IX
Andrews stood in the room where the previous night he had held Sir Henry’s mistress in his arms and watched with tired curiosity one star. He held in his hand a note which a winking waiter had given him. It was from Lucy and read “Henry has gone to bed. You can come to me. You know my room.” He had done what Elizabeth desired him to do, and in spite of the note he held, he told himself that it was for Elizabeth’s sake that he had done it. Didn’t I, he thought, renounce this morning with perfect sincerity this very reward? I did what I did then for Elizabeth and why should I not take any small benefits which come after? I had no thought for this when I stood in the witness box. It was an interesting moral point.
Carlyon now could come and go where he liked. Nothing, Andrews thought with apprehension, could prevent him strolling that very evening into the White Hart. It was so exactly the kind of thing for Carlyon to do that Andrews looked with a sudden start behind him. The door was shut. He longed to bolt it. As for this letter it could not be denied that he would be safer that night in Lucy’s bed than in his own. That was a reason which no one could deny. It would be to save myself, he told the star to which he instinctively addressed words meant for Elizabeth, for no other reason. I do not love her. Never will I love anyone but you. I swear to that. If a man loves one, he cannot help still lusting after others. But it was love not lust, I promise, that strengthened me this morning.
After all, he said to the star, I shall never see you again, and must I therefore never know another woman? I cannot come to you, for they will be watching for me there, and you do not love me. I should be a fool … and he stopped speaking to himself, struck by the astonishing knowledge of how deeply his heart longed to be a fool. Reason, reason, reason. I must cling to that, he thought. Reason and his body seemed to act together in a somewhat evil partnership. In fear of his own heart he began to play on fear for his own safety, and that fear seemed strangely less strong than was its wont. And then he turned to the thought of Lucy and the feel of her body pressed to him and her close promises the night before. He imagined her naked and in disgusting attitudes, and tried to whip his body into a blind lust which would forget for a time at least the dictates of his heart. Yet strangely even his lust seemed less strong. What have you done to me? he cried despairingly at the lonely star.
It was then that he heard someone twist cautiously the handle of the door. He forgot star, Elizabeth, Lucy, everything but his own safety. In one stride he reached the oil lamp which lit the room and turned it out. The room was still too light or seemed so to his hammering nerves from the wash of moonlight which entered at the window. It was too late to hide behind the door, so Andrews pressed his back against the wall and cursed himself for being weaponless. What a sentimental fool he had been to leave his knife behind him at the cottage. Where were the two runners, he wondered, who were supposed to guard him? Drunk in bed in all probability. He watched the door handle with fascination. It was of white marble and glimmered, touched by the crest of the moon’s wave, with deceptive distinctness. Again it twisted round with surprising silentness and then flew outwards like a thrown ball. An oil lamp stood in the passage outside and its light cast a kind of mocking halo round the head of the cockney Harry, who stood in the doorway, his face thrust forward and moving from side to side, like that of a snake.
Andrews pressed himself still harder against the wall, and Cockney Harry sidled into the room. As though he was aware that the light in the passage put him at a disadvantage he shut the door behind him. “Andrews,” he whispered. His eyes were not yet used to the dark, and the silence made him uneasy. He too put his back against the wall, opposite the place where Andrews stood, as if he feared attack. Then he saw Andrews. “So there you are,” he said. Andrews clenched his fists in preparation for an unexpected spring, but the smuggler saw the movement and flashed a knife warningly in the moon’s ray. “Stay where you are,” he whispered.
“There are runners in this hotel,” Andrews also lowered his voice. “What do you want?”
“I’m not afeared of the runners now,” the man said. “But look ’ere,” he added plaintively, “why d’you want to quarrel? I’m ’ere to do you a service, strite I am.”
“To do me a service?” Andrews repeated. “Do you forget who I am?”
“Oh, I don’t forget ’ow you squeaked on us, but one good turn deserves another. You didn’t squeak on me this afternoon, and you might ’ave done easy.”
