If Winter Comes Part 49

"They went aside. I wasn't looking at them. I was watching a chap on a bike tumble off in front of a motor bus, near as a toucher run over.

Suddenly some one shoved past me and there was old Sabre getting into the cab with this chap who had come up to him. I said, 'Hullo! Hullo, are you off?'

"We'd arranged, d'you see, to part there. I had to get back to my chambers. He turned round on me a face grey as ashes, absolutely dead grey. I'd never seen such a colour in a man's face. He said, 'Yes, I'm off,' and sort of fell over his stick into the cab. The man, who was already in, righted him on to the seat and said, 'Paddington' to the driver who was at the door, shutting it. I said, through the window, 'Sabre! Old man, are you ill? What's up? Shall I come with you?'

"He put his head towards me and said in the most extraordinary voice, speaking between his clenched teeth as though he was keeping himself from yelling out, he said, 'If you love me, Hapgood, get right away out of it from me and let me alone. This man happens to live at Tidborough.

I know him. We're going down together.'

"I said, 'Sabre--'

"He clenched his teeth so they were all bare with his lips contracting.

He said, 'Let me alone. Let me alone. Let me alone.'

"And they pushed off.

"I tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going down there to-morrow. I'm frightened about him."

CHAPTER IV

I

Hapgood had said to his friend of the effect on Sabre of Mabel's action against him: "He's crashed. The roof's fallen in on him." And that had been Sabre's own belief. But it was not so. There are degrees of calamity. Dumfounded, stunned, aghast, Sabre would not have believed that conspiracy against him of all the powers of darkness could conceivably worsen his plight. They had shot their bolt. He was stricken amain. He was in the crucible of disaster and in its heart where the furnace is white.

But they had not shot their bolt. The roof had not yet fallen on him.

They had discharged but a petard, but a mine to effect a breach. The timbers of the superstructure had but bent and cracked and groaned.

Their bolt was shot, the roof crashed in, the four sides of his world tottered and collapsed upon him, with the words spoken to Sabre by that man who approached and took him aside while he stood to take leave of Hapgood.

The man said, "I daresay you know me by sight, Mr. Sabre. I've seen you about the town. I'm the coroner's officer at Tidborough. You're rather wanted down there. I've been to Brighton after you and followed here and just took a lucky chance on finding you about this part. You're rather wanted down there. The fact is that young woman that's been living with you's been found dead."

Sabre's face took then the strange and awful hue that Hapgood had marked upon it.

"Found dead? Found dead? Where?"

"In your house, Mr. Sabre. And her baby, dead with her."

"Found dead? Found dead? Effie? And her baby? Found dead? Oh, dear G.o.d.... Catch hold of my arm a minute. All right, let me go. Let me go, I say. _Can't_ you? Found dead? What d'you mean, found dead?"

"Well, sir, that's rather for the coroner to say, sir. There's to be an inquest to-morrow. That's what you're wanted for."

"Inquest? Inquest?" Sabre's speech was thick. He knew it was thick. His tongue felt enormously too big for his mouth. He could not control it properly. He felt that all his limbs and members were swollen and ponderous and out of his control. "Inquest? Found dead? Inquest? Found dead? Goo' G.o.d, can't you _tell_ me something? You come up to me in the street, and all the place going round and round, and you say to me, 'Found dead.' Can't you say anything except 'Found dead'? Can't you tell me what you mean, found dead? Eh? _Can't_ you?"

The man said, "Now look here, sir. I say that's for the coroner. Least said best. And least you say best, sir, if you understand me. Looks as if the young woman took poison. That's all I can say. Looks as if she took poison. Oxalic acid."

"Oxalic acid!"

"Now, see here, sir. You've no call to say anything to me and I've no call to say more to you than I've told you. Is that your cab, sir?

Because if so--"

They went to the cab.

II

One of two questions is commonly the first words articulated by one knocked senseless in a disaster. Recovering consciousness, or recovering his scattered wits, "What's happened?" he asks; or "Where am I?" In the first shock he has not known he was hurt. He recovers his senses. He then is aware of himself mangled, maimed, delivered to the torturers.

In that day and through the night Sabre was numb to coherent thought, numb to any realisation of the meaning to himself of this that had befallen him. The roof had crashed in upon him; but he lay stunned. As one pinned beneath scaffolding knows not his agony till the beams are being lifted from him, so stupefaction inhibited his senses until, on the morrow, he was dug down to in the coroner's court and there awakened.

