5
Only when I was committed irrevocably did I realize that I had not decided how I was to meet her.
“I can’t pretend for five minutes,” I said. “I never could.”
“She’s . . . entitled to see her own letters,” O’Rane suggested. “You opened this at her request . . .”
“But, good God, man, she’s my wife!,” I broke out; and, remembering the sustained deceit of these fifteen months, I could not trust myself to say more.
We drove our last stage with heavy hearts. Southampton was shrouded in the first fog of the year; and, when it lifted on the confines of the New Forest, I saw bare trees, dead leaves and all November’s decay. Every few minutes O’Rane asked me what point we had now reached; and I knew that for him too every turn of the road was marked by a memory and guarded by a ghost. Through eyes half-closed I could see Jim Loring and the Daintons striding, three abreast, on a leave-out walk from Melton to Crowley; I could see Eric Lane piloting me through Lashmar village to call on his father. . . . Strange! Though he was now dead, though I had almost loved him and though we had both been punished for trying to play a game according to its rules, I could not forgive him for flinging this last shadow across Barbara’s life, I could not whisper his name without a shudder.
As we drove through a country that was haunted with the shades of our dead selves, I fell to thinking whether a man was happier in the discontent of eighteen or the disillusion of thirty-eight. I no longer aspired to Westminster Abbey and a nation’s gratitude; but, like other men on the threshold of middle-age, I made the discovery, incomprehensible to a schoolboy, that I had no heir to shelter himself under the trees which I had planted; and love seemed almost to have been left out of my life.
In Crawleigh village, my nerve broke and I headed for London; then, for very shame in the reproach of O’Rane’s silence, I turned, though I knew that no love was awaiting me here, and splashed through the floods to the Abbey. Neave was fishing perfunctorily by the bridge and volunteered to take the car up to the house if I wanted to look for Barbara.
“The guv’nor’s in London for this Unknown Soldier business,” he explained. “So it’s only the four of us. Just right for a nice game of cards.”
“How’s Babs?,” I asked, as unconcernedly as I could.
“Oh, fit as a flea,” he answered. “She’s wandering about the park, waiting for you.”
I made a pretence of hurrying forward as the car shot ahead; then, as it passed out of sight, I leaned against the parapet of the bridge till the low grey line of the refectory wall deepened to black and was gradually lost in the oncoming tide of darkness. I was still there when the first rare lights twinkled at the windows and paled as the curtains were drawn. Then I heard a distant whistle and turned to the house before my impulse to hurry away got the better of me.
I was halfway to the gardens when I saw the white coil of Barbara’s furs.
“Darling! I was expecting you hours ago!,” she cried. “Did you have a breakdown? I hope I didn’t upset your plans by asking you to come here, George: I wanted you most awfully.”
I could not see her face clearly; but her voice thrilled me till I had to bite my lip and look away. I wondered how I had existed without her all these weeks. The long rest had given her back her old vitality. Her eyes, when we entered the hall, were shining; and for a moment I fancied that I was seeing her in a vision or that I was emerging from twelve days’ delirium.
“My dear!,” I cried; and she laughed with childlike exultation at my joy in her.
“Pleased to see your deserted and ill-used wife?”
“Babs . . .” Her cheeks were pink from the biting cold outside; her hair and eye-lashes were spangled with tiny raindrops. As she flung her coat aside and twined her arms about my neck, a familiar, faint, warm fragrance rose from the carnations at her waist. As she clung to me and our lips met, I could have fancied that no other man had ever made her heart beat so quickly. “I’ve never seen you like this before!,” I cried.
“I’ve been getting well . . . for your sake, sweetheart. I’ve been so patient, so good. And I did miss you so.”
“I’ve been thinking of you day and night,” I answered truthfully enough.
“The next time you go away, I’ll tell your secretary to send me a daily telegram: ‘Missing you dreadfully best love George.’ You’d never do it on your own account. What’s the matter, darling?”
Unconsciously I must have drawn away from her embrace. The delirium was returning; and I could only think of the telegram which she had sent me the day after she asked Eric Lane to run away with her.
“Some bad news, I’m afraid. I didn’t want to spoil our first moment together, but you’ll have to be told some time. I’ve not seen any papers . . .”
Barbara’s hands fell from my shoulders; and she walked slowly to the fire.
“I . . . have,” she whispered; and her head drooped as though I had struck her.
“You mean . . . what . . . what I mean?,” I stammered.
As she turned, her eyes were blinded with tears; and her hands groped for support.
“Darling, if it had been any one else, should I have had to say ‘I need you’? . . . When I saw the great cruel headlines, I hoped and prayed that I might die . . . till I knew you were being sorry for me. You’re all I have; and I promised myself I’d repay you for all your patience.” She could go on no longer; and her terrible tearless sobbing shook her till I feared that her heart must break. “I can’t be brave any longer.” As she once more hid her face against my chest, I could feel her whole body trembling in the last vain effort to restrain her weeping. “When . . . when . . . when did you hear?”
“Twelve days ago,” I answered, as I led her to a chair.
“The day he died. You . . . didn’t tell me, George. Did you think I shouldn’t see?”
