The Dawn of Reckoning

by James Hilton

  His voice was quieter now. “I don’t understand you. I don’t understand you at all. But go on explaining.”

  “Oh, yes.” She assented as if he had reminded her of something she had forgotten. “I’ll go on explaining, even if you go on disbelieving. I must tell you about my kitten. You remember that, don’t you?”

  Suddenly she broke into sobs. “He did have it drowned,” she cried fiercely. “He hated it—and so he had it killed. I met one of the men yesterday in Chassingford. He told me that Philip had made it worth his while…Philip…”

  “Let’s get to details,” His voice was hard and metallic. “You say you met this man—the man who had been a gardener at your place and whom Philip dismissed?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you mean by saying that Philip made it worth his while?”

  “He gave him money to say nothing after he had been dismissed. It was an unjust dismissal, and probably he could have made trouble about it.”

  “Why did he tell you this?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps he wanted to help me. Perhaps Philip hadn’t given him enough money. Perhaps—oh, perhaps anything.”

  “And your theory is that Philip gave orders that the kitten should be drowned? Why do you suppose he didn’t drown it himself? Surely that would have been far easier.”

  “Drown it himself? he’d have fainted! Why, he couldn’t kill a fly even! He used to go out of the room while Venner went in to do it.”

  “I see. And you think his motive was spite—just spite?”

  “Jealousy,” she interrupted. “He hated my little kitten because he knew how I loved it, just as now he hates you because he knows—”

  She stopped, scared suddenly by his appearance. For a spasm of pain passed over his face, and he almost closed his eyes for a moment. When he spoke it was with both voice and words carefully under control. “You—you must not talk like that,” he said, biting his lips. “I’m afraid it is partly my own fault…I—I most sincerely regret what—what took place a little while since…No, no, you must never talk like that.” He seemed in the end almost soliloquising. “Besides—” He recollected himself. “Besides, it’s absurd to say that Philip hates me. He and I are old friends—‘varsity friends—”

  “And therefore you must always stick up for him, eh? Very well, I understand. You don’t believe me; you believe him. Even still? Never mind…I’ll go now. I’ve said all I can say. I’ll go. But not back to him.”

  That seemed to electrify him.

  “No? What d’you mean? You’re not going back to Chassingford?”

  “No.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “And mine.”

  “Very well, I don’t mind. Let’s discuss it. Where do you suggest that I should go?”

  He began to pace up and down the small room. She smiled slightly as she watched him, although in her heart there was a gradually increasing pain. The clock outside chimed the half-hour.

  At last he said very quietly: “I’ll tell you where you will go. You will go back to Chassingford. No—don’t interrupt. I’ll tell you why. When does the bye-election take place?”

  “Next Wednesday.”

  “Good. Then you will not have long to wait. You must stay at Chassingford with Philip until next Wednesday. It’s only fair. Think what the effect would be if it got about that the candidate’s wife had left him? No, you must not leave him until then.”

  “And then?” she said. “What then?”

  “Well, what do you suggest?”

  “I shall leave him, I suppose.”

  “I suppose so. Have you any money of your own?”

  “Not a penny. But I’m prepared to earn some.”

  “Yes…yes…” He sprawled himself out in a chair and stared vaguely at the ceiling. “These affairs are apt to have rather troublesome details. It seems a pity that you and Philip can’t—”

  “Can’t kiss and be friends, eh?” she interrupted witheringly. “As if this were just a delightful little lovers’ quarrel? The fact is, you don’t believe me. Be honest and admit it.”

  He replied slowly: “I will be honest. I’ll tell you quite frankly that I find all that you have said damnably hard to believe. Mind you, I don’t dis-believe it. Oh, hang it all—I’m fogged—absolutely—I don’t know what to believe. I’ve thought and thought about it—”

  “Ah, that’s where you go wrong. I don’t think—I feel!”

  He stopped suddenly and relapsed into silence. At last he rose, stretched himself, and walked to the window. “Well,” he said, heavily, “carry on as best you can until next Wednesday. That’s my advice, and you’ll admit there’s some sense in it. And now I’ll ‘phone for a cab and you’ll be able to reach Liverpool Street in time for the 10.12…You can”—he paused and cleared his throat as if the words were difficult to say—“you can always count on me to help you…always.” He went over to the window and pulled the blind slightly aside. “Ha, it’s raining…Now then, before we say good-bye for—for perhaps a short while, is there—is there anything you’d like to ask me?”

  In the silence that followed, they could hear the rain falling heavily on the roof above; in a few seconds it had swollen from a gentle drizzle to a fierce slanting storm. The seconds seemed hours in length; her head was again swimming and her heart pounding away tumultuously. There came a curious crashing sound from outside; she started violently, and then realized that it was only the closing of the windows in the wards. The rain beat down in a furious crescendo.

  “Just one question,” she said quietly. She paused a little and then added, with hardly the least change of voice: “Do—do you love me?”

  He faced her like one suddenly fighting for his life. He stared at her without speaking for a moment, and then moved near to her in two enormous strides. She was less frightened now; indeed, his angry looks gave her almost a sensation of relief.

