Restless Earth/Chapter 24

Patricia Weybourn sat up in bed and listened intently. She had not been sleeping well of late, and the faintest unusual sound disturbed her.

She heard a car stop outside the gate, the opening of a car door and its closing; and then—the voice of James Harley!

Her heart seemed to miss a beat. A feeling of panic seized her. She caught her breath sharply, clutched the sheet to her breast with a convulsive movement of fear, and felt the blood draining from her face, leaving it peculiarly cold.

​She had not expected Harley so soon. Nor had she expected him to arrive unannounced. She had hoped for time to depart before he came; and now———!

With a hurried movement she threw aside the clothes and sprang out of bed, her instinctive intention being to escape by the back door before Harley entered at the front.

Then she remembered his habit of entering by the back door. She paused, sitting on the edge of her bed, thinking furiously. If she went out by the front door he would see her as he came up the path. Better to wait until she knew by which door he would enter.

She had no time to dress.

Her kimono hung from the head of the bed. She found it in the darkness and donned it hastily. She dragged her suitcase from beneath the bed—the sole piece of luggage which she had brought back. It bumped against a leg of the bed noisily. She became still for a moment, then crossed the room and leaned over Grace, who was faintly discernible in the dim light from the open window.

Grace slept peacefully, one hand touching her bandaged face as though she were still conscious of pain.

Moving noiselessly and swiftly, Patricia gathered her belongings from the wardrobe and from the dressing-table, her fingers searching hurriedly that she might not miss anything. She bundled the things into the suitcase and closed it, trembling and unable to avoid making a loud click with the lock.

James Harley still talked at the gate. She heard him say good-bye.

Crossing again to Grace, she stooped swiftly and kissed the blind woman gently upon her scarred lips; then, picking up the suitcase, she hurried silently into the hall. Her hat and coat hung from hooks near the door. She found them and held them in her hand.

​Nothing else? She had everything? Yes.

She heard the car swing round the corner of the street and move away down the hill.

She stared at the faintly luminous leadlight in the door and listened intently for Harley’s approaching foot-steps.

They did not come.

For long minutes she waited, and the silence continued.

Then, faintly, as though it were opened by a stealthy hand, the click of the gate.

Silence.

Where was he? By which door would he enter? She had counted upon hearing his footsteps upon the path, but it seemed that he waited by the gate, or—or that he came stealthily.

Patricia’s heart beat faster and louder. It seemed to her that its beating echoed in the empty hall, that it must inevitably awaken Grace.

The sweat of growing fear moistened her hands and chilled her forehead.

Something malignant was abroad! She knew it! She could feel it! Feel it through the solid door!

A loose board thudded softly upon the verandah!

Harley was there. She could almost see him!

And yet, why should she fear———?

Not until this moment did she doubt that Harley had come in response to one or both of the two first telegrams, or the letter, in all of which it had been definitely stated that Grace lived and awaited him at home.

Like a blow in the face came the conviction that he had come in response to the wire she had sent only the previous morning. The others had missed him.

He had come back, not expecting to see his wife alive, but to see the woman who had sent his wife and child to their deaths. The ambiguity of the message—an ambiguity which had struck her as ​rather amusing after she had sent it—had deceived him.

He had come back to see her, Patricia, and he had not come with love!

She recalled the sentence in Buzzy’s recent letter which embodied the opinion of the friend who had seen Harley in Napier. “Tony says Jimmy went mad when he found the body of Joan and the other woman; and, ever since, he has been on the border-line, and any little thing might send him of the deep-end again. Don’t tell Grace that.”

Patricia knew, beyond doubt, that her crazily-worded telegram had sent him off the deep-end. By a tragic accident it had reached him before the others, and now he was outside the door, crouching like a wild animal, listening, waiting to enter the house and destroy the woman whom his mad brain conceived to be without a soul.

She fancied she heard him breathing!

For one moment she contemplated flight. The back door offered escape. Then she remembered Grace.

Harley might slay in the dark. He might kill Grace, believing it to be herself, Patricia.

A sudden courage came to her, a reckless disregard for the danger which threatened.

She threw her hat and coat aside, dropped her suitcase upon the carpet, switched on the light with her right hand and threw the door wide open with her left.

Harley stood upon the threshold, coatless, hatless, shoeless, his left hand raised stealthily to insert a key in the lock, his right hand holding the automatic before him threateningly.

Patricia did not ery out. She had known what to expect. The alteration in his appearance, due to grief and semi-starvation, alone shocked her.

“Come in,” she invited softly, stepping aside easily, as though the occasion were in no way extra-ordinary.

​James Harley blinked at her, his eyes unaccustomed to the light. He was dazed. Dazed by a vision he had not expected. His gaze wandered slowly from the glorious halo of her hair lit by the lamp behind her to the blue ribbon which depended from the breast of her silken pyjamas.

His mind played him a curious trick.

