"Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband?"
When Lady Newhaven slipped out of the supper-room after her husband and
Hugh, and lingered at the door of the study, she did not follow them
with the deliberate intention of eavesdropping, but from a vague impulse
of suspicious anxiety. Yet she crouched in her white satin gown against
the door listening intently.
Neither man moved within, only one spoke. There was no other sound to
deaden her husband's distinct, low voice. The silence that followed his
last words, "Will you draw?" was broken by his laugh, and she had barely
time to throw herself back from the door into a dark recess under the
staircase before Hugh came out. He almost touched her as he passed. He
must have seen her, if he had been capable of seeing anything; but he
went straight on unheeding. And as she stole a few steps to gaze after
him, she saw him cross the hall and go out into the night without his
hat and coat, the amazed servants staring after him.
She drew back to go up-stairs, and met her husband coming slowly out of
the study. He looked steadily at her, as she clung trembling to the
banisters. There was no alteration in his glance, and she suddenly
perceived that what he knew now he had always known. She put her hand to
her head.
"You look tired," he said, in the level voice to which she was
accustomed. "You had better go to bed."
She stumbled swiftly up-stairs, catching at the banisters, and went into
her own room.
Her maid was waiting for her by the dressing-table with its shaded
electric lights. And she remembered that she had given a party, and that
she had on her diamonds.
It would take a long time to unfasten them. She pulled at the diamond
sun on her breast with a shaking hand. Her husband had given it to her
when her eldest son was born. Her maid took the tiara gently out of her
hair, and cut the threads that sewed the diamonds on her breast and
shoulders. Would it never end? The lace of her gown, cautiously
withdrawn through its hundred eyelet-holes, knotted itself.
"Cut it," she said, impatiently. "Cut it."
At last she was in her dressing-gown and alone. She flung herself face
downwards on the sofa. Her attitude had the touch of artificiality which
was natural to her.
The deluge had arrived, and unconsciously she met it, as she would have
made a heroine meet it had she been a novelist, in a white dressing-gown
and pink ribbons in a stereotyped attitude of despair on a divan.
Conscience is supposed to make cowards of us all, but it is a matter of
common experience that the unimaginative are made cowards of only by
being found out.
Had David qualms of conscience when Uriah fell before the besieged city?
Surely if he had he would have winced at the obvious parallel of the
prophet's story about the ewe lamb. But apparently he remained serenely
obtuse till the indignant author's "Thou art the man" unexpectedly
nailed him to the cross of his sin.
And so it was with Lady Newhaven. She had gone through the twenty-seven
years of her life believing herself to be a religious and virtuous
person. She was so accustomed to the idea that it had become a habit,
and now the whole of her self-respect was in one wrench torn from her.
The events of the last year had not worn it down to its last shred, had
not even worn the nap off. It was dragged from her intact, and the shock
left her faint and shuddering.
The thought that her husband knew, and had thought fit to conceal his
knowledge, had never entered her mind, any more than the probability
that she had been seen by some of the servants kneeling listening at a
keyhole. The mistake which all unobservant people make is to assume that
others are as unobservant as themselves.
By what frightful accident, she asked herself, had this catastrophe come
about? She thought of all the obvious incidents which would have
revealed the secret to herself--the dropped letter, the altered
countenance, the badly arranged lie. No. She was convinced her secret
had been guarded with minute, with scrupulous care. The only thing she
had forgotten in her calculations was her husband's character, if,
indeed, she could be said to have forgotten that which she had never
known.
Lord Newhaven was in his wife's eyes a very quiet man of few words. That
his few words did not represent the whole of him had never occurred to
her. She had often told her friends that he walked through life with his
eyes shut. He had a trick of half shutting his eyes which confirmed her
in this opinion. When she came across persons who were after a time
discovered to have affections and interests of which they had not
spoken, she described them as "cunning." She had never thought Edward
"cunning" till to-night. How had he, of all men, discovered
this--this--? She, had no words ready to call her conduct by, though
words would not have failed her had she been denouncing the same conduct
in another wife and mother.
Gradually "the whole horror of her situation"--to borrow from her own
vocabulary--forced itself upon her mind like damp through a gay
wall-paper. What did it matter how the discovery had been made! It was
made, and she was ruined. She repeated the words between little gasps
for breath. Ruined! Her reputation lost! Hers--Violet Newhaven's. It was
a sheer impossibility that such a thing could have happened to a woman
like her. It was some vile slander which Edward must see to. He was good
at that sort of thing. But no, Edward would not help her. She had
committed--She flung out her hands, panic-stricken, as if to ward off a
blow. The deed had brought with it no shame, but the word--the word
wounded her like a sword.
Her feeble mind, momentarily stunned, pursued its groping way.
He would divorce her. It would be in the papers. But no. What was that
he had said to Hugh--"No names to be mentioned; all scandal avoided."
She shivered and drew in her breath. It was to be settled some other
way. Her mind became an entire blank. Another way! What way? She
remembered now, and an inarticulate cry broke from her. They had drawn
lots.
_Which had drawn the short lighter?_
Her husband had laughed. But then he laughed at everything. He was never
really serious, always shallow and heartless. He would have laughed if
he had drawn it himself. Perhaps he had. Yes, he certainly had drawn it.
But Hugh? She saw again the white, set face as he passed her. No; it
must be Hugh who had drawn it--Hugh, whom she loved. She wrung her hands
and moaned, half aloud:
"Which? Which?"
There was a slight movement in the next room, the door was opened, and
Lord Newhaven appeared in the door-way. He was still in evening dress.
"Did you call?" he said, quietly. "Are you ill?" He came and stood
beside her.
"No," she said, hoarsely, and she sat up and gazed fixedly at him.
Despair and suspense were in her eyes. There was no change in his, and
she remembered that she had never seen him angry. Perhaps she had not
known when he was angry.
He was turning away, but she stopped him. "Wait," she said, and he
returned, his cold, attentive eye upon her. There was no contempt, no
indignation in his bearing. If those feelings had shaken him, it must
have been some time ago. If they had been met and vanquished in secret,
that also must have been some time ago. He took up an _Imitation of
Christ_, bound in the peculiar shade of lilac which at that moment
prevailed, and turned it in his hand.
"You are overwrought," he said, after a moment's pause, "and I
particularly dislike a scene."
She did not heed him.
"I listened at the door," she said, in a harsh, unnatural voice.
"I am perfectly aware of it."
A sort of horror seemed to have enveloped the familiar room. The very
furniture looked like well-known words arranged suddenly in some new and
dreadful meaning.
"You never loved me," she said.
He did not answer, but he looked gravely at her for a moment, and she
was ashamed.
"Why don't you divorce me if you think me so wicked?"
"For the sake of the children," he said, with a slight change of voice.
Teddy, the eldest, had been born in this room. Did either remember that
gray morning six years ago?
There was a silence that might be felt.
"Who drew the short lighter?" she whispered, before she knew that she
had spoken.
"I am not here to answer questions," he replied. "And I have asked none.
Neither, you will observe, have I blamed you. But I desire that you will
never again allude to this subject, and that you will keep in mind that
I do not intend to discuss it with you."
He laid down the _Imitation_ and moved towards his own room.
With a sudden movement she flung herself upon her knees before him and
caught his arm. The attitude suggested an amateur.
"Which drew the short lighter?" she gasped, her small upturned face
white and convulsed.
"You will know in five months' time," he said. Then he extricated
himself from her trembling clasp and left the room, closing the door
quietly behind him.