He could not think. Through the day and through the night his mind groped with outstretched arms as one groping in a dark room, or as a blind man tapping with a stick. He could not think. He could attend to things; he could notice things; he could perform necessary actions; but "Effie is dead." "Effie has killed herself." "Effie has killed herself and her child--now what?" In pursuit of these his mind could only grope with outstretched hands; these, in the dark room of his calamity, eluded his mind. He groped and stumbled after them. They stole and slipped away.

In the train going down to Tidborough the man who had accosted him permitted himself to be more communicative. A policeman, observing lights burning in the house at midday on Sunday, had knocked, and getting no answer had gone in. He had found the young woman dead on her bed, the baby dead beside her. A tumbler was on a small table and a bottle of oxalic acid, "salts of lemon, as they call it," said the man.

Sabre stared out of the window. "Effie has killed herself. Effie has killed herself and her baby." No, he could not fasten upon it. "Effie has killed herself." That was what this man was telling him. It circled and spun away from him as from the rus.h.i.+ng train the fields circled and spun before his vision.

He was able to attend to things and to do things. At Tidborough he took a cab and drove home, and dismissing it at the gate was able to give normal attention to the requirements of the morrow and instruct the man to come out for him at half-past eleven; the inquest was at twelve.

He was able to notice things. For years turning the handle and entering this house had been like entering an empty habitation. It struck cold now. It was like entering a tomb. He went into the morning room. No one was there. He went into the kitchen. No one was there. He stood still and tried to think. Of course no one was here. Effie had killed herself.

He climbed to his room, still awkward on stairs with his leg and stick, and went in and stood before his books and stared at them. He was still staring when it occurred to him that it had grown dusk since he first entered and stared. Effie had killed herself.... He went out and along the pa.s.sage to her room and entered and stared upon the bed. Effie had been found dead. This was where they had found her--dead. No, it was gone; he could not get hold of it. He turned and stared about the room.

Things seemed to have been taken out of the room. The man had said something about a gla.s.s and a bottle. But there was no gla.s.s or bottle here. They had taken things out of the room. And they had taken Effie out of the room--picked up Effie and carried her out like a--an o.r.g.a.s.m of terrible emotion surged enormously within him; a bursting thing was in his throat--No, it was gone. What phenomenon had suddenly possessed him? What was the matter? Effie had killed herself. No, he could not get hold of it. He turned away and began to wander from room to room. In some he lit lights because you naturally lit lights when it was dark.

All night he wandered from room to room, rarely sitting down. All night his mind groped with outstretched hands for that which all night eluded it.

III

In the morning, in the mortuary adjoining the coroner's court, his mind suddenly and with shock most terrible made contact with the calamity it had pursued.

In the mortuary....

When he arrived and alighted from his cab he found a small crowd of persons a.s.sembled about the yard of the court. Some one said, "There he is!" Some one said, "That's him!" A kind of threatening murmur went up from the people. A general movement was made towards him. What was the matter? What were they looking at? They stood in his way. He seemed to be wedged among a ma.s.s of dark and rather beastly faces breathing close to his own. He could not get on. He was being pushed. He was caused to stagger. He said, "Look out, I've got a game leg." That threatening sort of murmur arose more loudly in answer to his words. Some one somewhere threw a piece of orange peel at some one. It almost hit his face. What was up? What were they all doing?

A policeman and the coroner's officer came shouldering through the press and helped him towards the court. He thought it was rather decent of them.

The policeman said, "You'd better get inside. They're a bit rough."

At the door of the court Sabre looked across to where on the other side of the yard some men were shuffling out of a detached building. The coroner's officer said, "Jury. They've been viewing the corpse."

"Corpse!" The rough word stabbed through his numbness. He thought, "Corpse! Viewing the corpse! Obscene and horrible phrase! Corpse!

Effie!" He made a movement in that direction.

The man said, "Yes, perhaps you'd better."

They took him across and into the detached building.

He was against a gla.s.s screen, misty with breaths of those who had stared and peered through it. The policeman wiped his sleeve across the gla.s.s. "There you are."

Ah, ...! Now, suddenly and with shock most terrible, his mind made contact with that which it had pursued. It had groped as in a dark room with outstretched hands. Now, suddenly and with shock most terrible, it was as if those groping hands had touched in the darkness a face.