by None
‘You… woman,’ he murmured contentedly, and the sound seemed to come from the depths of his being.
His speech was slow and lacking in words when it came to expressing a vital emotion, so one word must suffice and this he now spoke, and the word that he spoke had a number of meanings. It meant: ‘Little spring of exceedingly pure water’. It meant: ‘Hut of peace for a man after battle’. It meant: ‘Ripe red berry sweet to the taste’. It meant: ‘Happy small home of future generations’. All these things he must try to express by a word, and because of their loving she understood him.
They paused, and lifting her up he kissed her. Then he rubbed his large shaggy head on her shoulder; and when he released her she knelt at his feet.
‘My master; blood of my body,’ she whispered. For with her it was different, love had taught her love’s speech, so that she might turn her heart into sounds that her primitive tongue could utter.
After she had pressed her lips to his hands, and her cheek to his hairy and powerful forearm, she stood up and they gazed at the setting sun, but with bowed heads, gazing under their lids, because this was very sacred.
A couple of mating bears padded towards them from a thicket, and the female rose to her haunches. But the man drew his celt and menaced the beast, so that she dropped down noiselessly and fled, and her mate also fled, for here was the power that few dared to withstand by day or by night, on the uplands or in the forests. And now from across to the left where a river would presently lose itself in the marshes, came a rhythmical thudding, as a herd of red deer with wide nostrils and starting eyes thundered past, disturbed in their drinking by the bears.
After this the evening returned to its silence, and the spell of its silence descended on the lovers, so that each felt very much alone, yet withal more closely united to the other. But the man became restless under that spell, and he suddenly laughed; then grasping the woman he tossed her above his head and caught her. This he did many times for his own amusement and because he knew that his strength gave her joy. In this manner they played together for a while, he with his strength and she with her weakness. And they cried out, and made many guttural sounds which were meaningless save only to themselves. And the tunic of pelts slipped down from her breasts, and her two little breasts were pear-shaped.
Presently, he grew tired of their playing, and he pointed towards a cluster of huts and earthworks that lay to the eastward. The smoke from these huts rose in thick straight lines, bending neither to right nor left in its rising, and the thought of sweet burning rushes and brushwood touched his consciousness, making him feel sentimental.
‘Smoke,’ he said.
And she answered: ‘Blue smoke.’
He nodded: ‘Yes, blue smoke – home.’
Then she said: ‘I have ground much corn since the full moon. My stones are too smooth. You make me new stones.’
‘All you have need of, I make,’ he told her.
She stole closer to him, taking his hand: ‘My father is still a black cloud full of thunder. He thinks that you wish to be head of our tribe in his place, because he is now very old. He must not hear of these meetings of ours, if he did I think he would beat me!’
So he asked her: ‘Are you unhappy, small berry?’
But at this she smiled: ‘What is being unhappy? I do not know what that means any more.’
‘I do not either,’ he answered.
Then as though some invisible force had drawn him, his body swung round and he stared at the forests where they lay and darkened, fold upon fold; and his eyes dilated with wonder and terror, and he moved his head quickly from side to side as a wild thing will do that is held between bars and whose mind is pitifully bewildered.
‘Water!’ he cried hoarsely, ‘great water – look, look! Over there. This land is surrounded by water!’
‘What water?’ she questioned.
He answered: ‘The sea.’ And he covered his face with his hands.
‘Not so,’ she consoled, ‘big forests, good hunting. Big forests in which you hunt boar and aurochs. No sea over there but only the trees.’
He took his trembling hands from his face: ‘You are right… only trees,’ he said dully.
But now his face had grown heavy and brooding and he started to speak of a thing that oppressed him: ‘The Roundheaded-ones, they are devils,’ he growled, while his bushy black brows met over his eyes, and when this happened it changed his expression, which became a little sub-human.
‘No matter,’ she protested, for she saw that he forgot her and she wished him to think and talk only of love. ‘No matter. My father laughs at your fears. Are we not friends with the Roundheaded-ones? We are friends, so why should we fear them?’
