She was walking now on a white road that went between broad grass
borders. To the right and left were the long raking lines of the hills,
curve after curve, shimmering in a thin mist.
The road dropped to the green valley. It mounted the humped bridge over
the river. Beyond it she saw the twin gables of the grey house pricked
up over the high, grey garden wall. The tall iron gate stood in front of
it between the ball-topped stone pillars.
And now she was in a large, low-ceilinged room with drawn blinds. She
was standing before the wide double bed. It was her father’s bed. The
dead body, stretched out in the middle under the drawn white sheet, was
her father’s body.
The outline of the sheet sank from the peak of the upturned toes to the
shin bone, and from the high bridge of the nose to the chin.
She lifted the sheet and folded it back across the breast of the dead
man. The face she saw then was Oscar Wade’s face, stilled and smoothed
in the innocence of sleep, the supreme innocence of death. She stared at
it, fascinated, in a cold, pitiless joy.
Oscar was dead.
She remembered how he used to lie like that beside her in the room in
the Hotel Saint Pierre, on his back with his hands folded on his waist,
his mouth half open, his big chest rising and falling. If he was dead,
it would never happen again. She would be safe.
The dead face frightened her, and she was about to cover it up again
when she was aware of a light heaving, a rhythmical rise and fall. As
she drew the sheet up tighter, the hands under it began to struggle
convulsively, the broad ends of the fingers appeared above the edge,
clutching it to keep it down. The mouth opened; the eyes opened; the
whole face stared back at her in a look of agony and horror.
Then the body drew itself forwards from the hips and sat up, its eyes
peering into her eyes; he and she remained for an instant motionless,
each held there by the other’s fear.
[Illustration: ... each held there by the other’s fear]
Suddenly she broke away, turned and ran, out of the room, out of the
house.
She stood at the gate, looking up and down the road, not knowing by
which way she must go to escape Oscar. To the right, over the bridge and
up the hill and across the downs she would come to the arcades of the
rue de Rivoli and the dreadful grey corridors of the hotel. To the left
the road went through the village.
If she could get further back she would be safe, out of Oscar’s reach.
Standing by her father’s death-bed she had been young, but not young
enough. She must get back to the place where she was younger still, to
the Park and the green drive under the beech trees and the white
pavilion at the cross. She knew how to find it. At the end of the
village the high road ran right and left, east and west, under the Park
walls; the south gate stood there at the top, looking down the narrow
street.
She ran towards it through the village, past the long grey barns of
Goodyer’s farm, past the grocer’s shop, past the yellow front and blue
sign of the “Queen’s Head,” past the post office, with its one black
window blinking under its vine, past the church and the yew-trees in the
churchyard, to where the south gate made a delicate black pattern on the
green grass.
These things appeared insubstantial, drawn back behind a sheet of air
that shimmered over them like thin glass. They opened out, floated past
and away from her; and instead of the high road and park walls she saw a
London street of dingy white facades, and instead of the south gate the
swinging glass doors of Schnebler’s Restaurant.
* * * * *
The glass doors swung open and she passed into the restaurant. The scene
beat on her with the hard impact of reality: the white and gold panels,
the white pillars and their curling gold capitals, the white circles of
the tables, glittering, the flushed faces of the diners, moving
mechanically.
She was driven forward by some irresistible compulsion to a table in the
corner, where a man sat alone. The table napkin he was using hid his
mouth, and jaw, and chest; and she was not sure of the upper part of the
face above the straight, drawn edge. It dropped; and she saw Oscar
Wade’s face. She came to him, dragged, without power to resist; she sat
down beside him, and he leaned to her over the table; she could feel the
warmth of his red, congested face; the smell of wine floated towards her
on his thick whisper.
“I knew you would come.”
She ate and drank with him in silence, nibbling and sipping slowly,
staving off the abominable moment it would end in.
At last they got up and faced each other. His long bulk stood before
her, above her; she could almost feel the vibration of its power.
“Come,” he said. “Come.”
And she went before him, slowly, slipping out through the maze of the
tables, hearing behind her Oscar’s measured, deliberate, thoughtful
tread. The steep, red-carpeted staircase rose up before her.
She swerved from it, but he turned her back.
“You know the way,” he said.
At the top of the flight she found the white door of the room she knew.
She knew the long windows guarded by drawn muslin blinds; the gilt
looking-glass over the chimney-piece that reflected Oscar’s head and
shoulders grotesquely between two white porcelain babies with bulbous
limbs and garlanded loins, she knew the sprawling stain on the drab
carpet by the table, the shabby, infamous couch behind the screen.
They moved about the room, turning and turning in it like beasts in a
cage, uneasy, inimical, avoiding each other.
At last they stood still, he at the window, she at the door, the length
of the room between.
“It’s no good your getting away like that,” he said. “There couldn’t be
any other end to it—to what we did.”
“But that _was_ ended.”
“Ended there, but not here.”
“Ended for ever. We’ve done with it for ever.”
“We haven’t. We’ve got to begin again. And go on. And go on.”
“Oh, no. No. Anything but that.”
“There isn’t anything else.”
“We can’t. We can’t. Don’t you remember how it bored us?”
“Remember? Do you suppose I’d touch you if I could help it?... That’s
what we’re here for. We must. We must.”
“No. No. I shall get away—now.”
She turned to the door to open it.
“You can’t,” he said. “The door’s locked.”
“Oscar—what did you do that for?”
“We always did it. Don’t you remember?”
She turned to the door again and shook it; she beat on it with her
hands.
“It’s no use, Harriott. If you got out now you’d only have to come back
again. You might stave it off for an hour or so, but what’s that in an
immortality?”
“Immortality?”
“That’s what we’re in for.”
“Time enough to talk about immortality when we’re dead.... Ah—”
[Illustration: ... moving slowly, like figures in some monstrous and
appalling dance ...]
