by A. J. Cronin
‘It’s the first time for days,’ she went on hurriedly, ‘that we’ve had a meal alone. We’re more like ourselves tonight.’
‘You mean you are more like yourself,’ he said moodily.
She flushed and drew back, watching his bent head with a troubled eye; but she made no reply.
At last he had finished, and, picking up his paper, he went over to the sofa.
‘I wonder where Anna is,’ he exclaimed, his gaze still upon the sheet. ‘Where can she have got to?’
She was silent; then, feeling she could wait no longer, with a quick movement she rose, advanced to the sofa, and sat down beside him. It was a moment reminiscent of the occasion, when first she had confronted him with her suspicion. But since that moment the flux within her soul had fused to another purpose. Now, though more painfully agitated, she collected herself for no attack. That issue was sealed. Now she asked only that they bury the past and face the future together. And, making an effort to speak lightly, she exclaimed:
‘Frank! It’s just like old times, having the house to ourselves like this. Don’t you remember?’
The paper crinkled as he turned to another page.
‘Of course I remember,’ he said. ‘Surely you don’t expect me to forget.’
‘But, Frank, don’t you remember?’ she repeated nervously, taking his hand and pressing it between her warm fingers. ‘I’ve been thinking all afternoon about things – that mean so much to us. That day we had – that day in Craigmore Wood – we don’t seem to have thought much of that – lately.’ Stirred by her own words, again that nostalgia rushed over her and she moved restlessly, feeling once more the hot sun on the pine-needles, the warm scent of the humming bracken; below them the bay, she glowing, passive in his arms, a wild beating within and against her breast.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he demanded, turning slowly, and perceiving the shamed colour in her face he added, ‘What have you done now?’
Coming nearer to him upon the sofa, she lifted his hand and placed it close against her eager cheek.
‘All that I’ve ever done has been to love you, Frank.’
He looked at her uncomfortably, drawn to her, yet conscious of the strangeness of her mood.
‘You’ve had a peculiar way of showing it this last fortnight,’ he said slowly.
‘I want us to start over again,’ she murmured agitatedly. ‘Dear Frank. We’ll forget everything that’s happened. If only we love each other, nothing matters.’
‘But, Lucy,’ he said uneasily; then suddenly, struck by a violent thought, he pulled himself up, stared at her. ‘You haven’t – no, surely – where did you say Anna was?’
Her eyes averted, she pulled nervously at a thread in his cuff answering painfully:
‘You know I didn’t want to do it, Frank. You know it wasn’t easy for me.’
‘In the name of God!’ he broke out, and as abruptly paused. There was a strained silence. ‘You don’t mean to say,’ he resumed slowly, almost dazedly, ‘you don’t mean to say you asked her to go?’
‘And why not?’ The mildness of her tone masking the turbulence of her heart was infinite.
‘You made her go?’ he stammered. ‘Made her get out?’ Apparently he could not credit her admission.
‘Yes.’ The word was more emphatic, the turbulence breaking through the mask.
Violently he wrenched his hand away.
‘You’ve chucked her out of my house!’ he cried out. ‘It’s – it’s unbelievable. Anna – my own cousin!’
‘I’ve had quite enough of this cousin business,’ she answered in a suppressed voice. ‘I asked her to go for your good.’
‘My good!’ he cried. ‘The way you’ve treated her this last week! And now – now you put the lid on it with this!’
Her bosom filled convulsively; anger brightened her eyes.
‘You didn’t wish her to come,’ she said, striving vainly to maintain her calm. ‘Why be sorry that she’s away?’
‘She was going next week,’ he cried, and in the acute exasperation of the moment his words rose almost to a shout. ‘Even if you didn’t like her, why couldn’t you put up with it for a few days longer?’
‘Because I love you, Frank.’ It was the culmination of her argument, the explanation of her conduct, the epitome of everything, the sublime second of her oblation.
