by Edith Nesbit
“So you see,” she ended, “ It’s good-bye. And I’ve come to say it.”
He got up and walked away — quite a long way he walked. Then came back quickly and stood looking down at her.
“It’s not good-bye,” he said. “ That’s not a marriage. We can get that annulled, and then — oh, Sandra, don’t be unhappy, my darling. It’ll be all right.”
“It never will,” she said; “ if the marriage could have been annulled my grandfather would have done it. He paid the man to keep away, and now I must pay him to keep away. And I’ve been so happy — and now it’s all over. Oh, I wish I’d never seen you. I wish I had never been born.”
He was down beside her, his arm round her neck.
“Don’t cry, my darling — ah, don’t. — What did you say?”
“I — I can’t find my handkerchief,” was what she said. He gave her his, with a silly, glorious thrill of intimacy. Then they sat and held each other tightly, while she cried and he kissed her hair.
When she had grown calm again he tried every argument, every persuasion, only to see each shattered against the rock of her inflexible will.
She had not spent the night in agony for nothing. Her mind was made up. Her husband was alive: therefore she had no right to love the man who loved her. She could not help loving him, but she could never see him again. That was what it all came to again and again through the quiet morning hours while he pleaded and she denied.
“And even if you were married,” he said at last, driven to a sharper attack by the immobility of her resistance, “ what does it matter? Come away with me — we’ll be married in a church and go to South America or somewhere where he’ll never find you.”
“Don’t,” she said gravely.
“You can’t think there’s anything sacred in a marriage like that — a marriage you were tricked into? And anyhow marriage is all a silly convention,” he said, and almost persuaded himself that he thought so. “ I can’t let you go.”
“You’ve got to let me go. While he’s alive I’ll never see you anymore.”
It all came round to that over and over and over again. Worn out at last he had to let her leave him.
“Tell me your town address,” he said. “I’ll see my lawyer. I know you can get free.”
“I live,” she said, half smiling with pale lips, “ at the house with no address. And I won’t tell you where that is. And don’t tell me where you live. I won’t know.”
“That at least wouldn’t do any harm,” he said. “You must know where I am. You might need me. I live at 64—”
“No” — she almost shouted the word. “I won’t — oh — don’t you see? don’t you understand? I don’t keep all on saying it — hut you aren’t a fool — you must see . . . don’t you understand that if I knew where you lived I could never trust myself from one day to another to keep away from you .... And I must. Whatever happens I’m going to keep straight.”
The phrase, which was Aunt Dusa’s, gave to the declaration a force that no finer phrase could have let it. It was then that he held her in his arms as one holds the beloved for the death parting, lightly, passionately, with the tenderness of a mother for a child, the passion of a lover for the mistress desired and unpossessed.
“Go,” he said, letting his arms fall suddenly, “ go if you must go — go now.”
She went. And at the end of three steps turned to say: “ Take care of your poor hand.”
It seemed to him the most pathetic and lovely thing in the world. That she should care about his rotten hand .... now
She did not look back again. She knew that he was lying face-down among the tree roots. And she knew, too, that if she looked back she would go back to him, and that if she went back to him she would never be able to go away, from him anymore.
So she went blindly along the towing path — and children going to afternoon school passed her and looked curiously at the white face.
“She do look sick,” one of them said.
“I reckon it’s a touch of the sun like what father had,” said an older child, “ only he was red in the face, and her no hat on at all.”
She found her boat, and pulled up to the boat house, moored the boat quite securely and reasonably, and went back to the Wood House.
“We’ll go back to-morrow,” she said. “ I’m too tired now. I want to go to sleep. Don’t wake me for anything. No, I don’t want any lunch. I don’t want anything. Only to be let alone and to go to sleep for a very long time. I shall be all right to-morrow. But I’ll write a letter first.”
She wrote, quite legibly and steadily:
“I know you can’t make me live with you. You can do anything else you like. And you shall never have a penny from me. Alexandra.”
