The Black Laurel

by Storm Jameson

  Arnold said, distinctly,

  “I wish to resign, sir.”

  Now what? He was astonished, and in the same moment he thought that he had known it while he was talking to Rechberg.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked gently.

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “Then why —?”

  The effort this was for Arnold showed itself in his rigidity, in a roughened voice. A muscle twitched in his cheek. His eyes were congested.

  “I should like to resign as soon as you can get another pilot, sir.”

  “Why not tell me what’s wrong?” he said gently. “You know I’ll help you.”

  “Yes, I know,” Arnold said drily. “I prefer to resign.”

  I brought that on myself, he thought: he hates nothing so much as being made to feel. He reflected. He could handle the boy; he knew very well what to say to him to make him feel that he had behaved rashly, and then that, without loss of face, he could change his mind. But. . . do I want to handle him? Is that what I wanted?. . . He felt a lancinating pain, and said,

  “I won’t argue with you. I wanted to do everything for you. Do you really mean to go?”

  “I do. As soon as possible.”

  The puerile brutality of this did not shock Gary. He excused it to himself. I shouldn’t have asked him to deal with my — my disappointment, he thought; he’s too young, he only could defend himself by a small egoism. He looked at his hands and thought: I’m getting old.

  “Very well,” he said, with an inflection of mockery. “I won’t stand in your way. As soon as I can, I’ll get another pilot. We’re leaving here on Thursday. You can take me to Avie Lodge. Then, let’s say a week, and three months’ salary. All right?”

  He turned his back. With an inaudible mutter, Arnold went away. When he reached the door, he hesitated, turned, said quietly,

  “I’m grateful for your kindness, sir. It was far more than I deserved. But there are other things I want to do. Besides — I can’t go on as your pilot, because you offered me the other job. And I can’t take that, because you don’t care what happens to people you can’t use. It makes everything ridiculous.”

  He paused. Without looking round, Gary saw him move his long fingers as if freeing them from grains of sand.

  “If you see what I mean,” he finished.

  He paused again, began a phrase, stopped, went out, closing the door gently.

  Gary was as exhausted as if he had dragged himself about for an hour, hours. His leg, in its heavy casing, throbbed. He lay down on the couch and closed his eyes. He felt an atrocious grief, and it stupefied him. I’ve lost a son, he thought. . . It was only absurd. . . He has great faults; he is self-centred, cold, an egoist. . . It was useless to think this, since he loved him.

  No, it’s done with, he thought. Finished. I shan’t think of it again. He lay still.

  His mind became lucid. During these weeks he had failed completely, so completely that his failure was ridiculous. . . I abandoned that poor devil, what was his name?, Kalb, uselessly. Not that it matters. This evening I threw away any chance I had of using Rechberg. I failed with Lucius. . . Of his labours since he came to Berlin, nothing remained but the echoes, dying away, of a fall. He saw Lucius. Nailed through his shoulders to the wall, he was leaning forward as far as the nails permitted: an ironically loving smile distorted his face, elongated, fleshless, the arched nose dividing two hollows of darkness and stretched skin. The image persisted even when Gary opened his eyes. It began to deride him gently. What an absurd fellow you are. Men, you believe, exist to provide the material for a few wholly rational artists like yourself. Really? Why, you hadn’t the little control of yourself you needed to avoid a quarrel with cousin Hugo. You, the prince of peace! Your famous Order! After this, can you believe that your impotence goes no deeper than your body? Listening to him, Gary had the feeling that there was worse to come. Say what you have to say, and go, he said coldly. It’s true, isn’t it, that you’re happier to know I’m dead?. . . Yes, quite true, he thought. He shuddered.

  He closed his eyes again. He fell asleep. With a feeling of intense anxiety, he explained to the gentle worldly priest preparing him for his first communion that he had lost faith. The priest smiled. Don’t you want to make your confession? he asked. . . He forced himself out of this dream, and opened his eyes under a sluggish darkness, afraid in it of an old woman, meaning death. She bent over him. . . He made another effort and woke up.

