 | II The Choice |  |
2. II
THE darkness had thinned a little when Wrayford scrambled down the steep path to the shore. Though the air was heavy, the threat of a storm seemed to have vanished, and now and then the moon's edge showed above a torn slope of cloud.
But in the densely massed shrubbery about the boat-house the night was still black, and Wrayford had to strike a match before he could find the lock and insert his key. He left the door unlatched, and groped his way in. How often he had crept into this warm pine-scented obscurity, guiding himself cautiously by the edge of the bench along the side wall, and hearing the stealthy lap of water through the gaps in the flooring! He knew just where one had to duck one's head to avoid the two canoes swung from the rafters, and just where to put his hand on the latch of the door that led to the balcony above the lake.
The boat-house represented one of Stilling's abandoned whims. He had built it some seven years before, and for a time it had been the scene of incessant nautical exploits. Stilling had rowed, sailed, paddled indefatigably, and all Highfield had been impressed to bear him company and admire his versatility. Then motors had come in, and he had forsaken aquatic sports for the guidance of the flying chariot. The canoes of birchbark and canvas had been hoisted to the roof, the little sail-boat had rotted at her moorings, and the movable floor of the boat-house, ingeniously contrived to slide back on noiseless runners, had lain
As Wrayford entered he noticed that a strange oily odor overpowered the usual scent of dry pine-wood; and at the next step his foot struck an object that rolled noisily across the boards. He lighted a match, and found he had overturned a can of grease which the boatman had no doubt been using to oil the runners of the sliding-floor.
Wrayford felt his way down the length of the boat-house, and softly opening the balcony door, looked out on the lake. A few yards off the launch lay motionless in the veiled moonlight; and just below him, on the black water, he saw the dim outline of the skiff which Stilling used to paddle out to her. The silence was so intense that Wrayford fancied he heard a faint rustling in the shrubbery on the high bank behind the boat-house, and the crackle of gravel on the path descending to it.
He closed the door again and turned back; and as he did so the other door, on the land-side, swung inward, and a figure darkened the dim opening. Just enough light entered through the round holes above the respective doors to reveal it as Mrs. Stilling's cloaked outline, and to guide her to him as he advanced. But before they met she stumbled and gave a little cry.
"What is it?" he exclaimed, springing toward her.
"My foot caught; the floor seemed to give way under me. Ah, of course — " She bent down in the darkness — "I saw the men oiling it this morning."
Wrayford caught her to him. "Be careful, darling! It might be dangerous if it slid too easily. The water's deep under here."
"Yes; the water's very deep. I sometimes wish — " She leaned against him without finishing her sentence, and he tightened his arms about her.
"Hush!" he whispered, his lips on her hair.
Suddenly she threw back her head and seemed to listen.
"What's the matter?" he asked, listening also. "What did you hear?"
"I don't know." He felt her trembling. "I'm not sure this place is as safe as it used to be — "
Wrayford held her to him reassuringly. "But the boatman sleeps down at the village; and who else should come here at this hour?"
"My husband might. He thinks of nothing but the launch."
"He won't to-night, for I told him I'd seen the skipper roll up the awning, and put the launch shipshape, and that satisfied him."
"Ah, he did think of coming, then?"
"Only for a minute, when the sky looked so black half an hour ago, and he was afraid of a squall. It's clearing now, and there's no danger."
He drew her down on the bench, and they sat a moment or two in silence, her hands in his. Then she said wearily: "You'd better tell me."
Wrayford gave a faint laugh. "Yes, I suppose I had. In fact, he asked me to."
"He asked you to?"
"Yes."
She sounded a sharp note of contempt. "The coward! he's afraid!"
Wrayford made no reply, and she went on: " I'm not. Tell me everything, please."
"Well, he's chucked away a pretty big sum again — "
"How has he done it?"
"He says he doesn't know. He's been speculating, I suppose. The madness of making him your trustee!"
She drew her hands away quickly. "You know why I did it. When we married I didn't want to put him in the false position of the man who accepts everything; I wanted people to think the money was partly his."
"I don't know what you've made people think; but you've been eminently successful in one respect. He thinks it's his — and he loses it as if it were."
She shivered a little, drawing her cloak closer. "There are worse things. Go on."
"Isabel!" He bent over her. "Give me your hand again." He lifted it and laid a long kiss on it.
"What was it — exactly — that he wished you to tell me?" she asked.
"That you've got to sign another promissory note — for fifty thousand this time."
She drew a deep breath. "Is that all?"
Wrayford hesitated; then he said: "Yes — for the present."
She sat motionless, her head bent, her hand resting passively in his.
