extract confidences; kept conversation rigidly to the impersonal.
Somehow, he frightened Patricia. It seemed to her as though he had lost
all interest in life. Except for his own writing-room, he left all
arrangements at Glen Cottage to Prout. The war, he never mentioned: “as
far as I’m concerned,” he said, “it’s over.” Literature, he referred to
contemptuously as “the last resource of people who hadn’t the capacity
for doing real things.”
Even the children noticed this change. “What’s the matter with Uncle
Francis?” asked Evelyn, now a precocious long-legged creature of eight.
“He always used to talk such a lot, and now he hardly talks at all.”
“He’s got a bad leg, dear,” explained her mother.
“But he doesn’t talk with his leg, Mummy,” put in precocity; and
Patricia was driven to the usual: “Go on with your lessons, darling.
Uncle Francis will be quite well again soon.”
But would Francis ever be well again; well in mentality; able to
reconstruct his life? Patricia’s reason said “Yes” to those questions;
Patricia’s instinct said “No.” She had thought once, long ago at
Wargrave, that he might yet do great things, make a name for himself:
there seemed a force in him then, a power behind his self-absorption.
But this new Francis was not even self-absorbed: there was nothing so
positive as self-absorption about him: he might have been anybody. And
when he finally shuffled off through Tebbits’ cow-yard, started down the
meadow path to his new home, Patricia’s fantasy pictured him a stricken
beast, crawling away to die in solitude. . . .
But next day’s telegram from the War Office dispelled all fantasies!
Peter was wounded, back in England, in London: the world, for Patricia,
shrank to the size of her husband’s left arm.
§ 3
Patricia had waited thirteen months for that telegram; and once her
anxious eyes deciphered its exact meaning, she knew no feeling except
relief. Her man was home again, out of it, not for a week’s exeat but
for months, perhaps for good! They would give him leave. He would see
Sunflowers. She would nurse him back to health. . . .
She sent Fry into Arlsfield with telegrams to her father and the
invalid; she packed her bag; she urged the children to behave themselves
during her absence; she borrowed Tebbits’ trap, and caught the 3:45 from
Henley with exactly one minute to spare. Neither in the trap, the train,
nor the taxi which whirled her through unfamiliar streets to her
destination, did she panic.
At the entrance to the hospital—a great barrack of a building, set
foursquare round a gravel courtyard—difficulties began. An R. A. M. C.
Sergeant, standing stiffly to attention, informed Patricia that visitors
were allowed only between two and four P. M. She asked to see the
Matron, and was conducted down a cold stone corridor to an unfriendly
waiting-room. After ten minutes, appeared a forbidding woman of
uncertain age, dressed in the Regulation Red Cross uniform, who said:
“She knew of no patient named Jameson in the Officers’ Ward; but would
make enquiries.”
Patricia waited another ten minutes. The Matron returned. She had
discovered Peter: he was as well as could be expected: Mrs. Jameson
could come to see him the following afternoon.
“But I want to see him at once,” insisted Patricia.
“I’m afraid we can’t allow that.” The Matron smiled a superior smile.
“It’s against orders.”
“Then you must disobey orders.”
“My dear Mrs. Jameson . . .” began the woman.
But at that, Patricia’s temper exploded.
“Don’t ‘dear Mrs. Jameson’ me,” she flashed out. “He may be your
patient. But he’s my husband. And I’m going to see him.”
“The Registrar _might_ let you. I can’t.”
“Then please go and fetch the Registrar.”
There appeared, after a further twenty minutes during which Patricia’s
annoyance rose to fever-point, a pompous but kindly individual with
drooping moustaches, who peered at her through gold pince-nez, and said:
“The Matron tells me you want to see your husband. We really oughtn’t to
allow it, you know. Really, we oughtn’t. Of course, if he were in any
danger, it would be a different thing.”
“It’s rather natural I should want to see him, isn’t it?”
“Entirely, my dear young lady, entirely. But we have to think of the
other patients, you see. Still, as a great favour, and just for ten
minutes. . . .”
He led her up stone-staircases, down endless miles of corridors where
blue-clad patients shuffled and limped on noiseless slippers, till they
came to a white-painted doorway marked, “Officers Only”; up yet another
staircase to a stone half-landing. Here a capped nurse met them.
“This is Mrs. Jameson,” said the Registrar. “I’ve promised her she may
see her husband. But only for ten minutes, Sister. Only for ten
minutes.”
“Is he very bad?” asked Patricia.
“He’s asleep, I think,” said the Sister.
