The Pandervils (19 page)

Meanwhile that alien life in Mr Noom, to which his ‘rather special pain' bore witness, was doing very nicely indeed, and at Mr Noom's expense. In fact it had by now become evident—to the doctor, to Egg, and to Mr Noom himself not least—that there was not room in the world for both of them. In short, Mr Noom's little pain was killing Mr Noom. An operation was out of the question, for, even had Dr Renwick been able to anticipate the methods of Lister, any attempt at surgery must have killed the sufferer outright. Without it he might have the good luck to live for many months in torment such as a man would be sent to prison for allowing a dog to endure.
But there existed no special society for the prevention of cruelty to old gentlemen, so Mr Noom, having finally taken to his bed, continued, with sobs and animal grunts and screaming invocations of his God (a reticent personage), to advertise from time to time the sanctity of human life. Dr Renwick did all, within the law, that he could, and for the last few days of existence Mr Noom was comparatively comfortable, being conscious for not much more than an aggregate of one hour during each twenty-four, and for that hour too weak to suffer acutely. Mr Noom's vitality, the unsuspected strength, as of youth itself, which, surviving in his old body, had cruelly insisted on fighting the intruder to the last ditch, was now all but spent. Things had reached the stage when it is permitted to hope, almost in so many words, that the end will come soon. Again and again Egg would steal to the door of the room and glance towards the nurse with an eager question forming on his lips. Again and again she would sadly shake her head. It goes on and on, thought Egg. On and on. It's too much. It's wicked. But he himself had the shop to attend to; that was the best he could do for Mr Noom, and it was, he felt, nothing at all. He was glad when Carrie, against her wish, was sent to spend her evenings and nights at a neighbour's house; that had been Dr Renwick's counsel. And if he had had an emotion to spare it would perhaps, a little of it, have been spent on Mrs Noom, who, having worn her scepticism threadbare and indulged her
scorn of Dr Renwick to the utmost degree, could no longer disguise from herself that she was about to be widowed. At last, at last, her Richard was escaping from her. Indefatigable in her devotion now, she was yet visibly consumed with jealousy of the nurse, finding it intolerable that during these last few weeks, with her lust for possession at its height, she must take second place to this smooth-faced hussy in uniform. The doctor and the nurse were so clearly, she said, conspiring to oust her from her rightful position as lawful wedded wife. Egg sometimes, for the sake of distraction, tried to guess what was going on in the private mind of this inexplicable woman. Life had now thrust upon her a part grandiose enough, in its anguish and terror, to satisfy even such a passion for melodrama as hers; and if she overacted the part—well, that was hardly to be wondered at, and it did not mean that she was not suffering her share of the fear and pain that vibrated through the household. No doubt she was bewildered, even frightened, to find that events, and Richard Noom in particular, would no longer submit to her management; and perhaps it was not her fault, but rather an accident of temperament, that she so often had the air of implying that this disease of Mr Noom's was a piece of gross insubordination on his part which she could never bring herself to forgive him. At long last, after a lifetime of unexampled marital docility, Mr Noom was doing something without her permission: he was dying.

On the last morning Mr Noom rallied a little, emerged for a while from the drug-dimmed nightmare of his life and was able to indulge in some quiet fragmentary conversation. His wife was with him. He asked for Carrie, and, a moment later, for Egg. The nurse, slipping from the room, brought these messages to Egg in the shop. A customer volunteered to fetch Carrie. ‘Will he get better then?' asked Egg of the nurse. She shook her head. He followed her upstairs.

‘Morning, Mr Noom!'

‘Hullo, my boy!' Mr Noom smiled beatifically, a child's smile. ‘Do you know,' he said, in a small, remote, hesitating voice, ‘I feel wonderful better this morning. Soon be out and about again. Hey, nurse?'

Mrs Noom, seizing his hand, began to weep. ‘Have you been happy with me, Richard?' she wailed. ‘Say something to your wife.'

The nurse, pushing her aside without ceremony, smothered the question by saying, with a swift smile: ‘You do me credit, Mr Noom. I've never had such a good easy patient before.'

Mr Noom, vaguely and uncertainly, smiled back at her. ‘Where's my Carrie?' he asked after a pause.

‘I think I hear her coming,' said Egg. There were quick footsteps on the stairs. ‘That's her, I bet.'

