The Little Nugget/Part Two/Chapter 16
In my recollections of that strange night there are wide gaps. Trivial incidents come back to me with extraordinary vividness; while there are hours of which I can remember nothing. What I did or where I went I cannot recall. It seems to me, looking back, that I walked without a pause till morning; yet, when day came, I was still in the school grounds. Perhaps I walked, as a wounded animal runs, in circles. I lost, I know, all count of time. I became aware of the dawn as something that had happened suddenly, as if light had succeeded darkness in a flash. It had been night; I looked about me, and it was day—a steely, cheerless day, like a December evening. And I found that I was very cold, very tired, and very miserable.
My mind was like the morning, grey and overcast. Conscience may be expelled, but, like Nature, it will return. Mine, which I had cast from me, had crept back with the daylight. I had had my hour of freedom, and it was now for me to pay for it.
I paid in full. My thoughts tore me. I could see no way out. Through the night the fever and exhilaration of that mad moment had sustained me, but now the morning had come, when dreams must yield to facts, and I had to face the future.
I sat on the stump of a tree, and buried my face in my hands. I must have fallen asleep, for, when I raised my eyes again, the day was brighter. Its cheerlessness had gone. The sky was blue, and birds were singing.
It must have been about half an hour later that the first beginnings of a plan of action came to me. I could not trust myself to reason out my position clearly and honestly in this place where Audrey's spell was over everything. The part of me that was struggling to be loyal to Cynthia was overwhelmed here. London called to me. I could think there, face my position quietly, and make up my mind.
I turned to walk to the station. I could not guess even remotely what time it was. The sun was shining through the trees, but in the road outside the grounds there were no signs of workers beginning the day.
It was half past five when I reached the station. A sleepy porter informed me that there would be a train to London, a slow train, at six.
*****
I remained in London two days, and on the third went down to Sanstead to see Audrey for the last time. I had made my decision.
I found her on the drive, close by the gate. She turned at my footstep on the gravel; and, as I saw her, I knew that the fight which I had thought over was only beginning.
I was shocked at her appearance. Her face was very pale, and there were tired lines about her eyes.
I could not speak. Something choked me. Once again, as on that night in the stable-yard, the world and all that was in it seemed infinitely remote.
It was she who broke the silence.
'Well, Peter,' she said listlessly.
We walked up the drive together.
'Have you been to London?'
'Yes. I came down this morning.' I paused. 'I went there to think,' I said.
She nodded.
'I have been thinking, too.'
I stopped, and began to hollow out a groove in the wet gravel with my heel. Words were not coming readily.
Suddenly she found speech. She spoke quickly, but her voice was dull and lifeless.
'Let us forget what has happened, Peter. We were neither of us ourselves. I was tired and frightened and disappointed. You were sorry for me just at the moment, and your nerves were strained, like mine. It was all nothing. Let us forget it.'
I shook my head.
'No,' I said. 'It was not that. I can't let you even pretend you think that was all. I love you. I always have loved you, though I did not know how much till you had gone away. After a time, I thought I had got over it. But when I met you again down here, I knew that I had not, and never should. I came back to say good-bye, but I shall always love you. It is my punishment for being the sort of man I was five years ago.'
'And mine for being the sort of woman I was five years ago.' She laughed bitterly. 'Woman! I was just a little fool, a sulky child. My punishment is going to be worse than yours, Peter. You will not be always thinking that you had the happiness of two lives in your hands, and threw it away because you had not the sense to hold it.'
'It is just that that I shall always be thinking. What happened five years ago was my fault, Audrey, and nobody's but mine. I don't think that, even when the loss of you hurt most, I ever blamed you for going away. You had made me see myself as I was, and I knew that you had done the right thing. I was selfish, patronizing—I was insufferable. It was I who threw away our happiness. You put it in a sentence that first day here, when you said that I had been kind—sometimes—when I happened to think of it. That summed me up. You have nothing to reproach yourself for. I think we have not had the best of luck; but all the blame is mine.'
A flush came into her pale face.
'I remember saying that. I said it because I was afraid of myself. I was shaken by meeting you again. I thought you must be hating me—you had every reason to hate me, and you spoke as if you did—and I did not want to show you what you were to me. It wasn't true, Peter. Five years ago I may have thought it, but not now. I have grown to understand the realities by this time. I have been through too much to have any false ideas left. I have had some chance to compare men, and I realize that they are not all kind, Peter, even sometimes, when they happen to think of it.'
'Audrey,' I said—I had never found myself able to ask the question before—'was—was—he—was Sheridan kind to you?'
She did not speak for a moment, and I thought she was resenting the question.
'No!' she said abruptly.
She shot out the monosyllable with a force that startled and silenced me. There was a whole history of unhappiness in the word.
'No,' she said again, after a pause, more gently this time. I understood. She was speaking of a dead man.
'I can't talk about him,' she went on hurriedly. 'I expect most of it was my fault. I was unhappy because he was not you, and he saw that I was unhappy and hated me for it. We had nothing in common. It was just a piece of sheer madness, our marriage. He swept me off my feet. I never had a great deal of sense, and I lost it all then. I was far happier when he had left me.'