  He had slept only two or three minutes. When he stood up, a shadowy reflection of himself faced him in the glass of a bookcase: a heavy beaked profile thrust forward over the future, over darkness. I must begin again, he thought.

  There was no reason why he should not. His will to change the world had not weakened. Nor his power. Where lesser men are shaped by their power, he held his, a tool, between his hands, to turn the confusion of the world into order, peace, lucidity, and the ruin of leaderless men into their very salvation.

  He thought: The proof that you have power, the one thing you have succeeded in here, is that an obscure creature called Kalb has died. Could anything be more laughable?

  His laughter leaped in him, stretching spine and muscles, and ripped the flesh from his nerves; he pressed his hands over it, suffocating, ready to roll on the floor in an agony of amusement at the spectacle he made. In a single still lucid corner of his mind he knew he must keep quiet; let a sound out and he would be done for. The ridiculous struggle went on in silence for a minute, he got the better of the beast, and went slowly, exhausted, to a bookcase and searched through the books until he found the Vigny he had once recommended to the young pilot. He went off with it to his bedroom.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Arnold had been in London a little more than a week. Today was one of those mid-November days of warmth, stillness, a light the colour of honey, placed like a benediction before winter to remind the English that God cherishes them. The sky had been pushed back to an immense height: at half-past four it was still light, but the street-lamps were coming out. A few small clouds, like wisps of smoke, ruffled the otherwise empty surface above them. St Martin in the Fields gleamed like ivory. As he walked past it, and looked one way towards Whitehall, another into Pall Mall, through depth below depth of a false clearness, he noticed an air of gaiety on the faces of passers-by, and supposed that it was the reflection of his own. He crossed the Square, sauntered along Pall Mall, and turned up St James’s Street. Towards the top, he caught sight of Edward. He had the impression that Edward tried to avoid him. When he knew that he had been seen, he hurried across the street, and was very amiable and friendly. He invited him into Boodle’s; he had become a member only this week: and Arnold felt him delighted to show it off, and embarrassed, as though he hoped to get rid of him quickly. Luckily for him, we feel alike, he thought with an effort.

  “Well, what’s the news? ” he asked.

  Edward hesitated; a fine smile crossed his face: at once he became grave and said,

  “Mine? In fact, I have something to tell you. I’m getting married.”

  “Congratulations,” Arnold said. “Who is it?”

  “Harriet Lamerby.”

  “Who is she?”

  “A sister of the Marquis of Hare — their father died last week, you may have seen; we shall have to be married very quietly.”

  “A pity,” Arnold said.

  As if he had not noticed or were indifferent to his friend’s clumsy mockery, Edward went on calmly,

  “Tom — my future brother-in-law — is lending us Hare House for a month. It’s a really lovely house, not very large: it was built in 1668 by Francis Hare, and there are actually, living in it, descendants of the original servants. You know, I like that.”

  He has got what he wants most in the world, Arnold thought. He felt a curious grief. Without malice, and because he wanted desperately to know, he asked,

  “Have you seen the Bretts lately?”

  “No,” Edward said, “the la
st time I went, I was so bored by all that frenzied chic, the infantile chatter about an Italian who only paints stout women in corsets, Hannah Markham’s latest and most sophisticated dress — the latest adjective, too — I couldn’t stand it. It’s very exciting, I know, and rotten inside; nothing sound will come of a society of fashionable writers, dressmakers, female war correspondents, hairdressers: they’re all so agile — you can hear their poor joints creaking.”

  Arnold agreed with him, but he had no wish to say so. He asked,

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I? Send in my papers, settle down, raise a family — do anything I can to stop the country cutting its throat with the knife obligingly handed to it by a government of lower middle-class townies.” He hesitated, and added kindly, “And what are you doing?”

  “I shall go on flying,” Arnold said.

  Edward raised his eyebrows.

  “Really? Isn’t that rather a pity? With your brains.”

