Heavily at ease, in the comfort of good digestion and a confident mind, Max Arbuthnot sat in the back seat of his Daimler and placidly approved the skill of Thomson his chauffeur who was driving him at a smooth, unchanging fifty-miles-an-hour on the road that led south from Edinburgh, over slowly climbing ploughlands, past shelter-belts and copses of tactfully planted trees, in the brave company of the Pentland Hills that, on his right-hand side, rose like the miniature of a Highland scene, as if to remind him, in his Lowland complacency, of Scotland’s double nature.
The Highlands penetrated the Lowlands, the Lowlands of the eastern shore crept richly in between the arms of the sea and the gaunt ribs of the northern mountains. Two lands within a single boundary — and under a bright autumnal sun, how beautiful they were! Unashamed of his emotion, Max wiped a tear from his eye, and bade Thomson drive a little slower, that he might enjoy, for a few more minutes, his view of the dove-grey, sharp-drawn, yellow-splashed, descending ridge of the hills.
How blest, how richly blest, are we who live in Scotland, he thought —and that meagre, miserly, rat-chested, dead schoolmaster his sister married had never, in all his days, looked up from his dog-eared books to find in the land he lived in the grace and grandeur, the exuberance of its current, that might have given his teaching something richer than a smell of dust. A wretched fellow! A niggardly, prim, dry-bones caricature of a man: the very caricature that the cheapest sort of parodist had always used for his picture of a schoolmaster. That’s what he’d been! No guts, no appetite, no excuse for life at all. And why Jessie had married him, God only knew: God who, in his most parsimonious mood, had made the first woman out of Adam’s rib — a shred of bone, no more — and some thousands of years later had made poor Jessie after the same model. An ossuary, not a marriage bed, was all they had enjoyed.
Jessie, and her younger sister Annie, for whom some excuse could be found in the simplicity of her mind, had lived a much more confined, restricted life than Max had made for himself; but he did not exactly despise them, nor in any positive way was sorry for them. Rather was he impatient of them, feeling that they had misused their opportunities. They had all come from the same nursery, but while he had gone boldly forward into the broad stream of life, they had looked for a hiding-place among its reeds and shallows. He had grown and prospered, and in comparison they seemed to have shrunk and diminished; though this might be an illusion. He had forced the world to accept him — not, indeed, at his own valuation, but less a reasonable discount; while they, by avoiding the world’s attention, had perhaps retained their own self-value, small though it might be, without impairment. He was sometimes aware of this possibility, and vaguely uncomfortable because of it. They had never been impressed by his achievements, considerable though they were, nor acknowledged the importance — manifest though it was — of the position he had made for himself. Annie, in her simplicity, had once said, ‘He always likes to be in the front row.’ This referred to an early triumph, and her obvious intention was to explain his prominence in a photograph of some very eminent people as something no more significant than a preference for brown bread-and-butter or grey socks. There had been no thought that he had earned his position; he was there by reason of some whim or foible to which others could afford to be indulgent. — It was tiresome, this lack of understanding, but common enough (as Max well knew) in families where one member was distinguished above the rest; and the reason for it, he told himself, was just stupidity.
Impatiently he put away the discomfort inseparable from the assessing of domestic relationship, and leaned forward to enjoy, for a little while longer, the view, that was now enlarging, of small hills rising more urgently, as it seemed, and the farther heights about Ettrick Forest. Presently they drove into the comfortable small town of Peebles, and Max, remembering suddenly that his sister Jessie had always kept a remarkably poor table, told Thomson to go first to an hotel where he proposed to order lunch. It was a very large hotel for so small a town — an hotel that suggested a factory efficiently designed for the production of solid comfort at eighteen guineas a week — and it looked splendidly across the valley of the Tweed to a range of sharp-sided, sharply-coloured hills. In a situation so agreeable Max felt a stab of pity for his own sad errand. How lamentable to leave that bright prospect for a house in the shadow of death — and, to keep the hills in view for another few minutes, and fortify himself for the ordeal, he drank some gin and tonic-water.
