CHAPTER XI

THE BUSINESS

I

"You're never going to keep it till the very last minute?" Essie had said. Mr. Wriford's plan rested for its actual execution upon this very fact of keeping it till the very last minute--from her. Essie had thrilled with the delicious mystification of "They think you're going to-day." It was his carefully deliberated project suddenly to spring upon her that indeed he was going to-day--and then to ask her: "I'm going, Essie--by this train--I'm not going back to say good-bye--I'm going now--for ever. Essie, are you coming with me?"

Thus was she suddenly to be presented with it. Thus was she to decide--flatly, immediately. She was to know what sort of union he intended. She was either to fear it and let him go from her--as he would go--at once and for ever; or of her love for him he was to carry her with him--immediately, to have always for his own!

Let Essie decide! He was holding to that. With Essie let the decision be! All he was doing was to present the decision to her sharp and clear and sudden: all he had done was to tell her that he loved her. But there resulted to him this: that between the sharpness of the decision she was to make and the love he had pressed upon her in these intervening Whitecliffe days, between the effects of these on such as Essie was, he was certain of her, convinced of her: so utterly assured of her that as, after lunch, they left the house for that last walk in which he was "to say good-bye to everything," he told Mr. and Mrs. Bickers: "Don't be anxious if we're not back by half-past four. There's another train at seven. I can just as well go by that if we find we want to stop out a bit;" so certain of her that, as they left the house, "Bring a warm wrap of some kind," he said to Essie. "Bring that long cloak of yours."

"Why, it's as hot as anything!" Essie protested. But the agonies of "nearly screaming" in which she had sat through lunch while Mother and Dad said how sorry they were Arthur was going, and that if the job of work he was after fell through he was to be sure and let them know at once--the agonies of enduring this without screaming, made it, as she told him when they were started, impossible "to stand there arguing on the steps with them watching us, so I've got to lug this along, and don't I look half a silly carrying it either, all along the parade too!"

"I'll carry it," said Mr. Wriford and took the cloak; "and we won't keep along the parade. We'll go that walk of ours in towards Yexley Green and round by that white house with the jolly garden and come out on to the cliff. That'll give us plenty of time to get back."

Essie laughed and skipped. "Plenty of time! How you can keep it up like that I can't think. My goodness, if you oughtn't to be on the stage! Hope you like carrying that cloak!"

"Well, there'll be a shower or two, I shouldn't be surprised," said Mr. Wriford. "Anyway, it'll do to sit down on when we get over to the cliff and sit down--to arrange."

II

This white house with the jolly garden that was to be the turning-point of their walk had come to be quite a place of pilgrimage since its chance discovery on the first morning of the holiday. "Whitehouse" was its name. It was tenantless. An auctioneer's placard announced that it was for sale. They had walked far along the cliffs from Whitecliffe Sands on that first morning, had taken a winding lane that led to Yexley Green, and in the lane suddenly had come upon Whitehouse, with which immediately Essie, and Mr. Wriford scarcely less, had fallen most encaptivatingly in love. A high wall surrounded it. They had explored its garden: kitchen garden with fruit trees; and a bit of lawn with a shady old elm; and enticing odd little bits of garden tucked here and there behind shrubberies and in corners; and a little stable--at the stable Mr. Wriford had said: "That's where you'd keep a fat little pony, Essie, and have one of those jolly little governess cars and drive into Whitecliffe every day to do the shopping." And "Oh, if ever!" Essie had cried delightedly; and immediately and thenceforward the thing had been to come here every day and imagine Whitehouse was theirs and plan the garden--sadly neglected--as they would have it if it were. One storey high, the house, and white, and "sort of bulging, the darling," as Essie had said, with the effect that the three ground-floor rooms and even the kitchen at the back were spaciously circular in shape. High French windows--"My goodness, though, if there aren't more windows than walls almost!" Encircled all about by a wide, paved verandah.

"It's the very house for an author," Mr. Wriford had declared. "Shut away from everything by that jolly old wall, Essie; and this room--come and look at this room, Essie--this would be mine where I'd write. It must get the sun pretty well all day, and it's sort of away from the others--quite quiet. Couldn't I write in there!"

