He found himself outside in High Street as in some strange incomprehensible dream....
All the way back to Millstead joy was raging in his heart, trampling down all his woes and defying him to be miserable. Nothing in the world—not his unhappiness with Helen, or the hatred that Millstead had for him, or the perfidy of his own soul—could drive out that crowning, overmastering triumph—the knowledge that Clare loved him. For the moment he saw no difficulties, no dangers, no future that he could not easily bear. Even if he were never to see Clare again, he felt that the knowledge that she loved him would be an adequate solace to his mind for ever. He was happy—deliriously, eternally happy. Helen's silences, the school's ragging, the Head's sinister coldness, were bereft of all their powers to hurt him; he had a secret armour, proof against all assault. It seemed to him that he could understand how the early Christians, fortified by some such inward armour, had walked calm-eyed and happy into the arena of lions.
He did not go straight back to the school, but took a detour along the Deepersdale road; he wanted to think, and hug his happiness, and eventually calm it before seeing Helen. Then he wondered what sort of an explanation he should give her of his absence; for, of course, she would have received by this time full accounts of the ragging. In the end he decided that he had better pretend to have been knocked a little silly by the blow on his head and to have taken a walk into the country without any proper consciousness of what he was doing.
He returned to Lavery's about eleven o'clock, admitting himself by his own private key. In the corridor leading to his own rooms, Helen suddenly ran into his arms imploring him to tell her if he was hurt, where he had been, what had happened, and so on.
He said, speaking as though he had hardly recovered full possession of his senses: "I—I don't know.... Something hit me.... I think I've been walking about for a long time.... I'm all right now, though."
Her hands were feeling the bandages round his head.
"Who bandaged you?"
"I—I don't—I don't know." (After all, 'I don't know' was always a safe answer.)
She led him into the red-tinted drawing-room. As he entered it he suddenly felt the onrush of depression, as if, once within these four walls, half the strength of his armour would be gone.
"We must have Howard to see you to-morrow morning," she said, her voice trembling. "It was absolutely disgraceful! I could hear them from here—I wondered whatever was happening." And she added, with just the suspicion of tartness: "I'd no idea you'd ever let them rag you like that."
"Letthem rag me?" he exclaimed. Then, remembering his part, he stammered: "I—I don't know what—what happened. Something—somebody perhaps—hit me, I think—that was all. It wasn't—it wasn't the ragging. I could have—managed that."
Suddenly she said: "Whose mackintosh is that you're wearing?"
The tone of her voice was sharp, acrid, almost venomous.
He started, felt himself blushing, but hoped that in the reddish glow it would not be observed. "I—I don't know," he stammered, still playing for safety.
"You don't know?—Then we'll find out if we can. Perhaps there's a name inside it."
She helped him off with it, and he, hoping devoutly that there might not be a name inside it, watched her fascinatedly. He saw her examine the inside of the collar and then throw the coat on the floor.
"So you've been there again," was all that she said. Once again he replied, maddeningly: "I—I don't know."
She almost screamed at him: "Don't keep telling me you don't know! You're not ill—there's nothing the matter with you at all—you're just pretending! You couldn't keep order in the Big Hall, so you ran away like a great coward and went tothatwoman! Did you or didn't you? Answer me!"
Never before, he reflected, had she quarrelled so shrilly and rancorously; hitherto she had been restrained and rather pathetic, but now she was shouting at him like a fishwife. It was a common domestic bicker; the sort of thing that gets a good laugh on the music-hall stage. No dignity in it—just sordid heaped-up abuse. "Great coward"—"Thatwoman"—!
He dropped his lost-memory pose, careless, now, whether she found out or not.
"Ididgo to Clare," he said, curtly. "And that's Clare's raincoat. Also Clare bandaged me—rather well, you must admit. Also, I've drunk Clare's coffee and warmed myself at Clare's fire. Is there any other confession you'd like to wring out of me?"
"Is there indeed? You know that best yourself."
"Perhaps you think I've been flirting with Clare?"
(As he said it he thought: Good God, why am I saying such things? It's only making the position worse for us both.)
"I've no doubt she would if you'd given her half a chance."
The bitterness of her increased his own.
"Or is it thatIwould if she'd given me half a chance? Are you quitesurewhich?"
"I'm sure of nothing where either of you are concerned. As for Clare, she's been a traitor. Right from the time of first meeting you she's played a double game, deceiving me and yourself as well. She's ruined our lives together, she's spoilt our happiness and she won't be satisfied till she's wrecked us both completely. I detest her—I loathe her—I loathe her more than I've ever loathed anybody in the world. Thank God I know hernow—at leastIshall never trust her any more. And ifyoudo, perhaps some day you'll pay as I've paid. Do you think she's playing straight with you any more than she has with me? Do you thinkyoucan trust her? Are you taken in?"
The note of savage scorn in her voice made him reply coldly: "You've no cause to talk about taking people in. If ever I've been taken in, as you call it, it was by you, not by Clare!"
He saw her go suddenly white. He was half-sorry he had dealt her the blow, but as she went on to speak, her words, fiercer than ever now, stung him into gladness.
"All right! Trust her and pay for it! I could tell you things if I wished—but I'm not such a traitor to her as she's been to me. I could tell you things that would make you gasp, you wretched little fool!"
"They wouldn't make me gasp; they'd make me call you a damned liar. Helen, I can understand you hating Clare; I can understand, in a sense, the charge of traitor that you bring against her; but when you hint all sorts of awful secrets about her I just think what a petty, spiteful heart you must have! You ruin your own case by actions like that. They sicken me."
"Very well, let them sicken you. You'll not be more sickened than I am. But perhaps you think I can't do more than hint. I can and I will, since you drive me to it. Next time you pay your evening visits to Clare ask her what she thinks of Pritchard!"
"Pritchard! Pritchard!—What's he got to do with it?"
"Ask Clare."
"Why should I ask her?"
"Because, maybe, on the spur of the moment she wouldn't be able to think of any satisfactory lie to tell you."
He felt anger rising up within him. He detested Pritchard, and the mention of his name in connection with Clare infuriated him. Moreover, his mind, always quick to entertain suspicion, pictured all manner of disturbing fancies, even though his reason rejected them absolutely. He trusted Clare; he would believe no evil of her. And yet, the mere thought of it was a disturbing one.
"I wouldn't insult her by letting her think I listened to such gossip," he said, rather weakly.
There followed a longish pause; he thinking of what she had said and trying to rid himself of the discomfort of associating Pritchard with Clare, and she watching him, mockingly, as if conscious that her words had taken root in his mind.
Then she went on: "So now you can suspect somebody else instead of me. And while we're on the subject of Pritchard let me tell you something else."
"Tell me!" The mere thought that there was anything else to tell in which Pritchard was concerned was sufficient to give his voice a note of peremptory harshness.
"I'm going to leave you."
"So you've said before."
"This time I mean it."
"Well?"
"And you can divorce me."
He stamped his foot with irritation. "Don't be ridiculous, Helen. A divorce is absolutely out of the question."
"Why? Do you think we can go on like this any longer?"
"That's not the point. The point is that nothing in the circumstances provides any grounds for a divorce."
"So that we've got to go on like this then, eh?"
"Not like this, I hope. Istillhope—that some day—"
She interrupted him angrily. "Youstillhope! How many more secret visits to Clare do you think you'll make,—how many more damnable lies do you think you'll need to tell me—before you leave off still hoping? You hateful little hypocrite! Why don't you be frank with me and yourself and acknowledge that you love Clare? Why don't you run off with her like a man?"
He said: "So you think that's what a man would do, eh?"
"Yes."
"One sort of a man, perhaps. Only I'm not that sort."
"I wish you were."
"Possibly. I also wish that you were another sort of woman, but it's rather pointless wishing, isn't it?"
