The Story of Ivy · Chapter 6 (2/2)

Then he went out of the room, with just a cool nod to the other doctor.

It was a very different Dr. Berwick who at eight that same evening finished eating his well-cooked, daintily-served dinner. Janey Berwick was what her husband’s old friends called, with truth, a thoroughly nice woman. After their early marriage she and her husband had had a bitter struggle, but that had only made them come the closer to one another, and now that he was beginning to be really successful, she was determined to make him, so far as lay in her power, comfortable.

She wore tonight her prettiest evening frock, and anyone, seeing them sitting there side by side in front of their cheerful fire in their pleasant sitting-room, would have thought them a pair of engaged lovers, rather than a couple who had been wedded for close on twelve years.

Janey Berwick still looked a young woman, for she had been only nineteen when she had given up a comfortable, even luxurious, home, to throw in her lot with the young man who till two or three months before their wedding had been still a medical student.

He bore more signs than did his wife of the struggle they had gone through. However, that struggle was now a thing of the past, or, at least, so they both had good reason to think.

An intelligent doctor either shares everything or nothing with his wife. Berwick shared everything and now he was engaged in telling her about Jervis Lexton, and how puzzled he was fast becoming over Lexton’s curious condition. He also told her how surprised, not to say indignant, he had been to discover, when he had gone to see his patient today, another doctor there, actually prescribing for Lexton⁠—true, only as a friend, but acting, even so, in a most irregular fashion!

“I think I made him feel what I thought of such conduct,” he said with satisfaction.

Then suddenly he asked her a question.

“D’you remember that your people took a shooting in Sussex many years ago, when I first knew you, from a man call Gretorex?”

“Of course I do, darling! Anchorford was the name of the place.”

She was puzzled at the sudden change in the conversation.

“Well, this young chap I found prescribing for Lexton is Roger Gretorex! I had a sort of feeling I’d seen him before.”

“But what an extraordinary thing⁠—I mean, that he should be a doctor.”

“I don’t see why. Only the old house and that bit of shooting belonged to them, even then. D’you remember Mrs. Gretorex? She was very much the grande dame⁠—”

“Yes, she was in a way, but so really kind. She took a great fancy to me,” said Janey Berwick slowly.

“I don’t think she approved of me. She thought you ought to do better.”

Berwick’s wife smiled. It was true that Mrs. Gretorex hadn’t much cared for the dour, silent, medical student who was obviously in love with her attractive young friend.

“It all comes back to me. They were fearfully poor; but Mrs. Gretorex was keeping up all her charities in the village just as if she had still been the rich lady of the manor. I thought it splendid of her. What is Roger Gretorex like now? He was such a handsome boy,” she concluded, with some curiosity.

Her husband waited a moment, then he answered: “He’s still good-looking; I can tell you that much. But I didn’t like the look of him. He said that he’d taken over a slum practice, somewhere in Westminster.”

“Is he a great friend of Mr. Lexton?”

“He seemed to be, though they’re as different as chalk from cheese. The one’s a born idler, the other I should say a born worker; though, mind you, Squire Gretorex was a bad man. D’you remember the sort of things we were told about him, Janey? How he had come in for thirty thousand a year when he was twenty-one, and how by the time he was fifty he had run through the whole of his fortune on the turf?”

“I expect Dr. Gretorex takes after his mother,” she said with a smile.

Suddenly there came the postman’s loud knock, and Berwick, jumping up, went out into the hall.

He came back with only one rather bulky letter, addressed to himself, in a woman’s sloping handwriting as yet unknown to him.

He opened the large, square, pale-mauve envelope slowly, deliberately. It contained a note folded in two, and also an enclosure, an envelope on which was written “Prescriptions.”

He glanced over the note:

Dear Dr. Berwick,

You asked me to send you Dr. Lancaster’s prescriptions. I found them just after you left. Jervis is feeling better this afternoon, and the nurse says that if you’re busy she doesn’t think you need come tomorrow.

He looked across at his wife. “It’s from Mrs. Lexton. She says her husband’s better, and that I need not go there tomorrow. That’s a comfort!”

Idly he took out what that other envelope contained. Dr. Lancaster’s prescriptions might give him a clue as to what the old fellow really thought of Lexton’s mysterious condition.

“Hallo!” he exclaimed in a tone of extreme surprise, for what was written on a wide sheet of thin, common paper, folded in eight, ran:

My own precious love (for that you are and always will be)⁠—

Of course I quite see your point of view. Indeed I absolutely agree in a sense with every word that you have written to me. We have done wrong in allowing ourselves to love one another, and when I say “we” I really mean I Roger Gretorex, not you, Ivy Lexton. You were, you are, the purest and best woman I have ever known.

I can swear before God that, had you been even moderately happy, I would have killed myself rather than have disturbed your peace. My only excuse, not for having loved you⁠—of that I am not at all ashamed⁠—but for having let you know that I loved you, is that when we first met you had begun to find how bitter a loveless life can be.

You say you feel you ought never to come again to Ferry Place. I bow to your decision, dearest, and I will say that you are right in having come to that decision, even though it causes me agony. Thank you for saying I may still write to you, and that you will sometimes telephone to me.

Berwick read the letter right through. Then he handed it to his wife.

“Janey? I want you to tell me what you think of this! Both of the writer, I mean, and of the woman to whom this letter was written?”

Slowly, with her husband closely watching her, and feeling, it must be admitted, ashamed of what she was doing, Janey Berwick read Roger Gretorex’s letter to Ivy Lexton right through.

Then she looked across at her husband, and her face bore an expression that a little surprised him. He had expected it to be filled with the wrath and disgust he felt himself.

“This is written with a man’s heart’s blood,” she said at last. “There must be more in this little Mrs. Lexton than you think, Angus. Surely this letter cannot be in answer to one sent by a silly, frivolous woman?”

“I wonder,” he said gloomily, “what their real relations have been. This letter might, of course, mean one of two things.”

She was reading the letter once more, slowly and carefully. At last she looked up. “I am inclined to think⁠—” then she stopped and exclaimed, “I don’t know what to think, Angus!”

“What were you going to say just now?” he asked quickly.

“I was going to say that I’m inclined to think that their friendship has not been innocent. That was what I was going to say; but even in these last few moments I’ve turned right round! Now I would say in all sincerity, my dear, that I think it very probable that there’s been nothing but passionate love on his side, and I suppose grateful affection on hers. She evidently doesn’t care for her husband; so much is quite clear.”

“No one would ever think so, from her way of speaking of him. The only time I’ve ever seen them together they seemed on the most affectionate terms. He was calling her ‘darling’ all the time, and she called him ‘dear old boy,’ and seemed genuinely very much worried about him.”

“At any rate she’s now made up her mind to do the right thing,” said Janey Berwick gravely. “One can’t but honour her for that, when one remembers⁠—”

She smiled, a curious little smile.

“Yes, my dear? Out with it!”

“After all, it is very delightful to be loved,” she said softly, “and this poor young chap evidently adores her.”

“Now comes a difficult question: what am I to do with this letter? I wonder if I ought to send it back to her⁠—”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t send it back to her. If she’s the sort of woman you’ve described her to be, it’s quite likely she’ll never discover that she sent it you by mistake.”

“Ought I to put it in the fire?”

“I don’t think you ought to do that. It doesn’t belong to you. You’ve no right to destroy it. Wait a day or two, dearest, and see what happens. She may ask you if you have got the letter? Then you can give it back to her. I’ll keep it if you like, Angus. We’ll put it in an envelope and I’ll address it to myself. If I keep it in the secret drawer of my old desk over there, only you and I will know where it is.”