“What shall we do?” asked David.
Sebastian looked up and saw him standing by the fire. His eyes were those of a bewildered child, and he had spoken like a child.
“Do?” asked Sebastian, startled.
“If I have judged your silence rightly, you will not want to stay on in this house,” said David. “I should not have told you. It was difficult to know what to do.”
Sebastian realized that he had been silent for much longer than he knew. The mind has pits. But he was no longer swinging over the abyss. There was ground under his feet and an extraordinary increase of strength in his body. He sat up and took a grip upon himself. They were in country that was dangerous for David. The nearness of birth and death had brought them to a borderland where he was at home, but not David.
“Do?” he said again. “Have some common sense. Put another log on that fire. Sit down and light another cigarette. What you have told me has certainly given me the explanation that I wanted, but it’s done a great deal more than that. It has not only explained my dislike, but transformed it into the exact opposite. I expect that’s always the way when half-knowledge becomes true understanding. Half-knowledge is the breeding ground for error. I doubt if you can separate true understanding from love.”
“I don’t think I know what you are talking about,” said David. He had obeyed Sebastian’s commands and looked himself again, though tired and confused.
“It is extremely difficult to put it into words,” said Sebastian. “Not long ago Lady Eliot said to me, ‘I am glad you love David.’ Women can say these things without embarrassment. At the time I had no answer to make to that. But the old have prevision.”
“I have taken in the sense of what you say,” said David slowly. “The egocentric are not capable either of much hatred or of much love, but as far as I am capable of either, I feel them both at this moment. It is myself whom I hate.”
“In that case half-knowledge has bred error in you, too,” said Sebastian. “Men of your type, and my type, should never fight a war. We see too far for sanity but not far enough for understanding. If your wife and children had been killed in one of the raids on London, you would have seen that as the work of one man only. I don’t doubt you saw the bombing of Hamburg as the work of one man only, and that yourself. You saw far enough to recognize instinctively the oneness of men in their guilt. I was able at one time to see the oneness of men in their pain. Neither of us saw far enough to see the oneness of the guilt and the pain. But there is such a union. Men have a union with each other which makes them in very truth one man, each of them members of one body. You cannot divide your hatred and love between yourself and me when there is no division between us.”
David moved restlessly. “All the same, in the one body there is division between the hand and the foot,” he said. “The hand can be white and shapely and the foot dark and ugly with disease.” He stopped, struggling for words, and Sebastian waited patiently. “The undivided being is in pain because of the deformity, sees it and is in grief. When that bright beam of seeing touches the darkness, then the darkness sees itself for what it is. Self-hatred is torment then, but what else is possible?”
“I have been harping on unity,” said Sebastian, “but there are divisions that must be harped on, too. If a sick man identified himself with his cancer he would lose his reason. Instead he offers himself to the surgeon’s knife—that beam of light you spoke of—in faith and hope.”
“Many of us are responsible for our sickness,” said David grimly.
“Certainly,” said Sebastian. “And so for the sickness of the world. If we seek our own healing, it is also for the healing of the world.” His voice, even and quiet, changed suddenly to a queer note of panic. “But, my God, the cost of it! The fear of the knife and of the pain.”
“Why are you afraid?” asked David. “For you, it is almost over.”
“In this world, yes,” said Sebastian. “Perhaps it was your fear I shared just then. But there’s a way to endure that makes it bearable.”
“What?” asked David.
“You know,” said Sebastian.
“Yes, after tonight, I know,” said David. “That piercing light—increasingly to love it. Already, a little, I think I’ve welcomed it. And we are not alone. The same for us all. The same light.”
“You feel alone,” said Sebastian. “That’s the essence of it.”
“Yet you know that what you feel is not the truth,” said David. “And it’s the knowledge that matters.”
“You’re lucky, for you start with it,” said Sebastian. “I endured in ignorance. I had heard, but I did not know.”
“Yet it’s the same in the end,” said David.
“Yes,” said Sebastian. “But it’s a bitter journey when knowledge comes so late.”
“That’s another mystery,” said David. “Why early for one and late for another?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” said Sebastian,
“All part of it, perhaps,” said David. “You endure without conscious knowledge up to the point when you can do so no longer. For my weakness, that point has come early. To your strength it came late.”
“I don’t know,” said Sebastian.
David looked at him and got up. “It’s late,” he said. “And it’s been the most exhausting day. I’ll come up with you.”
“You will be sitting up alone?” asked Sebastian. “Would you rather be alone? I could stay.”
“You could not,” said David, smiling. “And if I can’t be with Sally, I’d rather be alone. Not that I ever feel alone here. When you have lived almost all your life in the same house it becomes good company. And so do all the people who lived here. I’ll give you an arm up out of that chair.”
“I wish I knew about them,” said Sebastian. “I have been very much aware of their fortitude.”
“I’ll tell you about them as we go upstairs,” said David. “Christopher Martin, Aramanthe and Jeremy. The Eliots. And now you.”
