The Voyage Out
its news of London, and the movements of real people who were giving
dinner-parties and making speeches, seemed to give a little background
of reality to what was otherwise mere nightmare. Then, just as his
attention was fixed on the print, a soft call would come from Helen, or
Mrs. Chailey would bring in something which was wanted upstairs, and he
would run up very quietly in his socks, and put the jug on the little
table which stood crowded with jugs and cups outside the bedroom door;
or if he could catch Helen for a moment he would ask, “How is she?”
“Rather restless. . . . On the whole, quieter, I think.”
The answer would be one or the other.
As usual she seemed to reserve something which she did not say, and
Terence was conscious that they disagreed, and, without saying it
aloud, were arguing against each other. But she was too hurried and
pre-occupied to talk.
The strain of listening and the effort of making practical arrangements
and seeing that things worked smoothly, absorbed all Terence’s power.
Involved in this long dreary nightmare, he did not attempt to think
what it amounted to. Rachel was ill; that was all; he must see that
there was medicine and milk, and that things were ready when they were
wanted. Thought had ceased; life itself had come to a standstill.
Sunday was rather worse than Saturday had been, simply because the
strain was a little greater every day, although nothing else had
changed. The separate feelings of pleasure, interest, and pain, which
combine to make up the ordinary day, were merged in one long-drawn
sensation of sordid misery and profound boredom. He had never been so
bored since he was shut up in the nursery alone as a child. The vision
of Rachel as she was now, confused and heedless, had almost obliterated
the vision of her as she had been once long ago; he could hardly
believe that they had ever been happy, or engaged to be married, for
what were feelings, what was there to be felt? Confusion covered every
sight and person, and he seemed to see St. John, Ridley, and the stray
people who came up now and then from the hotel to enquire, through a
mist; the only people who were not hidden in this mist were Helen and
Rodriguez, because they could tell him something definite about Rachel.
Nevertheless the day followed the usual forms. At certain hours they
went into the dining-room, and when they sat round the table they
talked about indifferent things. St. John usually made it his business
to start the talk and to keep it from dying out.
“I’ve discovered the way to get Sancho past the white house,” said St.
John on Sunday at luncheon. “You crackle a piece of paper in his ear,
then he bolts for about a hundred yards, but he goes on quite well
after that.”
“Yes, but he wants corn. You should see that he has corn.”
“I don’t think much of the stuff they give him; and Angelo seems a
dirty little rascal.”
There was then a long silence. Ridley murmured a few lines of poetry
under his breath, and remarked, as if to conceal the fact that he had
done so, “Very hot to-day.”
“Two degrees higher than it was yesterday,” said St. John. “I wonder
where these nuts come from,” he observed, taking a nut out of the
plate, turning it over in his fingers, and looking at it curiously.
“London, I should think,” said Terence, looking at the nut too.
“A competent man of business could make a fortune here in no time,” St.
John continued. “I suppose the heat does something funny to people’s
brains. Even the English go a little queer. Anyhow they’re hopeless
people to deal with. They kept me three-quarters of an hour waiting at
the chemist’s this morning, for no reason whatever.”
There was another long pause. Then Ridley enquired, “Rodriguez seems
satisfied?”
“Quite,” said Terence with decision. “It’s just got to run its course.”
Whereupon Ridley heaved a deep sigh. He was genuinely sorry for every
one, but at the same time he missed Helen considerably, and was a
little aggrieved by the constant presence of the two young men.
They moved back into the drawing-room.
“Look here, Hirst,” said Terence, “there’s nothing to be done for two
hours.” He consulted the sheet pinned to the door. “You go and lie
down. I’ll wait here. Chailey sits with Rachel while Helen has her
luncheon.”
It was asking a good deal of Hirst to tell him to go without waiting
for a sight of Helen. These little glimpses of Helen were the only
respites from strain and boredom, and very often they seemed to make up
for the discomfort of the day, although she might not have anything to
tell them. However, as they were on an expedition together, he had made
up his mind to obey.
Helen was very late in coming down. She looked like a person who has
been sitting for a long time in the dark. She was pale and thinner, and
the expression of her eyes was harassed but determined. She ate her
luncheon quickly, and seemed indifferent to what she was doing. She
brushed aside Terence’s enquiries, and at last, as if he had not
spoken, she looked at him with a slight frown and said:
“We can’t go on like this, Terence. Either you’ve got to find another
doctor, or you must tell Rodriguez to stop coming, and I’ll manage for
myself. It’s no use for him to say that Rachel’s better; she’s not
better; she’s worse.”
Terence suffered a terrific shock, like that which he had suffered when
Rachel said, “My head aches.” He stilled it by reflecting that Helen
was overwrought, and he was upheld in this opinion by his obstinate
sense that she was opposed to him in the argument.
“Do you think she’s in danger?” he asked.
“No one can go on being as ill as that day after day—” Helen replied.
She looked at him, and spoke as if she felt some indignation with
somebody.
“Very well, I’ll talk to Rodriguez this afternoon,” he replied.
Helen went upstairs at once.
