CHAPTER XXIX.
It was after ten o'clock. The dancers had already dispersed and thelast lights were being put out. To-morrow the tents would be struck, thedismantled merry-go-round would be packed into waggons and carted away.An expanse of worn grass, a shabby brown patch in the wide green of thepark, would be all that remained. Crome Fair was over.
By the edge of the pool two figures lingered.
"No, no, no," Anne was saying in a breathless whisper, leaningbackwards, turning her head from side to side in an effort to escapeGombauld's kisses. "No, please. No." Her raised voice had becomeimperative.
Gombauld relaxed his embrace a little. "Why not?" he said. "I will."
With a sudden effort Anne freed herself. "You won't," she retorted."You've tried to take the most unfair advantage of me."
"Unfair advantage?" echoed Gombauld in genuine surprise.
"Yes, unfair advantage. You attack me after I've been dancing for twohours, while I'm still reeling drunk with the movement, when I've lostmy head, when I've got no mind left but only a rhythmical body! It's asbad as making love to someone you've drugged or intoxicated."
Gombauld laughed angrily. "Call me a White Slaver and have done withit."
"Luckily," said Anne, "I am now completely sobered, and if you try andkiss me again I shall box your ears. Shall we take a few turns round thepool?" she added. "The night is delicious."
For answer Gombauld made an irritated noise. They paced off slowly, sideby side.
"What I like about the painting of Degas..." Anne began in her mostdetached and conversational tone.
"Oh, damn Degas!" Gombauld was almost shouting.
From where he stood, leaning in an attitude of despair against theparapet of the terrace, Denis had seen them, the two pale figures ina patch of moonlight, far down by the pool's edge. He had seen thebeginning of what promised to be an endless passionate embracement,and at the sight he had fled. It was too much; he couldn't stand it. Inanother moment, he felt, he would have burst into irrepressible tears.
Dashing blindly into the house, he almost ran into Mr. Scogan, who waswalking up and down the hall smoking a final pipe.
"Hullo!" said Mr. Scogan, catching him by the arm; dazed and hardlyconscious of what he was doing or where he was, Denis stood there fora moment like a somnambulist. "What's the matter?" Mr. Scogan went on."you look disturbed, distressed, depressed."
Denis shook his head without replying.
"Worried about the cosmos, eh?" Mr. Scogan patted him on the arm. "Iknow the feeling," he said. "It's a most distressing symptom. 'What'sthe point of it all? All is vanity. What's the good of continuing tofunction if one's doomed to be snuffed out at last along with everythingelse?' Yes, yes. I know exactly how you feel. It's most distressing ifone allows oneself to be distressed. But then why allow oneself to bedistressed? After all, we all know that there's no ultimate point. Butwhat difference does that make?"
At this point the somnambulist suddenly woke up. "What?" he said,blinking and frowning at his interlocutor. "What?" Then breaking away hedashed up the stairs, two steps at a time.
Mr. Scogan ran to the foot of the stairs and called up after him. "Itmakes no difference, none whatever. Life is gay all the same, always,under whatever circumstances--under whatever circumstances," he added,raising his voice to a shout. But Denis was already far out of hearing,and even if he had not been, his mind to-night was proof against allthe consolations of philosophy. Mr. Scogan replaced his pipe between histeeth and resumed his meditative pacing. "Under any circumstances," herepeated to himself. It was ungrammatical to begin with; was it true?And is life really its own reward? He wondered. When his pipe had burneditself to its stinking conclusion he took a drink of gin and went tobed. In ten minutes he was deeply, innocently asleep.
