The Rosemary Tree

by Elizabeth Goudge

  “Before, you know, you did not want me to tell him who you were.”

  “That’s past. I can’t have him thinking me a decent chap when I’m not. I’d like you to tell him all I’ve told you.”

  “I’ll tell him,” said Daphne. “I’ve a certain amount to tell him about myself too. As I said before, I doubt if I’m a decent woman. It’s only because I had the good fortune to marry John that there’s even room for doubt.”

  “If a good husband was necessary for your salvation you were lucky,” Michael agreed. “There’d have been little hope for our marriage with me a partner to it.”

  “With me a partner to it,” she corrected him. “For I didn’t love you.”

  He was silent. In moments of bitterest shame he had been accustomed to tell himself that he had at least won the love of a beautiful and well-born woman. Now it appeared he hadn’t.

  “I was in love,” she went on quickly, “but not with you, only with what you stood for, success and so on. And, oh yes, I was in love with you in the obvious way.”

  “But you—” He stopped and paused.

  “Wouldn’t do that weekend,” she finished for him. “That wasn’t because I was a decent woman, as you thought it was, and as I thought it was. When I refused I was simply reacting. You’d hurt me by forgetting that we were to have been married during that leave of yours, and I hit back. My reactions have always been entirely reflex. That’s all.”

  Michael looked bewildered.

  “You don’t understand,” said Daphne. “It was my pride that was hurt and you’re a humble sort of child and don’t understand the vindictiveness of proud women. If I could have loved the humble child we’d have come together earlier than we did. We might even have been happily married long before the war and I expect you would never have had to say, ‘I’ve been in prison.’ So don’t you think it’s I who should ask for forgiveness, not you?”

  He stared at her. “Daphne, what has come to you?”

  “I’ve heard a few home truths,” said Daphne. “Harriet, our old nurse, after ten years of behaving so nicely to me that I quite thought she shared my own opinion of myself suddenly showed me that she didn’t. Not that she behaved other than nicely. She couldn’t. But she made me look at myself, and I’ve been trying to get to know myself through all the days and nights since. The nights have been the worst.”

  “They are,” said Michael. “I’ve been doing the same thing.”

  “And can you laugh at yourself now?”

  “No.”

  “You must, you know,” said Daphne. “And so must I. If I can’t laugh at the fool I am I’ll despair at the beast I am. You must laugh at yourself, Michael.”

  “I expect you’re right,” he said. “One must come out on the other side of despair before one can find that stony sanctuary.”

  “And laughing at yourself gives you freedom.”

  “From what?” asked Michael grimly.

  “From hating yourself. One can be just as self-engrossed in self-hatred as self-love, and either way be as blind to the quality of those about you as I was when I wanted you for what you could give me and married John for the same reason.”

  “But you love him now, don’t you?” asked Michael quickly.

  “Yes,” said Daphne. “He’ll be surprised when I tell him. He has a lot to forgive me. And so have you. When I said that laughter brought freedom I wasn’t forgetting about forgiveness. One can’t begin to laugh until one’s forgiven. Do you forgive me?”

  “That goes without saying,” said Michael. “Daphne, this has been an astonishing ten minutes.”

  “Not all one’s minutes are presided over by a linnet,” said Daphne lightly and gaily. “I’m glad you came to Belmaray, though you’ve caused a lot of upheaval. Do you know what you’ve done? Opened the eyes of a woman born blind, introduced geraniums at the manor and made Harriet fall in love again. She saw you out of her window. Would you like to go upstairs and talk to Harriet?”

  Michael got up. She was right to send him away now, for they had no more to say, but not right to send him to Harriet. Not yet. He wanted to get away by himself into the cool spaces of the valley, where the birds were singing so riotously. He shook his head at Daphne, smiled at her, and went away through the garden with a quick stride like a boy’s.

