Yet scruples came.
He had not the smallest doubt of winning Essie to his intentions—Essie who liked to think somebody was fond of her, who liked to be kissed, who had confessed of the lodgers that "most of 'em had"—who, in fact, was Essie Bickers. He knew, thinking upon it, what had been in pretty little Essie's heart when she said softly: "What, are you fond of me, Arthur?" He knew it was that she loved him. He knew what had been in her heart when, having said it, she drew away from him, and he knew why as she drew away he had seen tears in her eyes. He knew it was because, having made her confession of love, she had seen no response of love in his eyes that only were bemused with sudden thought upon his sudden plan. He knew he had only to tell her that she was wrong, that indeed he loved her. Yet scruples came.
He set about his plans. On the morning when but a week remained to the end of the term—the date he had fixed in his mind—he wrote before he came down to breakfast a letter to his agent in London.
"DEAR LESSINGHAM,
"I'm still alive! I've been wandering—getting back my health. I was rather run down. Now, very soon, I hope to get to work again. Keep it to yourself that you've heard of me again. I'll be seeing you soon. Meanwhile, you've got a pile of money for me, haven't you? I want you, please, to send me at once £200 in £10 notes to this address. I'm going abroad for a bit.
"Yours ever,"PHILIP WRIFORD."
Funny to be in touch with that world again! He put the letter in his pocket. He would post it on his way to school. Imagine Essie's eyes when she saw all that wealth! He could hear her cry—he imagined himself showing it to her in a first-class carriage bound for London—"Oh, Arthur! Did you ever, though!"
Smiling upon that thought, he went down-stairs to the parlour; and it was thus, at the very moment as it were of first putting out his hand to take Essie, that scruples came.
He found Mrs. Bickers seated alone. There were sounds of Essie gaily humming as she prepared breakfast in the kitchen. Mrs. Bickers, busily sewing, looked up and smiled at him. "Good morning, Arthur. I declare I do like to see you come down of a morning smiling like that. Busy, aren't I? So early, too!" and she held up what looked to be a blouse that she was making, and told him: "That's for our Essie!"
The smile went from his face and from his thoughts. "Our Essie!" Only now that phrase, and what it meant, entered his calculations on his purpose; and with it the thought of his smiles which Mrs. Bickers had been so glad to see—and what they meant.
He desired to turn the conversation; yet even as he made answer he knew his words were leading him deeper into it. "Why, you're not surprised to see me smiling, are you, Mrs. Bickers?" he said. "This is what I call a very smiling house, you know."
Mrs. Bickers set down her work on her lap and smiled anew. "Well, that's good news," she said. "Ah, and it's not always been either, Arthur."
"Hasn't it, Mrs. Bickers?"
"Oh, dear, it hasn't! Why, Mr. Bickers and me we had a heap of trouble one time."
"But you're very happy now?"
"I've been happy," said Mrs. Bickers, smiling again, "eighteen years and three—four—eighteen years and four months."
"That means ever since something?"
"Ever since our Essie came," said Mrs. Bickers softly.
Our Essie! Ah! He said dully: "Yes, you must be fond of Essie?"
"Fond!" Mrs. Bickers echoed him. "Why, Arthur, she's all the world to Mr. Bickers an' me, our Essie. She's such a bright one! Our Essie came to us very late in life, and you know I reckon we've never had a minute's trouble since. Looking back on what we'd had before, that's why we say, Mr. Bickers an' me, that we reckon she was a gift sent straight out of heaven. We're sure of it. Brought up with old folk like us, she'd grow up quiet and odd like some children are, wouldn't you think? Or likely enough discontented, finding it dull? But you've only got to look at our Essie to feel happy. There's not many can say that of a daughter, not for every bit of eighteen years, Arthur. We reckon we're uncommon blessed, Mr. Bickers an' me."
In comes Essie with a steaming dish: "Oh, these sausages, Mother! Jus' look at them sizzling! Oh, aren't they funny, though!"
He does not post his letter on the way to school. He does not post it on the way back from school. He carries it up-stairs again in his pocket when he goes to bed. Scruples!
Scruples—he lies awake and reasons the scruples; he tosses restlessly and damns the scruples. Scruples! In the morning he has settled them. He rises very early before the house is astir. He comes down to post his letter and goes at once through the back yard which offers nearer way to the letter-box.
"Hulloa, Arthur! Why, you're up early!"
This time it is Mr. Bickers, hailing him through the open door of his workshop where he is busily occupied with blow-flame and soldering-irons.
"Well, not so early as you, Mr. Bickers. I thought I was first for once."
The cert. plumber laughs, evidently well-pleased. "Come along in an' give a hand. Soldering, this is. Me! I'm never abed after five o'clock summer-times."
"I often think you're wonderfully young for your years, Mr. Bickers."
Another laugh of satisfaction. "I'm younger than I was a score years back; and that's a fact, Arthur."
"What's the secret of it?"
"Why," says Mr. Bickers, "there is a secret to it, sure enough. It's this way, Arthur. Now you put the solder-pot on the lamp again. There's matches. This way—I was fifty-two years growing old, and I've been close on nineteen years growing young. Ever since— Hullo! careful with it!"
"Ever since—?" says Mr. Wriford, his head averted, fumbling with the lamp, fumbling with his thoughts.
"Ever since our Essie came to us."
"Yes," says Mr. Wriford, and adds "Yes, that's much what Mrs. Bickers was telling me only yesterday."
"Why, it's the same with both of us," says Mr. Bickers; and then changes his voice to the voice that Mr. Wriford recognises for that in which he reads the scriptural portions at night. "You mark this from me, Arthur," Mr. Bickers continues. "You're a young man. You mark what I tell you—"
Necessary to face Mr. Bickers while he tells—to face that serene old countenance, those steady eyes, that earnest voice. "Prayers aren't always answered the way you expect, Arthur. You'll find that. There's man's way of reckoning how a thing ought to be done, and there's God's way. We'd had uncommon trouble, Mrs. Bickers an' me, a score years back, and we prayed our ways for to ease it. Essie came. God's way. Our Essie come to us a blessing straight out of heaven."
Necessary to face him, necessary to hear in his voice, to see in his eyes, to watch in the radiation that fills up the careworn lines about his mouth and on his brow—necessary to hear and to see there what "Our Essie" means to him.
Necessary to say something.... To say what? Mr. Wriford can only find the words he said yesterday to Mrs. Bickers. He says: "Yes, you must be fond of Essie."
"Fond!" says Mr. Bickers. "I'll tell you this to it, Arthur. I'll tell you just what our Essie is to us. There's a verse we say night and morning, Mrs. Bickers an' me, when we're returning thanks for our blessing: 'Through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us.' That's our Essie."
