II

Mrs. Hutton was lying on the sofa in her boudoir, playing Patience. In

spite of the warmth of the July evening a wood fire was burning on the

hearth. A black Pomeranian, extenuated by the heat and the fatigues of

digestion, slept before the blaze.

"Phew! Isn't it rather hot in here?" Mr. Hutton asked as he entered the

room.

"You know I have to keep warm, dear." The voice seemed breaking on the

verge of tears. "I get so shivery."

"I hope you're better this evening."

"Not much, I'm afraid."

The conversation stagnated. Mr. Hutton stood leaning his back against

the mantelpiece. He looked down at the Pomeranian lying at his feet, and

with the toe of his right boot he rolled the little dog over and rubbed

its white-flecked chest and belly. The creature lay in an inert ecstasy.

Mrs. Hutton continued to play Patience. Arrived at an _impasse_, she

altered the position of one card, took back another, and went on

playing. Her Patiences always came out.

"Dr. Libbard thinks I ought to go to Llandrindod Wells this summer."

"Well--go, my dear--go, most certainly."

Mr. Hutton was thinking of the events of the afternoon: how they had

driven, Doris and he, up to the hanging wood, had left the car to wait

for them under the shade of the trees, and walked together out into the

windless sunshine of the chalk down.

"I'm to drink the waters for my liver, and he thinks I ought to have

massage and electric treatment, too."

Hat in hand, Doris had stalked four blue butterflies that were dancing

together round a scabious flower with a motion that was like the

flickering of blue fire. The blue fire burst and scattered into whirling

sparks; she had given chase, laughing and shouting like a child.

"I'm sure it will do you good, my dear."

"I was wondering if you'd come with me, dear."

"But you know I'm going to Scotland at the end of the month."

Mrs. Hutton looked up at him entreatingly. "It's the journey," she said.

"The thought of it is such a nightmare. I don't know if I can manage

it. And you know I can't sleep in hotels. And then there's the luggage

and all the worries. I can't go alone.

"But you won't be alone. You'll have your maid with you." He spoke

impatiently. The sick woman was usurping the place of the healthy one.

He was being dragged back from the memory of the sunlit down and the

quick, laughing girl, back to this unhealthy, overheated room and its

complaining occupant.

"I don't think I shall be able to go."

"But you must, my dear, if the doctor tells you to. And, besides, a

change will do you good."

"I don't think so."

"But Libbard thinks so, and he knows what he's talking about."

"No, I can't face it. I'm too weak. I can't go alone." Mrs. Hutton

pulled a handkerchief out of her black silk bag, and put it to her eyes.

"Nonsense, my dear, you must make the effort."

"I had rather be left in peace to die here." She was crying in earnest

now.

"O Lord! Now do be reasonable. Listen now, please." Mrs. Hutton only

sobbed more violently. "Oh, what is one to do?" He shrugged his

shoulders and walked out of the room.

Mr. Hutton was aware that he had not behaved with proper patience; but

he could not help it. Very early in his manhood he had discovered that

not only did he not feel sympathy for the poor, the weak, the diseased,

and deformed; he actually hated them. Once, as an undergraduate, he

spent three days at a mission in the East End. He had returned, filled

with a profound and ineradicable disgust. Instead of pitying, he loathed

the unfortunate. It was not, he knew, a very comely emotion; and he had

been ashamed of it at first. In the end he had decided that it was

temperamental, inevitable, and had felt no further qualms. Emily had

been healthy and beautiful when he married her. He had loved her then.

But now--was it his fault that she was like this?

Mr. Hutton dined alone. Food and drink left him more benevolent than he

had been before dinner. To make amends for his show of exasperation he

went up to his wife's room and offered to read to her. She was touched,

gratefully accepted the offer, and Mr. Hutton, who was particularly

proud of his accent, suggested a little light reading in French.

"French? I am so fond of French." Mrs. Hutton spoke of the language of

Racine as though it were a dish of green peas.

Mr. Hutton ran down to the library and returned with a yellow volume. He

began reading. The effort of pronouncing perfectly absorbed his whole

attention. But how good his accent was! The fact of its goodness seemed

to improve the quality of the novel he was reading.

