Bell Timson

by Marguerite Steen

  I was sorry for him; so sorry that on the evening I ran into him on Mount Street, and he asked me to come and have a bit of food at Kettner’s with him — although I’d told the girls I would be home early, and take them to the pictures — I rang up and said I had been detained, and we would have to make it another evening.

  As it happened, it was one of Kettner’s “smart” evenings, and when we went in, and the duke was recognized, there was first a buzz and then a silence you could have heard a pin drop in. I saw him turn crimson up to the roots of his hair, and his back stiffen, and he turned round sharply and walked past me, straight back through the door. He spoke to one of the people in the hall, and then he beckoned to me.

  “I hope you won’t mind, Bell, were having a private room. I’m damned if I’ll provide a tuppenny gaff for those gaping fools in there!”

  I sympathized with him, although I knew it was partly his own fault. According to the tales, he had gone blustering about, swearing up to the last minute that there wasn’t a word of truth in the stories about his son’s affairs, that he would knock anybody down who said a word against his daughter-in-law — poor old dear, he had asked for it. He had built up what would have been a commonplace enough divorce into a regular three-volume family saga, and I suppose people were not to be blamed for getting all the fun they could out of it.

  When we were alone I said something about being sorry about his trouble.

  “It does seem a tragedy — after so happy a time,” I added, for the marriage had only taken place between three and four years ago.

  “It’s a damn sight more of a tragedy than you know, Bell,” he told me. He looked shockingly older, and it struck me it was the first time I had seen the duke really as himself. At Flora’s he was always buffooning and joking like the rest of them, and on the few occasions when we had been alone he was too busy trying to undermine my virtue (as he called it) for me to be able to guess what he was like in ordinary intercourse with other people. But tonight he was just a tired, middle-aged man, discouraged, disappointed, and, above all, deeply disgusted with the publicity which, for the last week or two, had surrounded him and his family. Ordinarily he was a bit jaunty and horsy-looking — nothing aristocratic about him; as a matter of fact I had often laughed to think what he would look like in his robes and coronet. But tonight, for some odd reason, they would have fitted him; short though he was, and with his little clipped mustache and all, he would have worn them with a sort of sorrowful dignity that I could not help feeling, although I had never seen him dressed up for the opening of Parliament or for any great occasion.

  “It’s more of a tragedy than you know,” he repeated, not taking the least interest in the menu the waiter had placed beside him. “What’s more, it’s killing the girl, and it’ll ruin Cash.” I knew he meant his son, Viscount Cassiobury. “Isn’t it awful? Bell, isn’t it god-damned awful?” He spoke like a puzzled child, and I could fairly have hugged him; sometimes there seems to be nothing for it but to take somebody in your arms.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it?” I thought it might make him feel better to talk.

  “Why? You read your papers, don’t you?” He glared at me.

  “Oh, papers! Who takes any notice of papers?” I shrugged my shoulders, and he made a noise that was meant for a laugh.

  “About ten million people, I should say! Every one of those sods down there.” He pointed through the floor. “It’s what they feed on, isn’t it? The breakup of two decent young people’s marriage, and the stink of a name like ours! Bell,” he said after a while, “do you know — they adore each other?”

  “That’s what one always heard.”

  “Oh! So they make a song of that, do they — as well as the other?”

  We were interrupted by the waiter, and the duke gave the order and we were silent for quite a while.

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” he began after the man had gone again. “You’re a sensible woman; you can hold your tongue. I’ve got to talk to somebody or I’ll go dotty ... It was Cash’s fault of course; he knows it. He would cut off his right hand for Perdita — but there you are; these things happen. You know he was ordered out East, and there was a Mrs. — what do names matter? I suppose Cash is an attractive fellow; the women are always after him, but he’s never been interested since he married Per. He may have felt a bit lonely, or this Mrs. Thing was clever. He swears it didn’t last a week. Anyhow, some busybody comes home and tells Per.

  “Of course you don’t know Per. She’s a lovely girl, a darling; and she seems to have fallen in love with Cash practically in her cradle. Constancy’s supposed to be out of fashion, but I’d take my oath she’ll love him until she dies. On my soul I’ve never seen such a pair. All Per did and all Cash did was perfect — according to each other; they never had a wry word or a difference of opinion from the day they got married. We used to make a joke of it — God forgive us. The only thing that ever troubled them was they hadn’t managed to have a child. Four years seems a long time, when you’re in love like that and impatient. They were both perfectly healthy; it seemed funny.

  ‘Then Per gets this news.”

  He stopped; he had forgotten about the food on his plate, and his face was sagging, like an old man’s. It was as if he was asking me to comfort him and yet was ashamed.

  “Being a woman, perhaps you’ll understand this better than we do. Per’s an odd girl in some ways: very reserved, very shy. Never makes confidantes. Never tells you if she’s hurt or pleased about anything. You have to guess. Cash seemed to be pretty good at the guessing. They understood each other; it was part of their loving. She must have been suffering like hell. But, being Per, she never showed it. Of course.”

  “I suppose that’s where Captain Locke came along,” I ventured.

