Part 8 (1/2)

'It is a great bore coming at all,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, with that sort of superb impertinence which distinguished her and was hardly ever offensive; 'but let us say in a month's time. The wedding was not to have been till late in November; but my son and Miss Erskine are quite absurdly in love with each other, and it will not be difficult to persuade them to alter that date for an earlier one.'

'If you have positively decided to postpone treatment,' said the surgeon, 'I can say nothing more except to tell you that you are minimizing your chances of recovery.'

'I don't feel in the least like dying yet,' she said.

'Were you to put yourself into my hands at once,' he urged, 'it is possible that you might be sufficiently recovered to go to the wedding in November.'

'No one is to know anything about it,' said Mrs. Ogilvie quickly and decisively. 'If my son is married in October I can come up to town, as I always do in November, and go into one of your nursing-homes.

Probably the wall-papers will offend me, but at least I shall not have the whole of a countryside discussing my helplessness and the various stages of my illness. Ye G.o.ds! they would like to ask for details from one's very footman at the hall door!'

It was useless to say more. The surgeon recommended diet, and made out a prescription.

'Everything is talked about in these days, I admit,' he said, 'and I think no one regrets the decline of reserve more than we doctors do; but you are carrying a desire for concealment too far.'

Mrs. Ogilvie was drawing on her gloves and b.u.t.toning them with an air much more grave and intent than she had bestowed upon her doctor during the discussion of her health. 'Even an animal,' she said lightly, 'is allowed to creep away into the denseness of a thicket and nurse its wounds unseen; but we superior human beings are like the beggars who expose a mutilated arm to the pitiful, and would fain show their wounds to every pa.s.ser-by.'

'Perhaps you will allow me to write to your son?' said the surgeon.

Mrs. Ogilvie replied by a quick and unequivocal answer in the negative; then, relaxing a little, she said more lightly, but with intent, 'I have always triumphed over difficulties all my life--I have always overcome.'

'That is quite possible,' said the physician gravely.

Mrs. Ogilvie stood up and began to arrange her veil before the mirror which hung above the mantel-piece; and, as she did so, she glanced critically at her face under her large, fas.h.i.+onable-looking hat, with its bizarre tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs.

'I am very plain,' she said, with a sort of sensuous enjoyment in her frankness, 'and yet I have pa.s.sed successfully for a beautiful woman most of my life. I am also what is ridiculously called a power in society, and I owe everything to my own will. I detest unsuccess!'

'You are talking of the success which lies in the hands of every clever woman,' said the doctor, 'but your health is another matter.'

'I believe in my good luck; it has never failed me,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, as she shook hands and said good-bye.

When she reached home she dressed in one of her sumptuous gowns, for a score of country neighbours were coming to meet Jane Erskine as the fiancee of her son. Her maid bore the brunt of my lady's sarcasm during the time of dressing, and was given a curt notice of dismissal before the toilet was complete. The woman's big round eyes, which were so obnoxious to her mistress, filled with tears as she accepted her discharge. And Mrs. Ogilvie, descending the broad staircase of the house with her air of magnificence, her jewels, and her red hair, rapped her fan suddenly and sharply on the palm of her hand, so that the delicate tortoise-sh.e.l.l sticks were broken. 'Why does she look at me like that?' she said fiercely below her breath. 'I am glad I dismissed her, and I am glad she cried! Why should not some one else suffer as well as I?'

'You are not really tiresome, Jane,' she said after dinner, as the two sat together on a couch. 'I have never known another engaged young lady whom I did not avoid; but you are distressing yourself quite unnecessarily about me. When I look tired, for instance, you may take it as a sure sign that I am bored; nothing ever really makes me feel ill except dullness.'

'Still,' urged Jane, 'Peter and I want it so much. We think if you were to get advice from a doctor it would make us feel so much happier about you.'

'I never allow any one to discuss my health with me,' said Mrs. Ogilvie coldly; 'it is only a polite way of pointing out to one that one is looking plain.'

Jane took one of her hands in hers with an impulsive gesture, and printed a kiss upon it.

'Do sit upon me when I begin to bore you or to say the wrong thing! I believe, for a woman, I am quite unpardonably clumsy and tactless.'

'Have you ever discovered,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, 'that tact is becoming a little overdone, and that it generally succeeds in accentuating a difficult situation, or in making it impossible? Women are horribly tactful as a rule, and that is why men's society is preferable to theirs. If you tread on a man's foot he will no doubt forgive you, while admitting that the blow was painful; but a woman smiles and tries to look as though she really enjoyed it.'

'Promise never to endure me in silence,' said Jane, laughing, 'even when I am most tactless!'

'Silent endurance is hardly my character,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her eyes. 'I dismissed Forder before dinner because she annoyed me.'

'Please take Forder to your heart again tomorrow morning,' said Jane; 'she keeps Martin in such a good temper.'

'No,' said Mrs. Ogilvie; 'I shall get a new maid when I go up to London in November. Forder has had round eyes for such a long time, and she is hopelessly stupid about doing my hair.'