XXXII THE CUTTING OF A KNOT

          Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth.         
          ISAIAH, xxiv. 17.

IT is one of the most disconcerting phenomena of existence that, when passionate love has answered its purpose, it simply disappears, leaving its instruments wedded by such truth as they have discovered in each other or divorced by the lies they have forged for each other’s delight. Very rarely, however, is the issue so simple. The bone-and-shadow business comes into play here also, and most people marry with very little passionate love and a great deal of careful imitation of it, so that most marriages are strangled in their birth with a very tangled web of lies.

It was so with Frederic and Jessie Folyat in their marriage, and they were never so nearly united as when jealousy came between them. Their marriage feast did coldly furnish forth the funeral of love, and over love’s dead body they quarrelled. They had scenes, hysterical skirmishes and almost as hysterical reconciliations. There was grim sport in it all, a sort of fascination in the stealthy prying and spying, each crouching and shrinking in readiness for the other’s spring, the snarling bravado with which each dared the other to come on, a little further, a little further, inviting to a caress, repelling with a scratching blow; and all smooth-seeming, veiled, polite, with polished airs and graceful manners and feigned interest and inquiry: a pooling of the common stock only to wrangle over the division of it again. The gambling fever was in it. At any moment all might be lost upon a throw, a little gain, a little loss, more gain, more gain, a [Pg 324]little more and the other might be beggared, the game won. But neither dared let the game come to an end. When one was near ruin, grey-faced, anxiously glaring for the turn of the card, the other cheated and the game went on. It absorbed both. Neither could do without it. It was a drug. Their craving for it was agony; its satisfaction a seeming delight.

They were very skilful and cunning to let no trace of it appear on the surface of their lives. Frederic abandoned all pursuit of Annie Lipsett, he deserted the company of his flattering fools, for these things trespassed upon the field of his fevered sport. It was very rarely that they went of their own accord to seek purchasable pleasures. Visits they paid, when politeness and discretion compelled, and everybody found them charming. They could be good company and their talents were useful. They became popular and were much in request to organise entertainments, bazaars, jumble sales, and such functions.

 

In his business Frederic became more cunning, quicker-witted, and his reputation gained. His practice increased. His whole life was concentrated on his home and his office. He grew lean and alert, but he was always tired.

In the early days of his management of the Bradby-Folyat estate he had borrowed large sums of money. These debts he was able considerably to reduce, and very soon there were no arrears of interest outstanding. As he began to feel himself on more solid ground his habit of exaggeration lost much of its hold upon him, and men who had previously avoided him began to seek his company. Many who had dismissed him as a bore now came to see qualities in him, and, as he gained the acquaintance of a better class of men, the quality of the work that passed through his hands improved.

Over Minna’s disaster he behaved well. He explained the legal aspect of divorce to his father, and by telling him what he heard men saying about it—men who had known Basil Haslam, men of the world—helped him to understand that there was less malice than idle curiosity [Pg 325]in gossip, that scandal was the thing of a day, and that sympathy was to a great extent on Minna’s side and altogether with her parents. . . . Francis was not greatly comforted. He felt that the attitude of mind of Frederic’s “men of the world” was rather dirty, but he appreciated the kindness, which was greater than he had looked for. He was not at all easy, remembering Serge’s and his own attitude towards Frederic’s imbroglio, when Frederic rushed up to town, pounced on Herbert Fry, and insisted on his marrying Minna. . . . As it happened, it was a fatal step. Minna complied only because she thought the marriage would infuriate Basil (the horrible ordeal through which she had passed had deprived her of all control), and Fry because he loved her and because his affairs were more complicated than any one knew save himself, and, having to leave the country, he preferred to pass into exile with a beloved companion. His life had come to ruin, and he thought that to have Minna for his wife would be a step towards reconstruction and would help to blot out the past. . . . Frederic came back glowing with virtue and manly pride, feeling that he had made an honest woman of his sister.

Frederic’s interview with Herbert Fry had seemed to him a direct triumph of right over wrong. It was the first time he had ever found himself in the van of the big battalions, and it gave him a feeling of confidence that was almost exhilarating. He returned to his wife, to find that her suspicion of him was not abated, and convinced himself that she was cruel and unjust. He gambled in marriage more recklessly than ever, and if before she had been anxious, now she was filled with dread as she saw that she was playing a losing game. Sooner or later he would have cleared her out and the last tie between them would be broken. Her dread paralysed her. Only mechanically could she keep the cards fluttering and the pot a-boiling.

