There had been the picnic and the climb up the glen, and the view of the Ardfillan mountains and the decision to go away. But behind all that lay in some earlier time, some point in the last fortnight when he had left off worrying about Thring or feeling that it mattered what Thring would say. He could not remember when it was, and his mind came back to yesterday, the return to the island, the change of mood, the music and the hot moonlight. He saw that he had yielded to temptation. At the time it had not seemed so, nor did he think that it would have seemed so now if he had not been found out. This change in the whole course of his life seemed to have come as suddenly and as irrelevantly as the change in the weather.
“Because I slept too long,” he decided.
Indubitably he was ruined because he had slept too long. He had awakened to find himself cut off from everything that he valued in the world, from his wife, his children, his work, from the society and respect of his friends. He had awakened to find Gordon’s face, looking in at him, a stupid face, made formidable by its expression of horrified incredulity, the repulsion of a decent man confronted with infamy.
It was very cold in the cottage and he was shivering. During the few minutes when he ran down to the lake-side, the rain had soaked him. On the hearth the ashes of last night’s fire lay, white and scattered. He peeled off his wet shirt and knelt down to try and blow the smouldering turf into a flame again, but it was no use.
With a desolate curiosity he began to examine his surroundings, for he had never been inside the house until last night. It seemed as strange to find himself there as to find Gordon’s face peering in through the window at him. Into this room he must have come with Elissa, but he could remember nothing of it. He must have been mad. He had come there in the course of a violent dream which had begun in moonlight and changed to the glow of a turf fire on the walls of a house, and ending, not like a dream, in satiety, in darkness, in sleep that had lasted too long.
And then he heard a slight movement, up in the half-loft. Elissa was awake. A little while ago, not more than half an hour, he had awakened, up there, beside her. He had not meant to leave her so abruptly, but he came down to look for his watch, and there, at the window, was Gordon. Since when he had almost forgotten that she was still asleep, while the world came tumbling down about his ears. He wondered how long it would take her to remember last night, and to miss him.
Presently she called him softly:
“De-eck?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to blow up the fire. It’s cold.”
“Come up here, please.”
He climbed the ladder, still trying to remember when and how he had climbed it before. The half-loft was a little room, and the great curtained bed nearly filled it. Elissa lay, dishevelled, sleepy and warm, among the tumbled sheets, her long hair sprayed over the pillow. She raised herself on one elbow to look at him, and at the sight of his shirtless torso she gave a little exclamation.
“But you are wet!”
“Yes.”
“How is that?”
He told her what had happened and she said immediately:
“Then you need not go to Killross this morning, unless you wish.”
“I suppose not.”
He leant against the wooden bedpost and looked at her. Those strange eyes, so candidly desirous, were all that he could remember of the night. In the firelight he had seen them otherwise, the challenge gone, submissive and tender.
“Mine …” he thought, with a sudden wrenching sorrow. “She was mine.”
And Elissa, who knew all the moods of love as well as she knew the notes of a scale, did not ask why he sighed.
24
ALL day it rained, and nobody could go out. For the island did not even afford the spartan consolation of a walk in the wet. It was too small, and a journey to the mainland in an open boat appealed to nobody.
Louise and Maude wrote very long letters which were scarcely finished in time for the four o’clock post boat. They had dosed Gordon with aspirin and put him to bed, for his early expedition in the rain had brought on a bad attack of lumbago. Barny discovered an old ping-pong set in one of the gate-houses, and he organised a tournament with the older children, in which Kerran and Guy Fletcher joined. They kept it up all the afternoon, on the dining-room table.
By tea-time the day seemed to have gone on for ever, since most of them had been up that morning at five o’clock. They were in wretched spirits. Recrimination and bitterness were in the air. Louise feared that they were going to blame her for bringing Elissa to the island and when she was not writing letters she was busy taking each one of them aisde, in turn, and pointing out that it was really Gordon’s fault, not hers. If Gordon had not made it all so difficult she might have got rid of Elissa in time.
She even called upon Guy Fletcher to agree with her, but he cut her short with less than his usual deference.
“I don’t think your sister would care to have her affairs discussed like this.”
Louise had so little expected reproof from this quarter that she looked confused.
“Why … I … of course this is all in the strictest confidence. I know I can rely on you, absolutely.”
“It’s none of my business. I’d much rather not hear about it.”
“Oh, very well. I’m sorry. Do you always receive people in this way if they happen to mention their troubles?”
“I was thinking of her troubles,” said Guy, exasperated.
“I see.”
If she had not had so much else to make her miserable, Louise would have taken more notice of Guy’s open defection. As it was she merely wrote him off as being less nice than formerly, and began thenceforth to notice a number of little things in his disfavour. By the time she got back to Oxford in the autumn she had amassed several entertaining but damaging instances of his priggishness, which went the round of their mutual acquaintance.
