The Elderbrook Brothers

by Gerald Bullet

  On his way home from the service he dawdled and was presently overtaken by Mrs Meldreth and her party. The rigours of politeness restrained him from openly staring at Ellen, but his covert glances searched her face for the pensive child he had surprised in her profile. Visually he could not quite recapture that moment’s revelation; but it was clear in memory, clear and indubitable, and he knew he would never see her again with his earlier purblind vision. Whether suddenly or by imperceptible gradations, he was now conscious of her in a new way. He realized, without phrasing it, the simple fathomless truth of her existence as a spirit, a living centre of consciousness, an I living alone, even as he was, even as he did.

  Though busy in his silences, he felt it necessary to make some conversation.

  ‘I was surprised to see you in church, Aunt Ellen.’

  With his bantering tone, his playful mode of address, he was back in the unreal world of social exchanges. But that other, who held a watching brief in him, was still alert.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I had an idea you, didn’t much go in for such things.’

  ‘She came to please me,’ said Mrs Meldreth cosily. ‘Didn’t you, my dear?’

  Ellen smiled, as if to say that that theory was as good as another. But after a moment’s hesitation she said: ‘I don’t know why I should have to have a special reason. After all, we’ve all been to church, haven’t we? Why did you go, Felix?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kate chimed in. ‘And what did you do, Felix, when you got there?’

  Felix almost blushed, wondering what lay behind the seeming innocence of the question; but Florrie said, not to be left out: ‘Did you think it a good sermon? I did.’

  Everybody laughed at this pronouncement. Ellen remarked: ‘Florrie has a nice sense of what’s due. We should discuss the sermon on our way home, not argue about why we went to church.’

  ‘We’re not arguing,’ said Felix. ‘I haven’t heard a single word of argument yet.’

  ‘How disappointing for you!’ Ellen retorted. ‘No one can say you haven’t done your best to provoke one.’

  ‘All this,’ said Felix, in injured tones, ‘because I asked a meek question!’ He made gestures of mock admiration and despair. ‘How like a woman!’

  ‘Well, she is a woman, silly,’ said Kate. ‘What would you expect her to be?’

  ‘We’re all women,’ Florrie contributed.

  ‘Except you, Florrie,’ said Kate. ‘You’re Mother’s little chick.’

  Florrie tossed her fair head in disdain of this pleasantry. ‘Male and female created he them,’ she remarked. ‘It’s not a question of how old you are.’

  The devastating justice of the rebuke flattened out the conversation for a while, and Felix saw that Florrie, hiding embarrassment under a scowl of indifference, was wishing she had not spoken. The incurable frivolity of her elders was a constant trial to Florrie, but their present silence seemed to convict her of gaucherie and she was filled with chagrin. Of the four female persons whose company Felix was now enjoying, she knew herself to be the least interesting to him. He treated her always with a casual, an all-too-brotherly kindness. He had never, she believed, really looked at her; and, had he looked, what could he have seen but what she herself so discontentedly saw in her glass every morning and night?—an overgrown lump of a girl, too fat, too blond, too pink, too raw, too everything that Kate was not. If only she had been dark like Kate, and gentle like Mamma, and mysterious like Aunt Ellen! If only she could find and follow the middle way between moodiness and self-assertion! If only people were not too stupid to see how much she adored them!

  Released for a moment from his concentration on the problem of Ellen, Felix privately contemplated each of his companions in turn. Kate, he coolly supposed, was the beauty of the party; and it just crossed his mind that perhaps had he not seen her growing towards this present perfection from her unalarming schoolgirlhood, were he in fact seeing her for the first time, her extreme attractiveness would frighten him away. Yes, Kate was a dazzler, and Mrs Meldreth was a charmer, and Florrie was a nice serious child whom one liked and was a little sorry for. He was happy and at home with any or all of them.

  With Ellen, too, he was at home in some sense. He had lost his shyness of her; he felt her to be a friend; he no longer found difficulty in talking with her. Yet Ellen was somehow different. Ellen was real. He had, even now, a sense of being alone with her. You are here, he said. You. And we are in the world together.

