CHAPTER VIII
I
Hapgood across the coffee cups, the liqueur glasses and the cigarettes, wagged a solemn head at that friend of his, newly returned from a long visit to America. He wagged a solemn head:
"She's got her divorce, that wife of his....
"Eh?... Well, man alive, where do you expect me to begin? You insinuate yourself into a Government commission to go to America to lecture with your 'Sketchbook on the Western Front', and I write you about six letters to every one I get out of you, and you come back and expect me to give you a complete social and political and military record of everything that's happened in your absence. Can't you read?...
"Well, have it your own way. I've told you in my letters how he went on after that collapse, that brain hemorrhage. I told you we got Ormond Clive on to him. I told you we got him up here eventually to Clive's own nursing home in Welbeck Place. Clive was a friend of that Lady Tybar. She was with Sabre all the time he was in Queer Street—and it was queer, I give you my word. Pretty well every day I'd look in. Every day she'd be there. Every day Ormond Clive would come. Time and again we'd stand around the bed, we three,—watching. Impenetrable and extraordinary business! There was his body, alive, breathing. His mind, his consciousness, his ego, his self, his whatever you like to call it—not there. Away. Absent. Not in that place. Departed into, and occupied in that mysterious valley where those cases go. What was he doing there? What was he seeing there? What was he thinking there? Was he in touch with this that belonged to him here? Was he sitting in some fastness, dark and infinitely remote, and trying to rid himself of this that belonged to him here? Was he trying to get back to it, to resume habitation and possession and command? It was rummy. It was eerie. It was creepy. It was like staring down into a dark pit and hearing little tinkling sounds of some one moving there, and wondering what the devil he was up to. Yes, it was creepy....
"Process of time he began to come back. He'd struck a light down there, as you might say, and you could see the dim, mysterious glimmer of it, moving about, imperceptibly coming up the side. Now brighter, now fainter; now here, now there. Rummy, I can tell you. But he was coming up. He was climbing up out of that place where he had been. What would he remember? Yes, and what was he coming up to?
"What was he coming up to? That was what began to worry me. This divorce suit of his wife's was climbing up its place in the list. He was climbing up out of the place where he had been and this case was climbing up towards hearing. Do you get me? Do you get my trouble? Soon as his head emerged up out of the pit, was he going to be bludgeoned down into it again by going through in the Divorce Court precisely that which had bludgeoned him down at the inquest? Was I going to get the case held up so as to keep him for that? Or what was I going to do? I hadn't been instructed to prepare his defence. At Brighton, when I'd suggested it, he'd told me, politely, to go to hell. I hadn't been instructed; no one had been instructed. And there was no defence to prepare. There was only his bare word, only his flat denial—denial flat, unprofitable, and totally unsupported. The only person who could support it was the girl, and she was dead: she was much worse than dead: she had died in atrocious circumstances, his part in which had earned him the severe censure of the coroner's jury. His defence couldn't have been worse. He'd tied himself in damning knots ever since he'd first set eyes on the girl, and all he could bring to untie them was simply to say, 'It wasn't so.' His defence was as bad as if he were to stand up before the Divorce Court and say, 'Before she died the girl wrote and signed a statement exonerating me and fixing the paternity on so-and-so. He's dead, too, that so-and-so, and as for her signed statement, I'm sorry to say I destroyed it, forgetting I should need it in this suit. I was worried about something else at the time, and I quite forgot this and I destroyed it.'
"I don't say his defence would be quite so crudely insulting to the intelligence of the court as that; but I say the whole unsupported twisting and turning and writhing and wriggling of it was not far short of it.
"Well, that was how I figured it out to myself in those days, as the case came along for hearing; and I said to myself: Was I going to put in affidavits for a stay of hearing for the pleasure of seeing him nursed back to life to go through that agony and ordeal of the inquest again and come out with the same result as if he hadn't been there at all? And I decided—no; no, thanks; not me. It was too much like patching up a dying man in a civilised country for the pleasure of hanging him, or like fatting up a starving man in a cannibal country for the satisfaction of eating him.
