Salome and the Head/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
THE LOVER
She came along by the towing path, and he knew the moment he saw her that the world was changed. Calamity weighed on her gait, the swing of her clenched hand, the droop of her proud head. He went to meet her along the path, still dewy.
“Where’s your boat?” he said.
“At the lock. I was tired. I thought I should get here quicker walking. Let’s go across the meadow and sit under the trees: shall we?”
“Where’s your basket—in the boat?” he asked stupidly.
They had parted last night in the dusk, almost as lovers part. And he had gone home through the twilight thinking of her—thinking, thinking. He, who had pursued her through paved London, with his mean spying and the hot desire of a man who seeks the embraces of an easy Venus—who had hunted her with his dogs of dirty detectives as one hunts a prey—who had soiled the thought of her with those other tainted cheap thoughts,—he had found her, when he had ceased to seek, and had found Diana with a child’s heart.
This he saw plainly as he went home along the winding river bank. He also saw that, having found the nectar of the gods where he had looked for cheap champagne—ambrosia, where he had thought to find the spiced dishes of vulgar gourmets—he must hold fast his prize.
He did not want to be married: no man does. But he wanted her. He wanted the food of the gods, and that food could only be served as a sacrament. To soil the bread and foul the wine were a sin unthinkable. When you have looked for a pig-sty and found a palace, you do not seek to turn what you have found into what you looked for. You desire to enter the palace and make it your own forever. The palace of pure love was here: marriage its only door.
Half the night he had lain awake going over her words, re-feeling again and again the touch of her two soft thin hands in his.
He had tried—not at all meaning to try—to draw her to him by those hands, and she had swung herself back to full arm’s length and said ever so softly and passionately: “No, no—not yet; it is too soon. I mean it is very late, I must go home.”
And he had let her go. They had walked together to the gate of her garden, and for most of the way her hand had been on his arm, against his heart.
And now—he dared not meet her eyes, for fear of the coldness and distance that he knew they held.
Could she have found out anything? About the detective?
In silence they reached the trees, and sat down under them. She clasped her hands round her knees and looked out across the pasture to the woods with eyes that did not see them. He waited awhile. Then:
“What is it?” he said in a very low voice.
“I don’t know how to begin.”
“Don’t begin. Just tell me.”
“I can’t. I thought I could, but I can’t.”
“Something’s happened since last night? Something bad.”
“Yes.”
“Very bad?”
“Yes—the worst that possibly could.”
“Then tell me. You must.”
“Why should I?”
“I might explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Because I shall help you then,” he said.
“No one can help me.”
“I can help you to bear it.”
“Not even that. . . It’s no good. I can’t tell you—let me go home. Good-bye.”
It was then that he came close to her so that his shoulder touched her’s as it leaned against the trunk of the oak tree.
“Tell me,” he said, “tell me, because I love you.”
She turned and looked at him. He met the look in her eyes and kissed her. She drew back instantly, loosed her clasped hands and held them out to him.
“Ah,” she said, and “Ah,” again, and then surprisingly:
“I hoped you would tell me that.”
He held her hands closely, and had the sense not to say, “Why?” To be near her—even with this unexplained cloud above them—was enough to make the old earth new. And he had kissed her. And as he kissed her he had known certainly what really he had known before, that she loved him.
“Tell me,” he said, tenderly, almost gaily. “I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m sure when you tell me it will all turn out to be nothing. It’s some silly nightmare, and when you tell me you’ll wake up. And when you’ve told me I want to tell you things, no end of things, all new and all beautiful. Tell me.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, and her eyes were far away again on the distant wood. “I can tell you now. That’s why I hoped you’d tell me that. At least I think that’s why. Anyway I couldn’t have told you if you hadn’t. I shouldn’t have had any right to tell you.”
“I am a patient man,” he said, and the joy would not any longer be kept out of his voice, “but there are limits. Tell me.”
“I will,” she said. “I am married.”
“You. . . you are. . .”
