Noble in Reason (20 page)

“Very well. But it's no use, Chris. He's dying.”

“We ought to get him on the couch,” I said uneasily.

“It's too late. Why make him suffer by moving him? Still, if you think so, Chris,” said Beatrice mildly.

I was ashamed to find that her strength, or at any rate her skill, was greater than mine in moving the heavy inert lump which had once been the handsome and dashing Dr. Darrell. Her long fine fingers gripped mine with steel-like tenacity, her slender shoulders easily took a strain under which mine quivered. Just as we laid him down the dying man opened his eyes. He fixed his gaze, first on her, then with a great effort on me, in a look of terrible enquiry.

“It's Beatrice, father,” said Beatrice clearly. “And this is Chris, Chris Jarmayne you know.”

A most lamentable groan rolled out from behind Dr. Darrell's gaping lips: a groan so loud, so animal in tone, that it was somehow indecent.

“Hurry, Chris,” said Beatrice.

I ran to the hospital and arrived there panting. In the bustle of the convoy's arrival—a sombre and gruesome sight enough—it was difficult at first to gain any attention, but when my errand was known an elderly doctor, a friend of Dr. Darrell, soon drove me back to Ashleigh in his car.

Beatrice sat beside her father holding his hand in hers, but he was dead.

The doctor, drawing out a book of death certificates and unscrewing his fountain pen, asked a few formal questions.

“Did he have any kind of shock at all?”

“Not to my knowledge,” said Beatrice.

Something in her tone made me doubt her, and I thought the doctor too hesitated. But in such moments of anguish, I reflected, one's voice is not under one's control.

“He was waiting to go to the hospital to meet the convoy. He has been overworking steadily for four years,” continued Beatrice.

This time her voice had the ring of truth. The doctor nodded agreement, filled and signed the form, telephoned to summon the necessary undertaker's assistant.

“Are you alone in the house? Where will you spend the night, Miss Darrell?”

“You'd better take my room next door, and I'll stay here,” I offered clumsily.

Beatrice shook her head. “There's no need, Chris,” she said. “But I'd be glad if you'd stay with me until the—nurse— has been.”

I agreed of course; I wished very much that I could offer to take Beatrice to my mother, and I saw that the absence of this suggestion puzzled the doctor, but my mother was not in a fit state to receive her. The doctor left, and Beatrice and I were alone. Beatrice led me into the kitchen and made some coffee. (Everyone else I knew in the West Riding, I reflected, would have made tea.) We sat on either side of the white scrubbed kitchen table, sipping from agreeable cups of fine blue and gold. At least, I sipped; looking across at Beatrice, I saw that she had set down her cup; she had neither spoken nor sobbed, but the tears lay wet and still on her cheek. I sprang up and went to her side.

“Beatrice, I'm so sorry, my dear, I'm so very sorry,” I said, laying my arm about her shoulders.

She put up her hand to mine but did not turn her face to me.

“I'm so desperately lonely, Chris,” she said in her clear quiet tones. “Now father's gone there's nobody in the world who cares for me.”

“The Jarmaynes care for you—you must come and stay with us,” was the natural response to this. Beatrice was silent, so after a moment I added: “Your relatives in Scotland—shall you go to them?”

“No. Chris—you're going to be lonely too, aren't you? Without Netta, I mean.”

“Yes.” Feeling I had let too much of my trouble show in my voice, I went on hastily: “Netta will be living in Hudley after the war.”

“No, she won't. Her husband will never come back here. He's too jealous of your influence over Netta, Chris, to let her live near you.”

I sighed. “So long as she's happy,” I said.

“Look, Chris,” said Beatrice. Her hand still lay on mine, she gazed straight ahead and spoke with her usual poised calm. “You and I are both very lonely. Why shouldn't we marry and be lonely no more?”

“Marry?” I repeated. I was entirely puzzled, I had not taken her meaning in.

“Yes, marry. You've always liked me, Chris, haven't you?”

