The House by the River Part 5

John looked at his watch. It was a quarter-past ten--only about an hour since Emily died. He stared incredulous at the faintly luminous hands.

Then he looked round; the boat seemed to be drifting very fast. On his right were the boat-houses, a dark huddle of boats clinging to the rafts in front of them. The boat-houses were next to the Bridge.

He looked back and up, with a new fear. The long span of the suspension bridge hung almost above them. A bus rumbled ominously above. Two persons were standing on the footpath against the parapet, looking down at the boat. He could see the pale blobs of their faces. One of them had a Panama hat.

The boat shot into the dark under the Bridge.

John leaned forward. "Stephen," he whispered--"Stephen." There was no answer. John touched his knee. "Stephen."

A yellow face lifted slowly. "What is it?"

"There was some one watching on the Bridge ... two men."

Stephen sighed with a profound weariness.

"It can't be helped," he said.

A dreadful paralysis seemed to have succeeded the heavy strain. He looked as the men used to look after a long spell in the line, sitting at last in a dingy billet--played out.

John Egerton took the sculls and turned the boat round. The boat moved stiffly, with a steady gurgle at the bows; the noiseless tide swung violently by; the oars creaked complainingly.

"This _tide_ ..." muttered John.

Stephen Byrne raised his head. "The tide's going out," he said stupidly.

IV

Margery Byrne walked home very happily from the Underground Station at Stamford Brook, The ticket collector uttered a reverent "Good night, mum"; the policeman at the corner of St. Peter's Square brightened suddenly at her and saluted with the imperishable manner of past military service. The world was very kind and friendly, she felt. But that was the usual manner of the world to Margery Byrne. The world invariably looked at her as it pa.s.sed her in the street. The male world invariably looked again. The mannerless male world usually looked back.

The shameless male world stared at her in Tubes and manoeuvred obviously for commanding positions. But that part of the world, having secured its positions, was generally either disappointed or abashed.

There was an aspect of fragility and virtue about her which stirred in the bold and shameless male the almost atrophied instincts of chivalry and protection. After a little they ceased to stare, but opened doors for her with a conscious knighthood. There are women who make a man feel evil at the sight of them. Margery made a man feel good.

But this aspect of fragility was without any suggestion of feebleness.

It was just that she was slight and fair, and her face small and her features intensely delicate and refined. She had a rarefied look--as if all flaws and imperfections and superfluities had been somehow chemically removed, leaving only the essential stamina and grace. For she had stamina. She walked with an easy un-urban swing, and she could walk a long way. Her lips were little and slightly anaemic, but firm.

There was an evident will in the determined and perfectly proportioned chin. The nose was small but admirably straight and set very close above the mouth. Only her large blue eyes seemed a little out of proportion, but these suggested a warm sympathy which the smallness of her features might otherwise have concealed. Her head, balanced attractively on straight white shoulders, was covered gloriously, if a little thinly, with hair of a light gold, an indescribable tint not often encountered outside the world of books. But such, in fact, was Margery's hair. Her skin also was of a colour and texture not to be painted in words--it had that indefinable quality for which there has been discovered no better name than transparent. And this pale, almost colourless quality of complexion completed the effect of fragility, of physical refinement.

It was still and sultry in St. Peter's Square. The old moon hung above the church and lit up the ridiculous stone eagles on the decayed and pompous houses on Margery's right. "Like lecterns," she thought, for the thousandth time.

The houses were square and semi-detached, two in one; a life-size eagle perched over every porch, its neck screwed tragically towards its sister-eagle craning sympathetically on the neighbouring porch, seeking apparently for ever a never-to-be-attained communion. What sort of people lived there, Margery wondered, and why? So far from town and no view of the river, no special attraction. The people of The Chase always wondered in this way as they walked through St. Peter's Square. The problems of who lived in it and why were permanently insoluble since n.o.body who lived in The Chase knew anybody who lived in the Square. They knew each other, and that was enough. They knew it was worth while travelling a long way if you lived in The Chase, because of the river, the views, the openness, and the fine old rambling, rickety houses. But why should any one live in an inland square with eagles over the front doors?

Margery did not know. And she had other things to think of. Tomorrow she must speak seriously to Emily. Emily, like all these young women, had started excellently, but was becoming slack. And impertinent, sometimes.

But one must be careful. Just now was not the time to frighten her away. Then Trueman's man was coming for the curtains in the morning; they must be got ready. And there was a mountain of needlework to be done. And she must run through Stephen's clothes again--before she was too ill for it. Only a month more now, perhaps less. That was a blessing. She was not frightened this time--not like the first time, with little Joan--that _had_ been rather terrifying--not knowing quite what it was like. But it was a long, interminable business; for such ages, it seemed, you had to "be careful," not play tennis, or go out to dinner just when you wanted to. You felt a fool sometimes, inventing reasons for not doing things, when of course there was only one reason.

