The Judas Tree (29 page)

‘Dearest Kathy.' He bent towards her. ‘If it is upsetting you, we will leave.'

‘No, no,' she protested chokingly. ‘It's sad but it's wonderful. And I must see what happens. Just lend me your handkerchief, mine is useless now. Thank you, dear, dear David – you are so kind. Oh, that poor, sweet girl. That any man could be so inhuman, so – so beastly.' Her voice failed, yet she willed herself to be composed.

Indeed, during the third act, rising through unbearable pathos to the final shattering tragedy, she retained control. When the curtain fell and he dared look towards her she was not weeping, but her head had fallen forward on her breast, as though she could endure no more.

They left the theatre. Still overcome, she did not speak until they were in their taxi; then, secure from observation, she said, in a muffled voice:

‘I shall never forget this evening … never …'

He chose his words carefully.

‘I knew you had feeling, a great capacity for emotion. I hoped you would be moved.'

‘Oh, I was, I was.… And the best thing of all, dear David, was seeing it with you.'

No more than that, but enough for him to sense through her still quivering nerves a melting softness towards him. Silently, gently questing in the closed intimacy of the cab, he took her small hand in his.

She did not withdraw it. What had happened to her? Nothing, ever, like this, before. Oh, she had naturally had attentions paid her. While attending her nursing classes, a student at the University, working for his M.A. degree, had been strongly attracted to her. She had not responded. At the hospital during the previous Christmas festivities, the young asistant doctor had tried to kiss her under the mistletoe, succeeding only in clumsily reaching her left ear. She had passed off the attempt with indifference, and refused, later, when he asked her to go to the New Year's dance. She knew herself to be a serious-minded person, not interested in young men, sharing indeed her mother's view, so often forced upon her until it had become her own, that they were brash, inconsiderate and undependable.

But David was none of these things, instead his qualities were exactly opposite. And his maturity, oddly reassuring, had from the first appealed to her. He was still holding her hand, quietly and soothingly, as they reached the hotel. Nor did he relinquish it then. The night concierge was half asleep at his desk as they entered and took the lift to their floor. In the corridor he paused, opened the door of their sitting-room, conscious of a quick thread of pulse in her imprisoned fingers, his own heart beating fast.

‘I ordered hot chocolate to be left for us. It would restore you, dearest Kathy.'

‘No.' Half turned away from him, she shook her head. ‘Nothing… please.'

‘You're still upset. I can scarcely bear to let you go.'

He led her, unresisting, into the room where, as he had said, a Thermos jug, with fruit and sandwiches covered by a napkin, had been placed upon the table. The room was faintly lit by a single shaded light that cast a soft glow on the carpet while the walls remained in shadow, and they too were in shadow as they faced each other.

‘Dearest Kathy,' he said again. ‘ What can I say? What can I do for you?'

Still not looking at him, she answered in a stifled voice.

‘I'll be all right in the morning.'

‘It's almost morning now,' he reasoned gently, despite his pounding blood, ‘and you're not all right. What really is the matter?'

‘Nothing, nothing … I don't know. I feel lost somehow. I've never been like this before – sad and happy at the same time.'

‘But how can you be lost when you're with me?'

‘Oh, I know, I know,' she admitted, then hurried inarticulately on. ‘ That wretched man has made me see how different – but that's just the trouble. You're so …'. She broke off, tears coursing afresh down her cheeks.

Her head was bowed, but placing his fingers beneath her chin he raised her tear-stained face so that they looked into each other's eyes.

‘Kathy darling,' he murmured in a tone of ultimate tenderness, ‘I'm in love with you. And I believe that you love me.'

Bending, he kissed her upturned fresh young lips, innocent of make-up – which he abominated – and deliciously salt from her tears. The next instant, with a gulping sob, she was closely in his arms, her wet flushed cheek pressed hard against his breast.

‘David – dearest David.'

But it was only for a moment. With a cry she broke away.

‘It's no use – no use at all. I should have known it from the beginning.'

‘But why, Kathy? We love each other.'

‘How can we love each other three thousand miles away? You know I'm going away. We'd only break our hearts. Mine is breaking now.'

