“Perhaps he likes it.”
“Maybe he tries to make himself like it. But I have seen a sort of look in his eyes——”
Miss Merriss did not ask to have the look in Mr. Herrick’s eyes explained to her; in fact she pushed the subject aside, and led Mrs. Jenner’s gossip into other channels.
But the seed had been sown. In the man’s heart it grew openly, and with the vigour of a thing thrusting up towards the light. With the woman the growth was secret, because she tried wilfully to suppress it and to hide it from herself. She was not going to feel sorry for any man a second time in her life, for her first great adventure in sympathy had been disastrous.
Jane Jenner had views of her own. It seemed to her ridiculous that the red cottage should not be on friendly terms with the white bungalow, when there was everything to be gained by such friendliness.
Miss Merriss was queer. There was no doubt about it. As for poor Mr. Peter, Jane had seen him leaning on his hoe, or pausing, bucket in hand, to look across the valley, and when Jane Jenner had looked in the same direction she had seen the figure of a woman.
“Bless us,” she had said to herself, “why don’t he go across some time and speak to her? Fancy two young people living within two furlongs of each other and never meeting. ’Tain’t sense.”
It wasn’t sense. Herrick accepted its senselessness and the realization of it made his difficult life more difficult. For three years he had carried on, living like a squatter in some new country, reservedly obstinate, seeing few people and speaking to less. Lonely? Of course he had been lonely; but he had contrived to grow accustomed to his loneliness, and then this problematical creature in petticoats had come to emphasize his isolation. It was a provocation. She had reintroduced the consciousness of woman into his life.
“I’ll go across and call,” he said; “we are neighbours. She must be pretty lonely.”
But he did not go. His solitary life had exaggerated his natural shyness, and he put off the adventure until chance and Mrs. Jenner forced it upon him.
She came to him big with information. It was early in May.
“Miss Merriss has got ’flu. The doctor’s bin, and has told her to stay in bed. And all her young birds to be looked after——”
“Can’t she get somebody?”
“There’s only Silly Sam. And I wouldn’t send Silly Sam to my worst enemy, sir.”
Herrick looked thoughtful.
“I might be able to carry on for her for a few days. It is bad luck.”
“I’m sure she’d be very grateful.”
“I’ll go over. But she’s in bed. You needn’t tell her, Mrs. Jenner, who it is who is looking after things for her. I’d rather she didn’t know.”
Jane looked at him shrewdly.
“Very good, sir; I won’t tell her. I’ll say it’s a neighbour of mine, a steady chap I could recommend.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Jenner. I’ll go over at once.”
As was to be expected, Jane Jenner did not approve of such mystery, and before the day was out Marjory Merriss heard who it was who had come to her rescue.
“Mr. Herrick came straight across when I told him, Miss. Now don’t you worry. He’s a real little gentleman. And he said you were not to know.”
Marjory, with a burning head and a sense of disaster hovering over her, was able to utter to herself the one word: “Bother.”
“It is very kind of Mr. Herrick. Of course I’ll pretend not to know.”
Mrs. Jenner was filling a glass with milk and soda. She reckoned that the promise would not hold for very long, and that she could wait for it to be broken.
It was Marjory who made the first move. She was over-persuaded by her gratitude, and also by a growing interest in the unknown and lonely man who had come to help her and who appeared to expect no thanks. During the days of her illness she had an occasional glimpse of him passing across her window along the line of Gordon’s ragged myrobalan hedge. She presumed that he thought himself below her line of vision. He never glanced at the bungalow.
She waited five days. There was an element of vanity in her waiting, innocent and human vanity, for she wished to be seen sitting up in bed in her cerise-coloured jacket and wearing a white lace cap. Also, she had to make a confession to Jane Jenner.
“I can’t lie here and let Mr. Herrick do all this for me without thanking him.”
“But you are not supposed to know, Miss.”
“But I have seen him.”
Herrick, scattering grain to a crowd of birds, was called to Marjory Merriss’s window.
“She wants to thank you, sir.”
“I don’t want thanking, Besides——”
“Well, she has seen you, and she’ll be hurt.”
Herrick went to the window, and stood there with a few windblown wallflowers brushing against his knees. The bed faced the window. Marjory Merriss was sitting up in it, propped against two pillows, her dark hair tucked under her cap. Her eyes looked very big and black in the pallor of her face.
“Mr. Herrick,” she said, “I am very grateful to you for helping me like this.”
He had taken off his hat.
“Well, we are neighbours. It seemed the obvious sort of thing——”
“Oh, no. And with all your own work too.”
“I have managed all right. Everything is going on swimmingly.”
“Thank you; I know you are an expert.”
“Hardly. I hope you are better?”
“Much. I shall be up in a day or two.”
“That’s good.”
