"Come in here."
Roger Delane came in and shut the door behind him. They confronted each
other.
"You've managed it uncommonly well," he said, at last. "You've dared it.
Aren't you afraid of me?"
"Not the least. What do you want?"
They surveyed each other--with hatred, yet not without a certain
passionate curiosity on both sides. When Delane had last seen Rachel she
was a pale and care-worn creature, her youth darkened by suffering and
struggle, her eyes still heavy with the tears she had shed for her lost
baby. He beheld her now rounded and full-blown, at the zenith of her
beauty, and breathing an energy, physical and mental, he had never yet
seen in her. She had escaped him, and her life had put out a new flower.
He was suddenly possessed as he looked at her, both by the poisonous
memory of old desire, and by an intolerable sense of his impotence, and
her triumph. And the physical fever in his veins made self-control
difficult.
On her side, she saw the ruin of a man. When she married him he had been
a moral wreck. But the physical envelope was still intact, still
splendid. Now his clothes seemed to hang upon a skeleton; the hollows in
the temples and cheeks, the emaciation of the face and neck, the scanty
grey hair, struck horror, but it was a horror in which there was not
a trace of sympathy or pity. He had destroyed himself, and he would, if
he could, destroy her. She read in him the thirst for revenge. She had to
baffle it, if she could.
As she defied him, indeed, she saw his hand steal to his coat-pocket, and
it occurred to her that the pocket might contain a revolver. But the
thought only nerved her--gave her an almost exultant courage.
"What do I want?" he repeated, at last with-drawing his eyes. "I'll tell
you. I've come--like Foch--to dictate to you certain terms, which you
have only to accept. We had better sit down. It will take time."
Rachel pointed to a chair. He took it, crossed one knee over the other,
rested his arm on the table near, and watched her with a sneering smile,
while she seated herself.
He broke the silence.
"I confess you were very clever about Dick Tanner--and I was a precious
fool! I never suspected."
"I have not the least idea what you mean."
"A lie!" he said, impetuously. "You were in Dick Tanner's house--staying
with him alone--at night--after I left you. You were seen there--by
a man--a Canadian--from whom I had the story--only two days ago. He
doesn't know my name, nor I his. We met on the common, two nights ago,
after dark. And by the merest chance he was coming to the farm, and he
began to talk of you. Then this came out. But of course I always knew
that it--or something like it--would come out. Your puritanical airs
never deceived me--for a moment."
"I suppose you are talking of John Dempsey?" The scorn in her voice
enraged him.
"I know nothing about John Dempsey. Of course I can track the man who
told me, if I want to--with the greatest ease. He was coming here to
call. He saw either you or your partner. And I shall track him--if you
force me."
She was silent--and he smiled.
"Assume, please, that I have my witness at hand. Well, then, he saw you
alone--at night--in Dick Tanner's charge, a few days apparently, after
you and I quarrelled. What were you doing there?"
"It was during that great snowstorm, I suppose," she said, in her most
ordinary voice, taking up her knitting. "I remember going over to the
Tanners' to ask for something--and being snow-bound. Lucy Tanner was
always ready to help me--and be sorry for me."
At this he laughed out, and the note of the laugh dismayed her.
"Lucy Tanner? Yes, that's good. I thought you'd play her! Now, I'll
tell you something. The day after I left you, I was on the train going
to Regina. We stopped a long time. I don't remember why--at Medicine
Hat--and walking up and down the platform was--_Lucy Tanner_! Does that
surprise you? She told me she couldn't stand the Manitoba climate, and
was going to a friend at Kamloops for the winter. Is that news to you?"
Rachel had turned white, but he saw no other sign of discomposure.
"Not at all. Naturally, I went over expecting to find her. But as you
say, she was gone, and Mr. Tanner drove me back, when the storm went
down."
Then she threw down her knitting and faced him.
"What's the use of talking like this, Roger? You won't make anything out
of this story you're so proud of. Hadn't you better come to business?
