Twilight, Julia Frankau [100 books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗

THE few words I had with Nurse Benham the next morning cleared the air and the situation between us. The strange thing was that at first she did not notice the parcel at all, still loose and untidy in the paper in which Dr. Kennedy had enwrapped it. Not until I told her to be careful not to spill the tea over it did it strike her to wonder how it came there.

“Did Suzanne give you that?” she asked suspiciously.

“She has not been in my room since you left me.”

“That’s the very parcel you asked for the other night. How ever did you get hold of it?”

“After you left me I got out of bed and fetched it.”

“You got out of bed!” She grew red in the face with rage or incredulity.

“Yes, twice. Once for the parcel and once for the scissors!”

She did not speak at once, standing there with her flushed face. So I went on:

“It is absurd for you to insist on me doing this or that, or leaving it undone. You are here to take care of me, not to bully and tyrannise over me.”

“I am no good to you at all. I’d better go. You will take matters into your own hands. I never knew such a patient, never. One would think you’d no sense at all, that you didn’t know how ill you were.”

“That is no reason why I should not be allowed to get better. Believe me, the only way for that to come about is that I should be allowed to lead my own life in my own way.”

“To get up in the middle of the night with the window wide open, to walk about the room in your nightgown!”

“I should not have done so, you know, if you had passed me the things when I asked you for them.”

“You don’t want a nurse at all,” she repeated.

“Yes, I do. What I don’t want is a gaoler.”

I was on the sofa when Dr. Kennedy called, the papers on the table beside me. He asked eagerly what I thought of them:

“I see you have got at them. Are you disappointed, exhilarated? Are they illuminative? Tell me about them; I want so much to hear.”

He had forgotten to ask how I was.

“I will tell you about them presently. I haven’t read them all. Up to now they are certainly disappointing, if not dull! They are business letters, to begin with. But it is obvious she is trying to get up something like a flirtation with him.”

“Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes! I have watched Ella, my sister Mrs. Lovegrove, for years. She is past mistress of the art of flirtation. Sentiment and the appeal of her femininity, a note of unhappiness and the suggestion the man’s friendship may assuage it…”

“Mrs. Lovegrove is a very charming woman. But Margaret Capel was not in the least like her.”

“Or any other woman?”

“No.”

“You have put yourself out of court. No woman is unlike any other. Your ‘ pale fair Margaret ‘ admits, from the first, that Gabriel Stanton attracts her. And this at a moment when she should allow herself to be attracted by no man. When she has just gone through the horrors of the Divorce Court.”

“You are not bringing that up against her?”

“I am not bringing anything up against her. But you asked me about the letters. I have only read a dozen of them, and that is how they strike me. A little dull and, on her part, flirtatious.”

“I hope you won’t do the book at all if you don’t feel sympathetic.”

“Believe me I shall be sympathetic if there is anything with which to sympathise. Do you know her early life, or history? It is hinted at, partly revealed here, but I should like to see it clearly.”

“Won’t she tell you herself?” He smiled. I answered his smile.

“She has left off coming since I have begun to get well. I shall have to write the book, if I write it at all, without further help. By the way, talking about getting better, I know that doctoring bores you, but I want to know how much better I am going to get? I am as weak as a rat; my legs refuse to carry me, my hand shakes when I get a pen in it. I shall get the story into my head from these papers,” I added, with something of the depression that I was feeling: “But I don’t see how I am to get it out again. I don’t see how I shall ever have the strength to put it on paper.”

“That will come. There is no hurry about that. As a matter of fact I believe letters are copyright for fourteen years. It isn’t twelve yet.”

It was not worth while to put him right on the t pyright acts.

“You’ll be going downstairs next week, you’ll be at your writing-table, her writing-table in the drawingroom. You ask me about her early life. I only know her father was a wealthy American absolutely devoted to her. He married for the second time when she was fifteen or sixteen and they both concentrated on her. She was remarkable even as a child, obviously a genius, very beautiful.”

“She outgrew that,” I said emphatically.

“She was a very beautiful woman,” he insisted. And then said more lightly, “You must remember you have only seen her ghost.” The retort pleased me and I let the subject of Margaret Capel’s beauty drop. She interested me less when I felt well, and notwithstanding my active night I felt comparatively well this morning. Since I could not get him to take my weakness seriously I told him my grievance against nurse.

“When she hears I am to go down next week she will have a fit. I wish for once you would use your medical authority and tell her I am on no account to be contradicted or thwarted.”

“I’ll tell her so if you like, but I never see her. She runs like a rabbit when I come near.”

“You are not professional enough for her taste, there are too few examinations and prescriptions. How is my unsatisfactory lung, by the way? Give a guess, something scientific to retail. I must keep Ella informed.”

“There has not been time for the physical signs to have cleared up yet. I’ll listen if you like, but after seeing all those specialists I should have thought you were tired of saying ‘ 99 ′.″

“They varied it sometimes. ‘ 999 ‘ seems to be the latest wheeze.”

“I wish you had not left off seeing Margaret,” he sighed.

“It is a pity,” I laughed at him. “You should not have dropped giving me the morphia so soon.”

“You wouldn’t have it.”

“It was dulling my brain. I felt myself growing stupid and more stupid.”

“You only had one-quarter grain twice a day for the inside of a week, and there was atropin in it. If it had really had a deadening effect upon you you would not have refused it, but just gone on. Not that I believe anything would ever dull your brain.”

I wished Ella could have heard him, it would have confirmed her in her folly and made for my amusement. He left shortly after paying me that remarkable compliment, but stopped on his way out to speak to Benham. The immediate effect of his words was to make her silent and perhaps sullen for a few hours. After which, but still under protest, she gave me whatever I asked for, and began to be more like other nurses in the time she took off duty for exercise, sleep, and meals. She even yawned in my face on the rare occasions when I summoned her in the night. I tried to chaff her back into good humour, but without much success.

“Do you find me any worse for having got out of leading strings?” I asked her. “Have pencils and MS. paper sent up my temperature?”

“You are not out of the wood