The Man Within (22 page)

ELIZABETH STOOD AT THE
bottom step of the stairs, her hand on the open door, her eyes sleepy and astonished. ‘You,’ she said.

Andrews turned the cup round and round in his hands, embarrassed now, almost wordless. ‘I’ve come back,’ he said.

She stepped down into the room and Andrews watched with fascinated eyes the swing of her gait, the manner in which she flung her chin up as she moved. ‘Oh, yes, I can see that,’ she said with a slight smile. ‘Here, give me that cup. You’ll break it.’

Andrews put his hand with sudden resolution behind his back. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I want this cup. This was the cup we both drank from.’

‘That’s not the one,’ Elizabeth answered quickly, and as Andrews gazed at her in astonishment, she twisted her lower lip between her teeth. ‘I remember that one,’ she added, ‘because it had a chip out of the rim. Tell me – what are you doing here?’

‘I’ve got news,’ Andrews said. He spoke with reluctance. A great unwillingness to tell her swept over him. For when he had given her his news what possible excuse had he to stay?

‘Will it wait till after breakfast?’ she asked, and when he nodded she began with no more said to lay the table.

Only when they were seated did she speak again. ‘You must have been up early?’ He grunted assent, afraid to hear the question which would bring out his news.

‘Has anything happened since I’ve been away?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she said, ‘nothing ever happens here.’

‘The door was unbolted. Do you think that’s safe?’

‘It was unbolted when you first came,’ she replied, and watching him with candid eyes, ‘I did not want you to have a less warm welcome when you came back.’

He looked up sharply in a kind of poignant hope, but her candour repelled it. All her meaning seemed on the surface, none beneath it. ‘Did you know I would come back?’

She frowned a little as though puzzled. ‘But surely that was the understanding. We parted friends, didn’t we?’

‘You are very generous.’ Her voice for some reason made him bitter, but she did not notice his sarcasm. ‘I don’t understand you,’ she answered. ‘You say very puzzling things.’

‘Oh, I am not like you,’ Andrews said. ‘I don’t know that I want to be. You are so clear, so terribly sane. I’m twisted.’

‘Am I very clear?’ she asked. She laid down her knife and, resting her chin on one hand, stared at him curiously across the table. ‘Could you tell, for instance, that I was anxious for you to return? It’s lonely here. When I came down the other morning I was sorry that you’d gone. I felt guilty. I shouldn’t have persuaded you to go to Lewes. I had no right to make you risk yourself. Do you forgive me?’

Andrews jumped up from the table and, walking over to the fireplace, turned his back on her. ‘You are laughing at me,’ he said.

Elizabeth smiled. ‘You
are
twisted,’ she said. ‘Why should you think that? No, we are friends.’

He turned round with scarlet face. ‘If you say that word again –’ he threatened. Watching her white, puzzled, yet calm, face quietened him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I have only had one friend and I betrayed him. I don’t want to betray you.’

‘You will not betray me,’ she said. ‘You left your knife.’

‘I thought you might need it.’

‘You knew that you might need it.’

He turned his back again and kicked the coals in the fire.

‘I was a fool,’ he muttered. ‘Just sentimentality. That means nothing.’

‘I thought it brave,’ she said. ‘I admired you tremendously for that.’

Again Andrews coloured. ‘You are laughing at me,’ he said. ‘You know that you despise me, that I’m a coward.’ He laughed. ‘Why, I’ve betrayed you twice in Lewes, and I’m betraying you now if you only knew it. Don’t mock me by pretending admiration. You women are cunning. No one but a woman would think of that turn to the screw.’ His voice broke. ‘You win. You see it’s successful.’

Elizabeth rose from the table and came and stood beside him at the fire. ‘How have you betrayed me?’ she asked.

Andrews without looking up answered, ‘Once with a woman.’

There was a pause. Then Elizabeth said coldly, ‘I don’t understand how that’s a betrayal of me. Of yourself perhaps. What other betrayal?’

‘It came out in Court that you sheltered me.’

‘In Court?’ she asked. Her voice trembled for a reason which he could not understand. ‘Were you there?’

‘I was in the witness box,’ he said gloomily. ‘Don’t praise me. It was only partly you. And the other parts were drink and a harlot. What do you say to that?’

‘Well done,’ she said.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You go on too long. You are not as cunning as I thought you. I’m getting used to that mockery. You must change your tack.’

