After leaving Alexandra that morning Maggy had driven to Woolf's club.
They had arranged to lunch together at some restaurant, but instead he
bore her off to her flat, scarcely vouchsafing a word to her on the way.
That he was in a towering rage she could see plainly enough. The reason
for it she could not guess. He was apt to lose his temper. At such
times she would tactfully wait until he had calmed down. Now, however,
she was hungry and wanted her lunch, so she naturally asked for it.
"Where did you think of going for lunch?"
To her surprise he burst out violently: "Lunch be damned! You'll have
lunch by yourself in future."
"What's the matter? What have I done?" she asked, placably enough.
"I've found you out, that's all."
Not another word could she extract from him until they were in the flat.
Coaxing and gentleness only made him more morose. She began to feel
afraid. What she could not see, because she did not know that the stage
had lost quite a convincingly bombastic actor in Woolf, was that much of
his anger was assumed; nor did she know that he was spoiling for a
quarrel and that he had found a very good handle upon which to hang one.
So blinded was she by her devotion that, except for the fact that since
his return she had seen less of him than usual, she had not observed a
certain weariness in his manner toward her. She did not at all know
what he meant by saying he had found her out. Hoping to placate him by
a show of affection she made an attempt to kiss him. But he repulsed
her.
"I've had enough of that," he scowled. "It's all shammed, and it comes
easy to you, my girl. I was up here half-an-hour ago and I saw your
dressing-case."
"Well," she rejoined, "you've seen it before, haven't you?"
"Not with a sheet of headed notepaper sticking out of it--Purton Towers,
that swine Chalfont's place!"
Maggy's face cleared. She thought she knew now what the storm portended
and how to weather it.
"Oh, is that all?" she said lightly. "I took it to wrap my toothbrush
in, you goose! I was going to tell you about it all, but I forgot
because I was so happy at having you back."
"A likely story! You expect me to believe you forgot to admit you've
been carrying on with Chalfont!"
"Oh, Fred!" she cried, horrified at the allegation.
"Well, let's have your expurgated version of it."
"I went there for Christmas with Lexie. And the Honorable Mrs.
Pardiston, his aunt, was there too. We went to church, and there was a
Christmas tree and a children's party. It was all quite proper and
perfectly glorious. Lord Chalfont wouldn't do anything that was
underhand."
"Of course you're bound to say that for your own sake. Look here,
Maggy, you needn't tell me lies. I won't swallow them. You know
perfectly well that if I'd known he'd asked you down to his rotten place
I'd have stopped your going."
"I did think of that, Fred," she admitted; "but then I knew there was no
harm in it, and if I hadn't gone Lexie wouldn't have been able to,
either; and I wasn't looking forward to spending Christmas alone here.
No flesh and blood girl could resist a square invitation like that. Why
didn't you take me abroad with you if you couldn't trust me? I haven't
asked you questions about where you've been or what you did while you
were away. Besides, if it comes to that, husbands and wives often pay
visits apart."
"Do you consider yourself particularly qualified to give an opinion
about the habits of married people?" he sneered.
"That's a caddish thing to fling in my face," she cried indignantly.
Woolf flinched a little under her flashing eyes.
"This quarrel's getting vulgar," he retorted uneasily.
"It's of your making. Look me in the face, Fred, and you'll see I
couldn't tell you a lie. Look at me, please."
He did so reluctantly.
"On my solemnest word of honor, on my awful love for you," she said with
terrible earnestness, "I swear to you, Fred, that never once have I been
unfaithful to you, even in thought."
"Never seen Chalfont in town, I suppose?" It was a chance shot, but
Woolf saw that it had struck home. "Oh, so you have!" he followed up
quickly. "Well--upon my word! That means, before I went away."
"Yes. You shan't say I'm deceiving you. I went to him to borrow some
diamonds for Lexie."
The astonishing avowal staggered him.
"That's a pretty admission!" he laughed satirically. "Gentlemen are not
in the habit of lending girls diamonds for nothing!"
"Oh, what do you know what _gentlemen_ do?" she retorted, losing control
of her temper.
Had she deliberately tried to wound his self-esteem she could have
chosen no better way. Inadvertently she had touched on the raw. Woolf
would not have admitted it for the world, but deep down in his
consciousness he knew that he was not a gentleman and had no pretensions
to be called one. What galled him more than all was that Maggy, whose
status would have been considered a grade lower than his own, must have
detected the social difference between himself and a man like Chalfont.
Accidentally she found the vulnerable chink in his armor of swagger and
carefully acquired polish.
"That will do," he said, getting up and flushing darkly. "It's a bit
too thick when a girl of your class sets up to criticise a man of mine.
I'm not a gentleman? Very well, that ends it between you and me."
The stark finality of his words and manner made her tremble all over.
"You mean--Oh, my God, Fred, you can't mean you're done with me?"
"That's about it.... You've got nothing to complain of. You'll be
better off with Chalfont."
She ran to him and held him.
"You can't believe there's anything like that," she cried piteously.
