I Shall Not Want

by Norman Collins

  He was alone now; the servants had given their notice and he had let them go. No one ever came to the house and when he went from one room to another, the dust rose out of the carpets and there were echoes behind him in the silent hall.

  Some of Louise’s friends had been sorry for him at first; they had sent him invitations and had tried to see him. But he had avoided the lot of them, clinging closely to his own company. And when he met anyone in the street he walked on, either not recognising or not wanting to be recognised. People said, too, that he was behaving queerly. He went about unshaven nowadays; his clothes untidy and his shoes unpolished. But for the most part he remained inside the house; he was seen standing at the windows that were always fastened, staring blankly across the street as if waiting for someone. No one knew what meals he had.

  His store of ready money had been less than a hundred pounds when Louise had left him. The company had not parted with a penny of the commission that was due to him; Mr. Lyman had punctiliously set it against John Marco’s over-draft with the firm. And the bank had refused to accommodate him further; he had seen his own cheques come back dishonoured, and the bills now lay littering the hall; he walked over them on the rare occasions when he went outside. The tradesmen had all learned, that same night it seemed, of what had happened; and their collectors waited, smoking innumerable cigarettes at the top of the area steps, for someone to come out. And then finding that the massive front door would never be opened to them, there had been summonses. John Marco had had one such paper served on him nearly at midnight by a solicitor’s clerk who did not conceal the victory that it was to him. John Marco had thrust the summons into his pocket and had walked on: he had not looked at it since.

  The terror that he had was not of the tradesmen and the petty creditors who surrounded him, but of the mortgagees. “When they throw me out of the house, where shall I go?” he asked himself. “Who is there to take me in?” And he sweated, reflecting that there was not a single friend to turn to, not a single door that he could expect to be opened to him. “I’m too old,” he kept repeating, “no one wants me. And I haven’t got the strength to start again.” These terrors became worst at night: he would lie on the bed—he rarely undressed completely—with the waking nightmare upon him, and at those moments it seemed that the whole of London was united against him, waiting for the moment when they could break in and over-run him. For the last week he had even given up attempting to sleep at night. He dozed on and off in his chair by day, and sat on through the evening and the small hours reading. It was always the same book that he read, and often the same page. He read it sometimes aloud to himself, mouthing out the Scriptures as Mr. Tuke himself might have done, so that the room no longer seemed empty and he forgot that he was alone. And while he was reading it the mists for a moment retreated and he was in the light again.

  There were times now when his mind was no longer clear within him. He would ring the bell impatiently for the maid to come to him, or turn his head thinking that it was Louise’s voice that he had heard. Once it was the white-haired Mr. Morgan whom he thought he saw before him and he half rose respectfully, as though ashamed that the Old Gentleman should have caught him resting.

  During the last month Hesther came often to the house. On the last occasion, she stood on the doorstep for nearly an hour, in her copious black that was like an advertisement of the tomb, ringing at the bell and waiting. Finally she thrust a handful of tracts and exhortations through the letter box, on top of the accumulated bills, and went away again, glancing hopefully over her shoulder to see if there were any movement. From behind the shutters in the drawing-room, John Marco watched her as she went back down the street. He stood there, his eyes fixed on those trailing, sepulchral skirts.

  And when she had left him, he had not moved away at once but had stayed where he was in the darkness, his eyes still fixed on the deserted street before him.

  The delusions that came to him in the empty house gradually grew wider and more varied. At times it seemed to him that there were other people, strangers whom he had not seen before, around him, or that the other rooms were full of his friends, Louise’s friends, and that they were waiting for him. On these occasions he would wander all round the house, standing about on the dusty landings, peering and listening. And only when he had satisfied himself that there was no one there would he go back to his room and lock the door behind him and settle down to his reading again. He usually turned the key in the lock behind him nowadays, because of the sense of safety, of security, that it gave; he found comfort in it. “They can’t get me here,” he kept re-assuring himself; “even if they force their way in they won’t be able to reach me here.” He had never attempted to define within his mind who “They” were. “They” remained something shadowy in the background, a vague, malevolent influence that was seeking to destroy him. And as the sense of persecution grew within him he went, not once a night, but a dozen times to see that the doors were fastened and that the bars were set firmly across the shutters. Then the house would seem a fortress to him, something unassailable and impregnable. “If they try to break in,” he told himself, “I shall defend myself. I shall stand at the head of the stairs and keep them back.”

