THE DARK HOUSE
I
AUNT LAURA was waiting for him on the platform. It was a very strange
sensation. Always at other times when he had come home from St. Luke’s
his mother had met him at North Bromwich, and even now it seemed natural
to look for her, to pick out her fragile figure from all the others on
the platform, and then to kiss her cool face through her veil. On these
occasions neither of them would speak, but he would see her eyes smiling
and full of love looking him all over, drowning him in their particular
kindness. Aunt Laura was a poor substitute. To-day she was a little
more diffuse and emotional than usual, and at the same time curiously
kinder. She kissed him—her lips were hot—and he felt that the kiss was
really nothing more than an attempt to conceal an entirely different
emotion and to hide her eyes. On his cheek her lips trembled. He dared
not look at her for he was afraid that in her eyes he would be able to
read the worst. It had to be faced. At last he managed to say,
“How is she?”
And above the roar of the station he heard an uncertain voice answer.
“She’s very ill, Eddie . . . very ill indeed.”
“Not dead? . . . she’s not dead?”
“No, no. We must all be brave, Eddie.”
“We must all be brave.” . . . He hated to hear her talk like that.
What had she to be brave about? It wasn’t her mother who was dying, only
her sister. A sister wasn’t like a mother. It was all very well to say
these conventional things. He didn’t believe she really meant them. She
could cry her eyes out before he’d believe her, however kind she might
try to be. It wasn’t any good her trying to be kind now. She hadn’t
been kind to his mother. He remembered the day when her callousness had
made his mother cry. He couldn’t pity her now; he couldn’t put up with
her condolences; he believed he hated her. He would hate any one in the
world who had given his mother a moment’s pain. She was so little and
beautiful and perfect. . . .
And yet, when he sat opposite to Aunt Laura in the Halesby train, and
examined her more closely, he could see for himself that the strain of
the last few days had somehow chastened her—she seemed to have lost some
of her florid assurance, and her eyes looked as if she had been crying.
She even seemed to have shrunk a little. And this made matters worse,
for it seemed to him that the very thing which had obliterated what he
most disliked in her had also accentuated the family likeness. All the
time, beneath this face, which he distrusted, he could see a faint and
tantalising resemblance to the other face that he adored. If any one had
suggested to him that Aunt Laura was in any way like his mother, he would
have denied it indignantly; but the likeness was there, a curious,
torturing likeness of feature. He didn’t know then what in after years
he was to realise time after time: that grief has a way of suppressing
individual characteristics and reducing the faces of a whole suffering
family to their original type after the manner of a composite photograph.
It was tantalising, and so harrowing that he dared not look at her any
longer.
At Halesby they walked up from the station together almost without
speaking. The little house on the edge of the country wore a strangely
tragic air. Downstairs all was quiet. After the big echoing rooms at
St. Luke’s it seemed ridiculously small. Nobody inhabited the rooms, and
the soft carpet created a curious hushed atmosphere in which it seemed
sacrilege to speak in anything but a whisper. Aunt Laura took off her
hat and veil.
“I’d better carry my bag upstairs,” said Edwin. He felt somehow, that in
his little old room he could be happier. He could even, if he wanted to,
throw himself on the bed and give way to the tears which were bound to
come.
“No . . . you’d better wait here,” said Aunt Laura. “Your father is
sleeping in your room. You see it wouldn’t do for him to be in hers.
He’s been there for three nights. And I’m in the spare room. I think
you’re going to sleep over at Mrs. Barrow’s.”
Edwin flamed with jealousy. What was Aunt Laura doing in the house?
She, above all people, had no right to be there.
“But I could sleep on the sofa in the drawing-room,” he said.
“You mustn’t make difficulties, Eddie. It’s all arranged. The
specialist has been out this afternoon to see her with Dr. Moorhouse. He
may be upstairs now.”
“But I can’t, I can’t be so far away. I ought to be here. She would
like me to be here.”
“Eddie, dear . . . do be a good boy. Here comes your father.”
And his father came. Strangely, strangely old and worn he looked in the
shabby alpaca coat. Edwin had never realised that he could be so
pathetic. He smiled at Edwin, a smile that was unutterably painful.
“Eddie . . . my boy,” he said, and kissed him, “I’m glad you’ve come. . . .
She was anxious for you to come. . . .”
“Oh, father. . . .”
“We must all be brave, Eddie.” Again that terrible smile.
“Father, may I go and see her . . .?”
“The doctor says that nobody had better see her to-night.”
“Yes, Eddie, we must obey the doctor’s orders, dear,” said Aunt Laura.
“But you’ve seen her . . . you saw her this morning, didn’t you?”
“That was different,” said Aunt Laura. “I was up all night with her.”
“It isn’t different, is it, father? Aunt Laura’s nothing to her. . . .”
