I
They turned again at the end of the platform.
The tail of her long, averted stare was conscious of him, of his big,
tweed-suited body and its behaviour, squaring and swelling and tightening
in its dignity, of its heavy swing to her shoulder as they turned.
She could stave off the worst by not looking at him, by looking at other
things, impersonal, innocent things; the bright, yellow, sharp gabled
station; the black girders of the bridge; the white signal post beside it
holding out a stiff, black-banded arm; the two rails curving there, with
the flat white glitter and sweep of scythes; pointed blades coming
together, buried in the bend of the cutting.
Small three-cornered fields, clean edged like the pieces of a puzzle, red
brown and pure bright green, dovetailed under the high black bar of the
bridge. She supposed you could paint that.
Turn.
Clear stillness after the rain. She caught herself smiling at the noise
her boots made clanking on the tiles with the harsh, joyous candour that
he hated. He walked noiselessly, with a jerk of bluff knickerbockered
hips, raising himself on his toes like a cat.
She could see him moving about in her room, like that, in the half
darkness, feeling for his things, with shamed, helpless gestures. She
could see him tiptoeing down her staircase, furtive, afraid. Always
afraid they would be found out.
That would have ruined him.
Oh well--why should he have ruined himself for her? Why? But she had
wanted, wanted to ruin herself for him, to stand, superb and reckless,
facing the world with him. If that could have been the way of it.
Turn.
That road over the hill--under the yellow painted canopy sticking out
from the goods station--it would be the Cirencester road, the Fosse Way.
She would tramp along it when he was gone.
Turn.
He must have seen her looking at the clock. Three minutes more.
Suddenly, round the bend, under the bridge, the train.
He was carrying it off fairly well, with his tight red face and his stare
over her head when she looked at him, his straight smile when she said
"Good-bye and Good-luck!"
And her silly hand clutching the window ledge. She let go, quick, afraid
he would turn sentimental at the end. But no; he was settling down
heavily in his corner, blinking and puffing over his cigar.
That was her knapsack lying on the seat there. She picked it up and slung
it over her shoulder.
Cirencester? Or back to Stow-on-the-Wold? If only he hadn't come there
last night. If only he had let her alone.
She meditated. She would have to wire to Gwinnie Denning to meet her at
Cirencester. She wondered whether Gwinnie's mother's lumbago would last
over the week-end. It was Friday. Perhaps Gwinnie had started. Perhaps
there would be a wire from her at the hotel.
Going on to Cirencester when you wanted to be in Stow-on-the-Wold, what
_was_ it but a cowardly retreat? Driven out of Stow-on-the-Wold by
Gibson? Not she!
Dusk at ten o'clock in the morning under the trees on the mile-long hill.
You climbed up and up a steep green tunnel. The sun would be blazing at
its mouth on the top. Nothing would matter. Certainly not this affair
with Gibson Herbert. She could see clearly her immense, unique passion
thus diminished. Surprising what a lot of it you could forget. Clean
forget. She supposed you forgot because you couldn't bear to remember.
But there were days that stood out; hours; little minutes that thrilled
you even now and stung.
This time, two years ago, that hot August. The day in the office when
everything went wrong all at once and the clicking of her typewriter
maddened him and he sent her out of his room.
The day when he kept her over-time. The others had gone and they were
there by themselves, the big man in his big room and she in her den, the
door open between. Suddenly she saw him standing in the doorway, looking
at her. She knew then. She could feel the blood rushing in her brain; the
stabbing click of the typewriter set up little whirling currents that
swamped her thoughts.
Her wet fingers kept slipping from the keys. He came and took her in his
arms. She lay back in his arms, crying. Crying because she was happy,
because she knew.
She remembered now what he had said then. "You must have known. You must
have thought of me. You must have wanted me to take you in my arms." And
her answer. "No. I didn't. I didn't think of it."
And his smile. His unbelieving smile. He thought she was lying. He always
thought people were lying. Women. He thought women always lied about what
they wanted.
The first time. In her Bloomsbury room, one evening, and the compact they
made then, sitting on the edge of the sofa, like children, holding each
other's hands and swearing never to go back on it, never to go back on
themselves or on each other. If it ever had to end, a clean cut. No going
back on that either.
The first night, in the big, gloomy bedroom of the hotel in Glasgow. The
thick, grey daylight oozing in at the window out of the black street; and
Gibson lying on his back, beside her, sleeping, the sheet dragged
sideways across his great chest. His innocent eyelids.
And the morning after; the happiness. All day the queer, exalted feeling
that she was herself, Charlotte Redhead, at last, undeceived and
undeceiving.
The day his wife came into the office. Her unhappy eyes and small,
sharp-pointed face, shrinking into her furs. Her name was Effie.
He had told her in the beginning that he had left off caring for his
wife. They couldn't hurt her; she didn't care enough. She never had
cared. There was another fellow. Effie would be all right.
Yet, after she had seen Effie it had never been the same thing. She
couldn't remember, quite, how it had been.
She could remember the ecstasy, how it would come swinging through you,
making you blind and deaf to impersonal, innocent things while it
lasted. Even then there was always something beyond it, something you
looked for and missed, something you thought would come that never came.
There was something he did. She couldn't remember. That would be one of
the things you wanted to forget. She saw his thick fingers at dessert,
peeling the peaches.
Perhaps his way of calling her "Poor Sharlie?" Things he let out--"I
never thought I could have loved a girl with bobbed hair. A white and
black girl." There must have been other girls then. A regular procession.
Before he married Effie.
She could see them. Pink and gold girls, fluffy and fat; girls with red
hair; brown haired girls with wide slippery mouths. Then Effie. Then
herself, with her thick bobbed mane and white face. And the beautiful
mouth he praised so.
Was it the disgust of knowing that you were only one of a procession? Or
was it that Effie's sad, sharp face slipped between?
And the end of it. The break-down, when Effie was ill.
His hysterical cries. "My wife, Sharlie, my wife. We oughtn't to have
done it....
"... I can't forgive myself, Sharlie. I've been a brute, a beast, a
stupid animal....
"... When I think of what we've done to her--the little innocent
thing--the awful unhappiness--I could kill myself."
"Do you mean she knows?"
"She thinks. That's bad enough. If she knew, it would kill her."
"You said she wouldn't care. You said there was another man."
"There wasn't."
"You lied, then?"
"Of course I lied. You wouldn't have come to me if I hadn't."
"You told me you didn't care for her."