The rain showed no signs of abating, but Alfred Wimple was chilly and
hungry. Moreover, he was tired of the _tête-à-tête_ in the shed, and he
had a dull curiosity to hear the result of Aunt Anne’s visit to town. It
was certain to provide some sort of excitement for the evening. If she
had brought back money he would reap the benefit of it; if she had not,
he could at least make her suffer, and to watch her suffer would provide
him a satisfaction over which he gloated more and more with every
experience of it. He buttoned his coat, turned up the bottoms of his
trousers, and looked for his umbrella; then he hesitated a moment and
looked out at the weather. He hated rain.
“I wish I had thought to bring myself an umbrella,” his companion said;
“it’s a long way across. Joe Pook is over at the King’s Head with his
cart, and he’ll drive me back; but it’s a good bit to there.”
Alfred Wimple coughed.
“I can’t let you have mine”—and he held it firmly; “my chest is not
strong.”
“I wasn’t saying it for that,” she answered; “I was only thinking it was
a pity I didn’t bring one. Good-bye; you’ll take care of yourself, won’t
you?”
“I will try,” he said, in his most sombre manner, as though he felt it
to be an important undertaking. “Good-bye, Caroline.”
Before they were many yards apart she turned and went after him. Her
jacket was already wet with rain; her black straw hat was shining. There
was an anxious excitement in her manner.
“Alfred”—she put her hand on his shoulder and looked at his face while
she spoke—“you care about me really, don’t you?”
“Why do you ask that now?” he asked severely.
“I don’t know. Mother said once that you had love for nothing but
yourself. It isn’t true, is it? Sometimes I think I would have done
better if I had married Albert Spark. I believe he’s fonder of me now
than you are.”
He looked impatient and at a loss what to do. He could not understand
unselfish love; self-protection was his own strongest feeling;
everything else was merely a means, a weapon to be used in attaining it.
“You mustn’t keep me in the rain,” he said; “the old woman will be back
by this time. Why do you think I don’t care for you?”
“I don’t know,” and as she spoke the tears came into her eyes; “I think
it was because you just let me go in the rain and didn’t see that I’d
get wet through. It doesn’t matter, but I’d like you to have seen it.”
“You are stronger than I am. It is dangerous for me to get wet: I came
out in the rain to meet you.”
“And then, perhaps I oughtn’t to say it, but you took the money and
didn’t offer me a shilling to keep for myself.”
“I didn’t know you wanted it. You can’t expect me to go without anything
in my pocket?”
“No,” and she burst into tears; “it’s only sometimes I get
dissatisfied,” she added apologetically.
“You should have done it in the shed. You ought not to keep me here in
the rain. You know that.”
“No, I oughtn’t; you go on, dear”—there was sudden repentance in her
voice. “Just kiss me and say you are fond of me again.” He leaned over
her, and for a moment his eyes flashed, as he kissed her with a
loathsome eagerness that left the woman’s heart more hungry than before.
“I am fond of you,” he said; “you know I am fond of you—when I see you.
But I can’t come to Liphook to be dunned for money.”
“I always do the best I can to get things for you; and if I have plenty
of work I’ll take care it’s more comfortable, if you’ll only come.
There, go now, Alfred dear. I don’t want to keep you in the wet. It’s
only that we have been married these four years, and, somehow, we never
seem to have got any good of it yet.” She put her arms round his neck
for a moment “I am awful fond of you,” she said, and turned away.
Something in her voice touched him; or it might have been that he was
fonder of her than he supposed, for as he went by the pathway that poor
Aunt Anne had hurried along, bowed down with insult and despair, only
twenty minutes before, there was a less sullen expression than usual on
his face. He thought of the clinging hands and tearful eyes, and the
undisguised love written on her face, with something like satisfaction.
