The Dark House

by I. A. R. Wylie

IV

1

After all, Rufus Cosgrave had imagined his answers. Connie Edwards met Robert as he came out of the hospital gates and told him. It was raining dismally, with an ill-tempered wind blustering down the crowded street, and she had not dressed for bad weather. Perhaps she did not admit unpleasant possibilities even into her wardrobe. Perhaps she could not afford to do so. Her thin, paper-soled shoes, with the Louis XIV heels, and the cheap silk stockings which showed up to her knees, made her look like some bedraggled, long-legged bird-of-Paradise. A gaudy parasol could not protect her flopping hat, or her complexion, which had both suffered. Or she had been crying. But she did not sound as though she had been crying. She sounded breathless and resentful.

"He heard this afternoon," she said. "And what must he do but come bursting round to my place—half an hour before I'm due to start for the show—and carry on like a madman. Scared stiff, I was. Tried to make me swear I'd marry him and start for Timbuctoo to-morrow, and when I wouldn't, wanted to shoot himself and me too—as though I'd made a muck of things. Well, I'd done my best, and when it came to that sort of sob-stuff I'd had enough. What's he take me for? Get me into trouble with my landlady—making a row like that."

Robert heard her out in silence, and his intent, expressionless scrutiny seemed to flick her on the raw. She stamped her foot at him. "Oh, for the Lord's sake, get a move on—-do something, can't you? I didn't come here to be stared at as though I were a disease!"

"Where is he?"

"If I knew——! My place probably—with the gas full on—committing suicide—making a rotten scandal. You've got to come and dig him out."

"Where do you live?"

"Ten minutes from here. 10E Stanton Place. I'll show you a short way. I ran like a hare, hoping I'd catch you, and you'd put a bit of sense into the poor looney's head. Serves me right—taking on with his sort."

"Well—we'd better hurry," Robert said.

"Thanks. I said I'd show you the way. I'm not coming in. Don't you believe it. I've had enough. All I ask is—get him out and keep him out."

"You're through with him?"

Her habitual good-natured gaiety was gone. She looked disrupted and savagely afraid, like an animal that has escaped capture by a frantic effort. And yet it was difficult to imagine Rufus Cosgrave capturing or frightening anyone.

"You bet I'm through with him. You tell him so—tell him I don't want to see him again—I won't be bothered——" She broke off, and added, with a kind of rough relenting: "Put it any blessed way you like—say what's true—we've had our good times together—and it seems they're over—we've no use for one another."

"You mean—now he's failed."

"What do you mean—'now he's failed'? What's his rotten old exam got to do with me? I don't even know what it's about."

"You took the good time whilst you could get it, and now when you can't hope for anything more——"

She stopped short, and they faced each other with an antagonism that neither gave nor asked for quarter. They had always been enemies, and now that the gloves were off they were almost glad.

"So that's my line. Cradle-snatching. Vamping the helpless infant!" She burst into a fit of angry, ugly laughter. "A good time! Running round with a poor kid with ten shillings a week pocket-money—eating in beastly cheap restaurants—riding on the tops of 'buses when some girls I know are feeding at the Ritz and rolling round in limousines. That's what I get for being soft. And now because I won't shoot myself, or go off to nowhere steerage, I'm a bad, abandoned woman. What d'you take me for?"

"What you are," he said.

She went dead white under her streaky paint.

"You—you've got no right to say that. You're a devil—a stuck-up devil—I hate you—I'd have always hated you if I'd bothered to mind. I—I gave him a good time. That's the truth. He was down and out when I met him, and I set him on his feet. I didn't mind what I missed—or the other girls guying me—I made him laugh and believe he had as good a chance in the world as anyone else. I put a bit of fun into him. I liked the kid. I—I like him now. If he wanted a good time to-morrow I'd run round with him again. But I'm no movie heroine—I'm not out for poison and funerals and slow music. Life's too damn serious for my sort to make a wail and a moan about it."

He stood close to her. He almost menaced her. He did in fact look dangerous enough with his white, set face and unflinching eyes in which stood two points of metallic light. If he had seen himself then he might have cowered away as from a ghost.

"I don't care a rap about you. I do care about my friend. You've got to stand by Cosgrave till he's over the worst."

"I won't—I won't!"

"I'll make you. You took him up. You made him think you cared about him. You're responsible——"

"I'm not—I won't be responsible; it's not my line. I've got myself to look after."

She had the look of someone struggling against an invisible entanglement—a pitiable, rather horrible look of naked purpose. She meant to cut free at whatever cost.

"You little beast!" he said.

