Part 3

"Take Mrs. Hugh to her room," she ordered. "Sarah, we've put you in the front room because of the view; the trees are lovely just now."

"I'm sure they are; it gave me quite a pang to leave Lynton even for a week," said Mrs. Hugh conversationally as she left the room in the wake of Miss Dorset.

Left alone Mrs. Greene walked with difficulty over to the window. When Miss Dorset came back she found her standing there, a small crumpled figure, darkly outlined against the orange curtains, gazing at the gathering dusk with the inscrutability of her many years carved round her mouth, but with a mysteriously youthful speculation alight in her eyes.

V

Dinner was a meal of some ceremony.

The two old ladies sat at either end of the table with Miss Dorset at Mrs. Greene's right, ready to help if her unsteady hands proved unequal to the task of cutting her meat, or raising her wine glass, which she insisted on having filled to the precisely correct level.

Mrs. Greene, in spite of all her modern outlook, had retained in many ways an old-fashioned eye, and she had never been able to accustom herself to the fashion for bare tables. It struck her as slightly barbaric; not in keeping with the solemn tradition that had built itself up around the ritual of dinner, a tradition that to her mind necessitated the use of fine linen, heavy silver, and good china. Candle-light, too, was abhorrent to her. The flicker of each separate candle, and the alternate dark patches and uncertain pools of light on the table which she considered should be illuminated by a steady radiance, suggested to her something slightly decadent and certainly grotesque. So the table was lit from directly above, by a round brass fitting, each of whose five globes was covered by a rose silk shade. This, with sconces on every wall, effectively dissipated the gloominess of the severe shadowy room.

This evening one of the finest damask cloths with inlets of lace at each corner had been put on in honour of Mrs. Hugh, and the heavy silver bowl in the centre with its four attendant silver vases arranged diamond-wise contained the last poor blooms from the garden, mixed with leaves whose colours ranged from saffron through orange and russet to flaming scarlet.

It was in keeping with Mrs. Greene's love of formality that the conversation at dinner should run along prescribed lines. General topics of any sort, trivial or abstruse, she welcomed--but forbade anything of a personal nature to be discussed; gossip must be kept for the drawing-room. This was sometimes a severe trial to Miss Dorset who at the end of a wearisome day found herself forced to eschew just those comfortable irrelevances which were all that occurred to her tired mind.

Mrs. Hugh, however, like Mrs. Greene, was of that self-effacing generation of women that had been brought up to make conversation at dinner with the sole purpose of entertaining the gentlemen, and she perfectly understood why clothes and personalities were permissible in one room and taboo in another.

Accordingly throughout the meal the two old ladies were accustomed to exchange a number of superficial generalisations which both were too fatigued to pursue.

Mrs. Greene's single moment of animation was also one of indignation.

"You've not drunk your sherry," she said crossly. "It's still the sherry that Geoffrey laid down and I've got enough palate left to know that it's good. Why don't you drink it?"

"You know I never care much about wine," Mrs. Hugh replied, "I think the only thing I really enjoy is a glass of good claret."

Mrs. Greene smiled.

"I remembered that," she said. "I told them to bring up a bottle of the Pontet Canet. We had some up last time Rodney was here, and it's got a beautiful bouquet."

"I shall enjoy that, Margaret," said Mrs. Hugh. "You know I've never had to add anything to the cellar since Hugh died. Sometimes I've been very sorry to think of the 1906 Veuve Clicquot going past it's best; in fact once or twice I've thought of giving it to one of the young couples, but young people don't seem to have cellars nowadays."

"That's true." Mrs. Greene's assent was a little morose. "They don't go in for anything so permanent. If they want something to drink they just ring up a shop and order a few bottles."

"There have been great changes in the last twenty years," reflected Mrs. Hugh. "Some for the worse, no doubt, and many for the better, but I confess I no longer find myself able to adapt very readily. I'm too old to change."

This was dangerously like an expression of personal feeling and Mrs. Hugh hastily covered her tracks by asking Mrs. Greene's opinion of a new book of travel.

