Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (11 page)

T
HE YOUNG doctor stood looking down at the almost unconscious Dennis, who lay quite still except for a trembling of the hands. Emma sat beside him so exhausted she did not hear him enter the room and was startled when he asked her to fetch the nurse. She looked at him with her heavy brown eyes, too large for her narrow, white, dreaming face. “She is like an El Greco Madonna,” he thought, “except for the hair; but, if that was covered with blue drapery—but then it’s so beautiful. She is perfect as she is.” He collected himself and said:

“Miss Willoweed, the nurse, if you tell the nurse Doctor Hatt is here to see your brother—”

“Oh yes, of course, you are one of the doctors. I’ll tell the nurse,” and she crept from the dark little room as Doctor Hatt entered it.

“That poor girl is taking her brother’s illness very badly,” he said as he closed the door preparatory to telling his assistant about Eunice’s miscarriage.

“I’ll have to make a report; but there is no need to let the old lady know. The nurse can keep an eye on her. Ah, here she is!”

The nurse entered the room with a rustle of starch and her mouth coyly smiling under her moustache, and the examination of Dennis began.

When the two doctors left the room they found Ebin Willoweed standing on the landing under some stags’ horns, biting his nails. He looked at their grave faces and followed them downstairs with a dreadful sinking of his heart. Francis Hatt was surprised to observe how acutely his friend was suffering from his boy’s illness and put his hand on his arm for a moment as he said, “I’m afraid he’s very ill indeed, and I can give you little hope. Would you be willing to send him to hospital, where I think he would stand a better chance?”

But Ebin would not agree to Dennis being sent to hospital, and shook the doctor’s hand from his arm and hurried upstairs to see his son for himself. The nurse was just leaving the room as he entered and she pushed past him rather impatiently, but was punished for her rudeness by meeting Grandmother Willoweed on the landing. The old woman was in a dreadful state because she thought she could hear a death-watch beetle in her wardrobe; and she insisted on the nurse coming to listen. The nurse turned down her mouth at the evil-smelling room, and stood stiffly as the old woman bent by the cupboard straining to hear through her ear trumpet.

“It’s a mouse,” she declared crossly. “Don’t you know a mouse when you hear one? You should get a trap or cat and get rid of the disgusting creature.”

“But my cat’s dead,” wailed the old woman, “that wicked woman the baker’s wife squashed it, and now I have to have mice in my room. It’s too unjust!”

The nurse turned and left the room, but, suddenly remembering that Grandmother Willoweed would be the one to pay her for her services, she opened the door a chink and shouted, “Such a pity about your cat!”

As the doctors left the house together they saw Norah and Fig talking. He had just told Norah that his mother had died in a muscular spasm which followed a violent attack of delirium, and he seemed greatly distressed at losing his disreputable parent. “How strange that he should grieve for that dirty old woman!” thought Norah. “But he was a good son, and they say good sons make even better husbands.” So she said suitably comforting words to him, hoping that he would not know they were insincere.

As the day passed Dennis grew worse, and hallucinations came to him in the form of dreadful animals and strange fires. The poor child’s cries could be heard through the house, and Grandmother Willoweed became hysterical and thought the end of the world had come and it was Revelations that were happening. Hattie and her father went to the river and sat in one of the moored boats, two unhappy humped figures in the sun. The nurse turned Emma from the room; but she sat under her brother’s window in the dark front garden and leant against the ivy-covered walls that smelt of bitter dust. She listened to her brother’s terrified cries, and even when they ceased they seemed to echo in her head. She saw the doctors come again through the green gates and later heard their voices droning from the window above, and she heard the nurse’s bright little laugh and then Dennis’s shrill voice, high and strained, describing some fabulous vision. She sat so still a baby robin, brown and very round, settled on her shoe and gave a plaintive chirp and she shook her foot as she said, “Go away, you beastly bird”; for she remembered the maids telling her that birds, usually robins, came into the house when death was expected. Once Old Ives had told her that, when his young brother was dying, a dove with one broken wing had come into the kitchen and flown about the dresser, breaking the blue plates, and his father had wrung its neck.

