In this moment she knew that, for her, it would be easier to stay than to run. If she stayed she would be yielding to the mother in her and to her fears and to the hunger in her blood that had fought and schemed to get the Yard from George and Rupert Ling. Yet if she went, it would be said that she had yielded to her passions. Her mouth straightened itself contemptuously. Passion! There was none in her. She had got to the bottom of all that.
She was going with Gerry because of his overpowering need of her and because of her spiritual need of him. In him her life fulfilled itself. With a calm pride she laid under his feet her love of her ships, her attachment to her Yard, her ambitions, her youth and the son of Mary Roxby. The sacrifice was enormous. No one knew how enormous it was. And just as she would have died rather than let Gerry guess the extent and the anguish of her renunciation, so, lest it should seem to lessen him in her eyes, she would not pretend to herself that she was not, as indeed she was, stripping herself for his sake. Mary Hervey had been a stolid wilful girl and was a proud woman. It is strange to reflect how much her pride cost her and how unconscious she was of it and how many times in her life she abased herself at the bidding of a tenderness and a generosity for which few people gave her credit. She had no vanity.
The pressure of Gerry’s arm against her shoulder roused her from her solitary thoughts. He did not seem to realise that he was leaning against her. With an adroit movement she drew him round so that her head rested against his cheek. He stirred and she insinuated herself into his arms, looking up at him with an enchanting smile.
“After all,” she murmured, “you have been talking as if I were the only one giving up something to come away with you, but you are giving up a very great deal. Why did you come back to England? Not because of me, you didn’t know I was waiting for you at Garton’s. But because you were tired and wanted peace and a decent life and England. That’s true, isn’t it? You don’t mind my knowing the truth, you don’t mind anything I know about you.”
“It is true,” Gerry said, with the smile that never failed to touch her. “I was tired. I am tired, and I’ve learned to distrust myself. I could stand anything with you. But the thought that you might come to hate it is—frightful. I can’t face it yet. . . . Forgive me for not taking you away now, at once. If I took you and you couldn’t stand it______”
“Love,” Mary said, and kissed him, with both hands laid lightly on his breast.
Gerry shut his eyes: in a world empty of everything but sky and sea he and Mary seemed unreal, shadows talking. The light pressure of her hands on his and her body in his arms was real enough. She was quite right. He would either have to take her or let her go, go away himself. He could not see her every day and not want her. Would she be offended if he told her that? Probably not, Mary was unlike other women, who could tolerate any action but not the words that described it. . . . He held her close to assure himself of her reality in his arms. God, how tired he was. He thought confusedly of the English club at Singapore and the handful of English women who had drifted out there in the wake of their husbands; gallant burnt-up chattering decent creatures, most of them. They would cut Mary, damn them, and the husbands would eye her. It was in Singapore he had heard himself described to a newcomer as “a damned fine engineer and can’t stick at anything.” The speaker was doubtless right. He was restless, a disease he believed to be growing on the world. . . . His thoughts turned to his wife and he felt a sudden pity for her. If he went off with Mary she would be turned adrift again with what miserable provision he could make for her. He clenched his teeth over the thought. A pretty frame of mind for an eloping lover. . . . He was hungry for Mary. His whole body cried out for the peace she gave it. His soul loved her. Soul? He touched her cheek and found it wet.
“I was wishing,” Mary said fiercely, “that I was a little girl at home again. . . . If you don’t want me.”
If he didn’t want her? He suppressed a fit of perverse and spontaneous laughter. Couldn’t she see what he felt like, helping her to ruin herself for his sake, for the sake of living the rest of her life in Singapore or a worse place? There were far worse places—places where a man watched his wife die daily. The sheer cold bravery of women made him shudder. He knew that if he once took her out there he’d never hear from her a wish to be at home or anywhere else but where she was. And he wanted her intolerably. The curve of her cheek in the dusk was a temptation. Recovering himself, he kissed her hands, and they began to walk slowly back towards the old church and the steps twisting down between the red-roofed houses to Harbour Street and the life of the town.
