call. Fanny sat in an arm-chair and listened and watched my face as
I told my story, confessed how I had exaggerated Hetty's offence and
asked for help. 'I ought to have seen her, Harry, before I took your
word for it,' she said. 'Of course, even now, I can't imagine how a
girl who loves one man could ever stand the kiss of another as she
did, but then, as you say, she'd been drinking. We women aren't all
made alike. There's all sorts make a world. Some girls--the
backbone goes out of them when they feel a man's kisses. You and me,
Harry, we aren't made like that. I've been thinking while you sat
talking there, how like we both are to poor mother really--for all
she quarrelled with me. We'll grow hard presently if we aren't
careful. And your Hetty was young and she didn't know. Only once it
was. And all her life's been spoilt by it! ... I didn't know it was
like that, Harry.'
"And my sister Fanny began to recall her impressions of Hetty. She
recalled her fine animation and the living interest of her talk.
'When she left I said to myself, she's got wit; that's the first
witty woman I've ever met. She's got poetry in her. Everything she
says comes out a little different from the things most people say.
She says things that come like flowers in a hedgerow. So she did.
Does she still?"
"'I never thought of it like that before,' I said. 'I suppose she
has a sort of poetry. Only the other day--when I met her first.
What was it she said? Something.'
"'It's no good quoting, Harry. Witty things should bloom where they
grow. They're no good as cut-flowers. But you and I are fairly
quick and fairly clever, Harry, but we've never had any of that.'
"'I've always loved her talk,' I said.
"I began to explain the situation to Fanny more fully and to show how
she could help in it. I was not to see Hetty again; Fanny was to see
her, pay her the hundred pounds we could put together for her,
communicate with the friends she was to accompany and get her away.
Fanny listened gravely and agreed.
"Then she reflected.
"'Why don't you take her to Canada yourself, Harry?' she asked
abruptly."
§ 6
"I did not answer Fanny for some moments. Then I said, 'I don't want
to.'
"'I can see you love Hetty still.'
"'Love. But I don't want that.'
"'You don't want to be with her?'
"'It's out of the question. Why ask a painful thing like that? All
that is dead.'
"'Isn't a resurrection possible? Why is it out of the question?
Pride?'
"'No.'
"'Why then?'
"'Milly.'
"'You don't love Milly.'
"'I won't have you discuss that, Fanny. I do love her.'
"'Not as you love Hetty.'
"'Quite differently. But Milly trusts me. She keeps faith with me.
I'd as soon steal money--from a child's money-box--as go back on
Milly.'
"'It's wonderful how fine men can be to the wives they don't love,'
said Fanny bitterly.
"'Newberry's different,' I said. 'I've got my little son. I've got
my work. And though you will never have it, I love Milly.'
"'In a way. Is she company for you? Is she fun?'
"'I trust and love her. And as for Hetty, you don't understand about
Hetty. I love her. I love her enormously. But it's like two ghosts
meeting by moonlight. We two are dead to each other and--sorrowful.
It isn't as though it was anything like your case over again. I see
Hetty in hell and I'd do nearly anything in life to get her out. I
don't even want to meet her. I want to get her away out of this
filth and stupidity to where she can begin again. That's all I want
and that's all she wants. How could she and I ever come together
again? How could we kiss again as lovers kiss? Poor defiled things
we are! And all my cruelty. You're thinking of something else,
Fanny. You're not thinking of Hetty and me.'
"'Maybe I am,' said Fanny. 'Yes, I think I am. And so she is to go
to Canada and begin again--till her health comes back and her courage
comes back. It isn't natural for a woman of her temperament to live
without a man to love her, Harry.'
"'Let her live and love,' said I. 'She'll have changed her name.
Her friends will stand by her. They won't give her away. Let her
forget. Let her begin again.'
"'With another man?'
"'It may be.'
"'You don't mind the thought of that?'
"I was stung but I kept my temper. 'Have I any right to mind the
thought of that now?'
"'But you will. And you will go on living with this wife you trust
and respect. Who's dull spirited--dull as ditchwater.'
"'No. Who's my son's mother. Who is trustworthy. Whom I'm pledged
to. And I've got my work. It may seem nothing to you. It's good
enough for me to give myself to it. Can't I love Hetty, can't I help
her out of the net she's in, and yet not want to go back to
impossible things?'
"'Grey Monday mornings,' said Fanny.
"'As if all life wasn't grey,' I said.
"And then," said Sarnac, "I remember that I made a prophecy. I made
it--when did I make it? Two thousand years ago? Or two weeks ago?
