Free Nuns and Soldiers by Iris Murdoch Page B

this while thinking throughout the whole evening about Gertrude.
    Guy and Gertrude between them had performed some sort of miracle for the Count by introducing him to their ‘set’. The very extension of their generosity made it seem less intense, less in need of definition. What was more natural than that Guy’s discovery, his ‘phenomenon’, should be made welcome, even petted a little? He had not at first wondered, and they had perhaps never thought, just how they saw him: a silent man without a country and without a language, an awkward shy man who had to be jollied into the conversation, a thin pale tall man whose hair might be blond or might be white without anyone caring to determine which. ‘Where did Guy dig up our Count?’ ‘Whatever was he doing before we discovered him?’ These would be perfunctory inquiries. They were infinitely kind to him but they did take him a little too incuriously for granted. They might even take him for a calm man, a placid man! They had rescued him from nonentity, from a narrowing loneliness, and still he remained a shadow in their lives, a footless ghost. Yet all this, which the Count now frequently rehearsed, was unjust. Gertrude and Guy were undemonstrative English people, but they were also unconventional enough to take friendship very seriously. If he was often in their house it was because they often wanted to see him.
    The Count was well aware of the crucial difference between loving someone and being in love. He had loved Guy and Gertrude out of gratitude, out of admiration, out of an amazed pleasure at the sudden welcoming ease of their company. He had now a house to visit, a warm bright significant place, people to see regularly, who were connected with each other and had readily, almost casually, bound him into their company. Then suddenly the absolute preciousness of Gertrude had come upon him in a dazzling transfiguring flash. She was absolutely precious, absolutely necessary. Hitherto his life had had a Polish meaning but no sense. Now Gertrude became the sense of his life, its secret centre. His impoverished soul turned in dumb wonderment to this sudden radiant source. The Count was changed, every particle of his being charged with magnetized emotion. His flesh glowed, his body waked from dull sleep, and quivered. His love endowed his life, every day, every second, with thrilling purpose. It was a happy activity , a little crazed, deeply inherently painful, and yet, as happiness must be, steady, invulnerable, eternal. The situation was impossible, but at the same time it was absolutely secure, and the impossibility and the security and the secrecy were one. He could see Gertrude often, easily, in company. He did not even want to be alone with her. And when accidentally, when he had arrived early or stayed late, they were briefly alone together it was as if they were not alone. He could see Gertrude often, he could go on seeing her often, they were familiar affectionate friends, connected together forever; and yet the barrier between them was as absolute as if he had been her servant. And of course her servant, with joyful brooding pain, he saw himself eternally destined to be. It was moreover also part of the Count’s impossible security that it was inconceivable that he should feel jealous of Guy. He felt no jot of jealousy, even of envy, so high above him was the whole concept of Gertrude’s marriage. It was in a curious and precious sense a remote mystery which did not concern him. He revered Guy as Gertrude’s consort, and continued to love and admire him on his own account. Having Guy as his office chief had transformed his work, his day. Guy, so clever, so cordial, so dotty, had touched and stirred up something in the Count which was becoming dull and selfish and old. And when the Count had stopped being afraid that his clever friend would suddenly drop him, Guy had become a stronghold. That stronghold remained, now become an inextricable part of the