South Riding (57 page)

“Well, what about it? Eleven? I have a train to catch at eight o’clock and all those parcels to pack.” She rose.

“Won’t you let me get you another drink?”

Did he want her? Was he trying to keep her? The pale handsome mask of his face said nothing, yet as she looked at it she knew. He’s ill, he’d old, he’s tired, and he’s lonely. She wanted to punish him because the flame that burned her had not even touched him. She did not sit down again.

“Oh, I’ve drunk enough—far more than is seemly in a head mistress on holiday.”

“I’d forgotten that you were a head mistress.”

Her heart leapt.

“Well—if you
must
go . . .” But his voice was reluctant.

“I—Don’t you think we shall both be tired?”

“Then why not just sit?” he asked. “After all, it’s early.”

He wants me to stay; he wants me to stay, she triumphed.

“You don’t have to hurry away then, in the morning?”

“No. As a matter of fact.”—his long lashes lifted and his dark eyes frowned at her, as though it were she who had hurt him—“I’ve got to go round here looking for some kind of home for my wife.”

It was the first time that he had ever mentioned her and the shock robbed her of breath. She thought—then he
is
a little drunk or he wouldn’t tell me that. She said, “I’m sorry. That must be rather a grim business.” She sat down again.

“It is. It’s damned grim.”

“Must she come to Manchester?”

“Perhaps. I may be getting a job here.”

“You? A job?”

“Riding school.”

“But are you going to leave Maythorpe?”

“Not if I can help it. But it’s as well to have a second string to your bow. Depends what the Government do for us. And the market—
and
the season too. Can’t tell in farming. Depends on so many things outside yourself.”

The whisky had loosened his tongue. The dancing had excited him. His dark eyes blazed in his white face, and he repeatedly made a puzzling gesture. He would put his hand on the table, draw in the well-shaped but now work-stained fingers, stretch them out again, and stare at them, as though they were giving him some kind of trouble for which he could not quite account.

“Are you thinking of selling up, then?” she persisted, recalling rumours.

“The place isn’t mine to sell. It belongs to the bank, and the bank’s in Snaith’s pocket, and he wants the farm for his lunatics.” He beckoned the waiter and ordered another whisky; she sat regarding him, now quite coldly observant.

“Do you believe in curses?” he asked suddenly.

“What kind of curses?”

He held the tumbler against the light, measuring the whisky before adding the soda.

“When I ran away with my wife, her mother cursed me. Of course she was mad at the time. My wife is mad now, you know. In an asylum.”

“I know.”

“She is the most beautiful woman I ever saw.”

“I know. I saw her portrait.”

“She hasn’t recognised me for over a year. Do you think Midge is like her?”

“No,” lied Sarah. “She’s more like you.”

“Sometimes I think I’m going mad myself.”

“That’s natural enough. But it’s morbid. I’ve never met any one more sane.”

“Do you think so? How do you know? You don’t know me.”

“Oh, yes, I do. I know you quite well.”

“You know me—eh? You’ve watched me? You see how I crack up in emergencies? How they’ve got me down?”

“No. No. They haven’t.”

“They’ve got me down. They’ll sell Maythorpe over my head. Castle’s dying. Midge is better off with Mrs. Beddows. Muriel doesn’t even know me. And you would prefer not to be here with me. I’m giving you a hell of an evening.”

“No,” said Sarah.

“Not a hell of an evening?”

“No.”

“You don’t want to go and leave me?”

“No.”

Then he gave her an extraordinary look—a sideways look which was quizzical, explanatory—and frivolous. That was the word—a frivolous look. He’s drunk, she thought. And he takes me now for a little tart. That’s the kind of man he is. That’s the kind of way he thinks of women—all but his wife. I’m a little tart.

And because no man had ever treated her lightly before, her breath came in quick jerks and her palms moistened; but she sat and smiled, her will riding calm above her panicking body.

“You don’t want to leave me?” he repeated.

“No,” she replied.

The programme was approaching its conclusion. The lights grew dim; the orchestra wailed softly into a waltz.

“Come and dance this.”

She rose. If he was drunk, he still could dance. They were locked together in perfection of physical sympathy.

The tune changed to “Auld Lang Syne.”

“This is the end,” he said.

“No,” she repeated. “It need not be.”

Again he flashed at her that look. This time she met it, and smiled fully and frankly into his eyes. His arm tightened.

“Sarah?”

“My dear?”

“Do you mean that?”

“I mean anything, you like.”

He stopped and almost lifted her from the crowd. The band played “God Save the King.”

“Do you mean that I need not be alone to-night?”

“Yes. I mean that.”

“May I come to your room?”

“Yes. It’s on the fifth floor. Number 517.”

“517,” he repeated, looking down at her with calm appreciation.

Her mind was quite cold. He is drunk, she thought; he has forgotten who I am or who he is; he thinks I am a little tart. Well? I am Sarah Burton; I have Kiplington High School; he is a governor. This may destroy me. Even if I do not have his child, this may destroy me.

I will be his little tart; I will comfort him for one night.

“You mean that? Sarah?”

“Wait half an hour. I will have the door unlocked. No one will notice. You can come straight in.”

“Five hundred and seventeen,” he repeated, and she twisted from him, slipped between the couples, and was away.

This is the end; she repeated his words. She meant the end of her security as a respectable and respected professional woman; she had loved before, but never with this abandonment of pride. She would have him, drunk or sober. She would humiliate herself if necessary. She would have him though he had even forgotten her identity.

As she climbed the ten steep flights of stairs, she pressed her hands together in an agony of apprehension in case he should not come.

