The Heart of the Family

  “Have you come to stay?” asked Meg.

  “I have,” said Sebastian. “Do you object at all?”

  “No,” Meg assured him equably. “Do you like cod?”

  “Not very much,” said Sebastian.

  “It’s for dinner,” Meg warned him. “But with baked apples after, Zelle said, to make it nicer. We don’t have cod when Daddy is here because he won’t eat it. He’d sooner starve, he says.”

  “There he deceives himself,” said Sebastian grimly, yet his face twisted into the grimace which did duty with him for a smile, for this mutual dislike of cod was a point of contact with David Eliot, and as such it had its value.

  “My Daddy has been in America,” said Meg.

  Sebastian’s smile faded and his expression took on its customary aridity, for he knew that only too well. He had been with her father in America.

  “My Daddy is an actor,” said Meg.

  Sebastian remained silent. This also, to his cost, he knew.

  “Mummy went in the car to meet the big boat,” said Meg. “They’ll be home for tea.”

  The impact of this glorious fact suddenly smote her afresh, as it had been doing at intervals throughout the day. The first long parting that she and her father had ever known was over and he would be home today. Each time she remembered this it was as though a wave made not of water but of light broke over her head. She was drenched in light, and it had a glowing warmth that reached even to her toes. She looked at the world through it, too, and the world shone and sparkled as though God had suddenly bent down and put a fresh polish upon it just to please her. When this happened she had to stand still for a moment because the light and the glow seemed to hold her so.

  The stillness took Sebastian by surprise, for he had expected the suddenly jump sideways and the swinging on his hand that he had once been accustomed to in an excited child; he had even braced his gaunt body to hold firm as she swung. He stopped, too, and for a brief and extraordinary moment there came again that freshness, this time within himself, welling up from that fountain down at the roots of things. What sort of a place was this to which he had come with such reluctance, and yet which twice in an hour had made him feel again this emotion of renewal? He supposed he had once known it, because there was a feeling of familiarity about it, but he had utterly forgotten it.

  They had come out from the trees to an open sweep of gravel in front of the house. Here they could feel the wind again, sweeping across the marshes from the sea. Sebastian put down his suitcase and, taking off his hat, faced it for a moment, feeling its cleanliness reaching through his clothes to the sick body that he carried about with him with such extreme distaste wherever he went. The wind was not cold, only fresh and invigorating. The reeds and rushes of the marsh swept up as far as the stream that bordered the strip of grass edging the drive, and rustled beneath the wind.

  He turned round again to look at the house. The trees of the walled garden hid the length of it, and what he saw was only the gabled east end, yet that attracted him immensely. Damerosehay was an eighteenth-century house, but its irregular roof and grey stone walls were so battered by the gales of a couple of centuries that it looked older. At this end of it Virginia creeper veiled the battered stone, each green leaf already touched with fire, and a climbing rose ran riot over the old porch. There were seats inside the porch and a wide front door with an old-fashioned brass handle. Over the porch was a window, slightly open and with a gay curtain fluttering out from it. Sebastian looked up for a moment. From that window a man would look out over the bending rushes to the silver line of the estuary, with the Island beyond. He would see the ships passing, and the gulls beating up into the wind, and the great skies that are the glory of the flat and marshy lands. He liked that window.

  But Meg was inside the porch, struggling with the door-handle, and he went to help her. He turned it and, preceded by Mouse, they went in together. Meg went straight to the stairs, sat down on the bottom step and began struggling with her boots. “Zelle,” she called into the shadows of the house. “Please, Zelle, my boots, and there’s a man.”

