1
Miraculously, as it seemed to her comforted son, death stayed its hand
from Julia Cavendish.
For three days and nights of morphia she drowsed away the effects of
that first hemorrhage. Heron Baynet, returning hot-foot to Harley Street
on his secretary's telegram, insisted--despite the fact that he was a
consultant--on ousting Dr. Redbank; on taking over the entire conduct of
the case in person.
A year ago the little keen scientist of the lined face, the fine
forehead, and the shining eye-glasses had suspected, warned, begged his
distinguished patient to let him radiograph her lungs;--mentioned the
possibility of a diabetic complication--advised Switzerland. Now perhaps
his advice, and the one slender chance of life it offered, would be
taken.
"How she tricked me!" he used to ruminate, looking down at the tired
face on the smooth pillow. "How she fought me!" For although in his
heart Sir Heron both pitied and admired this woman whose stubbornness
and stamina had so long eluded his aid, it gave him a certain
satisfaction, not altogether professional, to feel that she would now be
completely in his power. Yet--would she be completely in his power?
Already, on the fourth day of her illness, he sensed the stubbornness
and the false stamina of stubbornness renewing themselves in her;
already he perceived that his medical fight would be two-fold--against
his patient as well as against her disease.
"I suppose you're pleased," she managed to stammer. "You warned me that
this might happen if I refused to take your advice." And after he had
given her the morphia injection, "The less I have of that stuff, the
better. If I'm going to die, I'd rather die with my brain clear."
"You're not going to die yet awhile," retorted the specialist. "Not if
you refrain from talking, lie perfectly still, and get away into the
country as soon as you're fit to be moved."
Julia smiled up at him without moving her head. "I congratulate you on
your bedside manner, Sir Heron, but you needn't be professional with me.
My case is hopeless. It always has been hopeless. You haven't forgotten
our compact, I hope? You won't tell my son or my son's wife more than is
absolutely necessary?"
"Of course I won't tell your son," he humored her; "not if you'll
consent to go to sleep."
"But I don't want to go to sleep."
"Oh yes, you do. Besides, if you go on talking, you'll have another
hemorrhage."
That seemed to frighten her. "Very well," she said, closing her eyes,
for already the morphia was pouring wave on wave of lassitude through
her body. "Very well, I won't talk. Do you think you can manage to keep
me alive for six months? It's rather important. I've got work to do."
Thinking her brain already under the influence of the drug, he humored
her again. "We'll see about that in the morning. Meanwhile I shouldn't
worry. Your daughter-in-law and your secretary between them will be able
to manage quite well until you're up and about again."
"It isn't that sort of work," began Julia Cavendish; and pretended to
fall asleep.
This pretense of falling asleep was a trick, learned from the drug. One
had only, Julia discovered, to pretend sleep, and nurse or doctor left
one entirely alone. Alone with one's dreams. Very curious, very pleasant
dreams hers were, too. All about a book. A book called--Now what had she
intended to call the book?--"Man's--Man's--Man's Law." Yes--that was the
title. If only--one took--enough morphia--one could write--like--like de
Quincey.
"I mustn't let them give me too much, though," thought Julia; and fell
really asleep.
2
For Aliette those first four days of her "mother-in-law's" illness were
almost happy. At Julia's particular request, both lovers had abandoned
the "ridiculous flat," to take up their abode in Bruton Street; and the
sense of self-sacrifice--for it was a sacrifice to abandon the little
home where she had been so safe and face the inevitable difficulties of
her anomalous position in Julia's household--seemed yet another chance
of repaying her debt.
Work (she found enormously to do) saved her from overmuch introspection.
Julia, the feudalist, had never learned domestic decentralization; her
daily secretary, Mrs. Sanderson, a gray-haired gentlewoman with
tortoise-shell spectacles and a diffidence which only just avoided crass
stupidity, had become a typewriter-thumping automaton; her cook was a
mere obedient preparer of ordered meals, and even Kate seemed incapable
of performing the simplest household duty on her own initiative.
Resultantly there devolved on Aliette, seated of a morning in the
novelist's work-room, the manifold activities of a strenuous celebrity,
a housekeeper, a woman of property, and an information bureau. For, of
course, everybody wanted information about the celebrity's health.
The telephone and the telegrams were a curse. The press association
rang, apologetically, twice a day. The Northcliffe press, commandingly,
once. Julia's American publishers cabled almost hourly; and hourly,
scandal for the moment forgotten, one or other of her private
acquaintances quested for news of her. Even Dot Fancourt rallied
gallantly to the receiver. While as for the three other sisters Wixton
and their appanages, one would have imagined them afflicted to the verge
of suicide.