“It wasn’t for love of that face of yours,” Andrews said. His fists remained clenched against any sudden attack.
“You ain’t very griteful,” Harry complained. “Don’t you want to ’ear my news?”
“What news?”
“Of Carlyon an’ the others.”
“No, I’ve finished with them,” he said and added, as always with a curious aching heart, slowly, as though in an effort to overcome with finality each ache, “I never want to see that man again.”
“Ah, but ’e ain’t finished with you. Nor with yer ladybird.”
Andrews started forward. “What do you mean?”
“Now keep back,” Harry flashed his knife again. “What I mean is they feel they been cheated by ’er—cheated shimeful.”
“Carlyon wouldn’t do anything to her, I know he wouldn’t.”
“Ah, but there’s Joe. ’E says she ought to ’ave a fright, an’ Carlyon agrees to that, but ’e don’t know what Joe and ’Ake calls a fright. They are all off to give it ’er tomorrer or the next dy.”
“You are lying, you know you are lying,” Andrews panted a little like a dog thirsty or out of breath. “This is a trap to get me to go back there, so that you’ll catch me. But I won’t, I won’t go back I tell you.”
“Why, that’s why I’m ’ere—to warn yer against goin’, in case you were thinkin’ of it. They’ll all be there. Carlyon’ll kill you as soon as look at you. Though ’Ake says as killin’s too good. ’E says they oughter ’ave some fun with you first.”
“Well, you can tell them that I’m never going back there. It’s no use laying that trap for me.”
“Good. Now I’ve warned yer an’ we’re quits. Next time,” Harry spat on the floor expressively and again flashed the steel of his knife in the moonlight, “don’t you expect me to be friendly.” He gave the impression of sliding across the floor. The white marble handle again flew outwards and the smuggler disappeared. Up the street the clock of St. Anne’s Church beat out with irritating deliberation the half after eleven.
Like a dream the man had entered and like a dream he had gone. Why could he not have been one more degree a phantom and become a vision only? Now inevitably a turmoil was roused in the mind. Carlyon would not harm a woman, Andrews thought. It is only a trap to catch me. But then was it likely that they would plan such a trap for me, a coward? They could not expect to do anything but repel him by danger. Again he repeated to himself that she was safe, that Carlyon would see to that, but still he could not dispel from his mind the thought of Joe and Hake. Tomorrow or the next day. If he were to leave tonight he could warn her in time, and they could both escape. But that was only if it were not a trap. Perhaps even now Harry, Joe, Hake, Carlyon and the rest were preparing to meet him on the downs. And yet how good, how glorious it would be, to be coming down the hill at dawn, to wait perhaps for the first sign of smoke to show that she was awake, to tap on the door and see recognition lit in her eyes. She would have to welcome me, he thought. I have earned that, for I have done all that she told me to do. In a medley of the stories of his childhood he imagined—“I have climbed the hill of glass and Gretel waits.” And then, he thought, I would help her get some breakfast and we would sit together in front of the fire. And I would tell her everything. His momentary exhilaration died and left the cold truth, danger to himself and her and more than that the knowledge that she would greet him as a not too welcome friend. Neither I nor any other man will ever approach her. What was the use of risking his life—miserable, debased it might be, but only he knew how infinitely precious—in return for what? A kind word. He did not want kind words. Let them give her a little pain. He had suffered. Why should not everyone in the world suffer? It was the common lot. Carlyon would see that they did not go too far.
As his fingers tightened in perplexity he felt still in his hand Lucy’s note. Here was someone who would give him more than kind words and yet exact no sense of responsibility. All his reason commanded him to go to her, only his heart, and that hard abstract critic for once allied to his heart, opposed. I shall be safe with her tonight, he thought, and tomorrow Carlyon and the others will have gone off over the downs and the road to London will be safe. Why, if he went to Elizabeth now, he would have no money for their escape. You mustn’t be dependent on her money, reason added, striking a noble attitude. That decided him. Why, even honour forbade the dangerous course.
