XXIII
The hands had gone and all the clerks.
“And so,” said Mr Chilly, “it is going to its lecture.”
He stood beside Henry and put his arm round his shoulder. Quietly he squeezed. Henry moved sulkily away from Mr Chilly.
“Innocent eyes,” he said, letting Henry go.
Henry looked with provoking scorn at Mr Chilly. Mr Chilly was in one of his frightening moods. Henry hated Mr Chilly to address him in the third person, though he clung to Mr Chilly's explanation that he had picked up the habit in Italy. Mr Chilly's life in Italy bewitched Henry. Once or twice Mr Chilly said, “I will take you there.” And then the invitation died in his eyes.
“Let me look at its eyes. No, no. It is innocent.”
Twice already Mr Chilly had kissed him on the top of the head, once had held the top of his head lightly for a moment, murmuring:
“Celtic. Celtic. A pity. The Celts destroy civilisation.”
Henry felt large, rough and uncouth when Mr Chilly behaved like this; but if he saw Mary Phibbs soon afterwards she complained of his vanity and started garrulous praises of her father or spoke of more wickednesses of the shop manager.
“It is going to hear that evil does not exist,” said Mr Chilly. “And yet it admires Balzac, Shakespeare, and is just going to read Dostoevsky. If evil does not exist, what is going to happen to literature?”
This was the Everard Chilly Henry could not resist.
Mr Chilly listened gravely to Henry's arguments.
“It is not astonished,” said Mr Chilly, “that a good lady called Mrs Parkinson, whose husband had a shoe-repairing business in Toronto, has solved the problem that has, I mean, wrecked the minds of theologians, I mean, for two thousand years-the origin of evil.”
“Many,” Henry argued, “have come near to the Truth.”
Henry thought, “How we have all misjudged Mr Chilly.” He looked at Mr Chilly's handsome nose; a little coloured at the tip, was it? The cheekbones marked by redness? Did Mr Chilly drink? The irony of Mr Chilly's foolish voice was infuriating and disturbing. Mr Chilly looked at his watch.
“My dear,” he exclaimed, “you must fly.”
He was dismissed.
“I could never tell all this to Mary,” Henry thought. “Everyone thinks I ought to have another girl. No one seems to understand my situation. Is the Purification true? Do I love Mary? Why am I not thirty-five? If I could be like Mr Chilly and yet not be a fool! The great mistake in my life is not belonging to the upper classes.”
Henry wished to say good night to Mr Chilly, but he had left the room.
Mr Chilly himself had gone to Mrs Truslove's office.
“Thank God,” he thought, “now I am going to wipe out that horrible business with Miss Vanner. Oh, I am so ashamed. Mrs Truslove is coming to dine with me. We will toddle along.”
Mr Beluncle's departure had left the usual void. Mr Chilly could feel the wonderful emptiness opening in him, alarming, sinister, yet irresistible. He opened the door marked Private and stopped dead, so suddenly that his foot kicked the door, the handle slipped from his hand and the door went wide to the wall. Mr Beluncle had not gone. He was there.
“I'm so sorry,” said Mr Chilly.
Mr Beluncle's face was pinker than he remembered it and was fixed in a handsome smile that seemed like the frank smile of a brilliant portrait in oils. The lips beautifully smiled; the eyes, enlarged by happiness, reflected the smile of the face.
“Oh, sir!” said Mr Chilly, with a shout of laughter. Mr Beluncle had gone mad. Mr Beluncle was having a lark. Mr Beluncle was having a romp with Mrs Truslove and had put her hat on his head. There was Mr Beluncle dressed up in a woman's hat.
The smile went when Mr Chilly laughed and the big face became set, large and masterful, in one of Mr Beluncle's well-known facial manoeuvres.
“How d'you do?” said a woman's voice. “I am waiting for Mr Beluncle. I am his sister.”
“Oh, what a fool! How stupid! For the moment I thought you were Mr Beluncle. I beg your pardon,” said Mr Chilly. “I'll get him at once.”
He turned round and then back again, making a circle.
“But of course, he's gone,” he said. “He went an hour ago. They should have told you.”
