CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
Mrs. Durlacher had asked one of her guests to come early.
"Come at seven," she had said; "before if you can." And Miss Standish-Roe had arrived at a quarter to the hour.
When she entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Durlacher kissed her affectionately, then held her at arm's length, her hands on her shoulders and gazed pensively into her eyes.
"Why do you look at me like that?" Coralie asked.
Mrs. Durlacher shrugged her shoulders and turned away to her chair.
"For no reason at all, my dear child, and for a million reasons. I wish I was as pretty as you are."
"What nonsense!"
"Yes, isn't it? But if I had that red hair of yours, and those eyes, I'd be happy for the rest of my life. You can't grow old with that hair as long as you keep thin. Do you mind my telling you something?"
"No, not a bit; what?"
"You've got a little too much on that cheek, and your lips as well; do you mind?"
"Heavens! No! Was that one of the million reasons?" She crossed the room to a well-lighted mirror and, by the aid of its reflection, rubbed her cheeks and lips with a handkerchief taken from the front of her dress. "Was that why you stared at me?" she asked, turning round, looking at Mrs. Durlacher, then at that part of the handkerchief that her lips had touched.
"One of the reasons? Oh no. I only noticed it. That's all right now. I believe you look better without it."
"Well, I felt so fagged this evening."
"I know; that's wretched. If you were a man, you'd drink; being a woman, you make up. It's much more respectable really. By the way, you don't see anything of Devenish now, do you?"
"No, nothing. We saw him that day at Prince's—I hadn't seen him for two or three months before that—I haven't seen him since. I don't think you can ever rely on a married man. Don't you know that line of Kipling's?"
"Which?"
"In 'Barrack Room Ballads'—'Fuzzy Wuzzy,' I think."
"Nothing about a married man, surely?"
"No; but it fits him."
"''E's all 'ot sand and ginger when alive,An' 'e's generally shammin' when 'e's dead.'"
Mrs. Durlacher broke into a peal of laughter. "What a quaint creature you are!" she said. "Whatever made you think of that?"
"Well, he is like that—isn't he? I mean, you never know the moment when his wife isn't going to hear a rumour. Then he shams dead, and the next time he sees you, he just manages, with an effort, to recognize you by your appearance."
"Is that what happened to Devenish?" asked Mrs. Durlacher with amusement.
"I expect so. I never heard that his wife knew anything; but from the way he suddenly fell in a heap, I should think it's quite likely. And he's shamming still."
"Well, let him sham. I don't think he's worth anything else." She paused, watching the effect of her words. "Oh, and you never told me what you thought of my brother yesterday?"
"I think he's rather quaint."
"Yes, isn't he? I'm glad you like him."
"But why haven't I met him before? Don't you ever ask him down to Apsley? I never realized you'd got a brother, you know, till the other day you showed me that case in the paper."
"Very few people I know do," replied Mrs. Durlacher, whereby she created a sense of the mysterious, raised curiosity and played a hand that needed all her skill, all her ingenuity. "I shouldn't have told you about him, even then," she continued, "if it hadn't been fairly obvious to me that he was becoming a different sort of person."
"Why, what sort of an individual has he been?"
Mrs. Durlacher told her. Ah, but she made the telling interesting. A man who owns such a place in the country as Apsley Manor, yet prefers to live the life of the Bohemian in town, shunning society, reaping none of the benefits that should naturally accrue to him from such a position, can quite easily be surrounded with a halo of interest if his narrative be placed in the hands of a skilful raconteur. Mrs. Durlacher spared no pains in the telling of her story. Led it up slowly through its various stages to the crisis, the crisis as she made it. He owned Apsley Manor, not they! It was his property, capable of repurchase at any moment! And—she leant back in her chair, covering her face with her hands as though the blow were an unbearable tragedy to her—he had said that he would take the place back. Five thousand pounds was nothing to him. He could find it at a moment's notice. So would any one, when such a place as Apsley was in the balance.
"You can imagine," she concluded—bearing it bravely with the resignation of martyrdom—"what a catastrophe that'll be to us."
"Poor Dolly; I never knew of that. I always thought the place was yours. You always said so."
"Yes; why not? With every right. It is ours—till he repurchases. You see he's beginning to nurse ambition now. I suppose there's no doubt that he'll come up to the top of the ladder. I always knew he'd make a splendid barrister if he once caught hold of the ambition. Now, of course, he'll find that the possession of Apsley's of value to him. He'll have to entertain. A Bohemian can't entertain any one but a Bohemian. Then, I suppose, he'll marry—get a house in Town like we have—and use Apsley, as we've done, for his friends."
