Joan staggered against the wall with sudden horror as Victor walked away
and adjusted the chain which shut out possible intruders. Alone in the
house--with him--and he was legally her husband! Could she face it? "I
must, I will!" she said to herself, clenching her teeth and summoning
all the fortitude she possessed to her aid.
As he turned, he noticed her pallor, the wild glitter in her great eyes.
"At bay," he thought. "Mad with passion for another man--hates me--what
a delicious situation!"
"Come upstairs, dearest," he said, in the new, abhorrently caressing
tone which seemed to curdle her blood. "What? The staircase is too
narrow for us both? Then I will go first." He tripped lightly up the
steps, which were covered with oilcloth, and after turning up the gas on
the landing, stood smiling upon her as she slowly, reluctantly,
ascended. As she reached the top, he opened a door, and she saw a
well-lighted room with a book-case, good, solid chairs, and a new
Kidderminster carpet. But a curious odour floated out to meet her.
"What an odd smell of drugs!" she exclaimed, standing on the threshold.
It seemed to take her back years, that pungent odour, to the
schoolroom--when she went into the schoolmistress' little medicine-room
to be physicked.
"I am very sorry, but I happen to be on sufferance in these rooms--their
real tenant is a medical student, who has got leave because of a series
of catastrophes in his family. Look here! This looks like business,
doesn't it?"
He opened a cupboard door, and she saw a skeleton hanging on a peg.
"Oh!" she cried, shrinking back.
He laughed. "I thought you were strong minded," he said. "But somehow
I am rather glad you are not. But you are not going to stand there all
the evening, are you, because there are a few harmless bones in the
cupboard? There are worse things in creation than skeletons!" He spoke
meaningly.
She watched him as he seated himself in a revolving chair by a writing
table. There was a certain insolence in his manner and tone, as well as
in his depreciatory stare, as he gazed slightingly at her and twisted
his small black moustache. A diamond twinkled on his little finger.
Somehow she took courage from his shallow, careless attitude--and she
was strongly stirred by a wild idea that flashed upon her. She would
make use of her own scheme with Vansittart to cajole him into waiting
until the mine was sprung, and he had lost her for ever!
"I am not strong-minded, more's the pity, or I should not be here
to-night," she said, firmly, and she entered and seated herself opposite
him, once more mistress of herself and her emotions. "Why not? Because
I should have been with you long ago, if I'd had the spirit some women
have!"
"You would--have followed me?" he asked, a little taken back, puzzled.
"I would! Because I believed in you!" she said, honestly. "I thought
you more sinned against than sinning!"
"That is right! A woman's first duty is to believe in her husband," he
exclaimed, leering at her.
"Her husband!" For a moment she was off guard, she spoke with scathing
contempt. "A husband, who leaves his wife month after month, year after
year, without a word!"
"A real woman would have searched for me the world through, when she had
money to command as you have had!" he said, leaning back, folding his
arms, and contemplating her with a savage, vindictive expression.
"Money? I have only an allowance!" she exclaimed, bitterly, and with a
real bitterness. It had sometimes maddened her since his return, when
she thought of what she might do if only her uncle had given her the
control of a small fortune, instead of doling out an income. "And that
is where our difficulty lies, Victor. I have taken a week to think hard
about it. Suppose we hire a yacht under another name, and wander about
for a time, and then I appeal to my uncle? I think he would be inclined
to forgive--everything."
"If you remember, my dear, that was my idea, not yours," he said,
leaning back in his chair, puzzled. Was it possible that Paul Naz, and
the people who coupled Joan with that "milord" Paul had spoken of, were
mistaken, and that she cared for him still--only her pride and vanity
had kept her from showing it? "Not a yacht--bah, I detest the sea--and
to be shut up in a boat! Not even with you, my beautiful wife, could I
stand such _gene_! No, no, I have a better idea than that. Let us lose
ourselves in Paris! You know nothing, you are still a baby, if you have
not seen and enjoyed life there! But you are a baby--hein? I must
teach my child-wife what life really is."
Slightly exhilarated by his new view of Joan, as possibly as potentially
great a victim of his fascinations as poor deluded Vera, he sprang up,
and going to her, took her in his arms. The instinct to fling, thrust
him violently from her, was cruelly strong. But she--in an agony of woe
and love--remembered Vansittart, and mentally thought "for his sake, for
his sake," as she willed passively to endure, while Victor kept his lips
long and firmly on hers. At last she could bear it no longer, and freed
herself with a sudden frantic effort.
