CHAPTER IX

For several days after her attack, Hermione was very weak and prostrate.

She was able, however, on the following morning to refer indirectly to Bodger. She asked in a low, broken whisper if Bichette was perfectly safe. Bichette was full in view at the moment, noisily engaged in eating creamed chicken at the foot of Hermione’s bed; and Hermione was instantly told that Bodger was no longer on the premises.

After this enquiry Hermione closed her eyes and retired into a state of even completer exhaustion.

She was physically prostrate but her mind was vividly alert. Hermione was thinking out several problems. She had her conscience to deal with, and her future life.

Her conscience was a comparatively easy affair: even in a high fever, she had been able to justify herself to her own complete satisfaction. Hermione had a little manual of “Self-Examination” questions which always lay beside her bed, and she could go through the whole list with perfect confidence day or night. But did her father sufficiently believe in her? And was it worth while that he should? Hermione did not put these two questions to herself as crudely as this—she saw them, as she would have expressed it, “on a higher plane.” It was her duty to make her father realise that she was a power for good in the world, and he had not yet appeared to think so with sufficient conviction; if she had succeeded in convincing him, might she not, with him at her side, win moral successes upon a larger scale? Hermione told herself that she must not be ambitious about spiritual openings and she emptied her mind—with an effort of concentration and by the help of several ejaculatory prayers—of all memory of the house and garden in the Champs Elysées. But on the other hand she had been broken-hearted and helpful to young wives for several years; perhaps more was now asked of her. She could not, in justice to herself, change her ideal, but she might change the channel of her efforts. Perhaps Papa was right—he had distinctly spoken of a wider field—the time might have arrived for her to make fresh efforts. Papa was worldly, of course, and hideously astray if he expected her to give up her present situation for the sake of any material profit. But she had never intended to stay permanently with Elise and John, and her father was her first duty.

They might live in Paris, which was dryer than London, and therefore, no doubt, more suitable for diabetics. Papa could not really care for Mambles or he would not have given it to John.

Hermione was the person who really _ought_ to make a home for her father. Perhaps this was what he had always felt, and the singular tone of misinformed bitterness with which he had addressed her had been caused by a feeling of neglect.

Hermione lay with her eyes shut, reconstructing the neglected past of Mr. Brett and the rose-coloured future with which she intended to present him. Yes—she was prepared to sacrifice Elise and John to give herself up to her ill and aged parent. The house in the Champs Elysées shot through her mind again, but would she have the physical strength to entertain properly? And how large was the garden? It was no use her undertaking what she could not carry through.

Hermione had had a long career full of excitements, and even perils; but she had foreseen the excitements and been able as a rule to terminate any dangers which had arisen from them. But the night of her attack she had neither foreseen how ill she would be, nor been able to control it. A sensation which she had not roused in herself had frightened her. She had suddenly felt that something might happen to her which she could not prevent.

Hermione shivered a little as she realised how very near she had been to that final trickster, Immortality.

She had often spoken of longing for death, and she had even experienced baffling moments of exasperation with human material, when she had thought of death as a supreme restfulness where she would be enshrined forever in the right, beyond the criticism of ignorant Roumanians; but these moments of longing had come to her when she knew she wasn’t going to die. She had never been conscious of any desire for death when it was at all likely. At the birth of her child, for instance, the very idea of her own insecurity had shocked her, and she had neither forgotten nor forgiven those preposterous, precipitate hours.

The night of her attack reminded her of them: something had turned on her and forced her beyond her pace.

Might this happen again? And what steps should she take to prevent it?

She remembered that the doctor had been no use, but her father had.

The instant her eyes met his, this violent force in her had recognised a resistance stronger than her own, and had yielded to it. But she was not going to speak to her father about it.

He might be an asset for the future, and you do not tell assets that they have the power of control.

It would be a great help to have Papa with her, if he could influence her at a moment when she wished to be influenced, but Hermione felt that she must first make sure of her need. Perhaps she would have got better in any case; and she had a wholesome dread of undue personal influence.

Hermione decided to send for Dr. Raymond and ask him how ill she had been.

Hermione did not like Dr. Raymond; she had always been accustomed to make intimate friends with her doctors, and she had spared no pains to create a happy relationship. They admired her first, and they admired her symptoms afterwards. But Dr. Raymond had evaded his opportunities. He was a busy man who did not want hurried intimacies with attractive women patients.