He was sick with contempt. He swung away from her, and she stood in the middle of the pavement and called names after him like a drunken, furious street-girl. She did not seem to be even aware of the people who stared at her. When he was almost out of hearing, she added:

"Give him my love!" shrilly, vindictively, as though it had been a final insult. But he took no notice and now, at any rate, she was crying bitterly enough.

2

"E" proved to be the top room of No. 10, a dingy lodging-house whose front door, in accordance with the uncertain habits of its patrons, stood open from year's end to year's end. Robert went in unnoticed. He ran up the steep, narrow stairs, with their tattered carpeting, two steps at a time. A queer elation surged beneath his anger and distress. Cosgrave's failure was like a personal challenge—a defiance thrown in his teeth. The old fight was on again. It was against odds. But then, he had always fought against odds—won against them.

The room was Connie Edwards herself. It seemed to rush out at him in a tearing rage, flaunting its vulgar finery and its odour of bad scent and cheap cigarette smoke. It made him sick, and he brushed it out of his consciousness. He did not see the poor attempts to make it decent and attractive—the bed disguised beneath a faded Liberty cretonne, a sentimental Christ hanging between a galaxy of matinee heroes, nor a full-length woman's portrait, across which was scrawled "Gyp Labelle" in letters large enough to conceal half of her outrageous nakedness. There were even a few flowers, drooping forlornly out of a dusty vase, and a collection of theatrical posters, to lend a touch, of serious professionalism.

But the end of it all was a frowzy, hopeless disorder.

Cosgrave lay huddled over the littered table by the open window. The red untidy head made a patch of grotesque colour in the general murk. He looked like a poor rag doll that had been torn and battered in some wild carnival scrimmage and flung aside.

There was not much in him—not much fight, as he himself said. Not the sort to survive. Life was too strong—too difficult for him. He bungled everything—even an exam. It would be wiser, more consistent to let him drift. And yet at sight of that futile breakdown, it was not impatience or contempt that Robert felt, but a choking tenderness—a fierce pity. He had to protect him—pull him through. He had promised so much—he forgot when: that afternoon lying in the long, sooty grass behind the biscuit factory, or that night when he had dragged Cosgrave breathless and staggering in pursuit of the Greatest Show in Europe. It did not matter. It had become part of himself. And Cosgrave had always trusted him—believed in him.

"It's all right, old man; it's only me—Robert." For Cosgrave had leapt up with an eager cry, and now stood staring at him open-mouthed. The light was behind him, and the open mouth and blank, shadowy face made a queer, ghastly effect, as though a drowned man had suddenly stood up. Then he sagged pitifully, and Robert caught him by the shoulders and shook him with a rough, boyish impatience. "Don't be an idiot. It doesn't matter all that much. Exams are not everything. Everyone knows that. We'll find something else. If your people are too beastly, you'll come and share with us. I'll see you through—it'll be all right."

But a baffling change came over Cosgrave. He shook himself free. He stood upright, looking at Robert with a kind of stony dignity.

"Where is she?"

"Who?"

"Connie. She sent you, didn't she?"

"Yes. We met——"

"Where is she?"

"I don't know. Gone to the theatre probably."

"Isn't she coming back?"

"Not now."

"Didn't she send a message?"

"She said—it was finish between you. She's a little rotter, Cosgrave."

"She made me laugh," Cosgrave said simply. "I don't mind about the exam.—or about anything now. I suppose I was bound to fail. But I was so jolly happy. I'd never had a good time like that. It's all over now. She doesn't care. She said she couldn't be tied up with a lot of trouble. That's what I am. A lot of trouble. It was all bunkum—make-believe—to think I could be anything else."

So it wasn't his failure. It wasn't even the loss of a good-for-nothing chorus-girl. It was a loss far more subtle. The recognition of it lamed Robert Stonehouse, knocked the power out of him, as though someone had struck and paralysed a vital nerve centre. He could only stammer futilely:

"She's not worth bothering about."

Cosgrave slumped back into his chair. His hands lay on the table, half clenched as though they had let go and didn't care any more. He looked at Robert wide-eyed with a sudden absolute knowledge.

"That's it," he said. "Not worth bothering about—nothing in this whole beastly, rotten, world. . . . . ."

3

A convenient uncle found him a berth as clerk to a trading firm in West Africa, and with a cheap Colonial outfit and 10 pounds in his pocket, Cosgrave set out for the particular swamp which was to be the scene of his future career. He went docilely, with limp handshakes and dull, pathetic eyes. If he betrayed any feeling at all, it was a sort of relief at getting away from everybody. But emotionally he was dead—like cheap champagne gone flat, as he expressed it in one twisted mood of self-revelation.

Probably he was thinking of Connie Edwards and of their last spree together.

But he never spoke of her.

