“No, thanks. The path is too uneven.”
He was looking the more exhausted of the two. The sweat was pouring down his face.
“I seem to be in filthy condition,” he said.
The children got to the top first. They danced about on the skyline and waved their arms. A wind, unfelt by the climbers below, a gentle breeze, fluttered their garments. One by one each of them crested the ridge, and each, feeling the soft, reviving wind, came once more to life. They were out of the glen, on a long slope of heather all in bloom. Before them were blue ranges of hills, valleys which they had never seen before, the gleaming waters of a chain of little lakes; a varied and noble scene, full of softness and colour, beheld in that miraculous clarity which comes before rain.
Their toil over, they flung themselves down on the heather, drawing in long breaths of the balmy air. Louise, relaxed, said at once:
“That place was haunted.”
“Don’t say so yet,” exclaimed Guy. “Remember, we’ve got to go back.”
“It’s most extraordinary. Not a bit what I would have expected. I would have thought that we would feel there was more than we could see. But I had an impression there was less. As if what we saw was hollow. Everything shrank …”
Dick and Ellen reached the crest, and drew in their breath quickly as they saw the new hills. They were together in a swift sense of conquest and repose.
“Not bad,” said Dick, with a nod at the view.
“Oh, I’m glad I came all the way up!”
“After that wretched island …”
The fresh wind gave her power. She could speak.
“Why don’t you go away, Dick? You don’t like it. I shouldn’t stay if I were you.”
“Over there?”
Receiving the overture calmly, he nodded towards the genial valleys and the little chain of lakes. She had not meant over there, particularly, but any place would be better than Inishbar.
“I might,” he said. “I will. But there’s my paper …”
“I shouldn’t bother about your paper if I were you until …”
She paused. She was afraid of going too far. But he accepted even this.
“Until I’ve quite got over all this nervous exhaustion. I expect you’re right. But wouldn’t Louise take offence? I couldn’t stand a scene with her.”
“Oh, I’ll explain. You just go and say nothing about it, and I’ll explain after you’ve gone.”
“Will you? All right. I’ll go … quite soon … I’ll go over there and walk up into those mountains. It would do me a lot of good to be alone for a bit.”
She left it at that, for she was terrified of saying too much and the effort of speaking at all had left her breathless. They went on to where the others were sitting and flung themselves down into the heather.
Ellen could not take her eyes off these new mountains. They stirred in her an emotion which she could not understand, a sense of something coming, something which was going to happen. She was filled with hope.
She watched the dappled shadows of clouds travel across clear slopes, far, far away. And her mind, her soul, seemed to expand, to travel far away, too, into the airy spaciousness of the valleys and the hillsides, and the little gleaming lakes where the soft wind whispered in the reeds. She heard that whispering wind more clearly than she heard the voices talking all round her. Perhaps the long climb, and the emotional tension between herself and Dick, as they stood at the head of the glen, had made her feel a little faint. She felt herself grow cold: her senses became more and more confused.
She could not understand what the others were saying, yet she listened to the symphony of their voices, catching at a word here and there. Words flowed past her like leaves on a current, leaves spinning on towards a weir. She was rushing towards it herself, but the words shot past her.
Frightened of a caterpillar.
A caterpillar, a caterpillar … the syllables were like little stones skipping down a hillside. And Gordon’s neat voice said: The Powers of Darkness. Another leaf spun by towards a thunder that was close. Guy said the Powers of Darkness again, on a dragging note of alarm which was smothered in a laugh from Maude.
Was Dick frightened? Frightened of a caterpillar?
Out of their laughter came something about Scotchmen. They all believe in the devil; it’s a legacy of the Shorter Catechism. Catechism … caterpillar … catechism … the little stones came skipping down. Dick’s voice, nervous and taut, cut through the clatter of it. I did, but I’ve forgotten. Caterpillar … catechism … forgotten … the quick words came spinning past, and after them five august monosyllables, tipping slowly over the edge of the weir … the chief end of Man…. Somebody was asking a question.
“What is the Chief End of Man?”
Ellen went over the weir into silence, as Dick answered:
“To glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.”
The coming thing had happened.
She had been waiting to hear this, and she heard no more.
For in that moment she had been overthrown by the occurrence of absolute faith, by a conviction of the presence of God, of His eternal existence, a fact so tremendous that all other facts, everything else in her consciousness became small … small … diminished into nothing.
“God is there,” she thought, clutching at the heather. “God is there …”
Not any God that she had ever pictured to herself; not yet to be known or understood, but there, infinite, the cause and end of her own existence. To be enjoyed, not here but there, in a region where the words “for ever” become a possible conception: an enjoyment too strenuous for the human mind, a hope only to be perceived in revelation.
The last echoes of that revelation rolled away into the sky.
The dissolved world reassembled itself into a vision of mountains and lakes, and voices of people talking in the heather. The moment had come and gone.
