by A. J. Cronin
‘Give me some more coffee,’ said Moore moodily. ‘I’m parched.’
Lucy hesitated, then stiffly she stretched out her hand for his cup; the curtness, the latent resentment in his words pierced her. As though, indeed, it were she who was to blame! There was a stiff silence, and her face too was rigid, suffused by the colour of her wounded love.
‘Dave took me out in the Eagle this afternoon,’ ventured Peter at length; he had but a vague idea of the tension which encompassed him; but no one gave heed to the remark.
‘Why has Netta put so much sugar in this tart?’ broke out Moore. ‘It’s poisoned with it.’
‘I made the tart myself,’ said Lucy coldly; but her voice quivered.
‘It’s right enough for me,’ said Lennox quickly. ‘Just lovely.’
Moore moved uneasily; he had not thought; usually it was Netta who made the tart. Anna said nothing, but bit into a biscuit as though something amused her intensely. There was a long pause.
Loudly Lennox cleared his throat.
‘Anyway, I’m for some more,’ said he pacifically, passing up his plate. ‘ The pastry is fine.’
‘It’s nice to see you sharp set,’ said Anna politely, as Polly might have done.
He had his second helping, and was the last to finish: his air that of a man who had enjoyed the meal in the face of circumstance. And, as Lucy observed him, sensed his partiality for her, she thought bitterly on what she might now have done but for Anna’s insufferable meddling. It goaded her, the thought; agitatedly her fingers crumbled the wheaten cake that lay untasted on her plate. They sat in silence for a long time; then at last Lennox made a move.
‘Time I was off,’ he said, brushing his waistcoat. ‘ I came early because I knew I must get away early.’
She did not protest, yet as they rose she was conscious of the falsity of his excuse.
‘I’ll come along with you,’ Moore declared, ‘as far as your gate.’
‘I could do with some air myself,’ said Anna speculatively. ‘ It’s a fine night.’
Again Lucy felt the blood rush into her face, felt Lennox looking at her, felt an overwhelming surge of rage come over her. She could not offer to go: it was Netta’s evening out; she must put Peter to bed. In a red haze of confusion, she accompanied them to the hall.
‘Good night, and thank you,’ Lennox was saying, with the usual warm pressure of his hand.
She stood at the front door – the air striking upon her heated face – watching them go down the path. Then, with a sigh which broke involuntarily from her lips, which seemed to come from a rending in her breast, she turned, went back into the house.
This, then, was the climax of her achievement. Nothing! And Frank – she winced, feeling bitterly the injustice of his attitude. She – more anxious for his advancement than anyone, with that advancement already consummated in her mind – to be spoken to as he had spoken to her. And Anna – always Anna – interfering in so dubious, so detestable a fashion. There was in Anna’s interference so manifest a pretext that she immediately suspected it. Anna, indeed! Wearily in the empty room she leaned her brow against the cool marble of the mantelpiece, contemplating the figure of the other woman. How she detested her! Her indifference, her composure, her enigmatic eye drawing towards Frank. The softness of her speech, even her movements, which had at first seemed quiet and natural, were become odious and insincere. Now, to look at Anna, even to think of Anna, evoked instantly a shiver of aversion.
Controlling herself, she saw Peter upstairs, cleared the table, and returned to the dining-room. She knew she must not think; and that was why she thought. Her excited mind, seething with a leaven of anger and suspicion, turned fiercely upon her humiliation – for it was surely a humiliation. The precipitation of this anticlimax, the sudden frustration of her brilliant scheme, awoke in her a galling sense of deprivation, brought back with redoubled violence all those previous nebulous misgivings.
Why had Anna dared to interfere with Frank in this insidious, insufferable fashion? Anna had no right to shape his future! Surely something lay at the bottom of it all, something which she must seek and apprehend. Vehemently almost she desired to grasp some tangible solution of this elusive, exasperating perplexity.
