“_Pardon, monsieur._”
I lifted up my voice in vain. So I was active. She stared at me,
panting. I withdrew my first impression as to her being a nun. She was
no nun. She had a crucifix and a coif, but she was no nun. She was a
woman scorned. She said many things and used many words which I did not
understand. But I didn’t care. I somehow thought, you know, of Iris
dying.
“I am here,” I said in effect, “and here I stay until I can speak to a
doctor or a matron. I am sorry, but you have made me anxious as to the
lady’s health.”
“_Mais je vous l’ai déjà dit, jeune homme! Madame est assez bien!_”
The ordinary dingy _concierge’s_ lodge: a black stove, a table covered
with frayed red cloth, a chair, a stool, an indescribable odour, a plate
of food on the table--_bœuf bouilli_, which is French for the salvaging
of grey matter from liquid dungeons of onions, carrots and potatoes. I
sat on the stool. It was unbelievable that her coif had ever been white.
Somehow my eyes were transfixed by the small wooden crucifix which, like
a dinghy on a choppy sea, rolled on her bosom as she ate. I wondered how
long I would have to wait. I wondered if I could smoke. I wondered if
this was one of those convent-nursing-homes. I wondered if one called a
nun _madame_ or _mademoiselle_. They were maidens presumably, so I
supposed _mademoiselle_.
“_On peut fumer, mademoiselle?_”
I was wrong. She looked at me with contempt. “_C’est défendu,
monsieur._”
“_Merci, madame._”
I wondered if she really could be a nun. I wondered if one could tip a
nun. Out of sheer hatred one acquires a passion for tipping in France
and Italy. Detestable it was on this detestable day to sit like this,
being hated. I made a muttering noise and gave her a ten-franc note,
and it was in a more amiable spirit that she went on with her salvaging.
At last there were only two bits of carrot and an awful looking onion
left to engage her attention, and I felt that one might perhaps
converse.
I was right about her being no nun. She was a lay-sister, she said. And
this place, she told me, was a convent-nursing-home. “_Nous avons ici_,”
she was pleased to add, “_la clientèle européenne la plus chic_.”
Perhaps that was the worst stroke of that day, so far. Iris among a
_clientèle européenne la plus chic_.... One saw the cosmopolitan
divorcées, their secret illnesses and guileful pains, their nasty little
coquetries and the way they would blackmail their lovers with their
sufferings, and one felt the sticky night-club breath of all the silly,
common harlotries of England, France, America. My poor ten-franc note
must have seemed pathetic to this old lay-sister, who probably thought
nothing of receiving a _mille_ from an anxious Dago.
I had until then been trying not to wonder about Iris in the vile shadow
of a prison. Suddenly I was furiously hot. What on earth was I doing
here! Intruding where I was not wanted! I was about to go, to run, when
the lay-sister was as though distracted from the last piece of carrot by
the opening of a door in the back room. Frantically she hurried towards
it. It would look too silly of me to run now. I could but ask, anyhow.
The lay-sister’s voice, voluble, vindictive, explanatory. Much good my
ten francs had done! Then steps came towards me, into the lodge. “Eh,” I
said. How afraid one always is of the callous French doctors with their
cynical eyes and purple beards....
A man, bald, sharp-featured as a bird, in a rough brown great-coat, a
tired-looking, an anxious-looking, middle-aged--Englishman!
“Masters! Conrad Masters!”
“Well,” muttered that anxious-looking man. He looked just the same when
he was playing bridge. He was always playing bridge, that man. And he
said he hated playing bridge. That kind of man. “Well? How are you?”
“Glad,” I said, “glad it’s no worse. Glad it’s only you. I was afraid of
a purple beard.”
“And how did you get here?” A man given to muttering, that. One could
hear what he said or not just as one pleased. One couldn’t, you
understand, be afraid of Conrad Masters.
“Masters, the fight I’ve had with this Cerberus to see you!”
“Rules ... must have rules, you know....” A decidedly undecided man.
Soft-speaking but not plausible, a combination peculiarly English. A man
of nerves. Shifty without suavity ... and then, suddenly, apt to bite
your head off like a very captain of men: “And how did you know Mrs.
Storm was ill? Here?”
“Oh,” I said. “Well....” And I thought of many things. Of Conrad
Masters, of “Should a doctor tell?” of Cherry-Marvel, that confidant at
third-hand, of Mrs. Conrad Masters. A dashing lady, that.
“Who but Cherry-Marvel told me!” said I.
“God in Heaven, that man!”
But Iris swept out of my mind her doctor’s problematical indiscretions
to his dashing wife....
