Superseded

by May Sinclair

CHAPTER VIII

A Painful Misunderstanding

And now, on early evenings and Saturday afternoons when the weather was fine, Miss Quincey was to be found in Primrose Hill Park. Not that anybody ever came to look for Miss Quincey. Nevertheless, whether she was walking up and down the paths or sitting on a bench, Miss Quincey had a certain expectant air, as if at any moment Dr. Cautley might come tearing round the corner with his coat-tails flying, or as if she might look up and find him sitting beside her and talking to her. But he did not come. There are some histories that never repeat themselves.

And he had never called since that day—Miss Quincey remembered it well; it was Saturday the thirteenth of March. April and May went by; she had not seen him now for more than two months; and she began to think there must be a reason for it.

At last she saw him; she saw him twice running. Once in the park where they had sat together, and once in the forked road that leads past that part of St. Sidwell's where Miss Cursiter and Miss Vivian lived in state. Each time he was walking very fast as usual, and he looked at her, but he never raised his hat; she spoke, but he passed her without a word. And yet he had recognised her; there could be no possible doubt of it.

Depend upon it there was a reason for that. Miss Quincey was one of those innocent people who believe that every variety of human behaviour must have a reason (as if only two months ago she had not been favoured with the spectacle of an absolutely unreasonable young man). To be sure it was not easy to find one for conduct so strange and unprecedented, and in any case Miss Quincey's knowledge of masculine motives was but small. Taken by itself it might have passed without any reason, as an oversight, a momentary lapse; but coupled with his complete abandonment of Camden Street North it looked ominous indeed. Not that her faith in Bastian Cautley wavered for an instant. Because Bastian Cautley was what he was, he could never be guilty of spontaneous discourtesy; on the other hand, she had seen that he could be fierce enough on provocation; therefore, she argued, he had some obscure ground of offence against her.

Miss Quincey passed a sleepless night reasoning about the reason, a palpitating never-ending night, without a doze or a dream in it or so much as the winking of an eyelid. She reasoned about it for a week between the classes, and in her spare time (when she had any) in the evening (thus running into debt to Sordello again). At the end of the week Miss Quincey's mind seemed to have become remarkably lucid; every thought in it ground to excessive subtlety in the mill of her logic. She saw it all clearly. There had been some misunderstanding, some terrible mistake. She had forfeited his friendship through a blunder nameless but irrevocable. Once or twice she wondered if Mrs. Moon could be at the bottom of it—or Martha. Had her aunt carried out her dreadful threat of giving him a hint to send in his account? And had the hint implied that for the future all accounts with him were closed? Had he called on Mrs. Moon and been received with crushing hostility? Or had Martha permitted herself to say that she, Miss Quincey, was out when perhaps he knew for a positive fact that she was in? But she soon dismissed these conjectures as inadequate and fell back on her original hypothesis.

And all the time the Old Lady's eyes, and her voice too, were sharper than ever; from the corner where she dreamed she watched Miss Quincey incessantly between the dreams. At times the Old Lady was shaken with terrible and mysterious mirth. Bastian Cautley began to figure fantastically in her conversation. Her ideas travelled by slow trains of association that started from nowhere but always arrived at Bastian Cautley as a terminus. If Juliana had a headache Mrs. Moon supposed that she wanted that young man to be dancing attendance on her again; if Juliana sighed she declared that Dr. Cautley was a faithless swain who had forsaken Juliana; if Martha brought in the tea-tray she wondered when Dr. Cautley was coming back for another slice of Juliana's wedding-cake. Mrs. Moon referred to a certain abominable piece of confectionery now crumbling away on a shelf in the sideboard, where, with a breach in its side and its sugar turret in ruins, it seemed to nod at Miss Quincey with all sorts of satirical suggestions. And when Louisa sent her accounts of Teenie who lisped in German, Alexander who wrote Latin letters to his father, and Mildred who refused to read the New Testament in anything but Greek, and Miss Quincey remarked that if she had children she wouldn't bring them up so, the Old Lady laughed—"Tchee—Tchee! We all know about old maids' children." Miss Quincey said nothing to that; but she hardened her heart against Louisa's children, and against Louisa's husband and Louisa. She couldn't think how Louisa could have married such a dreadful little man as Andrew Mackinnon, with his unmistakable accent and problematical linen. The gentle creature who had never said a harsh word to anybody in her life became mysteriously cross and captious. She hardened her heart even to little Laura Lazarus.