  When he had gone Daphne went and sat where he had sat, her back against the apple tree, and looked up into the blossom above her head. She could no longer see the linnet but the robin was singing up there now. His song was not quite the linnet’s clear exposition of the truth but he came very near it with a merry ditty expressing his contentment with the situation in which he found himself. He was himself the picture of contentment, bright-eyed and humorous, and somewhere his lady, equally contented, was listening to him and interpreting aright “his gay, sweet notes.”

  “Was I interpreting aright when I told Michael to laugh at himself?” Daphne wondered. “The words seemed to fall into my mind. I hadn’t thought before that we must laugh at ourselves. But it’s true. I’ve never had a sense of humor. I’d better take lessons from the robin before it’s too late.”

  She was tired after her bad nights. Her eyes closed and she fell asleep. She dreamed that all the birds in the world, singing gloriously, flew up through the blue air and spread themselves across the sky, becoming one bird, a Seraph whose wings covered the world. And the world was darkened. But for Daphne there was no fear in the dark, as there had been in the clear skies of her childhood. In her dream she turned and put her cheek against it and knew herself beloved.

  2

  John’s meeting had been followed by lunch at the Silverbridge hotel, at the invitation of Mr. Entwistle, but even the roast chicken and apple tart, chosen by Mr. Entwistle as likely to elevate the spirits but not upset the stomach of a nervous and sensitive man, had done nothing to make him feel less wretched. There was a private mental home on the outskirts of Silverbridge and he and Mr. Entwistle were both members of its committee of management. Once a month they debated its affairs and talked to its inmates, and once a month John was plunged into such misery that Mr. Entwistle did not know what to do with him.

  “Why did you go on the committee?” he asked now in slight irritation, as John pushed away his plate of apple tart almost untouched. “Not your sort of job at all.”

  “ ‘But for the grace of God, there go I,’ ” said John. “I very nearly went out of my mind in the war, Entwistle.”

  “All the more reason for giving lunatics a wide berth now,” said Mr. Entwistle. “Wentworth, this is very good apple tart. Try some cream with it.”

  John pulled his plate back and tried again. “No,” he said. “All the more reason for serving the mentally sick in every way open to me.”

  “They’re not as unhappy as you think they are,” said Mr. Entwistle comfortably.

  “How do we know?” said John miserably. “We don’t know, Entwistle.”

  “Very well then, we don’t know,” said Mr. Entwistle. “And I refuse to spoil good food worrying because I don’t know something which would probably give me no pleasure if I did know it.”

  “I am being a most discourteous guest,” said John apologetically. “As you said, Entwistle, it is very good apple tart.”

  “Have some coffee?” suggested Mr. Entwistle.

  “No, thanks.”

  “I will,” said Mr. Entwistle. “I need support. I’m not looking forward to my afternoon.”

  “Selfish beast that I am,” said John. “Here I am, absorbed in my own depression, and you no doubt with a funeral before you. You must see a lot of sadness in your profession, Entwistle.”

  “I should feel no sadness at Mrs. Belling’s funeral,” said Mr. Entwistle with rosy, smiling honesty. “But I do not at all look forward to interviewing her this afternoon and persuading her to sign that power of attorney.”

&nb
sp; “I’ve let you in for this, I’m afraid,” said John.

  “You have,” said Mr. Entwistle. “And had better accompany me.”

  “No, Entwistle, no!” implored John. “I’m no business man. You know that.”

  “I do,” said Mr. Entwistle, “and I’m not requiring you in that capacity. But you have excellent persuasive powers. If I cannot persuade the old lady to put pen to paper you may have better success. Now will you join me in some black coffee? Yes? Waiter, two black coffees, please. I told Miss Giles and Miss O’Hara, Wentworth, that they must send for the doctor with or without Mrs. Bellings’ permission. Were she to die without having seen a doctor they would be severely censured. I wonder how they got on.”

  The question was answered when the door was opened to them by a tired-looking Mary. “It was hateful when the doctor came,” she said. “Aunt Rose shouted at him. It was horrid.”

  “She should be in a nursing home,” said Mr. Entwistle.

