Well, I mean to say, people don't fall ill for nothing, do they?"
"Selina!" Jasmine gasped. "You're making the most dreadful accusation.
You really ought to be careful."
"That's what I am being. Careful. If I wasn't careful, I should have
gone and hollered it out in the streets, shouldn't I? But I know better.
Before I'd hollered it out once or twice I should have been asked to eat
my words, if you'll excuse the vulgar expression. And then where should
I have been?"
"Yes, but I don't think you ought to say things like that even to me.
After all...." Jasmine hesitated; she was debating indeed whether to say
'Miss Pamela' or 'Pamela.' If she used the former, she should seem to be
dissociating herself too much from Selina, which in view of having
accepted the loan of that money would be snobbish; and yet if she called
her simply 'Pamela' she should seem to be associating herself too
intimately with Selina, even perhaps to be endorsing the terrible
accusation, which was only one of Selina's ridiculous exaggerations, on
the level of her theory that the human race was without exception
damned. "After all," she had found the way to put it, "my cousin, you
see she _is_ my cousin."
"Well," Selina granted unwillingly, "if she didn't poison him with
arsenic, she poisoned his mind. The things she used to say at the
dinner-table! Well, I give you my word, I was in two twos once or twice
whether I wouldn't bang her on the head with the cover of the potato
dish. I give you my word, it was itching in my hand. Nasty sneering way
of talking! I don't know where people who calls theirselves ladies learn
such manners. And no sooner had that there Pamela gone than that there
Lettice appeared. Lettice, indeed! There's not much green about her.
Anyone more cunning I've never seen. Nasty insinuendos, enough to make
anyone sick! Small wonder the poor old gentleman had no appetite for his
food! And of course she attempted to set him against me. Well, on one
occasion he akcherly used language to me which I give you my word if
he'd of been a day younger I wouldn't have stood it. Language I should
be sorry to use to a convick myself. Well, there have been times when
I've wondered if the Lord wasn't a little bit too particular. You know
what I mean, a little too dictatorial and old-fashioned. But I give you
my word since I've had two months of them I sympathize with Him. Yes, I
sympathize with Him! And if I was Him, I'd do the same thing. Well, I
never expected to enjoy looking down out of Heaven at a lot of poor
souls burning; but if this goes on much longer, I shall begin to think
that it's one of the glories of Paradise. I could watch the whole lot of
them burning by the hour. And that's not the worst I've told you. Even
if they didn't akcherly poison him, they're glad he's ill, and I
wouldn't mind who heard me say that. I'd go and shout out that this very
moment in Piccadilly Circus. And their mother! Nosey, nasty,
stuck-up--well, it's no use sitting here and talking about what they
are. What we've got to do is to spoil their little game. If I go up to
see if he wants anything, I get ordered out of the room like the dirt
beneath their feet. 'We've got to be very careful,' says that smarmy
doctor they've got in to annoy me. 'Very careful.' says I, looking at
him very meaning. 'Terrible to hear anyone suffer like that,' he says.
'Yes, it is terrible,' says I. 'And the terrible thing is,' he says,
'that however much one wants to alleviorate the pain, we daren't do it.
And whyever won't he come out of that dreadful little room,' he says,
'when there's all those nice bedrooms lying empty?' 'You let him be
where he is,' I said, 'it's his house, isn't it?' And then, before I
could stop them, they started lifting the box mattress and trying to
move him out of the bathroom. And the way he screamed and carried on, it
was something shocking to hear him! And I know the reason perfectly
well. Underneath the mattress _in_ the bath he keeps his coffin. Many's
the time he's congratulated himself to me on getting that coffin so
cheap. 'It's oak, Selina,' he used to say, 'and I got it cheap for a
misfit, and it fills up the bath a treat.' Well, it stands to reason,
doesn't it, that now of all times he wants to keep it handy? 'No deal
coffins for me, Selina,' he used to say. Besides, it's my belief he's
got his will inside of that coffin. Depend upon it, he's got his own
reasons for not wishing to be moved. So I stood in the doorway, and I
said very fierce: 'If you want to move him, you'll have to move me
first.' And then it came over me all of a sudden that if I got you back
here to help we might be able to do something both together."
