The Bird in the Tree

  One o’clock struck. The hour of a new beginning. She turned over and lay on her back staring at the ceiling. In the faint light of the guttering candles she looked old and haggard. It had happened. Once again, as after her first love affair, her world had crumbled. She was not going to marry David. Her youth, together with her desperate striving to prolong it, had vanished. Her self-seeking, born of her youthful longing for joy, had gone too. Stripped of it all she lay looking desperately into the empty void ahead, while the candles guttered and went out. Two o’clock struck.

  There seemed nothing in that void ahead. Nothing but a dark emptiness. For an hour she lay, struggling to put George into that emptiness, struggling to force her will to the building up of a new life in the way that Lucilla had done. . . . Acting, acting all the time until one was half dead with weariness, on and on until at last the pretence was reality. . . . Again and again she tried to force her will to this effort and again and again it fell back. It was like a wave beating against some barrier and continually forced back again. The roar of the storm seemed to come right into her and to be part of her own body and soul. The onslaught, the check, the recoil, went on and on until at last from sheer exhaustion she fell asleep.

  She woke up to find that it was morning. It was not raining now and a pale watery light, lit by fitful gleams of sunshine, filled the room. The wind was still blowing but not at gale force. Now and then there were intervals of utter quiet. The outside storm was over.

  And so, she realized, was her own. While she slept she must have been still unconsciously fighting and while she slept she had won. She was going back to George. Telling David would be terrible, but she must do it. She was going to build a new life in the way that Lucilla had done and her will was bent to her task. She was more desperately unhappy than she had known a woman could be but she was at peace.

  As she dressed she marvelled that in the end her will had yielded so easily. It was almost as though something besides her own strength had been fighting for her, while she slept. Quite irrelevantly she thought of that woman in the lilac dress whom Caroline had imagined in the wild garden. Poor little Caroline. Please God in the years to come she would be a better mother than she had been in the past.

  — 4 —

  David also, on going to bed, resigned himself to hours of reading, but he had a good deal more control over his thoughts than Nadine had and he was able to keep his attention firmly riveted on his book. It was favourite book, Humbert Wolfe’s Uncelestial City. In times of storm and tempest, of indecision and desolation, a book already known and loved makes better reading than something new and untried. The meeting with remembered and well-loved passages is like the continual greeting of old friends; nothing is so warming and companionable.

  Yet tonight, as so often when the mind is tortured by some undecided question, everything he read seemed to have some bearing upon his problem, all his old friends seemed to have something to say to him and most of the time it was something that he did not in the least want to hear. As the night wore on he came with a leap of the heart to a passage that he usually loved because it made him think again of Van Gogh’s picture of the lark above the cornfield.

  Shall I not see that to live is to have relinquished

  beauty to the sequestration of the dark,

  and yet that the spirit of man, benighted, vanquished,

  has folded wings, and shall use them as the lark

  into the sun beyond the cold clouds flinging

  her desperate hope, not reaching where she has striven

  but soaring for ever beyond herself, and singing

  high above earth as she is low in heaven?

  Shall I not confess that mine own evil humour

  and not man’s failure forged this black despair,

  and, while I wept, high up the golden rumour

  of the lark ascending fringed the quiet air?

  Yet tonight it made him feel cold with apprehension as he put the book down and thought about it. “To live is to have relinquished beauty to the sequestration of the dark.” Was that what life must be, continual loss of beauty? Youth, love, happiness, health, work, life itself, one left them one by one behind as one went on. “Relinquish.” It was a good word. It suggested not the tearing away of treasures but the willing and graceful sacrifice of them. Beauty to him at this time was all summed up in Nadine’s unpossessed loveliness and her adored companionship. Such a relinquishment seemed impossible. He turned away from the thought of it to rejoice in that picture of the soul as a bird-like thing, winged and free even when the evil humours and the despair of a man seemed to himself to keep him earthbound. Men always thought of the spirit of man like that. They even thought of the Spirit of God like that; they pictured him with the wings of a dove. “Fly away and be at rest.” At last the mounting lark ascended so high into the light that she was lost in it and was not seen again. If only they would fly back sometimes! If only they would come back to say that they had not disappeared into nothingness but into somewhere. If only they could communicate their peace and tell their wisdom. People said that while one slept one spoke with the dead, though one woke with no memory of it. But that was only conjecture. He turned back some page and read another passage.