"But, my dear Dolly—what on earth will you do?"
"Do?" Mrs. Durlacher rose with a sigh. "Well—there's prayer and fasting; but there'll be considerably more fasting than prayer, I should imagine. I assure you, I do pray that he doesn't make a fool of himself and marry some woman out of the bottomless pit of Bohemia."
"Well, I should think so. It 'ud be an awful pity, wouldn't it?"
"A considerable pity—yes. Here he is." She turned quickly to her friend, but her voice was cleverly pitched on a casual note. "Don't say anything to him about Apsley," she remarked. "He never admits to possession of it—that's one of his peculiarities. I don't suppose he will until he planks down his five thousand pounds. He has what he calls a legal sense of justice. Makes sure of a statement before he delivers it. You'll never catch him out. That's the Scotch blood on the mater's side of the family. I should think it's saved him out of many a difficulty."
Traill strode into the drawing-room as unconscious of the fate that Mrs. Durlacher had so deftly woven for him as is the unwieldy gull that, tumbling down the wind, strikes into the meshes of the fowler's net and finds itself enchained within the web. Coralie, herself, set to the task of winning him, was as unconscious of the subtly diaphonous mechanism of the trap as he. Yet she was versed well enough in human nature in her way. Innocence could not be laid at her door with the hope of finding it again. But it needs the long training of social strategy for any one to realize the cunning knowledge that things are not obtained in this world by asking for them, but by the hidden method of suggestion. That Mrs. Durlacher was in search of a suitable sister-in-law was obvious to the most untrained eye. It was no capable deduction on Coralie's part to have made certain of that. But she hesitated when she came to the wondering of whether she was considered suitable to fill that position herself. The hesitancy was of but little duration. The first time she had seen Traill, he had attracted her; now the attraction was increased a thousandfold. She had often stayed at Apsley Manor. Once her father had gone down for the shooting and had returned glowing with enthusiasm.
"Place I should like to have," he had grunted, "place I should like to have." And after dinner he sat over his port and amused himself with breaking the tenth commandment.
But there was no certainty in Coralie's mind that Mrs. Durlacher, with all her outward show of friendship, would consider her to be the eligible one. Yet here the chance offered. She determined to take it—hand open, ready for the gift.
From the moment then, that he arrived, she began the outset of her campaign. The social manner she knew he hated. That she cast off. The astute woman of the world, he despised. Mrs. Durlacher had well grounded her. She wrapped herself in the simplicity of a girl whose eyes have scarcely opened to a knowledge of life and whose inner consciousness is as yet untouched.
If she had given him any impression of a want of innocence the day before when they discussed the case in the divorce court which he had won, she now swept it from his mind. He found her ingenuousness charming. Her eyes helped her. They were big, grey, wide-open like a child's. He found himself looking interestedly for the simple questions that they turned upon him. In the box at the theatre, they leant back in their seats and talked in undertones through the acts and Mrs. Durlacher, leaning out to watch the piece, heard not a word that the actors said. Her ears were strained to catch the progress of their conversation. During the intervals, she levelled her glasses at the house and was apparently too pre-occupied to interrupt their enjoyment. In the interval that followed the second act, her glasses, roaming aimlessly across the stalls, became riveted to her eyes. After a moment, she looked hastily away, then stealthily looked again. Finally she turned round to her brother, curbing the surprise which, notwithstanding her efforts, forced itself into the expression of her face.
Then she beckoned to him. He rose from his chair and came to her side.
"In the interval after the next act," she whispered, "look through the glasses at the third row in the pit. Not now—not now! It might be noticed now."
"Who is it?" he asked.
"I don't know—I'm not certain."
The lights in the theatre were put out just as he was about to turn his head in the direction. He went back to his seat and in five minutes had forgotten about it.
When that act was over and the lights revived again, Mrs. Durlacher handed him the glasses. He came to the edge of the box. Coralie followed him, looking down on the rows of heads below her.
"Look round the house first," Mrs. Durlacher whispered.
