Three Loves

by A. J. Cronin

  Transfixed by his words, she paled, and her eyes widened towards him in a sudden anguish. It was as if a, chasm yawned suddenly beneath her feet. She made to speak and could not.

  ‘They’ll be home now,’ he continued, unobservant of her distress. ‘Come in and have a cup of tea before you turn.’

  Her tongue seemed fixed, wooden; she was choking. So Anna had not gone away! She had waited, waited with inconceivable duplicity, and Frank had met her. And what – oh, what would be the upshot of this meeting?

  ‘Come away in,’ said Lennox again.

  She struggled with her speech.

  ‘No,’ she stammered at last, ‘I must – I must get back.’

  ‘A cup of tea’ll take the fog out of your throat.’

  ‘No, no,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I’ll not – I can’t wait.’ And, before he could reply, she turned, blinded by her emotion, moving away from him with rapid stumbling steps.

  So she had been right. Tears of anger and misery ran out of her eyes and mingled with the raindrops on her cheeks. She had known it; but at last the certainly was absolute. And they had renewed their previous intimacy; fostered it despite her every care. Having done everything to prevent it, by some incredible circumstance she had failed to keep them apart. It was anguish, a maddening thought.

  Violently she bit her lip, clenched her hands in the pockets of her coat. Her slight figure hastening along the wet, deserted street so thickly plastered by these sodden fallen leaves became dynamic with the painful force of her resentment. Recovered from the first stunning impact of the blow, the thought of her deception infuriated her. It was not as if Frank had not loved her. She knew that he loved her; and she knew too that she loved him. He had been compelled to this against his will.

  Why had it happened? Panting with her haste, she struggled to find the answer, to lay her finger on the fault. Oh, why had it happened? She had tried so hard; it was unendurable she should have failed. Desperately she tried to calm herself. She had not failed. Nothing had happened that was beyond repair. Her conviction had become irrevocable. But pressing closely upon that certainty came another. She would immediately control the situation, smash up this menace to her home, restore Frank to sanity and to herself. She was neither a weakling nor a fool. Outraged though she was, her love was greater than the outrage. She had no mawkish modesty; she knew her power over Frank; and use that power she would! She would go home, await his return; and she would save him, save him from himself.

  With an effort she forced herself to slacken her pace, feeling through all her anguish that she must be calm, conscious that she must not make herself conspicuous in the open street. She was now nearing her house, and approaching in the opposite direction she observed the figure of Dave Bowie. Firmly she composed her features; she at least would make no exhibition of her distress, nor expose her humiliation to the public gaze. They met opposite her gate, and with a set face she inclined her head, made to enter. But he stopped.

  ‘You’re not away over with them?’ he exclaimed pleasantly.

  She spun round, staring at his red face cased by the shining south-wester tied beneath his chin. Little crystals of water beaded the oilskin’s yellow rim.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said, with curious slowness.

  ‘I’m sorry about it. A regular nuisance, this weather,’ he apologised mildly. ‘But I had the Eagle up at Linton this afternoon. If I had known that your husband wanted her I could easy have been back earlier.’

  Her eyes remained fixed, still bewildered, but filling gradually with a strange dismay. A strained sensation came upon her that he was not real, that she lived this in a dream.

  ‘What are you trying to say, Dave?’ she demanded in a low, intent voice.

  ‘Did you not know?’ he answered awkwardly. ‘ I’m just this minute back. And they wouldn’t wait; they were in such a hurry – my father told me. Angus had to get out the dinghy to pull them over.’

  ‘Over where?’ Her tone was feverish now, but her eyes did not leave his face.

  ‘Across for the mail boat,’ he stammered. ‘That lady you had staying with you. And your husband.’

  ‘The mail boat,’ she cried out, with sudden uncontrollable emotion. Then all at once struck by a horrible fear, stunned by the unthought-of, the unthinkable acme of her dread, she paused. A great throb of anguish broke within her, like a cord strung taut and then intolerably snapped. Frank was gone – with Anna. That was the reason of everything, the consummation of all her foreboding. He had left her and returned to Anna.

  Unconscious of Dave’s presence, a low cry escaped from her lips as, standing at that gate where so often she had awaited him in love, she realised with crushing violence that he was gone. He had deserted her. Her face, wreathed by her wet hair, seemed shrunken, and her lips pale, as though drained suddenly of blood.