  “That’s what the doctor says,” said Mary. “He thinks she’s very ill. But how can we persuade her to go? Do you think you could, Mr. Wentworth?”

  “All in good time,” said Mr. Entwistle. “First I’ll have a little talk with her on the subject of this document. There’s Miss Giles. Good afternoon, Miss Giles. Is your patient ready to see me?”

  “As ready as she’ll ever be,” said Miss Giles with gloom. “I’ll take you up now.”

  “I’ll ask for your assistance if I need it, Wentworth,” said Mr. Entwistle. “I may be able to manage alone.” And he mounted the stairs with a buoyancy which filled John with profound admiration. Entwistle was a very brave man.

  “Come into my schoolroom to wait,” said Mary impulsively to John. “It’s the only decent room in the house. Though of course it looks nicer in term-time, when it has the children in it. We’ve sent the boarders away to various friends. We thought it was better for them.”

  “Much better,” said John, looking round the fresh, clean little room. “But I like the room even without children. Has Miss Giles been sitting here with you?”

  “You’re observant,” said Mary, laughing and removing some dun-colored knitting and Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson from a chair. “I don’t fly to the classics for comfort, as Giles does. I’m too frivolous. Worthy people always read the classics when things are difficult. I was wrong about Giles, Mr. Wentworth. She’s good.”

  “I’m glad you’ve made friends with her,” said John. “I’m glad I have. I like and respect her. But none of us are good.”

  “However hard we try to do a job of work well it’s always smirched somewhere by what we are, isn’t it?” said Mary sadly.

  “Every darn thing,” said John. “But don’t let that depress you. I think it’s even harder to accept the faults and limitations of one’s work than of oneself, but what else can we do? Our work will be perfect when we are, and not before. So you’re too frivolous to turn to the classics for comfort. Is poetry frivolous?” He picked up the open volume that lay on the jade-green sweater she was knitting. “ ‘The Dying Swan’ and ‘Kindness.’ Were you reading ‘Kindness’?” He read the last four verses aloud, reading as he always did musically and with delight, forgetting himself.

  “Oh! well may the lark sing of this,

  As through rents of huge cloud,

  He broacheth blue gulfs that are bliss,

  For they make his heart proud

  “With the power of wings deployed

  In delightfullest air.

  Yea, thus among things enjoyed

  Is kindness rare.

  “For even the weak with surprise

  Spread wings, utter song,

  They can launch . . . in this blue they can rise,

  In this kindness are strong, . . .

  “They can launch like a ship into calm,

  Which was penned up by storm,

  Which sails for the islands of balm

  Luxuriant and warm.”

  “That chap liked birds. Nothing about birds is frivolous reading, Mary. Birds are an extremely serious subject. Do I call you Mary?”

  “I should hope so,” she said. “But I was reading ‘Kindness’ for a frivolous reason. A man I know told me he liked it. He thought I’d been kind to him and it was his way of paying me a compliment.” The pink in her cheeks deepened. “I like compliments.”

  “So do I,” said John, putting the open book back on her knitting again. “I seldom get one but when I do it does me more good than a bottle of tonic.”

  Mary took a deep breath and put her finger on the second verse,

  Of the soul that absorbeth itself

  In discovering good . . .

  but before she could pay him the compliment of saying it aloud the door opened and Mr. Entwistle came in.

  “Wentworth, I think you’d better come upstairs,” he said, and such was the urgency of his tone that John went with him at once, with hardly any sensation of dread. He was generally all right once the trumpet had sounded.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “Neither Miss Giles nor I can do a thing with her. She must be entirely crazy. We’ll wait outside on the landing while you have a try. She’s merely to sign her name either to a deed of attorney or, if she doesn’t like that, to a few cheques. See what you can do.”

