The Devil's Garden

They took a cab to drive back in, and he almost carried her up to their bedroom. It was on the same floor as the other room, with the same marvelous bird's-eye view of the starlit sky and the lamplit town. He had got her to himself at last—here, high above the world, half-way to heaven. There seemed to him something poetical, almost sublime in their situation: they two alone, isolated, millions of people surrounding them and no living creature able to interfere with them.

As he knew, they were the only lodgers on this top floor; and so one need not even trouble to avoid making a noise. He gave full voice to his exultation.

"There, old lady." He had opened the window as wide as it would go, and he told her to look out. "The air—what there is of it—will do you good."

"Oh, I couldn't," and she recoiled.

"Giddy?"

"Giddy isn't the word. Oh, Will, why did you let me drink that stuff—after drinking the wine?"

She was not intoxicated in an ugly way; her speech, her movements were unaffected, and yet the alcohol was troubling her brain. She looked like a child who has been overexercised at a children's party, and who comes home with eyebrows raised, eyes glowing and yet dull, and cheeks very pale.

"Oh, dear, I am tired," and she sat down on a chair by the chest of drawers, and slowly took off her hat.

But she got up again and pushed Dale away, when he offered to help her in undressing.

"No, certainly not. What are you thinking of?" and she began to hum one of the pretty airs they had heard at the theater. "But, my word, Will," and she stopped humming, and laughed foolishly, "I shan't be sorry to get out of my things. It is hot. This is the hottest night we've had."

"Ah, you feel it. I've got acclim'tized."

He undressed rapidly, and lighting the briar pipe which he had not cared to smoke in the genteel society at the theater, he lay on the outside of the bed.

"Better now, old girl?"

"Yes. I'm all right, Will. Dear old boy—I'm all right."

Soon he puffed lazily, drowsily; then he nodded, and then the pipe fell from his mouth.

"Hullo!" And muttering, he roused himself. "I must 'a' dropped off. Might 'a' set the bed on fire."

Mavis, in her chemise and stockings now, with her hair down, was still at the dressing-table. She did not turn when he spoke to her. While he dozed she had fetched the other candle, and in the double light she was staring intently at the reflection of her face in the looking-glass.

Dale slipped softly off the bed, moved across to the dressing-table, and with explosive vigor clasped her in his arms.

"Oh, how you frightened me!" She had given a little squeal, and she tried to release herself. "Let me go—please."

"Rot!" And he lifted her from the ground, and carried her across to the bed.

"Will—let me go. I—I'm tired;" and she began to cry. "Be kind to me, Will." The words came in feeble entreaty, between weak sobs. "Be kind to me—my husband—not only now—but always."

And she, melting beneath the gentleness and tenderness of his caresses, wept in pity of herself. "Yes, I'm tired—dead-tired." And the tears flowed unchecked, blotting out emotion, reason, instinct, swamping her in floods of self-pity. "Let me sleep—and let me forget. Oh, let me forget what I've gone through these last two days."

"Anyways, it's over now."

"Yes, it's over. Oh, thank God in Heaven, it's over and done with."

"Just so." And there was a change in the tone of his voice that she might have noticed, but did not. "Just so—but you're talking rather strange, come to think of it."

His arms slowly relaxed, and he let her slide out of his embrace. She sank down wearily upon the pillow, closed her eyes, and for a little while went on talking drowsily and inconsecutively.

"Shut up," he said suddenly. "Hold your tongue. I'm thinking."

Then almost immediately he turned, and, with his hands upon her shoulders, looked down into her face.

"Why didn't you go to church yesterday?"

"What did you say, Will?"

"I said, why didn't you go to church yesterday?"

"That wasn't like you—you so fond of the Abbey Church. Did your Aunt go?"

"Yes."

"You said this afternoon she didn't go."

"She did go. I remember now."

"Ah! Another thing! That actor-feller—what d'yer call 'im—him that you counted on and didn't find—Chugwun!"

"Yes."

"You see the name in the paper?"

"Yes."

"You didn't aarpen t'see it on the boards outside the theater?"

"No."

She was wide awake and quite sober now. But her limbs were trembling again, and her eyes seemed preposterously large as they stared up at him from the white face. "Will!" And she spoke fast and piteously; "don't look at me like this. What's come to you? Why do you ask me such a pack of questions?" And she tried to laugh. "At such a time of night!"