“Yes, indeed. I like and admire you, Beatrice. You've always appeared the height of elegance to me.”

“And I like you. I'm a few years older than you, but not too many. Let us marry, Chris.”

Now I understood her, and between a terrible dismay and a wonderful exaltation blurted sheepishly:

“You wouldn't want to marry me, Beatrice.”

Beatrice's shoulder moved impatiently beneath my hand.

“You undervalue yourself, Chris—you think too little of yourself. I
do
want to marry you. Soon. Now.”

A peal at the front-door bell announced the arrival of the undertaker's assistant. Beatrice rose and turned to face me. She was lightly flushed, but held her head high and smiled calmly.

“Is it settled then? Shall it be so?”

I stammered in hopeless confusion: “Well—but you wouldn't, Beatrice—I mean I haven't—if you wish, of course. . . .” The bell ringing again—it was an old-fashioned type, an iron bell on a curving spring, which made a tremendous clangour just above our heads—seemed to infuse urgency into the situation. “Of course if you wish,” I said with a different, a consenting emphasis.

Beatrice put her hands on my shoulders, bent forward and lightly kissed my lips.

“Thank you, Chris. I knew you wouldn't fail me.”

I had never kissed a woman before, and though I did not find this first experience perhaps quite as ecstatic as the poets had given me to understand, it was sufficiently intoxicating. In a vague, blundering untaught way I put out my arms to enfold Beatrice, but she stepped quietly aside and went away to the front door.

The next few weeks I spent in a feverish alternation of hope and despair. Although deep in my heart I knew that I did not love Beatrice in the way I had hoped to love the unimaginable she whom I should marry, I felt also a tremendous satisfaction and relief that I was to be like other men, have a wife, a home and children of my own. Could it really be true that I should thus become a normal part of the community? An ordinary man? When I thought thus I smiled happily to myself and whistled about my work. There were other times when the realization that my future was now for ever fixed and settled, that I was henceforth to be bound and
tied, barred off from joyous roving, that bright dreams or hopes of escape to a different kind of life had no longer any validity, brought me a sickening despair, a determination to escape at any cost.

But no escape was honourably (or indeed at all) possible. My father was astonished by the news of my engagement, but his astonishment took the form of delighted surprise that a girl he respected as much as Beatrice should “take on,” as he said, anybody so feckless and difficult as his youngest son. My mother, alas, was not there to receive my confidences; the withdrawal of Netta had sent her to seek consolation in her usual source; after her long abstinence desire completely overpowered her—how well I understood that from my daydream struggles! —and she was again obliged to go away for a “cure.” Graham was attached to a training flying school in the Midlands for a few months and Netta lived in a neighbouring village; John of course languished in a German prisoner-of-war camp. Only Edie of the family remained to express an opinion. Her reaction was at first unfavourable, and as usual bluntly expressed.

“She's too old for you, Chris, she's six years older than you. You should have a nice
young
girl who'll look up to you and admire all your funny ways,” said Edie. “I don't know what John will say about it when he hears, I really don't.”

But her very insistence on the oddity of my ways and the probable disapproval of my elder brother militated against her argument, for Beatrice took pains to make me feel that my mode of life was superior to the general, my work interesting, my intellect remarkable; I was a man, not a mere younger brother, her delicate and tactful flattery continually insisted; she resented on my behalf any idea that we should defer our marriage till we heard what John said—such a suggestion was, she said, both insulting and ridiculous. Accordingly we married before the month was out at the Hudley Registrar's
office—I had scruples against submitting to a religious service, to which Beatrice most charmingly and unprotestingly deferred.