“Ill,” he muttered. “Decidedly ill.... mm....”
“I heard,” I said desperately, “that she’d had a sort of operation--”
“There’s been no operation!” snapped that captain of men. “Simply
maddens a man, the way these things get about....”
“Well, I’m only repeating what I heard, Masters. And you can’t hope for
secrecy once our friend gets hold of anything--”
“Who said anything about secrecy?” A dangerous, feline muttering. “I
don’t want secrecy....”
Silence. Anxieties walked across it arm-in-arm with that lank man’s
doubtful heat.
“I say, Masters, is she--is she very ill? But, of course, if I’m
intruding....”
Those worried eyes were fixed on the feet stuck far out from the chair
on which he lay as though exhausted. The lay-sister appeared to be
pottering about in the next room. “Thinking of Donna Guelãra, are you?
Haven’t much faith in me and Martel-Bonnard, have you?” Faintly amused
those worried eyes looked to be. That was that man’s way. You would
think he was being shifty with you when he might be just laughing at
you.
Some would speak well, very well, of Dr. Masters; whilst others almost
libellously, saying that, working as he did with Eugene Martel-Bonnard,
the surgeon, he couldn’t be over-scrupulous in advising profitable but
unnecessary operations. Martel-Bonnard’s wife wore a famous pearl rope,
of which it was said that each pearl had been bought at the price of a
woman’s life. But a brilliant surgeon’s life. Martel-Bonnard would say,
is full of drawbacks. He charged accordingly. I think that he and Mrs.
Masters must have bullied Masters every now and then--not that he
wouldn’t have looked worried in the Elysian Fields. Between them, those
three had once made poor Anna Estella Guelãra very sorry she had ever
left Chile. She was quite well, Martel-Bonnard said she was very ill, he
almost killed her, then he saved her, and how he hurt her! “Naturally,”
smiled Martel-Bonnard. “Such things hurt. But, my friend, she
was--_pouf!_--but for me.” How one would have liked to operate on that
sleek little man, unsuccessfully! He despised you if you differed from
him, operated on you if you were fool enough, and robbed you according
to a special system he had of discounting the exchange. One hundred
thousand francs, poor Anna Estella’s life had cost her that time. And
pain, such as falls only to the lot of women!
“But. Masters, it’s surely not as bad a case as that!”
“Mm ... not as bad? Well ... different shall we say?”
“But that was an internal operation! You just said--”
“Quite. That’s why it’s different....”
Talking with Conrad Masters was like playing a game in which he who made
out the most of the other’s words scored the most points.... But Iris
alone here, in this obscure place as full of crucifixes as a cemetery!
“I’m sorry,” I said, rising from the stool. “I’m intruding....”
“You’re all right,” he mumbled. “So you heard about it from that _femme
fatale_, did you? Damn that man! Bla, bla, bla!”
Those worried but faintly amused eyes were on me. “Been hearing quite a
lot about you lately. Nurses would have your _dossier_ complete by now
if they could understand English. You seem to have put your foot in it
somewhere. Rather sorry for you if....”
This bantering ... medical bantering! Only doctors dare do it. “Well,
how are we to-day?” But by paying close attention to the game I had
scored one point. She was delirious. So far, delirious. Then ... “if!”
“Masters,” I said, “are you telling me that she is dying?”
“Mm ...” he muttered impatiently, and as he jumped up from his chair the
rough brown great-coat seemed to fill the dingy lodge. It smelt of
England, that coat. And, protruding from it, that sharp, naked, weary
face with the worried eyes....
“Look here, Masters--”
“Here you are,” he muttered. I could not understand why he muttered.
“Here you are” until I found a cigarette in one hand and one of those
wretched spirit-lighters in the other. A man without conviction even in
his ability to strike a match....
“Known her for years,” he muttered towards his feet. “At Deauville that
year ... terrible for her. Poor child....”
“Masters, you said Donna Guelãra might die. You know you did. But she
didn’t, did she?”
He looked at me sharply. “If only she’d help herself, lift a finger to
help herself! That’s what beats a man. Doesn’t lift one finger, she
doesn’t.”
“Oh!” I said, trying to look reasonable. But I couldn’t, for the life of
me, accommodate myself to the idea of Iris dying. “I suppose this is the
crisis, is it, Masters?”
The rough great-coat gave one vindictive flounce, filled the room.
“Crisis! The way you people talk of crisis this and crisis that! Hear a
word once and stick to it through life! ‘When does the crisis pass?’
