Part 7

Saunders got out of his chair, as though the story were finished, and stood with his back to the fire warming the palms of his hands. There was a moment’s silence, which I saw no reason for breaking, and then he began talking again. After that, he said, Miss Lettice and I were quite good friends. I became a constant and welcome visitor at her cottage: constant because her solitude was something of a pain to me, and welcome because she knew that to me she could talk about Bernard to her heart’s content. And that, by Jove, was a privilege she lost no opportunity of exercising. How many times have I piously lied to that woman assuring her that my interest in her Bernard was insatiable! Often, as you’ll readily understand, I was bored beyond expression, though I never lost my sense of the grotesque pathos of her life. But I must be careful not to let you suppose that she was a mere monomaniac. She knew, as well as I did, that she was playing a game of make-believe: she was not the victim of any sort of delusion, and her obsession never became pathological or threatened to become so.

Things went on like this for ten years or so. She lived untroubled among her dreams until some few months ago. During the war Bernard led an existence even more shadowy than usual. Of course he enlisted, and was wounded, and won decorations for his valour; and Miss Lettice, knitting socks for more substantial soldiers, continued to play her secret game by fancying that they would comfort the feet of her son. The change came, as I’ve said, not many months ago, and it shewed itself first of all in our conversations. From those conversations Bernard was painlessly excluded, and his place taken by a young man weighing twelve stone or more. You’ll know the name well enough--Jack Turnbull, the stationmaster’s son. Jack began to loom so large in the hopes and fears of Miss Lettice that I became uneasy, the more so because I had been the instrument of bringing them together. It was this way. During the latter part of the war, and ever since, Miss Lettice had found it increasingly difficult to manage on her extremely modest income, and music pupils were more in request than ever. I did what I could for her by dropping a recommendation here and there, and among others I enlisted the active sympathy of old Turnbull. Together we hatched a little conspiracy, the upshot of which was that Jack, a big hulking fellow approaching thirty years, was fired with a sudden ambition to become an amateur pianist. Jack had done well in the army, and finding himself in mufti again, at a loose end, and with a captain’s gratuity standing to his credit at Cox’s, he lent himself very readily to the amiable fraud. His three hours tuition a week was very useful to Miss Lettice; but it proved her undoing. For now we come to the hopeless passion I spoke of. And I needn’t stop to assure you that there’s nothing scandalous in this tragic affair. Miss Lettice fell in love with Jack, but the love she yearned to lavish on him was maternal love. If you think me perverse in calling that love a hopeless passion I must disagree with you. It was passion, and it was, in part, physical passion, as all human love must be. Why do we shrink from admitting that maternal love is as deeply rooted in the body as any other? Miss Lettice loved Jack Turnbull for his strength, his masculinity, his youth, and because, by a fatal coincidence, he was born in the same month of the same year as her Bernard. In a sense it was the calendar that killed the Miss Lettice we knew and set in her stead a witless child. No doubt Jack seemed to her a gift from God, a wonderful consolation prize, a token of the heavenly forgiveness. Indeed she told me as much when, with the air of imparting to me her dearest secret, she said that Jack was coming to lodge with her. She had bought some pretty things for his bedroom, worked ornamental bolster-slips with her own fingers, and replaced the dressing-table by a chest of drawers dragged in from her own room. I hardly dared to hint my misgiving. ‘Are you quite sure he is coming?’ I ventured. ‘I fancied he would soon be looking out for a job. Young men can’t remain idle for long nowadays, you know.’ But she wouldn’t hear of my doubts. Jack would get work at the station under his father. He hadn’t exactly promised to come to her, but she had urged it and she knew he would humour an old woman.

I was by no means so sure, and I made up my mind to tackle Master Jack at the earliest possible moment. I called at his father’s house and left a message asking him to make a point, if he could, of calling at the vicarage. He came the same evening. ‘Well, Turnbull,’ I said. ‘I hear you’re thinking of changing your quarters?’

He looked as guilty and uncomfortable as though I had surprised him with his hand in somebody’s till. ‘Has it got round already? Why, I’ve told no one outside the family. Why can’t people hold their tongues!’

‘My dear fellow,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve annoyed you. But I really don’t see why you should be so secretive about it. And it wasn’t your father who told me.’

‘Who was it?’ He spoke curtly. Four years as an infantry officer hadn’t improved his manners.

‘It was Miss Lettice herself.’

