I Shall Not Want (38 page)

“No, you won't,” John Marco answered, his good humour slipping suddenly from him. “You'll tell me now before you go.”

“It's very late,” Mr. Petter replied evasively.

But John Marco had grown impatient: he was snapping his fingers at him.

“Tell me now,” he said.

Mr. Petter regarded him steadily for a moment, rearguing his decision with himself. Then he thrust his hand into his pocket.

“Very well,” he said. “Read that.”

John Marco stood for a moment looking at the letter without moving, and then almost snatched it out of Mr. Petter's hands. His back was towards Mr. Petter as he read it; all that Mr. Petter could see was his shoulders. They were square and steady enough until suddenly he crumpled the letter up into a tight ball and shot it onto the floor. He turned towards Mr. Petter, turned angrily this time, his face flushed and his eyebrows drawn into a hard line across his forehead.

“Why did you have to show me this?” he demanded.

“I showed it to you because it concerned you,” Mr. Petter answered with a calm that astonished him.

“And what do you want me to do?” John Marco asked. “Tell you that it isn't true?”

“I . . .I never doubted you,” Mr. Petter replied.

“Then forget you ever read it,” John Marco told him.

“But . . . but I've got to decide what to do,” Mr. Petter replied.

“Do nothing,” said John Marco savagely.

“But that's impossible,” Mr. Petter persisted. “I'm afraid that people may begin talking.”

“People? What people?”

“I know the person who wrote it is just a poor mad woman,” Mr. Petter began, “but ...”

He was not allowed, however, to get any further. John Marco suddenly turned on him again.

“So you've found out who wrote it, have you?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Petter unguardedly. “Mr. Tuke knows her.”

He was, as he spoke, quite unprepared for the effect on John Marco. He knew, of course, that his friend was strange, very strange to-night: he was pursued by the
demons of liquor. But for the moment he seemed to go entirely out of his senses. He drew back his lips until the whole extent of his teeth was showing.

“How the devil does Mr. Tuke come to know about this?” he shouted.

Mr. Petter felt frightened by now, and he wanted to get away. He didn't ever want to see again this John Marco who drank and swore. But he stood his ground a moment longer and answered him.

“I only showed him the letter,” he replied. “I wanted his advice.”

“And what was his advice?” John Marco demanded.

Mr. Petter paused: this needed courage to say to John Marco's face.

“He said I shouldn't have you in the house,” he replied quietly.

“He said that, did he?” John Marco answered. “And what do you propose to do about it?”

Mr. Petter squared his shoulders and drew in a deep, unnatural breath.

“I propose to take it,” he replied.

His voice, as he said it, rose to a shrill, uncertain squeak; it trembled.

John Marco put down his glass and faced him: he was shaking with anger now.

“You and I have got to understand each other,” he said.

“There's nothing else to understand,” Mr. Petter replied.

“Oh yes there is,” John Marco answered. “When you get away from here you'll understand a lot of things.”

He came towards him as he said it; and Mr. Petter instinctively took a step away.

“So Mr. Tuke thinks your wife's in love with me, does he?” he asked.

“He didn't say any such thing,” Mr. Petter replied indignantly.

“Well it's true. True, do you hear me? She was in love with me before she ever set eyes on you. And she still is.”

“I don't believe it,” Mr. Petter managed to reply.

His lips were quivering so uncontrollably that he could scarcely speak the words.

“If you don't believe me, why don't you ask her?” John Marco went on. “Ask her family. Ask Mr. Tuke. Ask anyone. You're the only one who's been blind.”

“It's a lie,” Mr. Petter jerked out.

“Then why did my wife write that letter?” John Marco demanded. “
Why was she jealous?”

“So it was your wife who wrote it?”

Mr. Petter's voice was almost inaudible and his hand was raised to his face in a vain gesture of protection.

John Marco nodded.

“You thought that you could keep Mary to yourself simply by turning the key on her,” he said. “You thought that she belonged to you. Wait till you find out the truth. Wait till your eyes have been opened. Wait till you've seen something.”

