But that was all she could do. Adam’s life, behind the facade of the material comforts and elegances they shared together, was something that he longed to open to her, but could not. Sometimes, stumblingly, he tried to speak of the things that were life to him, but she did not understand. Nor could he on his side understand that the luxuries that so desperately wearied him, that he endured only because his position in the world demanded it of him, were life to her. It would have been all right, she sometimes thought, if he could have stopped loving her, if they could have settled down together into that easy indifference that is the refuge of so many ill-assorted marriages, but they could not even share indifference, and his love, increasingly of the sort that she neither understood nor wanted, bored her almost to distraction. Her dislike of the love of carnal men had, she discovered, been only a passing ennui.
Yet she did not leave him. She wanted to, several times she had almost done so, especially when he had decided that instead of moving to London, chosen as the place of retirement because she loved London, they must come to the bleak city in the fens. Over that they had a heartbreaking struggle. Adam, torn between the will of his adored wife and what he finally came to believe was the will of God, could make only the one decision. She had not understood it, and she could not forgive him, but he had a hold upon her that she could not break and she went with him to the city.
Now she was more unhappy than she had ever been. Until now her married life had been spent in places where there were at times great social occasions and her surpassing beauty could be arrayed and displayed worthily. In the little old city such social occasions as existed were boring in the extreme. Clothes were years behind the fashion and all the men who were not parsons were over seventy. And the climate did not suit her. She was not so well as she had been and not quite so beautiful. She was in a panic about her beauty and so was her husband, knowing that it was her axis. And about Elaine herself he was in anguish. He had loved her for so long, and it seemed so unavailingly, and he had not made her happy. He had, he thought, utterly failed her. He did not know what her life had been before their marriage, and so was unaware of the significance of that one fact that lay like a nugget of buried gold at the heart of their life together. She was still with him, still a woman who because of something in himself had remained through all the weary years a decent woman and a faithful wife. Those who had any affection for Adam Ayscough disliked Elaine. Even Miss Montague, who disliked no one and would have taken Elaine to her heart had that been a place where Elaine had the slightest wish to be, did not do her justice. For there had been a battle and it had been, if hardly, won.
The sermon ended at last and Elaine was aware through her whole body of her husband’s relief, his relaxation of tension. Aware too, when he had gone to his canopied stall, of the reaction of misery that took its place. He would be impossible to live with for the rest of the day now. He was never at any time a cheerful man and after a sermon his depression was as impenetrable as a fen fog. When the last hymn had been sung, and the blessing given, and the organ voluntary was pealing under the vast arches and down the shadowy aisles striped with their dusty bars of sunshine, Elaine walked slowly and gracefully toward the side door that led into the Deanery garden. One gloved hand held her rustling silk skirts raised above the contamination of dust, the other held the beautiful ivory-backed prayer book with its silver cross that her husband had given her to carry on her wedding day. It was a warmth to her chilled heart that every eye was on her, though not one of them was an eye worth having. Her way brought her past Miss Montague’s Bath chair and the old lady looked up at her with a smile, whole heartedly delighting in her beauty, even though a slightly mischievous sparkle in her eye recognized the histrionic perfection of Elaine’s exit. Elaine inclined her head graciously but coldly. She could not stand Miss Montague. Upon the rare occasions when Adam went to call on the old lady every fiber in her body knew it.
9. The Mouse
1.
EVENSONG on Sundays was at three o’clock and was sometimes followed by one of the Deanery tea parties to the elite of the Close and Worship Street. These parties on the whole gave pleasure. The sandwiches and cakes melted in the mouth, Elaine no matter how bored was always a good hostess, and the Dean’s painstaking courtesy was less alarming at his wife’s parties than at other people’s because being less shy in his own house he was also less hard of hearing. Yet at the same time there was for the guests a sense of relief when it was over and they could emerge safely from the Deanery portal without, they hoped, having appeared too ignorant and dowdy in the presence of the Dean’s vast learning and his wife’s elegance. Out in the Close there was a tendency for them all to chatter, even when they were not the chattering type. Like children let out of school the making of a joyful noise was a psychological need. A few of them felt a strong desire to go and see Miss Montague; indeed Miss Montague always knew when there had been a Deanery party because of the number of droppers-in from which she suffered. “I was passing the door, my dear. I thought I’d just look in.” She was pleased to see them, but always very tired on Sunday evenings because going to the Cathedral in her Bath chair was rather an exhausting business.
For Adam Ayscough and his wife, after their guests had gone and Garland had replenished the fire and closed the drawing-room door noiselessly upon their loneliness, there was no sense of relief. They were perhaps at their happiest together when they were entertaining, for in this they worked well as a team. Left to face the long Sunday evening together a sense of hopelessness, almost of panic, took hold of them. If Adam could have immersed himself in the Spectator Elaine could have taken her French novel and buried herself in that, but it was his habit to sit beside her on the sofa, to take her hand and stroke it maddeningly while he made heart-rending efforts to talk to her, to amuse her, to reach her at last. She longed to cry out, “You fool, there’s nothing to reach,” but that would have been to hurt him. She was almost thankful tonight to find the first light hammer strokes of one of her headaches beating on her forehead. “Adam,” she said, “I am so sorry but I have one of my heads. I think I’ll go to bed before dinner.”