It began to grow dark, and Ebin and Hattie left the boat and crept back to the house. In the dusky hall the clock sounded loudly in the stillness; but upstairs there was the sound of great snores from Grandmother Willoweed, who had been drugged without her knowledge. Ebin paused by his son’s door and then opened it a little way, half dreading what he would see; but all he saw was Dennis lying very still and Philip Andrew intently watching beside him.

“How is he?” he asked in a husky whisper.

“Well it’s difficult to say,” the young doctor answered. “He’s quieter now; but he’s very exhausted and had a form of epileptiform convulsions about an hour ago. If he gets through this night, I think the worst will be over. Anyway, Doctor Hatt is coming along soon and will stay most of the night with him. The nurse is having a bit of a rest—and, by the way, I hope you don’t mind, but we had to give your mother a little something to quieten her; she had got in rather a state!”

“Oh, no, of course not. I only wish you would do it more often.”

Ebin stood in the doorway looking at Dennis’s pinched little face and thought: “Perhaps this is the last time I shall see him alive. If only he gets better, I’ll take him for a holiday, somewhere where there are lots of boats and books; the poor little chap likes reading.” He stood there by the door gently swaying on his toes for a few minutes and suddenly said: “Goodnight. Call me if I’m wanted,” and went up his dark attic stairs. He was grateful for the darkness; for there were tears in his eyes.

The next visitor to Dennis’s room was Emma. She started to creep away when she saw the doctor sitting so still by her brother’s bed; but he noticed her drawn white face and tired, burning eyes and asked her to remain, talking to her in a soothing manner. He wondered if she had eaten that day and suggested to her that he was rather hungry and would be really grateful for a sandwich and coffee or even a boiled egg, “And perhaps you would be kind enough to eat with me because I’ve a real horror of eating alone.”

“Alright, if you like,” Emma agreed rather ungraciously as she trailed off to the kitchen; but when she returned sometime later to tell him that a meal was waiting in the morning-room she seemed much brighter, and he saw that she had washed her tear-spoiled face and combed her hair. The nurse was now in charge of Dennis; so they left the room together, Emma gravely leading the way.

On the morning-room table two tall candles burnt, shaded by red silk shades which made their food faintly pink. The young doctor gazed at Emma in wonder as he encouraged her to eat, and, when their meal was finished, he asked her questions about the life she led. He was astonished to learn that she had only left the village on two occasions since she had come to it as a young child. Once was to visit a dentist in Birmingham, “It was years ago, when I was about ten, but I remember it all so clearly. My grandmother took me and we went part of the way by carriage; but we also went in a train. I’d seen them of course, but had only been in one once before when I was very young, and it was wonderful. Everything was wonderful that day except that the dentist gassed me and I was sick after; but that didn’t last long. We had lunch in the most enormous hotel, where you could hear the trains as much as you wanted and there were waiters and palm-trees wherever you looked. And the shops! The windows were terrific, and I seem to remember them being filled with great Chinese vases as big as my grandmother and shining silks and jewels like sparkling falling water with the sun on it, only it was the light from electricity. There were some shops that sold nothing but new books with bright paper covers. I never knew new books had paper covers before. Oh, and there were shops that only sold flowers, and one that made sweets in the window, just masses of sticky stuff whirling round on two pieces of metal, and it never fell down. But the streets! They were so smooth and dark when you could see the road—which wasn’t easy because they were simply covered in traffic; no one even looked at cars, and there were so many handsome cabs, and huge drays often drawn by four horses, and the noise was sort of savage.” She suddenly paused for breath and then went on rather primly, “Of course it was frightfully dark and dirty. I suppose you have been there often.”

“No, I’ve never been to Birmingham, but it sounds a very fine place.”

“Where do you live then, not London?”

“Yes, I live in London, in Kensington; but tell me about the other time you left the village.”

“Well, it’s nothing much,” she said flatly.

“Please tell me; I’d like to hear about it so much,” he said almost pleadingly.

