Across the Stream Part 26

"Why did Helena treat me like that?" he said. "It wasn't fair on me. Why did she encourage me? She might so easily have shown me that she didn't care. She knew: don't tell me she didn't know! Do answer me. Didn't she know? All the time that we were in town together she knew. And she let me go on. She was waiting to see if she could catch the Bradshaw. If she couldn't, perhaps she would have taken me. Was it so? You ought to know: you're her sister."

His voice had risen from the first reproach of his speech to a fury of indignation.

"Did she love me or didn't she?" he cried. "Do tell me if you know."

His pa.s.sion had found combustible material in her: she flamed with it.

"Helena doesn't love anybody," she said. "Oh, Archie, poor Helena!"

"Poor Helena!" said he. "Why 'poor'? Surely it's far more comfortable to love n.o.body. Oh, don't remind me of that stupid rot about it being better to have loved and lost. Anyhow, a worse thing is to have loved and not found. That's what has happened to me, and she made me think I had found. She meant to make me think that. d.a.m.ned well she succeeded, too. And, if you're right about her not loving anybody, do you mean that she doesn't love the Bradshaw?"

Archie had closed a grip on her arm: now she shook his hand off, though loving to have it there.

"I can't answer you that," she said. "And I oughtn't to have said that Helena loves n.o.body. I withdraw that entirely."

"The saying of it, you mean," said he. "You don't withdraw your belief in it."

"I don't know the truth of it. What I said was only my opinion, and I withdraw it. I oughtn't to have said it."

"But you keep your opinion?" asked he.

"You shouldn't ask me that. I have withdrawn what I said. Please accept that."

In this high noon of stars she could see his face very clearly. It was not angry any longer: it was just empty, as if there was no one there behind the eyes and the mouth. It was a face empty, swept, and garnished, ready for any occupant who might take possession. The sweet, clean water of his nature must have run out on to desert sands; the cistern of the body into which it had so swiftly and boyishly bubbled all these years was empty. Just for one second that impression lasted, inscrutably frightening her, with some nightmare touch.

"Archie," she cried, "are _you_ there? Is it you?" She heard a dreary little laugh for answer.

"Oh, I suppose so," he said. "I answer to my name, don't I?"

She longed, with a force of pa.s.sion quite new to her, to be able to reach him in some way, to let her love be coined into the commoner metal of friendship, if only that could get to him, and give him the sense that he had something in his pocket worth having, even though it was not gold. She would have gleefully melted all her love into a currency that could have enriched him, for he did not want her love, and she had no other use for it except to help him in some way. And, as if to answer her yearning, he took her arm again, not angrily now, but with the quiet pressure of a man with a sympathetic friend.

"You're a good pal, Jessie," he said. "I'm awfully grateful to you. You won't play me false with your friendship, will you?"

"No, my dear," said she, stumbling a little on the words. "I'm--I'm not like that. The more you count on me the better I shall be pleased. I'm stupid at saying things, but, oh Archie, if a friend is any use to you, you've got one. And let me say, just once, how sorry I am for all this miserable business."

"Thanks, Jessie," said he.

They had turned back towards the house, and Jessie, unconscious of anything else except Archie, saw that they were already half across the lawn that lay dripping with dew. Her thin satin shoes were soaked, and the hem of her dress trailed on the gra.s.s. But she regarded that no more than she would have regarded it had she been walking in the dark with her lover.

Then Archie spoke again--there was no more emotion in his voice than if he had been speaking through a telephone.

"Do keep on trying to be friends with me, Jessie," he said. "I'm nothing at all just now; I'm dead, but will you watch by the corpse? It likes to know you are there. There's no complaint if you go away, but when sometimes you have nothing to do, you might just sit with it."

"Archie, dear, don't talk such nonsense," she said.

