第9章

He glanced up at her as she came in, and looked pleased. He had some books and papers in front of him and had been busily writing.

By now Flora was really cross. Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation? Here was an occasion, she thought, for indulging in that deliberate rudeness which only persons with habitually good manners have the right to commit; she sat down at a table with her back to the supposed Mr Mybug, picked up a menu which had gnomes painted on it, and hoped for the best …

A waitress in a long frilly chintz dress which needed ironing had brought her some coffee, some plain biscuits and an orange, which she had dressed with sugar and was now enjoying. The waitress had warned her that we were closed, but as this did not seem to prevent Flora sitting in the shop and enjoying her sugared orange, she did not mind if we were.

She was just beginning on her fourth biscuit when she became conscious of a presence approaching her from behind, and before she could collect her faculties the voice of Mr Mybug said:

‘Hullo, Flora Poste. Do you believe that women have souls?’ And there he was, standing above her and looking down at her with a bold yet whimsical smile.

Flora was not surprised at being asked this question. She knew that intellectuals, like Mr Kipling’s Bi-coloured Python-Rock-Snake, always talked like this. So she replied pleasantly, but from her heart: ‘I am afraid I’m not very interested.’

Mr Mybug gave a short laugh. Evidently he was pleased. She spooned out some more orange juice and wondered why.

‘Aren’t you? Good girl … we shall be all right if only you’ll be frank with me. As a matter of fact, I’m not very interested in whether they have souls either. Bodies matter more than souls. I say, may I sit down? You do remember me, don’t you? We met at the Polswetts in October. Look here, you don’t think this is butting in or anything, do you? The Polswetts told me you were staying down here, and I wondered if I should run into you. Do you know Billie Polswett well? She’s a charming person, I think … so simple and gay, and such a genius for friendship. He’s charming, too … a bit homo, of course, but quite charming. I say, that orange does look good … I think I’ll have one too. I adore eating things with a spoon. May I sit here?’

‘Do,’ said Flora, seeing that her hour was upon her and that there was no escape.

Mr Mybug sat down and, turning round, beckoned to the waitress, who came and told him that we were closed.

‘I say, that sounds vaguely indelicate,’ laughed Mr Mybug, glancing round at Flora. ‘Well, look here, miss, never mind that. Just bring me an orange and some sugar, will you?’

The waitress went away and Mr Mybug could once more concentrate upon Flora. He leaned his elbows on the table, sunk his chin in his hands, and looked steadily at her. As Flora merely went on eating her orange, he was forced to open the game with, ‘Well?’ (A gambit which Flora, with a sinking heart, recognized as one used by intellectuals who had decided to fall in love with you.)

‘You are writing a book, aren’t you?’ she said, rather hastily. ‘I remember that Mrs Polswett told me you were. Isn’t it a life of Branwell Brontл?’ (She thought it would be best to utilize the information artlessly conveyed to her by Mrs Murther at the Condemn’d Man, and conceal the fact that she had met Mrs Polswett, a protégée of Mrs Smiling’s, only once, and thought her a most trying female.)

‘Yes, it’s going to be dam’ good,’ said Mr Mybug. ‘It’s a psychological study, of course, and I’ve got a lot of new matter, including three letters he wrote to an old aunt in Ireland, Mrs Prunty, during the period when he was working on “Wuthering Heights”.’

He glanced sharply at Flora to see if she would react by a laugh or a stare of blank amazement, but the gentle, interested expression upon her face did not change, so he had to explain:

‘You see, it’s obvious that it’s his book and not Emily’s. No woman could have written that. It’s male stuff … I’ve worked out a theory about his drunkenness, too – you see, he wasn’t really a drunkard. He was a tremendous genius, a sort of second Chatterton – and his sisters hated him because of his genius.’

‘I thought most of the contemporary records agree that his sisters were quite devoted to him,’ said Flora, who was only too pleased to keep the conversation impersonal.

‘I know … I know. But that was only their cunning. You see, they were devoured by jealousy of their brilliant brother, but they were afraid that if they showed it he would go away to London for good, taking his manuscripts with him. And they didn’t want him to do that because it would have spoiled their little game.’

‘Which little game was that?’ asked Flora, trying with some difficulty to imagine Charlotte, Emily and Anne engaged in a little game.