Now he saw his folly. Those handsome eyes were longer than her brother's. The large face was painted, the jaw soft and strong, the hair showing under the hat was brown. She was wearing a tight black dress. A little cigarette ash dropped on one of the creases of the bust, and one fine leg showed, bent at the bold knee that looked like another face beyond the desk. It was hard to guess in what odd attitude Miss Beluncle was sitting. She was a woman who changed the air of the room in which she sat; she used a strong scent that, after the first breath, had a bitterness in it which puzzled Mr Chilly's sensitive nose. Large, electric, deeply-breathing, Miss Beluncle sat before her brother's papers and Mr Chilly felt that he had been wired and instantly given a violent change of current. Miss Beluncle's voice was slow, low and questioning.
“Who?” she said.
“When you came in,” said Mr Chilly, “did they tell you?”
“Who told me?” repeated Miss Beluncle. “No one told me. I came in and sat down”—and she put both her hands on the desk. “Here,” she said, and touched the arm of the chair. An emphatic woman. A small chin appeared under the jaw.
“I came in at the main door-do you call it the main door? Yes or no? All right,” she said. “And there was no one in the passage. Isn't that so? I asked no one.”
Miss Beluncle seemed to accuse him of wilfully saying something else, but she was still smiling generously.
She laughed a small isolated laugh which was like a speech to someone else in the room-indeed Mr Chilly turned round to see who it might be.
“I came in,” she resumed.
Mr Chilly saw she was like her brother. She was not a woman to be contradicted.
“When did my brother go? You say he has gone. If he has gone, when was that?”
“An hour ago.”
“An hour. All right, an hour. You said at five o'clock. Still, let it go,” accused Miss Beluncle.
Mr Chilly looked at his watch.
“Yes, five o'clock, about an hour,” said Mr Chilly, very politely.
“So what?” said Miss Beluncle.
“I beg your pardon?” said Mr Chilly.
“Where is he? I don't want to know when he went, where is he? You keep saying he went an hour ago or five o'clock, I don't know what you mean, it doesn't matter. Oh,” she said, surprising herself, “I see. You are with him in this.”
Miss Beluncle lifted a bold white arm and made a kind of semaphore signal, indicating the office, the factory.
“Yes, I mean, I work here,” said Mr Chilly. “We're just closing. I think Mrs Truslove is about. Shall I go and fetch her? She will soon be back.”
“What's she doing here?” said Miss Beluncle. And then she laughed quietly to herself. “Of course. Mrs Truslove. I didn't ask for her. I want my brother. It is no good your saying he's gone an hour ago or five o'clock or six or seven, what did you say?”
“Five,” said Mr Chilly, hypnotised by Miss Beluncle.
“I called at his house on Sunday to see my mother in his house,” said Miss Beluncle fiercely. And then she smiled. “On Sunday. The gate was locked. I pushed at the handle.” Miss Beluncle raised both arms and began to push an imaginary door about the desk. “I pushed it, using my strength-you don't understand. I would say you didn't understand anything. Don't pretend.”
Miss Beluncle suddenly stood up and her face redoubled its redness and became crimson and then purple.
“It's no good lying to me,” she said powerfully. “You've got him here. You're defending him. She's my mother as well as his. And locking her up in an old box. I rattled it, I tell you”—she stepped out from behind the desk and advanced on Mr Chilly. “-like this, back and forth, back and forth, on Sunday and it wasn't five o'clock or an hour
ago, three, two, I don't know what it was….”
Miss Beluncle's face became gloomy and the skin over the fine jaw folded and thickened.
“Oh, all right,” she said, becoming calm. And she smiled voluptuously at Mr Chilly.
“He has stolen my money,” she said.
“Who?” said Mr Chilly.
“Don't stand there pretending and lying,” said Miss Beluncle, raising her arm and suddenly striking at Mr Chilly. “My brother. And tell him this. He can f off.”
Mr Chilly stood away. He switched on a hurried anxious smile.
“I'll get Mrs Truslove,” he said. “I'm just an assistant here.” And he went to the door. There was a crash as he left and Mr Chilly saw Miss Beluncle knock a chair over and then strike a pile of papers off Mr Beluncle's desk.
“What was that?” Miss Beluncle accused him.
Mr Chilly ran. He heard the door slam behind him.
“Mrs Truslove,” he called. “Could you come?”
Mrs Truslove came up the steps with her towel and her handbag in her hands.
