Read the book: «The God in the Car: A Novel», page 9

He broke off, pushing his chair back, and rising to his feet. He walked to the window of the little sitting-room where they were; the sun was setting over the sea, and early dusk gathering. It was still, save for the sound of the waves.

"Is there nobody at home?" he asked, with his back towards her.

"No. Marjory and the children have gone down to the Rome to have tea with Bessie Semingham."

He waited a moment longer, looking out, then he came back and stood facing her. She was leaning her head on her hand. At last she spoke in a low voice.

"He's Harry's friend," she said, "and he used to be mine; and he trusted me."

Willie Ruston threw his head back with a little sharp jerk.

"Oh, well, I didn't come to talk about Tom Loring," he said. "If you value his opinion so very much, why, you must keep it; that's all," and he moved towards where his hat was lying. "But I'm afraid I can't share my friends with him."

"Oh, I know you won't share anything with anybody," said Maggie Dennison, her voice trembling between a sob and a laugh.

He turned instantly. His face lighted up, and the sun, casting its last rays on her eyes, made them answer with borrowed brilliance.

"I won't share you with Loring, anyhow," he cried, walking close up to her, and resting his hand on the table.

She laid hers gently on it.

"Don't go to Omofaga, Willie," she said.

For a moment he sheerly stared at her; then he burst into a merry unrestrained peal of laughter. Next he lifted her hand and kissed it.

"You are the most wonderful woman in the world," said he, his mouth quivering with amusement.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms wide for a moment.

"Well, what's the matter? What have I done wrong now?"

She rose and walked up and down the room.

"I wish I'd never seen you," she said from the far end of it.

"I wish I'd never seen – Tom Loring."

"Ah, that's the only thing!" she cried. "I may live or I may die, or I may – do anything you like; but I mustn't have another friend! I mustn't give a thought to what anybody else thinks of me!"

"You mustn't balance me against Tom Loring," he answered between his teeth, all signs of his merriment gone now.

For a moment – not long, but seeming very long – there was silence in the room; and, while the brief stillness reigned, she fought a last battle against him, calling loyalty and friendship to her aid, praying their alliance against the overbearing demand he made on her – against his roughness, his blindness to all she suffered for him. But the strife was short. Lifting her hands above her head, and bringing them down through the air as with a blow, she cried,

"My God, I balance nothing against you!"

Her reward – her only reward – seemed on the instant to be hers. Willie Ruston was transformed; his sullenness was gone; his eyes were alight with triumph; the smile she loved was on his lips, and he had forgotten those troubled, useless, mazy musings on the jetty. He took a quick step towards her, holding out both his hands. She clasped them.

"Nothing?" he asked in a low tone. "Nothing, Maggie?"

She bowed her head for answer; it was the attitude of surrender, of helplessness, and of trust, and it appealed to the softer feeling in him which her resistance had smothered. He was strongly moved, and his face was pale as he drew her to him and kissed her lips; but all he said was,

"Then the deuce take Tom Loring!"

It seemed to her enough. The light devil-may-care words surely covered a pledge from him to her – something in return from him to her. At last, surely he was hers, and her wishes his law. It was her moment; she would ask of him now the uttermost wish of her heart – the wish that had displaced all else – the passionate wish not to lose him – not, as it were, to be emptied of him.

"And Omofaga?" she whispered.

His eyes looked past her, out into the dim twilight, into the broad world – the world that she seemed to ask him to give for her, as she was giving her world for him. He laughed again, but not as he had laughed before. There was a note of wonder in his laugh now – of wonder that the prayer seemed now not so utterly absurd – that he could imagine himself doing even that – spoiling his heart of its darling ambition – for her. Yet, even in that moment of her strongest sway, as her arms were about him, he was swearing to himself that he would not.

She did not press for an answer. A glance into his distant eyes gave her one, perhaps, for she sighed as though in pain. Hearing her, he bent his look on her again. Though he might deny that last boon, he had given her much. So she read; and, drawing herself to her full height, she released one of her hands from his, and held it out to him. For a moment he hesitated; then a slow smile breaking on his face, he bent and kissed it, and she whispered over his bent head, half in triumph, half in apology for bidding him bend his head even in love,

"I like pretending to be queen – even with you, Willie."

Her flattery, so sweet to him, because it was wrung from her all against her will, and was for him alone of men, thrilled through him and he was drawing her to him again when the merry chatter of a child struck on their ears from the garden.

