“Oh, yes! I’ve heard about your driving,” I answered drily.
He laughed.
“I am supposed to be reckless, but really I am only unlucky. With luck now. …”
“Yes, with luck?”
“You might go on for any time. I shouldn’t worry about that if I were you. You are getting better.”
“I am not worrying, only thinking about Mrs. Lovegrove. She has two children, a large house, literary and other engagements. Will you tell her I am well enough to be left alone?” He answered quickly and surprised:
“She does not want to go, she likes being with you. Not that I wonder at that.”
He was a strange person. Sometimes I had an idea he was not “all there.” He said whatever came into his mind, and had other divergencies from the ordinary type. I had to explain to him my need of solitude. If Ella went back to town, Benham would soon, I hoped, with a little encouragement, fall into the way of ordinary nurses. I had had them in London and knew their habits. Two or three hours in the morning for their so-called “constitutionals,” two or three hours in the afternoon for sleep, whether they had been disturbed in the night or not; in the intervals there were the meals over which they lingered. Solitude would be easily secured if Ella went away and there was no one to watch or comment on the amount of attention purchased or purchasable for two guineas a week. I misread Benham, by the way, but that is a detail. She was not like the average nurse, and never behaved in the same way.
My first objective, once that brown paper parcel lay on the bed, was to persuade Ella to go back to home and children. Without hurting her feelings. She would not have left the house for five minutes before I should be longing for her back again. I knew that, but one cannot work and play. I have never had any other companion but Ella. Still. … Work whilst ye have the light. One more book I must do, and here was one to my hand.
I made Dr. Kennedy put the parcel back in the drawer. Then I lay and made plans. I must talk to Ella of Violet and Tommy, make her homesick for them. Unfortunately Ella knew me so well. I started that very afternoon.
“How does Violet get on without you?”
“She is all right.”
But soon afterwards Ella asked me quietly whether there was any one else I would like down.
“God forbid!” I answered in alarm, and she understood, understood without showing pang or offence, that I wanted to be alone. One thing Ella never quite realised, my wretched inability to live in two worlds at once, the real and the unreal. When I want to write there is no use giving me certain hours or times to myself. I want all the days and all the nights. I don’t wish to be spoken to, nor torn away from my story and new friends. For this reason I have always had to leave London many months in the year, for the seaside or abroad. London meant Ella, almost daily, at the telephone if not personally.
“You don’t write all day, do you? What are you pretending? Don’t be so absurd, you must go out sometimes. I am fetching you in the car at. …”
And then I was lured by her to theatres, dinners, lunches. She thought people liked to meet me, but I have rarely noticed any interest taken in a female novelist, however many editions she may run through. My strength was returning, if slowly. Ella of course had duties to those children of hers that sometimes I resented so unreasonably. I always wished her early widowhood had left her without ties. However, the call of them came in usefully now; it was not necessary for me to press it. I came first with her, I exulted in it. But since I was getting better. …
I wished to be alone with that parcel. I did make a tentative effort before Ella left.
“I don’t want to settle off to sleep just yet, nurse, I should like to read a little. There is a packet of letters. …”
“No! No! I wouldn’t hear of such a thing. Starting reading at ten o’clock. What will you be wanting to do next?”
“It would not do me any harm,” I answered irritably. “I’ve told you before it does me more harm to be contradicted every time I make a suggestion.”
“Well, you won’t get me to help you to commit suicide. Night is the time for sleep, and you’ve had your codein.”
“The codein does not send me to sleep, it only soothes and quiets me.”
“All the more reason you should not wake yourself up by any old letters.” She argued, and I. … At the end I was too tired and out of humour to insist. I made up my mind to do without a nurse as soon as possible, and in the meantime not to argue but to circumvent her. At this time, before Ella went, I was getting up every day for a few hours, lying on the couch by the window. I tested my strength and found I could walk from bed to sofa, from sofa to easy-chair without nurse’s arm, if I made the effort.
“You will take care of yourself?” were Ella’s last words, and I promised impatiently.
“I don’t so much mind leaving you alone now, you have your Peter, and nurse won’t let you overdo things.”
“You have your Peter.” Can one imagine anything more ridiculous! My incurably frivolous sister imagined I had fallen in love, with that lout! I was unable to persuade her to the contrary. She argued, that at my worst and before, I would have no other attendant. And she pointed out that it could not possibly be Peter Kennedy’s skill that attracted me. I defended him, feebly perhaps, for it was true that he had not shown any special aptitude or ability. I said he was quite as good as any of the others, and certainly less depressing.
“There is no good humbugging me, or trying to. You are in love with the man. Don’t trouble to contradict it. And I am not a bit jealous. I only hope he will make you happy. Nurse told me you do not even like her to come into the room when he is here.”
“Don’t you know how old I am? It is really undignified, humiliating, to be talked to or of in that way. …”
“Age has nothing to do with it. A woman is never too old to fall in love. And besides, what is thirty-nine?”
“In this case it is forty-two,” I put in drily, my sense of humour not being entirely in abeyance.
“Well! or forty-two. Anyway you will admit I took a hint very quickly. I am going to leave you alone with your Corydon.”
“Caliban!”
“He is not bad-looking really, it is only his clothes. And if anything comes of it you will send him to Poole’s. Anyway his feet and hands are all right, and there is a certain grace about his ungainliness.”
“Really, Ella, I can’t bear any more. Love runs in your head; feeds your activities, agrees with you. But as for me, I’ve long outgrown it. I am tired, old, ill. Peter Kennedy is just not objectionable. Other doctors are. He is honest, simple. …”
“I will hear all about his qualities next time I come. Only don’t think you are deceiving me. God bless you, dear.” She turned suddenly serious. “You know I would not go if you wanted me to stop or if I were uneasy about you any more. You know I will come down again at any moment you want me. I shall miss my train if I don’t rush. Can I send you anything? I won’t forget the sofa rug, and if you think of anything else. …” Her maid knocked at the door and said the flyman