  “Well, he didn’t come along.’” The duke was frowning. “They had known each other from childhood — like Per and Cash. It was an open secret he had asked her to marry him and that she turned him down for our boy. The three of them had gone on being friends, and young Locke was in and out of the house, whenever Cash was at home, like one of the family. He used to look Per up fairly often after Cash went abroad, and the pair of them used to go out dancing. I expect people gossiped, but all her friends knew Per.

  “Now I’ll tell you an extraordinary thing. Everybody is loading the blame on Locke, and that’s how it should be. But it was Per’s

  This certainly was a departure from the common story.

  “You’re a woman,” he said miserably. “Probably you know how a woman’s heart goes when it breaks. Per’s heart was broken, so she asks Locke to pop into bed with her. Go on! Explain that — explain that!” he growled at me, and I shook my head, for of course I hadn’t any explanation: It was not the way I would have acted myself; but what had that to do with it? You can’t interpret a person’s feelings by the feelings of somebody else.

  “Well, when she comes to her senses — the damage is done. Did you ever hear anything like it? She and Cash, who adore each other, can’t produce a child for four years; a fellow who doesn’t mean as much to her as the tip of my little finger puts her in the family way at one go. It’s preposterous!” fumed the duke. ‘It’s unfair to everybody! It’s the damnedest, cruellest trick that was ever played on a pair of people who loved each other! They both did wrong, but, my God, how many of us are doing wrong every day and getting away with it? While poor Cash and poor little Per are stuck up for every guttersnipe to throw his mud against. And even that one might put up with,” he muttered, “though we’ve not had much of it in the family, if there was the smallest chance of their getting back their happiness —”

  “But surely something could have been done about it? Why, things like that are happening every day, and it never comes out,” I could not help saying.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “It was left too long, and how does one know it wouldn’t have been bungled? Per’s a delicate girl; she was nearly out of h
er mind in any case, and — the damnable way they do things over here — the shock might have finished it. Well, there you are; that’s the truth of the story — and I don’t mind saying it’s been a relief to talk it out with you. My wife won’t hear it mentioned, and Cash and I are sick of each other’s faces. He’s going abroad again, now the divorce is over —”

  “Poor things; it’s one of the saddest stories I’ve heard. What’s going to happen to Lady Cassiobury?” I asked presently.

  “Oh, Peril die.” He said it as if it was to be taken for granted. “You can see it written all over her. A nature like hers never gets over that sort of thing.”

  “But surely — she’s got the baby to live for!”

  “She hasn’t got Cash to live for. That’s all that matters to Per.”

  “It seems a pity ... Had there got to be the divorce?”

  “We thought it over from all sides. You see — Per had made it impossible, really. She had lost her head, and the whole town was roaring with it. You could hardly expect Cash to play the mari complaisant — as he might have done if there had been the least hope of hushing the matter up. He’ll have to marry again, of course, and get an heir; it’s damned hard luck on him, for he’ll never get over Per. I tell you, there are times I could blast the laws of this country to hell ...”

  All my friends seemed to have been getting themselves into trouble while I was out of England. There was Remmy, if you please, getting himself into a car smash that put him into bed for three weeks; I would have gone to see him immediately on my return, but I gathered from Alice that female visitors were not exactly made welcome by Mrs. Remington! I had already come to the conclusion that she was a fool of a woman, but perhaps she knew her Remmy. It had struck me before now that he had a bit of a wandering eye, but as I had nothing to complain of it was nothing to do with me. One thing I was sure of: that he had too much good sense to risk his position for the sake of the greatest Venus on earth. Alice, of course, as matron of his nursing home, was bound to see him daily, but she said that not even she got a chance of tête-à-tête with Mrs. Remington around. I have often wondered if women of this kind know what fools they make their husbands look. Anyhow, it was a plain case of the hand that held the purse strings ruling the roost, so although he sent me a message or two and hoped I had had a good holiday I had been back more than a fortnight before I set eyes on Remmy.

  We were alone in Alice’s room at the nursing home. I was treating five special cases of Remmy’s, and it was grueling work. I was not fit for anything by the end of the afternoon. Remmy had just done his round and was having a glass of sherry, and we had just had a hearty laugh over the bandage he still wore round his head, which made him look like one of the pirates from Peter Pan.

  “Well, what did you make of Les Óleandres?”

  I told him they were a pretty hot lot and I had enjoyed it. I showed him a very handsome handbag I had bought in St.-Jean-de-Luz — the one I happened to be carrying on the evening I dined with Dr. Lavigne. I never could bear those finicking bits of bags made out of velvet or fancy needlework women carry in the evenings; and this one, although it was made of suede leather, was quite smart enough to go with an evening dress. I had it with me because I was going on to a cocktail party from the nursing home, so I aired it to Remmy, and he took it and of course examined it all over, inside and out — even having the impudence to go through the pockets. One of the pleasant things about Remmy was the interest he took in women’s gadgets. And in one of the pockets, of course, he had to find Dr. Lavigne’s card.

