Benighted Page 15

  Her hands came down in front of her and then fluttered towards him. ‘Well,’ she said calmly, ‘if that’s how you feel, go on.’

  She was in his arms and her face was tilted back, a few inches away. They kissed. Then her hand was passed over his cheek, and his arms tightened about her and they kissed again. It was all done very quietly and comfortably, without any of the blind fumbling and straining of a new passion, yet it had not only meaning but intensity. This intensity, however, like a slant of sunlight, had passed through a mellowing atmosphere of large friendliness.

  Now, her hands pressing against him, she gently pushed herself away. Penderel drew a long breath. He wasn’t bewildered, he wasn’t ecstatic; he was suddenly and solidly happy. He felt enormously rich.

  ‘I didn’t mean that, you know,’ she remarked, ‘when I said you ought to do something.’

  ‘That’s a pity. No, it isn’t.’ It was funny. He was cool enough, and yet his voice wasn’t. It was hoarse, unsteady. ‘Well, I will do something now. I’ll start this week.’

  ‘Listen, Roger.’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘Why don’t you come to London?’

  ‘I will. As a matter of fact, I’m on my way there now. That sounds damned odd, when you think of it.’

  ‘You must think I’m rushing it.’ She was very serious now. ‘But I can’t help it. I feel I must, while we’re here and it’s quiet and—Oh!—I don’t know. But listen. Do you—will you—want to see me again?’

  His hands went out, but she caught and held them. ‘No, never mind about that, now. Tell me, honestly and truly, do you?’

  ‘Of course I do!’ he cried. ‘What a question! Why, you’re the very person I’m going up to see, though I didn’t know it when I began this journey. But then I didn’t know anything. When do we get there? Anyhow, we’ll begin with dinner the very first night, that is, if Sir William doesn’t object. What about him?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. He doesn’t matter. He can fade out. He’s done that already.’

  ‘So he has,’ he assented. ‘And it’s a comforting thought. But what’s this about town?’

  ‘I want to see you too. And I want to help if you’ll start again. I’ll do anything, everything.’

  His mind went blundering after her. ‘Do you mean——’ he began.

  ‘Don’t you see what I mean?’ she broke in, with a whispered vehemence. ‘I’ll do everything. Oh, it sounds crazy, I know. Don’t think I’m always like this. I’ve never been like this before. But the girl from the chorus you’ve met in the middle of the night is telling you she’ll live with you if you want her to, and there you have it. She’s gone mad and is flinging herself at you.’

  ‘And he’s trying to fling himself at her,’ he cried, clasping her arms. An idea was fermenting in his mind. Why shouldn’t they try it together? They’d nothing to lose, at least he hadn’t, and everything to gain. It was delightfully crazy, this idea of his, which wasn’t identical with hers, much crazier. But he hadn’t tested the strength of hers yet. ‘You’re absolutely regal, Gladys; you take my breath away. But listen to me a minute——’

  ‘Are you going to tell me you don’t want me?’ she demanded. ‘Because you’ve only to nod and it’ll save you the trouble.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ he replied hastily. ‘Something quite different.’

  ‘Then I know what it is,’ she went on, ‘and I’m going to tell you. You were just going to point out that you hadn’t much money and didn’t exactly know where you were going to earn any and that I’d have a damned thin time, weren’t you? I knew you were. Well, that doesn’t matter. If you really like me enough, we can have some fun together and manage somehow. To begin with, I can get a job. I really have been in the chorus, you know—though lately I’ve been resting—though I’ve not had much from Bill, you needn’t think it; he’s not been keeping me really—and I can go back to the chorus. If there’s nothing doing there, I can easily get a job of some sort—there’s a girl I know managing a milliner’s who’d get me into the shop. And we’d find a cheap little flat, high up, somewhere not too far out, and if you found anything at all to do, we’d manage all right. I know I’d be pretty rotten, and you probably wouldn’t be comfortable at first. I can’t do much—something quick and easy on a gas-ring is about my limit in cooking—but I’d try and I’d be happy so long as you didn’t curse me too often. I know what it means, of course; I’m not a kid. Living like that with anybody else but you would be little hell; but with you it would be all different—there’d be fun and excitement all the time—and we’d go roaming round together and talk and talk about everything, just as we’ve been doing to-night, and we wouldn’t feel lost and lonely any more. I know I’m not the sort of girl you used to think about—like that other one—but I understand; and if you ever got depressed I’d tease you out of it and then love you hard—Oh! you must think I’m silly.’ A little choked cry, and she had flung her arms round him and was pressing her face against his.

