Daisy lay on the bed, still dressed, in the dark, sensation coming back to her. She lay on her back, quite rigid, and steeled herself to probe the wounds. The superficial wounds first—her own blindness, stupidity: she felt Hugo’s deception, poor girl, as a wound not to her pride but to her love. If I’d loved him truly, I’d have guessed, known the truth. I knew he was trying to tell me something, yet I never helped him out with it. “I’m a bad hat, Daisy”—that was at Kew, our first day. Then paying for everything with £1 notes: crooks always do that, so the newspapers say. And my funny feeling, on our holiday, that we were running away, being chased. Perhaps the police were after him then. And running away from them at the fair-ground. A woman’s instinct is always right. But when you love a chap so much, it goes to sleep. He tried to confess, to make me guess his secret. Running up that wall. Cat burglar. Like last night. And, afterwards, in the bluebell wood, “Would you marry me if I was a murderer?” and “if you were a criminal type, would you ask a girl you loved to marry you?”
It helped, to remember that. He’s got some decency left. Oh, you nasty wicked thing, to think of him like that, when he’s always been so loving and considerate.
Blank incredulity returned. It was impossible that he—her wonderful Hugo—could be a common crook. The talk she had heard just now between him and Jacko must mean something else. But it could not. Poor sweetheart, with your nightmares, your fear of being trapped—“buried alive”—perhaps he was in a real prison, not a prisoner-of-war camp: “there’s no such thing as a prison without bars.” … Then trying to swipe those beer-mats: he didn’t even seem to understand it was wrong: there must be something missing in him. Oh God, those flowers he brought back for me last night: he said he’d pinched them, and I thought it was a joke. How can I believe anything he says now—anything he ever said? Stuffing me up with tales about his business deals. He must have had a good laugh, the way I swallowed it all. Having a good laugh with that Jaques chap now, I shouldn’t be surprised. Don’t be a bitch, he’d never laugh at you, not in that way: don’t you see, he’s been trying to protect you all along.
And he might have killed himself last night, climbing up to… Brushing the old suit when he got back, in case I noticed marks on it, dirt: the suit with the poacher’s pocket, and the knobbly satchel inside it: burglar’s tools—what do they call them?—jemmies, skeleton keys and such. I wonder is he frightened when he breaks into places. Worth it, for a diamond necklace, and…
Daisy winced away. This was the mortal wound. Then she forced herself to examine it. The brooch was on her dress still. It had made her birthday and seemed to mark a new stage in her life with Hugo, admitting her into the mysterious, precious circle of his past. Why did he have to tell her it was his mother’s? That was a gratuitous insult, a piece of cruel mockery. She could have forgiven him for being a thief, for any other lies: but to have passed off as his mother’s a jewel-case he had stolen—that was a cheap, rotten thing to do. It made him utterly unreliable, made nonsense of his love. You could never again trust a person who did that.
The girl fell into a passion of sobbing. She tore the brooch from her dress and hurled it into the darkness, with a spasm of physical loathing, as if it were a scorpion. It struck the door and fell clinking on the floor-boards. Ten minutes later, when Hugo came in, he trod full upon the brooch, shattering it.
“What the devil?” Harsh light from the naked bulb overhead violated the room. Hugo bent down from the switch. “Oh, Christ, it’s my mother’s brooch! What’s it doing here? It’s ruined. Daisy, you’ve not undressed yet. Are you all right?”
“I threw it there.”
“You what?”
“I threw it there.”
Hugo stared at her, incredulity turning to anger on his face. She gazed implacably back, sitting bolt upright now in the bed, her eyes screwed up against the glare.
“Threw it? Have you gone mad?”
“Your mother’s brooch! I suppose it belonged to that tart—”
He was at the bedside in two swift strides, and had struck her a terrible blow across the face. Without a cry or a whimper, the beautiful head slowly bowed forward into her hands, covered away from him.
Hugo stood for a moment irresolute, as if he might hit her again or fall on his knees beside her. Then he turned away, began to take off his coat and tie, and when he had mastered his voice, said coldly:
“Will you please tell me what all this is about?”
“I heard what you and that man were saying.” Her voice came out muffled from behind her hands and the thick hair drooping over them. “I know what you were doing last night.”
“Oh?” Hugo sat down, and went quite still, like an animal shamming dead in a snare. The silence stretched between them till Daisy felt her mind must snap. Painfully she lifted her head, gazing full at him. He did not avoid her eyes, but he did not seem to be seeing her. She groped for the right thing to say, knowing that anything else would be the end for them. She felt too young, too tired, to manage this situation; yet it was in her hands—she must give the lead. Hugo’s mouth twitched. For an instant it was not Hugo there but her little brother, the baby of the family, whom she had loved most and mothered. A shaft of compunction, compassion, went through her. He was a thief, and a liar: he was hers.
“Hugo. I love you,” she said, holding out her arms.
He came stumbling into them, sightlessly. “I’m glad you know. I tried to tell you, but I couldn’t. I was afraid you’d leave me.”
