The Closed Harbour

by James Hanley

  "I can't find my prayer-book," Madame Marius said, "where is it?"

  "There. You're looking at it," and she pointed to the book on the window shelf.

  "I heard you get up. What does he want of you?"

  "Nothing," Madeleine said, nothing now."

  "In that case—There's the bell," Madame Marius said.

  She fussed about in the sitting-room, looking for her hat, her black gloves—

  "My stick, my stick," and Madeleine said, "here" and pushed it into her hand.

  "We'd better go," her mother said, "I hate to arrive at the church after the first gospel."

  "There's a time to speak, and there's a time to be silent," Madame Marius said as they went out into the street.

  "Ah!" she exclaimed, pausing a moment to take in a great breath, "after that house—how splendid the morning is. Come along, Madeleine, have my old feet to run you to shame," and she went forward with spirit, with determination, she would not be late, who was never late.

  "It must be a holy day," thought Madeleine, glancing over the crowded church, and then she was separated from her mother, she had to take a separate bench. She knelt, but not for long. Feeling sick she sat back in her seat again. She remained seated throughout the first Gospel and the last, and to her mother's horror did not rise and go to the rails as was usual, but remained tight in her seat. She stared straight ahead, at the altar, at the chalice, through the chalice and through the altar, she was back in the room with Marius.

  She saw his bared right arm, his man outside the window, his sailing ship, circling round in its feverish sea.

  "She does not understand."

  The man at her side blessed himself, left his seat, genuflected and went away. Someone had taken his place. Madeleine's fingers, holding the dangling beads, were now encircled by other fingers, and they gripped her own, hard, she winced, looked aside, her mother was there, kneeling, saying quickly, "you did not go to the rails."

  Madeleine took no notice, and again Madame Marius said, "you were not at the rails."

  "Leave go my fingers, mother. I was not at the communion, I felt sick."

  "We all of us feel sick sometimes," her mother said, but the words carried no sympathy.

  They knelt for the blessing.

  In silence they walked back to the house.

  "Make the coffee," her mother said, left Madeleine in the kitchen and went straight upstairs to her son's room, but was down again almost before Madeleine realized she had gone.

  "He's gone, off on his sotting expeditions. Have you made the coffee."

  "Yes mother," Madeleine said.

  "A man who can leave a house the moment your back is turned is not very ill. I wish you had never spoken to him. How weak you are. It would have come time enough, he couldn't hide it forever, it would have come out like vomit, the whole miserable story of it, the incredible lies, and that was how I would have had it. But no, he was ill, you couldn't, and then he crawled to you and you forgave him. That's how it was. God in heaven! The things that are asking to be forgiven, we're living in a madhouse. Coward. I suppose he brought up the war as an excuse, they all do. You think perhaps I'm a hard natured woman, but you are wrong. I admired your courage, my child, and the silence with which you took your blow, and now that blow and his filth are on the same level. Drink up your coffee. I wasn't angry because you had not taken the Sacrament, but only because I had found you in his room.

  "Sometimes I have watched a peasant beat unmercifully at his horse, or at his oxen, and it had been so unbearable I have wanted to scream. There is no great distance between the peasant and us, Madeleine."

  "Mother!"

  Madame Marius held her cup in mid-air. "Well?"

  "Do you really love me, mother?"

  "I have always loved you, sometimes I've thought you foolish, silly and sentimental, nevertheless my daughter is always my daughter—"

  "Will you listen?"

  "There is somebody knocking, go and see who it is," Madame Marius said.

  Madeleine did not move.

  "Eugene is ill, I know, something has happened—I mean—"

  "The door, that knocking is getting on my nerves."

  The old woman dipped her bread in the coffee, soaked it well, then lifted the sodden mass with a spoon and sucked it. She heard the door close.

  "The post."

  "Give me the letter. Thank you. I would like some more coffee, Madeleine."

  "Yes mother."

  "I followed him here to get the truth out of him, in justice to you, Madeleine. Life is not some rag to be torn up, we are not toads to be trodden on. It was his duty to speak out, to be honest. Are we to be left to drag it from him that he murdered your son, as much my flesh as your own. If it had been my son I would have followed him to the edge of hell and made him speak. Look where we are to-day, it is justice that we should remember what we have been, to where we belong."

  She was slowly tearing open the envelope.

  "My spectacles," she said.

  "Clear away now," she said.

  She had read only a few lines of the letter when she looked up, but Madeleine had gone out.

  "We're on the rocks," she thought. "He will not come now. No, he won't come now."

  "Are you there, Madeleine?"

  But Madeleine was already on the stairs, Madame Marius's hand fell to her lap, the letter dangling from her fingers. The footsteps she heard seemed to her only the beginning of another journey.

  "Madeleine, Madeleine," she called, she shifted her great bulk and moved to the door, "Madeleine, come down," she cried.

  She had the open letter in her hand when her daughter came in. She embraced her.

  She said quietly, "sit down, Madeleine, there, sit there, by me. No no, don't speak, just remain quiet, I must read this letter, just a moment ago a curious dread took hold of me, I heard you climbing the stairs, and I thought, My God! She's walking away from me, out of my life. Wait, let me finish this letter. There's something I must say directly."

