HOW TITA FLINGS HERSELF UPON MARGARET'S BREAST; AND HOW MARGARET
COMFORTS HER; AND HOW TITA PROMISES TO BE GOOD; AND HOW SHE HAS A
MEETING "BY LAMPLIGHT ALONE."
It is now eleven o'clock. Margaret, who is in her own room, and has
sent her maid to bed, is sitting over her fire dreaming of many
things, when her door is suddenly opened and as suddenly closed,
and, just as suddenly as all the rest of it, a little fragile thing
runs towards her, and flings herself in a perfectly tragic fashion
upon her breast, lying there prone--lost, apparently, in an
unappeasable outburst of grief.
"Tita, my child, my darling! What has happened?" exclaims Margaret,
pressing the girl to her. _"Do_ look up, my dear, and tell me. There
is nothing new, surely, Tita."
"Oh, I'm tired--I'm tired of it all!" cries Tita wildly. "I want to
be done with it. Oh, Margaret, I've said nothing, nothing! _Have_ I,
now?" appealing to her with great drenched eyes. "But I can go on no
longer. He hates me."
"Oh, hush, hush, Tita!"
"He does! He was unkind to me all to-day. He is always unkind to me.
He _hates_ me, and he--loves her."
"I don't think so. I don't, really. Sit down, darling," says
Margaret, in great agitation.
"I know he does. Did you see that he would hardly speak to me this
evening, and----"
"I thought it was you who would not speak to him."
"Oh no, no! I was longing to speak to him. I can't bear being bad
friends with _anyone;_ but, of course, I could not go up to him, and
tell him so; and he--what did _he_ do?--he spent the whole evening
with Mrs. Bethune in the conservatory."
"Tita, I assure you he was not alone with her then. Mrs.
Chichester----"
"I don't care about his being alone with her," says Tita, whose mind
is as fresh as her face. "He was _with_ her all the evening; you
know he was. Oh, how I hate that woman!"
"Tita, listen----"
"Yes; I hate her. And----" She stops and lays her hands on
Margaret's arm and looks piteously at her. "Do you know," says she,
"I used _not_ to hate people. I thought once I hated my uncle, but I
didn't know. It was nothing like this. It is dreadful to feel like
this."
There is poignant anguish in the young voice. It goes to Margaret's
heart.
"Tita, be sensible," says she sharply. "Do you think all the misery
of the world is yours?"
"No, no," faintly. "Only _my_ portion is so heavy."
She bursts into tears.
"Good heavens!" says Margaret distractedly, caressing her and
soothing her. "What a world it is! Why, _why_ cannot you and Maurice
see how delightful you both are? It is an enigma. No one can solve
it. Tita darling, take heart. Why--why, if Marian were so bad as you
think her--which I pray God she isn't--still, think how far you can
surpass her in youth, in charm, in beauty."
"Beauty!"
The girl looks up at Margaret as if too astonished to say more.
_"Certainly_ in beauty," firmly. "Marian in her best days was never
as lovely as you are. Never!"
"Ah! Now I know you love me," says Tita very sadly. "You alone think
that." She pauses, and the pause is eloquent. "Maurice doesn't,"
says she.
"Maurice is a fool" is on Margaret's lips, but she resists the
desire to say it to Maurice's wife, and, in the meantime, Tita has
recovered herself somewhat, and is now giving full sway once more to
her temper.
"After all, I don't care!" exclaims she. "Why should I? Maurice is
as little to me as I am to him. What I _do_ care about is being
scolded by him all day long, when I have quite as good a right to
scold him. Oh, better! He has behaved badly, Margaret, hasn't he? He
should never have married me without _telling_ me of--of her."
"I think he should have told you," says Margaret, with decision.
"But I think, too, Tita, that he has been perfectly true to you
since his marriage."
"True?"
"I mean--I think--he has not shown any special attention to Marian."
"He showed it to-night, any way," rebelliously.
"He did not indeed. She asked him to show her the chrysanthemums,
and what could he do but go with her to the conservatory? And I
particularly noticed that as he passed Mrs. Chichester he asked her
to come and see them too."
"He didn't ask me, at all events," says Tita.
"Perhaps he was afraid; and, indeed, Tita"--very gently--"you are
not so altogether blameless yourself. You talked and played cards
the whole night with Mr. Hescott."
"Oh, poor old Tom! That was only because I had been unkind to him in
the morning, and because"--ingenuously--"I wanted to pay out
Maurice."
Margaret sighs.
"It is all very sad," says she.
"It is," says Tita, tears welling up into her eyes again--a sign of
grace that Margaret welcomes.
"Well, go to bed now, darling; and, Tita, if Maurice says anything
to you--anything----"
"Cross--_I_ know!" puts in Tita.
"Promise me you will not answer him in anger, do promise me! It
makes me so unhappy," says Margaret persuasively, kissing the girl,
and pressing her in her arms.
"Oh! _Does_ it? I'm sorry," says Tita, seeing the real distress on
Margaret's sweet face. "There! He may say what he likes to me, I
shan't answer him back. Not a word! A syllable! I'll be as good as
gold!"
She kisses Margaret fondly, and leaves the room.
