She passed the beech tree, and her countrywoman’s eyes noted the narrow-leaved rue painted upon the inn signboard and about Nadine’s feet in her portrait; she came to the island and recognized it as the inspiration of one of Ben’s pictures; she ran through the wood beyond and came to the clearing, and found herself unexpectedly thinking of Sally. And then she saw something that stabbed her with almost unbearable pain, something personal to herself and to no one else. To her left the stream ran into the river, bog-myrtle bushes arching overhead, and inclosed within their branches, as in a frame, she saw a white swan floating on the silver sunlit river. Her baby’s favorite toy had been a celluloid swan that accompanied her into the bath, to bed, out in the pram, everywhere. The creature had started life almost as perfect in shape and as snowy-feathered as that swan out there on the river, but the passing of time and the squeezings of affection had made it so dented and discolored that at the end it was unrecognizable as a swan at all. But Midge had not cared. Her love was not time’s fool. She had even been unaware, Annie-Laurie thought, that her swan had lost his first loveliness. He had been in her cot with her when she died, and Annie-Laurie had put him into her little coffin.
Annie-Laurie knew suddenly that she must sit down. Her head was swimming. It was all coming over her again, the nightmare and the madness, just when she had hoped she was getting better. The grief, and then the shock of discovery that had followed, and then the awful thing that she had done because of the grief and shock. . . . And then the fear. . . . It was all years ago now. Why couldn’t she forget? She would think she was forgetting, and then some unexpected sight or sound would bring it all back again and she’d be as bad as ever. She pushed her way through the bog-myrtle bushes, out into the silver dazzle of the sunshine, and sat down on the riverbank, her head down on her knees. She did not cry, for it was one of her misfortunes that she could scarcely ever cry, but a familiar icy coldness slid over her body and pain throbbed in her temples. She was in for it again. There’d be sleepless nights again, and that awful nervous desperation that was harder to bear than any pain; she’d snap and snarl at poor Malony, and for a week or so life would be hell for them both.
An arm slipped round her shoulders and she looked up. Nadine in her cherry-red coat was sitting on the bank beside her, a basket of green stuff at her feet. She looked glowing and lovely, and her face as she smiled had a new motherliness. Annie-Laurie let out an unconscious sigh of relief, as a shivering body will when it comes near a glowing fire, but her pride caused her unconsciously to stiffen a little under the encircling arm. Nadine withdrew it. They were neither of them women who cared much for endearments.
“I was coming to find you,” said Annie-Laurie. “Tommy has come home earlier than you expected him. . . . He’s all right,” she added quickly. “He’s splendid. I only came because I thought you wouldn’t want to lose a moment.”
Nadine laughed. “That was understanding of you. But I don’t mind losing a few moments. I’m not used to tramping about in woods and I’d be glad to sit and rest for a bit. You’re not in a hurry, are you?”
“There’s the laundry—”
“That can wait. You’re a dear, Annie-Laurie, coming all this way to tell me about Tommy. But of course you would. Mothers understand mothers.” The girl beside her shivered, but like a good surgeon she went inexorably on with the job. “Were you thinking about your little girl just now?”
“She had a toy swan,” said Annie-Laurie, her eyes fixed now on the beautiful creature on the water in front of her. “She took it everywhere. It got awfully battered.”
“Had she? Caroline had a frightful rag doll with a patch on its nose. She wouldn’t look at anything else. I believe she’s got it still. I’ve never lost a child, but I can imagine how all the little things would stab one till the end of time.”
“Especially when it’s your fault,” said Annie-Laurie.
“You mean you blame yourself because your baby died?”
“Yes. She had bronchitis. I went out one night to do my work—I thought I ought to—I’d our living to get, for Luke, my husband, was too ill to work at that time. He said he’d look after her. But I ought not to have gone. She wasn’t fit to be left. It was a cold night and he opened the window bang on her.”
There was a pause, and then Nadine quietly asked a question. “Deliberately?”
“Yes.”
