Self Condemned (54 page)
That was the last time that they had any extensive conversation of this kind. She seemed to have given up as a bad job the effort to convince him of his mistake.
In the summer they went to the Gaspé Peninsula, in the purely French-Canadian Maritimes. With Hester the place called to mind Normandy and Brittany, those adjuncts of Kensington like the Oberland and the Rhine. She felt quite at home there sometimes, except for the Canadian English which the
habitant
used on occasion.
The change of scene, however, and the sea air, benefited her, as it benefited him. At one moment he became
almost
his old self. It was not until the time came to return to Momaco once more that the tension made itself felt again. In the train on the way back they spoke very little; and it was a rather gloomy pair of returned holiday makers who left the train at the Momaco terminus.
I
t had been necessary for them to curtail their holiday, so that René might have at least a month in which to prepare for his work at the university. It was unfortunate — for one of the big Churchill-Roosevelt Conferences (and one in which the former gave a great deal away) was occurring at Quebec — but the weekly column on the
Gazette-Herald
had to be abandoned, for René wished, during the fall, to work intensively on his book in such time as could be spared from the preparation of his lectures.
At the apartment a certain number of letters awaited them. There was a letter with the London postmark for René. It was from Mary, informing him of the death of their mother; this had occurred in the third week of July. Her interest in the war had not been very great, but the national excitement at the invasion of France communicated itself to her; and then the sensational arrival of flying bombs (for her, as for everybody else, a recommencement, an all-over-again-ness, probably of a worse kind) almost coincided with D-Day.These dynamic accelerations in the world about her, these new tensions, seemed to have been responsible for her death.
It was at their dinner table that this, and other mail, was read; and the letter from Mary was pushed across the table for his wife to read. As she perused it, she began to cry. Dry-eyed, René found himself watching her, speculating on the exact nature of this grief. Of course it was quite natural and proper for her to receive this news in this manner. They should
both
have been in tears. And then he began to think of these two women together, the mother and the wife: how similar was the attitude of both in one respect. In the eyes of wife, as much as mother, he was a
fool
, though the obstructiveness of the younger woman, at the present juncture, was far more intense, corresponding with the egotism involved. As a matter of fact he was mentally focussing Hester for the first time, was frowning and staring hard at her, as though he had detected some unsuspected
physical
attribute, not remarked before, of a displeasing kind. She looked up at him suddenly. She had been crying less than he supposed, and was quite able to see the harsh scrutiny. She continued to look, and the vertical lines of a frown prolonged upward by a swollen vein bisected her forehead.This, with her protruding eyes, produced an almost demented expression. “René,” she said, “what was it that caused you to hate your mother? You never told me.”
René had at once removed his eyes; and now, at her question, he answered without emotion, “I did not hate my mother.You are quite mistaken if you think that. I do not cry like you, that is all.”
“That is not true,” she said, as she stood up, and, swaying a little as if she had been drinking, she went into the bedroom, and he could hear her throw herself upon her bed.
“A demonstration,” he thought, “to leave me here on exhibition as a heartless brute. The idea being that the women are a sensitive, rather noble lot, invariably suffering from the lack of finer feelings of the male side of the creation.” René resented his mother being brought into a dispute between Hester and himself. What had occurred between his mother and himself was very much the affair of the mother and the son. It was a private matter. From the time of their return from the Gaspé, René began a furious labour — there was little opportunity for domestic tensions. Hester made no enquiries about his lectures; subsequently she was not present at any of them; nor did he make any reference to them either. He withdrew to his room “to work,” without specifying the nature of the work; and later he went to the university to give his lectures, but all he said was that he was “going to the university.” It was his hope that, quite suddenly perhaps, seeing that he was succeeding, she would relent, and everything would slip into place as if it had never been awry.
