted her shoulder and told her to sleep till she was rested through and through.
I wonder if ever that day will come, thought Mary. She welcomed the comfort and solitude of the bed, as a fish welcomes water. She covered her head and submerged herself in sleep. But she had no real rest in her sleep, for wherever her dreams carried her, Adeline Whiteoak was there to drive her away.
Fortunately she woke before she was called, so that she was able to dress in peace. She saw by the looking-glass that she was less pale and that the blue circles beneath her eyes had almost disappeared. This gave her confidence.
After the evening meal Mr. Craig proposed a game of euchre. He had not played a game of cards since before his illness. Miss Wakefield’s visit was doing him good. So a card table was placed in the chilly drawing-room and the four sat themselves about it, Mr. Craig and his nurse playing as partners. The light from the incandescent gas fixture that hung from the ceiling, cast intense shadows on their faces. Muriel looked very discontented, her father very pleased with himself and his twinklingly solicitous nurse. It was hard for him to remember what was trump or to decide what card to play. Time and again the nurse sprang up and ran round to help him. Mary noticed how, when she bent over his shoulder, her cheek seemed always to touch his head. Muriel noticed nothing but sat pouting at her cards like a sulky schoolgirl. Mary had a momentary vision of the Whiteoaks playing at cards or backgammon, the vivid laughing faces, the hilarity when Adeline was the winner and Boney joined his shouts to her triumph.
Mr. Craig was not satisfied till three games of euchre had been played. Then, leaning heavily on his nurse’s arm he stumped off, after a kindly “Good-night” to Mary and his thanks for putting up with an old man’s stupidity. Muriel and he exchanged a casual nod, a muttered something before they parted. With a pang Mary remembered the warm embrace her father had given her when they said “Good-night,” the smell of his tobacco and the way his moustache tickled her cheek. She remembered the audible kisses of the Whiteoaks.
To Muriel’s disappointment Mary said she must go to her room and write a letter. Fortunately she had brought her little leather writing-folio with her. All her writing things were in her room, she said. Might she go there to write her letter?
“Oh, what a different evening from the one I’d planned!” cried Muriel. “I thought we’d talk and talk till midnight.”
“I’m sorry,” was all Mary could say, “but I really must do this letter tonight.”
At last she escaped.
In her room she sat down by the marble-topped table. It was ice cold beneath her bare arm.
“My dear Clive,” she wrote and then stared out into the darkness … Again she made the attempt.
“My dear Clive,
“To me the writing of this letter is a great grief. It is to tell you that I cannot marry you, to tell you — oh, that I could find the gentlest words in the language — that I do not love you deeply enough for marriage. I reproach myself for not having discovered this before. Dearest Clive, I am not good enough for you. I will always remember your goodness and kindness. I don’t ask you to forget me but I do beg of you to forgive me, and to try to think of me without bitterness.
“Mary.”
She read the letter. It was not all that she would have liked to say to Clive but it must do. She could find no other words. She addressed the letter, sealed and stamped it. She would not let herself think of Clive’s face when he had read it.
And now that other letter, the letter to Philip. Surely she had the right to send him a message of farewell … just a line to say she loved him and would never love any other but him. Here, in this dim room, with the cavernous, dripping night beyond the window, she might free her spirit, pour out to him on paper what would never pass her lips. She took a sheet of notepaper and wrote:
“My dear, my only love —”
Then her hand refused to move. A terrible cramp came into it. Though she set her teeth and tried to force it, her hand would not move. She gripped her wrist in her left hand to control it but, when she put pen to paper she could only scrawl his name. She was powerless to write.
She buried her face in her arms and broke into wild crying. Hoarse sobs shook her. She did not care if people in the house heard her and came running. She cared for nothing but to let the sobs tear her to pieces. But no one heard her and, at last, she was quiet. She got up, undressed, knelt by the high bed in her long white nightdress and said her prayers. She made no mention in them of her unhappiness, sent up no petition, but the accustomed words comforted her.
