I shall always remember that Saturday, because as it turned out it was the last day which Philip and Beatrice Bartels and I spent together.
I did not know that, of course, and there was nothing to indicate it. It began as one of those days which make you think that winter is past, and that spring is not very far ahead; the sun shone out of a brittle blue sky, dazzlingly bright, and the sprinkling of frost on the lawn sparkled and danced in the pale, intense light.
I always sleep with the windows partly open, but when I got up that morning, I opened them wider still, and looked out, and breathed in deeply and felt glad to be alive.
The air was cold, and as I was not even wearing a dressing gown, it penetrated quickly to my skin, and raced over my face and neck and chest, yet left behind no feeling of chill, but rather a tingling, invigorating feeling as though I had been massaged.
It was quite late, past nine o’clock, for the Bartels took things very easily at weekends, as is right and proper, and we usually wandered down for breakfast at about a quarter to ten.
A robin fluttered down on to the lawn, hopped a few paces and stood listening. Somebody, presumably Beatrice, was moving about in the kitchen handling crockery.
The air was very still; so still that when the dog Brutus wandered out of the French windows below me, I picked up the sound as his heavy body disturbed the pebbles on the path.
The dog Brutus moved slowly on to the lawn, took a few paces and stopped, and stretched, his forelegs thrust out before him, tensing his hind legs in turn. The robin took no notice, as though aware that so old and heavy a body was incapable of sudden and dangerous attack.
The dog lowered his head to the ground, and sniffed, and then raised his half-blind eyes to the sun; his head moved slowly from side to side, as though he were trying to discern the source of the rays which were warming his body. He took a few more steps, and stood uncertainly looking across the lawn to where the vegetable garden lay.
“Brutus!” I called. “Hello, Brutus, boy!”
The dog took no notice, so I called louder: “Brutus! Hello, boy!”
The dog turned his heavy head and peered in the direction from which my voice had come. His stump of a tail moved gently from side to side, then he turned his head away and continued to gaze down the garden.
I thought: He is so old now that he does not much care whether human company is around or not; he is a half-numbed entity, for whom the hours and the days bring either warmth and comfort, or cold and discomfort; either food and satisfaction or vague stirrings of hunger and restlessness.
Men come to it, like dogs: but men have their memories to amuse and comfort them, or to torture and plague them. Memory is a mixed blessing. Time soothes most of the wounds of the past, but the ugliest remain unhealed; perhaps they are even exacerbated by the play of the imagination. Dogs don’t suffer like that. Dogs die easy deaths, devoid of hopes or fears. It’s a consolation for having to eat the half-cold remains from people’s plates, I thought.
I closed the window, and bathed and dressed, and went down to breakfast. Beatrice and Barty were already at table, reading the newspapers. There were boiled eggs for breakfast, two each, for Beatrice, efficient as ever, had good local contacts.
We did not talk much. I think that each of them was conscious that I shared his or her secret that bright February morning. As for me, I was merely concerned that neither should discern the true feelings of the other.
Of the two, as I thought even then, Beatrice was the finer character; she had made her bargain, married without being in love; but having made it she was going to keep it, even though it nearly broke her heart to do so.
Not so Philip Bartels. Unless I could prevent it, he was going to break what he considered to have been a bad bargain, and marry Lorna.
Such being the case, I had to take swift action in two directions. I had to consolidate the position in regard to Beatrice and John O’Brien, and I had to see Lorna Dickson and strengthen the idea that it would be wrong of her to take Bartels from Beatrice.
Yet all my plans were put in peril in a most unexpected way that same morning.
To begin with, everything went according to plan. After breakfast, Bartels went out into the garden to fix a piece of trellis-work that had come loose in the night, and I offered to help Beatrice with the washing-up.
Beatrice washed the things. I dried them. At first we did not speak; each knew the subject which lay uppermost in the other’s mind; each was reluctant to broach the subject, or perhaps Beatrice, like myself, did not know how to start.
At length, as I was drying the last few knives, I said abruptly:
“I have thought some more about you and John.”
“What have you thought?”
