The Governess and Other Stories (5 page)

I think we made a mistake, for perhaps—who can say—that might have prevented what happened next day, on that terrible and never-to-be-forgotten Sunday. My husband and I had gone round to the Limpleys’, and we were sitting in deckchairs on the small lower terrace of the garden, talking. From the lower terrace, the turf ran down quite a steep slope to the canal. The pram was on the flat lawn of the terrace beside us, and I hardly need say that the besotted father got up in the middle of the conversation every five minutes to enjoy the sight of the baby. After all, she was a pretty child, and on that golden sunlit afternoon it was really charming to see her looking up at the sky with her bright blue eyes and smiling—the hood of the pram was put back—as she tried to pick up the patterns made by the sunlight on her blanket with her delicate if still rather awkward hands. Her father rejoiced at this, as if such miraculous reasoning as hers had never been known, and we ourselves, to give him pleasure, acted as if we had never known anything like it. That sight of her, the last happy moment, is rooted in my mind for ever. Then Mrs Limpley called from the upper terrace, which was in the shade of the veranda, to tell us that tea was ready. Limpley spoke soothingly to the baby as if she could understand him, “There, there, we’ll be back in a minute!” We left the pram with the baby in it on the lawn, shaded from the hot sunlight by a cool canopy of leaves above, and strolled slowly to the usual place in the shade where the Limpleys drank afternoon tea. It was about twenty yards from the lower to the upper terrace of their garden, and you could not see one terrace from the other because of the rose-covered pergola between them. We talked as we walked, and I need hardly say what we talked about. Limpley was wonderfully cheerful, but his cheerfulness did not seem at all out of place today, when the sky was such a silky blue, it was such a peaceful Sunday, and we were sitting in the shade in front of a house full of blessings. Today, his mood was like a reflection of that fine summer’s day.

Suddenly we were alarmed. Shrill, horrified screams came from the canal, voices of children and women’s cries of alarm. We rushed down the green slope with Limpley in the lead. His first thought was for the child. But to our horror the lower terrace, where the pram had been standing only a few minutes ago with the baby dozing peacefully in it in perfect safety, was empty, and the shouting from the canal was shriller and more agitated than ever. We hurried down to the water. On the opposite bank several women and children stood close together, gesticulating and staring at the canal. And there was the pram we had left safe and sound on the lower terrace, now floating upside down in the water. One man had already put out in a boat to save the child, another had dived in. But it was all too late. The baby’s body was not brought up from the brackish water, which was covered with green waterweed, until quarter-of-an-hour later.

I cannot describe the despair of the wretched parents. Or rather, I will not even try to describe it, because I never again in my life want to think of those dreadful moments. A police superintendent, informed by telephone, turned up to find out how this terrible thing had happened. Was it negligence on the part of the parents, or an accident, or a crime? The floating pram had been fished out of the water by now, and put back on the lower terrace on the police officer’s instructions, just where it had been before. Then the Chief Constable himself joined the superintendent, and personally tested the pram to see whether a light touch would set it rolling down the slope of its own accord. But the wheels would hardly move through the thick, long grass. So it was out of the question for a sudden gust of wind, perhaps, to have made it roll so suddenly over the terrace, which itself was level. The superintendent also tried again, pushing a little harder. The pram rolled about a foot forward and then stopped. But the terrace was at least seven yards wide, and the pram, as the tracks of its wheels showed, had been standing securely some way from the place where the land began to slope. Only when the superintendent took a run up to the pram and pushed it really hard did it move along the terrace and begin to roll down the slope. So something unexpected must have set the pram suddenly in motion. But who or what had done it?

