The Go-Between (42 page)

  I saw my envoy coming towards me and went to meet
him. His face was clouded, and the resemblance between him and Ted
was stronger than ever.

  “She didn’t remember you at first,” he said, “and
then she remembered you very well. She said she would be very
pleased to see you. She also asked me if I would give you luncheon,
as she can’t: would you like that?”

  “Yes,” I replied, “if you would.”

  “I should be most happy to,” said he, not looking at
all happy, “if you don’t mind taking pot-luck. But she wasn’t sure
you’d want to come.”

  “Oh, why? “I asked.

  “Because of something that had happened long ago.
You were only a little boy, she said. She said it wasn’t her
fault.”

  “Your grandfather used to say,” I said, “that
nothing is ever a lady’s fault.”

  He gave me a hard look.

  “Yes,” I said, “I knew your grandfather extremely
well, and you are very like him.”

  He changed colour, and I noticed he was standing
away from me, as his grandfather had at our last meeting.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said, reddening, “if we didn’t
treat you well.”

  I was touched by the “we” and, remembering his
grandfather’s fatal capacity for contrition, I said hastily:

  “Oh, you had nothing to do with it. Please don’t
give it another thought. Your grandmother—”

  “Yes?” he said sombrely.

  “Do you often see her?”

  “Not very often.”

  “Not many people go to see her, you said?”

  “Not very many.”

  “Did many people go to see her when she was at the
Hall?”

  He shook his head. “I fancy not very many.”

  “Then why does she go on living here? “

  “Frankly, I can’t imagine.”

  “She was so beautiful,” I said.

  “I have often been told so,” he replied. “I don’t
quite see it myself.... You know your way to the house?”

  I answered, conscious of having said it once before:
“No, but I can ask.”

  I noticed he didn’t offer to go with me, but he told
me how to find the house. “Luncheon about one?” he added, and I
promised to be there. I heard the rustle of his corduroy trousers
as he walked away. And after a second or two I heard it again. He
was coming back.

  When he drew level with me he stopped and said,
obvi-ously making an effort, but without looking at me:

  “Were you the little boy who—?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Marian received me in a small, heavily curtained
room looking on the street, and below street-level—one went down a
step to reach it. She was sitting with her back to the light.

  “Mr. Colston,” the maid said.

  She rose and held her hand out uncertainly.

  “But is this really—? “ she began.

  “I should have known you,” I said, “but I couldn’t
expect you would know me.”

  Actually I shouldn’t have known her. Her hair was
bluish, her face had lost its roundness, her nose had grown more
prominent and hawklike. She was very much made up and had developed
a great deal of manner. Only her eyes, faded as they were, had kept
their quality, their frosty fire. We talked a little of my journey
and of what I had done in life, both subjects that were easily
disposed of. For conversational purpose, an ounce of incident is
worth a pound of routine progress, and my life had little incident
to record. My temporary loss of memory at Brandham Hall had been
the last dramatic thing that had happened to me. She went back to
that.

  “You lost your memory at the beginning,” she said;
“I’m losing mine at the end—not really losing it, you know, but not
quite remembering what happened yesterday, like poor old Nannie
Robson used to. My memory for the past is still quite clear.”

  I pounced on this and asked a question or two.

  “One at a time,” she said. “One at a time. Marcus,
yes, he was killed in the First War, and Denys, too. I forget which
went first—Denys, I think. Marcus was your friend, wasn’t he? Yes,
of course he was. A round-faced boy—he was Mama’s favourite, and
mine too. We were a very devoted family, but Denys was never quite
at home in it, if you know what I mean.”

  “And your mother? “ I prompted her.

  She sighed. “Poor Mama! It was a shame, those
nervous people! I got over it, I got over it very well. We didn’t
have the ball, you know; it had to be cancelled. Your mother came
down—I remember her very well, a sweet woman—grey eyes like yours,
and brown hair, and a quick way of moving and talking. We had to
put her up at the inn. The house was chock-full for the ball,
everyone tumbling over each other, you not speaking, Mama screaming
out all sorts of Biblical words. It was a nightmare! And then Papa
took charge and restored order. By the next day everyone was gone
who could go; you stayed until the Monday, I remember, and how you
heard about Ted we never knew. Perhaps Henry the footman told you:
he was a friend of yours.”

