He carried her in, and laid her on the bed.
“Do you know how to manage these things? You have to slip in feet first—like getting into a bag.”
She was aware of him going to the door and pausing there.
“If you should want anything, call me.”
He closed the door, and she heard him descending the stairs. She lay for a moment, looking at the candle flame standing so straight and still. Then, she sat up, and the bed creaked under her. A moment later she had discovered that blue and white sleeping-suit laid out for her. She put out a hand and touched it. Should she——? Something came to life in her, the laughter of a girl before her joy in things has been broken. How she could have laughed ten years ago! But now——! Standing on the mat beside the bed she stepped into those immense trousers, and found them festooned about her feet. She loved him for this,—as she was ready to love him—for everything. Love! What irony!
But that blanket? Had he given her his bed, and was she in possession of his one spare blanket? She bent down, rolled up those trousers, and went to open the door, carrying the blanket over her arm.
“Mr. Luce—John.”
She heard a movement below.
“Yes.”
“The blanket. I am putting it outside the door.”
She closed the door, placed the candlestick on the floor beside the bed, and slipped in feet first as he had told her to do. She left the candle burning and lay wide-eyed and still, listening. The rain had ceased, and the stillness was profound, and in the silence she heard him come up the stairs and take the blanket. With a little, smothered sigh she turned over and blew out the candle.
2
Luce had put his last logs on the fire. Touching the clothes on the backs of the two chairs he reminded himself that they were all she had in the world. And was he a sentimentalist that such a reflection should cause him emotion? Her necessity demanded that those clothes should be dry by the morning, and taking the skirt and holding it closer to the fire, he watched the moisture rising from it.
The clothes of a murderess! An exhibit for Madame Tussaud’s! News for the journalists. He kept turning the skirt, while his thoughts were occupied with her tragedy. What—before God—was he to do? Go down to that empty house and make sure? And then, perhaps, he began to foresee the sinister implications such interference might provoke. Supposing he was to leave the marks of his very large feet about the place, and they were traced to him, and he was asked to explain them? Even if she told the truth, would the law believe her? It would begin searching for motives, sifting clues and evidence, postulating some sex tangle. And he——? No, he would be ill-advised to go near the place.
But—to-morrow?
That ticking clock on the mantelpiece seemed to be plucking time to pieces.
She would give herself up.
She would tell the truth.
But what if Ballard happened to be alive?
He held the skirt in front of the fire until it ceased from steaming. There were those other garments, her poor muddy stockings, and the fire was burning low. He went to fetch more wood, and to obtain it he smashed up the big packing-case, using a billhook he had brought with him.
Would she sleep?
Poor kid, how could she be expected to sleep?
And to-morrow. O, damn that clucking clock!
He had hung the dry skirt on a chair, and was rinsing her muddy stockings in a bucket of water. He wrung them out and hung them in front of the fire.
O, no, they could not hang her. She could plead provocation, panic, that she had acted in self-defence. There would be evidence as to Ballard’s brutal temper. Yes, mitigating circumstances. But—even then! A light sentence, five years, ten years? And what would that mean? The cage. Five years of—the living death. He would not see her.
Good God, what was boiling up in him?
This madness! But was it madness?
Why should she have to suffer because of a brute like Ballard?
He piled more wood on the fire.
Yes, why should she have to suffer?
For the moment this tower was a sanctuary.
Supposing——?
At last her clothes were dry. What was the time? He held the clock-face to the fire and found the hands standing at seven minutes after midnight. He wound the clock. Another day! And he was no nearer to a solution of the problem. Some course of action would have to be decided upon, and the decision would be so dreadfully final. Could he temporize? He might assume that while she was hidden here he could hold off reality like a man with his shoulders against a door. She had but to show herself to the outer world, and he would be helpless.
Helpless! What did that word suggest?
Going to the outer door he unlocked it, and stood on the stone steps of the tower. The rain had passed, and the trees had ceased to drip. He could see stars. The night smelt wet and sweet. God, how beautiful the earth could be, and how beauty could wound!
He went down the steps and into the garden and out by the gate into the woods. He wanted to try and think things out in the darkness, not as yet realizing that some human riddles are solved, not by thinking, but by feeling. The solution would be so very simple when it arrived. Meanwhile, he walked up and down the woodland path, with the wet foliage brushing against him in a silence that was impersonal and profound.
What if she showed herself determined to surrender to fate?
He was conscious of emotion, of something within him beginning to struggle and resist. Why should she give herself up? And suddenly he stood still, looking up at a patch of clear sky studded with stars. Maybe the primitive urge that is in all of us, began to inspire and to possess him. The very setting was in sympathy with such an elemental manifestation, these miles of woodland and of heath, night, a world that might have been the world of man at war with nature and with other men. Dressed in furs, and with a stone axe on his shoulder! Death and peril in the woods! He found himself leaning against a tree, listening, looking, his muscles tense, his wits alert. The soul of the savage, of the lone man of the wilderness, seemed to remanifest itself in him, and to shoulder to one side the correct, socialized creature of a conventional community. His large hands had become fists. His shoulders hunched themselves. There was a fierce stirring of the primordial stuff in him.
