Her cheek pressed against the pillow, she gazed at him with shining eyes.
‘It’s like old times to hear you talk that way. I can’t tell you how I love it. Oh! it’s like beginning all over again. I am happy, darling, happy.’
‘I’ve got a lot to make up for,’ he reasoned sombrely. ‘I’ve been a fool. And worse.’ He pressed his brow with his hands. ‘ I can’t get poor Harry Vidler out of my head. And I won’t, either, till I do something really to make up for it.’ He groaned suddenly! ‘ I was to blame there, Chris, as much as Ivory. I can’t help feeling I’ve got off too easily. It doesn’t seem right that I should get away with it. But I’ll work like hell, Chris. And I believe Denny and Hope will come in with me. You know their ideas. Denny’s really dying to get back into the rough and tumble of a practice again. And Hope – if we give him a little lab. where he can do original stuff between making our sera – he’ll follow us anywhere.’
He jumped out of bed and began to pace up and down the room in his old impetuous style, torn between elation for the future and remorse of the past, turning things over in his head, worrying, hoping, planning.
‘I’ve so much to settle up, Chris,’ he cried, ‘and one thing I must see about. Look, dear! When I’ve written some letters – and we’ve had lunch – how about taking a little run into the country with me.’
She looked at him questioningly.
‘But if you’re busy?’
‘I’m not too busy for this. Honestly, Chris, I have a fearful weight on my mind over Mary Boland. She’s not getting on well at the Victoria and I haven’t taken nearly enough notice. Thoroughgood is most unsympathetic and he doesn’t properly understand her case, at least not to my way of thinking. God! If anything happened to Mary after me making myself responsible to Con for her I would just about go crazy. It’s an awful thing to say of one’s own hospital but she’ll never recover at the Victoria. She ought to be out in the country, in the fresh air, in a good sanatorium.’
‘Yes?’
‘That’s why I want us to run out to Stillman’s. Bellevue’s the finest, the most marvellous little place you could ever hope to see. If only I could persuade him to take Mary in – Oh! I’d not only be satisfied, I’d feel I’d really done something worth while.’
She said with decision:
‘We’ll leave the minute you’re ready.’
When he had dressed he went downstairs, wrote a long letter to Denny and another to Hope. He had only three serious cases on his hands and on his way to visit them he posted the letters. Then, after a light meal, he and Christine set out for Wycombe.
The journey, despite the emotional tension persisting in his mind, was a happy one. More than ever it was borne upon him that happiness was an inner state, wholly spiritual, independent – whatever the cynics might say – of worldly possessions. All these months, when he had been striving and tearing after wealth and position and succeeding in every material sense, he had imagined himself happy But he had not been happy. He had been existing in a kind of delirium, craving more after everything he got. Money, he thought bitterly, it was all for dirty money! First he had told himself he wanted to make £1,000 a year. When he reached that income he had immediately doubled it, and set that figure as his maximum. But that maximum, when achieved, found him dissatisfied. And so it had gone on. He wanted more and more. It would in the end have destroyed him.
He glanced sideways at Christine. How she must have suffered because of him! But now, if he had wished for any confirmation of the sanity of his decision, the sight of her altered, glowing face was evidence enough. It was not now a pretty face for there were marks of the wear and tear of life drawn upon it, a little dark of lines about the eyes, a faint hollowing of the cheeks which had once been firm and blooming. But it was a face which had always worn an aspect of serenity and truth. And this reanimation which kindled it was so bright and moving he felt a fresh pang of compunction strike deeply into him. He swore he would never again in all his life do anything to make her sad.
They reached Wycombe towards three o’clock, then took a side road uphill which led along the crest of the ridge past Lacey Green. The situation of Bellevue was superb, upon a little plateau which though sheltered on the north afforded an outlook over both valleys.
Stillman was cordial in his reception. He was a self-contained, undemonstrative little man, seldom given to enthusiasm, yet he showed his pleasure in Andrew’s visit by demonstrating the full beauty and efficiency of his creation.
Bellevue was intentionally small, but of its perfection there could be no question. Two wings, angled to a southwestern exposure were united by a central administrative section. Above the entrance hall and offices was a lavishly equipped treatment room, its south wall entirely of vitaglass. All the windows were of this material, the heating and ventilating system the last word in modern efficiency. As Andrew walked round he could not help contrasting this ultra-modern perfection with the antique buildings, built a hundred years before, which served as many of the London hospitals, and with those old dwelling-houses, badly converted and ill-equipped, which masqueraded as nursing-homes.
Afterwards, when he had shown them round, Stillman gave them tea. And here Andrew brought out his request with a rush.
‘I hate asking you a favour, Mr Stillman.’ Christine had to smile at the almost forgotten formula. ‘ But I wonder if you’d take in a case for me here? Early TB. Probably requires pneumothorax. You see she’s the daughter of a great friend of mine, a professional man – dentist – and she’s not getting on where she is –’
Something like amusement gathered behind Stillman’s pale blue eyes.