“Eddie, Eddie. . . .” Aunt Laura protested.
“Father, if she asked for me she ought to see me. . .”
“She’s so ill, Eddie. I’m afraid she wouldn’t know you.”
“Oh, I’m sure she would. . . .”
“Edwin, you mustn’t worry your father; there’s a good boy.”
“Oh, Aunt Laura . . .” Then fiercely, “She’s any mother. . . .”
Edwin’s father sighed and looked away. Aunt Laura, with a business-like
change of tone which implied that Edwin’s question was disposed of,
whispered to his father, “Is she still sleeping?”
“Yes. . . . The doctor says it isn’t really sleep, it’s coma.”
Coma . . . a gloomy and terrible word! What did it mean? Edwin
remembered the woman in the train. “Most of them pass away in their
sleep like.”
“I think I’ll go and lie down for an hour,” said his father.
“Yes, do, John,” said Aunt Laura encouragingly. “You need it. I’ll go
upstairs myself to be handy if the nurse wants anything.”
This was the first that Edwin had heard of a nurse. The idea inspired
him with awe. His father sighed and turned to go.
“Father . . . can’t I go up, only for a minute?”
Aunt Laura, who had taken upon herself the role of protectress and
manager of the distressed household, intervened,
“Eddie, you mustn’t worry your father. We’re all in trouble, and you
mustn’t be a nuisance.” His father went, without speaking.
“Well, when can I see her?” Edwin demanded.
“To-morrow. . . . You must be patient like the rest of us. Now I must
go upstairs. You’ll be quiet, won’t you? Mrs. Barrow has your bedroom
ready, and if you take your bag over she’ll give you some tea. She
promised to look after you. She was most kind. Or, if you like, and
will keep very quiet, you can stay here and read.”
“I didn’t come home to sit down here and read. Why did they send for me
to come if they won’t let me see her? I want her. . . .”
“Hush . . .” said Aunt Laura, with an air of being scandalised. She left
him, closing the door with exaggerated quietness behind her, leaving him
alone in the room that had once witnessed so much happiness. He didn’t
know what to do. Read? The idea was ridiculous. He looked at the
familiar shelves, on which he knew the place and title of every book. A
sense of the room’s awful emptiness oppressed him, for everything in it
recalled the memory of his darling’s presence; the books that they had
read together; the big chair in which he had sat cuddled in her arms; her
workbasket on the table by the window; and—terribly pathetic—a shopping
list scribbled on the back of an envelope. He couldn’t bear to be alone
in the room with so many inanimate reminders; and while he was debating
where he should go, a sudden angry jealousy flamed up in his heart
towards the other people in the house: his father, Aunt Laura, the
doctor, and the unknown nurse who shared the privilege that was denied
him and didn’t realise its value. He clenched his hands and cried aloud:
“We belong to one another. . . . She’s mine. . . . She’s mine. I hate
them.”
He opened the door softly and stepped into the hall. Scarcely knowing
what he was doing he looked into the drawing-room. There stood the piano
with a sonata of Beethoven upon the music-stand. The room was full of a
curious penetrating odour which came, he discovered, from a big vase full
of pinks that had faded and gone yellow. Some days ago, he supposed, his
mother had picked them. Her hands . . . he worshipped her hands. A
strange and uncontrollable impulse made him bend and kiss the dead
flowers.
But the atmosphere of that room was if anything more cruel than the
other. He couldn’t stay there. Once more he found himself in the
darkness and quiet of the hall. The house had never been so silent.
Only, in the corner an oak grandfather’s clock with a brass face engraved
with the name of Carver, Hay, ticked steadily. In the silence he heard
his own heart beating far faster than the clock.
Scarcely knowing what he was doing he climbed upstairs and crept quietly
to the door of the room where his mother was lying. He knelt on the mat
outside the door and listened. Inside the room there was no sound; not
even a sound of breathing. If only he dared open the door. . . . If
only he could see her for a second she might smile at him and he would be
satisfied. He was thankful to find that the mere fact of being nearer to
her made him feel more happy. For a long time he knelt there, and then,
hearing a slight noise in his own room, where his father was supposed to
be resting, he stole downstairs again, a little comforted, opened the
front door and went out into the garden.
II
Mrs. Barrow, at whose house it had been arranged that Edwin should put up
for the night, was the Ingleby’s nearest neighbour and their landlady.
The gardens of the two houses stood back to back with a high wall
between, and the relations of the neighbours had always been so friendly
that the little door in the wall was never locked, even though it was so
seldom used that tendrils of ivy had attached themselves to the woodwork,
forming a kind of natural hinge.
