The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham - II - The World Over (78 page)

Ruth had loved too passionately ever to love again and with a stony heart she turned to God and to good works. She was indefatigable. She tended the sick and assisted the poor. She founded orphanages and managed charitable institutions. And little by little her beauty which she cared for no longer left her and her face grew as hard as her heart. Her religion was fierce and narrow; her very kindness was cruel because it was founded not on love but on reason; she became domineering, intolerant and vindictive. And John resigned, but sullen and angry, dragged himself along the weary years waiting for the release of death. Life lost its meaning to him; he had made his effort and in conquering was conquered; the only emotion that remained with him was the unceasing, secret hatred with which he looked upon his wife. He used her with kindness and consideration; he did everything that could be expected of a man who was a Christian and a gentleman. He did his duty. Mary, a good, faithful and (it must be confessed) exceptional wife, never thought to reproach her husband for the madness that had seized him; but ail the same she could not forgive him for the sacrifice he had made for her sake. She grew acid and querulous. Though she hated herself for it, she could not refrain from saying the things that she knew would wound him. She would willingly have sacrificed her life for him, but she could not bear that he should enjoy a moment’s happiness when she was so wretched that a hundred times she had wished she was dead. Well, now she was and so were they; grey and drab had life been, but that was past; they had not sinned and now their reward was at hand.

They finished and there was silence. There was silence in all the courts of heaven. Go to hell were the words that came to the Eternal’s lips, but he did not utter them, for they had a colloquial association that he rightly thought unfitting to the solemnity of the occasion. Nor indeed would such a decree have met the merits of the case. But his brow darkened. He asked himself if it was for this that he had made the rising sun shine on the boundless sea and the snow glitter on the mountain tops; was it for this that the brooks sang blithely as they hastened down the hillsides and the golden corn waved in the evening breeze?

“I sometimes think,” said the Eternal, “that the stars never shine more brightly than when reflected in the muddy waters of a wayside ditch.”

But the three shades stood before him and now that they had unfolded their unhappy story they could not but feel a certain satisfaction. It had been a bitter struggle, but they had done their duty. The Eternal blew lightly, he blew as a man might blow out a lighted match, and, behold I where the three poor souls had stood—was nothing. The Eternal annihilated them.

“I have often wondered why men think I attach so much importance to sexual irregularity,” he said. “If they read my works more attentively they would see that I have always been sympathetic to that particular form of human frailty.”

Then he turned to the philosopher who was still waiting for a reply to his remarks.

“You cannot but allow,” said the Eternal, “that on this occasion I have very happily combined my All-Power with my All-Goodness.”

F
OR
the first six weeks that Ashenden was at the sanatorium he stayed in bed. He saw nobody but the doctor who visited him morning and evening, the nurses who looked after him, and the maid who brought him his meals. He had contracted tuberculosis of the lungs, and since at the time there were reasons that made it difficult for him to go to Switzerland the specialist he saw in London had sent him up to a sanatorium in the north of Scotland. At last the day came that he had been patiently looking forward to when the doctor told him he could get up; and in the afternoon his nurse, having helped him to dress, took him down to the veranda, placed cushions behind him, wrapped him up in rugs, and left him to enjoy the sun that was streaming down from a cloudless sky. It was mid-winter. The sanatorium stood on the top of a hill and from it you had a spacious view of the snow-clad country. There were people lying all along the veranda in deck-chairs, some chatting with their neighbours and some reading. Every now and then one would have a fit of coughing and you noticed that at the end of it he looked anxiously at his handkerchief. Before the nurse left Ashenden she turned with a kind of professional briskness to the man who was lying in the next chair.

“I want to introduce Mr Ashenden to you,” she said. And then to Ashenden: “This is Mr McLeod. He and Mr Campbell have been here longer than anyone else.”

On the other side of Ashenden was lying a pretty girl, with red hair and bright blue eyes; she had on no make-up, but her lips were very red and the colour on her cheeks was high. It emphasized the astonishing whiteness of her skin. It was lovely even when you realized that its delicate texture was due to illness. She wore a fur coat and was wrapped up in rugs, so that you could see nothing of her body, but her face was extremely thin, so thin that it made her nose, which wasn’t really large, look a trifle prominent. She gave Ashenden a friendly look, but did not speak, and Ashenden, feeling rather shy among all those strange people, waited to be spoken to.

