Once more the soft sound of falling coal ash whispered in Beddoes’ ears, and he felt a little prickly, as he had once after an injection of adrenaline. “Where is Tom now?” he whispered.
Sarah looked around. “I can’t always see him, you know,” she answered rather impatiently. “And I can only feel him here if he wants me to. Tom, are you here?” They waited for a minute, Sarah on the floor, with her soft plump hand warmly in Beddoes’, which suddenly felt rather damp. “No, he isn’t here. Or else he is but is shy with you.” She grinned. “You don’t have to hear them, you know. I know it’s annoying. It annoys me sometimes. Even Tom will tease me a little. I’ll think I’m alone and suddenly he’ll steal the last bite of a bonbon I’ve been saving for after supper.” She jerked her hand away. “Oh, Mr. Beddoes! Tea! I haven’t even told them about tea for you!”
Beddoes laughed. “I’m not used to afternoon tea,” he said. “We don’t have it much back home, except for company from England!”
“But Perry will be furious with me! Don’t tell him, eh?”
He felt delightfully secretive, and grabbed her hand hard. “In cahoots!” he cried. “The tea was delicious, Ma’am! As I live and breathe, it was indeed!”
Sarah laughed excitedly, and then bit at her lip, her eyes bemused. “Yes,” she murmured. “Today’s Saturday. I have some beautiful fresh eggs. We’ll have up an egg to our tea, as Mrs. Timpkins says. And that’ll be instead of supper. And you and Perry can go down to the Golden Duck and play darts. He likes to go Saturday nights. The men are easier then. They can tell him about—”
The door into the hall opened quietly, and Mac stood dark against the light that streamed in past him. Beddoes started to sit up, feeling vaguely guilty, but Sarah held his hand tighter. “Perry!” she called. “Perry, I’ve been telling him about our ghoulies. He knows about them.”
“Good,” Mac said. “That’s all right, then. Beddoes, old boy, how about a wee nip before supper? I could stand one myself.”
“And I’ll go see about things,” Sarah said. “I’ll tell Agatha about the eggs.”
The rest of Beddoes’ weekend passed in a pleasant blur. He helped clear the table after meals, at which he ate heartily of the bad food, and he never went into the kitchen, feeling shyly that Agatha and the others might not like it, but instead stacked dishes and cups with his customary neatness on the sideboard. They always disappeared soon after.
Saturday night, he played interminable darts in a crowded smoky saloon—pub, he should say. He drank an astonishing number of double Scotches, but none of them seemed to hit him, and afterward, in a solemnly clearheaded mood, he walked home through the sleeping village with Mac. He thought a long time and finally started to say that it was queer how well he understood the garbled accent of the village men, but Mac cut into his half-formed words. “Wait here, Beddoes, eh? I’ll be but a minute.” And, in his tweeds and round white collar, MacLaren hurried into the church through the unlocked door.
Beddoes waited, leaning against the cross by the sweetly dripping fountain. He knew Mac was right to leave him; he was drunk, even if he did not feel so in the least. “Tipsy souls must go to pray all by themselves, inside themselves, if they can find the door,” Beddoes said.
Mac came out in a few minutes, his face serene, and they went home to bed.
After morning services the next day (Beddoes did not go, feeling strangely shy about seeing his friend in vestments at the altar), they played golf a few miles from the village with a pair of fat tweedy old boys who scowled for eighteen holes and made Beddoes feel stiffly foreign and oafish, and then relaxed completely in the stuffy little clubhouse and told innumerable jokes so fast and mumblingly that he could only guess when to laugh.
He went to Evensong, rather to his surprise. The church was dim and musty, and two musty dim old women prayed alone on one side of the aisle, while he and Sarah sat, discreetly parted by an untidy pile of hymnals, in a pew across from them. At the back of the church, an ancient man—the sexton, perhaps—snuffled and creaked. Beddoes found himself following automatically the ritual that meant his childhood and then an occasional service with his wife back home. It was wonderful how some things never faded. And it was queer how little he felt at the sight of Mac up there, hunched like a great white quiet bird over the lectern. He had counted on being awed, and instead he felt only a desire to yawn. It was disappointing.
