say whether he went or not, and she did not ask him. But soon they
were meeting almost every day, and she felt with a strange, almost
savage pleasure that her influence over him grew with every meeting.
She discovered many things about his character. He was weak, undecided,
almost subservient, a man whom she would have despised perhaps had it
not been for the real sweetness that lay at the roots of him. She very
quickly understood how this girl, Margaret, although so young and so
ignorant of the world, must have dominated him. "Any woman could!" she
thought almost angrily to herself, and yet there was a kind of pride
behind her anger.
She would not confess to herself that what she was really fighting
was the memory of the dead girl, or, if she confessed at all, it was
to console herself with the thought that it was right for him now to
"cheer up a little."
Cheer up he did; it was curious to watch the rapidity with which he
responded to Lizzie's energy and humour and vitality.
At last she challenged him:
"Well, what about Dr. Orloff?" she asked.
He looked at her with a sudden startled glance, then almost under his
breath he said: "I don't go any more; I thought you didn't want me to."
So sudden a confession of her power took her breath away. She asked her
next question.
"But Margaret?" she said. He answered that as though he were arguing
some long-debated question with himself:
"I don't know," he replied slowly. "You were right. That wasn't the
proper way to bring her back, even though it were genuine. I must tell
you, Miss Rand," he said suddenly flinging up his head and looking
across at her, "you've shown me so many things since we first met. I
was getting into a very bad way, indulging myself in my grief. Margaret
wouldn't have liked that either, but it wasn't until I knew you that I
saw what I was doing. Thank you."
"Oh, you mustn't!" She shook her head. "You mustn't take me for Gospel
like that Mr. Lapsley. You make me frightened for my responsibility.
We are friends, and we must help one another, but we must keep our
independence."
He shook his head, smiling.
"There's always been somebody who's taken my independence away," he
said. "And I like it."
After he had gone she had the tussle of her life. She ate dinner alone,
then sat far into the night fighting. Why should she fight at all? Here
was the charge given straight into her hand, the gift for which she had
longed and longed, the very man for her, the man whom she could care
for as she would her child. Care for and protect and guide and govern.
Govern! Like a torch flaring between dark walls that word lit her soul
for her. Govern! That was what she wanted; all her life she had wanted
it.
She wanted to feel her power, to dominate, to command. And all for
his good. She loved him, she loved his sweetness and his goodness and
his simplicity. She could make him happy and contented and at ease
for the rest of his days. He should never have another anxiety, never
another responsibility. Why fight then? Wasn't it obviously the best
thing in the world, both for him and for her? She needed him. He her.
She abandoned herself then to happy, tender thoughts of their life
together. What it would be! What they could do with old Mrs. McKenzie's
money! She sat there trying to lose herself in that golden future. She
could not quite lose herself. Threading it was again and again the
warning that something was not right with it, that she was pursuing
some course that she should not. The clock struck half-past eleven.
She gave a little shiver. The room was cold. She knew then, with that
little shiver, of what she had been thinking. Margaret Lapsley....
Why should she be thinking of her? She was dead. She could not
complain. And if she were still consciously with them, surely she would
rather that he should be cared for and loved and guarded than pursue a
lonely life full of regrets and melancholy. What kind of girl had she
been? Had she loved him as he had loved her? How young she had died!
How young and fresh and happy!... Lizzie shivered again. Ah! She was
old. Fifty and old--old in thoughts and hopes and dreams. Pervaded by a
damp mist of unhappiness, she went to bed and lay there, looking into
the dark.
With the morning her scruples had vanished. She saw Margaret Lapsley
no more. She was her own sane, matter-of-fact mistress. A delightful
fortnight followed. All her life afterwards Lizzie looked back to those
fourteen days as the happiest of her time. They were together now every
afternoon. Very often in the evening too they went to the theatre or
music. He was her faithful dog. He agreed with all her suggestions,
eagerly, implicitly. Mentally, he was not stupid; he knew many things
that she did not, and he was not so submissive that he would not
argue. He argued hotly, growing excited, calling out protests in a
high treble, then suddenly laughing like a child. For those days she
abandoned herself utterly. She allowed herself to be surrounded, to be
hemmed in, by the companionship, the care, the affection.... Oh, it was
wonderful for her! Only those who had known her years and years of
loneliness could appreciate what it was to her now to have this. She
warmed her hands at the fire of it and let the flames fan their heat
upon her cheeks.
