The House by the River Part 16

"Stephen," she said, "I've been reading this--You--I--oh, _Stephen_!"

The last word came with a little wail, and she burst suddenly into tears, hiding her face against his shoulder. She stood there sobbing, and shaken with sobbing, and he tried to soothe her, stroking her hair with a futile caressing movement, and murmuring her name ridiculously, over and over again.

It did not occur to him to go on acting, to pretend astonishment or incomprehension. She had blundered somehow on the secret, and perhaps it was better so. To her at least he could lie no more.

At last the sobbing ceased, and he kissed her gently, and she turned from him automatically to tidy her hair in the gla.s.s.

Then she said, still breathless and incoherent, "Stephen, is it true--that _poor_ Emily--and poor John--Oh, Stephen, how _could_ you?"

The tears were coming back, so he put his arms about her again. And he spoke quickly, saying anything, anything to hold her attention and keep away those terrible tears.

"Darling, I was a fool ... it was for your sake in the first place--for your sake we kept it dark, I mean--it was John's idea--and then--I don't know--I was a beast--But don't worry. Tomorrow I'll put it all right....

I'll give myself up--I--"

But at these words, and at the picture they raised, a great cry burst from her, "Oh, no, Stephen. No! no!--you mustn't."

And she seized the lapels of his coat and shook him fiercely in the intensity of her feeling, the human, pa.s.sionate, protective feeling of a wife for her own man--careless what evil he may have done if somehow he may be made safe for her.

And Stephen was startled. He had not expected this. He said, stupidly, "But John--what about John?--don't you want me--don't you--?"

"No, Stephen, no--at least--" and she stopped, thinking now of John, trying conscientiously to realize what was owed to him. Then she went on, in a broken torrent of pleading, "No, Stephen, it's gone on so long now--a little more won't matter to him--surely, Stephen--and n.o.body _really_ thinks he did it--_n.o.body_, Stephen. It's only people like Mrs.

Vincent, Mrs. Ambrose was saying so only yesterday--and it would mean--it would mean--what _would_ it mean, Stephen--Stephen, tell me?"

But as she imagined what this would mean to Stephen she stood shuddering before him, her big eyes staring piteously at him.

"It would mean--O G.o.d, Margery, I don't know--" and he turned away.

So for a long time she pleaded with him, in groping, inarticulate half-sentences. She never reproached him, never asked him how he had come to do a foul murder. She did not want to know that, she did not want to think of what it was _right_ for him to do--that was too dangerous. All that mattered was this danger--a danger that could be avoided if she could only persuade him. And Stephen listened in a kind of stupor, listened miserably to the old excuses and arguments, and half-truths with which he had so often in secret convinced himself. But somehow, as Margery put them with all the prejudice of her pa.s.sionate fears, they did not convince him. They stood out horribly in their nakedness. And though he was touched and amazed by the strength of her forgiveness and her love in the face of this knowledge, he wished almost that she had not forgiven him, had urged him with curses to go out and do his duty. No, he did not wish that, really. But he did wish she would leave him alone now, leave him to think. He _must_ think.

His eye fell on the ma.n.u.script lying on the floor, and he began to wonder what it was in the poem that had told her, and how much it had told. She had said nothing of that. He interrupted her: "How--how did you guess?" He jerked his head at the paper.

She told him. And as she went again through that terrible process in her mind, that other thought returned, that idle notion about the wooing in the castle, which she had flung away from her.

She said, faltering and slow, her lips trembling, "Stephen--there's nothing else in it ... is there?... I ought to have guessed?--Stephen, you _do_ love me--don't you?" She stepped uncertainly towards him, and then with a loud cry, "Darling, I _do_!" he caught her to him. And she knew that it was true.

XVI

In the morning he went out as usual to feed the sea-gulls before breakfast, as if nothing had happened or was likely to happen. He was pleased as usual to see from the window that they were waiting for him, patient dots of grey and white, drifting on the near water. The sun broke thinly through the October haze, and the birds circled in a chattering crowd against the gold. And he had as usual the sense of personal satisfaction when they caught in the air, with marvellous judgment and grace, the pieces of old bread he flung out over the water, and was disappointed as usual when they missed it, and the bread fell into the river, though even then it was delightful to see with how much delicacy they skimmed over, and plucked it from the surface as they flew, as if it were a point of honour not to settle or pause or wet their red feet, tucked back beneath them.

