CHAPTER X—LADY PHAYRE THROWS HER CAP OVER THE WINDMILLS.
It had been a quick rough grasp, bringing to Lady Phayre a new conception of handshakes. It had not been violent like that of certain per-fervid ones among her friends, forcing the rings into her delicate flesh; but her hand tingled, and the tingling mounted her arm and died away in a flutter in her bosom. Involuntarily she held up the hand in front of her, saw that it trembled a little, and then laid it against her cheek. A swift consciousness of the act brought a flush to her face. But instead of drawing away her hand, she moved it slightly so that her lips touched the palm, and there it stayed while she gave herself up to a day-dream. And the smile rose into her eyes which no one has ever seen in a woman’s, except when she has been taken unawares; which only comes when she is alone, and is looking half tremulously, half amusedly into her heart.
Gradually, however, the smile grew dim with a gathering moisture. She was not a woman to whom tears came readily. She was surprised and glad. They were a delicate test of the sincerity of her emotion. A drop hung on the lower lid for a moment and fell upon the back of her fingers, losing itself among the rings. Her heart melted over Goddard. Failure for him was different from failure for other men. The wherefore of this conclusion she did not argue out, content with the assurance of its truth in her own mind. The great battle, into whose side-issues she herself had been drawn, was lost. She was sorry. But she had spoken truly when she had said she was sorrier for him. The fallen cause was merged in the defeated man. Her thoughts drifted towards plans of consolation.
It was very still, silence only broken by the whirr of the little leaping flame jets in the fire. The white cat rose from the hearthrug, stretched himself, stole noiselessly over the pile carpet to the centre of the room, and then, after a dubious wag of the tail, returned to slumber. Lady Phayre did not change her attitude. Her occupation engrossed her. She was compounding balm for Goddard—a new and wondrous panacea, whose secret she had just discovered—an extract of many feminine simples as old as the leaves on the Tree of Knowledge.
The sudden opening of the door caused her to start with a foolish hope that it might be Goddard returning. But the neat maid-servant, in her subdued voice, announced Mr. Gleam.
He came forward eagerly, his dry equable face glowing with excitement.
“Have you seen Goddard?”
He was too preoccupied with his business even to linger his usual moment over her finger-tips.
“He has been here. Why do you want him?” The question was in a breath with the reply. Something had happened. She caught Gleam’s excitement, half rose in her chair, and looked up at him anxiously.
“To tell him some news. Great news. Glorious news. I am the only one who has got it. The enemy have been weakening all the time—a rift within their lute. Rosenthal has backed out. Cleaver & Flyte are in a panic—Rosenthal was behind them, you know. The others can’t stand alone. It’s utter rout!”
“But it’s too late!” exclaimed Lady Phayre, with a ring of dismay in her voice. “Haven’t you heard?”
“It isn’t. Not yet,” replied Gleam animatedly. “The managers won’t declare till to-morrow morning—unless they are fools. But I have more precise news still. You did not let me finish,” he laughed apologetically. “They will give in all along the line if the men hold out another four-and-twenty hours.”
“They must hold out,” cried Lady Phayre. “Oh, why isn’t Goddard there?”
“Better he should be here—if I could only get at him. Wiring couldn’t have been definite enough. It’s not safe. Let me track him down, and off he goes by the midnight train, or the newspaper train, and then——”
“He will win,” cried Lady Phayre exultantly.
“Of course. Come, see, conquer. As easy as lying. That is why I have killed three cab horses under me to find him. I was in despair. I knew he had left Ecclesby. At his house they assured me he was not in London—did not expect him for a couple of days. No news at the clubs—his offices. Then I came here. Thank Heaven, he is in London, at any rate. If I can’t find him, some one else will have to go down.”
“And Goddard lose his triumph after all? He must be found. Besides, they would not believe any one else.”
“I was thinking of going myself, en dernier ressort,” said Gleam rather quizzically, “just as I am. I think they would believe me.”
“So would the masters. A member of Parliament in dress clothes going about at six o’clock in the morning! Besides, you would catch your death of cold.”
She laughed playfully, but she was trembling all through with suppressed joy. The knuckles of her hand, that held a futile ball of a handkerchief, were white. There was a little pause. She looked on the ground for a moment, then she lifted her long lashes, and regarded him half-shyly, with a smile playing round her lips.
“What would you say if I told you where you can find him?”
“Anything,” cried Gleam. “Where is he?”
“At the Midland Grand Hotel.”
She told the lie with astounding charm. He whipped up his hat from the table and turned towards her.
“Why did I not come to you at once? You are not a woman, but an Immortal. A crisis—a time of difficulty—and you come out of a rosy cloud like an Homeric goddess.”
Lady Phayre smiled on him divinely. She held out her hand.
“I won’t keep you. I am as eager as you are.”
In another minute she heard the wheels of his departing cab in the street below. She broke into a little ringing laugh: he had gone so promptly and unquestioningly on his fool’s errand. A woman in an exalted condition of mind has a queer sense of humour.
A wild fancy had seized her. It had grown into an irrepressible desire. Her woman’s wit had worked swiftly. The lie had mounted to her lips on wings of triumph, and spread radiance over her face. No wonder Gleam was enraptured.
