Dr. Stiff looked at the quiet elderly woman who was sitting on the
other side of his desk, and chose his words carefully.
"I'm afraid, Mrs. Greene, that I shall have to call upon your courage
and fortitude to listen to what I cannot avoid telling you. I gather
that your suspicions amounted almost to a certainty before you
consulted me, and I am unfortunately forced to confirm them. There
is a considerable growth in the left breast, which, owing to the
state of your heart, can't be removed. That being so, we can only
regard it as a definite signal which must not be ignored."
He spoke gently, but the crude fact implicit in his words stuck out
clearly. There was a moment's pause. Mrs. Greene's hands were
folded in her lap; her throat felt a little dry, and for a moment the
walls of the room wavered uncertainly towards her and the motes
dancing in a streak of sun across the floor seemed to swell
gigantically and overpoweringly. But as she cleared her throat and
prepared to speak, they diminished and the room resumed its normal
proportions.
"Thank you," she said steadily. "I quite understand. You mean that
I have cancer and you are not able to operate. How long can I expect
to live?"
Dr. Stiff looked distressed at the uncompromising question, and his
hand hovered over the bell as he answered:
"The disease is in its final stage, Mrs. Greene. You must have had
many attacks of pain recently, and there won't be very many more."
He pressed the bell as he spoke, and almost immediately a nurse
appeared with a little tray containing a glass and a decanter of
brandy.
Mrs. Greene smiled. "No, thank you, Nurse," she said, and her voice
had its natural buoyancy as she turned to Dr. Stiff. "My husband
never liked me to drink spirits of any sort, and this has not been a
shock to me. Indeed in some ways it is almost convenient."
She thought of Roger and then asked abruptly.
"Shall I live for six months?"
Dr. Stiff shook his head.
"It's impossible for me to give a definite date," he said. "But I
think not more than three."
Mrs. Greene pressed her hand to her treacherous breast as she thought
of Mary and Roger's child that would be born in the Spring.
"That is a disappointment to me," she said, "but only a very trivial
one. My husband died eight years ago; we were very devoted to each
other and since then I have often felt as if I were waiting with my
hat and jacket on for some vehicle to take me to him. Now that fancy
is gone; I see that the vehicle is my illness which will soon come to
a conclusion, and I thank you very much for your consideration and
kindness to me."
She rose to go. For a moment Dr. Stiff held her hand as he said:
"It's I who thank you, Mrs. Greene. My work is very often both
trying and depressing, and to meet with such courage and control as
yours is a great stimulus to me."
"I'm afraid I'm very old-fashioned," said Mrs. Greene. "I've never
learnt to take life so vehemently and rebelliously as young people do
nowadays. I sometimes think they lack a sense of humour and
proportion. Goodbye and thank you again."
She left the room, unhurried and untroubled, oblivious of the fact
that she left behind her a man filled with amazement at the dignity
and decorum of her generation.
As she sat in a taxi on the way to lunch, Sarah Greene was busy with
arrangements: first of all she must make an appointment with her
solicitors and see to her will. A feeling of warm gratitude to her
dead husband shot across her mind as she remembered that he had
expressly stated that she was to leave the bulk of his considerable
fortune to relations and friends for whom she cared. Lynton was her
own of course, both house and land, but she was glad that she was
under no moral obligation to leave Greene money to Greenes; she was
perfectly free to make life as happy and tranquil as an assured
income could make it, for Mary and Roger Dodds.
Then a nursing home must be considered. Mrs. Greene suppressed a
slight tremor as she thought of the crudity and awkwardness of a
death in the house: the embarrassed, tearful servants; the relations
whose perfectly sincere grief could not prevent them feeling an
intense relief at the approach of a meal, followed by an equally
intense shame at the thought of enjoying food with poor Aunt Sarah
lying upstairs; the desultory and spasmodic conversations; the whole
painful interregnum between normal life before the death occurred and
normal life resumed after the funeral. A nursing-home in London
would certainly have advantages. Sarah Greene would be able to die
as unobstrusively as she hoped she had lived.
Before finding her way to the restaurant of the large shop in which
she intended to lunch, Mrs. Greene made a few methodical purchases.
She had intended to buy half a dozen pairs of the thick woollen
stockings which she usually wore for gardening, but in view of her
curtailed future she mechanically reduced the order to three. She
did not however hesitate to order a new mackintosh, since her old one
was worn out, and a future, however short, was unthinkable if it
withheld from her the promise of rainy walks on soft November
afternoons with dusk dropping behind the long row of beeches that
bordered the avenue up to Lynton, the house she had loved and cared
for these last forty-five years.
