If Winter Comes Part 54

CHAPTER VII

I

When that cab which Hapgood had despatched after Sabre from the coroner's court overtook its quest, the driver put himself abreast of the distracted figure furiously hobbling along the road and, his second pound note in view, began, in a fat and comfortable voice, a beguiling monologue of "Keb, sir? Keb? Keb? Keb, sir?"

Sabre at first gave no attention. Farther along he once angrily waved his stick in signal of dismissal. About a mile along his disabled knee, and all his much overwrought body refused longer to be the flogged slave of his tumultuous mind. He stopped in physical exhaustion and rested upon his stick. The cabman also stopped and tuned afresh his enticing and restful rhythm: "Keb, sir? Keb? Keb? Keb, sir?"

He got in.

He did not think to give a direction, but the driver had his directions; nor, when he was set down at his house, to make payment; but payment had been made. The driver a.s.sisted him from the cab and into his door--and he needed a.s.sistance--and being off his box set himself to the adjustment of a buckle, repair of which he had deferred through the day until (being a man economical of effort) some other circ.u.mstance should necessitate his coming to earth.

Sabre stumbled into his house and pushed the door behind him with a resolution expressive of his desire to shut away from himself all creatures of the world and be alone,--be left entirely alone. By habit he climbed the stairs to his room. He collapsed into a chair.

His head was not aching; but there throbbed within his head, ceaselessly and enormously, a pulse that seemed to shake him at its every beat. It was going knock, knock, knock! He began to have the feeling that if this frightful knocking continued it would beat its way out. Something would give way. Amidst the purposeful reverberations, his mind, like one squeezed back in the dark corner of a lair of beasts, crouched shaking and appalled. He was the father of Effie's child; he was the murderer of Effie and of her child! He was neither; but the crimes were fastened upon him as ineradicable pigment upon his skin. His skin was white but it was annealed black; there was not a gla.s.s of the mirrors of his past actions but showed it black and reflected upon it hue that was blacker yet. He was a betrayer and a murderer, and every refutation that he could produce turned to a brand in his hands and branded him yet more deeply. He writhed in torment. For ever, in every hour of every day and night, he would carry the memory of that fierce and sweating face pressing towards him across the table in that court. No! It was another face that pa.s.sed before that pa.s.sionate countenance and stood like flame before his eyes. Twyning! Twyning, Twyning, Twyning! The prompter, the goader of that pa.s.sionate man's pa.s.sion, the instigater and instrument of this his utter and appalling destruction. Twyning, Twyning, Twyning!

He ground his teeth upon the name. He twisted in his chair upon the thought. Twyning, Twyning, Twyning! Knock, knock, knock! Ah, that knocking, that knocking! Something was going to give way in a minute. It must be abated. It must. Something would give way else. A feverish desire to smoke came upon him. He felt in his pockets for his cigarette case. He had not got it. He thought after it. He remembered that he had started for Brighton without it, discovered there that he had left it behind. He started to hunt for it. It must be in this room. It was not to be seen in the room. Where? He remembered a previous occasion of searching for it like this. When? Ah, when Effie had told him she had found it lying about and had put it--of all absurd places for a cigarette case--in the back of the clock. Ten to one she had put it there again now. The very last thing she had done for him! Effie! He went quickly to the clock and opened it. Good! It was there. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it up. Something else there. A folded paper. His name pencilled on it: Mr. Sabre.

She had left a message for him!

She had left a message for him! That cigarette case business had been deliberately done!

He fumbled the paper open. He could not control his fingers. He fumbled it open. He began to read. Tears stood in his eyes. Pitiful, oh, pitiful. He turned the page,--knock, knock, knock! The knocking suddenly ceased. He threw up his hand. He gave a very loud cry. A single note. A note of extraordinary exultation: "Ha!"

He crushed the paper between his hands. He cried aloud: "Into my hands!

Into my hands thou hast delivered him!"

He opened the paper and read again, his hand shaking, and now a most terrible trembling upon him.

Dear Mr. Sabre,

I wanted you to go to Brighton so I could be alone to do what I am just going to do. I see now it is all impossible, and I ought to have seen it before, but I was so very fond of my little baby and I never dreamt it would be like this. But you see they won't let me keep my little baby and now I have made things too terrible for you. So I see the only thing to do is to take myself out of it all and take my little baby with me. Soon I shall explain things to G.o.d and then I think it will be quite all right. Dear Mr. Sabre, when I explain things to G.o.d, I shall tell him how wonderful you have been to me. My heart is filled with grat.i.tude to you. I cannot express it; but I shall tell G.o.d when I explain everything to him; and my one hope is that after I have been punished I shall be allowed to meet you again, and thank you--there, where everything will be understood.

He turned over.

I feel I ought to tell you now, before I leave this world, what I never was able to tell you or any one. The father of my little baby was Harold Twyning who used to be in your office. We had been secretly engaged a very, very long time and then he was in an officers' training camp at Bournemouth where I was, and I don't think I quite understood. We were going to be married and then he had to go suddenly, and then he was afraid to tell his father and then this happened and he was more afraid. So that was how it all was. I do want you, please, to tell Harold that I quite I forgive him, only I can't quite write to him. And dear Mr. Sabre, I do trust you to be with Harold what you have always been with me and with everybody--gentle, and understanding things. And I shall tell the Perches, too, about you, and Mr. Fargus. Good-by and may G.o.d bless and reward you for ever and ever,

Effie.

II

He shouted again, "Ha!" He cried again, "Into my hands! Into my hands!"

He abandoned himself to a rather horrible ecstasy of hate and pa.s.sion.

His face became rather horrible to see. His face became purple and black and knotted, and the veins on his forehead black. He cried aloud, "Harold! Harold! Twyning! Twyning!" He rather horribly mimicked Twyning.

