I Shall Not Want (21 page)

The house was quite dark when he got there; the curtains were still drawn and the windows bolted. It was like entering a cold handsome tomb. But he did not pause. He lit the light with fingers that were shaking. And then in the cold bleak hall he stood staring.

There were trunks and boxes all round him. They were labelled and corded, ready.

His heart still hammering, he began to mount the stairs.

And at the top he turned, not towards his room, but towards Hesther's. It was not, however, until he actually heard her voice in the darkness that he knew whether she was still in the house or not. Then, he closed the door behind him. He was alone with her.

“I've come to you,” he said.

There was a sound from the bed that was almost like a sob.

“I've been waiting,” she answered. “Waiting so long.”

Hesther woke before him in the morning. She lay there filled with a rich happiness. This other body, with a warmth of its own, seemed still to be giving her a share of the life within it. It was strong and satisfying. Even the regular sound of the breathing was reassuring. With him beside her she felt that she could never be lonely again.

The light was already shining through the slats of the Venetian blind when she stirred; it fell across the counterpane in a crumpled design of black and yellow. Very gently so as not to disturb him, she raised herself on one elbow. She had never watched him sleeping before and she bent over him, fascinated. In repose his face seemed strangely different; it was younger. The hard lines beside the mouth had disappeared arid his frown had gone. And as she sat there her face became gentler, too. She watched him for some minutes and her lips began to move. “Oh God,” she was saying, “make him love me. Make him need me more and more.”

Then she drew back. She felt proud as well as happy. It had happened, and the years of her humiliation were over. She was a woman. And because it was her victory, because of all the days of her life this was the greatest, she wanted to share the moment: it was a secret too important to be kept alone.

So slipping from the bed with the same silent, stealthy movement she went over to the dressing-table and stood gazing into the mirror. The face that looked back at her was paler than she liked, paler and more drawn. “I'm getting old,” she thought. “Old”; and she loosened her hair at the temples and drew it forward. Then she searched for something to put round her; the plain linen nightgown
that buttoned in at the wrists like a surplice and the faded dressing-gown were not what she wanted this morning. Finally she opened the scent bottle (she had given up using scent again; the bottle had stood there half-full on the dressing-table for years) and sprinkled some on her wrap.

She was ready now. Going over to the fireplace she rang the bell. The sound surprised Emmy. But obediently she put down her dust-pan and brush—she had been about the house cleaning ever since half past six—and began to climb the vast Niagara of stairs that descended in a twisting cascade of woodwork from the roof to the basement: she had toiled up them so many times that she had grown to think of them as being built that way.

She was inside the bedroom before she noticed John Marco's head on the pillow. Then he stirred and she saw him.

Hesther was saying something about bringing the master's tea up to this room instead. But Emmy was not listening: she knew perfectly well why she had been sent for. She turned and caught Hesther's eye. The two women understood each other.

ii

When John Marco returned home that night he found it converted. Hesther and Emmy had brought all his things through into Hesther's bedroom; his suits were now hanging in the big mahogany wardrobe alongside her dresses. And she had even set out his brushes with hers on the dressing-table. His own bedroom was now simply a box-room again.

The rest of the house, too, had undergone a change. There were flowers in the hall and a rug that he had not seen before covered the cold tiling. Even the Venetian blinds were drawn up higher so that the evening light could get in. And Hesther herself was wearing a brown velvet evening dress with a brooch on it. It was very different from the black satin in which
he was used to seeing her. She looked a woman; and when she came to the door to meet him—she had been standing there apparently waiting—he smelt perfume again. Before he had time to remove his coat she had kissed him.

“John,” she said.

And she paused as though hoping that he would utter her name. But he only smiled, smiled pityingly it seemed, and turned away. And then, still as if he were sorry for her, he came back and putting his arms upon her shoulders he kissed her on the forehead.

He felt a kind of relief as he did so. Now that the struggle was resolved, now that at last he had decided to take everything that Hesther had to offer, he was freer. He had waited long enough; no one could deny that. He had tried to remain faithful. But somehow the miracle had not happened. He had lost Mary for ever: he realised that now. And in her place he had got a mansion and a future; the Lord, he supposed, had been a good shepherd to him after all.

And Hesther was another woman to him: she bloomed, like a wife who is cherished. At dinner she kept smiling, caressing him with her eyes from the far end of the table. When he told her that he was going to the lecture at the Tabernacle she only nodded her head and smiled again. She would not come too, she said; she was happy to remain at home now, waiting confidently for his return.

The subject of to-night's lecture was the transgressions of Moab; the lecturer, the Reverend Samuel Carver, had come all the way over from the Putney Tabernacle to discuss them. He was a poor speaker and of no presence—beside Mr. Tuke he looked no more than an impostor. But his reputation as a wizard in theology had spread before him, and in consequence the pews were crowded to hear his exposition of what the Lord had really meant when He said that because of the three transgressions of Israel and because of four, He was not going to turn
away the punishment thereof. But when Mr. Carver came to the Lord's threat: “I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabbah, and it shall devour the palaces thereof, with shouting in the day of battle, with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind,” Mr. Tuke turned in his toes: he wished that
his
voice instead of Mr. Carver's thin, piping one could have been given a chance of showing them what the Lord really sounded like when He was angry.

John Marco had been sitting listening for some time before he became aware that there was another power than the lecturer's in the room. It was a stronger power and it lay somewhere behind him. He began to stir uncomfortably in his seat and, when the speaker was reading verbatim from an apparently endless tract of Mr. Sturger's on Sin, he turned round. It was not immediately, however, that he could find what he was looking for; at first he saw merely a blank bank of faces. Nevertheless, he was aware at once that the power had increased, that he was now in the full play of it. Then on the far side of the Chapel against the wall he saw one face different from all the others: he saw Mary. She was alone. And she was looking towards him.

