He came a little nearer very cautiously, with a desire quite alien to his nature not to intrude on a sorrow which he could not share. “It is the dead man,” he thought and became aware of a feeling of despairing jealousy. “It’s true then,” his second self whispered, “always hate.”
“No,” he said out loud, speaking partly to her and partly to that other self, “not here. Hate’s not here,” and when she looked up at him with a puzzled frown, he added, “I’m grateful.” The poverty of his words! He grew aware of himself as a large, coarse body with soiled clothes and burst out indignantly, “It’s not fair that you should be touched by this.” Suddenly in spirit he stretched out both hands to his own critic and begged him to take control, if only for a few minutes, of his actions. He said to Elizabeth, “It’s my fault. I know that. Perhaps it’s not too late. I’ll go now—this instant,” and he turned hesitatingly and looked with shuddering distaste at the cold night outside. There was a suitable dwelling place for hate and there he would take it, leaving again in security this small warm room and its white occupant. Yet he did not want to go. It was not only that outside Carlyon and his two companions sought him, but that inside he would leave someone who seemed to carry far behind her eyes, glimpsed only obscurely and at whiles, the promise of his two selves at one, the peace which he had discovered sometimes in music.
He stood shamefully hesitating, the strength of his resolution exhausted in his words. “You needn’t go,” she said. “You haven’t done me any harm,” and seeing that he had not been affected by her unenthusiastic statement she added reluctantly, “I don’t want you to go.”
Andrews looked round at her. “Do you mean that?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s not your fascinating self,” she said, with gentle mockery. “But I’m tired of being alone. I haven’t even the body with me now.”
“No, but the spirit?” he burst out, wilfully misunderstanding her words, seeing her body as a fragile and beautiful casing, which just succeeded in enclosing her lightly poised spirit that spoke in turn with mockery, friendship, sorrow, laughter and always with a pervading undertone of peace.
She did not understand. “I don’t know where that is,” she said. “It will keep me safe anyway. I’ve said he was jealous, didn’t I? If you were drunk and full of lust,” she added with an outspokenness which startled Andrews, “I should be safe.”
“Yes, from anything of that kind, perhaps,” Andrews said, “but from death?”
Elizabeth laughed. “Oh, I never thought of that,” she said. “When I’m old will be time enough.”
“How wonderful,” Andrews said thoughtfully, “to live like that without the fear of death. You must be very brave. You are all alone here.” He had completely forgotten his resolution to go, and now with sudden but not offensive familiarity he sat down on the floor by her feet and let the fire light up the wonder in his face to a warm glow. To Elizabeth it seemed that the lines with which fear had falsely aged his face were smoothed away, and it was a boy’s face which watched her with a boy’s enthusiasm. She smiled. “Not bravery but custom,” she said.
He leant forward towards her, watching her face intently as though he were unwilling to miss the least shade, the smallest movement of the hidden muscles, the slightest change in the colour of what he began to consider in his heart were faultless eyes. “I’ve told you my story,” he said. “Tell me yours. You say that I can stay the night here and it’s too early for sleep.”
“It’s not an interesting story,” Elizabeth said. “I have always lived here. I’ve never been further away than to school at Shoreham.”
“And that man—who’s dead?” Andrews asked, again with the puzzling twinge of jealousy.
“I was here first,” she said, as though she claimed like Venus priority over death. “I was born here, I think, but I can’t remember who my father was. I think he must have died or left my mother. What money there was came from my grandfather, a rich farmer as wealth is considered in these parts. As for the rest my mother took in lodgers, when she could get them, and when she failed, there was a little less to eat, that was all.”
“And that man?” Andrews repeated again with a stubborn boyish intentness.
She smiled. “You are very interested in him,” she said. “He was one of my mother’s lodgers. He worked at Shoreham with the Customs, a clerk in the office. That didn’t make him popular in this neighbourhood, where, as you must know, everyone has a cellar and everyone is at the beck and call of the Gentlemen. He was an outcast, the more so as he lived out here away from his own kind in the town. That puzzled me for a long time. He never knew anyone, partly from choice, partly from necessity. The strange thing was that he was able suddenly to retire with enough money to live on for the rest of his life.
“I remember the day. I was about ten years old. We lived a very close life, you know, in this cottage. This was our only living room. Above here are two rooms,” and she pointed to a small door on the left of the fireplace. “My mother and I slept in one, and Mr. Jennings—that was the name we knew him by—in another. He would be in to breakfast and
