A Little Treachery

38

Almost at once they heard him running quickly and quietly up the stairs. Olive went out and met him with some explanation. Catherine, hearing them go into Simon’s room, went to the door and stood there, waiting. She felt calm. They came out after a very few minutes.

No, he did not look overwhelmed or in any way broken, as she had expected – so much had his doting love of the child impressed itself upon her. Only his eyes were red, as if from sleeplessness. But his manner was dry and cold. ‘Olive, I believe, imagined you might be able to elucidate things for us, that you might be able to cast some light.’ The sarcasm was barely hidden, and was directed as much at his wife as at herself.

She told him, unresentfully, that she knew nothing whatever to account for it. Only the child had taken a great fancy to Emmy Rivers, her young friend, and was perhaps unsettled by that parting. But no normal child could come to any serious harm from such a thing.

‘Ah,’ said Martin, breathing deeply. ‘Miss Hare! – your young friend! Who was so good with Simon! Such an ideal young person to have charge of a child! –’ But he broke off with a bitter pinching of the lips.

Catherine realized that he had information which he had not, for some reason, passed on to his wife, and indeed he had broken off as if having spoken impetuously and not wishing to explain himself – and of course she could only remember the Unicorn and Mrs Stewart’s accusing eyes.

She was astonished at her own indifference, and spoke quietly, defending Emmy. ‘You mustn’t blame her. She was fond of Simon. If she treated him unsuitably in any way, it was done in ignorance. She is used to children, but they are people not of your class. . . . But he’s an odd little fellow, he has odd moods. Odd, dull, unfeeling moods. We both noticed it. No, the child wasn’t normal when he came to us – you can’t deny it; he himself told us that he had ill-treated the baby.’

Olive’s sudden look of dark reproach cast at her husband told a tale which all but exonerated her. Hungerford’s face met this with a spasm of bitter protest. And as if afraid of further reference to a tender point, he coldly invited the visitor to come downstairs, thus shutting out Olive. They went into a fine, spacious room, sparely and delicately furnished, on the ground floor. Near one of the long windows lay a toy animal of some fantastic description, with its legs in the air. He went to the desk and pulled out a drawer, irresolutely, but then stood as if debating within himself.

The unhappy argument brimmed over, he spoke it aloud. ‘Some form of nervous exhaustion – that explains it. Obviously there’s been some strain of which we know nothing, about which we’re quite in the dark. Something which has exhausted him – something which has been exacting of him far too great an expenditure of nervous energy. A tension which has gone on for a long while. Something which violently stimulated and exhausted him – perhaps some adult feeling for which he’s much too young. And of course you don’t know of anything like this?’

She was silent.

He fiddled with a few papers, pushed in the drawer, searched another, and then came up to her with something in his hand.

‘You can’t help us, but at least you can refrain from persecuting us. I ask you now, for your own sake as much as for mine, to cease taking measures like this.’ His tone was so altered and unexpected that she glanced up at him. His face was severe and full of contempt.

As she did not put out her hand to receive it, he laid the card on the arm of her chair, saying. ‘You’ll recognize this, I believe. Simon, too, has had cards, but they come openly from your young friend. This is anonymous.’

She saw the manicured, elegant finger-tips as they laid the card down, and there seemed to be something ironical in the gesture, a slightly exaggerated elegance, which was cruel and fleering – but was probably only an unconscious manifestation of a distaste he could not control. A postcard of disreputable appearance. It bore a few lines of block-lettering, and she noticed that the first sentence, though coarsely done, was firm, clear and stylish, while the rest might have been formed by an illiterate hand.

‘Woe to the foxes, the little foxes. What did you get out of that deal at Ockentree? R.I.B.A., I.S.A., etc. A nasty show-up. The sins of the fathers, etc., etc.’

There was a short pause.

‘– the foxes, the little foxes –’ She involuntarily pictured Emmy’s little piquant face with the narrowed, sparkling, full-lidded eyes, smiling sidelong; but it had undergone a slight distortion, the whole face seemed heavier and looked intensely Jewish, as it had never looked to her before. A revengeful people!

