‘Do you honestly think so?’
‘Yes - I don’t know.’
‘You’re happy at Plyn, aren’t you?’
‘Oh! terribly - I never want to leave Plyn again.’
‘What is it then?’
‘I can’t explain. A doubt of the future, an uncertainty, a vague fear . . .’
‘What sort of fear?’
‘A fear of being afraid - that sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Sometimes I wake up in the night and feel there’s nothing before me - but nothing - nothing - emptiness and mist. And I walk about laughing all day pretending I don’t care and really just longing to be safe.’
‘Jennifer - promise me something.’
‘What?’
‘Promise you’ll always tell me things like this. When you’re frightened, lonely - or when you’re happy - come and tell me.’
‘I believe I could tell you anything, John.’
‘There’s no reason for you to be afraid, Jennifer. It’s only because you were left alone when you were a child.You were too little to understand. And now you feel you’ll never grow out of it, but you will. Jennifer - don’t ever be frightened or lonely again.’
She rubbed her face against his sleeve.
‘It’s nice knowing you, John. You’re safe.’
‘Always think that, won’t you?’
‘H’m.’
‘Coming to the wreck, Sunday?’
‘H’m.’
‘All day - bringing pasties and cider.’
‘H’m.’
‘Not unhappy, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, what are you hiding your face about?’
‘I don’t know.’
She slipped off the fence, and ran away from him without looking back.
Jennifer did not find winter at Plyn either gloomy or cheerless. She knew that this was where she belonged. Jennifer belonged to Plyn, she was Christopher Coombe’s daughter, she had been born here, her home was here, she moved and dwelt amongst friendly simple folk because her nature demanded their kindliness and their company.
These were her true surroundings. She had been deprived of them too long, lonely and frustrated.
Jennifer knew that had she stayed in London she would have drifted heedlessly wherever her casual fancy called her, little caring what should become of her. And now she was in Plyn, and so far removed from that other life that it seemed another world and she another being.
Plyn was necessary to her; she loved the sea, the shelter of the hills and the valleys, the comfort of the harbour, the wide grey sheet of water, the sight of the clustered houses, the church tower, the coming and going of ships; the crying of gulls, the peace of continual beauty, the love and kindness of the people who understood. It seemed to her that she possessed the companionship of those who were part of her, the very air rang with their voices, and their footsteps echoed on the hills.
She could see Christopher’s figure outlined against the sky, his fair hair blown by the light wind, his eyes tender as he watched the life in the cottages below. She heard him whistle to his dog, and then disappear over the brow of the hill in the wake of the setting sun.
Harold and Willie ran with her across the fields, they taught her to dive from the projecting rock in Castle Cove, they shouted with laughter as she shivered on the brink.
It was Harold who guided her to the gull’s nest in the cliff; it was Willie who showed her how to spin for mackerel. They walked three abreast, over the stretching hills, arguing, discussing . . .
Other voices were with her too, the voice of Joseph when she sailed a boat, making her careless of time and weather, setting her blood on fire with the zest of the stinging spray and the wet wind. Joseph who taught her the triumphant power of a sou’westerly gale, the thrill of a lifting sea and a straining mast, the weird exultation of danger.
But there was one who understood her best, one from whom she withheld no secret, one who soothed all irritation, all idle questionings, all vague perplexities, all hidden doubts.
On the sloping fo’c’sle head of the wrecked Janet Coombe Jennifer would lie, her cheek against the bulwark, her hand upon the bow-spirit; and beneath her a white figurehead gazed seaward, not a painted wooden carving with patched colouring chipped and old, but someone who was part of Jennifer herself, someone who cried and whispered in the depths of her being, someone who was loving and infinitely wise. Someone who knew that restlessness came from a rebellious mind, that fancied loneliness was the outcome of an awakening heart, that sleeplessness was due to the hunger of instinct, that dreams were the prelude to fulfilment, that fear was the tremor of a spirit craving completion - and that the cause of these things and the sweet anguish and torment within Jennifer was the sight of John climbing down to her from the hills above.
11
Philip Coombe rarely went to the office now. His business was left almost entirely in the hands of his head clerk, as nearly forty-five years before the senior partner Hogg had done in entrusting it to him.
Philip was eighty-seven.
He sat all day in the front room overlooking the harbour, in his house in Marine Terrace. This was the room where Annie had visited him twice a week in the last months of her life, this was the room where Joseph had struck him to the ground. It was to this room that Christopher should have come, with murder in his heart, when the storm raged and the rain and wind shattered themselves against the window.
Now nearly fifteen years had passed since then, and opposite him in this room of memories sat a girl in the likeness of Janet, with Joseph’s eyes and Joseph’s hair, a girl who held no fear of him, who laughed and sang, a girl who waited for him to die that she might seize upon his money, who already scattered it far and wide, careless, triumphant, holding him in her power.
