"Acts—words—whose acts?" asks he slowly.
"Tita's."
"Lady Rylton's? What do you mean?"
He shakes himself suddenly free of the touch that has grown hateful to him.
"I mean," says she boldly, still unconscious of his real meaning of the abyss that lies before her, "that you can at any moment get rid of her. You can at any moment get a divorce!"
"By lying?" says he, with agitation. "By"—vehemently—"dragging her name into the dust. By falsely, grossly swearing against her."
"Why take it so much to heart?" says she, again coming close to him. "She would not care, she would help you. She could then marry her cousin. We could all see how that was. Would it be such false swearing after all?"
"Don't!" says Rylton, in a suffocating tone.
"Ah, Maurice, I understand you. I know how your honour revolts from such a step, but it is only a step—one—one, and then—we——" She covers her eyes with her hands and leans heavily against the table behind her. "We should be together—for ever," whispers she faintly.
A long, long silence follows this. It seems to hold, to envelop the room. It is like darkness! All at once Marian begins to tremble. She lifts her head.
"You do not speak," says she. There is something frantic in her low voice—an awful fear. The first dawn of the truth is breaking on her, but as yet the light is imperfect. "You do not speak," she repeats, and now her voice is higher, shriller; there is agony in it. "You mean—you mean—— What do you mean, Maurice?"
"What can I mean? You called me just now an honourable man."
"Ah, your honour!" says she bitterly.
"You, at least, can find no flaw in it," says he suddenly.
"No? Was it an honourable man who married that girl for her money, loving me all the time? You," passionately, "you did love me then?"
There is question in her tone.
"The dishonour was to her, not to you," returns he, his eyes bent on the ground.
"Oh, forget her! What has she got to do with us?" cries she, with a sudden burst of angry misery, stung by the fact that he had given no answer to that last question of hers. "You loved me once. You loved me. Oh, Maurice," smiting her hands together, "you cannot have forgotten that! You cannot. Why should I remember if you forget? Each kiss of yours, each word, is graven on my soul! When I am dead, perhaps I shall forget, but not till then; and you—you, too—you must remember!"
"I remember!"
He is looking white and haggard.
"Ah!"
There is a quick triumphant note in her voice.
"But what?" he goes on quickly. "What have I to remember about you? That I prayed you on my knees day after day to give yourself to me. To risk the chances of poverty, to marry me—and," slowly, "I remember, too, your answer. It was always 'No'. You loved me, you said, but you would wait. Poverty frightened you. I would have given my life for you, you would not give even your comfort for me. Even when my engagement with—with——"
"Your wife."
The words come like a knife from between her clenched teeth.
"With Tita was almost accomplished—but not quite—I spoke to you again, but you still held back. You let me go—you deliberately gave me up to another. Was that love? I tell you," says he vehemently, "that all the money the world contains would not have forced me from you at that time. You of your own accord put me outside your life. Was that love?"
"I was content to wait. I did not seek another in marriage. I, too, was poor. But I swore to myself to live and die a pauper—for your sake, if—if no help came to us." She pauses. A sigh—a cruel sigh bursts from her lips. "No help came."
She is deadly white. A sudden reaction from hope, sure and glorious, to horrible despair is mastering her. She had not thought, she had not known she loved him so well until now, when it has begun to dawn upon her that he no longer loves her.
In all her life no gladness had come to her until she met Rylton, and then her heart went forth, but without the full generosity of one who had been fed with love from its birth. Soured, narrowed by her surroundings, and chilled by a dread of the poverty she had so learned to fear, she had hung back when joy was offered to her, and now that joy was dead. It would be hers never, never! The love on which she had been counting all these days,
"For which I cry both day and night,
For which I let slip all delight,
Whereby I grow both deaf and blind,
Careless to win, unskilled to find,"
is hers no longer. Deaf and blind she has been indeed.
A little faintness falls on her; she sways, and Rylton, catching her, presses her into a chair. His touch recalls her to life, and rouses within her a sudden outbreak of passion.
"Maurice!"—she holds him with both her hands—"I will not believe it. It is not true! You love me still! You do, you do. I was"—she lets his arms go and raises her hands to his shoulders, and, leaning back, gazes with wild, beautiful, beseeching eyes into his face—"wrong—foolish—mad, I think, when I flung from me the only good that Heaven ever gave me, but—but for all that you love me still." She pauses. His eyes are on the ground; he looks like a criminal condemned to death. "Say it, say it," whispers she hoarsely. There is a silence that speaks. He can feel the shudder that runs through her. It nerves him.
"All this," he says—his voice is low and harsh, because of the agony of the moment—"all this comes——"
He grows silent. He cannot say it. She can.
"Too late?"
The words fall like a knell, yet there is a question in them, and one that must be answered.
"Too late!" repeats he. He could have cursed himself, yet it had to be done. He frees himself from her and stands back. "Why do you compel me to say such things?" cries he violently.
But she does not hear him. She is looking into the distant corner of the room as though—as one might suppose, seeing her earnest gaze—she can there see something. Her dead life's hope, perhaps, lying in its shroud. And perhaps, too, the sight is too much for her, for after a moment or two she raises her hands to her eyes, and clasps them there.
A sound breaks from her. In all his after life Rylton never forgets it.
"Oh!" says she, and that is all—but it sounds like a last breath—a final moan—an end.
Then all at once it is over. Whatever she has felt is done with for the present. She takes down her hands, and looks round at him deliberately. Her face is as the face of one dead, but her voice is clear and cold and cutting as an east wind.
"It is this, then," says she, "that all is at an end between us. You have tired of me. I have heard that men do tire. Now I know it. You wish me dead, perhaps."
"No! Marian, No!"
"For that, I suppose, I should thank you. Thank the man who once wanted so much to make me his wife. You did wish to make me—your wife?"
"Yes—yes. But that is all over," says he desperately.
"For you, yes! For me——"
She pauses.
"Great heavens!" cries Rylton. "Why go on like this? Why go into it again? Was it my fault? At that time I was a poor man. I laid my heart at your feet, but"—drawing a long breath—"I was a poor man. It all lay in that."
"Ah! You will throw that in my teeth always," says she—not violently now, not even with a touch of excitement, but slowly, evenly. "Even in the days to come. Yet it was not that that killed your love for me. There was something else. Go on. Let me hear it."
