Part 6

What had become of Kate, where had she hidden? What _would_ be the end of it all? He would never see her again. He disliked everything about her, except herself. Her clothes, her speech, her walk, the way she carried her umbrella, her reticence that was nothing if not conspicuous, her melancholy, her angular concrete piety, her hands--in particular he disliked her pale hands. She had a mind that was cultivated as perfunctorily as a kitchen garden, with ideas like roots or beans, hostilities like briars, and a fence of prudery as tough as hoops of galvanised iron. And yet he loved her--or almost. He was ready to love her, he wanted to, he wanted her; her deep but guarded devotion--it was limited but it was devotion--compelled that return from him. It was a passionate return. He had tried to mould that devotion into a form that could delight him--he had failed. He knew her now, he could peer into her craven soul as one peers into an empty bottle, with one eye. For her the opportunities afforded by freedom were but the preludes to misadventure. What a fool she was!

When he reached home Kate stood in darkness at the doorway of his house. He exclaimed with delight, her surprising presence was the very centre of his desire; he wanted to embrace her, loving her deeply inexplicably again, just in a moment.

"I want my bike," the girl said sulkily. "I left it inside this morning."

"Ah, your bicycle! Yes, you did." He unlocked the door, "Wait, there should be a candle, there should be."

She stood in the doorway until he had lit it.

"Come in, Kate," he said, "let me give you something. I think there is some milk, certainly I have some cake, come in, Kate, or do you drink beer, I have beer, come in, I'll make you something hot."

But Kate only took her bicycle. "I ought to have been home hours ago," she said darkly, wheeling it outside and lighting the lantern. He watched her silently as she dabbed the wick; the pallor of her hands had never appeared so marked.

"Let's be kind to each other," he said, detaining her, "don't go, dear Kate."

She pushed her bicycle out into the road.

"Won't you see me again?" he asked as she mounted it.

"I am always seeing you," she called back, but her meaning was dark to him.

"Faugh! The devil! The fool!" He gurgled anathemas as he returned to his cottage. "And me, too! What am I?"

But no mortal man could ever love a woman of that kind. She did not love him at all, had never loved him. Then what was it she did love? Not her virtue--you might as well be proud of the sole of your foot; it was some sort of pride, perhaps the test of her virtue that the conflict between them provoked, the contest itself alone alluring her, not its aim and end. She was never happier than when, having led him on, she thwarted him. But she would find that his metal was as tough as her own.

Before going to bed he spent an hour in writing very slowly a letter to Kate, telling her that he felt they would not meet again, that their notions of love were so unrelated, their standards so different. "My morals are at least as high as yours, though likely you regard me as a rip. Let us recognise then," he wrote concludingly, "that we have come to the end of the tether without once having put an ounce of strain upon its delightful but very tense cord. But the effort to keep the affair down to the level at which you seem satisfied has wearied me. The task of living down to that assures me that for you the effort of living up to mine would be consuming. I congratulate you, my dear, on coming through scatheless, and that the only appropriate condolences are my own--for myself."

It was rather pompous, he thought, but then she wouldn't notice that, let alone understand it. She suffered not so much from an impediment of speech--how could she when she spoke so little?--as from an impediment of intellect, which was worse, much worse, but not so noticeable, being so common a failing. She was, when all was said and done, just a fool. It was a pity, for bodily she must indeed be a treasure. What a pity! But she had never had any love for him at all, only compassion and pity for his bad thoughts about her; he had neither pity for her nor compunction--only love. Dear, dear, dear. Blow out the candle. Lock the door. Good-night!

5

He did not see her again for a long time. He would have liked to have seen her, yes, just once more, but of course he was glad, quite glad, that she did not risk it and drag from dim depths the old passion to break again in those idiotic bubbles of propriety. She did not answer his letter--he was amused. Then her long silence vexed him, until vexation was merged in alarm. She had gone away from Tutsan--of course--gone away on family affairs--oh, naturally!--she might be gone away for ever. But a real grief came upon him. He had long mocked the girl, not only the girl but his own vision of her; now she was gone his mind elaborated her melancholy immobile figure into an image of beauty. Her absence, her silence, left him wretched. He heard of her from Ianthe, who renewed her blandishments; he was not unwilling to receive them now--he hoped their intercourse might be reported to Kate.

