Captain Desmond, V.C. Part 60

She might as well have tried to shift a bar of iron.

"What's the matter with you now?" she asked, half petulant, half fearful. "Has anything else gone wrong? Haven't we had enough misery and depression----?"

"There's no more call for acting, Evelyn," Desmond interposed with an ominous quietness more disconcerting than anger--"Doesn't your own conscience tell you what may have gone wrong?"

At that the colour left her face. "You mean--is it about--me?" she asked with shaking lips.

"Yes. About you." Her pitiful aspect softened him; he took her arm and set her gently down upon a chair;--the selfsame chair that Paul had occupied half an hour ago. "Don't be frightened," he said gently; "I won't hurt you more than I must. Ever since we married I have done my utmost to help you, spare you, shield you; but now--we've got to arrive at a clear understanding, once for all. First I want you to answer a question or two, straightly, without prevarication. You went out early, it seems. Where?"

"To Mrs Riley's----"

"And after?"

"I met Mr Kresney--quite by chance. He wanted me to come in to tea. He said Miss Kresney would soon be home--and I--I----"

"No need for polite fabrications;" he took her up quickly. "You went in. Miss Kresney did _not_ come home. Is this the first time he has trapped you with a convenient lie? Tell me that."

Words and tone roused her to a pa.s.sing flash of retaliation.

"If you're going to get so angry, Theo, I won't tell you _any_thing, and I _won't_ be questioned like a creature in a witness-box! Some one's been saying horrid things of me. Major Wyndham, I suppose. You wouldn't listen to any one else. It's very mean of him----"

Desmond took a hasty step forward. "How dare you speak so of the straightest man living!" he cried with imperious heat. "You, who have taken advantage of my blindness to deceive me deliberately a second time, on account of a cad who isn't fit to tie your shoe-strings. I've been blind in more than one way lately. But that is over now. I am not likely to repeat the mistake of trusting you implicitly--after this."

She cowered under the lash of his just wrath, hiding her face and crying heart-broken tears--the bitterest she had yet shed. In s.n.a.t.c.hing at the shadow it seemed she had lost the substance past recall.

"Oh! You are cruel--horrible!" she wailed, with her disarming, pathetic air of a scolded child that made a rough word to her seem cowardly as a blow.

"No need to break your heart over it," he said more gently; "and as to cruelty, Evelyn, haven't you abused my faith in your loyalty and dragged my pride in the dust by letting your name be coupled with that man's, though I told you plainly I had good reasons for distrusting and disliking him. I suppose he made a dead set at you while I was away--cowardly brute! But what hits me hardest of all is not your indiscretion; it's your persistent crookedness that poisons everything. It was the same over your bills last year--as I told you then. It's the same now. It's a poor look-out if a man can't trust his own wife; but I suppose you must have lied to me--and to Honor, a dozen times this last week."

It had cost him an effort to speak so plainly and at such length; but his wife's uneven breathing was the only answer he received.

He came closer and laid an arm round her shoulder.

"Evelyn--Ladybird--have you nothing to say to me?"

"N--no," she answered in a choked voice, without uncovering her face; "it wouldn't be any use."

"Why not? Am I so utterly devoid of understanding?"

"No--no. But you brave, strong sort of people can't ever know how hard little things are for--for people like me. It has been so--dull lately. You had--all those men, and--I was lonely. It was nice to have some one--wanting me--some one not miles above my head. But I knew you would be cross if I told you--and--and--" tears choked her utterance--"oh, it's no good talking. You'd never understand."

"I understand this much, my dear," he said. "You are done up with the strain of nursing, and badly in need of a change. But we shall soon get away on leave now; and I will see to it that you shall never feel dull or out of it again. Only one thing I insist upon--your intimacy with--that man is at an end. No more riding with him; no more going to his bungalow. From to-day you treat him and his sister as mere acquaintances."

She faced him now with terror-stricken eyes. For while he spoke, she had perceived the full extent of her dilemma.

"But, Theo--there isn't any need for that," she urged, with a thrill of fear at her own boldness. "They would think it so odd. What excuses could I possibly make?"

"That's your affair," Desmond answered unmoved. "You are a better hand at it than I am. My only concern is that you shall put an end to this equivocal state of things for good."

At that she hid her face again, with a sob of despair. "I can't do it--I _can't_. It's impossible!" she murmured vehemently more to herself than to him.

Her unexpected opposition fanned his smouldering wrath to a blaze. He took her by the shoulder--not roughly, but very decisively.

"_Impossible!_ What am I to understand by that?"

It was the first time he had touched her untenderly; and she quivered in every nerve.

"I--I don't know. I can't explain. But--it's true."

For one instant he stood speechless;--then:

"Great Heavens, Evelyn!" he broke out, "don't you see that you are forcing upon me a suspicion that is an insult to us both?"

She looked up at him in blank bewilderment, then jerked herself free from his hand.

"I--I don't understand what you mean. But if you _will_ think horrid things of me you may. I can't explain and--I won't!"

"You--_won't_," Desmond repeated slowly, frozen incredulity in his eyes; and she, fearing she had gone too far, caught at the hand she had shaken off.

"Oh, Theo, what _does_ it matter after all?" she urged between irritation and despair, "when you know quite well it's you--that I love?"

The appeal was too ill-timed to be convincing; and Desmond's smile had a tinge of bitterness in it.

"You have an uncommonly original way of showing it," he said coldly; "and the statement doesn't square with your refusal to explain yourself. You have broken up the foundations of--things to-day, Evelyn! You have killed my trust in you altogether. You may remember, perhaps,--what that involves." And withdrawing his hand he turned and left her.

But he had roused her at last by the infliction of a pain too intense for tears. She sprang up, knocking over the chair that fell with a thud on the carpet, and hurried after him, clinging to his unresponsive arm.

"Theo, Theo, take care what you say! Do you mean--truthfully that you don't--love me any more?"

"G.o.d knows," he answered wearily. "Let me alone now, for Heaven's sake, till I can see things clearer. But I'll not alter my decision about Kresney, whatever your mysterious impossibilities may be."

Freeing himself gently but deliberately, he went over to the verandah door and stood there, erect, motionless, his back towards her, looking out upon the featureless huts of the servants' quarters with eyes that saw nothing save a vision of his wife's face, as it had shone upon him, more than two years ago, in the Garden of Tombs.

And it was shining upon him now--had he but guessed it,--not with the simple tenderness of girlhood; but with the despairing half-worshipping love of a woman.

When he heard the door close softly behind her, he came back into the room, mechanically righted the chair, and sitting down upon it buried his face in his hands.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

EVEN TO THE UTMOST.

"How can Love lose, doing of its kind, Even to the utmost?"

--EDWIN ARNOLD.

When Evelyn Desmond stumbled out of her husband's presence, stunned, bewildered, blinded with tears, the one coherent thought left in her mind was--Honor. Amid all that was terrifying and heart-breaking, Honor's love stood sure; a rock in mid-ocean--the one certainty that would never fail her, though the world went to pieces under her feet.