The Registrar made his adieux; clattered off downstairs. The two women
passed into the ward: a long bare room of ten beds whose occupants
looked up incuriously at the accustomed swish of the Sister’s linen
skirt, displaying scarcely more interest on sight of Patricia.
The last bed of all was screened.
“He’s in here,” whispered the Sister. She shifted one of the screens
noiselessly; and Patricia tip-toed in.
For a moment, the joy of seeing him eclipsed judgment. Then it was no
longer merely the loving woman, Peter’s wife, who looked down on him;
but Patricia Baynet the doctor’s daughter, sickness-wise by inheritance!
He lay on his back, bandaged arm outside the coverlet. In the shadow
cast by the screens, his unshaved face showed thin and fine-drawn. She
hardly noticed these symptoms; she had expected and discounted them. She
noticed something else—his breathing. It came spasmodically, in quick
uneven jerks through half-opened lips. Twice, during the ten minutes she
stood watching him, he seemed about to awaken; moaned in his
sleep. . . . The Sister signalled to her that it was time to leave him.
Very quietly, she withdrew; and they passed out of the ward again.
“Well,” asked the Sister, “what do you think of him?”
Patricia looked doubtfully at the unintelligent eyes under the white
cap. “How long has he been here?” she asked.
“Two days, I think. I’ve only just come to this ward.”
“Could I see the doctor who’s attending him?”
“He’s left, I think. But the Orderly Officer’s in his room. I’ll take
you to him if you like.”
They found the Orderly Officer, an ascetic-looking young man, seated at
a large desk, telephone in front of him, fountain-pen in hand. He
offered Patricia a seat, listened carefully to her questions.
“Yes,” said Captain Territt, “your husband’s been here two days. I saw
him when he came in. He told me that a piece of shrapnel hit him on the
helmet. Slight case of concussion, I expect. He’ll soon get over that.
And he’s got a touch of bronchial catarrh. Exposure, you know.”
“When did you take his temperature last?”
“Five o’clock, I expect.” He turned to the nurse. “When was it, Sister?”
The girl hesitated. “I—I didn’t take it. He seemed so sound asleep.”
“Well, please go and do so at once.”
The girl hurried out of the room. “We’re frightfully understaffed, you
know,” explained the doctor. Patricia looked at him, summed him up. She
was half mad with anxiety; but she spoke without a trace of emotion.
“May I use your telephone, doctor?” “Certainly.” She pulled the
instrument towards her; called up her father’s number. . . .
The nurse, returning white-faced, thermometer in hand, heard her
say:—“Is that Jenkins speaking? . . . This is Mrs. Jameson. . . . Then
you must put me through to his consulting-room. . . . Is that you,
pater? . . . Did you get my wire? . . . I’m at the hospital now. . . .
No, he’s very ill, and I want you to come down at once. . . . It’s
pneumonia, I think. . . . In half-an-hour. . . . Thanks awfully, pater.”
She hung up the receiver; turned to Captain Territt. “It _is_ pneumonia,
isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so. The temperature’s rather high.”
“How high?”
“A hundred and four point one, under the arm.” Doctor and Sister hurried
out of the room. . . .
She waited their return; waited miserably; visioned Peter fighting for
breath as she had seen her brother Jack fighting for breath, years and
years ago, in the night-nursery at Harley Street. And she, his wife,
could do nothing; must sit there powerless. All the relief at knowing
him saved from the firing-line, all the rosy expectations of his coming
to Sunflowers, faded like silly dreams. Supposing they had only brought
him home to die!
Heron Baynet, entering with the quiet unhurried step of the professional
consultant, hardly recognized his daughter: her face was so drawn with
agony—love-agony of which he had never dreamed her capable.
“Am I in time?” he asked, doubting the answer.
She rose, tottered towards him. “I don’t know, pater, I don’t know
anything. . . .” He caught the panic in her voice, hardened to it.
“Don’t be hysterical, Pat. It does you no good: and it may harm Peter.
Now, tell me exactly what has happened, and why you telephoned.”
At the sound of his voice, nerve came back to her; and she told him of
her suspicions, of their confirmation.
“He was asleep, you say?” asked Heron Baynet.
“Yes.”
“On his back, or propped up?”
“On his back.”
“Oh, you women!” Heron Baynet smiled at his daughter. “You know so much,
and yet you know so little. If it had been as bad as you’ve imagined for
the last half-hour, do you think he could have slept? Why, Pat, he’d
have been bolt upright, breathing fifty to the minute. . . .”
