Part 6

His busy mind, while they spoke, was nimbly darting here and there with an odd, agile avoidance of certain recognitions. This was the moment of moments in which to show no fear. And his mind was not afraid.--Clairvoyance; clairvoyance; it repeated, while the horror clotted round his heart. As if pushing against a weight he forced his will through the horror and went back to his place at the other end of the mantelpiece; and, with a conscious volition, he put his hand on hers and drew it from the shelf. "Tony dear," he said, "come sit down. Let us talk quietly."--Heaven knew they had been quiet enough!--"Here; let me keep beside you. Don't take your hand away. I shan't trouble you. Listen, dear. Even if it were true, even if Malcolm came--and I do not believe he comes--it need not mean that we must part."

She had suffered him to draw her down beside him on the leathern divan and, as she felt his kindly hand upon her and heard his voice, empty of all but an immense gentleness, tears, for the first time, rose to her eyes. Slowly they fell down her cheeks and she sat there, mute, and let them fall.

"Why should you think it means he wants to part us?" he asked in a gentle and exhausted voice. He asked, for he must still try to save himself and Tony; yet he knew that Miss Latimer had indeed done something to him; or that Malcolm had. The wraith of that inscrutability hovered between him and Tony, and in clasping her would he not always clasp its chill? The springs of ardour in his heart were killed. Never had he more loved and never less desired her. Poor, poor Tony. How could she live without him? And wretched he, how was he to win her back from this antagonist?

He had asked his question, but she knew his thoughts.

"He has parted us, Bevis. We are parted. You know it, too."

"I don't! I don't!" Holding her hand he looked down at it while his heart mocked the protestation. "I don't know it. Life can cover this misery. We must be brave, and face it together."

"It can't be faced together. He would be there, always. Seeing us."

"We want him to be there; happy; loving you; loving your happiness."

"It is not like that, Bevis." She only needed to remind him. The reality before them mocked his words. "He would not have called to us if he were happy. He would not have appeared to Cicely. He is not angry. I understand it all. He is trying to get through, but it is not because he is angry. It is because he feels I have gone from him. He is lonely, Bevis; and lost. Like the curlew. Like the poor, forgotten curlew."

When she said that, something seemed to break in his heart, if there were anything left to break. He sat for a little while, still looking down at the hand he held, the piteous, engulfed hand. But it was a pity not only for her, but for himself, and, unendurably, for Malcolm, in that vision she evoked, that brought the slow tears to his eyes. And then thought and feeling seemed washed away from him and he knew only that he had laid his head upon her shoulder, as if in great weariness, and sobbed.

"Oh, my darling!" whispered Tony. She put her arms around him. "Oh, my darling Bevis. I've broken your heart, too. Oh, what grief! What misery!"

She had never spoken to him like that before; never clasped him to her. He had a beautiful feeling of comfort and contentment, even while, with her, he felt the waters closing over their heads.

"Darling Tony," he said. He added after a moment, "My heart's not broken when you are so lovely to me."

Pressing her cheek against his forehead, kissing him tenderly, she held him as a mother holds her child. "I'd give my life for you," she said. "I'd die to make you happy."

"Ah, but you see," he put his hand up to her shoulder so that he should feel her more near, "that wouldn't do any good. You must stay like this to make me happy."

"If I could!" she breathed.

They sat thus for a long time and, in the stillness, sweetness, sorrow, he felt that it was he and Tony who lay drowned in each other's arms at the bottom of the sea, dead and peaceful, and Malcolm who lived and roved so restlessly, in the world from which they were mercifully sunken. They were the innocent ghosts and he the baleful, living creature haunting their peace.

"Don't go. Why do you go?" he said, almost with terror, as Antonia's arms released him. She had opened her eyes; but not to him. Their cold, fixed grief gazed above his head. And the faint, deprecatory smile flickered about her mouth as, rising, she said: "I must. Cicely will soon be back. And I must rest again. I must rest for to-morrow, Bevis dear."

