“That’s just what I can’t do. I only know the bare outline.”
“Then give me the bare outline.”
“It was just the usual three-cornered affair that you come across in every rag of an evening paper that you pick up. When she was quite young Annie-Laurie was engaged to Malony—that’s not his name, of course, but it doesn’t matter—but chucked him to marry some good-looking rotter whose name I can’t remember either—I can’t remember anything in these days—my brain seems made of wool—”
“All brains are,” said Hilary comfortably. “Don’t worry about it. It’s merely the result of war food. Call him Harold.”
“Thanks. He gave Annie-Laurie a pretty bad time, and then took himself off to the Spanish Civil War. He was an ardent Communist. His politics were the best thing about him, one gathers. He didn’t care what he suffered for his political faith. He was a plucky fellow, by all accounts. He was reported killed, and after a little while Annie-Laurie married Malony and had a child by him.”
“The Enoch Arden story? It repeats itself pretty often in time of war.”
“Yes,” said David. “He’d been badly wounded and come back in pretty poor shape. Annie-Laurie went back to him, taking Malony’s child with her. They had a flat in Town and she apparently looked after him devotedly.”
“And Malony?”
“He just went on with the job. He was a well-known comedian—pantomime, music hall, and radio. Annie-Laurie was in the same line of business. They’d done acts together when they were married, but they had the sense to part company when she went back to her first husband. But Annie-Laurie went on working. She had to, poor girl; she had a sick husband to look after and she needed the money, but she wasn’t very successful without Malony. Then he took to seeing her again occasionally, helping her as much as she would allow him to. You can’t blame him. He loved her and she had his child. But it naturally led to trouble between Annie-Laurie and her husband. Then the child died.”
“Poor Annie-Laurie!” murmured Hilary.
“After that everything seems to have gone wrong between them, though she continued to look after him. He slept badly and was allowed sleeping tablets. One night she gave them to him and the next morning he was dead. She fetched the woman from the flat below, saying that he had taken an overdose of his tablets. His own doctor was away at the time, but the neighbors insisted on fetching another. He examined the tablets and found them to be of a strength that no doctor in his senses would have given to a man as weak as Annie-Laurie’s husband. He made a fuss about it and things looked black against Annie-Laurie. Her great friend was a chemist’s wife in the next street. She was there a great deal and very often helped the short-handed chemist in his work, for she had been a dispenser at one time. She knew where he kept everything.
“The night before her husband died she went there to fetch him some more tablets, which the chemist had promised to leave ready for her in the place where he always put them. It was after closing time. There had been an air-raid warning, and the chemist and his wife had gone to the nearest shelter. She had the place to herself. She did not take the box of tablets put ready for her, though it was staring her in the face in its accustomed place, but took the key of the cupboard where he kept his drugs from the chemist’s private drawer and took a box of these much stronger tablets. Her fingerprints were both on the key and the cupboard. She said of course that in the commotion of the air raid she had not been able to find the right box, and so had unlocked the cupboard and taken what she thought was the same stuff. But it looked bad. Especially as she had had a row with her husband that very evening. The people in the flat below heard it. They heard her threaten him.”
“A girl capable of planning a cold-blooded murder would have had more sense than to leave her fingerprints on the cupboard and the key,” said Hilary.
“That was one of the points her advocate made. He was a brilliant fellow. He got her off in the end.”
“Whatever made you take such a burning interest in all this?” asked Hilary. “The war was on, and you had plenty of other things to think about.”
“I followed the trial in the papers,” said David. “I was, as you say, burningly interested. You see—I had met her once, and as an artist she was unforgettable.”
“She was good?”
