The Shadow of the Lynx (33 page)

My mother spent the day in her room declaring that she did not want to see anybody. I saw Lizzie, who told me she had slept for some part of the afternoon having worn herself out crying.

“She’ll be better tomorrow. Miss Minta,” comforted Lizzie. I talked it over with Lucie, who was very distressed.

“It’s quite clear that criticism doesn’t help Mamma.” I said.

“Your father is too gentle by nature. Perhaps he should have

continued as he began. “

“He is too kind to take up a new role. It’s like changing his character.”

It was natural that Lucie would not admit that Dr. Hunter’s diagnosis was wrong. She repeated Lizzie’s words: “She’ll be better tomorrow.”

Before I retired that night I went up to my mother’s room, but hesitated before entering. As I stood at the door I heard my mother’s voice: “You’re wicked! Oh, how I wish I could go back all those years.

I’d know what to do because you’re wicked . wicked. “

I pictured my father’s mild bewildered eyes and I decided that I would not go into that room. So I went to my own and lay awake for a long time thinking of the sadness of my parents’ lives and all the lost years when they might have been happy.

Neither of them was to blame. I wished that I had been able to go in and tell them this, to implore them to forget the past and start afresh from now.

How I wished that I had gone in that night! I never saw my mother alive again.

Next morning when Lizzie went in to awaken her she found her dead.

Two

Lizzie said afterwards that she had a strange premonition; she was waiting for the bell to ring for the early morning tea and when it didn’t come she went in.

“She was lying there,” said Lizzie, “and there was something different about her. And when I went close … oh, my God!”

Lizzie had been hysterical and incoherent but she did run for Lucie and Lucie came to me. I awoke with a start to find them both standing by my bed.

Lucie said: “Minta, you have to prepare yourself for a shock.”

I scrambled up and stared at them.

“It’s your mother,” said Lucie.

“Something dreadful .. 8 ” Is she . dead? “

Lucie nodded slowly. She was unlike herself—her eyes

were wide, her pupils se emeu una ted and her mouth quivered;

I felt she was fighting hard to control herself. Lizzie started to sob.

“After all these years…. It’s not true. There’s a mistake. She’s fainted, that’s what it is.”

“I have sent for Dr. Hunter,” said Lucie.

“And my father?” I asked.

“I haven’t sent word to him yet. I thought we’d wait until the doctor came. There’s nothing he can do.”

“But he should know.”

“I went into her room,” murmured Lizzie.

“You see, she hadn’t rung.. ” Then she covered her face with her hands and continued to sob.

I snatched up my dressing-gown and said: ‘ll1 go to her. “

Lucie shook her head.

“Don’t,” she said.

“But I must. I don’t believe she’s dead. Only yesterday Dr. Hunter was saying …”

I had moved past Lucie to the door; she was beside me and walked with me to my mother’s room.

“Don’t, Minta,” whispered Lucie.

“Wait … wait until the doctor’s been.”

She held my hand tightly and drew me gently along the corridor to her room.

By the time Dr. Hunter arrived my father was up. Lucie had talked to him as she had talked to me, soothing us, really taking matters in hand. My father was quite willing for her to do this; so was I. It was Lueie who went with the doctor into my mother’s room.

“Take your father to the library and stay there till we come,” she said.

“Look after your father. This is a terrible shock for him.”

It seemed a long time before the doctor and Lucie came to us. It was in fact fifteen minutes.

Dr. Hunter was shaken; a good deal of his jaunty assurance had deserted him. No wonder! Since yesterday he had said my mother’s ailments were more or less imaginary, and now she was dead.

“So it’s true?” my father said blankly.

“She died of heart failure during the night,” said Dr. Hunter.

“So she had a bad heart after all. Doctor?”

“No.” He spoke defiantly.

“It could happen to any of us at any time.

There was nothing organically wrong with her heart.

Of course the invalid life she leu was not conducive to good health.

This was a case of the heart’s suddenly failing to function. “

“Poor Mamma!” I said.

