"Oh! Is anything the matter?"
She noticed that he looked embarrassed.
"No, nothing. Come outside for a few minutes; downstairs is best,
where we won't disturb anybody. The whole house seems to have turned
in, and it's only ten-thirty."
They descended to the floor below and sat on the broad stairs in
semi-darkness. Esther waited, curious to know what he was going to
say. He lit a cigarette and seemed reluctant to begin.
"I've been driving in the rain for a couple of hours," he volunteered
at last. "I've got a beastly head for some reason or other. I thought
the air might do it good."
There was a long, awkward pause, then finally he turned and eyed her
with the same shamefaced expression she had noticed at dinner.
"Well," he said abruptly, "what do you think of me?"
She returned his gaze with transparent innocence.
"Think of you?" she repeated. "Nothing. Why?"
He drew a deep breath.
"Come now, Esther, you know you've been wondering about what you saw
this afternoon. It wouldn't be human not to. What conclusion did you
come to in regard to my stepmother and me?"
"Oh," she replied indifferently, "I don't know. What do you want me to
think?"
"Poker face! There's nothing to be got out of you, is there?" he said,
smiling. "I see I'll have to tell you--and yet I feel such a beast to
say anything about it. Besides, there's a bit I can't tell; it
wouldn't be decent."
Esther interposed quickly:
"There's no reason why you should say anything. Please don't, if you'd
rather not."
"But I'd like to; I couldn't let you get wrong ideas."
He halted again, frowning at the lighted end of his cigarette.
"Oh, well, it was like this. About a week ago I had a sort of a
brush-up with Thérèse. She was very angry and so was I, and I laid
down the law to her a bit. Since then we've scarcely spoken.... I
don't believe I had said a word to her until I found her in my room,
early this afternoon. Well, this evening I was on my way to dress, and
when I passed the sitting-room she was in the doorway. She asked me to
come inside, said she wanted to explain something to me."
"Oh! So that was it?"
"She was extraordinarily nice, appealing, and all that. She admitted
it was a stupid lie about coming to get a book, that she had tapped on
the door and thought she heard me say 'Come in.' Then when she was
inside she found out she was mistaken, and was about to go out again,
when I appeared, and frightened the life out of her by the suspicious
look on my face, so she just said the first thing that came into her
head. She made me feel rather a brute. She said, 'You know you always
terrify me, Roger, you are so hard, so intolerant. You always think
the worst of me.' I have to admit that's true. I may not have given
her a chance."
She waited for him to go on. He continued to frown, not looking at
her, plainly troubled in his mind.
"I can't tell you all she said, but she told me something about the
scene we'd had that put rather a different light on matters. She told
me how sorry she was, and I think she meant it. She was quite upset.
Do you know, Esther, I felt rather ashamed of myself for--for not
having tried to make a friend of her. It makes me out a frightful
prig. Looking at things from her point of view, I'm sure it hasn't
always been easy."
"No, of course not."
"You see that, don't you, Esther? I mean a young woman married to an
old man--I daresay she didn't realise what it was going to be like."
He leaned his head on his hands for a moment, his forehead furrowed.
He gave the impression of arguing with himself. Then he looked up
suddenly.
"She said to me, 'I don't expect sympathy from you, Roger, but you are
a man of the world; you can't go on for ever so completely misjudging
me. You had the wrong idea about me six years ago'..."
He broke off, evidently regretting his last words, but Esther made no
comment, and he went quickly on:
"I didn't know what to say. I was damned uncomfortable. The odd part
about it is, Esther, that inside me I don't like her much better than I
did before, only she made me see how unfairly I've behaved. I feel I
owe it to her to try and be nicer. Can you understand?"
"Of course I can. Why shouldn't you feel like that? She's your
father's wife."
"Yes, she's my father's wife.... Well, the finish of it was she put
her hands on my shoulders, very simply, like a child, and asked if we
could be friends. What could I say? And then she put her cheek
against me, and--and I put my arms around her; she seemed to expect it,
and I didn't know what else to do. And then you came in. Gad, shall I
ever forget your eyes!"