Essie with her nose flat against the window: "Oh, wouldn't it be glorious! Can't I just see you sitting in there writing a book! Perhaps I'd be out on the verandah here with a little dog that I'd have and just have a peep at you sometimes!"

To-day as they came by Whitehouse and turned towards the cliffs there was a sudden development of these imaginative ecstasies. The showers that Mr. Wriford had foreboded, heralded by watery clouds trailing up from the west, approached in quickening drops of heavy rain as they came through Yexley Green. They were at Whitehouse when sudden midsummer downpour broke and descended.

"My goodness!" cried Essie.

"We'll shelter in the porch--in the verandah," said Mr. Wriford and opened the gate. "Run, Essie!"

In the porch, Essie breathless and laughing from their helter-skelter rush, and shaking the raindrops from her skirts, Mr. Wriford read again a duplicate of the auctioneer's notice posted at the gate. He came to the last words and read them aloud with exclamation.

"'Open to view!' Essie, if we haven't been donkeys all this time! I believe it's--" He turned the handle of the door. "It is. It's open!"

"Oo-oo!" cried Essie, clasping her hands in delight, flashing her sparkling eyes all about the wide hall--its white panelling, its inglenook fireplace, its room-doors standing ajar with captivating peeps of interiors even more entrancing than when seen from outside, its low, spacious stairway bending up to the first floor--"Oh, if ever! Oh, Arthur, if it isn't a darling!"

At the cliffs--and they had been within five minutes of them when the rain came--he had planned they should sit down and he would tell her: "I'm going by the five o'clock train. Here's my ticket. Essie, are you coming with me? Look, here's yours." The diversion of being within enchanting Whitehouse, his laughter at Essie's ecstasies as from room to room they went, momentarily forgot him his purpose--and yet, and partly of envisaging within these perfect surroundings the very joy, settled with Essie in dwelling-place so conducive to work and happiness as this, that soon should be his, brought him (and her) directly to it.

With light and trifling steps they suddenly were plunged amidst it. The exploration, twice repeated, was done. Essie was in ecstasies anew over the sitting-room, of which Mr. Wriford told her again: "Yes, this would be yours. That's the dining-room behind, you see, with a door to the kitchen where your servants would be."

"Not really two servants?" said Essie.

"Oh, rather--three perhaps; and then the gardener chap who'd look after your pony-trap."

"Oh, my goodness!" said Essie, sparkling. "Do just go on, dear!"

"Yes, well, this would be yours. We wouldn't call it the drawing-room or any rot like that. Just your room with jolly furniture and a little bureau where you'd keep your accounts. We'd have tea in here when we didn't have it outside. The servants would call it the sitting-room. We'd call it jolly little Essie's room. I'd get fed up with working sometimes, you know, and come and sprawl about in here. You'd be sewing or something, I expect."

Essie had no expression for all this but an enormous sigh of ecstasy. Then she said: "Now we'll go back to yours," and hand in hand they came to it--and to their reckoning.

III

"Simply built for a chap to write in," Mr. Wriford said. "Just look how it gets the sun. It's stopped raining. I'd come here directly after breakfast. That's the time I can write. There's where I'd have my table. You'd see I was kept quiet."

"Oh, wouldn't I just," said Essie. "You see, there's a passage comes right down to this door, and my goodness if I saw any of the servants come past that corner there, or even go into the room overhead! My goodness, they'd know it if they did!"

He put his arm about her shoulders and laughed and pressed her to him; and Essie said: "Oh, just fancy if it really could be ours!"

He kept her there. She in his arm, they in surroundings such as these: he working, she ministering to him--ah, return to life! return to life!

"Well, we'll have a place as like it as we can find," he said.

She shook her head. With just a little sigh, "We never could," she said. "We'll be happier than anything wherever we are; but one thing, there couldn't be another darling place like this, and another, it would cost a fair fortune. Why, it's not even to let. It's only for sale."

He told her easily: "That's all right. That's just what we're going to do--buy a little place somewhere. I bet a thousand would buy this Whitehouse, buried away down here."

Essie made a tremendous mouthful of the word: "Well, a _thousand_!"