And he had breakfast as usual with Margery and chattering Joan, and as usual afterwards went out with Joan to feed the rabbits, and again enjoyed the mysterious and universal pleasure of giving food to animals and watching them eat. He noted as usual the peculiar habits and foibles of the rabbit Henry and the rabbit Maud, and the common follies of all of them--how they all persisted, as usual, in crowding impossibly round the same cabbage leaf, jostling and thrusting and eating with the maximum discomfort, with urgent anxiety and petulant stamping because there were too many of them, while all around there lay large wet cabbage leaves, inviting and neglected. He listened as usual to little Joan's insane interminable questions, and answered them as usual as intelligently as he could. And he puffed as usual at the perfect pipe of after-breakfast, and swept as usual the dead leaves from the path. But all these things he did with the exquisite melancholy enjoyment of a schoolboy, knowing that he does them for the last time on the last day of his holidays at home.

And he had decided nothing. Margery, too, moved as usual through the busy routine of after-breakfast, "ordering" food for herself and Stephen and the children and the servants, and promising Cook to get some lard and "speaking to" Mary about the drawing-room carpet, and arranging for the dining-room to be "done out" tomorrow, and conferring with Nurse and telephoning for some fish. She did these things in a kind of dream, hating them more than usual, and now and then she looked out of the window, and wondered what Stephen was doing, and what he was thinking.

For she knew that he had not decided. And she would not speak to him; she had said her say, and some instinct told her that silence now was her best hope.

So all day they went about in this distressful tranquillity, pretending that this day was as yesterday, and as the day before. At midday the tide was down; the grey sky crept up from the far roofs and hid the sun.

There was the damp promise of a drizzle in the air, and the bleak depression of low tide lay over the mud and the meagre stream and the deserted boats. They had lunch almost in silence, and after lunch a thin rain began. Stephen stared out at it silent from the window, thinking and thinking and deciding nothing; and Margery sat silent by the fire, darning. And her silence, and the silent riot of his thoughts, and the silent miserable rain, and the empty abandoned river, united in a vast conspiracy of menace and accusation and gloom. They were leagued together to get on his nerves and drive him to despair. He went out suddenly, and down to the dining-room, and there he drank some whisky, very quickly, and very strong.

Then, because he must do _something_ or he would go mad, he dragged the dinghy over the mud and shingle down to the water, and he rowed up to the Island to pick up firewood from the mud-banks, where the high tides took it and left it tangled in the reeds and young willow stems.

It was an infinite toil to get this wood, but all afternoon he worked there, crashing fiercely through the tall forest of withes and crowded reeds, and slithering down banks into deep mud, and groping laboriously in the slush of small inlets for tiny pieces of tarred wood, and filling his basket with great beams and bits of bark, and small planks and box-wood, and painfully carrying them through the mud and the wet reeds down to the boat. He worked hard, with a savage determination to tire himself, to occupy his mind, cursing with a kind of furious satisfaction when the stems sprang back and whipped him in the face. The sweat came out upon him, and his hands were scratched, and the mud was thick upon his clothes. But all the time he thought. He could not stop thinking.

And somehow the fierce energy of the work communicated itself to his thoughts. As he struck down the brittle reeds he fancied himself striking at his enemies, manfully meeting his Fate. All his life he had done things thoroughly, as he was doing this foolish wood-gathering. He had faced things, he had not been afraid. He would not be afraid now. He would give himself up. No, no! He couldn't do that. Not fair to Margery--a long wait, prison, trial, the dock--hanging! Aah! He made a shuddering cry at that thought, and he lashed out with the stick in his hand, beating at the withes in a fury of fear. No, no! by G.o.d, no!--hanging--the last morning! Not that.

But still, he must be brave. No more cowardice. That was the worst of all he had done this summer--the cowardice. No more sitting tight at John's expense. Whatever Margery said. It was sweet of her, but later it would be different. When all this was forgotten, she would remember ...

she would be living with him, day after day, knowing every night there was a murderer in her bed, a liar, a coward, a treacherous coward....

Very soon she would hate him. And he would hate her, because she knew.

He would be always ashamed before her, all day, always.... Just now they did not mind, because they were afraid. But they _would_ mind.... She had not even minded about Muriel, when he told her--and he had told her everything. But she would mind that, too, in the end.... She would always be imagining Muriels.