And it was very unlikely that the swamp would give him a chance to see any of them again.

After all, he had stood for something. He was a rudderless little craft that had come leaking and tumbling willy-nilly in the wake of the bigger vessel. But also he had been a sort of talisman. He had protected Robert as the weak, when they are humble and loving, can protect the strong, giving them greater confidence, making their defeat impossible. With his going went security. Little old fears came crawling out of their hiding-places. At night when Robert climbed the dark stairs to their stable-attic, they set upon him. They clawed his heart. He called to Christine before he saw her, and the answering silence made him sick with panic. It was reasonless panic, for Christine often fell asleep at dusk. She was difficult to wake and when she woke it was strangely, with a look of bewilderment, like a traveller who has come home after a long absence. Once she had spoken his father's name with a ringing joy, and he had answered roughly and had seen her shrink back into herself. Her little hands trembled, fumbling apologetically with the shabby bag she always carried. She was like a girl who, in one withering tragic moment, had become old. But his aching love found no outlet, no word of regret or tenderness. It recoiled back on himself in a dead weight of pain.

He began to watch himself like a sick man. There were hours when he knew his brain to be losing edge—black periods of hideous impotency which, when they passed, left him shaken and wet with terror. Supposing, at the end of everything, be failed? He didn't care so much. His very power of caring had been dissipated. His single purpose lost itself amidst incompatible dreams. He was being torn asunder—and there was a limit to endurance.

Cosgrave had failed. He couldn't concentrate. He was always looking for happiness. He had fallen in love and wasted himself and made a mess of his life.

It was mad to fall in love.

And yet the worst dread of all was the dread of losing Francey. It seemed even the most unreasonable, for they had their work in common and they loved one another. There was no doubting their love. They were very young and might have to wait, but he could trust her to wait all her life. He knew dimly that she had been fond of him as a little boy, and had gone on being fond of him, simply and unconsciously, because it was not possible for her to forget. She would love him in the same way. That steadfastness was like a light shining through the mists of her character—through her sudden fancies, her shadowy withdrawals.

And still he was afraid, and sometimes he suspected that she was afraid too. It was as though inexorable forces were rising up in both of them, essentially of them, and yet outside their control, two dark antagonisms waiting sorrowfully to join issue.

4

It had happened suddenly—not without warning. One little event trod on the heels of another, rubble skirling down the mountain-side, growing to an avalanche.

Or, again, Cosgrave might have been the odd, unlikely keystone of their daily life. He had not seemed to matter much, but now that he had been torn out the bridge between them crumbled.

It had been a day full of bitterness—of set-backs, which to Robert Stonehouse were like pointing fingers. They were the outward expressions of his disorder. He did not believe in luck, but in a man's strength or weakness, and he knew by the things that happened to him that he was weakening. A private operation had gone badly. He had bungled with his dressings, so that the surgeon had turned on him in a burst of irritation.

"Better go home and sleep it off, Stonehouse."

He had not gone. He would not admit that he was ill—dared not. All illness now meant the end of everything. It would wipe out all that they had endured if he were to break down now. It would kill Christine. She must not even guess.

He hung about the hospital common-room. The summer heat surging up from the burning pavements stagnated between the faded walls. He could not touch the food that he had brought with him. He was faint and sick, and the long table at which he sat, with its white blur of newspapers, rose and fell as though it were floating on an oily sea. But he held out. At five o'clock he was to meet Francey at the gates, and, as though she had some magic gift of relief, he strained towards that time, his head between his hands, his ears counting the seconds that dripped heavily, drowsily from the moon-faced clock.

And then she did not come. Outwardly it was only one more trifle, capable of simple explanations. But he saw it through a disfiguring haze of fever, and it was deadly in its significance. He hardly waited. He crossed the thoroughfare, and once in a side street stumbled into a shambling run. He did not stop until he reached her house. His former reluctance broke before the imperative need to see her and make sure of her. He stormed the broad, deep, carpeted stairs, pursued by a senseless panic, But at the top his strength failed him. He felt his brain throbbing in torture against his skull.

The old maid-servant nodded gravely, sympathetically.

"Yes, she's in, sir, but very busy—going away—sir." Going away. He wavered in the dim hall, trying to control his flying thoughts. Going away. And she had said nothing the night before—had not even warned him. Some unexpected, untoward event striking in the dark. Illness. A long separation. (And yet, he argued, he could not live without her. She had no people who could claim her. They were dead. No one to come between them. And there was her work. She would never leave that again.)

But there she stood in the midst of the disorder of a sudden going. Open suit-cases, clothes strewn about the floor, she herself in some loose, bright-coloured wrap, her brown hair tousled and her brows knit in perplexity. She stopped short at sight of him, smiling ruefully, her arms full.