Women who are in the habit of throwing their caps over windmills find it as monotonous as anything else after a time; but for one who has never done it before, the act is accompanied with a rare exhilaration.
Lady Phayre had lived a bright but perfectly exemplary life. No breath of scandal had ever rested upon her name. Sir Ephraim had cloyed her with affection, and hitherto she had regarded amatory offerings with a young confectioner’s serene indifference to puffs. If she dared now and then to flout at convention, she was only exercising the privileges of her position. No one could find a word to say against it. To have driven to a politician’s house at night to deliver a political message was a commonplace of propriety. But to take the message of victory to the man she loved, knowing, with a thrill that quivered from her feet to her hair, that the message would contain also the openly avowed gift of herself—that set matters on a totally different plane. It was wild, daring, unutterably sweet. The breathless moment that followed the lie was the supreme point of happiness in Lady Phayre’s life.
She went to a writing-table, took a sheet of the crested, delicately-scented paper, and wrote a hurried line, which she enclosed in an envelope and thrust in her corsage. Then she rang for her maid, and in a few moments was speeding across London in a hansom cab. The cold air caught her face, filling her with a joyous sense of vitality. She pictured, glowingly, the little scene that would take place. First, his look of wondering delight at her presence, then the illumination on his face when she gave him her breathless message. There would be just time to deliver it, if he was to catch the midnight train. The letter she would slip into the letter-box. It would be found after she had left. If it was forwarded to him the next day, so much the better.
She loved him. It was a new, wild sensation to her. The gradual drifting towards the rapids had been pleasant, though not unaccompanied by certain trepidations and misgivings. This evening had brought her to the edge, and the swirl fascinated her. For once Lady Phayre had lost her head. And yet there was method in her wildness. She felt herself worshipped, longed for, saw the man standing in passionate helplessness on the other side of the social gap between them. It was her prerogative to stretch the bridge across. In the midst of all the excitement, Lady Phayre was deliciously conscious that she was doing it gracefully.
Her mind was blissfully unheedful of the route. Crowded thoroughfares, dreary squares, long, gaunt streets—it was all the same to her. She lay back in a corner of the cab, felt the letter stiff against her bosom, beneath her sealskin jacket, and surrendered herself to her sensations. They were those of an angel of mercy committing a rapturous indiscretion.
At last the cab stopped at the given number of the quiet street where Goddard lived. Bidding the cabman wait, she ran up the steps and rang the bell. For a moment she hesitated with the letter in her hand, fingering it nervously. Then, with a little throb, half-joy, half-fear, she thrust it into the letter-box.
A servant came to the door and stared at the visitor. Lady Phayre’s heart beat so fast that she could scarcely speak.
“Mr. Goddard’s upstairs, ma’am. I’ll fetch him,” said the servant; and she ran up the stairs, leaving Lady Phayre standing in the hall.
She was a slatternly slip of a girl, in a print dress. The thought of men’s incapacity in the domestic economies brought a superior smile to Lady Phayre’s lips. She forgave him, on account of his sex, for being left to wait in a draughty passage. But the dining-room door was ajar, showing a light within. There was no reason against her entering, her hand was upon it, when it was suddenly opened wide, and, in the full light appeared the figure of a woman with sodden features, dull eyes, and loose, untidy hair, dressed in a dirty flannel dressing-gown.
For a second they stood watching one another. Then the woman made a step, and reeled sideways against the wall. She was drunk.
“Who the ———— are you?” she cried in a thick voice.
Lady Phayre was transfixed with horror. She shrank back, just as Goddard rushed down the stairs. He had heard his wife’s speech. It was an awful moment. At the sight of him the woman cowered.
“Stay in that room!” he thundered at her; then he slammed the door, and still gripping the knob, stood with livid features and heavily coming breath, staring into Lady Phayre’s white face.
“You here? What madness brought you?” he said hoarsely.
The sound of his voice addressing her was an awakening shock to Lady Phayre.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, the disgust and revolt of her soul finding its only expression in an inarticulate cry. And then she instinctively fled towards the street door.
But Goddard overtook her in two or three great strides. She shrank into the corner, put up her hand as if he were about to touch her.
“Let me go. Don’t come near me. Don’t speak to me. It is horrible.”
“Yes, it’s horrible,” he replied fiercely. “But it is my curse, and not my fault, that I have a wife like that.”
“Your wife, your wife?” she said in a queer, faint voice. “That—that woman your wife?”
“You did not think it was my mistress?” he exclaimed with bitter coarseness. “To come to her after leaving you!”
She recovered her composure with a strong effort.
“I will trouble you to open that door for me.”
He slid back the latch, held the door open for her to pass out, followed her, and, shutting it behind him, stood with her on the steps. Then, before she had time to descend, he seized her by the wrist.
“What madness made you come to this house? Tell me.”
Her first impulse was to wrench herself free and rush down to the waiting cab, so as to fly from the loathed spot, and be alone with her sickening mortification. But he held her too firmly.
“Tell me,” he said again sternly. “You would not come here without some good reason.”
“Let go my arm. You are hurting me.”
“Forgive me,” he said, in a softer tone, dropping her wrist. “The hell of indoors followed me out here.”
