Angels and Insects (23 page)

‘What will you do?’

‘I don’t know,’ William said truthfully. He was looking back, with difficulty. ‘I don’t want you to think you must lie to me, Eugenia. This—this has been going on all the time, hasn’t it? All the time I’ve been here?’

He could see the lies pass over her face, like clouds over the moon. Then she shuddered, and nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘How long?’ said William.

‘Since I was very little. Very little, yes. It began as a game. You cannot possibly understand.’

‘No. I cannot.’

‘At first it seemed—nothing to do with the rest of my life. It was just something—secret—that
was
you know—like other things you must not do, and do. Like touching yourself, in the dark. You don’t understand.’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘And then—and then—when I was going to marry Captain Hunt—he saw—he saw—oh, not so much as
you
have seen—but enough to guess. And it preyed on his mind. It preyed on his mind. I swore then, I would stop it—I
did
stop it—I wanted to be married, and good, and—like other people—and I—I did persuade him—he—was mistaken in me. It was so hard, for he would not say what he feared—he could not speak it out loud—and that was when I saw—how very terrible—it was—I was.

‘Only—we could not stop. I do not think—he—’ she choked on Edgar’s name, ‘meant even to stop—he—he is—
strong
—and of course Captain Hunt—someone led him to see—he saw—not
much
—but enough. And he wrote a terrible letter—to—to both of us—and said—oh—’ she began to weep rapidly suddenly, ‘he could not live with the knowledge even if
we
could. That is what he said. And then he shot himself. In his desk there was a note, to me, saying I would know why he had died, and that he hoped I would be able to be happy.’

William watched her weep.

‘But even after that—you went on.’

‘Who else could I turn to?’

She went on weeping. William looked back over his life. He said, ‘You turned to me. Or made use of me, anyway.’ He began to feel very sick indeed. ‘All your children, who revert so shockingly to the ancestral type—’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know. I made sure I don’t know,’ cried
Eugenia, on a new high frantic note. She began to sway to and fro, exaggeratedly, banging her head on the mirror.

William said, ‘Make less noise. You cannot wish to attract any more attention.’

There was a long silence. Eugenia moaned, and William stood, paralysed by conflicting furies and indecisions. He said, when he felt he could not protract this unbearable scene a moment longer, ‘I shall go now. We will talk again later.’

‘What will you do?’ asked Eugenia, in a small toneless voice.

‘I don’t know what I shall do. I shall tell you, when I do know. You may wait for my decision. You need not be afraid I shall kill myself.’

Eugenia wept quietly.

‘Or him,’ said William. ‘I want to be a free man, not a convicted murderer.’

‘You are cold,’ said Eugenia.

‘I am now,’ said William, lying at least in part. He retreated into his own room, and locked the door on his side.

He lay down on his own bed, and, to his later surprise, fell immediately into a deep sleep, from which he woke, just as suddenly, and unable for a moment to remember
what
had happened that was terrible, only that something had. And then he remembered, and felt sick, and over-excited, and restless, and could not think what to do. All sorts of things went through his mind. Divorce, flight, a showdown with Edgar, making him promise he would go away and never return. Could he? Would he? Could he himself stay in that house?

Nevertheless, he stood up and changed into his house clothes and went down to dinner, where, apart from the absence of both Edgar and Eugenia, things were as they were every night, with Grace from Harald, bickerings amongst the younger girls, and a kind of ruminative supping noise from Lady Alabaster. The servants
brought the dishes, and removed them again, silently, unobtrusively. After dinner card-games were proposed, and William thought of declining, but Matty Crompton said to him on their way through the corridors to the parlour where tea was served, ‘O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,/Alone and palely loitering?’

‘Do I look as though something ails me?’ asked William, forcing himself to speak lightly.

‘You have a brooding look,’ said his friend. ‘And you are distinctly pale, if you do not mind my observing it.’

