The Pursued

by C. S. Forester

  And as the wounded solider on the battlefield, or the man dying from cancer, seems to be suffering all the pain that can be inflicted, and yet at intervals shrieks under new and still more savage stabs, so with Marjorie; the steady current of her pain quickened at intervals, when she thought of Derrick and Anne in some workhouse now, presumably, and of her mother – bitter agony it was. And once, to the steady drumming of the wheels, she thought of George Ely. It seemed to her as if her palms could actually feel the harsh braids of the rope which awaited his neck. She bit her lip and writhed in her seat under the torment. When the train ran into Victoria Station she could hardly stand, could hardly totter to the carriage door. And at the sight of the platform, massed with the midday Saturday crowd, she drew back for a second in fear. That mass of people, her unreasoning instinct suggested, might be waiting for her.

  Victoria Station was full of people, as was to be expected at just after noon on a summer Saturday, a bustling, noisy mob. Marjorie, standing on the platform, waiting for the strength to carry her to the ticket barrier, made an effort to collect herself. She knew quite well what she had to do – or rather she felt she would know if only she could think about it. She tried to tell herself that in those bustling hurrying crowds lay her best chance of evading observation. She tried to hearten herself as her mother would have done.

  But the din of the station drained her of her last strength. She knew that she would be fainting soon, and fainting would mean detection and arrest. The effort necessary to do what she ought, to buy a suitcase, to travel to the suburbs, to find lodgings, was as far beyond her as it would have been for her unaided strength to drag along the train in which she had just travelled. Her will and her wits were as wanting as her strength. She was a feeble little animal moved only by her instincts the moment that effort to rally herself had faded out. Victoria Station meant only one thing to her now – Millicent Dunne and Millicent Dunne’s flat. It was the old association of ideas which guided her, nothing else. Without knowing where she was going she crept through the crowd to the Wilton Road exit from the station. Here was the house, with the front door open. Up the stairs to the second floor. This was the door; she knocked on it, and it was instantly opened by Millicent, still in her coat and hat, just home from the office.

  To Millicent it might have been the landlady knocking, or some neighbour to borrow milk or an egg. She never dreamed that it might be Marjorie. But she stood aside, and Marjorie came in, blind eyed, with slow short steps, to stand stock still in the middle of the room, while Millicent shut the door and, as an afterthought, locked it as well. Then she came to Marjorie.

  ‘Well, Marjorie?’ she said, quietly. ‘Well, my dear?’

  There was nothing else she could say. The tears were rolling down Marjorie’s cheeks, and falling upon her bosom, as she stood with her blind eyes turned to the windows.

  ‘You poor darling!’ said Millicent, moved to intense pity, and she took her into her arms.

  Later Marjorie was sitting in the armchair. There was no doubt that this was Millicent’s bed sitting room – her ‘flat’, as Millicent would say to people who did not know it. The divan with the brown cover against the wall was the bed at night. The window was hung with the curtains which Marjorie had helped to choose, and which had been hemmed on Marjorie’s sewing machine. There was a photograph of Anne as a baby on the mantelpiece. And Millicent was bending over the gas ring which was an adjunct to the gas fire, and chattering as usual.

  ‘It’ll have to be eggs,’ Millicent said. ‘It always has to be eggs. Do you know, when I get my promotion, and have a real flat, I’m never going to eat an egg again. And I shall always cook the things that smell. Onions. Fresh herrings. But if you even think about fresh herrings here Mrs Hardy’s up in two shakes of a lamb’s tail and knocking at the door and saying that the whole house is complaining about the stink. Anyway, it’s eggs this time. Three, altogether, Fried, boiled, poached or scrambled?’

  Marjorie shook her head. She could even smile, now.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she said.

  ‘It’s an awful choice to make,’ said Millicent. ‘Especially when you’ve hesitated before those four possibilities about five times a week for six years. Come on, give it a name. Choose and save me the trouble.’

  ‘Boiled, then,’ said Marjorie. That meant the easiest washing up afterwards – it was the choice she always made at home when it was left to her.

  ‘Right,’ said Millicent, filling the egg saucepan at the tap.

  Millicent could always talk, and years of experience in her present employment had taught her how to fill up any awkward gap with bright chatter. She talked industriously, while laying the table, cutting bread and butter, opening a tin of fruit in a whirl of extravagance. Later, looking back on this time, she could not imagine how she was able to talk brightly all about nothing during that first hour – she did not make sufficient allowance for her own professional ability. But to such good purpose did she chatter that Marjorie actually ate an egg and bread and butter and a mouthful of tinned fruit salad, actually smiled at her sallies, actually forgot for forty minutes why she was hiding here in Millicent’s room.

  Millicent put the last of the crockery back in its cupboard. Thoughtfully, she took her cigarette case and holder out of her handbag, and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Bed or chair?’ she asked. ‘I expect you’re tired.’

  That was the first, the most insignificant hint that had been let fall between them that Marjorie was not paying an ordinary call.

  ‘Oh, I’m tired, Mill. Tired out. They’re after me. Mill, can I stop here?’

  ‘Of course you can,’ said Millicent.