“I have not lived here,” said Sebastian.
“You have,” said David. “If you’d only been here a week, you’d still have lived at Damerosehay. You know what I mean. In the future the discerning will be just as aware of you as you are aware of Christopher Martin. He was a sailor whose ship was wrecked on the marshes a hundred years ago. That overmantel was made out of some of the ship’s carving. And you know that old cornfield that you pass on the road through the marshes, not the one on the inland side of the lane that is sown and reaped each year, but the one in the marsh? The ship had a cargo of grain and that queer tough corn has sprung up every year since the ship was wrecked there.”
“ ‘Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die,’ ” Sebastian remembered. There were so many kinds of death, and probably the one he had chosen tonight was one of the easiest. But it would not be unproductive. Though he knew nothing else about it, he was sure of that. He heard not a word more about Christopher Martin, Aramanthe and Jeremy, though he did hear the music of David’s voice telling their story. He did not suppose that David imagined he was listening. The story was merely a ruse to disguise the fact that he was more or less carrying him upstairs.
Yet at his own door he straightened himself and spoke with astonishing vigor. “I am very glad,” he said, “that I saw your Lear. Yet it’s not Lear who speaks the most perfect line in the play; that command that one remembers. Good night.”
David found himself looking at a door that had been quietly closed in his face. He put out his hand to turn the handle and go in, for he wanted to help Sebastian to bed and do all he could for him. Looking after himself might be just the last thing that would be too much. But the door seemed to face him with a blank refusal.
“O, let him pass! he hates him much that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer.”
His hand fell from the door and he t
urned away.
CHAPTER
19
— 1 —
Lucilla that evening went to bed even earlier than Meg and Robin and when Margaret had bathed them they had their milk and rusks in her room, sitting in two little chairs at a small table set before the crackling fire of wood and fir-cones, that had been lit for the occasion in the basket grate, and she lay against her piled-up pillows and watched them. She had been expecting an evening of anxiety, thinking of her dear old George, but, contrary to her expectations, she was enjoying the children. She knew it was completely shocking that she should be able to enjoy anything when George was so critically ill that there was no sort of certainty that he would be alive tomorrow, but she was not shocked. She had lived so long that she was well aware that these moments of respite were a normal part of anxiety or grief. They were like the periods of cessation of pain that came in childbirth, when one fell exhaustedly asleep and then woke again to more pain. She had learned to welcome them and make the most of them, even if they came at quite unsuitable moments, for they did not last long.
She did not often see the children after their baths, and the sight enchanted her; they were so downy, so rosy, so sweet-smelling and roundabout. Even Meg looked fat in a bunchy blue dressing-gown over rose-pink pyjamas, with her hair very smooth and shining after its brushing, her cheeks flushed with the warmth of the fire and distended with rusk. Mouse, asleep in front of the fire, had buttoned herself up into a round ball, with her tail over her nose. Robin, fat at any time, looked completely circular in a scarlet dressing gown that had once belonged to Jerry. It gaped between the buttons, Jerry having been a slim child, much in the fashion of Mrs. Wilkes’s jumpers. His cheeks were as scarlet as the dressing-gown and his riotous damp curls shone like burnished copper. He absorbed his milk with loud noises, taking both hands to it, his head tipped back and his mug over his nose. He had kicked off his bedroom shoes and his toes wriggled with pleasure. When he had finished he emerged, panting with the effort, and smiled at his great-grandmother, his dimples and his two teeth engagingly prominent. Then he reached for a teaspoon and scooped up the sugar at the bottom of his mug, but there wasn’t as much of it as there might have been. “More,” he commanded, and Meg handed him her mug to be similarly dealt with. Margaret, entering at this moment, Lucilla drew attention to the episode with a movement of her head.
“So fortunate,” she said, “that Christopher should be of the sex he is. Another Lord of Creation in the nursery will do His Highness no harm.”
“He’s started,” said Margaret. “Mrs. Wilkes has just rung up.”
“Already!” ejaculated Lucilla. “What a hurry he’s in! How is my darling Sally?”
“Very placid,” said Margaret. “Mrs. Wilkes says she likes being in her own home.”
Lucilla had no comment to make upon this, for her views were already well known to her daughter. Instead she said, “How safe the room looks, Margaret.”
Margaret looked round the dainty little room, fire-lit and curtained with flowering chintz against the evening chill. With its four-poster, flounced dressing-table, bow-fronted chest of drawers, and religious pictures of lost sheep and angels with lilies that Lucilla had had since childhood, it did not seem to belong to this unsafe world at all. And neither did Lucilla, sitting up in bed with a square of old lace draped over her white hair. And neither did the children, lapped in a security of rosy warmth that appeared inviolable and eternal because the room was four-square and the curtains were drawn and outside was the deep quiet of the country. Margaret sighed, aware of illusion, and seemed to see the little room like a colored ball spinning alone through the vast night, gallant but no bigger than a drop of dew shaken off the petal of a flower. She was not used to such fancies and it gave her what Lucilla’s old maid Ellen used to call “a turn.” Well, but it was like that. And so were they all. The mystery that surrounded one’s small span of life was at times quite terrible to bear.
