His father would have liked them. Connie Edwards, no doubt, would have been one of those dazzling, noisy phenomena that burst periodically on the Stonehouse horizon.
Supposing he should come to like them too—to tolerate their ways, their loose living, loose thinking——?
He remembered how that very afternoon he had tried to be one of them, and sickened before himself.
Francey called to him through the darkness.
"Miss Forsyth's so tired, Robert. Couldn't you carry her?"
And he took Christine in his arms, whilst she laughed and protested feebly. It was awful to feel how little she was. Her head rested against his shoulder.
"It's a longer road than I thought. You're very strong, Robert. Your father was strong too."
It had been a successful day. And yet, as they sat packed close together in the dim, third-class carriage, they were like captives who had escaped and were being taken back into captivity. The sickly, overhead light fell on their tired faces, out of which the blood, called up by the sun and wind, had receded, leaving their city pallor. Connie Edwards had indeed produced a lip-stick from her gaudy bead bag, but after a fretful effort had flung it back.
"What's the good? Who cares——?"
And Cosgrave huddled closer to her, wan-eyed, hunted-looking. It was the ghost of that exam that wouldn't be laid—the prophetic vision of the row that waited for him, grinding its teeth.
Only Gertie Sumners and Howard had a queer, remote look, as though in that recent muffled exchange they had reached some desperate resolve.
The wet, gleaming platform slid away from them. There was a faint red light in the west where the sunset had been drowned. Christine turned her face towards it. She was like a little old child. Her little feet in the shabby, worn-out shoes scarcely touched the floor. Her drooping hat was askew—forgotten.
"It has been a wonderful day. But I mustn't come again. I'm too old.It's silly to fall in love with life when one is old."
Robert leant across to her. He ached with his love and pity.
"Tired, Christine?"
"A little. But it has been worth while. You carried me so nicely—so big and strong."
She leant against Francey, nodding and smiling to reassure him. And presently she was asleep. He saw how Francey shifted her arm so that it encircled the bowed figure, and every ugly thing that had dogged him in that lonely, haunted walk vanished before the kind steadfastness of her eyes.
It was as though she had said aloud:
"We'll take care of her together. We won't let her die before we've made her very, very happy."
Then he took out a note-book and made a shaky sketch of a pompous, drunken-looking house with a huge door, on which were two brass plates, side by side, bearing the splendid inscriptions:
Dr. Frances Stonehouse, Robert Stonehouse,M.D., F.R.C.S.Hours 10—1
He showed it to her and they smiled at one another, and there was no one else in the carriage but themselves and their happiness.
1
It meant a tightening—a screwing up of his whole life. Time had to be found. The hours had to be packed closer to make room for her. He grasped after fresh opportunities to make money with a white-hot assiduity. He worked harder. For he was hag-ridden by his unfaithfulness. He drew up a remorseless programme of his days, and after that Francey might only walk home with him from the hospital. And there was an hour on Sunday evening when he was too tired for anything else.
It meant a ceaseless, active negation: a "No" to the simple wish to buy her a bunch of flowers, "No" to the longing to walk a little farther with her in the quiet dusk, "No" to the very thought of her.
2
As usual, on the way home, they discussed their best "cases." There was No. 10 in A Ward, a raddled woman of the streets who had been brought in the night before as the result of acrime passionnel, and whose injuries had been the subject of long deliberations. Even before they had reached the hospital archway Robert and Francey agreed that Rogers' air of mystery was simply a professional disguise for complete bafflement.
"It's the sort of case I'd like to have," Robert said. "Something you can get your teeth into and worry. I believe if I were on my own—given a free hand—I'd work it out—pull her through. Rogers may too. But just now he's marking time. And there's nothing to hope from time in a job like that. No constitution. Rotten all through. Still, it would be a feather in one's cap."
He brooded fiercely, intently, like a hound on a hot scent. People turned to look at the big, shabby young man with the sunken, burning eyes that stared through them as though they had been so many shadows. He did not, in fact, see them at all. He made his way by sheer instinct across the crowded street.
"She's terribly afraid of death," Francey said. "It's awful to be so afraid. It must make life itself terrible."
"They'll operate soon as they dare—an exploratory operation. If only I could have a say—a real say! It's maddening to know so much—to be sure of oneself. I don't believe Rogers would take me out on his private work if he knew I knew all I do. I'm glad we're on a surgical post together, Francey. I don't know what I'd do if I hadn't got you to talk things over with."
"You daren't talk of anything else," she answered unexpectedly. "You're frightened of our being happy together. You're always trying to justify yourself."
"I'm not—what rubbish!"
He tried to laugh at her. It was so like Francey to dash off down a side issue. And yet it was true. He did try to think as much as he could of that side of their common life. It did add an appearance of stability and reason to the splendid unreason of his loving her. It made up to him for those dismaying breaks when her face and body stood like a scorching pillar of fire between himself and his work, to find that when they were together they could be sternly practical, discuss their eases and criticize their superiors as though, beneath it all, there were not this golden, insurgent sea whose high tides swirled over his landmarks. Not destroying them.
In those latter times he loved her humbly, with wonder and passionate self-abasement. But in their work they stood further away from one another. He could criticize her, and that gave him a heady sense of power and freedom. He never forgot the year that she had deliberately thrown away. And even now, when she stood at the beginning of the road which he had already passed over, she seemed to him full of strange curiosities and wayward, purposeless interests. There were days when an ugly Chinese print, picked up in some back-street pawnshop, or the misfortunes of one of her raffish hangers-on, or some wild student rag, appeared to wipe out the vital business of life. She was known to be brilliant, but he distrusted her power of leaping to conclusions over the head of his own mathematical and exact reasoning. He distrusted still more her tendency to be right in the teeth of every sort of evidence to the contrary. It seemed that she took into her calculations factors that no one else found, significant, unprofessional straws in the wind, things she could not even explain.
And yet she understood when he talked about his work, and that alone was like a gift to him. No one else understood—for that matter, no one else had had to listen. He knew that Christine was too tired, and poor overburdened Cosgrave would only have gazed helplessly at him, wondering why this strong, self-sufficient friend should pour out such unintelligible stuff over his own aching head. So he had learnt to be silent. Even now it was difficult to begin. He stammered and was shy and distrustful and eager, sometimes crudely self-confident, like a child who has played alone too long.
And Francey listened, for the most part critical and dispassionate, but with sudden gestures of unmotivated tenderness: as when in the midst of his dissertation on a theory of insanity and crime she had kissed him.
