The Judas Tree

by A. J. Cronin

  ‘The Lord is our shepherd,’ Willie said. ‘A silver collection will be taken later.’

  Immediately the charge ceased. The lions faced about and sat up on their haunches in a begging attitude, whereupon the black soldiers began to mark time and clap their hands. Then, with disharmony resembling that of the Markinch choir, they boomed out the hymn ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers.’

  The grotesque and ridiculous vision was too sudden a release. Moray tried to laugh, to howl with laughter, and finally let out a shout that woke him up.

  Exhausted, yet relieved by the reality of his own bedroom, he lay for a long time gloomily pondering the reasons for this absurd and painful fantasy. What rankled most of all was his own behaviour. Was he as weak as that? God, no – he would not admit it. He set his teeth and shook the thing off. Obviously, he decided, a subconscious conflict between his admiration for Willie’s heroic and self-sacrificing life and his own past indifference towards religion. With that he got up. The luminous dial of his Gubelin bedside-clock showed three o’clock. Feeling around, he stripped off his wet pyjama jacket and, having rubbed himself down, put on a fresh one and returned to bed. After turning uneasily for more than an hour he got off to sleep.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Next morning when he awoke, only half rested, he was bitterly annoyed with himself. He rose hurriedly, prompted by a sense of shame, welcoming as a corrective the discomfort of his strained back which now seemed definitely worse. Ranging about the house, restlessly awaiting Madame von Altishofer’s arrival, be checked and rechecked his preparations: the inventory was complete, all his papers were in order, the bank had been notified, his appointment with Stieger definitely arranged for the following day. All that remained, then, was to finish off his packing, impatiently, his ears alert for the sound of the Dauphine, he looked at his watch: past ten o’clock. Why on earth did she not come? Punctuality had always been outstanding amongst her many virtues. He was on the point of telephoning when, with a disproportionate sense of relief, he heard her step on the gravel drive. The door bell rang. He answered it himself.

  ‘You didn’t drive. I wondered why you were late. Come along in. I’ll take your coat.’

  ‘Thank you, no. I will not come in. Or at least only to the hall.’

  He stared at her, blankly, as she took a bare step forward across the threshold. She was not wearing her usual grey working outfit, but the faded russet costume and the bersagliere hat in which she went walking. Yet it was her expression, calm yet firm, that astonished him most of all, and caused him, fearing some disaster, to exclaim: ‘ What’s wrong, Frida?’

  She did not immediately answer; then, gazing at him almost pityingly with those remarkable yellow eyes, she said: ‘My friend, despite my great wish to help you, I have decided I must not see you now, or ever again.’

  ‘What!’ In his confusion he brought out the word with difficulty. ‘But why? You promised. I’m relying on you to do the porcelain.’

  ‘The porcelain,’ she echoed with scornful emphasis. ‘What does that matter? You have no use for it now. You will never see it again.’

  ‘But I – I need your help for other things.’

  ‘Then I must not give it.’ Still with her gaze fixed upon him, she shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘ It is altogether too painful for me. Better, in your own words, the sharp, clean cut.’

  A moment of complete silence followed, during which he could find nothing to say except ‘why’, and he had said that before. Then she went on, with that same solemnity, almost sounding a note of doom.

  ‘My friend, my dear friend, my feeling for you, and it is deep beyond your knowledge, has misled me. I am a woman, and weakly I have given in, to help you. But yesterday, at the party, meeting all your friends, I see that I have been wrong, greatly wrong. For all are in dismay, all have the same opinion of you.’

  ‘I’m obliged for their concern,’ he muttered, nettled that they should have discussed him in his absence. ‘But I don’t see how I merit it.’

  ‘They see it!’ Her voice stung him. ‘They were, every one, speaking of you, a man who has worked all his life to make a great success, and become rich, who has good friends, and a beautiful home. And who, no longer young, throws all, all away, for a sudden idea, so extreme that even your Mr Stench was saying, in his nasty smiling way, you had bitten more than you could chew.’