  For a moment she stood motionless, pervaded by a sinking hopelessness of loss, an insufferable feeling of defeat. Then with a violent movement she raised her hand to her brow. Was he mad? He must surely be mad, infatuated, or both, to compass this incredible, this final folly. To desert her, disintegrate his home, and ally himself with that loathsome creature.

  Anna! Her lips drew in over her set teeth. How could he expect to be happy with her? And as by a tide she was swept by the recollection of Anna and her laziness, her vulgarity, her utter shamelessness.

  She couldn’t let Frank do this thing. So weak, so easily influenced, he had been dragged into it against his will – yes, drawn into it despite her efforts to safeguard him.

  As with a sudden inspiration of courage her eyes flashed, the colour ran back into her face and she flushed with the intensity of her feeling.

  Defeated! She was not defeated! Was she the woman to stand in wretched apathy or sink down in helpless tears whilst this creature ran off with Frank? Through her tense figure there flowed a vital resolution. She had said that she would save him.

  Abruptly she turned and, seizing Dave by the arm, she declared passionately:

  ‘You’ve got to take me across – now – at once.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he stammered. ‘I don’t understand.’

  She made no answer; but, still holding him by the arm, began to hurry him across the road towards the yard. The gate swung shut with a violent slam.

  ‘How long is it since they left?’ she demanded in a hard voice as they went along.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered, much put out at the strangeness of her manner; ‘maybe quarter of an hour; maybe less. I wasn’t expected back so soon. But what’s – what’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Quarter of an hour,’ she repeated intently, as though to herself. ‘We’ll be over in time.’

  They were in the yard now, advancing towards the stone jetty which ran out and seemed to lose itself in the vague white haze beyond. Then all at once Dave hesitated and drew up.

  ‘I’ll not go out,’ he exclaimed uncomfortably. ‘ It’s too late. And there’s a fog coming up.’

  Giving no sign of having heard, she continued on her course, mounting the narrow slip, quickening her step upon its moistened flags. And, in constrained fashion, he finally came after her.

  ‘I’m saying that we can’t go over,’ he repeated in a louder tone. ‘I don’t like the weather. It’s thickening. You can’t see a hundred yards ahead.’

  Turning opposite the Eagle’s moorings, she faced him with eyes that blazed.

  ‘You’re going, Dave,’ she said in a choking voice. ‘And I’m going with you.’

  ‘I have no steam,’ he answered surlily, gazing out at the shifting vapours that moved uncertainly above the glassy sea.

  She looked at him fiercely.

  ‘You’ve just come in,’ she cried. ‘And now you’re going out again.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ he muttered, his eye still evasive of her burning stare. Thus they stood for a moment facing each other, whilst the tide made a quiet sea sound beneath their feet. There was a second of sus
pense: this second, sublimated, reduced, seemed to poise the balance of Frank’s future and her own. Then suddenly Dave’s head dropped; he moved to the rope around the tiny bollard. It was over! She had done it. Without a word she swung round and clambered over the low iron bulwarks of the Eagle.

  ‘I’m telling you,’ he said hesitantly, but, compelled by that unusual force which drew him against his will, he bent over the bollard, cast off the hawser, and came aboard the tiny launch beside her.

  ‘I’m not wanting to go,’ he muttered again as with one hand on the wheel he threw in the gear. ‘Remember that.’

  She made no reply as, with a sound that was strangely muffled, they slid away from the jetty, losing the shore instantly, moving into the dumb softness of that fleecy sea. Outwards they slid, outwards and away.

  ‘Be quick, Dave!’ she whispered suddenly in a low voice. ‘Quick as you can!’

  Consumed by an intolerable emotion, she stood rigidly beside him, looking ahead with eyes which were like wounds in the blurred pallor of her face. If she should fail? Yet she knew she would not fail. She had the conviction that she must succeed. Frank could not yet be across; he was not far ahead; the very swiftness of her resolution would be his salvation. If only she could see, pierce through these loose folds of mist that fell about her like a fleecy garment. But it was thick, the mist, and it seemed, out upon this still sea, to turn, thicker: a pale, amorphous vapour, intangible yet actual, brackish as a polluted breath, choking her with its vapid density. Clasping the collar of her coat around her neck, she bent forward, stifled by its oppression and by the oppression of her choking breast. Then suddenly, softly, half-way over, the fog deepened, descending upon them like a shroud, blotting out everything but their own figures. They became in an instant two shadowy forms isolated in a wilderness of fog.

