"Dans la première auberge
_J'eus b'en bu_!"
sang I in a little voice.
"Quite right," said Lord Lathkill. "You're quite right."
And we sent the port round.
"This house," I said, "needs a sort of Spring cleaning."
"You're quite right," said Lord Lathkill.
"There's a bit of a dead smell!" said I. "We need Bacchus, and Eros, to
sweeten it up, to freshen it."
"You think Bacchus and Eros?" said Lord Lathkill, with complete
seriousness; as if one might have telephoned for them.
"In the best sense," said I. As if we were going to get them from
Fortnum and Mason's, at least.
"What exactly is the best sense?" asked Lord Lathkill.
"Ah! The flame of life! There's a dead smell here."
The Colonel fingered his glass with thick, inert fingers, uneasily.
"Do you think so?" he said, looking up at me heavily.
"Don't you?"
He gazed at me with blank, glazed blue eyes, that had deathly yellow
stains underneath. Something was wrong with him, some sort of breakdown.
He should have been a fat, healthy, jolly old boy. Not very old either:
probably not quite sixty. But with this collapse on him, he seemed,
somehow, to smell.
"You know," he said, staring at me with a sort of gruesome challenge,
then looking down at his wine, "there's more things than we're aware of,
happening to us!" He looked up at me again, shutting his full lips under
his little grey moustache, and gazing with a glazed defiance.
"Quite!" said I.
He continued to gaze at me with glazed, gruesome defiance.
"Ha!" He made a sudden movement, and seemed to break up, collapse and
become brokenly natural. "There, you've said it. I married my wife when
I was a kid of twenty."
"Mrs. Hale?" I exclaimed.
"Not this one"--he jerked his head towards the door--"my first wife."
There was a pause; he looked at me with shamed eyes, then turned his
wine-glass round and his head dropped. Staring at his twisting glass, he
continued: "I married her when I was twenty, and she was twenty-eight.
You might say, she married me. Well, there it was! We had three
children--I've got three married daughters--and we got on all right. I
suppose she mothered me, in a way. And I never thought a thing. I was
content enough, wasn't tied to her apron strings, and she never asked
questions. She was always fond of me, and I took it for granted. I took
it for granted. Even when she died--I was away in Salonika--I took it
for granted, if you understand me. It was part of the rest of
things--war--life--death. I knew I should feel lonely when I got back.
Well, then I got buried--shell dropped, and the dug-out caved in--and
that queered me. They sent me home. And the minute I saw the Lizard
light--it was evening when we got up out of the Bay--I realised that
Lucy had been waiting for me. I could feel her there, at my side, more
plainly than I feel you now. And do you know, at that moment I woke up
to her, and she made an awful impression on me. She seemed, if you get
me, tremendously powerful, important; everything else dwindled away.
There was the Lizard light blinking a long way off, and that meant home.
And all the rest was my wife, Lucy: as if her skirts filled all the
darkness. In a way, I was frightened; but that was because I couldn't
quite get myself into line. I felt: _Good God_! _I never knew her_! And
she was this tremendous thing! I felt like a child, and as weak as a
kitten. And, believe me or not, from that day to this she's never left
me. I know quite well she can hear what I'm saying. But she'll let me
tell you. I knew that at dinner-time."
"But what made you marry again?" I said.
"She made me!" He went a trifle yellow on his cheek-bones. "I could feel
her telling me, '_Marry_! _Marry_!' Lady Lathkill had messages from her
too; she was her great friend in life. I didn't think of marrying. But
Lady Lathkill had the same message, that I must marry. Then a medium
described the girl, in detail: my present wife. I knew her at once,
friend of my daughters. After that the messages became more insistent,
waking me three and four times in the night. Lady Lathkill urged me to
propose, and I did it, and was accepted. My present wife was just
twenty-eight, the age Lucy had been----"
"How long ago did you marry the present Mrs. Hale?"