“It was only a cattle show at Leamington that my father took me to once. We just went in a carriage with the lawyer and his wife.” And then her face lit up again; “But you can’t believe how big some of the animals were, like giants; and some of the bulls’ horns, they were quite good enough to mount and hang in someone’s hall. There were horses too, and there was a show for them and jumping, and the people who rode them were so beautiful—the men as well as the women. And the machinery is so fascinating when it’s all new and hasn’t been left in fields for months on end. And there were bees making honey in a glass hive you could see right into. Have you ever seen a glass hive? ‘Observation’ I believe they are called.” Emma’s brow suddenly puckered and she said reproachfully, “Hadn’t you better go back to Dennis, now?”

Philip smiled as he replied, “Yes, I’d like to see him before I go. I have to visit the hospital as soon as Doctor Hatt takes over here.”

They walked up the stairs together without speaking, and as they entered Dennis’s room he whimpered like a small puppy. Philip bent over him and gently lifted one eyelid and examined his eye. While he was taking his pulse Doctor Hatt arrived and apologised to Emma for letting himself into the house from the garden “to save disturbing anyone,” he added. “And you should be in bed Emma. I assure you, if Dennis becomes worse, I will have you called immediately.”

So Emma, who had not slept for two nights, went to her room slightly reassured, and, only partly undressing, she fell on her hard white bed and was almost immediately asleep. It was early morning when she awoke to hear voices on the landing and softly running feet. Outside the birds were all singing and twittering wildly as if there had been a great silence which had suddenly ended. Her door opened slightly, and the nurse’s face appeared. When she saw Emma was awake she came into the room and said:

“Oh, my dear, your brother has just died. He suddenly became much worse and there was no time to call you.”

I
T WAS a small funeral, and Ebin and Old Ives were the only mourners from Willoweed House. Ives had not expected Dennis to die and had not planned a wreath for him; but eventually he had made one of many marguerites very close together, and as he stood by the grave he worried in case it was too feminine for a boy.

“But you couldn’t call him a boyish boy,” he muttered to himself; and the vicar stopped reading the burial service and frowned. The two doctors stood together under one umbrella, and the rain poured down and the grave was gradually filling with water round the little coffin. Ebin noticed a dead shrew mouse by his feet and carefully manoeuvred it with his shoe until it fell in the grave. “It will keep him company,” he thought. The vicar again stopped the service, glowered at the small object lying among the watery wreaths, and then ended the service with a prayer.

In the morning-room at Willoweed House the bereaved grandmother discussed her will with the lame Lawyer Williams. Sometimes she shouted at him in a threatening manner and then almost immediately she would whine that she was only a miserable old woman with no one to help her. This assumed pathetic whine was a recent affectation of hers and was very embarrassing and trying to those who came in contact with her.

“I can’t last for ever,” she almost shrieked. “What will become of my money when I die? And my good land all let out so advantageously. I can’t leave it to that fool Ebin, he’ll most likely sell it and fritter the money away in London.” She paused and then went on more quietly, “Perhaps he isn’t such a fool after all. I can’t say why, but he has been different lately, and seems to have got money from somewhere. But I don’t want to leave him mine except perhaps a little annuity or something like that. He’s just like his father—the same idiotic face and lazy ways. I’ve never liked either of them and frankly I was glad when my husband died and everything became mine after only putting up with him for three years. Ha! You are shocked, you old hypocrite.”

The lawyer laughed nervously. His laugh was a sort of bleat out of one side of his mouth, and he tucked his face into his neck in the most extraordinary one-sided manner when he gave it—which was about once in every four minutes if he was with a difficult client.

After much shouting and wailing on Grandmother Willoweed’s part and bleating from Lawyer Williams it was arranged that a new will should be drawn up leaving Ebin, Emma and Hattie an equal interest in her property until Emma had a son, who would inherit the entire property at the age of twenty-one, less three thousand pounds, which was to be divided between the previous beneficiaries.

“Of course this is entirely between ourselves, Williams. I can’t have Emma rushing off to get married and leaving me a lonely old woman dependent on servants. I can’t last much longer, but even if I do she will still be young in another ten or fifteen years.”