He told us we had spoiled his pleasure, but if so, it must have very
quickly become unspoiled again, for--it was only a week ago that he had
conceived that idea--he spent a boisterously hilarious evening
afterwards. But, how I wish we had not spoiled his pleasure even for
that moment! As if it mattered whether it was funny or not, so long as
it amused him. Helen had said it was rather a cheap sort of joke.... And
just then her eyes, too, saw the fancy dress hanging up in the wardrobe,
and the moment afterwards she looked across to me. And then she left
the room for a little while. She, too, I am sure, had thought of that.
* * * * *
I had a friend once who was killed in a railway accident. A year
afterwards I was staying with his mother, and one evening, when we were
alone, she began crying gently. ‘Jim took his lunch with him to eat in
the train that day,’ she said to me soon, and he had asked me to put him
up an orange. But I forgot.’
That is the pathos of little things. Yes, you dear soul, weep a little
over the forgotten orange, and let Helen weep a little because she said
Leg’s joke was cheap. And then let us think of the bigger things--the
love and the loving-kindness that have been ours, that bright, boyish
spirit that made mirth in the home. Even now let us try to thank God for
what has been. You know what Legs was to us--a sort of son, a sort of
brother.
All that afternoon we sat there, hearing London rumble distantly around
us, and little stirrings and creakings came from different parts of the
room. Now the blind flapped, now a curtain sighed, or, as often happens
in spring-time, a board of the flooring gave a little sharp rap, some
infinitesimal particle of sap still lingering in it, perhaps, and
hearing the heralds of spring blowing their horns outside. Only from the
bed there came no sound at all: he was still sunk deep in that sleep
which the doctor hoped would join and be one with death. If he woke at
all, there was a chance that he would suffer blinding, excruciating
pain. On the other hand, he might come to himself, just at the last
moment of all, when pain would be already passed.
The doctor was saying this in the hushed whisper with which we speak in
the chamber of death, though there may be no real reason why we should
not speak openly, when I heard a little stir from the bed, and, looking
round, I saw that Leg’s eyes were open, and that he was moving them this
way and that, as if in search of something. Helen had seen, too, and
next moment she was by him. He recognized her, for there was welcome in
his eyes, and then, turning his head a little, he saw me. The doctor
meantime had moved to the head of the bed and looked at Leg’s face very
intently. Then he made a little sign to me that I should come up to the
bed, and he himself went and stood by the window, looking out.
And I understood.
Then Legs spoke in his ordinary voice.
‘Wasn’t it bad luck?’ he said. My bicycle skidded, and the omnibus----
‘What is happening to me?’ he asked quickly. ‘Is it----’
Helen laid her hand on his head.
‘Yes, my darling,’ she said. ‘But you are not afraid, are you?’
For a moment the pupils of his eyes contracted; then they grew quite
normal again.
‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ve had an awfully good time. Oh, and it was a
great success--Shakespeare, you know.’
Then a shadow seemed to pass over his face and his eyelids fluttered.
‘Now? Is it coming now?’ he said.
‘Yes, my darling,’ said she again, and kissed him.
Legs lay quite still for a moment with closed eyes. Then he quickly
opened them again, and made as if he would raise his head.
‘Buck up, you two, won’t you?’ he said.
From outside there came the dim roar of London, and little noises crept
about the room. But from the bed came no sound at all.
* * * * *
Two days afterwards we went down home again, arriving in the evening,
and the body rested that night in his own room down here, to be taken
next day to the churchyard, which the sun blesses more than any other
place I have ever seen, and over which the grey Norman tower keeps
watch. His last charge to us had been to ‘buck up,’ and I do not know
how it was, but it seemed to us both as if he was still liking us to
‘buck up.’ So, in so far as we found it possible, we did what Legs
wished us to do.
But to-night he would have been here, making the third of a merry table,
and when the servants had come in for the last time, bringing us coffee,
it was not possible not to remember that, and Helen rose. And when she
spoke, her voice trembled.
‘Is it very foolish of me?’ she asked. ‘And do you think Legs will mind?
But I feel as if I can’t face to-morrow, unless I go and look at the
place where we shall put him. It is quite warm outside, Jack. Oh, let us
go out and look at it. It will seem more natural then. I think I shall
“buck up” better if I see it first.’
