Sting of Death

by Shelley Smith

  Presently, as Ivor had foreseen, because of Linda’s failure with Edmund and consequent loss of self-confidence, there arose in her queer little heart inexplicable feelings that she had been the one to behave badly to Ivor, that she had been unfair, that she was guilty of meanness and unwitting cruelty to him even. His quiet disdain and persevering silence convinced her more than any words and protestations could have done that he was in the right.

  On the fourth day after the “quarrel,” she said to him shyly when she found him alone (he no longer helped her about the house, of course, and she had scarcely seen him these last days):

  “Don’t you think we could be friends again?”

  His dark saturnine face was unsmiling, his eyes cold. For the first time it occurred to her with something of a shock that he had a cruel face, that he could be more heartless, more ruthless than Edmund. She was aware of her heartbeats, uneasy with fear.

  He said, so severely that it was a moment or two before she took in his meaning:

  “How can we be friends? My feelings about you are unchanged.”

  She stammered:

  “Well...then... I – ”

  “I think it will be best for me if I go away. If I don’t see you, sooner or later I shall forget you.”

  She brought out a laugh, a little shakily.

  “Well, I don’t call that a very pretty speech, I must say.”

  His unsmiling look accused her of flippancy. She stared at him. Hardly moving his lips, he said:

  “You do not know the pain in my heart.”

  She felt ashamed, and a tenderness of romantic pity welled up in her own heart for him. Ah, did she not know the anguish of unrequited love! Besides, she could not afford to throw away so flattering a balm. And somewhere, in the very depths of her darkest consciousness flickered a tiny revengeful notion that here was someone who could be made to suffer as Edmund was making her suffer.

  She said, low:

  “You are the only friend I’ve got. There’s no one else I can talk to here. I don’t know what I shall do without you.”

  “I’ll do whatever you want,” he said deeply, his expression softening. He took her small rough hands in his.

  She bent her head so that he could hardly catch the words.

  “I want you to stay.”

  “Then I’ll stay,” he said, and slid his hands up her arms.

  “Yes, but Ivor – ” She drew back. How was she to word it without upsetting him again?

  But he understood. He reassured her a little mockingly.

  “I promise I’ll behave,” he said.

  That night he slipped a letter under her door, describing his misery of the last few days after that “ungovernable impulse” as he called the kiss, describing his love find his devotion, etc. Thereafter she received many letters from him. It would be foolish to pretend they displeased her. She thought it was wrong of him to write them and dishonourable of herself to read them. To her way of thinking, Edmund’s infidelity did not excuse it. Nevertheless, she did read the letters, and what is more, could not quite bring herself to destroy these testimonials to her charm and adorability. She used to toss them furtively into the false bottom of an old converted workbox, in which she kept other “important” papers for which she could find no place in her daily life.

  Yet, despite all his wiles, she granted him nothing. Not one embrace, not a touch of the hand nor even a caressing word. She was scrupulously honest with him.

  She would say not one word more than she meant; and in her affections she was adamantly faithful to Edmund.

  It infuriated Ivor.

  “How can you be so stupid?” he stormed at her. “Don’t you know that he despises your virtue, he doesn’t want it, he’d like you the more for knowing you were no better than himself. I can tell you, no man likes a woman to be his superior, morally or in any other way. Don’t you know that virtue and chastity are no longer de rigueur, you obstinate girl?”

  “But I love him,” she explained pitifully.

  “Who’s talking about love, you silly little thing? Why can’t you enjoy yourself, without bringing love into it? You don’t have to be thirsty before you can enjoy a glass of wine, do you? You think I’m a pagan, but let me tell you, I worship God through the gratification of my senses, as He meant me to. Or why did He give them to me? Wake up, you maddening little medieval creature, this isn’t the Dark Ages!”

  “They seem like the Dark Ages to me,” she said simply. “I don’t see that they could be much darker.”