  Sebastian did not help with the boots, for he doubted his efficiency, and he could not at the moment attend to anything but the house. Hat in hand, he stood and attended to it. He was aware at once of that sense of depth and strength that all old houses have. The wide staircase rose only gradually, with shallow worn uncarpeted stairs that gave the impression that they would take you very deeply in to withdrawn and peaceful places. The hall was dark, velvety with shadow and cosily warm. Beneath his feet, under the shabby rug, he could feel uneven flagstones. Meg’s soft voice, calling for Zelle, and the sound of Mouse lapping water from a bowl marked dog no more affected the deep silence of the house than Meg’s glowing little figure disturbed the shadows. There was an old settle against the dark-paneled wall and a pot of flowers on a table. The house smelled of flowers, furniture polish, baked apples, dog and tobacco. Somewhere in the shadows a grandfather clock struck one, and a cuckoo clock far away upstairs made the same remark.

  Then the silence was broken by the light steps of a girl running down to them, and the roars of an angry baby left in the lurch upstairs. A door opened at the back of the hall, letting in light, and a woman came through it, a country body of immense size and immense charm. She advanced with a stately swaying motion, shifting her great weight from one foot to the other with a patient humorous determination that did not quite mask her fatigue. Her white apron billowed before her, and her bright pink knitted cardigan, buttoned up over her bosom to her chin, strained at all its buttons with desperation but success, holding fast but showing spotless white petticoat at all the interstices. Her scanty grey hair was strained back as tightly as possible and skewered with a couple of hairpins at the back of her head. Her face was round and red and shone with selflessness and lathered soap, for Mrs. Wilkes, when she washed anything, including herself, washed with a sort of religious devotion that could be satisfied by nothing less than a really supreme lather. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbow, and her large red capable hands, with the wedding-ring nearly imbedded in flesh on the left one, were slightly flecked with lather now. She dried them on her apron as she considered Sebastian.

  Zelle, expertly peeling Meg, also considered him. Zelle was twenty-six years old, petite and dainty in her gay flowered overall. With her thin face and sallow skin she was not strictly pretty, but her little head, covered with short dark curls, was beautifully shaped, and she had a fine air of distinction. Just at the moment she was both tired and cross, but that she was one of those women born to care for children was obvious in her handling of Meg. Buttons flew in and out of their appropriate holes at the touch of her fingers, and when she removed the obliterating hat and saw Meg’s nose her loving outcry had a tenderness that made Sebastian wince. And there was something else about her that made him wince: a tautness across the cheekbones, and a hard sadness in the eyes, that he had seen so often in the faces of the young who have suffered much at an age when they should have known nothing but joy.

  “Mon petit chou, quel dommage!”

  Meg made no complaint. Upon her face had dawned that look of placid peace that children’s faces wear when they give themselves into hands whose skill they know and trust. Her nose no longer mattered. Zelle would see to it.

  “It’s not so bad as it looks, Mademoiselle,” Sebastian reassured her. “The child tripped in a puddle and fell and bumped it and it bled a little. That’s all.” He spoke hesitantly, for the roars of the angry baby upstairs, who was apparently being murdered but to whom neither woman paid the slightest attention, were confusing him a little.

  “I’ll take ’er upstairs and put some Dettol on it,” said Zelle. Her English was good, and charming, with its foreign inflection, and she spoke French in moments of emotion only.

  “Now wait, Zelle,” said Mrs. Wilkes. “The gentleman—’e can’t be left stood there. Yes,
Sir?”

  Zelle turned round, Meg’s hand in hers, and once more considered Sebastian, this time with the astonishment and slight dismay to which he was only too well accustomed.

  “You’re not expecting me?” he asked.

  Both women shook their heads.

  Sebastian, suddenly exhausted beyond endurance, sat down on the settle. Now once again he would have to explain himself. He was always explaining himself. In fresh situations, always difficult, to new people, mostly without understanding, he was perpetually explaining himself. What a senseless affair it all was! Why did God, if there was a God, demand the continued existence in time and space of such disconnected items as himself? There should be a celestial bonfire once a year to burn up all extraneous humanity. War should do it, but did not. War only created more of the rubbish. And here they were preparing for a new war with the remaining heaps of it left over from the last war not yet sorted out. Abruptly he pulled himself together to explain himself yet once again.

