39. The Same to the Same
June 6th, 1929
Petra, my darling, my dear, dear man darling,
Oh, my dearest, isn’t it terrible to see the summer coming, and to feel so wintry and lonely. Your letters have been a help, but what wouldn’t I give for you yourself, the real you!
You will tell me again that I’m not telling the truth. That I don’t really love you because I won’t give up being conventional and respectable and go away with you, but it isn’t that, Petra darling. You think in your dear, impetuous way that it would all be so easy, but it wouldn’t really, darling. You think that because you are a man, and you don’t consider how awful it would be, day after day, all the sordidness and trouble. It wouldn’t really be fair to make you go through all that. Even if He would let me go—which, of course, he wouldn’t, because he is so selfish—it would be a long, drawn-out misery. I know how horrid it is because I know a woman who got her divorce. Of course, her husband took all the blame, but it was a miserable time for everybody, and she and her man friend had to go right away, and he gave up his post, a very good post, and they are living in quite a slummy little place in rooms, and don’t even get enough to eat sometimes.
Anyway, the Gorgon would never consent to me divorcing him, because he prides himself on being very virtuous and proper, and he would probably have to leave his firm or something. He would never do that. He thinks more of his firm than of anything in the world—far more than he does of me or my happiness, which he has never considered at all from the day he married me.
Doesn’t it seem too awful that one has to pay so heavily for making a mistake? I keep on thinking, if only I hadn’t married him. If only I were free to come to you, Petra darling—what a wonderful time we could have together! But then I think again that if I hadn’t married him, I should never have lived here, never met you, and oh, darling, what could make up for that? So I suppose, as they say in the nature-books, that He has “fulfilled his function” in bringing us together. I looked at him last night as he sat glooming over the mutton, which wasn’t quite done as he likes it (you would never let a stupid thing like mutton poison the whole beautiful day for you, but he does), and I thought of Mr. Munting saying once, “All God’s creatures have their uses,” when Miss Milsom had made me one of her lovely scarves—and I said to myself, “If only you could know, my dear Gorgon, what is the one thing in our lives I thank you for!” That would really have given him something to gloom about, wouldn’t it?
It is so funny—he is always asking when you are coming to see us again. His Cookery Book is going to be published in a few weeks’ time, and he is ridiculously excited about it. He thinks it is a great work of art, and is going to send you a copy as from one artist to another. Wouldn’t that make a good reason for you to call on us, if you could get over to England? It is clever of you to be able to find so many things to say about his silly little water-colours—you who are a really great painter (I have learnt not to say artist now. Do you remember how impatient you were with me when I called you “artistic”? We nearly had a quarrel that day. Fancy us quarrelling about anything—now!).
It makes me sad, Petra darling, to think of my poor lonely Man so far away, wanting his Lolo. And I’m a little frightened, too, when I think of all the beautiful ladies in Paris. I expect they think a lot of you, don’t they? Do you go to a great many fashionable parties? Or do you live the student-life I used to read about and think how gay and jolly it must be? You don’t tell me very much about the people you see and the places you go to. I wish you weren’t a portrait-painter—you must have so many opportunities to find someone more beautiful than your poor Lolo and so much cleverer. Don’t say they aren’t more beautiful than I am, because I shall know you aren’t telling the truth. I’m not really beautiful at all—only when I had been with you I sometimes used to look in the glass and think that happiness made me almost beautiful, sometimes. I have been reading in a book about the real Laura and Petrarch—did you know, she was really only a little girl and that he hardly saw her at all? Perhaps she was only beautiful in his imagination, too. But that didn’t prevent her from being his inspiration, did it? I wonder if you are the same. Perhaps I inspire you better from a distance. I don’t think a woman could feel like that. She wants her Man always, close to her. Darling, do say you want me like that, too.
I must stop now. The Gorgon will be wanting its tea. I am living just like a hermit now. I never go anywhere and I try to do all I can to keep him in a good temper, for fear he should get the idea that there is Somebody Else in my life. How dreadful it would be if he suspected anything. He is fairly reasonable now, except when his food isn’t quite right. But oh! I am so lonely.
Darling, I love you so much I don’t know what to do with myself. I have kissed the paper twenty times where your dear, darling name is. You must kiss it, too, and think you are kissing your own, your absolutely ownest own,
Lolo
40. The Same to the Same
14th June, 1929
Darling,
Your letter hurt me so dreadfully, I cried and cried. Oh, Petra, you can’t love me at all, or you wouldn’t say such awful things. You can’t really think that if I love you I ought to let him divorce me. Darling, do think how horrible it would be! How could I go through all that terrible shame in public, and all my friends looking on and thinking hateful things about our beautiful love! At least, I suppose I could go through with it—one can go through all kinds of agonies and still live—but that you should want me to do it—that you could think of your Lolo in such a sordid way—that’s what hurts me, darling. You used to say you wanted to stand between me and trouble, and couldn’t bear to think of anything ugly touching our pure and lovely passion. And yet now you want to smirch me with the stain of the divorce courts and see my name in the papers for people to snigger at. Oh, Petra, it’s absolutely clear you don’t really love me one bit.
You couldn’t feel the same to me, Petra, I know that, if I came to you all dirtied and draggled from an ordeal like that. Just think of having to stand up in the witness-box and tell the judge all about our love. It would all sound so different to their worldly, coarse, horrible minds, and our love would seem just a vulgar, nasty—I don’t like to write the word they would call it, even to you—instead of the pure, clean, divine thing it really is.
Darling, I’m not thinking of myself—I’m thinking of you and our love. I don’t want a single spot to touch it. It would be better to suffer all our lives as we are suffering now—as I am suffering, for sometimes, Petra, I don’t think you suffer at all—rather than to look at each other with the shadow of an ugly scandal between us. You don’t understand. You don’t realise what a difference these things make to a woman. It does not make any difference to a man, but even you would see the stain on me for ever afterwards, and would turn against me.