I have never seen a man more astonished. ‘Miss Lettice! Miss Lettice told you! Damn it, sir, she doesn’t know!’ After a moment’s stupefied silence he added, with an air of apology, ‘But perhaps we’re at cross-purposes. What was it that Miss Lettice told you?’

‘Only that you’re going to lodge in her house. Nothing to get excited about.’

He began striding about the room. ‘We are certainly at cross-purposes all right. I thought you meant Canada. I’m leaving next week for Canada.’

‘For a holiday?’ I ineptly inquired.

‘For keeps,’ said Jack. ‘Mounted Police, with a commission soon, I hope. This country’s gone to the dogs, sir.’

Here was a pretty mess! ‘But look here, Turnbull, Miss Lettice has got it into her head that you’re going there as a lodger. Have you given her any cause to believe such stuff?’

At that the swagger dropped off him. ‘That woman, I’m sorry for her, but she gets on my nerves. She gushes too much for my taste. She wants to mother me, if you ever heard such rot. And I won’t be mothered.’

‘That’s all very well,’ I cut in. ‘But why say this to me? Miss Lettice is the person you should complain to. Are you content to let her go on living in a fool’s paradise?’

Well, you can pretty well guess how the conversation proceeded. We argued for the best part of three hours. Jack was determined not to yield to her devouring maternal affection, but he hadn’t pluck enough to tell her so outright. He preferred to save his own feelings by equivocation. The coward does it with a kiss, you know, the brave man with the sword. But I must do him the justice to admit that, short of brutal explicitness, he did all he could to disabuse her mind of its fond fiction. I was aghast when I realized that the secret of his departure was being kept solely in order that he might slip out of the country without bidding her good-bye. After long battle I wrung from him a reluctant promise that he would spare her that culminating cruelty.

And that is the end of the story. I too was a coward, for I did not dare to visit Miss Lettice until Jack had gone. In point of fact I watched him off the premises and then stepped in, unwillingly enough but hoping to afford the wretched woman some comfort, if only the comfort of distraction. The front door yielded to my push: it was seldom locked. I tapped at the door of the sitting-room. There was no sound from within. Gently I turned the handle and looked in.

‘Good morning, Miss Lettice,’ I said, with a cheerfulness that was idiotic, I dare say, but what was one to do?

Miss Lettice sat staring at the wall in front of her, staring fixedly, motionless. Whether she heard my voice or not I don’t know, but she neither moved nor spoke. I became very anxious and called to her again, offering such dry crumbs of comfort as came to hand. ‘Don’t grieve, my dear Miss Lettice. There’s still Bernard left to you.’ Something of that sort I said to her, but it made no difference at all. She was struck down, struck worse than dead, by the colossal and cruel power of love. And while I continued to stare at her with pity and horror, she slowly turned towards me, as though on a swivel, a face marred out of recognition by a smile....

Saunders winced. His lips had hesitated in releasing those last words. Lifting one hand to his eyes, he turned away from me towards his bookshelves. There, with a book in his hand, he shrugged his shoulders as if to shake off the grip of a memory.

‘If it’s standard trees you’re having,’ he remarked, ‘you’ll want light six-feet stakes. Bowers is your man.’

WEDDING-DAY

WEDDING-DAY

Wedding-day. It was curiously unreal. His own face grimaced back at him as he struggled to adjust his tie, a face that no man could feel satisfied with. ‘I sometimes wish Uncle Edgar hadn’t died after all,’ he confided to the looking-glass. Round and pink, with a wisp of light brown moustache that didn’t seem to belong to it, that ghost of himself continued to agonize. Funny, what women could see to admire in men. As for Florrie’s devotion to himself, the unreasonableness of it, the obstinacy, positively vexed him. If it hadn’t been for that little legacy they would have had to wait another five years. Not that he wanted to wait, but still--five years was five years, time to turn round in. That fifty pounds a year had made just the difference; it had brought this day within his immediate reach; his heart’s desire, glowing like luminous fruit upon an inaccessible tree, had bent suddenly towards him, and his hand was already poised to grasp it. Fateful moment. It didn’t bear thinking about. The old man ought not to have sprung it on him like this.

‘Cheer-O, Bert!’ There was a bang upon the bedroom door, and before it could be answered the attacking force entered tumultuously. It was a large red-headed man, dressed unmistakably for the approaching ceremony, tall, clean-shaven, possessing hands a size too big for his body.

