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‘No, not ill. Perhaps I’m bored,’ said Connie a little pathetically.
The light of battle glowed in Hilda’s face; she was a woman, soft and still as she seemed, of the old amazon sort, not made to fit with men.
‘This wretched place!’ she said softly, looking at poor, old, lumbering Wragby with real hate. She looked soft and warm herself, as a ripe pear, and she was an amazon of the real old breed.
She went quietly in to Clifford. He thought how handsome she looked, but also he shrank from her. His wife’s family did not have his sort of manners, or his sort of etiquette. He considered them rather outsiders, but once they got inside they made him jump through the hoop.
He sat square and well-groomed in his chair, his hair sleek and blond, and his face fresh, his blue eyes pale, and a little prominent, his expression inscrutable, but well-bred. Hilda thought it sulky and stupid, and he waited. He had an air of aplomb, but Hilda didn’t care what he had an air of; she was up in arms, and if he’d been Pope or Emperor it would have been just the same.
‘Connie’s looking awfully unwell,’ she said in her soft voice, fixing him with her beautiful, glowering grey eyes. She looked so maidenly, so did Connie; but he well knew the tone of Scottish obstinacy underneath.
‘She’s a little thinner,’ he said.
‘Haven’t you done anything about it?’
‘Do you think it necessary?’ he asked, with his suavest English stiffness, for the two things often go together.
Hilda only glowered at him without replying; repartee was not her forte, nor Connie’s; so she glowered, and he was much more uncomfortable than if she had said things.
‘I’ll take her to a doctor,’ said Hilda at length. ‘Can you suggest a good one round here?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t.’
‘Then I’ll take her to London, where we have a doctor we trust.’
Though boiling with rage, Clifford said nothing.
‘I suppose I may as well stay the night,’ said Hilda, pulling off her gloves, ‘and I’ll drive her to town tomorrow.’
Clifford was yellow at the gills with anger, and at evening the whites of his eyes were a little yellow too. He ran to liver. But Hilda was consistently modest and maidenly.
‘You must have a nurse or somebody, to look after you personally. You should really have a manservant,’ said Hilda as they sat, with apparent calmness, at coffee after dinner. She spoke in her soft, seemingly gentle way, but Clifford felt she was hitting him on the head with a bludgeon.
‘You think so?’ he said coldly.
‘I’m sure! It’s necessary. Either that, or Father and I must take Connie away for some months. This can’t go on.’
‘What can’t go on?’
‘Haven’t you looked at the child!’ asked Hilda, gazing at him full stare. He looked rather like a huge, boiled crayfish at the moment; or so she thought.
‘Connie and I will discuss it,’ he said.
‘I’ve already discussed it with her,’ said Hilda.
Clifford had been long enough in the hands of nurses; he hated them, because they left him no real privacy. And a manservant! … he couldn’t stand a man hanging round him. Almost better any woman. But why not Connie?
The two sisters drove off in the morning, Connie looking rather like an Easter lamb, rather small beside Hilda, who held the wheel. Sir Malcolm was away, but the Kensington house was open.
The doctor examined Connie carefully, and asked her all about her life. ‘I see your photograph, and Sir Clifford’s, in the illustrated papers sometimes. Almost notorieties, aren’t you? That’s how the quiet little girls grow up, though you’re only a quiet little girl even now, in spite of the illustrated papers. No, no! There’s nothing organically wrong, but it won’t do! It won’t do! Tell Sir Clifford he’s got to bring you to town, or take you abroad, and amuse you. You’ve got to be amused, got to! Your vitality is much too low; no reserves, no reserves. The nerves of the heart a bit queer already: oh, yes! Nothing but nerves; I’d put you right in a month at Cannes or Biarritz. But it mustn’t go on, mustn’t, I tell you, or I won’t be answerable for consequences. You’re spending your life without renewing it. You’ve got to be amused, properly, healthily amused. You’re spending your vitality without making any. Can’t go on, you know. Depression! Avoid depression!’
Hilda set her jaw, and that meant something.
Michaelis heard they were in town, and came running with roses. ‘Why, whatever’s wrong?’ he cried. ‘You’re a shadow of yourself. Why, I never saw such a change! Why ever didn’t you let me know? Come to Nice with me! Come down to Sicily! Go on, come to Sicily with me. It’s lovely there just now. You want sun! You want life! Why, you’re wasting away! Come away with me! Come to Africa! Oh, hang Sir Clifford! Chuck him, and come along with me. I’ll marry you the minute he divorces you. Come along and try a life! God’s love! That place Wragby would kill anybody. Beastly place! Foul place! Kill anybody! Come away with me into the sun! It’s the sun you want, of course, and a bit of normal life.’
But Connie’s heart simply stood still at the thought of abandoning Clifford there and then. She couldn’t do it. No … no! She just couldn’t. She had to go back to Wragby.
Michaelis was disgusted. Hilda didn’t like Michaelis, but she almost preferred him to Clifford. Back went the sisters to the Midlands.
Hilda talked to Clifford, who still had yellow eyeballs when they got back. He, too, in his way, was overwrought; but he had to listen to all Hilda said, to all the doctor had said, not what Michaelis had said, of course, and he sat mum through the ultimatum.
‘Here is the address of a good manservant, who was with an invalid patient of the doctor’s till he died last month. He is really a good man, and fairly sure to come.’
‘But I’m not an invalid, and I will not have a manservant,’ said Clifford, poor devil.
‘And here are the addresses of two women; I saw one of them, she would do very well; a woman of about fifty, quiet, strong, kind, and in her way cultured…’
Clifford only sulked, and would not answer.
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