Part 33 (1/2)

”You lived near the Lakes once, didn't you, Maurice?”

”Yes,” he said.

”What was the name of the valley?”

He told her.

”And the house?”

”End Cottage. It was close to the waterfall. I hate it,” he added almost fiercely. ”It was there that I first heard--but I have told you.”

He relapsed into silence and sent away the food on his plate untasted.

Lily glanced across at him. But she said nothing more. And Maurice was struck by the consciousness that she took his strangeness strangely, with a lack of curiosity, a lack of protestation unlike a woman; almost for the first time since they were married he was moved to wonder how much she loved him, indeed whether she still loved him at all. He had got up from the dinner table and stood with one hand leaning upon it as he looked steadily, with his heavy and hunted eyes, across at Lily.

”Are you glad to go with the Canon?” he asked.

”I am quite ready to go,” she said quietly.

”You don't mind leaving me?”

”I think you wish me to leave you--”

”Perhaps I do,” he said, watching her to see if she winced at the words.

But her face was still and calm.

”What then?”

”Then it is better for me to go for a little while than to stay.”

”For a little while,” he repeated, ”yes.”

He turned and went slowly out of the room, and suddenly his face was distorted. For, in the darkness of the hall, he heard the child crying and lamenting. He stopped and listened to it like a man who resolutely faces his destruction. And, as so many times, he asked himself; ”Is this a freak of my imagination, a trick of my nerves?” No, the sound was surely real, was close to him. It thrilled in his ears keenly. He could not doubt its reality. Yet he acknowledged to himself that he could not actually locate it. Only in that respect did it differ from other sounds of earth. As he stood in the half darkness, listening, a horror, greater than he had ever felt before, came over him. The cry seemed to him menacing, no longer merely a cry for sympathy, for a.s.sistance, no longer merely the cry of a helpless creature in pain. He turned white and sick, and clapped his two hands to his ears. And just as he did so the dining-room door opened and Lily came out, a thin stream of light following her and falling upon Maurice. He started at the vision of her and at the revealing illumination. His nerves were quivering. His whole body seemed to vibrate.

”Don't come near me,” he cried out to Lily. ”It is worse since you are with me. Your presence makes my danger. Ah!”

And with a cry he dashed into his study, banging the door behind him, as if he fled from her.

A few days later Maurice stood at the garden gate and helped Lily into the carriage that was to take her to the station. A summons to a patient prevented him from seeing her and the Canon off on their journey northwards. Just before Lily put her foot on the step she stopped and wavered.

”Wait a moment,” she said.

She ran back into the little house which had been her home since she was married. Maurice supposed that she had forgotten something. But she only peeped into her bedroom, into the gay drawing-room, into Maurice's den.

And as she looked at this last little chamber, at the books, the ruffled writing-table, the pipes ranged against the wall, her photograph standing in a silver frame upon the mantelpiece, her eyes filled with tears, and there was a stricken feeling at her heart.

”Lily, you will miss the train,” Maurice called to her.

She hurried out, got into the carriage and was driven away, wondering why she had gone back to take a last glance at her home, why she had scarcely been able to see it for her tears.

That evening Maurice returned from his round of visits in a curious state of excitement and of antic.i.p.ation, mingled with nervous dread. He felt as if the eyes of the dead child were upon all his doings, as if the mind of the dead child pondered every act of his, as if the brain of the dead child were busy about his life, as if the soul of the dead child concerned itself for ever with his soul, which it had secretly dedicated to a loneliness a.s.sured now by the departure of Lily. By living alone, even for a few weeks, was he not in a measure obeying the desire of the little spirit, which possessed his fate like some inexorable Providence? If so, dare he not hope for an interval of peace, for that stillness after which he longed with an anxiety that was like a physical pain?