  The ice had been broken now. They would have to talk this out, and the sooner the better. Millicent paced up and down the room, her cigarette holder between her fingers. A long time back, actually while she was cracking her egg, the phrase ‘Accessory after the fact’ had come up into her mind, and to her credit she had not allowed it to interrupt her flow of small talk, nor was she allowing it now to influence her actions. She was risking prison, the loss of her beloved job, her whole future. That was of no importance now with Marjorie needing help. She paced up and down the room while Marjorie watched her. Discomposed by the scrutiny, self-conscious, she fidgeted with the ornaments. She parted the curtains, and looked out, down to the noisy street two storeys below.

  That was when her self-control wavered. The slight wincing of her expression as she drew back from the window called Marjorie from the bed in a panic again.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Marjorie. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Nothing, dear,’ said Millicent.

  ‘You did! What was it?’

  Marjorie opened the curtains too, and looked out. She could not have said what it was she expected to see – a cordon of policemen, perhaps, or a mob approaching to lynch her. As it was, the wide street was empty of all danger. There were some children playing, some taxicabs crawling along, a few people walking peacefully along the pavements. Nothing dangerous at all. But right opposite was a newspaper shop, with its row of placards, and the middle one bore red letters, letters of blood, which she could read as clearly as if they were close before her, even though in her present tenseness they shrank and dwindled until they appeared microscopically small.

  MRS CLAIR ARRESTED

  The wires had borne the urgent message from Brighton. Men with telephone receivers at their ears had bawled it out in Fleet Street offices. Printing machines had stopped while typesetters’ fingers raced over keys. Then the vans had dashed out under the reckless guidance of the drivers, with great bundles of newspapers and posters, careering through the streets so as to try and catch the last of the great tide ebbing out of London, to secure as many as possible of the coppers which would eagerly be taken from pockets when those red words were read.

  It seemed as if now there was no added pain for Marjorie, as if her cup was so
full that nothing could make it fuller. Her face bore no alteration of expression now, as Millicent looked at her. She met Millicent’s gaze with an answering stare, immobile, stupid.

  ‘Didn’t – didn’t you know?’ whispered Millicent.

  ‘No,’ said Marjorie.

  She stood stock-still, numb and unfeeling.

  ‘Lie down again, dear,’ said Millicent.

  It was only later that Marjorie was able to think, to weep again.

  ‘Mother did it for me!’ she said, suddenly. ‘She meant to, all along. I never guessed. What are they doing to her now, Mill? Are they being cruel to her?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Millicent, soothingly.

  The tone that she used, her manner, her words, reminded Marjorie of how her mother had spoken to her during this two days’ nightmare, and by an odd freak of her character helped her to regain her stability. Mother had guarded her and protected her. She realized with sudden clarity how utterly dependent she had been upon her mother, and that the moment she found herself left to her own resources she had immediately fled to Millicent in search of some new support. It would not happen again. Millicent, watching, saw with surprise how Marjorie’s expression hardened. The childishness, the stupidity, vanished. By a sudden transformation she became, in a few minutes, the old Marjorie Millicent had always know. For the first time since Thursday Marjorie was thinking clearly, was in complete control of herself.

  ‘I oughtn’t to be in here,’ said Marjorie. ‘It isn’t fair to you. You oughtn’t to have let me in.’

  Millicent shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘I should stay here as long as you can if I were you,’ she said. ‘Make the most of it.’

  ‘You’re kind to me, Mill,’ said Marjorie. ‘You might have told them where I was.’

  ‘It’s not for me to do that. You’re my friend.’

  Millicent could not help but look inquiringly at Marjorie as she spoke now. She knew no more of what had happened than any other member of the public; the brief paragraphs in the newspapers had told little enough. She had never even heard of George Ely before – so much had happened since that tragic evening, only a few weeks before, when she had seen Marjorie last. The newspaper paragraphs had called up to her mind a picture of two angry women and a young lover, a bloody drama in which an axe played a part. How it had come about she could not imagine; but she had suspected for years that Ted had used Marjorie brutally. But whether Ted had got what he deserved or not, it was natural for Millicent to offer Marjorie unhesitatingly all the help within her power; that inquiring look implied no more than excusable curiosity. Marjorie noticed it, all the same.

  ‘You think I did it!’ she said, sharply. Her voice rose a semitone again.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I couldn’t believe that,’ answered Millicent, and then, watching Marjorie’s tired face, ‘Tell me how it happened, if you like.’

  It was a relief for Marjorie to talk. She poured out all the story, all the misery and horror of it. Millicent kept herself from wincing as she listened. Faster sometimes, and slower sometimes, Marjorie told her it all. The discoveries regarding Dot’s death she poured out in a few breathless sentences. She stumbled and hesitated when she told of George Ely, but that was not so much because of shame as because now it seemed to her as if it had never happened. It seemed impossible to her that she had ever put her arms round his neck or felt his kisses. Her memory told her that she had, but she found herself distrusting her memory. It was if it she were trying to recover the details of some novel she had read long ago, and which on reconsideration did not ring as true as she had first thought. She slurred that part of the story over with no thought of excusing herself.

