by R. A. Dick
Lucy could only shake her head. She had always hated the brass bed, decorated with its obese, gilt cupids, and had sold it to a second-hand dealer for a very moderate sum, but her head ached under the onslaught of Eva’s bludgeoning words, and she could say nothing.
“There, there,” said Eva, clapping her on the back with a firm hand, “you must pull yourself together, my dear, you must buck up. Edwin wouldn’t like you to give way like this. I see that my place is here for the present—no, don’t thank me, I have always known my duty and have never shirked it. But if you don’t mind, I will have the divan moved out of the dining-room into Anna’s room; I never did like the idea of sleeping in the same room as one eats.”
Lucy did mind. She minded very much, and so did Anna.
“She snores, mummy,” protested Anna, “and she makes the room smell of tooth-paste and cold cream, and she asks me problems in arithmetic while I’m dressing. It isn’t fair! Why does she have to be here when we were so happy without her?”
Why, indeed, thought Lucy. The only one contented in her presence was Cyril, for Eva loved collections and so did he. Together they coursed the hills and valleys about Whitecliff, with a green butterfly net and a cyanide of potassium killing-bottle, snaring red admirals, fritillaries, sulphur-yellows, and tortoise-shells. All the fleeting loveliness that fluttered like dancing flower petals in the sun was brought home in triumph, and their fragile wings were stretched out in stiff crucifixion on the setting boards and speared in a collection of death in a neat little cabinet. In the same way they tramped for miles gathering flowers, squashing the results flat between blotting paper in a great wooden press, labelling the faded corpses with dead Latin names.
“He’s so keen,” said Eva after one such expedition, “and I must say I do like keenness. That’s where you fail, Lucy, you are not keen.”
“I am, about my own things,” said Lucy, “but I prefer growing things to taking life.”
“Taking life!” repeated Eva. “You talk as if I were a murderess!”
“Well, aren’t you?” said Lucy.
“My dear child!” said Eva. “A few flowers and insects! Where is your sense of proportion? Besides, think what a lot Cyril is learning.”
“He could learn it just as well out of books,” said Lucy, “without destroying so much beauty. Oh, I know it’s necessary for scientists to destroy life in order to preserve it, but I cannot see that it’s essential for little boys to make these morgues of birds’ eggs and butterflies and——”
“I must start you on some knitting,” interrupted Eva. “Knitting is wonderful for the nerves, and I think you should take a tonic. You aren’t yourself—I wrote to Helen yesterday about you—‘dear little Lucy is not at all herself,’ I said, ‘and I shall stay until she is.’ ”
“I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it,” wailed Lucy into her pillow that night, “and as for you,” she went on, raising her head and looking across at the portrait of Captain Gregg, glinting sardonically down at her in the moonlight that streamed through her uncurtained windows, “as for you, you’re no help at all. You said I was to leave Eva to you, and you haven’t been near me for a week!”
“If you will remember our last conversation, you implored me not to come near you till that woman had gone away,” said the captain’s voice.
“And you said you’d do no such thing,” said Lucy.
“Perverse little creature, aren’t you?” The captain chuckled. “Well, if you ask me nicely, perhaps I’ll help you after all.”
“What will you do?” asked Lucy, doubtful again now that she had forced the issue.
“Never you mind, that’s my business.”
“You must tell me,” said Lucy, “you must tell me,” and stopped abruptly and lay flat in the bed at the sound of a door opening across the passage and footsteps shuffling in bedroom slippers.
“Are you all right?” asked Eva, coming into the room.
“Quite, thank you,” said Lucy, pulling the sheet up to her chin and peering over it at the square figure of Eva in a pale pink kimono, her hair in a tight thin plait tied with white tape, her face smeared with cold cream shining pallidly in the moonlight, her short-sighted eyes searching about the room.
“I thought I heard you cry out,” said Eva.
“Did you?” remarked Lucy nervously. She could feel the captain’s presence almost like a buffer between her and Eva, and she trembled under the bed-clothes lest he should break into the conversation.
