quivered. It quivered to her hand as she wrote. She could not keep her
eyes away from the pistol. . . .
“Francis has probably told you about me. I am his cousin’s wife—his
cousin Peter’s wife. He does not know I am writing to you—he has never
told me _or any one_ about you. I am writing this in his house—he is
not here. I don’t quite know what to say to you. I can only tell you
that he needs you _very desperately_. If you love him you ought to come
to him. I don’t know if you love him or if you can come to him—but I do
know that it is a question of life or death for Francis.” . . .
She signed her name and address legibly at foot of the letter; rose with
it in her hand; walked to the fireplace; dried the single sheet at the
flame. Again, the whole affair seemed fantastic. She wanted to throw the
letter on the fire: till, looking over her shoulder, she saw the pistol,
black and menacing on the desk-top.
She rang the bell; walked back to the writing-desk; found an envelope,
folded the sheet; sealed it up.
“You rang for me, Madam,” said Prout, appearing silently in the doorway.
“Yes.” She handed him the closed envelope. “You know Miss Cochrane’s
address, I suppose.”
“Yes, Madam”—obviously, the valet wanted to thank her, to ask
questions. He began to stammer something; but Patricia cut him short.
“Have it registered, please: and, Prout”—her eyes flickered to the
pistol on the writing-desk—“I thought you said you were fond of him!”
She was out of the room and down the stairs before the old man could
answer. He heard the rattle of her stick, the clang of front door
closing, as he stood by the window, pistol grasped gingerly in one hand,
unaddressed letter in the other. “I ought to have seen her out,” thought
the valet. “I ought to have seen her out.”
§ 3
Twice, as she climbed the meadow-path, Patricia wanted to turn back. She
had behaved like a lunatic. She had done two unpardonable things:
gossiped with a servant, interfered between a man and a woman. The
letter must not be sent—the letter must be destroyed. But Patricia did
not turn back. . . .
Among the haystacks in the field behind his cow-yard, old man Tebbits
was feeding his chickens. Patricia heard his quaint treble: “Come
birds—come birds—come birds”; came upon him suddenly as she rounded
the first rick. He plucked cap from head, said:
“Good-evening, missis.”
“Good evening, Mr. Tebbits.” She could see that old man Tebbits was ripe
for a gossip. He began to talk as he scattered the corn, and she stood
listening to him for a full five minutes. “Middlings was up again—and
bad. He never remembered them so bad. And the bran. You couldn’t really
call it bran. Same with the toppings. That gilt of hers would make a
fine sow. Store-pigs didn’t pay like they used to. Ten-week pigs didn’t
pay so bad. _He_ always killed ‘brokes.’ ‘Brokes’ was no good.”
Patricia had not yet learned the meaning of a “broke”; but she found
Tebbits’ gossip comforting. Here, at least, was somebody normal,
somebody of the old kindly world, the world, that had gone to smash in
August, 1914. . . . Reluctantly, she made her excuses, bade him
good-night; picked her way through the cow-yard, out on to the road:
reluctantly, she swung the gate of Sunflowers, passed to her home.
It was nearly five o’clock, dusk deepening to darkness. In the paddock,
she could see Fry’s burly figure, locking-up the chicken-houses. But no
lamp yet glowed from the hall windows. Perhaps Francis and Peter had
gone upstairs to the children. . . .
She turned the knob of the front-door, heard Francis’ voice through the
velvet curtains. “Well, anyway it’s a gentleman’s death.” She entered
quietly, stood still for a moment. Peter’s voice answered: “Oh, of
course a man’s got a right to kill himself if he wants to. No one asked
us into this rotten world.”
Patricia slipped out again, closing the door gently behind her; walked
round to the back of the house. Fry was just locking up the stable-door.
She called out, “Good-night, Fry.” He answered surlily, “Good-night,
Madam.” In the red-tiled kitchen, Fanny—a fat slovenly fair-haired
girl—was preparing tea. Both lamps were lit; the kitchen glowed
hospitably. Patricia scraped her boots; strode in.
