The Man Within · Part II · Chapter 7 (2/2)

Andrews watched his small trim figure in its dark clothes move down the passage, turn a corner and vanish from sight. “Tomorrow we face the guns.” He had not expected to be called upon so soon. Panic buffeted against his resignation to fate. I could slip out of the hotel tonight, he thought. But what then? An endless repetition of last week. And if he stayed? Danger will at least be plain and in front of me, he considered, fear nevertheless catching at his throat. His mouth and lips were dry. It would be easier to decide what he should do over a glass. He moved to the stairhead and became aware of a candle flame moving up towards him. But it was not the flame itself he saw but its reflection in the large mirror at the sharp turn of the stairs below him. The candle passed and he became aware of Sir Henry’s companion visaged in the glass. Her body was indistinct, owing to the dark blue velvet of her dress which fell almost to her small feet and then trained off into the darkness behind. The white face with its red, vivid lips stared back at itself with an expression of anxiety. The candle was lowered a little way in a long gloved hand and shone on lovely, exquisitely sloping shoulders and the fall of the young breasts. The face leant forward and stared cautiously from the mirror at the invisible reality before it. So close must the girl have been, although hidden from Andrews’s eyes by the turn of the stairs, that a mist from her breath marred the image. A hand appeared and brushed it away, with a cautious secretive movement. Andrews stepped down the stairs, and the image, startled, moved back out of the mirror, but round the corner he came on the living person.

“Looking at yourself?” he said with a forced, embarrassed laugh.

“To see whether I am beautiful,” she answered challengingly.

“You needn’t do that,” he said.

“Are you a judge?” she asked.

“I’ve known a lot of women,” Andrews said boastfully, “but none as lovely as you⁠—in face,” he added with a sudden sense of loyalty to Elizabeth.

“Or in body?” she said, flashing the candle from her head to feet.

“Nor in body,” he repeated reluctantly.

“But then you are so young,” she came a little nearer to him. “An older man would not think so.”

Andrews thought of the man working, working, working above his head. “Are you in love with that old man?” he asked.

She leant against the baluster. “How do I know?” she murmured. “He’s been kind to me. I’ve been with him for three years. But he’s getting more and more tied up in his work. He’ll turn me off soon, I expect. No, I’m not in love with him, but after three years one has a sort of fondness for a man.”

“It must be a dull life for you,” Andrews said.

“You mean,” she laughed, “that you want to make love to me.” She looked him up and down between narrowed lids. “It would be dull if I troubled to be faithful. You are staying in the hotel, aren’t you? We must really find you some clean clothes.”

Andrews shifted his gaze a little. “I shouldn’t trouble,” he said and began to move down the stairs. She watched him closely and shrewdly and then barred his passage. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“Only to have a drink.”

“And aren’t you enough of a gentleman to ask me to join you?” Her voice was mocking with an aftertaste of suspicion. “All right. Come along,” he said. He did not look at her as they descended the stairs, but told himself over and over again that his position was too serious to think about “fun,” that he must come to his decision to go or stay uninfluenced by the restless prick of desire which grew on him at every step.

She led him into a room where a fire still sent out desultory tongues of flame at lengthening intervals. It was empty. All the other visitors had gone to their rooms. She rang for a waiter and gave an order and he returned with a glass of port and a glass of whisky.

Andrews watched her as she sipped the port. “Your lips are the lovelier colour,” he said.

“Pretty,” she laughed, and turning to the fire stirred it with her foot so that shadows were driven into life and danced across her face. “Tell me, why did you betray those men?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” he said with conviction. “It was jealousy of a dead man and because I was despised by them.”

“It doesn’t sound sense to me,” she said, “but I suppose you got something out of it.”

“Fear.”

“Is that all? I’d have made certain of something more. And Henry’s putting you into the witness box tomorrow? I shall come and see. You mustn’t be as reticent as you are with me.” She looked at him more closely. “You are going aren’t you?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said abstractedly. She stepped back from the fire, glass in hand, to his side, so that his leg felt the shape and touch of her thigh beneath the velvet. His reason gave way beneath a sudden access of desire. He took her in his arms and kissed her lips and throat and breast, and as she remained unresisting with the passivity of the women whom he had met in common bars, his own desire grew, his hands strayed about her, till finally he stepped aside panting and halfway to tears.

“You are a funny boy,” was all she said.

He damned himself for a swine as he thought of Elizabeth. But that was all over and why should he not have fun where he found it? That other air is too rarefied for me, he thought. Let me stick in my own sty.

“I want you,” he said aloud.