  § 9

  THE spell of fine weather showed no signs of breaking. Showers there were, sudden and brief and freshening, but they too seemed like sunshine, sunshine translated into another element, crystal sprinklings of light falling into a world of spun glass. Wiseacres hinted darkly at the chance of late frosts, fatal to the precocious plum; but to less anxious spirits, and to Felix especially, it was a timeless time, without past or future, the kind of golden interval that makes one marvel to remember having ever heard evil of our English climate. Yet measured by days it was perhaps not long. It was the days themselves that were long, though midsummer was months away, and the boys were not yet back at school.

  For Felix the days were long and full, each one a lifetime. There was an unresolved tension between his idly active mind and another and profounder part of him in which a new universe was being brought to birth. His imagination was pregnant with an idea which even now he could scarcely bring himself to acknowledge or understand. But the veiled angel of his destiny was hovering on the verge of consciousness; and at last the knowledge confronted him, bewildering in its implications, that yesterday and to-day and for many days and nights the unseen palpable presence of Ellen Winter had been with him. He fell asleep thinking of her, and in the morning she was still there in his mind, her voice, her look, her very self. With this realization came a change, a fear, a resistance. What had been easy and almost inevitable became difficult, a matter for conscious contrivance. Hitherto scarcely a day passed without his encountering her. It had seemed natural, a happy chance, that they should talk and walk together. But now that he must see her, now that not to be with her was suddenly unbearable, he betook himself to the Meldreths’ house with dragging feet, conscious of every step, except in those moments when a state of dream supervened.

  He found Florrie in the garden. She was gathering flowers for the house.

  ‘Hullo, Felix!’

  He had no eyes for her shining look, her suppressed eagerness. But the sight and sound of her, so ordinary and reassuring, roused him from trance.

  ‘Hullo, Florrie! What a lovely morning!’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it!’ She stood at gaze, her hands dangling their flowers.

  ‘Where’s everybody?’

  ‘They’re in the house somewhere. At least, Kate and Mother are.’

  But I’m in the garden. Florrie’s manner seemed to say. This is me, here.

  ‘I see.’

  He waited impatiently to hear more. Was Florrie being obstinate, or merely obtuse? Would she force him to ask outright for what he wanted?

  ‘Aunt Ellen’s gone out somewhere.’

  ‘Has she? Where, I wonder?’

  Florrie turned back to her occupation. ‘On the wold, I suppose. One of her famous solitary walks,’ she said strangely.

  On the wold told him nothing. She might almost as well have said on the world, for all the help it was. He turned away, mumbling that he must go.

  ‘Aren’t you coming in to see them?’ she called after him.

  ‘Not now.’ He was already some yards away. ‘Back presently.’ He smiled and waved a purposely vague gesture designed to eke out his meagre speech. ‘Goodbye!’

  That he should find her seemed to him so improbable that when in fact he did find her, walking in the woods, he had the sense of being part of a prearranged pattern. The setting of this moment, the luminous leaves and dappled umbrage of the woods, was perhaps worth a glance; but he had none to spare for it. It was as if his own thought of her h
ad taken shape before him. But she was more real than thought, and different. Imagination was at once fulfilled and put to derision. She was actual, a living woman. She, not he (as of her phantom he had been), was the animating principle of herself.

  She was actual and tangible. He longed to touch her, to put that to the proof; and but for his longing he could have done so, even so recently as yesterday he could have done so, could have touched her hand lightly in passing and said: is it you, or am I dreaming?

  Shyness held him aloof. ‘Hullo, Ellen!’ His voice was unnaturally quiet, with a quietness that cancelled the implied surprise at seeing her. ‘They told me you were out.’

  She smiled, friendly and indifferent. ‘Did they?’

  ‘I was afraid I shouldn’t find you,’ he said breathlessly.

  ‘Dear me!’ she said. Her voice had the Warmth that amusement always imparted to it. ‘That would have been a disaster.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ he said, ‘it would.’ He looked at her, and looked away. ‘Shall we sit down?’

  She seemed surprised by the’ question, even more than by this grave unsmiling manner; but following his indication she saw that they happened to be only a pace or two from a fallen tree, ancient and mossgrown, upon which some few days ago they had sat together for half an hour, contentedly talking.

  ‘If you like,’ she said. ‘Is anything the matter?’ Feeling the weight of his silence she said quickly: ‘Have you brought me bad news?’

  ‘No, no. No one’s dead or anything. Don’t worry.’ He laughed. His voice sounded to himself forced and over-loud. ‘I’m the only bad news.’