No, there must be no more cowardice. It must finish now, one way or another. But there was only one way.

The rain had stopped now, and a warm wind blew freshly from the south-west. The two swans of the Island washed themselves in the ruffled shallows, wings flapping and necks busily twisting. In the west was a stormy and marvellous sky, still dark pillows of heavy clouds, black and grey, and an angry purple, with small white tufts floating irresponsibly across them, and here and there a startling lake of the palest blue; while low down, beneath them, as if rebellious at the long grey day, and determined somehow to make a show at his own setting, the sun revealed himself as an orange dome on the roof of the Quick Boat Company, and poised grotesquely between the tall black chimneys, flung out behind the Richmond Hills a narrow ribbon of defiant light, and away towards Hammersmith all the windows in a big house lit up suddenly with orange and gold, as if the house were burning furiously within. The boat was heavy now with wood, and Stephen pushed her off, to row home with his face to the sunset and the storm. Now the light was caught in the mud-slopes by the Island, and they, too, were beautiful. And as he rowed he said a self-conscious farewell to the sun and the warm wind and the river which he loved. No one loved this river as he did. They lived smugly in their drawing-rooms like Kensington people, and they looked out at the river when the sun shone at high tide, and in the summer crept out timidly for an hour in hired boats like trippers. But when it was winter and the wind blew, they drew their curtains and shivered over their fires and shut out the river, so that they hardly knew it was there from the autumn to the spring. They did not deserve to live by the river; they did not understand it. They did not see that it was lovable always, and most lovable perhaps when the tide rushed in against the wild west wind, and the rain and the spindrift lashed your face as you tossed in a small boat over the lively waves. They thought it was the noisy storm rushing down a muddy river; they thought the wind made a melancholy howl about the windows. They did not know that the river in the wind was a place of poetry and excitement, such as you might not find in the rest of London, that the noisy wind and the muddy water and the wet mud at low tide were things of beauty and healthy life if you went out and made friends with them. These people never saw the sunset in winter, and the curious majesty of factories against the glow; they never saw the lights upon the mud; they did not love the barges and the tugs, sliding up with a squat importance out of the fog, or swishing lazily down in the early morning, with the h.o.a.r-frost thick upon their decks. They did not know what the river was like in the darkness or the winter dusk; you could not know that till you had been on the river many times at those hours and found out the strange lights and the strange whispers, and the friendly loneliness of the river in the dark.

And when he had gone, no one here would do that; no one would row out in the frosty noons or the velvet dusks, no one would feed the sea-gulls in the morning, or steal out in the evening to watch the dab-chicks diving round the Island. No one would be left who properly loved the river.

They would sit in their drawing-rooms and shudder at the wind, and say: "That poor fellow Byrne--he was mad about the river--he was always pottering about on the river in a boat--and then, you know, he drowned himself in the river--just outside here." Yes, he would do that. There would be something "dramatic" about that. Just outside here--in the dark. He had decided now. Not poison, for he knew nothing about that; not shooting--for he had no revolver. But the river.

When he had decided his heart was lighter. Very carefully he moored the boat, and took out the wood and carried it in a basket to the kitchen to be dried. Then he took a last look at the river and the sun and went in to tea. All that evening he was very cheerful with Margery in the drawing-room, and at dinner and afterwards. At dinner he talked hard and laughed very often. And Margery was easier in her mind, though sometimes she was puzzled by his laughter. But she thought that she had persuaded him, or that he had persuaded himself, that she was right, and this gaiety was the reaction from the long uncertainty of mind. And indeed it was. She saw also that he drank a good deal; but because he was cheerful at last, and would be more cheerful when he had drunk more, she did not mind.

By the late post there came a copy of _The Argus_. They looked at the parcel, but they did not open it, and they did not look at each other.

When she went up to bed he kissed her fondly, but not too fondly, lest she should suspect--and said that he would sit and read for a little by the fire. Then he opened _The Argus_ and read through "The Death in the Wood" from beginning to end. It pleased him now--it pleased him very much; for it was more than a week since he had seen it, and some of its original freshness had returned. It was good. But it seemed to him, as he read it now, to be a very d.a.m.ning confession of weakness and sin, and while he glowed with the pride of artistic achievement, he was chilled with the shame of his human record. It was so clear and naked in this poem that he had written; it must be obvious to any who read it what kind of a man he was and what things he had done. Margery had known, and surely the whole world would know. But no matter--he would be too quick for them. He would be dead before they discovered.

