Moreen lay, sleepless, wide-eyed, staring up at the roof of the tent.
She had eaten, could eat, nothing, but she was consumed by a parching
thirst. The sounds of the night had no terrors for her; indeed, she
scarcely noticed them, for she had other and more dreadful things to
think of.
Ramsa Lal had been her father's servant; him she could trust. But the
others--the others were Major Fayne's. They were no more than spies upon
her; guards.
What did it mean, this sudden dash from the bungalow into the hills?
It amused her husband to pretend that it was a pleasure-trip, but the
equipment was not of the sort one takes upon such occasions, and one is
not usually dragged from bed at midnight to embark upon such a journey.
It was additionally improbable in view of the fact that up to the moment
of departure Major Fayne had not spoken to her, except in public, for
six months. The dreadful, forced marches were breaking her down, and she
knew that her husband was drinking heavily. What, in God's name, would
be the end of it?
Weakly, she raised herself into a sitting position, groping for and
lighting a candle. From the bosom of her dress she took out a letter,
the last she had received from home before this mad flight. There was
something in it which had frightened her at the time, but which, viewed
in the light of recent events, was unspeakably horrifying.
During the long estrangement between her husband and herself she had
learnt, and had paid for her knowledge with bitter tears, that there was
a side to the character of Major Fayne which he had carefully concealed
from her before marriage; the dark, saturnine part of her husband's
character had dawned upon her suddenly. That had been the beginning of
her disillusionment, the disillusionment which has come to more than one
English girl during the first twelve months of married life in an Indian
bungalow.
Then, perforce, the gap had widened, and six months later had become a
chasm quite impassable except in the interests of social propriety.
Anglo-Indian society is notable for divorces, and poor Moreen very early
in her married life fully understood the reason.
She held the letter to the dim light and read it again attentively.
Allowing a certain discount for her mother's changeless animosity
towards Major Fayne, it yet remained a startling letter. Much of it
consisted in feckless condolences, characteristic but foolish; the
passage, however, which she read and re-read by the dim, flickering
light was as follows:
"Mr. Harringay in his last letter begged of me to come out by the
next boat to Rangoon," her mother wrote. "He has quite opened my eyes
to the truth, Moreen, not in such a way as to shock me all at once,
but gradually. I always distrusted Ralph Fayne and never disguised
the fact from you. I knew that his previous life had been far
from irreproachable, but his treatment of you surpasses even _my_
expectations. I know _all_, my poor darling! and I know something which
you do not know. His father did not die in Colombo at all; he died in a
madhouse! and there are two other known dipsomaniacs in Ralph Fayne's
family----"
A hand reached over Moreen's shoulder and tore the letter from her.
She turned with a cry--and looked up into her husband's quivering face!
For a moment he stood over her, his left fist clenching and unclenching
and his pale blue eyes glassy with anger. Then chokingly he spoke:
"So you carry one of his letters about with you?"
The veins were throbbing visibly upon his temples. Moreen clutched at
the blanket but did not speak, dared not move, for if ever she had
looked into the face of a madman it was at this moment when she looked
into the face of Ralph Fayne.
He suddenly grabbed the candle and, holding it close to the letter,
began to read. His hands were perfectly steady, showing the tremendous
nerve tension under which he laboured. Then his expression changed, but
nothing of the maniac glare left his eyes.
"From your mother," he said hoarsely, "and full of two things--your
wrongs, _your_ wrongs! and Jack Harringay--Jack Harringay--always Jack
Harringay! Damn him!"
He put down the candle and began to tear the letter into tiny fragments,
pouring forth the while a stream of coarse, blasphemous language.
Moreen, who felt that consciousness was slipping from her, crouched
there with a face deathly pale.
Fayne began to laugh softly as he threw the torn-up letter from him
piece by piece.
"Damn him!" he said again. He turned the blazing eyes towards his wife.
"You lying, baby-faced hypocrite! Why don't you admit that he is----"
He stopped; the sinister laughter died upon his lips and he stood there
shaking all over and with a sort of stark horror in his eyes dreadful
to see.
"Why don't you?" he muttered--and looked at her almost
pathetically,--"why of course you can't--no one can----"
He reeled and clutched at the tent-flap, then stumblingly made his way
out.
"No one can," came back in a shaky whisper--"no one can----"
Moreen heard him staggering away, until the sound of his uncertain
footsteps grew inaudible. A distant howling rose upon the night, and,
nearer to the clearing, sounded a sort of tapping, not unlike that of a
woodpecker. Some winged creature was fluttering over the tent.