  Why are we talking like this? thought Arnold angrily: it’s as false as any of the nonsense talked in Mrs Brett’s drawing-room. In his coolest manner, he said,

  “It seems so unlikely I shall marry into the aristocracy that I must arrange to earn my living somehow.”

  He saw from Edward’s face that neither his self-satisfaction nor his intelligence — and not even his courage — could keep him from tasting the single drop of poison in his happiness: his fear of being just not a success as a graft on a family which respected its traditions enough to decline the amusing friendship of the Yuris and the Markhams. Strangely, at this moment Edward looked at him with a confused smiling appeal and embarrassment.

  “You know, Arnold —”

  He stopped — he had caught sight of a man who had just come into the room — and went on in a changed voice,

  “Sorry, old boy, afraid I must send you off. I’ll see you again, I hope.”

  He turned his back, leaving Arnold to find his way out of the club. As he walked off, he heard Edward saying gaily, “Ah, there you are, Tom.”

  Unspeakably mortified, Arnold hurried along Piccadilly, seeing nothing. It was a second before he realised that the gloved hand gesticulating from a cab drawn up immediately ahead was beckoning him. He stared. Inside were Mrs Brett and Lise. Laughing at his disconcerted face, Mrs Brett said,

  “Where are you going with such energy? Come and dine, won’t you?”

  He stepped into the taxi. Mrs Brett talked to him as if they met every day; he answered politely, watching Lise. She looked him directly in the eyes, a long clear look: a joyous excitement seized him, he felt lightheaded, as if he were drunk; his own voice talking to her mother returned to him from an immense distance; after a minute or two, he realised that he was very nearly shouting. Mrs Brett was certainly laughing at him: he smiled warmly at her; for two pins he would have thrown his arms round her neck and kissed her. Lise was silent.

  Only one other person was at dinner, Cecil Cowley. In a bemused way, Arnold understood that he had taken Edward’s place with Mrs Brett. Whether for this reason or because an article on him had just appeared in Vogue — a copy was lying on a table in the drawing-room — he was gayer than he usually was. His languid voice covered the silence of the two young ones.

  “The Russians? We’re all appeasers now,” he cried. “We can’t stand on the Oder, we can’t stand on the Rhine, I doubt if we can stand on our dignity.”

  Roaring with laughter, Arnold thought: Oh, my love, my love. He noticed a tiny scratch on the girl’s thin arm, and his heart contracted with love and joy. When she turned her head, her slightly blurred profile amazed him by its perfection, and Cowley drawling, “My dear, I do think, don’t you, that the most important thing is nostalgia”, appeared to be commenting on it very neatly: he laughed again. An amusing witty fellow, Cowley. Abruptly, the critic asked him,

  “Have you seen your friend West?”

  Instantly sobered, Arnold said,

  “Yes.”

  “What a climb, eh? By conviction, instinct, and deliberate manœuvring, he’s achieved just the life he wanted — a pillar of Church and State. Most remarkable. The reward of years of effort. I’m told that when he lived with his parents in the suburbs he used to walk into Mayfair to post his letters, and make sure of a good postmark.”

  It happened to be true, but Arnold felt an angry resentment.

  “Rot!” he said coldly.

  Mrs Brett gave him a quick ambiguous smile and began smoothly to talk of something else. He was afraid to look at Lise. When, after a minute, he forced himself to glance at her from the corner of his eyes, he saw with intense joy that she was unmoved. She never was in love with him, he thought; he hasn’t touched or spoiled her in any way at all. What an ass I’ve been. Lise, forgive me, forgive me, my darling.

  “Cecil and I are going to la Markham’s,” Mrs Brett said lightly. “Do you children want to come?”

  Lise shook her head. Mumbling a refusal, and less able than ever to talk coherently, he waited with furious impatience for them to take themselves off. He was strangling with the things he had to say to her. When the door closed, leaving them alone, he found it impossible to decide on a phrase that was not ridiculous or inadequate, or both. Lise waited in silence, looking down, with a faint smile. After a moment, she said curtly,

  “I have something to tell you. I was mistaken about Captain West, he’s not the kind of person I thought he was, I was very silly.”

