So, he had stood aside, and watched life with those hungry and shy eyes of his, until a more adventurous and impressive male had sailed in and left him—alone on the shore—gazing. It had hurt him very horribly at the time. He had never felt about any other woman as he had felt about Marie Foster. Being the sort of man he was he had effaced himself, drifted into other surroundings, and become submerged in a little, solitary service-flat and business.
That was nearly nine years ago. If he thought about Marie at all, which he did on occasions, he thought of her as Marie Greatorex, and the mother of little Greatorexes. Swaggering, good-looking, breezy fellow—Greatorex, scratch at golf, and a partner in big business. He had had no chance with Greatorex.
Meanwhile, the Gledhill business pushed slowly and sensitively uphill, had reached a little plateau and paused there breathlessly. Gledhill had been making fifteen hundred a year, out of which he had had to help a widowed sister with a family, who was trying to run a tea-shop in a south coast town.
Then, like thousands of his fellows, Jack Gledhill had found himself involved in the world’s chaos. Eloquent publicists might describe it as a Financial Cyclone, but all that Gledhill knew was that his business began to blow to bits like a haycock. Nothing that he did or tried to do seemed to make any difference. And suddenly, after two years of inarticulate, mute enduring, something seemed to break in him. He had a bill out against him for a thousand pounds. His life insurance would cover it, under the contract he had signed. There would be a little over for Eileen and her tea-shop.
So, one day in August he packed two suit-cases, with an automatic pistol he happened to own in one of them, and went down into the country. He was a lover of quiet places. He had spent many week-ends wandering along the Downs.
He thought, “I will have a last look at England before I die.”
He chose Newlands Corner. He had phoned the hotel, that most charming rest-house where he had stayed so often. The hotel car met him at Clandon station. He was driven up through that green and secret village with its slanting sunlight and its shadows, up to the great grey hills. A serene sky covered all that lambent landscape, valleys and hills and woods, and beyond the dim grey South Downs he divined the sea.
The hotel was human. It remembered his name, and the room he preferred. It met him in the gay and gold dining-room with its green curtains and grey loggia in the person of Munday the head-waiter. Munday was young; Munday had a pleasant smile and kind eyes. Like the hotel he was a little unusual.
“Glad to see you again, sir.”
“Glad to be here, Munday.”
But was he? And what sort of gladness was this, the whimsical, gay anguish of a man who was beaten, and about to die? The dinner was excellent, so rightly so that in his dream state he did not notice its excellence. How many more hours had he to live? And the bill? As he sat in the lounge, smoking a cigarette and drinking his coffee he told himself that he would leave some cash in an envelope for the hotel. A party of young things had drifted in and were laughing and chattering over their little drinks. Yes, youth! The swagger and the colour of it tantalized him. The windows were filling with the dusk, and that soft, indeterminate greyness was his colour.
He had changed for dinner, but what did that matter? He went up to his room, slipped the pistol into the right-hand pocket of his dinner-jacket, filled and lit a pipe, and going down he passed out into the garden by the library window. His urge was towards the downs, and as he turned into the hotel drive he saw the moon as a blur of tawny light among the trees. Strange, that the moon should be over there, a half-moon shaped like a silver kettledrum. He took the path up to the car-park, and crossing the high road, found himself looking at the landscape and the moon.
Beautiful? Ye gods, yes! Never had this England looked more mysterious and strange and beautiful. The silence was complete. There were wisps and streaks of white mist in the valley. Wooded hills had their blackness edged with silver. Turning west he strolled slowly along the Drove Road, that broad sweep of turf between the thorns and yews, a road that was old as man. He met no one. And then, a most strange feeling came over him. It was as though time and space had passed. He felt himself part of some ultimate and vast reality. This world of woods and hills and valleys, sky and moon, was but a pattern, and he a little point of throbbing light in it. The night seemed to tremble. The earth under his feet was vapour, and he—a slave of the senses—was about to escape from them and behold this ghost world reveal itself.
The stillness was utter. A little wind came suddenly and touched his cheek, and with it—drifted voices. They startled him most strangely. It was as though he—already a disembodied spirit—had been brought back to earth. A little shiver went through him. Women’s voices, and they were coming his way! He stood quite still. He would let these shadows of the old world pass.
Set like a black post in the sweep of the moonlit turf he waited, willing himself to listen to what the voices said. The world of women had nothing more to say to him. He heard one of the girls laugh.
“No, it’s not a post, Jean, it’s a man.”
And suddenly he was sure that he had heard that voice before.
“Ask him.”
“I’d better.”
They had come into his field of vision, two bare-headed, short-skirted figures between him and that deep valley, and again the night overwhelmed him with a sense of strangeness. Was it possible that the past was to reveal itself as a wound in the obscure body of his tragedy?
The same voice was speaking to him.
“Excuse me—but can you tell us how to find the hotel?”
“Newlands Corner?”
“Yes.”
He stood mute, and then as though moved by some inevitable impulse he walked towards them and spoke.
“I am staying there. If you follow this grass track until you reach the road——”
The girls had their backs to the moon, but he was facing it, and to the taller of the two he ceased to be a mere stranger in evening dress. Her eyes were staring at him.