“We’ve only talked about Richard,” Mary said suddenly. “There’s Hugh . . . and the others. They’re more Hugh’s daughters than mine, they’d miss me very little, less than many daughters. Less than I missed my mother. Danesacre would look queerly at them because their mother had behaved badly, but Hugh wouldn’t keep them here, he’d go back to London. And as for that, I owe Hugh a debt I haven’t finished paying. One can’t pay all one’s debts in this life, and part of mine to Hugh must remain unpaid, if you want me.”
“I shall finish paying it in hell,” she thought gravely, but the face she turned up to her lover’s in the light of the lamp half-way down the steps was serene, and her hand on his arm did not vary its gentle pressure. Whatever one thinks of Mary Hervey and her loving, one need not deny her courage. She descended the church steps with Gerry as placidly as if she did not know full well that she was walking straight to the unquenchable fire. As she went she noticed, as if for the first time, the shallowness of the worn stone steps and the huddled grimness of the houses tumbling down the cliff-side on her left. She glanced into the tiny fenced yard belonging to one of them. A thread of light lit up its uneven flagging and the straggling truculence of a row of plants under the fence. A fisherman’s wicker-basket stood beside them. Mary felt a sudden rush of love for the worn old houses. ’The man who lives in that is an artist,” she said abruptly. “His pictures—water-colours of ships they are—have been praised by some London paper. He’s starving, of course. No one in Danesacre will buy his pictures.” She thought guiltily of the two or three she had bought herself, impelled by the painter’s haggard eyes and hungry face. She hid them in an attic, ashamed of her sentimental weakness in wasting good money on such dim and trifling productions. She was proud of Danesacre’s indifference to an artist in its midst. Danesacre people were like that.
“Dear,” she said, when she and Gerry were in Harbour Street again, and smiled at him; and leaving him there to go back to his house and Mercy, sped across the bridge and climbed the steep hill to her own. . . .
Less than a week later, chance, which had played on them already so many tricks and merry jests, interferes in their lives again. This time chance squints, has a long clumsy body, thatched hair growing lamentably thin, and answers to the name of George Ling.
Mrs George wrote that she needed sea air and would come to stay with her dear cousin Mary in Danesacre until the nearer approach of her fifth child made a return to her own home imperative. George would bring her over and stay the night. On hearing the news, Hugh decided that it was time his sister saw her nieces and departed incontinently for London with two excited little girls. Mary was left in her big new house alone to welcome the George Lings. She did it with what grace she could muster, having a whimsical liking for George’s wife that almost, not quite, balanced her dislike of George.
The Lings reached Danesacre in the afternoon and Mrs George went immediately to bed, for the benefit, she explained, of unborn Lings. Faced by the prospect of entertaining cousin George alone, Mary lost heart for the task and wrote a letter begging Gerry to invite him to his house for the evening. She sent it by messenger to the Yard. Sighing outwardly and inwardly cursing all women, even his Mary, and all Lings, Gerry returned a note asking for the pleasure of Mr Ling’s company at dinner and made a journey up to his house. He told his wife, with a formal apology for short notice, that she would have to entertai
n a guest.
“You are not such cheerful company,” Mercy remarked, “that you need apologise for adding a third.”
“I am sorry,” Gerry retorted politely, “that I am dull, and glad to offer you even a George Ling to amuse you.”
Mercy looked at him. “I wonder,” she said, “whether any woman, even such a woman as I am, would have the heart to punish another human being as you punish me for having done me the kindness of taking me back into your house.”
Gerry turned on his heel and left her without a glance.
George accepted the invitation, being politely urged thereto, and Mary enjoyed the emptiness of her house, wth Mrs George sleeping upstairs for the good of posterity, for five hours. She sent her servants to bed and sat up alone to admit George, wondering a little why he was so late. Near midnight she heard his knock and went out into the hall. Clasping both hands round the monstrous key, she unlocked the door. It swung heavily back and on the broad shallow steps Gerry Hardman confronted her, supporting the sagging body of her cousin.
