Twilight by Julia Frankau (ready to read books txt) 📕

“Don’t go away,” were the first words I said to her. I! who had begged her so hard not to come, repudiated her anxiety so violently.

“Of course not. Why should I? I always like the country in the early spring,” she answered coolly. “Do you want anything?” She came nearer to the bed.

“What has become of Dr. Kennedy?” I asked.

“I thought you did not like him. Suzanne told me that often you would not see him when he called. And you were quite right. It was evident he did not know what was the matter with you.”

“No one does.”

“You have not helped us.” Her eyelids were pink, but otherwise she did not reproach me.

“And now I am going to die, I suppose.”

“Die! You are not going to die; don’t be so absurd. I wouldn’t let you, for one thing. And why should you? People don’t die of pleurisy, or neuritis. You are better today than you were yesterday, and you will be better still tomorrow. I know.”

Outside the room she may have wept, for, as I said, her eyelids were pink. Inside it she was all quiet confidence and courage.

“I want Dr. Kennedy. Get him back to me.” I did not argue with her whether I would live or die, it was too futile.

“This man Lansdowne is F.R.C.S. and M.D. London,” she reminded me.

“I don’t care if he’s all the letters of the alphabet. He grins at me, talks smugly, patronises me, pats my shoulder. He will send his carriage to follow the funeral. I see in his face that he has made up his mind to it.”

Nurse interfered and said that Dr. Lansdowne was most able.

“Send her out of the room.” I was impatient at her interference.

“All right, nurse, I’ll sit with Mrs. Vevaseur until you’ve had your dinner. You won’t talk too much?” she said to me imploringly.

“Perhaps,” I answered, and smiled. It was good to have Ella sitting with me again.

“The doctor did not wish her to speak at all, nor to see visitors.”

I don’t know how Ella managed to get that authoritative white-capped female out of the room, but she did; she had infinite tact and resource.

“Shall I get my needlework? Or would you rather I read to you? You really mustn’t talk.”

“Neither. You are not going away?”

“I am staying as long as you want me.”

Not a word about the times when I had told her brutally to let me alone, when I had almost turned her out of the house in London, finally fled from her here. That was Ella all over, and characteristic of me that I could not even thank her. When she said she would stay it seemed too good to be true. I questioned her about her responsibilities.

“What about Violet and Tommy, the paper?” For Ella, too, was bound on the Ixion wheel of the weekly press.

“It’s all right; everything has been arranged, in the best possible way. I am quite free. I shan’t go away until you ask me to go.”

Then I began to cry, in my great weakness, but hid my eyes, for I knew my tears would hurt her. I gave way only for a moment. It was such a relief to know her there, to feel I was being cared for. Paid service is only for the sound.

Ella pretended not to notice my little breakdown, although she was not far off it herself. She began to talk of indifferent things. Who had telegraphed, or rung up; she told me that the news of my illness had been in the papers. All my good friends whom I had avoided during those dreary months had forgotten they had been snubbed and came forward with genuine sympathy and offers of help. I soon stopped her from telling me about them. It made me feel ashamed and unworthy. I could not recollect ever having done anything for anybody.

“About getting Dr. Kennedy back?”

“He neglected you disgracefully; wrote me lightly. I don’t wonder you told him not to call.”

“I want him back.”

“Then you shall have him back. You shall have everything you want, only go on getting better.” She turned her face away from me.

“Have I begun?”

She made no answer, and I knew it was because she could not at the moment command her voice.

So I stayed quiet a little while. Then I began again to beg her to rid me of Lansdowne.

“After all, he is independent of his profession,” she said at length thoughtfully, thinking of his feelings and how not to hurt them. “He married a rich woman.”

“He would. And I am sure he has no children,” I answered.

“Good heavens! How did you know? You are cleverer when you are ill than other people when they are well.”

That is like Ella, too, she has an exaggerated and absurd opinion of my talent. Just because I write novels which are paid for beyond their deserts!

I don’t know how she did it, I don’t know how she accomplished half of the magical wonderful things she did for my comfort all that sad time. But I was not even surprised, a few days later, when I really was better and sitting up in bed; propped up by pillows, I admit, but still actually sitting up; that Dr. Kennedy, tall and unaltered, with the same light in his eye, even the same dreadful country suit, lounged in and sat on the chair by my side. Ella went away when he came in, she always had an idea that patients like to see their doctors alone. She flirts with hers, I think. She is incurably flirtatious in her leisure hours.

“You’ve had a bad time,” he said abruptly.

“You didn’t try to make it any better,” I answered weakly.

