The Third Window Part 13

He saw the suffocating, vaultlike darkness where he had groped. Since Tony had gone from him that afternoon, the clotting horror had not left his heart. It had been a vault; tenebrous; a place of death. Yet flesh and blood had not come to his help. He had forced no doors and beaten down no walls. Such doors and walls did not yield to force. It had been his sensitiveness to reality that had led him forth. As, sitting at the table the other night, he had seen the shadow, felt the scent of danger, so now his sensitiveness had shown him in the darkness something less dark. He had groped, he had crept, he had felt his way, from his intuition that Miss Latimer feared him to that memory of her form fallen forward on the little table, and the darkness that was only less dark had softly expanded to a pallor, until, suddenly, from her bewildered eyes and pa.s.sionate negations, conviction of the truth had flashed upon him. It had been like turning the corner of a b.u.t.tress to find the aperture that led out to pure, clear, starlit air. Of course, of course--how clearly now the light was spread! She had had her vision of Malcolm, not at the third window, but while she sat there at the table, her head bent down on her arms. She had lied only in saying that it had been objective. He and Tony had built it up for her.

His recovery was not only of freedom; he entered again, with his recognition of how he had found freedom, into possession of himself, into security and confidence. Flesh and blood had miserably failed him that afternoon, and so he had failed Tony. What most had choked him in the darkness had been his self-contempt. For he had miserably, horribly, if pitifully and inevitably, failed her. Her fear had cankered his will and frozen his heart, and he had helped to fix her in it. Thank G.o.d, where flesh and blood had failed, intelligence and intuition had atoned.

He was not worthless, after all. He had saved himself and he could save Tony.

As he stood there, and it had been for some little time, Thompson, Tony's maid, came down the staircase. She was a middle-aged woman, elegant of figure, with a gentle, careworn face, and he had always felt her friendly to his hopes. She carried a pair of Tony's shoes and gaiters, no doubt to have warmed to-morrow in readiness for the journey, and, not having noticed her for some days, he saw that her face was paler, more careworn than it had been. Tony was the sort of woman who would rouse devotion in her maid. He had already guessed that Thompson's was a romantic devotion; and now, their eyes meeting, something pa.s.sed between them, so that, at the foot of the stairs, Thompson paused, and he, glad to see her, glad to question her, asked, "How is Mrs. Wellwood to-night?"

"I'm afraid she's far from well, sir," said Thompson, and her kindly, decorous eyes dwelt on him. "She hasn't been herself for some days. But she's gone off nicely now to sleep."

"Really? She's been sleeping so badly, I hear."

"Yes, sir, very badly. But I made her take a little hot milk, for she would eat no dinner, and that seemed to send her off quite soundly."

"You think she's fit to travel to-morrow?"

The dwelling of Thompson's eyes at this became almost urgent. "Oh, yes, sir. Oh, it will be the best thing for her, sir; to get away. It doesn't suit her here at all. It's the place that doesn't suit her. She's quite fit to travel; but I hope she won't go as far as Cornwall, sir. It would be much better if she stopped at her own house in London. Perhaps you could say something about it to her, sir. Perhaps"--and sustained by what she saw of understanding in his gaze she pa.s.sed bravely beyond professional reticence--"it's being so much with Miss Cicely that isn't good for her. It's not cheering, sir. They've both had such great sorrow. It would be much better if she stayed in London and Miss Cicely went on to Cornwall alone. Perhaps, if you see with me, sir, you might say something on the journey to-morrow. Anything you could say would have weight with Mrs. Wellwood."

Bevis, gazing hard at her, felt that he loved Thompson. She seemed to embody the warmth and sanity of the new life for which he was to save Tony. He had even the impulse, ridiculous yet so strong--for he was young and had not been happy for such a long time--to put his arms around her neck, his head on her shoulder, and tell her how much he loved Tony and what terrible danger they had been in. But, of course, she understood; understood how much he loved Tony and how great had been the danger. So all that he said, at last, was: "Yes; I do agree. Yes; I'll do my best. Thanks so awfully."

"I do so wish you joy, sir," Thompson murmured.

He was glad that she had said that. He needed to have it said to him.

