"I don't hold you responsible for anything. Not even for that."

Her face never changed. She did not take in the meaning of his emphasis.

He continued. "And, if you want your separation, you shall have it.
Though I did hope that you might consider that six years was about enough
of it."

"I did want it. But I do not want it now. When I wrote that letter I had
forgotten my promise."

"You shall have your promise back again if you want it. I shall not hold
you to it, or to anything, if you'd rather not."

"I can never have my promise back--I made it to Edie."

"To Edie?"

"Yes. A short time before she died."

His face brightened.

"What did you promise her?" he said softly.

"That I would never leave you."

"Did she make you promise not to?"

"No. It did not occur to her that I could leave you. She did not think it
possible."

"But _you_ did?"

"I thought it possible--yes."

"Even then. There was no reason then. I had given you no cause."

"I did not know that."

"Do you mean that you suspected me--then?"

"I never accused you, Walter, even in my thoughts."

"You suspected?"

"I didn't know."

"And--afterwards--did you suspect anything?"

"No. I never suspected anything--afterwards."

"I see. You suspected me when you had no cause. And when I gave you cause
you suspected nothing. I must say you are a very extraordinary woman."

"I didn't know," she answered.

"Who told you? Or must I not ask that?"

"I cannot tell you. I would rather not. I was not told much. And there
are some things that I have a right to know."

"Well--"

"Who is this woman?--the girl you've been living with?"

"I've no right to tell you--that. Why do you want to know? It's all
over."

"I must know, Walter. I have a reason."

"Can you give me your reason?"

"Yes. I want to help her."

"You would--really--help her?"

"If I can. It is my duty."

"It isn't in the least your duty."

"And I want to help you. That also is my duty. I want to undo, as far as
possible, the consequences of your sin. We cannot let the girl suffer."

Majendie was moved by her charity. He had not looked for charity from
Anne.

"If you will give me her name, and tell me where to find her, I will see
that she is provided for."

"She is provided for."

"How?"

"I am keeping on the house for her."

Anne's face flushed.

"What house?"

"A farm, out in the country."

"That house is yours? You were living with her there?"

"Yes."

Her face hardened. She was thinking of her dead child, who was to have
gone into the country to get strong.

He was tortured by the same thought. Maggie, his mistress, had grown fat
and rosy in the pure air of Holderness. Peggy had died in Scale.

In her bitterness she turned on him.

"And what guarantee have I that you will not go to her again?"

"My word. Isn't that sufficient?"

"I don't know, Walter. It would have been once. It isn't now. What proof
have I of your honour?"

"My--"

"I beg your pardon. I forgot. A man's honour and a woman's honour are two
very different things."

"They are both things that are usually taken for granted, and not
mentioned."

"I will try to take it for granted. You must forgive my having mentioned
it. There is one thing I must know. Has she--that woman--any children?"

"She has none."

Up till that moment, the examination had been conducted with the coolness
of intense constraint. But for her one burst of feeling, Anne had
sustained her tone of business-like inquiry, her manner of the woman of
committees. Now, as she asked her question, her voice shook with the
beating of her heart. Majendie, as he answered, heard her draw a long,
deep breath of relief.

"And you propose to keep on this house for her?" she said calmly.

"Yes. She has settled in there, and she will be well looked after."

"Who will look after her?"

"The Pearsons. They're people I can trust."

"And, besides the house, I suppose you will give her money?"

"I _must_ make her a small allowance."

"That is a very unwise arrangement. Whatever help is given her had much
better come from me."

"From _you_?"

"From a woman. It will be the best safeguard for the girl."

He saw her drift and smiled.

"Am I to understand that you propose to rescue her?"

"It's my duty--my work."

"Your work?"

"You may not realise it; but that is the work I've been doing for the
last three years. I am doubly responsible for a girl who has suffered
through my husband's fault."

"What do you want to do with her?"

"I want, if possible, to reclaim her."

He smiled again.

"Do you realise what sort of girl she is?"

"I'm afraid, Walter, she is what you have made her."

"And so you want to reclaim her?"

"I do, indeed."

"You couldn't reclaim her."

"She is very young, isn't she?"

"N--no--She's eight--and--twenty."

"I thought she was a young girl. But, if she's as old as that--and bad--"

"Bad? Bad?"

He rose and looked down on her in anger.