She shrank back.

"Hark!" she murmured. "They're coming."

"Yes," he said, with a frown. "I shall come to-morrow, Maggie."

"To-morrow? Every day?" said she.

"Well, then, every day. But to-morrow all day."

"Ah, yes, all day to-morrow."

"But I must go now."

"No, no, don't go," she said quickly. "Sit down; see, sit there. Don't look as if you'd thought of going."

He did as she bade him, trying to assume an indifferent air.

She, too, sat down, her eyes fixed on the door. A strange look of pain and shame spread over her face. She must bend to deceive her children, to dread detection, to play little tricks and weave little devices against the eyes of those for whom she had been an earthly providence – the highest, most powerful, and best they knew. Willie Ruston did not follow the thought that stamped its mark on her face then, nor understand why, with a sudden gasp, she dashed her hand across her eyes and turned to him with trembling lips, crying, in low tones,

"Ah, but I have you, Willie!"

Before he could answer her appeal, the voices were in the passage. Her face grew calm, save for a slight frown on her brow. She shaped her lips into a smile to meet the incomers. She shot a rapid glance of caution and warning at him. The door was flung open, and the three children rushed in, Madge at their head. Madge, seeing Willie Ruston, stopped short, and her laughter died away. She turned and said,

"Marjory, here's Mr. Ruston."

None could mistake her tone for one of welcome.

Marjory Valentine came forward. She looked at neither of them, but sat down near the table.

"Well, Madge," said Mrs. Dennison, "there's good news for you, isn't there? Your friend's coming."

Madge, finding (as she thought) sympathy, came to her mother's knee.

"Yes, I'm glad," she said. "Are you glad, mother?"

"Oh, I don't mind," answered Mrs. Dennison, kissing her; but she could not help one glance at Willie Ruston. Bitterly she repented it, for she found Marjory Valentine following it with her open sorrowful eyes. She rose abruptly, and Ruston rose also, and with brief good-nights – Madge being kissed only on strong persuasion – took his leave. The children flocked away to take off their hats, and Marjory was left alone with her hostess.

The girl looked pale, weary, and sad. Mrs. Dennison was stirred to an impulse of compassion. Walking up to where she sat, she bent down as though to kiss her. Marjory looked up. There was a question – it seemed to be a question – in her face. Mrs. Dennison flushed red from neck to forehead, and then grew paler than the pallor she had pitied. The girl's unspoken question seemed to echo hauntingly from every corner of the little room, "Are your lips – clean?"

CHAPTER XVII
A SOUND IN THE NIGHT

Slow in forming, swift in acting; slow in the making, swift in the working; slow to the summit, swift down the other slope; it is the way of nature, and the way of the human mind. What seemed yesterday unborn and impossible, is to-day incipient and a great way off, to-morrow complete, present, and accomplished. After long labour a thing springs forth full grown; to deny it, or refuse it, or fight against it, seems now as vain as a few hours ago it was to hope for it, or to fear, or to imagine, or conceive it. In like manner, the slow, crawling, upward journey can be followed by every eye; its turns, its twists, its checks, its zigzags may be recorded on a chart. Then is the brief pause – on the summit – and the tottering incline towards the declivity. But how describe what comes after? The dazzling rush that beats the eye, that in its fury of advance, its paroxysm of speed, is void of halts or turns, and, darting from point to point, covers and blurs the landscape till there seems nothing but the moving thing; and that again, while the watcher still tries vainly to catch its whirl, has sprung, and reached, and ceased; and, save that there it was and here it is, he would not know that its fierce stir had been.

Such a race runs passion to its goal, when the reins hang loose. Hours may do what years have not done, and minutes sum more changes than long days could stretch to hold. The world narrows till there would seem to be nothing else existent in it – nothing of all that once held out the promise (sure as it then claimed to be) of escape, of help, or warning. The very promise is forgotten, the craving for its fulfilment dies away. "Let me alone," is the only cry; and the appeal makes its own answer, the entreaty its own concession.

