“Well,” he said slowly, “you don’t object to things being as they are for a time. I’m sure Tony will see it sensibly, and perhaps Miss Morelli might meet Lady Gale. It would be a pity, don’t you think, to put a stop altogether to the acquaintance?”
“Ah yes,” said Morelli, “certainly. We’ll say no more about it for the present. It was very pleasant as it was. As I told you, I like young Gale; and who knows?—perhaps one day——”
Maradick sat back in his chair and looked up lazily at the sky. It was all very pleasant and comfortable here in this delicious old garden; let the matter rest.
And then Morelli proved himself a most delightful companion. He seemed to have been everywhere and to have seen everything. And it was not only knowledge. He put things so charmingly; he had a thousand ways of looking at things, a thousand ways of showing them off, so that you saw them from new points of view, and the world was an amusing, entertaining treasure-house of wonders.
The minutes slipped by; the sun went down the sky, the shadow of the tree spread farther and farther across the lawn, the pinks and roses lay in bunches of red and pink and yellow against the dark background of the wall.
Maradick got up to go and Morelli walked with him, his hat set back, his hands in his pockets. As they entered the house he said, “Ah, by the way, there was that Spanish sword that I promised to show you. It’s a fine thing and of some value; I’ll bring it down.”
He disappeared up the stairs.
Suddenly Janet was at Maradick’s elbow. He had not seen her coming, but she looked round with quick, startled eyes. Her white dress shone against the dark corners of the hall. He saw, too, that her face was very white and there were dark lines under her eyes; to his surprise she put her hand on his arm, she spoke in a whisper.
“Mr. Maradick, please,” she said, “I must speak to you. There is only a minute. Please listen, it’s dreadfully important. Tony says you want to help us. There isn’t anyone else;” she spoke in little gasps and her hand was at her throat as though she found it difficult to breathe. “I must get away somehow, at once, I don’t know what will happen if I don’t. You don’t know father, and I can’t explain now, but I’m terribly frightened; and he will suddenly—I can see it coming.” She was nearly hysterical; he could feel her whole body trembling. “Tony said something yesterday that made father dreadfully angry. Tony ought not to have come; anything might happen when father’s like that. If you can’t help me I will run away; but youmusthelp.”
She grew calmer but still spoke very rapidly, still throwing frightened glances at the stairs. “Listen; on the twenty-seventh—that’s Thursday—father’s going away. He’s going to Pendragon for the whole day; it was arranged long ago. He was to have taken me, but he has decided not to; I heard him tell Miss Minns—I——”
But suddenly she was gone again, as quietly as she had come. He saw now that there had been a door behind her leading to some room. He looked up and saw that Morelli was coming downstairs carrying the sword. Five minutes afterwards he had left the house.
It had all happened so suddenly, so fantastically, that it was some minutes before he could straighten it out. First he had the impression of her, very young, very frightened, very beautiful. But there was no question of the reality of her terror. All the feelings of danger that he had had with Tony last night came crowding back now. It was true then? It hadn’t only been Tony’s imagination. After all, Janet must know. She hadn’t lived with her father all those years without knowing more about it than he, Maradick, possibly could. She wouldn’t have been likely to have taken the risk of seeing him like that if there was nothing in it, if there was only the mere ordinary domestic quarrel in it. But above all, there was the terror in her eyes; that he had seen.
He could not, he must not, leave her then. There was danger threatening her somewhere. The whole business had entirely changed from his original conception of it. It had been, at first, merely the love affair of a boy and girl, and he, from a pleasant sense of romance and a comfortable conviction that it was all good for his middle-aged solidity, had had his share in it. But now it had become suddenly a serious and most urgent affair, perhaps even a matter of life and of death.
He turned, as he had turned before, to Punch. There was no time to lose, and he was the man to see about it; he must find him at once.
The lights were coming out in the town as he passed through the streets; there were not many people about, and the twilight was lingering in the air so that all the colours of the sky and the houses and the white stretches of pavement had a faint pure light. The sky was the very tenderest blue, and the last gleam from the setting sun still lingered about the dark peaks and pinnacles of the houses.
He was soon on the outskirts of the town, and at last he trod the white high road. At the farther turn were Punch’s lodgings. There was a full round globe of a moon, and below him he could hear the distant beating of the sea.
Some one was walking rapidly behind him; he turned round, and to his astonishment saw, as the man came up to him, that it was the very person for whom he was looking.
“Ah! that’s splendid, Garrick,” he said, “I was just coming for you. I’m a bit worried and I want your advice.”
“I’m a bit worried too, sir, as a matter of fact,” said Punch, “but if there’s anything I can do——”
Maradick saw now that the man was very different from his usual cheerful self. He was looking anxious, and his eyes were staring down the road as though he were expecting to see something.
