L. S.
4
I had read this extraordinary confession aloud. Not unnaturally, there was a silence between Holroyd and myself when I had finished it.
‘One sees them,’ Holroyd said.
‘Them?’
‘Otho Senderhill and his Lydia in Baden-Baden. Wandering the little rough-paved streets, or flirting in the grounds of the Conversationshaus. But would that have been there in the Napoleonic period? The countryside can’t have changed much. Those little timber-and-plaster villages peeping out from a tangle of plum-trees.’
‘My dear man!’ I was astonished at my friend’s falling into this evasive chatter, although I faintly knew it was a consequence of his being much disturbed. ‘You realise what this letter tells us?’
‘Yes, yes – but at least they lived long ago.’
‘Otho and Lydia?’
‘Florizel and Perdita. They were really Laon and Cythna – all the time.’
‘What the devil do you mean by that?’
‘Shelley’s lovers were brother and sister – at least in his first shot at the poem. Curious that Bertrand should have copied from its supreme moment into his book.’
‘You mean Bertrand may have known?’
‘No, no. But if this affair confirms us in anything, it’s surely in the knowledge that human minds, living and dead, communicate with one another in remarkably devious ways. Do you know Kipling’s story called Wireless? It’s not about Shelley. But it’s about Keats.’
‘Confound Kipling.’ I paused for a moment. ‘No wonder those wretched Sticklebacks were upset. But they kept mum, and at least Bertrand and his mistress never knew. Indeed, the Sticklebacks must have been the only two human beings who did know. All knowledge of the truth – the full truth – perished with them. Until we opened this’—I tapped the letter—’and put our own small two-and-two together.’
‘That’s the probability, unless the Sticklebacks had a confessional urge too. Perhaps—’ Holroyd broke off. ‘Hullo! That girl has vanished.’
‘Vanished?’ Not unnaturally, I had for the moment quite forgotten Martha Uff.
‘Not in any supernatural fashion.’ Holroyd’s brilliant eyes flashed at me alarmingly. ‘She must just have walked away – following her dream.’
‘Last time, it became my dream too.’
‘Yes, indeed.’ Holroyd was suddenly grave. ‘Don’t think I have no sense of the strangeness of all this.’
I made no reply. I was less concerned with Holroyd’s state of mind than with my own. Several times since coming to Vailes I had felt, not wholly without cause, uneasy enough. But that had been, so to speak, in my head. My sensation now was scarcely cerebral at all. Rather it was visceral: an obscure dismay and dread deep in my body, like a premonitory symptom of depressive sickness. It was in an effort to get rid of this that I did presently speak.
‘Holroyd – Martha couldn’t have heard us? She couldn’t have heard me reading this?’ And again I tapped the yellowing paper and faded brown ink of Lady Otho Senderhill’s letter to the Bishop of Bath and Wells.
‘Not unless she’s endowed with a most remarkable hyperaesthesia of the auditory faculty. Otherwise, she could have heard nothing short of a shout. Not that some other form of rapport—’ Suddenly Holroyd stopped in the middle of his jargon. ‘Listen!’ he said.
The injunction was needless, for I had already heard the sound. Nor was it again repeated after some faint echo had done with it amid the beech woods. It had come from the direction of the lake: a single and despairing cry.
We were running – two elderly and agitated men – down the long green ride that led from the ruined cottage to the water. It was my thought – shocking yet prosaic enough – that we should find Martha as they had found Ophelia: drowned while incapable of her own distress. Martha, however, was still on dry land.
She, too, was running – frantically by the margin of that small, tranquil flood. But, even as we first glimpsed her, she stopped, and flung out her arms strangely in an imploring gesture to empty air. She turned and ran again; stopped; the gesture was repeated in the direction contrary to the first. And this time she sank down upon her knees.
It was thus that we came up with her: a distraught child, her face bathed in streaming tears. I scarcely expected that she would so much as see us. But she did, and our presence brought her to her feet. She faced us, and spoke.
‘You’ve taken them from me!’ she cried. ‘And now I know as wot they’ll come no more.’