She turned her head and looked at me anxiously. I did not know whether she was hopeful that I might have changed my mind, in order that she could have some moral backing for reconsidering the problem herself, or whether, having now reconciled herself, she was fearful lest I put up arguments which would cause her to weaken.
“I think that you and John are well suited to each other, but I am not at all certain that one can build happiness upon the unhappiness of somebody else.”
“I suppose not,” she said. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Some people could, but not you, Beatrice dear. Not a person with your burden of conscience.”
“No.”
She wiped her right hand on her apron, and then pushed some hair back from her forehead. The blood had mounted to her head, and her lower lip was trembling. She raised her hand again, and brushed it across her eyes.
“I wish I could advise you otherwise. I would willingly sacrifice Barty, if I thought that you and John would be happy.”
She stood at the sink, saying nothing, cleaning a small glass marmalade dish with a small mop, pushing the mop round and round.
“John might be happy,” I went on, “but not you, Beatrice dear. Your thoughts would go out to Barty, all the time, souring everything. Perhaps even embittering your relationship with John.”
The winter sunlight shone through the little window, touching her beautiful red hair. Once, she looked quickly at me and tried to smile, and I saw the tears in her eyes. She nodded her head, with that quick little trembling smile, and bent over the sink again. And all the time, forgetful of what she was doing, she continued to push the little mop round the marmalade dish.
For a moment, despite my resolution, I felt sick at heart, not merely at her heartbreak, but at my own treachery.
I saw her standing, almost symbolically, at the sink, a woman who had been faced with the greatest temptation which a married woman can encounter. But because her conception of duty, of what is fair and decent, was so strong, she had won her struggle.
I suddenly flung the dishcloth over the back of a chair, and murmured an apology and went out of the kitchen.
I was nauseated by my own actions. “Beatrice dear,” I had called her. “I wish I could advise you otherwise,” I had said. And with it all, I had spoken in a low, regretful tone, as though the one thing I longed for was to be able to tell her something different. I went into the drawing room, and paced up and down in front of the fireplace.
I couldn’t go on with it.
I was not as tough as I thought I was. This was the invisible X, the unseen factor which was going to upset my plans.
I had the power to make three people happier than they had ever been before, and one person reasonably happy. As is so often the case with ruthless people like myself, I was swept by a wave of the most revolting sentimentality.
I conjured up mental pictures of Bartels, with his gentle smile, and quiet good nature, and diffident manner; Bartels, the unsuccessful wine salesman, traipsing round the countryside, longing for Lorna, whom he believed to be in love with him, and who would certainly never let him see that she was not.
I thought of Beatrice, whose heart called out for the strong masculinity of John O’Brien; Beatrice who was fundamentally so good that she was prepared to sacrifice her own happiness rather than harm, as she thought, a devoted and dependent husband.
Even the forceful and sturdy John O’Brien came in for his share of my pity: John, fundamentally decent, too, who was prepared to stand by Beatrice’s decision, whatever the cost to himself. John, the good-humoured, the generous, the kind.
The wave of sentimentality receded.
In its place I felt quite cool. I lit a cigarette, and threw the match in the fireplace, and stood smoking and looking out of the window. Bartels had apparently finished his work on the trellis, and must have gone down to the vegetable garden, for he was no longer in sight.
I had never imagined that I would be prepared to sacrifice my own ambitions for anybody else, not even for Beatrice and Bartels.
But that is what I now proposed to do.
I walked to the door and into the passage and along to the kitchen. My heart was beating a little faster than usual, but I was determined. Beatrice had finished the drying-up, and was going over the floor with a mop. The back door was open. The dog Brutus lay dozing on the mat.
I stood by the kitchen door in silence for a few seconds, watching her.
“Beatrice,” I said, at last, and now I had come to it, the word had to be forced through my lips. She looked up, but said nothing.
“Beatrice,” I said again. She stopped mopping the floor and looked round at me. A wisp of hair had fallen over one eye. She looked listless and tired.
“Yes?”
Curiously enough, at that moment I felt a surge of happiness within me. Even at this late date, I can still recall a faint flavour of it. It was the unalloyed, pure joy which only a giver can know.
For a second I hesitated, looking upon Beatrice’s unhappy face and anticipating the wild happiness I was going to bring to her. Yet I wasn’t feeling smug, or virtuous: just happy. It was most odd.
