And at last none of them, least of all Lucilla herself, listened to a word she was saying. The children seemed glad to go to bed and the grown-ups were glad to have them go. The battering of the storm and their individual worries made them all so restless that the only comfort lay in perpetually doing something different from what they had been doing before. It was a relief to David to write a quite unnecessary letter, a further relief to fight his way to the pillar box with it, a greater one to find it was time to go upstairs and change for dinner.
As he passed the open door of the boys’ room he stopped. Tommy was splashing in the bath and Ben in his blue pyjamas was alone in their room, his face pressed against the uncurtained window where outside in the grey twilight the great storm rushed by. To each side of him the colours of the stained glass windows glimmered only very faintly in the strange pallid light that was the stricken day’s desperate attempt at a sunset. David tried to picture the room as it had been in Aramante’s time. Perhaps she had put a prie-dieu in the window where Ben stood now and while she prayed she would have looked across the garden to that break in the oak-wood through which one could see the patch of marsh where the Blue Bird had been wrecked. In imagination she would have seen it happen all over again, and perhaps autumn by autumn she had watched for the springing of the stunted corn. But of course she had. That was why there was a cornfield in the foreground of the picture of Saint Christopher. “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die—”
Ben gave a little gasp.
“What is it, old man?” David asked, going over to him.
Ben seemed frightened as well as excited, but he did not remove his squashed button of a nose from the glass. “Look!” he said.
“What?” asked David. He could see nothing but the grey whirling twilight, and that bleak stretch of wind-swept marsh framed in the tossing branches of the oak-trees, almost invisible now in the gathering darkness.
“The ship!” said Ben. “It’s driving right on to the shingle bank. The sea is coming in over the marshes.”
“No, Ben,” said David. “How could it? The tide’s going down.”
“But it is!” cried Ben. “And the ship’ll be wrecked!”
“There’s no ship there, Ben,” said David. “You’re dreaming.”
“I’m not dreaming, I’m awake,” said Ben fiercely. “It is there. It is.” And then uncertainty seemed to seize him. He withdrew his squashed nose from the pane and rubbed his eyes. He sighed and began to tremble. David picked him up, found he was shivering with cold, inserted him firmly into his bed, drew the curtains and lit the candles.
“Never take any notice of what you think you see at twilight,” he told Ben. “It’s a queer light. Owl’s light, the country people call it, because it’s uncanny, like owls. Have you got a hot-water bottle?”
“No!” said Ben with scorn. “I don’t have a hot-water bottle until November.”
David went to the bathroom, burst in upon the dripping Tommy and filled one at the hot tap. . . . Damerosehay might be old-fashioned but its water was always piping hot.
“See me do the porpoise-roll,” said Tommy.
“No thanks,” said David.
But Tommy took no notice of this discouragement. As David went out a realistic side-to-side movement sent the water surging over the top of the bath on to the floor. Hastily closing the door David supposed that Margaret would deal with the mess later, and went back to Ben, who was coughing.
“Now stop that!” he cried in exasperation, and then, more kindly, reproached by Ben’s great eyes fixed mournfully upon him, “What is it, old man? What do you want?”
“I’m not coughing to get anything, thank you,” said Ben irritably. “I never do. I just cough. I didn’t cough to get away from school, like you thought I did, I just coughed a bit more than I was coughing anyhow. I want Father. Mind you, I’m not coughing to get him, I just want him.” And he coughed again.
David sat down despairingly upon the bed. All the friendliness that had once existed between himself and Ben had now somehow disappeared. The affection that used to shine in the little boy’s eyes when they looked at him had gone. They were dull and without light. Were he again to have a fright, such as he had had over Obadiah’s book, it would not now be David to whom he would go for comfort. An unreasonably deep sadness seized David as he realized this. . . . It must have been Ben who had seen them in the wild garden. . . . Such a little thing, such a small maladjustment of what a child considered the right arrangement of things, could apparently upset him disastrously.