I looked beyond her to the unmoving and empty water of the lake. It shone still a heavenly blue. The early evening was indeed one of extraordinary beauty. There was not another soul or living thing in sight. There were only our three selves, required to make what we could of the impassive face of external Nature.
‘Listen, Martha!’ I cried. ‘You must try to understand. They are only—’
The child was running again. I had broken off at the sight of her freshly contorted face. Now that was invisible to me. For she had turned, and it was straight for the lake that she ran. This was in itself no crisis, since the water could not have been for some way deep enough to allow of her doing any mischief to herself. But my thoughts were confused, and I felt that I must stop her at once, must hold her until some sort of calm words were possible. So I too ran, and it was only at the verge that I seized her hand. We both halted – so abruptly that I almost stumbled over a sizable stone at my feet. I glanced quickly down at this, and saw that it lay on top of a short length of rope. And suddenly it was very, very cold.
The little boat was there. I could have put out my disengaged hand and touched its prow. But my gaze rested on it only for a moment, and then I looked beyond; looked to where, that morning, I had seen two lovers hand in hand. The young man in the jeans and sweater was there again now. Only whereas my morning’s experience had been lucid and rational, about this one there was something fantasmal and dreamlike. He was walking slowly away from me, but some breach in the laws of optics permitted me to view his face. I saw it with an extraordinary clarity, as if through an instrument more refined than the one in Holroyd’s pocket now. The young man was very handsome and very pale. And over his features lay an expression of numb horror so unnerving that I could not bear it. I looked to the other side of the lake.
The girl was there. She too was retreating, and her face too I could nevertheless see – or rather I could see the two hands in which she carried it buried. For seconds these two figures – planted solidly on earth despite the strangeness of my vision of them – walked slowly on, sundered by the long vista of water that led to Vailes. Then something seemed to happen to the girl. It was something that made me wonder whether my grip on Martha’s hand had slackened. But it was not so; I held it as firmly as before. I looked again at Perdita, and knew that she was fading from my sight. I looked at Florizel. He was there still, but something was happening to his clothes, to his body – for through and beyond them I saw some further thing: thorn or bramble or hazel-bush it may have been. A moment later and he was there no longer – nor his mistress on the other bank. Yet for some heart-beats in each place something lingered: shadows faintly human like those traces called pentimenti in old pictures, where the artist has repented of some botched creation and expunged on his canvas all but the shade of a shade.
‘You saw them again?’ Holroyd had joined me, and it was as if some spell were broken by his voice.
‘Yes.’ I put my arm round the weeping child at my side ‘But Martha is right. They’ll come no more.’
The Men
1
It was 5 p.m. and the dons were packing up to go home. Or so the Jarvie phrased it to himself as, glancing through a window which commanded the main gate of the college, he saw yet another middle-aged man strapping a pile of books to the antique carrier of his bicycle. The time was coming, the Jarvie thought, when at this hour of the day he would be the only senior member left in the place.
He was universally known as
the Jarvie, and as Jarvie he was almost invariably addressed. This was because, in a closed society, ‘Strathalan-Jerviswoode’ becomes tedious to articulate, and because he had gained his Fellowship long before the use of Christian names was the practice in Oxford common rooms, whether senior or junior. So the Jarvie he became – upon the information, some averred, of a contemporary who had known him to have been so nicknamed at Winchester. At one subsequent period, indeed, a few venturesome persons – who had all become Charles and Theodore and the like to each other, and who possessed that just distaste for the exceptional or anomalous which distinguishes the academic mind – tried calling the Jarvie Vivian. The Jarvie had thereupon let it be known that, although he would not dream of questioning his colleagues’ taste, it remained his own feeling that this completely familiar form of address ought to be employed only by those who were his intimates.