For two days Nadine had been thinking over the story that Hilary had told her, wondering about many things, but in particular what it was that had turned Annie-Laurie’s love for Luke to hatred. Something, of course, to do with the baby. She had guessed before this that the child was the crux of it all. She looked round and saw Annie-Laurie’s eyes fixed on hers with blank horror. That brief yes had been surprised out of her by Nadine’s quietness. She would have given the earth to withdraw it.
“Annie-Laurie, now that you’ve told me that much I think it would help you if you told me everything. Was your husband very ill? If so, perhaps he was not in a normal state of mind when he opened the window.”
“No, he wasn’t. And he was insanely jealous, too—of my baby’s father—of Jim. And of Midge because she was Jim’s child. We’d longed for a baby, Luke and I, but we had not had one.”
“Try to tell me everything, Annie-Laurie, as you would have told your mother. Try not to leave anything out. It is never fair to anyone to tell a half truth. It is a form of lying and it confuses judgment.”
If Annie-Laurie had hesitated she did not after that. All her life she had taken her stand upon truth. Bit by bit, bravely, she told it all, while Nadine listened patiently, fitting among the facts she already knew those that until now Annie-Laurie had told no one. Given those facts there was no more confusion in the story.
Though Annie-Laurie had been in an anguish of fury over the open window, though she had bitterly reproached Luke for it, she had not suspected him of more than gross carelessness until the evening of his death, when he had himself told her that he had exposed Midge deliberately. They had had a row over Malony, and he had not cared what he said if only he could hurt her enough. “He had suffered so much that he was not sane,” she kept saying to Nadine. “He was not to blame. He did not know what he did or said. And it had been an awful shock to him, after we had loved each other so much, to come back and find me married to another man. I could not make him understand how I felt about Jim. I never loved him as I loved Luke—I never shall—but I felt safe with him. I was grateful to him and he needed me. It was awful, that evening he told me he had—almost—murdered Midge. It threw me right off my balance. After that, I was hardly sane either. I cried out, ‘I hate you, Luke. I hate you so much I’d like to kill you,’ and I cried out so loudly that the people in the next flat heard me.” But she had not meant to bring back the wrong tablets from the chemist. Malony’s explanation of her conduct then had been the right one. It was not until Luke was actually taking the first one that she saw her mistake and then, deliberately, as deliberately as Luke himself when he opened the window upon Midge, she held her peace and let him take the second. She had not known, of course, what it was that he was taking; for all she knew it was something harmless.
But she had not bothered to find out. When she had found him deeply asleep, she still had not bothered.
“It was as though what he had told me had been a blow on the head,” she said to Nadine. “I was stunned. I didn’t come to myself till the next morning. So you see, that verdict of not guilty was a wrong one. I killed Luke.”
She had told it at last, the thing that had poisoned her life and nearly disordered her reason. Her straight back sagged, and she seemed to shrink in upon herself as though she had no more strength left in her.
“I’m sure I’d have done the same,” said Nadine quickly. “I believe any mother would.”
After that she sat quietly beside Annie-Laurie, not touching her but willing that the warmth of her unde
rstanding might reach her. “Defend us from all adversities which may happen to the body and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul,” she had prayed once in her room at the Herb of Grace, that first time Annie-Laurie had talked to her. The old inn gave one a very comforting feeling of physical protection, but this wood gave one more than that: a sense of spiritual safety, of release from the burden of tormenting thought. . . . There grew in it the hellebore that was for the healing of mental sickness. . . . After a while Annie-Laurie straightened herself, and with both hands pushed the hair back from her forehead with a gesture of such unutterable relief that Nadine knew she was released. She had told at last.
“I ought to have told at the trial,” said Annie-Laurie. “But I was afraid of what they might do to me. I’m a coward, you know. I’ve always been afraid of things—I don’t know why. But I tried not to tell any lies. I didn’t think then—what you said just now—that to tell only half the truth is a form of lying. Perhaps—do you think—I ought to tell Jim?”
“Yes, I think you ought. I think he deserves that you should not keep anything from him. Why did you not tell him before? Were you afraid you would lose his love?”
“No. I don’t think anything I could do would make him love me less—he’s like that. It was for Luke’s sake I did not tell. He would have asked how I had come to hate Luke so much. I did not want him to know what Luke had done to Midge. You see, I had loved Luke and—you’ll think this odd—after he was dead I loved him again.”
