Beyond the faint breathing of the leaves overhead and the secret
movement of hidden things, there was no sound. He walked on quickly.
At first it was only suspense, childish, thrilling. Then it was more
than that. His heart began to beat quickly. He tried to call her, but
the quiet daunted him. The wood was a still, green pool into which she
had dropped and vanished. It was an enchanted wood. There was
enchantment all about her. They had seemed so near to one another--and
then in a moment she had slipped away from him into a life of her own
where he could not follow.
He had to find her and hold her fast. Nothing else mattered--neither
his work, nor his career, nor Christine. It was terrible how little
they seemed now--a handful of dust--beside this mounting, imperative
desire. He had been so invulnerable. In wanting nothing but what was
in himself he had been able to defy exterior events. Now he was
stripped of his defence. He could be hurt. He could be made
desperately happy or unhappy by things which he had thought trivial and
purposeless--the playthings of inferior children.
He came upon her suddenly. She knelt in the long grass, idle, with a
few scattered primroses in her lap as though in the midst of gathering
them she had been overtaken by a dream. He called her by name,
angrily, because of what he suffered. He stumbled to her and flung
himself down beside her and held her close to him, ruthless with desire
and his child's fear.
In that sheer physical explosion his whole personality blazed up and
seemed to melt away, flowing into new form. He had dashed down the
hill, a crude, exultant boy, into the whole storm and mystery of
manhood. And for all his fierceness his heart was small within him,
afraid of her, and of itself, and its own hunger.
At last he let her go. He tore himself from her and dropped face down
in the grass, trembling with grief and shame. He heard her say:
"Robert--dear Robert," very quietly, and her hand touched him, passing
like a breath of cool wind over his hair and neck. He kissed it
humbly, pressing it to his wet, hot cheek.
"I was frightened, Francey--and jealous--of everything--of the things
you love that I don't even know of--of the places you've been to--of
your friends--your money--your work. I thought you'd run away to
Italy--or somewhere else where I couldn't follow--that I'd lost
you----"
He saw her face and how deeply stirred she was. She had blazed up in
answer to him, but that very fire lit up something in her which was not
new, but which now stood out full armed--a clear-eyed austerity.
"I felt, too, as though I were running away--to the ends of the
world--but not from you, Robert. I wanted you to come too. I asked
you. You're not frightened now, are you?"
"Not so much."
"Let's be quiet--quite quiet, Robert. We've got to talk this out,
haven't we? I've got to understand. Sit here and help me tie these
together. They're for Christine. It'll make it easier for us. You
didn't mean this to happen. It was the sun and wind--it goes to one's
head like being out of prison after years and years. You mustn't make
a mistake. You would never forgive yourself or me. I'd understand if
you said: 'It was just to-day and being happy.' But I won't play at
our being in love with one another, Robert."
"It isn't a mistake, I'm not playing. I don't pretend I meant to let
you know. I was frightened. I wanted to hold fast to you. But I've
been sure ever since that night at Brown's----"
"And yet you wanted to avoid me----"
He nodded. Ho knelt beside her, very white and earnest, with his hands
clenched on his thighs.
"That was because I knew. I didn't think about it. But I knew all
right. And I was afraid it would upset everything to care."
"Doesn't it?"
"Not caring for you. Of course, I know all about life. I'm young and
I've never looked at a girl. I've always realized that it would be
natural to fall in love--perhaps worse than most men--and that if it
was with a girl like Cosgrave's it would be sheer damnation. I'd have
to fight it down. But loving you is different. It'll make me
stronger. I'll work harder and better because I love you. I'll do
bigger things because of you."
Her head was bowed over her primroses. The sunlight falling between
the trees on her wild brown hair kindled a smouldering colour in its
disorder. He watched her, fascinated and abashed by the knowledge that
she was smiling to herself. And suddenly, roughly like an ashamed boy,
he took a grey and blood-stained rag from his inner pocket and tossed
it into her lap.
"Do you remember that?"
She picked it up gingerly, amusedly.
"Is it a handkerchief, Robert?"
"Don't you remember it?" he repeated with triumph, as though in some
way he had beaten her.
For a moment she was silent. And when she looked at him her eyes were
no longer smiling.
"You kept it like that----?"
"I wouldn't even wash it. I hid it. It's got dirtier and dirtier."
"It must be horribly germy, Robert. We'll wash it together. As
members of the medical profession we couldn't have it on our
conscience----"
They laughed then, freely, out of the depth of their happiness. She
laid her hand in his and he bent his head to kiss it.
"You do trust me, Francey?"
"Trust you?"
"You don't think it's weak of me to love you? You know I'll pass my
finals, don't you--that I'll be all right? People might think I hadn't
the right to love you till I was sure. But, then, I am sure--dead
sure."
"I'm sure, too." Her voice sounded brooding, a little husky. She took
his hand and laid it on her lap, spreading out the fingers as though to
examine each one in turn. "It's a clever, beautiful hand, Robert--much
the most beautiful part of you. It will do clever, wonderful things.
What will _you_ do?"
(As though, he thought, his hands were something apart and she was
inquiring deeper into what was vitally him.)
He told her. It reassured him to go back to his foundations and to
find them still standing. He lost his tongue-tied clumsiness and spoke
rapidly, clearly, with brief, strong gestures. His haggard youth gave
place to a forcible, aggressive maturity. He was like an architect who
had planned for every inch and stone of his masterpiece. Next year he
would pass his finals. He would take posts as locum tenens whenever he
could and keep his hospital connexions warm. In five years he would
save enough to specialize--the throat gave wide opportunities for
research. There were men already interested in him who would send him
work. In ten years Harley Street--if not before.
In the midst of it all he faltered and broke off to ask:
"Why do you love me, Francey?"
And then, impulsively, she flung her arm about him and drew him close
to her. His head was on her breast, and for one uncertain moment she
was not Francey Wilmot at all, but the warm living spirit of the
sunlight, of the quiet trees and the grass in which they lay--of all
the things of which he was afraid.
"Because you're such an odd, sad, little boy----"
3
After tea it began to rain, not dismally, but in a gentle way as people
cry who have been too happy.
"In this jolly old country fine weather means bad weather," Connie
Edwards commented cynically. She had reason to be depressed. The
impossible poppies dripped tears of blood over the brim of the
cartwheel hat. But apart from that misfortune she had never got over
her original mood of puzzled dissatisfaction, and she and Cosgrave
walked droopingly down the narrow lane arm in arm and almost wordless.
So much of winter days was left that it was dark when they reached the
foot of the hill--the eerie luminous darkness of the country when there
is a moon riding somewhere behind the clouds. Robert could see
Christine and Francey just ahead of him. Christine had taken Francey's
arm, and they talked together in undertones like people who have secret
things to say to one another. How small Christine was! She seemed to
have shrunk into a handful of a woman as though the sun had withered
her. She walked timidly, with bowed head, feeling her way. Her voice
lifted for a moment into the old clearness.
"His father was a wonderful man--a wonderful, good man. Unhappy. Very
unfortunate. Not meant for this world. His mother was my dear friend.
If they had lived--those two---- I did what I could--I think they
will be satisfied--it makes me happy----"
She murmured wearily. And Francey bent her head to listen. Robert
loved her for the tenderness of that gesture. Yet it was bitter, too,
that they should talk of his father. He wanted to go up to them and
tell the truth brutally to Christine's face. He would have liked to
have told them the one dream which he carried over from his sleep. But
it would have been useless. Christine would only smile with a cruel,
loving wisdom.
"You don't understand. You were only a child. Your father was so
unhappy----"
The myth had become an invulnerable reality and had grown golden in the
twilight of her coming blindness. James Stonehouse had been a good
man, a faithful friend, and broken-hearted husband. If those two had
lived everything would have been different. She threw her hallowed
picture of them on the screen of the dripping dusk so that they seemed
to live. Robert saw them too. That was his mother walking at
Christine's side, and then his father---- In a sort of shattering
vision Robert saw him, a man of promise, black-browed with the riddle
of his failure, a man of many hungers, seduced by rootless passions,
lured to miserable shipwreck because he could not keep to any course,
because he could not give up worthlessness for worth.
Himself----
He staggered before the brief hallucination. The moisture broke out on
his white face. It wasn't enough to hate his father. He had to be
fought down day by day. He was always there, waiting to pounce out.
