Beaumaroy Home from the Wars
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The scene was ended by Gertie Naylor calling these laggards in to tea, to which meal the rest of the company had already betaken itself.
At the tea-table they found General Punnit discoursing on war, and giving "idealists" what idealists usually get. The General believed in war; he pressed the biological argument, did not flinch when Mr. Naylor dubbed him the "British Bernhardi," and invoked the support of "these medical gentlemen" (this with a smile at Doctor Mary's expense) for his point of view. War tested, proved, braced, hardened; it was nature's crucible; it was the antidote to softness and sentimentality; it was the vindication of the strong, the elimination of the weak.
"I suppose there's a lot in all that, sir," said Alec Naylor, "but I don't think the effect on one's character is always what you say. I think I've come out of this awful business a good deal softer than I went in." He laughed in an apologetic way. "More – more sentimental, if you like – with more feeling, don't you know, for human life, and suffering, and so on. I've seen a great many men killed, but the sight hasn't made me any more ready to kill men. In fact, quite the reverse." He smiled again. "Really sometimes, for a row of pins, I'd have turned conscientious objector."
Mrs. Naylor looked apprehensively at the General: would he explode? No, he took it quite quietly. "You're a man who can afford to say it, Alec," he remarked, with a nod that was almost approving.
Naylor looked affectionately at his son and turned to Beaumaroy. "And what's the war done to you?" he asked. And this question did draw from the General, if not an explosion, at least a rather contemptuous smile: Beaumaroy had earned no right to express opinions!
But express one he did, and with his habitual air of candour. "I believe it's destroyed every scruple I ever had!
"Mr. Beaumaroy!" exclaimed his hostess, scandalized; while the two girls, Cynthia and Gertie, laughed.
"I mean it. Can you see human life treated as dirt – absolutely as cheap as dirt – for three years, and come out thinking it worth anything? Can you fight for your own hand, right or wrong? Oh, yes, right or wrong, in the end, and it's no good blinking it. Can you do that for three years in war, and then hesitate to fight for your own hand, right or wrong, in peace? Who really cares for right or wrong, anyhow?"
A pause ensued – rather an uncomfortable pause. There was a raw sincerity in Beaumaroy's utterance that made it a challenge.
"I honestly think we did care about the rights and wrongs – we in England," said Naylor.
"That was certainly so at the beginning," Irechester agreed.
Beaumaroy took him up smartly. "Aye, at the beginning. But what about when our blood got up? What then? Would we, in our hearts, rather have been right and got a licking, or wrong and given one?"
"A searching question!" mused old Naylor. "What say you, Tom Punnit?"
"It never occurred to me to put the question," the General answered brusquely.
"May I ask why not, sir?" said Beaumaroy respectfully.
"Because I believed in God. I knew that we were right, and I knew that we should win."
"Are we in theology now, or still in biology?" asked Irechester, rather acidly.
"You're getting out of my depth anyhow," smiled Mrs. Naylor. "And I'm sure the girls must be bewildered."
"Mamma, I've done biology!"
"And many people think they've done theology!" chuckled Naylor. "Done it completely!"
"I've raised a pretty argument!" said Beaumaroy, smiling. "I'm sorry! I only meant to answer your question about the effect the whole thing has had on myself."
"Even your answer to that was pretty startling, Mr. Beaumaroy," said Doctor Mary, smiling too. "You gave us to understand that it had obliterated for you all distinctions of right and wrong, didn't you?"
"Did I go as far as that?" he laughed. "Then I'm open to the remark that they can't have been very strong at first."
"Now don't destroy the general interest of your thesis," Naylor implored. "It's quite likely that yours is a case as common as Alec's, or even commoner. 'A brutal and licentious soldiery' – isn't that a classic phrase in our histories? All the same, I fancy Mr. Beaumaroy does himself less than justice." He laughed. "We shall be able to judge of that when we know him better."
"At all events, Miss Gertie, look out that I don't fake the score at tennis!" said Beaumaroy.
"A man might be capable of murder, but not capable of that," said Alec.
"A truly British sentiment!" cried his father. "Tom, we have got back to the national ideals."