And so ugly--especially in London ... going about in shops ... and Tubes.

Never mind. It was worth it. And afterwards....

Margery cast her mind deliciously forward to that "afterwards." They would all go away somewhere, her dear Stephen and Joan and a new and adorable little Stephen. She was determined that it should be a boy this time. That was what Stephen wanted, and what he wanted, within reason, he should have. He deserved it, the dear man. Really, he was becoming an amazingly perfect husband. Becoming, yes--for just at first he had been difficult. But that was during the war; they had seen so little of each other--and he was always worried, overworked. But now they had really "settled down," the horrid war was done with, and he had been too wonderfully delightful and nice to her. Lately especially. Much more considerate and helpful and--and, yes, demonstrative. She felt more sure of him. She was appalled, sometimes, to think how essential he was to her, how frightfully dependent she had become on the existence of this one man, met quite by chance, or what was called chance, at somebody else's house. If anything should happen now--Even the children would be a poor consolation.

But nothing would happen. He would go on being more and more delicious and successful; she would go on being happy and proud, watching eagerly the maturement of her ambitions for him. Even now she was intensely proud of him--though, of course, it would never do to let him suspect it.

It was an astounding thing, this literary triumph. Secretly, she admitted, she had never had enormous faith in his poetical powers. She had liked his work because it was his. And being the daughter of a mildly literary man, she had developed a serious critical faculty capable of generously appraising any artistic effort of real sincerity and promise. But she had seldom thought of Stephen's poetry in terms of the market, of public favour and material reward. Certainly she had not married him as "a poet" or even "a writer." But that only made his meteoric success more dazzling and delightful. Sometimes it was almost impossible to realize, she found, that this young man she had married was the same Stephen Byrne whose name was everywhere--on the bookstalls, in the publishers' advertis.e.m.e.nts, in literary articles in any paper you picked up; that all over the country men and women were buying and reading and re-reading and quoting and discussing bits of poetry which _her_ husband had scribbled down on odd bits of paper at her own house.

It was astounding. Margery was pa.s.sing the small houses at the end of the Square, the homes of clerks and shop-people and superior artisans.

She glanced at a group of wives, garrulously taking the air at a doorway, and almost pitied them because _their_ husbands' names were never before the public. It seemed awful, now, to be absolutely obscure.

No. She didn't think that really. After all, it was an "extra," this fame. It had nothing to do with her marrying Stephen; it would have nothing to do with her happiness with Stephen. It was a kind of matrimonial windfall. What really mattered was Stephen himself, and Margery herself, and the way in which they fitted together. What, she really--yes, _adored_--there was no other word--was himself, his black hair and his twinkling smile, his laugh and jolliness and funny little ways. And his character. That, of course, was the foundation of it all.

A dear and excellent character. Other men, even the best of them, did horrid things sometimes. Stephen, she knew, with all his faults--a little selfish, perhaps--conceited? no, but self-centred, rather--would never do anything mean or degrading or treacherous. She could trust him absolutely. He would certainly never disgrace her as some men did disgrace their wives--women, drink, and so on. "The soul of honour"--that was the phrase.... That, again, was a marvellous piece of fortune, that out of a world of peccant questionable men she should have been allowed to appropriate a man like Stephen, so nearly perfect and secure. No wonder she had this consuming, this frightening sense of adoration, sometimes. But she tried to suppress that. It was dangerous.

"Thou shalt not bow down ..."

Margery smiled secretly and turned her latch-key in the lock.

In the hall she noticed immediately Stephen's hat on the peg, and was glad that he was home. She walked through with her letters to the garden, and looked out over the wall. The boat was gone, and she was faintly disappointed. Far down the river she fancied she saw it, a dirty whiteness, and resisted an impulse to call to Stephen. It must be nice on the river tonight. The rabbits rustled stealthily in the corner; a faint unpleasant smell hung about their home. She looked absently at the rabbit Paul, his nose twitching endlessly in the moonlight, and went in to bed.

When she had undressed she leaned for a long time out of the high window looking at the night. Across the river lay the broad reservoirs of the water company, and the first houses were half a mile away; so that from the window on a night like this you looked over seemingly endless stretches of gleaming water; strangers coming there at night-time wondered at the wide s.p.a.ciousness of this obscure corner of London. You could imagine yourself easily in some Oriental city. Hammersmith and Chiswick and Barnes wore a romantic coat of shadow and silver. The carved reflections of the small trees on the other bank were so nearly like reflected rows of palms. The far-off outline of factories against the sky had the awe and mystery of mosques. In the remote murmur of London traffic there was the note, at once lazy and sinister, treacherous and reposeful, of an Eastern town. And now when no tugs went by and nothing stirred, the silent river, rus.h.i.+ng smoothly into the black heart of London, had for Margery something of the sombre majesty of the Nile, hinting at dark unnameable things, pa.s.sion and death and furtive cruelties, and all that sense of secrecy and crime which clings to the river-side of great cities, the world over.