“I know, my dear love, I know,” she soothed him, recognising, with a wisdom beyond her years, with a woman’s tender, indulgent scorn, the tones of masculine self-pity—so facile, so sincere. “I understand,” she said. “Don’t you take on so, sweetheart. It’s all right now. I shan’t leave you.” His body was shaking convulsively, as though some furious engine had broken loose inside it. She crushed his head tighter to her breast, desperately trying to bury thus her reproaches and his betrayals.
“I hurt you, darling,” he muttered.
“I don’t mind. That’s over now.”
And presently, when he had grown calmer and was stroking her bruised cheek, she let herself say:
“It wasn’t that that hurt me. Not hitting me.”
“I don’t—”
“You told me it was your mother’s.”
“My mother’s? Oh, your brooch. But it was, darling. All those trinkets I showed you.” He broke off, flushing painfully. “Oh, I see now. You thought I’d stolen it. You really believed I’d do a thing like that?”
“I was so miserable,” she answered drearily. “How could I believe anything you said, after—”
“After—?”
“Well, those flowers you brought to me for my birthday.”
“But I told you I’d pinched them.”
Daisy sighed. “I thought it was a joke, and you let me think it was.”
“Yes, that’s true,” he said ingenuously. “But the brooch was different. I’m not all that of a clot. I do draw the line somewhere. Don’t you believe me, love? Look, I can prove it. I’ve got the letter my father sent, saying mother wanted me to have—”
“I don’t want you proving things to me,” Daisy broke in. “I want to be able to believe what you tell me.”
“You’re rather like her, you know. She never nagged me; but she never suffered me in silence, like a martyr. Funny, because she was just a doormat to my father. I hated him as a child—the way he treated her. Made me miserable. I used to run and hide under a table when he started bullying her.”
Daisy undressed quickly, bathed her face, and got into bed. Hugo was still sitting on the edge of it, his arms hanging down between his knees.
“Well, what happens now?” he asked, not looking at her.
“That’s for you to say,” she wearily replied. “Can’t we leave it till to-morrow?”
“You want to make conditions?”
“Conditions?”
His lips twisted. “If I reform, you’ll stay with me? That sort of thing?”
“I never—”
“No, but that’s what was in your mind, my pet. I’ll have another shot, if you like. But I warn you, it won’t work. I’ve tried before. I’m no good at anything else, and I’m rather keen on my present profession: it suits me. Besides, it’s hopeless trying to get a job once you’ve been in, stir. Can you see me, anyway, touting soap-flakes or sitting in some god-awful office? Why—”
“Oh, Hugo, do listen to me. I don’t want to make conditions. I just want us to trust each other—never to have to wonder if you’re telling me the truth, or putting me off with some clever story. You could do that so easily, because I’m not clever and I love you. I’d hate to feel suspicious of everything you said. It’d be the end of our loving each other, don’t you see?”
Hugo took her face between his hands, and gazed deep. At last he whispered:
“You’re too good for me. I always knew it. I’ll try to be someone you can trust. But you ought to find someone better—”
“I don’t care what else you do! I don’t mind your stealing!” she cried, in an abandonment of gratitude and relief. Her eyes shone with an unearthly, sacrificial light: then, as his hand moved on her breast, they misted over, and she was trembling, calling to him in a weak, harsh voice, “I want you. I want you. Quick. Kill me if you like.”
Their love-making that night had a new sensuality of violence. They tore at each other, struggling, like animals in a net, as though each had something to take revenge for and something to expiate, or as if their bodies were an area unpacified, exasperated even, by the reconciliation just now of their minds. One way and another, it was the end of innocence between them.
It left her pale and flaccid as a drowned corpse, her lips cold, her head hanging back over the edge of the bed.
“Have you had enough?” he said; but she could make no sound.
Later he was talking to her, gently and remotely. “I have to work alone. It’s safest. That’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to drag you in. The less you know, the better: the police might come asking you questions.”
“But Jacko knows, doesn’t he?”
“Jacko knows as much as I tell him. Which is damned little. What he guesses is another matter. He gets a kick out of it, you see. Sort of vicarious excitement. Like respectable citizens pawing at some of the Sunday newspapers. Not that he’s such a respectable citizen himself.”
“But isn’t it dangerous?”
“Oh, well, it’s mutual. I know a bit about him, too: enough to keep him gummed up all right. So we both go our own ways, more or less regardless. Besides, he’s useful.”
“Useful?”
“He does illegal operations.” Hugo offered this in a purely factual tone. “He has rather a classy clientele. So old Jacko just mentions to me in passing, as it might be, that Lady Stinkeroo or Miss Gloxinia Can-Can owns some eligible sparklers; and we get talking; he knows where she keeps ’em, maybe, knows her goings-out and her comings-in. A nod’s as good as a wink. Oh yes, he slips me quite a bit of information behind his back. Nothing open, of course. Nothing ungentlemanly about it. You can’t pin anything on a chap for being—well, slightly indiscreet.”