 

Frederic lost his drawn look. He was winning, and was sure that the luck would never turn again. Feeling immeasurably superior to Fry, who had committed the [Pg 326]unpardonable folly of being found out, and morally on a different plane from Minna and the world of illicit love which had spewed her out to the scorn of all men (except men of the world, who could wink at these things), he fell back upon the cushion of middle-class prosperity, thrust aside happiness as a thing to be desired, and concentrated all his energies on money. He began to speculate—successfully at first, then unsuccessfully. In his early days of practice it had hardly been worth while to keep his accounts separate, and, as his business grew, he never troubled to reorganise his books.

Mrs. Bradby-Folyat died. She had taken a dislike to Gertrude and left Streeten Folyat only a thousand pounds. Frederic received twenty-five pounds to buy a mourning ring. That did not fret him. There was the estate to be wound up, and the pickings of the process would be rich.

The executors asked to see the accounts. Frederic made them up, but they were found so slovenly and unsatisfactory that further inquiry was instituted and an accountant was called in—a precise, mincing little man who spoke with a strong north-country accent, sniffed, and walked in and out of the office as though he were treading the aisle of a chapel. He exasperated Frederic so that he went out of his way to be rude to him. The accountant sniffed and smugly turned the other cheek. He was a week in the office and went away without saying a word.

Frederic received a letter from one of the executors requesting him to hand over all papers and securities to another larger firm of solicitors. Without comment a statement of account was enclosed, showing a deficit in the Bradby-Folyat estate of six thousand pounds. Every nerve in Frederic’s body quivered and went hot and dry. He locked the statement away and gave orders for the Bradby-Folyat deed-box to be handed over to the representatives of the nominated solicitors upon their giving a receipt for it. Mechanically, with a fevered concentration upon the figures as an occupation to keep himself from thinking, he went into his banking account. He had three hundred pounds in cash. His shares, which would have to be sold at a loss, would realise another [Pg 327]thousand. Outstanding debts amounted to not two hundred. . . . His wife’s money was hers upon trust for her children, or, failing her children, for her nephews and nieces. All the Clibran-Bell money was trust money. His father had none, only enough to make a small provision for his old age and his wife and Mary.

The executor called. He was polite—a barrister by profession, with the most suave and urbane brow-beating manner. He supposed that the numerous mistakes could be rectified, and that where losses had occurred through incompetent investment the deficiency would be made good. Frederic said not a word. He twiddled a little piece of paper between his fingers and his face was as white as the paper. The executor drew his own conclusions and said:

“It is misappropriation and embezzlement. I have tried to persuade Batson’s not to take proceedings, but they insist that it must go before the Law Society. . . . You will be lucky if you get no worse than being struck off the rolls.”

The words bit into Frederic’s brain and went trickling down his spine. The executor took his hat and left him sitting by his table still twiddling the little piece of paper, with his face as grey as a goose-feather. He sat very still for a long time staring at the piece of paper in his hand. Presently he let it fall, but still he sat staring. . . . He heard his clerks go. The cashier brought the key of the safe. He said good-night. Frederic said good-night, and was startled at the sound of his own voice. The silence had seemed to him so inevitable, so final, surely eternal.

One thought sprang to life in his brain: “No one must know.” That gave him a purpose and brought him to the need of action. At home he forced an amiable mood upon his wife. In the evening they called at Burdley Park and took Mary to the theatre. They saw her home after a merry evening, and, in the highest spirits, they called on the Clibran-Bells and invited some of the family to come and play whist on the morrow. Frederic smoked a cigar with his father-in-law and discussed the new waterworks [Pg 328]scheme and the police scandal which had lately set all the town by the ears, a whole division having been discovered to be drawing large profits from organised prostitution in a certain district. Many droll stories were in circulation of constables caught in flagrante delicto, and Frederic and his father-in-law laughed heartily over them. At certain moments Frederic had a crazy desire to pick his father-in-law up by the scruff of the neck and shake him: there was something in his manner so ridiculous and undignified, and his jocularity was so trivial and pointless. However, Frederic continued to laugh, and old Clibran-Bell patted him on the shoulder and told him he was a good fellow, a very good fellow.