"Bide a bit, my lass. I'm just thinking."

Where had the thoughts come from?—out of blank space?—from nowhere? Yet here they were, filling his head, multiplying, expanding, making his blood rattle like boiling water in a tube as it rushed up to nourish their monstrous growth.

"Will, let go my shoulders. You hurt. Get into the bed—and be sensible. I'll answer all questions in the morning."

"No, I think I'll have the answers now."

"What train did you come up by this morning?"

"The nine o'clock."

"What! D'you mean you went right across from North Ride to Rodchurch Road?"

"Oh, no. I caught it at Manninglea Cross."

"Did you, then? An' s'pose I was to tell you the nine o'clock don't stop at Manninglea Cross!"

"Will! Loosen your hands. It does stop—it did stop there this morning."

"Yes, it did stop—and so it does all mornings. But a fat lot you know about it. And for why? You weren't in it."

"I was—I really was. Will—don't go on so cruel."

"Oh, but I am going on." He had lowered his face close to hers, and his hot breath beat upon her cold cheeks. "Now, give me the explanation of what you let slip about going through so much these last two days. What was the precise sense o' that?"

"I only meant I've been so anxious."

"Yes, but yer bin anxious best part o' four weeks. What was the mighty difference in yesterday or day before?"

"I didn't mean any difference. I scarce knew what I was saying—or what I'm saying now."

"Oh! Just a remark let fall without a scrap o' sense in it!"

"Will, dear, I meant nothing at all."

"You're lying."

Abruptly he took his hands from her shoulders, got off the bed, and went to the chest of drawers. Her handbag was on the drawers; and when she saw him pick it up she sprang after him, clutching at his hands and imploring.

"You'll find nothing there. Nothing that I can't explain;" and she made a desperate gurgling laugh. "Why, Will, old man, it is you that's drunk, yourself, after chaffing me? No, you shan't. No, Will, you shan't."

He gave her a back-hander that sent her reeling. It was the first time he had struck her, and he delivered the blow quite automatically, the thought that she was preventing him from opening the bag and the action that got rid of her interference being all one process. His hand had remained open, but he swung it with unhesitating force; and now, as he plunged it into the bag, he saw that there was blood on it.

Before he had extracted all the contents of the bag she was back again, once more clinging, clutching, and impeding. He did not strike her again—merely shook her off so violently that she fell to the floor, where she lay for a moment.

She had come back, but she had not risen from the ground; while he slowly pursued his investigations she kept quite still, crouching close to his legs, silently waiting.

She could not see what he was doing, but presently she knew that he had begun to unfold the paper from the things she had hidden in the pocket.

"Ah," and he snorted. One of the bits of paper held hairpins; another a side-comb; and another, a bit of trebly folded paper, proved to be an envelope—the envelope of one of the letters that he had sent to her at North Ride Cottage. He looked at the postmark. The postmark told him that the envelope belonged to a letter he had written four days ago.

Then he found what she had put in the envelope before she folded it. It was the return half of a railway ticket, from London to Rodchurch Road—he turned it in his fingers and examined the date on the back of it.

"Last Friday, my lady. Not to-day by any means—and not Manninglea Cross. Issued at Rodchurch Road o' Friday last—the day you come up to London."

"Yes, Will, I won't pretend any more."

She had put her arms round his legs and lifted herself to a kneeling position. "I did come Friday. But don't be angry with me. Don't fly out at me, and I—I'll explain everything."

"May I make so bold 's t'a' ask why you come, without my permission begged for nor given?"

His voice was terrible to hear, so deep and yet so harsh, and vibrating with such implacable wrath.

"Go on. I'm listening, an' I'm thinking all the time."

"I thought—Auntie thought so too—she advised it—that Mr. Barradine knowing me so long, ever since I was a girl, if I went direct to him—"

"Ah!" And he made a loud guttural noise, as if on the point of choking. "Ah—so's I supposed. Then I got a bull's-eye with my first thought to-night. So you went to him. Where?"

"At his house."

"Yes, right into his house. By yourself?"

"Yes."

"You didn't think to bring your aunt with you. Two was to be comp'ny at Mr. Barradine's. So in you go—alone—without my leave—behind my back."