Tell me you don’t really mean it, darling. There must be some other way out. Let us think very hard and find out. Or if you really think so little of me, tell me so, and we will say good-bye again—for always, this time. I expect I was wrong to stick to our agreement before. You wanted to be released then, and you wouldn’t have asked it if you hadn’t been tired of me already in your heart. Let’s end it all, Petra. Perhaps I shall die, and then you will be free. I feel unhappy enough to die—and if I’m too strong for wretchedness to kill me, there are always easy ways out of it all.
Your heart-broken
Lolo
41. The Same to the Same
15, Whittington Terrace
30th June, 1929
Darling, dear Petra, my dearest,
Of course I do forgive you. It’s you really that must forgive me for saying such awful things. I didn’t mean them. I knew really, deep down in my heart, that you loved me all the time. Of course I couldn’t say good-bye—it would kill me—— Yes, I meant that part of it.
But you do see now, don’t you, that we can’t take that way out. For my sake, you say, darling, but, indeed, I could bear anything for myself—only I don’t want to spoil the lovely thing we have made. We will do just as you say, wait for a year and see if anything happens. It may, if we only want it enough. God might make a miracle to help us. Such things have happened before now. He might even die—“in him Nature’s copy’s not eterne”—doesn’t somebody say that in a play somewhere? We used to go and see Shakespeare sometimes when I was at school, and do the plays in class, though I didn’t pay much attention to them then. I didn’t understand what a difference art and poetry make to one’s life. I was waiting for you to come and teach me, my dear.
I am going to do some really solid reading now, to try and be more worthy of my darling when the happy time comes. (I must believe there will be a happy time, or I should go mad.) This year of waiting shall be a year of self-development. That will make the desolate days pass more quickly. Goodness knows I shall have time enough, for He never lets me go out anywhere or have any of my own friends to see me. The only people I ever have to talk to are his friends from the office. They talk about bridges and electrical plant interminably. I don’t know how people can live with such petty, dull things taking up all their minds. Sometimes one or two of them have the graciousness to ask me if I have seen the latest play or film, but I never have, and I just have to sit and smile while He says, “We’re quiet, domestic people, my wife and I; we don’t care about this night life.” And if I ever suggest going out, he pretends that I want to be “gadding round” in nightclubs at all hours. I am ashamed of being so ignorant of the things everybody is talking about. Other husbands take their wives out. But no—if I want to stir out of doors, I’m a bad woman—“one of these modern wives who don’t care for their homes.” What kind of place is my home, that I should care about it?
I have got that book you were talking about, Women in Love. It is very queer and coarse in parts, don’t you think, and rather bewildering, but some of the descriptions are very beautiful. I don’t understand it all, but it is thrilling, like music. That bit about the horse, for instance. I can’t quite make out what he means, but it is terribly exciting. What funny people Lawrence’s characters are! They don’t seem to have any ordinary lives, or have to make money or run households or anything. That woman who is a schoolmistress—she never seems to have to bother about her work, one would think it was all holidays at her school. I suppose the author means that the humdrum things don’t really count in one’s life at all, and I expect that is true, only in actual life they do seem to make a lot of difference.
Oh, I do hate this cramping life—always telling lies and smothering up one’s feelings. But tyrants make liars. It is what somebody I read about in the papers calls “slave-psychology.” I feel myself turning into a cringing slave, lying and crawling to get one little scrap of precious freedom—a book, a letter, a thought even—and carrying it off into a corner to gloat over it in secret. That is the way in which I am learning to build up an inner life for myself, a lovely, secret freedom, so that the things He says and does can’t really hurt me any longer. The real Me is free and happy, worshipping in my hidden temple with my darling Idol, my own dear Petra darling.
How I do love you! My starved life is full when I think of you—brimmed with joy and inward laughter. And one day, perhaps, we shall come out of the dark catacombs and build our temple of Love in the glorious sunlight, with the golden gates wide open for all the world to see and marvel at our happiness.
Yours, beloved, yours utterly and completely,
Lolo
I love to write the name you call me by—the name that is only yours. Such a silly name it would sound to people who didn’t know what it means. He uses the name other people use—just like an uncle or something. That’s all he is—a sort of Wicked Uncle in a fairy-tale. I can bear him better if I think of him just as that.
42. The Same to the Same
15, Whittington Terrace
18th July, 1929
Darling, darling,
I hardly know how to breathe for joy! To know that I shall see you, hear your dear voice, hold your hand again! He heard me singing in the kitchen this morning and asked what I was yowling about. I should have liked to tell him. Think of his face if I had said: “My lover is coming home and I am singing for joy!” I said meekly that I was sorry if it disturbed him, and he said in his courteous way that it didn’t matter to him if I liked to hear the sound of my own voice, but the girl would probably think I was mad. I said I didn’t care what the girl thought of me, and he answered: “That’s just the trouble with you. You don’t care. You’re right up in the air.” So I am—so I am! Right above the clouds, Petra darling, up in the golden sunlight, where nothing can touch me. He’s quite right for once, if he did but know it.
Darling, we must be very careful when you come. I don’t know how I shall manage to keep the happiness out of my eyes and voice. But he won’t notice—he never notices how I’m feeling. Besides, he will monopolise you with his precious book. It’s really out at last, and he’s clucking over it like a hen that’s laid an egg. People say to me: “So your husband has written a book, Mrs. Harrison. So clever of him. Fancy a man knowing such a lot about cooking! What exciting meals you must have. Aren’t you afraid he’ll poison himself sometimes with those queer toadstools and things?” And I smile and say, “Oh, but my husband would never make a stupid mistake. He knows so much about them, you see.” That’s quite true, too. He doesn’t make mistakes about things—only about people. He never gets anything right about me—not one single thing. But then he really cares about mushrooms and takes trouble to study them.
I wonder how his first wife put up with him. She was a homely sort of person, from all accounts—the sort that are good housekeepers and mothers and all that. I think, if I’d ever had a child I could have been happier, but he has never given me one, and doesn’t seem to want to. I’m glad of that now—since I met you. It would be terrible to have his child now—it would seem like a sort of treason to you, beloved. Don’t be afraid, dearest. He never touches me—you know what I mean—and I wouldn’t let him. I don’t let him even give me his usual morning peck if I can help it. I don’t refuse, of course—that would make him suspicious at once. I just happen to be busy and keep out of his way. He’s glad, I think, because he always used to grumble at any demonstration and say, “That’ll do, that’ll do”—though he’ll let the cat swarm all over him and knead bread on his chest for hours together. I suppose he thinks a woman’s feelings don’t matter as much as a cat’s!