  She patted her daughter and smiled at her. Then she resumed her reading.

  "I would never leave you, mother, you know I promised you that. I told you I would always stay with you, you know that—"

  "And I believe you, Madeleine, I believe you," the old woman said, not looking up but intent upon the letter she was reading.

  "Eugene is ill, I know he's ill..."

  "We are all of us ill, something has laid hold of us. Will you please allow me to finish reading this letter. It is most important that I should do so. It is from Father Nollet. He will not be calling to-day as was his promise."

  Some parts of the letter she read aloud, "and others have taken account of it," and from time to time she looked across at her daughter, and her quick intense glance seemed to say, "good, you are still there, you are with me, you won't desert me..."

  "What does he say, mother?"

  "In a moment or two you may read the letter. It is a terrible letter, nevertheless you shall read it if you wish," and her head lowered still further so that she was now bent forward, her spectacles trembling over her nose, her fingers shaking as she read on.

  "Perhaps he is right, perhaps I ought to go after him," she said.

  "Who, mother?"

  "My son. But no, I'm not sure even yet—this man of God—he is good, I have no doubt, but there is right and wrong. Goodness alone is not the power to decide such a question. It is too big. I will read you the letter."

  In a strong, clear voice she began:

  Dear Madame Marius,

  I am writing you this letter, since, though I had meant to call and see you again, I now find, and regret that I cannot do so. I am called away for some ten days by my Bishop, and I feel that the situation in which you find yourself, and it is at once the situation of your children, should be resolved, not perfectly, and not finally, since this could never be so. We have all of us our limitations, we accept them, and under them we do the best we can. I will try to do so. First th
ings first.

  I regret to say that I cannot now advise you to take the step you contemplate, and that is, after all, your reason for seeking my advice. I have given the matter much consideration, so that the decision I have come to has not been easy and it could never be ignored. I feel that were you to take this step you would leave behind you something far more corroding than the filth you effect to despise, and also that you would vest in yourself complete authority over a life to which you are not entitled. It is not yours, and you cannot own it. I say this after having had a long conversation with your daughter, and she has told me much. She has taken, with a splendid resignation, a blow far greater than your own. I have pointed out to her the possibility of her re-marrying again, even though she has been some years a widow, for at forty-five one is not old.

  But she has said plainly enough that there can never be another Madeau. That may be so. I respect her sentiments. Such creatures carry in their hearts a certain gayness, a curious kind of joy, it is difficult for me to find the right word to describe it, but always it lies there as the prey of a terrible innocence of soul. A heart so blind with trust is struck but the once. She will never take another blow. If she has accompanied you here, it is simply because there was nothing else that she could do. You followed your son, and she followed you. One can understand that, even appreciate it, he, after all, is your son, and will remain so to the end. Nevertheless I feel it was very foolish of you to have torn up your roots and left your home, for at seventy they remain the only roots you will ever have. You felt that you had been disgraced, and you placed a high price upon your respectability. You treasured the memory of your husband, who I'm sure was a good and honourable man. But your decision is an act of cowardice. My advice to you is to return from whence you came, and resume your life together where you really belong. I have taken the liberty of writing to your Father Gerard, informing him of my advice to you.

  Your daughter has made up her mind and will not alter it. She will remain by your side and will not leave you. In your declining years you may accept that loyalty and the grace that goes with it. But Madame Madeau must not be looked upon as some kind of faithful cow, to go on yielding to the dictates of your selfishness and pride. And here we get to the root of the matter, for it is only of yourself that you are thinking. In so doing, it would seem that you are making an exception of your case. Life is not as exclusive as all that. There is always somebody on the rack. It's an echo of the selfishness you bear. There are always others. Often it is good to remember this.

  You have followed your son here for no other purpose than to strip and wreck him, who is already wrecked, and there are some who have taken account of it. Madame Madeau has also told me that since his return home you have not addressed to him a single word, and she was under your orders not to do so either. I refrain from comment.

  I now come to the question of your son. Your daughter has shown me a letter from a man named Royat, who, with your son, survived, when their ship, in ballast to North Africa, ran into a minefield. In that letter he accuses your son of murdering his nephew in a fit of temper. Some terrible argument had arisen between your son and his first officer as to the course they were taking and it seems that your grandson took the side of the Mate against your son. It is not my purpose to say, even to venture to say, who was right or who was wrong. The fact remains that, according to Royat your son felled his nephew at a blow, and accused him of siding with the First Officer, a man many years older than your son, who, I gather hated serving under a Captain so many years his junior. As I say one cannot pronounce on this, but your son had once had a suspension of his ticket by the authorities. It may be that he realized that if he were wrong in his navigational calculations, it was the end for him.

  But all this with reserve. I notice that the writer of this letter gives no address upon it, and moreover, writes from behind the formidable barrier of some three thousand miles of ocean. It is certain that he has talked, perhaps to old shipmates, who have carried this rumour across the seas. It has had its results. Your own silence can cause your son little pain, compared with the silence of others—I refer to the shipowners who ignore him, the agents of the sea who say No. The closed door is the measure of their indifference. They are not concerned with murder, but only with their own boats. The survival of tonnage is important to them, as it is to their brokers. Your son is paying for errors, rightly or wrongly.

