‘I was thinking only of your good,’ she said. ‘Or rather, of your and the children’s good. You needn’t suppose I have any other reason for wanting to marry you.’
The Vicar said, ‘If you only knew the abhorrence I feel…’
‘If you think you have any physical attraction for me, you’re mistaken,’ said Hilary.
‘I pray God I haven’t.’
‘Don’t bother to bring God into it. You haven’t.’
‘Then don’t say another word about so revolting an idea.’
Hilary began to feel angry. ‘Will you try to realize’, she said, ‘that in some ways the thought of marrying you is probably just as distasteful to me as it is to you. But I was prepared to sacrifice my comfort, and the very real pleasures of my present manner of life, in order to look after you and give your children the benefit of a secure and sympathetic home. I was Caroline’s friend – her true friend, I hope – and it was my deep regard for her that finally persuaded me to make this suggestion. But if you find it revolting …’
‘I do.’
‘Then I’ve been wasting my time. But I won’t suffer from your refusal to be sensible. It’s you who will suffer, you and your children, and if you weren’t ill, both in body and mind …’
‘My mind is absolutely healthy, and my mind rejects this abhorrent plan with every scrap of strength it possesses. Our marriage is impossible. The mere thought of it is shameful and humiliating and disgusting. I refuse to say another word to you. I must ask you to go, to go now, and do not come back till you have given me time to forget – if I can forget – this horrible suggestion.’
Limping and leaning on his stick the Vicar turned his back on her, and walking to a table, with trembling fingers picked up a book. Hilary stood for a moment or two in silence. Words, half-sentences, explanatory phrases, and indignant phrases struggled within her against a feeling of breathlessness, a kind of nervous asphyxia. They struggled and were defeated. She could say nothing. She turned and fled. With difficulty she restrained herself from running down the drive.
Above all thoughts of her own, above all other memory of the Vicar’s words, she could hear the hatred in his voice, when, breaking into the clatter of her explanation, he had shouted, ‘You fool!’ All thought dissolving, she began to cry. An endeavour to understand gave place to more urgent endeavour as she tried to withhold her tears. She walked at a great pace, and the tears came faster than she could sniff them back. She saw Mrs Sabby approaching her, and crossed to the other side of the road. She passed Sir Gervase without seeing him, and Sir Gervase stood and stared after her in great astonishment. She came to Rumneys with no desire in her mind except the desire to hide herself, and a maid, looking curiously at her, told her that Mr Peabody was waiting in the library.
‘Say I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I can’t see him now.’
She went upstairs, and took off her hat, and bathed her face before she looked in the mirror. ‘He’d no right to say that,’ she whimpered. ‘I’m not revolting! I’m not disgusting!’ And tears flowed afresh.
She heard at tap at the door. The maid came in and said, ‘Mr Peabody asked me to tell you that his business is most important, and he would be obliged if you could see him for only a few minutes’.
Ten minutes later Hilary was ascribing her unhappy appearance and malaise to the heat, and to walking too fast in the late afternoon sun. Mr Peabody was sympathetic in a perfunctory way, but his news, he said, was so urgent that he had felt it necessary to impart it without delay. He opened his brief-case and made a busy little rustling noise among its papers.
‘I have been in communication with a firm of solicitors and various other agents and authorities in Bombay,’ he said, ‘and the result of my several inquiries is somewhat startling. George, as you know, gave into my keeping the certificates referring to his marriage, the death of his wife, and the birth of his children. Now all these certificates appeared to be copies, such as may be obtained on payment of a small fee, and after some thought I decided to cable to the Registrar in Bombay and ask him to confirm them. He presently replied that he was unable to find the entries I referred to. Thereupon I established communication with Messrs Lighterwood, Lighter, & Webb – solicitors with whom my late partner had some connexion – and asked them, among other things, to search the files of the local newspapers for the usual contemporary notices of these vital events. Their information is that the columns devoted to the notification of births, marriages, and deaths, in The Times of India, and several journals of smaller importance which they also examined, make no mention either of George’s marriage or the birth of any one of his children. They further state that he had recently been employed, in a humble capacity, by the Bombay and Rajputana Railway, and for some time had been living, with such a family as I described, in a small house, the property of the railway company, in Parel. But according to local evidence there had also been living, in the same house, a middle-aged or elderly woman whose present whereabouts cannot be discovered.’
