The Man Within (21 page)

He rose and with a little melodramatic gesture opened his arms as though he would entice courage to his heart, but all that came was a cold sweep of early wind. He walked on. Why could he not, as Lucy said, kill his conscience and be content? Why if he was given these aspirations, softened and blurred by sentiment as they were, was he not given sinew to attain them? He was the son of his mother, he supposed. Her heart had been trapped by vague romantic longings. His father when he desired something which could not be attained by other means had the power of showing himself as a sort of rough, genial fellow – a sea dog of the old Elizabethan tradition. He was of Drake’s county and he spoke Drake’s tongue. The sea had even given him a little of Drake’s face and manner, the colour, lines, aggressive beard, loud voice, loud laugh, what those who did not know him in his black moods called ‘a way with him’. Tears of anger, self-pity and some of love pricked Andrews’ eyes. If I could revenge you on the dead, he thought. Is there no way to hurt the dead? Yet he knew that that foolish sentimental heart would not have desired revenge. Was it not even possible to please the dead, he
wondered
, and so softly it seemed to his superstitious mind a supernatural answer, came the thought ‘Do not do as your father and ruin a woman.’

Still walking swiftly in the direction of Hassocks he swore silently that he would not. ‘I will only warn her,’ he said, ‘and go.’ Only by not seeing her again he felt could he prevent her ruin.

And yet how different it would have been if Carlyon had been his father. It did not seem odd to him so to think of the man who was seeking to kill him. Carlyon would have satisfied his mother’s heart, and he himself would have been born with will and backbone. He remembered his first meeting with Carlyon.

He was walking by himself away from the school. He had one hour of freedom and exhilarated by it ran up the hill beyond the school, the sooner to escape the sight of the red brick barrack-like buildings, the sooner to see the moors stretching away, sweep beyond sweep of short heather, into the sunset. He ran with his eyes on the ground, for then he always seemed to move faster. He knew from experience that when he had counted two hundred and twenty-five he would be within a few feet of the summit. Two hundred and twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five. He raised his eyes. A man stood with his back to him, in much the same way as he had stood a few days before at the turn of the road beyond Hassocks. He was dressed in black and as then he gave the impression of bulk poised with incongruous lightness. He was staring at the sunset, but when he heard a step behind him he turned with remarkable swiftness, as though footsteps were associated in his mind with danger. Andrews saw then for the first time the broad shoulders, short thick neck, low receding ape-like brow and the dark eyes that in a flash tumbled to the ground the whole of the animal impression which the body had raised. The eyes could on occasion laugh, be merry, but their prevailing tone,
Andrews
found later, was a brooding sadness. They were smiling, however, when he first saw them with a kind of happy wonder.

‘Have you seen it?’ Carlyon said with a hushed, trembling ecstasy and outflung finger, and Andrews had looked beyond him at a sky tumultuous with flame, an angry umber, rising from the grey ashes of the moor, spumed up in tottering pinnacles into the powdery blue smoke of the sky.

They stood in silence and stared at it, and then the stranger turned to him and said, ‘The school. I’m looking for the school.’ It was as though he had mentioned the word prison to an escaped convict. ‘I’ve come from there,’ Andrews said. ‘It’s down there.’

‘One can’t see the sun set from there,’ Carlyon remarked, and had the air in those few words of condemning the whole institution, masters, boys, buildings. He frowned a little and said contemptuously, ‘Do you belong there?’ Andrews nodded.

‘Do you like it?’ Andrews hearing the tone gazed at the stranger with a peculiar fascination. Others had asked him that question as it were rhetorically, assuming a fervent assent. They generally added some jolly reference to beatings and a dull anecdote of their schooldays. But the stranger spoke to him as though they were both of one age, with a slight contempt as though there would be something ignoble in answering ‘yes’.

‘I hate it,’ he said.

‘Why do you stay?’ the question, quietly put, was stunning to the boy in its implications of free will.

‘It’s worse at home,’ he said. ‘My mother’s dead.’