‘Hullo, elephant!’ He resented the fellow’s entry, and yet in some vague way he was glad of it. He wanted to be alone with his dreams, but he feared to be alone with his doubts. Well, in a few hours solitude would be a thing of the past indeed. Florrie and he would be together, sleeping and waking, in sickness and in health, till death them did part. Forty years, perhaps, and never alone. Breakfast with Florrie, the eight-thirteen to town, the six-five back, a late tea with Florrie, conversation with Florrie, supper with Florrie; and week-ends spent going to church or digging in the garden. There was no escape now. Escape! Who wanted to escape? Not he, anyhow. And that was fortunate, for here was Maurice, the jubilant best man, and Florrie’s brother to boot. No escape.

‘You’d better pull your socks up, old feller,’ said Maurice, his face bisected by a grin. ‘You haven’t got as much time to spare as you seem to think. Cab’s at the door.’

It was fortunate, he knew, that the tide of events was sweeping him along, or he would have stood for ever staring at himself in a dream of indecision. Yet he hated to be bustled. He was still a free man, and there leapt to life in him a spark of anger against the man who sought to wrest that freedom from his grasp before the hour had struck. It would strike soon enough, but until then ... it seemed suddenly necessary that he should assert his independence of Maurice. His toilet was already completed, but he would delay a while yet.

‘All right. I won’t keep you a minute.’ He spoke with an affected coolness, as though addressing an importunate commercial traveller. And, without haste, he picked up from the dressing-table a small pair of nail-scissors. With these he began cutting off his moustache.

‘Hullo, what’s the game?’ asked Maurice.

‘Time that thing came off,’ replied Bert, still plying the scissors. ‘Pour me out a spot of water for shaving, there’s a good chap... No, cold’ll do.’

The world without was ablaze with summer, a beacon in the grey waste of infinity, a fire-ball flung into the darkness. The sky flamed beauty down upon the responsive pavements. But he, stubbornly, remained shut in his cold introspection. It was as if he alone of all created things was able to resist the infection of gladness that the warm air held. Forty years, forty years. The dailyness of life terrified him. The amiable Maurice became for him the symbol of all-conquering circumstance.

It was a new Florrie who joined him at the altar, a Florrie veiled, mysterious, and therefore seductive. ‘Therefore’ was the word stressed by the devil in his brain. But she was undeniably pretty, and so fragile, so like a piece of exquisite china, that he held his breath in awe when she yielded her hand to his. This was the lovely ingenuous child that life, day by day, year by year, would bend and break, and finally cast aside. His was to be the dubious privilege of watching that process, of watching the hair go grey, the face wrinkle, the child-dreams die one by one. His heart beat with a profound pity. Poor little devil, they were both in the same boat. She too was swearing her freedom away, taking the veil of everlasting monotony. And, irrationally, he blamed not himself, not her, but the officiating clergyman, the guests, and most of all that fellow Maurice. He was glad that he had not allowed himself to be bustled by Maurice, glad to feel that soreness of the upper lip which bore witness to his not having been bustled.

The clergyman at whose feet he knelt was tactfully gabbling words about the procreation of children. Someone in the pews behind was sniffing tearfully. That would be Florrie’s mother, no doubt, that angular female version of Maurice. He became almost bemused by the drowsy noises, like bees in a bottle, emitted by the priest. The sunlight, pouring through the stained-glass window, cast a luminous many-coloured pattern across the chancel floor. The colours entered him--his eyes, his nostrils, his very veins--and made his blood tingle in tune with their brightness. A faint purple, like wine stains; a rich yellow, like harvested corn--they rang their little bell-melodies in his consciousness till he lost count of time.

‘And I hope you’ll be very happy. Now we’ll go to the vestry.’

With Florrie clinging to his arm he went to the vestry; and there a swarm of relations, like honey-seeking bees, descended upon them. ‘Florrie, you look too sweet!’ ‘Bert, you dear old thing!’ And so on.

Florrie’s younger brother approached, fresh from school. ‘Gratters, old horse. She’s a good girl. I’ve trained her well. But what’s happened to the cricket teams?’

‘The what?’

‘Cricket teams. Eleven a side, you know.’

Florrie translated. ‘He means your moustache, Bert. Why did you shave it off? I wish you hadn’t.’

He experienced a pang of compunction. Curse it, why had he shaved it off? ‘Oh, I don’t know. Thought I’d feel freer without it.’

Maurice, the omnipotent Maurice, bore down on them. ‘Off we go!’ he said briskly. Why was he always in such a devil of a hurry? Bert and his bride began marching down the aisle. He wanted to dance: not with joy, but because it was so difficult to walk against the tempo of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.

