Chapter XXX

“Yet, ah! that Spring should vanish with the Rose;
That youth’s sweet-scented Manuscript should close!
The nightingale that in the branches sang—
Ah, whence and whither flown again who knows!”

RUBAIYAT.

He had made up his mind not to think about Katherine, so that when he actually met her in an A. B. C. he felt that the reward of his decision was clear. She looked tired and white, and he ordered a succession of ices for each of them.

“In this country,” he said, “you have your luxuries in egg-cups, so the only way is to get a lot of egg-cups. I think perhaps that is the real reason why English people take their pleasure sadly—you see, they are always coming to the bottom of the egg-cup. In fact, you ought to go for a holiday, which proves my point.”

Katherine hoped his nonsense had covered her visible embarrassment at the sight of him. It had covered it, but he had seen it, and he knew better than Katherine did what it meant.

The sun burnt through the window of the dull little shop, the sugar trickled off the buns, the butter floated. The girls who lounged about the small tables made the idea of eating difficult. A young man in a billy-cock hat sucked lemon-squash, through a straw.

The American enjoyed the scene before him. “Oh! it’s good! it’s good,” he said. “Think of this in the heart of London—and it pays.”

“Why shouldn’t it pay?” said Katherine crossly.

“If you came here oftener it would pay more,” said Bert Russell audaciously. Katherine looked steadily before her.

“I shall not come here again,” she said.

“Then where shall we go?” he asked.

“You can go where you please,” she replied with irritation, “and I shall go somewhere else.” They both laughed, but Bert Russell, remembering the look of unwilling welcome in the girl’s eyes, made the mistake of supposing she knew it also.

“I have been looking for you for some twenty-eight years,” he said. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I should suggest that you wasted no more time,” said Katherine.

“That’s what I feel about it myself,” said Bert. “Will you have another ice in honour of your decision?”

“You are wilfully misunderstanding me,” said Katherine angrily. “I have never liked, nor trusted you. If you will force me to tell you unpleasant truths, I cannot help it. You have no right to jest with me on—on such subjects!”

“Pardon me, I was not jesting,” said Bert with a queer little smile. “I was only proposing to you, and the laugh is all on your side.”

The young man with the lemon-squash pushed back his chair with a noisy squeak, and began to tease one of the girls across the counter. Their nasal voices made Katherine wince.

“Then you might have found a simpler way of doing it,” she said, “but it makes no difference. I am sorry I cannot marry you.” She had not meant to speak so brutally, but she was hurting herself as well as him, and it is not easy to hurt oneself gracefully.

“And you neither like nor trust me?” he said thoughtfully. Katherine did not answer him. “Well, thank you, Miss Linton, for being frank; it saves ever so much time. You won’t have another ice?”

“No,” said Katherine. “Mr. Russell?”

“Yes, Miss Linton.”

“I do like and trust you, but it doesn’t make any difference!” Bert Russell laughed.

“It makes a lot of difference to me,” he said, “I can assure you!”

“It doesn’t to what we have just been talking about,” persisted Katherine.

“Maybe we can be friends?” he asked lightly, “or brothers?” Katherine frowned.

“It might lead to mistakes,” she said.

“I believe in the policy of the open-door,” he said. “Some day the right person walks in. Anyway, it’s much more hospitable, don’t you think?”

“Well, I sometimes come to tea here on Tuesdays,” said Katherine.

“Good,” said the American. “It’s a fine place to come to.”

The young man at the counter said something to the girl which made her giggle. Katherine walked out of the shop. As they turned towards the hospital they were stopped, by one of those swiftly-forming little London crowds. On the pavement, surrounded by their pressing figures, was a very well-dressed woman, who might have been good-looking—only she was drunk. Katherine and her companion made their way to her side.

“Let us take her somewhere,” said the American, “before a policeman comes.” He tipped a bystander, and a cab appeared. Somehow they got her into it.