"She's good. You don't know what you're talking about. She isn't a lady,
but she's as gentle and as modest as you are yourself. She's sweet, and
kind, and loving. She's the most unworldly and unselfish creature I ever
met. All the time I've known her she never did a selfish thing. She was
absolutely devoted. She'd have stripped herself bare of everything she
possessed if it would have done me any good. Why, the very thing you
blame the poor little soul for, only proves that she hadn't a thought
for herself. It would have been better for her if she'd had. And you talk
of 'reclaiming' a woman like that! You want to turn your preposterous
committee on to her, to decide whether she's good enough to be taken and
shut up in one of your beastly institutions! No. On the whole, I think
she'll be better off if you leave her to me."

"Say at once that you think I'd better leave you to her, since you think
her perfect."

"She _was_ perfect to me. She gave me all she had to give. She couldn't
very well do more."

"You mean she helped you to sin. So, of course, you condone her sin."

"I should be an utter brute if I didn't stand up for her, shouldn't I?"

"Yes." She admitted it. "I suppose you feel that you must defend her. Can
you defend yourself, Walter?"

He was silent.

"I'm not going to remind you of your sin against your wife. _That_ you
would think nothing of. What have you to say for your sin against her?"

"My sin against her was not caring for her. _You_ needn't call me to
account for it."

"I am to believe that you did not care for her?"

"I never cared for her. I took everything from her and gave her nothing,
and I left her like a brute."

"Why did you go to her if you did not care for her?"

"I went to her because I cared for my wife. And I left her for the same
reason. And she knew it."

"Do you really expect me to believe that you left me for another woman,
because you cared for me?"

"For no earthly reason except that."

"You deceived me--you lived in deliberate sin with this woman for three
years--and now you come back to me, because, I suppose, you are tired of
her--and I am to believe that you cared for me!"

"I don't expect you to believe it. It's the fact, all the same. I
wouldn't have left you if I hadn't been hopelessly in love with you. You
mayn't know it, and I don't suppose you'd understand it if you did, but
that was the trouble. It was the trouble all along, ever since I married
you. I know I've been unfaithful to you, but I never loved any one but
you. Consider how we've been living, you and I, for the last six
years--can you say that I put another woman in your place?"

She looked at him with her sad, uncomprehending eyes; her hands made a
hopeless, helpless gesture.

"You know what you have done," she said presently. "And you know that it
was wrong."

"Yes, it was wrong. But the whole thing was wrong. Wrong from the
beginning. How are we going to make it right?"

"I don't know, Walter. We must do our best."

"Yes, but what are we going to do? What are you going to do?"

"I have told you that I am not going to leave you."

"We are to go on, then, as we did before?"

"Yes--as far as possible."

"Then," he said, "we shall still be all wrong. Can't you see it? Can't
you see _now_ that it's all wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

"Our life. Yours and mine. Are you going to begin again like that?"

"Does it rest with me?"

"Yes. It rests with you, I think. You say we must make the best of it.
What is your notion of the best?"

"I don't know, Walter."

"I _must_ know. You say you'll take me back--you'll never leave me. What
are you taking me back to? Not to that old misery? It wasn't only bad for
me, dear. It was bad for both of us."

She sighed, and her sigh shuddered to a sob in her throat. The sound went
to his heart and stirred in it a passion of pity.

"God knows," he said, "I'd live with you on any terms. And I'll keep
straight. You needn't be afraid. Only--See here. There's no reason why
you shouldn't take me back. I wouldn't ask you to if I'd left off caring
for you. But it wasn't there I went wrong. I can't explain about Maggie.
You wouldn't understand. But, if you'd only try to, we might get along.
There's nothing that I won't do for you to make up--"

"You can do nothing. There are things that cannot be made up for."

"I know--I know. But still--we mightn't be so unhappy--perhaps, in
time--And if we had children--"

"Never," she cried sharply, "never!"

He had not stirred in his chair where he sat bowed and dejected. But she
drew back, flinching.

"I see," he said. "Then you do not forgive me."

"If you had come to me, and told me of your temptation--of your
sin--three years ago, I would have forgiven you then. I would have taken
you back. I cannot now. Not willingly, not with the feeling that I ought
to have."

She spoke humbly, gently, as if aware that she was giving him pain. Her
face was averted. He said nothing; and she turned and faced him.

