An Awkward Turn

by Phyllis Bottome

 

An Awkward Turn

By PHYLLIS BOTTOME

Author of "The Dark Tower"

SHE had made the great surrender; she had given up—it was probably only for a short time; still, she had given up—all that she had been trained to think a woman must have. Her husband was fishing in Norway, and she was in Cornwall with the man she loved.

No one knew that she was there; she could go back if she grew tired of it, but at present she was n't in the least tired of it. She became surer each day that she had been meant for the real things of life: simplicity, love, ideal companionship, the spiritual value of ideas.

Edward Lockett was full of ideas. His tiny bungalow on the headland of the cliff, with the rocks and the sea in the garden, was one of them. A long time ago the farm in which his wife lived, a mile away, was another. He had not been able to unite the two. His wife was one of those capable women, without sympathy, who fall by accident into marriages with literary men.

She made him comfortable, but it is a great mistake to suppose that comfort is all that a man of Edward Lockett's type needs. He needed a woman to make him uncomfortable as well.

Rosamund fulfilled this further need. When she first met him in London she was tired of everything—of yachting, of motoring, of the Russian dancers, even of her dressmaker; for several years she had been extremely tired of her husband. She thought her life was very unreal, and she assured Edward Lockett that there was nothing she found so unbearable as unreality. Edward Lockett believed her. though there were moments when he had his doubts.

The worst of these came after he had inadvertently kissed her and she wrote that they must part. "Petrarch and Laura had done it," Rosamund wrote, "and they must do it, too." Edward Lockett whistled when he read about Petrarch and Laura; however, they did n't part.

There were inconveniences attached to their situation, and the question was simply whether the inconveniences would grow greater than the situation or the situation become so absorbing as to overcome the inconveniences.

In the first place, there was always Petrarch and Laura to fall back upon, and in the second, Edward told her of his bungalow by the sea. His wife never came near it, and his daily attendant had never spoken since the day she saw her husband and two sons drowned before her eyes.

It was an intensely romantic idea. Rosamund hesitated, because she was eight and twenty and she had never yet been romantic. It was like eating a new kind of fruit and not being quite sure if it would n't poison you. Edward, however, assured her that it would n't. He had experienced romances before, and he knew that they were extremely nourishing; he always did his best work after them. He did not tell her this, because the great thing about romance is that it should n't be in the plural. Still, perhaps she guessed it.

They said it would be for ever: it had already lasted a week. The weather was wonderful for June; the air was full of the scent of the short wild thyme.

All night long they heard at the foot of the lawn the summer music of the sea; all day the heavy bees blundered in and out of the tiny garden. The narrow, empty glen, with its soft-blue summit of sky, was as much their own as if they had made it, untenanted, serene, and brimful of their love.

Rosamund was amazed at the immensity of her own feelings. Of course she had always said that love was the strongest force in the world; but still it was a little surprising that, with nothing going on, she was n't in the least bored. It seemed to her as if she and the earth and Lockett had all been made for this one perfect consummation.

Lockett was clever with her despite their solitude; she did not see too much of him. He wrote for three hours every morning, and when he joined her she had to use all her skill to win him back from his imaginary world. She said to him before she came there:

"Sha'n't I interfere with your work?" And he answered:

"The woman one loves always interferes."

Hut he had taken every precaution to prevent her interference. When he had finished writing he came out to her on the rocks. This morning he seemed longer than usual. The sea's soft, pearly blue turned hard and flat; deep shadows fell on the gray rocks; the air grew heavy and drowsy with the summer noon. Rosamund slept; she woke with a start at the sound of sea-gulls laughing overhead. They shook the silence out of the glen; but after they had passed it came back again oppressively, as if it were the herald of something uneasy and sinister. She looked at her watch and sprang to her feet. It was one o'clock; Edward had never been so late before. It was Sunday, and the woman who looked after the house had cleaned up early and left them for the day; she must have passed close by Rosamund while she slept.

The first change in a definite habit is terrible to lovers. Rosamund felt as if her perfect world had suddenly been guilty of a flaw; but she was not a young girl to cry out at the signal for retreat. Perhaps his work was harder than usual, or perhaps, like herself, the drowsy summer stillness had sent him to sleep.

