Read Ebook: The confessions of a well-meaning woman by McKenna Stephen

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Ebook has 505 lines and 70156 words, and 11 pages

THE CONFESSIONS OF A WELL-MEANING WOMAN

LADY ANN SPENWORTH PREFERS NOT TO DISCUSS HER OPERATION

Hoped for, rather than expected... You are quite right.

"Oh, she's signed on for the duration of the war," Brackenbury interrupted.

"But I do think," I resumed, "that you should keep an eye on her..."

"Her head is screwed on quite tight," said Brackenbury, "though I have no idea what you're insinuating."

"If she's in love with him, I don't care who she marries," said Brackenbury with a quite extraordinary callousness. "He must be a decent fellow, of course, who'll make her happy. I don't attach the importance to Debrett that you do, Ann, especially since the war."

"But aren't you frightening yourself unduly?," interrupted Brackenbury. "Arthur told me it was only--"

Brackenbury would only talk of increasing expenses and the burden of taxation.

"I could face my operation with an easier mind," I said, "if I knew that Will would never want."

"Do not," I said, "let us discuss the matter any more. It is unpleasant to be a pauper, but more unpleasant to be a beggar. If my boy wins through with his life--"

"Oh, you needn't worry about that," said Brackenbury. "They tell me he's on a staff which has never even heard a shot fired."

"Is it not enough," I said, "that you have refused the last request I may ever make? Is it necessary to add slander to ungraciousness?"

I refused to continue the discussion and sank back on my pillows.

"What," I said, "what have I done to deserve this?"...

And it was I who found Ruth for him...

"But," I said, "I do not want to disinter old controversies. If I have failed in achievement, you must judge me on my intentions. Lying here, though I am not a nervous woman, I have been compelled to think of the uncertainty of life. Let us, Spenworth," I said, "bury the hatchet. If anything happens to me, you must be our rock and anchor. You are the head of the family; Arthur is your brother; Will is your nephew--"

"No fault of mine," growled Spenworth in a way that set everything trembling. He is obsessed by the idea that rudeness is the same thing as humour. "What's he been up to now?"

"Well, Brackenbury told me--and Arthur told Brackenbury--," he began.

I was not bargaining or haggling; it was a direct appeal to his generosity... Spenworth hummed and hawed for a while; then he said:

"I don't feel very much disposed to do anything more for that young man."

I had no more idea what he was talking about than the man in the moon!

"Spenworth! I must beg for enlightenment," I said.

"Oh, we'll let bygones be bygones," he answered. "The case was never brought to trial. But, as long as I'm likely to be called on to wipe up little messes of that kind, I'd sooner make a sinking-fund, to provide against emergencies, than pay Will money to get into more mischief and then have to stump up again."

"Then," I said, "you repudiate all responsibility to your own flesh and blood? Whether I live or die, this is a request I shall never repeat."

"Oh, we'll see how things go," he answered. "You may not be as bad as you think. If I find Will starving at the end of the war, I'd undertake to pay his passage to Australia and give him a hundred a year to stay there..."

"Let us," I said, "discuss this no further."

"You know," he began, very importantly, "you wouldn't have half so much trouble with that fellow, if you'd licked him a bit more when he was younger..."

"Who," I asked, "who made thee a ruler and a judge?"

And then, truly honestly, I had to beg him to leave me in order that I might compose myself....

Compose myself!

Alas for reality! Phyllida came and bullied me for my "interference." ... But I told you about that. And, the day before the operation, Arthur asked whether I really thought it was necessary. Like that! At the eleventh hour!

"Dear Arthur," I said, "I am not doing this for my amusement."

"Oh, of course not!," he answered. "All the same, I wish it could be avoided. And, if it can't be avoided, I wish you'd kept more quiet about it. I don't know what you said to Spenworth and Brackenbury, but they're making the deuce's own tale of it."

I begged him to enlighten me.

But not so marvellous as what followed. Dr. Richardson congratulated me, and I had to beg for enlightenment.

"It will not be necessary," he said, "to operate after all. The symptoms are exactly as you described them, but a little treatment, principally massage..."

And that is why I am still here, though I hope to be allowed up on Friday. But lying in bed makes one so absurdly weak! What I have told you is for your ears alone. It would be altogether too much of a triumph for Spenworth. Instead of feeling any thankfulness that I had been spared the knife, he would only say... Well, you can imagine it even from the very imperfect sketch that I have given you. No, I am assured that massage makes the operation wholly unnecessary; and I am already feeling much, much better. If I have not taken the whole world into my confidence, it is partly because I detest this modern practice of discussing one's inside and partly because I am altogether too humble-minded to fancy that the entire world is interested in my private affairs. When the princess asked "How did the operation go off?," I said "Excellently, thank you, ma'am." And that was what all the papers published. It was not worth while telling her that the operation was found to be unnecessary. I am not of those who feel obliged to trumpet forth that Mrs. Tom Noddy has left Gloucester Place for Eastbourne or Eastbourne for Gloucester Place. As Tennyson says, "Again--who wonders and who cares?"

Truly honestly, I don't think we have come to that yet...

But you agree that they are hardly the people I should wish to discuss my operation with. And whatever I have said to you has of course been said in confidence.

LADY ANN SPENWORTH REPUDIATES ALL RESPONSIBILITY

You know this Colonel Butler, perhaps? I'll confess at once that I liked him. When he was convalescent, Phyllida brought him to luncheon one day in Mount Street, and I thought him a decent, manly young fellow. I understand he comes from the west of England; and that, perhaps, accounts for the accent which I thought I detected; or, of course, he may simply have been not altogether at ease. I liked him--frankly. Some one quite early in the war said something about "temporary officers" and "temporary gentlemen"--it was very naughty, but so true!--; I said to my boy Will, when Colonel Butler was gone:

I was struggling to find a meaning--Phyllida expresses herself almost as carelessly as her poor mother, but with hardly her mother's excuse--, when she began to pour out a catalogue of his virtues: he had won a Military Cross and a Distinguished Service Order with a bar, he was the youngest colonel in the army, I don't know what else.

"Who are his people?," I asked.

A name like Butler is so very misleading; it may be all right--or it may not.

"And what is he in civil life?," I asked.

I had made up my mind at the outset to do nothing precipitate. The war has made girls quite dangerously romantic, and any opposition might have created--artificially--a most undesirable attachment. I knew that Phyllida had these young officers through her hands in dozens; and, though I was naturally anxious, I knew that in a few weeks or months our paragon would be back in Flanders or Devonshire--out of Christine Malleson's hospital, at all events. I commended my spirit, so to say...

An opportunity came to me two or three days before my operation. Phyllida--she was quite brazen about it--admitted that she had dined with her hero four times in one week. That was on a Saturday; I'm glad to say that she hasn't become democratic enough to go to these picture-houses, and there was nothing to do on Sunday. I told her she might ask Colonel Butler to dine with us. And, when he came, I took occasion to speak rather freely to him.

"I can't help seeing," I said, "that you are very intimate with my niece."

"Oh, I'm devoted to Phyllida," he answered.

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