She paused, watching his sullen, good-looking face. He was trying to produce a little whimsical smirk. She went on:
“How was it that I never saw the cad in you before, the rotten little man-about-town, the sponger? Was it that I wouldn’t let myself see?”
But he had his chance to be angry. He took it; he had been waiting for it.
“Well, I’m damned! I’ve kept you for——”
“Be silent. You’re horrible to me—somehow.”
“Many thanks. I wasn’t so horrible when you left this house of virtue.”
She propped herself against the table.
“O, go! We’ve both been grossly selfish, but perhaps you are more logical than I am. Go!”
Again she began to cough, and Carthew, crossing behind her, collected his hat and coat. His face had a thin, complacent malevolence.
“You women always go in off the deep end. I can stand a good deal, but after this——”
She panted.
“Go!”
Without looking at him she moved to the fire and sat down in Morrow’s chair. She bent forward. She heard the door close, and turned and stared at it. A spasm of coughing caught her, and she seemed to struggle with it, her hands gripping the arms of the chair.
“O, my God—I’m drowning!”
The spasm died away. She rose, crossed the room, hesitated, and then switched off the ceiling lights. She returned to the chair by the fire, but the room was not sufficiently dark for her mood. She put out the table lamp and sat cowering before the fire.
III
When Arnold Morrow opened the door and found the room in darkness, save for the flicker of the fire, he for an instant wondered whether those two ghosts out of the past had disappeared again into the night. But then he realized that there was someone sitting in his chair. He saw her dimly silhouetted, leaning forward with outstretched hands. She was alone.
He closed the door gently, but she did not move. There was something final and finished in her stillness, and in that moment of time he was conscious of sudden compassion. It was as though he saw her as a sick and broken thing huddled before the fire, or like a bird blown against the window of life and left stunned and panting. He had not meant to pity her, and an hour ago he might have been angered by the intrusion of pity.
He switched on the ceiling lights, and then turned them off again, for he had a feeling that the darkness was a cloak to her, and that she shrank from too much light.
“What, all alone?”
“Yes.”
The monosyllable was toneless, and he understood.
“I have fixed up everything. It is a comfortable place. I suppose Carthew has gone for your things?”
“You didn’t meet him?”
“No.”
He moved to the centre of the room and stood waiting. He saw her head and hands outlined against the fire.
“He’s not coming back.”
“What!”
“No, I sent him away. He wanted to go away, I’m no more use to him. I’m——”
“Do you mean to say he is that sort of swine?”
He saw her nod her head.
“I suppose so.”
He did not move. The silence was hers. She went on speaking.
“You see—I’m finished. I’m no more use to him. For him the adventure begins all over again. I’m sorry I came here, Arnold. I apologize. I’ll go now.”
She rose and stood with a hand to her head. She made a movement as though to pass him. She faltered.
He stood in her path and spoke gently.
“That’s all right, Kitty. Sit down again. You’re not fit——”
And suddenly she seemed to sink at his feet. She lay with her face hidden, one hand clasping his ankle.
“O, you can gloat, Arnold; gloat as much as you please. I’m finished. I don’t want to live. I’m not going to be—a problem to you. Yes, I’ll get up and go.”
He was profoundly moved. He bent down and lifted her until she was kneeling.
“Gloat! Am I that sort of beast? My dear, when a man has given years of his life to sick children—— Yes, that’s my job, you know.”
She hung with drooping head.
“O, don’t, don’t! I’m not a sick child. I’m the dregs, slime——”
He lifted her up, and carrying her to the chair, placed her in it, and sitting on the arm, comforted her.
“We’re all sick children, sometimes, Kitty. I’ve often thought that the mistake was more mine than yours. A dull dog, wasn’t I? And you wanted life, adventure.”
She hid her face against his coat.
“Let me go, Arnold. Oh, it hurts, it hurts.”
“What hurts, my dear?”
“This kindness.”
He laid a hand on her head.
“Does it hurt? I’m sorry. But sometimes I have to hurt a kid without wanting to. I have a taxi outside. We’ll go and collect your things, and then I’ll take you to the nursing home.”
She was silent for a moment.
“I have no money, Arnold; I’ve nothing. Won’t you let me just disappear? Wouldn’t it be—better?”
He put an arm round her and helped her to her feet.
“My job’s to heal people. They’ll be kind where I am taking you. You can call yourself Mrs. Carthew. No one there will know.”
She still resisted faintly.
“But afterwards? If I get well?”
“Let the afterwards take care of itself. My job is to try and get you well.”
IV
At No. 23, Belmont Street, Sister Smith was accustomed to all sorts of cases and all sorts of patients, but she was a large, cheerful and jocund person with a philosophy of her own. She came into a room smiling and went out of it smiling. She had infinite good temper and a large, firm hand. The most petulant of patients could not rouse her to anger.
Even her severities were playful. She would give some grown child a gentle smack.
“Now—you naughty little thing!”
In fact she treated her patients like children, and in the large bosom of her kindness they found consolation and humour and a wisdom that could be silent. Her rarest virtue was that she did not gossip either on landings or in bedrooms, and she had an eye that was as quick as a bird’s.
