The Dead of Night

by Oliver Onions

  ‘I hope you may be right, my dear.’

  ‘Oh, I may not be happy – but I’m right!’

  And they went on, almost as if it were some other person’s affair, to talk of the wedding.

  They had tea, she and Mr and Mrs Paton; and not long after Barty sought her. He was ready to take her back. She knew that his idea was to come in with her and she was as resolved that he should not. She had taken another resolve too, of which he should hear presently.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she said.

  He drove her back at even greater speed. One would have said that he was pressed for time, in some desperate strait. Before the fan­lighted door he vaulted from the car and waited for her to produce her key. She stood with the key in her hand.

  ‘Good night, Barty,’ she said.

  ‘Open the door.’

  ‘When you’ve gone, dear love.’

  ‘Do you mean I’m not to come in?’

  ‘You can’t possibly come in, Barty. You see that.’

  Suddenly he laughed. – ‘Well, I suppose it’s all of a piece. I’ve had a day of conventions, with Humphrey and now this. But of course you’re right, sweetheart. There are the servants. I quite see.’

  ‘There’s another thing I want to ask you,’ she said.

  ‘What’s that, dearest?’

  ‘I want you not to come tomorrow at all. I’ll meet you the morning after, at the church.’

  ‘Not see you tomorrow at all!’ he repeated, dumbfounded.

  ‘Not again until we meet in the church.’

  ‘Heart of mine, something’s the matter. What is it? Tell me,’ he urged.

  ‘Only that I love you, Barty.’

  ‘Come for a turn in the lily-garden, where I first kissed you.’

  ‘Not now, Barty. I want to go in. And I want you to go home.’

  ‘Don’t you even want to know what I fixed up with Humphrey?’

  ‘Later. Please, Barty –’

  She turned up her face.

  A few minutes later he was on his way back, but he drove as slowly as if the road had been newly tarred and he wished to save the Hispano-Suiza’s bodywork from splash.

  8

  It was what she had told his mother – that she was not sure she had not had her chance of happiness with him, and it had passed now for ever. There was one nook of the pinewood that she wished to visit again, alone, and it would not matter this time if a man did come past with a dog and a gun. On the day after that she would be his wife, and they would come here to this house together, but in a sense closer and dearer than she could have expressed she felt that that other should have been her bridal, that no church had assisted at. Oh, with what a pain she loved him, and how exquisitely unendurable that pain would be were that afternoon in the pine wood to be really all! But why should it be all? Was he not coming here, into this room, by the very door he had first entered at?

  She was lying in bed with the reading lamp on. There was a thin volume there; it was The Tempest, and it lay open at a page. Her eyes caught the words.

  ‘And like this insubstantial pageant faded Leave not a wrack behind –’

  They were the very words she had been reading that other night, an hour or two before he had come in –

  She had seen only his eyes then, and a dim brownness and tallness, and the vague steep shape of his head –

  But since then he had drunk her very soul at her lips –

  There was another door he had yet to enter for the first time, a door that had never been entered –

  And she remembered that he had come with a sword.

  She could not truthfully have said that she was not frightened now.

  She was frightened with a fright for which she could give no reason, for those were not reasons, that a builder’s man didn’t know which room an old door had come from, that James could not date it, that she had jestingly suggested that it should be fitted to her room and they had agreed. That door admitted too much strangeness. It had let one mystical fulfilment in, but it might let in a doom too. It did not even look as still as a door should, softly shining there beyond the electric lamp, for a flat door is a door at rest, but one that is shaped like a bow suggests spring and compression and power. And she had seen Barty with his back in it, a sword in his hand, looking for her

  Her decision came to her swift as a flash. He and she must not occupy this room. Barty must not even enter it. He must not as much as . . . ah! But that was impossible! There the door was, the most conspicuous thing in the house, the thing one’s eyes rested on a third of the way up the stairs. He could not help but see it. Wild ideas of covering it up with a curtain, of taking it down altogether and putting up the quiet white one again rushed through her head. But she couldn’t go moving other people’s doors about like that. At all events they would change to another room. Almost frantically she ran over the rooms available. Not Virginia’s room of course; there could be no bridal there. Nor yet the room James had shared with Arthur. In fact not any of their rooms. Any old room would do, a maid’s room, a box-room, an attic. But not the room with the rosewood door. The servants would think it odd, but she couldn’t help that . . .

  She fell asleep still passing the rooms of the house in review.

  The next morning she put as bold a face on it as she could, sought the housekeeper, and gave her first directions as temporary mistress of the house. She wished her things moved to another room, she said.

  Mrs Bradley beamed fatly and comprehendingly. Agatha was a favourite with them, and the whole of Mrs Bradley’s staff was as excited about the wedding as if they had been getting married themselves.

  ‘To be sure!’ Mrs Bradley said. ‘If it was me I should feel just the same!’

  Agatha gave her a startled look.

  ‘Not that your room isn’t a nice one, and over the garden too,’ Mrs Bradley went on. ‘But when a room’s always been Miss Agatha’s room, and Miss Agatha isn’t going to be Miss Agatha herself many hours longer, as you might say –’

  ‘Oh! I see.’

