Gaymer would not write; there had been some phrase about “not
communicating”... Gaymer may have interpreted this to mean personal
communication; or he might be acting on the principle that wise men
give promises and fools accept them.
Ivy’s next letter narrowed the field of choice.
“_J. G. has been here,” she began. “He called with some flowers, and
nurse let him in. Several other people had been, so she never asked me.
I said at once, ‘I can’t see you;’ and I told him that I thought he’d
promised you faithfully not to come here. He said he only meant to come
to the door with the flowers, but that he couldn’t help coming in. He
wasn’t going to argue, he said, but he was responsible for everything
and he must come and ask me to forgive him. I told him I’d forgive him,
if that gave him any pleasure, but he must understand that everything
was over. On the whole, I was rather glad to have it out with him. He
must see now, because at the end he said—horribly bitterly—, ‘Your love
is rather short-lived, Ivy.’ I refused to be drawn. If he likes to
think that, he may, I don’t feel it’s worth having a row with him,
Eric, about coming, because we have cleared the air, however painful it
may have been at the time. And it isn’t pleasant, you know, to have him
thinking that I’m unfaithful to him. I did love him—desperately; I’m
even willing to believe now that he always meant to behave honourably;
but, as I told him, it doesn’t really matter whether there’s any
foundation for a misunderstanding, what matters is the effect it has on
one’s mind. It was no use pretending I hadn’t utterly changed towards
him. He couldn’t see how I could love him once and then stop loving
him, when the reason why I’d ceased to love him had been explained
away. He’s tired me out, dear Eric, and I don’t want to think about
him._”
Her letter reached Lashmar by the evening post, and Eric spent a
sleepless night after reading it. At one moment he decided to return by
the first train to London and mount guard over Ivy’s door; at another
he shuffled and discarded cryptic phrases for a warning telegram to
Gaisford... It was long after daybreak when he fell asleep without
reaching a decision; and, when his breakfast was brought in, he was too
tired to eat it or to read his letters or to begin getting up.
Only when Lady Lane asked leave to send for the doctor did he rouse to
interest.
“Your man here is such a hopeless idiot,” he exclaimed impatiently. “I
think I shall run up and see Gaisford. All I want is a tonic, but he
_does_ know about me. I can’t stand answering a string of questions
from a stranger.”
Lady Lane forbore to oppose him in his new mood of nervous
irritability; she contented herself with making him promise to come
down the following day and asking whether he would care for her to
accompany him. Her obvious anxiety jarred on nerves that were already
raw.
“I’m _really_ all right, mother,” he answered querulously.
“My dear boy, you’re _not_! I _have_ had some experience of you,
remember. You’re shockingly ill. You know I try not to worry you, when
you’re not feeling well, but you frighten me, Eric, when you look like
that. Isn’t there something you haven’t told me? _Can’t_ you tell
me?... People are commenting on it. After church on Sunday the vicar
wanted to know... So, you see, it isn’t just fancy. I have a pretty
handful in your father, as it is,—trying to make him take care of
himself. I can’t have _you_ getting ill... _Isn’t_ there anything,
Eric?”
His mother had come nearer to breaking down than he had ever seen; a
vague stirring of masculine protectiveness steadied Eric.
“I’m feeling used up,” he answered wearily. “It may be this hot
spring... I think it’s the war... and the strain of the last few weeks,
the strain of the last two or three years... It takes something to
drive me into a doctor’s arms, but I’ll get myself thoroughly
overhauled by Gaisford and, what’s more, I’ll tell you what he says and
I’ll carry out his orders to the letter. There’s no need for _you_ to
worry, mother.”
He kissed her with a bluff attempt at reassurance and scrambled out of
bed. It was humiliating that he had to steady himself by gripping the
top of his dressing-table, and, when he began to pour out his
shaving-water, as much slopped on to the wash-hand-stand as went into
his glass. He could only hope that, as she said nothing, his mother had
seen nothing.
It was late afternoon when he reached Waterloo, and, after dining at
his club, he drove to Dr. Gaisford’s house in Wimpole Street. The
butler, who was a friend of many years’ standing, regretted that his
master was not yet returned and invited Eric to come in and wait.
“I suppose you’ve no idea where he is or how long he’ll be?,” asked
Eric.
The butler retired to the consulting-room and returned with an
engagement-pad.
