The Man Within

whispered words to knock its head against the black wall which receded always out of reach. Still in his heart was that strange mingling of exaltation, because he was doing at last what was right and dangerous, and fear. The two emotions left no room for planning. His only object was to reach the cottage as soon as might be and fling himself upon any whom he might find there. They would kill him probably and then they would go because their object was achieved. “You trusted in my cowardice to keep me safe,” he cried through the dark. “You were wrong, wrong, wrong,” but his heart felt sick at the thought of how nearly she had been right. “Go faster, you devil,” he called to the horse, beating it unmercifully upon the flank, till the wretched animal which was old and uncertain in eyesight stumbled in its efforts to obey. With an eye rolled backwards nervously to watch the upraised stick it put back its ears and whinnied not so much a protest against cruel treatment as a pathetic excuse for being unable better to obey.

A cry came from the bushes at the edge of the road a little in front. A figure shot into his path and held out both arms to stop the horse and rider. The horse shied to one side and halted. The figure approached and put one hand upon the rein. “Where are you going?” a voice asked and Andrews recognised Tims.

He put his hand down to the wrist which held the rein and gave it a sudden twist. “Who’s at the cottage?” he asked.

The boy, whimpering with pain, replied, “Joe and Carlyon.”

“And what are you doing here?”

“They told me to keep a lookout.” He suddenly creased his face up in a puzzled frown. “It wasn’t true, Andrews, was it? You didn’t put me in that box?”

“Why are they at the cottage?” Andrews asked.

“They said they’d meet you there. They want to talk to you.”

“Let go of my rein.”

“But, Andrews, you haven’t told me. It’s not true, is it?”

Andrews struck his horse and forced it forward.

Persistently the boy clung to the rein and stumbled with it.

“Let go,” Andrews cried again.

“But, Andrews⁠ ⁠…” Andrews drew back his arm and struck the boy across the face with his stick. The mouth creased with a cry of pain, the hand loosed the rein, and for a brief instant before the darkness separated them, Andrews saw a dog’s eyes raised to him in pain and puzzlement. With an instinctive gesture of self-disgust Andrews flung the stick towards an invisible hedge and leaning forward over the horse’s head began to implore it, “Faster, old boy, faster, faster.”

Carlyon’s there, he told himself, all must be well. Enmity was forgotten in the relief of that knowledge. He was riding, riding to a friend and he urged the horse the faster the sooner to see his friend. She would be safe with Carlyon. What did Carlyon’s anger against him matter? He was Elizabeth’s guardian now, to keep her safe from the Joes and Hakes of an embittered world. The rattle of the hoofs upon the road sang themselves rhythmically into his brain until they became a poem which he whispered aloud to the night which was fleeing past him into banishment. Carlyon reading, Carlyon speaking slowly with rapt face stunned with the shock of beauty. Carlyon, my friend Carlyon. A face in a sunset on a hill speaking unimagined things. A godlike and heroic ape. “You can have anything you want, all except the ship.” The voice falling on the last word as though it spoke of something holy and unsullied. The Good Chance.

Then Andrews remembered that Carlyon had lost his ship. It was not to a friend that he was riding but to a man whom he had robbed not only of livelihood and sole mistress but of his only dream, a foolish sentimental blind dream of adventure. It had not needed the loss of a ship to break the dream. Betrayal had done that. The loss only made the waking irrevocable. One of us will be dead tonight, he thought, and the horse as though in alliance with the shrinking body slowed its pace. “Faster, old boy, faster.” O, to be there before his courage again departed. He must not think of the future, but the advice was an impossible one. “O God,” he prayed, “let it not be me. He’s broken and finished. He will not mind death, but I’m only just beginning.”

The cottage light. It was less than a week since, fleeing over the down, he had seen it first. Now as then he was afraid, but with what a difference. A gulf of more than time separated the two figures. One had approached with shrinking caution. The other, leaving the horse untied to stray at will, ran with a desperate carelessness to outstrip fear and flung open the cottage door. Out of a gale fashioned of the roaring passage of time and his own tumultuous thoughts and fears he stepped into a quiet so deep that it formed a frozen block which kept him pressed against the door, unable to move or speak or for a moment feel.

At the table Carlyon sat facing him, eyes open, breathing, seeing, knowing, yet neither speaking nor moving nor showing hatred or surprise. Elizabeth’s back was turned, where she sat, but Andrews did not need to see her face, for her hunched shoulders and fallen face told him that she was dead. Told him but conveyed for a little no meaning of death, spoke, as it were, in images too hackneyed or conventional to stir the mind. He stared and stared at the extreme decrepitude of the dead body, which now had no more of grace or beauty than a sawdust doll. His eyes passed on in a puzzled and still uncomprehending inquiry to Carlyon, who sat watching him without speech or movement. On the table out of Carlyon’s reach lay