The Pest 25

The Pest 25

They walked along some way in silence. Alice had become a habit, and to

learn that she was going to leave them made him realize that the absence

of her quiet influence would make a real change to him. His wife had

almost suddenly grown to be nothing to him but a burden which he had

taken up and which he must carry with as good an outward grace as he

could assume. He believed her emotions to be so shallow that she would

not long moan over his dead affection and that she would be reasonably

content so long as he could provide her with luxuries and amusement. But

now he was brought definitely face to face with the fact that he was

bound to a companion who was becoming every day more distasteful to him

and with whom he would have to spend many days alone. There are people

whose influence though strong is so quiet that we do not value them at

their true price until they are taken from us; such an one was Alice

Lane. Her suddenly announced departure showed plainly to West that she

had become almost a necessity to him; that she had helped often to

smooth away asperities and to cover over Agatha’s deficiencies, and that

she could give him that comradeship which he had learned the need of by

discovering his wife’s inability to give it to him.

 

Comradeship only, he believed, for he did not, in any usual sense of the

word, love her. She had become a quiet, steadying, soothing influence, a

mental support and sedative. It was not her strange, placid comeliness

that appealed to him; it was not the feminine in her: she was almost to

him what a man friend would be, save that, as a woman, he had to treat

her with respect, and with self-respect. She had not come between him

and his wife, but, on the contrary, by complementing her deficiencies,

had made her the longer endurable. He had grown accustomed during the

last few months to her companionship; he had not, indeed, talked much to

her, or in any degree sought her confidence, but her mere presence had

acted soothingly upon him; and to be with her had been restful and

pacifying. Her return to her brother’s house would practically mean that

she would go out of his life, except for occasional visits and meetings.

But he could think of no compelling reason that he could urge for her

staying longer with them, and, as she had accused him of being, he was

well aware of her firmness in carrying out any decision to which she had

come. He had been accustomed to having his own way with those around

him, but instead of irritating him, it added to his respect and

admiration for her, to find that what she thought right to do, she would

do, and that no persuasion of his could move or stay her.

 

“Tell me why you are going?” he asked, as they turned to go homeward,

and faced the eager wind. “And why you think that Aggy doesn’t care so

much for you as she used to do?”

 

“If I were a man I suppose I should be expected to give a reason for my

doings. But you see, I’m a mere woman, and of course act on impulse.”

 

“Not at all a mere woman. And much too clever, not to know that

generalizations are always untrue. I conclude that a man’s an ignorant

ass when he says that something or other is ‘just like a woman.’ Though

it is rather like a woman to avoid answering a question by making an

aimless remark. Why are you going home?”

 

“Why should I have stayed so long? Why shouldn’t I go away?

Why—why—lots of ‘whys.’”

 

“Don’t you enjoy being with us?”

 

“Of course I do,” she answered, no sign of the pain the question caused

her showing in her tone, though she ached to be able to tell him how

exquisite was the torture to which he was putting her. “Of course I do.

I _did_ think you knew that; you’re not the sort of man who needs to be

told everything every day.”

 

“Well, I won’t make use of an old friend’s privilege of worrying you.

But, look here, when’ll you come to see us again?”

 

“When Aggy asks me, if she doesn’t ask me too soon.”

 

The words sprang to her lips in such haste that she could not stay them.

She repented them bitterly, for she realized at once that they might

lead to disaster for Agatha, who might refuse to ask her again to visit

her; who might, rendered brave by jealousy, oppose her husband’s wish,

who might, in a moment of anger, give her reason for so doing, thereby

perhaps making an inevitable breach in her married happiness. But the

words being said, any attempt to withdraw them might stimulate dangerous

questioning on his part.

 

“When Aggy asks you!” he answered, throwing his head up and laughing

gayly. “Well, you may as well not go away at all, then. Does she know

you’re going to-morrow?”

 

“I told her yesterday.”

 

“Funny she didn’t tell me. What did _she_ say?”

 

“Asked me to stay.”

 

“There you are!”

 

She bit her lip and looked away from him, but he could see the

__EXPRESSION__ of trouble that was upon her face, and felt compunction at

having so over-eagerly pressed her.

 

“What an obstinate tease I am!” he said. “When I can’t have my own way,

I’ve a beastly habit of plugging away till I get it, quite forgetting

what it may cost the other chap to give it. What a clumsy boor you must

think me; I deserve to be kicked. I ought to know well enough that you

always have a real reason for what you do.”