  ‘And me can hardly get a hand’s turn done, with all the maids in such a stir about it –’

  ‘I can never understand why everybody’s so good to me,’ said Agatha wistfully.

  ‘Ah! That’s people’s different natures, Miss Agatha. Some calls forth liking and some the other thing. Which room were you thinking of?’

  ‘Not any of the family rooms.’

  ‘If you could spare the time to walk round –’

  Agatha and Mrs Bradley walked round together, but Agatha already knew the portion of the house she wanted. It was the portion as far away as possible from the rosewood door. This left her the choice of the two ends of the house. But the upper room of one end was a sort of museum workshop, where they polished and repaired things and put away objects when their eyes grew temporarily tired of them, and that left only one room, dimity-papered, carpetless, and with a large brass bedstead without as much as a piece of felt over the bare springs of its box-mattress. Mrs Bradley was turning away.

  But ‘This will do beautifully,’ Agatha said.

  ‘Miss Agatha! I should be ashamed!’

  ‘It’s beautifully light. (And it hasn’t got quite such a mad-looking sort of door,’ she added to herself.)

  ‘But not a curtain or anything! Whatever should I say to Miss Virginia?’

  Agatha laughed. – ‘Say I wanted it because it looks towards Mr Paton’s home,’ she said.

  ‘And what would Mr Barty think, and the best of everything never any too good for him!’ Mrs Bradley protested.

  ‘Well, he’s supposed to be getting the best of everything in me . . . I should like this room, please Mrs Bradley, if it could be got ready in time.’

  ‘It could be got ready. No bother about
that. But it hasn’t even a light to read in bed by without getting up to turn it off.’

  Agatha’s reply was repeated afterwards by Mrs Bradley to Mr Crooks, the butler, a sedate and family-sort of man, but as fond of his chuckle as here or there a one.

  ‘So she looked at me with those beautiful eyes of hers, like pools, they were so full of what was to come, and she put her cheek so close to mine that I declare I could feel the blush warm on it, and she smiled and said, “Did you read in bed, Mrs Bradley?” and there it was. Ah, he’s a lucky one, is Mr Barty, it’s to be hoped he knows it!’

  True to his promise, Barty kept away, and that afternoon she took the longest walk she had taken for years. It was six miles as the crow flies to a certain spot in the pinewoods, but she was happy in having no car, since to walk made it in some sort a pilgrimage. But perhaps pilgrimage was not the word, for pilgrimages have to do with churches, and it was to a place where she had offered to set the church aside that she was going that afternoon. She reached it, a part of the wood so seldom visited that hardly from one year’s end to the next would a man with a dog and a gun pass by. She cast herself down on the dry fragrant needles, in the same spot where she had lain with him. She felt herself taking his strong brown hand again and drawing it about her body. Tomorrow it was to be so in reality. Through one door he had come, but there was to be no such door for him to go out by. Cunningly she had changed the room. Even Barty would find it difficult to escape again through that ordinary machine-made door with dimity wallpaper about it! She would have him fixed, found, clenched happily down. All the space and time he would need thence­forward until death he would find in her heart. The Licence she had obtained at the Faculty Office was usable anywhere, but she had had to make a declaration that one of the parties had lived for the space of fifteen days previously in the parish of the church where the marriage was to take place, and she had smiled in signing it. Barty had actually lived for fifteen days in one parish! Therefore they were to be married in the church near his home. Only Barty, herself, his parents, and old Doctor Benn, whom James had entrusted with the duty of giving her away, were to be present. Then, Barty’s idea was, a dash up to town in the car, a jolly matinée somewhere, and back to the house that was their temporary home.

  She lay long in the pinewood, musing, musing. The world, she thought, had been very kind to her. She had friends, a hundred or so a year, and now that shadowy bequest that had brooded over her all her days was to be inherited in reality and light. She looked about her for the last time. Her sacrifice had not been accepted, but it was in this spot that she had made it, so that earth had no other place like it. She put her face down to the needles. She kissed them. Then she rose and set her face the way she had come.

  On her return Mrs Bradley met her.

  ‘Would you like to see what we’ve done, Miss Agatha?’ she said, and up they went to the room at the end of the wing.

  If the best of everything was none too good for Mr Barty, neither was it for Miss Agatha. A carpet of violent crimson, unearthed from heaven knew where, covered the floor. Long curtains of stiffly-starched lace, looped back with broad blue ribbons, fell from the window-poles to the floor. A primrose-yellow quilt covered the bed, and over the head of it hung an engraving of ‘The Light of the World’. There were other pictures too, and china ornaments on the mantelpiece.

  ‘And it was a pleasure to do it,’ Mrs Bradley declared, ‘for there’s some odd-fangled things about this house, what with Mr Arthur’s Chinese ladies with knobs sticking out all over their heads and I’m sure I don’t know what! The Hunt’ – she had picked up the family habit of speech – ‘is a little present from myself. The Sadler’ – she pointed – ‘is from Mr Crookes. And the ornaments’ – she pointed again – ‘are a lend from Annie; she has them against when her happy day comes along, which we hope won’t be long first, for she’s a good girl and deserves it.’

