HUSBAND AND WIFE
When Herbert Nash quitted Bloomsbury Mansions he went straight back to
Littlehampton, by the last train of the day to reach that primitive
place. When he arrived at Ocean Villas it was past ten o'clock. His
wife had gone to bed; or, at least, she had retired to her bedroom. As
a matter of fact, she felt as if she never wanted to go to bed again;
unless going to bed was synonymous with eternal sleep. If only she
could go to sleep and never wake! She was of opinion that she was the
most miserable woman; many women think themselves that with less cause
than she had. She was half-undressed, and, crouching on the floor,
rested her head against the bed. In her hands was a telegram, which
she had read again, and again, and again, until it seemed to have
branded itself upon her throbbing brain so that she could not get it
out of her sight even for a second. It had come to her earlier in the
day, and, as telegrams are apt to be, was curt.
"Send another five hundred immediately. No excuses will be accepted.
"MORGAN."
Only a day or two ago she had given him a hundred pounds; then sent
him another four hundred, and here already he was demanding five
hundred more. The inference was plain; he would persist in his demands
until he had wrung from her all that she had found on Donald Lindsay's
table. Though he stripped her of every penny she would still be at his
mercy; what would he demand from her then? Whatever it might be, how
would she dare refuse him then, if she dare not refuse him now?
In a sense, indeed, she had refused him, as it was. He had bade her
send the cash "immediately." That she had not done; she had purposely
not sent it by the night's post; and now was racked by fears of the
measures he might take to show her his resentment. Suppose he told her
husband, as he had threatened to do? If he did! if he did! Had she not
better hide in the sea before Herbert came back again?
His opportunities for telling were so numerous; he and Herbert were
away together at that moment. That was another of her burdens. What
was the meaning of this sudden, ill-omened connection which had sprung
up between them? Why, all at once, had her husband become the
inseparable companion of the man who had been wont to stand behind her
chair? He had resented, so hotly, the fellow's presumption in even
venturing to write to him; yet now they might be bosom friends; he
even expected her to receive him as an equal. What did it mean?
Nothing kindles the imagination like a coward conscience. All sorts of
hideous surmises had tormented her. A dozen explanations had occurred
to her; every fresh one more unsavoury than the last. She could see
that her husband had changed; in himself, as well as to her. He was
not the same man; he was always brooding, irritable, depressed. Of
late, not only had he not spoken to her a tender word, he had only
addressed her when compelled, and then with scant civility. What did
such conduct on his part portend? All kinds of doubts afflicted her;
yet among them one was foremost. Was it not possible that Morgan had
poisoned her husband's mind against her? He, perhaps, had not told him
everything, she did not believe he had; but, with diabolical
ingenuity, he might have hinted just enough to make Herbert afraid of
hearing more. In that case her husband might be working Morgan's will
under the delusion that, by so doing, he was protecting her; and all
the while the man was wresting from her all that she had risked so
much to gain--for Herbert's sake.
As, on the floor in the bedroom there, she wrestled with wild beasts
of her own creation, on a sudden she heard the front door open, and a
familiar step come into the house. It was her husband. She sprang to
her feet, not with joy, but with terror. Why had he come back? He had
told her that he would not return that night; perhaps not on the
morrow. Why had he returned--when he had said that he would not
return--without notice, at that hour of the night? for it seemed to
her that she had been in her bedroom hours.
She heard him go into the sitting-room; finding it in darkness, no
one there, he came towards where she was. As she heard him take the
half-dozen steps which divided the two rooms, she stood by the
bedstead, trembling from head to foot; it might have been her
executioner, not her husband, who was coming. A wild, frenzied impulse
came to her to turn the key in the lock, and so gain time; but before
she could do it he had opened the door, and was standing in the room.
It did not need such a rarefied vision as hers was then to perceive
that with him all was not well. She seemed to see him in a blaze of
lightning, phantom-haunted, as she was. It was borne in on her that he
saw her as the hideous thing she saw herself to be, and that that was
why he stood there, white and terrible. If she could she would have
dropped to the floor, and crawled to him, and hung about his knees,
and cried for mercy; but she could not; she had to stand there,
straight and rigid, waiting for him to speak. When he spoke his voice
sounded strange in her ears, as indeed, though she was not aware of
it, it did in his own.
"I see you guess why I am here!"
"Guess? How--how can I guess?"
"Has Morgan told you nothing?"
"Morgan? What--what could Morgan tell me?"
"Hasn't he told you that I'm a blackguard and a thief?"
The words were so wholly different from any she had expected him to
utter that, in the stress of her agitation, they conveyed no meaning
to her mind; she stared at him like one bereft of her senses, as, in
fact, for the moment she was. He misconstrued her look entirely.
"Elaine," he cried, "don't look at me like that, don't! If you only
knew what I have suffered, what I've gone through, you'd pity me,
you wouldn't look at me as if I was something wholly outside the
pale. I know you've guessed that there was something wrong ever since
that--that brute came; you knew I wouldn't breathe the same air with
him if I could help it; but it mayn't be, Elaine, it mayn't be so bad
as you suppose. I don't ask you to forgive me; I don't even ask you to
continue to regard me as your husband; I know I've forfeited all
claims I may have had on you. All I ask of you is to believe that, at
last, I'm going to try to be a man. I've come to tell you that, and to
tell you that chiefly. I'm not going to stay; you need not fear that
I'll contaminate the house which shelters you; but before I go I think
I ought to tell you just what I've done, and what the temptation was;
not to excuse myself, but so that, whatever happens, you, at least,
may know the truth. I felt that I could not let the night pass without
telling you the truth, if only because I have kept it from you so
long, and in the morning it may be too late; I may not have the chance
of telling it to you, face to face, again."
