"But that's ridiculous," he said to himself, "quite ridiculous. Alie's so strong. And besides, after all we've been through together, that just couldn't happen."
He wandered into the low-ceiled library, picked a book at random, and sat down to read. But the words of the book conveyed no meaning to his brain. His brain was upstairs--with Alie. Kate came in to remind him of lunch. He said to her, speaking softly as though he were in a sick-room: "Oh, bring me something in here, will you?"
Kate brought some sandwiches, and a whisky-decanter. He ate a sandwich, and drank a stiff peg. Then he crept quietly up the wide staircase and listened outside Alie's door. But the closed mahogany let through no sound; and after a little while he tiptoed downstairs again.
"If only," he thought, "it were all over. Safely over!" His heart ached for the woman he loved, for the pangs which she must bear alone. Almost, he hated the unborn cause of her sufferings. What need had he and Alie of children? Was not their love for one another all-sufficing? Had they not won enough from life already? Why tempt Providence with yet another hazard?
Suppose--suppose Alie were to die?
Fretfully Ronnie wandered back to the library; fretfully he flung his long length into a big saddle-bag chair. But he could not rest in the chair. The Wixton imagination tore and tore at his brain. Windmill House, last of Julia Cavendish's Little Overdine properties; Windmill House, where his mother had honeymooned with his father; Windmill House, whither he had brought Aliette for sanctuary while the law was separating her from Hector--seemed sanctuary no longer. Death and life hovered about the place, each contentious for mastery.
He looked at the Chippendale clock on the dark oak mantelpiece. The clock-hands pointed two. "Another four hours," he thought. "Another four eternities!"
How the minutes dragged as one watched them! How cruel, how desperately cruel was time!
He looked out of the window, through the shining lattices to a shining garden. Yesterday's gale no longer blew. It had pelted all morning; and the tennis-lawn still glinted with raindrops. Thrushes hopped on it, and blackbirds. Through the open pane in the lattices, from under the eaves of the house, came faint eager twitterings. Out of doors, perhaps, one would feel more hopeful, less--less infernally jumpy.
Ronnie, closing the library door behind him, stole quietly across the square hall, and picked an old tweed cap from its peg in the cloakroom, an ashplant from its corner in the porch. The front door of Windmill House stood open. Through it he could see the flagstone path, bright either side with vari-colored primulas; and at the end of the flags, high-hung between brown stone walls, the wrought-iron gates that gave on to the highroad.