‘It’s because he isn’t really very well,’ Miss Fulkes explained apologetically. And it was true. The boy looked sallow and peaked, slept uneasily, was nervous and quickly tired, suffered from headaches, had ceased to put on weight. Dr. Crowther had ordered malt and codliver oil and a tonic. ‘Not well,’ insisted Miss Fulkes.
But John Bidlake would not hear of it. ‘He’s simply naughty, that’s all. He just won’t eat.’ And turning to the boy, ‘Swallow, child, swallow!’ he shouted. ‘Have you forgotten how to swallow?’ The spectacle of little Phil chewing and chewing interminably on a mouthful of something he did not like exasperated him. ‘Swallow, boy! Don’t go on ruminating like that. You’re not a cow. Swallow!’ And, very red in the face, with tears welling up into his eyes, little Phil would make a terrible effort to swallow the abhorred cud of five minutes’ queasy mastication. The muscles of his throat would heave and ripple, an expression of invincible disgust would distort his small face, there would be an ominous sound of retching. ‘But it’s simply revolting!’ stormed the old man. ‘Swallow!’ His shouting was an almost infallible recipe for making the child sick.
Burdens fell, darkness gave place to light, Marjorie apocalyptically understood all the symbols of religious literature. For she herself had struggled in the Slough of Despond and had emerged; she too had climbed laboriously and without hope and had suddenly been consoled by a sight of the promised land.
‘All these phrases used to sound so conventional and meaninglessly pious,’ she said to Mrs. Quarles. ‘But now I see they’re just descriptions of facts.’
Mrs. Quarles nodded. ‘Bad descriptions, because the facts are indescribable. But if you’ve had personal experience of them, you can see what the symbols are driving at.’
‘Do you know the Black Country?’ said Marjorie. ‘I feel as though I’d come out of one of those mining towns on to the moors. Out into the great open spaces,’ she added in her earnest, rather drawlingly childish voice. (The voice, Mrs. Quarles couldn’t help thinking, and repented immediately of the thought—for after all the poor girl couldn’t help her voice—made the great open spaces seem curiously stuffy.) ‘And when I look back, the black town seems so small and insignificant compared with the space and the enormous sky. As though one were looking at it through the wrong end of a pair of field-glasses.’
Mrs. Quarles frowned slightly. ‘Not so insignificant as all that,’ she said. ‘For after all, there are people living in the town, however black it may be. And the wrong end of the field-glasses is the wrong end. One isn’t meant to look at things so that they appear small and insignificant. That’s one of the dangers of getting out under the sky; one’s too apt to think of the towns and the people in them as small and remote and unimportant. But they aren’t, Marjorie. And it’s the business of the lucky ones who have got out into the open to help the others to come too.’ She frowned again, at herself this time; she hated anything like preaching. But Marjorie mustn’t imagine herself superior, promoted out of the world. ‘How’s Walter?’ she asked with an irrelevance that was no irrelevance. ‘How are you getting on together now?’
‘The same as ever,’ said Marjorie. The admission, a few weeks ago, would have made her utterly wretched. But now even Walter had begun to seem small and rather remote. She loved him still, of course; but somehow through the wrong end of the field-glasses. Through the right end she saw only God and Jesus; they loomed overwhelmingly large.
Mrs. Quarles looked at her, and an expression of sadness passed quickly over her sensitive face. ‘Poor Walter!’ she said.
‘Yes, I’m sorry for him too,’ said Marjorie. There was silence.
Old Dr. Fisher had told her to come and report progress every few weeks, and Marjorie took advantage of that Wednesday’s cheap excursion tickets to run up to town, do some necessary shopping and tell the doctor how well she felt.
‘You look it too,’ said Dr. Fisher, peering at her first through his spectacles, then over the top of them. ‘Extraordinarily much better than when you were here last. It often happens in the fourth month,’ he went on to explain. Dr. Fisher liked to make his patients take an intelligent interest in their own physiology. ‘Health improves. So do spirits. It’s the body settling down to the new state of affairs. The changes in the circulation no doubt have something to do with it. The foetal heart begins to beat about this time. I’ve known cases of neurasthenic women who wanted to have one baby after another, as quick as ever it could be managed. Pregnancy was the only thing that could cure them of their melancholy and obsessions. How little as yet we understand about the relations between body and mind!’
