“What the hell?” he said. “O God!”
John groped distantly with a hand in the dark. Then, “The anchor!” he said—“the anchor’s caught. …” He heard a relieved “O Lord!” from Stephen, “thought I’d put the anchor end over first”—and for the first time made himself a petulant comment, “Why the devil didn’t you?” It was too much—this sort of thing. Then the shaggy end of the sack was slithering quietly over the side, the anchor twinkled swiftly in the moon, and the relieved boat rocked suddenly with a wild, delighted levity. Emily was gone.
Peering back upstream, the two men saw a slowly expanding circle on the black water. And there were a few bubbles. Emily was indeed gone.
Stephen sat in a limp posture of absolute exhaustion, his shoulders hunched, his head on his hands, speechless.
John looked at his watch. It was a —only about an hour since Emily died. He stared incredulous at the faintly luminous hands. Then he looked round; the boat seemed to be drifting very fast. On his right were the boathouses, a dark huddle of boats clinging to the rafts in front of them. The boathouses were next to the Bridge.
He looked back and up, with a new fear. The long span of the suspension bridge hung almost above them. A bus rumbled ominously above. Two persons were standing on the footpath against the parapet, looking down at the boat. He could see the pale blobs of their faces. One of them had a Panama hat.
The boat shot into the dark under the Bridge.
John leaned forward. “Stephen,” he whispered—“Stephen.” There was no answer. John touched his knee. “Stephen.”
A yellow face lifted slowly. “What is it?”
“There was someone watching on the Bridge … two men.”
Stephen sighed with a profound weariness.
“It can’t be helped,” he said.
A dreadful paralysis seemed to have succeeded the heavy strain. He looked as the men used to look after a long spell in the line, sitting at last in a dingy billet—played out.
John Egerton took the sculls and turned the boat round. The boat moved stiffly, with a steady gurgle at the bows; the noiseless tide swung violently by; the oars creaked complainingly.
“This tide …” muttered John.
Stephen Byrne raised his head. “The tide’s going out,” he said stupidly.
IV
Margery Byrne walked home very happily from the Underground Station at Stamford Brook, The ticket collector uttered a reverent “Good night, mum”; the policeman at the corner of St. Peter’s Square brightened suddenly at her and saluted with the imperishable manner of past military service. The world was very kind and friendly, she felt. But that was the usual manner of the world to Margery Byrne. The world invariably looked at her as it passed her in the street. The male world invariably looked again. The mannerless male world usually looked back. The shameless male world stared at her in Tubes and manoeuvred obviously for commanding positions. But that part of the world, having secured its positions, was generally either disappointed or abashed. There was an aspect of fragility and virtue about her which stirred in the bold and shameless male the almost atrophied instincts of chivalry and protection. After a little they ceased to stare, but opened doors for her with a conscious knighthood. There are women who make a man feel evil at the sight of them. Margery made a man feel good.
But this aspect of fragility was without any suggestion of feebleness. It was just that she was slight and fair, and her face small and her features intensely delicate and refined. She had a rarefied look—as if all flaws and imperfections and superfluities had been somehow chemically removed, leaving only the essential stamina and grace. For she had stamina. She walked with an easy un-urban swing, and she could walk a long way. Her lips were little and slightly anaemic, but firm. There was an evident will in the determined and perfectly proportioned chin. The nose was small but admirably straight and set very close above the mouth. Only her large blue eyes seemed a little out of proportion, but these suggested a warm sympathy which the smallness of her features might otherwise have concealed. Her head, balanced attractively on straight white shoulders, was covered gloriously, if a little thinly, with hair of a light gold, an indescribable tint not often encountered outside the world of books. But such, in fact, was Margery’s hair. Her skin also was of a colour and texture not to be painted in words—it had that indefinable quality for which there has been discovered no better name than transparent. And this pale, almost colourless quality of complexion completed the effect of fragility, of physical refinement.
It was still and sultry in St. Peter’s Square. The old moon hung above the church and lit up the ridiculous stone eagles on the decayed and pompous houses on Margery’s right. “Like lecterns,” she thought, for the thousandth time.
The houses were square and semidetached, two in one; a life-size eagle perched over every porch, its neck screwed tragically towards its sister-eagle craning sympathetically on the neighbouring porch, seeking apparently forever a never-to-be-attained communion. What sort of people lived there, Margery wondered, and why? So far from town and no view of the river, no special attraction. The people of The Chase always wondered in this way as they walked through St. Peter’s Square. The problems of who lived in it and why were permanently insoluble since nobody who lived in The Chase knew anybody who lived in the Square. They knew each other, and that was enough. They knew it was worth while travelling a long way if you lived in The Chase, because of the river, the views, the openness, and the fine old rambling, rickety houses. But why should anyone live in an inland square with eagles over the front doors?
Margery did not know. And she had other things to think of. Tomorrow she must speak seriously to Emily. Emily, like all these young