Why have you been spying on me, and dogging me like this? You know, of
course, I could give you in charge to-morrow, or I could get Captain
Ellesborough to do it. And I will--unless you give me your solemn promise
to leave this place, to go out of my life altogether, and stop molesting
me in this scandalous way. Now, of course, I understand who it is that
has been prowling about the farm all these weeks. And I warn you the
police too know all about it, and are on the watch. They may have
tracked you here to-night for all I know."
"Not they! I passed one bobby fellow on the hill, going safely away
north, as I came down. I was scarcely three yards from him, and he never
twigged. And the other's gone to Millsborough. You could hardly be more
alone, more entirely at my mercy--than you are at this moment, Miss
Henderson!" He laid an ironic emphasis on the name.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"All the same the people who live with me in this house will soon be
back. I recommend you to make haste. I ask you again--what is it you
want?"
She had stood up pluckily--he admitted it. But, as he observed her
closely it seemed to him that the strain on her nerves was telling. She
was beginning to look pinched, and her hand as it lay beside her
knitting shook.
"Well, I'll tell you," he said coolly. He took a half sheet of note-paper
out of the breast-pocket of his coat, drew the lamp on the table towards
him, and looked at certain figures and notes written on the paper.
"I went this morning in town to look up your uncle's will. Of course I
remember all about that old chap at Manchester. I often speculated on
what he was going to leave you. Unfortunately for me he lived just a
little too long. But I find from the copy of the will that he left
you--three--thousand--pounds. Not bad, considering that you were never at
all civil to him. But three thousand pounds is more than you require to
run this small farm on. You owe me damages for the injury you inflicted
on me by the loss of--first, your society; second, your financial
prospects. I assess it at five hundred pounds. Pay me that small sum,
and--well, I engage to leave you henceforth to the Captain,--and
your conscience."
He bent forward across the table, his mocking eyes fixed intently upon
her. There was silence a moment--till she said:--
"And if I refuse?"
"Oh, well, then--" he lifted a paper-knife and balanced it on his hand as
though considering--"I shall of course have to work up my case. What do
you call this man?--John Dempsey? A great fool--but I dare say I shall
get enough out of him. And then--well, then I propose to present the
story to Captain Ellesborough--for his future protection."
"He won't believe a word of it."
But her lips had blanched--her voice had begun to waver--and with a cruel
triumph he saw that he had won the day.
"I dare say not. That's for him to consider. But if I were you, I
wouldn't put him to the test."
Silence again. He saw the fluttering of her breath. With a complete
change of tone, he said, smiling, in a low voice:--
"Rachel!--when did you begin to prefer Dick Tanner to me? No doubt you
had a jolly time with him. I suppose I can't undo the divorce--but you
would never have got it, if I hadn't been such an innocent."
She sprang up, and he saw that he had gone too far.
"If you say any more such things to me, you will get nothing from me--and
you may either _go_--" she pointed passionately to the door--"or you may
sit there till my people come back--which you like."
He looked at her, under his eyebrows, smiling mechanically--weighing the
relative advantages of prudence or violence. Prudence carried the day.
"You are just the same spitfire, I see, as you used to be! All right. I
see you understand. Well, now, how am I to get my money--my damages?"
She turned away, and went quickly to an old bureau that had been her
uncle's. He watched her, exultant. It was all true, then. Dick Tanner had
been her lover, and Ellesborough knew nothing. He did not know whether to
be the more triumphant in her tacit avowal, or the more enraged by the
testimony borne by her acquiescence to her love for Ellesborough. He
hated her; yet he had never admired her so much, as his eyes followed her
stooping over the drawers of the bureau, her beautiful head and neck
in a warm glow of firelight.
Then, suddenly, he began to cough. She, hunting for her cheque-book, took
no notice at first. But the paroxysm grew; it shook the very life out of
him; till at last she stood arrested and staring-while he fell back in
his chair like a dead man, his eyes shut, his handkerchief to his lips.