Marjorie smiled and said nothing. Dr. Fisher was an angel, one of the best and kindest men in the whole world. But there were things he understood even less of than the relations between body and mind. What did he understand about God, for example? What did he understand about the soul and its mystical communion with spiritual powers? Poor Dr. Fisher! All that he could talk about was the fourth month of pregnancy and the foetal heart. She smiled inwardly, feeling a kind of pity for the old man.
Burlap that morning was affectionate. ‘Old man,’ he said, laying a hand on Walter’s shoulder,’shouldn’t we go out and eat a chop together somewhere?’ He gave Walter’s shoulder a little squeeze and smiled down at him with the wistful enigmatic tenderness of one of Sodoma’s saints.
‘Alas,’ said Walter, trying to simulate an answering affection,’ I’m lunching with a man at the other end of London.’ It was a lie; but he couldn’t face the prospect of an hour with Burlap in a Fleet Street chophouse. Besides, he wanted to see if there was a letter from Lucy waiting for him at the club. He looked at his watch. ‘Lord!’ he added, not wishing to prolong the conversation with Burlap, ‘I must be off.’
Outside it was raining. The umbrellas were like black mushrooms that had suddenly sprouted from the mud. Gloomy, gloomy. In Madrid the sunshine would be ferocious. ‘But I love the heat,’ she had said. ‘I blossom in ovens.’ He had imagined Spanish nights, dark and hot, and her body pale in the starlight, a ghost, but tangible and warm; and love as patient and relentless as hatred, and possessions like slow murder. His imaginations had justified every conceivable lie and outrage. It mattered not what might be done or left undone, provided the imaginations were realized. He had prepared the ground, he had invented a series of elaborate lies, one set for Burlap, another for Marjorie; he had made enquiries about the price of tickets, he had arranged for an overdraft at the bank. And then came Lucy’s letter with the news that she had changed her mind. She was going to stay in Paris. Why? There was only one possible reason. His jealousy, his disappointment; his humiliation had overflowed into six pages of reproach and fury.
‘Any letters?’ he asked offhandedly of the porter as he entered the club. His tone was meant to imply that he expected nothing more interesting than a publisher’s circular or a philanthropic offer to lend five thousand pounds without security. The porter handed him the familiar yellow envelope. He tore it open and unfolded three sheets of pencilled scribble. ‘Quai Voltaire. Monday.’ He pored over the writing. It was almost as difficult to read as an ancient manuscript. ‘Why do you always write to me in pencil?’ He remembered Cuthbert Arkwright’s question and her answer. ‘I’ll kiss the ink away,’ he had replied. The lout! Walter entered the dining-room and ordered his lunch. Between the mouthfuls he deciphered Lucy’s letter. ‘Quai Voltaire. Insufferable, your letter.
Once and for all, I refuse to be cursed at or whined at; I simply won’t be reproached, or condemned. I do what I like and I don’t admit anybody’s right to call my doings into question. Last week I thought it would be amusing to go to Madrid with you; this week I don’t. If my changing my mind has put you to any inconvenience, I’m sorry. But I’m not in the least apologetic for having changed my mind, and if you think your howlings and jealousies make me feel sorry for you, you’re much mistaken. They’re intolerable, they’re inexcusable. Do you really want to know why I’m not leaving Paris? Very well. “I suppose you’ve found some man you like more than me.” Marvellous, my dear Holmes! And guess where I found him? In the street. Strolling along the Boulevard Saint-Germain, looking at the bookshops. I noticed I was being followed from window to window by a young man. I liked his looks. Very black, with an olive skin, rather Roman, no taller than I. At the fourth window he began to talk to me in extraordinary French, with accents on all the mute E’s. “Ma Lei e italiano.” He was; huge delight. “Parla italiano?” And he began pouring out