Sometimes for them both the prose and poetry of their relationship met and clasped hands. That was when they took their walk down Harley Street to have another look at the house which was one day to be adorned with the celebrated brass plates. At present it was solidly occupied by several eminent-sounding medical gentlemen who would have to be ruthlessly dislodged when their time came.
For it was the best house in the street, and, of course, the DoctorsRobert and Francey Stonehouse would have to have the best.
And once they quarrelled about nothing at all, or about everything—they hardly knew. It was an absurd quarrel, which blazed up and went out again like fire in stubble. Perhaps they had waited too long for their allotted hour together—dreamed too much about it, so that when it came they could hardly bear it, and almost longed for it to be over. And in the midst of it Mr. Ricardo drifted in on one of his strange, distressful visits to Christine, and drove them out of doors to roam the drowsy Sunday streets, hand in hand, like any other pair of vulgar, homeless lovers. For Francey could not stay when Mr. Ricardo came. His hatred of her was a burning, poisonous sore that gave no peace to any of them.
"It's a sort of jealousy," Robert reflected. "We three have always held together. He's had no one else to care about. And now you've come, and he thinks you want to take me away from him."
"I do," Francey said unexpectedly.
"Not in the way he means."
"You don't know——"
"He's been good to me. I'd never have got through without him. I can't have him hurt. And you will fight him, Francey. I know he's crabbed and bitter, but so would you be if you'd been twisted out of shape all your life. And you only do it for the fun of the thing. Fundamentally, you think alike."
"We don't, that's just it. I'm sorry for him, and if it had been anything less vital I'd compromise—he'd compromise, too, perhaps. We'd both lie low and look pleasant about our differences. But as it is we can't help ourselves. We've got to stand up and fight——"
"I say, that sounds jolly dramatic."
"It is rather."
"Next thing you'll be saying you believe in God."
"Well, I do——"
He stopped short and let go her hand. He was physically ashamed and uncomfortable. He tried to laugh, but for the moment they were face to face, and he could not mistake her seriousness. They were like strangers, peering at each other through the grey dusk.
"Look here, Francey, dearest, you don't expect me to believe that? You're just joking, aren't you? You're—you're a modern woman, with a scientific training, too. You can't believe in an old, worn-out myth."
"I didn't say that."
"'An untested hypothesis,'" he quoted teasingly, but with a stirring anger.
"I don't know about that, either. We're both bound by our profession to admit an empirical test. And if we human beings can't survive without God——"
"But we can—we do."
"I can't."
He threw up his head.
"Why do women always become personal when they argue?"
"And why do rationalists always become irrational?"
They walked on slowly, apart, vaguely afraid. He wanted to change the subject, to take her by the arm and hold her fast. For she was drifting away from him. Her voice sounded remote and troubling, like a little old tune that he could not quite remember. Its emotion fretted his overstrained nerves. He wanted to close his ears against it. It was a trivial tune which might become a torment.
"It's not only me. It's everyone. Most of us are frightfully unhappy. Don't you realize that? And the more we understand life the more desperate we get. Savages and children may do without a god, but we can't. We know too much. Even the stupidest—the most careless of us. Think of Howard and Gertie and all that lot. Every second word is 'What's the good? What's it all about?' They make a great deal of noise to cover up their unhappiness. They're terrified of loneliness and silence. And one day it'll have to be faced."
"Oh, if you're going to take Howard as an example—" he interrupted.
"—and Rufus Cosgrave," she added.
He laughed with a boyish malice.
"Cosgrave doesn't need a god. He's got me. I'll look after him."
"You think you can? And then we ourselves. We're different, aren't we? We've got our work. We're going to do big things. For whom?—for what? For our fellow-creatures? But if we don't care for our fellow-creatures? And we don't, do we? Not naturally. The Brotherhood of Man is just dangerous nonsense. Naturally men loathe one another in the mass. How can we pretend to love some of those people we see every day in the wards with their terrible faces—their terrible minds? But the idea of God does somehow translate them—it gets underneath the ugliness—they do become in some mystic way my brothers and my sisters."
He found it strangely difficult to answer calmly. It would have been easier to have bludgeoned her into silence by a shouted "It's all snivelling, wretched rot!" like an angry schoolboy. He did not know why he was so angry. Perhaps Ricardo was right. It was something vital. He could feel the old man's shadow at his side, his hand plucking his sleeve, urging him on, claiming his loyalty. They were allies fighting together against a poisonous miasma that sapped men's brains—their intellectual integrity.
"Piling one fallacy on another isn't argument, Francey. We don't need to like our fellow-creatures. It's a mistake to care. Emotion upsets one's judgment. Scientists—the best men in the profession—try to eliminate personal feeling altogether. They're out for knowledge for its own sake. That's good enough for them."
"And the end of that—organized, scientific beastliness, like modern war. Knowledge perverted to every sort of deviltry. Huge swollen heads and miserable withered hearts. One of these days we'll blow ourselves to pieces——"
They were both breathless and more than a little incoherent. They had entered into a playful tussle, and now they were fighting one another with set teeth.
"I don't believe you believe a word you're saying," he stammered. "You know as well as I do that it's only since we began to throw off superstition that we've begun to move. Or perhaps you don't want to move—don't believe in progress."
"Progress towards what?" she flung back impetuously. "Perfection? Some point where we'd have no poverty, no war, no ignorance, no death even; where we'd all have every mortal thing we want? The millennium? That's only another word for Hell. It's only by pretending that there are things we want, and that we should be happy if we had them, that we can believe in happiness at all. All this unrest, this sick despair every morning of our lives when we drag ourselves out of bed and wonder why we bother—it's just because we've begun to suspect that the millennium is of no use to us. We've got to have more than that—some sort of spiritual background—or cut our throats."
"Wild rhapsodizing, Francey. You don't know a thing."
"I don't. Nor do you. When I said I believed, I meant I hoped—I trusted. And if there isn't a God at the end of it all, you people who want to keep us alive for the sake of the knowledge you get out of us will have to make one up."
Whereat, suddenly, in a cool, refreshing gust, their sense of humour returned and blew them close to one another. They laughed and took hands again—a little shyly, like lovers who had been parted for a long time.
"What rot—our quarrelling over nothing at all," Robert said, "whenwe've only got this hour together. I wanted to say 'I love you,Francey—I love you, dear' over and over again. Say 'I love you too,Robert.'"
