He was taken up to the sitting-room, introduced by the maid, and left
just inside the door, as on the occasion of his first visit. But now he
knew the way about the room.
“In the house to-day, my lady?” he said, “I like the garden-house
better.”
“And you want your own way, as usual?” she asked.
“You say that as though you hated me,” he said, stopping dead.
“What a sensitive ear you have,” she replied cruelly. “I do.”
There was a finality about this pronouncement which caused him to take
it with the utmost seriousness. Her tones were chill and bloodless and
dead, and they disquieted him, so much that he advanced not another
step, but remained readjusting his mood, which had been eager, to one of
defence. He was horribly startled. It was fortunate for him that he
could not see her; she had retreated from him as far as the size of the
room would allow, behind the sofa, where she stood shivering as though
with cold, her eyes fixed and unblinking, her hand laid upon her loose
garment to hold it close at the throat, and all her muscles gathered
ready for swift escape at any sign of advance on his part.
“I should not have sent for you,” she said, “but I knew you could not
read a letter if I wrote you one, and I did not care to send you a
message through any of my servants. I don’t want to keep you long, as I
only want to tell you that I am leaving for London to-morrow and shall
not be seeing you again. I could certainly have sent you a message to
tell you that. But I wanted to tell you my reason myself.”
She had prepared beforehand what she intended to say, for her safeguard
lay in frigidity of speech, and to achieve that she must maintain
frigidity of feeling. That had been easy before he came; but when she
saw him her cold anger had been shaken, her contempt had wavered beneath
a return of her old respect, and her audacity in risking danger had
revived. “I wanted to tell you my reason,” she resumed, “but before
doing so I must own that you had completely taken me in. I thought I
knew you well, but I knew only that part of you which you were willing
that I should know. I thought I had made in you the discovery of
something really rather remarkable. I was rather pleased with myself
over it. I know now that I have been stupidly mistaken. Your elaborate
fraud deceived me as being a genuine thing....”
“I can see you have learnt all this by heart,” he interrupted. She
flamed up no less at his perspicacity than at his rudeness.
“Very well,” she cried, “I’ll drop my stilted phrases. I did prepare
them, but they are true, for all that. I have found you out. You
interested me, you even impressed me,—I hate you for it. You’re nothing
but a sham and a coward.”
“It’s not true,” said Silas, growing very pale.
“It’s so true,” she said quickly, “that the words I’ve just used to you
are the very words you have always most dreaded hearing. A sham and a
coward. You’re such a coward that there have been moments when you were
glad you were blind, because that saved you from dangers other men were
expected to undertake. You were quite safe to talk about danger; your
blindness sheltered you, and words couldn’t possibly hurt. Am I not
speaking the truth? Your blindness has been your best friend, as well as
your worst enemy,—your worst enemy, because it favoured your horrible
imagination, and provided a darkness that you peopled with shapes; your
best friend, because all the time it preserved you from having to
practise what you preached. See how I know you now. I suppose it amused
you to deceive me, to see just how far you could go, and sometimes when
you thought you’d put your foot an inch over the line of my credulity
you drew it back very skilfully. Now I have simply found you out for
what you are. I have learnt the story of the fire two nights ago.”
“Nan!” exclaimed Silas, in a burst of fury.
“Not at all; I have seen Hambley. I don’t wish to make any mystery. He
came to see me this morning, whining and snivelling, and told me the
whole story: how you had lost your head, how you had gibbered with
fright—gibbered was the word he used—he says you went like this,” and
she imitated a man in the extremity of terror, working her mouth,
distending her eyes and nostrils, and clacking her fingers; “he was not
pretty to watch, Dene. Then he told me how you had dragged him in and
beaten him for looking in through your window; he was quite shrewd
enough to see that you seized upon the pretext of beating him merely as
a relief to your nerves, that fright had exasperated. He came to me in
order to be revenged on you, and also, I think, because he wanted to
whimper to some one. He says you went upon your knees to young Morgan,
and that Morgan was laughing at you, though you didn’t know it, and that
even your sister-in-law smiled more than once behind her hand. Well,
that’s the picture I carry away of you, Dene. You can hardly be
surprised that I regret the kindness I have shown to you. I have made a
great mistake which I shall know better than to repeat in the future.”
She hardened herself, she mentally insisted on her relief at escaping
from a situation which she had felt to be getting beyond her control.
There were many incidents she remembered with discomfort, and her
husband had been very peremptory, when, the anonymous letter in his
hand, he had come to her, “If I thought there was any truth in these
revolting hints ...” yes, decidedly, Hambley’s revelations had been very
opportune as an excuse for getting rid of Silas. She thought, on the
whole, she had manœuvred her opportunities ably.
“Hambley shall pay for this.”
“Hambley must take care of himself,” she replied, “I have no doubt that
you will invent some form of revenge which will interest you very much
as a new experiment, and you will improve it and refine it and fiddle
over it, like some magician preparing a brew. I should never, at any
moment, have had any doubts as to that. I should like you to understand
that I always knew you for cruel, unscrupulous, and without heart or
conscience; I thought you a ruthless man, but where I went wrong was in
not thinking you despicable. I could have respected you for
thorough-going villainy,—yes, I thought there was a certain largeness of
gesture about your discontent,—but I have only contempt for the sham.”
Her voice had grown still more cold and level; it licked sharply round
his vanity, and as ever, his instinct flew to physical violence. He
snarled, and moved in her direction, knocking over a small table, but
she dodged him.
“Keep quiet, Dene,” she said, in the same glacial tone, “we really
cannot play this ridiculous game of blindman’s buff.”