Part 13

They had been married, it appeared, ten years, ten wonderful happy years. "How she can have cared for me, that's what I never understood, Miss--Miss----"

"Rand," said Lizzie.

"I beg your pardon. Difficult to catch ... when you are introduced.... Never understood. I was years older than she. I'm fifty now--forty when I married her, and she was only twenty. Thirty when she--when she died. In childbirth it was. The child, a boy, was born dead. Everyone prophesied disaster. They all told her not to marry me, she was so pretty, and so young, and so brilliant. She sang, Miss Rand, just like a lark. She did, indeed. She was trained in Paris. I oughtn't to have proposed to her, I suppose. That's what I tell myself now, but I was carried off my feet, completely off my feet. I couldn't help myself at all. I loved her from the first moment that I saw her. You know how those things are, Miss Rand. And, in any case, I don't know. Ten perfect years, that's a good deal for anyone to have, isn't it? And she was as happy as I was. It may seem strange to you, looking at me, but it was really so. She thought I was so much cleverer than I was--and better too. It used to make me very nervous sometimes lest she should find me out, you know, and leave me. I always expected that to happen. But she was so charitable to everyone. Never could see the bad side of people, and they were always better with her than with anyone else. We'd always hoped for a child, and then, as the years went on, we gave it up. Edmund, she said to me, we must make it up to one another. And then she told me it was going to be all right. You wouldn't have believed two ordinary people could be so happy as we were when we knew about it. We made many plans, of course. I was a little apprehensive that I'd be rather old to bring up a child, but she was so young that made it all right--so wonderfully young.... Then she died. It was incredible, of course. I didn't believe it ... I don't believe it now. She's not dead. That's absurd. You'd feel the same if you'd seen her, Miss Rand. So full of life, and then suddenly ... nothing at all. It's impossible. Nature isn't like that. Things gradually die, don't they, and change into something else. Not suddenly...."

He broke off. He was clutching his knees and staring in front of him. "I don't know why I talk to you like this, Miss Rand ... I hope you'll forgive me. I shouldn't have bothered you."

"I'm pleased that you have, Mr. Lapsley." She got up. She felt that he would be glad now to escape. "Won't you come and see me? I have a flat in Hortons Chambers in Duke Street, No. 42.... Do come. Just telephone."

He looked up at her, not rising from his seat. Then he got up.

"I will," he said. "Thank you."

He was still staring at her, and she knew that he had something further to say. She could see it struggling in his eyes. But she did not want him to confess any more. He would be the kind of man to regret afterwards what he had done. She would not burden his conscience. And yet she had the knowledge that it was something very serious that he wanted to tell her, something that had been, in reality, at the back of all his earlier confession.

She refused the appeal in his eyes, said good-night, took his hand for a moment and turned away.

Afterwards she was talking to Katherine Mark.

"I see you were kind to poor Mr. Lapsley," Katherine said.

"How sad about his wife!" Lizzie answered.

"Yes. And she really was young and beautiful. No one understood why she married him, but I've never seen anything more successful.... I didn't think he'd come to-night, but I'm fond of him. Philip doesn't care for him much, but he reminds me of a cousin of ours, John Trenchard, who was killed in Russia in the second year of the war. But John was unhappier than Mr. Lapsley. He never had his perfect years."

"Yes, that's something," Lizzie acknowledged.

It was strange to her afterwards that Edmund Lapsley should persist so vividly in her mind. She saw him with absolute clarity almost as though he were with her in her flat. She thought of him a good deal. He needed someone to comfort him, and she needed someone to comfort. She hoped he would come and see her.

He did come, one afternoon, quite unexpectedly and without telephoning first. Fortunately she was there, alone, and wanting someone to talk to. At first he was shy and self-conscious. They talked stiffly about London, and the weather, and the approaching Peace, and whether there would ever be a League of Nations, and how high prices were, and how impossible it was to get servants and when they got them they went.... Lizzie broke ruthlessly in upon this. "It isn't the least little good, Mr. Lapsley," she said, "our talking like this. It's mere waste of time. We both know plenty of people to whom we can chatter this nonsense. Either we are friends, or we are not. If we are friends, we must go a little further. Are we friends?"