And one morning when she came upon the Mad Hatter in her corner of the class-room, and found her adding two familiar columns of figures together and adding them all wrong, Miss Quincey was very cross and very captious indeed. The Mad Hatter explained at more length than ever that the figures twisted themselves about; they wouldn't stay still a minute so that she could hold them; they were always going on and on, turning over and over, and growing, growing, till there were millions, billions, trillions of them; oh, they were wonderful things those figures; you could go on watching them for ever if you were sharp enough; you could even—here Laura lowered her voice in awe of her own conception, for Laura was a mystic, a seer, a metaphysician, what you will—you could even think with them, if you knew how; in short you could do anything with them but turn them into sums. And as all this was very confusing to the intellect Miss Quincey became crosser than ever. And while Miss Quincey quivered all over with irritability, the Mad Hatter paid no heed whatever to her instructions, but thrust forward a small yellow face that was all nose and eyes, and gazed at Miss Quincey like one possessed by a spirit of divination.

"Have you got a headache, Miss Quincey?" she inquired on hearing herself addressed for the third time as "Stupid child!"

Miss Quincey relied tartly that no, she had not got a headache. The Mad Hatter appeared to be absorbed in tracing rude verses on her rough notebook with a paralytic pencil.

"I'm sorry; because then you must be unhappy. When people are cross," she continued, "it means one of two things. Either their heads ache or they are unhappy. You must be very unhappy. I know all about it." The paralytic pencil wavered and came to a full stop. "You like somebody, and so somebody has made you unhappy."

But for the shame of it, Miss Quincey could have put her head down on the desk and cried as she had seen the Mad Hatter cry over her sums, and for the same reason; because she could not put two and two together.

And what Mrs. Moon saw, what Martha saw, what the Mad Hatter divined with her feverish, precocious brain, Rhoda Vivian could not fail to see. It was Dr. Cautley's business to look after Miss Quincey in her illness, and it was Rhoda's to keep an eye on her in her recovery, and instantly report the slightest threatening of a break-down. Miss Quincey's somewhat eccentric behaviour filled her with misgivings; and in order to investigate her case at leisure, she chose the first afternoon when Miss Cursiter was not at home to ask the little arithmetic teacher to lunch.

After Rhoda's lunch, soothed with her sympathy and hidden, not to say extinguished, in an enormous chair, Miss Quincey was easily worked into the right mood for confidences; indeed she was in that state of mind when they rush out of their own accord in the utter exhaustion of the will.

"Are you sure you are perfectly well?" so Rhoda began her inquiry.

"Perfectly, perfectly—in myself," said Miss Quincey, "I think, perhaps—that is, sometimes I'm a little afraid that taking so much arsenic may have disagreed with me. You know it is a deadly poison. But I've left it off lately, so I ought to be better—unless perhaps I'm feeling the want of it."

"You are not worrying about St. Sidwell's—about your work?"

"It's not that—not that. But to tell you the truth, I am worried, Rhoda. For some reason or other, my own fault, no doubt, I have lost a friend. It's a hard thing," said Miss Quincey, "to lose a friend."

"Oh, I am sure—Do you mean Miss Cursiter?"

"No, I do not mean Miss Cursiter."

"Do you mean—me then? Not me?"

"You, dear child? Never. To be plain—this is in confidence, Rhoda—I am speaking of Dr. Cautley."

"Dr. Cautley?"

"Yes. I do not know what I have done, or how I have offended him, but he has not been near me for over two months."

"Perhaps he has been busy—in fact, I know he has."

