‘What! Promised to marry you? When did I promise to marry you?’
‘Not in words, I know. But it was understood between us.’
‘Nothing of the kind was understood between us! I think you are behaving in the most horrible way. I’m going along to the Club at once. Good evening!’
‘Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Listen. It’s not fair to condemn me unheard. You knew before what I’d done and you knew that I’d lived a different life since I met you. What happened this evening was only an accident. That wretched woman, who, I admit, was once my–well——’
‘I won’t listen, I won’t listen to such things! I’m going!’
He caught her by the wrists again, and this time held her. The Karens had disappeared, fortunately.
‘No, no, you shall hear me! I’d rather offend you to the heart than have this uncertainty. It’s gone on week after week, month after month, and I’ve never once been able to speak straight out to you. You don’t seem to know or care how much you make me suffer. But this time you’ve got to answer me.’
She struggled in his grip, and she was surprisingly strong. Her face was more bitterly angry than he had ever seen or imagined it. She hated him so that she would have struck him if her hands were free.
‘Let me go! Oh, you beast, you beast, let me go!’
‘My God, my God, that we should fight like this! But what else can I do? I can’t let you go without even hearing me. Elizabeth, you must listen to me!’
‘I will not! I will not discuss it! What right have you to question me? Let me go!’
‘Forgive me, forgive me! This one question. Will you not now, but later, when this vile business is forgotten–will you marry me?’
‘No, never, never!’
‘Don’t say it like that! Don’t make it final. Say no for the present if you like–but in a month, a year, five years——’
‘Haven’t I said no? Why must you keep on and on?’
‘Elizabeth, listen to me. I’ve tried again and again to tell you what you mean to me–oh, it’s so useless talking about it! But do try and understand. Haven’t I told you something of the life we live here? The sort of horrible death-in-life! The decay, the loneliness, the self-pity? Try and realise what it means, and that you’re the sole person on earth who could save me from it.’
‘Will you let me go? Why do you have to make this dreadful scene?’
‘Does it mean nothing to you when I say that I love you? I don’t believe you’ve ever realised what it is that I want from you. If you like, I’d marry you and promise never even to touch you with my finger. I wouldn’t mind even that, so long as you were with me. But I can’t go on with my life alone, always alone. Can’t you bring yourself ever to forgive me?’
‘Never, never! I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth. I’d as soon marry the–the sweeper!’
She had begun crying now. He saw that she meant what she said. The tears came into his own eyes. He said again:
‘For the last time. Remember that it’s something to have one person in the world who loves you. Remember that though you’ll find men who are richer, and younger, and better in every way than I, you’ll never find one who cares for you so much. And though I’m not rich, at least I could make you a home. There’s a way of living–civilised, decent——’
‘Haven’t we said enough?’ she said more calmly. ‘Will you let me go before somebody comes?’
He relaxed his grip on her wrists. He had lost her, that was certain. Like a hallucination, painfully clear, he saw again their home as he had imagined it; he saw their garden, and Elizabeth feeding Nero and the pigeons on the drive by the sulphur-yellow phloxes that grew as high as her shoulder; and the drawing-room, with the water-colours on the walls, and the balsams in the china bowl mirrored by the table, and the bookshelves, and the black piano. The impossible, mythical piano–symbol of everything that that futile accident had wrecked!
‘You should have a piano,’ he said despairingly.
‘I don’t play the piano.’
He let her go. It was no use continuing. She was no sooner free of him than she took to her heels and actually ran into the Club garden, so hateful was his presence to her. Among the trees she stopped to take off her spectacles and remove the signs of tears from her face. Oh, the beast, the beast! He had hurt her wrists abominably. Oh, what an unspeakable beast he was! When she thought of his face as it had looked in church, yellow and glistening with the hideous birthmark upon it, she could have wished him dead. It was not what he had done that horrified her. He might have committed a thousand abominations and she could have forgiven him. But not after that shameful, squalid scene, and the devilish ugliness of his disfigured face in that moment. It was, finally, the birthmark that had damned him.
Her aunt would be furious when she heard that she had refused Flory. And there was her uncle and his legpinching–between the two of them, life here would become impossible. Perhaps she would have to go Home unmarried after all. Black beetles! No matter. Anything–spinsterhood, drudgery, anything–sooner than the alternative. Never, never would she yield to a man who had been so disgraced! Death sooner, far sooner. If there had been mercenary thoughts in her mind an hour ago, she had forgotten them. She did not even remember that Verrall had jilted her and that to have married Flory would have saved her face. She knew only that he was dishonoured and less than a man, and that she hated him as she would have hated a leper or a lunatic. The instinct was deeper than reason or even self-interest, and she could no more have disobeyed it than she could have stopped breathing.
Flory, as he turned up the hill, did not run, but he walked as fast as he could. What he had to do must be done quickly. It was getting very dark. The wretched Flo, who even now had not grasped that anything serious was the matter, trotted close to his heels, whimpering in a self-pitying manner to reproach him for the kick he had given her. As he came up the path a wind blew through the plantain trees, rattling the tattered leaves and bringing a scent of damp. It was going to rain again. Ko S’la had laid the dinner-table and was removing some flying beetles that had committed suicide against the petrol-lamp. Evidently he had not heard about the scene in church yet.
‘The holy one’s dinner is ready. Will the holy one dine now?’
‘No, not yet. Give me that lamp.’
He took the lamp, went into the bedroom and shut the door. The stale scent of dust and cigarette-smoke met him, and in the white, unsteady glare of the lamp he could see the mildewed books and the lizards on the wall. So he was back again to this–to the old, secret life–after everything, back where he had been before.
Was it not possible to endure it? He had endured it before. There were palliatives–books, his garden, drink, work, whoring, shooting, conversations with the doctor.
No, it was not endurable any longer. Since Elizabeth’s coming the power to suffer and above all to hope, which he had thought dead in him, had sprung to new life. The half-comfortable lethargy in which he had lived was broken. And if he suffered now, there was far worse to come. In a little while someone else would marry her. How he could picture it–the moment when he heard the news!–‘Did you hear the Lackersteen kid’s got off at last? Poor old So-and-so–booked for the altar, God help him,’ etc. etc. And the casual question–‘Oh, really? When is it to be?’–stiffening one’s face, pretending to be uninterested. And then her wedding day approaching, her bridal night–ah, not that! Obscene, obscene. Keep your eyes fixed on that. Obscene. He dragged his tin uniform-case from under the bed, took out his automatic pistol, slid a clip of cartridges into the magazine, and pulled one into the breech.
Ko S’la was remembered in his will. There remained Flo. He laid his pistol on the table and went outside. Flo was playing with Ba Shin, Ko S’la’s youngest son, under the lee of the cookhouse, where the servants had left the remains of a wood fire. She was dancing round him with her small teeth bared, pretending to bite him, while the tiny boy, his belly red in the glow of the embers, smacked weakly at her, laughing and yet half frightened.
‘Flo! Come here, Flo!’