The Wind Flies Over the House
Later, that day, she went from the house. It was a strange evening. Two
different weathers seemed to have met over the Polchester streets. First
there was the deep serene beauty of the May day, pale blue faintly fading
into the palest yellow, the world lying like an enchanted spirit asleep
within a glass bell, reflecting the light from the shining surface that
enfolded it. In this light houses, grass, cobbles lay as though stained by
a painter's brush, bright colours like the dazzling pigment of a wooden
toy, glittering under the shining sky.
This was a normal enough evening for the Polchester May, but across it,
shivering it into fragments, broke a stormy and blustering wind, a wind
that belonged to stormy January days, cold and violent, with the hint of
rain in its murmuring voice. It tore through the town, sometimes carrying
hurried and, as it seemed, terrified clouds with it; for a while the May
light would be hidden, the air would be chill, a few drops like flashes of
glass would fall, gleaming against the bright colours--then suddenly the
sky would be again unchallenged blue, there would be no cloud on the
horizon, only the pavements would glitter as though reflecting a glassy
dome. Sometimes it would be more than one cloud that the wind would carry
on its track--a company of clouds; they would appear suddenly above the
horizon, like white-faced giants peering over the world's rim, then in a
huddled confusion they would gather together, then start their flight,
separating, joining, merging, dwindling and expanding, swallowing up the
blue, threatening to encompass the pale saffron of the lower sky, then
vanishing with incredible swiftness, leaving warmth and colour in their
train.
Amy Brandon did not see the enchanted town. She heard, as she left the
house, the clocks striking half-past six. Some regular subconscious self,
working with its accustomed daily duty, murmured to her that to-night her
husband was dining at the Conservative Club and Joan was staying on to
supper at the Sampsons' after the opening tennis party of the season. No
one would need her--as so often in the past no one had needed her. But it
was her unconscious self that whispered this to her; in the wild stream
into whose current during these last strange months she had flung herself
she was carried along she knew not, she cared not, whither.
Enough for her that she was free now to encompass her desire, the only
dominating, devastating desire that she had ever known in all her dead,
well-ordered life. But it was not even with so active a consciousness as
this that she thought this out. She thought out nothing save that she must
see Morris, be with Morris, catch from Morris that sense of appeasement
from the torture of hunger unsatisfied that never now left her.
In the last weeks she had grown so regardless of the town's opinion that
she did not care how many people saw her pass Morris' door. She had,
perhaps, been always regardless, only in the dull security of her life
there had been no need to regard them. She despised them all; she had
always despised them, for the deference and admiration that they paid her
husband if for no other reason. Despised them too, it might be, because
they had not seen more in herself, had thought her the dull, lifeless
nonentity in whose soul no fires had ever burned.
She had never chattered nor gossiped with them, did not consider gossip a
factor in any one's day; she had never had the least curiosity about any
one else, whether about life or character or motive.
There is no egoist in the world so complete as the disappointed woman
without imagination.
She hurried through the town as though she were on a business of the
utmost urgency; she saw nothing and she heard nothing. She did not even
see Miss Milton sitting at her half-opened window enjoying the evening
air.
Morris himself opened the door. He was surprised when he saw her; when he
had closed the door and helped her off with her coat he said as they
walked into the drawing-room:
"Is there anything the matter?"
She saw at once that the room was cheerless and deserted.
"Is Miss Burnett here?" she asked.
"No. She went off to Rafiel for a week's holiday. I'm being looked after
by the cook."
"It's cold." She drew her shoulders and arms together, shivering.
"Yes. It _is_ cold. It's these showers. Shall I light the fire?"
"Yes, do."
He bent down, putting a match to the paper; then when the fire blazed he
pushed the sofa forwards.
"Now sit down and tell me what's the matter."
She could see that he was extremely nervous.
"Have you heard nothing?"
"No."
She laughed bitterly. "I thought all the town knew by this time."
"Knew what?"
"Falk has run away to London with the daughter of Samuel Hogg."
"Samuel Hogg?"
"Yes, the man of the 'Dog and Pilchard' down in Seatown."
"Run away with her?"
"Yesterday. He sent us a letter saying that he had gone up to London to
earn his own living, had taken this girl with him, and would marry her
next week."
Morris was horrified.
"Without a word of warning? Without speaking to you? Horrible! The
daughter of that man.... I know something about him...the worst man in the
place."
Then followed a long silence. The effect on Morris was as it had been on
Mrs. Brandon--the actual deed was almost lost sight of in the sudden light
that it threw on his passion. From the very first the most appealing
element of her attraction to him had been her loneliness, the neglect from
which she suffered, the need she had of comfort.
He saw her as a woman who, for twenty years, had had no love, although in
her very nature she had hungered for it; and if she had not been treated
with actual cruelty, at least she had been so basely neglected that
cruelty was not far away. It was not true to say that during these months
he had grown to hate Brandon, but he had come, more and more, to despise
and condemn him. The effeminacy in his own nature had from the first both
shrunk from and been attracted by the masculinity in Brandon.
He could have loved that man, but as the situation had forbidden that, his
feeling now was very near to hate.
