had risen, still keeping her hand as he went with her to the door, still
feeling himself the bereft and terrified child who seeks pretexts so
that its mother shall not leave it. And he thought, as they went so
together, that their lives were strangely overturned since this could
be; for until now Tony had been his child. It had been he who had
sustained and comforted Tony.
"Why do you go?" he repeated. "You can rest with me here: not saying
anything; only being quiet, together."
"No, Bevis dear; no." She shook her head slowly, and her face was turned
away from him. "We must not be together now."
He knew that it was what she must say. He knew the terror in her heart.
He saw Malcolm, mourning, unappeased, between them. Yet, summoning his
will, summoning the claim of life against that detested apparition,
expressing, also, the sickness of his heart as he saw his devastated
future, "You mustn't make me a lonely curlew, too," he said.
He was sorry for the words as soon as he had uttered them. It was a
different terror they struck from her sunken face. She stood for a
moment and looked at him and he remembered how she had looked the other
day--oh! how long ago it seemed--when he had frightened her by saying he
might get over her. But it was not his child who looked at him now. "I
have broken your heart! I have broken your heart, too!" she said.
"Far from it!" he declared. And he tried to smile at her. "Wait till I
get you safely to London. You'll see how it will revive!"
The door stood open between them, and it was not his child who looked at
him, answering his sally with a smile as difficult as his own. "Dear,
brave Bevis," she murmured.
And, as she turned and left him, he saw again the love that had
cherished him so tenderly, faltering, helpless, at the threshold of her
lips and eyes.
VIII
Miss Latimer dined with him. She told him that the poor woman had died,
and they talked of the Peace Conference. Miss Latimer read her papers
carefully and the subject floated them until dessert. She spoke with dry
scepticism of the League of Nations. Her outlook was narrow, acute, and
practical. As they rose from the table she bade him good-night.
"Do you mind giving me a few moments, in the library, first?" he said.
"I don't suppose we'll have another chance for a talk. You and Antonia
are going to Cornwall, I hear."
She hesitated, looking across at him, still at the table, from the place
where she had risen. "Yes. We are. I have a great deal to do."
"I know. But our train is not early. I should be very much obliged."
Under the compulsion of his courtesy she moved before him, reluctantly,
to the library.
"You see"--Bevis following, closed the door behind them--"a great deal
has happened to me since we talked yesterday. I've heard of things I did
not know before. They have changed my life and Antonia's. And since it's
owing to you that they've come, I think you'll own it fair that I should
ask for a little more enlightenment."
His heart had stayed sunken in what was almost despair since Tony had
left him. He had no plan; no hope. It was in a dismal sincerity that he
made his request. There might be enlightenment. If there were, only she
could give it. She was his antagonist; yet, unwillingly, she might show
him some loophole of escape.
Reluctance evidently battled in her with what might be pride. She did
not wish to show reluctance. She took a straight chair near the table at
a little distance from the fire and sat there with rather the air of an
applicant for a post, willing, coldly and succinctly, to give
information.
Bevis limped up and down the room.
"Why have you been working against me?" he said at last. He stopped
before her. "Or, no; I don't mean that. Of course you would work against
me. You would have to. But why haven't you been straight with me? Didn't
you owe it to me as much as to Tony to tell me what had happened?"
She looked back coldly at him. "I have not worked against you. I owe you
nothing."
"Not even when what happened concerned me so closely?"
"It was for Antonia to tell you anything that concerned you." She paused
and added, in a lower voice, "I should not choose to speak of some
things to you."
"I see." He took a turn or two away. "Yes. After all, that's natural.
But now you see me defeated and cast out. So perhaps you'll be merely
merciful." He stopped again and scrutinized her.
Yes; he had seen in her face yesterday what her hatred could be. It
was--all defeated and cast out as he was--hatred for him he saw now,
evident, palpable, like a sword. And why should she hate him so much?
Had she anything to fear? Like OEdipus before the Sphinx, he studied
her.
"You believe that you saw Malcolm the other night?" She had not told him
that she would be merciful, yet, apparently, she was willing to give
information, since she sat there.
Something more evidently baleful came into her eyes as she answered, "It
is not a question of belief."
"Of course; naturally. What I mean is--you did see him. Well, this is
what I would like to know. Did you see him when you sat at the table
with your head down, before we left the room?"
