August 17th, 1947.
I had the Dream again last night. I came out of it sick and very cold. I could not sleep again. I do not wish to describe it, but if I have it again I will do so, here. I am not sure that it is a dream.
I am sitting at my usual post by the window. Christina means to go to Early Communion. She broke our contract of silence last night, and asked me if I would be so good as to wake her at seven o’clock. I undertook to do so.
I do not care for the church here. The parson is an Anglo-Catholic and calls himself, I believe, ‘Father Bott.’ He is in constant trouble with his Bishop; he reserves the Sacrament, hears confession and will not read what is written in the Prayer Book, but edits and alters it in a most irresponsible way. He arrogates to himself a priestly prestige and authority which would be perfectly proper in the Roman Communion, but to which the Church of England gives him, in my opinion, no claim.
Nevertheless I shall think it my duty to accompany Christina. I shall not, of course, communicate. I do not consider myself fit to take the Sacrament. When I explained this to Mallon, the Rector of Stoke, he said that nobody is fit. I completely failed to make him understand my position. He would have given me the Sacrament with no scruples whatsoever. He said that God has forgiven me. I told him that I do not forgive myself.
My wife, I told him, asserts that she has forgiven me. But I do not think she ought to do so. A stricter sense of justice, a finer appreciation of the moral values involved, would have impelled her to judge otherwise. He asked me if this criticism applied also to the Almighty. I said that I cannot suppose the Creator to be inferior to His creature. Why should I suppose He forgives me if I do not forgive myself?
I know what is in Christina’s mind. To-day is the child’s birthday. Does she think I do not remember? She complains, or used to complain, that she cannot bear to be alone in her grief. But does she really suppose that she is alone? Is there one memory which tortures her and does not also torture me? As we kneel, side by side, in Church, we shall both be recalling the same scenes. They will be clearer for me than for her, because I have a more accurate memory.
I could describe the wall-paper of the room where she lay: it had a pattern of blue ribbon on a white ground: blue ribbon crossed lattice-wise on bunches of cornflowers. We were in lodgings in Leeds. It was such a small room we scarcely knew where to put the cradle. That day was the happiest in our lives. But even then she angered me by wishing for some trifle, a pink coverlet, I think, which she had seen in some shop window. It was beyond our means at that time. She spoke thoughtlessly, not meaning to wound me. But she should not have reminded me of my poverty. I would have bought her the pink coverlet if I could. I would have given her the moon if I could. By complaining she made me feel that she regretted the luxury of the home she forsook when she married me. But she was weak and ill, so I said nothing.
Will she remember all this in church to-day? I shall.
Miss Ellis heard footsteps coming along the passage and hastily put Mr. Paley’s diary back where she had found it. She did not want, in any case, to read much more of it. Diaries worth reading were seldom, in her experience, left lying about and Mr. Paley’s was no exception to this general rule.
Nancibel came in. Mrs. Siddal had ultimately capitulated to Miss Ellis’s argument that it takes two to make a bed, and had agreed that Nancibel should help with this part of the upstairs work before starting on the washing-up. But she was adamant about the slops.
‘You wouldn’t think,’ said Miss Ellis, ‘that these two had had a child, would you?’
‘I don’t know why not!’ said Nancibel, tugging at the heavy double mattress.
‘Well, they did. But it died.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Oh … I know a good bit about them.’
Nancibel left off wrestling with the mattress and stood at the side of the bed looking at Miss Ellis. It was the same in all the rooms. She did the work while the housekeeper talked. But she had had enough of it.
‘It was quite a tragedy,’ continued Miss Ellis. ‘Her people were wealthy and he was quite poor, and they didn’t want her to marry him. So she made a runaway match. But he couldn’t get over it that they didn’t think him good enough. Couldn’t forgive the scornful things they’d said. He made her cut herself off completely; wouldn’t let her write or anything.
Well, they had an awful time. Poor as rats. And she wasn’t used to that, of course. Go on, can’t you? What are you waiting for?’
‘I’m ready when you are, Miss Ellis.’
Miss Ellis laid reluctant hold on her side of the mattress and gave it a mild tug, complaining:
‘She’s no right to have these heavy things. If I get ruptured I shall sue her for compensation. Let’s leave it, shall we? It’s Sunday. Well … they had this little girl and she got ill. T.B. And they hadn’t the cash for a sanatorium, and he wouldn’t let her write to her people. And she said if the child died she’d never forgive him. And the child did die and she never has.’
‘In her shoes,’ said Nancibel, picking up a sheet, ‘I’d have written all the same. Yes, I would. And got the money and carted the kid off to a sanatorium, when his back was turned, and refused to tell him where it was. Oh, I’d have been deedy, in her shoes.’
‘She isn’t the sort that sticks up for themselves. Not that he doesn’t blame himself. He does. He knows it’s his fault that child isn’t alive to-day. And he’s got plenty of money now too. He began to get on after that, and got an Art Gallery or something to build.’
‘Poor things,’ said Nancibel. ‘No wonder they look so sad.’
Voices in the garden below drew Miss Ellis to the window. Nancibel, determined to make no more beds alone, stood still with the sheet in her hand.
‘Do for goodness’ sake come and look,’ exclaimed Miss Ellis. ‘What on earth will those children be up to next?’
Nancibel joined her in time to see the little Coves undergoing the first of seven tests imposed by the rules of the Noble Covenant of Spartans. They were walking blindfold along a stone parapet at the end of the terrace, where the rocks fell steeply away to the beach. The Giffords ran along the path beside them, shouting exhortations:
‘Go on! Go on! You’re nearly half way! We’ll tell you when you’re there. Don’t stop. You’re disqualified if you stop.’
In single file they staggered and wavered, their arms stretched out, their bare feet clinging to the rough stone. But they never stopped until they reached the end of the parapet and Hebe pulled them down, one after another, to safety.
‘It’s that Hebe! She put them up to it,’ cried Miss Ellis. ‘If ever a child needed her bottom smacking, she’s one. But come along; come along, Nancibel! Mrs Siddal doesn’t pay you to stand gaping out of the window. No wonder the beds take such a long time!’
Pendizack Church Town stands in the bare upland fields on the top of the cliff. It consists of seven cottages, a post office, and a public house, crouching in a fuzz of trees beneath an enormous church—the Church of St. Sody, who came long ago out of Ireland, in a stone boat, with ten thousand other saints.
For the best part of the year the services are poorly attended, for most of the cottagers go to Chapel and the better-off parishioners dislike the Anglo-Catholicism of Father Bott. But in the summer season the beauty of the cliff walk, the fame of the choir, and rumours of fantastic ritual, bring a trickle of visitors from Porthmerryn. Mass at St. Sody’s is attended by people from the Marine Parade Hotel who do not generally go to church at all.
Bruce, however, did not climb that steep hill for love of Plain Song, or for the sake of coastal scenery, or to see a man who was said to bring a donkey into the chancel on Palm Sunday. He went because he was told to do so. His mistress had a fancy to see the place and had ordered him to escort her. So he was waiting, rather sulkily, in the hotel lounge, conscious of critical glances from the other residents.
