“How very kind of you,” said John. All through the disturbing affair he had been vaguely aware of her, hovering medusa-like on the outskirts of the fray. Her sallow face, her straight grey hair arranged in a snaky coil beneath her hard felt hat, her dark grey-clad figure, had sent a further chill through his already shivering body. Shock always made him icy cold. He had been deep in serious cogitation as to what on earth he could say to Miss Giles and the sudden jar of finding that he was driving a car that had collided with a greengrocery van had been a severe shock. Fumbling to lift his hat he found to his shame that his hand was shaking, then seeing the look of sick weariness on the woman’s face and the number of things she had in her shopping basket he forgot about himself. “As you see, I’m not fit to be trusted with a car,” he said, “but could I drive you anywhere with that heavy basket?”
“I live quite close, Mr. Wentworth,” she said. “At Oaklands. I teach your daughters. Won’t you come in and rest?”
“Can you possibly be Miss Giles?” asked John joyously.
“Yes,” she said, astonished to see him as warm and confident as he had hitherto been nervous and distracted. His smile flashed over his face. The woman was delivered into his hands! With what bounty and withal with what humor did heaven answer prayer. He had been praying for the right approach to Miss Giles all the time Woodcote had been pulling out his tooth. He still had no idea what he would say, or in what further ways he might be called upon to make an ass of himself, but somehow or other all these things would work together for good for this poor woman.
Beneath his joyousness he was painfully moved by her face. Looking away from her as he took her basket and opened the car door for her he saw it as he had seen Michael’s, with that strange visual gift of his which seemed to stamp a face upon the very air and sunlight, so that the light made the truth of it plain to him. The mouth was not actually cruel but it had that thin-lipped bitterness of unhappiness that has found no help anywhere, no outlet but the distillation of itself acid drop by acid drop in word and thought and act. The eyes had looked into his straightly. He thought that the mind behind the eyes would not flinch from convicting truth however unpalatable. He wanted to hear the voice again. He believed it had had beauty.
“It’s not so much rest I am in need of as a cup of tea,” he confided to her as he took his place beside her. “Should you say it was round about eleven?”
Miss Giles consulted her watch. “Six and a half minutes past,” she said.
He observed she was an accurate woman of a mathematical turn of mind; only mathematicians bothered with half minutes. Yes, the voice was musical. Mathematics and music were closely allied.
“I thought you might like a cup of tea,” she said. “That was why I waited. I recognized you, for I saw you once waiting outside Oaklands for the children. And also, Mr. Wentworth, it seems a chance for me to consult one of the parents about the difficulty we are in just now.”
“Here we are,” said John, scraping the paint off the gate post as he turned into the Oaklands drive. “And I’m entirely at your service.”
The sudden precision of his tone surprised Miss Giles. Her amused liking for the amiable muddler was infused with sudden respect; which was not lost when he stopped the car with such a jerk that her head nearly went through the windshield. He was out of the car in a moment, apologizing and helping her out in a manner that could not have been more courteous had she been a duchess. Four shallow steps led up to the front door of Oaklands and such is the power of suggestion that she walked up them as though she were a duchess, and led the way to the drawing room with an air of elegance and grace that smote John’s heart with profound compassion. Another man might have thought it merely laughable, contrasted with her shabby clothes and ravaged face, and the dusty stuffy room to which she brought him, but to John it was as though he saw a fine and delicate flower struggling for life in some airless slum. . . And an airless slum was exactly what the room was, for Annie had not touched it since Mrs. Belling had taken to her bed. Ashes of a dead fire were still in the grate and chocolate papers lay on the floor.
“Please sit down,” said Miss Giles, “and I’ll ring for Annie to bring some tea.”
He sat down, struggling with a hideous depression. It had been a delight to find Miss Giles but, as usual, his joy had been short-lived. Never had he felt so utterly inadequate, such an abysmal failure as he felt in this room. He had been in it once before, upon some gala occasion when there had been fresh flowers in the vases and a bright fire in the grate, and such a concourse of clean children and proud parents that the room itself could not emerge. Now he saw it and felt it; sluggish, unclean and deceitful.
“This is a horrible room,” he said in a quick whisper to Miss Giles.
“It’s a vile room,” she agreed, also in a whisper, and then they both started guiltily as Annie came in.
John looked at Annie pitifully as Miss Giles ordered the tea. He had seldom seen a more slovenly maidservant, and she obeyed Miss Giles insolently, on the verge of rebellion. Yet she did not disgust him as the room did. However much the weakness of one human spirit may be dominated by the strength of another it retains somewhere its own wavering individuality, but a room takes the stamp of its owner as helplessly and surely as soft wax. He hated the room but not Annie.
“Poor woman,” he murmured to Miss Giles when she had gone.
“She can be managed,” said Miss Giles, aloud this time and in a grating voice that had lost its beauty. John started and looked at her. Since their meeting until this moment she had been relaxed and softened, now she was taut with anguished control. He felt her strength, but it was less than the strength that had so long inhabited this vile deceitful room and it was now very nearly exhausted.