In spite of Selina's marvels and exaggerations and absurd
misconstructions, her tale convinced Jasmine of Uncle Matthew's hatred
of being taken charge of by the Hector Grants. Naturally she sympathized
with his point of view on this matter. To be helpless in the hands of
the Hector Grants struck her as a punishment far in excess of anything
that the old gentleman deserved. She did not feel that it was her duty
to interfere in the slightest degree with the normal process of his
will, but she did feel that she had a right if he were not comfortable
to protest her own anxiety to look after him, even more, to insist upon
looking after him. She supposed that her Aunt May would attribute the
lowest motives to this intention; Aunt May, however, always attributed
low motives to everybody, and the lowest motives of all to her niece.
"Well?" asked Selina sharply when Jasmine did not offer any remarks upon
her tale.
"I'm sorry," said Jasmine, pulling herself together. "I was wondering
what excuse I should be able to give my aunt for seeming to interfere."
"Excuse?" Selina repeated angrily. "No excuse is needed, I assure you,
for putting yourself forward on his behalf, as you might say. What he
requires is looking after. What he's getting is nothing of the kind."
At that moment a scream rang through the house. Jasmine looked at Selina
in horror.
"What did I tell you?" the housekeeper demanded triumphantly. "I told
you he carried on something awful, and you wouldn't believe me. It's a
wonder he hasn't started in screaming before. I've never known him quiet
for so long at a stretch. Bloodcurdling, I call it. You often read of
bloodcurdling screams. Now you can hear them for yourself. There he goes
again."
And it really was bloodcurdling to hear from that old man's room what
sounded like the shrieks of a passionate, frightened, tortured child. It
had the effect of rousing Jasmine to an immediate encounter with her
aunt, an encounter to brace herself up to which, until she had heard
Uncle Matthew scream, had been growing more and more difficult with
every moment of delay. Now she sprang out of her chair and hurried up
the wide central staircase, past the countless figures in the pictures
that stared at her when she passed like a frightened crowd. She ran too
quickly for Selina to keep up with her, and when she turned down into
the passage at the end of which was her uncle's little room, she beheld
what, without the real agony and pain at the back of it, would have been
a merely grotesque sight. The box-mattress on which Uncle Matthew was
lying was half-way through the door of his bedroom, carried by two men
of respectful and sober appearance whom she recognized as two male
nurses that she had once seen on the steps of Sir Hector's house in
Harley Street arming an old man with a shaven head into a brougham. The
old man's eyes had been wild and tragic, and their wildness and tragedy
had been rendered more conspicuous to Jasmine by the very respect with
which the attendants treated him and the very sobriety of their manner
and appearance; to such an extent indeed that the personalities of the
two men, if two such colourless individuals could be allowed to possess
personality, had been tinged, or rather not so much tinged as glazed
over, with a sinister aura. So now when she saw them for the second
time, struggling in the doorway while her uncle held fast to the frame
and tried to prevent the bed's being carried out, she had a swift and
sickening sensation of horror. She was hurrying down the passage to
protest against the old gentleman's being moved against his will, when
her aunt emerged from one of the nearer bedrooms and stood before her.
"What are you doing to Uncle Matthew?" demanded Jasmine furiously, not
pausing to explain her own presence. She had a moment's satisfaction in
perceiving that Lady Grant was obviously taken aback at seeing her
there; but her aunt soon recovered herself sufficiently to reply with
her wonted coldness:
"It scarcely seems to concern you, my dear; and may I enquire in my turn
what _you_ are doing _here_?"
"Oh, you needn't think you can put me off like that," Jasmine went on
apace. "I've left Silchester, and I'm going to stay here until Uncle
Matthew is better, and I'll answer no questions until he is better."
"Indeed? That will be for your uncle and me to decide."
"Oh no, it won't. You're not my guardians. You weren't appointed my
guardians, and you've got no say in the matter at all. If Uncle Matthew
doesn't want to be taken out of his own room, why should he be, when
he's ill?"
Another person now appeared, a sleek, pale, old young man, whom Jasmine
recognized from Selina's allusion as the 'smarmy' doctor. She took
advantage of his presence to run past her aunt and speak to the old
gentleman, who was so much occupied in holding on to the frame of the
door that he was apparently unconscious of his niece's arrival.