His sisters lived in a small house in a reticent grey terrace, built with substance but economy in the days of Edward VII, that overlooked the river from a lesser elevation. An iron gate and a short gravel path led to a front door still protected from the summer sun by a striped curtain, or valance; and as the blinds were down over all the windows, the whole house appeared to have taken the veil. Brusquely hauling the curtain aside, Max found the bell and pulled it violently. A chattering, offended, high-pitched tinkle sounded inside, and the door opened to disclose the figure of his younger sister.
‘Oh, Max,’ she exclaimed, ‘how old you look! Well, not old exactly, but quite the man of business, in those clothes! It must be years since I’ve seen you, and really I’m still very fond of you, in spite of all that Jessie says. Dear Max!’
Impulsively she advanced to embrace him, and Max, retreating into the door-curtain, was simultaneously enveloped by its surrounding folds and her sisterly arms.
‘Let go, let go!’ he demanded. ‘I’m being smothered. Oh, God damn it … ’
Angrily he tried to disentangle himself — gave a tug to the faded canvas — and heard it tear from the brass rings to which it was attached.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’ said Annie. ‘And just wait till Jessie sees it!’
As if it were a sail torn by a sudden squall the curtain lay reproachfully on the doorstep, and for a moment Max looked at it with remorse, with a flicker of apprehension perhaps; but then, recovering himself, said bluffly, ‘It should have been down a week ago. Summer’s over.’
‘I’ll take it away,’ said Annie — conspiratorial now, in league against authority — ‘and perhaps she won’t notice.’
Max went in and found Jessie in the darkened sitting-room. She was a small woman with narrow shoulders and a pale face dominated by its high forehead. She wore a plain black blouse that sharpened the pallor of her face and hands, and on the table at which she sat there was a disarray of letters, bills and newspaper-cuttings within a rampart of cardboard shoe-boxes, each of which was stuffed with more letters, and yellowed files, and envelopes on which their contents had been noted in a spidery hand.
‘He threw nothing away,’ she explained. ‘There are boxes and boxes full of his correspondence, and articles he cut from the newspapers. And I don’t know what to do with them, Max.’
‘Burn the lot,’ said Max. ‘Make a bonfire and burn the lot of them.’
‘It doesn’t seem right,’ she said. ‘He took such care of everything.’
Annie came in and sat beside her sister. They were the same height, but Annie was round and rosy, her hair was still brown, and her eyes, in contrast with the tear-stained, faded blue of her sister’s, were as black as pickled walnuts.
‘He had a pair of big scissors,’ she said, ‘and he used to cut the papers to shreds.’
‘He was gathering material,’ explained Jessie. ‘For many years past he had cut out the letters in the correspondence columns of the Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald and they were all filed according to subject. He used to write to them — the people who wrote the letters — to ask what they really meant, and he kept all their replies.’
‘He wanted to find out what people were interested in,’ said Annie. ‘He used to say it was a great mystery to him, because he himself wasn’t interested in anything. Except keeping his feet warm.’
‘Oh, that’s not fair, Annie! He was deeply interested in people, and he was collecting all these letters to analyse them and discover what were the true motives of those who wrote t
hem. But it was useless to analyse a few, he said. He wanted hundreds and hundreds, on every subject, but he died too soon — too soon — and I don’t suppose anyone will want his collection now, or be able to make use of it as he would have done.’
‘Burn the lot,’ said Max again, but with an impulse of affection took Jessie’s hand in his, and patted it, and let her tell him, at great length, the sad story of her husband’s last illness.
‘And now,’ he said, when the recital came to an end, ‘let us put off all talk of business — I suppose there are several things on which you want my advice and I’ll do all I can to help you, you can depend on that — but don’t start talking business till after lunch. It just occurred to me, on the way here, that it would cheer you up to come and have lunch at The Wells…’
‘At the hotel?’ exclaimed Jessie. ‘Oh, how could I? With Charlie lying upstairs!’
‘He won’t know what you’re doing, and won’t care either. Come and have your lunch; he’ll still be there.’