It was no good staying any longer with the unresponsive Ben and he got up. He carefully avoided looking at the window over Ben’s bed. He did not want to be told at what cost some men serve the children. “Good night, old man,” he said.
“Good night,” said Ben sullenly. “It was a ship that I saw. I didn’t dream it. I don’t dream things.” And he thrust out his lower lip and glowered at his cousin.
David, seeking after Ben’s lost friendship, decided to capitulate. After all, Nadine and he had talked a lot of nonsense about a woman in the wild garden and a man in the drawing-room. The whole family was tarred with the same brush.
“Perhaps it was the grain ship that you saw,” he said. “Not a ghost ship, there are no such things as ghosts, but a moving picture of what happened once.”
“A moving picture?” queried Ben, interested.
“People say,” said David, “that everything that once happened in a place leaves its mark upon it, like a photograph on celluloid. Given certain conditions you see it again, just as you see the moving picture when the cinema man puts up his screen and turns a handle.”
“What conditions?” asked Ben.
“Sunset seems to be one of them,” said David, “and little boys with imaginative minds. And two people thinking of the same thing at the same moment; for you see I was thinking of the grain ship too. And, I think, being unhappy. One’s real self gets very sharpened when one is unhappy. It gets able to pierce through and make peepholes in the stuff of everyday life. It’s practically the only advantage of being unhappy.”
“Oh,” said Ben. “Thank you.” His tone was a little more cordial and David left him feeling slightly comforted. It is absurd, he thought, how elated or how dashed one’s spirits can be by the approval or disapproval of the children.
— 3 —
The grown-ups’ dinner was a depressing meal, for they could hardly hear themselves think above the noise of the storm.
“So early in the autumn for a storm like this,” said Lucilla loudly and distinctly above its uproar.
“It’s a high tide early tomorrow morning,” said Margaret.
“Extra high?” asked Nadine.
“One of the highest tides of the year,” said David. “They come in the spring and the autumn.”
“I wish,” said Lucilla, “that old Obadiah hadn’t gone back to his cottage today. I begged him to stay here, but he wouldn’t. Alf is away, you know.”
“He’ll be all right,” said David easily. “It’s the safest part of the marsh, with all those dykes.”
“I think they told me that one gave way,” said Lucilla.
“Sure to be mended again by this time,” David assured her.
After dinner the four of them played bridge for the most part in a gloomy silence, for the wind in the drawing-room chimney sounded now like guns going off and conversation was even more difficult than in the dining-room. Margaret’s bridge, also, was a depressing thing; the other three were such expert players that only their affection for her made it possible for them to bear it. Margaret played from instinct rather than from reason, and her instincts were always wrong.
“I thought the king was out,” she said.
“Why, Aunt Margaret?” asked David.
“I just felt that it was,” said Margaret.
?
??Well, it just isn’t, dear,” said Lucilla, who was her partner. “And you’ve lost us the game. . . . Not that it matters, darling,” she hastily added, fearful of wounding her so easily-hurt daughter. “It’s only a game.”
“Only a game,” she thought, as she shuffled and dealt. Here she was setting her wits against David’s, just as she had done on the night he came home. Only now he had Nadine to help him while she had only Margaret. She wished she could know how the battle was going.
By mutual consent they went to bed early. They had little hope of sleep but the bridge was nothing but a farce; it could not take their thoughts.
Lucilla was so weary that she had to ring for Ellen to help her to undress. “What a wind, Ellen,” she said. “I’m not nervous, but the noise of it makes one so tired.”
“You’ve more than the wind to make you tired, Milady,” said Ellen with a world of meaning in her tone.
Lucilla, already enthroned amongst her pillows, raised herself a little and stared at Ellen. But she was too tired to ask questions. “Leave the candles burning,” she said. “A little light is consoling with all this noise going on outside. Good night, Ellen.”
“Good night, Milady,” said Ellen, and went out.