This was the Jennifer he saw before him. Someone who embodied in her person the souls of Janet, and Joseph, and Christopher, someone who watched him day and night that he might not escape from their keeping, someone whose presence was a continual reproach and a reminder, tormenting his memory, a haunting spirit.Yet he dared not turn her from his door, he dared not bid her be gone and be lost to him, for then he would be enveloped by the presence of unseen things, of whispering voices, of soundless footsteps; he would turn in his chair and feel the gathering shadows about him, the clustering of dark, malevolent thoughts, the existence of shrouded figures, motionless, behind him, their breath fanning his forehead, and then creeping nearer, nearer, seizing upon him with cold, abhorrent hands . . . Better a living hated form, better a real physical detestation than an unknown horror.
Thus Philip clung to life and to the nearness of Jennifer whom he loathed, rather than lose himself in the fear that waited for him, that loomed close, so close.
And Jennifer watched this old and trembling man, crouching before his fire for all the midsummer days without, his wrinkled hands like the claws of a bird, rubbing slowly one against the other.
He spoke seldom, addressing her when he did so with unfailing courtesy, inquiring after her health, and expressing a hope that she was finding everything to her satisfaction.
Then he moistened his thin, racked lips with his tongue, and turned his narrow, deep-set eyes away from her hated face, back to the glow of the little fire, the coals sinking in upon one another, fanned by one single blue flame.
‘She is wondering when I shall die,’ he thought, ‘she is wondering if I have made my will, and where it is hidden.’
And Philip schemed how he could prevent her from robbing him of his wealth. He had made no will, therefore if he died leaving none behind him the value of his estate would go to his next-of-kin. Jennifer - his next-of-kin. Jennifer, or the other Coombes scattered about Plyn. All day he puzzled the matter.
While Jennifer, ignorant of his fancies, leaned out of the window, seeing nothing but a fair untidy head and a pair of long legs walking towards her, heard nothing but a whistle and a distant shout, and a voice which called ‘Jenny, come down,�
�� cared for nothing but to walk with her hand in his, singing snatches of songs, to stand on the hill with her cheek against his shoulder. ‘Do you want to bathe, sweet, or shall we just muck about in a boat and fish?’ and to answer ‘I don’t mind, John,’ knowing he felt the same. To be half-asleep on the thwart beneath the blistering sun, the line dangling in her careless hand, and to open one eye and see him laughing at her, waving a glistening wriggling fish,‘Wake up, you lazy little beggar, and do some work’; to pull home away from the path of the setting sun, wrapped in his jacket so much too big for her that the sleeves hung down below her hands, weary, happy, saying no word, and smiling at him for no reason . . .
‘Tomorrow’s Saturday - I’ll get away from the yard at two-thirty, and we’ll have the whole afternoon out here. Is that all right for you?’
‘Lovely. You’ll bring the bait?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ll bring the cigarettes.’
‘Not cold, Jenny?’
‘No.’
‘Been dull at all?’
‘Frightfully.’
‘Same here. God! I’m sick of the sight of your face.’
‘Are you, John?’
‘H’m. I look up, and see you in front of me and think hell - this woman again.’
‘What else?’
‘Want to know? It bores me terribly never thinking of anything but you, day and night . . .’
And that was how John Stevens told Jennifer Coombe he loved her, in the year nineteen hundred and twenty-six.
Throughout the year Philip Coombe was planning to exclude Jennifer and the Coombes from inheriting his wealth.
In spite of his age and his dawning insanity, his brain was still astute enough to reckon the state of his present financial affairs, and whilst his niece followed her lover on the hills above Plyn, the uncle examined papers, files, and documents, checked figures and compared accounts.
Although Jennifer had barely lived eighteen months under his roof, she had compelled him to part with at least a quarter of his private income, on voluntary donations and subscriptions.
‘The Carne Infirmary is badly in need of funds, Uncle Philip,’ she would say. ‘I met the hon treasurer yesterday, and I said I was certain you would be only too pleased to help them out of the present difficulty.’
‘The Carne Infirmary?’ he would ask guardedly. ‘I did not know there was such a place. The treasurer was possibly exaggerating. I should think no more about it.’
‘The appeal was quite genuine,’ she answered. ‘If you care to write out a cheque I will see that it is posted tonight.’
He would hesitate a moment, tortured by the thought of that money slipping through his fingers, gone from his power for ever, and then glancing at her face he would see the shadows watching him over her shoulder, the pale motionless shadows waiting until she should turn away and leave him to their hands.
‘Certainly - yes - I will sign the cheque this evening.’
A quarter of his private income was gone in this way, frittered, wasted. Somehow she must be defeated. He knew now that his end was near and that there was no time to be lost. By November his plans were complete. Once more Plyn saw the bent, well-known figure, wrapped in his black coat and muffler, walk slowly through the street to the office on the quay.
Every day for a week Philip Coombe sat in his private room at the office, and not even his head clerk knew what he was about.
Even when a man named Austin, a stranger to Plyn, arrived by appointment and stayed with the head of Hogg and Williams for half a day, it caused no comment, Mr Coombe giving his employees to understand that the stranger was a shipowner.
In reality, he was a wealthy ship-broker from Liverpool, with whom Philip Coombe had long been in correspondence, and the reason for his five-hour interview was to discuss the final figure of the sum which would terminate the existence of Hogg and Williams, and see the birth of the firm James Austin, Ltd.
