Barry took her hand in his and held it tightly.
"Are you trying to say you've — changed your mind about — some things?" he asked almost diffidently.
"It wasn't a case of changing my mind, Barry." Strange how easy it was to speak frankly now that the tragedy of Varoni's danger had stripped everything to the barest essentials. "My mind never needed to change. It was all a mis» take that evening — I did try to tell you afterwards, but made such a bad job of it. I can't explain even now — I wish I could.
"Something happened that made me think I had to make you hate me."
He smiled very faintly.
"You failed miserably," he said. "I've scarcely stopped thinking of you from that evening to this."
"Oh—" In spite of all her anxiety and fear, a ray of light entered her heart. "Barry, I never stopped thinking of you either. I wanted to tell you. Oh, it's so difficult! And we mustn't stay now, because Mother—" She stopped, staring at him, her eyes very wide and frightened.
"It's all right, Alix dear," Barry said gently. "Moerling told me that bit. It seems there's a lot to explain, and I believe I've been very stupid about it all somewhere. But I do know about your being Nina's daughter, and I think perhaps that has something to do with our dreadful misunderstanding, hasn't it?"
Alix nodded wordlessly. It was beyond her to make explanations just then — and in any case, some of them could never be made even now. But he said it was "all right". He was speaking to her gently, just as he used to do — and he said it was all right
"I want you to know — I didn't mean — anything I said," she got out at last.
"When, dear?"
"That awful evening — in the car. I was mad with wretchedness. I had to say those things — and I wanted to die."
He put his arm round her then.
"Don't think about it any more. It doesn't matter — it's forgotten. Drink up your coffee, child. It will help to steady you. And then we must go. We have a long way to drive."
She drank her coffee obediently and, saying good-bye to Betty, went out of the cottage with Barry.
It was still raining hard, and the wind was blowing so strongly that he put his arm round her to support her as they went down the path to the gate. There was no moon, and the bright lights of the car seemed the only beacon in a black and stormy world.
She thought they were like the feel of Barry's arm round her, holding back the dark fears that would otherwise engulf her.
He settled her in the car, tucking rugs warmly round her, and then took his place beside her.
"All right?"
"Yes, quite all right." She smiled at him rather wanly, and his glance softened once more.
"There's one other thing, Alix—" he dropped his eyes, and she wondered for a moment how she had ever imagined he was anything like forty.
"Yes?" It was her voice that was very gentle now. "What is it?"
"Have you forgiven me for the hateful thing / did that evening? I've so often thought of it and longed to say I was sorry."
"It's all forgotten too," she said, and, leaning forward, she softly kissed his cheek.
"Oh, my dear!" He returned the kiss just as gently. And then, with a little sigh of satisfaction, he started the car.
They drove for a while in silence. Alix watched the long spears of rain that glistened in the light from the car, and thought how strange it was that in spite of everything, there was happiness somewhere in her heart.
Moerling had been right. Only one thing could make it better for her, and that was to have Barry fetch her. That he should have thought of it at a moment like this, when his world must be falling to pieces! To know that the very tragedy of the moment provided the chance.
"I think Moerling is the most utterly unselfish person I know," she exclaimed suddenly, breaking a long silence.
"Do you?" Barry sounded surprised. "He hasn't that reputation, you know."
"No, I know. That surface hauteur and his autocratic manner are as far as most people go. But underneath—" she paused and seemed lost in thought.
"What, Alix? What has he got underneath all that?"
"A capacity for loving that is like a living force," Alix said slowly. "I know now that I shall probably never see it again in anyone else, but all these years it has stood beside Nina and what Shakespeare calls her 'fighting souP. I think perhaps that in the end it conquered."
Barry glanced at her curiously.
"You know them both very well, don't you?"
"I should do. They are my parents," Alix said, and in her voice there was a loving pride that must surely have touched them both if they had heard.
"Moerling is your father?" Barry sounded a little as though he were past being astonished by anything now.
"Yes. Didn't he tell you that?"
"No. We only had a few minutes 5 talk, and though he was very calm, I think he found some difficulty in keeping his thoughts on me at all. He just explained about Nina being your mother, and asked me most earnestly to come and fetch you. He gave me a letter for you. I have it here."
"A letter!"
"Yes." Barry felt in his pocket and produced the letter. "I'm sorry, I should have given it to you earlier. I forgot in the — well, in the urgency of other things."
She took it from him and held it tightly for a minute.
"He didn't — Barry, he didn't say anything about what they told him on the phone, did he? Not anything to show how — how much hope there was?"
Barry stared straight ahead.
"There didn't seem much hope, darling. I'm terribly sorry. Only Moerling seemed so cool for the few minutes that I came along and actually saw him. It wasn't possible to believe the worst."
Alix was silent. She supposed there had been something stunned about Moerling's blank rejection of the inevitable, and she wondered if there would be a reflection of that in his letter to her. She unfolded it slowly.
And then she saw.
It was not a letter from him at all. It was the letter her mother had sent to him that morning. Varoni's overture for peace. Her half pleading, half imperious appeal — so pathetic now — that had been meant to pave the way to better things.