  The details of the last evening of Ted’s life were much more vivid in her memory. She recounted each in its turn, the bald sentences reconstructing the whole picture in life-like fashion in Millicent’s mind. And then she went on to the flight, to the incidents of the last two days. Here her words began to fail her again. It was only by inference, by the play of horror over Marjorie’s tortured face, that Millicent was able to guess at what she had been through during the last forty-eight hours.

  ‘That’s how I came here,’ said Marjorie, vaguely, her gestures trying to convey the fear and weakness which had overcome her at Victoria Station.

  ‘I understand,’ said Millicent.

  Marjorie looked beseechingly at Millicent’s compassionate face.

  ‘Will they hang me if they catch me?’ she asked.

  ‘No!’ said Millicent, hotly. ‘Never! You aren’t – guilty of anything.’

  She stumbled in the middle of that speech, all the same. She had begun the asseveration in all good faith. It was only after she had begun it that doubt came to her. Marjorie had been told before they reached the house what was going to happen there – ‘We’re going to kill him!’ her mother had said. All the same, Marjorie had admitted George and Mrs Clair to her house, had stood by without interfering while the crime was committed. Legally, she was equally guilty of it in consequence, whatever her moral justification, whatever excuses she could put forward regarding her state of mind at the time. Bad luck, or bad management of her defence, could hang her, could reduce this beautiful woman into a mass of dead flesh. Millicent felt within her that strange prick of curiosity regarding someone whose life was in danger from the law which crams the court at a murder trial, and she hated herself for it in the same instant.

  ‘Is that true?’ asked Marjorie.

  ‘Yes,’ said Millicent, stubbornly. She could not bring herself to say otherwise at first, whatever she felt. She met Marjorie’s searching look as openly as she could. Then she forced herself to mention the source of her doubts.

  ‘But look here, old thing,’ she said, trying to speak convincingly and yet casually at the same time. ‘You must be careful what you say, if – if ever you have to say anything. Never tell anyone else about what your mother said as you walked up Simon Street. Except your solicitor. Tell him, of course. But nobody else.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Marjorie, honestly at sea. Ignorance and fear between them had prevented her from ever trying to estimate the strength and weakness of her position with regard to the law.

  ‘I can’t explain, somehow,’ said Millicent, still trying desperately to be casual. ‘But I’m sure I’m right. I mean it, dear. Always remember what I’m telling you, always.’

  Millicent was trying to warn Marjorie against making damaging admissions in one of those ‘voluntary statements’ so dexterously drawn from prisoners by the police, but try as she would she could not be more explicit. That would have called for a cold-blooded mention of the words ‘police’ and ‘arrest’, and savoured of an indecency she could not tolerate.

  22

  For Millicent it had been hot and uncomfortable in the little single bed with Marjorie at her side. Most of the night she had lain grimly motionless, suffering cramp and discomfort rather than run the risk of disturbing Marjorie, deeply asleep beside her, and whose heavy breathing testified to her exhaustion. She heard the milkman come clinking along the corridor with his tray of bottles – by special arrangement he was admitted to the building early each morning to leave the customary half pint (it was invariably half a pint) outside each door, behind which slept some single professional woman. Apart from that, the building remained silent until much later on this Sunday morning than on weekdays.

  Later she heard a few doors open and shut, and a few hurried footsteps along the corridors. That would be the Catholics, going off to early Mass. The Low Churchwomen and the infidels always stayed in bed much later than that. It was only by slow degrees that the house awoke fully, and the opening and shutting of doors as the professional women took in their milk became more frequent, as a certain subdued murmur of life, like a somnolent beehive slowly awakening, began to reach her ear. Not until then did Marjorie beside her stir and wake. Fear was still with h
er – Millicent saw her clutch the bedclothes and stare round her until she remembered where she was – but it was not nearly as acute as on her arrival yesterday. Indeed, she smiled, like a child, when she saw Millicent beside her.

  ‘Did you sleep well, dear?’ asked Millicent.

  ‘Ooh yes, thank you,’ answered Marjorie.

  ‘Well, you can just go on resting until I get some breakfast ready,’ said Millicent.

  She climbed out of bed and pottered about the room in her nightdress. There was no chance of her getting a bath, she knew – on Sunday mornings the few bathrooms were all appropriated by a clique with a series of secret signals, who let each other in, and who lay and soaked to the exclusion of every one else all the morning. Millicent always took her bath in the afternoon on Sundays. She washed at the handbasin and dressed, put on the kettle and brought in the milk, laid the breakfast tray and brought the table to the bedside. Marjorie lay and watched her dreamily as she moved busily about. She was bathed in a feeling of comfort and security. She had a friend; she had a home. The misery of the last two days – which seemed to her memory to have endured more like two months – had come to an end. The contrast was delightful, as long as she was drugged with sleep and could only be conscious of what was outstanding in her situation. Then suddenly she stiffened as she lay in bed. Unhappiness was renewed in that moment. She felt again all the old sick weakness. Now she was ashamed of herself as well. Until now panic had hardly allowed her to think of anyone except herself.