Until the Colours Fade by Tim Jeal Page A

mothers in difficult child-birth. More recently he had gained a reputation for curing muscular pains with charges from galvanic batteries. He was still bent over his microscope when his housekeeper came in with the painfully unwelcome news that Lady Goodchild’s coach-and-four was at present standing in front of the house. His first reaction was to delay seeing her by claiming he was with a patient, but that could only be a temporary expedient.
    He crossed the room to a small zinc basin and washed his hands. Of course he could affect complete ignorance of his wife’s adultery and feign shock and blazing anger; but then instant action would be expected, and that was a course to which he was entirely opposed. The woman herself might be ignorant of the situation: a prospect in its way even more horrifying. But on reflection he doubted whether she had come as a bona fide patient. But what could she possibly hope to gain by confronting him? This time it was his valet who came up to tell him that herladyship would not wait. Carstairs ran a hand through his thinning hair and put on his silver-rimmed pince-nez. Then with a sigh he rolled down his shirtsleeves and put on a grey frock-coat over his black waistcoat. Whatever her intentions, her ladyship could be relied upon, with the rest of her caste, to look down on him as a ‘sawbones’ or jumped-up apothecary.
    When he received her in his consulting room, Carstairs felt still more confused. That Goodchild should have preferred Dolly to the woman who now stood in front of the shelves of glass jars and bottles beside the door seemed fantastic to him. Dolly was so much plumper, with features coarse and blunt by comparison, and without any of Lady Goodchild’s evident dignity. But perhaps it was this very lack of hauteur and reserve which the peer found attractive. There was no mistaking Dolly’s bubbling laughter and her zest for all life’s pleasures, however questionable some of them might be considered for a woman. Lady Goodchild with her ivory smooth skin and black mantle edged with astrakhan looked elegantly graceful in a way which Mrs Carstairs could never hope to emulate, whoever her dressmaker might be.
    ‘Your ladyship, I am sorry to have been prevented from seeing you sooner,’ said Carstairs, rising from his chair behind an imposing mahogany desk and indicating with a nod an upright leather chair beside the red curtain which hid his examination couch.
    ‘You have no need to apologise, doctor. I came without warning .’ She sat stiffly on the edge of the chair and glanced hesitantly down at her gloved hands. ‘I have come to speak of matters painful to both of us.’ She looked up and fixed his eye with unblushing directness. ‘You know of my husband’s adultery with your wife?’
    ‘I do, madam,’ he returned quietly, disturbed by the forthrightness of her question. Without dropping her gaze, she said sternly:
    ‘And do you not intend to remind your wife of her duty to you?’
    ‘I have done so, ma’am,’ he replied with a flicker of resentment in his eyes. Helen understood his feelings but did not soften her manner.
    ‘May I ask with what result?’
    ‘None, I fear, your ladyship. Mrs Carstairs is of an independent frame of mind. I am afraid that talk of duty amuses rather than chastens her.’ Carstairs was surprised to see that instead ofangering his visitor, his remark had made her smile.
    ‘Wives may be spirited, doctor, but never independent. By law even her property belongs to you.’ Her smile died on her lips. ‘Perhaps that fact might amuse her less than notions of duty.’
    Unlike most of his patients, Carstairs was never distressed by a woman’s assumption of intellectual equality. He removed his pince-nez and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
    ‘By law, Lady Goodchild, I might imprison her in this house, but I doubt whether it would be conducive to my happiness or peace of mind.’
    While Helen admired the ease with which he had turned her