He would settle down with her, once he possessed the money. He liked the
idea of it; it would be good to be waited upon by her, to go abroad with
her perhaps, to buy comfort and luxury, and to feel her hanging about
him. He lingered in thought over her caresses; he remembered Aunt Anne’s
and shuddered. He had said truly enough that he could not bear the
latter much longer; toleration had grown to endurance, endurance to
dislike, and dislike to loathing. He was sensible of even being beneath
the same roof with her; her voice irritated him, her touch produced a
feeling that was almost fear. Every step he made now towards the house
that contained her was reluctant and almost shrinking. He could just
bear life with her if she gave him good food and comfort and money he
could not obtain elsewhere; but unless she gave him these things, which
he counted worth any price that could be paid, he felt it would be
impossible to stay with her longer. Warmth and idleness and comfort were
gods to him; but his loathing for the poor soul who had struggled for
months to give them to him was developing into horror. He waited,
doggedly, day after day for Sir William Rammage’s death. When that
happened he would seize the money that would be hers and, without mercy,
leave her to her fate; he and Caroline could easily keep out of her
reach. If she would not give him the money he would make life impossible
for her to bear. He had not the least intention of murdering her, but in
imagination he often put his hands round her throat, and all his fingers
felt her life growing still beneath them. He resented everything she
did: her voice, her footstep, her tender, wrinkled face; he felt as if
her winking left eye were driving him mad—as if there were poison in
her breath. He considered her life an offence against him, except as a
means of giving him money. When once she had done that, when she had
given him the thousands for which he had married her, he wanted her for
ever out of his sight, and underground; he gloated in imagination over
the deepness of the grave into which he would have her put, and the
silence and darkness that would surround her.
He was at the bottom of the dip. He reflected, with triumph, that it was
too late for any question of going to the station to meet the half-past
six o’clock train. He thought of the rain that would fall upon her as
she drove to the cottage. He wondered if she had left her cloak behind,
and imagined the cold and pain she would suffer without it. He could see
her in the open cart, bending her head and shoulders beneath the grey
storm, carrying the bag that contained the dinner for him, and he
imagined the bulging condition in which the bag would return. If she had
not brought back all he considered necessary for his comfort, she would
tremble to see him, and he would not spare her one single pang. He was
among the firs and larches, within sight of the cottage windows. He
hated to think that she was behind them—that almost immediately he
would be in the same room with her, sitting opposite to her at table. He
thought of himself as a martyr, and of her as a loathsome burden, a
presence that had no right to be inflicted on him; one that he would be
justified in using any means within his power to remove. His feeling for
her had grown in intensity till it threatened to burst the bonds of
reserve and silence in which he had wrapped himself. It was only with an
effort that he could keep in all the lashing words that hatred could
suggest. He went up the pathway, as slowly as she herself had done, and
walked round the house under the verandah. Unknowingly, in putting the
easy-chair back into its place, Aunt Anne had pushed aside a little bit
of the dining-room curtain. He looked in and saw the table laid, the
candles burning, and the bowl of primroses; they were a sign that she
had returned, and had not returned empty-handed. He noticed that only
one place was laid, and he wondered vaguely what it meant. He thought of
Aunt Anne’s face, and a sickening feeling came over him. If it had only
been a girl’s face to which he was going in, a young woman who would
come to meet him, and put her arms round his neck, and call him
endearing names, instead of the old woman, shrivelled and wrinkled, to
whom in a moment or two he would have to submit himself? He went towards
the front door, vaguely determining that he would make her miserable
that night. He had a right to everything she could give, but she had no
right to intrude herself upon his sight, and he would make her feel it.
There was a click at the gate. Some one had entered the garden from the
road. He stopped. A boy came up to him through the darkness.
“Wimple? A telegram, sir. There is sixpence for porterage.” He felt in
his pocket among the silver the woman had given him in the shed; he
found a sixpence, and the boy departed. He opened the yellow envelope,
and stood still for a moment, with the telegram in his hand. He guessed
what it meant. He took a match from his pocket, struck a light, and,
protecting it from the wind with his hat, read:
“Died at five o’clock from sudden attack.”
He screwed it up into a ball and put it carefully into his pocket. His
feeling for Aunt Anne changed in a moment: he felt that for this one
evening, at any rate, he would endure her—he would even be civil—since
it was through her that he was about to gain all he wanted. He looked up
at the cottage before he entered it with the almost pleasant feeling
with which a prisoner sometimes looks at his cell before he departs into
freedom. Aunt Anne was sitting by the drawing-room fire; he lingered by
the doorway.
