The Department of Dead Ends by Roy Vickers

Author:Roy Vickers [Vickers, Roy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Chapter Three

The next day he called at her lodgings with the intention of taking her out to lunch at some obscure restaurant where he could begin on her table manners. The landlady, of the kind he had more or less expected, told him:

‘It’s all her own fault. You know what a frightful night it was last night, with sleet and that east wind. She would go out, though she wasn’t short o’ cash. I told her it would bring back her coughin’, and so it did. This morning she was all hot and raving, so not wantin’ anything to happen I called the doctor to her and he popped her off to the Metropolitan Hospital.’

At the hospital, Wakering interviewed the almoner. He paid in cash for Jeannie to be moved from the ward to a cubicle and to be given every purchasable comfort. He was informed that her temperature had dropped, and that he would probably be able to see her the next day. He was not asked his name, but was tactfully addressed as ‘Mr Smith’. To the hospital authorities, anonymous interest in patients of that class was not unfamiliar.

The next day, when his typist was going out to lunch, he asked her to buy him a dozen red carnations. He himself always lunched in the office on coffee and sandwiches. At three, after signing his letters, he announced that he was going out and would not return that day. The paper wrapping the carnations was wet and came unfolded when he picked up the flowers. On a side table were the ‘wretched posters’, with photographs of Mrs Hemmelman and her slandered dog. They were at least dry. He doubled one and used it as a wrapper for the red carnations.

When he reached the hospital he was shown into the matron’s office, where he was informed, through the formula designed to convey sympathy, that Jeannie was dead. There followed a brief explanation of the reason for the sudden collapse, which he did not hear.

‘She’s dead! Thank you!’ said Wakering and walked out before the matron could raise the question of funeral expenses. He was not interested in Jeannie’s funeral. He was not, indeed never had been, interested in Jeannie herself. But his personality was hopelessly entangled in the dream, of which the person of Jeannie had provided the raw material.

He walked on, unconscious of his direction. The new, energizing dream had been violently torn from him. He would not be able to build where others had destroyed. No one would write of him as one of the great lovers of history. He would die as he had lived, a solicitor with a small practice – a man who had never had the virility to secure a woman for himself.

As he strode on, hot tears of frustration and self-pity dropped on the carnations that were to have been the banner of Jeannie Ruthen’s regeneration. His stark tragedy overshadowed the universe, brought him a wide generosity so that he forgave everybody, particularly Cuthbert Bridstowe.

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