Denis had mechanically undressed and, clad in those flowered silkpyjamas of which he was so justly proud, was lying face downwards onhis bed. Time passed. When at last he looked up, the candle which hehad left alight at his bedside had burned down almost to the socket. Helooked at his watch; it was nearly half-past one. His head ached, hisdry, sleepless eyes felt as though they had been bruised from behind,and the blood was beating within his ears a loud arterial drum. He gotup, opened the door, tiptoed noiselessly along the passage, and beganto mount the stairs towards the higher floors. Arrived at the servants'quarters under the roof, he hesitated, then turning to the right heopened a little door at the end of the corridor. Within was a pitch-darkcupboard-like boxroom, hot, stuffy, and smelling of dust and oldleather. He advanced cautiously into the blackness, groping with hishands. It was from this den that the ladder went up to the leads ofthe western tower. He found the ladder, and set his feet on the rungs;noiselessly, he lifted the trap-door above his head; the moonlit sky wasover him, he breathed the fresh, cool air of the night. In a momenthe was standing on the leads, gazing out over the dim, colourlesslandscape, looking perpendicularly down at the terrace seventy feetbelow.
Why had he climbed up to this high, desolate place? Was it to look atthe moon? Was it to commit suicide? As yet he hardly knew. Death--thetears came into his eyes when he thought of it. His misery assumeda certain solemnity; he was lifted up on the wings of a kind ofexaltation. It was a mood in which he might have done almost anything,however foolish. He advanced towards the farther parapet; the drop wassheer there and uninterrupted. A good leap, and perhaps one might clearthe narrow terrace and so crash down yet another thirty feet to thesun-baked ground below. He paused at the corner of the tower, lookingnow down into the shadowy gulf below, now up towards the rare stars andthe waning moon. He made a gesture with his hand, muttered something,he could not afterwards remember what; but the fact that he had saidit aloud gave the utterance a peculiarly terrible significance. Then helooked down once more into the depths.
"What ARE you doing, Denis?" questioned a voice from somewhere veryclose behind him.
Denis uttered a cry of frightened surprise, and very nearly went overthe parapet in good earnest. His heart was beating terribly, and he waspale when, recovering himself, he turned round in the direction fromwhich the voice had come.
"Are you ill?"
In the profound shadow that slept under the eastern parapet of thetower, he saw something he had not previously noticed--an oblongshape. It was a mattress, and someone was lying on it. Since that firstmemorable night on the tower, Mary had slept out every evening; it was asort of manifestation of fidelity.
"It gave me a fright," she went on, "to wake up and see you waving yourarms and gibbering there. What on earth were you doing?"
Denis laughed melodramatically. "What, indeed!" he said. If she hadn'twoken up as she did, he would be lying in pieces at the bottom of thetower; he was certain of that, now.
"You hadn't got designs on me, I hope?" Mary inquired, jumping toorapidly to conclusions.
"I didn't know you were here," said Denis, laughing more bitterly andartificially than before.
"What IS the matter, Denis?"
He sat down on the edge of the mattress, and for all reply went onlaughing in the same frightful and improbable tone.
An hour later he was reposing with his head on Mary's knees, and she,with an affectionate solicitude that was wholly maternal, was runningher fingers through his tangled hair. He had told her everything,everything: his hopeless love, his jealousy, his despair, hissuicide--as it were providentially averted by her interposition. He hadsolemnly promised never to think of self-destruction again. And now hissoul was floating in a sad serenity. It was embalmed in the sympathythat Mary so generously poured. And it was not only in receivingsympathy that Denis found serenity and even a kind of happiness; itwas also in giving it. For if he had told Mary everything about hismiseries, Mary, reacting to these confidences, had told him in returneverything, or very nearly everything, about her own.
"Poor Mary!" He was very sorry for her. Still, she might have guessedthat Ivor wasn't precisely a monument of constancy.
"Well," she conclude
d, "one must put a good face on it." She wanted tocry, but she wouldn't allow herself to be weak. There was a silence.
"Do you think," asked Denis hesitatingly--"do you really think thatshe...that Gombauld..."
"I'm sure of it," Mary answered decisively. There was another longpause.
"I don't know what to do about it," he said at last, utterly dejected.
"You'd better go away," advised Mary. "It's the safest thing, and themost sensible."
"But I've arranged to stay here three weeks more."
"You must concoct an excuse."
