And yet, was not this same desire fate itself, his own fate, leading him
on and further to some inevitable end? Only that he did not fear it. He
opened wide his arms, welcoming it, longing for and therefore unconscious of
its domination.
He stood in front of the gilded dinginess of the picture-palace, pondering
on his destiny, when there came up to him a shabby little man in a long
tattered overcoat, who asked him for a light. Speed, who was so anxious not
to be a snob that he usually gave to strangers the impression of being one,
proffered a box of matches and smiled. But for the life of him he could not
think of anything to say. He felt he ought to say something, lest the other
fellow might think him surly; he racked his brain for some appropriate remark
and eventually said: “Nice night.” The other lit the stump of a cigarette
contemplatively and replied: “Yes. Nice night…Thanks…Waiting for
somebody?”
“Yes,” replied Speed, rather curtly. He had no desire to continue the
conversation, still less to discuss his own affairs.
“Rotten hole, Seacliffe, in winter,” resumed the stranger, showing no sign
of moving on.
“Yes,” agreed Speed.
“Nothing to do—nowhere to go—absolutely the deadest place on
God’s earth. I live here and I know. Every night I take a stroll about this
time and tonight’s bin the first night this year I’ve ever seen anything
happen at all.”
“Indeed?”
The stranger ignored the obvious boredness of Speed’s voice, and
continued: “Yes. That’s the truth. But it happened all right to-night. Quite
exciting, in fact.”
He looked at Speed to see if his interest was in any way, aroused. Such
being not yet so he remarked again: “Yes, quite exciting.” He paused and
added: “Bit gruesome perhaps—to some folks.”
Speed said, forcing himself to be interested:
“Why, what was it?”
And the other, triumphant that he had secured an attentive audience at
last, replied: “Body found. Pulled up off the breakwater…Drowned, of
course.”
Even now Speed was only casually interested. “Really? And who was it?”
“Don’t know the name…A woman’s body.”
“Nobody identified her yet?”
“Not yet. They say she’s not a Seacliffe woman…See
there
!” He
pointed back along the promenade towards a spot where, not half an hour ago,
Speed had leaned over the railings to see the moonlight on the sea. “Can you
see the crowd standing about? That’s where they dragged her in. Only about
ten minutes ago as I was passin’. Very high tide, you know, washes all sorts
of things up…I didn’t stay long—bit too gruesome for me.”
“Yes,” agreed Speed. “And for me too…By the way d’you happen to know
when this picture-house shuts up?”
“About half-past ten, mostly.”
“Thanks.”
“Well—I’ll be gettin’ along…Much obliged for the light…Good
night…”
“Good night,” said Speed.
A few minutes later the crowd began to tumble out of the kinema. He stood
in the darkness against a blank wall, where he could see without being seen.
He wondered whether he had not better take Helen home through the town
instead of along the promenade. It was a longer way, of course, but it would
avoid the unpleasant affair that the stranger had mentioned to him He neither
wished to see himself nor wished Helen to see anything of the sort.
Curious that she was so late? The kinema must be almost empty now; the
stream of people had stopped. He saw the manager going to the box-office to
lock up. “Have they all come out?” he asked, emerging into the rays of the
electric lights. “Yes, everybody,” answered the other. He even glanced at
Speed suspiciously, as if he wondered why he should be waiting for somebody
who obviously hadn’t been to the kinema at all.
Well…Speed stood in a sheltered alcove and lit a cigarette. He had
better get back to the Beach Hotel, anyway. Perhaps Helen hadn’t gone to the
picture-show after all. Or, perhaps, she had come out before the end and they
had missed each other. Perhaps anything…Anything!…
Then suddenly the awful thought occurred to him. At first it was
fantastic; he walked along, sampling it in a horrified fashion, yet refusing
to be in the least perturbed by it. Then it gained ground upon him, made him
hasten his steps, throw away his cigarette, and finally run madly along the
echoing promenade to the curious little silent crowd that had gathered there,
about halfway to the pier entrance. He scampered along the smooth asphalt
just like a boisterous youngster, yet in his eyes was wild brain-maddening
fear.