She was again imprisoned in time and place and the body of Ellen Napier, and she returned to that habitation desolately, as a stranger. The long, untrodden track of her life still lay before her and the burden of earthly care which she must carry. But she still felt that she had nothing to do with all that, that she had been with God, who had nothing to do with it either, who had willed her to live for this moment only, and who was at the end, at the other side of all the things which she might have to pass through.
She was growing smaller. She could not compass that thought any more. But she knew that it had been. She had known something. She would know it again. The assurance of it would never leave her.
She was alone, lying in the heather.
Gordon was saying:
“What is sin?”
They were still amusing themselves by trying to find out how much Dick could remember of the shorter catechism. But Dick laughed and shook his head. He could not remember any more.
20
EVEN after sunset the air was sultry. There was no coolness, indoors or out, and the full moon, blazing down upon the castle courtyard, seemed almost hot. From far away the least noise travelled for miles in the breathless night, and on the island they could hear the voices of people going along the lake road, and the tinkle of little streams in the glens, so soft as scarcely to be sound at all.
Dick came out of the drawing-room and stood in the deserted courtyard, which the moon had painted sharply in silver and black. He had listened for a little while to Guy Fletcher and Barny playing sonatas for piano and violin, but he was too restless to stay anywhere for long. He had thought that it might be cooler outside. The furnace heat of the day still seemed to stream up from the baked flagstones and when he sat down on the parapet of the well it was quite warm.
His desires returned continually to that moment when he came out at the head of the glen and felt the breeze which came from those unexplored valleys and hills. It had seemed to blow right through him, through his sick brain and heavy heart, and he found himself standing upon the frontiers of recovery.
But he cou
ld not recapture the purity of that first impulse. Now it seemed that he had been thrown into a mood of disturbance and change, and that was all. It was better than the deadness which had held him for so long. There was exhilaration in it. There was the need to be strenuously active. He had said, going up the glen, that he must be in filthy condition. But he was not. Anybody would have sweated, clambering up that airless funnel. This fortnight of idleness and sunshine had restored his vigour. Without knowing it he had amassed a lot of energy during those two weeks and now that energy made him restless.
The constriction of the island exacerbated this mood. He paced the courtyard like a caged beast and sat, fuming, upon the edge of the well where he had first sat by the side of Elissa Koebel.
He would sit by her side no more, if he could help it. For he was no longer safe. He realised that as soon as he got back to the island. There was not a tree or a stone that was not drenched with her personality; he must think of her continually, even when she was not there. He had lived for a fortnight in her company, aware of the nature of her appeal but immune, secure in his inability to respond to that or to any other stimulus. But to-day, at some time in the course of the day—he could not determine exactly when—his immunity had deserted him. His thoughts were no longer negative. They were positive—extremely positive—and he was sensible of an inherent, a satisfying rightness in them which counterbalanced any warning which his reasoning self might choose to give. It was right that he should have made up his mind to go away and walk in the Ardfillan mountains. And it was right that afterwards … oh, yes, he was almost sure of it, afterwards, he was going to be able to snap his fingers at Thring. And in the same terms it was right that he should find himself, for the first time, thinking of Elissa with a certain lustful vigour. It was impossible to separate the ingredients of recovery: he was a sound man again, or nearly a sound man, and that was as it should be. His spirits had been raised, by some mysterious and vital spell, until he scarcely knew what to do with them. On getting back he had taken Guy and Kerran for a swim. He swam three times round the island and only left off swimming because it was supper-time.
But Elissa was another reason for immediate departure. It would not do to see much more of her. She had been quite right, that first day, when she made him understand that he must either capitulate or run away. He would run away. He would pack up and go at once.
“Like a fool,” he thought ruefully, pausing for a moment before the forbidden, but alluring alternative.
For he knew too much about her not to feel that he was missing the chance of a lifetime. She talked too much, but he thought that he would know how to shut her mouth. With such a temperament … but then he was a man of principle, although he could not remember more than the first dozen answers of the shorter catechism. He did not think that a husband, the father of a family, could do anything except run away. Being susceptible he had run away on several other occasions, both before and after he married Ellen. Nor was this the first time that he had called himself a fool.
After debating his position for more than twenty minutes, he did actually go up to his room in the tower and change his boots. He tossed a few things into his haversack, more because it was something to do than because he really meant to be off that night. But he toyed with the idea of going over to Killross and staying at the inn there. To-morrow morning, very early, he could send a fisherman up with a note to tell them that he had gone. In this way he could slip off, while his mind was still made up. Ellen would get his note as soon as she woke. She would understand and she would be glad. When next they met their trouble would be over.
But when he had carried his haversack down to the landing stage he changed his mind. It was too late to arrive at Killross and demand a bed. It was past eleven. He doubted if there would even be one at the tiny inn. He might walk all night, which would be a good way of working off this superfluous energy, or he might stay one more night at the castle and get away early to-morrow before anybody was about.
