The Power of the Dead

by Henry Williamson

  *

  When Lord Satchville had gone a familiar voice, curt with a donnish minimum of lip movement, said in Phillip’s ear, “I had no idea that you were on familiar terms with the greatest rowing blue my College has produced,” and turning, he saw Martin Beausire, carrying as usual a pile of review books under one arm and, as usual, in a tearing hurry. “I’ve got to get back to my office to write a leader for my paper—walk with me down to Piccadilly where I’ll get a cab—both Fifi and I expect you at Worthing tonight—bring Lucy if she’s with you—you know theaddress, it’s in the telephone book. What are you writing now—I hear you’re farming near my old stamping ground. Then why aren’t you writing about the Great Plain instead of writing about the Great War? All the articles I’ve seen of yours are about nothing except the war. Very good of their kind they are, too, but who cares a hoot about the war when your animal and country stuff is only as you can do it, you prize ass. Here’s a taxi. Get in.”

  “I can’t come tonight, Martin, thanks all the same, Lucy and I are staying with the Morlands.”

  “Then come as soon as you can. Fifi is always saying, ‘When are we going to see Phillip and Lucy again’,” and banging the taxicab door he cried “Fleet Street—Daily Telegram——” and off he went.

  Returning to the hall, Phillip saw Archie Plugge, who came across an empty row of seats as though invisibly being impelled by a tall dark woman with brilliant dark eyes and red mouth. “First of all, do let me congratulate you, Phillip! Now may I present you to Zorinda—Mrs. Nembhard la Guardia. Zorinda wants to ask you how she can get a tame otter. Now, alas, I must leave you, if you’ll forgive me. It would be press night for The Wireless Times at Watford, and I simply mustn’t miss the van——”

  He hurried away, leaving Phillip with the tall woman and her sparkling gaze upon him. “Yes, you are just like your book. I knew it. It is too, too divine. I must get a cub for a pet. How does one go about it? Archie has been telling me that they live in your river.”

  “Well, I’ve never actually seen one in the brook, but otters do roam about a good deal, I fancy.”

  “How perfectly fascinating. You tracked your beastie everywhere, Archie tells me. How does one see wild animals? Do tell me, is there an hotel near you, where one might stay? I wouldn’t dream of suggesting myself, knowing how busy you must be,” she said, her dark eyes open wide behind lashes sticky with lampblack. “The West Country must be simply heaven now.”

  He was wondering how to extricate himself when he saw Lucy. “This is Mrs. Nembhard la Guardia, a friend of Archie’s,” he explained. “My wife,” he added, vaguely. “Do forgive me. I’ll be back in a moment——” for he had seen Plugge beckoning him at the back of the hall.

  “I’m most frightfully sorry, but Zorinda insisted—— What I wanted to say, although I couldn’t for obvious reasons say it while she was there, was that my summer holiday begins next week, and as I’ll probably be staying a few days with Piers, might I drop round and see you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You will forgive me, I know, but I simply must rush away to catch the press van. Don’t for God’s sake let on to Zorinda that I’m coming to you.”

  Phillip went back to the two women, arriving in time to hear Lucy saying, “Oh, we don’t live in Devon, but Phillip has kept a cottage there.”

  “I suppose you wouldn’t consider letting it for a period? One simply must get away from the mad rush that London is nowadays.”

  “It’s rather damp,” said Phillip. With relief he saw Spica approaching. She nodded cheerfully to the woman with Phillip, then said to him, “Some reporters from the evening papers want an interview with you. They say there isn’t much time left if they’re to catch the final edition.”

  “I don’t awfully care for interviews.”

  “But you were once a reporter yourself, don’t forget.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Waiting at the back of the hall. I’ll show you.” She led him away. “Who’s that awful woman trying to attach herself to you?”

  “An object of mixed feeling to an undecided acquaintance of mine. I’ve never seen her before.”

  “Take my advice, and don’t see her again.”

  Four young reporters, one of them Felicity Ancroft, stood in a row together. The man, speaking for the others, said, “Mr. Maddison, please will you give us a story?”