The discussion ended in laughter, and the talk turned to lighter matters, but, as Mary Arkroyd drove Cynthia home across the heath, her thoughts returned to it. The two men – the two soldiers – seemed to have given an authentic account of what their experience had done to them. Both, as she saw the case, had been moved to pity, horror, and indignation that such things should be done, or should have to be done, in the world. After that point came the divergence. The higher nature had been raised, the lower debased; Alec Naylor's sympathies had been sharpened and sensitized; Beaumaroy's blunted. Where the one had found ideals and incentives, the other found despair – a despair that issued in excuses and denied high standards. And the finer mind belonged to the finer soldier; that she knew, for Gertie had told her General Punnit's story, and, however much she might discount it as the tale of an elderly martinet, yet it stood for something – for something that could never be attributed to Alec Naylor.
And yet – for her mind travelled back to her earlier talk by the tennis-court – Beaumaroy had a conscience, had feelings. He was fond of old Mr. Saffron; he felt a responsibility for him – felt it, indeed, keenly. Or was he, under all that seeming openness, a consummate hypocrite? Did he value Mr. Saffron only as a milch cow – the doting giver of a large salary? Was his only desire to humour him, keep him in good health and temper, and use him to his own profit? A puzzling man – but, at all events, cutting a poor figure beside Alec Naylor, about whom there could circle no clouds of doubt. Doctor Mary's learning and gravity did not prevent her from drawing a very heroic and rather romantic figure of Captain Alec – notwithstanding the fact that she sometimes found him rather hard to talk to.
She felt Cynthia's arm steal round her waist, and Cynthia said softly, "I did enjoy my afternoon. Can we go again soon, Mary?"
Mary glanced round at her. Cynthia laughed and blushed. "Isn't he splendid?" Cynthia murmured. "But I don't like Mr. Beaumaroy at all, do you?"
"I say yes to the first question, but I'm not quite ready to answer the second," said Mary with a laugh.
Three days later, on Christmas Eve, one whom Jeanne, who caught sight of him in the hall, described as being all there was possible of ugliness, delivered (with a request for an immediate answer) the following note for Mary Arkroyd:
"Dear Dr. Arkroyd,
Mr. Saffron is unwell, and I have insisted with him that he must see a doctor. So much he has yielded – after a fight! But nothing will induce him to see Dr. Irechester again. On this point I tried to reason with him, but in vain. He is obstinate and resolved. I am afraid that I am putting you in a difficult and disagreeable position, but it seems to me that I have no alternative but to ask you to call on him professionally. I hope that Dr. Irechester will not be hurt by a whim which is, no doubt, itself merely a symptom of disordered nerves, for Dr. Irechester has been most attentive, and very successful hitherto in dealing with the dear old gentleman. But my first duty is to Mr. Saffron. If it will ease matters at all, pray hold yourself at liberty to show this note to Dr. Irechester. May I beg you to be kind enough to call at your earliest convenience, though it is, alas, a rough evening to ask you to come out?
Yours very faithfully,Hector Beaumaroy""How very awkward!" exclaimed Mary. She had prided herself on a rigorous abstention from "poaching"; she fancied that men were very ready to accuse women of not "playing the game" and had been resolved to give no colour to such an accusation. "Mr. Saffron has sent for me – professionally. He's ill, it seems," she said to Cynthia.
"Why shouldn't he?"
"He's a patient of Dr. Irechester's."
"But people often change their doctors, don't they? He thinks you're cleverer, I suppose, and I expect you are, really."
There was no use in expounding professional etiquette to Cynthia. Mary had to decide the point for herself – and quickly; the old man might be seriously ill. Beaumaroy had said, at the Naylors', that his attacks were sometimes alarming.
Suddenly she recollected that he had also seemed to hint that they were more alarming than Irechester appeared to appreciate; she had not taken much notice of that hint at the time, but now it recurred to her very distinctly. There was no suggestion of the sort in Beaumaroy's letter. Beaumaroy had written a letter that could be shown to Irechester! Was that dishonesty, or only a pardonable diplomacy?
"I suppose I must go – and explain to Dr. Irechester afterwards." She rang the bell to recall the maid, and gave her answer. "Say I will be round as soon as possible. Is the messenger walking?"
"He's got a bicycle, Miss."
"All right. I shall be there almost as soon as he is."