"Everything is rather pointless that has to do with you and me."
Suddenly he said: "Look here, Helen. Let's stop this talk. Just listen a minute while I try to tell you how I'm situated. You and I are married—"
"Really?"
"Oh, for God's sake, don't be stupid about it! We're married, and we've got to put up with it for better, for worse. I visit Clare in an entirely friendly way, though you mayn't believe it, and your suspicions of me are altogether unfounded. All the same, I'm prepared to give up her friendship, if that helps you at all. I'm prepared to leave Millstead with you, get a job somewhere else, and start life afresh. We have been happy together, and I daresay in time we shall manage to be happy again. We'd emigrate, if you liked. And the baby—ourbaby—our baby that is to be—"
She suddenly rushed up to him with her arms raised and struck him with both fists on his mouth. "Oh, for Christ's sake, stop that sort of talk! I could kill you when you try to lull me into happiness with those sticky, little sentimental words!Ourbaby! Good God, am I to be made to submit to you because of that? And all the time you talk of it you're thinking of another woman! You're not livable with! Something's happened to you that's made you cruel and hateful—you're not the man that I married or that I ever would have married. I loathe and detest you—you're rotten—rotten to the very root!"
He said, idly: "Do you think so?"
She replied, more restrainedly: "I've never met anybody who's altered so much as you have in the last six months. You've sunk lower and lower—in every way, until now—everybody hates you. You're simply a ruin."
Still quietly he said: "Yes, that's true." And then watching to see the effect that his words had upon her, he added: "Clare said so."
"What!" she screamed, frenzied again. "Yes,sheknows!Sheknows how she's ruined you! She knows better than anybody! And she taunted you with it! How I loathe her!"
"And me too, eh?"
She made no answer.
Then, more quietly than ever, he said: "Yes, Clare knows what a failure I've been and how low I've sunk. But she doesn't think it's due to her, and neither do I."
He would not say more than that. He wondered if she would perceive the subtle innuendo which he half-meant and half did not mean; which he would not absolutely deny, and yet would not positively affirm; which he was prepared to hint, but only vaguely, because he was not perfectly sure himself.
Whether or not she did perceive it he was not able to discover. She was silent for some while and then said: "Well, I repeat what I said—I'm going to leave you so that you can get a divorce."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"You can leave me if you wish, but I shall not get a divorce."
"Why not?"
"Because for one thing I shan't be able to."
"And why do you think you won't?"
"Because," he replied, coldly, "the law will not give me my freedom merely because we have lived a cat-and-dog life together. The law requires that you should not only leave me, but that you should run away with another man and commit misconduct with him."
She nodded. "Yes, and that is what I propose to do."
"What!"
A curious silence ensued. He was utterly astounded, horrified, by her announcement; she was smiling at him, mocking his astonishment. He shouted at her, fiercely: "What's that!"
She said: "I intend to do what you said."
"What's that! Youwhat?"
"I intend to do what you said. I shall run away with another man and commit misconduct with him!"
"God!" he exclaimed, clenching his teeth, and stamping the floor. "It's absurd. You can't. You wouldn't dare. Oh, it's impossible. Besides—good God, think of the scandals! Surely I haven't driven you tothat! Who would you run away with?" His anger began to conquer his astonishment. "You little fool, Helen, you can't do it! I forbid you! Oh, Lord, what a mess we're in! Tell me, who's the man you're thinking of! I demand to know. Who is he? Give me his name!"
And she said, cuttingly: "Pritchard."
On top of his boiling fury she added: "We've talked it over and he's quite agreed to—to oblige me in the matter, so you see I really do mean things this time, darling Kenneth!"
And she laughed at him.
Out of Lavery's he plunged and into the cold, frosty night of Milner's. He had not stayed to hear the last echoes of her laughter dying away; he was mad with fury; he was going to kill Pritchard. He ran up the steps of Milner's and gave the bell a ferocious tug. At last the porter came, half undressed, and by no means too affable to such a late visitor. "I want to see Mr. Pritchard on very important business," said Speed. "Will it take long, sir?" asked the porter, and Speed answered: "I can't say how long it will take."—"Then," said the porter, "perhaps you wouldn't mind letting yourself out when you've finished. I'll give you this key till to-morrow morning—I've got a duplicate of my own." Speed took the key, hardly comprehending the instructions, and rushed along the corridor to the flight of steps along the wall of which was printed the name: "Mr. H. Pritchard."
Arrived on Pritchard's landing he groped his way to the sitting-room door and entered stealthily. All was perfectly still, except for one or two detached snores proceeding from the adjoining dormitory. In the starshine that came through the window he could see, just faintly, the outline of Pritchard's desk, and Pritchard's armchair, and Pritchard's bookshelves, and Pritchard's cap and gown hung upon the hook on the door of Pritchard's bedroom.Hisbedroom! He crept towards it, turned the handle softly, and entered. At first he thought the bed was empty, but as he listened he could hear breathing—steady, though faint. He began to be ever so slightly frightened. Being in the room alone with Pritchard asleep was somehow an unnerving experience; like being alone in a room with a dead body. For, perhaps, Pritchard would be a dead body before the dawn rose. And again he felt frightened because somebody might hear him and come up and think he was in there to steal something—Pritchard's silver wrist-watch or his rolled gold sleeve links, for instance. Somehow Speed was unwilling to be apprehended for theft when his real object was only murder.
He struck a match to see if it really was Pritchard in bed; it would be a joke if he murdered somebody else by mistake, wouldn't it? ...
Yes, it was Pritchard.
Then Speed, looking down at him, realised that he did not hate him so much for his disgraceful overtures to Helen as for the suspicion of some sinister connection with Clare.
Suddenly Pritchard opened his eyes.
"Good God, Speed!" he cried, blinking and sitting up in bed. "Whatever's the matter! What's—what's happened? Anything wrong?"
And Speed, startled out of his wits by the sudden awakening, fell forward across Pritchard's bed and fainted.
So that he did not murder Pritchard after all....
Vague years seemed to pass by, and then out of the abyss came the voice of the Head booming: "Um, yes, Mr. Speed ... I think, in the circumstances, you had better—um, yes, take a holiday at the seaside.... You are very clearly in a highly dangerous—um—nervous state ... and I will gladly release you from the rest of your term's duties.... No doubt a rest will effect a great and rapid improvement.... My wife recommends Seacliffe—a pleasant little watering-place—um, yes, extremely so.... As for the incidents during preparation last evening, I think we need not—um—discuss them at present.... Oh yes, most certainly—as soon as convenient—in fact, an early train to-morrow morning would not incommode us.... I—um, yes—I hope the rest will benefit you ... oh yes, I hope so extremely...."
And he added: "Helen is—um—a good nurse."
Then something else of no particular importance, and then: "I shall put Mr.—um—Pritchard in charge of—um—Lavery's while you are absent, so you need not—um—worry about your House...."
Speed said, conquering himself enough to smile: "Oh, no, I shan't worry. I shan't worry about anything."
"Um—no, I hope not. I—I hope not.... My wife and I—um—we both hope that you will not—um—worry...."
Then Speed noticed, with childish curiosity, that the Head was attired in a sky-blue dressing-gown and pink-striped pyjamas....
Where was he, by the way? He looked round and saw a tiny gas-jet burning on a wall bracket; near him was a bed ... Pritchard's bed, of course. But why was the Head in Pritchard's bedroom, and why was Clanwell there as well?
Clanwell said sepulchrally: "Take things easy, old man. I thought something like this would happen. You've been overdoing it."
"Overdoing what?" said Speed.
"Everything," replied Clanwell.
The clock on the dressing-table showed exactly midnight.
"Good-bye," said Speed.
Clanwell said: "I'm coming over with you to Lavery's."
