THE SKELETON IN SELWYN'S CUPBOARD
After tea, Selwyn escorted Sara upstairs and introduced her to his wife.
Mrs. Selwyn was a slender, colourless woman, possessing the remnants of
what must at one time have been an ineffective kind of prettiness. She
was a determinedly chronic invalid, and rarely left the rooms which
had been set aside for her use to join the other members of the family
downstairs.
“The stairs try my heart, you see,” she told Sara, with the martyred air
peculiar to the hypochondriac--the genuine sufferer rarely has it.
“It is, of course, a great deprivation to me, and I don't think either
Dick”--with an inimical glance at her husband--“or Molly come up to see
me as often as they might. Stairs are no difficulty to _them_.”
Selwyn, who invariably ran up to see his wife immediately on his return
from no matter how long or how tiring a round of professional visits,
bit his lip.
“I come as often as I can, Minnie,” he said patiently. “You must
remember my time is not my own.”
“No, dear, of course not. And I expect that outside patients are much
more interesting to visit than one's own wife,” with a disagreeable
little laugh.
“They mean bread-and-butter, anyway,” said Selwyn bluntly.
“Of course they do.” She turned to Sara. “Dick always thinks in terms of
bread-and-butter, Miss Tennant,” she said sneeringly. “But money means
little enough to any one with my poor health. Beyond procuring me a few
alleviations, there is nothing it can do for me.”
Sara was privately of the opinion that it had done a good deal for her.
Looking round the luxuriously furnished room with its blazing fire, and
then at Mrs. Selwyn herself, elegantly clad in a rest-gown of rich silk,
she could better understand the poverty-stricken appearance of the rest
of the house, Dick's shabby clothes, and his willingness to receive a
paying guest whose contribution towards the housekeeping might augment
his slender income.
Here, then, was where his hard-earned guineas went--to keep in luxury
this petulant, complaining woman whose entire thoughts were centred
about her own bodily comfort, and whom Patrick Lovell, with his lucid
recognition of values, would have contemptuously described as “a
parasite woman, m'dear--the kind of female I've no use for.”
“Oh, Dick”--Mrs. Selwyn had been turning over the pages of a price-list
that was lying on her knee--“I see the World's Store have just brought
out a new kind of adjustable reading-table. It's a much lighter make
than the one I have. I think I should find it easier to use.”
Selwyn's face clouded.
“How much does it cost, dear?” he asked nervously. “These mechanical
contrivances are very expensive, you know.”
“Oh, this one isn't. It's only five guineas.”
“Five guineas is rather a lot of money, Minnie,” he said gravely.
“Couldn't you manage with the table you have for a bit longer?”
Mrs. Selwyn tossed the price-list pettishly on to the floor.
“Of, of course!” she declared. “That's always the way. 'Can't I manage
with what I have? Can't I make do with this, that, and the other?'
I believe you grudge every penny you spend on me!” she wound up
acrimoniously.
A dull red crept into Selwyn's face.
“You know it's not that, Minnie,” he replied in a painfully controlled
voice. “It's simply that I _can't afford_ these things. I give you
everything I can. If I were only a rich man, you should have everything
you want.”
“Perhaps if you were to work a little more intelligently you'd make more
money,” she retorted. “If only you'd keep your brains for the use of
people who can _pay_--and pay well--I shouldn't be deprived of every
little comfort I ask for! Instead of that, you've got half the poor of
Monkshaven on your hands--and if you think they can't afford to pay, you
simply don't send in a bill. Oh, _I_ know!”--sitting up excitedly in her
chair, a patch of angry scarlet staining each cheek--“I hear what
goes on--even shut away from the world as I am. It's just to curry
popularity--you get all the praise, and I suffer for it! _I_ have to go
without what I want--”
“Oh, hush! Hush!” Selwyn tried ineffectually to stem the torrent of
complaint.
“No, I won't hush! It's 'Doctor Dick this,' and 'Doctor Dick that'--oh,
yes, you see, I know their name for you, these slum patients of
yours!--but it's Doctor Dick's wife who really foots the bills--by going
without what she needs!”
“Minnie, be quiet!” Selwyn broke in sternly. “Remember Miss Tennant is
present.”
But she had got beyond the stage when the presence of a third person,
even that of an absolute stranger, could be depended upon to exercise
any restraining effect.
“Well, since Miss Tenant's going to live here, the sooner she knows how
things stand the better! She won't be here long without seeing how I'm
treated”--her voice rising hysterically--“set on one side, and denied
even the few small pleasures my health permits----”
She broke off in a storm of angry weeping, and Sara retreated hastily
from the room, leaving husband and wife alone together.