  “I am Mr. Eliot’s secretary,” he said.

  “Mr. Collins?” enquired Zelle.

  “No, not Collins. He left Mr. Eliot in America and went to Hollywood. I took his place. I gather Mr. Eliot’s secretaries follow each other in rather quick succession.”

  The moment the words were out of his mouth he could have kicked himself for the bitterness with which he had spoken. Eliot had, according to his lights, been kind. What sort of creature had he become, that he could not even be loyal in the presence of his servants to a man who employed him? No, servants was the wrong word, for servants had vanished now, like loyalty. He had last visited England in the days of nannies and butlers. The little French girl and the enormous kindly soul were, he supposed, the modern equivalents, but he did not know how to describe them. Yet whatever they were they were loyal, for he could feel the disapproval that his remark had immediately brought into their consideration of himself.

  “I am wrong. It’s not dead yet,” he said.

  The disapproval faded into bewilderment.

  “Loyalty,” he said.

  Bewilderment became apprehension. Even Meg, who had at first accepted him with equanimity, had her thumb in her mouth. He supposed he was talking to himself again. They must think him mad. So he probably still was at times. He pulled himself together once more.

  “My name is Sebastian Weber,” he said; and even now there was a ghost of pride hovering somewhere in the tone of his voice, the wraith of that full-bodied thing that had made him so sure of himself in the days when the announcement of a well-known name, in a man’s own country, could command immediate respect. “Mr. Eliot wanted me to come down here to do some work for him. He said he would telephone and tell you to expect me.”

  This was a familiar situation, and apprehension vanished as tolerant smiles appeared upon both women’s faces.

  “There now, that’s Mr. Eliot all over!” said Mrs. Wilkes. “ ’E never done it. A wonderful memory for all the nonsense ’e talks on the stage, so they tell me, but none at all for anything useful.”

  “It’s a wonder Mrs. Eliot didn’t give us a ring,” said Zelle.

  “Likely ’e never told ’er,” said Mrs. Wilkes. “She’ll be took aback, same as us. Now then, Sir, gimme your bag. I’ll take you upstairs and see you comfortable.”

  Mrs. Wilkes had a way of saying comfortable, stressing the solidity of the word and softly rolling the “r,” that made it a word of infinite reassurance. Resisting his effort to carry his own bag, she took Sebastian firmly into her kindly charge. It was obvious that she was as expert with men as Zelle with small children. As the little procession wound its way upstairs, Zelle going first with Meg and Mouse and Mrs. Wilkes following with Sebastian, his face for a brief moment had a look that was almost a reflection of Meg’s expression of placid peace. Mrs. Wilkes saw the look, recognized it, sighed and accepted the burden. She already had five men—a husband and four sons—dependent upon her for their every comfort, and now here was another, making a half-dozen. Well, she’d always had a fancy for an even number.

  “That poor child!” ejaculated Sebastian, for the roars of the angry baby increased in volume as they reached the top of the stairs.

  “Master Robin,” said Mrs. Wilkes placidly. “Creating. Proper temper ’e ’as. This way, Sir. Mind, now. This ’ouse is all steps up and steps down, for no reason, as you might say.”

  But the abrupt little flight of steps that led down into the quiet room added to its charm, seeming to cut it off more completely from the rest of the house. With the door shut one could no longer hear the angry baby. The window-curtains stirred in the breeze, and the cool sound of the rushes was like the sound of distant water. It was the room over the porch that Sebastian had noticed from outside.

  “Mr. Eliot’s room before ’e married,” said Mrs. Wilkes. “All swept and dusted. I’ve only to make the bed up. Don’t you unpack your bag now; I’ll see to that later. You’d best ’ave a tray of lunch up ’ere in peace and quiet. Now sit down and make yourself comfortable.”