Some thirty hours had passed since the last recorded scene, and Marjory Valentine was still under Mrs. Dennison's roof. It had been hard to stay, but the girl would not give up her self-imposed hopeless task. Helpless she had proved, and hopeless she had become. The day had passed with hardly a word spoken between her and her hostess. Mrs. Dennison had been out the greater part of the time, and, when out, she had been with Ruston. She had come in to dinner at half-past seven, and at nine had gone to her room, pleading fatigue and a headache. Marjory had sat up a little longer, with an unopened book on her knee. Then she also went to bed, and tried vainly to sleep. She had left her bed now, and, wrapped in a dressing-gown, sat in a low arm-chair near the window. It was a dark and still night; a thick fog hung over the little garden; nothing was to be heard save the gentle roll of a quiet sea, and the occasional blast of a steam whistle. Marjory's watch had stopped, but she guessed it to be somewhere in the small hours of the morning – one o'clock, perhaps, or nearing two. There was an infinite weary time, then, before the sun would shine again, and the oppression of the misty darkness be lifted off. She hated the night – this night – it savoured not of rest to her, but of death; for she was wrought to a nervous strain, and felt her imaginings taking half-bodily shapes about her, so that she was fearful of looking to the right hand or the left. Sleep was impossible; to try to sleep like a surrender to the mysterious enemies round her. Time seemed to stand still; she counted sixty once, to mark a minute's flight, and the counting took an eternity. The house was utterly noiseless, and she shivered at the silence. She would have given half her life, she felt, for a ray of the sun; but half a life stretched between her and the first break of morning. Sitting there, she heaped terrors round her; the superstitions that hide their heads before daytime mockery reared them now in victory and made a prey of her. The struggle she had in her weakness entered on seemed less now with human frailty than against the strong and evil purpose of some devil; in face of which she was naught. How should she be? She had not, she told herself in morbid upbraiding, even a pure motive in the fight; her hatred of the sin had been less keen had she not once desired the love of him that caused it, and when she arrested Maggie Dennison's kiss, she shamed a rival in rebuking an unfaithful wife. Then she cried rebelliously against her anguish. Why had this come on her, darkening bright youth? Why was she compassed about with trouble? And why – why – why did not the morning come?

The mist was thick and grey against the window. A fog-horn roared, and the sea, regardless, repeated its even beat; behind the feeble interruptions there sounded infinite silence. She hid her face in her hands. Then she leapt up and flung the window open wide. The damp fog-folds settled on her face, but she heard the sea more plainly, and there were sounds in the air about her. It was not so terribly quiet. She peered eagerly through the mist, but saw nothing save vague tremulous shapes, vacant of identity. Still the world, the actual, earthly, healthy world, was there – a refuge from imagination.

She stood looking; and, as she looked, one shape seemed to grow into a nearer likeness of something definite. It was motionless; it differed from the rest only in being darker and of rather sharper outline. It must be a tree, she thought, but remembered no tree there; the garden held only low-growing shrubs. A post? But the gate lay to the right, and this stood on her left hand, hard by the door of the house. What then? The terror came on her again, but she stood and looked, longing to find some explanation for it – some meaning on which her mind could rest, and, reassured, drive away its terrifying fancies. For the shape was large in the mist, and she could not tell what it might mean. Was it human? On her superstitious mood the thought flashed bright with sudden relief, and she cried beseechingly,

"Who is it? Who is there?"

A human voice in answer would have been heaven to her, but no answer came. With a stifled cry, she shut the window down, and stood a moment, listening – eager, yet fearful, to hear. Hark! Yes, there was a sound! What was it? It was a footstep on the gravel – a slow, uncertain, wavering, intermittent step, as though of someone groping with hesitating feet and doubtful resolution through the mist. She must know what it was – who it was – what it meant. She started up again, laying both hands on the window-sash. But then terror conquered curiosity; gasping as if breath failed her and something still pursued, she ran across the room and flung open the door. She must find someone – Maggie or someone.

On the threshold she paused in amazement. The door of Mrs. Dennison's room was open, and Maggie stood in the doorway, holding a candle, behind which her face gleamed pale and her eyes shone. She was muffled in a long white wrapper, and her dark hair fell over her shoulders. The candle shook in her hand, but, on sight of Marjory, her lips smiled beneath her deep shining eyes. Marjory ran to her crying,

"Is it you, Maggie?"

"Who should it be?" asked Mrs. Dennison, still smiling, so well as her fast-beating breath allowed her. "Why aren't you in bed?"

The girl grasped her hand, and pushed her back into the room.