She crept noiselessly toward the window of the room where he wrote. At first she still thought he was asleep. He was sitting huddled up in an arm-chair by the window, with his head fallen forward. It was a very uncomfortable position in which to go to sleep. Then he raised his eyes, and she saw that he was in pain. He looked like a creature caught in a trap: his mouth was open; there were blue lines round it; and his chest shook as if something had got hold of it and was dragging it to and fro. But it was his eyes that were most terrible, they were like nothing Rosamund had ever seen. They were like the eyes of some one who is drowning, and cannot drown. They were fighting, but they did not want to fight; the struggle was compulsory, and hopeless.

She ran forward into the room and bent over him. He moved then; a strange voice croaked at her:

"Don't! Air!"

She stepped back, half offended and half terrified. His eyes seemed weighing her; there was nothing in them but a kind of violent prayer, neither recognition nor acceptance of the presence that had stirred him to passionate delight. In the same strange, tortured voice he said. "Go—Ellen—quick!"

Her brain registered the words, but it was some time before she understood what he meant. She had never had anything to do with ill people before. In her world there were always trained nurses, eau de Cologne, and darkened rooms. If people were in too much pain, you did not see them.

The merciless summer sunshine poured through the little bungalow, and the man before her, dressed in his usual clothes, helpless and expecting something from her, was presumably dying—dying in this unsuitable, exacting way on her hands!

He had nothing whatever to do with Edward Lockett. His face had changed in a few hours; he looked like some old, shivering wretch outside a public house on a winter's morning, come to the end of his tether; only there was no ambulance to drive up and take him away.

Ellen was his wife. It was manifestly impossible that Rosamund could go up to the farm and reveal herself to Mrs. Lockett, the one person she must not meet.

Rosamund did not feel so aware of fear now as she did of being aggravated, on edge, utterly uncomfortable, and at a loss. She wanted to put a cushion behind Edward's head, but she was afraid to touch him, he was shaken so; she was afraid that if she touched him he might break. Why had n't he told her that he had attacks like these? Surely there was something he could take? Was n't there always something that people could take?

She asked him; she spoke very calmly and plainly. She felt vaguely that she ought to speak in a whisper in a sick-room, but this hardly resembled a sick-room. Besides, his breathing was so loud that he could n't have heard her if she had whispered. His breathing was a most peculiar sound; it reminded her of the nightjar they had listened to the evening before in the pines.

He moved his hand out toward the window in the direction of the farm. There was a long silence except for the quick, soft rattle of his breath. Lockett did not look at Rosamund again; he seemed taken up with staring at one of his hands that pulled unceasingly at the chair-cover. A peculiar dark shadow came over his face, like the deep noon shadows Rosamund had just been watching on the rocks outside.

She became suddenly terrified. What she was afraid of was that he would go on like this for hours without dying; she would have given anything in the world to see him die.

She turned and ran out of the room into the open sunshine. The little glen lay there, serene and empty, like a lovely golden trap. The silence pressed down upon her, and she realized that she could n't get rid of it. She could n't get rid of anything; she must act. She had never been in a position before where one has to act, when one can't ring a bell or send for a servant or go into another room. The nearest house was the farm, a mile away.

There was nothing else for it; she must sacrifice her reputation,. she must meet his wife. She felt an intense relief at this decision, and as she set off by the white ribbon of road her mind became exalted with a rush of ideas. She saw all that she must say to this hard woman to melt her and save the man she loved (the moment she was out of sight of Lockett he was still the man she loved). Words came to her with an ease and clarity which was almost miraculous. She would begin: "We are two women—" Far away across the cliffs the church bells were ringing. The sound of them reminded her of her childhood. She used to think angels rang them. Rosamund had always had beautiful thoughts.

A woman stood at the gate in front of her leading to the farm.

"This is private ground." the young woman said briefly. "What do you want?"

They looked at each other, and it occurred to Rosamund that this was Lockett's wife. Nothing else occurred to her; it was as if speech had ceased to exist. The woman before her had evidently just returned from church; she was dressed in black and had a prayer-book in her hand. She was good-looking and had very thick hair.

