anything about neuritis and that it is practically incurable. One has to suffer and suffer. Even Almroth Wright has not found the anti-bacilli. Nepenthe gives me ease; that is all the doctoring I want—ease!”
“It is doing you a lot of harm. And what makes you think you’ve got neuritis?”
“What ailed your Margaret?” I answered mockingly. “Did you ever find that out?”
“No … yes. Of course I knew.”
“Did you ever examine her?” I was curious to know that; suddenly and inconsequently curious.
“Why do you ask?” But his face changed, and I knew the question had been cruel or impertinent. He let go my hand abruptly, he had been holding it all this time. “I did all that any doctor could.” He was obviously distressed and I ashamed.
“Don’t go yet. Sit down and have a cup of tea with me. I’ve been here three weeks and every meal has been solitary. Your Margaret”—I smiled at him then, knowing he would not understand—“comes to me sometimes at night with my nepenthe, but all day I am alone.”
“By your own desire then, I swear. You are not a woman to be left alone if you wanted company.” He dropped into a chair, seemed glad to stay. Presently over tea and crumpets, we were really talking of my illness, and if I had permitted it I have no doubt he would have gone into the matter more closely. As it was he warned me solemnly against the nepenthe and suggested I should try codein as an alternative, a suggestion I ignored completely, unfortunately for myself.
“Tell me about your partner,” I said, drinking my tea slowly.
“Oh! you’ll like him, all the ladies like him. He is very spruce and rather handsome; dapper, band-boxy. Not tall, turning grey. …”
“Did she like him?” I persisted.
“She would not have him near her. After his first visit she denied herself to him all the time. He used to talk to me about her, he could never understand it, he was not used to that sort of treatment, he is a tremendous favourite about here.”
“What did she say of him?”
“That he grinned like a Cheshire cat, talked in clichés, rubbed his hands and seemed glad when she suffered. He has a very cheerful bedside manner; most people like it.”
“I quite understand. I won’t have him. Mind that; don’t send him to see me, because I won’t see him. I’d rather put up with you.” I have explained I was beyond convention. He really tried hard to persuade me, urged Dr. Lansdowne’s degrees and qualifications, his seniority. I grew angry in the end.
“Surely I need not have either of you if I don’t want to. I suppose there are other doctors in the neighbourhood.”
He gave me a list of the medical men practising in and about Pineland; it was not at all badly done, he praised everybody yet made me see them clearly. In the end I told him I would choose my own medical attendant when I wanted one.
“Am I dismissed, then?” he asked.
“Have you ever been summoned?” I answered in the same tone.
“Seriously now, I’d like to be of use to you if you’d let me.”
“In order to retain the entrée to the house where the wonderful Margaret moved and had her being?”
“No! Well, perhaps yes, partly. And you are a very attractive woman yourself.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It is quite true. I expect you know it.”
“I’m over forty and ill. I suppose that is what you find attractive, that I am ill?”
“I don’t think so. I hate hysterical women as a rule.”
“Hysterical!”
“With any form of nerve disease.”
“Do you really think I am suffering from nerve disease? From the vapours?” I asked scornfully, thinking for the thousand and first time what a fool the man was.
“You don’t occupy yourself?”
“I’m one of the busiest women on God’s earth.”
“I’ve never seen you doing anything, except sitting at her writing-table with two bone-dry pens set out and some blank paper. And you object to be questioned about your illness, or examined.”
“I hate scientific doctoring. And then you have not inspired me with confidence, you are obsessed with one idea.”
“I can’t help that. From the first you’ve reminded me of Margaret.”
“Oh! damn Margaret Capel, and your infatuation for her! I’m sorry, but that’s the way I feel just now. I can’t escape from her, the whole place is full of her. And yet she hasn’t written a thing that will live. I sent to the London Library soon after I came and got all her books. I waded through the lot. Just epigram and paradox, a weak Bernard Shaw in petticoats.”
“I never read a word she wrote,” he answered indifferently. “It was the woman herself. …”
“I am sure. Well, good-bye! I can’t talk any more tonight, I’m tired. Don’t send Dr. Lansdowne. If I want any one I’ll let you know.”
Margaret came to me again that night when the house was quite silent and all the lights out except the red one from the fire. She sat in the easy-chair on the hearthrug, and for the first time I heard her speak. She was very young and feeble-looking, and I told her I was sorry I had been impatient and said “damn” about her.
“But you are all over the place, you know. And I can’t write unless I am alone. I’m always solitary and never alone here; you haunt and obsess me. Can’t you go away? I don’t mean now. I am glad you are here now, and talking. Tell me about Dr. Kennedy. Did you care for him at all? Did you know he was in love with you?”
“Peter Kennedy! No, I never thought about him at all, not until the end. Then he was very kind, or cruel. He did what I asked him. You know why I obsess you, don’t you? It used to be just the same with me when a subject was evolving. You are going to write my story; you will do it better in a way than I could have done it myself, although worse in another. I have left you all the material.”
“Not a word.”
“You haven’t found it yet. I put it together myself, the day Gabriel sent back my letters. You will have my diary and a few notes. …”
“Where?”
“In a drawer in the writing-table. But it is only half there. … You will have to add to it.”
“I see you quite well when I keep my eyes shut. If I open them the room sways and you are not there. Why should I write your life? I am no historian, only a novelist.”
“I know, but you are on the spot, with all the material and local colour. You know Gabriel too; we used to speak about you.”
“He
