The Light Heart (36 page)

“Rosalind,” he said in his slurred, soft tones, and she moved her head on the pillow and murmured something.

“Again,” whispered the doctor, watching.

“Rosalind, it’s Charles.
Come
on, old girl, they want you to wake up.”

Slowly her dark lashes lifted and she saw him sitting there.

“Hello,” she whispered.

“That’s better,” said Charles easily. “Archie’s gone and got a lot of high-priced doctors down from London to look at you, and the least you can do is co-operate.”

“Am I—dying?”

“How can we tell, if you just lie there with your eyes shut? Of course you’re not dying. You took a nice clean spill right over his head. I’d have done the same in your place. Nothing to make a fuss about. Doctors have to earn their fees somehow, and they want you to try to waggle your toes or something.”

For the first time her gaze left his face and wandered vaguely around the unfamiliar faces beside the bed. Then she frowned slightly.

“Where’s—Conny—?”

“Asleep, of course,” Charles told her matter-of-factly. “Do you want him?”

“
No
—oh, no,” she murmured, and her heavy lids came down. “Charles.”

“Yes, I’m here,” he said.

“Don’t—go away—”

“What, without seeing you again tomorrow? Not likely.”

The doctor’s fingers were on her pulse. He nodded, and Charles slid out of the chair and the doctor took his place. Just inside the door Charles was confronted by Phoebe, who said, “Oh, Charles, you’re marvellous!” and burst into tears.

“Now, now hold up,” he said, and put an arm around her. “You can’t afford to cave in, she’s going to need you. Will you promise me something?” He drew her further from the bed. “I can’t hang about here in the circumstances. I’ll have to bung off to Buckinghamshire tomorrow as planned. Promise you
won’t let her out of your sight while she’s like this—and write me every day, will you?”

“Yes, Charles. I will.”

“You won’t sail for home, or go to Cannes, or anything like that till she’s all right again?”

“I promise.”

“Good. Now I can just manage not to go out of my mind.”

Charles went back to bed and his volume of Conan Doyle, and Phoebe returned to her chair in a corner of
Rosalind’s room.

In the morning the doctors quite naturally made their report in private to Rosalind’s husband, and the little group of rather silent men in the gun-room had had no official news when he finally entered upon them shortly before lunch and accepted a whisky and soda from Archie’s sympathetic hand.

“Well,” said Archie, “do they think it’s going to be serious?”

“It’s very unsatisfactory,” said Conrad, sinking into a chair with his glass. “I suppose these fellows know their business?”

“Oh, bound to,” said Archie. “Very well thought of in Town, I assure you. Anything broken?”

“The spine is not actually broken, though it has been
injured
,” said Conrad. “There is slight concussion too, and some internal damage. I questioned them very closely about that, and they are convinced that even if she is able to walk again there can be no more children.”

The words struck the air of the quiet room with the general effect of high explosive. Archie came to first with the
realization
that he had not moved for he didn’t know how long, and that Charles was standing at a window looking out, with his back to the room.

“If we are to believe these doctors,” Conrad was continuing, “she is in no immediate danger of death, but cannot be moved for some time—perhaps weeks. I deplore the inconvenience to your household, my dear Campion, but your wife has been kind enough to say from the beginning that she wished to keep Rosalind here until she is quite recovered—”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Archie hastily. “By all means. Best place for her—delighted to have her—do anything in the world for her, you know—”

“Thank you,” said Prince Conrad in his most stately manner. “I am told by your physicians that there is no objection whatever to my keeping our engagements in Scotland and making my wife’s excuses—they say there is nothing to be done here, except see that she has complete rest and quiet and does not attempt to move about, and the nurses will be kept on, at my expense, of course. Since I can do no more than that to hasten her recovery, I will depart as already arranged, on the Friday morning train.”

“Uh—quite,” said Archie, barely covering his astonishment at such coolness. “Very sensible of you, no doubt. It’s a woman’s job—nursing.” And, Why am I saying this, he wondered—fatuous ass—it’s catching.

“I will supply you with my Scottish itinerary,” said Conrad, sipping his whisky, “so that I can be reached at any time if there should be some sudden—necessity.”