It was a mystery. The police superintendent took his cap off his sweating brow and scratched his short hair ever more thoughtfully. He couldn’t make it out. Had any object, he asked, even just a ball when someone was playing with it, ever been known to roll over the terrace and down to the canal of its own accord? “No, never!” everyone assured him. Had there been a child nearby, or in the garden, a high-spirited child who might have been playing with the pram? No, no one! Had there been anyone else in the vicinity? Again, no. The garden gate had been closed, and none of the people walking by the canal had seen anyone coming or going. The one person who could really be regarded as an eyewitness was the labourer who had jumped straight into the water to save the baby, but even he, still dripping wet and greatly distressed, could say only that he and his wife had been walking beside the canal, and nothing seemed wrong. Then the pram had suddenly come rolling down the slope from the garden, going faster and faster, and tipped upside down as soon as it reached the water. As he thought he had seen a child in the water, he had run down to the bank at once, stripping off his jacket, and tried to rescue it, but he had not been able to make his way through the dense tangles of waterweeds as fast as he had hoped. That was all he knew.

The police superintendent was more and more baffled. He had never known such a puzzling case, he said. He simply could not imagine how that pram could have started rolling. The only possibility seemed to be that the baby might suddenly have sat up, or thrown herself violently to one side, thus unbalancing the lightweight pram. But it was hard to believe that, and he for one couldn’t imagine it. Was there anything else that occurred to any of us?

I automatically glanced at the Limpleys’ housemaid. Our eyes met. We were both thinking the same thing at the same moment. We both knew that the dog hated the child. We knew that he had been seen several times recently slinking around the garden. We knew how he had often head-butted laundry baskets full of washing and sent them into the canal. We both—I saw it from the maid’s pallor and her twitching lips—we both suspected that the sly and now vicious animal, finally seeing a chance to get his revenge, had come out of hiding as soon as we left the baby alone for a few minutes, and had then butted the pram containing his hated rival fiercely and fast, sending it rolling down to the canal, before making his own escape as soundlessly as usual. But we neither of us voiced our suspicions. I knew the mere idea that if he had shot the raving animal after Ponto’s attack, he might have saved his child would drive Limpley mad. And then, in spite of the logic of our thinking, we lacked any solid evidence. Neither the maid nor I, and none of the others, had actually seen the dog slinking around or running away that afternoon. The woodshed where he liked to hide—I looked there at once—was empty, the dry trodden earth of its floor showed no trace at all, we had not heard a note of the furious barking in which Ponto had always triumphantly indulged when he pushed a basket of washing into the canal. So we could not really claim that he had done it. It was more of a cruelly tormenting assumption. Only a justified, a terribly well justified suspicion. But the final, clinching certainty was missing.

And yet I have never since shaken off that dreadful suspicion—on the contrary, it was even more strongly confirmed over the next few days, almost to the point of certainty. A week later—the poor baby had been buried by then, and the Limpleys had left the house because they could not bear the sight of that fateful canal—something happened that affected me deeply. I had been shopping in Bath for a few household items when I suddenly had a shock. Beside the butcher’s van I saw Ponto, of whom I had subconsciously been thinking in all those terrible hours, walking along at his leisure, and at the same moment he saw me. He stopped at once, and so did I. And now something that still weighs on my mind happened; in all the weeks that had passed since his humiliation, I had never seen Ponto looking anything but upset and distressed, and he had avoided any encounter with me, crouching low and turning his eyes away. Now he held his head high and looked at me—I can’t put it any other way—with self-confident indifference. Overnight he had become the proud, arrogant animal of the old days again. He stood in that provocative position for a minute. Then, swaggering and almost dancing across the road with pretended friendliness, he came over to me and stopped a foot or so away, as if to say, “Well, here I am! Now what have you got to say? Are you going to accuse me?”

I felt paralysed. I had no power to push him away, no power to bear that self-confident and, indeed, I might almost say self-satisfied look. I walked quickly on. God forbid I should accuse even an innocent animal, let alone a human being, of a crime he did not commit. But since that day I cannot get rid of the terrible thought: “He did it. He was the one who did it.”