"There is nothing to hear. I beg of you, Marian, to——"
"To let you off?" says she, with a ghastly attempt at gaiety. "No, don't hope for that. There is something—something that has cost me—everything. And I will learn it. No one's love dies without a cause. And there is a cause for the death of yours. Be frank with me, now, in this our last hour. Make me a confession."
Five minutes ago she would have thrown her arms round him, and besought him, with tender phrases, to tell her what is on his mind. Now she stands apart from him, with a cold, lifeless smile upon her still colder lips.
"No! Do not perjure yourself," says she quickly, seeing him about to speak. "Do you think I do not know? That I cannot see by your face that there is something? I have studied it quite long enough to understand it. Come, Maurice. The past is the past—you have decided that—and it is a merely curious mood that leads me to ask you the secret of the great crime that has separated us. My crime, bien entendu!"
Rylton turns away from her with an impatient gesture, and goes back to the hearthrug. To persist like this! It is madness!
"There was no crime," says he. "But"—frowning—"as we are on the subject, and as you compel me to it, I——"
"No, don't speak. Don't!" says she quickly.
She seems to cower away from him. She had solicited his condemnation, yet when it came to the point she had no strength to bear it. And after all, is she had only known, he was merely going to accuse himself of having been over-foolish when he induced Tita to ask her to Oakdean on a visit.
"As you will," says he listlessly. "I was merely thinking of——"
"I know—I know. Of course she would make me out the worst in the world, and I have reason to know that her cousin, Miss Hescott, told you stories about me. There was a night when——
"When——"
"Ah, I was wrong there. I was merely thinking of——"
"Wrong!" says Rylton slowly.
His thoughts have gone back to that last interview with Margaret, and what she had said about his folly in asking Marian on a visit to Oakdean, considering all that had been said and done between them in the old time.
"You remember it, then?" asks Marian. She looks at him. Her face is still livid, and as she speaks she throws back her head and laughs aloud—such a cruel, hateful laugh! "Well, I know it—I lied. I lied then most abominably."
"Then?"
"That night on the balcony—I confess it. I know Minnie Hescott told you."
Rylton's mind goes quickly back.
"That night," says he slowly, as if thinking, as if concentrating his thoughts, "the night you led me to where——"
He hesitates.
"Does it hurt you to name her in my presence?" asks Mrs. Bethune in a tone like velvet. "Well, spare yourself. Let us call her 'she'—the immaculate 'she.' Now you can go on with safety."
Her tone, her sneer, so evidently directed at Tita, maddens Rylton.
"You say you lied that night," says he, with barely suppressed fury. "And—I believe you. I was on the balcony with you, and you told me then that you did not know where my wife was. At all events, you gave me the impression that you did not know where she was. You made me a bet—you can't have forgotten it—that she was with her cousin in the garden. I took the bet, and then you led me to the arbour—the arbour where you knew she was. All things seemed to swear against her—all things save her cousin, Minnie Hescott."
"Minnie Hescott!" Marian Bethune laughs aloud. "Minnie and Tom Hescott! Would a brother swear against a brother? Would a sister give a brother away? No. And I will tell you why. Because it is to the interest of each to support the other. Minnie Hescott would lie far deeper than I did to save her brother's reputation, for with her brother's reputation her own would sink. I lied when I said I did not know where your precious wife was at that moment, but I lied for your sake, Maurice—to save you from a woman who was betraying you, and who would drag you down to the very dust with her."
Rylton lifts his head.
"To what woman are you alluding?" asks he shortly, icily.
"To Tita," returns she boldly. "I knew where she was that night; I knew she would be with her cousin at that moment—the cousin she had known and loved all her life. The cousin she had cast aside, for the moment, to take your title, and mount by it to a higher rank in life." She takes a step towards him, her large eyes blazing. "Now you know the truth," says she, with a vehemence that shakes her. "Your love may be dead to me, but you shall know her as she is! Faithless! False as hell she is! She shall not supplant me!"
She stands back from him, her hands outstretched and clenched. She looks almost superb in her wicked wrath.
Rylton regards her steadily.
"You are tired," says he coldly. "You ought to get some rest. You will sleep here to-night?"
There is a question in his tone.
"Why not? In this my old home—my home for years—your mother's home."
"My mother is in Scotland," says he briefly.
Something is tearing at his breast. Her deliberate, her most cruel attack on Tita has touched him to the quick.
"Don't be frightened!" says Mrs. Bethune, bursting out laughing.
"What are you thinking of—your reputation?"
"No!"
Manlike, he refrains from the obvious return. But she, in her mad frenzy of despair and anger, supplies it.
"Mine, then? It is not worth a thought, eh? Who cares for me? Whether I sink with the vile, or swim with the good? No! I'll tell you what you are thinking of, Maurice." She lays her hand upon her throat quickly, as if stifling, yet laughs gaily. "You are thinking that that little idiot may hear of my being here, and that she will make a fuss about it—all underbred people love a fuss—and that——"
She would have gone on, but Rylton has given up his neutral position on the hearthrug—he has made one step forward, his face dark with passion.
"Not another word!" says he in a sharp, imperious tone. "Not another word about—MY WIFE!"
The last two words explain all. Mrs. Bethune stand still, as if struck to the heart.
For a full minute she so stands, and then—"You are right. I should not be here," says she. She turns, and rests her eyes steadily on him. "So that is my fault," says she, "that you love—her!"
Shame holds him silent.
"You do love her?" persists she, playing with her misery, insisting on it. She lays her hand upon her heart as if to stay its beating. Is it going to burst its bonds? Oh, if it only might, and at this moment! To think that she—that girl—should take her place! And yet, had she not known? All through, had she not known? She had felt a superstitious fear about her, and now—"You do not speak?" says she. "Is it that you cannot? God knows I do not wonder! Well," slowly, "good-night! good-bye!"
She goes to the door.
"You cannot go like this," says Rylton, with some agitation. "Stay here to-night. I shall have time to catch the up-train, and I have business in town; and besides——"
"Do not lie!" says she. She stops and faces him; her eyes are aflame, and she throws out her right arm with a gesture that must be called magnificent. It fills him with a sort of admiration. "I want no hollow courtesies from you." She stoops, and gathering up her wraps, folds them around her. Then she turns to him again. "As all is dead between us." She stops short. "Oh no!"—laying her hand upon her heart.—"As all is dead in you——"
Whether her strength forsakes her here, or whether she refuses to say more, he never knows. She opens the door and goes into the hall, and, seeing a servant, beckons to him.