He swept the glasses right and left, about the theatre in an indiscriminate manner—seeing nothing. Then he turned them in the direction his sister had indicated. From one face to another he passed along the third row of the pit, seeing only clerks and their young girls, shop-keepers and their wives. At last he stopped. There was a girl sitting by herself. Her head was down, her face hidden; but he recognized her. Then she looked up quickly—straight to the box—turned direct to his glasses a pair of dark eyes that were burning, cheeks that were pale, almost unhealthy in the pallor, and white lips, half-parted to the breaths he could almost hear her talking.
It was Sally!
Directly she thought that he had seen her, her head lowered guiltily again. She kept it bent, hidden from him, lifting a programme to shield her utterly from his gaze.
He put down his glasses on the ledge of the box.
"Do you allow that sort of thing?" Mrs. Durlacher whispered as she took them up.
"My God—no!" he exclaimed.
She smiled in her mind. That word—allow—was chosen with discretion.
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
As the curtain fell Traill proposed supper at a restaurant. They readily agreed. Mrs. Durlacher, in the best of spirits, thanking Providence for the weakness of human nature that had driven Sally to follow Traill to the theatre, still thrilling with the sound of his exclamation in her ears, would have lit the dullest entertainment in the world with the humour of her mood. There was a part for her to play. She played it. All her remarks, bristling with the pointed satires of spiteful criticism, were a foil to the gentle temper of Coralie's conversation.
"My God!" said Traill, as they walked down one of the passages to thefoyer, and he listened to his sister's verdict upon a woman who had gone out before them. "Do you women allow a stitch of respectability to hang on each other's backs?"
"She'd want more than a stitch," Mrs. Durlacher replied, "if she's not going to put on more clothes than that."
Traill shrugged his shoulders, half conscious of a comparison between his sister and the quiet reserve of this girl beside him. He had thought her pretty, seeing her at a distance on the night when he had dined with Dolly. Meeting her the day before, in the dim light of the drawing-room at Sloane Street, he had found her still more attractive; but on this evening, in the glamour of bright lights—young, fresh, charming as she seemed to him—his senses were swept by her fascination.
At all times a beautiful woman is wonderful—the thing of beauty and the joy for ever; the phrase that comes naturally to the mind. But when, conscious of her own attractions, she lends that beauty to the expression of pleasure which she finds in the company of the man beside her, then, to possibly that man alone, but certainly to him, she is doubly beautiful. Nature indeed had been generous with Coralie Standish-Roe. Nature has her moods and her devilish humours. She was more than amiable when she bestowed her gifts upon Coralie. You may talk about the value of a noble heart beating in an empty corset, shining out of pinched and tired eyes; but it is a value, unmarketable, where the good things in a woman's life are given in exchange. Janet Hallard and her like have learnt the realization of that. And of the qualities of noble-heartedness, Coralie possessed but very few. Her disposition was intensely selfish. She took all the admiration that she could get—and it was infinitely more than some women dream of—with a grace of gratitude whose parallel may be found in the schoolboy galloping through one helping of food that he may begin another. Her hunger for it was insatiable, but she was too young as yet for any such reputation to have fastened itself upon her; too young for the manner which becomes the natural expression of women of this type to have blotted out her undeniable charm of youth. Youth saved her from Traill's critical appreciation of women. Two years later he would have passed her with a momentary lifting of interest which she herself would unconsciously have dispelled at the first touch of acquaintance. Now, he was not only thrilled, he was interested. She was a child. He found her so—as much a child as Sally had been. Add her beauty to that—a beauty unquestionably greater than the simple charm of Sally's baby features—and add still again that fallacious sense of social position by which Traill realized that such a girl he could not ask promiscuously out to dinner, could not casually persuade to come to his rooms, and you have, besides the unavoidable comparison between the two in his mind, that subtle difference which a life of ease and a life of labour makes in the position of women to a man's conception of the sex.
Immediately they stepped outside the theatre into the blaze of light where the attendants were rushing for carriages, and men and women, in a confused mass, jostled each other to fight free of the crowd, Traill's eyes searched quickly for a sight of Sally. Mrs. Durlacher also was alert to the possibility of finding her watching their movements. But they saw no trace of her.