The question--he had not meditated it--it had come to him instinctively,
like a whisper from some unseen friend--was as unexpected to her as it
had been to him. She had expected, no doubt, to be questioned as to
Malcolm's dress, attitude, and demeanour. She kept her eyes fixed; but a
tremor knotted her brows, as if with bewilderment.
"As I sat at the table?" she repeated. "How do you mean?"
He did not take his eyes off her. He seemed to slide his hand along a
sudden clue and to find it holding.
"I mean the vision of him standing beside the fountain. Did it come to
you first while we were at the window seeing nothing?"
She stared at him, and the bewilderment gained her eyes. "A vision? What
do you mean by a vision? No. It was when you had gone. It was when I
went to the window that I saw him standing there." Yet, even as she
spoke, he saw that she was thinking with a new intensity.
Something had been gained. Safety required him, at the moment, not to
examine it overmuch, not to arouse her craft. "I see," he said, as if
assenting, and again he turned from her and again he came back, with a
new question. "You think he came because he is suffering?"
She had looked away from him while she thought, and as her eyes turned
to him he saw the new edge to their hatred. "Yes. Suffering," she said.
And her eyes added: "Because of you."
"You told Tony he was suffering?"
"I answered her questions."
"He will be appeased by her sacrifice of me?"
She paused a moment, as if with a cold irony for his grossness. "It is
her heart he misses," she then said.
He stood across the table from her, considering her. For the first time
he seemed to see in full clearness the force of the passion that moved
her. Her very being was centred in one loyalty, one devotion. She would,
he felt sure, sacrifice any thing, any one, to it. He considered her and
she kept her cold, ironic face uplifted to his scrutiny. There was
desecration, he felt, in the blow his mind now prepared. Yet, as she was
merciless, so he, too, must be. "How is it he comes to you and not to
Tony?" he asked her. "How is it you know what he suffers?"
Unsuspecting, she was still ready to deal with him, since that was to be
done with him. "I have always been like that. I have always known things
and felt them, and sometimes seen them. I have known Malcolm since he
was a child. There is nothing he has felt that I have not known. It
frightened him, sometimes, to find that I had known everything.--The
bond is not broken."
"No. It is not. But do you see what I am going to tell Antonia
to-morrow?" he said, not stirring as, with his folded arms, he looked
across at her. "That such a bond as that sets her free. It's you he
comes for; you he misses. Realities take their place after death. Things
come out. He didn't know it while he was alive. You were too near for
him to know it. But it's you who are his mate. You are the creature
nearest to him in the universe."
She sat still for a moment after he had finished. Then she rose. Her
little face, with its lighted glare, was almost terrifying. He saw, as
he looked at her, that he had committed a sacrilege, yet he could not
regret it.
"You know you lie," she said.--It had been a sacrilege, yet it might
help him and Tony, for now all her barriers were down.--"If that were
true how could I wish to keep her for him? He is the creature nearest to
me in the universe, but I am not near him. Never, never, never," said
Miss Latimer; and her voice, as she spoke, piped to a rising wail. "He
was fond of me; never more than fond, and Antonia was the only woman he
ever loved. I was with him in it all. I helped him sometimes to answer
her letters, for she frightened him with her cleverness, and he was not
like that; he was not clever in your way. And he would grow confused.
Nothing ever brought us so near. It was of her we talked that last
night, beside the fountain, in the flagged garden. It was then he told
me that he knew, whatever happened to him, that he and Antonia belonged
to each other forever."
It was the truth, absolute and irrefutable. Yet, though before it, and
her, in her bared agony, he knew himself ashamed, the light had come to
him as it blazed from her. It gave him all he needed. He was sure now,
as he had not been sure before, of what was not the truth. Malcolm, as a
wraith, a menace, was exorcised. There was only Miss Latimer to deal
with.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I was wrong. You convince me. But there's
something else." She had dropped down again upon her chair and she had
put up her hand to her face, and so she sat while he spoke to her. "You
see, your love explains everything," he said. "I mean, everything that
needs explaining. Don't think I speak as an enemy. It's only that I
understand you and what has happened to you, and to us, better than you
do yourself. You are so sure of your fact that you feel yourself
justified in giving it to Antonia in a symbol; so, as you say, to keep
her for him. You are sure he is here; you are sure he suffers; and you
feel it right to tell her you have seen him, to save her from herself,
as you would see it; and from me."
