Chapter Five I
All the way back to Millstead joy was raging in his heart, trampling down all his woes and defying him to be miserable. Nothing in the world—not his unhappiness with Helen, or the hatred that Millstead had for him, or the perfidy of his own soul—could drive out that crowning, overmastering triumph—the knowledge that Clare loved him. For the moment he saw no difficulties, no dangers, no future that he could not easily bear. Even if he were never to see Clare again, he felt that the knowledge that she loved him would be an adequate solace to his mind for ever. He was happy—deliriously, eternally happy. Helen’s silences, the school’s ragging, the Head’s sinister coldness, were bereft of all their powers to hurt him; he had a secret armour, proof against all assault. It seemed to him that he could understand how the early Christians, fortified by some such inward armour, had walked calm-eyed and happy into the arena of lions.
He did not go straight back to the school, but took a detour along the Deepersdale road; he wanted to think, and hug his happiness, and eventually calm it before seeing Helen. Then he wondered what sort of an explanation he should give her of his absence; for, of course, she would have received by this time full accounts of the ragging. In the end he decided that he had better pretend to have been knocked a little silly by the blow on his head and to have taken a walk into the country without any proper consciousness of what he was doing.
He returned to Lavery’s about eleven o’clock, admitting himself by his own private key. In the corridor leading to his own rooms, Helen suddenly ran into his arms imploring him to tell her if he was hurt, where he had been, what had happened, and so on.
He said, speaking as though he had hardly recovered full possession of his senses: “I—I don’t know.... Something hit me.... I think I’ve been walking about for a long time.... I’m all right now, though.”
Her hands were feeling the bandages round his head.
“Who bandaged you?”
“I—I don’t—I don’t know.” (After all, ‘I don’t know’ was always a safe answer.)
She led him into the red-tinted drawing-room. As he entered it he suddenly felt the onrush of depression, as if, once within these four walls, half the strength of his armour would be gone.
“We must have Howard to see you to-morrow morning,” she said, her voice trembling. “It was absolutely disgraceful! I could hear them from here—I wondered whatever was happening.” And she added, with just the suspicion of tartness: “I’d no idea you’d ever let them rag you like that.”
“Let them rag me?” he exclaimed. Then, remembering his part, he stammered: “I—I don’t know what—what happened. Something—somebody perhaps—hit me, I think—that was all. It wasn’t—it wasn’t the ragging. I could have—managed that.”
Suddenly she said: “Whose mackintosh is that you’re wearing?”
The tone of her voice was sharp, acrid, almost venomous.
He started, felt himself blushing, but hoped that in the reddish glow it would not be observed. “I—I don’t know,” he stammered, still playing for safety.
“You don’t know?—Then we’ll find out if we can. Perhaps there’s a name inside it.”
She helped him off with it, and he, hoping devoutly that there might not be a name inside it, watched her fascinatedly. He saw her examine the inside of the collar and then throw the coat on the floor.
“So you’ve been there again,” was all that she said. Once again he replied, maddeningly: “I—I don’t know.”
She almost screamed at him: “Don’t keep telling me you don’t know! You’re not ill—there’s nothing the matter with you at all—you’re just pretending! You couldn’t keep order in the Big Hall, so you ran away like a great coward and went to that woman! Did you or didn’t you? Answer me!”
Never before, he reflected, had she quarrelled so shrilly and rancorously; hitherto she had been restrained and rather pathetic, but now she was shouting at him like a fishwife. It was a common domestic bicker; the sort of thing that gets a good laugh on the music-hall stage. No dignity in it—just sordid heaped-up abuse. “Great coward”—“That woman”—!
He dropped his lost-memory pose, careless, now, whether she found out or not.
“I did go to Clare,” he said, curtly. “And that’s Clare’s raincoat. Also Clare bandaged me—rather well, you must admit. Also, I’ve drunk Clare’s coffee and warmed myself at Clare’s fire. Is there any other confession you’d like to wring out of me?”