Mrs Noom stood rigid at the bedside. Her glance of hatred travelled from face to face. Egg, shocked into staring at her, shuddered in the act
of conjecturing what mighty and implacable passions were flaming behind that mask. These were strangers, she seemed to be thinking, thrust between her and the man, her own man, whom she was seeing alive for perhaps the last time. And now they proposed to bring yet another on the scene, a girl, this Carrie. Perhaps in that galling moment of defeat—for indeed we must make what excuses we can for her—she crazily confused Carrie with another young woman, the wench whom once, a quarter of a century ago, in the scullery, Mr Noom had kissed. But this was not in Egg's mind; his thoughts and his eyes were on Mrs Noom herself, who, suddenly, relaxing the stiffness of her attitude, swooped like a hawk to the bed and whispered, eyeing her husband fixedly: ‘Don't see her, Daddy! Tell her to keep away till you're better!'

The light went out of Mr Noom's face. He stared perplexedly at her bright eyes, now so near his own. From the passage outside came the sound of a hesitating step, and then a little cough of nervousness.

‘Quick! Say: “Another time, Carrie!” say: “Don't come in!”'

‘Carrie?' repeated Mr Noom questioningly. His lip quivered. Reluctantly he met his wife's look, and he seemed to understand what he read there. ‘You tell her, my dear.' His eyes closed in weariness, and quickly Mrs Noom glided to the door in time to intercept Carrie's entry. She closed and locked the door, and came back, almost smiling, to
the bedside. The nurse with gentle fingers was now stroking the pain-crumpled face on the pillow; in her other hand she still held the hypodermic needle. Egg had seen and heard everything. He had seen and heard more than he could bear to remember, and his heart ached with a question. Why had the old man flashed that signal to his merciful sister? Had it been indeed a return of bodily pain, or an agony more exquisite, more subtly cruel? … And now Mr Noom, his face twitching no longer, was drifting quietly into sleep. He slept for nine hours, and did not wake again.

The day after the funeral, a singular orgy which seemed to give general satisfaction, Mrs Noom took to her bed and remained there, magnificent in sorrow, for a week; and Carrie was kept busy all day long running up and down stairs in a hopeless endeavour to satisfy all her mother's demands. This additional burden, though it fatigued the girl, helped to distract her from grief; and she herself, spending a quiet evening in the kitchen with Egg, audibly thanked God for Mrs Noom's voluntary sequestration.

‘It's nice and comfy here, int it?' said she.

‘Um,' answered Egg, affirmatively, and went on reading. He was reading a work (for the Use of Schools and Young Persons) entitled
Goldsmith's Geography
, the flyleaf of which bore an inscription,
in faded ink:
To our dear nephew Richard Noom for his
21
birth-day, from Uncle and Aunty Bunce, Jany
, 1815.
The lips of the wise disperse knowledge: but the heart of the foolish doeth not so. Proverbs xv
. 7. It was not perhaps precisely the reading he would have chosen, but of the fourteen books that comprised Mr Noom's library this was the only one he had never before looked at. And indeed he was enthralled by it, for its very existence proved that there were other places in the world than Farringay. He had just reached a reference to certain ‘enormous mirrors, the costly donations of infidel kings', which the reverend author had observed in the Sultan Mother's Chamber of Audience at Constantinople. In those mirrors Egg saw himself reflected. He was translated into a world of strange splendour. And presently he came upon this magical sentence: ‘These mirrors the women of the Seraglio sometimes break in their frolics.' Under the spell of this incantation he allowed the book to fall into his lap, and to lie there unregarded, while he stared at the little red heart of the kitchen-grate and in opulent day-dreaming lost all sense of his surroundings, all memory of dark and mortuary things. Enticing pictures danced in his mind, and for a while he surrendered himself drowsily to their queer wicked charm. For so many days he had dwelt on death, and on death in those viler aspects which the horrific pomp of burial had made conspicuous, that now, with all the impetus of reaction, his thoughts made holiday and disported
wantonly in the oriental palace of his fancy. A falling cinder roused him, and he glanced towards Carrie. At once his mood changed. Poor Carrie! She looked inexpressibly forlorn. Tears glistened on her lashes, glistened and swelled and tumbled on to her young pallid cheeks.

He leaned forward and touched her knee. ‘Cheer up, Carrie!'