“First time they’ve let you get up, is it?” said McLeod.

“Yes.”

“Where’s your room?” Ashenden told him.

“Small. I know every room in the place. I’ve been here for seventeen years. I’ve got the best room here and so I damned well ought to have. Campbell’s been trying to get me out of it, he wants it himself, but I’m not going to budge; I’ve got a right to it, I came here six months before he did.”

McLeod lying there, gave you the impression that he was immensely tall; his skin was stretched tight over his bones, his cheeks and temples hollow, so that you could see the formation of his skull under it; and in that emaciated face, with its great bony nose, the eyes were preternaturally large.

“Seventeen years is a long time,” said Ashenden, because he could think of nothing else to say.

“Time passes very quickly. I like it here. At first, after a year or two, I went away in the summer, but I don’t any more. It’s my home now. I’ve got a brother and two sisters; but they’re married and now they’ve got families; they don’t want me. When you’ve been here a few years and you go back to ordinary life, you feel a bit out of it, you know. Your pals have gone their own ways and you’ve got nothing in common with them any more. It all seems an awful rush. Much ado about nothing, that’s what it is. It’s noisy and stuffy. No, one’s better off here. I shan’t stir again till they carry me out feet first in my coffin.”

The specialist had told Ashenden that if he took care of himself for a reasonable time he would get well, and he looked at McLeod with curiosity.

“What do you do with yourself all day long?” he asked.

“Do? Having T.B. is a whole-time job, my boy. There’s my temperature to take and then I weigh myself. I don’t hurry over my dressing. I have breakfast, I read the papers and go for a walk. Then I have my rest. I lunch and play bridge. I have another rest and then I dine. I play a bit more bridge and I go to bed. They’ve got quite a decent library here, we get all the new books, but I don’t really have much time for reading. I talk to people. You meet all sorts here, you know. They come and they go. Sometimes they go because they think they’re cured, but a lot of them come back, and sometimes they go because they die. I’ve seen a lot of people out and before I go I expect to see a lot more.”

The girl sitting on Ashenden’s other side suddenly spoke.

“I should tell you that few persons can get a heartier laugh out of a hearse than Mr McLeod,” she said.

McLeod chuckled.

“I don’t know about that, but it wouldn’t be human nature if I didn’t say to myself: Well, I’m just as glad it’s him and not me they’re taking for a ride.”

It occurred to him that Ashenden didn’t know the pretty girl, so he introduced him.

“By the way, I don’t think you’ve met Mr Ashenden-Miss Bishop. She’s English, but not a bad girl.”

“How long have
you
been here?” asked Ashenden.

“Only two years. This is my last winter. Dr Lennox says I shall be all right in a few months and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t go home.”

“Silly, I call it,” said McLeod. “Stay where you’re well off, that’s what I say.”

At that moment a man, leaning on a stick, came walking slowly along the veranda.

“Oh, look, there’s Major Templeton,” said Miss Bishop, a smile lighting up her blue eyes; and then, as he came up: “I’m glad to see you up again.”

“Oh, it was nothing. Only a bit of a cold. I’m quite all right now.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when he began to cough. He leaned heavily on his stick. But when the attack was over he smiled gaily.

“Can’t get rid of this damned cough,” he said. “Smoking too much. Dr Lennox says I ought to give it up, but it’s no good-I can’t.”

He was a tall fellow, good-looking in a slightly theatrical way, with a dusky, sallow face, fine very dark eyes, and a neat black moustache. He was wearing a fur coat with an astrakhan collar. His appearance was smart and perhaps a trifle showy. Miss Bishop made Ashenden known to him. Major Templeton said a few civil words in an easy, cordial way, and then asked the girl to go for a stroll with him; he had been ordered to walk to a certain place in the wood behind the sanatorium and back again. McLeod watched them as they sauntered off.

“I wonder if there’s anything between those two,” he said. “They do say Templeton was a devil with the girls before he got ill.”

