WHEN BELINDA AWOKE NEXT morning, she decided that she did not feel very well. She was not sure whether this was because of the ash in the baked beans, the half-empty bottle of Empire port that Edith had found in the back of a cupboard or the damp walk home, in rather thin shoes. She was inclined to think it must be the last, for what else could have given her such an unromantic, snivelling cold?
‘Oh, dear,’ said Harriet, sitting down heavily on Belinda’s bed, ‘the Bishop was coming to tea and I suppose I shall have to put him off if you’re going to be ill.’
‘Why?’ asked Belinda stupidly.
‘Well, really, what would people think?’
‘They needn’t know I’m in bed, and after all, it’s only a matter of time,’ said Belinda, who was in no mood to humour her sister’s coy scruples.
‘Yes, perhaps it is,’ agreed Harriet, but rather doubtfully. ‘He asked particularly if you would be here, though.’
‘Did he? Well, we certainly can’t have tea in my bedroom,’ said Belinda plaintively.
‘No, of course not,’ Harriet agreed. ‘Now are you sure you couldn’t fancy a little sausage?’ she said brightly. ‘Emily will have cooked enough for both of us.’
Belinda did not think she fancied anything at all, but was persuaded to try some weak tea and a piece of toast. And would Harriet be very kind and bring her the Oxford Book of Victorian Verse? She might feel like reading later on.
Harriet went downstairs and came back with a tray and the book.
‘Isn’t it rather heavy to read in bed?’ she ventured. ‘I’ve brought you something smaller as well. Here’s the Fourth Book of Virgil. I know you like the part about Dido and Aeneas. It’s such a nice thin little book.’
‘Oh, Harriet, how kind. But it’s all in Latin, and you know I can’t read it.’
‘Never mind, dear,’ said Harriet soothingly. ‘I shouldn’t read at all, if I were you. Just try and rest.’
‘I can’t think how I caught this cold,’ said Belinda.
‘I’ll go and get you some whisky from the Crownwheel and Pinion,’ declared Harriet. ‘I shall go as soon as it’s open.’
‘Oh, Harriet, don’t go there,’ said Belinda, rather concerned. ‘I’m sure you could get some at Abbot’s, and anyway I don’t think I really need it. If I stay in bed and keep warm I’m sure to be better in a day or two. Hot lemon is really a much nicer drink.’
‘You never know when you may need whisky,’ said Harriet mysteriously. ‘It’s just as well to have it in the house.’
‘I seem to remember a recipe in Tried Favourites—a sort of substitute for whisky,’ said Belinda. ‘I dare say it would be quite easy to make.’
‘I think our guests would hardly thank us if we offered them that,’ said Harriet.
‘Our guests?’ Belinda sank back weakly on to her pillows, unable to face the idea of guests who needed to be entertained with whisky. ‘I think I’ll just rest until lunch-time,’ she said. ‘I dare say I shan’t read after all.’
So Harriet left her and went out to do the shopping. She met several people and told each one about her sister’s indisposition, making little or much of it according to the status of her hearer. To the Archdeacon she gave the most exact details, thinking that somehow he ought to be possessed of all the facts.
‘She had weak tea and dry toast for breakfast,’ said Harriet confidentially, ‘and then she asked for the Oxford Book of Victorian Verse.’
‘She called for madder music and for stronger wine,’ said the Archdeacon, but Harriet was not familiar with our great Victorian poets and so the quotation passed over her head.
She pointed out rather sharply that strong wine was the last thing that should be given to an invalid, although a little brandy might be helpful in cases of biliousness.
‘But of course Belinda isn’t bilious,’ she said hastily. ‘Nothing like that.’
‘Poor Belinda, I am really extremely sorry. Do tell her how very sorry I am. I only wish I could go and see her.’
‘Oh, she’s not at all seriously ill,’ said Harriet. ‘Just a little chill. I’m sure it would alarm people if you were seen going to the house. People always think the worst when they see a clergyman.’
