The Rise of Henry Morcar (24 page)

For the children, what deep thoughts went on in their young minds he could not know, but they soon called him Uncle Harry and treated him as a very present help in trouble, a staunch friend who could be relied on to take their side.

That Christina should feel him always at her hand to help her, a comforting, sustaining presence, was Morcar's aim. “This will be better perhaps,” he said mildly, adjusting the position of a lamp or the angle of a chair. “We can easily telephone,” said Morcar when some difficulty arose and Harington's anger threatened: “We can run over and fetch it—we can have it sent by rail—I can drop round and change the tickets in the morning.” Harington's surface manners to his wife were of course those of a gentleman; he never omitted to rise when she rose, to open doors, to carry coats, to give her precedence; he taught his son to do the same under threat of fearful penalties and reviled (at considerable length) the low-bred behaviour of all who did otherwise. But he was apt to emerge from the small room downstairs used as his study and shout: “Christina!” and when she hurried to him to discover that he wanted a sheet of notepaper from the bureau or an invitation which was staring him in the face over his mantelpiece. Morcar intervened whenever he could to spare Christina the tasks which her husband's egoism thus dumped on her, against which her nature was too generous to rebel. She grew, he hoped and believed, to rely on him when he was present, turning quickly towards him in any difficulty, without ever asking for his help or admitting that she needed it. This situation, where Morcar was half in her confidence, half out, was unlikely to last, and Morcar did not intend that it should; it would come to all or nothing in the way of confidence between them, and he meant it should be all.

One of the familiar scenes of Harington's exacting temper gave him the chance he wished. It was winter and during the
children's term-time; the Haringtons were entertaining guests for cocktails; Morcar, arriving early for the party by request, found the maid wearing an embarrassed air. He stood waiting while she hung his coat in the closet, taking as it seemed an unconscionable time about this simple act; then the sound of voices from upstairs told him what was wrong. He went up swiftly, and found that some error over the drinks had excited Harington's rage. He was scolding furiously; Christina, trying to soothe, succeeded only in adding fuel to the flames. Even as Morcar entered, the doorbell rang below. A look of deepened misery flashed across Christina's lovely face. Morcar had a moment's view of what it must mean to a woman to have guests arriving in her home while her husband raged. The social exposure imminent in such a situation must be hell to her.

“Hullo, Edward, good-evening, Christina,” said Morcar briskly, affecting to notice nothing strained in their manner. “I'm first, but only just, I gather; two legal luminaries are on my heels.”

Harington's face changed at once; an ambitious man, he was exceedingly susceptible to the good opinion of his professional colleagues. He put on a host's countenance and greeted his guests with suave affability, and the party, a large one flowing into every room, passed off well. Towards its close, Morcar found an opportunity to ask whether he and Christina would come out and dine, in view of the disruption which parties inevitably caused in domestic arrangements. Harington accepted, provided Morcar could wait awhile; he thought of taking a cottage in Cornwall for the coming summer from one of his colleagues then present, with whom he wished to begin preliminary negotiations. When all the guests save this one had gone, Harington withdrew with him into the study, and Morcar went upstairs to Christina.

She was alone in the room, standing by the fire, her arms outstretched to the mantelpiece, her dark head bowed. In that pose, her long filmy black draperies flowing about her, she looked weighted down with griefs too heavy for her strength, and Morcar's heart swelled with pity.

“Christina.”

“Oh—Harry. You startled me,” said Christina, at once changing her pose. She turned to him, spoke in a cheerful tone and smiled, but Morcar saw that tears stood in her blue eyes. “Have another drink? A cigarette?”

“You needn't put on your party face for me,” said Morcar.

Christina raised her eyebrows. “I wasn't aware of doing so,” she said haughtily. Her lips quivered, however.

“Don't try to hide from me, Christina,” said Morcar. “I understand—I understand everything. You're very unhappy. If only I could do something to help you, my dear. But at least you needn't trouble to hide from me. You can trust me.”

Christina stood silent, her eyes averted. She stooped and snatched a cigarette, tapping it nervously against her hand. Morcar held a match for her.

“Is it so obvious to you?” said Christina suddenly. “My unhappiness, I mean? It's a nightmare to me to feel that people in the street look at me and say: ‘That woman's unhappy in her marriage.' I feel ashamed. You won't understand that. It's a woman's feeling.”