The dayspring from on high! Irreverent, in Mr. Wriford's dim recollection of the text, in its application to Essie. He tries to laugh at it. How laugh at it? Dayspring—ah, that is she! She is that in her perpetual vitality, in her bubbling, ceaseless, bottomless well of spirits. She is that to him, and therefore he requires her, requires her. Ah, she is that to them! Scruples—scruples—infernal scruples—ridiculous scruples. He means no harm to her. God knows he means nothing but happiness to her. Yet the day passes. He defers his intention to post his letter till after breakfast. He goes to school and defers it till the luncheon hour. He goes then for a walk and defers it till he is coming home. He comes home and brings his letter with him.
Scruples—damn them! Scruples—damn himself for entertaining them!
Let Essie decide! That is the decision to which he comes, with which he stills his scruples. He desires her. The more he reflects upon possession of her—his to amuse him, to run his house that he will take for her, to make him laugh, not to interfere with him, requiring nothing from him but what he shall choose to give her—the more he visions this prospect, the more ardently it attracts him. There he sees that vacant place in his life filled up; there he sees sufficiently attained the secret of happiness that he has missed; there, belonging to him, he sees her—jolly little Essie—filling, hiding, forgetting him his endless quest, his hopeless hopelessness, his old-time miserable misery. He cannot marry her. He does not love her. He could not be mated—for life!—to such as she in all her funny little phrases reveals herself to be. He only wants her. Then come the scruples. Well, let Essie decide! She shall know his every intention, his every feeling. He will not even so far delude her as to tell her he loves her. If she who loves him is willing to go with him, what need matter Mr. and Mrs. Bickers with their devotion to our Essie? What are they to him? Why should they interfere with his life? What are they to Essie if he—as he will be—is everything to her? And then, with "Let Essie decide," he finally crushes under foot all of scruples, all of conscience, that remain after this review of his resolve: finally, for this is his last and comforting and confident resolve—that if Essie is shocked and frightened and will not, he will immediately accept it: whatever the temptation will nothing deceive or trick her, not by so much as a look pretend he loves her, immediately leave her and immediately return to the old hopelessness, the old quest, the old emptiness of all his former years.
Decided! His scruples stilled! Himself assured, absolved! Let Essie decide it. Now to act.
This is Thursday. He has carried that letter nearly a week unposted in his pocket. To-morrow the Tower House School breaks up. On Saturday Mrs. Bickers and Essie are going for a three weeks' summer holiday to Whitecliffe Sands, which is an hour away on the Norfolk coast, and it has been decided a month before that he is to accompany them for their first week as Mrs. Bickers' guest. The kindly invitation had been made, and he had gratefully accepted it, in the period before this sudden thought of filling with Essie that vacant corner in the room of his life: in the period when he had been content dispassionately to drift along until the holidays should terminate his engagement—dispassionately to leave till then conjecture upon what he next should do.
This summer visit to Whitecliffe Sands was, as he then learned, an annual excursion. Mr. Bickers stays with the shop, but closes it and comes down to mother and Essie every Saturday until Monday. When only that month remained before the holiday came, discussion of the subject became Essie's chief topic of conversation at supper every evening; all aglitter it made her with reminiscences of Whitecliffe's past delights and with anticipations of its fond excitements now to be renewed: the pier that has been opened since last summer, the concert party that will reopen its season there just before they arrive, the progress she has made and means to make in swimming, the white shoes she is going to buy, the new coat and skirt that she and mother are making because "My goodness, you don't have to look half smart on the parade, evenings!"
In the midst of this had come one evening Mrs. Bickers' "What about Arthur?" and then, to his rather rueful smile and announcement that he had no plans as yet beyond the end of the term, her kindly proposal, evidently arranged beforehand with Mr. Bickers: "Well, I tell you what would be very nice, Arthur dear, that is, if you haven't got another job of work immediately by then. Me and Mr. Bickers have had a talk about it. We'd like you to come with Essie an' me jus' till Mr. Bickers comes down after our first week. There's his nice room you could have in our lodgings, and you'd be just our guest like. A nice blow by the sea would do you a world of good, an' nice for our Essie to have a companion."
Essie had clapped her hands in immense delight: he had accepted with marks in his eyes and voice of a return of that sense of being overwhelmed by this household's kindness that in the early days here often overwhelmed him. Now he set his teeth against consideration of that aspect. Let Essie decide! He might take her away to-morrow or on Saturday morning: it might be easier to wait and slip off one day from Whitecliffe. Let Essie decide!
That evening he asked her.
The night was fine for a stroll after supper. They passed together up the main street of the town towards the Gardens—Essie desperately excited with the immediate nearness of Whitecliffe and attracted by all the shops in case there was something she had not yet bought for the holiday: himself revolving in his mind how best to open his proposal. He wished to do it at once. He found it very difficult to begin.
"Oh, those parasols!" cried Essie, stopping before a brightly-illuminated window. "Do stop, Arthur. That sort of blue one with lace! Did you ever! Wouldn't I like that for Whitecliffe though! Can you see the ticket? Nine-an'-eleven-three! Oh, talk about dear!"
"That's not really expensive, Essie."
"My goodness, it is for me, though. Ten shillings, Arthur!"
"Essie, would you like to be rich?"
"Oo, wouldn't I just!"
"What would you say if I was rich, Essie?"
Essie turned away from the coveted sunshade and laughed delightedly at him. "Goodness, wouldn't it be funny! I'd say what ho! Whatho!"
"Essie, I want to tell you something. I am rich. I'm what you'd call very rich."
"Picked up a shilling, have you?" cried Essie, gleefully entering into the game. "Let's go into the bank and invest it!"
"No, we'll go in here," said Mr. Wriford, the contents of a bookseller's window they had reached giving him a sudden idea. "We'll go in here. I'll show you something."
She caught his arm as he stepped towards the door. "Whatever do you mean?"
He answered her very intensely, "Essie, be serious. I've a lot to tell you to-night. First of all, I'm rich, I've only been pretending all the time I've been down here. My name's not Arthur at all. It's Philip—"
Essie made a laughing grimace. "Ur! Philip's like skim milk."
Unheeding her, he went on. "Philip Wriford. I'm an author—
"Oh, if you aren't a caution!" cried Essie.
"You don't believe it?"
Essie assumed a very ingenuous air. "Your mistake, pardon me. I wasn't born jus' before supper, you know."
"Will you believe it if I go in here and ask to see some of my books?"
"Oh, wouldn't I like to see you dare!"
"Come along," and he stepped inside the porch of the shop and opened the door.
Essie, half-laughing, half-frightened at this boldness, clutched at his arm. He caught her hand and led her within. "Oh, if you aren't a caution to-night!" Essie whispered. "Don't, Arthur! Arthur, don't be so bold!"
"You've got to believe."
A counter at the end of the shop displayed above it the words "Lending Library." Essie, most terribly red in the face, followed him while he stalked to it, and then stood confounded with his boldness and striving immensely to restrain her laughter while Mr. Wriford addressed the young woman who came towards them.