When John Marco turned towards the lecturer again he was trembling, and his knees were weak. Mr. Carver was ingeniously proving that when the Lord had said Damascus, Tyre and Edom He had really meant Bayswater, Paddington and Marylebone and the people thereof. But John Marco was not listening to him. He had seen Mary again, and already the whole of this new life of his was crumbling.

He folded his arms and sank deeper into his seat. This was the very thing that he had told himself he must never do, to let the past come creeping up into the present. But as he sat there, he could still feel this power beating on his back, forcing its message through to him, and he knew that Mary's eyes were still fixed on him.

But when the lecture was over and he was able to turn round again she was gone. Her place was empty and the whole Chapel seemed suddenly to have gone cold. For a moment he wondered if he had been deceived and if it were someone else with gold hair and slender shoulders whom he had seen sitting there. But he knew in his heart that there had been no mistake.

The warmth had gone from the air by the time he got outside. The last vestiges of daylight had gone with it and the streets were desolate, lamp-lit chasms again. John Marco did not linger. He picked his way through the dispersing crowd on the Chapel steps and walked off rapidly like a man who is not anxious for company. Soon he was alone, except for a few late stragglers returning to their homes, and he slackened his pace a little. His path lay down Chapel Walk where it was dark, very dark, under the plane trees. The walk was short—a mere hundred yards or so—and he was halfway down it before he was aware that there was someone, a woman, standing in the shadows beside him. And this time he knew at once who it was. His heart seemed momentarily to stop altogether and then begin racing furiously as he came up to her.

“Mary,” he said. “It's you.”

She came towards him and laid her hand upon his arm.

“I had to see you again,” she said. “I've been trying to see you ever since I got back.”

“Trying to see me?” he repeated. “Why should you ever want to see me again?”

“I wanted to know if you were happy,” she answered.

She had turned her head a little and the light of the lamp now fell upon her face. For a moment he dared not look at her. Then he raised his eyes and, as he did so, the three years since he had last seen her disappeared. He was back again at the night of the Immersion; his eyes had been fixed on her then. Everything that had
happened since that night was a phantasy which only this moment could dissolve.

“I was asking if you were happy,” she reminded him.

He started.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because I'm getting married too,” she told him. “I shouldn't feel free to be happy if I knew that you weren't.”

There was a pause, and he ran his tongue over his lips to moisten them.

“Yes,” he said deliberately. “You can think of me as happy.”

They did not speak again for a moment and they began to walk along slowly, side by side.

“Did . . . did you get those letters I wrote you?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“No. But I knew that you must have written. I was sure of it.”

“I told you everything in them,” he said.

She was frowning, puzzled.

“What was it you told me?” she asked.

But his face darkened and he did not answer.

“It's too late now,” he said. “It's all over. It doesn't matter.” He paused: “Are you in love with this man you are marrying?” he asked abruptly.

“Yes,” she answered. “You can think of me as happy, too.”

He turned on her.

“That isn't the same thing,” he said. “I asked if you loved him?”

“Do you love Hesther?” she asked quietly.

They were nearing the end of Chapel Walk by now. Its darkness and its trees came suddenly to an end in a thoroughfare along which lighted buses trundled. All privacy stopped there. He laid his hand on her arm.

“Stop here a moment,” he said.

He put his arm round her.

“I love
you,”
he said. “You know that. I shall go on loving you for ever.”

“I love you too,” she answered. “I can't tell you how much.”

He looked into her face and saw that she was crying. His heart which had become normal again now began to hammer uncontrollably once more. He could feel little frantic pulses all over him.

“Gome away with me,” he said suddenly. “Come away before it's too late. We'll manage somehow. I'm strong. I can support you. Come away to-night . . .”

But she put her hand over his mouth to stop him.

“Don't ask me,” she said. “Can't you see that it's wicked?”

“It's not wicked to love you,” he answered.

She took hold of his hands and drew them away from her.

“It
is
wicked,” she said. “Hesther's your wife now. We mustn't see each other again.”

Her voice was calm as she spoke; so calm that he felt his desire passing out of him. Only the misery of separation remained.

“Then kiss me,” he said. “Kiss me this last time.”

“I hoped you'd ask that,” she said.

They were still embracing, his lips on hers, when Mr. Tuke, the total of the collection in his bag, passed hurriedly down Chapel Walk on his way back to the Presbytery. He was frowning as he walked; he knew that lovers used these shadows and, in his mind, the street reeked of Babylon and its devices.

But he was utterly unprepared for what he saw to-night. A chink of light penetrating between two of the trunks illuminated the figures and there was no mistaking them. For a moment this man of God thought of striding up and tearing them apart as Joshua or Isaiah would have done.
But he checked himself: he was actually so dumb-founded that he could think of nothing to say. So, instead, he went on hurriedly—almost running in fact to avoid their seeing him—as though it were he who were guilty, and they who were standing in innocence beneath the trees.

Old Mr. Morgan did not ever get so far as Swansea as he had once intended. The rooms were booked, the nurse, a grizzled-haired old veteran, was installed, and then the doctor said that things had gone too far and Mr. Morgan was not to be moved.

In his heart Mr. Morgan knew that the doctor was right. The last three months during which he had been carefully tying up the business and putting all the ends into Mr. Hackbridge's damp, fumbling hands, had been painful and terrifying. He was now a groaning lump of misery with a kind of octopus inside him that stretched out one of its eight legs and caught him whichever way he turned. Had he attempted the journey, indeed, he doubted whether he would ever have reached his destination; and there seemed something downright improper in a man's meeting his Maker in a private compartment on the Great Western Railway.