  He seized her by the shoulders and shook her. “You’re trying to tempt me,” he cried, gritting his teeth. “You’ve got a devil in you to-night.”

  “And if I have, you put it there,” she answered boldly. “Won’t you give me a plain answer to my plain question?”

  His hands on her shoulders gripped her till she winced with pain. “Very well, you can have your plain answer. I do love you. Now sit down.”

  But she did not obey him. A strange transfiguring light came into her eyes, and she stood on tiptoe and flung both her arms round him. “Oh, you man,” she gasped, half-choking with emotion, “you try to take away the joy by talking as if it were business—just business—not love. But you can’t—you shan’t—I won’t let you!—Oh, kiss me—kiss me—kiss me as you did a little while ago when you were tired and weary and worn out—when you wanted me and you found me waiting for you…” She gave him her red glowing lips and he crushed them wildly to his. All her words were quenched by the fire that ran down her limbs; the room grew dark about them till they saw nothing but each other’s eyes; he kissed her again and again and again, till she almost fainted from delicious weariness.

  “Oh, my strong, lovely man,” she whispered, trembling vitally as he held her. “I have been tame for so long…but now you have made me wild again…”

  V

  The clock outside began the chiming of ten. He almost flung her away from him. “Your train,” he cried sharply. “Your train.”

  “Oh, damn my train.”

  “No…No, no. It’s the last train to-night. You must catch it. Hurry up. Thank goodness it’s not foggy.”

  “I wish it were.”

  “Nonsense. Get yourself ready quickly while I ‘phone for a cab.”

  “Suppose I refuse to go?”

  “You won’t refuse. You will do as I tell you.”

  “And after Wednesday?”

  “Then you will also do as I tell you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I am quite sure. After Wednesday we will sett
le everything.”

  “And then?”

  “We will decide when the time comes…Your train—you must hurry. One thing I want you to promise.”

  “What is it?”

  “I want you to help Philip all you can in his election. It’s only for a few more days. You must, oh, you must promise that.”

  She looked at him at first defiantly, and then replied: “Yes, I promise. And you—what will you promise?”

  “I promise you that—as I said before—you can count on me…I—I am very—very tired to-night and—-and—” He put his hand to his head as if to defend himself from a blow. “Tired, yes, and—and, oh, anyway, I must go and telephone.”

  He dashed out of the room. It was only as the light shone on his face near the doorway that she noticed how suddenly pale he had grown.

  Five minutes later she was racing through the greasy garbage-littered streets in a taxi. She reached the courtyard of Liverpool Street Station at eleven minutes past the hour, and jumped into the last compartment of the train just as it began to move out of the platform.

  VI

  By the evening post on the next day she received this letter

  “Dear Stella,—I’ve thought it all out, darling, and I know it’s all impossible. I’d better tell you frankly, to save you all sorts of worries and anxieties. I love you very, very much, but I cannot—I cannot steal the wife of my friend. Don’t think me priggish—it isn’t that.

  “I spent all last night after you had gone, thinking it all out, and I must be honest with you and with myself, Stella. I think that Philip loves and always has loved you very deeply, perhaps even as deeply as I do. I think also that all his queernesses lately have been due to jealousy.

  “He wants you and he thinks you are slipping away from him. Even the things you most hate him for have been done, I am convinced, because he loves you so much. And I think it would be treachery to do what we contemplated. I cannot do it. It isn’t mere convention—if you and Philip were tired of each other I would run off with you to-night. But he loves you, and he is my friend, and I think that to lose you would kill him. We must remember that.

  “Help him all you can, both in the election and afterwards. Give him another big chance, for my sake, Stella.

  “I am going to sign on for another trip to the South, and I leave for Norway on Thursday morning to make certain arrangements. I hope by then I shall know that Philip is M.P. for Chassingford.

  “Darling, it will be hard for both of us—it is hard, infernally hard, but for the present it’s the only honest thing we can do.”

  “Good-bye till we meet again. Be brave.

  “Aubrey Ward.

  “P.S.—Before I go away finally I will call round to say good-bye to you and Philip.”

  She replied by return as follows:

  “My Dear, Dear Man,—Your letter has made me the most miserable woman on earth. I only read it once hastily, because I heard Philip’s footsteps outside the room, and I got in such a panic that I threw the whole letter into the fire. Oh, why, why are you going to do this dreadful thing? Is there no other way at all? I feel blind, deaf, and dumb with misery, now that I know what you are going to do. Oh, my man, think of the danger. It frightens me—I’m too absolutely scared to write any more. If you do come here, don’t, for God’s sake, have anything to do with me, for at the first sight of you I should go raving mad and give the whole game away. I shall help Philip till the polling is over, but after that—God help me, and you too! I feel disaster all about you, but then, you won’t take heed of my warning. Oh, if I had known you when I was a girl, all these terrible things would never have happened. Good-bye, dearest—good-bye.—Your own always, whatever you do—

  “Stella.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER XV

  I

  As the polling-day drew nearer, Chassingford became vastly more excited that it had ever been in its life before. By the almost fatuous caprice of the English electoral system, it had been chosen to express the opinion of the country upon a Government that was suffering primarily from the fatigue and sterility of long office. Chassingford was aware of its sudden importance in the scheme of things; it received retinues of newspaper correspondents and bevies of ex-Cabinet Ministers with the coy air of a middle-aged woman accepting flatteries.

