A Woman Perfected

CHAPTER XXXI

HUSBAND AND WIFE

When Herbert Nash quitted Bloomsbury Mansions he went straight back to Littlehampton, by the last train of the day to reach that primitive place. When he arrived at Ocean Villas it was past ten o'clock. His wife had gone to bed; or, at least, she had retired to her bedroom. As a matter of fact, she felt as if she never wanted to go to bed again; unless going to bed was synonymous with eternal sleep. If only she could go to sleep and never wake! She was of opinion that she was the most miserable woman; many women think themselves that with less cause than she had. She was half-undressed, and, crouching on the floor, rested her head against the bed. In her hands was a telegram, which she had read again, and again, and again, until it seemed to have branded itself upon her throbbing brain so that she could not get it out of her sight even for a second. It had come to her earlier in the day, and, as telegrams are apt to be, was curt.

"Send another five hundred immediately. No excuses will be accepted.

Only a day or two ago she had given him a hundred pounds; then sent him another four hundred, and here already he was demanding five hundred more. The inference was plain; he would persist in his demands until he had wrung from her all that she had found on Donald Lindsay's table. Though he stripped her of every penny she would still be at his mercy; what would he demand from her then? Whatever it might be, how would she dare refuse him then, if she dare not refuse him now?

In a sense, indeed, she had refused him, as it was. He had bade her send the cash "immediately." That she had not done; she had purposely not sent it by the night's post; and now was racked by fears of the measures he might take to show her his resentment. Suppose he told her husband, as he had threatened to do? If he did! if he did! Had she not better hide in the sea before Herbert came back again?

His opportunities for telling were so numerous; he and Herbert were away together at that moment. That was another of her burdens. What was the meaning of this sudden, ill-omened connection which had sprung up between them? Why, all at once, had her husband become the inseparable companion of the man who had been wont to stand behind her chair? He had resented, so hotly, the fellow's presumption in even venturing to write to him; yet now they might be bosom friends; he even expected her to receive him as an equal. What did it mean?

Nothing kindles the imagination like a coward conscience. All sorts of hideous surmises had tormented her. A dozen explanations had occurred to her; every fresh one more unsavoury than the last. She could see that her husband had changed; in himself, as well as to her. He was not the same man; he was always brooding, irritable, depressed. Of late, not only had he not spoken to her a tender word, he had only addressed her when compelled, and then with scant civility. What did such conduct on his part portend? All kinds of doubts afflicted her; yet among them one was foremost. Was it not possible that Morgan had poisoned her husband's mind against her? He, perhaps, had not told him everything, she did not believe he had; but, with diabolical ingenuity, he might have hinted just enough to make Herbert afraid of hearing more. In that case her husband might be working Morgan's will under the delusion that, by so doing, he was protecting her; and all the while the man was wresting from her all that she had risked so much to gain-for Herbert's sake.

As, on the floor in the bedroom there, she wrestled with wild beasts of her own creation, on a sudden she heard the front door open, and a familiar step come into the house. It was her husband. She sprang to her feet, not with joy, but with terror. Why had he come back? He had told her that he would not return that night; perhaps not on the morrow. Why had he returned-when he had said that he would not return-without notice, at that hour of the night? for it seemed to her that she had been in her bedroom hours.

She heard him go into the sitting-room; finding it in darkness, no one there, he came towards where she was. As she heard him take the half-dozen steps which divided the two rooms, she stood by the bedstead, trembling from head to foot; it might have been her executioner, not her husband, who was coming. A wild, frenzied impulse came to her to turn the key in the lock, and so gain time; but before she could do it he had opened the door, and was standing in the room.

It did not need such a rarefied vision as hers was then to perceive that with him all was not well. She seemed to see him in a blaze of lightning, phantom-haunted, as she was. It was borne in on her that he saw her as the hideous thing she saw herself to be, and that that was why he stood there, white and terrible. If she could she would have dropped to the floor, and crawled to him, and hung about his knees, and cried for mercy; but she could not; she had to stand there, straight and rigid, waiting for him to speak. When he spoke his voice sounded strange in her ears, as indeed, though she was not aware of it, it did in his own.

