John Egerton came home very weary that evening; and all the way home
things went wrong as they had gone wrong on a certain evening in June
when he had come home tired to find the Byrnes' maid on the doorstep,
and told the first lie about the sack. Tonight again the trains went
wrong, and they were stuffy and packed, difficult to enter and difficult
to leave and abominable to be in. It was one of the exceptionally
hateful journeys which men remember as they remember battles. It was of
a piece with that night in June, and John thought of them together as he
walked home, hot and jumpy with irritation. Nothing had gone right since
that night--nothing. He had lost his love, and his good name, and his
peace of mind--and his best friend. He had had faith in Stephen then; he
had admired and loved--had almost idolized him. Tonight he felt that he
hated Stephen. Not a word from him--not one word of encouragement or
gratitude in all this filthy business of the articles. Not that he
wanted Stephen to _do_ anything--oh no! He had made his vow and he would
stick to it. But it did hurt that Stephen should take this sacrifice so
much as a matter of course, should do nothing to help him in this new
storm of suspicion. He had been a good friend once--a jolly,
companionable friend, open-hearted and full of laughter--the best friend
a lonely bachelor could have. Well, it was done with now. He had lost
that as he had lost everything else. And it had all begun with that lie.
Perhaps it was a judgment. Perhaps there was never a virtuous lie.
He had bought at Charing Cross the October number of _The Argus_,
because he had seen on the cover the name of Stephen Byrne, and he read
everything that Stephen wrote. After dinner he sat down and read "The
Death in the Wood." And at first he read, as Margery had read, only with
admiration, though it was now a jealous, almost reluctant admiration. He
thought, "How can a mean swine like Stephen create such glorious
high-minded stuff?" It was unnatural, wrong.
While he was reading the bell rang. Mrs. Bantam came in. "It's them
Gaunts," she whispered. The Gaunt family had not been near him for
months, and now they had come to pluck the certain fruit of the _I Say_
articles. They stood in a defiant cluster in the tiny hall. John, for
once, fortified and embittered by the exasperations of the Underground,
allowed himself to be violently angry. He took a stick from the rack
and shouted at them, "Get out of my house--or I'll--I'll throw you out!"
A little to his surprise they did go out, and he went back to "The Death
in the Wood," pleasantly relieved by his self-assertion and anger.
He read on through the burial in the lake, and the finding of the
maiden, and the battle at the lake where the faithful Tristram fought
and was wounded. Then he came to the wooing in the castle, the false
wooing by Gelert of Tristram's lady, the lovely Isobel. And here the
soft heart of John melted within him; for the picture of Isobel which
Stephen had drawn was so like the picture of Muriel that was ever in his
own mind, a fair and gracious and relenting lady; and the hot words of
Gelert were such words as he would have uttered and had dreamed himself
uttering to Muriel Tarrant. But Muriel Tarrant had done with him, it
seemed; she would hardly nod at him across the road; he had not spoken
to her alone since that miserable dance. And this poetry of Stephen
Byrne's was the perfect expression of his faithful devotion, and made
him almost weep with sentimental regret.
He read these passages several times. Then he went on to the poisoning
by Gelert of Isobel's mind against her old lover, and his conquest of
her, and his cruel desertion of her. And somewhere among those terrible
lines the thought came to him as it had come to Margery, with a red-hot
excruciating stab--that this story was a true story. And he looked back
then, as Margery had looked, at the first pages of the poem and at the
memory of those dreadful months in the new light of his suspicions. He
remembered the dance, and Muriel's face at the dance; how kind at the
beginning of it, how cold and cruel at the end--when she had danced many
times with Stephen. He remembered how he had met her in September in the
street; and how in her sidelong look there had been not only that
coldness, but also a certain shame. Could it be?...
Once, he was sure, she had liked him a little--in the end he could have
won her; she would have relieved him of this loneliness--this loneliness
in an empty house with the hateful whining at the windows; but something
devilish and unknown had got in the way.... And if it was Stephen, and
Stephen's lies.... God! He would go to Muriel, he would go to Stephen;
he would have it out of them, he would go now--
And as he paced up and down the room, working himself into a fever of
rage, that terrible cry came out of the night, and he rushed out into
the garden. Over the wall he scrambled to Margery, and heard her
incoherent appeals; then on to Stephen's steps and down into Stephen's
motor-boat. "The oars," he shouted--"the oars!" and Margery pushed them,
trembling, over the wall. He rowed out wildly towards the Island,
missing the water and splashing emptily in his haste. He turned round
and there was nothing to be seen, no other boat, no bobbing
head,--nothing, nothing but the gleam and shadow of the tumbled water.
He rowed round laboriously in a wide circle for many minutes, peering,
shouting, damp with spindrift and the sweat of rowing, though his hands
were frozen and numb upon the oars. The boat was a hideous weight for
rowing in the fierce wind, and when he could see nothing anywhere, he
started the engine--with merciful ease--and steered up past the Island,
since anything that was in the water must move up with the tide at last.
The spray shot over the bows and blinded him. The boat steered drunkenly
as he wiped his eyes and peered out at the water, and shouted weakly at
the wind.
He came out past the Island into the open, and there he saw the dinghy,
fifty yards ahead, a dark blot, dancing aimlessly sideways over the
short waves. Anyhow, he would pick up the dinghy--it might be useful.
But when he came up with the dinghy he saw that there was something in
it, something that was like the carved figures that may be seen brooding
over tombs, with curved back and head drooping over clasped knees, a
figure of utter dejection. But now and then it moved and paddled feebly
in the water with one hand.
John called, with an incredulous question in his voice, "Stephen?
Stephen? Is that you?"
And it was Stephen, brooding bitterly over the shame of his last
cowardice, and exhausted with the long struggle he had made for life.
For the cold clutch of the water had woken up the love of life, and he
had swum in a scrambling terror after the boat, and climbed with
infinite difficulty back into the oarless boat. He was sodden and cold,
and sick with humiliation. And John Egerton of all people must come and
find him. So he turned his head and said with a great bitterness, "O
God! It's _you_, is it?"
When John saw that miserable figure, there began to take hold of him
that old and fatal softness of heart; he felt very pitiful, and he said
gently, "Get in, Stephen." And Stephen crawled over into the other boat,
the water streaming from him; and they sat together on the wide seat in
front of the engine as they had sat so often before.