To the Dark Tower (7 page)

July 6th
, 1937

After dinner yesterday I showed S, N. G. the Forsdike letters. I had not meant to show them to anyone—I don’t know why: certainly not out of loyalty to her. Yet here I was handing them to him. Perhaps I accepted, subconsciously, his own belief that he would not survive the operation. Perhaps the thought crossed my mind: Dead men tell no tales. I do not know. All that is certain is that, suddenly, on an impulse, I had gone to the bureau, unlocked the box, and given them to him. There was still a faint scent on them as they passed through my hands. "What do you make of these?" I asked.

He read them slowly, without comment, while I watched him, his gold signet ring flashing under the electric light, the shoulders of his dinner-jacket grey with scurf. Then, at the end, he folded them, and handed them back to me, still saying nothing, his gaze preoccupied.

"Well? What do you think? Crazy, aren’t they?"

"I shouldn’t have said crazy. I can understand it."

"But, my dear man—"

"I can see an otherwise quite rational person writing to you in that fashion. After all, my dear H. W., you are a personality. I’ve learnt that myself."

"What do you mean?"

"When I was a boy of eleven I went to private school—and you were a leader of a gang. Do you remember? You were a horrid little savage—and your gang was horrid. But I joined it. Why? Simply because of this personality of yours. I loathed all the things you did—roasting new boys on the hot pipes in the changing-rooms, stealing from the tuck cupboard, tracking Mr. Bowley and the under-matron. But there it was. You had this fiendish personality."

"Well?"

"Now, as you know, H. W., I agree with very few of your opinions. We’ve hardly an opinion in common. But even now, to-day, if you wanted me to do something wholly disreputable—well, I think I should do it. I wish it wasn’t so, but it is. I wish such personalities didn’t exist: they’re dangerous. But the power is there—the magnetism—and I, for one, feel it. And not only me. How do you think that you, a European, succeeded in turning a handful of South American insurgents into a formidable fighting force? Your personality. One still hears of the love those men had for you. Well—is it such a step from that devotion to this? Imagine someone whose life has been aimless, dull— and then your picture, the story of the South American campaign, your books. Is it so hard to see it happen?"

"But she worshipped me before we had even met—"

"Why not? Your story was romantic enough. Someone once said that your face was ideal for a recruiting poster. And then there was this thing over and above—something supernatural, uncontrollable—an aura; if you like—your personality."

I began to laugh, without humour, profoundly disturbed, but afraid of showing it; pretending that all that he said seemed ridiculous to me, when he continued: "Oh, yes; you have a personality, H. W. It is unique. I only thank God that you have never tried to use it to the full. You could do anything with it—anything... And that frightens me."

So he too is in the conspiracy.

July 7th
, 1937

The best love letters are written by those no longer in love. When I said good-bye to S. N. G. this morning we were both inarticulate.

Before he went he showed me the new pyjamas he had bought for the nursing-home. "Feel them. They’ve a most lovely texture." His wan enthusiasm heartens me.

Will he die? Will he recover? I do not know. Presentiments mean nothing. I often thought that I should be killed in the last war. But I cannot help sharing his melancholy.

"Take care of yourself," I say, watching him settle himself in a first-class carriage, with the
Spectator
, the
Criterion
, and the
London Mercury
. "Take care of yourself. I shall ring up the nursing-home to-morrow. I’m sure all will go well."

He smiles distantly, almost coldly, sinking down into his seat and folding his blue-veined hands. "Don’t bother to wait."

"But I’d like to."

Silence. He looks out of the other window, his head turned away from me, at some men on the line. The heat is oppressive.

Then: "Good-bye, good-bye." The train moving, coach by coach, drawing him away, jerking beside the unimpeachably blue river until it reaches a hazy distance and is lost.

I feel suddenly sick.

July 8th
, 1937

Last night there was thunder—on the right. What sort of portent is this?

I lay awake for hours, head aching, sweating, naked, without bedclothes. Was it an attack of malaria? Or only the heat? I thought all the time of what S. N. G. had said to me. I was wrestling with devils.

