In spite of his unease about Miss Wentworth, of his anxiety as to what John was thinking of him at the moment, these days were happy for him. Daphne’s strange, sudden softening, the completeness of her forgiveness, had come upon him like rain upon parched earth. He felt unspeakably eased and was ready to receive the spring as he had never before been ready. “Let no flower of the spring go by me.” Last year, he remembered, he had hated it. The whole thing had seemed a lie. This year, as he listened to the larks, he could believe it. Resurrection happened. The thought of death as irretrievable destruction had always obsessed his mind. Now he wondered if there was any conceivable situation in which one could say, it is the end. Was the word hopeless one that ever had any truth in it?
“I’d like to ask John,” he said to himself one evening. He was tired after a hard day’s work and a pang went through him. He stopped digging, leaning on his spade. Would he ever ask John anything again? Could even John forgive his treatment of Daphne, his cowardice and fraud? The garden was darkening about him and the song of the birds seemed receding. He put his tools away in the gazebo, went indoors and found Miss Wentworth getting supper ready. It was a rather special supper, he noticed. She delighted in preparing meals that were a little different, or served in a different room, or in dishes that were not the usual ones. She hated unalterable routine and life with her was full of the little varieties that give spice to living.
“John rang up with a message for you,” she said.
Michael’s heart leaped. “Yes?” he asked.
“ ‘The Knight of the Wood. Chapter Ten, paragraph One.’ Now wash your hands quickly. I’m making an omelette. John’s mad. Does a message like that make sense to you?”
“Yes, it makes sense,” said Michael, and ran upstairs whistling.
He was gay through supper, and through the washing up, but it was hard to wait until Miss Wentworth had gone to bed and he could escape to the library and take down Don Quixote. He lit the candles, sat in the chair where he always sat now in the evenings, and turned the yellowed pages. As he did so he had a picture in his mind of John as a boy sitting here as he was doing and reading the same Don Quixote, and the Malory that was beside it. His head must have been full of knights in armor. He found the passage and read it.
“Sir,” answered Don Quixote, “I have so hearty a desire to serve you . . . that I might know from you whether the discontents that have urged you to make choice of this unusual course of life, might not admit of a remedy; for, if they do, assure yourself I will leave no means untried, till I have purchased you that ease which I heartily wish you. . . . If then good intentions may plead merit, or a grateful requital, let me intreat you, Sir, by that generous nature that shoots through the gloom with which adversity has clouded your graceful outside; nay, let me conjure you by the darling object of your wishes, to let me know who you are, and what strange misfortunes have urged you to withdraw from the converse of your fellow creatures, to bury yourself alive in this horrid solitude. . . . And I solemnly swear,” added Don Quixote, “by the order of knighthood, of which I am an unworthy professor, that if you so far gratify my desires, I will assist you to the utmost of my capacity, either by remedying your disaster, if it is not past redress; or at least, I will become your partner in sorrow, and strive to ease it by a society in sadness.”
The Knight of the Wood, hearing the Knight of the Woeful Figure talk at that rate, looked upon him steadfastly for a long time, and viewed and reviewed him from head to foot. . . .
Michael put the book down and laughed. The message of friendship and encouragement was unmistakable, and relieved him enormously, but he did not quite understand. If Daphne had told John what he had told her John knew the facts. What more was there to tell? But he’d go down to the vicarage in the morning.
But in the morning there were an unusual number of odd jobs to do for Miss Wentworth and it was half-past three before he set out. As he approached the vicarage gate he beheld the extraordinary sight of John poised dangerously on top of a stepladder, struggling to fasten a walking stick to a branch of the tree beside it. Tied to the walking stick by its sleeves was a red smock. The three children were assisting John. Pat and Winkle were holding the stepladder steady and Margary was anxiously clutching her father’s leg. Michael approached with caution, lest any sudden sound cause John to fall headlong, but Pat saw him and let go of the ladder and called out a greeting.
