“When did you last …”
“Oh, I can’t think. I can’t remember. Not since after supper when you and Barny were playing. I was so sleepy. Oh, but Maude saw him in the garden after that! She saw him outside the window with Madame Koebel.”
“Did she?” exclaimed both men. And Kerran added:
“But was Elissa Koebel over here last night?”
“I didn’t see her. Maude saw her. She saw them looking in through the window. Weren’t you there when she … oh no, it was when we were going to bed. So Dick must have been in the garden then.”
There was a short pause while both men dismissed an instant suspicion. It was not possible.
“Perhaps he decided to sleep out,” suggested Guy. “It was so hot.”
“But he’d have come in when it began to rain.”
“Perhaps he’s been locked out.”
“Oh, yes,” said Ellen hopefully.
“It’s very likely,” agreed Kerran. “Just wait, Ellen, while I go and see.”
Guy, who had put on a dressing gown, came down with her to the door of the tower, and they both stood watching while Kerran ran through the sheets of rain towards the gate-house. The thunder was growing fainter, and the flashes less blinding. The rain poured steadily down in the struggling light of early morning.
Kerran reappeared in a moment and shouted across the court that the gates were open. They had, in fact, never been locked since the night of Guy and Dick’s arrival. Then he vanished again, and Ellen thought she had better put on a few clothes. She went up to her room and had just huddled a coat and skirt over her nightdress when Kerran came knocking at her door.
“I ran down to the boats. To see if he’d gone over to the mainland. But they’re all three in the boat-house.”
“So that he must be on the island. Or … or …”
“My dear Ellen … don’t meet trouble half way.”
He had just said the same thing to Guy, who, on hearing that no boat had been taken, had insisted upon raising an alarm.
Ellen’s flurried mind darted hither and thither. It seized on a new idea.
“Or he could have gone in Madame Koebel’s boat. She must have come in a boat and gone in a boat, as she didn’t come in. Perhaps …”
There was another knock at the door. This time it was Maude, who had been roused by Kerran’s shout in the courtyard, and who had seen, from her window, his hurried visit to the boat-house.
“Excuse me, but what’s up? Is anything the …” She had seen Dick’s empty bed as soon as she got into the room, and her eyes snapped. “Oh! what’s happened to Dick?”
“That’s just what we don’t know,” said Kerran. “He seems to have vanished last night.”
“Sleeping out, probably,” said Maude with great presence of mind. “I don’t wonder. Barny wanted to. It was so hot.”
“But in this rain … surely …”
“It came on so suddenly. If he was some way away, on the beaches at the other side, he may have crawled into shelter under a boulder or something. I expect we shall have him back in a minute or two.”
“Do you really think so?” asked Ellen, doubtfully.
“My dear, what else could have happened? You go back to bed and I’ll fetch you a nice cup of tea. You look perfectly blue.”
Maude hurried Kerran out on to the stairs and as soon as they had got out of earshot she said:
“Whatever’s to be done?”
“I expect you’re right. I expect he is sheltering …”
“You don’t think I really thought that? It’s as plain as a pikestaff what’s happened. He’s gone off with that woman. I knew he would.”
“Oh, no, no,” cried Kerran, who had thought so himself when Ellen made her suggestion about Elissa’s boat, and had quickly tried to unthink it.
“Of course he has. I saw them in the garden myself last night, peeping in through the window. And I thought to myself we were in for a scene, because, you know, Louise said she wasn’t to come to the island any more, and said it on Dick’s account. I just took no notice. When we went to bed I asked Ellen if she’d seen them, and she said she hadn’t. I wondered what they could be up to, for they hadn’t come in.”
“Ellen herself suggested that he might have gone off in Elissa’s boat.”
“Oh, did she? Then she must have put two and two together. How many people know?”
“Guy and I and you. That’s all.”
“Then we’d better hold our tongues till we see what happens. He may come back, any minute. I don’t suppose he meant to be caught out like this. They thought nobody could see them. He’ll come back with some story of having slept out, you see…. Let’s find Mr. Fletcher …”
They had got to the door of the tower again and now they saw Louise and Gordon and Guy, all huddled up in nightclothes and mackintoshes, struggling through the rain towards them. For Guy, who really believed that Dick must be drowned, had gone to rouse his hosts.
“Well, then—the fat’s in the fire,” whispered Maude.
The panic spread. They were all arguing and exclaiming at once when Ellen came running once more down the stairs.
“It’s all right,” she said breathlessly. “It’s quite all right. I can’t think how I can have been so stupid. His haversack’s gone. He’s taken his things. I know what he’s done. It’s all right. He’s gone for a walking tour in the Ardfillan mountains!”
How she could have been so stupid she did not know. For she had promised to stand the racket and to smooth it over if he disappeared all of a sudden. And what she had done was to make his odd behaviour seem more odd than ever. But she had not expected that he would go so soon, and the thunder, waking her up like that, had put yesterday’s conversation out of her head.
Now they were staring at her in the most unbelieving way.
“To the Ardfillan mountains?”
“Did he say he was going?” asked Maude.