In the mouth of a little alley, deep with shadows, on the other side of St. Martin's Lane, she was standing, her heart throbbing, half timidly, half jealously, yet secure in the knowledge that she was safe from observation. With eyes, burnt in the fever of a fierce emotion, she watched them as they stepped into the car that drew up beneath the lighted portico. When she saw Mrs. Durlacher's gesture inviting Traill to sit between them on the back seat; when she saw him willingly accept, notwithstanding that there was more room, more comfort in the seat opposite, she drew in a breath between her teeth, and the nails of her fingers bit into the palms of her hands. Now, from what little she had seen in the theatre, and taking into greatest consideration of all the proof of her own eyes that the woman was beautiful, eclipsing herself at every point of attraction, Sally was full-swept into the mad whirlpool of unreasoning jealousy. Every action and every incident that her starved eyes fed upon were distorted, embittered to the taste as though the taint of aloes had crept into everything.
She thought she saw him lay his hand upon hers as he took the place beside her. In that position she knew that they would be wedged close together, their limbs touching, thrilling his senses as she well knew she herself had thrilled them by even slighter proximity than that. Here, too, she judged again by the lowest of standards, if judgment it can be said of a wild flinging of thoughts—vitriol hurled in a moment of madness. Yet against him she could find no bitterness. The woman, kissing the hand that strikes her, to shield it from the falling of the law, is a type that has made no history; but in the hearts of men she is to be found with her ineffaceable record.
It was against the two women, against Mrs. Durlacher with her damnable cunning, against the other with her still more damnable fascination, that all the blinding acid of Sally's thoughts was cast. The woman who had hoodwinked him with her lies about her husband, the woman who had crept in, seizing the moment of his blindness—these were the two people in the world whom she could willingly have strangled with her little hands that gripped and loosened in the mad emotion of her rage. Under her breath she muttered—hissing the words—the vain things that she would do. All the civilized refinement of humanity was burnt out of her. She was not human. She had lost control. The thoughts that revelled in her brain were animal; the savage fury of the beast starved of its food and then deprived of the flesh and blood that are snatched from the very clutching of its claws.
It is not so far a call, even now, for this divine humanity, weaned upon the nutritious food of intelligence, nursed in the refining lap of civilization, to hark back, driven by one rush of events, to the lowest forms of nature that exist. If, in the hour of death, seeking immunity from peril, there live men who have trodden down the bodies of women, beaten them with naked fists, severed arms from their bleeding hands that held to safety in order that they might find their own escape; then, surely it is no very wonderful thing for a woman, threatened with the destruction of all her happiness, to give herself over to the mad riot of murderous intent that shouts the cry of bloody revolution through her brain!
In these moments nothing human could have been accounted for in Sally. In these moments the fire of the enraged animal glittered in her eyes, the incoherent mutterings of dumb passion vibrated in her breath.
A man passing down through the dark shadows of the alley into the street, turned and gazed at her. She took no notice. Did not even see him. The car was just beginning to move out into the traffic. As it turned, too eager to follow it, she stepped on to the pavement.
Traill's eyes caught her then, saw her begin to quicken her steps, break even into a run following their tardy progress as they squeezed a way through the press of other vehicles. He looked out through the small, square window in the back of the hood and could still see her, forcing her way through the crowds of people, sometimes jostling them upon the path, then running in the gutter for the greater freedom of passage.
"God!" he muttered under his breath, as he turned back again.
"What is it?" asked Coralie.
"Oh, nothing," he replied; "nothing."
Mrs. Durlacher caught her lips between her teeth to crush the smile that rose to them. Now she was sure at least that Sally's power was broken. Her subtle use of that word "allow" had served its double purpose. Not only had it delicately questioned the possession of that authority which she knew he held above all things; but also, in permitting it, the admission had been deftly drawn from him that Sally was his mistress. She had known it before, as women do know things. Now she was certain of it and, in her certainty, realized that this was the moment—to strike when he was weakest. A man, shaken free of the ties that bind him to one woman, is more ready than another in the reaction of indifference which follows to fetter himself again in order that life may seem less void, less hollow than he finds it.
To Coralie, then, in the dressing-room of the restaurant, as they took off their cloaks, she said—
"My dear girl, you're making that brother of mine in love with you."
And to Traill, she jested as they said good night—
"My dear boy, considering your obligations to other women, do you think it's fair? The girl's losing her heart to you, or will be if she sees you again."
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
The congestion of the traffic, the knotted lines of carriages conveying to their houses the thousands of people whom the theatres had disgorged into the streets, enabled Sally to keep Mrs. Durlacher's car in sight until it passed through the wide portals of a restaurant in the Strand where, from the street, she could see them dismount and pass into the building. They had gone to supper. Traill had told her nothing about that. Then it had only been decided since he had met them; he must be enjoying himself in the society of these very people whose society he professed to abhor. That they might have pressed him to accompany them so that he found it impossible to refuse, did not enter the argument in her mind. All thoughts tended in one direction—instinct guiding them—instinct, drunk with the noxious ferment of jealousy, whipping her mind down paths where no reason could follow, yet bringing her invariably to the truth with that same generosity of Providence which watches over the besotted wanderings of a drunken man.