I sat in Fanny's little sitting-room, an old-world creature amidst
her old-world furnishings, and I said that men and women would not
always suffer as we were suffering then. I said that we were still
poor savages, living only in the bleak dawn of civilisation, and that
we suffered because we were under-bred, under-trained and darkly
ignorant of ourselves, that the mere fact that we knew our own
unhappiness was the promise of better things and that a day would
come when charity and understanding would light the world so that men
and women would no longer hurt themselves and one another as they
were doing now everywhere, universally, in law and in restriction and
in jealousy and in hate, all round and about the earth.
"'It is still too dark for us,' I said, 'to see clearly where we are
going, and everyone of us blunders and stumbles and does wrong.
Everyone. It is idle for me to ask now what is the right thing for
me to do? Whatever I do now will be wrong. I ought to go with Hetty
and be her lover again--easily I could do that and why should I deny
it?--and I ought to stick to Milly and the work I have found in the
world. Right road or left road, both lead to sorrow and remorse, but
there is scarcely a soul in all this dark world, Fanny, who has not
had to make or who will not presently have to make a choice as hard.
I will not pull the skies down upon Milly, I _cannot_ because she has
put her faith in me. You are my dear sister Fanny and I love you and
we have loved each other. Do you remember how you used to take me
round to school and hold my hand at the crossings? Don't make things
too hard for me now. Just help me to help Hetty. Don't tear me to
pieces. She is still alive and young and--Hetty. Out there--she at
least can begin again.'"
§ 7
"Nevertheless, I did see Hetty again before she left England. There
came a letter for me at Thunderstone House in which she proposed a
meeting.
"'You have been so kind to me,' she wrote. 'It is the next best
thing to your never having left me. You have been a generous dear.
You've given back happiness to me. I feel excited already at the
thought of the great liner and the ocean and full of hope. We've got
a sort of picture of the ship; it is like a great hotel; with our
cabin marked in it exactly where it is. Canada will be wonderful;
Our Lady of the Snows; and we are going by way of New York, New York,
like nothing else on earth, cliffs and crags of windows, towering up
to the sky. And it's wonderful to have new things again. I sneak
off to Fanny's just to finger them over. I'm excited--yes, and
grateful--yes, and full of hope--yes. And Harry, Harry, my heart
aches and aches. I want to see you again. I don't deserve to but I
want to see you again. We began with a walk and why shouldn't we end
with a walk? Thursday and Friday all the gang will be at Leeds. I
could get away the whole day either day and it would be a miracle if
anyone knew. I wish we could have that same old walk again. I
suppose it's too far and impossible. We'll save that, Harry, until
we're both quite dead and then we'll be two little swirls of breeze
in the grass or two bits of thistledown going side by side. But
there was that other walk we had when we went to Shere and right over
the North Downs to Leatherhead. We looked across the Weald and saw
our own South Downs far, far away. Pinewood and heather there was;
hills beyond hills. And the smoke of rubbish-burning.'
"I was to write to Fanny's address.
"Of course we had that walk, we two half-resuscitated lovers. We did
not make love at all though we kissed when we met and meant to kiss
when we parted. We talked as I suppose dead souls might talk of the
world that had once been real. We talked of a hundred different
things--even of Sumner. Now that she was so near escape from him her
dread and hatred had evaporated. She said Sumner had a passionate
desire for her and a real need of her and that it was not fair to him
and very bad for him that she despised him. It wounded his
self-respect. It made him violent and defiant. A woman who cared
for him, who would take the pains to watch him and care for him as a
woman should do for a man, might have made something of him. 'But
I've never cared for him, Harry; though I've tried. But I can see
where things hurt him. I can see they hurt him frightfully at times.
It doesn't hurt him any the less because he does ugly things.' He
was vain, too, and ashamed of his incapacity to get a sufficient
living. He was drifting very rapidly to a criminal life and she had
no power over him to hold him back.
"I can still see Hetty and hear her voice, as we walked along a broad
bridle-path between great rhododendron bushes, and she talked, grave
and balanced and kind she was, of this rogue who had cheated her and
outraged her and beaten her. It was a new aspect of Hetty and yet at
the same time it was the old dear Hetty I had loved and wasted and
lost, clear-minded and swift, with an understanding better than her
will.
"We sat for a long time on the crest of the Downs above Shere where
the view was at its widest and best, and we recalled the old days of
happiness in Kent and talked of the distances before us and of
crossing the sea and of France and so of the whole wide world. 'I
feel,' she said, 'as I used to when I was a child, at the end of the
school quarter. I'm going away to new things. Put on your frock,
put on your hat; the big ship is waiting. I am a little frightened
about it and rather happy.... I wish---- But never mind that.'