“He dined at home at half after seven, sir,” he announced. “Then he was
going to Sir Marcus Fordyce in Hay Hill, then to Mrs. Grimthorpe in
Upper Brook Street, then to Colonel Somers in Half-Moon Street—and then
to you, sir; to your young lady, I should say. He said he’d be back not
later than twelve.”
“And it’s half-past nine now. I’ll go home and wait for him. If I miss
him, will you tell him, when he comes in, that I called? And will you
ring me up and let me know when I can see him to-morrow? Say I’ve come
up from the country on purpose.”
He reached Ryder Street in time to find the hall lit up and a bowler
hat and stick on the table. The whole flat was sweet and heavy with the
warm scent of flowers. They symbolized Ivy, and he could fancy that he
was already married and returning to their home. It was a new,
electrifying emotion, the sublime epitome of all the moments when he
had waited of a morning to hear her ring. Latterly she had been too
much the patient; until that moment the flat had not drawn its life
from her.
A murmur of voices reached him from the passage leading to her bedroom;
he wrote “Don’t go till you’ve seen me” on the back of an envelope and
dropped it into the hat; then he picked up the evening paper and went
into the library.
At the end of one cigarette he threw away the paper and looked sleepily
at the clock, thanking Heaven that he was not a doctor. At this rate
Gaisford would not be home by midnight; and he must have had a heavy
day to be calling on patients after dinner... The sleepiness dropped
from Eric’s brain as he remembered an early bulletin from the nurse,
telling him that for the future Dr. Gaisford saw no need to come more
than once a day. The most overworked doctor would not be paying his
first visit at a quarter-past ten at night; this was the second visit,
and Ivy had undergone a relapse; or the third, the fourth... If Ivy
were dying, they would have sent for him... Telegrams took long.... But
Lashmar Mill-House was on the telephone... Trunk-calls took long,
too... But he had not left home till after five... Perhaps they had
forgotten, perhaps they had been too busy... But one could add
“perhaps” to “perhaps” like paper bows to the tail of a kite... This
was the discordant jangle of snapping nerves....
He sat long enough to recover self-possession, then strolled
unconcernedly into the hall. The hat and stick were still there, the
note in the hat. He bent down to read his own words and wondered why
Gaisford, of all men, had abandoned his traditional silk hat for a
bowler... A sporting bowler, too with flat brim. He was trying to
remember whether there were any races near London to explain the
unseemly hat and the doctor’s no less unseemly hour for calling, when
he noticed violet-ink initials over the maker’s name.
The doctor was Richard or Robert Gaisford, Eric could not remember
which; certainly not “J.” As he began to be certain that “J. G.” could
only stand for John Gaymer, Eric told himself in an audible whisper
that he had to be very calm; if there were anything in the old,
hysterical premonition of a stand-up fight with Gaymer, it would take
place in less than five minutes.
He inspected the hat carefully, as though it were filled with clues and
secrets, then replaced it on the table, withdrew his note and walked
quietly down the passage to Ivy’s room. The door was ajar, and he could
hear perhaps half Gaymer’s words, when he dropped his voice, and
everything, when he raised it.
“If you admit it, there’s nothing more to be said. D’you like the
prospect of being married for fifty years to one man when you’re in
love with another? Oh, it’s too late now, you’ve admitted it. _I_ never
had any doubt. You’ve got to get out of it; and the sooner the
better... It’s no good denying it, Ivy; we’ve gone through all that.
Look me in the eyes... Ivy, do as I tell you—_now_. You _have_ to do as
I tell you. You’ve never loved him as you loved me. Give me your hand.
You don’t shiver when you touch _him_, you don’t belong to _him_....
Kiss me, Ivy. I said, ‘Kiss me, Ivy’.” There was a laugh of
contemptuous affection. “There!... So valiant we were! So
independent—at a distance! Kiss me again—on my lips... Did you think
I’d let you go so easily? Didn’t you know that, if I stood at the back
of the church when you were being married and just said ‘Ivy, come
here’...? _You_ knew that, and _I_ knew that.”
Eric found himself sitting on a chair half-way down the passage. Ivy
was being bewitched; obviously he must not allow her to be bullied like
this... Somebody ought to go in and stop it....
“I’ve promised Eric,” she was saying quietly.