But I don’t know why I bother about him at all, when you, you, you are the one thing filling my heart. Oh, my darling, my Petra, my heart’s heart! You are coming back. Nothing else is of importance in the whole world. The sun’s shining and everything is happy. I went out to do some shopping to-day—silly, trivial things for the house—and I could have kissed the bread and the potatoes as I put them into my basket, just for joy that you and I and they exist in the same world together! Petra, beloved, you and I, you and I—oh, darling, isn’t it wonderful!
Your happy
Lolo
43. The Same to the Same
15, Whittington Terrace
August 2nd, 1929
Petra, oh, my dear!
Oh, darling, never say now that the luck isn’t on our side sometimes. Something even bigger than luck, perhaps. That we should save that last, wonderful evening out of the wreck—so perfect, so unspeakably wonderful—our evening of marvellous love. Just think—that it should be your last night, and that he should be called out suddenly like that, and ask you, himself, not to go before he got back. And even then, if it hadn’t been the girl’s night out, we shouldn’t have been safe. But it was, by such incredible luck, Petra mine.
Do you know, there was a moment when I was frightened. I thought, for a horrible minute, that he had suspected something after all, and had only pretended to go out, and would come slinking back on purpose to catch us. Did that occur to you? And were you afraid to say anything, lest I should be frightened? I was. And then, quite suddenly, I felt certain, absolutely certain that it was all right. We were being watched over, Petra. We had been given that great hour—a little bit of eternity, just for you and me. God must be sorry for us. I can’t believe it was sin—no one could commit a sin and be so happy. Sin doesn’t exist, the conventional kind of sin, I mean—only lovingness and unlovingness—people like you and me, and people like him. I wonder what Mr. Perry would say to that. He is just crossing the road now to Benediction, as he calls it. He thinks he knows all about what is right and what is wrong, but lots of people think his candles and incense wicked, and call him a papist and idolater and things like that. And yet, out of his little, cold, parish experience, he would set himself up to make silly laws for you, darling, who are big and free and splendid. How absurd it all is! He preached such a funny sermon the other day, about the Law and the Gospel. He said, if we wouldn’t do as the Gospel said, and keep good for the love of God, then we should be punished by the Law. And he said that didn’t mean that God was vindictive, only that the Laws of Nature had their way, and worked out the punishment quite impartially, just as fire burns you if you touch it, not to punish you, but because that is the natural law of fire.
I am wandering on, darling, am I not? I only wondered what kind of natural revenge Mr. Perry thought God would take for what he would call our sin. It does seem so ridiculous, doesn’t it? As if God or Nature would trouble about us, with all those millions and millions of worlds to see to. Besides, our love is the natural thing—it’s the Gorgon who is unnatural and abnormal. Probably that’s his punishment. He denies me love, and love is Nature’s revenge on him. But, of course, he wouldn’t see it that way.
Oh, darling, what a wonderful time these last weeks have been. I enjoyed every minute. I have been so happy, I didn’t know how to keep from shouting my happiness out loud in the streets. I wanted to run and tell the people who passed by, and the birds and the flowers and the stray cats how happy I was. Even the Gorgon being there couldn’t spoil it altogether. Do you remember how angry he was about The Sacred Flame? And you were holding my hand, and your hand was telling mine how true and right it was that the useless husband should be got out of the way of the living, the splendid wife and her lover and child. Darling, I think that play is the most wonderful and courageous thing that’s ever been written. What right have the useless people to get in the way of love and youth? Of course, in the play, it wasn’t the husband’s fault, because he was injured and couldn’t help himself—but that’s Nature’s law again, isn’t it? Get rid of the ugly and sick and weak and worn-out things, and let youth and love and happiness have their chance. It was a brave thing to write that, because it’s what we all know in our hearts, and yet we are afraid to say it.
Petra, darling, my lover, my dearest one, how can we wait and do nothing, while life slips by? The time of love is so short—what can we do? Think of a way, Petra. Even—yes, I’m almost coming to that—even if the way leads through shame and disgrace—I believe I could face it, if there is no other. I know so certainly that I was made for you and that you are all my life, as I am yours. Kiss me, kiss me, Petra. I kiss my own arms and hands and try to think it’s you. Ever, my darling, your own
Lolo
44. The Same to the Same
15, Whittington Terrace
5th Oct., 1929
Oh, Petra, I am so frightened. Darling, something dreadful has happened. I’m sure—I’m almost quite sure. Do you remember when I said Nature couldn’t revenge herself? Oh, but she can and has, Petra. What shall I do? I’ve tried things, but it’s no good, Petra, you’ve got to help me. I never thought of this—we were so careful—but something must have gone wrong. Petra, darling, I can’t face it. I shall kill myself. He’ll find out—he must find out, and he’ll be so cruel, and it will all be too terrible.
Petra, I was so desperate I tried to make him—don’t be angry, Petra—I mean, I tried to be nice to him and make him love me, but it wasn’t any good. I don’t know what he will do to me when he discovers the truth. Darling, darling, do something—anything! I can’t think of any way, but there must be one, somehow. Everybody will know, and there will be a frightful fuss and scandal. And even if we got a divorce, it wouldn’t be in time—they are so slow in those dreadful courts. But I don’t expect he would divorce me. He would just smother it all up and be cruel to me. I don’t know. I feel so ill, and I can’t sleep. He asked me what was the matter with me to-day. I’d been crying and I looked simply awful. Petra, my dearest, what can we do? How cruel God is! He must be on the conventional people’s side after all. Do write quickly and tell me what to do. And don’t, don’t be angry with me, darling, for getting you into this trouble. I couldn’t help it. Write to me or come to me—I shall go mad with worry. If you love me at all, Petra, you must help me now.
Lolo
45. Statement of John Munting
[Continued.]