This Mrs. Carthew was an unusual patient. She had arrived at an unusual hour and with unusual luggage, and Sister Smith had stayed late in order to put her to bed and to unpack for her. Such luggage, a shabby old suit-case, and in it such shabby clothes.
“Wear pyjamas, do you?”
“Yes, Sister.”
“These pink things?”
She held them up, and Mrs. Carthew, with a wincing look, apologized for the pyjamas.
“I’m afraid they are rather—finished. I had to pack in a hurry.”
So it seemed, for things had been jumbled into the suit-case as though a man in a hurry had performed the act of packing.
“O, well, these will do.”
That Mrs. Carthew was something of a mystery was as obvious as the unexpectedness of her luggage. A woman on the rocks? O, perhaps. A woman with a past, but in London nothing could be said to have had a past. Women looked so alike, on the streets, in hat-shops, sitting in the park, or riding in a taxi or a sumptuous car. Even gentlewomen could be enigmatic.
And as a patient Mrs. Carthew was equally enigmatic. She had a cough, a slight temperature, and the appearance of having been starved, but Sister Smith would not have marked her up as a serious case. P.T.? Oh, possibly. If Dr. Morrow had asserted that he had sent Mrs. Carthew to No. 23 for observation, he might be allowed to be a man of sense. But since Sister Smith was interested in her cases, and expected to be taken into the physician’s confidence, she waited and continued to wait for Dr. Morrow’s diagnosis.
He did tell her that the bacteriological examination had proved negative, and Sister Smith looked pleased.
“Well, that’s splendid. Just a wet patch on the lung, I suppose. She loo
ks as though she wants feeding up.”
Morrow was never talkative.
“Yes, that’s it. I wanted to make sure. A month’s sun somewhere. What about her—moods?”
Sister Smith was turning things over in her mind, for Dr. Morrow had an unusual reputation. She knew that on occasions he had performed acts that a sophisticated world might have regarded as dubious, and that he would be reticent and laconic about these compassionate interventions.
“O, she’s very quiet, no trouble, quiet and sad.”
Morrow accepted the description.
“Probably. Feed her up, Sister. Don’t worry her with questions—but you won’t.”
Moreover, Mrs. Carthew was the most uncommunicative of patients and to Sister Smith’s cheerfulness she opposed an equal but far more sophisticated cheerfulness. Her brightness had a tragic quality. It was as though the surface of her smiled, while within some other consciousness sat gazing hopelessly at life. When she was allowed up Mrs. Carthew would sit for hours at her window, and yet not as though she was interested in watching the life of Belmont Street. She had the air of a woman who had suffered some profound shock, and was still dazed by it.
To Sister Smith’s encouragements she listened as though the words were mere empty sounds.
“Now, eat this, my dear.”
“Must I?”
“Of course. There is nothing very wrong with your chest, you know. You will be out in the thick of things in a month.”
Mrs. Carthew looked at her vaguely.
“Shall I?”
“What you want is a month at Cannes, or a voyage to the Cape.”
And Mrs. Carthew smiled a queer, wincing little smile.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
To Morrow, Sister Smith reported her impressions. She said that she had nursed such cases before, and that they were the most difficult cases to deal with. Some patients lacked the will to get well. You might say that the mainspring was broken and the wheels would not revolve. Not that Mrs. Carthew was either hysterical or neurasthenic. She was just a woman who had ceased to care, or who cared so profoundly and in secret that the mere mechanism was paralysed, inhibited.
“No one comes to see her, doctor.”
“No friends?”
“Not a soul.”
Morrow’s face betrayed nothing to Sister Smith’s blue eyes. He just stood and looked out of the landing window, and was silent for five seconds.
“I’ll have a talk to her about things, yes—alone. I suppose she has not talked to you?”
“She’s not the sort that does. She just sits and thinks. There must be something, of course.”
Morrow nodded.
“O, probably.”
Morrow found his wife sitting by the window. He closed the door, and then opened it to make sure that the passage was empty, though Sister Smith was not a woman who listened at doors. Mrs. Carthew had a book on her knees.
“I want to talk to you.”
Her eyes met his. They had become again the eyes of a woman who had recovered that essential something in herself. They had lost all hardness, and as he took a chair and sat astride it with his arms crossed on the back, he seemed to see in her the Kitty of those earlier days.
She lowered her glance. She said, “I’m supposed to be well, or nearly so. Which means—that it is time that I began to consider the future.”
He watched her, nor was there any hardness in his eyes.
“I want you to have two months abroad.”
She sat very still.
“But that is impossible.”
“You think so?”
“You know my position.”
“Quite. If I choose to give my wife two months’ sunlight——”
She glanced at him suddenly, and her lips quivered.
“No. Please—I can’t accept. You see, I’ve had a month here, Arnold, to feel and to think. It’s as though years had elapsed since to-day and yesterday. If I have to begin again——”
His eyes seemed to narrow.
“You contemplate beginning again?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Her hands were folded over the book.
