The Aerodrome: A Love Story (20 page)

of what had seemed to me the miracle of her return to health. My hopes for her future and for mine were as yet undefined, but our feelings were hardly disguised although they had not yet been openly expressed. I knew that the Air Vice-Marshal meant what he said, and was about to reply to him when he spoke again. "Think carefully," he said, "and be sure that your life will depend on the conclusion you reach in the next half minute. There is an effort of the will of which I know you are capable, and which can place you for ever on my side with the most brilliant prospects before you. I would not give this opportunity to anyone else but you." He was still looking at me fiercely, but I thought I saw in his eyes an expression of indétermination, a reluctance to carry out the threat that he had made. Though I knew well that this reluctance would not deter him from acting as he thought fit, nevertheless the presence of the feeling encouraged me to stand my ground. He saw, I think, what kind of reply I was about to make, for he pressed his lips together and made a quick impatient gesture with his hand, as though he were urging himself to some unpleasant or dangerous task. But before I could speak or he could express himself further I heard the door at my back open and caught a glimpse of the Doctor's bald head, which quickly was withdrawn, although the door remained wide open. Instinctively the Air Vice-Marshal and I looked at each other, for we shared in the surprise at such an intrusion. Our surprise, however, was much greater when the Rector's wife entered the room, hatless, and with the hair dishevelled on her forehead. Behind her came the Doctor, who closed the door carefully behind him and then stood awkwardly by it, though in spite of the awkwardness of his posture his face was determined and his eyes met firmly the look of anger which the Air Vice-Marshal directed at him. "Sorry, Antony," he said. "I must try to stop this if I can." When he pronounced the name "Antony", a name by which I had never before heard the Air Vice-Marshal addressed, my mind reverted instantly to the scene in which I had heard the name spoken before with such agony, and I seemed to know already what I would soon hear. I remembered that the Doctor's name was Faulkner, and that this, too, was a name that had occurred in the Rector's confession. The details of the story now to be explained were still unknown to me, the story itself would have seemed incredible; yet already I was certain of its main outlines and pleased with the certainty, in spite of the trepidation and excitement with which I listened to the speakers and the danger in which I knew that we must all be placed. After the Doctor's speech the Air Vice-Marshal had stretched out his hand towards a bell, but the Rector's wife had stepped quickly between him and it. "No, Antony," she said, "you must hear me first." She spoke with a power and a determination that I had never seen her show before. For a second or two the Air Vice-Marshal stared at her with an expression of both anger and contempt upon his face. Then he sat back in his chair, leaning his elbows on the armrests. "Very well," he said. "Say quickly what you wish. Try to remember, at least, some of the promises which you have made." "I would never have made them," she said, "if I could have known what you are capable of doing. You have killed one of your sons. I have come to do what I can to save the other, my son as well as yours." And she stepped towards me and stood at my side, holding my hand. Somewhere at the back of my mind I had known already that these words would be spoken, yet when I heard them finally pronounced, I was ailed with all the agitation that is felt by one who receives utterly unexpected news. I looked from one to the other of those whom I now knew to be my parents, and I pressed my mother's hand. The Air Vice-Marshal, whom I now knew to be my father, the lover of my mother before her marriage, the Rector's friend believed to have been murdered, looked coolly and with a strange dispassionateness at both of us. When he spoke his voice was so cold as to seem to me inhuman, and yet I could not look at him without feeling, even in this moment of danger, a sympathy and an affection for him. "You have come to do what you can to save him," he said. "I have, against my own principles, been attempting exactly that. He seems, however, to have inherited some of the infidelity and unreliability which I first noticed in you, afterwards in every woman. I have no further use certainly for you nor, I think, for him." My mother flushed, and I could see that his words had made her angry rather than alarmed. "Infidelity!" she said. "I would never have married if I had not been certain that you were dead and if my husband, knowing all the truth, had not consented out of his goodness to be the father of your child. Even after you had come back and reproached me for what I had done and had immediately made love to my friend and left her, taking her child from her, even after that and for years I thought of you as my lover and thought well of you while you were living on your hatred and your pride. Now I see where these have led you. You have killed Florence with your own hand. You have ordered the murder of her son and yours. Now you have no further use for me and for our son. God knows that I wish that I had never had any use for you." The Air Vice-Marshal turned away from her and looked steadily at me. "Listen, Roy," he said. "Though it may be useless to attempt any more to recall you to your senses, I should like to explain to you once again what is the result of living the life that these people lead. Consider the record of crimes, hypocrisy, and irresolution in this woman's family. She falls in love with me and her fiancé, instead of recognizing this fact, attempts to murder me. He never realizes that he has failed