"We are all going away together? You will really rest?"

"All going away. Yes; I will rest." Still she did not look at him, but around at the room. "I shall never see Wyndwards again."

"Forget it, Tony, and all it's meant. That's what I am going to do. I am to travel with you?"

She hesitated; then, "Of course. You and I and Cicely," she said.

"And I may see you in London? You'll take a day or two there before going on?"

"A day or two, perhaps. But you must not try to see me, Bevis dear." He had risen, still keeping her hand as he went with her to the door, still feeling himself the bereft and terrified child who seeks pretexts so that its mother shall not leave it. And he thought, as they went so together, that their lives were strangely overturned since this could be; for until now Tony had been his child. It had been he who had sustained and comforted Tony.

"Why do you go?" he repeated. "You can rest with me here: not saying anything; only being quiet, together."

"No, Bevis dear; no." She shook her head slowly, and her face was turned away from him. "We must not be together now."

He knew that it was what she must say. He knew the terror in her heart. He saw Malcolm, mourning, unappeased, between them. Yet, summoning his will, summoning the claim of life against that detested apparition, expressing, also, the sickness of his heart as he saw his devastated future, "You mustn't make me a lonely curlew, too," he said.

He was sorry for the words as soon as he had uttered them. It was a different terror they struck from her sunken face. She stood for a moment and looked at him and he remembered how she had looked the other day--oh! how long ago it seemed--when he had frightened her by saying he might get over her. But it was not his child who looked at him now. "I have broken your heart! I have broken your heart, too!" she said.

"Far from it!" he declared. And he tried to smile at her. "Wait till I get you safely to London. You'll see how it will revive!"

The door stood open between them, and it was not his child who looked at him, answering his sally with a smile as difficult as his own. "Dear, brave Bevis," she murmured.

And, as she turned and left him, he saw again the love that had cherished him so tenderly, faltering, helpless, at the threshold of her lips and eyes.

VIII

Miss Latimer dined with him. She told him that the poor woman had died, and they talked of the Peace Conference. Miss Latimer read her papers carefully and the subject floated them until dessert. She spoke with dry scepticism of the League of Nations. Her outlook was narrow, acute, and practical. As they rose from the table she bade him good-night.

"Do you mind giving me a few moments, in the library, first?" he said. "I don't suppose we'll have another chance for a talk. You and Antonia are going to Cornwall, I hear."

She hesitated, looking across at him, still at the table, from the place where she had risen. "Yes. We are. I have a great deal to do."

"I know. But our train is not early. I should be very much obliged." Under the compulsion of his courtesy she moved before him, reluctantly, to the library.

"You see"--Bevis following, closed the door behind them--"a great deal has happened to me since we talked yesterday. I've heard of things I did not know before. They have changed my life and Antonia's. And since it's owing to you that they've come, I think you'll own it fair that I should ask for a little more enlightenment."

His heart had stayed sunken in what was almost despair since Tony had left him. He had no plan; no hope. It was in a dismal sincerity that he made his request. There might be enlightenment. If there were, only she could give it. She was his antagonist; yet, unwillingly, she might show him some loophole of escape.

Reluctance evidently battled in her with what might be pride. She did not wish to show reluctance. She took a straight chair near the table at a little distance from the fire and sat there with rather the air of an applicant for a post, willing, coldly and succinctly, to give information.

Bevis limped up and down the room.

"Why have you been working against me?" he said at last. He stopped before her. "Or, no; I don't mean that. Of course you would work against me. You would have to. But why haven't you been straight with me? Didn't you owe it to me as much as to Tony to tell me what had happened?"

She looked back coldly at him. "I have not worked against you. I owe you nothing."

"Not even when what happened concerned me so closely?"

"It was for Antonia to tell you anything that concerned you." She paused and added, in a lower voice, "I should not choose to speak of some things to you."

"I see." He took a turn or two away. "Yes. After all, that's natural. But now you see me defeated and cast out. So perhaps you'll be merely merciful." He stopped again and scrutinized her.