"What is it?" she repeated, frowning impatiently. "I suppose you want something?"

Then Rosamund heard her own voice; it sounded strangely flat and weak.

"There's a man down there at the bungalow taken very ill," she gasped. "I want help."

"Go back and set the big kettle to boiling," said Mrs. Lockett. "I 'll be with you in a few minutes." She hurriedly opened the gate, gathered up her black skirts, and ran swiftly along the path toward the farm-house. Rosamund called after her, but the woman did not stop or even turn her head. The world was just as empty as it had been before. It did not seem possible to Rosamund to go back to the bungalow. Why had n't she gone to Norway with her husband? Then this would never have happened. Nothing ever did happen in Norway (that was why she had not gone there, but she did not remember that now), and certainly she would not have been told to go back and boil a big kettle.

Nevertheless, there was a feeling in her that she must go back. Perhaps Lockett would be better or perhaps he would be dead.

He was neither; he was just the same. She heard as she approached the house the same steady rattle of his breathing; she did not dare go into the room, but through the open window she saw the gray shadow of his face. She hurried into the kitchen and hunted for the big kettle; the old woman had left them a good fire. It took an interminable, terrifying time to find the kettle, and she was still looking for the tap to fill it from when she heard the swift approaching steps of Mrs. Lockett. Mrs. Lockett knew where everything was. She went at once to her husband, but she called out in a businesslike way where Rosamund would find the tap.

She hardly gave her time to fill the kettle before she called her again. Rosamund would have given any great, unreasonable thing to have been spared going into the room of the man she loved, but the woman's voice took her coming profoundly for granted. Rosamund had meant to plead with her to forgive Edward, but she found herself fully occupied in helping Mrs. Lockett move him to the sofa. Mrs. Lockett was apparently not afraid that he would break, but before she moved him she had slit up his sleeve and given him an injection. The strange sound of his breathing altered a little. There were great drops of perspiration on his face, and his wife wiped them methodically away. Once she said, "There, then," very quietly, as if she were speaking to a child. He did not push her away or tell her that he wanted air. He did not speak to her at all, but his eyes looked less hopelessly urgent.

"As soon as the water boils, fill all those bottles you 'll find under the dresser and bring them in," said Mrs. Lockett. "There's some oxygen in the scullery, too; I always keep some handy. Before it gets too hot pour some of that water into the cylinder; here it is in the cupboard." Rosamund obeyed her. It occurred to her now that Edward was n't, after all, so very ill. A moment later she heard the bubbling sound of the oxygen.

The water took a long while to boil. She sat on the edge of the kitchen table, and felt very sorry for herself. Edward ought to have warned her. She remembered that he had once said that he had something the matter with his heart, and she had said, "What an awful nuisance!" And he had said, "Yes, it is rather a nuisance," but he had n't gone on with the subject. He had n't at all explained how awful it might be for her.

She took the bottles in one by one. Mrs. Lockett did not say that he was better; she did not say anything at all. She seemed always doing something, very quietly, and without the slightest sign of hurry; and Edward was not breathing nearly so loudly. He was lying much lower on the cushions, but his face had a strange, sunken look, and all his features stood out with a curious sharpness. His eyes were shut. Rosamund wondered if he was asleep. She looked at her watch, and found it was only three o'clock. It seemed to her that time had literally stood quite still.

Then she heard Mrs. Lockett's voice. She was not talking to Edward; she was speaking to her.

"Have you had anything to eat?" asked Mrs. Lockett. Then she added, "There ought to be something in the larder."

Rosamund went into the larder. It seemed to her as if the food would choke her; but it did not choke her. After she had eaten as well as she could, she filled a plate and took it out to Mrs. Lockett. She hardly knew which of them was the hostess, and she was afraid Mrs. Lockett might be angry; but Mrs. Lockett merely looked up and said, "I 'll eat later."

Time again stood still for half an hour. Then Mrs. Lockett said through the open door:

"It's no use; the injections won't act."

Rosamund stared at her, she had been so sure Edward was getting better; she could hardly hear his breathing at all now.