“Have the children had their tea, Fanny?”
“Yes, mum. Elizabeth’s upstairs with them now, mum.”
“Why isn’t the lamp in the hall lit?”
“I’m sorry, mum. I forgot it, mum.”
“Go and light it, please.”
The girl rattled a box of matches in her apron pocket; went out.
Patricia leaned her stick against the wall; drew off her gauntlets;
re-arranged the tea-tray. Through the door, which Fanny had left open,
she heard Peter’s, “Mrs. Jameson not come in yet, Fanny?” and the girl’s
answer, “Yes. She’s just come in.” . . .
The two cousins were sitting in armchairs by the fireplace. They rose as
Patricia entered. Francis said, “Good evening, Pat”; Peter, “Hallo, old
thing.”
“Why didn’t you ask for the lamp?” asked Patricia.
“Forgot all about it,” said Peter.
“And the room smells like a public-house.”
“You always say that, Pat.” Francis plopped back into his chair. “It’s
Peter’s fault, not mine. He ought to give up cigars now he’s out of the
business. Besides, he’ll ruin his lungs. . . .”
Patricia saw Peter wince; turned away to draw the brown window-curtains.
Fanny clattered in with the tea-tray; put it down on a stool by the
fireplace.
“Where are you going to sit, Pat?” Peter was still on his feet, back to
the fire.
“In _your_ chair, I think.” She smiled at him. He walked gingerly round
the tea-tray; drew himself up a third chair. She poured out; handed them
their cups, plates, cakes and bread-and-butter. Talk languished. “What
have you two been discussing all the afternoon?” she asked.
“Suicide,” grinned Francis; “nice cheery topic!” and went on, Peter
approving, to elaborate his theory.
“Suicide’s the last act of a coward,” decided Patricia.
“Or an altruist,” interrupted Francis.
“What the devil’s an altruist?” asked Peter.
“An altruist”—Patricia rose from the tea-table—“is a woman who leaves
a nice comfortable fire to see that Elizabeth doesn’t drown Evelyn and
Primula in their baths.”
But she went upstairs heavy-hearted; found no joy in the laughter of her
children, in their bath-games, their quaint prayers, their snuggling
“good-nights.” . . .
§ 4
Francis stayed for dinner; stayed endlessly. After coffee, he and Peter
drew sofa to the fireplace in the hall; began to discuss the war.
Patricia, making pretence of reading the newspapers, watched them
covertly from her armchair.
Both the cousins were in day-clothes: Peter still wore breeches and
gaiters, his rough homespun shooting-coat; Francis, a loose gray-green
suit of Lovat tweed. Her own black evening dress, high-throated, lawn at
wrist, seemed to isolate her from their bodies, as thought isolated her
from their conversation.
They talked quietly, but with the bitter unreasoned conviction of the
fighting-man. Patricia could never accustom herself to that bitterness.
In their eyes, only the fighting-man existed: they could not see the
non-combatant. To them, non-combatants were traitors, shirkers,
conscientious objectors, self-advertisers, money-grubbers; always ready
to betray the fighting-man, to cheat him and rob him, to preach to him
first and leave him in the lurch afterwards.
“Patriotism!” sneered Peter. “Why, the Boches are ten times more
patriotic than we are. There aren’t any conscientious objectors in
Germany.”
Francis sneered back, “Never mind, old boy. We shall never sheathe the
sword till every munition-worker has got his own motor-car.”
“Don’t you believe it, Francis. Our damned politicians would sheathe the
sword tomorrow if they saw the chance. Take it from me, they’ll do us in
the eye before it’s over.”
Patricia flung down her newspapers. “You’re perfectly impossible, both
of you. Can’t you see anything good in England? Isn’t everybody working?
. . .”