  ‘You?’

  He felt suddenly abashed, and angry with himself for having destroyed, as he thought, the easiness there had been between them. But this anger was brief and superficial. In the moment of raising his eyes again to look at her, all minor emotions were forgotten, lost to view, in the astonishment of a new experience. He was seeing her for the first time. Later he was to wonder how he could have supposed, in the beginning, that she was not beautiful; but in this moment of looking, of seeing, of realizing the sensual mystery of her being, he could not think in such categories; even in his mind there was silence. As if by a miracle he found his callow fantasies embodied not in ivory and roseleaves, not in a vision of ideal perfections, but in a living woman, earthly and actual.

  With a sense of returning from a long voyage, he withdrew his glance. He had said nothing. Her composure told him that even his eyes had said nothing. She still looked at him with grave, questioning, but untroubled eyes. The generous curve of her mouth had lost nothing of its gentleness and humour.

  ‘I want to talk to you, Ellen, if you’ll let me.’

  They were seated side by side on the fallen tree-trunk. Himself trembling, he seemed to feel the sleek tree tremble, under his curved hand.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I let you?’ she answered reasonably. ‘Is it something so dreadful?’

  ‘Something’s happened to me,’ he said. ‘It’s … well, it’s you. That’s the whole story. Somehow you’ve been … haunting me for days. I’ve been thinking of nothing else.’

  During this speech, which seemed to Felix a prodigiously long one, he kept his eyes away from her, staring at distance. He waited for her to speak.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘that is a bad job!’

  She might almost have been speaking to a child. But he picked up her words and challenged them.

  ‘Why?’ He turned accusing eyes upon her. ‘Why is it a bad job? It’s not. It’s a good job. It’s the best thing that ever happened.’

  Her hand moved towards his, where it lay embracing the smooth tree. But she did not quite touch him.

  ‘Dear Felix! … What am I to say?’

  ‘It’s not the best thing, it’s the only thing that ever happened. I’ve been dreaming till now. This is real. You’re real.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said, with a shy approach to banter, ‘I suppose I am. But I don’t see why that should trouble you so much. I’m not the only real person in the world, you know.’

  ‘Yes, but you are,’ he said eagerly. ‘That’s just it. I can’t explain, but that’s how it is. You’re … everything.’

  It did not occur to him to speak of love, of beauty. Nor did he consciously know what response he expected or desired from her. His paramount need was to confess his strange condition, to disburden himself of a secret which had grown too big, and which he had borne alone too long.

  ‘It’s very …’ She broke off, and then tried again. ‘It’s very nice of you, Felix. But-’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Felix. There was astonishment and almost anger in his voice. ‘You know it’s not “nice” of me.’

  With unaccustomed meekness she answered: ‘Isn’t it? I’m so sorry.’

  Meeting her rueful glance he smiled, half in apology.

  ‘You see,’ he explained gently, ‘this is serious.’

  ‘I’m beginning to see,’ said Ellen. ‘But you haven’t made it quite easy, up to now. Are you trying to tell me you’re in love with me?’

  With ingenuous surprise he said: ‘I suppose I am. Yes, of course I am. But that’s only part of it.’

  The words were no sooner spoken than they lost meaning for him. All words lost meaning. His laborious groping after statement left him empty of thought and filled only with Ellen. She only was real, and he had no life except in her. The carnal fact of her, the dream made flesh, this living body that was her very self, of this he was suddenly and shatteringly conscious. The naked kindness of her face seemed to soften the grave, troubled look. The ravishing loveliness of lips never looked at before was a sudden intimate revelation. He believed he would die if he did not kiss her.

  He clutched at her hand, which lay so near his own. He possessed himself of both her hands, her arms, her shoulders; and the trembling he had felt in the tree-trunk seemed to be in her too, like the beat of music, or the throbbing of the sea.

  She suffered his kiss with more than gentleness. Then with an inward effort, as if against her will, she held him at arm’s length, wryly smiling.

  ‘How old are you, Felix?’

  He would have kissed her again, but she said sharply:

  ‘No. Listen!’

  ‘I’m listening.’ He looked mutinous, resolved.

  ‘I’m older than you. And even if I weren’t … it’s useless. You’re wasting your time.’

  ‘I’m the best judge of that.’ With some return of grace he added, more humbly: ‘So long as I ‘m not wasting yours?’

