A sudden, fearful death (24 page)

"The more so is it a crime, my
dear lady," Sir Herbert replied gravely. "To abuse trust is more
despicable than simply to enact a violence upon a stranger."

Julia was white. Standing in the
alcove, Hester was afraid she was going to faint. She moved to intervene, to
offer a glass of water, or even some physical support, and suddenly Sir Herbert
glanced at her and motioned her to remain where she was.

"I am aware of the enormity of
it, Sir Herbert," she said so quietly that he leaned forward, screwing up
his eyes, in his concentration. "It is my husband who committed the offense.
You must surely appreciate why I do not wish to bring the police into the
matter. And my sister is sensible of my feelings, for which I am profoundly
grateful. She is also aware that it would do no good. He would naturally deny
it. But even if it could be proved, which it cannot, we are both dependent upon
him. We should all be ruined, to no purpose."

"You have my sympathies,
ma'am," he said with more gentleness. "It is a truly tragic
situation. But I fail to see how I can be of any assistance to you. To be with
child is not an illness. Your regular physician will give you all the aid that
you require, and a midwife will attend you during your confinement."

Marianne spoke for the first time,
her voice low and clear. "I do not wish to bear the child, Sir Herbert. It
is conceived as a result of an event which I shall spend the rest of my life
trying to forget. And its birth would ruin us all."

"I well understand your
situation, Miss Gillespie." He sat back in his chair, looking at her
gravely. "But I am afraid that it is not a matter in which you have a
choice. Once a child is conceived, there is no other course except to await its
birth." The ghost of a smile touched his neat mouth. "I sympathize
with you profoundly, but all I can suggest is that you counsel with your parson
and gain what comfort you may from him."

Marianne blinked, her face
painfully hot, her eyes downcast.

"Of course there is an
alternative," Julia said hastily. "There is abortion."

"My dear lady, your sister
appears to be a healthy young woman. There is no question of her life being in
jeopardy, and indeed no reason to suppose she will not deliver a fine child in
due course." He folded his fine sensitive hands- "I could not
possibly perform an abortion. It would be a criminal act, as perhaps you are
not aware?"

"The rape was a criminal
act!" Julia protested desperately, leaning far forward, her hands,
white-knuckled, on the edge of his desk.

"You have already explained
very clearly why you have brought no charge regarding that," Sir Herbert
said patiently. "But it has no bearing upon my situation with regard to
performing an abortion." He shook his head. "I am sorry, but it is
not something I can do. You are asking me to commit a crime. I can recommend an
excellent and discreet physician, and will be happy to do so. He is in Bath,
so you may stay away from London and your acquaintances for the next few
months. He will also find a place for the child, should you wish to have it
adopted, which no doubt you will. Unless ...?" He turned to Julia.
"Could you make room for it in your family, Mrs. Penrose? Or would the
cause of its conception be a permanent distress to you?"

Julia swallowed hard and opened her
mouth, but before she could reply, Marianne cut across her.

"I do not wish to bear the
child," she said, her voice rising sharply in something like panic.
"I don't care how discreet the physician is, or how easily he could place
it afterwards. Can't you understand? The whole event was a nightmare! I want to
forget it, not live with it as a constant reminder every day!"

"I wish I could offer you a
way of escape," Sir Herbert said again, his expression pained. "But I
cannot. How long ago did this happen?"

"Three weeks and five
days," Marianne answered immediately.

"Three weeks?" Sir
Herbert said incredulously, his eyebrows high. "But my dear girl, you
cannot possibly know that you are with child! There will be no quickening for
another three or four months at the very earliest. I should go home and cease
to worry."

"I am with child!"
Marianne said with hard, very suppressed fury. "The midwife said so, and
she is never wrong. She can tell merely by looking at a woman's face, without
any of the other signs." Her own expression set in anger and pain, and she
stared at him defiantly.

He sighed. "Possibly. But it
does not alter the case. The law is very plain. There used to be a distinction
between aborting a fetus before it had quickened and after, but that has now
been done away with. It is all the same." He sounded weary, as if he had
said all this before. "And of course it used to be a hanging offense. Now
it is merely a matter of ruin and imprisonment But whatever the punishment,
Miss Gillespie, it is a crime I am not prepared to commit, however tragic the
circumstances. I am truly sorry."

Julia remained sitting. "We
should naturally expect to pay—handsomely."

A small muscle flickered in Sir
Herbert's cheeks.

"I had not assumed you were
asking it as a gift. But the matter of payment is irrelevant. I have tried to
explain to you why I cannot do it." He looked from one to the other of
them. "Please believe me, my decision is absolute. I am not unsympathetic,
indeed I am not. I grieve for you. But I cannot help."

Marianne rose to her feet and put
her hand on Julia's shoulder.

"Come. We shall achieve
nothing further here. We shall have to seek help elsewhere." She turned to
Sir Herbert. "Thank you for your time. Good day."

Julia climbed to her feet very
slowly, still half lingering, as if there were some hope.

"Elsewhere?" Sir Herbert
said with a frown. "I assure you, Miss Gillespie, no reputable surgeon
will perform such an operation for you." He drew in his breath sharply,
and suddenly his face took on a curiously pinched look, quite different from
the slight complacence before. This had a sharp note of reality. "And I
beg you, please do not go to the back-street practitioners," he urged.
"They will assuredly do it for you, and very possibly ruin you for life;
at worst bungle it so badly you become infected and either bleed to death or
die in agony of septicemia."

Both women froze, staring at him,
eyes wide.

He leaned forward, his hands
white-knuckled on the desk.

