The Pit-Prop Syndicate

by Freeman Wills Crofts

But she would not hear of it.

“If he thought my happiness depended on it,” she declared, “he would break with them at all costs. I could not risk it. You must go away. Oh, my dear, you must go. Go, go!” she entreated almost hysterically, “it will be best for us both.”

Merriman, though beside himself with suffering, felt he could no longer disregard her.

“I shall go,” he answered sadly, “since you require it, but I will never give you up. Not until one of us is dead or you marry someone else—I will never give you up. Oh, Madeleine, have pity and give me some hope; something to keep me alive till this trouble is over.”

She was beginning to reply when she stopped suddenly and stood listening.

“The lorry!” she cried. “Go! Go!” Then pointing wildly in the direction of the road, she turned and fled rapidly back towards the clearing.

Merriman gazed after her until she passed round a corner of the lane and was lost to sight among the trees. Then, with a weight of hopeless despair on his heart, he began to walk towards the road. The lorry, driven by Henri, passed him at the next bend, and Henri, though he saluted with a show of respect, smiled sardonically as he noted the other’s woebegone appearance.

But Merriman neither knew nor cared what the driver thought. Almost physically sick with misery and disappointment, he regained his taxi and was driven back to Bordeaux.

The next few days seemed to him like a nightmare of hideous reality and permanence. He moved as a man in a dream, living under a shadow of almost tangible weight, as a criminal must do who has been sentenced to early execution. The longing to see Madeleine again, to hear the sound of her voice, to feel her presence, was so intense as to be almost unendurable. Again and again he said to himself that had she cared for another, had she even told him that she could not care for him, he would have taken his dismissal as irrevocable and gone to try and drag out the remainder of his life elsewhere as best he could. But he was maddened to think that the major difficulty—the overwhelming, insuperable difficulty—of his suit had been overcome. She loved him! Miraculous and incredible though it might seem—though it was—it was the amazing truth. And that being so, it was beyond bearing that a mere truckling to convention should be allowed to step in and snatch away the ecstasy of happiness that was within his grasp. And worse still, this truckling to convention was to save him! What, he asked himself, did it matter about him? Even if the worst happened and she suffered shame through her father, wasn’t all he wanted to be allowed to share it with her? And if narrow, stupid fools did talk, what matter? They could do without their companionship.

Fits of wild rage alternated with periods of cold and numbing despair, but as day succeeded day the desire to be near her grew until it could no longer be denied. He dared not again attempt to force himself into her presence, lest she should be angry and shatter irrevocably the hope to which he still clung with desperation. But he might without fear of disaster be nearer to her for a time. He hired a bicycle, and after dark had fallen that evening he rode out to the lane, and leaving his machine on the road, walked to the edge of the clearing. It was a perfect night, calm and silent, though with a slight touch of chill in the air. A crescent moon shone soft and silvery, lighting up pallidly the open space, gleaming on the white wood of the freshly cut stumps, and throwing black shadows from the ghostly looking buildings. It was close on midnight, and Merriman looked eagerly across the clearing to the manager’s house. He was not disappointed. There, in the window that he knew belonged to her room, shone a light.