The storm was followed – a rather unusual caprice in an English summer – by a spell of happy, halcyon weather. The patient, however, lying there on his back in his beautiful brass bed, the blinds at the window all but shrouding his room, his shade over his eyes, enjoyed it only at second hand. When Mrs le Mercier was not either giving him his physic or sitting over him while he consumed milk pudding, his cousin Eirene was. She, however, was the more restless nurse of the two, and again and again would interrupt the Cranford she was reading to him in order to mince over to the window and peep out at the day.
‘You can’t think how lovely it is,’ she would cry gaily over her shoulder. ‘It’s a thousand pities, you poor thing. And I simply can’t imagine why you didn’t take shelter in a shop. You always go that way, don’t you, Cecil?’
And once more Cecil would be compelled to remember the precise terms of the rather fantastic little story he had invented to explain his sousing, a story received by Eirene with a variety of reactions. After what was perhaps the fifth attempt to glean a little further information, she returned to his bedside and, so to speak, took the bull by the horns.
‘What auntie, you know, has perfectly made up her mind about now is that you really want somebody to take more care of you. And I am going to be one of the “somebodies”. You are getting mopish, Cecil. You just shut yourself up away from everybody, though you know how sympathetic we all can’t help being. And what’s more, I believe you make things out worse than they are, just to spoil yourself a little. The doctor was saying only the other day that, even if it is a little painful, you ought to try ever so little to – you know what I mean – to make yourself better.’
‘My eyes, you mean?’ interjected Cecil from his pillow.
‘And aren’t our eyes,’ cried Eirene brightly, ‘almost, as it were, ourselves? Why, you see things that I have never even noticed at all. It’s quite, quite wonderful. Still, you mustn’t mind my speaking out a little, even though you never seem to be really listening to half I say. You couldn’t tell me a single word about that last chapter I have been reading, now, could you? And I can’t bear reading aloud, especially in a room like a vault.’
Cecil remained perfectly still in his bed. ‘You have been kindness itself, Eirene,’ he replied in a flattish voice; ‘and it’s hateful to keep you here. Do please take a little rest. And – and might I have half an hour’s more Cranford after dinner?’
‘Well, if I must, I must, you naughty boy. But promise me, if I do, that you’ll get a little sleep. We all do so much want to help you all we can. It’s so difficult – just groping in the dark.’
There was almost a hint of tears in her voice, and she stooped prettily, though not very far down, as if to blow him a kiss right in underneath the green shade, for as a matter of fact she had always felt a peculiar disinclination to confront those hidden eyes. How was she to tell, then, if her incipient kiss had reached its destination? She eyed the long, green-cowled hummock mistrustfully. ‘And you’ve promised to turn over a new leaf?’ she concluded.
The door gently closed, and the rack on which Cecil lay resumed its more leisurely activities. Of all the rats that were gnawing at his mind, one was never for a moment satisfied – what must his stranger be thinking of him now? With unprecedented presence of mind, his last words had been that he would be found edging along around the shop-end of the crescent at a quarter-past eleven every morning, ad infinitum. Just about then, it appeared, would be her only chance of a few free minutes except in the evenings, and on Thursdays; and even they were precarious. Why, Cecil had not attempted to find out.
Sheer instinct had told him that circumstances had never been very kind to her. He realized she must be ‘poor’, and the very sound of the word sent him rushing away from it in his mind as fast as ever he could. From infancy he had been lapped in comparative luxury, and the merest suspicion that beneath Luxury’s silken skirts were concealed two bony knees filled him with incredible dismay. Nonetheless he knew with the immense assurance of mere faith that somehow or other she was not going to be poor for very long; that he was going to just sweep those circumstances up into a pile and burn them.
There never was a more helpless creature than himself; he knew that, too. And yet, once or twice in his life, he had determined to have his own way, and this was going to be another time. But how see her? How keep his tryst? How write to her? How let her have but one word to show that it was only a silly old temperature and a Grummumma and a doctor and a quickwitted, nimble-tongued cousin that were for the moment keeping him away?
