The Judge Part 44

"Tell me everything. All she did after I went upstairs."

Grimly she remembered the former rich traffic of their minds.

Henceforward he would do nothing but ask that question; she would do nothing but answer it. It was the third time she had told this story in the twelve hours. "She was as bright as could be. Talked of going to a theatre, but said you cared for a good music-hall as much as anything...." Her voice was thin, as liars' voices are. Surely he must notice it and feel distaste. Oh, fatal Marion! Even in her complete and final abnegation of her forcefulness she had used such an excess of force that the world about her was shattered. For Ellen perceived that never again would the relationship of Richard and herself be the perfect crystal sphere that it had been before they came here, but must always, till they died, be flawed with insincerity. She would never dare tell him how, thought over, those trivial plans for the next day's pleasuring were revealed, themselves, as devices of a tremendous hammering n.o.bility; how, seen with the intelligence of memory, the face at the window had been the greasy mask of a swimmer in the icy waters of the ultimate fear; how there had stood on the lawn for a long time what had seemed a loiterer, but was in truth a pillar of love. If she let his inherited excessiveness learn this he would go mad; and he would hate her for not reading these signs when they had been given her. All her life she would have to keep silence concerning something of which he would speak repeatedly. She would become queer and jerky with strained inhibitions ... charmless.... Perhaps he would go from her to unburdened women....

"Perhaps you're right," he said wearily when she had finished; "maybe it was an accident." He began to eat again, but soon pushed away his plate and stood up looking down on the hearth. "Where did she sit? Which chair?"

"Yon, at your hand."

He drooped over it, caressing the velvet cover. "Will I ever get him out of this house, where everything will always remind him of her?" she wondered savagely. Really Marion was magnificent, but she was very upsetting. She was like a cardinal in full robes falling downstairs. And for what inadequate reason she had caused all this commotion! Just because her two sons quarrelled! She could have prevented that easily enough if she had brought them up properly and skelped them when they needed it. Ellen curled her lip as she watched him stroking the soft velvet, laying his cheek against it.

"And the desk? You say she sat there while she talked to cook?"

"Yes."

She hated the way he sat down in front of it; in a heap, like a tired navvy. By her death Marion deprived her of her beautiful lightfooted lover. But she must wait. He would come back. She became aware that Roger was speaking to her. It appeared that he had sobbed in his cup and had sent jets of tea flying over the tablecloth, and he was now apologising.

"Never heed," she told him comfortingly; "we'll have a clean one for lunch." "I didn't mean to," he quavered piteously, but she checked him.

Richard had turned over his shoulder a white face.

"She sat here?..."

"Yes. While the cook stood talking to her, she sat there."

"She ... You didn't notice ... when she was sitting there ... if she was scribbling on the blotter?"

"Yes, she did. I noticed that."

"Ah ... ah...."

She was beside him in the time of a breath. But he had not fainted, though his head had crashed down on the wood, for his fingers, buried in his hair, still laced and interlaced. She did not dare touch him; but she grovelled for the blotter, which at the moment of his groan had fallen to the floor, and stood staring at it. For a second her attention was dispersed by a shudder of disgust, for she felt Roger's noisy mouth-breathing at her ears. Then the proof leapt to her eyes. There was a rim of plain paper round the calendar on the inside of the cover, and this was covered with words and phrases written in the exquisite small script of Marion. "This is the end. Death. Death. Death. This is the end. I must die. Give him to Ellen. I must die."

Roger tumbled back towards Poppy. "The awful sin of self-destruction!"

he wailed.

This proof struck through her with an awful, unifying grief. She had had evidence of Marion's intention which had convinced her mind, but it was all derived from ugliness: from the awkwardness of the woman's talk, the plainness of the face against the gla.s.s, the intrusive loitering of a squat figure in the garden. The soul had hearkened to these ugly messengers from reality since it had desired to know the truth, but it had made them cry their message from as far off as possible and as briefly as might be. But this lovely black arabesque of letters had the power of beauty. It ran into the core of her soul and told its story at its leisure. Her flesh, which before had grieved as any that is living might grieve for any that is dead, now knew the sorrow appropriate to the destruction of Marion's wide, productive body. For what her spirit learned and admitted it had always known of that burning thing which had been Marion she looked round the room in reverence, since she had lived there. The light on the handle of the French window caught her eye, and she wept. She had been annoyed with Marion because she could not turn it. But who would not find it difficult to open a door if it was death on which it opened?

"Richard, I love your mother!" she sobbed. "I love your mother so!"

He muttered something. In case he was speaking to her she bent down and listened. But he was repeating over and over again in accents of irony: "Give him up to Ellen. Give him up to Ellen. Oh, mother, mother...."

By the pa.s.sion for Marion that was wringing her she could measure the flame that must be devouring him. There was a strong impulse in her to feel nothing but pity for him; to apprehend with resignation that there might be a period ahead during which he might feel hatred for her, loathing her for being alive when his mother, who deserved so well, was dead. She stepped backward from the desk so that he need not be vexed by any sense of her. Yet she had a feeling as she moved that she was taking a step infinitely rash, infinitely dangerous....

She became aware that behind her Roger was shaking words out of his weeping body. "You ought to be on your knees, you two! You've killed my mummie with your wickedness!"

"What's that?" she murmured, turning on him. "What's that?" She was not quite attentive. A picture was forming in her consciousness which, when it was clear, would tell her why it was perilous to leave Richard to his grief....

"Aw, shut up!" hissed Poppy, and tugged at his arm.

