Love Child

by Edith Olivier

  She sped through the Rectory garden, and reached the window of the room where they were dancing. Here she stopped, and crouching under a tree-fuchsia which grew against the house, she gazed into the room. The passing shadows of the dancers played across her tiny white face, while her eyes caught the reflections of the lights from the candles. She was listening to the music, and she looked past the moving figures to watch the players. The notes of the violin carried with them the pure spirit of dancing. From its strings came a melody which soared and leapt and swayed; while beneath its free and joyous music, the piano kept a steady conscientious syncopated rhythm, as though to tether its floating companion and hold it to the ground.

  Then Clarissa spoke.

  “I could dance with that violinist,” she said. “ He knows my dances—listen.”

  She caught the gaiety of the tune, and was suddenly all animation. She sprang to her feet, and he watched her, thinking she was going to begin to dance again, but at that moment the music stopped and all the dancers moved simultaneously towards the garden. Clarissa glanced round, startled, and then she flew up the walnut tree like a cat. She crawled along a branch and looked down.

  David swung himself up after her and stood against the trunk of the tree. He was bewildered, dazzled, enchanted; every moment more entirely in love, and yet she baffled him. What was she? Not a child, for she was seventeen, and taller than Kitty: not a girl, for she floated like a feather, and flew into trees like a bird; not a spirit—she was human to the touch. But to-night she was all made of mischief and magic, remote from him, and yet calling him to her, to share her elfin mood.

  From behind her, he watched the various pairs of figures moving about the lawn, finding the chairs which he dimly remembered himself having placed, in the long bygone past of the very morning, in various sequestered spots about the garden. Such obviously sequestered spots, too, they now seemed to him, as he looked at them from beside Clarissa in the hiding-place of her choice.

  They did not speak to each other. Two people were sitting under the tree, and the least whisper would have been overheard; but he could feel the dimple in Clarissa’s cheek, and the light in her eye, though he couldn’t really see either. Remote in some ways, as she had seemed this evening, yet, as he compared her with the ordinary human beings below, he knew that she was infinitely nearer to him than they were. Each of her wayward movements had touched him with a sympathy closer than any understanding.

  The people below were talking about a tennis tournament in which they both seemed to have played, and their conversation was very boring. He thought he heard a little sigh from Clarissa, and then, as if possessed by an imp of mischief, she stretched her whole length along the branch, and lying there in her white dress like a ray of moonlight, she dropped a walnut on to the lap of the girl sitting below.

  The two partners looked up. David pressed himself close against the trunk of the tree, merging himself in its shadow, and Clarissa lay quiet as a moonbeam.

  “I believe there’s a squirrel up there,” said the young man below.

  Clarissa dropped another nut, this time on to his upturned face.

  “Shall I climb up?” the young man said.

  “No, certainly not,” was his partner’s reply. “You could never catch a squirrel, and you’ll only spoil your clothes. Let us come away, or we shall be covered in walnut-juice.”

  She got up and moved off, for she was wearing a new dress.

  Almost immediately the music began again, and everyone went obediently towards the house.

  Clarissa dropped to the ground, and for a moment she stood still listening to the music. Then she turned to David.

  “We must go home,” she said, swiftly and furtively, and she sped away across the garden. Again he had that sense of being baffled. There was a distance between them which it seemed impossible to bridge. Hitherto Miss Bodenham had always been with them, keeping them apart; but now, when at last he was alone with Clarissa, she herself held him back from speaking.

  “This is all like a dream,” she said, as they went down the lane. “I can hardly remember how we came, but I am glad that I saw the dance, and heard that violin,” and, in a voice far away like an echo, she sang a few bars of the music they had listened to.

  Now they were back in Miss Bodenham’s garden, and he knew that what he meant to say must be said quickly, or she would be gone. She seemed tired all at once. There was no more of that effortless floating, when she had barely seemed to touch the ground. Now she walked slowly and wearily, as if she were in pain.

