Noble in Reason

by Phyllis Bentley

  For me it was a strange and harrowing occasion.

  I paced the floor of my room for much of the preceding night, and accordingly found myself looking even paler and drearier than usual next morning. I disliked the publicity of acting as an usher at the church in a morning coat and buttonhole flower—Graham’s best man was in the RFC (now just becoming the RAF) like himself, and the few other young men present all wore uniform. Canon Graham, who was assisting in the marriage ceremony, wore a face like a thunder-cloud. My mother was late in reaching the church, the purple of her dress was a little over-bright and the hooks of the belt were inaccurately fastened. Luckily Beatrice Darrell, who was standing in the porch having a word with me when my mother arrived, perceived the mistake and rectified it before her entry. Edie had not yet come and I was worried by this lateness, for there had been trouble between her daughters about the position and duties of bridesmaid. The wedding being “quiet,” Netta had thought to have merely one small attendant, but this had caused such an outcry from the younger twin that eventually both Muriel and Joyce had to be invited. Then arguments arose as to which child should hold during the service the prayer-book which Netta was carrying as a wartime substitute for a bouquet. All John’s daughters had a stubborn grasp of their own rights, and I was apprehensive of some “scene” between those two firm-willed young twins. When I heard children’s voices in the porch, therefore, I hurried towards them.

  To my surprise Edie and her offspring seemed in a happy mood. Edie on her knees in a light-coloured flowery frock was shaking out the twins’ skirts so vigorously that they staggered under the impact, but their round florid faces remained smiling and cheerful. The reason for this was at once explained by the youngest girl, Anne, who exclaimed in a loud childish tone which carried through the whole church:

  “Uncle Chris, Daddy’s a prisoner!”

  “Good heavens! Is it true? Do my father and mother know?”

  “Yes, it’s true. The telegram came this morning. He’s unwounded too. Isn’t it nice? I’m afraid I didn’t think to telephone Mr. and Mrs. Jarmayne,” said Edie apologetically. “I was so busy with the twins, you know.”

  I hurried into the Church and told my mother the good news. She took it calmly, smiling and nodding as if to say: “I told you so.” I hurried back to the porch in time to meet Netta and my father as they arrived, and told them too. Netta broke into happy laughter and exclaimed:

  “What lovely news for my wedding day!”

  My father, however, was quite knocked over by the news; he turned pale and trembled, and had to sit on the porch bench for a moment to recover his composure before leading his daughter up the aisle. By this time the news had spread, from my mother and Edie, all over the church. Everyone—for everyone had sons, brothers, husbands, serving at the front— was very much moved; the men smiled and nodded, tears stood in the women’s eyes. Even the Canon became less glum, and Netta of course looked radiantly happy.

  At the reception after the wedding we drank the health of John as well as of the happy pair. The only jarring note was struck, oddly enough considering her usual tact, by Beatrice Darrell, who said to Edie as they stood with other guests about the bride:

  “But when will John come home, then?”

  Edie’s face twitched wryly as she replied: “I suppose not till after the war.”

  A sudden message recalled my father to Hilbert Mills just before the departure of the bride and bridegroom. He was obliged to go; the exigencies of the war could not be disregarded. He kissed Netta tenderly and left. This incident called forth a remark from Canon Graham which he did not, I am sure, intend to make:

  “Is it very profitable, then, when your mill is so fully employed?”

  “I suppose it is,” said I.

  I spoke in this casual manner because I had genuinely given little thought to the matter. But now I considered it I perceived that the Ashroyd finances had been much more comfortable of late; the preparations for Netta’s wedding had certainly been made on quite a lavish scale.

  “Yes, it is,” I added in surprise.

  No tone could better have convinced Canon Graham of the truth of our improved fortunes than my disinterested carelessness; the gloom cleared from his face and he became very kindly indeed towards his new daughter.

  Graham and I had said very little to each other during the engagement, and I at least had kept such talk as we had, firmly on the surface and in the present. I felt that only so could I avoid some shameful exposure of the fear and hatred I still felt towards him. Now when it came to saying goodbye and allowing him to carry Netta off to wifehood I made a last great effort, took his hand in the friendliest way I could manage and wished him happiness in the warmest tone I could find. But this expressed goodwill was not sincere. I had already noted a certain dominance in his tone towards Netta, a certain sharpness of comment when her simplicity became more than usually apparent, which pained me keenly on her behalf and gave me uncomfortable auguries for their future together. However, as I say, I drove down this feeling and smiled and took his hand. For his part he gave me a long strange look the nature of which I could not diagnose; was it appeal, reproach? I did not know.

