Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts Part 35

"Grace looks after them."

"I know. I get word. She is kind."

"You think of them?"

"Don't, w.i.l.l.y!"

He harked back. "Do you know, whenever I've thought of it . . . the chance of our meeting . . . I've wondered what I should say. Hundreds and hundreds of times I've made up my mind what to say. Why, only just now--I've come from the theatre: I still go to the theatre sometimes; it's a splendid thing to distract your thoughts: takes you out of _yourself--Frou--Frou_, it was . . . the finest play in the world . . .

next to _East Lynne_. It made me cry, to-night, and the people in the pit stared at me. But one mustn't be ashamed of a little honest emotion, before strangers. And when a thing comes _home_ to a man . . .

So you've thought of it too--the chance of our running against one another?"

"Every day and all the day long I've gone fearing it: especially in March and September, when I knew you'd be up in town buying for the season. All the day long I've gone watching the street ahead of me . . . watching in fear of you. . . ."

"But I never guessed it would happen like this." He stared up irritably, as though the lamp were to blame for upsetting his calculations. The woman followed his eyes.

"Yes . . . the lamp," she a.s.sented. "Something held my face up to it, just now, when I wanted to hide. It's like as if our souls were naked under it, and there is nothing to say."

"Eh? but there is. I tell you I've thought it out so often!

I've thought it all out, or almost all; and that can't mean nothing."

He cleared his throat. "I've made allowances, too--" he began magnanimously.

But for the moment she was not listening. "Yes, yes . . ." She had turned her face aside and was gazing out into the darkness. "Look at the gas-jets, w.i.l.l.y--in the fog. What do they remind you of?

That Christmas-tree . . . after d.i.c.k was born. . . . Don't you remember how he mistook the oranges on it for lanterns and wanted to blow them out . . . how he kicked to get at them . . ."

"It's odd: I was thinking of d.i.c.k, just now, when you--when you spoke to me. The lamp put me in mind of him. I was wondering what it cost.

We have nothing like it at home. Of course, if I bought one for the shop, people would talk--'drawing attention,' they'd say, after what has happened. But I thought that d.i.c.k, perhaps . . . when he grows up and enters the business . . . perhaps he might propose such a thing, and then I shan't say no. I should carry it off lightly . . . After all, it's the shop it would call attention to . . . not the house. And one must advertise in these days."

She was looking at him steadily now. "Yes," she a.s.sented, "people would talk."

"And they pity me. I do hate to be pitied, in that way. Even the people up here, at the old lodgings . . . I won't come to them again.

If I thought the children . . . One never can tell how much children know--"

"Don't, w.i.l.l.y!"

He plunged a hand into his pocket. "I daresay, now, you're starving?"

Her arms began to sway again, and she laughed quietly, hideously.

"Don't--don't--don't! I make money. That's the worst. I make money.

Oh, why don't you hit me? Why was you always a soft man?"

For a moment he stood horribly revolted. But his weakness had a better side, and he showed it now.

"I say, Annie . . . is it so bad?"

"It is h.e.l.l."

"'Soft'?" he harked back again. "It might take some courage to be soft."

She peered at him eagerly; then sighed. "But you haven't that sort of courage, w.i.l.l.y."

"They would say . . ." he went on musing, "I wonder what they would say?

. . . Come back to the lamp," he cried with sudden peevishness.

"Don't look out there . . . this circle of light on the pavement . . .

like a map of the world."

"With only our two shadows on it."

"If it were all the world . . ." He peered around, searching the darkness. "If there were nothing to concern us beyond, and we could stay always inside it . . ."

"--With the light shining straight down on us, and our shadows close at our feet, and so small! But directly we moved beyond they would lengthen, lengthen . . ."

"'Forsaking all other'--that's what the Service says. And what does that mean if we cannot stand apart from all and render account to each other only? I tell you I've made allowances. I didn't make any in the old days, being wrapped up in the shop and the chapel, and you not caring for either. There was fault on my side: I've come to see that."

"I'd liefer you struck me, w.i.l.l.y, instead of making allowances."

"Oh, come, that's nonsense. It seems to me, Annie, there's nothing we couldn't help to mend together. It would never be the same, of course: but we can understand . . . or at least overlook." In his magnanimity he caught at high thoughts. "This light above us--what if it were the Truth?"

"Truth doesn't overlook," she answered, with a hopeless scorn which puzzled him. "No, no," she went on rapidly, yet more gently, "Truth knows of the world outside, and is wakeful. If we move a step our shadows will lengthen. They will touch all bright things--they will fall across the children. w.i.l.l.y, we cannot move!"

"I see . . ."

"Ah?" She craned forward and almost touched his arm again.

"Annie, it comes to me now--I see for the first time how happy we might have been. How came we two to kill love?"

The woman gave a cry, almost of joy. Her fingers touched his sleeve now. "We have not killed love. We--I--had stunned him: but (O, I see!) he has picked up his weapons again and is fighting. He is bewildered here, in this great light, and he fights at random . . . fights to make you strong and me weak, you weak and me strong. We can never be one again, never. One of us must fall, must be beaten . . .he does not see this, but O, w.i.l.l.y, he fights . . . he fights!"

"He shall fight for you. Annie, come home!"

"No, no--for you--and the children!"

"Come!"

"Think of the people!" She held him off, shaking her head, but her eyes were wistful, intent upon his. "You have lived it down. . . . It would all begin again. Look at me . . . think of the talk . . ."

"Let them say what they choose. . . I wonder what they would say . . ."

The Policeman stepped forward and across the road-way. He had heard nothing, and completely misunderstood all he had seen.

"Come, you must move on there, you two!" he commanded harshly.

Suddenly, as he said it, the light above was extinguished.

"Hullo!" He paused, half-way across. "Twelve o'clock already!

Then what's taken my watch?"

A pair of feet tip-toed away in the darkness for a few yards, then broke into a nervous run.

As a matter of fact it still wanted five minutes of midnight. And while the Policeman fumbled for his watch and slipped back the slide of his lantern, the white flame leaped back into the blind eye above and blazed down as fiercely as ever.