"I love you too," she answered soberly.
But the crack was there—a mere fissure in the ground between them—a place to be avoided even in their thoughts.
3
At night when his work was over and the unrest grew too strong to be fought, he crept down the black, creaking stairs, through the sleeping backwater of Drayton Mews, and out into the streets. He walked fast, with his head down, guiltily, like a man flying from a crime. But in the grave square where Francey Wilmot lived he slackened speed, and, under the thick mantle of the trees, stood so still that he was only a deeper shadow. Then release came. It was like gentle summer rain falling on his fever. There was no one to see his weakness. He could think and feel simply and naturally as a lover, without remorse. Sometimes a light burnt in her window, and then he knew that she was working, making up for those queer, wild play-hours. He could imagine her under the shaded lamplight, the books heaped round her, and her hands clenched hard in the thick brown hair. He could feel the peace, the rich, deep stillness round her. And a loving tenderness, exquisite and delicate as a dream, welled up in him. He said things out of his heart to her that he had never said: broken, stumbling things, melted in the white-heat of their truth into a kind of poetry of which the burden never changed. "I can't live without you—I can't live without you." He could have knelt before her, burying his burning face in her lap in strange humility—childlike surrender.
And when the window was dark he knew that she had gone out to dance, to the theatre, with friends whom he did not know, belonging to that other life in which he had no part. And then his loneliness was like a black sea. He leant against the railings, weak with weariness and hunger, fighting his boy's tears, until she came. He did not speak to her. She never knew that he was there. He hid, his heart stifling him, until the door closed on her. Then, since she had come back to him, belonged to him again, he could go in peace.
The others—Howard and Gertie and even Connie now—went in and out, risking ruthless ejection if she were hard pressed, to sit in the best chairs, with their feet in the fender and drink coffee and smoke endlessly whilst they poured their good-natured cynicism over life. If they were hungry they rifled Francey's larder, and if they were hard up they borrowed her money. But after the one time Robert never went. He did not want to meet them. And besides the big square room with its mark of other stately days—its panelled walls, rich ceilings and noble doors—was his enemy. It was steeped in a mellow, unconscious luxury that threatened him. There were relics from Francey's old home, trophies from her Italian wanderings, books that his hands itched just to touch, and things of strange troubling beauty. A bronze statue of a naked faun stood in the corner where the light fell upon it, and seemed to gather into itself everything that he feared—a joyous dancing to some far-off music.
The room would not let him forget that Francey held money, which he had had to squeeze his life dry to get, lightly and indifferently. She gave it with both hands. She had always had enough, and it seemed to her a little thing. Between people who cared for one another it counted less than a word, and his sullen refusal of every trivial pleasure and relief that lay in her power to give them hurt and puzzled her. She saw in it only a bitter pride.
"You might at least let me make Christine's life easier in little things," she said.
He could not tell her that Christine would have been afraid for him, as he was afraid of the deep chairs that had seemed to clasp his tired body in drowsy arms, of the rugs that drank up every harsh sound, of the warm, fragrant atmosphere that was like a blow in the face of their chill and barren poverty.
So after that one time he kept away. But he could always see the room and Francey working there, and the slender, joyful body of the faun poised on the verge of its mystic dance.
Once, Francey was too strong for him, and they bought tickets for the theatre, and he sat hunched beside her in the front row of the cheap seats and stared down at the great square of light like an outcast gazing at the golden gates of Paradise. It wasThe Tempest, and he hardly understood. It broke over him in overpowering sound and colour. He was dazed and blinded. He forgot Francey. He sat with his gaunt white face between his bands and watched them pass: Prospero, Miranda, Ferdinand, Ariel—figures of a noble, glittering company—and wretched, uncouth Caliban crouched on the outskirts of their lives, pining for his lost kingdom. But in the interval he was silent, awkward and heavy with an emotion that could not find an outlet. He felt her hand close over his—an, almost anxious hand.
"Robert, you like it, don't you? You're not bored?" He turned to look dazedly at her, stammering in his confusion.
"I've never been to a theatre before."
"Never? Oh, my dear——"
"Only to a circus, long ago." He drew back hastily into himself. He did not want her to be sorry like that. He would not let her see how shaken he was. "I never wanted to go," he said.
After that they walked home together, and in the empty street that led into her square a moonlight spirit of phantasy seemed to possess her, and she sang under her breath and danced in front of him, rather solemnly as she had done as a little girl:
"Come unto these yellow sandsAnd then take hands. . ."
He caught hold of her. Everything was unreal—they themselves and the unfamiliar street, painted with silver and black shadows.
"Don't—you're dancing away from me; there's nothing for you to dance to."
She smiled back wistfully.
"'The isle is full of noises,Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.Sometimes a thousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices. . .'"
"I don't hear them," he muttered clumsily.
"Caliban heard them——"
"And you're Ariel," he said, with sudden, sorrowful understanding."Ariel!"
From the steps of the dark house she looked down at him, her eager face smiling palely in the white, still light.
"Ariel wasn't a woman, dear duffer. You'll have to read it. I'll lend it to you. And then we'll go again."
He shook his head.
"No."
"Yes—often—often, Robert. We've been nearer to one another than ever before—just these last minutes—quite, quite close. We've got to find each other in pleasure too."
He rallied all his strength. He said stiffly, pompously:
"It's been awfully nice, of course. And thank you for taking me. ButI don't really care for that sort of thing."
And for a moment they remained facing one another whilst the joy died out of her eyes, leaving a queer distress. Then they shook hands and he left her, coldly, prosaically, as though nothing had happened. But he was like a drunken man who had fallen into a sea of glory.
"The clouds, methought, would open, and show richesReady to drop upon me. . ."
There was all that work that he had meant to do before morning. It seemed far off—more unreal and fantastic than a fairy tale. His heart and brain, ached with willingness and loathing.
". . . that, when I wak'd, I cried to dream again. . ."
He set his teeth. He clenched his hands till they hurt him.
"I'll have to keep away from all that," he thought aloud, "altogether—till I don't care any more."
1
After all, Rufus Cosgrave had imagined his answers. Connie Edwards met Robert as he came out of the hospital gates and told him. It was raining dismally, with an ill-tempered wind blustering down the crowded street, and she had not dressed for bad weather. Perhaps she did not admit unpleasant possibilities even into her wardrobe. Perhaps she could not afford to do so. Her thin, paper-soled shoes, with the Louis XIV heels, and the cheap silk stockings which showed up to her knees, made her look like some bedraggled, long-legged bird-of-Paradise. A gaudy parasol could not protect her flopping hat, or her complexion, which had both suffered. Or she had been crying. But she did not sound as though she had been crying. She sounded breathless and resentful.
