The Black Laurel

by Storm Jameson

  “You’re waiting for someone?” he said sharply.

  She had seated herself again, and was leaning back. For the first time he noticed her dress, a long handsome garment like an evening coat, buttoned tightly to her waist and springing away in heavy folds to her feet. The impression she made was charming and arranged, as though she were sitting to the artist.

  “Everyone knows that at this hour I’m at home,” she said quietly.

  He was tempted to tell her that he knew she was infatuated with young West. He had made the discovery accidentally, careful — he had been careful for years — to know as little as possible about her life. But why, he thought bitterly, did I think she was only amusing herself? Of all people — Edward West. . . He was astonished by the sourness of his anger. Am I jealous? No, what nonsense. . . He disliked young West. Worse than that — he could not believe in the honesty of an affair between a man of twenty-four or five and a woman over forty: the idea that West must, however unwillingly, feel a contempt for her, made him want to assault the young man.

  He forced himself to say smoothly,

  “Where is Lise?”

  “I sent her to lie down. She runs about far too much, she was tired.”

  “Nonsense,” he exclaimed, “Lise is never tired.”

  “I can’t tell you how tiresome Lise is,” she said harshly. “Either she behaves like a child when she ought to keep quiet, or she gives herself the airs and graces of a spoiled young woman. The truth is it’s more than time she went away until she can behave herself in company. Your sister can try her out at hunt balls and teas at the vicarage.”

  Brett was horrified. If he was not jealous now, there was a year when he had been: he knew jealousy when he saw and heard it, and he knew that she was in torment. He saw, too, that she did not know what was the matter with her — if she had had any idea she would have taken care not to give herself away. Poor Lise, he thought.

  “Be careful,” he said sternly, “you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  For less than a moment she looked like the old woman she would one day become. Her hands trembled — she saw him glance at them, and with an awkward movement hid them between herself and the arms of the chair.

  “Perhaps I don’t.” Her voice rose. “You’re a fool, Humphrey. You know nothing about me. Nothing at all. Why did you marry me? Out of kindness. I know. Well, let me tell you, kindness of that sort is only disgraceful. You wanted to feel easy about me — I was poor, it worried you that I hadn’t a soul in the world — and so you offered yourself. I was a fool to accept. I should have waited.”

  Pierced by the vulgar justice of this, he said,

  “Mary, my dear, I’d do anything to help you. What do you want me to do?”

  After a moment she said, quietly and simply,

  “Forgive me, I had no right to say that. It’s less than half the truth. I’m a selfish woman, Humphrey. I lived on you for years — and I’m quite capable, when I’m old and my voice goes, of coming back and asking you to support me again. My cleverness is all show, I’m vain —”

  She hesitated, and went on in a light voice,

  “I don’t entirely believe this. Why am I saying it?”

  He had a sudden feeling of intimacy with her — as if they must understand each other nakedly, without reticence and without the falseness of words; he said boldly,

  “Because you depend on me as your friend. We know each other — you know just how much of my honesty is the cynicism of a man who has been passed over in his career. And you, my poor girl, I’ve seen you afraid, crying, ugly —”

  The composed smile she turned on him cut him short.

  “No, you’re not friendly, Humphrey.”

  He felt absurdly humiliated again.

  “My dear girl,” he said quickly, “you’re right, I’m not. For just a minute I was your humble servant, but I’m my normal gross self again, and you have every reason to distrust me. Besides, I’m growing old and I’m a clown, and no woman could stand it.”

  She said drily,

  “Yes, you’re a clown, but you’re not a fool. It’s true, though — in five years you’ve aged more than ten. I suppose you overwork. Why?” Her smile became unpleasantly mocking. “Since I left you — how often have you been in love?”

  “Not at all.”

  “How can you live like that? It’s quite inhuman!”

  He looked at her with deliberate impudence.

  “Human? Any little animal amuses itself as humanly as you do.”

