That game of consequences to which we all sit down, the
hanger-back not least.--R. L. STEVENSON.
Down, very deep down. Buried in an abyss of darkness, shrouded tightly
in a nameless horror that pressed on eyes and breath and hands and
limbs.
At last a faint sound reached Wentworth. Far away in some other world a
clock struck. His numbed faculties apprehended the sound, and then
forgot it when it ceased.
At last he felt himself stir. He found himself staring at a glimmer of
light. He could not look at it, and he could not look away from it. What
was it? It had something to do with him. It grew more distinct. It was a
window with a broken blind.
Someone close at hand began to tremble. Wentworth sat up suddenly and
found it was himself. He was alone, lying crumpled up against the wall
where he had been flung down. He knew where he was. He saw the piles of
tin boxes. He remembered.
He leaned his leaden throbbing head against the wall, and wave after
wave of sickness even unto death shuddered over him. Michael had tried
to kill him. His stiff wrenched throat throbbed together with his head.
For a long time he did not move.
At last the clock struck again.
He staggered to his feet as if he had been called, and looked with
intentness at a fallen book and upset inkstand. There was a quill pen
balancing itself in an absurd manner with its nib stuck in the cane
bottom of an overturned chair. He took it out and laid it on the table.
He saw his hat in a corner, stooped for it, missed it several times, and
then got hold of it, and put it on. There was a little glass over the
mantelpiece. A ghastly face with a torn collar was watching him
furtively through it. He turned fiercely on the spy and found the face
was his own. He turned up his coat and buttoned it. Then he went to the
half-open door and looked out.
His ear caught a faint sound. Otherwise the house was very still.
A maid servant on her knees with her back to him was washing the white
stone floor of the hall at the foot of the staircase. Another servant,
also with her back to him, was watching her.
"Then it is early morning," he said. And he walked out of the room, and
out of the house, through the wide open doors. A fine rain was falling,
but he did not notice it. He passed out through the gates and found
himself in the road. He stopped unconsciously, not knowing what to do
next.
A fly dawdling back to the town from the station, passed him, and pulled
up, as he hesitated.
"Station, sir?" said the driver.
"No, Barford," said Wentworth, and he got in. The fly with its faded
cushions and musty atmosphere seemed a kind of refuge. He breathed more
freely when he was enclosed in it.
As in the garden of Eden desolation often first makes itself felt as a
realisation of nakedness. We must creep away. We must hide. We have no
protection, no covering.
Wentworth cowered in the fly. He passed without recognising them all the
old familiar landmarks, the twisting white road that branched off to
Priesthope, the dew ponds, the half hidden, lonely farms. He was in a
strange country.
He looked with momentary curiosity at a weather-worn sign post which
pointed forlornly where four roads met. It was falling to pieces with
age, but yet it must have been put up there since the morning. He had
never seen it before. He shouted to the driver that he had taken the
wrong road. The man pointed with his whip to where, a mile away, the
smoke of Barford rose among its trees. The landscape suddenly slid into
familiar lines again. He recognised it, and sank back, confused and
exhausted. The effort of speaking had hurt his throat horribly. Was he
going mad? How could his throat hurt him like this--if it wasn't--if
Michael had not----
He thrust thought from him. He would wait till he got home, till his own
roof was safely over him, the familiar walls round him.
This was his gate. Here was his own door, with his butler looking
somewhat surprised, standing on the steps.
He found himself getting out, and giving orders. He listened to himself
telling the servant to pay the fly and to send word by it to his
dog-cart to return home. Of course he had gone to Lostford in the
dog-cart. He had forgotten that.
Then he heard his own voice ordering a whiskey and soda to be brought
to him in the library. And he walked there.
The afternoon post had arrived with the newspapers and he took up a
paper. But it was printed in some language unknown to him, though he
recognised some of the letters.
How long had he been gone, an hour, a day, a year?
He looked at the clock.
Half-past two. But this great shock with which the air was still rocking
might have stopped it. He put his ear to it. Strange! It was going. And
it always stopped so easily, even if the housemaid dusted it.
Was it half-past two in the afternoon or in the night?
There was a band of sunshine across the floor and outside the gardens
and the downs were steeped in it.
Perhaps it was day.
The butler brought in a tray, and placed it near him.
