Chapter VIII

" MY dearest," said Maggie, a week later, coming into the music-room where the girl sat playing, after lunch, " I've got a confession to make."

Marion smiled.

"Well?" she said.

" I've just had a telegram from Sir John, saying he'll be here at four. Yes: I wrote to him, myself. I saw you were fretting. This is just a small present from me to you Why! what's the matter? "

It was an instant before Marion could speak: the little ripple of chords had ceased suddenly: and she had gone white.

" Ah! " she said. " You think so too, do you? "

"My darling! What do you mean?"

" I told you I was nervous... and you agree with me. You think... you think my voice has gone."

Maggie dropped a rosary with a crash on to the boards, as she threw herself forward on her knees, clasping the girl round the waist.

" My darling! What a brute beast I am 1 No! No! No! A thousand times! I think nothing of the sort! Nothing of the sort! Don't you understand? It's because I'm absolutely certain that you're fretting about nothing, that I've sent for him. Oh! my dear! Don't you see? "

"But "

" My dearest, do you really think I could be such a pig as to come and announce to you coolly that I've sent for Sir John to come and... and break it to you that you've lost your voice? Do you think I shouldn't be down on my knees, if I thought that — to pray... and pray that God could comfort us both, and help us to bear it? Why, my dear!"

Maggie's face disappeared into the girl's lap. When she raised it again her eyes were bright with tears and her glasses were askew.

" What a selfish, thoughtless beast I am not to have thought that perhaps you might think that. My dearest! Forgive me! And give me a kiss to tell me so."

It was a good five minutes before the tragic group was broken up, and Maggie found herself, still a little dazed, watching Marion standing on the hearth-rug, and making little gestures as she talked. Her face was still flushed with the reaction from her misery; and her voice was a little hoarser than usual.

" Maggie! It's simply heavenly of you to have thought of it. I simply couldn't send again for him: and I daren't even go up and see him. But I have been fretting, horribly. And yet I know it's nonsense — sheer nonsense! How in the world could a little operation like the one I had possibly make any difference? And I've said that over and over again to myself: but you know how ridiculous one is when one wakes early; and how everything is unreal and exaggerated."

" Oh, my dear! Don't I know? " murmured Maggie ecstatically.

" You see it's the... the one single thing in my life now; and — no: of course I don't mean that exactly. But — but, oh! you understand, don't you?" A comforting cooing came from the chair where Maggie sat, regarding her friend, with her head a little on one side. Marion's face was bright enough now.

" But I did want somebody, with authority, to tell me I was a little fool, and that this hoarseness is only inevitable, so soon after the operation. Why, of course it is — I know that really, well enough. My poor throat! Oh! Oh! Maggie, you darling! "

Again the group re-formed, with the figures reversed.

At a quarter past four, the clouds broke overhead, and drove Marion indoors from the garden, where she had been pretending to read a book. She was just a little pale again, too, with excitement, as she came into the parlour and beheld her faithful Maggie still glued to the window to watch for the coming of the surgeon's car.

" No sign? " she said.

" My dearest! How you startled me! " said Maggie, turning round. " Why, it's raining! You've got drops all over you! "

" It's raining your side of the house, too, you know! " observed Marion.

"Why; so it is: and I never noticed it. I remember trying to rub away the drops, too, on the wrong side of the glass. But I never thought it was raining. It didn't occur to me, somehow. Why, of course it'll be that that has detained him! I daresay his chauffeur is afraid of skidding. My dear! you're not nervous now, are you? "

" No! No! No I " cried the girl emphatically. " At least, of course, I am, on the top. But not down below. Maggie! you do think my hoarseness is going, don't you? I'm sure if he'd only allow me to do my exercises again I should be all right. Don't you? "

"My dear! how should I know? But of course you're better. Jenny was saying so only yesterday. Now, do go into the garden again — Oh! no, of course you can't: it's raining."

" Maggie: you'll explain our plan to him, won't you? He is to examine my throat upstairs in my room: and he's not to say one single word. He's got a face like cast steel: so I shan't be able to tell anything from that. Then I'll go straight down to the music-room, and get my exercises ready, and wait. Then — you'll be waiting in your room, won't you? — and go straight into mine as soon as you hear me go downstairs. Then you'll come straight down to me, at once: and if I'm allowed to practise again, we'll sing — oh! ' God save the King ' straight through. And if I'm not allowed, just yet — and I'm really trying to make up my mind to that — I'll play it instead as... as a thanksgiving that I needn't fret any more, anyhow. And then we'll all have tea together: and he shall go back with blessings on his bald head. You'll remember all that, won't you?"