He laughed and squeezed her in reproof again. "Or two," he said. "Won't you ever understand what they pay for what you call the silly books?"

She had protested before, when in these Whitecliffe days he had assured her of his identity with Philip Wriford, that she never would have said silly in the library that evening if she had known the book was his "really." She protested now again with a wriggle and a laugh; but quickly upon her protest looked up at him with: "Oh, you can't ever mean that you really could buy this? You simply can't?"

He nodded, smiling.

"Oh," she cried, "why not then? Why not? Oh, Arthur, just think if you would! Oh, jus' think!"

The smile went from his lips and from his eyes. Whitehouse, so near to Mother and Dad, was impossible. Flight must take them, and keep them, very far from here. Before he could speak it was this very fact of proximity to home that she adduced in further persuasion.

"And think," she cried, "how near we'd be to Mother and Dad! Jus' an hour in the train. I could see them every week. I expect you've thought they'd live with us, you being so rich. But they never would, you know. Dad would never leave his shop, one thing; and another, Mother's often said when we've talked about me getting married one day, that a girl ought to have a home of her own and not have her mother tied round her neck. Why, this would be perfect, this darling Whitehouse, and so close to them! Oh, if you really can, Arthur!"

Here was the telling of it.

"I can't," he said. "We can't live here, Essie."

She detected something amiss in his tone. There went out of her face the fond and smiling entreaty expressive of her plea. She said: "Arthur, why?"

To one of the windows there was a broad window-seat, and he took her to it. "Let's sit down here, Essie."

She said: "Oh, whatever is it, dear?"

He took her hand. "It's this. What I told your father and mother about going by the five o'clock train is true. I am going. It's nearly four now. It's time to be starting back. I am going. Look, here's my ticket."

Wonderingly she looked at it, and at him. "Oh, you can't be?"

"I am. There's the ticket. Essie, look. Here's yours."

She almost laughed. She looked at his face and the impulse was checked. But she said half-laughingly, her brows prettily puckered: "Oh, whatever? Is it a game, dear, you're having?"

"No, it's no game. It's very serious. I'm going--for good. Not coming back--ever."

She made a little distressful motion with her hands. "Oh, Arthur, don't go on so, dear. Whatever can you mean?"

"I mean just what I say. I'm going--at five o'clock." He stopped and looked intently into her wondering, her something shadowed, eyes. He said: "Essie, are you coming with me?"

This time she laughed. It obviously was a game! A little ring of her clear and merry laughter, and her eyes that always sparkled, that had been shadowed, sparkling anew. "Oh, if you oughtn't to be an actor on the stage! If you didn't half frighten me, though!" and she laughed again. "Why, how could I come? Why, we're not married yet!"

Now!

He put an arm about her and drew her to him. "Don't let me frighten you, Essie. Trust me. Trust me. Come with me, Essie. I'll take care of you. I'll love you always. You'll never regret it--not a moment. You know what I can do for you--everything you want. You know how happy we'll be--happy, happy."

He had imagined--he had prepared for--everything that she might say: fears, tears, doubts, protests--he had rehearsed his part, his fond endearments, his dear cajoleries, against them all. He was utterly unprepared for her answer, for the gentle puzzlement in her eyes that went with it, for the Sunday-school awe in her voice with which she spoke it.

"What, live in sin?" said Essie.

He was prepared for, he had rehearsed, every way this telling of her might go. Across any difficulties of it he had stepped to the utter conviction of her that, howsoever it went, would radiantly end it, he knew. He was utterly unprepared for this her first contribution to it, for each and all with which she followed it, for the sudden fear, and then the quickly mounting fear, and then the knowledge, that she was lost to him--that the game was up, the thing done, the plans shattered, the future irrevocably destroyed: he was most unprepared of all, as the knowledge came and grew and burned within him, for the fury that began to fill him at his loss, the fury and the hate that finally he broke upon her. And God, God, how vilely quickly the thing was projected, was fought, was done! In one minute, as it seemed to him, they were lovingly trifling their plans of Whitehouse; in the next, those very plans had swept him to the telling; in the next, return to life was crushed like ashes in his mouth, and his fury and hate were out and raging; in the next, they were back returning on the cliffs, a blustering wind got up, rain again streaming.