  “How did you know I knew?”

  “Because one of the few things you said was ‘Why did
Ted shoot himself? Wasn’t he a good shot?’ You see at first you
thought he shot himself by accident, and a good shot wouldn’t have;
you don’t have to be a good shot to shoot yourself. Ted had a weak
streak in him like Edward has.”

  “Edward?”

  “My grandson. He should have waited till it all blew
over, as I did. I knew it would blow over, once I was Lady
Trimingham.”

  “And Hugh?”

  “And me?” she queried, puzzled.

  “No,” I said, “Hugh”—I hooted it.

  “Oh,
Hugh
,” she said. “He married me; he
didn’t mind what they said. Hugh was as true as steel. He wouldn’t
hear a word against me. We held our heads very high. If anyone
didn’t want to know us we just ignored them, but everybody did. I
was Lady Trimingham, you see. I still am. There isn’t another.”

  “What was your daughter-in-law like?” I asked.

  “Poor Alethea? Oh, such a dull girl. She had such
dreary, stupid parties—I hardly ever went to them. I was living at
the Dower House, and people came to me, of course, interesting
people, artists and writers, not stuffy country neighbours. There
are stuffy people even in Norfolk. My son wasn’t a sporting man,
you know, he took after my father—he was the very image of him. But
he hadn’t Papa’s drive. Papa was a wonderful man, and Mama was
wonderful too—it is something to have had such very exceptional
parents.”

  “You haven’t told me what happened to your mother,”
I reminded her.

  “Oh, poor Mama! She couldn’t stay with us, you know,
she had to go away, but we often went to see her, and she
remembered all about us and was so glad I had married Hugh —she
always wanted that, you know. I didn’t really, but I was glad I
had, or people might not have been as nice to me as they were.”

  “And your father?”

  “Oh, Papa lived to be very old, nearly ninety, but
he lost interest in the business after Mama left us, and when
Marcus and Denys were killed he gave it up. But he often came to
see us at the Hall, and when I was living at the Dower House he
paid me many visits. We were always a very devoted family, you
see.”

  “How happy,” I thought, “has my life been compared
with hers!” I couldn’t bear to hear much more, and yet I wanted to
have the picture fitted in completely.

  “Isn’t it rather dull for you, Marian,” I said, “to
be living here alone? Wouldn’t you be happier in London?”

  “Alone?” she said. “Alone, what do you mean? But
people come in shoals. I almost have to turn them from the door,
I’m quite a place of pilgrimage, I can tell you! Everybody knows
about me, you see, they know what I’ve been through, and naturally
they want to see me—just as you did.”

  “I’m very glad I have,” I said, “and I’m glad to
have met your nice young grandson, Edward.”

  “Sh,” she said. “You mustn’t call him that, he likes
to be called Hugh, though Edward is a family name, of course.”

  I remembered the two Edwards in the transept.

  “Well,” I said, “it must be a comfort to you to have
him near you.”

  At that her face fell, and the mask she had been
wearing since I came showed signs of cracking.

  “He is”—then she corrected herself: “he would be.
But do you know, though we are the only two members of the family
left, he doesn’t come to see me very much?”

  “Oh, surely—” I protested.

  “No, he doesn’t. Masses of people come, but he does
not —I mean not regularly—not regularly like I used to see old
Nannie Robson when she was old. Does he remind you of anyone? “ she
asked me suddenly.

  “Well, yes, he does,” I said, surprised at being
asked. “His grandfather. “

  “That’s it, that’s it, he does. And of course he
knows—he knows what he’s been told, what his parents told him, for
he’s never spoken of it to me. And what other people may have told
him—a village is a hive of gossip. And I think he has a grudge
against me—you know why. The only person in the world who has! His
own grandmother! And they tell me—
he
has never told
me—that he wants to marry a girl—a nice girl, a Winlove cousin, a
distant cousin, but still a Winlove—but he won’t ask her
because—because this is still weighing on him. He feels—or so they
tell me—that he’s under some sort of spell or curse, and that he’d
hand it on. He’s just plain
sillyl
But no doubt he’s heard
some rumour, totally false of course, that worries him. Now this is
where you come in.”

