A Little Treachery

34

But having received sundry dramatic and remorseful looks across the restaurant table, Catherine had said to herself, ‘I have lost her.’

However, during the afternoon, Emmy was declaring she would not leave her for the world. This was on her coming in, thoughtful, from an errand into the town.

Later, at dusk, she made another expedition.

Emmy turned off from the high street into a steep lane which ran down between lofty, dank walls and tumble-down cottages, and finally led up to the station. In the hollow it crossed the stream at a point where it issued from the mill-ponds, and it was there, in that inauspicious spot, that she came upon a tall man leaning on the parapet under the willows. It was as if he had drifted into the depths naturally.

Ferdy had been thinking all day, and it had done him no good.

Perhaps because he vaguely felt the unbalance in himself, he had been thrown into a fit of gloom by the story of the sisters’ tragedy as told by Emmy when she had met their party in the town during the morning. He had fallen into one of his moods. This was his reason for cutting the lunch-party at the Unicorn. He had gone gloomily to feed in some little pull-up, and then, not unaware that his appearance in that countrified town was rather conspicuous, had taken to the country. He had come upon some new building which was going on in the valley and had hovered within sight of it for some while, attempting to cull a little more information about house property in the district without attracting attention to himself. Housing was not in his line of business, so no more likely role than that of a prospective buyer was open to him, and upon that he did not venture. He did not look like a householder. His appearance was always hampering, which was hard. Later he had called at the agreed rendezvous, to find that he had missed Emmy. Here he had listened to Greg’s earnest persuasions but refused to go back to town with his friends. He wanted a private word with his sister. They told him that Emmy would be found walking down the lane to the station at a certain hour in the evening. Ferdy again took shyly to the byways, drifted about the leafy lanes with certain plans taking shape in his mind, and at dusk was down by the mill, leaning on the parapet, his hat over his dead eye. His thoughts were dark.

It made him feel queer to hear of people being put away, queer and sympathetic. Perhaps innocent as a babe – yes, sick only – taken helplessly. But he did not make much distinction between the various ways in which it might come about that one was shut up, or put inside. Bolts and bars; it was the thought of these which caused fear to jab so dangerously at the back of his insecure brain. The obscurity under the trees, the air full of the tumbling and splashing of the water, cut him off from the noises of surrounding life, cut off his thoughts in a world of their own, and fitly. These thoughts would have astonished any inhabitant of that quiet spot, just as his face, air and general cut had caused passing surprise to a few observant people. Ferdy’s clothes were good and unspectacular; that was not the trouble. But there was strangeness, there was failure at a certain level. And it was the same with his thoughts. Not that they were the thoughts of a wolf among sheep – rather they were the thoughts of a sheep among wolves, which, being among wolves, was obliged to go armed. A strayed sheep, too, such as the Lord loves.

He was a sympathetic man, he was a man capable of pity. Or at least he was capable of that spirit in which the poor help the poor, with the idea that they themselves will need help one day, acting half in superstition, acting for luck; that is, making a superstitious attempt to avert evil from themselves.

There it was (whatever it was); some motive in Ferdy which transcended the hope of gain, and yet, miraculously, did not preclude it. Ferdy liked a good motive and nearly always worked from one.

Emmy came up to her brother in the shadow and began by crying firmly over the gushing and splashing, ‘As it happens, I’m pulling out of it, so don’t count me in.’ But her pause, after she had said this, was dubious. Ferdy had made no response. The water racketed on in their ears. She could not make up her mind whether it would be better for her to go or stay at the cottage; and this from a consideration quite apart from her own interests. There was no question, now, of drawing off the scent by going; truly she was afraid, though in a carefully unformulated way, of what her brother might compel her to do if she remained. For she knew what she was like with Ferdy; she was weak.

‘Well, I’ve enjoyed my stay here,’ she said, perhaps dimly hoping to make virtue sound enticing, or at least to encourage herself in good ways. ‘I’ll say that. And I feel the better for it.’ She had drawn close to him so that there was no need to shout. Thus she got Ferdy’s voice, slow and mild, sounding rather kindly, right in her ear. Still, it was doubtful if anyone not used to him could have made out anything but the gist of what he said. To Emmy it conveyed this meaning: ‘Ah, I’m glad you’ve enjoyed yourself.’

‘Yes, so am I. And I’ve enjoyed the high principles.’