Look how it went. Consider the quickness of it.

"What, live in sin?"

He caught her to him. "Live together, live together, Essie--always. Don't talk about sin."

"How could I? Oh, how ever could I?"

"Together, together, Essie! Think of us together in a little house of our own just like this. Think of you looking after me, and of me looking after my sweet, my dear, my darling!"

"How could I, dear? How could I?"

"Trust me--trust me! Ah, those tears in my darling's darling eyes! Look how I kiss them away and hold her in my arms and always hold her."

"I couldn't, dear. I couldn't."

"You know I'm different. You know how different I am from other men. That's why I ask you, why I take you, without marrying you. Does it frighten you at first? Only at first. You know I'm different. You know you trust me."

"Oh, you don't love me! You don't love me, after all!"

Chill at his heart.

"I can't live without you, Essie."

"Oh, you couldn't ask me to live in sin, not if you loved me."

Swift fear that he has lost her.

"It is because I love you. Because I love you."

"Oh, didn't I love to think you loved me, Arthur! You don't. You don't."

Losing her! The knowledge loses him the ardour of his words, halts him and stumbles him among them. "You're silly, you're silly to talk like that!"

"Oh, didn't I think you loved me truly!"

Lost her! He knows it. He feels it. There is something in her simple, plaintive exclamations, in her "I couldn't, couldn't, dear," in her abandonment to belief that he cannot love her--there is some damned, numbing essence in it that emanates as it were from her spirit and thus informs him; and thus informing him, numbs and dumbs his own. Lost her! And cannot combat it. Lost her! And has no words, no help. Fury beginning in him. Fury at his impotence mounting within him. Return to life! By God, by God, to lose it!

"Essie, will you let me go, then? Now? For ever? You can't. All our love? All our happiness we're going to have?"

"Oh, didn't I think you loved me truly!"

Fury within him. That maddening iteration of her maddening cry! He can scarcely retain his fury. He chokes it back. He is hoarse as he grinds out words. "Think of us in a little house like we've planned."

"I couldn't, dear, I couldn't!"

"Think how we'll have everything we want!"

"Oh, I can't bear to hear you tempting me!"

Fury in a storm breaks out of him. "Oh!" he cries and makes a savage action with his arms that thrusts her from him. "Oh, for God Almighty's sake, don't drag the Bible into it!"

She says: "Arthur!"

He gets violently to his feet, his hands clenched, and makes again that savage, breaking action of his arms, and cries at her: "Temptation and sin and rubbish, rubbish, like that! Let it alone! If you don't love me, say so! If you're going to let me go, say so! Don't drag the Bible into it! If you don't love me, say so, say so, say so!"

"Arthur, you know I love you. You don't love me, dear!"

A last effort. A last control of his fury. He turns to her. "Essie, I can't live without you. Essie! Essie!"

"Oh, you couldn't love me to ask me to live in sin!"

That ends it. That expression--its beastly and vulgar piety, its common, vulgar phraseology--sweeps across his fury as in a rasping shudder of abhorrence. He breaks his fury out upon it. He bursts out: "By God, you're common, common! Do you think I'd marry you--you? What do you think you are? Who do you think I am? Marry you! Marry you! Let's get out of this! Let's go home, and you can tell your father and your mother!"

Return to life! Gone, gone! Lost, lost! He was shaking with hate and shaking with utter fury. He walked to the door and staggered as he walked and must stop and correct his direction as though he were drunken. At the door he turned to her and saw that she remained seated, leaning back against the window, her hands clasped. He cried: "Are you coming? Are you coming?"

She got up and came to him and went through the doorway before him and through the outer door. He slammed it behind him, and they passed out from Whitehouse and up the lane, and out upon the cliffs and turned along them homeward. Raining. He carried her cloak but did not offer it her. A wind blew gustily from off the land that frequently buffetted him, and her, and at whose buffettings and at the slippery foothold of the rain-swept grass he angrily exclaimed.

IV

She walked to seaward of him close along the cliff's edge. Here the cliff fell sharply a few feet, then overhung an outward lap of gorse and bracken, sheer then to the sands. Once as they pressed and slipped their way along, he caught her eyes. She was crying. He sneered: "You can tell your father and mother!"

