A Duet (with an occasional chorus) by Arthur Conan Doyle (best classic books to read .txt) 📕

In a conflict of wits the woman may lose a battle, but the odds are that she will win the campaign. The man dissipates over many things, while she concentrates upon the one. Maude had made up her mind absolutely upon one point, and she meant to attain it. She tried here, she tried there, through a friend, through her mother, but Frank was still immovable. The ordeal coming upon herself never disturbed her for an instant. But the thought that Frank would suffer was unendurable. She put herself in his place, and realised what it would be to him if he were in the house at such a time. With many cunning devices she tried to lure him off, but still, in his stubborn way, he refused to be misled. And then suddenly she realised that it was too late.

It was early one morning that the conviction came home to her, but he, at her side, knew nothing of it. He came up to her before he left for the City.

‘You have not eaten anything, dear.’

‘No, Frank, I am not hungry.’

‘Perhaps, after you get up—’

‘Well, dear, I thought of staying in bed.’

‘You are not—?’

‘What nonsense, dear! I want to keep very quiet until next week, when I may need all my strength.’

‘Dear girl, I would gladly give ten years of my life to have next week past.’

‘Silly old boy! But I do think it would be wiser if I were to keep in bed.’

‘Yes, yes, do.’

‘I have a little headache. Nothing to speak of, but just a little.’

‘Don’t you think Dr. Jordan had better give you something for it.’

‘Do you think so? Well, just as you like. You might call as you pass, and tell him to step up.’

And so, upon a false mission, the doctor was summoned to her side, but found a very real mission waiting for him when he got there. She had written a note for Frank the moment that he had left the house, and he found both it and a conspiracy of silence waiting for him when he returned in the late afternoon. The note was upon the hall-table, and he eagerly tore it open.

‘My dear boy,’ said this mendacious epistle, ‘my head is still rather bad, and Dr. Jordan thought that it would be wiser if I were to have an undisturbed rest, but I will send down to you when I feel better. Until then I had best, perhaps, remain alone. Mr. Harrison sent round to say that he would come to help you to pot the bulbs, so that will give you something to do. Don’t bother about me, for I only want a little rest.—MAUDE.’

It seemed very unnatural to him to come back and not to hear the swift rustle of the dress which followed always so quickly upon the creak of his latch-key that they might have been the same sound. The hall and dining-room seemed unhomely without the bright welcoming face. He wandered about in a discontented fashion upon his tiptoes, and then, looking through the window, he saw Harrison his neighbour coming up the path with a straw basket in his hand. He opened the door for him with his finger upon his lips.

‘Don’t make a row, Harrison,’ said he, ‘my wife’s bad.’

Harrison whistled softly.

‘Not—?’

‘No, no, not that. Only a headache, but she is not to be disturbed. We expect THAT next week. Come in here and smoke a pipe with me. It was very kind of you to bring the bulbs.’

‘I am going back for some more.’

‘Wait a little. You can go back presently. Sit down and light your pipe. There is some one moving about upstairs. It must be that heavy-footed Jemima. I hope she won’t wake Maude up. I suppose one must expect such attacks at such a time.’

‘Yes, my wife was just the same. No, thank you, I’ve just had some tea. You look worried, Crosse. Don’t take things too hard.’

‘I can’t get the thought of next week out of my head. If anything goes wrong—well there, what can I do? I never knew how a man’s nerves may be harrowed before. And she is such a saint, Harrison— such an absolutely unselfish saint! You’ll never guess what she tried to do.’

‘What, then?’

‘She knew what it would mean to me—what it will mean to me—to sit here in impotence while she goes through this horrible business. She guessed in some extraordinary way what my secret feelings were about it. And she actually tried to deceive me as to when it was to occur- -tried to get me out of the house on one pretext or another until it was all over. That was her plot, and, by Jove, she tried it so cleverly that she would have managed it if something had not put me on my guard. She was a little too eager, unnaturally so, and I saw through her game. But think of it, the absolute unselfishness of it. To consider ME at such a time, and to face her trouble alone and unsupported in order to make it easier for me. She wanted me to go to Norwich and play golf.’

‘She must have thought you pretty guileless, Crosse, to be led away so easily.’

‘Yes, it was a hopeless attempt to deceive me on such a point, or to dream for an instant that my instincts would not tell me when she had need of me. But none the less it was beautiful and characteristic. You don’t mind my talking of these things, Harrison?’

‘My dear chap, it is just what you need. You have been bottling things up too much. Your health will break down under it. After all, it is not so serious as all that. The danger is very much exaggerated.’

‘You think so.’