Later while she ate her usual plain lunch she reviewed deliberately
in some detail, the sentimental aspect of the situation. Not again
would she see the daffodils swaying on their stems in the spring
winds that every year swept Lynton; not again would she see the
amazing blue of summer skies through the amazing green of beech
trees; other hands would snap off the dead pansy heads and pick the
lupins ranged along the mellow wall.
A moment of forlornness, grim augury of the desolate weeks ahead,
fell upon Sarah Greene, sitting in the crowded restaurant, to outward
seeming an elderly woman contentedly eating her lunch. Panic
squeezed her heart as she thought of the creeping growth that was
working even now to her undoing, but her will automatically
reasserted itself. Self-pity was repugnant to her; she was of the
generation that held duty to be at the same time an aim and a reward,
that accepted frustrations and tragedies as part of the necessary
fabric of life.
As she put down her coffee cup she dealt sharply with herself. Here
I am, she thought, sitting in a ridiculous basket chair in a pink and
white restaurant. I've just finished a pleasant lunch and bought a
good mackintosh and now I'm letting myself get quite maudlin; I'm
giving way to foolish fancies over what is only a natural event.
Much better go back to Roger's little house and ring up my solicitor
to make an appointment for to-morrow.
The thought of this small task was enough to re-establish Mrs.
Greene's poise. There were still things to be done that only she
could do, and she sighed pleasurably as she remembered that the
Lynton gardens, greedy like all gardens in their demand for time,
care and skilled forethought, would claim her, so long as she could
respond to any claim.
As she talked to Mary a couple of hours later, Lynton was still
uppermost in her mind, and her interest in the various aspects of
Mary's coming maternity was kindly but perfunctory.
Mary was the perfectly conventional middle class prospective mother,
enjoying all the emotions possible to a first pregnancy: pride in her
own adequacy, pride in the interest and the faint spice of danger
that would be attached to her for the next few months--though as she
eagerly assured Aunt Sarah, "The doctor is frightfully pleased with
me. He says I'm ideally fitted to be a mother,"--pride in Roger's
love and anxiety, and an overwhelming pleasure at the thought of a
small naked body to be intricately clothed in wools and muslins,
laces and ribbons.
"I feel it's going to be a girl," she said positively. "And I'm
going to make her the loveliest little frilled cloak with a tiny
bonnet to match."
"As a matter of fact, Mary," answered Aunt Sarah equally positively,
"I think it will be a boy."
A look of keen delight suddenly lit up her face.
"My dear," she said, "I've just had a delightful idea. Will you have
your baby at Lynton? I should so much like him to be born there. It
would give me the greatest pleasure to look forward to the crocuses
and hyacinths coming out just about the right time. You would be
very comfortable there, and I can promise you I would not
inconvenience you in any way."
"It's awfully kind of you, Aunt Sarah," Mary spoke gratefully. "It
would be ideal of course. I've been worried about a nursing home,
they're so expensive, and this house is terribly inconvenient. It's
so small, and the hot water is all downstairs, and that is awkward
when you're in bed. Besides I don't believe Roger would mind my
being away from him. After all it's only an hour and a half to
Lynton."
"I very much hope you'll arrange it, Mary."
"I really would love it."
"Well, I want you to make a definite plan and keep to it. I have
several reasons for asking this; I don't want anything that may
happen to upset your plan."
"Nothing is likely to happen." Mary's thoughts were concentrated
entirely on herself and her condition. "Everything is quite normal,
and I'm sure it will go all right."
"I'm quite sure, too," answered Aunt Sarah. "I wasn't really
thinking of that. Things do change you know, dear, and arrangements
sometimes have to be altered, but I don't want anything to interfere
with this. You must talk it over with Roger. Now tell me, Mary, do
you feel well enough to go to a play to-night? I have a fancy for
you and Roger and me to have a little celebration. If it doesn't put
you out at all, I suggest that we dine at the Berkeley and go to a
theatre."
"I'd love it. Thank you very much. Shall I go and telephone to
Roger and tell him not to be late?"
"Yes do, Mary; and ask him to get three stalls for any good play that
we will all enjoy."
"I'll get tea, too, when I'm downstairs," said Mary happily, "I do
hope you don't mind my having to do it; I really didn't dare ask
Ellen to stay in, and there's never any use expecting cook to do
anything extra."