‘Our forts, very old, very weak,’ he went on, ‘and the Round-headed-ones have terrible weapons. Their weapons are not made of good stone like ours, but of some dark, devilish substance.’
‘What of that?’ she said lightly. ‘They would fight on our side, so why need we trouble about their weapons?’
But he looked away, not appearing to hear her. ‘We must barter all, all for their celts and arrows and spears, and then we must learn their secret. They lust after our women, they lust after our lands. We must barter all, all for their sly brown celts.’
‘Me… bartered?’ she queried, very sure of his answer otherwise she had not dared to say this.
‘The Roundheaded-ones may destroy my tribe and yet I will not part with you,’ he told her. Then he spoke very gravely: ‘But I think they desire to slay us, and me they will try to slay first because they well know how much I mistrust them – they have seen my eyes fixed many times on their camps.’
She cried: ‘I will bite out the throats of these people if they so much as scratch your skin!’
And at this his mood changed and he roared with amusement: ‘You… woman!’ he roared. ‘Little foolish white teeth. Your teeth were made for nibbling wild cherries, not for tearing the throats of the Roundheaded-ones!’
‘Thoughts of war always make me afraid,’ she whimpered, still wishing him to talk about love.
He turned his sorrowful eyes upon her, the eyes that were sad even when he was merry, and although his mind was often obtuse, yet he clearly perceived how it was with her then. And his blood caught fire from the flame in her blood, so that he strained her against his body.
‘You… mine…’ he stammered.
‘Love,’ she said, trembling, ‘this is love.’
And he answered: ‘Love.’
Then their faces grew melancholy for a moment, because dimly, very dimly in their dawning souls, they were conscious of a longing for something more vast than this earthly passion could compass.
Presently, he lifted her like a child and carried her quickly southward and westward till they came to a place where a gentle descent led down to a marshy valley. Far away, at the line where the marshes ended, they discerned the misty line of the sea; but the sea and the marshes were become as one substance, merging, blending, folding together; and since they were lovers they also would be one, even as the sea and the marshes.
And now they had reached the mouth of a cave that was set in the quiet hillside. There was bright green verdure beside the cave, and a number of small, pink, thick-stemmed flowers that when they were crushed smelt of spices. And within the cave there was bracken newly gathered and heaped together for a bed; while beyond, from some rocks, came a low liquid sound as a spring dripped out through a crevice. Abruptly, he set the girl on her feet, and she knew that the days of her innocence were over. And she thought of the anxious virgin soil that was rent and sown to bring forth fruit in season, and she gave a quick little gasp of fear:
‘No… no…’ she gasped. For, divining his need, she was weak with the longing to be possessed, yet the terror of love lay heavy upon her. ‘No… no…’ she gasped.
But he caught her wrist and she felt the great strength of his rough, gnarled fingers, the great strength of the urge that leaped in his loi
ns, and again she must give that quick gasp of fear, the while she clung close to him lest he should spare her.
The twilight was engulfed and possessed by darkness, which in turn was transfigured by the moonrise, which in turn was fulfilled and consumed by dawn. A mighty eagle soared up from his eyrie, cleaving the air with his masterful wings, and beneath him from the rushes that harboured their nests, rose other great birds, crying loudly. Then the heavy-horned elks appeared on the uplands, bending their burdened heads to the sod; while beyond in the forests the fierce wild aurochs stamped as they bellowed their love songs.
But within the dim cave the lord of these creatures had put by his weapon and his instinct for slaying. And he lay there defenceless with tenderness, thinking no longer of death but of life as he murmured the word that had so many meanings. That meant: ‘Little spring of exceedingly pure water’. That meant: ‘Hut of peace for a man after battle’. That meant: ‘Ripe red berry sweet to the taste’. That meant: ‘Happy small home of future generations’.
They found Miss Ogilvy the next morning; the fisherman saw her and climbed to the ledge. She was sitting at the mouth of the cave. She was dead, with her hands thrust deep into her pockets.
HUGH WALPOLE
NOBODY
The only one of them all who perceived anything like the truth was young Claribel.
Claribel (how she hated the absurd name!) had a splendid opportunity for observing everything in life, simply because she was so universally neglected. The Matchams and the Dorsets and the Duddons (all the relations, in fact) simply considered her of no importance at all.