"Harold's such a good boy! Harold's such a good, Christian, model boy!

Harold's never said a bad word or had a bad thought. Harold's such a good boy." He cried out: "Harold's such a blackguard! Harold's such a blackguard! A blackguard and the son of a vile, infamous, lying, perjured blackguard."

His pa.s.sion and his hate surmounted his voice. He choked. He picked up his stick and went with frantic striding hops to the door. He cried aloud, gritting his teeth upon it, "I'll cram the letter down his throat. I'll cram the letter down his throat. I'll take him by the neck.

I'll _bash_ him across the face. And I'll cram the letter down his throat."

The cab driver, his labour upon the buckle finished, was resting on his box with the purposeful and luxurious rest of a man who has borne the heat and burden of the day. Sabre waved his stick at him, and shouted to him, "Fortune's office in Tidborough. Hard as you can. Hard as you can."

He wrenched open the door and got in. In a moment, the startled horse scarcely put into motion by its startled driver, he put his head and arm from the window and was out on the step. "Stop! Stop! Let me out. I've something to get."

He ran again into the house and bundled himself up the stairs and into his room. At his bureau he took a drawer and wrenched it open so that it came out in his hand, swung on the sockets of its handle, and scattered its contents upon the floor. One article fell heavily. His service revolver. He grabbed it up and dropped on his hands and knees, padding eagerly about after scattered cartridges. As he searched his voice went harshly, "He's hounded me to h.e.l.l. At the very gates of h.e.l.l I've got him, _got_ him, and I'll have him by the throat and _hurl_ him in!" He broke open the breech and jammed the cartridges in, counting them, "One, two, three, four, five, six!" He sapped up the breech and jammed the revolver in his jacket pocket. He went scrambling again down the stairs, and as he scrambled down he cried, "I'll cram the letter down his throat. I'll take him by the neck. I'll _bash_ him across the face. And I'll cram the letter down his throat. When he's sprawling, when he's looking, perhaps I'll out with my gun and drill him, drill him for the dog, the dog that he is."

All the way down as the cab proceeded, he alternated between shouted behests to the driver to hurry and repet.i.tion of his ferocious intention. Over and over again; gritting his teeth upon it; picturing it; in vision acting it so that the perspiration streamed upon his body.

"I'll cram the letter down his throat. I'll take him by the neck. I'll _bash_ him across the face, and I'll cram the letter down his throat."

Over and over again; visioning it; in his mind, and with all his muscles working, ferociously performing it. He felt immensely well. He felt enormously fit. The knocking was done in his brain. His mind was tingling clear. "I'll cram ... I'll take ... I'll _bash_ ... I'll cram the letter down his throat."

He was arrived! He was here! "Into my hands! Into my hands." He pa.s.sed into the office and swiftly as he could go up the stairs. He encountered no one. He came to Twyning's door and put his hand upon the latch.

Immediately, and enormously, so that for a moment he was forced to pause, the pulse broke out anew in his head. Knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock, knock. Curse the thing! Never mind. In! In! At him! At him!

He went in.

III

On his right, as he entered, a fire was burning in the grate and it struck him, with the inconsequent insistence of trifles in enormous issues, how chilly for the time of year the day had been and how icily cold his own house. On the left, at the far end of the room, Twyning sat at his desk. He was crouched at his desk. His head was buried in his hands. At his elbows, vivid upon the black expanse of the table, lay a torn envelope, dull red.

Sabre shut the door and leant his stick against the wall by the fire. He took the letter from his pocket and walked across and stood over Twyning. Twyning had not heard him. He stood over him and looked down upon him. Knock, knock, knock. Curse the thing. There was Twyning's neck, that brown strip between his collar and his head, that in a minute he would catch him by.... No, seated thus he would catch his hair and wrench him back and cram his meal upon him. Knock, knock, knock. Curse the thing!

He said heavily, "Twyning. Twyning, I've come to speak to you about your son."

Twyning slightly twisted his face in his hands so as to glance up at Sabre. His face was red. He said in an odd, thick voice, "Oh, Sabre, Sabre, have you heard?"

Sabre said, "Heard?"

"He's killed. My Harold. My boy. My boy, Harold. Oh, Sabre, Sabre, my boy, my boy, my Harold!"

He began to sob; his shoulders heaving.

Sabre gave a sound that was just a whimper. Oh, irony of fate! Oh, cynicism incredible in its malignancy! Oh, c.u.mulative touch! To deliver him this his enemy to strike, and to present him for the knife thus already stricken!

No sound in all the range of sounds whereby man can express emotion was possible to express this emotion that now surcharged him. This was no pain of man's devising. This was a special and a private agony of the G.o.ds reserved for victims approved for very nice and exquisite experiment. He felt himself squeezed right down beneath a pressure squeezing to his vitals; and there was squeezed out of him just a whimper.

He walked across to the fireplace; and on the high mantle-shelf laid his arms and bowed his forehead to the marble.

Twyning was brokenly saying, "It's good of you to come, Sabre. I feel it. After that business. I'm sorry about it, Sabre. I feel your goodness coming to me like this. But you know, you always knew, what my boy was to me. My Harold. My Harold. Such a good boy, Sabre. Such a good, Christian boy. And now he's gone, he's gone. Never to see him again. My boy. My son. My son!"

Oh, dreadful!

And he went on, distraught and pitiable. "My boy. My Harold. Such a good boy, Sabre. Such a perfect boy. My Harold!"

The letter was crumpled in Sabre's right hand. He was constricting it in his hand and knocking his clenched knuckles on the marble.

"My boy. My dear, good boy. Oh, Sabre, Sabre!"