THE noise and bustle, the coming and going in the castle yard, the hasty preparation of a meal, all this gave Ellen time. Dick had been clever. Or perhaps merely fortunate. Nobody knew that he had not arrived with Guy Fletcher and herself. It was not likely that anyone to-night would take her aside and ask what was the matter with him. The two men, eating cold meat in the hall, were mere belated travellers, and the household were too busy beholding them as such to perceive that something was very wrong with one of them. She would have time, before to-morrow, to stave off questions by supplying facts in advance.
She must tell them that poor Mrs. Briggs was dead, and that Dick was very sad about it, because they had been his friends. Coming from a heartrending scene, his spirits were not, perhaps, quite as good as usual. Doctors have to live through very sad things sometimes, but it is much worse for them when the people are personal friends. Dick had been so fond of Dr. Briggs.
She was very much frightened, and fear had quickened her imaginative powers to an unusually vivid degree. She saw that the real trouble must never be known. Dick must not be shut up in this narrow place with a lot of people who knew what was on his mind. The island was so small, the castle so constricted, that an idea, a suggestion, could grow and flourish there like a plant in a hothouse. It would receive strength from every mind which harboured it, and from every comment made upon it. It would grow in the daytime, in the enforced publicity of their life, and it would grow secretly at night when they all retired to their several turrets and talked things over. The suggestion would come back and back at Dick, who had first made it, like the echoes of his shout on the lake. This was the worst place for him to be in, at such a crisis. They must not say or think that he had lost his nerve, that he blamed himself, and that he was playing with the idea of retirement. If they said it, or thought it, the thing was much more likely to happen.
The danger piled up before her, rising and curving like the crest of a huge wave. But it had not yet broken. It was still merely a thought in Dick’s mind. She might still, by some heroic effort of will, defy it and make it turn backward. She must cling to her faith in Dick; the immovable belief that this calamity was not his fault and that only overstrain could have brought about that wavering of moral courage which attacks all sensitive people in positions of responsibility. She must imbue him with her faith; she must be for him an extra source of strength. And she must keep the others at bay.
Convinced of the need to act quickly, she left the hall, where Gordon and Barny were watching the travellers eat, and went out into the courtyard. A good deal was happening there. Maids were running about with blankets for a bed that was to be made up for Guy Fletcher in Kerran’s room. Lights twinkled from windows on all sides of the little quadrangle and people hurried from one door to another.
Louise was sitting on the edge of the well in the middle, quite obviously remote from all this humdrum bustle. Ellen went up to her at once.
“Oh, Louise …”
“Elissa has gone. She wouldn’t stay to be introduced to-night, but she’s coming early to-morrow.”
“Louise, poor Dick has had such a sad time. One of his patients, one of Dr. Thring’s patients, has died. He’s so much distressed …”
“Good gracious! Is this the first time he’s ever had a patient die?”
“No, but these people were personal friends.”
“Oh, who?”
When Ellen explained the status of Dr. Briggs, Louise jerked her head impatiently.
“I thought you meant somebody I know. I’m sure it’s very good of Dick …”
“But I wanted to explain why he’s in such low spirits. Will you just not talk about it. And tell Gordon and the others not to either.”
“My dear Ellen! Do I ever encourage ‘shop’?”
“No. I know. But the sooner he forgets about it the sooner he’ll be able to enjoy it all here.”
“I have some tact. Is that Muffy? Oh, Muffy! Don’t shut the big gate because Madame Koebel is coming early to-morrow, early before breakfast …”
And that was the best that could be done with Louise. But it would be safer to speak to Maude as well, so as to make sure that the authorised version had been published in both towers. Ellen hurried into the keep. She was afraid of Maude and of Maude’s intuitions. She pulled herself together for a battle when she heard Maude say:
“Oh! Poor Dick!”
(Not poor Mrs. Briggs, but poor Dick!)
“They were such great friends, he and Dr. Briggs. Dr. Briggs was Dick’s best man …”
“I know. And they do so hate losing baby cases, don’t they? It’s the responsibility. They hate it like poison if anything goes wrong. I suppose they feel that a woman having a baby isn’t just like some idiot who’s gone and got ill. At least, a doctor friend of mine once put it that way to me. He said that’s why so many of them won’t take baby cases. It isn’t the work, it’s the worry.”