The Head departed, booming his farewell. "Good night.... My—um—my best wishes, Speed ... um, yes—most certainly.... Good night."
Then Pritchard said: "Perhaps I can sleep again now. Enough to give me a breakdown, I should think. Good-night, Speed. And good luck. I wish they'd givemea holiday at Seacliffe.... Good night, Clanwell."
As they trod over the soft turf of the quadrangle they heard old Millstead bells calling the hour of midnight.
Speed said: "Clanwell, do you remember I once told you I could write a novel about Millstead?"
"Yes, I remember it."
"Well, I might have done it then. But I couldn't now. When I first came here Millstead was so big and enveloping—it nearly swallowed me up. But now—it's all gone. I might be living in a slum tenement for all it means to me. Where's it all gone to?"
"You're ill, Speed. It'll come back when you're better."
"Yes, but when shall I be better?"
"When you've been away and had a rest."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. You don't suppose you're dying, do you?"
"No. But there are times when I could suppose I'm dead."
"Nonsense, man. You're too morbid. Why don't you go for a sea voyage? Pull yourself together, man, and don't brood."
Clanwell added: "I'm damned sorry for you—what can I do? Would you like me to come in Lavery's with you for a while? You're not nervous of being alone, are you?"
"Oh no. And besides, I shan't be alone. My wife's there."
"Of course, of course. Stupid of me. I was for the moment forgetting—forgetting—"
"That I was married, eh?"
"No, no, not exactly—I had just forgotten—well, you know how even the most obvious things sometimes slip the memory.... Well, here you are. Have you the key? And you'll be all right, eh? Sure? Well, now, take a long rest and get better, won't you? Good night—Good night—sure you're all right? Good night!"
Clanwell raced back across the turf to his own House and Speed admitted himself to Lavery's and sauntered slowly down the corridor to his room.
Helen was sitting in front of the fire, perfectly still and quiet.
He said: "Helen!"
"Well!" She spoke without the slightest movement of her head or body.
"We've got to go away from Millstead."
He wondered how she would take it. It never occurred to him that she was prepared. She answered: "Yes. Mother's been over here to tell me all about it. We're going to Seacliffe in the morning. Catching the 9.5. What were you doing in Pritchard's bedroom?"
"Didn't they tell you?" he enquired sarcastically.
"How could they? They didn't know. They found you fainting across the bed, and Pritchard said he woke up and found you staring at him."
"And you can't guess why I went there?"
"I suppose you wanted to ask him if it were true that he and I were going away together."
"No, not quite. I wanted to murder him so that it could never be true."
"What!"
"Yes. What I said."
She made no answer, and after a long pause he said: "You're not in love with Pritchard, are you?"
She replied sorrowfully: "Not a little bit. In fact, I rather dislike him. You're the only person I love."
"When you're not hating me, eh?"
"Yes, that's right. When I'm not hating you."
Then after a second long pause he suddenly decided to make one last effort for the tranquillising of the future.
"Helen," he began pleadingly, "Can't you stop hating me? Is it too late to begin everything afresh? Can't we——"
Then he stopped. All the eloquence went out of him suddenly, like the air out of a suddenly pricked balloon. His brain refused to frame the sentences of promise and supplication that he had intended. His brain was tired—utterly tired. He felt he did not care whether Helen stayed with him or not, whether she ran away with Pritchard or not, whether his own relationship with her improved, worsened, or ceased altogether, whether anything in the world happened or did not happen. All he wanted was peace—peace from the eternal torment of his mind.
She suddenly put her arms round him and kissed him passionately. "Wewillbegin again, Kenneth," she said eagerly. "Wewillbe happy again, won't we? Oh yes, I knowwewill. When we get to Seacliffe we'll have a second honeymoon together, what do you think, darling?"
"Rather," he replied, with simulated enthusiasm. In reality he felt sick—physically sick. Something in the word "honeymoon" set his nerves on edge. Poor little darling Helen—why on earth had he ever married such a creature? They would never be happy together, he was quite certain of that. And yet ... well, anyway, they had to make the best of it. He smiled at her and returned her kisses, and then suggested packing the trunk in readiness for the morning.
In the morning there arrived a letter from Clare. He guessed it from the postmark, and was glad that she had the tact to type the address on the envelope. When he tore it open he saw that the letter was also typewritten, and signed merely "C. H.", so that he was able to read it at the breakfast-table without any fears of Helen guessing. It was a curious sensation, that of reading a letter from Clare with Helen so near to him, and so unsuspecting.
It ran:—
"DEAR KENNETH SPEED—As I told you last night I feel thoroughly disgusted with myself—I knew I should. I'm very sorry I acted as I did, though of course everything I said was true. If you take my advice you'll take Helen right away and never come near Millstead any more. Begin life with her afresh, and don't expect it to be too easy. As for me—you'd better forget if you can. We mustn't ever see each other again, and I think we had better not write, either. I really mean that and I hope you won't send me any awfully pathetic reply as it will only make things more awkward than they are. There was a time when you thought I was hard-hearted; you must try and think so again, because I really don't want to have anything more to do with you. It sounds brutal, but it isn't, really. You have still time to make your life a success, and the only way to do it in the present circumstances is to keep away from my evil influence. So good-bye and good luck. Yours—C.H."—"P.S. If you ever do return to Millstead you won't find me there."
"DEAR KENNETH SPEED—As I told you last night I feel thoroughly disgusted with myself—I knew I should. I'm very sorry I acted as I did, though of course everything I said was true. If you take my advice you'll take Helen right away and never come near Millstead any more. Begin life with her afresh, and don't expect it to be too easy. As for me—you'd better forget if you can. We mustn't ever see each other again, and I think we had better not write, either. I really mean that and I hope you won't send me any awfully pathetic reply as it will only make things more awkward than they are. There was a time when you thought I was hard-hearted; you must try and think so again, because I really don't want to have anything more to do with you. It sounds brutal, but it isn't, really. You have still time to make your life a success, and the only way to do it in the present circumstances is to keep away from my evil influence. So good-bye and good luck. Yours—C.H."—"P.S. If you ever do return to Millstead you won't find me there."
He was so furious that he tore the letter up and flung it into the fire.
"What is it?" enquired Helen.
He forced himself to reply: "Oh, only a tradesman's letter."
She answered, with vague sympathy: "Everybody's being perfectly horrid, aren't they?"
"Oh, I don't care," he replied, shrugging his shoulders and eating vigorously. "I don't care a damn for the lot of them."
She looked at him in thoughtful silence.
Towards the end of the meal he had begun to wonder if it had been Clare's object to put him in just that mood of fierce aggressiveness and truculence. He wished he had not thrown the letter into the fire. He would like to have re-read it, and to have studied the phrasing with a view to more accurate interpretation.
That was about seven-thirty in the morning. The bells were just beginning to ring in the dormitories and the floors above to creak with the beginnings of movement. It was a dull morning in early March, cold, but not freezing; the sky was full of mist and clouds, and very likely it would rain later. As he looked out of the window, for what might be the last time in his life, he realised that he was leaving Millstead without a pang. It astonished him a little. There was nothing in the place that he still cared for. All his dreams were in ruins, all his hopes shattered, all his enthusiasms burned away; he could look out upon Millstead, that had once contained them all, without love and without malice. It was nothing to him now; a mere box of bricks teeming with strangers. Even the terror of it had vanished; it stirred him to no emotion at all. He could leave it as casually as he could a railway station at which he had stoppeden route.
And when he tried, just by way of experiment, to resuscitate for a moment some of the feelings he had once had, he was conscious only of immense mental strain, for something inside him that was sterile and that ached intolerably. He remembered how, on the moonlight nights of his first term, his eyes would fill with tears as he saw the great window-lit blocks of Milner's and Lavery's rising into the pale night. He remembered it without passion and without understanding. He was so different now from what he had been then. He was older now; he was tired; his emotions had been wrung dry; some of him was a little withered.