“Miss Beluncle is here,” he said. “I'm afraid she's … I don't know what she is …”
“Oh, God,” said Mrs Truslove. “Not Connie again?”
Miss Beluncle was lying on the floor when they came in.
“Open the window, Everard,” said Mrs Truslove. “One can smell it right down the passage. I hate sour drink.”
She was lying asleep with a smile amorous and content on her face. Her mouth opened, the smile died on her cheeks, which had now gone violet at the cheekbones, and she snored the profound, ranging and aggressive Beluncle snore.
“Poor woman,” said Mrs Truslove. “This is the end of our dinner, I'm afraid, Everard.”
“Oh no, no,” said Mr Chilly absently, looking at the fine body, the beautiful legs, with admiration.
XXIV
All the way in the train to Boystone, Henry watched his faith go out of the window, sheet by sheet, like leaves out of a book. At some stations, a page or two blew back, but, once more, it flew out again to lie and stain and decay in the back gardens. “If I could be reborn,” he thought, “and never see these houses again. If I could be everyone I see and not myself.”
But as the crowd moved into the Royal Cinema, as someone said, “He's here. There's Mr Van der Hoek's car,” his faith returned. How could so many well-dressed people be deceived? In the expectant hall, before the dead, slightly dirtyj white screen of the cinema, he forgot everything in his search for Mary's head.
“There's Mr Phibbs,” said his brother George, to their father.
“You'd think he'd wear a hard collar,” said Mr Beluncle. Henry did not look, but patiently searched for a glimpse of Mary's fair hair. He could not see her, but there in front, on the other side of the hall, she must be growing like a single flower.
Faith came washing boldly back at the sight of Mr Van der Hoek on the platform. A very tall and heavy man, in a frock-coat and with white-lined waistcoat, he sent smile after smile spinning over the heads of the audience, and everyone was whispering and fidgeting with pleasure. “Look, Mr Van der Hoek. He is smiling. So sane, so sensible, so kind, so good, so inspired. Who says there is anything peculiar about the Purification? We are normal.”
Faith boomed as Mr Van der Hoek stood up, his body reposing against his fine shoulders, his good-natured legs carrying him gratefully. And then, like cream pleasantly poured upon some fruit pie whose pastry was crisp and dry to the teeth, the words of Mr Van der Hoek gradually covered the audience. Henry's mind woke up. Mr Beluncle grew stouter with pleasure. George's head drooped wistfully. Then Henry's mind began happily to wander and, at last, for a moment, he saw Mary's head. He could not see her face, but her chin was lifted and sometimes she slightly turned, at some good point of Mr Van der Hoek's, to glance at her sister. And, by a movement of her shoulder, Henry guessed she was holding her sister's hand in that incredible affection which played in her family like some simple little fountain.
Earnestly Henry tried to follow her good example and to listen closely to Mr Van der Hoek. And for a time he managed this; but, inexplicably, Henry's thoughts went to Mr Chilly and he began to compare Mr Chilly's trousers, well cut and sharply creased, with Mr Van der Hoek's. Were they as well creased? And then, a terrible thing happened. Henry's faith went. Henry's fancy unbuttoned Mr Van der Hoek's trousers from their braces. Slowly he lowered them, crumpling their creases. He pulled Mr Van der Hoek's trousers down to his ankles. He removed his underpants. Fighting with all his might against the impulse, he exposed the mild and thoughtful private organs of the lecturer. Hurriedly Henry pulled back the underpants. Hastily he struggled to haul up the trousers and he was in the midst of this when the air of the hall seemed to freeze, every human body in it stiffened, and a wide empty hollow opened in the air. There was a shuffle of chairs and a man's voice was shouting out at the back of the hall.
“Blasphemy on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ!” and
“Lies! Lies!” and again
“Blasphemy!”
Four hundred heads turned. Mr Beluncle said to his sons: “Don't look round. Don't look round.”
There was a scuffling sound and Mr Phibbs, to Henry's pride, rushed quietly up the hall to the back. But Mr Van der Hoek's voice went on uninterrupted. Only the raising of his pale eyelids showed that he had noticed the interruption.
“The creeping, sin-i-ster forces of animal magnetism …;” he was saying, slowly raising his hands before him in the well-known, the very controversial gesture.