‘Passing his manuscripts off as their own, of course. They wanted to have him under their noses so that they could steal his work and sell it to buy more drink.’

‘Who for – Branwell?’

‘No – for themselves. They were all drunkards, but Anne was the worst of the lot. Branwell, who adored her, used to pretend to get drunk at the Black Bull in order to get gin for Anne. The landlord wouldn’t have let him have it if Branwell hadn’t built up – with what devotion, only God knows – that false reputation as a brilliant, reckless, idle drunkard. The landlord was proud to have young Mr Brontл in his tavern; it attracted custom to the place, and Branwell could get gin for Anne on tick – as much as Anne wanted. Secretly, he worked twelve hours a day writing “Shirley”, and “Villette” – and, of course, “Wuthering Heights”. I’ve proved all this by evidence from the three letters to old Mrs Prunty.’

‘But do the letters,’ enquired Flora, who was fascinated by this recital, ‘actually say that he is writing “Wuthering Heights”?’

‘Of course not,’ retorted Mr Mybug. ‘Look at the question as a psychologist would. Here is a man working fifteen hours a day on a stupendous masterpiece which absorbs almost all his energy. He will scarcely spare the time to eat or sleep. He’s like a dynamo driving itself on its own demoniac vitality. Every scrap of his being is concentrated on finishing “Wuthering Heights”. With what little energy he has left he writes to an old aunt in Ireland. Now, I ask you, would you expect him to mention that he was working on “Wuthering Heights”?’

‘Yes,’ said Flora.

Mr Mybug shook his head violently.

‘No – no – no! Of course he wouldn’t. He’d want to get away from it for a little while, away from this all-obsessing work that was devouring his vitality. Of course he wouldn’t mention it – not even to his aunt.’

‘Why not even to her? Was he so fond of her?’

‘She was the passion of his life,’ said Mr Mybug, simply, with a luminous gravity in his voice. ‘Think – he’d never seen her. She was not like the rest of the drab angular women by whom he was surrounded. She symbolized mystery … woman … the eternal unsolvable and unfindable X. It was a perversion, of course, his passion for her, and that made it all the stronger. All we have left of this fragile, wonderfully delicate relationship between the old woman and the young man are these three short letters. Nothing more.’

‘Didn’t she ever answer them?’

‘If she did, her letters are lost. But his letters to her are enough to go on. They are little masterpieces of repressed passion. They’re full of tender little questions … he asks her how is her rheumatism … has her cat, Toby, “recovered from his fever” … what is the weather like at Derrydownderry … at Haworth it is not so good … how is Cousin Martha (and what a picture we get of Cousin Martha in those simple words, a raw Irish chit, high-cheekboned, with limp black hair and clear blood in her lips!) … It didn’t matter to Branwell that in London the Duke was jockeying Palmerston in the stormy Corn Reforms of the “forties”. Aunt Prunty’s health and welfare came first in interest.’

Mr Mybug paused and refreshed himself with a spoonful of orange juice. Flora sat pondering on what she had just heard. Judging by her personal experience among her friends, it was not the habit of men of genius to refresh themselves from their labours by writing to old aunts; this task, indeed, usually fell to the sisters and wives of men of genius, and it struck Flora as far more likely that Charlotte, Anne or Emily would have had to cope with any old aunts who were clamouring to be written to. However, perhaps Charlotte, Anne and Emily had all decided one morning that it really was Branwell’s turn to write to Aunt Prunty, and had sat on his head in turn while he wrote the three letters, which were afterwards posted at prudently spaced intervals.

She glanced at her watch.

It was half-past eight. She wondered what time the Brethren came out of the dog-kennel. There was no sign of their release so far; the kennel was thundering to their singing, and at intervals there were pauses, during which Flora presumed that they were quivering. She swallowed a tiny yawn. She was sleepy.

‘What are you going to call it?’ she asked.

She knew that intellectuals always made a great fuss about the titles of their books. The titles of biographies were especially important. Had not ‘Victorian Vista’, the scathing life of Thomas Carlyle, dropped stone cold last year from the presses because everybody thought it was a boring book of reminiscences, while ‘Odour of Sanctity’, a rather dull history of Drainage Reform from 1840 to 1873, had sold like hot cakes because everybody thought it was an attack on Victorian morality?