An hour later he left Millstead quite undramatically by the 9.5. The taxi came to the door of Lavery's at ten minutes to nine, while the school was in morning chapel; as he rode away and out of the main gates he could hear, faintly above the purr of the motor, the drone of two hundred voices making the responses in the psalms. It did not bring to his heart a single pang or to his eye a single tear. Helen sat beside him and she, too, was unmoved; but she had never cared for Millstead. She was telling him about Seacliffe.
As the taxi bounded into the station yard she said: "Oh, Kenneth, did you leave anything for Burton?"
"No," he answered, curtly.
"You ought to have done," she said.
That ended their conversation till they were in the train.
As he looked out of the window at the dull, bleak fen country he wondered how he could ever have thought it beautiful. Mile after mile of bare, grey-green fields, ditches of tangled reeds, forlorn villages, trees that stood solitary in the midst of great plains. He saw every now and then the long, flat road along which he had cycled many times to Pangbourne. And in a little while Pangbourne itself came into view, with its huge dominating cathedral round which he had been wont formerly to conduct little enthusiastic parties of Millsteadians; Pangbourne had seemed to him so pretty and sunlit in those days, but now all was dull and dreary, and the mist was creeping up in swathes from the fenlands. Pangbourne station...
Again he wished that he had not burnt Clare's letter.
At noon he was at Seacliffe, booking accommodation at the Beach Hotel.
"Heaven knows what we are going to do with ourselves here," he remarked to Helen during lunch.
"You've got to rest," replied Helen.
He went on to a melancholy mastication of bread. "So far as I can see, we're the only visitors in the entire hotel."
"Well, Kenneth, March is hardly the season, is it?"
"Then why did we come here? I'd much rather have gone to town, where there's always something happening. But a seaside-place in winter!—is there anything in the world more depressing?"
"There's nobody in the world more depressing than you are yourself," she answered tartly. "It isn't my fault we've come here in March. It isn't my fault we've come here at all. And what good would London have done for you? It's rest you want, and you'll get it here."
"Heavens, yes—I'll get it all right."
After a silence he smiled and said: "I'm sorry, Helen, for being such a wet blanket. And you're quite right, it isn't your fault—not any of it. What can we do this afternoon?"
"We can have a walk along the cliffs," she answered.
He nodded and took up a week-old copy of theSeacliffe Gazette. "That's what we'll do," he said, beginning to read.
So that afternoon they had a walk along the cliffs.
In fact there was really nothing at all to do in Seacliffe during the winter season except to take a walk along the cliffs. Everything wore an air of depression—the dingy rain-sodden refreshment kiosks, the shuttered bandstand, the rusting tram rails on the promenade, along which no trams had run since the preceding October, the melancholy pier pavilion, forlornly decorated with the tattered advertisements of last season's festivities. Nothing remained of the town's social amenities but the cindered walk along the cliff edges, and this, except for patches of mud and an absence of strollers, was much the same as usual. Speed and Helen walked vigorously, as people do on the first day of their holidays—grimly determined to extract every atom of nourishment out of the much-advertised air. They climbed the slope of the Beach hill, past the gaunt five-storied basemented boarding-houses, past the yachting club-house, past the marine gardens, past the rows of glass shelters, and then on to the winding cinder-path that rose steeply to the edge of the cliffs. Meanwhile the mist turned to rain and the sea and the sky merged together into one vast grey blur without a horizon.
Then they went back to the Beach Hotel for tea.
Then they read the magazines until dinner-time, and after dinner, more magazines until bedtime.
The next day came the same routine again; walk along the cliffs in the morning; walk along the cliffs in the afternoon; tea; magazines; dinner; magazines; bed. Speed discovered in the hotel a bookcase entirely filled with cheap novels that had been left behind by previous visitors. He read some of them until their small print gave him a headache. Helen revelled in them. In the mornings, by way of a variant from the cliff walk, they took to sitting on the windless side of the municipal shelters, absorbed in the novels. It was melancholy, and yet Speed felt with some satisfaction that he was undoubtedly resting, and that, on the whole, he was enduring it better than he had expected.
Then slowly there grew in him again the thought of Clare. It was as if, as soon as he gained strength at all, that strength should bring with it turmoil and desire, so that the only peace that he could ever hope for was the joyless peace of exhaustion. The sharp sea-salt winds that brought him health and vigour brought him also passion, passion that racked and tortured him into weakness again.
He wished a thousand times that he had not burned Clare's letter. He felt sure that somewhere in it there must have been a touch of verbal ambiguity or subtlety that would have given him some message of hope; he could not believe that she had sent him merely a letter of dismissal. In one sense, he was glad that he had burned the letter, for the impossibility of recovering it made it easier for him to suppose whatever he wished about it. And whatever he wished was really only one wish in the world, a wish of one word: Clare. He wanted her, her company, her voice, her movements around him, the sight of her, her quaint perplexing soul that so fitted in with his own, her baffling mysterious understandings of him that nobody else had ever had at all. He wanted her as a sick man longs for health; as if he had a divine right to her, and as if the withholding of her from him gave him a surging grudge against the world.
One dreary interval between tea at the hotel and dinner he wrote to her. He wrote in a mood in which he cared not if his writing angered her or not; her silence, if she did not reply, would be his answer. And if she did not reply, he vowed solemnly to himself that he would never write to her again, that he would put her out of his life and spend his energies in forgetting her.
He wrote:—
"DEAR CLARE—I destroyed your letter, and I can't quite remember whether it forbade me to reply or not. Anyhow, that's only my excuse for it. I'm having a dreadfully dull time at Seacliffe—we're the only visitors at the hotel and, so far as I can see, the only visitors in Seacliffe at all. I'm not exactly enjoying it, but I daresay it's doing me good. Thanks ever so much for your advice—I mean to profit by it—most of it, at any rate. But mayn't I write to you—even if you don't write to me? I do want to, especially now. May I!—Yours, KENNETH SPEED."
"DEAR CLARE—I destroyed your letter, and I can't quite remember whether it forbade me to reply or not. Anyhow, that's only my excuse for it. I'm having a dreadfully dull time at Seacliffe—we're the only visitors at the hotel and, so far as I can see, the only visitors in Seacliffe at all. I'm not exactly enjoying it, but I daresay it's doing me good. Thanks ever so much for your advice—I mean to profit by it—most of it, at any rate. But mayn't I write to you—even if you don't write to me? I do want to, especially now. May I!—Yours, KENNETH SPEED."
No answer to that. For nearly a week he scanned the rack in the entrance-hall, hoping to see his own name typewritten on an envelope, for he guessed that even if she did reply she would take that precaution. But in vain his hurried and anxious returns from the cliff-walks; no letter was there. And at last, tortured to despair, he wrote again.
"DEAR CLARE—You haven't answered my letter. I did think you would, and now I'm a prey to all sorts of awful and, no doubt, quite ridiculous fears. And I'm going to ask you again, half-believing that you didn't receive my last letter—may I write to you? May I write to you whenever I want? I can't have your company, I know—surely you haven't the heart to deny me the friendship I can get by writing to you? You needn't answer: I promise I will never ask for an answer. I don't care if the letters I write offend you or not; there is only one case in which I should like you to be good enough to reply to me and tell me not to write again. And that is if you were beginning to forget me—if letters from me were beginning to be a bore to you.Please, therefore, let me write.—Yours, KENNETH SPEED."