"'You wish----?'
"'What else could I wish?'
"'You mean----?'
"'It's no good wishing."
"'I've got to stick to the job I've taken. I've got to see it
through. But if you care to know it, Hetty, I wish so too. My
God!--if wishes could release one!'
"'You've got your job here. I wouldn't take you away, Harry, if I
could. Sturdy you are, Harry, and you'll go through with it and do
the work you're made to do--and I'll take what comes to me. Over
there I guess I'll forget a lot about Sumner and the things that have
happened in between--and think a lot about you and the South Downs
and this--how we sat side by side here.
"'Perhaps,' said Hetty, 'heaven is a place like this. A great
hillside to which you come at last, after all the tugging and pushing
and the hoping and the disappointments and the spurring and the
hungers and the cruel jealousies are done with and finished for ever.
Then here you sit down and rest. And you aren't alone. Your lover
is here and he sits beside you and you just touch shoulder to
shoulder, very close and very still, and your sins are forgiven you;
your blunders and misunderstandings they matter no longer; and the
beauty takes you and you dissolve into it, you dissolve into it side
by side and together you forget and fade until at last nothing
remains of all the distresses and anger and sorrow, nothing remains
of you at all but the breeze upon the great hillside and sunshine and
everlasting peace....
"'All of which,' said Hetty, rising abruptly to her feet and standing
over me, 'is just empty nothingness. Oh Harry! Harry! One feels
things and when one tries to say them it is just words and nonsense.
We've hardly started on our way to Leatherhead and you'll have to be
back by seven. So get up, old Harry. Get up and come on. You are
the dearest person alive and it has been sweet of you to come with me
to-day. I was half-afraid you'd think it wasn't wise....'
"In the late afternoon we got to a place called Little Bookham and
there we had tea. About a mile farther on was a railway station and
we found a train for London; it came in as we got on to the platform.
"Everything had gone well so far and then came the first gleam of
disaster. At Leatherhead we sat looking out on the station platform
and a little ruddy man came trotting along to get into the
compartment next to us, a little common fellow like an ostler with a
cigar under his Hebrew nose, and as he was about to get in he glanced
up at us. Doubt and then recognition came into his eyes and at the
sight of him Hetty recoiled.
"'Get in,' said the guard, blowing his whistle, and the little man
was hustled out of sight.
"Hetty was very white. 'I know that man,' she said, 'and he knows
me. He's named Barnado. What shall I do?'
"'Nothing. Does he know you very well?'
"'He's been to our rooms--three or four times.'
"'He may not have been sure it was you.'
"'I think he was. Suppose he were to come to the window at the next
station to make certain. Could I pretend not to be myself? Refuse
to recognise him or answer to my name?'
"'But if he was convinced it was you in spite of your bluff that
would instantly make him suspicious and off he'd go to your husband!
If on the other hand you took it all quite casually--said I was your
cousin or your brother-in-law--he might think nothing of it and never
even mention it to Sumner. But making him suspicious would send him
off to Sumner right away. Anyhow, you go to Liverpool to-morrow. I
don't see that his recognition of you matters.'
"'I'm thinking of you,' she said.
"'But he doesn't know who I am. So far as I know none of that lot
has seen me....'
"The train slowed down at the next station. Mr. Barnado appeared,
cigar and all, bright-eyed and curious.
"'Blest if I didn't say to myself that's Hetty Sumner!' said Mr.
Barnado. 'Wonderful 'ow one meets people!'
"'My brother-in-law, Mr. Dyson,' said Hetty, introducing me. 'We've
been down to see his little daughter.'
"'I didn't know you 'ad a sister, Mrs. Sumner.'
"'I haven't,' said Hetty, with a note of pain in her voice. 'Mr.
Dyson is a widower.'
"'Sorry,' said Mr. Barnado. 'Stupid of me. And what age might the
little girl be, Mr. Dyson?'
"I found myself under the necessity of creating, explaining and
discussing an orphan daughter. Mr. Barnado had three and was
uncomfortably expert about children and their phases of development.
He was evidently a model father. I did as well as I could, I drew
out Mr. Barnado's family pride rather than indulged my own, but I was
immensely relieved when Mr. Barnado exclaimed, 'Gawd! 'Ere's Epsom
already! Glad to 'ave met you, Mr.----'
"'Damn!' I said to myself. I had forgotten.
"'Dixon,' said Hetty hastily, and Mr. Barnado, after effusive
farewells, proceeded to remove himself from the carriage.