The heat and the glare of the day made the world terrible—a world in which such a thing could easily happen. The crowd dispersed as the cab drove away, and a policeman sauntered up.

“We were just in time,” said Bert with relief.

“And now will you tell me what you are going to do?” asked Katherine with some asperity. “In half-an-hour’s time I am due in the ward. This——” she hesitated as she looked at the heavy, inanimate figure he was supporting, “this woman is completely helpless and will remain so for some hours. She is probably an actress,” glancing at her clothes.

“She ought to have a card somewhere about her,” said Bert Russell. “Why—here is one in her pocketbook. My gracious! Miss Linton,” he said aghast, “she’s Mrs. Arthur Field!” The two gazed at each other in a communion of horror. Why, in all the world, had this black secret come to them? The stern, indomitable face of the surgeon rose up between them, and the weak, lost loveliness of the woman was in itself an appeal, and an explanation. “We must take her to her husband,” said the American.

“Ah, poor fellow,” said Katherine. They drove in silence through the noise and glare, of the great city, shrouded in the stillness of a human mystery, unseeing and unhearing. They arrived at the impressively blank house where the surgeon lived, before they had framed an explanation.

The maid told them Mr. Field was engaged, but would be free in a few minutes. “People did not usually see him without an appointment,” she added, looking suspiciously at the nurse and the young man.

“The nurse has brought a patient of Mr. Field’s to him; she is in the cab, but unfortunately she has fainted. Will you kindly find us a private room. I take all the responsibility of settling affairs with Mr. Field,” said the American. “The case is urgent,” he added in an undertone, handing her a sovereign. The maid nodded.

The nurse had roused the woman to a stumbling consciousness; they managed between them to get her into the house. The maid’s suspicion deepened, and a further proof of another sovereign was needed before the private room was found. Katherine looked at her watch, and Bert Russell took her back to the cab. At the door she gave him her hand.

“I can’t bear leaving you to face it alone,” she said.

“Ah!—now I wonder why?” asked Bert Russell, smiling. Katherine withdrew her hand sharply.

As the cab drove off she leaned to him out of the window. “Good-bye,” she said, “and thank you.” Bert went back to his post.

The woman had been more or less roused, but she was still only half-conscious; sometimes she muttered and tossed to and fro in her sleep. She had such pretty hands. The minutes were heavier and longer than hours. Once, through a partition at the end of the room, he heard a woman’s voice.

“Then, Mr. Field, you would suggest a winter abroad?”

“I never suggest, madam, I merely state what is necessary.”

“It will be very expensive,” said the lady.

“That has nothing whatever to do with me,” he replied a little brutally.

He heard the door close sharply, and a moment later a quick, decisive tread stopped at the door of the room, and the surgeon entered.

“May I ask the meaning of this intrusion, sir?” he asked in a short, hard voice. Then he saw the woman on the sofa. He stood quite still for a moment, and swayed a little. The storm had burst upon him, and he was not quite ready for the storm. Yet the thought came to him even then with a rush of gladness that Daphne had been spared this. “Ah!” he said, coming swiftly forward, “my wife, sir.” He looked down at her with passionate loathing and anger in his eyes. As Bert Russell watched him, he saw the clear-cut mouth quiver once, as if old memories were tugging at his heart; his eyes grew soft, and he turned to the young man. “I think I have met you before?” he said.

“At Lady Middleton’s,” said the American.

“Yes,” said Mr. Field, “I remember. May I ask you where you met my wife?” Bert explained. The surgeon raised his eyebrows. “Do you often do these things?” he asked; “must be a little awkward at times?” Bert smiled.

“Why, no!” he said, “I don’t find it so. It was lucky I saw her card.”

“Was there anyone with you?” Mr. Field questioned. Bert hesitated.

“A lady,” he said finally.