"DEAR CLARE—You haven't answered my letter. I did think you would, and now I'm a prey to all sorts of awful and, no doubt, quite ridiculous fears. And I'm going to ask you again, half-believing that you didn't receive my last letter—may I write to you? May I write to you whenever I want? I can't have your company, I know—surely you haven't the heart to deny me the friendship I can get by writing to you? You needn't answer: I promise I will never ask for an answer. I don't care if the letters I write offend you or not; there is only one case in which I should like you to be good enough to reply to me and tell me not to write again. And that is if you were beginning to forget me—if letters from me were beginning to be a bore to you.Please, therefore, let me write.—Yours, KENNETH SPEED."
To that there came a reply by return of post:
"MY DEAR KENNETH SPEED,—I think correspondence between us is both unwise and unnecessary, but I don't see how I can prevent you from writing if you wish to. And you need not fear that I shall forget you.—CLARE."
"MY DEAR KENNETH SPEED,—I think correspondence between us is both unwise and unnecessary, but I don't see how I can prevent you from writing if you wish to. And you need not fear that I shall forget you.—CLARE."
He replied, immediately, and with his soul tingling with the renewal of happiness:
"DEAR CLARE,—Thank God you can't stop me from writing, and thank God you know you can't. I don't feel unhappy now that I can write to you, now that I know you will read what I write. I feel so unreticent where you are concerned—I want you tounderstand, and I don't really care, when you have understood, whether you condemn or not. This is going (perhaps) to be a longish letter; I'm alone in the lounge of this entirely God-forsaken hotel—Helen is putting on a frock for dinner, and I've got a quarter-of-an-hour for you."This is what I've found out since I've come to Seacliffe. I've found out the true position of you and me. You've sunk far deeper into my soul than I have ever guessed, and I don't honestly know how on earth I'm to get rid of you! For the last ten days I've been fighting hard to drive you away, but I'm afraid I've been defeated. You're there still, securely entrenched as ever, and you simply won't budge. The only times I don't think of you are the times when I'm too utterly tired out to think of anything or anybody. Worse still, the stronger I get the more I want you. Why can't I stop it? You yourself said during our memorable interview after the 'rag' that it wasn't a bit of good trying to stop loving somebody. Soyouknow, as well as me—am I to conclude that, you Hound of Heaven?"But you can't get rid of me, I hope, any more than I can of you. You may go to the uttermost ends of the earth, but it won't matter. I shall still have you, I shall always bore you—in fact, I've got you now, haven't I? Don't we belong to each other in spite of ourselves?"I tell you, I've tried to drive you out of my mind. And I really think I might succeed better if I didn't try. Therefore, I shan't try any more. How can you deliberately try to forget anybody? The mere deliberation of the effort rivets them more and more eternally on your memory!"Helen and I are getting on moderately well. We don't quarrel. We exchange remarks about the weather, and we discuss trashy novels which we both have read, and we take long and uninteresting walks along the cliffs and admire the same views, over and over again. Helen thinks the rest must be doing me a lot of good. Oh my dear, dear Clare, am I wicked because I sit down here and write to you these pleading, treacherous letters, while my wife dresses herself upstairs without a thought that I am so engaged? Am I really full of sin? I know if I put my case before ninety-nine out of a hundred men and women what answer I should receive. But are you the hundredth? I don't care if you are or not; if this is wickedness, I clasp it as dearly as if it were not. I just can't help it. I lie awake at nights trying to think nice, husbandly things about Helen, and just when I think I've got really interested in her I find it's you I've really been thinking about and not Helen at all."There must be some wonderful and curious bond between us, some sort of invisible elastic. It wouldn't ever break, no matter how far apart we went, but when it's stretched it hurts, hurts us both, I hope, equally. Is it really courage to go on hurting ourselves like this? What is the good of it? Supposing—I only say supposing—supposing we let go, let the elastic slacken, followed our heart's desire, what then? Who would suffer? Helen, I suppose. Poor Helen!—I mustn't let her suffer like that, must I?"It wasn't real love that I ever had for her; it was just mere physical infatuation. And now that's gone, all that's left is just dreadful pity—oh, pity that will not let me go! And yet what good is pity—the sort of pity that I have for her?"Ever since I first knew you, you have been creeping into my heart ever so slowly and steadily, and I, because I never guessed what was happening, have yielded myself to you utterly. In fact, I am a man possessed by a devil—a good little devil—yet—"
"DEAR CLARE,—Thank God you can't stop me from writing, and thank God you know you can't. I don't feel unhappy now that I can write to you, now that I know you will read what I write. I feel so unreticent where you are concerned—I want you tounderstand, and I don't really care, when you have understood, whether you condemn or not. This is going (perhaps) to be a longish letter; I'm alone in the lounge of this entirely God-forsaken hotel—Helen is putting on a frock for dinner, and I've got a quarter-of-an-hour for you.
"This is what I've found out since I've come to Seacliffe. I've found out the true position of you and me. You've sunk far deeper into my soul than I have ever guessed, and I don't honestly know how on earth I'm to get rid of you! For the last ten days I've been fighting hard to drive you away, but I'm afraid I've been defeated. You're there still, securely entrenched as ever, and you simply won't budge. The only times I don't think of you are the times when I'm too utterly tired out to think of anything or anybody. Worse still, the stronger I get the more I want you. Why can't I stop it? You yourself said during our memorable interview after the 'rag' that it wasn't a bit of good trying to stop loving somebody. Soyouknow, as well as me—am I to conclude that, you Hound of Heaven?
"But you can't get rid of me, I hope, any more than I can of you. You may go to the uttermost ends of the earth, but it won't matter. I shall still have you, I shall always bore you—in fact, I've got you now, haven't I? Don't we belong to each other in spite of ourselves?
"I tell you, I've tried to drive you out of my mind. And I really think I might succeed better if I didn't try. Therefore, I shan't try any more. How can you deliberately try to forget anybody? The mere deliberation of the effort rivets them more and more eternally on your memory!
"Helen and I are getting on moderately well. We don't quarrel. We exchange remarks about the weather, and we discuss trashy novels which we both have read, and we take long and uninteresting walks along the cliffs and admire the same views, over and over again. Helen thinks the rest must be doing me a lot of good. Oh my dear, dear Clare, am I wicked because I sit down here and write to you these pleading, treacherous letters, while my wife dresses herself upstairs without a thought that I am so engaged? Am I really full of sin? I know if I put my case before ninety-nine out of a hundred men and women what answer I should receive. But are you the hundredth? I don't care if you are or not; if this is wickedness, I clasp it as dearly as if it were not. I just can't help it. I lie awake at nights trying to think nice, husbandly things about Helen, and just when I think I've got really interested in her I find it's you I've really been thinking about and not Helen at all.
"There must be some wonderful and curious bond between us, some sort of invisible elastic. It wouldn't ever break, no matter how far apart we went, but when it's stretched it hurts, hurts us both, I hope, equally. Is it really courage to go on hurting ourselves like this? What is the good of it? Supposing—I only say supposing—supposing we let go, let the elastic slacken, followed our heart's desire, what then? Who would suffer? Helen, I suppose. Poor Helen!—I mustn't let her suffer like that, must I?
"It wasn't real love that I ever had for her; it was just mere physical infatuation. And now that's gone, all that's left is just dreadful pity—oh, pity that will not let me go! And yet what good is pity—the sort of pity that I have for her?
"Ever since I first knew you, you have been creeping into my heart ever so slowly and steadily, and I, because I never guessed what was happening, have yielded myself to you utterly. In fact, I am a man possessed by a devil—a good little devil—yet—"
He looked round and saw Helen standing by the side of him. He had not heard her approach. She might have been there some while, he reflected. Had she been looking over his shoulder? Did she know to whom was the letter he was writing?
He started, and instinctively covered as much of the writing as he could with the sleeve of his jacket.
"I didn't know you still wrote to Clare," she said, quietly.
"Who said I did?" he parried, with instant truculence.
"You're writing to her now."
"How do you know?"
"Never mind how I know. Answer me: you are, aren't you?"