"Have you got any of Philip Wriford's books in the library?" Mr. Wriford asked her.
"We've got several copies," he was told. "But they're all out. There's a great demand for them."
His eye caught the top volume of a pile of books on the counter, from each of which a ticket was displayed, and he motioned towards it.
"Yes, that's his last," the young woman said, "but it's ordered. It's going out to-morrow."
"I can look at it?"
"Oh, you can look at it. If you like to take out a subscription by the week or longer, you can put your name down for it. There's other copies out," and she moved away.
Mr. Wriford took up the book with something of a thrill—the first actively stirring thought of his work since he had fled from it. It was the book he had delivered to his agent shortly before that night of his escape, and had seen ecstatically reviewed in the paper at Pendra. He had never seen it in print. He opened it at the title page. "Twelfth Edition," he read aloud to Essie. "You know what that means. It was only published in the autumn."
"How do you know?" said Essie.
"I tell you I wrote it. I tell you I'm Philip Wriford."
The young woman's departure permitted Essie to relieve her laughter. "Oh, Arthur, do not!" she cried.
"I tell you it's true." He turned to the opening chapter and began with very strange sensations to read what he had written in days separated from the present by illimitable gulfs of new identity. The cunning of his own hand, thus separated from the identity that now read the words, was abundantly apparent to him. There was a nervous and arresting force in the first paragraph, a play of wit above a searching philosophy, that called up and strongly attracted his literary appreciation, dormant beneath the stresses of his past months.
Occupied, for the moment he forgot Essie standing by his side. Her voice recalled her to him. She was reading over his shoulder, and reaching the end of the paragraph, spoke her opinion.
"Isn't it silly, though!" said Essie.
He closed the book and put it down and turned to her and looked at her. "Do you think so?" he said.
"Well, don't you?" cried Essie. "I never read such ridiculous nonsense. I'm sure if you were an author, Arthur, you couldn't write such silly stuff as that."
He laughed a trifle vexedly. "Come along," he said, and laughed again, this time to himself and with better humour, as they came into the street and turned towards the Gardens. He could appreciate the blow at his conceit: further, this little scene was illuminating demonstration of the gulf social and intellectual between himself and Essie, and somehow that approved him in his intentions towards her: what vexed him now was only the failure of this sudden plan to inform Essie of his position in life and so to give him opening for the proposal he intended.
The bookseller's was the last shop in the High Street. They had entered the Gardens before Essie, consumed with laughter, could find words for comment. Then she said: "Oh, Arthur, if you weren't a fair caution! I'd never have thought it of you!"
"You don't believe it?"
"Why, of course I don't!"
"Well, you've got to believe somehow that I've got a lot of money."
"Daresay I can believe the moon is made of green cheese if I try hard enough. I say, though, serious, whatever for have I got to believe you're rich?"
It was the desired opening. He slipped his hand beneath her arm. "Because I want to spend it on you, Essie. I want to make you happy with me."
He felt and heard her sharply catch her breath. He looked down at her and saw her eyes dim and her face suffuse in sudden rush of colour.
"Oh, Arthur!" Essie said and caught her breath again.
"Let's go up to our seat, Essie."
In silence up to their seat, and on their seat a little space in silence. She first to speak. She, while he sat determining how best to tell her, turned to him eyes starry as the stars that lit them, in which still and deeper yet he saw the moisture that had dimmed them a moment before, and still, and cloudier yet, her face all cloudy red.
She said very softly: "What, have you proposed to me, Arthur, dear?"
He was prepared for anything but that. He was reassuring himself, while they waited in that silence, upon his resolution not to deceive her, not even to pretend he loved her as she understood love, upon his determination, for his honour and for hers (so he convinced himself), straitly, without deception, without temptation, to throw all the burden of decision upon her love for him. This "What, have you proposed to me?" took him unawares. It caught him so unexpectedly that, of its very unexpectedness, it threw out of him its own response where, had he first imagined such a question, to fashion answers to it had filled him with confusion, nay, with dismay.
Its own response! It came to him as a question so ludicrously odd, so blundering, so inept, ah, so characteristic of jolly little Essie's funny little ways, that he gave a little laugh, and put his arm about her shoulders, and playfully squeezed her to him and laughed again and exclaimed "Essie!"
The softness left her voice, the dimness her eyes. "Oh, aren't I glad!" cried Essie and snuggled against him and said: "Oh, hasn't it come all of a sudden, though!"
Her funny little ways! Close she was against him—jolly to hold her thus: his arm about her, her face close beneath his own, his other hand that held her hand caressing her soft warm cheek—his dear, his jolly little Essie. But not to deceive her! Let him hold to that. Let her be told in her own opportunity that which he has to tell. Let him lead her towards it.
He asked her—avoiding her question, not confirming her exclamation—"Do you love me, Essie?"
She wriggled herself closer up to him, and laughed at him with those soft expressive lips and with those eyes of hers, and said "Oh, love you!" as though love were too ridiculously poor a word.
"Put up with me, Essie—always? You know what I am sometimes."
"Put up with you!" cried Essie, and again the wriggle and again the laugh, and then said "What a way to talk!" and by a movement of her face towards his own made as if to kiss such talk away.
He kept himself from that. Not to deceive her! "Suppose I made you miserable, Essie?"
"However could you?"
"Suppose I did? You know how I get sometimes."
"Mean when you're quiet?" said Essie, snuggling. "Of course you're quiet sometimes, aren't you? My goodness, I don't mind. I'd just have a jolly laugh by myself."
Her funny little ways! He was fighting against them. They urged him that they were in themselves just what attracted him—always to have them to turn to in his moodiness. Ah, not to deceive her! He said heavily: "I don't mean that, Essie. Suppose—suppose I made you more miserable than that? Suppose I told you something that made you think I couldn't be fond of you?"
She asked him quickly: "What, been engaged before, have you?"
"I've been lots of things. I'm going to tell you."
He felt her stiffen. "I only want to hear this one. Why didn't you marry her?"
"I think because she wouldn't marry me."
"Oh, dear!" cried Essie, and wriggled. "Isn't this awful! Oh, don't I hate her, though! Whyever wouldn't she?"
Here was a way to tell her. What if it meant to lose her? Here was the opportunity. Let him hold to his vow! He said deeply: "Essie, because she knew me too well. She knew some of what you've got to know, Essie. She'd tell you."
"Like her to try!" said Essie and sat up with a jerk.
He could face her now. There she was, his jolly little Essie, looking so fierce, breathing so quickly. Tell her and lose her? Clasp her and kiss away that angry little frown? Not to deceive her! Hold, hold to that! He began: "She'd tell you—what I've got to tell you. She'd tell you—listen to me, Essie. What would you do if she told you I'd make you—or anybody—unhappy? That I'm all—all wrong, all moods, all utterly impossible? Essie, that I can't love anybody really—not even you? That I'm not to be trusted? That I can't trust myself? That I'd marry and then—then pretty well go mad to think I was married and do anything to get out of it? That all I want, that what I want, Essie, is—is not exactly to marry? Essie, do you understand? That so long as I felt free, perhaps—perhaps—I'd be all right—perhaps be kind?"
