A long, long week went by, and it was now the evening of the 16th of
November. Nurse Bradfield had been out for an hour after lunch, and
while she was out Ivy had “looked after” Jervis. She made a point of
doing this at some time of her day, though it was always over-full.
Being both good humoured and good natured, Nurse Bradfield fell in
easily with any plan proposed by her patient’s wife. She had become
very fond of Jervis Lexton, and, though aware of Ivy Lexton’s
selfishness and innate frivolity and levity, she was yet attracted, in
spite of herself, by the younger woman’s beauty, and what was in very
truth an exceptional charm of manner, and what some of Ivy’s friends
called her cheeriness.
Nurse Bradfield would have been surprised indeed could she have looked
into Ivy Lexton’s mind, and seen how often and how anxiously that mind
was occupied with herself.
Often the nurse would be touched and gratified by the consideration
with which she was treated, and her comfort studied. It was no wonder
that she, on her side, never even thought of insisting on her right to
a certain amount of rest and exercise. She was no longer a young
woman. She had few friends in London, and this day nursing job with a
pleasant young couple was an agreeable interlude in her often anxious
and hard-working life.
So on this early afternoon Ivy and Jervis had what her patient
afterwards weakly described to his nurse as a quiet, nice little time
together.
Then Ivy had gone out to a bridge-party, and now she had just come in,
leaving herself barely time enough to dress and go out again.
To the young day-maid who hovered, timidly, admiringly, about her,
Mrs. Lexton sadly expressed her regret at being in too great a hurry
to see Mr. Lexton, even for a minute.
Hurry was the word to-day. She was hurrying over her dressing as she
never hurried before, and, while she made up with feverish haste,
there was a strange look on her lovely face. She even noticed that she
did not look “quite the thing,” as she gazed at herself in the
looking-glass, and she tried, but it was a failure, to smile,
reassuringly, at herself.
She had turned away from the dressing-table and had just slipped her
frock over her head, when there was a knock at the bedroom door, and
Nurse Bradfield came in.
“I feel anxious about Mr. Lexton,” she said in a worried voice. “I
don’t like his colour. Will you ’phone for the doctor, Mrs. Lexton? I
hate leaving Mr. Lexton, even for a moment!”
Ivy of course murmured a word of assent. Then it was as if her heart
bounded in her breast. Had it come at last--her order of release?
She felt a spasm of terror shake her being. Also a sensation of abject
fear of hard-faced, cold-mannered Dr. Berwick.
This morning she had discovered the envelope containing the
prescriptions which she believed she had sent the doctor a
few days ago. And as she stared at it, puzzled, she suddenly
remembered--remembered, with a sharp stab of dismay, thrusting
Gretorex’s letter into an empty envelope which she herself, in the
early days of Jervis’s illness, acting on Dr. Lancaster’s fussy advice,
had marked “Prescriptions.” Fool, fool that she had been!
There was that in the lovely, sensitive face of her patient’s wife
that caused the nurse to run forward and put her arms round her.
“Don’t be so upset, Mrs. Lexton! We’ll have the doctor round in a few
minutes. Though he’s not my sort, Dr. Berwick is very clever, and
maybe he’ll think of something to bring him round--quick! But do
please now ’phone at once!” And she almost ran out of the room.
But Ivy did not go over to the side of the bed where stood the
telephone. Instead, she went and sat down again in front of the pretty
dressing-table. She shrank with terror from the thought of sending for
Dr. Berwick “all in a hurry, like this.”
Oh! What had made her give that large, that dangerous, dose of
the--the stuff, to Jervis to-day? He had felt weak, weak and what he
oddly called “spent.” So she had mixed him a stiff brandy and soda.
And the doing of that had seemed such a good opportunity for… Ivy did
not end the sentence, even to herself.
Again, why wasn’t Roger Gretorex in London? What a fool she had been
to let him go for a long week-end down to Sussex to his tiresome
mother. There was such support in his unquestioning love, in his
adoring devotion, especially as he no longer asked her, with pleading,
ardent, burning words of longing, to go to that horrid little house in
Ferry Place.
At last, slowly, and with dragging steps, she went over to the
telephone and rang up the doctor’s house.
To her relief it was a woman’s voice, kindly, gentle, which answered.