For a few moments the entire memory of the past month, its agony, its long nightmare, was blotted out. He was back again on the evening of the ’quake. They had had tea—fried chops and tomatoes, he remembered—he had read the paper, and now the hour was late. Pat had retired, and he, filled with an unexpected timidity, had slept on the hard settee by the breakfast-room window. Now Pat had come to see what had happened to him. She was standing in the doorway, calling to him invitingly———

“Come in,” she repeated.

“Not yet, Pat,” he answered. “I’m not quite so hardened———”

The peculiar expression on the girl’s face and the sound of his own voice awakened him. He shook his head, glanced hurriedly around and at the pistol in his hand, and he remembered.

He stepped over the threshold lightly. His eyes narrowed to slits. His hand held the pistol directed at Patricia’s heart. He closed the door with his heel and advanced menacingly, crouching horribly.

Patricia was deathly pale, but neither her voice nor her courage faltered.

“I don’t blame you,” she said, glancing at the threatening weapon, “considering what you think I am.”

She turned her back upon him and led the way into the breakfast-room, moving cautiously and signalling him to do likewise.

He did not understand her signal, but he followed her silently, intent only upon meting out “justice.”

How like a snake she was! How sinuous were her movements, emphasised by the sheen and peculiar ​pattern of her kimono! Beautiful, yes. But deadly. Deadly!

He lifted his head and sniffed like an animal as he entered the breakfast-room. Even the fragrance of her was alluring, poisonously alluring!

He closed the door and approached her where she stood beneath the light.

“Well?” he asked softly. “You know why I am here?”

Patricia nodded. She looked at him fearlessly, and with a great pity. The alteration in him was tragic. His eyes, though they glittered with a mad light, seemed strangely vacant. His unshaven cheeks, lined and sunken, quivered as though his nervous system were utterly smashed.

“I know,” she answered softly.

“And you are not afraid?”

“No.”

He shook his head in a puzzled manner. He had not expected this attitude in her.

“Why? Why are you not afraid?”

“Because you will not kill me, Jimmy.”

He laughed silently, a horrible laugh which shook him to his heels.

“No? I will not kill you?” he mocked.

She looked at him calmly. He became savage.

“You think I will hesitate to kill you? Hesitate to kill the thing which has smashed my life?”

She did not flinch. Instead, she smiled at him pityingly.

“You will not kill me, for your own sake, Jimmy.”

“For my own sake?” snarled Harley, advancing a step uatil the muzzle of the pistol was thrust against the girl’s heart. “Do you think I care what becomes of me when you are dead? You, who have robbed me of my reason, poisoned my brain, so that even now I want to take you in my arms! In my arms and crush you—like the deadly thing you are! The Devil gave you beauty and took away your heart! You laugh at the men who grovel before you!” he con​tinued as Patricia’s smile of pity remained. “You suck them dry, and you laugh, you harlot! You laugh! You call them from the graves of their dead hopes and they come, the fools! They crawl to you, pleading for pity, and you stamp their faces in the dust! Well, here am I in answer to your call—but I do not crawl. I walk upright like a man again! And, like a man, I have come to destroy that which would destroy me!”

Throughout the tirade, which commenced on a low note and ended in something very near a scream, Patricia did not move. Althcugh the muzzle of the pistol bruised her flesh as Harley emphasised his periods with vicious prods, she had not flinch. Instead of being crushed by the violent condemnation, she experienced a curious exaltation. As Harley proceeded and his voice became shriller and more passionate, her colour rose until she seemed to blush, her eyes sparkled with a knowledge of triumph, her beauty flamed.

In this supreme moment of per11 and sacrifice, she knew that Harley loved her, that he would love her until the end, no matter What might be the outcome of this meeting. She knew that a touch of her hand, a word, would send him to his knees in tears begging for her love and her forgiveness.

It was not the real James Harley who threatened her. It was convention, the narrow conscience of a Christian civilisation which makes hypocrites of men. Harley himself, the primal man, stripped of the veneer of modermty, worshipped her still. His idolatry was in his eyes, in his words, in the violent movements of his arms which ached to hold and crush her.

Just one look, one word, and he would be upon his knees.

For a pregnant second she toyed with the idea, as they stood facing each other, tense, silent. Then she laughed, harshly, mockingly.

​“Yes,” she agreed, “you behave like a man. You see with one eye and reason with but half of your mind. The evil you see is not all in me, James Harley. Not all of it. Why do you think that I want you to grovel? Do you think I still want you? My dear man!”

She laughed again, throwing back her head and revealing her glorious white throat. Then she became serious.

“Pull yourself together, Jimmy,” she begged, putting out her hands to deflect the pistol. “This is———”

Harley brought the heavy barrel of the pistol down upon her knuckles viciously, so that her skin was broken and the blood flowed. She drew a sharp breath, but did not cry out.

The new colour drained from her face and her knees shook as Harley thrust the muzzle of the pistol against her heart.

“Talk!” he hissed. “Talk as long as you can; but you will be better occupied talking to your God—if you have one—than to me. Talk!”