They faced each other, strained unbearably by the tension of the moment. Pale, her eyes hot and dry, she was breathing quickly, conscious of a quick throbbing in her side, filled by an agonised yearning for him to take her in his arms. Then all at once he moved restlessly, the corners of his lips turned downwards.
‘Do you think you own me?’ he said gloomily. ‘Do you think you’re my keeper? If you loved God Almighty you’d want to put a chain on Him!’
‘Frank!’ she cried out appealingly. ‘Did you expect me to blind myself – to let things slide?’
‘Slide! What was there to slide? You think you know everything. But you don’t. Not by a devil of a way. Anna was no more to me than anybody else. Yet you’ve shoved her in my teeth ever since she came. Go on like that and you’ll destroy everything – destroy yourself too!’
Bitter words of denial rose to her lips, but she stifled them. This was what he said; this was how he answered this present offering of herself; this how he named her honesty, her sincerity, the intensity of her love for him; and after all that had taken place between them, those intimacies so enduring they could never be forgotten or effaced! Abruptly she turned away, angry at heart, feeling a humiliation turbulently mixed, with longing. She knew she had been right, and she would persist in her intention. She knew he must be conquered; it was the only way; left to himself, he would slide weakly to disaster. His attitude served only to confirm her conviction that she had acted for his good.
‘I’ll leave you now,’ she said in a voice that was tremulous under her control. ‘ I know you’ll come round when you’ve thought about it.’ And all at once she rose, turned on her heel. As she went out of the room, she visualised poignantly the time when he would thank her for what she had done, admit that she had suffered equally with him.
She went into the parlour, where she sat at the window, fore seeing with a humid eye and heavy lip that hour when she would be justified; her thoughts ran faster and farther, too, and with a strangely childish turn of her dejection she saw herself working at some humiliating toil, scrubbing even on her knees, immolating herself for him, making some exalted sacrifice that should be for his good, and he who had ignored her demanding pardon, perhaps, when it should be too late.
For a long time she remained passive at the darkened window; then all at once into this mood of singular inversion came the sudden slam of the door. She started; turning, she hurried to the hall. He had gone out of the house! The unexpectedness of it dismayed her, shocked her like a blow. He never went out at nights, preferring always to lounge by his own fireside, and this swift departure from his inevitable habit moved her with a sense of keen dismay. With eyes puckered, she entered the dining-room, sat down in the chair which he had that moment vacated.
It seemed to strike her now with utter certainty, the conviction that her suspicion was justified: his reception of Anna’s departure the final link in her chain of evidence. A heavy sigh broke from the very depths of her bosom. The blow was shattering. Yet she would accept it because she loved him.
But with what providential fortune had she recognised the situation, with what incisive foresight had she acted upon it. Was she the woman to sit passively in her own home and endure the recrudescence of this old, dishonourable infatuation? Was she the woman to wait weakly until this same senseless prepossession had run its gamut and then to say, ‘ Come back, Frank. It’s just the same as ever.’ No! A thousand times no. That was not marriage. She had asserted her rights, and she was glad. Possession! It was not possession, but love, her love – a welling tenderness towards him that rose into her eyes now as she sat waiting – waiting fo
r his return.
Chapter Eleven
When he had slammed the door – that sound which vibrated unexpectedly upon her nerves – Moore came down the steps and swung along the road moodily, his indignation still colouring his face, that line of bitterness still twisted upon his lips.
Pulling down his hat, he turned sharply towards the front, quite deserted at this hour, and with hands in his pockets and shoulders raised set out along the promenade. The mist had thinned, weaving like a living fleece above his head; the night seemed warmer, close, and quite oppressive. Where was he going? Exasperated to the point of oblivion, he did not know, nor did he care. He knew, however, that he had no wish to be here, at this time of night, when he might have been in comfort at his own fireside. It was she who had driven him out with the very earnestness of her desire to keep him in. The insane paradox moved him with a sense of moody futility.