Presently she appeared at the top of the stairs. The cruel light of the morning sun, blazing down upon her from the staircase window, so emphasized her age, her bulk and her dowdiness that he felt considerably reassured. None but the nastiest mind, he thought, could suppose him to be more than a secretary-chauffeur to so ripe an employer.
‘Don’t you have to wear a hat?’ he asked, as they went out of the hotel.
‘My God!’ said Mrs. Lechene. ‘I hope not! D’you think they’ll throw me out of church? I haven’t got a hat.’
She couldn’t get a hat if she tried, thought Bruce. No hat ever made would go on that head. I ought to be thankful her hair is up and not down.
For Anna Lechene was very proud of her hair which was true gold, very thick, quite straight, and hung to her knees. She missed no occasion for letting it so hang. But when obliged to put it up she braided it in thick cables and wound it round her head. The effect was striking though top-heavy.
‘At least I’m not wearing slacks,’ she said. ‘I’ve put on a dress, haven’t I?’
Yes, but what a dress! All right for a kid of thirteen. Nobody over twenty ought to wear these dirndls. Oh, all right! I know all the grandmas do in Macedonia or wherever it is you got it from. But this isn’t Macedonia.
He stared venomously at Anna’s broad back as he followed her along Fore Street. He was a changeable young man. Not long ago he had admired Anna’s golden head and peasant embroideries. But now he was glad when he had got her out of the crowded street on to a flight of steps which led up the hill.
‘Where is this church we’re going to?’ he asked.
‘It’s on the cliffs, half way to Pendizack. You must have seen the tower.’
‘Oh? Oh yes…. I have.’
His spirits rose. For that tower was quite near Nancibel’s cottage. He had noticed it last night, standing up against the evening sky. He might see her again. She might be in church.
Mrs. Lechene, panting slightly for the steps were steep, was talking about Father Bott. She had heard that he was a remarkable man.
‘A celibate,’ she added meditatively.
Lucky So-and-so, thought Bruce, and made vague noises of assent while Anna speculated upon the causes and effects of celibacy in Father Bott.
At the top of the hill they passed an ugly little building called Bethesda whence the first hymn of the morning already resounded:
Oh that will be
Glory for me!
Glory for me!
Glory for me!
And he reflected that he ought to be grateful to Anna for not taking him there, unaware that Nancibel was inside it, with all her family. She got time off from Pendizack on Sunday mornings to go to Chapel. But he still hoped to find her among the flock at St. Sody’s, and pressed on towards that tall square tower.
What will she think, he pondered, as the great pure curve of the sea came once more into view. What will she think about me and Anna? Nothing. Why should she think anything? If I meet her again, and she asks me, I shall tell her: That’s Mrs. Lechene. My boss. She’s a writer. A very well-known writer. No. You wouldn’t care for her books. She’s been very kind to me. She got a publisher to take my novel. She’s very kind to young writers. Yes, I know she looks peculiar. So do most lady writers. If you’d met as many of them as I have, Nancibel, you wouldn’t think this one looks so queer. Yes, Mrs. Lechene. No … well … I believe she’s divorced him. I type her novels and drive her car. Secretary-chauffeur.
‘Pretty up here,’ he said craftily. ‘I think I’ll take a stroll round after church and look at the cliffs.’
Anna turned and said sharply:
‘I don’t think so. After church you’ll get back to the hotel and type out those three chapters of the B.B. I can’t think why you didn’t get them done last night.’
The B.B. was The Bleeding Bush, a novel based on the life of Emily Brontë upon which Anna was engaged.
‘I’m out of carbons,’ said Bruce.
‘My God! You’re always out of carbons. I never knew such a boy. Get some more.’
‘I can’t on Sunday. Shops shut.’
A full peal of bells rang out from the tower, over the fields and over the flat blue floor of the sea. In the distance a long procession of people was coming by a narrow path through a cornfield. Strung out, in single file, it seemed endless. Gerry Siddal led it and after him came Duff, Robin, Canon Wraxton, Evangeline Wraxton, Mrs. Cove, Maud, Beatrix, Blanche, Michael, Luke, Hebe, Sir Henry Gifford, Caroline, a considerable gap, Mr. Paley, Mrs. Paley.
‘Could it be a Butlin’s Camp?’ speculated Bruce.
‘No,’ said Anna. ‘There’s a little hotel down there in the cove. I hear it’s most attractive and comfortable. I was thinking of going there when we leave the Marine Parade. But I’m not sure I like the look of the inmates, if these are they.’
‘Pretty little girl,’ said Bruce.
She thought he meant Evangeline Wraxton, and exclaimed:
‘What? That skeleton in tweeds?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘The little kid in green. Talking to her father.’
‘Oh,’ said Anna, slightly mollified. ‘You mean Miss Bobby Sox?’
She scrutinized Hebe who was skipping along and turning to laugh at Sir Henry, and added:
‘Making eyes at her father, I should say.’
‘Good People come and pray,’ cried the bells.
The Pendizack party climbed a stile into the churchyard. Each in turn was outlined against the sky for a moment, at the top of the stone wall, and then disappeared from view. When Anna and Bruce reached the building they were all inside. The Siddal boys had gone round to the vestry, for Duff and Robin sang in the choir and Gerry was serving at the Mass. The rest found seats in the great empty nave. As is customary among churchgoers they sat rather to the back, leaving the foremost rows of pews vacant. An old man dealt out prayer books to summer visitors who had not got any. The chimes ceased. There was a great tramping as the eight bell-ringers came down from the tower; in that small parish everyone did double duty, and six of them were needed in the choir.
Anna and Bruce took seats in a pew just behind the Wraxtons. A faint smell of decaying wood mingled with a reek of incense. The great church was rapidly falling to pieces, and poor Father Bott could not even collect enough money to repair the pews.
‘A bit niffy,’ commented Anna, loudly.
Every child in the congregation turned its head to see who had said this.
‘Who on earth is that supposed to be?’ she continued, pointing to a banner of St. Sody, used in processions.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ muttered Bruce.
‘It’s rather good,’ she declared. ‘A bit epicene … I expect one of the artists in Porthmerryn designed it for them.’
At this point she became aware of the inflamed countenance of Canon Wraxton, who had turned round and was glaring at her.
‘Will you kindly make less noise?’ he barked.
Anna gaped at him. She disliked parsons and was habitually rude to them. But it was not often that they were rude to her.
‘Well …’ she said at last, ‘you quite startled me.’
‘I mean it,’ thundered the Canon. ‘If you can’t behave decently I shall have you turned out.’
‘You’re making a terrible noise yourself,’ retorted Anna.
‘Hush!’ whispered Bruce, scandalized in spite of himself.
‘Why should I hush? This isn’t his church. Or if it is, I can well understand why it’s so empty.’
The Canon was now surveying Bruce.
‘If you’ve any decency,’ he said, ‘you’ll go and induce your mother to go with you.’