"A little over a year ago. Well, I thought I had done what was required
of me. But directly after the wedding, such a state of terror came over
me--perfectly unreasonable--I became almost unconscious. My present wife
asked me if I was ill, and I said I was. We got to Paris. I felt I was
dying. But I said I was going out to see a doctor, and I found myself
kneeling in a church. Then I found peace--and Lucy. She had her arms
round me, and I was like a child at peace. I must have knelt there for a
couple of hours, in Lucy's arms. I _never_ felt like that when I was
alive: why, I couldn't stand that sort of thing! It's all come on
after--after----And now, I daren't offend Lucy's spirit. If I do, I
suffer tortures till I've made peace again, till she folds me in her
arms. Then I can live. But she won't let me go near the present Mrs.
Hale. I--I--I daren't go near her."
He looked up at me with fear, and shame, and shameful secrecy, and a
sort of gloating showing in his unmanned blue eyes. He had been talking
as if in his sleep.
"Why did your dead wife urge you to marry again?" I said.
"I don't know," he replied. "I don't know. She was older than I was, and
all the cleverness was on her side. She was a very clever woman, and I
was never much in the intellectual line, myself. I just took it for
granted she liked me. She never showed jealousy, but I think now,
perhaps she was jealous all the time, and kept it under. I don't know. I
think she never felt quite straight about having married me. It seems
like that. As if she had something on her mind. Do you know, while she
was alive, I never gave it a thought. And now I'm aware of nothing else
but her. It's as if her spirit wanted to live in my body, or at any
rate--I don't know----"
His blue eyes were glazed, almost fishy, with fear and gloating shame.
He had a short nose, and full, self-indulgent lips, and a once-comely
chin. Eternally a careless boy of thirteen. But now, care had got him in
decay.
"And what does your present wife say?" I asked.
He poured himself some more wine.
"Why," he replied, "except for her, I shouldn't mind so much. She says
nothing. Lady Lathkill has explained everything to her, and she agrees
that--that--a spirit from the other side is more important than mere
pleasure--you know what I mean. Lady Lathkill says that this is a
preparation for my next incarnation, when I am going to serve Woman, and
help Her to take Her place."
He looked up again, trying to be proud in his shame.
"Well, what a damned curious story!" exclaimed Lord Lathkill. "Mother's
idea for herself--she had it in a message too--is that she is coming on
earth the next time to save the animals from the cruelty of man. That's
why she hates meat at table, or anything that has to be killed."
"And does Lady Lathkill encourage you in this business with your dead
wife?" said I.
"Yes. She helps me. When I get as you might say at cross purposes with
Lucy--with Lucy's spirit, that is--Lady Lathkill helps to put it right
between us. Then I'm all right, when I know I'm loved."
He looked at me stealthily, cunningly.
"Then you're all wrong," said I, "surely."
"And do you mean to say," put in Lord Lathkill, "that you don't live
with the present Mrs. Hale at all? Do you mean to say you never _have_
lived with her?"
"I've got a higher claim on me," said the unhappy Colonel.
"My God!" said Lord Lathkill.
I looked in amazement: the sort of chap who picks up a woman and has a
good time with her for a week, then goes home as nice as pie, and now
look at him! It was obvious that he had a terror of his black-browed new
wife, as well as of Lucy's spirit. A devil and a deep sea with a
vengeance!
"A damned curious story!" mused Lord Lathkill. "I'm not so sure I like
it. Something's wrong somewhere. We shall have to go upstairs."
"Wrong!" said I. "Why, Colonel, don't you turn round and quarrel with
the spirit of your first wife, fatally and finally, and get rid of her?"
The Colonel looked at me, still diminished and afraid, but perking up a
bit, as we rose from table.
"How would you go about it?" he said.
"I'd just face her, wherever she seemed to be, and say: '_Lucy, go to
Blazes_!'"
Lord Lathkill burst into a loud laugh, then was suddenly silent as the
door noiselessly opened, and the dowager's white hair and pointed
uncanny eyes peered in, then entered.