"Oh, my dear—I'd forgotten." (Then she must have seen his face with its dead whiteness, for she added quickly, half laughing): "Not you. Only the time. I've not been at the hospital, and I thought I had still half an hour. I've had to run round like mad, and even now I've got a hundred things to do——"

He gulped. He said: "Where are you going?" in a flat, emotionless voice, as though he did not care.

For a moment she did not answer. She let the clothes drop, forgotten, on the sofa. He could see her weighing—considering what she should say to him.

"Italy—Rome—I expect——"

"Italy—when?"

"I've got to be at the hospital to-morrow. Wednesday probably. I don't believe it'll be for long. I hope not. A week or two. I've got leave for a month."

"Why are you going?"

And now he could not keep the harsh break out of his voice. He could not hide the physical weakness which made it impossible for him to stand. And yet, though she looked at him, she seemed unaware that he was suffering. She was absorbed in some difficulty of her own, set on her own immediate purpose. He knew that mood. It was the other side of her fitful, whimsical way of life that she could be as relentless, as deadly resolute and patient in attainment as himself.

"It's about Howard," she said, abruptly coming to a decision. "I wasn't sure at first what to do about it. I didn't want anyone to know. But you're different. We have to share things. Howard and Gertie—they've both gone—gone off—no one knows where."

"Together?"

"I'm pretty certain of it. At any rate, Gertie, who couldn't even pay her rent, has vanished, and Howard—I heard about Howard this morning."

"What did you hear about him?"

"It was from Salter. You probably don't know him. He came to me because he knew I was a friend of Howard's. He was frightfully upset. It seems there was some sort of club which a crowd of students were collecting for, and he and Howard held the funds. It wasn't much—150 pounds—and Howard drew it out two days ago."

"Does that astonish you?" Robert asked.

She seemed not to hear the scorn and irony of the question. She went on packing deliberately, and he watched her, not knowing what he would say or do. The tide was rising faster. His dread would carry him off his feet.

"No. I was sure things were coming to a crisis."

"He was no good. Anyone could see that."

"I didn't see it."

"Well, you see it now," he flung at her with a hard triumph.

"I don't."

"A mean thief——"

"Not mean, Robert."

"I don't know anything meaner than stealing money from a lot of hard-up students."

"There was Gertie," she said as though that were some sort of extenuation.

"Gertie—they've gone off on some rotten spree—not even married."

(He hated himself—the beastly righteousness of his voice, his contemptible exultation. It was as though he were under some horrid spell which twisted his love and anguish into the expressions of a spiteful prig. Why couldn't he tell her of those deadly, shapeless fears, of his loneliness, his sorrowful jealousies? He was shut up in the iron fastness of his own will—gagged and helpless.)

He saw her start. She stopped definitely in her work as though she were at last aware of some struggle between them. The room was growing dark, and she came a little nearer, trying to see his face.

"I don't suppose so. I don't think it would occur to them."

"No—that's what I should imagine."

"You're awfully hard on people, Robert."

"That sort of thing makes me sick. It ought to make you sick. I don't know why it doesn't. You don't seem to care—to have any standards. You're unmoral in your outlook—perhaps you're too young—you don't realize. A rotter like Howard who takes other people's money just to enjoy himself—a girl like Gertie Sumners who goes off with the first man who asks her——"

"You don't understand, Robert."

"No," he said with a laugh, "I don't."

"Gertie Sumners hasn't long to live. I sent her to the hospital last week, and they told her honestly. And she wanted so much to see Italy. I don't think Howard cares for her or she for him, except in a comradely sort of way. They loved the same things—and he was sorry—he wanted to give her her one good time."

"He told you all that, I suppose?"

"No," she answered soberly. "But I know."

He waited a moment. He was trying desperately to hold back—to stop himself. He was sorry about Gertie Sumners. But everything was against him. The room was against him—the faun dancing noiselessly among the shadows, the little things that Francey had gathered about her, the dear personal things that can become terrible in their poignancy, Francey herself, standing there slender and grave-eyed, judging him, weighing him. They were all leagued together. They spoke with one voice. "We belong TO one another. We understand. But you don't belong. You are outside."

"I don't see, at any rate," he said, "what it has got to do with you—or why you should be going away."

"I'm going after them. There's no one else. Howard will expect prosecution. He will think that he'll never be able to come home. He's pretty reckless, but they will be thinking of that all the time. It will spoil everything for them."

"And what can you do?"

"I can tell them it's all right."

"How can it be?"

"It is," she said curtly. "The money has been paid back."

"Paid back!" Understanding burst upon him. "You paid it?"

