In a quarter of an hour her gentle breathing assured him that she was asleep. He lay quite still, scarcely breathing, clenching his hands fiercely to control himself. The darkness of the room pressed down upon him like a pall. He wanted to cry out, to ease his tortured nerves by one wild, despairing shout. He wanted to turn to her, to Bessie, his wife. To implore her sympathy. To cry passionately:
‘I’m not what you think I am. I’m not hard. I never have been hard. I feel everything, I feel it terribly. And now I’m frightened, desperately frightened – like a trembling child. There always has been something of the child in me. I’ve always been sensitive, always been nervous. That’s why I’ve pretended not to be. But now I’m past pretending. Don’t you hear me? Don’t you understand? They think – they think that I’ve got cancer!’
A paroxysm of mortal agony shook him. While his wife slept in all tranquillity he thrust his hands upon his mouth to choke the sobs which racked him. His eyeballs, seared by the torture of unshed tears, seemed bursting. His ears rang with the chords of his own despair. The dark hours of night rolled over him. Not for one moment did he sleep. Not for one second did he forget.
At four o’clock he rose, put on his working clothes, and went into the bakehouse. He had hoped that the routine of the day might soothe him, distract his mind. But it was not so. As the day passed, bringing no assuagement of his suspense, he grew more desperate. Outwardly frozen, he went through his duties in the semblance of normality. He spoke, answered questions, went here and there. It was as though he stood apart, trembling, suffering, watching the figure of an automaton; an automaton which was himself. He knew now that he had cancer. Whenever he had a spare moment he went upstairs and, thrusting out his tongue before the looking-glass, stared at the tiny growth, like a scarlet flower, in horror.
Comedy or tragedy? A grown man thrusting out his tongue at his reflection in a mirror. He could have laughed madly at the grotesque idea. But now he had no time for laughing. He kept looking at his tongue.
Was it worse, the swelling? Or was it just the same? A little more painful, perhaps, since the doctor had cut into it. It hurt him now when he protruded it like that. Or was that just his fancy? Strange that this little red flower should mean death. Terribly strange. But it did mean death. With a last stealthy look into the mirror he tiptoed downstairs.
That night again he did not sleep. At breakfast his wife turned upon him a mildly solicitous eye:
‘You’re off your food these last few days.’
He protested.
‘Nonsense,’ he said, with that frozen self-possession; and to prove his words he helped himself to more bacon and egg. But though he ate it, he did not taste the food.
All his senses were numb now except the sense of his own condition. He was perhaps now a little mad. His imagination, working feverishly, carried him a stage further. The fact that he had cancer was accepted, proved. What was to be done, then? Operation, the doctor had said. By closing his eyes and staring into the future he saw exactly what that meant.
He saw himself in hospital in a little narrow bed; he endured the agony of days of waiting in one swift thought. Then, frowning slightly, he perceived himself wheeled to the operating theatre. The unknown terror of that place magnified its horror. What was the stuff they gave you there? Chloroform – that was it. A sickly, pungent stuff that hurried you into oblivion. But what happened in that oblivion? Sharp lancets flashed about his mouth, his own mouth. They were cutting out his tongue, cutting it deeply out by the very roots. A sob rose in his throat, choking him; and he raised his hand to his shut eyes as though to blot out the grotesque vision of his tongue, dissevered from his mouth, lying all bloody and horrible where they had cast it.
And after the operation? He would awake, of course, in that same narrow bed, an object of sympathy and intolerable solicitude.
A man without his tongue. A man who could not speak, but merely mumble and mouth his words. The nurse bending over him.
‘What did you say?’
And he struggling, straining, striving to tell her, to make it clear.
Oh, it was terrible, terrible, not to be endured. He lost himself in the agony of the thought. Time swung its inexorable pendulum. Wednesday night passed – it mighta have been a hundred years! Thursday came. He had almost reached the limit of his suffering – such suffering as no one dreamed of, all locked and concealed within his soul.