Rylton follows her, but, seeing him coming, she turns and waves him back. One last word she flings at him.
"Remember your reputation."
He can hear the bitterness of her laugh as she runs down the stone steps into the fly outside. She had evidently told the man to wait.
CHAPTER XXIV.
HOW TITA PLEADS HER CAUSE WITH MARGARET; AND HOW MARGARET REBUKES HER; AND HOW STEPS ARE HEARD, AND TITA SEEKS SECLUSION BEHIND A JAPANESE SCREEN; AND WHAT COMES OF IT.
"What hour did he say he was coming?" asks Tita, looking up suddenly from the book she has been pretending to read.
"About four. I wish, dearest, you would consent to see him."
"I consent? Four, you say? And it is just three now. A whole hour before I feel his hated presence in the house. Where are you going to receive him?"
"In the small drawing-room, I suppose."
"You suppose. Margaret, is it possible you have not given directions to James? Why, he might show him in here."
"Well, even if he did," says Margaret impatiently, "I don't suppose he would do you any bodily harm. Once you saw him the ice would be broken, and——"
"We should both fall in and be drowned. It would only make matters worse, I assure you."
"It would be a change at all events, and 'variety is charming.' As it is, you have both fallen out."
"You are getting too funny for anything," says Tita, tilting her chin saucily.
"Now, if you were to do as you suggest, fall in—in love—with each other——"
"Really, Margaret, this is beneath you," says Tita, laughing in spite of herself. "No! no! no! I tell you," starting to her feet, "I'd rather die than meet him again. When you and Colonel Neilson are married——"
"Oh! as to that," says Margaret, but she colours faintly.
"I shall take a tiny cottage in the country, and a tiny maid; and
I'll have chickens, and a big dog, and a pony and trap, and——"
"A desolate hearth. No, Tita, you were not born for the old maid's joys."
"Well, I was not born to be tyrannized over, any way," says Tita, raising her arms above her head, her fingers interlaced, and yawning lightly. "And old maid has liberty, at all events."
"I don't see that mine does me much good," says Margaret ruefully.
"That's why you are going to give it up. Though anyone who could call you an old maid would be a fool. I sometimes"—wistfully— "wish you were going to be one, Meg, because then I could live with you for ever."
"Well, you shall."
"No; not I. Three is trumpery."
"There won't be three."
"I wish I had a big bet on that. I wish someone would bet me my old dear home, my Oakdean, upon that. I should be a happy girl again."
A great sadness grows within her eyes.
"Tita, you could be happy if you chose."
"You are always saying that," says Lady Rylton, looking full at her.
"But how—how can I be happy!"
"See Maurice! Make it up with him. Put an end to this foolish quarrel."
"What should I gain by agreeing to live again with a man who cares nothing for me? I tell you, Margaret, that I desire no great things. I did not expect to wring from life extraordinary joys. I have never been exorbitant in my demands. I did not even ask that Maurice should love me. I asked only that he should like me—be—be fond of me. I"—her voice beginning to tremble—"have had so few people to be fond of me; and to live with anyone, Margaret, to see him all day long, and know he cared nothing for me, that he thought me in his way, that he so hated me that he couldn't speak to me without scolding me, or saying hurtful words! Oh, no! I could not do that again."
"Maurice has been most unfortunate," says Margaret, very sadly. "Do you really believe all this of him, Tita?"
"I believe he loved Mrs. Bethune all the time," returns she simply. "And even if it be true what you say, that he does not love her now—still he does not love me either."
"And you?"
"Oh, I—I am like the 'miller of the Dee.'" She had been on the verge of tears, but now she laughs.
"'I care for nobody, no, not I,
And nobody cares for me.'
I told you that before. Why do you persist in thinking I am in love? Such a silly phrase! At all events"—disdainfully—"I'm not in love with Maurice."
"I am afraid not, indeed," says Margaret, in a low voice. "And yet you seem to have such a capacity for loving. Me I know you love—and that old home."
"Ah yes—that! But that is gone. And soon you will be gone, too."
"Never! never!" says Margaret earnestly. "And all this is so morbid, Tita. You must rouse yourself; you know some of our old friends are coming to see me on Sunday next. You will meet them?"
"If you like." She pauses. "Is Mrs. Chichester coming?"
"Yes, I think so, and Randal Gower, and some others."
"I should like to see them very much."
She has grown quite animated.
"The only one you don't want to see, in my opinion, is your husband," says Margaret, with a little reproach.
"I want to see him quite as much as he wants to see me," says Tita. "By-the-bye, you ought to tell James about his coming. It is half-past three now."
"He's always late," says Margaret lazily.
But even as she says it, both Tita and she are conscious of the approach of a man's footstep, that assuredly is not the footstep of James.
"I told you—I told you!" cries Tita, springing to her feet, and wringing her hands. "Oh! why didn't you give some directions to James? Oh, Margaret! Oh! what shall I do? If I go out there I shall meet him face to face. Oh! why do people build rooms with only one door in them? I'm undone." She glances wildly round her, and in the far distance of this big drawing-room espies a screen. "That," gasps she, "that will do! I'll hide myself behind that. Don't keep him long, Meg darling! Hurry him off. Say you've got the cholera—any little thing like that—and get rid of him."
"Tita—you can't. It is impossible. He will probably say things, and you won't like them—and——"
"I shan't listen! I shall put my fingers in my ears. Of course"—indignantly—"I shan't listen."
"But—Tita—good gracious——"
Her other words are lost for ever. The handle of the door is turned.
Tita, indeed, has barely time to scramble behind the screen when Sir
Maurice is announced by James, who is electrified by the glance his
mistress casts at him.
"I expect I'm a little early," says Rylton, shaking hands with Margaret—apologizing in his words but not in his tone. He is of course unaware of the heart-burnings in Margaret's breast, or the apology would have been more than a mere society speech. "You are alone?"
Here poor Margaret's purgatory begins—Margaret, who is the soul of truth.
"Well, you can see!" says she, spreading out her hands and giving a comprehensive glance round her—a glance that rests as if stricken on the screen. What awful possibilities lie behind that!
"Yes, yes, of course. Yet I fancied I heard voices."
"How curious are our fancies!" says poor Margaret, taking the tone of an advanced Theosophist, even while her heart is dying within her.
