THERE WAS much for the warden to do that day – phone calls and interviews with the doctor, the undertaker, the vicar and Miss Dawson’s “next of kin” (a cousin in Cornwall) and all the time she felt a heavy weight of oppression and weariness. It made things worse that her emotions were not clearly defined, but all mixed up and muddy. She could not find relief in anger against Miss Dawson, for she was dead, and the liberating moment of vision vouchsafed to her in the attic was already banished from her conscious thought. She had decided by now that Miss Dawson had been too ill to know what she was doing or saying.
She felt guilty at having accused Tom so harshly and violently, yet this did not prevent her still suffering from the jealousy that had occasioned the violence. It hurt that Lord Jim had died on Tom’s bed, and that these last weeks he had seemed to prefer his company to her own. Then there was the question of how far she was responsible for Miss Dawson’s collapse. She felt she ought to have noticed that she had not been eating properly for some days past and had been more than usually withdrawn; and, knowing how crippled and frail she was, should she not have seen her safely back to her own room? That she had not fallen on the stairs, seeing the state she was in that night, had been almost a miracle. Had she failed in her duty as warden and should she offer to resign? She felt it might be a relief to do so. These thoughts and emotions chased each other round her tired brain all that day, and underlying everything was the ache for Lord Jim, which she knew would be even worse when everything had settled down again.
She had no time to see to him before the late afternoon; then she found a good strong shoebox and lined it with a silk headscarf, a favourite one, and laid Lord Jim in it and, looking carefully to see that no one was about, she carried the box to the further side of the copse where the old thorn tree grew. Lord Jim had loved to climb that particular tree, it had a comfortable branch along which he liked to stretch out on hot summer days when Mrs Perry’s border was too warm for him. Miss Blackett laid down the box while she went to fetch a spade. The ground was hard underneath the tree and she found it difficult to dig a big enough hole but she did not want to ask Fred to help her and certainly not Tom. At last it was finished, but she had been too tired to dig very deep and there was a mound which she tried to hide with moss and leaves. She did not want anyone but herself to know where Lord Jim was. When she got back to her room she felt utterly exhausted, but before she sat down to rest she put away Lord Jim’s saucer and cushion where they could not be seen.
That evening everyone but Leila Ford was subdued for, though no one but Mrs Perry had known Miss Dawson at all well, the presence of death in the house made itself felt. The residents of The Haven were too old not to be aware of its inescapable reality, and its dark mystery, seeming now so close and intimate, blotted out their customary and comforting trivialities. Only Leila’s rudimentary soul still believed that such a thing could never happen to her, and she was pleasantly roused and excited by the unusual drama of the day. Rumours were flying round about Lord Jim.
“Of course that boy is at the bottom of it. I saw the cat, you know, Dorothy, going up to his room yesterday morning. It was the last time he was seen alive. It was I who told Miss Blackett he was up there. No one else saw him, and I heard the row in the evening too. Mrs Thornton was with Miss Norton, she heard nothing. Well, what I say is that it only serves Miss Blackett right for employing such a boy here.”
“You shouldn’t say such a thing, Leila,” said Dorothy Brown. “Miss Blackett says Lord Jim must have picked up some poison somewhere, probably rat poison, people aren’t careful enough, and cats will wander.”
“I wonder when Miss Dawson’s funeral will be,” said Leila. “I hope soon, I don’t like the feeling of a corpse in the house. I hope we’ll get somebody a bit livelier in her place. It’ll make a change – she kept herself to herself, if anyone did. Funny, the tree and the cat and her all disappearing at once. My bottle’s not hot enough, Dorothy; Gisela never does them properly.”
“Give it to me,” said Dorothy, “I’ll heat it up for you.”
After a night when she had slept from sheer exhaustion, Miss Blackett felt less inclined to offer her resignation. She decided to consult the vicar who was calling to see her about arrangements for the funeral service, she could not of course say anything about what had happened in Tom’s attic, that was impossible, but she would try not to excuse herself in any way.
“I should have noticed that Miss Dawson had not been herself for some days,” she began. “Gisela, our German girl, did say she was eating very little, but I did not take this seriously. Then, the night she died, for some reason she climbed the stairs to the attic floor. I should have prevented this, and certainly I should have seen that once there she should not have been left to come down those stairs alone, for I was aware that she was there. I ought to have seen that she was not fit to be left alone that night. In fact,” she ended, “I feel I have been remiss and that perhaps I should offer to resign.”
