The Dawn of Reckoning (11 page)

“Yes, I am going.”

He put down his pencil with an air of finality and handed her the
scribbled prescription.

She took it and crumpled it into her handbag. “Are you going to the South
Pole?” she asked with uncompromising abruptness.

“I hope so…”

“You
hope
you are going?”

“I hope I get there.”

She rose from her chair and held out her hand. The interview had to be
finished somehow, and the thought of the crowded waiting-room urged her to be
brief, now that she had found out what she wanted.

“Well—good-bye. I wish you luck…When are you going?”

“Monday week…Thank you for your good wishes. By the way, did you come in
your car?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to do somebody a good turn?”

“It depends.”

He went on “My last patient before you was a little boy brought by his
mother. He has a bad ankle, and no doubt his mother will be carrying him all
the way home. They live at Firs Cottages, on your way back. If you should
overtake them it would be an act of kindness to—”

“Of course I’ll give them a lift,” she said eagerly.

“You will?—Good.”

His eyes widened and his face became less severe. “Give my best wishes to
Philip,” he added, opening the door for her and ringing for the maid. “I
shall call to see him before I go…Good-bye…”

“Good-bye…”

She walked out briskly to her car. In the middle of the High Street she
overtook the mother carrying her little boy, and only her promise to Ward
made her pull in at the kerb and offer them a lift. She saw people staring
curiously, especially when the woman, surprised out of her senses, had to
have the offer shouted at her several times. In the end she accepted
suspiciously, as if she had fears of being kidnapped with her offspring. The
latter meanwhile was sucking sweets and making sticky finger-marks on the
upholstery of the car. When Firs Cottages were reached the whole population
turned out en masse to see the remarkable scene of disembarkation. Stella was
desperately uncomfortable. It seemed such ostentatious philanthropy—all
who had seen it would be certain she had done it for show. And Stimpson, the
chauffeur at the Hall, would want to know the origin of the sticky marks.

When she drove up to the Hall a few minutes later she was quite miserable,
thus falsifying the dictum that a good deed makes the doer happy.

Ward accepted an invitation to dinner the following
Tuesday.

Stella’s fixed intention—which she freely admitted to
herself—was to make as deep an impression on him as she could. He had
humbled her and been rude to her as no other man had; it was almost as if he
alone, out of all the men she had ever met, had failed to respond to her
attractiveness. Not that she particularly wanted to attract him, but that
curiosity and pique urged her to find out whether he were really adamant.

She dressed herself with unusual care, and in a frock which she knew made
her look enchantingly pretty—a delicate thing of black and gold that
clung closely to her and enhanced the rounded slimness of her body. In her
mind she had the whole of that evening accurately mapped out. She would sit
between him and Philip at dinner, and afterwards, in the drawing-room, she
would sing at the piano—plaintive little Hungarian songs which, if he
had a spark of music or poetry in him, would kindle him to flame as they
never failed to kindle her.

In all this she was certain there was no disloyalty to Philip. She even
said to Philip before Ward arrived: “Don’t I look pretty?—Don’t you
think I shall make the doctor fall madly in love with me?”

Philip smiled. “Probably he’s done that already. Most people have.”

“Even you?” she hinted.

“Of course.”

“All your love is of course. Kiss me, then—of course…”

He kissed her gently, and she stared at him after wards with wistful,
half-mocking eyes. “You strange old Philip…” she whispered. “What a
nuisance I am to you…and shall be…”

That evening was unforgettable, but in a way that no one
could have foreseen. All the day a great wind had been blowing from the sea,
and at night it increased to a gale. Men coming in from the east reported
that the sea was very rough (a rare occurrence on the coasts near by), and in
the open road outside the Hall gates the taste of the salt spray was on the
wind that raced past. Ward, when he arrived, said that several times on the
short journey he had been nearly blown off his machine.

