Chapter IX

I don't know what it was that I expected to see when the door opened—two policemen in the hall, Osmund and Hench guarded while the flat was searched, anything you please…. What I did see was the little place as quiet and reflective as a graveyard—and Helen.

I came in, closing the door quietly behind me. I must have looked at her cold, pale, dirty, desolate, for at once her movement towards me was one of protection, maternal, the kind of anxiety that no one had shown towards me for many a day.

'I thought you mightn't come back…. I hoped that you wouldn't.'

I looked at her and smiled. Oh! I was so glad to see her! The confusion and fantasy of the Circus dropped from me as I stood beside her. I was no longer afraid. I knew that I saw things sanely again.

Then I quickly perceived her own change. She was a woman of deep reserve and strength of will. She yielded to no weakness; at any rate, no other human being should know that she yielded.

But this last hour had done something to all of us—'peeled a skin off,' as Unamuno says somewhere.

I did not know at that moment—I WAS to know very shortly—what, indeed, this last hour had been for her, something more disintegrating than I could then guess. But we were all—Osmund, Hench, she and I—people in another world now. The scene was of a fierce bright colour, the figures strange, every movement had a new echo. And the rules that we had to obey were new rules.

'Osmund?' I asked.

'He's gone.' She breathed quickly, looking back at the sitting– room, whose door was slightly open.

'Mr. Hench is in there. He's sleeping like a drugged man. After you'd gone he began to cry. John gave him some brandy. He drank it, and quite suddenly went off to sleep. He's there on the sofa.'

I pushed back the door and looked in. The room was in a trembling twittering dusk. There were no lights, but the curtains had remained drawn back from the windows; there was the golden shadow like starry dust about the room, and on the wall the jumping sky– signs. On the sofa where Pengelly had been, Hench was lying, his stout soft body shapeless like an undisciplined bolster, his head back, his mouth open, and out of his mouth proceeded a long–drawn, whining snore. This snore filled the whole flat with its regular rhythmical beat.

'We'll go into the bedroom,' she said. 'It's better to leave him.'

I followed her. We closed the door, and then sat on the bed side by side.

She began, in that low, deep, trusting voice that I loved so dearly.

'Oh, Dick, I didn't want you to come back—but I'm so glad you have. If you hadn't, I don't know, I don't see how … ' She looked at me, then smiling (a new different smile, a smile belonging to the new country in which we now were) … 'You're so dirty. Go and wash. It must be hateful being as dirty as that.'

I nodded and went through the room into the bathroom. While I washed I listened, and I can give you no idea of how strange that sound of Hench's snore was, dominating the quiet flat: Honk—Honk— One, Two, Three. Honk—Honk. That snore, too, was a snore of the new world, sinister, threatening, charged with meaning….

I washed. I scrubbed. I brushed my hair with Osmund's brushes. I longed to shave myself with his razor, but it would take too long.

I went back to her.

'Now tell me where Osmund is,' I said.

'I don't know where he is. After you and Mr. Buller left—'

'No, but before that,' I interrupted. 'When you were alone with him while we were in that other room. What did he say to you? I want to know everything.'

'Everything?' She gave me one of her old ironical smiles. 'You won't know everything. No one can about this.' Her voice sank almost to a whisper. 'That's why it's terrible—because there are so many things in it that we can't get at. The change—from the one world to the other—it was so sudden—everything now is unreal— EVERYTHING.'

She paused as though she were thinking something out. She went on. 'We have very little time. John may come back or—anything can happen. But there's a parallel with this—something that haunts me. Years ago I had a woman friend—only an acquaintance, if you like. I didn't know her well, but she was charming, sympathetic, kindly, intelligent. I asked her to stay with me in a flat that I had then in Kensington. The first evening she was delightful. We went to a concert, I remember, and both of us enjoyed every minute of it. Next morning the same; we talked, laughed, found that we liked the same things. Tea–time she went to her room for a nap before we dined. I went in an hour later and woke her up. She awoke, Dick, an utterly other creature—malevolent, rude, querulous— the very lines of her face were different. We had an awful evening; and next morning, after a horrible row in which she behaved like a fishwife, she left. I can't tell you how disgusting it was, how utterly puzzled I was, because there was no conceivable reason for any of it. Later I learnt that she was a hopeless drug addict. I've always thought that that instant, uncausable change in her was one of the most dreadful and depressing experiences of my life. Causeless, fiendish—how are you to believe in the human soul when a drug can do THAT? How many worlds are there, and where is there anything to trust to, to put your hand firmly on? … We are wasting time, but that moment when I pushed past John and looked into that room … it was like that … a fierce change from one world to another that we hadn't asked for—and we've got to live in this world now always—everything is different; there's nothing to trust to—anything can happen….'

'We're not different, Helen,' I broke in, 'you and I.'