  Immediately Dave cut down the boat’s speed.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ he cried. ‘We’ll need to turn back.’ His voice came, dulled, as from afar.

  She made no movement.

  ‘Go on,’ she insisted, her eyes fixedly before her.

  ‘We might be into something – any minute.’

  ‘Go on,’ she cried out in a louder voice. ‘We can’t turn back now.’

  He made a hopeless gesture with his arm, then tugged violently at the siren cord, loosing a thin, shrill whistle into those opaque billows of white.

  ‘Look out, then,’ he shouted. ‘In the bows.’

  Without another word she crept forward. Crouched in the bows, burning with fierce impatience, feeling nothing of the wetness or the cold, she was like a figure-head driving forward, herself the motive, the very impulse of the boat. Her will it was alone which drove them forward. Swathes of fog rolled past her like coils of smoke working within a vast and desolate cavern. She could see nothing, nothing but this impenetrable whiteness which numbed her eyes, choked her, condensed upon her hair, and coursed like tears upon her cheek.

  Desolation pressed itself around her, raw as the rimed air of winter, clammy with a wet sea breath. And faintly in warning came the thin, bleak clanging of the Ardmore Buoy, clanging far off, clanging, clanging in monotone and desolation. She shivered and set her teeth. It was as though some phantom hovering unseen had laid cold fingers upon her brow. Trembling, isolated, she could see nothing. No matter; she was going forward. Forward to save Frank.

  ‘What was that?’ shouted Dave suddenly. ‘ Did you hear oars?’ And he loosed a violent blast from out the whistle.

  Listening with straining ears, she heard no sound; nothing but the siren’s echoes, the plashing of unseen water, the faint clanging of the Ardmore Buoy, clanging its dirge in monotone, sad monotone and desolation.

  ‘Did you hear it?’ he cried again.

  But she had heard nothing.

  Then all at once, from ahead and beneath, there came a loud cry swelling upwards through the fog, so close it seemed to draw them towards it.

  ‘Ahoy!’ shouted Dave, wrenching upon the rudder.

  Rigid in the bows she heard that cry repeated, louder, nearer, and with a sudden vital urgency. It pierced her, the urgency of the call. Then in the same swift second she felt the shuddering of an impact which ran through her with awful paralysing numbness: no violent crash, but a soft concussion, as though the fog or some soft shape had cushioned the violence of the blow: a tearing, crushing impact which drove the blood out of her beating heart.

  Instantly a shriek soared up from beneath her, a confusion of cries, a grinding noise, then, everything fell away astern to silence. Grey silence and shrouded desolation.

  ‘God Almighty!’ shouted Dave in panic, ‘we’ve hit something.’ Already he had jerked the engine to reverse, and with a violent threshing they went astern, the launch, torn by two impulses, quivering along her keel. And her body quivered too, rent by a frightful thought. Yet, held as by a vice, she stood motionless while they slowed, drifted, stopped. The fog clung thicker, darkened by the coming night.

  ‘Ahoy!’ bellowed Dave wildly through his cupped hands.

  ‘Ahoy!’ came the answer, vague, yet near, like a lost cry from some vast wilderness.

  ‘My God!’ he cried again despairingly. ‘It’s Angus and the dinghy!’

  Trembling, she rushed towards his side as, leaning over the stern, he searched the obscurity with his call.

  ‘Frank!’ she shouted desperately. ‘Frank!’

  The fog was like a wall from which her voice rebounded in a vain elusive echo: an echo which mocked her, chasing through the caverns of despair. Then suddenly there came an answer, close at hand.

  ‘Fling a line!’

  Instantly the coil in Dave’s hand curled out towards the muffled cry, fell slack, then tautened incredibly.

  ‘They’ve got it,’ she sobbed. ‘They’ve got it’; and, straining, she helped him as he hauled arm over arm upon the dripping rope.