She seemed to have no alternative, just as Beaumaroy had none. Yet while she put on her mackintosh – it was very wet and misty – got out her car, and lit her lamps, her face was still fretful and her mind disturbed. For now – as she looked back on it – Beaumaroy's conversation with her at Old Place seemed just a prelude to this summons, and meant to prepare her for it. Perhaps that too was pardonable diplomacy, and no reference to it could be expected in a letter which she was at liberty to show to Dr. Irechester. She wondered, uncomfortably, how Irechester would take it.
CHAPTER V
A FAMILIAR IMPLEMENT
As Mary brought her car to a stand at the gate of the little front garden of Tower Cottage, she saw, through the mist, Beaumaroy's corrugated face; he was standing in the doorway, and the light in the passage revealed it. It seemed to her to wear a triumphant impish look, but this vanished as he advanced to meet her, relieved her of the neat black handbag which she always carried with her on her visits, and suggested gravely that she should at once go upstairs and see her patient.
"He's quieter now," he said. "The mere news that you were coming had a soothing effect. Let me show you the way." He led her upstairs and into a small room on the first floor, nakedly furnished with necessities, but with a cheery fire blazing in the grate.
Old Mr. Saffron lay in bed, propped up by pillows. His silver hair strayed from under a nightcap; he wore a light blue bedroom jacket; its colour matched that of his restless eyes; his arms were under the clothes from the elbows down. He was rather flushed, but did not look seriously ill, and greeted Doctor Mary with dignified composure.
"I'll see Dr. Arkroyd alone, Hector." Beaumaroy gave the slightest little jerk of his head, and the old man added quickly, "I am sure of myself, quite sure."
The phrase sounded rather an odd one to Mary, but Beaumaroy accepted the assurance with a nod. "All right, I'll wait downstairs, sir. I hope you'll bring me a good account of him, Doctor." So he left Mary to make her examination; going downstairs, he shook his head once, pursed up his lips, and then smiled doubtfully, as a man may do when he has made up his mind to take a chance.
When Mary rejoined him, she asked for pen and paper, wrote a prescription, and requested that Beaumaroy's man should take it to the chemist's. He went out to give it to the Sergeant, and, when he came back, found her seated in the big chair by the fire.
"The present little attack is nothing, Mr. Beaumaroy," she said. "Stomachic – with a little fever; if he takes what I've prescribed, he ought to be all right in the morning. But I suppose you know that there is valvular disease – quite definite? Didn't Dr. Irechester tell you?"
"Yes; but he said there was no particular – no immediate danger."
"If he's kept quiet and free from worry. Didn't he advise that?"
"Yes," Beaumaroy admitted, "he did. That's the only thing you find wrong with him, Doctor?"
Beaumaroy was standing on the far side of the table, his finger-tips resting lightly on it. He looked across at Mary with eyes candidly inquiring.
"I've found nothing else so far. I suppose he's got nothing to worry him?"
"Not really, I think. He fusses a bit about his affairs." He smiled. "We go to London every week to fuss about his affairs; he's always changing his investments, taking his money out of one thing and putting it in another, you know. Old people get like that sometimes, don't they? I'm a novice at that kind of thing, never having had any money to play with; but I'm bound to say that he seems to know very well what he's about."
"Do you know anything of his history or his people? Has he any relations?"
"I know very little. I don't think he has any – any real relations, so to speak. There are, I believe, some cousins, distant cousins, whom he hates. In fact, a lonely old bachelor, Dr. Arkroyd."
Mary gave a little laugh and became less professional. "He's rather an old dear! He uses funny stately phrases. He said I might speak quite openly to you, as you were closely attached to his person!"
"Sounds rather like a newspaper, doesn't it? He does talk like that sometimes." Beaumaroy moved round the table, came close to the fire, and stood there, smiling down at Mary.
"He's very fond of you, I think," she went on.
"He reposes entire confidence in me," said Beaumaroy, with a touch of assumed pompousness.
"Those were his very words!" cried Mary, laughing again. "And he said it just in that way! How clever of you to guess!"
"Not so very. He says it to me six times a week."
Mary had risen, about to take her leave, but to her surprise Beaumaroy went on quickly, with one of his confidential smiles, "And now I'm going to show you that I have the utmost confidence in you. Please sit down again, Dr. Arkroyd. The matter concerns your patient just as much as myself, or I wouldn't trouble you with it – at any rate, I shouldn't venture to, so early in our acquaintance. I want you to consider yourself as Mr. Saffron's medical adviser, and – also – to try to imagine yourself my friend."