“What’s the matter?” said Maradick.
“Well, it’s the dog,” said Punch, “Toby, you know. He’s missing, been gone all the afternoon. Not that there’s very much in that in the ordinary way. He often goes off by ’imself. ’E knows the neighbourhood as well as I do; besides, the people round ’ere know him and know his mind. But I’m uneasy this time. It’s foolish, perhaps, but when a man’s got only one thing in the world——” He stopped.
“But why should you be uneasy?” said Maradick. The loss of a dog seemed a very small thing compared with his own affairs.
“Well, as a matter of fact, it’s Morelli.” The lines of Punch’s mouth grew hard. “’E’s owed me a grudge ever since I spoke to ’im plain about them animals. And ’e knows that I know a good bit, too. He passed me in the market-place two days back, and stopped for an instant and looked at the dog. To them that don’t know Morelli that’s nothing; but for them that do—’e’d think nothing of having his bit of revenge. And it’s late now, and the dog’s not home.” The little man looked at Maradick almost piteously, as though he wanted to be reassured.
“Oh, I expect it’s all right,” said Maradick. “Anyhow, I’ll come along with you and we can talk as we go.”
In a few words he explained what had happened that afternoon.
Punch stopped for a moment in the road and stared into Maradick’s face.
“Get ’er away, sir,” he said, “whatever you do, get ’er away. I know the girl; she wouldn’t have spoken to you like that unless there was something very much the matter. And I know the man; there’s nothing ’e’d stop at when ’e’s roused.”
“But why,” said Maradick, “if he feels like this about it did he let them go about together? He helped them in every way. He seemed to love to have Tony there. I can’t understand it.”
“Ah, sir, if you take Morelli as an ordinary man you won’t understand ’im. But ’e’s a kind of survival. ’E loves to be cruel, as they did in the beginning of things when they didn’t know any better. It’s true. I’ve seen it once or twice in my life. It’s a lust like any other lust, so that your body quivers with the pleasure of it. But there’s more in it than that. You see ’e wants to have young things about ’im. ’E’s always been like that; will play with kittens and birds and puppies, and then p’r’aps, on a sudden, kill them. That’s why he took to young Gale, because of ’is youth. And ’e liked to watch them together; but now, when young Gale comes and talks of marriage, why, that means that they both leave ’im and ’e can’t play with them any more, so ’e’ll kill them instead. Take ’er away, sir, take ’er away.”
They were out now upon the moor that ran between the woods and the sea; the world was perfectly still save for the distant bleating of some sheep and the monotonous tramp of the waves on the shore far below them. There was no sign of any other human being; the moon flung a white unnatural light about the place.
Punch walked with his eyes darting from side to side; every now and again he whistled, but there was no answering bark.
“It may seem a bit absurd to you, sir,” Punch said almost apologetically, “to be fussing this way about a dog, but ’e’s more to me than I could ever explain. If I hadn’t got ’im to talk to and have about at nights and kind o’ smile at when you’re wanting company the world would be another kind of place.”
Maradick tried to fix his mind on Punch’s words, but the ghostliness of the place and the hour seemed to hang round him so that he could not think of anything, but only wanted to get back to lights and company. Every now and again he turned round because he fancied that he heard steps. Their feet sank into the soft soil and then stumbled over tufts of grass. Faint mists swept up from the sea and shadowed the moon.
Behind them the lights of the town twinkled like the watching eye of some mysterious enemy. A bird rose in front of them with shrill protesting cries, and whirled, screaming, into the skies.
Punch seemed to be talking to himself. “Toby, boy, where are you? Toby, old dog. You know your master and you wouldn’t hide from your master. It’s time to be getting home, Toby. Time for bed, old boy. Damn the dog, why don’t ’e come? Toby, old boy!”
Every few minutes he started as though he saw it, and he would run forward a few paces and then stop. And indeed, in the gathering and shifting mist that went and came and took form and shape, there might have been a thousand white dogs wandering, an army of dogs, passing silently, mysteriously across the moor.
“Toby, old boy, it’s time to be getting back. ’E was that used to the place you couldn’t imagine ’is being lost anywhere round about. ’E was that cunning . . .”
But the army of dogs passed silently by, curving with their silent feet in and out of the mists. One new dog had joined their ranks. He fell in at the rear and went by with the others; but his master did not see them.
Suddenly the mists broke and the moon shone out across the moor like a flame. The moon leapt into the light. A little to the right on a raised piece of ground lay something white.
The army of dogs had vanished. The woods, the moor, the sea, were bathed in white colour.
Punch ran forward with a cry; he was down on his knees and his arms were round the dog’s body.
He bent down, and for a moment there was perfect silence, only, in a far distant field, some sheep was crying. Then he looked up.