"Will—remember yourself, my dear one. You won't blame, you can't blame me. But for him, you were done for. All could see it, except you. I asked for his help, and I got it."

"But your next move! We're talking about Friday, aren't we? Well, after you'd bin to Mr. Barradine, what next?"

"Then I hoped he'd help us."

"Yes, but Friday, Saturday, Sunday? Had yer forgotten my address—or didn' 'aarpen to remember that I was in London, too?"

"I was afraid of your being angry. I thought I'd better wait."

She looked up at him, but did not answer.

"You've played me false. You've sold yourself to that fornicating old devil. You—"

And with a roar he burst into imprecations, blasphemies and obscenities. It was the string of foul words that, under a sufficient impetus, infallibly comes rolling from the peasant's tongue—an explosion as natural as when a thunderbolt scatters a muck-heap at the roadside.

Then, snarling and growling like an animal, he stooped and cuffed her.

"Will!" "Will!" She repeated his name between the blows. She did not utter a word of complaint, or make an effort to escape. Brave and unflinching, though almost stunned, she raised her white blood-stained face for him to strike again each time that he buffed it from him. "Will!" "Will!"

But her courage and submissiveness were driving him mad, had changed suspicion to certainty. Only guilt could make her take her punishment this way. Nevertheless she must confess the guilt herself. Even in his fury, he remembered to hold his hand open and not clench it—like a cruelly strong animal, tormenting its prey before killing, careful to keep it alive.

"Answer me. Go on with your tale."

"Then stop beating me, and I'll tell you."

He stayed his hand, poised it, and she seized it and clung to it.

"Will—as God sees me—I did it for your sake—only to help you. I couldn't get the help unless I sacrificed myself to save you."

The world had tumbled about his ears; his glorious life had shriveled to nothing; his pride was gone, his love was gone, his trust in man and his belief in man's creator; and for a few moments one thought grew a little clearer than the rest. The end of all this must be death—nothing less. He was really dead already, and he would not pretend to go on living. He would finish her, and then finish himself.

Turning his head, he looked at the window; and the open space out there seemed to whisper to him, to beg to him, and to command him. Yes, that way would be as good as another—strangle her, pitch her out, and jump out after her.

"Will!" She had once more scrambled to her knees. "I've loved you faithfully. I've never loved any one but you."

He did not hit her. Grasping the arm that she was stretching toward him, he dragged her upward, seized her round the body, and carried her to the bed.

"Do you mean to murder me?"

"Prob'ly. But not till I've 'ad the truth—and I'll 'aarve it to the last word, if I tear it out o' yer boosum."

"You'll kill me if I tell you."

"See that winder! That's yer road—head first—if you try to lie to me."

Then she told him the whole sickening story of her relations with Mr. Barradine. He had debauched her innocence when she was quite a young girl; she had continued to be one of his many mistresses for several years; then he grew tired of her, and, his attentions gradually ceasing, he had left her quite free to do what she pleased. She had never liked him, had always feared him. The long intermittent thraldom to his power had been an abomination to her, and it was martyrdom to return to him.

"Only to save you, Will. And he wouldn't help unless I done it. It was as much a sacrifice for you as if I'd been hung, drawn, and quartered for your sake."

"And why did you sacrifice yourself in the beginning, before ever you'd seen my face?"

"Auntie made me. It was Auntie's fault, not mine. I told her I was afraid of him."

"Your aunt had been that gait with him herself, in her time?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Yes, I twigged that—and then the mealy-mouthed, filthy hag came over me. I on'y guessed, but you knew. Answer me;" and his grip tightened on her throat, and he shook her. "Answer."

"And that cousin—the one he paid for in foreign parts?"

"I suppose so."

"Those rooms at the Cottage. They were furnished and set out for you and him to take your pleasure."

"He used them for other women—once or twice."

"What other women?"

"Girls from London."

As he questioned her and listened to her answers his passion took a rhythm, upward and downward, from blind wrath to black sorrow; and it seemed that the points reached by the rising curves were becoming less high, while the descending curves went lower and lower, through sorrow into shame, and still down, to fathomless depths of despair. He had heard all that it was necessary to hear. His life that he had thought marvelous and splendid was ridiculous and pitiful; what he had fancied to be success was failure; all that he had been proud of as being gained by his own merit had been brought to him by his wife's disgrace. What more could he learn?