Alix had never seen her mother's handwriting before, except for the deliberately foreign style she used for signing photographs. Now she was surprised at the almost schoolgirl roundness of it, and its rather artless legibility.
The letter began, without any preamble:
"// isn't any good, Dieter. I can't bear it any more. I am coming back. 1 know I deserve that you should refuse to let me come, and yet 1 cannot imagine your doing so. It's that which gives me courage to do this now.
"Anyone else would say 7 suppose she knows her voice
is goingy and she thinks she'll come back while she can'. But again I can't imagine that you will say anything like that. I am coming back because I find that in the last extremity I love you. You are more to me than all the other things. 1 haven't used such words to you for over twenty years. I don't know why you should believe them now, but they are the truth.
"There have been so many triumphs in the last six months, almost as though to mock me. But each time, when the applause has ended, I have thought that if I could only hear your THerzchen, you were wonderful tonight I could die happy."
Alix shivered. Why had she used just that expression? It was so tragically significant now. She read cm.
"And it isn't only you. Its the child too. I can't do without her either. Its odd, because for so long I managed almost not to think of her. Yet the few months she was with me she seems to have grown into my very heart — what heart 1 have.
"When I look back all those years to the time when she was born, I think I remember that it hurt a gr^ui ui having her, but, strange though it may seem, it hurts even more losing her. Or perhaps it is that the pains of birth are easily forgotten but the pain of parting stays there always. 1 don't know.
"I've read this letter over, Dieter, and I find I have said nothin
g of what I really feel. What shall I do? I cannot write as I want to. But I shall be in England a few hours after you receive this, and I keep on hoping that somehow you and Alix will forgive me, and I shall have you always. I seem to have gone such a long way down a very dark path, and now I'm very frightened except when I think of you. But you will not be angry with me, will you? Though anyone else in the world would be angry, you will not. I know now that, even if I were dead, your love would somehow find me in whatever cold wastes I might have to wander. My love is a poor thing in comparison, but it is all yours, such as it is — yours and Alix's. — Nina.**
Alix raised her head and stared in front of her again — at the rain falling ceaselessly in the light from the
head-lamps, at the shining ribbon of wet road, at the occasional glimpses of dripping hedges that showed bright green in the lamplight and then were lost in darkness.
Nina had been coming back to them. In this mood of almost despairing contrition, she had been coming back — but the journey had never been completed.
"If only Moerling got there in time!'* thought Alix. "I could almost bear it if / didn't get there in time, so long as he did. She'd be so frightened without him. If only he got there in time!"
They were passing through a silent, sleeping village now, and Barry glanced at the name.
"Is it far now, Barry? Shall we be much longer?"
"I don't think it can be much farther. From what I could see on the map, another half hour should do it."
She relapsed into silence again.
It was such a comfort having Barry there. It made one feel that somehow the very worst things in the world could not come. And see how impossible it was to foresee what miracles might happen. Three hours ago no power on earth would have made her believe that she would be here beside Barry again, their clumsy, half-made explanations bridging the gap between them and comforting their sore hearts.
Then why not hope and believe that Nina would yet recover?
Alix tried to thrust away the superstitious feeling that half of Nina's letter had been almost prophetic.
"I seem to have gone such a long way down a very dark path . . ." She meant something quite different — quite different from the path which led into the final shadows, of course. And yet that stark little cry to Moerling — "I am very frightened" might be echoing to the bottom of her soul now.
She must not think like this. She must not.
Alix smoothed out the letter on her knee again, and her eyes travelled over the page until that sentence near the end "—even if I were dead, your love would somehow find me in whatever cold wastes I might have to wander."
"Oh, Nina, Nina," she thought with pity and tenderness, "if you had to go, would it really comfort you to know that his love would follow you, even into eternity?"
The thought comforted her too a little, and presently, when Barry said: "Will you look out for a white gate, your side?" she was able to do so with alert, tearless eyes.
"Here, Barry," she said quietly a few minutes later, and, stopping the car, Barry got out and opened a wide white gate set far back in a bend in the hedge. A short drive led to an unpretentious country house, where the immediate opening of the door showed how eagerly they were expected.
A maid admitted them, and as they came in, a grey-haired woman with a pleasant, kindly face came to meet them.
She took Alix's hand warmly in both of hers.
"You're Madame Varoni's daughter, aren't you? My name is Mrs. Dodd. I'm so glad you have come."
"It's very kind of you to let us make free of your home like this," Alix said gratefully. "How — how is she?"
"Well, it is very serious, of course. The specialist who came down with Mr. Moerling is with her now. One can only hope."
"Yes — yes, of course." Alix saw there was little hope in Mrs. Dodd's opinion. "And Mr. Moerling?"
"He is up there too."
"I see. I'd better wait until they come down."
"Oh yes. Come in here, and do try to eat something after your long drive. It's difficult, I know, but please try."
Alix and Barry followed their kind hostess into a cosy sitting-room, and did their best to swallow some sandwiches and coffee.