“You are being too conscientious, if you don’t mind my saying so, my dear Miss Blackett,” exclaimed the vicar. “Miss Dawson was, I know, very reserved and she certainly did not invite questioning or sympathy. You must not blame yourself for what probably made no difference. After all she did not fall on the stairs. Perhaps the lack of appetite might have been a pointer, but it is easy to be wise after the event. I am quite sure the committee would not consider any offer of resignation from you for such a cause, and you must not think of such a thing. Now, about the funeral, don’t let that worry you. I understand Miss Dawson left clear instructions that she wished to be cremated, and with no ceremony, but I think a short service at the cremation would be fitting, which I will arrange. Anyone who would care to be present from The Haven will be welcome of course –” he hesitated.
Miss Blackett said that she would like to come and Mrs Perry, if she were back in time, and she would enquire as to anyone else. She was relieved at the vicar’s decisive reassurance. She really felt too old to start a new job and knew that she would not now easily obtain another post so good, and she could not afford to be unemployed.
“Goodbye, then,” said the vicar, “and take care of yourself; you have had quite a shock, I can see. I shall send you along a pot of my honey, it is better than any tonic.”
After Miss Blackett had thanked the vicar and seen him out, she felt her nagging sense of guilt partly assuaged, and more free to mourn her cat. Instinctively she found herself walking towards the copse, but when she got there she saw, to her dismay and indignation, that Tom was underneath the old thorn tree busily hammering away at some object on the ground, and that the little mound that covered Lord Jim had been carefully ringed round with roughly matching stones.
“What are you doing, Tom?” she asked.
Tom looked up. “I guessed as you might’ve laid him here, Lady Miss Blackett,” he said. “The stones look right pretty, don’t they? And I’m making him a cross all proper like, the wood it be from chips off that big old tree as is cut down.”
Miss Blackett felt the usual uncomfortable conflict which Tom always seemed to arouse in her. She could not help being touched, yet she resented him thus trespassing on her private emotions, and as to the cross, that she considered really ought not to be allowed.
“Yes, the stones are nice,” she said, “but not the cross, Tom, the vicar wouldn’t like it.”
“Oh, yes, Lady Miss Blackett,” said Tom. “Vicar, he loves ’em, churchyard be full of ’em, and so be church.”
Miss Blackett turned away. She knew that, in spite of anything she could say, the cross would be finished and if she removed it, another would be made to take its place. She supposed that now the little grave would be bound to be discovered and pointed out and talked about, and this she would hate, and yet, at the same time she felt an absurd childish gleam of comfort as if Tom’s cross might ensure for Lord Jim a minute corner of heaven.
Mrs Perry managed to return to The Haven in time for Miss Dawson’s funeral. She was very troubled and sad about her old friend’s death. She alone guessed something of what the felling of the deodar tree must have meant to her. “Perhaps,” she thought, “if I had not been away, I might have helped.” It seemed heartless, too, that she had been enjoying her visit so much and especially her delicious new great-grandchild while this was happening to Frances. She sincerely grieved, too, for Miss Blackett’s loss of Lord Jim, and she could not entirely suppress a very unwelcome query as to his death, which she would not put into words, even to herself. It was just there, like a little cloud which would not go away – but no, she simply would not think about it any more, it would have been impossible anyway. But perhaps this made her express her sympathy with the warden more openly and warmly than anybody else had dared to do in the face of grim discouragement.
“Dear Miss Blackett,” she said, “we had a retriever once who was such a darling, he was a most beloved member of the family. He got run over. I know what it feels like, one misses such a pet at every turn – you must get another cat, it’s the only way. We got a puppy directly. Of course it wasn’t the same as dear Rab, but it healed and helped. My daughter’s tabby has lovely kittens and I’m sure she would gladly give you one.”
Miss Blackett felt her lonely unhappiness melt a little, but she shook her head. She was not going to lay herself open to the perilous arrow of love a third time. “No, thank you, Mrs Perry, I don’t mean ever to have another cat, but I appreciate your kindness all the same.”
Mrs Perry missed Frances Dawson very much. She had admired her for her courage and her knowledge, though she was always a little in awe of her. Now she began to cultivate Mrs Nicholson’s company; it was Tom’s raids on her flower border that first brought them together. He kept Mrs Nicholson’s vases regularly supplied with snapdragons, which were now enjoying their second flowering, and when she learned that the only border where they grew belonged to Mrs Perry, she thought an apology was called for. But Mrs Perry just laughed.
“You’re welcome,” she said, “and nobody really minds what Tom does, bless him.”