“Isn’t everybody getting paid for it?”—Peter’s eyes darkled. “Who’s
paid worst? The front-line infantryman, of course. That’s war all over.
The more dangerous the job, the less the pay. And if it wasn’t for the
infantryman, you’d have had the Huns in England. . . .”
“No, we shouldn’t,” interrupted Francis. “The Navy’s still at sea, isn’t
it?”
“It is,” crowed Peter. “And that’s the worst paid service of the lot.”
She picked up her paper. It was useless to argue with them; they must
talk themselves out. And again the thought of madness overwhelmed
Patricia. The whole scene—the two lounging men, the cosy lamp-lit
room—became unreal. She was in a lunatic asylum. Peter and Francis were
both dead: their minds, the minds she had once known so well, existed no
longer: two ghosts, two utter strangers, occupied these bodies. Two mad
ghosts of minds she had known!
The hallucination passed. She felt mentality strengthen in her, felt
resolution rise triumphant over weakness. These were not lunatics, but
two sufferers, two sick men. And she, Patricia, would cure them both. To
cure, to heal—these were the blessed functions of her womanhood. . . .
At last, Francis said good-night; lit his final cigarette; limped
towards the door. Patricia helped him on with his coat; found him his
torch; watched it dancing over the gravel towards the gate. “Take care
of yourself,” she called after him: and thought of Prout, waiting-up in
that lonely cottage. She could trust Prout—but for how long? And the
girl in America? What would “that girl” do? If I were her, thought
Patricia, nothing on earth would keep me from him. . . . Thought
expired: she turned back to her husband.
Peter had not moved from the sofa. He sat hunched-up, peering into the
fire. His face showed thin and drawn in the flame-light. A great throb
of pity for him suffused her: she wanted to fling herself at his feet,
to ask his pardon. Mad? Her Peter mad? How had she dared so much as
think it of him? He was only ill, ill and sad and broken. His life, his
dreams, his health—everything he valued in the world—had gone to
smash. He had flung them down, a free gift, in the temple of honour. And
now, now he had no more to give! He was spent in honour, exhausted of
giving. But she—she to whom he had given, all his life,
ungrudgingly—she the acceptor of his gifts—she was not spent; her
giving had not yet begun, the fountain of it gushed in her veins,
ungrudging, inexhaustible, a great bright fountain of giving. . . .
“Peter!” Her voice woke him from reverie. He felt her warm arms round
his neck; her warm lips on his cheek. Instinctively, he recoiled from
them: they seemed to invade the privacy of his thought. The warmth of
womanhood had no place among those cold devils of fear with whom he
walked o’ nights. . . . But she would not let him go. Her arms clung to
him; her lips explored his face; her body snuggled against him on the
sofa. . . . “Peter,” she was whispering at his ear—“make love to me.
Make love to me tonight. I can’t bear you to be away from me any
more. . . . You’re being cruel to me, Peter. . . . I can’t go on doing
without you, I just can’t. . . . Despise me if you like: but don’t
reject me. I want you so . . . I’m shameless. I haven’t got any shame
left in me. But I want you, Peter: I want you as you used to want me.
You used to want me once, Peter.” . . . He lay in her arms, passive, a
man struck dumb. . . . “Peter, you must love me tonight. I can’t be
alone any more. Oh, boy, boy”—the old love-word quivered at her
lips—“I want you so much. I can’t be alone any more, boy. Are you
afraid to love me? . . .”
He sprang from the sofa with a great shrill cry: “Afraid! Yes. I am
afraid. God forgive me for being a coward. I am afraid.”
She dragged him down to her. “You mustn’t be afraid of me, boy. I love
you. Do you understand. I’m your wife, your slave, your mistress. . . .”
He wrenched himself free; stood up to his full height. She saw him
through a sheen of tears, towering above her. His voice carried down to
her through immense distances:—
“You mustn’t touch me, Pat. You mustn’t degrade yourself by touching me.