So we went across the garden, and through the place of roses, and
through the gate on the far side, and through the field which bounded
the churchyard. There was a great yellow moon just risen, and shadows
were sharp-cut, so that there was no doubt when we came to the place
that had been so newly dug. His uncle, Helen’s father, lay there; the
two graves were side by side.
So we sat there in silence for some time, very still, for a rat ran on
to the mound of earth by the graveside, and sat there, smartening itself
up, brushing its face and whiskers with nimble paws. The shadow of the
tower swung just clear of the place, and sharp-cut in the light was that
oblong hole in the ground. There was nothing as yet to be said, for
Helen was crying quietly to herself, and I could not stay those loving
tears. Once she said to me: ‘Oh, let us buck up!’ But then she silently
wept again.
You see, I know Helen. I knew that there was nothing of bitterness in
her crying. Tears of that sort were not opposed to the bucking up. Legs
did not mean that he wanted us not to miss his dear companionship. He
only wanted us to stand up and be cheery, not be bitter or broken. But
since Helen felt she could face to-morrow better if she faced the scene
of it, why, that was all right; it was bucking up.
Then in a few little sentences we talked of the next day. There should
be the A flat Fugue--no funeral march--and we would have no funeral
hymns, but just one Psalm, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd,’ and one hymn after
all that had to be done was over; so then we would sing ‘Adeste
Fideles,’ Helen thought, for it is always Christmas since the first
Christmas Day.
Helen just moved as she sat there on the edge of his grave when we had
settled this as if to go home again, but----
And then I told her all that I had thought three mornings ago--all the
doubts that merged into certainty, all the logical conclusions. Whether
I then at that moment inclined more to the side of the Devil or of God
I do not know, but in any case I told her all; and then she put her arms
round me.
‘Yes, dear,’ she said, ‘but in hell He is there also. And we are all
there sometimes, and it is but the lowest step of the beautiful stair to
heaven.’
The moon had swung behind the tower, and we sat in the darkness of its
shadow.
‘It is all so simple,’ she said. ‘It all depends upon what you believe,
not what you think or what you reason about. Do you believe that we bury
Legs to-morrow? Do you believe that he is dead, or that he has ceased to
be an individual? You may reason about it, and ask me, as you asked
yourself, how you will recognize him if his body has become grass and
flowers? I am quite content to say that I have no idea. You see, one
doesn’t know all God’s plans quite completely, and sometimes we are apt
to think that if one doesn’t know plans about a certain thing He hasn’t
got one. We put our intelligence above His. That is a mistake.’
And we sat in silence again; then Helen spoke asking me an extremely
simple question.
‘What does faith mean if you are right about it?’ she said.
‘It means nothing. It is without meaning.’
‘And are you prepared to abide by that?’
Again there was silence. She sat a little apart from me, so that her
questions came from the darkness; they were put impersonally, so to
speak, not by Helen, but just by a voice.
‘Do you believe that Margery and Dick are nothing now except grass and
flowers, and perhaps a little bit of the lives of other people? Do you
really believe it? And is Legs nothing now?’
It was quite still. We had come to a very sequestered corner of the
great house of life to talk about these things. In front was the shadow
of the grave, and over it now lay the shadow of the tower. Once from the
grave’s side a few pebbles detached themselves and fell rattling to the
bottom, and I had no answer to this. Three days ago I had asked myself
the same questions, and what I call my brain answered them; but now it
gave no answer. Something, I suppose, had made it uncertain.
‘How can the wheel of an omnibus hurt Legs?’ she asked. ‘It can do no
more than hurt his body.’
Then she came closer to me again.
‘And what does love mean?’ she said.
* * * * *
I think Legs must have enjoyed his funeral next day, because it was so
extremely funny, and I think by this time that you know enough about him
and Helen and me to allow us all to be amused at it. We had sent a note
to our Vicar saying that we should like the A flat Prelude, and the
Psalm, and the hymn which I have mentioned. He came in person, not to
remonstrate, but to put on to us the correcter attitude. Death was a
solemn occasion. There was none so solemn, and the Hymns Ancient and
Modern provided some very suitable verses to be sung--‘Now the
labourer’s task is o’er,’ for instance. (Legs a labourer, who was the
most gorgeous player at life that has ever been seen!) Besides, surely a
Christmas hymn was out of place, when it would be Ash Wednesday in no
time. I said feebly that a Christmas hymn was surely always in place;
but dear Mr. Eversley looked pained, and Helen at once yielded. She was
sure that the ‘labourer’s task’ was most suitable.