  “Ah, but I’m a thinking animal,” she said, smiling, “my pleasures really are pleasures. You, my poor Humphrey, have your own ways of amusing yourself. I admire you and respect you, but thank heaven I’m as unlike you as anyone could be. You can’t make me ashamed. I’m not ashamed. If I were deformed I might be, but, if you remember, I’m not in the least deformed.”

  She laughed at him, stretching her head back so that the strong curve of her throat was exaggerated.

  “I should like to live a dozen lives at once,” she said lightly.

  Anger — or hatred? — blinded him, with the flash of a knife turned in the sun. “Yes, you’re remarkable for your age,” he said under his breath. Her body became limp, as if she had been struck — only for an instant, then she stood up, and forced herself to look at him. He made an effort to get rid not only of his mean anger, but of his self-contempt. Neither of them so much as touched her. He knew it. He had no power to make her unhappy — she was unhappy because of this young man, and because her good sense as well as her body warned her that she was going to be defeated. The contempt he felt for his indecency was swept aside by pity for her.

  “I’m sorry. Forgive me, and let me help you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, with indifference, “I prefer to look after myself. You would like me to suffer, I know. Very well, you can be satisfied, but it won’t do you any good.”

  She went out of the room. Brett stood for a moment with bent head, conscious of his failure. Walking to the window, he looked at the dead city. He was struck by the brilliance of the sky over the young ruins. It was the first of September, but it might be a midsummer day in this defenceless plain. Massive shoulders of cloud, whiter than many a swan, plunged into the torrent of sunlight: they changed their form as he stared, but it was so subtly done that he did not catch them at it.

  He decided impatiently not to try to see Lise. She came in just as he was going, and ran at him with a cry of joy. She was radiant: her nails — he glanced at them — were as neatly smooth as the inner surface of a shell. Since she left him she had learned to dress herself properly; she was now neither gawky nor elegant, and (he guessed) not yet conscious of her good looks. She’s turning out well, he thought. His pride made him feel light and swollen.

  “Can you still bend yourself back like a croquet hoop, with your hands on the floor?”

  She laughed. “Yes, of course. Shall I show you?”

  “Certainly not. I thought you were lying down.”

  “Well, how can I? On a day like this!”

  “Of course you couldn’t. Are you happy in London, puppy?”

  “Yes, terribly happy. Don’t think I didn’t like Scotland. I did. But — do you know? — in London I can dance or go to a concert nearly every evening of the week. And the bookshops, and mamma’s friends — she knows everybody.”

  “Do you like them?”

  “Some of them. I don’t talk, I listen.” She smiled with the involuntary malice of a child. “I don’t want to disgrace her by saying the wrong things. She’s so kind, even kinder than I hoped she would be. I’m very happy.”

  Only a child would have failed to see through his clumsy approach.

  “And Berlin? Have you enjoyed yourself?”

  “I should think so! But, heavens, how queer the Germans are. I talk to our chambermaid — she knows a little English, and she snubs me. And yesterday, when I was going to throw Captain West’s cigarette-ends out of that window, she sc
reamed and snatched the tray out of my hand.”

  “You could find out why,” he said drily. “So you’ve been talking to young West?”

  He watched her walk lightly across the room: as she passed it, she caressed one of the hideous gilt and walnut chairs, false Empire — in this room all the furniture was false.

  “I like him better than any of them,” she said frankly, “he’s awfully kind. I shall miss him.”

  He was startled into saying harshly,

  “I don’t care for the fellow.”

  “You can’t possibly know him, then,” she said, smiling.

  The door opening interrupted her. Brett looked at his wife with a familiar guilt and foreboding: her eyes, only her eyes, gave away her anger: she said coldly,

  “Lise, I told you to stay in your bedroom.”

  “I tried to, but it was too hot and too fine. I couldn’t rest.”

  “Don’t be tiresome. When I tell you to do a thing I mean you to do it. Come here.”

  “I’m sorry, mamma.”