“There!” she said, hammering the envelope with her fist to make the gum stick, “ send that to that man at once. I suppose he gave you his address. I suppose he’s somewhere near here. I shall never give him a penny. He can’t hurt me any more than he has.”
A real heroine would have thrown herself on her bed dressed as she was, and either fallen into the sleep of exhaustion or lain awake for hours gazing at the white ceiling. But Sandra had learned to take care of her body. She undressed methodically and completely, bathed, put on her nightgown, brushed out her long hair and plaited it up, pulled down the blinds and went to bed with a cold-water bandage over her swollen eyes. The sleep of exhaustion came all right enough then.
Mrs. Mosenthal left with the letter in her hands, sought a messenger for it. There was no one. The gardener only came once a week, and it was not his day. The woman from the house of East Lock who came in every morning to cook and clean, had gone. Aunt Dusa could not take the letter herself. Sandra might wake and want her.
Remained only Denny. So Denny she sought. And found. He was in the garden, lying face downwards in the darkest, dampest part of the shrubbery, his chin on his hands. His “ little friend,” the crutch, lay beside him. At her voice he raised his face to her, void of expression as any wax mask at Madame Tussaud’s.
“Oh, brother,” said the harassed woman, “he’s in one of his states now. Of course he would be — just to-day of all days.”
Denny had fits of silent absorption, when he seemed oblivious of all around him. He could be roused from these, but if this were done he was always ill afterwards. So it was usual to leave him alone at such times — after an hour or two he would arouse himself, and come back into the waking world stretching his long arms like one who has slept too soundly. These lapses into oblivion were always called his states. They never happened in town. Sandra had a theory that his music kept them at bay. But in the country he could not always be induced to offer that defence.
“It’s no good,” said Mrs. Mosenthal, “ go that letter must, or we shall have my lady ramping and raging, poor injured lamb. Denny, Denny.”
She shook him by the shoulders. He rolled over on his back, and his face lay turned up like a dead face. She took his cold hands one at a time and kneaded them between her warm, fat, cushiony palms. “Denny, Denny,” she said loudly, “wake up, Sandra wants you.”
“I know she does,” he said suddenly in the midst of the fifth repetition of this formula. “I know. I’m ready.” But his face still looked like the face of a dead man.
“Wake up,” she said sharply; “ you must.”
“Eh?” he said, and sat up, rubbed his eyes and stretched. “ What is it? I was asleep, wasn’t I?”
“Yes,” she answered.
It was what he always said after one of his “ states,” — and what they always said in reply.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said, “ though really this place is too damp — Why, the ground’s as soft as butter with all these dead leaves about, too. You’d think they’d all be gone by this time of year, wouldn’t you?” she added, making conversation bravely, as Denny stumped beside her into the afternoon sunshine. “ Sandra wants a letter to go at once. There’s no one else — so I thought you’d take it —
in the chair. Would you mind very much? It’s to the Railway Hotel at Paddock Wood. It’s on business. Very urgent. I wouldn’t ask you only Sandra was so particular for it to go at once.”
Denny’s face flushed a slow crimson. He hated to go abroad in daylight in that chair — a sort of tricycle worked by the arms, with a rest for the poor lame leg. The crutch was less noticeable. Everyone stared at the chair. But with the crutch one went so slowly and got so tired. In the chair, at night, Denny could go for twenty miles easily. On the crutch a couple of miles wore him out.
“Of course I’ll go,” he said. “ The Princess is resting, isn’t she? She must be tired with all the boating she’s done this week. And all alone, too.”
Mrs. Mosenthal looked at him and wondered how much he knew. She could not be sure. One never could be sure, with him.
He went to change his suit — he was always particular in matters of the toilet — pernickety Mrs. Mosenthal called it, in moments of exasperation. She brought the machine round to the front door.
“You are in a hurry,” He said, and smiled, when he found it there waiting.