"Where is Tita?" asks Rylton suddenly. To Margaret's guilty conscience the direct question sounds like an open disbelief in her former answers. But Rylton had asked it thus abruptly merely because he felt that if he lingered over it it never might be asked; and he must know. "Where is Tita?" asks he again. Where indeed!
"She is here—at least," hurriedly, almost frantically, "with me, you know; staying with me. Staying, you know."
"Yes, I know. Gone out, perhaps?"
"No, n—o. In retirement," says Margaret wretchedly. Is she listening? How can she answer him all through? If he speaks against her, what is she to do? If she has in all justice to condemn her in some little ways, will she bear it? Will she keep her fingers in her ears?
"Ah—headache, I suppose," says Rylton.
"Yes; her head aches sometimes," says Margaret, who now feels she is fast developing into a confirmed liar.
"It usen't to ache," says he.
At this Miss Knollys grows a little wild.
"Used it not?" says she. "You remember, perhaps; I don't! But I am certain she would object to being made a subject for cross-examination. If you are anxious about her health, you need not be. She is well, very well indeed. Excellently well. She seems to regret—to require—nothing."
Margaret has quite assured herself that this little speech of hers will be acceptable to the hidden form behind the screen. She feels, indeed, quite proud of it. Tita had been angry with her that last day when she had told Rylton she looked pale, but now she casts a glance at the screen, and to her horror sees that it shakes perceptibly. There is something angry in the shake of it. What is wrong now? What has she said or done?
"I am glad to hear that," says Sir Maurice, in a tone that is absolutely raging. He moves up the room, as he speaks, to the fire—a small fire, it is still a little chilly—and terribly close to the screen. Indeed, as he stoops to lift the poker and break the coals, his elbow touches the corner of it.
"Don't stand there; come over here. So bad for your complexion!" says Margaret frantically.
As Maurice is about as brown as he can be, this caution falls somewhat flat.
"It's cold enough," says he absently, standing upright, with his hands behind him. He gives himself a little shake, as men do when airing themselves before a fire in mid-winter. It is quite warm to-day, but he had "seen the fire," and—we are all children of habit. "It is wonderfully cold for this time of year," continues he, even more absently than before. He lays his hand upon the corner of the screen near him. Margaret is conscious of a vague sensation of faintness. Maurice turns to her.
"You were saying that Tita——"
Here Margaret rebels.
"Once for all, Maurice, I decline to discuss your wife," says she quickly. "Talk of anything else on earth you like—of Mr. Gladstone, the Irish question, poor Lord Tennyson, the mice in Hungary, anything—but not of Tita!"
"But why?" asks Rylton. "Has she forbidden you to mention her to me?"
"Certainly not! Why should she?"
"Why indeed? A man more barbarously treated by her than I have been—has seldom——"
Margaret's unhappy eyes once more glance towards the screen. It is shaking now—ominously.
"Of course! Of course! We all know that," says she, her eyes on the screen, her mind nowhere. She has not the least idea of the words she has chosen. She had meant only to pacify him, to avert the catastrophe if possible: she had spoken timidly, enthusiastically, fatally. The screen now seems to quiver to its fall. An earthquake has taken possession of it, apparently—an earthquake in an extremely advanced stage.
Oh, those girls, and their promises about their fingers and their ears!
"I'm sorry I can't ask you to stay, Maurice," says she hurriedly. "But—but I'm not well: I, too, have a headache—a sort of neuralgia, you know."
"You seem pretty well, however," says Sir Maurice, regarding her curiously.
"Oh, I dare say," impatiently. "But I'm not. I'm ill. I tell you this sudden attack of influenza is overpowering me, and—it's infectious, my dear Maurice. It is really. They all say so—the very cleverest doctors; and I should never forgive myself if you took it—and, besides——"
"You can't be feeling very bad," says Maurice slowly. "Your colour is all right."
"Ah! That is what is so deceptive about it," says Margaret eagerly. "One looks well, even whilst one is almost dying. I assure you these sudden attacks of—of toothache"—wildly—"are most trying. They take so much out of one."
"They must," says Maurice gravely. "So many attacks, and all endured at the same time, would shake the constitution of an annuitant. Headache, neuralgia, influenza, toothache! You have been greatly afflicted. Are you sure you feel no symptoms of hydrophobia?"
"Maurice——"
"No? So glad of that! My dear girl, why are you so anxious to get rid of me?"
"Anxious to get rid of you? What an absurd idea!"
"Well, if not that, what on earth do you mean?"
"I have told you! I have a headache."
"Like Lady Rylton. The fact is, Margaret," says he, turning upon her wrathfully, "she has bound you down not to listen to a word I can say in my own defence. The last day I was here you were very different. But I can see she has been at work since, and is fast prejudicing you against me. I call that most unfair. I don't blame you, though I think you might give half an hour to a cousin and an old friend—one who was your friend long before ever she saw you. You think the right is all on her side; but is it? Now I put it fairly to you. Is it?"
Margaret is quaking.
"My dear Maurice—I—you know how I feel for you—for"—with a frantic glance at the screen—"for both of you, but——"
"Pshaw! that is mere playing with the subject. Do you mean to say you have given up even your honest opinion to her? You must know that it is not right for a wife to refuse to live with her husband. Come"—vehemently—"you must know that."
"Yes. Yes, of course," says poor Margaret, who doesn't know on earth what she is saying.
Her eyes are riveted on that awful screen, and now she is shaken to the very core by the fact that it is evidently undergoing a second earthquake! What is to be done? How long will this last? And when the end comes, will even one of them be left alive to tell the tale?
"Look here!" says Rylton. "She won't see me, it appears; she declines to acknowledge the tie that binds us. She has plainly decided on putting me outside her life altogether. But she can't do that, you know. And"—with some vehemence—"what I wish to say is this, that if I was in fault when I married her, fancying myself in love with another woman——"
"Maurice, I entreat," says Margaret, rising, "I desire you to——"
"No; you must listen. I will not be condemned unheard. She can't have it all her own way. If I was in fault, so was she. Is it right for a woman to marry a man without one spark of love for him, with—she never concealed it—an almost open dislike to him?"
"Dislike? Maurice——"
"Well, is she not proving it now? My coming seems to be the signal for her hiding herself away in her own room. 'In retirement' you said she was, with a bad headache. Do you think"—furiously—"I can't see through her headaches? Now listen, Margaret; the case stands thus: I married her for her money, and she married me for my title. We both accepted the risk, and——"
Margaret throws up her hands. Her face grows livid, her eyes are fastened on the screen, and at this moment it goes over with a loud crash.
