In about a quarter of an hour after reading that letter, Algernon called
to the servants to know if their mistress had come back. He did not ring
as usual, but went to the door of the kitchen and spoke to both the
women, saying that he was uneasy at Mrs. Errington's absence, and did
not like to go to the office without seeing her. He said two or three
times, how strange it was that his wife should have wandered out in that
way; and plainly showed considerable anxiety about her. Both the women
remarked how pale and upset their master looked. "Oh, it's enough to
wear out anybody the way she goes on," said Lydia. "Poor young man! A
nice way to welcome him home!"
"Ah," returned Polly, the cook, shaking her head, "I'm afraid there's
going to be awful trouble with missus, poor thing. _I_ believe she's
half out of her mind with jealousy. Just think how she's been going on
about Miss Maxfield. Why 'tis all over the place. And they say old Max
is going to law against her, or something. But I can't but pity her,
poor thing."
"Oh! they say worse of her than being out of her mind with jealousy,"
returned Lydia. "Don't you know what Mrs. Ravell's housemaid told her
young man at the grocer's?" Et cetera, et cetera.
The discussion was checked in full career by their master returning to
say that he should not go to the office until he had seen Mrs.
Errington, and that he was then going to Whit Meadow to look for her. He
went out past the kitchen and through the garden at the back of the
house.
He looked about him when he got to the garden gate. Nothing to be seen
but damp green meadow, leaden sky, and leaden river. Where was Castalia?
A thought shot into his mind, swift and keen as an arrow--had she thrown
herself into the Whit? And, if she had, what a load of his cares would
be drowned with her! He walked a few paces towards the town, then turned
and looked in the opposite direction. For as far as he could see, there
was not a human being on the meadow-path. His eyes were very good and he
used them eagerly, scanning all the space of Whit Meadow within their
range of vision. At length he caught sight of something moving among a
clump of low bushes--blackberry bushes and dog-roses, a tangle of
leafless spikes now, although in the summer they would be fresh and
fragrant, and the holiday haunt of little merry children--which grew on
a sloping part of the bank between him and the Whit. He walked straight
towards it, and as he drew nearer, became satisfied that the moving
figure was that of his wife. He recognised a dark tartan shawl which she
wore. It was not bright enough to be visible at a long distance; but as
he advanced he became sure that he knew it. In a few minutes the husband
and wife stood face to face.
"This is a nice reception to give me," said Algernon, in a hard, cold
voice, after they had looked at each other for a second, and Castalia
had remained silent and still. In truth, she was physically unable to
speak to him in that first moment of meeting. Her heart throbbed so that
every beat of it seemed like an angry blow threatening her life.
"Why do you wander out alone in this way? Why do you conduct yourself
like a mad woman? Though, indeed, perhaps you are not so wrong there;
madness might excuse your conduct. Nothing else can."
"I couldn't stay in that house. I should have died there. Everything in
every room reminded me of you."
She answered so faintly that he had to strain his ear to hear her, and
her colourless lips trembled as the lips tremble of a person trying to
keep back tears. But her eyes were quite dry.
Algernon was pale, with the peculiar ghastly pallor of a fresh ruddy
complexion. His blue eyes had a glitter in them like ice, not fire; and
there was a set, sarcastic, bitter smile on his mouth.
"Look here, Castalia; we had better understand one another at once. I
shall begin by telling you what I have resolved upon, and what I have
done, and you will then have to obey me _implicitly_. There must be no
sort of discussion or hesitation. Come back to the house with me at
once."
She shook her head quickly. "No! no! Tell me here--out here by
ourselves, where no one can hear us. I cannot bear to go into that house
yet."
"Pshaw! What intolerable fooling! Well, here be it. I have no time to
waste. I have seen your uncle. Don't interrupt me! He has promised to
get us out of this cursed place, and to find a post for me abroad as
consul. I had to exercise a good deal of persistence and ability to
bring him to that point, but to that point I have brought him. We must
keep him to it, and be active. My lady will move heaven and earth--or
t'other place and earth, which is more in her line--to thwart us. Now,
when it is necessary to keep things here as smooth as possible, to
arouse no suspicion that we may be off at a moment's notice, to hold out
hopes of everything being settled by Lord Seely's help, what do I find?