“You must have been having a nightmare,” said Eva, settling herself on the end of the bed.
“No,” said Lucy, “I wasn’t asleep.”
“But I distinctly heard you cry out,” persisted Eva. “ ‘You must tell me,’ I thought I heard you call that out twice.”
“It must have been your imagination,” said Lucy, “voices—you know—like Joan of Arc——”
“My dear child!” exclaimed Eva. “What an idea! I can assure you that I have my imagination completely under control—voices indeed! Really, Lucy, I am quite worried about you. You must get away for a bit, you must go on a cruise.”
“A cruise!” said Lucy.
“Yes,” replied Eva, “lots of people go on them and have loads of fun. It would do you all the good in the world—stop all this brooding nonsense. You could go to the West Indies or the Greek Islands and meet the nicest people—you’d love it.”
“Tell her to go on a cruise herself,” roared Captain Gregg, “and drown herself.”
Lucy closed her eyes and waited for pandemonium to break over her head; but all was quiet, and she opened them again to see Eva sitting there quite placidly as if she were deaf.
“Of course she’s deaf,” said the captain, “spiritually deaf. She can’t hear me—she’s only tuned in to earth and herself. And if you have anything to say to me, think it. There’s no need for you to speak to me out loud, I can hear all you think. And don’t you be bullied into going on any blasted cruise.”
“I won’t,” began Lucy out loud, and stopped abruptly.
“My dear Lucy, how can you possibly tell whether you will enjoy it or not till you’ve been on it,” said Eva tartly, “and I don’t think it’s very polite to speak in that tone to me when I’m only trying to help you.”
“It’s very good of you, Eva,” replied Lucy, “but I don’t need any help.”
“That’s the ticket,” put in the captain.
“I am perfectly well and happy here,” continued Lucy, emboldened by the captain’s encouragement. “All I want is to be left alone to live my life as I wish and not as other people think best for themselves.”
“And put that in your pipe and smoke it, madam,” said the captain triumphantly.
“Really, Lucy, I can’t think what has happened to you lately,” said Eva. “You used to be such a sweet little thing. Lady Smythe always used to say to me, ‘I’m so fond of your sister-in-law, she’s such a sweet little thing’—I doubt if she would say so now.”
“Who cares a damn what Lady Smythe thinks or doesn’t think?” roared the captain. “Go on, Lucy, tell her that.”
“I really don’t mind very much what Lady Smythe says about me,” said Lucy. “I don’t mind what any one says about me,” she went on recklessly, “because most gossip is only the evil in people’s own minds coming to the surface.”
“Splendid!” said the captain. “I didn’t know you had it in you, me dear.”
“Are you accusing me of having an evil mind?” demanded Eva angrily.
“Isn’t that typical of the woman,” said the captain, “reducing everything to the personal! She’s beginning to bore me, Lucy, let’s be rid of her.”
“Because if you are, you have only to say so plainly,” went on Eva, her voice rising. “I mean I like to have things cut and dried——” She broke off suddenly and pulled her kimono more closely about her. “What a draught!” she said peevishly. “Where can it be coming from on such a warm night? I’m chilled to the bone.”
“Oh, dear!” giggled Lucy childishly.
“I see nothing to laugh at in my being frozen to death,” snapped Eva, “nothing at all—but perhaps you think I have no sense of humour as well as an evil mind.”
“I—I’m not laughing at you,” said Lucy weakly as another gale of merriment shook her.
“Then what are you laughing at?” asked Eva.
But Lucy could not tell her.
“Hysteria,” declared Eva. “I shall take you to a doctor the first thing in the morning.” She rose stiffly from the bed and went out, shutting the door with ostentatious quiet behind her.
But she did not take Lucy to the doctor on the following morning, for the doctor came to see Eva instead. Her neck was so stiff that she could not turn her head. Being unused to illness in herself, she made an impatient and most disagreeable invalid.
“Such draughts!” she complained. “This will be a terrible place in winter.”
