A Little Treachery

42

Emmy now rose briskly, adjusted herself before the glass, wondered what she should do.

Really there seemed no end to the luck! It was a great bit of luck for her, for instance, that her brother was out of the way temporarily.

It struck her that to keep the house might be as good a way as any of keeping Ferdy’s hands off her inheritance. So for a minute or two she turned over this idea. She might bring her two little fellows there and make a healthy country home for them; give them all the benefits of a clean village life – for Emmy had never ceased to see this country town with its spreading suburbs as an innocent and backward village; save them from following in the footsteps of the kind-hearted Ferdy – and she was really anxious to do this.

But it was only another daydream, and she knew it. She well knew that Mumsie would never allow it; Mumsie was such a loving mother at times. She would wait till her daughter had got her little home together and then she would have one of her attacks of mother-love, she would discover that she could never, never consent to be separated from her little boys. These little boys, though, were a problem to Emmy; and they were a problem which had troubled her all the more of late for her contact with Simon. Something about Simon’s manners and ways of speaking, the results of a classy background, as Emmy saw it, had filled her with envy on her own boys’ behalf. Of course she had never wished the child any harm. She had grown really fond of the pretty little fellow; though it was not with admiration that she had once described him as ‘a regular little tom – at his age!’ Yet this kind of jealousy on her brothers’ account had sometimes given her a mischievous inclination to take it out of spoilt little Master Simon.

All bright again, smiling to herself, disposed to be playful in her satisfaction, Emmy turned to the desk with other thoughts in mind than those connected with the sad packages. There was not much left in the desk beside these. But she found a few postcards and among them some enlargements of snapshots they had taken in the summer, pictures so amazingly pretty that, in sentimental mood, she had had them enlarged to postcard size. They were all of the cottage, the garden and the three of them. Little old red-face was wonderfully photogenic; so were Simon and herself, snuggling together in the foreground.

Cigarette smouldering on the edge of the writing-flap, remains of pastries bought in the town, saucerless cup, tin of milk perched stickily on the well-polished desk-top, Emmy sat all at ease in the place of the two dead women and turned over these pictures and her summer’s memories (happy, happy days!) and at last selected one of the cards for her purpose. She did not choose the one of Simon and herself, after all, but one of Catherine, not looking at her best, with the cottage in the background. Either picture would thrill the kid, but this one would thrill somebody else also, please God. And here Emmy could not but remember Roy and that ridiculous fee-faw-fum message the boys had concocted while she was on the phone in the office. She had said they had better not send it, but she had added the top line herself, ‘woe to the foxes’, and she could not help laughing at the remembrance.

Now she simply wrote, ‘My dear little Simon, I wonder if you’ve forgotten who this is and the little house? Your own Emmy.’ Oh, yes, she had all along been very careful to keep it genteel and good-class, simple and sweet. She even wrote in a hand rounder, more backward, more infantile, than her normal one, not from guile, but because she had so completely entered into her role, the role of Miss Hare’s artless young friend, the ‘young girl’. Her features took part in this effect as she wrote; her top lip pushed up childishly. Who could object to such kind and simple attentions to his little boy?

Emmy’s upbringing had been such that she had probably never even known a stage of youthful idealism; she did not expect that wrongs would ever be righted on this earth, for she had observed for herself that they never were; nor had she any romantic thoughts of rough justice. But, simply, it was amusing. It was amusing to think of a certain person coming in. picking up a bunch of letters on the hall-table and being confronted once more by a little reminder or souvenir of ‘the cottage at Ockentree’.

‘Well, enough of fun,’ said Emmy to herself, her face changing. ‘Now to business.’

