The table was alluring, and I wanted to be alone. Cook arrived before Mary had finished, and then the monologue became a duet.
“There’s not more than half a dozen glasses altogether, and I’m sure I don’t know what to do about the teapot. There’s only one tray. …”
“And as for the cooking utensils, well, I never see such a lot. And that dirty! The kitchen dresser has never been cleaned out since the flood, I should think. Stuffed up with dirty cloths and broken crockery. As for the kitchen table, there’s knives without handles and forks without prongs; not a shape that isn’t dented; the big fish kettle’s got a hole in it as big as your ’and, and the others ain’t fit to use. The pastry board’s broke. …”
I wanted to stop my ears and tell them to get out. I had asked for competent servants, and understood that competent servants bought or hired whatever was necessary for their work. That was the way things were managed at home. But then my cook had been with me for eight years and my housemaid for eleven. They knew my ways, and that I was never to be bothered with household details, only the bills were my affair. And those my secretary paid.
“It was one of them there writing women as had the place last, with no more idea of order than the kitchen cat,” cook said indignantly, or perhaps suspiciously, eyeing the writing-table. I had come here for rest and change, to lead the simple life, with two servants instead of five and everything in proportion. Now I found myself giving reckless orders.
“Buy everything you want; there is sure to be a shop in the village. If not, make out a list, and one of you go up to the Stores or Harrod’s. If the place is dirty get in a charwoman. Some one will recommend you a charwoman, the house-agent or the doctor.” I reminded cook that she was a cook-housekeeper, but failed to subdue her.
“You can’t be cook-housekeeper in a desert island. I call it no better than a desert island. I’d get hold of that there house-agent that engaged us if I was you. He said the ’ouse was well-found. Him with his well-found ’ouse! They’re bound to give you what you need, but if you don’t mind expense. …”
Of course I minded expense, never more so than now when I saw the possibility before me of a long period of inaction. … But I minded other things more. Household detail for instance, and uneducated voices. I compromised and sanctioned the appeal to the house-agent, confirming that the irreducible minimum was to be purchased, explaining I was ill, not to be troubled about this sort of thing. I brushed aside a few “buts” and finally rid myself of them. I caught myself yearning for Ella, who would have saved me this and every trouble. Then scorned my desire to send for her and determined to be glad of my solitude, to rejoice in my freedom. I could look as ill as I liked without comment. I could sit where I was without attempting to tidy my belongings, and no one would ask me if I felt seedy, if the pain was coming on, if they could do anything for me. And then, fool that I was, I remember tears coming to my eyes because I was lonely, and sure that I had tired out even Ella’s patience. I wondered how any one could face a long illness, least of all any one like me who loved work, and above all independence, freedom. I knew, I knew even then that the time was coming when I could neither work nor be independent; the shadow was upon me that very first afternoon at Carbies. When I could see to write I dashed off a postcard to Ella telling her I was quite well and she was not to bother about me.
“I like the place, I’m sure I shall be able to write here. Don’t think of coming down, and keep the rest of the family off me if you can. …”
I spent the remainder of the evening weakly longing for her, and feeling that she need not have taken me at my word, that she might have come with me although I urged her not, that she should have understood me better.
That night I took less nepenthe, yet saw Margaret Capel more vividly. She stayed a long time too. This time she wore a blue peignoir, her hair down, and she looked very young and girlish. There were gnomes and fairies when she went, and after that the sea, swish and awash as if I had been upon a yacht. Unconsciousness only came to me when the yacht was submerged in a great wave … semi-consciousness.
But I am not telling the story of my illness. I should like to, but I fear it would have no interest for the general public, or for the young people amongst whom one looks for readers. I have sometimes thought nevertheless, both then and afterwards, that there must be a public who would like to hear what one does and thinks and suffers when illness catches one unawares; and all life’s interests alter and narrow down to temperatures and medicine-time, to fighting or submitting to nurses and weakness, to hatred and contempt of doctors, and a dumb blind rage against fate; to pain and the soporifics behind which its hold tightens.
Pineland did not cure me, although I spent hours in the open air and let my pens lie resting in their case. Under continual pains I grew sullen and resentful, always more ill-tempered and desirous of solitude. Dr. Kennedy called frequently. Sometimes I saw him and sometimes not, as the mood took me. He never came without speaking of the former occupant of the house, of Margaret Capel. He seemed to take very little personal interest in me or my condition. And I was too proud (or stupid) to force it on his notice. I asked him once, crudely enough, if he had been in love with Margaret Capel. He answered quite simply, as if he had been a child:
“One had no chance. From the first I knew there was no chance.”
“There was some one else?”
“He came up and down. I seldom met him. Then there were the circumstances. She was between the Nisi and the Absolute, the nether and the upper stone. …”
“Oh, yes, I remember now. She was divorced.”
“No, she was not. She divorced her husband,” he answered quite sharply and a little distressed. “Courts of Justice they are called, but Courts of Injustice would be a better name. They put her to the question, on the rack; no inquisition could have been worse. And she was broken by it. …”
“But there was some one else, you said yourself there was some one else. Probably these probing questions, this rack, were her deserts. Personally I am a monogamist,” I retorted. Not that I was really narrow or a Pharisee, only in contentious mood and cruel under the pressure of my own harrow. “Probably anything she suffered served her right,” I added indifferently.
“It all happened afterwards. I thought you knew,” he said incoherently.
“I know nothing except that you are always talking of Margaret Capel, and I am a little tired of the subject,” I answered pettishly. “Who was the man?”
“The man!”
“Yes, the man who came up and down to see her?”
“Gabriel Stanton.”
“Gabriel Stanton!” I sat upright in my chair; that really startled me. “Gabriel Stanton,” I repeated, and then, stupidly enough: “Are you sure?”
“Quite sure. But I won’t talk about it any more since it bores you. The house is so haunted for me, and you seemed so sympathetic, so interested. You won’t let me doctor you.”
“You haven’t tried very hard, have you?”
“You put me off whenever I try to ask you how you are, or any questions.”
“What is the good? I’ve seen twelve London doctors.”
“London has not the monopoly of talent.” He took up his hat, and then my hand.
“Offended?” I asked him.
“No.