Of an evening, Ronnie helped Aliette to deal with the "family"; but by
day she had to cope with them single-handed. The "family" were never
satisfied with Mrs. Sanderson's report; the "family" demanded to speak
with the hospital nurse; the "family," barred by Sir Heron's
instructions from visiting, demanded to speak with Sir Heron himself.
Soon Aliette began to recognize their voices--Sir John Bentham,
courteous if a little aloof; Lady Clementina, full-throated and fussy;
May Robinson, piteous and protestant out of the depths of St. John's
Wood; Alice Edwards, distantly jovial on the trunk-line from Cheltenham.
"How they must be hating me," Aliette used to think.
On the afternoon of the fifth day, Julia--having coaxed permission from
a reluctant nurse--sent down word that her "daughter-in-law" was to come
up.
"You won't stay with her long, will you, ma'am?" said Smithers,
permanently on guard at the bedroom door. (Mysteriously, since Aliette
had moved to Bruton Street, the social sense of the basement had
substituted "ma'am" for Mrs. Ronnie.) "The doctor says the less she
talks, the better."
Aliette passed into the bedroom; and heard a weak voice say, "Leave us
alone please, nurse."
Nurse--a pleasant-faced creature very much impressed at finding herself
in charge of so literary an invalid--made her exit to a stiff rustle of
starched linen. Aliette moved across to the bedside. Sunshine
illuminated the elegance of the room, slanting down in dust-motes from
the three open windows on to the _écru_ pile carpet. Among Julia's
cut-glass toilet-ware on the porphyry Empire wash-table showed none of
the paraphernalia of sickness. The pillow-propped figure on the low
mahogany and gold bedstead seemed, to the visitor, rather that of a
resting than of a dying woman. A frilled boudoir-cap hid Julia's hair; a
padded bed-jacket of crimson silk swathed her shoulders.
"I suppose I gave you all a rare fright," she said, thinking how well
she had staged the little scene.
"We _were_ rather frightened." Aliette took a chair, obviously arranged
for her, at the bedside; and began to talk aimlessly of this and that.
But Julia soon interrupted the aimless phrases. "Are my servants
behaving themselves?" she asked. "Are they making you and Ronnie really
comfortable? I told Smithers to maid you. I hope she's been doing it
properly."
"Beautifully," prevaricated Aliette.
"You're sure you wouldn't rather have your own maid? You could shut up
the flat easily enough. You don't mind coming to live with me, do you?
It's," the weak voice betrayed the first sign of emotion, "it's bound to
be a little difficult for you, but I'm not quite up to running things
myself yet. And Mrs. Sanderson is a fool."
"Of course I don't mind. It's wonderful to feel that I can be of some
use at last."
Aliette did her best to prevent the patient from talking; but Julia
Cavendish, feudalist, wanted to know a thousand domestic details.
Whether cook was being economical? Whether the new kitchen-maid promised
to be a success? If Mrs. Sanderson had remembered to take carbon-copies
of important correspondence? Whether the "family" had been very
troublesome?
"Families are bad enough when one's well. They're impossible in
illness," pronounced Julia. "I'm always glad my husband died abroad. One
day I must tell you about Ronnie's father." She relapsed into silence,
closing her eyes; and Aliette thought she had fallen asleep. But in a
moment the eyes opened again. "Talking of families, my dear, how is your
sister?"
"Mollie? Oh, Mollie's gone back to Devonshire."
"Is she engaged to young Wilberforce?"
"No. I don't think so."
"What a pity!"
The nurse, tapping discreetly, announced it "time for Mrs. Cavendish's
medicine"; and the invalid closed the interview with a weak, "If the
family call, for heaven's sake keep them out of my room."
3
On the seventh day after the hemorrhage, Aliette's ordeal at the hands
of the Wixton family began.
Sir John and his lady, dissatisfied with the meager information afforded
them on the telephone, called in person to insist upon seeing "some one
in authority." But Julia's bell had rung four times during the night,
and nurse was lying down.
"Surely there's a day-nurse?" fussed Clementina.
"No, m'lady. Only Mrs. Ronnie, m'lady." Kate, erect and correct at the
front door, watched the pair of them whisper together; heard them decide
after some hesitation that they would like to see "Mrs. Ronald
Cavendish"; and showed them upstairs into the drawing-room.