“And d’you think I care about that? He can’t hold you to your promise,
if you don’t want to marry him. You love _me_, Ivy. Say it again!”
There was no answer.
“Say it again!,” repeated Gaymer.
“I....”
Eric could not hear the next whispered words, but they seemed to
satisfy Gaymer.
“Say ‘I love you more than my life’,” went on the relentless voice.
“I love you more than my life.”
“Say—‘I will marry you and no one else—’”
There was a pause and a sob.
“Oh, Johnnie, don’t make me! It isn’t fair on him!”
“You can’t be fair to us both!,” Gaymer cried.
“He’s been so wonderfully good to me. I should have killed myself, if
it hadn’t been for him. I _told_ him I’d marry him, I said he was the
only person in the world I cared for. He’s done everything for me! We
should have been married by now, but he wanted to give me time to be
quite sure—”
She was interrupted by a harsh, triumphant laugh.
“Well for him he did! And you _are_ quite sure, Ivy! I’m not going
through all this again. ‘I will marry you and no one else.’ Say it.”
“I will marry you and no one else... Johnnie, it’ll break his heart! I
_can’t_ say it!”
“But you have. Do you take it back?”
There was a long silence. Then Eric heard a low but distinct “No.”
The passage had not been noticeably hot before, but the still air
glared like the burning blast from an open furnace-door. Eric found his
face streaming with sweat; and the wooden chair-back was slippery in
his grasp. There seemed to be a murmur of confused voices everywhere—in
the passage on either side of him, in the hall—preeminently in the
hall, where one murmur dominated the other murmurs, and one voice
dominated all.
It was Gaisford’s voice, authoritative and ill-tempered, reprimanding
some one.
“Yes, my girl, but I said my patient was not to be left. You go off
duty when the other nurse comes on—and not a moment before. You’ve left
the patient entirely unattended? ‘Seemed all right’ be hanged! Your
duty is to do precisely what I tell you. When did you go out? Half an
hour! I don’t believe it! I don’t mind telling you that you haven’t
heard the last of this.”
Eric came into the hall, as the nurse hurried away with a scarlet face
and the doctor pulled off his gloves and threw them on to the table,
still muttering angrily to himself.
“Hullo!,” he exclaimed. “I thought I’d sent you away.”
“I came up this evening to consult you,” Eric answered. His voice
seemed small and remote, but the doctor found nothing amiss with it. “I
was feeling rather seedy and I thought I’d ask you to overhaul me. If
you’re not very busy, we might get it over to-night, when you’ve
finished with Ivy. I—I’ve only just come in,” he added hastily. “I went
to your place first. I rather fancy that in the nurse’s absence some
one must have let Gaymer in. I think he’s with Ivy now, though I
haven’t been in to see yet.”
It was all admirably calm. The doctor did not even look at him; but his
frown deepened, and he strode down the passage with threatening
footsteps. Eric was not conscious of having followed; but he found
himself on the threshold, as the door was thrown open. Ivy and Gaymer
had been given time to prepare themselves; she was lying back with half
her face hidden in a bouquet of lilies of the valley, while he stood
with his hands on the back of a chair, as though he were just leaving.
Neither shewed surprise or discomfiture at the doctor’s volcanic entry,
but Ivy could not repress a cry at sight of Eric.
“Now, young man, you can take yourself off!,” Gaisford snapped at
Gaymer, jerking his thumb towards the door.
There was a confusion of four voices speaking at once.
“I just brought some flowers.”
“Eric!”
“A pretty time to call—exciting my patient, when she ought to be
asleep!”
“H-how are you, Ivy? I came up for one night—only decided at
tea-time....”
Eric found himself face to face with Gaymer, who nodded quickly as he
walked to the door. He was as much concerned as a man who finds that he
has left himself too little time to dress before dinner—as much and no
more. He seemed to be murmuring, “’Evening, Lane. No idea it was so
late. ’Couldn’t get round before. Glad to see she’s so much better.”
Thus far for the audience; he retreated in good order; and in another
moment there was a rattle as he picked up his stick from the hall
table. Eric found his jaw moving; but he could say nothing, he did not
even know what he wanted to say. It was no use staring at the blank
door-way, he could not turn without facing Ivy... The authoritative
voice was speaking again, apparently addressing him; the resonant words
defined themselves into “If you’ll run away now, I’ll come and have a
word with you on my way out.”