“Well—of all the extraordinary things——!”
And then he knew.
“Marie!”
“It’s like two ghosts meeting on the top of a mountain.”
He was conscious of mental confusion. She was introducing him to her friend. “Jean has an aunt at the hotel. Yes, we have walked up from Guildford. We just felt like it.” He was strolling with them along the downs; he had offered to show them the way. But what a climax to his crisis! He had come out to shoot himself, and met the ghost of his own poignant past.
His gross and confused silence seemed to drift along between them. He put a hand in his pocket and felt that pistol. If they could suspect——? He stole a glance at the face of the girl who had married Greatorex. It was vague to him at the moment in the shadow of a thorn tree.
“Are you living at Guildford?”
“My people have taken a house there. I’m with them for a few days.”
“So—it is all new to you—this?”
“Utterly, and so—more wonderful.”
“Yes, it is rather wonderful.”
He saw her face in the moonlight, the shapely, dark, shingled head, the frank forehead and sweet mouth. He could suppose that she was more mature, and yet—she was disturbingly the same. What could he say to her? He felt that he could have said everything and nothing. The lights of the hotel showed, and Miss Jean Merrivale was carrying the conversation. She, too, was new to this part of Surrey. Wasn’t it marvellous? And what a place for an hotel! Her aunt was always raving about it. And didn’t the hotel give a weekly dance? Gledhill answered that it did. And then, in the midst of a quag of silence he asked Marie that absurd and conventional question:
“How’s your husband, Mrs. Greatorex?”
It was Jean Merrivale who laughed, and the lights of the hotel seemed to twinkle with her.
“How priceless! That was rather a bad one, Mr. Gledhill.”
Her laughter was lik
e the breaking of glass. Had he—like a clumsy idiot—smashed some——? And obviously Miss Merrivale was completely modern, and the child of candour. He found himself gripping a hard object, the pistol in his pocket.
“Have I—offended?”
“Marie isn’t married. Or—are you, Marie?”
“No.”
Her voice was almost soundless, but to Gledhill it was like some strange clash in the stillness of the night. He was conscious of more confusion, of a feeling of being involved in some new and bitter emotion.
“Sorry. It’s so long ago.”
He dared not look at her. He was aware of Miss Merrivale, explaining that both she and Marie were working women—“City celibates, you know,” and children of their generation. Did that surprise him? Would anything surprise him on this incredible night?
“I’m sorry, Marie.”
She gave a little breathless laugh.
“And you?”
“O—I’m just an old bachelor crock.”
Miss Merrivale left them in the oak-panelled lounge. It would appear that Jean’s aunt was a semi-invalid and spent half her life in bed, and Miss Merrivale was directed to Room No. 11. A lounge sofa was vacant, and Gledhill pointed to it.
“Let’s sit here. Would you like anything, Marie?”
“No.”
“Not even a soft drink?”
“No—Jack.”
He stood for a moment looking down at her, acutely conscious of her as the one woman who had mattered in his life. She was the same Marie, yet different, more mature, more the woman of the world. Her dark hair was as beautiful as ever; she had the same sweet mouth and clear frank forehead. The exquisite reality of her made him tremble.
She looked up at him.
“Aren’t you going to sit down?”
He sat down beside her, rigid, shy, strangely afraid.
“Sorry—I asked that question. Stupid of me. You see, I——”
“Does it matter?”
“One just blurts out anything—when—— I’ve always thought of you as——”
“You always took too much for granted, Jack.”
He gave her a quick, brittle glance.
“I don’t think so. I’m an inarticulate sort of ass. But why——”
She smiled faintly at the opposite wall.
“Why—didn’t I marry?”
“My dear—I haven’t any right to ask——”
“I didn’t marry, Jack, because I changed my mind, and because I have never made it up again—since—then.”
He sat staring at the carpet. If he had known! But would things have been different? They could not be different now. He was a broken man, a failure, a fellow sitting beside the ghost of his old love, with a pistol in his pocket. And suddenly he knew that he wanted to live, and the desire was hunger and anguish in him. But how impossible!
He looked at the strong and shapely hands lying in her lap. He was aware of her beautiful solidity. There was nothing flimsy or meretricious about Marie.
“Earning your own living?”
She smiled at him.
“Yes. I am buyer for a big concern.”
“Success. And how is business?”
“A little better. I attend rather strictly to business, Jack. And you haven’t married?”
He sat staring.
“No. Missed my chance.”
She observed him, and her eyes were gentle. This was the same old Jack, shy, self-effacing, rather too sensitive. What had life given him? She could suppose that since he was staying here he was moderately successful.
She said, “I like the feel of this place. It’s friendly.”
He came out of his stare.
“Yes, it’s a good place. Staying long in Guildford?”
“Just over the week-end.”
“You wouldn’t come and dine and dance with me?”
“I’d love to.”
He looked at her poignantly.
“Mean it?”
“Of course. Why so—sceptical?”
“O—I’m just a dull, middle-aged fellow. But will you really come?”
She nodded, and his eyes surprised her.
“My dear—it’s awfully good of you—— I’ll send a car to fetch you up and to take you home.”