"It is not true! It is a lie!" says Tita, advancing into the middle of the room, her lips apart, her eyes blazing.
CHAPTER XXV.
HOW TITA WAGES WAR WITH MARGARET AND MAURICE; AND HOW MARGARET SUFFERS IGNOMINIOUS TREATMENT ON BOTH HANDS; AND HOW MAURICE AT THE LAST GAINS ONE SMALL VICTORY.
There is a moment's awful silence, and then Tita sweeps straight up to Rylton, who is gazing at her as if he never saw her before. As for Margaret, she feels as if she is going to faint.
"I—I!" says Tita; "to accuse me of marrying you for your title! I never thought about your title. I don't care a fig for your title. My greatest grief now is that people call me Lady Rylton."
"I beg of you, Tita——" begins Margaret, trembling; she lays her hand on the girl's arm, but Tita shakes her off.
"Don't speak to me. Don't touch me. You are as bad as he is. You took his part all through. You said you felt for him! When he was saying all sorts of dreadful things about me. You said, 'Yes, yes, of course.' I heard you; I was listening. I heard every word."
"May I ask," says Rylton, "if you did not marry me for my title, what did you marry me for? Not," with a sneer, "for love, certainly."
"I should think not," with a sneer on her part that sinks his into insignificance. "I married you to escape from my uncle, who was making me wretched! But not"—with an ireful glance at him—"half as wretched as you have made me!"
Rylton shrugs his shoulders. You should never shrug your shoulders when a woman is angry.
"Yes, wretched—wretched!" says Tita, angry tears flooding her eyes. "There was never any one so miserable as I have been since I married you."
"That makes it all the more unfortunate that you are married to me still," says Rylton icily.
"I may be married to you—I shan't live with you," says Tita.
"We shall see to that," says Rylton, who has lost his head a little.
"Yes, I shall," returns she, with open defiance.
Meantime Margaret, who had been crushed by that first onslaught on her, has recovered herself a little. To appeal to Tita again is useless; but to Maurice—she must say a word of entreaty to Maurice. Tita has been most unjust, but men are of nobler make. Maurice will understand.
"I think," says she very gently, catching his eye, "that it would be better for you to—to discuss all this—with Tita—alone. I shall go, but I beg of you, Maurice, to——"
"Pray don't beg anything of me," says Maurice, turning upon her with an expression that bodes no good to anyone. "I should think you ought to be the last person in the world to ask a favour of me."
"Good gracious! what have I done now?" exclaims Margaret shrinking back, and cut to the heart by this fresh affront.
"You knew she was there, behind that screen, and you never gave me even a hint about it. A hint would have been sufficient, but——"
"I did!" says Margaret, driven to bay. "I told you I had a headache, and that you were to go away—but you wouldn't!"
"You told me you had twenty diseases, but even that wouldn't exonerate you from letting her hear what was not meant for her ears."
"Ah! I'm glad you acknowledge even so much," breaks in Tita vindictively.
"Even though they weren't meant for your ears I'm glad you heard them," says Rylton, turning to her with all the air of one who isn't going to give in at any price. "But as for you, Margaret, I did not expect this from you. I believed you stanch, at all events, and honest; yet you deliberately let me say what was in my mind, knowing there was an unseen listener who would be sure to make the worst of all she heard."
"Tita, you shall explain this!" says Margaret, turning with a tragic gesture towards her. "Speak. Tell him."
"What is the good of telling him anything?" says Tita, regarding her coldly. "Yet though you have forsaken me, Margaret, I will do as you wish." She turns to Rylton. "It was against Margaret's wish that I hid behind that screen. I heard you coming, and there was no way out of the room except by the door through which you would enter, and rather than meet you I felt"—with a sudden flash of her large eyes at him—"I would willingly die. So I got behind that screen, and—and" She pauses. "Well, that's all," says she.
"You see it was not my fault," says Margaret.
She lets a passing glance fall on Rylton, and with an increase of dignity in her air leaves the room. The two left behind look strangely at each other.
"So you were listening?" says Rylton. "Listening all that time?"
"You wrong me as usual. I was not listening all the time. I didn't want to listen at all. Do you think I ever wanted to hear your voice again?"
"I didn't flatter myself so far, as to this,"—bitterly—"and yet——"
"I only wanted to get away from you, and I wasn't listening, really. I kept my fingers tight in my ears until you had been there for hours; then my arms felt as if they were dead, and I—well, I dropped them then."
"Hours! I like that! Why, I haven't been here for half an hour yet."
"Oh, you could say anything!" says Tita contemptuously.
She walks away from him, and flings herself into a lounging chair. She is dressed in a very pale pink gown, with knots of black velvet here and there. And as she has seated herself a tiny, exquisitely shaped foot, clad in a pale pink stocking and black shoe, betrays itself to the admiring air.
Rylton, who is too angry to see anything, and has only a half-conscious knowledge that she is looking more beautiful than ever, goes up to the lounging chair in which she is reclining, and looking down upon her, says sternly, and with a distinctly dramatic air:
"At last we meet."
"At last," returns she, regarding with fixed interest the tip of her shoe as she sways it with an air of steady indifference to and fro. "Against my will!"
"I know that. I have had plenty of time to know that."
"Then why do you come?"
"To see you," says he plainly.
"Knowing that I didn't wish to see you?"
"Yes. Because I wish to see you."
"What a man's reason!" says she, with a scoffing smile. "I wonder you aren't ashamed of yourself."
"Well, I am sometimes," says Rylton, making an effort to suppress the anger that is rising within him. "I sometimes tell myself, for example, that I must be the meanest hound alive. I know you avoid me—hate me—and yet I come."
"But why—why?" impatiently.
"Because," slowly, "I—do not hate you."
"Don't be a hypocrite," says Tita sharply. She gets up suddenly, pushing back her chair behind her. "Why do you pretend?" says she. "What is to be gained by it? I know we are bound to each other in a sense—bound——" She breaks off. "Ah, that horrid word!" cries she. "Why can we not get rid of it? Why can't we separate? How ridiculous the laws are! You would be as glad to say good-bye to me for ever as I should be to say it to you, and yet——"
"I beg your pardon," says Rylton, interrupting her quickly. "Speak for yourself only. For my part, I have no desire to be separated from you now, or," steadily, "at any other time."