On the Inglebys’ side of the wall lay a modern well-kept garden, not more
than twenty years old. Edwin’s mother had a passion for flowers, and his
father had made the gratification of her pleasure his favourite hobby, so
that Edwin’s earliest memories of both of them were associated with the
gathering of fruits and blooms, with the rich odours of summer, or, above
all, the smell of newly-turned earth. This summer Mr. Ingleby had
planted the long bed that stretched along the side of the house towards
the door in Mrs. Barrow’s wall with masses of delicately-coloured stocks.
Though the form of these flowers was not particularly beautiful their
scent rose to meet him in a hot wave of overpowering sweetness. He
remembered a letter in which his mother had told him how wonderful they
were. Everything reminded him of her. . . .
He passed through the door in the wall and entered another world.
Everything connected with Mrs. Barrow was in character. She was a little
old woman, the widow of a small manufacturer who had set his mark upon
the countryside by the erection of a chimney stack taller than any other
in the district, so tall that even from the summit of Pen Beacon it made
a landmark more prominent than the slender spire of Halesby church. In
Edwin’s eyes its presence was so familiar that he had almost become fond
of it. Many and many times on windy days he had watched the immense
structure swaying gently as a reed in a summer breeze. Under the shadow
of Mr. Barrow’s monument lay an old garden designed on the formal lines
of a hundred years ago, full of honeysuckle arbours and narrow twisted
paths: so rich, and so tangled that every year a great part of its
fruitfulness ran to waste. Long rows of lavender were there; and alleys
of hoary apple-trees whose gnarled branches overreached the paths: and
the whole place was so crowded with decaying vegetable matter and the
mould of fallen leaves that even in high summer it had an autumnal savour
and a ripe smell that was not unlike that of an apple loft.
Through this shady precinct he passed carrying his hand-bag, pausing only
in a sudden patch of light where a bank of tawny scabious diffused an
aromatic perfume in the sun. He paused, not because he was impressed by
their garish beauty, but because many of the heads were now frequented by
a new hatch of Comma butterflies eagerly expanding their serrated wings,
drugged already with the flowers’ harsh honey. Edwin had never seen this
uncommon butterfly before. In the neighbourhood of St. Luke’s the
species, which is notoriously capricious, had never appeared. He wished
that he had a butterfly net with him: for by catching one of them he
would have scored over Widdup.
So he passed to Mrs. Barrow’s house, a dark Georgian structure as twisted
and autumnal as her garden, and there, in a gloomy sitting-room, he found
the old lady herself, a little demure creature with round-hunched,
shawl-covered shoulders, like the dormouse in _Alice in Wonderland_,
taking tea with her companion, a decorous lady of the same age named Miss
Beecock.
They did their best to make Edwin feel at home. They never mentioned his
mother, but it was so obvious that their maidenly commonplaces were only
designed to divert his mind from the tragic shadow which he carried with
him, that Edwin felt inclined to scandalise them by talking of it. . . .
Their deliberate awkward kindness, the cautious glances which they
exchanged, the little sniff of emotion which Mrs. Barrow concealed in her
empty teacup, when the pitiful contemplation of Edwin’s youth and
innocence overcame her, would have been amusing if there had been room
for anything amusing on the darkened earth.
When they had finished the buttered scones and medlar jelly which Mrs.
Barrow made from fruit that fell on the dark leaf-mould of her garden,
Mrs. Barrow herself moved with short steps to a mahogany bureau, and
calling Edwin to her side, showed him one of those secret drawers whose
secret everybody knows, smelling of cedar wood and aged russia leather.
From this drawer she produced a purse made of beadwork, and from the
purse her fragile fingers extracted a Georgian five-shilling piece,
which, with a sigh, she then presented to Edwin. “If I were you,” she
said, “I don’t think I should spend it. Old coins like that are
valuable. Mr. Barrow had a great interest in anything old and
historical.”
Edwin was so surprised by this generosity that he almost forgot to thank
her; but Miss Beecock, in a shrill, soft voice, reminded him of his duty,
saying: “Now, isn’t that kind of Mrs. Barrow, Edwin?” Edwin hastily
agreed that it was, and the old ladies smiled at one another, as though
they were saying, “Isn’t that clever of us, to give him a toy that will
take his mind off his mother?” In the silence that followed, a canary
which had been pecking at a lump of sugar stuck in the bars of his cage,
attracted by the bright hues of the ribbon on Mrs. Barrow’s cap, broke
into a shrill twitter.
“Sweet . . . swee . . . t,” said Mrs. Barrow with pursed lips.
“Sweet . . . sweet,” echoed Miss Beecock, with a little laugh.
“I think I will take my crochet on to the lawn,” said Mrs. Barrow.
“If you have your shawl, and the grass is not too damp,” Miss Beecock
reminded her.
“There was a heavy dew last week,” said Mrs. Barrow. “Which day was it?
