A Little Treachery

31

‘Emmy tells me we met at Mr Longwood’s,’ Catherine said with a reluctant tongue, and looking down. ‘But I’m afraid I hardly saw anyone there.’

‘Oh, yes, we’ve met,’ Mrs Stewart answered meaningly.

Emmy got in a dig at her crony. ‘She knows you hate her. I told her you said so.’

‘Pooh, surely you didn’t say such a thing?’ exclaimed Mrs Stewart, suddenly laughing and looking pleasant; and she glanced at Catherine with perhaps a touch of embarrassment, which she covered up with a peculiar, teasing air. But this was momentary.

Staring full at Catherine, she appeared surprised. ‘You still look rather unwell,’ she remarked. ‘I suppose you’re just fretting about your sister?’

Here Emmy, exclaiming tenderly that poor little Simon looked so lonely out there, leapt up and scampered from the room.

‘Mm. You still have quite a scar,’ the visitor went on, taking Catherine’s hand and not releasing it. ‘That blow on the head probably helped to confuse you afterwards – and of course you could hardly see at the time.’ She spoke in a rather milder tone than usual; and then, while pressing Catherine’s hand and looking into her face compellingly, she added, ‘It was I who got in and helped you that morning. We ran down our garden when we heard you call and were the first to reach you. It was my husband who took the chief part in finding her. She was wandering there –’

Catherine shuddered visibly but said nothing. Mrs Stewart dropped her hand.

‘Well, dear me, it was not so very heart-rending. Don’t worry – she was only wandering there, did not seem particularly frightened, just dazed. And of course shivering.’

This, too, brought no answer.

‘So you see you need not make such a terrible tragedy of it.’

Catherine’s lips parted, but merely to draw in breath. ‘It was you, then, who went to the police,’ she said reflectively, after a moment.

‘Well, good heavens, of course it was a police matter anyway. Attempted suicide is a police matter. And as it had in fact more the look of attempted murder – She was very wet, and nobody knew whether she had got so by accident. Didn’t they question you? – take a statement from you?’

‘Yes – yes – a lot of questions. It was really a trial. But there are murders which don’t show.’

‘I don’t know what you mean by that! I should be careful how I used the word murder, if I were you. Even now.’

‘That was what you suggested to them?’

‘I did not suggest it. It was not my business to suggest anything. I merely gave them the facts. It was wicked carelessness at the best. One can really hardly believe the thought of danger didn’t occur to you.’

‘So you told them that your suspicions had been aroused.’

‘You’re laughing at me. I confess that disgusts me. You’ve no right to laugh. Do you know what you said to me that morning? You laughed, and you said, “I’ve brought the pack on her” – or some such words. “They’re like dogs. When they find her, they’ll carry her tenderly in their mouths, careful not to spill one drop of blood, so that she can be tortured for fifteen years” – some such stuff. Oh, what a tragedy!’ Mrs Stewart had quoted the words scathingly, with the inverted commas heavily indicated and that overbearing sneer which counsel use to discredit the statement of a witness. ‘And you laughed.’

‘Perhaps I was half mad.’

‘I saw you were,’ Mrs Stewart acknowledged dispassionately, ‘and of course gave them my impression. At the same time, I was bound to tell them what you’d said, how you’d behaved. What do you expect? Of course I told them! Do you think I would countenance a mortal sin – a crime? Well, I’m glad you’re not laughing any more. It’s time you repented. Do you mean to tell me you really did not think of the danger of leaving her like that?’

‘I didn’t mean to tell you anything. Still, I’ll tell you now – for you may as well understand. Yes, I saw it, and left her to do for herself what I knew in my heart she would never have the strength to do.’

‘I am not listening,’ Mrs Stewart said with calm indignation.

Neither of them had sat down. There was a pause, during which they both turned to the window and looked out on the garden where Emmy and Simon were to be seen running about with the glider. The glider would not fly, but Emmy had made this so funny that it didn’t matter.

‘How that child’s looks surprise me,’ Mrs Stewart observed. ‘He’s curiously unlike his father, that’s what I mean.’

‘So you know Mr Hungerford – you, too, know him!’

Mrs Stewart replied off-handedly, ‘Well, very slightly. My husband happened to see him in the garden when he came to look at this cottage. Leon had crossed over and was having a look round, just out of curiosity. We hadn’t been here long ourselves, then. They got into conversation and Leon brought him up to lunch. An attractive man, don’t you think so? I thought him very agreeable.’

Catherine, considering the other’s tall and arrogant figure, had reflected, ‘But this cannot possibly be the “little woman”!’ She asked aloud, ‘Did you speak about the cottage?’