  You cannot traffick in peace,

  . . . for Christ

  (or whatever name is given

  to the secret kingdom of heaven

  in which we are and have

  this shadow of life, that shadow of the grave)

  to those who remain has said,

  “Leave the dead to bury the dead!”

  Rich though they be, you cannot sell

  or buy their miracle,

  nor be enriched by it, nor in Jerusalem,

  sweet with the bugles blowing over them,

  set up your marketplace and have increase—Not thus comes peace,

  nor freedom thus. But, slowly

  making more holy what is holy

  from the guarded pool

  of the spirit, swift, cold, and beautiful,

  in mists diaphanous his rain

  a god draws back again;

  and, as the sun builds with the clouds, of these

  he builds his city of peace—

  those stoneless streets at whose sweet end

  friend meets with friend,

  those star-hung towers in which the light of the sun

  with the moon’s light is one,

  and love as visible and exquisite

  as the little lamps with which the yew is lit,

  so luminously red in the translucent green

  of that deep air the lanterns of love are seen—

  and the music of meeting and the trumpet at the gate

  sounding, “All ye who enter here, abandon hate.”

  Thus freedom comes, thus peace.

  He supposed that if life beyond death existed at all it was created in that way; by a god who took a man’s work, thoughts and sacrifices and built with them, stone by stone, his future city of peace. As one lived and worked in this world one made the habitation that was to come. That darkness to which one relinquished one’s treasures was not really darkness but the hands of a god. “Relinquish.” Whatever way one turned one came back to it again. It was like being caught in a trap. . . . Oh, God, to know that the city of peace was a real city, and not just the creation of desperate longing. . . . He read on and on and at last, in spite of the noise of the storm, he fell asleep. His last wandering thought, before sleep took him, was that Christopher Martyn had had to relinquish that most precious of all a man’s treasures, his sanity.

  He woke up with a start. “Yes?” he said, for he was certain that someone had touched and called him. “Yes?” he repeated. “What is it?”

  There was no one there, and no sound that could have aw
akened him except the calling of the plover. The gale was dying away and his room was filled with the grey light of dawn. He felt amazingly peaceful.

  But it was not the peace of inaction. Almost in the moment of waking, as though he had been awakened for some particular purpose, he had jumped out of bed and pulled his curtains. His room looked east towards that part of the marshes where Obadiah had his cottage. But they could not be seen. Beyond the rushes there was nothing but a sheet of water.

  David gasped and looked at his watch. The tide was coming in but it was not yet at its height. Quick staccato thoughts hammered at his brain as he dragged on his clothes. Obadiah. Alf was away. One of the highest tides of the year. The worst storm for years. The dykes had burst. There was no upstairs to Obadiah’s cottage. That stream near it had been swollen by the summer rains. And it had poured with rain most of yesterday.

  He was out of doors and running through the oak-wood, one part of his mind vaguely noticing how it had suffered; the moss of the drive was strewn with torn branches and the wounds on the trees showed white in the pallid light. His racing thoughts went on. Those lazy devils could not have mended that broken dyke. God, but he’d make a row about it! Obadiah’s life was perhaps in danger. The life of a man who served Damerosehay; a man who served him. He was not going to marry Nadine. . . . He noticed that the dogs had appeared out of nowhere and were running at his heels.

  He was at the harbour and dragging his boat out of the boathouse. He did not waste time knocking up Little Village; he did give a shout but they were all upstairs in bed, asleep and snoring, happily unaware that in another twenty minutes the sea would be entering beneath their front doors. It was perhaps heartless of David not to give them further warning but it was Obadiah he was bothering about, Obadiah who had no upstairs.