Next to Gordon it was Guy who most felt the tragedy of Ellen’s situation. Kerran and Barny were buoyed up by their anger, Louise was wandering in a wilderness of personal grievances, and Maude was kept so busy being tactful and smoothing things over that she scarcely had time to think. But to Guy it was an occasion of pure grief. He cared nothing for Dick and his paramour. Their behaviour was evil and he turned from the thought of them with a sickened disgust. It was for Ellen to whom his soul cried out in a voiceless lamentation. He had wakened that morning to see her in his room, so frightened and so lovely, asking breathlessly for help. He knew what she feared. He had not forgotten that walk to Killross. He, too, had jumped to the conclusion that Dick must be drowned, might even have made away with himself. And he had rushed out to waken the Lindsays, feeling that he would do anything in the world for Ellen, and that there was nothing that he could do.
When the truth emerged he could almost have wished that his first guess had been right. That she should have to endure the insult as well as the loss was more than he could bear.
Still there was nothing that he could do for her. But all day he waited about, in case there might be some small service that he could offer. He knew where she was. When she went to her room in the tower he sat in his own room, above, with the door open, so that he might hear her footstep on the stairs when she went down again. If she crossed the courtyard to the keep, he stood by the staircase window, watching to see her return. He knew that she had spent most of the day in the nursery, reading to the older children and helping Muffy to keep the little ones quiet. She seemed to be asking no help of anybody. Her fortitude and her calm became glorified, for him, into something that was almost unearthly.
After tea he got his chance. The rain had stopped for a little while and he asked her if she would like to be taken across for a walk on the mainland. He knew that she had got very tired of the island, even when it was fine.
“I should like to come very much,” she said gratefully. “We seem to have done nothing but eat all day.”
&
nbsp; It was not unpleasant outside, though the hills were sombre and the rain had made the air very chilly. The high wind had dropped and the lough was like a millpond, save for the great rings made on its surface by leaping fish. A wrack of angry clouds, sailing down the Haunted Glen, told of storms to come.
Guy had scarcely pulled clear of the shore before he felt conscious of relief and escape. Once more, in Ellen’s company, he had got out of the circle of sad things ill done. It had happened before, when they were in a boat together, coming up from Killross. He felt the oppression, the weight upon his heart, grow lighter. Why this should be he did not know. But he could not sit opposite to her, and talk to her, without beginning to feel that she was not, perhaps, in such deep trouble as he had supposed. She must possess some secret power which he did not understand. Sometimes she frowned a little, as if her thoughts were not entirely pleasant, but her pose, her gestures, were easy and relaxed, and her smile was light-hearted.
“Is she so glad that he isn’t dead that she doesn’t mind?” he wondered. “It can’t be that.”
There was a materialism in such an attitude which he would not ascribe to her, for he had already endowed her with every spiritual quality which the ideal woman ought to possess. He preferred to think that she would rather see her husband dead than dishonoured. And yet she looked happier than anyone else on the island, almost as if she had been entirely outside it.
He was quite right. Ellen was outside it. She had been growing more composed all day, though she was still angry with herself for losing her head in the morning. She did not deserve that things should be turning out so well. For they all seemed to have accepted Dick’s sudden departure without comment. She was not obliged to go on explaining that everything was really quite all right. Even Louise, whom she had expected to take offence, asked no further questions.
One other thing, an unpleasant little thought, disturbed her. She could have wished that he had not gone away in Elissa’s boat, as apparently he had. Any other boat would have been better. It was impossible to ignore the sort of conclusions that Louise and Maude might draw from it. They had hinted at something rather horrid yesterday when they told her that strange tale of Elissa’s behaviour on the bathing beach. And Maude’s hints had begun before that; they had been dropped at intervals ever since Elissa first came to the castle. She was always foreseeing some catastrophe. First of all it had been Gordon. Did Ellen really believe that two people of opposite sexes could want to sit all day and read Vergil? And then there had been some ridiculous scare about Barny. Kerran and Guy Fletcher, as unmarried men, were both said to be in grave danger. And now it was Dick, for no reason at all except that he had gone across to the shore in her boat.
Still, she had to admit to herself that she would rather some fishermen had taken him across. She had not liked it when Maude told her that they had been in the garden together. She did not like Dick to be alone in gardens with women who took their clothes off in public. No sensible wife could like such a thing. Elissa was not the sort of person who fits well into domestic life, where it is so necessary that people should keep their clothes on. There was that much colouring of truth in Maude’s suggestions. Ellen trusted Dick’s loyalty as she trusted her own, but still she did not like it. She could not help wondering what they said to one another in the garden, and afterwards, on the lake, and if Dick showed a side of himself to this woman which he had kept hidden from his wife. The thought made her ashamed, yet it stayed with her.
She had seen him, with other women, slip into an easy, half-mocking familiarity which, as he explained contemptuously afterwards, was the only sort of language that they could understand. There had been nothing of it in their own straightforward courtship, and the sight of that unspoken intimacy, which he could so easily establish with any pretty and provocative stranger, had always given her a faint pang of surprise. But she had never been really uneasy before. She knew the sort of thing which he said to these ladies. She could not imagine what he would say to Elissa.