After lunch on Thursday he went out of the bakehouse and walked down to the river. It was high tide, and the water, rushing past the quayside, lay but a few feet beneath him. He stared at it stupidly. One step and it would be finished, all his wretchedness, the misery of the operation and the helplessness that lay after that. The river, gurgling and sucking against the stone piers, seemed to call him.
Suddenly he heard a voice at his elbow.
‘Taking a breath of air to yourself, Willie, man?’
It was Peter Lennie smiling at him.
As in a dream he heard himself reply:
‘It’s pretty hot in the bake house in the afternoon.’
They stood together in silence. Then Peter Lennie said:
‘I’ll walk down the road with you, if you are going that way.’
They talked as they strolled along the stream, little bits of gossip, petty odds and ends of a small town’s news. There was no escape for Willie. He had to go on. The afternoon passed. He drank a cup of tea, then, going upstairs, changed into his Sunday clothes. His mind was made up now. He would refuse the operation. He had resolved simply to die. He knew, with sudden precognition, that the operation would not save him. Cancer came back again in spite of what they did. Yes, cancer came back, it always came back.
At half past six he told Bessie he would take a little walk. He was half afraid that she would offer to come with him, but with a smile she informed him that she was going to run round to buy her new hat. She had just time before Jenny shut the shop.
The evening was fine as he went down the street, nodding to this acquaintance and to that. He had the strange unreality of a man walking with ghostly steps to his own funeral. His tortured imagination, working feverishly, made him feel that none of these people round about were real – since none of them knew that he was nearly dead.
‘Is the doctor in, Janet?’
He was saying it again, that silly, senseless phrase. Yes, he was sitting in the dining-room again, staring at the silly, senseless fiddle that hung above the mantelpiece. And then once again he was in the consulting-room, standing before the desk as though he stood before the judgement seat.
I looked at him a long, long time. The expression upon my face was profound and serious; then, rising, I solemnly held out my hand.
‘I want to congratulate you. I’ve had the full pathological report. There isn’t a trace of malignancy in the specimen. It isn’t cancer at all – a simple papilloma of your tongue. It will be gone with treatment in a couple of weeks.’
Willie’s senses reeled. A great wave of joy broke over him and surged to the very centre of his being. He could have swooned from the very ecstasy of joy and sweet relief; but his pale, calm face showed nothing.
‘I’m obliged to you, Doctor,’ he said awkwardly. ‘ I’m … I’m … I’m glad it’s no worse.’
‘I hope you haven’t worried these last two days,’ I persisted. ‘Of course, I’d never have let you know what I was afraid of if I hadn’t been dead certain that you weren’t the worrying kind.’
‘That’s all right, Doctor,’ Willie murmured, with his eyes upon the ground. ‘Maybe I’m not the worrying kind.’
That quiet, self-contained smile played over his face.
‘They aye say that’s my trouble, ye know. No imagination!’
Then, in his composed voice, he told me all that I have just related here.
Chapter Twelve
It was, I think, Madame de Sévigné – a subtle and discerning woman – who first made the sage observation that no man is a hero to his v
alet. But Montaigne had forestalled her, less wittily, perhaps, yet with greater wisdom, when he wrote: ‘ No man should be a hero to himself.’ To be honest, then, the writer who embarks upon the dangerous sea of self-revelation should acknowledge the defects of his character parallel with any merits he may possess, balance his vanities against his virtues.
Do not imagine, then, that I was the admirable Crichton of Tannochbrae, a blameless young medico who was never stupid, fatuous, or foolish. More than once I was all three. And that is why I must introduce a lady whom I shall call Miss Malcolm.
I first met Miss Malcolm at a dance, not an ordinary dance, like the Knoxhill Academy reunion or the Markinch Anglers’ Social, but the annual Highland Ball, given by the President of the Society, Lord Sinclair of Dundrum Castle.
This sounds – at least for the moment – extremely grand, and, indeed, the Sinclairs were the great shipbuilding family, whose yards had outgrown and now outrivalled even the most famous shipyards on the Clyde. They were county people, connected by kinship and marriage with half the notables in Glasgow, whose tremendous estate between Markinch and Ardfillan was the pride and envy of the countryside.
