"Well, worse things might have happened after all--what do _you_ think?"
Still I did not answer him, feeling a certain shame, not to say disgust.
Then he began to pay me some compliments on my appearance.
"Do you know you're charming, my dear, really charming!"
That stung me, and made me shudder, I don't know why, unless it was
because the words gave me the sense of having been used before to other
women. I turned my eyes away again.
"Don't turn away, dear. Let me see those big black eyes of yours. I
adore black eyes. They always pierce me like a gimlet."
He reached forward as he spoke and drew me to him. I felt frightened and
pushed him off.
"What's this?" he said, as if surprised.
But after another moment he laughed, and in the tone of a man who had
had much to do with women and thought he knew how to deal with them, he
said:
"Wants to be coaxed, does she? They all do, bless them!"
Saying this he pulled me closer to him, putting his arm about my waist,
but once more I drew and forcibly pushed him from me.
His face darkened for an instant, and then cleared again.
"Oh, I see," he said. "Offended, is she? Paying me out for having paid
so little court to her? Well, she's right there too, bless her! But
never mind! You're a decidedly good-looking little woman, my dear, and
if I have neglected you thus far, I intend to make up for it during the
honeymoon. So come, little gal, let's be friends."
Taking hold of me again, he tried to kiss me, putting at the same time
his hand on the bosom of my dress, but I twisted my face aside and
prevented him.
"Oh! Oh! Hurt her modesty, have I?" he said, laughing like a man who was
quite sure both of himself and of me. "But my little nun will get over
that by and by. Wait awhile! Wait awhile!"
By this time I was trembling with the shock of a terror that was
entirely new to me. I could not explain to myself the nature of it, but
it was there, and I could not escape from it.
Hitherto, when I had thought of my marriage to Lord Raa I had been
troubled by the absence of love between us; and what I meant to myself
by love--the love of husband and wife--was the kind of feeling I had for
the Reverend Mother, heightened and deepened and spiritualised, as I
believed, by the fact (with all its mysterious significance) that the
one was a man and the other a woman.
But this was something quite different. Not having found in marriage
what I had expected, I was finding something else, for there could be no
mistaking my husband's meaning when he looked at me with his passionate
eyes and said, "Wait awhile!"
I saw what was before me, and in fear of it I found myself wishing that
something might happen to save me. I was so frightened that if I could
have escaped from the car I should have done so. The only thing I could
hope for was that we should arrive at Blackwater too late for the
steamer, or that the storm would prevent it from sailing. What relief
from my situation I should find in that, beyond the delay of one day,
one night (in which I imagined I might be allowed to return home), I did
not know. But none the less on that account I began to watch the clouds
with a feverish interest.
They were wilder than ever now--rolling up from the south-west in huge
black whorls which enveloped the mountains and engulfed the valleys. The
wind, too, was howling at intervals like a beast being slaughtered. It
was terrible, but not so terrible as the thing I was thinking of. I was
afraid of the storm, and yet I was fearfully, frightfully glad of it.
My husband, who, after my repulse, had dropped back into his own corner
of the car, was very angry. He talked again of our "God-forsaken
island," and the folly of living in it, said our passage would be a long
one in any case, and we might lose our connection to London.
"Damnably inconvenient if we do. I've special reasons for being there in
the morning," he said.
At a sharp turn of the road the wind smote the car as with an invisible
wing. One of the windows was blown in, and to prevent the rain from
driving on to us my husband had to hold up a cushion in the gap.
This occupied him until we ran into Blackwater, and then he dropped the
cushion and put his head out, although the rain was falling heavily, to
catch the first glimpse of the water in the bay.
It was in terrific turmoil. My heart leapt up at the sight of it. My
husband swore.
We drew up on the drenched and naked pier. My husband's valet, in
waterproofs, came to the sheltered side of the car, and, shouting above
the noises of the wind in the rigging of the steamer, he said:
"Captain will not sail to-day, my lord. Inshore wind. Says he couldn't
get safely out of the harbour."
My husband swore violently. I was unused to oaths at that time and they
cut me like whipcord, but all the same my pulse was bounding joyfully.
"Bad luck, my lord, but only one thing to do now," shouted the valet.
"What's that?" said my husband, growling.
"Sleep in Blackwater to-night, in hopes of weather mending in the
morning."
Anticipating this course, he had already engaged rooms for us at the
"Fort George."
My heart fell, and I waited for my husband's answer. I was stifling.
"All right, Hobson. If it must be, it must," he answered.
I wanted to speak, but I did not know what to say. There seemed to be
nothing that I could say.
A quarter of an hour afterwards we arrived at the hotel, where the
proprietor, attended by the manageress and the waiters, received us with
rather familiar smiles.