It was these thoughts which made her frown sometimes, try as she would to shake them off. Yet until she had done so there could be no getting back to that exalted memory of yesterday which seemed to have deserted her. She had allowed herself to become confused by a thunderstorm, a groundless panic and a twinge of unworthy jealousy. But though the exaltation was gone, the conviction remained. She still knew herself to have been in the presence of God, and she still felt that her whole existence must depend upon the return of such a moment.
“I must put these bad thoughts quite out of my mind,” she told herself. “I must put them quite away.”
It was not so difficult to escape from them, now that she had got away from the island with nice Mr. Fletcher. She liked Guy very much. She liked his seriousness. She felt that she wanted to ask him something, if only she could have been sure what it was. She wanted to tell him what had happened yesterday, and then he might say something which would bring it back.
But that was impossible. When she spoke it was to exclaim at the size of the fish which were jumping out of the water.
Guy agreed that they were very large. Every word that passed between them was precious to him; yet afterwards he could seldom remember very much of their conversations, which were, indeed, extremely commonplace. It was with Louise that he exchanged views on art, morality and Fabianism. But he would have sacrificed every one of those discussions for the nameless pleasure of hearing Ellen say:
“Look at that fish!”
“Are they jumping out after flies?” he wondered.
“I don’t know.”
They neither of them knew very much about the habits of fish and they let the question drop. Ellen went on thinking about eternity and Guy went on thinking about Ellen.
Still the rain kept off, so they landed and walked about for a little while on the lake road, skirting the puddles and skipping over the hundreds of little streams which ran down the hillsides into the lake. There was a sound of running water everywhere, for the heavy rain had swollen all the rivulets to double the size that they had been yesterday. Ellen picked some bog myrtle, not because she wanted any, but because she could never resist doing so.
Just as they turned to go back to their boat the sun came out for a few minutes, among the heavy western clouds. Immediately the whole scene became transfused with colour, the translucent hues of a reflection, for moisture had made the air like a mirror. The lake glittered, the grass burned with a green flame, and every puddle was a pool of light.
“This,” said Guy, “is worth the whole of a wet day.”
Ellen looked round her at the changed world and made no reply. She thought that it was like a sign from God, as if the hills and the water and the very stones beneath her feet shared with her this mysterious existence which was outside time.
“The Chief End of Man,” she thought to herself. “Well, that’s rather conceited, really. You might as well say the Chief End of Grass.”
And then she thought:
“There are two meanings to things. One is here and the other is there. They are quite different.”
Her difficult thoughts recoiled upon her. There was no getting any nearer to it than that. She knew it, but she could not think about it.
“But thinking isn’t everything,” she concluded. “If it was, then only clever people would go to heaven, which wouldn’t be fair.”
Again she longed to ask Guy, who was clever, if he thought that grass might have a chief end. At last she said, with a breathless rush:
“Do-you-believe-in-the-immortality-of-the-soul?”
“What?” asked Guy, somewhat startled. “Oh, yes. I certainly believe in it.”
“No, but I don’t mean ‘believe.’ Do you think about it much?”
“Oh, yes. I think about it a great deal.”
“Do you really?”
“Well … not as often as I ought, perhaps. But I do think about it sometimes, don’t you?”
Ellen solemnly shook her h
ead.
“I find it very difficult to think about it.”
They were both silent and embarrassed. Guy could have discussed this point much better with Louise. He was afraid of saying something which might disturb Ellen’s gentle orthodoxy.
“We shall know some day, I suppose,” she observed piously.
Guy racked his brains for some beautiful and comforting remark, but the moment passed before he could think of anything.
Ellen was preparing to get into the boat. The sound of her words had told her that she would only make a fool of herself if she tried to go on.
“But what shall I do with all this bog myrtle?” she sighed. “I don’t really want it.”
“Give it to me,” said Guy.
“But you don’t want it either.”
“Yes, I do.”
Which had echoes of those conversations between Dick and the ladies who did not understand any other way of talking. Ellen blushed a little. For the first time it occurred to her that nice Mr. Fletcher might be getting fond of her. She wished more than ever that she had not asked him about the immortality of the soul.
Bog myrtle, though aromatic, is a stubby and undecorative plant. Guy carried home his strange posy rather sheepishly and put it into Kerran’s tooth-glass in their bedroom. He wished that he had not asked her for it.
25
Letter from Kerran
DEAREST MOTHER,
I need give you no account of this dreadful business, for I understand that Louise and Maude both wrote yesterday. Dick has not turned up, and things look pretty bad. Poor Gordon talks about writing to you too, but I do not know whether he will. He is crippled with lumbago and I told him not to bother. There is nothing to be done until we know what is to happen next.
The official version, to which we all subscribe in public, is that invented by Ellen yesterday morning. Dick has gone for a walking tour in the Ardfillan mountains. As long as Ellen sticks to that I think the rest of us should. How it will end, I cannot imagine.
A Long Time Ago Page 22