And then he said a strange thing.
“Why shouldn’t I be—happy—just for one night? My dancing is nothing very great, Marie.” And then he laughed. “You’ll have to be kind.”
He did not sleep much that night, for he felt like a man who was to drink of a magic cup before dying. He got up and watched the sun rise. It was to be a perfect day. But would she really come? Would not something prevent her? Such a wonderful thing could not happen to him, and yet he assumed that it would happen. At breakfast he called up Munday and asked for a particular table, ordered special flowers and a bottle of 1921 champagne. All the morning he hung about the hotel expecting a telephone message and to hear her voice saying, “I’m most awfully sorry, Jack——” He sat in the garden trying to read. He was a perfect nuisance to Miss Kent in the office. He kept appearing at the window.
“Quite sure no one has telephoned me?”
He arranged for the hotel car to call for Marie, and there was something final about the ordering of that car.
“She’s coming,” he said to himself—“she’s coming. I shall be with her for four whole hours before—that happens.”
At half-past six he went up to change. Not for years had he taken so much trouble over hair, chin and tie. His trousers might have had a cleaner crease. And then, looking at himself self-consciously in the mirror, he felt how pathetic and absurd it all was. Would this wonderful night have any meaning for Marie? Probably he would be self-conscious and stilted and formal—the eternal, fumbling failure.
He waited in the lounge. Munday had told him that it was to be a quiet night—not many people. So much the better. He kept looking at his watch and getting up and going to the hotel door to see if the car was coming up the drive. A voice within him said, “For God’s sake sit still, man; don’t be an ass.” He sat down on one of the sofas just inside the lounge. Opposite him a picture hanging on the wall reflected the hotel entrance. He saw the bonnet and radiator of a car, and then—the figure of a woman.
Marie! He hurried to meet her. She was standing in the doorway with the evening sky and the sunlit trees behind her, a stately creature, and looking taller in her long frock. He was aware of her as a very beautiful and serene thing on the edge of the sunset, her dark hair contrasting with her shell-pink dress, white throat and shoulders. Almost, her beauty frightened him.
“So—you’ve come!”
Her brown eyes were faintly whimsical.
“Wasn’t my yes—sufficient?”
He said—stammeringly—“It seems too good to be true.”
To begin with he felt confused by her nearness and her beauty. Was she really dining and dancing with him? He ordered cocktails, and they sat on a sofa in the lounge. Would she smoke? He looked at her sweet, clean mouth and was somehow glad when she refused the cigarette. He put his case away.
“Ever danced here before? No, of course, you said you hadn’t. We dance in Strachey’s library, rather a lovely room. This was his house, you know.”
He found his shyness passing, but the wonder in him increased. He could talk to her. She was a young woman of the world, and yet so much more than that. She had dignity, and consoling, quiet eyes.
“Let’s go and dine.”
He felt immensely proud of her as he led the way down the stairs into that gay and pleasant room. Munday’s smiling face was like a benediction.
“Your table is in the window, sir.”
“And flowers, Munday?”
“Yes, flowers, sir.”
Courses came and went, but to Gledhill they were of no importance. He forgot to eat his asparagus, and the waitress took it away. Was Marie happy, was Marie enjoying herself, was the wine to her liking? He was so afraid of this
last sacrificial feast being a frost. And presently he ceased to worry. It was after the second dance, when he had begun to forget his fumbling feet. The music and Marie seemed to flow. And she was smiling; she had the serene, sweet look of a woman who was happy with her partner, with the music, with herself.
“Enjoying yourself?”
“Ever so much.”
They seemed to move in perfect sympathy. He would have said that she was like light in his arms. Once her hair touched his forehead, and he was conscious of a little spasm of exquisite pain. What a last night upon earth! Something cried out in him. He thought: “She has given me back my lost youth, and when she goes—my youth will go with her.” The lights were out for a moment, and they were in a world of shadows.
“I’m most terribly grateful to you, Marie—for giving me this.”
She looked in his eyes. She was beginning to wonder about him. There was something strange in the sweet savour of the night. She too was moved.
“It is not very much, Jack, is it?”
“Everything,” he said, and was silent.
Then, it was over. They had stood side by side listening to the red-shirted orchestra playing “God save the King.” A sudden, terrible sadness seized him. He was calling for her car. He was standing by the window looking in at her. He managed to smile.
“You look like a queen, Marie.”
“I feel—a queen.”
And she was gone.
He had told her nothing. What could he have told her? He was conscious of inward anguish and of a kind of dim despair. Yes, this was the end, life flaring wonderfully for an instant before the darkness came. He went to his room, and took the pistol out of a drawer. He found himself in the garden, and everything seemed still and fresh and sweet. No, it could not be done here. It would not be fair to this pleasant, friendly place. He would go out on to the downs, and under some shadowy tree——
He walked down the drive to the white gate-posts and the main road. He stood there a moment. He had only to cross that black road and he would be in a wilderness, country that was as primitive as when the wild men haunted it. And then he heard a sound, a most prosaic and unmusical sound, the detonations of a motor-bicycle coming up the steep hill from Clandon Way. The machine’s head-light cut the darkness.
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