Esther laughed in relief, her companion joined her, and for several
seconds they were a prey to helpless merriment. The whole affair was
so different now; Roger's explanation had taken all the sting out of
it. She could understand his guilty look; he had been the
battle-ground for one of those fights between reason and prejudice, his
sense of justice Striving to overcome a deeply rooted aversion.
"S'sh! We mustn't make a noise! Good-night--I'm off to bed."
He caught hold of her hands, detaining her.
"See here, you don't think me a hopeless fool, do you?"
"Certainly not; why should I?"
"And you don't think now that I was making love to her or anything like
that, do you?"
"Well, I'm not quite sure! If you keep protesting----"
She broke off with a teasing smile, looking down on him from the step
above.
"Esther, you----"
Chalmers entered the hall with a measured step, on his way to bolt the
front door. Esther took advantage of the interruption to tear herself
away.
"Good-night," she called softly over her shoulder, and vanished up the
stairs.
Roger gazed after her with eyes that shone. Then he put his hand to
his head and frowned again.
"Bring me a whisky and soda, will you, Chalmers?" he said. "I'll see
if that will do this beastly head any good."
The headache had not gone next morning, though it had subsided into a
duller sensation. His aunt at breakfast noticed that he had no
appetite, merely trifling with his grapefruit and tasting his coffee.
At once she inquired the reason, remarking at the same time that he had
not his usual healthy colour.
"Oh, it's nothing, Dido. I do feel a bit rotten."
"Does your head pain you?"
"A bit: I shall be all right presently."
He was annoyed to see apprehension cloud the old lady's eyes.
"My dear, don't begin bothering about me. Can't a person have a little
ordinary headache without----"
"I know, Roger, darling, only with your father and then Thérèse...
Don't you think you'd better see the doctor?"
"I see altogether too much of the doctor, thank you; wherever I go I
seem to run into him. He's a depressing brute."
"Don't be childish, Roger, that's only a manner."
"Well, it's a damned bad manner, and I'll look after my own headache if
it's just the same to you. It's not the first I've had. Got any
aspirin?"
"I've got something much better than aspirin--a new French preparation.
If you'll come upstairs I'll get it for you."
A little later, having managed to finish his coffee, he joined his aunt
in the boudoir, where he found her ineffectually trying to get a
stopper out of a bottle.
"It's a glass stopper, and absolutely refuses to budge. Why will they
make bottles that one can't open?"
"Give it to me. I'll put it under the hot tap."
"I've done that; it's no use."
"Then let's see what a lighted match will do."
He struck a match and held it under the neck of the bottle until a ring
of smoke appeared on the glass.
"Now, here goes."
He gave the stopper a sharp twist, there was a cracking sound, a cry
from Miss Clifford, and a pungent odour filled the room as the contents
of the bottle gushed over the carpet. The neck was broken away, and
the jagged glass had cut a deep, ugly gash across the base of Roger's
thumb. Blood welled up freely from the wound.
"Oh; how dreadful! I'm so distressed! What shall we do?"
The old lady gazed about distractedly, while her nephew regarded the
pool of blood forming in his hand.
"Get my handkerchief out of my trousers pocket, will you?"
"Here, take mine. Don't stir--I'll call Miss Rowe; she'll know what to
do. That beastly bottle; it's all my fault!"
In her flurry she entered her brother's bedroom without knocking,
calling out:
"Miss Rowe, can you come quickly? My nephew has had a horrid accident
here."
"Accident?"
"Yes; will you give us a hand?"
Esther was leaning over the bed on the opposite side from the doctor,
who had that moment administered an injection to the patient. She
straightened up and stared in alarm at Miss Clifford, holding in her
hand the hypodermic needle she had just taken mechanically from the
doctor.
"Certainly, I'll come at once."
She hastened after the older woman, leaving the doctor to draw up the
cover over the old man.
"Nurse!"
There was a note of slight annoyance in the doctor's voice as he viewed
her abrupt departure.
"I won't be a second, doctor.... Oh, what has he done to his hand?"
