Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 271
“Katya’s coming back!” she said. “Katya’s coming back. She’s on one of the slow ships from Philadelphia, with an American. She may be here any day, and I did so want to let Toto know before he started for Athens.”
She was still in black furs, with a black veil, but her cheeks were more flushed than usual, and her eyes danced.
“Think of Katya’s coming back!” she said, but her lower lip suddenly quivered. “Toto hasn’t started?” she asked. “His train doesn’t go till one.”
She regarded Dudley Leicester with something of impatience. She said afterwards that she had never before noticed he was goggle-eyed. He stood, enormously tall, his legs very wide apart, gazing at her with his mouth open.
“I’m not a ghost, man,” she said at last. “What’s wrong with you?”
Dudley Leicester raised his hand to his straw-coloured moustache.
“Grimshaw’s talking to Saunders,” he said.
Ellida looked at him incredulously. But eventually her face cleared.
“Oh, about Peter?” she said. “I was beginning to think you’d got an inquest in the house....”
And suddenly she touched Dudley Leicester vigorously on the arm.
“Come! Get him up from wherever he is,” she said, with a good-humoured vivacity. “Katya’s more important than Peter, and I’ve got the largest number of things to tell him in the shortest possible time.”
Dudley Leicester, in his dull bewilderment, was veering round upon his straddled legs, gazing first helplessly at the bell beside the chimney-piece and then at the door. Even if he hadn’t been already bewildered, he would not have known very well how properly to summon a friend who was talking to a servant of his own. Did you ring, or did you go to the top of the stairs and call? But his bewilderment was cut short by the appearance of Grimshaw himself, and at the sight of his serene face just lighting up with a little smile of astonishment and pleasure, Dudley Leicester’s panic vanished as suddenly and irrationally as it had fallen on him. He even smiled, while Ellida Langham said, with a sharp, quick little sound, “Boo!” in answer to Robert’s exclamation of “Ellida!” But Grimshaw took himself up quickly, and said:
“Ah! I know you’ve some final message for me, and you went round to my rooms, and Jervis told you I’d come on here.”
She was quite a different Ellida from the plaintive lady in the Park. Her lips were parted, her eyes sparkled, and she held her arms behind her back as if she were expecting a dog to jump up at her.
“Ah! You think you know everything, Mr. Toto,” she said; “but, je vous le donne en mille, you don’t know what I’ve come to tell you.”
“I know it’s one of two things,” Grimshaw said, smiling: “Either Kitty’s spoken, or else Katya has.”
“Oh, she’s more than spoken,” Ellida cried out. “She’s coming. In three days she’ll be here.”
Robert Grimshaw reflected for a long time.
“You did what you said you would?” he asked at last.
“I did what I said I would,” she repeated. “I appealed to her sense of duty. I said that, if she was so good in the treatment of obscure nervous diseases — and you know the head-doctor-man over there said she was as good a man as himself — it was manifestly her duty, her duty to mother’s memory, to take charge of mother’s only descendant — that’s Kitty — and this is her answer: She’s coming — she’s coming with a patient from Philadelphia.... Oh! she’s coming. Katya’s coming again. Won’t it make everything different?”
She pulled Robert Grimshaw by the buttonhole over to the window, and began to speak in little sibilant whispers.
And it came into Dudley Leicester’s head to think that, if Katya Lascarides was so splendid in the treatment of difficult cases, she might possibly be able to advise him as to some of the obscure maladies from which he was certain that he suffered.
Robert Grimshaw was departing that day for the city of Athens, where for two months he was to attend to the business of the firm of Peter Lascarides and Co., of which he was a director.
CHAPTER III.
WITH her eyes on the grey pinnacles of the Scillies, Katya Lascarides rose from her deck-chair, saying to Mrs. Van Husum:
“I am going to send a marconigram.”
Mrs. Van Husum gave a dismal but a healthy groan. It pleased Katya, since it took the place of the passionately pleading “Oh, don’t leave me — don’t leave me!” to which Katya Lascarides had been accustomed for many months. It meant that her patient had arrived at a state of mind so normal that she was perfectly fit to be left to the unaided care of her son and daughter-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Clement P. Van Husum junior, who resided at Wantage. Indeed, Mrs. Van Husum’s groan was far more the sound of an elderly lady recovering from the troubles of sea-sickness than that which would be made by a neurotic sufferer from the dread of solitude.
Katya, with her tranquil and decided step, moved along the deck and descended the companion forward to where the Marconi installation sent out its cracklings from a little cabin surrounded by what appeared a schemeless jumble of rusty capstans and brown cables. With the same air of pensive introspection and tranquil resolve she leaned upon the little slab that was devoted to the sender of telegrams, and wrote to her sister Ellida, using the telegraphic address of her husband’s office:
“Shall reach London noon to-morrow. Beg you not to meet ship or to come to hotel for three days. Writing conditions.”