  ‘My dear, my dear,’ he found himself saying. He saw the two of them crazily garreting it together somewhere above the bus tops; laughing or grousing together if nothing came off; jubilant over the occasional windfalls; rushing one another into life. He was holding her close now, was protective, soothing; yet all the time he had a dim feeling that it was he who was finding comfort, sustenance itself, in this happy weight in his arms. Here was the way back into things. But he wouldn’t sneak up to share her attic. His own idea, mad as it seemed, was better than that. They’d get married, risk all and then plunge in together. No doubt people were right, he’d wanted the moon; now he’d start again and simply want cheese; and perhaps in the end he’d find that the moon was made of cheese after all.

  He put a hand on her hair and gently tilted back her face so that he could kiss her again. ‘It’s a great idea, Gladys,’ he told her, ‘and you’re wonderful, and we’ll make it all happen. Only my idea improves on yours, though you’ll probably think it crazy.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she whispered. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Let’s go back first, and then I will.’ She must hear it back in the house, with other people not far away, where she could test it. Anything was plausible here, in this tiny odd world they seemed to have created for themselves. ‘We’ve been too long away as it is. We’ll go back now.’

  ‘No, no. You want to leave me.’ He felt her body stiffen in his arms.

  ‘I don’t. Not ever. But we must see what the others are doing. They’re probably asleep.’ He couldn’t help feeling that they weren’t, though. ‘Then we’ll talk it all out. I’ve a special reason for wanting to finish it off there.’

  ‘All right.’ She drew back but kept her eyes fixed on his. Then, after a pause, she went on: ‘But are you sure——?’ The question died away. Her voice was dubious; her stare was dubious, sombre. He was instantly visited by a curious mixed feeling of alarm and shame. It had occurred to her that she really knew nothing about him. And he knew nothing about her. They were strangers, staring through the dusk at one another. Voices, questioning eyes, the electric contact of flesh, and you seemed to know everything—a turn of the wheel, a click, and you knew nothing. The old despair returned; he was trapped again. Without thinking what he was doing, he took hold of her hand and the next moment it had given him a warm hard squeeze. At the same time a thought arrived, just as if it had been squeezed into him.

  ‘Why,’ he cried aloud, ‘it’s all bosh!’

  ‘What!’ She withdrew her hand instantly. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Sorry! I didn’t mean about us, you know, though we come into it. I’d been thinking and had just made a discovery.’

  She regarded him indulgently. ‘You’d better get it off your chest, hadn’t you? Go on. I’m listening.’

  ‘We all get on a romantic switchback—up and down, up and down all
the time.’ He was talking to himself rather than to her. ‘First we can know everything and it’s wonderful, then we can know nothing and it’s all rotten. Just as if there wasn’t a way in between! There always is, all the time, and we’re simply too damned proud and lazy and egoistical to find it and go down it. The thing we won’t bother with is just plain common sense. It frightens us. It makes us seem less important. Why, after all, Gladys, I know you——’

  ‘Do you though?’ she interrupted. ‘That’s what I’ve just been wondering about. You don’t really, do you? I don’t really know you, though I seem to better than anybody. That’s funny, isn’t it?’ She was very eager, excited.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he replied sturdily. ‘I don’t know all about you, but I feel I know a devil of a lot. If I’ve made it up, I’ve made it up, and that’s that. But I can go on learning. There’s a truth to come out.’ He was excited himself now and sat up as if to proclaim his discovery to the world. He felt as if he had turned a corner. ‘That’s what we really don’t want to believe, that there’s a truth to come out. We don’t want to sit tight, wait, and learn anything. We pretend we’re above sensible compromise, when all the time we’re below it. All this disillusion’s egoistical bunkum.’