I find that you have gone to a man who is a creditor of mine, who is not
over fond of me to begin with, and have grossly and outrageously
insulted him and his daughter! Just as if you had ingeniously cast about
for the most effectual means of doing me a mischief. I found this letter
on the table. He threatens to ruin me, and he can do it. If my name is
posted, my bills protested, and a public hullabaloo made about them and
other matters, your uncle's influence will hardly suffice to get me the
berth I want in the face of the opposition newspapers' bellowing on the
subject. Your uncle is but small beer in London at best. But that much
he might have managed, if you hadn't behaved in this maniacal way."
"And how have _you_ behaved? Oh, Ancram, Ancram, I would not have
believed--I _could_ not----" She burst into tears, and sank down on the
damp grass, covering her face with her hands, and shaking with sobs.
"Listen! Castalia! Do you hear me?" said her husband, shaking her
lightly by the arm.
She did not answer, but continued to cry convulsively, rocking herself
to and fro.
Algernon stood looking down upon her with folded arms. "Upon my soul!"
he said, after a minute, and with a contemptuous little nod of the head,
which expressed an unbounded sense of the hopeless imbecility of the
woman at his feet, and of his own long-suffering tolerance towards her,
"Upon my life and soul, Castalia, I have never even heard of anyone so
outrageously unreasonable as you are. Your jealousy--we may as well
speak plainly--your jealousy has passed the bounds of sanity. But, as I
told you, I am not going to argue with you. I am going to give
directions for your guidance, since it is quite clear you are unable to
guide yourself. In the first place----for God's sake stop that noise!"
he cried, a sudden fierce irritation piercing through his
self-restraint. "In the first place, you must make a full, free, and
humble apology to Rhoda Maxfield!"
Castalia started to her feet and confronted him. "Never!" she said. "I
will never do it!"
"I told you I was not going to argue with you. I am giving you your
orders. A full, free, and humble--very humble--apology to Rhoda Maxfield
is our one chance of softening her father. And if you have any sense or
conscience left, you must know that Rhoda richly deserves every apology
you can make her."
"You think so, do you?"
"Yes; I think so. She is a thoroughly good and charming girl. The only
crime she has ever committed against you is being young and pretty. And
if you quarrel with every woman who is so, you will find the battle a
rather unequal one." He could not resist the sneer. He detested Castalia
at that moment. Her whole nature, her violence, her passionate jealousy,
her no less passionate love, her piteous grief, her demands on some
sentiment in himself, which he knew to be non-existent; every turn of
her body, every tone of her voice, were at that moment intensely
repulsive to him.
The poor thing was stung into such pain by his taunt that she scarcely
knew what she said or what she did.
"Oh, I know," she cried, "that you care more for her than for me! A
pink-and-white face, that's all you value! More than wife,
or--or--anything in the world. More than the honour of a gentleman.
She's a devil; a sly, sleek little devil! She has got your love away
from me. She has made you tell lies, and be cruel to me. But I'll expose
her to all the world."
"What, in the name of all that's incomprehensible, has put this craze
into your head against Rhoda Maxfield? It's the wildest thing!"
"Oh, Ancram! you can't deceive me any longer. I know--I have seen. She
came on the sly to see you at the office. You used to go to her when you
told me you had to be busy at the office. I watched you, I followed you
all down Whitford High Street one night, and found out that you were
cheating me."
"Ha! And you also opened my desk at the office, and took out letters and
papers! Do you know what people are called who do such things?" said
Algernon, now in a white heat of anger.
She drew back and looked at him. "Yes," she said, "I know."
