Stephen Morris (18 page)

What if he had been wrong – a fool?

He pressed on past the turning to Cumnor and on round by Wytham Woods, the hill looming faintly on his right in the darkness. He did not understand it, and he supposed that now he never would. He drove over the bridge before Eynsham and stopped at the lighted toll-gate, fumbling for coppers.

‘Are you coming back tonight?’ asked the girl.

Morris shook his head.

On through the main street of the village and out into the country again. He was on the road to Witney; he knew it well. It was a good road this, clear and easy and pleasant enough in daylight, past farm and wood now dimly illumined by his lamps as he passed. He was getting a little cold again, weary and dispirited. Perhaps things always came out this way really, only he had shut his eyes to it. There was an end to everything, to all illusion. Things faded, the bright colours did not last. Riley …

He breasted the hill outside Witney and ran down into the little grey town. To the left at the cross-roads and on over the bridge, on through the long main street to the other end of the town. Cheerful lights shone out of the windows; a stream of light, smoke, and laughter came from the door of one little pub. But he must get on.

He took the road to the right at the end of the town and made for Burford.

On out of the town, up the hill, and along the high plateau at the top past the derelict aerodrome, ghostly and desolate and painfully reminiscent of the Isle of Wight. Well, that remained, the work he loved, the designing business that meant so much to him. That was a clean, healthy, unemotional thing; something that
lasted, that was permanent. The strength of the wings, the delicate, beautiful strength.

He was very tired; tired, cold and numb; he could not think clearly any longer. But he must go on, must keep his course, all night if necessary. He was numb, but he could not sleep yet; he must go right on wherever this might lead him.

But this was not the road to Cornwall he was on.

He passed by Burford in the valley below him. If he was going to Cornwall he should be farther south … there was a road through Newbury or somewhere that he ought to be on. He was twenty, thirty miles too far north. He would have to make a big detour later on – he would have to turn off somewhere.

He was going to Cheltenham, to Gloucester. He would have to turn off in Gloucester and head south for a bit.

He had not cared which way he went when he left Oxford; he had come this way at random. But it was all wrong; he must go on with it now, but it would bring him close, too close, to Bevil Crossways. He must not stop there, or anywhere else in Gloucestershire. He must show them that he could stick a thing like this out without squealing. He would carry on and make for Bristol or somewhere and put up there for the night. There would be all-night hotels in Bristol. And by the time he got there perhaps he would be able to sleep.

He pressed on over the wide, open, treeless country. The moon was bright now; he could see the country almost as well as in daylight. The road wound on over the open fields; one could see it ahead for three or four miles in the daytime, a black line of telegraph poles on the horizon of the next ridge. Morris let the car out and began to run the miles down quickly. He had one
narrow shave at an unexpected corner, but did not reduce his speed. It didn’t matter – nothing mattered to him now.

Then, before he realised he was so close, he was running down into Northleach, nestling in a hollow. This was typical Gloucestershire country now, the grey stone houses and the stone walls to the fields. He slowed a little through the town, and put the car at the long hill up on the farther side, by the prison. He supposed there were men in there, poor vagrants pinched for stealing a chicken or for sleeping in the road. Yokels who had earned a week’s correction for some trivial offence. Poor devils.

He was tired and stiff. Some miles from Northleach he stopped the car and got out, stretching his stiff limbs. He had left the main road to Cheltenham and had taken the little one to Gloucester, hardly more than a lane. He must be somewhere not very far from Bevil Crossways – it didn’t matter. He would walk about a little to ease his stiffness and to warm himself, and then he would get on.

It was at the top of a long hill that he had stopped; the country all seemed to be up and down round here. He walked a little way up the lane till he came to a gate in the hedge, where he could look out over the countryside. It was a fine outlook; he could see for miles in the bright moonlight, right away over the valley he had crossed. Down the opposite side, a mile and a half away, he traced the road to Cheltenham on its course, a silver ribbon winding away down the valley.

Morris leaned on the gate and stood looking out over the fields. Well, he had made a fool of himself and must start all over again. He had asked a girl to marry him when he couldn’t marry her, and had then turned her
down. Then he had counted on her waiting and loving nobody else, so that he could come back to her when it suited him to marry. He had been sanguine! And now that he had come to the logical consequence of his folly he must realise that it was his own fault, that it was one of those things that one must accept, that one must learn by. He would not make that mistake again. He was calmer now, and could think about it all quite reasonably and logically.

He was all right now. There would be more pain; it would be a long time before he got over that desolate sense of loneliness. But he could face it now with a quiet mind; he was no longer afraid of his own thoughts. Now he could find somewhere to sleep, and go on his way again in the morning. There was nothing like keeping on the move till you had outdistanced your troubles.

Far away in the valley there appeared a splash of bright light on the road, moving slowly, it seemed, towards him. Some car coming his way. He looked at his watch; it was just after eleven. Well, he would stay here a little longer, and then he would go on into Gloucester and put up for the night. He was all right now, only this news had been a bit sudden.

He could hear the car purring up the road in the distance, perhaps half a mile away. He wondered if it would be able to pass his own in that narrow lane. As it approached he moved out into the road to see how it would negotiate the passage.