“No—I mean, yes. I mean, he said he was going some time. He said so yesterday. I’m sure that’s what he’s done, now I see that he’s taken his haversack. I’m so sorry, so very sorry, to have made all this fuss.”
“But the boats …” began Gordon.
“Somebody must have given him a lift.”
She was making a mess of it.
She was not smoothing it over at all. Just when things were so very nearly going right she had almost given him away. She wondered how much Kerran had guessed at what was in her mind, when she came rushing up to him that morning. She must try and put a better face on it.
“He … he often goes off like this without warning,” she asserted.
Which was not true. He had never done such a thing in his life before, and they knew it. Her voice had an overemphasis which sounded false even in her own ears, and she realised that, if she was really going to lie, she might just as well say that he had mentioned the plan; so she added:
“As a matter of fact, I think he must have told me, only I didn’t understand …”
But it was no good. She was a poor prevaricator. The more she asserted that everything was all right, the more likely they were to suspect that she was hiding something. She had better leave it alone.
“Anyhow,” she added, “I’m not going to worry about him any more. I’m only so sorry to have been so stupid.”
“But,” said Gordon, “who could have given him a lift, at that time of night?”
Ellen looked even more flurried. She did not know how matters stood between Louise and Gordon about Elissa, or if Gordon knew of Elissa’s visit the night before. She turned helplessly to Maude, who interposed:
“There were fishermen going down the lake very late last night. I heard them. Really quite a lot of little boats go past … Do go up to bed, Ellen, and let me make you some tea.”
Ellen was only too thankful to go. As soon as she had disappeared up the stairs Louise exclaimed:
“What on earth are we to make of all this? Do you believe what she says? Any
of you? She seemed to be making the whole thing up as she went along, first of all saying he hadn’t mentioned it and then saying that he had. She never could tell a lie. But what is she hiding?”
“I think,” said Kerran hastily, “that’s her business. She’s evidently not worrying about his personal safety, and we shall know in a day or two what’s happened to him. The best we can do is to accept her story.”
“Most certainly,” said Maude. “There’s the servants and children to think of. We must put as good a face on it as we can, for as long as we can.”
“Don’t talk as if he’d eloped or done something disgraceful,” began Louise irritably.
But the expression on the faces of Kerran and Maude brought her up short. She gasped and turned very pale.
“You don’t think …”
“I’m afraid it’s so,” whispered Maude. “She was over here, over on the island last night. I saw them together in the garden. Ellen knows.”
Kerran interposed:
“Don’t you think the less said the better. He may come back at any moment, and it’s no business of ours what explanation he makes to Ellen. It’s not five o’clock now! He may come back.”
“But he won’t come back,” said Maude. “He’s taken his haversack. The whole thing was intended.”
Gordon chimed in plaintively:
“But I don’t understand! What are you talking about? Who was here last night? What does Ellen know?”
Louise turned on him with the triumph of one who is at last proved to have been in the right.
“Your friend,” she said bitterly. “Your friend Elissa Koebel.”
22
NOTHING would make Gordon believe it. He even went so far as to assert that Ellen’s version must be the true one. Elissa might have taken Dick across in her boat, but there was no great harm in that. If, as he now learnt, she had that afternoon received a cruel note from Louise, he could quite understand why she had stayed in the garden and why she had not come in that night.
“Then why did she come here at all?” asked Louise.
“She has friends here, who are more loyal to her than you are.”
“Oh! has she?”
“I expect she came to say good-bye, poor woman.”
He felt that he understood it all exactly. She had stolen across, not meaning to speak to any of them but just to look in, once more, through the window at the friends she had lost. The thought was very painful to him, and his voice shook a little as he tried to convince Louise.
“Do you think so?” she asked coldly.
This was one of her most effective retorts, and it never failed to exasperate her opponent.
“I certainly think so. But in any case I am going over to Elissa immediately, to apologise and disclaim any part in your very callous treatment of her. She will perhaps be able to tell me if she did see Dick last night and if she rowed him across.”
“Oh, no, Gordon! No! You mustn’t do that!”
“And why not?”
“Well, supposing … well, suppose Dick was there.”
Gordon made no answer. He could not trust himself to speak. But it seemed to him, as he set off through the rain towards the boat-house, that he could not bear being married to Louise much longer.
She poisoned everything. The dishonesty of her mind tainted the whole of their companionship. For years he had endured it, admiring her beauty, her vivacity and her quick wits, and telling himself that all women are morally inferior, even the best of them. It was not her fault that she had the lie in the soul, she had been born with it. It was not her fault that he felt degraded, sometimes, at this close tie with a nature which he knew to be false. All married men must feel the same, and in the Golden Age of the world, which he understood so much better than his own time, this fact was generally recognised. Nobody ever thought then of trying to include a woman in the bright garland of friendship. Gordon himself had never thought of it until this summer, when his life had suddenly became irradiated with new happiness.