Yet he went on questioning her.

She wrote to Mr. Barradine, simply asking him to exert this influence on behalf of her husband; and the reply—the letter that she tore up—was in these words: "I will do what I can; but why don't you come and ask me yourself?" Of course she knew what that meant.

It was at the railway station, when bidding Dale good-by, that she made up her mind to save him at all costs. When he refused to act on Ridgett's advice, when he showed himself so firm, so unyielding, she knew that he was a man going to his doom, unless she could avert the doom.

"And, Will—believe it or not—no woman ever loved a husband truer than I loved you at that moment. To see you there so brave and strong and good—and yet certain sure to ruin yourself! Well, I couldn't bear it. And if it was to do again, I'd do it."

Slowly he withdrew his hands from her throat, and clasped them together with all his strength. Turning for a moment, he glanced at the open window. The space seemed to have contracted and darkened, so that it looked black and small as a square grave cut out for a child. But if not by the window, what other end to it all would he find? He could not go on like this—with a to-morrow and a day after, and weeks and months to follow.

He turned, and in speaking to her, unconsciously used her name.

"I thought you'd never know. And I loved you, Will—only you—no one else."

He scarcely seemed to listen to the answer. He turned from her again; and went on talking, as if to himself or the far-off stars, or the invisible powers that mold men's destinies.

"'Aardn't I my fingers and brains—to work for you? Would I care—so's you could be what I thought you were—whether I broke my back or burst my heart in working for you? Besides, t'wouldn't 'a' bin that. What was it but the loss of the office—a step back that I'd soon 'a' recovered."

He groaned; then suddenly he unclasped his hands and brandished them. The rhythmic beat of his rage came strong and high, and with savage energy he seized her again.

"It's half lies still. The money? How does that match? He gave it to you. Deny it if you dare."

"Yes, I tried not to take it. He forced it on me."

"Lies! It was the bit for yourself when you drove your bargain—nothing to do with me—you—you. The price of your two or three nights of love."

"No, I swear. He forced the money as a present. The price he paid was his help to you. As God hears me, that's the truth."

Then, answering more and more questions, she resumed her story.

"What hotel?"

"The Sunderland Hotel—Alderney Street."

"Go on."

"I waited in the rooms."

"Rooms! You mean one room, you slut!"

"No, there were four rooms—a grand suite."

"Go on."

"He said he would come to me next day, or Sunday at latest. And he didn't come on Saturday—I stopped indoors all day, afraid to go out for fear of meeting you—and he didn't come till Sunday, after lunch."

"Ah! How long did he stay?"

"Till early this morning. Will, let me be—I'm done. You're throttling me."

"Go on. I'll 'aarve it all out of you. Begin at the beginning. It's Sunday afternoon we're talking of—ever since lunch time. There's a many hours to amuse yourselves."

"After dinner he made me dress up."

"What d'you mean?"

"He had brought things in his luggage—fancy dress."

"What dresses?"

"Oh, boy's things—things he'd bought in Turkey, on his travels. He made me act that I was his page—and bring the coffee, and sit cross-legged on the ground."

"Go on."

"Go on."

"No. Kill me, if you want to, and be done with it. I don't care—I'm tired out. What I've gone through was worse than death. I'm not afraid of dying."

She would tell him no more; she defied him; and yet he did not kill her. She lay weeping, moaning, at intervals, repeating that desolate phrase, "What's the use? Oh, what's the use?"

Irremediable loss—it sounded in her voice, it crept coldly in his burning veins, it came spreading, flooding, filling the whole earth in the first faint glimmer of dawn. He sat on the edge of the bed, let his hands fall heavy and inert between his knees, and for a long time did not change his attitude.

Just now, looking down at her, he had felt a sickness of loathing. He hated her for the musical note of her voice, the tragic eloquence of her eyes, and above all he hated her for her nakedness. The almost nude sprawling form seemed to symbolize the unspeakable shame of his sex. This was the disgusting female, round and smooth, white and weak, with tumbling hair and lying lips, the lewd parasite that can drag the noble male down into hell-fire. Now he looked at her with comparative indifference, and felt even pity for the broken and soiled thing that he had believed to be clean and sound.

The fusion of his thoughts was over. One thought had split away from all the rest, and every moment was becoming more definite, more logical, more full of excruciating pain. He thought now only of his enemy, of the human fiend who had destroyed Mavis and himself.

