Part 23 (1/2)

Mr. Scogan ran to the foot of the stairs and called up after him. ”It makes no difference, none whatever. Life is gay all the same, always, under whatever circ.u.mstances--under whatever circ.u.mstances,” he added, raising his voice to a shout. But Denis was already far out of hearing, and even if he had not been, his mind to-night was proof against all the consolations of philosophy. Mr. Scogan replaced his pipe between his teeth and resumed his meditative pacing. ”Under any circ.u.mstances,” he repeated to himself. It was ungrammatical to begin with; was it true?

And is life really its own reward? He wondered. When his pipe had burned itself to its stinking conclusion he took a drink of gin and went to bed. In ten minutes he was deeply, innocently asleep.

Denis had mechanically undressed and, clad in those flowered silk pyjamas of which he was so justly proud, was lying face downwards on his bed. Time pa.s.sed. When at last he looked up, the candle which he had left alight at his bedside had burned down almost to the socket. He looked at his watch; it was nearly half-past one. His head ached, his dry, sleepless eyes felt as though they had been bruised from behind, and the blood was beating within his ears a loud arterial drum. He got up, opened the door, tiptoed noiselessly along the pa.s.sage, and began to mount the stairs towards the higher floors. Arrived at the servants'

quarters under the roof, he hesitated, then turning to the right he opened a little door at the end of the corridor. Within was a pitch-dark cupboard-like boxroom, hot, stuffy, and smelling of dust and old leather. He advanced cautiously into the blackness, groping with his hands. It was from this den that the ladder went up to the leads of the western tower. He found the ladder, and set his feet on the rungs; noiselessly, he lifted the trap-door above his head; the moonlit sky was over him, he breathed the fresh, cool air of the night. In a moment he was standing on the leads, gazing out over the dim, colourless landscape, looking perpendicularly down at the terrace seventy feet below.

Why had he climbed up to this high, desolate place? Was it to look at the moon? Was it to commit suicide? As yet he hardly knew. Death--the tears came into his eyes when he thought of it. His misery a.s.sumed a certain solemnity; he was lifted up on the wings of a kind of exaltation. It was a mood in which he might have done almost anything, however foolish. He advanced towards the farther parapet; the drop was sheer there and uninterrupted. A good leap, and perhaps one might clear the narrow terrace and so crash down yet another thirty feet to the sun-baked ground below. He paused at the corner of the tower, looking now down into the shadowy gulf below, now up towards the rare stars and the waning moon. He made a gesture with his hand, muttered something, he could not afterwards remember what; but the fact that he had said it aloud gave the utterance a peculiarly terrible significance. Then he looked down once more into the depths.

”What ARE you doing, Denis?” questioned a voice from somewhere very close behind him.

Denis uttered a cry of frightened surprise, and very nearly went over the parapet in good earnest. His heart was beating terribly, and he was pale when, recovering himself, he turned round in the direction from which the voice had come.

”Are you ill?”

In the profound shadow that slept under the eastern parapet of the tower, he saw something he had not previously noticed--an oblong shape. It was a mattress, and someone was lying on it. Since that first memorable night on the tower, Mary had slept out every evening; it was a sort of manifestation of fidelity.

”It gave me a fright,” she went on, ”to wake up and see you waving your arms and gibbering there. What on earth were you doing?”

Denis laughed melodramatically. ”What, indeed!” he said. If she hadn't woken up as she did, he would be lying in pieces at the bottom of the tower; he was certain of that, now.

”You hadn't got designs on me, I hope?” Mary inquired, jumping too rapidly to conclusions.

”I didn't know you were here,” said Denis, laughing more bitterly and artificially than before.

”What IS the matter, Denis?”

He sat down on the edge of the mattress, and for all reply went on laughing in the same frightful and improbable tone.

An hour later he was reposing with his head on Mary's knees, and she, with an affectionate solicitude that was wholly maternal, was running her fingers through his tangled hair. He had told her everything, everything: his hopeless love, his jealousy, his despair, his suicide--as it were providentially averted by her interposition. He had solemnly promised never to think of self-destruction again. And now his soul was floating in a sad serenity. It was embalmed in the sympathy that Mary so generously poured. And it was not only in receiving sympathy that Denis found serenity and even a kind of happiness; it was also in giving it. For if he had told Mary everything about his miseries, Mary, reacting to these confidences, had told him in return everything, or very nearly everything, about her own.

”Poor Mary!” He was very sorry for her. Still, she might have guessed that Ivor wasn't precisely a monument of constancy.

”Well,” she concluded, ”one must put a good face on it.” She wanted to cry, but she wouldn't allow herself to be weak. There was a silence.

”Do you think,” asked Denis hesitatingly--”do you really think that she...that Gombauld...”

”I'm sure of it,” Mary answered decisively. There was another long pause.

”I don't know what to do about it,” he said at last, utterly dejected.

”You'd better go away,” advised Mary. ”It's the safest thing, and the most sensible.”

”But I've arranged to stay here three weeks more.”

”You must concoct an excuse.”

”I suppose you're right.”

”I know I am,” said Mary, who was recovering all her firm self-possession. ”You can't go on like this, can you?”