How closely packed the working day was may be judged by the following circumstance — belonging to a period some months further on. On Christmas Day René worked in his study up to tea time.They had arranged to go to Momaco’s giant hotel for dinner, to celebrate with the McKenzies, who were bringing their son, Duncan, now ten years old. After a brief tea René returned to his study: and he hardly gave himself time to dress. Hester, on her side, had gone to see Alice Price, and to have a good talk with Alice’s father about a certain country, which both of them loathed, and another, which both of them loved — romantically, uncritically. Mr. Price was quite a well-to-do man: but his well-known lack of Canadian orthodoxy, and his habit of continually criticizing the country which was responsible for his small fortune, had probably been the cause of his daughter’s not marrying. She was good-looking, a typical Canadian, but already thirty-five.
When Hester got home to dress for the evening, René was drinking a cup of tea; and when at half-past seven the McKenzies called, in a hired car, to take them to the hotel, his toilet was still incomplete. It was with a flushed face of wry apology that he at last entered the car, saying,“I worked too late; I have two jobs on my hands: you are a sensible fellow” (to McKenzie), “and content yourself with one.”
The King George Hotel was an example of the colossal in hotel building.... Certain of its massive and sinister vistas were suggestive of Gnossos rather than of Momaco, of hieratic rather than of capitalistic architecture. Their French-Canadian waiter had a countenance that went with the architecture. Lines of ponderous square pillars marked off the dancing floor from the lines of tables, and behind the pillar-line there was more depth than in the Château Laurier — which the architect clearly had had in mind, and had hoped to outdo. When they arrived, a rumba was in progress. Leaving McKenzie Junior at the table, the two professors disappeared into the barbaric melee, Laura waving her posteriors expertly in the embrace of René. Hester, less disposed to borrow from the expressive buttocks of the Black, wobbled her own a little mournfully.
They decided that they would drink champagne. Before long they were pulling crackers, and transformed by paper hats into pantomime figures, McKenzie with an eyebrow pencil having given himself a very dark moustache. Chicken Maryland, with fried pineapple and sweet corn and potato mixed, was the centre of the meal. (They had rejected unanimously turkey Momaco,
reine pedauque
.) Young Duncan McKenzie looked rather green for a moment, after consuming a bombe glacée messaline. The Moët frothed as it should, and flames from the large Christmas pudding very nearly started a conflagration; Hester’s Alsatian peasant cap burst into flames, but was extinguished with great skill and promptitude by McKenzie, who clapped his hands upon the flames. A smell of singeing bore witness to the part that Hester’s hair had played in the excitements of the evening. Theirs was a conventional Christmas celebration, and there was a great deal of dancing: the taste of the French Canadians, who were prominent in staffing and stage directing this monstrous hotel, was of a “Rasta” type, the orchestra preferring rumbas and tangos to anything else. René carried on an intermittent conversation with a French party at the next table — Parisian French, not Momaco French. The noise soon became terrific. There were one or two academical figures here and there, and two of these joined them at one point. It was undeniably a wonderful idea to have had their Christmas dinner in this saturnalian fashion.
With their last bottle came the final toasts. All of these toasts, naturally, looked towards the future happiness or success of each member of the party. When René’s new academic adventure was being toasted, it was noticed that Hester watched, with an exclusive concentration, the scene on the dance floor. “And now, René, your book!” exclaimed McKenzie. But even to that she did not respond. This glass that never rose to celebrate, but which got emptied all the same, in toasts that were undivulged, at the last chilled this Christmas party, and left an uncomfortable sense of something wrong: although, on the whole, the evening might be described as a great success.
When the Hardings got home, as Hester was drawing off her gloves, she summed up: “A pretty penny that has cost us. What was it for?”
René looked at the cross and staring face with compassion.
“Mais quel entêtement, nom de dieu!”
he said under his breath.
As a consequence of his appointment at the university, if for no other reason, René was obliged to go to a certain number of parties and functions, as well as to dinner engagements or casual visits to the houses of the friends he had made. Hester almost always accompanied him. Such a demonstration as she made on the occasion of the Christmas dinner was not a typical occurrence, she usually conducted herself quite normally.