Eric went to his bedroom and began to undress, because it gave his
hands occupation. They were trembling until he could hardly undo the
buttons of his waistcoat. He looked at his reflection in the mirror and
found himself a little paler than usual; his forehead was still
glistening with the insufferable heat of the passage, but there should
have been something to shew that he had been blown to bits and was held
together by shreds of tattered skin. Lines that he had learned as a boy
at school....
“_So tight he kept his lips compressed,
Scarce any blood came through.
You looked twice ere you saw his breast
Was all but shot in two...._”
And why should he murmur them to the tune of ‘Wenceslaus’?... Was he
delirious?
Gaisford had seen nothing amiss. If it were but possible to carry off
the interview without shewing him anything... After all, Ivy and Gaymer
had not betrayed themselves. “_I will marry you and no one else._” With
lips not yet still from her betrayal of him, she had made a show of
composure. And Gaymer, forsworn and a walking lie, explained coolly
that he had brought some flowers and could not get round before. They
would probably have been no less composed if they knew that he was in
the passage, listening to every word. Did they know? Did they fancy
that he had come in with the doctor?
Did they care?
He could not begin to think about it all until his brain was fit to
work. Gaymer had lied, Ivy had betrayed him; there was room here for
anger, jealousy... He had lost her, when she alone had come to make
life worth living, when she was the prize and symbol of his victory
over fate; room here for shaking his fists at Heaven and cursing God.
To curse God and die... But God was quite equal to keeping him alive.
Room here for thinking of the future and going stark mad. But these
were all parts of a whole too big for him to envisage yet; that at
least he could see....
It was curious that force of habit should set him methodically folding
his clothes and winding his watch... Before committing suicide a man
nearly always shaved himself, without pausing to wonder whether it was
not rather wasted labour....
He put on a dressing-gown and lay on his bed. It was curious that he
and Ivy should be destined to spend this night of all nights within
twenty yards of each other. Curious world... Barbara had once said
something about the fun that God was having with her... Curious how the
light seemed to burn through the back of the eyes into the brain.
Curious that one lacked the energy to stretch a hand to the switch....
Eric was still staring at the ceiling when Gaisford came in. The
doctor’s moment of ill-temper had passed; and this was a pity, because
he would be less preoccupied and more observant.
“Well, my son, and what’s the matter with you?,” he asked.
“I’ve become so extraordinarily limp.” The voice was slow but firm.
“The longer I stayed at Lashmar, the limper I got. I wasn’t trying to
work, but I couldn’t even walk a couple of miles. It occurred to me
that a tonic, perhaps....”
The doctor grunted and fitted the ends of a stethoscope into his ears.
The ritual which followed was very familiar to Eric; chest and back,
long breath, ordinary breathing, holding the breath, tapping... The
stethoscope darted to and fro, as though it were playing a game with
some elusive noise inside him; it finished with the heart and began
chasing the lungs into improbable corners under the collar-bone and
shoulder-blades, dodging back to the heart when it was least expected.
“Lie down. A deep breath,” said Gaisford.
This lying-down portended something serious; or perhaps the doctor was
not yet sure. They were always so uncommunicative; you might have a
tolerably wide experience of these examinations and yet not know what
they were trying to find.
“Anything the matter?,” Eric asked, as the stethoscope was detached and
pocketed.
“You’ve not much flesh on you,” said the doctor, feeling his ribs. “Are
you eating properly?”
“The usual amount. But you know I never _did_ run to fat.”
“Do you perspire much?”
“Like a pig. I gave my poor mother quite a shock when she came in one
morning and found me as if I’d just come out of the mill-stream. I save
pounds on Turkish baths.”
Gaisford nodded and put a number of questions which Eric seemed to
answer adequately. They did not appear to lead anywhere, but some of
them were new to his experience. At the end, the stethoscope was
produced again.
“Anything the matter?,” Eric repeated, for the doctor was frowning. The
examination, too, was unusually long.
“Well, yes. It’s what I’ve feared ever since I’ve known you. We’ve
caught it in time, but you’ll have to be rather careful. There are four
of you, aren’t there? What are your brothers and sisters like? You can
put on that dressing-gown; I don’t want you to catch cold.”