She was already beside Roger. He was endeavouring to staunch the flow
of blood with his aunt's handkerchief, which was already sopping.
"My dear girl, it's merely a cut. If you can get me a towel or
something----"
"Let me look."
Gently she examined the deep and jagged wound.
"Ugh! What a horrid affair! It must be seen to properly. Will you
hold your hand over this newspaper while I fetch some water and
bandages?"
For an instant she stuck her head into the bedroom door, to say
reassuringly to her patient:
"It's only a cut, Sir Charles, nothing serious."
Then she dashed off in search of her little first-aid box, returning a
moment later with it and a basin of water. Miss Clifford cleared the
table for her paraphernalia.
"What a comfort you are. Miss Rowe! Do you think it will want
stitching up?"
"Oh, no! But he must keep it bandaged. It's in such an awkward place,
the right hand, too."
"Good-bye to tennis, also golf, for the rest of my stay," was Roger's
rueful comment. "What rotten luck!"
Esther worked skilfully and quickly: soon the injured hand was swathed
in a neat and snowy bandage that smelled of iodine. She was aware that
Roger's eyes not only followed the movements of her fingers, but dwelt
as well on her cheek, her mouth, the downward sweep of her lashes. It
was a pleasant moment, fraught with potentialities.
"Can I be of any assistance?"
The question came in a somewhat laboured manner from the door behind.
Over her shoulder Esther saw the doctor, his bald head lowered, his
small eyes regarding them in a sort of dull, tentative way.
"No, thanks, doctor, I've just finished.... You didn't want me for
anything, did you?"
It struck her he had something on his mind.
"Not at the moment."
He came into the room slowly, his eyes roving about as if in search of
something, now dwelling on the table, now on the mantelpiece, now on
the Louis XV commode. Then in the same preoccupied manner he went out
again.
"What an odd man!" Miss Clifford remarked with a smile. "You'd have
thought it natural to ask how Roger came to cut his hand, wouldn't you?"
But Esther knew how little the insignificant detail of life interested
Sartorius; his indifference no longer struck her as strange. Firmly
she tied the last knot about Roger's wrist.
"You'll have to keep that on and try not to get it wet," she cautioned
him.
"And how do you suggest I'm going to take a bath?"
"You'll have to manage with a shower, or else get Chalmers to rub you
down like a horse," she told him gaily.
As she began putting away her rolls of gauze a thoughtful look came
over her face.
"You know, I wonder if the doctor did want something? I shouldn't like
to offend him."
"See here," said Roger decidedly, "you waste a good deal too much
energy bothering about that man's opinion. Tell him to go to hell."
"And where should I be?" she laughed spontaneously.
"Catching the first train out of Cannes, I suppose."
"No, I'm dashed if you would! Not if I had any say."
She looked up, thrilled by his warmth, and saw his laughing eyes grow
serious as they dwelt on her. In that instant she had a certain
knowledge that only his aunt's presence in the room prevented his
kissing her.
There was a mist before her eyes and her breath came quickly as she
went about her tasks. She recalled the odour of Roger's tweed clothing
mingled with the indescribable masculine scent of his skin, and the
memory caused her a thrill of joyous excitement. She began to believe
that he did care for her. Oh, if only he really cared, if it wasn't
the light sort of thing a man so easily feels and so readily forgets!
When she returned to the bedroom she noticed the doctor, with his back
turned to her, standing by the window and rummaging through his black
leather bag. At once she got a feeling of something wrong. The very
lines of his figure suggested tension. Was he disturbed about
something? If so, she couldn't imagine what it was. He said nothing,
but presently followed her into the bathroom when she went there to
replace the enamelled basin she had used for Roger's hand.
"Oh, Miss Rowe!" he said, speaking casually enough, yet with a
sub-current of something indefinable which made her turn and look at
him.
"Yes, doctor?"
He had the hypodermic case open in his hand.
"What have you done with that needle I was using just now?"
She wrinkled her brow for a moment.
"The needle?" she repeated, and gazed at him blankly.