Borderland

When the Thorsgarth carriage had driven away, and the Balder Hall one came up, Otho handed Magdalen in, followed her, shut the window, and turned to her. After the bright light around the concert-room door, they seemed suddenly to plunge into utter and outer darkness, and Magdalen was glad of it, for she would not have had Otho see her face now for a great deal of money,—perhaps not even if his seeing it would have secured to her the object for which she had toiled so long and so unsuccessfully—the position of his wife. She did not know what he was going to say to her, but she believed she could guess. She believed that the new line she had lately taken towards him—to-night, and on one or two other occasions recently—had so angered his imperious and exacting temper that he was now going to tell her that their friendship was at an end, unless she would submit to take a lower position with regard to him than she had yet done. She knew—she had been so unhappy as to have to consider the subject, in reckoning with herself about Otho and his ‘intentions’—she knew that she had no ‘dishonourable’ proposal to fear from him. She had maintained always a footing distinctly forbidding such possibilities; but she dreaded and feared that he had shaken off what influence she had had over him—that he found he could exist without the counsel and advice for which he had often come to her, and which he professed, had often been of service to him. She believed he was angry that she had dared to thwart him in a whim which he considered to be harmless, and a kind of amusing joke, and that after making the bizarre and humiliating exhibition of himself, her, and Ada, which he had accomplished this evening, he was now going to let her understand that he was about to shake off her influence once and for all. And what was it that she experienced in this idea? Scarcely what might have been expected. Neither anger, contempt, nor indignation, but grief, sorrow, soreness; a yearning unwillingness to part, and a dread of the days when she should not see him; an almost passionate speculation as to whether she could not concede something—keep the man at her side, somehow.

Thus she was glad when the darkness hid her face. He could not see the thrill that shot through her, as she wondered what the next half hour was to bring forth for her, and she managed to control her voice, and to say calmly—

‘Pray be quick. I do not know why I have granted you this favour at all. It is far beyond your deserts.’

‘As for that, there may be two opinions. If you’d heard me out to-night, instead of pouncing upon me as you did——’

‘Do not allude to that. It is over, and I have not repented my refusal to you. It was quite obvious what people thought when you appeared with that girl on your arm. Not for worlds would I have put myself into such a position.’

‘Position—position! You spit out that word just as women do when they want to make out that their dearest friend is doing something bad. I’ve heard that your friendship is a dangerous kind of thing, Magdalen, but I have never heeded such reports. I don’t know whether they are true or not, but I know you have often talked a lot about friendship, and the duty of sticking to your friend when you have got one. I wondered whether you dared show every one that you were my friend to-night.’

‘Absurd! To show myself your friend in that fashion means one of two things—either that I am engaged to be married to you, or else that I show myself a bold, vulgar woman, whom any other man might well be afraid to marry. That is not friendship; it is senseless bravado; it is being loud and fast, and all to no purpose. Such a proceeding could serve no possible end.’

‘I know that. Do you think I am a fool?’ said he. ‘But when you began to pitch into me, without losing any time, you made me so wild, that I was resolved to pay you out, cost what it might. Magdalen——’ his voice sank, and it thrilled through her, and with it a sense of dread and terror, and the miserable consciousness that she, who had so long contrived to have the reins in her own hands, was now the one to be dominated with bit and bridle, and made to turn this way and that, at the will of another. She listened, stooping a little forward, in a crouching attitude, waiting to hear her doom. ‘I’ve got what they call a bad character. Whatever it is, good or bad, it is a pretty correct estimate they have made of me. They’ll tell you that I drink, and I dice, and I bet. So I do, and like them all; and, of course, they’ll tell you I’m no fitting husband for a decent woman. As for decent, I know nothing; but from what I’ve seen of women, I should judge it wanted a bold one to undertake me. If you would, Magdalen—Magdalen! I don’t say I’d make you happy, for I know I should make you miserable, but whatever I seemed—I can’t always answer for myself—whatever I seemed, I’d love you to the end of my life, ten times better than I do now. Dare you do it?’

Silence. The carriage rolled softly on over the snowy road. Otho had seized hold of her two hands. His face she could not see, but she heard his breath, laboured and heavy. A very strange, wild sensation surged through her whole being. As in a flash of lightning, in a kind of revelation, she seemed to see all the terrible possibilities of the dim future—all that could be implied by his ‘dare you do it?’ He did not urge her when she did not answer; his passion seemed to have softened into patience. He waited and waited for her to reply.