Intimates was a good Jarvie word, and the Jarvie did actually know a number of persons who could be so denominated. There were even a couple of them resident in Oxford, whom he dined or went to dine with regularly. The others – stringy old men with drooping moustaches like discoloured tusks – were understood to be in general the proprietors of extensive though totally barren estates in North Britain. These did actually call the Jarvie, Vivian. They were perhaps a little surprised to hear their ancient friend call his professional associates at High Table Theodore or Charles. But the Jarvie would have thought it poor form not to concur – at least this way on – with his younger colleagues’ conventions. It was true that, if one of them chanced to have initials susceptible of enunciation as a word, the Jarvie would ingeniously cheat by himself producing a kind of nickname out of them. There was a man called William Oldfield Gifford, an inorganic chemist of obscure origin, whom the Jarvie habitually addressed as ‘Wog’. Late at night, when he had drunk too much brandy and become a shade quarrelsome, he would try to insist on other people calling Gifford Wog too. On the other hand, were anyone outside the college to asperse Gifford in the Jarvie’s hearing – on the score, say, of his accent or his finger-nails – the Jarvie would turn on an icy aristocratic contempt that simply froze further words on the speaker’s lips. College loyalty was a first principle with the Jarvie.
It came under strain from time to time – as now, for example, as he watched the homing habits of married dons at five o’clock. He might soon be the only grown-up left in the place, he repeated to himself sadly as he turned away from the window to pace the worn Aubusson carpet which he had been let bring up with him when entering the college as a freshman more than half a century before. Not, he told himself quickly, that the men were not to be thought of as grown-up. Or at least spoken of, and to, as grown-up. One of the newfangled things that most annoyed him was the tendency of college tutors to refer to the men as boys. It wasn’t even an Americanism, although it sounded like one.
And as with all changes in verbal habit it was significant of something, although he wasn’t quite sure of what.
The Jarvie’s thoughts turned to making up his fire, and then to tea. Nowadays, his mind seldom proceeded very far in an analytical way.
He was accustomed to have tea served at half-past four, which was late enough considering that dinner was at half-past seven. But commonly he left the silver kettle undisturbed above its small flame until nearly five before setting about the actual business of infusion. His actions then, although he scarcely knew it, were exactly those of his mother long ago. He warmed each cup, or more commonly his solitary cup, with a little of the hot water, and a single drop of this he transferred in turn to each required saucer. This consulted the convenience of his guests, if there were any, by decreasing the liability of the cups (which like the carpet and the tea equipage came from Jerviswoode) to slither on the saucers. Or that was the theory.
Nobody having dropped in, he made tea now. There was a covered dish which revealed on inspection a sizeable pile of crumpets. The Jarvie, although he had expected nothing else and would have been put out by innovation, frowned at the buttery objects, put back the cover, and picked up a small tomato sandwich. As he did so, there came a knock at the door.
The Jarvie was not misled. This was the knock of a person who proposes to enter whether bidden so to do or not – but only in virtue of holding a station so lowly that he, or she, can be ignored if need be. It was, in fact, Mrs Crumble. And Mrs Crumble, seeing that the Jarvie was alone, wished him good evening.
‘Ah, Mrs Crumble, I’m not quite finished, I’m afraid.’ The Jarvie spoke particularly pleasantly to Mrs Crumble, for the reason that he didn’t greatly approve of her, or rather of her presence in his rooms. Mrs Crumble was simply Crumble’s wife, and it was, after all, Crumble whom the Jarvie employed. The Jarvie was the only don in college thus to have a private servant in fee; indeed, such a state of affairs must almost have vanished out of mind in the University as a whole. It was an extravagance, without a doubt; there were probably those who regarded it as an eccentricity. But then the Jarvie had had Crumble for a very long time – for much longer, certainly, than Crumble had had Mrs Crumble.
Mrs Crumble, however, was a respectable woman, and had probably been in good service before attaining with Crumble to her present connubial felicity. (The Jarvie was given to such phrases, at least in interior monologue, since he was no lover of women.) Perhaps it was sensible of Crumble to keep his wife in some degree in good service still, at least to the extent of appointing her his deputy from time to time. It would be unreasonable, the Jarvie felt, to object to the woman’s making his bed, or even setting out or taking away the tea things. It was for this last purpose, he supposed, that she had presented herself now.