  ‘I’m obliged to Stench, and the others,’ he said bitterly. ‘Nevertheless, I believe I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘But do you? Now you are so busy, so obsessed, you never read or even listen to the news. Yesterday Mr Stench was telling us – it had just come in – that in another town, Kalinda, which is so near your Willie’s place, hordes of these tribesmen came with flaming arrows and cutlasses, broke into the Belgian mission and massacred all who were inside. Not killed alone, first mutilated them, cutting off their hands. Mein Gott, when I think of your hands, so fine and sensitive, which I have always admired, and some beastly savage hacking them off, do you wonder that I, and others too, are heartbroken for you?’

  He bit his lip, frowning, uneasiness and anger striving for mastery in him. Anger predominated.

  “You seem to forget that Willie warned me there might be danger. I’ve fully considered the risks to run.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Do you accuse me of lying?”

  “I accuse you of deliberate self-deception.”

  “If so, it’s from the highest motives.”

  “So you want to be a holy martyr, perhaps be shot with arrows, for a change, like Sebastian, and win a harp and a halo after.” Her eyes narrowed scornfully. “I am speaking in your true interest when I tell you …”

  ‘It’s no use,’ he interrupted her sharply. ‘ You won’t dissuade me.’

  They faced each other during a long and, on her part, a calculated silence.

  ‘So you are going,’ she said at last, in a hard voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then go. You are totally blind and devoid of sense, in fact quite out of your mind.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They were quarrelling, creating a scene – the realisation caused him an acute distress.

  ‘You say you do this because of a great ideal, to amend your life. You do not. It is all done for the sake of going to bed with a silly young woman, a religious killjoy, who has infatuated you, who has no maturity, no meeting of minds, a common nurse who does not know a Bonnard from a bedpan.’

  Pale to the lips under these insults, delivered with a fatal, telling force, he ran true to form in his indignant reply: ‘You are speaking of the young lady who will be my wife.’

  ‘And as such, what do you delude yourself she can give you? Not passion, for it is not in her. These religious women are without sex.’ He winced. ‘For passion such as you demand, you need a strong, vital body. An answering force which she does not possess. She is feeble. And she is already bound to her Willie, you are for her only a father figure. Besides, you have too strong a competitor. She cannot love both you and the Lord.’

  ‘I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.’

  She was breathing with a deep, though controlled violence, a Wagnerian prima donna, splendid in figure, with fire in her eyes. Then all at once she was calm, cold as ice.

  ‘Yes, I am leaving. But do not forget that I have warned you. And remember one important thing: if you should return to reason, I am still at the Seeburg, still your friend.’

  He barely waited until she had passed the drive before shutting the door with a bang. He was furiously angry, hurt, outraged, and above all inflexibly confirmed in his intention. How dared she take such scandalous liberties with Kathy and himself! This, and the maddening fact that his friends had made him the object of their malicious gossip at the party, was in itself enough to fuse and forge his resolution, into solid steel. What stung most of all, quickened by a flashback thought to that night of docile surrender, was the shameful allegation agains
t the pudendum of his future bride. A father figure indeed, competing for affection against Willie and the Lord – could any allegation be more unjust, more unutterably shameful – blasphemous, in fact? Yet that poisoned barb, worst of all, had pierced deep and still quivered in his flesh. To make matters worse, in slamming the heavy door he had aggravated his strained back and now, blaming her all the more since the casualty was basically her fault, he found that his limp had become more pronounced.

  Altogether he was so worked up, he could not bring himself to remain passive in the house. What then? It was essential that he get his back put right at once and, as he had additionally some final purchases to make, he decided to take the train for Zurich and consult his good friend Dr Muller. Having cancelled lunch, he was driven by the mystified Arturo to Schwansee station in time to take the 11.45 Schnellzug.

  Settling himself in the comfortable window seat – no other trains, in his opinion, could match the Swiss – he opened the Gazette Suisse which, almost instinctively, he had picked up at the bookstall. Naturally, Madame von Altishofer had exaggerated in order to alarm him; nevertheless it was true, as she suggested, that he had lately been too preoccupied to heed external events. He rarely did heed them, preferring to banish from his exclusive life the shocks and discords of a disordered world. Now, however, he felt it would repay him to sift the news. He had no need to sift. There, on the front page, were the headlines.

