I Shall Not Want (3 page)

As for the woman she did not hesitate: she walked straight in the direction of the Jordan Tank. She was thus upon John Marco before he was properly aware of what was happening. She touched his sleeve, and he started.

“I've got to speak to Mr. Tuke,” she said.

“Mr. Tuke?” he repeated.

“Tell him that I've got to speak to him now,” the woman answered. “Tell him that Mr. Trackett says it's urgent.”

John Marco looked at her coldly.

“No one can speak to Mr. Tuke now,” he said. “The Minister is officiating.”

“I've got to speak to him,” she answered. “There's someone dying.”

“Who?”

“It's Mr. Trackett.”

It was then that John Marco became aware that everyone in the chapel was staring at them
both;
simply by pulling at his sleeve, the frowsty old harridan had somehow identified him with her cause. It was almost as though he,
John Marco, were holding up the service himself. But the mention of a fellow human being who was dying gave her a kind of over-riding authority; it was impossible to ignore the woman.

“Do you know he's dying?” he asked. “Did you call a doctor?”

“He's dying all right,” the woman answered. “And he's got something he wants to give the gentleman.”

John Marco hesitated. Then, at the cost of making himself even more conspicuous, he did the only possible thing. He stepped over the brass chain and went to the very edge of the tank. The tank was empty of initiates for the moment. And Mr. Tuke, an expression of angry bewilderment on his face, came wading across the tank towards him like a resentful Triton.

“What does our Sister want?” he asked.

“She's been sent by Mr. Trackett,” John Marco explained in a carrying whisper. “He's dying.”

“Mr. Trackett's been an invalid for a long time,” Mr. Tuke said dubiously.

“She says that he's got something for you,” John Marco continued.

“What is it?”

“She wouldn't tell me,” he answered. “It's something private.”

Mr. Tuke glanced at the eight muffled figures on the baptismal bench. Then he glanced at the clock opposite the pulpit. It showed seven-thirty-five; there was almost another fifty-five minutes of divine service. He couldn't go now. It was unheard of for a Minister to suspend an Immersion night in this way. Besides, it was a sin that he would not have cared to have on his conscience to withhold the Sacrament of baptism from eight of the Sisterhood who, having properly prepared themselves for it, had now waited so long.

“You must go in my stead, Mr. Marco,” he said. “Comfort Mr. Trackett. Console him. Tell him that I am detained on the Lord's business.”

John Marco straightened his back.

“I'll go, sir,” he said.

He turned and stepped over the brass chain again. As he did so, he heard Mr. Tuke, magnificently master of the situation, calling upon the next disciple, a Sister Bowen, to come forward. Mr. Tuke uttered the name as though nothing untoward had happened, as though it were the commonest of experiences at adult baptisms for the Minister to be called to the side of the tank like a swimming instructor.

But the magic had gone from the evening. Somewhere during those few seconds of turmoil followed by this remarkable incursion, the spell had been broken; and it was not at the swathed figure of the latest initiate that everyone was looking, but at John Marco and the woman in black.

While Sister Bowen was, so to speak, being baptized privately and without excitement to anyone, John Marco and Mr. Trackett's sluttish messenger became wonderland figures of speculation and mystery. Six hundred people exchanged glances and congratulated themselves on having been present on this unforgettable night when the door of the Amosite Tabernacle had been battered down, when one sidesman had flung himself upon another, when Mr. Tuke had been treated with contempt, and when one of their own Sunday schoolmasters had been whisked away from their midst by a drab.

It was Gold outside the Chapel, so cold that John Marco turned up the collar of his overcoat and shuddered. The rain, which had been holding off earlier, was now coming down in slanting, icy streams and every gas-lamp in the street cast a smudged, primrose-coloured path of light across the roadway. Chapel Walk, indeed, had more the appearance of a river than of a road; it flowed, gleaming and sinister, through the narrow stucco chasm that connected the western limits of Paddington with the northern fringe of Bayswater.