Her hand had dropped and the face she showed him was, in its
bewilderment, in its desperation, its distraction, strangely young; like
the face of a child judged by some standard it does not understand. "A
symbol? What do you mean by a symbol?" she asked, and her voice was the
reedy, piping voice of a child.
He pressed home his advantage. "You have not seen Malcolm. You believe
that he is here and you believe he suffers. But you have not seen him.
On your honour;--can you look at me and say, on your honour, that you
have seen him?"
She looked at him. She stared. And it was with the eyes of the
desperate child. "How could I not have seen him? How could I have
known?"
"The table rapped it out for you, because you are a medium. It's a
mystery that such things should be; but you say yourself that, in life,
your mind read Malcolm's. In the same way, the other night, it read
Tony's. You saw what she saw. Everything is open to you."
She had risen and, with a strange gesture, she put her hand up to her
head. "No--no. It was more than that. It was more than that. Antonia did
not know. I did not know. No one knew, till I saw it; how he died. I saw
him. Half his head was shot away."
He leaped to his triumph. "It was my mind that showed you that. I did
know. I did know how he died. You read my mind as well as Tony's. Our
minds built up the picture for you."
Her hand held to her head she stared at him. "It is not true! Not true!
You say so now when I have told you."
"Ask Tony if it's not true. I told her what you'd seen before she told
me. Miss Latimer--I appeal to you. Our lives hang on you. Tell me the
truth--tell it to me now, and to Tony to-night. You did not see him. Not
what we mean by seeing. Not as Tony believes you saw. You had your inner
vision while you leaned there on the table, and it convinced you of the
outer. I've shown you how you built it up. Every detail of our knowledge
was revealed to you. It's we who created Malcolm's ghost."
But she had turned away from him, and it was as if in desperate flight,
blindly, pushing aside the chair against which she stumbled, still with
her hand held as though to Malcolm's wound. "Not true! Not true!" she
cried, and she flung aside the hand he held out to arrest her. "He is
here! He has saved her! I saw him! Beside the fountain!"
IX
She was gone and he need not pursue her. Her desperation had given him
all that he had hoped for, and there was no recantation, no avowal to be
wrested from that panic. He had followed her to the door and he watched
her mount the stairs, running as she went and without one backward
glance. And when, at the end of the corridor above, he heard her door
shut, he still stood in the open doorway, his head bent, his hands in
his pockets, and took, it seemed in long draughts of recovery, full
possession of his almost miraculous escape.
He saw the suffocating, vaultlike darkness where he had groped. Since
Tony had gone from him that afternoon, the clotting horror had not left
his heart. It had been a vault; tenebrous; a place of death. Yet flesh
and blood had not come to his help. He had forced no doors and beaten
down no walls. Such doors and walls did not yield to force. It had been
his sensitiveness to reality that had led him forth. As, sitting at the
table the other night, he had seen the shadow, felt the scent of danger,
so now his sensitiveness had shown him in the darkness something less
dark. He had groped, he had crept, he had felt his way, from his
intuition that Miss Latimer feared him to that memory of her form fallen
forward on the little table, and the darkness that was only less dark
had softly expanded to a pallor, until, suddenly, from her bewildered
eyes and passionate negations, conviction of the truth had flashed upon
him. It had been like turning the corner of a buttress to find the
aperture that led out to pure, clear, starlit air. Of course, of
course--how clearly now the light was spread! She had had her vision of
Malcolm, not at the third window, but while she sat there at the table,
her head bent down on her arms. She had lied only in saying that it had
been objective. He and Tony had built it up for her.
His recovery was not only of freedom; he entered again, with his
recognition of how he had found freedom, into possession of himself,
into security and confidence. Flesh and blood had miserably failed him
that afternoon, and so he had failed Tony. What most had choked him in
the darkness had been his self-contempt. For he had miserably, horribly,
if pitifully and inevitably, failed her. Her fear had cankered his will
and frozen his heart, and he had helped to fix her in it. Thank God,
where flesh and blood had failed, intelligence and intuition had atoned.