So Rosalind was left in peace, to everyone’s satisfaction, and soon began to show a gradual improvement in colour and spirits, though she was kept flat in bed and showed no
inclination
to try to move anything but her arms and could not even be propped up for meals. She was not surprised at Conrad’s departure for Scotland, and seemed to feel no resentment at what looked to the rest of them like the most heartless conduct on his part.

“Conny never has any use for people who are ill,” she
informed
them cheerfully. “Each time the babies came—well, I hardly ever saw him at all, of course, once I began to lose my looks. And that time I nearly died of bronchitis, he simply went off to Berlin and left Gibson to cope. It wasn’t fear of infection or anything like that—if you’re ill you simply don’t exist for him. It’s really very convenient,” she said placidly. “Gibson and I like it that way.” But her smile, Phoebe thought, was piteous.

W
HEN
Charles at Lady Shadwell’s in Buckinghamshire got Phoebe’s letter saying that Conrad had actually gone, he at once went down to Cleeve Place, his uncle’s house which was not more than twenty miles from Farthingale, so that he could motor over from there every day and back. He would sit a while in the drawing-room downstairs, receiving the small daily news of Rosalind’s progress, seeming to derive some sort of comfort just from being under the same roof. He never asked to see her, and when it was finally suggested he thought it might be better not, though once or twice he was persuaded to just look in at the door and say Hello. Now that she was mending, the pain had begun, and she was often made drowsy with pills to give her respite.

Then one day he was commanded back after Rosalind’s door had closed on his brief appearance there, and the nurse placed a chair for him close to the bed, saying that Rosalind ought not to talk much, and left them.

“Anything you want?” he asked after they had looked at each other a moment in silence. “Fruit—flowers—books—anything I can get down from London to cheer you up a bit?”

Her head moved a little on the pillow in negation.

“You’ve only got to name it,” he reminded her. “One rather shopworn soldier entirely at your disposal.”

The corners of her mouth lifted slightly.

“Please hold my hand,” she said.

“With pleasure,” said Charles, and took possession of the one nearest him where it lay on the coverlet. Her small fingers nestled gratefully into his warm ones. Her smile broadened.

“Tell about—what you’ve been doing,” she murmured.

“Oh, much the usual sort of thing,” said Charles, and began an account of his Buckinghamshire visit.

When the nurse returned half an hour later Rosalind lay a little on her side, curved towards him, asleep, her hand in his. The nurse was startled.

“Did you move her?” she demanded quickly, and Charles shook his head.

“She did it herself as she dozed off,” he said.

“But—we’ve had to turn her,” said the nurse. “This is an excellent sign, we must have you back again, sir.”

Meanwhile London had livened up for the Little Season, and during the French autumn manoeuvres a brilliantly beribboned case containing messages had been successfully dropped from an aeroplane on its headquarters objective, and all the English illustrated weeklies were printing articles entitled
War
by
Petrol
and so on. Archie brought back a story which was going round Town to the effect that Germans now visiting in England had begun to choose the country house they intended to live in before long while a conquered England laboured to pay an enormous indemnity. And of course no one could help
thinking
of Prince Conrad and his tour of inspection, at present being conducted in Scotland.

In October, while the Scottish shooting parties were still in progress, the perennial Balkans boiled over in a war between Italy and Turkey, as Italy reached out for North African
territory
roundabout Benghazi and Derna. Charles, who had been spending some days in Town, drove over during the week-end from Cleeve Place, looking rather grave, and said that things were humming at the Shop so he would have only the one day there—which rather dashed their spirits, for they were saving a surprise for him. Rosalind had been sitting up in a chair, carried to and from it by Archie or the youngest footman, and she was planning to receive him that way for the first time today, and the doctors thought now that she would be able eventually to walk as well as ever. But on the way up to Rosalind’s room Phoebe gave him the rest of the news, which was not so good. A telegram from Conrad had just announced his arrival at Farthingale the following day, and while Rosalind had not said much it was plain to see that she was depressed and quiet.