"I think I left my papers in here, Luke," she murmured.
"Yes, mother. There they are. We're just coming up."
"Take your time."
He held the door, and ducking forward, she went out again, clutching
some papers. The Colonel had blenched yellow on his cheek-bones.
We went upstairs to the small drawing-room.
"You were a long time," said Carlotta, looking in all our faces. "Hope
the coffee's not cold. We'll have fresh if it is."
She poured out, and Mrs. Hale carried the cups. The dark young woman
thrust out her straight, dusky arm, offering me sugar, and gazing at me
with her unchanging, yellow-brown eyes. I looked back at her, and being
clairvoyant in this house, was conscious of the curves of her erect
body, the sparse black hairs there would be on her strong-skinned dusky
thighs. She was a woman of thirty, and she had had a great dread, lest
she should never marry. Now she was as if mesmerised.
"What do you do usually in the evenings?" I said.
She turned to me as if startled, as she nearly always did when
addressed.
"We do nothing," she replied. "Talk; and sometimes Lady Lathkill reads."
"What does she read?"
"About spiritualism."
"Sounds pretty dull."
She looked at me again, but she did not answer. It was difficult to get
anything out of her. She put up no fight, only remained in the same
swarthy, passive, negative resistance. For a moment I wondered that no
men made love to her: it was obvious they didn't. But then, modern young
men are accustomed to being attracted, flattered, impressed: they expect
an effort to please. And Mrs. Hale made none: didn't know how. Which for
me was her mystery. She was passive, static, locked up in a resistant
passivity that had fire beneath it.
Lord Lathkill came and sat by us. The Colonel's confession had had an
effect on him.
"I'm afraid," he said to Mrs. Hale, "you have a thin time here."
"Why?" she asked.
"Oh, there is so little to amuse you. Do you like to dance?"
"Yes," she said.
"Well, then," he said, "let us go downstairs and dance to the Victrola.
There are four of us. You'll come, of course?" he said to me.
Then he turned to his mother.
"Mother, we shall go down to the morning-room and dance. Will you come
too? Will you. Colonel?"
The dowager gazed at her son.
"I will come and look on," she said.
"And I will play the pianola, if you like," volunteered the Colonel.
We went down, and pushed aside the chintz chairs and the rugs. Lady
Lathkill sat in a chair, the Colonel worked away at the pianola. I
danced with Carlotta, Lord Lathkill with Mrs. Hale.
A quiet soothing came over me, dancing with Carlotta. She was very still
and remote, and she hardly looked at me. Yet the touch of her was
wonderful, like a flower that yields itself to the morning. Her warm,
silken shoulder was soft and grateful under my hand, as if it knew me
with that second knowledge which is part of one's childhood, and which
so rarely blossoms again in manhood and womanhood. It was as if we had
known each other perfectly, as children, and now, as man and woman, met
in the full, further sympathy. Perhaps, in modern people, only after
long suffering and defeat, can the naked intuition break free between
woman and man.
She, I knew, let the strain and the tension of all her life depart from
her then, leaving her nakedly still, within my arm. And I only wanted to
be with her, to have her in my touch.
Yet after the second dance she looked at me, and suggested that she
should dance with her husband. So I found myself with the strong,
passive shoulder of Mrs. Hale under my hand, and her inert hand in mine,
as I looked down at her dusky, dirty-looking neck--she wisely avoided
powder. The duskiness of her mesmerised body made me see the faint dark
sheen of her thighs, with intermittent black hairs. It was as if they
shone through the silk of her mauve dress, like the limbs of a half-wild
animal, that is locked up in its own helpless dumb winter, a prisoner.
She knew, with the heavy intuition of her sort, that I glimpsed her
crude among the bushes, and felt her attraction. But she kept looking
away over my shoulder, with her yellow eyes, towards Lord Lathkill.
Myself or him, it was a question of which got there first. But she
preferred him. Only for some things she would rather it were me.