And with his rage against the man came more and more detestation of the crime itself. At the very beginning it had no possible excuse in honest love. There was nothing belonging to it of nature's grand instinct. It had not the inexorable brutality of primitive passion. Here was an old, or an elderly man, not driven by the force of normal, full-blooded desire, but craftily plotting, treacherously abusing his power, because he was rotten with impure whims—befouling youth and innocence just to obtain a few faint voluptuous thrills.

Then the brain-pictures flashed out with torturing clearness, and Dale saw the criminal renewing the outrage after long years. He was quite old, shaky, infirm, and yet strong enough to consummate the final act of his infinite wickedness. And Dale saw those yellow-white hands, with their nauseating blotches, their glistening blue knobs, and their jeweled rings, as they took possession again of the victim to whom they had once given freedom.

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

Blindly raging, he passed through the silent, deserted streets, and presently blundered into Regent's Park. It was all exquisitely pretty in the pure morning light, with dew-wet grass, feathery branches of trees, and the water of a river or lake flashing and sparkling; and as he stared stupidly about him, he thought for a moment that he was experiencing an illusion of the senses. Or was he a boy again safe in his forest? This sort of thing belonged to the happy past, and could have no proper place in the abominable present.

He crossed a low rail, walked on a little way toward the water, and then threw himself face downward on the grass. He knew where he was now—in the present time, in a public pleasure-ground. London stretched about the park, and beyond that there was the vast round globe; beyond that again there was the universe; and it seemed to him that, big as it all was, it was not big enough to hold one other man and himself.

When, four or five hours later, he came back to the lodging-house he found his wife dressed and sitting by the bedroom table. She had contrived to wash away nearly all the marks of violence: one noticed only the swollen aspect of the whole face, an inflamed eyebrow, and a cut lip. She looked up meekly and fondly as a thrashed dog.

"No."

Then, while getting together his things and beginning to pack, he told her that he would take his fortnight's leave, as arranged, and carefully consider matters. "And then, at the end of the fortnight, if I'm above ground by that time, I'll let you know what I've decided."

But, on hearing this, she flopped from the chair to her knees, and clung round him just as she had clung when he was first questioning her.

"Will, don't be mad and wicked, and go and take your life."

"Why not? D'you think there's vaarlue in it to me now?"

He spoke quite quietly, but he looked gray, haggard, terrible, his clothes all stained and dirty from his open-air bed.

"Will, for mercy's sake—"

He shook her off, and began to count his money.

"I must keep this," he said. "I'll pay it back later to the right quarter—along with the equivalent of what I burnt."

When he had finished packing he told her that he would settle with the lodging-house keeper, and he gave her a few shillings.

"That's enough to get you home with."

Mavis had bought a cheap blue veil to protect her face, and being, moreover, fortunate enough to find an empty compartment in the through coach to Rodchurch Road, she did not suffer during the journey from too curious observation of strangers. She was going home, exactly as if nothing had happened. Her husband had said that she was to go, and what else could she do but obey him?

When the station omnibus pulled up outside the post office, Mr. Ridgett caught sight of her, and gallantly came to assist her in alighting. Evidently he noticed nothing strange about her appearance. She at once announced the good news that Dale had not only been reinstated, but given a couple of weeks' holiday; and Ridgett, genuinely delighted, squeezed both her hands.

"That's something like. Here, let me carry this upstairs for you."

"No, thank you, please don't trouble. I can manage."

Mr. Allen, the saddler, had come across from his shop, and she told him the good news too. Mr. Allen hurried down the street to tell others. Soon the whole village knew that Mr. Dale had triumphed, and that the Postmaster-General was granting him leave of absence as a special mark of favor.

"Oh, lor, mum, whatever have you done to yourself?"

"I have had an accident," said Mrs. Dale. "I fell down—and it has given me a bad headache. I don't want any tea. I shall go to bed early, and try to get a good sleep."

And in truth, she was longing to sleep. After the terrible ordeal of yesterday sleep seemed to be the one good thing left in the world for her. But, notwithstanding supreme fatigue, sleep would not come.