He had so many times re-explored in imagination that hour by the river that he now knew every inch of it by heart. And what is more, huddling there beside her under the linden tree, he had actually managed to speak of his infirmity. It was the one thing in the world his tongue hated and detested having anything to do with. Still, it had somehow stumbled out; and the ordeal had not only proved an immeasurable relief but had also won an immeasurable reward.
‘Think worse of you for that! Oh, what an utter meanness you must feel in me! Why, all along I have almost hoped you were blind; for then, you see, I might have been of help, though I don’t quite see how – if ever, I mean, we are going to meet again. “Worse”, indeed! I’d ask the thunder just to swallow me up if I even so much as thought you thought it.’
Her face had been turned away from him as she spoke; and the grass at his feet, studded with small, snow-white daisies and here and there a yellow dandelion, had showed a wild, violent green beneath yet another riot of lightning.
But why did that particular ‘blind’ still make his heart stand still with delight, while Eirene’s nattier little pronunciation of the word just now, rankled in his side like a poisoned arrow? Could anything be odder? And what, indeed, was the matter with Eirene?
Two days ago she was just a first cousin much removed, waiting for him like a lightship, so to speak, irremovably in the offing, both a warning and an eventual refuge against all life’s storms. He had always known that if nobody more satisfactory turned up for her Eirene would probably decide to marry him. Grummumma had often spoken about it, quite plainly, however playfully; and since Cecil had always hated thinking of the future, he habitually left that future to wait until the present caught up with it.
And now the present had actually done so. And he knew as well as if it had been written down on paper, first that Eirene had suddenly made up her mind – just as if his chill had been her conflagration, and next, that he had also made up his own. He didn’t know exactly how he could manage to persuade his stranger to accept for the time being about two-thirds of his modest income. But it was his, and he was going to do so, and by sheer logic Eirene was therefore not going to marry him.
And then, Cecil had suddenly stopped thinking and had actually found himself attempting to put Eirene’s advice into practice. Hands clenched, heart pounding, pulses drumming, he was endeavouring, if only by the remotest fraction of an inch, to raise these abject eyes of his in their sockets. A horrible sweat broke out on his forehead. He was shivering from head to foot. He persisted, nonetheless, until it seemed the very brain beneath his skull was splitting into fragments, and incandescent stars and arrows of light were raining out of the darkness. And then, poor spoiled invalid, he flung himself over on to his pillow, and turning his back upon paradise, wept with rage and chagrin.
When calm returned, there returned with it, hungry as ever, the same old rat. How was he ever to assure the stranger that he was not – well, just another ‘young fellow’? And once more the words that had haunted him repeated themselves over and over again in his mind: ‘I came at last to hate him – to hate him.’ He lay there – stiff and still. Grummumma’s step was sounding on the stair; the First Wardress was approaching. Despair swept over him. The nameless, longed-for one must in sober fact be hating him with all her heart and soul this very moment.
But Grummumma (followed by the parlour-maid carrying on a silver salver a dish of sole an
d a glass of hock), was bringing him, apart from these dainties, news which proved at least that, however extreme that hatred might now be, it was not going to prevent the young people from meeting again. First, she assured him he was much better. That being so she paid very little attention to the grey, damp underpart of the face that lay on the pillow, though even the hair on that pillow was dank with sweat. Being better, he might sit up this afternoon and come down tomorrow. And the afternoon after that he was to receive a visitor. ‘And I wonder, my dear boy, if you can guess who that will be?’
There had been only the faintest trill on the ‘that’, yet at sound of it his heart stood still. ‘Is it Canon Bagshot?’ he muttered stonily.
‘Him, too,’ breathed Grummumma, ‘but who else?’
‘Eirene’s not going away, is she?’
‘Not quite yet,’ smiled Grummumma. ‘But then, Cecil, she is coming back for good.’
‘I give it up,’ said Cecil. ‘And anyhow I should much prefer to be left alone.’