Every winter, at the castle, they gave a dance – a ball, to be accurate – at which everybody who was anybody appeared. A stray duke often strolled in, the parliamentary member invariably was there, certainly a baronet or two, and always a flock of kilted Highland lairds, with fiery pride in their eyes and nothing in their sporran. It was, in short, a function where pedigrees were flourished and the blueness of one’s blood was of greater import than the strength of the claret cup.
To this affair, by way of indicating the liberalism of the gentry, were invited the least unworthy professional people of the district – the ‘best-thought-of’ doctors and lawyers, and their wives. It came about, then, in the course of events, that a large, stiff, Gilt-edged card – as full of scrolls and superscriptions as a tombstone – arrived at Arden House bidding Dr Cameron and myself to the ball.
‘Bah!’ said Cameron, as he tossed it on the mantelpiece. ‘I’ll miss my night’s sleep for none of them. You can go, young fellow. My dancing days are done.’
Actually, my dancing days had not begun. Indeed, my youthful struggles for existence had kept me from acquiring even the rudiments of such social graces. I therefore followed my senior’s lead and protested sturdily that I had as much use for the ball as a bull for a china shop.
‘Ye’d better look in, though, lad,’ Cameron answered in a more equable tone. ‘If only for the matter of policy. The Sinclairs can put many a guinea our way if they choose to think on’t. Just you drop in about ten, let yourself be seen hob-nobbing with his Grace.’ Cameron’s eyes twinkled. ‘Sup an ice with her Leddyship, tell our Member of Parliament I thought his last speech was tripe, and then come home decent-like to your bed.’
Thus I did go to the dance.
At first I did not enjoy myself; I was, in fact, uncomfortable, unhappy, and extremely ill at ease. On the wide marble staircase of the castellated mansion there was a great press of people with Roman noses and high voices, a delirious clash of clan tartans with scarlet jackets on the floor, and a strong sense of superiority in the air.
No one took the slightest notice of me. Though I doggedly called up all my democratic pride to support me, I gradually became aware of myself as a gawky youth in a badly made dress suit, borrowed for the occasion from Will Duncan – an unfledged provincial doctor who knew nobody and whom nobody wished to know.
I thought of Flaubert’s Charles Bovary, the doltish apothecary whom everyone ignored at the d’Andervilliers chateau, and a faint colour of shame rose to my brow. But I set myself dourly to stick it out, standing with my back to the wall in the ballroom, watching the dancing, feeling horribly lonely, trying hard to despise the petty affectations displayed before me, but despising only myself.
It was then that I discovered two friendly eyes fixed upon me. My colour deepened; but she smiled at me, and I smiled back. I felt sure I had seen her before, that Jamie had mentioned her name to me as we passed her in the main street of Knoxhill. Then I remembered. With a spurt of confidence, I went over to where she sat underneath a tall, green palm. She received me with perfect ease.
‘I know you quite well,’ she informed me charmingly, ‘though we’ve never been introduced. But you haven’t the least idea who I am.’
‘But I have! You’re Miss Malcolm.’ I almost added, ‘the school-teacher,’ but mercifully restrained myself in time. Yet she had been a school-teacher, had taught French at St. Hilda’s, that most exclusive girls’ school in Ardfillan, but she had come into a little money of her own and, while quite young, had given up her profession altogether.
She smiled at me again and made room for me to sit beside her. At that, with rising self-esteem, I felt comfortable: she was pleasant, she was charming, she was somebody to talk to.
‘I’m surprised to find you here,’ I remarked confidentially, thinking unconsciously once again of her social status, which was surely inferior even to my own.
‘I’m often surprised to find myself here,’ she admitted. She had a delightful voice – well-modulated and soft. ‘It’s a complete nuisance. But in a sense I find myself bound to come. You see, Lord Sinclair is my cousin.’
My face must have been a study. A cousin of Lord Sinclair! She was one of them, related by blood to the head of the clan, and I, poor fool, had attempted to patronise her.