The tears were rolling down his face; he lifted his hand and brushed them back. “It’s Toby. My dog! ’E’s been killed. Something’s torn ’im. . . .”
He bent down and picked it up and held it in his arms. “Toby, old dog, it’s time to go back. It’s all right; ’e hasn’t hurt you, old boy. It’s all right.” He broke off. “Curse him,” he said, “curse him! ’E did it—I know his marks—I’ll kill ’im for it.” His hands fell down to his side. “Toby, old dog! Toby. . . .”
The moon crept back again behind the mist. In the shadow the man sat nursing the dog in his arms.
Far below him sounded the sea.
PART IIITHE TOWER
PART III
THE TOWER
MRS. LESTER, TOO, WOULD LIKE IT TO BE THE TWENTY-SEVENTH
BUT MARADICK IS AFRAID OF THE DEVIL
On Monday the 24th the weather broke. Cold winds swept up from the sea, mists twisted and turned about the hotel, the rain beat in torrents against the panes. In all the rooms there were fires, and it seemed impossible that, only the day before, there should have been a burning, dazzling sun.
It was after lunch, and Lady Gale and Tony were sitting over the fire in the drawing-room. Tony had been obviously not himself during these last few days, and his mother felt that her silence could last a very little time longer. However, matters were at length approaching a crisis. Things must decide themselves one way or the other in a day or two, for Sir Richard had, at lunch, announced his intention of departing on Saturday the 29th; that is, they had the inside of a week, and then Treliss, thank Heaven, would be left behind. Surely nothing very much could happen in a week.
Her earlier feeling, that above all she did not want Tony to miss this girl if she were the right one for him, had yielded now to a kind of panic. All that she could think of now was to get him away. There was a look in his eyes that she had never seen in his face before. It was a look that aged him, that robbed him altogether of that delightful youth and vitality that had been his surprising, his charming gift! But there was more than a look of weariness and distress, there was positive fright there!
She watched him when he was in the room with her, and she had seen him suddenly start and tremble, fling back his head as though he expected to find some one behind him. He, her boy Tony, who had never been afraid of anyone or anything. And then, too, she had seen a new look of determination in his mouth and eyes during these last days. His mind was made up to something, but to what she was too afraid to think!
She must get him away, and she had heard her husband’s decision about Saturday with tremendous relief. She had watched Tony’s face at the announcement. But it had not changed at all; only, for a moment he had looked quickly across at Maradick; it had apparently not startled him.
His indifference frightened her. If he was taking it so calmly then he must have decided on something that this date could not affect, on something probably before the date? But what could he do before Saturday? She seemed to miss altogether the obvious thing that he could do.
But it had been seldom enough that she had had him to herself during these last weeks, and now she snatched eagerly at her opportunity. She sat on one side of the fire, one hand up to shield her face, her rings glittering in the firelight; her brown dress stood out against the white tiles of the fireplace and her beautiful snow-white hair crowned her head gloriously.
Tony sat at her feet, one hand in hers. He stared straight before him into the fire. She had noticed during these last three days a delightful tenderness towards her. His attitude to her had always been charming, courteous, affectionate and yet companionable; but now he seemed to want to do everything that he could to show her that he loved her. And yet though she valued and treasured this it also frightened her. It was a little as though he were preparing for some departure, at any rate some change, that might hurt her.
Well, they were going at the end of the week, only a few more days.
He took her fingers and stroked them. His hand stopped at the wedding ring and he passed his thumb across it.
“I say, mother,” he looked up in her face with a little laugh, “I suppose you’d say that you’d rather lose anything in the world than that.”
“Yes, dear, it’s very precious;” but she sighed.
“I suppose it is. It must be ripping having something that is just yours and nobody else’s, that you simply don’t share with anyone. It must be ripping having somebody that belongs to you and that you belong to; just you two.”
“Yes, But that ring means more to me than that. It means you and Rupert as well as your father. It means all those hours when you screamed and kicked, and the day when you began to talk, and the first adventurous hours when you tried to cross the nursery floor. And yes, a thousand things besides.”
“Dear old mater,” he said softly. “It’s been just ripping having you. You’ve always understood so splendidly. Some chaps’ mothers I’ve seen, and they don’t know their sons in the very least. They do all the things that are most likely to drive them wild, and they never seem to be able to give them a bit what they want.”
“Yes, but it works both ways,” she answered. “A son’s got to try and understand his mother too. It’s no use their leaving it all to her, you know.”
“No, of course not.” Then he turned his body round and looked her in the face. “But you do understand so splendidly. You always have understood. You see, you trust a fellow.” Then he added quickly, “You’re trusting me now, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she answered, looking at him steadily, “perfectly. Only, just these last few days, perhaps I’ve been a little tiny bit worried. You haven’t been looking happy, and then I’m always worried; it’s so seldom that you’re not all right.”