  “How do you know?” he muttered. He felt weak and relaxed, as though he had been making some terrific effort.

  “Mamma told me about him — everything.”

  He looked at her, stupefied.

  “Everything?”

  Looking at him steadily, she said,

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly humbled, Arnold thought: If only once in my life I can behave as well as that. He had a sharp sense of what it must have cost the vain clever superficial woman to give herself away to her daughter: for a moment he knew that nothing in the world is strong enough to build on except the brief moments of grace of sinful foolish human beings. He forgot it at once — but not entirely. In a light voice, as if she wanted to laugh, Lise was saying,

  “You know, I’m not living here any more. I’m with my father — he’s hoping they’ll give him another job, but —” She hesitated and went on, “I came up for a day or two to buy things we can’t get in the village. . . I couldn’t live here.”

  He felt a confused happiness.

  “I see.”

  A silence.

  “I suppose you’re still piloting Mr Gary?” she murmured.

  “No. I — it’s very difficult, it would take me a long time, I’ll explain some day,” he stammered. “ To tell you the truth, I behaved very ungratefully — but there was nothing else to do, I couldn’t work for him any longer, and I don’t regret it. It was really the only thing I could do.”

  “I’m sure of it,” Lise said quietly.

  His happiness became the feeling that he could do anything he had to: a triumphant certainty of strength, the still undiscovered glory of life.

  “I’ve taken a job with a new air line,” he said. “Flying to Brazil and the Argentine. It’s a way, if you know what I mean, of being free and responsible. Not that that’s the whole of it — there are other things.”

  He frowned. How explain, even to the person he loved with passion and a wild gaiety, that nothing matters except the chance to risk soul and body? — why you risk it is infinitely less important. Or is it? He would find out. Gary, he thought suddenly, has been blocking the view. With that vast shadow out of the way, it would be his own fault if he failed to discover other men — and himself. We don’t work simply to work, he thought confusedly. Then why? Hoping to create what?

  “I’m waiting to find out what we can do,” he said. “My God, there’s nothing else worth doing. Nothing. And we’ve time —”

  He stammered.

  “My dearest. . .”


  Lise had moved away from him. She was standing quite still, watching him with her slight smile. She nodded. The air between them had become nearly unbreathable. With an effort, Arnold said,

  “Do you mind if we have to live fairly simply?”

  “No, of course not,” she answered calmly. “I shall like it better that way.” She glanced round the room. “You know, I can’t stand this. In fact, I hate it.”

  He knew now, the knowledge sprang in him from a depth, that the one thing both of them wanted was safety — in each other —, simplicity, a life too full of the ordinary griefs and efforts, children. Everything outside that was his, only his, the ferment in his mind of questions so new that he did not know yet, and perhaps would not live long enough to know, where they were taking him. . . Lise had not moved, and he felt, he was sure, that measured out to him by her, his life for the first time had its shape and value; what was irreconcilable decided at least to live side by side in peace; his fear of emotion, of tenderness, with his unsatisfied need of it; the risks of his daily life with the return, at fixed intervals, to the quiet life, unchanging, of his home; his short past with his unending future. He said anxiously,

  “Oh, my dear love.”

  She came across the room at once, and stood in front of him. His head reeled, he saw her for a second at a distance, a speck growing smaller and smaller, as though he were flying and she the thread joining him to the earth, then abruptly close, closer than he had been to anyone in his life, so that he saw the separate hairs springing in a light curve from her temple.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  A fortnight before he was due to leave Berlin, Renn had another message from the Mother Superior. Would he come and see her before he left? He went at once, that morning. As soon as he stepped into the ill-lit cellar, he saw Marie. She had changed; she was not so thin, her face was heavier and less appealing, harder, without having for that become any more formed: only her eyes had still their false appearance of depth. He felt certain, when she looked at him, with the clouded gaze he remembered, that there was no trace of reflection behind it.