  MASSACRE ATROCE A LA MISSION KALINDA.

  Still keyed to a high intensity, he read the graphic report. More than a hundred persons, men, women and children, who had sought refuge in the mission, had been butchered with inhuman ferocity. In this blood-bath the missionaries themselves, two Franciscan priests, had been singled out for special treatment, first mutilated, then beheaded, and their bodies hacked to bits. It was a gruesome story, yet it had the ring of truth and following on the earlier slaughter at Tochilenge, was undoubtedly part of the general pattern of frenzied outrage that had broken loose.

  Frida had spoken the truth: what an end for a sensitive, civilised man. A quiver of nausea constricted his stomach as he lowered the paper and gazed out at the placid Swiss landscape, the belled, brown cows grazing peacefully in the green pastures amongst the pear and cherry trees. Perhaps, after all, in making his heroic decision he had not fully weighed the obligations and dangers imposed by it. But he killed the thought before it entered his mind. Even if he had not wanted to go, he wanted Kathy. He would never turn back.

  The train drew into Zurich station and he got out, finding the step down so awkward he wished he had brought a stick. His noticeable limp drew sympathetic glances as he traversed the Bahnhofstrasse, but making an effort he managed his shopping at Grieder’s which, unlike so many of the other establishments, did not close between twelve and two. Then, with scarcely a thought of the Baur-au-Lac, he lunched sparingly at Sprungli’s on minced veal and noodles followed by compote and a café crême. He was, indeed, too upset, too depressed to eat, and in this chastened mood he took a taxi to Dr Muller’s office in Gloriastrasse, being fortunate to get hold of the good doctor before his consultations had begun. Muller, moreover – and this seemed even more important – was unaware of his visitor’s imminent departure for the Dark Continent. At this moment either congratulations or reproaches would have been equally unbearable to Moray, who came immediately to the point, enumerated his symptoms, and concluded: ‘I’m almost sure I’ve slipped a disc.’

  Muller, a ruddy, jovial little man in an over-size starched white coat, who looked as though he enjoyed good living, had listened to the recital in the hunched attitude he assumed at his desk, darting occasional good-humoured glances at Moray. Now he got up, made an examination which to Moray seemed brief, almost cursory.

  ‘A slight sprain of your latissimas dorsi. Get your man to rub you with a good liniment.’

  ‘I have, and it’s no better.’

  ‘Naturally, it will take a few days.’

  ‘But this limp I have developed, surely that is rather a matter for concern.’

  ‘Purely psychosomatic. A protective transference of your worry about your back – though why that should worry you I can’t imagine. I suppose there’s nothing else on your mind, no more pressing anxiety?’

  Frowning, Moray chose to ignore the question.

  ‘Then you don’t think I should have a spinal X-ray?’

  ‘Mein Gott,’ Muller laughed the idea away, ‘here we do not X-ray for a simple strain.’

  Moray left the doctor’s office in worse case than when he entered, trying not to limp, an effort that exaggerated the condition and made him stiffen and drag his leg.

  ‘Confound the fellow,’ he muttered to himself. ‘He has this psychosomatic nonsense on the brain.’

  He was tempted to seek another opinion, but the fear of making himself ridiculous restrained him. Instead, in the hope that exercise might help, he walked down the hill to the Belvedere, then wandered along the front of the Zürichsee. A pale sun, glinting on the still water through a nacreous haze, had made the afternoon tranquil and luminous. Yet this strange light flooded him with confused misgiving – a doubt of the truth of his own reality, a desolate consciousness of his own insecurity in a hostile world. What was he doing here, limping aimlessly, his mind clouded by a host of conflicting thoughts that struck at him like a swarm of hornets? The direction his life was taking suddenly seemed preposterous. He felt a loss of support, an impression of falling into an abyss. Why had Frida made that violent and upsetting attack on him this morning? It was unpardonable and yet, seeking her motive, he found much to excuse and even to forgive. She was in love with him, jealous of Kathy, broken by the thought of his departure, fearful for his safety and health. Deeply, he regretted the rupture between them. He had always liked and admired her and had been to blame, perhaps, in encouraging her hopes of a closer relationship. Yet in the circumstances it was best that their friendship should be severed.