Throughout that first night, and again on succeeding nights, she struggled beneath a suffocating burden of anxiety. In the daylight she had been able to think of herself, but in the darkness she could think only of her husband. She was haunted by the expression of his face, by the tone of his voice, when he had asked her if she supposed that existence was any longer valuable to him, and the sudden instinctive apprehension that she had felt then now grew so strong that she fought against it vainly.

He intended to commit suicide. At first she had thought of all those London bridges, with the dark rivers swirling through their arches and eddying round their piers; then she became sure that he would not drown himself. He was a vigorous swimmer—such a death would be impossible to him. No, he would poison himself, or shoot himself, or hang himself. Perhaps even now it was all over.

By day she recognized that her anxiety was unreasoning, based on her own emotions, or at least not logically derived from her knowledge of his character. Of course he had taken the discovery of her secret far worse than she had ever conceived as possible, when timorously thinking of untoward hazards that one day or another might lead to disclosure. But, even then, fully allowing for the effect of his extreme excitement, would he, so brave and self-reliant a creature, be guilty of an act that is in its essence cowardly?

She thought of his courage. He was as brave a man as ever breathed, and yet you could not describe him as reckless or foolhardy. He was wise enough to be chary of exposing himself to useless risks. So much so that he had more than once surprised her by keeping quite calm when she had expected and dreaded perilous energy. Especially she remembered a day out on the Manninglea road when a runaway horse with an empty cart came galloping toward them, and Dale, instead of attempting to stop it, put his arm round her waist and hastily drew her well out of the way. In another hundred yards the runaway went crashing off the road, fell, and smashed the cart into smithereens.

She clung to this thought of his innate common sense. And there was comfort and hope, too, in another thought. He was a naturally religious man, if not an orthodoxly religious one. The church service bored him; he only attended it from motives of policy; but, nevertheless, when you got him inside the sacred edifice, his behavior was perfect, and you could not watch him on his knees or hear him say "Christ have mercy upon us, O Lord Christ have mercy on us," without being convinced that he did truly believe in an omnipotent God and the punishments or rewards that await us on the other side of the grave. Surely the man who bowed his head like that at the name of Jesus would not, could not, be the man to take his own life merely because it had become an unhappy life.

The hope that lay in such thoughts as these helped her to support the strain of three long waiting days and four long sleepless nights. Then on the fourth day, Saturday, the strain was relieved.

"Mrs. Dale," said Ridgett, speaking to her from the bottom of the stairs, "would you be disposed for a little stroll before tea?"

"No, thank you, Mr. Ridgett."

"Have pity on a lonely stranger, and change your mind," said Mr. Ridgett, smiling up at her.

"No, really not—but thank you for offering it."

"I—I have not been feeling quite myself, Mr. Ridgett."

"No, so your maid told me. But, still, I am afraid it's the way to make yourself worse, never going out of doors;" and Mr. Ridgett laughed amiably. "I won't press you—that is, I won't press you to honor me with your company; but I do respectfully press my advice to get out a bit. You know I feel a responsibility to look after you in the absence of your lord and master."

"Thank you."

"By the way, I had a note from him this morning."

"From Mr. Dale?"

"Yes."

"Oh, had you? Where—" Mavis gripped the baluster rail so tightly that the slender wooden uprights rattled. She had nearly asked a question which would have betrayed the fact that she did not know her husband's address. "Did he write from his lodgings?"

"No, he wrote from a public library. Lambeth—yes, the Lambeth Library."

"What did he say?"

"Only confirmed your report that he wouldn't be back till the twenty-eighth." Mr. Ridgett laughed again. "And told me that the clocks ought to be wound up Thursday, and he hoped we hadn't let them run down. We hadn't, you know."

Would he go for a divorce? Publish her shame? Perhaps, even if he were willing to spare her, he would not forego the chance of dragging down Mr. Barradine. Feeling as strongly as he did—and since the world began, surely no one in such circumstances had ever felt quite so strongly—he would seize upon the overthrow of Mr. Barradine's reputation as the obvious means of obtaining his own revenge. Then she thought of what such a scandal would mean to a gentleman of Mr. Barradine's state and status. Mr. Barradine would move heaven and earth to avert it. He might even get Will spirited away, never to be found again! One was always reading in the newspaper of mysterious, inexplicable disappearances. New fears almost as bad as the old fear began to shake her again.

