The Hireling (28 page)

‘Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes I would rather think he hadn’t, because less seems lost like that, and sometimes I would rather think he had, because then I could remember him with love, instead of with those horrible mixed feelings, not knowing what to think. The uncertainty was the most tormenting part. It split me into two countries, which were always at war. And then a most wonderful thing happened,’

Lady Franklin stopped and the two women looked at each other questioningly.

‘I hardly like to tell you,’ Lady Franklin said, ‘because it must sound rather silly and as if I was taking myself so seriously. But it’s what I meant when I said that Nature doesn’t mean us to suffer, and is always planning a way out, however much we may oppose her. Because there’s always something in us that wants to suffer, isn’t there?’

‘I should have to think about that,’ Constance said.

‘Well, if it hadn’t happened I couldn’t be talking to you as I am, it would have been too painful, and I was half dizzy with drugs, too. The stuff they poured into me! But now you see how calm I am,’

‘I shouldn’t have said that you were very calm,’ said Constance, and was sorry she had spoken when she saw the cloud that gathered between Lady Franklin’s brows.

‘Oh, but compared with what I was! I was dreaming, I think - I couldn’t always tell the difference - when suddenly all this that we’ve been through, both of us, seemed to dissolve and float away like a mist, and I was back again,’

‘Back again?’

Lady Franklin smiled apologetically.

‘How could I expect you to understand my private language? I used to call it “back again”, you know, after my husband’s death, when I slipped back into that sort of obsession I had. The doctors tried to help me out of it, but I kept slipping back. Well, I was cured, I needn’t tell you how, and afterwards all this happened. Quite unbearable, it seemed - and then suddenly, without warning, something slipped and I was back again, back with my grief for Philip. Oh the relief of it!’

‘Relief?’

‘But yes. You know how a bright light can hurt one’s eyes - in some countries they use it as a torture. And it’s still there if you shut them. Well, all at once it dimmed, as if my soul had fainted, and now it’s a kind of twilight, in which everything looks very much the same, and my feelings are the same, too - they don’t vary. I don’t really suffer, I don’t know why I ever thought I did! It’s like being in church, where nothing ever happens, or can happen, except to the spirit. I believe you can cure an illness by an illness -well, that’s what’s happened to me: only I don’t count this an illness, it’s a deliverance,’

When Constance said nothing, Lady Franklin went on, but more tentatively and apologetically:

‘You see, where I am now, though I can’t get out, nothing can come in - none of this could have come in, if I’d stayed where I was, as Nature meant me to. I shall always feel sorry about something - the doctors told me so; it’s no good my trying to get angry and blame others. Even if they are to blame, I don’t get any satisfaction from thinking I am in the right. I do get some from knowing I was in the wrong, as I was about Philip. I couldn’t sleep before, but now I can sleep, I can sleep for hours - I was asleep just now, when you came.’

‘I’m sorry if I woke you,’ Constance said, ‘and yet, in another way, I’m not. I don’t like to hear you talk like this. I don’t believe it’s natural, even if you say so, to live in a padded cell. Why it’s like madness -‘

‘What if it is?’ cried Lady Franklin, jumping up and pacing the floor in front of her visitor. ‘Isn’t madness preferable to sanity, the kind of sanity I’ve had for these last weeks? Madness is my friend. Life, Life, they used to say, you must get back to Life; they tempted me out of my retreat, talking of Life. But what has Life done for me? Life’s my enemy, the only one I ever had, unless it was whoever sent that letter. If I went back to Life, as they call it, what should i go back to? Wondering about the letter, was it true or not whether I killed him by breaking off the engagement - as i believe I did, though not directly of course. And there are scores of others “it’s”. What is there for me in Life but to flounder for ever in these cruel uncertainties, not even knowing what I want to believe? Far better not to think and not to feel but to pass the time in a kind of drowse, as I do now, making amends to Philip for my neglect, for not being there when he died, and wishing I had told him that I loved him. If that be madness, well, I welcome it! At any rate the past can’t change or spring surprises on me.’

‘But is that true?’ asked Constance. ‘I mean about the past not springing surprises? Supposing, for instance, I were to tell you something about the recent past that changed your view of it - would you want to hear?’