Yes; he had seen in her face yesterday what her hatred could be. It was--all defeated and cast out as he was--hatred for him he saw now, evident, palpable, like a sword. And why should she hate him so much? Had she anything to fear? Like OEdipus before the Sphinx, he studied her.

"You believe that you saw Malcolm the other night?" She had not told him that she would be merciful, yet, apparently, she was willing to give information, since she sat there.

Something more evidently baleful came into her eyes as she answered, "It is not a question of belief."

"Of course; naturally. What I mean is--you did see him. Well, this is what I would like to know. Did you see him when you sat at the table with your head down, before we left the room?"

The question--he had not meditated it--it had come to him instinctively, like a whisper from some unseen friend--was as unexpected to her as it had been to him. She had expected, no doubt, to be questioned as to Malcolm's dress, attitude, and demeanour. She kept her eyes fixed; but a tremor knotted her brows, as if with bewilderment.

"As I sat at the table?" she repeated. "How do you mean?"

He did not take his eyes off her. He seemed to slide his hand along a sudden clue and to find it holding.

"I mean the vision of him standing beside the fountain. Did it come to you first while we were at the window seeing nothing?"

She stared at him, and the bewilderment gained her eyes. "A vision? What do you mean by a vision? No. It was when you had gone. It was when I went to the window that I saw him standing there." Yet, even as she spoke, he saw that she was thinking with a new intensity.

Something had been gained. Safety required him, at the moment, not to examine it overmuch, not to arouse her craft. "I see," he said, as if assenting, and again he turned from her and again he came back, with a new question. "You think he came because he is suffering?"

She had looked away from him while she thought, and as her eyes turned to him he saw the new edge to their hatred. "Yes. Suffering," she said. And her eyes added: "Because of you."

"You told Tony he was suffering?"

"I answered her questions."

"He will be appeased by her sacrifice of me?"

She paused a moment, as if with a cold irony for his grossness. "It is her heart he misses," she then said.

He stood across the table from her, considering her. For the first time he seemed to see in full clearness the force of the passion that moved her. Her very being was centred in one loyalty, one devotion. She would, he felt sure, sacrifice any thing, any one, to it. He considered her and she kept her cold, ironic face uplifted to his scrutiny. There was desecration, he felt, in the blow his mind now prepared. Yet, as she was merciless, so he, too, must be. "How is it he comes to you and not to Tony?" he asked her. "How is it you know what he suffers?"

Unsuspecting, she was still ready to deal with him, since that was to be done with him. "I have always been like that. I have always known things and felt them, and sometimes seen them. I have known Malcolm since he was a child. There is nothing he has felt that I have not known. It frightened him, sometimes, to find that I had known everything.--The bond is not broken."

"No. It is not. But do you see what I am going to tell Antonia to-morrow?" he said, not stirring as, with his folded arms, he looked across at her. "That such a bond as that sets her free. It's you he comes for; you he misses. Realities take their place after death. Things come out. He didn't know it while he was alive. You were too near for him to know it. But it's you who are his mate. You are the creature nearest to him in the universe."

She sat still for a moment after he had finished. Then she rose. Her little face, with its lighted glare, was almost terrifying. He saw, as he looked at her, that he had committed a sacrilege, yet he could not regret it.

"You know you lie," she said.--It had been a sacrilege, yet it might help him and Tony, for now all her barriers were down.--"If that were true how could I wish to keep her for him? He is the creature nearest to me in the universe, but I am not near him. Never, never, never," said Miss Latimer; and her voice, as she spoke, piped to a rising wail. "He was fond of me; never more than fond, and Antonia was the only woman he ever loved. I was with him in it all. I helped him sometimes to answer her letters, for she frightened him with her cleverness, and he was not like that; he was not clever in your way. And he would grow confused. Nothing ever brought us so near. It was of her we talked that last night, beside the fountain, in the flagged garden. It was then he told me that he knew, whatever happened to him, that he and Antonia belonged to each other forever."