  She gave a light, unmirthful laugh. ‘My time isn’t so valuable. What do you want of me, Felix? Just … this?’

  ‘I want to marry you,’ he said firmly. ‘Well, of course. What else?’

  ‘That’s what I was afraid of,’ she said sadly. ‘Please put it out of your mind.’

  ‘Why? Do you mean you don’t …’

  He could not complete the question. But Ellen did.

  ‘Love you? Perhaps I do, a little. But that’s not the point. Love is easy.’

  ‘Easy?’ He was incredulous.

  ‘Inevitable,’ she said, with a shrug. ‘But marriage isn’t, and I shall never marry.’

  ‘What nonsense!’ But he was shaken. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because it’s true,’ said Ellen, ‘and if you’ll only keep it in mind everything will be all right between us.’

  ‘I don’t understand a word of that,’ Felix announced. He gazed with burning eyes. ‘Why do we waste time arguing?’

  She pondered the question, and seemed to ponder too some other question which it set stirring within her. Then her face cleared, as though she had come to a decision.

  ‘Yes, why do we?’ she said.

  At sight of her smile his heart turned over. His answer was inarticulate. She gave him her hands again, and her lips.

  § 10

  INCIPIT vita nova: the burden of Dante’s story ran in his mind. For a day or two he was in bliss. Th
e glory of the new life was all in all. By her touch, by her liking, by her warm kisses, which no cautionary talking could cancel out, Ellen had undesignedly completed her possession of him. In the moment of that first butterfly kiss, which for Felix was a plighting of troth, she had become the living centre of all beauty and all desire, so that now the very leaves of the tree, the grass growing, the delight of the sun, the chirrup of a bird in the garden hedge, must lead his thoughts back to her. The air was her breathing and dusk was the darkness of her eyes, which yet were not dark, being lit by the glowing mystery within them. Prevent us in all our ways, he said, unaware of any incongruity, if a little surprised to find a traditional prayer expressing so exactly his sense of her abiding presence; for she did indeed appear before him, at every turn, with every pulse of his heart, an enchantment made visible in whatever of beauty his eye lit upon. Herself, by a paradox that greatly puzzled and tantalized him, he could not see. When he stared straight into memory, trying to visualize her, she seemed always to elude him. He could hold for a moment her eyes, her brows, the noble contours of nose and mouth; but the whole face, the whole visible self of her, he could not recapture by any effort: not till effort was abandoned and forgotten did it sometimes, unexpectedly, briefly, gone as soon as come, flash into his vision as from heaven itself. By his sense of the surpassing value of this one creature the whole of creation was transfigured.

  The whole of creation included such hitherto unregarded items as the members of his own household, and those of Ellen’s too. He looked on them with new eyes and found them interesting and lovable. He was surprised by the warmth of his sudden affection for Tom, for Daniel, for the servants. The sight of the sky made him want to sing; and when he sauntered out on the lawns he could not refrain from bending down to touch the grass, to stroke it lovingly with his finger-tips in delight of its soft aliveness and green joy. His thraldom, because confessed and unreproved, now seemed to him a new and perfect freedom. Will and desire both pointing the same way, he was free to see Ellen in all things and all things good in Ellen; free to conjure into phantasmal being the ravishing delight of her embraces; free to spend all his active thought in contriving ways of seeing her again, and of being alone with her. In his attitude to the people about him, and especially in his notion of their attitude to himself, he vacillated between two extremes. Filled to overflowing with love, he believed his condition must be plain for all to read; he nevertheless imagined that by giving rein to his high spirits, by being heartily normal, he could throw dust in the world’s eyes. In both ideas he was mistaken. No one, unless it were Florrie in one of her wilder flights from reason, had divined the cause of his recent brooding; whereas almost everyone was conscious of the sudden change in him now, and there were some who paused long enough in their self-preoccupation to wonder what it portended. Felix, because he managed not to blush at mention of Ellen’s name, began to consider himself devilish cunning, and an adept in self-control; but though his daily visit to Mrs Meldreth’s house was no new thing it could hardly fail to be observed, in time, that it was neither Mrs Meldreth nor her daughters that he went to see. Dimly, through the mists of his obsession, he knew that sooner or later he must give himself away; so that when his betrothal was announced it would be received with the knowing smiles of gratified prophecy.