He stood up. He knew that resentment flickered in her—a fine, dangerous resentment against him because he had dragged so simple and obvious a thing out of its insignificance. But his own anger was like a mad, runaway horse, rushing him to destruction.

"It was stupid of him not to have come to me in the first place," she said, with an effort. "He should have known——"

He broke in fiercely.

"You can't—can't go like that."

"I must. If they had left an address—but, of course, they haven't. I'll have to track them down. It won't be so difficult." A spark of gaiety lit up her serious eyes. "I'll find Gertie lying on her back in the Sistine Chapel. She'll scorn the mirrors."

"You can't leave your work like that."

"The hospital people have been awfully decent about it."

"You told them——?"

"I told them I had urgent, personal business."

"You told them a lie, then?"

(Steady. Steady. But it was too late. His only hope lay in her understanding—her pity.)

"It wasn't a lie. My friends are my business."

"Your friends!" he echoed.

There was silence between them. She was controlled enough not to answer. It would have been better if she had returned taunt for taunt so that at last in the white heat of conflict his prison might have melted and let him free. But there followed a cold, deadly interlude, in which their antagonism hardened itself with reason and bitterness. He went and stood by the window looking out on to the dim square. He said at last roughly, authoritatively:

"Don't go. I don't want you to go."

(If only he could have gone on—driven the words over his set lips—"because I'm afraid—because I'm at breaking-point—because I can't do without you. I'm frightened of life. I've been starved in body and heart too long. I'm frightened because Christine is hard to wake at night—because I can't work any more.")

"I've got to," she said briefly, sternly.

He walked from the window to the door.

"You don't care. You care more for these two than you do for me. I've lived hard and clean. I don't lie or steal. I've never thought of any girl but you. And you put me second to a feckless thief and a——"

She stopped him. Not with a word or gesture, but with the sheer upward blaze of a chivalrous anger. And it was not only anger. That would have been bearable. It was sorrow, reproach, a kind of grieving bewilderment, as though he had changed before her eyes.

"You'd—you'd better go, Robert. We're both of us out of hand. We'll see each other to-morrow. It will be different then."

He went without a word. But on the dark stairs he stood still, leaning back against the wall, his wet face between his hands. He said aloud: "Oh, Francey. Francey, I can't live without you!" He would have gone back to tell her, but he was physically at the end of everything, and at the mercy of the power outside himself. He thought:

"There's still to-morrow. I'll tell her everything. I'll help her to get away. I'll make her understand that it wasn't Howard. To-morrow it will be all right."

And so went on. And the stolid Georgian door closed with a hard metallic click, setting its teeth against him.

"Now you see how it happens, Robert Stonehouse!"

5

But he came out of a night of fever and hallucination with very little left but the will to keep on. Apathy, like a thin protecting skin, had grown over him, shielding him from further hurt. He did not want to feel or care any more. The very memory of that "scene" with Francey made him shrink with a kind of physical disgust. Only no more of that. Back to work—back to reason. If she wished to go in pursuit of Howard and Gertie she would have to go. It seemed strange to him now that he should have minded so desperately.

Christine called to him as he passed her door.

"Is that you, Robert? Have you had your breakfast? Wait, dear—I'll get it for you."

But he crept down the stairs as though he had not heard. Only not so much caring—if only he could forget that he cared.

"Good-bye, dearest, good-bye!"

Her voice followed him, plaintive and clear. It seemed to lodge itself in his heart so that ever afterwards he had only to think of her to hear it like the echo of a small, sad bell. He went on stubbornly, in silence.

He did not try to see Francey. They met inevitably in the wake of the surgeon on whose post they worked, but they did not speak. Their eyes avoided one another. Yet he could not forget her. It was not the old consciousness that had been full of mystery and delight. It hurt. He felt her unsapped joyous living like a blow on his own aching weariness. He thought bitterly of her. How easy life had been for her! She played at living. Her airy fancies, her belief in God, her vagrant tenderness for the rag and bobtail of the earth were all part of that same thing. She had never suffered. Her people had died, but they had died in the odour of sanctity and wealth. She had never had to ask herself: "If I fall out, what will become of us?" She saw pain and poverty through the softening veil of her own well-being. Nothing could really hurt her.

(And yet how lovable she was! He watched her covertly as she stood at the surgeon's elbow—a little graver than usual—a little paler. To-day there was no warm glance with a flicker of a smile in its serene depths to greet him. Her hands were thrust boyishly into the pockets of her white coat, and there was an air of austere earnestness about her that sat quaintly, charmingly upon her youth. He loved the businesslike simplicity of her dress—the dark, tailored skirt and white silk shirt—immaculate—expressive of her real ability, an accustomed wealth. He flaired and hated its expensiveness.)