And she began to go back, piecing together what might be evidence – the evident solution of Anna’s attitude: a look here, a word there: adding up the total of her doubts, trying vainly to crystallise the substance of her fears. Because she knew her position to be unimpeachable, it was inevitable that she assumed Anna’s to be amiss. Because she felt her conduct to be blameless, it was natural that she saw Anna’s motives as the converse of her own. Besides, had she not that wretched echo of the past rising up and resounding perpetually in her ears? And involuntarily she commenced to think of that unhappy episode, to formulate its circumstances, to visualise even the image of that child – nameless and now dead – of which she knew Anna to be the mother. Unaccountably she began to feel that the mystery of this hidden child was linked in some vague and devious manner to her own perplexity. Or at least, by an unconscious association of ideas, by some common bond of obscurity, she herself linked them in her mind, bound the two subconsciously into a unity as yet unrealised. If only she knew more about that episode in Anna’s life, would she not then have a clue to Anna’s conduct, a clue to Anna herself? And, understanding Anna, would she not then comprehend her attitude to Frank? Anna and Frank – always now she reduced her reasoning to this inevitable impasse: those two names, coupled together, provoking her by the very inconclusiveness of their association.
All at once she started, hearing the opening of the outer door, the sound of their voices in the hall. Her face took on a set, determined look as Frank entered the room. He was alone.
‘Well,’ he said immediately, in a low voice, ‘you made a pretty fool of me tonight. And all for nothing!’
Her lips compressed themselves. The fact that he, who with Anna had compassed his own defeat, should now accuse her, was too painfully absurd to allow her even to defend her action.
‘It was you made a fool of yourself,’ she cried out. ‘I know Lennox would have given it you. I could have managed it.’ She dropped her arm with a hopeless gesture. ‘And it would have suited us so well.’
‘And you are to be the judge of that? Don’t think you can boss him into it. And don’t think you can boss me all my life!’
‘That’s not true, Frank,’ she cried passionately. ‘You know it isn’t. I want everything to be for you – your good.’
‘My good,’ he sneered. ‘ Everybody sees you’ve got a chain on me. Even Anna.’
‘Anna!’ She threw an indescribable intensity into the word.
‘Yes, Anna. And, whilst we’re on that point, I may ask you to be a bit more civil. You’ve been damned rude to her lately. Remember she’s my cousin!’
‘Your cousin!’ she repeated in a quivering voice. ‘I like that! Is she more important than your wife?’
He took a cigarette and lit it, watching her all the time; then, jerking the spent match into the fire, he exclaimed curtly:
‘I think what I said was to ask you to be civil to her.’
Ignoring this issue, she faced him with burning eyes.
‘I’m going to ask you a simple question! Why are you so taken up with Anna?’
He made a fractious movement of his head.
‘What the devil’s wrong with you these days? Do you own me or what, that you cross-examine me like this?’
‘Cross-examine you!’ she exclaimed vehemently. ‘You know I’m not doing that. It is a straightforward question!’
‘Straightforward question be damned!’ he broke in angrily. ‘Keep your straightforward questions and don’t hang over me – don’t smother me. You’ve been doing it for years. Is that not plain enough?’
At the childish irrationality of his words her eyes flashed with vexation. Something goaded her to say, in a low suppressed voice:
‘I think I’ve al
ways done the right thing by you, Frank. I think you know if you’ve been happy.’
‘That’s right,’ he said sulkily. ‘You’re perfect. When you walk I can hear them flap.’
She made no reply, but with a face still flushed, she fixed him with a look of passionate reproach. For a moment she stood there, then abruptly went over to the sofa where, in a pretence of occupation, she took up her needlework and began to sew with trembling fingers; and he, too, sealed up to a gloomy taciturnity. Thus they sat in silence; then at last he rose. Despite herself, she made a quick movement; her eyes clouded suddenly with tears.
‘Is it anything’ – she was filled by a flowing desire for reconciliation – ‘anything I can get you?’
‘I’m going to bed,’ he answered, ‘bed!’
She stared at him, aghast.
‘But, Frank, it’s not nine o’clock yet.’ She stretched out her hand. ‘Let’s make it up. After all – we love each other.’
‘Let me be,’ he said; ‘you’ve done enough for me tonight.’ And he went out of the room before she could utter another word.
