The Man Within

for the relief of tears. Deliberately he turned his back in mind upon the cottage and shut out all sight and sound and remembrance of it, and fixed instead his eyes upon the danger in front of him which he must be cunning to evade. In this quiet room over the High Street, in the presence of the two barristers, all fear of violence seemed absurd. The peace which he had experienced the night before was like a dream, and into a dream nightmare could easily enter. But now he was awake, amid real surroundings, among calm, ordinary people, and it was impossible to believe that he was really hunted by a sudden death. His flight seemed no longer to be necessarily eternal. When this was over he would go to London and leave the past behind and live like an ordinary man, working daily for his bread. I shall be able to buy books, he thought, his heart leaping, and go in and listen to the music at St. Paul’s and the Abbey. The streets would be full of cabs and the pavements crowded with people. He would walk here and there and be no more conspicuous than an ant in an ant hill. It would be a pain to be so happy, he thought, and then realised that that ache was not a prophecy of bliss but of vacancy. He put his head on his hands. What will be the use, he wondered, with my life empty of her forever? When it was warm, he would want her to be with him to bask in the warmth and when cold to crouch with him over the fire. Always in his brain when he woke would be the thought, she is only a few hours away. Go and see if she is in the cottage. She may have moved or be lost or be dying or hungry or lonely. And every morning fear would struggle with the thought and win. There could be no more peace for him in that constant struggle than in flight. What then am I to do? he asked himself with a tired gesture of the hands.

The two barristers were speaking to each other, ignoring Andrews.

“And Parkin?” Mr. Farne said. “What do you think of Parkin?”

“He’s the best judge the prisoners could have. He’s a conceited windbag who likes to hear the sound of his own voice. If there’s one honest man on the jury Parkin will alienate him by his snobbery or else confuse him by the length of his summing up. Farne, you ought to be going to bed. You’ve got a long day in front of you and the best part of the evening too if I know Parkin. He’ll sit till there are no more candles to burn.”

“And you, Sir Henry?” Mr. Farne asked with a trace of anxiety.

“Oh I, Farne, I’ve still a little more work to do. I need less sleep. I’m older. Farne, shall we get a conviction?”

“Not unless you get some sleep, Sir Henry.”

“I don’t know why you are all worrying like this⁠—you and Lucy. Farne, will there ever be a time when a jury can be trusted to give a verdict according to the evidence in a smuggling case? It makes one tired of justice and long for martial law.”

“Don’t say that, Sir Henry. Justice is justice. What about this man, Sir Henry? Do you want him any more tonight?”

They are treating me like a servant again, Andrews thought, but his anger had no time to rise before it was quenched by Merriman’s tired, courteous tones. “A waiter will show you to your room, Mr. Andrews,” he said. “Sleep well. Tomorrow we face the guns.” He passed his hand across his face as though he were trying to remember all those things which are necessary to the comfort of men to whom work was not the great and most abiding pleasure. “If you are thirsty, Mr. Andrews,” he said, “order what you like.” Mr. Farne grunted disapprovingly, and holding open the door waited for Andrews to pass through.

“I should advise you to drink no more tonight,” he said, when they stood in the dark passage without. “Good night.”

Andrews watched his small trim figure in its dark clothes move down the passage, turn a corner and vanish from sight. “Tomorrow we face the guns.” He had not expected to be called upon so soon. Panic buffeted against his resignation to fate. I could slip out of the hotel tonight, he thought. But what then? An endless repetition of last week. And if he stayed? Danger will at least be plain and in front of me, he considered, fear nevertheless catching at his throat. His mouth and lips were dry. It would be easier to decide what he should do over a glass. He moved to the stairhead and became aware of a candle flame moving up towards him. But it was not the flame itself he saw but its reflection in the large mirror at the sharp turn of the stairs below him. The candle passed and he became aware of Sir Henry’s companion visaged in the glass. Her body was indistinct, owing to the dark blue velvet of her dress which fell almost to her small feet and then trained off into the darkness behind. The white face with its red, vivid lips stared back at itself with an expression of anxiety. The candle was lowered a little way in a long gloved hand and shone on lovely, exquisitely sloping shoulders and the fall of the young breasts. The face leant forward and stared cautiously from the mirror at the invisible reality before it. So close must the girl have been, although hidden from Andrews’s eyes by the turn of the stairs, that a mist from her breath marred the image. A hand appeared and brushed it away, with a cautious secretive movement. Andrews stepped down the stairs, and the image, startled, moved back out of