He lay on his face, pretending to be dead----
It was gone. He shook himself free as from the touch of an evil,
insinuating hand out of the dark. This love was his strength. If
Francey were like his mother, then she was also good. It was these rag
and bobtail friends that poisoned everything. They would have to be
shaken off. Francey was a child, fond of gaiety and pleasure, with no
one to guide her. She didn't understand.
Howard and Gertie Sumners were walking behind him now with the
luncheon-basket between them, talking earnestly in muffled whispers
that were too intimate, and behind them again came the Gang itself,
laughing, jostling one another, exchanging facetiousness in their
medical-Chelsea jargon.
His father would have liked them. Connie Edwards, no doubt, would have
been one of those dazzling, noisy phenomena that burst periodically on
the Stonehouse horizon.
Supposing he should come to like them too--to tolerate their ways,
their loose living, loose thinking----?
He remembered how that very afternoon he had tried to be one of them,
and sickened before himself.
Francey called to him through the darkness.
"Miss Forsyth's so tired, Robert. Couldn't you carry her?"
And he took Christine in his arms, whilst she laughed and protested
feebly. It was awful to feel how little she was. Her head rested
against his shoulder.
"It's a longer road than I thought. You're very strong, Robert. Your
father was strong too."
It had been a successful day. And yet, as they sat packed close
together in the dim, third-class carriage, they were like captives who
had escaped and were being taken back into captivity. The sickly,
overhead light fell on their tired faces, out of which the blood,
called up by the sun and wind, had receded, leaving their city pallor.
Connie Edwards had indeed produced a lip-stick from her gaudy bead bag,
but after a fretful effort had flung it back.
"What's the good? Who cares----?"
And Cosgrave huddled closer to her, wan-eyed, hunted-looking. It was
the ghost of that exam that wouldn't be laid--the prophetic vision of
the row that waited for him, grinding its teeth.
Only Gertie Sumners and Howard had a queer, remote look, as though in
that recent muffled exchange they had reached some desperate resolve.
The wet, gleaming platform slid away from them. There was a faint red
light in the west where the sunset had been drowned. Christine turned
her face towards it. She was like a little old child. Her little feet
in the shabby, worn-out shoes scarcely touched the floor. Her drooping
hat was askew--forgotten.
"It has been a wonderful day. But I mustn't come again. I'm too old.
It's silly to fall in love with life when one is old."
Robert leant across to her. He ached with his love and pity.
"Tired, Christine?"
"A little. But it has been worth while. You carried me so nicely--so
big and strong."
She leant against Francey, nodding and smiling to reassure him. And
presently she was asleep. He saw how Francey shifted her arm so that
it encircled the bowed figure, and every ugly thing that had dogged him
in that lonely, haunted walk vanished before the kind steadfastness of
her eyes.
It was as though she had said aloud:
"We'll take care of her together. We won't let her die before we've
made her very, very happy."
Then he took out a note-book and made a shaky sketch of a pompous,
drunken-looking house with a huge door, on which were two brass plates,
side by side, bearing the splendid inscriptions:
Dr. Frances Stonehouse, Robert Stonehouse,
M.D., F.R.C.S.
Hours 10--1
He showed it to her and they smiled at one another, and there was no
one else in the carriage but themselves and their happiness.
III
1
It meant a tightening--a screwing up of his whole life. Time had to be
found. The hours had to be packed closer to make room for her. He
grasped after fresh opportunities to make money with a white-hot
assiduity. He worked harder. For he was hag-ridden by his
unfaithfulness. He drew up a remorseless programme of his days, and
after that Francey might only walk home with him from the hospital.
And there was an hour on Sunday evening when he was too tired for
anything else.
It meant a ceaseless, active negation: a "No" to the simple wish to buy
her a bunch of flowers, "No" to the longing to walk a little farther
with her in the quiet dusk, "No" to the very thought of her.
2
As usual, on the way home, they discussed their best "cases." There
was No. 10 in A Ward, a raddled woman of the streets who had been
brought in the night before as the result of a _crime passionnel_, and
whose injuries had been the subject of long deliberations. Even before
they had reached the hospital archway Robert and Francey agreed that
Rogers' air of mystery was simply a professional disguise for complete
bafflement.
"It's the sort of case I'd like to have," Robert said. "Something you
can get your teeth into and worry. I believe if I were on my
own--given a free hand--I'd work it out--pull her through. Rogers may
too. But just now he's marking time. And there's nothing to hope from
time in a job like that. No constitution. Rotten all through. Still,
it would be a feather in one's cap."
He brooded fiercely, intently, like a hound on a hot scent. People
turned to look at the big, shabby young man with the sunken, burning
eyes that stared through them as though they had been so many shadows.
He did not, in fact, see them at all. He made his way by sheer
instinct across the crowded street.
"She's terribly afraid of death," Francey said. "It's awful to be so
afraid. It must make life itself terrible."
"They'll operate soon as they dare--an exploratory operation. If only
I could have a say--a real say! It's maddening to know so much--to be
sure of oneself. I don't believe Rogers would take me out on his
private work if he knew I knew all I do. I'm glad we're on a surgical
post together, Francey. I don't know what I'd do if I hadn't got you
to talk things over with."
"You daren't talk of anything else," she answered unexpectedly.
"You're frightened of our being happy together. You're always trying
to justify yourself."
"I'm not--what rubbish!"
He tried to laugh at her. It was so like Francey to dash off down a
side issue. And yet it was true. He did try to think as much as he
could of that side of their common life. It did add an appearance of
stability and reason to the splendid unreason of his loving her. It
made up to him for those dismaying breaks when her face and body stood
like a scorching pillar of fire between himself and his work, to find
that when they were together they could be sternly practical, discuss
their eases and criticize their superiors as though, beneath it all,
there were not this golden, insurgent sea whose high tides swirled over
his landmarks. Not destroying them.
In those latter times he loved her humbly, with wonder and passionate
self-abasement. But in their work they stood further away from one
another. He could criticize her, and that gave him a heady sense of
power and freedom. He never forgot the year that she had deliberately
thrown away. And even now, when she stood at the beginning of the road
which he had already passed over, she seemed to him full of strange
curiosities and wayward, purposeless interests. There were days when
an ugly Chinese print, picked up in some back-street pawnshop, or the
misfortunes of one of her raffish hangers-on, or some wild student rag,
appeared to wipe out the vital business of life. She was known to be
brilliant, but he distrusted her power of leaping to conclusions over
the head of his own mathematical and exact reasoning. He distrusted
still more her tendency to be right in the teeth of every sort of
evidence to the contrary. It seemed that she took into her
calculations factors that no one else found, significant,
unprofessional straws in the wind, things she could not even explain.
And yet she understood when he talked about his work, and that alone
was like a gift to him. No one else understood--for that matter, no
one else had had to listen. He knew that Christine was too tired, and
poor overburdened Cosgrave would only have gazed helplessly at him,
wondering why this strong, self-sufficient friend should pour out such
unintelligible stuff over his own aching head. So he had learnt to be
silent. Even now it was difficult to begin. He stammered and was shy
and distrustful and eager, sometimes crudely self-confident, like a
child who has played alone too long.
And Francey listened, for the most part critical and dispassionate, but
with sudden gestures of unmotivated tenderness: as when in the midst of
his dissertation on a theory of insanity and crime she had kissed him.
Sometimes for them both the prose and poetry of their relationship met
and clasped hands. That was when they took their walk down Harley
Street to have another look at the house which was one day to be
adorned with the celebrated brass plates. At present it was solidly
occupied by several eminent-sounding medical gentlemen who would have
to be ruthlessly dislodged when their time came.
For it was the best house in the street, and, of course, the Doctors
Robert and Francey Stonehouse would have to have the best.
And once they quarrelled about nothing at all, or about
everything--they hardly knew. It was an absurd quarrel, which blazed
up and went out again like fire in stubble. Perhaps they had waited
too long for their allotted hour together--dreamed too much about it,
so that when it came they could hardly bear it, and almost longed for
it to be over. And in the midst of it Mr. Ricardo drifted in on one of
his strange, distressful visits to Christine, and drove them out of
doors to roam the drowsy Sunday streets, hand in hand, like any other
pair of vulgar, homeless lovers. For Francey could not stay when Mr.