‘Oh, no, Max, no! You don’t understand. I daresay you mean it kindly … ’
‘I went to the trouble of booking a table … ’
‘I’ll come,’ said Annie. ‘It’s a long time since I had a good meal. I mean, the sort of meal that someone has to pay for.’
‘Yes, take her,’ said Jessie. ‘It will do her good, poor Annie, but I couldn’t eat anything, even if I did come. I’ll boil an egg for myself, that’s all I want. But when you come back, there is something — something of great importance, and very difficult to talk about — on which I do want your advice, Max. So don’t be long.’
Annie dressed for the occasion in a style too gay for a house of mourning, but Jessie, busy again with her cardboard boxes and their accumulation of waste paper, did not see her smart hat and yellow gloves; and Annie went off in high spirits to her luncheon party. Her enjoyment of a hearty meal was pleasantly enhanced by her discovery that the waiter who served them was an old acquaintance. As well as being a waiter he was also verger of the church that she and Jessie attended, and after he had expressed his sorrow at Mr Youghal’s death he told Annie, in short instalments between courses, a deeply involved story of the last vestry meeting; at which a dispute between two members had exposed a very pretty scandal about evasion of income tax on the Easter offering.
Annie expressed her pleasure by exclamations of shrill astonishment — by rhetorical questions, and occasionally by rollicking laughter — and Max was compelled to fortify himself against the embarrassment she caused him, and the attention she attracted, by drinking the greater part of a bottle of Burgundy — Annie drank a glass or two with relish — and a large measure of wood port. Annie, to keep him company, had two glasses of crême de menthe, and they returned to the shrouded house, where the body of Charlie Youghal lay, in a strange, unexpected harmony.
‘You may be a fool,’ said Max to his sister, ‘but you’re less of a fool than Jessie. You know how to enjoy yourself.’
‘I could enjoy every day of my life,’ said Annie, belching slightly, ‘if you, or someone as rich as you, would always take me out to lunch. But Jessie — no, with her stomach she wouldn’t dare.’
‘You have the root of the matter in you,’ said Max morosely. ‘The stomach dictates to the brain, and what the brain devises … ’
Annie put her arm round his waist and whispered, ‘I’ve got a stomach like a camel. That’s my secret! But Jessie! Oh, poor Jessie, she can’t keep anything down!’
When they re-entered the house of mourning, Jessie said immediately, ‘Annie, you’ll take off your dress and go and lie down for an hour. You’re over-excited. But you, Max — are you in a mood for serious discussion?’
‘It’s what I came for. To give you what help I can.’
‘Well, sit down there, and listen to this.’
She related to him, in a dry and self-contained voice, the few clauses of her husband’s will, and told him what their lawyer had said about it. There had been very little to say, and Max had no criticism to offer except of their decision that Charlie Youghal should be cremated.
‘It was his own choice,’ said Jessie earnestly. ‘There’s nothing in writing, but he spoke of it again and again. It’s what he wanted — and more important than cremation is the disposal of the ashes.’
‘They put them in a pot,’ said Max, a little grudgingly, ‘and what you do with the pot is your own affair. You can bury it under your roses or keep it on your mantelpiece: just as you like.’
‘Charlie wanted his ashes to be thrown into the sea,’ said Jessie. ‘You won’t believe it, Max, because you never sympathized with him — you never believed in him — but the truth is that Charlie was very romantic. In his youth he always wanted to be a sailor. His grandfather was captain of an East Indiaman, and the call of the sea was in his blood. But his constitution wasn’t strong enough, and he had to content himself with being a schoolmaster, which he did very well indeed, and to the great benefit of many hundreds of boys who would otherwise have come to little good. But in his last days — little though I thought they were his last ones — he re-discovered his old desire, and his last wish was that his ashes should be scattered in the open sea. Now you, you have great shipping interests, Max, and surely you can arrange that? For his happiness — for Charlie’s happiness — and for mine too?’