For some moments she stood there, watching the doors which a powdered flunkey had swung to after their entrance. Wild suggestions flung themselves before her consideration. She would go back to her room, dress herself in the best frock that Traill had given her and go to supper there herself. She would wait there an hour, an hour and a half if necessary, to see if he went home with them. That she had almost decided on, when a man of whose presence, passing behind her once or twice upon the pavement, she had been unaware, stopped by her side.
"Waiting for some one?" he said, with that insinuating tone of voice which disposes of any need for introduction.
She drew away from him quickly in horror, fear driving cold through the hot blood of her jealousy. Then she turned, as he laughed to conceal his momentary embarrassment, and hurried off in the direction of Trafalgar Square.
That incident proved her waiting to be impossible. She walked slowly home, all the spirit within her sinking down into an impenetrable mood of depression from which not even the persistent hope that love must win her back her happiness in the end had any power to raise her. Now she was crushed—burnt out. Only the charred cinders and the ashes of herself were left behind from the flames of that furnace which had torn its way through her.
Lighting just one candle, she sat in his room waiting for his return. An hour passed, and at last she blew the candle out. He might think it strange to find her there, sitting up for him; he might suspect, and as yet she was sublimely unconscious that he had seen her. She was sure when she had covered her face with the programme in the theatre that the action had been in time; moreover, she was by no means certain that from that distance his glasses had covered her at all.
Mounting the uncarpeted stairs from his room to the floor above, she stopped once or twice, thinking she heard a hansom pulling up in the street. Her heart stopped with her and she held a breath in suspense; but on each occasion it jingled on, losing the noise of its bells in the murmuring night sounds which never quite die into silence in that quarter.
When she reached her room, she lit a candle, holding it up before the mirror on the dressing-table and gazing at her face in its reflection.
"My God!" she whispered.
Truly, in the light of that one candle, she hardly recognized herself. Violent sensations, deep emotions, these are the accelerations of time. They produce—momentarily no doubt—the same effect as do the passing of years over which such intensity of feeling is more evenly distributed. In those few hours, since she had heard from Devenish that another woman was claiming the attentions of Traill's mind, Sally had aged—withered almost—in the fierce stress of her passion of jealousy. It had passed over her like the sirocco of the desert, leaving her parched, dried, shrivelled, as a child grown old before its years. No colour was there in her cheeks, no vestige of the sign that beneath a mere fraction's measurement of that white skin, the blood was flowing through her veins. Yet the skin was not really white. It was an ugly grey, smirched with a colour that bore but the faintest resemblance to animation. Beneath the eyes deep shadows lay, smeared into the sockets. She lifted the candle to their level, but they did not disappear. Pain had cast them, and no shifting of material light would wipe them out. But it was the eyes themselves that startled her. When she looked into them—deep into the pupils—she realized how close she had drifted to the moment beyond which control is of no account—the moment of absolute madness. Even then, they glittered unnaturally. A gleam from the candle again? She moved it once more—this way and that—but still the light flickered there, frightening her into a sudden effort of restraint. She tried to pull herself together; put down the candle hurriedly and, feeling the leathern dryness in her mouth, caught at a carafe of water, drinking from it without use of the glass.
That steadied her. Thoughts drifted back into their channels and, coming with them, looming with its portentous realization above the others, the remembrance that only the evening before, he had drawn out the settlement upon her life. Now she knew why he had done it. Now she found the absolute trending of his mind. He had said if he died! That was only to blind, only to tie a bandage about her eyes in order to conceal from her the true motive that had instigated him. But she saw the true motive now. Under the bandages she had already tried to peer; now circumstance itself had wrenched them from her.
With feverish movements, she opened a drawer and took from it a little slip of paper. This was a copy of the settlement as he had drawn it out. He had presented it to her.
"You'd better keep it as a memorandum of the details," he had said and, without glancing at its contents, she had thrust it into this drawer. Now she hurriedly spread it open.