‘You should run away,’ the stranger said carelessly and turning his back stared again at the sunset. Andrews watched him. At that moment his heart, barren of any object of affection, was ready open to hero worship. The man stood in front of him with his legs a little apart as
though
balancing himself upon the spinning globe. A sailor, Andrews thought, remembering that his father stood so.

After a little the man turned again and seeing that the boy was still there asked him whether he happened to know a boy at school named Andrews.

Andrews looked at him in amazement. It was as though a figure from a dream had suddenly stepped into reality and claimed acquaintanceship with him. ‘I’m Andrews,’ he said.

‘That’s strange,’ the man said, watching him with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity, ‘you are pale. You don’t look strong. Unlike your father. I was your father’s friend,’ he said.

The past tense caught Andrews’ attention. ‘I’m glad you are not his friend now,’ he said. ‘I hate him.’

‘He’s dead,’ Carlyon said.

There was a pause and then Andrews said slowly, ‘I suppose you’d be shocked if I said I was glad.’

The stranger laughed. ‘Not in the least. I imagine that he’d be a particularly unlovely character on shore. He was a great sailor though. Let me introduce myself – my name’s Carlyon, skipper and owner of the
Good Chance
, your father’s ship.’ He held out his hand. Andrews took it. The grip was firm, brief and dry.

‘How did he die?’ he asked.

‘Shot. You knew what your father was?’

‘I guessed,’ Andrews said.

‘And now,’ Carlyon asked, ‘what do you want to do?’ He suddenly made a twisted embarrassed motion with his hands. ‘Your father left me everything.’ He added quickly, turning a little away, ‘Of course you have only to ask. You can have anything but the ship.’ His voice dropped on the last word to the same hushed note which he had used in speaking of the sunset. His voice was extraordinarily musical, even in the shortest, most careless entence. It had a concentration, a clear purity suggesting depth and tautness,
which
while utterly unlike in timbre, yet suggested the note of a violin. Andrews listened to it with a kind of hunger.

‘Will you stay here?’ Carlyon asked, making a gesture with his hand down the hill.

‘I hate it,’ Andrews said. ‘It’s ugly.’

‘Why did you come up here?’ Carlyon asked suddenly.

‘It’s all red brick down there. And a gravel playground. Every few yards there’s something in the way. Up here there’s nothing for miles and miles.’

Carlyon nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come with me?’

That was all that passed before the decision was made. Andrews from that moment would have followed Carlyon to the ends of the world, and yet it was Carlyon who was ridiculously impetuous and desired simply to walk away then with no more said or done. It was Andrews who insisted that Carlyon must come down to the school and make arrangements.

That night Carlyon stayed at an inn in the town and Andrews, as he said good night, asked the question he had been longing to ask all the evening. ‘Do you want me to come?’ ‘Yes,’ Carlyon had answered. ‘We both love the same things. They do not love them at this school, and my men, fine men, mind you, do not love them. We are made to be friends.’

‘Made to be friends,’ Andrews laughed, walking over the downs. What a mess he had made of that friendship. He wondered whether if he had the power, he would undo what he had done; have back the covert jeers, his father’s example constantly thrown up, the hated, noisy sea, the danger, but also Carlyon’s friendship, the cabin, shut out from the eyes of the crew, Carlyon speaking, Carlyon reading, Carlyon’s clear, refreshing certainty of what he followed. He had not by his act destroyed his shame nor his fear, but had increased them both, and he had lost Carlyon. And yet if he was able to return through time he must leave
behind
Elizabeth and this reawakened, defeated, but persistent longing to raise himself from the dirt.