And, having handed in this message through the little shutter to the invisible operator, she threaded her way with the same pensiveness between the capstans and the ropes up the companion and on to the upper deck where, having adjusted the rugs around the dozing figure of Mrs. Van Husum in her deck-chair, she paused, with her grey eyes looking out across the grey sea, to consider the purplish islands, fringed with white, the swirls of foam in the greeny and slate-coloured waters, the white lighthouse, and a spray-beaten tramp-steamer that, rolling, undulating, and battling through the long swell between them and the Scillies, was making its good departure for Mexico.
Tall, rounded, in excellent condition, with slow but decided actions, with that naturally pale complexion and clean-cut run of the cheek-bone from chin to ear which came to her with her Greek parentage, Katya Lascarides was reflecting upon the terms of her letter to her sister.
From the tranquillity of her motions and the determination of her few words, she was to be set down as a person, passionless, practical, and without tides of emotion. But her eyes, as she leant gazing out to landwards, changed colour by imperceptible shades, ranging from grey to the slaty-blue colour of the sea itself, and her brows from minute to minute, following the course of her thoughts, curved slightly upwards above eyes that expressed tender reminiscences, and gradually straightened themselves out until, like a delicate bar below her forehead, they denoted, stretched and tensile, the fact that she had arrived at an inflexible determination.
In the small and dusky reading-room, that never contained any readers, she set herself slowly to write.
“MY DEAR ELLIDA” (her letter ran), “I have again carefully read through your report of what Dr. Tressider says of Kitty’s case, and I see no reason why the dear child should not find it in her to speak within a few weeks — within a month even. Dr. Tressider is certain that there is no functional trouble of the brain or the vocal organs. Then there is just the word for it — obstinacy. The case is not so very uncommon: the position must be regarded psychologically rather than by a pathologist. On the facts given me I should say that your little Kitty is indulging in a sort of dramatic display. You say that she is of an affectionate, even of a jealously affectionate, disposition. Very well, then; I take it that she desires to be fussed over. Children are very inscrutable. Who can tell, then, whether she has not found out (I do not mean to say that she is aware of a motive, as you or I might be) — found out that the way to be fussed over is just not to speak. For you, I should say, it would be almost impossible to cure her, simply because you are the person most worried by her silence. And similarly with the nurses, who say to her: ‘Do say so-and-so, there’s a little pet!’ The desire to be made a fuss of, to occupy the whole mind of some person or of many persons, to cause one’s power to be felt — are these not motives very human? Is there any necessity to go to the length of putting them down to mental aberration?”
Katya Lascarides had finished her sheet of paper. She blotted it with deliberate motions, and, leaving it face downwards, she placed her arms upon the table, and, her eyelashes drooping over her distant eyes, she looked reflectively at her long and pointed hands. At last she took up her pen and wrote upon a fresh sheet in her large, firm hand:
“I am diagnosing my own case!”
Serious and unsmiling she looked at the words; then, as if she were scrawling idly, she wrote:
“Robert.”
Beneath that:
“Robert Hurstlett Grimshaw.”
And then:
“Greek: sas agapo.”
She heaved a sigh of voluptuous pleasure, and began to write, “I love you! I love you! I love you...” letting the words be accompanied by deep breaths of solace, as a very thirsty child may drink. And, having written the page full all but a tiny corner at the bottom, she inscribed very swiftly and in minute letters:
“Oh, Robert Grimshaw, why don’t you bring me to my knees?”
She heaved one great sigh of desire, and, leaning back in her chair, she looked at her words, smiling, and her lips moving. Then, as it were, she straightened herself out; she took up the paper to tear it into minute and regular fragments, and, rising, precise and tranquil, she walked out of the doorway to the rail of the ship. She opened her hand, and a little flock of white squares whirled, with the swiftness of swallows, into the discoloured wake. One piece that stuck for a moment to her forefinger showed the words:
“My own case!”
She turned, appearing engrossed and full of reserve, again to her writing.
“No,” she commenced, “do not put down this form of obstinacy to mental aberration. It is rather to be considered as a manifestation of passion. You say that Kitty is not of a passionate disposition. I imagine it may prove that she is actually of a disposition passionate in the extreme. But all her passion is centred in that one desire — the desire to excite concern. The cure for this is not medical; it is merely practical. Nerve treatment will not cure it, nor solicitude, but feigned indifference. You will not touch the spot with dieting; perhaps by... But there, I will not explain my methods to you, old Ellida. I discussed Kitty’s case, as you set it forth, very fully with the chief in Philadelphia, and between us we arrived at certain conclusions. I won’t tell you what they were, not because I want to observe a professional reticence, but simply so that, in case one treatment fails, you may not be in agonies of disappointment and fear. I haven’t myself much fear of non-success if things are as you and Dr. Tressider say. After all, weren’t we both of us as kiddies celebrated for fits of irrational obstinacy? Don’t you remember how one day you refused to eat if Calton, the cat, was in the dining-room? And didn’t you keep that up for days and days and days? Yet you were awfully fond of Calton.... Yes; I think I can change Kitty for you, but upon one condition — that you never plead for Robert Grimshaw, that you never mention his name to me. Quite apart from any other motive of mine — and you know that I consider mother’s example before anything else in the world — if he will not make this sacrifice for me he does not love me. I do not mean to say that you are to forbid him your house, for I understand he dines with you every other day. His pleadings I am prepared to deal with, but not yours, for in you they savour of disrespect for mother. Indeed, disrespect or no disrespect, I will not have it. If you agree to this, come to our hotel as soon as you have read it. If you disagree — if you won’t, dear, make me a solemn promise — leave me three days in which to make a choice out of the five patients who wish to have me in London, and then come and see me, bringing Kitty.