“O, somehow. Work. I shall try to get a job. I don’t suppose it matters much what it is.”
“I disagree.”
“As to my working?”
“Not at all, but as to the job. But supposing we were to make a bargain. You accept two months in the south, and I agree to try and find you a job.”
For a moment her eyes were whimsical.
“But where is the—bargain? I am the receiver, and you——”
He stood up and went to the window.
“Look here, supposing I feel responsible? Supposing I feel that it was more my fault than yours? I, too, have been doing some feeling and thinking. Now—as to the job. Are you particular?”
“Have I any right to be particular?”
“Yes. You have as much right to refuse as to accept.”
She looked up at him.
“What is the job?”
He told her. He confessed that since their shipwreck he had given his life to sick children. It had seemed to him one of the few things that was worth while, and down in Surrey he had bought up an old farm-house and had it converted into a convalescent home. It was his hobby. The staff consisted of a matron and two nurses, and one of the nurses would be leaving in the spring. The post would be vacant.
Her face had flushed slightly.
“But I know nothing of nursing.”
“You’d soon learn. One of the present nurses was trained down there. She’s not certificated, but she’s—invaluable.”
She sat looking out of the window.
“Should I go as—Mrs. Carthew?”
“Yes.”
“And I should be just a nurse, someone for whom you had found——?”
“Exactly. Plenty of work, my dear, and work that matters.”
She sat very still for a moment.
“Yes—I understand. There’s not much of the prig left in me, Arnold. I’m just——”
“O, well, woman.”
“Perhaps. A woman with a—— No, that’s rather crude and old-fashioned. I think I’ll accept. If I have to begin again I would prefer——”
“Independence?”
“Of a kind.”
“No obligations on either side.”
Her head was lowered.
“O, there always are obligations, aren’t there, if they are only the dead flowers our grandmothers used to press in their books.”
V
Dr. Arnold Morrow had a cottage attached to his Home for Sick Children at Pit Hill in Surrey. In its earlier days the cottage had housed the farm’s cowman, and if Morrow had transformed the cottage he had left the garden as it was, a mélange of old fruit trees, roses and cottage flowers. The two ground-floor rooms had been thrown together into one long, pleasant room with its windows looking upon the garden. He spent most of his week-ends at Pit Hill, a visitor whom the staff of the home regarded as very much part of the humanities, a kind of beloved bachelor, a creature of pipes and of old clothes who was both autocrat and master. During the week a certain Dr. Standish came daily from Dorking and gave the children all the doctoring that they needed. Pit Hill was a busy man’s hobby, folly, or blessed relaxation. It just depended upon your point of view.
On a certain Saturday in June Mrs. Part entered the parlour of Dr. Morrow’s cottage, a florid and cheerful woman of eight and thirty, with a well-developed bust, yellow hair, a snub nose, and jocund blue eyes. She wore a nurse’s uniform of lavender and white, and carried in her hands a bunch of roses. Mrs. Part was one of those women who must carry on a conversation even if she has to address herself to a brown jug or a chest of drawers.
“Christ, if I haven’t forgotten the water! All right, my pretties, don’t get huffy. You’ll see his old ugly face in half an hour.”
For a year or more she had assumed it to be her pri
vilege to be responsible for the flowers in Dr. Morrow’s parlour. Old Ugly had a fondness for flowers, and if Mrs. Part had a fondness for Dr. Morrow, it was a nicely sublimated affection spiced with a sense of humour.
She had put the flowers down on the gate-legged table when some sound attracted her attention. She moved to one side so that she had a view of the gate and the path. Her blue eyes looked amused.
“Gosh, she’s caught the infection, too! This is going to be a regular flower-shop, what?”
In the nature of things and as a privileged person Mrs. Part should have been jealous, but that sort of jealousy had gone the way of all flesh. She grimaced. Almost she met the interloper with a jocund wink.
“Come in. The more the merrier.”
Kitty looked plumper and in better health. She was dressed in the same lavender and white, and she, too, carried her bunch of roses, but not with the assurance of Mrs. Part.
“O—I’m sorry; I didn’t know——”
“That’s all right, my dear. Two wise virgins, and one of ’em has forgotten the water.”
“Water?”
“Yes, just water, what in my gay days we used to meet in the morning, and not after. Took the water for granted, did you? That’s not like you as a nurse.”
Kitty placed her flowers on the table.
“I’ll go and get a jug.”
“No need, my dear. There’s a pump in the kitchen. Old Ugly has marked it, ‘Not for Drinking,’ but the flowers won’t mind.”
She disappeared with the vase, leaving Nurse Carthew standing by the table and touching the petals of the flowers with the tips of her fingers. For the moment she appeared unconscious of the passing of time or of the complaining of the pump handle worked by Mrs. Part’s vigorous arm, and Mrs. Part, returning, observed both her attitude and her rapt look.
“Flowers and kids! Couple of tosh-merchants. What price Piccadilly? Well, here we are.”
The abruptness of Mrs. Part’s entry and of her philosophy seemed to startle Nurse Carthew. Her eyes had a wide look.
“You mean—that a woman can’t help being sentimental.”
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