I think it must have been Tuesday. Yes . . . it was Tuesday. That was
the day on which I spoke to Mr. Waldron about thinning the grapes. And
now, Edwin, would you like to fetch a book from the drawing-room? You
may prefer to bring it out on to the lawn. You know the way. The key is
on the outside of the door.”
Edwin said, “Yes.” He left them and climbed the creaking oak stairs, to
the first story landing, a wide passage of polished wood lit by a shining
fanlight that overlooked the street. He knew the room well enough. It
had been one of the delights of his childhood. It was long, and
irregular in shape, and crammed with curious things that he had once
found entertaining.
He unlocked the door and released immediately a concentrated odour of the
same character as that which had issued from the secret drawer in Mrs.
Barrow’s bureau. Damp and cedar wood and mouldy russia leather. All the
chairs in the room were covered with white draw-sheets as though they
were dead and awaiting burial. The venetian blinds were down, and when
Edwin raised them, the heavy rep curtains at the side of the three tall
windows admitted no more than an ecclesiastical twilight.
There, however, stood the things which had delighted his youth. Nothing
had been moved a hair’s-breadth for many years: since the day, indeed,
long before Edwin was born, when Mr. Barrow had died. It was the best
room of the house: and so reverenced by Mrs. Barrow that she would never
have dreamed of living in it or using it at all except on Christmas Day,
when a melancholy family party of relatives and possible heirs assembled
to do their duty by the old lady. Then, and only then, a fire was
lighted, extracting from the walls a curious odour of dry rot, which
resembled, curiously enough, the apple-loft odour which pervaded the
garden.
Edwin was soon at home. Here was a great glass-fronted mahogany bookcase
the wonder of which he had never thoroughly explored. Here was the flat
glass showcase, shaped like a card-table in which a number of Mr.
Barrow’s curiosities reposed. Here was the great musical-box
(glass-topped again) with its prickly brass cylinder and twanging teeth
for notes, and a winding lever that made a sound as impressive as the
winding of a grandfather’s clock.
Edwin thought he would try a tune. He wound up the mechanism, pressed
over the starting lever, and the prickly cylinder began slowly to
revolve. It made a bad start; for no one knows how many years ago it had
been stopped in the middle of a tune. Then, having finished the broken
cadence, it burst gaily into the song called “Mousetraps for Sale,” a
pathetic ballad which may have sounded sprightly in the ears of young
people fifty years ago, but in this strange room was invested with a
pathetic and faded quality which made Edwin wish it would stop. There
was no need for him to pull back the lever, for the musical box, as
though guessing his wishes, suddenly petered out with a sort of metallic
growl. Edwin laughed in spite of himself, at this peculiar noise, and
hearing the echo of his own laugh turned to find himself staring into the
jealous eyes of a portrait of a Victorian gentleman whom he took to be
the late Mr. Barrow, for whose delectation, over his glass of punch, the
instrument had been purchased. Edwin began to feel a little uneasy. The
feeling annoyed him. “I’m silly to be like this,” he said to himself.
“I suppose it’s the uncertainty. . . . Oh, I wish I knew. . . .”
He took refuge in the bookcase, from which he extracted, to his great
delight, the complete works of Shenstone in two volumes, bound in
slippery calf and published by Dodsley in the year seventeen-seventy. . . .
The books were in a beautiful state of preservation. Edwin doubted if
they had ever been read. Mr. Barrow, no doubt, had purchased them simply
for their local interest. With a final glance at Mr. Barrow’s portrait,
in a faint hope that he approved of his choice, Edwin let down the
blinds, so that no light penetrated the room but a single gleam reflected
from the glass pane of a wool-worked fire-guard that hung from a bracket
at the side of the fireplace. With a shiver he re-locked the door. . . .
When he reached the garden with his Shenstone, the light was failing.
“You were a long time, Edwin,” said Mrs. Barrow.
“Yes, wasn’t he?” echoed Miss Beecock. “I’m afraid it is time Mrs.
Barrow was going in.”
Quietly, and with a leisure that seemed to presume an endless placidity
of existence, the old ladies folded their work, sighed, and recrossed the
lawn towards the house. In a little time came supper: biscuits and milk
on which a thick cream had been rising all day. Then Mrs. Barrow kissed
him good-night. He felt her face on his cheek: a little chilly, but lax
and very soft. Miss Beecock lighted him to bed with a candle in a
highly-polished brass candlestick. The sheets were cool and of old
linen. The bedroom smelt of apples. With the air of “Mousetraps for
Sale” in his head, and a sleepy consciousness of ancient creaking
timbers, Edwin fell asleep.