But the dog Brutus raised his head.
I heard the sound of footstep, then a noise as Bartels kicked some mud off his shoes on the scraper. Then he came into the kitchen. And I thought of him, with Lorna, his wide, colourless lips pressed on hers; his deep musical voice, in such contrast to his appearance, murmuring endearments. I imagined him married to her and all that that implied. It was too much for me.
“Beatrice,” I said loudly, “let’s go along to the local for a drink at twelve. What about it?”
If Bartels had stayed outside two minutes more, so much might have been changed.
We did not go to the local. Beatrice said she had to stay and watch the joint. It was my joint. I always brought a joint for the weekends. There is no point in being in the hotel business if one cannot scrounge a reasonably sized joint for oneself now and again.
But Bartels asked me to come for a stroll across the fields with Brutus. I went with him willingly enough, for the wave of jealousy was still around me, and the foolish, generous weakness had been replaced by the old well-known feeling of determination to fight for what I wanted by fair means and, if necessary, by foul ones-in that order.
I thought I did quite well during that walk, for I made him promise that he would not leave Beatrice until Easter, pointing out to him that at that time she would be spending a fortnight with her parents in Falmouth, and that the blow would be softened if she were with her family.
He promised readily enough.
In view of what he had in mind, I am not surprised.
I recall now, incidentally, how kind he was to the dog Brutus during that walk. Indeed, he had been unusually kind to the dog at breakfast, feeding him with titbits from the table, a thing he never normally allowed, and caressing him.
So now, upon that beautiful February morning, Bartels led the dog along hedgerows where a scent of rabbits could perhaps be detected, encouraging him with soft words, and sometimes calling him for a pat. And once we went through a small copse, because sometimes a cock pheasant lurked in the undergrowth.
The dog Brutus seemed for a space to regain some of his youthful vigour, and though he could not move fast, he showed all his former enthusiasm, and snuffled in the hedges and among the briars, tail wagging; and once, when he put a rabbit up, he lumbered after it excitedly, until shortness of breath made him abandon the chase after a few yards.
Bartels was quieter than usual, and I noticed in the bright sunlight certain lines upon his face, and a suggestion of a shadow under the eyes, which I had not seen before.
He talked to me of his future plans for Lorna and himself; how Lorna, at least for a while, would have to continue with her dressmaking.
“But she says she doesn’t mind,” he said.
“She is not the sort of woman who would,” I answered. And I thought that if I had my way, and I was sure I would, Lorna would never make another dress as long as she lived, except for her own pleasure.
“But I hope it won’t be for long,” said Bartels.
“You do?”
“She is the kind of woman who makes a man want to conquer the world for her.”
“She is?”
I thought how odd it was that love could make even an intelligent man like Bartels fall back upon platitudes, cliches, and worn-out phrases to express his feelings.
“When I marry Lorna, I shall insist upon a better position in the firm. Something at head office. By God, I’ve earned it. And I shall demand it.”
“You will? Supposing they don’t give it to you?”
“I’ll make them give it to me.”
“Splendid.”
“There’s no reason why I should not be a director one day.”
“None at all. There is no reason at all why you should not be a director. I hope you will be. I think you probably will be, before you have finished.”
It was one of those broadly reassuring things which one says to failures. With men who are likely to succeed, you can afford to discuss the probabilities and chances: you can’t do that with failures.
The idea that Bartels would ever become one of the heads of the firm was, of course, laughable. He was a failure on the road; he had neither the organizing ability nor the assertiveness to force his way to the top.
The likelihood that the diffident and reserved Bartels could even compel his firm to give him a better job seemed small enough to me. I reckoned that it was about all he could do to hold his position at all. But my words elated him.
“Is that your honest opinion?” he asked. His eyes shone, and the lines and the shadows seemed to disappear.
“Of course it is.”
“If I succeed, it will be entirely due to Lorna’s influence.”
“So you suggested before.”
“She makes me feel that I’m pretty good at my job.”
“So you are, I expect,” I said mildly.
My fit of jealousy had departed. I watched his thin figure walking along the narrow track in front of me, the wind ruffling the absurd patch of hair on the crown of his head, and I did not begrudge him his mood of buoyancy.