Once she said to him:
"Isn't it strange that we should have made friends so quickly? It isn't
generally my way. I'm a shy character, you know."
"So am I," he answered her. "I never would have talked to you as I have
if you hadn't helped me. You have helped me. Wonderfully, marvellously.
I only wish that Margaret could have known you. You would have helped
her too."
He talked to her now continually of Margaret, but very happily, with
great contentment.
"Margaret would have loved you," he liked to say. Lizzie was not so
sure.
Then suddenly came the afternoon, for days past now inevitable, when he
asked her to marry him.
They were sitting together in the Horton flat. It was a day of intense
heat. All the windows were wide open, the blinds down, and into the
dim, grey shadowy air there struck shafts and lines of heat, bringing
with them a smell of dust and pavements. The roses in a large yellow
bowl on the centre table flung their thick scent across the dusky
mote-threaded light. The hot town lay below them like a still sea
basking at the foot of their rock.
"I want you to marry me, Lizzie," he said. "It may seem very soon after
Margaret's death, but it's what she would have wished, I know. Please,
please don't refuse me. I don't know how I have the impertinence to
ask, but I must. I can't help myself----"
At his words the happiness that had filled her heart during the last
fortnight suddenly left her, as water ebbs out of a pool. She felt
guilty, wicked, ashamed. She had never before been so aware of his
helplessness and also of some strange, reproaching voice that blamed
her. Why should she be blamed? She looked at him and longed to take his
head in her hands and kiss him and keep him beside her and never let
him go again.
At last she told him that she would give him her answer the next day.
When at last he left her, she was miserable, weighted with a sense
of some horrible crime. And yet why? What was there against such a
marriage? She was pursued that evening, that night. Next day she would
not see him, but sent down word that she was unwell and would he come
to-morrow? All that day, keeping alone in her flat, feeling the waves
of heat beat about her, tired, exhausted, driven, the whole of her life
stole past her.
"Why should I not marry him? Why _must_ I not marry him?"
The consciousness that she was fighting somebody or something grew with
her through the day. Towards evening, when the heat faded and dusk
swallowed the colours and patterns of her room, she seemed to hear a
voice: "You are not the wife for him. He will have no freedom. He will
lose his character. He will become a shadow."
And her answer was almost spoken to the still and empty room. "But
he will be happy. I will give him everything. Why may I not think of
myself at last after all these years? I've waited and waited, and
worked and worked...."
And the answer came back: "You're old. You're old. You're old." She
_was_ old. She felt that night eighty, a hundred.
She went to bed at last; closed her eyes and slept.
She woke suddenly; the room swam in moonlight. She had forgotten to
draw her blinds. The high, blue expanse of heaven flashing with fiery
stars broke the grey spaces of her room with splendour.
She lay in bed watching the stars. She was suddenly aware that a figure
stood there between her bed and the thin shadowy pane. She gazed at it
with no fear, but rather as though she had known it before.
It was the figure of a young girl in a white dress. Her hair was black,
her face very, very young, her eyes deep and innocent, full of light.
Her hands were lovely, thin and pale, shell-coloured against the starry
sky.
The women looked at one another. A little unspoken dialogue fell
between them.
"You are Margaret?"
"Yes."
"You have come to tell me to leave him alone?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Oh, don't you see? He won't be happy. He won't grow. His soul
won't grow with you. You are not the woman for him. Someone
else--perhaps--later-- but oh! let me have him a little longer just
now. I love him so! Don't take him from me!"
Lizzie smiled.
"You beautiful dear!... How young you are! How lovely!"
"Leave him to me! Leave him to me!"
The moon fell into fleecy clouds. The room was filled with shadow.
* * * * *
With the morning nothing had been dimmed. Lizzie was happy with a
strange sense of companionship and comfort.
When Edmund came she saw at once that he was greatly troubled.
"Well?" he asked her.
"You've seen Margaret!" she cried. "Last night!" He nodded his head.
"It may have been a dream...."
"You don't want to marry me...."
"Oh, yes! Don't think I would go back...." She put her hands on his
shoulders.
"It's all right, Edmund. I'm not going to marry you. I'm too old. We're
friends for always, but nothing more. Margaret was right."
"Margaret!" He stared at her. "But you didn't know her!"