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Mac was saying deeply, his voice echoing from the damp walls, “and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all, evermore.”
“Amen,” said Beddoes and Sarah and the two old dim shadows in the pew across the aisle. The invisible sexton at the back of the church cleared his throat sanctimoniously and threw open the doors as for a fine wedding. Beddoes hurried away from Sarah. He felt wildly, urgently depressed. He almost ran around the buttresses of the little church and into the twilit garden, which lay sombrely between the high stone structure and the vicarage.
A few minutes later, when Sarah came slowly to join him, she found him sitting on a bench under a tall privet tree. He stared strangely at her, and she saw even in the twilight that his face was almost luminous with emotion. “What is it, my dear Mr. Beddoes? What is it?” she cried, sitting quickly down beside him.
“Mrs. MacLaren—I have just seen Tom!”
For a minute, neither spoke, and then Sarah laughed. “But how good! That is wonderful. Tom must like you very much. As we do, Mr. Beddoes, you know. That’s really dear of Tom, I think!”
“I didn’t think it dear at all, at first,” Beddoes answered rather severely. “I was damned upset, I can tell you. I was sitting here, wondering why Perry didn’t have some of his … his …”
“His ghoulies?”
“Yes, why he didn’t have them go to church. And then Tom said—and I heard him as clearly as I’m sitting here—Tom said, ‘Because we ain’t ready yet, you damn fool!’ And damn it, Mrs. MacLaren, he’s as American as I am! He’s no Limey. What’s he doing over here?”
Sarah only shook her head, smiling softly, her eyes dark in the gentle round fullness of her face.
“And then I sat down here feeling sort of queer, and I looked up and there he stood. It’s pretty dark, but I saw him, all right. He’s short and twisted, like a little old jockey, only smaller. There was a sort of blue outline. Oh, hell!”
Sarah sighed, as if she felt tired. “Yes, he’s like that. But they all are, for a while, Mr. Beddoes. They all are. But it’s good that you saw him. He trusts you. He’s still very lost, poor ghoulie, but he’s beginning to trust Perry, and me most of the time, and now you. He’s beginning to find himself.” She sighed again, and stood up. “Let’s go in. Perry’s not coming for a time; he’s helping the doctor with a poor woman in labor. I wish I’d had children. I’d have been a fine mother, I think.”
She walked up the path, talking as if to herself, and Beddoes, following her, felt a deep wrench at his heart. Poor Sarah! She was right. All that rich fullness of her body should have fed something other than lost souls.
“Turn on the switch there, dear Mr. Beddoes,” she went on. “Right by your hand. We’ll find a plate of cold toast. I like cold toast, especially when it grows a bit chewy, don’t you?”
He had never thought about it, but now it was plain to him that he did, indeed, like cold toast. I wouldn’t mind a good drink to wash it down, though, he thought.
“Tom says you’d like a drink.” She stood in the doorway of the kitchen, with the toast on a blue plate in her hand. “Get a glass, then, and we’ll pour a wee bit more from the vicar’s bottle. We’ll blame it on Tom.” There was a faint sound of giggling in the hall, and she laughed, too. “He’s a canny one,” she added, and disappeared.
Beddoes found a tumbler and half filled it with water and then followed Sarah down the narrow musty hall to the parlor. He felt tired, but when he saw her sitting as if broken in the low chair by the hearth he wanted to cry out
and fold her to him tenderly and mightily, like a cloud or a giant. Her little round arms lay down along her sides, and she looked up at him with a faint frown, as if she were trying to remember who he was and what he expected her to say. “Where is Mac’s bottle?” he asked her.
“In the cupboard on the left—or is it on the right? On your right of his desk. Isn’t it nice there’s a fire? I think we’ll have a storm soon. Poor Perry. But he loves to drive in storms. He took the doctor in his car with him.”
Beddoes poured himself a good wallop from the bottle, and swirled the glass around. Then he walked down the long room to Sarah and said, “Here, you take a little of this.”