“Yes. So was Malony. I saw them both on the halls and in pantomime before their troubles. He was just an extremely clever comedian, but she was—something very much more. She was reaching after something. Watching her, one was reminded of a leaping flame, like a hand reaching—not getting there, but jumping for it. Her voice wasn’t much, but she sang with a simplicity that got right under your skin. And she never sang cheap stuff; generally old Scotch and Irish ballads, but sometimes extraordinarily arresting little songs that I suspect she made up herself. She could be funny, but she could be sad too; and it was always real sadness, savage sometimes but never sentimental. Her dances were very simple, too, but she had an airy lightness, like autumn leaves blowing, and they all had a touch of originality.
“There was one unforgettable one that she did in some pantomime. She danced dressed as a little Christmas tree, with Malony lumbering about in the background as an extremely comic Father Christmas. She was dressed in spangled, dark green, with Christmas roses in her hair and bells round her waist that chimed as she danced. I can’t think where she got them from, for their chime had a special loveliness. She has them now, tied to the mast of the houseboat. When she’d finished the dance, she’d sink to the floor and hold out her hands to an imaginary fire and sing—something about bells; I don’t remember the words but the tune’s in my head now.”
“You’ve remembered everything in the most astonishing detail,” said Hilary, a little dryly.
David laughed. “Yes. It was unforgettable. There was a touch of genius there. Needless to say I don’t think she was particularly successful. Her art was too delicate for the sort of work she was doing. It was Malony who pulled her through. He would have pulled her to the top with him if they’d gone on together. I wonder why they didn’t start again when their troubles were over. And why in the world are they masquerading as father and daughter instead of husband and wife?”
“Did Annie-Laurie recognize you when she saw you at the Herb of Grace?”
“I think she did. She looked stricken for the moment. But I don’t think I gave myself away. I don’t think she knows that I recognized her. And now, what the dickens am I to do about it?”
“I don’t see the necessity, as yet, for your doing anything about it,” said Hilary comfortably, spinning out his glass of port as long as possible, for he did not intend to allow himself the luxury of a second glass.
“But George would have a fit,” said David, “if he knew that a girl with a past like Annie-Laurie’s was living in close day-by-day contact with his wife and children.”
“He would indeed,” agreed Hilary. “His reactions are always entirely conventional. But unless you tell him, why should he know?”
“But Uncle Hilary, Annie-Laurie had two husbands at once, and I believe she murdered one of them.”
“It wasn’t her fault that she had two husbands at once. And you only suspect her of murder; you have no proof. And who are you to throw stones? There was a time when you and Nadine contemplated a relationship that was unsound, to say the least of it. You can pass no judgment without a knowledge of motive. What matters, you know, is not so much what we do as why we do it. Our actions are only the letter. It’s the spirit that counts.”
“It works the other way round, too, at least so Grandmother says. A systematic course of action creates the complementary spirit in the end.”
“Desire is a better word there than spirit, the desire to which you do violence by a chosen course of action; and deep below them both is the motive, the spirit, the mainspring.”
“ ‘And all shall be well, an
d all manner of things shall be well, by the purification of the motive in the ground of our beseeching,’ ” quoted David.
“The beseeching,” said Hilary gently, “the crying out, like the upthrust of the green shoot from the sod, or the leap of the flame from the charred wood. So long as that cry goes up from a soul, though it be for she knows not what, she is not lost.”
“We’re wandering from the point a bit,” objected David.
“No. The point is that Annie-Laurie’s all right. There’s the leap of the flame there. You saw it in her art and did not forget it. I’ve seen it in her devotion to Nadine.”
“Is she devoted to Nadine?”
“Yes. And Nadine to her. That is, if my observation is not at fault. Leave this to Nadine. It’s her business—and mine too, now you’ve told me. But not yours. Odd how the artistic temperament always makes the sufferer feel that every problem of the universe must be dealt with by himself. A form of arrogance, really.”
“You’ve just shouldered Annie-Laurie,” retorted David.
“All sin and trouble is the business of a priest. And if that sounds arrogant, too, it’s not a personal arrogance. We work under orders but not under our own steam.”
