Tom Mitchell had never seen the big man so embarrassed. The childlike look in his eyes was more evident than ever. He stood behind the chair offered to him, refusing to sit down, as if he feared to be drawn into explanations. The lawyer, a small rosy-cheeked old man who was a walking graveyard of family secrets, pulled out a drawer.
‘Ay, weel,’ he said, in an affectedly broad accent, ‘it just happens that Miss Lizzie sent me a letter for you some months syne, with positive instructions that it was not to be given to you unless you speired after her. Man, she must have jaloused that you were going to do it. Or else you must have jaloused that the letter was here. There’s queerer things happens than that.’
John Shand made a step forward.
‘Bide a wee, bide a wee; I’ll find it in a minute. Here we are. To John Shand, Esquire.’
He held out a thin bluish envelope, larger than those usually seen in Calderwick. The same handwriting, said John to himself, as he eagerly snatched the letter. Lizzie always printed her capitals instead of writing them.
‘When did this come, Tom?’ he asked in a casual voice.
‘Nineteenth of July.’
‘And where is she now?’
‘South of France. The address will be inside. Sit down, man, and read it.’
John put the letter in his pocket. As jealous as if it were from his lass, Tom Mitchell remarked to himself. He could feel it there all the way down the street. Dear, dear Lizzie. He had been an unconscionably long time in jalousing the message. Nineteenth of July. And this was the twenty-eighth of November. She might have been in great trouble; it might even be too late now.
He stopped on the pavement, his heart in his mouth, plucked the letter out of the envelope, and read it, standing on the kerb.
‘My dear John, – This is to let you know that I am now made an honest woman of – much against my will, but the man is dying and wouldn’t take no. It’s not Fritz, by the way; I shed Fritz long ago; but it’s another German, a friend of mine for years. I am now Frau Doktor Mütze, which is to say Mrs Doctor Bonnet, so you see although I threw my bonnet over the mill it has come back like a boomerang. I don’t think he can live for more than a month or so. We did it last week. I can’t explain it all now, but I feel that I ought at least to tell you, for I know how much importance you attach to getting married and things like that. But I don’t want you to think I’m proud of it. I don’t want to tell you either, unless you are feeling friendly towards me, so I’ll instruct Tom Mitchell accordingly. Anyhow, there it is. Love from Lizzie. Villa Soleil, Menton.’
John laughed as he crammed the letter back into his pocket without folding it. Mrs Doctor Bonnet. Love from Lizzie. The same old sixpence, he said to himself in glee; the same old sixpence!
In his first exuberance he wrote her the letter of invitation and gummed down the flap of the envelope before he rememberd that her new-made husband might be dead by this time. He checked himself. It was indecent to be so overjoyed if Lizzie were a widow. Yet he could not feel grief-stricken; her being a widow was the best thing that could happen; it would set her free to come home. He tore up that letter, however, and wrote another. When that was in its envelope he took it out at the last minute and added as a postscript: ‘Do come.’ Then he went out to post it himself. Before he slid it into the letterbox he looked again at the superscription, ‘Frau Doktor Mütze’, and grinned like a boy.
Now that the letter was posted he realized how much of himself had gone into it. His heart had not stirred in such secret delight since Lizzie’s disappearance – not even on his wedding-day. Something hidden very deep seemed to have come alive again. He felt like whistling, and he had not whistled for fifteen years, he dared say, yes, fifteen years at least.
I must have been growing old, thought John. That was what growing old meant, saving up one’s energy, no whistling or running or jumping. There was a flight of stone steps leading up to his own front door; he took them in two strides and paused at the top to reflect that Lizzie would certainly push him down again if she were there. What were steps for!
II
Mabel was feeling pettish. For days John had been mooning about as if bewitched, shutting himself up all evening and either looking at her as if she were not there or evading her irritably whenever he came out of the study. One might as well be married to a log. It was a pity John was so old.
Their marital relationship had been well regulated during the two years of their marriage. After John’s first ardours were over she had escaped his embraces except on Sunday mornings when they lay longer in bed. These Sunday-morning embraces now had the sanction of tradition, and Mabel sometimes wondered if John kept them up because they were a tradition. It was a pity John was so old. A woman so well made as she was should have a husband to match her.
She looked up resentfully from her magazine as John came in.
‘Are you going to change?’ she asked.
‘Won’t take me a minute,’ said John, balancing himself on his toes before the fire.
He would break it to her after dinner, he was thinking.
‘You’re growing fat, John. Must do something to take down your tummy.’
‘Am I?’ John looked down at his waistcoat and fingered his beard. Mabel noted with satisfaction that he seemed dashed.
‘Do I look very old, Mabel?’ he asked in a surprisingly humble tone. Mabel’s possessiveness reasserted itself.
‘No, you don’t, darling; you look very dignified, but not old. A little less on the tummy would be an improvement, though.’
‘I’ll do exercises every morning,’ decided John. He still lingered, however, and then brought out the question which had been troubling him.
‘Should I shave my beard off, Mabel, do you think?’
Mabel was astounded. She had never seen him without a beard.
‘I don’t know what you’d look like without it!’ she cried. ‘Oh no, darling. It gives you such a distinguished look.’
John went upstairs to change and as he looked in the glass he could hear Lizzie saying: ‘Saves you washing your neck, doesn’t it?’
He laughed out loud.
If he took off his beard, Mabel was thinking downstairs, I might as well be married to anybody.
She gazed idly at an illustration to the story she was reading. The hero and heroine were standing clasped in each other’s arms, a typical magazine embrace, with the woman swaying backwards and the man masterfully overtopping her. She had a hand on each of his shoulders, pushing him away; when the inevitable kiss came she would enjoy it with a good conscience because of this show of resistance. Mabel’s eye lingered on the picture. It came into her mind that the hero’s shoulders were like Hector’s, and although startled, even shocked, she felt for an infinitesimal space of time that it would be thrilling to stem her hands against Hector’s broad shoulders and push him away with all her strength.
During dinner and afterwards John and Mabel were more talkative than usual. Perhaps they were each trying to atone to the other for a secret feeling of guilt. John found it easy, at any rate, to confess all, or nearly all, of what was in his heart. Mabel, apparently, had nothing to confess.
TWO
On looking at them one could never have told that Hector and John Shand were half-brothers. John resembled his Highland mother; with his big frame and his reddish fair beard he might have been a viking from the Western Isles. Hector was like the Shands; his wrists and ankles were small and sinewy, his hands and feet small