"Of course you can compel me," she said. "You can compel me to anything."

"I have never compelled you, as you know."

"I know. I know you have been good in that way."

"Good? Is that your only notion of goodness?"

"Good to me, Walter. Yes. You were very good. I do not say that I will
not go back to you; but if I do, you must understand plainly, that it
will be for one reason only. Because I desire to save you from yourself.
To save some other woman, perhaps--"

"You can let the other woman take care of herself. As for me, I
appreciate your generosity, but I decline to be saved on those terms.
I'm fastidious about a few things, and that's one of them. What you are
trying to tell me is that you do not care for me."

She lifted her face. "Walter, I have never in all my life deceived you. I
do not care for you. Not in that way."

He smiled. "Well, I'll be content so long as you care for me in any
way--your way. I think your way's a mistake; but I won't insist on that.
I'll do my best to adapt my way to yours, that's all."

Her face was very still. Under their deep lids her eyes brooded, as if
trying to see the truth inside herself.

"No--no," she moaned. "I haven't told you the truth. I believe there
is _no_ way in which I can care for you again. Or--well--I can care
perhaps--I'm caring now--but--"

"I see. You do not love me."

She shook her head. "No. I know what love is, and--I do not love you."

"If you don't love me, of course there's nothing more to be said."

"Yes, there is. There's one thing that I have kept from you."

"Well," he said, "you may as well let me have it. There's no good keeping
things from me."

"I had meant to spare you."

At that he laughed. "Oh, don't spare me."

She still hesitated.

"What is it?"

She spoke low.

"If you had been here--that night--Peggy would not have died."

He drew a quick breath. "What makes you think that?" he said quietly.

"She overstrained her heart with crying. As you know. She was crying for
you. And you were not there. Nothing would make her believe that you were
not dead."

She saw the muscles of his face contract with sudden pain.

He looked at her gravely. The look expressed his large male contempt for
her woman's cruelty; also a certain luminous compassion.

"Why have you told me this?" he said.

"I've told you, because I think the thought of it may restrain you when
nothing else will."

"I see. You mean to say, you believe I killed her?"

Anne closed her eyes.




CHAPTER XXXVI


He did not know whether he believed what she had said, nor whether she
believed it herself, neither could he understand her motive in saying it.

At intervals he was profoundly sorry for her. Pity for her loosened, from
time to time, the grip of his own pain. He told himself that she must
have gone through intolerable days and nights of misery before she could
bring herself to say a thing like that. Her grief excused her. But he
knew that, if he had been in her place, she in his, he the saint and she
the sinner, and that, if he had known her through her sin to be
responsible for the child's death, there was no misery on earth that
could have made him charge her with it.

Further than that he could not understand her. The suddenness and cruelty
of the blow had brutalised his imagination.

He got up and stretched himself, to shake off the oppression that weighed
on him like an unwholesome sleep. As he rose he felt a queer feeling in
his head, a giddiness, a sense of obstruction in his brain. He went into
the dining-room, and poured himself out a small quantity of whiskey,
measuring it with the accuracy of abstemious habit. The dose had become
necessary since his nerves had been unhinged by worry and the shock of
Peggy's death. This time he drank it almost undiluted.

He felt better. The stimulant had jogged something in his brain and
cleared it.

He went back into the study and began to think. He remained thinking for
some time, consecutively, and with great lucidity. He asked himself what
he was to do now, and he saw clearly that he could do nothing. If Anne
had been a passionate woman, hurling her words in a fury of fierce grief,
he would have thought no more of it. If she had been the tender, tearful
sort, dropping words in a weak, helpless misery, he would have thought
no more of it. He could imagine poor little Maggie saying a thing like
that, not knowing what she said. If it had been poor little Maggie he
could have drawn her to him and comforted her, and reasoned with her till
he had made her see the senselessness of her idea. Maggie would have
listened to reason--his reason. Anne never would.

She had been cold and slow, and implacably deliberate. It was not blind
instinct, but illuminated reason that had told her what to say and when
to say it. Nothing he could ever do or say would make her take back her
words. And if she took back her words, her thought would remain
indestructible. She would never give it up; she would never approach him
without it; she would never forget that it was there. It would always
rise up between them, unburied, unappeased.