Nothing could have silenced Anna more effectively. She could, for some seconds, think of no retort. And the appearance of Gerry in the chancel, carrying a taper, created a diversion. Candle after candle was lit. The Canon, looking like a bull in a field, turned to survey this fresh enormity. Anna giggled but did not venture to speak again. The congregation had left off staring before the cross preceding the choir appeared, and Father Bott, surrounded by servers and acolytes, emerged from the vestry.
| —“deLIVER JS FORM EVIL” | |
| q1 | Fear. insecurty. Atom bomb.£Heplessness |
| 2 | Nothingnew abt Eveil. Causes old as Adam. Effects merely more spe ctacular. Sin. |
| e 3 | Sin isolates the soul z(@) frim God. (b) from fellowmen. Mutual generosity, willingness to give and accet, essential condition of Salvation. |
| 4 | Teaching of Church. 7 deadly froms of spiritual isolation. Vices which destroy gratutude and generosity. |
| prIDE accepts nothing. | |
| E | |
| ENVY guves nothing. | |
| sloTH accidie especially insidious to the intellectual. |
xxxxxxxxxx substitues speculation for action. xxxxx24@5£ WRATH lust for power.
| S | LECHERY Sexual expliotation. “Hardensall with-in and petrifies the feelins” |
| X | GLN. GLOT/. GLUTTONY Their God is in ther belly. |
| 7 | GOVETOUSNESS Financial exploitation. |
| These sins the most deadly weapons of the Enemy. We should fear them more than any waepons of man. Grace is our only protection. | |
| £Hence importance of last petition in the Lord’s Prayer. |
Yes, thought Sir Henry Gifford, as he got to his feet for the Offertory hymn. But where do I come in? I’m a sinner, I suppose. We all are. But which of this little list is mine, and what do I do about it? Number 4. I know this. A nice easy tune. I really don’t think I’m proud. I know I’m not envious.
New every morning is the love
Our wakening and uprising prove;
I’m not slothful. I work very hard. And I’ve plenty of practice in keeping my temper.
Through sleep and darkness safely brought,
Restored to life and power, and thought.
Nor am I particularly covetous, lecherous or gluttonous.
New mercies each returning day …
If I were covetous I’d go to the Channel Isles and dodge income tax. But I’m standing out about that. And if I do, if she wears me down, it won’t be because of pride or envy or any of the list. It’ll be sheer exhaustion. Here comes the plate. Good Lord! Michael’s going to drop it! No … all safe. Hebe needn’t have pushed him like that. She’s unbearably bossy. Do I hand it back or pass it to the Coves? A pound seems a lot, but I have no change. Must get some to-morrow. My sin is weakness. And I believe that goes for most of us here. We don’t do evil, but we consent … we let ourselves be pushed about.
The trivial round, the common task,
Will furnish all we need to ask,
Room to deny ourselves, a road …
It was years before I noticed the comma there. Thought it was Room to deny ourselves a road … a sort of contortionist’s feat. Yes, sheer spinelessness. Very few entirely evil people in the world really; but we let them run us. Eirene … do I really think she’s evil?
And help us, this and every day,
To live more nearly as we pray. Amen.
Yes, I do. Sometimes I do.
The Giffords had expected the service to end after the Offertory. But it went on. Everybody knelt down, and Father Bott prayed for the Church Militant. Then, turning to the congregation, he muttered an Invocation unfamiliar to many of them. All the little Giffords began to rustle the pages of their prayer books. So did Beatrix, Blanche and Maud, who were eager to do everything the Giffords did, until their mother took her face out of her black gloved hands and scowled at them. Whereat the three Coves became immobile, their foreheads pressed against the ledge of the pew in front, and the tender infantile backs of their necks exposed to the world.
‘It’s the Communion Service,’ whispered Sir Henry.
Hebe looked shocked and protested:
‘We oughtn’t to be here. We aren’t confirmed.’
‘I know. But you must just stay and kneel quietly.’
He felt more than a little embarrassed himself, since it was years since he had heard this Service. He was not much of a church-goer, but he considered that children should be brought up with a religious background and if no one else was available to take them he accompanied them himself. He, too, had merely expected Matins, at which a decorous demeanour would be all that he need offer. He tried to remember the details of the coming ritual, and then he tried to compose his wandering thoughts to some mood of sincere gravity, as he did at funerals. For it would be indecent, he felt, to dwell upon trivial subjects at a moment which was, to his neighbours, of the highest importance.
But at funerals he could always think about death, which dignifies life and abolishes triviality. While here no suitable topic occurred to him. His reflections during the hymn had been too detached, too flippant. He wanted to feel, if he could. He stared at the top of the pew in front of him and tried to clear his mind of the petty traffic which daily swarmed through it, as a street might be cleared for a procession. No procession arrived.
I must think about people I love, he decided, and then could not think of any. The children … He glanced at the little creatures on either side of him. Caroline had her head buried in her arms. Luke was following the Service in his Prayer Book. Michael was twisting a button off his jacket. Hebe knelt erect, staring avidly at Father Bott. They meant very little to him. They were Eirene’s affair. Only one of them was his, and she was the lease attractive. For five years, during the war, they had been in America. And even at home he seldom saw them. Were they all right? Were they happy? Were they growing up as they ought?
These uneasy speculations were not quite suitable. He must postpone them to a less sacred moment. He would do better to think of his own childhood, of people whom he had loved and who were gone now, of remembered places and happy moments. He looked across the years and sought a way back.
Evangeline’s sick feelings were beginning to subside. Nothing dreadful was going to happen. That little disturbance before the Service started had been nothing: those people really deserved it. The thing she most dreaded had not befallen, in spite of the incense and the genuflections and the candles. God had prevented it.
Her father took, it was true, no part in the Service. He sat with folded arms, looking on with an expression of grim amusement, as though he had been told in advance of some well-merited retribution which was going to overtake Father Bott. And that was bad enough, for people stared when he did not stand up for the Greed. But she was used to staring people, and if he would only keep quiet she would believe that God did really listen to prayer. She would show her gratitude. She would give up her sin, although nobody could really call it a sin because it did not hurt anyone. Perhaps it was a waste of time to grind up glass with a nail file, but surely nothing worse? Because she would never use it, she would never do anything wicked with it. And that little pill box full of powdered glass was such a relief to possess. They said it could never be detected in a person’s food. If she were a wicked woman it could free her from this martyrdom. It was a very powerful little treasure, that box. She kissed it sometimes. But if God kept the Canon quiet, then God was really there and she would placate Him by throwing the box into the sea. For He would know all about that box.
When I am confirmed, thought Caroline, I shall be religious. The Bishop will put his hand on my head and the Holy Ghost will go all through me like an electric shock, and I shall be religious. But Hebe will be wishing she was the Bishop.
‘It is very meet, right, and our bounden du-uty …’ intoned Father Bott.
