The Man Within

he did not dare to look. He was afraid even to raise a hand, lest it should make a sound in passing through the air. He let his arms hang limply at his side, like the arms of a doll empty of sawdust. After a considerable time the rustle in the hedge ceased. Somewhere behind a whispering began, too faint for him to catch a word. Then there was a rustle in the hedge on the opposite side of the road, more rapid, almost perfunctory. Then that too ceased and the whispering returned and hovered elusively in the mist. Sometimes he thought it came from his right side, sometimes from his left, at other times from behind him. It grew more rapid, seemed to beat desperately up and down, like a lost bird in a room. He began to think that he could distinguish words. Several times he imagined his own name “Andrews.” Hope stirred in his heart that Carlyon would give up the search and take his escape for granted. As though to confirm this hope the whisperers grew more and more careless. He could distinguish phrases. “Somewhere here,” and “I’d swear to his step.”

After an interval Carlyon’s voice blew like a melancholy wind through the mist. “Andrews,” it said, “Andrews.” And then, “Why are you frightened? What’s the matter with you? It’s Carlyon, merely Carlyon.”

The fascination of the voice! It seemed to hold for Andrews everything which he so much desired⁠—peace, friendship, the end of a useless struggle. He wanted to say, “Here I am, Carlyon,” and lie down there in the mist and sleep; and wake to find Carlyon sitting beside him talking of this and that with brooding kindliness, drowning the nauseating fatigue of danger, the acrid smell of smoke, the monotony of winds with the cool beauty of his voice. Above, the eternally reiterated clatter of feet on deck, the beat, beat, beat of flapping canvas, the curses, movement, scurry, unrest; below, Carlyon’s apelike face transfigured with peace⁠—

Ye have been fresh and green,
Ye have been filled with flowers,
And ye the walks have been,
Where maids have spent their hours.

“Andrews, Andrews,” with a soft melancholy. “I must not, I must not,” he said to himself, sobbing hysterically and yet with an effort retaining silence, though the effort was a tearing pain in throat and chest. “That’s over.” Over forever friendship, poetry, silence at the heart of noise; remained fear and a continual flight. And he had intended to win peace.

Carlyon, he realised, had not spoken now for many moments. He was surrounded again by silence save for the drip, drip, drip of the laden bough. Space that had closed in on him during the sound of the voice calling spread away again on every side. He was alone in a wilderness of white mist hopelessly barren of companionship. He waited listening for a little while longer and then stumbled back into the mist the way that he had come. He thought that Carlyon had been deceived or had given up the search. It did not occur to him that Carlyon might wait quietly and listen to find the direction which he took. Andrews ran crookedly along invisible ruts with a slow strange lightening of the heart.

IV

He became aware of the cottage again by the red glow of a hidden flame, which penetrated a little way into the white blanket of mist with a promise of warmth and calm companionship and food. Fear had not dispelled his hunger, it had but overlaid it with a more fierce emotion. Now with the slow return of peace he remembered what his belly desired. He was not angry nor frightened now, only a little ill at ease. He advanced cautiously, with one arm of his spirit raised to ward off a blow.

Through the window he peered into a room deprived of daylight. A large fire burnt with a kind of subdued ferocity and its red rays, instead of bearing light, spilt blacker pools of darkness in the room. Only in a small semicircle before it was a space cleared, and the dark pushed back from there formed a more sombre and concentrated wall on the further side. Squatting on the floor in the cleared space Elizabeth knitted with a metallic flash⁠—flash of needles like sparks from a gaseous coal.

Her figure started so distinctly from the shadows, distorted though it was by the glass, that Andrews did not realise that his own face was veiled. He tapped with fingers which he intended to sound gentle and reassuring. She looked up and remained staring at him with a mixture of fear, perplexity and doubt, and let the knitting fall upon her lap. He smiled but was unaware that she could not see his smile, or glimpsed at most a vague grimace from almost invisible lips. He tapped again and saw her lift whatever it was she had been knitting to her breast and tightly press it to her. How slim, he thought, as she rose and stood (a dark Elizabeth, he wondered again) where the flicker of the flames played up and down her body like the dazed, groping fingers of a lover. Her hand pressed so hard on her breast that it appeared to be reaching for the heart to hold it and still its beats. Only then did Andrews realise that she could not see him clearly, and that she was afraid. But at the moment when he prepared to reassure her, the small quiver of fear left her lips and she passed from the zone of the firelight and advanced to the window through the shadows.

He heard her fingers feeling not very certainly for the catch. Then the window swung open and he stepped away. “Is it really you back?” she whispered, and he could not tell from her voice whether she was afraid or glad.

“Yes, yes,” he said, “it’s me.”

She said: “Oh, you,” in a flat, disappointed tone. “What do you want?” He became