“No.”
“May I ask, then, why you found it necessary to spend the night there?”
“I had someone I wanted to see.”
Counsel shrugged. “This is not a court of morals, Mr Bagshawe. You had no business to transact, but there was someone you wanted to see.” He paused for two or three seconds to glance expressively at the jury. “When did your business in Exeter finish? What was the hour of your last interview?”
The judge interposed again. “What exactly are you trying to establish, Mr Ashford?”
“I thought that perhaps the jury might attach some importance to the fact that it would have been perfectly possible for the witness to have returned home on the same night, in which case his wife would in all probability be still alive.”
“In view of the line you yourself have taken, I think any such consideration would be quite irrelevant.”
The judge spoke sharply, but Mr Ashford had produced the effect he wanted. Anyone in court who did not know Georgie looked at him askance, as a man whose absence from home with another woman had left his wife unprotected against her murderer.
Georgie was allowed to go after he had given his evidence. He did not wait to hear the rest of the trial, but slunk home, feeling that every eye was fixed on him in reprobation. Once safely back, he was so miserably preoccupied that Ruth had to send him out of the shop, and explain to customers that he was feeling ill.
He remained in the living room, pacing about, biting his nails, and going out every few minutes for the latest copy of the evening paper.
“Georgie! What will people think? What’s the good of my telling them you’re not well, if you keep popping in and out like a Jack-in-the-box?”
For a few seconds it seemed that he had not heard. Then he looked at her oddly.
“What will people think. That’s what Grace used to say.”
She flinched as if he had slapped her, and hurried back to the shop, hardly able to see for tears.
When at last the verdict was announced, Georgie came in, grey-faced, his feet slithering as if he had not strength to lift them. Ruth caught sight of him in the light from the shop, but could not follow at once, as she was in the middle of serving a chatty customer. As soon as she could, she excused herself, and went into the living room.
There was no light on, but she could just make out the shape of him hunched in a chair.
“Georgie! You’re all in the dark.”
He was murmuring to himself. She switched on the light. His elbows were on his knees. His eyes could not focus. He looked like a man who has been hit on the head.
Shocked, frightened, she ran and put her arms around him.
“Darling, darling. What is it?”
He took no notice, but went on murmuring. The words were hardly distinguishable. Putting her ear near his mouth. She could just catch some of them. He knew she was there. He was talking to her.
“—where I ought to be. You said so. It’s true. I ought to have been in that dock. I ought to be hanged, not her.”
She longed to cry out in contradiction, but her rigid sense of justice clamped her tongue. She could only hug him tight. Suddenly he relaxed, heaved one of his deep sighs, and sagged forward in her arms. His consciousness would bear the pain no longer.
“I can’t quite make it out. I know it’s all been pretty difficult for him: but the degree of shock he’s suffering seems out of all proportion.”
Looking sideways at the young doctor, Ruth decided to trust him with a part of the truth.
“I think, doctor, he’s bringing most of it on himself.”
“How do you mean?”
“He’s so terribly conscientious. His wife treated him very badly, and—well—he hated her, and sometimes he wished she was dead.”
The young doctor nodded. His eyes were fixed on her. They were so bright and intent that for a moment she was distracted from her argument.
“Well, you see, doctor, because he sometimes felt like doing what that woman did, he feels that he deserves to be where she is. And, you see, he’s not that sort of person at all—to want to do harm to anyone, I mean——” she broke off, confused. “That’s got nothing to do with it. I don’t know why I said that, but——”
“On the contrary.” The doctor was looking at her with a new interest. “It may have everything to do with it. I only wish half my patients had your good sense, Mrs Bagshawe, if you’d allow me to say so.”
“But——”
“You see, that’s the whole point. He isn’t that sort of person. Now, if you get a quiet and gentle person so worked upon that he wants to do something that isn’t in his nature, it’ll have a far greater effect on him than it would on ordinary folk. It’s like swinging a pendulum too far in one direction. If you do that, it’ll have an exaggerated swing back. He couldn’t bear hating his wife and wishing her dead, and so, when someone else murders her for him, and is sentenced to die, it half kills him.”
Ruth wrinkled her brow.
“What are we to do?”
“Buck him up. I’ll do what I can, with tonics and things. You do what you can. Cheer up, Mrs Bagshawe. He’ll get well all right. But it may take some time. You’ll have to be patient with him.”
It took a long time; but, luckily, within a few days something happened which set the forces of recovery to work. Knowing how Georgie felt, Ruth was waiting with dread she could hardly face for the day of the woman’s execution. She realized that the judge could take no notice of the recommendation to mercy, beyond saying, as he did, that it would be considered in the proper place; but to her, as to Georgie, the fact of the death sentence was horribly final. Once the black cap had been put on, and the words of doom spoken, it seemed that nothing could undo such awesome rites.
Local sympathy was violent for the murderess. People said openly that Grace was no loss, and that her removal was a public benefit. A large petition was started, but while signatures were still being collected the news came that the prisoner was reprieved. Her sufferings had upset the balance of what little reason she possessed, and she was to be detained for so long as His Majesty should please.