The Lord’s Supper! thought Beatrix Cove. I am at the Lord’s Supper with Hebe and all the people. Her heart swelled with ecstasy. She lifted her head and looked at the dazzling candle light, half expecting to see a long table with all the disciples round it and the Divine Presence in the midst. But she only saw Father Bott and Gerry Siddal. It had been so nice when young Mr. Siddal waved the incense at all the people and bowed, and all the people bowed back politely. These gracious courtesies were the very essence of a Feast. She looked round to see if Blanche was as happy as she was. But Blanche, white and rigid, had tears on her cheeks, not of bliss but of pain. Kneeling had brought on the agonizing ache in her back, and she was entirely concentrated upon enduring it. But she caught her sister’s eye and gave a faint smile.
‘Evermore praising Thee and sa-a-aying …’
Duff and Robin fixed their eyes upon their parts in the Sanctus and drew deep breaths.
‘Holy! Holy! Holy!’ sang the choir of St. Sody’s.
I became dumb, prayed Christina Paley, and opened not rny mouth. For it was Thy doing…. Hear my prayer Oh Lord, and let Thine ear consider my calling. Hold not Thy peace at my tears. For I am a stranger with Thee and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. Oh spare me a little that I may recover my strength … before I go hence and be no more seen.
Father Bott was speaking in a whisper and when he paused three soft, clear notes from a bell filled up the silence, just before the incredible horror fell upon them. A kind of bellow rose up from the nave. A great voice was howling:
‘I denounce this mummery!’
The shock was so great that everyone recoiled, as though struck. Still upon their knees they turned to see the Canon coming out of his pew.
‘This is a Protestant Church …’ he began.
He was interrupted by an excruciating scream from his daughter. Evangeline’s nerves had snapped. She was not only shrieking, she was banging her Prayer Book on the ledge of the pew.
‘No!’ she yelled. ‘No … no … no! I can’t bear it. I can’t … ahoo! Ahoo! Ahoo!’
This attack from the rear seemed to confuse the Canon. He had meant to march up to the altar and attack Father Bott. But he now turned round and ordered the girl to be quiet. She only screamed louder. He seized her arm and tried to drag her up from her knees whereat she laughed insanely and hit him with her Prayer Book.
‘Help me, somebody,’ he said, almost humbly.
The paralyzed congregation bestirred itself. Bruce and Sir Henry went to help him and between them they carried the laughing, screaming girl out of church. The verger shut the door upon the noise, but there was still a sound of sobbing for several of the children had begun to cry. It was some minutes before these gasps of woe subsided and Father Bott was able to finish the Consecration.
‘But you’ve no idea,’ said Gerry, ‘how utterly disgusting it was. What an outrage…. One reads about that sort of thing in the papers and it sounds shocking enough then. But to be there … they must go. We can’t keep them. I told Father Bott … I said we’ll turn them out immediately.’
‘We can’t make them go,’ sighed Mrs. Siddal. ‘I spoke to Canon Wraxton. I explained how embarrassing it is for us. But he simply said he’d paid for a week and should stay for a week.’
‘What about the girl? She was worse than he was … the ghastly noise she made.’
‘I don’t know where she is. She wasn’t at lunch, and she’s not in her room.’
‘Would Father …?’
‘Gerry, you know he wouldn’t.’
‘Very well, then. I must. I’ll go and speak to the old brute now. I’ll tell him to clear out. Give me the money they paid, and I’ll return it.’
Gerry marched upstairs, determined to have a fight with somebody. He was not naturally pugnacious, but he felt that the morning’s outrage demanded action of some kind. The Wraxtons must be demolished. He did not distinguish much between them, nor was he quite clear about the facts. They had created a most blasphemous disturbance, shouting and laughing, until they were turned out. From his place, up by the altar, he had seen very little. He had tried to rush down and hit Canon Wraxton, but Father Bott had restrained him. He did not realize that Evangeline’s laughter proceeded from hysteria, not from mockery, and he believed that the interruption had been deliberately planned by both the offenders.
The Canon was lying on his bed having forty winks. But when Gerry came in he sat up and swung his legs to the floor.
‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘And what can I do for you?’
Gerry put twelve guineas on the bedside table.
‘You must go, please,’ he said. ‘At once. Here is the money you paid.’
‘Are you,’ asked the Canon, ‘the proprietor of this hotel?’
‘No. I’m speaking for my mother.’
‘Why doesn’t she speak for herself?’
‘Because you won’t listen to her.’
‘I listened to her. It’s she who didn’t listen to me, or she’d have told you what I said.’
And the Canon flung himself back on his bed.
‘She told me you wouldn’t go.’
‘And I told her that if she wants me out she’ll have to send for the police to put me out. Let nobody make any mistake about that.’
‘All right!’ said Gerry.
‘I also told her that, if I’m put out, I shall sue her for breach of contract. She agreed to take me in and to render certain services for which I paid.’
‘No hotel is expected to keep people who cause a public scandal,’ said Gerry.
‘No scandal, as you call it, occurred on your mother’s premises. But if she wants a fight she can have it. I don’t mind a fight. If Mister Bott wants a fight he can have one too. He’ll have it whether he wants it or not. I’m writing to his Bishop. I shall see that the facts are known.’
‘So shall we,’ declared Gerry.
‘And if I’m turned out of this hotel for doing my duty as a Minister of the Church of England, I shall see that that’s known too. I shall write to every newspaper in the country.’
‘You must do as you please about that,’ said Gerry. ‘As long as you go.’
‘I’ll go if I’m flung out by force. Not otherwise.’
Gerry went off to find his mother, but could not persuade her to send for the police. She said that she would rather put up with the Canon for a week, nor would she agree that loyalty to their Parish Church demanded extreme measures. When he persisted, she even said that it was partly Father Bott’s fault, for being so High Church. ‘He’s not High Church,’ explained Gerry. ‘He’s Anglo-Catholic’
‘Which is worse,’ said Mrs. Siddal. ‘I’m sure I sympathize with people who don’t like it. What did we have the Reformation for?’
‘I’m an Anglo-Catholic myself,’ said Gerry.
‘I know. But I’m not. I’m a Protestant and I don’t like all these goings on in my Parish Church. It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other, and I won’t have the police brought into it.’
In despair Gerry took an unusual step. He decided to consult his father, hoping to get some kind of parental encouragement in pursuing the vendetta. For Dick Siddal had often annoyed his wife by professing considerable admiration for Father Bott. It was not to be hoped that he would do anything energetic himself, but he might say something which could be construed as authority to ring up the police.
He, too, was taking a little nap when Gerry arrived, in a boot-hole strewn with Sunday newspapers. He had just finished the crossword in the Observer and was collecting his resources before attempting that in the Sunday Express. But he opened one eye and looked at his son good-humouredly.
‘Well?’ he asked. ‘How’s Martin Luther?’
‘He won’t go.’
‘Why should he go?’
‘We can’t have people of that sort here.’
‘Then why did you take them?’
‘We didn’t know what they were like.’