It was the truth, absolute and irrefutable. Yet, though before it, and her, in her bared agony, he knew himself ashamed, the light had come to him as it blazed from her. It gave him all he needed. He was sure now, as he had not been sure before, of what was not the truth. Malcolm, as a wraith, a menace, was exorcised. There was only Miss Latimer to deal with.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I was wrong. You convince me. But there's something else." She had dropped down again upon her chair and she had put up her hand to her face, and so she sat while he spoke to her. "You see, your love explains everything," he said. "I mean, everything that needs explaining. Don't think I speak as an enemy. It's only that I understand you and what has happened to you, and to us, better than you do yourself. You are so sure of your fact that you feel yourself justified in giving it to Antonia in a symbol; so, as you say, to keep her for him. You are sure he is here; you are sure he suffers; and you feel it right to tell her you have seen him, to save her from herself, as you would see it; and from me."

Her hand had dropped and the face she showed him was, in its bewilderment, in its desperation, its distraction, strangely young; like the face of a child judged by some standard it does not understand. "A symbol? What do you mean by a symbol?" she asked, and her voice was the reedy, piping voice of a child.

He pressed home his advantage. "You have not seen Malcolm. You believe that he is here and you believe he suffers. But you have not seen him. On your honour;--can you look at me and say, on your honour, that you have seen him?"

She looked at him. She stared. And it was with the eyes of the desperate child. "How could I not have seen him? How could I have known?"

"The table rapped it out for you, because you are a medium. It's a mystery that such things should be; but you say yourself that, in life, your mind read Malcolm's. In the same way, the other night, it read Tony's. You saw what she saw. Everything is open to you."

She had risen and, with a strange gesture, she put her hand up to her head. "No--no. It was more than that. It was more than that. Antonia did not know. I did not know. No one knew, till I saw it; how he died. I saw him. Half his head was shot away."

He leaped to his triumph. "It was my mind that showed you that. I did know. I did know how he died. You read my mind as well as Tony's. Our minds built up the picture for you."

Her hand held to her head she stared at him. "It is not true! Not true! You say so now when I have told you."

"Ask Tony if it's not true. I told her what you'd seen before she told me. Miss Latimer--I appeal to you. Our lives hang on you. Tell me the truth--tell it to me now, and to Tony to-night. You did not see him. Not what we mean by seeing. Not as Tony believes you saw. You had your inner vision while you leaned there on the table, and it convinced you of the outer. I've shown you how you built it up. Every detail of our knowledge was revealed to you. It's we who created Malcolm's ghost."

But she had turned away from him, and it was as if in desperate flight, blindly, pushing aside the chair against which she stumbled, still with her hand held as though to Malcolm's wound. "Not true! Not true!" she cried, and she flung aside the hand he held out to arrest her. "He is here! He has saved her! I saw him! Beside the fountain!"

IX

She was gone and he need not pursue her. Her desperation had given him all that he had hoped for, and there was no recantation, no avowal to be wrested from that panic. He had followed her to the door and he watched her mount the stairs, running as she went and without one backward glance. And when, at the end of the corridor above, he heard her door shut, he still stood in the open doorway, his head bent, his hands in his pockets, and took, it seemed in long draughts of recovery, full possession of his almost miraculous escape.

He saw the suffocating, vaultlike darkness where he had groped. Since Tony had gone from him that afternoon, the clotting horror had not left his heart. It had been a vault; tenebrous; a place of death. Yet flesh and blood had not come to his help. He had forced no doors and beaten down no walls. Such doors and walls did not yield to force. It had been his sensitiveness to reality that had led him forth. As, sitting at the table the other night, he had seen the shadow, felt the scent of danger, so now his sensitiveness had shown him in the darkness something less dark. He had groped, he had crept, he had felt his way, from his intuition that Miss Latimer feared him to that memory of her form fallen forward on the little table, and the darkness that was only less dark had softly expanded to a pallor, until, suddenly, from her bewildered eyes and passionate negations, conviction of the truth had flashed upon him. It had been like turning the corner of a buttress to find the aperture that led out to pure, clear, starlit air. Of course, of course--how clearly now the light was spread! She had had her vision of Malcolm, not at the third window, but while she sat there at the table, her head bent down on her arms. She had lied only in saying that it had been objective. He and Tony had built it up for her.