to do so, but makes himself miserable for the rest of his life because he cannot face the consequences of what he deliberately willed. As for your mother, she marries before I can recover from my injuries and return to claim her. Whether her conduct is due to conventionality or to mere self-seeking I cannot guess. She does not love her husband, and in consequence he pays his addresses to another woman. He deserts the child who is the result of this connection, but his sense of honour is so fine that he will not allow you, after you have grown up, to think of him as your father. By so doing he also deprives you of your mother. Here he acted unwittingly for the best. Finally he is killed accidentally by another son of mine, whose mother, thanks to her brother's care, has lived a life of extreme respectability, though in the end, so attached is she to this way of living, she places me in a position where it is necessary for her to be shot. What a record of confusion, deception, rankling hatred, low aims, indecision! One is stained by any contact with such people. Can you not see, and I am asking you for the last time, what I mean when I urge you to escape from all this, to escape from time and its bondage, to construct around you in your brief existence something that is guided by your own will, not forced upon you by past accidents, something of clarity, independence, and beauty?" He was speaking with great emphasis and in a louder voice than usual. In his eyes there was a look almost of frenzy, so that it seemed that his words were addressed to himself as much as to us. I contemplated as he bade me the long record of crime and deception into which I had been born and had lived, but saw in that no reason to change my mind. If there had been guilt in the village, there had been guilt also at the aerodrome, for the two worlds were not exclusive, and by denying one or the other the security that was gained was an illusion. Dr Faulkner, whose presence had been forgotten; I think, by all of us, stepped forward. "It is you, Antony," he said, "who must change your mind, not your son." He spoke with great deliberation, as though he were replying to a question on which he possessed expert knowledge. "Let him be happy in the way in which you failed to be happy. Let him at least attempt it. Remember that I saved your life. Save his for me in return." My father looked at him blankly. "You are mistaken," he said, "if you imagine that I am likely to be affected by your sentimentality. Your own life, after what you have done, is in considerable danger. You will be lucky to get off with that." My mother stretched out her hands to him and I saw that there were tears in her eyes. "Antony," she said, "why must these crimes and cruelties continue? You have the power to put an end to them." He looked at her gravely, and said: "These crimes, as you call them, must continue so that the world may be clean." Then he looked at his watch and turned quickly to me. "Are you coming with me to the conference, Roy?" he said. He spoke casually, and yet we knew what might depend upon my answer. "No," I said, "I cannot", and I looked at his expressionless face with an affection that I had never felt for him before. He kept his eyes on my face for a moment and then rose to his feet and locked the side door of the room. "You will all remain here till I return," he said. "Guards will be posted at the doors with orders to shoot if anyone attempts to escape. I will see you later." And he went quickly to the door, locking it behind him. We stood for some moments without saying a word. My mother took my arm and I smiled at her, feeling, in spite of our predicament, happy and assured as I had not been since the night, that now seemed so long ago, when the Rector had spoken at the dinner party. The Doctor looked at us sadly. He was rubbing the sleeve of his uniform against his ear. As though by common accord we went to the window overlooking the airfield and watched the Air Vice-Marshal, the Chief Mathematician, and many others of our chief officers climbing into the aircraft that was waiting for them. If I had been accompanying them I should have piloted the plane. As it was I noticed that the Air Vice-Marshal himself was taking his place at the controls. We watched, still silently, the preparations made for the start. Almost absentmindedly I allowed my eyes to follow the aircraft as it gathered speed over the field and took off into the air. So surprising had been the events of the last half-hour that I hardly thought of our danger. Indeed, my mind was curiously calm, as I considered what might be the results of the conference which my father was attending. I noticed, I remember, that the aircraft was not gaining height as rapidly as I might have expected, and I felt half-consciously the pressure on the stick that would be needed to bring the nose up. Then suddenly my mind became all attention and anxiety. The aircraft had responded to the pressure that I had imagined, but it had responded unnaturally, and was rising as though handled by a novice. What happened next happened quickly. One of the wings, the one on which I had observed the Flight-Lieutenant working that morning, became detached from the fuselage, and the aircraft plunged downwards to the ground. Obviously nothing could save it. The noise of the impact shook the windows of the room where we stood, and in a moment the wreckage was hidden from our eyes by sheets of flame. We saw the fire-parties rush over the field towards the conflagration, but for long they could neither quench it nor approach it. It was some time before we turned and looked with inquiring glances in each other's faces, not thinking then of what might have happened to us, or of what must happen now, of how the new order, resting as it did on the desperate will of one man, had been broken and the old order could never be restored, of the vices and virtues of each.

CHAPTER XX

Conclusion

NOR WOULD IT be right for me to end this story, as so many stories are ended, merely with a description of my marriage, and of the relief that must be felt when danger has been escaped, of explanations given to each other by various characters and of their mutual understanding. True that in the days following the accident many such explanations were made. From Dr Faulkner, in particular, I learnt more of the early life of both my parents than I had known before. He told me, among much else, the full story of the failure of the Rector's crime: how he had himself recovered the battered body of my father, and of the lucky accident that had broken the fall from the precipice; how for some days after this my father had been in full possession of his faculties and had persuaded the Doctor into the trickery of the funeral and into hiding his knowledge of the attempted murder. Dr Faulkner had accepted the risk of this deception since he had been from youth a friend both of the Rector and of the Rector's friend. He had been convinced that the interests of both would be best served by carrying out the plan that my father, before his relapse into serious illness, had designed in every detail. After his friend's slow recovery from this illness he had been less certain of the wisdom of the course which he had taken. At first there had seemed to the Doctor something of Quixotism in Antony's decision to efface himself. But in the long days of his convalescence it became evident that it was not self-effacement but a change of identity at which the young clergyman was aiming, and that the news of the Rector's marriage had seemed finally to determine the shape of character into which would grow the Air Vice-Marshal whom I had known. Dr Faulkner had remained with him throughout his career, at times sharing enthusiastically in his work since over him, as over so many others, the scope and brilliance of my father's plans had exercised a kind of fascination that was irresistible. It had been only gradually, over a period of years, that the full scheme of his ideas and of his ambitions had taken form. Dr Faulkner, as a scientist and philosopher, had followed closely and excitedly the growth of plans that extended from a profession to a policy, from a policy to a revolution not only in his own country, but in the whole nature of man. Nor, until recently, had there seemed to the Doctor anything necessarily inhuman or monstrous in the tremendous ambitions of his friend. "That the world may be clean" were some of the last words which the Air Vice-Marshal had spoken, and there was no doubt hi our minds that this had indeed been his ambition, though he had stained his hands with the blood of his son and mistress, and would, in all probability, have destroyed another son and another mistress had his life not been ended by an accident. Now he was gone, and shortly the whole organization which he built up would, through the death of all its leaders, be ineffectual in the direction for which it had been planned. But it was not as though he had never been, for none who had met him could forget him; no corner of the country that had felt the force of his ideas could afterwards relapse wholly into its original content. I, least of all, could remain indifferent to his memory. I knew that my mother from hearsay only (for since her one angry meeting with him after her marriage, she had not met him till the day of her husband's funeral) had been so swayed by his confidence and his success that she had wished for nothing more than that I should serve under him. I knew that my guardian, the Rector, had lived all his life in agony at the thought of a crime which he had in fact been unable to commit. I knew that, but for accidents of various kinds, I should myself have followed in my father's path and repaid him perhaps for the care which he had shown more to me than to any of his subordinates; for, though I lacked his great qualities, the impulses of my mind had been the same as his. Now I had found my parents and I had found that I was both united and at variance with them both. In so doing I had also found myself. I think now, when I recall those past days, of another scene which took place in the same meadow to which I had retired drunk after the party at which the Rector had mystified me by his speech. I remember sitting there with Bess, some days after our second marriage, on an evening not unlike the evening which I have described already. The gigantic elms were there as I knew them in my boyhood, but the sky was clearer than on the evening of the dinner party, for it was not long after sunset. We were happy as we had never been, for we were each confident of each. Bess had regained her health and her vitality. I, too, had regained what I had lost, a desire to see the world as it was and some assurance of the ground on which my feet were treading. It was not for me, I knew now, to attempt either to reshape or to avoid what was too vast even to be imagined as enfolding me, not could I reject as negligible the least event in the whole current of past time. We had been talking, I remember, of the lives of our fathers and of ourselves. Nothing of any great profundity was said by either of us, but, as we talked and looked from time to time in each other's eyes, it seemed to us that between those two enemies there was something binding and eternally so. Something, too, which would bind their children together in confidence though never in certainty; for the future was too vast for that. It might be said that we anticipated, both of us, that now at least the circle of sin might be broken, that, with what we knew, we might live to avoid murder and deception. Yet this would be to put our feelings too simply. I remember that night as we looked over the valley in the rapidly increasing darkness that we were uncertain of where we would be or what we would be doing in the years in front of us. I remember the valley itself and how I saw it again as I had seen it in my childhood, heard a late-sleeping redshank whistle from the river, and thought of the life continuing beneath the roofs behind us. "That the world may be clean": I remember my father's words. Clean indeed it was and most intricate, fiercer than tigers, wonderful and infinitely forgiving.