They were being drawn towards each other across the room, moving slowly,
like figures in some monstrous and appalling dance, their heads thrown
back over their shoulders, their faces turned from the horrible
approach. Their arms rose slowly, heavy with intolerable reluctance;
they stretched them out towards each other, aching, as if they held up
an overpowering weight. Their feet dragged and were drawn.
Suddenly her knees sank under her; she shut her eyes; all her being went
down before him in darkness and terror.
* * * * *
It was over. She had got away, she was going back, back, to the green
drive of the Park, between the beech trees, where Oscar had never been,
where he would never find her. When she passed through the south gate
her memory became suddenly young and clean. She forgot the rue de Rivoli
and the Hotel Saint Pierre; she forgot Schnebler’s Restaurant and the
room at the top of the stairs. She was back in her youth. She was
Harriott Leigh going to wait for Stephen Philpotts in the pavilion
opposite the west gate. She could feel herself, a slender figure moving
fast over the grass between the lines of the great beech trees. The
freshness of her youth was upon her.
She came to the heart of the drive where it branched right and left in
the form of a cross. At the end of the right arm the white Greek temple,
with its pediment and pillars, gleamed against the wood.
She was sitting on their seat at the back of the pavilion, watching the
side door that Stephen would come in by.
The door was pushed open; he came towards her, light and young, skimming
between the beech trees with his eager, tiptoeing stride. She rose up to
meet him. She gave a cry.
“Stephen!”
It had been Stephen. She had seen him coming. But the man who stood
before her between the pillars of the pavilion was Oscar Wade.
And now she was walking along the field-path that slanted from the
orchard door to the stile; further and further back, to where young
George Waring waited for her under the elder tree. The smell of the
elder flowers came to her over the field. She could feel on her lips and
in all her body the sweet, innocent excitement of her youth.
“George, oh, George!”
As she went along the field-path she had seen him. But the man who stood
waiting for her under the elder tree was Oscar Wade.
“I told you it’s no use getting away, Harriott. Every path brings you
back to me. You’ll find me at every turn.”
“But how did you get _here?_”
“As I got into the pavilion. As I got into your father’s room, on to his
death-bed. Because I _was_ there. I am in all your memories.”
“My memories are innocent. How could you take my father’s place, and
Stephen’s, and George Waring’s? You?”
“Because I did take them.”
“Never. My love for _them_ was innocent.”
“Your love for me was part of it. You think the past affects the future.
Has it never struck you that the future may affect the past? In your
innocence there was the beginning of your sin. You _were_ what you _were
to be_.”
“I shall get away,” she said.
“And, this time, I shall go with you.”
The stile, the elder tree, and the field floated away from her. She was
going under the beech trees down the Park drive towards the south gate
and the village, slinking close to the right-hand row of trees. She was
aware that Oscar Wade was going with her under the left-hand row,
keeping even with her, step by step, and tree by tree. And presently
there was grey pavement under her feet and a row of grey pillars on her
right hand. They were walking side by side down the rue de Rivoli
towards the hotel.
They were sitting together now on the edge of the dingy white bed. Their
arms hung by their sides, heavy and limp, their heads drooped, averted.
Their passion weighed on them with the unbearable, unescapable boredom
of immortality.
“Oscar—how long will it last?”
“I can’t tell you. I don’t know whether _this_ is one moment of
eternity, or the eternity of one moment.”
“It must end some time,” she said. “Life doesn’t go on for ever. We
shall die.”
“Die? We _have_ died. Don’t you know what this is? Don’t you know where
you are? This is death. We’re dead, Harriott. We’re in hell.”
“Yes. There can’t be anything worse than this.”
“This isn’t the worst. We’re not quite dead yet, as long as we’ve life
in us to turn and run and get away from each other; as long as we can
escape into our memories. But when you’ve got back to the farthest
memory of all and there’s nothing beyond it—when there’s no memory but
this—
“In the last hell we shall not run away any longer; we shall find no
more roads, no more passages, no more open doors. We shall have no need
to look for each other.
“In the last death we shall be shut up in this room, behind that locked
door, together. We shall lie here together, for ever and ever, joined so
fast that even God can’t put us asunder. We shall be one flesh and one
spirit, one sin repeated for ever, and ever; spirit loathing flesh,
flesh loathing spirit; you and I loathing each other.”
“Why? Why?” she cried.
“Because that’s all that’s left us. That’s what you made of love.”
* * * * *
The darkness came down swamping, it blotted out the room. She was
walking along a garden path between high borders of phlox and larkspur
and lupin. They were taller than she was, their flowers swayed and
nodded above her head. She tugged at the tall stems and had no strength
to break them. She was a little thing.
She said to herself then that she was safe. She had gone back so far
that she was a child again; she had the blank innocence of childhood. To
be a child, to go small under the heads of the lupins, to be blank and
innocent, without memory, was to be safe.
The walk led her out through a yew hedge on to a bright green lawn. In
the middle of the lawn there was a shallow round pond in a ring of
rockery cushioned with small flowers, yellow and white and purple.
Gold-fish swam in the olive-brown water. She would be safe when she saw
the gold-fish swimming towards her. The old one with the white scales
would come up first, pushing up his nose, making bubbles in the water.
At the bottom of the lawn there was a privet hedge cut by a broad path
that went through the orchard. She knew what she would find there; her
mother was in the orchard. She would lift her up in her arms to play
with the hard red balls of the apples that hung from the tree. She had
got back to the farthest memory of all; there was nothing beyond it.
There would be an iron gate in the wall of the orchard. It would lead
into a field.
Something was different here, something that frightened her. An ash-grey
door instead of an iron gate.
She pushed it open and came into the last corridor of the Hotel Saint
Pierre.