‘I’m hesitating between “Scapegoat: ‘A Study of Branwell Brontл’”, and “Pard-spirit: ‘A Study of Branwell Brontл’” – you know … A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift.’

Flora did indeed know. The quotation was from Shelley’s Adonais. One of the disadvantages of almost universal education was the fact that all kinds of persons acquired a familiarity with one’s favourite writers. It gave one a curious feeling; it was like seeing a drunken stranger wrapped in one’s dressing-gown.

‘Which do you like best?’ asked Mr Mybug.

‘Pard-spirit,’ said Flora, unhesitatingly, not because she did, but because it would only lead to a long and boring argument if she hesitated.

‘Really … that’s interesting. So do I. It’s wilder somehow, isn’t it? I mean, I think it does give one something of the feeling of a wild thing bound down and chained, eh? And Branwell’s colouring carries out the analogy – that wild reddish-leopard colouring. I refer to him as the Pard throughout the book. And then, of course, there’s an undercurrent of symbolism …’

He thinks of everything, reflected Flora.

‘A leopard can’t change its spots, and neither could Branwell, in the end. He might take the blame for his sisters’ drunkenness and let them, out of some perverted sense of sacrifice, claim his books. But in the end his genius has flamed out, blackest spots on richest gold. There isn’t an intelligent person in Europe today who really believes Emily wrote the “Heights”.’

Flora finished her last biscuit, which she had been saving, and looked hopefully across at the dog-kennel. It seemed to her that the hymn now being sung had a sound like the tune of those hymns which are played just before people come out of church.

In the interval of outlining his work, Mr Mybug had been looking at her very steadily, with his chin lowered, and she was not surprised when he said, abruptly:

‘Do you cah about walking?’

Flora was now in a dreadful fix, and earnestly wished that the dog-kennel would open and Amos, like a fiery angel, come to rescue her. For if she said that she adored walking, Mr Mybug would drag her for miles in the rain while he talked about sex, and if she said that she liked it only in moderation, he would make her sit on wet stiles while he tried to kiss her. If, again, she parried his question and said that she loathed walking, he would either suspect that she suspected that he wanted to kiss her, or else he would make her sit in some dire tea-room while he talked more about sex and asked her what she felt about it.

There really seemed no way out of it, except by getting up and rushing out of the shop.

But Mr Mybug spared her this decision by continuing in the same low voice:

‘I thought we might do some walks together, if you’d cah to? I’d better warn you – I’m – pretty susceptible.’

And he gave a curt laugh, still looking sombrely at her.

‘Then perhaps we had better postpone our walks until the weather is finer,’ said she, pleasantly. ‘It would be too bad if your book were held up by your catching a cold, and if you really have a weak chest you cannot be too careful.’

Mr Mybug looked as though he would have given much to have brushed this aside with a brutal laugh. He had planned that his next sentence should be, in an even lower voice:

‘You see, I believe in utter frankness about these things – Flora.’

But somehow he did not say it. He was not used to talking to young women who looked as clean as Flora looked. It rather put him off his stroke. He said instead, in a toneless voice: ‘Yes … oh yes, of course’, and gave her a quick glance.

Flora was pensively drawing on her gauntlets and keeping her glance upon the stream of Brethren now issuing from the dog-kennel. She feared to miss Amos.

Mr Mybug rose abruptly, and stood looking at her with his hands thrust into his pockets.

‘Are you with anybody?’ he asked.

‘My cousin is preaching at the Church of the Quivering Brethren opposite. He is driving me home.’

Mr Mybug murmured his dear, how amusing. He then said:

‘Oh … I thought we might have walked it.’

‘It is seven miles, and I am afraid my shoes are not stout enough,’ countered Flora, firmly.

Mr Mybug gave an ironical smile and muttered something about ‘Check to the King’, but Flora had seen Amos coming out of the kennel and knew that rescue had come, so she did not mind who was checked.

She said, pleasantly, ‘I must go, I am afraid; there is my cousin looking for me. Goodbye, and thank you so much for telling me about your book. It’s been so interesting. Perhaps we shall meet again some time …’

Mr Mybug leapt on this remark, which slipped out unintentionally from Flora’s social armoury, before she could prevent it, and said eagerly that it would be great fun if they could meet again. ‘I’ll give you my card.’ And he brought out a large, dirty, nasty one, which Flora with some reluctance put into her bag.