“But you’d rather not know—what’s going on, I mean. It’s all right, perfectly right, and if it wasn’t—if it wasn’t right for you, I mean, as well as for me—I wouldn’t go on with it for a moment. Only it’s dreadfully important.”
“Yes, dear, I know. And if Mr. Maradick knows about it——”
“He’s a brick, isn’t he?” Tony interrupted eagerly. “You know, so few middle-aged men can understand the point of view of a chap who’s only about twenty-five. They are either fatherly and patronising or schoolmasterly and bossing, or kind of wise and beneficent; but Maradick’s most awfully young really, and yet he’s wise too. He’s a ripper.”
He stopped. They neither of them spoke for some minutes. “It will be quite all right, mother,” he said, “very soon. Just now things are a little difficult, but we’ll pull through.”
He got up and stood looking down at her. “You are a brick to trust me and not to ask,” he said. “It would make things so awfully difficult if you asked.” He bent down and kissed her. “It’s a bit of luck having you,” he said.
But as soon as he had left the room his face was serious again. He passed Mrs. Lester on the stairs and smiled and hurried on. It was all very well; she was there, of course, real enough and all that sort of thing, but she simply didn’t count for him at that moment, she didn’t exist, really, any more than the hotel or the garden did. Nothing existed except that house in the town with Janet somewhere in it waiting for him to set her free.
That was the one point on which his eyes were now fixed. In his earlier days it had, perhaps, been one of his failings—that he had run rather too eagerly after too many interests, finding in everything so immediate an excitement that he forgot the purpose of yesterday in the purpose of to-day. It had always been the matter with him that he had too many irons in the fire. Life was so full and such fun!—that had been the excuse.Nowit was deadly earnest.
But it was the first time that the world had so resolved into one single point for him. He was already years older; these last days had made him that, the uncertainties, the indecisions, the fluctuating enthusiasms, the passing from wonder to wonder. All these had solidified into one thing, and one thing only—Janet, how to get her out, how to marry her, how to have her for always; the rest of the world was in shadow.
To-day was Monday; Tuesday, Wednesday, and then Thursday, Thursday the 27th. That was the day on which everything must be done. He was thinking it all out, they had got that one chance. If they missed it Morelli would be back, and for ever. They must not miss it.
But he was perfectly calm about it. His agitation seemed curiously to have left him. He was cold and stern and absolutely collected. He and Maradick were going to pull it through.
He could not find Maradick. He searched for him in the dining-room, the passages, the billiard-room.
No. The servants hadn’t seen him. Mrs. Maradick was with Mrs. Lawrence in one of the drawing-rooms; no, they hadn’t see him, he had disappeared after lunch.
Mrs. Maradick smiled. “Find Mrs. Lester” was the advice that she would have given him. She went back to her novel with tightly closed mouth and refused to talk to Mrs. Lawrence.
And then Tony suddenly remembered. Of course, he would be up in that old room where he so often went, the room with the gallery. Tony found him there.
The rain was beating furiously against the panes, and there was a very dismal light that struggled across the floor and lost itself hopelessly in the dark corners under the gallery. Maradick was sitting close up against the window, reading in the rather feeble light. He looked up when he saw Tony and put his book down.
“Ah, Tony, I was coming down to find you; Sir Richard’s decision at lunch pretty well settles things, doesn’t it? We must move at once.”
He looked up at the boy and saw the age in his face.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re going to pull it through all right.”
“Oh, I’m not worrying,” Tony answered shortly. “It’s too damned serious, and besides, there’s no time.” He paused as though he were collecting his thoughts, and then he went on. “Look here, I’ve thought it all out. I’ve been able to write to Janet and have had several letters from her. She’s plucky, my word, you can’t think! Anyhow, that beast’s all right for the moment, it seems, only he keeps looking at her as though he was meaning to do something, and she’s terribly frightened, poor little girl. But he’s going on Thursday all right, and that’s when we’ve got to do the trick.”
“Yes,” said Maradick. “I’m absolutely at your service.” Their positions had changed. Tony was taking the lead.
“Yes,” said Tony, very solemnly and speaking rather quickly. “It’s all got to be Thursday. I want you to go off this afternoon, if you don’t very much mind, to that parson I was telling you of—the parson at Tremnan. He knows me and he’s a real sportsman. He must do the trick. You can tell him, 1.30 Thursday. Then there’s the licence to be got. I’ll see to that. I’ve been here three weeks now, so that’s all right. Then it only remains to think about that, I’m going to get ’em—the family, I mean—to go for an expedition on Thursday. Mother will understand if I ask her, and that will get them out of the way. Then we just take a cab, you and I and Janet and Miss Minns.”