He slept long and dreamlessly, waking in the morning to find the sun
shining brilliantly through Mrs. Barrow’s lace curtains. At first he
could not remember where he was, so completely had sleep, bred of long
fatigue, obliterated his consciousness. Before he opened his eyes he had
half expected to hear the noise of Widdup turning out of bed with a flop,
or the clangour of the six-thirty bell. And then, with a rush, the whole
situation came back to him: this was Halesby, and the new day might be
full of tragedy.
At his bedside Miss Beecock, who had stolen into the room an hour or so
before in slippered feet and found him sleeping, had placed a glass of
creamy milk and biscuits. It was awfully kind of her, Edwin thought, as
he sipped the yellow cream at the top of the glass. Outside in the
garden it was very quiet. He had overslept the morning chorus of
birdsong; but he heard the noise of a thrush cracking snail-shells on the
gravel path beneath his window. He had forgotten to wind up his watch
overnight; and when he found it in his waistcoat pocket where he had left
it he saw that it had stopped. “I’d better get up, anyway,” he thought,
and while he stood at the door wondering if Mrs. Barrow’s house ran to a
bathroom, he heard a clock in the hall give a loud whirr and then strike
ten. “Good Lord, I’ve overslept myself,” he thought. “I’d better buck
up.”
Abandoning the uncertainty of hunting for a bath he dressed and came
downstairs to the sitting-room (that was what it was called) in which the
meals had been served the day before. Mrs. Barrow was sitting there in
pleasant sunlight, wearing a less elaborate cap and a shetland shawl, and
the canary, whose brass cage and saffron plumage now shone brilliantly in
the morning sunlight, was singing like mad. When Edwin came into the
room she smiled at him.
“We’re so glad that you slept well,” she said. “Miss Beecock went to
have a look at you but you were sleeping so soundly that she didn’t like
to disturb you. You must have been tired out. Now you’ll be ready for
breakfast.”
At this point Miss Beecock entered the room, her attire modified in the
same degree as that of Mrs. Barrow.
“Ah . . .” she said with a little laugh. “Here you are. I must ask
Annie for your breakfast.”
“He’d like a nice brown egg, lightly boiled, and some buttered toast,”
said Mrs. Barrow temptingly.
“Yes, of course he would,” said Miss Beecock.
“I think if you don’t mind,” said Edwin, “I’d like to go home. It’s so
late.”
“Oh, you needn’t mind us,” chimed the two old ladies.
That wasn’t exactly what Edwin had meant, but he allowed himself to be
persuaded, and even enjoyed his breakfast, to the accompaniment of the
twitterings of the canary and his two hostesses.
“You’ll sleep here again to-night, won’t you?” they said when he was
ready to go. Edwin thanked them. “Oh, we’re only too pleased to be of
any assistance to your mother,” they said, pursuing his departure with
the kindest and most innocent of smiles.
This time he did not linger in the old garden: he was far too anxious to
get home and learn how things were going. At the door in the wall his
heart stood still. What was he going to find? It seemed to him that
something terrible might be waiting for him on the other side of the
wall. It was a silly apprehension, he thought, and when he stepped into
it the new garden was as sunny as the old. Only, on the long walk beside
the bed of stocks, a mattress, blankets, and sheets were spread out to
air in the sun. The scent of some disinfectant mingled with that of the
flowers. His fears supplied an awful explanation. It was the bedding
from his mother’s room that was spread out there in the sun. And when he
looked up to the windows of the house above him, he saw that the blinds
were down. That, of course, needn’t mean anything on the sunny side of
the house. In a great hurry he turned the corner to the front and saw
that the blinds on that side were down as well.
III
In the darkened dining-room Aunt Laura sat at his mother’s desk writing
letters with dashing fluency. When he came in she stopped her writing
and rose to meet him. “Edwin, my poor dear,” she said, holding out her
hands to him. He took no notice of her hands.
“She’s gone,” he said, “in the night?”
“Yes. . . . In the night. She passed away quite quietly. It’s a
dreadful blow for us, Edwin, we must be brave. . . .”
He hadn’t time for sentiments of that kind. “She was alive when I came
yesterday. And you wouldn’t let me see her. _You_, of all people. . . .
She hated you. She told me so. She always hated you . . . and she’d
hate you for this more than anything.”
“Edwin,” she cried, “don’t say these terrible things!’
“They’re true . . . true. I wish it were you who were dead. It was you
who stopped me from seeing her . . . my little darling. . . . Damn you . . .
damn you.”
“Edwin . . . you don’t know what you’re saying. You’re cruel.”
“Cruel. . . . I like that. Cruel. _You_ talk about cruelty. . . .”
“Edwin. . . .” Aunt Laura clutched nervously at her breast. It was
funny to see this big blowzy woman crumple up like that. She flopped
down in a red plush chair and started crying softly in a thin voice.