In the office next day Frederic teased and pestered his clerks and kept them all bustling, finding errands for them to go, requiring books from the Law Library, discovering papers that were long overdue and had to be fetched. Seized with a wild, hilarious impulse, he made out a whole series of bogus writs and sent them to be stamped and delivered. . . . When all the clerks had gone he sat down and wrote to Batson’s, saying that he had made further inquiries and had many papers and much information to lay before them which had previously been overlooked, and he added that such deficiency as might remain after final examination would be paid in full. This letter he posted himself. He returned to his office, wrote a cheque for each of his clerks, repaid his articled clerks their premiums, laid an envelope containing them on each desk, looked round to make sure he had forgotten nothing, locked the outer door, walked down to the bridge by the Collegiate church and threw the key into the river.

At night, after the whist-party had dispersed, he pretended that he had papers to look into and sent Jessie to bed. He sat by the fire staring into the glowing coals. It died down, but he made no effort to keep it alight. He was exhausted. The assumed hilarity of the evening had been too great a strain, and yet not strain enough. He was driving himself to a collapse, but was fearful lest it should come too soon.

[Pg 329]

It was very cold. He shivered and crouched over the black grate. He heard his wife’s voice calling him:

“Aren’t you coming up to-night?”

“Presently . . . presently.”

When he judged that she would be asleep he crept upstairs, and in the dark, to avoid waking her and also to avoid seeing her, he slipped into the bed by her side. All night he lay awake, cold, throbbing, straining and starting at all the small noises of the house.

At breakfast he chattered gaily over the newspapers. There was a school board election toward, and a woman had offered herself as a candidate for their division. He chaffed Jessie and said he supposed she would soon be wanting to vote for Parliament. Jessie was to spend the day in town shopping with her mother. He asked her to make sundry small purchases for him, and they agreed that they would have a crab for supper.

He was rather a long time packing the little handbag he always took with him to town. She went to remind him that it was getting late and found him with his hand in a drawer. He shut it hastily and asked her to fetch his tobacco-pouch from upstairs. When she came down again he was waiting for her at the front door. She walked to the little iron gate with him and they kissed. As he reached the kerb he turned to look at her and saw the old ladies and gentlemen at their windows, and he felt with a twinge of shame that for years he had been a spectacle without knowing it. . . . He thought Jessie looked rather ill, tired, old, and bony. It was absurd for them to kiss in public. . . . Everything seemed absurd, fantastical, and unreal. The world was presented to his eyes in sharper outline than he had ever seen it before. It was bathed in a cold grey light. It had nothing to do with him. It was going on. He felt stationary. That his body was moving was nothing. His thoughts were not moving. Everything was absurd. The new sharply outlined world, with its curious interwoven activities (he saw how they were dovetailed), was moving on. The world with which he had been concerned—the world in which he had been miserable, elated, crestfallen, amused, [Pg 330]disgusted—the world in which he had known affection and companionship and spite and jealousy—was moving backward, sinking from under his feet while he himself stood on the verge of a nonsensical dawn that had its light from a setting sun. Away from him, backward and forward, everything moved faster and faster, making him dizzy, intolerably dizzy, sick and cold with it.

He had intended to go to London, but at the station he saw a sign indicating a train for Plymouth. The name started out of the blurred past and relieved him, a little restored his balance, and he saw clearly the scenes of his boyhood—the grimy little office where he had been articled, the ships, the Hoe and the Sound. Then all that too slipped away from him.

He took the train for Plymouth, and had a carriage all to himself as far as Crewe. He sat stupidly staring out of the window. The train was going so fast. Why did everything move so fast? . . . He was very tired. At Crewe a man entered the carriage. He had not thought of that. He must change. He must be alone. The train moved on before he could bring himself to stir. . . . With the presence of the man at the other end of the carriage his mood changed. Out of the cold mists that were upon him a desire rose and took possession of him. He did not know what desire it was but it took the form of an itch to speak to the man. He stole glances at him but his lips would not obey him. The man said:

“It’s a fine day.”

Frederic agreed that it was a fine day, and the desire in him fell back into the void. The man was part of the absurd world that had nothing to do with him, the world that went on, the trivial, silly world. How trivial and silly everything was: the train was silly, movement was silly; absurd and grotesque was the man’s voice and his idiotic comment on the day, and that was silly too. A day was but the passage out of night into night. The whole world was nothing, moving out of nothing into nothing. Some things were clear because they did not matter; other things were blurred because they had mattered to him, Frederic, who mattered no longer because he was standing [Pg 331]still and everything else was moving. . . . His eyes mechanically read the legend—“To Stop the Train Pull Down the Cord Outside the Window. Penalty for Improper Use, ￡5.”

“I could stop it,” he thought, “but it would only move on again. Everything moves on again.”