“On the contrary I understand it perfectly,” said Morcar grimly. “For years I've felt that way myself.”

“You?” said Christina, astonished. Her beautiful face changed on an instant, softening from lines of wretchedness to her customary lovely look of sympathy, compassion. “Are you unhappily married, Harry?” she said softly. “I'm so sorry. I didn't know.” She looked round, sank to a chintz-covered settee, threw away her cigarette. “Tell me,” she said.

Then Morcar, seating himself beside her, looking away, leaning forward, clasping his hands between his knees, told her about his wife. His words poured out, incoherent, jerky, commonplace, but revealing. As he spoke, it struck him that he had never told anyone, anyone at all, anyone in the world, of the true reason for his separation from Winnie. After a silence of almost ten years, it was an infinite release to speak of it, and yet an agony; he suffered in the telling, his muscles twitched, his body was drenched with sweat. “I've never seen her from that day to this. ‘He's not your son,' she said, ‘he's not your child. Don't you understand, he's not your child.' I've never known whose child he was,” said Morcar, turning to Christina. “I couldn't bring a divorce suit—or, at least, I felt I couldn't,” he amended: “Because of her brother, Charlie. My friend. My lifelong friend. I've never known whose child he was. At first I used to look in every man's face to see if there was a likeness. I still do sometimes. I've never known. Not even guessed. Charlie was killed in the war. We were on patrol together. I've never seen her from that day to this.”

The sorry story was ended, and he fell silent. Christina did not speak.

“So you see,” said Morcar after a while, making an effort to sound normal, looking down casually at his hands: “About feeling ashamed of being unhappy—wanting to conceal it—I understand.”

“Poor children!” exclaimed Christina.

Morcar was astonished. At first he could not fathom her meaning, turned to her questioningly. Her blue eyes, veiled in tears, the whole curve of her body, her woman's nature, seemed to offer him such a soft and loving sympathy that he could hardly restrain himself from kneeling before her and burying his face in her hands.

“Poor children,” repeated Christina softly.

This time Morcar understood. “Yes, I expect that's just what we were,” he said, soberly considering. “Children. We knew nothing of life. Winnie had lived in such a narrow restricted kind of way, you know. I see that now. Uneducated. Ignorant. She left school at fourteen. I was ignorant too, in spite of my war service. Just a raw lad.”

“You didn't think of forgiving her, Harry?”

“Somehow it never entered my head. Besides,” continued Morcar—with difficulty, for this was the last, the deepest, the unforgivable wound: “She didn't want me to forgive her, you know.”

“I'm so sorry,” said Christina. She dropped the words out slowly and softly.

“You at least have your children,” said Morcar, not without bitterness. “They should console you.”

“Yes, oh yes!” cried Christina with her lovely smile. “Yes, indeed!” She added in a whisper, turning away her head as though it was not for him to hear: “But it's their happiness I'm afraid for.”

“Count on me for help—for friendship,” said Morcar earnestly. He dared not say: “For love,” but added: “For anything you like and need.”

“I will,” said Christina. She smiled, rose, and as he stood up, offered him her hand. “It's a promise,” she said. “If you will promise me to believe that you have a home with us.”

“I promise,” said Morcar.

After that day confidence was complete between them; they felt themselves in a sense companions in misfortune. Gradually they told each other all their histories. Morcar spoke of his parents, his cloths, Mr. Shaw, Daisy Mills, Winnie, Charlie; Christina spoke of her able and brilliant father, very dearly loved, of her happy childhood in Bersing, her schooldays happy in learning, of her father's death in India, and Edward's elder brother. It was clear to Morcar that Christina had loved this brother (drowned at Jutland) though perhaps she was too young then to know it. Edward arriving back on leave from France with all the prestige of heroism and danger just after her
father's death, urging her to abandon her scholarship to Somer-ville and marry him, marry him, had called out all her generous responsiveness, and given direction, as she had thought then with schoolgirl earnestness, to a life lost in a maze of grief. On her side, Christina indicated to Morcar her conviction that he had never loved Winnie as a lover should, but only as a brother. Morcar smiled a trifle grimly when she laid this idea before him; he knew its truth so well, so very well, now, for his love for Christina had taught it to him.