He seemed to be at a loss. He blinked at her.

"Yes," he said.

"Well, then," she looked at him and smiled. "I don't want to force your confidence, but there was something that you were anxious to tell me about the other night, some way in which I could help you. I stopped you then, but I don't want to stop you now. I'll be honoured indeed if there's anything I can do."

He gulped, stammered, then out it came. At the first hint of his trouble it was all that Lizzie could do to repress an impatient gesture. His trouble was--spiritualism.

Of all the tiresome things, of all the things about which she had no patience at all, of all the idiotic, money-wasting imbecilities! He poured it all out. He had read books, at last a friend had taken him ... a Dr. Orloff, a very wonderful medium, a very trustworthy man, a man about whom there could be no question.

On the first occasion the results had been poor--on the second occasion his Margaret had spoken to him, actually spoken to him. Oh! but there could be no doubt! Her very voice.... His own voice shook as he spoke of it.

Since then he had been, he was forced to admit, a number of times--almost every day ... every day ... every afternoon. He talked to Margaret every day now for half an hour or more.

He was sure it was right, he was doing nobody any harm ... they two together ... it could not be wrong, but.... He stopped. Lizzie gave him no help. She sat there looking in front of her. She despised him; she was conscious of a deep and bitter disappointment. She did not know how he could betray his weakness, his softness, his gullibility. She had thought him.... She looked up suddenly, knowing that his voice had stopped. He was gazing at her in despair, his eyes wide with an unhappiness that struck deep to his heart.

"You despise me!" he said.

"Yes," she answered. "I do." But she was aware at the same time that she could have gone across to him and put her hand on his head and comforted him. "That's all false! You know it is. You're only deluding yourself because you want to persuade yourself--it's weak of you. Your wife can't come to you that way."

"Don't take it from me!" His voice was an agonised cry. "It's all I have. It's true. It's true. It must be true!"

They were suddenly in contact ... she felt a warm sense of protection and pity, a longing to comfort and help so strong that she instinctively put her hand to her heart as though she would restrain it.

"Oh, I didn't mean," she cried, "that I'd take anything away from you. No, no--never that. If you thought that I meant that, you're wrong. Keep anything you've got. Perhaps I'm mistaken. The mediums I've known have been charlatans. That's prejudiced me. Then I don't think I want my friends to come back to me in quite that way.... If it's true, it seems to be forcing them, against their will, as it were. Oh! I know a great many people now are finding it all true and good. I don't know anything about it. I shouldn't have said what I did. And then you see I've never lost anyone whom I loved very much."

"Never?" Mr. Lapsley asked, staring at her with wide-open eyes.

"No, never, I think."

He got up and came across to her, standing near to her, looking down upon her. She saw that she had aroused his interest, that she had suddenly switched his attention upon herself.

She had aroused him in the only way that he could be aroused, by stirring his pity for her. She knew exactly how suddenly he saw her--as a lonely, unhappy, deserted old maid. She did not mind; that the attention of any one single human being should be centred upon her for herself was a very wonderful, touching thing.

Silence fell between them; the pretty room, grey and silver in the half-light, gathered intimately around them. When at last he went away it seemed that the last ten minutes had added years to their knowledge of one another.

A strange time for Lizzie followed. Edmund Lapsley had rushed into her life with a precipitate urgency that showed how empty before it had been. But there was more than their mere contact in the affair. She was fighting a battle; all her energies were in it; she was ruthless, savage, tooth-and-nail; he should be snatched from this spiritualism.