“Oh! I—I was dismissed. Your sister turned me out. She said I hadn’t recognised how ill you were. I told her she was quite right. I didn’t tell her how often you had refused to see me.”

“Did you know how ill I was?”

“I’m not sure.” He smiled, and so did I. “Were you so ill?”

“I know now what Margaret Capel felt about Dr. Lansdowne.”

“He is a very able fellow. And you’ve had Felton, Shorter, Lawson.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Anyway you are getting better now.”

“Am I? I am so hideously weak.”

“Not beginning to write again yet! You see, I know all about you now. I’ve taken a course of your novels.”

“Thinking all the time how much better Margaret Capel wrote?”

“You haven’t forgotten Margaret, then?”

“Have you?” He became quite grave and pale.

“I! I shall never forget Margaret Capel.”

Up till then he had been light and airy in manner, as if this visit and circumstance and poor me, who had been so near the Gates, were of little consequence.

“Did you think how much worse I wrote than she did, that I was no stylist?”

“Why do you say that?”

I was glad to see him and wished to keep him by my side. I thought what I was going to tell him would secure my object.

“She told me so herself “I shot at him, and watched to see how he would take it. “The last time I saw you, the night the pleurisy started, she sat over there by the fireside. We talked together confidentially, she said she knew I would write her story, and was sorry because I had no style.” There was a flush on his forehead, he looked to where I said she sat.

“What else did she say?” He did not seem to doubt me or to be surprised.

“You believe I saw her, that it was not a dream?”

“There is an unexplored borderland between dreams and reality. Fever often bridges it. Your temperature was probably high. And I, and you, were so full of her. Go on. Tell me what she wore.”

“She was dressed in grey, a white fichu over her shoulders.”

“And a pink rose.”

“Her hair…”

“Was snooded with a blue ribbon.” He finished my sentences excitedly.

“No. It was hanging in plaits.”

“Oh, no! Not when she wore the grey dress.” He had risen and was standing by the bed now, he seemed anxious, almost imploring. “Think again. Shut your eyes and think again. Surely she had the blue ribbon.”

I shut my eyes as he bade me. Then opened them and stared at him.

“But how did you know?”

“Go on. There was a blue ribbon in her hair?”

“The first time I saw her. The next time her hair was hanging down her back, two great plaits of fair hair, and she had on a blue dressinggown.”

“With a white collar like a fine handkerchief, showing her slender throat.”

“How well you knew her clothes.”

“There was a sense of fitness about her, an exquisite sense of fitness. She would not have worn her hair down with that grey dress.”

“You know I really did see her.”

“Of course. Go on. Tell me exactly what she said, word for word.”

“About my bad style.”

“About your good sense of comradeship with her.”

“She said I would write the story. Hers and Gabriel Stanton’s.”

I told him all she had said, word for word as well as I could remember it, keeping my eyes shut, speaking slowly, remembering well.

“She told me of the letters and diary, the notes, chapter headings, all she had prepared….”

I turned my head away, sank down amongst the pillows, and turned my head away. I didn’t want him to see my disappointment, to know that I had found nothing. Now I recognised my weakness, that I was spent with feverish nights and pain.

“I can’t talk any more.” He put his hand upon my pulse.

“Your pulse is quite strong.”

“I am not,” I said shortly. I wished Ella would come back.

“You looked for them?” I did not answer.

“I am so sorry. Blundering fool that I am. You looked, and looked… that is why you kept me at arm’s length, would not see me, wanted to be alone. You were searching. Why didn’t I think of it before?. But how did I know she would come to you, confide in you?”

He was talking to himself now, seemed to forget me and my grave illness. “I might have thought of it though. From the first I pictured you two together. I have them. I took them… didn’t you guess?” I forgot the extreme weakness of which I had complained, and caught hold of his coat sleeve, a little breathless.

“You took them… stole them?”

“Yes. If you put it that way. Who had a better right? I knew everything. Her father, her people, nothing, or very little. And she had not wished them to know.”

“She was going to write the story, whatever it was; to publish it.”

“No! not immediately, not until long afterwards, not until it would hurt no one. They were in the writing-table drawer, the letters, in an elastic band. She was not tidy as a rule with papers, but these were tidy. The diary was bound in soft grey leather, and there were a few rough notes; loose, on MS. paper. You know all that happened there; the excitement was intense. How could I bear her papers, his letters, her notes to fall into strange hands. I was doing what she would wish, I knew I was carrying out her wishes. The day she… she died I gathered them all together, slipped them into my greatcoat pocket; the car was at the door. I hurried away as if I had been a thief, the thief you are thinking me.”

“Got home quickly, gloated over them