“Miss Minns?” broke in Maradick.
“Yes,” said Tony, still very seriously. “The poor woman’s frightened out of her life, and Janet’s taken her into her confidence. We’re going to take her away with us. She’s going to live with us. That’ll be all right. She’s got more sense than you think. Well, we four drive out to the church and there the thing’s done. Then we get back and catch the three o’clock up to town. Then off to Paris that same night; and there you are!”
He stopped and looked at Maradick for a moment.
“The only thing,” he said, “is about you.”
“About me?” Maradick looked up, smiling.
“Yes. What are we going to do about you? Of course you can come off with us, too, if you like, but then there’s your wife and the girls. You couldn’t do that very well, I suppose?”
“No,” said Maradick, “I couldn’t.”
“Well, but, you know, if you’re left, why then, everybody’s got you, so to speak—Morelli, my people, everybody. There’s only you to turn on; you’ll have a pretty rotten time. It isn’t fair. And even now, you know, if you’d rather get out of it I expect I’ll manage.”
Maradick said nothing.
“I hadn’t really seen how damned selfish it all was until just now. I asked you to come and didn’t see it really a bit, what it would all lead to, I mean, and especially for you.”
Maradick looked up, laughing.
“My dear boy, do you suppose I, at any rate, haven’t seen? Why, from the beginning, from that first night of all when we talked about it, I was responsible; responsible to your mother at any rate, and she’s the only person who really matters. As to Morelli, he can do nothing. When I see a girl look as Janet looked the other night, why, then it was time some steps were taken by somebody to get her away.”
He put his hand on Tony’s arm. “And besides, whatever happened to me, do you suppose that I could ever cease to be grateful for all that you’ve done for me, your being with me, your showing me a new kind of life altogether? I’d be a bit of a cur if I wasn’t ready to help you after that. Nothing that I can do can quite repay you.”
“That’s all right, then,” said Tony. He was a little impatient, just then, of Maradick’s approach to sentiment. It was off the mark; it hadn’t anything at all to do with Janet, and besides, it was all rot, anyway, to talk about all that he’d done. He’d done nothing. But he didn’t, in the least, want to be ungracious. “But that’s most awfully good of you, really, and I don’t suppose, as a matter of fact, they’ll do very much. They can’t, anyhow. I’m over age, and I shan’t have to go to the governor for money. Besides, it will be all right in a week or two. The governor’s like that; I know him, and once the thing’s over he’ll get over it, because he loathes things being uncomfortable; besides, mother will manage him. Anyhow, are you sure you don’t mind going off to the parson? I’d come, too, but I think it would be safer for me on the whole to hang round here this afternoon.”
No, Maradick didn’t mind. Maradick would like to go; Maradick would do anything. And, as a matter of fact, he wanted to get out and away—away from the house and the people in it, where he could think undisturbed.
He left Tony and started down to the town. His brain was still on fire with his meeting with Mrs. Lester on the evening before. During these last three days they had had very few opportunities of meeting, but the affair had nevertheless advanced with extraordinary rapidity. Then, last night, he had been alone with her, after dinner, in the garden. It had been terribly hot and oppressive, a prelude to the storm that came a few hours later.
There was not a breath of wind; the world might have been of carved stone, so motionless was it. He had had her in his arms; her hands had crept round his neck and had pulled his head down until it rested on her breast. He had been on fire—the world had been on fire—and he had poured into her ear, in fierce hurried words, passion such as it seemed to him no man had ever known before. He had told her the old, old arguments; things that seemed to him absolutely new and fresh. Their marriages had been, both of them, absurd. They had been joined, each of them, to persons who did not understand them, people who did not even care to understand them. After all, what were marriage vows? A few words spoken hurriedly when they could not possibly tell whether there was even a chance of their being able to keep them.
They were not meant to keep them. They had made their mistake, and now they must pay for it; but it was better to break with those bonds now, to have done with them once and for all, than to go on for ever in hypercritical mockery, pretending what they could not feel, acting a lie before God and man.
But now, if they could escape now, away from this stupid country with its stupid conventions, away to some place where they would be happy together for ever until death . . . and so on, and so on; and the leaves and the paths and the dark sky were held together, motionless, by the iron hand of God.
And then some one had in a moment interrupted them; some fool from the hotel. Maradick’s fingers itched to be about his throat. “What a close night! Yes, a storm must be coming up. They’d heard very distant thunder; how solemn the sea sounded . . .” and so they had gone into the hotel.
The rain had ceased. The streets stretched in dreary wet lines before him, the skies were leaden grey; from some room the discordant jingle of a piano came down to him, a cart bumped past him through the mud and dirt.