She leant a little towards him. “And you expect me to fall into your bed at your wish?” she asked. “You’d be a funny choice for me, wouldn’t you? A penniless smuggler, who’s betrayed his fellows. And a mere boy.” She smiled. “That’s the one attraction,” she murmured, with an appraising glance. “You have a cool impertinence. I feel half inclined⁠—It must be this damned spring weather beginning.” She came close to him and suddenly pressed her lips on his mouth. They tasted sweet with port. “How he bores me with his work,” she said. “When all’s said there’s only one amusement while one’s young.”

Andrews’s lips and mouth felt dry with excitement. “Can I come up with you?” he asked.

She pouted her lips. “No, not tonight, I’m sleepy. Not inclined.”

Desire and caution could not live at one time in Andrews’s brain. “You won’t see me again,” he said.

She laughed at him. “Do you think that I mind? One doesn’t discriminate in spring. It would be fun to hook Mr. Farne. Do you think that these sober churchgoing people behave like everyone else? But I doubt if the trial will be over tomorrow.”

“I’ll be gone tomorrow,” he said.

She looked up in quick suspicion. “You mean you are running away?” she asked.

“Why should I stay? It only means danger for me.”

“But Henry?”

“What on earth is he to me?”

She watched him thoughtfully. “He’s set his heart on winning this case,” she said.

“Is that where his heart is?”

“Oh, I may hate him for it,” she exclaimed, “but it’s great anyway. I shall be leaving him soon. I want excitement. I shall grow old too quickly with him or else he’ll find me out. But I’d like him to win this case. He has worked so hard for it.”

“Well, let him win it without me.”

“Listen,” she stood in front of him with small chin raised challengingly in the air, “you can have me⁠—tomorrow night, if you’ll pay for me. And the payment I want is your evidence for Henry. You can boast afterwards that you’ve got me at a cheaper rate than any other man has done.”

“Too high,” he said.

“How can you tell?” she answered. “Give me your hand. Now feel here and here and here. Now give me your mouth. Can you feel me here close to you? That is right. Hold me so. You may have me closer than this if you will. You know I am young⁠—as young as you are. Don’t you think it would be worth a little danger?”

“Tonight, tonight,” he implored.

“No, not tonight. Tomorrow night or never at all. What a trifling danger. This is England, a civilised country. The danger is worse for me. Suppose Henry should find us like this⁠—or tomorrow night. How would he find us then? He will be working late. You may come to my room. They have given me a fine, soft bed. You are so young, I am sure that there are still things that I can show you. It will be fun. I shall enjoy myself.”

“Tonight. I can’t wait.”

She released herself and stood away watching him with a cool, amused glance. “Never unless you do what I say,” she said. “Think of that never. Will you ever have such a rich chance again? I don’t know why I’m offering it to you. I suppose it is pity for Henry and this spring weather. You are a likelier man than anyone else I’ve seen in this hotel.”

He watched her closely. Never before had he desired a woman so much⁠—no, not Elizabeth. There was a kind of mystery in Elizabeth, a kind of sanctity which blurred and obscured his desire with love. Here was no love and no reverence. The animal in him could ponder her beauty crudely and lustfully, as it had pondered the charms of common harlots, but with the added spice of a reciprocated desire. It is true, he thought, what danger can there be? This is a civilised land. I will go to London and I shall not be lonely without Elizabeth for I shall have many other such adventures as this.

“Do you agree?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “And you⁠—it shall be tomorrow night?”

“Unless the court sits too late. Nothing will make me stay awake for you.” She yawned. “How naughty of me it is. Henry would be furious with me,” she murmured with a smile of very faint amusement. “But I am so deathly bored. It is a mistake to live with a man for three years. He almost regards me as his wife, is virtuous with me, continent. I can’t bear that. Good night.” She held out her hand, but he ignored it. “I have bought her,” he thought, “why should I be polite? I have touched a better hand.”

“Good night,” he said.

She shrugged her shoulders, grimaced at him and passed through the door. Shadows swept round her, drowned her dress and body in darkness, so that for a brief moment her white face alone was visible and seemed to be floating disembodied in the dark. Then that too vanished and he heard the stairs creak under her running footsteps.

“Tomorrow we face the guns.” He was doing for a wrong reason what he had refused to do for a right. He had turned a deaf ear to what his heart, supported by the critic within, had asked of him, but he had capitulated at the first hungry wail his dirty, lusting body had uttered. His body had feared death and shrunk from danger. “If you had conquered that fear,” the reproachful critic murmured, “when Elizabeth spoke, I would have upheld you. Now your body has chosen and your body shall stand alone.”