"In the event of my death, or the discontinuance of the relations which now exist between Miss Sally Bishop and myself—"
These were the first words that met her eyes. Her fingers closed automatically over the paper, crushing it into her palm. Could she need any more proof than that? That a settlement and dealing with a relationship such as theirs must be worded in such a way, carried no weight with it to her mind. She knew then, that when he had alluded to the event of his death, it had been farthest from his thoughts. He had meant their separation. In three years—a little more than three years it had come. He was tired of her. She knew well then how useless had been her efforts to move him to passion the night before. Her cheeks flamed, thinking that it had not been because he was unconscious of her attempt. He had seen it. There was no doubt in her mind that when he had told her to fasten her dressing-gown, when he had noticed the perfumes of scent from her hair, he had realized the motive that was acting within her. But he was tired—satiated. And how he must have loathed her! Yet no greater than she, at that moment, loathed herself. He knew—of course he knew—that her coming down to get the book had all been an excuse. He had probably thought that her desire had been for herself. How could he possibly have known that she felt no desire, had been frigid, cold, without a strain of passion in her thoughts, seeking only to tempt him to her side, for his pleasure alone, with the delights of her body? How could he have known? He did not know! Of a certainty he must have thought that it was her own satisfaction she was seeking. The blood raced back from her cheeks, leaving her shivering and cold. Oh, how he must have loathed her! Why had she done it? Why was there not some illuminating power to point out the intricacy of the ways when people came to such a maze in life as this?
In a torture of shame that blent with all her misery, she flung herself, dressed as she was, on to the bed. Let him find her there—what did it matter! She realized that she had lost everything. And there she lay, eyes burning and dry, heart just beating faintly in her breast. But when she heard his footsteps mounting the stairs, she suddenly got up. If he knew that she had followed them, he would never forgive her. So, in the midst of her misery, she still found the strength to hope. Jumping up from the bed she stood before her mirror and began to take off her hat as though she had that moment returned.
When his knock fell on the door, she forced fear from her voice, drove eagerness into the place of it, and called him to enter.
The door opened. In the mirror's reflection, she could see him stop abruptly as he came into the room. With hands still lifted, extricating the pins from her hat, she turned. His lips were tight closed, his eyes merciless. So he had looked that day at Apsley when he had returned to find his sister with her in the dining-room. So he had directed his gaze upon the woman whom she had heard him cross-examine in the Law Courts. The suspicion leapt to her mind that he knew, that he had seen her; but having steeled herself to tell the lie, she did not attempt, in the sudden moment, to reconstruct her mind to a hasty admission of the truth. She must tell the lie, clinging to it through everything.
"Have you only just come in?" he asked.
The tone in his voice seemed to question her right to come in at all. And she was no actress. Another woman in her place, even knowing all she knew, suspecting all she did, would have turned to him in amazement; questioning his right to speak to her like that; covered her guilt with a cloak of astonished innocence and paraded her injury before him. Sally took it for granted; did not even argue from it the certainty that he had seen her. Her mind was made up for the lie and she did not possess that agility of purpose which, at a moment's notice, could enable her to twist her intentions—a mental somersault that needs the double-jointedness of cunning and all the consummate flexibility of tact. He might know that she had followed them, but she must never admit it. It seemed a feasible argument to her, in the whirling panic of her thoughts, that her admission would be fatal—just as the prisoner in the dock pleads "not guilty" against all the damning evidence of every witness who can be brought against him.
"I've been in about half an hour," she replied.
"Did you dine with Devenish?"
The same direct form of question, thrown at her with the same implacable scrutiny of his eyes.
"Yes," she replied.
"Where?"
She mentioned the name of the restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue.
"Where did you go afterwards?"
It was all prepared on her tongue. She did not hesitate.
"To the Palace," she replied.
"To the Palace?" He repeated it. His eyes burnt into her. Then she knew that he had seen her in the theatre; but only in the theatre where she could still swear to him that he was mistaken. Every instinct she possessed forced her to deny it until the last; beyond that if breath were left her.
"Did you see it out? Did you see the performance out?" he continued.
"Yes—we waited till the end."
A note of warning despatched to Devenish would ensure his confirmation of all she had said. He had told her that if ever she needed a friend—now indeed she wanted one.
"What did you do then if you only came in half an hour ago? It's just one o'clock."
A thought rushed exultingly to her mind that he was jealous—jealous of Devenish. He had not seen her at all. This was jealousy. Her heart cried out in thankfulness. She crossed the room to him, all the whole wealth of her love alive and bright in her eyes.