Dinner progressed slowly. The pheasant appeared, three small slices of breast were eaten by the three ladies, it was removed and the peach tart took its place. Mrs. Hugh, for courtesy's sake, toyed with a minute piece of pastry, Miss Dorset enjoyed a reasonable helping, but Mrs. Greene lacked the energy even to taste it. It was succeeded by a savoury, which again for courtesy's sake all three ladies made an effort to eat.

At last the interminable meal was ended. A little food had been eaten, a little wine drunk, and a prolonged exhibition of fortitude and good manners had been given by Mrs. Greene, whose weakness clamoured for the easy comfort of a tray by the fire, but whose instincts and training drove her to endure the full ceremony prescribed by the laws of good society.

She was very tired when they went through to the drawing-room. She sat relaxed and huddled in her armchair, stretching out her chill hands to the fire, which leaped and spluttered.

"The logs are green," she said dreamily. "But I like to hear them hiss like that."

"I like all country sounds and sights," answered Mrs. Hugh.

"That's what you live on, Sarah, I understand very well; Lynton is what you live on from day to day; and you've got Hugh and your past for a background."

There was a pause, broken presently by Mrs. Hugh who spoke quickly and jerkily in her insistency.

"I find Lynton very lovely," she said. "It's to satisfying and complete. I turn over the earth and take out things and plant other things, and they grow and flower, and when they die, I plant something else. And it all goes on round and round, so that I feel quite confident that beauty renews itself even if it doesn't last, and so I'm able to be happy."

Her credo ended abruptly.

"We're optimists, Sarah," said Mrs. Greene. "You know, only this morning I was thinking something like that, but I don't remember now what it was. I forget things; I forget the simplest things sometimes."

"Don't let that worry you," advised Mrs. Hugh, gently. "We all forget things when we're tired."

"I worry when I'm tired," confided Mrs. Greene. "Everything worries me; the thought of Edith's party next week worries me. I don't feel I can face it."

She relapsed into silence. In the glow of the fire her face looked pinched and wan. Suddenly it sharpened into irritation.

"I must go to bed, Sarah," she said. "I'm sorry to leave you so early, but I've talked enough for to-night, and I'll see you in the morning."

She stood up, tremulous and uncertain.

"Miss Dorset," she called querulously, "help me to bed, Miss Dorset, I'm tired."

MRS. HUGH GREENE

MRS. HUGH GREENE

I

"What are you doing this morning, Aunt Sarah?" asked Mary Dodds on the first morning of Mrs. Hugh Greene's visit. "I have to do some shopping, but I'd love it if you would come with me."

"No thank you, dear," answered Mrs. Greene. "I have an appointment at 12 o'clock, and if you'll excuse me, I won't come back to lunch."

"You're sure you won't be too tired if you stay out both morning and afternoon?"

Young Mrs. Dodds was genuinely solicitous, and her husband, Roger, added quietly, "You're not looking too well, Aunt Sarah; why not see a doctor while you are in town?"

"That is just what I'm doing at 12 o'clock, but you needn't worry, my dears; I'm a little run down perhaps, and don't forget that I'm seventy this year so I can hardly expect to be quite as active as I used to be. But I shall come quietly back and have a rest before tea, if I may."

"Let me bring tea up to your room and have it there with you," suggested Mary, "Ellen is out this afternoon, and I shall be getting tea myself anyhow, and it would be nice for you to have it in bed and then rest on till dinner-time."

Mrs. Greene turned to Roger.

"Your wife is the most thoughtful young woman I know," she said briskly, "You did very well for yourself when you married her."

Roger laughed, kissed Mary, who was pink and flustered, and left for his office.

"You can't think how much nicer you are than most relations-in-law, Aunt Sarah," said Mary impulsively, "you're so much easier than my mother-in-law somehow. She expects so much of me that I just get futile and incompetent when she is about."

"I've never had any children, you know, and I think perhaps that makes me less exacting than Elinor. She has always made too many demands on Roger, and that leads to difficulties.

"You're awfully wise," said Mary slowly, "I think all old people are much wiser than middle-aged ones, especially women; perhaps in ten years' time Mrs. Dodds will be quite sensible."