A bit later she wrote to Nell: “I find that our new resident, Mrs Nicholson, plays Scrabble well and we have a game together most evenings. We are about equal. She is a pleasant person, though very religious. She had an uncle who was a bishop, but this doesn’t matter for Scrabble. Tom has made a cross for poor Lord Jim’s grave and she thinks this is sacrilegious, I fear, but, as you know, I always say I shan’t be happy in heaven if dear Rab isn’t there, and really, I think that dolphins and seals and whales and poor dear gorillas and some, though not all, dogs and cats, have much nicer natures and are better behaved than many humans, and I shouldn’t wonder if God doesn’t think so too, so we’d better look out. But of course I can’t say that to a bishop’s niece. It is nice to have another grandmother here, poor Mrs Thornton had no grandchildren, you know – though I can tell that Mrs Nicholson’s are nothing like so nice or clever as mine. Your loving Gran.”
The evenings were now definitely drawing in, as the residents remarked to each other, and an early frost had blackened the giant dahlias, though Mrs Perry’s little ones in their warm bed were still unscathed, when Miss Blackett received a letter from Mrs Bradshaw. It said that her own invaluable “help” possessed a lately widowed and childless sister who was anxious to find work and a home near herself. “She sounds a treasure and I thought of you at once, for I was sorry to hear from the vicar you had had the shock of the sudden death of one of your charges lately, and I am glad to think that more adequate help than the boy, whom you kindly took in as a stopgap, may now be available. She is giving up her home but would like to keep some of her furniture, and I hope it may be possible for her to have a room for herself and that she can make it into a bedsitter. If all goes smoothly, she should be free in two or three weeks’ time.”
Miss Blackett immediately determined that nothing should prevent her acquiring this treasure. Mrs Thornton really must now see the necessity of moving down to Mrs Langley or Miss Dawson’s room – there was already another applicant but Mrs Thornton could take her choice first, leaving the big attic, so unsuitable for her but just right as a bedsitter for a resident help. As for Tom, she could not pretend that it would not be a relief to get rid of him. He was a good little worker, but his behaviour was so unpredictable, so unreliable that sometimes, she admitted to herself, it thoroughly upset her. It had always been understood that his job was a temporary one, and she was willing to give him a good reference. She wrote a grateful letter to Mrs Bradshaw and resolved to tackle Mrs Thornton as soon as possible.
Fate played into her hands for once. Mrs Thornton stumbled on the stairs on the way down from her attic one evening and fell. She did not break any bones, but she was badly bruised and shaken. Miss Blackett took the opportunity to press home the advantage of a room accessible by the lift and which would be warmer in the coming winter months. Stairs were apt to be dangerous after a certain age, well, she had proved that already, hadn’t she? Then she told her about “the Treasure” who must have a room of her own for a bed-sitting-room. Mrs Thornton lay and listened with an aching head and bones, and the fight went out of her. It would be selfish, too, she thought, to cling to the attic in the circumstances. She agreed to move as soon as she had recoverd from her fall and she chose Mrs Langley’s room, perhaps she would feel her gentle, merry spirit lingering there.
Next Miss Blackett summoned Tom to her. “Tom,” she said, “you know when you came first, you were told it would probably only be for the summer, as I always intended to find someone older and more experienced when I could. Well, now I have found someone. She is a widow lady who wants a home, and she is coming quite soon, but you can stay your month out. You have been a good boy on the whole and worked well, and you can tell your grandmother I said so.”
“He can make himself useful till Mrs Smith settles in,” she thought.
Tom showed neither dismay nor pleasure at the news. He looked at her with his wide impersonal stare and said nothing. He could stand still and silent sometimes for quite long periods, as an animal will do, without any need to make himself felt, yet felt he inescapably always was.
“Do you understand what I am saying, Tom?” said Miss Blackett sharply.
“Farmer Jackson’s Clover, she calved last night, Lady Miss Blackett, ’tis a fine little heifer, as like Clover as can be,” said Tom, and went out of the room.
Everyone except Miss Blackett and Leila Ford were sorry to hear that Tom was going. “But he doesn’t seem to mind at all,” said Miss Brown to Mrs Thornton, “I don’t understand it, he has always seemed so fond of us and so happy.”
“I think it’s just because he doesn’t look before and after and pine for what is not.”
Dorothy Brown looked blank. She had taken to a hearing aid but it was not always very helpful.
“I mean,” said Mrs Thornton hastily, “that he just lives in the present moment. When it comes to the point I expect he’ll show he’s sorry; but I shouldn’t count on it. He probably just accepts that things happen to him, some of them good, some of them bad, and that’s that, as we used to do, didn’t we, when we were children?”