"Shall I--shall I get you some brandy?" she said, coldly. He nodded
assent. She hurriedly looked for her keys, and went to a cupboard in the
kitchen, where Janet kept a half bottle of brandy for medical use if
needed.
He drank off what she brought--but it was some time before he recovered
speech. When he did it was in a low tone that made the words a curse:---
"That's your doing!"
Her only answer was a gesture.
"It is," he insisted, speaking in gasps. "You never showed me any real
love--any forbearance. You never cared for me--as you know I cared for
you. You told me so once. You married me for a home--and then you
deserted--and betrayed me."
There was a guilty answer in her consciousness which made her speak
without anger.
"I know my own faults very well. And now you must go--we can't either of
us stand this any more. Do you give me your solemn promise that you will
trouble me no more---or the man I am going to marry--if I do this for
you?"
"Give me a piece of paper--" he said, huskily.
He wrote the promise, signed it, and pushed it to her. Then he carefully
examined the self cheque "to bearer" which she had written.
"Well, I dare say that will see me out--and bury me decently. I shall
take my family down to the sea. You know I've got a little girl--about
three? Oh, I never told any lies about Anita. I've married her now."
Rachel stood like a stone, without a word. Her one consuming anxiety was
to see him gone, to be done with him.
He rose slowly--with difficulty. And the cough seized him again. Rachel
in a fevered exasperation watched him clinging to the table for support.
Would he die--or faint--then and there--and be found by Janet, who must
now be on her way home? She pressed brandy on him again. But he pushed
it away. "Let me be!" She could only wait.
When he could speak and move again, he put the cheque away in his pocket,
and buttoned his coat over it.
"Well, good-night." Then straightening himself, he fixed her with a pair
of burning eyes. "Good-night. Anita will be kind to me--when I die--Anita
will be a woman to me. You were never kind--you never thought of any one
but yourself. Good-bye. Good luck!"
And walking uncertainly to the door, he opened it and was gone. She heard
his slow steps in the farmyard, and the opening of the wicket gate. Then
all sounds died away.
For a few minutes she crouched sobbing over the fire, weeping for sheer
nervous exhaustion. Then the dread seized her of being caught in such a
state by Janet, and she went upstairs, locked her door, and threw herself
on her bed. The bruise of an intolerable humiliation seemed to spread
through soul and body. She knew that for the first time she had confessed
her wretched secret which she had thought so wholly her own--and
confessed it--horrible and degrading thought!--to Roger Delane. Not in
words indeed--but in act. No innocent woman would have paid the
blackmail. The dark room in which she lay seemed to be haunted by
Delane's exultant eyes.
And the silence was haunted too by his last words. There arose in her a
reluctant and torturing pity for the wretched man who had been her
husband; a pity, which passed on into a storm of moral anguish. Her whole
past life looked incredibly black to her as she lay there in the
dark--stained with unkindness, and selfishness, and sin.
Which saw her the more truly?--Roger, or Ellesborough?--the man who hated
and cursed her, or the man who adored her?
She was struggling, manoeuvring, fighting, to keep the truth from George
Ellesborough. It was quite uncertain whether she would succeed. Roger's
word was a poor safeguard! But if she did, the truth itself would only
the more certainly pursue and beat her down.
And again, the utter yearning for confession and an unburdened soul came
upon her intolerably. The religious psychologist describes such a crisis
as "conversion," or "conviction of sin," or the "working of grace." And
he knows from long experience that it is the result in the human soul not
so much of a sense of evil, as of a vision of good. Goodness had been
brought near to Rachel in the personality--the tender self-forgetting
trust--of George Ellesborough. It was goodness, not fear--goodness,
unconscious of any threatened wrong--that had pierced her heart. Then a
thought came to her. _Janet!_--Janet whose pure and loving life beside
her made yet another element in the spiritual forces that were pressing
upon her.
She sprang to her feet. She would tell Janet everything--put her poor
secret--her all--in Janet's hands.