The Go-Between (29 page)

  When my turn came, Marian looked into my eyes and
said: “Three lumps or four, Leo?” and I said four because small
boys are supposed to like a lot of sugar. It raised a laugh, as I
had hoped it would.

  Tea was made a feature of at Brandham. The cakes and
sandwiches and jam we had! Half of it went back into the servants’
hall. If I thought of Ted eating his lonely tea at his kitchen
table scored with knife-cuts, it was to wonder how I ever came to
be there; it had left a lurid feeling in my mind, as if it had been
the cage of a wild animal. The decorous sounds we all made eating
and drinking, the light chatter, the unemphatic voices, the small
safe sounds of things being moved about and passed from hand to
hand, the glitter of the trail of gold—how captivating it all was!
And yet I shouldn’t have relished it so much if I hadn’t known the
other.

  When I took my cup to Marian to be refilled (I
claimed this privilege as a guest of older standing), her eyes held
a message that I did not miss. “Stay behind,” they said, “or come
and see me afterwards.” But in spite of that and in spite of having
enjoyed it all so much, I didn’t. I went back to my room and locked
the door and wrote the letter.

  It seemed to me that if I went away, and only if I
went away, the relationship between Ted and Marian would cease. I
didn’t ask myself how it had been kept up before I came. I
reasoned: “There is no one else to take the notes but me; they have
to be taken and brought back on the same day, because only after
breakfast does Marian know what her mother’s plans will be; if I’m
not there to do it, they can’t meet, and Lord Trimingham will never
know that his bride-to-be is too friendly with another man. If I
stay, I shall have to do as she tells me: the only thing is to go.”
I saw no flaw in the logic of this.

  I didn’t ask myself why these missions, which had
once been my delight, were now my bugbear. It was I who had
changed, not they. For the first time in my life I had a strong
sense of obligation in a matter that didn’t really concern me —a
sense of ought and ought not. Hitherto my maxim had been to mind my
own business, as it was the maxim of most of my schoolfellows. If
anyone attacked me, I tried to defend myself. If I had broken a
rule, I tried to escape the consequences. Where no rules were, and
when I was not being attacked, I had no sense at all of two
independent elements, unrelated to my concerns, called right and
wrong, to which my actions could be referred for approval or
disapproval. But now for some such scruple I felt constrained to
take preventive action—and at a sacrifice to myself, for I didn’t
want to leave Brandham.

  Of course I had had plenty of provocation from
Marian and Ted, but I had the fairness to see that I had attacked
them first. They were defending themselves against me. I thought I
knew what was best for myself, best for them, best for Lord
Trimingham, best for everybody; so I was leaving. I did not feel I
was running away. But I was. I was shaken and frightened and did
not trust myself or anyone.

  The hall box had been cleared and my letter would
have to wait till morning. The other had got a start of it by more
than half a day. But I did not doubt that it would bring the
telegram of recall.

  Crossing the hall, I ran into Lord Trimingham. “Just
the man!” he said, as Marian had said before him. “Do you want to
earn my good opinion?”

  The others had offered me heavier bribes, but I saw
no risk in taking this.

  “Oh, yes!”

  “Well, find Marian for me, there’s a good
feller.”

  My heart sank. She was the last person I wanted to
see.

  “But I thought you weren’t going to send her any
more messages!” I protested.

  For the first time in our acquaintanceship, if I
read the signs aright, he looked put out, and I thought he was
going to turn on me as the others had. He said, rather sharply:

  “Oh, don’t worry if you’re busy. It’s just that I
wanted to say something to her. She’s going to London tomorrow and
I may not get another chance.”

  “She’s going to London?”

  “Yes, till Wednesday.” He spoke of her possessively,
I thought.

  “She never told me,” I said, in the offended tone of
a servant who has not been apprised of a coming visitor.

  “She has a lot to think about just now or I’m sure
she would have. Now be a saint and find her, unless you can produce
her out of your hat.”

  Suddenly, with intense relief, I remembered a valid
objection. “Marcus told me she was going down to see Nannie Robson
after tea.”