“You are home, then?” he said. There was something exalted in his voice,
that at another time would have made her look up at him lovingly, as he
expected to see her do now. But, instead, she answered coldly and
without any words of greeting—
“Yes, Alfred, I am home.”
“What did you do in town?” She winked haughtily and did not speak. “What
did you do?” he repeated.
“I did a great deal, and learned many things of which I will tell you
when you have finished your dinner. It is quite ready—you will be good
enough to go to it, Alfred.”
He looked at her searchingly, and felt a little uneasiness.
“Are you coming?” he asked, seeing that she did not move.
“No, I have dined; but I trust you will be satisfied with what I have
provided for you,” she said coldly. Something in her manner forced him
reluctantly to obey. He went into the dining-room; she shut the door
that led into it and waited in the drawing-room. Jane came in after she
had served the sole, and drew down the blinds and arranged the curtains
and threw some wood on the fire.
“There is only one candle left,” she said, “till the two in the
dining-room are done with.”
“It is quite sufficient; you can light it and put it on the table. As
soon as you have finished waiting upon Mr. Wimple you will go upstairs
and do what I have told you”—and she was left alone again. While she
looked at the fire she could almost imagine Alfred Wimple eating his
sole; she knew when it was finished; she listened while Jane entered and
pushed his plate through the buttery-hatch; she heard the chicken
arrive, and imagined Alfred Wimple solemnly carving it. Her heart beat
faster as he went on towards the end of his feast; she was impatient for
the crisis to begin. At last he rose from the table, opened the door,
and stood looking at her curiously. She rose too and waited, facing him,
on the rug.
“Did you bring a paper from town, Anne?” he asked, without a word of
gratitude for his dainty dinner.
“Yes, I brought some papers; but you will not require them.” She
hesitated a moment, and then went on firmly, “I wish you to know,
Alfred, that you are about to leave this house never to enter it again.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, and fastened his eyes on her with only a
little more expression in them than usual.
“I mean that I know everything.”
“Have you seen my uncle?” he asked, betraying no surprise and not moving
from the doorway.
“He is in Scotland for a fortnight—but I know everything. I know that
you have insulted and defamed me.” She spoke in a low voice and so
calmly that he looked at her as if he thought she did not understand the
meaning of her own words. “Till I met you,” she went on, “I bore an
unsullied name and reputation.”
“What have I done to your name and reputation?” he asked, and closed his
lips as though he were almost stupefied with silence. But he went a step
towards her, with a shrinking, defensive movement. She retreated towards
the table on which the candle stood, a flickering witness of the scene
between them—a scene full of shame and suffering and unconfessed fear
for her, and of cruelty and loathing and bewilderment for him; but for
both strangely destitute of fire and passion.
“You have ruined both,” she said. “You have dared to make a pretence of
marriage with me, though you were married already to an inferior person
whom you had known at your lodgings.”
“Who told you this?”
“I shall not tell you my informant, but I know everything. You will
retire from my presence this evening and never enter it again.”
“It is not true,” he said shortly, and made another step towards her,
and again she retreated.
“It is true. To-morrow I shall go to Liphook and expose your infamous
behaviour.”
“If you dare,” he said, almost fiercely, and then, suddenly, he changed
his note. “I was obliged to do it, Anne,” he added, as if he had
suddenly seen that the game was up, and lying would serve him nothing.
“But I was fond of you; I told you there were many difficulties the
night I asked you to marry me.”
“No, Alfred”—and for the first time her lips quivered—“you were not
fond of me, even then. You were under the impression that you would get
the money Sir William Rammage had left me in his will.”
“What should I know about his will?”
“You were aware of its contents. You went to him in regard to the
instructions. I have heard everything from his own lips.” He was silent
for a moment, and still there was no expression in his dull eyes.
“Rammage could not tell you that I was married,” he said presently.
“Where did you get that ridiculous story from?”
“It is not a ridiculous story. You have married a common dressmaker, and
you presumed after that to insult and impose on me.”