  The three young women remained attentive. Felicity, he noticed, wore her hair in a different style: she looked like Barley about the brow, with two waves of fair hair growing back from the widow’s peak. Conscious of her gaze upon him, he replied with ease, “I wonder if I waited so politely when I was on space with The Sunday Courier? There’s not much of a story, I’m afraid. I left Fleet Street to live in a labourer’s cottage in South Devon after the war—I lived with dogs, cats, and various birds. There was also—towards the end—a tame otter.”

  “Was that Lutra?”

  He drew a deep breath. “One night he got in a rabbit trap, losing two claws of a front paw before I managed to release him. Then he ran off in fear. It took some months to track him, up and down the rivers of Exmoor and Dartmoor. I came upon him at last, towards the end of a hunt. He got down to the tide-head—salt water, as I expect you know, carries no scent, so hounds could not follow. That’s the last I saw of him.”

  “But in your book the otter is killed by hounds. Was there any symbolism involved in its death?”

  When he did not reply the reporter took another line. “Would it be true to say that you met your wife in the search for Lutra?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she is a niece of Lady Kilmeston?”

  “Well——”

  “And since your marriage you have farmed an estate in Wiltshire?”

  “I’m a farm pupil.”

  “Does that mean that you will write no more books?”

  “I can’t really say. However, I’ve managed to complete another.”

  “May we know what the subject is?”

  “A novel about an ex-soldier who rebels against accepted ideas.”

  “Would it be correct to assume that it is autobiographical?”

  “I appear only as a minor character.”

  They thanked him, and three of them moved away. Felicity Ancroft remained, twisting white cotton gloves.

  “I used to be diffident when I had to interview people,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, looking up at him. “I hardly like to say it—but—well—may I write to you about coming down to see you for an article on your work? I’m a freelance.”

  “Yes, you told me. I’ll give you my address.”

  “I know where you live. I’ve actually bought a one-inch Ordnance Survey Map of your country. I mustn’t keep you. Goodbye, and oh yes—congratulations.” She went away.

  He looked around for Spica. She was sitting alone in the last row. Moving down the aisle, he repassed the young man with feathery yellow hair who said, “I’ve just heard Sir Godber Hollins say, ‘I discovered that young man’, after receiving congratulations on being your publisher.”

  “Oh.”

  Phillip sat beside Spica. She took his hand.

  “Well, Phillip, this is the day I’ve always looked forward to. Now you’re a famous figure all right. What a very sweet person your mother is. You inherit your talent from her, you know.” The large gentle eyes regarded him seriously. “You know I’m always your friend, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And I’ve always said what I think. You know that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then don’t be offended when I tell you to look after your beautiful, enduring, and tolerant Lucy. She’s not Barley, you know.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  She caressed his hand. “Because I’m very fond of you both. I’ll say goodbye here. Bless you.”

  His mother was waiting with Pa, Ernest and Lucy. Hetty said gaily, “Well, Phillip, I am so glad
everything went off all right.”

  “Thank you for coming, Mother. I’m sorry I’ve kept you waiting. It looks as if Lucy and I must find the Morlands now. They’ve asked us to stay the night with them.”

  “If you have time, do come down to see Father, won’t you? I must go now, to be home when he arrives from the office.”

  “I wish you were coming with us to Rookhurst,” he said, feeling sad that she was looking so old.

  “Perhaps I shall come again, one day.”

  “Father must come, too. It is his country, really. Well, I suppose we must be going.”

  Thomas Morland and his wife were waiting in the vestibule. Mrs. Morland was a thin elderly woman with dark eyes looking as though she had been permanently hurt. Of course, she would be the wife of Morland’s cousin, whom he put into Possession as the unsympathetic Evelyn Crouchend. He told her how startled he had been to hear Mr. Morland’s praise of his ‘little book’. She smiled wanly. They were driven to a house in Upper Brook Street, where, among a score of fashionable people, they listened to a string quartet playing in the drawing room, before having tea.