Then about the Psalm. There were two Psalms already provided for the
Burial Service, and surely ‘“The Lord is my Shepherd” struck a different
note.’ So said our Vicar. That was undeniable. And when should we sing
that Psalm? Then Helen was firm, and said that we thought we should go
back into church at the end of the service, and--well, just sing it. It
was rather good to end with. But Mr. Eversley looked even more pained
than before. He had never heard of such a thing being done. That point
was left undecided for the moment, for there was clearly something even
more crucial to come.
It came.
Ever since the organist had heard of Legs’ death he had been most
diligent at Chopin’s Funeral March, of which he had of his own
initiative bought a copy in order to be able to perform it. The organist
in question, who was also the schoolmaster, had had a sort of distant
adoration for Legs ever since a year ago he had seen him drive a
golf-ball two hundred and sixty measured yards. Since then Legs had
played with him once or twice, giving him enormous odds, and the distant
adoration had ripened into a nearer one. ‘He was such a pleasant young
gentleman,’ was the upshot of it. And the dear man had bought Chopin’s
Funeral March, since he wanted to play something ‘more uncommon’ than
the Dead March in ‘Saul’!
Here Helen and I were completely at one. There should be no A flat
Preludes; it was to be Chopin’s Funeral March.
There remained the question of the Twenty-third Psalm. Oh yes, it would
strike a different note, that was quite true; so there would be no going
back into church, but we should have Chopin’s Funeral March and ‘Now the
labourer’s task is o’er.’
The Vicar did not exactly beam when these things were settled, but he
was visibly relieved. He shook hands with us both, and said:
‘Terribly sudden, terribly sudden. At two precisely.’
(Oh, Legs, how you would have enjoyed that! We did, too, for you told us
to buck up. And it was so funny, after all we had planned!)
The Vicar’s call had been made quite early, and it was scarcely twelve
when he went away; but to us both it seemed as if Legs had been waiting
somewhere upstairs till he went in order to laugh over it with us. It
was as if he had been waiting on the landing, fresh from his bath, with
just a dressing-gown on, so that he could not appear when other people
were there, but might come down barefooted when they had gone. He must
have been so amused at it. How he would skip into the drawing-room,
afraid of prowling housemaids, to find us alone, and say, ‘Sorry I
haven’t got much on, but I had to come down after my bath.’ Yes, after
his bath. It was so that it seemed to us. That wholesome spirit had been
washed, we thought, by what is called death. It was fresher, more
jubilant than ever. And on the Vicar’s departure down he came to join us
again. I have no other words for it.
* * * * *
There was more to come, for hardly had the Vicar gone when it was
announced to us that Mr. Holmes had called, and might he see one of us
for a moment only. I felt that Legs was cornered now. He would have to
stop here, hide behind the piano or something. I hoped he would behave
himself, and not make me laugh. So Mr. Holmes came in.
I never saw anybody so wonderfully attired. He was all in black,
including his gloves and his stick, and above his small neat buttoned
boots when he sat down I saw a black sock. That may only have been
accidental, but no accident would account for the fact that his cuffs
had a neat black border about half an inch wide. I wondered if he had
blacked himself all over like the enthusiastic impersonator of Othello.
He had ventured to intrude on our grief, but only for a moment. Here
Helen dropped her handkerchief, and they both bent down to pick it up
and knocked their heads together, and I almost thought I heard a little
stifled gasp from behind the piano. But Mr. Holmes had received no
notice of the funeral, which he had understood was to be to-day, and did
not know if we wished it to be quite private; if not, he would esteem it
a privilege to be allowed to pay his last respects. And here little Mr.
Holmes gave a great gulp, and could not get on.
‘I did like him so much,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Two. Thank you, I
can let myself out!’
And he walked away on tiptoe, as if it was most important not to make a
noise.
* * * * *
It was one of those sparkling February days, sunny and windless, and the
air was full of the chirruping of birds. There was a moment’s pause at
the gate of the churchyard, a moment’s silence. Inside the church the
organ ceased; then came great simple words:
‘I am the Resurrection and the Life.’