"Why, he wouldn't look at me--not in that way. He knows I belong to
you. If he thinks of me at all it's as he would of the little East-end
children that people take down into the country for a day. He's a lord
and I'm just common Maggy, and he condescended to be kind to me.
Believe me, Fred, believe me, or I--I shall die. I can't live without
you. You know I can't!"
Woolf did believe her. Although he hated Chalfont and his
exclusiveness, which had once been the means of humbling him, he knew
well enough that because of that very exclusiveness he would be
punctilious in his attitude toward Maggy. He did not make the mistake
of comparing Maggy's position with that of Mrs. Lambert. The latter was
a woman of some social standing, separated from her husband. What did
genuinely enrage Woolf was that Chalfont should be so contemptuous of
his, Woolf's, relations with Maggy that he could be friendly with her in
spite of them. It meant that he was ignored. It was inconceivable to
him that Chalfont's attitude toward her was largely dictated by a
touching respect for her personality, and pity that she should be
associated with such a man as himself.
"Don't make a scene," was his unmoved rejoinder. "We can settle things
quite quietly if you'll be sensible."
Maggy felt a fierce desire to scream and laugh and cry and so break her
nightmare by noise. The cataclysm had come upon her so suddenly; the
break seemed so imminent; her hold over Woolf so frail. She seemed to
have held him by a thread and that thread had now snapped. Her
sensation was one of absolute shipwreck. She experienced the very
paralysis of actual drowning, the throbbing of pulses in her head, the
suffocation in her throat, the sense of being entirely submerged. And
just as the drowning person is said to survey the past with startling
clearness so she now had a rapid mental vista of her brief season of
love and the desolation that would follow it if Woolf meant what he
said.
"I'm _not_ sensible," she pleaded. "You can't give me up for such a
little thing as that. Oh, you're cruel, cruel!"
"If you're going to be hysterical I shan't stop."
His unrelenting manner had a steadying effect on her. Tortured, but
silent, she stared at him. Could this be the man whom she had been able
to soften and cajole with a mere pose of her body; the man who had taken
possession of her with such controlling ardor that she was oblivious of
the very details of her capitulation; the man whom she had loved with
such devastating vehemence? She could see by the utterly unmoved
expression of his face that it was impossible to stir his pity. There
might be a bare chance of exciting his passion, but a new-born delicacy
of feeling in her prevented an appeal to that side of his nature. She
made a strong effort to keep a hold on herself.
"I won't be hysterical," she said. "But--I can't understand why you're
going on like this. You loved me before you went abroad. What has
happened since?"
His eyes shifted from her face.
"What has happened since?" she repeated.
Woolf would not answer her. He got up and went to her little inlaid
bureau, picked up a pen, squared his elbows and began writing something.
Quivering with emotion, her breast heaving, her breath coming in gasping
sobs, she stood where she was, incurious as to what he was doing.
Presently he turned, and placed a piece of paper on the table.
"You can stay on here till the end of the quarter," he said. "After
that I shall sublet it. And here"--he pushed the paper toward her--"is
a little present for you."
She took a stumbling step toward him, arms outstretched, her poor face
working.
"Fred! Don't go!" she shrieked.
But he had got to the door. He would go. Nothing she could say or do
would stop him. She had just enough presence of mind left not to follow
him. Even in that moment of distress she had the sublime unselfishness
to refrain from making a scene beyond the privacy of the flat--on his
account.
She tottered back to the table, clutching at it for support, stared down
at the slip of paper he had left there--paper with a pretty lacy
pattern, and read:
"_Pay to_ Miss Delamere ... _or order_ Twenty-five pounds."
The words danced before her eyes like little black mocking devils....
_Twenty-five pounds_! The price which Woolf thought sufficient to buy
her off!
Mad now, she scrawled her name on the back of the cheque, caught up her
hat and ran downstairs into the street. At the corner there generally
stood a miserable woman with a baby, selling flowers. She was there
now. Maggy was a regular customer of hers. She thrust the cheque upon
her.
"It's signed on the back. Take it--oh, take it!" she said wildly,
closed the dumfounded woman's fingers on the cheque, and sped on.
She went fast, walking aimlessly, conscious of nothing but the desire
for movement. She wanted to lose herself, to forget herself. Of the
things around her she saw nothing, heard nothing. Her processes of
thought seemed to be exhausted. Her brain was a mere reservoir of utter
hopelessness.
Yet, all the while, it was insensibly driving her in a given direction.
In a dull way she realized this when she found herself in the street
where Woolf lived. She had never been there since the day of that
eventful lunch with him, seven months ago. The memory of it had a
clarifying effect on her troubled mind. It calmed her frenzy. She asked
herself what she meant to do, but could find no answer. She had not
consciously intended going to his house. All motive for doing so was
absent. Yet she could not pass it.
She rang the bell, and when the door was opened enquired for Woolf.
"Mr. Woolf is not in, miss," said the servant; "but Lady Susan is, if
you would like to see her."
Maggy, still mentally benumbed, entered and followed her.