He stopped. She was sitting bolt upright, staring straight before her into the night, her pretty lips compressed, and he could hear her breathing—short and quick and sharp.
He said: "Essie, what would you do—what would you do if she told you that?"
She turned sharply towards him. "Do?" cried Essie. He could see how she quivered. "I tell you what I'd do! I'd take my hand and I'd give her such a slap in the face as she wouldn't forget in a hurry, I know!"
He laughed despite himself. But he cried: "If it was true, Essie? If it was true?"
"Give her another!" said Essie. "Such a one!"
Her funny little ways! He gave an exclamation and caught her to him. She was rigid in her indignant heat. He clasped her and turned her face to his. "Oo-oo!" cried Essie, "Oo-oo!" and relaxed, and snuggled, and put her mouth to his. He laughed freely—bitterly—recklessly. How treat her as others than her class should be treated? Why treat her so? He cried: "Essie, you're impossible!" and squeezed her in reproof of her and in helpless desire of her, and cried: "Essie! Essie! Essie!"
She laughed and clung to him; laughed and kissed him kiss for kiss. She said presently, only murmuring, so close their lips: "Wouldn't I just though! Hard as I could I'd fetch her such a couple of slaps! Oo-oo! Oh, I say, Arthur! Why, I never heard such things! I never heard such a caution as she must have been! Jus' because you're quiet, dear—that's what it was. One of that fast lot. That's what she was. Don't I know them, though!"
He was just holding her, kissing her, laughing at her. Why not? He'd not wrong her till she understood—that was his new assurance. At Whitecliffe he'd take her, and tell her there so that not possibly she'd misunderstand him. Not to deceive her—he'd not deceived her yet.
Swiftly deception came.
"Won't we be happy though!"
"Won't we!" he answered her.
"Won't I take care of you just!"
"That's what I want, Essie! That's what I want!"
"Quiet as you like, dear. I shan't mind.".
"Essie, I'll make you happy—happy."
"Just think of Mother and Dad when we tell them! They aren't half fond of you, Mother and Dad."
The beginning of it. "We won't tell them—yet," he said.
"What, have a secret?"
"Just for a day or two—just till Whitecliffe."
"Oh, isn't that fine, though, to have it a secret by ourselves!"
"Fine, Essie."
"Not long though. I couldn't keep it above a week!"
"Just a week, Essie."
She was silent a moment, her lips on his. And very silent he.
She said: "You're not really rich, dear?"
"Yes, I am."
"Perhaps you only said it—just because. I know how things pop out. That doesn't matter. Look, I shouldn't be half surprised if Dad'll give you a job of work in his shop when he knows we're engaged."
"It's true, Essie. Rich as rich."
"You've never got as much as fifty pounds?"
"Heaps more than that."
"Oh, if ever! We'll never have a jolly little house of our own?"
"We will, though. A jolly one."
Silent again. She was smiling, dreaming. And silent he. He was thinking, thinking. A striking clock disturbed her. "Eleven! Oh, would you believe it! If we don't hurry, we'll have to tell them—to explain."
"We'll hurry," he said; and he added: "We must keep our secret, Essie."
She was out of his arms in her surprise at the hour. Something in his voice made her look at him quickly. "There, you're quiet now—like you are sometimes," she said.
He told her "I'm thinking—of you."
At that she suddenly was in his arms again, her hands about his neck. "There's one thing," she whispered and drew down his face. "Oh, there's one thing!"
He asked her "What?"
"Jus' tell me how you love me. You've not said it."
Not to deceive her! "As if I need, Essie?"
"But I want you to. Jus' say it so I can remember it."
Not to deceive her! He stroked her face. "As if I need, Essie! Why should you want me to?"
She told him: "Well, but of course you need. Of course I want you to. Oh, isn't that jus' what a girl wants to hear, Arthur? Why, haven't I laid awake at night, loving you over and over, and thought how it would be to hear you say it! Do jus' say it to me, dear."
Not to deceive her!—not even to pretend he loved her as she understood love! Ah, here at the stake was his vow—caught, brought at last to the burning. Evasions had saved it, hidden it, preserved it to him unbroken: here it was dragged to the open. As he had nerved himself to try to tell her, so now he strengthened himself to hold to his resolution. Ah, as at enticement of her funny little ways he could not resist her, so now, by sudden yearning in her cry, fear to lose her overcame him. She suddenly had change of her fresh young voice; she suddenly, as he waited, and she felt his arms relax, most passionately was pressed against him, and suddenly, with a break, in a cry, entreatingly besought him: "Ah, do jus' put your arms around me, dear, and hold me close and say you love me. Do!"
Why not? How not? Thrice fool, thrice fool to hesitate! These that she asked were only words, and all his plans and all his happiness at stake upon them. This not the deeper step—nothing irrevocable here. Who, with such as Essie, would scruple as he scrupled? Who such a fool? Who had suffered of life as he had suffered? Who, in his case, would hold away relief as he was holding it? She should decide. He'd hold to that. By God, by God, he'd seal her to him first!
He said: "I love you, Essie."
Holding her, he could feel the sigh she gave run through her as though all her spirit trembled in her ecstasy. She whispered: "Put your face down on mine."
He put his cheek to hers. Her cheek was wet.
"Are you crying, Essie?"
She pressed closer to him.
"Why are you crying?"
She murmured: "Well, haven't I wanted this! Isn't it what I've always wanted! Say it again, dear. With your face on mine and with your arms around me say it."
"I love you, Essie."
Only words—no harm in that. Only words! At Whitecliffe he'd tell her, and she, as he'd sworn, should decide. Only words—only words, but he'd not lose her now!
As they walked home, he posted his letter.
"Registered letter for you," cried Essie. "My goodness if there isn't!"
This was in the little sitting-room of the Whitecliffe Sands lodgings—the fifth morning there; Mr. Bickers expected on the morrow; Mr. Wriford, as had been arranged when he was invited for the blow by the sea that would do him a world of good, supposed to be leaving on the same day; and Essie, as they walked the parade together before breakfast, in highest state of excitement and mystification at Arthur's insistence that their secret should be kept till then and then should be revealed—if Essie wished it.
"Well, but aren't you a tease, though!" said Essie delightedly, as this was repeated while they came in to where the registered letter awaited them on the breakfast-table. "Aren't you a fair tease! 'If I want to!' Why, aren't I simply dying to just! I'm simply bursting to tell Mother every single minute. Isn't a secret a caution though—just like when you've got a hole in your dress and think everybody's looking at it. Oh, isn't it funny how you do when you have, though? Let's have a laugh!"