“Let them come, Margaret,” said Lucilla. “And let them go. With equal quietness.”
“Who, Mother?” asked Margaret, startled.
“Moments like these.”
“I thought you meant—people,” said Margaret. “Those who are born and those who die.”
“Well, so I might have done,” said Lucilla. “We should not hold possessively to either. Though I doubt, Margaret, if I practise what I preach. Have these children said their prayers?”
“No,” said Margaret. “Hearing the children say their prayers has always been your prerogative.”
She spoke without bitterness, yet Lucilla felt reproached. For so many years they had worked together for the children, the grandchildren and now the great-grandchildren, and Margaret had been like the foundation of the house, not remembered unless deliberately thought about, while she had been like the decorative bits that would have made a poor showing but for the hidden strength below.
“Margaret,” she said, “looking back when we are old, I wonder if we really know whom we’ve loved best through our lives?”
“Surely we do,” said Margaret. “With you it’s been Maurice and David.”
“So I’ve always imagined,” said Lucilla. “But now I’m not sure. I believe when I am dying I shall only think of you.”
Margaret went white and then went scarlet. She clasped her knobbly hands together in a most ungainly manner as she fought for words.
“Don’t bother with them,” said Lucilla. “You’ve never been any good at them. You’ve never really been any good at anything, Margaret, except laying yourself down as a foundation stone. Now take away the children’s dirty mugs and plates and get my Bengers ready, and then come back with it and take them to bed. Then you’ll have to feed the dog. I’ll want a hot bottle later, and you’ll have the stove to see to and the breakfast to lay ready for the morning. I’ll have mine in bed, of course. You will have to wait up because Hilary will be ringing up about George, but you can get on with the mending while you wait. I don’t know what time you’ll get to bed, and I shall probably get you up with indigestion in the night, and so will the children, and possibly the dog. I know I reproach you sometimes with doing unnecessary work, but that’s only because I know how much there is that is necessary. I won’t go on, Margaret, because I’m getting breathless, but I’m sure you know what I mean.”
Margaret took the children’s tray and fled precipitately, Mouse waking up to follow her.
“Mouse is very fond of Aunt Margaret,” said Meg.
“Providence saw fit to bestow more sense on dogs than men,” said Lucilla. “I’ve always thought it a pity, but one must not question the ways of providence.”
“What does providence mean?” asked Meg.
“Good management,” said Lucilla. “It’s also a name we give to God when His management is not what ours would have been under the circumstances. Don’t listen to me, darling. I talk nonsense at this time of night. Kneel down, both of you, and let me hear you say your prayers.”
Meg knelt down instantly, folded her hands, as always, upon the second button of her dressing-gown counting from the top, and shut her eyes. Robin flopped to the floor with a deep sigh, sat back on his heels and scratched his head. Meg was naturally pious but Robin was not.
Lucilla regarded him severely. “Kneel right up, Robin,” she commanded sharply.
Meg opened her eyes to defend him. “He’s so young, Grandmother,” she said. “He doesn’t know any words yet.”
“Words are unnecessary in prayer,” said Lucilla. “Reverence is. Kneel up, Robin. Shut your eyes and fold your hands. If you can’t I won’t give you a sugared almond.”
“Two?” cajoled Robin.
“One,” said Lucilla.
“Two,” said Robin, and rolled over on his back with his legs in the air.
Lucilla began to feel very tired, but for the sake of the child’s immortal soul she could not be
beaten. “One,” she said. “And if you don’t do as you’re told I’ll telephone for Daddy to come and spank you in the morning.”
Robin knew Daddy’s spankings. He’d had one yesterday. He knelt up, clasped his hands on his stomach (the third button counting down), bent his head and shut his eyes. His long lashes lay gently on his flushed cheeks, casting an entrancing shadow, and one red curl flopped over his forehead. Lucilla was sure that a sweeter picture of piety was not to be seen even in heaven. Meg began to pray very quickly, while it lasted, leaving out the middle verses of “Loving Shepherd” and concentrating on the first and last. She and Mummy had decided that that was best on Robin’s wicked evenings.
“Amen,” she said.
“ ’Men,” said Robin, scrambling to his feet. “Shoogar mond?”
Lucilla reached for her black velvet bag and took out a silver box. For an incredible number of years this same box had contained sugared almonds for the grandchildren, and she had hardly been able to bear it when during the war they became unobtainable. She was a conservative born and bred, but she would say for the Labour government that under its aegis sugared almonds had come back upon the market. She took out a mauve one for Meg and a pink one for Robin, and they sat on her bed sucking and smiling at her, until Margaret was heard coming upstairs with the Bengers.
“Good night, my darlings,” said Lucilla. “I am very sorry for all those poor old ladies who have no great-grandchildren.”