  But he knew in his own heart that he was not strong enough to defend himself from anyone; he could scarcely creep up the high staircase without pausing on every step. And on the day when the little auctioneer’s men did break in—they did it very politely and discreetly for the sake of the neighbourhood, forcing open one of the lower windows, while a policeman in plain clothes stood by to drive away the inquisitive errand boys—and John Marco heard footsteps, real footsteps, on the stairs and knew that the hour had come, he could only advance towards them, trembling all over, asking in the weak, querulous voice of an old man why they were there, what was it that they had come for.

  And when they had told him that they were there to take away the furniture, that the house would be stripped in a few hours, he had offered no resistance. The terrifying blackness, that had descended on him for a moment, had cleared away again when he had realised that it was not him that they had come for. And he had stood by and let them enter one room after another, had seen them going even into Louise’s bedroom, into his bedroom, and he had done nothing to prevent it. He had watched the drawing-room being dismantled, himself sitting in one of the big easy chairs by the fireplace, until that, too, was wanted and he was turned out of it, and was driven into another room where already the carpet was turned back and the pictures were down off the walls. They worked with a horrid and a silent efficiency, these men; they were like executioners. He saw his whole private world as he had known it, torn to pieces and destroyed. But he no longer minded: it seemed to him that it was not his home that they were destroying, but Louise’s. And Louise had no further use for it. She had gone away and left it. Nothing that the men could do could hurt either of them now.

  When the men had gone down the stairs for the last time and the echo of their steps had gone from the house again, the foreman, a grey elderly man, had gone back up the steps once more and had sought out John Marco where he was standing.

  “You oughtn’t to stop here all alone,” he had said. “You’ll be doing some mischief to yourself.”

  But John Marco had only shaken his head and remained where he was, amid the litter of the emptied rooms.

  “I can’t go yet,” he had answered. “I’m not ready.”

  And that night John Marco began to pray. The prayers were not those that any Amosite minister would have recognised, though there were whole sentences of Mr. Sturger’s Devotionary included in them. The words came out in a rush from the turmoil of the present and from the lost places of the memory. And as John Marco prayed, going down on his knees on the bare boards that were all that had been left to him, he was in the Presence again and the room was filled with light and power. There were the rushing of wings about his head and the tongues of serpents; there were great blinding waters and bright
cataracts of stars. And because it was nearly two days since he had eaten, he was faint and his mind became released from his body and spanned the heights and the depths. “Call down your vengeance, O Lord, on those that have deceived me and done me wrong,” he prayed at one moment; and, at the next, the tears were running down his face and he was contrite: “Miserable I am that I have sinned and betrayed Thy name. Make me whole again so that I may truly repent. Let His precious blood redeem and wipe away my stains.” And the prayers became mingled and confused, and he repeated verses of hymns that he had sung as a child and snatches of other confessions that he had heard made in Tabernacle, and words that had reached him from the Bible. He had been praying so long that all sense of time had left him, and even his weakness seemed to have departed too; and still the Presence was there, and the light and the power. And suddenly, in a voice not like that of a man praying, but in a quiet low voice as though he were uttering a confidence to another man, he said aloud: “It wasn’t stealing the money that was the sin. The thief were forgiven on the cross. My sin was in betraying Mary. If I had taken my punishment then, she would have been there, waiting; and I should have been clean again. I could have lived. Now I am alone. My sin was turning away from life. For that, God, I ask forgiveness.” And he added a private, selfish prayer of his own; something that he did not utter aloud but merely repeated within himself; repeated, time and time again.