All during dinner the gale howled down the chimneys and shrieked through
the tall trees in the garden. Then suddenly, over the coffee and liqueurs,
there came a tremendous whistle of wind followed by the clamour of smashing
glass and splintering wood. Philip started to his feet, upsetting his
liqueur-glass over the table-cloth. Stella rushed to the window. Only Mrs.
Monsell and Ward remained in their places, apparently quite calm.

“A tree’s fallen on top of the conservatories,” Stella cried, pulling
aside the window blinds.

Mrs. Monsell sipped her coffee. “Really? Is that all?—Well, don’t
let it interrupt a pleasant party.”

At At that moment the door opened and Venner entered. “Another liqueur for
Mr. Philip,” said Mrs. Monsell, imperturbably, nodding to him.

But the old fellow shuffled forward and seemed most unprofessionally
disturbed about something.

“Excuse me, madam, but one of the big elms has fallen on the conservatory
and—”

“Yes, Venner, we know all about it. Don’t worry yourself.”

“But—you’ll excuse me, madam—one of the maids—was there,
madam, when it fell, and is—is injured—”

It was Ward then who interrupted. He bounded out of his seat like a sharp
flash. “I’ll go,” he said quietly to the company in general. And he added to
Venner, in a voice at once curt and courteous: “Please show me the way.”

The girl had been walking through the conservatory when the
tree fell, and a splinter of glass had fallen on her arm, cutting it
severely. When Ward reached her, followed closely by Stella, she was sitting
in a chair in the kitchen, very pale-faced, and with one of the men-servants
dabbing at her arm with handkerchiefs. Her dress was soaked with blood, and
blood ran down her arm and dripped off her finger-tips on to the floor.

“Telephone for an ambulance,” said Ward as soon as he saw her. Stella was
about to run off to the telephone in the hall when he beckoned to her to
stay. “No, let one of the servants do that. You stay here and help me. Does
the sight of blood make you sick?”

“No.”

“Good. Fetch me a towel.”

She got one for him, and for the next few minutes both were busy applying
a tourniquet, he directing and she obeying him.

When she looked up she saw that Philip was watching them. His face was
very white. “C—can I do anything?” he asked plaintively.

“We’ve finished now,” said Stella.

The ambulance came and Ward accompanied the frightened girl
to the local hospital. The cut had been a bad one, puncturing the artery, and
she had lost a great deal of blood and was very weak.

Meanwhile, Stella and Philip waited at the Hall. The wind was still high,
raving through the trees, and blowing in great angry whuffs down the wide
hall chimney. The evening had turned to tragedy, and as the moments crawled
by it seemed to Stella as if the whole world were filled with tragedy also.
The mediocre oil-paintings of the Monsell ancestors gazed at her in
stony-eyed ferocity, and when the clocks whirred and clanged the hour of nine
it seemed impossible that the night could be still so young.

Then there came a telephone call. It was Ward, speaking from the hospital.
“Yes…not serious…they’re keeping her for a few days—then she’ll
need a rest…I left my machine at your place, didn’t I?…Yes, I’ll come on
then…Why, walk, of course; it’s only a mile over the fields…”

Philip was in his study, and she went to him, meaning to tell him that
Ward was coming back. She found him cosily settled in an armchair by a huge
fire. A table by his side contained a decanter and syphon, from which he was
helping himself as she entered.

“You look very pale, Philip,” she said.

He answered: “Do I? It upset me—seeing all that blood…Did Ward
think she was badly hurt?”

“He just ‘phoned me to say it wasn’t serious at all, and that she’d soon
be all right again.”

“Good…
Good
…Oh, excellent…I hate to think of people
suffering…
Now
perhaps I can read a little. But I’m afraid seeing all
that—has disturbed my mind…Do you mind handing me that book on my
desk—the one with the red cover—
The Evolution of Society
,
it’s called…”

She gave it him, smiled slightly and went out.

In the hall she put on her sou’wester hat and mackintosh, chose a stout
walking-stick out of the stand, and walked quickly through the kitchens out
of the house.