"I've every inclination to be your friend, but I hardly know you, Mr. Beaumaroy."
"And feel a few doubts about me? From what you've heard from myself – and perhaps from others?"
The wind swished outside; save for that, the little room seemed very still. The professional character of the interview did not save it, for Mary Arkroyd, from a sudden and rather unwelcome sense of intimacy – of an intimacy thrust upon her, though not so much by her companion as by circumstances. She answered rather stiffly, "Perhaps I have some doubts."
"You detect – very acutely – that I have a great influence over Mr. Saffron. You ask – very properly – whether he has relations. I think you threw out a feeler about his money affairs – whether he had anything to worry about was your phrase, wasn't it? Am I misinterpreting what was in your mind?"
As he spoke, he offered her a cigarette from a box on the mantelpiece. She took one and lit it at the top of the lamp-chimney; then she sat down again in the big chair; she had not accepted his earlier invitation to resume her seat.
"It was proper for me to put those questions, Mr. Beaumaroy. Mr. Saffron is not a sound man, and he's old. In normal conditions his relations should at least be warned of the position."
"Exactly," Beaumaroy assented, with an appearance of eagerness. "But he hates them. Any suggestion that they have any sort of claim on him raises strong resentment in him. I've known old men – old monied men – like that before, and no doubt you have. Well now, you'll begin to see the difficulty of my position. I'll put the case to you quite bluntly. Suppose Mr. Saffron, having this liking for me, this confidence in me, living here with me alone – except for servants; being, as one might say, exposed to my influence; suppose he took it into his head to make a will in my favour, to leave me all his money. It's quite a considerable sum, so far as our Wednesday doings enable me to judge. Suppose that happened, how should I stand in your opinion, Dr. Arkroyd? But wait a moment still. Suppose that my career has not been very – well, resplendent; that my army record is only so-so; that I've devoted myself to him with remarkable assiduity, as in fact I have; that I might be called, quite plausibly, an adventurer. Well, propounding that will, how should I stand before the world and, if necessary" (he shrugged his shoulders), "the Court?"
Mary sat silent for a moment or two. Beaumaroy knelt down by the fire, rearranged the logs of wood which were smouldering there, and put on a couple more. From that position, looking into the grate, he added, "And the change of doctors? It was he, of course, who insisted on it, but I can see a clever lawyer using that against me too. Can't you, Dr. Arkroyd?"
"I'm sure I wish you hadn't had to make the change!" exclaimed Mary.
"So do I; though, mind you, I'm not pretending that Irechester is a favourite of mine, any more than he is of my old friend's. Still – there it is. I've no right, perhaps, to press my question, but your opinion would be of real value to me."
"I see no reason to think that he's not quite competent to make a will," said Doctor Mary. "And no real reason why he shouldn't prefer you to distant relations whom he dislikes."
"Ah, no real reason; that's what you say! You mean that people would impute – ?"
Mary Arkroyd had her limitations – of experience, of knowledge, of intuition. But she did not lack courage.
"I have given you my professional opinion. It is that, so far as I see, Mr. Saffron is of perfectly sound understanding, and capable of making a valid will. You did me the honour – "
"No, no!" he interrupted in a low but rather strangely vehement protest. "I begged the favour – "
"As you like! The favour, then, of my opinion as your friend, as well as my view as Mr. Saffron's doctor."
Beaumaroy did not rise from his knees, but turned his face towards her; the logs had blazed up, and his eyes looked curiously bright in the glare – themselves, as it were, afire.
"In my opinion a man of sensitive honour would prefer that that will should not be made, Mr. Beaumaroy," said Mary steadily.
Beaumaroy appeared to consider. "I'm a bit posed by that point of view, Dr. Arkroyd," he said at last. "Either the old man's sane —compos mentis, don't you call it? – or he isn't. If he is – "
"I know. But I feel that way about it."
"You'd have to give evidence for me!" He raised his brows and smiled at her.
"There can be undue influence without actual want of mental competence, I think."
"I don't know whether my influence is undue. I believe I'm the only creature alive who cares twopence for the poor old gentleman."
"I know! I know! Mr. Beaumaroy, your position is very difficult. I see that. It really is. But – would you take the money for yourself? Aren't you – well, rather in the position of a trustee?"
"Who for? The hated cousins? What's the reason in that?"