Tita lifts her eyes and looks at him. Their glances meet, and there is something in his that brings the blood to her face.
"I cannot understand you," cries she, with some agitation. "You don't want my money now; you have plenty of your own, and," throwing up her head with a disdainful little gesture, "certainly you don't want me."
"You seem wonderfully certain on many points," says Rylton, "but is your judgment always infallible?"
"In this case, yes."
"Ah! you have decided," says he. His gaze wanders from her face and falls upon her hands. On the right hand is a beautiful pearl ring. He regards it without thought for a second or two, and then he wakens to the fact that he had never seen it there before. "Who gave you that ring?" demands he suddenly, with something of the old masterful air. It is so like the old air that Tita for a little while is silent, then she wakes. No! It is all over now—that ownership. She has emancipated herself; she is free. There is something strange and terrible, however, to her in the knowledge that this thought gives her no joy. She stands pale, actually frightened, for there is fear in the knowledge—that she had felt a sharp throb of delight when that commanding tone had fallen on her ears.
She recovers almost instantly.
"You think it was Tom, perhaps," says she, speaking with a little difficulty, but smiling contemptuously. "Well, it was not. It was only Margaret, after all. This is a last insult, I suppose. Was it to deliver it that you came here to-day?"
"No," he is beginning, "but——"
"You ask me questions," continues she, brushing his words aside with a wave of her small hand. "And I—I—have I no questions to ask?" She stops, as if suffocating.
"You have, God knows," says he. "And"—he hesitates—"I don't expect you to believe me, but—that old folly—it is dead."
"Dead?" She shakes her head. "What killed it?"
"You!" says Rylton.
One burning glance she casts at him.
"Do not let us waste time," says she. "Tell me plainly why you came here, why you want to see me."
"You give me little encouragement to speak"—bitterly. "But it is this: I want you to come back to me, to be mistress of my house again. I"—he pauses as if seeking words—"I have bought a new house; I want you to come and be the head of it."
Tita has been listening to him with wide eyes. She had grown pale as death itself during his speech, and now she recoils from him. She makes a little movement as though to repel him for ever, and then, suddenly she covers her eyes with her hands, and bursts into violent weeping.
"Oh no! No!" gasps she. "Never! Never again! How could you ask me!"
He takes a step towards her, and lays his hand upon her arm.
"No, don't touch me. Don't speak to me," cries she. "I have had to see you to-day, and it has been terrible to me—so terrible that I hope I shall never see you again. I could not bear it. Go—go away!"
"Do not send me from you like this," entreats Rylton, in a voice that trembles. Her tears cut him to the heart. He is so close to her that he has only to put out his hand to catch her—to take her to him, and yet——"Think, Tita! We have got to live out our lives, whether we like it or not. Can we not live them out together?"
"We cannot," says Tita, in a low but distinct voice. She turns to him proudly. "Have you forgotten?" says she. Her poor little face is stained with tears, but he sees no disfigurement in it; he has but one desire, and that is to take her into his arms and kiss those tears away from it for ever.
"Forget! Do you think I shall ever forget? It is my curse that I shall always remember. But that is at an end, Tita. I swear it! I hope I shall never see her again. If you wish it—I——"
"I wish nothing with regard to either her or you," interrupts Tita, her breath coming a little quickly. "It is nothing to me. I do not care."
"Don't say that," says Rylton hoarsely. He is fighting his battle inch by inch. "Give me some hope! Is one sin to condemn a man for ever? I tell you all that is done. And you—if you love no one—give me a chance!"
"Why should I trouble myself so far?" says she, with infinite disdain.
At this Rylton turns away from her. He goes to the window, and stands there gazing out, but seeing nothing.
"You are implacable—cold, heartless," says he, in a low tone, fraught with hidden meaning.
"Oh, let us leave hearts out of the discussion," cries Tita scornfully. "And, indeed, why should we have any discussions? Why need we talk to each other at all? This interview"— clenching her handkerchief into a ball—"what has it done for us? It has only made us both wretched!" She takes a step nearer to him. "Do—do promise me you will not seek another."
"I cannot promise you that."
"No?" She turns back again. "Well—go away now, at all events," says she, sighing.
"Not until I have said what is on my mind," says Rylton, with determination.
"Well, say it"—frowning.
"I will! You are my wife, and I am your husband, and I think it is your duty to live with me."
She looks at him for a long time, as if thinking.
"I'll tell you what you think," says she slowly, "that it will add to your respectability in the eyes of your world to have your wife living in your house, and not in Margaret's."
"I don't expect to be generously judged by you," says he. "But even as you put it there is sense in it. If our world——"
"Yours! yours!" interrupts she angrily—that old wound had always rankled. "It is not my world! I have nothing to do with it. I do not belong to it. Your mother showed me that, even so long ago as when we were first"—there is a little perceptible hesitation—"married".
"Hang my mother!" says Rylton violently. "I tell you my world is your world, and if not—well, then I have no desire to belong to it. The question is, Tita, will you consent to forget—and—and forgive—and"—with a sudden plunge—"make it up with me?"
He would have taken her hand here, but she slips adroitly behind a small table.
"Say it is for respectability's sake, if you like, that I ask you to return to me," goes on Rylton, a little daunted, however, by her determined entrenchment; "though it is not. Still——"
She stops him.
"It is no use," says she. "Don't go on. I cannot. I will not. I," her lips quiver slightly—"I was too unhappy with you. And I should always think of——" Her voice dies away.
Rylton is thinking, too, of last night, and that terrible interview with Marian. A feeling of hatred towards her grows within him. She had played with him—killed all that was best in him, and then flung him aside. She had let him go for the moment—only to return and spoil whatever good the world had left him. Her face rises before him pleading, seductive; and here is the other face—angry, scornful. Oh, dear little angry face! How fair, how pure, and how beloved!
"I tell you," says he, breaking out vehemently, "that all that is at an end—if I ever loved her." He forgets everything now, and, catching her hands, holds them tightly in his own. "Give me another trial," entreats he.
"No, no!" She speaks as if choking, but for all that she draws her hands out of his. "It would be madness. You would tire. We should tire of each other in a week—where there is no love. No, no!"
"You refuse, then?"
"I refuse!"
"Tita——"
She turns upon him passionately.