MARCH
Helen and I have a failing, though you may not have thought that such a
thing was possible. It is a foolish weakness for old bits of rubbish. We
can neither of us without anguish and unutterable rendings bear to throw
old and useless things away. The weakness has to be got over sometimes,
but we keep putting the work of destruction off, just as one puts off a
visit to the dentist, with the result that when it comes to pass we find
that it would have been far better to have done it long ago. However, if
we did not occasionally tear things up, and throw things away, the house
would become uninhabitable, so this morning we vowed to each other to
spend the hours till lunch in the work of destruction. Our rubbish
collects chiefly in the room that is called mine, where she has a
knee-hole table with nine drawers. She opened these one after the
other. They were all full, and despair seized her.
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Here are nine drawers all quite full of heart’s
blood. O Jack, look!’
And she brought across to me a photograph I had taken of Legs jumping
the lawn-tennis net. He was sitting in the air apparently in an easy
attitude. One knee seemed crossed over the other, and his mouth was wide
open.
‘It will be harder than ever this year,’ she said, half to herself. ‘And
there are nine drawers full!’
‘Circumscribe the drops of heart’s blood as they come,’ said I. ‘Don’t
think there are nine drawers full. Only keep thinking of the particular
thing that has to be kept or thrown away.’
‘Oh, but it’s only the fact that there are nine drawers full that makes
it possible to throw anything away at all,’ said she.
‘Hush, woman!’ said I.
Personally, I am extremely methodical over the work of destruction. I
clear a table and dump upon it a pile of heart’s blood. This I sort
into three heaps, one of which is for destruction, one for preservation,
and one for further consideration. I proceeded to do so now.
There were many pieces of string. Throughout the year I keep pieces of
string, because I know I shall use them. As a matter of fact, when I
want a piece of string I cut it off Helen’s ball, and never use any of
the bits that I have saved, because I don’t know where they are, and
they would prove to be the wrong length if I did. So on the day of
destruction I consign them to the dust-bin, and begin to collect again
immediately. Then there was a pill-box full of soft yellow powder, which
Legs and I had collected from the little cedar-cones at some house where
we were staying in the autumn. That I put on to the heap of destruction,
but transferred it to the heap of consideration. Then there were a dozen
little bits of verd-antique which I had picked up years ago on the beach
at Capri, and which I had periodically tried to throw away. But I never
could manage it, and this morning, knowing it was useless to strive
against the irresistible, I made no attempt whatever to steel myself to
their destruction, but put them at once into the pile that was
predestined unto life. There was a chunk of amber that I had picked up
at Cromer, equally imperishable; yards and yards of indiarubber tape
that is the filling of a rubber-cored golf-ball; a small bottle with a
glass stopper, clearly impossible to throw away, since it might come in
useful any day, and how foolish I should feel if this afternoon I wanted
a bottle with a glass stopper, and had to send into the town for one,
whereas, if I had been less iconoclastic, I might have airily produced
the exact thing needed out of the left-hand top drawer. Then came a
little tin box full of pink powder, which I concluded was rouge. This
was puzzling.
‘When did I use rouge?’ I asked Helen.
‘I don’t know. Was it Legs’, do you think, when he acted the Red Queen
last year?’
No, I couldn’t throw that away. The Red Queen had been a piece of
genius. And next came the telegram from him to me saying that he had
passed into the Foreign Office. Then there was a vile caricature of
myself at the top of my so-called swing at golf--quite unrecognizable,
I assure you, but....
Then came a mass of letters, receipted bills, and accounts rendered.
Accounts rendered always fill me with suspicion, and I have to hunt
among unpaid bills to find the items of the account rendered, as I feel
a moral certainty that this is an attempt to defraud me. But they are
invariably correct. But these and the receipted bills, which had to be
docketed and tied up together in a bundle, took time. Probably, however,
I could tie them up with one of those many pieces of string which I had
so diligently collected. By a rare and happy chance I found one that
would do exactly, and tied them up with a beautiful hard knot, and put
them on the predestination heap. A moment afterwards I found several
more to join the same packet, split my nail over trying to untie my
beautiful knot, and had to go upstairs for nail-scissors to cut it
smooth, and brought them down to cut the knot. No other piece of string
in my collection would do, and so I cut a piece off Helen’s ball, for
she had left the room for the moment.
Then I came upon a large quantity of boxes of fusees, all partly empty.
