1
Like a river that has gradually risen to flood, until it sweeps
everything before it, so now events rose and gathered in strength
towards their inevitable conclusion. At the end of May Ralph must go to
his mother, who was said to be dying at her house in Brighton. With all
his faults he had been a good son, and the redness of his eyes was
indeed from real tears as he kissed his wife good-bye at the station, on
his way to his dying mother. The next morning he wired that his mother
was dead, but that he could not get home for a couple of weeks. As it
happened, he gave the actual day and hour of his return, so that Angela
knew it.
The relief of his unexpectedly long absence went to Stephen’s head; she
grew much more exacting, suggesting all sorts of intimate plans.
Supposing they went for a few days to London? Supposing they motored to
Symond’s Yat and stayed at the little hotel by the river? They might
even push on to Abergavenny and from there motor up and explore the
Black Mountains—why not? It was glorious weather.
‘Angela, please come away with me, darling—just for a few days—we’ve
never done it, and I’ve longed to so often. You can’t refuse, there’s
nothing on earth to prevent your coming.’
But Angela would not make up her mind, she seemed suddenly anxious about
her husband: ‘Poor devil, he was awfully fond of his mother. I oughtn’t
to go, it would look so heartless with the old woman dead and Ralph so
unhappy—’
Stephen said bitterly; ‘What about me? Do you think I’m never unhappy?’
So the time slipped by in heartaches and quarrels, for Stephen’s taut
nerves were like spurs to her temper, and she stormed or reproached in
her dire disappointment:
‘You pretend that you love me and yet you won’t come—and I’ve waited so
long—oh, my God, how I’ve waited! But you’re utterly cruel. And I ask
for so little, just to have you with me for a few days and nights—just
to sleep with you in my arms; just to feel you beside me when I wake up
in the morning—I want to open my eyes and see your face, as though we
belonged to each other. Angela, I swear I wouldn’t torment you—we’d be
just as we are now, if that’s what you’re afraid of. You must know,
after all these months, that you can trust me—’
But Angela set her lips and refused: ‘No, Stephen, I’m sorry, but I’d
rather not come.’
Then Stephen would feel that life was past bearing, and sometimes she
must ride rather wildly for miles—now on Raftery, now on Sir Philip’s
young chestnut. All alone she would ride in the early mornings, getting
up from a sleepless night unrefreshed, yet terribly alive because of
those nerves that tortured her luckless body. She would get back to
Morton still unable to rest, and a little later would order the motor
and drive herself across to The Grange, where Angela would usually be
dreading her coming.
Her reception would be cold: ‘I’m fairly busy, Stephen—I must pay off
all these bills before Ralph gets home;’ or: ‘I’ve got a foul headache,
so don’t scold me this morning; I think if you did that I just couldn’t
bear it!’ Stephen would flinch as though struck in the face; she might
even turn round and go back to Morton.
Came the last precious day before Ralph’s return, and that day they did
spend quite peaceably together, for Angela seemed bent upon soothing.
She went out of her way to be gentle to Stephen, and Stephen, quick as
always to respond, was very gentle in her turn. But after they had dined
in the little herb garden—taking advantage of the hot, still
weather—Angela developed one of her headaches.
‘Oh, my Stephen—oh, darling, my head’s too awful. It must be the
thunder—it’s been coming on all day. What a perfectly damnable thing to
happen, on our last evening too—but I know this kind well; I’ll just
have to give in and go to my bed. I’ll take a cachet and then try to
sleep, so don’t ring me up when you get back to Morton. Come
to-morrow—come early. I’m so miserable, darling, when I think that this
is our last peaceful evening—’
‘I know. But are you all right to be left?’
‘Yes, of course. All I need is to get some sleep. You won’t worry, will
you? Promise, my Stephen!’
Stephen hesitated. Quite suddenly Angela was looking very ill, and her
hands were like ice. ‘Swear you’ll telephone to me if you can’t get to
sleep, then I’ll come back at once.’
‘Yes, but don’t do that, will you, unless I ring up—I should hear you,
of course, and that would wake me and start my head throbbing.’ Then as
though impelled, in spite of herself, by the girl’s strange attraction,
she lifted her face: ‘Kiss me . . . oh, God . . . Stephen!’
‘I love you so much—so much—’ whispered Stephen.
2
It was past ten o’clock when she got back to Morton: ‘Has Angela Crossby
rung up?’ she inquired of Puddle, who appeared to have been waiting in
the hall.
‘No, she hasn’t!’ snapped Puddle, who was getting to the stage when she
hated the mere name of Angela Crossby. Then she added: ‘You look like
nothing on earth; in your place I’d go to bed at once, Stephen.’
‘You go to bed, Puddle, if you’re tired—where’s Mother?’
‘In her bath. For heaven’s sake do come to bed! I can’t bear to see you
looking as you do these days.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘No, you’re not, you’re all wrong. Go and look at your face.’