To think that today she had actually ordered Anna to leave his house – it was monstrous. Anna, his cousin, who five years ago had come through her trouble; who ought now in all justice to have lived down that trouble. He didn’t know anything about it: where or how it had happened; who the man had been. Nor did he care. It was nobody’s business. He had never thought twice of Anna in those days, but now he had a rising sympathy for her, initiated by Lucy’s action – a feeling of companionable compassion. Not that Anna needed his compassion: a reckless devil she was – he had all the weak man’s admiration for Anna’s particular hardihood; and there was something more than hardihood in Anna. She was – yes, he supposed she was rather a wild lot; taking life as it came and her amusement where she could find it. Yet, though this had been his reason for objecting to her coming, now, strangely, he had no quarrel with her on that score.
But to think that Lucy had conceived the ludicrous idea that Anna and he had once been intimate; that he, actually he, had been the father of Anna’s brat. It would have been funny had it not been so intolerable: gloomily he admitted the humour of the situation to have worn thin. He had laughed it off, sneered it off, yes, blustered it off – all to no purpose. Was the fault his? It was so typical of his ineffectuality, this failure to convince. Why had he not the capacity to meet the situation with a cold and powerful assurance? To have mastered the ridiculous thing, smashed it with a firm and decisive contempt.
But no, he was not like that – never had been. No guts, he thought, miserably. Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel. In the Bible, was that? The word of God, or was it Shakespeare?
All at once the old complex of inferiority cast him down and he had a hot rush of self-contempt: curious devil, he was, curious unlucky devil; he couldn’t get away from it. Something would happen to him one of these days. For sure.
He frowned into the mist. It was not as if he had bothered much about women; no, not even in his palmy days, and now, of course, still less. Stray fancies perhaps: those photographs a customer had shown him, artistic, Parisian, state age when applying; but always a barrier lay between himself and freedom. That barrier was himself: laughter and easy companionship cut off by the curious inhibition of his temperament. Besides, when all was said and done, he had his wife. With stinging exasperation came the realisation of his fondness for Lucy. He did love her; but how obstinate she could be when she chose; so – he sought for a phrase – so wrong-headedly in the right. It was not that she was jealous in the ordinary sense: take, for example, those few days she had left Anna and him together – here came vaguely a sensation of missed opportunity – it was that she seemed to appropriate him pertinaciously, exclusively, as her own.
Content to move through life with easy indolence, he had never troubled about this proprietorship, but now it rankled with all the bitter violence of an indignity suddenly discovered.
By this time he was opposite the main street of the town, and with a sudden impulse he crossed the road, put his shoulder to the light swing door of the Shandon Bar.
He had a drink, which had a bitterness that matched his mood.
‘Another, miss!’
He brooded over the second glass, which, as usual, was never as good as the first. He wouldn’t have a third. Couldn’t be bothered. Didn’t really care for the taste; he would never make a drunkard, never make anything.
Wiping the brown froth from his lips, he looked around, then instinctively pulled out his watch. Nearly time to get home; she would be wondering where on earth he’d got to. Lucy! She was a good wife, her motives high, her qualities self-evident. Wherein, then lay the essence of his discontent?
A fresh surge of irritation took him as he flung out of the bar. Why was he thinking like this? Why was he here at all, troubled by this ferment of his mind? For a moment he stood indecisively, looking up and down the street, where the lamps glowed with a soft-ringed radiance; then, as he made to turn for home, a voice accosted him with easy familiarity.
‘Hello, Frank. How’s yourself?’
He spun round, staring, and instantly his face lighted to a warm amazement.
‘Anna! I thought you were away!’
Standing there wrapped warmly in coat and fur, the curious gleam of her skin enhanced by the lamplight, her lip moistened by the damp air, her eyes deep, expressionless, she made a charming figure, vaguely mysterious, vaguely enticing.
‘I thought,’ he stammered, ‘ I thought you had left us.’
‘I changed my mind at the station. I was going, and then I didn’t. Took the notion. I’m at the Craig Hotel for the night. Tomorrow I’ll get over to Port Doran for the boat.’