And then suddenly the tower in the market-place sprung upon him. It was literally that, a definite springing out from all the depths of greyness and squalor behind it to meet him. On shining days, when the sky was very blue and the new smart hotel opposite glittered in all its splendour, the tower put on its most sombre cloak of grey and hid itself.
That was no time or place for it when other things could look so brilliant, but now, in the absolutely deserted market-place, when the cobbles glittered in the wet and the windows, like so many stupid eyes, gave back the dead colour of the sky, it took its rightful place.
It seemed to be the one thing that mattered, with its square and sturdy strength, its solidity that bid defiance to all the winds and rains of the world. Puddles lay about its feet and grey windy clouds tugged at its head, but it stood confidently resolute, while the red hotel opposite shrunk back, with its tawdry glitter damped and torn and dishevelled.
So Maradick stood alone in the market-place and looked at it, and suddenly realised it as a symbol. He might have his room from which he looked out and saw the world, and he held it to be good; Tony had shown him that. He might have his freedom, so that he might step out and take the wonderful things that he had seen; Punch had shown him that. But he must also have—oh! he saw it so clearly—his strength, the character to deal with it all, the resolution to carve his own actions rather than to let his actions carve him; and the tower had shown him that!
As he looked at it, he almost bowed his head before it. Foolish to make so much of an old thing like that! Sentimental and emotional with no atom of common-sense in it, but it had come out to meet him just when he wanted it most. It needed all his resolution to persuade himself that it had not a life of its own, that it did not know, like some old, sober, experienced friend, what danger he was running.
He passed out into the country. Although the rain had ceased and the grass was scenting the air with the new fragrance that the storm had given it, the sky was dark and overcast, grey clouds like Valkyries rushed furiously before the wind, and the sea, through the mist, broke into armies of white horses. As far as the eye could reach they kept charging into the grey dun-coloured air and fell back to give way to other furious riders.
The mist crept forward like live things, twisting and turning, forming into pillars and clouds, and then rent by the screaming wind into a thousand tatters.
The road was at a high level, and he could see the coast for some miles bending round until it reached the headland; a line of white foam stretched, with hard and clear outline, from point to point. This was a new Cornwall to him, this grey mysterious thing, hinting at so much, with a force and power almost terrible in its ominous disregard of human individuality. He had thought that the right light for Cornwall was on a day of gold and blue, now he knew that he had not seen half the wonder and fascination; it was here, with this crawling foam, the sharp rocks, the screaming wind and the turning, twisting mist, that she was rightly to be seen.
The wind tore at his coat and beat him about the face. It was incredible that only yesterday there should have been heat and silence and dazzling colour. He pressed forward.
His thought now was that he was glad Mrs. Maradick did not know. Until this morning he had not considered her at all. After all, she had given him a bad twenty years of it, and she had no right to complain. Other men did it with far less excuse.
But there had been something when she had met him at breakfast this morning that he had not understood. She had been almost submissive. She had spoken to him at breakfast as she had never spoken to him in their married life before. She had been gentle, had told Annie not to jingle her teaspoon because it worried father, and had inquired almost timidly what were his plans for the day.
He had felt yesterday that he rather wanted her to see that Mrs. Lester was fond of him; she had driven it into him so often that he was only accepted by people as her husband, that he had no value in himself at all except as a payer of bills. She had even chaffed him about certain ladies of whom she had ironically suggested that he was enamoured. And so it had seemed in its way something of a triumph to show her that he wasn’t merely a figurehead, a person of no importance; that there was somebody who found him attractive, several people, indeed. But now he was ashamed. He had scarcely known how to answer her when she had spoken to him so gently. Was she too under influence of the place?
In fact, he did not know what he was going to do. He was tired, worn out; he would not think of it at all. He would see how things turned out.
The character of the day had changed. The mists were still on the sea, but behind them now was the shining of the sun, only as a faint light vaguely discerned, but the water seemed to heave gently as though some giant had felt the coming of the sun and was hurrying to meet it.
The light was held back by a wall of mist, but in places it seemed to be about to break through, and the floor of the sea shone with all the colours of mother of pearl.
The little church stood back from the cliff; it stood as though it had faced a thousand years of storm and rain, as an animal stands with its feet planted wide and its ears well back ready for attack. Its little tower was square and its stone was of weather-beaten grey, only the little windows with deep blue glass caught the haze from the sea and shone like eyes through the stone and across the grass.
The little rectory stood on the other side of the road. It also was minute and absolutely exposed to the elements; here lived the Rev. Mark Anstey, aged eighty-two, quite alone except for the company of five dogs, six cats, three pigeons, a parrot, two tame rabbits, a hedgehog and a great many frogs, these last in a pond near by.