The next news I had about the Harrisons was about the middle of October, 1929, when I got a note from Lathom, written, rather unexpectedly, from “The Shack, Manaton, Devon.” He said that he was staying with Harrison, who was having his annual “camp” among the water-colour “bits” and the natural foodstuffs. Harrison, it appeared, had been so pressing that he really had not known how to refuse, especially as he was really feeling rather played-out after several months’ strenuous work in Paris. After the unbearably hot and prolonged summer, the prospect of pottering about a bit among the lush grass and deep lanes of Devon had seemed attractive, even when coupled with the boredom of Harrison’s company. “As a matter of fact,” he added, “the old boy is not so bad when you get him in the country by himself. This is the kind of life that really suits him. As a family man he is a failure, but he quite comes out and blossoms doing the odd bits of work about the shack. And he certainly is a first-class cook, though up to the present I have successfully avoided his nettle-broth and stewed toadstools, not wishing to be cut off in my youth. This is a pretty place—miles away from everywhere, of course, stuck down on a circumbendible lane which runs down from Manaton (half a dozen houses and a pub) to the deep valley which separates the Manaton Ridge and Becky Falls from Lustleigh Cleave. The only neighbours are the sheep and cows—an old ram walked into the kitchen the other day. Harrison was grunting over the stove and didn’t see him at first. ‘Be-hey-hey,’ says the ram; ‘Eh-heh-heh,’ bleats Harrison, looking up; and damn it, he was so exactly like the old fellow that he wanted nothing but a pair of horns to complete the resemblance! We wash the crockery, and then Harrison takes his newest superfine painting-box, with the collapsible legs and all the rest of it, and trundles away into the valley, where he sits all day in a gorse-bush, trying to put the tumbling of the stream on paper. The drought has dried it up a good bit, but never was anything so desiccated as the arid little plan of it he produces with pride for me to see, painted with a brush with three hairs in it—peck, peck, scratch and dab—like a canary scrabbling for seed. Why don’t I take the opportunity to do some work in this glorious place? No, thanks; I’m a figure and portrait wallah—besides, I’ve come here for a rest. It is not mine to sing the stately grace—I smoke my pipe in the doorway, drive the cattle out of the back garden, and see that the stewpot doesn’t boil too fast.
“So here I am, in comfortable exile with Menelaus, while Helen sits at home and sews shirts. And it’s a better way, too. One mustn’t take these things too seriously. Damned if Harrison hasn’t got the right idea after all. Look after the grub and leave women to their own fool devices. They give a man no peace. You, being married, have perhaps got your house in order. Do you find it as easy to do your work, now that you’re hooked up to a whirlwind? But, of course, your whirlwind works too, and helps to turn the mill-wheel, which no doubt makes all the difference.”
Lathom went on in this strain for a page or so. Cynicism from him was something new, and I took it to spell restlessness of some sort or other. Either, I thought, he was getting fed up with the lady’s exactions, or the trio had arrived at a modus vivendi. It was no affair of mine.
He ended up by saying that he would be running up to town in a day or two and would look me up. I was then living in Bloomsbury—in fact, in my present house—and my wife was away with her people. I had arranged to go with her, but at the last moment an urgent matter turned up—an Introduction to an anthology, which had to be rushed out in a great hurry before some other publisher get hold of the idea, and I had to stay behind to get the thing fairly going, as it meant a good deal of work at the British Museum.
When Lathom turned up at about one o’clock on the 19th, I explained this to him and apologised for having no lunch to offer him. Like most men, and women, too, when left to themselves, I found solitary meals uninspiring. So, apparently, did “the girl,” whom, till my wife left me, I had imagined to be a good cook. Not that I had ever expected Elizabeth to leave her writing to see after my meals, so I can only suppose that her moral influence was enough to make the difference between roast mutton and raw.
Lathom commiserated me, and we went and had some grub at the “Bon Bourgeois.” He seemed to be in high spirits, when he thought about it, but had a way of going off into fits of abstraction which suggested nerves or preoccupation of some kind. He asked about the anthology and my work generally with apparent interest, and then, to my surprise, broke suddenly into my description of the plot of my new novel by saying:
“Look here, if the wife’s away, why don’t you come down to the Shack with me for the week-end? It’ll do you good, freshen you up and all that.”
“Good heavens,” I said, “it’s Harrison’s place. He won’t want me.”
“Oh yes, he’d love to have you. Oh, rather. In fact, he only said to me yesterday, when I was starting off, he wished I could bring you back with me. He’s quite forgotten all that misunderstanding. He’s rather distressed about it, really. Thinks he did you an injustice. Would like to make it up. He says you must be harbouring resentment, because you’ve been in town all this time and haven’t been to see them.”
“That’s nonsense,” I said. “You know why I’ve thought it best to keep out of it.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t. Naturally he thinks you’re offended.”
“Didn’t you tell him I was busy?”
“Of course. Oh, yes. Played up the popular literary man for all it was worth. So he said, of course you were too important nowadays to remember your old friends.”
“Damn it,” I said, “what a tactless devil you are, Lathom. You needn’t have hurt his feelings.”
“No, but look here. Why not come down? It’ll please the old boy no end, and as neither of the women will be there, there won’t be any awkwardness. It’s a damned good opportunity for being civil to him without involving your wife.”
“Civil is a good word for it,” I objected. “I don’t know that it’s particularly civil to plant myself on the man like that, and make him feed me and so on, without notice, when he probably doesn’t want me. Just at the week-end, too, when it’s difficult to get extra supplies.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” said Lathom, “we’ll take some grub down with us. I was going to in any case. Everything has to be brought out there by a carrier twice a week. Frightful desolate hole. We’ll take a bit of beef and a couple of pounds of sausages. That’ll see us through all right.”
I considered it.
“I say,” said Lathom, suddenly. “Do come, old man. I wish you would. It’s all right there, you know, but I do get a bit bored at times. I’d like to have a yap with somebody who talks my language.”
“If you’re fed up,” I said reasonably, “why do you stay?”
“Oh, well—I promised I would, don’t you see. It’s not bad really, but it would do us both good to have a bit of a change.”