Lady Phayre at that moment hated him intensely. If it had been a mere personal service to him, rather than perform it she would have called to her safe-conduct into the cab the policeman who was pacing the solitary, windswept street. But she reflected on the gravity of the issue. Mastering her repugnance, she told him in a few curt sentences the object of her mission. The longing for escape tingled through every fibre in her body. As soon as the last word of the hated task was spoken, she shuddered, flew down the steps, and rushed into the cab.
At the door of Queen’s Court Mansions, after she had paid her fare, her heart stood still with a sickening recollection. She had left the letter behind in the box. For a moment she thought of driving back to claim it; but that was impossible. She crawled up the stairs and went to bed, her brain reeling with rage, disgust, and humiliation.
Goddard stood bareheaded on the steps till the cab had disappeared in the darkness, and then let himself in with his latch-key. He went into the dining-room. Lizzie, lying half asleep on the couch by the fire, turned her glazed eyes towards him as he entered. Her hair was squalidly loose, her face bloated, her figure shapeless, her dirty dressing-gown half open, her stockings wrinkling around her ankles. The room smelt of spirits; the furniture was awry; the table-cloth was askew, and on it were crumbs of a half-eaten Bath bun, a dirty handkerchief, and a copy of a penny novelette, lying open at a great stain of grease.
A wave of indescribable loathing passed through the man. A savage desire leaped from his heart to snatch the sofa-cushion from under her and stifle her with it as she lay there, but it ended in a great lump in his throat.
“I told you to go to bed,” he said fiercely. “Go at once.”
She rose to her feet and staggered, unable to walk. If she had fallen to the ground, Goddard felt that he could not have touched her. She dropped back on the couch. He rang the bell and the girl appeared.
“Call cook and put your mistress to bed at once. I am going back to Ecclesby to-night. I don’t know how long I shall be away. I shall wire to Mrs. Smith to come here to-morrow.”
The girl went out to fetch the cook. Lizzie looked at him with stupid gravity.
“Think I believe you’re a-going to Ecclesby? You’re going to that Piccadilly Circus woman.”
Goddard sprang forward, caught her by the loose collar of her dressing gown, and shook her till the stuff tore.
“Do you want me to kill you?” he said, between his teeth, glaring at her.
She was frightened, and began to whimper.
Goddard stood for a moment looking at her. Then he passed his hand through his hair in a passionate gesture.
“O God!” he cried, in a low, trembling voice, and then strode out of the room.
He sought mechanically his still unpacked bag, his overcoat and necessaries, and went out into the night. At St. Pancras Station he found Gleam waiting on the platform. He was conscious of the Member asking him for certain explanations concerning the Midland Grand Hotel and Lady Phayre, and of listening to details of the leakage of secrets, Rosenthal’s defection, to congratulations, encouragement, adieux as the train moved off, but it was all a phantasmagoria in which his intellect worked independently of himself. The glorious news he was carrying, the certain victory that was to crown his hopes and ambitions, the thousands of lives whose destiny he was bearing in his hands—all loomed like vague shadows at the back of his consciousness. But his brain was on fire with passionate love for Lady Phayre, and wild hatred of the woman from whom he had just parted. If man ever carried the fires of hell in his heart it was Goddard, that night, as he was on his way to realise the first great ambition of his life.
CHAPTER XI—RECONSTRUCTION
The victory was complete. The sudden collapse of the firms caused a sensation all over the country. The newspapers were ringing with his name. He was the hero of the hour. At Ecclesby he was the hero for all time. His first appearance after the announcement of the terms of settlement was a signal for extravagant demonstration. Men shouted themselves hoarse, and fought to shake hands with him. Women wept upon each other’s necks and shrilled out blessings. One, mad with joy, threw her arms around him and kissed him. A torch-light procession, headed by two frenzied bands, playing “See the Conquering Hero comes,” carried him in triumph through the streets.
For the time his heart glowed with the intoxication of success and popular worship. But when the shouts of the crowd had ceased ringing in his ears, the glow faded like a false glamour, and left him face to face with grim realities, before which all else seemed shadowy. As soon as he reached London, he went with whirling thoughts to Queen’s Court Mansions.
What he should say to Lady Phayre he did not know. All that he had defined was a fierce hunger to see her again, a wild longing to throw himself at her feet. The dormant passion of the man had awakened and shook him to the depths of his nature. His love for her had flowed so calmly, had quickened so imperceptibly, had maintained so smooth a surface with passionate depths so unsuspected, that when the sudden chasm met its course, it dashed down an overwhelming cataract that swept him headlong into unknown abysses. The blood swirled through his veins as he stood waiting outside the familiar door. The servant opened it. Lady Phayre was unwell, was not receiving any visitors. “Is she in bed?” asked Daniel rudely.
“She is keeping her room, sir.”
“Tell her that I wish to see her.”
The servant retired, and returned with the message that Lady Phayre could not possibly receive, and would not be well enough to do so for some time. He had to depart, raging with disappointment. He went home, shut himself up in his room, and wrote to her. The days passed, and he received no reply. A second letter met with similar treatment. Then he called again. This time neither the electric bell, nor the little brass knocker, caused the door to be opened. At the entrance to the Mansions he met the porter, who told him that Lady Phayre had locked up her flat for six months, and had gone to the south of France.