  The effect of that card on Remmy was very much like the effect of my hands on Dr. Lavigne only more so. He looked for a moment as if I had shot him out of his skin.

  “Where on earth did you get that?”

  “He gave it to me. We met at St.-Jean.”

  “You ... would.” He stood staring, first at the card and then at me, chewing the corner of his lip as if he wanted to say something and did not quite know how to begin. “Well?” he barked at me.

  “Well what? I liked him very much. He took me out to dinner one night.”

  “Oh, did he? And what did you talk about?”

  I took a quick look at Remmy. This couldn’t by any chance be jealousy? The very idea was absurd. But it was plain his interest was sharper than I had expected and that something was cooking behind his short, dry manner.

  “Well, let me see. We talked about my work, mainly. He seemed to think a lot of hand massage; said its possibilities had not been fully exploited. He got me to describe some of my cases, and we discussed the results. From the way he talked, it was easy to see he knew a lot about it. I told him- — “ I remembered something and began to laugh.

  “Joke?” said Remmy, I thought rather sourly.

  “My hands! Yes, it takes a Frenchman to notice my hands.” For once I preened myself. “I suppose you’ve never even noticed my hands, Remmy?” He positively sneered while I spread them out and looked at them. “They’re big, but they’re quite good-looking hands in their way.” I had taken the greatest care of them since Alice made me wear india-rubber gloves in the house, and, without vanity, the nails were beautiful.

  “When you’ve finished admiring yourself, perhaps we might get on to something interesting!”

  But his slighting manner had just roused the devil in me.

  “That’s where you’re wrong and Dr. Lavigne was right. Nothing’s so interesting to a woman as talking about herself,” I threw at him.

  As a matter of fact Dr. Lavigne’s admiration had not, on the night of the dinner, stopped at my hands. I had never had so many compliments paid me in my life — and what fascinated me as much as the compliments was his way of paying them: almost coldly, almost as though he were making a diagnosis — not in the least as if I was a woman of flesh and blood sitting there, feeling at my best in a new frock and enjoying my dinner! I was told I was admirably healthy — which I knew; that I gave off a feeling of wholesomeness — which I was pleased to hear. That my mental balance was admirable and that I was evidently a woman of great strength of character, power, and discretion! Not very flowery compliments, perhaps, but they were good enough to put me in conceit with myself and to make me feel I was satisfying my companion.

  By the time I had run a few of these off to Remmy he was thoroughly disgusted and looking for his case. I relented.

  “It’s all right; he wasn’t making a pass at me.” Though why should Remmy mind if he were, considering that he, Remmy, with all his opportunities, had never done anything but pull my leg and be rude to me in a joking fashion? “Have you ever tried tactile experiments?” I asked innocently and pretended not to notice that he had looked round quickly and was paying attention to every word I said. “You shut your eyes and describe things by feeling them. Bits of paper: rough or smooth? How smooth? Like satin or like ivory? How smooth is ivory? And which is the colder, ivory or celluloid? A handkerchief: is it linen or cambric? Silly things like that. A sort of game. We played it after dinner, over coffee.”

  “What else?”

  “Oh, nothing. Except” — I paused to remember — “he said I had a more acute sense of touch than any he had come across, except his own. He said he’d have liked to have done some other tests with me —”

  “H’m,” said Remmy skeptically.

  “ — and he said if I would ever like to — now how did he put it? — extend the scope of my experience,’ he would be glad to help me,” I concluded.

  “What!” Remmy’s roar made me jump.

  “Well, what about it? I don’t live in Orleans.”

  “You great, ignorant — jackass of a woman!”

  When I had got my wind back — for a moment I had honestly thought he was going to knock me down! — I answered back with spirit.

  “‘Good Lord, Remmy, I don’t even know if the man was serious! I don’t suppose he was, for a minute. Although he was sober enough,” I added as an afterthought. “We had a bottle of wine and some brandy, b
ut he never touched anything but Vichy water from beginning to end of dinner. He struck me as a bad life; I wouldn’t give him much more than another couple of years.”

  “Bell Timson, you’re the biggest, blazing fool I ever met among your sex.” I remained calm and waited for him to cool down. “The very idea of a woman in your profession not knowing the name of — did you mention this to Logan?” he turned on me to ask.

  “Yes — now you come to mention it, I did.” I also remembered, now, that Alice had given me rather a funny look and changed the subject.

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothing.” He gave a short laugh. “Well, Remmy, I admit it’s a pity I’m not more up in things, as you say; but who is this Dr. Lavigne?”

  He took two or three turns up and down the big room, then he came and gripped me by the shoulders; a couple of nice bruises I found when I undressed that night.

  “Now listen to me. You are going to sit down tonight and write to Lavigne that you are coming to see him. Tell him, if you like, that I’m sending you ... No.” He pulled himself up. “Don’t put that in a letter. You understand? Don’t put it in a letter.”

  “It looks as if you’re the fool, not me.” I turned on him roundly. “Have you lost your wits, Remmy? I’ve just taken nearly a month’s holiday. I can’t afford to play ducks and drakes with a connection like mine, and I must say I’m astonished at you for suggesting it.”