‘You could stay, Kathy?'

‘Never – it's impossible.'

He had caught her wrist, to keep her from flying to her room. Still straining away from him like a captive bird, she went on wildly.

‘I must go. All my life. I've been preparing for that one thing – training as a nurse, getting experience at Dalhaven. I've thought of nothing else. I'm needed out there.… Uncle Willie expects it.… Most of all, I promised Mother before she died that I would go, and I would never fail her, never.'

‘Don't, Kathy,' he cut in, fearfully. ‘For God's sake – you mustn't do it.'

‘I must do it for God's sake … for both our sakes.'

She freed herself and, half running towards her room, was gone.

He stared painfully at the closed door. Resisting an impulse to follow her, he began to pace the soft piled carpet in a state of acute agitation. Yet, with the imprint of her soft lips still lingering on his, gradually his distress passed and his main feeling became one of joy. She loved him, utterly, unmistakably, with all her heart. Nothing else mattered. There were difficulties in the way, but they could be overcome. He must, and would, persuade her. Anything else was unthinkable. At all costs he would have her.

Suddenly he felt strong, filled with vigour, and an immense potentiality for love. Hungry, too, As his eye fell upon the good things on the table, he became conscious of the hours that had elapsed since dinner – and the meal had not been notably substantial. Seating himself, he poured the chocolate, still steaming hot, folded back the napkin and began the sandwiches. Ah! Caviar, and the real Beluga, too. Absently, yet with relish, he scoffed the lot.

He had forecast snow in Switzerland and, as though confirming his infallibility, snow had greeted them – an early, light covering that had frozen hard and now lay glittering under cobalt skies. For almost a week they had been in Schwansee, rigidly conforming to the covenant of restraint which, as a condition of her coming, she had obliged him to accept. Throughout this horrid stalemate of emotion, in a frantic effort to sway her, he had made simplicity and calm the order of the day. Their too theatrical welcome by Arturo and Elena had been quickly suppressed, staidness imposed, and plain meals commanded, served with an absence of formality. Straining to demonstrate the desirability of his picturesque landscape, he took her walking every afternoon in the crisp, tingling air: excursions, conducted mainly in silence, which brought them into the white foothills of the Alps, seen above as soaring pinnacles made rosy by the rising and setting of the sun. In the evenings, seated in the library on either side of the crackling log fire, tired less from their long outings than from persistent strain, he gave her a programme of his records – selecting mainly Handel, Bach, Mozart – which, rising from time, to time, he played upon the stereophonic radiogram, its varnished mahogany skilfully concealed in his lacquer Coromandel cabinet. No one knew of his return, there were no intrusive visitors, no distractions, just themselves alone.

How idyllic under normal circumstances such an existence would have been. But, alas, beneath that superficial control a bowstring tension quivered insufferably with, for him, a rankling sensation of frustration and defeat. With all his charm and subtlety he had tried to dissuade her from her intention to desert him, and he had failed. Persuasion and argument alike had proved futile. And time was flying – indeed, had flown. She must leave when Willie arrived in three days' time.

This inflexibility in one so young, untried and inexperienced, remained for him a perpetual source, not of anguish alone, but of stupefaction. It was not as though she did not love him. Every hour of the day presented him with evidence of her suffering through the constant suppression of her natural desires. Now when he accidentally touched her hand, as in passing a dish at table, the tremor that ran through her was physically perceptible. And how often, when she thought herself unobserved, had he surprised her glance bent upon him, charged with longing, with all the sad hunger of the heart.

One morning, although visitors were proscribed, he had felt be must introduce her to his two little friends, the children of the pier-master. So Hans and Suzy were summoned, introduced, and given ‘elevenses' of cherry cake and orangeade. Afterwards all four had gone into the garden to make a snow-man from a drift blown against the thick bole of the Judas tree. This snow, beneath its hard crust, was soft and malleable, and he tied back the swing he had put up for them last summer, so they could get at it. What fun the children had, what shouts of glee, what rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes! Watching them, he had said to her, almost curtly:

‘Wouldn't you like to have children like these?'