After many months he did receive a letter from her. It was a tender letter though ill-expressed, not very wise or informative, but he could feel that the old affection for him was still there, and he wrote her a long reply in which penitence and passion and appeal were mingled.

"I know now, yes, I see it all now; solutions are so easy when the proof of them is passed. We were cold to each other, it was stupid, I should have _made_ you love me and it would have been well. I see it now. How stupid, how unlucky; it turned me to anger and you to sorrow. Now I can think only of you."

She made no further sign, not immediately, and he grew dull again. His old disbelief in her returned. Bah! She loved him no more than a suicide loved the pond it dies in; she had used him for her senseless egoism, tempting him and fooling him, wantonly yes, wantonly, he had not begun it, and she took a chaste pride in saving herself from him. What was it the old writer had said? "Chastity, by nature the gentlest of all affections--give it but its head--'tis like a ramping and roaring lion." Saving herself! Yes, she would save herself for marriage.

He even began to contemplate that outcome.

Her delayed letter, when it came, announced that she was coming home at once; he was to meet her train on the morning after the morrow.

It was a dull autumnal morning when he met her. Her appearance was not less charming than he had imagined it, though the charm was almost inarticulate and there were one or two crude touches that momentarily distressed him. But he met with a flush of emotion all her glances of gaiety and love that were somehow, vaguely, different--perhaps there was a shade less reserve. They went to lunch in the city and at the end of the meal he asked her:

"Well, why have you come back again?"

She looked at him intently: "Guess!"

"I--well, no--perhaps--tell me, Kate, yourself."

"You are different, now, you look different, David."

"Am I changed! Better or worse?"

She did not reply and he continued:

"You, too, are changed, I can't tell how it is, or where, but you are."

"O, I am changed, much changed," murmured Kate.

"Have you been well?"

"Yes."

"And happy?"

"Yes."

"Then how unwise of you to come back."

"I have come back," said Kate, "to be happier. But somehow you are different."

"You are different, too. Shall we ever be happy again?"

"Why--why not?" said Kate.

"Come on!" he cried hilariously, "let us make a day of it, come along!"

Out in the streets they wandered until rain began to fall. "Come in here for a while." They were passing a roomy dull building, the museum, and they went in together. It was a vast hollow-sounding flagstone place that had a central brightness fading into dim recesses and galleries of gloom. They examined a monster skeleton of something like an elephant, three stuffed apes and a picture of the dodo. Kate stood before them without interest or amusement, she just contemplated them. What did she want with an elephant, an ape, or a dodo! The glass exhibit cases were leaned upon by them, the pieces of coal neatly arranged and labelled were stared at, besides the pieces of granite or coloured rock with long names ending in _orite_, _dorite_ and _sorite_ and so on to the precious gems including an imitation, as big as a bun, of a noted diamond. They leaned over them, repeating the names on the labels with the quintessence of vacuity. They hated it. There were beetles and worms of horror, butterflies of beauty, and birds that had been stuffed for so long that they seemed to be intoxicated; their beaks fitted them as loosely as a drunkard's hat, their glassy eyes were pathetically vague. After ascending a flight of stone steps David and Kate stooped for a long time over a case of sea-anemones that had been reproduced in gelatine by a German with a fancy for such things. From the railed balcony they could peer down into the well of the fusty-smelling museum. No one else was visiting it, they were alone with all things dead, things that had died millions of years ago and were yet simulating life. A footfall sounded so harsh in the corridors, boomed with such clangour, that they took slow diffident steps, almost tiptoeing, while Kate scarcely spoke at all and he conversed in murmurs. Whenever he coughed the whole place seemed to shudder. In the recess, hidden from prying eyes, David clasped her willing body in his arms. For once she was unshrinking and returned his fervour. The vastness, the emptiness, the deadness, worked upon their feelings with intense magic.

