With a Prayer Book in her hand she could easily have said that it was. But it was not true. The discipline of her church had never troubled her and she always felt that God understood if nobody else did.
“No,” she said. “It’s something deeper than that.”
“There’s always one thing that I want to say to you,” pursued Ford, looking anywhere but at the Prayer Book, “but I don’t know how to say it. You’ll be angry. It’s this. Doesn’t it make any difference that you … that you belonged to me first?”
“Don’t, Ford. Don’t speak of that.”
“But I must. It makes all the difference. You oughtn’t to have married him. You ought to have married me. And now it’s all cleared up between us you can set it right. You can leave him and come to me and I’ll marry you as soon as you’re free. He’ll divorce you, I suppose? Only there is this. We’d have to live on £500 a year. Is it that that you can’t face? Do you think £500 a year enough?”
She did not answer because they had reached the flagged path under the house and she could see Corny’s head bobbing behind the curtain of a first-floor room. Probably there were others watching them. And she thought that Corny might have heard the last sentence about £500 a year. With a small pressure on Ford’s arm she enjoined caution.
“I suppose,” she said, speaking to Corny’s curtain, “that £500 wouldn’t be enough to go to Yeshenku again. How soon do you want to go?”
“As soon as possible,” said Ford, with a scowl up at the window. “We’re held up till we can get more specimens.”
“Because of the zygotes you can’t trace? But where ought they to be, Ford? I mean, where did you expect to find them?”
“In the midgut,” said Ford.
“Of the mosquito?”
“Naturally,” said Ford. “If it was our own midguts we wouldn’t have to go and look for them in Yeshenku.”
Corny, sure that this conversation might be openly overheard, poked his head out of the window and wished them a good-morning. He said that Aggie had a temperature.
“In the walls of the stomach,” particularised Ford.
“But you find sporonts in the salivary glands?”
“Never in a mosquito we’ve infected ourselves.”
“Very odd. But they must pass it on somehow. Perhaps it comes out in a second generation. In their eggs or something.”
“Oh, that’s impossible …” began Ford. “At least … it’s so unlikely that we’ve never considered it.”
“But why shouldn’t it?”
He stood still and pondered.
“Because it never happens with any form of the malaria parasite. Anophelines …”
“But this isn’t a malaria parasite. You said that in many ways its history differs …”
“I know. And that’s why we haven’t sufficiently … have you got a telephone?”
It seemed as if she was never going to get him away from the house again.
“I’d like to get on to Macdonald, my assistant at the Guthrie. We dissected some specimens yesterday and he mayn’t have thrown away the carcasses. It’s just possible. It’s worth looking. He’ll be there. He lives at the Guthrie.”
“Telephone after breakfast,” suggested Laura.
“But I ought to get on to him at once. He may throw away those carcasses.”
“And if he hasn’t?”
“Then I must take the first train back …”
As soon as he had finished his business here, he was going to say. He looked quickly and questioningly at Laura, and saw that she was biting her lip. His mind came back, refreshed, to the business in hand. He must settle it or he would never get back to his zygotes. And he walked her briskly away from the house to the bottom of the garden.
“It will be breakfast in five minutes,” he said, “and you haven’t told me what you are going to do.”
“But I have told you, Ford. I can’t come with you. It’s impossible.”
“Because I’m too poor?”
“No. Not that. I’d willingly share poverty with you. But I’ve married Alec. I oughtn’t to have, but it’s done. And I’m bound to … to give him value for his money.”
Ford gave a short laugh.
“That’s good! You give him value for his money. What do you give him, I’d like to know? He looks half starved. Value! He has to work twenty hours a day for you, and a lot of fun he must get in the other four!”
“All successful barristers overwork …”
“You think you give him value? You call yourself a good wife? When you go about complaining that you’re not happy and you oughtn’t to have married him? What kind of a wife do you call yourself? You’re worse than a kept woman. You steal everything. You take everything and give nothing.”