He passed through the dark passage and up the stairs, slowly, still a little doubtful and reluctant. In one of the rooms which now faced him Sir Henry Merriman slept. There was even a little danger, he now realised, in this course, danger of being stranded without money in this perilous Sussex. He knew which was Lucy’s room and cautiously he turned the handle and went in. He still held her note, as though a passport, in his hand.
“Here I am,” he said. He could not see her, but one hand stumbled on the foot of a bed.
There was a small sigh, a yawn, and through the darkness a sleepy whisper, “How late you are.”
His hand felt down the bed till he reached a cool sheet and beneath it he felt her body. He snatched his hand away as though it had touched a flame. The note fell from it to the floor. O, if he could surrender to his heart for once and not his body, and if he could go now before it was too late. Three hours’ walk over the downs beneath the moon and he would be home again.
“Where are you?” she said. “I can’t see in the dark. Come here.”
“I only came to say …” he said and hesitated. His heart had spoken, given courage by an image of Elizabeth as she had faced Carlyon, his cup raised to her lips, and his body had cut his words short, for his hand retained the feel of her body.
“That you were going again?” she asked. “You fool.”
He felt his flesh rising to her whisper.
“Will you ever get a chance like this again?” she murmured with an air of unfeigned carelessness. “You know what you are missing, don’t you?”
He took a step away from the bed. “How common you are,” he said. His hand felt behind him for the door handle, but he could not find it.
“You know you enjoy that,” she answered. She did not seem to argue but rather to advise him gently and dispassionately for his own good. Her quiet irritated and attracted him at the same time. “I’d like to make her squeal,” he thought.
“At least before you go,” she said, “strike a light and see what you miss. Put out your hand.” He obeyed her reluctantly. He felt her fingers touch his. “How symbolical,” she laughed a little. “Here’s a flint and steel. Now strike a light. There is a candle here,” and she guided his hand to a table beside her bed.
“I won’t,” he said.
“Are you afraid?” she asked curiously. “You’ve turned very pure since last night. Have you fallen in love?”
“Not fallen,” he replied more to himself than her.
“And you boasted so of all the women you’ve known. Surely you aren’t afraid. You ought to be more used to us.”
He turned his back on her. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll strike a light and then I’ll go. I know your sort. You won’t leave a man alone.” Without looking in her direction he struck a light and lit the candle. It made a small yellow patch on the opposite wall and in that radiance he suddenly saw with extraordinary clarity the face of Elizabeth creased by fear till it was ugly, almost repulsive. Then it was blotted out by two other faces, that of Joe, the black bearded mouth open in a laugh, and that of the mad youth Richard Tims, red and angry. Then there was only the yellow radiance again.
“I can’t stay,” Andrews cried, “she’s in danger,” and he swung round candle in hand.
The girl was stretched on the outside of the bed. She had flung her nightdress on the floor. She was slim, long legged with small firm breasts. With a modesty which had no pretence of truth she spread her hands over her stomach and smiled at him.
“Run away then,” she said.
He came a little nearer and with his eyes fixed on her face, so as not to see her body, he began to make excuses, reason, even plead. “I must go,” he said, “someone came to warn me tonight. A girl—I’ve got her into danger. I must go to her. Just now on that wall I thought I saw her scream.”
“You are dreaming.”
“But sometimes dreams come true. Don’t you see—I must go. I got her into this danger.”
“Well go. I’m not stopping you am I? But listen. What difference will it make if you stay here just for half an hour?” She turned over on her side, and his eyes could not help but follow her body as it moved. “She’s cool now,” he thought, “but I could make her warm.”
“Go then,” she said. “You won’t have another chance, but I don’t care. I’m feeling restless—this damn spring. I’ll go into Harry. He’s old and tired, but I believe he’s more of a man than you.” Although she spoke of going she did not go, but watched him with faintly amused eyes. Andrews moistened his lips, which were dry. He felt thirsty. He no longer tried to keep his eyes off her body. He knew now that he could not move away.