She did not mind this: she took it entirely for granted, as she did her plainness, her slowness of speech, her shyness in company, her tendency to heat spots, her bad figure, and all the other things with which an undoubtedly all-wise God had seen fit to endow her. It was only that having all these things, Claribel was additionally an unfortunate name; but then, most of them called her Carrie, and the boys ‘Fetch and Carry’ often enough.
She was taken with the others to parties and teas, in order, as she very well knew, that critical friends and neighbours should not say that ‘the Dorsets always neglected that plain child of theirs, poor thing’.
She sat in a corner and was neglected, but that she did not mind in the least. She liked it. It gave her, all the more, the opportunity of watching people, the game that she liked best in all the world. She played it without any sense at all that she had unusual powers. It was much later than this that she was to realize her gifts.
It was this sitting in a corner in the Hortons flat that enabled her to perceive what it was that had happened to her Cousin Tom. Of course, she knew from the public standpoint well enough what had happened to him – simply that he had been wounded three times, once in Gallipoli and twice in France; that he had received the DSO and been made a Major. But it was something other than that that she meant. She knew that all the brothers and the sisters, the cousins, the uncles and the aunts proclaimed gleefully that there was nothing the matter with him at all. ‘It’s quite wonderful,’ they all said, ‘to see the way that dear Tom has come back from the war just as he went into it. His same jolly generous self. Everyone’s friend. Not at all conceited. How wonderful that is, when he’s done so well and has all that money!’
That was, Claribel knew, the thing that everyone said. Tom had always been her own favourite. He had not considered her the least little bit more than he had considered everyone else. He always was kind. But he gave her a smile and a nod and a pat, and she was grateful.
Then he had always seemed to her a miraculous creature; his whole history in the war had only increased that adoration. She loved to look at him, and certainly he must, in anyone’s eyes, have been handsome, with his light, shining hair, his fine, open brow, his slim, straight body, his breeding and distinction and nobility.
To all of this was suddenly added wealth – his uncle, the head of the biggest biscuit factory in England, dying and leaving him everything. His mother and he had already been sufficiently provided for at his father’s death; but he was now, through Uncle Bob’s love for him, an immensely rich man. This had fallen to him in the last year of the war, when he was recovering from his third wound. After the Armistice, freed from the hospital, he had taken a delightful flat in Hortons (his mother preferred the country, and was cosy with dogs, a parrot, a butler, and bees in Wiltshire), and it was here that he gave his delightful parties. It was here that Claribel, watching from her corner, made her great discovery about him.
Her discovery quite simply was that he did not exist; that he was dead, that ‘there was nobody there’.
She did not know what it was that caused her just to be aware of her ghostly surprise. She had in the beginning been taken in as they all had been. He had seemed on his first return from the hospital to be the same old Tom whom they had always known. For some weeks he had used a crutch, and his cheeks were pale, his eyes were sunk like bright jewels into dark pouches of shadow.
He had said very little about his experiences in France; that was natural, none of the men who had returned from there wished to speak of it. He had thrown himself with apparent eagerness into the dancing, the theatres, the house-parties, the shooting, the flirting – all the hectic, eager life that seemed to be pushed by everyone’s hands into the dark, ominous silence that the announcement of the Armistice had created.
Then how they all had crowded about him! Claribel, seated in her dark little corner, had summoned them one by one – Mrs Freddie Matcham with her high, bright colour and wonderful hair, her two daughters, Claribel’s cousins, Lucy and Amy, so pretty and so stupid, the voluminous Dorsets, with all their Beaminster connections, Hattie Dorset, Dollie Pym-Dorset, Rose and Emily; then the men – young Harwood Dorset, who was no good at anything, but danced so well, Henry Matcham, capable and intelligent would he only work, Pelham Duddon, ambitious and grasping; then her own family, her elder sisters, Morgraunt (what a name!), who married Rex Beaminster, and they hadn’t a penny, and Lucile, unmarried, pretty and silly, and Dora, serious and plain and a miser – Oh! Claribel knew them all! She wondered, as she sat there, how she could know them all as she did, and, after that, how they could be so unaware that she did know them! She did not feel herself preternaturally sharp – only that they were unobservant or simply, perhaps, that they had better things to observe.