So when, one night, she failed to turn up at the house of the chancellor of the university, at the time arranged, 7:30, René was very surprised and correspondingly uneasy. He had dressed at the university, from which he went directly to the chancellor’s house. It was an important dinner: the president of McGill and other academic notables were to be there. Of course, no great harm would be done should she not appear; if it turned out to be a
coup de tête
on Hester’s part, some plausible excuse could be found. What he said, on the spur of the moment, was simply that he could not guess what had happened to delay her.
It was half-way through the meal that he was called to the telephone outside in the hall. When he picked up the receiver, someone said, “This is the police.” He was asked if his wife’s name was “Hester Lilian Harding.” His heart took a painful jump and stopped dead. He said quietly “Yes,” when the voice asked him to come immediately to Police Headquarters at Rochester Avenue. He asked no questions. Upon the back of a visiting card he scribbled a brief message, and told the man who had accompanied him to the telephone to hand it to the Chancellor.
In Momaco (unlike Toronto) taxis are allowed to ply for hire, and he found one almost at once. Rochester Avenue was not far, and as soon as he entered the door of the main commissariat of police, someone said, “You Professor Harding?” — He was then conducted into a room in which a police officer sat at a table, who sprang up, saying “You Professor Harding?” before any sound had been made by his escort. But after that, as they stood facing one another, the police officer appeared embarrassed.
“It’s a warm evening for April, Professor,” he said. “I’m glad you came right over here without delay. I was sorry to disturb you, Professor, I’m more sorry than I know how to say, Professor....
Hell, this isn’t easy!”
“What is it?” René asked sharply.
To hunt other human beings seems to reduce the face to a coarse muzzle and baleful eye. When this simplified face attempts to portray pity, the effect is alarming.
“Will you kindly tell me at once what my wife has done,” demanded René.
“What did she do?” echoed the policeman. And René noticed the change of tense.
“She did nothing?” he asked; his lips trembled. “If she has done nothing, why did you demand my presence here?” The aggressive tone provoked the reappearance of the unmodified jowl of the dogs of the Law.
“She did do
something
, Professor. She threw herself under a truck.”
René was trembling, and swaying a little. He glared silently at the police officer, as if the latter had said that his wife was a liar or a thief. Then he staggered forward, and supported himself upon the table with the flat of his hands. The policeman said, “Lean on me,” and led him to a chair. He retched once and vomited a little, turning sideways to do so. The man rang a bell on his desk, and soon a glass of water was produced. René attempted to rise. “Sit there for a while, Professor,” the policeman told him: he knew all about shock. He could see that this one had almost knocked this limey cold. He sat in his chair smoking, and noting something in a large book.
At length René got to his feet and said, “Where is she? Shall we go?”
“Okay, Professor.”
The man walked beside him, his eye in the corner of his head, ready to catch him as he fell. They stopped, the policeman drew from his pocket a large key, opened a door.
René was not conscious of passing through the door, but almost immediately he found himself leaning bodily upon the policeman, his head almost on the shoulder of his escort, and looking down on a much-soiled collection of objects. They were arranged in the most paradoxical way. Like a
graffito
the essentials were picked out. He recognized the low-bottomed silhouette of a female figure, the clothes shapeless and black with blood. Slightly to one side there was a pair of legs in horrible detachment, like a pair of legs for a doll upon a factory table, before they have been stuck on to the body. At the top, was the long forward-straining, as it were yearning neck. Topmost was the bloodstained head of Hester, lying on its side. The poor hair was full of mud, which flattened it upon the skull. Her eye protruded: it was strange it should still have the strength to go peering on in the darkness.
René took a step forward towards the exhibit, but he fell headlong, striking his forehead upon the edge of the marble slab — the remains being arranged upon something like a fishmonger’s display slab. As he fell it had been his object to seize the head and carry it away with him. To examine his legal right had been his last clear act of consciousness.