“I am married. I thought he was dead. Aunt Dusa thought so too. Last night he turned up. I am glad you love me; for myself I am glad. It’s the only beautiful thing I’ve ever had. . . . these four beautiful days. But it’s hard for you.”
Her voice was cold and toneless.
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “It’s some child’s test of yours—to see whether I love you—to see how unhappy you can make me. It’s not a pretty game—dear—don’t!”
“It’s not a game,” she said, “and you know it. Don’t—you’re hurting my hands. Let them go.”
“I didn’t mean to,” he said humbly, and he did not let them go.
“Don’t make it harder by pretending not to believe me. Let me tell you—I was a child and a fool. Let me tell you.”
She told him; all that the last chapter told you, or nearly—all that and very much more.
“So you see,” she ended, “It’s good-bye. And I’ve come to say it.”
He got up and walked away—quite a long way he walked; then came back quickly and stood looking down at her.
“It’s not good-bye,” he said. “That’s not a marriage. We can get that annulled, and then—oh, Sandra, don’t be unhappy, my darling. It’ll be all right.”
“It never will,” she said; “if the marriage could have been annulled my grandfather would have done it. He paid the man to keep away, and now I must pay him to keep away. And I’ve been so happy—and now it’s all over. Oh, I wish I’d never seen you. I wish I had never been born.”
He was down beside her, his arm round her neck.
“Don’t cry, my darling—ah! don’t. What did you say?”
“I—I can’t find my handkerchief,” was what she said.
He gave her his, with a silly, glorious thrill of intimacy. Then they sat and held each other tightly, while she cried and he kissed her hair.
When she had grown calm again, he tried every argument, every persuasion, only to see each shattered against the rock of her inflexible will.
She had not spent the night in agony for nothing. Her mind was made up. Her husband was alive: therefore she had no right to love the man who loved her. She could not help loving him, but she could never see him again. That was what it all came to again and again through the quiet morning hours while he pleaded and she denied.
“And even if you were married,” he said at last, driven to a sharper attack by the immobility of her resistance, “what does it matter? Come away with me—we’ll be married in a church and go to South America or somewhere where he’ll never find you.”
“Don’t,” she said gravely.
“You can’t think there’s anything sacred in a marriage like that—a marriage you were tricked into? And anyhow marriage is all a silly convention,” he said, and almost persuaded himself that he thought so. “I can’t let you go.”
“You’ve got to let me go. While he’s alive I’ll never see you any more.”
It all came round to that over and over and over again. Worn out at last he had to let her leave him.
“Tell me your town address,” he said. “I’ll see my lawyer. I know you can get free.”
“I live,” she said, half smiling with pale lips, “at the house with no address. And I won’t tell you where that is. And don’t tell me where you live. I won’t know.”
“That at least wouldn’t do any harm,” he said. “You must know where I am. You might need me. I live at 64—”
“No!”—she almost shouted the word. “I won’t—oh!—don’t you see? don’t you understand? I don’t keep on saying it all; but you aren’t a fool—you must see. . . Don’t you understand that if I knew where you lived, I could never trust myself from one day to another to keep away from you? . . . And I must. Whatever happens I’m going to keep straight.”
The phrase, which was Aunt Dusa’s, gave to the declaration a force that no finer phrase could have let it. It was then that he held her in his arms as one holds the beloved for the death-parting—lightly, passionately, with the tenderness of a mother for a child, the passion of a lover for the mistress desired and unpossessed.
“Go,” he said, letting his arms fall suddenly, “go if you must go—go now.”
She went. And at the end of three steps turned to say: “Take care of your poor hand.”
It seemed to him the most pathetic and lovely thing in the world. That she should care about his rotten hand—now——
She did not look back again. She knew that he was lying there among the tree roots. And she knew, too, that if she looked back she would go back to him, and that if she went back to him she would never be able to go away from him any more.
So she went blindly along the towing-path—and children going to afternoon school passed her and looked curiously at the white face.
“She do look sick,” one of them said.
“I reckon it’s a touch of the sun like what father had,” said an older child; “only he was red in the face, and her no hat on at all!”