Then, and then only, did Goddard realise his lost paradise. He had been buoyed up with hopes that if he could but have speech with her he could win his pardon, his right of entry into the bit-over of Eden that she inhabited. Now she had closed the gates. If the porter had been the angel of the flaming sword, Goddard could not have looked at him with more hopeless acquiescence.
He wandered for some time aimlessly through the streets. Life seemed as drear as the murky November afternoon that was merging into a wet, dismal night. He had finished his routine duties for the day, had hurried through them feverishly in view of his visit to Lady Phayre. He walked on to Piccadilly Circus. There he stopped, debated for a moment what he should do. A Bayswater ’bus had just drawn up at the end of the lumbering line, and the conductor was vociferating loudly. He shouted into Goddard’s face—
“Now, then! Nottin’ ’Ill, sir. Room inside.”
Goddard turned away quickly. He could not go home. The thought of Lizzie, foul and drunken, caused a red cloud to pass before his eyes. In his present mood it would be well not to see her.
He made his way to his club, mounted to the quiet library, where he would be undisturbed by the chatter of acquaintances, and pulling up an arm-chair before a fire-place in a dark corner, gave himself up to the grim task of reconstructing his life. A new devastating element had come into his sphere—Lizzie. In the days before his friendship with Lady Phayre his wife had counted for little in his earnest life. He regretted her unhappiness, did what lay in his power to remedy the irremediable mistake of his marriage; but never desiring freedom, the bond scarcely troubled him. Even during the sweetness of his intercourse with Lady Phayre it had galled him but little. She was so far above him, the feelings with which he regarded her were so new to his almost original experience that he had not realised that he loved her after the common way of men. In the serenity of Lady Phayre’s atmosphere Lizzie counted for no more than the little bare top-room in which he had once lived, his early memories of hardship and struggle with poverty. But now when the idyll was over, when he felt the man’s fierce passion for the woman that was lost to him, the other woman who stood between counted as a terrible, resistless force.
He gazed with set features into the fire. It faded, and in its place rose the scene of that night when the two women had met. One face noble, intellectual, pure in outline; the other, sodden, coarse, and bestial. He gripped the arms of his chair, and a half groan came from his lips. A loathing of the woman to whom he was bound arose within him like a nausea.
Then anger shook him—anger at the folly of his marriage; anger at the coarse nature of his wife, at her father’s drunkenness, at the pretty baby face that had caught his raw fancy—anger, too, at Lady Phayre. Why had she sought him out? Why had she lured him on to enslave himself to her? Anger at her scorn of him, at her fine-lady sensitiveness that was revolted at the sight of a drunken shrew. Anger at her having led him into the fool’s paradise only to eject him ignominiously.
A slight tap on his shoulder aroused him. He started round: the anger that was hot within him turned against the disturber. It was Gleam.
“I have been looking round the club for some one to dine with. Come along,” he said in his friendly way.
But Goddard glowered at him. At that moment Gleam seemed to belong to the other side of the great gulf, and he hated him with the old class-hatred. He looked so spick and span with his evening dress, and gold eye-glass, and meticulously trimmed head. His manner was so easy, giving the impression of freedom from sordid cares. He had no foul drunken wife dragging him down. He could meet Lady Phayre on a level. He could offer her marriage, and she could but take the offer as a compliment. A sense of personal degradation filled Goddard’s soul, and he hated himself for hating Gleam. In a moment, however, he came to his senses, but not before Gleam had rallied him on his confusion.
“Caught you napping, eh? Well—will you dine?”
“No,” said Goddard, rising from his chair. “Not to-night. I ought to have got out of this half-an-hour ago.”
He made a pretence of stretching himself as if he had been asleep. Gleam looked at him with his quick glance.
“You have been overworking yourself. Take care. You great strong men break with a crash. Go away and have a rest.”
“Like Lady Phayre,” said Goddard, in the bitterness of his heart.
“Quite so. That confounded strike of yours did for her. What the dickens we’re to do without her I don’t know.”
“Life will go on just the same, I suppose. No one is indispensable.”
He laughed mirthlessly. A faint flush rose in Gleam’s dry cheeks.
“You’re talking treason, Goddard. You certainly do want a rest.”
“One wants a devil of a lot of things one can’t get,” said Goddard.
“I want my dinner, and I’m going to get it,” replied Gleam good-humouredly. “Goodbye.”
He went out of the library, took his place in the lift. His eyes twinkled, and he smoothed his moustache abstractedly. Then a little exclamation broke from him.
“I wonder!” said he.
“Did you speak, sir?” said the lift-porter.
“Eh?” replied Gleam. “Yes; I wonder—I wonder why I have come down to the basement when I wanted the dining-room floor.”