“What are you going to do—what do you want me to do?” he asked, almost
curiously.
“I shall not treat you with the severity you deserve, but you will leave
this house to-night and never enter it again.”
“I should go to Liphook. You would not like that, Anne.”
“Alfred,” she said indignantly, “I could not accept shame and
degradation, even from a man I love. Besides, I have no longer any love
for you. You will not dare to offer me that. Every moment that you stay
in my presence is an insult. I must insist on your leaving this house at
once.”
“Where am I to go?” he asked, still curiously.
“That is for your consideration. You and I are apart.”
“I have no money,” he said, too much astonished, though he made no sign
of it, to fight her fairly.
“You have sufficient money for your present necessities, Alfred. You
must not think that you can deceive me any longer. I know everything
about you.”
Suddenly an idea occurred to him, and he asked, in a manner that was
almost a threat, though it had no effect upon her—
“Have you been to Liphook?”
“I shall not tell you where I have been, Alfred; I have discovered your
baseness, and that is sufficient. I know that our marriage was a
mockery, that you dared to offer me what you had already given to
another woman. You will go back to her, and at once. You came to me
solely for my money, and of that you will not have one penny piece.”
Still he stood looking at her speechlessly, while with each word she
said his loathing for her increased and his anger grew more difficult to
control. His lips parted and showed his teeth, white and clenched
together.
“I will have the money yet; and you shall suffer,” he said.
“You will not,” she answered, with a determined wink. “I have taken care
of that.”
“You have left it to me.”
For a moment she was silent; then a light broke upon her, and she spoke
quickly.
“Alfred,” she said, “I know now why you put your name in my will without
mentioning the relationship in which I supposed you stood to me, and why
you did not put my name in yours, but only said that you left everything
to your wife. You were deliberately insulting me, and deceiving me most
cruelly even then, on the day I thought most sacred.”
“I thought you were fond of me,” he said, as if he had not heard her
last speech. For a moment she could not answer him. Only a few hours
before, and the deceptions of which she had known him then to be guilty
had but made him dearer to her. She had loved him with all her own
strength, and supposed him to possess it. She had idealized him with her
own goodness, till she had mistaken it for his. It had never occurred to
her that any comfort she gathered in through him was but her own feeling
returning to soothe her a little with its beauty. Now all the glamour
had vanished, she loathed and shrank from him, just as he had done from
her. It was like a death agony.
“I was fond of you,” she said. “I loved you more than all the world, and
I would have given you my life, I would have worked for your daily
bread. I wanted nothing in the world but you, Alfred; but I am
undeceived. You must go; you must leave me, and at once. I have desired
Jane to pack your things——”
“I shall stay,” he said, in a tone that made her look up quickly. “I do
not mean to go until I have the money that old Rammage has left you.”
“You will not have one penny piece of it,” she answered.
“I will,” he said, with a quiet, determined look she knew well in his
dull eyes. “He has left it to you, and you have left it to me. I mean to
have it.”
“It is no use trying to intimidate me, Alfred,” she said; “it is too
late. To-morrow I shall make another disposition of my property.”
“No, you will not,” he said; “for I shall not let you out of my sight
till you are dead, and you will be dead soon.”
“You will gain nothing by that, Alfred. William Rammage also will make
another disposition of his property to-morrow, for I told him of our
marriage.”
“No, he will not, Anne” and he looked at her with awful triumph—“for he
is dead already.”
“Dead already? You are trying to hoodwink me, Alfred; and if it is true
it will not alter my intention or prevent me from carrying it out,” she
answered, determined not to let him know that her promised wealth had
vanished. There was a sound of footsteps, and then the back door closed.
Aunt Anne quaked when she heard it, for she knew that Jane had gone home
without coming to say the usual good-night. He heard it, too, and his
tone altered in a moment.
“You will have no chance of altering your intention, Anne,” he said, and
went another step towards her.
“Why?” she asked, with a fearless wink.
“Because you shall not live to do it”—and he went still a little
nearer; but she did not quail for a moment. “Do you hear?” and he showed
his teeth while he spoke, “you shall not live to do it.”