‘A servant, I suppose,’ said Hilary.
‘Possibly,’ said Mr Peabody. ‘Messrs Lighterwood, Lighter, & Webb were also thoughtful enough to give me some information about George’s previous movements. That is, activities prior to his employment, or rather re-employment, by the Bombay and Rajputana Railway. He apparently incurred the displeasure – though why, or to what extent, is not known – of one of the Indian Princes, and he seems to have been…’
‘Does that matter now?’ Hilary asked. ‘I think you’ve told me enough to show what you suspect, and frankly I don’t believe you. I’m not feeling very well, and perhaps I’m not being very intelligent: but if these aren’t George’s children – and that’s what you’re implying, isn’t it? – then whose are they and how did he get them? And where did he get these copies of their birth – certificates? There are too many difficulties that you can’t explain. Perhaps the children were registered somewhere else, and perhaps he couldn’t afford to send a notice to the papers.’
‘The forgery of documents such as these’, said Mr Peabody carefully, ‘is happily a rare occurrence, at least in this country. But it is not entirely unknown, even in Great Britain. And in India, or so I have heard, it is possible to procure evidence of a much more unusual and seemingly impossible character. I have been told, though I cannot say with what truth, that one may there procure a dead body in order to charge a man with murder.’
‘But George has procured five living bodies, and surely that’s very difficult, even in India?’
‘But if these birth-certificates cannot be confirmed …’
‘You must talk to George himself about it. I really can’t give my mind to it now, and I don’t much care what happens, anyhow.’
Mr Peabody was disappointed. ‘You are my fellow trustee,’ he said, ‘and it was my duty to give you this information. But, with your approval, I am willing to postpone any further action till I have had a talk with George.’
Hilary took some aspirin and went to bed. She went to bed calmly and with a reasonable purpose: she wanted to avoid George, to escape the necessity of talking to Doris and Tessie. But she took the aspirin with an almost theatrical gesture: she was a stranger to drugs, even to those mild domestic tablets, and she swallowed them – four of them – with the recklessness of one who seeks oblivion by reckless means.
George, on the other hand, sought stimulants when he heard that Mr Peabody wanted to see him on business so urgent that it could not wait till the morning. He dined well and drank a good deal of brandy before going to the small square house that Miss Peabody kept in such cold and perfect order for her bachelor brother; and so fortified he listened with great confidence to Mr Peabody’s clear but cautious narrative, and vigorously denied the imputation.
‘It’s a damned good thing for you, Peabody,’ he said, ‘that I’m not a touchy sort of fellow. You’re suggesting that I’ve committed a very serious crime, and unless I’m much mistaken that’s actionable.’
/>
‘No, no, no! I’m merely asking you to provide an explanation for the very curious fact that no original entries can be found to authenticate these certificates.’
‘You’re suggesting they’re forgeries. Well, they’re not! And your implication is that I’m claiming seventy thousand pounds on false pretences. Let me tell you this: you’re sailing on a damned dangerous tack, and you ought to put about before it’s too late.’
‘Various sums have already been advanced to you, amounting in all, I think, to two hundred and sixty pounds…’
‘To which I’m perfectly entitled.’
‘I shall be delighted if you can prove that. This inquiry, this necessary inquiry, is very painful to me, and nothing could make me happier than to hear your explanation of what is, at present, a very perplexing situation.’