His brain swam and clouded again. He went again to the dining-room and
drank more whiskey. Kate was in the dining-room and she saw him drinking.
He saw Kate looking at him; but he didn't care. He was past caring for
what anybody might think of him.

His brain was clearer than ever now. He realised Anne's omnipotence to
harm him. He saw the hard, imperishable divinity in her. His wife was a
spiritual woman. He had not always known what that meant. But he knew
now; and now for the first time in his life he judged her. For the first
time in his life his heart rose in a savage revolt against her power.

His head grew hot. The air of the study was stifling. He opened the
window and went out into the cool, dark garden. He paced up and down,
heedless of where he trod, trampling the flowerless plants down into
their black beds. At the end of the path a little circle of white stones
glimmered in the dark. That was Peggy's garden.

An agony of love and grief shook him as he thought of the dead child.

He thought, with his hot brain, of Anne, and his anger flared like hate.
It was through the child that she had always struck him. She was a fool
to refuse to have more children, to sacrifice her boundless opportunities
to strike.

There was a light in the upper window. He thought of Maggie, walking up
and down in the back alley behind the garden, watching the lights of his
house burning to the dawn. The little thing had loved him. She had given
him all she had to give; and he had given her nothing. He had compelled
her to live childless; and he had cast her off. She had been sacrificed
to his passion, and to his wife's coldness.

Up there he could see Anne's large shadow moving on the lighted
window-blind. She was dressing for dinner.

Kate was standing on the step, looking for him. As he came to the study
window he saw Nanna behind her, going out of the room. His servants had
been watching him. Kate was frightened. Her voice fluttered in her throat
as she told him dinner was served.

He sat opposite his wife, with the little oblong table between them.
Twice, sometimes three times a day, as long as they both lived, they
would have to sit like that, separated, hostile, horribly conscious of
each other.

Anne talked about the Gardners, and he stared at her stupidly, with eyes
that were like heavy burning balls under his aching forehead. He ate
little and drank a good deal. Half an hour after dinner he followed her
to the drawing-room, dazed, not knowing clearly where he went.

Anne was seated at her writing-table. The place was strewn with papers.
She was absorbed in the business of her committee, working off five weeks
of correspondence in arrears.

He lay on the sofa and dozed, and she took no notice of him. He left the
room, and she did not hear him go out.

He went to the Hannays. They were out. He went on to the Ransomes and
found them there. He found Canon Wharton there, too, drinking whiskey and
soda.

"Here's Wallie," some one said. Mrs. Hannay (it _was_ Mrs. Hannay) gave a
cry of delight, and made a little rush at him which confused him. Ransome
poured out more whiskey, and gave it to him and to the Canon. The Canon
drank peg for peg with them, while he eyed Majendie austerely. He used to
drink peg for peg with Lawson Hannay, in the days when Hannay drank; now
he drank peg for peg with Majendie, eyeing him austerely.

Then the Hannays came between them. They closed round Majendie and hemmed
him in a corner, and kept him there talking to him. He had no clear idea
what they were saying or what he was saying to them; but their voices
were kind and they soothed him. Dick Ransome brought him more whiskey. He
refused it. He had a sort of idea that he had had enough, rather more, in
fact, than was quite good for him; and ladies were in the room. Ransome
pressed him, and Lawson Hannay said something to Ransome; he couldn't
tell what. He was getting drowsy and disinclined to answer when people
spoke to him. He wished they would let him alone.

Lawson Hannay put his hand on his shoulder, and said, "Come along with
us, Wallie," and he wished Lawson Hannay would let him alone. Mrs. Hannay
came and stooped over him and whispered things in his ear, and he tried
to rouse himself so far as to stare into her face and try to understand
what she was saying.

She was saying, "Wallie, get up--Come with us, Wallie, dear." And she
laid her hand on his arm. He took her hand in his, and pressed it, and
let it drop.

Then Ransome said, "Why can't you let the poor chap alone? Let him stay
if he likes."

That was what he wanted. Ransome knew what he wanted--to be let alone.

He didn't see the Hannays go. The only thing he saw distinctly was the
Canon's large grey face, and the eyes in it fixed unpleasantly on him. He
wished the Canon would let him alone.

He was getting really _too_ sleepy. He would have to rouse himself
presently and go. With a tremendous effort he dragged himself up and
went. Ransome walked with him to the club and left him there.