“My husband is away. He won’t be back till to-morrow morning. Mr.
Lexton less well? I’m so sorry. I’ll have a message sent round at once
to Dr. Singleton, who always takes over Dr. Berwick’s work. He only
lives two doors off, and his telephone is unluckily out of order.”
Ivy waited for what seemed to the other a very long time.
“Are you sure he’ll be able to come at once?” she asked.
There came the slightly impatient answer, “I can’t be sure of that,
for Dr. Singleton may be out. But he’ll come as soon as he can.”
“We want someone at once,” and the voice sounded so sad, so woeful,
that Mrs. Berwick, at the other end of the telephone, felt ashamed of
the suspicion she had harboured about young Mrs. Lexton ever since the
night she had read Roger Gretorex’s love-letter. It was, however, a
suspicion she had kept to herself. Even if these two had been lovers,
they were so no longer. And in any case it was none of her business.
But what was this Mrs. Lexton was saying?
“There’s a doctor living in Duke of Kent Mansion. I think I’d better
try and get him, don’t you? My husband is so very ill. Nurse is quite
frightened!”
Without waiting for Mrs. Berwick’s assent, Ivy hung up the receiver.
She felt very much less afraid than she had felt just now. Surely fate
was playing into her hands? She told herself that it was really a most
fortunate thing that Dr. Berwick happened to be away.
She went out into the hall and listened. But no sounds were coming
from the sick man’s room.
Timorously she called out, “Nurse!”
She was afraid to open Jervis’s bedroom door, for she was determined
not to see him. To do so, she told herself, would do him no good, and
only make her feel miserable.
The kitchen door, situated some way off, at the end of the long
corridor, swung open, and the nurse appeared, a jug of boiling water
in her hand.
“I’m coming,” she called out, “I’m coming, Mr. Lexton. Is the doctor
here already?”
“Dr. Berwick has gone away till to-morrow morning. Shall we try and
get the doctor who lives in number 1A, downstairs?”
“Oh, I don’t think Dr. Berwick would like us to do that! He was so
disagreeable about that nice Dr. Gretorex. Surely Dr. Berwick has
someone who takes his patients when he’s away? I never heard of such a
thing as a doctor leaving his patients unattended! But I’ve thought of
something to give Mr. Lexton that may ease the dreadful pain. He seems
a little better now.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Ivy fervently. And she was glad. It hurt her,
made her feel wretched, when she had time to remember it, to think of
poor Jervis suffering.
As time had gone on, Nurse Bradfield had liked Dr. Berwick less and
less. He had such a short, unpleasant way with him. Also, she was too
experienced not to have quickly seen that he was both puzzled and
irritated by his patient’s lack of reaction to his treatment. Once or
twice she had thrown out a feeler about this. But he had rebuffed her,
almost rudely, while yet giving her strict instructions never to leave
her patient alone, and always to administer herself the food and the
medicines prescribed. This had surprised, and even offended her.
Not only had the nurse become fond, in a way, of beautiful Mrs.
Lexton, but for Jervis himself she had now almost a tender feeling. He
was such a real gentleman, giving as little trouble as he could, and
even when in sharp pain invariably patient and good-humoured.
“I suppose you’d like me to stay in to-night?” asked Ivy nervously.
Nurse Bradfield hesitated.
“I don’t think you need, really. It isn’t as if you could do anything,
Mrs. Lexton? I can manage quite well; and if I think it necessary I
can always send cook for the doctor in the flat downstairs.”
So Ivy went off, with a sensation of intense relief, to a
theatre-party, composed of a young married woman of much her own age
and two men. Her own special escort was a good-looking bachelor whom
she had met since her return to London, and with whom she spent a
great deal of what she called her spare time.
She determined to banish Jervis from her mind, and, in quite a short
time, she succeeded. After all, he was “a little better,” and Nurse
Bradfield was kindness itself.
Ivy had abstained from saying to which theatre she was going, and
after an amusing evening spent in laughing at a really funny farce,
the four went on to supper at the Carlton.
Her new man friend drove her home at almost one in the morning, and
she lingered for quite a long while in the deserted hall of the Duke
of Kent Mansion, bidding him farewell. When at last he went off she
felt quite “good,” for she had only allowed him one kiss.