At the thought of Ellen and cook, Mary nervously wrinkled her
forehead, but the frown was chased away by an expression of amazed
relief as a new idea dawned on her.
"Aunt Sarah, if I have my baby at Lynton, I shan't have to bother the
least bit about servants or dust or Roger's meals or anything. How
perfectly marvellous."
As Mary closed the door rather noisily, Sarah Greene's sensibilities
shrank from such a robustly common-sensible point of view being
applied to her romantic project. The idea of new life in Lynton
house coinciding with so much vigorous new life in Lynton gardens was
compensation to her for her own death. It struck the right balance;
more, it pleased her always fastidious sense of the fitness of
things, that she, an old woman, should die before the turn of the
year when sap springs in the bough, and that her grandnephew should
be born in her house at the time when apple trees blossom and lambs
play in the field.
This pastoral conception sustained a rude shock when Mary translated
it into terms of dust and domestics.
Mary is a genuinely good capable girl, she told herself, not
imaginative, perhaps, but with courage and intelligence, and most of
the qualities that Roger needs in a wife. Even so, it was difficult
to see Mary at Lynton, ordering the household, planning new effects
for the misty herbaceous border, lavishly stocking the formal beds,
attentive to the diurnal duties towards flowers and trees and shrubs.
Sarah Greene thought of her other young relations: Lavinia, mondaine,
vivid, with a delicate certainty of touch that enabled her to cover
her essential sophistication with a delightful veneer of country
simplicity.
Lavinia in green linen stooping over the rose beds in the sunlight
was perfect; Lavinia in scarlet silk stepping out of the French
window to the moonlit terrace was perfect; her clothes for a country
weekend were admirable. But Lavinia waking day after day to the
sound of steady rain, was unimaginable. She would find herself
without interests and without resources.
Mrs. Greene decided quite firmly that Lavinia would not do for Lynton.
Helen and Geoffrey were not more promising candidates. Geoffrey's
manifest uneasiness in tweeds, his distaste for country pursuits no
less than Helen's restlessness and impatience, rendered them
ineligible.
Helen really paints well, thought Mrs. Greene. It's a pity she so
seldom finishes anything, and that when she does, she just tosses it
aside and begins at once on something new.
A vision of Helen frenziedly digging up week-old bulbs to see if they
had sprouted crossed Mrs. Greene's mind and she smiled.
Only Hugh and Jessica remained. But Jessica, the youngest Mrs.
Greene, with her small creamy face, her cool incisiveness to the
world and her passionate gentleness to Hugh could never belong to
Lynton. She was too slight and too brittle. At moments she seemed
as vibrant as spun glass, at moments she dimmed into a moony
vagueness. There was no stability about her; she would never move
with Lynton through the steady roll of the seasons, taking note of
the almost imperceptible signs that herald growth and decay.
Thinking it over, Mary was really much the most suitable. There was
something slow-moving and deep-rooted about her; she, was practical
but not trivial; she did not spend herself on details but she never
ignored them, and she could take a long view of things. She was free
from petty spites and envies, and she and Roger would do very well.
As Sarah Greene reached this conclusion the door opened to admit Mary
with the tea-tray and a letter, addressed in Mrs. Rodney Greene's
unmistakable writing.
"Oh, Mary, I knew that letter was coming, but I'd forgotten all about
it."
"Is it something tiresome?"
"No, not exactly. It's an invitation to dinner next week at the
Rodneys but I don't feel like meeting people just at present."
Sarah Greene drew the letter rather reluctantly from its envelope and
read it.
207, Sussex Square.
9th Nov.
My dear Aunt Sarah,
Many thanks for your kind letter after the wedding. I am so glad you
thought it all went off nicely and that you weren't too tired.
I expect you have heard that Hugh and Jessica get back on Tuesday
after a delightful honeymoon apparently. We have had several very
happy post-cards from them, though I must say I should have liked a
letter.
I have planned a little dinner-party for them for Friday the 18th,
to-morrow week, at 7.45, which I do hope will suit you. It is only a
family affair, but I am anxious that all six Mrs. Greenes should meet
and enjoy each other, so I very much hope you will be able to come.
With love from Rodney and myself,
Yours affectionately,
EDITH GREENE.
"Mrs. Rodney is having her party next Friday," said Mrs. Greene
slowly. "I hadn't meant to stay in town quite so long."
"Oh, do stay, Aunt Sarah," urged Mary. "We love having you and if
you don't want to go to Mrs. Rodney's we can easily think of
something. Why not invent an engagement for that evening?"