It was a silent battle. He never spoke to her again of it. He did not say whether he went or not, and she did not ask him. But soon they were meeting almost every day, and she felt with a strange, almost savage pleasure that her influence over him grew with every meeting. She discovered many things about his character. He was weak, undecided, almost subservient, a man whom she would have despised perhaps had it not been for the real sweetness that lay at the roots of him. She very quickly understood how this girl, Margaret, although so young and so ignorant of the world, must have dominated him. "Any woman could!" she thought almost angrily to herself, and yet there was a kind of pride behind her anger.

She would not confess to herself that what she was really fighting was the memory of the dead girl, or, if she confessed at all, it was to console herself with the thought that it was right for him now to "cheer up a little."

Cheer up he did; it was curious to watch the rapidity with which he responded to Lizzie's energy and humour and vitality.

At last she challenged him:

"Well, what about Dr. Orloff?" she asked.

He looked at her with a sudden startled glance, then almost under his breath he said: "I don't go any more; I thought you didn't want me to."

So sudden a confession of her power took her breath away. She asked her next question.

"But Margaret?" she said. He answered that as though he were arguing some long-debated question with himself:

"I don't know," he replied slowly. "You were right. That wasn't the proper way to bring her back, even though it were genuine. I must tell you, Miss Rand," he said suddenly flinging up his head and looking across at her, "you've shown me so many things since we first met. I was getting into a very bad way, indulging myself in my grief. Margaret wouldn't have liked that either, but it wasn't until I knew you that I saw what I was doing. Thank you."

"Oh, you mustn't!" She shook her head. "You mustn't take me for Gospel like that Mr. Lapsley. You make me frightened for my responsibility. We are friends, and we must help one another, but we must keep our independence."

He shook his head, smiling.

"There's always been somebody who's taken my independence away," he said. "And I like it."

After he had gone she had the tussle of her life. She ate dinner alone, then sat far into the night fighting. Why should she fight at all? Here was the charge given straight into her hand, the gift for which she had longed and longed, the very man for her, the man whom she could care for as she would her child. Care for and protect and guide and govern. Govern! Like a torch flaring between dark walls that word lit her soul for her. Govern! That was what she wanted; all her life she had wanted it.

She wanted to feel her power, to dominate, to command. And all for his good. She loved him, she loved his sweetness and his goodness and his simplicity. She could make him happy and contented and at ease for the rest of his days. He should never have another anxiety, never another responsibility. Why fight then? Wasn't it obviously the best thing in the world, both for him and for her? She needed him. He her. She abandoned herself then to happy, tender thoughts of their life together. What it would be! What they could do with old Mrs. McKenzie's money! She sat there trying to lose herself in that golden future. She could not quite lose herself. Threading it was again and again the warning that something was not right with it, that she was pursuing some course that she should not. The clock struck half-past eleven. She gave a little shiver. The room was cold. She knew then, with that little shiver, of what she had been thinking. Margaret Lapsley....

Why should she be thinking of her? She was dead. She could not complain. And if she were still consciously with them, surely she would rather that he should be cared for and loved and guarded than pursue a lonely life full of regrets and melancholy. What kind of girl had she been? Had she loved him as he had loved her? How young she had died! How young and fresh and happy!... Lizzie shivered again. Ah! She was old. Fifty and old--old in thoughts and hopes and dreams. Pervaded by a damp mist of unhappiness, she went to bed and lay there, looking into the dark.

With the morning her scruples had vanished. She saw Margaret Lapsley no more. She was her own sane, matter-of-fact mistress. A delightful fortnight followed. All her life afterwards Lizzie looked back to those fourteen days as the happiest of her time. They were together now every afternoon. Very often in the evening too they went to the theatre or music. He was her faithful dog. He agreed with all her suggestions, eagerly, implicitly. Mentally, he was not stupid; he knew many things that she did not, and he was not so submissive that he would not argue. He argued hotly, growing excited, calling out protests in a high treble, then suddenly laughing like a child. For those days she abandoned herself utterly. She allowed herself to be surrounded, to be hemmed in, by the companionship, the care, the affection.... Oh, it was wonderful for her! Only those who had known her years and years of loneliness could appreciate what it was to her now to have this. She warmed her hands at the fire of it and let the flames fan their heat upon her cheeks.