“Is there indeed? You know that best yourself.”
“Perhaps you think I’ve been flirting with Clare?”
(As he said it he thought: Good God, why am I saying such things? It’s only making the position worse for us both.)
“I’ve no doubt she would if you’d given her half a chance.”
The bitterness of her increased his own.
“Or is it that I would if she’d given me half a chance? Are you quite sure which?”
“I’m sure of nothing where either of you are concerned. As for Clare, she’s been a traitor. Right from the time of first meeting you she’s played a double game, deceiving me and yourself as well. She’s ruined our lives together, she’s spoilt our happiness and she won’t be satisfied till she’s wrecked us both completely. I detest her—I loathe her—I loathe her more than I’ve ever loathed anybody in the world. Thank God I know her now—at least I shall never trust her any more. And if you do, perhaps some day you’ll pay as I’ve paid. Do you think she’s playing straight with you any more than she has with me? Do you think you can trust her? Are you taken in?”
The note of savage scorn in her voice made him reply coldly: “You’ve no cause to talk about taking people in. If ever I’ve been taken in, as you call it, it was by you, not by Clare!”
He saw her go suddenly white. He was half-sorry he had dealt her the blow, but as she went on to speak, her words, fiercer than ever now, stung him into gladness.
“All right! Trust her and pay for it! I could tell you things if I wished—but I’m not such a traitor to her as she’s been to me. I could tell you things that would make you gasp, you wretched little fool!”
“They wouldn’t make me gasp; they’d make me call you a damned liar. Helen, I can understand you hating Clare; I can understand, in a sense, the charge of traitor that you bring against her; but when you hint all sorts of awful secrets about her I just think what a petty, spiteful heart you must have! You ruin your own case by actions like that. They sicken me.”
“Very well, let them sicken you. You’ll not be more sickened than I am. But perhaps you think I can’t do more than hint. I can and I will, since you drive me to it. Next time you pay your evening visits to Clare ask her what she thinks of Pritchard!”
“Pritchard! Pritchard!—What’s he got to do with it?”
“Ask Clare.”
“Why should I ask her?”
“Because, maybe, on the spur of the moment she wouldn’t be able to think of any satisfactory lie to tell you.”
He felt anger rising up within him. He detested Pritchard, and the mention of his name in connection with Clare infuriated him. Moreover, his mind, always quick to entertain suspicion, pictured all manner of disturbing fancies, even though his reason rejected them absolutely. He trusted Clare; he would believe no evil of her. And yet, the mere thought of it was a disturbing one.
“I wouldn’t insult her by letting her think I listened to such gossip,” he said, rather weakly.
There followed a longish pause; he thinking of what she had said and trying to rid himself of the discomfort of associating Pritchard with Clare, and she watching him, mockingly, as if conscious that her words had taken root in his mind.
Then she went on: “So now you can suspect somebody else instead of me. And while we’re on the subject of Pritchard let me tell you something else.”
“Tell me!” The mere thought that there was anything else to tell in which Pritchard was concerned was sufficient to give his voice a note of peremptory harshness.
“I’m going to leave you.”
“So you’ve said before.”
“This time I mean it.”
“Well?”
“And you can divorce me.”
He stamped his foot with irritation. “Don’t be ridiculous, Helen. A divorce is absolutely out of the question.”
“Why? Do you think we can go on like this any longer?”
“That’s not the point. The point is that nothing in the circumstances provides any grounds for a divorce.”
“So that we’ve got to go on like this then, eh?”
“Not like this, I hope. I still hope—that some day—”
She interrupted him angrily. “You still hope! How many more secret visits to Clare do you think you’ll make,—how many more damnable lies do you think you’ll need to tell me—before you leave off still hoping? You hateful little hypocrite! Why don’t you be frank with me and yourself and acknowledge that you love Clare? Why don’t you run off with her like a man?”
He said: “So you think that’s what a man would do, eh?”