“It’s Mr. Stone. Hullo, Mr. Stone. Be careful, Father! Father, what are you doing?”
John rocked wildly backwards and forwards on the ladder, missed his footing and jumped to safety, the red flag remaining hopelessly askew in the tree. The stepladder overbalanced on top of Winkle and her roars rent the air. Extricated, she was found to be unhurt, but just as she was being soothed back into her normal state of placidity the red flag fell out of the tree and hit her on the nose, and her roars became more horrific than ever.
“Stop it, Winkle!” shouted Pat angrily. “The bus will be here any minute and the flag not up. You’re not hurt. Stop it, you little beast!”
“How dare you call her a beast!” flamed Margary, who though sweet-tempered could upon great provocation become inflamed with righteous indignation. “Beast yourself. It was you let go of the ladder.”
“Children! Children!” mourned John distractedly. “Your language is deplorable!”
Michael righted the stepladder and mounted nimbly to its summit, flag in hand. “Is it a birthday?” he enquired above the uproar.
“No,” said Pat. “Stop it, Winkle! Miss O’Hara’s coming to tea on the three-forty-five bus. It’s to turn her thoughts.”
“Winkle’s form mistress,” explained John. “She’s had a shock lately in the death of her aunt and, as Pat says, we want to turn her thoughts. She has leanings towards the left, and though we’re all good conservatives here we thought we’d like to make her feel at home.”
“It was my idea to put it in the tree,” said Pat.
“It’s my smock,” said Margary.
“My Miss O’Hara,” hiccuped Winkle.
“The disaster alone is mine,” said John humbly.
“I’m rectifying it,” said Michael gaily. But within he panicked. “I must fix this darn flag and get out of it,” he thought. He went hot and then cold. “I can’t see that girl again. Not fair on her. Damn!” The stick had slipped again just as he’d got it fixed. He rocked on the stepladder.
“Not as easy as it looks,” said John, cheered by his lack of success. “Now if it had occurred to me to bring a piece of string we’d have got on better. Why do I always think of these things too late? Ah, that’s the style!”
Michael had remembered his dark red silk handkerchief and was binding the stick in place with that. He was listening anxiously for the sound of the bus but the children, restored to good humor, were chattering loudly and John was saying something or other about a walk after tea. Down by the river. “I’ll show you the white rhododendron,” he said.
“Is he talking to me?” wondered Michael irritably, and then was ashamed. This magnanimous man was inviting him for a walk as naturally and charmingly as though his opinion of him was still what it had been a week ago, and he, Michael, was feeling no appreciation of his magnanimity. He must get down off this ladder. But John had his foot on it. “The tide will be in,” he said.
“Get off the ladder,” said Michael hoarsely.
“That’s a lovely flag, Comrade,” said Mary, and the children fell upon her with shouts of joy.
Michael sat down on top of the ladder. No hope of escape now. His legs felt as weak as his will. He had not known it could come upon a man with quite such overwhelming suddenness. At his age too. Was he nineteen, to be such a fool? He was thirty-eight. Getting on for middle-age. But she couldn’t be much more than twenty. She had that lightness of movement of the very young. Not fair on her. “It is that way my soul would follow he
r, lightly, and airily, and happily, and I would be rid of all my great troubles.”
John was introducing them and Mary was saying they had met before. He got off the ladder and shook hands with her speechlessly. Her eyes were alight with fun as she asked, “How’s Josephine?” But he could not return her smile. Nor could he find the words in which to excuse himself and go away. And then it seemed as though the children and John and Mary closed about him and bore him with them up the drive. The power of their good will seemed immensely strong. There was some purpose here and he abandoned himself to it in sudden content.
