The Helpmate Part 80

When a sober--a fantastically sober man does that--"

"What does it mean?"

"It generally means that he's in a pretty bad way. And," added d.i.c.k pensively, "they call poor Toodles a dangerous woman."

All night the yacht lay in Scarby harbour.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

It was nine o'clock on Sunday evening. Majendie was in Scarby, in the hotel on the little grey parade, where he and Anne had stayed on their honeymoon.

Lady Cayley was with him. She was with him in the sitting-room which had been his and Anne's. They were by themselves. The Ransomes were dining with friends in another quarter of the town. He had accepted Sarah's invitation to dine with her alone.

The Ransomes had tried to drag him away, and he had refused to go with them. He had very nearly quarrelled with the Ransomes. They had been irritating him all day, till he had been atrociously rude to them. He had told Ransome to go to a place where, as Ransome had remarked, he could hardly have taken Mrs. Ransome. Then he had explained gently that he had had enough knocking about for one day, that his head ached abominably, and that he wished they would leave him alone. It was all he wanted. Then they had left him alone, with Sarah. He was glad to be with her. She was the only person who seemed to understand that all he wanted was to be let alone.

She had been with him all day. She had sat beside him on the deck of the yacht as they cruised up and down the coast till sunset. Afterwards, when the Ransomes' friends had trooped in, one after another, and filled the sitting-room with insufferable sounds, she had taken him into a quiet corner and kept him there. He had felt grateful to her for that.

She had been angelic to him during dinner. She had let him eat as little and drink as much as he pleased. And she had hardly spoken to him. She had wrapped him in a heavenly silence. Only from time to time, out of the divine silence, her woman's voice had dropped between them, soothing and pleasantly indistinct. He had been drinking hard all day. He had been excited, intolerably excited; and she soothed him. He was aware of her chiefly as a large, benignant presence, maternal and protecting.

His brain felt brittle, but extraordinarily clear, luminous, transparent, the delicate centre of monstrous and destructive energies. It burned behind his eyeb.a.l.l.s like a fire. His eyes were hot with it, the pupils strained, distended, gorged with light.

This monstrous brain of his originated nothing, but ideas presented to it became monstrous, too. And their immensity roused no sense of the incredible.

The table had been cleared of everything but coffee-cups, gla.s.ses, and wine. They still sat facing each other. Sarah had her arms on the table, propping her chin up with her clenched hands. Her head was tilted back slightly, in a way that was familiar to him; so that she looked at him from under the worn and wrinkled white lids of her eyes. And as she looked at him she smiled slightly; and the smile was familiar, too.

And he sat opposite her, with his chin sunk on his breast. His bright, dark, distended eyes seemed to strain upwards towards her, under the weight of his flushed forehead.

"Well, Wallie," she said, "I didn't get married, you see, after all."

"Married--married? Why didn't you?"

"I never meant to. I only wanted you to think it."

"Why? Why did you want me to think it?"

He was no longer disinclined to talk. Though his brain lacked spontaneity, it responded appropriately to suggestion.

"I didn't want you to think something else."

"What? What should I think?"

His voice was thick and rapid, his eyes burned.

"That you'd made a mess of my life, my dear."

"When did I make a mess of your life?"

"Never mind when. I _might_ have married, only I didn't. That's the difference between me and you."

"And that's how I made a mess of your life, is it? I haven't made a furious success of my own, have I?"

"I wouldn't have brought it up against you, if you had. The awful thing was to stand by, and see you make a sinful muddle of it"

"A sinful muddle?"

"Yes. That's what it's been. A sinful muddle."

"Which is worse, d'you think, a sinful muddle? or a muddling sin?"

"Oh, don't ask me, my dear. I can't see any difference."

"My G.o.d--nor I!"

"There's no good talking. You're so obstinate, Wallie, that I believe, if you could live your life over again, you'd do just the same."

"I would, probably. Just the same."

"There's nothing you'd alter?"

"Nothing. Except one thing."

"What thing?"

"Never mind what."

"I don't mind, if the one thing wasn't _me_--was it?"

He did not answer.

"Was it?" she insisted, turning the full blue blaze of her eyes on him.

He started. "Of course it wasn't. You don't suppose I'd have said so if it had been, do you?"

"A-ah! So, if you could live your life over again, you wouldn't turn me out of it? I didn't take up much room, did I? Only two years."

"Two years?"

"That was all. And you'd let me stay in for my two poor little years.

Well, that's something. It's a great deal. It's more than some women get."

"Yes. More than some women get."

"Poor Wallie. I'm afraid you wouldn't live your life again."

"No. I wouldn't."