There were so many things to annoy Ellen in this comment that she lost count of them. For one thing, why must all the family, even Maude, who had some medical experience, believe that Dick spent his time doing what they called “baby cases”? Could they really not grasp the difference between gynæcology and obstetrics? But since Dick was always complaining that he had the same difficulty with the lay committee of the hospital she must perhaps make allowances.
“This wasn’t a confinement,” she explained. “It was appendicitis. But it’s so terrible for poor Dr. Briggs …”
Maude nodded understandingly, and then exploded another mine.
“Such a pity! Especially just now.”
“Just now?”
“You’re the last person he’ll want to unburden himself to about it, I should think. I do hope to goodness it won’t start him off worrying about you. It does sometimes.”
“About me? What nonsense. I’m perfectly well.”
“Oh, yes. But I mean he’d much better forget about babies and baby cases for a bit, so it’s a pity … I beg your pardon, Muffy? What did you say?”
Muffy, who was stooping over a chest of blankets, had said something which sounded like fiddle. But at Maude’s question she had an attack of deafness, and made no reply at all. Maude’s smile grew wider and wider.
“I wish you wouldn’t go on about baby cases,” said Ellen irritably. “Obstetrics is only a very small part—I think he says about five per cent—of all Dick’s important work. He …”
“I know. But this woman was going to have a baby, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. But she …”
“And you’re going to have a baby. That’s all I meant. It’ll be more difficult for him to forget …”
Ellen fled into the courtyard.
What nonsense Maude talked! Dick never worried about her. Her condition could not possibly come between them in this matter. It was absurd. She was with child, and another woman, also with child, had died. But it was not possible that these two ideas could have any sort of connection in Dick’s troubled mind.
The mere suggestion was a shock and made her feel suddenly self-conscious. To face any other people that night was more than she could manage. She went quickly across the quadrangle to her own tower, took a candle from the shelf at the bottom of the staircase, and went up to the quietness and order of her cold bedroom.
Here, reassuringly, she had all her own things about her. Her brushes and combs were disposed neatly on the dressing-table. The two beds, side by side, were turned down and ready. Across one of them lay her night-dress, with its freshly-laundered frills of Swiss embroidery. Across the other lay an ornamental pair of pyjamas, borrowed from Kerran until Dick’s luggage could be brought from Dunclough. She felt a moment of happiness and hope at the sight. At least, she had got him near her again. Whatever he had suffered during their separation he would at least have some solace and companionship now.
Bed, she thought, was a very good invention. Being married would be much more difficult if one did not go to bed every night. For twelve years now she had been going to bed with Dick, and she could not remember what it had felt like to sleep contentedly alone. They liked being near to one another. They liked falling asleep and waking up in one another’s company. Reason and argument might fail them sometimes, but the marriage bed remained, a symbol of the unexpressed affection and loyalty which bound them together, of the delight which they took in one another, a passion which would live on, after they were dead, in the bodies of their children. “That side of marriage,” her mother had called it, when, shamefacedly, and with difficulty, she had broached the subject to her growing daughters. But her mother had been wrong. Going to bed was not at the side at all; it was plumb in the middle of everything.
Quickly, and shivering a little because the room was cold, she undressed herself and put on the long, frilly night-dress, with its collar that buttoned up closely round her neck. When Dick came up and knocked, she was brushing her hair in front of the glass.
Almost before he had shut the door behind him he began asking her about the children, plying her with questions so fast that she scarcely got time to answer. But he did not look at her, and the quiet of the room was shattered by a desolate uneasiness. While he talked he rapidly undressed, splashed his head in the wash-basin, put on Kerran’s pyjamas and climbed into bed. She plaited back her hair neatly and went round to sit beside him.
“You can’t think,” she began, almost shyly, “how horrid it’s been here without you.”
He did look at her then, for a moment, long enough to let her see the fear in his eyes. And then he looked away, saying something quite meaningless about being glad, himself, to have got away from London.
