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

good of that if you won’t have a chance of going out?”

“One of my new teagowns, then?”

“I never did hold with teagowns in the morning,” Stevens answered lugubriously. “I suppose Mr. Stanton will be coming over. Not but what he’ll get wet through.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised if he came all the same.” Margaret smiled, and the omniscient maid reflected the smile, if a little sourly.

“There’s never no saying. There’s that telephone going. Another mistake, I suppose. I wish I’d the drilling of them girls. Oh! I’m coming, I’m coming!” she cried out to the insensitive instrument. “Don’t you attempt to get up till I come back. You’re going to have a fire to dress by; calendar or no calendar, it’s as cold as winter.”

Margaret watched the rain driving in wind gusts against the window until Stevens came back. Somehow the rain seemed to have altered everything, she felt the fatigue of her broken night, the irritability of her frayed nerves.

“It’s that there Dr. Kennedy. He wants to know how soon he may come over. He says he’s got something to tell you. ‘All the fat’s in the fire,’ he said. ‘Am I to tell her that?’ I arst him. ‘Tell her anything you like,’ he answered, ‘but find out how soon I can see her.’ Very arbitrary he was and impatient, as if I’d nothing to do but give and take his messages.”

“Tell him I’m just getting up. I can be ready in half an hour.”

“I shall tell him nothing of the sort. Half an hour, indeed, with your bath and everything, and no breakfast, and the fire not yet lit. Nor one of the rooms done, I shouldn’t think…”

“Tell him I’ll see him in half an hour,” Margaret persisted. “Now go away, that’s a good woman, and do as you are told. Don’t stand there arguing, or I’ll answer the telephone myself.” She put one foot out of bed as if to be as good as her word, and Stevens, grumbling and astonished, went to do her bidding.

Half an hour seemed too long for Margaret. What had Peter Kennedy to tell her? Had he met or seen Mrs. Roope?” All the fat was in the fire.” What fat, what fire? The phrase foreshadowed comedy and not tragedy. But that was nothing for Peter Kennedy, who was in continual need of editing, who had not the gift of expression nor the capacity of appropriate words. She scrambled in and out of her bath, to Stevens’s indignation, never waiting for the room to be warmed. She was impatient about her hair, would not sit still to have it properly brushed, but took the long strands in her own hands and “twisted them up anyhow.” Stevens’s description of the whole toilette would have been sorry reading in a dress magazine or ladies’ paper.

“Give me anything,” she says, “anything. What does it matter? He’ll be here any minute now. The old dressinggown, or a shirt and skirt. Whichever is quickest. What a slowcoach you’re getting!”

“Slowcoach! She called me a slowcoach, and from first to last it hadn’t been twenty minutes.”

Margaret, sufficiently dressed, but without having breakfasted, very pale and impatient, was at the window of the music room when Peter came up the gravel path in his noisy motor, flung in the clutch with a grating sound, pulled the machine to a standstill. There was no ceremony about showing him up. He was in the room before she had collected herself. He, too, was pale, his chin unshaved, his eyes a little wild; looking as if he, also, had not slept.

“You’ve heard what happened?” he began, abruptly….” No, of course you haven’t, how could you? What a fool I am! There’s been a hell of a hullabaloo. That’s why I telephoned, rushed up. You know that she-cat came down here?” He had difficulty in explaining his errand.

“Yes. I saw her, she waited for you at the hotel. Go on, what next?”

“I didn’t get back until after nine o’clock. And then I found her waiting for me. The servants did not know what to make of her; they told me they couldn’t understand what she said, so I suppose she talked Christian Science. Fortunately I’d got the cheque with me. I had not been able to change it, the London banks were all closed. She took it like a bird. Not without some of the jargon and hope that I’d mend my ways, give up prescribing drugs. You know the sort of thing. I thought I’d got through, that it was all over. The cheque was dated Saturday, she would be able to cash it first thing Monday morning. It was as good as money directly the banks opened. I never dreamt of them meeting.”

“Who?” asked Margaret, with pale lips. She knew well enough, although she asked and waited for an answer.

“She and Gabriel Stanton. It seems she was too late for the last train and had to put up at the hotel…”

“At the King’s Arms?”

“Yes. He met her there, or rather she forced herself on him. God knows what she had in her mind. Pure mischief, I suspect, though of course it may have been propaganda. It seems he came in about ten o’clock and went on to the terrace to smoke or to look at the sea. She followed him there, tackled him about his sister or his soul.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Let me tell the story my own way. He met her full-face so to speak, wanted to know exactly what she was doing in this part of the world. Perhaps she didn’t know she was giving away the show. Perhaps she didn’t know he wasn’t exactly in our confidence. There is no use thinking the worst of her.”