"You will suffocate--choke me!" she gasped, and her eyes seemed as if
starting from her head--her voice came thickly from her quivering lips.
"Well, I will be gentler, my tender dove!" he said a little satirically.
He doubted her again. If she had had "any mind of him," would not that
kiss of his have effectually broken down all barriers of pique, and
launched her on a sea of passion? But there was charm to such a
_gourmet_ in love, as he considered himself, in appropriating what she
disliked to give. He took her hand. "Come and sit with me on our friend
the medico's sofa under the window there!" he coaxingly said. "I want
to look at my wife, to kiss her, embrace her after these years of
longing, of waiting!"
She gave him an involuntary glance of horror and terror. "Presently,"
she stammered. "First let me give you the money I have brought you--let
us settle about our journey, when it is to be."
He stood still for a few moments, gazing steadily at her. That look had
told him much--the mention of money when he asked for love told him
still more.
"Very well," he said, after a pause, during which she wondered whether
it would end in his killing her--in that lonely house she was at the
mercy of any sudden outburst of anger of his. Just then she felt that
death would be preferable to another kiss of the kind which still stung
her icy lips.
"I suppose the money is in that bag?" he went on, going to the
writing-table and lifting it. "You want me to take care of it for you,
as your contribution to our honeymoon?" He spoke sneeringly.
"Yes," she said, watching him as he seated himself before the table.
Then she went to him, took up the bag, and shook out six common leather
purses she had bought at the bazaar in a great emporium that morning,
and filled during the afternoon. Purses and gold alike were
untraceable. "There are a hundred and twenty-five sovereigns. Count
them, won't you?"
"No! I will trust you," he said, with a sinister smile. "I may be a
fool for my pains, but I trust you."
She sat as if spellbound, watching him take a small bunch of keys from
his pocket and open a worn old travelling desk on the table. It was his
own, that desk, she mechanically thought, as she noted the half
obliterated letters "V.M." on the flap, and wondered what was passing
within his mind to cause that dark frown, that cruel look in his black
eyes, as he slowly packed in the purses one by one.
"It is a beggarly sum that you have brought me, do you know?" he said,
turning to her with sudden fierceness--and his lips were drawn back, his
teeth gleamed white under his moustache. "I am too good to you! I have
that here in this desk with which I could coin thousands to-morrow if I
pleased. I have only to show your letters, the certificate of marriage,
to your damnably miserly old uncle, and he would at once make terms.
And you--you would precious soon find me as much money as I wanted if I
threatened you to take the lot to your lover, Lord Vansittart!"
If a bomb had suddenly fallen upon the table before her, Joan could
hardly have had a greater shock. She staggered back and fell limply
into a chair, staring at him. Her lips opened to speak, but no sound
came. She was livid as a corpse.
He was frightened. If she should choose to have a prolonged faint--such
as he had known some women to have--and Vera returned before he could
get her away!
"Don't make a scene here, d'ye hear?" he savagely cried--and he went to
the cupboard, and after a clinking of glass, he brought out a bottle
half full of brandy, and two tumblers, and poured some into each.
"Take some of that, it'll pull you together," he said, not unkindly, as
he held the glass to her lips. But she kept them firmly closed, and
faintly shook her head.
"No! Water!" she whispered, hoarsely. "Water!"
"Don't be so silly! It's not poison! It wouldn't suit my book to get
rid of you, my love!" he scornfully exclaimed, reassured by her being
conscious, and speaking. Then he set down her glass on the table, and
taking up his, drank off its contents at a gulp. "There! You see it is
not! However, I'll get you some water, if you like."
He crossed to the door, opened it, and went downstairs. She sat up,
listening to his footsteps. A new idea had flashed upon her. She
glanced first at the desk, hungrily, wildly, then at the cupboard. Then
she rose, stepped cautiously, supporting herself, for she was giddy, by
the chairs, and peered eagerly in at the half-open cupboard door, where
the skeleton hung. She had seen shelves of bottles. Scanning these,
she selected one marked "Morphia--Poison"--shook it--it was
half-full--and returned to the table. Taking out the stopper, she
poured the contents into the bottle of brandy, swift as a flash returned
the morphia-bottle to its place on the shelf, then, going back to her
chair, leant against the wall in the exhausted attitude she had been in
when he left her.
"He drinks," she gloomily told herself. "He will take more. I must make
him fall asleep. Then I will secure those letters."