She had her by the shoulders now, and was shaking her so vigorously that Maggie's glasses suddenly fell off.

" Oh! what a rough brute I am! " cried the girl, dropping on her knees to hunt for them.

" Oh, my dear! " murmured Maggie, " I'll remember every word of it. (Thank you, dear.) And I've told Mrs. Grant to have scones for tea, all ready at half-past four. He's Scotch, you know, and he's sure to like them. And we've got the strawberry jam that Jenny made last year: I found two pots of it, unused. And Jenny's to bring tea in, straight, the very moment I ring: and we'll have it in the music-room. Ah! "

There was the musical cry of a horn further up the village street: and the two, suddenly struck dumb, remained motionless by the little diamond-paned window, now streaming with gusty tears. Outside in the strip of garden that separated the cottage from the road, the tall delphiniums tossed their spires of burning blue, and the privet-hedge beyond shivered under the shock of the wind. As Maggie bent this way and that for a first glimpse, she caught sight for a moment of the ligid profile and the fixed terrified eyes of the girl at her side. She threw her arms round her; and, simultaneously, a long dark blue car, splashed above its wheels, slid over the yellow strip of road, and drew up.

" Now: be quiet and wait! be quiet and wait! " murmured the girl as she went, with clenched hands, up the long floor of the music-room.

So far everything had gone according to programme.

She had recovered herself enough to look quite natural once more, by the time that the tall Scotch surgeon — absolutely the supreme throat-man of that period — followed the tremulous Maggie into the dark little parlour.

He was a very lean man, which made his height the more impressive; and he had, as Marion had said, a face that appeared as if cut out of steel, with a high, bald forehead over it. His eyes were small and keen, with tangled eyebrows; but they could be kind and bracing too. He did none of the things that might have been expected of him: he did not rub his hands together; on the contrary they dangled before him, rather in the manner of a kangaroo's forepaws, until he put one of them forward to be shaken: he did not ask how " we " were: he said " Good afternoon " only, in a perfectly colourless voice.

Then Maggie had burst into explanations.

" This poor girl has been dreadfully foolish and nervous," she said. ("Yes, my dear! I'm going to tell the truth!) She's been fretting dreadfully, and not resting at all well, as you told her she must. She's been fancying the most ridiculous things about her voice being gone, and all that. So I was determined she should have her mind put at rest, once and for all. And, please, Sir John, will you kindly not say anything at all to her, after you've examined her throat upstairs, but say it ah1 to me instead, when I come in. Miss Tenterden will go straight downstairs as soon as you've finished, and wait for us in the music-room: and "

" Shall we go upstairs at once, Sir John? " Marion had said at that point.

She simply could not bear any more explanations just then. He had bowed, without speaking.

Then, upstairs, after she had once more described the little plan which the two had formed, the extremely unpleasant process had been gone through, lasting perhaps twenty minutes. He had put round his head a sort of circlet, bound in leather, with a highly concentrated and shaded electric lamp in the centre of his forehead, and a shade so fixed to it as to keep the light out of his own eyes. Then the usual things were done: instruments had been inserted; and on one of them was a tiny mirror. She had been desired to pronounce certain vowels, after a deep breath: and those little bits of ritual were repeated three or four times over. No change whatever had passed over the surgeon's face. Then, still staring down her throat, he had asked her to attempt to sing very softly three or four notes; and had stopped her with a gesture. Then, almost roughly, he had laid his hands on her cheeks and had looked down her throat again. Then he had paused.

Marion lifted her eyebrows. She could not speak.

" Thank you, Miss Tenterden," he had said.

For a moment she thought he was going to say more, and her hands made a swift little gesture upwards from her sides: but she had forced them down again, and wheeling, she had gone straight out of the room, hearing a loud crack from the door of the room where obviously Maggie had been listening throughout. As she went downstairs, with a very strange feeling in her knees, she had heard the unmistakable crash of a pebble-rosary upon bare boards. Plainly Maggie had been reciting her beads throughout the interview. Marion wondered which of the Mysteries had been contemplated.... And now, here she was, breathing swiftly, still with that weak feeling in the knees, going up and down the music-room.

