by Dion Fortune
He planned to go and see the old couple who owned the farm. They would know every house in the neighbourhood that was to let. They must be getting on by now, for they had seemed old when he was a small boy.
He passed through the village, and turned the car off the main road on to a rutted track, much overgrown. Curious how things shrink from what you remember them to be as a kid. He had thought it a decent road down to the farm.
Finally he pushed through a small wood of wind-blown firs and came out into the farmyard itself. Curious, he thought, that no dog gave warning of his approach, for the door stood hospitably open. But as he drew up to it he saw the reason. The curtainless windows stared blank as the eyes of a dead man. The house was empty and deserted, and the broken door swung idly in the wind.
Murchison felt as if the bottom had dropped out of the universe. This was the last straw, everything had gone from him. The comfortable farm and the kindly old couple were the one link he had with happier days, and now that was broken. The empty house affected him out of all proportion to its practical significance.
A red-gold beam of the setting sun had penetrated a rift in the cloud-bank to the west and lit up the stained whitewash of the old walls and set the windows ablaze. The place seemed alive again for the moment, as if firelight were shining out of the windows, as he had seen it shine out of the windows of Ursula’s mountain cottage as he had approached it, dead-beat, but full of strange hopes, only to hear the casual words that had revealed to him his real position.
And with the memory there flashed into his mind a sudden idea that perhaps the farm itself might suit Brangwyn for his place of secret retreat, and his depression lifted as suddenly as the beam of the setting sun had struck through the rift in the clouds. With a new eagerness he got out of the car and entered the open door. The setting sun shone straight in at the windows, filling the place with temporary cheer. The floor was deep in drifting leaves and the droppings of roosting birds, but it was dry and weathertight. The big kitchen would do for Brangwyn’s living-room; the sacred parlour for his dining-room; and the big scullery out at the rear for his kitchen. An active wench on a cycle would make nothing of the mile from the village.
Murchison made his way back to the village, and received a warm welcome at the local pub when he made himself known. The landlady being a daughter of the old couple, whose pigtail he had often pulled in the days of his youth; the farm was her brother’s property, brother produced forthwith, and a more than modest price demanded for the farm and the few acres immediately surrounding it that gave it complete seclusion with their wind-swept woods and barren dunes. The land was useless for farming, and no one wanted it.
Murchison went over the post office, put through a trunk call to the flat, and announced his find to Brangwyn.
‘It sounds absolutely right to me, provided you can vouch for the water supply. Close with it at once, and put the decorators in. I want it ready at the earliest possible moment to take Ursula to. She is jibbing at the nursing-home.’
‘How is she?’
‘Better than she was, but far from right. She can get no natural sleep, and with her nervous temperament the doctors are very shy of drugs, so we are between the devil and the deep blue sea.’
Murchison slept at the pub, and next morning accompanied the landlady’s brother to the local solicitor, and the conveyancing of the farm to Brangwyn was put in hand. The brother himself proved to be the local handyman, decorator, maker of hen-coops, and undertaker, so down they went to the house and looked over it with a view to repairs. Practically none were needed, save to the door, that had apparently been forced by tramps or trippers.
Paint, whitewash and distemper were the chief requirements, so the job did not promise to be a big one, or a prolonged one.
Murchison was good at staff-work, and the farmhouse was taking shape rapidly. At the end of a week he was able to move in and camp out in it. The days slid by unnoticed, almost every day there was a letter from Miss Brangwyn containing instructions and little personal friendly touches.
While waiting for the varnish on the floors to dry, pending the arrival of the furniture, Murchison got to work on what had been the garden, and unearthed the precious remains of certain pink and white moss-rose bushes beside the gate. And there was a sweet-briar under the window of the old kitchen, that was now the living-room; and lad’s-love beside the door. Then he raided a neighbouring wood for primrose roots, already in flower, and lined the path to the gate with them. An enormous van with a trailer arrived, barging its way as best it might down the overgrown lane, and Murchison spent a strenuous day helping to lift furniture into its appointed place.
Altogether, he was thoroughly enjoying himself, and what with the strong sea air and active work had been able to push his worries to the back of his mind. Egypt seemed no more than a bad dream, fading from memory, and he had half forgotten that the sands were running low of the month’s notice he was working out with Brangwyn. He seemed to have struck his roots into the old place with every spadeful of earth he turned, and every slap of whitewash he laid on the walls.
Then there came disillusionment. The lorry from the railway station came lumbering down the lane and deposited a large packing-case in front of the door. Murchison, left alone by the departure of undertaker-decorator at the end of his job, lugged it into the living-room, which now had its curtains up, and prised it open, pulled off the covering newspapers, and discovered that it contained all Ursula Brangwyn’s things from the cottage upon the flank of Snowdon. Here were books, pictures, ornaments, rugs, cushions — all the things he had seen about her in that room that had seemed so full of her personality, and in which he had heard the fatal words spoken that had shattered his dream. Here was the very rug that he had slept under that night on the settle. Out of a book fell snapshots of herself and Brangwyn, taken in front of the cottage. He picked them up and studied them. Here was a laughing Ursula, a very different person to the one he had known. Evidently the snapshot had been taken before her trouble came upon her.
