Ethel Lina White - THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ETHEL LINA WHITE

Joan was reminded of her friend's serial, by those screened windows, and her lip curled with derision. She knew each lighted interior so well, and was familiar with the evening's procedure. Miss Corner was tapping away at her incredible epic of how the Mile was won by the smallest boy in the school. The doctor and his wife were reading, for they subscribed to a London Library. In this big house they listened in to classical music on the air, and in that small one they drank cocoa and played Patience.

Everywhere was domestic drama, staged in the peace of Curfew. There were contented servants in comfortable kitchens; well-fed cats and dogs sleeping on rugs; clocks ticking away serene hours.

There was nothing to tell her that her friend's fantastic melodrama was justified by even one instance of insecurity and misery, or what was really happening behind drawn blinds. Only the walls heard—and they kept their secret.

Table of Contents

Two days had passed since the novelist's return to London, and nothing survived her visit but a few gnat-bites on her ankles and a filmy memory. The village retained even less of her personality; Joan washed her entirely from her mind, while no one mentioned the painted stranger with the monocle. The picture-paper which was printing her current serial was not in local circulation, so not even her work remained.

But, although life flowed on with the tranquillity of a brimful glassy river, the peace and security of the village was about to be shattered. Like a certain small animal which precedes a beast-of-prey, the novelist had been the herald of disaster. The communal harmony was static; but the first disrupting incident was timed for that evening.

Dr. Perry was late in coming home to dinner. He pushed open his garden-gate with his habitual sense of a mariner returning to port, as he saw the mellow red-brick front of the Queen Anne house. The shaven lawn was veined with evening sunlight, and the wide border of tall pink tulips and forget-me-nots—although imperceptibly past perfection—was still a cloud of shot azure and rose.

He was met on the steps of the porch by a reproachful wife. He had married his dispenser—the daughter of an impoverished Irish peer—and, therefore a stranger; but the village had accepted her on the credential of her husband.

At first sight, they appeared an ill-assorted couple. The doctor belonged to one of the oldest families, and was pale and thin, with a pleasant manner and a tired voice, while his wife was very dark and possessed a parched, passionate beauty.

The black rings around her eyes and her crumpled evening-gown of golden tissue gave her the appearance of a disreputable night-club hostess greeting the dawn; but a strong scent of violet-powder was a clue to a domestic occupation. She had just finished the job of bathing two resisting infants, and, as maternity was, to her, an emotional storm, she had exhausted herself with their wriggles and her own intense rapture.

"Well, Marianne," said her husband, kissing her lightly, "how's the family?"

"In bed," replied Marianne Perry, in her deep, throbbing voice, "I do wish you'd been here to see them in their bath. Micky nearly swam."

"Good. But you look a wet rag," remarked the doctor, as they walked through the wide, panelled hall. The western sun shone through delphinium-blue curtains, revealing an artistic interior, which was rather marred by scattered toys and two perambulators parked in corners.

"Got a pain." Marianne clasped the region of her waist. "Darling, are you poisoning me, so that you can marry my rival, Miss Corner?"

The doctor was false to the London novelist's conception of a double-character, for he displayed no anxiety.

"Too many green gooseberries," he said lightly. "Better take some bicarbonate of soda. It'll settle you, one way—or the other."

"Make me sick? I want my dinner, you brute." Marianne dragged the doctor away from the staircase. "No, you can't change. You're too late. Dinner's dished up."

Arm-in-arm, they entered the dining-room, a pleasant, well-proportioned apartment, hung with oatmeal linen and furnished with a walnut suite. The table-silver was tarnished and the service sketchy, but the meal was remarkably good. Apparently the doctor was not making a success of poisoning his wife, for she ate with a good appetite, in spite of her alleged pain.

"How's the practice?" she asked presently.

"As usual," replied the doctor. "Nothing revealing."

"Been to see Miss Corner?"

"No."

"Liar. Let me see your case-book."

The doctor laid it on the tablecloth without comment.

"I'm going to make up the books after dinner," announced his wife, flicking open the pages.

She spoke with relish, for this was a favourite occupation. The village took its health seriously, and was punctilious in its payments, so that she knew that she was not merely rolling up a paper income when she added up the columns.

"'J.C.', 'J.C.'," she murmured. "Miss Corner's as good as an annuity. What's the matter with her?"

"Suppose you ask her yourself?"

"I know . She's too fat. Is she rich?"

"I don't know."

"But, Horatio, that house cost thousands to build, and there is no money shortage there. She pays her cook seventy. She can't do it on her silly books."

"No?"

"'No?'" Marianne parodied her husband's toneless voice. "My good man, are you ever interested in anything or anyone?"

"That's a curious charge to make." The doctor spoke with his usual inertia, but there was a fugitive gleam in his quiet eyes. "Actually, I endure a chronic condition of frustrate curiosity...I admit, I care nothing for anyone's income, so long as he pays my bill, and I can't get excited about common-or-garden ailments. But —I would like to know what is really at the back of anyone's mind."

"Does anyone?" asked Marianne. "Do you know me?"

"No." The doctor winced as his wife began to dismember a fowl with her usual furious energy. "I wish I did. I should know then why you insist on carving. You'd make a devastating surgeon."

"I carve, because I hate to see you with a knife. You're so deadly professional that I feel I'm watching an operation. And that's a true message from the Back of Beyond, Mr. Curious...By the way, Micky's got a new word. It sounded just like 'bloody'. But I'm waiting for him to say it again, and living in hope."

During the remainder of the meal, Marianne talked exclusively of her infants. Before it was actually finished, she sprang to her feet and again clasped her waist passionately.

"I was a fool to have any dinner," she exclaimed. "My inside's woke up and is swearing at me like mad."

"Bicarbonate," murmured her husband. "How about some tennis, later on?"

"No, my beloved, Momma's no time to play with her biggest baby, this evening. After I'm through with the dispensing I'm going to get busy on those books."

Her eyes glowed at the prospect, and she entirely forgot her interior grumbles.

"I just love it," she declared. "Figures are a real joy to me. I ought to have been a bookie. And all the time I'm jotting down items I'm saying, 'Here's a packet of rusks for baby', and 'Here's new woollen panties for Micky'. What are you going to do?"

"Finish my novel."

The doctor strolled into the drawing-room, which was a cool, pleasant place, of faint pastel-tints, and green from the shade of plane-trees. Stretched on the faded old-rose divan, with his boots wrinkling the silken spread, he lost himself in the translation of a Russian play. Presently, Marianne entered, loaded with stationery, which she dumped down on the bureau.

She gave a cry at the disorder of the couch.

"Curse you, darling. Those cushions are clean."