  “I have got a stone in my shoe,” she said, and sitting down on the white seat, she took off her shoe and shook it. The stone fell on to the grass with a little thud.

  Before she could put on her shoe again, David took both her hands and held her firmly, turning her slightly towards himself, so that they faced each other on the bench. She sat very still, expectant. A little breeze passed by, bringing the scent of flowers. It stirred Clarissa’s hair, and when it reached the border beyond it touched the blossoms and set them swaying.

  For a moment he faltered. Words were too clumsy to express his meaning, and he feared that speech would shatter the delicate dream which surrounded them. Then, overmastered by his passion, he broke out, speaking now rapidly, now with hesitation, but caring not how he spoke if only he could make her understand and respond to the fervour of his love.

  “Clarissa, you mustn’t go in till I have told you something, something which I cannot keep from you any longer. I love you, darling. I love you with all my heart and soul and strength. You did not know this. Have you guessed it, I wonder?”

  She was silent, and he felt her try to draw her hands away from his.

  He would not let her go.

  “We have been happy together this summer, haven’t we? And now this wonderful night is the first time we have been alone together. Did you know that, Clarissa? And did you know how I have wanted to speak to you before?”

  “We have often spoken to each other,” she said.

  “Not like this,” he answered quickly. “Agatha has never allowed me to speak to you alone. She wants you for herself. But Clarissa, my darling, could you ever imagine that someone else beside Miss Bodenham might want you, long for you, know that his life was worth nothing at all to him if you didn’t share it. Clarissa, my love for you is all that I am now. I simply don’t exist except in my thoughts of you, my love for you. There is nothing else there. You are mine—me—you belong to me. You must belong to me, because I love you so.”

  His voice quivered, and he felt her quiver too.

  “Don’t, David,” she said. “ Don’t say that. I can’t belong to two people, and I am Agatha’s.”

  Agatha again! Would they ever escape her? She haunted them even in this hour which he thought he had stolen from her.

  “Agatha?” he cried despairingly. “Agatha! You think she can’t live without you, but she can. Of course she can. And … I can’t.”

  His voice broke. Clarissa trembled.

  “But can I live without her?” She faltered.

  “Of course you can, my darling. I shall be with you. We shall be together, and I will be all that she has been, and far, far more. Think what it means if you say No. Soon I shall have to go away. My leave is nearly ended, and unless you will come with me, I shall have to go out of your life altogether. We shall lose each other. All this will be over. I can’t face it. Can you?”

  “Don’t go,” she whispered.

  “You mean that you do want me?”

  She said nothing, but he felt a slight pressure from the hand which he still held in his.

  “As I want you!”

  “Don’t go,” she repeated, and her voice was fainter and very piteous.

  Then he took her into his arms and kissed her. He had not known before how little she was—how light. There seemed to be nothing there.

  But as he kissed her face, her head fell forward on his shoulder, almost as if she had fainted.
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  “You aren’t angry with me, darling, are you?” he asked.

  “David!” Her voice sounded all at once as if she were a very long way off. She drew her head back and looked at him, and the moonlight on her face made it all the more spirit-like. She seemed to be reaching towards him from another world. He held her eyes with his passionate, fervent gaze.

  Then, with that child-like directness which was always so lovely in her, she took his head between her hands, drew it to her, and kissed him with all her heart. He knew that she was his.

  At that moment a sharp cry struck upon the stillness of the garden. David started, and turned quickly towards the house.

  The open window framed the figure of Miss Bodenham, standing in her nightgown, with dishevelled hair. The light was full on her face. She looked like one who has lost everything, and who stares frantically into a gulf wherein hope is drowned.

  And as that cry was heard, Clarissa went. In one moment she had been beside him, slim and silver, like a ray of the moon; and in the next, she was lost. The shadows had swallowed her.

  Once more David and Agatha were face to face. They stood still and stared at each other for an appreciable space of time, and then she went back into the room. He waited, but she did not come down.