  The affair between Ilse and Ivor continued cordial. They managed to contrive many little opportunities for their pleasure. They were both so deft, so expert, that they had no fear of anyone’s finding out. Not even the keenest eye could catch a glance between them, or unravel a hint from a sentence addressed ostensibly to someone else. Neither was so obtuse as to look up or flush with desire when the other entered the room. Yet this man who was perfectly controlled in public where Ilse was concerned was the same man who openly languished after Linda, standing near her, following her with his eyes on all occasions, restless till he could get her alone, obviously troubled if he chanced to touch her. And even Linda was noticeably inclined to rest her eyes on him sometimes with a puzzled expression; she paid far more attention to him than Ilse did.

  All the same, Werner knew.

  Edmund had been down for a couple of days. At first he had been sweet, had taken the children to a fair in the neighbourhood, and been not disagreeable about the house. All sorts of mad hopes flew into Linda’s heart. If only he’d come back, she prayed, and vowed special vows to her five favourite saints and particularly to her best of all, the Little Flower, Saint Teresa. But before her avowed intentions could reach heaven, her bright dreams were broken by Edmund’s renewing his plea to be divorced. That, it appeared, was the reason for his pleasant visit, hoping that sweetness would prevail where argument had proved useless. But, “Never, never!” cried Linda, the tears falling through her fingers. So after all it ended in a row.

  But it left her with the determination to use her own energies more spiritedly. She had not tried hard enough to please him. For instance, he had asked her to get rid of her “paying” guests, and she had deliberately ignored it. No wonder he was angry and hated her. They should all go, and when Hawkswood was empty once more perhaps his desire to be back in it would return.

  She shrank from Great-Aunt Tory’s vicious tongue and she dreaded her father’s ignoble appeals; it seemed therefore easiest to begin with the Hausers. She would explain it to Werner Hauser. She always found it easier to talk to a man than a woman. Werner was gentleness itself, he would not make it difficult for her. At the worst, he would only make her feel a little sad and uncomfortable.

  “...It is my husband, you see,” she said earnestly, twisting her fingers.

  “Yes, I see,” Werner said dully.

  “If I had only myself to consider I’d be glad for you to stay as long as you might wish. But, you see, Edmund feels – He has plans... I do wish you’d sit down, Mr. Werner.”

  “Thank you, I am all right. It was so good of you to bear us for such a long time. Much kindness you have given us. It is quite right you should tell us when we are no longer agreeable to you.” He rested one long sensitive hand on the table to stop its trembling.

  “Please don’t say things like that. It isn’t that we don’t want you – ”

  Werner’s sad dark eyes flickered up for an instant, piercing her with a glance of such despair that it frightened her. He said at once with his exquisite politeness, however:

  “I perfectly comprehend. I shall explain to Ilse. I am sure she will understand. We shall leave at once. We would not wish you to be inconvenienced after so much kindness.”

  “Please,” said Linda. “There’s no hurry for two or three days...”

  Werner bowed.

  It was naturally something he wished to tell his wife right away. It was an
undeniable blow. There were plans to be made. Ilse would be very gay and optimistic about it, and she would conjure instantly a whole flock of brilliant new ideas out of her brain, to inspire him with courage. She had this altogether amazing faculty of turning disaster into a triumph. He was tender, neurotic, pessimistic death-absorbed, with a profound distrust of experience – the direct opposite, in his attitude toward life, of his wife, Ilse. So that now, as he climbed the stairs, he longed for her reassurance and strength.

  The door of their bedroom was locked.

  His fingers were suddenly too slippery to turn the handle. He stood there at attention, his shoulders bowed, keeping himself upright by leaning his forehead ever so lightly against the door.

  He fancied he could hear a torment whispering within. His face took on lines of agonizing strain...

  Exactly so had he once stood outside the drawing room of their flat in the Lindenstrasse, trying to open a door that was locked.