The last relics of Mr. Petter's self-control had at last gone from him: he was crying.

“I'm not going to listen to you,” he said. “I'm going home.”

But John Marco stood in his path, blocking it: his face was thrust forward.

“Why don't you give her up to me now?” he asked. “Why don't you give her up before she's taken from you? If she wants to go, you can't stop her. She'll slip past you. You'll lose her just the same.”

“She . . . she loves me, I tell you,” Mr. Petter cried out. And pushing his way past John Marco he stumbled blindly out of the room.

John Marco stood where he was staring after him. He did not attempt to follow. His head was aching and his legs were unsteady. He heard Mr. Petter's
feet descending into the darkness below, and the flat seemed suddenly to be very quiet. He stood there, swaying.

“It's I who've lost you, Mary,” he said aloud. “I'm the one who's lost.”

iv

The light in the little pink and white bedroom in Harrow Street was not extinguished until nearly two o'clock that morning; the child—she had been moved into the next room by now—slept on, however, without stirring.

Mary had been asleep when Mr. Petter had got back—she had dropped off for a moment—and started up as she heard his key touch the lock. Putting on a dressing-gown (it was a pretty new one that Mr. Petter in a moment of indulgence had just given her) and with her hair loose about her shoulders she went down to meet him. When she saw him she was startled by his appearance, and a little frightened. Mr. Petter first pushed her violently away, then he kissed her frantically, and finally broke down in her arms. During the next half-hour, still clasped up against her, he had told her everything. . . .

“How could I ever have doubted you?” he said at last. “How could I have been so vile?”

“Don't think about it,” Mary told him. “Don't think about it. It was horrible.”

She was stroking his head, soothing him, comforting.

“But you do love me, don't you?” he demanded. “You do?”

“What makes you think that I don't?” she asked. “Why do you keep on asking me?”

“Then why don't you tell me,” he begged her. “Let me hear you say it.”

He had buried his face against her breast by now, his arms folded round her. All the courage which earlier in the evening had supported him had ebbed away again by now, leaving him helpless and afraid.

“Say it,” he repeated. “Say it.”

“I do love you,” she said slowly. “I don't love anyone else.”

“Oh, Mary,” he said. “You're all I've got. You're everything.”

And opening the neck of her pretty dressing-gown he began kissing her again.

John Margo went on the next Tuesday to see his mother; and again on the following Tuesday; but after that there was no point in going any longer.

Old Mrs. Marco's end when it had come, was very sudden. For three brief days she had rallied. She had been able to get about the room and her mind had cleared. She had realised that she was living in Hesther's house, and she was worried because her son was away so much. He was like his father, she said to Hesther—quiet and secretive and in need of watching; and in saying this she allowed herself the first disloyal remark which she had ever made about the departed Mr. Marco. It was as though inside herself old Mrs. Marco was aware that she would be there for only a short time longer and felt that there was no further use in pretending; all her life she had kept up the myth of Mr. Marco's respectability; and then, at one stroke she shattered the whole image of this saturnine, morose man with the high collar and the mutton-chop whiskers. “He wasn't always what he seemed,” she said darkly. “He prayed beautifully, but some nights he didn't come home at all.” And when Hesther made no reply, old Mrs. Marco told her that it was she, his mother, whom she had to thank for having made John Marco as steady as he was. “He's like a rock, my son is,” she observed proudly. “Like a rock.”

When Hesther got up, Mrs. Marco was still rambling on about John Marco's childhood; and about revival meetings she had known, when young and old had plunged themselves into the tank unable to restrain themselves; and about the way evil and wickedness were increasing in the world so rapidly that the Second Coming could not be far off. She was still talking to herself when Hesther gently closed the door on her.

And then, next morning, when Emmy took her in a cup of tea, Mrs. Marco was lying there, propped up among the pillows, silent at last.

It had been an untidy finish. The old lady had obviously awakened in the night, because she had started eating again. There was a plate of tea-rusks left beside her and one of these rusks was still fixed between her teeth. After all her years of self-denial and discipline and preparation, when her Maker finally called to her she was sitting up in bed nibbling biscuits like a school-girl.