“And you think when I am dead that you will go and spend my money with
the woman at Liphook?”
“Yes,” he said; “I like her, and I loathe you.” He drew the word out as
if he gloated over the sound of it, and an awful look came into his eyes
again.
“Heaven has frustrated your design,” she said. “Alfred, if you kill me
you will gain nothing by it, and the law will punish you. William
Rammage has burnt his will. He burnt it to-day before my eyes, when he
heard that I had disgraced my family and my name by a marriage with
you.”
“Burnt it!” He clenched his hands, and struggled to control himself.
“Then I shall go; I shall go—when it suits me. I only wanted your
money. A young man does not marry an old woman for anything but money,
Anne. You are loathsome—loathsome and unwholesome,” he repeated,
watching the effect of every word upon her—“and I have loathed being
with you. I shall go to the other woman. She is my wife; I like her—she
is young, not old and loathsome like you. I only married you for the
sake of your money.” Aunt Anne never moved an inch; she only watched him
steadily, as slowly he brought out his sentences, pausing between each
one. “You have kept me from her all these months,” he went on,
concentrating himself on every word he said; “and now you have taken
from me the money I deserved for being with you—for being with a
wrinkled, withered old woman.”
She did not move or speak. For a moment he showed his teeth again, then
slowly lifted his hands.
“Anne,” he said, with a fiendish look in his eyes, but with the calm
gravity of a just avenger, “I am going to strangle you”—and he went
nearer and bent over her. He had no intention of carrying out his
threat, it was a luxury he dared not afford himself, but he wanted to
torture and frighten her till she quailed before him. For only one
moment was his desire satisfied.
“If you dare to touch me——” she said, and a shriek burst from her.
There was the sound of a door opening and of footsteps entering.
“Jane!” shouted Aunt Anne, “Jane!”
Jane opened the door and looked in.
“If you please, ma’am, I heard Mr. Knox, the policeman, go by, and you
said you wanted him.”
Alfred Wimple stared at her in astonishment, and his face blanched. Aunt
Anne recovered her self-possession in a moment, though she trembled from
head to foot.
“If you will ask him to stay in the kitchen, I will speak to him,” she
said. Then she turned to Alfred Wimple again.
“You will only get yourself laughed at,” he said.
She was silent a moment; she saw what was in his thoughts and took
advantage of it.
“You do not deserve my clemency,” she said, “but I will extend it to
you, provided you go from the house this minute. If you do not I shall
take measures to punish you.”
He was trembling, and could not speak.
She opened the door. “Jane,” she called, “get Mr. Wimple’s portmanteau;
have you put everything into it?”
“Everything but the slippers. It’s raining, ma’am,” Jane added, not in
the least understanding what was going on. But Aunt Anne had shut the
door, and turned to Alfred Wimple again.
“Now you will go,” she said.
“I cannot go in the rain,” he answered, and made a sound in his throat;
“you know how bad my cough is. You cannot turn me out in this weather. I
was angry just now; but I did not mean it. I was only trying to frighten
you.”
“You will go immediately,” she said; “you shall not remain another hour
under my roof.”
“It will kill me to go in this rain,” he said doggedly.
“You would have killed me when you thought you would get William
Rammage’s money by it; and just now you threatened me, Alfred. You are
not fit to remain another hour in the same house with the woman you have
wronged, and you shall not. Your coat is in the hall, ready for
you”—and she went towards the door. “You will go this very moment, and
you will never venture to come near me again.”
“I have been coughing all day,” he almost pleaded, utterly confounded by
the turn things had taken.
“I brought you some lozenges from London, before I knew all your
baseness”—and she fumbled in her pocket. “Here they are, and you can
take them with you.” She put them down before him on the table, and went
slowly out to the kitchen. “Officer,” she said, “I will not detain you
about the wood this evening. I want you to walk with Mr. Wimple as far
as Steggall’s, and see him into a waggonette; and there,” she added, in
a low voice, “is a half-crown to recompense you for your trouble.”
“It’s very wet, ma’am; is the gentleman obliged to go to-night?”
