Mortal Coils | Page 5

of the sharp,
bird-like nose. The closed eyes were set in profound bone-rimmed
sockets. The lamplight striking on the face from the side emphasized
with light and shade its cavities and projections. It was the face of a
dead Christ by Morales.
Le squelette etait invisible
An temps heureux de Ia art paten.
He shivered a little, and tiptoed out of the room.

On the following day Mrs. Hutton came down to luncheon. She had
had some unpleasant palpitations during the night, but she was feeling
better now. Besides, she wanted to do honour to her guest. Miss Spence
listened to her complaints about Llandrindod Wells, and was loud in
sympathy, lavish with advice. Whatever she said was always said with
intensity. She leaned forward, aimed, so to speak, like a gun, and fired
her words. Bang! the charge in her soul was ignited, the words whizzed
forth at the narrow barrel of her mouth. She was a machine-gun
riddling her hostess with sympathy. Mr. Hutton had undergone similar
bombardments, mostly of a literary or philosophic character
bombardments of Maeterlinck, of Mrs. Besant, of Bergson, of William
James. To-day the missiles were medical. She talked about insomnia,
she expatiated on the virtues of harmless drugs and beneficent
specialists. Under the bombardment Mrs. Hutton opened out, like a
flower in the sun.
Mr. Hutton looked on in silence. The spectacle of Janet Spence evoked
in him an unfailing curiosity. He was not romantic enough to imagine
that every face masked an interior physiognomy of beauty or
strangeness, that every woman's small talk was like a vapour hanging
over mysterious gulfs. His wife, for example, and Doris; they were
nothing more than what they seemed to be. But with Janet Spence it
was somehow different. Here one could be sure that there was some
kind of a queer face behind the Gioconda smile and the Roman
eyebrows. The only question was: What exactly was there? Mr. Hutton
could never quite make out.
."But perhaps you won't have to go to Llandrindod after all," Miss
Spence was saying. "If you get well quickly Dr. Libbard will let you
off."
"I only hope so. Indeed, I do really feel rather better to-day."
Mr. Hutton felt ashamed. How much was it his own lack of sympathy
that prevented her from feeling well every day? But he comforted
himself by reflecting that it was only a case of feeling, not of being
better. Sympathy does not mend a diseased liver or a weak heart.

"My dear, I wouldn't eat those red currants if I were you," he said,
suddenly solicitous. "You know that Libbard has banned everything
with skins and pips."
"But I am so fond of them/' Mrs. Hutton protested, "and I feel so well
to-day."
"Don't be a tyrant," said Miss Spence, looking first at him and then at
his wife. "Let the poor invalid have what she fancies; it will do her
good." She laid her hand on Mrs. Hutton's arm and patted it
affectionately two or three times.
"Thank you, my dear." Mrs. Hutton helped herself to the stewed
currants.
"Well, don't blame me if they make you ill again."
"Do I ever blame you, dear?"
"You have nothing to blame me for," Mr. Hutton answered playfully. "I
am the perfect husband."
They sat in the garden after luncheon. From the island of shade under
the old cypress tree they looked out across a flat expanse of lawn, in
which the parterres of flowers shone with a metallic brilliance.
Mr. Hutton took a deep breath of the warm and fragrant air. "It's good
to be alive," he said.
"Just to be alive," his wife echoed, stretching one pale, knot- jointed
hand into the sunlight.
A maid brought the coffee; the silver pots and the little blue cups were
set on a folding table near the group of chairs.
"Oh, my medicine!" exclaimed Mrs. Hutton. "Run in and fetch it, Clara,
will you? The white bottle on the sideboard."
"I'll go," said Mr. Hutton. "I've got to go and fetch a cigar in any case."

He ran in towards the house. On the threshold he turned round for an
instant. The maid was walking back across the lawn. His wife was
sitting up in her deck-chair, engaged in opening her white parasol. Miss
Spence was bending over the table, pouring out the coffee. He passed
into the cool obscurity of the house.
"Do you like sugar in your coffee?" Miss Spence inquired.
"Yes, please. Give me rather a lot. I'll drink it after my medicine to take
the taste away."
Mrs. Hutton leaned back in her chair, lowering the sunshade over her
eyes, so as to shut out from her vision the burning sky.
Behind her, Miss Spence was making a delicate clinking among the
coffee-cups.