Stephen McKenna
The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman
Published by Good Press, 2020
EAN 4064066064686
Table of Contents
1.
I
LADY ANN SPENWORTH PREFERS NOT TO DISCUSS HER OPERATION
LADY ANN (to a friend of proved discretion): You have toiled all the way here again? Do you know, I feel I am only beginning to find out who are the true friends? I am much, much better … On Friday I am to be allowed on to the sofa and by the end of next week Dr. Richardson promises to let me go back to Mount Street. Of course I should have liked the operation to take place there—it is one’s frame and setting, but, truly honestly, Arthur and I have not been in a position to have any painting or papering done for so long … The surgeon insisted on a nursing-home. Apparatus and so on and so forth … Quite between ourselves, I fancy that they make a very good thing out of these homes; but I am so thankful to be well again that I would put up with almost any imposition …
Everything went off too wonderfully. Perhaps you have seen my brother Brackenbury? Or Ruth? Ah, I am sorry; I should have been vastly entertained to hear what they were saying, what they dared say. Ruth did indeed offer to pay the expenses of the operation—the belated prick of conscience!—; and it was on the tip of my tongue to say we are not yet dependent on her spasmodic charity. Also, that I can keep my lips closed about Brackenbury without expecting a—tip! But they know I can’t afford to refuse £500 … If they, if everybody would only leave one alone! Spied on, whispered about …
The papers made such an absurd stir! If you are known by name as occupying any little niche, the world waits gaping below. I suppose I ought to be flattered, but for days there were callers, letters, telephone-messages. Like Royalty in extremis … And I never pretended that the operation was in any sense critical …
Do you know, beyond saying that, I would much rather not talk about it? This very modern frankness … Not you, of course! But, when a man like my brother-in-law Spenworth strides in here a few hours before the anæsthetic is administered and says “What is the matter with you? Much ado about nothing, I call it …” That from Arthur’s brother to Arthur’s wife, when, for all he knew, he might never see her alive again … I prefer just to say that everything went off most satisfactorily and that I hope now to be better than I have been for years …
It was anxiety more than anything else. A prolonged strain always finds out the weak place: Arthur complaining that he had lost some of his directorships and that, with the war, he was being offered none to take their place; talk of selling the house in Mount Street, every corner filled with a wonderful memory of old happy days when the princess almost lived with me; sometimes no news from the front for weeks, and that could only mean that my boy Will was moving up with the staff. It was just when I was at my wits’ end that he wrote to say that he must have five hundred pounds. He gave no reason, so I assumed that one of his friends must be in trouble; and I was not to tell Arthur … This last effort really exhausted me; and I knew that, if I was not to be a useless encumbrance to everybody, I must “go into dock,” as Will would say, “for overhauling and repairs.” Dr. Richardson really seemed reluctant to impose any further tax on my vitality at such a time, but I assured him that I was not afraid of the knife. So here you find me!
A little home-sick for Mount Street and my friends? Indeed, yes; though I have not been neglected. Are not those tulips too magnificent? Were, rather … The dear princess brought them a week ago, and I was so touched by her sweetness that I have not the heart to throw them away. If she, to whom I can be nothing but a dull old woman … I mean, it brings into relief the unkindness of others; and I do indeed find it hard to forgive the callousness of Spenworth and my brother Brackenbury. No, that—like the operation—I would rather not talk about. Their attitude was so—wicked …
You, of course, have been under an anæsthetic. I? Not since I was a child; and the only sensation I recall was a hammer, hammer, hammer just as I went off, which I believe is nothing but the beating of one’s heart … But before the operation … You must not think that I am posing as a heroine; but accidents do happen, and for two days and two nights, entirely by myself … It was inevitable that one should take stock … My thoughts went back to old days at Brackenbury, spacious old days with my dear father when he was ambassador at Rome and Vienna (they were happy times, though the expense crippled him); old days when my brother was a funny, impetuous little boy—not hard, as he has since become … I am fourteen years his senior; and, from the time when our dear mother died to the time when I married Arthur, I was wife and mother and sister at the Hall. On me devolved what, in spite of the socialists, I venture to call the great tradition of English life …
Lying in bed here, one could not help saying “if anything goes amiss, am I leaving the world better than I found it?” Under my own vine and fig-tree I had been a good wife to Arthur and a good mother to Will; and, if there had not always been some one of good intentions to smoothe over difficulties with the family on both sides … Blessed are the peacemakers, though I have sometimes wondered whether I did right in even tolerating my brother-in-law Spenworth. It is probably no news to you that he very much wanted to marry me, but I always felt that even Cheniston, even the house in Grosvenor Square, even his immense income would not compensate me for a husband whom I could never trust out of my sight. Arthur may be only the younger brother, I very soon found that the old spacious days were over; but with him one does know where one is, and I have never grudged poor Kathleen Manorby my leavings. There indeed is a lesson for the worldly! She was in love with a poor decent young subaltern named Laughton, more suitable for her in every way; however, the lure of Cheniston and the opportunity of being Lady Spenworth! … He transferred to an Indian regiment; and, if his heart was broken, so much the worse for him. I am not superstitious; but, when I remember that bit of treachery, when I think of Spenworth,