"Have you no shame, then? No common sense? You attack a young lady--yes,
a lady! A far better lady than you are!--of whom you take it into your
head to be jealous, merely because she is pretty and admired by
everybody. By me amongst the everybodies. Why not? I didn't lose my
eyesight when I married you. You talk about my not loving you----! Do
you think you go the way to make me do anything but detest the sight of
you? You disgrace me in the town. You disgrace me before my clerk in the
office. You and your relations persecuted me into marrying you, and now
you haven't even the decency to behave like a rational being, but make
yourself a laughing-stock, and me a butt for contemptuous pity in having
tied myself to such a woman. One would have thought you would try to
make some amends for the troubles I have been plunged into by my
marriage."
She put her hands up one to each side of her head, and held them there
tightly pressed. "Ancram," she said, "_do_ you detest the sight of me?"
"You've tried your best to make me."
"Have you no spark of kindness or affection for me in your heart--not
one?"
"Come, Castalia, let us have done with this! I thoroughly dislike and
object to 'scenes' of any kind. You have a taste for them,
unfortunately. What you have to do now is to do as I bid you, and try to
make your peace by begging Rhoda's pardon, and so trying to undo a
little of the mischief your insane temper has caused."
"Ancram, say one kind word to me!"
"Good God, Castalia! How can you be so exasperatingly childish?"
"One word! Say you love me a little still! Say you did love me when you
married me! Don't let me believe that I have been a miserable dupe all
along."
She no longer refused point-blank to obey him. She was bending into her
old attitude of submission to his wishes. His ascendancy over her was
paramount still. But she had made herself thoroughly obnoxious to him,
and must be punished. Algernon's resentments were neither quick nor
numerous, but they were lasting. His distaste for certain temperaments
was profound. Castalia's intensity of emotion, and her ungoverned way of
showing it, roused a sense of antagonism in him, which came nearer to
passion than anything he had ever felt. With the sure instinct of
cruelty, he confronted her wild, eager, supplicating face with a hard,
cold, sarcastic smile, and a slight shrug. A blow from his hand would
have been tender by comparison. Then he pulled out his watch and said,
"How long do you intend this performance to last?" in the quietest voice
in the world. And all the while he was in a white heat of anger, as I
have said.
"Oh, Ancram! Oh, Ancram!" she cried. Then with a sudden change of tone,
she said, "Will you promise me one thing? Will you swear never to see
Rhoda Maxfield again? If you will do that, I will--I will--try to
forgive you."
"To _forgive_ me! Then you really _have_ lost your senses?"
"No; I wish I had! I would rather be mad than know what I know. But
think, Ancram, think well before you refuse me! This one thing is all I
ask. Never see or speak to her, or write to her again--not even when I
am dead! Swear it. I think if you swore it you would keep to it,
wouldn't you? This one poor thing for all I have borne, for all I am
willing to bear. I'll take that as a proof that you don't love her best.
I'll be content with that. I'll give up everything else in the whole
world. Only do this one thing for me, Ancram; I beg it on my knees!"
She did, indeed, fall on her knees as she spoke, and stretched out her
clasped hands towards him. For one second their eyes met, then he turned
his way and said, as quietly as ever, "I am going to Mr. and Miss
Maxfield at once, with the most effectual apology which could be offered
to them--namely, that you are a maniac, and in any case not responsible
for your actions, nor to be treated like a rational being."
She staggered up to her feet. "Very well," she gasped out, "then I shall
not spare you--nor her. I have had a letter from my uncle. He has told
me what you accused me of. I went to the office. That man there told me
the same. The notes that I paid away to Ravell--you 'wondered'--_you_
were 'uneasy!' Why, you gave me them yourself. Oh, Ancram, how _could_
you have the heart? I wish I was dead!"
"I wish to God you were!"
She was standing close to the edge of the steep, slippery bank; and when
he said these words she staggered and, with a little heart-broken moan,
put out her hand to clutch at him, groping like a blind person. He shook
off her grasp with a sudden rough movement, and the next instant she was
deep in the dark ice-cold water.