"Believe me, Miss Gillespie, I
am not trying to distress you unnecessarily. I know what I am speaking about.
My own daughter was the victim of such a man! She too was molested, as you
were. She was only sixteen...." His voice caught for a moment, and he had
to force himself to continue. Only his inner anger overcame his grief. "We
never found who the man was. She told us nothing about it. She was too
frightened, too shocked and ashamed. She went to a private abortionist who was
so clumsy he cut her inside. Now she will never bear a child."

His eyes were narrowed slits in a
face almost bloodless. "She will never even be able to have a normal union
with a man. She will be single all her life, and in pain—in constant pain. For
God's sake don't go to a back-street abortionist!" His voice dropped again,
curiously husky. "Have your child, Miss Gillespie. Whatever you think now,
it is the better part than what you face if you go to someone else for the help
I cannot give you."

"I ..." Marianne gulped.
"I wasn't thinking of anything so—I mean—I hadn't ..."

"We hadn't thought of going to
such a person," Julia said in a tight brittle voice. "Neither of us
would know how to find one, or whom to approach. I had only thought of a reputable
surgeon. I—I hadn't realized it was against the law, not when the woman was a
victim—of rape."

"I am afraid the law makes no
distinction. The child's life is the same."

"I am not concerned with the
child's life," Julia said in little more than a whisper. "I am
thinking of Marianne."

"She is a healthy young woman.
She will probably be perfectly all right. And in time she will recover from the
fear and the grief. There is nothing I can do. I am sorry."

"So you have said. I apologize
for having taken up your time. Good day, Sir Herbert."

"Good day, Mrs. Penrose—Miss
Gillespie." As soon as they were gone, Sir Herbert closed the door and
returned to his desk. He sat motionless for several seconds, then apparently
dismissed the matter and reached for a pile of notes.

Hester came out of the alcove,
hesitated, then crossed the floor.

Sir Herbert's head jerked up, his
eyes momentarily wide with surprise.

"Oh—Miss Latterly." Then
he recollected himself. "Yes—the body's away. Thank you. That's all for
the moment. Thank you."

It was dismissal.

"Yes, Sir Herbert."

* * * * *

Hester found the encounter deeply
distressing. She could not clear it from her mind, and at the first opportunity
she recounted the entire interview to Callandra. It was late evening, and they
were sitting outside in Callandra's garden. The scent of roses was heavy in the
air and the low sunlight slanting on the poplar leaves was deep golden, almost
an apricot shade. There was no motion except the sunset wind in the leaves. The
wall muffled the passing of hooves and made inaudible the hiss of carriage
wheels.

"It was like the worst kind of
dream," Hester said, staring at the poplars and the golden blue sky
beyond. "I was aware what was going to happen before it did. And of course
I knew every word she said was true, and yet I was helpless to do anything at
all about it." She turned to Callandra. "I suppose Sir Herbert is
right, and it is a crime to abort, even when the child is a result of rape. It
is not anything I have ever had to know. I have nursed entirely soldiers or
people suffering from injury or fevers. I have no experience of midwifery at
all. I have not even cared for a child, much less a mother and infant. It seems
so wrong."

She slapped her hand on the arm of
the wicker garden chair. "I am seeing women suffer in a way I never knew
before. I suppose I hadn't thought about it. But do you know how many women
have come into that hospital in even the few days I've been there, who are worn
out and ill as a result of bearing child after child?" She leaned a little
farther to face Callandra. "And how many are there we don't see? How many
just live lives in silent despair and terror of the next pregnancy?" She
banged the chair arm again. "There's such ignorance. Such blind tragic
ignorance."

"I am not sure what good
knowledge would do," Callandra replied, looking not at Hester but at the
rose bed and a late butterfly drifting from one bloom to another. "Forms
of prevention have been around since Roman days, but they are not available to
most people." She pulled a face. "And they are very often weird
contraptions that the ordinary man would not use. A woman has no right in civil
or religious law to deny her husband, and even if she had, common sense and the
need to survive on something like equable terms would make it
impractical."

"At least knowledge would take
away some of the shock," Hester argued hotly. "We had one young woman
in hospital who was so mortified when she discovered what marriage required of
her she went into hysterics, and then tried to kill herself." Her voice
rose with outrage. "No one had given her the slightest idea, and she
simply could not endure it. She had been brought up with the strictest teachings
of purity and it overwhelmed her. She was married by her parents to a man
thirty years older than herself and with little patience or gentleness. She
came into the hospital with broken arms and legs and ribs where she had jumped
out of a window in an attempt to kill herself." She took a deep breath and
made a vain attempt to lower her tone.

"Now, unless Dr. Beck can
persuade the police and the Church that it was an accident, they will charge
her with attempted suicide and either imprison her or hang her." She
banged her fist down on the chair arm yet again. "And that monumental
fool, Jeavis, is trying to say Dr. Beck killed Prudence Barrymore." She
did not notice Callandra stiffen in her seat or her face grow paler. "That
is because that would be the easy answer, and save him from having to question
the other surgeons and the chaplain and the members of the Board of
Governors."

Callandra started to speak, and
then stopped again.

"Is there nothing we can do to
help Marianne Gillespie?" Hester persisted, her fists clenched, leaning
forward in the chair. She glanced at the roses. "Is there nobody to which
one could appeal? Do you know Sir Herbert said his own daughter had been
assaulted and had become with child as a result?" She swung around to
Callandra again. "And she went to a private abortionist in some back
street who maimed her so badly she can now never marry, let alone bear
children. And she is in constant pain. For Heaven's sake, there must be
something we can do!"

"If I knew of anything I
should not be sitting her listening to you," Callandra replied with a sad
smile. "I should have told you what it was, and we should be on our way to
do it. Please be careful, or you are going to put your arm right through my
best garden chair."