“You’ll have to come and stay a lot with Lorna and me, when we’re married,” he said over his shoulder.
I almost laughed out loud. “That’s very kind of you, Barty. I shall enjoy it. When are you thinking of telling Beatrice?”
“Oh, one of these days,” he said vaguely. “Sometime when the moment is ripe.”
He walked along in silence for a few moments. The dog Brutus, beginning to tire a little now, was walking at his heels, indifferent to the possibilities which the hedges offered him.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” said Bartels suddenly. We had come to a gate, and were looking over it, smoking our pipes. The dog, glad of the rest, had flopped down on the ground.
“Go ahead,” I said absently.
“Well, I just wanted to say how much it has meant to me to have your friendship at this time. That’s all.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. I couldn’t look at him.
“It may be nothing to you, but it’s made all the difference to me.”
“I haven’t done anything,” I replied uneasily. “You’d have been all right without me.”
But he shook his head.
“I sometimes wonder whether I could go through with it without having somebody to talk to, I think I might even have given it all up by now.”
For a moment I had a fleeting feeling as though a hand had gripped my heart.
“I should think it’s time we went back,” I said, and turned away from the gate.
It was after lunch that the dog Brutus died.
The circumstances were as follows.
Bartels and I returned with the dog from our walk. Beatrice had finished the simple household work which she did at weekends, and the cooking was well under way. She had laid out a tray of drinks in the drawing room, and was reading the papers when we arrived back.
We helped ourselves to drinks, and Bartels and I joined Beatrice in dipping into the newspapers. The dog, tired after his walk, but by no means distressed, lay in his customary place on the rug before the fire. He licked his paws for a few seconds, and then lay content but not asleep.
After a while, Bartels called the dog by name. The animal lifted his heavy head and gazed with his half-blind eyes in the direction of Bartels’ voice. He moved his tail slightly, lazily, but made no effort to get up.
Bartels called him again, and this time he got to his feet and walked slowly over to the chair where Bartels sat. He put his head on Bartels’ knee, and Barty fondled him, scratching him behind the ears, and stroking his muzzle with his forefinger.
Once, Bartels bent down and rubbed the side of his face against the side of the dog’s head. Beatrice made some remark about the dog having grown up with their marriage, because they had bought him as a puppy shortly after the honeymoon. Bartels made no comment about this, but continued to fondle the dog.
Shortly after, Beatrice went out to serve up the lunch.
A little later, we all went into the dining room, and the dog Brutus followed. When we had finished the meal, Bartels carved a few pieces from the outside of the joint for the dog. Meat being rationed, he did not carve a great deal.
He then went out into the kitchen, saying that he was going to break up some dog biscuits to mix with the meat. About five minutes later, he returned with the plate of food. Beatrice remarked that he had been some time. Had he had any difficulty in finding the biscuits?
Bartels said no, he had found them all right, but made no further comment.
He placed the plate on the floor at the side of the room, under the dresser, and called the dog Brutus. He laid his hand on the dog’s back, as he began to eat, kept it there a few seconds, and then returned to his seat at the table.
By this time we were smoking our after-lunch cigarettes. I was talking to Beatrice, but Bartels made no attempt either to join in or to listen. He sat watching the dog eat.
When the dog had finished, I remember seeing him, out of the corner of my eye, move slowly over towards the window. He did not reach the window.
Approximately two yards from the window, he sank slowly to the floor, and rolled on to his side. He sighed once, as though he were tired, and did not move again.
Almost at once, Bartels got up, and went over to the dog, and a few seconds later said, in a funny kind of voice:
“I think poor old Brutus has died.”
Beatrice gave a little cry, and put her hand to her mouth, but she did not rise from the table. I joined Bartels with the dog, and confirmed what he had said.
Bartels remained on one knee, his right hand still on the dog’s heart, his eyes fixed upon Beatrice. He said:
“He’s dead all right. Quickly, and without pain. That is a good way to go out; no struggles, no fears, no gasps. He just went to sleep.”