They talked in a spasmodic way, gleaning a few details of the accident, though Mrs. Dodd knew little more than they,
Nina had been driving her own car, there had evidently been a bad skid on the wet road, and she had crashed into a telegraph pole. Some farm-labourers had found her and brought her here, the nearest house.
"When our local doctor came, he decided against the risk of moving her. Then we examined her handbag and identified her, which helped us to guess who was 'Moerling' for whom she kept on asking."
"She asked for me too — for 'Alix', didn't she?" Alix said in a low voice.
"Yes. We knew you must be her daughter. She spoke of you as her little girl."
"She — called me — that?" Alix's eyes suddenly filled with tears.
"Yes. She may actually have thought of you as a little girl again, you know. People who are not quite themselves often go back many years in their memory."
Alix nodded, but she knew it was not that. Her mother had spoken of her as she had thought of her during the last six months.
Barry, seeing how much moved she was, though not quite understanding the reason, took on the burden of the conversation now, and Alix sat gazing into the fire, while the lowered voices of Barry and Mrs. Dodd made an indistinct accompaniment to her thoughts.
They all started slightly when there was the sound of a door opening quietly overhead, and then footsteps descended the stairs.
It was not Moerling's step, Alix knew. Then it must be the specialist coming down at last.
Mrs. Dodd got up and went into the hall to speak to him, and a moment later he came into the room alone — a tall, spare, grey-haired man, with an air of unmistakable authority.
Alix got nervously to her feet, but he said at once:
"No, no, please sit down. You are Madame Varoni's daughter, aren't you?"
"Yes." Alix's mouth felt so terribly dry that it was with difficulty that she got out even one word.
"I'm sorry. This is a very sad business for you." There was kindness in his voice in spite of the formality.
"You mean — there isn't — any hope?"
"None at all, I'm afraid. It would be wrong to deceive you. There has been much too much loss of blood and strength for her to rally. I doubt if she will recover consciousness again. But she won't suffer at all now."
There was absolute silence in the room except for the slight crackle of the fire. Barry took her hand quietly, and she held his tightly, though she didn't look at him.
"I seem to have gone such a long way down a very dark path . . ."
Alix's eyes came back to the doctor.
"May I go up and see her, please?"
He inclined his head.
"There is no objection. You will be very quiet, of course."
"Of course."
"Shall I come with you, Alix, as far as the door?" Barry asked gently.
"No, thank you. I shall be quite all right."
"Then I'll wait here."
Alix nodded.
"It's the first door on the right at the top of the stairs," the doctor told her, and she went out of the room.
Slowly she climbed the stairs. They seemed very long and very steep, but she knew that was only illusion. It was just that her heart was so unbearably heavy.
It was utterly still up there, and with a shiver Alix wondered if this were the silence of death.
Very quietly she turned the handle of the door and went into the room where Varoni lay.
It was only dimly lighted and she had made no sound at all, but even if she had, she would not have disturbed the two people she saw there. Not only Varoni but Moer-ling too, was completely oblivious of her presence. He was sitting at the other side of the bed, leaning forward, with one arm very near Varoni, and he was watching he
r with a fierce intensity that was none the less impressive because it was quiet.
Alix came forward a step or two, though she still remained in the shadow, but Moerling didn't raise his head.
Varoni lay there, very quiet and still, much as though she were asleep, except that her breathing was almost imperceptible. Her bright, fair hair had been drawn back from her face, and lay now in an extravagantly thick plait over one shoulder. She looked strangely young, and strangely — good, Alix thought with a little tug at her heart. As though she had been the sweet, quiet joy of some husband and family for many years of her life.
She hadn't been anything of the sort, of course, but it was hard to think otherwise when she looked as she did now, and Alix felt sure that if only those great blue eyes would open, they would smile with a warmth and tenderness beyond all description.
But they remained closed. The specialist had said they would probably never open again. Varoni's incomparable smile had already gone from the world.
"It isn't true!" Alix thought passionately. "I don't believe it. Oh, why won't she open her eyes? — and frown if she likes, be unreasonable, cross, unkind — anything, if she would just look at me again."
Perhaps Moerling was thinking that too. Alix shifted her sad gaze to him — and then was suddenly arrested by something about him. He was absolutely still, yet she knew quite well that every ounce of his tremendous vitality was being called into play. He seemed almost to be generating strength in his big quiet figure. She had seen him hold people before by the sheer driving force of his personality. But this was something different.
What was Moerling doing? Alix wondered, with something between pity and a sort of fear. Was he literally trying to reach Varoni, so far down that "dark path"? Was he defying the inevitable — holding it off for a little while by his sheer refusal to believe in it?
Alix felt she ought to speak to him, but there was nothing she could say. He was totally unaware of her presence — of anything but the woman on the bed. And as Alix hesitated, he spoke to Varoni, softly and gently, so that Alix could not even catch the words. But the tone was infinitely coaxing and reassuring, as though he believed implicitly that his voice was reaching her.
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