At this news Georgie revived. It was as if the declaration that the woman was no longer responsible for what she did seemed somehow to lessen his own responsibility. Slowly, but visibly, he began to mend. There was no logic in his feeling. The authorities did not declare that the woman had been insane when she killed Grace, only that she was insane now. Yet everyone felt that this absolved her of guilt, and Georgie, who wanted to get better and be happy, took part of the absolution to himself.
Part; but not all. For the rest of his days he never ceased to be grateful for his escape. He had relapses, but they grew fewer and less severe. He began to laugh once more, and take an interest in those about him.
It was in those first difficult weeks of his recovery that Ruth had her stiffest struggle. As soon as he was fit to give his mind to business, Georgie became obsessed with the idea that he must set aside all sums that came from Grace’s activities into a special fund—black money, as it were—apart from the shop. After he had spent a couple of miserable days in trying to separate the two sources, Ruth stepped in. Going to bed the night before, overwrought, her nerves stretched to a tension which could not find relief in speech, but made her dumb, she fell into a short exhausted sleep, and woke a couple of hours later with all her perceptions abnormally, terrifyingly clear. Georgie’s breathing roared in her ears like the noise of a train. Then her hearing seemed to pass through it, and though it still sounded close, like heavy waves on a beach, she was able to hear all manner of small sounds, the soft breathing of babies in other houses, the purring and loud chewing of a cat that had found a fishhead in a gutter, the heartbeat of a policeman who stood at the corner watching it eat. Then Georgie’s misery rushed at her, swamping her sense, until, in a clear moonlit space purged of all sound, she saw.
Ruth was in no way visionary; her nature was practical; but now, in her ex
tremity, something like vision came to her. It was as if, now and then, practical natures by the law of biological compensation may be granted a degree of inner understanding which they need if they are to go on being practical. The very core of Ruth’s life was threatened; her husband’s fortune and hers were at stake; and she was granted a lucid moment of insight during which, as if from some point of vantage high above it, she could look down on Georgie, see what he had been, and what, unless she acted quickly, and with skill, he might become.
Georgie, she saw, asked little of life. As long as his modest wishes were granted, he would neither exert himself nor show initiative outside the sober, honest, kindly routine of his work. He had been willing to put up with a severe degree of frustration, blaming himself and feeling that he did not deserve much better. Only when the frustration reached an unbearable pitch was he roused to act, and then on hopelessly mistaken lines. Unable to deal with Grace by means of the law, fearing it anyhow, he had flown to the wild extreme of plotting her death. He could see no other way out but this desperate step, which he was able only to half-imagine, to see its results to him and to Ruth, but not its horror. Even so, it set up such a violent conflict with his conscience that he had to hide it under part of his mind, so that he was hardly aware of what he did to give it effect.
Then came his confession to her, Ruth, and her intervention. How ironic it was—she saw this now—that, whereas she had been the spur that goaded him into taking the initiative, she should then be the means of crushing it, by making him realize that, though he had at last screwed up his courage to do something, the deed was a far worse mistake than all the softness and irresolution that had brought him where he was.
This perception was so much wider and more acute than anything Ruth saw normally that it threw her into a deep agitation of mind. But she was not one to battle for long with feelings which had law and conscience drawn up against them. If she had made Georgie a man, but the wrong sort of man, she must now remake him and put him right. She had to do it, not only for his sake but for her own. Turning her mind to the future, she saw a prospect that looked grim indeed. Georgie, if she let him, would go on struggling to make a clear separation between the fruits of Grace’s extortion and the property which she had stolen from him. He would keep the shop: nothing, she saw, would shift him from that. Grace’s tainted money, insofar as it could be separated, he would perhaps invest in other shops, so that the profits could be handed over to this or that charity. But suppose Summer Hill did not prosper? Suppose it got into difficulties, and she, as a partner, claimed the right to balance the deficit out of the profits of the “Grace” shops? All Georgie’s old agonies of conscience would be revived. He might go so far as to confess publicly. Even if he kept quiet, his whole life, with its balance between good money and bad, would become a kind of silent, tortuous confession. She saw, so sharply that she gave a violent twitch in the bed, that Georgie’s conscience might in time forbid the payment of the household bills and the education of their possible children.
No! Nothing of this kind should happen. She would see to that. She knew her Georgie: the time to act was now, while he was still nerveless, still suggestible. So help her God, she would set him in a mould that would last through his life. Absolute firmness of decision, absolute certainty, not a breath of doubt: that must be her line. Lying flat on her back, looking at the ceiling, she prayed for strength to do what she convinced herself was right
And then, by a further stroke of irony, she found Georgie the next morning suddenly changed and calm. It was as if her decision had communicated itself to him while he was asleep. Instead of the long wavering arguments she had dreaded, she found herself in the midst of a reasoned talk with a subdued but sensible man. Together they examined the question of Grace’s money and what to do with it.