"He heard this afternoon," she said. "And what must he do but come bursting round to my place—half an hour before I'm due to start for the show—and carry on like a madman. Scared stiff, I was. Tried to make me swear I'd marry him and start for Timbuctoo to-morrow, and when I wouldn't, wanted to shoot himself and me too—as though I'd made a muck of things. Well, I'd done my best, and when it came to that sort of sob-stuff I'd had enough. What's he take me for? Get me into trouble with my landlady—making a row like that."
Robert heard her out in silence, and his intent, expressionless scrutiny seemed to flick her on the raw. She stamped her foot at him. "Oh, for the Lord's sake, get a move on—-do something, can't you? I didn't come here to be stared at as though I were a disease!"
"Where is he?"
"If I knew——! My place probably—with the gas full on—committing suicide—making a rotten scandal. You've got to come and dig him out."
"Where do you live?"
"Ten minutes from here. 10E Stanton Place. I'll show you a short way. I ran like a hare, hoping I'd catch you, and you'd put a bit of sense into the poor looney's head. Serves me right—taking on with his sort."
"Well—we'd better hurry," Robert said.
"Thanks. I said I'd show you the way. I'm not coming in. Don't you believe it. I've had enough. All I ask is—get him out and keep him out."
"You're through with him?"
Her habitual good-natured gaiety was gone. She looked disrupted and savagely afraid, like an animal that has escaped capture by a frantic effort. And yet it was difficult to imagine Rufus Cosgrave capturing or frightening anyone.
"You bet I'm through with him. You tell him so—tell him I don't want to see him again—I won't be bothered——" She broke off, and added, with a kind of rough relenting: "Put it any blessed way you like—say what's true—we've had our good times together—and it seems they're over—we've no use for one another."
"You mean—now he's failed."
"What doyoumean—'now he's failed'? What's his rotten old exam got to do with me? I don't even know what it's about."
"You took the good time whilst you could get it, and now when you can't hope for anything more——"
She stopped short, and they faced each other with an antagonism that neither gave nor asked for quarter. They had always been enemies, and now that the gloves were off they were almost glad.
"So that's my line. Cradle-snatching. Vamping the helpless infant!" She burst into a fit of angry, ugly laughter. "A good time! Running round with a poor kid with ten shillings a week pocket-money—eating in beastly cheap restaurants—riding on the tops of 'buses when some girls I know are feeding at the Ritz and rolling round in limousines. That's what I get for being soft. And now because I won't shoot myself, or go off to nowhere steerage, I'm a bad, abandoned woman. What d'you take me for?"
"What you are," he said.
She went dead white under her streaky paint.
"You—you've got no right to say that. You're a devil—a stuck-up devil—I hate you—I'd have always hated you if I'd bothered to mind. I—I gavehima good time. That's the truth. He was down and out when I met him, and I set him on his feet. I didn't mind what I missed—or the other girls guying me—I made him laugh and believe he had as good a chance in the world as anyone else. I put a bit of fun into him. I liked the kid. I—I like him now. If he wanted a good time to-morrow I'd run round with him again. But I'm no movie heroine—I'm not out for poison and funerals and slow music. Life's too damn serious for my sort to make a wail and a moan about it."
He stood close to her. He almost menaced her. He did in fact look dangerous enough with his white, set face and unflinching eyes in which stood two points of metallic light. If he had seen himself then he might have cowered away as from a ghost.
"I don't care a rap about you. I do care about my friend. You've got to stand by Cosgrave till he's over the worst."
"I won't—I won't!"
"I'll make you. You took him up. You made him think you cared about him. You're responsible——"
"I'm not—I won't be responsible; it's not my line. I've got myself to look after."
She had the look of someone struggling against an invisible entanglement—a pitiable, rather horrible look of naked purpose. She meant to cut free at whatever cost.
"You little beast!" he said.
He was sick with contempt. He swung away from her, and she stood in the middle of the pavement and called names after him like a drunken, furious street-girl. She did not seem to be even aware of the people who stared at her. When he was almost out of hearing, she added:
"Give him my love!" shrilly, vindictively, as though it had been a final insult. But he took no notice and now, at any rate, she was crying bitterly enough.
2
"E" proved to be the top room of No. 10, a dingy lodging-house whose front door, in accordance with the uncertain habits of its patrons, stood open from year's end to year's end. Robert went in unnoticed. He ran up the steep, narrow stairs, with their tattered carpeting, two steps at a time. A queer elation surged beneath his anger and distress. Cosgrave's failure was like a personal challenge—a defiance thrown in his teeth. The old fight was on again. It was against odds. But then, he had always fought against odds—won against them.
The room was Connie Edwards herself. It seemed to rush out at him in a tearing rage, flaunting its vulgar finery and its odour of bad scent and cheap cigarette smoke. It made him sick, and he brushed it out of his consciousness. He did not see the poor attempts to make it decent and attractive—the bed disguised beneath a faded Liberty cretonne, a sentimental Christ hanging between a galaxy of matinee heroes, nor a full-length woman's portrait, across which was scrawled "Gyp Labelle" in letters large enough to conceal half of her outrageous nakedness. There were even a few flowers, drooping forlornly out of a dusty vase, and a collection of theatrical posters, to lend a touch, of serious professionalism.
But the end of it all was a frowzy, hopeless disorder.
Cosgrave lay huddled over the littered table by the open window. The red untidy head made a patch of grotesque colour in the general murk. He looked like a poor rag doll that had been torn and battered in some wild carnival scrimmage and flung aside.
There was not much in him—not much fight, as he himself said. Not the sort to survive. Life was too strong—too difficult for him. He bungled everything—even an exam. It would be wiser, more consistent to let him drift. And yet at sight of that futile breakdown, it was not impatience or contempt that Robert felt, but a choking tenderness—a fierce pity. He had to protect him—pull him through. He had promised so much—he forgot when: that afternoon lying in the long, sooty grass behind the biscuit factory, or that night when he had dragged Cosgrave breathless and staggering in pursuit of the Greatest Show in Europe. It did not matter. It had become part of himself. And Cosgrave had always trusted him—believed in him.
