CHAPTER XI
Dr. Cautley Sends in his Bill
"I wonder," Mrs. Moon observed suddenly one morning, "if that man is going to let his bill run on to the day of judgment?"
The Old Lady had not even distantly alluded to Dr. Cautley for as many as ten months. After the great day of what she called Juliana's "resignation" she seemed to have tacitly agreed that since Juliana had spared her dream she would spare Juliana's. Did she not know, she too, that the dream is the reality? As Miss Quincey, gentlewoman at large, Juliana had a perfect right to set up a dream of her own; as to whether she was able to afford the luxury, Juliana was the best judge. Her present wonder, then, had no malignant reference; it was simply wrung from her by inexorable economy. Juliana's supplies were calculated to last a year; as it was the winter season that they had lately weathered, she was rather more than three-quarters of the way through her slender resources, and it behoved them to look out for bills ahead. And Mrs. Moon had always suspected that young man, not only of a passion for mare's-nesting, but of deliberately and systematically keeping back his accounts that he might revel in a larger haul.
The remark, falling with a shock all the greater for a silence of ten months, had the effect of driving Juliana out of the room. Out of the room and out of the house, down High Street, where Hunter's shop was already blossoming in another spring; up Park Street and past the long wall of St. Sidwell's, till she found herself alone in Primrose Hill Park.
The young day was so glorious that Miss Quincey had some thoughts of climbing Primrose Hill and sitting on the top; but after twenty yards or so of it she abandoned the attempt. For the last few months her heart had been the seat of certain curious sensations, so remarkably like those she had experienced in the summer that she took them for the same, and sternly resolved to suppress their existence by ignoring it. That, she understood, was the right treatment for hysteria.
But this morning Miss Quincey's heart protested so violently against her notion of ascending Primrose Hill, threatening indeed to strangle her if she persisted in it, that Miss Quincey unwillingly gave in and contented herself with a seat in one of the lower walks of the park. There she leaned back and looked about her, but with no permanent interest in one thing more than another.
Presently, as she settled down to quieter breathing, there came to her a strange sensation, that grew till it became an unusually vivid perception of the outer world; a perception mingled with a still stranger double vision, a sense that seemed to be born in the dark of the brain and to be moving there to a foregone conclusion. And all the time her eyes were busy, now with a bush of May in crimson blossom, now with the many-pointed leaves of a sycamore pricked against the blue; now with the straight rectangular paths that made the park an immense mathematical diagram. From where she sat her eyes swept the length of the wide walk that cuts the green from east to west. Far down at the west end was a seat, and she could see two people, a man and a woman, sitting on it; they must have been there a quarter of an hour or more; she had noticed them ever since she came into the park.
They had risen, and her gaze left everything else to follow them; or rather, it went to meet them, for they had turned and were coming slowly eastward now. They had stopped; they were facing each other, and her gaze rested with them, fascinated yet uncertain. And now she could see nothing else; the park, with the regions beyond it and the sky above it, had become merely a setting for one man and one woman; the avenue, fresh strewn with red golden gravel, led up to them and ended there at their feet; a young poplar trembled in the wind and shook its silver green fans above them in delicate confusion. The next minute a light went up in that obscure and prophetic background of her brain; and she saw Rhoda Vivian and Bastian Cautley coming towards her, greeting her, with their kind faces shining.
She rose, turned from them, and went slowly home.
It was the last rent in the veil of illusion that Rhoda had spun so well. Up till then Miss Quincey had seen only half the truth. Now she had seen the whole, with all that Rhoda had disguised and kept hidden from her; the truth that kills or cures.
Miss Quincey did not go out again that day, but sat all afternoon silent in her chair. Towards evening she became talkative and stayed up later than had been her wont since she recovered her freedom. She seemed to be trying to make up to her aunt for a want of sociability in the past.
At eleven she got up and stood before the Old Lady in the attitude of a penitent. Apparently she had been seized with a mysterious impulse of confession.
"Aunt," she said, "there's something I want to say to you."
She paused, casting about in her mind for the sins she had committed.
They were three in all.
"I am afraid I have been very extravagant"—she was thinking of the blouse—"and—and very foolish"—she was thinking of Bastian Cautley—"and very selfish"—she was thinking of her momentary desire to die.
"Juliana, if you're worrying about that money"—the Old Lady was thinking of nothing else—"don't. I've plenty for us both. As long as we can keep together I don't care what I eat, nor what I drink, nor what I put on my poor back. And if the worst comes to the worst I'll sell the furniture."
It seemed to Miss Quincey that she had never known her aunt in all those five-and-twenty years; never known her until this minute. For perhaps, after all, being angry with Juliana was only Mrs. Moon's way of being sorry for her. But how was Juliana to know that?
"Only," continued the Old Lady, "I won't part with your uncle's picture.
Don't ask me to part with your uncle's picture."
"You won't have to part with anything. I'll—I'll get something to do.
I'm not worrying. There's nothing to worry about."
She stooped down and tenderly kissed the wrinkled forehead.
A vague fear clutched at the Old Lady's heart.
"Then, Juliana, you are not well. Hadn't you better see"—she hesitated—pausing with unwonted delicacy for her words—"a doctor?"
"I don't want to see a doctor. There is nothing the matter with me." And still insisting that there was nothing the matter with her, she went to bed.
And old Martha had come with her early morning croak to call Miss Juliana; she had dumped down the hot-water can in the basin with a clash, pulled up the blind with a jerk, and drawn back the curtains with a clatter, before she noticed that Miss Juliana was up all the time. Up and dressed, and sitting in her chair by the hearth, warming her feet at an imaginary fire.
She had been sitting up all night, for her bed was as Martha had left it the night before. Martha approached cautiously, still feeling her way, though there was no need for it, the room being full of light.
She groped like a blind woman for Miss Juliana's forehead, laying her hand there before she looked into her face.
After some fumbling futile experiments with brandy, a looking-glass and a feather, old Martha hid these things carefully out of sight; she disarranged the bed, turning back the clothes as they might have been left by one newly wakened and risen out of it; drew a shawl over the head and shoulders of the figure in the chair; pulled down the blind and closed the curtains till the room was dark again. Then she groped her way out and down the stairs to her mistress's door. There she stayed a moment, gathering her feeble wits together for the part she meant to play. She had made up her mind what she would do.
So she called the Old Lady as usual; said she was afraid there was something the matter with Miss Juliana; thought she might have got up a bit too early and turned faint like.
The Old Lady answered that she would come and see; and the two crept up the stairs, and went groping their way in the dark of the curtained room. Old Martha fumbled a long time with the blind; she drew back the curtains little by little, with infinite precaution letting in the light upon the fearful thing.
But the Old Lady approached it boldly.
"Don't you know me, Jooley dear?" she said, peering into the strange eyes. There was no recognition in them for all their staring.
"Don't know me, m'm," said Martha soothingly; "seems all of a white swoon, don't she?"
Martha was warming to her part. She made herself busy; she brought hot water bottles and eau de cologne; she spent twenty minutes chafing the hands and forehead and laying warmth to the feet, that the Old Lady might have the comfort of knowing that everything had been done that could be done. She shuffled off to find brandy, as if she had only thought of it that instant; and she played out the play with the looking-glass and the feather.
The feather fluttered to the floor, and Martha ceased bending and peering, and looked at her mistress.
"She's gone, m'm, I do believe."
The Old Lady sank by the chair, her arms clinging to those rigid knees.
"Jooley—Jooley—don't you know me?" she cried, as if in a passion of affront.