"I refuse to answer such a question. Surely I haven't to tell you of every letter I write. If you've been spying over my shoulder it's your own fault. How would you like me to read all the letters you write?"
"I wouldn't mind in the least, Kenneth, if I thought you didn't trust me."
"Well, I do trust you, you see, and even if I didn't I shouldn't attempt such an unheard—of liberty. And if you can't trust me without censoring my correspondence, I'm afraid you'll have to go on mistrusting me."
"I don't want to censor your correspondence. I only want you to answer me a straight question: is that a letter to Clare that you're writing?"
"It's a most improper question, and I refuse to answer it."
"Very well.... I think it's time for dinner; hadn't you better finish the letter afterwards? Unless of course, it's very important."
During dinner she said: "I don't feel like staying in from now until bedtime. You'll want to finish your letter, of course, so I think, if you don't mind, I'll go to the local kinema."
"You can't go alone, can you?"
"There's nobody can very easily stop me, is there? You don't want to come with me, I suppose?"
"I'm afraid I don't care for kinemas much? Isn't there a theatre somewhere?"
"No. Only a kinema. I looked in theSeacliffe Gazette. In the summer there are Pierrots on the sands, of course."
"So you want to go alone to the kinema?"
"Yes."
"All right. But I'll meet you when it's over. Half-past ten, I suppose?"
"Probably about then. You don't mind me leaving you for a few hours, do you?"
"Oh, not at all. I hope you have a good time. I'm sure I can quite understand you being bored with Seacliffe. It's the deadest hole I've ever struck."
"But it's doing you good, isn't it?"
"Oh, yes, I daresay it is inthatway."
She added, after a pause: "When you get back to the lounge you'll wonder where you put your half-written letter."
"What do you mean?" He suddenly felt in his inside coat-pocket. "Why—where is it? I thought I put it in my pocket. Who's got it? Haveyou?"
"Yes. You thought you put it in your pocket, I know. But you didn't. You left it on the writing table and I picked it up when you weren't looking."
"Then youhavegot it?"
"Yes, I have got it."
He went red with rage. "Helen, I don't want to make a scene in front of the servants, but I insist on you giving up to me that letter. You've absolutely no right to it, and I demand that you give it me immediately."
"You shall have it after I've read it."
"Good God, Helen, don't play the fool with me! I want it now, this minute! Understand, I mean it! I want it now!"
"And I shan't give it to you."
He suddenly looked round the room. There was nobody there; the waitress was away; the two of them were quite alone. He rose out of his chair and with a second cautious glance round him went over to her and seized her by the neck with one hand while with the other he felt in her corsage for the letter. He knew that was where she would have put it. The very surprise of his movement made it successful. In another moment he had the letter in his hand. He stood above her, grim and angry, flaunting the letter high above her head. She made an upward spring for his hand, and he, startled by her quick retaliation, crumpled the letter into a heap and flung it into the fire at the side of the room. Then they both stared at each other in silence.
"So it's come to that," she said, her face very white. She placed her hand to her breast and said: "By the way, you've hurt me."
He replied: "I'm sorry if I hurt you. I didn't intend to. I simply wanted to get the letter, that's all."
"All right," she answered. "I'll excuse you for hurting me."
Then the waitress entered with the sweet and their conversation was abruptly interrupted.
After dinner he went back into the lounge and took up an illustrated paper. Somehow, he did not feel inclined to try to rewrite the letter to Clare. And in any case, he could not have remembered more than bits of it; it would have to be a fresh letter if he wrote at all.
Helen came downstairs to him with hat and coat on ready for outdoors.
"Good-bye," she said, "I'm going."
He said: "Hadn't I better take you down to the place? I don't mind a bit of a walk, you know."
She answered: "Oh, no, don't bother. It's not far. You get on with your letter-writing."
Then she paused almost at the door of the lounge, and said, coming back to him suddenly: "Kiss me before I go, Kenneth."
He kissed her. Then she smiled and went out.
An hour later he started another letter to Clare.
"MY DEAR,dearCLARE,—I'm so pleased it has not all come to an end! ... All those hours we spent together, all the work we have shared, all our joy and laughter and sympathy together—it could not have counted for nothing, could it? We dare not have put an end to it; we should fear being haunted all our lives. We ..."
"MY DEAR,dearCLARE,—I'm so pleased it has not all come to an end! ... All those hours we spent together, all the work we have shared, all our joy and laughter and sympathy together—it could not have counted for nothing, could it? We dare not have put an end to it; we should fear being haunted all our lives. We ..."
Then the tired feeling came on him, and he no longer wanted to write, not even to Clare. He put the hardly-begun letter in his pocket—carefully, this time—and took up the illustrated paper again. He half wished he had gone with Helen to the kinema.... A quarter to ten.... It would soon be time for him to stroll out and meet her.
Walking along the promenade to the beach kinema he solemnly reviewed his life. He saw kaleidoscopically his childhood days at Beachings Over, then the interludes at Harrow and Cambridge, and then the sudden tremendous plunge—Millstead! It seemed to him that ever since that glowering April afternoon when he had first stepped into Ervine's dark study, events had been shaping themselves relentlessly to his ruin. He could see himself as a mere automaton, moved upon by the calm accurate fingers of fate. His meeting with Helen, his love of her and hers for him, their marriage, their slow infinitely wearisome estrangement—all seemed as if it had been planned with sinister deliberation. Only one section of his life had been dominated by his own free will, and that was the part of it that had to do with Clare. He pondered over the subtle differentiation, and decided at last that it was invalid, and that fate had operated at least as much with Clare as with Helen. And yet, for all that, the distinction remained in his mind. His life with Helen seemed to press him down, to cramp him in a narrow groove, to deprive him of all self-determination; it was only when he came to Clare that he was free again and could do as he liked. Surely it was he himself, and not fate, that drew him joyously to Clare.
The mist that had hovered over Seacliffe all day was now magically lifted, and out of a clear sky there shone a moon with the slightest of yellow haloes encircling it. The promenade was nearly deserted, and in all the tall cliff of boarding-houses along the Marine Parade there was hardly a window with a light in it. The solitary redness of the lamp on the end of the pier sent a soft shimmer over the intervening water; the sea, at almost high tide, was quite calm. Hardly a murmur of the waves reached his ears as he strolled briskly along, but that was because they were right up against the stone wall of the promenade and had no beach of pebbles to be noisy with. He leaned over the railings and saw the water immediately beneath him, silvered in moonlight. Seacliffe was beautiful now.... Then he looked ahead and saw the garish illuminations of the solitary picture-palace that Seacliffe possessed, and he wondered how Helen or anybody could prefer a kinema entertainment to the glory of the night outside. And yet, he reflected, the glory of the night was a subjective business; it required a certain mood; whereas the kinema created its own mood, asking and requiring nothing. Poor Helen!
Why should pity for her have overwhelmed him suddenly at that moment? He did not love her, not the least fraction; yet he would have died for her if such had need to be. If she were in danger he would not stay to think; he would risk life or limb for her sake without a premonitory thought. He almost longed for the opportunity to sacrifice himself for her in some such way. He felt he owed it to her. But there was one sacrifice that wastoohard—he could not live with her in contentment, giving up Clare. He knew he couldn't. He saw quite clearly in the future the day when he would leave Helen and go to Clare. Not fate this time, but the hungering desire of his heart, that would not let him rest.
And yet, was not this same desire fate itself, his own fate, leading him on and further to some inevitable end? Only that he did not fear it. He opened wide his arms, welcoming it, longing for and therefore unconscious of its domination.