  She spoke with the same patient humorous determination with which she moved, unconsciously forcing her voice to rise above the tones of weariness to a kindly command that allowed no disobedience. She had been a publican’s wife for many years, sobriety had not been among her husband’s virtues and her sons took after him. To her way of thinking if a man was not drunk at the moment, he soon would be, and she had long ago left off suiting her manner to the variations of his state; from sheer fatigue she had adopted now for good and all the one that was most in use. Yet Mrs. Wilkes liked men, always had and always would. There was no resentment in her manner, for acceptance and not resentment was the essence of her, and it was never resented, indeed the sober among her sons sometimes wished they were drunk just for the sheer comfort of being shepherded to bed by Mrs. Wilkes.

  Sebastian found himself sitting in a comfortable little arm-chair by the window. He had been taken out of his mackintosh by Mrs. Wilkes and placed there almost without his own knowledge, for in spite of her weight and bulk she had the gift of sure touch and noiseless movement. Sebastian, with the sensitiveness of the ill to the hidden qualities of those about them, was aware of a depth of quietness in her. A well of quiet, he thought, akin to the primeval freshness of the village beyond the fairy wood.

  But the next moment it was of the room that he was thinking. He was not looking at it, for he had relaxed in his chair and shut his eyes, and it seemed that a century of time had passed over him, but he was aware of it; gentle in color, with its quietness only accentuated by the rustle of the reeds and the sheets that Mrs. Wilkes was spreading on the bed. The creak of the door, when she left the room and came back again, had seemed to come from miles away, but her acceptance of the tasks that his arrival had imposed on her was so close that it seemed a part of him. That was one of the queer things about illness: things seemed now near, now far, so that the sense of distance, as of time, was revealed as mere illusion. But acceptance was not illusion. It was salvation. This time the sudden click of the door, as Mrs. Wilkes went away again, came as a physical shock that set his pulses hammering and sent a fiery thread of pain along the track of an old bullet-wound that went through his body.

  He opened his eyes and looked about him. So this had been David Eliot’s room before he married. Yet Eliot’s restlessness, that at times rasped Sebastian’s nerves almost beyond endurance, had left the peace of it unscathed. The spirit of this house was obviously a strong tough spirit, that would always be greater now than any human turmoil that its quietness would enclose. Yet in the beginning the spirit of a house is made by those who live in it, and he wondered who had lived here during two centuries, and what they had suffered. Mrs. Wilkes was obviously the heir to their fortitude. He thought of fortitude as being not endurance only but endurance with added to it that quietness and acceptance that he had felt in her.

  The walls of this smal
l room were painted a pale silver-grey, and it was filled with the clear silvery light that in his romantic boyhood he had described to himself as sanctuary light. Tracts of land enclosed by water, as these sea-marshes were almost enclosed by sea and estuary, were bathed in it on the clear and windswept days. In his youth islands had always given him a feeling of sanctuary, and he could still recognize the light. The few pieces of furniture in the room were old and beautiful, and so was the blue-green model of a horse that stood upon the chest of drawers. He fancied it must be a sea-horse, for there seemed a swirl of water about the galloping hoofs and a hint of spray in the flying mane. Over the bed hung a reproduction of Van Gogh’s painting of the lark singing and tossing over the windblown corn. He remembered the thrill of delight the picture had given him when he had first seen it, and he remembered naturally and easily. That was odd, for he had lived for so long with shutters in his mind closed against all memory of past happiness. He had himself put up the shutters and almost exhausted his will with the effort of holding them shut, yet the memory of the light, and of the lark, had slipped through quite easily and brought no pain.

  Mrs. Wilkes entered with lunch daintily set on a tray and put it down beside him on the little table in the window. “Poached egg, a glass of sherry and a nice baked apple,” she said encouragingly. “There’s a nice bit of cod, but from Mr. Eliot I know the feelings of gentlemen with regard to cod. Very fussy about his food, Mr. Eliot is.”

  She spoke the word “gentlemen” with archaic respect. Evidently she had not moved with the times. And how came she to apply the title to him? He knew what he looked like.