“Now, look here, Lathom,” said I, “I don’t like the idea particularly. I’m not particularly puritan” (I don’t know why one uses that phrase—I suppose it is easier to disown one’s decencies when one represents them as something grotesque in a black suit and steeple-hat), “but considering the way you behaved to Harrison, I think it’s rather thick to go and push your friends on to him. What you do is your own business” (looking back on it, I seem to have extracted a great deal of satisfaction from this original thought), “but it’s rather different for me.”
“Punk!” said Lathom. “That’s all absolutely over. Finished. Washed out. It’s you who keep on digging it up again. Can’t you forget it and come down and help me out with old Harrison?”
“Why so keen?”
“Oh, I’m not particularly keen. I thought you’d like it, that’s all. It doesn’t matter. What are you doing this afternoon? B.M. again?”
I said, no; I avoided the Reading Room on Saturday afternoons, because it was so crowded, and asked him about his work.
He talked about it a little, in the same vague way as before, saying how difficult it was to settle to anything, and displaying some irritability with his sitters of the moment. His triumph at the Academy had made him fashionable, and fashionable women were all alike, it seemed; small-minded and featureless. One might as well paint masks. All of which I had heard so often from other painters that I put Lathom down as already spoilt.
I suggested that he should stay up in town and do a show with me, but he said he was fed up with shows. He had only come up to see his agent, and was catching the 4.30. Why didn’t I change my mind and come with him?
It ended in my changing my mind, and going. I hardly know why, except that I was only six months married and my wife was away, which, to the well-balanced mind, is no good reason for idle behaviour.
The express ran us down in smooth, stuffy comfort, and reached Newton Abbot dead on time at 9.15. I cannot say—though I have tried—that I remembered any particular incident on the way down. I hate talking on railway journeys, anyway, and Lathom did not seem very conversational. I read—it was Hughes’ High Wind in Jamaica—an over-rated book, I think, considered as a whole, but memorable for that strange and convincing description of the earthquake. The thick heat and silence, and then the quick, noiseless shift of sea and shore, like the tilting of a saucer. Good, that. And the ghastly wind afterwards. And the child, not realising that anything out of the way had happened, because nobody gave the thing its proper terrifying name. That is very natural. I do not care for the part about the pirates. It is an anti-climax.
I know we dined on the train, but railway meals are seldom memorable. Lathom grumbled, and left his portion half-eaten, and I said something about his acquiring a taste for hedgehog-broth and stewed toadstools—some silly remark which he took as a deadly insult.
At Newton Abbot we changed into the local, and dawdled through Teigngrace, Heathfield and Brimley Halt, taking over half an hour about it, till we were turned out, twenty minutes late, on the platform at Bovey Tracey. It was a quarter-past ten and dark, but the smell of the earth came up pleasantly, with a welcome suggestion of rain in the air. I stood on the platform, clutching an attaché case in one hand and the bag with the beef and sausages in the other, while Lathom transacted some occult business with a man outside. Then he came back, saying briefly, “I’ve got a man to take us,” and we stumbled out to where an aged taxi thrummed mournfully in the gloom. Lathom bundled in, and I parked my bags at his feet.
“What the devil’s that?” he said crossly.
“The grub, fathead,” said I, following him in.
“Oh, yes, of course, I’d forgotten,” he said. “Come on, let’s get going, for God’s sake!”
Being used to Lathom, I ignored his irritability. We jolted off.
The taxi had a churchyard smell about it, and I mentioned the fact. Lathom slammed the window down with an impatient grunt. I remarked, foolishly, that he didn’t seem very enthusiastic about the trip. He said:
“Oh, don’t talk so much.”
It seemed to me that the prospect of seeing Harrison again had rather got on his nerves, and I looked forward to an exasperating week-end.
“Vous l’avez voulu, Georges Dandin,” I reflected, and lit a cigarette resignedly. The narrow road heaved and sank between the dark hedges, but climbed on the whole, wriggling determinedly up and round to the ridge. A dim light or so and a cluster of black roofs announced civilisation, and Lathom roused himself to say: “Manaton—there’s a good view from here by daylight.”
“We shan’t be long now, then, I suppose,” said I.
He did not reply, and I suddenly became aware that I could hear him breathing. Once I had noticed it, I couldn’t seem to shut my ears to the sound. It was like hearing your own heartbeats in the night—when they seem to grow louder and louder, till they fill the silence and keep you from going to sleep. The breaths seemed quite to rasp my ear, they were so heavy and so close.
“Eh!” said Lathom, unexpectedly. “What did you say?”
What had I said? It must have been ages ago, for Manaton was well behind us now, and the car was nosing her broken-winded way steadily down and down, with deep cart-ruts wringing her aged bones. I recollected that I had said I supposed we shouldn’t be long now.
“Oh, no,” said Lathom. “We’re nearly there.”
We bounced on in silence for ten minutes more; then creaked to a standstill. I put my head out. Dim fields, trees and the tinkling of a distant stream coming remotely up on a puff of south-west wind. No light. No building.
“Is this it?” I asked, “or has the engine conked?”
“What?” said Lathom, irritably. “Yes, of course this is it. What’s the matter? Push along—we don’t want to stay here all night.”
I wrestled with the door and edged out, Lathom close at my heels. He paid the driver, and the car began to move off, lurching on down the slope to find a place to turn.
“Here!” said I; “have you got the beef?”
“Oh, hell,” said Lathom, “I thought you had it.”
I plunged after the taxi, reclaiming the food, and came back to where Lathom was standing. His hurry seemed to have left him. He was striking a match and having a little trouble with it. The car, a hundred yards off, choked, crashed its gears, burbled, choked again, burbled, choked, and came thudding up on bottom gear. It passed us, labouring and bumping, moved up into second, hesitated into top, and its red rear light vanished, showed, jerking, vanished and span slowly skywards.
“Ready?” said Lathom.
I did not point out that I had been patiently waiting for him to make a move, but grasped the bags and followed.
“We’ve got a field to cross,” he explained, holding a gate open for me.
We staggered along for a little. Then he stopped and I bumped up against him.
“Over there,” he said.
I looked, and saw a patch of extra darkness, between the darkness of some tree-stems.
“There’s no light,” I said. “Is he expecting you? I hope he won’t be annoyed with me for coming.”
