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

any bad after-effects.”

“The bromide! but it always makes me feel dull and stupid.”

“Veronal?”

“I am frightened of veronal.”

“Adolin, paraldehyde, trional, a small injection of morphia?”

“But it is so late. You would have to get anything from a chemist.”

“No, I shouldn’t. I’ve got my case.”

“Your case!”

“Yes.” He showed it to her, full of strange little bottles and unknown drugs. She showed interest, asking what was this or the other, then changing her mind suddenly:

“No, I won’t try any experiments. I’ll sleep, or I’ll stay awake.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Indeed I do, but I distrust drugs. Unless I am in pain, then I would take anything. Tell me, can you really always help me if I get into pain? Would you? At any risk?”

“At any risk to myself, not at any risk to you. But we won’t talk of pain, it mustn’t happen.”

“But if it did?” she persisted.

“Don’t fear, I couldn’t see you in pain.”

“Yet I’ve always heard and sometimes seen how callous doctors are.”

“But I’m not only a doctor…”

“Hush! I thought we had agreed you were. My very good and concerned doctor. Now you really must go. Yes, you can come up in the morning.”

“You will take your bromide?”

“If I need it. Good-night!”

Margaret slept well. But she heard from Stevens again next morning over her toilette that cook was not to be trusted, should be got rid of, that she was deceitful, had been seen, after all, with the shabby man from London.

“She took her oath that she’d never mentioned you to him, you nor your visitors, only Dr. Kennedy who attends you. But I’d not believe her oath. A hat with feathers she had on, and a ring on her ringer when she went out with him. Such goings-on are not fit for a respectable Christian house, and so I told her.”

Margaret listened inattentively, and irritably. She did not want ever to think again of that shabby man or her own unreasoned fears. She bade the maid be silent, attend to her duties. Stevens sniffed and grumbled under her breath. Afterwards she asked if the doctor were coming up again this morning.

“Why?”

“He might want to sound you. You’d best have your Valenciennes slip.”

“Don’t be so absurd.”

Nevertheless the query set her thinking of Peter Kennedy and his love for her. Desultory thinking connects itself naturally with a leisurely toilette. She was sorry for Peter and composed phrases for him, comforting noncommittal phrases. She thought it would do him good to get to London, his ideas wanted expanding, his provincialisms brushed off. She was under the impression she would do great things for Peter one day, let him into her circle; that salon she and Gabriel would hold. Her father should consult him, she would help him to build up a practice.

When he came up, later on, she told him something of her good intentions. They did not interest him very much, it was not service he wanted from her. He heard her night had been good, that she felt rested and better this morning. He had not been told what had disturbed the last one. They were sitting together in the drawingroom, doctor and patient, when the parlourmaid came in with a card. Margaret looked at it and laughed, passed it over to him.

“That’s Anne,” she said. “Anne evidently thinks I am a hopeful subject.”

The card bore the name of “Mrs. Roope, Christian Healer.”

“Stay and see her with me,” she said to Peter. “It will be almost like a consultation, won’t it?

“… Yes,” she told the parlourmaid, “I will see the lady. Let her come up. Now, Peter Kennedy, is opportunity to show your quality, your tact. I expect to be amused, I want to be amused.”

Peter was not loath to stay, whatever the excuse.

Mrs. Roope, tall, and dressed something like a hospital nurse, in long flowing cloak and bonnet with veil, was ushered in, but delayed a little in her greeting, because that hysterical affection of the throat of which Anne had spoken, caught and held her, and at first she could only make uncanny noises, something between a hiccough and a bad stammer.

“I’ve come to see you,” she said not once but several times without getting any further.

“Sit down,” Margaret said good-naturedly. “This is my doctor. I would suggest you ask him to cure your affliction, only I understand you prefer your own methods.”

“There is nothing the matter with me,” said the Christian Scientist with an unavoidable contortion.

“So I see,” said Margaret, her eyes sparkling with humour.

“I would prefer that this interview should take place without witnesses.”

Margaret found that a little surprising, but even then she was not disturbed. There was no connection in her mind between Anne Stanton’s healer and the shabby man who had wooed her cook.

“I have no secrets from this gentleman,” she answered, her eyes still laughing. “He has no prejudice against you irregular practitioners. You can decide together what is to be done for me. He is my present physician.”

“I had thought he was “bupp, bupp, explosion “your co-respondent,”

When she said that Peter Kennedy looked up. He tingled all over and his forehead flushed. He made a step forward and then stood still. His instinct told him here was an enemy, an enemy of Margaret’s. He looked, too, at Margaret.

“Your name is Gabriel Stanton.”

“My name is Peter Kennedy.”

Margaret’s quick mind leapt to the truth, saw, and foresaw what was coming. She turned very pale, as if she had been struck. Peter Kennedy moved nearer to her.

“Shall I turn her out?” he asked.