"And I had this. In further support of my position I had this. My friend, the Divorce Court is a cynical institution. If a respondent and a corespondent have been in places and in circumstances where they might have incriminated themselves, the Divorce Court cynically assumes that, being human, they would have incriminated themselves. 'But,' it says to the petitioner, 'I want proof, definite and satisfactory proof of those places and of those circumstances. That's what I want. That's what you've got to give me.'
"Very well. Listen to me attentively. Lend me your ears. The onus of that proof rests on the petitioner. Because a case is undefended, it doesn't for one single shadow of a chance follow that the petitioner's plea is therefore going to be granted. No. The Divorce Court may be cynical, but it's a stickler for proof. The Divorce Court says to the petitioner, 'It's up to you. Prove it. Never mind what the other side isn't here to deny. What you've got to do is to satisfy me, to prove to me that these places and these circumstances were so. Go ahead. Satisfy me if you can.'
"So I said to myself: now the places and the circumstances of this petition unquestionably were so. All the Sabres in the world couldn't deny that. Let his wife go ahead and prove them to the satisfaction of the Court, if she can. If she can't; good; no harm done that he wasn't there to be bludgeoned anew. If she can satisfy the court, well, I say to you, my friend, as I said then to myself, and I say it deliberately: 'If she can satisfy the court—good again, better, excellent. He's free: he's free from a bond intolerable to both of them.'
"Right. The hearing came on and his wife did satisfy the Court. She got her decree. He's free.... That's that....
"Yesterday I took my courage in both hands and told him. Yesterday Ormond Clive said Sabre might be cautiously approached about things. For three weeks past Clive's not let us—me or that Lady Tybar—see him. Yesterday we were permitted again; and I took steps to be there first. I told him. There was one thing I'd rather prayed for to help me in the telling, and it came off—he didn't remember! He'd come out of that place where he had been with only a confused recollection of all that had happened to him before he went in. Like a fearful nightmare that in the morning one remembers only vaguely and in bits. Vaguely and in bits he remembered the inquest horror, and vaguely and in bits he remembered the divorce matter—and he thought the one was as much over as the other. He thought he had been divorced. I said to him, taking it as the easiest way of breaking my news, I said to him, 'You know your wife's divorced you, old man?' He said painfully, 'Yes, I know. I remember that.'
"I could have stood on my head and waved my heels with relief and joy. Of course it will come back to him in time that the business hadn't happened before his illness. In time he'll begin to grope after detailed recollection, and he'll begin to realise that he never did go through it and that it must have happened while he was ill. Well, I don't funk that. That won't happen yet awhile; and when it does happen I'm confident enough that something else will have happened meanwhile and that he'll see, and thank God for it, that what is is best. There'll be another thing too. He'll find his wife has married again. Yes, fact! I heard in a roundabout way that she's going to marry an old neighbour of theirs, chap called Major Millett, Hopscotch Millett, old Sabre used to call him. However, that's not the thing—though it would be a complication—that I mean will have happened and will make him see, and thank God for, that what is is best. What do I mean? What will have happened meanwhile? Well, that's telling; and I don't feel it's quite mine to tell. Tell you what, you come around and have a look at the old chap to-morrow. I dare bet he'll be on the road towards it by then and perhaps tell us himself. As I was coming away yesterday I passed that Lady Tybar going in, and I told her what I'd been saying to him and what he remembered and what he didn't remember.... What's that got to do with it? Well, you wait and see, my boy. You wait and see. I'll tell you this—come on, let's be getting off to this play or we'll be late—I tell you this, it's my belief of old Sabre that, after all he's been through,
"Home is the sailor, home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hill.
Or jolly soon will be. And good luck to him. He's won out."
II
Sabre, after Hapgood on the visit on which he had begun "to tell him things", had left him, was sitting propped up in bed awaiting who next might come. The nurse had told him he was to have visitors that morning. He sat as a man might sit at daybreak, brooding down upon a valley whence slowly the veiling mists dissolved. These many days they had been lifting; there were becoming apparent to him familiar features about the landscape. He was as one returned after long absence to his native village and wondering to find forgotten things again, paths he had walked, scenes he had viewed, places and people left long ago and still enduring here. More than that: he was to go down among them.
The door opened and one came in. Nona.
She said to him, "Marko!"
He had no reply that he could make.
