“Isn’t it rather dull for you, Marian,” I said, “to be living here alone? Wouldn’t you be happier in London?”
“Alone?” she said. “Alone, what do you mean? But people come in shoals. I almost have to turn them from the door, I’m quite a place of pilgrimage, I can tell you! Everybody knows about me, you see, they know what I’ve been through, and naturally they want to see me—just as you did.”
“I’m very glad I have,” I said, “and I’m glad to have met your nice young grandson, Edward.”
“Sh,” she said. “You mustn’t call him that, he likes to be called Hugh, though Edward is a family name, of course.”
I remembered the two Edwards in the transept.
“Well,” I said, “it must be a comfort to you to have him near you.”
At that her face fell, and the mask she had been wearing since I came showed signs of cracking.
“He is”—then she corrected herself: “he would be. But do you know, though we are the only two members of the family left, he doesn’t come to see me very much?”
“Oh, surely—” I protested.
“No, he doesn’t. Masses of people come, but he does not—I mean not regularly—not regularly like I used to see old Nannie Robson when she was old. Does he remind you of anyone?” she asked me suddenly.
“Well, yes, he does,” I said, surprised at being asked. “His grandfather.”
“That’s it, that’s it, he does. And of course he knows—he knows what he’s been told, what his parents told him, for he’s never spoken of it to me. And what other people may have told him—a village is a hive of gossip. And I think he has a grudge against me—you know why. The only person in the world who has! His own grandmother! And they tell me—he has never told me—that he wants to marry a girl—a nice girl, a Winlove cousin, a distant cousin, but still a Winlove—but he won’t ask her because—because this is still weighing on him. He feels—or so they tell me—that he’s under some sort of spell or curse, and that he’d hand it on. He’s just plain silly! But no doubt he’s heard some rumour, totally false of course, that worries him. Now this is where you come in.”
“I?”
“Yes, Leo, you. You know the facts, you know what really happened. And besides me, only you know. You know that Ted and I were lovers; well, we were. But we weren’t ordinary lovers, not lovers in the vulgar sense, not in the way people make love today. Our love was a beautiful thing, wasn’t it? I mean, we gave up everything for each other. We didn’t have a thought except for each other. All those house-parties—people being paired off like animals at stud—it wasn’t like that with us. We were made for each other. Do you remember what that summer was like?—how much more beautiful than any since? Well, what was the most beautiful thing in it? Wasn’t it us, and our feeling for each other? Didn’t you realize it when you took our letters for us? Didn’t you feel that all the rest—the house, the people coming and going—just didn’t count? And wouldn’t you feel proud to be descended from our union—the child of so much happiness and beauty?”
What could I say but yes?
“I’m glad you see it so,” she said, “for you were our instrument—we couldn’t have carried on without you. ‘Carried on’—that sounds a funny phrase—but you know what I mean. You came out of the blue to make us happy. And we made you happy, didn’t we? You were only a little boy, and yet we trusted you with our great treasure. You might never have known what it was, have gone through life without knowing. And yet Edward—” She stopped.
“But you can tell him, Leo, tell him everything, just as it was. Tell him that it was nothing to be ashamed of, and that I’m nothing to be ashamed of, his old grandmother whom people come miles to see! There was nothing mean or sordid in it, was there? And nothing that could possibly hurt anyone. We did have sorrows, bitter sorrows, Hugh dying, Marcus and Denys killed, my son Hugh killed, and his wife—though she was no great loss. But they weren’t our fault—they were the fault of this hideous century we live in, which has denatured humanity and planted death and hate where love and living were. Tell him this, Leo, make him see it and feel it; it will be the best day’s work you ever did. Remember how you loved taking our messages, bringing us together and making us happy—well, this is another errand of love, and the last time I shall ever ask you to be our postman. Why does he think I stay on here, except to be near him? And yet he has this grudge against me, he won’t come near me if he can help it, though shoals of people come that I don’t want to see. Sometimes I think he would rather I didn’t live here, but I won’t believe it. And make him get out of his head this ridiculous idea that he can’t marry: it’s that that wounds me most. I don’t want him to marry, Heaven knows, and bring some frightful woman to Brandham Hall—though the Winlove girl is quite nice, I believe. But every man should get married—you ought to have got married, Leo, you’re all dried up inside, I can tell that. It isn’t too late; you might marry still; why don’t you? Don’t you feel any need of love? But Edward (only don’t call him that), he must; he’s young—he’s the same age Ted was when you came to Brandham. He has all his life before him. Tell him he must get rid of these silly scruples—his grandfather would have had them, if I’d let him. Poor Ted, if he’d had more brains he wouldn’t have blown them out. You owe it to us, Leo, you owe it to us; and it’ll be good for you, too. Tell him there’s no spell or curse except an unloving heart. You know that, don’t you? Tell him to think kindly of his old grandmother, who only lives to love him.”
She ceased, greatly to my relief, for I had made several ineffectual attempts to stop her, having seen how she was tiring herself. We talked a little about indifferent subjects—the changes at Brandham, the changes in the world—and then I took my leave, promising to come again.
“Bless you,” she said, “bless you! You’re a friend in a thousand. Kiss me, Leo!”
Her face was wet with tears.
A foreigner in the world of the emotions, ignorant of their language but compelled to listen to it, I turned into the street. With every step I marvelled more at the extent of Marian’s self-deception. Why then was I moved by what she had said? Why did I half wish that I could see it all as she did? And why should I go on this preposterous errand? I hadn’t promised to and I wasn’t a child, to be ordered about. My car was standing by the public call-box; nothing easier than to ring up Ted’s grandson and make my excuses .…
But I didn’t, and hardly had I turned in at the lodge gates, wondering how I should say what I had come to say, when the south-west prospect of the Hall, long hidden from my memory, sprang into view.
L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between
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