It was Emmy whom Hesther sent to tell John Marco. Already she saw—indistinct as it was—her opportunity; the very fact of the funeral would bring John Marco beside her at the grave-side. She no longer deluded herself with foolish expectations. But, never for a single moment after that night when he had left her, had she entirely given up hope.

On her return to the house Hesther made Emmy repeat every word, every syllable, that John Marco had uttered. At first, Emmy said, she had been kept waiting; she had been kept waiting so long in fact that she wondered whether he ever intended to see her at all. And when, finally, she had been shown into his room he had treated her as a stranger, as someone whom he had never seen before. But the news of his mother's death had very clearly disturbed him; he had begun walking about the room and he had questioned her closely as to the circumstances. Had it been painless? Had the old lady had any premonition? Why hadn't they sent for him? It was not until Emmy had said diffidently that she expected that they would see him at the cemetery that his aloofness had returned to him.

“I shall not be there,” he had said.

“Not be there?” Emmy had repeated. “Not be at your own mother's funeral?”

And John Marco with that terrible deliberation that had always frightened had answered slowly.

“I shall sit with her,” he had said. “I shall come to
the house to-morrow night as usual. But I shall not be at the funeral.”

When Hesther heard this she knew that it was not going to be old Mrs. Marco in death who was to draw them together again. And on the Tuesday evening of the visit she sat in the wicker chair in her bedroom and listened to her own husband's feet pass her door and go into the room opposite.

As John Marco entered the room, his nerve, for a moment, left him; it was very quiet in there and the subtle odour of death pervaded the place. It was like stepping with eyes open into the tomb.

The figure under the sheet looked so small now, so ridiculously small; it was scarcely larger than a big doll and the hand when he touched it was as cold as china. He drew back for a moment, frightened. This thing lying there, as rigid as if in some preposterous fashion it were holding its breath, wasn't his mother;
she
had already slipped out through the mesh and was free. She was up there among the harps and the seven-branched candlesticks, while he was dragging a cane-seated chair across the oil-cloth to sit with the image that she had discarded.

When he at last could bear to do so he folded back the sheet and looked. The face seemed more tranquil than in life he could ever remember it. The lines were still there, running in a close net-work under the eyes and merging with the puckers round her mouth. But somehow she looked younger than he had known her; it was as though in death she had discovered, in part at least, the secret of perpetual youth.

As she lay there she appeared simply to be resting; and perhaps she
was
resting, he reflected. Now that the spark was out, her mind was no longer troubling her; it had ceased casting up those black shadows from the past that had kept deceiving and confusing her. She was as she had been when he was a young man in Chapel Villas. There had been no Hesther in his life when she
had looked like that; and no Mary. The Old Gentleman had still been a power in the shop, and Mr. Tuke was his friend. And the years that had changed her into a shapeless, tottery old witch had left their mark on him as well. It was a tired, bitter man who sat there looking at that unmoving face; a man without friends and without a family; someone in the prime of his days who was as cold and alone as she was.

But he halted his thoughts and drove them forward again towards the future; this lingering over his yesterdays was too disturbing. Not to remember, however, was impossible. Everything that he had ever done, or hoped to do, was linked to that silent figure that lay in front of him. And going down on his knees, as he had been trained to do, he started to pray for her.

“Oh Lord,” he began, “take this, Thy sister, into Thy fold and protect her for evermore. Let Thy arms be about her and her head on Thy bosom. Let her no longer think of those things which have hurt and injured her. Let her forget this, my marriage, that has been troubling her. Let her ...” But it was no use. This wasn't the way real Amosites prayed. He had turned his back on it for too long, and the magic of communion had forsaken him. Those words of his reached nowhere; they were simply echoes of what was going on in his own mind. Abruptly, impulsively, he bent forward and kissed the dead face below him, bracing himself against the chill of touching her. Then he gathered up his hat and his gloves and went quickly from the room.