Ellen felt quite giddy, as if she had been in a lift that was going down too fast. For it seemed to her almost as if there had been dislike as well as fear in the look he had given her. She thought:
“He doesn’t love me any more.”
But then she knew that this was not true. He was only determined not to speak of his trouble and he was afraid that she would force him to do so. Perhaps it was because she already knew too much. Or perhaps it was that thing that Maude had said:
“You’re the last person …”
Could that be true? She groped dimly for the sequence, understanding and yet not able to state it.
“He doesn’t want to think about me … to be near me … because of the child …”
Not because another woman was dead, but because he had lost courage. He would not take upon himself, any more, the responsibility of seeing that other women did not die. Other women, and Ellen among them, must depend upon the wit and courage of men who were not afraid of such a burden. Stupid men, perhaps; inferior to Dick in skill. But able to carry their part in the heavy burden of the world’s work, able to give their best, while Dick’s so much finer best must rot unused. These were better men than Dick, and he knew it. A world peopled with Dicks would be a sorry place: it was the Clarkes and the Thrings who really mattered.
And he was afraid that she knew this. He was afraid she would despise him because he had failed, not merely to save Mrs. Briggs, but to survive a defeat to his own vanity. And how large a part had that vanity played in this power which he had of impressing himself upon the world?
Well … they were going to find out.
There was nothing that she could say. He would have to settle this for himself. It was his fence. If he could take it, then everything would be quite all right between them. If he could not, then nothing would ever make it right again. She loved him and she would always love him, but she would have to learn to be ashamed of him.
Without another word she rose and went over to wedge the window which was rattling a little. Then she knelt down beside her own bed to say her prayers. She repeated to herself the Lord’s Prayer, the Collect for the week, and the formula which she had used every night since her confirmation. And then, incoherently, she began to implore for help, burying her face in the quilt which had grown wet with her tears. She asked that strength might be given to Dick, that she might be made able to think of something sensible to say, that something might happen to take all this off his mind; that Louise might not find out, that Dr. Thring should write and say that he would have done just the same, and that Dick might consent to go and see a neurologist in the autumn.
“But Lord, Thou knowest how much he would hate explaining it all to another doctor …”
Corbett would be the best man to go to. Dick liked him and believed in him as much as he believed in any of them. If only … but she was supposed to be praying. She tried to collect her thoughts, and found that the worst thing had happened, for she was quite sure that nobody had listened. It had been a vague fear for some time, and now it had become a conviction. She was an atheist. She believed neither in the Committee of Four nor in that other, remoter, Deity, to whom she had never tried to pray.
She rose from her knees, blew out the candle and got into bed.
“Good night, Dick.”
Her voice was flat and weary. Dick’s answer came out of the darkness:
“Good night, dear.”
As she lay there a certain comfort returned to her. She became once more aware of the passage of time. Soon they would go to sleep and to-morrow they would wake up, and new things, all sorts of things, might come into their lives, so that nothing would turn out as they had expected. And, anyhow, this moment would not go on for ever. It would be over sometime; it would be in the past. She must fortify herself against it as if it had been physical pain, like childbirth or toothache. It must be lived through.
“I must just get along as best I can,” she thought, as she curled up her cold toes in her night-gown. “It’s no use worrying. Anything may happen, not just the things one is afraid of. I must do the best I can and not worry. Keep them off him if I can. Not speak about it till he wants to. Let him see he’s quite safe about that. If he isn’t any better by the end of the summer, remember there’s always Corbett. And not bother any more about God. This is no moment to worry about that. I’ll think all that out later on sometime. If I’m an atheist, and it looks like it, well, I must just be one. Much better if only I can manage not to think. If I start thinking I shall make mistakes. I’ve thought enough. I’ve made up my mind what to do, and now I must stop thinking and do it. Now I ought to go to sleep. That’s the next thing. I’ll count sheep through a gap …”
She fell asleep very soon after.
Dick, in the darkness, turned and tossed and wondered if she was still awake, and if he had hurt her, and if he was now as low a thing in her eyes as he was in his own.