Eric weighed the question as he slipped his arms into the sleeves. God
was enjoying himself....
“Let’s come back to that,” he suggested. “What is it? Heart?”
“That’s been a bit tired for years.”
“Lungs, then?... I see. Well, I’m not a child, Gaisford. How long do
you give me? Six months? A year?”
The doctor changed his spectacles and tipped Eric’s clothes from an
arm-chair. He could be exasperatingly slow when he liked; and he always
liked to be slow, when his patients shewed signs of becoming unnerved.
“Forty, if you do what I tell you,” he announced at length. “If you
don’t, you’ll get rapidly worse. By the way, it’s chiefly in books that
a doctor says you’ve three weeks and two days to live; science isn’t
quite so exact as that, and doctors aren’t such damned fools... No!
I’ll tell you. This might have come at any time, because you’ve been on
the delicate side ever since I’ve known you. Now you’re a little bit
touched. It’s a bore, but it’s nothing to be frightened about. I shan’t
let you live in this country, of course, and I shall cut down your
work; but that doesn’t matter, because you’re indecently rich for your
age. And I can give you a choice of places to live in—California, South
Africa, the Riviera—”
“This is in confidence, of course,” Eric interrupted. “You’re not
telling my people—or Ivy... or any one?”
“No. But I’ll tell _you_ that, if you try to marry that child in your
present state, you’ll deserve to be pulled limb from limb.”
“I don’t propose to.”
“If you’ll wait a couple of years....”
Eric was troubled to keep his brain, now suddenly alert, back to the
doctor’s deliberate pace. The immediate future was clear....
“How soon am I to start?,” he asked.
“Get out of London as soon as possible.”
“And—about Ivy. When will she be well enough to be told?”
“I should tell her at once—to-morrow. She’ll see _something’s_ up; she
wanted to know to-night why you’d suddenly come back without warning...
I find that as a rule it’s best to tell people the truth, however much
of a shock it may be. We’re all of us equal to a certain number of
shocks; and it seldom becomes less of a shock by postponing it and
wrapping it in lies.”
“I’ll tell her to-morrow,” said Eric. “Do you want to do anything more
with me?”
“I’m afraid there’s no doubt of it.”
“Then I may as well turn in.”
Eric threw off the dressing-gown and put on his pyjamas. The doctor, he
knew, was watching him, but he was successfully deliberate and
composed. They shook hands and said good-night without emotion or
straining after heroics. There was a half-heard phrase about “having
another word with” him in the morning. Eric lay for a few moments in
darkness, waiting to hear the doctor’s car drive away; there was no
sound, however, and he was asleep before he had done speculating
whether Gaisford had come on foot or in a car....
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JOURNEY’S END
“Your distresses in your journey... are proper seasonings for the
greater fatigues and distresses, which you must expect in your travels;
and, if one had a mind to moralize, one might call them the samples of
the accidents, rubs, and difficulties, which everyone meets with in his
journey through life. In this journey, the understanding is the
_voiture_ that must carry you through; and in proportion as that is
stronger or weaker, more or less in repair, your journey will be better
or worse; though, at best you will now and then find some bad roads and
some bad inns....
“My long and frequent letters which I send you, in great doubt of their
success, put me in mind of certain papers which you have very lately,
and I formerly, sent up to kites, along the string, which we call
messengers; some of them the wind used to blow away, others were torn
by the string, and but few of them got up and stuck to the kite....”
LORD CHESTERFIELD TO HIS SON.
“Miss Maitland asked me to say she would like to see you as soon as you
are ready.”
Eric thanked the nurse and continued dressing. The night of
unresisting, helpless exhaustion had been tranquil as death; he
wondered whether Ivy had slept... Or had she been rehearsing the speech
in which she would tell him that she could not marry him? Or would she
say nothing, waiting for him to tell her that he had been in the
passage outside her room while she threw him aside for Gaymer?... It
was significant that she asked to see him. An easy conscience must have
told her that he would have come as soon as he was dressed....
He went in to find her tired and nervously excited, but she achieved an
unembarrassed smile of welcome and asked how he was.
“I’ll return the c-compliment,” he said, wondering why he stammered.
“How are _you_, Ivy? You’re the invalid.”
“Oh, I’m much better. I shall be able to come down to Lashmar at the
end of next week.”