Mrs. Roope fanned herself with her bonnet strings as if she had said nothing unusual.

“You had better see me alone,” she said, not menacingly but as if she had established her point. To save repetition the rest of her conversation can be recorded without the affliction that retarded it.

“No,” Margaret answered, her courage at low ebb. “Stay where you are,” she said to Peter Kennedy.

“You don’t suppose I am going, do you?” he asked. Mrs. Roope, after a glance, ignored him.

“Perhaps you are not aware that you have been under observation for some time. My call on you is one of kindness, of kindness only. James Capel is my husband’s cousin.”

At the name of James Capel Margaret gave a little low cry and Peter Kennedy sat down by her side, abruptly.

“We heard you were being visited by Gabriel Stanton and a watch was set upon you. Your decree is not yet made absolute. It never will be now, if the King’s Proctor is informed. James, I know, does not wish for a divorce from you.”

Margaret sat very still and speechless, any movement, she knew, might bring on that sickening pain. Peter too realised the position, although he had so little to guide him.

“Answer her. Don’t let her think you are afraid. It’s blackmail she’s after. I am sure of it,” he whispered to his patient. Thus strengthened Margaret made an effort for self-control. Peter saw then that the fear was not as new to her as it was to him.

“So it is you who have been having this house watched? Is it perhaps your husband who has been making love to my cook?” Since Peter Kennedy was here she would not show the cold fear at her heart. Mrs. Roope was not offended. She had been kicked out of too many houses by irate fathers, brothers, and husbands to be sensitive.

“No, that is not my husband. The gentleman who has been here is my nephew. As for making love to your cook, I will not admit it. I suggested your maid.”

“If she had only sent her husband instead of coming herself. One can talk to a man.”

Peter might have been talking to himself. He had risen and now was walking about the room on soft-balled feet like a captive panther.

“You don’t know our religion, our creed. We have the true Christian spirit and desire to help others. The sensual cannot be made the mouthpiece of the spiritual. Sensuality palsies the right hand and causes the left to let go its divine grasp. That is why I interfere, for your own good as we are enjoined. Uncleanliness must lead to the body’s hurt, in so far as it can be hurt. But mind and matter being one, what hurts the one will hurt the other.”

“You can cut the cackle and come to the horses,” Peter interrupted rudely. He had summed up the situation and thought he might control it. To him it was obvious the woman was a common blackmailer, although she had formulated no terms. “You are making a great deal of the fact that Mr. Stanton has been down here two or three times. I suppose you know he is Mrs. Capel’s publisher.”

“Do not interfere, young man. You are a member of a mendacious profession. I am not here to speak to you. I know Gabriel Stanton slept in the house,” she said to Margaret.

“What then? Show us your foul mind, if you dare.”

“There is no mind…”

“Oh! damn your jargon. What have you come here for? What do you want?” He stopped opposite to her in his restless walking. There shot a gleam of avarice into her dull eye.

“Is he your mouthpiece?” she asked Margaret, who nodded her assent. “I want nothing for myself.”

“For whom, then?”

“The labourer is worthy of his hire…. Our Church…”

“You call it a church, do you? And you are short of cash. There are not enough silly women, half-witted men. You want money…”

“For the promulgation of our tenets.” She interrupted. “Yes, we need money for that, for the regeneration of the world.”

“And to keep your own house going.”

“Your insults do not touch me. I am uplifted from them. Nothing touches the true believer.”

Margaret called him over to her and whispered:

“Find out whether James knows anything of this or whether she is acting on her own; what she really wants. I can’t talk to her.”

Mrs. Roope went on talking and spluttering out texts.

“Cannot you see that Mrs. Capel is ill?” he said angrily.

The Christian Healer was quick to take the opening he gave her.

“Sickness is a growth of error, springing from man’s ignorance of Christian Science.”

“Oh! more rot rot rot, rot! Shut it! What we want to know is if there is any one in this but yourself. We don’t admit a word of truth in your allegations. They are lies, and we have no doubt you know they are lies.”

“Mrs. Capel will make her own deductions. What have you to do with it, young man?”

“I’ll tell you what I have to do with it. I am here to protect this lady.”

“Mr. Capel and his lawyer will understand.”

“That isn’t what you came down here to say.”

“I knew that I should be guided. I prayed about it with my husband.”

“A pretty sight! ‘ The Blackmailers’ Prayer! ‘ How it must have stank to Heaven! And this fellow here?”

“My nephew. An honourable young man, one of the believers.”

“He would be. What’s the proverb? Bon sang ne pent pas mentir. Well, for the whole lot of you, your prayerful husband, your honourable nephew, and yourself?”

“What is it you are asking me?”

“As you are here and not with James Capel it is fair to presume you’ve got your price. Mrs. Capel does not wish to argue or defend herself, she wants to be left alone. You don’t know anything because there is nothing to know. But I daresay you could make mischief. What are you asking to keep your venomous mouth shut? There is no good