Over the crest of the road the world dropped away into valley and fields, beyond which the snow-caps rose up mightily. On his right the jags and scaurs made the outline of a pterodactyl hanging spread-winged against the sky. He heard a noise behind, like a deep prolonged A-ah! and saw another scatter and rush of snow and rocks pouring down over la Corniche.
After a while the narrow road began to zigzag down through green pasture fields, and he saw a village below. Hurrying on, he passed two peasants on a slope below him, and before he realised what he was doing, heard himself crying out,
“Mon compagnon est tué, tombé au dessous le Corniche!” and hurried away from their shouted questions. Now what had prompted him to call out that Jack-in-the-box lie? It would in all probability lead to all kinds of trouble. Why had he said it? Was it a discharge of horror or shock at the vision of himself falling, limb-spread and brutally stricken? Or that his old unsure flibbertigibbet self had fallen away with the confidence given by Barley? His doppelganger, as it were? Never again must he speak out of feeling, only through his mind. That was poor Mother’s trouble: she did not use her head for thinking. Feeling ashamed of himself he took plunging steps down the steep grazing, his ankles feeling thick and wooden, the soles of his feet aching, while shocks of joy arose in him that a new life had come to him with the thought of Barley.
In Arrens he sat in an estaminet and drank cup after cup of café au lait while scribbling postcards to his mother, to Willie in North Devon, to Bevan at the Hôtel Lutetia in Montparnasse, and others. Only twelve hours since leaving Laruns, but it seemed a timeless period of his life, and now it was over he felt dejected. However, he must use his mind, not his tired feelings, and getting up, paid for what he had had, humped on pack, took up his staff (“Good old Trusty” he had cried after the avalanche), posted the cards and continued on his way. Perhaps the Selby-Lloyds would not be at Argelès after all? And he did not even know the name of the hotel. Should he hire a car and drive there? No: he had said he would walk to Argelès and he would walk to Argelès.
He hobbled on down the grey road with the sun on his back and a long shadow preceding him in the dust. Movement was now mechanical; nails and stockings pressing into hot blisters unheeded.
*
Just before eight o’clock he reached Argelès and walked into the first hotel he saw. It had a pale yellow exterior. He engaged a room without asking if any English guests were there, washed, sat down on the bed, found it hard to get up, but went down to the dining-room, glancing at a dozen tables and people around them. With relief and disappointment he saw that they were not there. Men in dinner jackets, obviously English, were regarding him obliquely; he sat as though unaware of all others in the room. The fact of his soiled clothes and wild hair did not worry him, he unfixed his sight to rest his mind, feeling his personal self to be diminished to nothing.
He wondered about Annabelle, no picture of her in his mind would form now that the face in the adjacent air contemplating him gravely, steadily, had eyes of gentian-blue. He drank a glass of wine, another and another, finishing the bottle as he sat there waiting for his dinner, while the image of Barley filled him with active happiness. She was his ideal, why hadn’t he seen it before?
The soup was followed by undersized trout, and then chicken, which he ate with a second bottle of wine, before clattering up to his room. He wasn’t drunk, but his feet felt broken across. Having pulled off boots and stockings, which stuck to his feet with raw blisters, he pulled on espadrilles and a pair of cotton drill trousers and shuffled into the street to call at the next hotel. The first thing he saw in the foyer was Sophy’s blackthorn thumb-stick. They were at dinner—Sophy, the General, Queenie, Marcus, Annabelle and three other people. The men wore short evening jackets.
He returned to his hotel and pulled himself up to his room by the banisters, to comb his hair and brush his teeth, while feeling an increasing reluctance to face them. He started to undress, cursed himself for changing his mind, and went back to the hotel. They were now in the drawing-room. Queenie saw him first. “Heavens, look what’s blown in!”
Sophy flushed and said in a restrained voice, “Hullo, wherever did you spring from?”
The General arose and said genially, “’Evening, Maddison! You look as though you’ve been in the sun!” Marcus and a young man and the elderly man the General had been talking to got to their feet. Introductions, scarcely realised names, followed. Do you know—How do you do—And may I—How do you do—Have some coffee?