Once she said to him:

"Isn't it strange that we should have made friends so quickly? It isn't generally my way. I'm a shy character, you know."

"So am I," he answered her. "I never would have talked to you as I have if you hadn't helped me. You have helped me. Wonderfully, marvellously. I only wish that Margaret could have known you. You would have helped her too."

He talked to her now continually of Margaret, but very happily, with great contentment.

"Margaret would have loved you," he liked to say. Lizzie was not so sure.

Then suddenly came the afternoon, for days past now inevitable, when he asked her to marry him.

They were sitting together in the Horton flat. It was a day of intense heat. All the windows were wide open, the blinds down, and into the dim, grey shadowy air there struck shafts and lines of heat, bringing with them a smell of dust and pavements. The roses in a large yellow bowl on the centre table flung their thick scent across the dusky mote-threaded light. The hot town lay below them like a still sea basking at the foot of their rock.

"I want you to marry me, Lizzie," he said. "It may seem very soon after Margaret's death, but it's what she would have wished, I know. Please, please don't refuse me. I don't know how I have the impertinence to ask, but I must. I can't help myself----"

At his words the happiness that had filled her heart during the last fortnight suddenly left her, as water ebbs out of a pool. She felt guilty, wicked, ashamed. She had never before been so aware of his helplessness and also of some strange, reproaching voice that blamed her. Why should she be blamed? She looked at him and longed to take his head in her hands and kiss him and keep him beside her and never let him go again.

At last she told him that she would give him her answer the next day.

When at last he left her, she was miserable, weighted with a sense of some horrible crime. And yet why? What was there against such a marriage? She was pursued that evening, that night. Next day she would not see him, but sent down word that she was unwell and would he come to-morrow? All that day, keeping alone in her flat, feeling the waves of heat beat about her, tired, exhausted, driven, the whole of her life stole past her.

"Why should I not marry him? Why _must_ I not marry him?"

The consciousness that she was fighting somebody or something grew with her through the day. Towards evening, when the heat faded and dusk swallowed the colours and patterns of her room, she seemed to hear a voice: "You are not the wife for him. He will have no freedom. He will lose his character. He will become a shadow."

And her answer was almost spoken to the still and empty room. "But he will be happy. I will give him everything. Why may I not think of myself at last after all these years? I've waited and waited, and worked and worked...."

And the answer came back: "You're old. You're old. You're old." She _was_ old. She felt that night eighty, a hundred.

She went to bed at last; closed her eyes and slept.

She woke suddenly; the room swam in moonlight. She had forgotten to draw her blinds. The high, blue expanse of heaven flashing with fiery stars broke the grey spaces of her room with splendour.

She lay in bed watching the stars. She was suddenly aware that a figure stood there between her bed and the thin shadowy pane. She gazed at it with no fear, but rather as though she had known it before.

It was the figure of a young girl in a white dress. Her hair was black, her face very, very young, her eyes deep and innocent, full of light. Her hands were lovely, thin and pale, shell-coloured against the starry sky.

The women looked at one another. A little unspoken dialogue fell between them.

"You are Margaret?"

"Yes."

"You have come to tell me to leave him alone?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Oh, don't you see? He won't be happy. He won't grow. His soul won't grow with you. You are not the woman for him. Someone else--perhaps--later-- but oh! let me have him a little longer just now. I love him so! Don't take him from me!"

Lizzie smiled.

"You beautiful dear!... How young you are! How lovely!"

"Leave him to me! Leave him to me!"

The moon fell into fleecy clouds. The room was filled with shadow.

* * * * *

With the morning nothing had been dimmed. Lizzie was happy with a strange sense of companionship and comfort.