Rising to receive her guests, Aliette was humorously aware of Sir John's
discomfort. She could almost read behind his keen brown eyes the
thought, "So this is the little lady there's been all the trouble about,
is it? Rather good-looking. I wonder what the deuce one ought to call
her, Mrs. Cavendish or Mrs. Brunton?"
"How do you do--er--how do you do?" he compromised. "And how is your
illustrious patient? I'm sure it's most kind of you to look after my
sister-in-law. Very kind indeed."
But there was little compromise about the breasted Clementina. _Her_
greeting, _her_ scrutiny, her omission to shake hands, were definitely
hostile. In attitude she resembled nothing so much as a virtuous English
lady visiting the questionable quarter of Cairo. Aliette, her sense of
humor fighting against her resentment, invited the pair of them to sit
down, and offered propitiatory tea.
"Please don't trouble," retorted the female of the species Bentham.
"We've had tea. And besides, we wouldn't think of disturbing you. As a
matter of fact, it was my husband's idea that we should look in for a
moment to get first-hand news about dear Julia. In a few days, I
presume, we shall be able to see her ourselves."
That "dear Julia" made Aliette wholly resentful. "Ronnie's mother," she
began stiffly, observing, not without a certain malicious satisfaction,
how Lady Bentham writhed at the phrase, "is going on as well as we can
possibly expect. But I'm afraid it will be some time before Sir Heron
will allow her to receive visitors."
"But surely her sister----" protested Sir John.
"Not even her sister, I'm afraid," decided Aliette; and Julia, informed
of the Bentham defeat, chuckled audibly.
But the interview, for all Julia's chuckles, left its scar on Aliette's
sensitive pride--as did her talk with May Robinson.
The tea-broker's scrawny widow called two days later in her 1908
Panhard; accepted tea, and stayed for a full three quarters of an hour
gossiping about her sister's symptoms. May, far from being outwardly
hostile, positively beamed with that particular brand of offensive
condescension which only those whose lives are devoted to good works
know how to assume toward "fallen sisters." With her every non-committal
word, the untempted widow contrived to suggest, "Considering what a
thoroughly bad woman you must be, I think it remarkable, entirely
remarkable and praiseworthy, not to say Christian of you, to have given
up your fast life so as to look after my poor dear sister in her
illness." Luckily for May, Paul Flower arrived just in time to prevent
Aliette from losing her temper!
Alice Edwards's visit, however--for reasons that can be imagined, she
did not bring her daughter with her--passed off easily enough. "I never
was any good in a sick-room," said the Anglo-Indian lady brightly.
Followed, to Aliette's surprise, the admiral, who, calling to leave
formal cards, heard that she was at home and insisted upon seeing her.
The sailor only stayed his Victorian quarter of an hour; managed,
however, although Aliette did her best to restrain him, to thrust a good
Georgian foot into the conversational plate with his "That boy of mine's
putting you in a rotten position, me dear. But it ain't my fault."
"Billy," Aliette, seeing his sorrowful face, could not refrain from
laughing, "you've got no tact. Of course I know it isn't your fault.
I've never really thanked you for what you tried to do for me."
"Me dear," retorted the admiral, "it's no laughing matter. Honestly, I'm
sorry I ever sired the fellow. But never you mind; just you keep your
courage up, and it'll all come out right in the long run."
"I'm keeping my courage up all right," said Aliette, still laughing;
for, somehow or other, Julia's illness had made her own affairs seem
rather petty.
4
After ten days of bed, the patient insisted on seeing Mrs. Sanderson.
"Sir Heron advises a few months in the country," she told that
secretarial automaton. "I shall take a furnished house; the bigger the
better. You'd better write to Hampton's and ask for particulars. It
mustn't be more than forty miles from town, so that my son can run down
for week-ends. You'll have to come with me, and I shall take all the
servants."
"Sir Heron says we must humor her," said Aliette, consulting Ronnie over
dinner. "He says that if she wants a big house, she must have a big
house. Nurse seems to think Sussex would be the best place."
"But, Alie, is she really fit to be moved?"
"Sir Heron says he wouldn't risk it with any one else, but that with her
constitution it's the best thing we can do."
Ronnie agreed. His mother's recovery appeared so rapid, her good spirits
were so infectious, that he had already persuaded himself of her
ultimate cure. Of the diabetic complication, definitely diagnosed at
last, neither he nor Aliette was informed, nurse and specialist being
alike constrained to secrecy by a patient whose brain had begun to
function so masterfully, even under the reduced doses of morphia, that
they were afraid to cross her will.