"If you please, miss," said one of the nurses, "you'd better not excite
the patient just now."
Jasmine paid no attention to this advice, but knelt down and with all
the force she could achieve kept on calling out to know what Uncle
Matthew wanted, until at last the old gentleman was induced to recognize
her. He was evidently pleased at her arrival, so much pleased that he
offered her his hand in greeting, a gesture which cost him his hold on
the frame of the door. The male nurses were quick to take advantage of
this, and while Jasmine was still on her knees, they hurried him along
the passage and vanished through the door from which Lady Grant had just
emerged. Jasmine realized that her interference had only succeeded in
helping the other side, and in a mist of mortification and self-reproach
she followed the bed into the room prepared to receive the sick man. She
was bound to admit to herself that the room was well chosen and
admirably prepared. Yet she knew that the more careful the preparations,
the more acutely would they aggravate her uncle's discomfort. The fire
burning lavishly in the grate, the flowers blooming wastefully on the
table, the sick room's glittering equipment, they would seem to him
detestable extravagances which in his feeble condition he was powerless
to prevent. As soon as Uncle Matthew was safely out of his little
bath-bedroom, Lady Grant locked the door and put the key in her bag; but
Selina arrived on the scene in time for this action by her ladyship, to
whom she proceeded to give, or rather at whom she proceeded to throw a
piece of her mind. When the housekeeper paused for breath, her ladyship
merely said coldly that if she did not behave herself, she would find
herself and her boxes in the street.
"This kind of thing has been going on long enough," Lady Grant
proclaimed to the world. "It was time for his relations to interfere."
Jasmine, when she made an effort to consider the situation calmly, could
not help acknowledging that by that world to which she had appealed all
the right and all the reason would be awarded to her aunt. An abusive
housekeeper trying to interfere between doctor and patient would stand
little chance of obtaining even a hearing for her point of view,
especially when that doctor was Sir Hector Grant. Moreover, she began to
ask herself, might not Selina have merely got a bee buzzing in her
bonnet about interference for the sake of interference? Had not her own
judgment been wrought up by Selina's mysterious way of summoning her to
Rouncivell Lodge and by the stifling atmosphere that enwrapped it to
imagining what was, after all, looked at sanely, a melodramatic and
improbable situation? One thing she was determined to do, however, and
that was to stay in the house herself, not for any purpose connected
with wills concealed in coffins under beds, but simply in order to be
able to devote herself to Uncle Matthew's comfort. If her aunt really
was trying to manipulate the old gentleman's end--and of course the idea
was absurd--but if she were, she would find her niece's presence an
obstacle to the success of her schemes, and if her wicked intentions
were nothing more than the creation of Selina's highflown fancy....
Jasmine broke off her thoughts and went back to her uncle's new room,
where, pulling up a chair beside his bed, she took his hand and asked if
he did not feel a little better. The effort he had made to resist
removal had exhausted him, and he was lying on the box-mattress
breathing so faintly and looking so pale that she rose again in alarm to
call the doctor, who was talking to Lady Grant outside. She had not
moved a step from the bed before Uncle Matthew called to her in a weak
voice, a voice, however, that still retained the accent of command, and
bade her sit down again. It was at least a satisfaction to feel that he
had grasped the fact of her presence and that he was evidently anxious
to keep her by his side. Presently, when the respectful and sober male
nurses had respectfully and soberly left the house, like two plumbers
who had accomplished their job, the doctor came back to ask softly if
Mr. Rouncivell could not bring himself to change his bed as well as his
room. The old gentleman made no further opposition, but allowed himself
to be lifted down from the box-mattress and tucked up in the big
four-poster, after which the box-mattress, upon which he had slept for
so many years in his bath, was carried away. Jasmine was now alone with
him, and he beckoned her to lean over to catch what she feared might be
his last whisper.
She was unnecessarily nervous.
"They think I'm going to die," he chuckled. "But I'm not. Ha! Ha!"
Five minutes afterward he was peacefully sleeping.