'We are. Better or worse, I don't know, but different, anyway. And John—when he brought me in here to tell me—it was awful. Two things had happened. One, I was so afraid of him that when he touched me I could have screamed—and I'm not hysterical, you know, Dick. And the other, that I was so glad that Pengelly was dead, so frightfully, horribly glad! If only it hadn't been John who had done it! And all the time he was talking to me I was saying to myself: "You mustn't let him see that you're different, that you're afraid of him, that you hate his touch. He mustn't know ANYTHING!"'

'And did he?'

'I can't tell. But it was pitiful. He needed me then as he had never needed me before, and I could do nothing for him—nothing. It had been coming a long time, my terror of him, I mean. And yet— what I tell you is true—he is one of the finest, noblest men ever born.'

She put her hand through my arm, drawing herself to me:

'You don't know what it is to me to talk to you. I haven't had anybody for years. We've been driven from pillar to post. Even in Spain someone would turn up who knew about John, and everywhere it was the same thing—he saw his enemies round everything. The odd thing was that he never blamed them or hated them. He thought it right that they should hunt him.'

'They weren't hunting him,' I broke in. 'That was imagination. People are too busy with their own affairs to care. They haven't time or energy to hunt anyone.'

'Maybe. Probably. But what does it matter? If you think you're hunted you ARE hunted. A little imagination is enough. But he was hunted, in any case, by himself. He couldn't escape what he wanted to be, what he wanted to do. He was a prisoner.'

She paused, and we were silent for a moment. I remember that it struck me then how strange this quiet talk was after all the confusion and violence—the two of us sitting side by side on the bed, no sound anywhere but Hench's snore that had now become an accustomed element in our world, the things in the bedroom, the brushes, the looking–glass, the cupboard, and the two of us, moving— actually moving to a sort of happy tranquillity!

I daresay that it often happens that, after some awful catastrophe, one sits for an hour almost sleepily tranquil. The thing's done. For the moment all that there is for one is to stay and await the consequences. There really was just then nothing else for us to do, and, as I was to learn afterwards, over her, as over myself, gradually was stealing the knowledge of how deeply we loved, and that, whatever the future might be, we had at least these moments.

I put out my hand and took hers.

'Tell me first,' I said, 'before the Spanish part, what exactly happened just now, what Osmund said, where he's gone….'

'What he said? He just said: "I killed him, and he deserved it. He was rotten all through." I said nothing. I could think of nothing at that particular moment except that Pengelly was at last dead. You don't know—you can have no possible idea—of the way that that man has haunted us. He never actually interfered with us, and yet he was always there. We were never free of him. In Spain—in Segovia, where we buried ourselves—he was there just the same. It didn't matter where we went or what we did. I always knew that he would turn up again.

'So that, when John told me that he was dead, I could think only that we were free.

'But, of course, we were not free. A moment later John said, looking at me in despair—"So he's beaten me after all. I'm damned forever, and he knows it." I knew that the only thing for me to say then was that I was with him through everything, and that together we'd beat whatever came to us. But I couldn't! Dick, that was the dreadful, unforgivable moment of my life! The words stuck. I only knew that I would be loyal, faithful, but that the fear of him that had been growing in me for years had reached in this last act of his the point when I could control it no longer, when it was stronger than I was.'

'Why were you afraid of him?'

'I had always been afraid of him. I don't think I ever loved him. That has been my sin from the beginning. I admired him, feared him, and couldn't leave him. In the old days I was always being drawn to him, and when he wasn't there I longed for a sight of him and the sound of his voice, and when I was with him I used to tremble—not at HIM so much, but at some power in him that was stronger than he was. Something that drove him to desperate things. All his desire for noble action, his love of grand things, his idealism, would be used and twisted to something disastrous. His very love for me, which has never faltered, made him irascible, miserable, dissatisfied.'

'Bad luck,' I said.

'Rotten luck. The worst ever. You know that I'm not sentimental. I'm not very weak either. I don't suffer fools as gladly as I ought. I've no sympathy for hysteria. But John could make me hysterical and weak and soft—not simply because I was so sorry for him, but because I didn't love him, didn't know how to help him.

'Well, this evening when I knew that I was afraid and didn't want even to touch him, I was so sorry for him that I could have flung my arms round him and kissed him. But there IS something, Dick, about killing a man, something terrible and apart. The war was different. That was a world of its own. Men obeyed orders, and chances were equal. But back in rooms and quiet flats, with boys crying the evening papers, there IS something frightful, horrible, that IS devilish. And John's right. He'll never be free of it now, however loathsome Pengelly was. I'm the only soul in the world who could help him—and I can't.'

'What did he do?'