But Goddard could not sit any longer in the library. The brooding spell was over, and its place was taken by feverish unrest. He left the Club, went out into the streets, and began to walk rapidly. Whither was he going? He did not care. A vague idea that he could free himself of his madness by physical exercise prompted him. He had a faint recollection of a scene in a penny dreadful read in his board-school days—a scene where the hero, to bring calmness to his throbbing brain, mounted his horse and galloped at whirlwind speed over miles and miles of moorland, in frenzied chase, until the noble animal’s heart burst and he staggered and fell, throwing his rider, who broke his neck. But Goddard walked—up the hurrying Strand and Fleet Street, through the fast-emptying City; eastwards, up Fenchurch Street, the Whitechapel Road, Mile End Road, jostling through the crowded thoroughfares that reeked with the odour of fried-fish, naphtha from costers’ barrows, and the day’s sweat of the toiling population; down Whitehouse Lane and Stepney High Street on to Ratcliffe Highway. The squalor and misery of it all touched the ever-responsive chord in his nature, awoke the demagogue in him to sympathy with the people. The East End had never appeared to him so terrible, so crushing in its vast unloveliness. Mile after mile it was just the same—the same stench, the same stunted men; the same anemic girl-mothers; the same foul, fringed, and feathered women of the street; the same bestial talk that seemed to hang continuously on the air; the same scenes of drunken brawling outside the public-houses; the same dreamy, endless tram-cars, smoothly gliding past this hubbub and swelter of humanity on the pavement; and everywhere the same joyless struggle for the four sole ends of life—food, raiment, shelter, and forgetfulness.
Goddard felt a strange and stern comfort in steeping his soul in these wide waters of bitterness. He went on and on, through brawling companies of sailors, swarthy Lascars, and the land-scum that clings round the seafaring life; past evil-smelling marine stores, live-stock dealers dissonant with the screeching of parrots, slop-shops, low eating-houses, scented from afar, even through the general stench, by the miasmic exhalations from basement gratings. At the end of the Highway he turned, retraced his steps, went through the foul river-side slums, crossed the Commercial Road, struck northwards, up dark, narrow streets, where the flare and turmoil of the great arteries were perceived but faintly, and the minor privacies of life were in sordid evidence. Through streets of sweaters’ dens he could see the vague forms of the workers behind the blindless windows. Once he stopped and counted—thirty in one small, gas-lit room.
To carry on the combat with the powers of evil that enthralled this hideous city, his life needed little reconstruction. He thought of Lady Phayre, clenched his stick, and swung it furiously.
“I’ll go on with my work, and she can go to the devil!” he said.
And he walked on through the endless streets.
It is a simple way to rid ourselves of burdens, to consign them to Avernus, and ship them on the waters of Lethe. Unfortunately it is not always successful. They are apt to be elusive, like the vampire in the Indian story which Vikram could not keep in his sack. They slip from the hold of the dark ship, and return to the shoulders of the consigner. But in this Goddard’s pride allowed no confession of failure. He blustered himself into the belief that Lady Phayre was no more to him than Hecuba was to the First Player, thus playing the hypocrite to himself with morose and stubborn futility. He plunged into his work with redoubled energy, grew angry when he found that it did not give him the old sufficing happiness, and obstinately refused to allow the simple, obvious cause.
And then the new element of discord in his life had to be accepted and harmonised. Lizzie was going from bad to worse. He brought Emily to live in the house to take permanent charge of her. Together they tried to mitigate the evil, to circumvent her in her plans for obtaining drink; but she was more than their equal in cunning. The disease had laid its everlasting grasp upon her. She sank daily in degradation. Daniel could not cheat himself into the fancy of freedom from this burden of loathing. Yet he was a man with a keen sense of justice. The more his heart revolted, the more doggedly did he repress outward manifestation. He bore her reproaches silently, strove to render her lot less bitter.
“I believe you’re an angel from heaven, Daniel,” said Emily once. She always had looked up to him with reverential adoration. “How you can put up with her I don’t know. You’re a living angel if ever there was one.”
“You think so, do you, Em?” he answered with a rough laugh, rather touched. “Well, go on thinking so. It won’t do me any harm.”
Only once did Lizzie refer to the night of Lady Phayre’s visit. It was a Sunday evening. Emily had gone to church, and had left the two together in the drawing-room. Daniel was smoking a pipe over a book, and Lizzie was engaged with some needlework—a rare occupation. She had been less fretful that day, had even asked him to sit with her. Gradually, as Daniel read, her efforts with her needle became spasmodic. There were intervals of gazing into the fire, and sudden resumptions of industry. Then she rose, moved about the room, idly examining nicknacks and fidgeting with furniture. At last she left the room, and entered her bedroom that adjoined.
Suddenly Daniel’s attention was arrested by a sharp tinkling sound. He started to his feet and went quickly to join Lizzie. It was as he had suspected. By the half-light of the dim-burning gas he saw her thrusting a bottle beneath some garments in a trunk. A glass half full of spirits was close by on the mantelpiece.
“Lizzie! How can you?” he cried.
She turned upon him in a fury.
“How dare you come in here! How dare you spy upon me! If I want to drink I’ll drink. What business is it of yours if I kill myself?”
She seized the glass, had already put it to her lips, when he strode forward and dashed it from her hand.
“You won’t do it to-night anyhow, Lizzie,” he said calmly.
She broke into a torrent of angry speech.
When the drink or passion was upon her, she used the vernacular of the Sunington streets—of her own home, for the matter of that. He waited until there was a lull in the tempest.
“I’ll have the bottle anyway,” he said, turning to the trunk.