She smiled, and sipped generously. “I like it,” she said. “Thank you, Mr. Beddoes. It’s fine now and again, I think, and I could easily do more of it. There’s my position to think of, though.” She sat up, quickly refreshed. “And now, what do you think of a little music until Perry’s here again? Would you like Haydn, or are you noisy and disordered after your sight of poor Tom and ready for Tchaikovsky, perhaps?”
Beddoes felt dull. “I don’t know much about music. My wife—she always goes to the Philharmonic, of course. But I haven’t had much time for music myself.”
“I’ve heard that of you American men. It’s a pity, isn’t it? I can tell, Mr. Beddoes, by the bumps on your brow, that you would have a fine feeling for it if you had the chance. We’ll start with Tchaikovsky, then; he’ll stir you and not bother your brain much. That’s always best at first—not too much thought.”
She went quietly to the study end of the room, and he could hear her sliding records out of their envelopes and fussing in a measured way, and then, as she walked back through the half-lighted room nearer to the fire, the first tempestuous strains of a piano playing with an orchestra crashed against his ears. He felt his hair prickling all over his head, and even under his arms. He lay back and let himself wash like seaweed in the tide of the music. Now and then, he sipped at his Scotch, but he did not think. He didn’t even feel anything identifiable, but only a great weakness and fulfillment. Then, gradually, he began not to hear. His untrained ears were exhausted; the music became noise, and he looked about him once more. “Is it a Panotrone changer?” he whispered. “I knew a producer in Hollywood with one. It flashed red and green lights, I remember, when it was running out of records. Scared hell out of me.”
“No,” Sarah murmured. “It’s Tom. He loves to change them. But listen—this is ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.’ ” She bent her head back again, so that it rolled slowly sideways.
Instead of listening, Beddoes looked at the smooth flow of her cheek. There must be a tiny down upon it, to catch the firelight with such gold. He wished he could see it more clearly, or perhaps touch it.
The music went on, with hardly a pause between records, and then there was a small crash, which sounded sharply in the peaceful room. Sarah stiffened, and Beddoes sat up nervously, the empty glass jerking in his hand.
“It’s a record, I’m afraid,” she murmured. “Tom, I’m coming. Never mind. Never mind, my dear!” she called out as she hurried to the other end of the room. “It will be all right,” Beddoes heard her whisper urgently. “I’ll tell Mr. MacLaren. Think no more of it, my darling, but play us the Mozart again. Then we’ll stop. Come along now, don’t mope!” She walked back to the fire again, and Beddoes, who had thoughtfully kept his eyes away from the phonograph, saw that she was shaking her head a little. “He feels dreadfully. This time it wasn’t on purpose,” she told him. “We’ll listen to just one more, to buck him up a bit, don’t you think?”
“Sure, poor fellow.” It did not seem at all queer to Beddoes to be commiserating over the hurt pride of a ghoulie.
They listened dutifully, and then sat without talking. The man watched the woman and she watched the fire. “I’m sorry you must go tomorrow,” she said finally. “Perry will have to call you at five, I’m afraid. The train leaves Carlisle early. We’ll miss you, all of us.”
They talked for a minute or two of trains and travel, but Beddoes had no feeling that he was actually leaving, and so soon. It was like reading a book—the words were all there, but he himself was not.
The train trip down to London was longer than he had remembered. Fog hid the landscape, except for quick hideous flashes of factories and an occasional hedgerow leading thornily into more fog. He twisted and steamed alone in his compartment until about noon, when an old man in a silk hat climbed angrily in beside him and, after one bitter stare, hid himself behind a paper.
A steward brought Beddoes a piece of cold ham with little pickles, and a bottle of stout. It tasted fine, and there was not enough of it. In spite of that, he was on the point of offering a part of it to the silent old man across from him when he saw a crumb or two fall between the discreetly striped thighs and realized that all the time the man had been eating, like a secretive rabbit, at bread and cheese, without another sign than the few crumbs from behind his stiffly held paper. Beddoes laughed to himself. Tea was the same—hot and bitter and welcome to the American, and a matter of hidden nibblings to the silent old man. British reserve, Beddoes decided; if he can stick it, I can.