"Love me, David," she murmured, and when they moved away from the gelatinous sea-urchins she kept both her arms clasped around him as they walked the length of the empty corridor. He could not perceive her intimations, their meaning was dark to him. She was so altered, this was another Kate.

"I have come home to make it all up to you," she repeated, and he scarcely dared to understand her.

They approached a lecture room; the door was open, the room was empty, they went in and stood near the platform. The place was arranged like a tiny theatre, tiers of desks rising in half circles on three sides high up towards the ceiling. A small platform with a lecturer's desk confronted the rising tiers; on the wall behind it a large white sheet; a magic lantern on a pedestal was near and a blackboard on an easel. A pencil of white chalk lay broken on the floor. Behind the easel was a piano, with a duster on its lid. The room smelled of spilled acids. The lover's steps upon the wooden floor echoed louder than ever after their peregrination upon the flagstones; they were timid of the sound and stood still, close together, silent. He touched her bosom and pressed her to his heart, but all her surrender seemed strange and nerveless. She was almost violently different; he had liked her old rejections, they were fiery and passionate. He scarce knew what to do, he understood her less than ever now. Dressed as she was in thick winter clothes it was like embracing a tree, it tired him. She lay in his arms waiting, waiting, until he felt almost stifled. Something like the smell of the acids came from her fur necklet. He was glad when she stood up, but she was looking at him intently. To cover his uneasiness he went to the blackboard and picking up a piece of chalk he wrote the first inconsequent words that came into his mind. Kate stood where he had left her, staring at the board as he traced the words upon it: _We are but little children weak_.

Laughing softly she strolled towards him.

"What do you write that for? I know what it is."

"What it is!--well, what is it?"

She took the chalk from his fingers.

"It's a hymn," she went on "it goes...."

"A hymn!" he cried, "I did not know that."

Underneath the one he had written she was now writing another line on the board: _Nor born to any high estate_.

"Of course," he whispered, "I remember it now, I sang it as a child--at school--go on, go on."

But she had thereupon suddenly turned away, silent, dropping her hands to her side. One of her old black moods had seized her. He let her go and picking up another fragment of chalk completed the verse:

_What can we do for Jesu's sake Who is so high and good and great?_

She turned when he had finished and without a word walked loudly to the piano, fetched the duster and rubbed out the words they had written on the blackboard. She was glaring at him.

"How absurd you are"--he was annoyed--"let us go out and get some tea." He wandered off to the door, but she did not follow. He stood just outside gazing vacantly at a stuffed jay that had an indigo eye. He looked into the room again. She was there still just as he had left her; her head bent, her hands hanging clasped before her, the dimness covering and caressing her--a figure full of sad thoughts. He ran to her and crushed her in his arms again:

"Kate, my lovely."

She was saying brokenly: "You know what I said. I've come to make it all up to you. I promised, didn't I?"

Something shuddered in his very soul--too late, too late, this was no love for him. The magic lantern looked a stupid childish toy, the smell of the acid was repulsive. Of all they had written upon the blackboard one word dimly remained: _Jesu_.

She stirred in his arms. "You are changed, David."

"Changed, yes, everything is changed."

"This is just like a theatre, like a play, as if we were acting."

"Yes, as if we were acting. But we are not acting. Let us go up and sit in the gallery."

They ascended the steps to the top ring of desks and looked down to the tiny platform and the white curtain. She sat fondling his hands, leaning against him.

"Have you ever acted--you would do it so well?"

"Why do you say that? Am I at all histrionic?"

"Does that mean insincere? O no. But you are the person one expects to be able to do anything."