‘That woman,’ Elizabeth asked, ‘who was she? What was she like?’

‘She was my equal.’

‘I thought you said she was a harlot. Tell me – was she better looking than I?’

Andrews looked up in astonishment. Elizabeth was watching him with an anxious smile. ‘I’d never compare you,’ he said. ‘You belong to different worlds.’

‘Yet I should like to know.’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t. I could only compare your bodies, and I can’t see yours for you.’

‘I’m like other women, surely?’ she asked sadly.

‘No,’ he said, his voice soaring in sudden enthusiasm. ‘Like no other woman.’

‘I see,’ her voice was cold again. ‘Well, tell me more of your betrayals. Why am I betrayed because you loved this woman? You are the kind of man who does that frequently, I imagine.’

‘Not love,’ he said.

‘Is there any difference? Men are very fond of splitting hairs.’ She glanced as he had done at the kitchen table as though to her also it stood for a certain ever-present jealous spirit.

‘Which did he feel?’ she asked.

‘Did he wish to hurt you or did he wish, even if unsuccessful, to do unselfishly?’

‘Then his was both,’ she said. ‘Tell me – you spoke of a third betrayal. What was that?’

The moment had come. ‘I came here to warn you, and I’ve been putting it off and putting it off.’

‘To warn me?’ Her chin went up in a kind of defiance. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Carlyon and the rest mean to punish you for sheltering me. They are coming here today or tomorrow.’ He told her Cockney Harry’s message. ‘Apparently it was not a trap,’ he added.

‘But you thought it was,’ she said curiously, ‘and yet you came?’

He interrupted her. ‘You must go now at once.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘I hated the idea of your going,’ he said simply, ‘and so I spoilt the only decent thing I’ve done.’

‘And did you think I should really go?’

‘You must,’ he said, and then seeing her flash to meet the
unwelcome
word, he added quickly. ‘You must take what money you have and go anywhere – to London perhaps – until this blows over.’

‘No,’ Elizabeth said, ‘I don’t see the necessity.’

‘Good God,’ Andrews protested, ‘must I make you go?’

‘Why should I run away? I have that,’ and she pointed at the empty gun where it stood in its accustomed corner.

‘It’s empty.’

‘I have cartridges.’

‘You don’t know how to use it. You told me so.’

‘But you do,’ she said.

Andrews stamped his foot furiously. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no. I’ve run enough risks for you. You women are all the same, never satisfied.’

‘You mean you won’t stay and help.’

‘You don’t know what you are asking,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid of them. I’m more afraid of pain than of anything else in the world. I’m a coward. I’m not ashamed of it, I tell you.’

She smiled with a sad yet humorous twist to the mouth. ‘Forget that idea,’ she said.

He stamped his foot again with childish petulance. ‘It’s not an idea. It’s a fact. I’ve warned you. Now I’m going.’ He did not look at her, lest his resolution might waver, but walked like a drunken man with exaggerated straightness to the door.

‘I stay,’ he heard her say behind him. He swung round and said with desperation, ‘You can’t use the gun without me.’

‘I had no need to use it on you,’ she answered.

‘Those men are different. They are not cowards.’

‘They must be cowards,’ she said with unanswerable logic, ‘if they intend to revenge themselves on me.’

Outside the sun allured him with pale gold. What woman dared to compete with the sun in beauty and yet in sense of peace? Its colour seemed to sleep along the ground and in
its
sleep to glow with an untranslatable and secret dream of an exalted place. Go, go, go, reason told him, and watching the dozing countryside even his heart felt the same urge. He appealed to that critic which had so often in the past tried in vain to drive him along a noble course, but the critic was silent, stood aside, seemed to say, ‘Here is your last and great decision. I will not influence you.’ Before his eyes like a shoulder turned on him in disdain rose the down over which he had first come in blind terror a century ago. If only I could be blind with fear again, he thought, how happily could I fly from here. Even the girl behind him was silent now, leaving him, as all the world seemed to leave him, to make his own decision. And he was not accustomed thus to use his will. ‘I’m going,’ he said again irresolutely, in the vain hope that Elizabeth might waver, but she remained silent. He wondered a little at himself. He was surely bewitched, for never before had his feet found it so hard to leave danger behind him. To help them he tried to call up before his eyes a vision of what might happen to him if he fell into the hands of Hake or Joe, when even into Carlyon’s meant death. But instead he saw again the glow of yellow candlelight and Elizabeth’s face contorted in a scream. It was no good. He could not leave her. The door which he had opened he again slammed to, shot the bolt and came back into the centre of the room with hanging head.

