Pilgrim's Inn

by Elizabeth Goudge

  Sally, who had glowed with delight at the thought of the carols, now went pale with dismay. “Oh, I couldn’t, Ben, I just couldn’t!”

  “Why ever not?” demanded Ben.

  “The size of me!” cried Sally. “And I can’t act, either. And with David—”

  “Won’t you like acting with David?” asked Ben in surprise. “You’re engaged to him, aren’t you?”

  “That’s why!” groaned poor Sally.

  “Leaning over a balcony no one will notice your size,” said Ben inexorably. “We’ll rig up the balcony across the stairs, in front of the alcove, with a lamp burning behind your head in the alcove, making your hair all golden. It’ll look grand. I’ve thought it all out.”

  John Adair was chuckling into his beard.

  “It just can’t be done, old chap,” said David firmly. “I’m having a rest cure.”

  “You’ve had it,” said Ben heartlessly. “And by this time you ought to be able to play Romeo in your sleep.”

  “No hope, you two,” said John Adair. “Haven’t you discovered yet that what Ben ordains sooner or later comes to pass? Always, throughout life, Ben will get his own way. It’s not selfishness, mind you, but his perfectly accurate conviction that his way is the right way. In this respect his Grandmother lives again in him. When a man has a strong will, backed by the conviction that he is right, he turns into just a common dictator, but when his will and his conviction are backed by the fact that owing to some felicity of vision he is right, the chances are that he may become a great man. Time will show whether Ben—”

  But Ben was not attending. “Mother, you know that old fur coat of yours, the stripy one—it would do nicely for Badger, wouldn’t it? And Grandmother has an old sealskin coat that would do for Rat. You’ll help with the costumes too, won’t you, Mother? You’re so awfully good at dressmaking.” Nadine, who had been clinging as to a life line to Ben’s statement that she and George need have nothing to do with this affair, let go of the life line. “And Father will manage the lighting, won’t you, Father?”

  “Malony’s better at that kind of thing than I am,” suggested George weakly.

  “I know, but Malony and Annie-Laurie will be taking part in the show.”

  “Good heavens!” ejaculated David. “What are they going to do?”

  “Some sort of turn on their own. They’ve just got to be in it. They’re troubadours.”

  “You’ve asked them?”

  “No. I thought you could.”

  “Not on your life!” said David violently.

  “Then Sally will,” said Ben placidly. “They won’t like to refuse Sally when she’s just got engaged.”

  “No, Ben!” implored Sally.

  Ben waived this refusal aside for the moment and returned to the subject of her clothes. “You’ll wear the Botticelli thing, won’t you? You know, the blue-green thing—”

  “Oh, Ben—” pleaded poor Sally.

  David stretched a hand under the tea table and gripped hers. He loved in her this sensitive shrinking from making a show of her love. During these last days, since they had taken the plunge, each response of hers to all the new situations created by their coming together had seemed to him lovely and right. Always she rang true. With each new day he fell more deeply in love and became not only more sure of her but more sure of himself. He would be able to make her happy. Grandmother had been quite right. “ ‘But lo, a light in yonder window breaks. It is the east and Juliet is the sun,’ ” he declaimed, smiling at Ben in capitulation, his hand gripping Sally’s tighter. His meaning came to her. Because of her, there was a new morning, a rebirth in his life. She was so happy she hardly knew how to bear it. She smiled at Ben too. “All right, Ben.”

  Nadine did not miss the tone in David’s voice, the light in Sally’s face. But she had taken the plunge too, and she smiled at them and because of them with all her heart. And dear old George was looking at her with profound and loving commiseration because of this darned entertainment. And John Adair with profound and loving admiration, because she had smiled. The love of these two older men was suddenly very precious to her.

  “If we’re all in this, even your poor old parents, it beats me where the audience is coming from,” said George to Ben.

  “Grandmother, Aunt Margaret, Uncle Hilary, Jill, Auntie Rose, and all the people round here who have been nice to us,” said Ben. “What are you all groaning about? This is an inn, isn’t it? If we aren’t hospitable this first Christmas then we don’t deserve to live here.”