"Nonsense! I've never acted. I suppose I could. It isn't difficult, you haven't to be clever, only courageous. I should think it very easy to be only an ordinary actor, but I'm wrong, no doubt. I thought it was easy to write--to write a play--until I tried. I once engaged myself to write a little play for some students to act. I had never done such a thing before and like other idiots I thought I hadn't ever done it simply because I hadn't ever wanted to. Heavens, how harassed I was and how ashamed! I could not do it. I got no further than the author's speech."

"Well that was something. Tell me it."

"It's nothing to do with the play. It's what the author says to the audience when the play is finished."

She insisted on hearing it whatever it was. "O well," he said at last. "Let's do that properly, at least. I'll go down there and deliver it from the stage. You must pretend that you are the enthusiastic audience. Come and sit in the stalls."

They went down together.

"Now imagine that this curtain goes up and I suddenly appear."

Kate faintly clapped her hands. He stood upon the platform facing her and taking off his hat, began:

"Ladies and Gentlemen.

"I am so deeply touched by the warmth of this reception, this utterly undeserved appreciation, that--forgive me--I have forgotten the speech I had carefully prepared in anticipation of it. Let me meet my obligation by telling you a story; I think it is true, I made it up myself. Once upon a time there was a poor playwright--something like me--who wrote a play--something like this--and at the end of the performance the audience, a remarkably handsome well-fed intellectual audience--something like this--called him before the curtain and demanded a speech. He protested that he was unprepared and asked them to allow him to tell them a story--something like this. Well, that, too, was a remarkably handsome well-fed intellectual audience, so they didn't mind and he began again, Once upon a time a poor playwright,--and was just about to repeat the story I have already twice told you when suddenly, without a word of warning, without a sound, without a compunction, the curtain swooped down and chopped him clean in half."

Masterman made an elaborate obeisance and stepped off the platform.

"Is that all?" asked Kate.

"That's all."

At that moment a loud bell clanged throughout the building signifying that the museum was about to close.

"Come along!" he cried, but Kate did not move, she still sat in the stalls.

"Don't leave me, David, I want to hear the play," she said archly.

"There _was_ no play and there _is_ no play. Come, or we shall be locked in for the night."

Still she sat on. He went to her and seized her hands.

"What does it matter!" she whispered, embracing him. "I want to make it all up to you."

He was astoundingly moved. She was marvellously changed. If she hadn't the beauty of perfection she had some of the perfection of beauty. He adored her.

"But no," he said, "it won't do, it really won't. Come, I have got to buy you something at once, a ring with a diamond in it, as big as a bun, an engagement ring, quickly, or the shops will be shut."

He dragged the stammering bewildered girl away, down the stairs and into the street. The rain had ceased, the sunset sky was bright and Masterman was intensely happy.

A BROADSHEET BALLAD

A BROADSHEET BALLAD

At noon the tiler and the mason stepped down from the roof of the village church which they were repairing and crossed over the road to the tavern to eat their dinner. It had been a nice little morning but there were clouds massing in the south; Sam, the tiler, remarked that it looked like thunder. The two men sat in the dim little taproom eating, Bob, the mason, at the same time reading from a newspaper an account of a trial for murder.

"I dunno what thunder looks like," Bob said, "but I reckon this chap is going to be hung, though I can't rightly say for why. To my thinking he didn't do it at all: but murder's a bloody thing and someone ought to suffer for it."

"I don't think," spluttered Sam, as he impaled a flat piece of beetroot on the point of a pocket-knife and prepared to contemplate it with patience until his stuffed mouth was ready to receive it, "he ought to be hung."

"There can be no other end for him though, with a mob of lawyers like that, and a jury too ... why the rope's half round his neck this minute; he'll be in glory within a month; they only have three Sundays, you know, between the sentence and the execution. Well, hark at that rain then!"

A shower that began as a playful sprinkle grew to a powerful steady summer downpour. It splashed in the open window and the dim room grew more dim, and cool.

"Hanging's a dreadful thing," continued Sam, "and 'tis often unjust I've no doubt, I've no doubt at all."

