XIX.
CHRIS FENNO stood in the drawing-room. The servant who received him had turned on a blast of lamps and wall-lights, and in the hard overhead glare he looked drawn and worn, like a man recovering from severe illness. His clothes, too, Kate fancied, were shabbier; everything in his appearance showed a decline, a defeat.
She had not much believed in his illness when Nollie spoke of it; the old habit of incredulity was too strong in her. But now his appearance moved her. She felt herself responsible, almost guilty. But for her folly, she thought, he might have been standing before her with a high head, on easy terms with the world.
“You’ve been ill!” she exclaimed.
His gesture brushed that aside. “I’m well now, thanks.” He looked her in the face and added: “May we have a few minutes’ talk?”
She faltered: “If you think it necessary.” Inwardly she had already begun to tremble. When his blue eyes turned to that harsh slate-gray, and the two perpendicular lines deepened between his brows, she had always trembled.
“You’ve made it necessary,” he retorted, his voice as harsh as his eyes.
“I?”
“You’ve broken our compact. It’s not my doing. I stuck to my side of it.” He flung out the short sentences like blows.
Her heart was beating so wildly that she could not follow what he said. “What do you mean?” she stammered.
“That you agreed to help me if I gave up Anne. God knows what your idea of helping me was. To me it meant only one thing: your keeping quiet, keeping out of the whole business, and trusting me to carry out my side of the bargain—as I did. I broke our engagement, chucked my job, went away. And you? Instead of keeping out of it, of saying nothing, you’ve talked against me, insinuated God knows what, and then refused to explain your insinuations. You’ve put me in such a position that I’ve got to take back my word to you, or appear to your daughter and your family as a man who has run away because he knew he couldn’t face the charge hanging over him.”
It was only in the white-heat of anger that he spoke with such violence, and at such length; he seemed spent, and desperately at bay, and the thought gave Kate Clephane courage.
“Well—canyou face it?” she asked.
His expression changed, as she had so often seenit change. From menace it passed to petulance and then became almost pleading in its perplexity. She said to herself: “It’s the first time I’ve ever been brave with him, and he doesn’t know how to take it.” But even then she felt the precariousness of the advantage. His ready wit had so often served him instead of resolution. It served him now.
“You do mean to make the charge, then?” he retorted.
She stood silent, feeling herself defeated, and at the same time humiliated that their angry thoughts should have dragged them down to such a level.
“Don’t sneer—” she faltered.
“Sneer? At what? I’m in dead earnest—can’t you see it? You’ve ruined me—or very nearly. I’m not speaking now of my feelings; that would makeyousneer, probably. At any rate, this is no time for discussing them. I’m merely putting my case as a poor devil who has to earn his living, a man who has his good name to defend. On both counts you’ve done me all the harm you could.”
“I had to stop this marriage.”
“Very well. I agreed to that. I did what I’d promised. Couldn’t you let it alone?”
“No. Because Anne wouldn’t. She wanted to ask you to come back. She saw I couldn’t bear it—she suspected me of knowing something. She insisted.”
“And you sacrificed my good name rather—”
“Oh, I’d sacrifice anything. You’d better understand that.”
“I do understand it. That’s why I’m here. To tell you I consider that what you’ve done has freed me from my promise.”
She stretched out her hands as if to catch him back. “Chris—no, stay! You can’t! You can’t! You know you can’t!”
He stood leaning against the chimney-piece, his arms crossed, his head a little bent and thrust forward, in the attitude of sullen obstinacy that she knew so well. And all at once in her own cry she heard the echo of other cries, other entreaties. She saw herself in another scene, stretching her arms to him in the same desperate entreaty, with the same sense of her inability to move him, even to reach him. Her tears overflowed and ran down.
“You don’t mean you’ll tell her?” she whispered.
He kept his dogged attitude. “I’ve got to clear myself—somehow.”
“Oh, don’t tell her, don’t tell her! Chris, don’t tell her!”
As the cry died on her lips she understood that, in uttering it, she had at last cast herself completely on his mercy. For it was not impossible that, if other means failed, he would risk justifying himself to Anne by revealing the truth. Therewere times when he was reckless enough to risk anything. And if Kate were right in her conjecture—if he had the audacity he affected—then his hold over her was complete, and he knew it. If any one else told Anne, the girl’s horror would turn her from him at once. But what if he himself told her? All this flashed on Kate Clephane in the same glare of enlightenment.
There was a long silence. She had sunk into a chair and hidden her face in her hands. Presently, through the enveloping cloud of her misery, she felt his nearness, and a touch on her shoulder.
“Kate—won’t you try to understand; to listen quietly?”
She lifted her eyes and met his fugitively. They had lost their harshness, and were almost frightened. “I was angry when I came here—a man would be,” he continued. “But what’s to be gained by our talking to each other in this way? You were awfully kind to me in old times; I haven’t forgotten. But is that a reason for being so hard on me now? I didn’t bring this situation on myself—you’re my witness that I didn’t. But here it is; it’s a fact; we’ve got to face it.”
She lowered her eyes and voice to whisper painfully: “To face Anne’s love for you?”
“Yes.”
“Her determination—?”
“Her absolute determination.”
His words made her tremble again; there had always been moments when his reasonableness alarmed her more than his anger, because she knew that, to be so gentle, he must be certain of eventually gaining his point. But she gathered resolution to say: “And if I take back my threats, as you call them? If I take back all I’ve said—‘clear’ you entirely? That’s what you want, I understand? If I promise that,” she panted, “will you promise too—promise me to find a way out?”
His hand fell from her shoulder, and he drew back a step. “A way out—now? But there isn’t any.”
Mrs. Clephane stood up. She remembered wondering long ago—one day when he had been very tender—how cruel Chris could be. The conjecture, then, had seemed whimsical, almost morbid; now she understood that she had guessed in him from the outset this genius for reaching, at the first thrust, to the central point of his antagonist’s misery.
“You’ve seen my daughter, then?”
“I’ve seen her—yes. This morning. It was she who sent me here.”
“If she’s made up her mind, why did she send you?”
“To tell you how she’s suffering. She thinks, you know—” He wavered again for a second or two, and then brought out: “She’s very unhappy aboutthe stand you take. She thinks you ought to say something to ... to clear up....”
“What difference will it make, if she means to marry you?”
“Why—the immense difference of her feeling foryou. She’s dreadfully hurt ... she’s very miserable....”
“But absolutely determined?”
Again he made an embarrassed gesture of acquiescence.
Kate Clephane stood looking about the rich glaring room. She felt like a dizzy moth battering itself to death against that implacable blaze. She closed her lids for an instant.
“I shall tell her, then; I shall tell her the truth,” she said suddenly.
He stood in the doorway, his hard gaze upon her. “Well, tell her—do tell her; if you want never to see her again,” he said.