CHAPTER X
I DISCOVER THAT DR. RENTON IS IN LOVE
Nurse has gone, and I am not overwhelmed with grief. I could quite see that within another week the kitchen would have been turned into a pugilistic ring, and she and Amelia would have settled their grievances in a fight.
Amelia has said, with her nose in the air, "Seems to think I am just here to wait on her, mum. Nurses halways imagines they're duchesses, and just took to nursin' out of pilanthropy."
And nurse has said kindly, "I don't want to worry you, Mrs. Westover, but probably that girl is here just as a temporary, or I shouldn't speak; but really her impertinence is——"
"She is quite permanent," I have hastened to assure her, at which she too has stuck her nose in the air; and so they have gone about as though the law of gravitation was reversed, and their noses permanently drawn heavenwards.
I am downstairs in the drawing-room. I found awaiting me an invalid couch—an Ilkley—low and luxurious, with soft down cushions cased in silk of a lovely golden hue—a couch contrived to ease the weariness of tired people. They have pushed it into the window, and from here I can see all my friends of the garden—the apple tree best loved of all, for is it not our very own tree, growing on our domain? One has a peculiar affection for one's own possessions. Not that I am anything but grateful to the beech in the frog-pond field for casting its cool shadow across the lawn; but it belongs to somebody else—perhaps some farmer who hardly knows of its existence.
My descent from the upper regions was somewhat perilous. We—Amelia, nurse, and I—wanted to take Dimbie by surprise, so nurse said she would superintend my removal. As a matter of fact, she did nothing of the kind, for Amelia superintended it.
First of all she made me put up my hair. She said I could not "boss the show" with it hanging down in two plaits. I reflected that were I to dress it as high as the Eiffel Tower I should not be able to boss her, but I did not mention this. Next she picked up her end of the chair and fairly ran with me down the stairs, nurse being bound to follow. I closed my eyes and held my breath, and when I opened them again I found myself staring at two gorgeous yellow flags decorated with portraits of the King and Queen. They had certainly not been there on the last occasion of my being in the drawing-room. The King wore a top-hat and carelessly held a cigar in his kid-gloved hand. The Queen, poor thing, was extremely decolletée, and wore mauve roses in her hair. The King, in morning dress, seemed out of place to me by the side of such grandeur on the part of his spouse.
Amelia broke into my musings.
"Thought we would have a bit of decoration, like the Jubilee, mum, in your honour, so I got them flags in the village."
She looked at me expectantly, and nurse sniffed.
The sniff annoyed me.
"It was extremely kind of you, Amelia," I said warmly. "Thank you very much."
"And the Hilkley, mum? The master got that, and we smuggled it into the house without your hearing anythink that was going on. And he's been wheeling it about hever since, trying to get the best persition, where the sun wouldn't catch your eyes, and where you could see the garden and the happle tree."
"I think it is lovely. Please lift me on to it, nurse. You will have to lift me to-morrow, Amelia," I said soothingly.
She watched the proceeding carefully, and with gentle hand arranged the cushions. The hand was rough and coarsened by hard work, but I felt that it would ever be ready to do my service.
I told them to leave me, as I wanted to be alone. I wanted to think. Now that I was downstairs I wished to review my position. The familiar aspect of the room, the furniture—which Amelia had pushed against the walls with an undesirable effort at neatness—conjured up a thousand pleasant memories. It had been on a snowy winter afternoon when Dimbie and I had first come home. How peaceful, how delicious the warm, fire-lit room had seemed after the rush of hotel life! We sat in the gloaming talking, planning out our lives, what we would do, where we would go; and now—ah! when should I cease to chafe at lying still? I thought of all the people who had had to lie so much—Mrs. Browning, Stevenson, and they had seemed so patient over years of ill-health—and my inactivity was but for one year, and yet I was not patient.
*****
Doctor Renton came into the room, bearing in his arms a great bunch of roses.
"From your mother," he said; "she came round with them this morning. She wanted to come with me."
"And why didn't she?" I felt my eyes kindle.
"You know," he replied with a shrug.
"Peter is a beast!" I said.