Yet, after he had gone upstairs, pausing at Tony's door to make sure that, as Thompson had said, she was sleeping, after he had lighted his candles and stood there, meditating, in his room, alone in the silent house, it was not joy he felt. Joy was not yet achieved. Tony's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, he foresaw, could not come from anything he might say to her. Her fear could never again infect him; but could his intuition free her? He would have only intuition to put before her, and Miss Latimer would be there with her lie that was half a truth. No; it could only be by the infection of his security and ardour that Tony could be won back from the darkness, and it should not fail her. But, until it had won her, he could feel no joy.

His room was at the other end of the corridor from Tony's, opposite Miss Latimer's, and he had not closed his door on entering. She could not yet be sleeping, and while she waked he would not sleep. Tony's slumber must be guarded. Anything was possible with Miss Latimer. She might go in to Tony with baleful warnings, warping beforehand his account of the interview. He must prevent her seeing Miss Latimer alone. During the journey that would be easy; and once London was reached he had Thompson to reenforce his strategy. They would go to Tony's house, and there he would talk to her. It would be in Tony's captivating drawing-room, with its cushions and fire-screens, its scent of lemon-verbena and sandalwood. Thompson would help him in it all. She would see that he had Tony to himself.

He undressed and lay down with a book and reading-candle, keeping his door ajar. Then, in the stillness, he became aware that Miss Latimer was weeping. Pa.s.sionately yet monotonously she was sobbing; a strange agony of grief, with none of the plaints and moans of self-pity. Was it remorse, he wondered; despair for her exposure, or baffled fury at finding her prey escape her, and Tony to be restored to life again? But Miss Latimer would never feel remorse; would never feel herself exposed.

And Tony was not her prey; it had been for another that she had tracked her down. All, all had been done, as all with her had always been, for love of Malcolm. And, with a curious, unwilling pity, he knew, as he listened, that he did not believe of her that she felt herself to be a liar. Her simplicity had been unable to interpret truly the overwhelming experience that had befallen her. It had been as genuine, as immediate as that of a Jeanne d'Arc. She was an unsanctified saint; or, rather, a sibyl, who had found her magic inefficacious and who feared the menace to her beloved of a universe deaf to her incantations.

For hours she must have wept.

When, at last, for a long time, silence had fallen, and he had put out his light, he could not have slept had he wished it. It was his last night in the hateful house and the hours seemed heavy with significance.

The wailing sobs, though silenced, still beat an undertone to his thoughts, thoughts of Malcolm, his dead friend, now, harmlessly, the immortal spirit; and thoughts of his dear Tony. Not till yesterday, when the waters had closed over them, had he known the depths of his love for Tony, and only through their anguish had the depths of her innocent, tragically gentle heart been revealed to him. Yet, while he thought of her, yearning over her, in her childlike sleep, with love unspeakable, the anguish seemed to hover like a cloud above him, and Miss Latimer's sobs still to beat:--Dead.--Dead.--Dead.

X

The first housemaids were already stirring when at last he fell into a heavy sleep. So heavy it was that it seemed long, yet only a few hours could have gone by before he was awakened by a rapping at his half-open door. Even as he drowsily struggled forth from slumber, he was aware that it was not the knock that announced hot water and the hour of rising.

He opened his eyes and saw Thompson standing in the doorway.

Her att.i.tude as she stood there, dark and narrow, with her flawlessly neat outline, had still so much of professional decorum that, for a moment, it veiled from him the strangeness of her face.

"Oh, sir, could you come?" she said. And then he saw that her face was strange.

He sprang up while she stood outside. There was, he knew that, no time for his leg, though he seemed to know nothing else, and he threw on his dressing-gown and took up his crutches while Thompson waited for him.

But when he went out to her she still stood there, looking at him.

"Is Mrs. Wellwood ill?" he asked.

"Oh, sir, she's dead," said Thompson.

Then, standing in the corridor, he felt himself trying to think. It was like the moment in France when his leg had been shattered and he had not known whether he were alive or dead. But this was worse. This was not like the moment in France. There was only, then, himself. He could not think. Thompson had put her arm under his. He was hanging forward heavily on his crutches.