But that was the signal for a fresh outburst. She sat upon the trunk, swore he should never have it while she lived, prepared to defend her property by physical means. Goddard shrugged his shoulders, and sat down upon the bed.
“All right,” he said; “I’ll wait.”
Then she burst into hysterical sobbing. She wished she was dead. She hated him. He was a brute. That was all he lived for—to keep the spy upon her when he wasn’t making up to other women.
“Do you think I’m a fool?” she cried, suddenly taking her hands from her face and turning to him. “Do you think I don’t know? I don’t interfere with you: why should you interfere with me? Only don’t bring your women to this house. Do you think I don’t know your goings on? You are worse than I am. I don’t pretend. You are a dirty blackguard. You think I don’t know all about your Rhodanthes and things?”
He started as if she had struck him, for a moment lost the command over himself that he had maintained through all the ordure of words. He regained it with a violent effort, clutching the counterpane fiercely, until his finger-nails were turned back. He understood now how a man could beat a woman. If he lost the hold over himself, he would rush to her and beat her—beat her until she lay senseless. Perhaps she almost expected it, for she paused at the last words, and looked at him half-coweringly, half-defiantly. So their eyes remained fixed on one another in the dim-lit room. Then she shuddered with body and lips, and uttering a low cry hid her face. A terror had taken possession of her. She was conquered.
Daniel rose from the bed, went to her, and took her by the arm.
“Go into the next room,” he said sternly, and she obeyed.
He joined her after he had disposed of the disputed whisky-bottle. And there they sat in an appalling silence, until Emily came back from church, and relieved him of his charge.
That was the last time that Lizzie referred to Lady Phayre. He wondered how she had learned her name—that name Rhodanthe, which he had ever in his mind—which, save this once, he had never heard uttered aloud. It was a curious freak of fate’s irony that, on this one occasion, it should have been uttered by his wife’s lips. The circumstance embittered him still more against her.
A few weeks after this the long-expected vacancy in the Hough division occurred, and Goddard was definitely chosen as the Radical candidate. In the very beginning of his electoral campaign he received news from London that the terrible drink illness had fallen upon his wife.
CHAPTER XII—A LEADER OF MEN
“D O YOU think it wise for me to go in?” asked Goddard.
“She has been asking for you,” said the nurse. “It may do her good; but don’t speak to her.”
“Then she has definitely turned the corner.”
“Yes; at last. But her recovery depends upon absolute quiet. It is the heart now. A sudden excitement, and then”—she snapped her fingers—“syncope.”
“That is to say—sudden death.”
“Of course,” said the nurse.
“I shall merely sit by her side for ten minutes,” said Daniel. “You are sure it will please her?”
“It will be a sign of forgiveness,” said the nurse. She sighed. “Ah! poor thing! I’ll go and prepare her.”
Goddard sat down wearily in the stiffly furnished drawing-room to await his summons, and rested his head in his hands. He was very tired. The strain, mental and physical, of the past three months had told upon him. His face was worn and yellow, and his eyes were rather too bright for health. A strange thing for him, he had been driven to seek medical advice for insomnia. The prescription was immediate rest and change. He shrugged his shoulders. After the election, perhaps.
Intense political feeling prevailed in the division. Goddard’s influence was such as to leave none lukewarm. The conflict was raging fiercely. One of the heaviest polls on record was anticipated. The strain of candidature would have been great in ordinary circumstances. Coming as it did upon an already over-worked man, it was dangerous. And then there was Lizzie’s illness. He had already come to town several times to satisfy himself that all was being done for her that money and skill could accomplish. It had been a matter of feverish anxiety lest any act of omission on his part should endanger her recovery.
He sat with his head in his hands, staring at the pattern of the carpet, too tired to think coherently. To-morrow was polling day. He would have to get back that evening. By the registers he ought to get in. “Daniel Goddard, M.P.”—a name to conjure with in a few years’ time. And yet there was something missing. He knew what it was only too well. It might have been. He would have seen her in Hough to-morrow—eager, radiant, driving about the polling-booths, wearing his colours. And if he won—the joy of standing before her in his victory! But the other picture rose up before him. All through the election he had been haunted by the two women. He had wrestled with passionate desires. One night, when news had come that Lizzie lay between life and death, a horrible, overwhelming longing that she might die had kept him awake till the morning, when he rose and took the first train to town, to assure himself that no stone was being left unturned in order to save her. He remembered now some of Emily’s descriptions of the horrors of that bed-side, and he shivered. Thank God it was over. She wanted to see him. Perhaps this might mark a change in their lives. He wondered whether she knew anything of the election. Perhaps she might take a pride in being the wife of a Member of Parliament. But what good could it do her? It would not bring fresh interests into her life. Yes, it was hopeless. Any common woman in the street would be as fit a companion for him. And again the longing for the companionship he had lost came upon him, and his thoughts, in his weary mood, lingered over the witchery of her odd name—Rhodanthe.
“I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Goddard,” said the nurse, coming in. “There were some odds and ends to do in the room. You’ll be very, very quiet, won’t you?”
“You are sure there is no danger?” asked Goddard.
The nurse smiled at his insistence.
“Don’t speak to her or make her talk. That is all,” she said.