"I see you guess why I am here!"

"Guess? How-how can I guess?"

"Has Morgan told you nothing?"

"Morgan? What-what could Morgan tell me?"

"Hasn't he told you that I'm a blackguard and a thief?"

The words were so wholly different from any she had expected him to utter that, in the stress of her agitation, they conveyed no meaning to her mind; she stared at him like one bereft of her senses, as, in fact, for the moment she was. He misconstrued her look entirely.

"Elaine," he cried, "don't look at me like that, don't! If you only knew what I have suffered, what I've gone through, you'd pity me, you wouldn't look at me as if I was something wholly outside the pale. I know you've guessed that there was something wrong ever since that-that brute came; you knew I wouldn't breathe the same air with him if I could help it; but it mayn't be, Elaine, it mayn't be so bad as you suppose. I don't ask you to forgive me; I don't even ask you to continue to regard me as your husband; I know I've forfeited all claims I may have had on you. All I ask of you is to believe that, at last, I'm going to try to be a man. I've come to tell you that, and to tell you that chiefly. I'm not going to stay; you need not fear that I'll contaminate the house which shelters you; but before I go I think I ought to tell you just what I've done, and what the temptation was; not to excuse myself, but so that, whatever happens, you, at least, may know the truth. I felt that I could not let the night pass without telling you the truth, if only because I have kept it from you so long, and in the morning it may be too late; I may not have the chance of telling it to you, face to face, again."

The longer he spoke, the more her bewilderment grew.

"I-I-don't understand," she stammered.

He made her understand, telling his tale as straightforwardly, as clearly, as it could be told; as it might have been told even by an impartial witness; the man that was in him was coming to the front at last.

"You see," he said, "I was at Morgan's mercy, or he thought I was; and, for a time, I thought so too; I was such a coward! And before long I should have been wholly at his mercy, had not the sight of that man, Clifford, roused me to a consciousness of what a coward I really was; then I knew that the only way to be free was to tell the truth, and let Morgan do what he likes. I've come to tell you the truth, first of all; and to-morrow I'm going to tell Frank Clifford the truth; and when I've found Miss Lindsay, I'll tell her the truth. If I have to suffer for it, I'll suffer; but at any rate I've escaped from Morgan. What a weight would have been off my mind if I'd escaped from him before!"

As she began to grasp the drift of what it was that he was telling her, she had sunk on to the edge of the bed, and, with distended eyes and gaping mouth, sat staring at him as if at some thing of horror. He mistook the meaning of her attitude.

"I don't wonder you look at me as if I were some repulsive object; I couldn't be more repulsive to you than I am to myself; I understand what you feel, what you think; I know I deserve it. I know you never would have married me if you had known me to be the thing I am; I have wronged you more than any one. I can't undo the bonds which bind us, that is not in my power, and I'm afraid the law will not help you. But this I can do, and I will; I'll take myself out of your life as completely as I can. Your aunt left you enough to live on; I think you had better sink it in an annuity; you'll be safer that way; and when I can I'll contribute what I can. I don't wish to be released from any of my obligations; on the contrary, I wish to fulfil them both in the letter and the spirit, and I will. So soon as I am earning money you shall have your proper share; but in any case it will be a comfort to me to feel that, in any case, you are provided for. And, in time, when I've done something towards regaining my self-respect, and-and you send for me, I'll come to you again, if only for just long enough to show that I am still alive. But you're rid of me till then. Good-bye."

He moved towards the door, as if the whole thing was at an end; as if husband and wife could be sundered quite so easily. She stopped him as he was going.

