was nineteen then. But when he dreamed of her, as he did now and then, she was always a slip of girl…. He drifted into sleep with the vague idea that he was stumbling through a dark forest of lofty trees, pursuing a brilliant butterfly that would dart off at a tangent and would not keep to the path.
Mabel Shand had never seen her sister-in-law, and, like everybody else, was unaware of John’s passionate regret for her. Like everybody else, too, she knew the facts of the scandal; Elizabeth Shand had run away with a married man, a foreigner, the head of the modern languages department in the Calderwick Academy. Mabel also had the benefit of Aunt Janet’s comments, including the information that John could not bear to have his sister’s name mentioned; but she had been surprised shortly after their marriage to hear John say lightly: ‘You remind me of my sister Lizzie; she was a gay young thing something like you.’ He had added hastily, ‘But you have more sense,’ and Mabel realized that the comparison was intended as a compliment. Of course she had more sense; she knew too well the value of social prestige. Her position as John Shand’s wife was more worth while than any fly-by-night nonsense of true love. Mabel had no intention of falling in love. She preferred to see others in love with her. She had fancied Hector, but that was when she was a mere child, and now, lying in bed beside John, she was convinced that she hated Hector. The thought flashed through her mind with savage suddenness: ‘I wish I had him here; I’d smack him!’
Her body quivered with the intensity of her feeling. Smack him, good and hard, she would.
II
About the same time Sarah Murray was sitting in her bedroom with a rug over her knees and a shawl round her shoulders darning stockings, as she listened to the irregular tramp of Ned’s feet overhead. He would stand for a long time on one part of the floor and then stride up and down speaking to himself with increasing vehemence in high tones of exasperation, only to fall silent again, standing motionless on some other spot. He had come in from his golf match taciturn and sullen, but at tea he had brightened up when William asked him how many he had gone round in; his one nasty remark had been made quite jokingly, that the links were all right if it weren’t for the people on them who infested the grass; they should be combed out like fleas. After that he had opened the piano, which he hadn’t done for months, and played beautifully for a long time until she asked him for something out of the Messiah and then he brought his hands down with a crash and stamped out of the room, saying: ‘O God!’
He had refused to come in to supper until she and William were finished; since then he had been walking up and down in his own room at the top of the house. Sarah looked at her watch; it was now midnight. Three hours he had been going at it, and might go on for three hours more. What could it be that was troubling him? What could it be that kept him turning and turning round it like an insect on a pin? He had crumpled up the local weekly and thrown it across the room; she had smoothed it out later and looked it over to find what cause for offence he had discovered in it. But there was nothing. Nothing in particular. The usual records of sudden deaths and police cases; local appointments, farmers’ dinners, auction sales, and the movements of prominent citizens. She had noticed, for instance, the arrival of Mr and Mrs Hector Shand at their house in the High Street. But how could any of it conceivably enrage a sane person? Insanity? Sarah’s hand shook as she darned. The footsteps upstairs seemed also, with furious persistence, to be darning an invisible hole across the room.
‘I can’t stand it,’ said Sarah aloud. ‘I must do someting or I’ll go crazy.’
She stuck her needle into the stocking and got up. She tiptoed upstairs, although she feared that Teenie was not asleep, and listened at Ned’s door.
‘Security!’ she heard him cry, half sobbing. ‘Surely that’s not much to ask for? Security’s all I want.’ His voice died away into mutterings; then it rose again. ‘Good God! They have to do it at somebody’s expense, but why me, me? Couldn’t they work it off on somebody else? It’s incredible, logically and mathematically incredible—’ He came to a dead stop on the floor, continuing the argument with his voice rising hysterically at the end of every statement. ‘With hundreds of millions in the world to practise on they make a dead set at me. All I ask is peace and security and they all climb by kicking me down. Are all the low, sneaking, cunning imbeciles to enjoy a home and a job at my expense? Just because I’m not so low and cunning as they are? Good God!’
He was silent again as well as motionless. Sarah’s heart was pounding wildly against her ribs. This was sheer raving. It was no use merely to listen; she must go in and bring him back to a sense of proportion. She opened the door. Ned started. ‘Get out!’ he screamed. ‘Can’t I have peace even here?’ Sarah spoke mildly, to her own astonishment, for she was shaking. ‘I’ve only come in to see that you haven’t let your fire out, Ned. You always forget to put coal on.’ The fire was actually half dead. Sarah went firmly towards it and made it up in silence. She could feel Ned’s eyes burning into her back.
‘That’s all right now,’ she said, rising from her knees and dusting her hands. ‘You won’t catch cold now. Are you working on your mathematics?’
‘Why? What sneaking cunning is at the back of your mind now?’
‘I though you were swotting for your examinations?’
‘That’s it! That’s the conspiracy again! Nobody would believe what I have to put up with!’
‘I don’t see why an examination is a conspiracy.’
In spite of her fears Sarah said this in the voice of one who is convinced of being reasonable and a little coldly superior to the unreasonableness of the other party.
Ned advanced upon her as if we would strike her. She stood her ground.
‘Everybody has to pass examinations. You’re not the only one,’ she said.
‘Oh, I’m not, am I not?’ he sneered. ‘Does everybody have to sit an examination twice, tell me that? Is everybody compelled to do things over and over again – and why I should be persecuted, God knows! What good does it do you? Anybody would think you’d be glad to see me in a job instead of sneaking behind my back —’
‘Nonsense! I didn’t make you fail in your examination —’
‘I didn’t fail in my examination!’ screamed Ned. ‘It’s a lie. It’s a lie. Liars and hypocrites! Am I to be downed because you are liars and hypocrites?’
‘Calling me a liar won’t change the facts,’ said Sarah. ‘You failed because you were ill; that’s no disgrace.’
‘Ill, was I? What are you going to saddle me with next?’
Ned’s voice was less bellicose, and Sarah pressed her advantage.
‘No disgrace at all to be ill. But it will be a disgrace if you deliberately leave yourself unprepared for the next time. And you can’t pass examinations if you don’t go to bed. You know very well what Dr Scrymgeour said.’
‘To hell with Dr Scrymgeour! To hell with you, too! Get out of my room!’
Sarah got steadily enough to the door, and turned round for a parting shot before shutting it:
‘And if you don’t believe you were ill, just go and ask him. Good-night.’
She managed to get downstairs to her room without stumbling. She was shaken, but in some queer way triumphant.
The
