Nor Many Waters Read online

  As he made it, however, she turned fiercely on him.

  “Not love you!” she cried indignantly. “Not love you!” And with cheeks flushed and eyes blazing she cast an impetuous arm about his neck, dragged down his face to hers. “Not love you!” she gasped, and her lips on his were a swooning well of fire. “Can you say after that, that I don’t love you?”

  Then wearily she let her arms fall at her sides and turning away leant her hot forehead against the window-pane.

  “Not love you. Oh, my dear, if you only knew how much,” she cried. “So much that I won’t let you ruin your life for me.”

  His arms were about her, and his voice was pleading in her ear. “You wouldn’t be,” he argued. “We’re young. We’ve plenty of time to build up a new life together. You’ld be ruining my life far more if you were to leave me. I can’t do without you now… I can’t… I can’t.” For a while she let him plead, lying inertly there, with some such passive gratitude as travellers know when they huddle before a wayside fire, knowing that in a few moments they must go out again into the cold. For a while she listened: then wearily she pushed him from her.

  “It’s no good,” she said. “Your father’s right. I’ld ruin your life. And I won’t let you do that; in just the same way that you wouldn’t let me carry on that case. You loved me too much for that. And I love you too much for this. We love each other too much to ruin one another.”

  Her words were like passing of a sentence. But still he could not believe that he was to be robbed of happiness. “Then what are you meaning to do?” he asked.

  Limply she leant her forehead upon the window-pane. Down there in the street below the sun was shining; and the trees in the park were green. And couples were loitering lazily across the grass. And the sky was blue, and the air joyous. All this wealth of summer and in her heart this heavy weight of winter.

  “What shall I do?” she said. “I know well enough what I ought to do. If I’ve got the courage.”

  §

  Alone and lonely in his sombrely lit library Herbert Eagar sat turning listlessly the pages of a detective novel. It was nine o’clock. Two hours before he could hope to feel sleepy enough to go to bed. Two hours. An interminable time. It seemed a century since he had left his office three hours back. They were terrible: these long, slow-passing nights. He had almost come to dread the moment when he had to leave his desk. As long as he was at his office life was tolerable. There was work and occupation, and the welcomed interruption of the telephone. But once away from it—he shuddered as he recalled the long succession of lonely evenings that he had had to endure during the last few weeks. Practically every evening for two months now.

  Since Marian had left him he had refused all invitations. In spite of his truculence, he was a shy man, sensitive and secretive. He was afraid of the questions that would be put to him, the explanations that he would have to give to account for his wife’s absence. And for the same reason he had avoided his Club. He had not wanted to give his fellow members an opportunity of remarking, “What, Eagar dining here again: is the man never with his wife?” He had preferred to that the lonely return to this empty house, the long melancholy evenings with a novel propped negligently against his knee. Two hours more and as likely as not even then he’ld be unable to sleep.

  His eyes fell on the tray beside him with its syphon and glasses and decanted whisky. He half stretched out a hand towards them, then drew it back. Better not. He knew too well what that would mean. One glass and something snapped. His power of resistance went. A craving for drink crept on to him, a craving to sink deeper and deeper into that warm, numb lethargy where he could forget. During the last six weeks that had happened to him too often for him to have any doubt of the consequences of that one drink now. One glass of whisky and he was done. A new thing altogether with him. He had never been like that before. He had held his liquor. He had known when to begin and when to stop. But now…

  It was the worry of this law suit, he supposed. The long strain of his quarrel with Marian. He had to make all day such an immense effort at self-control that when he allowed that effort to relax in the least degree, his troubles appeared so great that he had to find the nearest escape from them. One glass and he was finished. Still, since he knew the symptoms now…

  For he wasn’t to rot his brain that way, he wasn’t going to ruin his life because of a divorce suit and a selfish woman. If he couldn’t trust himself to drink moderately, then he would have to cut out alcohol altogether. He’ld tell his man not to put it out another evening. Savagely he pushed away the tray… Was there nothing that woman hadn’t spoilt for him?

  But he could not read. His thoughts would not concentrate on the flimsy narrative. He let the book drop on the floor. He lay back in his chair, his mind abrood upon his troubles, letting the minutes pass. Behind him he heard the sound of a door opening. Batson coming to ask if he should lock up.

  “Yes, that’s all, Batson, thank you,” he said, “and another evening you needn’t bother to put the whisky out. I’m going to knock it off. Good night.”

  But there was no answering good night. And the tread on the thick pile carpet was lighter than Batson’s had ever been. Inquisitively he turned round in his chair: to start a second later impulsively to his feet, one hand raised towards his throat, the other clenched tightly at his side. He stared and gasped, tried to speak, but could only stammer on a note of incredulous surprise the one word “You!”

  For a full minute they must have stood, staring at one another, then he recovered his control. “How did you get in?” he asked. “I heard no bell ring.”

  Marian smiled. “Have you forgotten,” she said, “that terribly long discussion we had two years ago about my latchkey?”