So it began. They were attracted to each other by those vague and almost indescribable qualities that appeal to the sensitive. She liked his voice, his reserved shyness, his lameness. He found something to wonder about in her eyes. It was not a question of mere propinquity, the throwing together of two human elements. Nevertheless, she resisted. On that first day when she went out into the garden and sat on the rustic seat Gordon had built on one side of the unkempt lawn, she looked across at the red cottage and prepared to renew her resolutions. Never again would she allow herself to be sorry for a man. And then she saw Herrick moving down the hillside. He followed the track beside the sand-pit, and disappeared into the green bottom of the valley. He was coming to the bungalow to feed her birds.
She waited. She saw him pause at the gate. He looked over it and saw her, and his face lit up.
“I’m glad.”
“Yes; I shall soon be fit for work again.”
“There is no hurry. You ought to be careful. These May winds, are treacherous.”
“Oh, I’m a cautious body.”
She held herself in; she resisted, and she saw that he was aware of her reserve, and was puzzled by it. He looked at her a little anxiously, and then ceased to look. She realized how easily he could be hurt.
“It has been awfully good of you——”
“Not a bit.”
He stared at the weedy path, and she knew that he was wanting to say something that would challenge her reserve.
“I’ll carry on till you feel quite fit.”
“I shall be quite fit in a day or two. Really, I can’t let you——”
“It would be rather absurd——”
“Would it?”
“Well, wouldn’t it? Besides——”
He hesitated, and she should have reinforced his hesitation, but her hardness failed her.
“I don’t know how I shall make it up to you.”
He looked at her with sudden meaning.
“That’s not necessary. It has been a pleasure. But if I might stroll across now and then. I’ll not make a nuisance of myself.”
His eyes hurt her: they appealed; they were full of his unconfessed loneliness, and of more than loneliness. She compromised with her past.
“Well, yes; I’ll give you tea in the garden.”
“Thank you,” he said, and walked on to his work.
Two weeks passed, weeks of beautiful May weather, wit
h all the growth of the year rising to the song of the birds. The gold of the gorse was fading, but the gold of the broom was there to take its place. It was a notable year for the blossom on the fruit trees, and even poor dead Gordon’s wind-blown young apple trees were happily gay. The perfume of life was in the air. The landscape grew gentle with young leaves. Gentleness. He came to her gently, looking at her with deep and devout eyes; he had realized her resistance, and he respected it. His gentleness was her most perilous enemy. Her resistance weakened when it ceased to be attacked. When he would not take she began to desire to give.
She felt a crisis near, and her fairness to him involved in it.
He had come across and had asked her to go over and look at his little old place across the valley. Also, he had some plants to give her.
She went, her heart consenting and protesting. They climbed the path beside the old sand-pit with its faded yellow precipices, and all the way she was nerving herself to blurt it out to him.
He paused by the rotten old fence, and looked into the distance. It was very blue.
“Rain’s coming.”
“Yes.”
The pause frightened her; for she knew that they were on the edge of intimate moments.
“I’m married.”
She blurted it out as though she were throwing an unexpected stone at him. It sounded so absurd, so crude. She wondered whether he understood.
He glanced at her quickly. Her left hand had gone to one of the poles of the rotten fence on the edge of the sand-pit.
“Don’t lean on that; it’s not safe.”
And that was all he said.
Later she knew that she would have to tell him. He did not ask her to tell him, and his quiet and patient silence made the confession all the more imperative. She chose an evening when Herrick had strolled across to the white bungalow at the end of the day’s work; she sat in a deck-chair, and Herrick on Gordon’s rustic seat; she told him to smoke, and he filled his pipe.
“It’s about—my marriage.”
“Oh?”
He gave her one quick, shy glance.
“I wondered whether you would. I’m grateful.”
“There is no need. I was sorry for a man and I married him. It was after the war.”
“Had he been in the war?”
“Yes.”
She gazed out across the garden and the rolling gorse at the soft landscape backed by the grey distance of the downs.
“He had had rather a bad time. I was sorry. I thought I could help him. I knew he had queer moods, but I did not know that he was one of those men who are cruel, who love cruelty. I don’t think he could help it. And the war must have made him more cruel.”
Herrick had let his pipe go out.
“Possessed by a devil,” he said.
“Yes—just like that, a clever, malicious devil. I heard afterwards—that as a boy—— Oh, well, I tried for two years, two horrible years—and then I gave up.”
“What did he do?”
“His cruelty was more moral than physical. He had a queer cunning. He did nothing the law could seize on.”
“Spiritual torture? Pulling the wings off one’s soul.”
“You can understand that?”
“Oh—yes.”
“It was just that. It is worse to have your soul knocked about and humiliated—— And in the end I began to feel that I was growing like him, and that he was dragging me down into a world of evil horror. I felt I had to escape.”
“And this——?”
“Oh—this is my second attempt. I tried to trust him the first time, but he made it part of the game. It amused him. So I made up my mind to disappear. I had a little money of my own, and only two people knew my plans. They helped me. I bought this place under another name. And the peace of it—the open sky and the silence. Can you understand?”
He nodded. His eyes were looking at the ground, and they were very sad eyes.
“I’ll try not to spoil it.”
And suddenly she held out a hand, a quick and impulsive hand.
“Peter—— I can’t promise things—you see.”