"Maggie, I – Hark! there it is again! There's something outside – there, in the garden! If you open the window – "

As she spoke, Mrs. Dennison darted quick on silent naked feet to the window, and stood by it; but she seemed rather to intercept approach to it than to think of opening it. Indeed there was no need. The slow uncertain step sounded again; there were five or six seeming footfalls, and the women stood motionless, listening to them. Then there was stillness outside, matching the hush within; till Maggie Dennison, tearing the wrapper loose from her throat, said in low tones,

"I hear nothing outside;" and she put the candle on the table by her. "You can see nothing for the fog," she added as she gazed through the glass. Her tone was strangely full of relief.

"I opened the window," whispered Marjory, "and I saw – I thought I saw – something. And then I heard – that. You heard it, Maggie?"

The girl was standing in the middle of the room, her eyes fixed on Mrs. Dennison, who leant against the window-sash with a strained, alert, watchful look on her face.

"I heard you open the window and call out something," she said. "That's all I heard."

"But just now – just now as we stood here?"

Mrs. Dennison did not answer for a moment; her ear was almost against the panes, and her face was like a runner's as he waits for the starter's word. There was nothing but the gentle beat of the sea. Mrs. Dennison pushed her hair back over her shoulders and sighed; her tense frame relaxed, and the fixed smile on her lips seemed, in broadening, to lose something of its rigidity.

"No, I didn't, you silly child," she said. "You're full of fancies, Marjory."

The curl of her lip and the shrug of her shoulders won no attention.

"It went across the garden from the door – across towards the gate," said Marjory, "towards the path down. I heard it. It came from near the door. I heard it."

Mrs. Dennison shook her head. The girl sprang forward and again caught her by the arm.

"You heard too?" she cried. "I know you heard!" and a challenge rang in her voice.

"I didn't hear," she repeated impatiently, "but I daresay you did. Perhaps it was a man – a thief, or somebody lost in the fog. Would you like me to wake the footman? I can tell him to take a lantern and look if anyone's in the garden."

Marjory took no notice of the offer.

"But if it was anyone, he'll have gone now," continued Maggie Dennison, "your opening the window will have frightened him. You made such a noise – you woke me up."

"Were you asleep?" came in quick question.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Dennison steadily, "I was asleep. Couldn't you sleep?"

"Sleep? No, I couldn't sleep. I was afraid."

"You're as bad as the children," said Mrs. Dennison, laughing gently. "Come, go back to bed. Shall I come and sit by you till it's light?"

The girl seemed not to hear; she drew nearer, searching Mrs. Dennison's face with suspicious eyes. Maggie could not face her; she dropped her glance to the floor and laughed nervously and fretfully. Suddenly Marjory threw herself on the floor at her friend's feet.

"Maggie, come away from here," she beseeched. "Do come; do come away directly. Maggie, dear, I love you so, and – and I was unkind last night. Do come, darling! We'll go back together – back home," and she burst into sobbing.

Maggie Dennison stood passive and motionless, her hands by her side. Her lips quivered and she looked down at the girl kneeling at her feet.

"Won't you come?" moaned Marjory. "Oh, Maggie, there's still time!"

Mrs. Dennison knew what she meant. A strange smile came over her face. Yes, there was time; in a sense there was time, for the uncertain footfalls had not reached their goal – arrested by that cry from the window, they had stopped – wavered – retreated – and were gone. Because a girl had not slept, there was time. Yet what difference did it make that there was still time – to-night? Since to-morrow was coming and must come.

"Time!" she echoed in a whisper.

"For God's sake, come, Maggie! Come to-morrow – you and the children. Come back with them to England! Maggie, I can't stay here!"

Mrs. Dennison put out her hands and took Marjory's.

"Get up," she said, almost roughly, and dragged the girl to her feet. "You can go, Marjory; I – I suppose you're not happy here. You can go."

"And you?"

"I shan't go," said Maggie Dennison.

Marjory, standing now, shrank back from her.

"You won't go?" she whispered. "Why, what are you staying for?"

"You forget," said Mrs. Dennison coldly. "I'm waiting for my husband."

"Oh!" moaned Marjory, a world of misery and contempt in her voice.

At the tone Mrs. Dennison's face grew rigid, and, if it could be, paler than before; she had been called "liar" to her face, and truly. It was lost to-night her madness mourned – hoped for to-morrow that held her in her place.

The fog was lifting outside; the darkness grew less dense; a distant, dim, cold light began to reveal the day.