“Not a word, you understand — not one single word!
“On that dreadful day when Robert told us that father had died intestate and that other — I was going to add ‘horror,’ but, since it was mother’s doing, she did it, and so it must have been right — when he told us that we were penniless and illegitimate, I saw in a flash my duty to mother’s memory. I have stuck to it, and I will stick to it. Robert must give in, or I will never play the part of wife to him.”
She folded her letter into the stamped envelope, and, having dropped it deliberately into the ship’s letter-box, she rejoined Mrs. Van Husum, who was reading “The Mill on the Floss,” on the main deck.
PART III.
CHAPTER I.
IN the shadow of a huge mulberry-tree, upon whose finger-like branches already the very light green leaves were beginning to form a veil, Katya Lascarides was sitting in a deck-chair. The expression upon her face was one of serenity and of resigned contentment. She was looking at the farmhouse; she was knitting a silk necktie, a strip of vivid green that fell across her light grey skirt. With a little quizzical and jolly expression, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of cream-coloured overalls, Kitty Langham looked sideways for approval at her aunt. She had just succeeded in driving a black cat out of the garden.
They lived down there in a deep silence, Katya never speaking and eliciting no word from the child. But already the child had made concessions to the extent of clearing her throat or emitting a little “Hem!” when she desired to attract her aunt’s attention; but her constant occupation was found in the obstinate gambols of a pet lamb — a “sock,” as the farm-people called it — which inhabited the farmhouse, bleated before the door, or was accustomed by butting to send the garden-gate flying back upon its hinges.
This creature, about one-third the size of a mature ram, was filled with obstinacies apparently incomprehensible; it was endowed with great strength and a considerable weight. With one push of its head it would send the child rolling several feet along the grass; it would upset chairs in the dining-room; it bleated clamorously for milk at all meals when Kitty had her milk and water.
Against its obstinacies Kitty’s was valiant but absolutely useless. With her arms round its neck — a little struggling thing with dark eyes and black hair, in her little white woollen sweater — she would attempt to impede the lamb’s progress across a garden-bed. But the clinching of her white teeth availed nothing at all. She would be dragged across the moist earth, and left upon her back like a little St. Lawrence amongst the flames of the yellow crocuses. And at these struggles Katya Lascarides presided with absolute deafness and with inflexible indifference; indeed, after their first meeting, when Ellida Langham had brought the child with her nurse to the gloomy, if tranquil, London hotel, where Katya had taken from Mrs. Van Husum a parting which lasted three days, and ended in Mrs. Van Husum’s dissolving into a flood of tears — at the end of that meeting Ellida had softly reproached Katya for the little notice she had taken of what was, after all, the nicest child in London.
But cool, calm, tall, and dressed in a grey that exactly matched her eyes, Katya “took charge.” And, during the process, whilst she said, “I shall want this and that,” or “The place must be on a hill; it must face southwest; it must be seven miles from the sea; it must be a farm, with plenty of live-stock but no children,” Ellida watched her, silent, bewildered, and admiring. It seemed so improbable that she should have a sister so professional, so practical, so determined. Yet there it was.
And then they descended, Katya and Kitty alone, into the intense silence of the farm that was found. It was on a hill; it faced southwest; it was seven miles from the sea, and the farmer’s wife, because she was childless, surrounded herself with little animals whose mothers had died.
And there the child played, never hearing a word, in deep silence with the wordless beasts. This had lasted three weeks.
The gate was behind Katya’s back as she smiled at the rolling hills below the garden. She smiled because the night before she believed she had overheard Kitty talking to the lamb; she smiled because she was exhausted and quivering and lonely. She knitted the green necktie, her eyes upon the April landscape, where bursts of sunlight travelled across these veil-like films of new leaves that covered tenderly the innumerable hedgerows.
And suddenly she leaned forward; the long fingers holding the knitting-needles ceased all motion. She had heard a footstep — and she knew every footstep of the farm....
He was leaning over the back of her chair; she saw, against the blue when she opened her eyes, his clear, dark skin, his clear, dark contemplative eyes. Her arms slowly raised themselves; her lips muttered unintelligible words which were broken into by the cool of his cheek as she drew him down to her. She rose to her feet and recoiled, and again, with her arms stretched straight before her, as if she were blind and felt her way, her head thrown back and her eyes closed, an Oriental with a face of chiselled alabaster. And with her eyes still closed, her lips against his ear as if she were asleep, she whispered:
