The Go-Between (25 page)

  These were high matters which appealed to my
imagination. But they also affected my daily life, or would affect
it. I took it for granted that my role of postman would now
cease.

  I was glad of this for several reasons. I still did
not see how my secret missions could be combined with Marcus’s
return to normal life. They had excited me and become a habit with
me and before the cricket match I hadn’t really wanted to abandon
them. The current of my endeavour flowed in them; I was most myself
when I was carrying them out. I liked the secrecy and the
conspiracy and the risk. And I liked Ted Burgess in a reluctant,
half-admiring, half-hating way. When I was away from him I could
think of him objectively as a working farmer whom no one at the
Hall thought much of. But when I was with him his mere physical
presence cast a spell on me; it established an ascendancy that I
could not break. He was, I felt, what a man ought to be, what I
should like to be when I grew up. At the same time I was jealous of
him, jealous of his power over Marian, little as I understood its
nature, jealous of whatever it was he had that I had not. He came
between me and my image of her. In my thoughts I wanted to
humiliate him, and sometimes did. But I also identified myself with
him, so that I could not think of his discomfiture without pain; I
could not hurt him without hurting myself. He fitted into my
imaginative life, he was my companion of the greenwood, a rival, an
ally, an enemy, a friend— I couldn’t be sure which. And yet on
Sunday morning he had ceased to be an unresolved discord and had
become part of the general harmony.

  At the time I did not wonder why,-1 was content to
accept the peace that my thoughts offered me. But now I do wonder
and I think I know. I had disposed of him. Twice I had overcome him
in fair fight. Of what use were the fours and sixes of this village
Jessop when I had caught him out and snatched victory from him? My
catch would be remembered when his sparkling innings was forgotten.
And in the same way I had eclipsed him at the concert. His songs of
love had moved me and brought him plenty of applause; but it was
applause mixed with laughter, for a personal not a musical success;
they clapped him for his hesitations and mistakes, as well as for
the rough charm of his singing; they clapped him as they might have
clapped him on the back. And what a figure he had cut on the
platform, with his red face, his board-stiff suit, and his strength
turned to heaviness! Whereas I, with my songs of death, my high,
pure, church music, had captured the admiration as well as the
emotions of the audience. From the human plane of badinage and
teasing, of jollity and good-fellowship, I had transported them to
the region of the angels. I had given them real music, purged of
human frailty, not a knock-about turn; and Marian had set her seal
on this, she had left her throne and taken my hand and curtsied to
me. If the Cricket Concert of 1900 was remembered, it would be
remembered for my songs—my songs of death, not for his songs of
love. I had killed him, he was dead, and that was why I no longer
felt him as a discordant element in my orchestra.

  I remember how on that enchanted morning one of the
servants, no longer a companion-in-arms but shrunk to his former
status, came up to me and said: “You saved the situation for us,
Master Leo. We should have been done for if you hadn’t caught him.
Of course his lordship took the wicket in a manner of speaking, but
it was you really. And we didn’t half enjoy your songs.”

  Now the thought of the farmyard had lost its magic
for me; it was as dead as a hobby that one has grown out of. I had
never really relished its strong smells or the feeling that some
dangerous animal might get loose and turn on me. As for the
straw-stack, I had tasted to satiety every experience it had to
offer, and I now thought, as Marcus did, that straw-stack sliding
was a puerile occupation, unworthy of a fully fledged
private-school boy. I was, in fact, a little ashamed of it. I was
looking forward to taking up my old life with Marcus, to renewing
our talks and jokes and to furbishing up our private language. I
thought of some new juicy insults to try out on him.

  So sure was I that Marian would have no more
messages for me to carry that I did not dream of asking her.
Indeed, I thought it would be tactless to ask her, just as it was
tactless to ask one’s schoolfellows if they had been doing
something that one knew they had given up. It would be a mistake to
mention it to her. The whole thing was done with. Totally ignorant
as I was of love affairs, and little as I knew about their
conventions, I felt sure that when a girl was engaged to a man, she
did not write letters to another man calling him “Darling.” She
might do it until the day of the engagement, but not after. It was
automatic; it was a rule, like leaving the wicket at cricket when
you were out; and it scarcely crossed my mind that to comply with
it might be painful. I had plenty of experience of
force
majeure
and I rebelled against it only when it was manifestly
unjust. Private injustice was the lot of schoolboys, as witness
Jenkins and Strode, but grownup people were exempt from it, for who
was there to be unjust to them?

  It no longer seemed to me that my life would be the
poorer for the cessation of my secret traffic between the Hall and
the farm. My feeling for Marian was possessive only when Ted
entered into it, and Ted was now eliminated. I didn’t seriously
regard Lord Trimingham as a rival: he was on a higher plane, the
plane of imagination. I sincerely wanted Marian’s happiness, both
for her sake and for mine; my happiness would be crowned by hers. I
thought of happiness as following naturally on the attainment of
some aim, like winning a cricket match. You got what you wanted and
were happy: it was quite simple. Who could not want to get Lord
Trimingham?—and by getting him, so Marcus told me, Marian would
also get his house. Married to her, he could afford to live there.
The trail of gold followed her, too.

  All this was eminently satisfactory as a subject of
contemplation, and I thought about it, almost with rapture, when I
was not thinking about myself and my own achievements. I had an
overwhelming desire to tell my mother about it, and in the space
between breakfast and starting for church I wrote her a long
letter, in which I represented Marian and myself as living on twin
pinnacles of glory. I also told her that Marian had asked me to
stay another week. Mrs. Maudsley had confirmed the invitation in
her after-breakfast orderly-room: she said a great many sweet
things to me. Among them was a compliment that I specially
treasured: she was glad that Marcus had found such a nice friend. I
told my mother this, and added: “Please let me stay if you’re not
too lonly without me, I have never been happier than I am now
except with you.”

  I posted the letter in the hall letterbox and was
relieved to see some letters showing through the glass door. I had
a morbid fear that they might have already been collected, though
the post did not go until the afternoon.

  Waiting for the other church-goers to assemble, I
wondered how I should spend the afternoon, and my thoughts, as to
some very distant object, flew to Ted. He had promised to tell me
something; what was it? I remembered: he was going to tell me all
about spooning, and at the time I had been very eager to hear. Now
I was much less eager, hardly eager at all. But perhaps some time,
not this afternoon, I would let him tell me; I had fifteen more
days at Brandham, and it would be only polite to go and say
good-bye to him.

  One thing more was added to me before I left for
church. Though there were clouds about, the temperature, I knew,
was rising: the weather hadn’t broken after all.

  Again I was lucky with the Psalms; the Sunday before
there had been forty-four verses; this Sunday there were
forty-three, seven below the danger-line. Truly providence was on
my side. Also I knew we should not have the Litany, as we had had
it last Sunday; this also was a great gain. Less than ever was I in
a mood to repent of my sins or to feel that other people should
repent of theirs. I could not find a flaw in the universe and was
impatient with Christianity for bringing imperfection to my notice,
so I closed my ears to its message and chose as a subject of
meditation the annals of the Trimingham family emblazoned on the
transept wall. I had a special interest in it now that Marian was
to be admitted to its ranks; she would be a Viscountess, Marcus had
told me; and for the first time I noticed that wives were included
in the mural tablets: hitherto I had thought of the family as an
entirely masculine phenomenon. It did not say, however, that they
were viscountesses: Caroline his wife... Mabelle his wife—what an
affected way of spelling Mabel! The next moment it seemed pretty
and aristocratic, such was the Trimingham spell. “Marian his
wife”—but I would not let myself think of that: to me they were
both immortal. Immortal—the word had a lovely quality that gave new
lustre to my reverie. Why should the race of Triminghams ever die
out? My excitement mounting, I thought of the ninety-ninth
Viscount, then the hundredth, and tried to calculate in what
century he would occur. The thought of their unbroken line,
stretching down the ages, moved me deeply. “And yet,” I told
myself, “it
has
been broken; there is no memorial to the
fifth Viscount.” My mind disliked the lacuna and tried to by-pass
it. At last, by dint of persuading myself that the missing memorial
must be in another part of the building, I managed to regain my
altitude. The solemn atmosphere of church reinforced the
sufficiency of earthly glory; in a mystical union of genealogy and
mathematics the time flashed by.