"Unjust! I tell you ... at majority of trials those who give their evidence mostly knows nothing at all about the matter; them as knows a lot--they stays at home and don't budge, not likely!"

"No? But why?"

"Why? They has their reasons. I know that, I knows it for truth ... hark at that rain, it's made the room feel cold."

They watched the downfall in complete silence for some moments.

"Hanging's a dreadful thing," Sam at length repeated, with almost a sigh.

"I can tell you a tale about that, Sam, in a minute," said the other. He began to fill his pipe from Sam's brass box, which was labelled cough lozenges and smelled of paregoric.

"Just about ten years ago I was working over in Cotswold country. I remember I'd been into Gloucester one Saturday afternoon and it rained. I was jogging along home in a carrier's van; I never seen it rain like that afore, no, nor never afterwards, not like that. Br..r..r..r! it came down ... bashing! And we came to a cross-roads where there's a public house called _The Wheel of Fortune_, very lonely and onsheltered it is just there. I seed a young woman standing in the porch awaiting us, but the carrier was wet and tired and angry or something and wouldn't stop. 'No room'--he bawled out to her--'full up, can't take you!' and he drove on. 'For the love o' God, mate,'--I says--pull up and take that young creature! She's ... she's ... can't you see!' 'But I'm all behind as 'tis', he shouts to me, 'you knows your gospel, don't you: time and tide wait for no man?' 'Ah, but dammit all, they always call for a feller,' I says. With that he turned round and we drove back for the girl. She clumb in and sat on my knees; I squat on a tub of vinegar, there was nowhere else and I was right and all, she was going on for a birth. Well, the old van rattled away for six or seven miles; whenever it stopped you could hear the rain clattering on the tarpolin, or sounding outside on the grass as if it was breathing hard, and the old horse steamed and shivered with it. I had knowed the girl once in a friendly way, a pretty young creature, but now she was white and sorrowful and wouldn't say much. By and bye we came to another cross-roads near a village, and she got out there. 'Good day, my gal,' I says, affable like, and; 'Thank you, sir,' says she, and off she popped in the rain with her umbrella up. A rare pretty girl, quite young, I'd met her before, a girl you could get uncommon fond of, you know, but I didn't meet her afterwards: she was mixed up in a bad business. It all happened in the next six months while I was working round those parts. Everybody knew of it. This girl's name was Edith and she had a younger sister Agnes. Their father was old Harry Mallerton, kept _The British Oak_ at North Quainy; he stuttered. Well this Edith had a love affair with a young chap William, and having a very loving nature she behaved foolish. Then she couldn't bring the chap up to the scratch nohow by herself, and of course she was afraid to tell her mother or father: you know how girls are after being so pesky natural, they fear, O they do fear! But soon it couldn't be hidden any longer as she was living at home with them all, so she wrote a letter to her mother. 'Dear Mother,' she wrote, and told her all about her trouble.

"By all accounts the mother was angry as an old lion, but Harry took it calm like and sent for young William, who'd not come at first. He lived close by in the village, so they went down at last and fetched him.

"'All right, yes,' he said, 'I'll do what's lawful to be done. There you are, I can't say no fairer, that I can't.'

"'No,' they said, 'you can't.'

"So he kissed the girl and off he went, promising to call in and settle affairs in a day or two. The next day Agnes, which was the younger girl, she also wrote a note to her mother telling her some more strange news.

"'God above!' the mother cried out, 'can it be true, both of you girls, my own daughters, and by the same man! O, whatever were you thinking on, both of ye! Whatever can be done now!'"

"What!" ejaculated Sam, "both on 'em, both on 'em!"

"As true as God's my mercy--both on 'em--same chap. Ah! Mrs. Mallerton was afraid to tell her husband at first, for old Harry was the devil born again when he were roused up, so she sent for young William herself, who'd not come again, of course, not likely. But they made him come, O yes, when they told the girls' father.