He leaned nearer. "What did you mean, just now, by worse things?"
She paused a moment. "Haven't you noticed that he's been drinking a great deal lately?"
"Yes; I've noticed."
They were both silent again; then Wrayford said with sudden vehemence: "And yet you won't — "
"Won't?"
"Put an end to it. Good God! Save what's left of your life."
She made no answer, and in the deep stillness the throb-throb of the water underneath them was like the anxious beat of a heart.
"Isabel — " Wrayford murmured. He bent over to kiss her, and felt the tears on her face. "Isabel! I can't stand it! Listen to me — "
She interrupted him. "No; no. I've thought of everything. There's the boy — the boy's fond of him. He's not a bad father."
"Except in the trifling matter of ruining his son."
"And there's his poor old mother. He's a good son, at any rate; he's never hurt her. And I know her. If I left him, she'd never touch a penny. What she has of her own is not enough to live on; and how could he provide for her? If I put him out of doors, I should be putting his mother out, too — out of the little house she's so happy in."
"But surely you could arrange — there are always ways."
"Not for her! She's proud. And then she believes in him. Lots of people believe in him, you know. It would kill her if she ever found out."
Wrayford made an impatient movement: "It will kill you, if you stay with him to prevent her finding out."
She turned toward him and laid her other hand on his. "Not while I have you."
"Have me? In this way?" he echoed with an exasperated laugh.
"In any way."
"My poor girl — poor child!"
She drew back from him suddenly, with a quick movement of fear. "You mean that you'll grow tired — your patience will give out soon?"
He answered her only by saying: "My poor Isabel!"
But she went on insistently: "Don't you suppose I've thought of that — foreseen it?"
"Well — and then?" he exclaimed with sudden passion.
"I've accepted that, too," she said.
He dropped her hands with a despairing gesture. "Then, indeed, I waste my breath!"
She made no answer, and for a time they sat silent, side by side, but with a space between. At length he asked in a contrite voice: "You're not crying, Isabel?"
"No."
"I can't see your face, it's grown so dark again."
"Yes. I hadn't noticed. The storm must be coming, after all." She made a motion as if to rise.
He drew close, and put his arm about her again. "Don't leave me yet, dear! You know I must go to-morrow." He broke off with a laugh. "I'm to break the news to you to-morrow morning, by the way; I'm to take you out in the motor-launch and break it to you." He dropped her hands and stood up. "Good God! How can I go away and leave you here alone with him?"
"You've done it often before."
"Yes; but each time it's more damnable. And then I've always had a hope — "
"A hope?" She rose also. "Give it up! Give it up!" she moaned.
"You've none, then, yourself?"
She was silent, drawing the folds of her cloak about her.
"None — none?" he insisted.
"Only one," she broke out passionately.
He bent over and sought for her in the darkness. "What is it, my dearest? What is it?"
"Don't touch me! That he may die!" she shuddered back.
He dropped his hands, and they drew apart instinctively, hearing each other's quick breathing through the obscurity.
" You wish that sometimes, too?" he said at length in a low voice.
"Sometimes? I wish it always — every day, every hour, every moment!" She paused, and then let the quivering words break out. "You'd better know it; you'd better know the worst of me. I'm not the saint you suppose; the duty I do is poisoned by the thoughts I think. Day by day, hour by hour, I wish him dead. When he goes out I pray for something to happen; when he comes back I say to myself: 'Are you here again?' When I hear of people being killed in accidents I think: 'Why wasn't he there?' When I read the death-notices in the paper I say: 'So-and-so was just his age.' When I see him taking such care of his health and his diet, — as he does, you know, except when he gets reckless and begins to drink too much, — when I see him exercising and resting, and eating only certain things, and weighing himself, and feeling his muscles, and boasting that he hasn't gained a pound, I think of the men who die from overwork, who throw their lives away for some big object, and I say to myself: 'What can kill a man who thinks only of himself?' And night after night I keep myself from going to sleep for fear I may dream that he's dead. When I dream that, and wake and find him there, it's worse than ever — and my thoughts are worse than ever, too!"
She broke off on a stifled sob, and the thump-thump of the water under the floor was like the beat of a loud, rebellious heart.
"There, you know the truth! Is it too bad for you?"
He answered in a low voice, as if unconscious of her question: "Such things do sometimes happen, you know."
"Do they?" She laughed. "Yes, I've seen it happen — in happy marriages!"
They were silent again, not approaching each other. Abruptly Isabel turned, feeling her way toward the door. As she did so, the profound stillness of the night was broken by the sound of a man's voice, caroling out somewhat unsteadily the refrain of a music-hall song.