Mrs. Greene shook her head.
"No," she said decisively. "You know I almost think I shall enjoy
it, and I think it will be salutary too."
"How do you mean, salutary?"
"Well, you know, my dear, one begins to think oneself and one's own
affairs too important; and then being plunged into a family dinner
party like that, one finds how relatively unimportant one is. The
young people are taken up with their own lives, and Mrs. Rodney is
busy about her arrangements, and poor Mrs. Edwin is always very
pre-occupied and so I shall forget about my own troubles."
"I shouldn't have thought you had any troubles or worries," was
Mary's naïve comment, to which Mrs. Greene responded briskly and
quite genuinely, "Well, no, Mary, I haven't many. One thing on my
mind is my second gardener. He isn't turning out as well as I
expected. He has bad hands for planting."
There was a pause as Mary poured out a cup of tea and handed it to
her Aunt who thanked her and added:
"You know it's very nice and luxurious to be here like this and have
tea brought to me. Now tell me about this evening; what did Roger
say?"
"He was delighted," said Mary. "He says he can get away fairly early
from the office, and he'll get the tickets on the way home. And he
asked me to give you his love and ask what it was you were
celebrating?"
Mrs. Greene's heart missed a beat. She felt that she could hardly
say, "I'm celebrating my death sentence," and yet the melodramatic
little phrase nearly escaped her. She hesitated for a second and
then said quite naturally:
"We're celebrating the very good news you told me this morning, my
dear Mary. I'm very happy about it; I shall enjoy having a
grand-nephew."
Mary's face glowed with pleasure.
"I never thought you'd be so pleased. Would you like us to call him
Hugh if he's a boy?"
Sarah Greene took her hand and held it for a moment.
"It's kind of you to think of it," she said, "but no, Mary, I don't
really think I'd like it. I've never quite believed in calling
children after people; it doesn't seem to me to mean very much; I'd
rather you just called your boy any name you liked."
"I had thought of Roger, but I'm not sure."
"Well, don't be influenced by anyone; just decide what name you like
and keep to it. It's only a convention to name children after their
relations, and I don't quite believe in conventions that are based on
sentiment. Perhaps we get harder as we get older; I'm not sure. But
it seems to me that my generation has a good deal in common with
yours. We were very differently brought up, of course, but we
arrived at rather the same conclusions as you young people have now:
a distaste for anything too easy, or flabby, as you might call it."
She turned questioningly to Mary, who reflected for a moment in the
struggle to assemble her thoughts.
"I know what you mean," she said at last. "I do feel we've much more
in common with people of your age than people about forty-five or
fifty. We're harder than they are, and we take things in our stride
like your generation did. I always think you were awfully brave.
And we're a greedy generation, but I don't think we're greedy in such
a soft way as middle-aged people are."
She stopped again to think, and then added:
"Your generation doesn't strike me as being greedy at all. You were
all so awfully good at self-sacrifice."
Mrs. Greene laughed.
"My dear Mary," she expostulated, "that sounds terrible--as if we
were all would-be martyrs. Yes, indeed, we were just as greedy as
you are, but we wanted different things, and I think we very often
wanted them for other people. As wives, we were contented to be a
good deal in the background; we liked our husbands to shine and we
didn't need so much personal success as women do nowadays. But it
wasn't so very different after all; I know you want things for Roger
more than for yourself, for instance."
"I do want a lot for Roger," agreed Mary eagerly and Mrs. Greene
exulted in the thought of how much her death would do for this
satisfactory and devoted young couple. Money she could give them in
her life-time, but what was money compared to Lynton whose lovely
perfection was solace enough for the bitterness of life and the fear
of death?
She switched abruptly off this trend of thought.
"If we are dining early and going out," she said, "it's certainly
time I got up and began to think about dressing. And we've never
taken the tray down. Let me help you, Mary, like a good child."
But Mary refused help, piled the tray up competently and left the
room.
Mrs. Greene found herself strangely comforted by this short and
uneventful conversation. Later, as she dressed, she thought about
the young Dodds and their contemporaries. They have good points,
these young people, she decided finally; lots of courage and spirit;
and how pleasant it is to think that I, who was brought up a model of
deportment, at the end of my life should find myself able to take
things in my stride.
She smiled over the phrase. Uncouth and slangy as it was, it seemed
to her to show a good enough standard, and when she went downstairs
she said gaily, "Roger, your wife's been teaching me modern slang and
I like it."