"See, it's morning," said Mrs. Dennison. "You needn't be afraid any longer. Won't you go back to your own room, Marjory?"

Marjory nodded. She wore a helpless bewildered look, and she did not speak. She started to cross the room, when Mrs. Dennison asked her,

"Do you mean to go this morning? I suppose the Seminghams will take you, if you like. We can make some excuse if you like."

Marjory stood still, then she sank on a chair near her, and began to sob quietly. Mrs. Dennison slowly walked to her, and stood by her. Then, gently and timidly, she laid her hand on the girl's head.

"Don't cry," she said. "Why should you cry?"

Marjory clutched her hand, crying,

"Maggie, Maggie, don't, don't!"

Mrs. Dennison's eyes filled with tears. She let her hand lie passive till the girl released it, and, looking up, said,

"I'm not going, Maggie. I shall stay. Don't send me away! Let me stay till Mr. Dennison comes."

"What's the use? You're unhappy here."

"Can't I help you?" asked the girl, so low that it seemed as though she were afraid to hear her own voice.

Mrs. Dennison's self-control suddenly gave way.

"Help!" she cried recklessly. "No, you can't help. Nobody can help. It's too late for anyone to help now."

The girl raised her head with a start.

"Too late! Maggie, you mean – ?"

"No, no, no," cried Mrs. Dennison, and then her eager cry died swiftly away.

Why protest in horror? By no grace of hers was it that it was not too late. The girl's eyes were on her, and she stammered,

"I mean nothing – nothing. Yes, you must go. I hate – no, no! Marjory, don't push me away! Let me touch you! There's no reason I shouldn't touch you. I mean, I love you, but – I can't have you here."

"Why not?" came from the girl in slow, strong tones.

A moment later, she sprang to her feet, her eyes full of new horror, as the vague suspicion grew to a strange undoubting certainty.

"Who was it in the garden? Who was out there? Maggie, if I hadn't – ?"

She could not end. On the last words her voice sank to a fearful whisper; when she had uttered them – with their unfinished, yet plain and naked, question – she hid her face in her hands, listening for the answer.

A minute – two minutes – passed. There was no sound but Maggie Dennison's quick breathings; once she started forward with her lips parted as if to speak, and a look of defiance on her face; once too, entreaty, hope, tenderness dawned for a moment. In anger or in sorrow, the truth was hard on being uttered; but the impulse failed. She arrested the words on her lips, and with an angry jerk of her head, said petulantly,

"Oh, you're a silly girl, and you make me silly too. There's nothing the matter. I don't know who it was or what it was. Very likely it was nothing. I heard nothing. It was all your imagination." Her voice grew harder, colder, more restrained as she went on. "Don't think about what I've said to-night – and don't chatter about it. You upset me with your fancies. Marjory, it means nothing."

The last words were imperative in their insistence, but all the answer Marjory made was to raise her head and ask,

"Am I to go?" while her eyes added, too plainly for Maggie Dennison not to read them, "You know the meaning of that."

Under the entreaty and the challenge of her eyes, Mrs. Dennison could not give the answer which it was her purpose to give – the answer which would deny the mad hope that still filled her, the hope which still cried that, though to-night was gone, there was to-morrow. It was the answer she must make to all the world – which she must declare and study to confirm in all her acts and bearing. But there – alone with the girl – under the compelling influence of the reluctant confidence – that impossibility of open falsehood – which the time and occasion seemed strangely to build up between them – she could not give it plainly. She dared not bid the girl stay, with that hope at her heart; she dared not cast away the cloak by bidding her go.

"You must do as you like," she said at last. "I can't help you about it."

Marjory caught at the narrow chance the answer left her; with returning tenderness she stretched out her hands towards her friend, saying,

"Maggie, do tell me! I shall believe what you tell me."

Mrs. Dennison drew back from the contact of the outstretched hands. Marjory rose, and for an instant they stood looking at one another. Then Marjory turned, and walked slowly to the door. To her own room she went, to fear and to hope, if hope she could.

Mrs. Dennison was left alone. The night was far gone, the morning coming apace. Her lips moved, as she gazed from the window. Was it in thanksgiving for the escape of the night, or in joy that the morrow was already to-day? She could not tell; yes, she was glad – surely she was glad? Yet, as at last she flung herself upon her bed, she murmured, "He'll come early to-day," and then she sobbed in shame.