Had he indulged in self-analysis or painted a little personal picture of his past Luce would have seen himself as essentially a separative person, a northern man who had felled trees and made himself a clearing in the woods. Around him spread the waste, to be crossed by no stranger save as a potential enemy. The wayfarer, coming to this solitary place, would know that these woodlands would expect him to blow his horn. Let him arrive with stealth and he would be treated as some treacherous enemy. Luce had always hated crowds, and the chatter and smell of too much humanity. Like your Saxon he had preferred trees, and the green and empty spaces, and if that stubborn, separative self was reborn in him on this May night, it was but part of an old heritage. What was his was his. His urge was to lay his large hands upon some weapon, though the gesture might be translated into the more modern tongue. Why not defy and outwit the thing that is called society? Why surrender to the crowd and its crowd customs? The thing may have been a mere blind impulse, vaguely realized as yet, an urge that was to be sublimated, but it was there in him.
He returned to the tower. He had ceased from questioning the significance of his involvement in this woman’s tragedy. It had become reality. He locked the door, and taking off his boots, crept up the stairs on bare feet to listen at her door. Was she sleeping? Please God she would sleep for a little while. Sleep, yes, and he too might need clean eyes and a clear head. When did the day break? About four. That would give him three hours of sleep. He sat down in one of the basket-chairs, and with his feet in the other, covered himself with the spare blanket. The fire was a mere knot of embers, the silence complete save for the ticking of the clock. And like some old sea-rover who could lie down with his sword and
shield beside him, and forget to-morrow’s hazard, Luce slept.
3
The birds woke him in the stealth of the dawn. There was to be a fresh, rain-washed splendour in this perfect morning, and the birds were wise as to it and rejoiced. But if the light came gradually, Luce’s waking was as sudden as the drawing of a curtain. His feet pushed back the chair. He was up, and standing at the window, his head shaggy against the dawn. He was like a man in a tower, looking out at a green world whose peacefulness was an illusion, a man ready to take up his bow and shoot.
He lit the oil stove, warmed up some water, and washed and shaved himself, and having refilled the kettle he put it on the stove ready for early morning tea. Early morning tea! How tame and domestic, but had not a mug of hot tea sometimes saved one’s soul in the trenches? He unlocked the green door, and relocking it from the outside, bent down to examine the steps. Had those stockinged feet of her left any pattern upon the stones? He could find no mark of any description, and having satisfied himself of this, he walked slowly along the path to the gate. The soil was light and sandy and the heavy rain had smoothed it out as the sea refreshes the sand of the shore. A mere scrutiny of the garden path did not satisfy him. He followed the woodland track for nearly a quarter of a mile, but nowhere could he discover any mark left by her shoeless feet.
Had she been seen by anyone? It seemed to him most unlikely, for who would have been out in that drenching rain? The twilight and the wet woods would have made her flight completely secret. And the inference? Was it not obvious? No one would suspect her of having taken refuge in the tower. And what, in all probability, would the assumption be? That she had committed suicide, or lost her reason, and that she would be found somewhere, dead or alive. They might drag that pond; they might recover her shoes, and the finding of them would suggest that she had contemplated suicide, but had been frightened by the water, and that she would be found elsewhere in some covert or heathy waste, exhausted, perhaps dead. The search for her might last for days. There were miles of wood and heathland to be covered.
She was safe for the moment, sure of some respite, if she did not show herself. Who would suspect a rather eccentric and middle-aged person of harbouring a woman who was a stranger to him? No one—as far as he knew—had ever seen them together, and his tenancy of the tower could be numbered in days. Good business! He was conscious of a feeling of fierce and secret elation.
He turned back towards the tower with the early sunlight streaming through the trees. What a marvellous morning, with the smell of the wet woods everywhere, and the thorn trees in flower, and the bracken beginning to unfurl its fronds. His world seemed limitless, and illimitably green and secret. And then, passing by the black spread of an old yew tree, he got a glimpse of the tower, and suddenly he stood still. God,—what was she thinking of? He saw her standing at the open window, a little figure against a dark background like a picture in a frame.
4
In the conflict between the spirit and the flesh, the spirit had surrendered to the importunities of a weary body, and she had slept.
Her moment of waking had been as sudden as Luce’s, but unlike his, her spirit had not risen instantly to the day’s challenge. She had lain there wide-eyed and still, more conscious of the inward and immediate features of her misfortune than of her surroundings. It was as though sleep had exorcised the haste and the horror of the thing, and brought her mute to the confessional. She had been conscious of a feeling of resignation. She had heard her inward self saying, “I shall dress and go and give myself up. I shall be glad when it is all over. The horror is finished for me. There is peace in surrender.”