Unmistakable death leapt from his eyes. His expression was maniacal, for he knew, as the woman knew, that he loved her and must always love her; that he was fighting a terrible battle which could only end in defeat of his conscience if he hesitated to strike.

Patricia knew that he meant to kill.

For herself death did not matter, but in killing her he would destroy himself and Grace.

“Jimmy!” she screamed desperately. “Don’t! For God’s sake! Jimmy!”

Harley snarled savagely. His finger jerked the trigger.

“For Grace!” he muttered between clenched teeth.

There was no explosion.

Harley pulled the trigger savagely, once, twice, three times. The weapon was dead.

​Patricia sighed, closed her eyes, and sank limply to the floor.

Harley stared at the weapon stupidly, pulling the trigger many times. Then he swore, and worked the safety catch furiously. Finding that ineffectual, he snapped out the cartridge-clip.

The weapon was not loaded. It had not been loaded since 1917!

With a violent movement Harley threw the weapon and the clip through the window-pane. The crash of breaking glass sounded startlingly loud in the stillness of the night.

He stooped over the crouching woman upon the floor, his long, thin hands reaching for her throat.

“Don’t, Jimmy!” she cried feebly. “You don’t know what you’re doing! Jimmy!”

“Talk, you snake! Talk!”

He held her close, glaring into her wide, frightened eyes. He shook her fiercely; then threw her violently across the room. She struck a corner of the table and slid to the floor in a heap.

Harley crossed to her with slow, menacing strides. The blood lust was on him. He was a wild beast, stalking to kill.

“Get up!” he snarled. “Get up and talk!”

Patricia moved her head from side to side helplessly. She was in pain, and unable to raise her head.

Harley looked at the back of her neck, so white, so inviting. One good blow upon her spine with something heavy———

He looked around the room quickly. The pseudo-antique poker which hung from an ornamental stand upon the hearth appeared to be made for the work. He stole across the room and secured it. He weighed it in his hand, and turned.

“Jimmy! Is that you?”

Harley stiffened, the poker half-upraised, poised upon his toes. Someone had spoken. Or did his brain play him tricks again?

​He waited, turning his head slowly towards the door.

“Jimmy!”

There! Again!

An expression of incredulity crept into his eyes. He could almost imagine that his dead wife had spoken.

“Jimmy! Is that you?”

He stood as though turned to stone. A terrible fear took possession of him. He heard the voice of the dead! He was mad! There was no longer any doubt.

Patricia moaned, trying to speak. He gave no heed to her.

“Jimmy!”

“Yes?” he whispered shakily, lifting his eyes and looking into space.

There was silence.

“Yes?” he shouted fiercely, as though he defied his reason to collapse.

“Jimmy!”

The voice was unmistakable now. It rang with happiness and tears. He heard the sound of someone rising from a bed.

The fury drained from him. The poker clattered upon the floor. He stared from side to side quickly, panic fastening upon him. He stared at Patricia, horrified that he had felled her. She was struggling to lift her face to him. She supported herself upon her knees with her hands flat upon the floor. She was gasping with pain.

“What is that?” he whispered, pointing to the door with shaking hand. “What is it?”

“Go to her!” Patricia gasped. “Go to her! Don’t let her wander in the dark!”

Harley looked at the door, and listened to the sound of bare feet approaching it across the hall.

He straightened and backed away towards the window.

​“Who is it?” he called, his voice shaking like that of a frightened child.

The door opened slowly.

Grace, clad only in a night-gown, her hair held back by the wide bandage which concealed the upper half of her face, stood in the doorway holding out to him bare, appealing arms.

Harley’s jaw dropped. He rapped his knuckles sharply upon the window ledge to assure himself that he did not dream.

“Grace!” he ejaculated, unable to believe his eyes.

“Jimmy!”

The blind woman crossed the room as though she saw, and Patricia rolled from her path with difficulty as she passed the table. She walked unhesitatingly to where her husband stood in helpless amazement; then her arms moved uncertainly.

“Jimmy, where are you? I can’t see you. I’m blind.”

For another moment Harley stood petrified; then understanding came to him. This was his happiness to which he was bidden to come!

With a swift movement he gathered the blind woman into his thin arms. His gaunt, unshaven cheek caressed her hair, and he sobbed.

“Grace! Oh, my dear!”

Patricia lay still and silent beneath the table. Her cup of sacrifice was full, and running over.

****

Roy, the taxi-driver, in his place of concealment just outside the wmdow, relaxed with a sigh of relief. He had been in the very act of poising himself preparatory to springing through the broken window when Grace had spoken and Harley had paused in his murderous action.

He had not exactly relished the idea of braving splintered glass.

“Cats!” he chuckled, as he crept away on hands and knees in search of the pistol and clip. “Cats is right! Nine lives!”

​He searched in silence, and presently found his souvenir. He sat upon the wet grass and slapped the clip home with a petulant blow of his palm.

“Some people have all the luck.” he said plaintively. “Cats take to ’em naturally.”

****