Of this there could be no question. Mr. Barradine would pay a very large sum of money to avoid the threatened disgrace. And—in the midst of her acute apprehension and distress—the plain matter-of-fact idea presented itself: that if Dale were not rendered irresponsible by jealous ire, one might hope that he would eventually fall in with Mr. Barradine's views—that he ought, for everybody's sake, to take his damages, more damages than he would ever get in a court of law, and then let bygones be bygones.

How he had knocked her about! Standing before the toilet-glass and looking at her bruises musingly, she tried to remember in what part of the room, and at which period of the long volcanic discussion, each one had been received. All the neck marks could be accounted for on the bed, when he was holding her down and shaking her; that graze above the knee, outside the right thigh had come when she rolled over by the chest of drawers. Raising her eyes in order to see if the lip and eyebrow continued to mend satisfactorily, she was surprised by the general expression of her face. Positively she was smiling. The smile vanished at once, but it had been there—a gentle, melancholy, yet proud little smile. And reflecting, she understood that deep in her thoughts there was truly pride whenever she dwelt upon her husband's violence. It did prove so conclusively how immense was his love.

Then, not in the least expecting that she was about to cry, she burst into tears.

She had remembered his voice and his look when he said something about honor and dishonor, and about working for her till he dropped. Noble and splendid love had spoken in that—such love as few women are lucky enough to get. Oh, surely if he loved her like that, he could not leave off loving her altogether, and never, never, want his Mav again.

Sadness and desolation overcame her. She was alone in their dear, dear home, disgraced, abandoned, heart-broken; and her thoughts for a little while were all prayers. With each one of them she prayed her husband to go on loving her; to come back and bruise her limbs, to punish her with fierce glances and cutting words, to subject her to systematic penitential discipline, if only at the end of it all she might have his love again.

And she had known that she was running a risk when she made up her mind to keep it. She bought it without any thought at all—a stupid thing to do, considering that the cost was the same as two single fares. Not so stupid, however, as the thrifty idea that if she and Will traveled home in different trains, she might after all use her return half. Oh, fatal economy! In scheming to avoid the loss of five shillings she had wrecked all her peace and comfort.

On this Sunday she would have liked to go to church, but a dread of loquacious and inquisitive neighbors kept her a prisoner in the house.

Nearly all day she sat by the window of the front room, staring at the trite and familiar scene, and encouraging her thoughts to wander away from her misery whenever they would consent to do so. A butcher's boy leaned his bicycle against the curbstone in so careless a fashion that it immediately fell down; Mr. Bates the corn merchant passed by with an empty wagon; then Mr. Norton the vicar appeared, going from house to house, distributing handbills of special services. And she wondered if he and his wife had ever had a hidden domestic storm in their outwardly tranquil existence. Mrs. Norton must have been quite pretty once, and perhaps at that period she caused Mr. Norton anxieties. But if she had ever needed forgiveness for some indiscretion or other, she had obviously obtained it; and again the thought came strong and clear that people who hold conspicuous positions—such as vicars, tax-collectors, postmasters, and so on—owe a duty to the world as well as to themselves. They must hush things up, and preserve appearances: they can not wash their dirty linen in public.

But before tea time that afternoon she saw something in the street that held her breathlessly attentive as long as it remained there. It was Mr. Barradine, riding slowly toward her between the churchyard and the Roebuck stables. She shrank back behind the muslin curtain of her window, and, watching him, passed through an extraordinarily rapid sequence of emotions.

The horse was a chestnut, and it stepped lightly and springily. As she thought of how and when she had last seen its rider, she felt a sensation that was like helplessness, shame, and fear all mingled. It was as though her whole body, muscles, flesh and nerves, quailed and grew weak at the mere sight of him; as though inherited instincts were controlling her, and would always control her whenever she was in his presence; as though she the descendant of serfs must infallibly submit to the descendant of lords—must forever fear the man who had been her master even when he was her lover. Rationally she hated him for the harm that he had done her, but instinctively she feared him for the further harm that he might yet have power to do.

Then, as soon as he disappeared, the spell was broken.

In all that she had confessed to her husband she had been sincere; but hers was a simple and easy going nature, and exaltation could not be long sustained. After excitement she returned rapidly to a passive and unimaginative level; and now, quietly brooding, she could not do otherwise than justify herself for all that had happened.