‘So far as I’m concerned, there’s no explanation needed. I made certain claims, and I provided you with legal proof in support of them. If you want to question the children, you can. And if you want to apologize to me, you can. But you’ll have to do it pretty smartly, because I tell you quite plainly that if I don’t get an apology within the next twenty-four hours, I’ll get another man of business when I succeed to my inheritance. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!’
George went home and drank some whisky and soda. He repeated, for no one’s benefit but his own, his parting words to Mr Peabody, and felt very well satisfied with them. He thought of several other questions that Peabody might have asked, and invented replies that carried conviction in every word. He continued the debate until Peabody, beaten in every attack, grew vulnerable at every point, and with another peroration, more valiant than the first, he reduced him to silence, to a shape of abject defeat, and so left him with the valedictory echo of a triumphant apodosis ringing in his ears.
‘Or it’ll be the worse for you, my man!’ he repeated: and went to bed, not quite steadily, carrying in one hand the decanter and in the other a siphon of soda-water.
He whistled cheerfully while he undressed. He poured himself another drink and set it conveniently on his bedside table. He took from the bookcase – his boyhood’s bookcase – a shabby little red leather volume called Plain Tales from the Hills, and got into bed. But presently the print grew blurred, and his memory repeated the story of Mclntosh Jellaludin quicker than he could read it. He laid down the book and whistled half a dozen bars of the song to which he had undressed. But suddenly recognizing the tune, he stopped, and exclaimed, ‘Damn the road to Mandalay! I’m going to live in blasted England henceforth and for ever, and a bloody dull life it’s going to be, with a halo of respectability, like a bowler-hat too big for me, falling on to my ears, and nothing to listen to but the bleat and gup of my Willy-wet-leg neighbours, like sheep in a. field, like a penny rubber ball bouncing in an empty skull. Me with a stake in the country, and tied to it, by God, henceforth and for ever! And four meals a day, all on plates, and clean shirts so I don’t stink of over-eating. If a man’s got any richness in him he ought to stink. God, what a fug there must have been round St Francis! And ploughmen’s sweat, and a stoker’s sweat, go up to God like an acceptable sacrifice. But cow-dung, and smoke, and gki, and pan-supari: that’s the stink I like. Oh damn respectability to everlasting hell!’
George swallowed his whisky and soda at a gulp, and taking a cigarette, angrily struck a match.
He lay muttering to himself, his cigarette moving between his lips. He was not wholly sober, and not thoroughly awake. He moved restlessly, and pushed the clothes away from him. He felt hot, and kicked impatiently at the sheets. Pale beneath the electric light, a little flame thrust its black edge over the crumpled whiteness.
George, in a fright, leapt out of bed and grabbed the siphon. The stream of soda-water hit hard against the burning clothes, and soon extinguished the small fire. But George was taking no chances. He watered the whole bed, and emptied the siphon before he felt satisfied that danger was averted. And then it seemed that he had nowhere to sleep, for the bed was as wet as a marsh. But George, after a little display of annoyance, was not noticeably worried by this. He shrugged his shoulders and put on his dressing-gown.
He turned out the light and stepped quietly into the corridor. A few yards away, round a corner, he opened another door, and went in. Doris turned over and looked at him with sleepy eyes. She did not appear surprised to see him. He got into bed beside her, and still she showed no surprise. She seemed, indeed, to welcome his visit.
Chapter 21
It was the result of taking drugs, thought Hilary. It was well known that drugs impaired the moral fibres, and as compensation for this damage they apparently induced a delicious feeling of lassitude. Hilary had slept soundly all night, and in the morning she calmly announced her intention of eating breakfast in bed. It was nine years since she had done such a thing – and then only during the aftermath of influenza – and she admitted that she would not have had the strength of mind to do it now had it not been for the immoral effects of aspirin. It was with a little holiday feeling, a sense of triumphant escape, that she sat up and surveyed the bed-table like a well-laden bridge across her knees.