Edwin didn’t mind. Let her cry. She deserved it. Nothing of that kind
could soften his indignant heart.
“Where’s father?” he asked at last.
“I don’t know. He’s upstairs somewhere,” she said between her sobs.
“For goodness’ sake, Edwin, don’t go and say things like this to the poor
man. We all have this trouble to bear. And we’ve had the strain of
nursing her. Now, don’t be hasty,” she pleaded.
“All right,” said Edwin, and left her.
Upstairs on the landing he found a pale, shadowy figure in which he could
scarcely recognise his father. Neither of them could speak at all.
Edwin had been ready with the reproaches that had come to his lips in the
presence of Aunt Laura; but he couldn’t do it. This man was too broken.
He was face to face with a grief as great as his own. There were no
words for either of them. The boy and the man clung together in each
other’s arms, overcome with pity and with sorrow. On the landing,
outside the door of the room where she lay dead, they stood together and
cried quietly to each other. And now it seemed to Edwin as if pity for
his father were overriding even the intensity of his own grief; for she
had been everything to him, too, and for so many years. He felt that he
would have done anything in the world to comfort this desolate man, whom
he had always taken for granted and never really loved. But his mother
had loved him. He wondered if they could do anything to assuage the
bitterness of their loss by loving one another. They were two people
left alone with nothing else in the world but each other. Why not . . .?
That, he thought, was what his mother would have wished.
He felt his father’s tears on his forehead, the roughness of his father’s
grey beard. He felt the man’s body quivering with sobs, and the arms
which clutched his body as if that were the only loved thing left to him
in life. They went together into the little room that had always been
Edwin’s, and there they knelt together beside the bed. He didn’t exactly
know why they knelt, but kneeling there at his side, with his arm still
clasped about his waist, he supposed that his father was praying; and
though Edwin could not understand what good prayer could do, it seemed to
him a simple and a beautiful thing. It made him feel that he loved his
father more than ever. He wished that he could pray himself. He tried
to pray . . . for what? There was nothing left in this world for him to
pray for. At last his father rose to his feet in the dim room, and Edwin
rose with him. He spoke, and the tears still choked his voice and his
bearded lip trembled. “Edwin,” he said, “I shall never be able to get
over this. I’m broken. . . . My life . . . my life has . . .” He
stopped.
“You don’t know what she was to me, Eddie. I can’t realise, Eddie, there
are only two of us left. We must help each other to bear it. We must be
brave.”
Strange that a phrase which had sounded like cant on the lips of Aunt
Laura should now seem the truest and most natural thing imaginable.
“We . . . we were like children together,” said his father.
Again they stood for a little while in silence. At last Edwin, still
gripping his father’s arm, said,—“Father, may I see her?”
“Of course, dear. . . .”
They went together to the room, and his father opened the door and pulled
up one of the blinds. Mrs. Bagley, the charwoman who did odd work in the
house and was an expert in this melancholy office, had drawn a clean
white sheet over the bed. His mother lay there in a cotton nightdress
with her hands folded in front of her, and her lips gently smiling. Even
her cheeks were faintly flushed, but the rest of her face and her hands
were of a waxen pallor. She looked very small and childlike. She looked
like a small wax doll. In this frail and strangely beautiful creature
Edwin could only recognise a shadow of the mother that he knew. It was a
little girl that lay there, not his mother.
Edwin spoke in a whisper,—
“Should I kiss her?”
His father nodded and turned away.
But he did not kiss her as he had thought he would. For some reason he
dared not, for he could not feel certain that it was she at all. He only
touched her hands, the hands that he had always worshipped, with his
fingers. They were cold; and still her lips smiled. The room was full
of the odour of Sanitas which some one had sprayed or sprinkled over the
floor. For the rest of his life the smell was one which Edwin hated; for
in his mind it became the smell of death.
IV
On the evening after the funeral Edwin sat alone in the drawing-room. He
sat there because the other room was still cumbered with the remnants of
a melancholy repast: several leaves of mahogany had been dragged down
from the dust of the attic and had lengthened the dining-room table to
such an extent that there was scarcely room to move in it, and round this
table, in the sunny afternoon, had clustered a large collection of people
who smelt of black crape and spoke in lowered, gentle voices, out of
respect for the woman whom, it seemed to Edwin, they had never known.
Everybody who entered the house—and there were many, for Mr. Ingleby was
much respected in Halesby—wore the same grave air. Even the undertaker,
a brisk little man with a fiery red beard and one shoulder lower than the
other from the constant carrying of coffins, treated his daily task with
the same sort of mute reverence. His face, at any rate, wore an
expression that matched that of the mourners; and Edwin was only
disillusioned as to the sincerity of his expression when he heard him
swearing violently at the driver of the first mourning carriage. This
moment of relaxation caused him to forget himself so far as to whistle a
pantomime song as he crossed the drive.