  Let us hear Mr. Jefferson Milner-White, special correspondent of the Manchester Sentinel.

  “There is no doubt,” he wrote two days before the election, “that Mr. Monsell’s chances are improving hour by hour, one had almost said minute by minute. Nor is this due entirely to the trend of events that has overwhelmed even this lethargic rural constituency…” and here follow a few sentences expressing in choice well-modulated phrases the Sentinel’s choice well-modulated politics. “It is rather, I believe, a personal—perhaps even a psychological matter. Mr. Monsell is a curious man, almost the exact opposite of the typical Parliamentary candidate. He is always very nervous; he has absolutely no sense of humour; his platform manner is unattractive and even disconcerting; nor can it be said that he is especially popular in the locality. Yet for all that there is a certain sombre unanalyzable power about him; this and his persistence are assuredly winning votes. Every night he addresses half-a-dozen meetings, delivering at each one long and exceeding dull speeches. Is there such a thing as being unconsciously hypnotized? If so, I should say that a large proportion of Mr. Monsell’s audience go home to their beds in such a condition. His eyes are of an intense blue, the eyes of a dreamer rather than of a practical man; yet his speeches are crammed full of unwieldy and singularly unilluminating Blue-Book statistics. What can one make of such a man? I do not profess to know, but I am rather afraid that the electors of Chassingford will make an M.P. of him.”

  Evidently Mr. Milner-White’s report aroused keen interest in Withington and Fallowfield, for he returned to the subject the next day in somewhat the same strain. “I cannot help writing mysteriously about Mr. Monsell. I do not understand him. People here to whom I have spoken seem to treat him as a sort of joke. And yet, on inquiry, I find that they are most of them are going to vote for him ‘Why vote for a joke?’ I ask, and the reply is generally vague…A curious in rent took place at one of Mr. Monsell’s meetings last evening. The Chairman, a local licensed victualler of rubicund countenance and Falstaffian proportions, had just made the usual optimistic remarks about the candidate’s chances of success, when the candidate himself suddenly echoed it, with clenched fists and uplifted eyes. ‘I will succeed,’ he declared, with death-like solemnity. ‘I shall succeed.’ The strange thing was that nobody laughed. On the contrary, the effect was electric. I myself distinctly felt a tense prickling of the skin. Whether Mr. Monsell was carried away by his own sombre enthusiasm, or whether it was a mere piece of consummate play-acting, I cannot say, but I confess that it was curiously impressive.

  “The candidate’s humourless intensity is well and aptly balanced by the high spirits of his wife, who has suddenly at almost the eleventh hour thrown herself into the combat. She combines great personal charm with an entire ignorance of political matters. Her assistance is, to say the least, timely, for Mr. Monsell has been working at such a high pressure that I am not surprised to hear rumours of his ill-health. The town, however, is full of rumours…etc., etc…”

  II

  They were thrown together more during those few final days of the campaign than they had been for many months. They had to attend meetings together, to drive in motor-cars from village to village, to smile at each other on platforms with ostentatious affection. They hid the truth from the crowd by tacit agreement, but from each other they could not hide it.

  “I am grateful to you for your help,” he said once, rather coldly, as they were motoring from one evening meeting to another through the dark country-side. “Oh, yes, I am very grateful. You make an excellent candidate’s wife. If only I were half so good a candidate…By the way, have you seen what that fellow Milner-White says about me in the Manche
ster Sentinel?

  “No, I haven’t read any of the papers.”

  He pulled out a sheaf of cuttings from his pocket.

  “This,” he answered, holding one of them beneath the dim roof-light of the limousine. “Listen…” He read out the passage beginning: ‘Mr. Monsell is a curious man…’ When he came to the phrase ‘sombre unanalyzable power’ he stopped and glanced at her intently. “Do you think I have this sombre unanalyzable power?”

  His strange eyes were upon her and something in them was making her suddenly frightened. “I—I haven’t noticed,” she said haltingly.

  “You haven’t noticed, eh? What have you noticed?” He checked himself sharply and went on, with more suavity: “Anyway, I should like to know this Mr. Milner-White. I rather fancy we should get on well together. I wonder if he’s a Cambridge man…”

  He seemed obsessed with Mr. Milner-White. When there were opportunities of private conversation with her (there were not many), he rarely seized them except to speculate upon the character and personality of the Sentinel correspondent.

  “I wish I knew him,” he kept saying. “I think I should find him remarkably sympathetic. I imagine him rather as an elderly scholarly type of man, by no means strong physically…None of the sweeping intolerance of youth…He would listen quietly and understand. The sort of friend who would stand by you through thick and thin…”

  And on the very morning of the poll he said to her: “That fellow Milner-White’s got something else in to-day. He says I am like a man who, after many failures, is at last staking his all. Now what do you suppose he means by that?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “I wish I knew…It is so rarely that one feels a certain sense of spiritual kinship breaking through the cold lines of print—”

  And so on.

  III