  It was some hours later—it must have been—because the light had gone out of the sky and the room was in darkness—when he roused himself and listened. There a bell clanging somewhere in the basement of the house. As he listened, it pealed again. He began to tremble, and started to grope his way downstairs and through the blackness of the hall towards the door. “I must hurry,” he kept telling himself; “I must hurry or it will be too late. She will have gone away again.” And at last he found the handle of the front door and drew back the bolt that he had fastened there and swung open the heavy door. He could feel the night air on his face again.

  It was Mary’s voice that spoke to him.

  He went away with her so naturally that he did not even remember leaving the dark house behind him; he simply rested his weight upon her arm that seemed so strong beside his weakness, and set out with her.

  In front of him the street flickered and grew mysterious and there were forms around him whose faces he could not see. But a new feeling of happiness was filling him; the nightmares that had been surrounding him seemed suddenly to have dissolved. “I am with Mary,” his whole body told him, “and there is nothing to fear.” And as he walked he found himself in the street that he and Mary had gone down together on the first day when he had walked back with her to the shop in Abernethy Terrace. And the years joined and fused together, and Mary was young and a little shy again; and he was proud and excited and wondered what the Kents would think of him when he had made his introduction. And then he remembered the crime of stealing Mr. Tuke’s umbrella and wondered if he would be able to replace it before Mr. Tuke discovered that it was missing. “The rain’s come on very suddenly,” he observed abruptly, and he glanced down again to catch sight of the rain-drops on her hair; but he saw now that the night was dry and rainless, and he grew confused and bewildered and could not understand.

  And as they went his pace became slower; he rested more heavily on her arm at every step. She grew anxious and asked him if he were ill, if she should get help for him. But he did not listen to her, and replied instead: “I wasn’t thinking about the lecture, I was thinking about you.” And he began to walk faster, swaying on his legs as he did so.

  It was when they were nearly home that his knees collapsed under him and he nearly fell. His face was quite grey again by now and he seemed to have stopped breathing altogether. But when he recovered himself he managed, even though the words were no more than a whisper, to say: “It was the miracle before Capernaum that I taught them about to-day”; and he added as if there were a third person beside them: “I shan’t ask her to marry me until I can give her everything that she deserves. It may mean one year or it may mean two.”

  And then he was silent again.

  They had reached the house by now—it was the house to which he had driven up that afternoon in his carriage—and Mary was helping him up the steps that mounted to the door. His feet were dragging and his body sagged against her at every movement.

  “I shall be all right,” he persisted. “I shall be all right. I’m strong.”

  It was as they reached the second landing, that the door in front of them opened and a girl stood there. The glow from the room caught her for a moment as if she were suspended in light and the pale gold of her hair was shining. Her body was young and slender, and the white neck seemed too slight to support the heavy coil of hair that was piled upon it.

  “This is my daughter,” said Mary proudly. “You wouldn’t wait to see her before.”

  But John Marco had not advanced any further. He stood still gazing at the girl, even though he was unable to breathe any longer and his blood was ebbing away inside him. He held out his arms towards her.

  “Mary,” he said. “Mary.”

  Then another cloud descended on him as he stood there, and he could no longer see. It was as though veils, each one thicker and more dense than the last, were being drawn across his eyes. He thrust out his hands to force them apart. But they remained there. Yet somehow he was not alarmed: she was there, and he had seen her. In the midst of this strange darkness the new feeling of happiness that had come was still with him; only stronger and indestructible by now. He was inside the pattern once more, the true one this time, and life was still there, waiting. Then the last veil of all, the black final curtain descended, and he slid forward gently onto the floor at their feet.

  Mary ran forward, shielding him from the girl’s eyes. But she need not have troubled: there was nothing in his face that would have distressed her.

  John Marco, without a penny to his name, was lying there at his ease, smiling.

  To

  Henrie and Peter

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

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  ISBN: 9781448200801

  eISBN: 9781448202126

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