“Never mind; never mind——”
He held her hand, and looked at the dim hills.
“Things happen all wrong. I’ll not spoil your peace, dear. I’ll help. It will give me something——”
Her fingers pressed his.
“Dear—— Oh, if I could! But there is always that in the background. Some day I know that he will find me.”
“That’s not a certainty,” said Herrick, thinking of things that he could not tell.
But though they held apart, they were lovers looking at each other from a distance, soul mates set one on either side of a green valley, and the very distance seemed to make the relationship more dear. They were very frank with each other. They discussed marriage, and this particular marriage with the sincerity and the understanding of two people who had suffered.
“Of course—you ought to be free. The conventions are always a hundred years behind the facts.”
“Isn’t that rather wise, Peter? We—who feel that we could be a law unto ourselves—are bound to be penalized.”
“You ought to divorce him.”
“My dear, I have no evidence. He is very clever. He used to say: ‘No, my lady, I am not going to be got rid of in that way.’ ”
One night, when wandering together up the lane, Herrick put the ultimate alternative before her, but she would not consider it. Her voice was tragic but steady.
“No, no, dear man; I’ll not drag you into that. There’s a fastidiousness in my caring.”
“I’m ready,” he protested; “ready to bear anything at any time.”
“You would be. But I have a feeling that it would hurt—hurt us both. Besides you are helping me so much.”
“Well—anyway—I love you.”
Herrick drove once a week in his old ramshackle car to Eastfield, combining business with pleasure, if a little necessary shopping can be called pleasure. He lunched at the White Hart—overlooking the market-place—and of late he had made a habit of loitering in the hall and looking at the entries in the visitors’ book. The White Hart was the only habitable inn in Eastfield, and many motorists stayed here.
At the back of his mind was the thought that one day he might find a certain name written in that book—the name of Marjory’s husband—and one September day he did find it.
“Howard Sheen. London.”
He stood for a moment, staring at the signature, before walking into the White Hart coffee-room. The signature had been dated that very morning, and when Herrick sat down at his usual table in a corner away from the windows he was sombrely alert. He scanned the people at the other tables; one or two were farmers whose faces were familiar, but most of them were strangers.
There was that fellow by the window, eating as though he had urgent business before him, a tall man who at intervals buried his face in one of the White Hart tankards. He was wearing a grey sports coat, green breeches of the plus four pattern, and fawn-coloured stockings with blue tassels.
Was this Howard Sheen? And as Herrick studied him he felt that the man repelled him. He had an air of easy arrogance, and a face that Herrick was not likely to forget. It was a queer face, badly balanced; sallow, square about the forehead, and narrowing to nostrils, and chin. At the root of the nose a curious ridge of skin protruded, with a deep cleft on either side of it giving the impression of a perpetual and unpleasant frown.
Herrick hurried his lunch. The man whom he thought to be Howard Sheen was still at the table when Herrick left. He bustled his old car out of the inn yard, and in a quarter of an hour he had covered the five miles that lay between him and home. He went across to the bungalow.
Marjory was having lunch, and he spoke to her through the open window, resting his hands on the sill.
“I have just been to Eastfield, lunching at the White Hart. I happened to look at the visitors’ book.”
He saw
her eyes darken and grow big.
“He is there?”
“I saw his name. And there was a man feeding there, tall and sallow with a squarish forehead, and a queer lump of skin at the root of his nose.”
She stood up.
“Is it chance—or has he found me out?”
They looked at each other, and she tried to smile.
“Oh, well, I shall soon know. I am not going to run away from him.”
Herrick’s hands gripped the edge of the sill.
“I shall be here——”
“Not here, Peter.”
“Well, over there. Do you doubt it.”
She came to the window and laid a hand over one of his.
“No; I was in Eastfield yesterday. Perhaps he saw me. But I don’t want you to meddle, Peter, not too much for my sake—I mean.”
“I’ll promise nothing,” he said. “All I know is that I am not going to let him spoil your life.”
Nothing happened that day, though Herrick arranged his work so that he could watch the bungalow. When dusk fell he walked across, following the path past the sand-pit, his gun under his arm. He left the gun in the hedge before going up the path to the bungalow. The door was locked and the windows closed.
Herrick knocked.
“It’s Peter.”
She let him in, and they stood in the darkness of her little dining-room.
“I just came across to see that things were all right. I should keep your door locked.”
“It may be nothing more than a coincidence.”
“Perhaps. Why not go away for a day or two? I could drive you to Lewes.”
“It’s an idea.”
She considered it, looking out through the open doorway at the dim landscape, while he stood in devoted silence.
“No; I think I’ll stay and see it through.”
“Just as you please. I shall be here—if I’m wanted.”
When he was leaving her she made a sudden movement towards him, and seized his arm. It was as though she had some dim feeling of what was in his mind.
“Peter, I don’t want you mixed up in it.”
“Why, in what way?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You won’t try to interfere with him? He is so strong. It would hurt me——”
He was calm, and his calmness misled her.
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 81
