2
Saunders got out of his chair, as though the story were finished, and stood with his back to the fire warming the palms of his hands. There was a moment’s silence, which I saw no reason for breaking, and then he began talking again. After that, he said, Miss Lettice and I were quite good friends. I became a constant and welcome visitor at her cottage: constant because her solitude was something of a pain to me, and welcome because she knew that to me she could talk about Bernard to her heart’s content. And that, by Jove, was a privilege she lost no opportunity of exercising. How many times have I piously lied to that woman assuring her that my interest in her Bernard was insatiable! Often, as you’ll readily understand, I was bored beyond expression, though I never lost my sense of the grotesque pathos of her life. But I must be careful not to let you suppose that she was a mere monomaniac. She knew, as well as I did, that she was playing a game of make-believe: she was not the victim of any sort of delusion, and her obsession never became pathological or threatened to become so.
Things went on like this for ten years or so. She lived untroubled among her dreams until some few months ago. During the war Bernard led an existence even more shadowy than usual. Of course he enlisted, and was wounded, and won decorations for his valour; and Miss Lettice, knitting socks for more substantial soldiers, continued to play her secret game by fancying that they would comfort the feet of her son. The change came, as I’ve said, not many months ago, and it shewed itself first of all in our conversations. From those conversations Bernard was painlessly excluded, and his place taken by a young man weighing twelve stone or more. You’ll know the name well enough—Jack Turnbull, the stationmaster’s son. Jack began to loom so large in the hopes and fears of Miss Lettice that I became uneasy, the more so because I had been the instrument of bringing them together. It was this way. During the latter part of the war, and ever since, Miss Lettice had found it increasingly difficult to manage on her extremely modest income, and music pupils were more in request than ever. I did what I could for her by dropping a recommendation here and there, and among others I enlisted the active sympathy of old Turnbull. Together we hatched a little conspiracy, the upshot of which was that Jack, a big hulking fellow approaching thirty years, was fired with a sudden ambition to become an amateur pianist. Jack had done well in the army, and finding himself in mufti again, at a loose end, and with a captain’s gratuity standing to his credit at Cox’s, he lent himself very readily to the amiable fraud. His three hours tuition a week was very useful to Miss Lettice; but it proved her undoing. For now we come to the hopeless passion I spoke of. And I needn’t stop to assure you that there’s nothing scandalous in this tragic affair. Miss Lettice fell in love with Jack, but the love she yearned to lavish on him was maternal love. If you think me perverse in calling that love a hopeless passion I must disagree with you. It was passion, and it was, in part, physical passion, as all human love must be. Why do we shrink from admitting that maternal love is as deeply rooted in the body as any other? Miss Lettice loved Jack Turnbull for his strength, his masculinity, his youth, and because, by a fatal coincidence, he was born in the same month of the same year as her Bernard. In a sense it was the calendar that killed the Miss Lettice we knew and set in her stead a witless child. No doubt Jack seemed to her a gift from God, a wonderful consolation prize, a token of the heavenly forgiveness. Indeed she told me as much when, with the air of imparting to me her dearest secret, she said that Jack was coming to lodge with her. She had bought some pretty things for his bedroom, worked ornamental bolster-slips with her own fingers, and replaced the dressing-table by a chest of drawers dragged in from her own room. I hardly dared to hint my misgiving. ‘Are you quite sure he is coming?’ I ventured. ‘I fancied he would soon be looking out for a job. Young men can’t remain idle for long nowadays, you know.’ But she wouldn’t hear of my doubts. Jack would get work at the station under his father. He hadn’t exactly promised to come to her, but she had urged it and she knew he would humour an old woman.
I was by no means so sure, and I made up my mind to tackle Master Jack at the earliest possible moment. I called at his father’s house and left a message asking him to make a point, if he could, of calling at the vicarage. He came the same evening. ‘Well, Turnbull,’ I said. ‘I hear you’re thinking of changing your quarters?’
He looked as guilty and uncomfortable as though I had surprised him with his hand in somebody’s till. ‘Has it got round already? Why, I’ve told no one outside the family. Why can’t people hold their tongues!’
‘My dear fellow,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve annoyed you. But I really don’t see why you should be so secretive about it. And it wasn’t your father who told me.’
‘Who was it?’ He spoke curtly. Four years as an infantry officer hadn’t improved his manners.
‘It was Miss Lettice herself.’
I have never seen a man more astonished. ‘Miss Lettice! Miss Lettice told you! Damn it, sir, she doesn’t know!’ After a moment’s stupefied silence he added, with an air of apology, ‘But perhaps we’re at cross-purposes. What was it that Miss Lettice told you?’
‘Only that you’re going to lodge in her house. Nothing to get excited about.’
He began striding about the room. ‘We are certainly at cross-purposes all right. I thought you meant Canada. I’m leaving next week for Canada.’
‘For a holiday?’ I ineptly inquired.
‘For keeps,’ said Jack. ‘Mounted Police, with a commission soon, I hope. This country’s gone to the dogs, sir.’
Here was a pretty mess! ‘But look here, Turnbull, Miss Lettice has got it into her head that you’re going there as a lodger. Have you given her any cause to believe such stuff?’
At that the swagger dropped off him. ‘That woman, I’m sorry for her, but she gets on my nerves. She gushes too much for my taste. She wants to mother me, if you ever heard such rot. And I won’t be mothered.’
‘That’s all very well,’ I cut in. ‘But why say this to me? Miss Lettice is the person you should complain to. Are you content to let her go on living in a fool’s paradise?’
Well, you can pretty well guess how the conversation proceeded. We argued for the best part of three hours. Jack was determined not to yield to her devouring maternal affection, but he hadn’t pluck enough to tell her so outright. He preferred to save his own feelings by equivocation. The coward does it with a kiss, you know, the brave man with the sword. But I must do him the justice to admit that, short of brutal explicitness, he did all he could to disabuse her mind of its fond fiction. I was aghast when I realized that the secret of his departure was being kept solely in order that he might slip out of the country without bidding her good-bye. After long battle I wrung from him a reluctant promise that he would spare her that culminating cruelty.
And that is the end of the story. I too was a coward, for I did not dare to visit Miss Lettice until Jack had gone. In point of fact I watched him off the premises and then stepped in, unwillingly enough but hoping to afford the wretched woman some comfort, if only the comfort of distraction. The front door yielded to my push: it was seldom locked. I tapped at the door of the sitting-room. There was no sound from within. Gently I turned the handle and looked in.
‘Good morning, Miss Lettice,’ I said, with a cheerfulness that was idiotic, I dare say, but what was one to do?
Miss Lettice sat staring at the wall in front of her, staring fixedly, motionless. Whether she heard my voice or not I don’t know, but she neither moved nor spoke. I became very anxious and called to her again, offering such dry crumbs of comfort as came to hand. ‘Don’t grieve, my dear Miss Lettice. There’s still Bernard left to you.’ Something of that sort I said to her, but it made no difference at all. She was struck down, struck worse than dead, by the colossal and cruel power of love. And while I continued to stare at her with pity and horror, she slowly turned towards me, as though on a swivel, a face marred out of recognition by a smile....
Saunders winced. His lips had hesitated in releasing those last words. Lifting one hand to his eyes, he turned away from me towards his bookshelves. There, with a book in his hand, he shrugged his shoulders as if to shake off the grip of a memory.
‘If it’s standard trees you’re having,’ he remarked, ‘you’ll want light six-feet stakes. Bowers is your man.’
WEDDING-DAY