Desolation swept in upon David once more. The iron band clamped down upon his head again. They seemed to have been talking for a long time, and his happy moment of relaxation was swept away completely upon the tide of exhaustion. He was lost again in the darkness of his own futility, of the apparent futility of everything that they had all of them done and suffered during these last years. “Don’t you lose heart?” he asked Hilary abruptly. “Wonder what’s the good of it all in this world where whatever you do it’s no use?”
“Only when I have bronchitis,” said Hilary cheerfully. “The superior strength of evil is a numerical superiority, not one of quality. Outside time, numbers have no meaning—only quality. We ought to go back to Mother and Margaret, I think. I enjoyed that port.” At the door he paused and subjected his nephew to a keen glance through his thick glasses. “This sense of futility—Ben has it too. It’s nothing, merely the reverse side of aspiration, and inevitable, just as failure is inevitable. Disregard them both. What can we expect when we aspire as we do, yet remain what we are? Struggle is divine in itself, but to ask to see it crowned with success is to ask for that sign which is forbidden to those who must travel by faith alone. Each fresh leap of the flame from the charred wood lights your footsteps a little further through the dark. Good Lord, how tedious I am! That’s the sermon I preached last Sunday. They all had a good sleep and I thanked God that I’d been able to rest them so nicely.”
David heard that hateful voice that was not his own snapping out some irritated reply to words he had scarcely heard. They went into the drawing room and played a frightful game of bridge, at which Lucilla and David were skilled, and Hilary and Margaret so inept that it was torture to partner them. But Hilary enjoyed himself, just as he had enjoyed himself drinking the port. Increasingly, as he got older, he enjoyed things. As his personal humility deepened, so did his awareness of the amazing bounty of God. . . . So many things. . . . The mellow warmth of the port, the pleasure of the game, the sight of Lucilla’s lovely old face in the firelight, and David’s fine hands holding the cards, his awareness of Margaret’s endearing simplicity, and the contentment of the two old dogs dozing on the hearth. . . . One by one the small joys fell. Only to Hilary no joy was small; each had its own mystery, aflame with the glory of God. Yet when ten o’clock struck he lumbered to his feet and wished them good night. He lived as firmly by the clock as any monk. Margaret went with him to the door and Lucilla and David were alone.
“My dear old Hilary,” said Lucilla. “He’ll be so happy walking home under the stars. And so happy praying for us all in that cold drafty study of his before he goes to bed. And if his rheumatism keeps him awake most of the night he won’t mind much, for it’ll give him the opportunity of a few more wakeful hours in which to praise God. When I feel depressed, thinking of the sons and grandsons whom I brought into the world to be killed or maimed by these horrible wars, I think to myself, Well, I did at least give life to one happy man.”
There was sadness in her voice and he knew that she grieved because he, her dearest on earth, was ill and not happy, but he was too bewildered by his own wretchedness to be able to think of anything to say to comfort her. To help them both through the next few minutes he reached for the book on the table beside her. “What were you reading, Grandmother?”
She regained her cheerfulness at once, deeply ashamed of its momentary loss. “Meredith. While you and Hilary were taking such ages over your port I was trying to find that bit about the lover of life. That darling Sally whom you brought to tea with me—she’s a lover.”
David found what she wanted and read it to her.
“The lover of life holds life in his hand,
Like a ring for the bride.
The lover of life is free of dread;
The lover of life holds life in his hand,
As the hills hold the day.
“But lust after life waves life like a brand,
For an ensign of pride.
The lust after life is life half-dead:
Yea, lust after life hugs life like a brand,
Dreading air and the ray.
“For the sake of life,
For that life is dear,
The lust after life
Clings to it fast.
For the sake of life,
For that life is fair,
The lover of life
Flings it broadcast.
“The lover of life knows his labour divine,
And therein is at peace.
The lust after life craves a touch and a sign
That the life shall increase.
“The lust after life in the chills of its lust
Claims a passport of death.