“She knew what she was doing, that she was coming between us.” Margaret spoke in a low voice, a voice of desperate certainty and hopelessness.

“Well, that doesn’t matter one way or another, what her intentions were, I mean. I don’t know myself what had happened between you and him. Although of course I spotted quick enough he’d had some sort of shock….”

“Then you have seen him!”

“I was coming to that. After his interview with her he came straight to me.”

“To you! But it was already night!”

“I’d gone to bed, but he rang the night bell, rang and rang again. I didn’t know who it was when I shouted through the tube that I’d come down, that I shouldn’t be half a minute. When I let him in I thought he was a ghost. I was quite staggered, he seemed all frozen up, stiff. Just for a moment it flashed across me that he’d come from you, that you were ill, needed me. But he did not give me time to say the wrong things. ‘Mrs. Roope has just left me,’ he began. ‘The devil she has!’ was all I could find to answer. I was quite taken aback. I needn’t go over it all word by word, it wasn’t very pleasant. He accused me of compromising you, seemed to think I’d done it on purpose, had some nefarious motive. I was in the dark about how much he knew, and that handicapped me. I swore you knew nothing about it, and he said haughtily that I was to leave your name out of the conversation. And now I’m coming to the point. Why I am here at all. It seems she tried to rush him for a bit more, and he, well practically told her to go to blazes, said he should stop the cheque, prosecute her. He seemed to think I was trying to save myself at your expense. ASS! He is going up this morning to see his lawyer, he wants an information laid at Scotland Yard. He says the Christian Science people are practically living on blackmail, getting hold of family secrets or skeletons. And he’s not going to stand for it. I did all I knew to persuade him to let well alone. We nearly came to blows, only he was so damned dignified. I said I believed it would break you up if there was another scandal. ‘ I have no doubt that Mrs. Capel will see the matter in the same light that I do,’ he said in the stiffest of all his stiff ways.” Peter Kennedy paused. He had another word to say, but he said it awkwardly, with an immense effort, and after a pause.

“He’ll come up here this morning and tackle you. You don’t care a curse if I’m dead or alive, I know that. But if… if he drives you too far… well, you know I’d lay down my life for you. He says I’ve no principle, and as far as you’re concerned that’s true enough. I’d say black was white, I’d steal or starve to give you pleasure, save you pain. That’s what I’ve come to say, to put myself at your service.” She put up her hand, motioned him to silence. All this time he had been standing up, now he flung himself into a chair, brushed his hand across his forehead. “I hardly know what I’m saying, I haven’t slept a wink.”

“You were saying you would do anything for me.”

“I meant that right enough.”

Without any preparation, for until now she had listened apparently calmly, she broke into a sudden storm of tears. He got up again and went and stood beside her.

“I can’t live without him,” she said. “I can’t live without him,” she repeated weakly.

“Oh, I say, you know…” But he had nothing to say. The sniffing Stevens, disapproval strongly marked upon her countenance, here brought in a tray with coffee and rolls. Margaret, recovering herself with an effort, motioned her to set it down.

“You ought to make her take it,” Stevens said to Dr. Kennedy indignantly, “disturbing her before she’s breakfasted. She’s had nothing inside her lips.” He was glad of the interruption.

“You stay and back me up, then.” Together they persuaded or forced her to the coffee, she could not eat, and was impatient that Stevens and the tray should go away. Her outburst was over, but she was pitiably shaken.

“He’ll come round, all right,” Peter said awkwardly, when they were alone again. She looked at him with fear in her eyes:

“Do you really think so?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“You don’t think he would go up to London without seeing me?”

“Not likely.”

She spoke again presently. In the interval Peter conjured up the image of Gabriel Stanton, speaking to her as he had to him, refusing compromise, harshly unapproachable, rigid.

“I could never go through what I went through before.”

“You shan’t.”

“What could you do?”

“I’ll find some way… a medical certificate!”

“The shame of it!” She covered her face with her hands.

“It won’t happen. She’s had her money. He may have rubbed her up the wrong way, but after all she has nothing to gain by interfering.”

“If only I had told him myself! If only I hadn’t lied to him!”

Peter, desperately miserable, walked about the room, interjecting a word now and again, trying to inspirit her.

“You had better go,” she said to him in the end. “It’s nearly ten o’clock. If he is coming up at all he will be here soon.”

“Of course he is coming up. How can I leave you like this?” he answered wildly. “Can’t I do anything, say anything, see him for you?” Margaret showed the pale simulacrum of a smile.

“That was my idea, once before, wasn’t it? No, you can’t see him for me.”

“I can’t do anything?”

“I’m not sure.”

She spoke slowly, hesitatingly. In truth she did not know how she was to bear what she saw before her. Not marriage, safety, happiness,