“How did you get here?” asked Queenie, making a place for him to sit beside her on a chaise longue.
“I walked over from Laruns.”
“But surely the Corniche is closed?” asked the General.
“Phillip’s an awful fibber, I must warn you!” said Queenie, revealing uneasiness under her semi-protective attitude.
“When did you come, Phillip, and how?” Sophy was now more herself.
“I was with the Lushingtons—you met them in Devon, didn’t you—who live at Laruns, and walked over to see you.”
The General said again, “Surely the Corniche is blocked?”
“Yes, it was, but I climbed down below it, and found the going fairly good, sir.”
“I thought it was a nigger when you first looked in,” said Queenie.
The elderly woman whose name he did not remember leaned over and said in a loud voice, “I hear you write. What sort of books do you write? Although one never remembers the titles of books nowadays.”
“I ought to warn you, Lady Maude,” said Queenie. “Our tame author is liable to produce a manuscript at any moment and read it aloud without warning!”
“Really, most interestin’,” murmured Lady Maude.
She must be Brian Talbot’s mother, he thought, perched on the edge of the chaise longue and sitting on his hands in such a position that the hard frame edge pushed some of the pages about Donkin from the poacher pocket of his coat. He thrust them back, but not before Queenie had seen them. “I told you so, he’s brought one with him!”
“Oh, lor’!” cried Annabelle. “Stop him, someone, quick!”
“It’s the safest place to keep a manuscript,” he said to the General.
“Just at the moment I feel I could not do justice to literature,” replied the General. “Had rather a hard day. Got your pipe with you?” He held out his pouch.
“N-no thank you. Well, I think I ought to be getting back to my hotel.”
“Yes, we’ve all had rather a long day,” said Sophy.
“If you’ll forgive me too,” said Lady Maude. “We’ve had a somewhat strenuous day, and another tomorrow——”
“Yes, my dear, yes …” said her husband. “I’m lookin’ forward to seein’ Foch’s birthplace tomorrow. So I’ll bid you all good-night!”
When they had gone up, General Gotley went to the sideboard. “Have a peg, won’t you, Maddison?” He poured out the drink, and took the glass over to Phillip. Then he poured one for himself and sat back in his chair, thoughtfully smoking his pipe. Sophy sat beside him.
“You look tired, Phillip,” she said.
Queenie was the next to leave, followed by Annabelle and Brian Talbot, who said something about seeing the driver of the car for tomorrow’s visit to Pau.
“You look as though you ought to be in bed,” said Sophy.
“Yes,” he said, and swallowed his drink.
“No hurry,” said the General. “How far is it to Laruns, I wonder.”
He fetched a map. “By Jove, you must have come at a cracking pace, it’s fifty kilometres.” He shut the map. “Are you staying here?”
“I’m in the next hotel. I’m going on first thing tomorrow morning.”
“We’re all starting out early, and so if we don’t meet again before you go, I’ll say goodbye now,” said Sophy, getting up.
“Good-night,” he said, making himself smile. “And thank you so much. I think I’ll go back to my hotel. Good-night, Sophy. Good-night, Ge
neral.”
He went through the doorway into the ice of the night. He felt that he had made a complete idiot of himself, from every point of view. In the morning he would go back to England. He knew his feeling for exhaustion, and that all thoughts in fatigue were valueless; but he would go all the same.
*
For a long time he could not sleep. The bones of his feet and legs ached heavily, and a feeling of being withdrawn from the bed’s level and suspended out of the horizontal made him clutch the bedside table to steady himself.