Money. That lay at the root of everything. If she were ill—what would it matter? A mere set-back. Her work would wait for her. Money would wave anxiety from her door. So she was never ill. Even though she loved him and they had quarrelled she had kept her fresh skin and clear eyes. Even if she had worried a little, in the end she had slept peacefully. (He felt his own shabbiness, his exhaustion, his burning hands and eyes, his dry and bitter mouth like a sort of uncleanliness.)

And there in the midst of his jagged thoughts there flickered a red anger—a desire to hurt too, to strike, to come to grips at last with her laughing philosophy of life—to tear it down and batter it into the dust and misery in which he stood.

They had come to No. 10's bedside. Things had gone badly with No. 10. She had stood a successful operation, but there had been severe haemorrhage, and, as Robert had said, there was no constitution to fight at the turning point. Her face just showed above the creaseless sheet. Death had already begun to clear away the mask of vice and cynicism and a lost prettiness peered through. But the eyes were terribly alive and old. So long as they kept open there could be no mistaking her. They travelled from face to face, and sought and questioned. Her voice sounded reedy and far-off.

"Not going this trip, am I, doctor?"

Rogers patted the bed.

"Certainly not. Going along fine. What do you expect to feel like—with a hole like that in your inside? Next time you have a young man, see he doesn't carry firearms."

One of the eyes tried to wink—pitifully, obscenely.

"You bet your life. Don't want to die just yet."

"Nobody does."

They drew a little apart. Rogers consulted with his colleague. The serious loss of blood must be made good. A transfusion. There was a young man who had offered himself. A suitable subject. This afternoon at the latest.

They moved on. Robert spoke to the man next him. But he knew that
Francey heard him. He meant her to hear.

"It's crazy. They ought to be glad to let a woman like that slip out. If she lives she'll only infect more people with her rottenness. She's better dead. Instead of that they'll suck out somebody else's vitality to save her. The better the life the more pleased they'll be to risk it. This sacrificing the strong to the weak—a snivelling sentimentality."

The man he spoke to glanced at him curiously—it was not usual for Robert Stonehouse to speak to anyone—and said something about the medical profession and the sanctity of life. Robert laughed. He argued it over with himself. It was true. For that matter Howard and Gertie and Connie would all be better dead. There was no use or purpose in their living. Only sentimentalists like Francey wanted to patch them up and keep them on their feet.

People who cluttered up life ought to be cleared out of it.

He felt light-headed, yet extraordinarily sure of himself again. He answered Rogers' questions with the old lucidity. And presently he found himself in the corridor, still arguing his theme over. He would prove to Francey that she must let Howard and Gertie go to the devil and they would never quarrel again.

He came to the head of the stairs where they met after the morning's work.

The steps were very broad and white and shallow, and gave the impression of great distance. Mr. Ricardo, at the bottom of them, was a black speck—a bird that had blundered into the building by mistake and beaten itself breathless against the walls. As he saw Robert he began to drag himself up, limping. He seemed to shrivel then to a mere face, stricken and yellow, that gaped and mouthed.

Robert did not move. He stood leaning against the balustrade. It was as though an iron fist had smashed through the protecting wall about him, letting in a rush of bitter wind.

"Robert—Robert!"

He nodded.

"I'm coming——"

For he had known instantly.

6

The tragic journey through the streets was over. They stood beside her. Robert knew too much to struggle, but Ricardo's voice went on, saying the same things over and over again, pleading.

"Do something—do something. Wake her, Robert, dear boy, for God's sake.
What is the use of all your studying if you can't even wake her?"

"It's no use," he said.

"She was sitting there—I was to have read her the last chapter—she was so quiet—asleep she seemed—-for an hour—I sat—not moving—then I was afraid!"

Robert nodded.

She had laid his supper for him. It was much too early for her to have laid it. She had spread muslin over the bread and cheese. And then she had sat down quietly in her chair by the window and waited. (How long had she waited there? Many years perhaps. It had been very lonely for her.) Her head was thrown back a little, and her closed eyes lifted to the light that came over the stable roofs. The grey hair hung in wisps about the transparent face—very still, as though the air had died too. She had changed profoundly, indefinably. She looked younger, and there was a new serenity about the faintly opened mouth. Her hands lay peacefully on the little shabby bag. Her little feet in the ill-fitting shoes just reached the ground. In a way it was all so familiar. And yet he felt that if he touched her he would find out that this was not Christine at all. This was something that had belonged to her—as poignant, as heart-rending as a dress that she had worn.

"Robert, isn't there anything—to do?"

"No."