The longer he spoke, the more her bewilderment grew.
"I--I--don't understand," she stammered.
He made her understand, telling his tale as straightforwardly, as
clearly, as it could be told; as it might have been told even by an
impartial witness; the man that was in him was coming to the front at
last.
"You see," he said, "I was at Morgan's mercy, or he thought I was;
and, for a time, I thought so too; I was such a coward! And before
long I should have been wholly at his mercy, had not the sight of that
man, Clifford, roused me to a consciousness of what a coward I really
was; then I knew that the only way to be free was to tell the truth,
and let Morgan do what he likes. I've come to tell you the truth,
first of all; and to-morrow I'm going to tell Frank Clifford the
truth; and when I've found Miss Lindsay, I'll tell her the truth. If I
have to suffer for it, I'll suffer; but at any rate I've escaped from
Morgan. What a weight would have been off my mind if I'd escaped from
him before!"
As she began to grasp the drift of what it was that he was telling
her, she had sunk on to the edge of the bed, and, with distended eyes
and gaping mouth, sat staring at him as if at some thing of horror. He
mistook the meaning of her attitude.
"I don't wonder you look at me as if I were some repulsive object; I
couldn't be more repulsive to you than I am to myself; I understand
what you feel, what you think; I know I deserve it. I know you never
would have married me if you had known me to be the thing I am; I have
wronged you more than any one. I can't undo the bonds which bind us,
that is not in my power, and I'm afraid the law will not help you. But
this I can do, and I will; I'll take myself out of your life as
completely as I can. Your aunt left you enough to live on; I think you
had better sink it in an annuity; you'll be safer that way; and when I
can I'll contribute what I can. I don't wish to be released from any
of my obligations; on the contrary, I wish to fulfil them both in the
letter and the spirit, and I will. So soon as I am earning money you
shall have your proper share; but in any case it will be a comfort to
me to feel that, in any case, you are provided for. And, in time, when
I've done something towards regaining my self-respect, and--and you
send for me, I'll come to you again, if only for just long enough to
show that I am still alive. But you're rid of me till then. Good-bye."
He moved towards the door, as if the whole thing was at an end; as if
husband and wife could be sundered quite so easily. She stopped him as
he was going.
"Herbert!" She spoke in the queerest whisper, as if something had gone
wrong with her vocal chords, the effect of which was to leave her
partially strangled. She held out the telegram she had still in her
hand. "Look at that."
He took it reluctantly, as if he feared it was a weapon which she
aimed at him. Glancing at it, he read it aloud.
"'Send another five hundred immediately. No excuses will be accepted.
'MORGAN.'
What--what does this mean?"
"It means that I'm worse than you; much worse than you."
"Elaine!" She tried to speak, but could not; her voice was strangled
in her throat; it was not nice to watch her struggles to regain the
use of it. He moved towards her, startled. "Elaine! what's the
matter?"
"I'm--I'm--I'm going to tell you, only I--I---- Give me--something--to
drink--there's some water--in the bottle." She pointed to the
washstand. He brought her some water; but she could not drink it. She
could not hold the glass in her own hand; she could not swallow when
he raised it to her lips. He put the glass down on the floor. Her
condition frightened him. Although he had just been speaking of
leaving her for an indefinite period, now he knelt beside her on the
floor, and, putting his arms about her, held her close, soothing her
as best he could. It was while he held her that she told him; she
confessed in her agony; the words being wrung from her as if they had
been gouts of blood. He continued to hold her all the time. When, in
his turn, he began to understand her story, he was man enough to
realize that it was only his support which gave her the strength she
needed; that but for his encircling arms, and the consciousness that
they were his arms, she would collapse. As, by degrees, her meaning
was borne in on his understanding, the fashion of his countenance was
changed, and he kept his face averted, but he never moved. When, in
disconnected sentences, the root of the matter had been told, she did
what he had not done; she began, in a manner, to excuse herself. "It
was--because you said that you wanted money, and--that we couldn't be
married without it, that I went back and took the money--which was on
the table. And Morgan saw me."
"Morgan saw you!"
It was the first time he had spoken; there was a curious contrast
between his voice and hers.
"He was in the room all the time--but in the darkness--I never knew
it."
"So Morgan has held us in the hollow of his hand; both of us!"
"I gave him five hundred pounds the other day, and now he's
telegraphed for more."
"Poor Elaine! It seems, after all, that we're a well-matched pair,
both thieves and cowards."
"Herbert!"
She spoke as if she shrieked.
"My dear, do let us look facts in the face now that we are trying to
make ourselves known to each other."
"I--shouldn't have taken the money--if I hadn't thought--Nora was
rich--and it would make no difference."
"I'm afraid that the question of Miss Lindsay's wealth or poverty
could make no difference to the thing you did."
"I know that--now."
"When it seemed that Miss Lindsay was a pauper did you give her back
any of the money you had taken under a misconception?"
"I meant to--but I never did--I meant to give her a thousand pounds."
"It's a pity you didn't; it might have caused the residue to appear a
little less dingy. We're a pair of beauties! God help us both; we need
His help!"
"I--haven't dared to ask for it."
But she did dare that night; they both of them dared. Already, since
they had been married, they had had some strange days and nights; but
that was the strangest night of their strange honeymoon.