Amy Brandon did not see the enchanted town. She heard, as she left the house, the clocks striking half-past six. Some regular subconscious self, working with its accustomed daily duty, murmured to her that to-night her husband was dining at the Conservative Club and Joan was staying on to supper at the Sampsons" after the opening tennis party of the season. No one would need her--as so often in the past no one had needed her. But it was her unconscious self that whispered this to her; in the wild stream into whose current during these last strange months she had flung herself she was carried along she knew not, she cared not, whither.
Enough for her that she was free now to encompa.s.s her desire, the only dominating, devastating desire that she had ever known in all her dead, well-ordered life. But it was not even with so active a consciousness as this that she thought this out. She thought out nothing save that she must see Morris, be with Morris, catch from Morris that sense of appeas.e.m.e.nt from the torture of hunger unsatisfied that never now left her.
In the last weeks she had grown so regardless of the town"s opinion that she did not care how many people saw her pa.s.s Morris" door. She had, perhaps, been always regardless, only in the dull security of her life there had been no need to regard them. She despised them all; she had always despised them, for the deference and admiration that they paid her husband if for no other reason. Despised them too, it might be, because they had not seen more in herself, had thought her the dull, lifeless nonent.i.ty in whose soul no fires had ever burned.
She had never chattered nor gossiped with them, did not consider gossip a factor in any one"s, day; she had never had the least curiosity about any one else, whether about life or character or motive.
There is no egoist in the world so complete as the disappointed woman without imagination.
She hurried through the town as though she were on a business of the utmost urgency; she saw nothing and she heard nothing. She did not even see Miss Milton sitting at her half-opened window enjoying the evening air.
Morris himself opened the door. He was surprised when he saw her; when he had closed the door and helped her off with her coat he said as they walked into the drawing-room:
"Is there anything the matter?"
She saw at once that the room was cheerless and deserted.
"Is Miss Burnett here?" she asked.
"No. She went off to Rafiel for a week"s holiday. I"m being looked after by the cook."
"It"s cold." She drew her shoulders and arms together, shivering.
"Yes. It _is_ cold. It"s these showers. Shall I light the fire?"
"Yes, do."
He bent down, putting a match to the paper; then when the fire blazed he pushed the sofa forwards.
"Now sit down and tell me what"s the matter."
She could see that he was extremely nervous.
"Have you heard nothing?"
"No."
She laughed bitterly. "I thought all the town knew by this time."
"Knew what?"
"Falk has run away to London with the daughter of Samuel Hogg."
"Samuel Hogg?"
"Yes, the man of the "Dog and Pilchard" down in Seatown."
"Run away with her?"
"Yesterday. He sent us a letter saying that he had gone up to London to earn his own living, had taken this girl with him, and would marry her next week."
Morris was horrified.
"Without a word of warning? Without speaking to you? Horrible! The daughter of that man.... I know something about him...the worst man in the place."
Then followed a long silence. The effect on Morris was as it had been on Mrs. Brandon--the actual deed was almost lost sight of in the sudden light that it threw on his pa.s.sion. From the very first the most appealing element of her attraction to him had been her loneliness, the neglect from which she suffered, the need she had of comfort.
He saw her as a woman who, for twenty years, had had no love, although in her very nature she had hungered for it; and if she had not been treated with actual cruelty, at least she had been so basely neglected that cruelty was not far away. It was not true to say that during these months he had grown to hate Brandon, but he had come, more and more, to despise and condemn him. The effeminacy in his own nature had from the first both shrunk from and been attracted by the masculinity in Brandon.
He could have loved that man, but as the situation had forbidden that, his feeling now was very near to hate.
Then, as the weeks had gone by, Mrs. Brandon had made it clear enough to him that Falk was all that she had left to her--not very much to her even there, perhaps, but something to keep her starved heart from dying. And now Falk was gone, gone in the most brutal, callous way. She had no one in the world left to her but himself. The rush of tenderness and longing to be good to her that now overwhelmed him was so strong and so sudden that it was with the utmost difficulty that he had held himself from going to the sofa beside her.
She looked so weak there, so helpless, so gentle.
"Amy," he said, "I will do anything in the world that is in my power."
She was trembling, partly with genuine emotion, partly with cold, partly with the drama of the situation.
"No," she said, "I don"t want to do a thing that"s going to involve you.
You must be left out of this. It is something that I must carry through by myself. It was wrong of me, I suppose, to come to you, but my first thought was that I must have companionship. I was selfish----"
"No," he broke in, "you were not selfish. I am prouder that you came to me than I can possibly say. That is what I"m here for. I"m your friend. You know, after all these months, that I am. And what is a friend for?" Then, as though he felt that he was advancing too dangerously close to emotion, he went on more quietly:
"Tell me--if it isn"t impertinent of me to ask--what is your husband doing about it?"
"Doing? Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"No. I thought that he would go up to London and see Falk, but he doesn"t feel that that is necessary. He says that, as Falk has run away with the girl, the most decent thing that he can do is to marry her. He seems very little upset by it. He is a most curious man. After all these years, I don"t understand him at all."
Morris went on hesitatingly. "I feel guilty myself. Weeks ago I overheard gossip about your son and some girl. I wondered then whether I ought to say something to you. But it"s so difficult in these cases to know what one ought to do. There"s so much gossip in these little Cathedral towns. I thought about it a good deal. Finally, I decided that it wasn"t my place to meddle."
"I heard nothing," she answered. "It"s always the family that hears the talk last. Perhaps my husband"s right. Perhaps there is nothing to be done. I see now that Falk never cared anything for any of us. I cheated myself. I had to cheat myself, otherwise I don"t know what I"d have done.
And now his doing this has made me suspicious of everything and of every one. Yes, even of a friendship like ours--the greatest thing in my life-- now--the only thing in my life."
Her voice trembled and dropped. But still he would not let himself pa.s.s on to that other ground. "Is there _nothing_ I can do?" he asked. "I suppose it would do no good if I were to go up to London and see him? I knew him a little--"
Vehemently she shook her head.
"You"re not to be involved in this. At least I can do that much--keep you out of it."
"How is he going to live, then?"
"He talks about writing. He"s utterly confident, of course. He always has been. Looking back now, I despise myself for ever imagining that _I_ was of any use to him. I see now that he never needed me--never at all."
Suddenly she looked across at him sharply.