"They may be very good people really. Old men take fancies, as you said yourself. And they may have built on – "
"Stepping into a dead man's shoes? I dare say. Why mayn't I build on it too? Why not my hand against the other fellow's?"
"That's what you learnt from the war! You said so – at Old Place. Captain Naylor said something different."
"Suppose Alec Naylor and I – a hero and a damaged article – " he smiled at Mary, and she smiled back with a sudden enjoyment of the humorous yet bitter tang in his voice – "loved the same woman – and I had a chance of her. Am I to give it up?"
"Really we're getting a long way from medicine, Mr. Beaumaroy!"
"Oh, you're a general practitioner! Wise on all subjects under heaven! Conceive yourself hesitating between him and me – "
Mary laughed frankly. "How absurd you are! If you must go on talking, talk seriously."
"But why am I absurd?"
"Because, if I were a marrying woman – which I'm not – I shouldn't hesitate between you and Captain Naylor, not for a minute."
"You'd jump at me?"
Laughing again – his eyes had now a schoolboy merriment in them – Mary rose from the big chair. "At him, if I'm not being impolite, Mr. Beaumaroy."
They stood face to face. For the first time for several years – Mary's girlhood had not been altogether empty of sentimental episodes – she blushed under a man's glance – because it was a man's. At this event, of which she was acutely conscious and at which she was intensely irritated, she drew herself up, with an attempt to return to her strictly professional manner.
"I don't find you the least impolite, Dr. Arkroyd," said Beaumaroy.
It was impudent, yet gay, dexterous, and elusive enough to avoid reproof. With no more than a little shake of her head and a light, yet embarrassed laugh, Mary moved towards the door, her way lying between the table and an old oak sideboard, which stood against the wall. Some plates, knives, and other articles of the table lay strewn, none too tidily, about it. Beaumaroy followed her, smiling complacently, his hands in his pockets.
Suddenly Mary came to a stop and pointed with her finger at the sideboard, turning her face towards her companion. At the same instant Beaumaroy's right hand shot out from his pocket towards the sideboard, as though to snatch up something from it. Then he drew the hand as swiftly back again; but his eyes watched Mary's with an alert and suspicious gaze. That was for a second only; then his face resumed its amused and nonchalant expression. But the movement of the hand and the look of the eyes had not escaped Mary's attention; her voice betrayed some surprise as she said:
"It's only that I just happened to notice that combination knife-and-fork lying there, and I wondered who – "
The article in question lay among some half-dozen ordinary knives and forks. It was of a kind quite familiar to Doctor Mary from her hospital experience – a fork on one side, a knife-blade on the other – an implement made for people who could command the use of only one hand.
"Surely you've noticed my hand?" He drew his right hand again from the pocket to which he had so quickly returned it. "I used to use that in hospital, when I was bandaged up. But that's a long while ago now, and I can't think why Hooper's left it lying there."
The account was plausible, and entirely the same might now be said of his face and manner. But Mary had seen the dart of his hand and the sudden alertness in his eyes. Her own rested on him for a moment with inquiry – for the first time with a hint of distrust. "I see!" she murmured vaguely, and, turning away from him, pursued her way to the door. Beaumaroy followed her with a queer smile on his lips; he shrugged his shoulders once, very slightly.
A constraint had fallen on Mary. She allowed herself to be escorted to the car and helped into it in silence. Beaumaroy made no effort to force the talk, possibly by reason of the presence of Sergeant Hooper, who had arrived back from the chemist's with the medicine for Mr. Saffron just as Mary and Beaumaroy came out of the hall door. He stood by his bicycle, drawing just a little aside to let them pass, but not far enough to prevent the light from the passage showing up his ill-favoured countenance.
"Well, good-bye, Dr. Arkroyd. I'll see how he is to-morrow, and ask you to be kind enough to call again, if it seems advisable. And a thousand thanks."
"Good night, Mr. Beaumaroy."
She started the car. Beaumaroy walked back to the hall door. Mary glanced behind her once, and saw him standing by it, again framed by the light behind him, as she had seen him on her arrival. But, this time, within the four corners of the same frame was included the forbidding visage of Sergeant Hooper.
Beaumaroy returned to the fire in the parlour; Hooper, leaving his bicycle in the passage, followed him into the room and put the medicine bottle on the table. Smiling at him, Beaumaroy pointed at the combination knife-and-fork.