There is no ‘crisis’ in most of these infernal things. Malaria,
pneumonia, a few others--yes, crisis, know where you are. But in these
things the patient just continues ill, two, three, four weeks, might
live, might not. Lysis, not crisis. Crisis!”
“Sorry. Lysis....”
“Oh, here!” He suddenly began fumbling in an ancient pocket-book, from
which he extracted a small folded piece of paper. “Might interest you,”
he muttered.
Scrawled in pencil across the slip of paper were what looked like two
names. That indecipherable scrawl! At last I made out the two names:
Hilary’s and mine.
“She said, should either of these two happen somehow to hear I am ill
and call, just be nice to them, please. Her very words....”
“Oh!” I said. And I went on staring at the slip of paper. It was a
rather grubby slip of paper. And those two scrawled names were like a
faint cry of loneliness.
“Known her for years,” Masters was muttering. “Nice! First tells me not
to tell any one, then to be ‘nice’ to you two....”
I gave him back the slip of paper. I don’t know why, and now I wish I
hadn’t. I would like to have it now, beside that fiver. “Nice, fivers
are....” Thoughtful Iris! She knew her friends, she did. Lying lonely
here ... and having an afterthought about Hilary--and me! “If they
should somehow happen to hear and call.” Poor Guy hadn’t a mention. She
wasn’t for putting any strain on Guy’s lawfulness. But why lawfulness? I
looked at Conrad Masters.
“Septic poisoning,” said Masters. “That’s the trouble.”
That meant very little to me, for never was a man so ill-informed about
such things. “But,” I said doubtfully to those gentle-worried eyes, and
he murmured:
“Sure you’re not thinking of ptomaine poisoning? Not that that isn’t
quite enough to be going on with....”
“Pain,” I said. “Good Lord, pain....” All I could think of was pain,
pain, pain. One can almost feel the stabs of some one’s pain. Worst of
all, one can mentally hear the faint screams of a voice just
recognisable. Conrad Masters, the sight of him, reminded me vividly of
Anna Estella’s pain. Once, from a waiting-room, I had heard her
screaming. “Pain?” I said.
“Oh, no ... no.” He weighed the matter. “Nothing to speak of. Just keep
still, that’s the main thing. Very still, for weeks and weeks. Long
business, you know. But what worries a man is that she doesn’t try to
help herself at all. Letting herself go ... can’t tell whether
consciously or not, but somewhere inside her just not caring. I’ve been
sharp with her.... Nice business for me, isn’t it? Good Lord, nice! If
only she’d take a pull, pull herself together ... some one just give her
mind a jab somehow. No good talking, of course. If she won’t, she won’t.
Lies there, you know, just not caring....” He was drawing on a fur-lined
glove, and it was to that he spoke; almost, one thought, shyly. A
curious, complex gentleman. “She’s said once or twice she’d like to see
you and ... well, learn you a thing or two. Some stuff about roses and
dandelions. You seem to have made a _gaffe_ somewhere, and it’s quite on
her mind to tell you about it. Hope I’m not giving anything away ... but
might do her good just to see you, feel you’re round about. You can’t
tell. We’ll see how she is to-morrow. Extraordinary, I’ve found it, the
way a woman will wake up for a second from days of delirium for no other
purpose than to feel lonely.... Not awake now, though. Ill, this
evening. Can’t really, you see, be iller if she tried. It will be good
news, really good news, if she is alive in the morning. That’s as much
as I can say. Sorry.... Well, I must snatch some dinner....”
We were outside. The rain had ceased, it was much warmer. The Masters’s
Renault, sleek and shining black but for the scarlet wheels, dwarfed my
taxi.
Septic poisoning. I began to remember a little about that. I remembered
two words which seemed very like “septic poisoning” in reports of trials
of wretched women who had “operated.” Surely, Masters couldn’t ... she
had, after all, trusted me--“be nice to him”--and I must at once think
the worst thing. Oh, God, how foul a thing a man’s mind is, how foul!
But, Iris, dear Iris, why is one able to think of these awful things in
connection with you!
“There’s always hope, you know,” Masters was muttering. “Pity you kept
your taxi. I could have dropped you. And Donna Guelãra didn’t die, did
she?”
But how Anna Estella had desired to live! “Die, me!” she had later
screamed with laughter.
Iris had trusted me. “Be nice to him”--her very words. And I had thought
that ...
“Masters, you won’t mind my coming round again? Perhaps to-night?”
“Sleep here, if you like,” he smiled. “I’ll be coming myself for a
second, about midnight. Wife’s got a party. Like to come? Rather good
bridge. Well, please yourself....”