"He has always been busy. It is not that. It is something—well, I hardly care to speak of it, it has been so very painful. My dear"—Miss Quincey's voice sank to an awful whisper—"he has cut me in the street."

"Oh, I know—he will do it; he has done it to all his patients. He is so dreadfully absent-minded."

If Miss Quincey had not been as guileless as the little old maid she was, she would have recognised these indications of intimacy; as it was, she said with superior conviction, "My dear, I know Dr. Cautley. He has never cut me before, and he would not do it now without a reason. There has been some awful mistake. If I only knew what I had done!"

"You've done nothing. I wouldn't worry if I were you."

"I can't help worrying. You don't know, Rhoda. The bitter and terrible part of this friendship is, and always has been, that I am under obligations to Dr. Cautley. I owe everything to him; I cannot tell you what he has done for me, and here I am, not allowed, and I never shall be allowed, to do anything for him." A sob struggled in Miss Quincey's throat.

Rhoda was silent. Did she know? Very dimly, with a mere intellectual perception, but still a great deal better than the little arithmetic teacher could have told her, she understood the desire of that innocent person, not for love, not for happiness, but just for leave to lay down her life for this friend, this deity of hers, to be consumed in sacrifice. And the bitter and terrible thing was that she was not allowed to do it. The friend had no use for the life, the deity no appetite for the sacrifice.

"Don't think about it," she said; it seemed the best thing to say in the singular circumstances. "It will all come right."

By this time Miss Quincey had got the better of the sob in her throat. "It may," she replied with dignity; "but I shall not be the first to make advances."

"Advances? Rather not. But if I thought he was thinking things—he isn't, you know, he's not that sort; still, if I thought it I should have it out with him."

"How could you have it—'out with him'?"

"Oh I should just ask him what he thought of me; or better still, tell him what I thought of him."

Miss Quincey shrank visibly from the bold suggestion.

"Would you? Oh, that would never do. You won't mind my saying so, but I think it would look a little indelicate. Of course it would be very different if it were a woman; if it were you for instance."

"I should do it any way. It's the straightest thing."

"I daresay, dear, in your friendships it is. But I think you can hardly judge of this. You do not know Dr. Cautley as I do."

"No," said Rhoda meekly, "perhaps I don't." Not for worlds would she have destroyed that beautiful illusion.

"It has been," continued Miss Quincey, "a very peculiar, a very interesting relationship. Strange too—considering. If you had asked me six months ago I should have told you that the thing was impossible, or rather, that in nine cases out of ten—I mean I should have said it was highly improbable that Dr. Cautley would take the faintest interest in me, let alone like me."

"He does like you, dear Miss Quincey, I know he does."

"How do you know?"

"He told me so." (Miss Quincey quivered and a faint flush worked up through the sallow of her cheek.) "And I'm sure he would be most distressed to think you were unhappy."

"It is not unhappiness; certainly not unhappiness. On the contrary I have been happy, quite happy lately. And I think it has been bad for me. I wasn't used to it. Perhaps, if it had happened five-and-twenty years ago—Do not misunderstand me, I am merely speaking of friendship, dear; but it might—I mean I might—"

Far back in the chair and favoured by Rhoda's silence, Miss Quincey dropped into a dream. Presently she woke up as it were with a start.

"What am I thinking of? Let us be reasonable; let us reduce it to figures. Forty-five—thirty—he is thirty. Take twenty-five from thirty and five remain. Why, Rhoda, he would have been—"

They looked at each other, but neither said: "He would have been five years old."

Miss Quincey seemed quite prostrated by the result of her calculations.
To everything that Rhoda could urge to soothe her she answered steadily:

"You do not know him as I do."

The voice was not Miss Quincey's voice; it was the monotonous, melancholy voice of the Fixed Idea.

Her knowledge of him. After all, nothing could take from her the exquisite privacy of that possession.

* * * * *

"Eros anikate machan," said Rhoda.

Miss Quincey was gone and the Classical Mistress was in school again, coaching a backward student through the "Antigone."