She sat quite still for a long time, hearing his slow movements upstairs, hearing finally the cessation of these movements as he got into bed. Her eyes remained fixed, transcending the limits of the room; her resentment gone, erased by a curious regret; her mind filled with an unconscious dismay.
At last she moved her head impatiently, rose, and wound up the clock on the mantelpiece: all such duties, which by right and precedent devolved upon the master of the house, belonged entirely to her: then she went upstairs.
She undressed in the darkness and got into bed beside him. He was not sleeping, but he was pretending to be asleep. His deep breathing did not deceive her, and she gauged the certainty of this pretence from the almost imperceptible rigidity of his body as it lay touching hers. She wished him to speak to her; yet she felt that he would not; nor would she herself risk another rebuff. She had her pride. And so she lay beside him without moving, without giving any sign, closing her eyes to shut out the moonlight light that streamed palely into the room, thinking – thinking with a faintly furrowed brow, straining for something which still eluded her.
Chapter Eight
She had firmly determined to have the matter out with Anna – so much was definite; and in her mind she had fixed the afternoon, when Peter would be safely out of the way, as the time of her attack. She would be calm; she would remember that Anna was her guest, yet she would demand at length an explanation of Anna’s conduct. But next morning, quite unexpectedly, Anna went to Glasgow, upon a shopping expedition – although nothing that Anna undertook could justly be defined by so exact and premeditated a phrase. She had said off-handedly after breakfast:
‘I’m going to get myself some clothes,’ and, rising at once, had caught the ten o’clock train without enthusiasm. No preparation, no excitement, no mention of Lucy accompanying her.
Not that Lucy would have dreamed of accompanying her. Indeed, despite the frustration of her purpose, she viewed the departure of the other woman with a sense of incredible relief. Her head this morning felt heavy, confused, her mind obscured by this strange obsessing doubt. Perhaps it was as well Anna had gone. She wanted to be alone to think, to reason clearly with herself. Again and again she had that conscious sensation of something within her straining to be delivered, something which was of her own substance and must painfully be born before she could find assuagement.
As she went about the house, almost automatically preparing Peter’s things for his visit to Port Doran at the end of the week, she felt herself remote from her surroundings. Moving restlessly, she attempted with racking intensity to define her suspicion, to conjure up this phantom which now intolerably possessed her.
From the beginning she had tried to make friends with Anna – so much she immediately admitted. She had welcomed her, had made every effort to like her. But, looking backwards, she now saw that from the moment when Joe had brought Anna into her house she had been conscious of a subtle antagonism flowing between this other woman and herself. The initial conviction that she liked Anna had been a delusion, mere imagining, a pretence born of her own hospitality; she had never liked Anna: they were at opposite poles: she distrusted Anna. And the first realisation, the first suspicion of this distrust, had come at that moment of her return from Ralston, when she had found Anna sitting so intimately with Frank. Then gradually, one stone upon another, had arisen this incredible structure, an unformed structure perhaps, an unshaped mass of doubts and suspicions and mistrust, but all – yes, all emerging and arising from the character of Anna Galton and the bearing of that character on Frank. In consequence, Anna’s visit, looked forward to so lightly, so eagerly, had become; not a happiness, but a menace; something painful, almost sinister. It was evident to her as she stood there that she was not to blame for this condition of affairs. How, indeed, could she be to blame? Frank was her husband, living with her in contentment and perfect happiness. Anna had come, and thereafter contentment had gone. It was unanswerable. Anna must be responsible. But how? She bit her lip, and with furrowed brow retraced once more the tenuous line of her suspicion. Had she not detected a curious undercurrent in Joe’s remarks, perceived a peculiar significance in Edward’s conduct? That singular atmosphere at the Presbytery, too, the almost painful embarrassment of Miss O’Regan’s manner – had this its origin simply in outraged modesty? And then – Anna’s attitude to Frank. Frank’s own attitude – his obstinate silence. If he had been obliged to be silent, if there was something which he had been forced to conceal, then she would at once have understood. But he had nothing to conceal. Nothing! And yet he had concealed it. He who had been there, actually in Ireland in that same year, had not said a word about the matter. Oh! it was a goading, insistent thought.