‘I don’t very much want to, it doesn’t attract me,’ smiled Stephen.
So Puddle went angrily up to her room, leaving Stephen to sit with a
book in the hall near the telephone bell, in case Angela should ring.
And there, like the faithful creature she was, she must sit on all
through the night, patiently waiting. But when the first tinges of dawn
greyed the window and the panes of the semi-circular fanlight, she left
her chair stiffly, to pace up and down, filled with a longing to be near
this woman, if only to stand and keep watch in her garden—Snatching up
a coat she went out to her car.
3
She left the motor at the gates of The Grange, and walked up the drive,
taking care to tread softly. The air had an indefinable smell of dew and
of very newly born morning. The tall, ornate Tudor chimneys of the house
stood out gauntly against a brightening sky, and as Stephen crept into
the small herb garden, one tentative bird had already begun singing—but
his voice was still rather husky from sleep. She stood there and
shivered in her heavy coat; the long night of vigil had devitalized her.
She was sometimes like this now—she would shiver at the least
provocation, the least sign of fatigue, for her splendid physical
strength was giving, worn out by its own insistence.
She dragged the coat more closely around her, and stared at the house
which was reddening with sunrise. Her heart beat anxiously, fearfully
even, as though in some painful anticipation of she knew not what—every
window was dark except one or two that were fired by the sunrise. How
long she stood there she never knew, it might have been moments, it
might have been a lifetime; and then suddenly there was something that
moved—the little oak door that led into that garden. It moved
cautiously, opening inch by inch, until at last it was standing wide
open, and Stephen saw a man and a woman who turned to clasp as though
neither of them could endure to be parted from the arms of the other;
and as they clung there together and kissed, they swayed
unsteadily—drunk with loving.
Then, as sometimes happens in moments of great anguish, Stephen could
only remember the grotesque. She could only remember a plump-bosomed
housemaid in the arms of a coarsely amorous footman, and she laughed and
she laughed like a creature demented—laughed and laughed until she must
gasp for breath and spit blood from her tongue, which had somehow got
bitten in her efforts to stop her hysterical laughing; and some of the
blood remained on her chin, jerked there by that agonized laughter.
Pale as death, Roger Antrim stared out into the garden, and his tiny
moustache looked quite black—like an ink stain smeared above his
tremulous mouth by some careless, schoolboy finger.
And now Angela’s voice came to Stephen, but faintly. She was saying
something—what was she saying? It sounded absurdly as though it were a
prayer—‘Christ!’ Then sharply—razor-sharp it sounded as it cut through
the air: ‘_You_, Stephen!’
The laughter died abruptly away, as Stephen turned and walked out of the
garden and down the short drive that led to the gates of The Grange,
where the motor was waiting. Her face was a mask, quite without
expression. She moved stiffly, yet with a curious precision; and she
swung up the handle and started the powerful engine without any apparent
effort.
She drove at great speed but with accurate judgment, for now her mind
felt as clear as spring water, and yet there were strange little gaps in
her mind—she had not the least idea where she was going. Every road for
miles around Upton was familiar, yet she had not the least idea where
she was going. Nor did she know how long she drove, nor when she stopped
to procure fresh petrol. The sun rose high and hot in the heavens; it
beat down on her without warming her coldness, for always she had the
sense of a dead thing that lay close against her heart and oppressed it.
A corpse—she was carrying a corpse about with her. Was it the corpse of
her love for Angela? If so that love was more terrible dead—oh, far
more terrible dead than living.
The first stars were shining, but as yet very faintly, when she found
herself driving through the gates of Morton. Heard Puddle’s voice
calling: ‘Wait a minute. Stop, Stephen!’ Saw Puddle barring her way in
the drive, a tiny yet dauntless figure.
She pulled up with a jerk: ‘What’s the matter? What is it?’
‘Where have you been?’
‘I—don’t know, Puddle.’
But Puddle had clambered in beside her: ‘Listen, Stephen,’ and now she
was talking very fast, ‘listen, Stephen—is it—is it Angela Crossby? It
is. I can see the thing in your face. My God, what’s that woman done to
you, Stephen?’
Then Stephen, in spite of the corpse against her heart, or perhaps
because of it, defended the woman: ‘She’s done nothing at all—it was
all my fault, but you wouldn’t understand—I got very angry and then I
laughed and couldn’t stop laughing—’ Steady—go steady! She was telling
too much: ‘No—it wasn’t that exactly. Oh, you know my vile temper, it
always goes off at half cock for nothing. Well, then I just drove round
and round the country until I cooled down. I’m sorry, Puddle, I ought to
have rung up, of course you’ve been anxious.’
Puddle gripped her arm: ‘Stephen, listen, it’s your mother—she thinks
that you started quite early for Worcester, I lied—I’ve been nearly
distracted, child. If you hadn’t come soon, I’d have had to tell her
that I didn’t know where you were. You must never, _never_ go off
without a word like this again—But I do understand, oh, I do indeed,
Stephen.’