“Yes, I can understand that. Death has a way of wiping out hatred. And it does more than that; it increases understanding. It’s queer, but after people are dead, you find that you understand them better. There’s a poem that says, ‘What the dead have no speech for, when living, they can tell you, being dead.’ Perhaps that’s true. I don’t know. But I think you’ll find, when you tell Malony what Luke did to Midge, that he won’t hate him for it. He’ll understand quite well that he did not understand what he was doing. . . . Annie-Laurie, why haven’t you remarried Malony and had another child?”
She knew, but she wanted Annie-Laurie to tell her, and Annie-Laurie told her.
“I promised Luke I wouldn’t. Once, when he was very ill one night and thought he might die, he made me promise. I tried not to, and then I had to, just to keep him quiet. After he was dead because of—what I’d done—I felt I had to keep that promise. It was the only reparation I could make.”
“That was a promise which Luke had no right to ask, and you have no right to keep.”
“I have to keep my word,” said Annie-Laurie stubbornly. “You were talking only a little while ago about the importance of truth.”
“It’s difficult,” said Nadine gently. “In my own life I’ve found decisions about truth almost the hardest of all to make. When to speak out and when to hold one’s peace. Whether it is best to hurt someone with the truth or make them happy with a lie. It’s dreadfully difficult. Generally I think it’s a question of charity. Those who are leaving the world have no right to impose their will upon those they leave behind them; that’s a sort of seeking after power that’s deadly selfish. And no one has the right to seek ease of conscience at the expense of another’s happiness; that’s selfish too.”
Nadine pushed her fingers up into her hair with a despairing gesture. She was no good at this sort of thing. She hated doing it. Hilary ought to have been doing it. Mean of him to have put it on her. But love for Annie-Laurie drove her on. “Even though you are together, yet you can see from Malony’s face that he’s a most unhappy man. He wants proper married life, children and a home. You’ve no right, just because keeping your promise to Luke eases your misery of remorse, to keep Malony on the rack.”
“You see,” said Annie-Laurie slowly, “it’s Luke I really love.”
Nadine looked at her. So that was the likeness between them. Annie-Laurie couldn’t let go of Luke any more than she had been able to let go of David. She had gone with Malony, even as Nadine had gone with George, but not with the single mind. “Let your love die,” she said sharply, almost savagely. “Cut it right out, like a cancer. Cut the whole past right out. Try your hardest to forget it. People with divided allegiance are crazily unhappy, and make others unhappy. Let it be Malony, and Malony only, with what he stands for, now and until the end.”
Annie-Laurie wrung her hands in an unconscious gesture of wretchedness. “It would be like killing Luke over again.”
“Nonsense. That’s sheer sentimentality. When I said, ‘Let your love die,’ I meant die out of your conscious mind, out of the part of you that has to deal with daily living here and now. It will live on in the innermost part of you, of course. Everything we’ve had and been does that. Perhaps in some way we find it all again after this life. I don’t know. I only know that here and now, today, the happiness of those we live with is what matters. I’ve no right to talk, Annie-Laurie. I haven’t practiced what I preach. But I’ll try—if you will.”
Annie-Laurie said nothing and Nadine didn’t look at her. She leaned back against a rock behind her and shut her eyes. She was about at the end of her tether. She’d probably made a complete mess of everything. She felt just about savage with Hilary. He should have done the job himself.
There was a trampling in the wood, and the sound of a boy’s voice calling, “Cooee!”
“Tommy come to find you,” said Annie-Laurie. Nadine opened her eyes, wondering for how long they’d sat here in silence. Annie-Laurie, very white but looking oddly peaceful, was standing up holding the basket of greenstuff. Nadine, getting to her feet, saw her looking about as though seeing for the first time this place where they had been sitting. The small patch of turf, pungent with thymy things, had been soft to sit upon between the boulders of gray rock, and well protected by the bog-myrtle bushes. Dividing it, the small clear brown stream ran merrily over the polished stones to lose itself in the iris leaves that fringed the river, a sheet of silver under the sun. Annie-Laurie looked steadily about her, for this for her was the heart of the wood, and then led the way upstream. Nadine, following her, knew without a word spoken that all would soon be well with her.