  He had gone down into the lobby and had rung their flat on the telephone, and then, leaving the receiver off, had run back upstairs and listened to it ringing, ringing, ringing, because she dared not answer it. It gave him a sour feeling of triumph to think how it must have agitated them, that insistent, wild ringing. He never found out which of their friends shared his drawing room and his wife on that occasion. They had been married about two years. So far as he knew it was the only time she had been unfaithful to him. And he left her then for several months, during which time he produced a scholarly and delicately inspired little volume on Fleme. After its small but gratifying success, they somehow came together again.

  If it had not been so, he would probably never have got out of Dachau alive. He owed that to his wife, just as he owed it to her that they were able to leave Austria and the Third Reich not entirely destitute. There was a certain Nazi official for whom she was able to render some small services not un-divorced from her personal charms. This it was inevitable that Werner should discover on his release. That he owed his freedom to his wife on such terms somehow did more to break his spirit than all the humiliations and pains inflicted on him by the Nazis in the camp.

  “But all that was only for you, my darling,” she swore. “And now we shall put all that behind us and start a new life abroad.”

  H knew that he was no longer able to satisfy her, but this new affront to his manhood sickened him afresh, as though it had never occurred before. He did not bother to wonder who it was with her behind that shamefully locked door; he only felt a childish crumbling anger that she should fail him at the very moment when he most required her sustenance.

  “Ilse!” he called softly twice, and waited. “Ilse!” he cried, and rapped sharp knuckles on the door. “Ilse, are you awake?” He shook the door. Aware of the absurdity of standing there shouting: “Let me in, Ilse! Let me in!” yet with a dour obstinacy he continued, till he imagined their stifled laughter...voluptuous hysteria... His hands fell to his sides. He walked away down the passage with the stiff gait of a sailor or a blind man...

  That evening, playing double dummy with Miss Sharpe, his eyes never raised from the cards, he became aware that his wife’s lover was Ivor Campion.

  In a sudden flash of intuition – or self-torturing invention – he thought, she’d like to marry him. He’s young and doubtless pleasing to a woman like Ilse. And if she married him she’d be English and safe. Nothing to worry about any more. She’d have a home.

  It was then that his own desire for “home” overpowered him. He felt a voluptuous weariness enwrap him, into which he aspired to sink forever.

  It distracted his mind from the humiliation outside the bedroom to think out the necessary details of his plan: A visit to the doctor to get his prescription for sleeping pills renewed. His private affairs to be put in order. A time chosen when everyone would be out or safely occupied and not running loose about the house, Ilse would be the greatest danger of course, but he guessed wryly that if she knew he was to be out she would seize the opportunity to occupy herself with her lover.

  So two days after his private catastrophe, he impudently “borrowed” Linda’s car.

  He drove deeper into the country, away from the main roads, but not a great distance from Hawkswood for he would have to return on foot. He stopped in the shade of some elm trees, locked the car carefully, and walked away. He had no difficulty in entering the house unseen and climbing the long, turning staircase up to the attics in the roof, which no one visited now. He peeped into them one after another, mildewy, mouse-haunted chambers littered with trunks and gilt-framed oleo-graphs with their winsome faces to the wall, and broken-down iron bedsteads. There was one attic, with a ceiling that sloped right down on one side to a funny little Victorian grate that seemed not unfriendly. With the unconsciously prim gesture of a landlady he touched the thin mattress, pressed clown the springs: it would do.

  The bed creaked under his weight as he sat on the edge of it, the ends of his tie dangling, his collar unfastened, swallowing pills. It was not easy to swallow them when his throat was so dry. When he had swallowed nine, he stopped. He took off his coat and folded it up to lay his head on. Then he unlaced his shoes and stretched himself out with a sigh. He wondered what the servant girl was like who had last used this bed. He tried conscientiously with his failing brain to imagine the round blank face and shallow light blue eyes…the black stockings...pink twill corsets stiff with bones...

  *

  Ilse could not but wonder uneasily why Werner had said nothing to her about the bedroom door locked in mid-afternoon. She had evolved a passable tale, but was too canny to offer it unmasked.