'He said that Pengelly wasn't dead—or wasn't so far as he was concerned. He raved a bit—that Pengelly and he were joined together forever and ever. Then he began about not dragging the rest of you into it. That you must, none of you, suffer, and that he must go after Buller. I told him that Buller knew his job— better to leave him to it. I was out of it, Dick. I couldn't say anything to him that would help. For one thing—to be truthful—I was thinking of you. Every moment I was expecting to hear that you and Buller had been stopped—the bell ringing—some policeman's voice…. I've pluck, as a rule, but those ten minutes in this room were too much for me. There were too many different things pulling at me. I felt that if I were only sure that you were safe I could deal then with the rest.'

It was at that point, I think, that we were both aware of this new element now flooding in upon us and drowning everything else—our love for one another.

We were neither of us either very young or very romantic any more. We have grown much younger since then. Life had been hard and ugly to both of us for a long time, and we had both the sense that on the whole we had not been given a fair deal. We knew that least of all now were we having a fair deal, and that these minutes that we were sharing were in all probability the last of our lives together.

We were neither shy nor self–conscious, but we tried for a little while to postpone any personal emotion. There was something in all this more important than ourselves and our private histories.

'Look here,' I said, 'we are both sensible, Helen. There are only two things that can happen. On the one hand—the most likely thing— Pengelly's body will be found, Osmund arrested, and all of us publicly involved. If that happens we'll know how to deal with it when the time comes. What we've got to do is to leave that alone till it occurs. The other thing that can happen is that nothing will happen—Pengelly never found, no questions asked.'

'There must be questions asked,' she interrupted. 'Pengelly didn't come in out of the blue. He has friends, relations, wives, mistresses. Someone will want to know what has happened to him. In all probability he told someone to keep an eye open. He knew that we didn't love him, that there must be some risk.'

'That needn't worry us,' I answered. 'All we have to say is that he came, talked, departed.'

'Did anybody see you on the stairs?'

'Yes,' I answered slowly, 'I'm afraid two people did—a woman and a man. That would be awkward. The man especially. He had rather a clear view.'

I told her about it.

'Oh, we're in a mess,' I finished up. 'As bad a mess as could be. It can end in everything, anything, nothing. And that's why I want to tell you now—because this may be the last five minutes together that we may ever have—that I love you, that I have always loved you, and that my loving you is the only grand, constant, faithful thing in my life.'

'Is it, Dick? … Well, I love you too, and have ever since … Oh, never mind when.'

I had the Quixote in one hand. I had picked it up in the other room.

'I wanted to fetch this, so I came back. I wanted to be with you, so I came back. One and the same. This is the world where you and I truly are.'

'Yes,' Helen agreed. 'If you said that about any other book in the world it would be literary—false. But that is sanity, that Quixote world. This other is insanity, and it is because the two are mingling…. They are always mingling. My life, Dick, has been passing from one mad moment to the other, but always someone else's madness. We ought to have married years ago, had a cottage, children, dogs, grown potatoes, had daffodils on the lawn and a grandfather's clock in the hall—a down or a hill rising above our back door, and the sea not too far away. We would have gone to stay in Edinburgh with the Maughams or the Baggots or the Freers. Or we would have motored over to see Jane Herries at Keswick, and she would have given us plants for our garden. You would have gone to Spain in an Austin Seven and written a bad book about it. Our eldest boy Richard would have chicken pox, and Mary, the second girl, would have a talent for housekeeping, while Sybil would think of nothing but hockey. And you after ten years or so would see a girl at a dance with a straight nose and Titian hair, and you would love me just the same but kiss the Titian hair, and I would try to be sensible and fail for a bit and then succeed. No madness anywhere … everything sane and straight….'

She turned her head from me and softly, leaning away from me, began to cry. Of all the things that I could have conceived her doing, crying was the last, the most impossible; I think, perhaps, she had never cried before. I put my arms round her. She lay against my heart. At last she said: 'And that's that. Don't be afraid. No more tears.'

But our contact was not to be broken. I remember that I held her to me as though my only hope of safety were in that. Then I did the worst of all my actions that night.

'Helen,' I said. 'Let's go. Now, while we have the chance. We can be abroad by to–morrow morning. We have our passports. There's nothing to stop us. I haven't any money at the moment, but there are your friends the Tessiers in Paris, they'll get me a job. Didn't you tell me once that he had a business in Tunis? I'll sweep floors, do anything. Osmund won't drag us back into this. He'll take it all.'

But even as I said his name I stopped. I was ashamed. She sighed. 'Yes—it would be wonderful. Why be sentimental about it? If our consciences would let us we'd go. But they won't. We'd never have a happy moment again. I couldn't leave John now. You know that I couldn't…. No, Dick, I suspect that this is our last time together. Pengelly will be found, John arrested, all of us involved. We must go through with it just as we've gone through with everything else.'