  “Confound Nannie Robson. Marian’s always going
there, and she says the old girl’s losing her memory and forgets
whether she’s been or not. Robson by name, Robson by nature, Mrs.
Maudsley used to say. She ought to be called Rob-daughter now.
“

  I thought this an excellent joke, and was just
running off when he called me back. “Don’t overdo it,” he said,
with a return to his old genial manner. “You’re looking a bit pale.
We mustn’t have two invalids in the house.”

  “Oh, who’s the other one?”

  “Our hostess, but she doesn’t want it talked
about.”

  “Is she
very
ill?” I asked.

  “Oh no, it’s nothing much.” I could see he wished he
hadn’t told me.

  17

  ON MY WAY to pay my deferred visit to the
rubbish-heap I met Marcus.

  “Bon soir, thou dusky varlet, whither away?” he
said.

  I told him my destination.

  “Oh, don’t let’s go there. Je le trouve trop
ennuyeux,” he said. “Let’s think of somewhere else.”

  I sighed. It was to be a French conversation. French
was one of the few school subjects that Marcus was better at than I
was. He had had a French governess who had given him a good accent;
he had also, unlike me, been abroad and there picked up words and
phrases his governess would not have taught him. And he had an
annoying habit, when one mispronounced a word, of repeating it with
the right pronunciation. But he was not a prig, and had allowed his
real French to be overlaid by a smattering of the pidgin French we
all sometimes talked. I was his guest, with a guest’s obligation to
comply. I had to admit that he had been decent in not insisting
before on a form of conversation at which he shone and I didn’t. I
don’t think he would have insisted on it then had he not still felt
sore about my Saturday’s success. He thought I still needed taking
down a peg, not knowing that this had been amply done already; and
I was half aware of his intention and resented it. Often when we
talked there was a spirit of verbal rivalry between us; we trod a
knife-edge between affection and falling out; but this time our
latent animosity was nearer to the surface.

  “Je suggère que nous visitons les outhouses,” I
proposed laboriously.

  “Mais oui! Quelle bonne idée! Ce sont des places
délicieuses.”

  “I thought a place meant a square,” I remarked.

  “Bon! Vous venez sur!” he said deflatingly, but
lapsing, I was relieved to hear, into a kind of French that was
less lesson-like. “Et que trouvons-nous là?”

  “Le deadly nightshade, for one thing,” I replied,
hoping to edge him into English.

  “Vous voudriez dire la belladonne, n’est-ce
pas?”

  “Oui, atropa belladonna,” I replied, trumping his
French with Latin.

  “Eh bien, je jamais!” he rejoined, but I knew that I
had scored, for the “Eh bien, je jamais,” though ironical, was a
current admission of being impressed, and we returned for a while
to our mother tongue, or rather to mediaeval and facetious versions
of it.

  Nearly every term it happened that certain words and
phrases ran like wildfire through the school and acquired a sort of
fetishistic value. Everyone used them, but no one ever knew who
started them. Conversely other words, which seemed intrinsically
harmless, were made taboo, and their use excited the utmost
derision. We had to guard our tongues against them. I could still
hear my tormentors hissing “vanquished” at me. In a few weeks the
vogue would pass and the words regain their normal value. “Vous
venez sur” (you’re coming on) and “Eh bien, je jamais” (well, I
never) were two of the latest.

  The outhouses were about ten minutes’ walk away.
They were adjuncts of an old kitchen garden that had been made, as
such gardens sometimes were, at a considerable distance from the
house. The path, a track of earth mixed with cinders, led through a
long shrubbery of rhododendrons, and I imagine that when they were
in flower it was much frequented; but now it was gloomy and
forbidding and rather frightening, which was partly the secret of
its attraction for me. Several times I had started out to revisit
the deadly nightshade and had turned back before I reached it,
overcome by an irrational dread; but only once, when I met Marian
coming along it, had I ever seen anyone on the path. But with
Marcus at my side my alarm was reduced to an agreeable pioneering
thrill.

  “Je vois l’empreinte d’un pied!” he cried, reverting
to French.

  We stopped and bent down. The path was very dry, the
grass withered, the earth powdery; but it did look like a footmark,
a small one. Marcus gave a whoop intended for a Red Indian
war-cry.

  “Eh bien, je jamais! Je dirai à Maman que nous avons
vu le spoor de Man Friday.”

  “Ou Mademoiselle Friday,” I suggested wittily.