‘My dear boy,’ replied Grummumma, with that hint of unction in her voice she could never keep out of her kindest remarks, ‘you would always prefer to be left alone. And what do you mean by that, may I ask? Left alone with whom? There are limits surely to one’s poor little self. I agree you are tied. But, as Eirene was saying, how long is it since you have made any effort to undo the knot?’
Cecil made no reply.
‘You have unnumbered blessings,’ went on the philanthropist. ‘Solicitous friends, a little income of your own. And though I agree the handicap has been extreme; yes, Cecil, you even have brains. And people with brains, my dear boy, don’t dash their heads against brick walls; don’t fly into silly entanglements out of which even the most clear-sighted minds find it difficult to extricate themselves. You make little difficulties. And as Dr Lodge agrees, and indeed as specialist after specialist has assured me, a physical habit is bound to reflect itself in the mind, and also, no doubt, in the heart. And if in our various spheres of society we have not a certain amount of proper respect for things as they are; if, that is, we don’t draw the line somewhere, the consequent difficulties merely end in disaster. And do, my dear boy, show some little appreciation of that delicious-looking sole before it is stone cold on the dish. No; I didn’t mean to be led away into a discussion on the physical side’ – she flickered in a charmingly helpless fashion her little, fat, ringed hand in the air – ‘I know nothing of all that. All that I merely wanted to tell you was that I have invited a young lady – a friend of yours – to tea.’
‘A young lady – a friend of mine?’ Cecil mumbled, as if incredulous of such a marvel.
‘Exactly that,’ cried Grummumma brightly. ‘She is an assistant in that large new draper’s, poor thing; and, considering the practice she has, I must say she writes a charmingly illegible hand.’
Cecil plunged clean into the deep end of the bath prepared for him. ‘I am delighted,’ he said.
‘About the handwriting?’ inquired Grummumma.
‘That she is coming to tea,’ said Cecil.
‘In my young days, gallantry would have suggested suggesting that Miss Simcox should come to tea. Wasn’t it in the nature of things that we should wish to know her – after you had met, well, as you did meet. You must have realized long ago that I am never likely to be a stickler for mere conventions. Why, then, may I ask, have you been hiding the young lady under your bushel?’ The voice was almost prattling in its geniality.
Cecil took a gulp of hock before replying. ‘Why, Grummumma, since you have asked her to tea, I don’t see where the bushel comes in?’
The black, handsome eyes had fixed their whole attention on his lips. ‘But why not at your suggestion, Cecil? It was that I was asking.’
‘But surely, Grummumma, one’s invitations are pleasanter when they are given on one’s own initiative. Yours must be, I am sure.’ The water was proving more buoyant than he had expected.
‘My dear!’ she acquiesced. ‘Then why didn’t you indulge in one? I find no difficulty in believing that Miss Simcox would have come to tea on Friday with even greater alacrity and pleasure if my poor little note had been in your handwriting.’
‘You didn’t call on her then?’ mumbled Cecil.
‘I proposed to myself the pleasure of her calling on me,’ replied Grum mumma. ‘And to whom, my dear boy, do you owe what I am sure must be this charming acquaintance?’
Cecil never lied. And a kind of nausea at the thought of any further fencing or prevarication suddenly swept over him. If the fat was already in the fire, why shouldn’t he set it blazing? He sat up on his bed prim and stiff, his snowy pillows for background; ‘I believe,’ he stolidly replied, ‘I just woke up.’
‘Charming, my dear Cecil, most romantic! But my actual question,’ Grummumma persisted equably, ‘was to whom do we owe it?’
Cecil jerked up even a little higher and the shade tilted itself almost to the angle of the peak of a guard’s signalling lamp. But, if anything, and in spite of it, the light beneath was red rather than green.
‘To whom does one owe any kind of awakening? Why sometimes, I suppose’ – and the voice had fallen flat and cold – ‘to sheer, downright Providence.’
‘I must ask Canon Bagshot to give us an address one Sunday on false gods, Cecil. You might learn a little more of the other One – by sheer force of contrast.’
There was a pause.
‘Will Eirene be here?’ Cecil inquired at last, his head now lowered again over his clammy sole.