G
REY MIST LAY LOW
over Antwerp, enveloping the city entirely in its dense and heavy swathes. The shapes of houses were blurred in the fine, smoky vapour, and you could not see to the end of the street, but overhead there was ringing in the air, a deep sound like the word of God coming out of the clouds, for the muted voices of the bells in the church towers, calling their congregations to prayer, had also merged in the great, wild sea of mist filling the city and the countryside around, and encompassing the restless, softly roaring waters of the sea far away in the harbour. Here and there a faint gleam struggled against the damp grey mist, trying to light up a gaudy shop sign, but only muffled noise and throaty laughter told you where to find the taverns in which freezing customers gathered, complaining of the weather. The alleys seemed empty, and any passers-by were seen only as fleeting impressions that soon dissolved into the mist. It was a dismal, depressing Sunday morning.

Only the bells called and pealed as if desperately, while the mist stifled their cries. For the devout were few and far between; foreign heresy had found a foothold in this land, and even those who had not abandoned their old faith were less assiduous and zealous in the service of the Lord. Heavy morning mists were enough to keep many away from their devotions. Wrinkled old women busily telling their beads, poor folk in their plain Sunday best stood looking lost in the long, dark aisles of the churches, where the shining gold of altars and chapels and the priests’ bright chasubles shone like a mild and gentle flame. But the mist seemed to have seeped through the high walls, for here, too, the chilly and sad mood of the deserted streets prevailed. The morning sermon itself was cold and austere, without a ray of sunlight to brighten it. It was preached against the Protestants, and the driving force behind it was furious rage, hatred along with a strong sense of power, for the time for moderation was over, and good news from Spain had reached the clerics—the new king served the work of the Church with admirable fervour. In his sermon, the preacher united graphic descriptions of the Last Judgement with dark words of admonition for the immediate future. If there had been a large congregation, his words might have been passed on by the faithful murmuring in their pews to a great crowd of hearers, but as it was they dropped into the dark void with a dull echo, as if frozen in the moist, chilly air.

During the storm two men had quickly entered the main porch of the cathedral, their faces obscured at first by wind-blown hair and voluminous coats with collars turned up high. The taller man shed his damp coat to reveal the honest but not especially striking features of a portly man in the rich clothing suitable for a merchant. The other was a stranger figure, although not because of anything unusual in his clothing; his gentle, unhurried movements and his rather big-boned, rustic but kindly face, surrounded by abundant waving white hair, lent him the mild aspect of an evangelist. They both said a short prayer, and then the merchant signed to his older companion to follow him. They went slowly, with measured steps, into the side aisle, which was almost entirely in darkness because dank air made the candles gutter, and heavy clouds that refused to lift still obscured the bright face of the sun. The merchant stopped at one of the small side chapels, most of which contained devotional items promised to the Church as donations by the old families of the city, and pointing to one of the little altars he said, “Here it is.”

The other man came closer and shaded his eyes with his hand to see it better in the dim light. One wing of the altarpiece was occupied by a painting in clear colours made even softer by the twilight, and it immediately caught the old painter’s eye. It showed the Virgin Mary, her heart transfixed by a sword, and despite the pain and sorrow of the subject it was a gentle work with an aura of reconciliation about it. Mary had a strangely sweet face, not so much that of the Mother of God as of a dreaming girl in the bloom of youth, but with the idea of pain tingeing the smiling beauty of a playful, carefree nature. Thick black hair tumbling down softly surrounded a small, pale but radiant face with very red lips, glowing like a crimson wound. The features were wonderfully delicate, and many of the brushstrokes, for instance in the assured, slender curve of the eyebrows, gave an almost yearning expression to the beauty of the tender face. The Virgin’s dark eyes were deep in thought, as if dreaming of another brighter and sweeter world from which her pain was stealing her away. The hands were folded in gentle devotion, and her breast still seemed to be quivering with slight fear at the cold touch of the sword piercing her. Blood from her wound ran along it. All this was bathed in a wonderful radiance surrounding her head with golden flame, and even her heart glowed like the mystical light of the chalice in the stained glass of the church windows when sunlight fell through them. And the twilight around it took the last touch of worldliness from this picture, so that the halo around the sweet girlish face shone with the true radiance of transfiguration.