  Out of the fog as by a miracle a wet hand appeared, clutching upon the gunwale, then a dark head glistened like a seal’s. It was Angus, holding in his arm the figure of Anna.

  ‘Take her,’ he gasped; ‘there’s another.’

  As Dave dragged Anna aboard, he grasped the rope once more, slid back into the water, and disappeared.

  Her teeth sank into her lip with the frustration of her hope.

  ‘Frank!’ she shouted passionately. ‘Frank!’

  With hands clenched upon the bulwark, she gave no heed to Anna, who, sat down weakly against the engine casing; but, straining towards that opaque screen, she waited in an agony of suspense. The slow seconds passed like hours. Frantic, in a cold sweat of fear, she willed him to be saved. Her heart was fluttering like a trembling flame. Then all at once a cry of inexpressible joy broke from her lips.

  ‘Here!’ she panted. ‘Here!’ Leaning far over the stern, with all her force she pulled in the rope, bearing upon it with desperate strength. A choking cry broke from her lips as she helped Angus to scramble aboard, to lift the figure of her husband across the gunwale.

  ‘Frank,’ she sobbed, her arms around him, ‘I thought – I thought you were gone!’

  He made no answer, but collapsed and lay limply upon the deck.

  Then all at once his eyes opened towards her with a dull and painful recognition.

  ‘The boat –’ he said, with difficulty. ‘You hit me here.’ And slowly, in a frightened sort of way, he let his hand fall weakly upon his chest, which seemed strangely sunken and deformed.

  She caught her breath.

  ‘Frank,’ she cried, falling upon her knees beside him. ‘ You’re all right.’

  ‘The bow –’ whispered Angus, shivering with cold, whilst water ran from his streaming clothes. ‘The bow struck him in the breast – took him under the keel –’ He shuddered. ‘A fearful blow.’

  ‘Frank,’ she sobbed, stricken by a new and feverish fear. ‘ You’re not – you’re not hurt, my dear?’

  ‘I don’t –’ he answered in a slow, slurred voice. ‘I don’t feel well. Something
– something warm coming into my mouth,’ he said with greater difficulty. She shivered. In his voice there was an inarticulate choking which terrified her. Instantly she flung herself towards him, but not before he coughed: a dreadful bubbling cough. The choking, retching issue of that cough – it spread over her bosom in a warm, living stream. Nothing seemed to arrest the gushing, insatiable tide of unseen blood that ran from him and flowed thickly between her breasts. The horror of it paralysed her. Desperately she tried to move, to help him. But in his panic he clung to her, would not let her go.

  ‘Frank! Frank!’ she shivered. ‘Let me – let me help you.’ She was terrified, locked to him in the white darkness, moved by the spasm which shook him, convulsed as by the consummation of some deathly orgasm. Suddenly she felt that she would faint. Then all at once the rigid intensity of his grip relaxed, his limp hands fell away from her, and with a final expiration, a gasping sigh, his spent body fell languidly upon the deck.

  Trembling, she lifted his head, lifted it upon her lap.

  ‘Oh, God!’ muttered Angus in panic, with chattering teeth. ‘He’s bad’; and again he whispered, ‘’Twas the bows hit him. Right – right in the breast.’ He had lighted the lantern, and now, with a wavering hand, he held it near: a weak yellow flame which threw a sickly smear upon her pale face vested by her hanging hair, and upon the sodden garments that clung and dripped about her.

  The light fell also upon Moore’s figure, motionless, inert; and on his pallid face – an empty face, as though some frightful force had sucked out the vital essence of the body, draining it of life.

  The shock of that look upon his face, so swiftly changed, made her shiver; the clammy garment, no longer warm, clung to her; her knees shook – shook weakly as she crouched beside him.

  ‘Look at me, Frank,’ she cried. ‘I love you.’ And she held him closely like a child upon her lap whilst the boat swung gently on the unseen water, and always that bell clanged slowly from afar, tolling a passing soul.

  He did not move, but lay motionless, his face sunken, already ghostly. His hand, clasped in hers, was cold and pliant, and had a fleshless feel, yielding and without substance, chilling her. For a second of agony she hesitated. Then a desperate strength flowed into her. It was impossible. She loved him. She was here to save him. Frantically she looked up, met Dave’s eyes.