At the end of everything she felt a deep-seated conviction that she was in truth blameless. She was not a bad woman. Therefore it would be wicked to treat her as a sinner and an outcast. Sinners did wrong because they enjoyed the sin; but she had never been vicious, or even selfishly anxious for pleasure. Pleasure! She had never cared for that sort of thing. Girls of her own age used to talk to her about it, and what they said was almost incomprehensible. She had never had such feelings, however faintly.

Then later, when she had, as it were, sacrificed herself on the family altar, she was indignant at finding that he had nevertheless looked elsewhere. There were others—and she said she would never forgive him. Yet she did forgive him. Finally, there came the outrage of his stopping at the Cottage with somebody else. Her aunt had sent her out of the way, but she heard of it; and this time she determined to be done with Mr. Barradine. And yet again she forgave him.

After marriage she began to love Will most truly and devotedly—but not for his embraces, which did not even stir her pulses, which only made her tenderly happy that she could make him happy. Now after eleven years her feeling toward him was all unselfish and beautiful, a gentle and deep affection, without a taint of anything that one would not call really lady-like. The passion and boisterousness were all on his side.

And thinking of things that she had never told Will, she wondered if this calmness of temperament, or perhaps unusual failure in response, was but another fatal consequence of the Barradine slavery. If so, what cause she had to hate and curse him! The episode with him was simply an irksomeness: it had frozen her instead of warming her, checked her expansion, and perhaps, breaking the cycle of normal development, made her imperfect as a woman.

She sat staring at the distant point where he and his horse had just now vanished, and for a little while her thoughts were like curses. Any attributes of grandeur were transitory illusions; he was wholly mean and base: he was the embodied principle of evil that had spoiled the past and that still threatened the future. She wished that he might eventually suffer as much as he had made her suffer. She wished that he might be racked with rheumatism, burned up with gout, tortured with every conceivable painful disease. She wished him dead and crumbling to dust in his coffin.

After tea she came back to the window and stayed there till nightfall.

Little by little the street became dim and vague. Two or three futile oil lamps were lighted, and the shop fronts shone brightly, but all the rest grew dark, like a river or a canal instead of a street. One heard voices, and then people showed themselves momentarily as they passed through the lamplight.

While she watched them passing, her thoughts drifted into generalized sadness.

Candle-light showed in a window of the house next door to the saddler's, and Mavis thought of these neighbors—two sisters, old maids—who had a very, very little money of their own and who endeavored to add to what was barely enough for necessities by selling butterfly nets, children's fishing-rods, stamp albums, and picture post-cards. Two years ago the elder sister tumbled down-stairs and injured her spine; and since then she had been bedridden, lying in the upper room at the back of the house, with nothing to amuse her but a view of the graveyard behind the church. Mavis had been to see her one day this summer, had sat by the bed, and read her a chapter out of the New Testament and then the weekly instalment of a novel in the Rodhaven District Courier. Extremely sad.

There was a dreadful lot of tippling at Rodchurch: in fact, one might say that drink was the prevailing fault of the village. The vicar publicly touched on the matter in his sermons, and privately he often said that Mr. Cope, the fat landlord of The Gauntlet Inn, was greatly to blame. The tradesmen had a little club at the Gauntlet, where Cope employed a horrid brazen barmaid who sometimes sang comic songs to the club members. Mrs. Cope felt strongly about the barmaid, and quite took the vicar's side in the dispute the day that Cope came out of the tap-room and was so rude and abusive to the reverend gentleman. Mrs. Cope said she'd be glad if Mr. Norton brought her husband to book before the magistrates and got his license taken away.

Mr. Silcox the tobacconist hurried through the lamplight, unquestionably on his way to the Gauntlet. Silcox was a chattering foolish creature who had lost his own and his widowed mother's savings in a ridiculous commercial enterprise—a promptly bankrupt theater company over at Rodhaven—and it was thought that the workhouse would be the end for him and Mrs. Silcox. But early this summer people had been startled by hearing that the Courier had appointed Silcox as their reporter; and local critics were of opinion that Silcox had taken very kindly to literature, and that he was shaping well, and might perhaps retrieve the past in making name and fortune. Dale, who used to chaff Silcox rather heavily, was at present quite polite to him. It had always been Will's policy to stand well with the press, and there was no doubt that during the recent controversy Silcox had endeavored to render aid with his pen.