She smiled at Mrs. Greene who thought of her uncertain, irritable, dissatisfied sister-in-law, and smiled back at the improbability of her developing into the type of tranquil old lady that Mary seemed to hope for. Then, looking more closely at Mary, she noticed that there was an expression of strain and fatigue on her usually pink and healthy face.

"You're not looking very well yourself, Mary," she said.

Mary hesitated for a moment.

"I'd like to tell you," she said uncertainly; "Roger thought I oughtn't to because I haven't told his mother yet, but after all you're very discreet, aren't you? We're having a baby in about six months, and he is rather worried about it because we can't really afford it."

Her lip trembled a little, but she steadied her voice and went on, "I'm really glad about it even though it does mean getting rid of Ellen and only having a cook and economising a lot, but of course it isn't much fun for Roger, and he does work hard."

"Well, I think that is a very nice piece of news," said Mrs. Greene warmly, "I shall thoroughly enjoy having a grandnephew or niece, and you must let me pay your doctor and help you in any way I can. As a matter of fact I get tired sometimes of hearing my sister-in-law talking of her great-grandchild and all her grandchildren. You don't know old Mrs. Greene do you? She's a delightful woman, but sometimes I feel she forgets there are other young couples in the world besides Lavinia and Martin and the young Geoffreys, and now the Hughs."

"Thank you ever so much, Aunt Sarah, it's lovely of you, and it will be a weight off Roger's mind. He does work so hard, and he earns so little."

Mary's voice rose almost to a wail, but Aunt Sarah only said crisply:

"Oughtn't you to go and see the cook now? You mustn't bother about me; I'll write a letter or two before I go out."

Young Mrs. Dodds gulped a little and blew her nose, but as the parlourmaid came in, cast an injured glance at the two ladies still sitting over the breakfast table and then swept out with pursed lips, she was sufficiently in command of herself to laugh and say, "I shan't mind getting rid of her anyhow. She's horribly haughty."

Mrs. Greene left alone, sat for a moment in thought before she crossed the hall to the small living room. She wondered how Roger's inadequate income was going to be stretched to meet the demands of the unborn child which was already beginning to assume a definite importance in her mind.

I'm as bad as Margaret, she thought; I didn't really care so very much when her great-grandchild was born, and yet it was my great-grandnephew after all. But there is something more intimate about this one; it's a Dodds, and I feel possessive about it. Odd that after being Mrs. Hugh Greene for nearly fifty years, I should still be Sarah Dodds.

Her thoughts turned back to Roger; something ought to be done for him; his position in the rather depressing solicitor's office where he worked was unsatisfactory.

As Ellen again entered the room, armed with a formidable frown and a tray, Mrs. Greene went across the hall and sat down to write. She found herself unable to concentrate on her letters. Either the thought of the impending interview was draining her of her usually resolute vitality, or the news that Mary had given her had provoked an emotional reaction.

Her heart stirred almost painfully as she thought of Roger, his enduring good qualities, his affection for her, his social inadequacy and uncouthness that concealed a good brain and a sense of humour. She had been pleased with his marriage to Mary, the least exacting of women, unaware of most of her husband's deficiencies, and tolerant of those she recognised.

A small sinister idea insinuated itself into Mrs. Greene's mind. Unaware that she spoke aloud she formulated her fear in words.

"Perhaps on this bright November day I shall have to make my will, and then Mary need not economise over her baby."

The rich autumn sun struck a shaft across the desk that warmed her chill hand, but Mrs. Greene shivered as she looked across the narrow street and steadied herself to accept the immediate future.

II

Dr. Stiff looked at the quiet elderly woman who was sitting on the other side of his desk, and chose his words carefully.

"I'm afraid, Mrs. Greene, that I shall have to call upon your courage and fortitude to listen to what I cannot avoid telling you. I gather that your suspicions amounted almost to a certainty before you consulted me, and I am unfortunately forced to confirm them. There is a considerable growth in the left breast, which, owing to the state of your heart, can't be removed. That being so, we can only regard it as a definite signal which must not be ignored."

