The House by the River

mind to literature and domestic calm. He had forgotten with his fears his compunction of an hour ago; he had forgotten even to feel grateful to John; and if he thought of him with pity, it was a contemptuous pity. He saw John now as a kind of literary figure of high but laughable virtue, a man so virtuous as to be ridiculous, a mere foil to the heroic daredevils of life⁠—such as Gelert and Stephen Byrne.

So he came to his own house, thinking again of those excellent lines of Gelert’s speech. In the hall he composed in his mind the description of the meeting which he would give to Margery.

But Margery, too, was thinking of Gelert. She was reading the manuscript of “The Death in the Wood.” She had watched Stephen go out in a slow gloom to the meeting, and then she had hurried to the table and taken guiltily the bundle from the special manuscript drawer. For Stephen, with the sentimental fondness of many writers for the original work of their own hands, preserved his manuscripts long after they had been copied in type and printed and published. Twice during the last week she had gone to that drawer, but each time she had been interrupted. And at each reading her curiosity and admiration had grown.

She had suspected nothing⁠—had imagined no sort of relation between Stephen’s life and Gelert’s adventures. There was no reason why she should. For she detested⁠—as she had been taught by Stephen to detest⁠—the conception of art as a vast autobiography. Stephen’s personality was in the feeling and in the phrasing of his work; and that was enough for her; the substance was a small matter.

Even the incident of the maiden in the wood, her death and her concealment in the lake, had scarcely stirred the memory of Emily. For the reverent and idyllic scene in which the two knights had “laid” the body of the maiden among the reeds and water lilies of the lake, to be discovered by her kinsmen peeping through the tangled thickets of wild rose, was as remote as possible from the sordid ugliness of Emily’s disposal and discovery in a muddy sack near Barnes.

But now she had finished. And she did suspect. When she came to the passage describing Gelert’s remorse for the betrayal of his old companion-at-arms, his gloomy bearing and penitent vows, she thought suddenly of Stephen’s late extravagant gloom, which she was still unable to understand. And then she suspected. Idly the thought came, and idly she put it away. But it returned, and she hated herself because of it. It grew to a stark suspicion, and she sat for a moment in an icy terror, frozen with pain by her imaginations. Then in a fever of anxiety she went back to the beginning of the manuscript, and hurried through it again, noting every incident of the story in the hideous light of her suspicions. And as she turned over the untidy pages, the terror grew.

In the light of this dreadful theory so many things were explained⁠—little odd things which had puzzled her and been forgotten⁠—Stephen’s surprising anxiety when Michael was born (and Emily disappeared), and that evening in the summer, when they had all been so silent and awkward together, and the drifting apart of Stephen and John, and John’s extraordinary evidence, and Stephen’s present depression. It was all so terribly clear, and the incidents of the poem so terribly fitted in. Margery moaned helplessly to herself, “Oh, Stephen!” When he came in, she was almost sure.

It was curious that at first she thought nothing of Gelert’s illicit amours in the castle, the stealing of his own friend’s lady. That part of the poem, of course, was a piece of romantic imagination, with which she had no personal concern. But while she waited for Stephen, turning over the leaves once more, the thought did come to her, “If one part is true⁠—why not all?” But this thought she firmly thrust out. She was sure of him in that way, at any rate. She flung a cushion over the manuscript and waited.

He came in slowly as he had gone out, but she saw at once that his gloom was somehow relieved. And as he told her in studied accents of distress the story of the meeting, there came to her a sick certainty that he was acting. He was not really sorry that John had thought it best not to take any action; he was glad.

When he had finished, she said, in a hard voice which startled her, “What do you make of it, Stephen? Do you think he really did it?”

Stephen looked at the fire, the first fire of late September, and he said, “God knows, Margery; God knows. He’s a funny fellow, John.” He sighed heavily and stared into the fire.

And then she was quite sure.

She stood up from the sofa, the manuscript in her hand, and came towards him.

“Stephen,” she said, “I’ve been reading this⁠—You⁠—I⁠—oh, Stephen!”

The last word came with a little wail, and she burst suddenly into tears, hiding her face against his shoulder. She stood there sobbing, and shaken with sobbing, and he tried to soothe her, stroking her hair with a futile caressing movement, and murmuring her name ridiculously, over and over again.

It did not occur to him to go on acting, to pretend astonishment or incomprehension. She had blundered somehow on the secret, and perhaps it was better so. To her at least he could lie no more.

At last the sobbing ceased, and he kissed her gently, and she turned from him automatically to tidy her hair in the glass.

Then she said, still breathless and incoherent, “Stephen, is it true⁠—that poor Emily⁠—and poor John⁠—Oh, Stephen, how could you?”

The tears were coming back, so he put his arms about her again. And he spoke quickly, saying anything, anything to hold her attention and keep away those terrible tears.

“Darling, I was a fool⁠ ⁠… it was for your sake