  It was an answer that might easily have been made to sound bitter and ironic, but as Marian made it it had a strange and disarming quality of sweetness. But Eagar was not in a conciliatory mood.

  “Well, and what have you come here for?” he asked.

  “To talk, Herbert, and quietly. Let’s sit down.”

  He waited for her to begin. She seemed neither hurried nor embarrassed; and with a composure that surprised him she took a cigarette from a wooden box upon the mantelpiece, struck a match and lighted it.

  “I want to talk quietly,” she said, “and calmly, before it’s too late. We seem to be heading, my dear, for a pretty heavy smash.”

  He laughed at that: a bullying, scornful laugh.

  “I see,” he said. “So this is the new move, is it? You’ve tried everything in turn. First you try and bluff me into letting an absurd cruelty charge go through. Then you ask me to agree to a collusive divorce. You send that dandified young lawyer of yours round to see if he can’t persuade me to be chivalrous. Then, when none of that takes, you come round yourself to see if you can’t work upon my pity. If that is what you are here for, my girl, I can tell you here and now that you are wasting your time and might just as well go home.”

  He spoke brutally and aggressively, but no flush came into Marian’s cheeks. She smiled a little wanly, and shook her head.

  “It isn’t that,” she said.

  She seemed in no hurry, however, to tell him what it was. She was looking round with an oddly pensive expression on her face. It had never been a favourite room of hers, this library; it had been too sombre for her taste. She had never spent much time in it, but never had she seen it looking so grim and lugubrious as it did to-night, with no flowers on the mantelpiece, no flowers on the writing desk, no flowers before the deserted grate. It was as though it had wilted without her care. And suddenly she felt sorry for her husband. He seemed a pathetic figure to her, alone in this gloomy room. And her heart softened with what was perhaps the first tender emotion she had ever felt for him. Years back in the days of courtship he had thrilled her, but it had been selfishly that she had been stirred, selfishly that she had responded. His virility, his power to protect and lead and assure had represented qualities of life she la
cked. She had wanted something that he had. It had been a bargaining; that, and no more than that. And there is no tenderness in bargaining. She was nearer to loving him at this moment than she had ever been.

  “No, no,” she said. “It’s something quite other than that that I’ve come to say to you. I want to ask you if you remember that letter you wrote me, it was rather a sweet letter, some six weeks back, at the very beginning of our trouble.”

  The question was so completely a surprise to Eagar that at first he could not answer.

  “That letter,” he said at length. “Why yes, naturally of course I do.”

  “You remember what you said in it?”

  “More or less.”

  “And would you still agree with what you said in it?”

  He looked at her searchingly, trying to fathom her thought, but he could read nothing behind the mask of those fresh, unlined features. Still agree with what he had said in it? But how could one talk of agreeing or not agreeing with the contents of a letter the occasion and need of which had passed? He temporized.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, “what you mean exactly.”

  “I’ll remind you, then. You spoke of the failure we’d made of our life together, how different a thing our marriage was from the thing we’d dreamed for it. You spoke of our separate personalities. Of the difference in age and upbringing. You were a Northerner, you said, and I a Londoner; though in truth I’m far more a cosmopolitan than a Londoner, but let that pass. You said that it was as impossible for you to be happy leading my life in London as it would be for me to be happy leading your life in Liverpool. You remember that?”

  “I remember.”

  “And you said that in Sydney it might be better: in a new country where we should be beginning an entirely new life among new people, among fresh surroundings. Do you remember that?”

  “I remember.”

  “And when you wrote that letter you really believed that, in spite of all our quarrels, in spite of our different ages and different upbringings, we should be happy in Australia? You really believed that when you wrote that letter?”

  “I did.”

  She paused, drawing a long breath slowly. She had come to the climax now, to the assault that she would need all her courage to sustain.

  “Very well,” she said quietly. “What I’ve come to ask you, my dear, is this. Do you still believe that?”

  He started. But even now he could not follow her thoughts. Believe or not believe, what did it matter either way? The issue was so long past, and as before “I don’t understand,” he said, “what you mean exactly.”

  She smiled with one of those smiles that, in spite of her youth, seemed to come from an age-old store of wisdom. “I’m afraid, my dear, that you’re a little dense to-night; or perhaps you think I’m being subtle and obscure. Which I’m not. There couldn’t be a more straightforward question than the one I’m putting to you. You believed once that we could be happy in Australia. I’m asking you if you believe that now. For the position isn’t the same now as it was when you wrote that letter. A good deal’s happened in the last two months. And it’s no use our ignoring those things, no use pretending that they haven’t happened. They have, and they are a part of our lives for ever. So what I’m asking you is this: do you, after all that’s happened, still believe that it would be possible for us to be happy out there?”

  He had caught the line, now, of her reasoning; but it was so unexpected that he could not be certain yet. And he was not going to commit himself until he was: he was not going to make himself ridiculous in her eyes. Besides, the wounds to his masculine vanity had need of ointment.

  “Go on,” he said.