"It's all right, old man; it's only me—Robert." For Cosgrave had leapt up with an eager cry, and now stood staring at him open-mouthed. The light was behind him, and the open mouth and blank, shadowy face made a queer, ghastly effect, as though a drowned man had suddenly stood up. Then he sagged pitifully, and Robert caught him by the shoulders and shook him with a rough, boyish impatience. "Don't be an idiot. It doesn't matter all that much. Exams are not everything. Everyone knows that. We'll find something else. If your people are too beastly, you'll come and share with us. I'll see you through—it'll be all right."
But a baffling change came over Cosgrave. He shook himself free. He stood upright, looking at Robert with a kind of stony dignity.
"Where is she?"
"Who?"
"Connie. She sent you, didn't she?"
"Yes. We met——"
"Where is she?"
"I don't know. Gone to the theatre probably."
"Isn't she coming back?"
"Not now."
"Didn't she send a message?"
"She said—it was finish between you. She's a little rotter, Cosgrave."
"She made me laugh," Cosgrave said simply. "I don't mind about the exam.—or about anything now. I suppose I was bound to fail. But I was so jolly happy. I'd never had a good time like that. It's all over now. She doesn't care. She said she couldn't be tied up with a lot of trouble. That's what I am. A lot of trouble. It was all bunkum—make-believe—to think I could be anything else."
So it wasn't his failure. It wasn't even the loss of a good-for-nothing chorus-girl. It was a loss far more subtle. The recognition of it lamed Robert Stonehouse, knocked the power out of him, as though someone had struck and paralysed a vital nerve centre. He could only stammer futilely:
"She's not worth bothering about."
Cosgrave slumped back into his chair. His hands lay on the table, half clenched as though they had let go and didn't care any more. He looked at Robert wide-eyed with a sudden absolute knowledge.
"That's it," he said. "Not worth bothering about—nothing in this whole beastly, rotten, world. . . . . ."
3
A convenient uncle found him a berth as clerk to a trading firm in West Africa, and with a cheap Colonial outfit and 10 pounds in his pocket, Cosgrave set out for the particular swamp which was to be the scene of his future career. He went docilely, with limp handshakes and dull, pathetic eyes. If he betrayed any feeling at all, it was a sort of relief at getting away from everybody. But emotionally he was dead—like cheap champagne gone flat, as he expressed it in one twisted mood of self-revelation.
Probably he was thinking of Connie Edwards and of their last spree together.
But he never spoke of her.
And it was very unlikely that the swamp would give him a chance to see any of them again.
After all, he had stood for something. He was a rudderless little craft that had come leaking and tumbling willy-nilly in the wake of the bigger vessel. But also he had been a sort of talisman. He had protected Robert as the weak, when they are humble and loving, can protect the strong, giving them greater confidence, making their defeat impossible. With his going went security. Little old fears came crawling out of their hiding-places. At night when Robert climbed the dark stairs to their stable-attic, they set upon him. They clawed his heart. He called to Christine before he saw her, and the answering silence made him sick with panic. It was reasonless panic, for Christine often fell asleep at dusk. She was difficult to wake and when she woke it was strangely, with a look of bewilderment, like a traveller who has come home after a long absence. Once she had spoken his father's name with a ringing joy, and he had answered roughly and had seen her shrink back into herself. Her little hands trembled, fumbling apologetically with the shabby bag she always carried. She was like a girl who, in one withering tragic moment, had become old. But his aching love found no outlet, no word of regret or tenderness. It recoiled back on himself in a dead weight of pain.
He began to watch himself like a sick man. There were hours when he knew his brain to be losing edge—black periods of hideous impotency which, when they passed, left him shaken and wet with terror. Supposing, at the end of everything, be failed? He didn't care so much. His very power of caring had been dissipated. His single purpose lost itself amidst incompatible dreams. He was being torn asunder—and there was a limit to endurance.
Cosgrave had failed. He couldn't concentrate. He was always looking for happiness. He had fallen in love and wasted himself and made a mess of his life.
It was mad to fall in love.
And yet the worst dread of all was the dread of losing Francey. It seemed even the most unreasonable, for they had their work in common and they loved one another. There was no doubting their love. They were very young and might have to wait, but he could trust her to wait all her life. He knew dimly that she had been fond of him as a little boy, and had gone on being fond of him, simply and unconsciously, because it was not possible for her to forget. She would love him in the same way. That steadfastness was like a light shining through the mists of her character—through her sudden fancies, her shadowy withdrawals.
And still he was afraid, and sometimes he suspected that she was afraid too. It was as though inexorable forces were rising up in both of them, essentially of them, and yet outside their control, two dark antagonisms waiting sorrowfully to join issue.
4
It had happened suddenly—not without warning. One little event trod on the heels of another, rubble skirling down the mountain-side, growing to an avalanche.
Or, again, Cosgrave might have been the odd, unlikely keystone of their daily life. He had not seemed to matter much, but now that he had been torn out the bridge between them crumbled.
It had been a day full of bitterness—of set-backs, which to Robert Stonehouse were like pointing fingers. They were the outward expressions of his disorder. He did not believe in luck, but in a man's strength or weakness, and he knew by the things that happened to him that he was weakening. A private operation had gone badly. He had bungled with his dressings, so that the surgeon had turned on him in a burst of irritation.
"Better go home and sleep it off, Stonehouse."
He had not gone. He would not admit that he was ill—dared not. All illness now meant the end of everything. It would wipe out all that they had endured if he were to break down now. It would kill Christine. She must not even guess.
He hung about the hospital common-room. The summer heat surging up from the burning pavements stagnated between the faded walls. He could not touch the food that he had brought with him. He was faint and sick, and the long table at which he sat, with its white blur of newspapers, rose and fell as though it were floating on an oily sea. But he held out. At five o'clock he was to meet Francey at the gates, and, as though she had some magic gift of relief, he strained towards that time, his head between his hands, his ears counting the seconds that dripped heavily, drowsily from the moon-faced clock.
And then she did not come. Outwardly it was only one more trifle, capable of simple explanations. But he saw it through a disfiguring haze of fever, and it was deadly in its significance. He hardly waited. He crossed the thoroughfare, and once in a side street stumbled into a shambling run. He did not stop until he reached her house. His former reluctance broke before the imperative need to see her and make sure of her. He stormed the broad, deep, carpeted stairs, pursued by a senseless panic, But at the top his strength failed him. He felt his brain throbbing in torture against his skull.