“Oh, he won’t be annoyed,” said Lathom, shortly. “He’s gone to bed, I expect. Early bird. Up with the lark and down with the sun and all that. It doesn’t matter. We can forage round for ourselves.”
A few more minutes, and we stood at the door of the shack. You know what it’s like—indeed, all England knows by now—a low, two-roomed cottage, ugly, built of stone, with a slate roof. Only one story—what in Scotland they call a but and ben. The windows were unshuttered, but not a spark of light showed through them—no candle, not so much as the embers of a fire.
Lathom gave an ejaculation.
“He must have gone to sleep,” he muttered. I was fumbling for the handle of the door, but he pushed me aside, and I heard the latch click open. He paused, staring into the dark interior.
“I wonder if he’s gone wandering off and got lost somewhere,” he said, hesitating on the threshold.
“Why not go in and see?” I countered.
“I’m going to.” He stepped in and the unmistakable rattle of matches in the box told me that he was getting a light. He was clumsy about it, and only after several futile scratches and curses did the small flame flare up; he held it high, and for a moment I saw the living-room—a kitchen table cluttered with crockery, a sink, an empty hearth, and a jumble of painting gear, clumped in a corner. Then the match flickered and burnt his fingers, and he dropped it, but made no effort to strike another.
“Juggins!” said I, defiantly, for this cheerless welcome was getting on my nerves. “Here—isn’t there a candle or anything?”
I hunted through my pockets for a petrol lighter. This gave a steadier light, by which I found and lit a bedroom candle on a bracket just behind the door. The untidy room leaped into existence again. I set the candle down on the table, beside the sordid remnants of a meal. A chair lay overturned on the floor. I righted it mechanically and looked round. Lathom was still standing just inside the door, with his head cocked sideways, as though he were listening.
“Well, I’m damned,” said I, “this is very cheerful. If Harrison—”
“Listen a minute,” he said, “I thought I heard him snoring.”
I listened, but could hear nothing except a tap dripping into the sink.
“Looks to me as if he’d gone out,” I said. “How about starting the fire up? I’m chilly. Where’s the wood?”
“In the basket,” said Lathom, vaguely.
I investigated the basket, but it was empty.
“Oh, well,” I said, “let’s have a drink and get to bed. If Harrison comes in later, you’ll have to do the explaining.”
“Yes,” said Lathom, eagerly. “Good idea. Let’s have a drink.” He wandered about. “Where the devil’s he put the whiskey?” He flung open a cupboard door, and groped about, muttering.
At this point a thought occurred to me.
“Would Harrison go out and leave the door unlocked?” I said. “He’s a careful sort of fellow as a rule.”
“What?” Lathom’s head emerged for a moment from the cupboard. “No—no—I should think he would lock up.”
“Then he must be about somewhere,” I said. We had been talking almost in whispers—I suppose with the idea of not disturbing the sleeper, but now I lost patience.
“Harrison!” I shouted.
“Shut up!” said Lathom. “He must have left the whiskey in the bedroom.” He picked up the candle and plunged into the inner room.
The shadows parted and flowed in after him as he went, leaving me in darkness again. His footsteps shuffled to a halt and there was a long pause. Then he spoke, in a curious, thick voice with a catch in it, like a gramophone needle going over a crack.
“I say, Munting. Come here a minute. Something’s up.”
The inner room was in a sordid confusion. My hurrying footsteps tripped over some bedclothes. There were two beds in the room, and Lathom was standing by the farther of the two. He stepped aside, and his hand shook so that the candle-flame danced. I thought at first that the man on the bed had moved, but it was only the dancing candle.
The bed was broken and tilted grotesquely sideways. Harrison was sprawled over it in a huddle of soiled blankets. His face was twisted and white and his eyeballs rolled up so that only the whites showed. I stooped over him and felt for his wrist. It was cold and heavy, and when I released it it fell back on the bed like dead-weight. I did not like the look of the nostrils—black caverns, scooped in wax—not flesh, anyway—and the mouth, twisted unpleasantly upwards from the teeth, with the pale tongue sticking through.
“My God!” I cried, but softly—and turned to look at Lathom, “the man’s dead!”
“Dead?” He was looking at me, not at Harrison. “Are you sure?”
“Sure?” I put a finger beneath the fallen jaw, which woodenly resisted me. “Why, he must have been dead for hours. He’s stiff, man, stiff!”
“So he is, poor old b——” said Lathom.
He began to laugh.
“Stop that,” I said, snatching the candle away from him, and dumping him roughly down on to the other bed. “Pull yourself together. You want a drink.”
I found the whiskey with some trouble. It was on the floor, under Harrison’s bed. He must have grasped at it in his struggles and let it roll away from him. Fortunately, the cork was in place. There was a tumbler, too, but I did not touch that. I fetched another from the living-room (Lathom cried out not to be left in the dark, but I paid no attention), and poured him out a stiff peg, and made him swallow it neat. Then I stood over him as he sat and shuddered.
“Sorry, old man,” he said at last. “Silly of me to make an ass of myself. Bit of a startler, isn’t it? But your face—oh, Lord!—if you could have seen yourself! It was priceless.”
He began to giggle again.
“Don’t be a fool,” said I. “We’ve got no time for hysterics. Something’s got to be done.”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Yes—something must be done. A doctor, or something. All right, old man. Give me another drink and I’ll be as right as rain.”
I gave him another small one and took some myself. That seemed to clear my mind a little.
“How far are we from Manaton?”
“About three miles, I think—or a little over.”
“Well,” I said, “I suppose somebody there will have a telephone, or can send a messenger. One of us had better get along there as fast as possible and get on to the police.”
“Police?”
“Yes, of course, you ass. They’ve got to know.”
“But you don’t suppose there’s anything wrong about it?”
“Wrong? Well, there’s a dead man—that’s pretty wrong, I should think. He must have died of something. Did he have a heart, or fits, or anything?”
“Not that I know of.”
I surveyed the distasteful bed again.
“It looks more as though—he’d eaten something—”
I stopped, struck by an idea.
“Let’s look at the things in the other room,” I said. Lathom jumped to his feet.