Nothing now could assuage Terence’s anxiety. He could not read, nor
could he sit still, and his sense of security was shaken, in spite of
the fact that he was determined that Helen was exaggerating, and that
Rachel was not very ill. But he wanted a third person to confirm him in
his belief.
Directly Rodriguez came down he demanded, “Well, how is she? Do you
think her worse?”
“There is no reason for anxiety, I tell you—none,” Rodriguez replied in
his execrable French, smiling uneasily, and making little movements all
the time as if to get away.
Hewet stood firmly between him and the door. He was determined to see
for himself what kind of man he was. His confidence in the man vanished
as he looked at him and saw his insignificance, his dirty appearance,
his shiftiness, and his unintelligent, hairy face. It was strange that
he had never seen this before.
“You won’t object, of course, if we ask you to consult another doctor?”
he continued.
At this the little man became openly incensed.
“Ah!” he cried. “You have not confidence in me? You object to my
treatment? You wish me to give up the case?”
“Not at all,” Terence replied, “but in serious illness of this kind—”
Rodriguez shrugged his shoulders.
“It is not serious, I assure you. You are overanxious. The young lady
is not seriously ill, and I am a doctor. The lady of course is
frightened,” he sneered. “I understand that perfectly.”
“The name and address of the doctor is—?” Terence continued.
“There is no other doctor,” Rodriguez replied sullenly. “Every one has
confidence in me. Look! I will show you.”
He took out a packet of old letters and began turning them over as if
in search of one that would confute Terence’s suspicions. As he
searched, he began to tell a story about an English lord who had
trusted him—a great English lord, whose name he had, unfortunately,
forgotten.
“There is no other doctor in the place,” he concluded, still turning
over the letters.
“Never mind,” said Terence shortly. “I will make enquiries for myself.”
Rodriguez put the letters back in his pocket.
“Very well,” he remarked. “I have no objection.”
He lifted his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, as if to repeat that
they took the illness much too seriously and that there was no other
doctor, and slipped out, leaving behind him an impression that he was
conscious that he was distrusted, and that his malice was aroused.
After this Terence could no longer stay downstairs. He went up, knocked
at Rachel’s door, and asked Helen whether he might see her for a few
minutes. He had not seen her yesterday. She made no objection, and went
and sat at a table in the window.
Terence sat down by the bedside. Rachel’s face was changed. She looked
as though she were entirely concentrated upon the effort of keeping
alive. Her lips were drawn, and her cheeks were sunken and flushed,
though without colour. Her eyes were not entirely shut, the lower half
of the white part showing, not as if she saw, but as if they remained
open because she was too much exhausted to close them. She opened them
completely when he kissed her. But she only saw an old woman slicing a
man’s head off with a knife.
“There it falls!” she murmured. She then turned to Terence and asked
him anxiously some question about a man with mules, which he could not
understand. “Why doesn’t he come? Why doesn’t he come?” she repeated.
He was appalled to think of the dirty little man downstairs in
connection with illness like this, and turned instinctively to Helen,
but she was doing something at a table in the window, and did not seem
to realise how great the shock to him must be. He rose to go, for he
could not endure to listen any longer; his heart beat quickly and
painfully with anger and misery. As he passed Helen she asked him in
the same weary, unnatural, but determined voice to fetch her more ice,
and to have the jug outside filled with fresh milk.
When he had done these errands he went to find Hirst. Exhausted and
very hot, St. John had fallen asleep on a bed, but Terence woke him
without scruple.
“Helen thinks she’s worse,” he said. “There’s no doubt she’s
frightfully ill. Rodriguez is useless. We must get another doctor.”
“But there is no other doctor,” said Hirst drowsily, sitting up and
rubbing his eyes.
“Don’t be a damned fool!” Terence exclaimed. “Of course there’s another
doctor, and, if there isn’t, you’ve got to find one. It ought to have
been done days ago. I’m going down to saddle the horse.” He could not
stay still in one place.
In less than ten minutes St. John was riding to the town in the
scorching heat in search of a doctor, his orders being to find one and
bring him back if he had to be fetched in a special train.
“We ought to have done it days ago,” Hewet repeated angrily.
When he went back into the drawing-room he found that Mrs. Flushing was
there, standing very erect in the middle of the room, having arrived,
as people did in these days, by the kitchen or through the garden
unannounced.
“She’s better?” Mrs. Flushing enquired abruptly; they did not attempt
to shake hands.
“No,” said Terence. “If anything, they think she’s worse.”
Mrs. Flushing seemed to consider for a moment or two, looking straight
at Terence all the time.
“Let me tell you,” she said, speaking in nervous jerks, “it’s always
about the seventh day one begins to get anxious. I daresay you’ve been
sittin’ here worryin’ by yourself. You think she’s bad, but any one
comin’ with a fresh eye would see she was better. Mr. Elliot’s had
fever; he’s all right now,” she threw out. “It wasn’t anythin’ she
caught on the expedition. What’s it matter—a few days’ fever? My
brother had fever for twenty-six days once. And in a week or two he was
up and about. We gave him nothin’ but milk and arrowroot—”
Here Mrs. Chailey came in with a message.
“I’m wanted upstairs,” said Terence.