He got up from the sofa in a condition of distress out of all proportion to the seriousness of her indisposition. That was another irritating thing about Adam; he got into such a ridiculous state if she ailed. “My dear, I am so sorry.” He took her in his arms, tender and clumsy, and with one heavy hand pushed the hair back from her forehead, shattering her coiffure so that she would be ashamed to face her maid when she went upstairs. “My dear, I wish you need not suffer so. I would give my right hand that you need not be always ill,” he said sadly.
She knew that he spoke the truth and she tried not to grit her teeth. “I shall be quite well in the morning,” she said. “Will you ring and tell Garland that I shall not want dinner? I will go now, Adam.”
He took his arms from her reluctantly and let her go, and rang the bell for Garland. That worthy, entering, found the Dean standing with his back to the fire, his huge form drooping disconsolately. “Mrs. Ayscough is unwell, Garland. She has gone to her room and will not take dinner.”
“I am sorry to hear it, sir,” said Garland and proceeded to deal with the familiar situation with suavity and skill. He had been with the Dean for many years and was one of the very few who had come close enough to him to love him. He was unaware of his love but he would not have left the Dean for untold gold. “What would you fancy for dinner, sir?” he asked, knowing very well that when his wife was indisposed and he himself had just preached a sermon the Dean fancied nothing. “Grilled sole, sir? A glass of white wine? A lightly baked custard settles well, sir.”
“Thank you, Garland,” said the Dean.
“It’s a nice evening, sir,” suggested Garland. A breath of fresh air always did good. And he knew what would happen if the Dean did not go out. He would sit the whole evening with the Spectator held unread before his eyes, for appearance’ sake if a servant should come in,
and worry about his wife until he could go to bed. He was a writer of scholarly books, and writing was his life line in times of distress, but on Sundays, bound by the Commandments, he could not write his book. Nor could he read the kind of book that helped him with his book because that too was work, and other books did not hold his attention when Elaine was not well. There was of course the great duty and privilege of prayer, and to prayer he most humbly believed himself to be especially called of God, but on Sunday evenings after a long day of services he found it difficult to pray. He was tired, he supposed. Garland knew all this. “A very pleasant evening indeed, sir.”
The curtains were still undrawn and the Dean looked at the evening. The trees in the Close were black and motionless against a clear sky. The moon was rising and presently there would be a blaze of stars. “I think I will take a little stroll,” he said.
“Very good, sir,” said Garland, and following the Dean out into the hall, he helped him into the cloak that he liked to wear on his lonely walks. It was an old friend and shabby now. He could not wear it when Elaine was with him. Garland noticed that he was a very bad color. He was always sallow but now his face had a leaden hue that Garland did not like at all. He had been noticing it for some while and so had Miss Montague. “Dinner can wait your convenience, sir,” he said. “Grilled sole. Baked custard. They can be prepared when you come in.” He handed the Dean his top hat and stick, opened the front door and saw him out. Then he came back to the drawing room to draw the curtains and tidy the cushions. The Dean when he came in would go to the study. The drawing-room fire which Garland had built up with such care would now be wasted, and so would the dinner which cook had prepared for two. But that was the way of it with the gentry. Their servants had to learn to accept wasted effort with equanimity.
The Dean walked slowly down the lime avenue. It was cool and quiet. Though the moon had not yet appeared from behind the Rollo tower there was a silveriness about the branches of the trees, magic in the air, a sensation as though bells that could not be heard were still ringing somewhere. There was no wind tonight and the city was silent. Over the fen the dome of the sky was quiet, vexed with no cloud rack, dark and vast. Just over the edge of the horizon the dark sea breathed gently and caressed the shore.
The Dean sat down for a moment on the seat in the lime walk where Isaac had sat, his head bent, too tired to be much aware of the beauty of the night but vaguely quieted, vaguely ashamed of his own shame. What did it matter if he was incapable of preaching a decent sermon? Why be ashamed of failure? Failure was unimportant. The fact was that mounting the pulpit steps, standing there before all those bored men and women who, like the hungry sheep in Lycidas, looked up and were not fed, had become to him a sort of symbol of the failure of his life. As priest and husband he had failed. They said he had been a good schoolmaster but he believed them to be wrong. His apparent success there had been due, he believed, solely to a formidable presence. He had always been able to impose discipline because people were afraid of him. There was of course that other thing, that power that had been given him of taking hold of an evil situation, wrestling with it, shaking it as a terrier shakes a rat until the evil fell out of it and fastened on himself. Then he carried the evil on his own shoulders to the place of prayer, carried it up a long hill in darkness, but willingly. Each time he felt himself alone, yet each time when the weight became too much for him it was shared, then lifted, as though he had never been alone. Even if there had been no hope of help he would still have been just as willing. But in that mystery nothing was his own except the willingness, and willingness in no way mitigated failure. Nothing mitigated failure except the knowledge that it did not matter. But how could he bring himself to think it did not matter that he had failed Elaine? It was impossible.