‘You don’t mean you’re proposing to send me a case. Doctors don’t send me cases here – though they do in America. You forget that here I’m a fake healer running a quack sanatorium, the kind that makes his patients walk barefooted in the dew – before leading them in to a grated carrot breakfast!’
Andrew did not smile.
‘I didn’t ask you to pull my leg, Mr Stillman. I’m dead serious about this girl. I’m – I’m worried about her.’
‘But I’m afraid I am full up, my friend. In spite of the antipathy of your medical fraternity I have a waiting list as long as my arm. Strange!’ Stillman did at last impassively smile. ‘People want me to cure them in spite of the doctors.’
‘Well!’ Andrew muttered – Stillman’s refusal was a great disappointment to him. ‘I was more or less banking on it. If we could have got Mary in here – oh! I’d have felt relieved. Why, you’ve got the finest treatment centre in England. I’m not trying to flatter you. I know! When I think of that old ward in the Victoria where she’s lying now, listening to the cockroaches scramble behind the skirting –’
Stillman leaned forward and picked up a thin cucumber sandwich from the low table before him. He had a characteristic, almost finicky way of handling things as though he had just, with the utmost care, washed his hands and went in fear of soiling them.
‘So! It’s a little ironic comedy you are arranging. No, no, I mustn’t talk that way, I see you are worried. And I will help you. Although you are a doctor I’ll take your case.’ Stillman’s lip twitched at the blank expression on Andrew’s face. ‘You see, I’m broad-minded. I don’t mind dealing with the profession when I’m obliged to. Why don’t you smile? – that’s a joke. Never mind. Even if you’ve no sense of humour you’re a darn sight more enlightened than most of the brethren. Let me see. I have no room vacant till next week. Wednesday, I think. Bring your case to me a week on Wednesday and I promise you I’ll do the best for her I can!’
Andrew’s face reddened with gratitude.
‘I – I can’t thank you enough – I –’
‘Then don’t. And don’t be so polite. I prefer you when you look like throwing things about. Mrs Manson, does he ever throw the china at you? I have a great friend in America, he owns sixteen newspapers, and every time he gets in a temper he breaks a five cent plate. Well, one d
ay, it so happened –’
He went on to tell them a long – and to Manson – quite pointless story. But, driving home in the cool of the evening Andrew meditated to Christine:
‘That’s one thing settled anyway, Chris – a big load off my mind. I’m positive it’s the right place for Mary. He’s a great chap is Stillman. I like him a lot. He’s nothing to look at, but underneath he’s just pressed steel. I wonder if ever we could have a clinic on these lines – miniature replica – Hope and Denny and me. That’s a wild dream, eh? But you never know. And I’ve been thinking, if Denny and Hope do come in with me and we pitch out in the provinces – we might be near enough one of the coalfields for me to pick up my inhalation work again. What d’you think, Chris?’
By way of answer she leaned sideways and, greatly to the common danger on the public highway, she soundly kissed him.
Chapter Eighteen
Next morning he rose early, after a good night’s rest. He felt tense, keyed for anything. Going straight to the telephone, he put the practice in the hands of Fulger & Turner, medical transfer agents, of Adam Street. Mr Gerald Turner, present head of that old established firm, answered personally and in response to Andrew’s request he came out promptly to Chesborough Terrace. After a scrutiny of the books lasting all that forenoon he assured him that he would have not the slightest difficulty in effecting a quick sale.
‘Of course, we shall have to state a reason, doctor, in our advertisements,’ said Mr Turner gently tapping his teeth with his case pencil. ‘Any purchaser is bound to ask himself – why should any doctor give up a gold-mine like this? – and excuse me for saying so, doctor, it is a gold-mine. I’ve never seen such spot cash receipts for many a day. Shall we say on account of ill-health?’
‘No,’ said Andrew brusquely. ‘Tell him the truth. Say –’ he checked himself, ‘oh, say for personal reasons.’
‘Very well, doctor,’ and Mr Gerald Turner wrote, against his draft advertisement: ‘Relinquished from motives purely personal and unconnected with the practice.’
Andrew concluded:
‘And remember, I don’t want a fortune for this thing – only a good price. There’s a lot of tame cats who mightn’t follow the new man around.’
At lunch time Christine produced two telegrams which had come for him. He had asked both Denny and Hope to wire him in reply to the letters he had written the day before.
The first, from Denny, said simply: Impressed. Expect me tomorrow evening.
The second declared with typical flippancy:
Must I spend all my life with lunatics. Feature of English provincial towns pubs stocks cathedrals and pig markets. Did you say laboratory. Signed INDIGNANT RATEPAYER.
After lunch Andrew ran down to the Victoria. It was not Doctor Thoroughgood’s visiting hour but that suited his purpose admirably. He wanted no fuss or unpleasantness, least of all did he wish to upset his senior who, for all his obstinacy and prim concern with the barber-surgeons of the past, had always treated him well.
Seated beside Mary’s bed he explained privately to her what he wished to do.