In Elissa he had found such a woman as he had not supposed to have existed anywhere. Her beauty ravished and soothed him, her sympathy was a stimulation, and she loved truth. She spoke what was in her mind, and her sincerity was as clear as the sunlight. She had drawn him towards his wife, in that brief period of their mutual love, so that they had enjoyed a harmony which they had never known in their lives before.
Now it was broken up. Louise had broken it and it was gone for ever. Not even the unsullied memory was to be left to him. They would not even allow him to mourn his loss. They had driven his friend away and they had filled their minds with evil against her. It was to protect himself and her against their unkind hearts that he set out across the lake, for he must stem this tide of evil and he must prove that they were wrong.
The rain fell in driving sheets and the waves ran so high that he could scarcely steer his boat. However hard he pulled, the next wave swung him round again. He could see neither the shore nor the island and when, after labouring for nearly an hour, he got close in to the mainland he saw that he was still half a mile north of Elissa’s cottage. It would be quicker to land and walk along the lake road. He beached his boat and set off at a jog-trot down the track.
He was soaked to the skin, and his heart beat painfully fast. Battling with the cold and the wet, buffeted by the wind, his courage began to fail him. If Dick should be there….
But Dick would not be there. Elissa would be sitting all alone by her warm fire and she would be delighted to see him. He would go in and sit with her, and get himself dry, and their friendship would be safe for ever, so that when he was old he could think tranquilly of those hours when they had all learnt Latin together in the sunlight. Truly he was doing a good deed, struggling along in the rain. Friendship was a thing to be preserved; it had meant more in his life than love or marriage. Some day he must tell Elissa all that he felt about friendship. She would understand. She had understood everything, from the very first, when she caught sight of the sundew in his pocket handkerchief.
The cottage emerged out of the curtain of rain. It had an empty, shut-up look. He knocked two or three times, but there was no reply, and he thought that the noise was muffled by the shrieking wind. At last he picked up a large stone, and hammered with that.
Still there was no answer. No one came. Yet she could not be out in such weather. Standing on tiptoe he peered through the panes of the little window into the untidy living-room. It looked quite deserted and dusty. The ashes were white on the hearth. In the corner he could see the ladder-like stairs to the half-loft where she slept. She must still be up there, asleep. After all it was very early. He looked at his watch and realised that it was still barely eight o’clock.
Yet he needed comfort and reassurance so badly that he could not make up his mind to go away. And it seemed as if there was, at last, some kind of movement in the little house. Someone was stirring.
His heart began to beat thickly.
There was somebody coming down the ladder, not Elissa, but a man, dishevelled, startled, half awake…. He did not go to the door. Perhaps he had not heard the knocking. But he came towards the window to look out at the inclement day. For a few seconds he and Gordon stared at each other through the panes, each petrified with horror and astonishment. And then with a faint groan, Gordon took flight. He set off again, jog-trotting up the track towards his boat. Soon the rain hid the cottage and the friendship that had perished there.
A sharp rheumatic stab took him in the back. He slackened his pace to a hasty shuffle, realising that he was in for a bout of lumbago.
“I’m too old,” he thought, “to get wet through like this.”
His eyes were filled with tears which ran down amid the raindrops on his cheeks. For he felt that he had, in those few seconds, witnessed the ruin of everything that was good and beautiful in the world. It was the triumph of evil, a cosmic calamity, not merely a misfortune to a small group of people. He had lost all that he held most d
ear, but his own loss was nothing compared with the wound to goodness, to happiness, to innocence.
He found his boat and began tugging away once more towards the island. And the only words which came into his mind were those which Elissa had sung, one day long ago, when they were all still innocent and happy.
Friendships decay … he kept thinking in a kind of dreary rhythm as he pulled at his oars. “And so may I follow with friendship’s decay. I’m too old …”
He got back at last, shivering and exhausted, and crept in to Louise. She was kind to him. She made him put on dry clothes and lighted a fire for him in their room. But a time came when he had to tell her.
23
FOR a few moments Dick stared stupidly at the streaming window-pane where Gordon’s face had been. He was still only half awake. Then he remembered that he was in a hurry. It was late. He had slept too late and he must get into Killross so as to send his note up to the island. And then the half-realised horror settled down on him again. Gordon, Gordon, had been looking in through the window. Gordon had seen him. Gordon knew. There was no need now to send a note from Killross. They knew. He had been found out.
An impulse seized him to stop Gordon, to say something, he knew not what. He dashed to the door and ran through the rain to the lake-side, but there was no sign of Gordon or his boat. It was too late!
Swearing horribly Dick went back to the cottage. He did not know what time it was, for he had forgotten to wind his watch. He did not know in the least what to do next. His predicament left him stranded, with no plans for the future. For a little while he strove to avoid its full implications and busied himself with wondering how they could have found out, and what had brought Gordon, spying through the window, so soon upon his track. But the fact of being found out was in itself so dire that he could not juggle with these speculations for very long.
He had heard, he had been told, how a moment’s folly can ruin a man for life.
Now it appeared that he himself was such a man. His mind went back to yesterday, when he had not been ruined. It travelled from one scene to another as he tried to discover how this thing had happened.
A Long Time Ago Page 21