He spoke gently, but the crude fact implicit in his words stuck out clearly. There was a moment's pause. Mrs. Greene's hands were folded in her lap; her throat felt a little dry, and for a moment the walls of the room wavered uncertainly towards her and the motes dancing in a streak of sun across the floor seemed to swell gigantically and overpoweringly. But as she cleared her throat and prepared to speak, they diminished and the room resumed its normal proportions.

"Thank you," she said steadily. "I quite understand. You mean that I have cancer and you are not able to operate. How long can I expect to live?"

Dr. Stiff looked distressed at the uncompromising question, and his hand hovered over the bell as he answered:

"The disease is in its final stage, Mrs. Greene. You must have had many attacks of pain recently, and there won't be very many more."

He pressed the bell as he spoke, and almost immediately a nurse appeared with a little tray containing a glass and a decanter of brandy.

Mrs. Greene smiled. "No, thank you, Nurse," she said, and her voice had its natural buoyancy as she turned to Dr. Stiff. "My husband never liked me to drink spirits of any sort, and this has not been a shock to me. Indeed in some ways it is almost convenient."

She thought of Roger and then asked abruptly.

"Shall I live for six months?"

Dr. Stiff shook his head.

"It's impossible for me to give a definite date," he said. "But I think not more than three."

Mrs. Greene pressed her hand to her treacherous breast as she thought of Mary and Roger's child that would be born in the Spring.

"That is a disappointment to me," she said, "but only a very trivial one. My husband died eight years ago; we were very devoted to each other and since then I have often felt as if I were waiting with my hat and jacket on for some vehicle to take me to him. Now that fancy is gone; I see that the vehicle is my illness which will soon come to a conclusion, and I thank you very much for your consideration and kindness to me."

She rose to go. For a moment Dr. Stiff held her hand as he said:

"It's I who thank you, Mrs. Greene. My work is very often both trying and depressing, and to meet with such courage and control as yours is a great stimulus to me."

"I'm afraid I'm very old-fashioned," said Mrs. Greene. "I've never learnt to take life so vehemently and rebelliously as young people do nowadays. I sometimes think they lack a sense of humour and proportion. Goodbye and thank you again."

She left the room, unhurried and untroubled, oblivious of the fact that she left behind her a man filled with amazement at the dignity and decorum of her generation.

As she sat in a taxi on the way to lunch, Sarah Greene was busy with arrangements: first of all she must make an appointment with her solicitors and see to her will. A feeling of warm gratitude to her dead husband shot across her mind as she remembered that he had expressly stated that she was to leave the bulk of his considerable fortune to relations and friends for whom she cared. Lynton was her own of course, both house and land, but she was glad that she was under no moral obligation to leave Greene money to Greenes; she was perfectly free to make life as happy and tranquil as an assured income could make it, for Mary and Roger Dodds.

Then a nursing home must be considered. Mrs. Greene suppressed a slight tremor as she thought of the crudity and awkwardness of a death in the house: the embarrassed, tearful servants; the relations whose perfectly sincere grief could not prevent them feeling an intense relief at the approach of a meal, followed by an equally intense shame at the thought of enjoying food with poor Aunt Sarah lying upstairs; the desultory and spasmodic conversations; the whole painful interregnum between normal life before the death occurred and normal life resumed after the funeral. A nursing-home in London would certainly have advantages. Sarah Greene would be able to die as unobstrusively as she hoped she had lived.

Before finding her way to the restaurant of the large shop in which she intended to lunch, Mrs. Greene made a few methodical purchases. She had intended to buy half a dozen pairs of the thick woollen stockings which she usually wore for gardening, but in view of her curtailed future she mechanically reduced the order to three. She did not however hesitate to order a new mackintosh, since her old one was worn out, and a future, however short, was unthinkable if it withheld from her the promise of rainy walks on soft November afternoons with dusk dropping behind the long row of beeches that bordered the avenue up to Lynton, the house she had loved and cared for these last forty-five years.

Later while she ate her usual plain lunch she reviewed deliberately in some detail, the sentimental aspect of the situation. Not again would she see the daffodils swaying on their stems in the spring winds that every year swept Lynton; not again would she see the amazing blue of summer skies through the amazing green of beech trees; other hands would snap off the dead pansy heads and pick the lupins ranged along the mellow wall.