Beatrice had risen, and came over and joined us. She was biting the knuckles on her right hand. She looked down on the dog. Her eyes grew moist but she did not cry. She said:
“Poor old Brutus! The house won’t be the same without him. Still, he didn’t suffer.”
I remember noting the strange, unblinking stare which Bartels gave Beatrice, but I thought nothing of it at the time. I heard him say:
“No, that’s the point. There was no suffering. None at all. He had to die sometime. So have we all. A few days or months or years sooner or later make no difference. It’s not when you die that matters. It’s how.”
I recalled he had said that once before, all those years ago at the chateau. But I attached no importance to it.
We buried the dog in a grassy bank at the bottom of the garden, having first wrapped him in an old Army blanket. Beatrice said she would buy a stone with the dog’s name on it. Bartels shrugged slightly, and said:
“If you like. But when we leave here-when we’re gone-it’ll only be a matter of time before the stone disappears, too.”
He had a curious sense of the inevitability of oblivion.
I said that I had an engagement in London, and I left them that evening, Beatrice and Bartels, together, each to their own thoughts, and actions. I never saw them together again.
Just before I left, an unpleasant little incident occurred. Beatrice was mending some undergarment or other, and Bartels, at the other side of the fire, had been reading; but now he had laid his book on his lap, and was gazing over at Beatrice, apparently deep in thought.
Near the wall was a side table, and above it a landscape in oils, framed in an old-fashioned, heavy, carved frame. After a while Bartels glanced up at the picture, saw that it was not hanging quite straight, and got up to adjust it.
He placed his open book on the side table, and moved the frame. When he moved it, a large, hairy moth which must have gone behind the picture to die in seclusion and warmth the previous autumn, dropped down with a tiny thud upon the open pages of the book.
Bartels made a curious little noise, half gasp, half groan, and shrank back. His face had flushed pink with shock; he stood staring at the dead insect, not daring to approach it.
Beatrice quickly put her mending down, and went over to the side table, and picked the moth up by its wings. She walked to the fire.
“Not in the fire!” muttered Bartels, but he was too late.
The dead moth hit the embers at the side, and a small flame shot up, flickered for the space of a second, and died down. Bartels had swung round, as I recalled he had swung round before, when a live butterfly had fluttered into the grate at the chateau.
“Why not in the fire?” asked Beatrice. “It was dead, wasn’t it?”
Dear, practical, dutiful Beatrice!
She went out into the kitchen. Shortly afterwards, I followed her to say goodbye. She was rolling some pieces of filleted fish in breadcrumbs, and looked up at me and said sadly:
“See how he needs me?”
That was my last chance. I did not take it.
On the contrary, I said in those sad, regretful tones I know so well how to adopt: “He needs you all right. Yes, he certainly needs you.”
Then I kissed her on the cheek.
I went out, leaving her alone in the cottage with Bartels.
The remainder of the evening was for me a mad rush, a happy whirl of laughter, and food and wine and fast driving.
I drove up to Lorna’s cottage and braked the car violently and blew three long blasts on the horn, and leaped out and rang the bell incessantly.
She came to the door.
“Why, hello,” Lorna said. “What’s the uproar about? Are you on fire, or-”
I did not let her finish. I grabbed her by the hand, and pulled her into the house, and slammed the door.
“Come on!” I cried. “Come on, throw some town clothes on, and get cracking. We’re going up to town, to celebrate!”
“Celebrate what, for heaven’s sake?” she said, and laughed.
“We’ll decide that on the way. Come on, girl, dash up and change into something that isn’t evening dress. Let no time be wasted, Lorna Dickson; this is no night for a girl to be on her own in a house in the country!”
“What’s special about tonight?” she asked, as I pushed her towards the stairs.
“Nothing’s special about tonight. No beautiful girl should ever be alone at night. ’Tisn’t safe. Go on. Up you go!”
“But what are we going to do?” she protested.
“One, dash up to London, and have a quick drink and a smoked salmon sandwich. Two, dash in and see a revue, or what’s left of it by the time we get there. Three, dash out of the revue, and have some supper and see a cabaret. Four, dash down here again. OK?”
“But you can’t drive me all the way home again!”
“Who can’t?”
“You can’t. You won’t get home till about four in the morning.”