“It’s Sandra,” her tone apologized. “ She might wake any minute, you know, and ask if it had gone.”
“She might,” he agreed. “ She makes slaves of us all> doesn’t she? I wonder whether there’s anyone who doesn’t worship her. Anyone she can’t turn round her little finger?”
And again she wondered if he knew anything, guessed anything. And again she could not be sure.
“It’s a wonderful thing — All right, I’m going — I must get my silly leg straight on the rest — it’s wonderful how she makes everyone do what she wants, and everything she wants seem right. So long, Aunt Dusa, dear.”
He was quite awake now — that was his own smile — a very beautiful one by the way. But for the accident of being dropped in the gutter at two little years old by a child only two little years older, Denny would have been a six foot man, broad and strong, with the shape of the Discobolus and the face that women turn round to look after. Well, the face was still his — and when he smiled Mrs. Mosenthal smiled and said to herself:
“God bless the dear boy. His heart’s right at any rate.”
That his head wasn’t, was the obvious implication.
The ride to Paddock Wood would have been pleasant enough to a man who had not been dropped in the gutter when he was two years old. To Denny it was a martyrdom. Every turn of the road might mask a foot passenger — some one who could walk strongly on his own upstanding equal feet, and who would look curiously at the man who worked a tricycle with his arms, because he had a foot that could not even walk, much less work machines. Behind any bush might lurk a boy, and when you are a cripple you learn to hate and fear boys.
But if Denny had had to put his feeling into words — his feeling, for it was not definite to be called a thought, he would have said:
“I am holding my breath in terror of something that will make my soul ache through and through — at any moment I may meet someone who will make fun of me, and whom I shall wish to kill. But I am happy, because it is for her I am holding my breath for fear; and it is for her that I am here, where my soul shivers and feels already half what it will feel when they laugh at me. For her, for her, for her.”
It was a refrain to which the movement of his arms kept time.
Close by the twenty coast-houses that stand in a row on the way to Paddock Wood he was aware of a stout, oily-faced man with black hair and a beard like an Assyrian.
The man looked at him, and though he did not smile, his eyes and lips sent straight through Denny’s soul the agony it was waiting for. The man raised a fat hand, and the machine stopped.
“Were you taking a letter to Mr. Saccage by chance?” said the oily man in a voice that matched his face.
“So you recognize me?” Denny said silently. “You know I live with her. But you don’t know that I recognize you.”
“Yes,” he said aloud.
“Hand over then. I’ll save you another mile or two — counting the two ways. I’m Mr. Saccage.”
“I know you are,” said Denny still to himself, and felt that he would gladly face the two miles more of misery for the sake of saying no to this black-haired beast. But Sandra had wished the letter delivered quickly. He pulled it out, and gave it.
“She might have chosen a quicker messenger,” Saccage grumbled. “ But I suppose you can’t choose in the country. Always been lame like that?” His look seemed to scorch the maimed foot.
“Not quite always,” said Denny equally. And he remembered how kind this man had been to him once, when he had something to gain by it. And how he had hated himself for hating one who was kind to him. And he watched the letter in the other man’s fat, yellow hand.
He watched the tearing open and the reading of the letter, and his eyes shifted to the face of the man who read. He himself read on that face: “ Oh, won’t she? We’ll see about that!”
Mr. Saccage seemed to feel the eyes of the man in the wheeled chair. He looked up quickly and their eyes met — in a long look, which neither would be the first to relinquish.
“Well!” said Mr. Saccage at last, and it was his eyes that had been forced to shift, “ Well — upon my word! I hope you’ll know me again next time you see me, young
man.”
“Yes,” said Denny coolly, and wheeled his chair round as he spoke. “ Yes,” he said again as his hands grasped the levers for the first stroke. “ Yes, I think I shall I”
CHAPTER VIII. THE THREAT
Me. Saccage walked slowly back to his Inn, fingering his Assyrian beard with his pale hand. As he walked he called himself names, — of which fool was the last and least.
