Part 23 (1/2)

The possible consequence to Lettice of what had been a mere indecision seemed to him out of any proportion. No, he thought, I wouldn't have gone when the time came; when the minute came I'd have held back. Then again, it ain't as though I had gone. A species of surprise alternated with resentment at the gravity of the situation which had resulted from his indiscreet conduct; the agony of that cry from within the house was too deep to have proceeded from ... it wasn't as though he had gone ... he wouldn't have gone, anyway.

He heard footsteps on the porch, and turned, recognizing Doctor Pelliter.

He half rose to go to the other with an inquiry; but he dropped quickly back on the bank, looked away.--Some time before the doctor had tied a towel about his waist ... it had been a white towel.

His mind returned to Lettice and the terrible mischance that had been brought upon her; that he had brought on her. He tested the latter clause, and attempted to reject it: he had done nothing to provoke such a terrible actuality. He rehea.r.s.ed the entire chain of events which had resulted in the purchase of the pearl necklace; he followed it as far back as the evening when, from the minister's lawn, he had seen Meta Beggs undressing at her window. He could nowhere discover any desperate wrong committed. He knew men, plenty of them, who were actually unfaithful to their wives: he had done nothing of that sort. He endeavored to grow infuriated with Meta Beggs, then with Mrs. Caley; he endeavored to place upon them the responsibility for that attenuated, agonized sound from the house; but without success. He had made a terrible blunder. But, in a universe where the slightest fairness ruled, he and not Lettice would pay for an error purely his own.

Lettice was so young, he realized suddenly.

He recalled her as she sat alone, under the lamp, with her shawl about her shuddering shoulders, waiting for the inevitable, begging him to a.s.sure her that it would be all right. It would, of course, be all right in the end. It must! Then things would be different. He made himself no extravagant promises of reform, no fevered reproaches; but things would be different.--He would take Lettice driving; he had the prettiest young wife in Greenstream, and he would show people that he realized it. She had been Lettice Hollidew, the daughter of old Pompey, the richest man in the county.

The importance of that latter fact had dimmed; the omnipotence of money had dwindled: for instance, any conceivable sum would be powerless to still that cry from within. In a way it had risen from the very fact of Pompey Hollidew's fortune--Meta Beggs would never have considered him aside from it. He endeavored to curse the old man's successful avarice, but without any satisfaction. Every cause contributing to the present impending catastrophe led directly back to himself, to his indecision. The responsibility, closing about him, seemed to shut out the air from his vicinity, to make labored his breathing. He put out a hand, as though to ward off the inimical forces everywhere pressing upon him. He had seen suffering before--what man had not?--but this was different; this unsettled the foundations of his being; it found him vulnerable where he had never been vulnerable before; he shrunk from it as he would shrink from touching a white-hot surface. He was afraid of it.

He thought of the ghastly activities inside the house; they haunted him in confused, horrid details amid which Lettice suffered and cried out.

He was unaware of the day wheeling splendidly through its golden hours, of the sun swinging across the narrow rift of the valley. At long intervals he heard m.u.f.fled hoof-beats pa.s.sing on the dusty road above. He watched a trout slip lazily out from under the bank, and lie headed upstream, slowly waving its fins. It recalled the trout he had left on the porch of Hollidew's farmhouse on the night when he had attempted to ... seduce ... Lettice!

The details of that occasion returned vivid, complete, unsparing. It was a memory profoundly regrettable because of an obscure connection with Lettice's present danger; it too--although he was unable to discover why it should--took on the dark aspect of having helped to bring the other about. As the memory of that night recurred to him he became conscious of an obscure, traitorous force lurking within him, betraying him, leading his complacency into foolish and fatal paths, into paths which totally misrepresented him.... He would not really have gone away with Meta Beggs.

He was a better man than all this would indicate! Yet--consider the result; he might as well have committed a foul crime. But, in the end, it would be all right. Doctors always predicted the darkest possibilities.