When Maradick came up the road he saw the old man standing in his garden watching the sea. The mist had been drawn back, as a veil is drawn back by a mysterious hand, until it lay only on the horizon. The sea was still grey, but it hinted, as it were, at wonderful colours. You fancied that you could see blue and gold and purple, and yet when you looked again it was still grey. It was as though a sheet of grey gauze had been stretched over a wonderful glittering floor and the colours shone through.
The old man was a magnificent figure of enormous height. He had a great white beard that fell almost to his waist and his snow-white hair had no covering. Three of his dogs were at his side and the five cats sat in a row on his doorstep. He was standing with his hands behind his back and his head up as though to catch the wind.
Maradick introduced himself and stated his errand. The old man shook him warmly by the hand.
“Ah, yes; come in, won’t you? Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Maradick. Come into my study and I’ll just take down details.”
His voice was as clear as a bell, and his eyes, blue as the sea, looked him through and through.
“Here, this is my room. Bit of a mess, isn’t it? But a bachelor can’t help that, you know; besides, I like a mess, always did.”
Whatever it was, it was the right kind of mess. The fireplace was of bright blue tiles; there were books, mostly, it seemed, theological, fishing tackle cumbered one corner, guns another, a writing-desk took up a good deal of the room. The old man filled the place. He really was enormous, and he had a habit of snapping his fingers with a sharp, clicking noise like the report of a pistol. Two deerhounds were lying by the fireplace, and these came to meet him, putting their noses into his hands.
“Ah, ha! Hum—where are we? Oh! yes! Sit down, Mr. Maradick, won’t you? Oh, clear those things off the chair—yes—let me see! Anthony Gale—Janet Morelli—what? Morelli? How do you spell it? What? M-o-r-e—oh! yes, thanks! Thursday—1.30. Yes, I know the boy; going to be married, is he? Well, that’s a good thing—can’t start breeding too young—improves the race—fill the country with children. Married yourself, Mr. Maradick? Ah! that’s good.”
Maradick wondered whether the name, Morelli, would seem familiar to him, but he had obviously never heard it before. “We don’t have many weddings up in this church here, nowadays. They don’t come this way much. Just the people down at the cove, you know. . . . Have some tea—oh, yes! you must have some tea.”
He rang the bell and a small boy with a very old face came and received orders. “Remarkable thing, you know,” said Mr. Anstey when the boy had gone out again. “That boy’s twenty-three. You wouldn’t think it, now, would you? But it’s true. Stopped growing, but he’s a good boy; rings the bell in the church, and digs in the garden and all the rest of it. We’ll have tea outside. It’s warm enough and it’s going to be fine, I think. Besides, I always must have my eyes on the sea if it’s possible.”
They had tea in the little porch over the door; the honeysuckle was still in flower and there were still roses in the beds, a mass of red hollyhocks at the farther end of the garden stood out against the sky. The old man talked of Tony.
“Yes, I’ve met him several times; a splendid boy, a friend of Garrick’s who’s brought him up here. Ah, you know Garrick?”
Yes, Maradick knew Garrick.
“Well, there’s a man! God made that man all right, even though he isn’t often inside a church. He worships in his own kind way, you know, as most of us do, if you only look into it. God’s more tolerant than most of us parsons, I can tell you, and understands people a lot better, too. Not that we parsons aren’t a pretty good lot on the whole, but we’re a bit apt to have our eyes fixed on our little differences and our creeds and our little quarrels when we ought to be having our eyes on the sky. Ah, if I could get a few of those gentlemen who are quarrelling there up in London and just set them here in this garden in rows with that to look at!” He waved his hand at the sea.
The hill bent at the end of the garden and disappeared, and beyond the bend there was nothing but the sea. The blue was beginning to steal into it in little lakes and rivers of colour.
“That’s God’s work, you know; take your atheist and show him that.”
He talked about Tony.
“A nice boy, if ever there was one. But what’s this about marriage? Well, I suppose I mustn’t ask questions. You’re a friend of his and you’re looking after him. But that’s a boy who’ll never go wrong; I’d trust any woman to him.”
Soon Maradick got up to go. This man had impressed him strangely; he had got that thing that Tony and Punch had got, but he had used it in the right way. There was not only the sentiment, the emotion of the view, there was the strength of the tower as well.
Maradick left him standing gazing at the sea. His figure seemed to fill the sky.
On his way back the sky grew clearer, and although the sun was never actually to be seen its light was felt in the air and over the sea. There was a freshness about everything around him. The sheaves on the hills, the grass waving on the moor, the sheep clustered in their pens, the hard white clean lines of the road surrounded him with new life. He felt suddenly as though he had been standing during these last days in a dark, close room with the walls pressing about him and no air.