He stood in front of the gilded dinginess of the picture-place, pondering on his destiny, when there came up to him a shabby little man in a long tattered overcoat, who asked him for a light. Speed, who was so anxious not to be a snob that he usually gave to strangers the impression of being one, proffered a box of matches and smiled. But for the life of him he could not think of anything to say. He felt he ought to say something, lest the other fellow might think him surly; he racked his brain for some appropriate remark and eventually said: "Nice night." The other lit the stump of a cigarette contemplatively and replied: "Yes. Nice night.... Thanks.... Waiting for somebody?"
"Yes," replied Speed, rather curtly. He had no desire to continue the conversation, still less to discuss his own affairs.
"Rotten hole, Seacliffe, in winter," resumed the stranger, showing no sign of moving on.
"Yes," agreed Speed.
"Nothing to do—nowhere to go—absolutely the deadest place on God's earth. I live here and I know. Every night I take a stroll about this time and to-night's bin the first night this year I've ever seen anything happen at all."
"Indeed?"
The stranger ignored the obvious boredness of Speed's voice, and continued: "Yes. That's the truth. But it happened all right to-night. Quite exciting, in fact."
He looked at Speed to see if his interest was in any way aroused. Such being not yet so he remarked again: "Yes, quite exciting." He paused and added:
"Bit gruesome perhaps—to some folks."
Speed said, forcing himself to be interested:
"Why, what was it?"
And the other, triumphant that he had secured an attentive audience at last, replied: "Body found. Pulled up off the breakwater.... Drowned, of course."
Even now Speed was only casually interested.
"Really? And who was it?"
"Don't know the name.... A woman's body."
"Nobody identified her yet?"
"Not yet. They say she's not a Seacliffe woman.... Seethere!" He pointed back along the promenade towards a spot where, not half an hour ago, Speed had leaned over the railings to see the moonlight on the sea. "Can you see the crowd standing about? That's where they dragged her in. Only about ten minutes ago as I was passin'. Very high tide, you know, washes all sorts of things up.... I didn't stay long—bit too gruesome for me."
"Yes," agreed Speed. "And for me too.... By the way d'you happen to know when this picture house shuts up?"
"About half-past ten, mostly."
"Thanks."
"Well—I'll be gettin' along.... Much obliged for the light.... Good-night...."
"Good-night," said Speed.
A few minutes later the crowd began to tumble out of the kinema. He stood in the darkness against a blank wall, where he could see without being seen. He wondered whether he had not better take Helen home through the town instead of along the promenade. It was a longer way, of course, but it would avoid the unpleasant affair that the stranger had mentioned to him. He neither wished to see himself nor wished Helen to see anything of the sort.
Curious that she was so late? The kinema must be almost empty now; the stream of people had stopped. He saw the manager going to the box-office to lock up. "Have they all come out?" he asked, emerging into the rays of the electric lights. "Yes, everybody," answered the other. He even glanced at Speed suspiciously, as if he wondered why he should be waiting for somebody who obviously hadn't been to the kinema at all.
Well.... Speed stood in a sheltered alcove and lit a cigarette. He had better get back to the Beach Hotel, anyway. Perhaps Helen hadn't gone to the picture-show after all. Or, perhaps, she had come out before the end and they had missed each other. Perhaps anything.... Anything! ...
Then suddenly the awful thought occurred to him. At first it was fantastic; he walked along, sampling it in a horrified fashion, yet refusing to be in the least perturbed by it. Then it gained ground upon him, made him hasten his steps, throw away his cigarette, and finally run madly along the echoing promenade to the curious little silent crowd that had gathered there, about half-way to the pier entrance. He scampered along the smooth asphalt just like a boisterous youngster, yet in his eyes was wild brain-maddening fear.
Ten minutes later he knew. They pointed to a gap in the railings close by, made some while before by a lorry that had run out of control along the Marine Parade. The Urban District Council ought to have repaired the railings immediately after the accident, and he (somebody in the crowd) would not be surprised if the coroner censured the Council pretty severely at the inquest. The gap was a positive death-trap for anybody walking along at night and not looking carefully ahead. Andhe(somebody else in the crowd) suggested the possibility of making the Seacliffe Urban District Council pay heavy damages.... Of course, it was an accident.... There was a bad bruise on the head: that was where she must have struck the stones as she fell.... And in one of the pockets was a torn kinema ticket; clearly she had been on her way home from the Beach kinema.... Once again, it was the Council's fault for not promptly repairing the dangerous gap in the railings.
They led him back to the Beach Hotel and gave him brandy. He kept saying: "Now please go—I'm quite all right.... There's really nothing that anybody can do for me.... Please go now...."
When at last he was alone in the cheerless hotel bedroom he sat down on the side of the bed and cried. Not for sorrow or pity or terror, but merely to relieve some fearful strain of emotion that was in him. Helen dead! He could hardly force himself to believe it, but when he did he felt sorry, achingly sorry, because there had been so many bonds between them, so many bonds that only death could have snapped. He saw her now, poor little woman, as he had never seen her before; the love in her still living, and all that had made them unhappy together vanished away. He loved her, those minutes in the empty, cheerless bedroom, more calmly than he had ever loved her when she had been near to him. And—strange miracle!—she had given him peace at last. Pity for her no longer overwhelmed him with its sickly torture; he was calm, calm with sorrow, but calm.
Then, slowly, grimly, as to some fixed and inevitable thing, his torture returned. He tried to persuade himself that the worst was over, that tragedy had spent its terrible utmost; but even the sad calm of desperation was nowhere to be found. He paced up and down the bedroom long and wearisomely; shortly after midnight the solitary gas-jet faltered and flickered and finally abandoned itself with a forlorn pop. "Cursethe place!" he muttered, acutely nervous in the sudden gloom; then for some moments he meditated a sarcastic protest to the hotel-proprietress in the morning. "I am aware," he would begin, tartly, "that the attractions of Seacliffe in the evenings are not such as would often tempt the visitor to keep up until the small hours; but don't you think that is an argumentagainstrather thanforturning off the gas-supply at midnight?" Rather ponderous, though; probably the woman wouldn't know what he meant. He might write a letter to theSeacliffe Gazetteabout it, anyway. "Oh,damnthem!" he exclaimed, with sudden fervour, as he searched for the candle on the dressing-table. Unfortunately he possessed no matches, and the candlestick, when at last his groping had discovered it, contained none, either. It was so infernally dark and silent; everybody in the place was in bed except himself. He pictured the maids, sleeping cosily in the top attics, or perhaps chattering together in whispers about clothes or their love-affairs or Seacliffe gossip or—why, of course!—abouthim. They would surely be talking about him. Such a tit-bit of gossip! Everyone in Seacliffe would be full of the tragedy of the young fellow whose wife, less than a year married, had fallen accidentally into the sea off the promenade! He, not she, would be the figure of high tragedy in their minds, and on the morrow they would all stare at him morbidly, curiously.... Good God in Heaven! Could he endure it? ... Lightly the moonlight filtered through the Venetian blinds on to the garish linoleum pattern; and when the blinds were stirred by the breeze the light skipped along the floor like moving swords; he could not endure that, anyway. He went to the windows and drew up the blinds, one after the other. They would hear that, he reflected, if they were awake; they would know he was not asleep.