“What a time you must have had,” he said, “holding things together here. Trying to give the children some sort of an education, impose some sort of discipline. Well, you’ve an ally now in Miss O’Hara.”
“I don’t suppose she’ll stay,” said Miss Giles bleakly. “They never do.”
“Why do you stay?” he asked.
“Partly because at my age I’m afraid of not getting another job,” said Miss Giles, ‘‘but chiefly because I’m accustomed to it here. You must think that very odd.”
“No,” said John. “You’re a sick woman. In a state of physical weakness it’s so much easier to function in the groove you know. It seems to hold you together. I know. I’d be terrified now if I had to cease to be vicar of Belmaray.”
“Yet surely that’s work you love,” said Miss Giles.
“Yes,” said John. “You’re right. Our conditions don’t really bear comparison. And I make such a mess of my job and you do yours so well.”
“No,” said Miss Giles. “I’ve become embittered. One can admit no worse failure than that, can one?”
“I think so,” said John. “Embitterment shows a failure of humor, of humility, but not necessarily of tenacity. If you still know how to hold on you can still redeem what’s lost.”
“Even love?” said Miss Giles. “I detest the children now.”
“Children are frequently detestable,” agreed John equably.
“I have been cruel to your daughter Margary,” said Miss Giles, two red spots showing unbecomingly on her cheek bones.
“Yes, I know,” said John, and then said no more because Annie came in with the tea, and he sprang up and took the heavy tray from her, putting it down on a table beside Miss Giles; crooked, so that the milk slopped over. By the time Annie had fetched a cloth and mopped it up, and accepted his embarrassed apologies, she was his friend for life.
“It was not Margary who told me,” he went on when Annie had gone. “She would never have told me. She has her own kind of strength.”
“Yes, she has, and if I had not lost the power of love I think I should now be finding Margary the most lovable child in the school,”
said Miss Giles. She spoke in a tone of flat despair and then said, “Mr. Wentworth, you must dislike me very much.”
“No,” said John. “And yet, Margary being my child, I’m astonished that I don’t.” He suddenly smiled at her. “You know, Miss Giles, you’re all wrong about yourself. People who have lost the power of love don’t grieve over its apparent loss. They don’t grieve over anything. If you’ve lost the power of love you’ve lost the power of grief. Hold on and the tide will turn.”
“Hold on to what?” asked Miss Giles.
“To grief,” said John.
Miss Giles was silent. “I’ve never done that,” she said at last. “I mean, I’ve never welcomed anything difficult or painful. I’ve always resented it and hit back. I can see now that to have welcomed the slings and arrows might have been to welcome love.”
“There’s never any ‘might have been’ with those who retain the power of grief and the power of tenacity,” said John.
Miss Giles got up, walked to the window and opened it, so that the spring air flooded into the stuffy room. “Why didn’t I do that before?” she wondered. “Because Mrs. Belling always keeps this window shut I forgot it could open. It’s a lovely day.”
She stood by the window, looking at the day with astonished recognition, as though she had not seen an English spring for twenty years. John thought that possibly she hadn’t. Beauty awakened such intolerable longing that people often shut their eyes to it, unaware that the longing was the greatest treasure that they had, their very lifeline, uniting the country of their lost innocence with the heavenly country for which their sails were set. He dared not move or speak while she took hold of her lifeline again. When she turned round and came back it was with an air of bewilderment, as though the familiar groove had for the moment eluded her.
“What was it you wanted to ask me about?” he said gently.
She looked at him gratefully, glad to be steered back to her groove again. As Daphne had done she had felt within her that tremor of anticipation with which the human spirit acknowledges the shadow of coming change. Things seem the same and yet one is aware that they will not be the same for very much longer. There may seem no reason for change, one may not even wish for it, yet the shadow is there, and in it familiar objects seem for a moment or two to be floating away, as though in a dream that will soon vanish. Ahead there is nothingness, behind a dream. The moment has its fear and one can be glad when the dream hardens into reality again, however ugly the reality may be.
“It’s Mrs. Belling,” she said. “It’s difficult to know what to do about her and what to do about the school.”
“Is she ill?” asked John.
“Not exactly ill. We think she may have had a slight stroke, though we don’t know for certain because she won’t see a doctor. Physically she seems to have recovered, but mentally she is very odd. She is in bed and won’t get up. She won’t exert herself in any way at all.”
“In what way did she previously exert herself?” asked John.
Miss Giles wondered if he intended sarcasm, but when she looked at him he was only wanting to know.
“She sat in this room as headmistress of Oaklands,” said Miss Giles. “She had a queer strength. Oaklands is Mrs. Belling.”
“Yes,” said John.
“This term is nearly finished,” said Miss Giles, “But the Easter holidays are short and what are we to do next term? Miss O’Hara and I can hardly take her authority from her and run the school as our own.”
“It’s a little difficult for me to give advice about next term,” said John, “because my wife and I are not sending the children back next term.”
Miss Giles looked at him. “You’re quite right,” she said. “Oaklands is not the best place for them. Nor am I the best teacher for them.”
“If you were headmistress of Oaklands I would not take them away,” said John. “In your own school I believe you would be an excellent headmistress.”