Ten minutes later he knew. They pointed to a gap in the
railings close by, made some while before by a lorry that had run out of
control along the Marine Parade. The Urban District Council ought to have
repaired the railings immediately after the accident, and he (somebody in the
crowd) would not be surprised if the coroner censured the Council pretty
severely at the inquest. The gap was a positive death-trap for anybody
walking along at night and not looking carefully ahead. And
he
(somebody else in the crowd) suggested the possibility of making the
Seacliffe Urban District Council pay heavy damages…Of course, it was an
accident…There was a bad bruise on the head: that was where she must have
struck the stones as she fell…And in one of the pockets was a torn kinema
ticket; clearly she had been on her way home from the Beach kinema…Once
again, it was the Council’s fault for not promptly repairing the dangerous
gap in the railings.
They led him back to the Beach Hotel and gave him brandy. He kept saying:
“Now please go—I’m quite all right…There’s really nothing that
anybody can do for me…Please go now…”
When at last he was alone in the cheerless hotel bedroom he sat down on
the side of the bed and cried. Not for sorrow or pity or terror, but merely
to relieve some fearful strain of emotion that was in him. Helen dead! He
could hardly force himself to believe it, but when he did he felt sorry,
achingly sorry, because there had been so many bonds between them, so many
bonds that only death could have snapped. He saw her now, poor little woman,
as he had never seen her before; the love in her still living, and all that
had made them unhappy together vanished away. He loved her, those minutes in
the empty, cheerless bedroom, more calmly than he had ever loved her when she
had been near to him. And—strange miracle!—she had given him
peace at last. Pity for her no longer overwhelmed him with its sickly
torture; he was calm, calm with sorrow, but calm.
Then, slowly, grimly, as to some fixed and inevitable thing,
his torture returned. He tried to persuade himself that the worst was over,
That tragedy had spent its terrible utmost; but even the sad calm of
desperation was nowhere to be found. He paced up and down the bedroom long
and wearisomely; shortly after midnight the solitary gas jet faltered and
flickered and finally abandoned itself with a forlorn pop. “
Curse
the
place!” he muttered, acutely nervous in the sudden gloom; then for some
moments he meditated a sarcastic protest to the hotel-proprietress in the
morning. “I am aware,” he would begin, tartly, “that the attractions of
Seacliffe in the evenings are not such as would often tempt the visitor to
keep up until the small hours; but don’t you think that is an argument
against
rather than
for
turning off the gas-supply at
midnight?” Rather ponderous, though; probably the woman wouldn’t know what he
meant. He might write a letter to the
Seacliffe Gazette
about it,
anyway. “Oh,
damn
them!” he exclaimed, with sudden fervour, as he
searched for the candle on the dressing-table. Unfortunately he possessed no
matches, and the candlestick, when at last his groping had discovered it,
contained none, either. It was so infernally dark and silent; everybody in
the place was in bed except himself. He pictured the maids, sleeping cosily
in the top attics, or perhaps chattering together in whispers about clothes
or their love-affairs or Seacliffe gossip or—why, of
course!—about
him
. They would surely be talking about
him
. Such a tit-bit of gossip! Everyone in Seacliffe would be full of
the tragedy of the young fellow whose wife, less than a year married, had
fallen accidentally into the sea off the promenade! He, not she, would be the
figure of high tragedy in their minds, and on the morrow they would all stare
at him morbidly, curiously…Good God in Heaven! Could he endure
it?…Lightly the moonlight filtered through the Venetian blinds on to the
garish linoleum pattern; and when the blinds were stirred by the breeze the
light skipped along the floor like moving swords; he could not endure that,
anyway. He went to the windows and drew up the blinds, one after the other.
They would hear that, he reflected, if they were awake; they would know he
was not asleep.