The black-coated people in the dining-room did not hear him: they were
far too busy being serious: and behind them, from time to time, Edwin
could see the grey face of his father, with curiously tired and puzzled
eyes. Puzzled . . . that was the only word for them. It was just as if
the man were protesting, in all simplicity, against the unreason and
injustice of the blow which had fallen on him. Edwin, savagely hating
the presence of all these hushed, uninterested people, found in his
father’s suffering face a sudden reinforcement to his anger. It was a
shame, a damned, ghastly shame, that a simple man like that should be hit
in the dark; and even more pathetic that he should be simple enough to
take the sympathy of his neighbours at its face value. Edwin glowed with
a new and protective love for his father. It was as well that some
generous emotion should be born to take the place of his numb grief.
Above all, the sight of his Aunt Laura, who was conscientiously doing the
honours of the house, maddened him. He could not look at her without
remembering that she had been selfish and unkind to his mother; that, on
the very last day, she had robbed him of the privilege of seeing his
darling alive. Even now, he believed that she was enjoying herself. Her
eyes occasionally brimmed with tears, but that meant nothing. They were
such easy tears . . . so different from the terrible tears that had
shaken his father’s body on the day of desolation. If only she were
dead, he thought, there would be no great loss.
And yet, while he thought of this, he suddenly caught sight of her
husband, the little manufacturer whom he had lately begun to know as
Uncle Albert, a small man with a shiny bald head and a diffident manner:
and in the eyes of Uncle Albert, which were fixed upon his wife, he saw
an extraordinary mixture of love and admiration for this shallow, diffuse
creature whom he had found himself hating.
“If Aunt Laura were to die,” he thought, “Uncle Albert might very well be
like father is to-day. That’s a queer idea. . . .” He was amazed at the
complications of human relationships and the potential pain that love
brings with it. He thought, “It’s no good thinking about it. . . . I
give it up. I don’t really wish she were dead. I only wish . . . that
there were no such thing as death. Why does God allow it?” No answer
came to him: but in place of an answer another angry impulse. “Curse
God,” he thought, meaning the God of Mr. Leeming, the God to whom this
queer collection of people were to dedicate his mother’s soul. Another
thought followed quickly: “What’s the good of cursing him? He doesn’t
exist. If he existed this sort of thing couldn’t happen. . . .”
People were seriously setting themselves to the putting on of black kid
gloves that the undertaker had provided. The horses on the gravel drive
were getting uneasy and the cab wheels made a grating noise. Heavy steps
were heard descending the stairs—awkward steps like those of men moving
furniture. Edwin saw that his father had heard too. He was looking
towards the closed door of the room. He wanted to go and take his
father’s hand and hold it, but the space round the edge of the table was
packed with people. Now they had opened the hall door. He dared not
look out of the window.
The voice of Aunt Laura, most studiously kind, said to him: “Eddie,
you’ll come along with your father and Uncle Albert and me.” He said,
“All right.” People at the side of the table made way for him. On his
way he found himself abreast of his friend, Miss Beecock. She said
nothing, but smiled at him and put her arm on his sleeve. She was
wearing black silk mittens, and her eyes were full of tears. That weak,
tearful smile nearly did for Edwin.
The first cab was drawn up at the hall door. Edwin scrambled in last.
Aunt Laura, with a rustle of black silk, made way for him. She took out
her handkerchief, and Edwin was stifled with a wave of scent. He hated
scent: but anyway it was better than Sanitas. He saw his father’s
puzzled eyes on the other side of the cab . . . so old, so awfully old.
Uncle Albert took out his handkerchief, too. Evidently, Edwin thought,
it was the correct thing to do. He had misjudged him. Uncle Albert
proceeded to blow his nose.
They were driving through the High Street. Aunt Laura noticed that most
of the shop shutters were up, and in several cases tradesmen were
standing at their shop doors bare-headed as they passed.
“It’s very kind of them . . . very nice to see so much respect, John,”
she said to his father. Mr. Ingleby said “Yes,” and Aunt Laura, with a
little laugh that was merely a symptom of nervousness, went on: “I expect
there’ll be a crowd at the cemetery gate.” This time Mr. Ingleby said
nothing and Uncle Albert once more stolidly blew his nose. “Albert,
dear, I wish you wouldn’t,” said Aunt Laura. The brakes grated, and the
cab stopped with a jerk. “Come along, Edwin, jump out, there’s a good
boy,” said Aunt Laura. “You’ll walk with your father.”
