Restless Earth/Chapter 4

On the following morning he had lain abed, afraid.

He had heard Grace rise and go out to the kitchenette, observing the morning routine as though nothing were altered. He had heard the familiar clatter of cooking utensils and the sizzling of the breakfast bacon, and a momentary hope had been born in him that she had found an excuse for his tardy return—the possible missing of the last tramcar to town and ​the necessity for him to have seen Patricia home. Then he remembered that he was self-condemned by his action of sleeping apart.

There had come the sound of pattering, exploring footsteps; his door had been pushed open cautiously, and little Joan had stood upon the threshold regarding him with grave concern.

“Hello, Daddy! What are you doing in here all by yourself? Are you sick?”

“Not very well, Joan,” he had lied, failing to achieve a smile. “Daddy has a bad headache. Must sleep it off.”

Joan had edged into the room sympathetically.

“Does Mummy know?”

“I think so, dear.”

At that moment he had heard Grace’s footsteps in the passage.

“Go away, Joan,” he had commanded harshly, in an effort to stem his panic. “And shut the door.”

Before the child could recover from her hurt astonishment at his sudden anger, Grace had entered the room quietly, smiling at the child as lovingly as ever. She had run her fingers through Joan’s) hair and had stooped to kiss her.

“Run along now, dear,” she had said. “Go and dress. I want to talk with daddy.”

His heart had shrunk at the final words and he had kept his gaze upon the embroidered apron which Grace wore, not daring to look into her face. When she had closed the door upon the child Grace stood with her back to it gazing inscrutably at him for interminable seconds; then she had crossed the room slowly and sat upon his bed. He had drawn up his knees that he might not be guilty of touching her. His gaze remained fixed and he looked at the lower panels of the door, fearfully apprehensive of her first words.

“Jimmy,” she had said, sitting with her hands folded in her lap, “have you anything to tell me?”

​The words, uttered softly and gently, had surprised him. He had expected condemnation unheard; and that Grace had failed to be so unjust roused a curious resentment in him.

“What do you expect me to tell you?” he had countered sullenly.

“That which you think I should be told, Jimmy.”

There had been silence in the room then for a long time. He had lain still, staring unseeingly at the door panels, flushing hotly under his wife’s steady gaze.

“Nothing, Jimmy?” she had pleaded softly.

He had remained silent, sullen.

At last Grace had risen suddenly, lifting her shoulders and spreading her hands in a pitiful gesture of resignation as she had crossed to the door again. She turned upon the threshold and he had looked up into her eyes for the first time. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her gaze steady and resolute. She had fought her battle in the lonely night and her soft mouth had firmed in defeat.

“Breakfast will be ready in five minutes,” she had said in the same quiet tone. “Please do not get up. I will bring yours here. I am lunching with Mrs. Warden to-day, so perhaps you had better lunch in town; unless you would prefer that I leave something in the oven for you. I doubt if I shall be home before five. I have some shopping to do this afternoon, and I have to arrange for a carter. It may be as well if I get the tickets to-day, too. It will save a rush in the morning.”

He had risen upon his elbow at that.

“Tickets? What tickets?”

“Our rail tickets—mine and Joan’s. We are leaving by the mail for Wanganui to-morrow. I planned our—our holiday during the night. A fortnight in Wanganui, then a fortnight in Napier, and after that I—I suppose it doesn’t matter where we go. Joan will be of school age next year, and I may as well see as much of the country as possible before then.”

​She had spoken in a curiously flat, lifeless tone, without hesitation, as though she had learned the words by rote; but there had been that in her voice which told him that she had made her unalterable decision, that she was convinced of his guilt.

Resentment had surged in him, a resentment which he had striven to justify by the thought that he had unnecessarily sent Patricia from him for a month—a month of love probation.

“Do you realise what you are saying, Grace?” he had asked sharply, sitting up in bed and clasping his knees.

“Perfectly.”

“And what if I forbid you to go?”

“It will make no atom of difference, Jimmy.”

Her lifeless tone had given place to a rising passion; her eyes had glistened with brimming tears.

“We can’t go on living as we have been living lately, Jimmy. We can’t! We can’t! Don’t let us argue about it. I am going away. It is the only thing I can do for the sake of your happiness—and for mine. I have been a fool. I have thought you stronger than you are. I have been conceited enough to think that I held all the love of which you were capable. I have allowed you to run into temptation, believing that Pat remembered our old friendship and would respect my happiness———”

“She has remembered it, Grace. We shall see her no more for a month———”

“Am I to suffer another month such as this last, Jimmy? We? I shall never see her again! I am going away. What is a month, a year, of separation to either of you now? What is it but a period of mad longing which will make your inevitable reunion an event which will destroy all remembrance of our happiness together—an event which will make of me a cast-off mistress?”

“Grace!” he had protested vehemently, shocked to realise that the truth of her words at once exalted and shamed him.

​“You know it is true! I know it is true! And so I am going away now, Jimmy, while you can still remember that you have loved me—and before your coldness turns my heart to ice.”

He had been about to speak and she had read his words before he could utter them.

“Don’t lie to me!” she had cried fiercely. “Don’t! You have lied enough to yourself for months—don’t lie to me! You want Pat—you don’t want me! And it’s my fault! My fault! I did wrong to expose you to the gaze of a natural man-hunter. I should have killed her rather than kill you. For that’s what I’ve done! Killed you! You wrote of passionate love when you knew nothing of it—now you will be ashamed to write of it. It—it’s beastly!”

At the last bitter words she had fled from the room, leaving him sitting there staring at the door-panels, his thoughts whirling around one heavy immovable emotion—a vast self-pity.