“When I left him he said something about fungi—he was going to get some special kind—”
We went out. In a saucepan on the table was a black, pulpy mess. I sniffed it cautiously. It had a sourish, faintly fungoid odour, like a cellar.
“Oh, Lord,” whimpered Lathom, “I knew it would happen some day. I told him over and over again. He laughed at me. Said he couldn’t possibly make a mistake.”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said, “but it looks rather as if he had. Poor devil. Of course, it would happen the very day there was nobody here to help him. I suppose he was absolutely on his own. Didn’t any tradesmen call, or anything?”
“The carrier comes over on Mondays and Thursdays with supplies,” said Lathom, “and takes the orders for the next visit.”
“No milkman? No baker?”
“No. Condensed milk, and the carrier brings the bread. If there’s nobody in he just puts the things on the window-sill.”
“I see.” It seemed to me pretty ghastly. “Well,” I went on, “will you go or shall I?”
“We’d better both go, hadn’t we?”
“Nonsense.” I was positive about this. I don’t know why, except that it seemed damnable, somehow, to leave Harrison’s body alone, when leaving it could do no possible harm. “If you don’t feel fit to go, I will.”
“Yes—no!” He looked about him uneasily. “All right, you go. It’s straight up the hill, you can’t miss it.”
I took up my hat, and was going, when he called me back.
“I say—do you mind—I think I’d rather go after all. I feel rather rotten. I’ll be better in the fresh air.”
“Now, look here,” I said firmly. “We can’t stay shilly-shallying all night. If you don’t like staying in the house, you’d better go yourself. But make up your mind, because the quicker we get on to somebody the better. Get the police and they’ll probably be able to find a doctor. And you’ll have to give them Mrs. Harrison’s address.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. Yes—I suppose—I suppose—they’d better break it to her.”
“Somebody’s got to. It’s a beastly business, but you don’t know any relations you could get hold of, do you?”
“No. Very well. I’ll see to it. Sure you won’t come with me? You don’t mind staying?”
“The sooner you go, the shorter time I’ll have to stay,” I reminded him.
“Right-ho!” he paused, appeared about to say something, then repeated “right-oh!” and went out, shutting the door behind him.
Three miles uphill in the dark—it would take him close on the hour, certainly. Then he had to knock somebody up, find a telephone, if there was one, get on to the police—say half an hour for that. Then, it all depended whether there was an available car in the village—whether he came straight back, or waited for the officials, who would come, presumably, from Bovey Tracey. I need not, I thought, expect anything to happen under an hour and three-quarters or so. I suddenly remembered that I was cold, and started to hunt for kindling. I found some, after a little search, in an outhouse. The fire consented to light without much persuasion, and after that, and when I had found and lighted two extra candles, I began to feel in better condition to take stock of things.
A bottle of Bovril on the mantelpiece presented itself to me with helpful suggestiveness. I took up the kettle to fill it at the tap. A glance at the sink nearly turned me from my intention, but I conquered the sudden nausea and drew my water with care. Impulse would have flooded the repulsive evidences of sickness away, but as the phrase flashed through my mind the word “evidence” asserted itself. “I must preserve the evidence,” I said to myself, and found myself subconsciously taking note that this trifling episode went to prove—as I had always believed—that Anatole France was right in supposing that we always, or at any rate usually, think in actual words.
The Bovril and the psychology together restored my self-confidence. I began to reconstruct Harrison’s manner of death in my mind. He was quite stiff. I tried to remember what I had read about rigor mortis. One thinks one knows these things till it comes to the point. My impression was that rigidity usually set in about six or seven hours after death, and that it began in the neck and jaw and extended to the limbs and trunk, going away in the same order, after an interval which I could not remember. I braced myself up to go back to Harrison and feel him again. The jaw was rigid, the limbs still fairly flexible. It seemed to me, then, that he must have died some time that morning. I could not quite recollect by what train Lathom had said he had come to town, but, presumably, whenever it was, he had left Harrison fit and well. It was now getting on for midnight on Saturday. Say Harrison had been dead six hours—what then? I had no idea how long fungus-poisoning—if it was fungus-poisoning—took to act. Presumably, it would depend on the amount taken and the state of the victim’s heart.
What meal was it whose remains lay on the table? I looked into the cupboard. In it there was a large cottage-loaf, uncut. On the table was another from which a couple of slices or so seemed to have been taken. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. If two loaves represented four days’ allowance before the carrier called again, the suggestion was that the last meal had been taken some time on the Thursday. Say Harrison had finished up the old loaf on Thursday morning, the remains probably represented Thursday’s mid-day or evening meal. The cupboard also contained about a pound of shin of beef, still in the paper in which the butcher had wrapped it, and smelling and looking rather on the stale side, a dried haddock, and a large quantity of tinned food. The meat was not “off,” but the blood had dried and darkened. It looked as though the carrier had left it on his Thursday’s visit. Evidently, therefore, Harrison had been alive then to take it in. But since he had not cooked it, I concluded that he must have been taken ill some time on the Thursday night or Friday morning.
Pleased with these deductions, I reasoned a little further. How soon after the meal had the trouble started? He had not cleared the table. Was he the kind of tidy man who clears as he goes? Yes, I thought he was. Then the illness had come on fairly soon after the meal. The chair which had stood before the used plate was now lying on its side, as though he had sprung up in a hurry and knocked it over. Searching about on the floor, I came upon a pipe, filled, and scarcely smoked. There was a cup, half-filled with coffee. I began to see Harrison, his supper finished, his chair pushed back against the edge of the rug, his pipe lit up, lingering over his after-dinner coffee. Suddenly he is gripped with a spasm of pain or nausea. He jumps up, dropping his pipe. The chair catches the edge of the carpet and falls over as he makes a dash for the sink. He clings to the edge of it and is horribly sick. What next?
I took up the candle and went out into the little yard at the back of the house, where there was the usual primitive country convenience. It occurred to me, as I pursued my sordid investigations, that the lot of coroners’ officers, policemen, doctors and detectives was much more disagreeable than sensational fiction would lead one to suppose. I soon had enough of the yard and came in again.
