65 Short Stories (66 page)

‘Are you very angry with me?’

‘No. Not at all. Only-only I must be left to myself for a while. Don’t move. I’m going to bed.’

She rose from her long chair and put her hand on his shoulder.

‘It’s so very hot tonight. I wish you’d sleep in your dressing-room. Good night.’

She was gone. He heard her lock the door of her bedroom.

She was pale next day and he could see that she had not slept. There was no bitterness in her manner, she talked as usual, but without ease; she spoke of this and that as though she were making conversation with a stranger. They had never had a quarrel, but it seemed to Guy that so would she talk if they had had a disagreement and the subsequent reconciliation had left her still wounded. The look in her eyes puzzled him; he seemed to read in them a strange fear. Immediately after dinner she said:

‘I’m not feeling very well tonight. I think I shall go straight to bed.’

‘Oh, my poor darling, I’m so sorry,’ he cried.

‘It’s nothing. I shall be all right in a day or two.’

‘I shall come in and say good night to you later.’

‘No, don’t do that. I shall try and get straight off to sleep.’

‘Well, then, kiss me before you go.’

He saw that she flushed. For an instant she seemed to hesitate; then, with averted eyes, she leaned towards him. He took her in his arms and sought her lips, but she turned her face away and he kissed her cheek. She left him quickly and again he heard the key turn softly in the lock of her door. He flung himself heavily on the chair. He tried to read, but his ear was attentive to the smallest sound in his wife’s room. She had said she was going to bed, but he did not hear her move. The silence in there made him unaccountably nervous. Shading the lamp with his hand he saw that there was a glimmer under her door; she had not put out her light. What on earth was she doing? He put down his book. It would not have surprised him if she had been angry and had made a scene, or if she had cried; he could have coped with that; but her calmness frightened him. And then what was that fear which he had seen so plainly in her eyes? He thought once more over all he had said to her on the previous night. He didn’t know how else he could have put it. After all, the chief point was that he’d done the same as everybody else, and it was all over long before he met her. Of course as things turned out he had been a fool, but anyone could be wise after the event. He put his hand to his heart. Funny how it hurt him there.

‘I suppose that’s the sort of thing people mean when they say they’re heartbroken,’ he said to himself ‘I wonder how long it’s going on like this?’ Should he knock at the door and tell her he must speak to her? It was better to have it out. He must make her understand. But the silence scared him. Not a sound! Perhaps it was better to leave her alone. Of course it had been a shock. He must give her as long as she wanted. After all, she knew how devotedly he loved her. Patience, that was the only thing; perhaps she was fighting it out with herself; he must give her time; he must have patience. Next morning he asked her if she had slept better.

‘Yes, much,’ she said.

‘Are you very angry with me?’ he asked piteously.

She looked at him with candid, open eyes.

‘Not a bit.’

‘Oh my dear, I’m so glad. I’ve been a brute and a beast. I know it’s been hateful for you. But do forgive me. I’ve been so miserable.’

‘I do forgive you. I don’t even blame you.’

He gave her a little rueful smile, and there was in his eyes the look of a whipped dog.

‘I haven’t much liked sleeping by myself the last two nights.’

She glanced away. Her face grew a trifle paler.

‘I’ve had the bed in my room taken away. It took up so much space. I’ve had a little camp bed put there instead.’

‘My dear, what are you talking about?’

Now she looked at him steadily.

‘I’m not going to live with you as your wife again.’

‘Never?’

She shook her head. He looked at her in a puzzled way. He could hardly believe he had heard aright and his heart began to beat painfully. ‘But that’s awfully unfair to me, Doris.’

‘Don’t you think it was a little unfair to me to bring me out here in the circumstances?’

‘But you just said you didn’t blame me.’

‘That’s quite true. But the other’s different. I can’t do it.’

‘But how are we going to live together like that?’

She stared at the floor. She seemed to ponder deeply.

‘When you wanted to kiss me on the lips last night I-it almost made me sick.’

‘Doris.’

She looked at him suddenly and her eyes were cold and hostile.

‘That bed I slept on, is that the bed in which she had her children?’ She saw him flush deeply. ‘Oh, it’s horrible. How could you?’ She wrung her hands, and her twisting, tortured fingers looked like little writhing snakes. But she made a great effort and controlled herself ‘My mind is quite made up. I don’t want to be unkind to you, but there are some things that you can’t ask me to do. I’ve thought it all over. I’ve been thinking of nothing else since you told me, night and day, till I’m exhausted. My first instinct was to get up and go. At once. The steamer will be here in two or three days.’

‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you that I love you?’

‘Oh, I know you love me. I’m not going to do that. I want to give us both a chance. I have loved you so, Guy.’ Her voice broke, but she did not cry. ‘I don’t want to be unreasonable. Heaven knows, I don’t want to be unkind. Guy, will you give me time?’

‘I don’t know quite what you mean.’

‘I just want you to leave me alone. I’m frightened by the feelings that I have.’ He had been right then; she was afraid. ‘What feelings?’

‘Please don’t ask me. I don’t want to say anything to wound you. Perhaps I shall get over them. Heaven knows, I want to. I’ll try, I promise you. I’ll try. Give me six months. I’ll do everything in the world for you, but just that one thing.’ She made a little gesture of appeal. ‘There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be happy enough together. If you really love me you’ll-you’ll have patience.’ He sighed deeply.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Naturally I don’t want to force you to do anything you don’t like. It shall be as you say.’

He sat heavily for a little, as though, on a sudden grown old, it was an effort to move; then he got up.