The thing, of course, that they were all just then observing was Tom and his money. The two things were synonymous, and if they couldn’t have the money without Tom, they must have him with it. Not that they minded having Tom – he was exactly what they felt a man should be – beautiful to look at, easy and happy and casual, a splendid sportsman, completely free of all that tiresome ‘analysis’ stuff that some of the would-be clever ones thought so essential.
They liked Tom and approved of him, and oh! how they wanted his money! There was not one of them not in need of it! Claribel could see all their dazzling, shining eyes fixed upon those great piles of gold, their beautiful fingers crooked out towards it. Claribel did not herself want money. What she wanted, more than she allowed herself to think, was companionship and friendship and affection… And that she was inclined to think she was fated never to obtain.
The day when she first noticed the thing that was the matter with Tom, was one wet, stormy afternoon in March; they were all gathered together in Tom’s lovely sitting-room in Hortons.
Tom, without being exactly clever about beautiful things, had a fine sense of the way that he wished to be served, and the result of this was that his flat was neat and ordered, everything always in perfect array. His man, Sheraton, was an ideal man; he had been Tom’s servant before the war, and now, released from his duties, was back again; there was no reason why he should ever now depart from them, he having, as he once told Claribel, a contemptuous opinion of women. Under Sheraton’s care, that long, low-ceilinged room, lined with bookcases (Tom loved fine bindings), with its gleaming, polished floor, some old f
amily portraits and rich curtains of a gleaming dark purple – to Claribel this place was heaven. It would not, of course, have been so heavenly had Tom not been so perfect a figure moving against the old gold frames, the curtains, the leaping fire, looking so exactly, Claribel thought, ‘the younger image of old Theophilus Duddon, stiff and grand up there on the wall in his white stock and velvet coat, Tom’s great-grandfather’.
On this particular day Claribel’s sister, Morgraunt Beaminster, and Lucile, Mrs Matcham, Hattie Dorset, and some men were present. Tom was sitting over the rim of a big leather chair near the fire, his head tossed back laughing at one of Lucile’s silly jokes. Mrs Matcham was at the table, ‘pouring out’, and Sheraton, rather stout but otherwise a fine example of the Admirable Crichton, handed around the food. They were laughing, as they always did, at nothing at all, Lucile’s shrill, barking laugh above the rest. From the babel Claribel caught phrases like ‘Dear old Tom!’ ‘But he didn’t – he hadn’t got the intelligence.’ ‘Tom, you’re a pet…’‘Oh, but of course not. What stuff! Why, Harriet herself…!’ Through it all Sheraton moved with his head back, his indulgent indifference, his supremely brushed hair. It was just then Claribel caught the flash from Mrs Matcham’s beautiful eyes. Everyone had their tea; there was nothing left for her to do. She sat there, her lovely hands crossed on the table in front of her, her eyes lost, apparently, in dim abstraction. Claribel saw that they were not lost at all, but were bent, obliquely, with a concentrated and almost passionate interest, upon Tom. Mrs Matcham wanted something, and she was determined this afternoon to ask for it. What was it? Money? Her debts were notorious. Jewels? She was insatiable there… Freddie Matcham couldn’t give her things. Old Lord Ferris wanted to, but wasn’t allowed to… Claribel knew all this, young though she was. There remained, then, as always, Tom.
Thrilled by this discovery of Mrs Matcham’s eyes, Claribel pursued her discoveries further, and the next thing that she saw was that Lucile also was intent upon some prize. Her silly, bright little eyes were tightened for some very definite purpose. They fastened upon Tom like little scissors. Claribel knew that Lucile had developed recently a passion for bridge and, being stupid… Yes, Lucile wanted money. Claribel allowed herself a little shudder of disgust. She was only seventeen, and wore spectacles, and was plain, but at that moment she felt herself to be infinitely superior to the whole lot of them. She had her own private comfortable arrogances.