“I don’t approve of a German doctor, even though he has been in England most of his life,” said Lady Currey primly. “I know all about German doctors and their cleverness, but is it the right kind of cleverness? I wish Gilbert would see dear old Doctor Green. He treated him as a baby. All German doctors are faddists. I daresay Dr. Green could have averted this trouble. He’s wonderful when I’ve got a sore throat, and his manner is so restful. He doesn’t approve of German doctors either. He says they experiment on you. That’s exactly what I think.... Don’t you think your laundry puts too much starch in the serviettes? Starch ruins good linen. I see there is a small hole already in the corner of this one. No, no German doctors for me, thank you. I should make ready to die if I fell in the hands of one.”
Claudia knew that she ought to be able to laugh—inwardly—but somehow her sense of humour seemed to have deserted her. One cannot support life entirely on a sense of humour, though it helps one over many a dreary mile. How Pat would have enjoyed the conversation, thought Claudia.
“Does this German say how long Gilbert ought to rest? It’s dreadful to think of his work being at a standstill.”
“Some months, but it depends, of course, on the patient. He seems to have got another touch of influenza—I suppose it was the cold of the cells, and he never really got rid of it; but next Monday he will go to Le Touquet.”
“I suppose Le Touquet is all right,” said Lady Currey, in a dissatisfied tone. “I think French places are often so enervating, and you can never be sure of the water in France. I must tell Gilbert always to drink mineral water. France is so dreadfully behind in the matter of hygiene. Look at a Frenchwoman’s pasty complexion.”
“Le Touquet is above any kind of reproach,” Claudia reassured her, hailing the arrival of coffee as one who, lost in the bush, sees the first sign of a human habitation. “The air is excellent, and Gilbert always enjoys the golf there. He chose it himself out of several places. He hates sea-voyages, you know, or Dr. Neeburg wished him to go on one.”
“Yes, I know. He inherits my constitution in that respect. Are these cups old Worcester? I have some very like them, but I do not care to have them used. You know they are very valuable? Servants are so careless. They broke a really exquisite piece of old Chelsea the other day. I cried, I positively cried, and had a headache all the rest of the day. I don’t know when I have been so upset, except”—hastily—“of course, when I heard the terrible news about poor Gilbert! I think I’ll go up and see how he feels now, and ask him if he won’t see Dr. Green.”
Later in the day Mr. Littleton came in to see Claudia. He found her with Billie on her lap, a volume of Strindberg’s plays in her hands. He took in at a glance her tired, languid aspect, though she greeted him cordially enough. There were but few people she wanted to see that day, but Littleton was one of them.
“Madame,” he said with mock seriousness, “Strindberg is not good reading for you to-day. Horribly clever, but much too morbid. His plays are interesting to those who study human nature, but they are not exhilarating.”
“Morbid! I don’t know. Because he presents men and women as complex, many-sided, vari-coloured egos, you call him morbid. Don’t talk like Jack.”