"I know her now," she answered. Then, laughing, "I've got two friends
instead of one husband! Who knows that I'm not the richer?"
As she spoke she seemed to feel on her cheek the soft, gentle kiss of a
young girl.
XI
NOBODY
The only one of them all who perceived anything like the truth was
young Claribel.
Claribel (how she hated the absurd name!) had a splendid opportunity
for observing everything in life, simply because she was so universally
neglected. The Matchams and the Dorsets and the Duddons (all the
relations, in fact) simply considered her of no importance at all.
She did not mind this: she took it entirely for granted, as she did her
plainness, her slowness of speech, her shyness in company, her tendency
to heat spots, her bad figure, and all the other things with which an
undoubtedly all-wise God had seen fit to endow her. It was only that
having all these things, Claribel was additionally an unfortunate name;
but then, most of them called her Carrie, and the boys "Fetch and
Carry" often enough.
She was taken with the others to parties and teas, in order, as she
very well knew, that critical friends and neighbors should not say that
"the Dorsets always neglected that plain child of theirs, poor thing."
She sat in a corner and was neglected, but that she did not mind in
the least. She liked it. It gave her, all the more, the opportunity of
watching people, the game that she liked best in all the world. She
played it without any sense at all that she had unusual powers. It was
much later than this that she was to realise her gifts.
It was this sitting in a corner in the Horton flat that enabled her to
perceive what it was that had happened to her Cousin Tom. Of course,
she knew from the public standpoint well enough what had happened to
him--simply that he had been wounded three times, once in Gallipoli and
twice in France; that he had received the D.S.O. and been made a Major.
But it was something other than that that she meant. She knew that all
the brothers and the sisters, the cousins, the uncles and the aunts
proclaimed gleefully that there was nothing the matter with him at all.
"It's quite wonderful," they all said, "to see the way that dear Tom
has come back from the war just as he went into it. His same jolly,
generous self. Everyone's friend. Not at all conceited. How wonderful
that is, when he's done so well and has all that money!"
That was, Claribel knew, the thing that everyone said. Tom had always
been her own favourite. He had not considered her the least little bit
more than he had considered everyone else. He always was kind. But he
gave her a smile and a nod and a pat, and she was grateful.
Then he had always seemed to her a miraculous creature; his whole
history in the war had only increased that adoration. She loved to look
at him, and certainly he must, in anyone's eyes, have been handsome,
with his light, shining hair, his fine, open brow, his slim, straight
body, his breeding and distinction and nobility.
To all of this was suddenly added wealth--his uncle, the head of the
biggest biscuit factory in England, dying and leaving him everything.
His mother and he had already been sufficiently provided for at his
father's death; but he was now, through Uncle Bob's love for him, an
immensely rich man. This had fallen to him in the last year of the
war, when he was recovering from his third wound. After the Armistice,
freed from the hospital, he had taken a delightful flat in Hortons
(his mother preferred the country, and was cosy with dogs, a parrot,
a butler, and bees in Wiltshire), and it was here that he gave his
delightful parties. It was here that Claribel, watching from her
corner, made her great discovery about him.
Her discovery quite simply was that he did not exist; that he was dead,
that "there was nobody there."
She did not know what it was that caused her just to be aware of her
ghostly surprise. She had in the beginning been taken in as they all
had been. He had seemed on his first return from the hospital to be the
same old Tom whom they had always known. For some weeks he had used a
crutch, and his cheeks were pale, his eyes were sunk like bright jewels
into dark pouches of shadow.
He had said very little about his experiences in France; that was
natural, none of the men who had returned from there wished to speak
of it. He had thrown himself with apparent eagerness into the dancing,
the theatres, the house-parties, the shooting, the flirting--all the
hectic, eager life that seemed to be pushed by everyone's hands into
the dark, ominous silence that the announcement of the Armistice had
created.
Then how they all had crowded about him! Claribel, seated in her dark
little corner, had summoned them one by one--Mrs. Freddie Matcham
with her high, bright colour and wonderful hair, her two daughters,
Claribel's cousins, Lucy and Amy, so pretty and so stupid, the
voluminous Dorsets, with all their Beaminster connections, Hattie
Dorset, Dollie Pym-Dorset, Rose and Emily; then the men--young Harwood
Dorset, who was no good at anything, but danced so well, Henry Matcham,
capable and intelligent would he only work, Pelham Duddon, ambitious
and grasping; then her own family, her elder sisters, Morgraunt (what
a name!), who married Rex Beaminster, and they hadn't a penny, and
Lucile, unmarried, pretty and silly, and Dora, serious and plain and
a miser--Oh! Claribel knew them all! She wondered, as she sat there,
how she _could_ know them all as she did, and, after that, how they
could be so unaware that she _did_ know them! She did not feel herself
preternaturally sharp--only that they were unobservant or simply,
perhaps, that they had better things to observe.