It came rapidly towards him and swung round the corner up the hill, its lights flooding the whole road and dazzling his eyes. It was a big landaulette, apparently; a powerful car to have come up that hill so well. It slowed to a walking pace as it edged by his car; Morris stood in the road watching it, bathed in light. It moved clear of the obstruction and accelerated past him. Morris, dazzled, was in darkness again and could see nothing.
He walked slowly towards his own car and started it up.

Fifty yards up the hill the landaulette had come to a standstill. Morris watched it, interested in the black mass of it on the road, the bright red tail-lamp below. The chauffeur had got down and had opened the door, and was talking through the door to the occupants of the car.

Then the chauffeur was walking down the road towards him. Tools, or a repair outfit, he supposed. These chaps never thought about carrying spares on any of these big cars; they left everything lying about the garage and then had to borrow when they got hung up on the road. Careless devils, most of them.

The man came up to him. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but are you Mr Morris?’

‘My name is Morris,’ he replied. Something was sticking in his throat; he could not swallow properly.

‘Would you come and speak to Miss Riley?’ said the chauffeur.

He looked at Morris curiously in the dim light. Why didn’t the gentleman answer? Or make any movement? Perhaps he was deaf or had not understood.

‘Miss Helen Riley,’ he said in a louder tone. ‘Miss Riley would like to speak to you, sir.’

‘Right you are,’ said Morris mechanically. ‘I’ll come.’

He moved up the road. The chauffeur was overcome by a horrifying suspicion from the way he walked that this man was drunk, and might insult his mistress. He followed him closely; in his pocket his hand closed upon a tyre lever. He was not a match for this chap physically, but he might be if he was soused.

Morris opened the door of the car. There was only one occupant in the light of the little roof lamp; a girl with deep-brown hair, in evening dress, leaning forward to the door.

‘Good evening,’ said Morris with a little smile. He had been preparing that.

‘Stephen,’ said the girl. ‘I saw you as we passed, in the light. Why … are you staying near here?’

Morris did not answer.

‘Stephen,’ said the girl again, a little piteously.

‘Why, Miss Riley,’ said Morris hurriedly, ‘– I didn’t see who it was for the moment – the light … I’ve been wanting to see you to congratulate you.’

It was a poor attempt.

The girl leaned forward in her seat. ‘What on, Stephen?’ she demanded.

‘Why,’ said Morris, ‘on your – your engagement. I heard … ’ His voice trailed away into silence. ‘I only heard this evening,’ he added. It seemed to him an extenuating circumstance.

A tender little whimsical smile appeared for a moment and chased the trouble from her face.

‘But Stephen,’ she said, ‘I broke off my engagement years ago. You told Malcolm all about us – don’t you remember? And he was going to tell me all about you when – when he was killed. He left the rough draft of a letter to me with all his papers, and Roger got hold of it and sent it on to me. And I broke off my engagement to him.’

A most reliable man, Lechlane; a man who could be trusted always to do the right thing.

Morris stood fingering the tassel of the window. Presently he raised his head and looked at her, a little mistily.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘I suppose you know all about me, then?’

The chauffeur had vanished into the darkness up the road. The girl leaned forward to the door.

‘I knew most of it before,’ she said.

Wallace went to the library. He found his father in his usual chair before the fire, a reading-lamp at his elbow, the only lamp alight in the dim room. He crossed to the table, laid a finger against the side of the coffee-pot, and poured himself out a glass of liqueur brandy.

‘What d’you think of our guest?’ he asked his father.

‘Which? Can’t say I ever thought much of that boy, Antony.’

‘No. Dennison.’

‘He seems a pleasant enough young fellow. What is he?’

‘Solicitor – just out of his articles.’

‘What’s he here for?’

Wallace glanced shrewdly at his father. ‘He’s on an Easter walking tour,’ he said. He balanced himself upon his insteps on the fender, his shoulders resting against the mantelpiece.

The old man raised his white head, and glanced keenly up at his son. ‘I wouldn’t have put him down as the sort of crank that goes walking,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Wallace. He sipped his brandy thoughtfully. ‘That’s all a put up job of course. It’s perfectly obvious what he’s here for – the poor, guileless lad. He’s come to marry Sheila.’

He laughed suddenly. ‘Whoever heard of a man taking a dinner-jacket with him on a walking tour?’ he said.

There was silence in the library. The old man sat leaning forward in his chair, stroking his chin. Wallace
glanced down at him in some concern. He placed his empty glass upon the mantelpiece. ‘He’s really not a bad sort,’ he said. ‘I rather liked him when we met him before, at Aunt Maggie’s. He and Sheila were as thick as two thieves then.’

‘What’s the matter with his leg?’ inquired his father abruptly, in a manner reminiscent of the stables.

‘Oh, that – that was when we met him. He bust it, you know, just before the end of the war, and got sent to Aunt Maggie to convalesce.’

He crossed to the table, selected a cigarette with care, and lit it. ‘As a matter of fact, it was really rather a creditable story. You know that crack there is between a ship and the quay – where you look down and see the water guggling about? Well, he was getting some liberty men aboard one night – all pretty far gone, I suppose. One of them managed to fall down there – there was a space about three feet wide between the ship and the wall. The man couldn’t swim, but instead of chucking him a rope like a Christian, this lad must needs go and jump in after him – Humane Society touch and all that.’