Then, as the weeks had gone by, Mrs. Brandon had made it clear enough to
him that Falk was all that she had left to her--not very much to her even
there, perhaps, but something to keep her starved heart from dying. And
now Falk was gone, gone in the most brutal, callous way. She had no one in
the world left to her but himself. The rush of tenderness and longing to
be good to her that now overwhelmed him was so strong and so sudden that
it was with the utmost difficulty that he had held himself from going to
the sofa beside her.
She looked so weak there, so helpless, so gentle.
"Amy," he said, "I will do anything in the world that is in my power."
She was trembling, partly with genuine emotion, partly with cold, partly
with the drama of the situation.
"No," she said, "I don't want to do a thing that's going to involve you.
You must be left out of this. It is something that I must carry through by
myself. It was wrong of me, I suppose, to come to you, but my first
thought was that I must have companionship. I was selfish----"
"No," he broke in, "you were not selfish. I am prouder that you came to me
than I can possibly say. That is what I'm here for. I'm your friend. You
know, after all these months, that I am. And what is a friend for?" Then,
as though he felt that he was advancing too dangerously close to emotion,
he went on more quietly:
"Tell me--if it isn't impertinent of me to ask--what is your husband doing
about it?"
"Doing? Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"No. I thought that he would go up to London and see Falk, but he doesn't
feel that that is necessary. He says that, as Falk has run away with the
girl, the most decent thing that he can do is to marry her. He seems very
little upset by it. He is a most curious man. After all these years, I
don't understand him at all."
Morris went on hesitatingly. "I feel guilty myself. Weeks ago I overheard
gossip about your son and some girl. I wondered then whether I ought to
say something to you. But it's so difficult in these cases to know what
one ought to do. There's so much gossip in these little Cathedral towns. I
thought about it a good deal. Finally, I decided that it wasn't my place
to meddle."
"I heard nothing," she answered. "It's always the family that hears the
talk last. Perhaps my husband's right. Perhaps there is nothing to be
done. I see now that Falk never cared anything for any of us. I cheated
myself. I had to cheat myself, otherwise I don't know what I'd have done.
And now his doing this has made me suspicious of everything and of every
one. Yes, even of a friendship like ours--the greatest thing in my life--
now--the only thing in my life."
Her voice trembled and dropped. But still he would not let himself pass on
to that other ground. "Is there _nothing_ I can do?" he asked. "I
suppose it would do no good if I were to go up to London and see him? I
knew him a little--"
Vehemently she shook her head.
"You're not to be involved in this. At least I can do that much--keep you
out of it."
"How is he going to live, then?"
"He talks about writing. He's utterly confident, of course. He always has
been. Looking back now, I despise myself for ever imagining that _I_
was of any use to him. I see now that he never needed me--never at all."
Suddenly she looked across at him sharply.
"How is your sister-in-law?" His colour rose.
"My sister-in-law?"
"Yes."
"She isn't well."
"What--?"
"It's hard to say. The doctor looked at her and said she needed quiet and
must go to the sea. It's her nerves."
"Her nerves?"
"Yes, they got very queer. She's been sleeping badly."
"You quarrelled."
"She and I?--yes."
"What about?"
"Oh, I don't know. She's getting a little too much for me, I think."
She looked him in the face.
"No, you know it isn't that. You quarrelled about me."
He said nothing.
"You quarrelled about me," she repeated. "She always disliked me from the
beginning."
"No."
"Oh, yes, she did. Of course I saw that. She was jealous of me. She saw,
more quickly than any one else, how much--how much we were going to mean
to one another. Speak the truth. You know that is the best."
"She didn't understand," Morris answered slowly. "She's stupid in some
things."
"So I've been the cause of your quarrelling, of your losing the only
friend you had in your life?"
"No, not of my losing it. I haven't lost her. Our relationship has
shifted, that's all."
"No. No. I know it is so. I've taken away the only person near you."
And suddenly turning from him to the back of the sofa, hiding her face in
her hands, she broke into passionate crying.
He stood for a moment, taut, controlled, as though he was fighting his
last little desperate battle. Then he was beaten. He knelt down on the
floor beside the sofa. He touched her hair, then her cheek. She made a
little movement towards him. He put his arms around her.
"Don't cry. Don't cry. I can't bear that. You mustn't say that you've
taken anything from me. It isn't true. You've given me everything...
everything. Why should we struggle any longer? Why shouldn't we take what
has been given to us? Your husband doesn't care. I haven't anybody. Has
God given me so much that I should miss this? And has He put it in our
hearts if He didn't mean us to take it? I love you. I've loved you since
first I set eyes on you. I can't keep away from you any longer. It's
keeping away from myself. We're one. We are one another--not alone,
either of us--any more...."
She turned towards him. He drew her closer and closer to him. With a
little sigh of happiness and comfort she yielded to him.
* * * * *
There was only one cloud in the dim green sky, a cloud orange and crimson,
shaped like a ship. As the sun was setting, a little wind stirred, the
faint aftermath of the storm of the day, and the cloud, now all crimson,
passed over the town and died in fading ribbons of gold and orange in the
white sky of the far horizon.
Only Miss Milton, perhaps, among all the citizens of the town, waiting
patiently behind her open window, watched its career.