The Inheritors Part 20

"Shot himself ... through the left temple ... _Mon Dieu_!"

De Mersch walked slowly down the long corridor away from us. There was an extraordinary stiffness in his gait, as if he were trying to emulate the goose step of his days in the Prussian Guard. My companion looked after him as though she wished to gauge the extent of his despair.

"You would say '_Habet_,' wouldn't you?" she asked me.

I thought we had seen the last of him, but as in the twilight of the dawn we waited for the lodge gates to open, a furious clatter of hoofs came down the long street, and a carriage drew level with ours. A moment after, de Mersch was knocking at our window.

"You will ... you will ..." he stuttered, "speak ... to Mr. Gurnard.

That is our only chance ... now." His voice came in mingled with the cold air of the morning. I s.h.i.+vered. "You have so much power ... with him and...."

"Oh, I ..." she answered.

"The thing must go through," he said again, "or else ..." He paused. The great gates in front of us swung noiselessly open, one saw into the court-yard. The light was growing stronger. She did not answer.

"I tell you," he a.s.severated insistently, "if the British Government abandons my railway _all_ our plans ..."

"Oh, the Government won't _abandon_ it," she said, with a little emphasis on the verb. He stepped back out of range of the wheels, and we turned in and left him standing there.

In the great room which was usually given up to the political plotters stood a table covered with eatables and lit by a pair of candles in tall silver sticks. I was conscious of a raging hunger and of a fierce excitement that made the thought of sleep part of a past of phantoms. I began to eat unconsciously, pacing up and down the while. She was standing beside the table in the glow of the transparent light. Pallid blue lines showed in the long windows. It was very cold and hideously late; away in those endless small hours when the pulse drags, when the clock-beat drags, when time is effaced.

"You see?" she said suddenly.

"Oh, I see," I answered--"and ... and now?"

"Now we are almost done with each other," she answered.

I felt a sudden mental falling away. I had never looked at things in that way, had never really looked things in the face. I had grown so used to the idea that she was to parcel out the remainder of my life, had grown so used to the feeling that I was the integral portion of her life ... "But I--" I said, "What is to become of me?"

She stood looking down at the ground ... for a long time. At last she said in a low monotone:

"Oh, you must try to forget."

A new idea struck me--luminously, overwhelming. I grew reckless.

"You--you are growing considerate," I taunted. "You are not so sure, not so cold. I notice a change in you. Upon my soul ..."

Her eyes dilated suddenly, and as suddenly closed again. She said nothing. I grew conscious of unbearable pain, the pain of returning life. She was going away. I should be alone. The future began to exist again, looming up like a vessel through thick mist, silent, phantasmal, overwhelming--a hideous future of irremediable remorse, of solitude, of craving.

"You are going back to work with Churchill," she said suddenly.

"How did you know?" I asked breathlessly. My despair of a sort found vent in violent interjecting of an immaterial query.

"You leave your letters about," she said, "and.... It will be best for you."

"It will not," I said bitterly. "It could never be the same. I don't want to see Churchill. I want...."

"You want?" she asked, in a low monotone.

"You," I answered.

She spoke at last, very slowly:

"Oh, as for me, I am going to marry Gurnard."

I don't know just what I said then, but I remember that I found myself repeating over and over again, the phrases running metrically up and down my mind: "You couldn't marry Gurnard; you don't know what he is.

You couldn't marry Gurnard; you don't know what he is." I don't suppose that I knew anything to the discredit of Gurnard--but he struck me in that way at that moment; struck me convincingly--more than any array of facts could have done.

"Oh--as for what he is--" she said, and paused. "_I_ know...." and then suddenly she began to speak very fast.

"Don't you see?--_can't_ you see?--that I don't marry Gurnard for what he is in that sense, but for what he is in the other. It isn't a marriage in your sense at all. And ... and it doesn't affect you ...

don't you _see_? We have to have done with one another, because ...

because...."

I had an inspiration.

"I believe," I said, very slowly, "I believe ... you _do_ care...."

She said nothing.

"You care," I repeated.

She spoke then with an energy that had something of a threat in it. "Do you think I would? Do you think I could?... or dare? Don't you understand?" She faltered--"but then...." she added, and was silent for a long minute. I felt the throb of a thousand pulses in my head, on my temples. "Oh, yes, I care," she said slowly, "but that--that makes it all the worse. Why, yes, I care--yes, yes. It hurts me to see you. I might.... It would draw me away. I have my allotted course. And you--Don't you see, you would influence me; you would be--you _are_--a disease--for me."

"But," I said, "I could--I would--do anything."

I had only the faintest of ideas of what I would do--for her sake.

"Ah, no," she said, "you must not say that. You don't understand....

Even that would mean misery for you--and I--I could not bear. Don't you see? Even now, before you have done your allotted part, I am wanting--oh, wanting--to let you go.... But I must not; I must not. You must go on ... and bear it for a little while more--and then...."

There was a tension somewhere, a string somewhere that was stretched tight and vibrating. I was tremulous with an excitement that overmastered my powers of speech, that surpa.s.sed my understanding.

"Don't you see ..." she asked again, "you are the past--the pa.s.sing. We could never meet. You are ... for me ... only the portrait of a man--of a man who has been dead--oh, a long time; and I, for you, only a possibility ... a conception.... You work to bring me on--to make me possible."

"But--" I said. The idea was so difficult to grasp. "I will--there must be a way--"

"No," she answered, "there is no way--you must go back; must try. There will be Churchill and what he stands for--He won't die, he won't even care much for losing this game ... not much.... And you will have to forget me. There is no other way--no bridge. We can't meet, you and I...."

The words goaded me to fury. I began to pace furiously up and down. I wanted to tell her that I would throw away everything for her, would crush myself out, would be a lifeless tool, would do anything. But I could tear no words out of the stone that seemed to surround me.

"You may even tell him, if you like, what I and Gurnard are going to do.

It will make no difference; he will fall. But you would like him to--to make a good fight for it, wouldn't you? That is all I can do ... for your sake."

I began to speak--as if I had not spoken for years. The house seemed to be coming to life; there were noises of opening doors, of voices outside.

"I believe you care enough," I said "to give it all up for me. I believe you do, and I want you." I continued to pace up and down. The noises of returning day grew loud; frightfully loud. It was as if I must hasten, must get said what I had to say, as if I must raise my voice to make it heard amid the clamour of a world awakening to life.

"I believe you do ... I believe you do...." I said again and again, "and I want you." My voice rose higher and higher. She stood motionless, an inscrutable white figure, like some silent Greek statue, a harmony of falling folds of heavy drapery perfectly motionless.