She found her boat, and pulled up to the boat house, moored the boat quite securely and reasonably, and went back to The Wood House.
“We’ll go back to-morrow,” she said. “I’m too tired now. I want to go to sleep. Don’t wake me for anything. No, I don’t want any lunch. I don’t want anything—only to be let alone and to go to sleep for a very long time. I shall be all right to-morrow. But I’ll write a letter first.”
She wrote, quite legibly and steadily:
“I know you can’t make me live with you. You can do anything else you like. And you shall never have a penny from me.—Alexandra.”
“There!” she said, hammering the envelope with her fist to make the gum stick, “send that to that man at once. At once. I suppose he gave you his address. I suppose he’s somewhere near here. I shall never give him a penny. He can’t hurt me any more than he has.”
A real heroine would have thrown herself on her bed dressed as she was, and either fallen into the sleep of exhaustion or lain awake for hours gazing at the white ceiling. But Sandra had learned to take care of her body. She undressed methodically and completely, bathed, put on her night-gown, brushed out her long hair and plaited it up, pulled down the blinds and went to bed with a cold-water bandage over her swollen eyes. The sleep of exhaustion came all right enough then.
Mrs. Mosenthal left with the letter in her hands, sought a messenger for it. There was no one. The gardener only came once a week, and it was not his day. The woman from the house by East Lock, who came in every morning to cook and clean, had gone. Aunt Dusa could not take the letter herself. Sandra might wake and want her.
Remained only Denny. So Denny she sought. And found. He was in the garden, lying face downwards in the darkest, dampest part of the shrubbery, his chin on his hands. His “little friend,” the crutch, lay beside him. At her voice he raised his face to her, void of expression as any wax mask at Madame Tussaud’s.
“Oh, brother!” said the harassed woman, “he’s in one of his states now. Of course he would be—just to-day of all days.”
Denny had fits of silent absorption, when he seemed oblivious of all around him. He could be roused from these, but if this were done he was always ill afterwards. So it was usual to leave him alone at such times—after an hour or two he would arouse himself, and come back into the waking world, stretching his long arms like one who has slept too soundly. These lapses into oblivion were always called his states. They never happened in town. Sandra had a theory that his music kept them at bay. But in the country he could not always be induced to offer that defence.
“It’s no good,” said Mrs. Mosenthal. “Go that letter must, or we shall have my lady ramping and raging, poor injured lamb. Denny, Denny!”
She shook him by the shoulders. He rolled over on his back, and his face lay turned up like a dead face. She took his cold hands one at a time and kneaded them between her warm, fat, cushiony palms.
“Denny, Denny!” she said loudly, “wake up! Sandra wants you.”
“I know she does,” he said suddenly in the midst of the fifth repetition of this formula. “I know. I’m ready.” But his face still looked like the face of a dead man.
“Wake up,” she said sharply; “you must.”
“Eh?” he said, and sat up, rubbed his eyes and stretched. “What is it? I was asleep, wasn’t I?”
“Yes,” she answered.
It was what he always said after one of his states, and what they always said in reply.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said, “though really this place is too damp. Why, the ground’s as soft as butter—with all these dead leaves about, too. You’d think they’d all be gone by this time of year, wouldn’t you?” she added, making conversation bravely, as Denny stumped beside her into the afternoon sunshine. “Sandra wants a letter to go at once. There’s no one else—so I thought you’d take it—in the chair. Would you mind very much? It’s to the Railway Hotel at Paddock Wood. It’s on business—very urgent. I wouldn’t ask you, only Sandra was so particular for it to go at once.”
Denny’s face flushed a slow crimson. He hated to go abroad in daylight in that chair—a sort of tricycle worked by the arms, with a rest for the poor lame leg. The crutch was less noticeable. Everyone stared at the chair. But with the crutch one went so slowly and got so tired. In the chair, at night, Denny could go for twenty miles easily. On the crutch a couple of miles wore him out.
“Of course I’ll go,” he said. “The princess is resting, isn’t she? She must be tired with all the boating she’s done this week. And all alone, too.”