In the end, since, apart from forgiving all private debts, there was nothing they could do to restore any of the money, Ruth and he compromised by getting rid of the slum property Grace had amassed, and letting the tenants of the three or four decent houses buy them cheaply by instalments. Ruth was firm, and Georgie with her, that no happiness or good luck could come from injustice or oppression. At the same time, of the money that was actually in the bank they could not sort out the honest from the dishonest penny. It seemed better to keep the lot, and put it to fair and honest use.
The decision once made, Ruth exerted all her powers to persuade Georgie to abide by it. He agreed; his intelligence saw that she was right; but it was easier said than done. Every now and then she would find him murmuring in a corner, his brows furrowed above piteous unfocused eyes, as in a regurgitated wave of guilt he tried to sort out unclean money from clean and so atone. Always her answer was the same. She said nothing, but went to him and put her arms around him until the tense muscles slackened, and he sighed and slept.
As soon as he seemed better, she took him to task with the toughness and hard sense he so much needed.
“You can’t hope to get rid of all the guilt, Georgie. It’s yours: you’ve got to live with it. We’ve all got something on our conscience.”
The attacks disappeared at last, but Ruth had plenty of time to learn how violent had been the reversal of his real nature, and how long was needed before the balance could be restored.
So ended a crisis in three obscure lives, whereby two were delivered and the third destroyed. Whether Grace deserved her fate is hardly our business to judge, but we may feel confident that it was a good thing Georgie and Ruth were saved. We may, perhaps, note the irony that they were saved in spite of having broken the accepted code—which, indeed, went some way towards destroying Georgie, insofar as under it he was perverted from an inoffensive gentle decency to the madness of an attempted murder. No doubt there are good people who will feel that he did not deserve the happiness and prosperity that came to him after his deliverance. They may even feel that Ruth did not deserve her happiness.
Still, as things turned out, a great many human beings would have had worse lives if Georgie had succeeded in his plot against Grace and paid the penalty for it. Once he had fairly recovered from the shock and the partial breakdown which it caused, he set himself determinedly to develop his business. His first impulse had been to leave Summer Hill, but Ruth insisted that this would be both weak and foolish. She felt, and Georgie soon felt with her, that they owed it to Aunt Butters’ memory to give the house back its one-time peace and happiness. Before long, however, they were obliged to move to bigger premises.
Within ten years the business had three branches in different parts of the fast-growing town. Today Georgie is owner and managing director of a chain of shops spread over Devon and Cornwall. He makes a lot of money and gives a lot away, for objects that will benefit his fellow citizens. He is especially good to children who have lost their parents or are unable to turn their gifts to account through poverty. He is also a regular churchgoer; but this part of his life has no compulsive drive behind it. He goes because he enjoys going. His faith has become natural to him, and Ruth’s has lost much of its bleakness and austerity.
They have a family, two boys and a girl, of whom the eldest is soon to take a responsible post in one of the outlying shops. It is in Cornwall, but not at Trelithrick, a town which Georgie stubbornly refuses to revisit.
Ruth has kept her figure, and her smooth skin makes her look surprisingly young for her age. Georgie has put on weight, and has a large bald patch which gets absurdly pink when he is warm. He keeps several of the mannerisms he had as a child, notably the trick of fetching a long deep noisy sigh when he is worried.
He is far more self-confident than in the old days, yet has an attractive touch of diffidence which warms people’s hearts, and he is liable to sudden fits of absent-mindedness in which his expression becomes vague and dreamy; but he can speak up hotly on anything he feels to be a matter of principle, as his colleagues on the town council have reason to know.
To a friendly observer he would appear to be a kindly, hones
t, mild-mannered, provincial worthy, likeable, wholly commonplace. Not even the most penetrating would suspect that his nature was once violently reversed, and that he tried to kill a woman who was married to him. No one would guess that, two or three times a year, his wife has to wake him from a nightmare in which he is choking, trying to scream, and clutching at his neck.
Note on the Author
L.A.G. Strong (1896-1958) was born in Plymouth, to a half-Irish father and Irish mother, and was educated at Brighton College and at Wadham College, Oxford (Open Classical Scholar), where he came under the influence of W. B. Yeats.
During his career he worked as an Assistant Master at Summer Fields, Oxford, was a Visiting Tutor at the Central School of Speech and Drama, and later became was a director of the publishers Methuen Ltd., a post he retained until his death. For many years he was also a governor of his old school, Brighton College.
Strong was a versatile writer – during his lifetime he produced more than 20 novels, as well as plays, children's books, poems, biography, criticism, and film scripts. Some of his poems were set to music by Arthur Bliss, and his novel The Brothers was filmed in 1947 by the Scottish director David MacDonald.
Discover books by L.A.G. Strong published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/LAGStrong
Deliverance
The Bay
The Fifth of November
The Garden
This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
Copyright © L.A.G. Strong
With acknowledgement to J. F. Swaine, the prince of collaborators.
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You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
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