  He did the following day, put into her care all their essential documents. “If anything should happen to me...” he had said; and she had replied: “Bübchen, don’t be so absurd! What should happen to you?”

  The formal handing over of the documents, the fragment of dialogue (with variations of course) had been performed before. Because she was sure they would be performed again, many times, she paid no attention. She had learned not to take Werner too seriously.

  Still, when dinnertime came and he did not appear at table she did feel a slight agitation. He never went off without telling her. There was nowhere for him to go. She muttered that she hoped nothing had befallen him, and did exchange one panic-stricken glance with Ivor.

  By eleven o’clock that night she had phoned the police. Because Werner had closed the garage doors behind him, they did not discover that the car was missing until the next morning.

  After that, Ilse had no doubt.

  She no longer imagined that he had been knocked down or met with some other kind of accident. It was only too plain to her that at last he had done as he so often threatened and killed himself – to punish her for being “naughty,” because of course he had known all along the truth of that afternoon and had not wished to listen to her lies. In the afternoon the police found the abandoned car and began a systematic search of the countryside. At houses around about, people were asked if he had been seen.

  Ilse looked ghastly.

  It was Linda who found him. On some ill-defined impulse of imagination she went from room to room; and yet perhaps if she had really thought to find him, she would not have dared to look. He was in almost the last room there remained to enter. He had not even troubled to lock the door. He lay on his side, on the dirty striped ticking, his knee slightly drawn up, his gray face on his bundled coat.

  Linda dropped on her knees in the doorway, afraid to go nearer, and rattled off a hasty prayer for his soul. She was desperately shocked. The mere fact that he could kill himself horrified her; she did not even pause to wonder why he had done it.

  But after that one flurried prayer she banged to the door and hastened downstairs to tell – whom should she tell? She almost fell into Ivor’s arms and flooded into sudden tears as she said: “He’s dead, Ivor! Oh, he’s dead!”

  The first thing Ilse said when they told her was, self-
betrayingly, ‘Did he leave a message?’ A letter to say why he had done it? It was a great relief to learn that he had not. She had not dared even to tell Ivor her fears. Now she began to cry with reaction, very pathetically. It brought a lump to Linda’s throat.

  It unbalanced Priscilla, too, in her adolescent romanticism. It had the effect on her of making her fanatically religious. She evolved for herself and adhered to a complicated arrangement of prayers and secret, absurd asceticisms. She was at that age. She determined to become a saint and save Werner’s soul by the sanctity of her own life. For the first time in her young life she had expended on another person all the emotional force of her thwarted, badgered little heart. His death left her more desolate than the death of her father. There was a little shrine in her bedroom before which she lit candles every day, but “The candles in the shrine of her heart never went out.” This beautiful sentiment never failed to bring tears to her eyes.

  She wished Ilse liked her better. She would have loved to talk to her about Werner. But Ilse had no time for little girls. It was partly in the attempt to show her that she was not so childish that Priscilla took her Ivor’s letter to Linda, when she found it in the corridor. (That too was a painful disillusionment. She had adored her Aunt Linda, seeing her as a Mrs. Do-as-you-would-be-done-by, all grace and sweetness, with love to spare even for an orphan. And then the letter... Priscilla had picked up the fluttering fold of paper and opened it to see what it was. The very first words told her everything... Her wrists trembled. Her face burned as if with fever. She was revolted and ashamed. She did not know how she was ever to face her aunt again. She did not know what to do with this hatefully betraying letter. She longed for the wisdom of Werner, and then she thought of Werner’s relict, that woman of the world, Ilse; she would understand and she would know what to do.) But even then Ilse did not take her into her confidence. She merely advised her rather sternly that she had done quite right, and to think no more about it.

  Behind Ilse’s severely composed face lurked triumph and malicious delight. This was just what she needed to force Ivor’s hand a little or, on the other hand, to persuade Linda into a more amenable frame of mind. She would not part with it for a thousand pounds. It could not be used just yet of course; it would be indecorous so soon after her husband’s death to be thinking of such things. But in a few weeks...