Daphne met them at the front door, serene, elegant and cool. She was an excellent if slightly aloof hostess. She greeted Michael as an old family friend with whom she had been in daily contact for the last twenty years, and Mary with a charming motherliness. She made them both for a moment or two aware of their age; the one feeling tarnished and old, the other raw and young. But seated round the dining room table, with Winkle clamoring for honey and John upsetting the sugar basin, their unease vanished. It was difficult to feel unease in the presence of either John or Winkle, and when they were both present the stage was set entirely for comedy. And in a moment or two Daphne’s mask of cool elegance had slipped a little and she became shy and uncertain, almost a little awkward. Michael felt a pang of warm feeling for her. He knew what it was like to have lost belief in one’s own excellence. One could not move through life without a measure of outward assurance any more than one could go about without a suit of clothes, but it needed a lot of practice before one could hold the thing steady outwardly while remaining inwardly aware that there was nothing to be assured about. To help her he adjusted his own mask firmly and took charge of the conversation. John marvelled at him. Yes, he’d be able to go back into life. A man who could maintain such ease of manner with the woman he had loved once sitting on one side of him, and the woman he loved now sitting on the other, would be able to keep an even keel while he wore down the contempt of a whispering world. Mary was just the woman to help him; provided she could keep her temper with the whisperers.
Did they know yet, John wondered? They had betrayed themselves utterly to him at the gate but he did not know if they had betrayed themselves to each other. They went into the drawing room for cigarettes and John said suddenly, “Children, go and pick a big bunch of flowers for Miss O’Hara.”
“But we want to show her the toad,” said Pat.
“The bus does not go till five-thirty,” said John firmly. He was not often firm but when he was the children obeyed him.
“That was too obvious, John,” said Daphne. “Pat will be listening outside the window.”
John had a moment’s astonishment at Daphne’s lack of knowledge of her own children. Did she not know Pat had a sense of honor? Probably not. She knew little about herself and consequently little about others. All that she had told him these last few days had made him love her more than ever but had given him a new light on her character. He had thought of her poise as being that of a woman of experience, and been a little afraid of it, he saw it now as the self-confidence of a girl whose adolescent pride had never been shattered. And now it had been shattered, by humble old Harriet of all people, and they could start again together in equal immaturity. Glancing round the room he decided that Mary was the most sensible of the four of them and it was to her he addressed himself.
“Mary, I think that the school should go on, and that Miss Giles should be its headmistress. What do you think?”
“I’ll work under her,” said Mary loyally. “But not in that house.”
“It can’t be in that house,” said John. “Entwistle tells me that Mrs. Belling left no will and so her property passes to her eldest nephew.”
“My father’s eldest brother’s son,” said Mary. “I’ve never seen him for Father quarrelled with his eldest brother . . . The O’Hara temper. . . Do you know, I took Giles to a concert the other night. She hadn’t heard good music for years and so of course she went to pieces in the middle and told me her heart’s desire. That’s what the thwarted always do in the middle of good music.”
“What is it?” asked John eagerly. “I was wondering what it was in Church the other morning.”
“A cottage in the country,” said Mary. “And to make her tea the way she likes it. Annie never makes it with boiling water. But Annie could be taught. Now I come to think of it, she must come too. We need to begin again together, Giles and Annie and I. At Oaklands the pattern was all snarled up. We need to take ourselves, the school and the children, and get things clean and straight again.”
“In a cottage?” asked Daphne.
“A small house,” amended Mary. “There’s one for sale on the way to Farthing Reach. A lovely little old house with a walled garden. The front door must be in Farthing Square but from the upstairs windows on the other side you’d see open country and the swans on the river. Giles could call it Farthing Cottage.”
“I believe I remember the little house,” said Michael. “We saw it the day you took me to Farthing Reach.”
“Now when did they pick each other up?” wondered Daphne, disturbed. It was no good, a woman could not see a man she had once wanted passing to the keeping of another woman without profound annoyance. She failed to keep sarcasm out of her voice as she enquired, “Who’s the financier behind this wonderful scheme of regeneration?”
