But of what avail were all these memories? They provided no setting for this extraordinary drama. Of Elissa, whom they had all so extravagantly admired, no clear impression remained. She became a legend almost at once and her memory, for Hope, was crystallised into a legendary figure, a sort of mixture between a Christmas-card angel and a pantomime fairy queen, a creature with flowing draperies and bright, streaming locks, who did not eat or sleep or post letters or read the newspapers, whose existence was scarcely on the human plane at all. And there had been nothing in her own style of writing to disturb this aura of otherworldliness. She wrote of herself very much as the children had seen her.
Only her story would not fit in with those flashes of reality which had survived. It could not be set alongside of Aunt Maude in her motor veil, the photographs or the curl of red peel hanging down against Muffy’s apron. It could never have belonged to that past which contained Hope’s memories. In proportion and texture it was too outrageously incongruous.
“I was only a child,” she said, uncertainly. “I remember it all as a child would. And I knew nothing of what was going on. But you were there too, Uncle Kerran. You must have seen the whole thing! You must remember it as a whole.”
“I don’t suppose any of us do that. Not even Elissa.”
“Oh, she does. I suppose because she has a clearer scale of values than most people. Only the important facts made any impression on her at the time.”
“Oh! Doesn’t she miss out a good deal?”
“No, I don’t think so. Nothing important. She’s got a few tiny details wrong. She talks as if Aunt Louise owned the Island and as if we were all her children. And she calls my father her brother, not brother-in-law. But she remembers all the important things as if they happened yesterday.”
“I’ve no doubt she puts in everything that concerned herself. That’s what we’d all do. But as for seeing it as a whole …”
“Are there no letters or anything? Have you, has anybody, any letters that were written at the time?”
Kerran hesitated.
There were letters. At his mother’s death he had found, when going through her papers, a packet labelled Letters from the Island. She had been taking a cure at Harrogate during those eventful summer months, and they had all written to her pretty frequently. The episode of Elissa Koebel had been described and discussed from several points of view.
He had re-read these letters occasionally since they came into his possession. And each time that he glanced at them he realised how little reliance can be put on human memory. For they told a story which differed considerably from that which he would have told himself, and from the versions supported by Gordon, Maude, or Louise. Nobody else in the family knew that these documents existed, and he was determined that no one should. His mother had been the recipient of many confidences. To her they had all said the things which were now best forgotten. Maude would not easily forgive Louise for complaining of her vulgarity, even though the complaint had been made twenty-five years ago. Louise would learn with indignation that Maude had suspected Gordon of unfaithfulness and Gordon himself would not relish some of the jokes which had been made at his expense. Even Kerran had suffered some pangs when he discovered how much they all seemed to know about a private trouble of his own which he had been at the greatest pains to keep secret. There had been a moment when he almost blamed his mother for preserving so much inflammatory material. In so discreet a person such carelessness was unexpected, and he could only explain it by supposing that she must have left the letters unburnt through an oversight. What she had really thought of the business he never knew. The tone of this and of all her correspondence showed that she sympathised unscrupulously with everybody and agreed with all of them. She had not been, he was forced to admit, a very sincere woman, but she had got what she wanted. To the end of her life she retained, not only the love, but the full confidence of both her sons, both her daughters, her sons-in-law, her daughter-in-law, and all her grandchildren.
Now he had been just as indiscreet himself. He had not burnt the letters, though he ought to have done so long ago. They were too fascinating. He would keep them a little longer, read them again, and be sure to destroy them before he died. And he would say nothing about them to Hope.
As luck would have it she did not notice his hesitation, nor was it necessary to give her any answer. Her attention had been distracted. Something had happened which diverted her indignant thoughts into a fresh channel. Even while she was speaking her voice had been drowned by a rumbling noise in the garden.
She turned her head. Ellen went past the window with a wheelbarrow. The rumbling died away and silence fell upon the room.
When Hope turned back to Kerran her face had grown paler. She had become, all at once, subdued and troubled. She said, in a low voice:
“And what about mother?”
Kerran thought:
“Ah! Now, at last, we are getting to it.”
4
HE could not understand why she had not asked this question sooner. But then he had not read Elissa’s story, so he could not gauge its compelling effect. That Ellen had been suppressed he knew, but he did not grasp how difficult it might be for a reader, in the first moment of stupefaction, to reinsert all the things which Elissa might have overlooked.
Hope had not forgotten the very existence of her mother. But her ideas, in that quarter, had remained static; they had undergone no sudden shock. Because she had been told nothing new about Ellen she did not immediately perceive that here was a person who must be remembered differently. It was hard enough to turn her father into the Byronic hero of Elissa’s romance, without realising that her mother also, if this story was true, must emerge from it as a new and unexpected person.