“I’ll stay,” he said. He put his knee on the bed, but her hands held him away.
“Not like that,” she said. “I’m not a harlot. Take off those things.” He hesitated for a moment and glanced at the candle.
“No there must be a little light,” she whispered, a little run of excitement in her tone, “so that we can see each other.”
He obeyed her unwillingly. He felt that he was raising a barrier of time between Elizabeth and any help which he might bring. Even now he could not forget the dream, vision, fantasy, what you will, which he had seen in the candle’s light, it was conquered only when he felt the girl’s body stretched along his own.
“Closer,” she said. His fingers closed on her, pinching the flesh. He buried his mouth between her breasts. He could see nothing but he heard her laugh a little. “You cannot hurt me like that,” she said …
He opened his eyes and thought at first how strange it was that a candle should burn with a silver flame. Then he saw that the candle was out and the light was the first of day. He sat up and looked at his companion. She slept with her mouth slightly open, breathing hard. He eyed first her body and then his own with disgust. He touched her shoulder gingerly with his hand, and she opened her eyes. “I should cover that,” he said, and turning his back, put his feet over the side of the bed.
From her voice he judged that she was smiling, but her smile which in the dark had seemed the beckoning of a passionate mystery, he considered now a shallow mechanical thing. He was disgusted with himself and her. He had been treading, he felt, during the last few days on the border of a new life, in which he would learn courage and even self forgetfulness, but now he had fallen back into the slime from which he had emerged.
“Have you enjoyed yourself?” she asked.
“I’ve wallowed,” he said, “if that’s what you mean.”
He could imagine her pouting at him and he hated that pout. “Am I pleasanter than all the other women you’ve boasted about?”
“You’ve made me feel myself dirtier,” he answered. But is there no way out of this slime? he thought silently. I was a fool and imagined I was escaping, but now I have sunk so deep that surely I’ve reached the bottom.
“I could kill myself,” he said aloud.
The girl laughed contemptuously. “You haven’t the courage,” she said, “and anyway what of that fair one who’s in danger?”
Andrews put his hand to his head. “You made me forget her,” he said. “I can’t face her after this.”
“How young you are,” she said. “Surely you know by this time that the feeling won’t last. For a day we are disgusted and disappointed and disillusioned and feel dirty all over. But we are clean again in a very short time, clean enough to go back and soil ourselves all over again.”
“One must reach an end some time.”
“Never.”
“Are you a devil as well as a harlot?” Andrews asked with interest, but without anger. “Do you mean to say that it’s no use trying to be clean?”
“How often have you felt sick and disgusted and resolved never to sin again?”
“I can’t count them. You are right. It’s no use. Why can’t I die?”
“How curious. You are one of those people—I’ve met them before—who can’t rid themselves of a conscience. How talkative one becomes after a bout of this. I’ve noticed it often. I thought you were going to rescue that girl of yours from danger. Why don’t you go? It’s ridiculous to sit on the edge of a bed naked and philosophise.”
“It may be a trap and they’ll kill me.”
“I thought you wouldn’t go when it came to the point.”
“You are wrong,” Andrews stood up, “that’s the very reason why I’m going.”
When he left the hotel he took no precautions whatever, but walked down the street with his eyes fixed straight in front of him. He felt no fear of death, but a terror of life, of going on soiling himself and repenting and soiling himself again. There was, he felt, no escape. He had no will left. For certain exalted moments he had dreamed of taking Elizabeth to London, of gaining her love and marrying her, but now he saw that even if he gained that high desire, it would only be to soil her and not cleanse himself. When I had been married to her for a month, he thought, I would be creeping out of the house on the sly to visit prostitutes. The cool air of early morning touched him in vain. He was hot with shame and self-loathing. He longed with a ridiculous pathos for the mere physical purification of a bath.