  At last the wedding reception was over; the bride and bridegroom drove away, the guests began to disperse. Playing host in my father’s absence, I stood on our large square doorstep shaking hands, calling farewells and in general behaving in the “cheery” manner necessary to the occasion—cheery is a word I have always detested. When even my uncle Alfred (when did Aunt Minna die? I have forgotten) and Edie and her flock had gone, I turned to find Beatrice Darrell at my side.

  “I’ll come in with you, Chris,” she said. “Your mother may need me.”

  She had guessed right. My poor mother, anguished no doubt by her parting with Netta, lay in the same kind of wretched stupor as had overtaken her at John’s wedding. Between us Beatrice and I carried her upstairs. Beatrice put her to bed.

  Then at last I was alone and able to indulge in the pain of my lacerated feelings and to savour the loneliness which in the absence of my gay little sister would now be mine.

  4

  I enquire of myself now what Graham’s feelings were towards me at the time of his marriage, and whether the fact that Netta was my sister stood for anything in his love for her.

  I think that probably, or at any rate possibly, it did. Our schooldays’ relationship had perhaps made a great mark on his life, as it did on mine. (In the light of Atkinson’s revelations I must even wonder whether my excelling him in class did not perhaps dim his zest for learning.) In those early days I believe the dividing line between the hate he felt and the love he might have felt for me was a very narrow one. We could have been deep friends. By a hairsbreadth—some foolish utterance of my own, I expect, some silliness the proud Graham could not stomach—we were enemies, and his feeling for me expressed itself in sadistic torment. This kind of masterful teasing has something sexual in its nature which for Graham readily found satisfaction later in desire for my sister; there was even a certain vague physical likeness between Netta and myself to assist this transference of emotion. If Graham and I had had it all out together then, discussed our old antagonisms, probed our hates and jealousies and fears, we three might have made a happy life together. But I rejected this solution, and perhaps after all the habit of reserve which Graham owed to the gentility of his heredity and upbringing would always have prevented him from such embarrassing frankness.

  In loving Netta, did Graham take revenge on or make atonement to his former enemy? Since I did not grant him the opportunity of telling me before his marriage, I shall never know. But I give him the benefit of the doubt.

  I am ashamed to say that after her marriage I wrote only once—an insincere and stilted letter of condolence—to Netta in nearly twenty years.

  5

  The fatal (for me) day of Netta’s wedding was not over when our guests had left nor even when my father came in and after a hasty meal withdrew, ext
remely tired, to bed. I went up to my own room and sat trying to read, trying to keep my thoughts from Graham and Netta—enduring, after the livelier pain of the day, a kind of quiet sick hopeless misery—when a rattle of stone struck against my window. Astonished, I put out the light—a wartime precaution—and drew the curtain. Below in the moonlight stood Beatrice Darrell. She was dressed in some kind of long loose light-coloured robe whose folds billowed in the night breeze; lace at the wide sleeve fell back from her rounded arm as she raised it to catch my attention. In the silver light her handsome face looked drawn, indeed her whole appearance had a strange ethereal, tragic quality. Her whisper reached me clearly through the open window.

  “Come and help me, Chris. Father is ill.”

  I ran downstairs and went out of the back door, the heavy chain rattling in my fingers as I drew it.

  “I hoped you’d be awake. No need to wake the others. You don’t mind, Chris?”

  I did not even trouble to answer this, but followed her hastily into the Darrell house, through the kitchen and into the surgery. Here Dr. Darrell lay sprawled in the armchair, his leonine head lolling, his face crimson, breathing stertorously. His left cheek puffed out oddly with each expiration. It seemed to me that he was suffering from some kind of apoplectic seizure. I looked at Beatrice.

  “We were sitting talking. It happened suddenly. He’s dying, Chris,” she said in a low clear tone.

  “We must get a doctor,” said I.

  “Yes. But there’s a military convoy due tonight. Most of the doctors will be at the hospital,” said Beatrice.

  “I’ll telephone there. Meanwhile—is there anything we can do for him?”

  Beatrice shook her head. “I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done.”

  She picked up a woollen rug which lay on the surgery couch, shook it out and folded it round her father. Even in this sad moment I could not help noticing the grace, the elegance, of her movements.

  A list of medical telephone numbers hung by the instrument in the hall. I tried several, but Beatrice had spoken truly: the few doctors the war had left in Hudley were at the station or at the hospital, dealing with the casualties in the convoy of wounded. I telephoned the hospital but the number was engaged and the operator warned me that it was useless to try for an answer there. I returned to Beatrice and explained that I would walk to the hospital and fetch a doctor personally.

  “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.”