Her mind was in such conflict that it produced the effect of a dual personality. On one side every fear and tremor that she had ever had during these last weeks seemed, like an undisciplined mob, to be besieging and assaulting her in overwhelming numbers. There was no arguing with them one by one: as soon as one was repulsed another rushed up, roaring; and, for those few minutes, every foreboding on any subject other than that of her voice seemed incredibly insignificant: her religious fears, her misery at the thought of having to break Maggie's heart — (for she had come to see that little less than this was probable) — even that wild doubt of Max that had come to her once, and that she had long ago ceased even to think of — these terrors were incapable of approaching her now. Every pang and anguish that she could feel centred round one single thing — the verdict that she was to hear in a minute or two — the verdict that even now was being pronounced upstairs.

Her defending side was composed of reason and common sense. Sir John had told her expressly, long ago, that there was no kind of cause to fear that the little operation could have any but a temporary effect; and she desperately strove to dash this memory into the face of her terrors. But they answered her so vividly and connectedly that it was as if voices disputed aloud on the stage of her consciousness.

" He told me so," she said. (She had caught up the kitten as she came downstairs, and was now stroking him violently. Her mascot seemed a comfort.)

Yes: but he's not infallible, came the swift response.

" But he knows far more than I do."

But still — he's not infallible.

" But it would be extraordinary and exceptional." (She had to put Maximilian down; he had resented her mechanical and untender caresses.)

Would that make it any easier to bear? — To think that a thousand others have had the operation, with, no Hi-effects?

" But the whole thing would be absurd! That a yrima donna should leap into success in January, and lose her voice in the following August, is unthinkable."

Only because it hasn't yet happened. It may be quite thinkable to-morrow — even in five minutes.

" But it is impossible that God could treat me so hardly."

Then came the most torturing answer of all.

Have you treated Him so gratefully?

That indeed was a poisonous thought, which had come to her once or twice before, but which she had managed to dismiss as superstitious and horrible, and totally unworthy of her new Gospel of Broad-minded-ness.

" But how could God stoop to so fiendish a revenge? "

Then the old Catholic training came back.

Revenge! How dare you call it that? Whom the Lord loves He chastises.

" Ah! God: let me alone! I don't want to be loved like that."

But perhaps He is greater than you. Perhaps He loves so much that He is willing even to torment you.

" But the thing is nonsense, anyhow. It isn't going to happen. I've told you so, twenty times: so we need not enter into a theological discussion. You know perfectly well that it's all right; that this hoarseness is far less than a week ago. Certainly you did not sing those three or four notes very well upstairs just now: but that's quite natural. Of course your throat isn't actually well yet: no one could expect that. But it's only a question of a week or two — or even a month or two. Anyhow the worst can't happen, because it's impossible. And impossible things do not happen.... Maximilian! come here at once."

Then she tried to switch off her fears by turning them merely on to the point as to whether she would be allowed to begin her exercises again at once, and to cheat herself into believing that that was the only real point at issue at all — since the greater terror was a ludicrous impossibility.

In the strength of the attempt, which she knew was a false one, she went across to the big chest and opened it. (Maximilian had not responded: he was eyeing her from beyond the stove. )

There lay the books within. Lohengrin was at the top. She had been playing it this morning, before she knew that Sir John was coming; and a pang of actual physical pain touched her heart as with a finger tipped in acid. That was absurd.... Of course she would sing it again. Next January. So she would lift it out now, and put it on the end of the piano.

And there were the exercise books. Yes: those were the ones she wanted. Just two would be enough. Of course it would be very annoying if she really wasn't allowed to begin her exercises again just yet, and had to put those books back. However, she would put them on the top of Lohengrin....

As she did so she suddenly heard rapid steps coming down the stairs; and her wrists grew nerveless and her heart sick.

Ah! but Maggie was running: and she wouldn't run with bad news of course.... Her teeth closed on her lower lip, and she drew a long trembling breath through the corners of her mouth.

Ah! there was a crash. Had Maggie slipped on that bottom step again?

The rest followed in a flash.

There was a fumbling at the door-handle. Then it flew open; and as the exercise books fell with a sudden bang to the floor, and Maximilian skipped into the air, Maggie, her face distorted with crying, burst into the room, and, with a cry like a wounded beast, rushed across the floor and seized her, sobbing.

et Ah-h-h! " cried Maggie.