‘You’ve won again,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay.’

He looked up at her with angry resentment. Her eyes were glowing, but he noticed even at that moment that the glow was on the surface only and altered the nature of the drowsing depths no more than moonlight on a pond can transmute more than the face of the dark metallic water into silver.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘since we’ve chosen to be fools we must make the best of it. Have you tools and wood? I want to mend the top bolt of the door.’ She led him into the shed, where he had slept first, and found him wood, nails, a saw,
a
hammer. Clumsily, for he was not used to working with his hands, he made a bolt and fastened it in place. ‘That helps to shut us in,’ he said. She was standing close beside him and he was on the point of taking her in his arms. Then a thought stopped him. I have the living against me, he thought, I do not want the dead also. To prevent a return of the temptation he tried to busy himself with means to their defence. ‘The cartridges?’ he asked. ‘Where are they?’ She brought them and he loaded the gun, leaving the others spread out on the table ready to the hand. Then he walked to the window, examined the outlook, entered the shed and reassured himself that the window was too high from the ground for a flank attack to be successful. ‘We are ready for them,’ he said dully. He was oppressed by a question. If Carlyon should be the first to come, could he shoot? He glanced out of the corners of his eyes at Elizabeth. It was she or Carlyon. He would have to shoot, and yet he prayed that it might be Hake or Joe who would offer himself to his bullet.

‘How far is your nearest neighbour?’ he asked.

‘Not more than a mile,’ she said. ‘He keeps a farm – and a cellar.’

‘You mean he’s a friend of these men?’ Andrews asked. ‘Surely if he heard shots he would send to Shoreham.’

‘You have lived very much on the sea, haven’t you?’ Elizabeth said. ‘You do not know this borderland, not close enough to the coast to be patrolled, not far enough away to have no dealings with smugglers. Here we are in the pocket of the Gentlemen.’ She unexpectedly clapped her hands. ‘What fun, after all, it is,’ she said.

‘Fun,’ he exclaimed. ‘Don’t you realize that it means death for someone?’

‘You are so afraid of death,’ she said.

‘I’m afraid of extinction,’ Andrews said, resting his hand on the barrel of the gun, in which he found comfort. ‘I am all that I have, I’m afraid of losing that.’

‘There is no danger,’ she said. ‘We go on.’

‘Oh, you believe in God,’ Andrews murmured, ‘and all that.’ He kicked his heels in an embarrassed fashion, not looking at her, blushing a little. ‘I envy you,’ he said. ‘You seem so certain, so sane, at peace. I’ve never been like that – at least only for a very little, while listening to music. – I’m listening to music now. Go on talking to me. While I hear you all this chaos,’ he put his hand to his head, ‘is smoothed out.’ He looked up at her suspiciously, expecting her laughter.

Elizabeth asked with a small puzzled frown, ‘What do you mean by chaos?’

‘It is as though,’ Andrews said slowly, ‘there were about six different people inside me. They all urge different things. I don’t know which is myself.’

‘The one who left the knife and the one who stays here now,’ she said.

‘But then, what of the others?’

‘The devil,’ she answered.

He laughed. ‘How old fashioned you are.’

She put herself in front of him. ‘Look at me,’ she said. Hesitatingly he looked up and seeing her face glowing (the only word for that radiance, which gave her face the appearance of a pale crystal holding a sun or a star) the desire to take her in his arms was almost irresistible. But I must not, he told himself. I will not spoil these hours with her. I have spoiled everything I have touched. I will not touch her. He thrust his hands deep in his pockets and baulked desire gave his face a sullen, hostile look. ‘Tell me how you could return to warn me,’ Elizabeth asked, ‘when you do not believe in immortality. You risked death.’

‘Sentimentality,’ he said with a grin.

A faint puzzled frown dimmed for a moment the radiance. ‘Why do you always make little of the good you do,’ she asked, ‘and make much of the bad?’

He bit his lip angrily. ‘If you want to know why I came,’
he
said, ‘I’ll tell you. Remember it’s your fault if all this peace is spoiled.’