He strolled round the town, bought a morning paper at the news agent's, and pretended to be interested in the contents. Over him like a sultry shadow lay the disagreeable paraphernalia of the immediate future: doctors, coroner, inquest, lawyers, interviews with Doctor and Mrs. Ervine, and so on. It had all to be gone through, but for the present he would try to forget it. The turmoil of his own mind, that battle which was being waged within his inmost self, that strife which no coroner would guess, those secrets which no inquest would or could elicit; these were the things of greater import. In the High Street, leading up from the Pierhead, he saw half a dozen stalwart navvies swinging sledge-hammers into the concrete road-bed. He stopped, ostensibly to wait for a tram, but really to watch them. He envied them, passionately; envied their strength and animal simplicity; envied above all their lack of education and ignorance of themselves, their happy blindness along the path of life. He wished he could forget such things as Art and Culture and Education, and could become as they, or as he imagined them to be. Their lives were brimful ofrealthings, things to be held and touched—hammers and levers and slabs of concrete. With all their crude joy and all their pain, simple and physical, their souls grew strong and stark. He envied them with a passion that made him desist at last from the sight of them, because it hurt.
The town-hall clock began the hour of noon, and that reminded him of Clare, and of the overwhelming fact that she was at that moment in the train hastening to Seacliffe. Was he thinking of her again? He went into a café and ordered in desperation a pot of China tea and some bread and butter, as if the mere routine of a meal would rid his mind of her. For desire was with him still, nor could he stave it off. Nothing that he could ever discover, however ugly or terrible, could stop the craving of him for Clare. The things that they had begun together, he and she, had no ending in this world. And suddenly all sense of free-will left him, and he felt himself propelled at a mighty rate towards her, wherever she might be; fate, surely, guiding him to her, but this time, a fate that was urging him from within, not pressing him from without. And he knew, secretly, whatever indignant protests he might make to himself about it, that when the 1:15 train entered Seacliffe station he would be waiting there on the platform for her. The thing was inevitable, like death.
But inevitability did not spare him torment. And at last his remorse insisted upon a compromise. He would meet Clare, he decided, but when he had met her, he would proceed to torture her, subtly, shrewdly—seeking vengeance for the tragedy that she had brought to his life, and the spell that she had cast upon his soul. He would be the Grand Inquisitor.
He was very white and haggard when the time came. He had reached the station as early as one o'clock, and for a quarter of an hour had lounged about the deserted platforms. Meanwhile the sun shone gloriously, and the train as it ran into the station caught the sunlight on its windows. The sight of the long line of coaches, curving into the station like a flaming sword into its scabbard, gave him a mighty heart-rending thrill. Yes, yes—he would torture her.... His eyes glinted with diabolical exhilaration, and a touch of hectic colour crept into his wan cheeks. He watched her alight from a third-class compartment near the rear of the train. Then he lost her momentarily amidst the emptying crowd. He walked briskly against the stream of the throng, with a heart that beat fast with unutterable expectations.
But how he loved her as he saw her coming towards him!—though he tried with all his might to kindle hate in his heart. She smiled and held out her tiny hand. He took it with a limpness that was to begin his torture of her. She was to notice that limpness.
"How is Helen?" was her first remark.
Amidst the bustle of the luggage round the guard's van he replied quietly: "Helen? Oh, she's all right. I didn't tell her you were coming."
"You were wise," she answered.
A faint thrill of anticipation crept over him; this diabolical game was interesting, fascinating, in its way; and would lead her very securely into a number of traps. And why, he thought, did she think it was wise of him not to have told Helen?
In the station-yard she suddenly stopped to consult a time-table hoarding.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"I'm looking for the next train back to Millstead."
"Not thenext, surely?"
"Why not? What do you think I've come for?"
"I don't know in the least. Whathaveyou come for?"
She looked at him appealingly. He saw, with keen and instant relish, that she had already noticed something of hostility in his attitude towards her. The torture had begun. For the first time, she was subject to his power and not he to hers.
"I've come for a few minutes' conversation," she answered, quietly. "And the next train back is at 3:18."
"You mean to travel by that?"
"Yes."
"Then we needn't stay in the station till then, need we? Let's walk somewhere. We've two whole hours—time enough to get right out of the town and back again. I hate conversations in railway-stations."
But his chief reason was a desire to secure the right scenic background for his torture of her.
"All right," she answered, and looked at him again appealingly. The tears almost welled into his own eyes because of the deep sadness that was in hers. How quick she was to feel his harshness!—he thought. How marvellously sensitive was that little soul of hers to the subtlest gradations of his own mood! What fiendish torture he could put her to, by no more, might be, than the merest upraising of an eyebrow, the faintest change of the voice, the slightest tightening of the lips! She was of mercury, like himself; responsive to every touch of the emotional atmosphere. And was not that the reason why she understood him with such wonderful instinctive intimacy,—was not that the reason why the two of them, out of the whole world, would have sought each other like twin magnets?