Flinging his haversack into the boat-house, he wandered back irresolutely towards the castle. It seemed as though a better plan was forming itself somewhere in the back of his mind, but he could not think what it was. He could hear the piano and the violin still at it in the drawing-room and this time he went up on to the gravel terrace, outside, to listen. Strolling up and down past the windows he could see them all in there, Gordon and Kerran intent over a chessboard, Maude’s needle going in and out as she smiled to herself, and Barny’s long nose bent so low over the piano that he might almost be going to strike an extra note with it. Guy stood with his back to the windows. Only his square head and square shoulders were visible. He played with clumsy movements, but the music which came from the violin under his chin was sweet enough. Half lying on a sofa, just opposite the second window, the tired Ellen had almost gone to sleep. She was looking pale and spent after her exertions of the day. And, like a shadow, Louise moved uneasily up and down, pacing through the candlelight.
Dick leant with his elbows on the sill, looking in through the third window at Guy and Barny and Maude with her needlework. They were engaged in the intricate coda of a last movement, thumping their way to a final, triumphant chord. There was a pause, and the silence of the night outside seemed to rush into the listening room. Guy touched his strings softly, tuning them, and Barny turned over some music. Nobody spoke. But Dick could hear faint noises from the people he could not see, a yawn from Ellen, and Kerran saying check! Louise, in her pacings, did not come into view. He felt safe there, unobserved. Guy and Barny, intent on their music, Maude with her needlework, not one of them had looked up and seen him.
“What am I going to do?” he kept wondering. “What do I want to do?”
Suddenly they began playing again, launching into the night a sharp, high note which flowed on into a long, shapely phrase, down and then up again. A little phrase and another long one balanced the melody, and then Barny had it and the notes of the piano came tinkling down, like crystal drops, while Guy see-sawed away on his G-string. Dick stiffened at the sound, as he came suddenly to grips with the other plan which had been floating about somewhere in the back of his mind. What had brought it to life he did not know, but it had sprung into complete being with that first high note. He was thinking:
“Not to Killross … to her house. I could go on to Killross afterwards. I would send up a message from Killross to-morrow. Nobody would know. I’ll go to her first, and then to Killross …”
It was almost as if he had her already in his arms. He tried to push the idea away from him, but his resistance was weakened by his insidious conviction of rightness. The possibility, the practicability, of spending a night with Elissa fell upon him like a raging fire. And he had only one slender weapon: the knowledge that he would, in retrospect, feel ashamed of himself. At the moment he was not in the least ashamed.
“I should be a fool if I didn’t.”
He felt no surprise, only triumph and exaltation, when he heard a light step in the gravel behind him, and knew that she had joined him at the window. It was as if his own desire had brought her there. Without looking round he moved a little and made room for her at his side. They stood, for a minute or two, looking at the unconscious players and at Maude bent over her needle.
The music flowed on. Before the first movement was over the two watchers had vanished from the window. He drew her into the shadow of the trees. He had been quite right. Now that she had gained her point she did not talk. They went without a word down to the shore and the boats. It was not until they were far away, over the water and out of earshot of the music, that he broke the silence:
“If you had not come to me, I should have come to you.”
Afterwards he could never make up his mind if this was true or at what moment the battle had been lost.
21
ELLEN started awake in a panic, aware that something had terrified her. A moment later she knew what it was, even before she had identified the hissing noise o
utside as torrential rain. The early morning twilight was torn up by a blinding glare and a crack of thunder which sent her scurrying down under the bedclothes with her hands over her ears. She hated thunder.
When the reverberations had died down, and there was only the drumming of rain, she peered timidly over the blankets towards Dick’s bed, wondering if she would have time, before the next peal, to jump out and climb in beside him and hide her face on his shoulder. That was what she always did when it thundered in the night. Any remembrance of estrangement between them was driven clean away by panic.
But Dick’s bed was empty and smooth. He had not slept in it. Her heart began to beat very fast. He had fallen into the lake and was drowned. He had taken a moonlight swim and had been seized with cramp. He was not there because he was dead.
She would not have immediately concluded this if she had not been so frightened at the thunder. For the moment she was quite unable to reason. She was beside herself. Jumping out of bed she threw on a dressing-gown and flew up to the room above, where Kerran and Guy were sleeping.
“Kerran! Kerran!” she cried, hammering on the door. “Are you there? Are you awake? Do come out … it’s Ellen … just a minute … Kerran!”
A tousled Kerran appeared.
“Oh, Kerran! I’m so frightened. Dick’s never been to bed. He’s never come in. I’m afraid something must have happened to him.”
“Dick? What … where …”
“He’s never been to bed. I woke up just now and he wasn’t there. I can’t think…. Oh!”
She hid her eyes from another flash, and Kerran, who knew how she hated thunder, put an arm round her to soothe her.
“Come in for a minute, while I put on a dressing-gown. Guy won’t mind.”
He drew her into the room and made her sit on his bed while he hurriedly put on a mackintosh and a pair of waders. Guy, just awake, rubbed his eyes in astonishment.
“He wasn’t there when I went to bed,” narrated Ellen. “Or when I went to sleep. The thunder woke me up. Oh, Kerran! He’s dead.”
A Long Time Ago Page 20