The laughter brought them to the registered letter and to Essie's exclamation at it; and then, as she handled the packet, readdressed in Mr. Bickers' clerkly script, and gave it to Mr. Wriford: "Feels to me as if some one's sent you a pocket-handkerchief," said Essie.
"That shows you don't know what a honeymoon ticket feels like," said Mr. Wriford and fingered the bundle of banknotes within their parchment cover. "Listen to the crinkling. That's the confetti they always pack it in."
Essie was highly amused. "Hasn't being engaged made you different, though! You're jolly as anything down here. Aren't I glad!"
"It's you that's made me different," Mr. Wriford declared; and "Oo-oo!" cried Essie at what went with this assurance. "Oo-oo! Look out, here's Mother coming."
Mrs. Bickers' appearance, and then all the jolly chatter at breakfast, and afterwards the morning bathe and the rest of the usual programme of Whitecliffe's delights, caused the mysterious registered letter to go—as she would have said—clean out of Essie's head. Mr. Wriford, when he had a moment alone, opened it and read it, and found within it, thrice repeated, a phrase that intensely he chorused as he put letter and the twenty ten-pound notes in his pockets and looked upon the immediate plans that now were all ripe for execution.
"Your return to life" was this phrase that the literary agent three times repeated in the course of his enthusiastic delight and surprise at news at last of missing Mr. Wriford. He gave some astonishing figures of the sales of Mr. Wriford's books. He put forward what appeared to him the most engaging of the contracts which publishers were longing to make. He ended with How soon would Mr. Wriford run up to town for a talk? or should Mr. Lessingham come down? "Don't let your return to life—now that at last you have made it—give me a moment's longer silence than you can help."
"Return to life"—that was the phrase. Essie's words—"Hasn't being engaged made you different, though?"—that was the illustration of it. Return to life! Ay, that was it, ay, that was his, far, far more truly, with wonder of rebirth immeasurably more, than ever Lessingham or any one in all the world could know. There was thrill in that very thought that none but himself knew its heights, its volume, its singing, its radiant intensity. That knowledge was his own as in the immediate future his life was to be his own—life without a care, life without a tie, life of complete abandonment to pleasure of work, to pleasure of sheer pleasure, to pleasure of jolly little Essie always to turn to, to look after, to make happy, and yet always to know of her that if he wished—he never would so wish—he could be rid of her: no tie, no bond—happiness, freedom; freedom, happiness!
This was the state to which, with a sudden, ecstatic soaring as it were, he had swung away from the evening of saying "I love you, Essie," and of posting his letter, through these laughing days at Whitecliffe Sands, to now when arrival of the honeymoon ticket made him all ready for the final step. Once that declaration of the love he did not feel—as Essie understood love—had been made, his scrupulous withholding from it lay strewn about his feet as matter of no more regard than the torn wrappings of a casket from which there has been taken a very precious prize. That declaration sealed her to him; and through those intervening days while the letter was awaited, constantly he repeated it, constantly embellished it. He mocked, he almost upbraided himself for his old scruples at it. Why, it was her due, her right, he told himself. She should be happy with him—that was his resolve: never should regret, never suffer. Why, how possibly could she be happy, how avoid pains of regret, if she were not assured that he loved her?
So he gave her this bond—that was her due—of his love; so with each day, each hour, each moment of Whitecliffe in her company he became more and more assured of her. Assured! He was convinced. There was not a glance from her eyes, not a sound from her lips, not a touch of her hand but informed him that she was his to do with as he would, come any test that he might put her to. Return to life! Why, this freedom, this happiness, was but the threshold of it. Return to life! He imaged all the darkness he had come through and damned it in exultant triumph at all its terrors trampled under foot: night, darker than deepest summer darkness here, he had known; day, of which these burning cloudless days of holiday were sign and symbol, now was his, and brighter still awaited him....
Whitecliffe Sands, anxious to present to its visitors every attraction and convenience that may place it among rising seaside resorts, numbers among the latter a Tourist Bureau in the High Street where, so an inscription informs you, you may book in advance to any railway station in the British Isles. On the morning of the arrival of the registered letter, Mr. Wriford stepped in here and took for to-morrow two first-class tickets to London: a fast train at five o'clock in the afternoon, he was told.
The morrow brought Mr. Bickers at midday, Mrs. Bickers and Mr. Wriford and Essie at the station to meet him, Essie in his arms and hugging him with delighted cries of joy before he is well out of the train. It is a thing to make all who stand about on the platform desist from their own greetings to see her slim young figure in its pretty white dress flash forward as the train comes in, and to smile at her cry of "There he is! Oh, jus' look at his summer waistcoat he's got!" and then to see her in his arms with "Oh, Dad! Oh, if you don't look a darling in that waistcoat! Whereever did you get it, though?"
Most wonderfully animated she is, most radiantly pretty. Mr. Bickers, after affectionate greeting of his wife, and to Mr. Wriford most genial "Hullo, Arthur! All right? That's the way! Glad to see you again, Arthur," watches her adoringly where she has returned to his carriage with "I'll get your bag, Dad!" and says: "Doesn't she look a picture, our Essie! Doesn't Whitecliffe suit our Essie!"
Most wonderfully animated she is, most radiantly pretty—chattering; walking with gay little skips as she holds Dad's hand while they proceed to the lodgings; carrying them all with her a dozen times on her irresistible appeal of: "Oh, isn't that funny, though! Let's have a laugh," before the lodgings are reached.
It is much more than Whitecliffe's breezes that make her thus, much more than joy at Dad's arrival: it is that this is To-day, the promised day—the secret come to bursting-point, and to burst out in all its wonder at any moment that Mr. Wriford may choose to relieve the almost unbearable excitement and mystery and tell her it may be told. "Feels to me like all the birthdays I ever had all rolled into one," Essie had declared to Mr. Wriford early that morning. "If you'd seen me jump out of bed when I woke up! Oh, jus' think when we tell them! Will it be when Dad arrives at the station? Well, at lunch, then?" And when Mr. Wriford smiles and shakes his head at each of these, "Well, but they think you're going to-day! Oh, if ever I knew any one love a mystery like you do!"
"I'll tell you when," says Mr. Wriford. "I'll tell you all of a sudden." For him also it is the day—the promised day—awaited thus with deliberate purpose, and he a little nervous, a little restless, something ill at ease now that its hour swiftly comes.
"You're never going to keep it till the very last minute just before they think you're going? My goodness, I couldn't bear it. I'll simply scream. I know I shall."
"Look here, Essie, I'll tell you. I'm going by the five o'clock train to London—"
Essie corrects him. "You mean that's what you'll say you are. Oh, how ever I won't scream I can't think!"
"Well, just before that we'll say we're going for a last walk together—for me to say good-bye to everything; and then we'll arrange how to—tell them."
She clapped her hands and laughed with glee. "If you're not a caution, Arthur! Oh, how ever I won't scream before five o'clock! Oh, when we tell them!"
