It was impossible. Horatio dropped the letter onto the table and stared at the whorl of peonies that ran up the wallpaper. He must write to Agatha; hard as she was, surely she would be reasonable, for this was condemning a human being to death. People had no imagination. If they had they would project themselves into the lives of others; then there would be neither battle nor ugliness. His wife had always been so good to the woman; he could see Margaret now sitting behind the square, white teapot and saying, “Aggie’s got another of her attacks. Do you think, dear, you could manage for lunch? Good, then I’ll pop over and see what I can do.” Slaved, she had, his dear Margaret, with never a word of thanks.
There had always been the barrier of money, whether they spoke of it or not. Agatha, and he scribbled her face, her mean little eyes on the edge of the envelope, had resented every gift he had made to his wife. “What about a rainy day?” she had cackled that last birthday when he had brought Margaret a gay little parasol with poppies all over it. He suspected he had heard her murmuring something about “old junk” when she went through the studio. We had a gracious life together, Horatio thought, and if Margaret’s last illness had eaten up any funds they had had, he regretted nothing. “I regret nothing!” He said it aloud and fiercely to the wallpaper and the blacked-out window. He would be earning now, his hand was extraordinarily steady, if it were not for popular taste.
“I am glad my dear Margaret has been spared this.” He wrote the sentence firmly under the sketch of Agatha. Perhaps Miss Johnson would write to him? He saw thin notepaper: “My dear Mr. Rashleigh, What a pleasant surprise to receive your letter in these troubled days. My mother used to speak of you and I have often wondered about you for somehow your address was mislaid. Do you remember the delightful water colour you once painted of our lupines? It is still here, in the same place, hanging over the piano. Now I know where you live, but to think that you are in London! Dear Mr. Rashleigh, if you will permit a stranger but I hope a friend to chide you, is it a place for a painter in wartime? They have evacuated a school to our village and artists are, they say, like children. Will you not accept the hospitality of our little home for the duration? We have no car, of course, but I have got out the pony cart, quite a museum piece, so with a wire I shall be at the station. You must get away from those horrible bombs.”
What a triumph it would be! After a few days he would write to Agatha, “Here in this peaceful seclusion where kind friends prevent even the news of war coming to my ears, I want to reply to your letter. It was a shock, I confess it was a shock, less because your allowance was insurance and not pocket money, than because of your uncousinly disregard of my welfare. In these difficult days the ties of relationship should be doubly knit, but it has been given to a patron of my art to look after me in the evening of my life. I am well, I am happy and painting as never before, with all my old enthusiasm and love of my drawing. And I have the sympathy of very dear ladies for having been so disparagingly treated. I will, therefore, say farewell as it will be unnecessary to continue this correspondence.”
The tiny clock on the mantelpiece struck six. He ought to light the fire, but Horatio felt that he could not pull himself out of the chair. His legs were stiff, he huddled under the rug, shivering in the faint light of the bulb overhead. Perhaps Miss Johnson had gone away? She might never answer his letter, and then what would he do? First the calendar firm had refused a batch of drawings, then their works had been burnt out in the first days of September. Nobody wanted art any more. Only canvases centuries old, buried in museum cellars. He would die in this weather if they turned him out of the attic. Miss Tippett would help him if she could, but her partner, that frightful woman, grudged him even a pennyworth of care. Every moment was so precious. Every second brought him nearer to that blank, inexorable moment when … but he could not name it, nightmare would triumph and he would not wake to see the sun shining in at his window. He looked miserably at the wedge of wallpaper beside the fireplace, and there in the crack a face was jeering at him; no, of course it was imagination; it was being angry, and he could hear his wife’s voice: “Now, Horatio, you mustn’t get upset, it makes you talk in your sleep!” The raids are less, he thought in surprise, than being reminded of that awful time when the neighbour’s children had rolled him in the dust and sat on his head. The helpless fury, the wild terror of suffocation had remained more vivid (strange, how disagreeable things stuck in one’s memory) than his first picture of any of his youthful triumphs. He had always loved trees and hated forests, for it was in the little wood behind the garden that his disgrace had happened.
Lawless, that