Ricardo came. His hatred of her was a burning, poisonous sore that
gave no peace to any of them.
"It's a sort of jealousy," Robert reflected. "We three have always
held together. He's had no one else to care about. And now you've
come, and he thinks you want to take me away from him."
"I do," Francey said unexpectedly.
"Not in the way he means."
"You don't know----"
"He's been good to me. I'd never have got through without him. I
can't have him hurt. And you will fight him, Francey. I know he's
crabbed and bitter, but so would you be if you'd been twisted out of
shape all your life. And you only do it for the fun of the thing.
Fundamentally, you think alike."
"We don't, that's just it. I'm sorry for him, and if it had been
anything less vital I'd compromise--he'd compromise, too, perhaps.
We'd both lie low and look pleasant about our differences. But as it
is we can't help ourselves. We've got to stand up and fight----"
"I say, that sounds jolly dramatic."
"It is rather."
"Next thing you'll be saying you believe in God."
"Well, I do----"
He stopped short and let go her hand. He was physically ashamed and
uncomfortable. He tried to laugh, but for the moment they were face to
face, and he could not mistake her seriousness. They were like
strangers, peering at each other through the grey dusk.
"Look here, Francey, dearest, you don't expect me to believe that?
You're just joking, aren't you? You're--you're a modern woman, with a
scientific training, too. You can't believe in an old, worn-out myth."
"I didn't say that."
"'An untested hypothesis,'" he quoted teasingly, but with a stirring
anger.
"I don't know about that, either. We're both bound by our profession
to admit an empirical test. And if we human beings can't survive
without God----"
"But we can--we do."
"I can't."
He threw up his head.
"Why do women always become personal when they argue?"
"And why do rationalists always become irrational?"
They walked on slowly, apart, vaguely afraid. He wanted to change the
subject, to take her by the arm and hold her fast. For she was
drifting away from him. Her voice sounded remote and troubling, like a
little old tune that he could not quite remember. Its emotion fretted
his overstrained nerves. He wanted to close his ears against it. It
was a trivial tune which might become a torment.
"It's not only me. It's everyone. Most of us are frightfully unhappy.
Don't you realize that? And the more we understand life the more
desperate we get. Savages and children may do without a god, but we
can't. We know too much. Even the stupidest--the most careless of us.
Think of Howard and Gertie and all that lot. Every second word is
'What's the good? What's it all about?' They make a great deal of
noise to cover up their unhappiness. They're terrified of loneliness
and silence. And one day it'll have to be faced."
"Oh, if you're going to take Howard as an example--" he interrupted.
"--and Rufus Cosgrave," she added.
He laughed with a boyish malice.
"Cosgrave doesn't need a god. He's got me. I'll look after him."
"You think you can? And then we ourselves. We're different, aren't
we? We've got our work. We're going to do big things. For whom?--for
what? For our fellow-creatures? But if we don't care for our
fellow-creatures? And we don't, do we? Not naturally. The
Brotherhood of Man is just dangerous nonsense. Naturally men loathe
one another in the mass. How can we pretend to love some of those
people we see every day in the wards with their terrible faces--their
terrible minds? But the idea of God does somehow translate them--it
gets underneath the ugliness--they do become in some mystic way my
brothers and my sisters."
He found it strangely difficult to answer calmly. It would have been
easier to have bludgeoned her into silence by a shouted "It's all
snivelling, wretched rot!" like an angry schoolboy. He did not know
why he was so angry. Perhaps Ricardo was right. It was something
vital. He could feel the old man's shadow at his side, his hand
plucking his sleeve, urging him on, claiming his loyalty. They were
allies fighting together against a poisonous miasma that sapped men's
brains--their intellectual integrity.
"Piling one fallacy on another isn't argument, Francey. We don't need
to like our fellow-creatures. It's a mistake to care. Emotion upsets
one's judgment. Scientists--the best men in the profession--try to
eliminate personal feeling altogether. They're out for knowledge for
its own sake. That's good enough for them."
"And the end of that--organized, scientific beastliness, like modern
war. Knowledge perverted to every sort of deviltry. Huge swollen
heads and miserable withered hearts. One of these days we'll blow
ourselves to pieces----"
They were both breathless and more than a little incoherent. They had
entered into a playful tussle, and now they were fighting one another
with set teeth.
"I don't believe you believe a word you're saying," he stammered. "You
know as well as I do that it's only since we began to throw off
superstition that we've begun to move. Or perhaps you don't want to
move--don't believe in progress."
"Progress towards what?" she flung back impetuously. "Perfection?
Some point where we'd have no poverty, no war, no ignorance, no death
even; where we'd all have every mortal thing we want? The millennium?
That's only another word for Hell. It's only by pretending that there
are things we want, and that we should be happy if we had them, that we
can believe in happiness at all. All this unrest, this sick despair
every morning of our lives when we drag ourselves out of bed and wonder
why we bother--it's just because we've begun to suspect that the
millennium is of no use to us. We've got to have more than that--some
sort of spiritual background--or cut our throats."
"Wild rhapsodizing, Francey. You don't know a thing."
"I don't. Nor do you. When I said I believed, I meant I hoped--I
trusted. And if there isn't a God at the end of it all, you people who
want to keep us alive for the sake of the knowledge you get out of us
will have to make one up."
Whereat, suddenly, in a cool, refreshing gust, their sense of humour
returned and blew them close to one another. They laughed and took
hands again--a little shyly, like lovers who had been parted for a long
time.
"What rot--our quarrelling over nothing at all," Robert said, "when
we've only got this hour together. I wanted to say 'I love you,
Francey--I love you, dear' over and over again. Say 'I love you too,
Robert.'"
"I love you too," she answered soberly.
But the crack was there--a mere fissure in the ground between them--a
place to be avoided even in their thoughts.
3
At night when his work was over and the unrest grew too strong to be
fought, he crept down the black, creaking stairs, through the sleeping
backwater of Drayton Mews, and out into the streets. He walked fast,
with his head down, guiltily, like a man flying from a crime. But in
the grave square where Francey Wilmot lived he slackened speed, and,
under the thick mantle of the trees, stood so still that he was only a
deeper shadow. Then release came. It was like gentle summer rain
falling on his fever. There was no one to see his weakness. He could
think and feel simply and naturally as a lover, without remorse.
Sometimes a light burnt in her window, and then he knew that she was
working, making up for those queer, wild play-hours. He could imagine
her under the shaded lamplight, the books heaped round her, and her
hands clenched hard in the thick brown hair. He could feel the peace,
the rich, deep stillness round her. And a loving tenderness, exquisite
and delicate as a dream, welled up in him. He said things out of his
heart to her that he had never said: broken, stumbling things, melted
in the white-heat of their truth into a kind of poetry of which the
burden never changed. "I can't live without you--I can't live without
you." He could have knelt before her, burying his burning face in her
lap in strange humility--childlike surrender.
And when the window was dark he knew that she had gone out to dance, to
the theatre, with friends whom he did not know, belonging to that other
life in which he had no part. And then his loneliness was like a black
sea. He leant against the railings, weak with weariness and hunger,
fighting his boy's tears, until she came. He did not speak to her.
She never knew that he was there. He hid, his heart stifling him,
until the door closed on her. Then, since she had come back to him,
belonged to him again, he could go in peace.
The others--Howard and Gertie and even Connie now--went in and out,
risking ruthless ejection if she were hard pressed, to sit in the best
chairs, with their feet in the fender and drink coffee and smoke
endlessly whilst they poured their good-natured cynicism over life. If
they were hungry they rifled Francey's larder, and if they were hard up
they borrowed her money. But after the one time Robert never went. He
did not want to meet them. And besides the big square room with its
mark of other stately days--its panelled walls, rich ceilings and noble
doors--was his enemy. It was steeped in a mellow, unconscious luxury
that threatened him. There were relics from Francey's old home,
trophies from her Italian wanderings, books that his hands itched just
to touch, and things of strange troubling beauty. A bronze statue of a
naked faun stood in the corner where the light fell upon it, and seemed
to gather into itself everything that he feared--a joyous dancing to
some far-off music.
The room would not let him forget that Francey held money, which he had
had to squeeze his life dry to get, lightly and indifferently. She
gave it with both hands. She had always had enough, and it seemed to
her a little thing. Between people who cared for one another it
counted less than a word, and his sullen refusal of every trivial
pleasure and relief that lay in her power to give them hurt and puzzled
her. She saw in it only a bitter pride.