‘Dear me, I hardly know how to take that,’ said the Archdeacon. ‘I should have liked to think that we brought comfort to the sick.’
‘Oh, well, I suppose you do, in a way,’ said Harriet, who was finding it difficult to convey that it all depended on the clergyman.
‘I must look out some books for her to read,’ said the Archdeacon.
‘Thank you very much, but she really has plenty to read.’
‘All the same, there might be something she’d like,’ persisted the Archdeacon. ‘I sometimes wish that I could afford to be ill so that I could read some of the things I normally never have time for.’
Harriet looked contemptuous but said nothing. ‘I must be going now,’ she said at last. ‘I still have quite a lot of shopping to do.’
On her return she found that Belinda had been to sleep and felt a little better.
‘I saw the Archdeacon,’ said Harriet triumphantly. ‘He seemed quite concerned to hear that you were ill and almost suggested coming to see you, but I soon nipped that in the bud.’
Belinda gathered her faded pink bed-jacket more closely round her shoulders. ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t have him coming to see me,’ she said. ‘Not without warning, anyway.’
‘Well, of course,’ said Harriet pompously, ‘it is, or should be, customary for a clergyman to visit the sick in his parish. But perhaps that’s only for the poor people really, to see if they have all they want and so on.’
‘Yes, I suppose I have everything I want,’ said Belinda rather sadly.
‘Naturally if you were seriously ill or dying it would be another matter,’ went on Harriet reassuringly.
‘But I’m not,’ said Belinda regretfully, thinking of Henry reading Samson Agonistes to her on her death-bed.
After lunch she settled down to her own thoughts. Harriet had brought up a light novel from the circulating library and this lay with the Oxford Book of Victorian Verse on the eiderdown. But Belinda did not feel like reading. She was quite enjoying her illness now that she felt a little better and could allow her thoughts to wander at random in the past and future without the consciousness that she ought to be more profitably employed. She had no doubt that there would soon be another proposal of marriage in the drawing-room, perhaps even this afternoon, although she judged the Bishop to be a more prudent man than Mr. Mold. He had certainly not behaved very cordially to Harriet at the lecture, but Belinda was sure that he would not be able to hold out long against her charms. Nor had Harriet seemed as enthusiastic as might have been expected. Could it be that she had found him less attractive than she anticipated, or was it the very depth of her feeling that kept her from speaking of it? Belinda puzzled over this for some time and then fell to thinking of her own life.
There was very little new to be said or thought about it, she decided. She had loved dear Henry for so many years now that she no longer thought of her love as a hopeless passion. Indeed, Belinda felt that no spinster of her age and respectability could possibly have such a thing for an archdeacon. The fierce flame had died down, but the fire was still glowing brightly.
My very ashes in their urn,
Shall like a hallowed lamp for ever burn.…
How much more one appreciated our great literature if one loved, thought Belinda, especially if the love were unrequited! She touched the books affectionately but made no effort to read either of them. As Harriet had said, the Oxford Book of Victorian Verse was rather heavy to hold, and many of the poems in it were uncomfortably sentimental for afternoon reading.
Suddenly there was a noise in the hall. Belinda sat up in bed and listened. At first she thought it must be the Bishop arriving rather too early for tea, but then she realized that it was a woman’s voice. It sounded almost like Agatha’s. She crouched under the bedclothes and began to wonder whether she had a temperature after all and ought not to see people. It was surely not normal to have a sudden longing to hide under the bedclothes when one heard the vicar’s wife in the hall, even if one did love her husband better than she did?
Belinda sat up bravely and took out her hand-mirror. She knew that she looked most unattractive and thought what a good thing it was that she was not seriously ill or dying. Her hair was out of curl, her cheeks were pale and her nose needed powdering. She would not have liked Henry to see her like this, even on her death-bed.
Agatha was all too soon in the room, saying, ‘Poor Belinda, I was so sorry when Henry told me you were ill. I thought I’d come and see how you were.’
Belinda, who was trying to smuggle the hand-mirror out of sight, murmured that it was very kind of Agatha and that she was feeling much better.
