Twilight - Julia Frankau (free novels to read .txt) 📗

a few paces away from her, to the edge of the sea. She smiled quietly to herself when he left her like that. He was suffering, he could not bear the contrast between what she had thought of him and he of her.

“Gabriel!” she called him back presently, called softly and he came swiftly.

“I had better go back to town by the next train. I disappoint you.”

“Silly!” She was amazingly, alluringly smiling into his dour eyes, not satisfied until he smiled too. “It is my sense of style. I am like grammar; all moods and tenses. You want me to tell you everything, don’t you?”

“Am I the man for you? that is what I want you to tell me. I don’t know what you mean by that sense of strangeness I cannot bear it.”

“Don’t you vary? wonder, doubt?”

“I always knew from the first afternoon when you were shown into my room in Grey friars’, your black fur framing your exquisite porcelain face, your eyes like wavering stars, that you were the only woman in the world. Since then the conviction of it grows deeper and deeper, more certain. You are never out of my mind. I know I am not good enough for you, too old and grave. But you have let me hope. Oh! you wonderful child.” For still she was smiling at him in that dazzling alluring way. He was at her feet and the hem of her dress again against his lips. “Don’t you understand, can’t I make you understand? I adore you, I worship you. I want nothing from you except that you let me tell you so sometimes.”

“It is so much nicer when you write it,” she murmured.

“Don’t.” She cajoled him.

“I can’t take it lightly,” he burst out. “Pity me, forgive me, but don’t laugh at me.”

“I am not laughing.”

“I know. You are an angel of sweetness, goodness. Margaret, let me love you!”

I was back again in bed, very drowsy and comfortable, wondering how I had got there, what had happened, what time it was. I took a drink of lemonade and thought what a bad night I was having. I remembered my dream; it had been very vivid, and I was sorry for Gabriel Stanton and tried to remember what had become of him, when I had heard of or seen him last; it must have been a long time ago. Margaret was a minx. If ever I wrote about them it would be to tell the truth, to analyse and expose the spirit and soul of a woman flirt. And again when I lay down I thought of what the critics would say of this fine and intimate study, this human document that I was to give the world. Phrases came to me, vivid lightning touches… I hoped I should be able to remember them, but hardly doubted it, for others came, even better than these, and then in consequence, sleep….

Benham said in the morning:

“Whatever did you take another pill for? Was anything the matter with you? You could have called me up.”

“But you might have argued with me.”

“I am sure I don’t know what good a nurse is to you at all!”

“You would be invaluable if you would only get it into your head that I am not a mental case. Don’t you realise that I am a very clever woman, quite as clever as you?”

“I don’t call it clever to retard your own recovery.”

“Am I going to recover?” I asked quickly.

“Your beloved Dr. Kennedy says you are.”

“By the way, is he coming to-day?”

“It isn’t many days he misses.”

“He comes to protect me from you, to see I have some few privileges and ameliorations of my condition, that my confinement is not too close, my gaoler too vigilant.”

We understood each other better now, and I could chaff her without provoking anything but a difficult smile. I, of course, was a bad patient. I found it difficult to believe that I ought not to try and overcome my weakness and inertia, that it was my duty to leave off fighting and sink into invalidism as if it were a feather bed.

That afternoon she helped me to the writing-table in the drawingroom, and I sat there trying to recapture the conversation I had heard. But although I could remember every word I found it hard to write. I could lie back in the chair and look at the gorse, the distant hills, the sea, the dim wide horizon, but to lean forward, take pen in hand, dip it in the ink, write, was almost beyond that still slowly ebbing strength. I whipped myself with the thought of what weak women had done, and dying men. “My head is bloody but unbowed…” Mine was bowed then, quickly over the writing-table; tears of self-pity welled hot, but I would not let them fall. It was not because Death was coming to me. I swear that then nor ever have I feared Death. But I was leaving so much undone. I had a place, and it was to know me no more. And the world was so lovely, the promise of spring in the air. When I lifted my bowed head Peter Kennedy was there, very pitiful as I could see by his eyes, and with a new gift of silence. Silence as to essentials, at least. He did not ask what ailed me, but spoke of a breakdown to the motor, of the wonder of the April weather. I soon regained my self-possession.

“How soon after Margaret Capel came here did you make her acquaintance?” I asked him suddenly, and a propos of nothing either of us had said.

“It must have been a week or two, not more. I knew the house had been taken, but not by whom. And at first the name meant nothing to me. I am not a reading man; at least I don’t read novels.”

“Don’t apologise. I have heard of the Sporting Times, Bell’s Life—”

“Go on, gibe away, I like it. She was just the same only kinder, much kinder.”

I laughed.