At five o'clock she was to be lying still, with silent lips: he on his knees: death waiting.
"You're never going to keep it till the very last minute?" Essie had said. Mr. Wriford's plan rested for its actual execution upon this very fact of keeping it till the very last minute—from her. Essie had thrilled with the delicious mystification of "They think you're going to-day." It was his carefully deliberated project suddenly to spring upon her that indeed he was going to-day—and then to ask her: "I'm going, Essie—by this train—I'm not going back to say good-bye—I'm going now—for ever. Essie, are you coming with me?"
Thus was she suddenly to be presented with it. Thus was she to decide—flatly, immediately. She was to know what sort of union he intended. She was either to fear it and let him go from her—as he would go—at once and for ever; or of her love for him he was to carry her with him—immediately, to have always for his own!
Let Essie decide! He was holding to that. With Essie let the decision be! All he was doing was to present the decision to her sharp and clear and sudden: all he had done was to tell her that he loved her. But there resulted to him this: that between the sharpness of the decision she was to make and the love he had pressed upon her in these intervening Whitecliffe days, between the effects of these on such as Essie was, he was certain of her, convinced of her: so utterly assured of her that as, after lunch, they left the house for that last walk in which he was "to say good-bye to everything," he told Mr. and Mrs. Bickers: "Don't be anxious if we're not back by half-past four. There's another train at seven. I can just as well go by that if we find we want to stop out a bit;" so certain of her that, as they left the house, "Bring a warm wrap of some kind," he said to Essie. "Bring that long cloak of yours."
"Why, it's as hot as anything!" Essie protested. But the agonies of "nearly screaming" in which she had sat through lunch while Mother and Dad said how sorry they were Arthur was going, and that if the job of work he was after fell through he was to be sure and let them know at once—the agonies of enduring this without screaming, made it, as she told him when they were started, impossible "to stand there arguing on the steps with them watching us, so I've got to lug this along, and don't I look half a silly carrying it either, all along the parade too!"
"I'll carry it," said Mr. Wriford and took the cloak; "and we won't keep along the parade. We'll go that walk of ours in towards Yexley Green and round by that white house with the jolly garden and come out on to the cliff. That'll give us plenty of time to get back."
Essie laughed and skipped. "Plenty of time! How you can keep it up like that I can't think. My goodness, if you oughtn't to be on the stage! Hope you like carrying that cloak!"
"Well, there'll be a shower or two, I shouldn't be surprised," said Mr. Wriford. "Anyway, it'll do to sit down on when we get over to the cliff and sit down—to arrange."
This white house with the jolly garden that was to be the turning-point of their walk had come to be quite a place of pilgrimage since its chance discovery on the first morning of the holiday. "Whitehouse" was its name. It was tenantless. An auctioneer's placard announced that it was for sale. They had walked far along the cliffs from Whitecliffe Sands on that first morning, had taken a winding lane that led to Yexley Green, and in the lane suddenly had come upon Whitehouse, with which immediately Essie, and Mr. Wriford scarcely less, had fallen most encaptivatingly in love. A high wall surrounded it. They had explored its garden: kitchen garden with fruit trees; and a bit of lawn with a shady old elm; and enticing odd little bits of garden tucked here and there behind shrubberies and in corners; and a little stable—at the stable Mr. Wriford had said: "That's where you'd keep a fat little pony, Essie, and have one of those jolly little governess cars and drive into Whitecliffe every day to do the shopping." And "Oh, if ever!" Essie had cried delightedly; and immediately and thenceforward the thing had been to come here every day and imagine Whitehouse was theirs and plan the garden—sadly neglected—as they would have it if it were. One storey high, the house, and white, and "sort of bulging, the darling," as Essie had said, with the effect that the three ground-floor rooms and even the kitchen at the back were spaciously circular in shape. High French windows—"My goodness, though, if there aren't more windows than walls almost!" Encircled all about by a wide, paved verandah.
"It's the very house for an author," Mr. Wriford had declared. "Shut away from everything by that jolly old wall, Essie; and this room—come and look at this room, Essie—this would be mine where I'd write. It must get the sun pretty well all day, and it's sort of away from the others—quite quiet. Couldn't I write in there!"
Essie with her nose flat against the window: "Oh, wouldn't it be glorious! Can't I just see you sitting in there writing a book! Perhaps I'd be out on the verandah here with a little dog that I'd have and just have a peep at you sometimes!"
To-day as they came by Whitehouse and turned towards the cliffs there was a sudden development of these imaginative ecstasies. The showers that Mr. Wriford had foreboded, heralded by watery clouds trailing up from the west, approached in quickening drops of heavy rain as they came through Yexley Green. They were at Whitehouse when sudden midsummer downpour broke and descended.
"My goodness!" cried Essie.
"We'll shelter in the porch—in the verandah," said Mr. Wriford and opened the gate. "Run, Essie!"
In the porch, Essie breathless and laughing from their helter-skelter rush, and shaking the raindrops from her skirts, Mr. Wriford read again a duplicate of the auctioneer's notice posted at the gate. He came to the last words and read them aloud with exclamation.
"'Open to view!' Essie, if we haven't been donkeys all this time! I believe it's—" He turned the handle of the door. "It is. It's open!"
"Oo-oo!" cried Essie, clasping her hands in delight, flashing her sparkling eyes all about the wide hall—its white panelling, its inglenook fireplace, its room-doors standing ajar with captivating peeps of interiors even more entrancing than when seen from outside, its low, spacious stairway bending up to the first floor—"Oh, if ever! Oh, Arthur, if it isn't a darling!"
At the cliffs—and they had been within five minutes of them when the rain came—he had planned they should sit down and he would tell her: "I'm going by the five o'clock train. Here's my ticket. Essie, are you coming with me? Look, here's yours." The diversion of being within enchanting Whitehouse, his laughter at Essie's ecstasies as from room to room they went, momentarily forgot him his purpose—and yet, and partly of envisaging within these perfect surroundings the very joy, settled with Essie in dwelling-place so conducive to work and happiness as this, that soon should be his, brought him (and her) directly to it.
With light and trifling steps they suddenly were plunged amidst it. The exploration, twice repeated, was done. Essie was in ecstasies anew over the sitting-room, of which Mr. Wriford told her again: "Yes, this would be yours. That's the dining-room behind, you see, with a door to the kitchen where your servants would be."
"Not really two servants?" said Essie.
"Oh, rather—three perhaps; and then the gardener chap who'd look after your pony-trap."
"Oh, my goodness!" said Essie, sparkling. "Do just go on, dear!"
"Yes, well, this would be yours. We wouldn't call it the drawing-room or any rot like that. Just your room with jolly furniture and a little bureau where you'd keep your accounts. We'd have tea in here when we didn't have it outside. The servants would call it the sitting-room. We'd call it jolly little Essie's room. I'd get fed up with working sometimes, you know, and come and sprawl about in here. You'd be sewing or something, I expect."