He turned and saw Doctor Pelliter striding up the slope to where his team was. .h.i.tched on the public road. A swift resentment swept over Gordon Makimmon as he realized that the other had purposely avoided him. He rose to demand attention, to call; but, instinctively, he stifled his voice.

The doctor stopped at the road, and saw him. Gordon waved toward the house, and the other nodded curtly.

XX

He pa.s.sed through the dining room to the inner doorway, where he brushed by Mrs. Caley. Her face was as harsh and twisted as an old root. He proceeded directly to the bed.

”Lettice,” he said; ”Lettice.”

Then he saw the appalling futility of addressing that familiar name to the strange head on the pillow.

Lettice had gone: she had been destroyed as utterly as though a sinister and ruthless magic had blasted every infinitesimal quality that had been hers. A countenance the color of glazed white paper seemed to hold pools of ink in the hollows of its eyes. The drawn mouth was the color of stale milk. Nothing remained to summon either pity or sorrow. The only possible emotion in the face of that revolting human disaster was an incredulous and shocked surprise. It struck like a terrible jest, a terrible, icy reminder, into the forgetful warmth of living; it mocked at the supposed majesty of suffering, tore aside the a.s.sumed dignity, the domination, of men; it tampered ferociously with the beauty, the pride, the innocent and gracious pretensions, of youth, of women.

Gordon Makimmon was conscious of an overwhelming desire to flee from the white grimace on the bed that had been Lettice's and his. He drew back, in a momentary, abject, shameful cowardice; then he forced himself to return.... The fleering lips quivered, there was a slight stir under the counterpane. A little sound gathered, shaped into words barely audible in the stillness of the room broken only by Gordon's breathing:

”It's ... too much. Not any more ... hurting. Oh! I can't--”

He found a chair, and sat down by her side. The palms of his hands were wet, and he wiped them upon his knees. His fear of the supine figure grew, destroying the arrogance of his manhood, his sentient reason. He was afraid of what it intimated, threatened, for himself, and of its unsupportable mockery. He felt as an animal might feel cornered by a hugely grim and playful cruelty.

The westering sun fell through a window on the disordered huddle of Lettice's hastily discarded clothes streaming from a chair to the floor--her stockings, her chemise threaded with a narrow blue ribband. His thoughts turned to the little white garments she had fas.h.i.+oned in vain.

It had been wonderfully comfortable in the evening in the sitting room with Lettice sewing. He recalled the time when he had first played the phonograph in order to hear the dog ”sing.” Lettice had cried out, imploring him to stop; well--he had stopped, hadn't he? The delayed realization of her patience of misery rankled like a barb. The wandering thoughts returned to the long fabrication he had told her of the loss of his money in Stenton, of the fict.i.tious agent of hardware. He had snared the girl in a net of such lies; scornful of Lettice's innocence, her ”stupid” trust, he had brought her to this ruinous pa.s.s. It hadn't been necessary.

The window was open, and a breath of early summer drifted in--a breath of palpable sweetness. Mrs. Caley entered and bent over the bed, an angular, black silhouette against the white. She left without a word.

If Lettice died he, Gordon Makimmon, would have killed her, he had killed more ... he recognized that clearly. The knowledge spread through him like a virus, thinning his blood, attacking his brain, his nerves. He lifted a shaking hand to wipe his brow; and, for a brief s.p.a.ce, his arm remained in air; it looked as though he were gazing beneath a s.h.i.+elding palm at a far prospect. The arm dropped suddenly to his side, the fingers struck dully against the chair. He heard again the m.u.f.fled beat of horse's hoofs on the road above; the sun moved slowly over the narrow, gay strips of rag carpet on the floor: life went on elsewhere.

His fear changed to loathing, to absolute, sick repulsion from all the facts of his existence. With the pa.s.sing minutes the lines deepened on his haggard countenance, his expression perceptibly aged. The stubble of beard that had grown since the day before grizzled his lean jaw; the confident line of his shoulders, of his back, was bowed.