Over the black and noisy night the moon shone faintly,
piercing every now and then the scurrying clouds. She walked round the side
of the house, down the drive, and into the high road; and then turned sharply
to the right along the field-path over the stile. The wind had dried the mud
into a soft clay-like surface, into which her feet sank as into thick carpet;
everywhere was the rich wintry smell of upturned soil, mingled now and then
with a sudden sharp tang of the sea. The field-path was one of Chassingford’s
favourite evening walks, but that night it was almost deserted. Only once, a
few yards from the high road, did she see strangers—an amorous couple
whose locked embrace was made more passionate by the gale that swirled around
them.

Half-way across the ploughed fields she met him, and knew that it was he
by the swelling bulk of his motor-coat, too stiff for even the wind to blow
into folds.

“I thought I’d meet you,” she said, when she was quite ten yards away from
him.

She stopped and let him approach her. He did so, and, when he was near to
her, stopped also and smiled.

“The girl’s not in any danger,” he began. “By the way, thank you for
helping me. If you ever think of doing any work in life, try nursing. You’d
do rather well.”

They walked on some way in silence. The wind was still boisterous,
galloping across the country in savage gusts and bending the trees till they
creaked and jostled against one another.

“Don’t you love to be out on a night like this?” she said, standing still
with her face to the keen onrush.

“Yes. There’s such a delightful possibility of being brained by a falling
tree, isn’t there?”

She ignored his reply. “All this reminds me of my old
home-country—the wind along the Danube in winter-time…Don’t you ever
feel homesick for the place you were born in?”

“Never. I was born in a Lancashire mining town—one that has the
highest death-rate of any county borough in England. If you saw it you’d
understand why I’m never homesick…By the way, what made you come out to
meet me? Did you think I didn’t know the way?”

She replied slowly: “I was quite certain you knew the way.”

“Then—”

She said sharply and rather rudely: “I came out because I wanted to.
That’s enough reason, isn’t it?”

He would not be charmed by her. And the incidents of the
evening, bizarre almost to the point of tragedy, had made her desperate. She
was desperate all the while she walked back with him through the darkness and
the rushing wind. Some strange uneasiness seized her soul and swept her miles
away from the usual Chassingford atmosphere of calm and seclusion. Strange
memories of childhood assailed her—of the Danube sweeping through the
plains, and the croon of the winds through the tall reeds—all as if it
had been but yesterday, and her life in England a vague and pointless
interruption. She remembered the first time she had met Ward—on the
river-bank near Cambridge—and her remark afterwards that he was like a
Hungarian. The likeness impressed her again; he
was
like a Hungarian,
though not noticeably in appearance, habits, personality or character. In
what, then? In some mysterious something that formed a link between him and
her; something she could not understand; but something that was stirring her
restlessly through and through. One thing she knew for certain; she hated him
fiercely and intensely, and her desire to attract was merely her desire to
subdue.

When they reached the Hall they went into the drawing-room, where after a
short while Philip and Mrs. Monsell joined them. Philip was still rather pale
and made eager enquiries after the condition of the injured girl. Ward
reassured him, patting him affectionately on the shoulder.

Then Stella went to the piano and sang a sad little Hungarian song about a
girl who killed herself because her lover was unfaithful. Beautifully,
conscious that passion was in her voice, she sang the words:

“Ha tudtad, hogy nem szerettel,
Halodba mest keritettel?”

Surely, even in an unknown language, she could convey some rough sense of
their meaning?

When she had finished Philip hastened to congratulate her; he had never
heard her sing so well, so he said. Ward meanwhile sat smoking stolidly in
his chair; at last he remarked calmly, almost casually: “Yes, quite a pretty
little tune.”

She left the piano-stool, with the uneasiness of her soul quivering almost
into flame. Quite a pretty little tune! Was that
all
?

Then Ward got up, shook himself in front of the fire like a great animal,
and lounged over to the piano. “I say, Philip,” he began, putting his pipe on
the music-rest, “do you remember that song we used to sing on Rag-nights at
College?—Something about Booze—it goes to the tune of ‘John
Peel’…?”

And he began to thump out, with one finger and many inaccuracies, the tune
of “John Peel” in the key of C natural.