When Edmund came she saw at once that he was greatly troubled.

"Well?" he asked her.

"You've seen Margaret!" she cried. "Last night!" He nodded his head.

"It may have been a dream...."

"You don't want to marry me...."

"Oh, yes! Don't think I would go back...." She put her hands on his shoulders.

"It's all right, Edmund. I'm not going to marry you. I'm too old. We're friends for always, but nothing more. Margaret was right."

"Margaret!" He stared at her. "But you didn't know her!"

"I know her now," she answered. Then, laughing, "I've got two friends instead of one husband! Who knows that I'm not the richer?"

As she spoke she seemed to feel on her cheek the soft, gentle kiss of a young girl.

XI

NOBODY

The only one of them all who perceived anything like the truth was young Claribel.

Claribel (how she hated the absurd name!) had a splendid opportunity for observing everything in life, simply because she was so universally neglected. The Matchams and the Dorsets and the Duddons (all the relations, in fact) simply considered her of no importance at all.

She did not mind this: she took it entirely for granted, as she did her plainness, her slowness of speech, her shyness in company, her tendency to heat spots, her bad figure, and all the other things with which an undoubtedly all-wise God had seen fit to endow her. It was only that having all these things, Claribel was additionally an unfortunate name; but then, most of them called her Carrie, and the boys "Fetch and Carry" often enough.

She was taken with the others to parties and teas, in order, as she very well knew, that critical friends and neighbors should not say that "the Dorsets always neglected that plain child of theirs, poor thing."

She sat in a corner and was neglected, but that she did not mind in the least. She liked it. It gave her, all the more, the opportunity of watching people, the game that she liked best in all the world. She played it without any sense at all that she had unusual powers. It was much later than this that she was to realise her gifts.

It was this sitting in a corner in the Horton flat that enabled her to perceive what it was that had happened to her Cousin Tom. Of course, she knew from the public standpoint well enough what had happened to him--simply that he had been wounded three times, once in Gallipoli and twice in France; that he had received the D.S.O. and been made a Major. But it was something other than that that she meant. She knew that all the brothers and the sisters, the cousins, the uncles and the aunts proclaimed gleefully that there was nothing the matter with him at all. "It's quite wonderful," they all said, "to see the way that dear Tom has come back from the war just as he went into it. His same jolly, generous self. Everyone's friend. Not at all conceited. How wonderful that is, when he's done so well and has all that money!"

That was, Claribel knew, the thing that everyone said. Tom had always been her own favourite. He had not considered her the least little bit more than he had considered everyone else. He always was kind. But he gave her a smile and a nod and a pat, and she was grateful.

Then he had always seemed to her a miraculous creature; his whole history in the war had only increased that adoration. She loved to look at him, and certainly he must, in anyone's eyes, have been handsome, with his light, shining hair, his fine, open brow, his slim, straight body, his breeding and distinction and nobility.

To all of this was suddenly added wealth--his uncle, the head of the biggest biscuit factory in England, dying and leaving him everything. His mother and he had already been sufficiently provided for at his father's death; but he was now, through Uncle Bob's love for him, an immensely rich man. This had fallen to him in the last year of the war, when he was recovering from his third wound. After the Armistice, freed from the hospital, he had taken a delightful flat in Hortons (his mother preferred the country, and was cosy with dogs, a parrot, a butler, and bees in Wiltshire), and it was here that he gave his delightful parties. It was here that Claribel, watching from her corner, made her great discovery about him.

Her discovery quite simply was that he did not exist; that he was dead, that "there was nobody there."

She did not know what it was that caused her just to be aware of her ghostly surprise. She had in the beginning been taken in as they all had been. He had seemed on his first return from the hospital to be the same old Tom whom they had always known. For some weeks he had used a crutch, and his cheeks were pale, his eyes were sunk like bright jewels into dark pouches of shadow.