He went out and stood at the back door for a time, looking out to sea. Then he strolled slowly round the house to the front, where the little bit of garden he had unearthed was beginning to make a brave show. Slowly it dawned upon him that in ten days’ time he was due to sail for Alexandria, and that would be the end of his association with the Brangwyns.
He returned to the house, and grimly, as a kind of martyrdom, he carried Ursula Brangwyn’s things up to the room she had chosen, and put them away in the drawers and cupboards for her, hung her pictures, and spread her pink eiderdown on the bed.
In the very hour that Murchison was undergoing the martyrdom of handling Ursula’s intimate personal belongings, their owner was sitting up in bed in a luxurious nursing-home and saying to her brother, ‘Alick, do you think Murchison would come and see me?’
Brangwyn hesitated for a moment, and then crossed the Rubicon. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think he would.’
‘Why ever not?’ Ursula’s voice was sharp and startled.
‘Well, my dear, he has made up his mind that you have no use for him, and he prefers to cut his loss.’
‘Oh, but Alick, that isn’t the case at all. I like him tremendously.’
‘You do not seem to have given him that impression. At any rate, he’s through with you.’
‘Oh, but Alick, that’s impossible. There is such a tremendously strong bond between us. What has happened? What has put him off me?’
‘Your own words, my dear, “I shall have to take Murchison.” He wasn’t having you on those terms, and I don’t blame him.’
‘But I don’t feel like that now, Alick. I feel quite differently.’
‘Then you had better tell him so, and tell him plainly and quickly, for he is due to sail for Egypt in ten days’ time.’
‘I must talk to him. I must explain things. Oh, Alick, I don’t want him to go! Can’t you do anything?’
‘I have done what I can, my d
ear, and it was no use. The only person who can do anything is yourself.’
‘But what can I do if he won’t meet me?’
‘Your only chance is to walk in on him when he isn’t expecting you. I think the best thing to do would be for us to go down to the farm as soon as you are fit to travel.’
‘But will he listen to me?’
‘Ursula, I think that if you handle him the right way, he will fall into your hands like a ripe plum. He is very much in love with you, you know, and that is what all the upheaval has been about.’
The next morning Murchison received a wire, ‘Arriving 3.15 for a few days. Please meet.’ Brangwyn had decided that a wire would be better than a letter, as so much less could be explained in it.
Murchison told Mrs Learoyd, who had taken charge of the household, to get a bed made up in the room Brangwyn had chosen for his own, and at the appointed hour pulled on the old trench-coat and the slouch hat of the same vintage, and drove the four miles to the nearest station. It was market day, and there was a considerable crowd on the platform, and it was a few moments before he caught sight of Brangwyn’s tall figure among the farmers. He bore down upon him, and was shaking him warmly by the hand, when he suddenly saw a face looking round Brangwyn’s shoulder, and there was Miss Brangwyn smiling up at him rather shyly from out of the huge collar of her mink coat. He held on to Brangwyn’s hand without realizing what he was doing, and stared at her, till Brangwyn, who was getting his fingers damaged, made him let go.
‘Well, you two, do I need to introduce you?’ said Brangwyn, in an endeavour to relieve an embarrassing situation.
‘Oh, er — no. How do you do, Miss Brangwyn? I hope you are better?’
‘Yes thanks, much better.’
Ursula was squeezed in between the two men on the front seat, and her lorry-load of luggage was stuffed into the dickey of the big two-seater. Murchison, with a face like a graven image, drove rather slowly and carefully. Brangwyn made occasional remarks, and got monosyllables in reply. Murchison was exceedingly angry and hurt. This was too bad of Brangwyn. He knew how he felt, and it was cruel to let him in for this.
Ursula was more than delighted with the farm, and pronounced it her place of dreams.
‘But the garden is so sweet!’ she cried. ‘I thought it was a neglected wilderness.’
Mrs Learoyd was in great form, welcoming the owners, but greatly perturbed lest they should not have enough to eat. Murchison sat down to the meal with them, but he never looked at Ursula once, and she was reduced to the state when she dared not address a remark to him, but only eyed him furtively, and was near to tears.
They were still at the table when a telegraph boy came banging at the door with a wire for Brangwyn.
‘Damn it all!’ said Brangwyn. ‘Look at that, will you?’ He flung a telegram down in front of Murchison, who saw that it was an urgent demand for Brangwyn’s immediate return to town from his solicitors. How was he to know that Brangwyn had taken their name in vain and left the wire with Luigi to be sent off at the appointed hour?
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to run me back to the station again. I’ll have to catch the next train back.’
‘Is Miss Brangwyn returning with you?’
‘No, why should she?’
Murchison’s eyes met Ursula’s for the first time since that first anguished stare, and she saw that he had gone very white.
He was debating in his mind whether he would pack his own suitcase, and insist on returning to London with Brangwyn. But he reckoned that he would have to set his teeth and stick it out.