"Jack"—she whispered—"you're not jealous of Devenish, are you?"
A laugh broke out from his lips, striking her with the sting of its harshness.
"Where did you go afterwards?" he repeated.
"To supper—we went to supper—the same place where we had dined. Why wouldn't you tell me if you were jealous? Do you think I should mind?"
"Jealous?" He took her arm and led her nearer to the light of the solitary candle. There he faced her, looking down into the weary pupils of her eyes. "All these things you've been saying," he said brutally—"are lies—the whole—blessed—pack of them. You never went to the Palace Theatre, you went to the Duke of York's. You sat in the third row of the pit and covered your face with a programme whenever you thought we were looking in your direction. You never went to supper afterwards. You tracked Dolly's car into the Strand—running in the gutter to keep pace with it. Jealous? Great God! No! What have I to be jealous about? What did you think you were doing—eh? What did you think you were going to gain by it?"
Up to a moment, she met his eyes; but when he railed at her thoughts of his jealousy, then all courage fell from her. "Jealous? Great God! No!" She knew it was finished when he had said that and, beneath the weight of his contempt, she crumbled into the dust of pitiful obsession.
"Did you imagine," he went on mercilessly—"that I undertook the arrangement of this life with you with the thought for a moment in my mind that you would institute a close vigil over all my actions?"
"It was only because I knew you were being deceived," she said brokenly.
"How being deceived? By whom?"
"By your sister."
"How has she deceived me?" He forced her eyes to his. "How?" he repeated.
To defend her case, just as the woman in the Courts had done, she told him of what Devenish had said; notwithstanding that she herself had pleaded with Devenish to repeat nothing of what had passed between them. Then, in the cold glittering of his eyes, she saw how she had doubly wronged her cause.
"So you speak to outsiders," he said quietly, "about the things which I have told you in confidence. My God! It's well that you and I are not married; well for you and well for me that we haven't to smirch our names in order to get the release of a divorce."
"Divorce?"
"Yes. Great heavens! Do you think I'm going to live on with you now? Do you think I'm going to be followed in all my actions—tracked, trapped—and dandle the private detective on my knee?"
"Ah, but Jack!" She flung arms around his neck, her head bent close to his chest. "I was jealous—can't you see that? I was jealous of that girl."
He put her firmly away from him. "Oh, that be damned for a tale!" he exclaimed.
She shuddered. She had sought for pity—the last hope. In his voice there was none. If only she had had some one to guide her, some one to show her that it would all lead to this. She would have held him longer; she would still have held him, had she not given way to let jealousy wrestle with her soul, flinging it at his feet for him to trample on. Whatever had been the attitude of his mind before, she had afforded him no reason to leave her. Now there was cause—cause enough. She could only see the enormity of her guilt with his eyes, so completely did he dominate her. That a thousand circumstances had mitigated her action, had goaded her, as the unwilling beast is driven through the noise and smoke of battle, until, in the fury of fear, it plunges headlong towards the murderous cannonade—that these things should be taken into account did not enter her conception of the situation. She had wronged him. That was all she felt. And now, clutching his hand, raising it to her lips, drenching it with her tears and kisses, she begged his forgiveness, humbling herself down to the very dust.
He took his hand away. "What's the good of talking about forgiveness?" he said unemotionally. "The thing's done. I was not the only person who saw you."
"Your sister?"
"Yes; she pointed you out first."
"I might have guessed that!" Sally exclaimed bitterly.
"Why?"
"Because she hates me. She knew it 'ud make you angry if you saw me there."
"Oh, that's nonsense! Why should she hate you?"
"Why, because she wants you for that other girl. And you do care for her now, don't you—don't you?"
Traill turned away with annoyance. "We'll leave that matter alone," he said. "I haven't the slightest intention of discussing it. To-morrow morning I shall see about letting my rooms. According to the terms of the settlement I drew out last night, you retain these—rent free—to the expiration of the lease. That's three years. But you mayn't sub-let."
Sub-let! He could talk about sub-letting! The irony of it dragged a laugh through her lips.
"Do you think I shall want to sub-let?" she said stridently. "Do you think I shall care what I do, where I live, how I live?"
"You'll be a fool if you don't," he remarked.
The hysterical note in her voice had jarred through him. Once before in his life he had had a woman screaming about his ears. There was no desire in his mind to relish the enjoyment of it again. He turned slowly towards the door. This was the worst of women. A man's relations with them were bound to end something after this fashion. In common with most men, he shared a hatred of that termination of all intimacies which one calls a scene.