“It’s the artistic temperament,” he said, “ it betrays me at every turn.” He took off his hat, and held it under his arm, that the wind might play with his long hair. “ This impetuosity .... I should have waited, waited, waited, like the lion for its prey.” He knew nothing about lions, but he drew himself up as he went, running his hands through his hair, as a regular dog of a lion might run his claws through his mane in an access of self-esteem. “If only I’d let her get a little deeper in. But I thought — anyone would have thought .... And now she’s chucked him. Just my luck. Lord, how damp that swampy wood was, the other side that backwater. Rheumatism in my bow arm, I expect. But it’ll be worth it, my boy — it’ll be worth it — you wait a bit. You’ve frightened her, that’s all. Timid little fawn — timid little idiot. What she wants now is a little encouragement. Just a little push’ the right way, and over she’ll go. Then you can stand over her and make your own terms. I hate the little greedy cat. Well, Miss Pussy, I’ll file your claws and draw your sharp teeth, and make you dance a new way, to my piping. I should like to encourage the other fool, too — the artistic temperament ought to be inventive.” He went on his way, pondering between the green hedges.
Denny made haste home. He wanted to see her — to look at her — to be sure that she was still in the same world with him. It was only that that he needed — but he needed, too, to assure himself of it.
He found not Sandra — her blinds were still drawn closely, and no sound of movement rewarded his listening — but Mrs. Mosenthal, darning long silk stockings in a basket chair, in the shade of the brisk little holly-tree by the French window, on whose glass the sunset light shone redly.
“I took the letter,” he said, getting heavily off his machine and letting himself down on the sun-warmed flag-stones at her feet, “ and I met the man. He thought I didn’t know him — but I did. He took the letter and swore.”
“What did he say?” she asked, and wished she had sent anybody else.
“Nothing — outside. But inside he swore. And he made up his mind that he meant to go on being a beast: only more so.”
“You can’t possibly know anything about what you’re talking about,” said Aunt Dusa helplessly.
“Perhaps not. I daresay I don’t. I daresay I only fancy
things. Only what you fancy’s just as real to you as the things sensible people are sure of. I can’t think what God was about to let a thing like that be born.”
Aunt Dusa emitted a shocked “ Hush!”
“You, but you know I’m right,” he persisted, plaiting and unplaiting the folds of her brown skirt. “ I always know. I was right about that housemaid who stole the linen. I told you she wasn’t straight the first time I saw her.”
“How do you know these things?” she asked, not because she believed that he did know, but because she believed that it was good for him to talk,—”It relieves his poor brain,” she said.
“I don’t know how it is everyone doesn’t know. It’s as plain as the shadows on the grass. I just see it — like you see them. And I’m never wrong. You remember the Building Society man. You all thought he was so affable and good to the poor: But I knew. And the man at the Ringwood Pearl, that knifed his brother. I knew he was all wrong. I told you so.”
“You certainly did. But,” she persisted, “ tell me how you see it. Do they look black in the face like shadows?”
He rubbed his hands impatiently on his knees.
“I can’t tell you. I can’t explain. I can’t make you see. If you don’t see these things you don’t. If you do, you do. But I can’t explain. I might as well try to explain what a shadow was like to a person who’d never seen
one.”
“But everyone sees shadows, you know,” said Mrs. Mosenthal patiently; snipped off the ends of silk, and chose a fresh stocking.
“Yes; that’s just it. You see I can’t explain. Only I know. And I want to tell her to be careful.”
“Why don’t you tell her yourself?”
“She mustn’t know that I know. She’d hate me to know. And if she begins by hating me to know she might end by hating me for knowing. You tell her that it’s you that thinks he’s dangerous. She’ll mind you. You tell her to be careful. Where is she?”
“Still resting.”
“I’m glad she’s got you,” said Denny, suddenly breaking a silence.