He insisted from the first on only being told Hermione’s symptoms, and he insisted upon them merely to assure her that they were not of much importance. He was a young man and he had come straight from a military hospital in France. Still, he was honest.

Hermione always realised the useful qualities of the people she disliked; and she knew that if she asked Dr. Raymond a straight question he would produce a straight answer, and keep both question and answer to himself.

It was difficult to Hermione to listen to what she did not wish to hear, and it very rarely occurred to her to be necessary; but when it did occur to her she had never been known to shirk it.

She waited till she felt she had sufficient physical strength to deal with the occasion successfully, and on the third day after her illness, she told Nurse Davies that she would see Dr. Raymond alone.

Dr. Raymond did not come immediately he was telephoned for, and when he did come he began their conversation by bluntly telling Hermione that she looked a great deal better.

He sat opposite her, waving his hat tiresomely in his hand, as if he wanted to go. Hermione ignored his clumsiness with difficulty.

“I should like you to tell me,” she said quietly, “two things—then I need not detain you further. Was I dangerously ill the other night? And in your opinion could I ever become normally well?”

Dr. Raymond stopped swinging his hat and looked at her with sudden attention.

He had often wanted to speak straight to the Princess Girla, but she had never given him the least opportunity. Now that she had given him the opportunity he felt that it would be brutal to take too great an advantage of it; besides he respected her for her frankness.

Hermione leaned back on her pillow, flushed, and with her grey eyes very wide open and steady. She knew exactly what effect her frankness would have upon Dr. Raymond and she realised that it would be easier to hear an unpalatable truth if it should be presented to her with respect.

“You were very ill indeed the other night,” Dr. Raymond said after a short pause, meeting her eyes with equal steadiness. “I think it is possible you might have died, but I think it is more probable that you might have gone out of your mind. You have a very excitable brain, and it was keyed up on one point rather tighter than it could stand.”

Hermione nodded.

“I know I am unduly sensitive,” she murmured, “something had been said to me which I could not break away from in my mind, although I was conscious of its complete unfairness.”

Dr. Raymond’s eyes seemed to grow smaller and keener. He no longer desired to spare the Princess anything; it flashed across him that she would always spare herself.

“As to your future condition,” he went on, “I must tell you frankly that it depends on you. There are people whose sensitiveness about their own sensations presupposes physical ill health.

“I do not wish to sound impertinent, but ill health when there is no organic cause for it is chiefly egoism.

“It comes from the fact that personal sensation is more interesting than outside facts. We all of us, even the strongest, have physical sensations which, if they interest us too much, become accentuated and may produce disease.

“You have a very powerful will, Princess Girla, and if your mind should become sufficiently interested on any outside line, I see no reason why you should not become normally strong, providing you pay attention to common sense, eat regular and healthy meals, and take enough fresh air and exercise.

“On the other hand, a few more such serious nerve and brain attacks will land you in a permanently bad physical condition out of which it would be practically impossible to break. You are an interesting invalid now, but as your ill health becomes chronic, you will become less and less interesting and more and more of an invalid.

“That is all I can tell you; the choice lies in your own hands.”

Hermione’s eyes remained steady, although they became a trifle glassy in expression.

“Thank you,” she said gently, “and may I ask when you came to this conclusion about my case?”

“I think I thought so, more or less, the first time I saw you,” said Dr. Raymond reflectively.

Hermione lowered her eyes. They became fixed upon Dr. Raymond’s hat.

“How very curious,” she said, “that you did not let me know what you thought on that first occasion. Let me see, I think this must be your twelfth visit?

“It will be perhaps unnecessary for you to call again as I understand that my case is in my own hands—and has always been so.”

Dr. Raymond never knew how he got out of the Princess Girla’s room. He felt profoundly uncomfortable and he was conscious that he looked a fool.

Hermione said nothing further to him, but she watched him step on his hat, and nearly overturn his chair. He carried away the impression that Hermione thought he had deliberately made a case out of her for money.

Hermione’s quiet eyes could say a great deal, and Dr. Raymond forgot that he had told the Princess Girla that she was guilty of egoism in the shock of being considered not only an inefficient, but a dishonest practitioner.

Hermione saw with satisfaction the impression that she had produced. She did not even smile at Dr. Raymond’s undignified exit. She was not easily amused, but she enjoyed it. Dr. Raymond had told her what she felt it necessary to know, and she had made him suffer for the inconvenience of truth.

Somebody has always to suffer in the cause of truth, and it is usually the person who attaches the greater importance to it.