Mary stood aside, lifting the lamp in her hand so that its light fell full on both men. Gerry’s face was colourless and he was Sweating in the effort of supporting the other man’s weight; he breathed painfully and laid a hand on the door to steady himself.
“What is it?” Mary asked quietly.
Gerry looked at her without interest and said unemotionally: “We fought. I hurt him more than I intended. You’ll have to help me upstairs with him unless you can call a servant.”
“I won’t call the servants,” Mary said. She shut the door noiselessly, and Gerry lowered his burden to a chair, where it lay heaped upon itself without moving.
“Brandy,” Mary suggested.
“Probably make him sick. You’d better give it to me.”
Mary went away, and came back with a glass. Gerry took it from her with a word of thanks. After that, he approached the semi-conscious George and poked him dispassionately in the back.
“Are you going to walk or be carried?”
“Be carried,” George muttered.
Gerry knelt down and hoisted the limp hulk across his left shoulder; his slight body staggered under the strain, and sweat broke out again on his forehead. Mary went in front with the lamp and opened the door of an empty bedroom on the first floor. Dropped on to the bed, George lay still, groaning. Gerry eyed him distastefully.
“I can’t undress it,” he declared.
“Leave it dressed,” Mary said and drew him out of the room, closing the door softly behind them. On the landing Gerry swerved away from her as if her touch offended him, and they went down the stairs in silence.
“You’re not going,” Mary said. “You must rest first.”
“I’d rather go,” Gerry muttered, but he submitted to being led into the drawing-room, where he dropped into a chair, abandoning himself to an exasperated weariness. Mary knelt down beside him and he shrugged her away.
“Don’t touch me,” he said briefly. “I’m not clean. I can’t bear to touch you, or be touched. I’ve got George Ling’s blood on me somewhere, too, damn him.”
Controlling herself, Mary waited until he could bear to talk to her. After a time, she got out of him an account of his dinner party. In the first place Mercy had made a direct attack on the admiration of their guest, whose response, growing more and more ardent as the wine he drank warmed him, reached a stage where Gerry could endure it no longer. Getting up to leave the other two to their devices, he was almost out of the room when Mercy said softly, “There he goes, to dream of his Mary.”
“Mary,” George exclaimed, “does he dream of Mary? I’ll teach him better. She’s not his, the slut.”
Whereupon Gerry’s pent-up emotions—he owned to a passion of hatred for George Ling—broke bounds. Returning to the table, he knocked George down. They fought in Mark Henry’s sitting-room, and Mercy watched them silently, her ear-rings quivering with the invisible tremors of her body.
“He is twice my weight and has nearly twice my reach,” Gerry said, “but he’s disgustingly soft and hadn’t a chance. I was going to kill him. We upset some candles and the warm grease ran over my hand, it reminded me of my senses and I stopped battering him. He was a horrid sight, swollen and bloody, and I dragged him down through the Yard to the edge of the harbour to wash him. Then I dragged his vile fat body up here. I’m broken with weariness. I’m dirty and smelling of sweat and George Ling, and I loathe it and myself. Don’t touch me, Mary, I can’t stand it. I can’t come near you like this.” He moved his shoulder to shake off her hand. “Forgive me, I suppose it’s something in the nerves of my body. I couldn’t tolerate the spectacle of myself touching you in this state. I’m drunk, too, with fatigue, not with your brandy, my dear. Why don’t you scold me for behaving like a cad and smashing up your damned cousin, and for talking to you like this?” He gave her a furious glance.
“You’re not,” Mary said slowly, “the first man I’ve seen beside himself with anger.”
Gerry looked at her with dislike of the other men in his eyes. Mary knew what he was thinking and her face puckered like the face of a grieved child; she turned away.