  He had got the boat out and was rowing hard. It would have been too risky to get the sail up, for the tide was flowing fast and the depth of the flood water over the different levels of the marsh was incalculable. Mercifully the wind was blowing now directly from the west and he had its help. “Go home!” he shouted to the dogs, who were swimming after him. Pooh-Bah, who disliked having his royal person assaulted by rudely slapping waves, obeyed, but the Bastard plunged on. “Go home, you old dunderhead!” David yelled at him. But the Bastard, puffing and blowing, came on, fighting desperately. He was not as young as he once had been, the tide was strong, and his waterlogged mat of hair was heavy about his straining body, but he was aware in his muddled old mind that this was no pleasure trip and he thought it his duty to come too and keep his eye on David. He thrust his black nose skywards and thrashed desperately. “The dear old fool!” groaned David, and was obliged to endanger the whole expedition by dragging the dripping furry mass in over the gunnel lest it drown. “You old Bastard, you!” The Bastard, his point won, lifted his waterlogged tail with difficulty, rotated it and fawned at David’s feet. Then he lay quietly panting and flooding the boat, water streaming from his fur and saliva from his long pink tongue, his eyes shining adoringly through the mat of dripping hair that fell over them.

  David struggled on, hard put to it in spite of the favouring wind to negotiate the flow of the tide. Though his attention and all his strength were bent to his task yet his thoughts, living some queer independent life of their own, as thoughts so often do in times of crisis, still went racing on. And very odd thoughts they were.

  “I am not going to marry Nadine. I woke up knowing that. How odd. As though I had gone on fighting while I slept and someone or something helped me to make up my mind. Who woke me? I could have sworn that someone woke me to do what I am doing now. Is it true that one meets the dead in sleep? There can’t have been a tide as high as this since the storm that wrecked Christopher Martyn. Life will be hell without Nadine. Yet I’ll have Damerosehay. I’d rather have had Nadine. It’s harder to give up a person than a place. Telling her will be pretty awful. I can’t live without Nadine. I’ve got to. No question about it. My God, the water is right over Obadiah’s windowsills.”

  The bridge had gone, and the stream, after adding its water to the flooding, had disappeared too. David rowed straight in over the garden and held on to the stout pole that supported Obadiah’s washing line. The ground rose towards the cottage and looking over the gunnel he could see the lost flowers, the marigolds and nasturtiums, bright and beautiful beneath the water. The tallest bushes, the hydrangeas and tamarisks, had their tops not quite submerged and the water was strewn with the little red floating lanterns of the fuchsias.

  “Marnin’, Master David,” said a cheerful voice. “ ’Twould a bin just about unkid if ee’d waited till tide was at height, so ’twould. But oi knowed ee’d come fur oi. Tarble storm. Tarble wind.”

  Obadiah, his bedroom window opened, was standing on a chair ankle deep in water. He had dressed himself and sensibly donned his high sea boots, and seemed little the worse for wear. “Can’t open door ’gainst this ’ere water,” he announced. “Oi’ll come through winder.”

  David got the boat beneath the window and looked in. The water was right up to the mattress of Obadiah’s high old-fashioned bed but not yet over it. On the bed the sensible Obadiah had collected his treasures; his best suit, his best boots, his best teapot, a piece of cold ham, his fishing rods, a biscuit tin ornamented with a portrait of Queen Victoria, the grandfather clock that had come from Damerosehay, and many other oddments.

  “God knows how we’re to get it all in,” cried poor David as Obadiah, standing with one foot on the chair and the other on the bed, handed out his treasures one by one. “Oi don’t go without me clock,” said Obadiah firmly. “Nor me best boots.”