Absorbed in drifting thoughts of the past an hour had fled. The day had begun and a pale crocus yellow light had absorbed the first silver. The lights in the valley had again gone out save for a few which still burned not brightly but like dull, rusty blossoms of a wild bush. Coming to a rise Andrews was startled to see the cottage below him, small, barren of light or movement, The faint sunlight was unable to pierce the trees in whose shelter the cottage lay, so that while the world was bathed in a light shower of gold, the cottage was in shadow. But to Andrews watching from the down, his heart beating with the suddenness of the sight, it lay in the deeper shadow of danger and of death. He did not know in the confusion into which his heart had been thrown, when thus unexpectedly woken from the past, whether it was fear or love that made the beats. He gazed hard at the cottage as though by intensity he might force it to declare any secrets which it might hold. No smoke came from the chimney, no light from the windows. This absence of life signified nothing, for the hour could hardly be later than seven, yet it frightened Andrews. Suppose that Carlyon and his men had already visited the cottage and that it now hid their revenge. It was useless to tell himself that Carlyon would not allow a woman to be hurt. Hake and Joe were with him. He wondered where Carlyon had left the
Good Chance
. If he had lost the ship his leadership was over. It seemed to Andrews that centuries had passed since he had watched, with a heart exalted as compared with now, the smoke rise from the cottage chimneys.

Very slowly he walked to the brink of the down, his eyes fixed on the cottage. There was yet another possibility to fear, that inside the cottage the smugglers were waiting for him to fall into the trap set by Cockney Harry. But was it a trap? It was his duty to warn Elizabeth, but when had he ever done anything for the sake of duty? He might in opening
that
cottage door find himself face to face with Carlyon, Joe, Hake and the rest of them. He remembered the vision he had seen in the yellow candlelight in Lucy’s room. He stood there in what seemed even to himself a pitiable hesitation. If only he had not fallen to that woman, he thought, how easy it would have been to have gone swinging blindly down the hill. His duty fulfilled, he would have been clean, exultant, confident of the future, confident that he had risen once and for all from his past. He returned now defeated by his body, dispirited, hopeless, to give a warning and then go. Why not abandon this attempt to be better than I am and escape now and never give the warning? I’m only beginning over again this weary, hopeless business of attempting to rise. I shall be disappointed again. Why not save myself that bitterness? The cowardly suggestion drove in on him with too great a force. If it had come quietly, insidiously, it might have won, but this brazen confident attempt defeated its own purpose. His heart rose in revolt. He half ran down the hill, careless of cover, intent only on putting it out of his power to draw back.

As he reached the edge of the trees and the cottage appeared again before him, as it had appeared on his first arrival, caution returned. His eyes on the window, he ran on tiptoe across the bare space between the coppice and the wall. Pressing his body hard against the wall, as though he hoped to be absorbed into its firmness, he put one eye to the corner of the window. The room within seemed empty. Surely all was well. He took three strides along the wall to the door and gently raised the latch. To his surprise the door opened. How careless she is, he thought. She should bolt this door. Seeing the room empty he knelt down himself and drew the bottom bolt. The top was broken.

He looked round him and sighed a little with relief to see no sign of disturbance. It was not a trap then, he thought. I must get her away from here this morning. In the middle of the room was the kitchen table on which the coffin had lain.
Do
not be afraid, old man, Andrews said under his breath, I will not touch her. I am going to save her from the others, that is all. He shivered a little. The morning air now that he had ceased to walk was cold. It seemed to him very possible that the room might hold a jealous, bitter and suspicious ghost. I don’t want any interference from the spirits, he thought, and smiled wearily at his own superstition. The room and house were very still. Should he go up and wake her? He longed, only now he realized to the full with what passion and what impatience, to see her again. If only he had returned unsullied, a conqueror of himself for her. I will try again, I will try again, he thought, beating down his own self-mockery. I don’t care how often I fall. I will try again. For the second time within twenty-four hours and for the second time in three years he prayed. ‘O God, help me.’ He turned hastily round. It was as though a warm draught had been blown on to the back of his neck. He found himself again facing the table and the imagined, but disquieting, presence of a coffin. Don’t be afraid, old man, he implored. I am not here to make love. She would never look at me. I want to save her, that is all.

He shook himself a little, like a dog. He was becoming foolish. I will get breakfast, he thought, and surprise her. A row of cups were hanging above the sink. He took one down and then stood, the tips of his fingers caressing the edge, but his mind on the past, his eyes fixed to a key-hole, his heart trembling as though at a saint. Then the small door which led to the upper floor opened and he looked up. ‘Is it you at last?’ he said. His voice was hushed and trembling in the presence of a mystery. The room was gold with sunlight, but he had not noticed it till now.