She had barely regained the shabby sitting-room when the front door
opened and closed with a bang, and a gay voice could be heard calling--
“Jane! Jane! Come here, my pretty Jane! I've brought home some shrimps
for tea!”
“Hold your noise, Miss Molly, now do!”
Sara could hear Jane's admonitory whisper, and there followed a murmured
colloquy, punctuated by exclamations and gusts of young laughter,
calling forth renewed remonstrance from Jane, and then the door of the
room was flung open, and Molly Selwyn sailed in and overwhelmed Sara
with apologies for her reception, or rather, for the lack of it. She was
quite charming in her penitence, waving dimpled, deprecating hands, and
appealing to Sara with a pair of liquid, disarming, golden-brown eyes
that earned her forgiveness on the spot.
She was a statuesque young creature, compact of large, soft, gracious
curves and swaying movements--with her nimbus of pale golden hair, and
curiously floating, undulating walk, rather reminding one of a stray
goddess. Always untidy with hooks lacking at important junctures, and
the trimmings of her hats usually pinned on with a casualness that
occasionally resulted in their deserting the hat altogether, she could
still never be other than delightful and irresistibly desirable to look
upon.
Her red, curving mouth of a child, cleft chin, and dimpled, tapering
hands all promised a certain yieldingness of disposition--a tendency
to take always the line of least resistance--but it was a charming,
appealing kind of frailty which most people--the sterner sex,
certainly--would be very ready to condone.
It is a wonderful thing to be young. Molly poured herself out a cup
of hideously stewed tea and drank it joyously to an accompaniment of
shrimps and bread-and-butter, and when Sara uttered a mild protest, she
only laughed and declared that it was a wholesome and digestible diet
compared with some of the “studio teas” perpetrated by the artists'
colony at Oldhampton, of which she was a member.
She chattered away gaily to Sara, giving her vivacious thumb-nail
portraits of her future neighbours--the people Selwyn had described as
being “much nicer than ourselves.”
“The Herricks and Audrey Maynard are our most intimate friends--I'm
sure you'll adore them. Mrs. Maynard is a widow, and if she weren't so
frightfully rich, Monkshaven would be perennially shocked at her. She
is ultra-fashionable, and smokes whenever she chooses, and swears
when ordinary language fails her--all of which things, of course,
are anathema to the select circles of Monkshaven. But then she's a
millionaire's widow, so instead of giving her the cold shoulder, every
one gushes round her and declares 'Mrs. Maynard is such a thoroughly
_modern_ type, you know!'”--Molly mimicked the sugar-and-vinegar
accents of the critics to perfection--“and privately Audrey shouts with
laughter at them, while publicly she continues to shock them for the
sheer joy of the thing.”
“And who are the Herricks?” asked Sara, smiling. “Married people?”
“No.” Molly shook her head. “Miles is a bachelor who lives with a maiden
aunt--Miss Lavinia. Or, rather, she lives with him and housekeeps for
him. 'The Lavender Lady,' I always call her, because she's one of those
delightful old-fashioned people who remind one of dimity curtains, and
pot-pourri, and little muslin bags of lavender. Miles is a perfect pet,
but he's lame, poor dear.”
Sara waited with a curious eagerness for any description which might
seem to fit her recent fellow-traveller, but none came, and at last she
threw out a question in the hope of eliciting his name.
“He was horribly ungracious and rude,” she added, “and yet he didn't
look in the least the sort of man who would be like that. There was no
lack of breeding about him. He was just deliberately snubby--as
though I had no right to exist on the same planet with
him--anyway”--laughing--“not in the same railway compartment.”
Molly nodded sagely.
“I believe I know whom you mean. Was he a lean, brown, grim-looking
individual, with the kind of eyes that almost make you jump when they
look at you suddenly?”
“That certainly describes them,” admitted Sara, smiling faintly.
“Then it was the Hermit of Far End,” announced Molly.
“The Hermit of Far End?”
“Yes. He's a queer, silent man who lives all by himself at a house built
almost on the edge of Monk's Cliff--you must have seen it as you drove
up?”
“Oh!” exclaimed Sara, with sudden enlightenment. “Then his name is
Trent. The cabman presented me with that information,” she added, in
answer to Molly's look of surprise.
“Yes--Garth Trent. It's rather an odd name--sounds like a railway
collision, doesn't it? But it suits him somehow”--reflectively.
“Have you met him?” prompted Sara. It was odd how definite an interest
her brief encounter with him had aroused in her.
“Yes--once. He treated me”--giggling delightedly--“rather as if I
_wasn't there_! At least”--reminiscently--“he tried to.”
