Water Weed, page 39
His eyes narrowed slowly as he took this in, but he made no remark, and she went on, fired with her idea.
“All along it was the same force at work, in one form or another. She got the better of him with her heart attacks, as she got the better of you. Perhaps if he’d made a stand she’d have respected him more; but he had never understood, any more than you had. If the sight of her real nature revolted you, what do you suppose it did to him?”
For the moment she was carried away by her vision of the truth. No longer was there the least doubt as to the inner meaning of the tragedy, fundamentally pathological, as so many tragedies are. Her companion was checking her explanation step by step, pondering deeply.
“It is easy to guess how the rest happened. He waited till you were gone, then came upon her out of the dark bathroom, seized her before she could utter a cry. Without warning she found herself in the grip of a lunatic—as I did later.”
She ceased speaking, as before her rose the picture of Henry’s still figure in the gloom of the orangery, his glassy eyes fixed upon her.
Her excitement subsided, she looked again at Glenn, to find him bent slightly forward, his head lowered, eyes staring down at the deck beneath. How could she rehabilitate him in his self-esteem? How was it possible to tell him what she felt to be true, that only a fine nature could be capable of the remorse he was experiencing? Remorse was hardly the word. He was suffering from shock due to his departure from a code. What if despising himself should become a habit?
She leaned towards him, her face pale in the moonlight, her eyes dark.
“Glenn,” she said earnestly, “there are two things I must tell you. I hadn’t meant to, but—well, I see I’d better. They may make you see yourself differently. One is that Mrs. Fenmore had had many lovers before she met you. Cousin Sue—everyone indeed—knows about it. I’ve heard stories that make me know she behaved to other men in much the same way as she did to you.”
He did not move, but she saw his lips tighten as he answered dispassionately. “That may be. In any case, it doesn’t alter my conduct.”
“I knew you would say that. The other thing is this: one night I overheard Colonel Meade relating something to Cousin Sue which he didn’t intend me to hear. At the time I didn’t quite take it in; I was too distressed about you, for one thing, and not understanding it, I put it down as an invention of Major Falck’s when he was drunk. It seems, though, that he had poured out an amazing story about his wife to Cousin Bertram and another man at the club, the night after she was murdered. He said she was a very peculiar woman, not at all normal; that she used to drive him into rages on purpose to make him beat her, and that she was never so happy as when she had been beaten up and down the room with a leather strap, till she was ready to faint with exhaustion. He said it was only when he grew sick of it and refused to humour her that she began to turn against him. Oh! it all seems too utterly horrible! I never knew such a thing existed.”
Breathless, with a sort of loathing of her own words, she finished in a dry voice, her hands pressed over her eyes.
“But you see,” she went on in a whisper, “the kind of thing you were up against. That’s why I can’t blame you.”
When she dropped her hands she found him looking at her oddly.
“Ginny, Ginny,” he cried in a tone of self-reproach, “I wish to God you had never been dragged into all this! You’re too young, too healthy, too—oh, it’s all wrong for such knowledge to touch you, even remotely!”
She had recovered her poise.
“Not at all. Why shouldn’t I know about it? I suppose it’s a form of insanity, really, or else . . . well, now that I think of it, isn’t there in all of us a tiny, perverse fondness for being hurt? Not that many people go to such mad extremes, of course. I hadn’t looked at it that way before, but . . .”
He stopped her brusquely.
“I should think you haven’t! If there ever was a girl absolutely splendidly sane and normal, it’s you. It’s what I love about you—or rather, one of the things.”
Her eyes widened, and for a second she gazed at him quite submissively. Then he seemed to retire into himself again, and when he went on it was in a different key, impersonal and reserved.
“What you say is true, though. There is a word for the tendency—masochism. It means the craving to suffer. There are people who scourge themselves, flagellants they’re called. There always have been, throughout the ages. In a place like Paris one gets to know about such things. . . . Not that she knew, though, and I’m quite certain she never even heard the word ‘masochism.’ That’s the odd part of it. She was a perfectly conventional Englishwoman, brought up in the late Victorian way, education rather neglected. She was ignorant of many things, and about certain matters rather—well, prim.”
He checked himself, as though he had committed a breach of taste in discussing the dead woman thus freely.
“In any case, Glenn,” she said positively, “there’s nothing wrong about you. You haven’t committed the unpardonable sin, and it’s stupid of you to keep dwelling on what’s past. I’m quite angry with you. If ever I hear you mention such a thing as a yellow streak again . . .”
To her infinite astonishment, a lump had come into her throat, preventing her from going on. She swallowed and was silent. Perhaps she was not yet as strong as she thought herself, else she would not have been overcome by this sudden rush of emotion. Annoyed, she turned her head away from him and pressed her cheek against her cushion.
The scraping sound of his chair told her he had drawn closer. Presently he spoke, his voice vibrating strangely:
“Ginny—then you honestly mean what you say—that you don’t consider me a blackguard?”
She shook her head impatiently.
“Of course not, idiot! Why should I, why should anyone? Don’t let’s talk about it.”
In spite of her efforts, there was a break in her muffled voice. Desperately she reviled herself for her weakness, afraid lest he should read into it a sort of betrayal.
A pause, then she felt a touch upon her hair, knew from the warmth that met her in a wave that he had come still nearer. She caught her breath, an inward voice whispering that she could not endure his tenderness. If he was going to do this sort of thing. . . . No, he mustn’t! She shook her head with a little laugh.
“It’s quite all right, Glenn! I’m not really a fool, I’m just tired and—and I don’t like hearing you call yourself names.”
“Ginny—look at me.”