She caught her breath to answer him: "As if--I should!"

"What are you crying about, then?"

"Didn't I think you loved me--truly!"

They were approaching the little coastguard station of Yexley Gap. Damn this rain. Damn this slippery grass. Damn this infernal wind. A fiercer gust came blustering seaward. He caught with both hands at his hat--nearly gone. Essie's cloak upon his arm blew across his eyes--blinded him, and he had to stop.

She didn't scream. It was not a cry. She just, in perplexity, in puzzlement, in trouble as it were, said "_Arthur!_"

She was balancing. She was struck by the wind and balancing--balancing with her body and with her arms, and looking at him as if she did not quite know what was happening to her; and in the like perplexity said to him "_Arthur!_"--balancing, over-balancing.

There were not ten feet between them. He rushed, and slipped as he rushed. It was like running with those leaden feet of nightmare. It seemed to him an immense time before he reached her. A horrible, blundering, unspeakable business, then. The cloak, the accursed cloak, got between them--between them. A jumbling, ghastly, blundering business, their hands fumbling on either side of it. Was this going on for ever and ever? The accursed cloak fumbled itself away. Ah, God, now it was their naked hands that were fumbling--all wet and slippery with rain, seeming to be all fists and no fingers and only knocking against one another instead of catching hold. And not a word said, and only very quick breathing, and jumbling and fumbling and jumbling. Look here, this fumbling, she's falling, toppling; is this going on for ever and ever and ever?

It was her hands that in the last wild, hideous fumbling clutched his. She toppled right back. He fell. He was face downwards upon the slippery grass, to his waist almost over the cliff, and slipping, slipping, and she had his hands--the backs of his hands over the knuckles so that his fingers were imprisoned and useless, and there she hung and dragged him, and he was slipping.

He said: "O God, Essie! O God! Can't you get your hands higher up, so I can hold you, instead of you holding me?"

She said: "I shall fall if I do."

He said: "My darling! My darling! Hold on, then, Essie. Dig your nails in."

"Am I hurting you?"

"Oh, for God's sake, Essie, hold, hold!"

Next she said: "Are you slipping?"

He said: "Some one will come. Some one will come. I heard a shout. Hold! Hold!"

She persisted: "Are you slipping?"

He said: "Yes. I'm slipping. Hold! Hold!"

There isn't any need to describe anything--of his gradual slipping by her drag upon him, of his useless hands enviced in hers, of her very terrible clutch upon them.

She presently said: "Tell me that what you said on the seat that night, dear."

He knew. He cried most passionately: "I love you, Essie."

"Truly?"

From the uttermost depths of his heart: "Truly! Truly!"

"More than any one?"

From his soul, from all his deepest depths, from all he ever had suffered, from all he ever had been, "Essie," he cried, "before God I love you more than all the world!"

She said: "You can't raise me to kiss me, can you, dear?"

He said: "I can't, Essie."

"Are you slipping?"

He did not answer her. He was slipped almost beyond recovery.

She then said: "Say that again--'before God.' I like that, dear."

"Essie, Essie, before God I love you above all the world!"

She gave a little sigh. She said: "Well, both of us--what's the sense to it, dear?" and she opened her fingers, and he saw her whizz, strike the face of the cliff where it jutted out, and pitch, and crash among the gorse and bracken, and roll over and over to the very edge of the outward lap above the sands, and caught there and lying there ... her jolly little dress for Whitecliffe lying there.

A hand grabbed him, or he, beyond recovery of his balance, had followed her. A coastguard grabbed him and dragged him back. He said in a thick, odd voice: "What the devil's the use of that now? You fool, what the devil's the use of that?"

He lay there, the rain stopped, in the sunshine. He just lay there--a minute, an hour, a year, a lifetime, eternity? They went down--a circuitous path to where she lay. They brought her up. They carried her, on a shutter, past him. He gave some wordless sound from his lips and scrambled on his knees towards their burden and threw his arms about it and clung there, with wordless sounds.

One man said: "She's alive, sir."

Another man said: "We'd best try to get her home before--"

A third man said: "Can you walk to show us the way?"

He got up and went stumbling along.