Payment Deferred · Chapter 6 (2/2)

He was sitting in the position that had become habitual, in the uncomfortable late Victorian armchair, facing the window and about two yards from it. His position indicated an awkward compromise between tension and relaxation. On the chair beside him stood his whisky and his glass, and on his lap lay his book, as if he had interrupted his reading for a moment to follow some train of thought which had just occurred to him. But for the last hour nearly, it had been too dark to read. Mr. Marble was half drunk, and his mind was working out possibilities of unimaginable horror, as he gazed out into the nearly dark garden which held his secret.

“Dear,” began Mrs. Marble, and then, as he did not answer: “Are you awake, dear?”

She came nearer to him, walking like a grey ghost in the semidarkness, and touched him lightly on the shoulder. Mr. Marble sprang into instant activity. He writhed in his chair, and the whisky decanter went over with a crash, sending its scant contents gurgling out on to the carpet.

“What⁠—what⁠—” he spluttered. After all, a man can be ready for all emergencies only for a limited time, and Mr. Marble had relaxed for once. Then he saw that it was only his wife. “Oh, it’s you, you fool,” he snarled, ashamed of his absurd fear⁠—he would not admit to himself what he had been afraid of⁠—and angry with her, with himself, and with everything else.

“Oh Will, I’m so sorry,” said Mrs. Marble, stooping to pick up the decanter, her slippers sopping with whisky.

A bare half-inch remained in the decanter⁠—mere mockery. Mr. Marble peered at it, and swore. It was an ugly word he used, and Mrs. Marble drew her breath in sharply. But she still tried to make the peace.

“Never mind, Willie boy,” she said, “I couldn’t help it. You can get some more in the morning. Never mind, dear.”

They were the little pathetic words she used to use when John was a little boy, very near to her heart, and something had upset him. To Mrs. Marble’s mind the loss of his whisky must affect Mr. Marble in the same way as did a broken toy affect Baby John.

“Never mind, dear,” said Mrs. Marble, and she put out her hand to his forehead, just as she used to do.

But Mr. Marble only pushed her away pettishly, and growled out the ugly word he had used before. It was that that upset Mrs. Marble. She was used to his fits of temper⁠—she would not have loved him so dearly had he not had them, baby like⁠—but he had never sworn at her, never before. Still she made another effort, trying to get past his outstretched arm to touch his forehead and ruffle back the sparse hair in the way she loved doing.

“That wasn’t what I wanted to speak about, dear,” she said. “I wanted⁠—”

“I hope to God it wasn’t,” sneered Marble. “You would be a bigger fool than even I thought you were if you came in here just to upset my whisky.”

“Oh, Willie, Willie,” sobbed Mrs. Marble. She was crying now.

“Oh, Willie, Willie,” mocked Mr. Marble, his nerves fretted red raw.

“No, Willie, do listen. I wanted to tell you that I know about it, after all, and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter a bit, dear. It won’t alter me at all.”

She was able to say this long speech⁠—long for her, that is⁠—only through the inability of her husband to say or do anything. He had gripped the arms of the chair and was staring at her in terror. Then at last he spoke, or rather croaked. His throat was dry and his heart was pounding away in his breast like a steam engine.

“How⁠—how do you know?”

“I don’t know really, dear, I just guessed. But you don’t understand, dear. It doesn’t matter, that’s what I wanted to say.”

Marble laughed; it sounded horrible in the darkness.

“So you think it doesn’t matter? A lot you know.”

“No, dear, I don’t mean that. I mean it doesn’t matter my knowing. Oh, Willie dear⁠—”

But Marble was laughing again. It was a wild beast sound.

“If you could guess, half the world will guess tomorrow. Ah⁠—”

“Tomorrow? Don’t they know now?”

“Would I be here if they did, you fool?”

“No, dear. But I thought perhaps they suspected.”

“There’s nothing for them to suspect. They can only know.”

“But how can they know?”

“If young Medland⁠—”

“Medland? Oh, you mean that young nephew who came here. Did he help you? I’ve often wanted to ask you about him.”

Marble stared at her grey form in the twilight. He could not see her face, and he felt a horrid fear that either she was tempting him or else he had lost his unassailable position for a silly nothing. For a moment the first idea triumphed.