She said, very quietly: “But supposing I hadn’t insisted on seeing him.
Supposing that idiot of a sister. . . .”
A step sounded outside. Captain Territt came in; stiffened at sight of
the civilian; was introduced; wilted at mention of the civilian’s name;
answered the technical questions with the deference due to a consultant.
Yes, the patient had bronchial pneumonia. At least, in Doctor Territt’s
opinion, it was bronchial pneumonia. Perhaps Doctor Baynet would prefer
to form his own opinion. . . .
The two members of the closest Labour Union in England passed out
together, leaving Patricia again alone.
Supposing they had only brought Peter back to die! . . .
§ 4
But Peter Jameson did not die. The pneumonia ran its course—two days of
choking misery for him, of mad anxiety for his wife—then the passing of
crisis—the slow return to painless breath and solid foods.
For the first forty-eight hours, Patricia stayed by him. The
hospital-staff, knowing her Heron Baynet’s daughter, made full amends:
Matron grew kindly; neglectful Sister was unremitting in service. On the
third day, Peter said very weakly, “Hello, old thing, what are you doing
here?”—and she went back to Harley Street a happy woman.
Followed a week of daily visits, during which she talked and he
listened. Temperature dropped to ninety-nine point three. Wound in arm
drained away its poison. She grew nervous about her children left alone
with the servants; ran down to Sunflowers for the day; found chaotic
idleness; stayed the night; straightened things out; returned to town.
At the end of the second week, her father pronounced his patient
definitely out of danger; persuaded her to leave London. She yielded
hesitatingly, realizing for the first time the handicaps of reduced
income—lack of car, lack of governess for the children, of efficient
servants; torn between her love for the man and her duty to his
home. . . .
Peter himself, during that first fortnight, was too ill for emotion. To
be in bed, to be under a solid roof, to be washed—these sensations
contented him. He rather liked waking at night to hear rain outside,
turning to sleep with the thought, “Well, I’m not in that anyway.” He
liked having his meals brought to him on clean china, the sounds of
women’s voices. He experienced a profound relief at the absence of
danger. . . .
But as Peter passed from illness to convalescence, he grew aware of new
dangers. These dangers were manifold, and each terrifying. Never, at the
Front, had he known fear as he knew fear at home. There was the Fear in
Sleep—a horror which woke him, sodden with sweat, from visions of
Lindsay still dying in Trônes Wood, still dying but not yet dead. . . .
There was the Fear in Daylight—a visionless misery, an immense black
cap which the soul donned or doffed at its own bitter will. While that
Fear lasted, the soul under the cap prayed ingratiatingly for
death. . . . There was the Fear of the Future, in which the future held
no hope beyond the present: and the Fear of the Present, when the
present held no hope save the future. . . . There was the Fear of
Time—where time hung dead through eternity or spun so fast that none
might accomplish a second’s labour between his cradle and his
grave. . . . There was the Fear of Pain, and the Fear of Poverty, the
Fear of being Sent Back to the Front, and the Fear of having to Stop at
Home: but strangest, strongest of all the fears Peter learned in those
first days was the Fear of Consumption.
He used to lie for hours remembering Rolleston’s story of the gassed
Canadian, hearing Rolleston’s words about tubercle, till every little
cough seemed a warning of death: then the Fear in Daylight would come to
him, whispering, “Perhaps that is best,” and the Fear of Poverty would
mutter, “There’ll be the insurance money for them if you die.” . . .
Peter did not realize that these fears were among the commonest symptoms
of neurasthenia. Peter knew nothing about neurasthenia, except that
“Pat’s governor made rather a hobby of it”; nothing about shell-shock
beyond the Army dictum of the period, “that it meant a chap got rather
shocked at being shelled.” His fears shamed him; and so he hid them
away, as decent men hide uncleanly impulses; never dreamed of
associating them with that theory about the “Limit of Human Endurance”
which Heron Baynet had once propounded to him over their brandy and
cigars.
This almost impossible battle, the battle of the neurasthenic with his
own soul, Peter Jameson entered on unaided—feeling himself lost to all
honour, coward and traitor in sight of his own manhood. Yet at the
outset he fought well; so well that, so long as he remained in hospital,
not even Heron Baynet suspected his condition. . . .
At the end of his first month, came letters from Garton, from Sandiland
and Purves. The Brigade had been moved northwards (“quite close to where
we first went into action,” wrote the censor-wise Garton): “Mr. Henry”
was riding Little Willie and had taken Jelks for groom: “Captain Lodden
was home, ‘sick.’” It all seemed very far away from the bare echoing
hospital, from the gossip of the ward. . . .