‘But you must have known. Do you never read the newspapers? He’s always doing this sort of thing; his name’s a household word. Why … only last month he started a free fight somewhere down in Dorset. He’s been suspended, or whatever it is they do to parsons who won’t behave, but he goes on doing it.’
Gerry gaped at his father and presently asked:
‘Did you know all about him, then, yesterday?’
‘Naturally,’ said Siddal, ‘when I heard we’d got a Canon Wraxton I supposed it must be the Canon Wraxton.’
‘But why didn’t you tell us?’
‘I wasn’t asked.’
‘But, Father, you must have known … that we wouldn’t … if we’d had the slightest idea….’
‘Not a bit of it. I didn’t like to interfere. Advice from me is seldom appreciated. I don’t pretend for a minute to understand how or why your mother chooses her inmates.’
‘Then you knew … when we all went to church … you knew this would probably happen?’
‘I thought it likely. And when I saw you all coming back I knew I was right. I’ve never laughed so much since your mother opened this hotel. I wish you could have seen yourselves.’
No help was coming from this quarter, so Gerry climbed the hill in search of Father Bott, hoping to be told that it was his duty, as a good Churchman, to use physical violence on the Canon. But the Vicar, whom he met in the churchyard, was discouraging.
‘Oh leave it, leave it,’ said Father Bott. ‘He can’t do more harm than he’s done already. If he tries to get into my church again, I’ll deal with him.’
‘But for us to harbour such people!’ cried Gerry. ‘I won’t have it.’
‘My dear boy, that’s for your parents to decide. It’s their hotel, not yours.’
‘But I’m so angry,’ protested Gerry. ‘I can’t bear to let them get away with it. It was so … so vile … so obscene … it made me sick.’
‘It made me sick too,’ agreed Father Bott. ‘But there you are.’
And he sighed. He was feeling very old and discouraged that afternoon. As a younger man he had enjoyed tussles with Protestants, but he had come to regard his own pugnacity with suspicion as a vice rather than a virtue, and he knew that a fresh scandal at St. Sody’s would do his church no good. He looked up at the sky and down at the grass and then he looked at Gerry’s irate face.
‘Dost thou well to be angry?’ he asked, smiling suddenly.
‘Yes,’ said Gerry. ‘I really think there are occasions when anger is justified.’
‘There may be,’ agreed Father Bott. ‘But I’ve never been able to make up my mind which they are.’
‘He insulted God,’ said Gerry.
‘Oh no, no, no! Oh no. He couldn’t do that, could he?’
‘He tried to.’
The Rector sighed again, looked at his watch, and said impatiently:
‘We don’t have to make all this fuss about God.’
Then, trying not to laugh at Gerry’s shocked expression, he added:
‘God can look after Himself. And He’s told us not to make a fuss. Be still and know that I am God. Now excuse me … I have to take a children’s service.’
‘Then you mean … do nothing?’
‘Not now. Anything you do just now will probably be wrong. I must admit I’m extremely angry myself. But I doubt if I do well.’
He turned away and strode across the grass, his old cassock flapping about his thin legs.
Baffled, the good Churchman returned to Pendizack. He was not going to be allowed to fight anybody though his fury was unabated. The Wraxtons were not entirely responsible for his frame of mind; the long trial to his patience, his father’s spite, his mother’s partiality, and his own frustrated existence, were getting to be more than he could bear. So that it was a relief to feel that his wrath was righteous.
On the doorstep, unfortunately, he encountered Evangeline. She had been hiding for hours in some lair on the cliffs, unable to endure her disgrace, and was now hoping to creep back to her room unnoticed. Gerry stood aside, grimly, to let her pass. But at the sight of him the silly creature dodged and swerved and waited for him to precede her. For a few seconds they danced about on the doorstep.
‘Please go in,’ said Gerry, with freezing politeness.
She gulped and began to mutter. He caught the words:
‘Don’t speak of it,’ he said. ‘If you were really sorry you wouldn’t insist on staying here when we’ve asked you to go.’
He watched her cross the lobby and crawl up the stairs. It should have been a satisfaction to see her so brought down. But it was not, and he felt more miserable than ever. He had never before in his life spoken to anyone so unkindly.
The whole house was suffering from moral shock. The hideous scene in church weighed upon the spirits of all who had been there, and there was a tendency among the adults to sit alone in their rooms.
The children vanished, rising up like a flock of starlings immediately after luncheon and betaking themselves to some hidden place. They retired into their own world, as children will when their elders misbehave. Bewildered, unable to judge, they turned their backs upon the ugly memory.
At supper time they reappeared and, as one child, refused the dessert of loganberries and ice-cream with which Mrs. Siddal had hoped to cheer them. The Giffords waved it away grimly. The Coves, who were dining, after all, downstairs since Mrs. Siddal had insisted upon charging full rates for them, declined it with a devotional enthusiasm. Fred brought a whole dish back into the kitchen, and Siddal consoled his wife by suggesting that Duff could eat it.
‘It will melt unless he comes in soon,’ she said. ‘He and Robin went over to Porthmerryn. I’ll put it in the larder.’
‘Yes … do,’ said Siddal. ‘Gerry and I don’t want any, either.’
Blushing a little she exclaimed:
‘Oh … I meant after you’d had some.’
And began to help them, while Gerry tactfully divertedhis father’s attention by passing him a piece of paper.
‘I picked this up in the hall,’ he said. ‘It looks likea cypher.’
On a page torn from an exercise book a message wasprinted in capitals:
BBM TQBSUBOT XJMM SFGVTF
EFTFSU UPOJHIU CZ PSEFS
Siddal, who liked puzzles, took it and put on his spectacles. When Duff and Robin came in he was so intent that he hardly looked up.
It was at once apparent to Mrs. Siddal that Duff had been up to something. He was flushed, excited and unusually silent. She was so much disturbed by his looks that she scarcely noticed Robin’s boisterous swagger. But Gerry did, and thanked heaven that his father’s attention should be engaged elsewhere. He hoped that the cypher would take a long time to solve. Later on, in the privacy of the stable loft, he would doubtless hear all about it.
Robin, however, had no wish to conceal his condition.
‘We’ve been drinking!’ he announced. ‘We’ve been drinking old fashioneds in the bar of the M.P.’
‘Robin!’ cried Mrs. Siddal.
‘Who paid?’ asked Gerry.
Duff looked up and asked why they should not have paid for themselves.
‘Because you’ve got no cash, either of you.’
‘A strange lady paid for us,’ said Robin. ‘So what?’
He teased his mother for a little while, and then he explained:
‘We met her on the Parade. She couldn’t make her cigarette lighter work. So Duff gave her a light. And we talked a bit and she asked us into the M.P. for a drink. She’s staying there.’
‘Oh well …’ said Mrs. Siddal unhappily, ‘I suppose girls do that sort of thing nowadays.’
‘She wasn’t a girl,’ said Robin. ‘She was older than you I should think, wouldn’t you, Duff?’
‘No,’ said Duff. ‘A big younger than Mother.’
‘It’s quite easy,’ said Siddal. ‘It reads: “All Spartans will refuse desert to-night by order.” I think desert means dessert.’