Then he remembered her as he had seen her less than a twelvemonth before; standing knee-deep in the grasses by the river-bank at Parminters. Everywhere that he had loved her was so clear now in his mind, and everywhere else was so unreal and dim. He heard the tinkle of the Head's piano and saw her puzzling intently over some easy Chopin mazurka, her golden hair flame-like in the sunlight of the afternoon. He saw the paths and fields of Millstead, all radiant where she and he had been, and the moonlight lapping the pavilion steps, where, first of all, he had touched her lips with his. And then—only with an effort could he picture this—he saw the grim room downstairs, where she lay all wet and bedraggled, those cheeks that he had kissed ice-cold and salt with the sea. The moon, emerging fully from behind a mist, plunged him suddenly in white light; at that moment it seemed to him that he was living in some ugly nightmare, and that shortly he would wake from it and find all the tragedy untrue. Helen was alive and well: he could only have imagined her dead. And downstairs, in that sitting-room—it had been no more than a dream, fearful and—thank God—false. Helen was away, somewhere, perfectly well and happy—somewhere. And downstairs, in that sitting-room ... Anyhow, he would go down and see, to convince himself. He unlocked the bedroom door and tiptoed out on to the landing. He saw the moon's rays caught phosphorescently on a fish in a glass case. Down the two flights of stairs he descended with caution, and then, at the foot, strove to recollect which was the room. He saw two doors, with something written on them. One was the bar-parlour, he thought, where the worthies of Seacliffe congregated nightly. He turned the handle and saw the glistening brass of the beer-engines. Then the other door, might be? He tried the handle, but the door was locked. Somehow this infuriated him. "They lock the doors and turn off the gas!" he cried, vehemently, uniting his complaints. Then suddenly he caught sight of another door in the wall opposite, a door on which there was no writing at all. He had an instant conviction that this must bethedoor. He strode to it, menacingly, took hold of its handle in a firm grasp, and pushed. Locked again! This time he could not endure the fury that raged within him. "Good God!" he cried, shouting at the top of his voice, "I'll burst every door in the place in!" He beat on the panels with his fists, shouting and screaming the whole while....
Ten minutes later the hotel-porter and the bar man, clad in trousers and shirt only, were holding his arms on either side, and the proprietress, swathed in a pink dressing-gown, was standing a little way off, staring at him curiously. And he was complaining to her about the turning off of the gas at midnight. "One really has a right to expect something more generous from the best hotel in Seacliffe," he was saying, with an argumentative mildness that surprised himself. "It is not as though this were a sixpenny doss-house. It is an A.A. listed hotel, and I consider it absolutely scandalous that ..."
Strangely, when he was back again and alone in his own bedroom, he felt different. His gas-jet was burning again, evidently as a result of his protest; the victory gave him a curious, childish pleasure. Nor did his burdens weigh so heavily on him; indeed, he felt even peaceful enough to try to sleep. He undressed and got into bed.
And then, slowly, secretly, dreadfully, he discovered that he was thinking about Clare! It frightened him—this way she crept into his thoughts as pain comes after the numbness of a blow. He knew he ought not to think of her. He ought to put her out of his mind, at any rate, for the present. Helen dead this little while, and already Clare in his thoughts! The realisation appalled him, terrified him by affording him a glimpse into the depths of his own dark soul. And yet—he could not help it. Was he to be blamed for the thoughts that he could not drive out of his mind? He prayed urgently and passionately for sleep, that he might rid himself of the lurking, lurking image of her. But even in sleep he feared he might dream of her.
Oh, Clare, Clare, would she ever come to him now, now that he was alone and Helen was dead? God, the awfulness of the question! Yet he could not put it away from him; he could but deceive himself, might be, into thinking he was not asking it. He wanted Clare. Not more than ever—only as much as he had always wanted her.
He wondered solemnly if the stuff in him were rotten; if he were proven vile and debased because he wanted her; if he were cancelling his soul by thinking of her so soon. And yet—God help him; even if all that were so,he could not help it. If he were to be damned eternally for thinking about Clare, then let him be damned eternally. Actions he might control, but never the strains and cravings of his own mind. If he were wrong, therefore, let him be wrong.
He wondered whether, when he fell asleep, he would dream about Helen or about Clare. And yet, when at last his very tiredness made him close his eyes, he dreamed of neither of them, but slept in perfect calm, as a child that has been forgiven.
In the morning they brought his breakfast up to him in bed, and with it a letter and a telegram. The chambermaid asked him dubiously if he were feeling better and he replied: "Oh yes, much better, thanks." Only vaguely could he remember what had taken place during the night.
When the girl had gone and he had glanced at the handwriting on the envelope, he had a sudden paralysing shock, for it was Helen's!
The postmark was: "Seacliffe, 10.10 p.m."
He tore open the envelope with slow and awful dread, and took out a single sheet of Beach Hotel notepaper. Scribbled on it in pencil was just:
"DEAR KENNETH" ("Dear" underlined),—Good-bye, darling. I can't bear you not to be happy. Forget me and don't worry. They will think it has been an accident, and you mustn't tell them anything else. Leave Millstead and take Clare away. Be happy with her.—Yours, HELEN."—"P.S.—There's one thing I'm sorry for. On the last night before we left Millstead I said something about Clare and Pritchard. Darling, it was a lie—I made it up because I couldn't bear you to love Clare so much. I don't mind now. Forgive me."
"DEAR KENNETH" ("Dear" underlined),—Good-bye, darling. I can't bear you not to be happy. Forget me and don't worry. They will think it has been an accident, and you mustn't tell them anything else. Leave Millstead and take Clare away. Be happy with her.—Yours, HELEN."—
"P.S.—There's one thing I'm sorry for. On the last night before we left Millstead I said something about Clare and Pritchard. Darling, it was a lie—I made it up because I couldn't bear you to love Clare so much. I don't mind now. Forgive me."
A moment later he was opening the telegram and reading: "Shall arrive Seacliffe Station one fifteen meet me Clare."
It had been despatched from Millstead at nine-five that morning, evidently as soon as the post office opened.
He ate no breakfast. It was a quarter past eleven and the sun was streaming in through the window—the first spring day of the year. He re-read the letter.
Strange that until then the thought that the catastrophe could have been anything at all but accidental had never even remotely occurred to him! Now it came as a terrible revelation, hardly to be believed, even with proof; a revelation of that utmost misery that had driven her to the sea. He had known that she was not happy, but he had never guessed that she might be miserable to death.
And what escape was there now from his own overwhelming guilt? She had killed herself because he had not made her happy. Or else because she had not been able to make him happy. Whichever it was, he was fearfully to blame. She had killed herself to make room for that other woman who had taken all the joy out of her life.
And at one-fifteen that other woman would arrive in Seacliffe.
In the darkest depths of his remorse he vowed that he would not meet her, see her, or hold any communication with her ever again, so long as his life lasted. He would hate her eternally, for Helen's sake. He would dedicate his life to the annihilation of her in his mind. Why was she coming? Did she know? Howcouldshe know? He raved at her mentally, trying to involve her in some share of his own deep treachery, for even the companionship of guilt was at least companionship. The two of them—Clare and himself—had murdered Helen. The two of them—together.Together. There was black magic in the intimacy that that word implied—magic in the guilty secret that was between them, in the passionate iniquity that was alluring even in its baseness!
He dressed hurriedly, and with his mind in a ferment, forgot his breakfast till it was cold and then found it too unpalatable to eat. As he descended the stairs and came into the hotel lobby he remarked to the proprietress: "Oh, by the way, I must apologise for making a row last night. Fact is, my nerves, you know.... Rather upset...."
"Quite all right, Mr. Speed. I'm sure we all understand and sympathise with you. If there's any way we can help you, you know.... Shall you be in to lunch?"
"Lunch? Oh yes—er—I mean, no. No, I don't think I shall—not to-day. You see there are—er—arrangements to make—er—arrangements, you know ..."
He smiled, and with carefully simulated nonchalance, commenced to light a cigarette! When he got outside the hotel he decided that it was absolutely the wrong thing to have done. He flung the cigarette into the gutter. What was the matter with him? Something,—something that made him, out of very fear, do ridiculous and inappropriate things. The same instinct, no doubt, that always made him talk loudly when he was nervous. And then he remembered that April morning of the year before, when he had first of all entered the Headmaster's study at Millstead; for then, through nervousness, he had spoken loudly, almost aggressively, to disguise his embarrassment. What a curious creature he was, and how curious people must think him.