Margery wondered idly how much of all that talk about the Thames was true; whether horrible things were still done secretly beside her beloved river, hidden and condoned by the river, carried away to the sea.... Down in the docks, no doubt.... Wapping and so on.

The prosaic thumping of a tug broke the spell of Margery's imagination.

She looked up and down for Stephen's boat, a faint crossness in her mind because of his lateness. She got into bed. She was sleepy, but she would read and doze a little till he came in.

She woke first drowsily to the hollow sound of oars clattering in a boat, a murmur of low voices and subdued splas.h.i.+ngs ... Stephen mooring the boat ... how late he was.

A long while afterwards, it seemed, she woke again: Stephen was creaking cautiously up the stairs. She felt that he was peeping at her round the door, murmured sleepily, "How late you are," dimly comprehended his soft excuses ... something about the tide ... caught by the tide ... engine went wrong ... of course ... always did ... raised her head with a vast effort to be kissed ... a very delicate and reverent kiss ... remembered to ask if Cook was back ... mustn't lock the front door ... half heard a deep "Good night, my darling, go to sleep" ... and drifted luxuriously to sleep again, to comfortable dreams of Stephen, dreams of babies ...

moonlight ... especial editions ... palm trees and water--peaceful, silvery water.

Long afterwards there was a distant fretful interruption, hardly heeded.

A stir outside. Cook's voice ... Stephen's voice ... something about Emily. Emily Gaunt ... not come home ... must speak seriously to Emily tomorrow ... can't be bothered now. Stephen see to it ... Stephen and Cook. Cook's voice, raucous. Cook's night out ... late ... go to bed, Cook ... go to bed ... go to bed, everybody ... all's well.

Stephen turned out the light and crept away to the little room behind, thanking G.o.d for the fortunate sleepiness of his wife. The dreaded moment had pa.s.sed.

He sat down wearily on the bed and tried to reduce the whirling tangle in his brain to order. He ought, of course, to be thinking things out, planning precautions, explanations, studied ignorances. But he was too muddled, too tired. G.o.d, how tired! Lugging that hateful sack about. And that awful row home--more than a mile against the tide, though John had done most of that, good old John.... (There was something disturbing he had said to John, when they parted at last--what the devil was it?...

Something had slipped out.... An intangible, uneasy memory prodded him somewhere ... no matter.) And then when he did get back, what a time he had had in the scullery, tidying the refuse on the floor, groping about under a table ... hundreds of pieces of paper, grease-paper, newspaper, paper bags, orange skins, old tins, bottles.... He had gathered them all and put them in a bucket, a greasy bucket, with tea-leaves at the bottom ... carried it down to the river on tiptoe ... four journeys.

G.o.d, what a night!

But it was over now--it was over--that part of it. All that was wanted now was a straight face, a little acting, and some straightforward lying. "G.o.d knows, I can lie all right," Stephen thought, "though n.o.body knows it." What lie was it he had invented about the sack, tired as he was? Oh yes, that John had borrowed it, and that John had first emptied the rubbish into the river.... Yes, he had coached John on the steps about that ... told him to keep it up if necessary. Old John had looked funny when he said that. John didn't like lies, even necessary ones. A bit of a prig, old John.

Stephen pulled at the bow of his black tie and fumbled at the stud. He took off one sock and scratched his ankle reflectively. It was a pity about John. He was such a good fellow, really, such a good friend. He had helped him splendidly tonight, invaluable. But G.o.d knew what he felt about it all.... Shocked, of course.... Flabbergasted (whatever that meant). The question was, how would he get over the shock? How would he feel when he woke up? Would he be permanently shocked, stop being friends?... He was a friend worth keeping, old John. And his opinion was worth having, his respect. Anyhow, it was going to be awkward. One would always feel a bit mean and ashamed now with John--in the wrong, somehow.... Stephen hated to feel in the wrong.

Cook lumbered breathlessly up the stairs, and halted with a loud sigh on the landing. She knocked delicately on Mrs. Byrne's door and threw out a tentative, "If you please, mum." Stephen went out. The acting must begin.

"What is it, Mrs. Beach--speak low--Mrs. Byrne's asleep."

"It's Emily, sir, if you please, sir, turned half-past eleven now, sir, and she's not in the house. I didn't speak before, sir, thinking she might have slipped out like for a bit of a turn and met a friend like.

She weren't in the kitchen, sir, when I come in, nor in the bedroom neither. I thought perhaps as how you'd seen her, sir, when you come in and sent her on a herrand like. What had I best do sir shall I lock up sir it's late for a young girl and gone out without her mack too."

Mrs. Beach concluded her remarks with a long, unpunctuated peroration as if fearful that her scanty wind should fail altogether before she had fully delivered herself.