“Did we?” said Dorothy vaguely. “Well, anyway, I was wondering if we could give Tom a parting present before he goes. It’s nice when one leaves a job to be given a present, don’t you think?”
“What a good idea,” said Mrs Thornton warmly. “Had you thought of anything in particular?”
“I wondered if a new pullover might be welcome,” said Dorothy, “the weather’s getting colder and he’s still got only his old patched thin one.”
Miss Brown’s proposal caught on; the pullover, a nice bright green one, was bought at Darnley’s wool shop, and The Haven’s champion knitters, Mrs Perry and Mrs Nicholson, worked hard at producing a pair of socks and scarf to go with it. In the end everyone except Leila contributed towards a whole new outfit. Miss Blackett’s feelings were again confused. She could hardly do less than fall in with the old ladies’ charitable plan, she thought, nor did she grudge Tom the clothes exactly, but she felt too much fuss was being made of the boy. She decided it would be best to give the things to him as quietly as possible, and although he was staying on till the end of the month, to give them before the Treasure arrived. So, the evening before this arrival, which she was keenly anticipating, Miss Blackett called Tom into the sitting-room after supper where the ladies were all assembled and where, laid out on the table, were the pullover, socks, scarf and, besides, a pair of stout jeans and some strong shoes, also a large glaring check handkerchief contributed by Gisela.
Mrs Thornton was feeling a little nervous. It occurred to her that Tom might resent being given clothes. She wished it had been a drum, yet it was certain that he needed them.
“Tom, said Mrs Blackett, “the ladies and I are giving you a present, or rather several presents, because you are to leave us soon and you have done your work here well. I hope you will take care of these nice clothes, for you are a very lucky boy to have them given to you, you know.”
“Oh, dear,” thought Mrs Thornton, “why need she have put it like that? And she sounds as if she were scolding him instead of giving him a present, yet I know that it was she who bought him these very good shoes.”
Tom simply stood and stared – motionless he stood, and Mrs Thornton held her breath until at last he stretched out a hand and very gently touched the soft wool of the jersey, but otherwise he still did not move or speak.
“Go off and put them on and let us see you in them,” said Mrs Perry, and gave him a little push.
At that he hooted with delight, gathered up everything and bounded out of the room, Mrs Thornton gave a sigh of relief.
“He might have said ‘Thank you’,” said Miss Blackett.
“Oh, he will,” said Mrs Perry, “dear Miss Blackett, he was so excited – that was really his thank you.”
When he came back, it was seen to the ladies’ satisfaction that the clothes fitted well. He had tied the scarf crossways over his chest and knotted Gisela’s hideous handkerchief round his neck. He moved as in a trance and, going up to Mrs Thornton, took her by the hand and led her to the old piano. She thought she knew what it was that he wanted and, after a little hesitation, she struck up the opening bars of the Mazurka from The Gondoliers.
And then Tom began to dance round the room, lifting his feet in their new shoes high in the air, clumsily but always in time. At this point Leila Ford got up noisily and stumped over to the television.
“It’s time for ‘Dallas’,” she said loudly, and switched on, not waiting for the warden’s permission.
Miss Blackett, however, took no notice of this infringement of her rules. She felt she had had enough of the evening, and of Tom in particular, and, leaving the room, she sought the solitude of her office and shut the door upon everyone and everything.
In the sitting-room the double entertainment continued – Leila squatting huge and central before the horrific goings on across the ocean, and Tom, wrapt in his grotesque yet somehow rather beautiful dance, circling round her. The idea suddenly occurred to Mrs Thornton that he and Leila were the only two completely unselfconscious people in the room, and that this constituted a sort of bond between them. Leila, with her dreadful perverted innocence, was a caricature of Tom. This thought disturbed her and she brought the dance to an end with a final chord, and closed the piano.
Then Tom shook hands twice all round, except of course for Leila who, ignorning him, continued to glare at “Dallas”. When he came to Gisela she said wistfully:
“The handkerchief, it is from me, is it not very, very pretty?”
“It be lovely!” said Tom with great feeling. It was the first time he had spoken and Gisela felt satisfied. He turned towards the door and Mrs Thornton got up to go with him, but he rushed away without waiting for her, and she just caught a vanishing sight of him doing a handturn on the landing. It was the last she saw of him, for in the morning he was nowhere to be found.