  “But they’ll expect to be fed!” gasped Nadine in horror.

  “Oh, not much, Mother. Just a few sandwiches and drinks and things. It’s wonderful what Auntie Rose can rake out from under her nephew’s counter if Tommy wheedles her.”

  And so it went on, like a snowball rolling. The exhausted elders would have died of the orgy of preparation had they not been sustained by the laughter of Tommy and Ben, Caroline, Jerry, and José ringing through the house from dawn to dusk.

  — 2 —

  One evening after tea Sally took a box tied with scarlet ribbon out of her drawer, slipped on her fur coat, and went across the stable yard and up the steps to the flat above. She had chosen a moment when she knew that Annie-Laurie was alone there. She knocked at the door and then stood waiting, decidedly scared. She understood Annie-Laurie better now, for David had told her something of her history, but she had no idea how Annie-Laurie would take this intrusion. She had no idea what she was going to say or do. She was just obeying Hilary and Ben, those two gentle Eliots whose gentleness did not seem to prevent their getting their own way with typical Eliot success. The door opened and Annie-Laurie and the cat Smith stood upon the threshold, with behind them the pretty lamplit room and a fire burning on the hearth. Annie-Laurie wore a flowered overall, and the smell of ironing made Sally wrinkle her nose appreciatively.

  “Could I come in a moment, Annie-Laurie?” she asked shyly. “Or are you too busy?”

  From force of habit Annie-Laurie had stiffened defensively at the sight of an uninvited visitor violating the sanctuary of her home, then she relaxed and smiled.

  “Please come in,” she said. “I’ve just finished. Won’t you take your coat off?”

  Sally hated herself for putting on her fur coat as she saw Annie-Laurie’s hand unconsciously caressing the lovely fur as she laid it over a chair. It had been lying in the hall and she had just picked it up as the first wrap that came to hand. But it looked like flaunting her detestable opulence in front of Annie-Laurie. She felt, with shrinking, the firelight flashing on her emerald ring, lighting up her vulgarly bright hair, stressing those robust curves of her strong and healthy body. Beside Annie-Laurie’s fragility she felt like an overblown dahlia towering over a snowdrop. She had everything. Even David now. There was not a single thing, now, that she had not got. When Annie-Laurie turned round to her again her cheeks were hot with shame and her eyes as beseeching as those of a child caught stealing jam from a cupboard. And she stood as a child stands, straight and shy, holding the white box between her hands, wanting to give it but not knowing how. Annie-Laurie’s painful jealousy was suddenly eased. Really, she’d never been as shy as this, not even in her greenest years. It was she, so she discovered, who must take charge of this interview and put her guest at her ease.

  “Do you like my room?” she asked. “Mrs. Eliot gave me the lovely bits of old furniture, and I made the curtains and cushions.”

  Sally looked about her with admiration. “It’s lovely, Annie-Laurie. You’ve arranged it all so well. I’ll never be the homemaker that you are.”

  “Yes, you will,” laughed Annie-Laurie. “I haven’t congratulated you, have I? I’m so glad for you.”

  The words came out with a little difficulty, yet, as she said them, she found to her intense relief that she meant them. A large part of her past mental misery had been cau
sed by the intense bitterness that against all her desire had choked her natural friendliness. It was queer, she thought, how the thing that she had done, unknown to a soul, had seemed to lie in her like an ugly rock in the center of a stream, gathering to itself all other sins and failings, so that they piled up around it, damming the natural flow of her being. Now, everything confessed to Nadine and Malony, the thing seemed to have gone and her reactions were natural again—almost.

  Sally sat down in one of the two chairs before the fire, the white box still held between her hands. “I’m glad for myself,” she said simply. “I didn’t know one could be so happy. Yet I’m scared of not being equal to it. Letting David down. You know what I mean. Though Damerosehay will be our real home we’ll have a flat in town for the working times and I’ll have to be a good hostess—and—that sort of thing.”

