The Odd Women Part 64

'I have never been there before.'

'You expect me to believe you?' Widdowson cried with savage contumely.

He had just loosed his hold of her, and she was upright again before him, her eyes flashing defiance, though every muscle in her frame quivered. 'When did your lies begin? Was it when you told me you had been to hear Miss Barfoot's lecture, and never went there at all?'

He aimed the charge at a venture, and her face told him that his suspicion had been grounded.

'For how many weeks, for how many months, have you been dishonouring me and yourself?'

'I am not guilty of what you believe, but I shan't try to defend myself. Thank Heaven, this is the end of everything between us! Charge me with what you like. I am going away from you, and I hope we may never meet again.'

'Yes, you are going--no doubt of that. But not before you have answered my questions. Whether with lies or not doesn't matter much. You shall give your own account of what you have been doing.'

Both panting as if after some supreme effort of their physical force, they stood and looked at each other. Each to the other's eyes was incredibly transformed. Monica could not have imagined such brutal ferocity in her husband's face, and she herself had a wild recklessness in her eyes, a scorn and abhorrence in all the lines of her countenance, which made Widdowson feel as if a stranger were before him.

'I shall answer no question whatever,' Monica replied. 'All I want is to leave your house, and never see you again.'

He regretted what he had done. The result of the first day's espionage being a piece of evidence so incomplete, he had hoped to command himself until more solid proof of his wife's guilt were forthcoming.

But jealousy was too strong for such prudence, and the sight of Monica as she uttered her falsehood made a mere madman of him. Predisposed to believe a story of this kind, he could not reason as he might have done if fear of Barfoot had never entered his thoughts. The whole course of dishonour seemed so clear; he traced it from Monica's earliest meetings with Barfoot at Chelsea. Wavering between the impulse to cast off his wife with every circ.u.mstance of public shame, and the piteous desire to arrest her on her path of destruction, he rushed into a middle course, compatible with neither of these intentions. If at this stage he chose to tell Monica what had come to his knowledge, it should have been done with the sternest calm, with dignity capable of shaming her guilt. As it was, he had spoilt his chances in every direction. Perhaps Monica understood this; he had begun to esteem her a mistress in craft and intrigue.

'You say you were never at that man's rooms before to-day?' he asked in a lower voice.

'What I have said you must take the trouble to recollect. I shall answer no question.'

Again the impulse a.s.sailed him to wring confession from her by terror.

He took a step forward, the demon in his face. Monica in that moment leapt past him, and reached the door of the room before he could stop her.

'Stay where you are!' she cried, 'If your hands touch me again I shall call for help until someone comes up. I won't endure your touch!'

'Do you pretend you are innocent of any crime against me?'

'I am not what you called me. Explain everything as you like. I will explain nothing. I want only to be free from you.'

She opened the door, rapidly crossed the landing, and went upstairs.

Feeling it was useless to follow, Widdowson allowed the door to remain wide, and waited. Five minutes pa.s.sed and Monica came down again, dressed for leaving the house.

'Where are you going?' he asked, stepping out of the room to intercept her.

'It is nothing to you. I am going away.'

They subdued their voices, which might else have been audible to the servants below.

'No, that you shall not!'

He stepped forward to block the head of the stairs, but again Monica was too quick for him. She fled down, and across the hall, and to the house-door. Only there, as she was arrested by the difficulty of drawing back the two latches, did Widdowson overtake her.

'Make what scandal you like, you don't leave this house.'

His tones were violent rather than resolute. What could he do? If Monica persisted, what means had he of confining her to the house--short of carrying her by main force to an upper room and there locking her in? He knew that his courage would not sustain him through such a task as this.

'For scandal I care nothing,' was her reply. 'One way or another I will leave the house.'

'Where are you going?'

'To my sister's.'

His hand on the door, Widdowson stood as if determined in opposition.

But her will was stronger than his. Only by homicide can a man maintain his dignity in a situation of this kind; Widdowson could not kill his wife, and every moment that he stood there made him more ridiculous, more contemptible.

He turned back into the hall and reached his hat. Whilst he was doing so Monica opened the door. Heavy rain was falling, but she paid no heed to it. In a moment Widdowson hastened after her, careless, he too, of the descending floods. Her way was towards the railway station, but the driver of a cab chancing to attract her notice, she accepted the man's offer, and bade him drive to Lavender Hill.

On the first opportunity Widdowson took like refuge from the rain, and was driven in the same direction. He alighted not far from Mrs.

Conisbee's house. That Monica had come hither he felt no doubt, but he would presently make sure of it. As it still rained he sought shelter in a public-house, where he quenched a painful thirst, and then satisfied his hunger with such primitive foods as a licensed victualler is disposed to vend. It was nearing eleven o'clock, and he had neither eaten nor drunk since luncheon.