Miss Blackett was angry. That Tom should take it into his head to disappear when he was still needed and after having had such kindness shown him appeared to her to be thoughtless, ungrateful and again most unreliable behaviour. She was not placated by Mrs Perry who said: “He’ll have run home to show his Granny his new clothes, he’ll be back before very long. I’m certain.” She was right in the first supposition but not in the second.
As the day wore on and no Tom appeared, Miss Blackett grew angrier – Mrs Smith, the Treasure, was due to arrive in the late afternoon and the warden resented the fuss and distraction Tom’s absence was causing.
Gisela was in tears. “That poor Tom,” she cried, “he will have been over run and killed in the road, I think!”
“Nonsense, Gisela,” said Miss Blackett, “stop being so foolish, if an accident had happened, we should have heard about it from the police.” But she rang up the vicar and explained the situation.
“I am so sorry to trouble you, Vicar, but I think we should know what has happened to the boy, and I have no one else to turn to. We think he has most probably run home. If so, perhaps you could make him see how irresponsibly he has behaved and that unless he comes back at once and apologizes, it may affect the reference I can give him – that is, of course, if you should have any time to spare and can get over to Sturton.”
The vicar, who still felt some responsibility for Tom, promised to investigate. He himself had no doubt but that Tom had gone home; as to the efficacy of Miss Blackett’s threats and reproaches, he was much more doubtful. He found old Mrs Hobb sitting close to her little log fire with her hands, usually so busy, folded placidly in her lap.
Yes, Tom had come home, but was now off again on an errand for herslf, she informed him quietly. She offered no further details.
“But he should not have run off like that, Mrs Hobb, Miss Blackett is very cross about it. He had caused anxiety and everyone is so surprised that he should have disappeared without warning and without saying goodbye. He was supposed to be staying the month out, you know.”
“I be sorry, sir, that the lady be put out, but ’tis a wonder to me that it should be so. Tom said as there was a party and music and handshaking and, beyond all, those good new clothes as a present for his leaving, and so, to be sure, he left.”
There was a little silence, then the vicar said, “I see.”
He felt he could not give Miss Blackett’s message as she had worded it, but that it was only fair to suggest that Tom should come back for the stipulated time.
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” said the old woman. “’Twas a saying when I was young that ‘fine clothes foretell a flitting’ – Tom had the fine clothes and the flitting’s done, and happen can’t be undone and, sir, I be thinking I be for a flitting myself soon, it’ll be further afield than the lad’s and the fine clothes for it be laid ready in the press yonder.”
She looked up at the vicar and saw that he knew what she meant.
“I’ll be glad to have Tom by me till the time comes for it won’t be long now, but if the lady truly wants him, maybe he’ll go.”
“She seemed to know quite simply and certainly that death was coming to her and when it would come,” said the vicar afterwards to his wife, “and I believed her, and I wish you could have heard the way she said, ‘If the lady truly wanted him.’ I couldn’t really convey it to Miss Blackett, though I tried.”
But the warden would only have Tom back on her own terms, and he did not come. She felt justifiably aggrieved, and resolved to think no more of him. Yet an aggravating wish to see him once again persisted, a sense of something unresolved that might have been straightened out to some unspecified advantage – though whether to him or to herself, was not clear. She put away such muddled unprofitable feelings, but in the days to come caught herself thinking of the boy with a sort of dull regret.
Tom’s unconventional departure was viewed wistfully by Mrs Perry, Mrs Nicholson and Dorothy Brown, emotionally by Gisela and pleasurably by Leila. Mrs Thornton, thinking it all over, with the memory of his dance and that last handstand on the landing, acknowledged to herself that she was not at all astonished.
“There was nothing ordinary about Tom,” she said to Meg Norton.
“No,” assented Meg, “and yet nothing extraordinary either, he always reminded me of a character out of one of our plays.” Mrs Thornton thought that Meg often said rather surprising things.
“‘My gentle Puck,’ are you thinking of him?”
“Oh, no, not Puck,” Meg said and said no more. She had never told anyone of the time when Tom had rescued her from despair down by the copse.
“A mixture of Puck and Ariel, perhaps, together with a bit of one of the clowns or rustics to humanize him,” laughed Mrs Thornton. “Anyway, a timeless natural being and therefore you’re right, Meg – certainly to be found in Shakespeare, though, now I come to think of it, considering how he left us, I can’t help remembering the tales my old nurse used to tell me about Brownies –
‘Brownie has got a cowl and coat
And never more will work a jot.’
I wonder what will become of him.”
“He’ll be all right,” said Meg with conviction, “we need not worry about Tom, but I shall miss him.”
“I think we all shall in our different ways,” said Mrs Thornton.