At the end of fifteen pages an unmistakable sound aroused him. He looked

up; Mrs. Hutton had gone to sleep. He sat still for a little while,

looking with a dispassionate curiosity at the sleeping face. Once it had

been beautiful; once, long ago, the sight of it, the recollection of it,

had moved him with an emotion profounder, perhaps, than any he had felt

before or since. Now it was lined and cadaverous. The skin was stretched

tightly over the cheekbones, across the bridge of the sharp, bird-like

nose. The closed eyes were set in profound bone-rimmed sockets. The

lamplight striking on the face from the side emphasised with light and

shade its cavities and projections. It was the face of a dead Christ by

Morales.

_Le squelette était invisible_

_Au temps heureux de l'art païen._

He shivered a little, and tiptoed out of the room.

On the following day Mrs. Hutton came down to luncheon. She had had some

unpleasant palpitations during the night, but she was feeling better

now. Besides, she wanted to do honour to her guest. Miss Spence listened

to her complaints about Llandrindod Wells, and was loud in sympathy,

lavish with advice. Whatever she said was always said with intensity.

She leaned forward, aimed, so to speak, like a gun, and fired her words.

Bang! the charge in her soul was ignited, the words whizzed forth at the

narrow barrel of her mouth. She was a machine-gun riddling her hostess

with sympathy. Mr. Hutton had undergone similar bombardments, mostly of

a literary or philosophic character--bombardments of Maeterlinck, of

Mrs. Besant, of Bergson, of William James. To-day the missiles were

medical. She talked about insomnia, she expatiated on the virtues of

harmless drugs and beneficent specialists. Under the bombardment Mrs.

Hutton opened out, like a flower in the sun.

Mr. Hutton looked on in silence. The spectacle of Janet Spence evoked in

him an unfailing curiosity. He was not romantic enough to imagine that

every face masked an interior physiognomy of beauty or strangeness,

that every woman's small talk was like a vapour hanging over mysterious

gulfs. His wife, for example, and Doris; they were nothing more than

what they seemed to be. But with Janet Spence it was somehow different.

Here one could be sure that there was some kind of a queer face behind

the Gioconda smile and the Roman eyebrows. The only question was: What

exactly was there? Mr. Hutton could never quite make out.

"But perhaps you won't have to go to Llandrindod after all," Miss Spence

was saying. "If you get well quickly Dr. Libbard will let you off."

"I only hope so. Indeed, I do really feel rather better to-day."

Mr. Hutton felt ashamed. How much was it his own lack of sympathy that

prevented her from feeling well every day? But he comforted himself by

reflecting that it was only a case of feeling, not of being better.

Sympathy does not mend a diseased liver or a weak heart.

"My dear, I wouldn't eat those red currants if I were you," he said,

suddenly solicitous. "You know that Libbard has banned everything with

skins and pips."

"But I am so fond of them," Mrs. Hutton protested, "and I feel so well

to-day."

"Don't be a tyrant," said Miss Spence, looking first at him and then at

his wife. "Let the poor invalid have what she fancies; it will do her

good." She laid her hand on Mrs. Hutton's arm and patted it

affectionately two or three times.

"Thank you, my dear." Mrs. Hutton helped herself to the stewed currants.

"Well, don't blame me if they make you ill again."

"Do I ever blame you, dear?"

"You have nothing to blame me for," Mr. Hutton answered playfully. "I am

the perfect husband."

They sat in the garden after luncheon. From the island of shade under

the old cypress tree they looked out across a flat expanse of lawn, in

which the parterres of flowers shone with a metallic brilliance.

Mr. Hutton took a deep breath of the warm and fragrant air. "It's good

to be alive," he said.

"Just to be alive," his wife echoed, stretching one pale, knot-jointed

hand into the sunlight.

A maid brought the coffee; the silver pots and the little blue cups were

set on a folding table near the group of chairs.

"Oh, my medicine!" exclaimed Mrs. Hutton. "Run in and fetch it, Clara,

will you? The white bottle on the sideboard."

"I'll go," said Mr. Hutton. "I've got to go and fetch a cigar in any

case."

He ran in towards the house. On the threshold he turned round for an

instant. The maid was walking back across the lawn. His wife was sitting

up in her deck-chair, engaged in opening her white parasol. Miss Spence

was bending over the table, pouring out the coffee. He passed into the

cool obscurity of the house.