He reached the downs as a first orange glow lifted above the eastern horizon. Its fragile soaring beauty, like a butterfly with delicate powdered wings resting on a silver leaf, touched him and increased his shame. If he had not seen Lucy but had started direct for the cottage some hours before, how that glow would have heartened him. What a prelude it would have been to his return.
From where he walked it was not yet light enough to see the valley clearly. Only at intervals the red spark of a lighted window would make a crevice in the grey veil, and after he had walked some miles a cock crew. The downs were bare of life, save for the occasional brooding hunched form of a dark tree. He walked, and as he walked the first poignancy of his shame departed and the events of the night slipped a little way into shadow. When Andrews realised this, he stayed for a moment still and strove to drag them back. For this had happened many times before. It was the first stage towards a repetition of the sin, this forgetfulness. How could he ever keep clean if the sense of shame was so short lived? After all I enjoyed myself, he thought against his will, why repent? It’s a coward’s part. Go back and do it again. Why run my head into danger? With an effort he clenched his will and ran, to stifle thought, ran fast until he had no more breath and flung himself down upon the grass.
The grass grew in cool, crisp, salty tufts, on which he leant his forehead. If it were barren of desire and of the need of any action how sweet life would be. If it were only this coolness, this silver sky touched now with green, those unfurling wings of orange. If he could but sit and watch and listen—listen to Carlyon speaking, and watch the enthusiasm in his eyes, with no dangerous echo in his own. It was a strange, unrealisable thing that Carlyon was his enemy. Carlyon was seeking to kill him, and yet his heart still leapt a little at the sound of the name. Carlyon, who was all the things which Andrews wished to be—courageous, understanding, hopelessly romantic, not about women, but about life, Carlyon who hated well because he knew so clearly what he loved—truth, danger, poetry. If I hate him, Andrews thought, it is because I have done him an injury, but he hates me because he thinks I’ve injured life. He tried to laugh—the man was only a romantic fool with an ugly face. That was the real secret of his humility, his courage, even his love of beauty. He was always seeking a compensation for his face, as though an ape in purple and ermine were less an ape. The qualities he had built round himself were dreams only, which Andrews by one act had destroyed. There remained the large body, heavy, however lightly poised, thick wrists, misshapen skull. Strip off Carlyon’s dreams and the remainder is inferior to me, Andrews thought. A sudden longing came that he could trap Carlyon into some unworthy action, not consonant with the dreams which he followed. That would show him they were dreams and not himself.
How could one judge a man when all was said but by his body and his private acts, not by dreams he followed in the world’s eye? His father to his crew was a hero, a king, a man of dash, of initiative. Andrews knew the truth—that he was a bully who killed his wife and ruined his son. And myself, Andrews thought, I have as good dreams as any man, of purity and courage and the rest, but I can only be judged by my body which sins and is cowardly. How do I know what Carlyon is in private. But as he spoke he wondered uneasily whether Carlyon might not follow his dreams even when alone. Suppose that after all a man, perhaps when a child, at any rate at some forgotten time, chose his dreams whether they were to be good or evil. Then, even though he were untrue to them, some credit was owing simply to the baseless dreaming. They were potentialities, aspects, and no man could tell whether suddenly and without warning they might not take control and turn the coward for one instant into the hero.
Carlyon and I are then on the same plane, he thought, with a wistful longing for belief. He follows his dreams and I do not follow mine, but the mere dreaming is good. And I am better than my father, for he had no dreams, and that part of him that men admired came not from following an ideal but from mere physical courage. But how he longed now for that mere physical valour, which would give him the power to fling himself blind-eyed upon the breast of his dream. He sometimes imagined that if courage could be granted him for a moment only to turn his back on fear, his dreams would have strength to seize him in their current and sweep him irrevocably on, with no need of further decision or further gallantry.