“That’s right,” I said happily. “That’s quite right. Now go and change, and stop arguing.”
She hesitated. Then she turned and ran lightly up the stairs.
“I’ll be ten minutes,” she said over her shoulder.
“Too long,” I called after her. “Cut it down to seven. The horses will get cold.”
She put her head over the banisters. “If the coachman wants a drink, he can help himself.”
“The coachman will.”
That is one of the memories I shall always retain of Lorna: her head over the banisters, her grey-blue eyes dancing with the fun of unexpected pleasure.
Loneliness on her part, rush tactics on my part: that’s what I had gambled on. I was giving her no chance to wonder if Bartels would mind; no chance to wonder anything at all, if it comes to that.
I did well that evening.
I suppose it was the first expensive evening out she had enjoyed for a long time. Bartels had certainly insufficient money to do what Lorna and I did that evening. It was laughter all the way, except towards the end of the drive home.
We had turned off the Kingston Bypass, and driven through Esher, and had just turned the sharp bend beyond Esher, when I asked Lorna if she would care to come out again the following week and see another show.
She said nothing, but it was easy enough to guess what she was thinking. So I said it for her:
“I don’t suppose Barty would mind.”
“He might be a little-envious. He is such a generous chap, but of course he can’t afford evenings like this. And I wouldn’t want him to. I think he might be a bit hurt, you know.”
I accelerated and passed a lorry, then dropped speed to an easy forty-five.
“I’m not quite sure whether Barty has the right to feel hurt,” I said flatly.
“Meaning?”
“You know as well as I do, Lorna.”
“Yes,” she said softly. Then again: “Yes.”
Her hand was lying on the seat beside me. I placed my left hand over it, and said: “You know, my dear, Barty is a terrific romantic. He is always-looking for perfection.”
I gave her hand the merest suggestion of pressure, and replaced my own on the wheel.
“Always looking for it? Do I gather that you are trying to tell me that I am not the result of his first search?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Perhaps. Perhaps not. If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you. It’s none of my business. It’s no concern of mine.”
Lorna remained quiet. She had not removed her hand from the seat, but I let it lie there, while I played my last important card.
“Besides,” I said casually, “he will have to consider the effect of anything he may do upon Beatrice’s health.”
I saw Lorna look at me suddenly, but I kept my eyes on the road ahead.
“Her health?”
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong with her health? Barty never told me there was anything the matter with her health.”
Poor Lorna! I could guess how the icy fingers of doubt and fear were beginning to grip her by the throat. I longed to stop the car and take her in my arms and comfort her. There was nothing wrong with Beatrice’s health, of course. Fundamentally, she was as sound as a bell, though once she had had slight palpitations of the heart through taking too many aspirins.
“I don’t think,” I said carefully, “that her heart is as strong as it could be. Nothing serious,” I added hastily, for if you wish to add an air of truth to a statement it is as well to soft-pedal it.
Then it sounds plausible. Suckers believe it.
“I see,” said Lorna slowly. “I didn’t know that. I didn’t know. He never told me that.”
“Oh, didn’t he?” I answered. “He probably didn’t think it necessary. It’s nothing serious, you know.”
After a while, as she said nothing, I said:
“On the whole, I would rather you didn’t mention it to Barty. He might think I was interfering.”
“I think I must mention it. It makes a difference.”
“I wouldn’t like to quarrel with him, Lorna. We’ve been friends since boyhood. I rather wish I hadn’t told you now. But I thought you knew, of course.”
She thought for a few moments. “All right,” she said at length. “I won’t mention it. Thank you for telling me.”
When I dropped her at her home, she asked me in for a final drink. But I declined. I said goodbye to her on the doorstep.
She was smoking a cigarette. I said to her: “May I have that cigarette you’re smoking?”
“If you wish. Why?”
“Because it has touched your lips,” I said.
Corny, of course. I had heard a Swede say it once in Stockholm.
Still, it worked. She smiled gently, and held it out. I took it and put it to my own lips, and touched my hat with a semi-military salute and turned away and climbed into my car and drove off. It had been a most satisfactory evening, and I felt cheerful all the way back.
Poor old Bartels! It was like taking candy from a child. Easy, dead easy, I thought.