“Strictly speaking, I didn’t hear for certain. I knew he was dying . . .”
“There was a long article in The Times. Oh, so cold! . . . I knew he was terribly ill. That’s what made me so ill this summer, though I couldn’t tell you before. I thought you might guess; the doctor did. I’ve been going up and down, up and down, as he got better or worse. The afternoon he died I fainted; and they all thought I was dead too. Now you understand why I wrote such horrid letters: as he slipped away, I couldn’t bear myself. I did try to keep it all to myself. I knew how I hurt you by talking about him. But no one told me anything! . . . I couldn’t ask Lady Lane for fear she’d say I’d killed him. And he died before I could ask him to forgive me.”
Barbara was no longer trying to control her tears; and I was no longer thinking of anything but a means of comforting her.
“He didn’t feel there was anything to forgive,” I assured her.
“Ah, that was the way he talked!”
“It was the way he thought, Babs.”
“Then he might have spared me this!,” Barbara broke out. “Just one word!”
As her head fell forward, I knelt down and chafed her hands.
“He may have been too weak,” I said.
“A message, then! I can’t bear it! I didn’t think he could be so cruel.”
In furious self-scorn, I remembered telling O’Rane I could not pretend for five minutes that I had not received Eric’s letter. Very little more than five minutes had passed since Barbara and I met.
“In justice to him,” I said, “there was a message. I was paraphrasing it. He never dreamt you needed his forgiveness, he was begging for yours. He loved you as much at the end as he’d ever done. His last words—so faint I could hardly read them!—were ‘God bless you’. And we must assume that he died at peace. You’d forgiven him so often, he said, that, if God was disposed to judge him, he believed you would intercede.”
In her agony of spirit, Barbara’s thoughts were reflected as clearly as if she had spoken them. Her eyes lightened for a moment in unutterable relief; they clouded as she looked suspiciously to see if I was inventing this opportune comfort; then she stared through me and past me to Eric’s death-bed six thousand miles away.
“He . . . wrote to you?,” she enquired after a long silence.
I half nodded; but, with Barbara’s eyes on mine, I could not put a lie into words.
“The letter was to you,” I said. “I opened it with the rest.”
There was a single piteous whimper. Then she looked at me in perplexity:
“Where is it? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s in my despatch-box. . . . I didn’t want to harrow you, darling. I think he was delirious part of the time.” . . .
“Will you get it for me?”
“I’ve told you all that matters. It will only make you miserable to read it.”
She seemed not to have heard me; but a strangled laugh, more terrible than her crying, shewed the worth of my comfort:
“D’you think anything can make me more miserable than I’ve been these last twelve days?,” she asked. Then she tore herself from me and stood with her hands pressed to her temples, staring at me in mingled bewilderment and rage. “All the time . . .? And you . . .? The last thing he ever wrote . . . oh, I might have reached him while there was still time! When did you get the letter?”
“Just before I left London.”
“While he was still alive . . . Ah, God, the cruelty of kind people!” With the tears still wet on her cheeks, she forced a smile. “And you’ve been carrying it about ever since? George dear, you’ve punished me for all the crimes I’ve committed and all that I shall never have time to commit if I live to be a thousand. . . . May I have my letter?”
For an instant, as she stood limply drying her eyes, I thought of telling her that I had destroyed the letter; then I saw that this would never be forgiven me, even if I had not already told her that it was with my other papers.
“It will only hurt you to read it,” I said. “Forget it! Forget him, if you can. I’ve told you he had nothing but love for you . . .”
“Then why mayn’t I see it? George, I don’t understand! I’m not a child; and, if I didn’t know you were trying to spare me, I could almost kill you for your ghastly kindness. Pocketing it for twelve torturing days, as though it were a bill! Pretending he was too weak to write! Saying it was a message! You’ll send me mad if you’re not careful!,” she cried hysterically. “For the last time, please give me my letter.”
“For the last time please try to forget there ever was a letter. I’ve told you he must have been delirious when he wrote. I won’t answer for the consequences if you read it. All this time I’ve been trying to forget it.” . . .
My voice told her all that I was trying to hide. Her eyes were startled, then compassionate, then defiant. I thought I heard a whisper of ‘Poor George’. She raised her eyebrows as though to ask what I was minded to do. Getting no answer, she shrugged her shoulders and turned wearily to the fire:
“Was that why you left London?” I said nothing. “You told me it was on business. And you’ve been . . . sitting in judgement on me ever since.” . . .
I took a step forward and tried to catch her hand:
“It has made no difference.” . . .
“Put it down to my curiosity!,” she taunted. “It’s not pleasant . . . to be . . . condemned unheard; but I couldn’t bear to be acquitted. Your despatch-box, you said?”
“Babs, I implore you!,” I cried, as she moved to the bell.
“You’re afraid of being certain?,” she interrupted scornfully. “I’m only afraid of sheltering myself behind a dead man. . . . Oh, Henry, Mr. Oakleigh wants his despatch-box. And will you see that there’s a good fire in the tapestry-room and have his things moved in there? The . . . peacocks make so much noise on my side of the house,” she added.