But, really, he had no cause for apprehension. The tears now were streaming down her face, sobs were choking her, convulsive shudderings that shook her body in a merciless grip. Her spirit was utterly broken. No worse could happen to her now. But through all her misery, she could still think first of him. That tentative drawing away, the hand stretching out for the door, she knew the meaning of that; she saw that he had had enough—enough of her weeping, enough of her despair. Just as when, watching the fight, she had struggled against her weakness lest it should spoil his pleasure, so now she fought down the hysteria of her mind to give him ease. Very wearily she crossed the room and stood beside him, forcing back tears with lips that were trembling and contorted. It was no show of bravado, no spurious bravery, aping self-respect, taking it well, as the phrase has it. She was not brave. She felt a coward to all of life that offered. Her heart was that of a derelict—numbed, inert, no spirit left in it—just lifting its head with sluggish weariness above the body of the waves. But simply out of love for him she could not bear to see him annoyed by her suffering.
"You needn't hurry to go," she said finely; "I shan't make a fool of myself—the way you think. I shan't be a drag on you—I promise you that. And if you're going to-morrow, wouldn't you stop just a little while and talk?"
At any other moment the simplicity of that would have touched him; but the affection that Devenish had seen to be tiring had been snapped—a thread in a flame—when he had found her watching his actions, dogging his footsteps. His liberty—that which a man of his type most prizes when he finds it being encroached upon—had been threatened. There was no forgiveness in the heart of him for that. In the sudden freedom of his affections—just as Mrs. Durlacher had so deftly anticipated—he had let them drift—a moth to the nearest candle, a floating seed to the nearest shore—and Coralie Standish-Roe had claimed them.
"Can anything be gained by talking?" he asked, quietly.
"Yes—perhaps it's the last time."
"But nothing can be gained by it. You'll only make yourself more miserable. What is the good of that?"
"Do you think I could be more miserable?" she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders.
This scarcely, without seeking defence for Traill, is the most difficult part for a man to play well. He had never offered, in the first beginning of their acquaintance, to deceive her. He was not a man who had respect for marriage, he had said quite honestly. He had told her to go—have no truck with him; and if she had gone, if she had not taken upon herself to return his present, he would have seen no more of her. She had known of his love of liberty, and she herself had threatened it; yet now, seemingly, he was playing a mean part, deserting her, casting her off, when she loved him with every breath her trembling lips drew through her body. It is hard to play such a part well. Even the least sensitive of men, conscious of their own cruelty, will seek to end it as quickly as may be. Wherefore, how could he be expected to see the good gained by staying and talking? What good, in God's name, did talking do? With the agony prolonged, the strain drawn out, how were they—either of them—to benefit? Here, indeed, is a judgment of the head. But it was with her heart alone that Sally craved for its continuance. It was the last she was to see of him; the last time that he would be in her bedroom where all the passionate associations of her life would always lie buried. Can it be wondered that she would willingly have dragged the misery of it through all that night, if only to keep him for the moments as they passed, by her side?
Yet he was driven to play the mean part—the part for which there never will be—perhaps never should be—any sympathy. And he must play it with the best grace he could. A man is always a spectator to his own actions; a woman, in her emotions—never. So women lose their self-respect more easily than men.
But Traill was not the type to allow these abstract considerations to worry him. The love in him she found to be dead. He was not even moved by the piteousness of her appeal. There, then, it must end. It was not his nature to choose the most graceful, the kindest way to end it. He snapped it off as, across the knees, you break a faggot for the burning. And that, too, is the only way to do it.
"I didn't come up here," he said, "to discuss anything. The whole thing's discussed in my mind. When I saw you running after the car, pushing your way along the gutter—that ended it. You'd better read through your settlement now and if you don't think I've been generous enough, tell me to-morrow morning. I shall be downstairs till eleven."
He opened the door—passed through—closed it. She listened to each one of his steps as he descended the stairs, her mouth hanging open, her eyes struck in a fixed glare at the spot where he had stood. Then, when she heard him close his door below, she just crumpled up in an abandoned heap upon the floor, and with each breath she moaned—"Oh—oh—oh."
Traill, undressing below, heard it. With a muttered exclamation, he dragged his shirt over his head and flung it violently into the corner of the room amongst the bundle of dirty linen.