  With an effort he pulled himself together, hailed a taxi and was driven to the station. The evening paper, which he read on the return journey, amply confirmed the bad news of the morning – an official statement had been issued from the United Nations deploring the outrage against innocent civilians. There was also a report that smallpox and bubonic plague had broken out; appeals for medical assistance had been broadcast. When he got home an hour later he found nothing to alleviate his despondency: no telephone message from Kathy, not even a letter, and the house now in such a state of upheaval – stacked books on the library floor, his silver in tissue paper, curtains dismantled in the salon – that all sense of comfort and security was gone. When he was enduring all this, abandoning everything for her sake, Kathy owed him at least a few words of encouragement and support. He must speak with her at once.

  He went to the library telephone and put through a call to the Fotheringay manse in Markinch. The delay on this occasion was interminable, yet he would not leave the instrument. At last, following a muddle of Scottish accents at the local exchanges, a lamentable connection was established. It was Mrs Fotheringay who spoke; he could scarcely hear her voice over the persistent hum, and once intelligible contact was made, all proved fruitless. Willie and Kathy had left on the previous day, were now on their way through England, probably in Manchester, though at what address she did not know. She could, however, give him the number of the mission centre in Edinburgh, where they might be able to help him.

  Cutting short the conversation, which she would have prolonged indefinitely, he rang the Edinburgh number, and was more successful in getting through. But here also he drew blank. Mr Douglas had delivered his lecture in Edinburgh and departed for London with his niece. They had no knowledge of his present address.

  He ate a poor dinner and afterwards moved to the study, the only sitting-room which still remained habitable. Almost an hour later, while he sat brooding, suddenly the telephone rang.

  His pulse missed a beat. He knew that it was Kathy, compelled by love and an in
stinctive awareness of his present need. He was at the phone in a second.

  But, no – his heart sank sickeningly – it was not the sweet expected voice that came from the void, but the glottal accents of Stieger, his lawyer, who, detained in Munich, asked for a postponement of their appointment until Monday.

  ‘Naturally, if the matter is urgent, I will fly back tomorrow morning and return to Munich in the evening.’

  ‘No,’ Moray said, struggling to recover himself. ‘There’s no immediate need. Don’t put yourself out. Monday will suit equally well.’

  ‘Then we will meet in three days’ time.’

  Three days, Moray reflected, as he hung up the phone; no harm could come of this brief postponement. At least it would afford him a breathing spell to recover and consolidate his forces. He was conscious of a vague feeling of relief.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A week had passed. Was it a week? Waiting like this, ready to go off, everything settled, it was difficult to keep track of the days. But of course, today was Sunday, and a wet one, drenching rain turning the snow into muddy slush, the mountains invisible behind swollen, dropsical clouds. God, what a horrible day, so damnably depressing to anyone, like himself, susceptible to weather. He turned from the window and for perhaps the twentieth time took Kathy’s letter from his pocket, her solitary letter posted on the morning after she had been to Edinburgh. She must have written and mailed it immediately she got back to Markinch.

  Dear David,

  It was wonderful to hear your voice on the phone, and truly I have not had time to write you before. As I told you, Uncle Willie has had a real bad attack of fever. But he won’t give up the lecture tour and we’ll be leaving soon for our journey through England. When we get to London we’ll be staying with Mr and Mrs Robertson, Scottish friends of Mrs Fotheringay’s. Their address, if you are writing is, 3 Hillside Drive, Ealing, N. W.11. It is handy for London Airport. Everything is now arranged; Uncle Willie has got all three tickets and made the reservations. The flight number is AF 4329. The plane leaves on Tuesday the 21st at eleven p.m., so we shall meet you in the assembly hall one hour before the time of departure. We will be there from nine o’clock onwards so that there will be no mistake, and there must not be, for Uncle Willie is desperately anxious to leave. Things have been going from bad to worse at Kwibu and if we are to save the mission outstations in Kasai we must get back at once. I am so much looking forward to working with you out there, and to the rewards it will bring us. Dear David, this is the first time I have written you and it is difficult to say all that I mean. But you know my hopes are centred on you and that I will soon be your own true wife.