IV
"And so the curtain falls on Act Three of this pleasant little drama," said Dunbar, huskily, turning towards the window. "There will be a twenty minutes' interval. But the last act will be played in camera. If only one wasn't so beastly tired—and if only it wasn't all my fault. . . ." His voice broke.
Harkness went up to him, put his arm around him and drew him to him. "Look here. I'm older than both of you. I might almost be your father, so you've got to obey my orders. I'll be best man at your wedding yet, David, yours and Hesther's. There's nobody to blame. Nothing but the fog. But don't let's cheat ourselves either. We're shut up here at half-past five in the morning miles from any help, no way out, no telephone, and two damn Japs who are stronger than we are, in the power of a man who's as mad as a hatter and as bloodthirsty as a tiger.
"It's going to be all right, I tell you. I know it. I feel it in my bones. But we've got to behave for these twenty minutes—only seventeen of them now—as though it won't be. It's of no use for us to make any plan. We'll have to do something on the spur of the moment when we see what the old devil has up his sleeve for us——"
"Meanwhile, as I say, make the best of these minutes."
He put out his arm and drew Hesther in.
"I tell you that I love you both. I've only known you a day, but I love you as I've never loved any one in my life before. I love you as father and brother and comrade. It's the best thing that has happened to me in all my life."
The three, body to body, stood looking out through the gilded bars at the sky, silver grey, and washed with shifting shadows.
"After all," he went on, "if our luck doesn't hold, and we are going to die in the next hour or so, what is it? It's only what millions of fellows passed through in the war and under much more terrible conditions. Imagination is the worst part of that I fancy, and I suggest that we don't think of what is going to happen when this time is over—whether it goes well or ill—we'll fill these twenty minutes with every decent thought we've got, we'll think of every fine thing that we know of, and every beautiful thing, and everything that is of good report."
"All I pray," said Dunbar, "is that I may have one last dash at that lunatic before good-bye. He can have a hundred Japs around him but I'll get at him somehow. Harkness, you're a brick. I brought you into this. I had no right to, but I'm not going to apologise. We're here. The thing's done, and if it hadn't been for that rotten fog——But you're right, Harkness. We'll think of all the ripping things we know. With me it's simple enough. Because the beginning and the middle and the end of it is Hesther. Hesther first and Hesther second and Hesther all the time."
He didn't look at her, but stared out of the window.
"By Jove, the sun's coming. It's been up round the corner ever so long. It will just about hit the window in another ten minutes. It seems kind of stupid to stand here doing nothing."
He stepped forward and felt the bars. "Take hours to get through that, and then there's a drop of hundreds of feet. No, you're about right, Harkness. There's nothing to be done here but to say good-bye as decently as possible."
He sighed. "I didn't want to kick the bucket just yet, but there it is, it can happen to anybody. A fellow can be as strong as a horse, forget to change his socks and next day be finished. This is better than pneumonia anyway! All the same I can't help feeling we missed our chance just now when we had him alone in here——"
"No," said Harkness, "I was watching him. That's what he wanted, for us to go for him. I am sure that he had the Japs handy somewhere, and I think he wanted to hurt us in front of Hesther. But his brain works queerly. He's formulated a kind of book of rules for himself. If we take such and such a step then he will take such and such another. A sort of insane sense of justice. He's worked it all out to the minute. Half the fun for him has been the planning of it, and then the deliberate slowness of it, watching us, calculating what we'll do. Really a cat with mice. There's nothing for deliberate consecutive thinking like a madman's brain."
Hesther broke in:
"We're wasting time. I know—I feel as you do—that it's going to be all right, but however he fails with you he can carry me off somewhere, and so it is very likely that I don't see either of you again for some time. And if that's so—if that's so, I just want to say that you've been the finest men in the world to me.
"And I want you to know that whatever turns up for me now—yes, whatever it is—it can't be as bad as it was before yesterday. I can't ever again be as unhappy as I was now that I've known both of you as I've known you this night.
"I didn't realise, David, how I felt about you until Mr. Harkness showed me. I've been so selfish all these years, and I suppose I shall go on being selfish, because one doesn't change all in a minute, but at least I've got the two best friends a woman ever had."
"Hesther," Dunbar said, turning towards her, "if we get free of this and you can get rid of that man—I ask you as I've asked you every week for the last ten years—will you marry me?"
"Yes," she said. But for the moment she turned to Harkness. He was looking through the bars out to the sky where the mist was now very faintly rose like the coloured smoke of far distant fire. She put her hand on his shoulder, keeping her other hand in Dunbar's.
"I don't know why you said you were so much older than we are. You're not. Do you promise to be the friend of both of us always?"
"Yes," he said. Something mockingly repeated in his brain, "It is a far better thing that I do——"
He burst out laughing. The macaw awoke, put up his head and screamed.
"You are both younger by centuries than I," he said. "I was born old. I was born with the Old Man of Europe singing in my ears. I was born to the inheritance of borrowed culture. The gifts that the fairies gave me at my cradle were Michael Angelo's 'David,' Rembrandt's 'Goldweigher's Field,' the 'Temples at Pæstum,' the Da Vinci 'Last Supper,' the Breughels at Vienna, the view of the Jungfrau from Mürren, the Grand Canal at dawn, Hogarth's prints, and the Quintet of the Meistersinger. Yes, the gifts were piled up all right. But just as they were all showered upon me in stepped the Wicked Fairy and said that I should have them all—on condition that I didn't touch! Never touch—never. At least I've known that they were there, at least I've bent the knee, but—until last night—until last night. . . ."