But he quickly realised that this could not be so. Mrs Crumble knew perfectly well that his tea-hour might not begin till five, and she was too well trained to appear only ten minutes thereafter for the purpose of clearing him up. There must be another explanation, and in a moment he came to it. When he had made up his fire there hadn’t been enough coal for the job. The probability of this had been in the mind of Crumble where he was somewhere enjoying his afternoon ease. And now Mrs Crumble was here to take his empty coal-scuttle, carry it down two flights of stairs, and then bring it up again laden.
It would by no means do. (This, as with most of the Jarvie’s imperatives, was his mother again. She had been a very odd sort of woman, who had insisted that only men-servants should carry heavy burdens about the castle. Even unmarried women guests – of whom her husband had been rather fond – had to abide by the rule: dressed or undressed, their peat and their bath-water would be brought in by the footmen or not at all.) So here was a sudden crisis, of a magnitude such as the Jarvie had not had to face for weeks. He found he didn’t want to say to Mrs Crumble, ‘That’s something I insist your husband should do, so put the scuttle down’. Thus to rebuke Crumble as it were via Mrs Crumble came to him obscurely as an improper intrusion on the mysterious, the utterly mysterious, marital bond. The woman wasn’t going to go scampering and staggering round with the damned scuttle, all the same. Awaiting inspiration, the Jarvie temporised. He conversed.
‘An excellent tea, Mrs Crumble. But nobody has come in to share it with me. Most of the men are in training, no doubt. Torpids, you know. And what they now call Cuppers, eh? And there are new notions about training, it seems. One of the men was talking to me about it the other day. Carbohydrates are in disfavour. And by carbohydrates are meant, it appears, crumpets and muffins. Great nonsense – eh, Mrs Crumble?’
‘Yes, indeed, sir. I never did know a gentleman the worse for a crumpet to his tea.’ Mrs Crumble paused, and then decided that it was permissible, even incumbent upon her, to venture further speech. ‘As Crumble says, sir, there’s never harm in a little of what you fancy. If you know how to get hold of it, he says.’
‘Does he, indeed.’ Mrs Crumble, the Jarvie reflected, must have been, at least for a time, a little of what Crumble fancied. ‘But my talk with Mr Bellringer – the man I speak of is called Bellr
inger, and is apparently President of the J.C.R. – has suggested something to me. I think of giving breakfasts again. Formerly, all the tutors gave breakfasts. They were completely sans façon. One could even go along in one’s dressing-gown, which is how one normally breakfasted in one’s rooms.’ The Jarvie had hesitated; he was uncertain about its being proper to mention an article of half-toilet when tête à tête with a female. ‘But now they all have to go into hall. Or rather they don’t. They simply lie in bed. I deprecate that.’
‘The old ways did mean a lot of service, sir.’ Mrs Crumble, although uneasy in face of this protracted chat, said what it was relevant to say. ‘All those trays up all those staircases. Crumble remembers his early days at that, sir – as a college scout, that is, before he had the good fortune to be taken into private service. It required what strength a man had, sir.’
‘Perfectly true, my good woman. Perfectly true, Mrs Crumble.’ The Jarvie had swiftly corrected himself in the interest of proper accommodation with the conventions of the later twentieth century. He observed Mrs Crumble to be edging towards the coal-scuttle, and realised that he had not yet decided on a plan of action. ‘But if I begin giving breakfasts again it will at least be no burden on the college. We are an independent concern, are we not? And the point is that we could have steaks. Rowing men should certainly have steaks. And some of the reading men look to me as if they would be none the worse of red meat. You must have remarked it.’
‘Well, sir, I don’t know that I much notice the gentlemen. It’s not as if Crumble and me was on a staircase.’ Mrs Crumble adduced this consideration with a just consciousness of a certain social remove. For the Jarvie’s quarters did constitute very much an independent domain, and on the strength of this the Crumbles took satisfaction in keeping themselves to themselves. Crumble’s intimates (as the Jarvie might have called them) were understood to consist only of the head porter and the senior-common-room butler. ‘And not so many of the gentlemen come and go in your own rooms, sir, as Crumble says he has memory of. It’s a change in them as comes into residence, Crumble says. The new sort of gentlemen being less at ease, he says, in a gentleman’s society.’
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