“And when I did … when I did … you threw it back in my face.”
“But I can tell you this. It’s not good enough for me.”
“You shouldn’t have let me go that first time. It was all your fault.”
“Now I’ve got my answer and I know where I am. You just want to keep me hanging round. It’s not good enough. You ask me down here …”
“To meet Walter Bechstrader …”
“And then you come at me with a Prayer Book and a lot of hysterical nonsense about loyalty and friendship being all that matters …”
“So they are.”
“You’re not loyal to him. You’re not loyal to me. He keeps you on velvet, and kills himself to do it, and what do you give him? A privilege that you won’t give to me because you say it’s not worth anything. If it’s worth so little why does he have to pay so much for it? If it’s worth such a lot, you’re lying when you tell me that I have the best you can give. You’re cheating both of us.”
“Because I’ve been cheated,” said Laura in a low voice.
“You?”
She did not know how to explain, or tell him that he was being unfair, and that she really had more desire to do right than he supposed. She had principles but they never seemed to help her. She knew, only too clearly, what she ought to be, but she could never make up her mind what she ought to do. It had been a mistake to marry Alec. As his wife she could never be what she ought. But her conscience rose up against any attempt to right that mistake.
“It’s quite true,” she thought bitterly. “I’m not a good wife to him. I’ll try to do better.”
But how? Well, to begin with, she would dismiss Ford.
“Who’s been cheating you?” he was asking.
“Nobody has. But you see, Ford, I’m not, as you say, a good wife to Alec, because I can’t be. Because he doesn’t call out the … the strength in me that I might have had. But I could have been a good wife to you.”
“Could you? Then …”
“Once. But not now. Don’t you see? That’s the point. I’ve changed. I’ve gone down hill. I think we’ve both changed. You’re harder and more selfish and more worldly than you used to be. You don’t really want the risk of going off with me. And if you lost your post at the Guthrie through it, I think you’d hate me. You want me so much that you’ve worked yourself up into thinking you’d be equal to it, but very soon you’ll be glad that you escaped. You don’t really want me for a wife now. If I had consented to become your mistress again, without leaving Alec, you would have been perfectly happy. We could once have given something better to each other. When we were younger, and had more faith. But not now, after our lives have grown apart for so long. I had so much courage then, and I haven’t got it now. The same thing which made me go to work for your mother might have strengthened me to make our marriage a success, in spite of our being poor, and divided by great differences of temperament. But anything I tried to do for you now would be a sham. It would only end in disaster. I do love you, but not as I did once, and we can’t put back the clock. I think it would be best if we gave each other up, absolutely and for ever. You must go back to your work and try to remember that if you had married me you might never have gone to
Yeshenku.”
“Yes I should,” said Ford obstinately. “I’d have married you. And I’d have gone there somehow or other. You’d have backed me up. Then you would. We’d have done it all.”
“Oh Ford … Ford …”
“If you hadn’t married him.”
“If you hadn’t turned back, that time you came for me. Oh Ford … why did you? You weren’t brave enough.”
It was just like her, he reflected, to fix the ultimate blame on to him. And then he was overwhelmed by the knowledge that he was losing her.
“I can’t, Laura. I can’t go. I was wrong to be so angry. I love you. I can’t live without you. If you won’t come with me, can’t you, couldn’t you …”
“No, Ford, no!”
“But if you love me …”
“It wouldn’t be right,” said Laura, through her tears. “We must do what we think is right. You’d better go away at once.”
“I wonder you don’t tell me I ought to stay and make friends with Bechstrader.”
“You certainly ought. But that’s asking rather much, I suppose.”
“A very good stalking horse … your Mister Bechstrader …”
“Don’t be so cruel.”
He could not be just to her. He was suffering too much. And when they got close to the house he turned on his heel and went indoors.