But her mind cleared. That singular mixture of threat, sinister hint and jocose melodrama which the disgraceful postcard conveyed – it had seemed familiar, she had almost caught the rolling eye behind it. On second thoughts, however, she could not attribute it to Emmy, who was after all a philosopher, and a hard-headed one; but she thought of the party at the Unicorn. Her suspicion made her feel a little implicated and uncertain, and in a manner which therefore could not be frank, she observed, ‘It looks as if that was written as a joke.’

‘You’ve someone in mind?’

She was evasive and said, ‘But surely it isn’t a thing one can take seriously?’

‘You had someone in mind,’ he repeated, and she noticed the change of tense. ‘Sometimes writers of such threatening letters, to divert suspicion from themselves, imitate the style of an innocent acquaintance.’

‘A threat? No, surely it’s more like a joke,’ she insisted.

‘It strikes you as funny! Well, the whole thing has a sort of facetiousness, of course. But the implication. Miss Hare, is not at all funny. The implication is that I was bribed – there’s a threat to cause me annoyance by reporting me to one or another of the important architectural societies, which possibly have methods of dealing with unsatisfactory members – though that’s something out of my experience. But even if a man had done nothing whatever to be ashamed of, it would still be decidedly unpleasant to have it rumoured among friends and acquaintances in the profession that he had. It’s sufficiently unpleasant to have such a thing come through the post. . . . No, you see, not quite an innocent joke. A vicious attempt at mischief-making, in short, by an ignorant and naïve person – and none the less vicious for being absurd and ineffective, for of course although it might cause me annoyance, it couldn’t possibly damage me.’

In a bitter voice, suddenly and strikingly full of emotion, almost tearful, he added, ‘Moreover, what do you make of that “woe to the little foxes”? I’m not unaware that my hair is reddish – and so is my little boy’s! Isn’t that the threat of someone who has, or had, power to injure Simon?’

‘Come!’ she said in astonishment. ‘Can you really suppose I wrote this card?’ She had turned the thing over and found a vulgar picture, the applicability of which, if any, she did not attempt to fathom.

‘Since we’re being perfectly frank – yes, I think you did. At a moment of anger and excitement, which you now probably regret.’

‘It’s not to my taste,’ she said, faintly smiling, putting the card down. ‘Did you think it was?’

‘I think you must know,’ he replied in an unyielding voice, ‘that to imitate illiteracy and vulgarity is a well-known trick with writers of poison-pen letters.’

Nevertheless, he had looked at her. Not at all a stupid face, he saw now, still less a mean or brutish one. He was conscious that he had been prejudiced all along by its unhappy total lack of beauty. Her large, lined forehead so fiercely barred by the two upright strokes between the brows gave the whole face a character of desperation. Not thus would such a woman take her revenge – if she wanted revenge.

He hesitated. He drew up his shoulders and even smiled. His mistake was flagrant, and he had seen this at once, yet he felt quite unable to retract his accusation, for upon that offence his soul had pounced while he was still terribly shaken by what had seemed to him a threat to Simon, so that he had lost his judgement. It had been pure relief to him to think that she had put herself in the wrong. If this fact had hardly put him in the right, it had in some mysterious fashion gone a little way towards doing so. He could not acknowledge his mistake.

So he cried, softly, bitingly, in a voice shaking with exasperation, ‘If ever a man suffered for an act of charity –!’ He had made that kind of pretence people make at such moments of speaking to himself. He said to her, ‘You have that against me, haven’t you? Perhaps there’s a slight feeling of vindictiveness?’

‘No – I don’t think so – I don’t seem to care much now,’ she answered with shattering indifference.

He retreated, but he would not abandon his disproved weapon. He retreated to safer ground. And he was still dishonest when he said, ‘But what did you expect that cottage to be? I’m really at a loss!’ Now, however, he was on the right side again, and he added quite courteously, ‘I’m sorry indeed that you didn’t understand the limitations you had to expect.’

She was taken in. ‘Yes, what simpletons we were!’ she thought, standing in silence. She suddenly pictured their ignorance through his eyes, and thought that it might really seem incredible to him; and she felt ashamed, and felt a terrible pang for Clem, so easily cheated in her weakness.