The lover of life sees the flame in our dust
And a gift in our breath.”
He scarcely took in what he read, but the rhythm of the words was restful, even as Hilary had been restful . . . and Sally.
“Darling, you must go to bed,” said Lucilla, eying him anxiously.
He got up, lit their candles, and put out the lamp. They went up the stairs together, his arm around her, the old dogs following after; for they had chosen nowadays to sleep in padded baskets on the mat outside Lucilla’s bedroom door. They felt lonely in the night, now that they were old, and liked to be near her. In her room David took Lucilla in his arms and kissed her eyelids, her hair, her soft old cheeks, as a lover would do. He was most truly her lover. To the depth of his soul he hated himself that his wretchedness was yet another burden for her to bear. But he could not help it. Abruptly he left her, without words, lest his control break and he grieve her more than ever.
“Fool,” he said to himself, lying still in the darkness of his room, stretched tautly by the fear of the pack of nightmare sensations that leaped at him like hounds through the sleepless nights. “This is just what is called a nervous breakdown. No one thinks anything of it. It passes. You don’t go crackers and chuck yourself out of the window if you remember that it passes. It passed for ten minutes during dinner. It will pass again when the morning comes. Hilary went through the same thing after the last war and now he praises God through the nights. It passes.” He tried to relax, then found himself tossing restlessly, his mind going back over the past. Nadine! Nadine! Why could she not let go? “The lust of life clings to it fast.” It had been like light to love her. They had loved as deeply as a man and woman can, and then had chosen to set it behind them and pass on. But she still looked back over her shoulder, holding him with her look. Let go. Let go. Let me go on. If I could go on there might be another dawn.
Hillsides are dark,
And hill-tops reac
h the star,
And down is the lark,
And I from my mark
Am far.
The rhythm of Meredith’s words was not quieting any more, but torturing like the ticking of the wretched cuckoo clock out in the passage. He tried to wrench his mind away from their stupid repetition, to disentangle himself from the monotonous ticking of the clock, from the even more monotonous remarks of the cuckoo at each quarter of an hour, and think of Sally in the woods this morning. The light had seemed to gather about her and the old Bastard had leaned his head against her knee. She had never seen death, nor inflicted it. While he had been with her, he had looked at the world with her eyes, and the light had streamed over it as from the east. His uncurtained window faced east, over the marshes. If he waited long enough the night would pass and the dark square of the window lighten to twilight gray, and then silver, and then gold.
CHAPTER
10
— 1 —
The two fishermen left them, and the weather broke.
One day St. Luke seemed reigning as triumphantly as before, with the sky a lovelier blue, the woods a more glorious gold, the stillness deeper and holier than ever, but the next day, a Sunday, there was a subtle change. In the morning the sun still shone from a cloudless sky, but there was a scarcely perceptible chill in the air, a sharpening of outline, a silence of birds; by nightfall there was a gray veil over the sky and it was so cold that Malony lit a roaring wood fire in the hall. After supper, instead of going to the drawing room, they sat in front of the fire while Ben roasted chestnuts for them all. George and John Adair smoked their pipes and Nadine and Sally knitted for the twins.
The Eliots found it a queer sort of evening, a transition evening. Hitherto the Herb of Grace had been to them a summer home; they had known it only permeated with sun and light, flower-scented, windows and doors wide open. But now doors were shut, curtains drawn to hide the sad gray dusk. Instead of the lap of the water against the river wall they heard the whisper of the flames, and instead of the flowers in the garden they smelled the roasting chestnuts, burning apple logs, coffee, the oil lamps, polish, all the house smells. This intimacy with the house was deepening; when winter came it would be deeper still. Nadine glanced over her shoulder at the firelight gleaming upon the dark wood of the paneling, at the shadows gathering in the corners, and marveled to see how the old place seemed to have shrunk in size with the shutting out of the daylight. It seemed gathering them in, holding them close.
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