July 9th
, 1937

Throughout this morning I have said: "I must ring up the nursing-home." But something prevents me—a fear which makes my heart thump, my scalp tingle. I keep on putting it off—‘after I have finished this article’, ‘after my bathe’, ‘after lunch’. This is cowardice.

It reminds me of when Dennis was killed: and I dared not go down from the balcony...

From
SHIRLEY FORSDIKE, Barbizon, France,
to
Sir HUGH WEIGH, Dartmouth

July 15th
, 1937

MY DEAREST,—It has happened! A letter has come from you! Oh, such a cold, disapproving letter—but a letter none the less. To-day I left my room where I have been brooding all these days and went for a drive in the Forest of Fontainebleau. This is the first time that I have been out of the garden since coming here. Your letter has done this. And now as I write, late, with Mother and all the guests asleep—all except the young Dutch couple on honeymoon who quarrel and do not turn out their light—I touch this one sheet of notepaper over and over again, I put my lips to it, because you, too, have touched it, your hands have rested there. Do not laugh at me for this: rather pity me. A letter is all that I have of you—a cold, disapproving letter.

If I could die! If I had the courage! But something prevents me—the certainty that some day, somehow, I shall be of service to you, that you will call me, that you will accept this love of mine. It is this that keeps me alive: it is only this that makes each day bearable—these days of summer, long, serene, but void, empty, like the smile on a dead face. (You see, I am being literary. ‘Like the smile on a dead face.’ But how else can I express this ache, this void? I cannot write over and over again: ‘I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you’.)

Plato was it who said that we all go through the world seeking a twin soul? I think I believe that. I feel as if you had been torn from me—as if we had been sundered. And this one half must always cry out for the other; must always hunger for it; must always bleed: for nothing can heal it, nothing, till the halves be one. Why should I only be so certain of this—that we are halves, twin-souls? Why should I only bear the ache? We belong to each other, inseparably. Claim what is yours: return to me what is mine.

...I came here to France because I was ill. Nothing could be diagnosed, the doctors were puzzled. Should I have said to them then: I am starving, I am bleeding to death? Would they have believed that? But it is true, true.

Your letter: I have read it over and over again. When I went for my drive this afternoon, alone, in a horse-carriage, I kept on opening my bag, taking it out, looking at it, each time as though I expected some miraculous change, so that what was formal and cold might be tender, might be loving. And each time my eyes filled with tears. You should not have written to me like that. I had rather you had been angry: this coldness freezes, kills.

You write: ‘Be reasonable. No sane person could have sent such a letter.’ No sane person! But are we ever sane when we are in love? And is it unreasonable, extraordinary, for me to love you? Is it strange that I should say to you: ‘Take me, I am yours’, when you are a god. What else can mortals do? What else but this—to dedicate themselves? ‘I am yours’: what else?

A book has just appeared here in France, called
Pitié pour les Femmes
; it has caused a stir, my mother has lent it to me. You must imagine a writer, Costals, a libertine, cynical, degenerate, a brute: yet to this man two women are willing to concede
everything
—because they have read his books. Understand: they have not met him. Yet they love him, as I love you. And they are starved—starved of all true companionship. While I—I could have been married over and over if I had wished it.

Does my love seem strange then? Costals is amoral, a cowardly degenerate: but you—you are noble, ascetic, good! There is nothing strange here. There is nothing mad in my wish to give myself to you. I am pouring my precious ointment on your feet. Oh, do not spurn it! Do not spurn it!

It is growing very late. Again I am weeping—as I always weep when I write to you. The young Dutch couple have turned out their light. If you knew how lonely I feel! If you would answer this—tenderly, gently! If I knew that you accepted my sacrifice! That would be sufficient.

You must forgive the reproaches in this letter. They are unworthy of you. I must learn the complete resignation—to resign everything, even my grief—to make it all yours. I am not afraid of doing that. I put my soul into your hand. Do what you will with it, my dearest, for I am yours, yours only. Yours always. Even this intolerable anguish is yours, these tears.

I shall put out the light now. I shall try to sleep.

SHIRLEY.