"I suppose you're right."
"I know I am," said Mary, who was recovering all her firmself-possession. "You can't go on like this, can you?"
"No, I can't go on like this," he echoed.
Immensely practical, Mary invented a plan of action. Startlingly, in thedarkness, the church clock struck three.
"You must go to bed at once," she said. "I'd no idea it was so late."
Denis clambered down the ladder, cautiously descended the creakingstairs. His room was dark; the candle had long ago guttered toextinction. He got into bed and fell asleep almost at once.
CHAPTER XXX.
Denis had been called, but in spite of the parted curtains he haddropped off again into that drowsy, dozy state when sleep becomes asensual pleasure almost consciously savoured. In this condition he mighthave remained for another hour if he had not been disturbed by a violentrapping at the door.
"Come in," he mumbled, without opening his eyes. The latch clicked, ahand seized him by the shoulder and he was rudely shaken.
"Get up, get up!"
His eyelids blinked painfully apart, and he saw Mary standing over him,bright-faced and earnest.
"Get up!" she repeated. "You must go and send the telegram. Don't youremember?"
"O Lord!" He threw off the bed-clothes; his tormentor retired.
Denis dressed as quickly as he could and ran up the road to the villagepost office. Satisfaction glowed within him as he returned. He had senta long telegram, which would in a few hours evoke an answer orderinghim back to town at once--on urgent business. It was an act performed,a decisive step taken--and he so rarely took decisive steps; he feltpleased with himself. It was with a whetted appetite that he came in tobreakfast.
"Good-morning," said Mr. Scogan. "I hope you're better."
"Better?"
"You were rather worried about the cosmos last night."
Denis tried to laugh away the impeachment. "Was I?" he lightly asked.
"I wish," said Mr. Scogan, "that I had nothing worse to prey on my mind.I should be a happy man."
"One is only happy in action," Denis enunciated, thinking of thetelegram.
He looked out of the window. Great florid baroque clouds floated highin the blue heaven. A wind stirred among the trees, and their shakenfoliage twinkled and glittered like metal in the sun. Everything seemedmarvellously beautiful. At the thought that he would soon be leavingall this beauty he felt a momentary pang; but he comforted himself byrecollecting how decisively he was acting.
"Action," he repeated aloud, and going over to the sideboard he helpedhimself to an agreeable mixture of bacon and fish.
Breakfast over, Denis repaired to the terrace, and, sitting there,raised the enormous bulwark of the "Times" against the possible assaultsof Mr. Scogan, who showed an unappeased desire to go on talking aboutthe Universe. Secure behind the crackling pages, he meditated. Inthe light of this brilliant morning the emotions of last night seemedsomehow rather remote. And what if he had seen them embracing in themoonlight? Perhaps it didn't mean much after all. And even if it did,why shouldn't he stay? He felt strong enough to stay, strong enough tobe aloof, disinterested, a mere friendly acquaintance. And even if heweren't strong enough...
"What time do you think the telegram will arrive?" asked Mary suddenly,thrusting in upon him over the top of the paper.
Denis started guiltily. "I don't know at all," he said.
"I was only wondering," said Mary, "because there's a very good train at3.27, and it would be nice if you could catch it, wouldn't it?"
"Awfully nice," he agreed weakly. He felt as though he were makingarrangements for his own funeral. Train leaves Waterloo 3.27. Noflowers...Mary was gone. No, he was blowed if he'd let himself behurried down to the Necropolis like this. He was blowed. The sight ofMr. Scogan looking out, with a hungry expression, from the drawing-roomwindow made him precipitately hoist the "Times" once more. For a longwhile he kept it hoisted. Lowering it at last to take another cautiouspeep at his surroundings, he found himself, with what astonishment!confronted by Anne's faint, amused, malicious smile. She was standingbefore him,--the woman who was a tree,--the swaying grace of hermovement arrested in a pose that seemed itself a movement.
"How long have you been standing there?" he asked, when he had donegaping at her.
