Part 44 (2/2)

This body would go back to the earth that it had tended, the wild gra.s.s would grow over it, the seasons spend wind and rain forever above it.

But that which had held this together--the inarticulate, lowly spirit, hardly asking itself why things should be, faithful as a dog to those who were kind to it, obeying the dumb instinct of a violence that in his betters would be called 'high spirit,' where--Felix wondered--where was it?

And what were they thinking--Nedda and that haunted boy--so motionless? Nothing showed on their faces, nothing but a sort of living concentration, as if they were trying desperately to pierce through and see whatever it was that held this thing before them in such awful stillness. Their first glimpse of death; their first perception of that terrible remoteness of the dead! No wonder they seemed to be conjured out of the power of thought and feeling!

Nedda was first to turn away. Walking back by her side, Felix was surprised by her composure. The reality of death had not been to her half so harrowing as the news of it. She said softly:

”I'm glad to have seen him like that; now I shall think of him--at peace; not as he was that other time.”

Derek rejoined them, and they went in silence back to the hotel. But at the door she said:

”Come with me to the cathedral, Derek; I can't go in yet!”

To Felix's dismay the boy nodded, and they turned to go. Should he stop them? Should he go with them? What should a father do? And, with a heavy sigh, he did nothing but retire into the hotel.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

It was calm, with a dark-blue sky, and a golden moon, and the lighted street full of people out for airing. The great cathedral, cutting the heavens with its ma.s.sive towers, was shut. No means of getting in; and while they stood there looking up the thought came into Nedda's mind: Where would they bury poor Tryst who had killed himself? Would they refuse to bury that unhappy one in a churchyard? Surely, the more unhappy and desperate he was, the kinder they ought to be to him!

They turned away down into a little lane where an old, white, timbered cottage presided ghostly at the corner. Some church magnate had his garden back there; and it was quiet, along the waving line of a high wall, behind which grew sycamores spreading close-bunched branches, whose shadows, in the light of the corner lamps, lay thick along the ground this glamourous August night. A chafer buzzed by, a small black cat played with its tail on some steps in a recess. n.o.body pa.s.sed.

The girl's heart was beating fast. Derek's face was so strange and strained. And he had not yet said one word to her. All sorts of fears and fancies beset her till she was trembling all over.

”What is it?” she said at last. ”You haven't--you haven't stopped loving me, Derek?”

”No one could stop loving you.”

”What is it, then? Are you thinking of poor Tryst?”

With a catch in his throat and a sort of choked laugh he answered:

”Yes.”

”But it's all over. He's at peace.”

”Peace!” Then, in a queer, dead voice, he added: ”I'm sorry, Nedda. It's beastly for you. But I can't help it.”

What couldn't he help? Why did he keep her suffering like this--not telling her? What was this something that seemed so terribly between them? She walked on silently at his side, conscious of the rustling of the sycamores, of the moonlit angle of the church magnate's house, of the silence in the lane, and the gliding of their own shadows along the wall. What was this in his face, his thoughts, that she could not reach!

And she cried out:

”Tell me! Oh, tell me, Derek! I can go through anything with you!”

”I can't get rid of him, that's all. I thought he'd go when I'd seen him there. But it's no good!”

Terror got hold of her then. She peered at his face--very white and haggard. There seemed no blood in it. They were going down-hill now, along the blank wall of a factory; there was the river in front, with the moonlight on it and boats drawn up along the bank. From a chimney a scroll of black smoke was flung out across the sky, and a lighted bridge glowed above the water. They turned away from that, pa.s.sing below the dark pile of the cathedral. Here couples still lingered on benches along the river-bank, happy in the warm night, under the August moon! And on and on they walked in that strange, miserable silence, past all those benches and couples, out on the river-path by the fields, where the scent of hay-stacks, and the freshness from the early stubbles and the gra.s.ses webbed with dew, overpowered the faint reek of the river mud.

And still on and on in the moonlight that haunted through the willows.

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