Essie had no expression for all this but an enormous sigh of ecstasy. Then she said: "Now we'll go back to yours," and hand in hand they came to it—and to their reckoning.
"Simply built for a chap to write in," Mr. Wriford said. "Just look how it gets the sun. It's stopped raining. I'd come here directly after breakfast. That's the time I can write. There's where I'd have my table. You'd see I was kept quiet."
"Oh, wouldn't I just," said Essie. "You see, there's a passage comes right down to this door, and my goodness if I saw any of the servants come past that corner there, or even go into the room overhead! My goodness, they'd know it if they did!"
He put his arm about her shoulders and laughed and pressed her to him; and Essie said: "Oh, just fancy if it really could be ours!"
He kept her there. She in his arm, they in surroundings such as these: he working, she ministering to him—ah, return to life! return to life!
"Well, we'll have a place as like it as we can find," he said.
She shook her head. With just a little sigh, "We never could," she said. "We'll be happier than anything wherever we are; but one thing, there couldn't be another darling place like this, and another, it would cost a fair fortune. Why, it's not even to let. It's only for sale."
He told her easily: "That's all right. That's just what we're going to do—buy a little place somewhere. I bet a thousand would buy this Whitehouse, buried away down here."
Essie made a tremendous mouthful of the word: "Well, athousand!"
He laughed and squeezed her in reproof again. "Or two," he said. "Won't you ever understand what they pay for what you call the silly books?"
She had protested before, when in these Whitecliffe days he had assured her of his identity with Philip Wriford, that she never would have said silly in the library that evening if she had known the book was his "really." She protested now again with a wriggle and a laugh; but quickly upon her protest looked up at him with: "Oh, you can't ever mean that you really could buy this? You simply can't?"
He nodded, smiling.
"Oh," she cried, "why not then? Why not? Oh, Arthur, just think if you would! Oh, jus' think!"
The smile went from his lips and from his eyes. Whitehouse, so near to Mother and Dad, was impossible. Flight must take them, and keep them, very far from here. Before he could speak it was this very fact of proximity to home that she adduced in further persuasion.
"And think," she cried, "how near we'd be to Mother and Dad! Jus' an hour in the train. I could see them every week. I expect you've thought they'd live with us, you being so rich. But they never would, you know. Dad would never leave his shop, one thing; and another, Mother's often said when we've talked about me getting married one day, that a girl ought to have a home of her own and not have her mother tied round her neck. Why, this would be perfect, this darling Whitehouse, and so close to them! Oh, if you really can, Arthur!"
Here was the telling of it.
"I can't," he said. "We can't live here, Essie."
She detected something amiss in his tone. There went out of her face the fond and smiling entreaty expressive of her plea. She said: "Arthur, why?"
To one of the windows there was a broad window-seat, and he took her to it. "Let's sit down here, Essie."
She said: "Oh, whatever is it, dear?"
He took her hand. "It's this. What I told your father and mother about going by the five o'clock train is true. I am going. It's nearly four now. It's time to be starting back. I am going. Look, here's my ticket."
Wonderingly she looked at it, and at him. "Oh, you can't be?"
"I am. There's the ticket. Essie, look. Here's yours."
She almost laughed. She looked at his face and the impulse was checked. But she said half-laughingly, her brows prettily puckered: "Oh, whatever? Is it a game, dear, you're having?"
"No, it's no game. It's very serious. I'm going—for good. Not coming back—ever."
She made a little distressful motion with her hands. "Oh, Arthur, don't go on so, dear. Whatever can you mean?"
"I mean just what I say. I'm going—at five o'clock." He stopped and looked intently into her wondering, her something shadowed, eyes. He said: "Essie, are you coming with me?"
This time she laughed. It obviously was a game! A little ring of her clear and merry laughter, and her eyes that always sparkled, that had been shadowed, sparkling anew. "Oh, if you oughtn't to be an actor on the stage! If you didn't half frighten me, though!" and she laughed again. "Why, how could I come? Why, we're not married yet!"
Now!
He put an arm about her and drew her to him. "Don't let me frighten you, Essie. Trust me. Trust me. Come with me, Essie. I'll take care of you. I'll love you always. You'll never regret it—not a moment. You know what I can do for you—everything you want. You know how happy we'll be—happy, happy."
He had imagined—he had prepared for—everything that she might say: fears, tears, doubts, protests—he had rehearsed his part, his fond endearments, his dear cajoleries, against them all. He was utterly unprepared for her answer, for the gentle puzzlement in her eyes that went with it, for the Sunday-school awe in her voice with which she spoke it.
"What, live in sin?" said Essie.
He was prepared for, he had rehearsed, every way this telling of her might go. Across any difficulties of it he had stepped to the utter conviction of her that, howsoever it went, would radiantly end it, he knew. He was utterly unprepared for this her first contribution to it, for each and all with which she followed it, for the sudden fear, and then the quickly mounting fear, and then the knowledge, that she was lost to him—that the game was up, the thing done, the plans shattered, the future irrevocably destroyed: he was most unprepared of all, as the knowledge came and grew and burned within him, for the fury that began to fill him at his loss, the fury and the hate that finally he broke upon her. And God, God, how vilely quickly the thing was projected, was fought, was done! In one minute, as it seemed to him, they were lovingly trifling their plans of Whitehouse; in the next, those very plans had swept him to the telling; in the next, return to life was crushed like ashes in his mouth, and his fury and hate were out and raging; in the next, they were back returning on the cliffs, a blustering wind got up, rain again streaming.
Look how it went. Consider the quickness of it.
"What, live in sin?"
He caught her to him. "Live together, live together, Essie—always. Don't talk about sin."
"How could I? Oh, how ever could I?"
"Together, together, Essie! Think of us together in a little house of our own just like this. Think of you looking after me, and of me looking after my sweet, my dear, my darling!"
"How could I, dear? How could I?"
"Trust me—trust me! Ah, those tears in my darling's darling eyes! Look how I kiss them away and hold her in my arms and always hold her."
"I couldn't, dear. I couldn't."
"You know I'm different. You know how different I am from other men. That's why I ask you, why I take you, without marrying you. Does it frighten you at first? Only at first. You know I'm different. You know you trust me."
"Oh, you don't love me! You don't love me, after all!"
Chill at his heart.
"I can't live without you, Essie."
"Oh, you couldn't ask me to live in sin, not if you loved me."
Swift fear that he has lost her.
"It is because I love you. Because I love you."
"Oh, didn't I love to think you loved me, Arthur! You don't. You don't."
Losing her! The knowledge loses him the ardour of his words, halts him and stumbles him among them. "You're silly, you're silly to talk like that!"
"Oh, didn't I think you loved me truly!"