Mrs. Mosenthal looked at him and wondered how much he knew. She could not be sure. One never could be sure, with him.
He went to change his suit—he was always particular in matters of the toilet—pernickety Mrs. Mosenthal called it, in moments of exasperation. She brought the machine round to the front door.
“You are in a hurry,” he said, and smiled, when he found it there waiting.
“It’s Sandra,” her tone apologised. “She might wake any minute, you know, and ask if it had gone.”
“She might,” he agreed. “She makes slaves of us all, doesn’t she? I wonder whether there’s anyone who doesn’t worship her—anyone she can’t turn round her little finger?”
And again she wondered if he knew anything, guessed anything. And again she could not be sure.
“It’s a wonderful thing—all right, I’m going; I must get my silly leg straight on the rest—it’s wonderful how she makes everyone do what she wants, and everything she wants seem right. So long, Aunt Dusa, dear.”
He was quite awake now: that was his own smile—a very beautiful one by the way. But for the accident of being dropped in the gutter at two little years old by a child only two little years older, Denny would have been a six foot man, broad and strong, with the shape of the Discobolus and the face that women turn round to look after. Well, the face was still his—and when he smiled Mrs. Mosenthal smiled and said to herself:
“God bless the dear boy. His heart’s right, at anyrate.”
She watched him till he was out of sight.
The ride to Paddock Wood would have been pleasant enough to a man who had not been dropped in the gutter when he was two years old. To Denny it was a martyrdom. Every turn of the road might mask a foot passenger—someone who could walk strongly on his own upstanding equal feet, and who would look curiously at the man who worked a tricycle with his arms, because he had a foot that could not even walk, much less work machines. Behind any bush might lurk a boy, and when you are a cripple you learn to loathe and detest boys.
But if Denny had had to put his feeling into words—his feeling, for it was not definite enough to be called a thought—he would have said:
“I am holding my breath in terror of something that will make my soul ache through and through—at any moment I may meet someone who will make fun of me, and whom I shall wish to kill. But I am happy, because it is for her I am holding my breath for fear; and it is for her that I am here, where my soul shivers and feels already half what it will feel when they laugh at me. For her, for her, for her!”
It was a refrain to which the movement of his arms kept time.
Close by the twenty oast-houses that stand in a row on the way to Paddock Wood he was aware of a stout, oily-faced man with black hair and a beard like an Assyrian.
The man looked at him, and though he did not smile, his eyes and lips sent straight through Denny’s soul the agony it was waiting for. The man raised a fat hand, and the machine stopped.
“Were you taking a letter to Mr. Saccage by chance?” said the oily man in a voice that matched his face.
“So you recognise me?” Denny said silently. “You know I live with her. But you don’t know that I remember you. . . . Yes,” he said aloud.
“Hand over then. I’ll save you another mile or two—counting the two ways. I’m Mr. Saccage.”
“I know you are,” said Denny still to himself, and felt that he would gladly face the two miles more of misery for the sake of saying no to this black-haired beast. But Sandra had wished the letter delivered quickly. He pulled it out, and gave it.
“She might have chosen a quicker messenger,” Saccage grumbled. “But I suppose you can’t choose in the country. Always been lame like that?” His look seemed to scorch the maimed foot.
“Not quite always,” said Denny equably. And he remembered how kind this man had been to him once, when he had something to gain by it. And how he had hated himself for hating one who was kind to him. And he watched the letter in the other man’s fat, yellow hand.
He watched the tearing open and the reading of the letter, and his eyes shifted to the face of the man who read. He himself read on that face: “Oh, won’t she? We’ll see about that!”
Mr. Saccage seemed to feel the eyes of the man in the wheeled chair. He looked up quickly and their eyes met—in a long look, which neither would be the first to relinquish.
“Well!” said Mr. Saccage at last, and it was his eyes that had been forced to shift, “Well—upon my word! I hope you’ll know me again next time you see me, young man.”
“Yes,” said Denny coolly, and wheeled his chair round as he spoke. “Yes,” he said again as his hands grasped the levers for the first stroke. “Yes, I think I shall!”