My watch told me I had returned from my walk twenty minutes before I was due. Ever since my boyhood I had loved poring over old epitaphs, so I turned into the churchyard, which was only a few yards from the front windows of the house.
Like most village churchyards it was very overcrowded, but the dark red-fruited yew trees shed an air of sombre peace over the clustered graves. Most of these graves were mere uncommemorated grass mounds, but there were also a number of grey lichen-clad tombstones lying and leaning at all angles, and on many of these the name of Clewer was engraved. Evidently innumerable generations of my future patient’s family had lived and died here. Most of these long-dead Clewers seemed to have been mourned by appreciative and verbose relations. Nothing that uncouth rhyme and shapeless sculpture could do to preserve the memory of the departed had been omitted. The scriptures had been ransacked for consoling texts, and prose and verse not only lavishly set down the virtues, talents and deeds of those described as “not lost but gone before”, but also assiduously struggled to describe the emotions of the bereaved. Only once in all those generations had a strange reticence descended on the Clewer family.
In the corner of the churchyard nearest to the house, directly beneath a darkly presiding yew tree, was a worn, flat stone. Here nothing implored the passing tribute of a sigh. There was only the bare inscription:
And beneath in different lettering the words:
This inscription struck me as laconic and queerly worded, so like, and yet so different from, the familiar –
Idly I wondered whether I should ever know Margaret Clewer well enough to question her about this undesignated ancestress.
It was now time to run from the dead to the living, so I moved towards the home of the Clewers. As I approached the iron-studded door, the air was heavily sweet with the scent of the magnolias. These, as well as wisteria and clematis, clustered thickly over the front of the building, but to my fancy the great house seemed to wear them with, as it were, a shrug of indifference, as though it knew nothing could really enhance its own beauty. The gentle austerity of that beauty humbled me again, and it was with a sense of intrusion that I pulled the bell and heard the responding clang and the bark of an aroused dog.
I don’t know what I had subconsciously expected, but the smiling beribboned parlour maid who opened the door seemed incongruous.
“Dr Stone?” she asked. “Miss Clewer is expecting you.”
Obedient to her “Come this way, please”, I followed her through a large hall in which young people were playing ping-pong and noisy games of cards; the blare of a gramophone triumphing over the confusion of sounds. A heavy door through which we passed cut us off into complete cool silence, and a short flight of shiny black oak stairs, splendidly solid to the tread, led us to the door of my patient’s room. The strong evening sun streamed in and it was through a dance of dazzling motes that I first saw her.
She lay on a low wide bed drawn close up to the window, and a Golden Retriever luxuriously sprawled over the flower-embroidered coverlet that was spread across her feet.
I cannot remember how much I took in at first sight: I know the window-shelf and the tables were then, as always, crowded with flowers and great branches cut from trees, and the bed strewn with books, writing materials and needlework.
The shock with which I saw her was not without an element of recognition. Vaguely I had always expected that one day I should see a woman far more lovely than all others. Her hair gleamed in the sunshine, and her translucent face smiled up at me. I thought I should never see anything more beautiful, but I did the next time I saw her, for the variety of her beauty was unending. Changing as the sea changes with the sky, her colouring had its special response to every tone of light, just as her expression varied with every shade of feeling. It was a fluid, unset loveliness, suggesting far more than it asserted.
After this first sight of her, I was often to wonder how I should describe her, supposing I had to reduce my impressions to the scope of words. What, for instance, should I set down if I were asked to fill in her passport? Would she be allowed across frontiers if I described her mouth as normal? Normal! When it was never the same for two consecutive seconds. As for her eyes. I should not even have known what colour to call them. ‘‘Eyes too mysterious to be blue, Too lovely to be grey,’’ would not help. Many more than two colours met in those pools of light.
As I entered the room I was to know so well, two canaries in a large golden cage were singing loudly, and l could scarcely hear Margaret Clewer’s welcoming words. In her lovely, lilting, but, to my professional ear, definitely nervous voice, before she began to speak of herself, she asked me many questions as to the comfort of my house and my impressions of my new practice. I had almost forgotten in what capacity I was there when she said:
“I’ve been very silly and strained my heart, I think, over-rowing myself. I’ve got a craze for very violent exercise. Anyhow, I feel distinctly queer, and my heart seems to beat everywhere where it shouldn’t be. And so,” she added in her way – how well I was to know that way – of speaking in inverted commas, “my friends insist on my taking medical advice, so perhaps you had better see if my heart is in the right place.”
It did not take me long to discover that her heart was severely strained. There was also a very considerable degree of anaemia, and I prescribed three weeks’ rest in bed.
My verdict was received with equanimity.
“If I can’t row or ride, I’d just as soon remain in the horizontal,” she answered gaily. “I shall be quite happy with books and food and friends, and with my beautiful Sheen. Isn’t he lovely?” she added, turning the Retriever’s golden head towards me.
After paying homage, I asked if there were anyone to whom she would like me to speak about her health.
“Oh, no! I haven’t any relations. I haven’t anyone to edit me. I’m quite alone.”
“But there seem so many people in the house.”
“Oh, yes, but they’re just visitors. When I said alone, I meant independent. I couldn’t bear to be literally alone.”
The last words were said with a vehemence that rather surprised me. Her room, with its multitude of books, a violin and several unfinished sketches, seemed to bear evidence of such varied resources, and I had already diagnosed her as a person who would be very good company to herself.
As I shook hands with her, saying I would return the day after tomorrow, I noticed that, for all their brightness, the responsive eyes held a slightly, not exactly hurt, but shall I say initiated expression. In spite of the nervous voice, my first impression had been that here, if anywhere, was one who had not felt the touch of earthly years. This superficial impression was already modified. Had life already bared its teeth at this lovely girl?
“I saw you groping about among the graves,” she said, as I reluctantly turned towards the door. “Are you interested in the rude forefathers, in worms and graves and epitaphs?”
“Well, at any rate, I love epitaphs,” I replied, “and this is a peculiarly picturesque churchyard. You, yourself, must surely have a weakness for it, as you occupy a room so immediately overlooking it.”
“Yes, I am close, aren’t I?” She laughed. “No rude forefather could turn in his grave without my hearing him. But this happens to be the room I like best in the house. There isn’t any harm in being so close, is there?”
“I can’t say I consider it physically unhealthy,” I answered professionally.
She smiled her swift, slanting smile. “Are you afraid of my being troubled by ghosts, Dr Stone? Well, if it’s a nervous patient you want, I’ll see what I can do to oblige you; but first, please put my heart back into the right place.”
I told her I would do my best and return the day after tomorrow to report progress.
“Au revoir, then,” she said. “And meanwhile, I shall look out for you in the churchyard, you ghoul! You ought to come and see it by night. You can’t think how lovely it is in the moonlight, with a great white owl swooping and brushing against the tombstones.”
As I turned my back on the beautiful house I found myself walking with a light step. For the first time since I came to this friendless new country a fellow creature had made me aware of myself as a human being. Till then I had been merely the new doctor.