The smile with which she responded hurt him even more sharply than her tears had done. A warm protective impulse woke in him. He got out of his chair and came near to her, placing a hand on her shoulder. She was not, perhaps, a pretty girl; but to-night she seemed touchingly young. She, like himself, was lonely. For her, as for him, the future was an inscrutable grey mystery.

At his touch she looked up at him with swimming eyes. ‘Oh Egg!'

‘Cheer up!' he said again. ‘I'll take care of you, you know.' His fingers, without instructions from himself, touched her throat, involuntarily making a cup for her chin to rest in.

‘Oh Egg!' she said again. ‘Do you mean …?'

What did he mean? Something in his mind shouted Danger! He ignored the shout. ‘I mean,' he said, lamely, ‘well, that I'll … take care of you … if you'll let me.'

His free hand found itself to be free no longer; moist warm fingers were entwined with his own. Carrie closed her eyes, as if they were saying too much, and nestled closer into the curve of his arm. What she was thinking he did not know,
but her mouth was waiting to be kissed, and he, alas, wanted to kiss it. Events were sweeping him off his feet, and, despite a pang of fear, in his unwonted excitement he could not altogether regret that the tide must prove too strong for him. He lost sight of what he dreaded—-if indeed he sighted it at all—in the hungry contemplation of what he wanted. It was too late now to draw back. At his protesting rational self he shouted, half joyously, half in despair: Too late, too late! And his lips sought and found their desire … After a moment of proper maidenly passiveness, Carrie gave him back kiss for kiss. She was not a pretty girl. She was Carrie, commonplace and familiar. It was not she that he wanted (ah, forget that, forget! ) but… her kisses were fresh and sweet; they, and not she herself, excited him, so that he constrained her out of the chair and put his arms eagerly about her. And as he held her close it suddenly and shockingly flashed into his mind that under this prim woollen frock, under that stiff corsetting, was a warm and naked body. The women of the Seraglio! He was affrighted by his own wickedness, and in hasty reaction from it he released Carrie, and drew away from her, his mind full of shame and doubt and half-formed questions. This crude desire and this honest unexcited affection that existed, not fused in love, but separately and (he feared) alternatingly—could this mean the end of his long aching loneliness?

And now, what was he to say to her. ‘Are you … all right, Carrie?'

‘Yes, dear.' Carrie was affectionate but decisive. ‘You're all rumpled. Let me put you to rights.' She stepped up to him, frowning critically, and with busy fingers pulled his collar and tie into their proper shapes. Uneasily submitting to these ministrations, he glanced askance at the wild creature that had stood in his shoes a moment before and delivered him, body and soul, into captivity. But the next moment she had melted again and was saying, snuggling close to him: ‘Oh Egg, isn't it nice! I've never had anyone of my very own before. Even … even Daddy … well, I mean I had to sorta share him, didn't I? But I've got you, haven't I!'

‘You bet!' said Egg.

‘I've got you all to myself, haven't I!' It was not quite a question, but undoubtedly it demanded an answer.

‘Well,' said Egg … The orchard blossomed; the moon rose in the summer sky; a black pit gaped to receive him … ‘Well what do
you
think?' said Egg, pretending to tease her. And lest more questions should come out of it, he again, quickly, covered her mouth with his own. And, say what he might, there was a certain comfort in that. Captivity had, perhaps, its consolations.

‘My!' exclaimed Carrie, not without complacency, ‘you
are
a one for kissing, I
must
say! No, you must be good for a change!' A thud-thud-thud was heard overhead. ‘There's Ma banging away again. Oh, bother her!'

Kissing Carrie, if less than a passion, was something more than a pastime. If it failed to intoxicate him, it at least seldom failed to dull his ears to the whispers that followed him from the past. The next day he contrived many occasions for being alone with her, and she had wit enough not to seem to seek them. Mrs Noom was still ignorant of the dramatic and drastic change in their relationship. Carrie did not lack courage, but she preferred not to provoke the inevitable quarrel until her mother was downstairs again. She had not long to wait, for at tea-time, looking none the worse and none the better for her lying-in-state, Mrs Noom appeared. But during the meal Carrie did not feel equal to announcing that she ‘had got a young man', and, after all, as she remarked to the young man himself, good news would keep. ‘Won't it, dear!'