When at last he dozed off it was to feel that he was falling from the parapet of la Corniche, flash upon flash of sweat and terror, and his voice was crying out soundlessly in the fixed yet swaying immobility of appalling space. He was falling, yet he could not fall; he was crying out, yet no sound came from his mouth; he was hurtling down in flash upon flash of terror, yet someone was gripping his arm, striving to pull him back from the swaying fixity of space. M’sieu, M’sieu! Attendez, attendez, s’il vous plaît! A light was shining in his face, and two men were standing by the bed he perceived with a blow of terror followed by relief. One was a gendarme, the other the proprietor of the hotel. He was asked to dress and go with them downstairs to the salle-à-manger where beside a white enamelled stove with blue flowers on it sat a man dressed in black with notebook and pencil before him. He asked questions. Was he not with an English jeune fille? At Laruns? Walking from the gare? His two friends to accompany him to Eaux Chaudes?
They were going down a passage at the end of which a telephone receiver was taken off its stand and given to him. Far away, through a faint crackling sound, he heard someone faintly asking, Is that you, P.M., is that you, P.M.? Irene was asking if he had heard anything of Barley. He could not speak, then Irene’s voice said, speaking very slowly and far away, that Barley left early in the morning—can you hear me, P.M.—Barley—left—early—while—I—was—asleep—to—stop—you—trying—to—cross—the—Col d’Aubisque—and—has—not—returned.
*
He was trying to put on his boots but could not, yet they dragged on his feet as he tried to get to the Col d’Aubisque to find her. He could not move, he was fixed unendurably in the horror of time, he was lying in the grasses before La Boisselle, the great glaring summer day was July the First and he could not stand up any longer.
He tried to drink a glass of cognac held to his face, but could not swallow it. The base of his skull seemed to have a bayonet pushed into it, he could not breathe, and then from far away he heard Irene’s voice saying that Barley had been found, she was dead, her back was broken when she fell from la Corniche.
*
He was awakened into blinding light by someone shaking his shoulder. He cried out, “Thank God, O thank God!” realising that it was a nightmare and he had been shouting in his sleep. He dressed, pulled espadrilles over his swollen feet and went downstairs with the patron and then it seemed that he was following part of the nightmare—teeth chattering, the telephone, the cognac, Irene’s voice saying, “Is that you, P.M.? Are you all right? Thank goodness you are safe! Barley has had a dream in which you fell from la Corniche and broke your back. Yes, yes, she is quite safe! She followed you up as far as the Col with some snow-shoes, she saw the avalanche and came back.”
“I’ve just had the same frightful dream, Irene, in which Barley was killed!” He broke into tears. Almost at once he recovered, and then Barley was on the other end, asking him to come over as soon as he could.
“I’m so glad to hear your voice! Come by train in the morning. You change at Pau. Did you see your friends?”
“Yes. It’s all finished, thank the Lord!”
“Good for you. Just a moment, Mummie wants to say something.”
Irene said, “You can get a train to Pau, where you change for Arudy, and so for Laruns. It’s not far, the scenery in the valleys beside the rivers is very fine at this time of year. You’ll be able to stay awhile, won’t you?”
Pause to enjoy the exquisite moment—“Oh, yes, thanks very much! I’m not expected in Paris for a little while.” Pause. “Irene—are you sure I won’t be in the way?”
“My dear P.M., what a question! When are you due in Paris? In four days’ time? My dear, don’t you know that we both love you? You’ll stay? Very well, we’ll expect you sometime in the early afternoon.”