Immediately Lady Franklin became extremely agitated.

‘Yes… no … I should have to think and you would have to remind me, so much of it is gone. No, I think I’d better not know,’

‘But I think that you should know,’ Constance said, raising her voice.

‘No, please, I’ve quite decided. I’m a misfit. I bring unhappiness to everyone. Shut up in myself, I can limit the harm I do. I’ve made all the arrangements’ - Lady Franklin’s voice became brisk and business-like - ‘my secretary will acknowledge the remaining letters with a printed form. I hate doing that - it seems so ungrateful, but I want to be impersonal - I want to fade out. The presents have been sent back, all except… all except.. ,’ A look of distaste that deepened into nausea crossed Lady Franklin’s face. ‘All except a very few that came after the accident. I’ve only to open them, see what they are, thank for them, and send them back, yet somehow I can’t do it,’

Constance seized on this admission to intervene.

‘But couldn’t you?’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you? Forgive me if it seems like meddling, but do try to. Mightn’t it be easier for you, while I’m here. I won’t look, of course, while you are opening the parcels; I won’t say anything; I’ll go into another room if you like,’

‘Perhaps I could,’ said Lady Franklin, ‘perhaps I could. … I know I ought to; I ought to thank my friends for their kind thought. I put them away somewhere, I don’t know where, but I could find them if you would excuse me a moment,’

She went out.

I must rouse her, Constance told herself; I must make her see that there was more in all this than a plausible excuse for skulking, and cherishing her grief which she finds the sole object of existence. If only I could ruin her financially, or in any way I - then she would have to bestir herself. If I could make her realize that she can’t impose her feelings on events! But she can - that’s just her trouble. Perhaps we all can, if it comes to that - but it’s easier for her, with all her money. And as though to confirm her thought the door opened to let in Lady Franklin, followed by the butler, his arms full of parcels. At her request he laid them on the sofa, in the crevices between the cushions, for there was no room on the knick-knack laden tables.

‘Shall I go now, my lady?’ Simmonds asked, and Lady Franklin said, ‘Yes, please go now, and if I want you I’ll ring,’ The butler went away. ‘You see,’ she explained, ‘I’ve had them out before, and told him to take them away, for I don’t like being in the room with them. But perhaps when you are here -‘

She got up and looked down at the parcels, and Constance, forgetting her promise, did the same. From much handling the parcels had a limp, tired, crumpled look, as if they knew that nobody had wanted to open them. Even to Constance they gave out so much discouragement that she turned her eyes away; and the knowledge that she had been partly the cause of all this, but couldn’t say so, or couldn’t usefully say so, seemed to frustrate her being at its source. She wished she could go; she wished she hadn’t come. Her mind spun round like an electric needle that has lost its bearings. The pointlessness of feeling anything! If I believed in punishment, she thought, this might be it, to have the meaning drained out of experience, because there’s no longer any moral value in it.

Why had she come? She remembered and on an impulse said to Lady Franklin:

‘I quite forgot. I had a message for you,’

‘A message?’ said Lady Franklin, wonderingly. ‘Who would want to send me a message?’

All at once Constance had an idea, and it so excited her that it drove all other thoughts out of her mind. Who cared if it was true? But yes, it must be true; it explained everything, and why had she not thought of it before? But the words to express it wouldn’t come; she had stage-fright, she had forgotten her lines.

‘It will seem very strange to you,’ she said. ‘But he … he asked me to tell you,’

‘He asked you to?’ said Lady Franklin, and began to tremble.

‘Yes,’ said Constance, too intent on what she was going to say, and how to say it, to make it clear who ‘he’ was. ‘He thought you had had a raw deal and he was sorry for you. He blamed us, he called us every name under the sun. He was quite right, of course,’

‘He blamed you?’ said Lady Franklin. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand. How were you to blame?’

‘It was something he had overheard,’ said Constance, blundering on. ‘We were talking and he couldn’t help hearing what we said. He had known all along, it seems, and it upset him terribly that you … should have been deceived,’

‘It upset Hughie?’ Lady Franklin cried. ‘You mean it upset him about the letter? Oh, don’t let’s speak of it. … I know he was upset, almost as much upset as I was. And he said it wasn’t true. He said it over and over again. Perhaps it wasn’t,’

‘No, no, not Hughie,’ Constance said, appalled at the turn the conversation had taken. ‘I wasn’t talking about Hughie. It was the chauffeur, Leadbitter, who was driving us,’

‘But what did Leadbitter know?’