Then he remembered her as he had seen her less than a twelvemonth before;
standing knee-deep in the grasses by the river-bank at Parminters. Everywhere
that he had loved her was so clear now in his mind, and everywhere else was
so unreal and dim. He heard the tinkle of the Head’s piano and saw her
puzzling intently over some easy Chopin mazurka, her golden hair flame-like
in the sunlight of the afternoon. He saw the paths and fields of Millstead,
all radiant where she and he had been, and the moonlight lapping the pavilion
steps, where, first of all, he had touched her lips with his. And
then—only with an effort could he picture this—he saw the grim
room downstairs, where she lay all wet and bedraggled, those cheeks that’ he
had kissed ice-cold and salt with the sea. The moon, emerging fully from
behind a mist, plunged him suddenly in white light; at that moment it seemed
to him that he was living in some ugly nightmare, and that shortly he would
wake from it and find all the tragedy untrue. Helen was alive and well: he
could only have imagined her dead. And downstairs, in that
sitting-room—it had been no more than a dream, fearful and—thank
God—false. Helen was away, somewhere, perfectly well and
happy—
somewhere
. And downstairs, in that sitting-room…Anyhow,
he would go down and see, to convince himself. He unlocked the bedroom door
and tiptoed out on to the landing. He saw the moon’s rays caught
phosphorescently on a fish in a glass case. Down the two flights of stairs he
descended with caution, and then, at the foot, strove to recollect which was
the room. He saw two doors, with something written on them. One was the
bar-parlour, he thought, where the worthies of Seacliffe congregated nightly.
He turned the handle and saw the glistening brass of the beer-engines. Then
the other door, might be? He tried the handle, but the door was locked.
Somehow this infuriated him. “They lock the doors and turn off the gas!” he
cried, vehemently, uniting his complaints. Then suddenly he caught sight of
another door in the wall opposite, a door on which there was no writing at
all. He had an instant conviction that this must be
the
door. He
strode to it, menacingly, took hold of its handle in a firm grasp, and
pushed. Locked again! This time he could not endure the fury that raged
within him. “Good God!” he cried, shouting at the top of his voice, “I’ll
burst every door in the place in!” He beat on the panels with his fists,
shouting and screaming the whole while…
Ten minutes later the hotel-porter and the barman, clad in trousers and
shirt only, were holding his arms on either side, and the proprietress,
swathed in a pink dressing-gown, was standing a little way off, staring at
him curiously. And he was complaining to her about the turning off of the gas
at midnight. “One really has a right to expect something more generous from
the best hotel in Seacliffe,” he was saying, with an argumentative mildness
that surprised himself. “It is not as though this were a sixpenny doss-house.
It is an A.A. listed hotel, and I consider it absolutely scandalous
that…”
Strangely, when he was back again and alone in his own
bedroom, he felt different. His gas-jet was burning again, evidently as a
result of his protest; the victory gave him a curious, childish pleasure. Nor
did his burdens weigh so heavily on him; indeed, he felt even peaceful enough
to try to sleep. He undressed and got into bed.
And then, slowly, secretly, dreadfully, he discovered that he was thinking
about Clare! It frightened him—this way she crept into his thoughts as
pain comes after the numbness of a blow. He knew he ought not to think of
her. He ought to put her out of his mind, at any rate, for the present. Helen
dead this little while, and already Clare in his thoughts! The realisation
appalled him, terrified him by affording him a glimpse into the depths of his
own dark soul. And yet—he
could not help it
. Was he to be blamed
for the thoughts that he could not drive out of his mind? He prayed urgently
and passionately for sleep, that he might rid himself of the lurking, lurking
image of her. But even in sleep he feared he might dream of her.
Oh, Clare, Clare, would she ever come to him now, now that he was alone
and Helen was dead? God, the awfulness of the question! Yet he could not put
it away from him; he could but deceive himself, might be, into thinking he
was not asking it. He wanted Clare. Not more than ever—only as much as
he had always wanted her.
He wondered solemnly if the stuff in him were rotten; if he were proven
vile and debased because he wanted her; if he were cancelling his soul by
thinking of her so soon. And yet—God help him; even if all that were
so,
he could not help it
. If he were to be damned eternally for
thinking about Clare, then let him be damned eternally. Actions he might
control, but never the strains and cravings of his own mind. If he were
wrong, therefore, let him be wrong.
He wondered whether, when he fell asleep, he would dream about Helen or
about Clare. And yet, when at last his very tiredness made him close his
eyes, he dreamed of neither of them, but slept in perfect calm, as a child
that has been forgiven.