‘Otho!’—her face almost touched his as she spoke—‘I know what you are. I have been trying to tear you out of my heart. I did not want you there. I cannot kill the love I have for you. I dare do anything for you.’

As she ceased to speak, their lips met in a clinging kiss—a kiss which bound their two fates together from henceforth, for evermore, and which made her heart beat chokingly with terror and passion, but which was utterly devoid of the joy and springing rapture it might have had. When Magdalen said, ‘I know what you are,’ she spoke the truth. She was nearly a year older than he was, and had all her life seen very clearly out of her passive eyes. When he said, ‘Dare you do it?’ that meant, and she knew that it meant, not that he was going to give up his evil ways for her sake, and try to become mild and human and gentle, and a fitting husband for a civilised lady, but that she accepted his evil ways along with himself, and endured them as best she might.

They sat silent for a while after this, till at last he said—

‘Magdalen!’

‘Well?’

‘You are not a good young woman, you know. You have not always stuck to people as you promised you would. They say—every one says—that you jilted Michael Langstroth,—did not keep your promises to him, you know.’

‘They say what is quite true; and Michael Langstroth may thank me if I did jilt him. He was not made for me, nor I for him. I daresay he knows it by now.’

‘He took his dismissal,’ pursued Otho, with a sneer, ‘and never raised his hand. But let me advise you not to try that game with me, or there might be murder done, or something as bad. I’m not Michael Langstroth. Do you understand?’

He spoke in a fierce whisper, and in Magdalen’s laugh, as she answered him, there was a hysterical sound.

‘Do you suppose I don’t know that! For every one of Michael Langstroth’s good qualities, you have half a dozen bad ones. If you wasted your whole life in trying, you could never get as much goodness into your whole body as he has in his little finger; and oh, how tired I was of it—how tired I was, before it was all over.’

‘H’m! Well, I can promise that you shall never tire of my oppressive goodness and piety—that’s all.’

‘I know you are a complete pagan; sometimes I think I am too. There’s one thing, Otho—you must not ask me to marry you yet; my aunt would faint at the idea that I was engaged to you, and I am not going to tell her, and leave her, and break her heart. Do you understand?’

‘I understand that you think more of that old woman than of any one in the world,’ said Otho, surlily, ‘whatever you may profess; but I suppose you must have your way. And, Magdalen’—he dropped his voice—‘confess that you were worsted to-night. You found your master.’

‘If I did, he might have been more generous. It was an odious thing that you did, to flout me, and openly play the gallant to a little chit who has always looked up to me with reverence. I can never have anything more to say to little Ada, now; and I can tell you, the child was almost my only amusement. I don’t know who will afford me any entertainment now.’

‘I will,’ said Otho, with generous promptitude.

‘You can’t. Here we are, and it is snowing, actually,’ she added, as she let down the glass, and looked out. ‘Heavy snow! How on earth will you get home?’

‘I’ll walk, of course,’ said Otho, jumping out, and holding out his hand to her.

‘Walk!’ repeated Magdalen, pausing before she got out, to expostulate with him—‘walk over three miles in this driving snow—and on such a road! Indeed, you must not. If you wait, they will get you a gig, or a dogcart, or something; it will be lighter than the brougham, and you could put it up at your place till to-morrow.’

‘I’ll walk, I tell you. Come out; you’ll get your death of cold, sitting there,’ said Otho, gruffly and impatiently. ‘What’s a few flakes of snow to me, now? Haven’t I been in a fever all night? I tell you, I want to work it off, so let me alone.’

She had got out of the carriage, and they stood on the steps. She was going to expostulate again, but Otho told the men to drive to the stables, he was going to walk home; and they, nothing willing to turn out again on such a night,—a contingency which they had already discussed,—obeyed with alacrity. The two figures, dark and shrouded, stood within the porch, and Magdalen stretched out her hand towards the bell.

‘Stop a minute!’ said Otho. ‘Heugh! what a wind!’ as a screaming blast from the north-west whistled past the vestibule.

‘Otho, you must not walk home——’

‘Be quiet, I tell you; let me alone! If I’ve a fancy, I’ll sleep in the vestibule, or anywhere I choose. Now, Magdalen,’—he seized her hands in a grasp that hurt them,—‘swear that you will not go back from what you have said to-night’

‘I swear I will not, Otho.’

‘And that when the time comes—we shall both know when it does—you’ll marry me, and follow me, as truly as I’ll go on loving you.’