She slipped off a fur that she was wearing and came and sat down beside him. She wore what he would have thought of as a kind of waistcoat thing, cut like his own waistcoats but short; and opened above like a waistcoat but turned back in a white rolled edging, revealing all her throat. She had a little closefitting hat banded with flowers and a loose veil depended from it. She put back the veil. Beauty abode in her face as the scent within the rose, Hapgood had said; and, as perfume deeply inhaled, her serene and tender beauty penetrated Sabre's senses, propped up, watching her. He had something to say to her.
"How long is it since I have seen you, Nona?"
"It's a month since I was here, Marko."
"I don't remember it."
"You've been very ill; oh, so ill."
He said slowly, "Yes, I think I've been down in a pretty deep place."
"You're going to be splendid now, Marko."
He did not respond to her tone. He said, "I've come on a lot in the last few weeks. I'd an idea you'd been about me before that. I'd an idea you'd be coming again. There's a thing I've been thinking out to tell you."
She breathed, "Yes, tell me, Marko."
But he did not answer.
She said, "Have you been thinking, in these weeks, while you've been coming on, what you are going to do?"
His hands, that had been crumpling up the sheet, were now laid flat before him. His eyes, that had been regarding her, were now averted from her, fixed ahead. "There is nothing I can do, in the way you mean."
She was silent a little time.
"Marko, we've not talked at all about the greatest thing—of course they've told you?—the Armistice, the war won. England, your England that you loved so, at peace, victorious; those dark years done. England her own again. Your dear England, Marko."
He said, "It's no more to do with me. Frightful things have happened to me. Frightful things."
She stretched a hand to his. He moved his hands away. "Marko, they're done. I would not have spoken of them. But shall I.... Your dear England in those years suffered frightful things. She suffered lies, calumnies, hateful and terrible things—not in one little place but across the world. Those who loved her trusted her and she has come through those dark years; and those who know you have trusted you always, and you are coming through those days to show to all. Time, Marko; time heals all things, forgets all things, and proves all things. There's that for you."
He shook his head with a quick, decisive motion.
She went on. "There's your book—your 'England.' You have that to go to now. And all your plans—do you remember telling me all your plans? Such splendid plans. And first of all your 'England' that you loved writing so."
He said, "It can't be. It can't be."
She began again to speak. He said, "I don't want to hear those things. They're done. I don't want to be told those things. They have nothing to do with me."
She tried to present to him indifferent subjects for his entertainment. She could not get him to talk any more. Presently she said, with a movement, "I am not to stay with you very long."
He then aroused himself and spoke and had a firmness in his voice. "And I'll tell you this," he said. "This was what I said I had to tell you. When you go, you are not to return. I don't want to see you again."
She drew a breath, steadying herself, "Why not, Marko?"
"Because what's been has been. Done. I've been through frightful things. They're on me still. They always will be on me. But from everything that belongs to them I want to get right away. And I'm going to."
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know. Only get right away."
She got up. "Very well. I understand." She turned away. "It grieves me, Marko. But I understand. I've always understood you." She turned again and came close to him. "That's what you're going to do. Do you know what I'm going to do?"
He shook his head. He was breathing deeply.
"I'm going to do what I ought to have done the minute I came into the room. I hadn't quite the courage. This."
She suddenly stooped over him. She encircled him with her arms and slightly raised him to her. She put her lips to his and kissed him and held him so.
"You are never going to leave me, Marko. Never, never, never, till death."
He cried, "Beloved, Beloved," and clung to her. "Beloved, Beloved!" and clung to her....
Postscript.... This went through the mail bearing postmark, September, 1919:
"And seeing in the picture newspaper photograph with printing called 'Lady Tybar, widow of the late Lord Tybar, V.C., who is marrying Mr. Mark Sabre (inset)' and never having been in comfortable situation since leaving Penny Green, have expected you might be wishing for cook and house parlourmaid as before and would be most pleased and obliged to come to you, which if you did not remember us at first were always called by you hi! Jinks and lo! Jinks, and no offence ever taken, as knowing it was only your way and friendly. And so will end now and hoping you may take us and oblige, your obedient servants
"Sarah Jinks (hi!)
"Rebecca Jinks (lo!)"