  Whatever gift she should receive from Virginia and James could never mean more than the warm-heartedness that had gone to the making ready of the room. Not for anything would she have removed an ornament or taken a ribbon from a curtain.

  ‘You dear, kind things,’ she said. ‘But I shall sleep in the other room tonight.’

  ‘To be sure. It makes a difference, like,’ said Mrs Bradley, under­standing to the end. ‘Your things are all laid out, and we’ll carry them over tomorrow.’

  That night Agatha slept for the last time but one in the room with the rosewood door.

  9

  The wedding was curiously of a piece with the rest – the still and relaxed house, the uncertainty of the future, the atmosphere of un­reality in which she seemed to move. It should have been something to remember, and yet she remembered little of it afterwards; it even seemed insignificant. She was hardly aware of Doctor Benn’s arm on which she leaned, little more aware of Barty’s parents, of Barty himself. As the vicar spoke the words, in a low, almost conversational voice, she found her thoughts wandering to the pinewoods. Even when Barty put a ring upon her finger it was the same, and when she rose from kneeling and came out of the church again, it was as if she were still waiting for something to happen, and somebody said to her, ‘That’s all.’

  No more real was the run up to London, nor the lunch at which she drank champagne. After lunch they went on to a theatre some­where, but except that she sat in a stall, watching the quietly intent face of a woman who played the fiddle in the orchestra, she did not remember very much. People were laughing, and there was a con­fusion of lights and colour and music. The woman who played the fiddle was earning her living. Agatha supposed she would have to do something about a living too. Barty, by her side, was laughing from time to time; he seemed to be enjoying himself. She felt the new ring on her finger. Assuredly it was real. Barty had placed it there, and in a church, so that was all right too . . . And then Barty was standing up, stiff and soldierly by her side. The conductor had turned round, and they were playing God Save the King. She watched the woman fiddler go out, with the fiddle under her arm. She and Barty went out. He told her to wait, for he had left the car a street away, and she waited, looking at photographs. He came back, and she got into the car. There were cars, buses, taxis, lorries, vans. Barty impetuously seized openings, braked as suddenly. Then came a long wide road, and the car leaped forward. She knew when they were clearing London by the open spaces with factories dotted here and there.

  ‘Ah!’ said Barty, as they reached hedges and fields and trees. ‘I think we can let her out a bit now –’

  Mrs Bradley and the servants were gathered about the front door of the house. Barty was wearing his own clothes now, though they were paid for by somebody else, and other people’s servants wel­comed him into a house not his own. None the less he who had no house picked her up and carried her over the threshold of it. Mrs Bradley was still at her congratulations. She had had a fire put into their room, because of its not having been used lately as well as being more welcoming like; and Barty had taken the car round to the garage. Agatha wished the way back from London had been longer. It was only seven o’clock, the sun high in the sky; he might have taken her out in the car again. But dinner would be in an hour, and that might take an hour, and then it would be nine. Was nine too early for bride and bridegroom to seek their chamber?

  Then she felt herself trembling. At the head of the stairs was the rosewood door. She had locked it with the new lock and put away the key, and she knew that presently he would be seeing it twenty times a day, passing it constantly as long as they were in the house; but that made no difference. An impulse to head him off from it took her – right away from it. He was in the garage, putting the car to bed. There was a secondary staircase to their room, used by the servants, and the way to it was through the back parts of the house . . . Already she was on her way, hurrying to the garage.

  He was just closing the double doors. She tried to make her voice
sound natural.

  ‘Ah, there you are! Don’t you want to see your room?’

  ‘Time to change presently. Have they sent my things over?’

  ‘Yes. They’re upstairs. Come and I’ll show you. There’s a short way without going round –’

  She took him by the hand and led him quickly across the paved yard.

  He made no remark on the way by which he was entering. They passed a row of sculleries, and found themselves on a bare, light wooden staircase. This led to a carpeted landing at the top, and there was their room. She pushed at its door, and they entered. He closed the door behind her and looked round.

  His evening clothes, together with her evening frock, were laid out on the primrose-yellow eiderdown, but it was not at these he was looking. He was looking at the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the starched and ribboned curtains, the crimson jam of the carpet, the Hunt and the Marcus Stones. Suddenly he broke into a peal of laughter.

  ‘Great heavens, Aggie, you don’t mean you’ve been put in here!’ he exploded.

  She felt that she must play her part boldly and skilfully. She laughed too, and clasped both her hands on his sleeve.

  ‘Of course not, darling. I’ve been using another room’ – and she looked the implication of the pronoun deeply at him. ‘But if you only knew the pleasure it gave them’ – and she told him how there was not a servant in the house but had contributed something to the room out of sheer goodness of heart.

  He was not listening; he was looking at her as if his eyes were his ears too. He was looking at her as he had looked at her that first time at the foot of the stairs. His arm was passed about her.