  Afraid to make things worse if he interfered, Brett watched the girl’s smiling confidence shrink under his wife’s fury. She seated herself and looked up at Lise with a reproving coldness.

  “This evening you’ll be tired, and behave as foolishly as you did last night — talking too much and making a laughing-stock of yourself. Go back to your room.”

  He looked at Lise as she slipped past him, but she kept her head down; he saw that she was as much puzzled as unhappy. The door shut behind her, and his wife turned on him resentfully.

  “What are you plotting?”

  He was appalled.

  “My dear Mary, you’re making a mistake, you’ll do yourself no good — and the child —”

  She stood up. She was trembling with anger.

  “For heaven’s sake, go away,” she said in a low voice. “I can’t bear you. Leave me alone.”

  Crossing the room to the door, he felt clumsy and enormous. I’m absurd, he thought. He was tempted to break out in the language of the sergeants’ mess; it would do him and might do her good. Recollecting himself, he went away without another word. He could do nothing for her. It scarcely mattered. But Lise — with despair, he saw that he was helpless: whatever her mother was driven to do to her, she would do, while he looked on uselessly. It was so intolerable a thought that, for the moment, he shook it off.

  He had arranged to see William Gary this afternoon.

  Chapter Twenty

  Why, after all, had he been invited? For no reason except to amuse Gary? It seemed so. Gary was propped up on a couch placed in one of the windows of the library — he had refused to take his fractured leg into hospital — and he was, he said, damnably bored. Brett did not believe him. He liked Gary. He had been seduced first by his liveliness and simplicity, the ease with which he became your friend — at a distance that made the friendship unexacting and happy. He was charmingly urbane, and he had the energy of a brute. Perhaps he’s a monster, Brett thought lightly; he has more power than is good for anyone, but he behaves like a human being. Like an intelligent and highly civilised human being. Looking at Gary, he was struck by the arrogance of his face, and its finely massive planes: in some indefinable way the arrogance was reflected through a smiling courtesy and friendliness. It was an attractive face. He pondered for a moment on the paradox that the terribly anonymous power of money has been concentrated, now, in single points of extreme individualism. As in Gary. . . And after Gary, what?

  When he had been there for a short time he saw that Gary was in pain. He stood up to go. Looking at him with an amused smile, Gary said,

  “I suppose you’re infernally busy. By the way, are you still keeping an evil eye on my poor Rechberg?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “It seems absurd. To anyone who knows him.”

  “You think you know him? No, no, of course you know him. He’s rich, pious, he comes from a good family. There’s no reason in this ridiculous country why he shouldn’t be all three, as well as a scoundrel or a receiver of stolen goods.”

  “Is that your imagination, Humphrey, or an informer?” Gary asked.

  “Neither.” A little unwillingly, he added, “There are gaps, large gaps, in any information I have. I can’t be certain that everyone I talk to is rich and pious. But I don’t like Rechberg’s smell.”

  A gleam of ironical contempt crossed Gary’s face.

  “It’s a ludicrous blunder.”

  I’m being warned off, Brett thought. He dismissed the idea at once.

  “I must go. Have I tired you?”

  Looking up with a quick warm smile,

  “Far from it. You do me good — come as often as you can.”

  In the warmth of the air outside, a thread of cold brushed across his face as invisibly, as barely, as a spider-web broken in the dusk of a country lane. The leaves of the garden chestnuts had a yellow look, the veins had turned, and the superb copper beech, he noted, was losing its gloss. The breath of autumn. When he reached the living-dead centre of the city, he stopped the car — he felt the need to walk. He had ceased to notice the ruins, as ruins. A file of German soldiers shuffled along an edge of the street as if they were blind, their sightless gaze in no danger of meeting the prudently averted eyes of their fellow-countrymen. Lifting herself from the bricks she was sorting, a young woman thrust at him the face of a mediæval sorceress, bold eyes, bold curves, lank curled hair. A stall with a few torn books rescued from a rubbish heap; in front of it, and looking at the books from some point far back in his skull, a boy held his arms pressed to his sides, hands contracted like claws.

