AT THE FOUR CROSS-ROADS
The next morning Miss Arnott sent a groom over to Oak Dene with this
curt note:--
"I shall be at the Wycke Cross--at the four crossroads--this afternoon
at half-past three, alone. I shall be glad if you will make it
convenient to be there also. There is something which it is essential I
should say to you.
V. A."
The groom brought back, in an envelope, Mr Hugh Morice's visiting card.
On the back of it were four words,--
"I will be there."
And Mr Hugh Morice was there before the lady. Miss Arnott saw his car
drawn up by the roadside, long before she reached it. She slackened her
pace as she approached. When she came abreast of it she saw that its
owner was sitting on a stile, enjoying a pipe. Taking his pipe out of
his mouth, his cap off his head, he advanced to her in silence.
"Am I late?" she asked.
"No, it is I who am early."
They exchanged glances--as it were, neutral glances--as if each were
desirous, as a preliminary, of making a study of the other. She
saw--she could not help seeing--that he was not looking well. The
_insouciance_ with which, mentally, she had always associated him, had
fled. The touch of the daredevil, of the man who looks out on to the
world without fear and with something of humorous scorn, that also had
gone. She did not know how old he was, but he struck her, all at once,
as being older than she had supposed. The upper part of his face was
seamed with deep lines which had not always, she fancied, been so
apparent. There were crow's-feet in the corners of his eyes, the eyes
themselves seemed sunken. The light in them was dimmed, or perhaps she
only fancied it. It was certain that he stooped more than he had used
to do. His head hung forward between his broad shoulders, as if the
whole man were tired, body, soul and spirit. There was something in his
looks, in his bearing, a suggestion of puzzlement, of bewilderment, of
pain, which might come from continuous wrestling with an insistent
problem which defied solution, which touched her to the heart, made her
feel conscious of a feeling she had not meant to feel. And because she
had not intended to harbour anything even remotely approaching such a
feeling, she resented its intrusion, and fought against herself so that
she might appear to this man to be even harder than she had proposed to
be.
On his part he saw, seated in her motor car, a woman whom he would have
given all that he possessed to have taken in his arms and kept there.
His acumen was greater, perhaps, than hers; he saw with a clearness
which frightened him, her dire distress, the weight of trouble which
bore her down. She might think that she hid it from the world, but, to
him, it was as though the flesh had been stripped from her nerves, and
he saw them quivering. He knew something of this girl's story; this
woman whose childhood should have been scarcely yet behind her, and he
knew that it had brought that upon her face which had no right to be
there even though her years had attained to the Psalmist's span. And
because his whole nature burned within him with a desire that she might
be to him as never woman had been before, he was unmanned. He was
possessed by so many emotions, all warring with each other, that, for
the moment, he was like a helmless ship, borne this way and that, he
knew not why or whither.
Then she was so hard, looked at him out of eyes which were so cold,
spoke to him as if it were only because she was compelled that she
spoke to him at all. How could he dare to hint--though only in a
whisper--at sympathy, or comfort? He knew that she would resent it as
bitterly as though he had lashed her with a whip. And, deeming herself
the victim of an outrage, the probabilities were that she would snatch
the supposititious weapon out of his hand and strike him with all her
force with the butt of it.
So that, in the end, her trouble would be worse at the end than it had
been at the beginning. He felt that this was a woman who would dree her
own weird, and that from him, of all men in the world, she would brook
only such interference, either by deed word, as she herself might
choose to demand.
When they had done studying one another she put her hand up to her
face, as if to brush away cobwebs which might have been spun before her
eyes, and she asked,--
"Shall we talk here?"
His tone was as stiff and formal as hers had been.
"As you please. It depends upon the length to which our conversation is
likely to extend. As I think it possible that what you have to say may
not be capable of compression within the limits of a dozen words, I
would, suggest that you should draw your car a little to one side here,
where it would not be possible for the most imaginative policeman to
regard it as an obstruction to the traffic which seldom or never comes
this way; and that you should then descend from it, and say what you
have to say under the shade of these trees, and in the neighbourhood of
this stile."
She acted on his suggestion, and took off the long dust cloak which she
was wearing, and tossed it on the seat of her car. Going to the stile
she leaned one hand on the cross bar. He held out his pipe towards her.
"May I smoke?"
"Certainly, why not? I think it possible that you may require its
soothing influence before we have gone very far."
There was something in her voice which seemed as if it had been meant
to sting him; it only made him smile.
"I also think that possible."
She watched him as, having refilled and relighted his pipe, he puffed
at it, as if he found in the flavour of the tobacco that consolation at
which she had hinted. Perceiving that he continued to smoke in silence
she spoke again, as if she resented being constrained to speak.
"I presume that you have some idea of what it is I wish to say to you?"
He shook his head.
"I haven't."
"Really?"
"Absolutely. If you will forgive my saying so, and I fear that you are
in an unforgiving mood, I have ceased attempting to forecast what,
under any stated set of circumstances, you may either say or do. You
are to me what mathematicians call an unknown quantity; you may stand
for something or for nothing. One never knows."
"I have not the honour to understand you, Mr Morice."
"Don't imagine that I am even hinting at a contradiction; but I hope,
for both our sakes, that you understand me better than I do you."
"I think that's very possible."
"I think so also; alas! that it should be so."
"You may well say, alas!"
"You are right; I may."
She was silent, her lips twitching, as if with impatience or scorn.
"My acquaintance with the world is but a slight one, Mr Morice; and,
unfortunately, in one respect it has been of an almost uniform kind. I
have learned to associate with the idea of a man something not
agreeable. I hoped, at one time, that you would prove to be a
variation; but you haven't. That is why, in admitting that I did
understand you a little, I think that you were justified in saying,
alas!"
"That, however, is not why I said it, as I should have imagined you
would have surmised; although I admire the ingenuity with which you
present your point of view. But, may I ask if you have ordered me to
present myself at Wyche Cross with the intention of favouring me with
neatly turned remarks on the subject of men in general and of myself in
particular?"
"You know I haven't."
"I am waiting to know it."
"I had not thought that anyone fashioned in God's image could play so
consummately the hypocrite."
"Of all the astounding observations! Is it possible that you can have
overlooked your own record?"
As he spoke the blood dyed her face; she swerved so suddenly that one
felt that if it had not been for the support of the stile she might
have fallen. On the instant he was penitent.
"I beg your pardon; but you use me in such a fashion; you say such
things, that you force me to use my tongue."
"Thank you, you need not apologise. The taunt was deserved. I have
played the hypocrite; I know it--none know it better. But let me assure
you that, latterly, I have continued to play the hypocrite for your
sake."
"For my sake?"
"For your sake and for yours only, and you know it."
"I know it? This transcends everything! The courage of such a
suggestion, even coming from you, startles me almost into
speechlessness. May I ask you to explain?"
"I will explain, if an explanation is necessary, which we both know it
is not!"
He waved his pipe with an odd little gesture in the air.
"Good heavens!" he exclaimed.