‘Yes, I swear I will.’

‘And that whatever happens, you are mine—you don’t cut yourself adrift from me as you did from Michael Langstroth.’

‘There is no need for me to swear that, for I could not, if I would.’

‘All right! give me a kiss, and let me get home.’

Magdalen put her two hands on his shoulders, and said—

‘I have sworn a good many things to you; I want you to swear nothing to me; but remember this, whatever wrong you do me, directly or indirectly, from this time forward, you do to your wife, for you are mine now, as much as I am yours. Good night!’

She kissed him on his mouth, and was turning away. Otho suddenly put his arm about her neck, laid his head for a moment on her breast, and said in a rough, broken voice—

‘You have been very good to me, and very patient with me, Magdalen. You’ll get your reward, I hope.’

Then he turned on his heel, rammed his cap on to his head, and plunged into the darkness and the snow, which drove blindingly in his face.

He had chosen to walk—persisted in walking, perhaps with some idea of cooling, in the wintry blast, the fever of his hot heart; for it was hot, and it beat and tossed with restless pain.

‘The biggest throw I ever made,’ he muttered to himself, as he passed out at the Balder Hall gate, and emerged in the tempest of the open road. ‘Will she be staunch, I wonder? I believe she will. We’ve been driven together, if ever two lost souls were, and——’

Here he was obliged to give his undivided attention to keeping the right road. Thorsgarth was but three miles away from Balder Hall, even by the roundabout way of the high road. It had been a little after eleven when Otho had turned away from Miss Strangforth’s door; it was nearly two when at last Gilbert let him in at the side door of his own house; and he entered, pallid, gasping, and scarce able to stand, covered all over with snow, and shading his blinded eyes from the light.

‘Good heavens, man! where have you been; and what have you been doing? I was just thinking of rousing the house, and sending relays of men after you, with lanterns.’

‘I’ve been doing my courting,’ said Otho, pulling off his overcoat, and shaking himself; ‘and since winning the lady, I’ve had to do battle with the storm. Have you got a good fire in there, and something to drink? It’s not weather for a dog to be out in.’

‘Which lady have you been honouring with your proposals?’ inquired Gilbert drily.

‘Which? Why, there is only one, and that’s Magdalen.’

‘Oh! It is a pity you did not manage to let other people understand that as clearly as you seem to do yourself.’

‘Come, don’t be crusty, Gilbert,’ said he, suddenly, and without his usual sullenness. ‘You know I have been wondering for a long time if I should do this; and now that it’s done, by Jove, you don’t seem to think it makes any difference to a fellow! I thought you would shake hands, and wish me joy at any rate.’

Gilbert was a little time silent before he answered. Then he said—

‘I can do that, if you like, and do it honestly. I’ve no objection to shake hands with you, and I would rather you met with joy than sorrow; but’—with a sudden change of tone—‘why did you spoil everything by making that hideous exhibition of yourself to-night? Why could you not tame Magdalen, if she wants taming, without embroiling yourself with half a dozen other people? It is too stupid!’

It was not by reproaches like these that Gilbert had got and maintained his power over Otho, but something to-night seemed to drive the words out of him, whether he wished to utter them or not. Otho did not seem inclined to quarrel.

‘What does it matter?’ he said, tolerantly. ‘Let me alone. It will all blow over.’

‘It will not blow over!’ said Gilbert, almost passionately. ‘Do you suppose that Roger Camm will put up with such treatment? He was perfectly frantic, and you will have to reckon with him yet——’

‘I’m quite ready,’ said Otho, scowling suddenly. ‘He had better mind what he is about, in calling me to account, that’s all.’

‘Not only that, but you made yourself ridiculous; and, above all, Otho, you put a public insult upon your sister by behaving as you did in her presence, with a little vulgar fool like that Dixon girl. It is——’

‘My sister chose to come poking her nose into my house, and mixing herself with my affairs,’ said Otho, sullenly. ‘She may take the consequences. Let her go home again to her genteel friends, if she objects to what goes on here.’

‘Bah!’ said Gilbert, with indignation. ‘Have you no sense of decency?’

‘You are cross, Gilbert; and it’s very late. I’m going to bed, and I advise you to do the same. The lecture to-morrow, when you’ve had time to think things over. Good-night, old fellow.’

He took a candle, nodded to Gilbert, and left the room. His friend slowly followed him, looking altogether more limp and less self-assured than he had done six hours earlier.