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.