I am unclean, a leper in the sight of God and man. The soul inside me
has putrefied. Putrefied! You don’t know what that means. I don’t want
you to know what that means. It stinks. My soul inside me stinks. My
brain is full of filthy pictures. They haunt me. And I am afraid. . . .”
She, too, was afraid; but love in her cast out fear. Brown eyes
kindling, she rose to him; twined her arms about him; locked hands
behind his neck; clung to him with all her body. She would have kissed
him on the lips; but his lips evaded her. The breath whistled through
his lips. His heart pounded against her breasts as she forced him back
to the sofa. . . . Her hands unlocked from his neck. Her hands fondled
him. Lower and lower she sank against him, closer and closer. She could
feel all his body quiver to her. He shook under her hands as a ship
shakes when she heaves propeller free. . . .
“What are you frightened of, boy? Tell me what you’re frightened of. I’m
your wife, boy. I won’t hurt you.”
Suddenly, she felt his arms round her; his lips at her ear. Clinging to
her, straining her to him, he spoke: fiercely, as men speak in fight:—
“You mustn’t love a coward, Pat. God knows I want you. God knows I
mustn’t take you. . . . I am a coward. Do you know what that means?
. . . I’ll tell you. . . . Everything frightens me. . . . I am afraid to
go out alone. . . . I am afraid for the children, for you, for
myself. . . . I am afraid of life. . . . I am afraid to go on
living. . . . And I haven’t got the pluck to kill myself. . . . Dear
Christ, I haven’t even got the pluck to kill myself. . . .”
He began to cry, clinging to her, straining her to him: cruel dry sobs,
deep down in the throat. She could not move; she could not see him. Her
breasts were two burning torments; her body burned as with fire.
“Peter”—would he hear her? O God! would he hear her?—“I don’t care if
you’re a coward. I don’t care about anything. Only make love to me. Make
love to me, boy, or I shall die. . . .”
§ 5
All that night, he lay in her arms; sleepless. All that night she lay
listening to him, listening to the horrors in his brain. In the
darkness, he told her of dark things, things hidden from sheltered
women. For he had walked many nights with Fear, none aiding; till Fear
had bitten deep into his soul. . . .
All that night she lay listening to these things, unafraid, glorying
that he should tell her of them, pitying him, loving him, persuading
him. . . .
But when at last, promise given, he fell asleep on her naked breast;
when at last dawn peeped at her through the chinks of the
window-curtains; Fear came to Patricia—and with Fear, Fear’s kinswoman,
self-reproach.
Would he hate her when he awoke? Would he retract the promise given? Had
she robbed him of honour, lost him his lonely battle for self-respect?
Had her thoughts been all of him? Had she given herself all selflessly?
Self-reproach whispered to her in the dawning: “Delilah! Delilah!
Delilah!”
PART TWENTY-NINE
THE LIFTING OF SHADOWS
§ 1
It is no use pretending that Patricia was not ashamed of herself. She
was—desperately so. She felt she had been guilty of immodesty, that she
had forfeited her husband’s respect. Even when she realized that Peter’s
damaged memory retained few details of their night except his promise to
consult her father about his “nerves,” shame haunted her. Constantly,
she expected him to remember, to judge, to condemn. . . . Yet actually,
she had saved him!
For Peter’s “case” was, in the terms of psycho-pathology (which is the
science of soul-illnesses), one of “repressed complexes”: in simpler
language, of bottling-up his emotions. At their first interview, Heron
Baynet put the matter to him very simply. Heron Baynet said:—
“You have been twice wounded. One wound is in your arm; the other in
your mind. The flesh wound, you let us cure: you understood that it
needed antiseptics, drainage, bandages, rest. The wound in your mind,
you concealed from us; and it has festered. Now, tell me what you are
most afraid of?”
“Consumption,” admitted Peter.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid I’ve got it.”
“Who put that idea into your head?”