‘You’re not dancing?’ She appeared not in the least to have observed my confusion, but kept beating time to the music with her tiny, ivory fan.
‘I’m such a wretched dancer,’ I said humbly, ashamed to acknowledge that I had not even taken a correspondence course in the art.
She smiled.
‘Shall we try?’
We tried. She was a magnificent dancer, light as a thistledown, skilfully guiding my most indifferent steps, tactfully keeping me to the rhythm. And the band was splendid. After the first moments of hesitation I enjoyed the dance marvellously.
‘That was grand,’ I said boyishly as we resumed our seats.
‘What a nice way to ask me for another,’ she murmured. ‘But first you might fetch me an ice. Chocolate, please.’
I dashed to the buffet and, using my elbows manfully despite the glares of the gathered clans, brought her back a chocolate ice.
She took the ice with her little smile and ate it in silence. She kept nodding to people as they swung past. I watched her with respect. Her poise really was delightful, her movements restrained and classic, without those mannerisms, those odious pretensions to gentility which one met, so often, in persons of a lower station. She was a lady. Yes, she was a lady. And she was – how could I phrase it? – she was quite good-looking. Her rather prominent eyes sparkled, the dance had brought some colour to her aesthetically hollow cheeks, she wore a charming white flounced frock – very simple and girlish. And she was not very old. How old was she exactly? Puzzled, I tried to guess. Twenty-seven perhaps; she might even be less; certainly not a day more than thirty.
I said suddenly, in a low voice:
‘It’s kind of you to bother with an idiot like me. Do you realise, before we met I hadn’t spoken to a single soul here but the butler? And even he didn’t answer me. He just drooped his eyelids at me like a bishop.’
She went into a low ripple of laughter.
‘That’s because you don’t know anybody. We must change all that.’
She waved her spoon at a passing young man.
‘Maurice! You ought to know our new physician.’
In five minutes she introduced me to half a dozen men. They were not snobs, but decent fellows after all, I saw, decent fellows every one of them. I was no longer an outsider. I was one of them.
I waltzed with Miss Malcolm again. They played the ‘Blue Danube’. It was superb.
‘You really dance quite well,’ she said casually.
I blushed happily.
For most of the
evening I danced with Miss Malcolm. She introduced me to many of the male guests, but the women to whom she made me known were – quite by chance, of course – rather too old to dance. Besides, that didn’t matter in the least. It was she I wished for a partner. Our steps matched perfectly.
I had an exciting evening. I came out of my shell, was lively, gay, and gallant I returned to Tannochbrae, not at eleven as Cameron had predicted, but at four o’clock on the following morning. Before I left Dundrum Castle I asked Miss Malcolm if I might see her home. She shook her head coyly.
‘I’m staying here overnight. But you must come and see me when I get back to my house. You know where it is. In that funny old crescent behind Knoxhill Park. Come in the evening when you have time. In the evening I’m usually free.’
Next morning at breakfast I was fresh as a daisy and full of the doing of the night before.
Old Cameron looked at me.
‘It takes youth,’ he observed sententiously, ‘to dance all night and get up next mornin’ without swearin’ at the porridge. Ye seem to have had a grand time.’
‘A glorious time,’ I heartily agreed.
‘Ay, ay! Just so! Did ye meet many of the gentry?’
‘Lots of them.’
‘Do ye tell me now! That’s grand, that’s grand. Maybe Lord Sinclair’ll be havin’ ye in next time he takes the measles.’
I reddened … that confounded reflex of an active circulation which always betrayed me.
‘As a matter of fact,’ I observed loftily, ‘I danced most of the evening with Lord Sinclair’s cousin.’
‘His Lordship’s cousin?’
‘Exactly! With Miss Malcolm.’
‘Miss Malcolm!’ Cameron echoed blankly, then covered his amazement by falling hastily to the dissection of his grilled kipper. ‘Ay, ay, she is some connection of the Sinclairs’. Not a first cousin, I shouldn’t say, no, no, hardly as near as that. But a nice enough body none the less.’