‘And now,’ said Agatha, rather too briskly, ‘what has been the matter with you?’
‘Oh, I think I must have caught a slight chill,’ said Belinda vaguely. ‘Perhaps I was sitting in a draught at the Bishop’s lecture,’ she ventured, feeling ashamed of not knowing exactly what was the matter with her and why. ‘The lecture was most interesting, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh, yes, fascinating,’ said Agatha. ‘The Bishop is such a dear man, so kind and amusing.’
He must be especially pleasant to Agatha, thought Belinda, who had not formed at all that impression of him. Indeed Agatha was quite animated when she spoke of him and even looked a little flushed.
‘He asked where you were last night after the lecture,’ she went on. ‘We had quite a little gathering at the vicarage, you know.’
‘I thought you would probably have enough people there without me,’ said Belinda weakly, feeling as she so often did with Agatha that she had somehow done the wrong thing. ‘I went to supper with Edith Liversidge. I’m surprised that he should have remembered me at all.’
‘Well, of course it is a bishop’s duty to remember people,’ said Agatha. ‘My father had a wonderful memory for names and faces.’
‘Yes, I suppose they meet so many people,’ said Belinda, feeling rather damped. Not that she wanted the Bishop to remember her particularly, but it was like Agatha to take away any illusions she might have cherished.
‘It’s some years since you last met, isn’t it?’ said Agatha conversationally.
‘Oh, yes, about thirty years, I think. We none of us grow any younger, do we? Timor mortis conturbat me,’ murmured Belinda, staring straight in front of her.
Agatha looked at her sharply. Sometimes she wondered whether Belinda was quite all there. She said such odd things.
There was a short pause, but before it had time to become awkward a hearty voice was heard outside the door and Edith Liversidge strode into the room, followed by Connie Aspinall. Their arms were full of books and parcels.
‘I must be going now,’ said Agatha, who disliked Edith. ‘Too many visitors at once will tire you.’
Belinda thanked her for her kindness, but was quite relieved to be left alone with Edith and Connie.
‘We’ve brought you some books,’ said Edith. ‘And Connie’s made you a sponge cake. You know I’m no hand at that kind of thing.’
‘Oh, how kind.…’
‘I thought you might like to see some old copies of The Gentlewoman,’ said Connie. ‘There’s a picture of Lady Grudge’s daughter in one’ of them.’
‘How interesting, I shall look forward to reading them,’ said Belinda. ‘You must point her out to me.’
At this moment the front-door bell rang. ‘That must be the Bishop arriving,’ said Belinda.
‘The Bishop?’ asked Edith, rather surprised.
‘Yes, he is coming to tea today.’
‘Does he know you’re ill or is he expecting to see both of you?’
‘Oh, I’m supposed to be there too, but I suddenly woke up ill,’ said Belinda pathetically. ‘So Harriet will have to entertain him alone.’
‘Alone?’ said Edith. ‘I don’t think he’ll like that.’
‘Why ever not?’ asked Belinda, rather worried. Life was quite difficult enough without Edith making disturbing suggestions. Harriet was going to marry the Bishop and Belinda would be left in her old age to die a lonely death, or with nobody but a paid companion to cheer her last hours. Surely that was enough? She had been trying to prepare herself for the worst and did not wish to be unsettled.
Meanwhile Edith expounded her ideas of what a bishop would think quite proper. ‘I don’t think Harriet will get him,’ she said bluntly.
Belinda had been thinking the same thing not so long ago, but now she was inclined to disagree. After all, dear Edith had had little or no experience of bishops, although poor John had been a very good man in his way.
‘I think he has successfully avoided so many women in his life that not even Harriet will be able to catch him,’ she went on. ‘I know his sort.’
Belinda thought this rather a vulgar way of putting it, though it could hardly be denied that it was what Harriet intended to do.
‘I believe women can do almost anything if they are really desperate,’ she ventured. ‘In one of Lyly’s plays, Endimion, I think.…’
‘But I don’t think Harriet is really desperate,’ Edith interrupted. ‘Do you?’