“I don’t feel any draught,” said Lucy gently, “but then I’m really very strong.”
“Don’t overdo it,” Lucy told the captain that night, “I don’t want her bedridden.”
“And that’s all the thanks I get for the trouble I’ve taken,” he said with a twinkle in his voice, “but don’t you worry, me dear, I’ll have her out of here in the turn of a screw.”
Eva’s neck was better by the following day, but her constitution seemed to have suffered. It was true that she went butterfly-catching with Cyril, but she seemed unable to keep on her feet, and tripped over hidden roots and into bramble bushes, and finally into a stream, coming home wet to the skin.
“Did you go with them?” asked Lucy accusingly when the captain came to visit her that evening.
“I did,” he said, “I pushed her in. What an ungentle manly thing to do, but there are no gentlemen and ladies after death.”
“Only saints and schoolboys, it seems,” said Lucy severely. “Heaven wouldn’t seem to have done much for you though you’ve been there twelve years.”
“I keep telling you that there is no time in this life,” said the captain, “and that I am not a perfect specimen of an after-lifer, since half my time is spent here. But don’t let’s argue about that; our job at present is to get rid of Eva and live in peace again.”
Eva was made of tough fibre and it took another ten days to dislodge her, and there was a scene, so much dreaded by Lucy, before she left.
“You are mad to stay in this exposed house for the winter,” Eva said as she and Lucy sat over a fire in the sitting-room after dinner.
Though the coals glowed redly, a most inexplicable column of smoke poured into Eva’s face wherever she sat, making her cough and shed tears. She had rheumatism in her knees and a cold in her head, and was very angry with herself, and Lucy, and life.
“Look at me,” she went on crossly, “aching in every joint—and I am never ill at home.”
Lucy said nothing with such significance that it penetrated even through Eva’s insensitiveness.
“Yes, I will go there, and what’s more, I’ll stay there,” she snapped. “You’ll have to go on your bended knees ever to get me to visit you in this benighted house again, and if you all die of pneumonia this winter, don’t blame me.”
“The place seems to suit us, we are very well here,” said Lucy, trying not to sound too complacent as a fresh cloud of smoke poured over her sister-in-law.
“Wait,” gasped Eva, “wait—in the meantime I will be making enquiries about inexpensive flats in Whitchester.”
“For whom?” asked Lucy.
“For you, when you come to your senses,” replied Eva.
“I have come to them,” said Lucy quietly.
“Thoroughly selfish, that’s what you’ve become,” said Eva.
“Why?” asked Lucy, bending over the sock she was darning to hide her flushing cheeks. If only she could argue with Eva without all this heat and physical agitation! “Why am I selfish? Just because I am living as I like at last?”
“You have always lived as you liked,” declared Eva.
“No,” said Lucy swiftly, “I’ve lived as Edwin liked and his mother liked, and as you and Helen liked. Now at last I am going to be myself.”
“In spite of your poor children’s health and happiness,” said Eva hotly.
“Because of it,” said Lucy. “I want them to grow up with a true sense of values, and we are quite healthy here, and very happy when we are alone.”
“When you are alone—I see,” said Eva. “Well, I can take a hint better than most people, sensitive as I am. You want me to go—don’t deny it—you want to be rid of your own husband’s sister—don’t deny it, I say.”
Lucy said nothing, sitting over her darning, her fingers trembling so that the needle shook in her hands.
“Don’t deny it,” shouted Eva for the third time, losing all control.
“I am not denying it,” said Lucy very quietly.
For a moment Eva stared at her in such astonishment that Lucy herself could scarcely believe that she had found the courage to say such wounding words. “I’m sorry, Eva,” she said impulsively, “but it’s true—you can’t live other people’s lives for them. Go home and make something worth while of your own.”
“Oh, I’ll go,” said Eva, bundling her knitting together, rising to her feet and striding to the door, “I’ll go by the very first train in the morning.”
