Agatha Christie - Sad Cypress

The eyes dropped and came to rest on the figure sitting by the window. They rested there tenderly – almost wistfully.

She said at last, "Mary -"

The girl turned quickly. "Oh, you're awake, Mrs. Welman." Laura Welman said, "Yes, I've been awake some time." "Oh, I didn't know. I'd have -"

Mrs. Welman broke in, "No, that's all right. I was thinking – thinking of many things."

"Yes, Mrs. Welman?"

The sympathetic look, the interested voice, made a tender look come into the older woman's face. She said gently, "I'm very fond of you, my dear. You're very good to me."

"Oh, Mrs. Welman, it's you who have been good to me. If it hadn't been for you, I don't know what I should have done! You've done everything for me."

"I don't know -I don't know, I'm sure." The sick woman moved restlessly, her right arm twitched – the left remaining inert and lifeless. "One means to do the best one can, but it's so difficult to know what is best – what is right. I've been too sure of myself always."

Mary Gerrard said, "Oh, no, I'm sure you always know what is best and right to do."

But Laura Welman shook her head. "No – no. It worries me. I've had one besetting sin always, Mary: I'm proud. Pride can be the devil. It runs in our family. Elinor has it, too."

Mary said quickly, "It will be nice for you to have Miss Elinor and Mr. Roderick down. It will cheer you up a lot. It's quite a time since they were here."

Mrs. Welman said softly, "They're good children – very good children. And fond of me, both of them. I always know I've only got to send and they'll come at any time. But I don't want to do that too often. They're young and happy – the world in front of them. No need to bring them near decay and suffering before their time."

Mary said, "I'm sure they'd never feel like that, Mrs. Welman."

Mrs. Welman went on, talking perhaps more to herself than to the girl: "I always hoped they might marry. But I tried never to suggest anything of the kind. Young people are so contradictory. It would have put them off! I had an idea, long ago, when they were children, that Elinor had set her heart on Roddy. But I wasn't at all sure about him. He's a funny creature. Henry was like that – very reserved and fastidious… Yes, Henry…"

She was silent for a little, thinking of her dead husband.

She murmured, "So long ago – so very long ago… We had only been married five years when he died. Double pneumonia… We were happy – yes, very happy; but somehow it all seems very unreal, that happiness. I was an odd, solemn, undeveloped girl – my head full of ideals and hero-worship. No reality."

Mary murmured, "You must have been very lonely – afterward."

"After? Oh, yes – terribly lonely. I was twenty-six – and now I'm over sixty. A long time, my dear – a long, long time."

She said with sudden brisk acerbity, "And now this!"

"Your illness?"

"Yes. A stroke is the thing I've always dreaded. The indignity of it all! Washed and tended like a baby! Helpless to do anything for myself. It maddens me. The O'Brien creature is good-natured – I will say that for her. She doesn't mind my snapping at her and she's not more idiotic than most of them. But it makes a lot of difference to me to have you about, Mary."

"Does it?" The girl flushed. "I – I'm so glad, Mrs. Welman."

Laura Welman said shrewdly, "You've been worrying, haven't you? About the future. You leave it to me, my dear. I'll see to it that you shall have the means to be independent and take up a profession. But be patient for a little – it means too much to me to have you here."

"Oh, Mrs. Welman, of course – of course! I wouldn't leave you for the world. Not if you want me -"

"I do want you." The voice was unusually deep and full. "You're – you're quite like a daughter to me, Mary. I've seen you grow up here at Hunterbury from a little toddling thing – have seen you grow into a beautiful girl. I'm proud of you, child. I only hope I've done what was best for you."

Mary said quickly, "If you mean that your having been so good to me and having educated me above – well, above my station – if you think it's made me dissatisfied or – or – given me what Father calls fine-lady ideas, indeed that isn't true. I'm just ever so grateful, that's all. And if I'm anxious to start earning my living, it's only because I feel it's right that I should, and not – and not – well, do nothing after all you've done for me. I – I shouldn't like it to be thought that I was sponging on you."

Laura Welman said, and her voice was suddenly sharpedged, "So that's what Gerrard's been putting into your head? Pay no attention to your father, Mary; there never has been and never will be any question of your sponging on me! I'm asking you to stay here a little longer solely on my account. Soon it will be over… If they went the proper way about things, my life could be ended here and now – none of this long-drawn-out tomfoolery with nurses and doctors."

"Oh, no, Mrs. Welman, Dr. Lord says you may live for years."

"I'm not at all anxious to, thank you! I told him the other day that in a decently civilized state all there would be to do would be for me to intimate to him that I wished to end it, and he'd finish me off painlessly with some nice drug. 'And if you'd any courage, Doctor,' I said, 'you'd do it anyway!' "

Mary cried, "Oh! What did he say?"

"The disrespectful young man merely grinned at me, my dear, and said he wasn't going to risk being hanged. He said, 'If you'd left me all your money, Mrs. Welman, that would be different, of course!' Impudent young jackanapes! But I like him. His visits do me more good than his medicines."

"Yes, he's very nice," said Mary. "Nurse O'Brien thinks a lot of him and so does Nurse Hopkins."

Mrs. Welman said, " Hopkins ought to have more sense at her age. As for O'Brien, she simpers and says, 'Oh, Doctor,' and tosses those long streamers of hers whenever he comes near her."

"Poor Nurse O'Brien."

Mrs. Welman said indulgently, "She's not a bad sort, really, but all nurses annoy me; they always will think that you'd like 'a nice cup of tea' at five in the morning!" She paused.

"What's that? Is it the car?"

Mary looked out of the window.

"Yes, it's the car. Miss Elinor and Mr. Roderick have arrived."

Mrs. Welman said to her niece, "I'm very glad, Elinor, about you and Roddy."

Elinor smiled at her. "I thought you would be, Aunt Laura."

The older woman said, after a moment's hesitation, "You do – care about him, Elinor?"

Elinor's delicate brows lifted. "Of course."

Laura Welman said quickly, "You must forgive me, dear. You know, you're very reserved. It's very difficult to know what you're thinking or feeling. When you were both much younger I thought you were perhaps beginning to care for Roddy – too much."

Again Elinor's delicate brows were raised. "Too much?"

The older woman nodded. "Yes. It's not wise to care too much. Sometimes a very young girl does do just that… I was glad when you went abroad to Germany to finish. Then, when you came back, you seemed quite indifferent to him – and, well, I was sorry for that, too! I'm a tiresome old woman, difficult to satisfy! But I've always fancied that you had, perhaps, rather an intense nature – that kind of temperament runs in our family. It isn't a very happy one for its possessors… But, as I say, when you came back from abroad so indifferent to Roddy, I was sorry about that, because I had always hoped you two would come together. And now you have, and so everything is all right! And you do really care for him?"

Elinor said gravely, "I care for Roddy enough and not too much."

Mrs. Welman nodded approval. "I think, then, you'll be happy. Roddy needs love – but he doesn't like violent emotion. He'd shy off from possessiveness."