I was sorry for Dr. Hunter. He seemed so distressed; he kept his eyes on my father’s face as though he expected sympathy. Sympathy for what?

Making a wrong diagnosis? Suspecting his patient was a malingerer and treating her as such when she was seriously ill?

Lucie’s eyes were fixed on him but he avoided looking at her. Once or twice he turned his gaze on me and then hastily back to my father.

“This is a great shock,” I said.

“Yesterday she was her normal self . “

“It happens like this now and then,” said the doctor.

“Minta and her father are very upset, naturally,” said Lucie.

“If they’ll allow me I’ll make the necessary arrangements.”

My father looked at her with gratitude and the doctor said:

“That would be very satisfactory, I think.”

Lucie signed to him and they went out together, leaving me with my father in the library. He raised his eyes to my face and I could not help being aware that it was shock not grief I saw there. Nor could I fail to notice his relief.

Later we went to see Mamma; she was lying in bed, her eyes closed; the frills of her white nightdress were up to her chin. She looked more peaceful in death than she ever had in life.

Something strange had happened to the house. It was no longer the same. Mamma lay in the churchyard where our family had been buried for the last five hundred years. The family vault had been ceremoniously opened; and we had gone through the mournful burial service. The shutters had been opened, the blinds drawn up. Lizzie had been ill for a week or so after the funeral and had emerged among us, gaunt and subdued. ^ Lucie had changed too; there was a certain aloofness about her.

“My father was different; it was as though a burden had been removed from his shoulders, and although he had tried to, he could not altogether bide his relief.

But perhaps the most changed of us all was Dr. Hunter. Before my mother’s death he had been a sociable young man;

ambitious in the extreme, he had been the friend of local

families as well as ineir aocior. tie nau enueavuured to make people forget his youth by his excessive confidence; he had clearly been eager to climb to the top of his profession. The change in him was subtle, but nevertheless marked-certainly to me.

I thought I understood. My mother had been ill. The pains she had complained of had been real; he had seen her, though, as a fractious, discontented woman—which she was—and had allowed his assessment of her character to cloud his judgment. It seemed clear to me that he had made a faulty diagnosis and that this had so upset his confidence in himself that it was having a marked effect on him. It would throw doubt on his advanced theories on which be was basing his career. I was sorry for him.

He called rarely at the house. None of us needed him professionally until I called him in to see Lizzie because I became worried about her. This was a week or so after the funeral and then I had a conversation with him.

“You’re not looking well yourself. Doctor,” I said.

“Are you saying ” Physician, heal thyself”?”

“I believe you are worrying about my mother’s death.”

I was immediately sorry that I had introduced the subject so abruptly, for a nervous twitch started in his cheek, and his head jerked sharply like a puppet’s.

“No, no,” he said quickly.

“It is not such an unusual case as you appear to think. It Can happen to completely healthy people. A clot of blood to the brain or heart and death can be the result. There is in some cases no warning. And your mother was scarcely a healthy woman, although there was nothing organically wrong, I have read of many such cases. I have encountered several when I was in hospital. No, no. It was not so very unusual.”

He was talking too fast and too persuasively. If what he said was true, why should he blame himself? It was unfortunate that the very day before she died he had told me that she had imagined her illness and we must ignore it.

“All the same,” I said, ‘you seem to reproach yourself. “

“Not in the least. It is something one cannot foresee.”

“I’m so glad I’m mistaken. We know that you took the utmost care of my mother.”

He seemed a little reconciled, but I was sure he was avoiding us for he never called socially at Whiteladies.

My father shut himself in his study for long periods. Lucie

2iS

told me that he was a gicdi ueal more upset than he appeared to be, and the fact that for the first time he had spoken to his wife unsympathetically, filled him with remorse.

“I am trying to get him working really hard on the book,” said Lucie.

“I think it best for him.”

Lucie was wonderful during that time. She asked if Lizzie might be her personal maid.

“Not,” she said deprecatingly, ‘that I need one, nor in my position should have one. I think, though, that for a time it would do Lizzie good. She has had a terrible shock. “

I said she must do as she liked for I was sure she knew best.