The woman at his elbow was talking to herself, he noticed. At first he could not catch the words. She had put up her gaping umbrella and was huddled nearly double as she walked; her head was pressed down on to her chest and her arms were raised almost as though she were trying to press the rain aside by sheer force. Only occasional syllables of what she was saying reached him. But these were enough.

“Got to get back in time,” she was repeating. “Got to get back in time.”

She turned up Flaxman Parade as though she had forgotten that he was with her. The rain was driving against their backs by now and she straightened herself a little. But she still kept her arms clasped in front of her and her chin crushed down into the collar of her coat. She was walking faster by now.

“Is it far?” John Marco asked.

The words had a strange effect on his companion. She began to run. Not a brisk, vigorous run, but a halting, limping movement, which made it appear as if she were skipping.

“Clarence Gardens: it's a good ten minutes,” she said over her shoulder.

John Marco found now that to keep up with her he had almost to run himself. He could remain level with this prancing, jumping creature beside him only by proceeding with great, striding steps. The absurdity of the spectacle which they both must be making troubled him; to any onlooker they would have seemed to be competing in a fantastic race.

The tired
clop
of a cruising hansom met his ears. It was something which until that moment had not occurred to him. He had never taken a hansom in his life before; it was the kind of extravagance which he had despised in other men. But to-night it was different. It was not extravagance to reach the bedside of a dying man while he still had some life left in him.

“We'll take a cab,” he said.

But the suggestion seemed almost to shock his companion.

“Oh no,” she said. “Don't do that. He wouldn't expect it. He wouldn't like it.”

“Why not?” John Marco asked.

He had nine shillings in his pocket and not to spend one of them seemed somehow to be treating death with less respect than it deserved.

The woman shook her head, however.

“Waste,” she said. “Sinful waste.”

It was then that John Marco remembered the reputation of Ephraim Trackett. It was not a pretty one. Even in those strict Amosite circles where everything that was not frugal was suspect, he was a bye-word for meanness and parsimony. Until a year ago when his illness had imprisoned him, Mr. Trackett had been a regular attendant at chapel. In a shiny, frock coat that was worn bare at the elbows and had been refaced, and again refaced, he had, every Sunday, glorified God and given a single penny to the collection. There was, John Marco recalled, a pale, dejected girl of about thirty—his niece—as shabbily dressed as himself, who used to accompany him. She had a sullen, bitter face. He had seen her looking round during the Sermon,
eyeing the Amosite men on the far side of the aisle as though envious of other women whose lot allowed them to know such creatures.

They had reached the house by now and the woman beside him was fumbling for her key. They went up the steps together and stood sheltering in the Palladian entrance-porch. It was a large house, altogether different from John Marco's scale of things; it was the kind of house that hinted at wealth no matter how it might have decayed. The woman swung the heavy front door open and John Marco found himself in a dim entrance hall shrouded with palms and hangings and dense lace curtains. His companion pulled a chair up and tugged at one of the hanging-chains from the gas-burner—apparently there were no other servants in the house. When the mantle had lit itself she got down and told John Marco to wait.

It was not pleasant, waiting. The house was silent; very silent and very cold. It seemed to be composed of shut-up rooms and empty grates; it was like a house from which everyone had suddenly gone away. There was a peculiar, chilling atmosphere—an odour almost—of dissolution. It was as though everything in the house—the stair carpet, the velvet pall at the foot of the stairs, the lace curtains at the windows—had withered and dried up; as though a gust of wind blowing through the house would have carried everything before it like dust.

John Marco had not long to wait, however. The woman—she had her hat off by now and her hair streamed across her head more wildly than ever—came down the stairs and beckoned to him to follow. She led him up to the first landing and, without knocking, flung open the door which faced him.

John Marco stood in the doorway without moving; the smell in the room was too much for him; it was the sour, human smell of a sick-room that has been occupied too long. The room itself was almost in darkness. The gas was not alight and a solitary oil lamp, turned very low, burned on the dressing-table.