  ‘I dare say it is, though I don’t know what you mean. I never knew anybody who went on at such a rate. And who are you talking about, with your “we pretend” this and “we do” that?’ She wasn’t eager now, but amused and worshipping, as if he had just done something rather clever with a box of bricks. ‘Now, who d’you mean?’

  ‘Oh—er—people like me, I suppose, gloomy young asses,’ he told her. ‘I speak,’ he added, with mock pompousness, ‘for my own generation, though whether you are a member of that generation or not, my dear Gladys, I am not prepared to say.’

  ‘You’re prepared to say anything, if you ask me.’ She leaned forward. ‘And you’re a funny boy and I don’t know why I’m bothering myself about you.’ Her cheek was lightly brushed across his and a hand passed over his head.

  ‘That was benediction,’ he said. ‘Now we must go. We’ll begin again—never to end—in the house. Ready?’ He rose from the seat and discovered that his feet were very cold and his legs were cramped.

  ‘No, Roger, no!’ She was holding his arm. ‘Don’t let’s go back there. Let’s stay here.’

  He turned to stare at her. ‘Why, what’s the matter? We can finish the night comfortably there. It may be queerish, but at least there’s a fire. Why don’t you want to go?’

  ‘Because there’s something—oh! I dunno. I’m silly I suppose. P’raps it’s just because I don’t want to leave this funny little place—I’d almost forgotten it’s the back seat of a car; if you’ve been happy in a place, no matter what it’s like, you don’t want to leave it, do you? It’s a risk moving on, isn’t it? I expect that’s it.’ But she sounded very doubtful.

  He switched off the small lights of the car, found the torch, and stepped out into about a foot of water. ‘We shall have to wade back,’ he told her, flashing the light inside. ‘I wonder if I could carry you.’

  ‘No, you couldn’t,’ she replied. ‘I’m an awful weight.’ Nevertheless he swooped upon her, just as she was getting out, and went splashing forward with her in his arms, contriving at the same time to send the light of the torch before them. That tiny fantastic journey was for them both like the mingling of a nightmare, in which all familiar things suddenly lost their identity, crawling into nothingness or taking on shapes of terror, and one of those clear dreams in which the enchanted heart recognises and claims its most secret desires as if they were children long-lost. Here the dream, their sense of one another, their nearness and warmth, threaded through the nightmare made up of the sight of that obliterating black water, the air that seemed like hanging crape, the corners of the house that gleamed sharply in the light of his torch like naked bone, and a fear, swelling beyond sensible dimensions, lest his foot should slip and they should fall. More than once she protested, but he would not put her down, and twice he had to rest, leaning heavily against the wall of the house, with one arm still holding her tight. Wet and aching, he was staggering now past a lighted window. The door could not be far away. Gladys threw out a hand, found the wall, and steadied them both, wondering all the while at his odd determination to indulge his whim at any cost. She found herself slipping down out of his arms, and her feet touched the highest of the three steps. He came scrambling up after her, sank back against the side of the door, and fought for his breath. And now, for the second time that night, he had his hand upon the knocker.

  CHAPTER XI

  Once inside the room, Margaret peeped round Philip’s shoulder. It was a large room and Margaret had a vague impression that it was full of lovely old things; but their candle, the only light there, merely illuminated a tiny space and then simply conjured the rest of the room, the circling darkness, into rich dusk, in which there wavered and shone, from unseen polished surfaces, little reflections of its flame. Thus she saw a background of shadows and some twinkling points of light, like a night sky. Then she stepped out from behind Philip and cleared her eyes. They were in a very large bedroom, heavy with old furniture. The bed itself was a huge shadowy affair, a great four-poster, canopied with dark curtains at the head.

  A voice came from the gloom there, and they moved forward. The light now fell on a hand resting on the counterpane, the hand of a very old man, a featherweight of brittle bone. ‘Who are you?’ the voice was asking. Leaving Philip behind, still holding the candle, Margaret drew nearer to the bed. Now she could dimly see the man who was lying there, could see his white hair and long white beard; his face was vague yet curiously luminous; it moved a little; he must be looking at her. ‘Who are you?’ The question was repeated. Even here, his voice seemed nothing more than a whisper.