"You might at least let me make Christine's life easier in little
things," she said.
He could not tell her that Christine would have been afraid for him, as
he was afraid of the deep chairs that had seemed to clasp his tired
body in drowsy arms, of the rugs that drank up every harsh sound, of
the warm, fragrant atmosphere that was like a blow in the face of their
chill and barren poverty.
So after that one time he kept away. But he could always see the room
and Francey working there, and the slender, joyful body of the faun
poised on the verge of its mystic dance.
Once, Francey was too strong for him, and they bought tickets for the
theatre, and he sat hunched beside her in the front row of the cheap
seats and stared down at the great square of light like an outcast
gazing at the golden gates of Paradise. It was _The Tempest_, and he
hardly understood. It broke over him in overpowering sound and colour.
He was dazed and blinded. He forgot Francey. He sat with his gaunt
white face between his bands and watched them pass: Prospero, Miranda,
Ferdinand, Ariel--figures of a noble, glittering company--and wretched,
uncouth Caliban crouched on the outskirts of their lives, pining for
his lost kingdom. But in the interval he was silent, awkward and heavy
with an emotion that could not find an outlet. He felt her hand close
over his--an, almost anxious hand.
"Robert, you like it, don't you? You're not bored?" He turned to look
dazedly at her, stammering in his confusion.
"I've never been to a theatre before."
"Never? Oh, my dear----"
"Only to a circus, long ago." He drew back hastily into himself. He
did not want her to be sorry like that. He would not let her see how
shaken he was. "I never wanted to go," he said.
After that they walked home together, and in the empty street that led
into her square a moonlight spirit of phantasy seemed to possess her,
and she sang under her breath and danced in front of him, rather
solemnly as she had done as a little girl:
"Come unto these yellow sands
And then take hands. . ."
He caught hold of her. Everything was unreal--they themselves and the
unfamiliar street, painted with silver and black shadows.
"Don't--you're dancing away from me; there's nothing for you to dance
to."
She smiled back wistfully.
"'The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices. . .'"
"I don't hear them," he muttered clumsily.
"Caliban heard them----"
"And you're Ariel," he said, with sudden, sorrowful understanding.
"Ariel!"
From the steps of the dark house she looked down at him, her eager face
smiling palely in the white, still light.
"Ariel wasn't a woman, dear duffer. You'll have to read it. I'll lend
it to you. And then we'll go again."
He shook his head.
"No."
"Yes--often--often, Robert. We've been nearer to one another than ever
before--just these last minutes--quite, quite close. We've got to find
each other in pleasure too."
He rallied all his strength. He said stiffly, pompously:
"It's been awfully nice, of course. And thank you for taking me. But
I don't really care for that sort of thing."
And for a moment they remained facing one another whilst the joy died
out of her eyes, leaving a queer distress. Then they shook hands and
he left her, coldly, prosaically, as though nothing had happened. But
he was like a drunken man who had fallen into a sea of glory.
"The clouds, methought, would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me. . ."
There was all that work that he had meant to do before morning. It
seemed far off--more unreal and fantastic than a fairy tale. His heart
and brain, ached with willingness and loathing.
". . . that, when I wak'd,
I cried to dream again. . ."
He set his teeth. He clenched his hands till they hurt him.
"I'll have to keep away from all that," he thought aloud,
"altogether--till I don't care any more."
IV
1
After all, Rufus Cosgrave had imagined his answers. Connie Edwards met
Robert as he came out of the hospital gates and told him. It was raining
dismally, with an ill-tempered wind blustering down the crowded street,
and she had not dressed for bad weather. Perhaps she did not admit
unpleasant possibilities even into her wardrobe. Perhaps she could not
afford to do so. Her thin, paper-soled shoes, with the Louis XIV heels,
and the cheap silk stockings which showed up to her knees, made her look
like some bedraggled, long-legged bird-of-Paradise. A gaudy parasol
could not protect her flopping hat, or her complexion, which had both
suffered. Or she had been crying. But she did not sound as though she
had been crying. She sounded breathless and resentful.
"He heard this afternoon," she said. "And what must he do but come
bursting round to my place--half an hour before I'm due to start for the
show--and carry on like a madman. Scared stiff, I was. Tried to make me
swear I'd marry him and start for Timbuctoo to-morrow, and when I
wouldn't, wanted to shoot himself and me too--as though I'd made a muck
of things. Well, I'd done my best, and when it came to that sort of
sob-stuff I'd had enough. What's he take me for? Get me into trouble
with my landlady--making a row like that."
Robert heard her out in silence, and his intent, expressionless scrutiny
seemed to flick her on the raw. She stamped her foot at him. "Oh, for
the Lord's sake, get a move on---do something, can't you? I didn't come
here to be stared at as though I were a disease!"
"Where is he?"
"If I knew----! My place probably--with the gas full on--committing
suicide--making a rotten scandal. You've got to come and dig him out."
"Where do you live?"
"Ten minutes from here. 10E Stanton Place. I'll show you a short way.
I ran like a hare, hoping I'd catch you, and you'd put a bit of sense
into the poor looney's head. Serves me right--taking on with his sort."
"Well--we'd better hurry," Robert said.
"Thanks. I said I'd show you the way. I'm not coming in. Don't you
believe it. I've had enough. All I ask is--get him out and keep him
out."
"You're through with him?"
Her habitual good-natured gaiety was gone. She looked disrupted and
savagely afraid, like an animal that has escaped capture by a frantic
effort. And yet it was difficult to imagine Rufus Cosgrave capturing or
frightening anyone.
"You bet I'm through with him. You tell him so--tell him I don't want to
see him again--I won't be bothered----" She broke off, and added, with
a kind of rough relenting: "Put it any blessed way you like--say what's
true--we've had our good times together--and it seems they're over--we've
no use for one another."
"You mean--now he's failed."
"What do _you_ mean--'now he's failed'? What's his rotten old exam got
to do with me? I don't even know what it's about."
"You took the good time whilst you could get it, and now when you can't
hope for anything more----"
She stopped short, and they faced each other with an antagonism that
neither gave nor asked for quarter. They had always been enemies, and
now that the gloves were off they were almost glad.
"So that's my line. Cradle-snatching. Vamping the helpless infant!" She
burst into a fit of angry, ugly laughter. "A good time! Running round
with a poor kid with ten shillings a week pocket-money--eating in beastly
cheap restaurants--riding on the tops of 'buses when some girls I know
are feeding at the Ritz and rolling round in limousines. That's what I
get for being soft. And now because I won't shoot myself, or go off to
nowhere steerage, I'm a bad, abandoned woman. What d'you take me for?"
"What you are," he said.
She went dead white under her streaky paint.
"You--you've got no right to say that. You're a devil--a stuck-up
devil--I hate you--I'd have always hated you if I'd bothered to mind.
I--I gave _him_ a good time. That's the truth. He was down and out when
I met him, and I set him on his feet. I didn't mind what I missed--or
the other girls guying me--I made him laugh and believe he had as good a
chance in the world as anyone else. I put a bit of fun into him. I
liked the kid. I--I like him now. If he wanted a good time to-morrow
I'd run round with him again. But I'm no movie heroine--I'm not out for
poison and funerals and slow music. Life's too damn serious for my sort
to make a wail and a moan about it."
He stood close to her. He almost menaced her. He did in fact look
dangerous enough with his white, set face and unflinching eyes in which
stood two points of metallic light. If he had seen himself then he might
have cowered away as from a ghost.
"I don't care a rap about you. I do care about my friend. You've got to
stand by Cosgrave till he's over the worst."
"I won't--I won't!"
"I'll make you. You took him up. You made him think you cared about
him. You're responsible----"
"I'm not--I won't be responsible; it's not my line. I've got myself to
look after."
She had the look of someone struggling against an invisible
entanglement--a pitiable, rather horrible look of naked purpose. She
meant to cut free at whatever cost.
"You little beast!" he said.
He was sick with contempt. He swung away from her, and she stood in the
middle of the pavement and called names after him like a drunken, furious
street-girl. She did not seem to be even aware of the people who stared
at her. When he was almost out of hearing, she added:
"Give him my love!" shrilly, vindictively, as though it had been a final
insult. But he took no notice and now, at any rate, she was crying
bitterly enough.