Outside, the world still blazed. And a hundred eyes stared. He handed Florrie into the waiting cab, and leaped in after her, with grains of rice trickling down his back. Maurice, the gaoler, shut the door behind them, and then, with incredible agility, thrust his head through the open window-space, elongated his neck, and kissed his sister on the cheek. ‘Best of luck, both.’ He withdrew. The taxi moved on, gobbling like a turkey. ‘I’m glad I had that shave,’ said Bert viciously. The forty years began.

DEARTH’S FARM

DEARTH’S FARM

It is really not far: our fast train does it in eighty minutes. But so sequestered is the little valley in which I have made my solitary home that I never go to town without the delicious sensation of poising my hand over a lucky-bag full of old memories. In the train I amuse myself by summoning up some of those ghosts of the past, a past not distant but sufficiently remote in atmosphere from my present to be invested with a certain sentimental glamour. ‘Perhaps I shall meet you--or you.’ But never yet have I succeeded in guessing what London held up her sleeve for me. She has that happiest of tricks--without which paradise will be dull indeed--the trick of surprise. In London, if in no other place, it is the unexpected that happens. For me Fleet Street is the scene _par excellence_ of these adventurous encounters, and it was in Fleet Street, three months ago, that I ran across Bailey, of Queens’, whom I hadn’t seen for five years. Bailey is not his name, nor Queens’ his college, but these names will serve to reveal what is germane to my purpose and to conceal the rest.

His recognition of me was instant; mine of him more slow. He told me his name twice; we stared at each other, and I struggled to disguise the blankness of my memory. The situation became awkward. I was the more embarrassed because I feared lest he should too odiously misinterpret my non-recognition of him, for the man was shabby and unshaven enough to be suspicious of an intentional slight. Bailey, Bailey ... now who the devil was Bailey? And then, when he had already made a gesture of moving on, memory stirred to activity.

‘Of course, I remember. Bailey. Theosophy. You used to talk to me about theosophy, didn’t you? I remember perfectly now.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘If you’re not busy let’s go and have tea somewhere.’

He smiled, with a hint of irony in his eyes, as he answered: ‘I’m not busy.’ I received the uncomfortable impression that he was hungry and with no ordinary hunger, and the idea kept me silent, like an awkward school-boy, while we walked together to a tea-shop that I knew.

Seated on opposite sides of the tea-table we took stock of each other. He was thin, and his hair greying; his complexion had a soiled unhealthy appearance; the cheeks had sunk in a little, throwing into prominence the high cheekbones above which his sensitive eyes glittered with a new light, a light not of heaven. Compared with the Bailey I now remembered so well, a rather sleek young man with an almost feline love of luxury blossoming like a tropical plant in the exotic atmosphere of his Cambridge rooms, compared with that man this was but a pale wraith. In those days he had been a flaming personality, suited well--too well, for my plain taste--to the highly-coloured orientalism that he affected in his mural decorations. And co-existent in him with this lust for soft cushions and chromatic orgies, which repelled me, there was an imagination that attracted me: an imagination delighting in highly-coloured metaphysical theories of the universe. These theories, which were as fantastic as _The Arabian Nights_ and perhaps as unreal, proved his academic undoing: he came down badly in his Tripos, and had to leave without a degree. Many a man has done that and yet prospered, but Bailey, it was apparent, hadn’t prospered. I made the conventional inquiries, adding, ‘It must be six or seven years since we met last.’

‘More than that,’ said Bailey morosely, and lapsed into silence. ‘Look here,’ he burst out suddenly, ‘I’m going to behave like a cad. I’m going to ask you to lend me a pound note. And don’t expect it back in a hurry.’

We both winced a little as the note changed hands. ‘You’ve had bad luck,’ I remarked, without, I hope, a hint of pity in my voice. ‘What’s wrong?’

He eyed me over the rim of his teacup. ‘I look a lot older to you, I expect?’

‘You don’t look very fit,’ I conceded.

‘No, I don’t.’ His cup came down with a nervous slam upon the saucer. ‘Going grey, too, aren’t I?’ I was forced to nod agreement. ‘Yet, do you know, a month ago there wasn’t a grey hair in my head. You write stories, don’t you? I saw your name somewhere. I wonder if you could write my story. You may get your money back after all.... By God, that would be funny, wouldn’t it!’

I couldn’t see the joke, but I was curious about his story. And after we had lit our cigarettes he told it to me, to the accompaniment of a driving storm of rain that tapped like a thousand idiot fingers upon the plate-glass windows of the shop.

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