“Then you’ll come down, sir?”
“Yes.”
The door closed, and he heard her heavy heels along
the passage.
“But the money—where’s the
money to come from?” The question sprang out
from some denser fold of the fog in his brain.
The money—how on earth was he to pay it
back? How could he have wasted his time in thinking
of anything else while that central difficulty existed?
“But I can’t ... I can’t ...
it’s gone ... and even if it weren’t....”
He dropped back in his chair and took his head between
his hands. He had forgotten what he wanted the
money for. He made a great effort to regain hold
of the idea, but all the whirring, shuttling, flying
had abruptly ceased in his brain, and he sat with
his eyes shut, staring straight into darkness....
The clock struck, and he remembered that he had said
he would go down to the dining-room. “If
I don’t she’ll come up—”
He raised his head and sat listening for the sound
of the old woman’s step: it seemed to him
perfectly intolerable that any one should cross the
threshold of the room again.
“Why can’t they leave me alone?”
he groaned.... At length through the silence
of the empty house, he fancied he heard a door opening
and closing far below; and he said to himself:
“She’s coming.”
He got to his feet and went to the door. He didn’t
feel anything now except the insane dread of hearing
the woman’s steps come nearer. He bolted
the door and stood looking about the room. For
a moment he was conscious of seeing it in every detail
with a distinctness he had never before known; then
everything in it vanished but the single narrow panel
of a drawer under one of the bookcases. He went
up to the drawer, knelt down and slipped his hand
into it.
As he raised himself he listened again, and this time
he distinctly heard the old servant’s steps
on the stairs. He passed his left hand over the
side of his head, and down the curve of the skull behind
the ear. He said to himself: “My wife
... this will make it all right for her....”
and a last flash of irony twitched through him.
Then he felt again, more deliberately, for the spot
he wanted, and put the muzzle of his revolver against
it.
In a drawing-room hung with portraits of high-nosed
personages in perukes and orders, a circle of ladies
and gentlemen, looking not unlike every-day versions
of the official figures above their heads, sat examining
with friendly interest a little boy in mourning.
The boy was slim, fair and shy, and his small black
figure, islanded in the middle of the wide lustrous
floor, looked curiously lonely and remote. This
effect of remoteness seemed to strike his mother as
something intentional, and almost naughty, for after
having launched him from the door, and waited to judge
of the impression he produced, she came forward and,
giving him a slight push, said impatiently: “Paul!
Why don’t you go and kiss your new granny?”