He sat back and smiled triumphantly at his family.
‘So that explains it,’ said Mrs. Siddal. ‘Some game of the children’s.’
‘She’s a lady authoress,’ said Robin. ‘I never met one before. She says she knows Father.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Siddal.
‘A lady we met in Porthmerryn. Her name is Mrs. Lechene.’
Siddal gave a joyous squeak.
‘Good old Anna! Fat old Anna! You don’t mean to say she’s still above ground?’
‘Of course she is,’ said Mrs. Siddal, who did not look pleased at the news. ‘She’s not old … only my age, as Duff says. And she’s always writing books. You see them in the library.’
‘I don’t,’ said Siddal, ‘because I never go to the library. And all my old friends have dropped me. They might be dead for anything I know. But is Anna in Porthmerryn then?’
‘She’s staying at the M.P.,’ said Robin.
‘Oh? At the M.P.? Who with?’
Duff and Robin looked at one another.
‘She didn’t say,’ said Duff. ‘We thought she was alone there.’
‘Not very likely,’ said Siddal.
Duff gave his father a quick, sharp glance and said:
‘She’s writing a book about Emily Brontë.’
‘Oh my Lord! She would! She would! The only wonder is that she hasn’t done it before. Poor Emily! What a shame! Why can’t they leave that unfortunate girl alone?’
‘Is she a good writer?’ asked Robin.
‘She writes well. Everybody does nowadays. She writes this biographical fiction, or fictional biography, whichever you like to call it. She takes some juicy scandal from the life of a famous person, and writes a novel round it. Any facts that don’t suit her go out. Any details she wants to invent come in. She’s saved the trouble of creating plot and characters, and she doesn’t have to be accurate because it’s only a novel, you know.’
‘You don’t sound,’ said Duff, ‘as if you liked her very much.’
‘Don’t I? I’m talking about her books. I hate ’em. But that doesn’t mean I’ve any personal animus against the poor girl. You think one shouldn’t criticize the work of a friend? Disloyal? Isn’t that rather suburban of you?’
‘I only read one of Anna’s books,’ put in Mrs. Siddal hastily. ‘The Lost Pleiad. I couldn’t bear it.’
‘Oh yes … the one about Augusta Leigh. “Like the Lost Pleiad, seen no more below!” That made her name. A huge success. You’d have thought that stale old bone had had all the meat pecked off it. But no! It seems that in Cardiff and Wimbledon and Tunbridge Wells and Palm Beach and Milwaukee they still didn’t know. So they all lapped up The Lost Pleiad. There was an unforgettable chapter about Byron and Augusta being snowed up…. I believe they actually were snowed up. Anna didn’t invent that. But oh, bless you, she knew everything they did and said and thought from the first snowflake to the thaw. What’s she like to look at now? I haven’t seen her for … it must be at least ten years.’
Duff and Robin looked vague.
‘She’s fat and rather pale,’ said Robin at last. ‘And she doesn’t look as if she makes up, except her hair which is peroxide.’
‘Oh no, it’s not. It’s true, Teutonic gold, and she’s very proud of it. Lets it down on the slightest provocation. She hasn’t changed apparently. She was a fat, pale girl twenty or thirty years ago, and whatever she wore looked as if she’d slept in it. She used to let her hair down at the dinner table and lean confidentially towards her neighbour till it trailed in his soup. If he blenched she said he had repressions.’
Robin guffawed and said that Anna had told them a limerick about repressions.
‘Limericks!’ cried Mr. Siddal. ‘How crude she must be getting! But I suppose she mistook you for schoolboys.’
‘Who is Mr. Lechene?’ asked Duff, ignoring this dig.
‘Haven’t an idea. She’d finished with him long before I knew her. She used to say she was married at fifteen, and I daresay she was. But I expect there’s a current Mister of sorts. There always is. You didn’t see him? Perhaps he was taking a little time off.’
‘She wants to come here,’ said Robin. ‘She asked if we had room.’
‘Oh no … we haven’t,’ exclaimed Mrs. Siddal.
‘Why Mother? We’ve got the garden room still unlet.’
‘I couldn’t possibly have Anna here. The Wraxtons are bad enough.’
‘Well, she might upset people,’ agreed Robin. ‘She says such … she doesn’t seem to mind what she says, does she, Duff?’
Duff made a noncommittal noise. He did not know whether he wanted Anna to come or not. She had upset him. He had been quite ashamed of the ideas which she managed to put into his head; and then she had stared at him, smiling, as though perfectly aware of what she was doing.
‘Duff,’ said Mr. Siddal, ‘had better be careful. She is older than the rocks on which she sits and she eats a young man every morning for breakfast. Her ash can is full of skulls and bones.’
‘Not now, surely!’ said Robin.
‘Oh yes. Every word she says, every look she gives, is a most powerful aphrodisiac; after a sufficient dose of it they don’t know that she’s fat and old and an ogress. They think she’s going to teach them some wonderful secret.’
‘And does she?’ asked Duff, with another of those keen looks.
‘That,’ confessed Siddal, ‘I don’t know. I’m not in a position to tell you. And if she has suggested anything to the contrary it’s just a little lapse of memory on her part. She finds it difficult, I daresay, to believe that any old acquaintance escaped her ash can. But I, whatever my faults, have never looked at any other woman since I married your mother. I’m what they call a happily married man.’
The hotel got its first glimpse of Lady Gifford at Sunday supper, for she had kept her bed ever since her arrival the evening before. Some curiosity was felt when at last she appeared. Her pallor, her emaciation, and her faint voice bore witness to her ill-health, and nobody felt able to protest when she asked for a fire in the lounge, though the night was very warm. Gerry took up logs and she sat close to the blaze, warming her delicate hands and looking round her with a faint, triumphant smile, as if expecting to be congratulated upon her gallantry in getting downstairs at all.
But nobody said the right things except Dick Siddal, whose custom it was to clean up and join his guests in the lounge in the evenings. And even he found the heat of the fire intolerable. He was obliged to go and sit at the other end of the room, beyond the range of her plaintive whispers. The room had several occupants, and all of them were suffocated. Sir Henry was writing letters at a desk in the bay window. The Paleys sat side by side on a sofa reading the Sunday papers. Upon another sofa sat Miss Ellis who was not supposed to use the lounge, but had done so as a protest against emptying slops. Nobody sat near the fire except Mrs. Cove who had left her knitting in the most comfortable chair before supper and chose to stay there in spite of its subsequent disadvantages.
Between these two ladies, crouching in their private inferno, a desultory conversation sprang up. Lady Gifford whispered questions to which Mrs. Cove gave terse replies in a singularly disagreeable voice. It was cold and sharp and it had a subtly common overtone, not innate, but acquired in the course of many battles with the grasping mob. She said that she was taking this holiday because she had recently sold her ‘haouse’ in the south of London. A mere house, as Siddal said afterwards to his family, would not, probably, have fetched half so much as a ‘haouse’ could. Houses are sold through estate agents who take commission. ‘Haouses’ are disposed of by their owners, who always get the best of the bargain.