But Stephen shook her head: ‘No, my dear, you couldn’t—and I’d rather
not tell you, Puddle.’
‘Some day you must tell me,’ said Puddle, ‘because—well, because I do
understand, Stephen.’
4
That night the weight against Stephen’s heart, with its icy coldness,
melted; and it flowed out in such a torrent of grief that she could not
stand up against that torrent, so that drowning though she was she found
pen and paper, and she wrote to Angela Crossby.
What a letter! All the pent-up passion of months, all the terrible,
rending, destructive frustrations must burst from her heart: ‘Love me,
only love me the way I love you. Angela, for God’s sake, try to love me
a little—don’t throw me away, because if you do I’m utterly finished.
You know how I love you, with my soul and my body; if it’s wrong,
grotesque, unholy—have pity. I’ll be humble. Oh, my darling, I am
humble now; I’m just a poor, heart-broken freak of a creature who loves
you and needs you much more than its life, because life’s worse than
death, ten times worse without you. I’m some awful mistake—God’s
mistake—I don’t know if there are any more like me, I pray not for
their sakes, because it’s pure hell. But oh, my dear, whatever I am, I
just love you and love you. I thought it was dead, but it wasn’t. It’s
alive—so terribly alive to-night in my bedroom. . . .’ And so it went
on for page after page.
But never a word about Roger Antrim and what she had seen that morning
in the garden. Some fine instinct of utterly selfless protection towards
this woman had managed to survive all the anguish and all the madness of
that day. The letter was a terrible indictment against Stephen, a
complete vindication of Angela Crossby.
5
Angela went to her husband’s study, and she stood before him utterly
shaken, utterly appalled at what she would do, yet utterly and
ruthlessly determined to do it from a primitive instinct of
self-preservation. In her ears she could still hear that terrible
laughter—that uncanny, hysterical, agonized laughter. Stephen was mad,
and God only knew what she might do or say in a moment of madness, and
then—but she dared not look into the future. Cringing in spirit and
trembling in body, she forgot the girl’s faithful and loyal devotion,
her will to forgive, her desire to protect, so clearly set forth in that
pitiful letter.
She said: ‘Ralph, I want to ask your advice. I’m in an awful mess—it’s
Stephen Gordon. You think I’ve been carrying on with Roger—good Lord,
if you only knew what I’ve endured these last few months! I have seen a
great deal of Roger, I admit—quite innocently of course—still, all the
same, I’ve seen him—I thought it would show her that I’m not—that I’m
not—’ For one moment her voice seemed about to fail her, then she went
on quite firmly: ‘that I’m not a pervert; that I’m not that sort of
degenerate creature.’
He sprang up: ‘What?’ he bellowed.
‘Yes, I know, it’s too awful. I ought to have asked your advice about
it, but I really did like the girl just at first, and after that,
well—I set out to reform her. Oh, I know I’ve been crazy, worse than
crazy if you like; it was hopeless right from the very beginning. If I’d
only known more about that sort of thing I’d have come to you at once,
but I’d never met it. She was our neighbour too, which made it more
awkward, and not only that—her position in the county—oh, Ralph, you
_must_ help me, I’m completely bewildered. How on earth does one answer
this sort of thing? It’s quite mad—I believe the girl’s half mad
herself.’
And she handed him Stephen’s letter.
He read it slowly, and as he did so his weak little eyes grew literally
scarlet—puffy and scarlet all over their lids, and when he had finished
reading that letter he turned and spat on the ground. Then Ralph’s
language became a thing to forget; every filthy invective learnt in the
slums of his youth and later on in the workshops, he hurled against
Stephen and all her kind. He called down the wrath of the Lord upon
them. He deplored the non-existence of the stake, and racked his brains
for indecent tortures. And finally: ‘I’ll answer this letter, yes, by
God I will! You leave her to me, I know how I’m going to answer this
letter!’
Angela asked him, and now her voice shook: ‘Ralph, what will you do to
her—to Stephen?’
He laughed loudly: ‘I’ll hound her out of the county before I’ve
done—and with luck out of England; the same as I’d hound you out if I
thought that there’d ever been anything between you two women. It’s
damned lucky for you that she wrote this letter, damned lucky, otherwise
I might have my suspicions. You’ve got off this time, but don’t try your
reforming again—you’re not cut out to be a reformer. If there’s any of
that Lamb of God stuff wanted I’ll see to it myself and don’t you forget
it!’ He slipped the letter into his pocket, ‘I’ll see to it myself next
time—with an axe!’
Angela turned and went out of the study with bowed head. She was saved
through this great betrayal, yet most strangely bitter she found her
salvation, and most shameful the price she had paid for her safety. So,
greatly daring, she went to her desk and with trembling fingers took a
sheet of paper. Then she wrote in her large, rather childish
handwriting: ‘Stephen—when you know what I’ve done, forgive me.’