He was not worthless, after all. He had saved himself and he could save
Tony.
As he stood there, and it had been for some little time, Thompson,
Tony's maid, came down the staircase. She was a middle-aged woman,
elegant of figure, with a gentle, careworn face, and he had always felt
her friendly to his hopes. She carried a pair of Tony's shoes and
gaiters, no doubt to have warmed to-morrow in readiness for the journey,
and, not having noticed her for some days, he saw that her face was
paler, more careworn than it had been. Tony was the sort of woman who
would rouse devotion in her maid. He had already guessed that Thompson's
was a romantic devotion; and now, their eyes meeting, something passed
between them, so that, at the foot of the stairs, Thompson paused, and
he, glad to see her, glad to question her, asked, "How is Mrs. Wellwood
to-night?"
"I'm afraid she's far from well, sir," said Thompson, and her kindly,
decorous eyes dwelt on him. "She hasn't been herself for some days. But
she's gone off nicely now to sleep."
"Really? She's been sleeping so badly, I hear."
"Yes, sir, very badly. But I made her take a little hot milk, for she
would eat no dinner, and that seemed to send her off quite soundly."
"You think she's fit to travel to-morrow?"
The dwelling of Thompson's eyes at this became almost urgent. "Oh, yes,
sir. Oh, it will be the best thing for her, sir; to get away. It doesn't
suit her here at all. It's the place that doesn't suit her. She's quite
fit to travel; but I hope she won't go as far as Cornwall, sir. It would
be much better if she stopped at her own house in London. Perhaps you
could say something about it to her, sir. Perhaps"--and sustained by
what she saw of understanding in his gaze she passed bravely beyond
professional reticence--"it's being so much with Miss Cicely that isn't
good for her. It's not cheering, sir. They've both had such great
sorrow. It would be much better if she stayed in London and Miss Cicely
went on to Cornwall alone. Perhaps, if you see with me, sir, you might
say something on the journey to-morrow. Anything you could say would
have weight with Mrs. Wellwood."
Bevis, gazing hard at her, felt that he loved Thompson. She seemed to
embody the warmth and sanity of the new life for which he was to save
Tony. He had even the impulse, ridiculous yet so strong--for he was
young and had not been happy for such a long time--to put his arms
around her neck, his head on her shoulder, and tell her how much he
loved Tony and what terrible danger they had been in. But, of course,
she understood; understood how much he loved Tony and how great had been
the danger. So all that he said, at last, was: "Yes; I do agree. Yes;
I'll do my best. Thanks so awfully."
"I do so wish you joy, sir," Thompson murmured.
He was glad that she had said that. He needed to have it said to him.
Yet, after he had gone upstairs, pausing at Tony's door to make sure
that, as Thompson had said, she was sleeping, after he had lighted his
candles and stood there, meditating, in his room, alone in the silent
house, it was not joy he felt. Joy was not yet achieved. Tony's
enfranchisement, he foresaw, could not come from anything he might say
to her. Her fear could never again infect him; but could his intuition
free her? He would have only intuition to put before her, and Miss
Latimer would be there with her lie that was half a truth. No; it could
only be by the infection of his security and ardour that Tony could be
won back from the darkness, and it should not fail her. But, until it
had won her, he could feel no joy.
His room was at the other end of the corridor from Tony's, opposite Miss
Latimer's, and he had not closed his door on entering. She could not yet
be sleeping, and while she waked he would not sleep. Tony's slumber must
be guarded. Anything was possible with Miss Latimer. She might go in to
Tony with baleful warnings, warping beforehand his account of the
interview. He must prevent her seeing Miss Latimer alone. During the
journey that would be easy; and once London was reached he had Thompson
to reënforce his strategy. They would go to Tony's house, and there he
would talk to her. It would be in Tony's captivating drawing-room, with
its cushions and fire-screens, its scent of lemon-verbena and
sandalwood. Thompson would help him in it all. She would see that he had
Tony to himself.
He undressed and lay down with a book and reading-candle, keeping his
door ajar. Then, in the stillness, he became aware that Miss Latimer was
weeping. Passionately yet monotonously she was sobbing; a strange agony
of grief, with none of the plaints and moans of self-pity. Was it
remorse, he wondered; despair for her exposure, or baffled fury at
finding her prey escape her, and Tony to be restored to life again? But
Miss Latimer would never feel remorse; would never feel herself exposed.
