Early next day Doctor Conrad came to see me. I thought it significant
that he came in my father's big motor-car--a car of great speed and
power.
I was in my dressing-gown before the fire in the boudoir, and at the
first glance of his cheerful face under his iron-grey head I knew what
Alma had said in the letter which had summoned him.
In his soft voice he asked me a few questions, and though I could have
wished to conceal the truth I dared not. I noticed that his face
brightened at each of my replies, and at the end of them he said:
"There is nothing to be alarmed at. We shall be better than ever
by-and-by."
Then in his sweet and delicate way (as if he were saying something that
would be very grateful) he told me what I knew already, and I listened
with my head down and my face towards the fire.
He must have been disappointed at the sad way I received his news, for
he proceeded to talk of my general health; saying the great thing in
such a case as mine was to be cheerful, to keep a good heart, and to
look hopefully to the future.
"You must have pleasant surroundings and the society of agreeable
people--old friends, old schoolfellows, familiar and happy faces."
I said "Yes" and "Yes," knowing only too well how impossible it all was;
and then his talk turned on general topics--my father, whose condition
made his face very grave, and then his wife, Christian Ann, whose name
caused his gentle old eyes to gleam with sunshine.
She had charged him with a message to me.
"Tell her," she had said, "I shall never forget what she did for me in
the autumn, and whiles and whiles I'm thanking God for her."
That cut me to the quick, but I was nearly torn to pieces by what came
next.
"Christian Ann told me to say too that Sunny Lodge is longing for you.
'She's a great lady now,' said she, 'but maybe great ladies have their
troubles same as ourselves, poor things, and if she ever wants to rest
her sweet head in a poor woman's bed, Mary O'Neill's little room is
always waiting for her.'"
"God bless her!" I said--it was all I _could_ say--and then, to my great
relief, he talked on other subjects.
The one thing I was afraid of was that he might speak of Martin. Heaven
alone, which looks into the deep places of a woman's heart in her hour
of sorest trial, knows why I was in such dread that he might do so, but
sure I am that if he had mentioned Martin at that moment I should have
screamed.
When he rose to go he repeated his warnings.
"You'll remember what I said about being bright and cheerful?"
"I'll try."
"And keeping happy and agreeable faces about you?"
"Ye-s."
Hardly had he left the room when Alma came sweeping into it, full of I
her warmest and insincerest congratulations.
"There!" she cried, with all the bitter honey of her tongue. "Wasn't I
right in sending for the doctor? Such news, too! Oh, happy, happy you!
But I must not keep you now, dearest. You'll be just crazy to write to
your husband and tell him all about it."
Alma's mother was the next to visit me. The comfortable old soul,
redolent of perfume and glittering with diamonds, began by
congratulating herself on her perspicacity.
"I knew it," she said. "When I saw as how you were so and so, I said to
Alma as I was sure you were that way. 'Impossible,' said Alma, but it's
us married women to know, isn't it?"
After that, and some homely counsel out of her own experience--to take
my breakfast in bed in future, avoiding tea, &c.,--she told me how
fortunate I was to have Alma in the house at such a moment.
"The doctor says you're to be kept bright and cheerful, and she's such a
happy heart, is Alma. So crazy about you too! You wouldn't believe it,
but she's actually talking of staying with you until the December
sailing, at all events."
The prospect of having Alma two months longer, to probe my secret soul
as with a red-hot iron, seemed enough to destroy me, but my martyrdom
had only begun.
Next day, Aunt Bridget came, and the bright glitter of the usually cold
grey eyes behind her gold-rimmed spectacles told me at a glance that her
visit was not an unselfish one.
"There now," she said, "you've got to thank me for this. Didn't I give
you good advice when I told you to be a little blind? It's the only way
with husbands. When Conrad came home with the news I said, 'Betsy, I
must get away to the poor girl straight.' To be sure I had enough on my
hands already, but I couldn't leave you to strangers, could I?"
Hearing no response to this question, Aunt Bridget went on to say that
what was coming would be a bond between me and my husband.
"It always is. It was in my case, anyway. The old colonel didn't behave
very well after our marriage, and times and times I was telling myself I
had made a rue bargain; but when Betsy came I thought, 'I might have
done better, but I might have done worse, and he's the father of my
offspring, anyway.'"
Hearing no response to this either, Aunt Bridget went on to talk of Alma
and her mother. Was not this the woman I suspected with my husband--the
young one with the big eyes and "the quality toss with her?" Then why
did I have a person like that about the house?
"If you need bright and cheerful company, what's amiss with your aunt
and your first cousin? Some people are selfish, but I thank the saints I
don't know what selfishness is. I'm willing to do for you what I did for
your poor mother, and _I_ can't say more than that, can I?"
I must have made some kind of response, for Aunt Bridget went on to say
it might be a sacrifice, but then she wouldn't be sorry to leave the Big
House either.
"I'm twenty years there, and now I'm to be a servant to my own
stepchild. Dear heart knows if I can bear it much longer. The way that
Nessy is carrying on with your father is something shocking. I do
believe she'll marry the man some day."
To escape from a painful topic I asked after my father's health.
"Worse and worse, but Conrad's news was like laughing-gas to the man. He
would have come with me to-day, but the doctor wouldn't hear of it.
He'll come soon though, and meantime he's talking and talking about a
great entertainment."
"Entertainment?"
"To celebrate the forthcoming event, of course, though nobody is to know
that except ourselves, it seems. Just a house-warming in honour of your
coming home after your marriage--that's all it's to be on the outside,
anyway."