His recovery was not only of freedom; he entered again, with his recognition of how he had found freedom, into possession of himself, into security and confidence. Flesh and blood had miserably failed him that afternoon, and so he had failed Tony. What most had choked him in the darkness had been his self-contempt. For he had miserably, horribly, if pitifully and inevitably, failed her. Her fear had cankered his will and frozen his heart, and he had helped to fix her in it. Thank God, where flesh and blood had failed, intelligence and intuition had atoned. He was not worthless, after all. He had saved himself and he could save Tony.

As he stood there, and it had been for some little time, Thompson, Tony's maid, came down the staircase. She was a middle-aged woman, elegant of figure, with a gentle, careworn face, and he had always felt her friendly to his hopes. She carried a pair of Tony's shoes and gaiters, no doubt to have warmed to-morrow in readiness for the journey, and, not having noticed her for some days, he saw that her face was paler, more careworn than it had been. Tony was the sort of woman who would rouse devotion in her maid. He had already guessed that Thompson's was a romantic devotion; and now, their eyes meeting, something passed between them, so that, at the foot of the stairs, Thompson paused, and he, glad to see her, glad to question her, asked, "How is Mrs. Wellwood to-night?"

"I'm afraid she's far from well, sir," said Thompson, and her kindly, decorous eyes dwelt on him. "She hasn't been herself for some days. But she's gone off nicely now to sleep."

"Really? She's been sleeping so badly, I hear."

"Yes, sir, very badly. But I made her take a little hot milk, for she would eat no dinner, and that seemed to send her off quite soundly."

"You think she's fit to travel to-morrow?"

The dwelling of Thompson's eyes at this became almost urgent. "Oh, yes, sir. Oh, it will be the best thing for her, sir; to get away. It doesn't suit her here at all. It's the place that doesn't suit her. She's quite fit to travel; but I hope she won't go as far as Cornwall, sir. It would be much better if she stopped at her own house in London. Perhaps you could say something about it to her, sir. Perhaps"--and sustained by what she saw of understanding in his gaze she passed bravely beyond professional reticence--"it's being so much with Miss Cicely that isn't good for her. It's not cheering, sir. They've both had such great sorrow. It would be much better if she stayed in London and Miss Cicely went on to Cornwall alone. Perhaps, if you see with me, sir, you might say something on the journey to-morrow. Anything you could say would have weight with Mrs. Wellwood."

Bevis, gazing hard at her, felt that he loved Thompson. She seemed to embody the warmth and sanity of the new life for which he was to save Tony. He had even the impulse, ridiculous yet so strong--for he was young and had not been happy for such a long time--to put his arms around her neck, his head on her shoulder, and tell her how much he loved Tony and what terrible danger they had been in. But, of course, she understood; understood how much he loved Tony and how great had been the danger. So all that he said, at last, was: "Yes; I do agree. Yes; I'll do my best. Thanks so awfully."

"I do so wish you joy, sir," Thompson murmured.

He was glad that she had said that. He needed to have it said to him. Yet, after he had gone upstairs, pausing at Tony's door to make sure that, as Thompson had said, she was sleeping, after he had lighted his candles and stood there, meditating, in his room, alone in the silent house, it was not joy he felt. Joy was not yet achieved. Tony's enfranchisement, he foresaw, could not come from anything he might say to her. Her fear could never again infect him; but could his intuition free her? He would have only intuition to put before her, and Miss Latimer would be there with her lie that was half a truth. No; it could only be by the infection of his security and ardour that Tony could be won back from the darkness, and it should not fail her. But, until it had won her, he could feel no joy.