The Man Within

He felt his way very cautiously along the wall towards the door, listening for any sound from the cottage on one side of him and from the wood on the other. It would be like his luck, he thought, his heart giving a sick jolt, if he had stumbled on a smuggler’s hole. It was just such a night, he knew, as he would have chosen himself to run a cargo, dark and moonless. Perhaps he had better move on and avoid the place, and even as the thought crossed his mind his fingers touched the wood of the door. His legs were weak as butter, his wrist was sending stab after stab of pain up his arm, and the edge of an approaching mist touched his consciousness. He could go no further. Better face what lay within the cottage than lie defenceless outside with Carlyon perhaps approaching through the wood. The vision of the white-haired old mother had been effaced very completely. He fumbled at the door, but he was unprepared for it to swing readily open, and he fell on his knees across the threshold in a silly sprawl.

He looked up. Clogged and dulled by that ever-approaching mist a voice had spoken to him. “Stay where you are,” it had said with a kind of quiet and unsurprised command. Now he saw at the other side of the room, wavering a little like a slim upstrained candle-flame, a woman. She was young, he recognised with an automatic leer, and white in the face but not frightened. What kept him still upon his knees, besides the complete physical weariness that made him unwilling to rise, was the gun which was aimed steadily at his chest. He could see the hammer raised.

“I say,” he said. “I say.” He was displeased at the dead sound of his own voice. He felt that it should be full of the mingled pathos of weariness and appeal. “You needn’t be afraid,” he tried again. “I’m done in.”

“You can stand up,” she said, “and let me look at you.” He rose shakily to his feet, with a feeling of immense grievance. This wasn’t the way for a woman to behave. She should be frightened, but she very damnably wasn’t. It was he who felt the fear, with his eye warily watching the gun.

“Now what do you want?” she asked. To his surprise there was no anger in her voice, but a quite genuine curiosity. It annoyed him to know that she was patently the mistress of the situation. It made him even in his weakness want to bully her, to teach her. If only he could get that gun⁠ ⁠…

“I want a hiding place,” he said. “I’m being followed.”

“Runners?” she asked. “Gaugers? You can’t stop here. You’d better go the way you came.”

“But I can’t,” he said, “they’d get me. Look here, I’m on the side of the law. It’s not the officers who are after me.” His eyes fixed on the gun, he made a step forward, spreading out his hands in appeal, in a gesture which he had often seen made on the stage.

“Keep back,” she said, “you can’t stay here. Turn round and go out.”

“For the love of God,” he said. He had picked that expression also from the stage, but the girl could not be expected to know it. It sounded genuine, for his voice was full of real tears. He was tired out and wanted to sleep.

“If you are being followed,” she said, as though speaking to a very stupid child, “you are wasting time here.”

“When I get you,” he said with sudden fury, “I’ll teach you charity. Call yourself a Christian”⁠—his eyes filled with warm sentimental tears at a sudden vision of little grey churches, corn fields, stiles, honeyed distant bells in the dusk, robins in snow. “I’ll teach you,” he said again. The white serenity of her face infuriated him. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do to you.” With childish petulance he flung his mud at something beautiful and very distant, hated himself and enjoyed his hatred. He described what he would do to her in a brief, physiological sentence, and rejoiced at the flush which it fetched to her face. His outburst brought the mist down closer upon him. “You can join your fellows on the streets then,” he cried at her, determined to hurt before fainting should make him a powerless, shameful weakling at her mercy. For a moment he thought that she was going to shoot. He was too exhausted for fear now and felt only a vague satisfaction that he had made himself sufficiently hateful to drive her to action. Then the danger passed. “I told you to go,” was all she said, “I don’t know what you want here.”

He swayed a little on his feet. He could hardly see her now. She was a lighter wisp in a world of grey. “Look, he’s at the window,” he cried with sudden vehemence, and as the wisp moved he lunged forward.

He felt the gun within his hand and forced it upwards, struggling at the same time for the trigger. The girl had been taken by surprise and for the moment gave way.

With the muzzle pointing somewhere at the ceiling, he pulled the trigger. The hammer fell, but there was no explosion. The girl had fooled him with an unloaded weapon. “Now, I’ll teach you,” he said. He tried to wrench the gun away, the better to get at her, but his right wrist seemed to double up and collapse with the effort. He felt a hand press against his face, and his whole body grew weak, and he stumbled backwards. He hit against a table which he had not seen was in the room, so focused had his eyes been on the danger in front of him. He put out a hand to save himself, for his legs seemed made in numerous joints, which were now all folding in upon each other. Something fell to the