The old maid-servant nodded gravely, sympathetically.
"Yes, she's in, sir, but very busy—going away—sir." Going away. He wavered in the dim hall, trying to control his flying thoughts. Going away. And she had said nothing the night before—had not even warned him. Some unexpected, untoward event striking in the dark. Illness. A long separation. (And yet, he argued, he could not live without her. She had no people who could claim her. They were dead. No one to come between them. And there was her work. She would never leave that again.)
But there she stood in the midst of the disorder of a sudden going. Open suit-cases, clothes strewn about the floor, she herself in some loose, bright-coloured wrap, her brown hair tousled and her brows knit in perplexity. She stopped short at sight of him, smiling ruefully, her arms full.
"Oh, my dear—I'd forgotten." (Then she must have seen his face with its dead whiteness, for she added quickly, half laughing): "Not you. Only the time. I've not been at the hospital, and I thought I had still half an hour. I've had to run round like mad, and even now I've got a hundred things to do——"
He gulped. He said: "Where are you going?" in a flat, emotionless voice, as though he did not care.
For a moment she did not answer. She let the clothes drop, forgotten, on the sofa. He could see her weighing—considering what she should say to him.
"Italy—Rome—I expect——"
"Italy—when?"
"I've got to be at the hospital to-morrow. Wednesday probably. I don't believe it'll be for long. I hope not. A week or two. I've got leave for a month."
"Why are you going?"
And now he could not keep the harsh break out of his voice. He could not hide the physical weakness which made it impossible for him to stand. And yet, though she looked at him, she seemed unaware that he was suffering. She was absorbed in some difficulty of her own, set on her own immediate purpose. He knew that mood. It was the other side of her fitful, whimsical way of life that she could be as relentless, as deadly resolute and patient in attainment as himself.
"It's about Howard," she said, abruptly coming to a decision. "I wasn't sure at first what to do about it. I didn't want anyone to know. But you're different. We have to share things. Howard and Gertie—they've both gone—gone off—no one knows where."
"Together?"
"I'm pretty certain of it. At any rate, Gertie, who couldn't even pay her rent, has vanished, and Howard—I heard about Howard this morning."
"What did you hear about him?"
"It was from Salter. You probably don't know him. He came to me because he knew I was a friend of Howard's. He was frightfully upset. It seems there was some sort of club which a crowd of students were collecting for, and he and Howard held the funds. It wasn't much—150 pounds—and Howard drew it out two days ago."
"Does that astonish you?" Robert asked.
She seemed not to hear the scorn and irony of the question. She went on packing deliberately, and he watched her, not knowing what he would say or do. The tide was rising faster. His dread would carry him off his feet.
"No. I was sure things were coming to a crisis."
"He was no good. Anyone could see that."
"I didn't see it."
"Well, you see it now," he flung at her with a hard triumph.
"I don't."
"A mean thief——"
"Not mean, Robert."
"I don't know anything meaner than stealing money from a lot of hard-up students."
"There was Gertie," she said as though that were some sort of extenuation.
"Gertie—they've gone off on some rotten spree—not even married."
(He hated himself—the beastly righteousness of his voice, his contemptible exultation. It was as though he were under some horrid spell which twisted his love and anguish into the expressions of a spiteful prig. Why couldn't he tell her of those deadly, shapeless fears, of his loneliness, his sorrowful jealousies? He was shut up in the iron fastness of his own will—gagged and helpless.)
He saw her start. She stopped definitely in her work as though she were at last aware of some struggle between them. The room was growing dark, and she came a little nearer, trying to see his face.
"I don't suppose so. I don't think it would occur to them."
"No—that's what I should imagine."
"You're awfully hard on people, Robert."
"That sort of thing makes me sick. It ought to make you sick. I don't know why it doesn't. You don't seem to care—to have any standards. You're unmoral in your outlook—perhaps you're too young—you don't realize. A rotter like Howard who takes other people's money just to enjoy himself—a girl like Gertie Sumners who goes off with the first man who asks her——"
"You don't understand, Robert."
"No," he said with a laugh, "I don't."
"Gertie Sumners hasn't long to live. I sent her to the hospital last week, and they told her honestly. And she wanted so much to see Italy. I don't think Howard cares for her or she for him, except in a comradely sort of way. They loved the same things—and he was sorry—he wanted to give her her one good time."
"He told you all that, I suppose?"
"No," she answered soberly. "But I know."
He waited a moment. He was trying desperately to hold back—to stop himself. He was sorry about Gertie Sumners. But everything was against him. The room was against him—the faun dancing noiselessly among the shadows, the little things that Francey had gathered about her, the dear personal things that can become terrible in their poignancy, Francey herself, standing there slender and grave-eyed, judging him, weighing him. They were all leagued together. They spoke with one voice. "We belong TO one another. We understand. But you don't belong. You are outside."
"I don't see, at any rate," he said, "what it has got to do with you—or why you should be going away."
"I'm going after them. There's no one else. Howard will expect prosecution. He will think that he'll never be able to come home. He's pretty reckless, but they will be thinking of that all the time. It will spoil everything for them."
"And what can you do?"
"I can tell them it's all right."
"How can it be?"
"It is," she said curtly. "The money has been paid back."
"Paid back!" Understanding burst upon him. "Youpaid it?"
He stood up. He knew that resentment flickered in her—a fine, dangerous resentment against him because he had dragged so simple and obvious a thing out of its insignificance. But his own anger was like a mad, runaway horse, rushing him to destruction.
"It was stupid of him not to have come to me in the first place," she said, with an effort. "He should have known——"
He broke in fiercely.
"You can't—can't go like that."
"I must. If they had left an address—but, of course, they haven't. I'll have to track them down. It won't be so difficult." A spark of gaiety lit up her serious eyes. "I'll find Gertie lying on her back in the Sistine Chapel. She'll scorn the mirrors."
"You can't leave your work like that."
"The hospital people have been awfully decent about it."
"You told them——?"
"I told them I had urgent, personal business."
"You told them a lie, then?"
(Steady. Steady. But it was too late. His only hope lay in her understanding—her pity.)
"It wasn't a lie. My friends are my business."
"Your friends!" he echoed.
There was silence between them. She was controlled enough not to answer. It would have been better if she had returned taunt for taunt so that at last in the white heat of conflict his prison might have melted and let him free. But there followed a cold, deadly interlude, in which their antagonism hardened itself with reason and bitterness. He went and stood by the window looking out on to the dim square. He said at last roughly, authoritatively:
"Don't go. I don't want you to go."