‘I like my sister to be high-principled.’

Emmy improvingly retailed the many austerities she had found practised at the cottage. ‘Never a bottle in the house. Strict truth in season and out of season. Clean sheets every week, and towels the same, and as little to eat as any soul could exist on, and that you could eat off the floor, supposing you should wish to. But, mind you, I like it, I respect it –’

‘With the help of the Unicorn.’

‘Well,’ said Emmy more tolerantly, ‘there’s no harm in eating. It isn’t that. Though there’s the look of it. . . . When I remember what I felt like, getting out of the train, and, if you’ll believe it, even snow laying around, not swept up –’

‘Lying, lying.’

‘Lying, by all means, if you prefer it – and I dare say you do. But it only shows you not to be prejudiced, for I’ve got on fine. I was like an old-time milkmaid inside of a month. Rosy! Simple!’

‘She’s a bad sight, I presume?’

‘Yes and no. Well, she’s got what I call a very charming smile. Yes, I should describe her as having a really wonderful smile which changes her face utterly!’ Emmy cried, suddenly bringing about this total change in Catherine’s looks, since nothing less than that could really mend matters. ‘Only she doesn’t lay it on often enough. And a nice laugh, to. But ditto there. However, she’s better than when I first came. I feel I’ve done a stroke of work on her. I feel proud of her now – like you do of a kid you’ve pulled through an illness. I wouldn’t like her to go back. . . . Of course, it’s no good really. She’s eating her heart out. And all the while, not a word to me. I feel that. When, after all, all the neighbours were in on the show from the word go. I heard it all from Mrs S. to the last detail.’

‘Should you call her a good woman?’

‘Why, she’s an angel!’ Emmy cried, with dramatic sense catching fire.

‘Right. Doesn’t go to church, by any chance?’

‘Ah, well – no!’

‘Well, you can’t have everything.’

‘Innocent as a child. No, worse, for there’s plenty she doesn’t know that any spry child does. Yet you’d be mistaken to think her really missing, like I rather inclined to at first. But not afterwards. Because there’s deeper sorts of things than never having seen the inside of a bar. There’s feelings –.’ But here Emmy herself could but feel. She turned to what was more readily expressed. ‘I wouldn’t for anything get anyone into drinking ways, but a glass of the good poison now and again would brighten her outlook. It’s a sad outlook.’ Then she was reminded of other instances of Catherine’s oddity and related them.

After listening with head bent to her, Ferdy gloomily made known his opinion that the woman was already border-line.

At this, Emmy ceased talking, with an effect of sudden thought. ‘I don’t like to picture her putting herself out,’ she said after a moment. ‘But so she will, that’s my belief, as soon as she’s alone again. Though Mrs S. has promised to keep an eye on her – not that Mrs S. cares really, but thinks it’s up to her to prevent anyone getting off in peace. Was the best I could do. Or the worst – I don’t know! . . . I don’t like to think of it. . . . It’s funny, because they’re both getting on, the sisters, I mean’ – Emmy spoke not scathingly but with plain realism – ‘and what did she expect, then, you wonder? Something pretty bad’s bound to happen to all of us in the end.’

‘Not necessarily. You can go quickly.’

‘Well, good luck to her!’ cried Emmy, like one who does not wish to hear what she has heard. ‘I’ve done my good neighbour act and enjoyed it. I’m sorry to be skipping. Nor do I like this idea of the daily grind I’m letting myself in for. Besides which, I shan’t feel as good as this up among the boys. Yes, it’s true, doing the right thing by your neighbours makes you feel good.’

‘Quite right, Emmy. I’m glad you’ve got such principles. Do unto others.’

Both were then silent. It was a silence full of discomfort of various kinds. The noise of the fall, the writhing tresses of the black water gulped away under the bridge, the wreaths of lacy foam scumming the surface, equivocal in the dark, horridly suggesting something disintegrated from long immersion, the dank smell, the slimy, leprous brickwork, the participating whispers of the leaves all round them, the feeling of being too much in the open – all could only strike these urban spirits as undesirable.

‘What’s the matter with the station, then?’ asked Emmy plaintively. ‘Seats there, and all. Didn’t they tell you the station? You and your charnel-house tastes.’

This brought no answer.