Almost abruptly, the painter tore himself away from his lengthy admiration of the picture. “None of our countrymen painted this,” he said

The merchant nodded in agreement.

“No, it is by an Italian. A young painter at the time. But there’s quite a long story behind it. I will tell it all to you from the beginning, and then, as you know, I want you to complete the altarpiece by putting the keystone in place. Look, the sermon is over. We should find a better place to tell stories than this church, well as it may suit our joint efforts. Let’s go.”

The painter lingered for a moment longer before turning his eyes away from the picture. It seemed even more radiant as the smoky darkness outside the windows lifted, and the mist took on a golden hue. He almost felt that if he stayed here, rapt in devout contemplation of the gentle pain on those childish lips, they would smile and reveal new loveliness. But his companion had gone ahead of him already, and he had to quicken his pace to catch up with the merchant in the porch. They left the cathedral together, as they had come.

The heavy cloak of mist thrown over the city by the early spring morning had given way to a dull, silvery light caught like a cobweb among the gabled roofs. The close-set cobblestones had a steely, damp gleam, and the first of the flickering sunlight was beginning to cast its gold on them. The two men made their way down narrow, winding alleys to the clear air of the harbour, where the merchant lived. And as they slowly walked towards it at their leisure, deep in thought and lost in memory, the merchant’s story gathered pace.

“As I have told you already,” he began, “I spent some time in Venice in my youth. And to cut a long story short, my conduct there was not very Christian. Instead of managing my father’s business in the city, I sat in taverns with young men who spent all day carousing and making merry, drinking, gambling, often bawling out some bawdy song or uttering bitter curses, and I was just as bad as the others. I had no intention of going home. I took life easy and ignored my father’s letters when he wrote to me more and more urgently and sternly, warning me that people in Venice who knew me had told him that my licentious life would be the end of me. I only laughed, sometimes with annoyance, and a quick draught of sweet, dark wine washed all my bitterness away, or if not that then the kiss of a wanton girl. I tore up my father’s letters, I had abandoned myself entirely to a life of intoxicated frenzy, and I did not intend to give it up. But one evening I was suddenly free of it all. It was very strange, and sometimes I still feel as if a miracle had cleared my path. I was sitting in my usual tavern; I can still see it today, with its smoke and vapours and my drinking companions. There were girls of easy virtue there as well, one of them very beautiful, and we seldom made merrier than that night, a stormy and very strange one. Suddenly, just as a lewd story aroused roars of laughter, my servant came in with a letter for me brought by the courier from Flanders. I was displeased. I did not like receiving my father’s letters, which were always admonishing me to do my duty and be a good Christian, two notions that I had long ago drowned in wine. But I was about to take it from the servant when up jumped one of my drinking companions, a handsome, clever fellow, a master of all the arts of chivalry. ‘Never mind the croaking old toad. What’s it to you?’ he cried, throwing the letter up in the air, swiftly drawing his sword, neatly spearing the letter as it fluttered down and pinning it to the wall. The supple blue blade quivered as it stuck there. He carefully withdrew the sword, and the letter, still unopened, stayed where it was. ‘There clings the black bat!’ he laughed. The others applauded, the girls clustered happily around him, they drank his health. I laughed myself, drank with them, and forgetting the letter and my father, God and myself, I forced myself into wild merriment. I gave the letter not a thought, and we went on to another tavern, where our merriment turned to outright folly. I was drunk as never before, and one of those girls was as beautiful as sin.”

The merchant instinctively stopped and passed his hand several times over his brow, as if to banish an unwelcome image from his mind. The painter was quick to realise that this was a painful memory, and did not look at him, but let his eyes rest with apparent interest on a galleon under full sail, swiftly approaching the harbour that the two men had reached, and where they now stood amidst all its colourful hurry and bustle. The merchant’s silence did not last long, and he soon continued his tale.