He rose and with a little melodramatic gesture opened his arms as though he would entice courage to his heart, but all that came was a cold sweep of early wind. He walked on. Why could he not, as Lucy said, kill his conscience and be content? Why if he was given these aspirations, softened and blurred by sentiment as they were, was he not given sinew to attain them? He was the son of his mother, he supposed. Her heart had been trapped by vague romantic longings. His father when he desired something which could not be attained by other means had the power of showing himself as a sort of rough, genial fellow—a sea dog of the old Elizabethan tradition. He was of Drake’s county and he spoke Drake’s tongue. The sea had even given him a little of Drake’s face and manner, the colour, lines, aggressive beard, loud voice, loud laugh, what those who did not know him in his black moods called “a way with him.” Tears of anger, self-pity and some of love pricked Andrews’s eyes. If I could revenge you on the dead, he thought. Is there no way to hurt the dead? Yet he knew that that foolish sentimental heart would not have desired revenge. Was it not even possible to please the dead, he wondered, and so swiftly it seemed to his superstitious mind a supernatural answer, came the thought “Do not do as your father and ruin a woman.”
Still walking swiftly in the direction of Hassocks he swore silently that he would not. “I will only warn her,” he said, “and go.” Only by not seeing her again he felt could he prevent her ruin.
And yet how different it would have been if Carlyon had been his father. It did not seem odd to him so to think of the man who was seeking to kill him. Carlyon would have satisfied his mother’s heart, and he himself would have been born with will and backbone. He remembered his first meeting with Carlyon.
He was walking by himself away from the school. He had one hour of freedom and exhilarated by it ran up the hill beyond the school, the sooner to escape the sight of the red brick barrack-like buildings, the sooner to see the moors stretching away, sweep beyond sweep of short heather, into the sunset. He ran with his eyes on the ground, for then he always seemed to move faster. He knew from experience that when he had counted two hundred and twenty-five he would be within a few feet of the summit. Two hundred and twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five. He raised his eyes. A man stood with his back to him, in much the same way as he had stood a few days before at the turn of the road beyond Hassocks. He was dressed in black and as then he gave the impression of bulk poised with incongruous lightness. He was staring at the sunset, but when he heard a step behind him he turned with remarkable swiftness, as though footsteps were associated in his mind with danger. Andrews saw then for the first time the broad shoulders, short thick neck, low receding apelike brow and the dark eyes that in a flash tumbled to the ground the whole of the animal impression which the body had raised. The eyes could on occasion, laugh, be merry, but their prevailing tone, Andrews found later, was a brooding sadness. They were smiling, however, when he first saw them with a kind of happy wonder.
“Have you seen it?” Carlyon had said with a hushed, trembling ecstasy and outflung finger, and Andrews had looked beyond him at a sky tumultuous with flame, an angry umber, rising from the grey ashes of the moor, spumed up in tottering pinnacles into the powdery blue smoke of the sky.
They stood in silence and stared at it, and then the stranger turned to him and said, “The school. I’m looking for the school.” It was as though he had mentioned the word prison to an escaped convict. “I’ve come from there,” Andrews said. “It’s down there.”
“One can’t see the sun set from there,” Carlyon remarked, and had the air in those few words of condemning the whole institution, masters, boys, buildings. He frowned a little and said contemptuously, “Do you belong there?” Andrews nodded.
“Do you like it?” Andrews hearing the tone gazed at the stranger with a peculiar fascination. Others had asked him that question as it were rhetorically, assuming a fervent assent. They generally added some jolly reference to beatings and a dull anecdote of their schooldays. But the stranger spoke to him as though they were both of one age, with a slight contempt as though there would be something ignoble in answering “yes.”
“I hate it,” he said.
“Why do you stay?” the question, quietly put, was stunning to the boy in its implications of free will.
“It’s worse at home,” he said. “My mother’s dead.”
“You should run away,” the stranger said carelessly and turning his back stared again at the sunset. Andrews watched him. At that moment his heart, barren of any object of affection, was ready open to hero worship. The man stood in front of him with his legs a little apart as though balancing himself upon the spinning globe. A sailor, Andrews thought, remembering that his father stood so.