I wish that I didn’t feel so mean, said Lucy to herself as she leaned on her window-sill the following night, looking at the lights of Whitecliff, curling round like a line of fireflies to meet the winking lighthouse on the point beyond. The scent of honeysuckle and roses and lavender came to her on the summer breeze, that yet held the crisp saltness of the sea, and though the feeling of unfairness rimmed her happiness with a dark border, it seemed to throw up the colour of her peace in very contrast.
“Why do you feel mean?” asked the captain’s voice.
“Well, Eva means so well,” said Lucy, “and I did hurt her—terribly. It must be so awful not to be necessary to anyone, and she does intend to be kind.”
“I doubt it,” replied Captain Gregg. “She wants her own way at all costs, which is the reason that she has never been necessary to anyone. God help us! What a woman!”
“Poor Eva!” said Lucy.
“Now, Lucia, don’t be sentimental,” the captain commanded, “you didn’t feel ‘poor Eva’ while she was here, and it’s entirely surface and false to feel it now she’s gone.”
“My name is Lucy,” she said.
“After yesterday I shall call you Lucia,” replied Captain Gregg firmly. “Lucy is a name with no guts in it—Lucy would never have routed that woman as Lucia did. I was proud of you.”
“If you hadn’t weakened her knees and her spirit I should never have been able to stand up to her,” said Lucy. “I’m afraid Cyril will miss her,” she went on, “she was very good to him.”
“If she’d stayed much longer, she’d have turned Cyril into a spoiled little prig and Anna into a revolutionary,” said the captain. “Cyril is a damned little prig by nature, but so far he’s not spoiled.”
“Please remember that Cyril is my son,” Lucy said.
“Oh, no, he’s not,” answered the captain, “he’s Edwin’s son, not yours at all, and it’s no good lying to me, my dear girl, even from loyalty. Cyril bores you and you know it.”
“He’s my son and I love him,” protested Lucy.
“You may love him, mothers are peculiar, but you don’t like him,” argued the captain, “not as you like Anna.”
“It’s very wrong to have favourites in a family,” Lucy said sententiously.
“Oh, don’t be so damn silly,” said Captain Gregg. “If you’re going to talk like an old-fashioned copybook I’m off.”
“Where to?” asked Lucy with interest. “I do think you might tell me something of your other exis
tence.”
“Grow up a little more and perhaps I will,” said the captain.
“At least you can tell me if it’s a happy state,” persisted Lucy.
“That depends on the individual,” replied Captain Gregg. “If a man has lived on earth merely for earthly desires of ambition, possessions, drink, and women, he’ll have a hell of a time at first because he’ll find no means of satisfying his lusts—but here’s something for you to think about, Lucia. Have you ever heard of a happy ghost?”
“No,” replied Lucy.
“No,” said the captain, “and why not? Because only the unhappy return to earth—the haunted—that’s a new idea for you. The souls that return are haunted in the next state by what has happened on earth. The average after-lifer never wants to return.”
“But isn’t that very selfish?” asked Lucy. “I mean when they see their relations and friends weeping their hearts out for one word of reassurance and comfort, don’t you think they might come back just once to tell them all is well?”
“Why,” asked the captain, “when all that’s wanting is their own faith? That beats me every time,” he went on, “all these psalm-singing hypocrites who spend half their lives in church, imploring God Almighty to give them wings like doves to fly to Paradise, and when their friends get their wings, they smother themselves in black crape and refer to the departed as ‘poor’—there’s no consistency in it and no sense! As for hauling them back every few minutes to dry their tears—well, me dear, think of the confusion. And there again this question of time comes into it, and a great deal more that, as I told you before, I couldn’t begin to attempt to put into earthly language, because there are no words for it.”
“You said just now that only the unhappy do return,” said Lucy. “Are you then so unhappy?”
“Not unhappy so much as angry,” the captain admitted. “I always did consider that suicide in the general case was about the most cowardly end any man could have, and I resented and continue to resent that I should be branded as a coward, and I also resent the fact that that fellow in South America should have what I intended for honest sea captains, and I am also a pig-headed idiot and very little advanced in after-life, though I may sound so to you.”