This one, explained Mrs. Cove, had doubled in value since she bought it, for the flying bombs had created a scarcity in that district.
‘Oh terrible!’ agreed Lady Gifford. ‘So much worse than the Blitz! More of a nervous strain, weren’t they?’
‘Were you in London through the Blitz, Lady Gifford?’
This was from Miss Ellis, chirping up from her sofa, reminding them that she not only had the right to sit but might talk if she liked.
‘No,’ breathed Lady Gifford. ‘No … actually I was there very little. But my husband was all through the worst of it. And naturally I was very anxious. For I felt I had to be with the children. Where,’ she asked Mrs. Cove, ‘did you send yours?’
‘Nowhere,’ snapped Mrs. Cove. ‘We stayed in London. We had an Anderson shelter. I wasn’t nervous.’
‘Weren’t they?’ asked Lady Gifford.
Mrs. Cove pursed her lips as if to say that her children knew better than to be nervous.
‘How lucky. Mine would have been shattered. They’re all so highly strung. I’m thankful to say not one of them ever heard a bomb.’
‘In America weren’t you, Lady Gifford?’ suggested Miss Ellis.
Lady Gifford ignored her and continued to address Mrs. Cove.
‘We had a kind invitation from a friend in Massachusetts. They had a wonderful time. But I didn’t, naturally, want them to become Americanized. So I felt I must go with them.’
‘Why?’ asked Mrs. Cove, looking up from her knitting. ‘Don’t you like Americans?’
‘Oh yes, I love them. So wonderfully kind and hospitable.’
‘Then why didn’t you want your children to be Americanized? When you accepted all this hospitality?’
‘Oh well …’ Lady Gifford made a helpless little gesture. ‘One does want them to be British, doesn’t one?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Mrs. Cove. ‘Which is why I kept mine in Britain. I had invitations for my children. But I don’t like cadging.’
Lady Gifford flushed slightly.
‘Naturally one disliked that part of it,’ she said. ‘I always thought it quite ridiculous that one wasn’t allowed to pay for them. But personally I think we owed it to our children to put them in safety, whatever the sacrifice. Don’t you?’
She turned her haggard gaze upon the Paleys as if asking for their support. Mrs. Paley looked flustered and made no reply. Mr. Paley stared at his boots and said:
‘I agree with Mrs. Cove. If I had had children I should have kept them in England. I should not have allowed them to live on charity.’
‘Plenty of places in the British Isles were fairly safe,’ said Sir Henry, turning round. ‘Many people here never heard a bomb.’
‘Oh, but one couldn’t know that,’ said Lady Gifford. ‘And I don’t think innocent little children ought to suffer. I always say that. The innocent oughtn’t to suffer.’
‘They invariably do,’ said Mr. Siddal. ‘They always have.’
‘But why? Why?’
Dick Siddal leant back upon his sofa and stared at three flies circling round the chandelier. He was getting bored with Lady Gifford.
‘Perhaps,’ he suggested, ‘the sufferings of the innocent are useful. That idea first occurred to me when one of my children said how unkind it was of Lot to leave Sodom, since, as long as he stayed there, the city was safe. The presence of one righteous man preserved it. I shouldn’t wonder if the entire human race isn’t tolerated simply for its innocent minority.’
‘What a sweet idea,’ said Lady Gifford.
He lowered his eyes for a moment and gave her a look. Then he raised them again and pursued the hare he had started. She was an intolerably stupid woman and could not understand a word he said. But he enjoyed the sound of his own voice, and nobody was likely to interrupt him.
‘I daresay,’ he said, ‘that mankind is protected and sustained by undeserved suffering; by all those millions of helpless people who pay for the evil we do and who shield us simply by being there, as Lot was in the doomed city. If any community of people were to be purely evil, were to have no element of innocence among them at all, the earth would probably open and swallow them up. Such a community would split the moral atom.’
He sat up straight and addressed his remarks to Paley, who might be able to follow them.
‘It’s the innocent who integrate the whole concern. Their agony is dreadful, but:
Their shoulders hold the sky suspended.
They stand, and earth’s foundations stay.
Why didn’t the earth open to swallow Belsen? Even in the bunkers of the Berlin Chancellery you might find the innocent children of Dr. Goebbels. Where you have the suffering innocent, the crucified victim, there you have the redeemer who secures for us all a continual reprieve. The oppressed preserve the oppressors. If the innocent did not suffer we should all go pop.’
Lady Gifford looked a little bewildered.
‘But surely,’ she said, ‘there were babies in Sodom, even after Lot went out.’
Siddal shook his head.
‘Weren’t there? Surely …’
‘Not one.’
‘Really? I never knew that. Does it say so?’
The door opened and Canon Wraxton stood upon the threshold. All conversation died down at once.
‘It’s insufferably hot in here,’ he announced.
‘I’m afraid that’s on my account,’ sighed Lady Gifford. ‘I have to be very careful not to catch a chill.’
‘To roast yourself will be the surest way to do it, Madam. If I’m to sit in here I really must ask for some of the windows to be opened.’
‘Then I can’t sit here,’ she pointed out.
‘You must judge for yourself about that,’ said the Canon.
He made a tour of the windows, opening them all, before he sat down at the other desk to write a letter. Lady Gifford was obliged to go back to bed, and departed on the arm of her husband.
The murmur of the sea came in through the opened windows. A breath of cool air fanned Christina Paley’s cheek. She looked out and saw a gull so high up in the sky that a beam from the sun, already set, caught its wings.
The heat and the darkness of the room were stifling her. She glanced at her husband. He was not reading. He was not thinking. She was sure that when he sat huddled up like this he was not thinking of anything at all; he was simply existing inside his shell. Of late he had seemed to shrink, as if the brain behind his skull was shrivelling.
She wished that somebody would say something, and peered through the stifling dusk at her companions. There were only four of them now. They were all withdrawn, all heavily silent. Mrs. Cove knitted in the firelight. Mr. Siddal stared at the chandelier. Canon Wraxton drew circles on his blotting paper. Miss Ellis seemed to be examining a hole in the carpet. She got the impression that none of them were thinking, that nothing was passing through their minds from the outer world. Each had retired, as an animal retires with a bone to the back of its cage, to chew over some single obsession. And this frightened her. She could no longer bear to be shut up in this murky den of strange beasts. She must get out, right out of the hotel, and away to the safety of the cliffs. She rose and slipped out of the room. Nobody noticed her departure.
Her panic did not subside till she was across the sands and halfway up to the headland. She mastered it only to discover that her misery had returned. Despair broke over her so irresistibly that she wondered how she could still observe the pure peace and beauty of the scene. But her senses continued to tell her that the sky, sea, cliffs and sands were lovely, that there was music in the murmur of the waves, and that the evening airs smelt of gorse blossom. To that message her mind replied: No good any more. It might have helped me once.