After a little the man turned again and seeing that the boy was still there asked him whether he happened to know a boy at the school called Andrews.
Andrews looked at him in amazement. It was as though a figure from a dream had suddenly stepped into reality and claimed acquaintanceship with him. “I’m Andrews,” he said.
“That’s strange,” the man said, watching him with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity, “you are pale. You don’t look strong. Unlike your father. I was your father’s friend,” he said.
The past tense caught Andrews’s attention. “I’m glad you are not his friend now,” he said. “I hate him.”
“He’s dead,” Carlyon said.
There was a pause and then Andrews said slowly, “I suppose you’d be shocked if I said I was glad.”
The stranger laughed. “Not in the least. I imagine that he’d be a particularly unlovely character on shore. He was a great sailor though. Let me introduce myself—my name’s Carlyon, skipper and owner of the Good Chance, your father’s ship.” He held out his hand. Andrews took it. The grip was firm, brief and dry.
“How did he die?” he asked.
“Shot. You knew what your father was?”
“I guessed,” Andrews said.
“And now,” Carlyon asked, “what do you want to do?” He suddenly made a twisted embarrassed motion with his hands. “Your father left me everything.” He added quickly, turning a little away, “Of course you have only to ask. You can have anything but the ship.” His voice dropped on the last word to the same hushed note which he had used in speaking of the sunset. His voice was extraordinarily musical, even in the shortest, most careless sentence. It had a concentration, a clear purity suggesting depth and tautness, which utterly unlike in timbre, yet suggested the note of a violin. Andrews listened to it with a kind of hunger.
“Will you stay here?” Carlyon asked, making a gesture with his hand down the hill.
“I hate it,” Andrews said. “It’s ugly.”
“Why did you come up here?” Carlyon asked suddenly.
“It’s all red brick down there. And a gravel playground. Every few yards there’s something in the way. Up here there’s nothing for miles and miles.”
Carlyon nodded. “I know,” he said. “Why don’t you come with me?”
That was all that passed before the decision was made. Andrews from that moment would have followed Carlyon to the ends of the world, and yet it was Carlyon who was ridiculously impetuous and desired simply to walk away then with no more said or done. It was Andrews who insisted that Carlyon must come down to the school and make arrangements.
That night Carlyon stayed at an inn in the town and Andrews, as he said good night, asked the question he had been longing to ask all the evening. “Do you want me to come?” “Yes,” Carlyon had answered. “We both love the same things. They do not love them at this school, and my men, fine men, mind you, do not love them. We are made to be friends.”
“Made to be friends,” Andrews laughed, walking over the downs. What a mess he had made of that friendship. He wondered whether if he had the power, he would undo what he had done; have back the covert jeers, his father’s example constantly thrown up, the hated, noisy sea, the danger, but also Carlyon’s friendship, the cabin, shut out from the eyes of the crew, Carlyon speaking, Carlyon reading, Carlyon’s clear, refreshing certainty of what he followed. He had not by his act destroyed his shame nor his fear, but had increased them both, and he had lost Carlyon. And yet if he was able to return through time he must leave behind Elizabeth and this reawakened, defeated, but persistent longing to raise himself from the dirt.
Absorbed in drifting thoughts of the past an hour had fled. The day had begun and a pale crocus yellow light had absorbed the first silver. The lights in the valley had again gone out save for a few which still burned not brightly but like dull, rusty blossoms of a wild bush. Coming to a rise Andrews was startled to see the cottage below him, small, barren of light or movement. The faint sunlight was unable to pierce the trees in whose shelter the cottage lay, so that while the world was bathed in a light shower of gold, the cottage was in shadow. But to Andrews watching from the down, his heart beating with the suddenness of the sight, it lay in the deeper shadow of danger and of death. He did not know in the confusion into which his heart had been thrown, when thus unexpectedly woken from the past, whether it was fear or love that made the beats. He gazed hard at the cottage as though by intensity he might force it to declare any secrets which it might hold. No smoke came from the chimney, no light from the windows. This absence of life signified nothing, for the hour could hardly be later than seven, yet it frightened Andrews. Suppose that Carlyon and his men had already visited the cottage and that it now hid their revenge. It was useless to tell himself that Carlyon would not allow a woman to be hurt. Hake and Joe were with him. He wondered where Carlyon had left the Good Chance. If he had lost the ship his leadership was over. It seemed to Andrews that centuries had passed since he had watched, with a heart exalted as compared with now, the smoke rise from the cottage chimneys.