But the major benevolence of aspirin – or perhaps of Hilary’s subjective submission to drugs – was the comparative calmness with which she read, and realized the significance of, a letter from the Vicar. There was, indeed, nothing to perturb her in what he himself had written: but his enclosure was, to use a meiotic figure, to employ a very mild sort of metaphor, a bombshell. Aspirin, fortunately, blanketed the force of its explosion.
His letter read as follows:
I feel that I owe you both an apology and an explanation for the violence of the mood in which I received your quite unexpected suggestion. I find no difficulty in apologizing. But it is very difficult to explain. It means that I must reveal a secret, and expose a pretence, that I have kept and maintained for nearly twenty-five years. You are charitable enough, I know, to forgive me – if forgiveness is needed – for my long deception. And I think I can trust you to keep my secret. You will understand why it must be kept. And you will also understand that I make you a partner in it, after long consideration and with considerable distress, because I was unjust to you, and perhaps caused you unhappiness: and this knowledge – I cannot bring myself to write it, but the enclosed letter should make all clear – will inform you why. I beg you, and I trust you, to tell no one else.
The missive enclosed was of an elder date. The ink was faded and the writing showed a thin out-moded angularity. The note-paper was heavily black-edged.
Dear Mary, it began, I’m not convinced by the arguments you state for wanting another £50. But sooner than squabble I enclose a cheque. Don’t take this for a precedent, though. I’m glad to hear that Lionel is doing well. He must take after you, religion and all. My liver is bad again, and Margaret’s death has upset me. I may have another pupil for Charlie before long, and I’ve told one or two of my friends about him. Do your best for Lionel, he’s the handsomest of all my gets, whether official or unofficial. And don’t waste the £50.
Yours affectionately,
Jonathan Gander
Lifting the bed-table from its bridge-like position across her legs, and carefully placing it lengthwise on the quilt, Hilary got out of bed, carried it towards the fireplace, and set it down before the fender. Then returning to bed, and making herself comfortable, she re-read Jonathan Gander’s letter. Blanketed by aspirin, its force reduced by lassitude, the bombshell burst in her mind. But it was shrapnel, not high explosive. The detonation was not single and destructive, but scattered the news in a hundred directions. She perceived in the tidings a score of explanations, a round dozen of implications, and forty existing or potential consequences. If Lionel was the illegitimate son of her father – but the derivatives ran too fast, the results came pell-mell upon her, and chasing now one, now the other, she missed the effect of the whole. Her heart beat quicker, she pursued a consequence with some excitement, but she escaped t
hat homologue of shell-shock which major news, of a totally unexpected nature, may sometimes bring.
Within a short time, indeed, she found herself thinking, with barely shamefaced satisfaction, that Lionel’s children were in some sort her nephews and nieces, and so she enjoyed a quasi claim to look after them. She felt suddenly fonder of Lionel than she had ever been before, and her relief at discovering the reason for his aversion from her – it had not been physical aversion, but merely canonical aversion – was so great as almost to blow back the very shock of discovery. And to find that her father, the munificent patriarchal Jonathan, had been guilty of an immorality, scarcely troubled her at all: but this insensitivity was almost certainly due to aspirin. In less than half an hour the summation of her emotions became something no more troublesome than a curiously sentimental exhilaration: and it was in this condition that she was found by Ruth – projecting her pale spectacled face round the door, after a shallow ‘May I come in, Aunt Hilary?’ – who proceeded to give her yet more news: such is the irrational bounty of Nature and the untimely profusion of Fortune.
Ruth, by virtue of one of those obscure predilections of childhood, had taken a great fancy to George’s little girl, Clarice. Clarice’s khaki topee, that she obstinately wore under Lammiter’s temperate sun, had possibly something to do with it; or her seeming obtuseness and taciturnity may have appealed to Ruth’s lively curiosity. At any rate, she became very fond of Clarice, and having overborne by sheer pertinacity her mother’s prejudice against George and his family, she had come, on her own invitation, to spend the last two week-ends at Rumneys.
Ripeness is All Page 26