Lost her! He knows it. He feels it. There is something in her simple, plaintive exclamations, in her "I couldn't, couldn't, dear," in her abandonment to belief that he cannot love her—there is some damned, numbing essence in it that emanates as it were from her spirit and thus informs him; and thus informing him, numbs and dumbs his own. Lost her! And cannot combat it. Lost her! And has no words, no help. Fury beginning in him. Fury at his impotence mounting within him. Return to life! By God, by God, to lose it!
"Essie, will you let me go, then? Now? For ever? You can't. All our love? All our happiness we're going to have?"
"Oh, didn't I think you loved me truly!"
Fury within him. That maddening iteration of her maddening cry! He can scarcely retain his fury. He chokes it back. He is hoarse as he grinds out words. "Think of us in a little house like we've planned."
"I couldn't, dear, I couldn't!"
"Think how we'll have everything we want!"
"Oh, I can't bear to hear you tempting me!"
Fury in a storm breaks out of him. "Oh!" he cries and makes a savage action with his arms that thrusts her from him. "Oh, for God Almighty's sake, don't drag the Bible into it!"
She says: "Arthur!"
He gets violently to his feet, his hands clenched, and makes again that savage, breaking action of his arms, and cries at her: "Temptation and sin and rubbish, rubbish, like that! Let it alone! If you don't love me, say so! If you're going to let me go, say so! Don't drag the Bible into it! If you don't love me, say so, say so, say so!"
"Arthur, you know I love you. You don't love me, dear!"
A last effort. A last control of his fury. He turns to her. "Essie, I can't live without you. Essie! Essie!"
"Oh, you couldn't love me to ask me to live in sin!"
That ends it. That expression—its beastly and vulgar piety, its common, vulgar phraseology—sweeps across his fury as in a rasping shudder of abhorrence. He breaks his fury out upon it. He bursts out: "By God, you're common, common! Do you think I'd marry you—you? What do you think you are? Who do you think I am? Marry you! Marry you! Let's get out of this! Let's go home, and you can tell your father and your mother!"
Return to life! Gone, gone! Lost, lost! He was shaking with hate and shaking with utter fury. He walked to the door and staggered as he walked and must stop and correct his direction as though he were drunken. At the door he turned to her and saw that she remained seated, leaning back against the window, her hands clasped. He cried: "Are you coming? Are you coming?"
She got up and came to him and went through the doorway before him and through the outer door. He slammed it behind him, and they passed out from Whitehouse and up the lane, and out upon the cliffs and turned along them homeward. Raining. He carried her cloak but did not offer it her. A wind blew gustily from off the land that frequently buffetted him, and her, and at whose buffettings and at the slippery foothold of the rain-swept grass he angrily exclaimed.
She walked to seaward of him close along the cliff's edge. Here the cliff fell sharply a few feet, then overhung an outward lap of gorse and bracken, sheer then to the sands. Once as they pressed and slipped their way along, he caught her eyes. She was crying. He sneered: "You can tell your father and mother!"
She caught her breath to answer him: "As if—I should!"
"What are you crying about, then?"
"Didn't I think you loved me—truly!"
They were approaching the little coastguard station of Yexley Gap. Damn this rain. Damn this slippery grass. Damn this infernal wind. A fiercer gust came blustering seaward. He caught with both hands at his hat—nearly gone. Essie's cloak upon his arm blew across his eyes—blinded him, and he had to stop.
She didn't scream. It was not a cry. She just, in perplexity, in puzzlement, in trouble as it were, said "Arthur!"
She was balancing. She was struck by the wind and balancing—balancing with her body and with her arms, and looking at him as if she did not quite know what was happening to her; and in the like perplexity said to him "Arthur!"—balancing, over-balancing.
There were not ten feet between them. He rushed, and slipped as he rushed. It was like running with those leaden feet of nightmare. It seemed to him an immense time before he reached her. A horrible, blundering, unspeakable business, then. The cloak, the accursed cloak, got between them—between them. A jumbling, ghastly, blundering business, their hands fumbling on either side of it. Was this going on for ever and ever? The accursed cloak fumbled itself away. Ah, God, now it was their naked hands that were fumbling—all wet and slippery with rain, seeming to be all fists and no fingers and only knocking against one another instead of catching hold. And not a word said, and only very quick breathing, and jumbling and fumbling and jumbling. Look here, this fumbling, she's falling, toppling; is this going on for ever and ever and ever?
It was her hands that in the last wild, hideous fumbling clutched his. She toppled right back. He fell. He was face downwards upon the slippery grass, to his waist almost over the cliff, and slipping, slipping, and she had his hands—the backs of his hands over the knuckles so that his fingers were imprisoned and useless, and there she hung and dragged him, and he was slipping.
He said: "O God, Essie! O God! Can't you get your hands higher up, so I can hold you, instead of you holding me?"
She said: "I shall fall if I do."
He said: "My darling! My darling! Hold on, then, Essie. Dig your nails in."
"Am I hurting you?"
"Oh, for God's sake, Essie, hold, hold!"
Next she said: "Are you slipping?"
He said: "Some one will come. Some one will come. I heard a shout. Hold! Hold!"
She persisted: "Are you slipping?"
He said: "Yes. I'm slipping. Hold! Hold!"
There isn't any need to describe anything—of his gradual slipping by her drag upon him, of his useless hands enviced in hers, of her very terrible clutch upon them.
She presently said: "Tell me that what you said on the seat that night, dear."
He knew. He cried most passionately: "I love you, Essie."
"Truly?"
From the uttermost depths of his heart: "Truly! Truly!"
"More than any one?"
From his soul, from all his deepest depths, from all he ever had suffered, from all he ever had been, "Essie," he cried, "before God I love you more than all the world!"
She said: "You can't raise me to kiss me, can you, dear?"
He said: "I can't, Essie."
"Are you slipping?"
He did not answer her. He was slipped almost beyond recovery.
She then said: "Say that again—'before God.' I like that, dear."
"Essie, Essie, before God I love you above all the world!"
She gave a little sigh. She said: "Well, both of us—what's the sense to it, dear?" and she opened her fingers, and he saw her whizz, strike the face of the cliff where it jutted out, and pitch, and crash among the gorse and bracken, and roll over and over to the very edge of the outward lap above the sands, and caught there and lying there ... her jolly little dress for Whitecliffe lying there.
A hand grabbed him, or he, beyond recovery of his balance, had followed her. A coastguard grabbed him and dragged him back. He said in a thick, odd voice: "What the devil's the use of that now? You fool, what the devil's the use of that?"
He lay there, the rain stopped, in the sunshine. He just lay there—a minute, an hour, a year, a lifetime, eternity? They went down—a circuitous path to where she lay. They brought her up. They carried her, on a shutter, past him. He gave some wordless sound from his lips and scrambled on his knees towards their burden and threw his arms about it and clung there, with wordless sounds.
One man said: "She's alive, sir."
Another man said: "We'd best try to get her home before—"
A third man said: "Can you walk to show us the way?"
He got up and went stumbling along.