Goddard entered the sick-room on tiptoe. At the door Emily met him on her way out, and whispered a caution not to stay too long. He went to the bedside. Lizzie was lying very still and white. The flesh had left her cheeks; they were pinched, her features sharp, the skin drawn away tight against the bones. Her colourless lips hung loose; her teeth were prominent—a death’s head rather than a living woman. Goddard was shocked to the heart. He scarcely recognised her. Not only did he fail to see in her any traces of the girl he had once thought to love, but also she was no longer the woman he had hated.
“So you’ve come,” she whispered, moving a feeble hand.
He took it in his, tried to smile to reassure her. Her lips moved again.
“Won’t you kiss me?”
Her voice had not changed. It lessened the strange sense of unfamiliarity with which he had been regarding her. There was an involuntary touch of peevishness in the tone. He bent down and kissed her cheek.
“Make haste and get well, Lizzie,” he said in a low voice.
She seemed satisfied with this, for she half closed her eyes, and let her hand slip from his on to the counterpane. Daniel sat down in the chair facing the small table by the bedside, on which were a bottle of medicine and glass, a bunch of violets in water, and her Bible. This last was a beautifully bound volume, edged with brass, and closed with a heavy clasp. Daniel had given it to her in the early days of their marriage, when she was eager to surround herself with all the obvious essentials of gentility. He had learned lately from Emily’s chatter how she had insisted upon this Bible being placed near her. “As if the Holy Book could charm away the other things,” Emily had said in an awed tone.
The sight of it carried his thoughts back. Only once before had he sat by her side like this—in this very room, too. She had been very white and still then, but young and fresh, with gladness in her eyes that had awakened within him an answering thrill. And there had been a little wee pink thing at her breast. It had fluffy black down on its head, he remembered. In this room, too, it had died three years later of diphtheria. The room’s associations grew upon him. It was here that he had first come by the knowledge of the curse of her life. She was lying speechless one evening on the bed. He had bent over her unsuspectingly, and then started back with a horrible spasm of disgust. Involuntarily now he raised his head and looked at her. Her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. His fancy seemed to read in them the lingering horrors through which she had passed. He shuddered, thanked God that the child had died. The hereditary poison must have lurked in its young veins.
To shake off these thoughts he rose, stirred the fire into a blaze, and returned to his seat. Then, moved by compunction—for this was a visit of forgiveness—he stretched out his arm and smoothed the back of her hand. A look of gratefulness appeared on her face, and she closed her eyes again. Daniel’s heart softened a little towards her.
The minutes passed slowly. He grew restless, wished that the nurse or Emily would come and relieve him. A sick-room, where one has to sit perfectly still, is not the place for a man suffering from nervous excitement. His eyes fell again on the Bible. He had not seen his gift for years. There was a certain pathos in her desire to have it near her.
He took it up, undid the clasp, and looked at the fly-leaf. “To my dear wife.” He sighed. He had tried to delude himself in those days that he loved her. Could he ever write such an inscription again? He shook his head, as the ever-haunting face of the other woman came between his eyes and the leaf. He turned the pages. They fell open, naturally, where a letter had been placed. The back of the envelope was turned to him. He thought it was one of his own to his wife, and felt touched by the idea of her keeping it there. He took it up curiously, but as his glance fell on the address he started with great amazement. It was in Lady Phayre’s handwriting—bore only his name. It had been opened. He himself surely had never received such a letter. With heart furiously beating and trembling fingers, he drew out the enclosure.
“Go, my hero and leader of men, to your victory. And if you love me, come back to me for your reward—whatsoever your heart desireth.
“Rhodanthe.”
For a few moments he remained staring at the paper, unable to comprehend. Then the truth crashed down upon him—both the letter’s significance and the probable history of its miscarriage. His brain reeled. She loved him. The note of passion in the words drowned his senses like a great diapason. She loved him. But for this other woman she would be his. He rose from his chair, turning his back to his wife, and put his hand to his forehead. His instinct was to fly from her presence. The smouldering hatred had sprung into fierce flame. He made a few steps by the foot of the bed, then stopped and looked at her. Their eyes met. He saw that she had been following his movements from the time he had first opened the Bible. A wave of gathering madness clouded his brain, surged red before his eyes. Remaining sanity bade him rush from the room if she was to live. An explosion of his passion would kill her. But the expression of excitement and fear on her peaked, livid face read in his disordered brain as one of mocking triumph. It swept away the lingering self-control. He strode round to her side, lifted his arms above his head, clenching the letter and shaking with passion, let loose all the fury in his soul in a low, hoarse cry.
Lizzie rose to a sitting posture, gazed at him for a moment, an awful terror in her eyes, and then, with a gasp, fell back on her pillow—dead.
How long he stood there, as if petrified, he never knew. When he recovered reason he wiped the great drops of perspiration from his forehead, thrust the letter into his pocket, and rushed from the room.
“Emily! Nurse!” he shouted from the top of the landing; and when they appeared hurriedly from the dining-room, “Come up at once: I think Lizzie is dead.”
The women ran up the stairs.
“Go to her. I will fetch Dr. Carson,” he cried, brushing past them.
