Atkinson shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, if you won’t, you won’t. But she’ll need very careful nursing, I tell you that. You must—” he went on to outline all that Marble must do. But all the time he was debating within himself over this strange man who lived alone with his wife in a poky house furnished like Buckingham Palace, whose daughter was—away, at present, who did no work, and who was violently opposed to having anyone nurse his wife.
And Marble guessed at his curiosity, and cursed at it within himself, with the sweat running cold under his clothes.
“Right, I’ll look in again this afternoon,” said Atkinson.
He did. He looked in again twice a day during all the next week.
And during that week Marble fretted and wore himself to pieces under the burden of his troubles. Everything was madly worrying. Atkinson alone, with his sharp eyes everywhere, was enough to madden him, yet to add to it all the great worry of his life returned to him and nagged at him more than ever he had known it before. Marble found his harassed mind returning continually to work out hateful possibilities; whether or no Atkinson might find something out; whether he had heard anything of what Annie was continually muttering; what the neighbours, as well as Atkinson, thought of his refusing to call in the assistance of anyone else. He knew that they were all interested in what went on in his house, he knew how they sneered enviously at all his fine possessions, and at Annie’s clothes and Winnie’s grand manner—and they were probably burningly interested in what had happened to Winnie, though by good luck they might think she was still at school.
Annie herself worried him, too. She was a “difficult” patient. She would hardly speak to him, and would turn from him in horror on those occasions when she was most nearly delirious. She needed a great deal of attention. Marble had to struggle to do invalid cookery for her—he, who had never so much as touched a saucepan in his life. He had to do it well, too, for that brute Atkinson was continually coming in, and more than once he demanded to see and taste the concoctions he had prepared for her. Marble struggled along with Mrs. Beeton, the same Mrs. Beeton as Annie had lingered over for his sake, and attended to the tradesmen who once more came calling—Marble had to allow that; Atkinson was too sharp for him to attempt to do the shopping and leave his patient. Rushing from the kitchen to the door, and from the door to the bedroom, whenever Annie rang the handbell that stood by the bed, and from the bedroom back to the kitchen, Marble wore himself out. It was rare that even two attempts brought success to his unskilful cookery; he seemed to be cooking all the time.
And as a crowning worry came the fear that he would be taken ill, too. In that case Atkinson, the interfering busybody, would step in and have them taken away to hospital. If he were delirious like Annie! He shuddered at the thought. So it was wildly necessary that he should retain his health. Marble had never worried about his health before, but now he paid for it in full. He took his temperature every few minutes, he studied his body attentively, and he stopped drinking the whisky for which his nerves shrieked.
The strain told on him. The worrying days and the broken nights—for he had to attend to Annie frequently during the nights—broke his already strained nerves to pieces. And he could not forget about the garden. That was continuously in his thoughts, too. If anything, it was worse now. Marble found himself, whenever the jangle of Annie’s bell roused him out of his sleep, and after he had done what she wanted, creeping downstairs to peer out into the dark garden to see that all was secure. He even began to wake on his own during the night and go down, and he had never done that before.
Strange to tell, Annie recovered. It was more really than Atkinson expected, and it seems stranger still when it is remembered that she did not want to recover. For she did not. Annie wanted to die.
But she recovered. The fever left her, very thin, very pale, with the shining pallor of the invalid, and she was able to leave off the pneumonia jacket that Marble had hurriedly contrived, and sit up in bed dressed in one of her opulent, overlaced nightdresses and a dressing-jacket and boudoir cap. Atkinson told Marble that she was not yet quite out of danger. There was always a risk after a bad attack of influenza. There might be grave heart trouble, or even now pneumonia might intervene if she were to get up too soon.
“But, of course,” said Atkinson, “there’s not much chance of her getting up for a bit yet. She’s too weak to stand at present.”
Annie lay in bed, thinking. She was thinking with the clearness of thought, harsh and raw as a winter’s morning, that comes after a period of high fever. Over her brooded the dreadful depression following influenza, the poisonous depression which darkens the most hopeful outlook. And Annie’s outlook was anything but hopeful. Downstairs she could hear her husband moving about on one of his endless household tasks, and her lips writhed at the thought of him. She did not hate him, she could not hate him, even now. But she felt she hated herself. And she had lost her husband’s love, the love which for a brief space had made the whole world seem a wonderful place. Looking ahead, as far as she was able to look ahead, she could see nothing to hope for. She was tormented by the hideous knowledge of what lay in the barren flowerbed in the