She had slipped out of the narrow bed, and discovered herself and the beginnings of a new mood draped in that monstrous sleeping-suit. This was no stage for the whimsical and the ridiculous, but smitten she had been by a little tremor of tenderness. She would be able to think of him always and to the end as a man—who——. But her clothes? Her urge had been to recover them. She had heard Luce moving in the room below, and stealthily opening her door she had stood listening. Should she call to him? And then, she had heard him go out and close the tower door.
Her haste and those torrential trousers had come near to spilling her down the stairs. The things, flopping over her feet, had tripped her up, and she had saved herself by clutching the handrail and swinging sideways against it. The incident had seemed to revive her feelings of breathlessness and of terror. What if he returned before she had recovered her clothes and smuggled them and herself upstairs? In her child’s panic she had let those blue and white accessories slip from her; and had run down naked save for the jacket. She had found her clothes hanging on the chairs, and had clutched them and fled, and then, when she had gained the upper room she remembered that she had left the trousers lying on the stairs. With a little sob of overcharged dismay she had run down to recover them.
She had dressed herself, but the smooth, resigned apathy of her waking mood had passed. Her hands had felt flurried; they had fumbled. Her stockings seemed to have grown smaller in the night, and in pulling them on a darned heel split. Well, did that matter? Dressed once more in her own clothes she became conscious of the significance and the finality of the act. That window, sunlight, the green freshness of the morning. She had put out her hands and raised the lower sash.
What a beautiful day!
Her opening of the window had let in the scent and the freshness of the morning. There had been sudden anguish in the joy and loveliness of life. She had felt her throat swelling. Almost, her eyes had filled with tears.
How very beautiful this world could be!
And she was to leave it, give herself up. How much better it would have been if she had shown more courage. But—now!
And then she had seen Luce standing there in the sunlight, waving his arms at her. What was the meaning of that silent signal? He seemed to be waving her away from the window. And suddenly, she understood. She drew back, and with a little catching of the breath, sat down upon the bed.
IX
She heard Luce climbing the stairs, and she waited for the sound of his voice like one who has dropped a stone into a deep well and listens for the splash.
“Rachel.”
Why did he speak so softly? And again she was wise as to the inference, and with a quickening of her heart beats she became conscious of a new crisis.
“Yes. I’m dressed.”
“Are those clothes quite dry?”
“O, yes.”
“You mustn’t show yourself at that window.”
His sudden insistence upon secrecy seemed to leave her poised above a precipice. Did he mean? But it wasn’t possible. She had been so ready in her waking mood to accept the day’s inevitableness. And now? Why had she gone to that window? Why had she felt herself overwhelmed by the beauty and desire of the morning?
Something seemed to give way in her. She cowered; she burst into tears. This sudden caring was too quick, too cruel. And then she realized that he was in the room. She saw his face. Dear God, had it happened to him too?
He was closing the window.
“Dear, don’t cry like that.”
She saw with blurred eyes his big hands hanging. They opened and shut, opened and shut. Then, he was holding her. He sat down on the bed with her on his knees.
“My dear, we are going to face this out together.”
She lay in his arms, sobbing. Could she go now? O, yes, she could go to her confessional and with a new courage. She became calm. She turned her face to the light.
“I’m so sorry, John. I’m braver now.”
She was aware of his strange stillness, the quiet, strong solidity of him.
“That’s right. We’ve got to think things out.”
“It will be easier—now.”
He was silent, and suddenly she wanted to look at his face, and dared not. What was he thinking? This silence of his was—— Yes, just what was it? Her eyes were wide open, her lips tremulous.
> “I’d like you to go with me, John.”
“Would you?”
“Yes.”
“That hasn’t happened yet.”
She lay looking up into his face. If she was conscious of bewilderment, a mingling of fear and of tenderness, his face expressed none of these things. His blue eyes stared. He sat there on that flimsy bed with a stillness that was like that of a rock or a tree. But what madness, what dear madness was this? And how had it happened? Just as it had happened to her? She began to struggle a little.
“Let me sit up, John.”
She sat erect on his knees, her face turned towards the window.
“Don’t make it more difficult for me, dear.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder.
“It’s different—now. It’s you who have made it different. When shall we go?”
She heard him say quietly. “You’re not going, my dear.”
Only then did she begin to appreciate the profound significance of his purpose. She felt that she must struggle against it, for his sake as well as for her own. She freed herself and went to the window, and once again she was wounded by the beauty of the morning. But the window was shut. Should she open it, make him understand that she was determined to accomplish her penance? But was she so determined?
“Don’t make it harder for me, John.”
She ran a finger over one of the glass panes as though tracing letters in a film of dust. Her back might be turned, but she felt him close to her. This sense of his nearness distracted her. There was more than mere method in his madness.
“John,—I——.”
She felt his hand on her arm. His grip was gentle and yet inexorable.
The Woman at The Door Page 9