"Do you like sugar in your coffee?" Miss Spence inquired.

"Yes, please. Give me rather a lot. I'll drink it after my medicine to

take the taste away."

Mrs. Hutton leaned back in her chair, lowering the sunshade over her

eyes, so as to shut out from her vision the burning sky.

Behind her, Miss Spence was making a delicate clinking among the

coffee-cups.

"I've given you three large spoonfuls. That ought to take the taste

away. And here comes the medicine."

Mr. Hutton had reappeared, carrying a wineglass, half full of a pale

liquid.

"It smells delicious," he said, as he handed it to his wife.

"That's only the flavouring." She drank it off at a gulp, shuddered, and

made a grimace. "Ugh, it's so nasty. Give me my coffee."

Miss Spence gave her the cup; she sipped at it. "You've made it like

syrup. But it's very nice, after that atrocious medicine."

At half-past three Mrs. Hutton complained that she did not feel as well

as she had done, and went indoors to lie down. Her husband would have

said something about the red currants, but checked himself; the triumph

of an "I told you so" was too cheaply won. Instead, he was sympathetic,

and gave her his arm to the house.

"A rest will do you good," he said. "By the way, I shan't be back till

after dinner."

"But why? Where are you going?"

"I promised to go to Johnson's this evening. We have to discuss the war

memorial, you know."

"Oh, I wish you weren't going." Mrs. Hutton was almost in tears. "Can't

you stay? I don't like being alone in the house."

"But, my dear, I promised weeks ago." It was a bother having to lie like

this. "And now I must get back and look after Miss Spence."

He kissed her on the forehead and went out again into the garden. Miss

Spence received him aimed and intense.

"Your wife is dreadfully ill," she fired off at him.

"I thought she cheered up so much when you came."

"That was purely nervous, purely nervous. I was watching her closely.

With a heart in that condition and her digestion wrecked--yes,

wrecked--anything might happen."

"Libbard doesn't take so gloomy a view of poor Emily's health." Mr.

Hutton held open the gate that led from the garden into the drive; Miss

Spence's car was standing by the front door.

"Libbard is only a country doctor. You ought to see a specialist."

He could not refrain from laughing. "You have a macabre passion for

specialists."

Miss Spence held up her hand in protest. "I am serious. I think poor

Emily is in a very bad state. Anything might happen at any moment."

He handed her into the car and shut the door. The chauffeur started the

engine and climbed into his place, ready to drive off.

"Shall I tell him to start?" He had no desire to continue the

conversation.

Miss Spence leaned forward and shot a Gioconda in his direction.

"Remember, I expect you to come and see me again soon."

Mechanically he grinned, made a polite noise, and, as the car moved

forward, waved his hand. He was happy to be alone.

A few minutes afterwards Mr. Hutton himself drove away. Doris was

waiting at the cross-roads. They dined together twenty miles from home,

at a roadside hotel. It was one of those bad, expensive meals which are

only cooked in country hotels frequented by motorists. It revolted Mr.

Hutton, but Doris enjoyed it. She always enjoyed things. Mr. Hutton

ordered a not very good brand of champagne. He was wishing he had spent

the evening in his library.

When they started homewards Doris was a little tipsy and extremely

affectionate. It was very dark inside the car, but looking forward, past

the motionless form of M'Nab, they could see a bright and narrow

universe of forms and colours scooped out of the night by the electric

head-lamps.

It was after eleven when Mr. Hutton reached home. Dr. Libbard met him in

the hall. He was a small man with delicate hands and well-formed

features that were almost feminine. His brown eyes were large and

melancholy. He used to waste a great deal of time sitting at the

bedside of his patients, looking sadness through those eyes and talking

in a sad, low voice about nothing in particular. His person exhaled a

pleasing odour, decidedly antiseptic but at the same time suave and

discreetly delicious.

"Libbard?" said Mr. Hutton in surprise. "You here? Is my wife ill?"

"We tried to fetch you earlier," the soft, melancholy voice replied. "It

was thought you were at Mr. Johnson's, but they had no news of you

there."

"No, I was detained. I had a breakdown," Mr. Hutton answered irritably.

It was tiresome to be caught out in a lie.

"Your wife wanted to see you urgently."

"Well, I can go now." Mr. Hutton moved towards the stairs.