Mrs le Mercier’s kid-clad right foot was at this moment beating softly on Cecil’s deep-piled bedroom carpet. It was her method of purring. She was looking at the china on the luncheon-tray and smiling gently, as if consciousness were just over the border of a charming reverie. Then she laid her other little card on the table, patly and finally, since sooner or later it would almost certainly have to be disclosed. ‘Why yes, Eirene will be with us – would make a point of being with us. Hasn’t she the positive privilege? Even if it were not a pleasure, dear boy, to share your friends, it would be little short of a duty. And Miss Bolsover is coming too. It will be quite a pleasant little party for Miss – Miss Simcox.’
She paused once more, but this time paused in vain. ‘Go on then, my dear boy, as fast as ever you can, getting better!’ she harangued him. ‘The removal of almost every little misfortune in this life, except those that come from above, is merely a question of time.’
Cecil sat up (physically speaking), and as she had prognosticated, that afternoon, and he went downstairs the next. But so assiduous were those who watched over his convalescence that, except after he had blown out his candle for the night, he was not for a moment left to mope alone. One can mope to some little purpose, however, in the gayest of company.
During the forty-eight hours that succeeded the sole, apart from those which he passed in restless sleep, he enjoyed not a single moment of peace of mind. Nor was the faintest chance given him of bringing his inward conflict into the open. Short of speaking out, which every nerve in him forbade, he might drag one red herring after another across the trail in the hopes of leading Grummumma on. But she seemed to have lost all interest in the chase. How had she found him out? Did he talk in his sleep? How had she discovered Miss Simcox’s name – and where she lived? What, what had she said to her? But Grummumma positively refused to budge. She believed that silence was best. Miss Simcox was never even mentioned again.
At a quarter to five, however, on the day before the tea-party, and when Eirene was in charge, Cecil made his first and only frontal attack. His feverish cold had left its marks behind it. There was something unusually invalidish in the look of the young man when, without the faintest preparation, be suddenly blurted out his challenge. ‘I want —’ he said, ‘Miss Simcox’s address!’
‘Cecil!’ cried his remote cousin in unconcealed amazement, ‘you don’t even know so much as her address!’
‘No,’ said Cecil, ‘not so much as he
r address. And I want to write to her now.’
‘But, my dear, the creature will be here tomorrow afternoon. Surely you need not be so intemperate as all that?’
The young man sat as still as a draper’s model in his armchair. ‘I don’t know what you mean by “intemperate”,’ he said, ‘and I don’t much care. The point is, I want to write to her. And I want you to give me the chance of doing so when Grummumma is not here. What’s more, Eirene, if you breathe a word of what I am saying to a living soul – then, I assure you, you will regret it.’
Eirene had never before heard trumpets in her cousin’s voice and had never before noticed that he sometimes sat so motionless as to resemble not exactly granite, but at least Portland stone. Her hands clasped themselves in her lap. ‘I think it’s perfectly monstrous of you,’ she cried lamentably, ‘to talk to me like that. Why, you are threatening me, Cecil! And who am I, may I ask, to be a skulking go-between? A nice kind of a creature this friend of yours must be to reduce you to that. I simply flatly refuse. Besides, I don’t know her address.’
‘How did Grummumma find her out?’ said Cecil. ‘Did you help?’
‘My Heavens!’ shrilled Eirene. ‘And now you accuse me of being a spy! As if anyone like you isn’t conspicuous a mile off. Even a shop-girl might have known that. I expect she did.’
‘And do you suppose I mind having been seen?’ cried Cecil furiously. ‘But I’m not going to argue about that. You are merely misleading me. Please keep to the point. You swear you haven’t her address?’
‘I will swear nothing,’ said Eirene. ‘It isn’t right. I say I haven’t her address. And I simply don’t care where she is – or ever will be.’
‘Then I believe you,’ said Cecil out of a horrible vacancy and yet as if he were conferring a royal favour. ‘But please understand, if you repeat a single word of what I said just now to anyone – well – we shall both of us be sorry for it.’
Short Stories 1927-1956 Page 16
