Читать книгу Interference - Roland Pertwee - Страница 7

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It was not John Marlay’s way to ask questions. He knew, by experience, that a willing confidence is a source of greater comfort than confidence inspired by questioning. And so, although swift to mark the sudden and alarming change in Faith, he said nothing.

He found it impossible to explain why she should have set out one morning, filled with happiness and good nature, and by the afternoon of the same day was huddled in a dark corner of the yellow-panelled living-room, a very ghost of herself.

Women, as he knew, are subject to unexplained nervous reactions. A nature like Faith’s, capable of touching pinnacles of happiness pays for the privilege in occasional moods of despair.

During the earlier years of their marriage, he had often marked the bogey of the past appear, like a shadow, in her eyes; but that past, he told himself, was dead and buried beneath the fertile soil of their present happiness. As a doctor he was confident that she was suffering from a trouble of the mind, not of the body. His love for Faith was founded largely on primitive instincts of possession, and in defence of his own property he waited, apparently unconscious that anything was amiss, for the explanation to disclose itself.

He knew that Faith trusted him as implicitly as a child—a child incapable of reticence or deceit.

At their first meeting, with a frankness which might have created a real danger to herself, she had told him everything. After that there had been no secrets.

Sometimes he had wondered if her love of confessing, even the most trivial matter, had sprung from her upbringing in a convent. Faith was not a Roman Catholic, but the habit of unburdening the soul of its sins and omissions clung to her like a little white gown. In his mind’s eye John always saw Faith in white.

The first indication she had given him that something was wrong with her was a sudden rebellion against the publicity which surrounded their lives, and in which, a few hours before, she had found such delight.

‘Must I be photographed every time I go out of the house—plucked at—questioned?’ she demanded, her voice rising hysterically. ‘I cannot stand it; it ... does ... seem so silly.’

She covered her eyes with tightly pressed hands and stood rigid.

‘Oh! wow! wow!’ he replied. ‘We are all being pestered and badgered about and questioned these days; but it doesn’t matter, my sweet, does it?’

Stooping, he kissed the curve of her neck where it flowed into a huddled shoulder.

‘You love to treat me like a patient,’ she said.

‘Hardly,’ he returned with a laugh. ‘I don’t treat my patients that way, believe me.’

Ordinarily, she, too, would have laughed, but not now. She trailed the back of her hand across her forehead and moved away from him, nibbling at a thumb nail.

John Marlay watched her from beneath knit brows.

‘Publicity?’ he said to himself. ‘It can’t be publicity. What then? Interference perhaps—interference of the world outside with our private lives? I wonder. Hardly that. One resents interference, one isn’t frightened of it.’

For every outline of her figure, as she leaned half-swaying against the window curtain, was illustrative of fear.

There was another blank postcard on his breakfast table when he came down next morning. They were arriving with monotonous regularity.

John Marlay frowned, and carried it off to the consulting room to put it with its fellows in one of the drawers of his writing table.

Barbara was there before him, with a sheaf of letters for signature. To be outspoken was her creed. Without preamble she announced that something was the matter with Faith. ‘Did she tell you so?’ he asked.

Barbara shook her head.

‘One doesn’t want telling; one can see it for oneself. Why don’t you have it out with her, Uncle John?’

‘She may not want to have it out,’ he answered lightly.

‘I think you are wrong,’ said Barbara. ‘It’s awful cheek, but I cannot help thinking you are wrong.’

‘We are all liable to be,’ he answered, putting an arm round her waist and drawing her toward him. ‘But one thing I have discovered in life, Babs darling, and that is the mistake of turning up when and where one hasn’t been invited.’ He paused, and went on, gently, ‘In the quiet places of men’s and women’s souls, little stews are always fussing and bubbling away, but until the lid comes off the saucepan it is nobody’s business to inquire what the stew is made of.’

‘Um,’ said Barbara, ‘I’m not so sure. When anything’s wrong, I believe in having it out.’

‘That’s because you are twenty years younger than I am,’ he said with an affectionate pressure of his arm. ‘I have a conviction that, between keeping things in and having them out, there’s a small empty corridor along which one must walk on tiptoe. It’s kind of Tom Tiddler’s ground, Babs dear, barred at either end with a door marked “No admittance.” You may push one door open successfully enough, but the sound of your feet clattering along that empty corridor, very often persuades the person on the other side of the second door to shoot the bolts.’

Barbara screwed up her face.

‘I suppose in the politest possible way you are telling me to mind my own business.’

‘It isn’t a bad policy,’ he nodded. ‘There would be a devil of a lot more work done in this world and a great deal less pain, if everybody did mind their own business.’

‘I know you are generally right,’ said Barbara, ‘but no one is going to persuade me that it’s right for Faith to look miserable.’ She stopped short, in the presence of a sudden idea. ‘Uncle John, you don’t think she’s going to have a——’

But John put a hand over her mouth.

‘If ever you want to see the happiest woman in the world,’ he answered, ‘I should advise you to take a look at Faith, if and when she is ever going to have a——’

The door opened and Childers announced the arrival of a patient.

Gathering up her letters, Barbara slipped out of the consulting room by way of the laboratory.