  “You’ll manage,” Annie-Laurie assured her, and sitting now in the other chair she leaned back and laughed softly, luxuriating in the glorious unchecked friendliness that was flowing now between the two of them. Not for years had she sat like this with another girl in the firelight and talked over the dear trivialities that make up the warmth of life. She could feel them all there waiting to be talked about: furniture, saucepans, trousseau, and the rest. “You’ll have a big wedding? A white one?”

  “Oh, no,” cried Sally in horror. “As quiet as we can have it. In Uncle Hilary’s church with him to marry us. And not white. I’d look bigger than ever in white.”

  “Blue?” asked Annie-Laurie.

  “David says golden-brown—lion color. He says I look like a lion, a nice one. And Ben told me this morning that I reminded him of Mowgli’s wolf. I don’t think it’s very flattering of them, do you?”

  “I know what they mean,” smiled Annie-Laurie. “You’ll have to have a hat of some sort, of course, not just a handkerchief tied over your head like you usually have.”

  The talk flowed on quietly and happily for a little while about nothing at all, and Sally was not shy and ashamed any more; but she still seemed unable to approach the matter of the box in her lap. As always when she gave presents she was seized by a host of misgivings: that she had chosen the wrong thing, that it wasn’t as nice as she had thought it was, that there would be a break or a flaw somewhere, that perhaps its value would seem too little and her friend be hurt by her lack of generosity, that perhaps it would seem too much and make her look like that detestable thing, a patroness, that present-giving was really only a form of self-indulgence and perhaps it was best not to indulge in it at all. Annie-Laurie, seeing all this in Sally’s naïve, revealing face (really, she thought, she was as transparent as a child, and David Eliot would have his work cut out defending her from exploitation), was obliged to come to the rescue.

  “What’s in that box?” she asked with a touch of mischief that took Sally completely by surprise, and no wonder, for all the swift changes of mood, the lightness and the humor which had once made Annie-Laurie so fine an actress, had been extinguished in her for a long time, and never seen by those who had known her only at the Herb of Grace. The swift happy question was suddenly in keeping with the red ribbon round the box, the Arcadian lambs inside. With a sigh of relief Sally leaned forward and put the box on Annie-Laurie’s lap. “It’s for you. For Christmas. It’s two little Rockingham lambs. You see, Uncle Hilary told me that you used to look after the sheep in your mountains. And I worked with the sheep, too, in Cumberland, during the war.”

  Annie-Laurie, smiling and murmuring her thanks, was savoring the pleasure of undoing the red ribbons, lifting the lid of the box, carefully unwrapping the lambs from their cotton wool. She adored pretty things, but until this moment she had forgotten that she did. With a cry of delight she held the lambs in her hands. They were snow-white and they had blue ribbons and bells round their necks, and they carried Annie-Laurie straight back to her happy childhood. “Sally, they’re perfect!” she cried. “Bells! I used to tie bells round the lambs’ necks at home. It used to make the old shepherd furious. But he couldn’t swear at me as he wanted to because he’d given me the bells. Very old morris dancers’ bells.” She looked up at the bright bunch hanging from the beam. “There they are.”

  “I thought of your bells when I saw the lambs,” said Sally happily. “Are those the ones that you wore for your Christmas-tree dance that David told me about?”

  “Yes, those are the ones.”

  “Annie-Laurie,” cried Sally with impulsive eagerness, “I wish you and Malony would come back on the stage again. It would be lovely to have you in London. We’d be friends and help each other.”

  Annie-Laurie had felt her reactions to be normal again . . . almost . . . not quite. Suddenly the old terror gripped her again, that fear of the shame, the whispering voices behind her back. “No, Sally, I couldn’t! Not possibly. I can never go back, Sally. Never!”

  Sally’s cheeks went crimson with shame at her blunder. “I’m so sorry, Annie-Laurie. Please forgive me. I’m about the most blundering fool who ever lived.”

  Annie-Laurie mastered herself quickly, stood up, and put the lambs on the mantelpiece. “No, you’re not. You say straight out what’s in your mind and I like that in you. I know I ought to go back, for Jim’s sake—but I can’t.” She sat down again. “Tell me about Damerosehay. I’ve not been there.”