Once, between luncheon and tea, something that had been mounting in him for more hours than he could count rose like a frightful wave, and for the first time since he had met Sarah MacLaren two days before, desire conquered him. He lay back palely against the cushions, his eyes closed. Every bone in his body ached as if he were catching influenza, and his brain swam. He was helpless, drowning, and he knew that although he had slept well with his slender wife, and would again, he had never felt passion for a woman until now. Gradually, he grew calm, resigned.
It was after dark, with steam on the windows and the old gentleman still inflexible behind his paper, when Beddoes first knew that Tom was in the compartment. He could not remember later whether Tom spoke to him or not, but there he was. Beddoes, who was wondering whether it was worth a glare from his fellow-traveller to get up and open his suitcase and pull out the flask and take a good swig, clearly felt Tom say, “I’ll get it down for you, sir.”
“You will not,” he snapped.
“What’s that?” The paper finally lowered itself, and the old gentleman looked rather shyly over the top of it. “Did you speak, sir?”
Beddoes cleared his throat, rather like a butler being discreet in a bedroom farce, and smirked apologetically. It worked. The old man disappeared again.
From then on, the conversation was silent, but no less violent. “What in hell are you doing here, Tom?” Beddoes asked furiously.
“Well now, sir. Well, listen. I summed you up, see, Mr. Beddoes? And I figured—”
“Oh, you figured, did you? And what do you suppose Mrs. MacLaren is going to do without you? Who’s going to keep them in line—Odessa and the old Duchess or whatever she is, and Agatha and all of them? So you walk out! A fine way to treat a woman who’s—”
“We’d say ‘lady’ here in England, sir,” Tom interrupted slyly, showing himself with a faint blue grin just above the seat level.
“Oh, you would, would you? ‘We,’ you say? You’re no more English than I am, damn it! What in—Tom, what am I going to do with you? That’s the hell of it.” Beddoes saw the old gentleman lower his paper perhaps an inch and peer at him with a timid bloodshot eye.
“That’s just it,” Tom said softly. “You don’t know yet, sir. But you may sometime. The hell of it, I mean.”
Beddoes felt him grow sad and dim, and he was humiliated to remember Sarah’s kind, tender ways. “O.K.,” he said gruffly. “O.K., Tom. But you’ll have to go back to Askhaven, you know. I mean it.” And that was the end of the incident, as far as Beddoes could remember later.
In London, he felt the muted exhilaration he always knew there, as if he were a happy ghost himself. He sent his bags on to the hotel, and took a cab to the New Clarges on Half Moon Street for a small bottle of rather warm champagne at one of the little green tables in the stre
et bar. Then he went back to his room, with only a sleepy nod from the night clerk and not a thought in his head of Tom. Inside his room, though, he saw that the stolen ghoulie—lost, strayed, and stolen, he thought solemnly—had been hard at work. Pajamas lay neatly ready, and on the marble dresser top were his toothbrush, his tubes of toothpaste and shaving cream, and the cabinet photograph of Mrs. Beddoes.
He felt coldly furious. The nerve of the fellow, to follow him to London and then try to weasel his way into things so that he could stay, when all the time Sarah needed him in Askhaven, and God knows what his wife would think, to have him land home with a ghoulie! He stood for a minute before he closed the door, cursing. There was no sight of Tom.
At last Beddoes saw the letter, which was leaning up against the photograph. It was smudged and cheap-looking, and he turned it over curiously a few times before he saw that the postmark was Askhaven. Askhaven, Thursday. Then it had been written before he went up there—mailed a day before he even started. “Dear Mr. Beddoes and Honor’d Sir,” it said, in a sloping, pompous hand:
I regret to inform you that as postmaster and former keeper of the public house none nown known as ye Golden Duck now closed that your telegram being duly received re your visit I regret to inform you that the reverend Mr. Perry MacLaren our dear pastor and his good wife were immediately killed some eleven months five days ago in a dreadful motor accident in the highlands near us. Please believe me honor’d sir your ob’t servant and hoping to serve you if I but had the pub still but trade has gone to nothing lately so I remain,
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