  “I?”

  “Yes, Leo, you. You know the facts, you know what
really
happened. And besides me, only you know. You know
that Ted and I were lovers; well, we were. But we weren’t ordinary
lovers, not lovers in the vulgar sense, not in the way people make
love today. Our love was a beautiful thing, wasn’t it? I mean, we
gave up everything for each other. We didn’t have a thought except
for each other. All those house-parties— people being paired off
like animals at stud—it wasn’t like that with us. We were made for
each other. Do you remember what that summer was like?—how much
more beautiful than any since? Well, what was the most beautiful
thing in it? Wasn’t it us, and our feeling for each other? Didn’t
you realize it when you took our letters for us? Didn’t you feel
that all the rest—the house, the people coming and going—just
didn’t count? And wouldn’t you feel proud to be descended from our
union—the child of so much happiness and beauty?”

  What could I say but yes?

  “I’m glad you see it so,” she said, “for you were
our instrument—we couldn’t have carried on without you. ‘Carried
on’ —that sounds a funny phrase—but you know what I mean. You came
out of the blue to make us happy. And we made you happy, didn’t we?
You were only a little boy, and yet we trusted you with our great
treasure. You might never have known what it was, have gone through
life without knowing. And yet Edward—” She stopped.

  “But you can tell him, Leo, tell him everything,
just as it was. Tell him that it was nothing to be ashamed of, and
that I’m nothing to be ashamed of, his old grandmother whom people
come miles to see! There was nothing mean or sordid in it, was
there? And nothing that could possibly hurt anyone. We did have
sorrows, bitter sorrows, Hugh dying, Marcus and Denys killed, my
son Hugh killed, and his wife —though she was no great loss. But
they weren’t our fault— they were the fault of this hideous century
we live in, which has denatured humanity and planted death and hate
where love and living were. Tell him this, Leo, make him see it and
feel it; it will be the best day’s work you ever did. Remember how
you loved taking our messages, bringing us together and making us
happy—well, this is another errand of love, and the last time I
shall ever ask you to be our postman. Why does he think I stay on
here, except to be near him? And yet he has this grudge against me,
he won’t come near me if he can help it, though shoals of people
come that I don’t want to see. Sometimes I think he would rather I
didn’t live here, but I won’t believe it. And make him get out of
his head this ridiculous idea that he can’t marry: it’s that that
wounds me most. I don’t want him to marry, Heaven knows, and bring
some frightful woman to Brandham Hall—though the Win-love girl is
quite nice, I believe. But every man should get married—you ought
to have got married, Leo, you’re all dried up inside, I can tell
that. It isn’t too late; you might marry still; why don’t you?
Don’t you feel any need of love? But Edward (only don’t call him
that), he must; he’s young—he’s the same age Ted was when you came
to Brandham. He has all his life before him. Tell him he must get
rid of these silly scruples—his grandfather would have had them, if
I’d let him. Poor Ted, if he’d had more brains he wouldn’t have
blown them out. You owe it to us, Leo, you owe it to us; and it’ll
be good for you, too. Tell him there’s no spell or curse except an
unloving heart. You know that, don’t you? Tell him to think kindly
of his old grandmother, who only lives to love him.”

  She ceased, greatly to my relief, for I had made
several ineffectual attempts to stop her, having seen how she was
tiring herself. We talked a little about indifferent subjects—the
changes at Brandham, the changes in the world—and then I took my
leave, promising to come again.

  “Bless you,” she said, “bless you! You’re a friend
in a thousand. Kiss me, Leo!”

  Her face was wet with tears.

  A foreigner in the world of the emotions, ignorant
of their language but compelled to listen to it, I turned into the
street. With every step I marvelled more at the extent of Marian’s
self-deception. Why then was I moved by what she had said? Why did
I half wish that I could see it all as she did? And why should I go
on this preposterous errand? I hadn’t promised to and I wasn’t a
child, to be ordered about. My car was standing by the public
call-box; nothing easier than to ring up Ted’s grandson and make my
excuses....