During the following summer the Haringtons rented for some months the Cornish cottage of which mention had first been made at their cocktail party. Morcar shared this expense with them, and came to the remote little village by the sea for a couple of weeks in August and as many weekends as he could conveniently spare. The result of this life in common was to rouse in him a mingled pity and desire for Christina which he found intolerable. On the one hand the holiday offered, as holidays are apt to do, innumerable opportunities for irritation to Harington. The Harington car broke down—in Morcar's opinion Harington was a wretched driver; he expected miracles from his machine and wrenched angrily at the wheel when they were not accomplished. The express bringing Edwin part-way on his cross-country journey was late, and minor inconveniences resulted. The cottage—really a house—which Morcar thought charming, stood on the flank of a steep hill, so that to return to it was always tiring. The domestic labour was variable in quantity and quality, and Christina's housekeeping, always a little sketchy (at least by the solid north-country standards to which Morcar was accustomed), suffered in consequence. The bathing pool, a natural hollow in the rocks, was too small for Harington to display his diving talents. The weather was too calm for the sailing in which he and his son delighted, and the sky too vacantly blue to make good background for his photographs. Jennifer did not win the children's tennis tournament in the seaside resort along the coast, as her father had expected, observing calmly, when reproached, that her victorious opponent had won because she played better. The weather was a blaze of sunshine, the high cliffs sheltered the village from any land breeze; Harington's fair skin suffered from acute sunburn and his temper was equally irritated. As usual when Christina was bowed beneath her tyrant's verbal lash, Morcar's pity, his wish to rescue, to defend, burned within him.

On the other hand, the romantic little harbour, haunt of artists, was of a singular and most bewitching beauty, a beauty which strangely matched Christina's own. The towering hills sweeping down in grace and strength to the white-sanded coves,
the black rocks, the blue sea, the misty aureole which encircled the pier lantern, rosy in the twilight—all these seemed designed to stress by repetition Christina's dark curls, her blue eyes, her milk-white skin and rich carmine mouth. Morcar and Christina were together all day, sometimes in company, sometimes alone; he helped her over rocks, down fern-grown paths, into rocking boats, through the white surf of breaking blue waves; they leaned over the bridge together, walked through gorse among the blue butterflies. The sun blazed down; Christina went hatless in thin light frocks. They talked continually; he touched her hand a hundred times a day. Cornwall seemed a very long way from Annotsfield; the Cornish fisher-folk with their lilting speech seemed to make this an earlier, more primitive, remote and romantic world. Jumping Jennifer down from a high jagged boulder as they clambered down towards a cave, she fell into his arms and Morcar kissed her, the child hugging him in return warmly. When it came to Christina's turn down the boulder he kissed her lightly too.

“Harry!” laughed Christina rebukingly, in the tone she used to the children when they made a forgiveable
gaffe
which however must not occur again. “Dear me!” She ran away across the beach and kneeling, became very busy about their picnic tea.

Morcar with the touch of her lips on his knew that he could not leave Cornwall without making her his own.

For the next few days she seemed to avoid him, which maddened him yet gave him a subtle pleasure; she knew of his love, he argued, her avoidance was a recognition of its power. If her eyes met his, his burning heavy glance left her surely in no doubt of his feeling. Embarrassment, consciousness, grew between them, as Morcar meant it should; Christina looked down at his approach, she spoke to him unevenly; for his part he haunted her path so that she found him at every turning, silent and sombre.

On the last night before Morcar's departure an entertainment was given in the village by visitors. The two children were eager to go to this, for entertainments were rare in the quiet little place; they had been promised the treat and tickets had been bought. Christina however at the last moment excused herself. It had been a trying day; Edwin, entrusted with the printing of some recent negatives, had allowed them to become too dark; Jenny, commanded by her father to eschew the society of some children whom he thought not quite the thing, had been seen playing with them in a nearby cove, and when scolded had replied calmly that they were nice children and she liked them. A highly uncomfortable scene had followed this, for Jenny, usually calm
and happy in disposition, was when roused as fierce and stubborn as her father. Harington, as always when you stood up to him, reflected Morcar, was defeated and retired abashed; later he became positively genial and actually helped to set the table for the evening meal, the day being one when no domestic help was available. But Christina did not recover so easily; she looked white and tired and said with more determination than usual that she meant to stay at home. Morcar suspected that she was at the end of her endurance and meant to give herself the relief of tears.