Quite a lot of people had come down and were waiting about for some impulse to go into breakfast. Corny was in the garden, picking off dead heads, a thing he always assiduously did in the country. He knew exactly where Geraldine kept her scissors and gardening gloves, and he had appropriated both so that Hugo, also intent upon doing the right thing in the country, was obliged either to stand and watch him or tear his fingers upon the thorns. Laura lingered beside them to ask if anyone had heard queer noises in the night. They had and Corny knew what it was all about. He had been looking out of his door when Geraldine brought Aggie upstairs again. And he gave them an account which alarmed Hugo, who was once more alertly on duty and braced by a night spent in solitude if not in sleep. Aggie must never be allowed to leave the house without having that play read to her, and if she had departed in the middle of the night he would only have had himself to blame. He must exert himself and atone for yesterday’s shortcomings.
Laura laughed and said that Aggie seldom stayed out a full week-end nowadays. She went upstairs to take off her hat, for she was not one of those who can fling down their headgear in the hall without looking in the glass. That Titian hair of hers took a good deal of time and she had begun to grow it again.
Before going downstairs to breakfast she looked into Alec’s room with some idea of beginning immediately to be a better wife. She found him still dozing, for he had brought down a lot of work and had sat up half the night over it. His early tea was already cold. Laura perched on the bottom of his bed and told him to wake up, whereat he thrust a yellow and wizened face over the sheets to blink at her, and yawned tremendously, showing all the beautiful gold fillings in his back teeth. In some surprise he said that she was up very early.
“I’ve been to church,” she said.
She looked down at her Prayer Book and at Ford’s rose, which she still held in her hand.
“Um, yes.”
He poured himself out a cup of tea and sipped it. Laura had been to church. That meant that his house would very soon be rid of microgametes and macrogametes. Ford would vanish from their lives. He would be dismissed, after a certain amount of melancholy discussion. Laura always went to church at the penultimate stage of these affairs. She was a good woman. Alec was quite sure about that. A good woman but a silly one. Many of his friends had wives who were quite as silly and not good at all. It was silly of her to ask the fella to meet Bechstrader when the fella was in love with her. He stirred his tepid brew and nodded.
Laura suggested ringing for more and hotter tea. It was the sort of thing that a good wife should do.
“Oh it’ll do,” he said. “It’s my own fault if it’s cold. I did wake up when they brought it in, but I went to sleep again.”
She put the rose and Prayer Book on the counterpane and felt the teapot.
“Shall we play a little golf to-day?” she suggested.
Very long ago Alec had told her that golf bored him unless she came too. And so it did, when first they were married. He looked surprised and mumbled something about a foursome that Gibbie had arranged.
“Oh. I see.”
It was uphill work, being a better wife. She picked up her belongings and prepared to go.
“Is that a George Wode?” asked Alec, looking at the rose.
“No. I think it’s a Mabel Jupp.”
She did not quite know what to do with it, for it was still fresh and deserved cherishing, even though Ford had torn off some of its petals. But when she got back to her room she put it in the waste-paper basket. And then, sinking on her knees beside her bed, she buried her face in the quilt.
16. A Quiet Sunday.
Hugo, at breakfast, was very brisk and very determined not to let the grass grow under his feet. He had made a vow to read his play to Aggie before lunch time, and he began at once to clear the ground. He must find out where everybody was going to be that morning in order to manœuvre Aggie into some other place. Laura, it appeared, would be going to church again and so would Lady Geraldine and Philomena. Corny was also to be taken, because it was encouraging for Mr. Comstock to see a man or two in the Syranwood pew. Gibbie, Alec and Adrian were to play golf. At least there had been some talk of it the night before.
“And Bechstrader?” asked Hugo, thinking that he did not want an obbligato accompaniment on the gong.
“He’d better come to church,” said Laura. “My mother likes to have the pew quite full.”
“But don’t you want a foursome?”