  Miss Giles on the landing opened the door and John went in and shut it behind him. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Belling,” he said, and sat on the chair beside the bed. The hot, stuffy, luxurious room did not affect him as the drawing room had done because his whole mind was focused in dismay upon Mrs. Belling herself. He did not know her, for the mask had gone. The sweetness, the placidity, had vanished, and this was Mrs. Belling. She was speechless with rage, shaking with it, her face purple, her hands plucking at the soiled eiderdown, but what he saw in her eyes was fear. He had sat by the dying so many times, and seldom seen fear, and when he had it had been the fear of a child shrinking from the dark, not this dreadful animal fear. Worse than that, for animals die submissively. Demoniacal fear. Yet was she dying? No one had told him so.

  “You’ll take a turn for the better now this bright weather has come, Mrs. Belling,” he said, and heard his banal words coming as from a great distance. He himself was at a great distance from this woman. Nothing he could do or say would bridge the gulf because there was nothing here to appeal to. There was nothing here but anger and fear, things in themselves entirely sterile. Divorced from the love of righteousness, the fear of God, they were nothing. There was nothing here. He had not realized before the ghastly evil of negation. He had seldom felt such evil. Nothingness was a bottomless pit and it was that she feared. He began to understand her a little. She was not crazy, as Entwistle thought. To sign that paper giving the power of attorney to Mary was to part with the one possession that she still had in this world. Power. While she refused to sign she had power to paralyze the life of the house, to keep Miss Giles and Mary in entire dependence upon her. She had been a woman of power all her life, not least when she had used her power for the procuring of her own comfort only. For a sick woman there was no comfort any more, but there could be power while she refused to sign that paper. Once she had signed it she had nothing, and would be consigned to nothing. The words to which Mary had pointed rung hopelessly in his mind. “The soul that absorbeth itself in discovering good.” There was no good to discover here. There was nothing. He had never felt more helpless.

  Yet he must try, and he heard himself making the usual appeal, the one that any man or woman turned to instinctively when persuasion was needed, so much is a modicum of kindness a normal part of humanity. “Mrs. Belling, it would be doing a kindness to Miss Giles and to your niece if you would sign this paper. And to Annie too, who is in need of her wages. If you would prefer it you could sign some cheques but you have said yourself that you do not wish to be bothered with that. This just
enables your niece to transact your business for you until you are better again. It’s just a matter of kindness, Mrs. Belling. Look, here is your fountain pen, and the paper. I’ll hold it steady.”

  She took the paper from the blotting pad he held for her and with all the strength she had tore it across and across. Then with an effort ghastly to see, but so savagely powerful that he was in capable of stopping her, she reared herself up and attempted to fling it, as she had flung Baba’s ointment, into the fire. The scraps of paper fell on the eiderdown and she fell back, sagging heavily to one side. He tried to call out for Miss Giles, but the words would not come. He felt as though he were in a nightmare. Gritting his teeth he bent over her and lifted her gently back onto her pillows. He looked in her eyes, still full of that terror, and saw that she was dead. Again he tried to call for help but his throat felt parched and dry. He fell on his knees but the familiar prayers would not come to him. When the other two came into the room he was still on his knees, but trembling as though the hot stuffy room had suddenly turned cold.

  3

  For the next few days Michael did not leave the manor house garden. This halcyon weather would break soon in storms from the sea and while it lasted he must clear the brambles and the weeds from the beds and paths of the garden, so that the children might play there in the sunlight and a queen and her lover walk there under the moon. And Miss Wentworth too, he kept reminding himself. But he had to keep reminding himself, for Miss Wentworth seemed strangely detached these days. She was as delightful a hostess as ever, she busied herself as usual with her house, pigs and poultry, but he felt a change in her. She was not in any way losing her grip on things, for he felt a new resolution in her, but it was a resolution towards detachment. Vaguely uneasy, he gardened madly and thought of the old man who had appeared out of the dusk and talked to him through the library window. He kept picturing him in the garden. Once or twice he could have fancied that he heard his footfall on the flagged path behind him. He had very soon discovered that one can have very odd sensations while gardening. A close union with the earth seemed to involve one in union with a good deal more than the earth.