The thing, of course, that they were all just then observing was Tom
and his money. The two things were synonymous, and if they couldn't
have the money without Tom, they must have him with it. Not that
they minded having Tom--he was exactly what they felt a man should
be--beautiful to look at, easy and happy and casual, a splendid
sportsman, completely free of that tiresome "analysis" stuff that some
of the would-be clever ones thought so essential.
They liked Tom and approved of him, and oh! how they wanted his money!
There was not one of them not in need of it! Claribel could see all
their dazzling, shining eyes fixed upon those great piles of gold,
their beautiful fingers crooked out towards it. Claribel did not
herself want money. What she wanted, more than she allowed herself to
think, was companionship and friendship and affection.... And that she
was inclined to think she was fated never to obtain.
The day when she first noticed the thing that was the matter with Tom,
was one wet, stormy afternoon in March; they were all gathered together
in Tom's lovely sitting-room in Hortons.
Tom, without being exactly clever about beautiful things, had a fine
sense of the way that he wished to be served, and the result of this
was that his flat was neat and ordered, everything always in perfect
array. His man, Sheraton, was an ideal man; he had been Tom's servant
before the war, and now, released from his duties, was back again;
there was no reason why he should ever now depart from them, he having,
as he once told Claribel, a contemptuous opinion of women. Under
Sheraton's care, that long, low-ceilinged room, lined with bookcases
(Tom loved fine bindings), with its gleaming, polished floor, some
old family portraits and rich curtains of a gleaming dark purple--to
Claribel this place was heaven. It would not, of course, have been
so heavenly had Tom not been so perfect a figure moving against the
old gold frames, the curtains, the leaping fire, looking so exactly,
Claribel thought "the younger image of old Theophilus Duddon, stiff and
grand up there on the wall in his white stock and velvet coat, Tom's
great-grandfather."
On this particular day, Claribel's sister, Morgraunt Beaminster and
Lucile, Mrs. Matcham, Hattie Dorset, and some men were present. Tom was
sitting over the rim of a big leather chair near the fire, his head
tossed back laughing at one of Lucile's silly jokes. Mrs. Matcham was
at the table, "pouring out," and Sheraton, rather stout but otherwise
a fine example of the Admirable Crichton, handed around the food. They
were laughing, as they always did, at nothing at all, Lucile's shrill,
barking laugh above the rest. From the babel Claribel caught phrases
like "Dear old Tom!" "But he didn't--he hadn't got the intelligence."
"Tom, you're a pet...." "Oh, but of _course_ not. What stuff! Why,
Harriet herself ...!" Through it all Sheraton moved with his head back,
his indulgent indifference, his supremely brushed hair. It was just
then Claribel caught the flash from Mrs. Matcham's beautiful eyes.
Everyone had their tea; there was nothing left for her to do. She sat
there, her lovely hands crossed on the table in front of her, her eyes
lost, apparently, in dim abstraction. Claribel saw that they were not
lost at all, but were bent, obliquely, with a concentrated and almost
passionate interest, upon Tom. Mrs. Matcham wanted something, and she
was determined this afternoon to ask for it. What was it? Money? Her
debts were notorious. Jewels? She was insatiable there ... Freddie
Matcham couldn't give her things. Old Lord Ferris wanted to, but wasn't
allowed to.... Claribel knew all this, young though she was. There
remained, then, as always, Tom.
Thrilled by this discovery of Mrs. Matcham's eyes, Claribel pursued her
discoveries further, and the next thing that she saw was that Lucile
also was intent upon some prize. Her silly, bright little eyes were
tightened for some very definite purpose. They fastened upon Tom like
little scissors. Claribel knew that Lucile had developed recently a
passion for bridge and, being stupid.... Yes, Lucile wanted money.