  “I am so glad you like music,” said Mrs. Morland. “We thought of going after dinner to hear Hiawatha at the Queen’s Hall. There’s a very promising young conductor named Henry Flashman.”

  It was a moving cantata. Whatever the modern attitude to lyric poetry, he said to Lucy, Longfellow was a true poet in Hiawatha. By the time the music had come to the death of Minnehaha he had withdrawn into himself, with a return of the very grief he had felt when Barley died on that winter morning when the fields of Malandine were white with rime.

  *

  The Morlands’ house on the edge of the Heath seemed to be inhabited by maid-servants in uniform with starched caps. What a wonderful bedroom, he said to Lucy, wide and light, with white bathroom adjoining. The soft carpets, the furniture mellowed by aromatic wax, the whisky and brandy decanters and the siphon of soda at the bed-head. He did not help himself to a drink, even out of bravado: the luxury was a little depressive, everything was so correct: and yet, at the Copleston’s house, he had tried to make everything correct. What was the truth about ‘atmosphere’? Was it but a projection from a man’s own experience? Had Tolstoi lived in such an atmosphere? While Lucy had a bath he sat in an envelopingly soft armchair and felt mean at his implied criticism of Morland. But the truth was he saw Morland as a writer inferior to himself. Even so, what a dreadful thing it was, to repay kindness, generosity, and service to another by assuming that, because Morland’s books were not really in the rare first-class, Morland had only done his duty to a superior writer, by paying tribute to Caesar. And yet, Morland was faithful to his conception of the rich upper-middle class. How else could Morland write about his relations except truthfully? But had he? Were those old uncles true portraits? Had they really been mean and stupid in their lives? Had his own grandfather, Thomas Turney, been like that? As for Evelyn Crouchend, was any man truly like that—unless he were sensitive to the point of neurosis, and ineffectual in love. Was that famous character but a whipping-boy for the author’s wife, who looked to be neurotic, possibly the victim of impotent rage? So, to her, he had grown to be a monster; and Morland had built up a ‘character’ that was not really human.

  Was it not Morland’s implied criticism of his characters that was his defect as an artist? But what about himself? Was he not a black pot criticising a slightly-smoked kettle?

  And yet—and yet—it was all a little too much a conformation to the highest standards of gentility. David Torrence must have felt this extremely, when invited to Morland’s house for a meal. For when he had asked Morland at dinner if he had met Torrence Morland had replied, guardedly, “I thought his eyes seemed to be dead,” while Mrs. Morland had added, “He was probably very tired.”

  In the morning, thanking Mr. and Mrs. Morland for ‘such a jolly visit’—feeling that was how the younger generations of Harrovian Crouchend nephews would have spoken—they left for Paddington, three hours before the train was due to leave. The blue rug was put round Lucy’s knees by the chauffeur, there was a restrained wave at the door, and away they were driven, feeling relief. When the chauffeur held out his battered ancient portmanteau, Phillip gave him a ten shilling note, wondering if it should have been a pound. Would the driver, as in a magazine story, pause ‘to give an icy thank-you’ to show what he thought of so paltry a sum? But the Harrods’ service-chauffeur bowed pleasantly as he told a porter to take the luggage to the Cloak Room and leave it there.

  “They were awfully kind, weren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you enjoy it all?”

  “Oh yes. Did you?”

  “Yes. But I’m glad it’s over. Aren’t you?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  At the bookstall he bought copies of all the morning papers, and with the bundle went to the buffet room. Every paper had a story, some with the photograph taken before the ceremony in the ante-room. There he was, with slightly open mouth, holding one end of a piece of paper shaped like a cheque in one hand while Morland held the other and they were shaking hands.

  “Look at this in The Graphic. ‘Heir to more than a thousand acres held by the Maddison family since the fourteenth century writes work of stupendous imagination says Thomas Morland, O.M.’ Whoever put that in? Nuncle will strafe me to hell for that.”

  He opened The Mirror.

  “‘Otters sport in the lake under Wayland Down, where trout exceeding six pounds in weight are preserved by the youthful winner of this year’s Grasmere Memorial Prize for Literature’. Strewth! Where the devil do they get it all from?”