And anyhow he was going to tell the world. Of course, he had forgotten that. He was going to tell the truth about John before he went. Of course. He must do that now.

He took some writing-paper and went down into the dining-room. He felt a little cold--not so cheerful. A little whisky would buck him up. A little whisky, while he wrote this letter.

He drank half a tumbler, and sat down. How would it go, this letter? To the police, of course. He wrote:

"This is to certify that I, Stephen Byrne, strangled Emily Gaunt on the 15th of May; John Egerton had nothing to do with it. I am going to drown myself."

He signed it and read it over. After "strangled" he squeezed in "by accident." It looked untidy, and he wrote it all out again. That would do. He drank some more whisky and sat staring at the paper.

Why should he do that? Wasn't he going to do enough, as it was? He was going to die; that was surely punishment enough. Why should he leave this d.a.m.ned silly confession behind? Just for the sake of old John. d.a.m.n John! A good fellow, John. A d.a.m.ned fool, John. Was it fair to Margery?

That was the thing. Was it fair? One more drink.

He filled up the fourth gla.s.s and sat pondering stupidly the supreme selfishness. Outside the wind had risen, and Margery shivered upstairs at the rattle of the windows. Eleven o'clock--why was Stephen so long?

What was that noise? A dull report--like a distant bomb. She sat up in bed, listening. Then she remembered. The gas-stove being lit in the dining-room. Something was wrong with it. But why had it frightened her?

And why was it being lit?

Because it was cold in the dining-room, and the wind was howling, and there was a numb sensation in his hands. A funny dead feeling. The whisky, perhaps. But when he had turned on the gas, he forgot about it, and stood thinking, matchbox in hand, thinking out the new problem. It was difficult to think clearly. Then it exploded like that, when he put the match to it. He kicked it. d.a.m.ned fool of a thing. Like John. It was John who was responsible for all this worry and fuss. John could go to the devil. He had fooled John before, and he would fool him again. Ha, ha! That was a cunning idea. Then they would say in the papers, "A great genius--a n.o.ble character--ha, ha!--'The Death in the Wood'--last work, imaginative writing"--ha, ha! _imaginative!_--and it was all true. But n.o.body would know--n.o.body would say so--because he would be dead. John wouldn't say so, and Margery wouldn't say so--because he would be dead.

Mustn't say anything about the dead. Oh no! Must burn this silly confession. When he had had another drink. It was so cold. No more whisky--h.e.l.l! "There's hoosh in the bottle still." But there wasn't. Who wrote that? d.a.m.ned Canadian fellow. The Yukon. Port. There was some port somewhere. Port was warming.

He fumbled in the oak dresser for the decanter, knocking over a number of gla.s.ses. d.a.m.ned little port left--somebody been at it. Best drink in the world--port. Good, rich, generous stuff. Ah! That was good. One more gla.s.s. Then he would go out. Half-past eleven. Margery would be wandering down in a minute--would think he was drunk. He wasn't drunk--head perfectly clear. Saw the whole thing now. Dramatic end--drowned in sight of home--national loss--moonlight. No, there was no moon. h.e.l.l of a wind, though. A sou'wester--he, he! Poor Margery, poor Muriel, poor John! They would miss him--when he had gone. They would be sorry then. Good fellow, John. Good fellows--all of them. But they didn't appreciate him--n.o.body did. Yes, Muriel did. A dear girl, Muriel. But no mind. He would like to say good-bye to Muriel. And Margery. But that wouldn't do. Dear things, both of them. Drink their healths. The last gla.s.s. No more port. No more whisky. No cheese, no b.u.t.ter, no jam. Like the war. Ha, ha!

First-rate port. He was warm now, and sleepy. G.o.d, what a wind. Mustn't go to sleep here. Sleep in the river--the dear old river. Drowning was pleasant, they said--not like hanging. Would rather stay here, though--in the warm. Only there was no more port. And he had promised some one--_must_ keep promises. Come on, then. No shirking. Head perfectly clear. What was it he was going to do first? Something he had to do. G.o.d knows. Head perfectly clear. But sleepy. Terribly sleepy.