A moment of forlornness, grim augury of the desolate weeks ahead, fell upon Sarah Greene, sitting in the crowded restaurant, to outward seeming an elderly woman contentedly eating her lunch. Panic squeezed her heart as she thought of the creeping growth that was working even now to her undoing, but her will automatically reasserted itself. Self-pity was repugnant to her; she was of the generation that held duty to be at the same time an aim and a reward, that accepted frustrations and tragedies as part of the necessary fabric of life.

As she put down her coffee cup she dealt sharply with herself. Here I am, she thought, sitting in a ridiculous basket chair in a pink and white restaurant. I've just finished a pleasant lunch and bought a good mackintosh and now I'm letting myself get quite maudlin; I'm giving way to foolish fancies over what is only a natural event. Much better go back to Roger's little house and ring up my solicitor to make an appointment for to-morrow.

The thought of this small task was enough to re-establish Mrs. Greene's poise. There were still things to be done that only she could do, and she sighed pleasurably as she remembered that the Lynton gardens, greedy like all gardens in their demand for time, care and skilled forethought, would claim her, so long as she could respond to any claim.

As she talked to Mary a couple of hours later, Lynton was still uppermost in her mind, and her interest in the various aspects of Mary's coming maternity was kindly but perfunctory.

Mary was the perfectly conventional middle class prospective mother, enjoying all the emotions possible to a first pregnancy: pride in her own adequacy, pride in the interest and the faint spice of danger that would be attached to her for the next few months--though as she eagerly assured Aunt Sarah, "The doctor is frightfully pleased with me. He says I'm ideally fitted to be a mother,"--pride in Roger's love and anxiety, and an overwhelming pleasure at the thought of a small naked body to be intricately clothed in wools and muslins, laces and ribbons.

"I feel it's going to be a girl," she said positively. "And I'm going to make her the loveliest little frilled cloak with a tiny bonnet to match."

"As a matter of fact, Mary," answered Aunt Sarah equally positively, "I think it will be a boy."

A look of keen delight suddenly lit up her face.

"My dear," she said, "I've just had a delightful idea. Will you have your baby at Lynton? I should so much like him to be born there. It would give me the greatest pleasure to look forward to the crocuses and hyacinths coming out just about the right time. You would be very comfortable there, and I can promise you I would not inconvenience you in any way."

"It's awfully kind of you, Aunt Sarah," Mary spoke gratefully. "It would be ideal of course. I've been worried about a nursing home, they're so expensive, and this house is terribly inconvenient. It's so small, and the hot water is all downstairs, and that is awkward when you're in bed. Besides I don't believe Roger would mind my being away from him. After all it's only an hour and a half to Lynton."

"I very much hope you'll arrange it, Mary."

"I really would love it."

"Well, I want you to make a definite plan and keep to it. I have several reasons for asking this; I don't want anything that may happen to upset your plan."

"Nothing is likely to happen." Mary's thoughts were concentrated entirely on herself and her condition. "Everything is quite normal, and I'm sure it will go all right."

"I'm quite sure, too," answered Aunt Sarah. "I wasn't really thinking of that. Things do change you know, dear, and arrangements sometimes have to be altered, but I don't want anything to interfere with this. You must talk it over with Roger. Now tell me, Mary, do you feel well enough to go to a play to-night? I have a fancy for you and Roger and me to have a little celebration. If it doesn't put you out at all, I suggest that we dine at the Berkeley and go to a theatre."

"I'd love it. Thank you very much. Shall I go and telephone to Roger and tell him not to be late?"

"Yes do, Mary; and ask him to get three stalls for any good play that we will all enjoy."

"I'll get tea, too, when I'm downstairs," said Mary happily, "I do hope you don't mind my having to do it; I really didn't dare ask Ellen to stay in, and there's never any use expecting cook to do anything extra."

At the thought of Ellen and cook, Mary nervously wrinkled her forehead, but the frown was chased away by an expression of amazed relief as a new idea dawned on her.

"Aunt Sarah, if I have my baby at Lynton, I shan't have to bother the least bit about servants or dust or Roger's meals or anything. How perfectly marvellous."