With that slight movement in his mind old habit reasserted itself and he began to crave for self-pity, but the unfamiliar presence of the man made that impossible. That habit of mind needed the co-operation of other habits. It was isolated and fell away again. . . . There had been so much clear-cut action in the last few hours, action for a purpose, action that could not be recalled and therefore drove him on to the fulfilment of the purpose.

“I must be alone,” thumped Frederic’s mind, and the train-wheels took it up, “alone, alone, alone.”

He became exasperated with the presence of the other man. What right had he in the world where there was nothing but Frederic, nothing at all, an empty world where a man must at last make sure, make very sure, that he is nothing?

The man got out at Bristol. It seemed to Frederic that he had come and gone like a shadow. So little time, the emptiness of the world moving so swiftly, and through it Plymouth coming nearer and nearer to him. Plymouth appeared to him as a sort of monster, a dogging shadow that had run after him for a long time, terrifying him, to spring ahead and come to meet him. And yet it was still behind. Everything was two things, behind and in front; the contradiction made it nothing. . . .

He was frozen with terror. Back, back, this way; no, that; now the other. . . . “It will have me! It will have me! Why? I am nothing. I am nothing. It doesn’t believe that I am nothing. . . . No, no. There is nothing but myself, myself, myself. . . .”

He drew the revolver from his pocket.

“No, no. I will go back. I will go back.”

He sat absolutely numbed for a long time. Suddenly he thought of his wife, coldly, clearly. He saw himself in her. She was stronger than he. He must show her that he was the stronger.

[Pg 332]

He thought of his father and passed into a golden stream of peace. He would go to his father. . . “I will arise and go to my father and say unto him, ‘Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy son.’ . . .” His father would understand as he had understood before. . . . But then he knew that all that his mother had thought of him would be sponged away from her mind, and he remembered with what bitterness she had spoken of Minna.

“Too difficult,” he thought. “Too many people.”

The train gathered speed down an incline. Faster and faster. His terror lest the journey should come to an end clutched him back into the present. He must make haste. He must be the quicker.

He had dropped the revolver into his pocket again. Now he fumbled for it. It caught in the lining, and he tugged at it with feverish impatience. . . . His heart leaped on the report, which seemed to come from far away. . . . He felt nothing; less and less; out of the swiftly moving world he was sinking downward, downward, gathering speed, falling, falling into nothing.

 

In the small hours of the morning Mr. Clibran-Bell rang furiously at the bell of the house in Burdley Park. After many minutes Francis came down in his dressing-gown with a candle in his hand. Mr. Clibran-Bell stepped into the hall.

“Frederic,” he said, “has not been home all night. Jessie is at my house. . . . My dear friend, my dear old friend . . .”

“Has . . . something happened?”

“He’s . . . he’s at Plymouth. Dead. They found him in the train, shot in the side.”

Francis stood very still, his mind slowly grasping this new appalling fact. Tears trickled down his cheeks into his beard.

“I shall go to Plymouth by the first train,” said Mr. Clibran-Bell, “I must get at the truth for Jessie’s sake.”

“Yes. It is very good of you.”

[Pg 333]

It was a long time after Mr. Clibran-Bell had gone before Francis went upstairs again. The candle burnt itself out. His thoughts see-sawed up and down.

“Frederic—dead. Frederic—dead.”

When he had groped his way back to his own existence, burdened with this new catastrophe, he said to himself:

“I can’t go on. . . . I can’t go on.”

He saw Frederic lying huddled in the corner of a railway carriage, strangers to whom he was nothing finding him. . . . Then he thought of that other dead body that he had seen long, long ago, the woman lying in the little dark house, under the guttering light of the tallow candle and the clement light of the moon. Death violent, death insistent, death that would not be shrouded away or softened or made seeming blessed with words or tears. Tears! Death was too harsh. And yet it mattered nothing how it came about. It was always the same: bitter, the bitter end to bitterness. All life was salt with the savour of death. Vain, vain the endeavour to sweeten it. Sweetness and corruption, were they not yoke-fellows? . . . Words from the Bible passed through Francis Folyat’s mind: “I am the resurrection and the Life,” and again: “For behold, the days are coming in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck,” and again in his bitter grief he turned to the Book of Job:

“My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart.

“They change the night into day: the light is short because of darkness.

“If I wait, the grave is mine house; I have made my bed in the darkness.

“I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister.

“And where is now my hope? As for my hope, who shall see it?

“They shall go down to the base of the pit where our rest together is in the dust.”