“You cannot believe that,” said Miss Giles. “Not after what I’ve told you.”
“I would not have believed it if you had not told me what you did,” said John. “But I can believe every possible good of anyone possessed of the power of self-knowledge.”
“And so of grief?” she asked.
“It’s always a grief,” he acknowledged. “It’s the very grief that makes you turn your eyes to where perfection is, and thankfully love that because you cannot love the other. But we’re getting away from your groove. What are you to do about next term? I’ve no idea. Couldn’t you wait until next term to see what to do about it?”
“Mr. Wentworth, you don’t understand. Mrs. Belling won’t do anything. She won’t answer letters. She won’t even sign a cheque. How can we engage the new matron we need so badly? How can we pay the tradesmen or even get our own salaries paid?”
“It’s certainly very awkward,” agreed John. “Is Entwistle her lawyer?”
“I don’t know,” said Miss Giles. “She has always been secretive about such things.”
“He’s sure to be,” said John. “He’s the only solicitor in Silverbridge. I’ll talk to him. Can the vicar make anything of her?”
“She won’t let him try,” said Miss Giles. “He called but she would not see him.”
“He should just have opened the door and walked in,” said John.
“Would you like to do that?” suggested Miss Giles.
John was on his feet in a panic. “Miss Giles, I couldn’t. Besides, she’s the vicar’s preserve.”
“If it comes to that I suppose I am too,” said Miss Giles, “but you didn’t think it poaching to help me.”
“That’s a different thing,” said John. “And I didn’t come here to preach to you, but to tell you that you were tormenting my child. And then you told me you had been unkind to her and so I saw you no longer were. I had to say something and so I preached, because that’s my groove.”
“Were you coming to see me?” asked Miss Giles.
“I was,” said John. “I was coming to see you when I ran into Entwistle. I must go now, Miss Giles, I really must. I must go and see Entwistle. He’s your man. But I’m your man if you ever want to start a school of your own. I’ll back you in every way I can. Good-bye, Miss Giles. Thanks for the tea.”
Before Miss Giles knew it he had fled. She heard his efforts to get his car started, and then the bumping and creaking as it jerked itself down the drive and out into the road. She leaned back in her chair and laughed, and then suddenly cried; tears of quite unexplainable relief and joy. The approaching change had ceased to be a shadow and became a beam of light. The future was just as obscure but it had no darkness in it.
3
The day that had dawned for John with a music and a beauty that would never be forgotten was closing for Michael in much the same manner. “Remember it,” he said to himself. “Remember this room, the mist upon the field and the evening star, the thrush singing and the voice of the river below the hill. Remember the flames of the candles, the books and the white page under your hand. When you go back you can take this with you. Remember it. Nothing is lost that is stamped upon memory. You may lose it for the time being, you may go mad and curse and rave, but what has once entered into memory is never effaced. Madness passes, memory does not. It is one of the things which is given back to be your heaven or hell. Take this and be thankful, for there will be plenty of hell for you in the place of judgment. That’s what judgment is; memory. You remember every shameful thing you ever did, every cruel word you ever spoke. The hooded figures behind the hedge will keep up with you right to the end, and then crowd in upon you and you’ll see their foul faces at last. You’ll be the victim then, for your own words will wound you and your own actions choke you. That’s hell, and you’ll not endure it and live if there’s not a sweetness in the air from another’s forgiveness and your own remorse, and hills in the d
istance touched with this light of beauty recognized, accepted and adored.”
He laid down his pen and took his hand from the page where he had just written the last word of a shockingly bad poem. He leaned back in his chair and let what he looked at do with him what it would. It chose to take from him all consciousness of himself, reducing him to the apparent nothingness of vision only. He was in the small book-lined study that he had seen from the field on the day of his arrival, but he did not know it. He only knew the room, dusky, and smelling of the old volumes on the shelves, of the wallflowers under the window and the wax of the candles that had nearly burned away in the candlesticks on the table. The table was old oak, black like dark water, and the light of the candles swam in it. The blue and yellow flames were so small, vanishing in wisps of smoke, yet they lit the gold lettering on the backs of the old brown books and showed a ruby glow from floor to ceiling where the curtains hung on either side of the two windows; torn and stained old velvet curtains by daylight, by candlelight sculptured pillars of red stone. The light of the candles guttered and died, the room with them. Michael, looking from the shadows, knew now not the room but the loveliness of the world beyond the windows.
Looking west he faced the afterglow of the sunset. The mist was rising upon the field in smoke-grey swathes but above it the sky was barred with rose and amethyst, melting into the deep cool blue of late evening. There was a tall old thorn tree growing on a hillock in the field and its trunk and branches were black against the strangeness of the muted color, and just above its highest branch shone the evening star. The tree looked strange too, like the fantastic figure of some bent old man, but the thrush was singing in it without fear. Michael moved further and further out from his lost self. He was the mist upon the field, the old black thorn tree, the bird singing, the evening star, and the light of the rising moon. He was the man walking towards him, the old bent man leaning on a stick. . . He seemed to be moving out of the room and walking to meet himself.