But then he was led to continue: ‘After all, there was no great harm done. You had only to sell again if you found it unsuitable. . . . As I’ve told you, prices are hardening all the time – you could sell now, I should say, practically without loss. I do admit, I allowed you to pay a trifle too much for the cottage,’ he added hastily, ‘because I saw you were so keen to have it.’

Three words were all she heard of this, and she could hardly believe her ears.

‘No harm done!’ she whispered. ‘Don’t you know that it cost Clem her reason?’

At this, he was visibly shocked, flushed and said quickly, though not without tones of bitterness and exasperation, ‘I’ve deeply regretted my reference to your sister that day – the day I called – about Simon – in the spring. I had come, you know, all on impulse, without telling my wife – she had no opportunity to warn me. I rarely meet Margaret. My wife hadn’t seen fit to tell me – afraid, perhaps, of worrying me. You did realize on that occasion, I do hope, that I’d no idea your sister was ill. The fact had been kept from me! I heard nothing about it till – a little before sending for Simon. . . . Now she’s gone. What shall I say? In cases like that, so much worse than death –’ But he stopped, no doubt despairing of pulling the situation into decent enough shape to venture upon condolence.

But she remembered too vividly his manner then; his dry and disdainful and self-conscious amusement, the amusement of a man who supposes himself to have made a ludicrous conquest, who supposes himself to have fascinated some foolish, unattractive woman no longer young. ‘Why, the ass!’ she thought, and gave a brief smile. She remembered that Clem had disliked him and striven to be especially agreeable to him for that reason, feeling that she had cause for gratitude. She said nothing.

‘You mustn’t blame me,’ he repeated nervously, ‘for a hideous blunder due to ignorance.’

Indeed, she felt not the slightest anger against him. It seemed absurd that she had ever regarded him as to blame, in any serious sense, for the tragedy.

‘Blame you?’ she said at length, vaguely. ‘No, I don’t blame you, or very little.’ But she was giving his words a general application. ‘Who knows? I’d have done the same, perhaps, in your place. Just the thing that happened to be easiest, I expect. Only – well, it’s done! Yes, you were unfortunate when you came in contact with us. Anything could have hurt us. The least touch, to send us one way or the other. Yes, really you were unfortunate. . . . But, at the same time, you’ll have to take what’s coming to you now –’

‘Take what’s coming to me?’ he repeated, half mimicking her, disdainful, but alert and shocked at the threat, as it appeared to be.

‘Yes, I saw it, I’ll tell you now, and didn’t lift a finger to prevent it. Wait – no, not for revenge – indeed, I don’t know why! I couldn’t feel it mattered. I hadn’t the strength. You felt we didn’t matter. I came to feel you didn’t matter – you and Simon – and can’t rid myself of the feeling.’

In an indignant voice in which despair sounded, he protested, ‘But a child, a child!’

‘Yes, you’d have thought I might feel sorry for a child. I should have thought so myself.’ And she felt it was like the deadening of pain in the last stages of cancer. She added, ‘But a child has no better right to be considered than a grown-up. Why do you think he has?’

‘So you saw it and “didn’t lift a finger”! For a helpless, innocent child! You admit it.’

‘Well, the helpless and innocent aren’t always children. Children haven’t the monopoly of innocence. Far from it. And, anyway, who should suffer but the innocent? Who else?’ She saw Clem’s high, benevolent forehead, a little prominent and child-like, and saw it twitch into the last maniacal frown.

‘Oh, Clem!’ she cried, without being aware of him any longer, or of where she was.

She stood up. Suddenly she felt stifled, her head swam; she looked for windows and doors, wishing to get out, but somehow not able to think what to do to achieve this. She saw the toy animal, even stooped a little to look at it, having been puzzled all along as to what it was meant to be. All kinds of trivial reflections arose, were hastily seized and hastily crammed into the widening gap through which the flames showed.

She began to walk carefully, putting out her hand to lean on things in the way, for she was dizzy; while abruptly, impatiently she threw out the words, referring to everything in her life from beginning to end, ‘Yes – guilty – guilty –.’

Never would she seek excuse for herself on the grounds of psychological illness. Even the miserable goblin was guilty. There are evil spirits.