‘I didn’t want –’ he stammered again. ‘I knew nothing about –’
‘Miss all that, Frank,’ she cut in. ‘ I’m as well at the Craig as anywhere. And it’s time I went home. The boat leaves for Belfast tomorrow night.’
‘But, Anna –’
‘Come on for a walk,’ said she, ‘and forget to apologise.’
He looked at her. For the first time he had the strange consciousness of promiscuous encounter. Had he met her in the ordinary way he would have smiled and taken her at her word; but now, this meeting, so unexpected, so contrary to Lucy’s inclination, almost forbidden, it seemed, stirred him with a curious reaction. Anna had been flung at his head. And now Anna was here, beside him!
But the reaction was momentary, a fleeting sense of intimacy which touched him lightly and left him self-conscious as before.
‘Do you want to go up the town,’ he asked nervously, ‘or along the front?’
‘The front is as good as any place,’ she answered carelessly. ‘We can talk there.’
And so they turned and set out towards the deserted promenade. When at night he had taken this stroll with Lucy, she would slip her hand in his warmly, companionably, in a particular fashion: their ‘way of walking’, she termed it; but now, having passed the darkened pier in silence, he it was who clumsily took Anna’s arm. Why he hardly knew – perhaps a vague impulse towards self-assertion.
‘It’s clearer now,’ said he, with an effort to appear at ease.
‘Why drag in the weather, Frank?’ she answered pleasantly. ‘You know you don’t mean it.’
He made no reply; and in a moment she added in a tone of condolence:
‘Poor Frank! so you’re in trouble for something you never did.’
Startled, he could find nothing to say, as with her low laugh she exclaimed:
‘It’s funny, Frank. You’ve had all the blame, and none of the fun.’
‘So long as it amuses you,’ he muttered, his face troubled, ill at ease.
‘That’s the spirit,’ she answered lightly. ‘If you can’t get the good of it, have a laugh anyhow.’
They walked on together, enclosed by the darkness, hardly an echo to their footsteps in the shrouded air. What was he doing here with Anna, at this hour? How exactly had it come about?
‘Honestly, though, Frank,’ she said suddenly, in a more reasonable voice, ‘ I’m dead sorry if I’ve made any bother for you. Lucy’s one of the best, but she
’s so gone on you she kind of put my back up. It’s the last thing I’d have wanted to do – to upset you. I always liked you too well to do that.’
‘You know it’s nothing to do with you,’ he answered moodily.
‘The fact is,’ she rejoined, in a sly tone of logic, ‘ yes, the fact is that you’re married, and you’ve just naturally got to put up with it.’
‘Don’t!’ he said in that same troubled voice. ‘Don’t rub it in.’ If he had his worries, he didn’t want to discuss them with Anna.
‘I never could see you as a family man,’ she meditated. ‘But there – you went and did it. Now you’ve got to walk in step till you finally step off. You’ve got to keep the collar on for life.’
‘Well, it’s my collar,’ he muttered resentfully, feeling her curious smile upon him in the darkness. And she had been smiling, for now she laughed outright.
‘Good enough, Frank,’ she declared in an altered manner. ‘ I’ve got hopes for you when you answer up like that. I thought you’d want to pour it all out and weep. I was afraid all the spunk had gone out of you. That’s why I first made up my mind to shake you up a bit. But, glory be! I’d no idea Lucy would start this cock and bull affair. It regularly riled me. Mind you, I’m not caring for myself. I don’t need to bother. Now I’ve got the old man’s tin I just enjoy myself and bless the Pope for what comes along!’
‘You have a good time,’ he said, ‘and you know it.’
‘Tell me though, Frank,’ she asked suddenly, reverting to that first ironic key, ‘did you never feel a bit reckless about me? Am I such a regular old hag as all that?’
He looked at her quickly, trying to pierce not so much the enigma of her words as of her unseen face. Uncertain, intimidated, conscious all at once of the pressure of her side against his, he swallowed uncomfortably, in the darkness.
‘No,’ he answered carefully, ‘I can’t say I did.’
She laughed again – her humour was unusually gay – and gave his arm a reproving pinch.