‘I’ll be getting along to the office.’

He took his topee and went out.

A month passed. Women conceal their feelings better than men and a stranger visiting them would never have guessed that Doris was in any way troubled. But in Guy the strain was obvious; his round, good-natured face was drawn, and in his eyes was a hungry, harassed look. He watched Doris. She was gay and she chaffed him as she had been used to do; they played tennis together; they chatted about one thing and another. But it was evident that she was merely playing a part, and at last, unable to contain himself, he tried to speak again of his connexions with the Malay woman.

‘Oh, Guy, there’s no object in going back on all that,’ she answered breezily. ‘We’ve said all we had to say about it and I don’t blame you for anything.’

‘Why do you punish me then?’

‘My poor boy, I don’t want to punish you. It’s not my fault if ...’ she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Human nature is very odd.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Don’t try.’

The words might have been harsh, but she softened them with a pleasant, friendly smile. Every night when she went to bed she leaned over Guy and lightly kissed his cheek. Her lips only touched it. It was as though a moth had just brushed his face in its flight.

A second month passed, then a third, and suddenly the six months which had seemed so interminable were over. Guy asked himself whether she remembered. He gave a strained attention now to everything she said, to every look on her face and to every gesture of her hands. She remained impenetrable. She had asked him to give her six months; well, he had.

The coasting steamer passed the mouth of the river, dropped their mail, and went on its way. Guy busily wrote the letters which it would pick up on the return journey. Two or three days passed by. It was a Tuesday and the prahu was to start at dawn on Thursday to await the steamer. Except at meal time when Doris exerted herself to make conversation they had not of late talked very much together; and after dinner as usual they took their books and began to read; but when the boy had finished clearing away and was gone for the night Doris put down hers.

‘Guy, I have something I want to say to you,’ she murmured.

His heart gave a sudden thud against his ribs and he felt himself change colour.

‘Oh, my dear, don’t look like that, it’s not so very terrible,’ she laughed. But he thought her voice trembled a little.

‘Well?’

‘I want you to do something for me.’

‘My darling, I’ll do anything in the world for you.’

He put out his hand to take hers, but she drew it away.

‘I want you to let me go home.’

‘You?’ he cried, aghast ‘When? Why?’

‘I’ve borne it as long as I can. I’m at the end of my tether.’

‘How long do you want to go for? For always?’

‘I don’t know. I think so.’ She gathered determination. ‘Yes, for always.’

‘Oh, my God!’

His voice broke and she thought he was going to cry.

‘Oh, Guy, don’t blame me. It really is not my fault. I can’t help myself.’

‘You asked me for six months. I accepted your terms. You can’t say I’ve made a nuisance of myself.’

‘No, no.’

‘I’ve tried not to let you see what a rotten time I was having.’

‘I know. I’m very grateful to you. You’ve been awfully kind to me. Listen, Guy, I want to tell you again that I don’t blame you for a single thing you did. After all, you were only a boy, and you did no more than the others; I know what the loneliness is here. Oh, my dear, I’m so dreadfully sorry for you. I knew all that from the beginning. That’s why I asked you for six months. My common sense tells me that I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. I’m unreasonable; I’m being unfair to you. But, you see, common sense has nothing to do with it; my whole soul is in revolt. When I see the woman and her children in the village I just feel my legs shaking. Everything in this house; when I think of that bed I slept in it gives me goose-flesh .... You don’t know what I’ve endured.’

‘I think I’ve persuaded her to go away. And I’ve applied for a transfer.’

‘That wouldn’t help. She’ll be there always. You belong to them, you don’t belong to me. I think perhaps I could have stood it if there’d only been one child, but three; and the boys are quite big boys. For ten years you lived with her.’ And now she came out with what she had been working up to. She was desperate. ‘It’s a physical thing, I can’t help it, it’s stronger than I am. I think of those thin black arms of hers round you and it fills me with a physical nausea. I think of you holding those little black babies in your arms. Oh, it’s loathsome. The touch of you is odious to me. Each night, when I’ve kissed you, I’ve had to brace myself up to it. I’ve had to clench my hands and force myself to touch your cheek’ Now she was clasping and unclasping her fingers in a nervous agony, and her voice was out of control. ‘I know it’s I who am to blame now I’m a silly, hysterical woman. I thought I’d get over it. I can’t, and now I never shall. I’ve brought it all on myself; I’m willing to take the consequences; if you say I must stay here, I’ll stay, but if I stay I shall die. I beseech you to let me go.’

And now the tears which she had restrained so long overflowed and she wept broken-heartedly. He had never seen her cry before.

‘Of course I don’t want to keep you here against your will,’ he said hoarsely. Exhausted, she leaned back in her chair. Her features were all twisted and awry. It was horribly painful to see the abandonment of grief on that face which was habitually so placid.

‘I’m so sorry, Guy. I’ve broken your life, but I’ve broken mine too. And we might have been so happy.’

‘When do you want to go? On Thursday?’

‘Yes.’

She looked at him piteously. He buried his face in his hands. At last he looked up.

‘I’m tired out,’ he muttered.

‘May I go?’

‘Yes.’

For two minutes perhaps they sat there without a word. She started when the chik-chak gave its piercing, hoarse, and strangely human cry. Guy rose and went out on to the veranda. He leaned against the rail and looked at the softly flowing water. He heard Doris go into her room.

Next morning, up earlier than usual, he went to her door and knocked. ‘Yes?’

‘I have to go up-river today. I shan’t be back till late.’