  Within her shoes Marian’s toes curled down towards the soles. He was not giving her much encouragement. He was not making it too easy for her and the temptation to self-assertion was very strong. “Oh, very well,” she had it on her tongue to say, “if that’s all you think of the thing I’m bringing you, I’ll take it back with me. It hasn’t been easy for me to come here to you and if you’re not going to meet me half-way, I’ll just go back again.” It was all that he had deserved. She was resolved, however, to see the business through.

  With a wry smile, but with a voice that was soft still and uncontentious, she continued:

  “But I can’t go on, Herbert. There isn’t any more for me to say. That was what I came to ask you: to ask you whether you still believe that we could be happy, if I were to come to you and say ‘the past is over. Let us forget everything about it except the lessons that there were for us to learn from it.’ Suppose I were to come to you and say that if you were content to begin again, I was, that I would start right again at the beginning, that I would do my best to make you happy, to be a devoted and loyal wife to you, if I were to say that, would you still believe that we could be happy?”

  At first he could scarcely believe that what he heard was true. Could it be possible, this complete capitulation? His heart was thudding with pride, happiness and excitement.

  “And is—is it that?” he stammered, “that y-you are saying to me?”

  She nodded her head. “And I’m waiting,” she told him, “for your answer.”

  Not that there was any need to wait for it. His answer was written clearly in the brightness of his eyes, his quick breathing, his trembling hands. How could she have ever imagined that there could be any question about that answer? He loved her; he had always loved her. There had been never a woman in his life that had really mattered before she came into it, and there would never be another. She must have known all along that she had only to lift a finger to get him back. There was no need for him to speak his answer.

  “Marian, my dear,” he stammered, and he had risen to his feet, he was stumbling across the room towards her; to take her into his arms, to call her his own again.

  But she, too, had risen to her feet, and a small white hand had been lifted before his face.

  “No, no,” she said, “not now. I’m tired, Herbert. If you knew how tired.”

  And with a sudden twist of her shoulder she turned away to stand at the window in the gap of half-drawn curtains to gaze with eyes that were looking upon nothing on to the green gloom of a London garden.

  §

  They met, Marian and Merrick, for lunch next morning at Gramati’s. There was a sad and pensive look in her eyes that to Merrick seemed like the passing of a sentence. He could scarcely wait till his hat and stick and gloves had been taken from him.

  “Darling,” he said, “what’s happened? You were so mysterious last night. You just said that you knew what you ought to do. You wouldn’t tell me what it was.”

  “I couldn’t. I wasn’t certain if I’ld have the courage to go through with it.”

  “And now?”

  “I’ve found I have.”

  In her eyes there was again that puzzling look of age-old wisdom. “I wasn’t certain,” she said, “whether I should be strong enough. I found I was. Last night I went and saw my husband.”

  To see her husband. His cheeks flushed and his blood leapt eagerly. So it was for that that she had been doubtful of her courage. To see her husband, to persuade him, when every one else had failed, to be reasonable.

  “And he agreed,” he cried eagerly, “he saw reason?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, “he saw reason.”

  “And he’s going to drop the case?”

  “There’ll be no case now.”

  “He’s going to let the divorce go through?”

  Slowly Marian shook her head. “There’s not going to be any more trouble about divorce. It wasn’t about that that I went to see my husband.”

  “Not about that!”

  At first he could not grasp the significance of her admission. She was looking at him with such sad, such tender eyes.…

  “Your husband, then… then…” he hesitated. Oh, but it could not, surely it could not be that. She could not have gone back to Eagar, to the man who had struck
her, the man who had been unfaithful to her, the man who had been prepared to dirty her reputation in the law courts. She could not have gone back to that; straight from his kisses back to that.

  “You don’t mean, you can’t mean,” he said.… And yet, if she didn’t mean that, what could she mean? What else was there for her to mean, if she had not gone to persuade him to be reasonable about the case? “You can’t have gone back to him!” he cried.

  Beneath the low brim of her hat her fingers made a swift gesture of denial.

  “No, no,” she said. “Back to that house, with all its memories, to that old life. No, no, that I could never do. But Australia, that’ll be different. When his ship sails for Sydney, I’ll be with him.”

  Merrick stared at her incredulously.

  “Australia!” he repeated.

  Marian shrugged her shoulders.

  “What else is there for me to do? Your father’s right. I’ld ruin your life if I ran away with you. I’m not going to do that. I’ve got to take the lesser of two evils. It’ll be better in the long run for both of us. It’ll be difficult, I know that. There’ll be a lot about it that I’ll hate. But we’ll be both new to it. We shall start on level terms. There’ll be a chance of our building something up together.”

  Building something up together. But it was she and he, not she and Eagar, who should be building up a life together. It was maddening; it was ridiculous, this talk about Australia. Even if it were not going to be possible for them to run away together, why must she go back to Eagar, why set these miles of ocean between her and him?

  “But look here,” he said, “this is preposterous, even if my father’s right, and I don’t think he is, there’s no need surely to jump madly to the other extreme. Why Australia? Even if you can’t come with me, you can keep your freedom.”

  She shook her head, and again there came into her eyes that look of wisdom.