He made an impatient gesture.
'Yes, I know,' she said. 'You think I am going out of my way to manufacture unnecessary complications. I'm not; I'm simply looking ahead. If I were trying to trap you for the sake of your money, could I play a stronger card than by seeming anxious to give you up? If I were to give in now, sooner or later that suspicion would come to you. You would drive it away. You might drive it away a hundred times. But you couldn't kill it. In the end it would beat you.'
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
'I can't argue.'
'Nor can I. I can only put very badly things which I know are true. Come and pack.'
'I'll do it. Don't you bother.'
'Nonsense! No man knows how to pack properly.'
He followed her to his room, pulled out his suitcase, the symbol of the end of all things, watched her as she flitted about, the sun shining on her hair as she passed and repassed the window. She was picking things up, folding them, packing them. Bill looked on with an aching sense of desolation. It was all so friendly, so intimate, so exactly as it would have been if she were his wife. It seemed to him needlessly cruel that she should be playing on this note of domesticity at the moment when she was barring for ever the door between him and happiness. He rebelled helplessly against the attitude she had taken. He had not thought it all out, as she had done. It was folly, insanity, ruining their two lives like this for a scruple.
Once again he was to encounter that practical strain in the feminine mind which jars upon a man in trouble. She was holding something in her hand and looking at it with concern.
'Why didn't you tell me?' she said. 'Your socks are in an awful state, poor boy!'
He had the feeling of having been hit by something. A man has not a woman's gift of being able to transfer his mind at will from sorrow to socks.
'Like sieves!' She sighed. A troubled frown wrinkled her forehead. 'Men are so helpless! Oh, dear, I'm sure you don't pay any attention to anything important. I don't believe you ever bother your head about keeping warm in winter and not getting your feet wet. And now I shan't be able to look after you!'
Bill's voice broke. He felt himself trembling.
'Elizabeth!'
She was kneeling on the floor, her head bent over the suitcase. She looked up and met his eyes.
'It's no use, Bill, dear. I must. It's the only way.'
The sense of the nearness of the end broke down the numbness which held him.
'Elizabeth! It's so utterly absurd. It's just—chucking everything away!'
She was silent for a moment.
'Bill, dear, I haven't said anything about it before but don't you see that there's my side to be considered too? I only showed you that you could never possibly know that I loved you. How am I to know that you really love me?'
He had moved a step towards her. He drew back, chilled.
'I can't do more than tell you,' he said.
'You can't. And there you have put in two words just what I've been trying to make clear all the time. Don't you see that that's the terrible thing about life, that nobody can do more than tell anybody anything? Life's nothing but words, words, words; and how are we to know when words are true? How am I to know that you didn't ask me to marry you out of sheer pity and an exaggerated sense of justice?'
He stared at her.
'That,' he said, 'is absolutely ridiculous!'
'Why? Look at it as I should look at it later on, when whatever it is inside me that tell me it's ridiculous now had died. Just at this moment, while we're talking here, there's something stronger than reason which tells me you really do love me. But can't you understand that that won't last? It's like a candle burning on a rock with the tide coming up all round it. It's burning brightly enough now, and we can see the truth by the light of it. But the tide will put it out, and then we shall have nothing left to see by. There's a great black sea of suspicion and doubt creeping up to swamp the little spark of intuition inside us.
'I will tell you what would happen to me if I didn't send you away. Remember I heard what that girl was saying last night. Remember that you hated the thought of depriving me of Uncle Ira's money so much that your first act was to try to get me to accept half of it. The quixotic thing is the first that it occurs to you to do, because you're like that, because you're the straightest, whitest man I've ever known or shall know. Could anything be more likely, looking at it as I should later on, than that you should have hit on the idea of marrying me as the only way of undoing the wrong you thought you had done me? I've been foolish about obligations all my life. I've a sort of morbid pride that hates the thought of owing anything to anybody, of getting anything that I have not earned. By and by, if I were to marry you, a little rotten speck of doubt would begin to eat its way farther and farther into me. It would be the same with you. We should react on each other. We should be watching each other, testing each other, trying each other out all the time. It would be horrible, horrible!'
He started to speak; then, borne down by the hopelessness of it, stopped. Elizabeth stood up. They did not look at each other. He strapped the suitcase and picked it up. The end of all things was at hand.
'Better to end it all cleanly, Bill,' she said, in a low voice. 'It will hurt less.'
He did not speak.
'I'll come down to the gate with you.'
They walked in silence down the drive. The air was heavy with contentment. He hummed a tune.
'Good-bye, Bill, dear.'
He took her hand dully.
'Good-bye,' he said.
Elizabeth stood at the gate, watching. He swung down the road with long strides. At the bend he turned and for a moment stood there, as if waiting for her to make some sign. Then he fell into his stride again and was gone. Elizabeth leaned on the gate. Her face was twisted, and she clutched the warm wood as if it gave her strength.
The grounds were very empty. The spirit of loneliness brooded on them. Elizabeth walked slowly back to the house. Nutty was coming towards her from the orchard.
'Halloa!' said Nutty.
He was cheerful and debonair. His little eyes were alight with contentment. He hummed a tune.
'Where's Dawlish?' he said.
'He has gone.'
Nutty's tune failed in the middle of a bar. Something in his sister's voice startled him. The glow of contentment gave way to a look of alarm.
'Gone? How do you mean—gone? You don't mean—gone?'
'Yes.'
'Gone away?'
'Gone away.'
They had reached the house before he spoke again.
'You don't mean—gone away?'
'Yes.'
'Do you mean—gone away?'
'Yes.'
'You aren't going to marry him?'
'No.'
The world stood still. The noise of the crickets and all the little sounds of summer smote on Nutty's ear in one discordant shriek.
'Oh, gosh!' he exclaimed, faintly, and collapsed on the front steps like a jelly-fish.
23
The spectacle of Nutty in his anguish did not touch Elizabeth. Normally a kind-hearted girl, she was not in the least sorry for him. She had even taken a bitter pleasure and found a momentary relief in loosing the thunderbolt which had smitten him down. Even if it has to manufacture it, misery loves company. She watched Nutty with a cold and uninterested eye as he opened his mouth feebly, shut it again and reopened it; and then when it became apparent that these manoeuvres were about to result in speech, she left him and walked quickly down the drive again. She had the feeling that if Nutty were to begin to ask her questions—and he had the aspect of one who is about to ask a thousand—she would break down. She wanted solitude and movement, so she left Nutty sitting and started for the gate. Presently she would go and do things among the beehives; and after that, if that brought no solace, she would go in and turn the house upside down and get dusty and tired. Anything to occupy herself.