Outside, in the long corridor, the lamps are beginning to burn
dimly. It is already twelve o'clock. Twelve strokes from the hall
beneath fall upon Tita's ear as she goes hurriedly towards her own
room. It is the midnight hour, the mystic hour, when ghosts do take
their nightly rounds!
This is not a ghost, however, this tall young man, who, coming up by
the central staircase, meets her now face to face.
"Tita! Is it you?"
"Yes, yes," says Tita, trying to hurry past him.
If Tom has come up from the smoking-room, of course the others will
be coming too, and, on the whole, she is not as well got up as
usual. It is with a sort of contempt she treats the charming gown in
which she is now clothed. And yet she has hardly ever looked
lovelier than now, with her eyes a little widened by her late grief,
and her hair so sweetly disturbed, and her little slender form
showing through the open folds of the long white gown that covers
her.
"Don't go. Don't!" says Tom Hescott; his tone is so full of poignant
anguish that she stops short. "Stay a moment." In his despair he has
caught a fold of her gown. To do him fair justice, he honestly
believes that she hates her husband, and that she is thoroughly
unhappy with him. Unhappy with great cause. "I am going--you know
that, and--I have a last word to say. I tried to say it this
afternoon--out there--you know--in the shrubberies, and when you
wouldn't listen--I--I respected that. I respected you. But--a time
may come when you"--hurriedly--"may not always choose to live this
wretched life. There will be a way out of it, Tita--a way not made
by _you!"_
Tita suddenly feels very cold, chilled to her heart's core. She had
listened so far as if stunned; but now she wakes, and the face of
Marian Bethune seems to look with a cold sneer into hers.
"And after that," goes on Hescott, "if--if----" He breaks down.
"Well, if _that_ comes, you know I--_love_ you, Tita."
He tries to take her hand.
"Don't touch me!" says Tita vehemently. She pushes his hand from
her; such a disdainful little push. "Oh, I thought you really _did_
love me," says she, "but not like _this!"_ Suddenly a sort of rage
and of anger springs to life within her. She turns a face,
singularly childish, yet with the sad first break of womanhood upon
it, to his. "How _dare_ you love me like this?" says she.
"Tita, listen to me----"
"No. Not I! You must be a _fool_ to talk to me like this. Of what
use is it? What good? If you loved me for ever, what good could come
of it? I don't love you! Ah!"--she catches her breath and looks
straight at him with an undying sense of indignation--"Maurice was
right about you, and I was wrong. He saw through you, I didn't.
I"--with a little inward glance into her own feelings--"I shan't
forgive you for _that,_ either!"
"You mean----"
"It really doesn't matter," says Tita, cruel for the first time in
all her sweet young life. The light is so dim that she cannot see
his face distinctly. Perhaps if she had, she would have been kinder.
"I mean nothing. Only go; go at once! Do you _hear?"_
Her childish voice grows imperious.
"I am going," says Hescott dully--"in the morning."
"Oh! I'm glad"--smiting her hands together--"by the _early_ train?"
"The earliest!"
Hescott's soul seems dying within him. All at once the truth is
clear to him, or, at least, half of it. She may not love her
husband, but, beyond all question, love for him--Hescott--has never
entered into her mind.
"And a good thing too!" says Tita wrathfully. "I hope I shall never
see you here again. I could never bear to look at you after this!"
She is standing trembling with agitation before him, like one
full-filled with wrath. "To-day--I shall not forget _that._
To-day--and that story"--she stops as if choking--"what did you
_mean_ by telling that story?" demands she, almost violently.
"Everyone there knew what you meant. It dragged me down to the
ground. I hated you for it! You invented it. You _know_ you did,
just to humiliate _him!_ You think Maurice hates me, but he doesn't.
It is a lie!" She pauses, her lovely eyes aflame. "It is a lie!" she
repeats passionately.
"If so----" begins Hescott, but in so low a tone, and so dead, that
she scarcely heeds it.
"And to call me an angel before them all. Ah! I could read through
you. So could everyone. It was an insult! I _won't_ be called an
angel. I am just what Maurice is, and no more. I wonder Maurice
didn't _kill_ you--and he would, only you were his guest. So would
I--only----"
She breaks off. The tears are running down her cheeks. She makes a
little swift turn of her body towards him.
"Oh, Tom! and I did so believe in _you!"_
There is a short silence fraught with misery for one soul, at all
events.
"Believe in me still," says Tom Hescott, in a queer, low tone.
"Believe in me now--and for ever--to"--with passionate
fondness--"the last moment of your life." He draws his breath
sharply. "And now good-bye."
He struggles with himself, and, failing in the struggle, catches her
suddenly to his breast, and there holds her to his heart for half a
minute, perhaps.
Then he releases her. It is all over. He had not even tried to kiss
her. He goes swiftly past her into the gloom beyond the dying lamp,
and is lost.
Tita stands as if stricken dumb. For a second only. _Then_ she is
conscious of a hand being laid on her arm, of her being forcibly led
forward to her own room, of the door being closed behind her.
She turns and looks up at Rylton. His eyes are blazing. He is
dangerously white across cheeks and nose.
"There shall be an end of this!" says he.