Claribel allowed herself a little shudder of disgust. She was only
seventeen and wore spectacles, and was plain, but at that moment she
felt herself to be infinitely superior to the whole lot of them. She
had her own private comfortable arrogances.
It was then, while she was despising them, that she made her discovery
about Tom. She looked across at him wondering whether he had noticed
any of the things that had struck her. She at the same time sighed,
seeing that she had made, as she always did, a nasty sloppy mess in her
saucer, and knowing that Morgraunt (the watchdog of the family) would
be certain to notice and scold her for it.
She looked across at Tom and discovered suddenly that he wasn't there.
The shell of him was there, the dark clothes, the black tie with the
pearl pin, the white shirt, the faintly-coloured clear-cut mask with
the shining hair, the white throat, the heavy eye-lashes--the shell,
the mask, nothing else. She could never remember afterwards exactly
what it was that made her certain that nobody was there. Lucile was
talking to him, eagerly, repeating, as she always did, her words over
and over again. He was, apparently, looking up at her, a smile on his
lips. Morgraunt, so smart with the teasing blue feather in her hat,
was looking across at them intent upon what Lucile was saying. He was
apparently looking at Lucile, and yet his eyes were dead, sightless,
like the eyes of a statue. In his hand he apparently held a cigarette,
and yet his hand was of marble, no life ran through the veins. Claribel
even fancied, so deeply excited had she become, that you could see the
glitter of the fire through his dark body as he sat carefully balanced
on the edge of the chair.
There was Nobody there, and then, as she began to reflect, there
never had been anybody since the Armistice. Tom had never returned
from France; only a framework with clothes hung upon it, a doll, an
automaton, did Tom's work and fulfilled his place. Tom's soul had
remained in France. He did not really hear what Lucile was saying.
He did not care what any of them were doing, and that, of course,
accounted for the wonderful way that, during these past weeks, he had
acquiesced in every one of their proposals. They had many of them
commented on Tom's extraordinary good nature now that he had returned.
"You really could do anything with him that you pleased," Claribel had
heard Morgraunt triumphantly exclaim. Well, so you can with a corpse!...
As she stared at him and realised the dramatic import of her
discovery, she was suddenly filled with pity. Poor Tom! How terrible
that time in France must have been to have killed him like that, and
nobody had known. They had thought that he had taken it so easily, he
had laughed and jested with the others, had always returned to France
gaily.... How terrified he must have been--before he died!
As she watched him, he got up from the chair and stood before the fire,
his legs spread out. The others had gathered in a corner of the room,
busied around Hattie, who was trying some new Jazz tunes on the piano.
Mrs. Matcham got up from her table and went over to Tom and began
eagerly to talk to him. Her hands were clasped behind her beautiful
back, and Claribel could see how the fingers twisted and untwisted
again and again over the urgency of her request.
Claribel saw Tom's face. The mask was the lovelier now because she knew
that there was no life behind it. She saw the lips smile, the eyes
shine, the head bend. It was to her as though someone were turning an
electric button behind there in the middle of his back....
He nodded. Mrs. Matcham laughed. "Oh, you darling!" Claribel heard her
cry. "If you only knew what you've done for me!"
The party was over. They all began to go.
Claribel was right. There was Nobody there.
When everybody had gone that evening and the body of Tom was alone, it
surveyed the beautiful room.
Tom's body (which may for the moment be conveniently but falsely
called Tom) looked about and felt a wave of miserable, impotent
uselessness.
Tom summoned Sheraton.
"Clear all these things away," he said.
"Yes, sir."
"I'm going out."
"Yes, sir." "Dinner jacket to-night, sir?"
"No, I'm not dressing." He went to the door, then turned round.
"Sheraton!"
"Yes sir!"
"What's the matter with me?"
"I beg your pardon, sir!"
"What's the matter with me? You know what I mean as well as I do. Ever
since I came back.... I can't take an interest in anything--not in
anything nor in anybody. To-day, for instance, I didn't hear a word
that they were saying, not one of them, and they made enough noise,
too! I don't care for anything, I don't want anything, I don't like
anything, I don't hate anything. It's as though I were asleep--and yet
I'm not asleep either. What's the matter with me, Sheraton?"
Sheraton's eyes, that had been so insistently veiled by decent society,
as expressionless as a pair of marbles, were suddenly human; Sheraton's
voice, which had been something like the shadow of a real voice, was
suddenly full of feeling.