I came to the verge of taking my leave "You needn't go yet," said Beatrice, abruptly.
She walked across to the piano, took a pile of music from the cabinet near, surveyed Lady Osprey's back, and with a gesture to me dropped it all deliberately on to the floor.
"Must talk," she said, kneeling close to me as I helped her to pick it up. "Turn my pages. At the piano."
"I can't read music."
"Turn my pages."
Presently we were at the piano, and Beatrice was playing with noisy inaccuracy. She glanced over her shoulder and Lady Osprey had resumed her patience. The old lady was very pink, and appeared to be absorbed in some attempt to cheat herself without our observing it.
"Isn't West Africa a vile climate?" "Are you going to live there?" "Why are you going?"
Beatrice asked these questions in a low voice and gave me no chance to answer. Then taking a rhythm from the music before her, she said--"At the back of the house is a garden--a door in the wall--on the lane. Understand?"
I turned over the pages without any effect on her playing.
"When?" I asked.
She dealt in chords. "I wish I COULD play this!" she said.
"Midnight."
She gave her attention to the music for a time.
"You may have to wait."
"I'll wait."
She brought her playing to an end by--as school boys say--"stashing it up."
"I can't play to-night," she said, standing up and meeting my eyes. "I wanted to give you a parting voluntary."
"Was that Wagner, Beatrice?" asked Lady Osprey looking up from her cards. "It sounded very confused."
I took my leave. I had a curious twinge of conscience as I parted from Lady Osprey. Either a first intimation of middle-age or my inexperience in romantic affairs was to blame, but I felt a very distinct objection to the prospect of invading this good lady's premises from the garden door. I motored up to the pavilion, found Cothope reading in bed, told him for the first time of West Africa, spent an hour with him in settling all the outstanding details of Lord Roberts B, and left that in his hands to finish against my return. I sent the motor back to Lady Grove, and still wearing my fur coat--for the January night was damp and bitterly cold--walked to Bedley Corner. I found the lane to the back of the Dower House without any difficulty, and was at the door in the wall with ten minutes to spare. I lit a cigar and fell to walking up and down. This queer flavour of intrigue, this nocturnal garden-door business, had taken me by surprise and changed my mental altitudes. I was startled out of my egotistical pose and thinking intently of Beatrice, of that elfin quality in her that always pleased me, that always took me by surprise, that had made her for example so instantly conceive this meeting.
She came within a minute of midnight; the door opened softly and she appeared, a short, grey figure in a motor-coat of sheepskin, bareheaded to the cold drizzle. She flitted up to me, and her eyes were shadows in her dusky face.
"Why are you going to West Africa?" she asked at once.
"Business crisis. I have to go."
"You're not going--? You're coming back?"
"Three or four months," I said, "at most."
"Then, it's nothing to do with me?"
"Nothing," I said. "Why should it have?"
"Oh, that's all right. One never knows what people think or what people fancy." She took me by the arm, "Let's go for a walk," she said.
I looked about me at darkness and rain.
"That's all right," she laughed. "We can go along the lane and into the Old Woking Road. Do you mind? Of course you don't. My head. It doesn't matter. One never meets anybody."
"How do you know?"
"I've wandered like this before.... Of course. Did you think"--she nodded her head back at her home--"that's all?"
"No, by Jove!" I cried; "it's manifest it isn't."
She took my arm and turned me down the lane. "Night's my time," she said by my side. "There's a touch of the werewolf in my blood. One never knows in these old families.... I've wondered often.... Here we are, anyhow, alone in the world. Just darkness and cold and a sky of clouds and wet. And we--together.
I like the wet on my face and hair, don't you? When do you sail?"
I told her to-morrow.
"Oh, well, there's no to-morrow now. You and I!" She stopped and confronted me.
"You don't say a word except to answer!"
"No," I said.
"Last time you did all the talking."
"Like a fool. Now--"
We looked at each other's two dim faces. "You're glad to be here?"
"I'm glad--I'm beginning to be--it's more than glad."
She put her hands on my shoulders and drew me down to kiss her.
"Ah!" she said, and for a moment or so we just clung to one another.
"That's all," she said, releasing herself. "What bundles of clothes we are to-night. I felt we should kiss some day again.
Always. The last time was ages ago."
"Among the fern stalks."
"Among the bracken. You remember. And your lips were cold.
Were mine? The same lips--after so long--after so much!... And now let's trudge through this blotted-out world together for a time. Yes, let me take your arm. Just trudge. See? Hold tight to me because I know the way--and don't talk--don't talk. Unless you want to talk.... Let me tell you things! You see, dear, the whole world is blotted out--it's dead and gone, and we're in this place. This dark wild place.... We're dead. Or all the world is dead. No! We're dead. No one can see us. We're shadows.
We've got out of our positions, out of our bodies--and together.
That's the good thing of it--together. But that's why the world can't see us and why we hardly see the world. Sssh! Is it all right?"
"It's all right," I said.
We stumbled along for a time in a close silence. We passed a dim-lit, rain-veiled window.
"The silly world," she said, "the silly world! It eats and sleeps. If the wet didn't patter so from the trees we'd hear it snoring. It's dreaming such stupid things--stupid judgments. It doesn't know we are passing, we two--free of it--clear of it.
You and I!"
We pressed against each other reassuringly.
"I'm glad we're dead," she whispered. "I'm glad we're dead. I was tired of it, dear. I was so tired of it, dear, and so entangled."
She stopped abruptly.