Very slowly he walked to the brink of the down, his eyes fixed on the cottage. There was yet another possibility to fear, that inside the cottage the smugglers were waiting for him to fall into the trap set by Cockney Harry. But was it a trap? It was his duty to warn Elizabeth, but when had he ever done anything for the sake of duty? He might in opening that cottage door find himself face to face with Carlyon, Joe, Hake, and the rest of them. He remembered the vision he had seen in the yellow candle light in Lucy’s room. He stood there in what seemed even to himself a pitiable hesitation. If only he had not fallen to that woman, he thought, how easy it would have been to have gone swinging blindly down the hill. His duty fulfilled, he would have been clean, exultant, confident of the future, confident that he had risen once and for all from his past. He returned now defeated by his body, dispirited, hopeless, to give a warning and then go. Why not abandon this attempt to be better than I am and escape now and never give the warning? I’m only beginning over again this weary, hopeless business of attempting to rise. I shall be disappointed again. Why not save myself that bitterness? The cowardly suggestion drove in on him with too great a force. If it had come quietly, insidiously, it might have won, but this brazen confident attempt defeated its own purpose. His heart rose in revolt. He half ran down the hill, careless of cover, intent only on putting it out of his power to draw back.
As he reached the edge of the trees and the cottage appeared again before him, as it had appeared on his first arrival, caution returned. His eyes on the window, he ran on tiptoe across the bare space between the coppice and wall. Pressing his body hard against the wall, as though he hoped to be absorbed into its firmness, he put one eye to the corner of the window. The room within seemed empty. Surely all was well. He took three strides along the wall to the door and gently raised the latch. To his surprise the door opened. How careless she is, he thought. She should bolt this door. Seeing the room empty he knelt down himself and drew the bottom bolt. The top was broken.
He looked round him and sighed a little with relief to see no sign of disturbance. It was not a trap then, he thought. I must get her away from here this morning. In the middle of the room was the kitchen table on which the coffin had lain. Do not be afraid, old man, Andrews said under his breath, I will not touch her. I am going to save her from the others, that is all. He shivered a little. The morning air now that he had ceased to walk was cold. It seemed to him very possible that the room might hold a jealous, bitter and suspicious ghost. I don’t want any interference from spirits, he thought, and smiled wearily at his own superstition. The room and house were very still. Should he go up and wake her? He longed, only now he realised to the full with what passion and what impatience, to see her again. If only he had returned unsullied, a conqueror of himself for her. I will try again, I will try again, he thought, beating down his own self-mockery. I don’t care how often I fall. I will try again. For the second time within twenty-four hours and for the second time in three years he prayed. “O God, help me.” He turned hastily round. It was as though a warm draught had blown on to the back of his neck. He found himself again facing the table and the imagined, but disquieting, presence of a coffin. Don’t be afraid, old man, he implored. I am not here to make love. She would never look at me. I want to save her, that is all.
He shook himself a little, like a dog. He was becoming foolish. I will get breakfast, he thought, and surprise her. A row of cups were hanging above the sink. He took one down and then stood, the tips of his fingers caressing the edge, but his mind on the past, his eyes fixed to a key hole, his heart trembling as though at a saint. Then the small door which led to the upper floor opened and he looked up. “Is it you at last?” he said. His voice was hushed and trembling in the presence of a mystery. The room was gold with sunlight, but he had not noticed it till now.