"Have you had luncheon, sir?"
Wentworth thought a moment, and then said "yes."
"And will Mr. Michael return to-day, sir?"
Wentworth remembered some old, old prehistoric arrangement by which
Michael was to have come back with him to Barford this afternoon.
"No," he said, the room suddenly darkening till the sunshine on the
floor was barely visible. "No. He is not coming back."
The man hesitated a moment, and then left the room.
Wentworth groped for the flagon of whiskey, poured out a quantity, and
drank it raw. Then he waited for the nightmare to lift.
His mind cleared gradually. His scattered faculties came sneaking back
like defeated soldiers to camp. But they had all one tale of disaster
and one only to tell. He must needs believe them.
_Michael had tried to kill him._ Whatever else shifted that remained
true.
Wentworth bowed his stiffening head upon his hands, and the sweat ran
down his face.
Michael had tried to kill him, and had all but succeeded. Oh! if only he
had quite succeeded. If only his life had not come back to him! He had
died and died hard in that little room. And yet here he was still alive
and in agony.
Michael first. That thought was torture. Then Fay. That thought was
torture. The woman he had so worshipped, on whom he had lavished a
wealth of love, far greater than most men have it in them to bestow, had
deceived him, had been willing to be his brother's mistress.
Why had he ever believed in Fay and Michael? Had he not tacitly
distrusted men and women always from his youth up? Had he not gauged
life and love and friendship at their true value years ago? Why had he
made an exception of this particular man and woman? They were no worse
than the rest.
What was any man or woman worth? They were all false to the core. What
was Fay? A pretty piece of pink and white, a sensual lure like other
women, not better and not worse. And what was Michael but a man like
other men, ready to forget honour, morality, everything, if once his
passions were aroused. It was an old story, as old as the hills, that
men and women betray each other. It was as old as the psalms of David.
Pah! what a fool he was to allow his heart to be wrung by what was only
the ordinary vulgar experience of those who were so silly as to mix
themselves up with their fellow creatures.
He had only himself to thank.
Well, at any rate, he was free now. He was awake now. He was not going
to put his hand in the fire a second time.
He was going abroad immediately. He would start to-morrow morning. In
the meanwhile, he would go and see somebody, call somewhere, be in high
spirits somewhere with others. They (they were Fay and Michael) would
hear of that afterwards, would see how little he cared.
He seized up his hat and went out. But when he had walked a few hundred
yards he sank down exhausted on a wooden seat in the alder coppice
overhanging the house, and remained there. The baby pheasants crept in
and out, all round him. Their little houses, each with an anxious
step-mother in it, were set at regular intervals along the grassy path.
Only yesterday he had walked along that path with the keeper, and had
thought that in the autumn he and Michael would be shooting together
once more.
They would never shoot together again.
* * * * *
As the dusk fell he heard a sound of wheels. His dog-cart returning from
Lostford, no doubt. It did not turn into the court-yard, but came on up
to the house. Wentworth peered down through the leaves.
It was the Bishop's dog-cart. He recognised the groom who drove it. To
his amazement he saw Lord Lossiemouth get out. After some parley he went
into the house.
Why should he have come?
Oh! of course, how dense he was. He had been sent over on an embassy by
Magdalen and the Bishop. They wanted to hush up the fight, and bring
about a reconciliation between him and Fay. He should be told Fay was
making herself ill with crying. His magnanimity would be appealed to by
that pompous prig. Well, he had had his journey for nothing. Wentworth
saw his servants looking for him, and hid himself in the coppice.
A couple of hours later he left the wood, and went down the steep path
to the gardens. It was nearly dark now. Lights twinkled in the house.
The lamp in the library laid a pale finger of light upon the lawn,
through the open glass doors.
Wentworth went up to it, and then as he was about to enter, shrank back
astonished.
Lord Lossiemouth was sitting there with his back to the window.
Wentworth stood a long time looking at him. He was evidently waiting for
him to come in. He sat stolidly on as if he were glued to his chair,
smoking one cigarette after another.
At last he got up. Surely he would go now. He walked to the bookshelves
that lined the walls, inspected the books, selected one, and settled
himself with a voluminous sigh in his arm-chair once more.
Wentworth stole away across the grass as noiselessly as he had come, and
disappeared in the darkness.