  Brett felt his isolation from these people. From all of them. What did they think about in the rooms with the boarded-over windows, in bricked-up cellars, crowded, smelling of excrement, and when, lying in bed, they stared at the cracked chest of drawers and the curtain? The crack was defeat, the stench was defeat, the dress hanging from the nail, defeat, an anguish joining them, below its forms and colours in this room, to the others, the greater, infinitely greater number of all human beings, living from birth to death as slaves. They were only a little worse off — and only because they had not been born in this state.

  A feeling of happiness seized him. He could not help it. He enjoyed walking, he felt remarkably well; and the hint of coolness — promising winter as well as autumn — exhilarated him.

  He must see Renn. When he walked in, Renn was telephoning: he motioned to him to go on, and waited. Curious face the fellow had — obliterated. One of your self-devourers, he thought — lives meagrely on his own entrails. That’s what happens when a man turns his decent sensuality into scruples. If he had lived a life at least partly of action — but a writer manqué — his energies forced under until they have become dryness, boredom. He would have made a good soldier — and it might even have saved him.

  He stretched himself. The severe energy in his own body was no more than he needed, and used in a life he was satisfied with. It was more accurate to say that it had used him — mercilessly well and wholly. He had no complaints. The life which had chosen him when he was still a child had not let him down. His mistakes sprang from the choices he had made for himself — compared with his happiness, his luck, they were nothing.

  Renn had put the receiver down. Liking him, and with a spring of malice, Brett asked,

  “Well, have you found Rechberg?”

  “No.”

  Delighted by Renn’s look of annoyance, he reflected that the business of Kalb — which had seemed a common, altogether too common case of looting and violence — was beginning to smell queer. No doubt partly because the accused was being defended by Dr Gerlach. This made news for the Germans; the bush telegraph — springing up overnight in an occupied country — was buzzing with it.

  “I’d like to see the fellow.”

  “Kalb?” Renn said. “Certainly — why not?”

  In the car, Renn said,

  “I’ve formed an opinion abou
t him which is contradicted by all the evidence — and by himself. I formed it, I may say, almost the moment I saw him — he looks as if a grasshopper and a frog had got together to produce him. Yes, yes, I know what you’re going to say. And in fact he has only to open his mouth, and any rash feeling I have that he’s innocent looks even sillier. I never saw a man look guiltier or more confused than he did in the summary court. He incriminated himself as thoroughly as he could, his story is idiotic, and he tells it with every air of not believing it himself. Well, is it the confusion of an innocent man, terrified by finding himself in a trap? Or is it the most superb cunning?”

  “Surely no one — let alone a wretched little Jew who has been a refugee — could be as cunning as that?”

  Renn’s tongue flickered over his upper lip.

  “I shouldn’t like to say. Any man can do anything.”

  You learned that by living on yourself, Brett thought.

  “The queerest thing, as queer as anything the chap himself says, is young Gerlach’s story that he met him in London. Isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Renn said drily. “It’s queer, and unfortunately for Kalb, it’s at least partly true. Kalb recognised him — and almost wept.” He smiled with a light bitterness. “Am I losing my nerve?”

  Brett glanced at him. Brutality, he thought, may be what he needs.

  “As soon as a man in your job begins to torment himself about the possible innocence of a spy, he’s no more use. You’d better —”

  Renn interrupted him swiftly.

  “A spy?”

  “Why the devil should young Gerlach invent his story?”

  “Why? Frankly, I don’t know,” Renn said. “And I don’t know why he shouldn’t. Another point — if Kalb were guilty, would he give himself away by recognising the boy?. . . Well, he might have lost his head.”

  He hesitated, and went on, with a mocking gaiety,

  “I shall be shocked if the poor devil is proved to be a killer. Every time I see him I believe — for a minute — in the essential goodness of man.”