Frowning, she drew in her breath sharply. She had raised a strange edifice in her mind, and lacked only the keystone with which to crown it to completion.
Perhaps there was no keystone. Perhaps it was jealousy alone that moved her. Though she winced at the thought, she confronted it. And she repudiated it calmly. No, no! Jealousy. That was a motive of unutterable selfishness. And her love was not selfish. Everything that was she strained towards the ultimate object of his good. She knew him so well, understood him so thoroughly, loved him so consummately, that she would brook no interference with his happiness nor see the contented passage of his life disturbed. That was not jealousy. It was loyalty, devotion, sanity – yes, the sublimated essence of her love. So she thought. So, indeed, she knew.
Anna, of course, was different. She had no ideals, no ambition, no objective, no code. The unhappy episode of the child seemed to typify exactly her attitude towards life. Why otherwise had she not married the father of this child and settled down determinedly to a new and regular existence? But that was not Anna. No doubt she had sneered her way through the whole trouble with a sort of detached perversity, to emerge harder and more indifferent in the end. The man, of course, must necessarily have been weak – someone unstable, foolish, injudicious – who had desired with all the obstinacy of weakness to escape his obligation in the end. And Anna had let him escape. Even now she could hear Anna saying with cold indifference: ‘Then go to the devil. I don’t care what you do.’ Yes, that was how it must have been.
But it was all so wrong, so misguided, so contrary to her own open line of conduct. Suppose, for example, she had adopted those careless standards with Frank, who could himself, she was well aware, be unstable, foolish, even injudicious: to what end indeed would she then have shaped his future and her own? Only towards disaster.
She sighed, and with a pressure of her knee closed the drawer wherein she had been arranging Peter’s clothes. Then abruptly she straightened herself and went into Anna’s bedroom to make it tidy. But at the door she paused and for a few seconds surveyed the room with a gathering frown. Really it was so disordered, disgustingly disordered, she thought: the bed unmade – she at least as a guest
would have made that bed – the dressing-table littered, a stocking exposing its shiny sole outside a half-shut drawer, a chemise lying nakedly upon the floor. It was too bad. And Anna’s underwear, thus displayed – of a most seductive pattern it was, and a material strangely different from her own white lawn – even that evoked in her a causeless, uneasy irritation. Involuntarily the wish rose passionately in her mind: ‘ I hope she’ll go soon.’ No, it could not be long now before Anna must surely terminate her stay. She must go. And she, Lucy, would not be sorry. She admitted, at last, the full force of that antagonism which had sprung into existence between Anna and herself.
Her frown still lingered as she began to clear up the room – Netta had her own work in the kitchen, but, quite apart from Netta’s obligations, Lucy had the singular urge to do this tidying herself. Unconsciously she felt the action to be symbolic: let Anna cast her life about her; she would arrange hers, and arrange it decently.
She restored the room to order, then gathered some trinkets – a brooch and an opal ring scattered carelessly; the rest of the jewellery at present adorned Anna’s person – to place them in Anna’s trinket-box that stood beside the mirror. And she opened this small green box. Then suddenly – the movement of her hand arrested – she stood motionless. A curious intentness came into her eyes, her face, her whole figure. She was staring at something in the box. Immobile, she stood staring – staring rigidly. And, fixed by that stare, her face blanched coldly.
Then slowly she moved her hand, picked out something from the case. It was a photograph; not a locket – nothing so sentimental could have been Anna’s – but a small, cracked photograph which might perhaps have rested unheeded in that box for years from very insignificance. And it was the likeness of a child – a paltry image, faded, long laid away, but still exact, distinct, and curiously arresting. So arresting, it absorbed her fascinated eye. She knew at once: it was Anna’s child, mysterious, hidden, that child long since dead – that was the likeness which now so suddenly confronted her. And suddenly, too, arising from the image of this child, came another image to confront her – the face of her own son. Peter’s face, shorn of the years, ranged beside this other face with staggering resemblance – the nose, the set of the eyes, the very curl of the lip almost identical – swimming together before her blurring vision into one single face. No, not a face, but a suspicion, a horrible, atrocious suspicion.