“Do better?” she repeated with a slight trace of mockery.
“Why do you always repeat words like that?” he said angrily. “It’s maddening. You sit there cool, collected, at peace. Oh I’d hate you if I didn’t love you.”
“You are crazy,” she said.
He came nearer. “Suppose I take your advice,” he spoke angrily, as though he did indeed hate her, “not to hesitate any longer. I want you. Why shouldn’t I have you?”
Elizabeth laughed. “Because you will always hesitate,” she said. “I’ve tried. I give you up.”
“That’s why I won’t touch you, is it?” Andrews’s breath rose into a sob, as he felt his last defences crumbling, and over them straddling a new and terrifying future. “You are wrong. I’ll prove you wrong. I’ll go to Lewes.” The word Lewes coming so out of his mouth frightened him. He struck one more hopeless blow against the threatening future. “Mind,” he said, “I promise nothing else. I’ll go to Lewes and see. I don’t promise to go into court.”
Elizabeth gave a little sigh of weariness and rose from her chair. “You have a long walk before you tomorrow,” she said. “You must sleep.” She watched him and the faint suspicion in her glance pleased him. He took it as a sign that she was already partly convinced. He grew suddenly proud and confident in his decision and was happier than he had been for many years. “I will sleep where I slept last night,” he said.
She went to the window and pulled the curtain across it. “The fog has gone,” she said. “The sky is quite clear and I can see six stars.” She opened the little door beside the fireplace and stood on the bottom step of the small flight of stairs.
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
Part II
VI
Andrews woke to a surge of gold light. He lay for a little in unconsciousness of anything save warmth. Somewhere a long way outside his mind disturbing facts nibbled like a brood of mice. But he kept them on one side and with eyes fixed upon that golden stationary wave hypnotised himself into a vacancy of mind. Yet the mice must have continued their nibbling, for suddenly and overwhelmingly reality burst in upon his consciousness. I am leaving here, he thought, I have promised to go, and he thought of Lewes as a dark and terrifying enemy, lying in wait for him to trip him up and fling him backwards into death. But I need do no more than go to Lewes, he told himself. That is all I have promised. And he wondered, in that case, whether he could not break—evade he called it—his promise altogether. But then I can never come back, he said, and it seemed to him an overwhelming, an impossible loss to lose forever Elizabeth—or rather the sound of her voice, which wrapped him in peace.
He got up and shook himself hopelessly, like a rumpled dog just escaped from a pond who knows his master intends to drive him back into the water many times more. I will go to Lewes, he thought, but I will leave again before the Assizes open. He tried to calculate what day of the month it was. He had dated his letter to the Shoreham Customs, he knew, on the third of February and a week passed before the betrayal was made absolute. On the night of the tenth they had tried to run a cargo, for the last time. Then this was the fourth day of his flight, and only a few days before the Assizes opened. He must not wait in Lewes long. Too many local people would come in to watch the smugglers’ fate—or triumph, as likely as not, with a local jury to try them. Every man is against me, he thought. None are on my side save outcasts and the hoard of strangers who will come from London. Judge, counsel, officers. Must I always stand alone on one side? And his heart protested against the necessity which drove him from his present shelter.
The room where Elizabeth and he had told their stories the previous night was empty. He looked round for some scrap of paper on which he could write his gratitude, but there was none, nor had he any pen or ink. He did not dare to go up to where she slept, feeling that if he saw her face again he could not leave her. And yet to go without a word or sign seemed impossible. He felt in his pockets. They were empty, save for some ancient crumbs, hard as shot, and his knife. He stared at his knife hesitatingly. His heart told him to leave it as a gift which might help her, a sign that he was grateful; his mind told him that very soon in Lewes he would need it. He opened the blade and stroked it. It was clean and sharp and on it, very roughly engraved, a schoolboy’s first experiment with acids, was his name. It’s my only weapon, he thought. It’s of more use to me than to her. What could she use it for but toasting and cutting bread? I shall be defenceless without it. Leave it for that very reason, his heart appealed. A sacrifice. But to his fingers running along the blade it was so comfortingly sharp.
I’ll leave nothing, he decided. After all she is driving me into this risk, and he moved to the door. Leaning in one corner beside it was the gun, with which she had overcome him. He remembered her laugh, “I haven’t an idea how to load it.” Suppose that Carlyon—but Carlyon would do nothing against a woman. There could be no danger for her, and yet he felt uneasy. He returned with lagging, unwilling steps to the table, and suddenly, drawing the knife from his pocket, plunged it into the