How it happens is this: I go to play golf on a windy day, and, of
course, have to buy at the club-house a box of fusees. These, on my
return, or what remains of them, I methodically put in a drawer on
reaching home. By an oversight I forget to take them out again when I
play next day, and so buy another box, which I similarly place in a
drawer. And if you play golf four or five times a week on these downs,
where there is almost always a high wind, it follows that in the course
of a year the amount of partly filled boxes of fusees which you collect
about you is nothing short of prodigious. I did not know how great a
supporter I was of home industries.
My methodical mind saw at once how these had to be treated. Of course,
throwing them all away was out of the question, and the right thing to
do was to produce out of every dozen of partly filled boxes some eight
or nine completely full. This plan I began to put into practice at once.
It was necessary, of course, to find how many matches a full fusee-box
contained, but they are awkward to pack, and some seemed to hold ten and
others only seven; so when Helen came back, the table was covered, among
other things, with fusees. So I waved my arms violently, and said: ‘You
shall not!’ This was because the female nose, and the male nose if it is
unaccustomed to tobacco-smoke, likes, positively likes, the smell of
fusees; but to anyone who smokes tobacco the smell of them is, for some
reason, perfectly nauseating, and that is why we only use them in the
open air.
Then Helen’s mean nature asserted itself. She said, ‘Oh, I forgot you
don’t like the smell,’ and soon after (not at once, mark you) called my
attention to some non-existent object of horticultural interest out of
the window. I turned, and in a moment she had lit a fusee, and
positively inhaled the sickening perfume of it. I only wished she had
inhaled it all.
The upshot was that we took a turn on the lawn, while the room with open
door and windows recovered from its degrading odour.
‘How were you getting on?’ she asked.
‘Not very well. I decided to destroy some string. I nearly destroyed a
pill-box with some cedar-flower dust in it. But I reserved that. At
least, I think I did.’
‘Why?’
‘Legs and I collected it, and I know Legs wouldn’t have thrown it away,
so I can’t.’
Helen was silent a moment; then,
‘Do you miss Legs very much?’ she asked. ‘His bodily presence, I mean,
of course.’
‘Of course I do, just as you do. I miss him all the time. Oh, he is in
the room, and he laughs at us, or with us. I know that.’
‘Then what do you miss?’ she asked.
‘The young body about the house.’
Then Helen said: ‘Oh, you darling!’
That sort of remark is always extremely pleasant, but I had no notion of
her artfulness. I am glad to say that she has often said it before, so
that it was not particularly stupid of me not to guess that it meant
anything especial. And with her artfulness she changed the subject to
that which I happened to be thinking about, thus making no transition.
‘I gave up,’ she said. ‘I found all my things were so connected with
Legs that I couldn’t destroy them. It is just what you said. We want to
keep the young thing in the house, since we are getting old--yes, it’s
no use saying “Pouf!”--and I can’t destroy anything connected with him.
So shall we move our rubbish straight into Legs’ room, and make a sort
of young museum? Then, when we feel particularly middle-aged, we can go
up there and sit among the young things. If we don’t do that, we must
clear out his room as well, and I can’t see how we can. There are rough
copies of letters to that dreadful Charlotte; there is a letter in his
handwriting, there on his table, beginning----’
‘Beginning “You’re a damned fool!”’ said I, ‘“but I don’t intend to
quarrel with you.” Did you mean that one?’
‘Then you have been there, too?’ she said.
‘Why, of course, every day. I go when you attend to household affairs
after breakfast; you go when you say you are going to bed. Didn’t you
know?’
‘Certainly I did, but I thought you didn’t know that I went there,’ she
said.
‘Ditto,’ said I.
There was a huge rushing wind out of the south-west, and we stood a
little while inhaling the boisterousness of it. All spring was in it,
all the renewal of life.
‘How Legs is laughing at us!’ she said.
‘I don’t care. Let’s have the museum of young things. Let’s put there
all the things we can’t throw away. Oh, Helen, there are photographs,
too! There is one of him in his last half at Eton.... There is one of
you and me when the Canadian canoe sank gently, and as we stood dripping
on the shore he photographed us. And I photographed him and you when you
said you would skate a rocking-turn together, and fell down. Heart’s
blood, heart’s blood! There ought to be a law which makes it a penal
offence to keep photographs,’
I suppose I had got excited, for Helen took my arm and said:
‘There, there!’
But even that did not do.
‘Oh, the pity of it,’ I cried--‘the pity of it! Why didn’t he take a
train to come down? Why didn’t that omnibus pull up? He was ours, and
he would have married, and still been ours, and there would have been
young things about the house again.’