After that—the bedroom, I supposed. And whiskey, of course. Pain and exhaustion would call for spirits. Well, I knew where I had found the whiskey and the tumbler. Then more sickness—by that time he had been too bad to move. Then—I did not like the look of the broken bedstead. How did one die of fungus-poisoning? Not peacefully, I supposed. There was no peace in that twisted body and face. How long had the agony of delirium and convulsion lasted? It must be a damnable thing to die in so much pain, absolutely alone.
I did not like these ideas. I took a sheet from the other bed, and laid it gently over Harrison’s body, being careful to disturb nothing. Then I went back and sat by the fire.
At about half-past two, I heard voices outside, and opened the door to Lathom, a police-sergeant, and a man who was introduced as Dr. Hughes of Bovey Tracey. He was a brisk and confident middle-aged man, and brought an atmosphere of reassurance along with him.
“Oh dear, yes,” he said, “I’m afraid he’s quite dead. Been dead for seven or eight hours, if not more. How very unfortunate!” He drew a pair of forceps from his pocket and rolled up the dead eyelids delicately. “Mmm! The pupils are slightly contracted—looks as if your diagnosis might be correct, Mr. Lathom. Poisoning of some kind seems indicated. No tablets? Glasses? Anything of that sort?”
I produced the tumbler from under the bedclothes, and explained about the whiskey-bottle.
“Oh, yes. Here, Sergeant—you’d better take charge of these.”
“The whiskey is all right,” I volunteered. “At least, we both had some about three or fours ago, without any ill effects.”
“That was rash of you,” said Dr. Hughes, with a sort of grim smile. “We’ll have to impound it, all the same.”
“The mushrooms are in here, doctor,” said Lathom, anxiously.
“Just a moment. I’ll finish here first.” He felt and flexed the body, and looked it over carefully. “Was this bed like this when you left him? No. Broken in a convulsion, probably. Yes. All right, Sergeant, you can carry on here. I shall want the body and these bedclothes taken down to the mortuary, just as they are. And any other utensils—”
Lathom pulled my arm. “Let’s clear out of this,” he urged. I stood my ground. Something—either inquisitiveness or the novelist’s greed for copy—impelled me to hang about and get in the way.
The doctor finished his investigations and covered the body up again.
“Now then,” he said, “that’s about all I can do for the moment. Where’s this saucepan you were telling me about? Oh, yes. Fungus of some sort, obviously, but I can’t say what by looking at it. That will all have to go to London, Sergeant. When the Superintendent comes he’ll see the things packed up. I’ll give you the address they’re to go to. Sir James Lubbock, the Home Office Analyst—here you are, and you’ll see they telephone him to expect them, won’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What will you do, Sergeant? Hold the fort here till they send down to relieve you?”
“Yes, sir. The Superintendent will be here very soon, sir, I expect. They’ve called him up.”
“Very well. Now I’d better be off. I’m wanted for a baby case. You’ll find me out at Forbes’s place if you want me. Lucky I hadn’t started. I don’t for a moment suppose anything will happen for hours, but it’s her first, and they’re naturally fidgety. If I don’t get there pronto, it’ll be B.B.A., out of pure cussedness, and I shall never hear the last of it. Well, good night. Sorry I can’t give anybody a lift, but I’m going out in the opposite direction.”
He hastened out, and we heard his car chug away down the lane. The sergeant observed that it was a bad business all round, and suggested that he should take down notes of what Lathom and I could tell him. I found some logs in the outhouse and piled them on the fire till it roared up the chimney. More and more I began to feel that this was a scene from a book; it was like nothing in life at all. It was—hang it—it was almost cosy. I should have ended, I think, by almost enjoying it—the policeman’s voice cooing like the note of a fat wood-pigeon, the ruddy blaze on his round face, the thick thumb that turned the pages of his notebook, the pink tongue licking the stubby pencil, and Lathom, talking, answering, explaining so lucidly (he had got over his nervousness and was childishly eager to tell his story)—I could have enjoyed it, if it had not been for a fear in the back of my mind.
The sun . . .
You do not want a description of that stiff, cold sunrise. I was facing the window, and saw it—first a whiteness, then a hardening of the sky-line—then a bluish reflection on the ceiling—then an uncertain gleam under the blanket of cloud. The weather was going to change.
I got up and wandered out across the fields. The stream, far off, was the only voice in the silence, and that was impersonal. It had no blood nor life behind its chatter.
I wandered to the edge of the slope, where the valley plunged down, gorse and heath and bracken all jumbled among the grey boulders, and looked across to where the huge tors humped their granite shoulders over the heights of Lustleigh Cleave. They looked grim enough.
What I was wondering was just this: Had Harrison ever guessed about his wife and Lathom? What had Lathom said to him in those long, solitary days? Had Harrison decided that his best way was to clear out from the place where he was not wanted? I knew that, for all his irritating mannerisms, the man had a sterling unselfishness in him—and it would have been so easy for him—with his knowledge—to make a mistake on purpose when he was gathering fungi.
Would anyone choose a death so painful? Well—a man only the other day had committed suicide by pouring petrol over his clothes and setting himself on fire. And nothing could be made to appear more natural than this poison-death of Harrison’s. Why had Lathom been so anxious for me to come down with him? Had he had doubts about his reception? Had he expected something? Had Harrison—possibly—agreed, promised, even hinted that Lathom might return to find the way clear? Or had Lathom spoken some shattering word—shown irrefutable evidence—and left the facts to do their bitter work?
A cock crew in the valley. A sheep said “Baa!” just behind me, so that I started and laughed. This kind of thing was morbid, and Harrison was the very last man to lay violent hands on himself. He clear meekly out to make way for a rival? Not likely!
I hurried back to the shack. The sergeant was dozing, his belt off and his tunic unbuttoned. Lathom was staring into the fire with his chin on his hands.
“Hullo, you two!” I said with unnecessary heartiness. The policeman jerked awake. “Lor’ bless me,” he muttered apologetically. “I must ’a’ dropped off.”
“Why not?” said I. “Best way to pass the time. Look here, there’s a pound of sausages in our kit that we brought down last night. How about a bit of grub?”
We did not care about using any of the pots and pans in that place, so we whittled a stick to a point, and toasted the sausages on that. They tasted none the worse.