(If only he could have gone on—driven the words over his set lips—"because I'm afraid—because I'm at breaking-point—because I can't do without you. I'm frightened of life. I've been starved in body and heart too long. I'm frightened because Christine is hard to wake at night—because I can't work any more.")
"I've got to," she said briefly, sternly.
He walked from the window to the door.
"You don't care. You care more for these two than you do for me. I've lived hard and clean. I don't lie or steal. I've never thought of any girl but you. And you put me second to a feckless thief and a——"
She stopped him. Not with a word or gesture, but with the sheer upward blaze of a chivalrous anger. And it was not only anger. That would have been bearable. It was sorrow, reproach, a kind of grieving bewilderment, as though he had changed before her eyes.
"You'd—you'd better go, Robert. We're both of us out of hand. We'll see each other to-morrow. It will be different then."
He went without a word. But on the dark stairs he stood still, leaning back against the wall, his wet face between his hands. He said aloud: "Oh, Francey. Francey, I can't live without you!" He would have gone back to tell her, but he was physically at the end of everything, and at the mercy of the power outside himself. He thought:
"There's still to-morrow. I'll tell her everything. I'll help her to get away. I'll make her understand that it wasn't Howard. To-morrow it will be all right."
And so went on. And the stolid Georgian door closed with a hard metallic click, setting its teeth against him.
"Now you see how it happens, Robert Stonehouse!"
5
But he came out of a night of fever and hallucination with very little left but the will to keep on. Apathy, like a thin protecting skin, had grown over him, shielding him from further hurt. He did not want to feel or care any more. The very memory of that "scene" with Francey made him shrink with a kind of physical disgust. Only no more of that. Back to work—back to reason. If she wished to go in pursuit of Howard and Gertie she would have to go. It seemed strange to him now that he should have minded so desperately.
Christine called to him as he passed her door.
"Is that you, Robert? Have you had your breakfast? Wait, dear—I'll get it for you."
But he crept down the stairs as though he had not heard. Only not so much caring—if only he could forget that he cared.
"Good-bye, dearest, good-bye!"
Her voice followed him, plaintive and clear. It seemed to lodge itself in his heart so that ever afterwards he had only to think of her to hear it like the echo of a small, sad bell. He went on stubbornly, in silence.
He did not try to see Francey. They met inevitably in the wake of the surgeon on whose post they worked, but they did not speak. Their eyes avoided one another. Yet he could not forget her. It was not the old consciousness that had been full of mystery and delight. It hurt. He felt her unsapped joyous living like a blow on his own aching weariness. He thought bitterly of her. How easy life had been for her! She played at living. Her airy fancies, her belief in God, her vagrant tenderness for the rag and bobtail of the earth were all part of that same thing. She had never suffered. Her people had died, but they had died in the odour of sanctity and wealth. She had never had to ask herself: "If I fall out, what will become of us?" She saw pain and poverty through the softening veil of her own well-being. Nothing could really hurt her.
(And yet how lovable she was! He watched her covertly as she stood at the surgeon's elbow—a little graver than usual—a little paler. To-day there was no warm glance with a flicker of a smile in its serene depths to greet him. Her hands were thrust boyishly into the pockets of her white coat, and there was an air of austere earnestness about her that sat quaintly, charmingly upon her youth. He loved the businesslike simplicity of her dress—the dark, tailored skirt and white silk shirt—immaculate—expressive of her real ability, an accustomed wealth. He flaired and hated its expensiveness.)
Money. That lay at the root of everything. If she were ill—what would it matter? A mere set-back. Her work would wait for her. Money would wave anxiety from her door. So she was never ill. Even though she loved him and they had quarrelled she had kept her fresh skin and clear eyes. Even if she had worried a little, in the end she had slept peacefully. (He felt his own shabbiness, his exhaustion, his burning hands and eyes, his dry and bitter mouth like a sort of uncleanliness.)
And there in the midst of his jagged thoughts there flickered a red anger—a desire to hurt too, to strike, to come to grips at last with her laughing philosophy of life—to tear it down and batter it into the dust and misery in which he stood.
They had come to No. 10's bedside. Things had gone badly with No. 10. She had stood a successful operation, but there had been severe haemorrhage, and, as Robert had said, there was no constitution to fight at the turning point. Her face just showed above the creaseless sheet. Death had already begun to clear away the mask of vice and cynicism and a lost prettiness peered through. But the eyes were terribly alive and old. So long as they kept open there could be no mistaking her. They travelled from face to face, and sought and questioned. Her voice sounded reedy and far-off.
"Not going this trip, am I, doctor?"
Rogers patted the bed.
"Certainly not. Going along fine. What do you expect to feel like—with a hole like that in your inside? Next time you have a young man, see he doesn't carry firearms."
One of the eyes tried to wink—pitifully, obscenely.
"You bet your life. Don't want to die just yet."
"Nobody does."
They drew a little apart. Rogers consulted with his colleague. The serious loss of blood must be made good. A transfusion. There was a young man who had offered himself. A suitable subject. This afternoon at the latest.
They moved on. Robert spoke to the man next him. But he knew thatFrancey heard him. He meant her to hear.
"It's crazy. They ought to be glad to let a woman like that slip out. If she lives she'll only infect more people with her rottenness. She's better dead. Instead of that they'll suck out somebody else's vitality to save her. The better the life the more pleased they'll be to risk it. This sacrificing the strong to the weak—a snivelling sentimentality."
The man he spoke to glanced at him curiously—it was not usual for Robert Stonehouse to speak to anyone—and said something about the medical profession and the sanctity of life. Robert laughed. He argued it over with himself. It was true. For that matter Howard and Gertie and Connie would all be better dead. There was no use or purpose in their living. Only sentimentalists like Francey wanted to patch them up and keep them on their feet.
People who cluttered up life ought to be cleared out of it.
He felt light-headed, yet extraordinarily sure of himself again. He answered Rogers' questions with the old lucidity. And presently he found himself in the corridor, still arguing his theme over. He would prove to Francey that she must let Howard and Gertie go to the devil and they would never quarrel again.
He came to the head of the stairs where they met after the morning's work.
The steps were very broad and white and shallow, and gave the impression of great distance. Mr. Ricardo, at the bottom of them, was a black speck—a bird that had blundered into the building by mistake and beaten itself breathless against the walls. As he saw Robert he began to drag himself up, limping. He seemed to shrivel then to a mere face, stricken and yellow, that gaped and mouthed.