  As he turned to go, he saw that Clarissa had left her shoe behind her on the seat. He picked it up. It was a little red shoe, so small that he could scarcely believe it could ever have been worn by anyone but a child of ten or eleven years old.

  “I shall keep this till I see her again,” he thought, and he put it into his pocket.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Clarissa was gone.

  Agatha knew what had happened. She had seen her go out, like the flame of a candle, and now the light of the moon fell coldly on to an empty space, which a second before had held that clearly defined little figure. She knew that it was possible for a star to escape from its orbit, and so to break the secret link which held it to its sun. It was true, as Clarissa had once said, that shooting stars do go out; the earth has called them to it, but it can give them no life.

  Agatha turned back into the empty room. She sat down on her bed and waited. She listened. Hours passed. Now and then a night bird flew by outside, crying harshly, but there was no footstep in the house. Clarissa did not come, and Agatha knew that she would not. Instead, the morning came slowly, relentlessly, cruelly, into the room where Agatha sat alone, her face greyer than the dawn, her hands colder than the fading moonlight. She stared across the room at Clarissa’s empty bed with her nightgown laid out on it, and at the two cardboard boxes, which held the ball dresses. She never thought of looking for Clarissa, of calling her. She waited, and knew that there was no one to wait for, that there never could be anyone to wait for again, and yet that she must always wait.

  The clock struck the hours, one after the other. Agatha did not hear them. She simply sat there.

  And so Helen found her sitting when she came in with the tea and hot water at seven.

  “Miss Bodenham has had a seizure!” was her first thought, and putting down her tray, she ran across the room, and put her arm around the rigid figure. The expression in Agatha’s eyes frightened her—helpless, senseless misery-dumb and inarticulate. Then she looked at Clarissa’s bed, and saw that it had not been slept in. She realized that this was something worse, more terrible, than illness. What dreadful tiling could have happened in sight of those haunted eyes?

  “Sarah! Cook! Come quickly. Something awful has happened,” she called.

  They didn’t know what to do, those distracted servants. Agatha was their first thought, and they got her into bed, trying to warm her hands, and giving her hot tea to drink. She said nothing, but now a few tears began to fall down her colourless face—slow, unmeaning tears, which she seemed unaware of, for she did not try to wipe them away. She allowed them to roll out of her eyes, which still stared hopelessly into vacancy.

  The scared women sent for all the men within reach—the gardener, the doctor, the rector, the policeman, and then began the fruitless search for Clarissa. There was no trace left. No clue to follow.

  Agatha could tell nothing. She lay insensible to all that passed around her. David was closely questioned, and could only say that Clarissa had disappeared into the house as soon as Miss Bodenham was seen at the window. He was quite certain that Agatha had killed her. He knew that she was demented, out of her mind from jealousy, and before his mind there rose ghastly pictures of the terrible struggle in Agatha’s bedroom, when Clarissa’s tiny thread of life must have been squeezed out of her by Agatha’s maniacal fingers on her throat. For if she hadn’t murdered Clarissa, what had happened during the night to send her out of her mind?

  Yet there was no sign of a struggle, and it was impossible for Miss Bodenham in her condition to have disposed of a dead body. Some other solution must be found.

  But the days rolled past, and none was forthcoming. Agatha slowly reached a condition more or less like her normal one, though the mention of Clarissa’s name again brought those heavy hopeless tears from her eyes.

  The Doctor questioned her very kindly. So did Mr. Burns.

  She only shook her head, saying, “ She is gone. Don’t look for her. She can’t come back.”

  Whatever had happened to Clarissa, it seemed to be something which had stunned Agatha’s will into a deadly acquiescence and her mind into oblivion.

  A week later she came downstairs and asked to see David.