“Dear Minta,” she said, ‘you are the mistress of Whiteladies bow. “

It was a thought which hadn’t occurred to me before.

Pranklyn was with us constantly from the day of my mother’s death. He helped my father in all the ways which Lucie couldn’t. I often wondered what we should have done at that time without Lucie or Franklyn.

He rode over to Whiteladies every day and I could be sure af seeing him some time. We talked about my mother and how unhappy she had been and I said how sad it was that she had gone through life never enjoying it, apart from one little episode when her magnificent drawing-master had come to the house and she had fallen in love with him. I rather enjoyed talking about such things with Franklyn because his prosaic views and his terse way of expressing them amused me.

“I suppose,” I said, ‘that it’s better to have had one exciting experience in your life than go along at a smooth and comfortable level all the time . even though you do spend the rest of your life repining. “

“That seems to me & very unreasonable deduction,” said Pranklyn.

“You would say that! I am sure your life will be comfortable and easy for ever and ever, unruffled by any incident, disturbing or ecstatic.”

“Another unreasonable deduction.”

“But you would never make any mistake; therefore the element of excitement is removed.”

“Why do you think it is only interesting to make mistakes?”

“If you know how everything is going to work out …”

“But nobody knows how everything is going to work out. You are being quite illogical, Minta.”

And 1 laugned tor the first time since my mother had died. I tried to explain to him the change in the household.

“It’s as though the ghost of Mamma cannot rest.”

“That’s pure imagination on your part.”

“Indeed it’s not. Everybody has changed. Haven’t you noticed it? But of course you haven’t. You never notice things like that.”

“I appear to be completely unobservant to you?”

“Only psychologically. For all practical purposes your powers of observation would be very keen.”

“How kind of you to say so.”

“Sarcasm does not become you, Franklyn. Nor is it natural to you. You are much too kind. But there is a change in the household. My father is relieved …”

“Minta!”

“Now you are shocked. But the truth should not shock anyone.”

“I think you should be more restrained in your conversation.”

“I am only talking to you, Franklyn. There is no one else in the world to whom I would say this. And how can we blame him? I know one is not supposed to speak ill of the dead and there for you never would. But Mamma was beastly to him, so it is only ‘natural that he should feel relieved. Lizzie goes round looking lost and yet she and Mamma were always quarrelling and Lizzie was always on the point of being dismissed or leaving voluntarily.”

That is not unusual in attachments such as theirs, and it is quite natural that she should be “lost” , as you say. She has been deprived of a mistress. “

“But poor Dr. Hunter is worse than any of them. I am sure he blames himself. He seems to avoid calling at the house.”

“It is natural that he should since the invalid is no longer there.”

“And Lucie has changed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. She appears to be the most sensible member of the household.”

“She seems shut in, aloof, not so easy to talk to. I suppose she’s worried about Dr. Hunter. I wonder she didn’t announce their engagement when it happened.”

Why? “

“Well, as Dr. Hunter is depressed and thinks he made the wrong diagnosis… ,”

“Who said he did?”

“Well, I think he did.”

“You should not say such a thing, even to me. It’s slander when discussing a professional man.”

“But, Franklyn, yon are not a court of law.”

“You must not be frivolous, Minta. You must stop this romantic ising this attempt to build up a dramatic situation.”

“It’s because you’re such a close friend that I can say anything to you. Besides, I like to shock you. But I wanted to tell you something.

Yesterday Lucie came to me and suggested we get rid of Mrs. Glee. She’s not really needed, she says. Lucie can do all that she does, for now that Mamma is dead Lucie is relieved of a lot of her duties. “

“It seems a reasonable and logical suggestion. I have tried to tell you many times that you are living beyond your means. Mrs. Glee is the most expensive of your retainers. Yes, it’s an excellent idea.”

“You would see the practical side of it. The point is, if Lucie is going to take on Mrs. Glee’s duties and run Whiteladies, what of her marriage to Dr. Hunter?”