The next morning she asked Muriel Craig where she could post a letter. She had it ready in her hand.
“Give it to me,” said Muriel, “the man’s just going in for the mail and he’ll take it. What a morning! Pouring with rain!” She caught up the letter and hurried off.
In the passage she stood thinking, after she had read the address. Then she went softly up to Mary’s room and looked about. She saw the writing-case and opened it. Nothing but notepaper and two English postcards inside. She looked in the wastepaper basket and discovered some torn bits of paper. She pounded on these and tiptoed with them to her room. Guilt was written all over her but no one saw her.
She pieced together the bits of paper and read what Mary had written: “My dear, my only love,” and his name “Philip”. The paper was blistered and writing blurred by tears.
What did it mean?
It meant possibly that Mary was breaking off what relations there were between herself and Clive and was reaching out toward Philip. What else could it mean? But Mary would not get her clutches on Philip — not if she could prevent it.
Her face was flushed with excitement as she finished her note to Clive. She flew downstairs with it to the reluctant man, waiting in his rubber cape to go out into the rain.
“Take this,” she said, “to Mr. Vaughan’s and leave it for Mr. Busby. When you bring back the mail from the post office bring it straight to me.”
For the seventh time Clive Busby was driving along the road by the lake, in search of Mary. To him it had become the most hateful stretch of road in the world. Every bend of it, every tree, every stone, every patch of thistles, he felt he knew like the palm of his hand. The horse knew it too and hated it. He showed his resentment by jerking his head and splashing through puddles so clumsily that drops of muddy water flew over the dashboard.
At last I shall know the truth, Clive thought. At last the truth … from her own lips. His weary mind had reached the point where what he craved most was to know where he stood, to sweep away the web that entangled him.
When he reached the Craigs’ he tied his horse and strode to the door. A maid left him in the hall where he took off his mackintosh, folded it neatly across a chair, and passed his hand over his hair. But the heavy thudding of his heart told a story less cool. He heard voices in the next room. Then the door of the room opened and Muriel Craig came into the hall. She said smiling:
“Mary’s in the
re. She doesn’t know it’s you. Katie just said, ‘A gentleman.’”
As Clive went into the room she closed the door after him, but she remained near it.
He was alone with Mary.
The first thought of each was shock at the appearance of the other. Her eyes were reddened, her features blurred. He looked ten years older.
Then panic seized her at being alone with him and she exclaimed, “Didn’t you get my letter?”
“Your letter? No.”
“Of course, you couldn’t. I forgot. It was only posted this morning.”
“Did you ask me to come, in the letter?”
“No. I asked you not to come.”
“Mary —” he had been standing just inside the door, now he came closer to her — “for God’s sake tell me what happened!”
“Clive — I beg of you — don’t make me talk of it. Go back and read my letter — try to believe that it breaks my heart to treat you like this.” She pressed her hand to her trembling mouth.
“No letter will do. I must have it from your own lips.”
“Then … if you must … I don’t love you well enough to marry you. I mean I don’t love you in that way. Oh, surely you understand.”
“I’m trying to but it’s hard. Only a few days ago you and I were happy together. You held my hand and we laughed, as we walked through the woods. Why, you even chose the sort of little dog you wanted me to buy you.” His voice broke.
“I know. I know. I must seem a horrible person to you — and no wonder.”
“What happened? Something happened after Philip Whiteoak came home.”
“Yes.”
“In the orchard?”
“Yes.”
“He told you not to marry me? You do what he says?”
“I needed no telling!” she broke out. “I love him. I’ve always loved him. I think you guessed that. But I stifled it — my love for him — I choked it down. I turned to you, thinking I could make you happy — perhaps be happy myself — but then he came back and he told me that he loved me ——”
“Are you going to marry Philip?”
03 Mary Wakefield Page 25