"'Thank Heaven!' said Hetty, 'he didn't come on to London. You're
the poorest liar, Harry, I've ever known. As it is--no harm's been
done.'
"'No harm's been done,' said I, but two or three times before we
reached the London station where we were to part for ever, we
recurred to the encounter and repeated the reassuring formula that no
harm had been done.
"We parted at Victoria Station with very little emotion. Mr. Barnado
had brought us back, as it were, to an everyday and incidental
atmosphere. We did not kiss each other again. The world about us
had become full now of observant eyes. My last words to Hetty were
'Everything's all right!' in a business-like, reassuring tone, and
the next day she slipped off to join her friends at Liverpool and
passed out of my life for ever."
§ 8
"For three or four days I did not feel this second separation from
Hetty very greatly. My mind was still busy with the details of her
departure. On the third day she sent me a wireless message, as we
used to call it, to Thunderstone House. 'Well away,' she said.
'Fine weather. Endless love and gratitude.' Then slowly as the days
passed my sense of loss grew upon me, the intimations of an immense
loneliness gathered and spread until they became a cloud that
darkened all my mental sky. I was persuaded now that there was no
human being who could make me altogether happy but Hetty, and that
for the second time I was rejecting the possibility of companionship
with her. I had wanted love, I perceived, without sacrifice, and in
that old world, it seems to me now, love was only possible at an
exorbitant price, sacrifice of honour, sacrifice of one's proper work
in the world, humiliations and distresses. I had shirked the price
of Hetty and she was going from me, taking out of my life for ever
all those sweet untellable things that were the essence of love, the
little names, the trivial careless caresses, the exquisite gestures
of mind and body, the moments of laughter and pride and perfect
understanding. Day by day love went westward from me. Day and night
I was haunted by a more and more vivid realisation of a great
steamship, throbbing and heaving its way across the crests and
swelling waves of the Atlantic welter. The rolling black coal-smoke
from its towering funnels poured before the wind. Now I would see
that big ocean-going fabric in the daylight; now lit brightly from
stem to stern, under the stars.
"I was full of unappeasable regret, I indulged in endless reveries of
a flight across the Atlantic in pursuit of Hetty, of a sudden
dramatic appearance before her;--'Hetty, I can't stand it. I've
come'--and all the time I stuck steadfastly to the course I had
chosen. I worked hard and late at Thunderstone House; I did my best
to shunt my imagination into new channels by planning two new
quasi-educational publications, and I set myself to take Milly out to
restaurants to dinner and to the theatre and to interesting shows.
And in the midst of some picture-show perhaps I would find my rebel
mind speculating what sort of thing Hetty would have said of it, had
she been there. There was a little show of landscapes at the Alpine
Gallery and several were pictures of Downland scenery and one showed
a sunlit hillside under drowsy white clouds. It was almost like
seeing Hetty.
"It was exactly a week after Hetty's landing in New York that I first
encountered Sumner. It was my usual time of arrival and I was just
turning out of Tottenham Court Road into the side street that led to
the yard of Thunderstone House. There was a small public-house in
this byway and two men were standing outside it in attitudes of
expectation. One of them stepped out to accost me. He was a little
flushed Jewish man, and for the moment I did not recognise him at all.
"'Mr. Smith?' said he, and scrutinised me queerly.
"'At your service,' said I.
"'Not by any chance Mr. Dyson or Dixon, eh?' he asked with a leer.
"'Barnado!' cried my memory and placed him. My instant recognition
must have betrayed itself in my face. Our eyes met and there were no
secrets between them. 'No, Mr. Barnado,' I said with incredible
stupidity; 'my name's just plain Smith.'
"'Don't mention it, Mr. Smith, don't mention it,' said Mr. Barnado
with extreme politeness. 'I had a sort of fancy I might have met you
before.' And turning to his companion and raising his voice a
little, he said, 'That's him all right, Sumner--sure as eggs are
eggs.'
"Sumner! I glanced at this man who had given my life so disastrous a
turn. He was very much my own height and build, fair with a blotched
complexion and wearing a checked grey suit and an experienced-looking
grey felt hat. He might have been my unsuccessful half-brother. Our
eyes met in curiosity and antagonism. 'I'm afraid I'm not the man
you want,' I said to Barnado and went on my way. I didn't see any
advantage in an immediate discussion in that place. I perceived that
an encounter was inevitable, but I meant it to happen amidst
circumstances of my own choice and after I had had time to consider
the situation properly. I heard something happen behind me and
Barnado said: 'Shut up, you fool! You've found out what you want to
know.' I went through the passages and rooms of Thunderstone House
to my office and there, when I was alone, I sat down in my arm-chair
and swore very heartily. Every day since the departure of Hetty I
had been feeling more and more sure that this at least was not going
to happen. I had thought that Sumner was very easily and safely and
completely out of the story.