‘I missed my gallop,’ said William. ‘I was called back—’ He paused, considering for the first time the strangeness of that calling-back. Miss Crompton appeared not to notice. She enlisted his support for a game of Anagrams, with Lady Alabaster and the elder children and Miss Fescue, who was always enlisted to help Lady Alabaster. They arranged themselves around the card-table, in the light of an oil-lamp. They all looked so comfortable, William thought, so innocent, so much at home.

The game consisted of making words out of alphabet cards, prettily decorated with pictures of harlequins, monkeys, columbines and devils with forks. Everyone had nine letters, and could give any complete word they could make secretly to anyone else, who must change at least one letter, and pass it on. The game was not to be left with the letters with demons on, which were, rather at random, some of the awkward letters, like Q and X, and some of those in demand, like E and S. William played with half his mind, pushing on easy words like ‘was’ and ‘his’ and ‘mine’ and accumulating demons. At one point, finding himself with PHXNITCSE, he suddenly woke up, and found himself able to present Matty Crompton with INSECT even though that left him with an X with a demon on it. Miss Crompton, her face heavily shadowed in the lamplight, gave a small snort of laughter at this word, considered it for some time, rearranged the cards, and pushed it back to him. He was about to point out that the rules did
not allow of returning the same word, without adding or subtracting a letter, when he saw
what
she had sent him. There it was, lying innocently in his hand. INCEST. He shuffled the evidence hastily, looked up, and met the dark intelligent eyes.

‘Things are not what they seem,’ said Matty Crompton amiably. William looked at his cards, and saw that he could make another word,
and
get rid of the X, and answer her message. So he pushed his word back, and she gave another snort of laughter, and the game went on. But now, his eyes met hers, from time to time, and hers gleamed with knowledge and—yes—excitement. And he did not know if he was more comforted or alarmed that she knew. How long had she known? How? What did she think? Her smile was not commiserating, nor was it prurient, it was somehow satisfied and amused. The luck of the letters was uncanny. It gave him the feeling that occasionally comes to most of us, that however we protest we are moved by chance, and struck by random shocks and blows, in fact there
is
Design, there is Fate, it has us in its grip.

It was possible, of course, that
she
had somehow shaped his cards. She liked riddles. He watched the flick of her precise, thin wrists as she passed PHOENIX on to Elaine, neatly getting rid of the dangerous X. Did she see him as a dupe, as a poor victim? Had she
always
seen him that way? Things were not what they seemed, indeed.

At the end of the game, he managed to say to her under his breath, ‘I must speak to you.’

‘Not now. Later. I will find a time. Later.’

He found it hard to sleep, that night. On the other side of the locked door was Eugenia. He could not hear her snore, and he did not hear her move, and once or twice resisted a compulsion to go in and see if she had killed herself. He thought she would not do that; it was not in her nature; though of course he knew nothing about her nature, after this morning. Everything he had thought he
knew was overturned. Or maybe not. He had partly known that he did not know Eugenia. Either she had
no
inner life, he had thought, or it was locked away, inaccessible to him. Something terrible had been done to him. And to her, he thought. He should perhaps wish to kill Edgar. Except that even Edgar was in some ways less simply hateful, in this hellish plight. He was more driven, less complacently, ordinarily brutal and overbearing than he had seemed.

William heard a tap on his outer door, which then opened quietly, to admit a dark figure. It was Miss Crompton, still in her day clothes, which consisted of a long black silk skirt, and a grey poplin shirt. She stood inside his door, and beckoned, without speaking. William got out of bed and wrapped himself in his dressing gown. He followed her silently along the corridor and up another flight of stairs, on to a long landing carpeted serviceably in cord, and through a door into what he saw immediately was her bedroom. She put her candle down on the little dressing-table. The room was narrow, like a high box, with one hard upright chair and a narrow bed with a cast-iron bedhead, and a precisely folded white dimity bedspread. There was a tiny bookcase, in dark oak, and books everywhere there could be, under the chair, sticking out in boxes under the bed, under the dressing-table. On the back of the door were hooks, where there hung the small wardrobe he knew so well. Under the window was a small chest of drawers, on which stood a glass, with a few teazles and poppyheads in it. That was all.

‘Please take a chair,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘I hope you don’t think this is too conspiratorial.’