  Madame Madeau has told me of certain things, and I accept them. Royat and your son were picked up by a fishing boat and landed some fifty miles down the coast, where in the great confusion of France's bitterest hours, they finally lost sight of each other. They had been under way only three days. He did not report. He could not report. In that respect I accept what he says. When he arrived everybody was departing. Authority had dissolved, France was on her knees, France was bent in two. It was a matter of skin for skin. His own master, who owned this single ship had disappeared together with his own buildings. There, I think, authority ended. In those poignant moments when he arrived on the threshold, and alone, to deliver without word or sign the full weight of a blow to your daughter, in those moments it is wise to remember that whole cities, and whole generations of men were vanishing. We need go no further than that.

  At this moment, whilst I am writing to you a good man is endeavouring to get in touch with your son, to help him in what little way he can, and not least to relieve him from the burden of a terrible illusion. Your son thinks that he starts again where he left off, but this is not so. Life is split clean in two.

  He cannot be a Captain again, and he is too old ever to start afresh. When one has struggled and kicked, from bottom upwards one does not wish to fall again, and he may well have a horror of so doing, even supposing he were given the chance. It is sad to think that your son is frightened of a good man. My advice to you would be to speak to your son and relieve his mind of the horror that lives with it.

  I recall something that you said to me at our meeting. You said that if it were possible you would go and see this man Follet yourself, and ask him if he had a ship that would take your son off the face of the earth. I would advise you of this. Your son will not sail again, and may never get beyond the frontiers of this city.

  He is a miserable, unhappy man, and you have your duty to do.

  And having done that, I would again say to you, go away from this place and take your daughter with you, and endeavour to take up the broken threads of your life. One must live with one's errors. Forget your terrible pride, which in the end will destroy you. Do not worry about your son. No one is ever quite alone. The peace of God be with you, and with your own. Yours sincerely, Dominic Nollet.

  Madame Marius folded up the letter and replaced it in its envelope.

  "We will pack," she said. "At once."

  IX

  MANOS had gone. It was Philippe's firm opinion that the final blast from his syren carried back to the Heros building something more than a formal farewell. He felt it also had a rude message wrapped up in it. So much did Manos think of all land, all landsmen, all shore establishments, all shipowners, their brokers, agents, runners and petty clerks.

  Secretly, Philippe was happy. Indeed he hoped that Manos and his ship would get bogged down somewhere in the Black Sea and remain there for a long time. He had never liked Manos, he could manage the other Captains, but Manos, no. There was something about Manos—that terrible maleness, that fierce independent spirit, that courage, that indifference to the conventions. Philippe always saw Manos moving about the world like a shout.

  "Perhaps," he once reflected, "I'm jealous of a person like that."

  Sometimes he wished he could be like Manos, but that meant breaking out. Manos in port meant chaos at the Heros, in little ways, since Philippe's mind could only harbour the minor matters. Manos meant banging doors, doors left wide open, mud on the carpets, cigar smoke everywhere, torn papers, cigar butts and match sticks all over the offices through which he had to pass, and it also mea
nt a short, stocky little man striding past the reedy man named Philippe as though he weren't there, as though he did not exist. Only once had Manos ever addressed M. Philippe, whom he knew as Follet's right hand man.

  "Ah! You stink of flowers," Manos cried, and that was the end of that.

  The building had settled down to dead rhythm, doors would not burst open, footsteps thunder in and out of rooms. It was nice to be quiet this morning, you could even hear the Heros clock ticking, and once or twice Philippe had taken out his little gold watch, just to see if Heros time was correct. He loved watching for slips, he loved to adjust. Casualness in a person, was an affront to Philippe.

  It was natural that he should have a secret warm corner for the dwarf-man who sat so diligently at his desk, and whom he could now see through the window, from the sheer comfort of his own seat. He liked watching Labiche bent over his desk, adding and subtracting, collating, going forward and doubling back, checking, bent forward again and again, the whole of Labiche absorbed in his task, so close to his time sheets, so that the minute and the sou should not by accident roll off one of the precious pages.

  Liking diligence, punctuality, faithfulness, scrupulous attention, all the conventional virtues, Philippe found room in his odd-shaped heart for Aristide Labiche.

  Seated at his desk, elbows anchored and chin cradled in long, bony fingers, Philippe told himself that, Follet not coming in until after lunch, the usual Monday procedure, he might tap on Labiche's window, and ask him to come along and have a coffee with him at Grandmother Dernier's place.

  He could see the whole thing at once, the scene lighted up immediately, as for a theatrical producer. They would sit down to wait for their coffee and for the first few minutes conversation would be quite formal, discussion about the weather, Follet's week-end on the farm with his grinding old father, Manos's departure and the excitement and relief of it, that absolutely merciless Toulon man who wanted the earth in return for a small service, the state of shipping, the Governmental position, the possibility of another German kick from the rear.