Passed another month of aimless existence, varied only by Patricia’s
weekly visits, by a letter from his brother Arthur, by a box of cigars
from Maurice Beresford, by a state-call of Sir Hubert and Lady
Rawlings. . . .
His arm healed rapidly. They took away his sling, allowed him “down” to
meals—where he learned the Fear of Eating in Public. He went for his
first walk—and discovered the Fear of Traffic. Then, quite
unexpectedly, he was summoned to a Medical Board: at which three kindly
men examined his arm, tested his lungs, and asked him how he “felt in
himself.”
“Quite all right,” said Peter, “but of course I’d like to go home for a
bit.”
They gave him three months’ leave, and advised him to take care of
himself. “One never knows with lungs, you know,” said the
President. . . . And Peter, the Fear of Consumption eating out his last
remnant of will power, took train to the home Patricia had planned for
him.
PART TWENTY-SEVEN
THE NEW SCIENCE
§ 1
Into every marriage there come times of crisis, when man and woman gaze
at each other dumbly across a great wall of misunderstanding. Peter’s
homecoming from hospital provided that crisis in his life and
Patricia’s.
Poor Patricia! she had looked forward so rapturously to having him at
Sunflowers; worked so hard to make the place perfect. And now it seemed
to her as though not only house and children but she herself must be
distasteful to him; as though even palship were ended. Night after
night, his placid kisses banished her to loneliness. Night after wakeful
night, she watched the light in his dressing-room glimmer through the
chinks of the door between them. Poor Patricia! unable to realize that
this man who annoyed her by the very placidity of his demeanour, was
struggling—every minute of the day, and every hour of the night—to
prevent his hands from trembling, his voice from quivering, his every
tone and every attitude from betraying the terrors which were eating
away his self-respect.
Poor Peter! he strove so desperately to conceal his miseries. Poor
Peter, who only succeeded, by not voicing them, in finally convincing
his wife that the something he strove so obviously to conceal from her
must be lack of affection. . . .
Thus brick by reticent brick: he with his nameless shameless fears, she
with her certainty of love lost for ever: these two built up their
pathetic wall of misunderstandings.
In all their lives they had never had so many opportunities for
companionship: in all their lives they had never been so
uncompanionable. They were always together—but they were never in
harmony. Mutual existence turned to a game of finesse—“I mustn’t let
her know this,” “I mustn’t let him see that.” Yet, outwardly, they
remained a very ordinary married couple. No visiting stranger, not even
Francis whom they saw almost daily, perceived the barrier between them.
Walking together, talking together, in the dining-room with the
children, in the garden with Fry, morning and evening, the game of
misunderstanding went on.
And the man used to say to himself: “O God, am I going mad? I am afraid,
afraid. Everything frightens me. One day she will know I am afraid.
Then, she will despise me. The servants know I am afraid: they talk
about me: I cannot hear what they say, but I know they are talking about
me, they talk about me all the time. The children know I am
afraid. . . . O God, what am I afraid of? Of what am I not afraid? I
wish to God I could go back to the front. Death is simpler out there.
And I am only fit for death, because I am afraid to go back to the
front. . . . She mustn’t know that I am afraid, she must never guess
that I am afraid.”
And the woman used to say to herself: “O God, what is behind Peter’s
eyes? He hates it all—me, the children, this house I have made for him.
His voice praises, but his heart condemns me. O God, if he’d only say
what he is thinking. We used to be pals once—and that was not enough
for me. I used to call myself his chattel. Now, I am not even chattel to
him. We are strangers in a strange house. He hates me. He mustn’t guess
that I know of his hatred.”
The woman, at any rate, had work for anodyne. By now, Patricia began to
realize that country life on a moderate income is not the simple
paradise which town dwellers imagine it. She was not yet fully aware of
the robberies practised on her; but she had learned, at least, the
necessity of personal supervision. Children, house, servants, garden,
animals—all needed her. The man Fry, grown arrogant on the proceeds of
speculation (he had utilized her absence to dispose of the apple-crop to
a confederate—and the two were now holding forty bushels of pippins for
the ultimate rise) turned lazy, insubordinate; required constant
prodding. Fanny and Elizabeth—half-trained, utterly uneducated, liars
by inheritance of serfdom—could not be trusted to work unwatched. Also,
accounts had begun to roll in.