John Marco peered into the design of shadows in front of him. First of all, he made out the bed. It was a lavish, brass-railed affair; at the head and foot were thick bars of metal that gleamed in the surrounding darkness. Altogether, it was like a cage from which the sides had been removed. And in it, amid a litter of bed-clothes, was the propped-up body of a small white-haired man.

His neck, which showed miserably thin like a chicken's over the top of his nightshirt, was stretched to its uttermost as he bent forward to catch sight of his visitor.

It was then that John Marco noticed that the old man was not alone. There was a dark head on the counterpane beside him. It was the head of a woman who was kneeling on the floor with her face resting in her two hands. When at last she moved, John Marco became aware of a white face with two sunken, staring eyes.

John Marco was about to say something when the figure in the bed interrupted him. There was a rattling intake of breath, and he spoke.

“You're not Mr. Tuke,” he said. “Someone's playing tricks on me again.”

“No one's playing tricks on you,” John Marco answered. “Mr. Tuke couldn't come.”

But the old man wouldn't listen to him.

“Who are you?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

John Marco took a step into the bedroom and faced him.

“I'm John Marco,” he said. “Mr. Tuke is at Service. He asked me to take his place until he could get here.”

Mr. Trackett bared his teeth; the lined, yellow face suddenly wrinkled up and revealed them.

“You can't deceive me,” he said. “They've tried it too long. All of them.”

“I've got nothing to deceive you about,” John Marco replied. “If I can be of no service to you I shall go.”

He felt angry within himself as he said it. Ever since the touch of the woman in the Chapel he had felt himself being drawn deeper and deeper into the affair of
Mr. Trackett and his confidential message. It was a secret that he had not asked to share; it had been forced upon him against his will. He wanted to turn his back on them all and walk out of the house forever.

His words, however, had roused the woman by the bed. She had got quickly to her feet and was moving in the direction of the door as though to cut him off.

“No, don't go, Mr. Marco,” she said. “Please don't leave me here alone again.”

He turned and stared at her. It was that hard, impersonal stare of his. But she did not flinch under it. Her own dark eyes returned it, unwaveringly. He could recognise now the down-trodden creature who used to accompany Mr. Trackett to Sunday Chapel. But she no longer looked suppressed. In her attitude as she stood there, the palms of her hands pressed flat against the door behind her almost as though they were nailed to it, there was something of desperation about her. She was colourless and sallow-skinned, but a single spot of red burned in the centre of each cheek.

John Marco paused.

“I'll stay if Mr. Trackett wants me,” he said.

“Who told you my name?” the old man asked.

“The woman you sent to the chapel,” John Marco told him.

“You
sent her,” said Mr. Trackett, bitterly, turning to the girl again. “You told her—to bring—this man.”

He dragged the words out of himself with difficulty; they came in quick, jerky rushes. And in between them was the painful, clumsy breathing. It was as though having once got the air inside him, his lungs no longer knew what to do with it.

“Then send for Emmy yourself and ask her.” The girl passed her hand wearily across her forehead. “Send for her and stop accusing me.”

“It's no use,” Mr. Trackett answered in a low voice, almost as though he were talking to himself. “It's no use sending for anyone. You've got them all in your power. They're afraid of you.”

He lay back against the pillows and began gasping. He was gulping at the air as though trying to eat it. His hands which were spread out on the bed-clothes, kept clenching and unclenching. John Marco could see the miserable little body under the counterpane writhing under the strain of keeping itself alive.

The girl regarded him for a moment without moving and then crossed over to the small table beside the bed. There was a dark bottle standing there. She poured some of the mixture from the bottle into a medicine phial and held it to Mr. Trackett's lips. But the old man only shook his head and kept his mouth pursed closely together. He was shaking all over. As soon as the spasm subsided he pushed his phial away altogether. The gesture was so violent that some of the dark drops were splashed onto the sheet.