‘I’ve had the experience twice now. You’ll go to the City some fine morning, and when you come back the whole thing will be over.’

‘Indeed it won’t. I have made arrangements at the office, and from the hour that she first seems bad I will never stir from the house. For all she may say, I know very well that it gives her strength and courage to feel that I am there.’

‘You may not know that it is coming on?’

Frank laughed incredulously.

‘We’ll see about that,’ said he. ‘And you think from your experience, Harrison, that it is not so very bad after all?’

‘Oh no. It soon passes.’

‘Soon! What do you mean by soon?’

‘Jordan was there six hours the first time.’

‘Good God! Six hours!’ Frank wiped his forehead. ‘They must have seemed six years.’

‘They WERE rather long. I kept on working in the garden. That’s the tip. Keep on doing something and it helps you along wonderfully.’

‘That’s a good suggestion, Harrison. What a curious smell there is in the air! Do you notice a sort of low, sweetish, spirity kind of scent? Well, perhaps it’s my imagination. I dare say that my nerves are a bit strung up these days. But that is a capital idea of yours about having some work to do. I should like to work madly for those hours. Have everything up out of the back garden and plant it all again in the front.’

Harrison laughed.

‘I’ll tell you something less heroic,’ said he; ‘you could keep all these bulbs, and pot them then. By the way, I’ll go round and get the others. Don’t bother about the door. I shall leave it open, for I won’t be five minutes.’

‘And I’ll put these in the greenhouse,’ said Frank. He took the basket of bulbs and he laid them all out on the wooden shelf of the tiny conservatory which leaned against the back of the house. When he came out there was a kitten making a noise somewhere. It was a low sound, but persistent, coming in burst after burst. He took the rake and jabbed with the handle amongst the laurel bushes under their bedroom window. The beast might waken Maude, and so it was worth some trouble to dislodge it. He could not see it, but when he had poked among the bushes and cried ‘Skat!’ several times, the crying died away, and he carried his empty basket into the dining-room. There he lit his pipe again, and waited for Harrison’s return.

There was that bothersome kitten again. He could hear it mewing away somewhere. It did not sound so loud as in the garden, so perhaps it would not matter. He felt very much inclined to steal upstairs upon tiptoe and see if Maude were stirring yet. After all, if Jemima, or whoever it was, could go clumping about in heavy boots over his head, there was no fear that he could do any harm. And yet she had said that she would ring or send word the moment she could see him, and so perhaps he had better wait where he was. He put his head out of the window and cried ‘Shoo!’ into the laurel bushes several times. Then he sat in the armchair with his back to the door. Steps came heavily along the hall, and he saw dimly with the back corner of his eye that some one was in the doorway carrying something. He thought that really Harrison might have brought the bulbs in more quietly, and so he treated him with some coldness, and did not turn round to him.

‘Put it in the out-house,’ said he.

‘Why the out-house?’

‘We keep them there. But you can put it under the sideboard, or in the coal-scuttle, or where you like as long as you don’t make any more noise.’

‘Why, surely, Crosse—’ But Frank suddenly sprang out of his chair.

‘I’m blessed if that infernal kitten isn’t somewhere in the room!’

And there when he turned was the grim, kindly face of old Doctor Jordan facing him. He carried in the crook of his arm a brown shawl with something round and small muffled up in it. There was one slit in front, and through this came a fist about the size of a marble, the thumb doubled under the tiny fingers, and the whole limb giving circular waves, as if the owner were cheering lustily at his own successful arrival. ‘Here am I, good people, hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!’ cried the waving hand. Then as the slit in the shawl widened Frank saw that behind the energetic fist there was a huge open mouth, a little button of a nose, and two eyes which were so resolutely screwed up that it seemed as if the owner had made a resolution never under any circumstances to take the least notice of this new world into which it had been transported. Frank dropped his pipe and stood staring at this apparition.

‘What! What’s that?’

‘The baby!’

‘Baby? Whose baby?’

‘Your baby, of course.’

‘My baby! Where—where did you get it?’

Doctor Jordan burst out laughing.

‘You are like a man who has just been wakened out of his sleep,’ said he. ‘Why, Crosse, your wife has been bad all day, but she’s all right now, and here’s your son and heir—a finer lad of the age I never saw—fighting weight about seven pounds.’

Frank was a very proud man at the roots of his nature. He did not readily give himself away. Perhaps if he had been quite alone he might at that moment, as the great wave of joy washed through his soul, bearing all his fears and forebodings away upon its crest, have dropped upon his knees in prayer. But prayer comes not from the knee but from the heart, and the