Peter told his father-in-law about the gas-attack at Neuve Église, about
his cough, about Rolleston. Heron Baynet laughed.
“We’ll soon settle that. Tubercle’s a bacillus. I’ll test you for it.
Now then, what else are you afraid of?”
Peter hesitated.
“Shall I tell you a few things?” went on the doctor. “You’re afraid of
going out by yourself. You’re afraid of noise. You’re afraid of time.”
“How do you know?” asked Peter wonderingly.
“My dear boy, how do _you_ know things? By learning them, don’t you? You
were trained in business, you were trained in soldiering. You studied
them. Well, I’ve studied the mind. . . .”
“But damn it,” said Peter, “one oughtn’t to be afraid of anything. At
least, one oughtn’t to admit it?”
“Oughtn’t”—the doctor smiled. “There’s no ‘oughtn’t’ in the mind.
‘Oughtn’t’ is half your trouble. You’ve corked-up all these fears with
your ‘oughtn’ts’ until they’ve become obsessions.”
“Well, anyway I’m a coward,” said Peter stubbornly. “You can’t get over
that, however much you argue about it.”
“Of course you are,” countered his father-in-law blandly, “of course
you’re a coward. So are nine-hundred and ninety-nine men out of every
thousand. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have tried to control this wound in
your mind. You were afraid to tell anybody about it, weren’t you?”
“I suppose I was.”
“Why?”
“Cowardice, I suppose. According to your theory.”
“Exactly. Don’t you see, Peter, that cowardice and bravery are
ridiculous terms?”
“No, I don’t,” snapped Peter. “A man either does his job, or he funks
it. If he funks it, he’s a coward.”
“You mean, if he funks it and doesn’t do it. Supposing he funks it, and
does it all the same.”
“Then,” admitted Peter, “he’s not a coward.”
“Good. Now, let me tell you something. That power which drives the man
to do a thing he funks, is not bravery but the will-to-be-brave. Your
will-to-be-brave is damaged; you’ve overstrained it. If you go on
overstraining it, you’ll lose it altogether. Give it a rest. Do you
understand me? Give it a rest. All these repressions you’ve been so
proud of—don’t interrupt, you _have_ been proud of them, subconsciously
proud—all these repressions are wrong. You’ve bound the wound up tight
instead of allowing it to drain. You’ve been sitting on you’re mental
safety-valves. If you want to jump when you hear a noise, for God’s sake
jump. It’s much better for you than the effort to control yourself. If
you’re afraid of open spaces, avoid ’em—don’t go through them with a
loaded gun and pretend you’re trying to shoot rabbits. . . .”
Peter blushed scarlet; and the lesson went on. One by one, Heron Baynet
detailed the Fears—Fear of Open Spaces, Fear of Closed Spaces, Fear of
Time, Fear of Money, Fear of Pain and Fear of Death. To his listening
son-in-law, the catalogue seemed inexhaustible.
“Is everybody afraid of something?” asked the patient at last.
“Everybody with any sense,” was the answer. “Fear is the beginning of
knowledge.”
“Then what are _you_ afraid of?”
“I!” Heron Baynet’s quiet eyes held Peter’s for a full second. “I’m
afraid of not knowing enough.”
. . . “Afraid of not knowing enough!” The phrase lingered in Peter’s
mind—as Heron Baynet had intended it should linger: and with it, came
back a scrap of Greek wisdom, γνωθι σεαυτον [Greek: gnôthi seauton]
(“Know thyself”). For the first time in his life, Peter began to
_think_.
Hitherto, he had lived automatically; actions had contented him. Now, he
started in to reason about his actions. Why had he done thus? Why had he
done so? What was the driving-force behind his actions? Why had that
driving-force suddenly run down?