Robert did not move. He stood leaning against the balustrade. It was as though an iron fist had smashed through the protecting wall about him, letting in a rush of bitter wind.
"Robert—Robert!"
He nodded.
"I'm coming——"
For he had known instantly.
6
The tragic journey through the streets was over. They stood beside her. Robert knew too much to struggle, but Ricardo's voice went on, saying the same things over and over again, pleading.
"Do something—do something. Wake her, Robert, dear boy, for God's sake.What is the use of all your studying if you can't even wake her?"
"It's no use," he said.
"She was sitting there—I was to have read her the last chapter—she was so quiet—asleep she seemed—-for an hour—I sat—not moving—then I was afraid!"
Robert nodded.
She had laid his supper for him. It was much too early for her to have laid it. She had spread muslin over the bread and cheese. And then she had sat down quietly in her chair by the window and waited. (How long had she waited there? Many years perhaps. It had been very lonely for her.) Her head was thrown back a little, and her closed eyes lifted to the light that came over the stable roofs. The grey hair hung in wisps about the transparent face—very still, as though the air had died too. She had changed profoundly, indefinably. She looked younger, and there was a new serenity about the faintly opened mouth. Her hands lay peacefully on the little shabby bag. Her little feet in the ill-fitting shoes just reached the ground. In a way it was all so familiar. And yet he felt that if he touched her he would find out that this was not Christine at all. This was something that had belonged to her—as poignant, as heart-rending as a dress that she had worn.
"Robert, isn't there anything—to do?"
"No."
They had nothing to say to one another. They had made a strange trio—lonely and outcast by necessity—but now a link had snapped and it was all over. They stood apart, each by himself. Ricardo, crouching against the window-sill, pressed his hand to his side as though he were hurt and bleeding to death. He said, almost inaudibly:
"I've no one. Nobody will ever listen. She believed in me. She was sure that one day—I would go out—and tell the truth. She knew I wasn't—a cowardly—beaten, old man."
Robert could not touch her whilst Ricardo stood there crying. Her repose was too dominating. And if he touched her something terrible and incalculable might happen. He felt as though he were standing on the edge of a precipice, and that suddenly he might let go and pitch over.
It had come true at last—his boy's nightmare that had grown up with him—that only waited for darkness to show itself. Christine had left him. She was dead, and it seemed that he had no one in the world. For Francey, loving him as she did, had failed him. But Christine had never failed him. Never at any time had she asked, "Are you a good little boy, Robert?" It would never have occurred to her. She was so sure. She had loved him and, believed in him unfalteringly, and, in her quiet way, died for him.
Ricardo drew himself up. He plucked at Robert's sleeve. A change had come over him in the last minutes. His sunken brown eyes had dried and become rather terribly alert. Something too fine—too exquisitely balanced in him had been disturbed and broken beyond hope.
"It proves what I have suspected for a long time, Robert. You know it's not a light thing to make an enemy like that. He's taken his time, but you see in the end he has taken everything I had. First he made me a liar and a hypocrite. Then he took you. He sent that girl specially to come between us. And now Miss Christine. I suppose he thinks that's done for me. But it's a great mistake to make people desperate, Robert. You should always leave them some little thing that they care for and which makes them cowards. Now, you see, I simply don't care any more. I don't care for myself or even my poor sister. I'm going to fight him in the open, gloves off. I'll wrestle with him and prevail. I'll give blow for blow. I'm going now to Hyde Park to tell people the truth about him. They take him altogether too lightly, Robert. They're inclined to laugh at him as of no account. That's a great mistake, too. I shall warn them." He nodded mysteriously. "God is a devil—a cruel, dangerous devil."
Then he bent and kissed Christine's hand, very solemnly and tenderly, as some battered, comical Don Quixote might have done before setting out on a last fantastic quest. And presently Robert heard him patter down the narrow stairs and over the cobbles to the open street.
They were alone now. He bent over her and said: "Christine—Christine," reassuringly, so that she should not be afraid, and gathered her in his arms. How little she was—no heavier than a child—and cold. Her grey head rested against his shoulder. If she had only stirred and laughed, and said: "Your father was strong too!" he would have answered gently. He would have been glad that the memory of his father could make her happy. But it was all too late.
He carried her into her room. It was like her to have left it so neat and ordered—each thing in its place—her out-door shoes standing decorously together under the window, and her best skirt peeping out from behind the cretonne curtain. Her hair-brush, with the comb planted in its bristles, lay exactly in the middle of the pine-wood dressing-table. When she had put it there, she had not known that it was for the last time.
Or had she known? She had called out to him so insistently. She had wanted to say good-bye. And he had gone on, not answering.
They said that people, at the end, saw their whole life pass before them. Perhaps she had seen hers. Perhaps she had trodden the old road that he was travelling over now. Only her vision of it would be different. It was James Stonehouse and Robert's mother that she would see—radiant figures of wonderful, unlucky people—and little Robert, who belonged to both of them, tagging in the rear.
But he saw her—Christine lying white and still under the great mahogany side-board, Christine coming back day after day in gallant patience to scrub the floors and his ears, and pay the bills and chase away the duns, and do whatever was necessary to keep the staggering Stonehouse menage on its feet.
She had held him close to her and comforted him.
Her splendid faithfulness.
He laid her on the narrow bed against the wall, and smoothed her dress and folded her hands over her breast. Her bag, which he had gathered up with her rolled on to the floor. A book fell out. He picked it up mechanically. It was a little Bible, and on the fly-leaf was written:
"From JIM and CONSTANCE to their friend, CHRISTINE."
The writing was his father's. It had faded, but one could still see how regular and beautiful it was. Then the date. His own birthday—the first of all the unfortunate birthdays.
He looked at it for a long time, stupidly, not realizing. Then suddenly he saw it—in a new light. Ricardo. How frightfully—excruciatingly funny. Ricardo. He felt that he was going to laugh—shout with laughter. It was horrible. Laughter rising and falling—-like a sort of awful sickness—choking him.
Instead his heart broke. He flung himself down beside her and pressed his face against her cold, thin cheek. And, instead of laughter, sobs that tore him to pieces—and at last, in mercy, tears.
"Oh, Christine, Christine—my own darling! I did love you—I never told you—you never, never knew how much!"
The earth-old cry of unavailing, inevitable remorse.
7
So there was no one but Francey now.