"Perhaps you'd better go back to bed, till a little later, sir. Till the doctor comes," she said. "It was an overdose of the powder. She's sometimes taken them since Mr. Wellwood was killed. And she must have made a mistake. It must have been a mistake, mustn't it, sir? She had everything to live for." Thompson broke into sobs. "I've just found her.

Miss Cicely is there. She sent a boy for the doctor. But it's too late.

You'd only think her sleeping, so beautiful she is, sir."

"Help me," said Bevis. "I must come."

The curtains had been drawn in Tony's room and the morning sunlight fell across the bed where she lay. It was not as if sleeping; he saw that at the first sight of her. She lay on her back and her head was sunken down on her breast as though with a doggedness of oblivion. Still, she was beautiful; and he noted, his heart shattered by impotent tenderness, the dusky mark upon her eyelids, like the freaking on a lovely fruit.

Miss Latimer sat on the other side of the bed with her back to the light. Beside her stood the little tray of early morning tea that Thompson had brought in and set down on the table near her mistress before drawing the curtains.

Thompson helping him, he reached the bed and laid hold of the bedpost.

"Yes. I can manage. Thank you so much," he said to her.

So he was left, confronting Miss Latimer; and Tony was between them.

He did not look at Miss Latimer. His being was absorbed in contemplation of the dead woman. With sickening sorrow he reconstructed the moments that had led her to this act. It had not been unintentional.

He remembered her still look, her ineffable gentleness of the day before. She had intended then; or, if not then, the grief that had come upon them both had fixed her in her design.

She had escaped. She had taken refuge from herself, knowing her longing heart must betray her did she linger. She had perhaps, in some overwhelming scepticism, taken refuge, in what she craved to be unending sleep, from the haunting figure of her husband. Or perhaps it had been in atonement to Malcolm and she had believed herself going to him. But no; but no; the dull hammer-stroke of conviction fell again and again upon his heart; it had been in despair that she had gone. In going she had turned her back upon her joy.

He had looked a long time when a consciousness of something unfitting pressed in upon his drugged absorption. Looking up from Tony's dear, strange face, he saw that Miss Latimer's eyes were on him and that she was not weeping. Shrivelled, shrunken as she appeared, sitting there, her hair dishevelled, a bright Chinese robe wrapped round her, there was in her gaze none of the fear or the bewilderment of the night before. It saw him, and its cruel radiance was for him; yet it pa.s.sed beyond him.

Free, exultant, it soared above him, above Tony, like a bird rising in crystal heights of air at daybreak. His mind fell back, blunted, from its attempt to penetrate her new significance. He only knew that she did not weep for Tony, that she rejoiced that Tony was dead, and an emotionless but calculating hatred rose in him.

"You see you've killed her," he said. "It wasn't too late last night. If you'd gone in to her last night, after you left me, you could have saved her."

And if he, last night, had gone in to Tony, he could have saved her. He thought of his long vigil. During all those hours that he had guarded her, she had been sinking, sinking away from him. He remembered his vision of her piteous, helpless hands lying on the table. She had stretched herself upon the darkness and it had sucked her down.

Miss Latimer's radiant gaze was upon him; but she made him no reply.

"Curse you!" said the young man. "Curse you!"

She saw him, but it was like the bird, gazing down from its height at the outsoared menace of a half-vanished earth. And her voice came to him now as if from those crystal distances.

"No," she said, "Antonia has saved herself. You drove her to it. You made it her only way."

"You drove her to it, you cursed liar! I could have made her happy. It was me she loved. Yes, take that in, more than she loved Malcolm.

Nothing stood between us but your lies. You determined and plotted it, when the weapon was put into your hands by our folly. You've killed her, and you are glad that she is dead."

She did not pause for his revilement. Her mind was fixed in its exultation. "No; it was Malcolm she loved more dearly. She chose between you. She knew herself too weak to stay. He came for her and she has gone to him. He has forgiven her. The husband and the wife are together."

Bevis leaned his head against the bedpost and closed his eyes. The idle folly of his fury dropped from him. He felt only a sick loathing and exhaustion. "Leave me," he muttered. "You'll not grudge me what I have left. Leave me with her. Never let me see your face again."