“Yes.”
“One sort of a man, perhaps. Only I’m not that sort.”
“I wish you were.”
“Possibly. I also wish that you were another sort of woman, but it’s rather pointless wishing, isn’t it?”
“Everything is rather pointless that has to do with you and me.”
Suddenly he said: “Look here, Helen. Let’s stop this talk. Just listen a minute while I try to tell you how I’m situated. You and I are married—”
“Really?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be stupid about it! We’re married, and we’ve got to put up with it for better, for worse. I visit Clare in an entirely friendly way, though you mayn’t believe it, and your suspicions of me are altogether unfounded. All the same, I’m prepared to give up her friendship, if that helps you at all. I’m prepared to leave Millstead with you, get a job somewhere else, and start life afresh. We have been happy together, and I daresay in time we shall manage to be happy again. We’d emigrate, if you liked. And the baby—our baby—our baby that is to be—”
She suddenly rushed up to him with her arms raised and struck him with both fists on his mouth. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop that sort of talk! I could kill you when you try to lull me into happiness with those sticky, little sentimental words! Our baby! Good God, am I to be made to submit to you because of that? And all the time you talk of it you’re thinking of another woman! You’re not livable with! Something’s happened to you that’s made you cruel and hateful—you’re not the man that I married or that I ever would have married. I loathe and detest you—you’re rotten—rotten to the very root!”
He said, idly: “Do you think so?”
She replied, more restrainedly: “I’ve never met anybody who’s altered so much as you have in the last six months. You’ve sunk lower and lower—in every way, until now—everybody hates you. You’re simply a ruin.”
Still quietly he said: “Yes, that’s true.” And then watching to see the effect that his words had upon her, he added: “Clare said so.”
“What!” she screamed, frenzied again. “Yes, she knows! She knows how she’s ruined you! She knows better than anybody! And she taunted you with it! How I loathe her!”
“And me too, eh?”
She made no answer.
Then, more quietly than ever, he said: “Yes, Clare knows what a failure I’ve been and how low I’ve sunk. But she doesn’t think it’s due to her, and neither do I.”
He would not say more than that. He wondered if she would perceive the subtle innuendo which he half-meant and half did not mean; which he would not absolutely deny, and yet would not positively affirm; which he was prepared to hint, but only vaguely, because he was not perfectly sure himself.
Whether or not she did perceive it he was not able to discover. She was silent for some while and then said: “Well, I repeat what I said—I’m going to leave you so that you can get a divorce.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“You can leave me if you wish, but I shall not get a divorce.”
“Why not?”
“Because for one thing I shan’t be able to.”
“And why do you think you won’t?”
“Because,” he replied, coldly, “the law will not give me my freedom merely because we have lived a cat-and-dog life together. The law requires that you should not only leave me, but that you should run away with another man and commit misconduct with him.”
She nodded. “Yes, and that is what I propose to do.”
“What!”
A curious silence ensued. He was utterly astounded, horrified, by her announcement; she was smiling at him, mocking his astonishment. He shouted at her, fiercely: “What’s that!”
She said: “I intend to do what you said.”
“What’s that! You what?”
“I intend to do what you said. I shall run away with another man and commit misconduct with him!”
“God!” he exclaimed, clenching his teeth, and stamping the floor. “It’s absurd. You can’t. You wouldn’t dare. Oh, it’s impossible. Besides—good God, think of the scandals! Surely I haven’t driven you to that! Who would you run away with?” His anger began to conquer his astonishment. “You little fool, Helen, you can’t do it! I forbid you! Oh, Lord, what a mess we’re in! Tell me, who’s the man you’re thinking of! I demand to know. Who is he? Give me his name!”
And she said, cuttingly: “Pritchard.”
On top of his boiling fury she added: “We’ve talked it over and he’s quite agreed to—to oblige me in the matter, so you see I really do mean things this time, darling Kenneth!”
And she laughed at him.