"I daresay it is nonsense, but it seems to me sense. I don't feel as if I was anybody... I can imagine what a house feels like that has been happily lived in for years, when the family goes away, and leaves it empty. There's a board up 'To let, unfurnished,' and the windows get dirty, and the knocker and door-handle, which were so well rubbed and polished, get dull. There used to be curtains in the windows, and in the evening pa.s.sers-by in the street could see c.h.i.n.ks of light from within, and perhaps hear sounds of laughter. But now there are no curtains, and the pictures have gone from the walls, leaving oblong marks where they used to hang. And the spirit of the house stares mournfully out, thinking of the days when there was laughter and love within its walls.

Haven't you ever seen a house like that? They're common enough."

She pressed the hand that lay loose in the crook of her elbow.

"Oh, Archie, you give me such a heartache," she said.

"Well, I won't again. But if you think me wanting in affection to mother, or you, or anybody, just remember that I'm an empty house for the present. I daresay somebody will take me again."

Jessie felt that this was a truer Archie than he who had stopped so long in the dining-room and come in afterwards with a shout of laughter over something that he would not recount. But by now their stroll had taken them close to the long grey front of the house, and for the present Archie had no more to say, and was evidently meaning to go indoors again. Upstairs all was dark, but below, the five windows of the drawing-room, uncurtained and open, cast oblongs of light on to the gravel, and next to them the two windows of Lord Tintagel's study were lit. Even as they stepped from the gra.s.s on to the walk, and their footsteps became audible again, his figure, silhouetted against the light, appeared there, and the window-sash rattled as he opened it wider.

"Is that you, Archie?" he called. "Come in and see me before you go upstairs."

"All right, father," said he, "we're just coming in."

Jessie heard a fresh vigour in his quickened voice, and in the light from the windows she could see that his face was alert again. And it was with a sense of certainty that she guessed what had given him this sudden animation. Perhaps it was only the knowledge of his father's habits that informed her, perhaps it was a brain-wave pa.s.sing from him to her that told her that inside his father's room were the things for which he craved, the cool hiss of bubbling water on to the ice that swam in the spirits...

"You're not going to sit up long, are you?" she said.

"Oh, I don't know. My father and I often have a talk in the evening. And sometimes I do some writing before I go to bed. It's quite a good time for writing when every one has gone to bed and the house is quiet."

"You always used to say at Silorno that you wrote best in the morning."

"Yes, but that was at Silorno, where I could lie on the beach, and go for a swim at intervals. Lord! What jolly days they were! It's a pity they are all dead."

They went through the French window into the drawing-room, and found that Lady Tintagel had already gone upstairs. Archie stood by Jessie, shifting from one foot to the other, in evident impatience at her lingering.

"Well, you'll be wanting to go to bed," he said. "I daresay you'll go in and have a talk with my mother. And, do you know, my father's waiting for me; I think I'll join him. I shall soon come upstairs, I expect. I feel rather like writing to-night."

"I'm glad you're going on with that," she said. "That's something left, isn't it? The house isn't quite empty, Archie."

He laughed.

"No, I can trace my name in the dust on the window-panes," he said. "But I'll go to my father. Good-night, Jessie."

Lord Tintagel, rather unusually, was deep in the evening paper when Archie entered. Archie noticed, with some surprise, that his gla.s.s still stood untouched on the tray.

"Rather nasty news," he said, not looking up. "Give me my drink, Archie, there's a good fellow. Plenty of ice and not much soda."

"And what's the news?" asked Archie.

"Well, it looks as if there might really be trouble brewing. Servia has appealed to Russia against the Austrian ultimatum. I wonder if Germany can really be at the bottom of it all. And the city takes a gloomy view of it. All Russian securities are heavily down."

"Does that affect you?" asked Archie, bringing him his drink.

"Yes, I've got a big account open in them. I wonder if I had better sell. Of course there won't be war; we're always having these scares, and they always come to nothing. But if dealers are anxious, prices may fall a good bit yet, and I should find it difficult to pay my differences."

Archie poured himself out his first tumbler. He held it in his hand a moment, not tasting it, now that he had got it. Delay, when the delay was voluntary, would but add deliciousness to the moment when his mouth and throat would feel that cold sting...

"I don't understand," he said, watching the bubbles stream up from the sides and bottom of his gla.s.s.