She realised it now. And, seen from this new angle, the episode began at last to take some sort of shape. It was as if the idea of Ellen’s betrayal had supplied a key-note which had been missing; there was an emotional quality in it which balanced the passion of Elissa’s recollection. The incongruities became less startling. Hope’s imagination had boggled at a picture of her father, in a top-hat, rowing off across the lake with a pantomime fairy queen, while Muffy peeled apples and Louise ran barefoot up and down the lawn. Now it focussed itself. From a background of shadowy memories these figures at last stood out, Elissa, Ellen and Dick, free from the trickeries of time. This was Ellen’s story, too. It was something that had happened to Ellen.
“What she must have suffered …”
Hope’s eyes were full of tears. She loved her mother. She had thought that they were so near to one another. And all these years there had been this, this, unspoken … buried.
“She adored him. She worshipped him. How did she bear it?”
Kerran said nothing. He had asked himself that question hundreds of times. He had thought of several answers, and had rejected them all in turn. Presently, Hope began to think of them, too, and he heard her running through them, just as he would have expected.
“I suppose it was for us. I suppose she wanted to keep her home together for us.
“But she forgave him. She loved him always.
“I suppose she loved him so much, that she had to forgive him. But it must have half killed her.”
“I don’t know, Hope.”
“But it must. Even if she forgave she’d never be able to understand it.”
“Why not?” asked Kerran, a little defensively.
Hope explained. Ellen’s generation did not understand things like that. She herself could. Elissa had made her see how it all was. But Ellen could never have seen.
“You know what she’s like! You know how much she dislikes anything to do with sex. She calls it ‘unnecessary.’ Why, good heavens, I’ve even heard her say that Tess o’ the D’Urbervilles was a book she could never quite like because she thought the seduction of Tess was unnecessary! I simply couldn’t make her see that it was the foundation-stone of the story. As for modern novels, they’re unnecessar
y from the first word to the last.”
“I know.”
“She could never have forgiven him with her mind, though she might have with her heart. Did she ever talk to you about it at all?”
“Never. I don’t believe she talked to anyone.”
“She wouldn’t. She’s the soul of loyalty. But how did she behave?”
Kerran considered.
“Quite naturally. Took his going as a matter of course.”
“Mother did? Mother!”
“You couldn’t have been more surprised than we were. Whatever pain she felt she kept it entirely to herself. She never let anyone see it.”
“All those weeks!”
“Oh, no! Not weeks. He was only away three days …”
“I think you’ve remembered wrong. By Elissa’s account they must have lived together at her cottage for much longer than that.”
“I’m positive it was only three days,” said Kerran crossly.
Hope smiled.
“On this point I think Elissa’s memory is more to be trusted than yours. After all, they were important days for her.”
Kerran poked the fire and held his tongue. He realised that he had been upon the point of quoting those letters. He must be more careful.
“Mother knew they’d gone. You’re sure she knew?”
“Oh, yes. There’s no sort of doubt about that. And just at first she lost her head. She came and roused me, the morning after they’d gone, in a terrible state of mind. But she very quickly pulled herself together. None of us knew what she really thought or felt. None of us.”
Hope drew a long breath and gave judgment. She was nothing if not quick to make up her mind about things.
“Then it must be that she’s a sort of case of dual personality. I suppose if he’d committed a murder it would have been just the same. Her love for him was so intense that she saw life, where he was concerned, in special terms. There are women like that. He must have been quite outside that part of her mind which is hampered by not being able to understand things—outside all her prejudices, and the traditions of her education, and all the standards she’s grown up by. Her feeling for him must have enlarged her into quite a different person.”
“Ah!” said Kerran, sitting up.
“She’s too simple, she’s too un-selfconscious to realise that she’s been two people all her life … his wife and the woman we know. She just passed from being one to being the other without noticing it. Because, you know, I’m convinced that she would be very shocked if she were to hear this story about anyone else. She’d say it was all very sad (unnecessary, if it was in a book), and that people ought not to be so uncontrolled, and the wife was probably doing right to forgive him, for the sake of the children, but that of course no woman could ever feel the same. I’m sure that’d be her line. I haven’t known her thirty-six years for nothing.”
“Are you thirty-six?” asked Kerran in some surprise. “I thought you were younger.”
Hope looked pleased, more pleased than she would have looked if she could have realised why it was that he thought her younger.
“But don’t you agree with me? Don’t you agree that it must almost be a case of a dual personality?”
“My dear Hope, that’s the only explanation I’ve ever been able to accept, myself. But you’re the first person who has agreed with me. I say she didn’t forgive him because she was never conscious of having anything to forgive.”
“But if that’s true, if that’s true, then Elissa is just nothing beside her.”
“I should hope so!” said Kerran with a revival of irritation. “Elissa never did amount to a hill of beans. We all said a good deal about her at the time, but it was your mother who kept us guessing. In some of the letters …”
Now the cat was out of the bag. Hope pounced.
“Then there are letters! I thought so. I thought you seemed to be very sure of your facts.”
