Youthful Arrogance

by Harris Coverley

After the stroke there had been no question: Montgomery Cushingham could neither live alone in the centre of London nor continue his work.

There was, naturally, a great protest from the man himself, but his nieces Athena and Gertrude knew what was best for him. They arranged for his artefacts to be packed into crates, most of his furniture to be sold, and old Montgomery’s person to be trundled in his new wheelchair onto a train up to Shropshire to reside permanently in the grand old ancestral home.

His nurse, picked for her long résumé rather than any particular humane qualities, took it upon herself to wheel him from the station, across the hills, all the way up to the stately manse, groaning and grumbling under her breath the entire time, Montgomery silent, resentful of, and at, everything.

The staff seemed happy to see him, and he would have himself admitted that he was pleased to become reacquainted with several of the oldest servants whom he remembered from his youth — but nothing could truly counteract the bitterness.

As days turned into weeks, he could not shake his depression and accept his new status as a retired invalid. For over four decades, aside from his brief service in the Sudan, the publishing industry had been his life, from his arrival in the capital when Gladstone was in his second premiership, up until then, just a couple of years after the grim conclusion of the Great War.

He had edited and brought to the public thousands of books, notable bestsellers, controversial works of earthshattering renown, but now it felt like it had all amounted to nothing. In his own office, would they even be mentioning him? And if they did, would it be in a good humour? Had he been too hard on his underlings and mentees through the years? Could he have done things differently? Had he even chosen the right profession to begin with? What of the youthful dream of painting on the continent?

All of these questions plagued him mercilessly, and one day the self-interrogation peaked as the nurse left him alone on the path beside the lily-coated pond behind the house to supposedly take in the fresh air and the burgeoning summer sun.

Sat there in a dressing gown, the uniform of the eternal patient, Montgomery examined the flesh of his thighs. There was some residual feeling, but there remained next-to-no strength.

He looked around, and in the golden rays his mind flickered back.

“Agatha,” he whispered. “Aggie…”

He had not seen his former fiancée since he had broken off their engagement all those years ago. He had heard through idle chatter that she had married well and left for Canada, but otherwise did not want to tempt anything by undertaking his own inquiries.

He looked through the trees and remembered her in her flowing white dress, the trim catching the grass, her blonde locks falling from beneath her bonnet.

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them there was some movement in the bushes across the water. It was a young woman in white, sauntering, laughing.

Instinct almost had Montgomery shout out and demand the trespasser’s name, but he stopped himself.

The woman was very familiar; if anything he felt an imperious sense of déjà vu.

“Aggie?” he quietly asked.

The young woman almost bounced around the pond, stopping at Montgomery, resting her hands on his knees, blonde hair peeking out from underneath her bonnet.

“Monty, you silly boy!” she laughed. “What are you doing? Come on, we’re off to the lake!”

“Aggie?” Montgomery asked again. “How is this possible? How can you be here…some forty years later? How could it be?”

“Stop being silly!” the woman chuckled, her hand to her mouth. “It is as it has always been! Now, come on! Time to get walking…!”

“I can’t!” Montgomery said. “Not like this!”

“Like what?”

“Not after…what has happened.”

In spite of everything, he was embarrassed to admit to the stroke. It would have betrayed his age to this most delightful girl even more than the whiteness of his hair or the cracking of his skin.

“Have you even tried?” she asked.

“It’s not going to work!”

“Here, let me help you!”

Agatha grabbed his arm and began to pull him up.

Montgomery did not resist, treasuring her touch too much.

At first it was awkward on weakened feet, but, as he straightened up, he found for the first time in months that he could stand unaided, just as before his malady had attacked him, his soles firm on the gravel.

“It’s a miracle!” he cried, overrun with happiness.

“To the lake then!” Agatha beamed.

“Yes, yes my darling, let’s…let’s!”

They then did not just walk, but ran.

#

It was the nurse who came back outside and made the discovery.

Montgomery’s nieces did not take kindly to her tragic, if temporary, abandonment of their uncle, and were sure to put a bad word about to damage her future prospects.

Although a second stroke was the most likely cause of his demise, what the doctor could not understand was how a man as immobile as Montgomery Cushingham could have got so far from his chair, its wheels still locked in place, into the pond, floating face down, some twelve feet away.