But he faced Ellen bravely and cried: "Yes, you've killed my mummie! She saw there was something wrong going on between you two. She found out what you'd been doing up there in the bedroom when Poppy and me caught you. It must have been an awful shock to her. It was to me," he said pathetically and with relish. "I could hardly believe it myself till Poppy said, 'Well, what would they be doing together in a bedroom if it wasn't that?' How could you do such filthiness...."

Shame swept over Ellen's body, over Ellen's mind. It was not s.e.xual shame, but shame that they should both be human, she and this. But when she turned her eyes away from him in loathing she came on something far worse in Poppy's florid and skull-like face. It would have been appalling if she had been quite attentive, but she was dreamy, because there was this picture forming in her consciousness which would explain the danger to her.... Round Poppy's eyes and mouth there was playing a thirsty look which she seemed to be trying to suppress, for she was glancing about the room with an expression of prudence as if she were reminding herself that not lightly must she run the risk of being evicted from this comfort. But the thirst triumphed. She gave herself the gratification she had desired, and turned on Ellen eyes on whose dull darkness there floated like oil a glistening look of lewd accusation. It took the form of a wet, twitching smile. But behind it was every sort of beaten, desolate envy: the envy of the happy which is felt by the unhappy: the envy of the woman who has a strong and glorious man which is felt by the woman who cannot disguise from herself that in her arms lies weakness and ign.o.bility: the envy of one to whom love has come as love which is felt by one to whom it has come as a deception and a sentence to squalor. And she could not be pitied. One cannot weep over the dead when they have begun to rot: and she was rotten with resentments. Ellen stared at her in anger and in misery that there should be one so sad and ill-used whom she could not comfort; and perceived why at seeing her she had been reminded of an open s.p.a.ce round which stood figures. It was of nothing in art she had been thinking, but of John Square in Edinburgh, where after nightfall women had leaned against the garden railings, their backs to the lovely nocturnal mystery of groves and lawns, their faces turned to the line of rich men's houses which mounted into the night like tall, impregnable fortresses. If she had not been preoccupied with the picture rising in her mind she would have felt fear, for the ultimate meaning of those women she had always suspected to be danger....

"Making me think evil of my poor mummie too!" Roger sobbed on. "I thought the reason she didn't come to my meeting this evening was that she was ashamed to see her son professing Jesus. I thought hardly of her for not bringing you two along as she promised, because I didn't see you weren't there, and I preached on the sin of impurity specially for you, and it was a real sacrifice for me to do it, because the officers thought it was a forward subject for me to choose, and it my first service here. I had to wrestle to forgive her for it."

It was growing clearer in Ellen's mind, this picture which would tell her why she must not allow Richard to abandon himself to his grief, to his pa.s.sion.

"But, of course, I see it all now. Oh, my darling, darling mummie! I suppose you two wouldn't come to my meeting because you wanted to stay here and play your tricks, and she saw through you and wouldn't leave you alone in the house. To think I blamed my mummie!"

Now she saw the picture. It was her own mother, her own old mother, shuffling about the kitchen in Hume Park Square in the dirty light of the unwarmed morning; poking forward into the grate with hands on which housework had acted like a skin disease; pulling her flannel dressing-gown about a body which poverty and neglect had made as ugly as the time, the place, the task. She was too tired to see it vividly, but she understood the message. That was what happened to women who allowed themselves to be disregarded; who allowed any other than themselves to dwell in their men's attention.

"Richard! Richard!" She beat on his shoulder to make him listen. "Hark what your brother's saying of us!"

He stirred. He sat up.

"He says we're bad."

He turned round and looked down on Roger. At the sight of his face, though it was still, Ellen wished she had not roused him.

"It's no use you looking at me like that," said Roger tearfully but resolutely. "I'm as good as you. In fact, I'm better now that I've got Jesus. And I tell you straight, you've killed my mummie with your beastly l.u.s.t. Mind you," he cried, in a tone of whistling exaltation inappropriate to his words, "I'm not pretending I'm without sin myself.

I did evil once with a woman at Blackburn, but I saw the filthiness of my ways. Old man, I do understand your temptations!"

What was Richard's hand searching for on the breakfast table? She bent forward to see, so that she might give it to him.

Richard had found what he wanted. His fingers tightened on the handle of the breadknife.

"Let's put an end to this," he said.

He drove the knife into Roger's heart.

"Mummie!" breathed Roger. Meekly, but with no sign that he had any other quarrel with the proceedings save that they were peremptory, he sank down on the chair beside him and fell forward, his head lying untidily among the tea-cups. This, no doubt, was the disorder which Marion had always foreseen; to prevent which she had practised her insane tidiness.

He held the attention much less than one had thought a dead man could.

"G.o.d," said Poppy, "this is a copper's business. I'm off before they come. They think I know something about a thing that happened down in Strood last Easter, though G.o.d help me I don't. They kind of mixed me up with someone else. Let me go."

"Right," said Richard, and put his hand into his pocket and brought out a fistful of coins. "Take this. Good luck."

She s.n.a.t.c.hed it, and with no further look at any of the company, ran out by the French window.

They stood looking down on Roger. Death revealed no significance in him.

The smallness of his head, the indefinite colour of his hair, palliated what had occurred and made them feel incredulous of their knowledge that presently much importance would be attached to it.

Richard breathed a deep sigh of relief. "Well, it's all cleared up now,"

he murmured. "It is as if she had never seen Peacey...."

Ellen broke into sobs. "'Tis I who made you do it. I thought of my poor mother and how she'd suffered through not making my father think of her first and last--and you were sitting there thinking of nothing but Marion--and I knew if you heard what Roger was saying about us you'd think of me, so I made you listen. If I hadn't given you yon dunts on your shoulders you never would have heard him and never would have killed him. Oh, my love, what I have done to you, and me that would have died rather than hurt you! But I saw my mother plain--"