Downstairs Jasmine was allowed the pleasure of thoroughly and
extensively defying her aunt. Nothing that Lady Grant said could make
her flinch from her avowed determination not to leave Rouncivell Lodge
until her uncle was definitely better. Only when she was satisfied on
this point would she agree to go wherever she was sent. She even took a
delight in drawing such a heightened picture of the affair with Edward
and Harry Vibart at the Deanery as to call down upon her the epithet
'shameless.' She announced that if after she had visited Uncle Alec and
Aunt Mildred she found that she did not get on better with them than
with the rest of her relations, she should somehow borrow the money to
return to Sirene, whence nothing should induce her ever to return to
England.
"It occurs to me," said Lady Grant, "that you are trying to be
impertinent."
"I don't care what occurs to you," Jasmine retorted. "I am simply
telling you what I intend to do. I've got a kind of fondness for Uncle
Matthew--not a very deep fondness, but a kind of fondness--and although
you think me so heartless, I really am anxious about him, and I really
should like to stay here until he's better."
It must have been difficult for Lady Grant to refrain from giving
expression to the implication that was on the tip of her tongue; but she
did refrain, and Jasmine could not help admiring her for doing so.
However, she was determined to provoke a discussion about that very
implication, and of her own accord she assured her aunt that she need be
under no apprehension over Uncle Matthew's money, because she had no
intention of trying to influence him in any way whatever.
"Impudent little wretch!" Aunt May gasped. And Jasmine gloried in her
ability to have wrung from that cold and well-mannered woman such a
betrayal of her radical femininity.
Jasmine did not expect to have the house to herself; nevertheless, in
spite of continual visits from Lettice and Pamela, from Aunt Cuckoo and
Aunt Ellen--the last-named greeting Jasmine as an abbess might greet a
runaway nun--most of Uncle Matthew's entertainment fell upon her
shoulders. This was not that the others did not take their turn at the
bedside, but when they did, the old gentleman always pretended to be
asleep, whereas with Jasmine he was conversational, much more
conversational, indeed, than he had ever been when he was well. One day
she felt that she really was forgiven when he asked her to go down to
the hall and bring up his collection of sticks, all of which in turn he
looked at and stroked and fondled; after this he made Jasmine put down
in pencil the cost of each one, add up the sum, divide it by the number
of sticks, and establish the average cost of each. When he had
established the average cost, all the sticks that had cost more he made
her put on one side, and all the sticks that had cost less on the other.
After the sticks were classified, she was told to fetch various pieces
of bric-a-brac on which he was anxious to gloat, as a convalescent child
gloats over his long-neglected toys; finally one afternoon the
musical-box was brought up, and the whole of its twelve tunes played
through twice over.
Next morning he announced that he should get up.
"Oh no, I'm not dead yet," he said. "And, after all, why should I be?
I'm only seventy-six. I've got a lot more years to live before I die."
Since the old gentleman had been out of danger, Selina had ceased to
worry; but she still insisted that his will was in the coffin, and that
time would prove her words true one of these days.
"Depend upon it," she told Jasmine, "they meant him to die without
leaving any will at all. They meant him to die untested. Oh yes, that's
what they meant him to do, and her ladyship--though why she should call
herself a ladyship any more than Mrs. Vokins is beyond me, and I've
known many real ladyships in my time--oh yes, her ladyship had worked it
all out. She knew she couldn't expect to get it all, the cunning Isaacs.
So she thought she'd have it divided amongst the lot, thinking as half a
loaf's better than no bread. You'd have been a loser and I'd have been
a loser by that game. And depend upon it the old gentleman saw through
her, and made up his mind he would not die. Oh dear, if he'd only make
up his mind to get salvation, there's no reason why he should worry
about anything at all. No reason whatever. Think how nice it would be if
we could all meet in Heaven one day and talk over all this. Oh, wouldn't
it be nice? Think of the lovely weather they must always get in Heaven.
I suppose we should be sitting about out of doors half the time. Or
that's my notion anyway. But you and he won't be there, so what's the
use in making plans to meet?"
_Chapter Ten_
Jasmine was not even yet cynical enough to keep herself from feeling
hurt when Uncle Matthew on his recovery did not press her to stay on
with him at Rouncivell Lodge, and, what was even more pointed, did not
suggest that she might accompany him to Bournemouth, where in accordance
with the prescription of Sir Hector Grant he was to regain all the
vigour possible for a man of his age to enjoy. The Hector Grants, in
their eagerness to help the old gentleman's convalescence, had taken a
furnished house among the pines, the superb situation of which, with a
great show of deference and affection, he had been invited to enjoy.