'Oh, Helen!' I cried, 'what a muddle! Our lives spoilt, all of them, and for no fault of our own.'

'No, for our fault—always for our fault. If John had more discipline, I more understanding and sympathy—'

'You—more sympathy!' I broke in.

She nodded.

'Yes, that is what has always been the matter with me. The machine of my soul moves stiffly. When certain people are near me round it goes, functioning with smoothness. How nice I am then, how understanding, wise, kindly! Another approaches, and every cog in the wheel is checked. I can comprehend only one tenth of your human beings and have no charity for the rest. You could teach me. I don't think that you are very wonderful, or clever, or very good, but I love you, Dick, with complete understanding, and it's good for me to be with you—'

She took my face between her hands, stared into my eyes, and we sat there, absorbed in one another, not hearing Hench's snore, forgetting Pengelly, forgetting for the moment Osmund, and not caring what happened next.

Like all lovers we began to recover the slightest details of our early meetings, and over the Circus there crept the oddest little rag–bag of trifles, the wind–swept empty village street, the sea pounding like a dream at the end of it, an avenue of trees with a carriage crawling towards a high stone gate, someone climbing a staircase and looking back, a pebble beach wet and gleaming after the departing sea, an Alsatian bounding across a green lawn in chase of its master, a novel read in a deep armchair, absorbing in its interest until the door opens, and, at someone's entrance, that interest is dead—a laugh, a cry, a call, a turn of the head, a wave of the hand—and, always encircling us both, that sea leaping upon the shingly beach, and those woods, still and deep, or blowing lightly, or crackling under storm. We yet seemed to move there. As we talked, gazing at one another, hand in hand, all this present adventure was as unreal to us as it must seem now in retrospect often to myself. We had our moment, and we lived it to the full.

'Remember, Helen,' I told her, 'that whatever happens now, we have had this half–hour—and remember that as I am now so I will always be.'

She shook her head, smiling. 'No. No one can tell that. If John gives me a black eye to–night, tomorrow you may be wondering that you ever gave me a thought. Always leave the future. Make no vows. But you are right about this half–hour. That shall last forever, and no one can rob us of it.'

We kissed and were so happy that the Circus burst into flame, the Quixote stood on its rose–coloured bindings and danced for joy, and all the angels clapped their wings.

'And now,' at last she said, getting up and going to the looking– glass, 'for the next business.' She stared into the glass, and, with a cry, turned to the door. I turned also. We had both reason to be startled, for in the bedroom doorway Osmund was standing.

His soft hat was pulled over his eyes, and his coat–collar was turned up. He leaned against the doorway and seemed fearfully weary.

Helen went up to him and put a hand on his coat.

'Well, did you find him?'

'No, I found nobody.' But he was not looking at her. He was staring at me, and I expected in the next moment to be challenged and then perhaps to be overwhelmed with one of those fearful tempests of rage. He would kill me also, maybe, as he had killed Pengelly. But when he spoke to me his voice was infinitely kind and friendly.

'I'm sorry you've come back, Dick,' he said. 'It was good of you, but it wasn't necessary. And now you are back you must clear out— at once. This is none of your business, and I won't have you mixed up in it.'

How I liked him then, yes, loved him, although I had been kissing his wife three minutes before and asking her to go off with me. Moreover, I felt no disloyalty to him at all. If he HAD challenged me, as I had supposed that he would, I would have admitted it at once, acknowledged that I had always loved Helen and had wanted her to go away with me.

The Quixote element of this strange evening was stamped with this— the especial honesty of Osmund, Helen and myself.

'No, John,' I said. (It was the first time in our acquaintance that I had called him John.) 'You can't get me out of this now. I'm in it as deeply as you are, and I'm glad that I am. I'm not going.'

'Indeed you are, Dick,' he answered smiling, 'and you are going to take Helen with you. Get up North by the night train. The Lakes or Scotland. And wait till you hear from me. I can manage this alone.'

'Don't waste time, John,' Helen said quietly. 'Dick is not going, and I am not going. Take your coat off. I'm hungry, and we must wake Hench up; you can send HIM up North if you like.'

Then the door–bell rang. It tinkled through the flat, striking us all three motionless. At the same moment, I remember, I noticed that I heard Hench's snore no longer.

'Wait,' said Osmund.

He went into the hall and stood there listening. The bedroom, I must remind you, had two doors, one into the hall, the other, behind us, into the sitting–room. The bell rang again. Osmund opened the door. At the same instant I heard the door behind us opening and, half turning, saw Hench filling the doorway with his untidy bulk.

I heard Osmund's voice:

'Yes?'

Then a soft, mild, and most amiable voice:

'I beg your pardon. Is this Mr. Osmund's flat?'

'Yes. I am Mr. Osmund.'

'Oh, thank you. I beg your pardon for disturbing you. My name is Pengelly.'