“I knew she would be kind, and soft, and womanly. Didn’t she say she was lonely?”

“Yes.”

“And then say quickly: ‘ But of course you are quite right. Reading is a waste of time, living everything, and you are doing a fine work, a man’s work in the world.’ She said she envied you. I can hear her saying it.” He looked ecstatic.

“So can I. Ella says the same thing.”

“Why are you so bitter?”

I could not tell him it was because I had heard other women, many women, who were all things to all men, and that I despised, or perhaps envied them, lacking their gift and so having lived lonely save for Ella and Ella’s love. Until now, when it was too late. And then I looked at him, at Dr. Kennedy, and laughed.

“Why do you laugh? You are so like and so unlike her. She would laugh for nothing, cry for nothing…”

“Tell me all about her from the beginning.” It was an excuse to rest on the cushions in the easychair, to cease whipping my tired conscience.

“There is little or nothing to tell. It was about a week after she came here we had the first call. Urgent, the message said. So I got on my bicycle and spun away up here. I did not even wait to get out the car.”

“What day of the week was it?” I asked, interrupting him.

“What day of the week?” he repeated in surprise.

“Yes, what day?”

“As a matter of fact it was on a Monday. What’s the point? I remember because it happens to have been my Infirmary day. I had just come home, dog-tired, but of course when the call came I had to go. I actually thought what a bore it was as I pedalled up. It’s nearly all uphill from our house to Carbies. The maid looked frightened when she opened the door.”

“Oh, sir, I am so glad you are here. Will you please come into the drawingroom? Mrs. Capel, she fainted right away. Miss Stevens has tried hartshorn an’ burnt feathers, everything we could think of.”

“Everything that had a smell?”

“Yes, sir. I perceived it as I approached the drawingroom this room. She was on the sofa,” he looked over to it, “very pale and dishevelled, only partly conscious.”

“Who was Miss Stevens?”

“Her maid. Quite a character. Something like your nurse, only more so.”

“What did you do?”

“I felt her pulse, her heart, thought of strychnine.”

“You are not a great doctor, are you?” I scoffed lightly.

“Oh! I know my work all right; it’s simple enough. You try this drug or the other…”

“Or none, as in my case.”

“That’s right.”

“And then if the patient does not get better or her relatives get restive, you call in some one else, who makes another shot.” There was a twinkle in his eye. I always thought he knew more about medicine than he pretended. “And what did you do for Margaret?” I went on.

“Opened the window, and her dress; waited. The first thing she said was, ‘ Has he gone? ‘ I did not know to whom she referred, but the maid told me primly: ‘ Mrs. Capel’s publisher has been down for the weekend. He left this morning. She don’t know what she’s saying.’ Margaret opened her eyes, her sweet eyes, dark-irised, the light in them wavered and grew strong. She seemed to recall herself with difficulty and slowly. ‘Did I faint? I’m all right now. Is that you, Stevens? What happened? ‘

“‘I came in to bring your afternoon tea and you were in a dead faint, at the writing-table, all in a heap. I rang for cook and we carried you to the sofa, and tried to bring you round. Then cook telephoned for Dr. Lansdowne.’

“‘Are you Dr. Lansdowne?’

“‘He was out. I’m his partner, Dr. Kennedy. How are you feeling?’ I asked her.

“‘Better. Stevens, you can go away. Bring me some more tea. Dr. Kennedy will have a cup with me.’ She struggled into a sitting position and I helped her. Then she told me she had always been subject to these attacks, ever since she was a child, that she was to have been a pianist, had studied seriously. But the doctors forbade her practising. Now she wrote. She admitted that her own emotional scenes overcame her. Then we talked of the emotions….”

Dr. Kennedy looked at me as if enquiringly.

“Do you want to hear any more?”

“You saw her often after that?”

“Nearly every day, all the time she was here.”

“And talked about the emotions?”

“Sometimes. What are you implying? What are you trying to get at? Whatever it is, you are wrong. I was in her confidence, she liked talking to me. I did her good.”

“With drugs or dogma?” I asked.

“With sympathy. She had suffered terribly, more than any woman should be allowed to suffer. And she was ultra-sensitive, her nerves were all exposed, inflamed. You have sometimes that elusive, strange resemblance to her. But she had neither strength nor courage and as for hardness … she did not know the meaning of the word.”

“You are wrong. Last night I heard her talk to Gabriel Stanton.”

“Did you?” His eyes lightened. “Tell me. But he was not the man for her, never the man for her. Not sufficiently flexible. He took her too seriously.”

“Can a man take a woman too seriously?”

“An emotional, nervous, delicate woman. Yes. You’ve been through all the letters?”

“No. There are a few more.”

They were on the table, and I put my hand on them. I was sure that no one but