The club-room was in an hotel opposite the pier. He could get a bedroom
there for the night; and when the night was over he would be able to
think what he would do. He couldn't go back to Prior Street as he was. He
was too sleepy to know very much about it, but he knew that. He knew,
too, that something had happened which might make it impossible for him
to go back at all.

Ransome had told the manager of the hotel to take care of him. Every now
and then the manager came and looked at him; and then the drowsiness
lifted from his brain with a jerk, and he knew that something horrible
had happened. That was why they kept on looking at him.

At last he dragged himself to his room. He rang the bell and ordered
more whiskey. This time he drank, not for lucidity, but for blessed
drunkenness, for kind sleep and pitiful oblivion.

He slept on far into the morning and woke with a headache. At twelve
Hannay and Ransome called for him. It was a fine warm day with a
southerly wind blowing and sails on the river. Ransome's yacht lay off
the pier, with Mrs. Ransome in it. The sails were going up in Ransome's
yacht. Hannay's yacht rocked beside it. Dick took Majendie by the arm.
Dick, outside in the morning light, looked paler and puffier than ever,
but his eyes were kind. He had an idea. Dick's idea was that Majendie
should run up with him and Mrs. Ransome to Scarby for the week-end.
Hannay looked troubled as Dick unfolded his idea.

"I wouldn't go, old man," said he, "with that head of yours."

Dick stared. "Head? Just the thing for his head," said Dick. "It'll do
him all the good in the world."

Hannay took Dick aside. "No, it won't. It won't do him any good at all."

"I say, you know, I don't know what you're driving at, but you might let
the poor chap have a little peace. Come along, Majendie."

Majendie sent a telegram to Prior Street and went.

The wind blew away his headache and put its own strong, violent, gusty
life into him. He felt agreeably excited as he paced the slanting deck.
He stayed there in the wind.

Downstairs in the cabin the Ransomes were quarrelling.

"What on earth," said she, "possessed you to bring him?"

"And why not?"

"Because of Sarah."

"What's she got to do with it?"

"Well, you don't want them to meet again, do you?"

Dick made his face a puffy blank. "Why the devil shouldn't they?" said
he.

"Well, you know the trouble he's had with his wife already about Sarah."

"It wasn't about Sarah. It was another woman altogether!"

"I know that. But she was the beginning of it."

"Let her be the end of it, then. If you're thinking of _him_. The sooner
that wife of his gets a separation the better it'll be for him."

"And you want my sister to be mixed up in _that_?"

Mrs. Ransome began to cry.

"She can't be mixed up in it. He's past caring for Sarah, poor old girl."

"She isn't past caring for him. She isn't past anything," sobbed Mrs.
Ransome.

"Don't be a fool, Topsy. There isn't any harm in poor old Toodles.
Majendie's a jolly sight safer with Toodles, I can tell you, than he is
with that wife of his."

"Has she come home, then?"

"She came yesterday afternoon. You saw what he was like last night. If
I'd left him to himself this morning he'd have drunk himself into a fit.
When a sober--a fantastically sober man does that--"

"What does it mean?"

"It generally means that he's in a pretty bad way. And," added Dick
pensively, "they call poor Toodles a dangerous woman."

All night the yacht lay in Scarby harbour.




CHAPTER XXXVII


It was nine o'clock on Sunday evening. Majendie was in Scarby, in the
hotel on the little grey parade, where he and Anne had stayed on their
honeymoon.

Lady Cayley was with him. She was with him in the sitting-room which had
been his and Anne's. They were by themselves. The Ransomes were dining
with friends in another quarter of the town. He had accepted Sarah's
invitation to dine with her alone.

The Ransomes had tried to drag him away, and he had refused to go with
them. He had very nearly quarrelled with the Ransomes. They had been
irritating him all day, till he had been atrociously rude to them. He had
told Ransome to go to a place where, as Ransome had remarked, he could
hardly have taken Mrs. Ransome. Then he had explained gently that he had
had enough knocking about for one day, that his head ached abominably,
and that he wished they would leave him alone. It was all he wanted. Then
they had left him alone, with Sarah. He was glad to be with her. She was
the only person who seemed to understand that all he wanted was to be let
alone.