2
"E" proved to be the top room of No. 10, a dingy lodging-house whose
front door, in accordance with the uncertain habits of its patrons, stood
open from year's end to year's end. Robert went in unnoticed. He ran up
the steep, narrow stairs, with their tattered carpeting, two steps at a
time. A queer elation surged beneath his anger and distress. Cosgrave's
failure was like a personal challenge--a defiance thrown in his teeth.
The old fight was on again. It was against odds. But then, he had
always fought against odds--won against them.
The room was Connie Edwards herself. It seemed to rush out at him in a
tearing rage, flaunting its vulgar finery and its odour of bad scent and
cheap cigarette smoke. It made him sick, and he brushed it out of his
consciousness. He did not see the poor attempts to make it decent and
attractive--the bed disguised beneath a faded Liberty cretonne, a
sentimental Christ hanging between a galaxy of matinee heroes, nor a
full-length woman's portrait, across which was scrawled "Gyp Labelle" in
letters large enough to conceal half of her outrageous nakedness. There
were even a few flowers, drooping forlornly out of a dusty vase, and a
collection of theatrical posters, to lend a touch, of serious
professionalism.
But the end of it all was a frowzy, hopeless disorder.
Cosgrave lay huddled over the littered table by the open window. The red
untidy head made a patch of grotesque colour in the general murk. He
looked like a poor rag doll that had been torn and battered in some wild
carnival scrimmage and flung aside.
There was not much in him--not much fight, as he himself said. Not the
sort to survive. Life was too strong--too difficult for him. He bungled
everything--even an exam. It would be wiser, more consistent to let him
drift. And yet at sight of that futile breakdown, it was not impatience
or contempt that Robert felt, but a choking tenderness--a fierce pity.
He had to protect him--pull him through. He had promised so much--he
forgot when: that afternoon lying in the long, sooty grass behind the
biscuit factory, or that night when he had dragged Cosgrave breathless
and staggering in pursuit of the Greatest Show in Europe. It did not
matter. It had become part of himself. And Cosgrave had always trusted
him--believed in him.
"It's all right, old man; it's only me--Robert." For Cosgrave had leapt
up with an eager cry, and now stood staring at him open-mouthed. The
light was behind him, and the open mouth and blank, shadowy face made a
queer, ghastly effect, as though a drowned man had suddenly stood up.
Then he sagged pitifully, and Robert caught him by the shoulders and
shook him with a rough, boyish impatience. "Don't be an idiot. It
doesn't matter all that much. Exams are not everything. Everyone knows
that. We'll find something else. If your people are too beastly, you'll
come and share with us. I'll see you through--it'll be all right."
But a baffling change came over Cosgrave. He shook himself free. He
stood upright, looking at Robert with a kind of stony dignity.
"Where is she?"
"Who?"
"Connie. She sent you, didn't she?"
"Yes. We met----"
"Where is she?"
"I don't know. Gone to the theatre probably."
"Isn't she coming back?"
"Not now."
"Didn't she send a message?"
"She said--it was finish between you. She's a little rotter, Cosgrave."
"She made me laugh," Cosgrave said simply. "I don't mind about the
exam.--or about anything now. I suppose I was bound to fail. But I was
so jolly happy. I'd never had a good time like that. It's all over now.
She doesn't care. She said she couldn't be tied up with a lot of
trouble. That's what I am. A lot of trouble. It was all
bunkum--make-believe--to think I could be anything else."
So it wasn't his failure. It wasn't even the loss of a good-for-nothing
chorus-girl. It was a loss far more subtle. The recognition of it lamed
Robert Stonehouse, knocked the power out of him, as though someone had
struck and paralysed a vital nerve centre. He could only stammer
futilely:
"She's not worth bothering about."
Cosgrave slumped back into his chair. His hands lay on the table, half
clenched as though they had let go and didn't care any more. He looked
at Robert wide-eyed with a sudden absolute knowledge.
"That's it," he said. "Not worth bothering about--nothing in this whole
beastly, rotten, world. . . . . ."
3
A convenient uncle found him a berth as clerk to a trading firm in West
Africa, and with a cheap Colonial outfit and 10 pounds in his pocket,
Cosgrave set out for the particular swamp which was to be the scene of
his future career. He went docilely, with limp handshakes and dull,
pathetic eyes. If he betrayed any feeling at all, it was a sort of
relief at getting away from everybody. But emotionally he was dead--like
cheap champagne gone flat, as he expressed it in one twisted mood of
self-revelation.
Probably he was thinking of Connie Edwards and of their last spree
together.
But he never spoke of her.
And it was very unlikely that the swamp would give him a chance to see
any of them again.
After all, he had stood for something. He was a rudderless little craft
that had come leaking and tumbling willy-nilly in the wake of the bigger
vessel. But also he had been a sort of talisman. He had protected
Robert as the weak, when they are humble and loving, can protect the
strong, giving them greater confidence, making their defeat impossible.
With his going went security. Little old fears came crawling out of
their hiding-places. At night when Robert climbed the dark stairs to
their stable-attic, they set upon him. They clawed his heart. He called
to Christine before he saw her, and the answering silence made him sick
with panic. It was reasonless panic, for Christine often fell asleep at
dusk. She was difficult to wake and when she woke it was strangely, with
a look of bewilderment, like a traveller who has come home after a long
absence. Once she had spoken his father's name with a ringing joy, and
he had answered roughly and had seen her shrink back into herself. Her
little hands trembled, fumbling apologetically with the shabby bag she
always carried. She was like a girl who, in one withering tragic moment,
had become old. But his aching love found no outlet, no word of regret
or tenderness. It recoiled back on himself in a dead weight of pain.
He began to watch himself like a sick man. There were hours when he knew
his brain to be losing edge--black periods of hideous impotency which,
when they passed, left him shaken and wet with terror. Supposing, at the
end of everything, be failed? He didn't care so much. His very power of
caring had been dissipated. His single purpose lost itself amidst
incompatible dreams. He was being torn asunder--and there was a limit to
endurance.
Cosgrave had failed. He couldn't concentrate. He was always looking for
happiness. He had fallen in love and wasted himself and made a mess of
his life.
It was mad to fall in love.
And yet the worst dread of all was the dread of losing Francey. It
seemed even the most unreasonable, for they had their work in common and
they loved one another. There was no doubting their love. They were
very young and might have to wait, but he could trust her to wait all her
life. He knew dimly that she had been fond of him as a little boy, and
had gone on being fond of him, simply and unconsciously, because it was
not possible for her to forget. She would love him in the same way.
That steadfastness was like a light shining through the mists of her
character--through her sudden fancies, her shadowy withdrawals.
And still he was afraid, and sometimes he suspected that she was afraid
too. It was as though inexorable forces were rising up in both of them,
essentially of them, and yet outside their control, two dark antagonisms
waiting sorrowfully to join issue.
4
It had happened suddenly--not without warning. One little event trod on
the heels of another, rubble skirling down the mountain-side, growing to
an avalanche.
Or, again, Cosgrave might have been the odd, unlikely keystone of their
daily life. He had not seemed to matter much, but now that he had been
torn out the bridge between them crumbled.
It had been a day full of bitterness--of set-backs, which to Robert
Stonehouse were like pointing fingers. They were the outward expressions
of his disorder. He did not believe in luck, but in a man's strength or
weakness, and he knew by the things that happened to him that he was
weakening. A private operation had gone badly. He had bungled with his
dressings, so that the surgeon had turned on him in a burst of irritation.
"Better go home and sleep it off, Stonehouse."
He had not gone. He would not admit that he was ill--dared not. All
illness now meant the end of everything. It would wipe out all that they
had endured if he were to break down now. It would kill Christine. She
must not even guess.
He hung about the hospital common-room. The summer heat surging up from
the burning pavements stagnated between the faded walls. He could not
touch the food that he had brought with him. He was faint and sick, and
the long table at which he sat, with its white blur of newspapers, rose
and fell as though it were floating on an oily sea. But he held out. At
five o'clock he was to meet Francey at the gates, and, as though she had
some magic gift of relief, he strained towards that time, his head
between his hands, his ears counting the seconds that dripped heavily,
drowsily from the moon-faced clock.