"Oh, about half an hour, I suppose," she said airily. "You were so verydeep in your paper--head over ears--I didn't like to disturb you."
"You look lovely this morning," Denis exclaimed. It was the first timehe had ever had the courage to utter a personal remark of the kind.
Anne held up her hand as though to ward off a blow. "Don't bludgeon me,please." She sat down on the bench beside him. He was a nice boy, shethought, quite charming; and Gombauld's violent insistences were reallybecoming rather tiresome. "Why don't you wear white trousers?" sheasked. "I like you so much in white trousers."
"They're at the wash," Denis replied rather curtly. This white-trouserbusiness was all in the wrong spirit. He was just preparing a schemeto manoeuvre the conversation back to the proper path, when Mr. Scogansuddenly darted out of the house, crossed the terrace with clockworkrapidity, and came to a halt in front of the bench on which they wereseated.
"To go on with our interesting conversation about the cosmos," he began,"I become more and more convinced that the various parts of the concernare fundamentally discrete...But would you mind, Denis, moving a shadeto your right?" He wedged himself between them on the bench. "And ifyou would shift a few inches to the left, my dear Anne...Thank you.Discrete, I think, was what I was saying."
"You were," said Anne. Denis was speechless.
They were taking their after luncheon coffee in the library when thetelegram arrived. Denis blushed guiltily as he took the orange envelopefrom the salver and tore it open. "Return at once. Urgent familybusiness." It was too ridiculous. As if he had any family business!Wouldn't it be best just to crumple the thing up and put it in hispocket without saying anything about it? He looked up; Mary's large bluechina eyes were fixed upon him, seriously, penetratingly. He blushedmore deeply than ever, hesitated in a horrible uncertainty.
"What's your telegram about?" Mary asked significantly.
He lost his head, "I'm afraid," he mumbled, "I'm afraid this meansI shall have to go back to town at once." He frowned at the telegramferociously.
"But that's absurd, impossible," cried Anne. She had been standing bythe window talking to Gombauld; but at Denis's words she came swayingacross the room towards him.
"It's urgent," he repeated desperately.
"But you've only been here such a short time," Anne protested.
"I know," he said, utterly miserable. Oh, if only she could understand!Women were supposed to have intuition.
"If he must go, he must," put in Mary firmly.
"Yes, I must." He looked at the telegram again for inspiration. "Yousee, it's urgent family business," he explained.
Priscilla got up from her chair in some excitement. "I had a distinctpresentiment of this last night," she said. "A distinct presentiment."
"A mere coincidence, no doubt," said Mary, brushing Mrs. Wimbush out ofthe conversation. "There's a very good train at 3.27." She looked at theclock on the mantelpiece. "You'll have nice time to pack."
"I'll order the motor at once." Henry Wimbush rang the bell. The funeralwas well under way. It was awful, awful.
"I am wretched you should be
going," said Anne.
Denis turned towards her; she really did look wretched. He abandonedhimself hopelessly, fatalistically to his destiny. This was what came ofaction, of doing something decisive. If only he'd just let things drift!If only...
"I shall miss your conversation," said Mr. Scogan.
Mary looked at the clock again. "I think perhaps you ought to go andpack," she said.
Obediently Denis left the room. Never again, he said to himself, neveragain would he do anything decisive. Camlet, West Bowlby, Knipswich forTimpany, Spavin Delawarr; and then all the other stations; and then,finally, London. The thought of the journey appalled him. And what onearth was he going to do in London when he got there? He climbed wearilyup the stairs. It was time for him to lay himself in his coffin.
The car was at the door--the hearse. The whole party had assembled tosee him go. Good-bye, good-bye. Mechanically he tapped the barometerthat hung in the porch; the needle stirred perceptibly to the left. Asudden smile lighted up his lugubrious face.
"'It sinks and I am ready to depart,'" he said, quoting Landor with anexquisite aptness. He looked quickly round from face to face. Nobody hadnoticed. He climbed into the hearse.
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