  He opened The Telegram.

  “Beausire wrote this, I bet. ‘Mr. Maddison’s spiritual search for his lost tame otter is akin to that of Tristan for Isolde. Lutra was the pet of his young wife, nee Teresa Jane Lushington, who died giving birth to her first-born, a boy called William, in January 1925. Mr. Maddison is now married to Lucy Amelia Copleston, a niece of Lady Kilmeston’. What will your people say to that, Lucy?”

  “Oh, I don’t suppose they’ll see it.”

  He opened The Crusader.

  “‘One day a struggling author in a remote labourer’s cottage, yesterday his work was hailed by all fashionable and artistic London. Mr. Thomas Morland, O.M., declares the prize novel (£100 and a gold medal) to be work of unquestioned genius’. Let’s leave this place, people are beginning to stare at us.”

  They took a taxi to the publishers.

  *

  The trade department of Mashie & Co., Ltd.—a small room with a counter—was filled with pale young men and girls. After peering in Phillip closed the door quickly and went upstairs by the side-entrance, and into the typist’s annexe adjoining Mr. Driver’s room overlooking the western end of Covent Garden market. The telephone bell was ringing behind the closed door; so, leaving Lucy, he went up to the sales manager’s office. It seemed to be full of men; so he climbed one more flight of stairs to the production room, where sat a thin young man who had sent him the galley proofs, and later the page-proofs.

  “Well,” he said, “how do you feel now that you’ve broken all Mashies’ records for sales in one day since we published The Crucifix many years ago? The office is in a state of complete chaos! We’ve had orders for three thousand copies by post this morning—an entire sackful of letters from the booksellers! And ever since we opened the office we’ve been besieged by messengers. It’s due to the broadcast in the B.B.C. news last night, didn’t you hear it? ‘Hamlet’ is in a fume, asking why you didn’t let him know, so that he could have run off a large impression to meet the demand. Now he can’t make up his mind whether or not to have plates made and sent to several printers, or to run off ten thousand copies from standing type. The trouble is that our printers haven’t the machinery to cope with such an order under a fortnight, even by working overtime.”

  “I think I ought to see Mr. Driver.”

  “You won’t find hi
m too pleased that Coats is to have your next novel.”

  “I did my best to get him to take it.”

  “I think you’ll find that ‘Hamlet’s’ chief gripe is that you didn’t let him know in time about the Grasmere.”

  “It wasn’t my secret.”

  Mr. Driver looked as though he had suffered a financial loss from which his firm wouldn’t recover.

  “So you’ve already gone to Coats, as all the up and coming young writers seem to go. Well, I suppose one should not really expect—how can I put it—that the artistic temperament should be fettered in any way by the—the—obligations that we ordinary folk consider to be the thing.”

  Mr. Driver waved a pencil, and looked at an overflowing waste-paper basket. “I suppose all that remains is for me to congratulate you on having such a great success. I suppose they’ve told you upstairs that we’re literally overwhelmed with orders which we are not in a position to fulfil for some time?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Coats is to do your next book?”

  “Yes, in the autumn, Mr. Driver.”

  “I suppose you knew about the award some time ago?”

  “Yes. I was asked to keep it to myself. I did try to get you to pay me £50 for the novel, you know.”

  “Well, it’s done now. And your novels aren’t in the same class as your animal books. By the way, did you tell your agent, Norse?”

  “Yes, in confidence, Mr. Driver.”

  “But not your publisher? But there, I must not reproach you. And if I may dare to offer you some advice, such as it is, I think you should not regard yourself as a novelist. You have often told me about some of your adventures in your past life, and most amusing they have been, too; but when I have read of the same incidents, romanticised a little no doubt, all the vitality you showed while telling me, all the humour, is absent from the printed page.”

  At this point the Sales Manager came into the room and said, with a face almost woeful, “Mr. Driver, Harrods have just telephoned, they want an extra five hundred copies, in addition to their order by post this morning.”