After that he walked to Mrs. Conisbee's, and knocked at the door. The landlady came.

'Will you please to tell me,' he asked 'whether Mrs. Widdowson is here?'

The sly curiosity of the woman's face informed him at once that she saw something unusual in these circ.u.mstances.

'Yes, sir. Mrs. Widdowson is with her sister,'

'Thank you.'

Without another word he departed. But went only a short distance, and until midnight kept Mrs. Conisbee's door in view. The rain fell, the air was raw; shelterless, and often shivering with fever, Widdowson walked the pavement with a constable's regularity. He could not but remember the many nights when he thus kept watch in Walworth Road and in Rutland Street, with jealousy, then too, burning in his heart, but also with amorous ardours, never again to be revived. A little more than twelve months ago! And he had waited, longed for marriage through half a lifetime.

CHAPTER XXV

THE FATE OF THE IDEAL

Rhoda's week at the seash.o.r.e was spoilt by uncertain weather. Only two days of abiding sunshine; for the rest, mere fitful gleams across a sky heaped with stormclouds. Over Wastdale hung a black canopy; from Scawfell came mutterings of thunder; and on the last night of the week--when Monica fled from her home in pelting rain--tempest broke upon the mountains and the sea. Wakeful until early morning, and at times watching the sky from her inland-looking window, Rhoda saw the rocky heights that frown upon Wast.w.a.ter illuminated by lightning-flare of such intensity and duration that miles of distance were annihilated, and it seemed but a step to these stern crags and precipices.

Sunday began with rain, but also with promise of better things; far over the sea was a broad expanse of blue, and before long the foam of the fallen tide glistened in strong, hopeful rays. Rhoda wandered about the sh.o.r.e towards St. Bees Head. A broad stream flowing into the sea stopped her progress before she had gone very far; the only way of crossing it was to go up on to the line of railway, which here runs along the edge of the sands. But she had little inclination to walk farther. No house, no person within sight, she sat down to gaze at the gulls fishing by the little river-mouth, their screams the only sound that blended with that of the subdued breakers.

On the horizon lay a long, low shape that might have been mistaken for cloud, though it resembled land. It was the Isle of Man. In an hour or two the outline had grown much clearer; the heights and hollows were no longer doubtful. In the north became visible another remote and hilly tract, it was the coast of Scotland beyond Solway Firth.

These distant objects acted as incentives to Rhoda's imagination. She heard Everard Barfoot's voice as he talked of travel--of the Orient Express. That joy of freedom he had offered her. Perhaps he was now very near her, anxious to repeat his offer. If he carried out the project suggested at their last interview, she would see him to-day or to-morrow morning--then she must make her choice. To have a day's walk with him among the mountains would be practically deciding. But for what? If she rejected his proposal of a free union, was he prepared to marry her in legal form? Yes; she had enough power over him for that.

But how would it affect his thought of her? Constraining him to legal marriage, would she not lower herself in his estimation, and make the endurance of his love less probable? Barfoot was not a man to accept with genuine satisfaction even the appearance of bondage, and more likely than not his love of her depended upon the belief that in her he had found a woman capable of regarding life from his own point of view--a woman who, when she once, loved, would be scornful of the formalities clung to by feeble minds. He would yield to her if she demanded forms, but afterwards--when pa.s.sion had subsided--.

A week had been none too long to ponder these considerations by themselves; but they were complicated with doubts of a more disturbing nature. Her mind could not free itself from the thought of Monica. That Mrs. Widdowson was not always truthful with her husband she had absolute proof; whether that supported her fear of an intimacy between Monica and Everard she was unable to determine. The grounds of suspicion seemed to her very grave; so grave, that during her first day or two in c.u.mberland she had all but renounced the hopes long secretly fostered. She knew herself well enough to understand how jealousy might wreck her life--even if it were only retrospective. If she married Barfoot (forms or none--that question in no way touched this other), she would demand of him a flawless faith. Her pride revolted against the thought of possessing only a share in his devotion; the moment that any faithlessness came to her knowledge she would leave him, perforce, inevitably--and what miseries were then before her!

Was flawless faith possible to Everard Barfoot? His cousin would ridicule the hope of any such thing--or so Rhoda believed. A conventional woman would of course see the completest evidence of his untrustworthiness in his dislike of legal marriage; but Rhoda knew the idleness of this argument. If love did not hold him, a.s.suredly the forms of marriage could be no restraint upon Everard; married ten times over, he would still deem himself absolutely free from any obligation save that of love. Yet how did he think of that obligation? He might hold it perfectly compatible with the indulgence of casual impulse. And this (which she suspected to be the view of every man) Rhoda had no power of tolerating. It must be all or nothing, whole faith or none whatever.