She had been with him all day. She had sat beside him on the deck of the
yacht as they cruised up and down the coast till sunset. Afterwards, when
the Ransomes' friends had trooped in, one after another, and filled the
sitting-room with insufferable sounds, she had taken him into a quiet
corner and kept him there. He had felt grateful to her for that.

She had been angelic to him during dinner. She had let him eat as little
and drink as much as he pleased. And she had hardly spoken to him. She
had wrapped him in a heavenly silence. Only from time to time, out of the
divine silence, her woman's voice had dropped between them, soothing and
pleasantly indistinct. He had been drinking hard all day. He had been
excited, intolerably excited; and she soothed him. He was aware of her
chiefly as a large, benignant presence, maternal and protecting.

His brain felt brittle, but extraordinarily clear, luminous, transparent,
the delicate centre of monstrous and destructive energies. It burned
behind his eyeballs like a fire. His eyes were hot with it, the pupils
strained, distended, gorged with light.

This monstrous brain of his originated nothing, but ideas presented to
it became monstrous, too. And their immensity roused no sense of the
incredible.

The table had been cleared of everything but coffee-cups, glasses, and
wine. They still sat facing each other. Sarah had her arms on the table,
propping her chin up with her clenched hands. Her head was tilted back
slightly, in a way that was familiar to him; so that she looked at him
from under the worn and wrinkled white lids of her eyes. And as she
looked at him she smiled slightly; and the smile was familiar, too.

And he sat opposite her, with his chin sunk on his breast. His bright,
dark, distended eyes seemed to strain upwards towards her, under the
weight of his flushed forehead.

"Well, Wallie," she said, "I didn't get married, you see, after all."

"Married--married? Why didn't you?"

"I never meant to. I only wanted you to think it."

"Why? Why did you want me to think it?"

He was no longer disinclined to talk. Though his brain lacked
spontaneity, it responded appropriately to suggestion.

"I didn't want you to think something else."

"What? What should I think?"

His voice was thick and rapid, his eyes burned.

"That you'd made a mess of my life, my dear."

"When did I make a mess of your life?"

"Never mind when. I _might_ have married, only I didn't. That's the
difference between me and you."

"And that's how I made a mess of your life, is it? I haven't made a
furious success of my own, have I?"

"I wouldn't have brought it up against you, if you had. The awful thing
was to stand by, and see you make a sinful muddle of it"

"A sinful muddle?"

"Yes. That's what it's been. A sinful muddle."

"Which is worse, d'you think, a sinful muddle? or a muddling sin?"

"Oh, don't ask me, my dear. I can't see any difference."

"My God--nor I!"

"There's no good talking. You're so obstinate, Wallie, that I believe, if
you could live your life over again, you'd do just the same."

"I would, probably. Just the same."

"There's nothing you'd alter?"

"Nothing. Except one thing."

"What thing?"

"Never mind what."

"I don't mind, if the one thing wasn't _me_--was it?"

He did not answer.

"Was it?" she insisted, turning the full blue blaze of her eyes on him.

He started. "Of course it wasn't. You don't suppose I'd have said so if
it had been, do you?"

"A-ah! So, if you could live your life over again, you wouldn't turn me
out of it? I didn't take up much room, did I? Only two years."

"Two years?"

"That was all. And you'd let me stay in for my two poor little years.
Well, that's something. It's a great deal. It's more than some women
get."

"Yes. More than some women get."

"Poor Wallie. I'm afraid you wouldn't live your life again."

"No. I wouldn't."

"I would. I'd live mine, horrors and all. Just for those two little
years. I say, if we'd keep each other in for those two years, we needn't
turn each other out now, need we?"

"Oh no, oh no."

His brain followed her lead, originating nothing.

"See here," she said, "if I come in--"

"Yes, yes," he said vaguely.

He was bending forward now, with his hands clasped on the table. She
stretched out her beautiful white arms and covered his hands with hers,
and held them. Her eyes were full-orbed, luminous, and tender. They held
him, too.

"I come in on my own terms, this time, not yours."

"Oh, of course."

"I mean I can't come in on the same terms as before. All that was over
nine years ago, when you married. You and I are older. We have had
experience. We've suffered horribly. We know."

"What do we know?"

She let go his hands.

"At least we know the limits--the lines we must draw. Fifteen years ago
we didn't know anything, either of us. We were innocents. You were an
innocent when you left me, when you married."

"When I married?"