They had nothing to say to one another. They had made a strange trio—lonely and outcast by necessity—but now a link had snapped and it was all over. They stood apart, each by himself. Ricardo, crouching against the window-sill, pressed his hand to his side as though he were hurt and bleeding to death. He said, almost inaudibly:

"I've no one. Nobody will ever listen. She believed in me. She was sure that one day—I would go out—and tell the truth. She knew I wasn't—a cowardly—beaten, old man."

Robert could not touch her whilst Ricardo stood there crying. Her repose was too dominating. And if he touched her something terrible and incalculable might happen. He felt as though he were standing on the edge of a precipice, and that suddenly he might let go and pitch over.

It had come true at last—his boy's nightmare that had grown up with him—that only waited for darkness to show itself. Christine had left him. She was dead, and it seemed that he had no one in the world. For Francey, loving him as she did, had failed him. But Christine had never failed him. Never at any time had she asked, "Are you a good little boy, Robert?" It would never have occurred to her. She was so sure. She had loved him and, believed in him unfalteringly, and, in her quiet way, died for him.

Ricardo drew himself up. He plucked at Robert's sleeve. A change had come over him in the last minutes. His sunken brown eyes had dried and become rather terribly alert. Something too fine—too exquisitely balanced in him had been disturbed and broken beyond hope.

"It proves what I have suspected for a long time, Robert. You know it's not a light thing to make an enemy like that. He's taken his time, but you see in the end he has taken everything I had. First he made me a liar and a hypocrite. Then he took you. He sent that girl specially to come between us. And now Miss Christine. I suppose he thinks that's done for me. But it's a great mistake to make people desperate, Robert. You should always leave them some little thing that they care for and which makes them cowards. Now, you see, I simply don't care any more. I don't care for myself or even my poor sister. I'm going to fight him in the open, gloves off. I'll wrestle with him and prevail. I'll give blow for blow. I'm going now to Hyde Park to tell people the truth about him. They take him altogether too lightly, Robert. They're inclined to laugh at him as of no account. That's a great mistake, too. I shall warn them." He nodded mysteriously. "God is a devil—a cruel, dangerous devil."

Then he bent and kissed Christine's hand, very solemnly and tenderly, as some battered, comical Don Quixote might have done before setting out on a last fantastic quest. And presently Robert heard him patter down the narrow stairs and over the cobbles to the open street.

They were alone now. He bent over her and said: "Christine—Christine," reassuringly, so that she should not be afraid, and gathered her in his arms. How little she was—no heavier than a child—and cold. Her grey head rested against his shoulder. If she had only stirred and laughed, and said: "Your father was strong too!" he would have answered gently. He would have been glad that the memory of his father could make her happy. But it was all too late.

He carried her into her room. It was like her to have left it so neat and ordered—each thing in its place—her out-door shoes standing decorously together under the window, and her best skirt peeping out from behind the cretonne curtain. Her hair-brush, with the comb planted in its bristles, lay exactly in the middle of the pine-wood dressing-table. When she had put it there, she had not known that it was for the last time.

Or had she known? She had called out to him so insistently. She had wanted to say good-bye. And he had gone on, not answering.

They said that people, at the end, saw their whole life pass before them. Perhaps she had seen hers. Perhaps she had trodden the old road that he was travelling over now. Only her vision of it would be different. It was James Stonehouse and Robert's mother that she would see—radiant figures of wonderful, unlucky people—and little Robert, who belonged to both of them, tagging in the rear.

But he saw her—Christine lying white and still under the great mahogany side-board, Christine coming back day after day in gallant patience to scrub the floors and his ears, and pay the bills and chase away the duns, and do whatever was necessary to keep the staggering Stonehouse menage on its feet.

She had held him close to her and comforted him.

Her splendid faithfulness.

He laid her on the narrow bed against the wall, and smoothed her dress and folded her hands over her breast. Her bag, which he had gathered up with her rolled on to the floor. A book fell out. He picked it up mechanically. It was a little Bible, and on the fly-leaf was written:

"From JIM and CONSTANCE to their friend, CHRISTINE."

The writing was his father's. It had faded, but one could still see how regular and beautiful it was. Then the date. His own birthday—the first of all the unfortunate birthdays.

He looked at it for a long time, stupidly, not realizing. Then suddenly he saw it—in a new light. Ricardo. How frightfully—excruciatingly funny. Ricardo. He felt that he was going to laugh—shout with laughter. It was horrible. Laughter rising and falling—-like a sort of awful sickness—choking him.

Instead his heart broke. He flung himself down beside her and pressed his face against her cold, thin cheek. And, instead of laughter, sobs that tore him to pieces—and at last, in mercy, tears.

"Oh, Christine, Christine—my own darling! I did love you—I never told you—you never, never knew how much!"