It was Brangwyn who broke the silence on the drive to the station. ‘I gather you are angry with me.’
‘I find the situation pretty trying, yes.’
‘When I told Ursula that you were leaving for Egypt in ten days’ time, she got straight out of bed and insisted on coming down by the next train to see you and try and put things right with you. Hear what she has to say, Murchison, before you form your judgement.’
Murchison drove sullenly back to the farm. His first thought was to cram his things into a suitacase and retreat to the pub, but he saw that he could hardly leave a girl, just arisen from a bed of sickness. He put the car away and went straight up to his room, and stood there staring out of the window with his hands in his pockets, till Ursula came knocking timidly at the door.
‘What time shall we have supper?’ she said. Murchison came out.
‘We’ll have it when you like,’ he said quietly.
‘Shall we have it now?’ said Ursula, very meekly.
‘Very good.’
It was a dreadful meal. Murchison was perfectly polite, but he never volunteered a remark, and he never looked at her. Ursula, quivering with nervousness, struggled through it as best she might.
This was being even worse than she had expected. There was nothing for it but to take her courage in both hands, and break through the ice with a crash.
‘I have come down here to talk to you.’
‘So your brother gave me to understand. But there was no need. I bear no ill-will for anything, and I’m only too glad to have been able to do anything for you. I hope you’ll get on to your feet now, and be all right.’
‘Alick tells me that you are going to Egypt in ten days’ time.’
‘Yes. I have got a job with a man who lives at Alexandria.’
Ursula pressed her sweating hands together nervously. ‘Will you stop if I ask you to?’ she said in a very small voice.
Murchison did not answer, but tense and motionless, stared at the fire. At last he said: ‘What good purpose could it serve?’
‘Well, I feel that there is a strong bond between us after all we’ve been through together.’
‘I don’t deny it. But I think it’s an unnatural sort of bond, and the sooner we break it the better.’
Ursula could not control her voice sufficiently to speak, and he took her prolonged silence for agreement. He rose:
‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll get off upstairs. This sort of talk can do no manner of good.’
Ursula sprang to her feet and caught hold of his arm. ‘Oh, don’t go. I feel as if the best thing in my life were going out of it. Oh, please don’t go.’
He stared down at her without moving. ‘I never wanted to go to Egypt. But the situation looked to me so hopelessly tangled it seemed the best thing to do.’
She came over to him and put her hands on his shoulders and looked up into his face. He put his hands over hers as they rested on his shoulders and looked down at her without speaking. ‘Don’t you think you could be happy with me?’ she said.
She suddenly felt herself gripped and held very closely. There was not much doubt about Murchison’s feelings, even if he were not very good at putting them into words.
He dropped into the big armchair, and Ursula sank down on the hearthrug at his feet and put her head on his knee. After a moment’s hesitation he put his arm round her shoulders tentatively, as if expecting to be rebuffed. They sat for a long time like that, gazing at the fire in silence.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘When did you first begin to like me? What made you change your mind about me?’
‘I kept on having glimpses from the very beginning. But the thing that really made an impression on me was when you snaffled me out from under Frank’s very nose and simply threw me into the car; and, again, when you kissed me in the barn.’
‘Good Lord, I thought I’d have to spend the rest of my life living those things down! But tell me, why did you say you’d have to take me in the same tone as if I were castor oil?’
‘Because I’d really begun to want you, and I wasn’t going to admit it to Alick.’
Silence fell between them, and in the silence they seemed to draw very near to each other. Murchison felt as if something that had been held under pressure till it ached desperately were now flowing freely in relief from the bare contact with the girl. His hand on Ursula’s shoulder was enough, with t
he warmth of her flesh coming to him through the think silk of her sleeve.
They sat together silently in the warm glow of the hearth, watching the little blue flames of the burning driftwood flickering over the embers.
‘Did you know that I nearly became a nun?’ she said.
‘Yes, your brother told me.’
‘Do you know why I did it?’
‘No.’
‘Because two or three times in the convent chapel I felt the most wonderful sense of peace and fulfilment and protection flow over me. It was the most perfect thing I had ever known, and I thought that if I became a nun I would have it all the time. But Alick says no; I was too young; and my human life would have been too strong for me.’
‘There is an extraordinary mixture of worldliness and spirituality about your brother that I have never understood.’
‘Well, you see, he does not believe that there is any dividing-line between spirit and matter. He says that matter is solidified spirit, as it were. Did you know that the initiates worship God made manifest in nature? It is one of their great secrets. It will work out in our marriage, you will see.’
‘In what way?’
‘Do you know the words, “Bring the Godhead down into manhood, and take the manhood up into Godhead”? Well, like that. That was why Alick would not let me go on at the convent. He said their teaching was all wrong on the subject of sex. And he made me meditate on the symbol of the winged bull to break me of it; but it had been so ground into me that sex was coarse and vulgar and evil that the bull simply scandalized me at first, and I couldn’t visualize his wings at all. Alick says that sex ought not to be under a taboo because it is unclean, but because it is sacred. Ted, do I shock you, talking like this?’