"Yes, when you married. You were a blessed innocent, or you couldn't have
done it. You married a good woman."

"I know."

"So do I. Well, I've given one or two men a pretty bad time, but you may
write it on my tombstone that I never hurt another woman."

"Of course you haven't."

"And I'm not going to hurt your wife, remember."

"I'm stupid, I don't think I understand."

"Can't you understand that I'm not going to make trouble between you and
her?"

"Me? And her?"

"You and her. You've come back to me as my friend. We'll be better
friends if you understand that, whatever I let you do, dear, I'm not
going to let you make love to me."

She drew herself back and faced him with her resolution.

She knew the man with whom she had to deal. His soul must be off its
guard before she could have any power over his body. In presenting
herself as unattainable she would make herself desired. She would bring
him back.

She knew what fires he had passed through on his way to her. She saw that
she could not bring him back by playing poor, tender Maggie's part. She
could not move him by appearing as the woman she once was, by falling at
his feet as she had once fallen. This time, it was he who must fall at
hers.

Anne Majendie had held her empire, and had made herself for ever
desirable, by six years of systematic torturings and deceptions and
denials, by all the infidelities of the saint in love with her own
sanctity. The woman who was to bring him back now would have to borrow
for a moment a little of Anne Majendie's spiritual splendour. She saw by
his flaming face that she had suggested the thing she had forbidden.

"You think," said she, "there isn't any danger? I don't say there is. But
if there was, you'd never see it. You'd never think of it. You'd be up to
your neck in it before you knew where you were."

He moved impatiently. "At any rate I know where I am now."

"And I," said she, in response to his movement, "mean that you shall stay
there." She paused. "I know what you're thinking. You'd like to know what
right I have to say these things to you."

"Well--I'm awfully stupid--"

"I earned the right fifteen years ago. When a woman gives a man all she
has to give, and gets nothing, there are very few things she hasn't a
right to say to him."

"I've no doubt you earned your right."

"I'm not reproaching you, dear. I'm simply justifying the plainness of my
speech."

He stared at her, but he did not answer.

"Don't think me hard," said she. "I'm saying these things because I care
for you. Because--" She rose, and flung her arms out with a passionate
gesture towards him. "Oh, my dear--my heart aches for you so that I can't
bear it."

She came over to where he sat staring at her, staring half stupefied,
half inflamed. She stood beside him, and passed her hand lightly over his
hair.

"I only want to help you."

"You can't help me."

"I know I can't. I can only say hard things to you."

She stooped, and her lips swept his hair. For a moment love gave her back
her beauty and the enchantment of her youth; it illuminated the house of
flesh it dwelt in and inspired. And yet she could not reach him. His soul
was on its guard.

"You've come back," she whispered. "You've come back. But you never came
till you were driven. That's how I thought you'd come. When you were
driven. When there was nobody but me."

He heard her speaking, but her words had no significance that pierced his
thick and swift sensations.

"What have you done that you should have to pay so?"

"What have I done?"

"Or I?" she said.

He did not hear her. There was another sound in his ears.

Her voice ceased. Her eyes only called to him. He pushed back his chair
and laid his arms on the table, and bowed his head upon them, hiding his
face from her. She knelt down beside him. Her voice was like a warm wind
in his ears. He groaned. She drew a short sharp breath, and pressed her
shoulder to his shoulder, and her face to his hidden face.

At her touch he rose to his feet, violently sobered, loathing himself and
her. He felt his blood leap like a hot fountain to his brain. When she
clung he raged, and pushed her from him, not knowing what he did,
thrusting his hands out, cruelly, against her breasts, so that he wrung
from her a cry of pain and anger.

But when he would have gone from her his feet were loaded; they were
heavy weights binding him to the floor. He had a sensation of intolerable
sickness; then a pain beat like a hammer on one side of his head. He
staggered, and fell, headlong, at her feet.




CHAPTER XXXVIII


Anne, left alone at her writing-table, had worked on far into Friday
night. The trouble in her was appeased by the answering of letters, the
sorting of papers, the bringing of order into confusion. She had always
had great practical ability; she had proved herself a good organiser,
expert in the business of societies and committees.

In her preoccupation she had not noticed that her husband had left the
house, and that he did not return to it.