‘I really couldn’t say,’ said Belinda plaintively. ‘I think I should like a drink of barley water. It’s on the little table.’
‘Oh, let me get it for you,’ said Connie, coming forward with a glass and a copy of The Gentlewoman in her hand. ‘This is Lady Joan Grudge,’ she said eagerly, indicating a group of people enjoying a joke at a race meeting.
‘Yes, she’s very pretty, isn’t she,’ murmured Belinda, and was then informed that she had been looking at the wrong girl, for nobody could call Lady Joan pretty. ‘Such a nice expression,’ she emended. ‘She looks very jolly.’
‘Yes, she is a very sweet girl.…’
Downstairs Harriet had just made the discovery that Bishop Grote never ate anything for his tea.
Now this was exceedingly awkward, for how can any real contact be established between two persons when one is eating and the other merely watching? For some minutes Harriet did not know what to do. Her recollections of the Bishop as a curate had included cream buns and hot buttered toast, with licking of fingers. Eventually she had to resort to a kind of arch scolding, which was really more suitable for very young curates than for bishops.
‘Now, that’s naughty of you,’ she said. ‘I expected you to have a really good appetite. I shall be much too embarrassed to eat alone,’ she added, liberally spreading a piece of buttered toast with strawberry jam.
‘I am really very sorry,’ said the Bishop complacently, but with no intention of changing his habits even to be polite to his hostess. ‘But your sister will be eating something, won’t she?’ he inquired, looking anxiously towards the door for a sign of the elder Miss Bede.
‘Oh, I forgot to tell you,’ said Harriet airily, ‘poor Belinda is in bed today. She isn’t well.’
The Bishop started and half rose from his chair. ‘Nothing infectious or contagious, I hope?’ he asked, rather too eagerly.
‘No, no,’ Harriet smiled reassuringly, but at the same time a little dangerously, so that the Bishop knew that there was as yet no possibility of escape. ‘Just a slight chill,’ she explained, ‘but one can’t be too careful.’
The Bishop murmured some words of regret but he found it difficult to keep a note of displeasure out of his voice. So might he have rebuked a rebellious African who appeared at Divine Service in his flowery but inadequate native costume. To begin with, he was not sure that he believed this story about Belinda’s illness. People didn’t suddenly become ill like this, he told himself angrily, and Belinda had seemed quite well at the lecture last night. If she were really indisposed why hadn’t Harriet written or sent a message, changing the invitation to another day? She could so easily have done this. That nice maid who had answered the door would have been only too willing to take a message to the vicarage. It was only a few minutes away. Besides, he wanted to see Belinda. He thought her much nicer than Harriet and she had knitted him such a beautiful scarf when he was a curate, however much she might deny it. Harriet must indeed be heartless to leave her sister lying alone and ill upstairs while she entertained guests—the Bishop’s indignation had got the better of his accuracy—in the drawing-room.
Harriet interrupted his thoughts by asking if his tea were too strong.
‘Oh, no, it is very nice, thank you,’ he said quite civilly.
‘Perhaps you would like some more sugar in it?’ she persisted.
‘No, thank you. I never take more than one lump.’
There was a pause while Harriet, who was finding dear Theo not at all as she had imagined, racked her brains for something to say. Surely he had lost some of his charm of manner? she asked herself anxiously. It went without saying that he had once had charm of manner, but what had happened to it now? He did not appear to be enjoying himself at all and was behaving almost as if this visit were a duty rather than a pleasure. She stretched forward and helped herself to another piece of buttered toast. And how extremely irritating this not eating was. It was impolite, too, most impolite.
‘I suppose it was in Africa that you got into the habit of not eating any tea?’ she asked brightly.
‘Oh, no, it was when I was a minor canon,’ he replied seriously. ‘I found that it interfered with Evensong.’
Harriet burst into a peal of laughter. She thought this very funny and stored it up to tell Belinda. But the Bishop’s sheep’s face hardly altered its expression.
