“Do you think I don’t care?” he said at last, brokenly. “Do you think it hasn’t nearly killed me to see her unhappiness—to be able to do nothing. You don’t know—I wasn’t fit to be near her, to touch her. I hoped by going to Africa to set her free. But I couldn’t die. I tried, God knows I tried, by every means in my power short of deliberately blowing my brains out—a suicide’s widow—I couldn’t brand her like that. When men were dying around me like flies death passed me by—I wasn’t fit even for that, I suppose.” He gave a ghastly little mirthless laugh that made Peters wince and came back slowly into the room, heedless of the window he had left open, and walked to the fireplace dropping his head on his arm on the mantel. “You asked me just now what I meant to do to her—it is not a question of me at all but what Gillian elects to do. I am going to her tomorrow. The future rests with her. If she turns me down—and you turn me down—I shall go to the devil the quickest way possible. It’s not a threat, I’m not trying to make bargains, it’s just that I’m at the end of my tether. I’ve made a damnable mess of my life, I’ve brought misery to the woman I love. For I do love her, God help me. I married her because I loved her, because I couldn’t bear to lose her. I was mad with jealousy. And heaven knows I’ve been punished for it. My life’s been hell. But it doesn’t matter about me—it’s only Gillian who matters, only Gillian who counts for anything.” His voice sank into a whisper and a long shudder passed over him.
The anger had died out of Peters’ face and the old tenderness crept back into his eyes as they rested on the tall bowed figure by the fireplace. He rose and went to the window, shutting it and drawing the curtain back neatly into position. Then he crossed the room slowly and laid his hand for an instant on Craven’s shoulder with a quick firm pressure that conveyed more than words. “Sit down,” he said gruffly, and going back to the little table splashed some whisky into a glass and held it under the syphon. Craven took the drink from him mechanically but set it down barely tasted as he dropped again into the chair he had left a few minutes before. He lit a cigarette, and Peters, as he filled his own pipe, noticed that his hands were shaking. He was silent for a long time, the cigarette, neglected, smouldering between his fingers, his face hidden by his other hand. At last he looked up, his grey eyes filled with an almost desperate appeal.
“You’ll stay, Peter—for the sake of the place?” he said unsteadily. “You made it what it is, it would go to pieces if you went. And I can’t go without you—if you chuck me it will about finish me.”
Peters drew vigorously at his pipe and a momentary moisture dimmed his vision. He was remembering another appeal made to him in this very room thirty years before when, after a stormy interview with his employer, the woman he had loved had begged him to remain and save the property for the little son who was her only hold on life. It was the mother’s face not the son’s he saw before him, the mother’s voice that was ringing in his ears.
“I’ll stay, Barry—as long as you want me,” he said at length huskily from behind a dense cloud of smoke. A look of intense relief passed over Craven’s worn face. He tried to speak and, failing, gripped Peters’ hand with a force that left the agent’s fingers numb.
There was another long pause. The blaze of the cheerful fire within and the fury of the storm beating against the house without were the only sounds that broke the silence. Peters was the first to speak.
“You say you are going to her tomorrow—do you know where to find her?”
Craven looked up with a start.
“Has she moved?” he asked uneasily. Peters stirred uncomfortably and made a little deprecating gesture with his hand.
“It was a tallish rent, you know. The flat you took was in the most expensive quarter of Paris,” he said with reluctance. Craven winced and his hands gripped the arms of his chair.
“But you—you write to her, you have been over several times to see her,” he said, with a new trouble coming into his eyes, and Peters turned from his steady stare.
“Her letters, by her own request, are sent to the bank. I was only once in the flat, shortly after you left. I think she must have given it up almost immediately. Since then when I have run over for a day—she never seemed to want me to stay longer—we have met in the Louvre or in the gardens of the Tuileries, according to weather,” he said hesitatingly.
Craven stiffened in his chair.
“The Louvre—the gardens of the Tuileries,” he gasped, “but what on earth—” he broke off with a smothered word Peters did not catch, and springing up began to pace the room with his hands plunged deep in his pockets. His face was set and his lips compressed under the neat moustache. His mind was in a ferment, he could hardly trust himself to speak. He halted at last in front of Peters, his eyes narrowing as he gazed down at him. “Do you mean to tell me that you yourself do not know where she is?” he said fiercely. Peters shook his head. “I do not. I wish to heaven I did. But what could I do? I couldn’t question her. She made it plain she had no wish to discuss the subject. The little I did say she put aside. It was not for me to spy on your wife, or employ a detective to shadow her movements, no matter how anxious I felt.”