For now that the hemorrhage had eliminated all possibility of
self-deception from her imagination; now that she realized--despite Sir
Heron's confident reassurances--how at the best she could only live two
years, at the worst a bare six months, the plan, the final plan for
Aliette's release, had taken concrete shape in Julia's brain.
Wilberforce's revelations about the Carrington case had stuck in her
memory. Carrington, according to Wilberforce, had been broken by the
press. She, Julia, wielded a more enduring weapon.
It was strange, very strange, to lie there, on one's own bed, surrounded
by one's own cherished furniture; and knowing one's self doomed, yet
know one's self capable of wielding a weapon--could one but forge
it--which would outlast death itself. Yet could she, an ill woman, a
woman who had never known the financial need for working swiftly, hope
to forge her weapon, her sword of the written word, within six months?
"Yes," she decided, ruminating one late afternoon behind the warm
darkness of closed eyelids, "yes, it can just be done."
There and then she wanted to begin. Then and there, opening her eyes,
she attempted to untuck the bedclothes. But her arms, weak, almost
powerless, refused their task. Even as she moved them, the ghost of a
remembered pain stabbed at her left lung; and, frightened by remembrance
of past agony, she desisted. "Not yet," she thought, "not yet. I must
rest for another week, perhaps for another fortnight. Fresh air might
cure these lungs of mine, and make me well again. What a fool I am to
deceive myself! That must be the consumption. Consumption always cheats
its victims with the hope of life."
And she fell to remembering Aubrey Beardsley, to comparing herself with
him, to conjuring up mental pictures of his "handkerchief-parties," as
he used to call them, when he would break off in the midst of some gay
anecdote, rush--silk pressed to mouth--from the room, and return, gayer
than ever, to carry on the game of make-believe with his cronies.
"Brave!" mused Julia, "but I mustn't be brave like that. For Ronnie's
sake I must husband every ounce of my strength. Above all, I must find a
house in the country."
The taking of that country-house, even though it had to be accomplished
by proxy, served in no small way to distract her mind from gloomier
thoughts. Mrs. Sanderson's inquiry had brought many answers, and Julia
used to sit up in bed of a morning, her secretary in attendance, buff
"particulars" from the house-agent's littered like cards on the heavily
embroidered eiderdown. These perused, she would send for Aliette. "Take
a car," she used to say. "Charge it to my account. The brougham's too
slow for long journeys. This lot," handing over a packet of slips, "look
as though they might do. All the rest are hopeless."
For the best part of a week, Aliette motored about the southern
counties. April was almost May; the blossomed countryside a dream of
green and white beauty. Rushing lonely through the sunlit air, hedges,
fields, and orchards streaming by, it seemed impossible that any
breathing creature should be near to death. Her mood expanded to the
expanding summer, so that she forgot her personal troubles, too, in the
sheer fun of her quest, and enjoyed every minute of it, from the
setting-out of midday to the evening consultations with her
"mother-in-law" and Ronnie about the places she had seen.
Finally, their choice narrowed itself down to two places--one, a modern
mansion perched high on the slopes that overlook Reigate and Dorking;
the other, an old-fashioned brown stone house roofed with great slabs of
Sussex slate, midway between Horsham and the sea.
"Let it be Sussex," decided Julia; and to Daffadillies, as the brown
stone house called itself, some fortnight later, they went.
5
Even to die in, Daffadillies was marvelous. No roads, save the one road
through the woodlands by which the recumbent Julia and her nurse
motored, gave access to that great house set high above terraced
gardens. On three sides of it--east, west, and north--great oaks baffled
the winds; southward were no trees, only slope on slope of field and
farm-land, ramparted in middle distance by the bosoming downs.
Day-long, the wise brown southward-gazing face of Daffadillies trapped
the sunshine in its high gabled windows; day-long, whiffs of the
sparkling sea blew tempered across twenty miles of kindly earth into
that vast oak-floored room, with the four-poster bed and the Jacobean
furniture, which Aliette at her very first visit had mentally chosen for
the invalid.
In that Sussex home quiet reigned like a sleeping princess. The
balustered staircases gave back scarcely a sound to the sedulous feet of
Julia'a serving-women. Neither from the brown-paneled dining-room nor
from the book-lined library could any whisper of voice arise to where,
had she so willed it, the invalid might have dreamed away her summer in
country peace, hearing only the swish and click of the mower on the
tennis-lawn, the snap and cut of gardeners' shears among the
shrubberies.