They reached the clearing at the same time as George, Ben, and Tommy.
“We’ve been anxious, Nadine,” said George, his worried face relaxing at the sight of her.
“Long past lunchtime, Mother,” explained Ben.
“With apple dumplings getting tougher and tougher in the oven, Mother,” said Tommy reproachfully, but his eyes sparkled, and in two bounds he was with her and subjecting her to one of his bear hugs. Though bruised, she gloried in his strength for a moment, then feeling the bruises more than the glory held him away from her and gently touched his cheek with her finger. “Forgive us, darling. We haven’t got our watches, and we sat down and talked, and the sun was nice and hot and we forgot about lunch. But I’ve got your water cress. Look!”
“Jolly decent of you, Mother,” said Tommy, surveying the basket and then subjecting her to another hug.
Ben also surveyed the basket, and looked at his mother with laughing eyes. “That’s not water cress, Mother; it’s water parsnip, and not edible. Sometimes it’s called fool’s cress, because—well—” he grinned, “people get mixed up between the two sometimes.”
Tommy roared with laughter. “Just as decent of you, Mother, all the same.”
CHAPTER
16
— 1 —
Sally also was returning to the Herb of Grace, speeding home in the train after her few days’ shopping in London, and she, like Caroline, had a suitcase bursting with presents for everybody. She had spent many hours choosing the presents, and they were very exquisite and very expensive, and as well suited to their recipients as Sally’s loving understanding could make them, which was very suitable indeed. For Sally was not one of those who buy for others the presents they would like to have themselves; she left herself out of it comp
letely, and her knowledge of the likes and dislikes of others was profounder than she knew. She hadn’t at all enjoyed buying the book of anatomical diagrams for Tommy because, surfeited with the nude as the relatives of artists tend to be, she was revolted by the human form unclothed—especially unclothed down to the skeleton—but she had both studied it to make sure it was really as good of its kind as it could be and bought it, at a most exorbitant price. And the bottle of scent for Auntie Rose wasn’t her own taste at all, stunning the nose as it did in exactly the same sort of way as Auntie Rose’s brilliant satin blouses stunned the eye, nor did she really like the pale pink note paper with golden initials on it for Caroline. But there were a few things that besides being well suited to the friends for whom she bought them were her own taste too, particularly the lovely sailing ship in a bottle for Ben, and two little Rockingham china lambs for Annie-Laurie. Hilary Eliot, last time he had come over to the Herb of Grace, had sat next to her at tea and had said casually, “You and Annie-Laurie ought to have a lot in common. Did you know she had been a shepherdess too?” And then in a low gentle voice, “Do make friends with Annie-Laurie.”
And she had answered, with one of her straight, clear looks, “Yes, I will.” But that had been the day before she went away, and she hadn’t had a chance yet. But when she got home she would summon up her courage and try again, in spite of the frustration of her first effort, for Hilary had looked at her as though he had thought that in some way he thought her friendship was necessary to Annie-Laurie. She couldn’t see what use it could be, when Annie-Laurie didn’t want it, but perhaps if she gave her the lambs she would want it. That happened sometimes when one gave a gift; if it was a lucky gift, one that touched the heart to acceptance, one got gathered in along with it, like the tail of the kite with the kite, and there you were.
She had little hope that David would gather her in with her gift to him. She felt that his gift was probably a failure. She had not known what to give him. She had gone into shop after shop and walked round and round in circles for what had seemed like hour after hour, but nothing she looked at had commended itself to her as a suitable gift for a woman to give a man she loved when the man didn’t love her. The weary circling of her body had seemed to echo the weary circling of her thoughts in these days. That afternoon when they discovered the frescoes he had seemed to come suddenly most gloriously close to her. A wild hope had sprung up in her and had burned brightly for a week or so while they toiled together at the cleaning of the walls. Then as the time passed and nothing happened, and David got more and more absorbed in the chapel, seeming to find in the restoration of its beauty the stimulus and comfort that he had before found in his friendship with her, the hope died and bitter shame took its place.