There was nothing for it but to sell; and she would go to the same agent, for, by God, those who had pulled it off before to such a tune could do it again. She’d tell them to find her a sucker and bleed him, bleed him white. She’d tell them she was out to get the pattern off the plate, and that she’d make it worth their while. And let them not call up a blush for her benefit, not after what she knew of them. This very afternoon on her way to the station she would do it. However, some idea that perhaps she did not quite know the best way to deal with a house-agent stayed her in the act of settling her hat. It might be as well to consult Greg first. Only they would all have to hustle. For a spell inside, though nothing to hurt, of course, always had a queer effect on Ferdy; it never did him any good. He would come out at his queerest, and his one idea would be to look after poor Ferdy and protect him from everybody, his one idea would be to collect. But Emmy still had three months. She thought that, with luck, three months might give her time to sell the house and tie up a bit of the loot somehow. If not, well, poor lass, pity her! By then, she’d have blued half it, anyway.

She threw off her hat again. ‘Take it easy, Emmy!’ She would make a bit of a clearance first, clear away a few of the private things before the lot was put up for sale; for the poor woman would thank her for that.

She now had a cheerful little fire going. She began fingering the packages, took up the one which was marked specially to be burned and opened it – a biggish packet, loose papers pushed into a cover. She hesitated. Inquisitiveness stirred in her, but she guessed, she knew, without reference to the Forresters’ prim suggestions, ‘She’d hate me to read it.’ She struggled; glanced within, caught up a few words and closed the cover quickly.

‘I want to cry out – I want to make someone hear me – I want to cry out and be heard – oh, for a voice – even animals cry out –’

The writing, too – wild!

Emmy sat looking at the cover, fingering it, raised her eyes to the postcard which she had propped up before her and stared into that desperate face with a sort of dismayed, half-comprehending curiosity.

A moment after, she had re-opened the cover, just a little way, and was squinting sidelong.

It came at her again, the breathless, exclamatory voice.

‘What was it done for? What for?’

Emmy could not see how this was meant. ‘Who asks questions like that,’ she thought, astonished, ‘unless they’re mad?’

She peeped again; fell to temptation this time to the extent of a whole short passage. Ah, but it drew you! The demoralized writing was crazily distinct, as if kept so by an intense effort. The same stopless voice.

‘What was it done for? What for? A shameful betrayal of one who loved You – who loved You in spite of everything, all Your persecution of the first time – shameful cruelty – shameful to let her kneel before You in humble gratitude, thanking You for Your goodness – Heavenly Father – with her brain already stricken, hell gaping for her. Did it amuse You? You are fond of terrible jokes. If You had done it to me, I would have acknowledged a justice. But to her –

‘Blasphemy – nonsense. Who cares? No one hears. Deep down – fallen into the bottomless pit – out of hearing –

‘I want to cry out – I want to make someone hear me – I want to cry out and be heard – oh, for a voice – even animals cry out –’

Emmy felt bad, she felt upset.

At the same time, the temptation to peep became less strong. High-class stuff about God, it seemed to be. She rose up, and with noble, histrionic gestures emptied the contents of the cover into the hearth and began feeding the papers to the flames. She was careful not to read any more. Still, she had to stir them from time to time to make them burn, and many fragments remained for some while intact and legible. This was how she suddenly came to realize, when it was two-thirds done, that she seemed to be burning up a whole lot of poetry. Light broke on her. ‘Ah, that’s why it was – that’s why she felt things so.’

But then for a moment her blood ran cold. Was she to go down to posterity as the girl who went and burned up a sort of Paradise Lost at one sitting? An ignorant girl? No reverence for Art? She made a hasty effort to salve something with the tongs, but the fragments she succeeded in recovering would not have done for poems, after all, not in her opinion.

She calmed down, slyly reflecting that, fortunately, it was all under her own hat. Except for the Forresters? But they must have peeped, too, and not thought much of it. Philistine types, however, obviously.

She stood there thinking intently of her friend. A questioning look, which tilted her head alertly, now gave to that little pointed face a strong suggestion of the mask of some pretty, highly intelligent pet animal, a creature which, from so much friendly contact with humans, seems almost to have attained to an understanding of human feeling; almost, but not quite; and so, after all, there is a shade of forlornness, a far-off bewilderment, in the bright eyes.

No, she didn’t know what to think. A regular child. A poor, horribly injured, weeping child. Asking what it was done for! Yet she had given the answer to herself, to Emmy’s way of thinking. It happens; no one is there, no one hears.