She undressed and lay in the broad white bed awaiting him. She had turned out the central light, and beside the bed the shaded hand-lamp illuminated only her red roses in a jug, the huge white counterpane and her still, expectant face. The ugly desolate room was lost in shadow. She smiled, thinking, This is my bridal chamber. She rembered her disgust when she had first looked at it. But it was the only room, they had said, available. She smiled, in amusement at her disdainful self. It was a lovely room. She listened to the noises in the corridor. She heard doors bang, the lift rattle, bells ring. Slowly, too slowly, the hotel began to settle itself down for the night. By instinct rather than sight she knew when the door opened. She sat up and held out her hand.

“Come in, my dear.”

He closed the door behind him. She could see in the shadows his tall figure. She heard his quick panting breath. He must have run up the stairs, avoiding the tell-tale lift.

“You’re—sure?” he gasped.

“So sure, my dear,” she steadied her voice with an effort, “that I know now I have never been sure of anything before in my life.”

She felt rather than saw him move towards her; she caught the gleam of a dark red dressing-gown, of ivory flesh.

Suddenly he stopped.

He had taken hold of the brass rail at the foot of the bed.

She heard a quivering groan. The bedstead rattled with his violent seizure. She cried, “Oh—what is it?” and raised the lamp and saw his face distorted with agony, his snarling lips drawn back from his chattering teeth, his skin a livid grey, smeared with perspiration.

She sprang from the bed and stood beside him. For an interminable period he did not speak.

“What is it? Oh, what is it?” she cried. It seemed to her that more than a physical torture racked him.

Then the attack withdrew a little and he became aware of her. He tried to smile.

“It’s all right. Heart. Nothing.”

“Come and lie down.”

He shook his head, but she put her arm round him and between two spasms of pain got him on to the bed and covered his jerking body.

“I’m going to get you some brandy.”

“No.” He made a violent effort. “Nitrate of amyl. Little tin in my waistcoat pocket.”

“What room? What’s your number?”

But the onslaught of pain attacked him, and he could only sit, his arms stretched out, trying to stifle his groans of agony. The bed shook. Sarah thought that the whole hotel must hear those half-checked cries. Then again he spoke.

“Hundred and six. First floor. It’s all right, though. I can go in a minute.”

“Have you the key? In your pocket?”

She had to climb on to the bed and kneel there, fumbling about in his tumbled silk gown until she found it. Then she pulled her own wrap round her, opened the door and was off like a lapwing down the corridor. As one flies in a dream, she raced down those stairs, hardly touching the steps, swinging wildly found the banisters. Once she met a little fat man, boiled lobster red from his bath; once she thought she saw a night porter in the distance. Then she was down; she had found Room 106; she unlocked the door; she began to search furiously among his neatly folded clothes. In the waistcoat pocket of the brown tweed suit was a small tin. Nitrate of amyl.

She was off like the wind again and up the stairs. When she re-entered her room, the pain had come again. He was on his face, wrestling with the pillow.

She tugged at the little tin, breaking her nails, for it was hard to open, then finally prising it up with nail scissors. It contained small white bundles tied with cotton. She had not a notion how to use them. Despair filled her. He would die. She came close to the bed. “How do I use these?” she asked in a loud clear voice, as though she must penetrate curtains of pain to reach him.

He stretched out an inhuman, clawlike hand and seized a bundle, crushing it between his fingers. He turned and held it against his twitching nostrils. She saw that his face had changed incredibly. The flesh seemed to have shrunk from the prominent skull and the hawk-like cartilage of the nose. He was a stranger.

She imitated him, breaking another capsule; she managed to hold him up against the pillows, because that position seemed easier for him. The strange odour of the amyl filled the room. She did not speak, kneeling half on a chair, half on the bed, to reach him.

Slowly she felt the tension relax, the agony slide from his limbs. His eyes sought her face. “I’m fearfully sorry.”

“Tell me what else I can do?”

“Nothing. It’s better.”

“Will it come again?”

“Don’t know.”

“I’m going to call a doctor.”

“No. Don’t leave me.”

“But I must. I shan’t be a minute.”

“No. No. For God’s sake. Amyl.”

The pain was coming again. Again she fought it, holding him, and the capsules to his face. She was torn by uncertainty. Which ought she to do—stay here with him? Rouse the night porter? He might die there.

And even as she crouched above him, feeling through her nerves the tortures of his pain, her cold mind, entirely calm, considered. I could tell the hall-porter I heard him here in the passage groaning and got him into my room. No. They know he’s on the first floor. I shall say he knew me—I’m his daughter’s school teacher. He felt ill and came to me for advice and fainted.

She waited until she felt that she dared leave him. She was conscious of everything—the scent of whisky, amyl and tobacco, the texture of his faded but admirable silk pyjamas, his shabby handsome crimson dressing-gown, the chill of the room, the vase of roses knocked over in her struggle to get him to bed. She knew that he might die, that there might be an inquest, that her position in Yorkshire might be ruined, and it came to her mind that if a doctor could save him and she did not fetch one, she would be guilty of his murder.

But he had clutched her arm so fiercely that she could not break away until he let her. She was his prisoner completely.

She saw that when he came to her he had brought with him sponge and towels. He had been pretending to go to his bath. She smiled at the limitations of well-meant deceit, and wondered. How often has he played this game before?

The pain swelled, then subsided. He lay back limply, his head on her breast. She tried to move it gently to the pillows so that she could slip away and fetch a doctor. But he opened his eyes and smiled at her.