"I won't listen. It is useless. You"—a sob breaks from her—"why don't you go!" she cries a little wildly.
"This is not good-bye," says he desperately. "You will let me come again? Margaret, I know, receives on Sundays. Say I may come then."
"Yes."
She gives the permission faintly, and with evident reluctance. She lifts her eyes, and makes a gesture towards the door.
"Oh, I am going," says Rylton bitterly. He goes a step or two away from her, and then pauses as if loath to leave her.
"You might at least shake hands with me," says he.
She hesitates—then lays a cold little hand in his. He too hesitates, then, stooping, presses his lips warmly, lingeringly to it.
In another moment he is gone.
Tita stands motionless, listening to his departing footsteps. For a while she struggles with herself, as if determined to overcome the strange emotion that is threatening to master her. Then she gives way, and, flinging herself into an armchair, breaks into a passion of tears.
Margaret, coming presently into the room, sees her, and going to her, kneels down beside the chair and takes her into her arms.
"Oh, Margaret!" cries Tita. "Oh, Meg! Meg! And I was so rude to you!
But to see him—to see him again——"
"My poor darling!" says Margaret, pressing the girl to her with infinite tenderness.
CHAPTER XXVI.
HOW SOME OLD FRIENDS REAPPEAR AGAIN; AND HOW SOME NEWS IS TOLD; AND HOW MAURICE MAKES ANOTHER EFFORT TO WIN HIS CASE.
"Just been to see her," says Mr. Gower, who has selected the snuggest chair in Margaret's drawing-room, and is now holding forth from its cushioned depths with a radiant smile upon his brow. "She's staying with the Tennants. They always had a hankering after Mrs. Bethune."
"Fancy Marian's being with anyone when Tessie is in town!" says Margaret. "Captain Marryatt, that is a wretchedly uncomfortable chair. Come and sit here."
"Oh, thanks! I'm all right," says Marryatt, who would have died rather than give up his present seat. It has a full command of the door. It is plain, indeed, to all present that he is expecting someone, and that someone Mrs. Chichester—his mistaken, if honest, infatuation for that lean young woman being still as ardent as of yore.
Minnie Hescott, who is talking to Tita, conceals a smile behind her fan.
"What! haven't you heard about her and Marian?" asks Gower, leaning towards his hostess. "Why, you must be out of the swim altogether not to have heard that. There's a split there. A regular cucumber coldness! They don't speak now."
"An exaggeration, surely," says Margaret. "I saw lady Rylton yesterday and—— How d'ye do, colonel Neilson?"
There is the faintest blush on Margaret's cheek as she rises to receive her warrior.
"I hardly expected you to-day; I thought you were going down to
Twickenham."
"What an awful story!" says Gower, letting her hear his whisper under pretence of picking up her handkerchief.
"Monday will do for that," says Neilson. "But Monday might not do for you. I decided not to risk the Sunday. By-the-bye, I have something to say to you, presently, if you can spare me a moment."
"Certainly," says Margaret, whereon the Colonel moves away to talk to someone else.
"Same old game, I suppose," suggests Gower, in a sweetly confidential tone, when he has gone. "Find it a little slow, don't you, knowing exactly what he's going to say to you, presently, when you have spared him a moment?"
"I really don't know," says Margaret, bringing a dignified eye to bear upon him.
"No? Then you ought. It isn't that you haven't had opportunities enough. Time has not been denied you. But as you say you don't know, I think it my duty to prepare you; to——"
"Really, Randal, I don't wish to know anything. I dare say Colonel
Neilson is quite capable of——"
"He appears to me," severely, "to be thoroughly in-capable. He ought to have impressed it upon your brain in half the time he's taken to do it. It is quite a little speech, and only firmness was required to make you remember it. This is it——"
"I don't wish to hear anything," says Margaret with suspicious haste.
"But I wish you to hear it. I think it bad to have things sprung upon one unawares. Now listen. 'For the nine hundred and ninetieth time, my beloved Margaret, I implore you on my bended knees to make me a happy man!' You remember it now?"
"No, indeed; I never heard such an absurd speech in my life."
"That's the second story you've told to-day," says Mr. Gower, regarding her with gentle sorrow.
"Oh, don't be stupid!" says Margaret. "Tell me what I want to know; about Marian. I am sorry if there really has occurred a breach between her and my aunt."
"There is little doubt about that! What a born orator is a woman!" says Mr. Gower, with deep enthusiasm. "Not one woman, mind you, but every woman. What command of language is theirs! I assure you if Mr. Goldstone had heard Mrs. Bethune on the subject of the Dowager Lady Rylton to-day, he would have given her a place in the Cabinet upon the spot. She would carry all before her in the House of Commons; we should have Home Rule for Ireland in twenty-four hours."
"Perhaps she wouldn't have voted for it," says Margaret, laughing.
"You bet!" says Mr. Gower. "Any way, there's a row on between her and Lady Rylton. The hatchet that has been buried for so long is dug up again, and it is now war to the knife between them."
"But what is to become of Marian?" asks Margaret anxiously, whose kind heart bleeds for all sad souls.
"She's going to marry a Russian. A nobody—but lots of money. Best thing she could do, too," says Gower, speaking the last words hurriedly, as he sees the door open and Margaret rise to receive her new visitor.
The fresh arrival is Mrs. Chichester, exquisitely arrayed in a summery costume of apple-green. It suits her eyes, which are greener than ever to-day, and sparkling. Her whole air, indeed, is full of delightful vivacity. There is a verve, a brightness, about her that communicates itself to her audience. She looks taller, thinner than usual.
"Such news!" cries she, in her clear, sharp voice. "Jack is coming home next month!"
"Jack?" questions Margaret.
"Yes, Jack. Jack Chichester—my husband, don't you know?"
At this a stricken silence falls upon her listeners. They all try to look as if they had been accustomed to think of Jack Chichester as an old and bosom friend. They also try (and this is even harder) not to look at Marryatt. As for him, he has forgotten that there is anyone to look at him. His foolish, boyish eyes are fixed on Mrs. Chichester.
"Yes, really," goes on that somewhat flighty young person. "No wonder you are all surprised. He has been so long away that I expect you thought he wasn't anywhere. I did almost. Well, he's coming now, any way, and that's a blessing. You'll all like him, I can tell you."
