“Fact is, my dear, I can’t take you where I live. I share the room
with a friend.”
He was somewhat dismayed himself. In the morning the blessed `tecs
will be out in all the stations, no doubt. And if they once got
hold of her, for one reason or another she would be lost to him
indeed.
“But you must. Don’t you care for me at all – at all? What are
you thinking of?”
She said this violently, but she let her clasped hands fall in
discouragement. There was a silence, while the mist fell, and
darkness reigned undisturbed over Brett Place. Not a soul, not
even the vagabond, lawless, and amorous soul of a cat, came near
the man and the woman facing each other.
“It would be possible perhaps to find a safe lodging somewhere,”
Ossipon spoke at last. “But the truth is, my dear, I have not
enough money to go and try with – only a few pence. We
revolutionists are not rich.”
He had fifteen shillings in his pocket. He added:
“And there’s the journey before us, too – first thing in the
morning at that.”
She did not move, made no sound, and Comrade Ossipon’s heart sank a
little. Apparently she had no suggestion to offer. Suddenly she
clutched at her breast, as if she had felt a sharp pain there.
“But I have,” she gasped. “I have the money. I have enough money.
Tom! Let us go from here.”
“How much have you got?” he inquired, without stirring to her tug;
for he was a cautious man.
“I have the money, I tell you. All the money.”
“What do you mean by it? All the money there was in the bank, or
what?” he asked incredulously, but ready not to be surprised at
anything in the way of luck.
“Yes, yes!” she said nervously. “All there was. I’ve it all.”
“How on earth did you manage to get hold of it already?” he
marvelled.
“He gave it to me,” she murmured, suddenly subdued and trembling.
Comrade Ossipon put down his rising surprise with a firm hand.
“Why, then – we are saved,” he uttered slowly.
She leaned forward, and sank against his breast. He welcomed her
there. She had all the money. Her hat was in the way of very
marked effusion; her veil too. He was adequate in his
manifestations, but no more. She received them without resistance
and without abandonment, passively, as if only half-sensible. She
freed herself from his lax embraces without difficulty.
“You will save me, Tom,” she broke out, recoiling, but still
keeping her hold on him by the two lapels of his damp coat. “Save
me. Hide me. Don’t let them have me. You must kill me first. I
couldn’t do it myself – I couldn’t, I couldn’t – not even for what
I am afraid of.”
She was confoundedly bizarre, he thought. She was beginning to
inspire him with an indefinite uneasiness. He said surlily, for he
was busy with important thoughts:
“What the devil ARE you afraid of?”
“Haven’t you guessed what I was driven to do!” cried the woman.
Distracted by the vividness of her dreadful apprehensions, her head
ringing with forceful words, that kept the horror of her position
before her mind, she had imagined her incoherence to be clearness
itself. She had no conscience of how little she had audibly said
in the disjointed phrases completed only in her thought. She had
felt the relief of a full confession, and she gave a special
meaning to every sentence spoken by Comrade Ossipon, whose
knowledge did not in the least resemble her own. “Haven’t you
guessed what I was driven to do!” Her voice fell. “You needn’t be
long in guessing then what I am afraid of,” she continued, in a
bitter and sombre murmur. “I won’t have it. I won’t. I won’t. I
won’t. You must promise to kill me first!” She shook the lapels
of his coat. “It must never be!”
He assured her curtly that no promises on his part were necessary,
but he took good care not to contradict her in set terms, because
he had had much to do with excited women, and he was inclined in