Luke had changed curiously. His body seemed to have come alive, in the
dark cloth of his evening suit; his eyes had a devil-may-care light in
them, his long cheeks a touch of scarlet, and his black hair felt loose
over his forehead. He had again some of that Guardsman's sense of
well-being and claim to the best in life, which I had noticed the first
time I saw him. But now it was a little more florid, defiant, with a
touch of madness.
He looked down at Carlotta with uncanny kindness and affection. Yet he
was glad to hand her over to me. He, too, was afraid of her: as if with
her his bad luck had worked. Whereas, in a throb of crude brutality, he
felt it would not work with the dark young woman. So, he handed Carlotta
over to me with relief, as if, with me, she would be safe from the doom
of his bad luck. And he, with the other woman, would be safe from it
too. For the other woman was outside the circle.
I was glad to have Carlotta again: to have that inexpressible delicate
and complete quiet of the two of us, resting my heart in a balance now
at last physical as well as spiritual. Till now, it had always been a
fragmentary thing. Now, for this hour at least, it was whole, a soft,
complete, physical flow, and a unison deeper even than childhood.
As she danced she shivered slightly, and I seemed to smell frost in the
air. The Colonel, too, was not keeping the rhythm.
"Has it turned colder?" I said.
"I wonder!" she answered, looking up at me with a slow beseeching. Why,
and for what was she beseeching me? I pressed my hand a little closer,
and her small breasts seemed to speak to me. The Colonel recovered the
rhythm again.
But at the end of the dance she shivered again, and it seemed to me I
too was chilled.
"Has it suddenly turned colder?" I said, going to the radiator. It was
quite hot.
"It seems to me it has," said Lord Lathkill, in a queer voice.
The Colonel was sitting abjectly on the music stool, as if broken.
"Shall we have another? Shall we try a tango?" said Lord Lathkill. "As
much of it as we can manage?"
"I--I----" the Colonel began, turning round on the seat, his face
yellow. "I'm not sure----"
Carlotta shivered. The frost seemed to touch my vitals. Mrs. Hale stood
stiff, like a pillar of brown rock-salt, staring at her husband.
"We had better leave off," murmured Lady Lathkill, rising.
Then she did an extraordinary thing. She lifted her face, staring to the
other side, and said suddenly, in a clear, cruel sort of voice:
"Are you here, Lucy?"
She was speaking across to the spirits. Deep inside me leaped a jump of
laughter. I wanted to howl with laughter. Then instantly, I went inert
again. The chill gloom seemed to deepen suddenly in the room, everybody
was overcome. On the piano-seat the Colonel sat yellow and huddled, with
a terrible hang-dog look of guilt on his face. There was a silence, in
which the cold seemed to creak. Then came again the peculiar bell-like
ringing of Lady Lathkill's voice:
"Are you here? What do you wish us to do?"
A dead and ghastly silence, in which we all remained transfixed. Then
from somewhere came two slow thuds, and a sound of drapery moving. The
Colonel, with mad fear in his eyes, looked round at the uncurtained
windows, and crouched on his seat.
"We must leave this room," said Lady Lathkill.
"I'll tell you what. Mother," said Lord Lathkill curiously; "you and the
Colonel go up, and we'll just turn on the Victrola."
That was almost uncanny of him. For myself, the cold effluence of these
people had paralysed me. Now I began to rally. I felt that Lord Lathkill
was sane, it was these other people who were mad.
Again from somewhere indefinite came two slow thuds.
"We must leave this room," repeated Lady Lathkill in monotony.
"All right. Mother. You go. I'll just turn on the Victrola."
And Lord Lathkill strode across the room. In another moment the
monstrous barking howl of the opening of a jazz tune, an event far more
extraordinary than thuds, poured from the unmoving bit of furniture
called a Victrola.
Lady Lathkill silently departed. The Colonel got to his feet.
"I wouldn't go if I were you. Colonel," said I. "Why not dance? I'll
look on this time."