‘It was my fault to begin with,’ he patted her hand reassuringly. ‘I ought to have foreseen this wasn’t quite the place for you. You’ll find a difference when you get to Bellevue – a big difference, Mary. But they’ve been very kind to you here, there’s no need to hurt anybody’s feelings. You must just say you want to go out next Wednesday, discharge yourself – if you don’t like to do it yourself I’ll get Con to write and say he wants you out. They’ve so many people waiting for beds it’ll be easy. Then on Wednesday I’ll take you out myself by car to Bellevue. I’ll have a nurse with me and everything. Nothing could be simpler – or better for you.’
He returned home with a sense of something further accomplished, feeling that he was beginning to clear up the mess into which his life had fallen. That evening in his surgery he set himself sternly to weed out the chronics, ruthlessly to sacrifice his charm school. A dozen times in the course of an hour he declared firmly:
‘This must be your last visit. You’ve been coming a long time. You’re quite better now. And it doesn’t do to go on drinking medicine!’
It was amazing, at the end of it, how much lighter he felt. To be able to speak his mind honestly and emphatically was a luxury he had long denied himself. He went in to Christine with a step almost boyish.
‘Now I feel less like a salesman for bath salts!’ He groaned: ‘God! How can I talk that way. I’m forgetting what’s happened – Vidler – everything I’ve done!’
It was then that the telephone rang. She went to answer it, and it seemed to him that she was a longish time absent and that when she returned her expression was again oddly strained.
‘Someone wants you on the phone.’
‘Who …?’ All at once he realised that Frances Lawrence had called him up. There was a bar of silence in the room. Then, hurriedly, he said, ‘Tell her I’m not in. Tell her I’ve gone away. No, wait!’ His expression strengthened, he took an abrupt movement forward. ‘I’ll speak to her myself.’
He came back in five minutes to find that she had seated herself with some work in her familiar corner where the light was good. He glanced at her covertly then glanced away, walked to the window and stood there moodily looking out with his hands in his pockets. The quiet click of her knitting needles made him feel inordinately foolish, a sad and stupid dog, cringing home limp tailed and bedraggled from some illicit foray. At last he could contain himself no longer. Still with his back to her he said:
‘That’s finished too. It may interest you to know it was only my stupid vanity – that and self interest. I loved you all the time.’ Suddenly he ground out, ‘Damn it, Chris. It was all my fault. These people don’t know any different, but I do. I’m getting out of this too easy – too easy. But let me tell you – while I was at the phone I rang up le Roy, thought I might as well make one job of it. Cremo products won’t be interested in me any more. I’ve wiped myself off their slate, too, Chris. And, God! I’ll see that I stay off!’
She did not answer but the click of her needles made, in the silent room, a brisk and cheerful sound. He must have remained there a long time, his shamed eyes upon the movement of the street outside, upon the lights springing up through the summer darkness. When at length he turned the invading dusk had crept into the room but she still sat there, almost invisible in the shadowed chair, a small slight figure occupied with her knitting.
That night he woke up sweating and distressed, turning to her blindly, still anguished by the terrors of his dream.
‘Where are you, Chris? I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. I’ll do my best to be decent to you in future.’ Then quieted, already half asleep. ‘We’ll take a holiday when we sell out here. God! My nerves are rotten – to think I once called you neurotic! And when we settle down, wherever it is, you’ll have a garden, Chris. I know how you love it. Remember – remember at Vale View, Chris?’
Next morning he brought her home a great bunch of chrysanthemums. He strove with all his old intensity, to show his affection for her, not by that showy generosity which she had hated – the thought of that Plaza luncheon still made him shiver! – but in small considerate, almost forgotten, ways.
At tea time when he came home with a special kind of sponge cake that she liked and on top of that silently brought in her house slippers from the cupboard at the end of the passage she sat up in her chair, frowning, mildly protesting:
‘Don’t, darling, don’t – or I’m sure to suffer for it. Next week you’ll be tearing your hair and kicking me round the house – like you used to in those old days.’
‘Chris!’ he exclaimed, his face shocked, pained. ‘ Can’t you see that’s all changed. From now on I’m going to make things up to you.’
‘All right, all right, my dear.’ Smiling she wiped her eyes. Then with a sudden tensity of which he had never suspected her, ‘I don’t mind how it is so long as we’re together. I don’t want you to r
un after me. All I ask is that you don’t run after anybody else.’
That evening Denny arrived, as he had promised, for supper. He brought a message from Hope, who had rung him on the toll line from Cambridge, to say that he would be unable to get to London that evening.
‘He said he was detained on business,’ Denny declared, knocking out his pipe. ‘But I strongly suspect friend Hope will shortly be taking unto himself a bride. Romantic business – the mating of a bacteriologist!’
‘Did he say anything about my idea?’ Andrew asked quickly.
‘Yes, he’s keen – not that it matters, we could just pocket him and take him along with us! And I’m keen too.’ Denny unfurled his napkin and helped himself to salad. ‘I can’t imagine how a first class scheme like this came out of your fool head. Especially when I fancied you’d tucked yourself up as a West End soap merchant. Tell me about it.’
Andrew told him, fully, and with increasing emphasis. They began to discuss the scheme in its more practical details. They suddenly realised how far they had progressed when Denny said: