A Little Treachery

2

Yes, she knew what was coming, knew exactly what was about to happen, for they had had all this done to them before.

But by whose hand?

‘A peasant with a thick neck and face red as a carrot. “How can you expect her to take such a load?” “She is mine; I can do what I like, can’t I? . . . I say she shall gallop!” “Such a gallop as she has not had for ten years.” ’ And he strikes the animal on the eyes, on the very eyeballs.

Memory helplessly reproduced broken phrases from that dream of cruelty, from which had come those words she had heard on waking.

When these died away, the picture of a little child appeared in a soft, mild light.

Days ago – or was it hours ago? – she had closed the front door on two callers and turned back into the room in a state so distracted that the very memory of it was blurred for her now; but she remembered thereafter rushing through the house, laying hands at random on such intimate possessions as she could come upon, her own and Clem’s, the private papers, the letters, the little worthless treasures, intending to destroy them or put them out of reach by any means – in the frame of mind, with the panic inconsequence of one who hears a terrible enemy approaching and must escape at all costs, and yet must take some vital measure before escaping.

But from this crazing memory also she stumbled forth, grasping the picture of the child, as one staggers out of a bombed ruin instinctively grasping a treasure.

She had come upon it that day while pitching the contents out of a drawer, haphazard, and she had stopped dead and knelt to take it on her lap, and had looked at it for a long while in astounded grief – this faded photograph of her sister as a child of two or three – and in looking she had grown quieter, because of incredulity.

Clem, her sister, aged two or three. A little blithe, laughing thing, with that dancing look in the eyes, full of light, which the camera catches in the clear blue iris. A darling, plainly; a child of the most happy temperament. It was a picture of artless charm. She was seated on the usual fur rug then in vogue. Clem’s hair was straight, but it had been curled up into an absurd quiff or love-lock to one side of her forehead. The dress, with the little neck-band and wide yoke, was a size too large, roomy, both because of the fashion and to allow for growth, and the cuffs fell half over the clumsy little hands, which held a small tin cup. She was the very picture of glee, her eyes sparkled, her teeth were pearly, her feet curled together in that movement expressive of tickled pleasure in the young child. Catherine had knelt there for some timeless while, absorbing a faint warmth, and thinking, ‘No, it’s impossible! And tomorrow, of course – tomorrow – when they come to fetch her, we’ll shut the door in their faces!’

If a pathetic story, half forgotten, had then come back to her, a story of how, on any day of unusual gloom, that merry little child would begin to fret and raise a sad plaint till the light was put on, it had been out of her power at that moment to relate story and picture, to see how one shadowed the other.

But with purpose forgotten, she had gone on rummaging idly in the heap of papers she had tipped out on the floor (which lay there still, in the corner of the middle room), and so coming upon a photograph of herself at the same age had paused to look at that, too; the only passable one they had ever got of her, and they had succeeded that time only because it had been taken without her knowledge. Otherwise, she could have been trusted to weep and throw her arms over her head. ‘What a child! My poor mother! There I sit, a born misery, as the phrase went in those days – there I sit with bleared eyes already suffused with tears and a face pinched with woe, and, because I am a little deformed in the spine, that bunchy, humpy look which adds to the dismalness of my appearance quite grotesquely. I dimly remember the occasion and believe I suspected the ruse and the hidden camera. It did not matter, I was always on the verge of tears anyway. They got me, but only just in time; a second picture – ah, here it is! – catches me shrinking back with a sort of snarl. This one was kept by way of a joke, and I, though terribly hurt by it secretly, never thought to destroy it. There it was. That was myself. Nothing to laugh at, really, for it’s the picture of a frightful tyrant. (Remember that! An evil spirit.)

‘No, if they had strangled me, I would never have blamed them, there would have been no accusing look from me when we met at Compt.

‘Well, there’s our story – it’s all in the pictures. Look. Clem cries for light – I cover my eyes from it.’

They could not have been less alike. Catherine’s was a miserable heritage of woe and weakness. She was born at a time when her mother was ill and wild with grief at the long, piteous sickness and death of a little son, her eldest child and passionately loved. And every inch of her betrayed that she was ‘ill-born’.

But the darkness about this formidable goblin stirred uneasily, as if to body forth some further horror, and she turned to dwell as long as the vision would hold on the merry little one with the painted cup.

Clem had always seemed like one possessed of the perfect disposition, sanguine and sweet-tempered. She had always treated Catherine with the purest kindness. Not enough for her was the patient tolerance of the elder sister. Never questioning, even in childhood, that the burden of looking after Catherine should alight on her shoulders, she had never (and now who knew how much to the hurt of both of them?) lost sight of the weak and miserable little child.

Never lost sight of her!

But might it not be that the dreadful view of her small sister as a born misery had made too deep an impression on Clem’s mind in childhood? Too deep, seeing that her nature was already all benevolence and compassion, all conscience and uprightness? And that the voice of her tender conscience, pleading the little misery’s need of help and protection, had never been stilled all her life? And that she had regarded her all her life with an unacknowledged dismay, amounting at last to despair?

‘Oh God, is that possible?’ She seemed to have cried out.

She had actually been in a light sleep, perhaps, lying there in the April dawn, a sleep in which the present was obliterated, since Clem had appeared to her thus, young, always benign, still the protector, the refuge.

So now, if thought again edged on torment, it was because she was waking. She was like a miserable straggler from a bloody rout, fleeing with crazed visions of home through mud and darkness, on whom it suddenly breaks, through his fever-visions, that home is leagues away, seas away.

She woke suddenly. The hour-hand of the clock could not have moved perceptibly through all that intricate reverie, for the light had barely changed.

Some noise must have roused her; it was some noise which had returned her from gazing into a smiling face, half-comforted, to the little house in which the light of the spring dawn was now beginning to make things visible, as they were. A door closing?

She thought she heard a door close softly. She crept out and listened, staring down. Then she called faintly her sister’s name, too faintly to be heard, and once only. Why, why did she do that? She waited still, crouched down, and made some attempt to cover her ears – but then thought, ‘Look at it, don’t be afraid to look at what you are doing. Useless to pretend.’ She dragged on hands and knees into the next room, the room with the garden view, crawled to the window, keeping her forehead below the sill. Still she made the gesture to cover her head. But the inner voice said grimly, ‘Look at it!’ And so at last she stood up and launched a burning stare into the scene which gradually, gradually seemed to blanch before her eyes, touched by the white light from the east in its upper regions, while below all was dark.

‘I cannot see!’ she thought, terror crashing on her.

If she saw her sister going down the garden to the stream, to the calm, deep ponds, she had resolved to stand there, holding back the instinctive cry, urging on the broken will with all the force of her own, with all the spiritual force of which she was capable. ‘Quick, quick! Yes – escape. Save yourself. The only way!’

But the intellect demands what the selfish heart cannot accede to. The heart of flesh needs body as well as soul; hands, eyes, and every hair of the head.