And yet he knew, as he neared the town, that the fascination, the temptation was beginning to steal about him again. As the door of the hotel closed round him, the tower, the clear colours of the land and sky, the man standing gazing at the sea—these things were already fading away from him.
He had nearly finished dressing when his wife came into his room. She talked a little, but had obviously nothing very much to say. He was suddenly conscious that he avoided looking at her. He busied himself over his tie, his shirt; it was not, he told himself angrily, that he was ashamed of facing her. After all, why should he be? All that he had done was to kiss another woman, and most men had done that in their time. He was no saint and, for that matter, neither was she. Nobody was a saint; but he was uncomfortable, most certainly uncomfortable. Looking into the glass as he brushed his hair, he caught sight of her staring at him in a strange way, as though she were trying to make up her mind about something.
Puzzled—puzzled—puzzled about what? Perhaps it was just possible that she too was just discovering that she had missed something in all these years. Perhaps she too was suddenly wondering whether she had got everything from life that she wanted; perhaps her mind was groping back to days when there did seem to be other things, when there were, most obviously, other people who had found something that she had never even searched for.
The thought touched him strangely. After all, what if there was a chance of starting again? Lord! what a fool he was to talk like that! Didn’t he know that in another two hours’ time he would be with the other woman, his pulses beating to a riotous tune that she, his wife, could never teach him; you couldn’t cure the faults, the mistakes, the omissions of twenty years in three weeks.
Dinner that night was of the pleasantest. Tony was at his very best. He seemed to have recovered all his lost spirits. That white, tense look had left his face, the strain had gone out of his eyes; even the waiters could not keep back their smiles at his laughter.
They discussed the hour of departure and Tony did not turn a hair. Mrs. Lester glanced for an instant at Maradick, but that was all.
“I’m afraid I shall have to go up on Thursday night,” said Lester. “One’s publishers, you know, need continual looking after, and if I don’t see them on Friday morning it may be some time before I get a chance again. But I’ll leave my wife in your hands, Lady Gale. I know she’ll be safe enough.”
“Oh! we’ll look after her, Lester,” said Tony, laughing; “won’t we, Milly? We’ll look after you all the time. I’ll constitute myself your special knight-errant, Milly. You shall want for nothing so long as I am there.”
“Thank you, Tony,” said Mrs. Lester.
It was a fine enough night for them all to go into the garden, and very soon Maradick and Mrs. Lester were alone. It was all about him once again, the perfume that she used, the rustle of her dress, the way that her hair brushed his cheek. But behind it, in spite of himself, he saw his wife’s face in the mirror, he saw Tony, he saw the tower, and he felt the wind about his body.
She bent over him and put her arms about his neck; but he put them back.
“No,” he said almost roughly, “we’ve got to talk; this kind of thing must be settled one way or the other.”
“Please, don’t be cross.” Her voice was very gentle; he could feel her breath on his cheek. “Ah, if you knew what I’d been suffering all day, waiting for you, looking forward, aching for these minutes; no, you mustn’t be cruel to me now.”
But he stared in front of him, looking into the black depths of the trees that surrounded them on every side.
“No, there’s more in it than I thought. What are we going to do? What’s going to happen afterwards? Don’t you see, we must be sensible about it?”
“No,” she said, holding his hand. “There is no time for that. We can be sensible afterwards. Didn’t you hear at dinner? Fred is going away on Thursday night; we have that, at any rate.”
“No,” he said, roughly breaking away from her, “we must not.”
But she pressed up against him. Her arm passed slowly round his neck and her fingers touched, for a moment, his cheek. “No; listen. Don’t you see what will happen if we don’t take it? All our lives we’ll know that we’ve missed it. There’s something that we might have had—some life, some experience. At any rate we had lived once, out of our stuffy lives, our stupid, dull humdrum. Oh! I tell you, you mustn’t miss it! You’ll always regret, you’ll always regret!”
Her whole body was pressed against his. He tried to push her away with his hand. For a moment he thought that he saw Tony watching him and then turning away, sadly, scornfully. And then it swept over him like a wave. He crushed her in his arms; for some minutes the world had stopped. Then again he let her go.
“Ah!” she said, smiling and touching her dress with her fingers. “You are dreadfully strong. I did not know how strong. But I like it. And now Thursday night will be ours; glorious, wonderful, never to be forgotten. I must go. They’ll be wondering. You’d better not come back with me. Good-night, darling!” She bent down, kissed him and disappeared.
But he sat there, his hands gripping his knees.
What sort of scum was he? He, a man?
Thisthen was the fine new thing that Tony and Punch had shown him.Thisthe kind of world!Thisthe great experience. Life!
No.With all his soul he knew that it was not; with all his soul he knew that the devil and all his angels were pressing about his path—laughing, laughing.
And the moon rose behind the trees and the stars danced between the branches.