“Forgive me,” Gerry said again, coming up behind her. Couldn’t she realise that although his brain was sober, his body was tired past control and his tongue likely to say things it would not say if he were in charge of it? He rested both hands on her shoulders and stood swaying in front of her. Fatigue had drawn his face into an ashen mask, and looking at him Mary felt in her body an exquisite sensation of tenderness and love.
“You miserable little Gerry,” she whispered. “You poor unhappy child. Lie down on my couch for an hour, I won’t touch you or worry you. Please, please do what I say.”
Gerry smiled at her and she watched him walk unsteadily across the room. He flung himself down on her couch. His body relaxed and he fell almost instantly asleep, not stirring when Mary made him more comfortable and slipped an arm under his head. For an hour she knelt beside the couch, supporting his head on her arm. Careless of the promise she had made not to touch him, she dropped light kisses on his face and on as much of his body as she could reach without moving her arm. After a time she laid her head down beside his and fell asleep.
When Gerry woke it was still dark and the fire on the hearth had sunk to a handful of glowing cinders. The lamp alight in the middle of the room kept back a host of shadows; they stood like trees on the edge of the pool of light. The couch where he lay was in shadow and Mary’s face, turned towards the cushions, was completely hidden from him. He felt light and rested, and stepped gently from the couch. Mary slept on. She looked uncomfortable and Gerry stooped to lift her on to the couch. Changing his mind, he knelt on the floor, circling her with his arms in an attitude of unendurable longing, while he listened to her gentle breathing. If he lifted her up she would rouse and he meant to leave her sleeping and get out of the house by way of the window and the side door of the garden. He took his arms from her and stood up. He was perfectly calm, and released from the bitterness that had raged in him after his humiliating struggle with George Ling. “Good-bye,” he whispered, and turned to go.
On the very edge of the pool of light as he entered it, his foot touched Mary’s abandoned slippers, which she had kicked off before carrying the lamp upstairs to light his painful ascent. Gerry picked one up and held it by the strap that clasped her ankle. He had the strongest impulse to slip it on to her foot, smoothing it to the narrow instep. He would rest her foot on his hand and kiss it when he had buttoned the strap. He felt his body trembling with love and desire, and all at once, laying down the innocent shoe, he went back to the couch and woke Mary gently. He lifted her to her feet and she leaned in his arms with a sigh of contentment.
“I was going without waking you.”
Mary kissed him reproachfully. They smiled at each other very kindly, like old married people.
Gerry felt extraordinarily happy. He wanted to tell her that he loved her as if he h
ad never loved any woman before. She was his only love, his dear girl, his true lover, his heart. Instead of talking he held her with an exultant carefulness.
“You’re not afraid of me, Mary?”
Was it for her own sake as well as his that she was staying here, in this room, in his arms? Had she any unmanageable desires? He felt her lips near his and kissed her to hide his emotion. She knew sufficiently what he was feeling to yield to the pressure of his arms. He felt that she yielded. Profoundly touched, he gave himself up to the moment. He felt humble because she was so convinced of his superiority over other men. Remembering that he had once told her he would never ask her for anything he laughed under his breath at the absurdity of it. Half unconsciously, he withdrew his arms from her small yielded body.
“I couldn’t love you and not want this,” he told her. “My dear, tell me I’m staying here because you want me to stay.” With a sudden humorous surprise, he thought: “I’m here because I fell over a slipper.”
Mary smiled and trembled. Pursuing an unconscious purpose, she chose this moment to remind him that he had not yet promised to take her away.
“I must take you. Oh, your heart on mine. Mary. Love.”
He would get himself a job in some not too uninhabitable part of the world. There was America. But decent Americans were even more strait-laced than English men and women of the same class, and the others—barbarians, the scourings of England. He wanted no one and nothing but her. Would she be content to have only him for the rest of her life?
“I love you, I love you,” he whispered and felt the slight swaying of her body towards his as an unimaginable ecstasy. He heard her voice in his ears, strangely childish and humble. “Then nothing else matters.”
The Lovely Ship Page 33