‘He knew … he knew … Don’t ask me, Lady Franklin,’

‘But you must tell me, for this is most important. Leadbitter knew that you and Hughie -‘

‘He knew nothing about us, Lady Franklin, nothing whatsoever,’

‘But a moment ago you said he did, and that it upset him. You must tell me - I insist on knowing,’

‘No, no. Lady Franklin. There isn’t anything to tell -there isn’t really. Leadbitter -‘

‘You needn’t say any more,’ said Lady Franklin. ‘You have told me. I wish you hadn’t, because it was one of the things I didn’t have to know. I could have kept it at arm’s length, as I did other things. You have forced me out of my shelter into a world where every fact is painful to me,’

‘Not every fact,’ said Constance. ‘Leadbitter -‘

Lady Franklin coloured slightly.

‘Well, what of him?’

‘He loved you, Lady Franklin. The last thing he said was, “Tell Lady Franklin that I love her” - he died saying it,’

So Leadbitter got his message delivered after all.

Lady Franklin walked away from the sofa and sat down, leaving Constance still looking idly at the presents.

‘Does it make any difference?’ Constance asked.

Lady Franklin took a long time to answer.

‘I think it does,’ she said at last. ‘I think it does. So it was Leadbitter who sent the letter?’

‘Yes,’

‘And what he said was true?’

‘Yes,’

‘Why did he send it, do you think?’

How dense she is, thought Constance, and said, almost impatiently, ‘Because he loved you,’

‘Thank you,’ said Lady Franklin, ‘thank you. It was kind of you to come, but you must go now,’

When she looked up she was alone. She glanced uncertainly about her and her eyes fell on the unopened parcels. The familiar inhibition came on her with a crushing force that negatived all effort. Take them away - put them out of sight! But half-way to the bell she stopped, and looked back, ashamed, ashamed for the first time of her unhappiness, and mistrustful of it. She stole back to the sofa. One parcel was much smaller than the others, a slip of a thing, only an envelope. It was a little dingy, as all the parcels were, and she hated handling dirty things. Tearing it open she felt she was tearing open the sheath that covered her. She held her hand under the envelope and shook it gently; there was a flash of blue and silver, like a glimpse of the sky, and in her palm, covering it, lay a round medallion. She saw at once what it represented: St Christopher carrying the Christ child. Something was written round the rim, but in the half-lit room she couldn’t read it. She put the medallion down on a table and felt inside the envelope, and not finding anything thought, ‘Oh dear, I shan’t know whom to thank, or whom to return it to,’ Then her fingers closed on a sheet of paper and drew it out. She could not see to read the writing either, and was going to turn the light on, but changed her mind and picking up the medallion took it with the letter to the window and drew the curtains back.

‘To Lady Franklin,’ she read, ‘with best wishes, hoping it may bring you luck, my lady. From S. Leadbitter.’

Tears came into her eyes and blinded them, for this was a present that couldn’t be returned: there was no one to return it to. Brushing the tears away she studied the medallion, and now, in the sunshine that was pouring into the room, she read the legend printed round the margin:

Regarde Saint Christophe et va-t-en rassure.

Tears filled her eyes again and dimmed the stalwart, naked figure of the giant. One hand grasped his staff, the other, too strong for its purpose, held the child, who smiled down from his shoulder. Onward he strode into the flood. She couldn’t help identifying him with the giver, who had escorted her through waters deep as these and who had parted with his luck to make it hers. ‘Behold St Christopher, and fearless go thy way.’ She felt the reassurance of his presence, a promise like the dawning of another day; he had awakened her once, though into other arms than his, and had he not awakened her again?

She pressed her lips to the cold metal, lips which the living Leadbitter had pressed to his. She could not bear the keepsake out of her sight and sat holding it, as if the warmth of her hand could give it life. Strength for what lay before her seemed to come from it; gently she put it down where she could still see it, and, going over to the sofa, began to untie the parcels.

The End