'Left you?'
'He deserted me almost directly we reached America.' She laughed. 'I told you I had grown to understand the realities. I began then.'
I was horrified. For the first time I realized vividly all that she had gone through. When she had spoken to me before of her struggles that evening over the study fire, I had supposed that they had begun only after her husband's death, and that her life with him had in some measure trained her for the fight. That she should have been pitched into the arena, a mere child, with no experience of life, appalled me. And, as she spoke, there came to me the knowledge that now I could never do what I had come to do. I could not give her up. She needed me. I tried not to think of Cynthia.
I took her hand.
'Audrey,' I said, 'I came here to say good-bye. I can't. I want you. Nothing matters except you. I won't give you up.'
'It's too late,' she said, with a little catch in her voice. 'You are engaged to Mrs Ford.'
'I am engaged, but not to Mrs Ford. I am engaged to someone you have never met—Cynthia Drassilis.'
She pulled her hand away quickly, wide-eyed, and for some moments was silent.
'Do you love her?' she asked at last.
'No.'
'Does she love you?'
Cynthia's letter rose before my eyes, that letter that could have had no meaning, but one.
'I am afraid she does,' I said.
She looked at me steadily. Her face was very pale.
'You must marry her, Peter.'
I shook my head.
'You must. She believes in you.'
'I can't. I want you. And you need me. Can you deny that you need me?'
'No.'
She said it quite simply, without emotion. I moved towards her, thrilling, but she stepped back.
'She needs you too,' she said.
A dull despair was creeping over me. I was weighed down by a premonition of failure. I had fought my conscience, my sense of duty and honour, and crushed them. She was raising them up against me once more. My self-control broke down.
'Audrey,' I cried, 'for God's sake can't you see what you're doing? We have been given a second chance. Our happiness is in your hands again, and you are throwing it away. Why should we make ourselves wretched for the whole of our lives? What does anything else matter except that we love each other? Why should we let anything stand in our way? I won't give you up.'
She did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on the ground. Hope began to revive in me, telling me that I had persuaded her. But when she looked up it was with the same steady gaze, and my heart sank again.
'Peter,' she said, 'I want to tell you something. It will make you understand, I think. I haven't been honest, Peter. I have not fought fairly. All these weeks, ever since we met, I have been trying to steal you. It's the only word. I have tried every little miserable trick I could think of to steal you from the girl you had promised to marry. And she wasn't here to fight for herself. I didn't think of her. I was wrapped up in my own selfishness. And then, after that night, when you had gone away, I thought it all out. I had a sort of awakening. I saw the part I had been playing. Even then I tried to persuade myself that I had done something rather fine. I thought, you see, at that time that you were infatuated with Mrs Ford—and I know Mrs Ford. If she is capable of loving any man, she loves Mr Ford, though they are divorced. I knew she would only make you unhappy. I told myself I was saving you. Then you told me it was not Mrs Ford, but this girl. That altered everything. Don't you see that I can't let you give her up now? You would despise me. I shouldn't feel clean. I should feel as if I had stabbed her in the back.'
I forced a laugh. It rang hollow against the barrier that separated us. In my heart I knew that this barrier was not to be laughed away.
'Can't you see, Peter? You must see.'
'I certainly don't. I think you're overstrained, and that you have let your imagination run away with you. I—'
She interrupted me.
'Do you remember that evening in the study?' she asked abruptly. 'We had been talking. I had been telling you how I had lived during those five years.'
'I remember.'
'Every word I spoke was spoken with an object—calculated…. Yes, even the pauses. I tried to make them tell, too. I knew you, you see, Peter. I knew you through and through, because I loved you, and I knew the effect those tales would have on you. Oh, they were all true. I was honest as far as that goes. But they had the mean motive at the back of them. I was playing on your feelings. I knew how kind you were, how you would pity me. I set myself to create an image which would stay in your mind and kill the memory of the other girl; the image of a poor, ill-treated little creature who should work through to your heart by way of your compassion. I knew you, Peter, I knew you. And then I did a meaner thing still. I pretended to stumble in the dark. I meant you to catch me and hold me, and you did. And …'
Her voice broke off.
'I'm glad I have told you,' she said. 'It makes it a little better. You understand now how I feel, don't you?'
She held out her hand.
'Good-bye.'
'I am not going to give you up,' I said doggedly.
'Good-bye,' she said again. Her voice was a whisper.
I took her hand and began to draw her towards me.
'It is not good-bye. There is no one else in the world but you, and I am not going to give you up.'
'Peter!' she struggled feebly. 'Oh, let me go.'
I drew her nearer.
'I won't let you go,' I said.
But, as I spoke, there came the sound of automobile wheels on the gravel. A large red car was coming up the drive. I dropped Audrey's hand, and she stepped back and was lost in the shrubbery. The car slowed down and stopped beside me. There were two women in the tonneau. One, who was dark and handsome, I did not know. The other was Mrs Drassilis.