For she loved natural beauty, and in the earlier stages of her struggle had often found consolation in a country walk. But this was a late stage, the final stage. Now she merely felt a clearer conviction that life was over for her, the last anodyne gone. If this fair prospect could not tempt her to stay, then nothing could and she might go when she pleased.
She went to the end of the headland and sat on a rock looking out to sea. The water was flat and pale, paler than the sky, except at the horizon where a dark blue pencil had sketched a great curve. On her left, behind the dusky mass of the next point, an after sunset light still burned. On her right, over Pendizack Cove, fell the shadow of advancing night. She thought that she would rest for a little while and then go back to the sand. She would wade out into that warm, flat sea, wade as far as she could and then swim. It was years since she had swum but she supposed she still could, for how far she did not know, but far enough. She would swim straight out towards that thin blue line of the horizon, on and on, until the end. A time would come when she could swim no more. And then there might be some moments of panic. The wish to live might reassert itself before she went under the choking water. But it would soon be over. And no one would be hurt by it, for she had given up all hope of helping Paul. Her life was useless and a burden.
So much suffering, she thought. So much suffering everywhere. And as long as I live I merely add to it. I am not strong. I can do nothing. I’m simply another hopeless, helpless person.
A faint wind sighed in the dread thrift beside the rock, and a longer wave than usual fell upon the beach below her. Decision had relaxed her nerves. She leant her back against the rock and closed her eyes, her mind vacant and open to any vision that might drift through it. Suddenly and vividly she saw a deep pit from which many faces peered up at her. It came and went so quickly that she could recognize none of them although she was sure that some were familiar; a girl’s face and three pale children distinct among millions and seen by a lightning flash. At the same time a voice said in her ear: Their shoulders hold the sky suspended. They stand and earth’s founda tions stay.
Mr. Siddal had said that. Mr. Siddal had said some very strange things, sitting in the lounge and staring at the ceiling. She was not sure that she understood them. He had said that the innocent save the world and that their suffering is necessary. He said that the victims, the helpless, hopeless people everywhere, are the redeemers who sustain and protect mankind. She could not remember his words exactly. But she had felt very strange for a moment, while he was talking, as though she might be on the verge of some enormous discovery. Crucified, he had said. The Lord was crucified. He was innocent and He redeemed mankind. But Mr. Siddal said redeems, as if it was all still going on. And did he mean, she asked herself, that we are all … all the oppressed … and the poor people in China … and the homeless … the poor little Jewish babies born in ships … no home, no country, turned away everywhere…. Oh, I do think that is the worst of all, for a poor baby to be born with no country even … but did he mean that we are all one person, innocent and crucified and redeeming the world … always? Is that what he meant?
Another wave fell on the beach, and before its reverberation had died away she knew that, whatever Mr. Siddal had meant, she herself had arrived at a certainty. She had made her discovery and knew that she was no longer alone. The chain of her solitude had been broken, that solitude, forced upon her by Paul’s cruelty, which she had been unable to endure. Her pain was not entirely her own, and it had transported her into an existence outside and beyond her own, into a mind, an endurance, from which she could never again be separated.
They endure for me and I for them, she thought, and strove to summon before her inward eye those pale faces peering from the pit. But the glimpse was gone and she could not bring it back. She could only speculate upon their familiarity and wonder if the girl she saw had not been Evangeline Wraxton, who was shut up now, somewhere in the hotel, among those wild beasts in their dens. And who must be brought out, out of the pit, before she sank.
‘At once! Immediately!’ exclaimed Mrs. Paley aloud, as she sprang to her feet. ‘Not a minute to be lost.’
She set off as fast as she could, down the path to the cove.
Night had almost fallen when, half an hour later, she returned with Evangeline. She had marched into the girl’s room without any prepared plan and had suggested a walk on the cliff as calmly as though it had been a long-standing habit. Evangeline had looked startled, but she rose obediently and put away in a drawer some objects on her dressing-table—a piece of glass, a file and a little box.
‘Shall I need a coat?’ she asked.
‘Better bring one,’ advised Mrs. Paley, ‘and then we needn’t come back if it gets cold. We can stay as long as we like. My coat is downstairs. I’ll get it as we go out.’
They had also got two cushions from the lobby settle lest sitting about on rocks should give them rheumatism.
‘Because that hotel isn’t a nice place at all,’ said Mrs. Paley. ‘It’s not nice at night.’
‘No,’ agreed Evangeline. ‘I can’t sleep there.’
‘I can’t either. With coats and cushions we can sleep on the cliff if we like.’
‘Unless it rains.’
‘It won’t. And there’s a sort of shelter, anyway, up on Pendizack Point.’
They found a comfortable little hollow in some heather close to the shelter and lay upon their backs, side by side, watching the stars come out and discussing the best way to make the tea ration last. Neither felt the least impulse, just then, to confide in the other. But they knew what united them. They were a little astonished at themselves and inclined to giggle, as women will, when they embark upon some daring adventure.
‘I infuse,’ said Mrs. Paley. ‘I just cover the leaves with boiling water and leave it for five minutes before I fill up the pot.’
‘You make me feel quite thirsty,’ said Evangeline.
‘I’ve got a picnic basket and a kettle and spirit lamp. If we come up here to-morrow night we’ll make ourselves some.’
‘That will be nice,’ said Evangeline. ‘I should like to come here every night till the week is over. I wish I didn’t have to stay. They’ve asked us to go.’
‘They know it’s not your fault.’
‘Do they? Mr. Gerry Siddal … Do you know him?’
‘Hardly at all. I’ve just seen him about.’
‘He’s nice, I think,’ said Evangeline, wistfully.
‘Is he?’
‘He’s very considerate to his mother. But … I tried to speak to him … to apologize …. and he wouldn’t listen.’
‘I’ll have a word with him to-morrow,’ promised Mrs. Paley. ‘I daresay he didn’t understand. I expect you muttered at him.’
‘Yes … I did. I can’t help it. People frighten me. Do beg him not to be angry.’
‘I will’
‘If only people wouldn’t be angry … if only they wouldn’t …’ sighed Evangeline.
Very soon afterwards she fell asleep. But Mrs. Paley lay for a long time staring at the stars, very small and pale in the summer sky. The thin girl beside her filled her with an immense tenderness and compassion, a love beyond any she had ever felt before. She thought of the child she had lost, whose birthday this was, who had been put into her waiting arms for the first time just twenty-three years ago. But it seemed to her as if the child had been sent in place of Evangeline, because at that time her heart had been smaller and could not have accommodated a creature in no sense her own. Nor could she have borne to know as much about that child as she knew about this one, to be aware of all that life with Canon Wraxton must entail, to guess at the significance of that box and nail file on the dressing-table.
Presently she dozed a little, waking to find many more stars in a darker sky. The spaces between the stars looked very black and the wind whispered in the heather, and she murmured sleepily a line learnt in her forgotten childhood: and whispers to the worlds of space … a sentinel … I hear at times a sentinel, Who moves about from place to place And whispers to the worlds of space, In the deep night, that all is well.