He suddenly took Hesther's face between his two hands, kissed her on the forehead, on the eyes, on the mouth:
"I don't know what's coming in a quarter of an hour. I don't like to think. To tell you the truth I'm in the devil of a funk. But I love you, I love you, I love you. Like an uncle you know or at least like a brother. You've taken a match and set fire to this old tinder-box that's been dry and dusty so long, and now it's alight—such a pretty blaze!"
He broke away from them both with a smile that suddenly made him look young as they'd never seen him:
"I've danced the town, I've climbed rocks. I've dared the devil. I've fallen in love, and I know at last that there's such a hunger for beauty in my soul that it must go on and on and on. Why should it be there? My parents hadn't it, my sisters haven't it, no one tried to give it to me. I've done nothing with it until last night, but now when I've needed it, it's come to my help. I've touched life at last. I'm alive. I never can die any more!"
The macaw screamed again and again, beating at the cage with its wings.
"Hesther, never lose courage. Remember that he can't touch you, that no one can touch you. You're your own immortal mistress."
The red-lacquered clock struck the quarter, and at the same moment the sun hit the window. Strange to see how instantly that room with the coloured pagodas, the fantastic temple, the gilt chairs and the purple carpet shivered into tinsel. The dust floated on the ladder of the sun: the blue of the early morning sky was coloured faintly like a bird's wing.
The sun flooded the room, wrapping them all in its mantle.
"Let's sit down," said Dunbar, pulling three of the gilt chairs into the centre of the room where the sun shone brightest. "I've a kind of idea that we'll need all the strength we've got in a few minutes. That's fine what you said, Harkness, about being alive, although I didn't follow you altogether.
"I'm not very artistic. A man who's been on the sea since he was a small kid doesn't go to many picture galleries and he doesn't read books much either. To tell you the truth there's always such a lot to do, and when I've finished the Daily Mail there doesn't seem time for much more, except a shocker sometimes. The sort of mess we're in now wouldn't make a bad shocker, would it? Only you'd never be able to make Crispin convincing. All I know is, if I wrote a book about him I'd have him tortured at the end with little red devils and plenty of pincers. However, I get what you mean, Harkness, about being alive.
"I felt something of the same thing in the war sometimes. At Jutland, although I was in the devil of a funk all the time, I was sort of pleased with myself too. Life's always seemed a bit unreal since the armistice, until last night. And it's a funny thing, but when I was helping Hesther climb out of that window and expecting Crispin Junior to poke his head up any minute I had just that same pleased-all-over feeling that I had at Jutland. So that's about the same as you feel, Harkness, only different, of course, because of your education. . . . Hesther, if we win out of this and you marry me I'll be so good to you—so good to you—that——"
He beat his hands desperately on his knees. "Here's the time slipping and we don't seem to be doing anything with it. It's always been my trouble that I've never been able to say what I mean—couldn't find words, you know. I can't now, but it's simple enough what I mean——"
Hesther said: "If we only have ten minutes like this it's so hard to choose what you would say, but I'd like you to know, David, that I remember everything we've ever done together—the time I missed the train at Truro and was so frightened about father, and you said you'd come in with me, and father hadn't even noticed I'd been away; and the time you brought me the pink fan from Madrid; and the time I had that fever and you sat up all night outside my room, those two days father was away; and the day Billy fell over the Bring Rock and you climbed down after him; and the time you brought me that Sealyham and father wouldn't let me have him; and the time just before you went off to South Africa and I wouldn't say good-bye. I've hurt you so many times and you've never been angry with me once—or only that once. Do you remember the day I struck you in the face because you said I was more like a boy than a girl? I thought you were laughing at me because I was so untidy and dirty and so I hit you. And do you remember you sprang on me like a tiger, and for a moment I thought you were going to kill me? You said no one had ever struck you without getting it back. Then suddenly you pulled yourself in—just like going inside and shutting your door.
"I've never seen you until to-night, David. I've been blind to you. You've been too close to me for me to see you. It will be all right. We'll come out of this and then we'll have such times—such wonderful times——"
She came up to him, drew his head to her breast. He knelt on the floor at her feet, his arms round her, his head on her bosom. She stroked his hair, looking out beyond him to the blue of the sky.
Harkness felt a mad wildness of impatience. He went to the window and tugged at the bars. In despair his hands fell to his side.
"The only chance, Dunbar, is to go straight for him the moment we're out of this room, even if those damned Japs are with him. We can't do much, but we may smash him up a bit first. Then there's Jabez. We've forgotten Jabez. Where's he been all this time?"
Dunbar looked up. "I expect he went home after we went off."
"No," said Harkness, "he was to be there till six. He told me. What's happened to him? At any rate he'll give the alarm if we don't turn up."
"No, he'll think we got safely off."
"Yes, I suppose he will. My God, it's five to six. Look here, stand up a moment."
They stood up.
"Let's take hands. Let's swear this. Whatever happens to us now, whether some of us survive or none, whether we die now or live happily ever afterwards, we'll be friends forever, nothing shall ever separate us, for better or worse we're together for always."
They swore it.
"And see here. If I don't come out of this don't have any regrets either of you. Don't think you brought me into this against my will. Don't think that whichever way it goes I regret a moment of it. You've given me the finest time."
Dunbar laughed. "I sort of feel we're going to have a chance yet. After all, he's been probably playing with us, trying to frighten us. There'll be nothing in it, you see. Anyway I'll get a crack at his skull, and now that I've got you, Hesther, I wouldn't give up this night for all the wealth of the Indies. I don't know about life or death. I've never thought much about it, to tell you the honest truth, but I bet that any one who's as fond of any one as I am of you can't be very far away whatever happens to their body."
"There goes six."
The red lacquer clock struck. Hesther flung her arms around Harkness and kissed him, then Dunbar.
They all stood listening. Just as the clock ceased there was a knock at the door.