Perhaps the old gentleman, who had been for several weeks the unwilling
host of so many anxious relations, wanted to get back some of the
expenses of hospitality. Jasmine thought that he owed as much to her
devotion as to insist on her company; Uncle Matthew, however, did not
appear sensible of any obligation, and he accepted Lettice and Pamela as
his companions for alternate weeks without a murmur on behalf of
Jasmine. Lettice and Pamela themselves were furious. They would have
much preferred to sacrifice any prospects in Uncle Matthew's will to the
dances of the autumn season; nor were they appeased by their mother's
suggestion that separation from each other for a time might lead to many
offers of marriage from young men who had hitherto been perplexed by the
difficulty of choosing between them.
"I suppose you want me to go and stay with Uncle Alec and Aunt Mildred?"
Jasmine asked one day when Lady Grant was demanding from the world at
large what was the wisest thing to do with Jasmine and when Cousin Edith
was apparently sunk in too profound an abyss of incertitude to be able
to reply for the world at large.
"Why should you suppose that?" Lady Grant enquired gently.
"Well, they're the only relatives left to whom I haven't been passed
on," said Jasmine. She was still able to hold her own against Aunt May
in the bandying of words; but the failure of Uncle Matthew to appreciate
her services had been fatal to any advance toward a real independence,
and she was already beginning to wonder if it was worth while being rude
to Aunt May, and if she might not be more profitably occupied in ousting
Cousin Edith and securing for herself Cousin Edith's humiliating but
superficially comfortable position in the household at Harley Street.
"What curious expressions you do employ, Jasmine. When I was your age, I
should never have dreamed of employing such expressions. But then in my
young days we were taught manners."
"And deportment," Cousin Edith added. "Don't you remember, Cousin May,
how strict about that the Miss Watneys used to be in the dear old days
at school?"
But Lady Grant did not wish to remember that she was once at school with
Cousin Edith, and in order to snub Cousin Edith she had to forgo the
pleasure of lecturing Jasmine upon her curious use of verbs.
"It is quite a coincidence," she went on, "that you should mention Uncle
Alec and Aunt Mildred, because only this morning I received an
invitation for you to go and stay with them at Curtain Wells. The
trouble is that since the unfortunate affair at your Aunt Ellen's I
feel some responsibility for your behaviour. Uncle Alec and Aunt Mildred
are very strict about the Prince. They have to be. And inasmuch as one
of the reasons for entrusting him to them was the advantage of being
given Uncle Hector's particular attention, really I don't know...."
At this moment Sir Hector himself came into the room, and his wife broke
off to ask him what he thought.
"What do you think, my dear, about this proposed visit to Alec and
Mildred? Could you recommend Jasmine in the circumstances? I know that
in many ways she might make herself very useful. You must learn ludo,
Jasmine, if we let you go. The Prince is very fond of ludo. But----"
Lady Grant paused, and Jasmine, who did not at all want to entertain the
royal lunatic, hurriedly suggested that she should go and live with
Selina at Rouncivell Lodge while Uncle Matthew was recuperating at
Bournemouth.
"What extraordinary notions you do get hold of," her aunt declared.
"Extraordinary!" Cousin Edith echoed.
Both ladies looked at Sir Hector as if they supposed that he would at
once certify his niece insane after such a remark. He did not seem to
find the notion so extraordinary, and his wife went on hurriedly, for
she was realizing that Jasmine's suggestion of living with Selina
attracted her husband.
"I'm inclined to think that Selina will not stay long at Rouncivell
Lodge," she said. "After her behaviour during poor old Uncle Matthew's
illness you may be sure that she will receive no help from me. Frankly,
I shall do my best to persuade Uncle Matthew that she is an unsuitable
person."
How glad Jasmine would have been to retort with a sarcastic remark
about Aunt May's behaviour! But she could not; she was falling back into
complete dependency; she would soon begin to wither, and she gazed at
Cousin Edith as if she were a Memento Mori, a skeleton whose fingers
pointed warningly at the future.
"Anyway," said Jasmine to herself when she took her seat in the train at
Paddington, "this is the last lot. And if they're worse than the others
it won't be so bad to come back to Harley Street."