He got up abruptly and walked on through the Porta and across Worship Street. At the top of Angel Lane he stopped. The city lay at his feet, its tumbled roofs washed with moonlight, its dark walls patched with squares of orange fireglow. The men and women in the houses would have been astonished to know that the Dean knew the city like the palm of his hand. In earlier years, when he had it in his grip and most men hated him, he would go out into the streets night after night after dark, when he could not be recognized, and walk up and down there. After a month or two he knew every corner and alley as well as Miss Montague knew them. The evil was more dreadful in one street than another, and to these places he would return again and again, exposing himself to them. He would stand in dark doorways and pray there for the men and women within the shuttered houses. If he lacked the common touch, if he was not the priest he had longed to be, this at least he could do. Sometimes, trudging wearily home up the hill, he would remember Michael towering above him in the dark sky, and would be aware of some sort of communication, as though Michael asked him, “Watchman, what of the night?”
Sometimes, when he got home on moonlight nights, he would let himself into the Cathedral through his private door, that he might bring the needs of the city before God before he slept. For he loved the Cathedral as few men had ever loved it, more deeply even than William de la Torre who had built it or Prior Hugh who had died within it or Dean Peter Rollard who had been persecuted for it, or Tom Hochicorn the bedesman of the south door who thought he owned it. What it was like at night, with the moonlight piercing through the clerestory windows to illumine the great rood, and gleams of silver touching now here and now there as the clouds passed, and the rest vast darkness, only he knew. But he could not have told what he knew.
2.
Tonight, looking down at the city, he found himself thinking of one citizen only, Isaac Peabody. He had not seen him again, for when Isaac had next come to wind the Deanery clocks he had been once more at matins. He wanted to ask him if in future he could wind the clocks a little later in the morning, so that they could have a few moments’ weekly conversation together on the subject of horology, and he wanted to ask if he had in his shop a clock suitable for Elaine’s Christmas present, some lovely thing such as Miss Montague’s Lyre clock. He was always thinking of something new to give Elaine, some exquisite new thing to adorn her beauty. She always thanked him charmingly for the new jewel or the new fan but he did not often see again the treasure he had chosen for her and then he was sorry, for he knew his taste had blundered. But surely she would like a new clock. The cupid clock in the drawing room, a relic of the disaster of her French marriage, she must surely dislike. He thought it was a dreadful thing. He wondered what Peabody thought of it.
He remembered suddenly that Isaac lived in Angel Lane at number twelve. He knew because he had asked Garland. He thought he would just stroll down the lane and see which of the old houses was number twelve. He would not go in, for it would be much easier for them both if he went to the shop, but he would just see where his friend lived. He would walk past, go down the steps to the market place and then home up Worship Street.
He found the house easily. The street lamp opposite illumined the number. The front door was slightly ajar and warm light spilled itself down the two worn steps and shone diagonally across the pavement and the cobbles. It was the only open door in the street. The Dean as a boy had had a recurrent dream about a little old house in a crooked street. Two steps had led to its door, set in a small arch like this one, and always it had been a night with stars in the sky and this light spilling out over the pavement and across the cobbled street. To the boy who dreamed the dream, a small boy without a mother and as an only child much addicted to dreams, it had always seemed that something he wanted very much was inside the house but he had been too shy to push the door and go in. So he had knocked and waited. But no one had ever answered his knock. Always he had said to himself, Next time that dream comes I will push the door. Yet when next time came he was still afraid, and had knocked and waited, and then waked up. Then he had been sent to boarding school and dreams had given place to nightmares.
The Dean knocked timidly and waited, aware of laughter somewhere
in the house, but no one came, and then with that boldness of panic that can precipitate even a shy person into the wildest of actions, he pushed the door and went in. If he had not done it quickly he would, once more, have waked up. Inside the little passage he suddenly, appallingly, came to himself, but it was too late. He had lost his footing on something which slid from beneath him, and crashed into the umbrella stand and sent it flying. He had also practically lost his own balance. His top hat fell from his head and his walking stick to the floor to join the stick and the vast umbrella of the Reverend Robert Peabody.
The half-open kitchen door, through which the light had been shining, flew wide, and Isaac, Polly and Job came hurrying into the passage. The Dean was too shaken to speak. He did not know what had happened to him out there in the street and he did not know how he came to be where he was now. He had seemed to fall out of time. It was as though he had left his body for a moment or two and coming back to it again had found it not where he had thought it was. Isaac, unable to believe that he was seeing what he saw, bewildered and dumfounded, could not speak either. Job had melted back into the kitchen. Polly alone remained in command of the unusual circumstances.
She had never seen the Dean, only heard him in a rage that one time at the workhouse, and so he was to her simply an old codger who had slipped on the wool mat outside the parlor door. In the light that shone from the kitchen she thought he looked poor, ill and old and immediately, figuratively speaking, took him to her bosom. “You’ve come to see Mr. Peabody, sir?” she said. “You’re welcome. You’ve not hurt yourself? You slipped on the mat. Mr. Peabody, he’s always doing the same. Miss Peabody, she will make ’em. Let me take your cloak, sir.”