  Philip had heard it too, but remained where he was for the moment, feeling sure that Margaret wanted to reply herself, to explain why they were there. He was more than content that she should. Who were they? It was a question that came very aptly, pointedly, ironically from that bed.

  ‘I am Mrs. Waverton and this is my husband,’ Margaret was saying. ‘Are you Sir Roderick Femm?’

  ‘Yes . . . Sir Roderick . . .’ The voice came as faintly as before; the words might have been spoken by the very air of that dim place.

  Margaret nodded and tried to smile at that blur of face with its ghostly sheen. ‘We have had to take shelter here for the night. There has been a very bad storm. We came in because we thought we heard you calling. Can we get you anything?’

  The hand that had been lying on the counterpane seemed to raise itself, and, like something clumsily floating, it moved uncertainly towards the right of the bed, where there was a little table. It’s horrible, Philip thought as he stared; it’s like watching a ghost, no, worse than that, a spirit coming back to try and make the old, rusty, creaky machinery of the body work again. The real Sir Roderick had already retired from life. Yet he hadn’t; he was wanting something; yes, he was still wanting something; and that made it all the worse. What was he saying?

  ‘Water,’ came the whisper. ‘Glass empty . . . Water over there . . .”

  Margaret had heard and understood. ‘Yes, I’ll get you some,’ she said, and taking up the glass from the little table, she went in the direction the hand had pointed and filled the glass from a carafe that she found on the top of a chest of drawers there. She still trembled slightly and felt a little heart-sick, but the action gave her a certain feeling of warmth and confidence. Returning with the glass, she put it into the awaiting hand, a frail curve of bone. ‘Can you take it yourself,’ she enquired gently, ‘or shall I give it to you?’

  ‘I can—do it—myself,—thank you.’ The hand closed round the glass and slowly raised it. For one second the water caught and held the candle-light and became liquid gold. The old man’s head came f
orward shakily, and they had a glimpse of a great curved nose, shaggy white brows, and wasted cheeks. Somehow it didn’t seem difficult to believe that he had once been easily the tallest and strongest and handsomest of the family, a magnificent figure. He had been a great man once, they had said. No doubt it was true; and now he could hardly raise the glass to his lips, and when he did at last succeed in drinking some of the water, spilling it into his mouth, it seemed a triumphant achievement.

  The water appeared to revive him, however, for he was able to replace the glass on the table, and though his head sank back again upon the piled pillows, into the deep shadow of the curtains, there seemed to be a faint trace of animation in his movements. But his voice remained the same, a ghostly whisper, a mere breath in the air. Yet it was he who spoke first, before Margaret could ask him if there was anything else he wanted.

  ‘What was—the noise there?’ he asked.

  Margaret explained, very briefly and as lightly as she could, what had happened outside. She had stepped back now and was standing by the side of Philip.

  ‘Morgan—is a savage,’ they heard. ‘It was—the drink though. We have had to keep him here’—and the voice trailed away into a long pause—‘because of my brother. I must—apologise for him.’

  This was the master of the house, though he seemed to whisper to them across an open grave, and here were accents they had not caught before under this roof. It was queer how this little speech appeared to lift a weight, the pressure of something unnamed, from their minds.

  ‘Did you say—you were husband and wife?’ The whisper came again, after a brief silence, filled with departing images.

  ‘Yes, we are,’ Margaret replied, very simply, like a child; and Philip felt her hand on his arm. She couldn’t help it; answering that had somehow been like another marriage ceremony, graver than that other in the little church at Otterwell. She thought of that, and then innumerable little pictures flashed across her mind: the two of them dining together that night at the Gare de Lyon; then going through the dust and faerie of Provence; the tiny flat in Doughty Street, with Philip painting the fireplace; the Hampstead house and Betty in the garden; and with all that had not been shared since flitting darkly through her mind like a bad dream.