And then she did not come. Outwardly it was only one more trifle,
capable of simple explanations. But he saw it through a disfiguring haze
of fever, and it was deadly in its significance. He hardly waited. He
crossed the thoroughfare, and once in a side street stumbled into a
shambling run. He did not stop until he reached her house. His former
reluctance broke before the imperative need to see her and make sure of
her. He stormed the broad, deep, carpeted stairs, pursued by a senseless
panic, But at the top his strength failed him. He felt his brain
throbbing in torture against his skull.
The old maid-servant nodded gravely, sympathetically.
"Yes, she's in, sir, but very busy--going away--sir." Going away. He
wavered in the dim hall, trying to control his flying thoughts. Going
away. And she had said nothing the night before--had not even warned
him. Some unexpected, untoward event striking in the dark. Illness. A
long separation. (And yet, he argued, he could not live without her.
She had no people who could claim her. They were dead. No one to come
between them. And there was her work. She would never leave that again.)
But there she stood in the midst of the disorder of a sudden going. Open
suit-cases, clothes strewn about the floor, she herself in some loose,
bright-coloured wrap, her brown hair tousled and her brows knit in
perplexity. She stopped short at sight of him, smiling ruefully, her
arms full.
"Oh, my dear--I'd forgotten." (Then she must have seen his face with its
dead whiteness, for she added quickly, half laughing): "Not you. Only
the time. I've not been at the hospital, and I thought I had still half
an hour. I've had to run round like mad, and even now I've got a hundred
things to do----"
He gulped. He said: "Where are you going?" in a flat, emotionless voice,
as though he did not care.
For a moment she did not answer. She let the clothes drop, forgotten, on
the sofa. He could see her weighing--considering what she should say to
him.
"Italy--Rome--I expect----"
"Italy--when?"
"I've got to be at the hospital to-morrow. Wednesday probably. I don't
believe it'll be for long. I hope not. A week or two. I've got leave
for a month."
"Why are you going?"
And now he could not keep the harsh break out of his voice. He could not
hide the physical weakness which made it impossible for him to stand.
And yet, though she looked at him, she seemed unaware that he was
suffering. She was absorbed in some difficulty of her own, set on her
own immediate purpose. He knew that mood. It was the other side of her
fitful, whimsical way of life that she could be as relentless, as deadly
resolute and patient in attainment as himself.
"It's about Howard," she said, abruptly coming to a decision. "I wasn't
sure at first what to do about it. I didn't want anyone to know. But
you're different. We have to share things. Howard and Gertie--they've
both gone--gone off--no one knows where."
"Together?"
"I'm pretty certain of it. At any rate, Gertie, who couldn't even pay
her rent, has vanished, and Howard--I heard about Howard this morning."
"What did you hear about him?"
"It was from Salter. You probably don't know him. He came to me because
he knew I was a friend of Howard's. He was frightfully upset. It seems
there was some sort of club which a crowd of students were collecting
for, and he and Howard held the funds. It wasn't much--150 pounds--and
Howard drew it out two days ago."
"Does that astonish you?" Robert asked.
She seemed not to hear the scorn and irony of the question. She went on
packing deliberately, and he watched her, not knowing what he would say
or do. The tide was rising faster. His dread would carry him off his
feet.
"No. I was sure things were coming to a crisis."
"He was no good. Anyone could see that."
"I didn't see it."
"Well, you see it now," he flung at her with a hard triumph.
"I don't."
"A mean thief----"
"Not mean, Robert."
"I don't know anything meaner than stealing money from a lot of hard-up
students."
"There was Gertie," she said as though that were some sort of extenuation.
"Gertie--they've gone off on some rotten spree--not even married."
(He hated himself--the beastly righteousness of his voice, his
contemptible exultation. It was as though he were under some horrid
spell which twisted his love and anguish into the expressions of a
spiteful prig. Why couldn't he tell her of those deadly, shapeless
fears, of his loneliness, his sorrowful jealousies? He was shut up in
the iron fastness of his own will--gagged and helpless.)
He saw her start. She stopped definitely in her work as though she were
at last aware of some struggle between them. The room was growing dark,
and she came a little nearer, trying to see his face.
"I don't suppose so. I don't think it would occur to them."
"No--that's what I should imagine."
"You're awfully hard on people, Robert."
"That sort of thing makes me sick. It ought to make you sick. I don't
know why it doesn't. You don't seem to care--to have any standards.
You're unmoral in your outlook--perhaps you're too young--you don't
realize. A rotter like Howard who takes other people's money just to
enjoy himself--a girl like Gertie Sumners who goes off with the first man
who asks her----"
"You don't understand, Robert."
"No," he said with a laugh, "I don't."
"Gertie Sumners hasn't long to live. I sent her to the hospital last
week, and they told her honestly. And she wanted so much to see Italy.
I don't think Howard cares for her or she for him, except in a comradely
sort of way. They loved the same things--and he was sorry--he wanted to
give her her one good time."
"He told you all that, I suppose?"
"No," she answered soberly. "But I know."
He waited a moment. He was trying desperately to hold back--to stop
himself. He was sorry about Gertie Sumners. But everything was against
him. The room was against him--the faun dancing noiselessly among the
shadows, the little things that Francey had gathered about her, the dear
personal things that can become terrible in their poignancy, Francey
herself, standing there slender and grave-eyed, judging him, weighing
him. They were all leagued together. They spoke with one voice. "We
belong TO one another. We understand. But you don't belong. You are
outside."
"I don't see, at any rate," he said, "what it has got to do with you--or
why you should be going away."
"I'm going after them. There's no one else. Howard will expect
prosecution. He will think that he'll never be able to come home. He's
pretty reckless, but they will be thinking of that all the time. It will
spoil everything for them."
"And what can you do?"
"I can tell them it's all right."
"How can it be?"
"It is," she said curtly. "The money has been paid back."
"Paid back!" Understanding burst upon him. "_You_ paid it?"
He stood up. He knew that resentment flickered in her--a fine, dangerous
resentment against him because he had dragged so simple and obvious a
thing out of its insignificance. But his own anger was like a mad,
runaway horse, rushing him to destruction.
"It was stupid of him not to have come to me in the first place," she
said, with an effort. "He should have known----"
He broke in fiercely.
"You can't--can't go like that."
"I must. If they had left an address--but, of course, they haven't.
I'll have to track them down. It won't be so difficult." A spark of
gaiety lit up her serious eyes. "I'll find Gertie lying on her back in
the Sistine Chapel. She'll scorn the mirrors."
"You can't leave your work like that."
"The hospital people have been awfully decent about it."
"You told them----?"
"I told them I had urgent, personal business."
"You told them a lie, then?"
(Steady. Steady. But it was too late. His only hope lay in her
understanding--her pity.)
"It wasn't a lie. My friends are my business."
"Your friends!" he echoed.
There was silence between them. She was controlled enough not to answer.
It would have been better if she had returned taunt for taunt so that at
last in the white heat of conflict his prison might have melted and let
him free. But there followed a cold, deadly interlude, in which their
antagonism hardened itself with reason and bitterness. He went and stood
by the window looking out on to the dim square. He said at last roughly,
authoritatively:
"Don't go. I don't want you to go."
(If only he could have gone on--driven the words over his set
lips--"because I'm afraid--because I'm at breaking-point--because I can't
do without you. I'm frightened of life. I've been starved in body and
heart too long. I'm frightened because Christine is hard to wake at
night--because I can't work any more.")
"I've got to," she said briefly, sternly.
He walked from the window to the door.
"You don't care. You care more for these two than you do for me. I've
lived hard and clean. I don't lie or steal. I've never thought of any
girl but you. And you put me second to a feckless thief and a----"
She stopped him. Not with a word or gesture, but with the sheer upward
blaze of a chivalrous anger. And it was not only anger. That would have
been bearable. It was sorrow, reproach, a kind of grieving bewilderment,
as though he had changed before her eyes.
"You'd--you'd better go, Robert. We're both of us out of hand. We'll
see each other to-morrow. It will be different then."
He went without a word. But on the dark stairs he stood still, leaning
back against the wall, his wet face between his hands. He said aloud:
"Oh, Francey. Francey, I can't live without you!" He would have gone
back to tell her, but he was physically at the end of everything, and at
the mercy of the power outside himself. He thought:
"There's still to-morrow. I'll tell her everything. I'll help her to
get away. I'll make her understand that it wasn't Howard. To-morrow it
will be all right."
