The Touchstone Part 11

Her silence exasperated him.

"Well?" he burst out. "Is that all you have to say?"

"Do you wish me to explain?" she asked, proudly.

"Do you imply I haven't the right to?"

"I imply nothing. I will tell you whatever you wish to know. I went for a walk with Mr. Flamel because he asked me to."

"I didn't suppose you went uninvited. But there are certain things a sensible woman doesn't do. She doesn't slink about in out-of-the-way streets with men. Why couldn't you have seen him here?"

She hesitated. "Because he wanted to see me alone."

"Did he, indeed? And may I ask if you gratify all his wishes with equal alacrity?"

"I don't know that he has any others where I am concerned." She paused again and then continued, in a lower voice that somehow had an under-note of warning. "He wished to bid me good-by. He's going away."

Glennard turned on her a startled glance. "Going away?"

"He's going to Europe to-morrow. He goes for a long time. I supposed you knew."

The last phrase revived his irritation. "You forget that I depend on you for my information about Flamel. He's your friend and not mine. In fact, I've sometimes wondered at your going out of your way to be so civil to him when you must see plainly enough that I don't like him."

Her answer to this was not immediate. She seemed to be choosing her words with care, not so much for her own sake as for his, and his exasperation was increased by the suspicion that she was trying to spare him.

"He was your friend before he was mine. I never knew him till I was married. It was you who brought him to the house and who seemed to wish me to like him."

Glennard gave a short laugh. The defence was feebler than he had expected: she was certainly not a clever woman.

"Your deference to my wishes is really beautiful; but it's not the first time in history that a man has made a mistake in introducing his friends to his wife. You must, at any rate, have seen since then that my enthusiasm had cooled; but so, perhaps, has your eagerness to oblige me."

She met this with a silence that seemed to rob the taunt of half its efficacy.

"Is that what you imply?" he pressed her.

"No," she answered with sudden directness. "I noticed some time ago that you seemed to dislike him, but since then--"

"Well--since then?"

"I've imagined that you had reasons for still wishing me to be civil to him, as you call it."

"Ah," said Glennard, with an effort at lightness; but his irony dropped, for something in her voice made him feel that he and she stood at last in that naked desert of apprehension where meaning skulks vainly behind speech.

"And why did you imagine this?" The blood mounted to his forehead.

"Because he told you that I was under obligations to him?"

She turned pale. "Under obligations?"

"Oh, don't let's beat about the bush. Didn't he tell you it was I who published Mrs. Aubyn's letters? Answer me that."

"No," she said; and after a moment which seemed given to the weighing of alternatives, she added: "No one told me."

"You didn't know then?"

She seemed to speak with an effort. "Not until--not until--"

"Till I gave you those papers to sort?"

Her head sank.

"You understood then?"

"Yes."

He looked at her immovable face. "Had you suspected--before?" was slowly wrung from him.

"At times--yes--" Her voice dropped to a whisper.

"Why? From anything that was said--?"

There was a shade of pity in her glance. "No one said anything--no one told me anything." She looked away from him. "It was your manner--"

"My manner?"

"Whenever the book was mentioned. Things you said--once or twice--your irritation--I can't explain--"

Glennard, unconsciously, had moved nearer. He breathed like a man who has been running. "You knew, then, you knew"--he stammered. The avowal of her love for Flamel would have hurt him less, would have rendered her less remote. "You knew--you knew--" he repeated; and suddenly his anguish gathered voice. "My G.o.d!" he cried, "you suspected it first, you say--and then you knew it--this d.a.m.nable, this accursed thing; you knew it months ago--it's months since I put that paper in your way--and yet you've done nothing, you've said nothing, you've made no sign, you've lived alongside of me as if it had made no difference--no difference in either of our lives. What are you made of, I wonder? Don't you see the hideous ignominy of it? Don't you see how you've shared in my disgrace?

Or haven't you any sense of shame?"

He preserved sufficient lucidity, as the words poured from him, to see how fatally they invited her derision; but something told him they had both pa.s.sed beyond the phase of obvious retaliations, and that if any chord in her responded it would not be that of scorn.

He was right. She rose slowly and moved toward him.

"Haven't you had enough--without that?" she said, in a strange voice of pity.

He stared at her. "Enough--?"

"Of misery...."

An iron band seemed loosened from his temples. "You saw then...?" he whispered.

"Oh, G.o.d----oh, G.o.d----" she sobbed. She dropped beside him and hid her anguish against his knees. They clung thus in silence, a long time, driven together down the same fierce blast of shame.

When at length she lifted her face he averted his. Her scorn would have hurt him less than the tears on his hands.

She spoke languidly, like a child emerging from a pa.s.sion of weeping.

"It was for the money--?"