And Tony was not her prey; it had been for another that she had tracked
her down. All, all had been done, as all with her had always been, for
love of Malcolm. And, with a curious, unwilling pity, he knew, as he
listened, that he did not believe of her that she felt herself to be a
liar. Her simplicity had been unable to interpret truly the overwhelming
experience that had befallen her. It had been as genuine, as immediate
as that of a Jeanne d'Arc. She was an unsanctified saint; or, rather, a
sibyl, who had found her magic inefficacious and who feared the menace
to her beloved of a universe deaf to her incantations.
For hours she must have wept.
When, at last, for a long time, silence had fallen, and he had put out
his light, he could not have slept had he wished it. It was his last
night in the hateful house and the hours seemed heavy with significance.
The wailing sobs, though silenced, still beat an undertone to his
thoughts, thoughts of Malcolm, his dead friend, now, harmlessly, the
immortal spirit; and thoughts of his dear Tony. Not till yesterday, when
the waters had closed over them, had he known the depths of his love for
Tony, and only through their anguish had the depths of her innocent,
tragically gentle heart been revealed to him. Yet, while he thought of
her, yearning over her, in her childlike sleep, with love unspeakable,
the anguish seemed to hover like a cloud above him, and Miss Latimer's
sobs still to beat:--Dead.--Dead.--Dead.
X
The first housemaids were already stirring when at last he fell into a
heavy sleep. So heavy it was that it seemed long, yet only a few hours
could have gone by before he was awakened by a rapping at his half-open
door. Even as he drowsily struggled forth from slumber, he was aware
that it was not the knock that announced hot water and the hour of
rising.
He opened his eyes and saw Thompson standing in the doorway.
Her attitude as she stood there, dark and narrow, with her flawlessly
neat outline, had still so much of professional decorum that, for a
moment, it veiled from him the strangeness of her face.
"Oh, sir, could you come?" she said. And then he saw that her face was
strange.
He sprang up while she stood outside. There was, he knew that, no time
for his leg, though he seemed to know nothing else, and he threw on his
dressing-gown and took up his crutches while Thompson waited for him.
But when he went out to her she still stood there, looking at him.
"Is Mrs. Wellwood ill?" he asked.
"Oh, sir, she's dead," said Thompson.
Then, standing in the corridor, he felt himself trying to think. It was
like the moment in France when his leg had been shattered and he had not
known whether he were alive or dead. But this was worse. This was not
like the moment in France. There was only, then, himself. He could not
think. Thompson had put her arm under his. He was hanging forward
heavily on his crutches.
"Perhaps you'd better go back to bed, till a little later, sir. Till the
doctor comes," she said. "It was an overdose of the powder. She's
sometimes taken them since Mr. Wellwood was killed. And she must have
made a mistake. It must have been a mistake, mustn't it, sir? She had
everything to live for." Thompson broke into sobs. "I've just found her.
Miss Cicely is there. She sent a boy for the doctor. But it's too late.
You'd only think her sleeping, so beautiful she is, sir."
"Help me," said Bevis. "I must come."
The curtains had been drawn in Tony's room and the morning sunlight fell
across the bed where she lay. It was not as if sleeping; he saw that at
the first sight of her. She lay on her back and her head was sunken down
on her breast as though with a doggedness of oblivion. Still, she was
beautiful; and he noted, his heart shattered by impotent tenderness, the
dusky mark upon her eyelids, like the freaking on a lovely fruit.
Miss Latimer sat on the other side of the bed with her back to the
light. Beside her stood the little tray of early morning tea that
Thompson had brought in and set down on the table near her mistress
before drawing the curtains.
Thompson helping him, he reached the bed and laid hold of the bedpost.
"Yes. I can manage. Thank you so much," he said to her.
So he was left, confronting Miss Latimer; and Tony was between them.
He did not look at Miss Latimer. His being was absorbed in
contemplation of the dead woman. With sickening sorrow he reconstructed
the moments that had led her to this act. It had not been unintentional.
He remembered her still look, her ineffable gentleness of the day
before. She had intended then; or, if not then, the grief that had come
upon them both had fixed her in her design.