"Herbert!" She spoke in the queerest whisper, as if something had gone wrong with her vocal chords, the effect of which was to leave her partially strangled. She held out the telegram she had still in her hand. "Look at that."

He took it reluctantly, as if he feared it was a weapon which she aimed at him. Glancing at it, he read it aloud.

"'Send another five hundred immediately. No excuses will be accepted.

What-what does this mean?"

"It means that I'm worse than you; much worse than you."

"Elaine!" She tried to speak, but could not; her voice was strangled in her throat; it was not nice to watch her struggles to regain the use of it. He moved towards her, startled. "Elaine! what's the matter?"

"I'm-I'm-I'm going to tell you, only I-I- Give me-something-to drink-there's some water-in the bottle." She pointed to the washstand. He brought her some water; but she could not drink it. She could not hold the glass in her own hand; she could not swallow when he raised it to her lips. He put the glass down on the floor. Her condition frightened him. Although he had just been speaking of leaving her for an indefinite period, now he knelt beside her on the floor, and, putting his arms about her, held her close, soothing her as best he could. It was while he held her that she told him; she confessed in her agony; the words being wrung from her as if they had been gouts of blood. He continued to hold her all the time. When, in his turn, he began to understand her story, he was man enough to realize that it was only his support which gave her the strength she needed; that but for his encircling arms, and the consciousness that they were his arms, she would collapse. As, by degrees, her meaning was borne in on his understanding, the fashion of his countenance was changed, and he kept his face averted, but he never moved. When, in disconnected sentences, the root of the matter had been told, she did what he had not done; she began, in a manner, to excuse herself. "It was-because you said that you wanted money, and-that we couldn't be married without it, that I went back and took the money-which was on the table. And Morgan saw me."

"Morgan saw you!"

It was the first time he had spoken; there was a curious contrast between his voice and hers.

"He was in the room all the time-but in the darkness-I never knew it."

"So Morgan has held us in the hollow of his hand; both of us!"

"I gave him five hundred pounds the other day, and now he's telegraphed for more."

"Poor Elaine! It seems, after all, that we're a well-matched pair, both thieves and cowards."

"Herbert!"

She spoke as if she shrieked.

"My dear, do let us look facts in the face now that we are trying to make ourselves known to each other."

"I-shouldn't have taken the money-if I hadn't thought-Nora was rich-and it would make no difference."

"I'm afraid that the question of Miss Lindsay's wealth or poverty could make no difference to the thing you did."

"I know that-now."

"When it seemed that Miss Lindsay was a pauper did you give her back any of the money you had taken under a misconception?"

"I meant to-but I never did-I meant to give her a thousand pounds."

"It's a pity you didn't; it might have caused the residue to appear a little less dingy. We're a pair of beauties! God help us both; we need His help!"

"I-haven't dared to ask for it."

But she did dare that night; they both of them dared. Already, since they had been married, they had had some strange days and nights; but that was the strangest night of their strange honeymoon.

CHAPTER XXXII

A FORGOTTEN COAT

Lady Jane Carruthers was one of those elderly ladies who are never quite well, yet seldom actually ill. She was a great believer in what she called "air."

"If you breathe the right air you're all right; and if you breathe the wrong air you're all wrong, and there's the whole science of medicine in a nutshell; believe me, my dear, because I know; mine's the teaching of actual experience. So long as I'm well in a place I stay there; I know the air's right; but so soon as I begin to feel a little out of sorts I know the air has ceased to be right, I go away at once; the consequence is that there are very few people who move about as much as I do."

It chanced that, in one of her pursuits after the right air, Lady Jane went to Littlehampton; and, being there, with nothing to do except breathe the right air, by way of doing something she sent for her nephew, the Hon. Robert Spencer. She dispatched to him this telegram-

"Come down to me this afternoon. I wish to speak to you."

When he received the telegram the Honourable Robert pulled a face; he happened to have a good deal to do. His impulse was to wire back-

"Can't come. Speak on."