  He found her standing in the library, a room he had never entered before, and in the unknown surroundings, she, too, was someone altogether unknown. She was revolting—terrible, and yet there was something of grandeur about her, a grandeur which she had never before possessed. She had grown thin, and the bones of her face had almost the dignity of death. The skin was drawn over them with an unnatural whiteness, so that the face looked almost like a mask, and in this mask were set eyes which seemed to have been torn from a living face and maddened by the torture of their tearing. He had never observed Agatha’s eyes before. They had been merely episodes in. a face that was practically featureless. If he had thought of them at all, he would have said that they were pale and without colour. Now they suddenly appeared much darker than he remembered, but in their darkness were flecks of light which in a horrible way recalled the serene dappling of Clarissa’s fawn-like eyes.

  Her hair looked dirty and unbrushed, and her brown dress was put on carelessly, hooked into the wrong places, so that it hung unevenly about her meagre shape, strained in one place and loose in another.

  David shuddered when he saw her. He felt repulsed, revolted. Yet he knew that from this mad woman he must try to wrest the secret of Clarissa’s whereabouts. For the police did not believe that she was dead, and now David too had come to think that Agatha had hidden her, and that he might in this interview succeed in leading her unwittingly to betray the mystery of the hiding-place. It was horrible to think of Clarissa in the power of the maniac who stood facing him, perhaps being slowly starved; at any rate, imprisoned in some unimaginable hiding-place—dark, dirty, suffocating.

  He stood waiting for her to speak, and for a few moments she was silent. Her miserable eyes looked past him, hunting in vain through the empty room for the figure that was gone.

  Then she spoke, vaguely, and as if to herself, hardly addressing him:

  “I saw you that night.… Clarissa went.… She went.… You did it.… Why don’t you tell them that you know what happened? Why do they all ask me?”

  David was completely bewildered. He answered her very gently:

  “But I have nothing to tell. I only wish I had. I have been searching for her—we all have —but no one has seen her since she went to your room that evening.”

  She looked at him vaguely.

  “No. It was not in my room. It was in the garden. You were with her. The moon shone, and you kissed her. You took her away, and you have lost her, lost my little darling, my precious child … lost her. Wha
t does the sun do when a star goes out? Can it find it again? Never! Never! Gone into the dark.”

  He thought her mind was wandering, and he tried to bring her back.

  “Miss Bodenham,” he said, “try to remember what happened that night. You saw us in the garden, Clarissa and me, and you called to her. She left me then. What happened afterwards?”

  “You know as much as I do,” said Miss Bodenham sullenly.

  “No, for I never saw her after she went into the house.”

  “She never came into the house.”

  The words fell with dead finality, and she was silent.

  He saw that his appeals were wasted upon her, and he determined to frighten her if he could. He spoke in a changed voice, looking her full in the face, and trying with his eye to hold her shifting glance.

  “Miss Bodenham, you must pull yourself together. You know what has happened to Clarissa, and you must tell me. I demand it. The world believes that you have murdered her. Speak and clear yourself if you can.”

  “Murdered her? Murdered her? Murdered my little Clarissa? Yes, she is murdered, but it is you who did it,” and she hid her face in her hands, rocking herself to and fro.

  “No, Miss Bodenham, this won’t do. You saw what happened that night, and you know that Clarissa loves me. She is mine now, and I have a right to know the truth. I shall find it out. You shall be brought to justice.”

  “You dare to call Clarissa yours?” cried Agatha, and her face was lit with sudden passion. “Why, you know nothing at all about her. Whence she came, or how. She was mine—mine only. I gave her life to her, and you have taken it away. Oh, the end of it all, the cruel, bitter end. My little Clarissa, he has killed you. Lost, lost, and dead.”

  She was shaken by her frenzy, and she fell on to a chair, her lips working strangely.

  “But they can’t shut you up in a coffin,” she muttered. “They will never know where you are.”

  David was almost as broken as she was. He searched his brain for some new way of appeal, but he could find none. For a moment there was silence, then he turned to go.