He led her, in silence, through the litter of mean streets near the station, and thence, beyond the edge of the town, towards the meadows that sloped to the sea. So far it had been a perfect day, but now the sun was half-quenching itself in a fringe of mist that lay along the horizon; and with the change there came a sudden pink light that lit both their faces and shone behind them on the tawdry newness of the town, giving it for once a touch of pitiful loveliness. He took her into a rolling meadow that tapered down into a coppice, and as they reached the trees the last shaft of sunlight died from the sky. Then they plunged into the grey depths, with all the freshly-budded leaves brushing against their faces, and the very earth, so it seemed, murmuring at their approach. Already there was the hint of rain in the air.
"It's a long way to come for a few minutes' conversation," he began.
She answered, ignoring his remark: "I had a letter from Helen this morning."
"What!" he exclaimed in sharp fear. He went suddenly white.
"A letter," she went on, broodingly. "Would you like to see it?"
He stared at her and replied: "I would rather hear from you what it was about."
He saw her brown eyes looking up curiously into his, and he had the instant feeling that she would cry if he persisted in his torture of her. The silence of that walk from the station had unnerved her, had made her frightened of him. That was what he had intended. And she did not know yet—did not know what he knew. Poor girl—what a blow was in waiting for her! But he must not let it fall for a little while.
She bit her lip and said: "Very well. It was about you. She was unhappy about you. Dreadfully unhappy. She said she was going to leave you. She also said—that she was going to leave you—to—to me."
Her voice trembled on that final word.
"Well?"
She recovered herself to continue with more energy: "And I've come here to tell you this—that if she does leave you, I shan't have you. That's all."
"You are making large assumptions."
"I know. And I don't mind your sarcasm, though I don't think any more of you for using it.... I repeat what I said—if Helen leaves you or if you leave Helen, I shall have nothing more to do with you."
"It is certainly kind of you to warn me in time."
"You've never given Helen a fair trial. I know you and she are ill-matched. I know you oughtn't to have married her at all, but that doesn't matter—you've done it, and you've got to be fair to her. And if you think that because I've confessed that I love you I'm in your power for you to be cruel to, you're mistaken!" Her voice rose passionately.
He stared at her, admiring the warm flush that came into her cheeks, and all the time pitying her, loving her, agonisingly!
"Understand," she went on, "You've got to look after Helen—you've got to take care of her—watch her—do you know what I mean?"
"No. What do you mean?"
"I mean you must try to make her happy. She's sick and miserable, and, somehow, you must cure her. I came here to see you because I thought I could persuade you to be kind to her. I thought if you loved me at all, you might do it for my sake. Remember I love Helen as well as you. Do you still think I'm hard-hearted and cold? If you knew what goes on inside me, the racking, raging longing—the— No, no—what's the good of talking of that to you? You either understand or else you don't, and if you don't, no words of mine will make you.... But I warn you again, you must cure Helen of her unhappiness. Otherwise, she might try to cure herself—in any way, drastic or not, that occurred to her. Do you know now what I mean?"
"I'm afraid I don't, even yet."
"Well"—her voice became harder—"it's this, if you want plain speaking. Watch her in case she kills herself. She's thinking of it."
He went ashen pale again and said quietly, after a long pause: "How do you know that?"
"Her letter."
"She mentioned it?"
"Yes."
"And that's what you've come to warn me about?"
"Yes. And to persuade you, if I could——"
"Why did you decide that a personal visit was necessary?"
"I shouldn't have cared to tell you all this by letter. And besides, a letter wouldn't have been nearly as quick, would it? You see I only received her letter this morning. After all, the matter's urgent enough. One can easily be too late."
He said, with eyes fixed steadily upon her: "Clare, youaretoo late. She drowned herself last night."
He expected she would cry or break down or do something dramatic that he could at any rate endure. But instead of that, she stared vacantly into the fast-deepening gloom of the coppice, stared infinitely, terribly, without movement or sound. Horror tore nakedly through her eyes like pain, though not a muscle of her face stirred from that fearful, statuesque immobility. Moments passed. Far over the intervening spaces came the faint chiming of the half-hour on the town-hall clock, and fainter still, but ominous-sounding, the swirl of the waves on the distant beach as the wind rose and freshened.
He could not bear that silence and that stillness of hers. It seemed as though it would be eternal. And suddenly he saw that she was really suffering, excruciatingly; and he could not bear it, because he loved her. And then all his plans for torturing her, all his desires for vengeance, all his schemes to make her suffer as he had suffered, all the hate of her that he had manufactured in his heart—all was suddenly gone, like worthless dust scoured by the gale. He perceived that they were one in suffering as in guilt—fate's pathetic flotsam, aching to cling together even in the last despairing drift.