  “Vous venez sur! Certes, c’est la patte d’une dame.
Mystère! Que dira Maman? Elle a un grand peur des voleurs!”

  “I should have thought your mother was very brave,”
I said, rebelling. “Braver even than mine/’ I added, not wanting
the talk to stray too far from my affairs.

  “Mais non! Elle est très nerveuse! C’est un type un
peu hystérique,” he said, with all the detachment of a doctor. “En
ce moment elle est au lit avec une forte migraine, le résultat de
tous ces jours de strain.”

  I was glad that Marcus had broken down at the last
word, but sorry to hear about his mother.

  “But why is it a strain?” I asked. “She seems to
have so many people to help her.” Like a housewife of today, I
thought of strain in terms of housekeeping.

  He shook his head mysteriously and raised his
finger. “Ce n’est pas seulement ça. C’est Marianne.”

  “Marian?” said I, anglicizing it.

  “Mais oui, c’est Marianne.” He lowered his voice.
“Il s’agit des fiançailles, vous savez. Ma mère n’est pas sure que
Marianne—” He rolled his eyes and put his finger to his lips.

  I didn’t understand.

  “Will stick to her engagement, if you must be told
in English.”

  I was thunderstruck, not only at the news but at
Marcus’s indiscretion. And I am almost sure that if he had not been
carried away by his own French, and by trying to act the Frenchman,
and by showing off to me, he would have been more careful. How much
did he suspect? How much did his mother suspect? He was her
favourite, that I knew; she didn’t care about Denys, she rarely
spoke to Mr. Maudsley, at any rate in my hearing. Perhaps she
confided in Marcus, as my mother sometimes confided in me—things
that surprised me. Perhaps all women were liable, at moments, to
let on
. But how much did she
know
?

  A thought struck me. “Vous avez vu votre seur chez
Mademoiselle Robson?” I brought out, after much consideration.

  “Robsón,” repeated Marcus, with a heavy accent on
the second syllable. “Mais non! Quand je suis parti, la Marianne
n’était pas encore arrivée. Et la pauvre Robsôn était bien
fâcheuse, because she says that Marian hardly ever comes to see
her,” said Marcus rapidly. “I say this in English for your benefit,
you insular owl.”

  “Lord Trimingham told me,” said I impressively, and
ignoring the insult, “that Marian says that Nannie Robson has,
well—has perdu sa mémoire,” I wound up with a slight flourish.

  “Perdu sa fiddlesticks!” retorted Marcus, again
breaking down. “Sa mémoire est aussi bonne que la mienne, et cent
fois meilleure que la vôtre, sale type de woolgatherer!”

  I clouted him for this, but the news disquieted
me.

  “Lord Trimingham also said that Marian is going to
London tomorrow,” I said. “Pourquoi?”

  “Pourquoi?” said Marcus, much more Frenchly than I
had. “En part, parce que, comme toutes les femmes, elle a besoin
des habits neufs pour le bal; mais en grand part, à cause de vous,
vous—” The epithet failed him, and he puffed out his cheeks
instead.

  “A cause de moi?” I said. “Because of me?”

  “Vous venez sur!” came the swift retort. “Yes,
because of you! She has gone to get what perhaps you will
understand if I say it is a cadeau.”

  “A present!” I said, and for a moment compunction
seized me. “But she has given me so many presents.”

  “This is a very special one for your birthday,” said
Marcus, speaking deliberately and loudly, as to a deaf person or a
halfwit. “Entendez-vous, coquin? Comprenez-vous, nigaud? But you’ll
never guess what it is.”

  In my excitement I forgot my dread of Marian’s
presents and their Danaàn implication.

  “Do
you
know what it is?” I exclaimed.

  “Yes, but I don’t tell les petits garçons.”

  I shook him till he cried “Pax.”

  “Well, swear that you won’t tell anyone I told you.”
I had shaken some of the French out of him too.

  “I swear.”

  “Swear in French, si vous le pouvez.”

  “Je jure.”

  “And swear that you’ll look surprised when Marian
gives it to you—though you can’t help looking surprised, mooncalf,
you were born that way.” And he mimicked my face.

  “Je jure,” I intoned, ignoring his grimaces.

  “Will you try to understand if I say it in
French?”