‘There wasn’t a will in the Boule cabinet,’ said Miss Arundell. She added abruptly: ‘Go to bed, Minnie. You’re tired. So am I. We’ll ask the Tripps in for an evening soon.’
‘Oh, that will be nice! Good night, dear. Sure you’ve got everything? I hope you haven’t been tired with so many people here. I must tell Ellen to air the drawing-room very well tomorrow, and shake out the curtains—all this smoking leaves such a smell. I must say I think it’s very good of you to let them all smoke in the drawing-room!’
‘I must make some concessions to modernity,’ said Emily Arundell. ‘Good night, Minnie.’
As the other woman left the room, Emily Arundell wondered if this spiritualistic business was really good for Minnie. Her eyes had been popping out of her head, and she had looked so restless and excited.
Odd about the Boule cabinet, thought Emily Arundell as she got into bed. She smiled grimly as she remembered the scene of long ago. The key that had come to light after papa’s death, and the cascade of empty brandy bottles that had tumbled out when the cabinet had been unlocked! It was little things like that, things that surely neither Minnie Lawson nor Isabel and Julia Tripp could possibly know, which made one wonder whether, after all, there wasn’t something in this spiritualistic business…
She felt wakeful lying on her big four-poster bed[66]. Nowadays she found it increasingly difficult to sleep. But she scorned Dr Grainger’s tentative suggestion of a sleeping draught[67]. Sleeping draughts were for weaklings, for people who couldn’t bear a finger-ache, or a little toothache, or the tedium of a sleepless night.
Often she would get up and wander noiselessly round the house, picking up a book, fingering an ornament, rearranging a vase of flowers, writing a letter or two. In those midnight hours she had a feeling of the equal liveliness of the house through which she wandered. They were not disagreeable, those nocturnal wanderings. It was as though ghosts walked beside her, the ghosts of her sisters, Arabella, Matilda and Agnes, the ghost of her brother Thomas, the dear fellow as he was before That Woman got hold of him[68]! Even the ghost of General Charles Laverton Arundell, that domestic tyrant with the charming manners who shouted and bullied his daughters but who nevertheless was an object of pride to them with his experiences in the Indian Mutiny[69] and his knowledge of the world. What if there were days when he was ‘not quite so well’ as his daughters put it evasively?
Her mind reverting to her niece’s fiance, Miss Arundell thought, ‘I don’t suppose he’ll ever take to drink[70]! Calls himself a man and drank barley water[71] this evening! Barley water! And I opened papa’s special port.’
Charles had done justice[72] to the port all right. Oh! if only Charles were to be trusted. If only one didn’t know that with him—
Her thoughts broke off… Her mind ranged over the events of the weekend…
Everything seemed vaguely disquieting…
She tried to put worrying thoughts out of her mind.
It was no good.
She raised herself on her elbow and by the light of the night-light that always burned in a little saucer she looked at the time.
One o’clock and she had never felt less like sleep.
She got out of bed and put on her slippers and her warm dressing-gown. She would go downstairs and just check over the weekly books ready for the paying of them the following morning.
Like a shadow she slipped from her room and along the corridor where one small electric bulb was allowed to burn all night.
She came to the head of the stairs, stretched out one hand to the baluster rail and then, unaccountably, she stumbled, tried to recover her balance, failed and went headlong down the stairs.
The sound of her fall, the cry she gave, stirred the sleeping house to wakefulness. Doors opened, lights flashed on.
Miss Lawson popped out of her room at the head of the staircase.
Uttering little cries of distress she pattered down the stairs. One by one the others arrived—Charles, yawning, in a resplendent dressing-gown. Theresa, wrapped in dark silk. Bella in a navy-blue kimono, her hair bristling with[73] combs to ‘set the wave’.
Dazed and confused Emily Arundell lay in a crushed heap. Her shoulder hurt her and her ankle—her whole body was a confused mass of pain. She was conscious of people standing over her, of that fool Minnie Lawson crying and making ineffectual gestures with her hands, of Theresa with a startled look in her dark eyes, of Bella standing with her mouth open looking expectant, of the voice of Charles saying from somewhere—very far away so it seemed—
‘It’s that damned dog’s ball! He must have left it here and she tripped over it. See? Here it is!’
And then she was conscious of authority, putting the others aside, kneeling beside her, touching her with hands that did not fumble but knew.
A feeling of relief swept over her. It would be all right now.
Dr Tanios was saying in firm, reassuring tones:
‘No, it’s all right. No bones broken… Just badly shaken and bruised—and of course she’s had a bad shock. But she’s been very lucky that it’s no worse.’
Then he cleared the others off a little and picked her up quite easily and carried her up to her bedroom, where he had held her wrist for a minute, counting, then nodded his head, sent Minnie (who was still crying and being generally a nuisance) out of the room to fetch brandy and to heat water for a hot bottle.
Confused, shaken, and racked with pain, she felt acutely grateful to Jacob Tanios in that moment. The relief of feeling oneself in capable hands. He gave you just that feeling of assurance—of confidence—that a doctor ought to give.
There was something—something she couldn’t quite get hold of—something vaguely disquieting—but she wouldn’t think of it now. She would drink this and go to sleep as they told her.
But surely there was something missing—someone.
Oh well, she wouldn’t think… Her shoulder hurt her— She drank down what she was given.
She heard Dr Tanios say—and in what a comfortable assured voice—‘She’ll be all right, now.’
She closed her eyes.
She awoke to a sound that she knew—a soft, muffled bark.
She was wide awake in a minute.
Bob—naughty Bob! He was barking outside the front door—his own particular ‘out all night very ashamed of himself’ bark, pitched in a subdued key but repeated hopefully.
Miss Arundell strained her ears. Ah, yes, that was all right. She could hear Minnie going down to let him in. She heard the creak of the opening front door, a confused low murmur—Minnie’s futile reproaches—‘Oh, you naughty little doggie—a very naughty little Bobsie—’ She heard the pantry door open. Bob’s bed was under the pantry table.
And at that moment Emily realized what it was she had subconsciously missed at the moment of her accident. It was Bob. All that commotion—her fall, people running—normally Bob would have responded by a crescendo of barking from inside the pantry.
So that was what had been worrying her at the back of her mind. But it was explained now—Bob, when he had been let out last night, had shamelessly and deliberately gone off on pleasure bent[74]. From time to time he had these lapses from virtue[75]—though his apologies afterwards were always all that could be desired.
So that was all right. But was it? What else was there worrying her, nagging at the back of her head? Her accident—something to do with her accident.
69
Indian Mutiny – Восстание сипаев (восстание индийских солдат против жесткой колониальной политики англичан, 1857–1859 гг.)
71
barley water – ячменный отвар (сладкий напиток, приготовленный из ячменного отвара и фруктового сока)