"I took my writing-pad and began to sketch out the situation. '_Ends
to be secured,_' I wrote.
"'_No. 1. Hetty must not be traced._
"'_No. 2. Milly must hear nothing of this._
"'_No. 3. No blackmailing._'
"I considered. '_But if a lump payment,_' I began. This I scratched
out again.
"I had to scheme out the essential facts. '_What does S. know? What
evidence exists? Of what? No clue to lead to Fanny? There is
nothing but that journey in the train. He will have a moral
certainty but will it convince anyone else?_'
"I wrote a new heading: '_How to handle them?_'
"I began to sketch grotesques and arabesques over my paper as I
plotted. Finally I tore it up into very small fragments and dropped
it into my wastepaper basket. A messenger-girl rapped and came in
with a paper slip, bearing the names of Fred Sumner and Arthur
Barnado.
"'They've not put the business they want to talk about,' I remarked.
"'They said you'd know, Sir.'
"'No excuse. I want everybody to fill in that,' I said. 'Just say
I'm too busy to see strangers who don't state their business. And
ask them to complete the form.'
"Back came the form: 'Enquiry about Mr. Sumner's missing wife.'
"I considered it calmly. 'I don't believe we ever had the
manuscript. Say I'm engaged up to half-past twelve. Then I could
have a talk of ten minutes with Mr. Sumner alone. Make that clear.
I don't see where Mr. Barnado comes in. Make it clear it's a
privilege to see me.'
"My messenger did not reappear. I resumed my meditations on the
situation. There was time for a lot of aggressive energy to
evaporate before half-past twelve. Probably both of the men had come
in from the outskirts and would have nowhere to wait but the streets
or a public-house. Mr. Barnado might want to be back upon his own
business at Epsom. He'd played his part in identifying me. Anyhow,
I didn't intend to have any talk with Sumner before a witness. If he
reappeared with Barnado I should refuse to see them. For Barnado
alone I had a plan and for Sumner I had a plan, but not for the two
of them together.
"My delaying policy was a good one. At half-past twelve Sumner came
alone and was shown up to me.
"'Sit down there,' I said abruptly and leant back in my chair and
stared at his face and waited in silence for him to begin.
"For some moments he did not speak. He had evidently expected me to
open with some sort of question and he had come ready loaded with a
reply. To be plumped into a chair and looked at, put him off his
game. He tried to glare at me and I looked at his face as if I was
looking at a map. As I did so I found my hatred for him shrinking
and changing. It wasn't a case for hatred. He had such a poor,
mean, silly face, a weak arrangement of plausibly handsome features.
Every now and then it was convulsed by a nervous twitch. His
straw-coloured moustache was clipped back more on one side than the
other, and his rather frayed necktie had slipped down to display his
collar stud and the grubbiness of his collar. He had pulled his
mouth a little askew and thrust his face forward in an attempt at
fierceness, and his rather watery blue eyes were as open and as
protruded as he could manage.
"'Where's my wife, Smith?' he said at last.
"'Out of my reach, Mr. Sumner, and out of yours.'
"'Where've you hid her?'
"'She's gone,' I said. 'It's no work of mine.'
"'She's come back to you.'
"I shook my head.
"'You know where she is?'
"'She's gone clear, Sumner. You let her go.'
"'Let her go! _You_ let her go, but I'm not going to. I'm not that
sort. Here's this girl you marry and mess about with and when she
comes across a man who's a bit more of a man than you are and handles
her as a woman ought to be handled, you go and chuck her out and
divorce her, divorce her with her child coming, and then start
planning and plotting to get her away from the man she's given her
love to----'
"He stopped for want of words or breath. He wanted to exasperate me
and start a shouting match. I said nothing.
"'I want Hetty back,' he said. 'She's my wife and I want her back.
She's mine and the sooner this foolery stops the better.'
"I sat up to the desk and put my elbows on it.
"'You won't get her back,' I said very quietly. 'What are you going
to do about it?'
"'By God! I'll have her back--if I swing for it.'
"'Exactly. And what are you going to do?'
"'What can't I do? I'm her husband.'
"'Well?'
"'You've got her.'
"'Not a scrap of her.'
"'She's missing. I can go to the police.'
"'Go to them. What will they do?'
"'I can put them on to you.'