“You devil,” he said. “What are you doing? What are you asking me this for?”

His voice cracked with fear and passion. Mrs. Marble said nothing. She was too startled to utter a word. Mr. Marble stared at her unmoving figure, and for a moment a wild, ridiculous fear of the unknown overwhelmed him. Was it really his wife, or was it⁠—was it⁠—? Blind panic began to overmaster him. He struck out wildly at the brooding form. He felt a savage pleasure as his fist struck firm flesh, and he heard his wife give a startled cry. He struck again and again, heaving himself up out of his chair to do so. The little chair fell over, and the glass and the siphon broke into a thousand clattering fragments. His wife screamed faintly as he followed her across the room, hitting with puny savagery.

“Oh, Willie, Willie, don’t!”

Then chance directed a blow more accurately and Mrs. Marble fell dumbly to the ground.

Marble staggered, and clutched the back of a chair to steady himself. As his panic passed, he was only conscious of a dreadful weakness; and he could hardly stand, and he was dizzy with strain and with the pounding of his heart. There came a clattering outside the room, and then the door was flung open. The light from the hall lamp outside streamed in, revealing John standing by the door in his ragged nightclothes. His mother lay where she had fallen, close at his feet.

For a second father and son stared at each other. It was only for a second, but that was enough. At the end of it John knew that he hated his father; and his father knew that he hated his son. John opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. Then his mother at his feet sighed and stirred. Mr. Marble recovered himself with an effort⁠—oh, those efforts!

“Glad you came down, John,” he said. “Your mother’s had a⁠—bit of an accident. Help me upstairs with her.”

John said nothing, but he bent and put his arm under her shoulders, while Marble held her at her knees. Between them they dragged her upstairs. She was conscious and well enough to walk up herself by that time, but a frozen silence lay on all three of them, and none of them would break it. They laid her on the bed, and Mrs. Marble wailed and dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief which she still held clutched in her hand. John looked once more at his father, with a flash of hatred still in his eyes, and then he swung round and walked out of the room.

Perhaps even then all might have been well if Mr. Marble had bent over his wife and had asked her pardon, in the little soft voice that he had sometimes used, which Annie loved so well. Annie might have softened; with her arms about his neck she might have pulled him down to her, and her brokenhearted tears might have changed to tears of joy even at that late moment. But Mr. Marble did not do this. He was badly flustered and shaken; he stepped back from the bed and fidgeted round the room. When at last he came back to her Annie had her face buried in the pillow, and she shook off the hand he tentatively rested on her shoulder. Mr. Marble dallied for a moment, but before his mind’s eye rose a vision of a little drain of whisky left in the decanter downstairs. There was still a little left; he had seen it with his own eyes after Annie had picked up the decanter from where she had knocked it. And whisky at that moment was what Marble needed more than anything else in the world. He turned and tiptoed out of the room, downstairs to where the decanter was.

Late that night Mr. Marble still sat in the drawing-room; he had lighted the gas, because he did not like the darkness he had found down there. His hand gripped an empty glass, and his eyes stared across the room as he sat in the armchair, faintly visualizing the sequence of events his overactive mind was tracing out. Too little whisky and too much excitement had stimulated Mr. Marble’s brain to such an extent that he could not check his wild imagination at all. The consequences of the evening’s work were presented to him in every possible variation. At one second he seemed to feel the hands of the police on his shoulders; the next, and he could feel the hangman’s slimy fingers upon him as they writhed over him making all ready. More than once he started from his chair mouthing a stream of inarticulate entreaties. Each time he sank back with a sigh, only to be plunged immediately afterwards into some other horrible fantasy. He had cut the ground from under his feet; he had made the blunder that every murderer had to make. His secret was shared, and a secret shared was a secret divulged. That fool Annie would never bear the strain he felt so hard. She would let fall something and then⁠—the ghastly fancies recommenced. What Mr. Marble needed was whisky, quantities of it, so that he could drown all these maddening thoughts. But whisky was just what Mr. Marble could not have. Not all his twenty-seven thousand pounds, no, not all the wealth imaginable could buy whisky for Mr. Marble at that time. In London it might have done, but not in that quiet suburb, at one o’clock in the morning. Mr. Marble could only sit yammering in his chair, tormented to madness.