 

She dared not reply, for fear her voice would betray her.

 

When they reached the hotel he went up to his wife’s room, hoping to

find her physically better, and less querulous for her rest. She was

lying on the bed, covered with a thick eider-down quilt, and turned

slowly to look at him as he came in tiptoe.

 

“I was just going to sleep, and now you’ve roused me up,” she

complained, and turned away again.

 

“I’m so sorry, dearie; it was clumsy of me,” he said, going round the

bed, and sitting down on the side. He took her hand, which she let lie

passively in his.

 

“Don’t feel any better?” he asked.

 

“My head’s not aching so much, at least not quite.”

 

“That’s fine. ‘Once on the mend, soon at an end.’”

 

“Where did you walk?”

 

“Just along the front with Alice, nearly to Hove. The wind’s jolly

cold.”

 

“Jolly? It’s horrid; Brighton’s horrid: too cold to go out, and the

hotel is so stuffy.”

 

“Is it? I hadn’t noticed it. But I do wish you would go out more. You

know what the doctor said—lots of fresh air.”

 

“But he didn’t tell me to go out when it was so cold it gave me

neuralgia all over my head.”

 

“Let me ring and we’ll have tea up here. It’ll cheer you up.”

 

“I do wish you wouldn’t always treat me like a child!” she said

pettishly; “so long as you give me pretty things or feed me with sweets

you think I’m happy.”

 

“Aren’t you happy, dear?”

 

“No, I’m not!” she answered sharply.

 

“Not?” he repeated, as he stood up and started to walk about the room.

“I thought you were, dear. What can I do? I’ve always tried my best to

give you what you wanted.”

 

“Please don’t walk about like that, you don’t know what a headache is.

You—don’t understand things.”

 

“Don’t I?” he asked, standing with his back to the fire; “then why not

try to teach me?”

 

“You always think you know everything, and are always right and that I’m

always wrong. But I’m right sometimes.”

 

“Why, Aggy, what on earth have I done to deserve such a slating?”

 

As she did not make any reply he went across to the bedside, and,

stooping down, kissed her, upon which she turned impatiently away.

 

“If you don’t want me to treat you as a child you shouldn’t behave like

one,” he said, and, after a moment’s hesitation, walked out of the room.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XVII

 

 

WHILE the sun was shining cheerily at Brighton the rain was pouring down

drearily in London, Acacia Grove looking its very worst under the leaden

sky; the roadway a sea of mud, the leafless branches of the trees

dripping and streaming, the evergreen shrubs in the scrubby gardens none

the less dirty for their washing; even the sharp rat-tat, rat-tat, of

the postman as he went from house to house sounding dismal, as if all

the letters he bore must announce death or disaster.

 

Squire had finished his frugal breakfast, and stood, newspaper in hand,

looking aimlessly out of the window. The trouble through which he was

passing had left no trace or mark upon his face, but there was a

restless misery in his eyes. Sighing heavily, he held up the paper and

glanced at it without purpose, almost unconsciously. “Sunshine at

Brighton” was the heading of an article down which his eye ran without

comprehension until Maddison’s name fixed his attention:—“Another

well-known face occasionally seen on the King’s Road is that of Mr.

George Maddison, the A.R.A., who is staying at his cottage at

Rottingdean.”

 

He crushed the paper angrily and threw it aside. They were at

Rottingdean, then; that was why his watch upon the studio had been vain.

They had gone away, trusting to his not being able to trace them.

 

Since his interview with Maddison, Squire’s life had been a restless

dream; every purpose had left him save one, the finding of Marian.

Despite the upshot of his last conversation with her, he still felt

confident that he could rescue her from the terrible life she was

leading. Hour after hour, sometimes by day, sometimes by night, he had

watched the studio in hopes of meeting her. He had seen Maddison several

times, but had avoided him; it was Marian with whom he desired to speak.

He had tried to track Maddison more than once, but one accident or

another had baffled him. Then Maddison appeared no more, and he had had

to wait upon “the skirts of happy chance,” and now fate had helped him.

Still he hesitated, for by several incidents it had been borne in upon

him that to save one soul he was neglecting many others intrusted to his

care—sinners, some of them, greater even than Marian. Could he feel

assured that he was pursuing the right course? That there was no element

of self in his eagerness to find Marian and to save her? Would he have

been so eager had she been a stranger to him? He was torn this way and that by the doubts which assailed him.