Lightly she ran up the stairs, for the lift stopped working at
midnight. But when she reached the landing outside her front door, Ivy
Lexton did not at once put her latchkey in the lock. Indeed, she
waited for quite a long time. At last, however, she did put the key in
the lock, and slowly she turned it.
Then she gave a stifled cry of surprise, for Nurse Bradfield was
sitting in the hall, waiting for her.
There was a look of great distress, almost of shame, on the nurse’s
kind face. She got up, and looked straight into the now terrified eyes
of the merry-maker.
“I’ve bad news for you--very bad news, Mrs. Lexton.”
She waited, hoping the other would say something that would imply she
understood what that bad news must be.
But Ivy remained silent, staring at Nurse Bradfield with
terror-filled, dilated eyes.
“Mr. Lexton took a very serious turn for the worse about half-past
ten. I sent at once for the doctor downstairs, but he was out;
and--and----” she did not finish her sentence. “I don’t think anything
could have saved him. His heart gave way--that’s what it was! He looks
so young, so boyish, so peaceful.”
The tears came into her eyes. “Would you like to see him?”
“Oh no! I--I couldn’t!”
The newly-made widow burst into tears, and the older woman led her
tenderly to her bedroom, and helped her to undress.
“I’ll never forget how kind you were to my poor darling--and to me,
too, nurse. I hope to be able to prove my gratitude some day,”
whispered Ivy, after the other had tucked her up in bed.
Nurse Bradfield was touched. She forgot how selfish she had secretly
thought little Mrs. Lexton’s conduct had been, in practically
insisting on going out this evening. She only remembered thenceforth
her pretty ways, her sweet manner to her poor husband, and the easy
good nature which always made her willing, when she happened to be at
home, to arrange some little treat for her husband’s kind nurse.
That night Ivy lay for a long, long while with eyes wide open in the
darkness. What had just happened filled her with a kind of awe. She
had not known how easy and simple is the passage from life to death.
She reminded herself how very kind, how good a pal, she had always
been to poor Jervis, and how happy he had been these last two months,
owing to Miles Rushworth.
Dear, delightful, generous Miles Rushworth! The thought of him brought
a rush of joy, as well as comfort, in its train.
At last a great peace descended upon her. All the terrors which had
assailed her during those infrequent moments when she had been, by
some strange chance, alone, during her husband’s illness, had vanished
as if they had never been.
As she looked back she shivered at the thought of how frightened she
had sometimes felt. And yet, after all, she knew now that there had
been nothing to be really frightened about.
Roger Gretorex had been right as to what he had said, on that evening
she still remembered so well. At the time she had thought it horrid of
him to imagine such a thing as that--she let what he had suggested
stay undefined. No need surely to put it into ugly words, even to
herself. All the same, she did bring herself to face the comforting
fact that, if rather horrible, it was certainly true. A great many
more people are undoubtedly helped out of life than stupid,
unimaginative folk suppose. As to those who--well--help them to leave
a world which has no further use for them, they certainly, as Roger
had declared, “got away with it,” often with marvellous success.
True, that disagreeable Dr. Berwick had been puzzled--he had said as
much to her. But she had got on much better with him during the last
couple of days, since, in fact, he had seen that she really could not
endure the sight of poor Jervis’s sufferings.…
The word “death,” which means so much to the great majority of men and
women, meant very little to Ivy Lexton. Indeed, she felt, as she lay
there in the darkness, that this man who had been her lover-comrade
had only gone away out of her life on a long journey--a journey from
which, however, he was never to return. The fact that she had planned
that journey, that it was owing to her direct action that he had gone
from the world he found on the whole so pleasant, would and must, not
only remain hidden, but in time be forgotten even by herself.
In a way, she was forgetting it already as she turned to her
cloudless, sunny future--to the delightful existence she would
henceforth lead, first as the fiancée, and then as the wife, of Miles
Rushworth.
Run straight? Of course she would run straight! For one thing,
Rushworth wasn’t the sort of man with whom it would be safe to run
crooked. For all his odd ideas, and to Ivy his ideas as to morality
were indeed singular, she realised that he had his weather eye very
much open. She would henceforth have to be what to herself she vaguely
called “a good woman.” But then, how easy it is to be a good woman
when one has a hundred thousand a year!