  They fought their way back to the warm trivialities and were at ease again until the clock struck six.

  “Those carols!” cried Sally. “We were to have a carol practice at six. You’re coming? Without your voice we’re just no good at all.”

  “We’re no good with it,” said Annie-Laurie gloomily. Then she brightened. “They always say depressing rehearsals make a good performance, you know. If things go too well in rehearsal you crash on the night.”

  “If only all these outside people were not coming!” sighed Sally, struggling into her fur coat. “Ben keeps thinking of more and more he’d like to come—and Juliet in the balcony scene gets worse and worse.”

  “Poor Juliet!” laughed Annie-Laurie. “How is the children’s animal thing going?”

  “Ben says it’s dreadful,” said Sally. “They’re trying to do a telescoped version of The Wind in the Willows and it won’t telescope.”

  Annie-Laurie had moved to put out the lamp, and while she did it Sally looked up at the bunch of bells over her head, gathering her courage to obey Ben’s command and ask for the help of the troubadours. She could not have done it but for her father’s remark, “Ben’s perfectly accurate conviction that his way is right.”

  “Annie-Laurie! Do your Christmas-tree dance for us, you and Malony! Just at the end. On the stage at the foot of the stairs. It would be lovely and just right. If everything else is a mess there will be that one perfect thing. Annie-Laurie, you must!”

  She had put her arms impulsively round Annie-Laurie and could not see her face, but she felt the stiffening of her body. But this time she did not apologize. Ben was always right, and her own instinct too told her to hold tight and go on.

  “Yes, Annie-Laurie. Please. You owe it to the Herb of Grace.”

  As a rule Annie-Laurie disliked endearments, but there was no suggestion of an endearment about the embrace of Sally Adair. The strength of her arms, the wholeheartedness of her hug, were more like some act of nature, like a great breath of spring wind that nearly takes you off your feet, or a sudden burst of sunshine through the clouds. Sally’s embrace was given rarely, but when it was given it definitely altered things. Annie-Laurie felt warm and safe in her arms, even as she had felt when she first came to the Herb of Grace. “You owe it to the Herb of Grace.” It was true. She did. She withdrew herself gently and reached for her coat hanging on the peg beside the door.

  “Very well,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

  Together they went out into the moonlight and down the steps to the yard. Each of them knew now that they were necessary to each oth
er, and would be friends until the end of their lives.

  — 3 —

  Ben’s dramatization of The Wind in the Willows continued to be no good at all. His designs for the costumes were admirable, and they were superbly made by himself, Nadine, and John Adair, and he was full of bright ideas. But they were too bright. His cast, Tommy, Caroline, and the twins, were incapable of carrying them out. Tommy and Caroline could learn their parts but they were without dramatic ability. Jerry and José had plenty of dramatic ability, too much in fact, but were of too tender years to commit their lines to memory. Or else they wouldn’t. Patiently Ben repeated the short simple sentences to them, but when asked to say them after him they merely replied with the two words “Hot sausage.” No one knew what they meant, but the fact had to be faced that they had decided to be not only uncooperative, but definitely obstructive. Ben finally, just two days before Christmas, fell victim to despair, and David was called upon in his professional capacity to give advice. John Adair came with him and stood leaning against the mantelpiece in the hall, chuckling into his beard, intrigued to see how the famous actor would deal with the situation, and finding him, as he expected, nervous.

  “Scrap it,” was David’s advice to Ben. “Much too difficult, old boy. You’ve aimed too high. Cut your losses and start again. Why not turn the speechlessness of these darned twins to good use and have mime?”

  The drooping spirits of Ben, Tommy, and Caroline rose a little. The twins, who were seals this morning, stopped slithering round and round the hall floor on their fronts and lay still to listen, with lazily flapping fins. David looked at them. Gently the fins rose and fell, now and then a tail waved, or a nose was lifted to sniff the air. They were lying in the ripples with the hot sun on their backs. For a queer flashing moment he saw the gleam of the water and felt the sun; it gave him quite a shock. Then he saw the light. No good trying to control genius with whip and rein. It must take its own way. He addressed them.