*
He took the train to Lourdes, getting off at the station with a feeling of exquisite satisfaction that he was delaying his return to Barley, and feeling that he must pray for the great blessing of life now given to him. But at the Grotto the feeling faded. The small quarry, once a dumping ground of rubbish, was hung with rotting crutches and trusses, while fifty or sixty people, most of them invalids with white or yellow faces, some on wheeled stretchers, sat and lay before the Grotto, hoping for a cure by prayer, a miracle. Remembering Uncle Hugh, thin, yellow face, the groans and cries of pain and remorse coming from the garden room next door, he prayed silently for ail hurt and suffering and unhappy people before returning up the street, his feet heavy and the spots as though fixed around his heart. He passed shop after shop where thousands of souvenirs were for sale, painted plaster casts of saints and the Virgin and Child. A pilgrims’ train had just arrived, with hundreds of people in black clothes who stared at him and his English tweeds, big boots, leather anklets, and spike-shod pole. He waited, a smile on his face, while trills of joy moved up his body, on the platform for the train to Pau. Arriving there he walked about again, unable to stand still in his tremendous happiness, until the branch line engine drew in with wide splayed funnel and iron grill on top, presumably to stop the sparks of the wood-burning engine from being blown by the forced draught into the air—danger of forest fires. He got into one of the small yellow wooden third-class carriages which had straight backs and hard seats—probably, he thought, the first carriages ever made for the chemin-de-fer. The journey was marvellous—he followed it on his map. The first stop was Gan. Peasants got in, with baskets for the market—at Laruns? Then puffing on to Arudy and so to the valley of the Gave d’Ossau with its grey snow-water rushing to join with the Gave d’Oloron on its way to the Atlantic. At last, at last—his heart beating faster as the engine slowed, was LARUNS, the end of the line: and there she was, waving, and here she was before him, her face strained and unsmiling at first, but soon the light was in her countenance, her blue eyes were sparkling, her voice, always soft yet decisive, asking how he was.
“Jolly well, thanks.”
“Let me take your pack.”
“Oh no, I can manage, thanks.”
He felt stiff and clumsy until she took his hand, when he thawed in a dream of sunshine beside her.
*
At night he was falling again, and when he cried out she came into his room, and sat on the bed, and lay with her cheek against his; and when he continued to tremble she got in beside him, to hold him to her, and he felt the delirious softness of her body giving warmth to his own. He had no desire to possess her, the joy was lyrical, as when he was lying beside the deep blue gentians in the grass where the snow had melted above the Col d’Aubisque.
“You are the truth of the gentian,” he said. “I love you, Barley. Will you marry me when you are older?”
“Yes,” she whispered. Then she was saying, “When I dreamed that you were dead, I did not want to live any longer.”
He kissed the bone of her cheek, and stroked her hair.
“You know, I still can’t believe that this is true!”
“When I am eighteen, I’ll come and live with you if Daddy won’t give permission to let me marry you then.”
“But what will Irene say?”
“Mummie said it would be all right when I asked her. I told her when I saw you first that I was going to marry you one day.”
“You darling! If only you’d told me, too, it would have saved a lot of trouble!”
She laughed. “Sowing your wild oats, P.M.! I knew you had to do that first!”
<
br /> “What fun to be together, always, Barley! My mother will love you, too.”
“Where does she live?”
“In south-east London. A place called Wakenham.”
“I hope I meet her soon. And I want to see all the places Donkin loved when he was a boy.”
“Oh, Barley, you are so sweet.”
They stood at the open window and saw the dawn over Spain, a blue shining light which cast in silhouette the loneliness of the peaks; and at another window they saw the snow upon great Ger, Gabizo, Monné and Midi de Bigorre in the height of the sky, infinitely remote and wan that life for ever was denied upon their rangèd loneliness. As they watched they saw the peaks beginning to flush. The dawn was in the room, in the warmth of her breasts, their softness, the enchanting joy of the pink blossom of their maiden beauty. She hung upon his neck, kissing him shyly on the cheek before leading him to his bed, to cover him as though he were her child, and with another kiss blown from her fingertips she was gone, and he was alone in the room with its fragrance of the flowers in the garden.
*
And now it was time to leave——
“Till the summer then, my dearest P.M.! I’ll write to Mrs. Tucker and ask her to let me have Verbena Cottage again for August. Meanwhile, work hard—but not too hard!—and don’t worry any more, will you? Your Barley shall come to you, with both our loves. Give my love to Devon, and write to us, won’t you? Au revoir, dearest P.M.!”
He kissed the two women and got into a wooden carriage; and so through forests and by streams and rivers to Bordeaux, the midnight train to Paris, Bevan and Archie at the Hotel Lutetia in Montparnasse.
“You are a different man,” said Bevan, looking at Phillip.
“Cherchez la femme!” said Archie. “But remember—every woman has her price!”
“That sounds like the title of a feuilleton for The Daily Crusader.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Archie Meek, with satisfaction, “it is!”
The Innocent Moon Page 47