‘For God’s sake,’ she said, her nerve going, ‘say what you want. I can’t think what you’re cooking up. It was only a passing fancy. Don’t you know a gold brick when you see it? Most likely she hasn’t given it another thought. And, anyway, there she is. And will live to be ninety.’

There was further silence.

‘Wouldn’t she be better off in heaven?’ said Ferdy at last in a slow, deep voice. Several witty answers suggested themselves, but Emmy’s gift for backchat suddenly deserted her.

‘Now, if you’d said the sister would –’

‘The sister, too. I meant the sister.’

‘Look here, why fidget?’ Emmy asked placatingly and in a helpless manner. ‘One – I’ve been told in so many words, by one who knows, that the sister won’t last long. Two – see what my poor friend herself is like, and how much chance she’s got –.’

The woman wouldn’t get much further, Ferdy observed in his hoarse murmur, before she was picked up by the hospital herself, by the sound of it. And what then? What then, eh? No doing herself in then! They’d keep her alive for ever. That was what those places were for – to keep them alive for ever. ‘To hell with your Mrs S. – to hell with her, I say, interfering bitch,’ he was heard to be concluding in his mild, muted tones. ‘She’ll be the one to hand her in, that one will.’

‘No, no, Ferdy, she’ll do it of herself,’ Emmy said, frightened, not answering his words. ‘You don’t want to do anything –.’

Ferdy intimated that she had misunderstood him; he said this with calm, kindly contempt, like one who was well used to being misunderstood. He was a merciful man, he said. Merciful. And it was the truth.

‘Good God, can’t you see that, ten to one, she hasn’t given the damn will another thought?’ Emmy burst out in sudden shrillness. But she could not keep that up with Ferdy, as she well knew, and she relapsed weakly; said the gnats were getting her and that she was going home.

A restraining hand on her arm, a hard-gripping hand which seemed inclined to twist, delayed her for a moment.

‘It is your business,’ Ferdy explained with a sudden clarity and with a surprisingly educated accent, ‘to see that she does give it another thought. To see that she does. That’s all. Nothing more.’

Emmy came home, and later in the evening announced that she was going to London ‘for a few days’. ‘So you’re going, Emmy?’ Catherine said quietly, calling up a smile. And the girl admitted it. ‘You see, I’ve got to think of my two little fellows – and the rest you know of. But I won’t tell Sambo, or you’ll have trouble with him. Tell him I’m blowing back in a day or two.’

After that, they had a little rather restrained and pondered talk, sitting by the window late and looking out into the moonlit garden, Emmy’s mood being unusually low-keyed.

‘And, look, dear, supposing you’ve by any chance made that will you spoke of, what I wish you’d do is to make another and leave me out of it, for, look, here I am, on the up and up, and your relatives ought to have any money that’s going, it may not be much, but everyone can do with a bit more money.’

If Emmy meant this, the speech was heroic. If she merely wished to sound Catherine as to what she had done, it was perfectly successful. But the two motives could exist together.

Catherine replied, absently, ‘Oh, yes, I’ve made it. No. Emmy, I’ll leave it as it is.’

Emmy’s spirits did not improve.

But by the morning things were decidedly better.

‘Well, we’ll see each other ever so often, I’ll always be running down –’ and the usual unconsidered things were said on the subject. ‘Never shall I forget my happy, happy days here! Only I may not be able to get away just at first, for it isn’t the kind of job I can do on my head. So, just at first – you’ll understand, won’t you, if just at first –.’

Then down came the whole gimcrack edifice of Emmy’s sojourning. A few links with her surroundings had been so lightly forged that they broke at a touch. One respectable case of solid proportions containing her wardrobe was packed and left to be called for; and then that collection of trifles which accumulates round even the lightest traveller during a six months’ visit was dispersed and cast to the winds without benefit of second thoughts; anything her sinewy little arms were found unable to carry at the last moment was thrust into fire or dustbin; and by the afternoon, with a terrible speediness which had had a numbing effect on both Catherine and Simon, there stood Emmy at the door, dressed for London. They had decided there should be no parting at the station, for fear of a scene with Simon. So, with many cries of ‘Happy days!’ ‘See you again ever so soon!’ and the like, she was off down the road, a little lively figure which often turned to wave or gesture humorously. The wind seemed to blow this little figure along like a piece of carnival flotsam, like a bit of spangled paper off a sweet – and Catherine thought, ‘I shall never see her again.’