The two in the boat-house darted toward each other with a simultaneous movement, clutching hands as they met.
"He's coming!" Isabel breathed.
Wrayford detached himself hastily from her hold.
"He may only be out for a turn before he goes to bed. Wait a minute. I'll see if I can make out." He felt his way to the bench, scrambled up on it, and stretching his body forward, managed to bring his eyes in line with the opening above the door.
"It's as black as pitch. I can't see anything."
The refrain rang out nearer.
"Wait! I saw something twinkle. There it is again. It's coming this way — down the path. It's his cigar."
There was a long rattle of thunder through the stillness.
"It's the storm!" Isabel gasped. "He's coming to see about the launch."
Wrayford dropped noiselessly from the bench to her side.
"He's coming — yes."
She caught him by the arm.
"Isn't there time to get up the path and slip under the shrubbery?" she whispered.
"No, no; he's in the path now. He'll be here in two minutes. He'll find us."
He felt her hand tighten on his arm.
"You must go in the skiff, then. It's the only way."
"And let him find you here? And hear my oars? Isabel, listen — there's something I must say."
She flung herself against him, shaken with dry sobs.
"Isabel, just now I didn't tell you everything. He's ruined his mother — taken everything of hers, too. And he's got to tell her; it can't be kept from her."
She uttered a startled sound and drew away.
"Is this the truth? Why didn't you tell me before?"
"He forbade me. You were not to know."
Close above them, in the shrubbery, Stilling rolled out:
Ask thy soul if we must part!"
Wrayford caught her wrist in a hard grasp. "Understand this — if he comes in, he'll find us. And if there's a scandal you'll lose your boy."
She seemed not to hear him. "You — you — you — he'll kill you!" she cried out.
Wrayford laughed and released her. She drew away and stood shrinking close against the wall, her hands pressed to her breast. Wrayford straightened himself and listened intently. Then he dropped to his knees and laid his hands against the boards of the sliding-floor. It yielded at once with a kind of evil alacrity; and at their feet they saw, in the night, another night that moved and shimmered. Wrayford sprang up, and threw himself back against the wall, behind the door.
A key rattled, and after a moment's fumbling the door swung open noisily. Wrayford and Isabel saw a black bulk against the obscurity. It moved a step, lurched forward, and vanished from them. In the depths there was a long cry and a splash.
"Go! go!" Wrayford cried out, feeling blindly for Isabel in the blackness.
"Go?" she shuddered back, wrenching herself away from him with horror.
He stood still a moment, as if dazed; then she saw him suddenly plunge from her side, and heard another splash far down, and a tumult in the beaten water.
In the darkness she cowered close to the opening, pressing her face over the edge, and frantically crying out the name of each in turn. Suddenly she began to see; the obscurity was less opaque, a faint moon-pallor diluted it. Isabel vaguely discerned the two shapes struggling in the black pit below her; once she saw the gleam of a face. Then she glanced up desperately for some means of rescue, and caught sight of the oars ranged on brackets against the wall. She snatched down the nearest, bent over the opening, and pushed the oar down into the blackness, calling her husband's name.
The clouds had swallowed up the moon again, and she could see nothing below her, but she still heard a tumult in the beaten water.
"Cobham! Cobham!" she screamed.
As if in answer, she felt a mighty clutch on the oar, a clutch that strained her arms to the breaking-point as she tried to brace her knees against the runners of the sliding-floor.
"Hold on! hold on! hold on!" a voice gasped out from below; and she held on, with racked muscles, with bleeding palms, with eyes straining from their sockets, and a heart that tugged at her like the weight on the oar.
Suddenly the weight relaxed, and the oar slipped up through her lacerated hands. She felt a wet bulk scrambling over the edge of the opening, and Stilling's voice, raucous and strange, groaned out, close to her: "God! I thought I was done for."
He staggered to his knees, coughing and sputtering, and the water dripped on her from his clothes.
She flung herself down, straining over the pit. Not a sound came up from it.
"Austin! Austin! Quick! Another oar!" she shrieked.
Stilling gave a cry. "My God! Was it Austin? What in hell — Another oar? No, no; untie the skiff, I tell you. But it's no use. Nothing's any use. I felt him lose hold as I came up."
After that she remembered nothing more till, hours later, as it appeared to her, she became dimly aware of her husband's voice, high, hysterical and important, haranguing a group of scared lantern-struck faces that seemed to have sprung up mysteriously about them in the night.
"Poor Austin! Poor fellow . . . terrible loss to me . . . mysterious dispensation. Yes, I do feel gratitude — miraculous escape — but I wish he could have known that I was saved!"
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