He cried, agonisingly: "Clare! Clare! Oh, for God's sake, don't stare at me like that, Clare! Oh, my darling, my dear darling, I'm sorry—sorry—I'm dead with sorrow! Clare—Clare—be kind to me, Clare—kinder than I have been to you or to Helen! ..."
She said, quietly: "I must get back in time for my train."
"No, no—not yet. Don't go. Don't leave me."
"I must."
"No—no——"
"You know I must. Don't you?"
He became calmer. It was as if she had willed him to become calmer, as if some of the calmness of her was passing over to him. "Clare," he said, eagerly, "Do you think I'mbad—am I—rotten-souled—because of what's happened? Am Idamned, do you think?"
She answered softly: "No. You're not. And you mustn't think you are. Don't I love you? Would I love you if you were rotten? Would you love me ifIwas?"
He replied, gritting his teeth: "I would love you if you were filth itself."
"Ah, would you?" she answered, with wistful pathos in her voice. "But I'm not like that. I love you for what I know you are, for what I know you could be!"
"Could be? Could have been! But Clare, Clare—who's to blame?"
"So many things happen dreadfully in this world and nobody knows who's to blame."
"But not this, Clare.We'reto blame."
"We can be to blame without being—all that you said."
"Can we? Can we? There's another thing. If Helen had—had lived—she would have had a baby in a few months' time...."
He paused, waiting for her reply, but none came. She went very pale. At last she said, with strange unrestfulness: "What can I say? Whatisthere to say? ... Oh, don't let us go mad through thinking of it! Wehavebeen wrong, but have we been as wrong as that? Hasn't there been fate in it? Fate can do the awfullest things.... My dear, dear man, we should go mad if we took all that load of guilt on ourselves! It is too heavy for repentance.... Oh, you're notbad, not inwardly. And neither am I. We've been instruments—puppets——"
"It's good to think so. But is it true?"
"Before God, I think it is.... Think of it all right from the beginning.... Right from the night you met us both at Millstead.... It's easy to blame fate for what we've done, but isn't it just as easy to blame ourselves for the workings of fate?"
She added, uneasily: "Imustgo back. My train. Don't forget the time."
"Can't you wait for the next?"
"Dear, youknowI mustn't. How could I stay? Fate's finished with us now. We've free-will.... Didn't I tell you we weren'tbad? All that's why I can't stay."
They began to walk back to the railway-station. A mist-like rain was beginning to fall, and everything was swathed in grey dampness. They talked together like two age-long friends, partners in distress and suffering; he told her, carefully and undramatically, the story of the night before.
She said to him, from the carriage-window just before the 3:18 steamed out: "I shan't see you again for ever such a long while. I wish—I wish I could stay with you and help you. But I can't.... You know why I can't, don't you?"
"Yes, I know why. We must be brave alone. We must learn, if we can, to call ourselves good again."
"Yes.... Yes.... We must start life anew. No more mistakes. And you must grow back again to what you used to be.... The next few months will be terrible—maddening—for both of us. ButIcan bear them. Do you thinkyoucan—without me? If I thought you couldn't"—her voice took on a sudden wild passion—"if I thought you would break down under the strain, if I thought the fight would crush and kill you, I would stay with you from this moment, and never, never leave you alone! I would—I would—if I thought there was no other way!"
He said, calmly and earnestly: "I can fight it, Clare. I shall not break down. Trust me. And then—some day——"
She interrupted him hurriedly. "I am going abroad very soon. I don't know for how long, but for a long while, certainly. And while I am away I shall not write to you, and you must not write to me, either. Then, when I come back ..."
He looked up into her eyes and smiled.
The guard was blowing his whistle.
"Be brave these next few months," she said again.
"I will," he answered. He added: "I shall go home."
"What? Home, Home to the millionaire soap-boiler?" (A touch of the old half-mocking Clare.)
"Yes. It's my home. They've always been very good to me."
"Of course they have. I'm glad you've realised it."
Then the train began to move. "Good-bye!" she said, holding out her hand.
"Good-bye!" he cried, taking it and clasping it quickly as he walked along the platform with the train. "See you again," he added, almost in a whisper.
She gave him such a smile, with tears streaming down her cheeks, as he would never, never forget.
When he went out again into the station-yard the fine rain was falling mercilessly. He felt miserable, sick with a new as well as an old misery, but stirred by a hope that would never let him go.
Back then to the Beach Hotel, vowing and determining for the future, facing in anticipation the ordeals of the dark days ahead, summoning up courage and fortitude, bracing himself for terror and conflict and desire.... And with it all hoping, hoping ... hoping everlastingly.