‘No,’ he said, although he did, in part. He was troubled to be closed away with her, in her private place.

‘You wished to talk,’ she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and seeming a little at a loss for how to begin.

‘You sent me a word, tonight,’ he said. ‘And
someone
sent for me to come back to the house, today, when I was not wanted. When I was anything but wanted.’

‘I
didn’t send for you,’ she said. ‘If that is what you are thinking. There are people in a house, you know, who know everything that goes on—the invisible people, and now and then
the house
simply decides that something must happen—I think your message came to you after a series of misunderstandings that at some level were quite deliberate—’

There was another silence. They were very awkward together, now they were on her territory, the little territory she commanded.

‘But you know what I saw,’ he said.

‘Yes. There are people in houses, between the visible inhabitants and the invisible, largely invisible to
both
, who can know a very great deal, or nothing, as they choose. I choose to know about some things, and not to know about others. I have become interested in knowing things that concern you.’

‘I have been used. I have been made a fool of.’

‘Even if that is so—it is not the most important thing. I want to know—what you feel. I need to know what you will do.’

The oddness of her way of putting it struck him, but he did not remark on it. He answered heavily, as best he could, ‘I find that—my most powerful feeling—is that I am free. I ought to feel—shocked, or vengeful, or—or humiliated—and from time to time, I do feel all these things—but mostly, I feel—I can go now, I can leave this house, I can return to my true work—

‘I cannot, of course. I have five children and a wife, and no income—though I might seek employment—’

‘There was talk of equipping a further Amazon venture—’

‘I cannot
now
take one Alabaster penny.
You
must see that, you see everything, I begin to think. I must go away, and soon. And never return. Retribution is not my business. I will—I will ask Edgar for money, for Amy—I do not care how that may appear, I will ensure that Amy has an income for life—and then I will go. And never return. And never return.’

The phrase was exciting him. He said, ‘You are all I shall miss
here. I have never felt—not in my heart of hearts—any warmth to all those—white children—’

‘This may be of the moment.’

‘No, no. I can go. I shall go. My book—our book—will provide a little—more can be earned.’

‘I have sold my Fairytales,’ said Matty Crompton.

‘I cannot take—you were not offering—I am sorry—’

‘I have taken certain steps,’ said Miss Crompton, in a tense voice. ‘Entirely subject to your approval. I—I have a Banker’s Draft from Mr George Smith that should be more than sufficient—and a letter from Mr Stevens offering to negotiate the sales of specimens as before—and a letter from a Captain Papagay, who sails from Liverpool for Rio in a month’s time. He has two berths free.’

‘You are truly a good Fairy,’ said William with an edge of rebellion. ‘You wave your wand, and I have everything I desire before I can think of desiring it.’

‘I watch, and contrive, and write letters, and consider your nature,’ said Matty Crompton. ‘And you
do
desire it. You have just said so.’

‘Two
berths—’ said William.

‘I shall come with you,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘You have filled me with a great desire to see all those Paradisal places and I shall not rest until I have seen the great River and felt the air of the Tropics.’

‘You cannot do that,’ said William. ‘Think of the fever, think of the terrible biting creatures, think of the monotonous insufficient food, of the rough men out there, the drunkenness—’

‘Yet you wish to return.’

‘
I
am not a woman.’

‘Ah. And I am.’

‘It is
no place
for a woman—’

‘Yet there are women there.’

‘Yes, but not of your kind.’

‘I do not think you know what kind of woman I am.’

She rose, and began to pace, like a prisoner in a cell, in a little room. He was quiet, watching her. She said, ‘You do not know that I am a woman. Why should that not continue as it is? You have
never seen me
.’

Her voice had a new harshness, a new note. She said, ‘You have no idea who I am. You have no idea even how old I am. Have you? You think I may be of an age between thirty and fifty, confess it.’

‘And if you know so precisely what I think, it is because you must have meant me to think it.’

What she said was nevertheless true. He had no idea, and that was what he had thought. She paced on. William said, ‘Tell me then, since you invite the question, how old are you?’