Lucilla lay and looked at her lovely room, so softly lit by the two candles. Their light gleamed upon her ebony and ivory crucifix, her miniatures, the silver on the dressing-table and the pretty flowered chintz. Now and then the whole house shook under a blast of wind and the noise was unceasing, yet she felt warm and safe in her beloved room, and in that state of exhaustion which is almost peace. “I’ve done all I can,” she thought, “all I possibly can.” She looked at the candle flames that David had said were like hands laid palm to palm in prayer. “Pray,” she said to them sleepily. “Pray for the peace of Damerosehay. Let it always be for my children a refuge against the storm.” There was a slight cessation in the battering of the rain against the window and she heard the oak-trees crying and creaking down in the wood. “Keep us safe,” she said, “as you have always done. Fight this storm until it passes.” The thought came to her that though she herself had done all she could yet there was upon her side other strength than her own. The universe was planned as an orderly thing and those forces that try to wreck its order are always on the losing side. . . . Most unexpectedly she closed her eyes and slept.
Which was more than poor Nadine did, even though her room was at the back of the house, facing the inland fields and woods, and the roar of the storm came to her only distantly. Yet she could feel the shiver of the house when the great blasts struck it and her own taut nerves quivered in sympathy. She kept the candles alight and resolutely opened her book. It was no good torturing herself anymore. She could not give up David and go back to the misery of her life with George. She simply could not do it, and that was that. She was not of the stuff of which martyrs are made. Lucilla had done it, but then she was not Lucilla. A sacrifice like that had been easier for Lucilla than it would be for her. She was different. She felt things more than most people. “That’s what everyone thinks,” said a voice in her mind. She closed her ears to it and turned a page. She must concentrate on her book or she would go mad. Lucilla had found that if you acted a lie long enough it became reality and happiness was recaptured. What nonsense. And even if it wasn’t nonsense for some people it would be for her. She was sure she herself could only capture happiness by the way of her own choice and by no other way. She was very individual. She had more individuality than most women. “That’s what every woman thinks,” said the voice in her mind. “I’ve a right to be happy,” she thought. “What right?” asked the voice in her mind. “Why you more than your children or George?” Oh, God, thought Nadine, and flung her book on the floor.
It was at this point that Ellen, after a perfunctory knock at the door, entered in a scarlet flannelette dressing-gown.
“You’ll excuse me, madam,” said Ellen, “but I thought you’d like this,” and she held out a little pill box in her bony hand.
Nadine opened the box. Inside, carefully wrapped in cotton wool, was a little pearly tooth, decayed at the top.
“What on earth?” she demanded, slightly disgusted.
Ellen, looking quite extraordinarily like a horse, drew up a chair and sat beside the bed. She had not been invited to do so, but that did not worry her.
“You’ll excuse me coming to you like this, madam,” she said, indicating her dressing-gown, “but I’m a lot more comfortable without my corsets. I never seem able to speak my mind in corsets. Can’t seem to get enough breath to it.”
“But this, Ellen?” asked Nadine, brandishing the pill box. She herself, as she drew a little jacket trimmed with swans-down over her silk nightgown, looked lovelier than the dawn. Her curls were hidden by a lace cap and the absence of lipstick made her face look almost pathetically young. Ellen, however, was by no means softened.
“Most mothers,” she said meaningly, “keep all their little dears’ first teeth.”
“Caroline’s tooth!” exclaimed Nadine. “But it’s decayed, Ellen.”
“Not to notice,” said Ellen. “One lady I knew had all the little teeth made into a necklace.”
“How perfectly revolting,” said Nadine. But she had not the courage to hand the tooth back. She put it carefully upon her bedside table.
“A very good mother, that lady was,” said Ellen, and clutched her chair nearer.
“She must have been,” said Nadine, with sarcasm.
And then it began.
“It’s only right that I should tell you, madam,” said Ellen, “that I know of your intended marriage to Master David.”
