“And they will know now,” he said, looking round (for the strange new pleasure of clearly and sharply seeing) from Josephine’s face to her stained breast (her heavy blue beads slipped sideways over her shoulder and coiled on the grass — touched, surrounded now by the unhesitant trickle); from her breast up the walls to their top, the top crumbling, the tufts of valerian trembling against the sky. It was as though the dark-paned window through which he had so long looked out swung open suddenly. He saw (clear as the walls and the sky) Right and Wrong, the old childish fixities. I have done right, he thought (but his brain was still ticking). She ought not to live with this flaw in her. Josephine ought not to live, she had to die.
All night he had thought this out, walking alone in the shrubberies, helped by the dance music, dodging the others. His mind had been kindled, like a dull coal suddenly blazing. He was not angry; he kept saying: “I must not be angry, I must be just.” He was in a blaze (it seemed to himself) of justice. The couples who came face to face with him down the paths started away. Someone spoke of a minor prophet, someone breathed “Caliban.”... He kept saying: “That flaw right through her. She damages truth. She kills souls; she’s killed mine.” So he had come to see, before morning, his purpose as God’s purpose.
She had laughed, you see. She had been pretending. There was a tender and lovely thing he kept hidden, a spark in him; she had touched it and made it the whole of him, made him a man. She had said: “Yes, I believe, Terry. I understand.” That had been everything. He had thrown off the old dull armor... Then she had laughed.
Then he had understood what other men meant when they spoke of her. He had seen at once what he was meant to do. “This is for me,” he said. “No one but I can do it.”
All night he walked alone in the garden. Then he watched the French windows and when they were open again stepped in quickly and took down the African knife from the dining-room wall. He had always wanted that African knife. Then he had gone upstairs (remembering, on the way, all those meetings with Josephine, shaving, tying of ties), shaved, changed into flannels, put the knife into his blazer pocket (it was too long, more than an inch of the blade came out through the inside lining) and sat on his window-sill, watching sunlight brighten and broaden from a yellow agitation behind the trees into swathes of color across the lawn. He did not think; his mind was like somebody singing, somebody able to sing.
And, later, it had all been arranged for him. He fell into, had his part in, some kind of design. Josephine had come down in her pleated white dress (when she turned, the pleats whirled.) He had said, “Come out!” and she gave that light distant look, still with a laugh at the back of it, and said, “Oh — right-o, little Terry.” And she had walked down the garden ahead of him, past the delphiniums into the chapel. Here, to make justice perfect, he had asked once more: “Do you believe in me?” She had laughed again.
She lay now with her feet and body in sunshine (the sun was just high enough), her arms flung out wide at him, desperately, generously: her head rolling sideways in shadow on the enclosed, silky grass. On her face was a dazzled look (eyes half closed, lips drawn back), an expression almost of diffidence. Her blood quietly soaked through the grass, sinking through to the roots of it.
He crouched a moment and, touching her eyelids — still warm — tried to shut her eyes. But he didn’t know how. Then he got up and wiped the blade of the African knife with a handful of grass, then scattered the handful away. All the time he was listening; he felt shy, embarrassed at the thought of anyone finding him here. And his brain, like a watch, was still ticking.
On his way to the house he stooped down and dipped his hands in the garden tank. Someone might scream; he felt embarrassed at the thought of somebody screaming. The red curled away through the water and melted.
He stepped in at the morning-room window. The blinds were half down — he stooped his head to avoid them — and the room was in dark-yellow shadow. (He had waited here for them all to come in, that afternoon he arrived back from Ceylon.) The smell of pinks came in, and two or three bluebottles bumbled and bounced on the ceiling. His sister Catherine sat with her back to him, playing the piano. (He had heard her as he came up the path.) He looked at her pink pointed elbows — she was playing a waltz and the music ran through them in jerky ripples.
“Hullo, Catherine,” he said, and listened in admiration. So his new voice sounded like this!
“Hullo, Terry.” She went on playing, worrying at the waltz. She had an anxious, methodical mind, but loved gossip. He thought: Here is a bit of gossip for you — Josephine’s down in the chapel, covered with blood. Her dress is spoiled, but I think her blue beads are all right. I should go and see.
“I say, Catherine—”
“Oh, Terry, they’re putting the furniture back in the drawing-room. I wish you’d go and help. It’s getting those big sofas through the door... and the cabinets.” She laughed: “I’m just putting the music away,” and went on playing.
He thought: I don’t suppose she’ll be able to marry now. No one will marry her. He said: “Do you know where Josephine is?”
“No, I haven’t” — rum-tum-tum, rum-tum-tum — “the slightest idea. Go on, Terry.”
He thought: She never liked Josephine. He went away.
He stood in the door of the drawing-room. His brothers and Beatrice were punting the big armchairs, chintz-skirted, over the waxy floor. They all felt him there: for as long as possible didn’t notice him. Charles — fifteen, with his pink scrubbed ears — considered a moment, shoving against the cabinet, thought it was rather a shame, turned with an honest, kindly look of distaste, said, “Come on, Terry.” He can’t go back to school now, thought Terry, can’t go anywhere, really: wonder what they’ll do with him — send him out to the Colonies? Charles had perfect manners: square, bluff, perfect. He never thought about anybody, never felt anybody — just classified them. Josephine was “a girl staying in the house,” “a friend of my sisters’.” He would think at once (in a moment when Terry had told him), “A girl staying in the house... it’s... well, I mean, if it hadn’t been a girl staying in the house...”
Terry went over to him; they pushed the cabinet. But Terry pushed too hard, crooked; the further corner grated against the wall. “Oh, I say, we’ve scratched the paint,” said Charles. And indeed they had; on the wall was a gray scar. Charles went scarlet: he hated things to be done badly. It was nice of him to say: “We’ve scratched the paint.” Would he say later: “We’ve killed Josephine”?
“I think perhaps you’d better help with the sofas,” said Charles civilly.
“You should have seen the blood on my hands just now,” said Terry.
“Bad luck!” Charles said quickly and went away.
Beatrice, Josephine’s friend, stood with her elbows on the mantelpiece looking at herself in the glass above. Last night a man had kissed her down in the chapel (Terry had watched them). This must seem to Beatrice to be written all over her face — what else could she be looking at? Her eyes in the looking-glass were dark, beseeching. As she saw Terry come up behind her, she frowned angrily and turned away.
“I say, Beatrice, do you know what happened down in the chapel?”