I begged him to enlighten me.
"Well," said Arthur, "Spenworth says that you pretended to be at death's door in order to force him to make a settlement on Will and that he might have consented if he hadn't happened to know that you'd said the same thing to Brackenbury five minutes before. About being the head of the family and all that sort of thing. You know, Ann, it does make us look just a little bit ridiculous."
You assure me you have seen neither Brackenbury nor Ruth? I just wondered who was privileged to hear this "deuce's own tale" ... I can hardly ask you to believe it; but I do assure you that this is the solemn truth; those two men were seeking to convince themselves that I was pretending to be ill in order to work on their susceptible emotions! They seem to have had the good taste to keep their little joke for home consumption, but you may be sure they made merry with Ruth and Kathleen about me... Too merry, perhaps; I can only think it was conscience that made Ruth offer to pay for the operation. Or perhaps it was curiosity... I wonder what their feelings would have been if anything had gone amiss...
No, I am thankful to say there was no hitch of any kind. The anæsthetic was administered, I heard that hammer, hammer, hammer—and then voices very far away. It was all over! That was the preliminary examination. Then I was subjected to that too wonderful X-ray light and saw myself as a black skeleton with a misty-grey covering of flesh, one's wedding-ring standing out like a black bar round one's finger. Too marvellous. I do believe in this science...
But not so marvellous as what followed. Dr. Richardson congratulated me, and I had to beg for enlightenment.
"It will not be necessary," he said, "to operate after all. The symptoms are exactly as you described them, but a little treatment, principally massage..."
And that is why I am still here, though I hope to be allowed up on Friday. But lying in bed makes one so absurdly weak! What I have told you is for your ears alone. It would be altogether too much of a triumph for Spenworth. Instead of feeling any thankfulness that I had been spared the knife, he would only say... Well, you can imagine it even from the very imperfect sketch that I have given you. No, I am assured that massage makes the operation wholly unnecessary; and I am already feeling much, much better. If I have not taken the whole world into my confidence, it is partly because I detest this modern practice of discussing one's inside ("wearing one's stomach on one's sleeve," as Will rather naughtily describes it) and partly because I am altogether too humble-minded to fancy that the entire world is interested in my private affairs. When the princess asked "How did the operation go off?," I said "Excellently, thank you, ma'am." And that was what all the papers published. It was not worth while telling her that the operation was found to be unnecessary. I am not of those who feel obliged to trumpet forth that Mrs. Tom Noddy has left Gloucester Place for Eastbourne or Eastbourne for Gloucester Place. As Tennyson says, "Again—who wonders and who cares?"
At the same time—I loathe Americanisms and I do conscientiously try to express myself in what I may call the English of educated society; we do not seem to have any literary equivalent for "mentality," so I must ask you to pardon the neologism—will you, to oblige me, try to imagine the "mentality" of Spenworth and Brackenbury? The sister-in-law of one, the sister of the other; casting about in her resourceful mind to discover any means of softening their hard hearts; clapping hand to forehead; exclaiming "I have it!"; retiring to bed; summoning the relations; making frantic appeal; exacting death-bed promises...
Truly honestly, I don't think we have come to that yet...
And those two men have an hereditary right... Thank goodness, neither of them knows where the House of Lords is! There are moments when I feel very nearly a radical...