There is a ring of genuine feeling in her tone, not to be mistaken. She is glad at the thought of her husband's return. Marryatt, recognising that ring, sinks into a chair with a groan. Oh, heavens! How he has pranced after that woman for fully twelve months, dancing attendance upon her, fulfilling her commands, and all the time her heart was filled with the face of this abominable Jack!
Presently, on the first moment, indeed, when he can do so with any decency, he leaves Miss Knollys' house a sadder, and most decidedly a wiser, man!
"Am I to sympathize with you?" asks Gower, in a low, expressive voice, as Mrs. Chichester sweeps towards him.
She laughs.
"Pouf!" says she, making light of his little impertinence. "You're out of it altogether. Why, I'm glad he's coming home. You've mistaken me."
"I knew it. I felt it all along," cries Gower enthusiastically. "It is you who have mistaken me. When I mentioned the word 'sympathy'—ah!" rapturously, "that was sympathy with your joy!"
"Was it? You ought to do it again," says Mrs. Chichester; "and before the glass next time. Practise it. However, I'm too happy to give you the lesson you deserve. I can tell you Jack isn't half bad. I like him better, any way, than any man I ever met in my life, and that's saying a lot. Of course," candidly, "I doubt if I could ever like any man as well as myself; but I confess I run it very close with Jack."
"Naturally. 'We all love Jack,'" quotes Mr. Gower in a sort of ecstasy.
"But for all that, I must have my little fling sometimes," says Jack's wife, with a delightful smile, that makes her look thinner than ever.
"Quite so," says Gower.
They both laugh—a good healthy laugh; and, indeed, the vulgar expression coming from her does not sound so bad as it might. There are some people who, when they say a queer thing, set one's teeth on edge; and there are others who, when they use the same words, raise only a smile. As yet, there is much injustice in the world.
Margaret is standing in a distant window, talking in an undertone to Colonel Neilson, and Gower is now teasing Minnie Hescott, when once again the door is thrown open and Sir Maurice comes in.
"Another surprise packet!" says Gower faintly. "Miss Hescott, you know everything. _Are _there more to come? I'm not strong; my heart is in a bad state. Pray, pray give me a gentle word of warning if——"
"Isn't he looking well!" says Minnie excitedly.
Sir Maurice is indeed looking very handsome as he comes up the room. It brings a mutual smile to Margaret and Colonel Neilson's lips as they note the extreme care with which he has got himself up for the visit to—his wife!
He is holding his head very high, and the flower in his button-hole
has evidently been chosen with great care. He shakes hands with
Margaret first, of course, and with Tita last. She is sitting near
Mrs. Chichester, and she gives him her hand without looking at him.
She has grown a little white.
And then presently they all fade away: Captain Marryatt first, as has been said, and Mrs. Chichester last, still saying absurd things about the return of her "Jack"—absurd, but undoubtedly sincere. "That's what made them so funny," said Gower afterwards. And now Margaret makes a little excuse and goes too, but not before she has asked Maurice to stay to dinner.
"Oh, thank you!" says Rylton, and then hesitates; but after a glance at Tita's face, most reluctantly, and a little hopelessly, as it seems to Margaret, declares he has a previous engagement.
"Another night, then," says Margaret kindly, and closes the door behind her.
CHAPTER XXVII.
HOW MAURICE GAINS ANOTHER POINT; AND HOW TITA CONSENTS TO THINK ABOUT IT; AND HOW MARGARET TELLS A LIE.
For a little while no word is spoken. It seems as if no words are theirs to speak. Rylton, standing on the hearthrug, has nothing to look at save her back, that is so determinedly turned towards him. She is leaning over the plants in one of the windows, pretending to busy herself with their leaves.
"Won't you speak to me?" says Rylton at last.
He goes to her, and so stands that she is forced to let him see her face—a face beautiful, but pale and unkind, and with the eyes so steadfastly lowered. And yet he
"Knows they must be there,
Sweet eyes behind those lashes fair,
That will not raise their rim."
"I have spoken," says Tita.
"When?"
"I said, 'How d'ye do' to you."
"Nonsense" says he; and then, "I don't believe you said even so much. You gave me your hand, that was all; and that you gave reluctantly."
"Well, I can't help it," slowly. "Remember what I told you that last day."
"I don't want to remember anything," says he earnestly. "I want to start afresh—from this hour. And yet—there is one thing I must recall. You said—that last day—there was no love between us—that," slowly, "was not true. There is love on one side, at all events. Tita"—taking a step towards her—"I——"
She makes a sudden, wild gesture, throwing out her hands as if to ward off something.
"Don't!" cries she in a stifled voice. "Don't say it!"
"I must! I will!" says Rylton passionately. "I love you!" There is a dead silence, and in it he says again, "I love you!"
For a moment Tita looks as if she were going to faint; then the light returns to her eyes, the colour to her face.
"First her, then me," says she.
"Will you never forgive that?" asks he. "And it was before I saw you. When I did see you—Tita, do try to believe this much, at all events, that after our marriage I was true to you. I think now, that from the first moment I saw you I loved you. But I did not know it, and——"
"That is not all," says Tita in a low tone.
"I know—about Hescott. I beg your pardon about that. I was mad, I think; but the madness arose out of jealousy. I could not bear to think you were happy with him, _un_happy with me. If I had loved another, would I have cared with whom you were happy?"
"I don't know," says Tita.
There is something so forlorn in the sad little answer—something so forlorn in her whole attitude, indeed—the droop of her head, the sorrowful clasping of her small hands before her—that Rylton's heart burns within him.
"Be just—be just to me," cries he; "give me a chance. I confess I married you for your money. But now that accursed money is all gone (for which I thank heaven), and our positions are reversed. The money now is mine, and I come to you, and fling it at your feet, and implore you from my very soul to forgive me, and take me back."
She still remains silent, and her silence cuts him to the heart.
"What can I say? What can I do to move you?" exclaims he, in a low tone, but one that trembles. "Is your heart dead to me? Have I killed any hope that might have been mine? Is it too late in the day to call myself your lover?"
At this she lifts her hands and covers her face. All at once he knows that she is crying. He goes to her quickly, and lays his arm round her shoulder.
"Let me begin again," says he. "Trust me once more. I know well, Tita, that you do not love me yet, but perhaps in time you will forgive me, and take me to your heart. I am sorry, darling, for every angry word I have ever said to you, but in every one of those angry words there was love for you, and you alone. I thought only of you, only I did not know it. Tita, say you will begin life again with me."