Max, with five sixths of a bottle of Burgundy and a large glass of wood port in his blood, sat back and wiped a tear from his eye. To learn, for the first time, that Charlie Youghal (that dried-up old stick of a barren schoolmaster) had had a maritime ancestry, and from it had inherited a romantic affection for the wild, propulsive sea, moved him deeply: Max, whose real interest in the sea lay only in the profit to be extracted from a fleet of seventeen vessels, of medium size, deeply enjoyed the warm sensation they gave him of being involved with deep waters and an arduous, sometimes heroic way of life — yes, that was unexpected, and with a flush of emotion he replied, ‘I honour him for that, Jessie. Yes, I applaud him! It’s a noble wish, and I never thought he was capable of it, But I’m in a position to give him fulfilment. I’ve two tugs, under charter, both lying in Leith, and one or the other can go out and scatter the ashes somewhere east of the Forth Bridge. That’s open sea enough for him: enough for anyone, after he’s been cremated. Yes, I’ll do that for you, Jessie. I’ll do it gladly.’
‘Thank you, Max. In spite of our estrangement — which I have mourned more than you have — in spite of that I knew I could rely on you to help me, if I needed it. And now, after that has been arranged, there’s another thing, and it’s more difficult to speak of. Oh, far more difficult. I don’t know how to explain it.’
‘I’m a lawyer,’ said Max, leaning back more carefully, ‘and as a lawyer I’m used to hearing some very odd things. I’m told that Catholic priests hear the strangest things of all — I suppose Catholics, with the release of the confessional in view, are more uninhibited than the rest of us — and for doctors, of course, everything is unbuttoned. But we lawyers, in our quiet way, have to deal with a lot of the vagaries of human nature, and God knows that human nature expresses itself in all degrees between Christian charity and black perversion. So whatever poor Charlie said, or did, or left behind him, it won’t surprise or shock me.’
Jessie rose and stood for a moment with the tips of her fingers pressed hard on the table, as if nerving herself for a leap into some cold flood of revelation — then, turning abruptly, unlocked the top drawer of a desk that stood in a dark corner of the room, and took from it a large, square, manila envelope. Hesitation again restrained her. She had to muster common sense, the necessity of facing facts, and all her resolution before she could part with it. But at last she put it down — and as Max reached for it she claimed it again, putting both her hands on it, and spoke with despair in her voice but in her faded blue eyes a tense, unnatural courage.
‘You’ll have to see it, Max. You’ll have to know what’s in it. But not while I’m in the room! You m
ust wait till I’ve gone. And what you’ll think — oh, I just can’t imagine. But you mustn’t think that I’ve ever read it, for I’ve never even looked at it — or merely looked at it — and as for Annie, she’s never heard of it, of course. She doesn’t know of its existence.’
‘What is it?’ asked Max. ‘Something that Charlie wrote? A confession?’
‘Oh no, nothing of that sort. He had nothing to confess. Nothing except this. And this is something he bought.’
‘Who from?’
‘The parish minister at Aulton, before he retired. He was very badly off — the minister, I mean. He drank! — and Charlie paid a great price for it, I don’t know how much, for he would never tell me. But he always said it was worth far more than he had given, and when he was dead — he thought a lot about death — I could sell it, and the price it would bring would make up for the loss of his pension. But I don’t know, Max. I don’t know if I should.’
‘I’ll soon tell you, when I see what it is.’
‘But wait, Max, wait! Not while I’m in the room.’
With a sob she left him, but re-asserting self-control closed the door behind her with a slow, deliberate quietness; and Max took from the manila envelope a thin square volume in an old, rubbed binding. He opened it and regarded the title-page with momentary astonishment. Then he began to laugh, and as the joke entered more deeply into his mind and its richness infected his senses his laughter grew louder and more violent. He moaned and cried with laughter, he barked like a sea-lion — for who, who in all Scotland, would have thought of finding this scandalous little book of bawdy verses and lewd songs in the house of such a respectable dry old stick as Charlie Youghal and his mild, prim sadness of widowed bones, poor Jessie? — But remembering that Charlie’s corpse lay upstairs, he silenced his rude mirth, he coughed and choked and blew his nose — he wiped his tearful eyes and again read the arch inscription:
Not for Maids, Ministers or Striplings
The Merry Muse Page 5