But it was not for dreams, rather for their accomplishment, that Julia
had taken Daffadillies. Aliette, bringing Ponto on the evening train,
found her in the highest fettle, curiously awake.
"My dear," she smiled, "this place is ideal. Ideal! You've done
wonders."
"Then the journey didn't tire you?"
"Not a bit. I feel quite well. So well, in fact, that I've told nurse
she needn't sleep in my room to-night."
"But suppose you were taken ill?"
"I sha'n't be taken ill." Something of the old mastery was back in
Julia's voice. "If I am, I can always ring for Smithers." And she
touched the two electric pushes, one for the light and the other for the
bell, which nurse had arranged under her pillow; smiling at her own
astuteness when--her morphia refused--the watchers withdrew for the
night. Then she waited, ears tense, eyes wide open, heart throbbing in
anticipation of its deed.
Smithers, acting on instructions, had set out her writing-things on the
desk under the vast curtained window. A night-light burned on the
bed-table. Across the glow of the night-light she saw her traveling
ink-pot, the gold pen which Ronnie had given her for Christmas, the
leather manuscript-box with its store of foolscap and sharpened pencils.
"Was it safe to begin?" If only she could be certain that nurse and
Smithers were in bed.
At last she heard the pair of them whispering to one another in the
corridor; at last she heard them separate, heard their doors close; and
after yet another interminable quarter of an hour the house grew utterly
quiet.
"Now," she said to herself, "now"; and very carefully, very quietly,
very fearful of waking the woman in the next room, her wasted hands
untucked the bedclothes. Very quietly her wasted limbs released
themselves from the sheets; very quietly her feet touched the carpet.
Then, surreptitious as a schoolboy breaking bounds--a tottering figure
of courage in her cambric nightgown,--she stole toward her desk.
She could never reach that desk! She felt her legs, weak after their
unaccustomed effort, wobble under her like loose springs. The dim room
spun. A breeze rustled the cretonne curtains, chilling her to the bone,
terrifying her for her own frailty. Quivering, she reached the desk;
clung to it. The dim room ceased its spinning. Quivering still, she took
two blocks of manuscript-paper from the leather-lined basket; and
tottered back to the bed.
Pencils! She had forgotten to bring pencils. She must go back--all those
miles from her bed to her desk, from her desk to her bed. She tottered
to the desk. It seemed as though she would never win her way back to the
safety of those distant sheets, those distant pillows.
Somehow, the pencils clutched in her trembling fingers, she had reached
the bed. Faintness overwhelmed her. The weak wire springs that were her
limbs sank under the weight of her body. Her body was a flaccid torment,
sinking down by the bed. Her heart yearned to give up its struggle. Her
brain told her to ring for Smithers. Smithers would lift her gently, so
gently, put her to rest between those waiting sheets.
Somehow she had climbed into bed; somehow she had covered her aching
body. On the eiderdown, two oblong patches of white, lay the paper.
For a full five minutes, exhausted, fearful with a thousand fears, Julia
Cavendish watched those two white oblongs. But gradually her fears
subsided. Gradually her brain conquered the exhaustion of her body.
She began to think, as literary craftsfolk think, in words. "'Man's
Law,'" she thought; "'The story of a great wrong.' I wonder if I need
that second title."
The night-light sputtered, expired. Sleep began to beat, soft-winged, on
her eyelids. Her brain fought with sleep in the darkness, fought sleep
away from her.
Wide-eyed in the silent darkness she thought, "I must have light--light
for the forging of my weapon." Her hands groped for the two electric
pushes under her pillow; found them. Her hands panicked lest they should
press the bell-push in mistake, and so waken Smithers. Her hands
remembered the light-switch pear-shaped. She drew the light-switch from
under the pillow; pressed it.
Light glinted on Julia Cavendish's wasted hands, on the virgin
manuscript-blocks and the sharpened pencils, on the runkled bed and the
wadded jacket at bed-foot. Painfully she reached for the jacket;
painfully, afraid for her lung, she managed to drape it about her
shoulders; painfully she arranged a pillow to prop her back; painfully
she took paper, a pencil; and, drawing up her knees to support the
manuscript-block, began.
"God," she prayed, "give me strength for the forging of this last
weapon."
* * * * *
It seemed to Julia Cavendish that she had scarcely set pencil to paper
when the first bird-twitter from dewy lawns warned her to abandon work;
to make, once again, that supreme effort from bed to desk, from desk to
bed; to smooth away with trembling fingers all signs of her
surreptitious task, and lay herself down to get what sleep she might
before Smithers brought her morning medicine.