Winifred was rapacious for detail: “Did anyone treat her badly?” she whispered, with healthy gloating. “Any man, I mean?”
And one man stood stock-still as though he had been shot.
“What makes you ask me that?”
“Was it you?” queried Winifred, very naturally.
And then he unburdened himself. He had by this time safely crossed that precarious borderland stage in the Life of a Lie, by Cliffe Kennedy, when that lie, from being artistically perceived, created and approved by his own consciousness, is slowly and mysteriously merged, as far as he was concerned, into genuine and independent existence, the self-supplied ground-work entirely obliterated from his memory.
He was mostly worried, it seemed, as to whether he ought to tell Deb’s people ... what he knew. Directly he heard that she was missing, her threat of suicide had scorched like fire into his mind.... Why, that night on the open common ... black blown space, and Deb’s wild hair swept straight out like a drenched black banner by the wind; and Deb’s mood black as night itself, and as passionate, declaring that she meant to die—that she was tired of fighting God—“tired of fighting Him for you, Cliffe.... And sometimes it’s easier to die than to live——” He had no very clear notion of what the fuss was about, but he saw her face, a grey blur, save where her eyes and mouth were wet and black ... and knew it was best for him to turn and go; her ragged sobbing followed him through the swish of the rain, black slanting stripes of rain....
So the man’s racing sense of what was fitly beautiful and tragic caught the scene and flashed it into being; so his infallible ear caught the sounds, ... and so he described it to Winnie Potter—till the complete vision was broken all into bits—like the Cubist pictures which he had last seen strewing the floor of Antonia’s studio.
... Mrs Verity’s recent remarks, a certain conversation with Otto Redbury in the Tube, the actual Saturday to Sunday spent at Seaview, telepathic oddments from Winifred’s conventional expectation, suggestion from the cover-picture illustrating “The Sin of Lady Jacynth,” were all stirred and flung pell-mell into the descending spiral vortex of Cliffe’s prismatic imagination.
“Oh!” gasped Winifred at the end of the recital, “but I do think you ought to tell them, Cliffe, even if you’re not sure—they might want to drag the river, or something.... Anyway, they’ve got a right to know.”
“Granted that—have I the right to tell them? The Aunt mentioned me as being mixed up in the whole horrible business, when she ’phoned Mrs Verity. Am I the person to tell them? ... when it may not even be true ... when I may be only the victim of my cursedly morbid imagination—And yet—I wish to Heaven, Winnie, that someone would take the decision out of my hands. I can’t stand it much longer—holding the secret alone—it gnaws ... like the fox—Spartan boy—you know!... I hold it tight, and it gnaws. What do you suppose my nights are like?” turning with ferocity on to his hearer, who replied simply: “What things you do say, Cliffe!”