His other hand was under her chin now, forcing her face upwards. Reluctantly she obeyed, conscious of the tears that hung upon her lashes.
“I tell you it’s nothing,” she protested again. “Let me go, please!”
But he kept a firm hold on her chin, while from above his eyes searched hers.
“Ginny,” he said hesitatingly, “there’s something I want to do. Just a little thing. Let me—this once. I’ll not bother you again. Do you know what I mean?”
“No—what is it?”
“Keep quite still and I’ll show you.”
He loosened the scarf from about her throat, bent down nearer, still nearer. Then she felt his lips upon her skin under her ear, knew that he was kissing in turn each of the bruises, faintly visible like shadows upon the flesh. For an instant she lay quiet, filled by a sensation of wonder and contentment. Then in a warning flash her inner monitor reminded her that he was thinking of what she had done for him, that if now she could claim him for her own it would be only because of his gratitude. Oh no—not that! It was not good enough! Like a bird caught in the hand she struggled till he was obliged to free her.
“Don’t! You mustn’t—really. I—I don’t want you to!”
He drew in his breath.
“All right,” he replied quietly. “I said I wouldn’t bother you. Thank you for that much, though. I’ve had it on my mind for the past month.”
Curiously shaken, she avoided his eyes, yet somehow she was physically unable to draw quite away, and they remained thus, heads close together, cheeks all but brushing, a power stronger than themselves holding them bound. Moments passed.
“Don’t be angry, Ginny,” he said at last. “I know only too well how you must feel about me. It can’t hurt you, though, to know how I have been feeling about you for weeks past—longer even. All the time I was in prison you were my mainstay. It’s not only that you stuck to me and believed in me when no one else did. You were the one fine, normal thing I clung to. That’s how it began, but later, even before I was released, I realised the truth—that I felt something much more than that. Never mind, I won’t speak of it. If in your heart you shrink from me. . . .”
“But I don’t! That’s nonsense. I shall never shrink from you.”
Impulsively she put out her hand, let him take it in his. Yet even now, with his eyes intent upon hers, she could not believe. It was a moment of susceptibility, brought about by various influences, the night, the moonlight, his softened mood. The memory of Cuckoo was too vivid for her to think otherwise. It was perilously pleasant to feel the strong clasp of his hand; hard, oh, very hard to shatter ruthlessly the spell woven round them; and yet—
“Yes, Glenn,” she said quickly, breathlessly. “I believe in you, as I have always done, with all my heart. No matter what happens, I shall always feel very close to you.”
She had put a definite boundary to their relationship which she believed he could not misconstrue. He would accept it, secretly glad perhaps, that they could go on being friends and nothing more. It was finished now. She, too, would be glad that she had not taken him under false pretences. . . .
Sure of this, she was unprepared for the look that deepened in his eyes. Her own wavered and fell, as his grip tightened on her hand.
“Did you say close, Ginny? How close? As close as this?”
Dimly she knew that he was using the tone lovers use, that his question required no answer. Too late to think, though. Already his arms were about her, his lips upon hers, uncertainly, then with strong confidence, his humility slipping away from him. The blood surged hot in her face, to find that she had returned the caress, awkwardly perhaps, yet for all that with a revelation of possible feeling so great that she was startled by it. Was this the self she knew?
“Ginny—Ginny!”
Her pride made a last stand. Breaking from him, she uttered a faint denial.
“You mustn’t take so much for granted, you know! I have never said that I . . .”
The sentence was not finished. His hold of her had grown more firm, and in the space where her coat was open he buried his head upon her young breast.
Unseen, a dozen yards away, the broad figure of Gilbert Carew darkened a lighted doorway, stepped out upon the deck, and for a moment stood with bent head, peering through the gloom towards the spot where the seated forms had merged into a single mass of shadow. He looked intently, frowned, put on his glasses, looked again. Then with a smile half-grim, half-quizzical, hovering about the corners of his mouth, he gave a scarcely perceptible shrug and tiptoed back the way he had come.
T H E E N D
About The Author
Alice Campbell (1887-1955) came originally from Atlanta, Georgia, where she was part of the socially prominent Ormond family. She moved to New York City at the age of nineteen and quickly became a socialist and women’s suffragist. Later she moved to Paris, marrying the American-born artist and writer James Lawrence Campbell, with whom she had a son in 1914.
Just before World War One, the family left France for England, where the couple had two more children, a son and a daughter. Campbell wrote crime fiction until 1950, though many of her novels continued to have French settings. She published her first work (Juggernaut) in 1928. She wrote nineteen detective novels during her career.
By Alice Campbell
1. Juggernaut (1928)
2. Water Weed (1929)
3. Spiderweb (1930)
4. The Click of the Gate (1932)
5. The Murder of Caroline Bundy (1933)
6. Desire to Kill (1934)
7. Keep Away from Water! (1935)
8. Death Framed in Silver (1937)
9. Flying Blind (1938)
10. A Door Closed Softly (1939)
11. They Hunted a Fox (1940)
12. No Murder of Mine (1941)
13. No Light Came On (1942)
14. Ringed with Fire (1943)
15. Travelling Butcher (1944)
16. The Cockroach Sings (1946)
17. Child’s Play (1947)
18. The Bloodstained Toy (1948)
19. The Corpse Had Red Hair (1950)
Published by Dean Street Press 2022
Copyright © 1929 Alice Campbell
Introduction copyright © 2022 Curtis Evans
All Rights Reserved
The right of Alice Campbell to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her estate in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 1929 by Hodder & Stoughton
Cover by DSP
ISBN 978 1 915014 89 4
www.deanstreetpress.co.uk
Alice Campbell, Water Weed