Gibbie, to whom this was said, looked rather blue. And Hugo, remembering with a shiver the menace which hung over both their heads, hastened to reassure him.
“Oh, I can’t come. I’ve got to read a play to Aggie. But what about Usher? I was wondering if he’d like to borrow my clubs. Where is he, by the way? Has he had breakfast?”
“He’s telephoning,” said Laura.
“But he was telephoning ten minutes ago. He’s taking his time.”
“He’s ringing up the Guthrie Institute.”
When they got out into the hall again Ford was still telephoning in the butler’s pantry. The door was open and his voice rang harshly through the hall. It seemed that he had got hold of his assistant, for he was saying:
“No. I mean the carcasses we dissected yesterday. Yes, I know. I want you to look at the ovaries … All right. Ring me up when you have. It was just an idea. Somebody … it came into my head this morning… yes … well, ring me up.”
Ford came out of the pantry and Hugo asked if he would like to play golf.
“With you?” asked Ford in surprise.
“No. I’m afraid I can’t. But Alec wants to make up a foursome.”
Ford explained that he must wait in the house all the morning in case a call came through from the Guthrie Institute. Meanwhile he proposed to go into the library and play for himself the records of five quartettes that he had found there. No power on earth should make him play golf with Alec.
“Then that’s all right,” thought Hugo. “I’ll take Aggie into the drawing-room.”
Having forgotten the girls he thought that he had accounted for everybody. So he sat in the hall, to make sure of catching Aggie when she came downstairs, and began to do the crossword puzzle in a Sunday paper. Everybody would be sure to pass through the hall sooner or later, and in this way he would be able to pass the time of day with each of them in turn and regain such good graces as he had lost the night before.
“A word in four letters, beginning with S, and meaning third thoughts,” he said to Adrian, who was the first to appear.
“I don’t degrade myself,” replied Adrian sombrely. “I’ve always stood out ag
ainst those horrible things. What is everybody going to do?”
“You’re going to play golf.”
“Am I? You don’t want the whole of that paper to yourself, do you? Give me some of it. I want to see what they say about Wrench.”
As Adrian read the obituary comments he rustled the sheets and clicked his tongue.
“Nobody ever began to understand him,” he complained. “As one of his few personal friends I can’t but feel …”
“Could it be stet?” murmured Hugo.
“Of course, in the most vital period of his life, when he was living in that lighthouse, one didn’t know him.”
“I did,” said Hugo.
“You did? Really! I never knew that. What sort of impression did he make on you? Was he writing then? Poetry?”
“I believe so,” said Hugo. And added privily: “So was I.”
He must have been writing poetry because his wash-hand-stand drawer was full of it. But he could not remember a word of it. Nor could he remember what sort of impression Wrench had made. But he recalled the lighthouse cottage, and the tamarisks blown flat by sea breezes, and the scratch of sand on the oilcloth of the floor. The rocks going up to the cottage had been covered with a queer low-growing fleshy plant that smelt sour when it was crushed. Perhaps he had written poetry about that. The Other Life flashed past him and was gone, as he thought of the tamarisks and the sand and the salt in the air. It was like being in a train that shot for a moment out of a tunnel into sunlight and then back into darkness. The glimpse was too short. He could not be sure of anything, only that there had been light and space and the sea tossing. If you put your ear to the shell you’ll hear the sea. Once when he was a little boy he had a shell that he used to take to bed with him. He could shut his eyes and listen to it. Now his memory was like a shell. If he held it close, close to his ear, he could catch faint echoes. He was nothing now but a man listening to a shell …
Adrian’s voice sounded pleasant and grieved in the resounding emptiness of the hall. He was taking the opportunity of saying all that he had been unable to say the evening before, at dinner. Indeed, he said it better, for he had had time to think it over and put it into shape. His full estimate of the loss to literature went booming gently out into the garden and up the curve of the stairs. So that Solange, running lightly down, caught echoes of it before she came into sight.
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