And so went on. And the stolid Georgian door closed with a hard metallic
click, setting its teeth against him.
"Now you see how it happens, Robert Stonehouse!"
5
But he came out of a night of fever and hallucination with very little
left but the will to keep on. Apathy, like a thin protecting skin, had
grown over him, shielding him from further hurt. He did not want to feel
or care any more. The very memory of that "scene" with Francey made him
shrink with a kind of physical disgust. Only no more of that. Back to
work--back to reason. If she wished to go in pursuit of Howard and
Gertie she would have to go. It seemed strange to him now that he should
have minded so desperately.
Christine called to him as he passed her door.
"Is that you, Robert? Have you had your breakfast? Wait, dear--I'll get
it for you."
But he crept down the stairs as though he had not heard. Only not so
much caring--if only he could forget that he cared.
"Good-bye, dearest, good-bye!"
Her voice followed him, plaintive and clear. It seemed to lodge itself
in his heart so that ever afterwards he had only to think of her to hear
it like the echo of a small, sad bell. He went on stubbornly, in silence.
He did not try to see Francey. They met inevitably in the wake of the
surgeon on whose post they worked, but they did not speak. Their eyes
avoided one another. Yet he could not forget her. It was not the old
consciousness that had been full of mystery and delight. It hurt. He
felt her unsapped joyous living like a blow on his own aching weariness.
He thought bitterly of her. How easy life had been for her! She played
at living. Her airy fancies, her belief in God, her vagrant tenderness
for the rag and bobtail of the earth were all part of that same thing.
She had never suffered. Her people had died, but they had died in the
odour of sanctity and wealth. She had never had to ask herself: "If I
fall out, what will become of us?" She saw pain and poverty through the
softening veil of her own well-being. Nothing could really hurt her.
(And yet how lovable she was! He watched her covertly as she stood at
the surgeon's elbow--a little graver than usual--a little paler. To-day
there was no warm glance with a flicker of a smile in its serene depths
to greet him. Her hands were thrust boyishly into the pockets of her
white coat, and there was an air of austere earnestness about her that
sat quaintly, charmingly upon her youth. He loved the businesslike
simplicity of her dress--the dark, tailored skirt and white silk
shirt--immaculate--expressive of her real ability, an accustomed wealth.
He flaired and hated its expensiveness.)
Money. That lay at the root of everything. If she were ill--what would
it matter? A mere set-back. Her work would wait for her. Money would
wave anxiety from her door. So she was never ill. Even though she loved
him and they had quarrelled she had kept her fresh skin and clear eyes.
Even if she had worried a little, in the end she had slept peacefully.
(He felt his own shabbiness, his exhaustion, his burning hands and eyes,
his dry and bitter mouth like a sort of uncleanliness.)
And there in the midst of his jagged thoughts there flickered a red
anger--a desire to hurt too, to strike, to come to grips at last with her
laughing philosophy of life--to tear it down and batter it into the dust
and misery in which he stood.
They had come to No. 10's bedside. Things had gone badly with No. 10.
She had stood a successful operation, but there had been severe
haemorrhage, and, as Robert had said, there was no constitution to fight
at the turning point. Her face just showed above the creaseless sheet.
Death had already begun to clear away the mask of vice and cynicism and a
lost prettiness peered through. But the eyes were terribly alive and
old. So long as they kept open there could be no mistaking her. They
travelled from face to face, and sought and questioned. Her voice
sounded reedy and far-off.
"Not going this trip, am I, doctor?"
Rogers patted the bed.
"Certainly not. Going along fine. What do you expect to feel like--with
a hole like that in your inside? Next time you have a young man, see he
doesn't carry firearms."
One of the eyes tried to wink--pitifully, obscenely.
"You bet your life. Don't want to die just yet."
"Nobody does."
They drew a little apart. Rogers consulted with his colleague. The
serious loss of blood must be made good. A transfusion. There was a
young man who had offered himself. A suitable subject. This afternoon
at the latest.
They moved on. Robert spoke to the man next him. But he knew that
Francey heard him. He meant her to hear.
"It's crazy. They ought to be glad to let a woman like that slip out.
If she lives she'll only infect more people with her rottenness. She's
better dead. Instead of that they'll suck out somebody else's vitality
to save her. The better the life the more pleased they'll be to risk it.
This sacrificing the strong to the weak--a snivelling sentimentality."
The man he spoke to glanced at him curiously--it was not usual for Robert
Stonehouse to speak to anyone--and said something about the medical
profession and the sanctity of life. Robert laughed. He argued it over
with himself. It was true. For that matter Howard and Gertie and Connie
would all be better dead. There was no use or purpose in their living.
Only sentimentalists like Francey wanted to patch them up and keep them
on their feet.
People who cluttered up life ought to be cleared out of it.
He felt light-headed, yet extraordinarily sure of himself again. He
answered Rogers' questions with the old lucidity. And presently he found
himself in the corridor, still arguing his theme over. He would prove to
Francey that she must let Howard and Gertie go to the devil and they
would never quarrel again.
He came to the head of the stairs where they met after the morning's work.
The steps were very broad and white and shallow, and gave the impression
of great distance. Mr. Ricardo, at the bottom of them, was a black
speck--a bird that had blundered into the building by mistake and beaten
itself breathless against the walls. As he saw Robert he began to drag
himself up, limping. He seemed to shrivel then to a mere face, stricken
and yellow, that gaped and mouthed.
Robert did not move. He stood leaning against the balustrade. It was as
though an iron fist had smashed through the protecting wall about him,
letting in a rush of bitter wind.
"Robert--Robert!"
He nodded.
"I'm coming----"
For he had known instantly.
6
The tragic journey through the streets was over. They stood beside her.
Robert knew too much to struggle, but Ricardo's voice went on, saying the
same things over and over again, pleading.
"Do something--do something. Wake her, Robert, dear boy, for God's sake.
What is the use of all your studying if you can't even wake her?"
"It's no use," he said.
"She was sitting there--I was to have read her the last chapter--she was
so quiet--asleep she seemed---for an hour--I sat--not moving--then I was
afraid!"
Robert nodded.
She had laid his supper for him. It was much too early for her to have
laid it. She had spread muslin over the bread and cheese. And then she
had sat down quietly in her chair by the window and waited. (How long
had she waited there? Many years perhaps. It had been very lonely for
her.) Her head was thrown back a little, and her closed eyes lifted to
the light that came over the stable roofs. The grey hair hung in wisps
about the transparent face--very still, as though the air had died too.
She had changed profoundly, indefinably. She looked younger, and there
was a new serenity about the faintly opened mouth. Her hands lay
peacefully on the little shabby bag. Her little feet in the ill-fitting
shoes just reached the ground. In a way it was all so familiar. And yet
he felt that if he touched her he would find out that this was not
Christine at all. This was something that had belonged to her--as
poignant, as heart-rending as a dress that she had worn.
"Robert, isn't there anything--to do?"
"No."
They had nothing to say to one another. They had made a strange
trio--lonely and outcast by necessity--but now a link had snapped and it
was all over. They stood apart, each by himself. Ricardo, crouching
against the window-sill, pressed his hand to his side as though he were
hurt and bleeding to death. He said, almost inaudibly:
"I've no one. Nobody will ever listen. She believed in me. She was
sure that one day--I would go out--and tell the truth. She knew I
wasn't--a cowardly--beaten, old man."
Robert could not touch her whilst Ricardo stood there crying. Her repose
was too dominating. And if he touched her something terrible and
incalculable might happen. He felt as though he were standing on the
edge of a precipice, and that suddenly he might let go and pitch over.
It had come true at last--his boy's nightmare that had grown up with
him--that only waited for darkness to show itself. Christine had left
him. She was dead, and it seemed that he had no one in the world. For
Francey, loving him as she did, had failed him. But Christine had never
failed him. Never at any time had she asked, "Are you a good little boy,
Robert?" It would never have occurred to her. She was so sure. She had
loved him and, believed in him unfalteringly, and, in her quiet way, died
for him.
Ricardo drew himself up. He plucked at Robert's sleeve. A change had
come over him in the last minutes. His sunken brown eyes had dried and
become rather terribly alert. Something too fine--too exquisitely
balanced in him had been disturbed and broken beyond hope.