“Yes”—and, winking sternly, she opened the street door wide. “Yes, he
is obliged to go to-night.” With a puzzled air Jane picked up the
portmanteau. Alfred Wimple took it from her with sulky reluctance. For a
moment they all stood looking out at the blackness of the fir-trees and
listened to the falling rain. Aunt Anne turned to the little hat-stand
in the hall. “Here is an umbrella, Alfred,” she said, “and you have your
lozenges. Good-night, officer”—and she did not say another word. Alfred
Wimple gave her a long look of cowed and baffled hatred, as he went out,
followed by the policeman. She shut the door, double-locked it, and drew
the bolts at the top and bottom—it was the last sound that Wimple heard
as he left the cottage.
For a moment she stood still, listening to his footsteps; she waited to
hear the click of the gate as it shut behind them. Then, with a strange,
dazed manner, as if she were not quite sure that she was awake, she went
back to the drawing-room.
“If you please, ma’am,” asked the servant, “isn’t Mr. Wimple coming back
to-night?—for you won’t like being left alone, and I don’t know what to
do about mother.”
“You can go to her,” Aunt Anne answered. A desperate longing to be alone
was upon her; she wanted to think quietly, and it seemed impossible to
do so while any one remained beneath the same roof with her. She was
impatient for a spell of loneliness before she died. She felt that she
was going to die, that she had heard her death-sentence in the shed
beyond the valley. There was no gainsaying it—shame and agony were
going to kill her. But first she wanted to be alone, to realize all that
had happened, and how it had come about. She remembered suddenly, but
only for a moment, that Alfred had stated that Sir William Rammage was
dead. It was untrue, of course—Alfred could not have known. Besides,
William Rammage’s life or death concerned her no longer; in his money
she took no further interest. She only wanted to be alone and to think.
“You can go to your mother, Jane,” she repeated; “I wish to be left
alone; I have a predilection for solitude.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl answered hesitatingly—“and you said I was to
remind you about the wages; I wouldn’t, only mother’s bad.”
“I will pay them.” She opened her purse and counted out the few silver
coins left in it. “I must remain a sixpence in your debt; this is all
the change I have for the moment.” She put her empty purse down on the
table, and knew that she had not a penny left in the world. For a moment
she was silent; she looked puzzled, as if she were doing a mental sum.
Then she looked up. “Jane,” she said, “you can take the remains of the
chicken and the sole to your mother, and anything else that was left
from dinner. I shall not require it.” She dreaded seeing the things that
Alfred Wimple had touched. She felt that, even down to the smallest
detail, she must rid herself of all that had had to do with her life of
shame and disgrace, and there was not much time left her in which to do
it. She must begin at once: when she had made her life clean and
spotless again she would look up and meet death unabashed.
“I am ready, ma’am,” Jane said presently, and looked in, with her basket
on her arm. Aunt Anne got up and followed her to the back door, in order
to see that it was made fast. She shook with fear when she beheld the
night. Under that sky and through the darkness Alfred Wimple was making
his way to Liphook. The very air seemed to have pollution in it. She
retreated thankfully to the covering of the cottage; but the stillness
appalled her, once she was wholly alone in it. She stood in the hall for
a moment and listened: there was not a sound. She waited for a moment at
the foot of the stairs and remembered Alfred’s room above, from which
every trace of him had been removed, but she had not courage to mount
the stairs. She went back into the little drawing-room and shut the
door, and taking up her empty purse from beside the candlestick put it
into her pocket. As in the morning, her hand touched something that
should not be there; but she knew what it was this time, and pulled it
out quickly. It was the blue tie that she had kissed in the train. With
almost a cry of horror, as if it were a deadly snake, she threw it on
the fire and held it down with the poker, as William Rammage had held
down his burning will. As she did so her eyes caught the wedding-ring on
her left hand; in a moment she had pulled it off her trembling finger
and put it in the fire too. The flame blazed and smouldered and died
away, and her excitement with it. But she had not strength to rise from
the floor on which she had been kneeling; she pulled the cushion down
from the back of the easy-chair, and sank, a miserable heap, upon the
rug.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]