‘Oh, I forget,’ Mrs Stewart said carelessly, with her chin in her hand and her eyes on Simon. ‘I believe we mentioned it, among other things. (That girl is very vulgar, you know, it seems a shame to put her in charge of a well brought-up child. But I dare say many a servant might be worse.) The men discussed building conditions, as far as I remember.’ Then she turned her attention on Catherine again.

‘Yes, you still look rather unwell,’ she repeated. ‘You’re fretting about your sister, of course. Well, she will die. Most probably very soon. It’s highly unlikely that she’ll go on long. A mental illness with origins like that – physical – the blood, the arteries – such illnesses are always hopeless, but they’re usually brief, as mental illnesses go. “Fifteen years!” ’ cried Mrs Stewart, quoting melodramatically and pulling a most satirical face. ‘Why, you stupid, she can’t last long. It’s not, after all, a replica of your mother’s illness, so I understand. You should be thankful.’

Catherine spoke impulsively. ‘You remind me, when you talk like that, of an important man I had to see some while ago. He jeered at me in that same fashion.’

She was remembering an interview, for which she had been called to London, an interview not with the Master of the Court himself, as it happened, but with one deputizing for him. She had written a letter, a statement of the facts, an appeal, and put it into the hands of their solicitor to lay in what form he thought best before the Court. She had had the idea at the time of bringing Clem home, and, since it would have been impossible to bring her back to the cottage, had had a scheme for renting a place, and this of course would have involved using Clem’s money. The scheme was, perhaps, not practicable, or not as it had seemed to her in her fevered planning; she suspected that now. But then she had pinned all her hopes on it. Her judge had taken her letter, that desperate cry (which of course she had never meant him to see in that form and had not addressed to him) and in the presence of several people had read aloud from it phrases which had no doubt seemed to him absurdly artless, or perhaps even impudent, using just that tone of contemptuous sarcasm in which Mrs Stewart was now indulging – and the intellectual quality of the man had made no difference, the manner was exactly similar.

She had not expected it. She had thought this personage would be courteous, even sympathetic. She had comforted herself with the supposition that it would not be like an interview with some jack in office. He was hostile from the first moment and of course she could only guess that a bad name had preceded her, fastened on her by a report from the hospital.

This incident of several months ago had unnerved her so utterly that she could not remember it without the most painful agitation. Like all the rest, it had been too much for her, something she should never have been forced to go through; and she herself was quite conscious that the affair had not improved her mental grasp. She could not go on with what she had begun to say – for she had had a passing impulse to tell her companion of the London interview. After groping for words, she merely added, ‘You seem to take fright at things spoken from the heart. Is that just emotional immaturity?’

Mrs Stewart opened her eyes a little, she seemed a little taken aback. But it was only momentary. ‘Oh, well, you see? There you are. People haven’t time for hysterics. You shouldn’t upset yourself. It’s so useless.’ (At this point, Emmy returned, sidling round the door.) ‘You aren’t the only one to suffer in such a manner – these things happen to people. Yes – even twice. Good heavens, why not twice? Why not three times?’ Mrs Stewart asked zestfully and with the same curious jeering emphasis on the word ‘twice’, as if she really could not help it. ‘Well, it’s hardly like breaking one’s neck, after all!’ she went on with dry humour. ‘So why not twice? Well, yes, it’s bad, I agree. But what did you expect? It was almost bound to happen with one or the other of you, that you would inherit insanity. Yes – if not both,’ she concluded, looking into Catherine’s face in an intent manner. Emmy stood petrified.

‘Pussy,’ said Mrs Stewart, turning to the girl amiably, ‘I’ve just been assuring Miss Hare that her invalid won’t last long and that she should be thankful. You can just remind her of that when she gets suicidal.’

‘We’re keeping you from your work,’ Catherine said to Emmy with compunction, and with a certain quiver in her voice which was not of distress. ‘Mrs Stewart is just going.’

It seemed that Mrs Stewart could take a hint of that size, for she picked up her handbag.

‘Offer your sufferings to God,’ she directed in a self-assured, authoritative manner, as if suggesting a simple, well-known remedy, a matter-of-fact measure which anyone of sense would take. ‘Don’t you see what you should have made of your afflictions? The desert can be made to blossom – It can, you know.’

Emmy drew a long breath when the door had closed on their visitor, and then with restraint she said, ‘She’s simple, that woman is. Got a simple mind. And “Pussy”, too! That’s hardly a name to give a decent girl. But, as I say, she’s simple.’ She was all set to pull her crony to pieces with adroit fingers, but a wary eye showed her Catherine standing there, smiling to herself.

Catherine was thinking that was something she had heard before, and wondering at the coincidence and the unlikely missioners; the bad spot made to blossom like the rose.

‘A woman,’ said Emmy, ‘who doesn’t let her sympathy get out of hand.’