Daisy digested this in silence for a little. “But he said something about ‘a sweet alibi.’ I heard him. That means he must know—”
“Ah, you don’t understand Jacko. A devious character. He likes a little game of cat-and-mouse. That’s his substitute for a bit of slap-and-tickle. He was saying that if I ever elected to embark on a life of crime, and if the bluebottles came buzzing round with awkward questions, you’d be able to give me a sweet alibi. By God, he’s right too! You’d have them eating out of your hand. You look so innocent and wholesome—they’d believe anything you told them. But I’m never going to put you in a position of having to tell lies for me. Be dumb, sweet maid, and let who will be clever. No, I’m not having you involved.”
But I am involved, thought Daisy, lying awake beside him, after he had dropped suddenly, as was his way, into deep, unvexed slumber. She felt how totally she was now involved, not only with the Hugo who had said, “I’ll try to be someone you can trust,” but with that other Hugo who could prattle of wicked things as lightly and knowledgeably as a woman talking hats.
The pattern of their life began to establish itself. First, there had been the feckless holiday, then the weeks in limbo at Maida Vale: now they were embarked on another gay fling into the world, buying clothes for Daisy, moving to the Ritz, theatre-going, all the fun of the fair. It was like living on a switchback, Daisy thought—a life of ups and down so dizzying that you could only hold tight and hope for the best. She felt that it corresponded with something in Hugo’s nature—the way he swung violently from wild high spirits to a sodden gloom. She put this, later, to Jacko, who congratulated her on being so clever, and said something about “manic-depressive”: this alarmed Daisy not a little, but Jacko assured her it did hot mean Hugo was mad—all the best people were manic-depressives.
Daisy had always been a suggestible girl, and Hugo brought out a strain of wildness in her which almost equalled his own. Seeing the pair dining in a restaurant, one might have taken her at first for a fashion model, or perhaps a deb. with bohemian inclinations: closer scrutiny might discover a freshness, an unexpected lack of self-consciousness, behind the bloom and poise of her personality. But no one could have guessed that this exquisite apparition concealed a village girl whose heart was bubbling half the time with, “Oh, what a lark it all is! What a lark!” Still less would they have supposed that the dark, sleepy-eyed, athletic young man escorting her (a gentleman rider? a racing motorist? a cricketer?) was a hardened criminal, and that his glances were appraising, not the women, but the jewels they wore.
At first Daisy had been apprehensive. She thought it was mad to be throwing money around like this and making themselves conspicuous so soon after the robbery. And indeed it was mad. But Hugo had, at this time, an ebullient belief in his own luck—the luck Daisy had brought him; and when he was on top of the world, his confidence was irresistible. After serving his first sentence, some years ago, he had changed his name, changed his sphere of operations from a Midland city to London, and changed his methods. Since he seldom entered the criminal underworld now, and always worked alone, he had little to fear from informers. The fence he dealt with was the only person in a position to give him away, apart from Jacko and Daisy herself; and each of these had good reasons for not doing so.
Hugo, besides, lacked the criminal’s obsessive vanity. What vanity he had was satisfied by showing Daisy off, being seen with her, and by the mischievous pleasure he took in gulling the world at large. He would often talk to Daisy now about his past exploits—though he never talked about his future plans—and this gave him the safety-valve most criminals need, requiring both to confess and to be admired. Daisy received these confidences as a mother might receive a boy’s boasting about his audacities: she was shocked, but secretly excited: she felt she should disapprove, but she could not resist him.
One thing became more and more evident to her—Hugo’s genuine contempt for society, his hatred of the settled, the hum-drum, the respectable. Jacko was to explain this to her one day; but she already associated it vaguely with Hugo’s childhood, his father’s treatment of him, and more particularly with the prison-term which still haunted him in his occasional terrible nightmares. As time went on, she gradually and unconsciously came to identify herself with this part of him, to feel that society was her enemy too. The first seed was sown when she got a letter from her mother, returning some money Daisy had sent her. Daisy’s aunt must have written to tell her sister that the girl was living with a man, and Mrs. Bland now announced that she would rather die in poverty than share the wages of her daughter’s sin. Daisy, after restraining an impulse to take the next train down to Gloucestershire, accepted this fatalistically: she had heard her mother say too often that those who make their bed must lie on it; and she did not want to lie on any other bed—not she.
But the seed was sown. And, a week after they went to the Ritz, something occurred which was more forcibly to make her feel an outlaw, and in due course to affect their fortunes disastrously. At the theatre one night, looking round before the curtain went up, Hugo suddenly remarked:
“Good God, there’s my brother!”
“Oh, where? Shall we go and talk to him in the interval?”
“Lord, no. I can’t stick him.”
“But he’s your brother.”
“That’s why. No, on second thoughts I couldn’t stick him even if he wasn’t my brother.” Hugo grinned at her amiably. Then, with his occasional capacity to read her thoughts, said, “You really want to meet the family? All right then. But don’t say you haven’t been warned.”