"Oh Love, unconquered in fight. Love who—Love who fliest, who fliest about among things," said the student. And the teacher laughed.

Laughed, for the entertaining blunder called up a vivid image of the god in Miss Quincey's drawing-room, fluttering about among the furniture and doing terrific damage with his wings.

"What's wrong?" asked the student.

"Oh nothing; only a slight confusion between flying about and falling upon. 'Oh Love who fallest on the prey'; please go on."

"'Oh Love who fallest on the prey'—" The chorus mumbled and stumbled, and the student sighed heavily, for the Greek was hard. "He who has—he who has—Oh dear, I can't see any sense in these old choruses; I do hate them."

"Still," said Rhoda sweetly, "you mustn't murder them. 'He who has love has madness.'"

The chorus limped to its end and the student left the coach to some curious reflections.

"Eros anikate machan!"

"Oh Love, unconquered in fight!" It sang in her ears persistently, joyously, ironically—a wedding-song, a battle-song, a song of victory.

Bastian Cautley was right when he said that the race was to the swift and the battle to the strong. How eager she had been for the fight, how mad for the crowded course! She had rushed on, heat after heat, outstripping all competitors and carrying off all the crowns and the judges' compliments at the end of the day. She loved the race for its own sake, this young athlete; and though she took the crowns and the compliments very much as a matter of course, she had come to look on life as nothing but an endless round of Olympic games. And just as she forgot each successive event in the excitement of the next, she also had forgotten the losers and those who were tumbled in the dust. Until she had seen Miss Quincey.

Miss Quincey—so they had let her come to this among them all? They had left her so bare of happiness that the first man (it happened to be her doctor) who spoke two kind words to her became necessary to her existence. No, that was hardly the way to put it; it was underrating Bastian Cautley. He was the sort of man that any woman—But who would have thought it of Miss Quincey? And the really sad thing was that she did not think it of herself; it showed how empty of humanity her life had been. It was odd how these things happened. Miss Quincey was neither brilliant nor efficient, but she had made the most of herself; at least she had lived a life of grinding intellectual toil; the whole woman had seemed absorbed in her miserable arithmetical function. And yet at fifty (she looked fifty) she had contrived to develop that particular form of foolishness which it was Miss Cursiter's business to exterminate. There were some of them who talked as if the thing was done; as if competitive examinations had superseded the primitive rivalry of sex.

Bastian Cautley was right. You may go on building as high as you please, but you will never alter the original ground-plan of human nature. And how she had scoffed at his "man's view"; how indignantly she had repulsed his suggestion that there was a side to the subject that her friends the idealists were much too ideal to see.

Were they really, as Bastian Cautley put it, so engrossed in producing a new type that they had lost sight of the individual? Was the system so far in accordance with Nature that it was careless of the single life? Which was the only life open to most of them, poor things.

And she had blundered more grossly than the system itself. What, after all, had she done for that innocent whom she had made her friend? She had taken everything from her. She had promised to keep her place for her at St. Sidwell's and was monopolising it herself. Worse than that, she had given her a friend with one hand and snatched him from her with the other. (If you came to think of it, it was hard that she who had so much already could have Bastian Cautley too, any day, to play with, or to keep—for her very own. There was not a bit of him that could by any possibility belong to Miss Quincey.) She had tried to stand between her and her Fate, and she had become her Fate. Worse than all, she had kept from her the knowledge of the truth—the truth that might have cured her. Of course she had done that out of consideration for Bastian Cautley.

There it seemed that Rhoda's regard for his feelings ended. Though she admitted ten times over that he was right, she was by no means more disposed to come to an understanding with him on that account. On the contrary, when she saw him the very next evening (poor Bastian had chosen his moment indiscreetly) she endeavoured to repair her blunders by visiting them on his irreproachable head, dealing to him a certain painful, but not wholly unexpected back-hander in the face.

She had done all she could for Miss Quincey. At any rate, she said to herself, she had spared her the final blow.