“That’s a nice thing to hand me just as I go in,” Charles said, his hand on the outer knob.

“Well, you had to know, didn’t you,” Phoebe said sadly, and very soon left them alone together.

Rosalind was sitting in an armchair by the fire, a rug over her knees. She wore a warm velvet tea-gown with a froth of lace at the throat, and her dark hair was dressed as usual again, parted in the middle and drawn out in two wide wings at the sides into heavy coils high on the back of her head. For a while after Phoebe had gone it was hard for them to find anything to go on talking about, and then Rosalind suddenly gave up and said, “Charles, I’m terrified.”

“What now?” asked Charles, with his lovely faculty of never turning a hair.

“Conny comes tomorrow—and he’ll want me to get up and walk.”

“Luckily they seem to think that’s possible.”

“But I can’t.”

“Have you tried?”

She shook her head.

“I just can’t. I’m too frightened.”

“That it will hurt, you mean?”

“No. Not that. He’ll make a ceremony of it—I know him so well. The doctor will be here, and Phoebe, and the nurses—and they’ll all be watching, and Conny will expect miracles, and I shall be shaking and sick with nerves and just go down in a heap on the floor before them all, and Conny will make a scene and say I didn’t
try
—”

Charles’s lips were set, but he said only, “Can’t you tell him you want to be alone with him the first time you do it?”

“But I don’t think I
do!
”
said Rosalind, and her eyes were haunted. “So much depends on—on my being normal again. You see—if I can’t walk—I might just as well be dead. In fact, much better. I mean, I shall just be left somewhere in disgrace in a chair at Heidersdorf and never see anybody but Gibson and Aunt Christa, and pretty soon I’ll start to scream and scream—I’ve been so near it before—and they’ll come and take me away in a straitjacket.”

“Well, if you’re going to be left somewhere, why can’t it be here?” he asked reasonably.

“He won’t allow that much longer. I belong to him. He’ll take me back to Hiedersdorf—I shall have to have German doctors—” She hid her face in her hands.

Charles sat a moment in silence, looking down at his own hands clasped tight in front of him. Finally he said without moving, “If you can walk, though—if you’re going to get well—it won’t be so bad, I suppose. You can bear it then.”

And she answered, her face hidden, “I always have borne it.”

“What would happen,” Charles began, speaking slowly and carefully, “if you just told him tomorrow that you wanted to stay here in England—”

“He wouldn’t listen—”

“—with me,” Charles finished, and there was a long pause while neither of them moved.

“I—think I can bear almost anything now,” she said simply, and laid her hands in her lap, looking at the fire. “But I won’t let you, Charles. It would mean your whole life thrown away, for me. You couldn’t go on at the War Office if you took another man’s wife. You’d have to resign.”

“I’ve got enough for us to live on without that,” he said doggedly. “They can have the War Office, I’ve been there long enough.”

“He would never give me a divorce,” she said. “We couldn’t be received anywhere. We should be outcasts.”

“Last time I was down at Cleeve Place I had a good look at the dower house,” said Charles. “Remember it? My Great-aunt Flora used to live there when we were children and we always went down to tea several times a week and had
enormous
cream buns. Remember what a pig you were about those cream buns? It’s just as she left it when she died four or five years ago—with all the furniture in dust-sheets and the creeper growing out across the window panes. I got the key and went all through it, thinking how very comfortable one
could be there. And I made up my mind then to offer it to you, along with myself, if you gave any sign of dreading to go back to Germany. Uncle Tim would let us have it like a shot, he’s got no use for it whatever. We needn’t see anyone there, if you don’t wish to—not for months at a time. But our friends wouldn’t let it make any difference, you know, in the
circumstances
. You see—Phoebe has told us quite a lot—and we’re none
of us blind, we can guess the rest. Yon haven’t got to go on with it, my dear—if I can be of any use to you.”

“Please don’t say any more, Charles, I—mustn’t listen.”

“You feel you’ve got to stick to him, and take what comes?” He rose with a long sigh, and pushed back his chair. “I hadn’t much hope of anything else,” he said. “But anyway, you’re going to walk.”

She looked up at him, shrinking visibly.