John’s eager face, and Mary’s, fell, and she reproached herself. Michael, she noted, had thought of this before. Michael also was disturbed. Mary was beyond his reach but it was distressing all the same to have her making plans for her future that left him out. Before he knew what he did his eyes met hers, reproaching her. She smiled at him, bringing him in. “How odd,” thought Daphne. “When he was young he took so long to fall in love with me but now he’s not so young I believe he’s fallen in love as suddenly as a boy. Thank heaven, here are the children back again.”
Pat dumped an armful of daffodils in Mary’s lap and demanded, “Now can we show her the toad?”
Michael took a grip on himself and got up. He must separate himself from Mary once and for all. “Good-bye, Miss O’Hara,” he said. “When you return from the toad I’ll have gone back to my work.”
“Good-bye,” she said sweetly and gravely, and went away with the children to the kitchen garden.
“What about that walk, Michael?” asked John when she had gone.
“Let’s go now,” said Michael. “Before I go back to work. I’ll wait for you outside,” and he went out through the French window without saying good-bye to Daphne.
“He’s forgotten my existence,” said Daphne. “Well, that’s right and very good for me. Go along, John. I’ll make your apologies to Mary.”
4
“The birds are singing wonderfully this evening,” said John as they tramped along.
“You’ve a ‘thing’ about birds,” said Michael.”
They’re the greatest wonder in nature,” said John. “Look at their instincts, their flight, their song. And to me they’re entirely symbolic. Look at the nightingale. He keeps the same mate all his life. Each spring, when he comes back to us after the winter migration, he meets her in the same tree or bush where he sang to her first. In the darkness. ‘There is in God, some say, a deep, but dazzling darkness.’ I’ve yet to hear any music that expresses love more satisfactorily than the nightingale’s song.”
They were striking down through the fields to the river. The tide was in and the river brimming with light. A mist of gold lay upon the blue distances and faintly veiled the fresh green of the trees beyond the river. There was not a breath of wind. The chorus of bird song rose to them with a touch of solemnity and the shadows lay long upon the grass. They came down through a great thicket of rhododendrons already in bud and turned along the river road. John was in an anguish of shyness and Michael took the plunge himself.
“I looked up the
‘Knight of the Wood,’ ” he said, smiling at John, “and I should like to ‘comply with your desires, which your great civilities and undeserved offers oblige me to satisfy.’ But I was puzzled. What more can I tell you? Daphne gave you the facts.”
“Only the facts,” said John. “Not the reasons for the facts. Why you do a thing is what matters. It is there one looks for the springs of character. Facts mean little.”
“I doubt if the fact of a good man blinded meant little either to him or his wife and children,” said Michael harshly. “That was one of the facts that were the result of my cowardice.”
“I think what you call your cowardice is also a fact,” said John. The reason, the root of it all, is further back still. I know I’m probing, Michael, but you wouldn’t have come along this afternoon if you hadn’t been prepared for that.”
“I don’t mind being probed by the lance of the Knight of the Woeful Figure,” said Michael. “Though I wouldn’t stand it from any other man’s lance. But aren’t we being a bit introspective?”
“Certainly,” said John. “Once and for all. Rather than live with a bad smell all your life isn’t it better to find the corpse?”
“It was my mother’s,” said Michael suddenly and violently. John was shocked into silence and they walked on and said nothing, until Michael added, “I’d not thought of that before. It was the fear of poverty that obsessed me when I was a boy. The other fear, of sickening injury, blood and pain, death, did not take hold until the war.”
“How did your mother die?” asked John.
“In a street accident. I was out for a walk with our maid and I saw my mother on the other side of a narrow street and called out to her. She was not expecting to see me and turned quickly and eagerly to come across to me. A drunken brute coming along in a car accelerated instead of putting the brakes on. But it was really her fault I suppose. . . Or rather my fault for calling to her. . . I really can’t tell you what happened. In the confusion of it all no one thought of removing me. I hear my mother’s screams in nightmares even now, and see the ghastly mess her face was in. She was a pretty woman.”