WHEN Hugh Weigh first met Lucy Korrance at a dance at the Collector’s bungalow (he ripped the train of her evening-dress and she was angry with him) it was said that she was ‘wild’. For one thing, Mrs. Meakins, her aunt, had a story of how on their last visit to England she had spent a night on the river at Oxford with an undergraduate—and without a chaperone (Mrs. Meakins being the chaperone provided); and for another she had an irrepressible sense of humour. On one occasion at a dinner party, she offered a raw young subaltern a concoction of vinegar and epsom salts with the words: "Do try this liqueur. It’s supposed to be terribly, terribly old." "Hm, excellent," he murmured to the giggled derision of Lucy and her friends. But the more stuffy of her mother’s guests thought that she might be going too far...

Such were her idiosyncracies: and it was these, rather than certain more formidable traits—a tendency to lose her temper, be self-willed, strike the native servants—that really worried Mumsie. (Lady Korrance was always Mumsie to her girl: to her husband she was Memsie.) But everyone knew that she was young; she would learn; she would grow up.

Lucy had one other characteristic—one more endearing, conventional; she was a snob. There was the occasion when her father had just been promoted and a dinner was given in his honour. After the ladies had gone into the drawing-room, Mrs. Meakins, who was pleased with her sister and wished to show it, said: "Tell me, dear. I suppose a
knighthood
goes with this new job?” and the then Mrs. Korrance, being habitually untruthful, replied: "Well, really, Beatrice, I haven’t thought about it." Then her voice tinkled upwards in nervous laughter and she added: "In any case I don’t care a ha’penny whether I’m Lady Korrance or not."

It was at this point that Lucy intervened. "I do," she said staunchly. "I shall be
proud
to be the daughter of Sir Basil Korrance." And she blushed in anticipation.

People agreed that this was the right spirit.

Not unnaturally, therefore, she decided to marry Hugh Weigh. He was, Mrs. Meakins had told her, heir to a baronetcy; and when this advantage was coupled with good looks and the ability to ride, Lucy thought it sufficient. She had always wanted to be one of the aristocracy; and, regardless of the fact that old Sir Humbert Weigh had been given his title by Queen Victoria and spoke with a Lancashire accent, this wish seemed at last attainable.

Mumsie repeatedly asked the young subaltern to bridge, tennis, and dinner; Papa, when he carved, gave him the breast and wing; and Mrs. Meakins contrived to ‘leave the young people alone’—as far as propriety permitted.

It was in the garden that the first step was taken. "I just exist for my garden," Mumsie was in the habit of saying to enthusiastic visitors, as though she identified herself with the half-dozen coolies whose lives were devoted to its irrigation. It was certainly beautiful, flowering at the centre of parched roads,
maidans
, compounds. "It’s like England," Mumsie would also say on occasions; and this was the highest praise that anyone could bestow. There were lush lawns with sundials, bird-baths, and statuary; there was a sunken garden; there was even topiary, Fantastic monsters, created out of the mind of one of the Indian gardeners. And all this was irrigated by a delightful stream which sloped artfully, made sudden waterfalls, trickled into pools, and at intervals was spanned by bridges of wood. This stream—but the coolies knew where the water came from.

Hugh and Lucy strolled over the lawns, she twirling a parasol of vivid green. From her wrists dangled bracelets, lockets, charms, which tinkled as she walked. She was, as Mrs. Meakins put it, "a lovely girl". Hair piled on to her head in auburn turrets, swelling
enbonpoint
, thighs moving firmly under rustling silk—these were the tastes of that era. Hugh approved.

"Do you ride?” she was asking. "I mean, do you find the time?"

"Oh, yes."

"Would you come riding with me? Susie’s nearly sixteen—Papa’s promised me another—would you?" This was the way she spoke, jumping from one thought to another, tripping here, slurring there. The parasol swung in an arc.

"That would be delightful."

"Oh, good! Couldn’t we ride for miles and miles—I mean, right into the jungle—Papa won’t let me—but if you said..."

At that moment they came to one of the wooden bridges. How cool the water flowed! How clear! They both looked down, hands moving along the rail. Fingers met, momentarily. When they walked on, descending the little incline of the bridge, Hugh gallantly helped her. Slipping one arm round her waist, he pressed upwards that fine
embonpoint
.