None of these inevitable pettinesses would have been a burden, if she
could have laughed over them with Peter. But household affairs had
always been taboo between them: her job and hers only. They had made
that rule in the prosperity of three thousand a year; and she was not
the type of woman to break it in the adversity of six hundred. Moreover,
intuition warned her that he must, for the present, be shielded from
financial anxieties.
Peter, who had no work for anodyne and cherished all the prejudices of
the caste which is not accustomed to see its womenfolk labour, watched
her busied about the house, feeding her chickens, educating the
children, till the Fear of Poverty wiped out all other fears and he said
to himself: “This is the way my clerks used to live. I’ve brought her to
this. I shall bring her to worse than this. . . .” Then he would take
his twelve-bore from the case in his dressing-room, drop a couple of No.
5’s into the breech, and slip through Tebbits’ Farm, down the hill to
Francis Gordon’s cottage.
“Why the devil do you always bring that gun of yours?” Francis used to
ask.
“Might see a rabbit.” Invariably Peter gave the same answer to his
cousin’s question; invariably he felt shamed by it. For the real reason
of that gun-carrying was Fear, the Fear of Open Spaces.
And when Peter used to ask, “Done any work, old man?” Francis would
answer, “Oh, I’m just lying fallow for a bit.” For Francis Gordon had
passed beyond the Fears into the land of No-Incentive.
§ 2
Heron Baynet arrived at Sunflowers on Christmas Eve. Nothing about the
house suggested tragedy: the hedges were clipped, the ground dug; holly
decked the hall; above the oak dining-table hung a bunch of mistletoe;
Peter’s study had been cleared for the children’s tree and presents. The
day itself brought its usual gift-giving, its usual church-going, the
usual roast-beef for lunch, the usual turkey, the usual champagne—and
Francis Gordon who hobbled through Tebbits’ cowyard in full evening-kit
and a fur-coat—for dinner.
The usual Christmas dinner-party! Yet all through it, Heron Baynet felt
conscious of tension. To his professional mind, these three fairly
ordinary people—the young wife, the convalescent and the invalided
soldier—seemed somehow out of tune with the world and with each other;
he sensed discord in the apparent harmony of their even small-talk.
Instinctively, he began to analyse them, to look for tangible symptoms
of that intangible tension.
What could be the trouble? Covertly, he studied Peter. The man looked
thin, of course: that was to be expected after his illness. He spoke
rather more slowly than usual, drank more than his share of wine, seemed
to grip knife and fork. . . . “I wonder,” thought Heron Baynet. Then
Fanny, entering hurriedly, caught her foot in the edge of the carpet,
stumbled, recovered her balance. The doctor saw Peter’s face twitch for
the fraction of a second; saw the lower jaw drop, jerk back into
position as the fifth nerve sent its message of control from the taut
brain. “Poor devil,” thought Heron Baynet. . . .
In the light of that subtle revelation, many things became clear to the
neurologist’s mind: he understood his daughter’s occasional glances at
her husband, Peter’s carefully modulated voice, the whole atmosphere of
watchful distrust in which these two must have been living since his
son-in-law returned from hospital. Professional instinct satisfied, he
turned his attention to Francis.
But nothing in Francis Gordon’s demeanour betrayed tension. On the
contrary, he seemed—compared with the super-alertness of Peter and
Patricia—a mind gone mute. He talked, and he ate, and he drank, like an
automaton. . . .
Meal over, Patricia left her three men alone in the small candle-lit
dining-room. The maid brought coffee; Peter produced cigars. They talked
for a little about the fall of the Asquith Cabinet, Lloyd George, Tanks,
the chances of America coming in.
The last topic seemed to strike a responsive chord in Francis Gordon’s
mind. His eyes brightened to it for a moment: then the flame in them
went dead. Peter told about Charlie Henry; Heron Baynet led him from
that to his own wounding.
“I don’t remember much after I was hit,” said Peter, and shied off the
subject.
“But were you unconscious all the way to England?”
“I suppose so.”
Conversation languished for a moment. Then Peter edged his chair towards
his father-in-law’s; began to talk medicine. Peter opened very
carefully, feeling his way with each sentence towards the topic which
for the moment obsessed him: but it did not take the doctor’s astute
mind very long to realize that he was being pumped for information. And
the information his son-in-law sought was all about one
subject—tubercle. “At what age were people most liable to consumption?”
“How did it start?” “Was it hereditary?” “How long did it take to kill a
man?” “Could it be cured?” . . .
* * * * *