He smiled.
"You are evidently better. I am glad to find you downstairs. How did you manage the removal?"
I described it fully, and he laughed.
"That girl of yours is a brick. I should keep her."
"She wouldn't go," I said.
"She will help you not to be lonely. Have you made any friends here yet?"
"No," I returned. "I believe some people called when I was ill. But I don't want anybody."
"You only want your husband?"
I nodded.
"You seem uncommonly fond of one another."
"Of course," I said.
To my surprise he sighed and walked to the window. I noticed his figure was a little bent and his hair grey. I had known Dr. Renton all my life, but for the first time it came to me that he was lonely.
"Why have you never married?" I asked suddenly. He surely wanted a wife.
He started, and then smiled.
"All young married people want to know that of their friends," he said evasively.
"I think you would have made an awfully nice husband, and—it seems such a pity that you should be alone."
He picked up one of the roses which I had untied and held it to his face.
"How do you mean, a pity?"
"Why, that you should be in that great big house at Dorking by yourself when there are so many women in the world. They seem to overflow. I don't know what is to be done with them all."
"So you want to marry me for the sake of reducing the number of spinsters?" He laughed.
"Well, not exactly," I replied. "But I feel you have lost so much—you and the woman you ought to have married."
"How do you know there was one?" he asked sharply.
I smiled.
"I guessed," I said. "I am quite brilliant at times. Where is she?"
"In India."
He stopped abruptly on the word, and from his attitude I realised he would have given much to recall it. I felt I had been impertinent.
"Forgive me——" I began.
"Not at all," he said. "I don't mind. It's rather a relief to speak of it. You—you are still in love, and will understand. Once there was a time when I looked forward to being married. I looked forward greatly. I thought of it morning, noon, and night."
"Well?" I said gently.
"She went abroad."
"But why? Didn't she return your love?"
"I—I don't know."
"You don't know?" I raised my voice.
"No."
"Didn't you tell her?"
"You see, she went off so quickly. She was in such a deuce of a hurry to get abroad."
"What do you call a hurry?"
Dr. Renton shuffled.
"Perhaps you knew her for three months?"
"I knew her for two years."
"And you call two years a hurry?" I endeavoured to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
"Of course, I didn't know if she cared anything about me."
"Did you expect her to propose to you?"
"Oh, no, certainly not."
"I see, you dangled about her for two years. In fact, you almost compromised her. Then you were astonished at the poor woman running away. Year after year you played fast and loose with her——"
"I don't call two years year after year," he interrupted meekly.
"I do," I said severely. "Dimbie was only six weeks."
He laughed.
"We are not all made of the same stuff as Dimbie." He spoke so humbly, so unlike his usual decided self, that I began to feel sorry for him.
"And do you think this woman will ever come back?"
"I wish to God she would," he said, with an intensity that startled me.
"Why, I do believe you still care for her," I said.
"Of course I do," he returned with asperity. "I thought I mentioned that."
"No, you didn't. You simply said you had driven a woman to India. Poor thing, my heart bleeds for her. I expect her tears have made a sort of railway cutting down her cheeks, and she will be prematurely aged."
Dr. Renton grunted.
"If you still care for her, may I ask why you don't follow her, or write to her?"
"That is what I have asked myself a thousand times a day," he cried, walking up and down the room. "For years I have been asking myself."
"Years!" I said in dismay. "Is it years?"
He nodded.
"Then I am afraid you are too late." I sighed.
"Of course I am. I've been a fool. Now it is too late."
"I'm very sorry."
He held out his hand.
"Good-bye."
"Can nothing be done?" I wondered.
"I'm afraid not, Marguerite."
"But you would be so happy married."
"Do you think all married people are happy?"
"No, according to Nanty few of them are. But I think you would have been, and I am sure of your wife. You are so strong and kind. I always think of you in the same way as I think of Miss Fairbrother."
"Oh!" he said, turning his face away.
"Yes, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary and thirsty land. You are both such comforting people. Do you remember Miss Fairbrother, my old governess?"
"Yes," he said, and he walked quickly to the door and went out.