She had flushed, then paled as from a sudden hurt.

‘They are sweet.' She avoided his question. ‘ So completely natural and unspoiled.'

Why – why – why should she refuse his love, the children he could give her, and all the immense advantages of his wealth and position? Above all, what could the alternative offer? That same afternoon, when they took their favourite walk along the high ridge of the Riesenthal, he kept asking himself these questions with a kind of brooding, desperate despondency induced for the first time by a gleam, a breaking through so to speak, a compelled recognition that there
must
be something in her point of view. And although a truce had been declared between them, as they strode along the high path between the silver-dusted pine trees he could hold back no longer.

‘Dearest Kathy, I've no wish to reopen our wounds, but it would help to – to soothe mine, if only I could get a fuller understanding of your motives. Are you leaving me mainly because you have pledged your word?'

‘Partly for that reason,' she answered, walking with lowered head. ‘ But also for another.'

‘What other?'

‘As I told you, because of what I believe is demanded of all of us. We're living at a terrible time, David. We just seem to be drifting towards self-destruction, moral and physical. Beneath the surface we're all terrified. Yet the world keeps moving away from God. We'll never get through unless everyone, every single person does something about it, each his own part, no matter how small. Oh, I'm not clever, but it's so obvious, what Uncle Willie says – that we must prove love is stronger than hatred – show that courage, self-denial, and above all charity, can defeat brutality, selfishness and fear.'

Mentally he had made the state of the world taboo, except to reflect that
it would see him out.
But in spite of this he was impressed – who wouldn't have been by such ingenuous fervour?

‘So because of your ideas of – of duty and service, you condemn yourself to a life of hardship and misery.'

‘Misery?' Quickly she raised her head in protest. ‘You can't imagine the personal rewards of such a life.'

‘A life of self-sacrifice.'

‘It's the only way life can be lived. Nowadays especially.'

‘You can't be serious.'

‘I was never more in earnest. Wait till you see Uncle Willie. He's had what you might think of as a miserable time, and a great deal of illness, but he's the happiest person in the world.'

He was silent. This hitherto had been beyond him, something outside his conception of life. Could one really be happy out there,
doing good
, in that confounded wilderness? He asked himself the question with a sense of growing agitation.

‘And there's more than happiness,' she went on, with difficulty, still striving to express herself. ‘ There's contentment and peace of mind and a sense of accomplishment. One can never get these by enjoying oneself, by running after pleasure all the time, shutting one's eyes to the agony of others. And they certainly can't be bought. But if one does a really fine job, something to benefit other people – people in need … Oh, I'm no good at explaining things, but surely you understand what I mean …'. She broke off. ‘ If you had practised as a doctor you would know … and I think – please forgive me, David – I'm sure you would have been a much happier man.'

Again he kept silence, biting his lip, and switching with his steel-pointed stick at the iced lumps of snow turned back by the passage of farm wagons. She was enunciating, naively, a humanitarian cliché. And yet, wasn't there more than a grain of truth in what she said? In the pursuit of the rewards of this world, had he found anything but heartache, ennui, recurrent dissatisfactions and regrets, and a bunch of neurotic complexes which had more than once brought him to the verge of a breakdown?

‘Dear Kathy!' With sudden self-pity and a rush of sentiment. ‘I've always wanted to be good, and to do good, but circumstances have been too much for me.'

‘You are good,' she said earnestly. ‘It's – it's looking out of your face. You only need the opportunity to prove it to yourself.'

‘Do you honestly believe that?'

‘With all my heart.'

‘My God, Kathy – if you knew what my life had been, what I've endured until … well, virtually, until I met you.' Emotionally, he went on: ‘As a young man, in India, trapped – yes, literally trapped – into a disastrous marriage and then, for years, the American treadmill, trying to get on … on … on, finding some refuge in the arts, but only a temporary respite, make-believe, really never achieving true satisfaction though deluding myself that I had. It all springs from my poor unwanted childhood. The whole tree of my life, roots, stem, and branch, was formed then. I've been told,' he refrained from mentioning Wilenski, ‘I know it too, all my present being comes from those early years when I had nobody but myself.'