"It proves what I have suspected for a long time, Robert. You know it's
not a light thing to make an enemy like that. He's taken his time, but
you see in the end he has taken everything I had. First he made me a
liar and a hypocrite. Then he took you. He sent that girl specially to
come between us. And now Miss Christine. I suppose he thinks that's
done for me. But it's a great mistake to make people desperate, Robert.
You should always leave them some little thing that they care for and
which makes them cowards. Now, you see, I simply don't care any more. I
don't care for myself or even my poor sister. I'm going to fight him in
the open, gloves off. I'll wrestle with him and prevail. I'll give blow
for blow. I'm going now to Hyde Park to tell people the truth about him.
They take him altogether too lightly, Robert. They're inclined to laugh
at him as of no account. That's a great mistake, too. I shall warn
them." He nodded mysteriously. "God is a devil--a cruel, dangerous
devil."
Then he bent and kissed Christine's hand, very solemnly and tenderly, as
some battered, comical Don Quixote might have done before setting out on
a last fantastic quest. And presently Robert heard him patter down the
narrow stairs and over the cobbles to the open street.
They were alone now. He bent over her and said: "Christine--Christine,"
reassuringly, so that she should not be afraid, and gathered her in his
arms. How little she was--no heavier than a child--and cold. Her grey
head rested against his shoulder. If she had only stirred and laughed,
and said: "Your father was strong too!" he would have answered gently.
He would have been glad that the memory of his father could make her
happy. But it was all too late.
He carried her into her room. It was like her to have left it so neat
and ordered--each thing in its place--her out-door shoes standing
decorously together under the window, and her best skirt peeping out from
behind the cretonne curtain. Her hair-brush, with the comb planted in
its bristles, lay exactly in the middle of the pine-wood dressing-table.
When she had put it there, she had not known that it was for the last
time.
Or had she known? She had called out to him so insistently. She had
wanted to say good-bye. And he had gone on, not answering.
They said that people, at the end, saw their whole life pass before them.
Perhaps she had seen hers. Perhaps she had trodden the old road that he
was travelling over now. Only her vision of it would be different. It
was James Stonehouse and Robert's mother that she would see--radiant
figures of wonderful, unlucky people--and little Robert, who belonged to
both of them, tagging in the rear.
But he saw her--Christine lying white and still under the great mahogany
side-board, Christine coming back day after day in gallant patience to
scrub the floors and his ears, and pay the bills and chase away the duns,
and do whatever was necessary to keep the staggering Stonehouse menage on
its feet.
She had held him close to her and comforted him.
Her splendid faithfulness.
He laid her on the narrow bed against the wall, and smoothed her dress
and folded her hands over her breast. Her bag, which he had gathered up
with her rolled on to the floor. A book fell out. He picked it up
mechanically. It was a little Bible, and on the fly-leaf was written:
"From JIM and CONSTANCE
to their friend, CHRISTINE."
The writing was his father's. It had faded, but one could still see how
regular and beautiful it was. Then the date. His own birthday--the
first of all the unfortunate birthdays.
He looked at it for a long time, stupidly, not realizing. Then suddenly
he saw it--in a new light. Ricardo. How frightfully--excruciatingly
funny. Ricardo. He felt that he was going to laugh--shout with
laughter. It was horrible. Laughter rising and falling---like a sort of
awful sickness--choking him.
Instead his heart broke. He flung himself down beside her and pressed
his face against her cold, thin cheek. And, instead of laughter, sobs
that tore him to pieces--and at last, in mercy, tears.
"Oh, Christine, Christine--my own darling! I did love you--I never told
you--you never, never knew how much!"
The earth-old cry of unavailing, inevitable remorse.
7
So there was no one but Francey now.
He did not know what he hoped, or indeed if he hoped for anything. He
turned to her instinctively. And when the door of the ward opened he
did, in fact, feel a faint lifting of the flat indifference which had
followed on that one difficult rending surrender. He went to meet her.
If she had looked at him with her usual straightness, she might have
remembered the boy of whom she had been fond--a small, queer boy, who did
not like having his face washed, and who came to her truculent and
swaggering, with smears under his red eyes.
Even then it is doubtful whether she could have changed the course on
which both of them were set.
He did not want her to see. And yet, unknown to himself, he did count on
her instant understanding, on some releasing, quickening word or look
that would give back life to the dead thing in him. But her eyes,
preoccupied and unhappy, avoided him. He could not have appealed to her.
He could not have said, as he had meant to do, "Christine is dead." He
was silenced by the certain knowledge that all real communication between
them had been broken off.
"No. 10 is going to pull through," she said.
They walked slowly down the corridor. He found it difficult to keep his
feet. He wondered vaguely why she should talk of No. 10 when Christine
was dead. He was puzzled---confused.
"It seemed likely," he muttered. "Rogers had got his teeth into her."
"I suppose you think he was a fool to try?"
(What was she talking about? He would have to arrange for the funeral.
And the money. He did not know whether there would be money enough. It
was hideous--to think of a thing like that--to have to go into a shop and
say to some bored shopkeeper: "I want a nice cheap coffin, please." For
Christine--for whom he had never been able to buy so much as a bunch of
flowers.)
"I--I don't know."
"You see, I heard what you said."
(What had he said? He tried to remember. No. 10. Better dead. Yes, of
course that was it. He couldn't go back on that. His mind seemed to
strain and stagger under the challenge like a half-dead horse under the
whip.)
"She didn't hear me, anyway."
"I want to know--was it just--just a sort of pose--or did you mean it?"
"It was true."
"That doesn't seem to me to matter. It was a beastly thing to have
thought--beastlier to have said----"
He stopped short, as though she had struck him across the face. For an
instant he was blind with pain, but afterwards he steadied, grew deadly
cool and clear-headed. There was a constant movement in the corridor and
he turned abruptly, almost with authority, into an empty operating
theatre. Instinctively he had chosen his ground. Here was symbolized
everything that he trusted and believed in--a cool, dispassionate
seeking, the ruthless cutting out of waste. Yet in the half-light the
place surrounded them both with a ghostly, almost sinister unreality.
Its stark immaculateness lay like a chill, ironic hand on their distress.
It made mock of their unhappiness. It divested them of their humanity.
The nauseating sweetness that still lingered in the sterilized air was
like incense offered up on the grotesque sacrificial altar that stood
bare and brutal beneath the glass-domed roof.
And now Robert saw Francey's face. It was white and pinched and
unfamiliar, as though all her humour and whimsical laughter and
loving-kindness had been twisted awry in a bitter fight with pain. But
he knew her eyes of old. Long ago he had seen them with the same burning
deadly anger. And he knew that it was all over. Their patient
antagonism had come to grips at last over the bodies of their suffering
love for one another.
Even then she held back.
"You don't know how hard life can be. It was hard for her----" But at
that he burst out laughing, and she added quickly, reading his thought:
"Nothing that you've gone through is of any use if it hasn't taught you
pity."
"Your pity would take a half-dead rat from a terrier."
"You have no right to judge," she persisted.
He smiled with white lips.
"Oh, yes, I have! We all have. We condemn men to prison--to death."
"You do believe in God," she said bitterly. "You believe in yourself."
"It comes to this, Francey, doesn't it? You're through with me? You
don't care any more?"
Her eyes narrowed with a kind of desperate humour. It was as though for
a moment she had regained her old vision of him--a sad queer little boy.
"You say that because you want to shirk the truth. You're almost
glad--presently you will be very glad. You never did want to care--not
from the first. Caring got in your way. You will be free now." She
waited, and then added very quietly, without anger: "I love you. I dare
say I always shall--but I couldn't live with you--it would break my heart
if we should come to hate one another. Don't think any more about it.
I'll have gone to-morrow, and I'll try to arrange not to come back till
you're through. It will be all right."
"Francey, it's such a foolish thing to quarrel about."
"It's everything," she said simply.
She turned to go. Even then he could have stopped her. He could have
said: "Francey, Christine died this morning!" and their sad enmity might
have melted in grief and pity. But what she had said was true. It was
everything. And his reason, his will, rising up out of the general ruin,
monstrous and powerful, stood like an admonishing shadow at his elbow.
"It's much better. There's nothing to make a coward of you now. You're
free."
He half held out his hand, but it was only a convulsive, dying movement.
He let her go.