‘A minor canon,’ she giggled. ‘Now when you were a deacon I seem to remember you eating crumpets for tea,’ she said, trying to bring back to him the remembrance that he had once been a typically charming curate with endearing human weaknesses. ‘Sic transit gloria mundi,’ she added.
‘I beg your pardon?’ The Bishop’s voice held a note of surprise. He thought Harriet an extremely silly woman and was wondering how soon he could decently get away. It was in vain that Harriet asked him intelligent questions about the flora and fauna of the Mbawawa country and tried to draw him out on the missionaries’ attitude towards polygamy. He seemed disinclined for conversation and at five o’clock got up to go.
As they went out into the hall, Miss Liversidge and Miss Aspinall came down the stairs from Belinda’s room.
‘Poor Belinda,’ said Connie, ‘I think she seems rather low. I must say I thought her looking not at all well.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Edith. ‘It’s only a chill. She’ll be up and about in a day or two.’
‘I am indeed sorry to hear this,’ said the Bishop. ‘Will you give her my very kindest regards and good wishes for a speedy recovery? In my diocese we have a special song for such an occasion. It is almost entirely on one note.’
The three ladies looked up expectantly.
‘Perhaps I had better not sing it now,’ said the Bishop. ‘It might disturb Miss Belinda. The African temperament is not quite like ours.’
‘Oh, Belinda, he’s so stupid and dull!’ Harriet burst out, when the visitors had gone. ‘He sent you his kindest regards. I don’t think he really believed you were ill until he saw Edith and Connie.’
‘I’m sorry he was such a disappointment,’ said Belinda, ‘but perhaps he will improve on further acquaintance. He is really quite the opposite to Mr. Mold, isn’t he? I mean, perhaps he doesn’t have all his goods in the shop window.’
Harriet laughed scornfully and became absorbed in looking at The Gentlewoman.
‘It was kind of Connie to bring these,’ said Belinda. ‘It makes one feel so secure to look at a paper like this.’ She pointed out Lady Joan Grudge, enjoying a joke with friends at a race meeting, a group at a dance held in Eaton Square for somebody’s debutante daughter, a party of titled people at a night club and other comforting unrealities. Lulled in security and contentment, they passed the next half-hour very pleasantly until there was a ring at the front door and the sisters started up in agitation.
‘Oh, dear, I wonder who that is?’ said Harriet, hastily squeezing her feet into the elegant shoes which she had kicked off after the Bishop had gone.
‘I really don’t think I can do with any more visitors tonight,’ said Belinda feebly. ‘What is it, Emily?’ she asked, as the maid appeared in the doorway.
For answer Emily thrust forward a large bundle, shrouded in many sheets of blue tissue paper. ‘Flowers for the invalid, Miss Belinda,’ she said brightly, in a nurse’s tone.
Harriet rushed forward. Nobody ever sent Belinda flowers, but the florist’s label was clearly addressed to Miss Belinda Bede. Harriet unwrapped the tissue paper to reveal a dozen beautiful chrysanthemums, bronze and white.
Belinda’s heart leapt. They were from Henry. Harriet had seen him that morning, so he knew she was ill, but in any case Agatha would probably have told him.
‘There doesn’t seem to be a card with them,’ said Harriet, fumbling with maddening deliberation. ‘Oh, yes, here we are.’ She tossed the little envelope over to Belinda, who tore it open eagerly.
When one has reached Belinda’s age, and even before, one takes these small disappointments calmly. Of course the flowers were not from the Archdeacon, how could they have been? It would have been most unsuitable, unless, of course, Agatha had joined in the gift, Belinda told herself, as she struggled to decipher the unfamiliar handwriting.
‘With best wishes for a speedy recovery—Theodore Mbawawa.’ she read. ‘Oh, Harriet, from the Bishop!’ she sank back weakly on to her pillows. ‘I really don’t think I can bear any more today. Theodore Mbawawa … doesn’t that sound odd … I suppose it’s what he calls himself.…’