“He doesn’t look up to much in that line just now,” said Ashenden.

“You never can tell. I’ve seen a lot of rum things here in my day. I could tell you no end of stories if I wanted to.”

“You evidently do, so why don’t you?”

McLeod grinned.

“Well, I’ll tell you one. Three or four years ago there was a woman here who was pretty hot stuff. Her husband used to come and see her every other week-end, he was crazy about her, used to fly up from London; but Dr Lennox was pretty sure she was carrying on with somebody here, but he couldn’t find out who. So one night when we’d all gone to bed he had a thin coat of paint put down just outside her room and next day he had everyone’s slippers examined. Neat, wasn’t it? The fellow whose slippers had paint on them got the push. Dr Lennox has to be particular, you know. He doesn’t want the place to get a bad name.”

“How long has Templeton been here?”

“Three or four months. He’s been in bed most of the time. He’s for it all right. Ivy Bishop’ll be a damned fool if she gets stuck on him. She’s got a good chance of getting well. I’ve seen so many of them, you know, I can tell. When I look at a fellow I make up my mind at once whether he’ll get well or whether he won’t, and if he won’t I can make a pretty shrewd guess how long he’ll last. I’m very seldom mistaken. I give Templeton about two years myself.”

McLeod gave Ashenden a speculative look, and Ashenden, knowing what he was thinking, though he tried to be amused, could not help feeling somewhat concerned. There was a twinkle in McLeod’s eyes. He plainly knew what was passing through Ashenden’s mind.

“You’ll get all right. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I hadn’t been pretty sure of that. I don’t want Dr Lennox to hoof me out for putting the fear of God into his bloody patients.”

Then Ashenden’s nurse came to take him back to bed. Even though he had only sat out for an hour, he was tired, and was glad to find himself once more between the sheets. Dr Lennox came in to see him in the course of the evening. He looked at his temperature chart.

“That’s not so bad,” he said.

Dr Lennox was small, brisk, and genial. He was a good enough doctor, an excellent business man, and an enthusiastic fisherman. When the fishing season began he was inclined to leave the care of his patients to his assistants; the patients grumbled a little, but were glad enough to eat the young salmon he brought back to vary their meals. He was fond of talking, and now, standing at the end of Ashenden’s bed, he asked him, in his broad Scots, whether he had got into conversation with any of the patients that afternoon. Ashenden told him the nurse had introduced him to McLeod. Dr Lennox laughed.

“The oldest living inhabitant. He knows more about the sanatorium and its inmates than I do. How he gets his information I haven’t an idea, but there’s not a thing about the private lives of anyone under this roof that he doesn’t know. There’s not an old maid in the place with a keener nose for a bit of scandal. Did he tell you about Campbell?”

“He mentioned him.”

“He hates Campbell, and Campbell hates him. Funny, when you come to think of it, those two men, they’ve been here for seventeen years and they’ve got about one sound lung between them. They loathe the sight of one another. I’ve had to refuse to listen to the complaints about one another that they come to me with. Campbell’s room is just below McLeod’s and Campbell plays the fiddle. It drives McLeod wild. He says he’s been listening to the same tunes for fifteen years, but Campbell says McLeod doesn’t know one tune from another. McLeod wants me to stop Campbell playing, but I can’t do that, he’s got a perfect right to play so long as he doesn’t play in the silence hours. I’ve offered to change McLeod’s room, but he won’t do that. He says Campbell only plays to drive him out of the room because it’s the best in the house, and he’s damned if he’s going to have it. It’s queer, isn’t it, that two middle-aged men should think it worth while to make life hell for one another? Neither can leave the other alone. They have their meals at the same table, they play bridge together; and not a day passes without a row. Sometimes I’ve threatened to turn them both out if they don’t behave like sensible fellows. That keeps them quiet for a bit. They don’t want to go. They’ve been here so long, they’ve got no one any more who gives a damn for them, and they can’t cope with the world outside. Campbell went away for a couple of months’ holiday some years ago. He came back after a week; he said he couldn’t stand the racket, and the sight of so many people in the streets scared him.”