He caught up a hat from the hall, and in another moment was out of doors. This pretext for absence and solitude was an inspiration. She was dead. He was free. He had killed her. He did not notice that an icy, heavy rain was sweeping the streets. He had killed her for Rhodanthe. Rhodanthe was his: he had bought her with his soul. He bit his lips to prevent himself from crying aloud. The rare passers-by turned round scared at his wild face and furious gait.
The calm of the doctor’s waiting-room was a check, and allowed him to concentrate his scattered faculties. When the medical man appeared, alert and matter of fact, he was master of himself. He explained his errand. He had been sitting with his wife, had idly reached for her Bible by the bedside. She had sprang up to prevent him. The exertion had killed her. He had looked through the Bible, found a letter written to him which she had guarded through jealousy. The explanation was simple and satisfactory, yet he felt deadly faint.
“You are upset,” said Dr. Carson, who had known him for several years. “You have been burning the candle at both ends lately. Drink this while I go and put on my coat.” He poured him out a glass of brandy, which he took from a cupboard. Goddard gulped it down neat. The spirit saved him from the threatening collapse and braced his nerves.
He accompanied the doctor to his own house in silence, left him at the dining-room door to go upstairs to the bedroom, and entering, sat down to wait. When the doctor returned, it was with a great effort that Goddard compelled himself to look him in the eyes.
“I am afraid your wife is dead,” said the doctor gravely.
“And I am indirectly the cause,” said Goddard.
The other moved a deprecating hand. “Don’t let that add to your sadness. Any other chance accident might have done it. Besides, may I speak to you frankly?”
“By all means.”
“Then—if it will not pain you—it is better so.”
“Would she never have recovered?”
“Her health was shattered. In all probability she would have broken out again. She and you have been spared some years of certain misery.”
“Then I have done a good action from a philosophical point of view?” said Goddard, with a harsh laugh.
“If you put it that way, you have,” replied he doctor, somewhat stiffly.
“Look here, Carson,” cried Goddard excitedly. “I can’t tell you that I am grieved she had gone. Don’t expect me to play the hypocrite.”
“I expect nothing but the misfortune of having you upon my hands in a short time,” said the other.
“Then let me speak to you once and for all—as a medical man: I must speak to somebody. These last few weeks I have been in hell fire. I hated her. I wanted her to die. I used to wake up at nights wet through with sweat, through the terror of it. I have been to blame throughout from the first cursed day I married her. I didn’t love her; she didn’t care much for me. I had to go my way: she couldn’t follow me. How could she? She was left alone here all by herself—no company, no occupations—nothing. You know her history—her father. The drink was in her blood. I tried to save her—after my fashion. You, who have attended her for the last eight years, can bear me out. But we were strangers—not an impulse in common. Latterly—listen: I must tell some one once, or I shall go mad. I knew what a woman could be—what it was to want a woman passionately, madly. She came here one night, discovered I was married—saw my wife drunk in this room. Since then my wife has been like an incubus throttling me, dragging me down to damnation. And I wanted her to die. In that room upstairs, an hour ago, when I kissed her and forgave her, I wanted her to die. When the moment came it was as though I had murdered her. Tell me, what am I to think? What am I to do?”
His features were working strangely, his brow damp with the black hair straggling across it. He looked at Carson with a searching appeal in his eyes. The latter took his hand, felt his pulse.
“What you are to do,” he said, “is to go to bed at once and sleep. I’ll send you round a draught. What you are to think, when you wake up, is that you are not responsible for her death—that she might have died at any moment, that it is better to die than to live a life of misery; that you are a free man, young, with all that makes life worth living in front of you. And lastly, if you like, that I have forgotten all you have told me. Now, go to bed and stay there.”
“Impossible,” cried Goddard. “The election.”
“Damn the election!” said the doctor.
“I must go back to-day.”
“And——?”
“I’ll make the arrangements,” replied Goddard with a shiver. “To-day is Tuesday. It will be for Friday. The poll will be declared at latest on Thursday morning. I must be there. Man alive!” he cried, with a queer tremor in his voice. “I cannot stay in this house! It would drive me mad. To sit here doing nothing—nothing—only thinking. I must go back. It will occupy my mind. There are two women in this house—the dead one who is living, and the living one who is dead—has been dead to me. If ever action and stimulus have been necessary to me, they are imperative now. I must do it, man, I tell you—I must do it.”
He began to walk about the room in a state of restless excitement, now and then moistening his lips with his tongue, and passing his hand through his hair. Dr. Carson reasoned with him. He was a young man, and felt himself powerless before Goddard’s stronger personality. By virtue of mere professional prestige you cannot force a man to follow your prescriptions. Goddard impetuously swept aside his arguments. At last he stopped short, as if struck by a sudden inspiration.
“I tell you what, Carson, I’ll promise to start at once for the south of France, as soon as this miserable business is over, and not do a stroke of work for a month.”
“That’s the only sensible thing you have said to-day,” returned the other, more cheerily. “You’d better let me see you again before you go.”
They parted. Goddard stumbled heavily upstairs to his own room, threw himself on the bed, and lay there, holding his burning head in his hands.
And Emily sat in the death-chamber and cried, the only soul on the wide earth who had love for the poor, wrecked creature that was dead, for Sophie, her sister, had never had a word of good to say on Lizzie’s behalf. She alone knew and pitied the miserable tragedy of that poor, futile life.