  Somehow, to the accompaniment of the Bastard’s piercing barks, barking being his idea of being helpful, everything was got in and stowed away. As Obadiah himself scrambled from the windowsill to the gunnel the sea surged over his bed. The sight of it made David feel suddenly sick. If he had been half-an-hour later, and if last night had been one of those nights when Obadiah refreshed himself so deeply at the Eel and Lobster that there was no waking him the next morning, then he might have been submerged like his marigolds and nasturtiums. Obadiah seemed to feel the same. “It do make oi feel right gaggly,” he told David. “It’ll be hard puffin’ to Harbour, look see, wi’ a down-along wind an’ all this ’ere i’ the boat.”

  It was indeed a hard pull home and conversation was impossible. David, straining at one oar while Obadiah pulled on the other, found himself gazing at the grandfather clock propped in the stern; Christopher Martyn’s clock that he had designed, and perhaps made, himself. David suddenly grinned. This was another rescue from sea and tempest, but comically different from the other one. That other had been gallant and dramatic, with the great ship rushing to its doom, the captain lashed to the mast, the terrified crew, the beautiful woman in the cabin and the blue bird singing in its cage; but this one, with the boatload of boots and cold ham, crockery, furniture and a wet dog, was simply funny. Yet he hoped it was in the Damerosehay tradition. If Christopher Martyn yet existed anywhere, if he was alive and laughing at him for this ridiculous parody of his own action, it was to be hoped he was yet well contented with the heirs of his home and spirit. . . . David realized that tradition had got him at last. For the family and the place he was sacrificing his personal happiness. The world was well lost for love, they said. They were wrong. Not his world.

  “Us came clever,” said Obadiah as they reached the harbour.

  Little Village had now awakened to the fact that the sea was in the cottages and agitated but excited heads popped in and out of upper windows.

  “Look see,” they cried, “Obadiah an’ young Mr. Eliot from up the House. Mr. Eliot ’e’s fetched Obadiah in from marsh. Deedily done, sir, deedily done. Tarble storm, sir. Reglar white rain, ’twas. Tarble wind. Never seen tide like this ’ere, not anywhen. Tarble storm. Tarble wind.”

  The Eel and Lobster, like other old inns in thos
e parts, had an outside staircase leading to the upper storey. Upon this Mrs. Urry appeared in her dressing-gown, her hair most marvellously done up in steel curlers and a scarlet and black rag hearthrug draped over her shoulders. “You come up ’ere, Obadiah,” she invited him. “You an’ your bits an’ pieces. Reglar shrammed you look, ol’ man, reglar shrammed.”

  David brought the boat up beside the stone stairs, against which the water, now almost at the level of the handle on the Eel and Lobster’s front door, was lapping hungrily, and held it there while Obadiah and Urry and Mrs. Urry carted the cold ham, the teapot, the boots, the biscuit tin and the other oddments up the stairs to safety. The male population of Little Village, now in their boats, paddled excitedly about David. “Tide’s at height,” they said. “Won’t rise no ’igher. Wi’ this down-along wind, an’ the ’igh tide, us is lucky ’tis no worse, look see. Dykes is burst too. Oo’s to blame for that? The bloody government.” They spat in the water. “Old Obadiah ’e’s lucky ’e’s not drowned. Mid a bin, but for Mr. Eliot up the House. Tarble storm. Tarble wind.”

  Their unusual loquacity cheered David and their approval wrapped him round warmly. The cold dull pain that was growing in him at the thought of Nadine was a little eased by it. This was his place. These were his people. Steadying the boat he watched Urry lift the grandfather clock from the stern.

  But Obadiah, halfway up the stairs with his best boots, intervened. “Oi’m givin’ that thur clock to Master David,” he said.

  “No, Obadiah!” cried David.

  “Oi ain’t long for this world, look see,” explained Obadiah piously. “It won’t be no use to oi i’ churchyard. Seein’ it come from House ’tis right should go back thar. . . . Oi knowed ee’d come fur oi.”

  David, meeting Obadiah’s eyes, saw that he really wanted him to have the clock. Obadiah, though he could not find the words to say so, was very grateful for his rescue and glad it had been the young master who had done it. His clock back again at Damerosehay would be one more link between him and the House. It would stand there forever to show his gratitude.