It is difficult to describe my state of mind during the months that followed, though I can feel it, experience it, vividly as I write. A profound uneasiness, a feeling that all that was best and most characteristic of myself sobbed alone in a dark cave, alternated with a greater ease and comfort on the surface than I had ever previously enjoyed. I was no longer lonely; my wife hastened to meet me when I returned and was with me whenever I wished through all my leisure time. Beatrice was always pleasant, always affable, always ready to listen— nobody had ever listened to me as she listened, and though she knew little of the subjects that especially interested me, she had a lively natural intelligence and had lived with an intelligent father, so she was able to make responses far superior to those hitherto offered by my own family. It was agreeable to hear the opinions of a contemporary, a member of my own generation. She managed Ashroyd—for in my mother's absence it seemed the best arrangement for the time for us to live there—with taste and skill; my father and I enjoyed better meals and greater comfort than ever before. She also managed my father, who admired and was a little afraid of her, with taste and skill, deferring outwardly to him but taking care that I received the dishes and arrangements I preferred. (For example, she did not grudge or interrupt the hours I spent in reading, but would devote these to pleasing my father, in talk or walk.) In our intimate relations no wife could have been kinder or more understanding; she received my clumsy and ignorant attempts at lovemaking with such infinite pity and gentleness that I was encouraged to believe (falsely) that I was not too unsatisfactory as a husband. She showed more knowledge in these matters than I did, but, accustomed as I was to being belated and inadequate in all the relations of
life, this did not surprise me, and I was able to take pride in achieving the status of manhood.

And yet I was wretched. Reading did not give me the same pleasure as of old, because the glorious delights of love which all creative literature exalted were, I now felt, placed forever out of my reach. My work now stifled and bored me, I did it conscientiously only for my country's sake. In a word, my life had been stripped of hope. So that when presently Beatrice informed me that she was with child, I was almost torn apart by two contradictory emotions. On the one hand I felt that a child, whether son or daughter, would bring new hope, new interest, into my life and I should, of course, cherish and love it very tenderly. On the other hand, the birth of this new generation seemed to press me back into the past, to make me old and fatherly, to transfer my hopes from myself to my child as I had seen happen with earlier generations; my young-manhood was over before it had begun; a lifetime of captivity lay before me.

Meanwhile July and August had come and gone, with their French and British tank victories, their “black day” for the German army, and September had brought the brilliant American operation round St. Michel. In October the news was all of Allied advances—no doubt they “stuck” sometimes and the newspapers told us the “penetration” was disappointing; but of retreats or adverse break-throughs there was no further mention. The tide of war had turned and now flowed irresistibly in our favour. Ludendorff fell; the Germans asked for an Armistice; the cease-fire, as everyone knows, took place at eleven o'clock on the eleventh of November, Monday morning. After a moment of overpowering joy when the buzzers and the church bells gave the news, I suddenly felt unutterably tired, cross and flat. Our workers were pouring out of the factories; the machines stood still for the first time in years. I asked my superiors if my services were required
for the reconstruction meeting which was immediately to be held, and in a rather odd tone was told that they were not; I could go home. I threw myself into a train and found myself in Hudley, and presently at Ashroyd shortly after noon.

For the first time in our married life, Beatrice did not seem pleased to see me. She came downstairs slowly to my call and set about preparing a meal with a slow step and a weary look; her face was pale and drawn and shadows lay heavily under her eyes. Thinking with concern of her condition, I began to help her, carrying trays and so on. In the middle of this my father burst into the house, as excited as a child. The town was all agog, said he; a special edition of the
Hudley News
carrying the good news had now been published, the streets were crowded, the Parish Church bells were ringing, flags and banners and bunting were everywhere displayed. We must at once find air old Union Jack he was sure we still possessed, which dated from the Coronation of Edward VII at the beginning of the century, and display it somehow at the front of the house; then walk down to town to see what was going on. I went to the attic in search of this flag while Beatrice completed the luncheon preparations, and with a good deal of instruction and interference from my father I eventually managed to drape it from a front window. Beatrice looked deathly pale when we at last came downstairs, and the dishes she placed on the table seemed almost ready to fall from her nerveless fingers. As we cleared away the meal together—our daily help having been swept away by the tide of national excitement—Beatrice once or twice clung to the table and seemed to experience a painful moment before she could proceed. I urged her privately to remain at home and rest while I went out with my father, but she seemed suddenly better and insisted on accompanying us.