Leslie Hartley - The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

Maggie read no more. She walked out of the library with the book under her arm. Before going to see how Antony was she would put it in her bedroom where no one could find it. Troubled and oppressed she paused at the head of the stairs. Her way lay straight ahead, but her glance automatically travelled to the right where, at the far end of the passage, Antony’s bedroom lay. She looked again; the door, which she could only just see, was shut now. But she could swear it had closed upon a woman. There was nothing odd in that; Mildred might have gone in, or Muriel, or a servant. But all the same she could not rest. Hurriedly she changed her dress and went to Antony’s room. Pausing at the door she listened and distinctly heard his voice, speaking rapidly and in a low tone; but no one seemed to reply. She got no answer to her knock, so, mustering her courage, she walked in.

The blind was down and the room half dark, and the talking continued, which increased her uneasiness. Then, as her eyes got used to the darkness, she realized, with a sense of relief, that he was talking in his sleep. She pulled up the blind a little, so that she might see his hand. The brown mark had spread, she thought, and looked rather puffy as though coffee had been injected under the skin. She felt concerned for him. He would never have gone properly to bed like that, in his pyjamas, if he hadn’t felt ill, and he tossed about restlessly. Maggie bent over him. Perhaps he had been eating a biscuit: there was some gritty stuff on the pillow. She tried to scoop it up but it eluded her. She could make no sense of his mutterings, but the word ‘light’ came in a good deal. Perhaps he was only half asleep and wanted the blind down. At last her ears caught the sentence that was running on his lips: ‘She was so light.’ Light? A light woman? Browning. The words conveyed nothing to her, and not wishing to wake him she tiptoed from the room.

‘The doctor doesn’t seem to think seriously of any of us, Maggie, you’ll be glad to hear,’ said Mr. Ampleforth, coming into the drawing-room about six o’clock. ‘Eileen’s coming down to dinner. I am to drink less port—I didn’t need a doctor, alas! to tell me that. Antony’s the only casualty: he’s got a slight temperature, and had better stay where he is until to-morrow. The doctor thinks it is one of those damnable horse-flies: his arm is a bit swollen, that’s all.’

‘Has he gone?’ asked Maggie quickly.

‘Who, Antony?’

‘No, no, the doctor.’

‘Oh, I’d forgotten your poor head. No, you’ll just catch him. His car’s on the terrace.’

The doctor, a kindly, harassed middle-aged man, listened patiently to Maggie’s questions.

‘The brown mark? Oh, that’s partly the inflammation, partly the iodine—he’s been applying it pretty liberally, you know; amateur physicians are all alike; feel they can’t have too much of a good thing.’

‘You don’t think the water here’s responsible? I wondered if he ought to go away.’

‘The water? Oh no. No, it’s a bite all right, though I confess I can’t see the place where the devil got his beak in. I’ll come to-morrow, if you like, but there’s really no need.’

The next morning, returning from his bath, Ronald marched into Antony’s room. The blind went up with a whizz and a smack, and Antony opened his eyes.

‘Good morning, old man,’ said Ronald cheerfully. ‘Thought I’d look in and see you. How goes the blood-poisoning? Better?’

Antony drew up his sleeve and hastily replaced it. The arm beneath was chocolate-coloured to the elbow.

‘I feel pretty rotten,’ he said.

‘I say, that’s bad luck. What this?’ added Ronald, coming nearer. ‘Have you been sleeping in both beds?’

‘Not to my knowledge,’ murmured Antony.

‘You have, though,’ said Ronald. ‘If this bed hasn’t been slept in, it’s been slept on, or lain on. That I can swear. Only a head, my boy, could have put that dent in the pillow, and only a pair of muddy—hullo! The pillow’s got it, too.’

‘Got what?’ asked Antony drowsily.

‘Well, if you ask me, it’s common garden mould.’

‘I’m not surprised. I feel pretty mouldy, too.’

‘Well, Antony; to save your good name with the servants, I’ll remove the traces.’

With characteristic vigour Ronald swept and smoothed the bed.

‘Now you’ll be able to look Rundle in the face.’

There was a knock on the door.

‘If this is Maggie,’ said Ronald, ‘I’m going.’

It was, and he suited the action to the word.

‘You needn’t trouble to tell me, dearest,’ she said, ‘that you are feeling much better, because I can see that you aren’t.’

Antony moved his head uneasily on the pillow.

‘I don’t feel very flourishing, to tell you the honest truth.’

‘Listen’—Maggie tried to make her voice sound casual—‘I don’t believe this is a very healthy place. Don’t laugh, Antony; we’re all of us more or less under the weather. I think you ought to go away.’

‘My dear, don’t be hysterical. One often feels rotten when one wakes up. I shall be all right in a day or two.’

‘Of course you will. But all the same if you were in Sussex Square you could call in Fosbrook—and, well, I should be more comfortable.’

‘But you’d be here!’

‘I could stay at Pamela’s.’

‘But, darling, that would break up the party. I couldn’t do it; and it wouldn’t be fair to Mildred.’

‘My angel, you’re no good to the party, lying here in bed. And as long as you’re here, let me warn you they won’t see much of me.’

A look of irritation Maggie had never noticed before came into his face as he said, almost spitefully:

‘Supposing the doctor won’t allow you to come in? It may be catching, you know.’

Maggie concealed the hurt she felt.

All the more reason for you to be out of the house.’

He pulled up the bedclothes with a gesture of annoyance and turned away.

‘Oh, Maggie, don’t keep nagging at me. You ought to be called Naggie, not Maggie.’

This was an allusion to an incident in Maggie’s childhood. Her too great solicitude for a younger brother’s safety had provoked the gibe. It had always wounded her, but never so much as coming from Antony’s lips. She rose to go.

‘Do put the bed straight,’ said Antony, still with face averted. ‘Otherwise they’ll think you’ve been sleeping here.’

‘What?’

‘Well, Ronald said something about it.’

Maggie closed the door softly behind her. Antony was ill, of course, she must remember that. But he had been ill before, and was always an angelic patient. She went down to breakfast feeling miserable.

After breakfast, at which everyone else had been unusually cheerful, she thought of a plan. It did not prove so easy of execution as she hoped.

‘But, dearest Maggie,’ said Mildred, ‘the village is nearly three miles away. And there’s nothing to see there.’

‘I love country post-offices,’ said Maggie; ‘they always have such amusing things.’

‘There is a post-office,’ admitted Mildred. ‘But are you sure it isn’t something we could do from here? Telephone, telegraph?’

‘Perhaps there’d be a picture-postcard of the house,’ said Maggie feebly.

‘Oh, but Charlie has such nice ones,’ Mildred protested. ‘He’s so house-proud, you could trust him for that. Don’t leave us for two hours just to get postcards. We shall miss you so much, and think of poor Antony left alone all the morning.’

Maggie had been thinking of him.

‘He’ll get on all right without me,’ she said lightly.

‘Well, wait till the afternoon when the chauffeur or Ronald can run you over in a car. He and Charlie have gone into Norwich and won’t be back till lunch.’