Philip Coombe stipulated the amount, and he won, as he had always won, and seizing the pen he signed the agreement making over the firm he had owned for over forty years to the stranger from Liverpool.The contract was secret, and would be held so for the space of a month, after which official declaration would be made.
There now remained his private investments and his separate banking account, his bonds and securities, which must be with-held from the possible enjoyment of his next-of-kin. To sell whatever stock he possessed and to withdraw his securities from the bank was a matter of comparative simplicity. Before three weeks Philip Coombe had the entire remainder of his fortune, in bonds, shares, and actual Bank of England notes, in his own possession under his personal supervision in the house in Marine Terrace.
To see, before his own eyes, the written testimony of his wealth, to touch with his own hands the very presence of his power brought Philip Coombe to the highest summit of exultation, and he stood in his room of memories, a weird triumphant figure, gazing upon the documents and paper at his feet, laughing softly to himself, clasping and unclasping his small and wrinkled hands. Death would come to him, but these things should perish with him. He would pass away, unloved and unremembered, but his treasures would pass also, never to fall into the hands of others, never to gladden the hearts of the people he despised.
For a moment he had forgotten the warning shadows, but as the light faded from the room and the shades of evening crept across the floor he was aware of voices murmuring from the doorway, their stealthy footsteps in the passage outside. He strained his ears to catch the echo of their sighs.
‘You cannot escape us,’ they whispered, ‘we are waiting for you. Nothing can keep you from us, there will be no hiding-place for you, no rest, no peace.’
Philip shrunk against the walls of his room, he put his hands over his ears that he might not hear their voices, louder now and pressing, a riot and confusion of tongues. They were close to him now, they hovered above him with outstretched hands. He seized his stick and beat against the air, and it seemed to him that they twisted and writhed with the pain he caused them, filling the room with lamentation.
Then he laughed aloud and trembled for joy, and into his mind came his last supreme decision.
The moon rose over the harbour, streaking the water with a path of silver. The lights of Plyn danced and twinkled in the darkness. The chimes rang out the hour from Lanoc Church.
‘Jenny, sweet, don’t go back tonight, come home with me.’
‘But John, darling, don’t be absurd, why should I suddenly, for no reason.’
‘Because I want you to so terribly, because something tells me that if you don’t you’ll be taken away from me, and we shall lose each other for ever.’
She put her arms about him, and laid her cheek against his face.
‘You know there’s nothing can take me from you, John, why do you ramble round with your silly little fears, looking for a danger that can’t exist?’
‘Oh! I admit it, I’m a fool tonight, dithering, hopeless, anything you like, but come with me, Jenny, just this once.’
‘No, John.’
‘Darling, this isn’t any beastly selfishness on my part, I’m not trying to put over a brilliant attempt at seduction - if you want to be by yourself you can have my room and I’ll lock myself up in the lavatory, but every instinct I possess tells me to keep you beside me tonight, to be near you - in case anything should happen.’
‘John, if I came to you there would be no locked doors - you’d find yourself shut up with a very immodest and abandoned woman - but it isn’t that, it’s giving way to a foolish fixed idea you have in your mind for which there can be no earthly reason.’
‘Jenny - I’ve told you about my damned premonitions, haven’t I? I’ve told you that when I sense danger it’s infallible - I’m always right. Sweet, there’s danger for you tonight, danger in that gloomy blasted house, danger with that loathsome uncle of yours . . .’
‘You’re crazy, John. Uncle Philip is a weak, doddering old man
, he hasn’t the strength to harm a fly, he always goes to bed by half past nine. What could he possibly do to me?’
‘I don’t know - I don’t care - Jenny, my Jenny, come home with me tonight. I want to hold you so you can’t get away, I want to tell you everything I’ve ever dreamt about you, so much, so much . . .’
‘John, don’t make me weak and helpless. I won’t give way to your creepy, haunting fears.’
‘Jenny - let me love you.’
‘No, John.’
‘Come back, Jennifer, don’t go - Jennifer - Jennifer.’
She ran away up the steps of the house, laughing over her shoulder. ‘Go home and be good. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Then she slammed the door and was gone.
When Jennifer was inside the house, with the door between her and John, she closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall, her nails digging into the palms of her hands.
She had refused to go back with him when she wanted to more than anything in the world. Just for the sake of a senseless flickering spirit of independence, a cold sprite within her mind who laughed at love and denied emotion, who saw ridicule in all things, and who suggested surrender as weakness and loss of freedom. Knowing it to be false yet she had persisted in listening to this cold voice, and now she was all alone, and John half-way home in all probability. Sighing and yawning she dragged herself upstairs, seeing by the clock in the hall it was already half past ten.
She undressed slowly, sitting on the edge of her bed, and gazing in front of her. John would be prowling about the yard now, seeing that all was quiet for the night, he would light his last pipe before climbing to his funny rooms over the office. Jennifer pulled on her pyjamas savagely and turned into bed, her face buried in the pillow.
The Loving Spirit Page 38