“Oh, well, yes … there are one or two …”
“Whom to? Whom from?”
“I have some letters that were written to your grandmother at that time. We all wrote, pretty often, when we were on the island. And my mother, rather indiscreetly, kept our letters.”
“Did mother write?”
“Yes. There are several of hers.”
“Then …”
“She makes no reference to the Koebel business at all. If her letters were all that had survived you’d know nothing about it. She ignores Elissa just as Elissa ignores her.”
“May I see the letters?”
“We-ell …”
He reflected. Five minutes ago he would certainly have refused. But his attitude towards Hope was becoming more friendly. She might turn out, after all, to be an ally, and if this was the case he had better put her into possession of all the facts which he could muster. He wanted support in the present crisis. If Hope could see his point of view she too would be indignant at all this glib reference to Ellen’s feelings. Elissa might write what she chose. Gossip might take its course. The woman who had survived the original catastrophe could scarcely be touched by these petty reverberations. She must not be discussed and protected as though she were some querulous victim, concealing her tattered dignity beneath a cloak of denials, falsehoods, and suppressions.
“I’ll show you the letters,” he promised at last, “if you’ll promise to back me up.”
“Back you up?”
“In saying that it’s much best, now, to leave the whole thing alone. That there’s nothing to be done.”
“But of course there’s nothing to be done,” agreed Hope impatiently. “The thing happened and there’s an end of it. What I want to know is, what did happen?”
“And you’ll hold your tongue? If I show you the letters you won’t mention them to anyone else?”
“Not even Alan?”
“Alan’s all right. But not to any member of the family?”
“I promise I won’t. But why …”
“You’ll see when you read them. Come back with me this afternoon and have tea, and then you can have a look at them. I’d rather not start posting them about the country.”
“But are they very …”
The boom of the gong interrupted them. And Ellen came in a moment later to ask reproachfully if they were ready for luncheon.
She was pleased with her morning’s work, for she had managed to clear the ground as far as the path. She led the way into the dining-room and began expertly to carve the joint while Maggie handed the vegetables.
“I want to come up to London one day quite soon,” she said when she had helped them all. “I must buy a new hat. And I want to go and look at some statues.”
She thought that would surprise them, and it did. They both sat up with a jerk.
“What kind of statues?” asked Kerran.
“I don’t really know. I think any kind of good ones would do. We had such an interesting lecture on sculpture last week at the Women’s Institute: such a clever man, he was staying with the Maxwells. It made me feel quite interested in statues, which I never was before, much. He told us so many things that I never knew. He said that sculpture was quite different from modelling.”
She paused, a little doubtfully, as though she feared that they might snub her for not knowing all this before.
“He said in sculpture you take everything off and in modelling you put everything on. I mean the way you do it, not clothes: and he said that clay is quite different from marble. He said that modern sculptors try to consider the material they’re working in, so one must make excuses for them.”
“But didn’t ancient sculptors …” began Kerran.
“Oh, yes, they did. But then later on they didn’t. And that is why Victorian work was so bad. And he showed us a great many slides. They were very funny and made us all laugh.”
“Funny?”
“Because they were so bad, I mean. But he showed us some very beautiful slides too. So that really I’ve begun to get quite inter
ested in statues. I used to get so tired of them when I went to Rome with Dick. I couldn’t think why anyone should ever want to make them, and I never knew which were bad and which were good. But now I want to begin all over again. You must tell me some good ones to start with, Kerran.”
Kerran suggested the Elgin Marbles, but she looked doubtful.
“I’ve seen those. I’d rather start with something rather smaller, and something that wasn’t broken at all. It bothers me when they have no heads. Hope, is that beef tough? You’re not eating anything.”
Hope shook her head. The beef was excellent, but she had suddenly felt she was too tired to eat anything. The emotions of the morning had exhausted her. She sat crumbling her bread and listening in a dazed way to this talk of statues and the Women’s Institute.
But, gradually, as the meal went on, her shocked nerves began to steady themselves. By the time the steamed pudding came in she had collected her ideas. The nightmare echoes faded. She was able to look at her mother, to hear what she was saying, to know that this was the same woman who had come downstairs that morning with a piece of brown paper in her hand.
“A dual personality!” she thought. “It’s not possible. She’s herself. She’s this. She’s never been anyone else.”
This woman she knew. This woman she loved. Whatever those letters might reveal, whatever glimpses they might give of an alien, an undiscovered Ellen, she would only be able to repeat to herself, with an absolute certainty:
“That is not so. She isn’t like that. I know what she is like.”
LETTERS FROM THE ISLAND
“Tell me where all past times are …”
LETTERS FROM THE ISLAND
1
JANET MURPHY’S protest had been like the first shot fired in a battle. She made it and she was silent; but after that there could be no question of peace. In appealing to old Mrs. Annesley before she had been on the island for twenty-four hours she had opened fire.
A Long Time Ago Page 5