“It doesn't sound as though he had succeeded?” suggested Sara, amused.
Molly looked at her solemnly.
“He told some one afterwards--Miles Herrick, the only man he ever speaks
to, I think, without compulsion--that I was 'the Delilah type of woman,
and ought to have been strangled at birth.'”
“He must be a charming person,” commented Sara ironically.
“Oh, he's a woman-hater--in fact, I believe he has a grudge against the
world in general, but woman in particular. I expect”--shrewdly--“he's
been crossed in love.”
At this moment Selwyn re-entered the room, his grave face clearing a
little as he caught sight of his daughter.
“Hullo, Molly mine! Got back, then?” he said, smiling. “Have you made
your peace with Miss Tennant, you scatterbrained young woman?”
“It's a hereditary taint, Dad--don't blame _me_!” retorted Molly with
lazy impudence, pulling his head down and kissing him on the top of his
ruffled hair.
Selwyn grinned.
“I pass,” he submitted. “And who is it that's been crossed in love?”
“The Hermit of Far End.”
“Oh”--turning to Sara--“so you have been discussing our local enigma?”
“Yes. I fancy I must have travelled down with him from Oldhampton. He
seemed rather a boorish individual.”
“He would be. He doesn't like women.”
“Monk's Cliff would appear to be an appropriate habitation for him,
then,” commented Sara tartly.
They all laughed, and presently Selwyn suggested that his daughter
should run up and see her mother.
“She'll be hurt if you don't go up, kiddy,” he said. “And try and be
very nice to her--she's a little tired and upset to-day.”
When she had left the room he turned to Sara, a curious blending of
proud reluctance and regret in his eyes.
“I'm so sorry, Miss Tennant,” he said simply, “that you should have seen
our worst side so soon after your arrival. You--you must try and pardon
it--”
“Oh, please, please don't apologize,” broke in Sara hastily. “I'm so
sorry I happened to be there just then. It was horrible for you.”
He smiled at her wistfully.
“It's very kind of you to take it like that,” he said. “After
all”--frankly--“you could not have remained with us very long without
finding out our particular skeleton in the cupboard. My wife's state of
health--or, rather, what she believes to be her state of health--is a
great grief to me. I've tried in every way to convince her that she is
not really so delicate as she imagines, but I've failed utterly.”
Now that the ice was broken, he seemed to find relief in pouring out the
pitiful little tragedy of his home life.
“She is comparatively young, you know, Miss Tennant--only thirty-seven,
and she willfully leads the life of a confirmed invalid. It has grown
upon her gradually, this absorption in her health, and now, practically
speaking, Molly has no mother and I no wife.”
“Oh, Doctor Dick”--the little nickname, that had its origin in his
slum patients' simple affection for the man who tended them, came
instinctively from her lips. It seemed, somehow, to fit itself to the
big, kindly man with the sternly rugged face and eyes of a saint. “Oh,
Doctor Dick, I'm so sorry--so very sorry!”
Perhaps something in the dainty, well-groomed air of the woman beside
him helped to accentuate the neglected appearance of the room, for
he looked round in an irritated kind of way, as though all at once
conscious of its deficiencies.
“And this--this, too,” he muttered. “There's no one at the helm. . . .
The truth is, I ought never to have let you come here.”
Sara shook her head.
“I've very glad I came,” she said simply. “I think I'm going to be very
happy here.”
“You've got grit,” he replied quietly. “You'd make a success of your
life anywhere. I wish”--thoughtfully--“Molly had a little of that same
quality. Sometimes”--a worried frown gathered on his face--“I get afraid
for Molly. She's such a child . . . and no mother to hold the reins.”
“Doctor Dick, would you consider it impertinent if--if I laid my hands
on the reins--just now and then?”
He whirled round, his eyes shining with gratitude.
“Impertinent! I should be illimitably thankful! You can see how things
are--I am compelled to be out all my time, my wife hardly ever leaves
her own rooms, and Molly and the house affairs just get along as best
they can.”
“Then,” said Sara, smiling, “I shall put my finger in the pie. I've--I've
no one to look after now, since Uncle Patrick died,” she added. “I
think, Doctor Dick, I've found my job.”
“It's absurd!” he exclaimed, regarding her with unfeigned delight. “Here
you come along, prepared, no doubt, to be treated as a 'guest,' and the
first thing I do is to shovel half my troubles on to your shoulders.
It's absurd--disgraceful! . . . But it's amazingly good!” He held out
his hand, and as Sara's slim fingers slid into his big palm, he muttered
a trifle huskily: “God bless you for it, my dear!”