The earth-old cry of unavailing, inevitable remorse.

7

So there was no one but Francey now.

He did not know what he hoped, or indeed if he hoped for anything. He turned to her instinctively. And when the door of the ward opened he did, in fact, feel a faint lifting of the flat indifference which had followed on that one difficult rending surrender. He went to meet her. If she had looked at him with her usual straightness, she might have remembered the boy of whom she had been fond—a small, queer boy, who did not like having his face washed, and who came to her truculent and swaggering, with smears under his red eyes.

Even then it is doubtful whether she could have changed the course on which both of them were set.

He did not want her to see. And yet, unknown to himself, he did count on her instant understanding, on some releasing, quickening word or look that would give back life to the dead thing in him. But her eyes, preoccupied and unhappy, avoided him. He could not have appealed to her. He could not have said, as he had meant to do, "Christine is dead." He was silenced by the certain knowledge that all real communication between them had been broken off.

"No. 10 is going to pull through," she said.

They walked slowly down the corridor. He found it difficult to keep his feet. He wondered vaguely why she should talk of No. 10 when Christine was dead. He was puzzled—-confused.

"It seemed likely," he muttered. "Rogers had got his teeth into her."

"I suppose you think he was a fool to try?"

(What was she talking about? He would have to arrange for the funeral. And the money. He did not know whether there would be money enough. It was hideous—to think of a thing like that—to have to go into a shop and say to some bored shopkeeper: "I want a nice cheap coffin, please." For Christine—for whom he had never been able to buy so much as a bunch of flowers.)

"I—I don't know."

"You see, I heard what you said."

(What had he said? He tried to remember. No. 10. Better dead. Yes, of course that was it. He couldn't go back on that. His mind seemed to strain and stagger under the challenge like a half-dead horse under the whip.)

"She didn't hear me, anyway."

"I want to know—was it just—just a sort of pose—or did you mean it?"

"It was true."

"That doesn't seem to me to matter. It was a beastly thing to have thought—beastlier to have said——"

He stopped short, as though she had struck him across the face. For an instant he was blind with pain, but afterwards he steadied, grew deadly cool and clear-headed. There was a constant movement in the corridor and he turned abruptly, almost with authority, into an empty operating theatre. Instinctively he had chosen his ground. Here was symbolized everything that he trusted and believed in—a cool, dispassionate seeking, the ruthless cutting out of waste. Yet in the half-light the place surrounded them both with a ghostly, almost sinister unreality. Its stark immaculateness lay like a chill, ironic hand on their distress. It made mock of their unhappiness. It divested them of their humanity. The nauseating sweetness that still lingered in the sterilized air was like incense offered up on the grotesque sacrificial altar that stood bare and brutal beneath the glass-domed roof.

And now Robert saw Francey's face. It was white and pinched and unfamiliar, as though all her humour and whimsical laughter and loving-kindness had been twisted awry in a bitter fight with pain. But he knew her eyes of old. Long ago he had seen them with the same burning deadly anger. And he knew that it was all over. Their patient antagonism had come to grips at last over the bodies of their suffering love for one another.

Even then she held back.

"You don't know how hard life can be. It was hard for her——" But at that he burst out laughing, and she added quickly, reading his thought: "Nothing that you've gone through is of any use if it hasn't taught you pity."

"Your pity would take a half-dead rat from a terrier."

"You have no right to judge," she persisted.

He smiled with white lips.

"Oh, yes, I have! We all have. We condemn men to prison—to death."

"You do believe in God," she said bitterly. "You believe in yourself."

"It comes to this, Francey, doesn't it? You're through with me? You don't care any more?"

Her eyes narrowed with a kind of desperate humour. It was as though for a moment she had regained her old vision of him—a sad queer little boy.

"You say that because you want to shirk the truth. You're almost glad—presently you will be very glad. You never did want to care—not from the first. Caring got in your way. You will be free now." She waited, and then added very quietly, without anger: "I love you. I dare say I always shall—but I couldn't live with you—it would break my heart if we should come to hate one another. Don't think any more about it. I'll have gone to-morrow, and I'll try to arrange not to come back till you're through. It will be all right."

"Francey, it's such a foolish thing to quarrel about."

"It's everything," she said simply.

She turned to go. Even then he could have stopped her. He could have said: "Francey, Christine died this morning!" and their sad enmity might have melted in grief and pity. But what she had said was true. It was everything. And his reason, his will, rising up out of the general ruin, monstrous and powerful, stood like an admonishing shadow at his elbow.

"It's much better. There's nothing to make a coward of you now. You're free."

He half held out his hand, but it was only a convulsive, dying movement.
He let her go.