  Again Lord Trimingham was the last to leave. I
thought that Marian would wait for him, but she didn’t, so I did.
Most of my shyness with him had worn off, and I was disposed to
think that everything I did or said became me. But I did not want
to broach at once the subject that was uppermost in my mind.

  “Hullo, Mercury,” he said.

  “Can I take a message for you?” I asked, too tactful
(and I was proud of this) to suggest the name of the recipient.

  “No, thank you,” he replied, and I noticed the
contentment in his tone. “It’s very good of you to offer to, but I
don’t think I shall have many more messages to send. “

  It was <;n the tip of my tongue to ask why not,
but I thought I knew and said instead, less tactfully: “She hasn’t
left her prayer-book behind
this
time?”

  “No; but did you ever know such a scatterbrained
girl?” he said, as if to be scatterbrained was something to be
intensely proud of, and as if I must know any number of girls who
were.

  I said I did not, and hoping to draw him out and at
the same time, perhaps, to collect a compliment for myself, I
added: “Doesn’t she play the piano well?”

  “Yes, and don’t you sing well?” he answered, taking
the bait at once.

  Delighted with the success of my ruse, I cut a few
capers, after which it seemed quite easy to ask: “Why is there no
fifth Viscount?”

  “No fifth Viscount?” he echoed. “What do you mean?
There are plenty of fifth viscounts.”

  “Oh, I expect there are,” I answered airily, not
wishing to seem ignorant of the peerage. “But I meant in the
church. There isn’t a fifth of your viscounts, not a fifth Viscount
Trimingham.”

  “Oh, I see,” he said. “I didn’t know you meant him.
I’d forgotten which number he was. But yes, there was one.” He was
silent.

  “But why isn’t he there?” I insisted.

  “Well, you see,” said Lord Trimingham, “it was
rather a sad story. He was killed.”

  “Oh,” I exclaimed, agreeably titillated, for this
was more than I had hoped for. “In battle, I expect.” I remembered
how many of the viscounts had served in the forces.

  “No,” he said, “not in battle.”

  “In an accident?” I prompted; “climbing a mountain
perhaps? Or rescuing somebody?”

  “No,” he answered, “it wasn’t really an
accident.”

  I could see he didn’t want to tell me, and a week
ago I should have stopped probing him. But now, on the crest of my
wave, I felt I could afford to go on.

  “What was it?”

  “If you really want to know,” Lord Trimingham said,
“he was killed in a duel.”

  “Oh, what
fun
!” I cried, astonished that he
didn’t want to discuss this ancestor, who now seemed to me the most
interesting of the Triminghams. “What had he done? Was it to avenge
his honour?”

  “Well, yes, in a way,” Lord Trimingham admitted.

  “Had someone insulted him? You know, called him a
coward or a liar?—Of course, I know he wasn’t,” I added hastily,
fearful of seeming to associate myself with the insult.

  “Well, no, they hadn’t,” Lord Trimingham said. “He
fought the duel about somebody else.”

  “Who?”

  “A lady. His wife, as a matter of fact.”

  “Oh.” My disappointment was almost as bitter as when
I realized what the messages I had been carrying between Ted and
Marian were about. But Marcus had told me that only an outsider
spoke of a woman as a lady. It was one of his shibboleths. Now I
could tell him that Lord Trimingham did, which was something.
Trying to sound interested I said:

  “The Viscountess?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said, my voice dull and heavy,
“that people fought duels about ladies.”

  “Well, they did.”

  “But what had she done?” I didn’t much care, but it
was only polite to ask.

  “He thought she was too friendly with another man,”
said Lord Trimingham, shortly.

  I had an inspiration. “He was jealous?”

  “Yes. It happened in France. He challenged the man
to a duel, and the man shot him.”