He walked with his father. The church was full. His father went with
bowed head, seeing nothing; but Edwin was conscious of many faces that he
knew. In the middle of the aisle the thought suddenly came to him that
these people weren’t really there to do honour to his mother: they were
so many that most of them could never have known her: no, they were just
curious people who had flocked there to find something sensational in the
faces of the mourners. In a dull place like Halesby a funeral, and such
an important funeral, was an unusual diversion. And this revelation made
him determined that whatever happened he would show no emotion that might
tickle the sensations of these ghouls. He only wished to goodness that
he could explain the matter to his father so that he too might give them
nothing to gloat over.
In the church, where a faint mustiness mingled with the exotic scent of
arum lilies that diffused from the heap of wreaths on the coffin, Edwin
held himself upright. They sang a hymn: “I heard the voice of Jesus say
. . . Come unto me and rest”—the first quatrain in unison, and Edwin sang
with them, just as he would have sung in the chapel at St. Luke’s. In
the churchyard, when they walked in procession behind the bearers to the
grave-side, his eyes were still dry, his lips did not tremble, though
Aunt Laura’s scented handkerchief was now drenched with tears, and even
Uncle Albert, a virtual outsider, was on the edge of violent emotion.
The burial service was nothing to Edwin. There was no consolation in it
nor, to him, the least atom of religious feeling. A mockery, a mockery,
a solemn and pretentious mockery. For she was dead . . . she had
vanished altogether, and the thing that they were burying with muttered
formulas and tears was no more she than the empty parchment of the cocoon
is the glowing butterfly. Let them cry their eyes out. That was not
grief. Beyond tears. Beyond tears. . . .
With a curious air of relief that was very near to a furtive gaiety, the
party drove back and reassembled in the dining-room. All except Mr.
Ingleby. “He has gone to his room, poor dear,” said Aunt Laura, with her
nervous laugh. “Mrs. Barrow, do have a slice of ginger-cake. Just a
little?” Round the long table conversation began to flow, cautiously at
first, but with an increasing confidence, when it became clear that it
was unattended by any revengeful consequences.
“Didn’t you think it was awfully nice to see the people in High Street so
respectful, Mrs. Willis?” said Aunt Laura. Edwin looked up. This then
was the Mrs. Willis of Mawne Hall with whom his mother had planned the
visit to Switzerland. He saw a middle-aged woman in black satin, with a
gold watch-chain round her neck and jet in her bonnet. She caught his
interested eyes and in return smiled. Aunt Laura went unanswered. “I
wonder,” Edwin thought, “if she understands what a fraud the whole thing
is.” At any rate she looked kind . . . and she had been kind to his
mother too. A moment later she said good-bye, and when Aunt Laura had
escorted her to the door, for Mrs. Willis was a person of consequence,
the rest of the company began to disappear. At last Edwin was left alone
in the room with his aunt and uncle. Aunt Laura’s face, that had been
glowing with hospitable smiles, now took a more serious cast.
“Edwin,” she said, “I want to speak to you.”
“Do you?” said Edwin. “Well . . . go on.”
“It’s very painful . . . I’m afraid . . . I’m half afraid that it will
have upset your father, poor man—as if he hadn’t enough to put up with.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“How can you ask? I mean your behaviour to-day. In the church. In the
cemetery. You stood there just as if . . . just as if . . . oh, it was
most irreverent. Not a sign of grief! You must have noticed it,
Albert?”
Uncle Albert, most uncomfortable at his inclusion in this family scene,
but fully aware of the disaster which would follow denial, said, “Yes . . .
yes . . . yes, certainly.”
“Every one must have noticed it,” Aunt Laura went on. “It was a public
scandal. It was unnatural. It showed such a curious lack of feeling.”
“Feeling,” said Edwin. “What do you know about feeling?”
“Steady, Edwin, steady,” from Uncle Albert.
“If mother were here,” he said, “and could hear you talking this damned
piffle she’d laugh at you. That’s what she’d do.”
“Edwin!”
“It’s true. . . . She couldn’t stick your sort of grief at any price.”
“On the very day of her burial. . . .”
“She’s not buried. It wasn’t she you buried. Oh, I’m sick of you. . . .”
“Edwin . . .” said Uncle Albert, who felt that something in the way of
protection was demanded of him. “Really now . . .”
“Oh, I don’t mean you, uncle,” said Edwin.
“You cruel boy,” Aunt Laura sobbed.
He left them there. He carried his bitterness into the drawing-room on
the other side of the passage. . . . It was very quiet there. Through
the bow window floated the perfume of the bed of stocks. In the corner
stood the piano. He had often listened to his mother playing at night
when he was in bed. He loved her to play him to sleep. The piano was
shut; and the shut piano seemed to him symbolical. All the music and all
the beauty that had been there had gone out of the house. The house was
an empty shell. Like a dry chrysalis. Like a coffin. There, on the
hearthrug, where he had crawled as a child, he lay down and cried.