But Henry's heart and mind were at the back of the hall, out in the street, where the man must be and he was pursuing him, begging him to say why it was all lies, why it was blasphemy. His heart rocked and went on rocking. Lies, lies, lies—he could still hear the voice, and he felt it was his own crying out as he drowned.
After the lecture Mr Beluncle took his sons into the circle of people who were congratulating the lecturer.
“This is my son,” said Mr Beluncle expansively. “He thinks he knows everything.”
“Well, y6u know,” said Mr Van der Hoek, expanding even more than Mr Beluncle, “he does, too. He is the child of God.”
Mr Beluncle and Mr Van der Hoek went on expanding before each other.
XXV
They sat for two hours beside the body of Miss Beluncle and in low voices they talked about her. Mr Chilly gazed. She was a woman of forty, he supposed, but Mrs Truslove said severely that she must be fifty-seven.
“She has been a great trouble to the family,” said Mrs Truslove, speaking with some dignity, as if trouble were an immensely respectable thing, “since she was a girl. A great trouble to old Mrs Beluncle.
“Men,” said Mrs Truslove.
Mr Chilly nodded his head respectfully. The snoring had now stopped and the moaning, too; Miss Beluncle moved voluptuously in her sleep and blew a small bubble.
“We shall have to take her home,” said Mr Chilly sadly.
“I am so glad Mr Beluncle wasn't here,” said Mrs Truslove.
“Yes, he would be upset,” said Mr Chilly.
“It doesn't upset me, you know,” said Mr Chilly. “I mean, I feel rather exhilarated.”
“It is disgusting,” said Mrs Truslove.
“I was absolutely plastered …” Mr Chilly began, and then he caught Mrs Truslove's eye.
How extraordinary, he thought. I was going to dine with Mrs Truslove. I admire her very much. I don't know what would have happened. I am in a peculiar state. Goodness knows what I said to Miss Vanner. And poor Henry. Here I am looking at this beautiful woman. I can't take my eyes off her. Why?
And a voice answered Mr Chilly. The voice said, “She is a wreck. That is what gets you.” He felt he had found a complement. Mr Beluncle his saviour, Miss Beluncle his wrecker. If Mrs Truslove had not been there he would have touched the sleeping woman's brow.
Later on, they called a taxi and took Miss Beluncle to her flat in St. John's Wood, a small place fil
led with what could only be called the ill-assorted loot of love. A mantelpiece was alive with signed photographs which made Mrs Truslove wince. Miss Beluncle excused herself weakly and they stayed while she went to bed. She begged them to have a teeny, tiddley little one for the road, but Mrs Truslove refused and Mr Chilly reluctantly did so.
“She wants to thank you,” said Mrs Truslove, coming out of the bedroom.
Mr Chilly went in and the lady patted the bed for him to sit down.
“Get rid of her,” said Miss Beluncle.
“I'm afraid, I mean, I'm awfully sorry,” said Mr Chilly. “I'm taking her to dinner …; I …; I would love …;”
“Give me a ring. Here's the number,” she said, stretching out her arm and taking his hand. “Soon,” she said. “Tomorrow.”
“Yes,” said Mr Chilly.
“Oh, I feel awful. I look awful,” she said. “Don't say I don't, I do.”
She was about to start another quarrel.
This is life, thought Mr Chilly, as he dined with Mrs Truslove, hardly hearing what she said. She was moralising about the character of the Beluncles, their power of exploitation, their habit of destroying human beings, the inevitable softening in their lives.
This is life, he thought, and saw a white arm coming across the table again and again to him, and large threatening lips.
It was about now, while they were drinking coffee and Mrs Truslove was beginning a disagreeable dispute about paying her share of the bill, Mr Chilly thought, that he would have been saying, “You have lovely hands.” Now that could not happen. He admired Mrs Truslove. He admired Mr Beluncle. He thought “poor Henry” rather sweet; but here in Miss Constance Beluncle were the disastrous, the irresistible forces of nature.
XXVI
“Why are you so late? I have been waiting for you,” the cripple said to her sister.
“I told you I was going out,” said Mrs Truslove. She was used to being questioned but it was late, she was tired and she thought, “How awful to have to account for oneself the whole time.”
Mr. Beluncle: A Novel (Modern Library Classics) Page 21