A few minutes later she returned, bearing his breakfast tray, and had found him lying down with the sheet drawn over his head. She had regained command of herself; and, after placing the tray on a chair at his bedside, had leaned over the bed to place a gentle, pitying hand upon his head.

“Jimmy,” she had said softly, “always remember that I don’t blame you. You are caught in the torrent of which you have written so often but of whose strength you have actually known nothing. You have struggled, and are struggling, against it to the best of your ability; but you are not a god that you may order the elements.”

The yearning compassion in her voice had caused him to bury his head a little deeper in the pillow. Her hand had moved upon his hair as lightly as a fallen leaf moved by a zephyr.

“You want to do right, Jimmy—to behave towards me as you have promised before God to behave. That is the civilised conscience in you. You crave for Pat, and dare not contemplate life apart from ​her. That is the god in you, the driving force of your man’s nature. I am, as you have so often told me, such a little bit of a woman. I am no fitting mate for a man fashioned like an epic hero. I understand—fully. I captured you before you had grown to a knowledge of yourself, and I have been foolish to think that I could hold you captive indefinitely with—with Joan. This thing had to be. But I want you to remember this, also, Jimmy—I want you as you want Pat. I have always wanted you that way—I will aways want you that way. Oh, Jimmy—I’ll always want you any way! Always, Jimmy, no matter what happens! Always!”

The last words had been a tremulous whisper, and he could not have replied then, for his throat had been full.

The silence which followed had been long and oppressive, and her hand had moved upon his hair in a continuous caress. Then she had risen swiftly and had left the room, turning in the doorway to say, in matter-of-fact tones,

“You had better eat your breakfast before it is cold, Jimmy. Whatever else you do, my dear, don’t starve yourself.”

He had heard the door close, and had felt an urge to spring from the bed and beg Grace’s forgiveness on his knees; to tell her that he had never ceased to love her; that his passion for Pat was but a transient blindness. Instead of obeying the urge, he had merely moved his head a little, because the pillow beneath his face had become uncomfortably damp, and had sniffed like a chastised schoolboy. The feeling of injustice had completely evaporated and he had seen himself as an abject, traitorous hound, unworthy even of pity.

It had been afternoon when he had risen, and he had left the house without thought of the breakfast tray, nor, indeed, of food in any form. He had made his way in self-abasement to the beach by an un ​accustomed route, lest he should meet Grace returning from town.

Unshaven; hungry and unconscious of the fact, he had paced the deserted beach beyond Fitzroy until darkness fell, his thoughts jumbled, his mind a misery. He had spent the whole night among the sandhills—sandhills which had become transformed from the setting of a scented dream into the trappings of a nightmare within a short twenty-four hours—sheltering himself from the chill westerly wind more by instinct than from conscious discomfort. The roar of the surf had supplied the uniform bass upon which he had built shrieking discords of unhappy thoughts. He had thrown himself down on the sand; he had risen; he had walked aimlessly all through that night; and when the south-bound mail train had thundered over the Te Henui viaduct in the morning he had regained enough of his sanity to recognise himself as the prince of all fools, and to tell himself as much in a loud voice.

He had returned home an hour later to find the place spotless. The beds had been made with fresh linen, the windows had been open, there had been no soiled dishes in the sink, everything had been in its place—the perfect setting for the perfect housewife. He had found the table in the kitchenette laid for his breakfast, and propped against the toast-rack he had found a note from Grace:

​The note had broken him utterly. Worn out with two sleepless nights, a conscience that raked him with barbs, and a sense of abject shame that he had allowed the faithful wife and lover of years to go out of his life without a word of farewell, he had sprawled upon the table and wept.

Had there been a revolver ready to his hand he would have shot himself; but he had not then, or later, reached to such a depth that any less sudden method of self-destruction appealed to him.

When the noon whistles had sounded in the town he had roused himself sufficiently to offer a fervent prayer to his nebulous God for the happiness of Grace and Joan, and to stoop to stroke Ginger who rubbed against his leg and miaowed for food.

The blue cod had been quite cold when he had taken it from the oven.

****

And this was the end of it.

After weeks of loneliness, weeks of mental torture, weeks spent in weighing Grace’s wifely virtues against the primordial attraction of Patricia Weybourn—an operation in which it shamed him to realise that little Joan added not a pennyweight to disturb the scales in favour of his remembrance of his nuptial promises—weeks in which literary labour and sleep had alike been almost impossible, he had made his decision.

He had chosen ‘the other woman,’ and the knowledge increased his wretchedness.

What had happened to his old love for Joan during this emotional upheaval? According to the rules governing these affairs, rules to which he had slavishly subsecribed in his stories, the parents’ mutual love of their children was a dispensation of Heaven to seal the bonds forged at the altar. What had happened?

He was actually relieved to be rid of the child. Could it be that, after all, men were but mating animals, and, like the animals, easily forgetful of their ​progeny? Was this passion for Patricia but a transient mating call? He could not believe it. It was too terrific to be that. It was the attraction of like to like, the hand of the Creator repairing His shattered handiwork, the adjusting of an eternal pattern of perfection.

His marriage with Grace had been a mistake. She had, indeed, caught him before his eyes had been fully open. She had but herself to blame———

Oh, hell! Where was the sense in seeking justification for the mistakes of a power beyond mortal control?

The letter was posted. The thing was settled. Let the world say he had chosen wrongly—what did it matter? What comprised his world, after all? A thin circle of friends, consciously righteous, and a handful of editors who would shake their heads at his ‘folly’ and welcome the publicity. What did he care for it?

Nothing.

Pat was his Heaven. He was going to her. The world could go to perdition for all he cared.