Mrs. Lockett looked at her curiously, then she said:

"Would n't you like to come in and sit the other side of him? He might know you presently."

Rosamund hung her head; she did not want to go in. Mrs. Lockett still looked at her; then she said gently, "It's all right now, you know; he's not suffering."

Rosamund came in and sat down on the other side of the sofa. The flowers on the table shook in the light air; through the windows she could hear the soft lap-lapping of the little summer waves. This time yesterday he had been writing her a poem about their love. Their love? This great possession seemed now like the forgotten hum of yesterday's gnat.

"You see, he might or he might not come round again," said Mrs. Lockett. "Anyway, we can't do any more. I sent for the doctor up along, but he must be out. Still, there's nothing he could do if he was here. When was he taken bad?"

"I don't know," stammered Rosamund. "He was writing; he did n't come out, and I came back and—and found him."

"Poor thing!" said Mrs, Lockett, but she did not say to which of the two she was referring.

Edward stirred a little; the faint jerking of his chest stopped. "Now!" said Mrs. Lockett, quickly. The two women leaned forward. He raised his wide blue eyes and stared straight in front of him.

"Clara," he said distinctly; then he fell back, and his eyes wavered as if something that was in them was going away.

"He's gone," said Mrs. Lockett; then she added conscientious!y, "My name is not Clara."

Rosamund covered her face with her hands. She tried to faint; but she could not faint.

"You'd better leave him with me," said Mrs. Lockett, kindly, "unless you'd like to help me lay him out."

Rosamund sprang to her feet and ran to her room. She stood aghast and trembling at the open doorway. It was her room and his; but it seemed all his now. Then she forced herself into action; she drove her will power like an unwilling horse.

It was terrible to pack her things in that room, full of memory; but it was more terrible to stay there listening to Mrs. Lockett's footsteps in the next room, and doing nothing. It was strange how the consciousness kept being forced back on her that there is sometimes no alternative to terrible things.

The doctor came, and she held her breath with a new fear. Surely Mrs. Lockett would give her away? Force her forward into some new position of shame and exposure? Did n't the injured wife always take her revenge? And yet even while Rosamund stood there trembling, she could n't see Mrs. Lockett playing the injured wife.

The doctor pushed back his chair and went to the door.

"Just such another attack as usual, I suppose?" she heard him say, and Mrs. Lockett's quiet, "Yes; more severe, but the same kind."

"It was a mercy you happened to be here with him."

"Yes," said Mrs. Lockett; "I'm glad I came."

"Well, well," said the doctor, getting into his trap, "I'm sorry for you."

Mrs. Lockett said nothing.

When Rosamund rejoined her, Mrs. Lockett had finished all that she had to a do. She was sitting opposite the body; there was a curious, unseeing look in her eyes.

Rosamund was afraid to speak; it was as if she was not sure which of them was dead. It was the first time that she had seriously acknowledged the existence of Edward's wife. The woman who sat by him now was his wife: there was a bond between them deeper than a casual affinity. They had not suited each other, but they had gone deep into the law of possession, and as Rosamund looked at them, living and dead, it seemed to her as if they were one being, and as if she had no place with them at all.

Mrs. Lockett turned her head and saw Rosamund.

"I 've sent for a cart for you," she said quietly. "It will carry you to the junction in time for the London train." As she spoke she drew a sheet forward and covered Edward's face.

Rosamund heard the approaching wheels from the farm; her heart beat with joy at the sound of her escape into freedom. Life had taken her measure, and she knew that reality was not for her. This was the end of romance.

Mrs. Lockett helped the carter lift Rosamund's trunk into the trap.

"You 've got such little hands," she said to Rosamund in explanation.

Then she stepped back quickly. It did not seem to Rosamund as if Mrs. Lockett wanted to touch her hand.

She got into the trap, and while the driver seated himself, Mrs. Lockett moved toward her again.

She spoke in a low tone and flushed a little, like an anxious hostess who is afraid a visit has not been a success. For the first time that day she appeared a little embarrassed and confused.

"I'm sure I'm very sorry," she said, "things happened the way they did. Edward would have been sorry, too. It was an awkward turn."