“You can guess how it was. I was young and bewildered, she was beautiful and bold. We came together, and I was full of urgent desire. But a strange thing happened. As I lay in her amorous embrace, with her mouth pressed to mine, I did not feel the kiss as a wild gesture of affection willingly returned. Instead, I was miraculously reminded of the gentle evening kisses we exchanged in my parental home. All at once, strange to say, even as I lay in the whore’s arms I thought of my father’s crumpled, mistreated, unread letter, and it was as if I felt my drinking companion’s sword-thrust in my own bleeding breast. I sat up, so suddenly and looking so pale that the girl asked in alarm what the matter was. However, I was ashamed of my foolish fears, ashamed in front of this woman, a stranger, in whose bed I lay and whose beauty I had been enjoying. I did not want to tell her the foolish thoughts of that moment. Yet my life changed there and then, and today I still feel, as I felt at the time, that only the grace of God can bring such a change. I threw the girl some money, which she took reluctantly because she was afraid I despised her, and she called me a German fool. But I listened to no more from her, and instead stormed away on that cold, rainy night, calling like a desperate man over the dark canals for a gondola. At last one came along, and the price the gondolier asked was high, but my heart was beating with such sudden, merciless, incomprehensible fear that I could think of nothing but the letter, miraculously reminded of it as I suddenly was. By the time I reached the tavern my desire to read it was like a devouring fever; I raced into the place like a madman, ignoring the cheerful, surprised cries of my companions, jumped up on a table, making the glasses on it clink, tore the letter down from the wall and ran out again, taking no notice of the derision and angry curses behind me. At the first corner I unfolded the letter with trembling hands. Rain was pouring down from the overcast sky, and the wind tore at the sheet of paper in my hands. However, I did not stop reading until, with overflowing eyes, I had deciphered the whole of the letter. Not that the words in it were many—they told me that my mother was sick and likely to die, and asked me to come home. Not a word of the usual blame or reproach. But how my heart burnt with shame when I saw that the sword blade had pierced my mother’s name …”

“A miracle indeed, an obvious miracle, one to be understood not by everyone but certainly by the man affected,” murmured the painter as the merchant, deeply moved, lapsed into silence. For a while they walked along side by side without a word. The merchant’s fine house was already visible in the distance, and when he looked up and saw it he quickly went on with his tale.

“I will be brief. I will not tell you what pain and remorseful madness I felt that night. I will say only that next morning found me kneeling on the steps of St Mark’s in ardent prayer, vowing to donate an altar to the Mother of God if she would grant me the grace to see my mother again alive and receive her forgiveness. I set off that same day, travelling for many days and hours in despair and fear to Antwerp, where I hurried in wild desperation to my parental home. At the gate stood my mother herself, looking pale and older, but restored to good health. On seeing me she opened her arms to me, rejoicing, and in her embrace I wept tears of sorrow pent up over many days and many shamefully wasted nights. My life was different after that, and I may almost say it was a life well lived. I have buried that letter, the dearest thing I had, under the foundation stone of this house, built by the fruits of my own labour, and I did my best to keep my vow. Soon after my return here I had the altar that you have seen erected, and adorned as well as I could. However, as I knew nothing of those mysteries by which you painters judge your art, and wanted to dedicate a worthy picture to the Mother of God, who had worked a miracle for me, I wrote to a good friend in Venice asking him to send me the best of the painters he knew, to paint me the work that my heart desired.

“Months passed by. One day a young man came to my door, told me what his calling was, and brought me greetings and a letter from my friend. This Italian painter, whose remarkable and strangely sad face I well remember to this day, was not at all like the boastful, noisy drinking companions of my days in Venice. You might have thought him a monk rather than a painter, for he wore a long, black robe, his hair was cut in a plain style, and his face showed the spiritual pallor of asceticism and night watches. The letter merely confirmed my favourable impression, and dispelled any doubts aroused in me by the youthfulness of this Italian master. The older painters of Italy, wrote my friend, were prouder than princes, and even the most tempting offer could not lure them away from their native land, where they were surrounded by great lords and ladies as well as the common people. He had chosen this young master because, for some reason he did not know, the young man’s wish to leave Italy weighed more with him than any offer of money, but the young painter’s talent was valued highly and honoured in his own country.