“Ah,” said the surgeon, “I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Russell.” Bert rose to his feet, and the two men looked at each other. Suddenly the woman on the sofa screamed “Arthur.” Mr. Field winced, then he walked to the door with Bert, with his back to the sofa. When he had gone, Arthur turned to his wife and sat down near the sofa. The sight of him and her surroundings brought her back to herself; she began to whimper:

“I didn’t mean to come here, Arthur. It was all an accident. Nurse and I came up for a change only for a night or two—and we went shopping, we missed each other somehow—and I got faint with the heat and had to have some brandy; it went to my head, I think, and I became unconscious, so—so someone brought me here—I am sure I don’t know how they knew where to come.”

“Providentially you had a card-case with my name on,” he said drily. “If it had not been so you would have been taken to a police station, you know. That would have been a new experience, wouldn’t it? We might try it next time!”

“Oh, Arthur! how unkind,” sobbed his wife. Then she looked up at him. “Where am I to go?” she said quickly—“not to another dreadful Home?”

“On the contrary,” he said, “we will try this—home, and I hope you will find it a pleasant one!” Rosamonde drew back and laughed hysterically.

“You’re—you’re joking!” she said.

“My dear Rosamonde,” said her husband, “I never joke. I thought you knew that.”

“But people will find out,” she whispered breathlessly—“they will talk.”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “they probably will.”

“I thought it would ruin you,” she said.

“I don’t think so now,” said Arthur. “I am going to give you another chance,” he said gently. “You are only twenty-eight—you used to be beautiful; you may be again, if you get the better of your trouble. You will live in this house with your nurse, as before, only this time under my name, and I shall be within call. Another thing, Rosamonde, if you fail again, I shall punish you, but I shall go on keeping you. I shall never let you go again. I am going to conquer this thing. Are you going to help me?” He spoke with a repressed force that frightened her. She looked at him with dull, curious eyes. He bent forward and, placing his arm around her, he took her across the room to a mirror. She looked at herself speechlessly, then she struggled to escape from the horror in the glass. He held her there for a minute, then, placing her on the sofa, he crossed the room, and came back to her with a photograph of a beautiful girl of eighteen. “These are both you, Rosamonde,” he said. “I am going to give you this photograph to keep; some day you may be like it again.”

“Oh, Arthur,” she whispered, “I’ll try.” He rang the bell. The maid, looking more curious than ever, answered the door.

“You will prepare the spare room for Mrs. Field, and the dressing-room next door for a nurse. Mrs. Field is an invalid; she will therefore not take over the housekeeping at present,” said the surgeon in his usual, quick, imperative tones. Then he went into his study. He took the picture of Daphne off his table and quietly tore it to pieces. He telephoned for a trustworthy nurse, and requested that the nurse he had had before should be dismissed from her association. Then he sank like an old man into his chair. “Only another few years now,” he muttered, “and another shock like this may set me free.”

It was not known in medical circles that the great surgeon suffered from an obscure and fatal disease. But the man himself knew it, and studied his own case day by day, noting its interesting symptoms and bearing its peculiarly absorbing pain. For a few hours he sat quite grey, and still, in his private consulting room. Then, as evening came on, in a sudden rush of summer rain, his breath came more easily, and he rose to his feet, swaying a little as he stood erect. There came a knock at his door. It was his housekeeper, a woman of rigid principle with a real attachment to him; he had saved her life a few years before.

“If you please, sir, I should like to leave,” she said; she had been crying and was ready to begin again. He stared at her scarcely out of the dumb valley of his pain.

“Very well,” he said shortly. She had meant to pour out explanations and reproaches, and possibly to recant at the end. Now she was too frightened to speak and went downstairs to tell the other servants “That master looked white as a ghost.”

After she had gone Arthur turned on the electric light. “And now I am alone,” he said, and then, with half a smile, he quoted to himself, “I was ever a fighter”; so one fight more, the best and the last. The shower lashed down the dust of the streets, and the burning day died in a mist of rain.