The process—study of “cause” as opposed to study of
“effect”—fascinated a mind hitherto devoid of introspection; so that by
the time he went up to town for his second “lesson,” the following
question formulated itself:
“What,” asked Peter Jameson, “is the real cause of this neurasthenia? Is
it a mental trouble or a physical one? I’ve had the devil’s own time
since I saw you last. I’m as nervy as fourteen cats. My hands wobble all
over the place. I don’t seem able to control my memory. I’ve had three
nightmares in four nights; and woken up screaming my guts out. What’s
wrong—my mind or my body?”
“Can you separate ’em?” said Heron Baynet. “You’re not God. Nor am I.
I’m only a doctor: but I don’t know more about both your body and your
mind than you do. Now listen. . . .”
So, twice weekly, the educative process went on. And gradually, with the
coming of knowledge, fear abated.
§ 2
But Patricia’s fears did not abate. To her, the days were terror; the
nights, agony. The very love she bore her husband became a scourge.
For Patricia was not interested in “cases”: her interest lay in Peter
the man. And Peter the man, as she saw him now, seemed utterly broken.
She lived too close to his body, too far from his mind, to be aware of
the gradual cure which was being wrought in him. She saw only the
shaking hands, the glaring eyes of neurasthenia; heard only its
high-pitched quavering voice, its outbursts of uncontrollable rage, its
intolerable depressions. Night after night, Peter’s screams woke her
from tormented sleep: day after day his temper fretted her almost to
breaking point.
Yet, out of the very love which scourged her, Patricia fashioned healing
for him. Calm, clear-eyed, infinitely tender, mastering herself to save
him, she walked by his side through the cold shadows—understanding
sometimes, pitying always, but faltering never, learning with each
painful step Love’s ultimate lesson, the lesson of self-sacrifice.
And always, as she walked beside him, the petty responsibilities of
home-keeping—responsibilities she had never known in the sheltered days
of their Kensington existence—fretted at her mind. (They are not
“literature,” these responsibilities of home-keeping; they are neither
dramatic, nor romantic: but, for the women of what we in England call
the “middle-class,” they are “life”—the instant problem of existence,
its thousand daily pettinesses which may not be postponed. Only the
“middle-class” woman, the woman of moderate income who wants not a house
but a _home_, will understand how much these responsibilities added to
Patricia’s burden!). . . .
One other burden, too, she carried on her willing shoulders through
those dark days of January, 1917—the burden of her responsibility for
Francis Gordon. Her brain was never quite free from the picture of the
long writing-room, the fire in the grate, the dark bookshelves against
the cream walls, and the big desk under the window—the desk—and the
silver photograph-frame—and the menacing fully-cocked pistol.
“Melodrama!” she used to say to herself. “Melodrama! People don’t kill
themselves for love nowadays—they only kill for hate.” But intuition
warned her, every time she saw Francis, that he had determined on
suicide. She told herself that such a man was not worth saving, that he
was a weakling, a coward . . . but her mind never ceased to make excuses
for him.
“Supposing,” she used to argue, “that I had lost Peter and the
children—supposing that I were a cripple—supposing that I saw nothing
ahead of me but a dragged-out, sexless existence, wouldn’t I think of
Death kindly, look forward to it as a relief?” . . .
Again and again, she tackled him about his writing; again and again, he
gave her the same answer, “It’s a futile game, Pat. Futile! Books are
the most useless things in the world. The worst-educated agricultural
labourer does more good with his hoe in ten minutes than I can do with
my pen in a whole life-time.” “Then why not take a hoe?” Patricia used
to say. “Some of us can’t!” answered Francis Gordon. “We’re built to be
brain-workers—and brain-work doesn’t satisfy us. Besides. . . .”
Patricia knew too well the meaning of that “Besides,” of the downward
glance at his left leg, at the distorted boot and the crutch-stick,
which accompanied it. At such times, she was glad that she had written
to “that girl.” Perhaps, “that girl” would understand. . . . But January
passed; February opened with threats of unlimited submarine warfare;
threat turned to actuality—and still no word arrived from Beatrice.