“Indeed, Ellen,” said Nadine evenly and coldly. But she was a little startled. Ellen’s eyes were fixed on her like gimlets and the harsh grating voice rasped upon her nerves. Really, it was too bad of Lucilla to have told their private affairs to her maid.
“No one told me,” said Ellen, injured. “Not a word was said to me, though I’ve been in the family sixty years, but Master David beneath the ilex tree was telling her ladyship the while I was mending a rent in the drawing-room chintz.”
“You listened, Ellen,” said Nadine.
“No, madam,” said Ellen sternly. “It was me duty to mend the chintz and I’m not a woman to neglect me duty just because, thank God, I retain the use of me hearing.” She folded her bony hands and snorted slightly, and her nostrils quivered like those of an old war horse smelling the powder. “And a more disgraceful suggestion than you divorcing poor Master George to marry poor Master David, and separating those poor innocent children from their own loving father, and breaking the heart of her poor ladyship, who’s never done you no harm, and she getting old as she is, I never heard in all my born days, madam. You’ll excuse me speaking my mind, madam, but I’ve been in the family sixty years and I’ll not lie easy in my grave thinking of the disgrace you’ve brought upon it. Bigamy, that’s what it is, madam; bigamy, adultery and desertion. I know there are laws these days which make such things seem respectable, but what I says is more shame to them in Parliament as passes such laws. They should know better. Making white black and black white. It ain’t right; that’s what I say. They should read their bibles, madam, and a little bible-reading wouldn’t do you no harm, madam, if you’ll excuse me mentioning it.” She paused, took a breath and began again. “As for Master David, madam, well, I won’t say what I think of Master David. Spoilt, he was, as a child. I took a slipper to him time and again myself but her ladyship, she was always too soft with him. But what I says is, he’s young, and old heads can’t be expected on young shoulders, and you being many a year older than he is, madam, if you’ll forgive my saying so, should know better than to lead him into temptation. And then, madam, it seems to me it ain’t hardly right for a young man like that to marry a lady who can’t give him children; and you, madam, after the bad time you had with Miss Caroline, may not be able to
oblige in that way. Not your fault, madam, but facts is facts, and a crying shame it would be if Master David were to have no children, and he so good with them as he is. And then, madam, Master David is very fond of Damerosehay and a sad pity it would be if any little disagreeableness in the family should part him from it. Well, madam, you’ll forgive me speaking my mind, but a more disgraceful suggestion than you divorcing poor Master George and marrying poor Master David and separating those poor innocent children from their loving father—”
And so it went on. Ellen, like all her kind, could repeat herself quite indefinitely and delighted to do so. The cuckoo clock in the nursery had struck eleven just before she came in, and in no time at all it was striking half-past, and then it was midnight and still Nadine could not stem the torrent. She tried to do it over and over again but at every effort at interruption Ellen merely raised her voice a little louder and hitched her chair a little nearer. And all the time, as a background to her rasping voice, there was that distant tumult of the storm. A prisoner enduring the Chinese torture of the rhythmically falling drops of water soon goes mad. Repetition can be more exhausting than pain and the continually recurring words and phrases seemed like red-hot nails beaten into Nadine’s brain by the strokes of a hammer. “Poor Master George. Poor Master David. Poor Lady Eliot. Poor innocent children. Bigamy. Desertion. Older than he is. Disgrace to the family. You’ll excuse me speaking my mind. Poor Master George. Poor innocent children. Poor children. Children.”
And then Nadine suddenly discovered that she was alone. Ellen had at last left her and the candles were getting low. She was alone in her darkening room, lying on her face on her bed, with those terrible words and phrases like fire in her brain. She would never get them out now. She knew she would never get them out. Ellen had knocked them in too firmly. Lucilla had put them there but Ellen had knocked them in. All her life long she had believed that what she wanted it was right that she should have; she had built her life on that assumption. Now Lucilla had shaken her faith and Ellen had destroyed it. Her whole world seemed tumbling in ruins about her.