“No, you couldn’t have done that,” said Craven drearily, and turned away. To pursue the matter further, even with Peters, seemed suddenly to him impossible. He wanted to be alone to think out this new problem, though at the same time he knew that no amount of thought would solve it. He would have to wait with what patience he could until the morning when he would be able to act instead of think.
His face was expressionless when he turned to Peters again and sat down quietly to discuss business. Half an hour later the agent rose to go. “I’ll bring up a checque book and some money in the morning before you start. You won’t have time to go to the bank in London. Wire me your address in Paris—and bring her back with you, Barry. The whole place misses her,” he said with a catch in his voice, stuffing the bundle of papers into his pocket. Craven’s reply was inaudible but Peters’ heart was lighter than it had been for years as he went out into the hall to get his coat. “Yes, I’m walking,” he replied in response to an inquiry, “bit of rain won’t hurt me, I’m too seasoned,” and he laughed for the first time that evening.
Going back to the study Craven threw a fresh log on the fire, filled a pipe, and drew a chair close to the hearth. It was past one but he was disinclined for bed. Peters’ revelations had staggered him. His brain was on fire. He felt that not until he had found her and got to the bottom of all this mystery would he be able to sleep again. And perhaps not even then, he thought with a quickening heart-beat and a sick fear of what his investigations in Paris might lead to.
Before leaving England he had snatched time from his African preparations to superintend personally the arrangements for her stay in Paris. He had himself selected the flat and installed her with every comfort and luxury that was befitting his wife. She had demurred once or twice on the score of extravagance, particularly in the case of the car he had insisted on sending over for her use, but he had laughed at her protests and she had ceased to make any further objection, accepting his wishes with the shy gentleness that marked her usual attitude toward him. And she must have hated it all! Why? She was his wife, what was his was hers. He had consistently impressed that on her from the first. But it was obvious that she had never seen it in that light. He remembered her passionate refusal—ending in tears that had horrified him—of the big settlement he had wished to make at the time of their marriage, her distress in taking the allowance he had had to force upon her. Was it only his money she hated, or was it himself as well? And to what had her hatred driven her? A fiercer gust of wind shrieked round the house, driving the rain in torrents against the window, and as he listened to it splashing sharply on the glass Craven shivered. Where was she tonight? What shelter had she found in the pitiless city of contrasts? Fragile and alone—and penniless? His hand clenched until the stem of the pipe he was holding snapped between his fingers and he flung the fragments into the fire, leaning forward and staring into the dying embers with haggard eyes—picturing, remembering. He was intimately acquainted with Paris, with two at least of its multifarious aspects—the brilliant Paris of the rich, and the cruel Paris of the struggling student. And yet, after all, what did his knowledge of the latter amount to? It had amused him for a time to live in the Latin quarter—it was in a disreputable cabaret on the south side of the river that he had first come across John Locke—he had mixed there with all and sundry, rubbing shoulders with the riff-raff of nations; he had seen its vice and destitution, had mingled with its feverish surface gaiety and known its underlying squalor and ugliness, but always as a disinterested spectator, a transient passer by. Always he had had money in his pocket. He had never known the deadly ever present fear that lies coldly at the heart of even the wildest of the greater number of its inhabitants. He had seen but never felt starvation. He had never sold his soul for bread. But he had witnessed such a sale, not once or twice but many times. In his carelessness he had accepted it as inevitable. But the recollection stabbed him now with sudden poignancy. Merciful God, toward what were his thoughts tending! He brushed his hand across his eyes as though to clear away some hideous vision and rose slowly to his feet. The expiring fire fell together with a little crash, flared for an instant and then died down in a smouldering red mass that grew quickly grey and cold. With a deep sigh Craven turned and went heavily from the room. He lingered for a moment in the hall, dimly lit by the single lamp left burning above, listening to the solemn ticking of the clock, that at that moment chimed with unnatural loudness.