In the morning, as she left her room, the old nurse came to her with a
grave face, and took her into Majendie's room. Nanna pointed out to her
that his bed had not been slept in. Anne's heart sank. Later on, the
telegram he sent explained his absence. She supposed that he had slept
at the Ransomes' or the Hannays', and she thought no more of it. The
business of the day again absorbed her.

In the afternoon Canon Wharton called on her. It was the recognised visit
of condolence, delayed till her return. In his manner with Mrs. Majendie
there was no sign of the adroit little man of the world who had drunk
whiskey with Mrs. Majendie's husband the night before. His manner was
reticent, reverential, not obtrusively tender. He abstained from all the
commonplaces of consolation. He did not speak of the dead child; but
reminded her of the greater maternal work that God had called upon her
to do, and told her that the children of many mothers would rise up and
call her blessed. He bade her believe that her life, which seemed to her
ended, had in reality only just begun. He said that, if great natures
were reserved for great sorrows, great afflictions, they were also
dedicated to great uses. Uses to which their sorrows were the unique and
perfect training.

He left her strengthened, uplifted, and consoled.

On Sunday morning she attended the service at All Souls. In the afternoon
she walked to the great flat cemetery of Scale, where Edith's and Peggy's
graves lay side by side. In the evening she went again to All Souls.

The church services were now the only link left between her soul and
God. She clung desperately to them, trying to recapture through these
consecrated public methods the peace that should have been her most
private personal possession.

For, all the time, now, she was depressed by a sense of separation from
the Unseen. She struggled for communion; she prostrated herself in
surrender, and was flung back upon herself, an outcast from the spiritual
world. She was alone in that alien place of earth where everything had
been taken from her. She almost rebelled against the cruelty of the
heavenly hand, that, having smitten her, withheld its healing. She had
still faith, but she had no joy nor comfort in her faith. Therefore she
occupied herself incessantly with works; appeasing, putting off the hours
that waited for her as their prey.

It was at night that her desolation found her most helpless. For then she
thought of her dead child and of the husband whom she regarded as worse
than dead.

She had one terrible consolation. She had once doubted the justice of her
attitude to him. Now she was sure. Her justification was complete.

She was sitting at work again early on Monday morning, in the
drawing-room that overlooked the street.

About ten o'clock she heard a cab drive up to the door.

She thought it was Majendie come back again, and she was surprised when
Kate came to her and told her that it was Mr. Hannay, and that he wished
to speak to her at once.

Hannay was downstairs, in the study; standing with his back to the
fireplace. He did not come forward to meet her. His rosy, sensual face
was curiously set. As she approached him, his loose lips moved and closed
again in a firm fold.

He pressed her hand without speaking. His heaviness and immobility
alarmed her.

"What is it?" she asked.

Her heart was like a wild whirlpool that sucked back her voice and
suffocated it.

"I've come with very bad news, Mrs. Majendie."

"Tell me," she whispered.

"Walter is ill--very dangerously ill."

"He is dead."

The words seemed to come from her without grief, without any feeling. She
felt nothing but a dull, dragging pain under her left breast, as if the
doors of her heart were closed and its chambers full to bursting.

"No. He is not dead."

Her heart beat again.

"He's dying, then."

"They don't know."

"Where is he?"

"At Scarby."

"Scarby? How much time have I?"

"There's a train at ten-twenty. Can you be ready in five--seven minutes?"

"Yes."

She rang the bell.

"Tell Kate where to send my things," she said as she left the room. Her
mind took possession of her, so that she did not waste a word of her
lips, or a single motion of her feet. She came back in five minutes,
ready to start.

"What is it?" she said as they drove to the station.

"Hæmorrhage of the brain."

"The brain?"

"Apoplexy."

"Is he unconscious?"

"Yes."

She closed her eyes.

"He will not know me," she said.

Hannay was silent. She lay back and kept her eyes closed.

A van blocked the narrow street that led to the East Station. The driver
reined in his horse. She opened her eyes in terror.

"We shall miss the train--if we stop."

"No, no, we've plenty of time."

They waited.

"Oh, tell him to drive round the other way."

"We shall miss the train if we do _that_."

"Well, make that man in front move on. Make him turn--up there."

The van turned into a side street, and they drove on.

The Scarby train was drawn up along the platform. They had five minutes
before it started; but she hurried into the nearest compartment. They had
it to themselves.

The train moved on. It was a two hours' journey to Scarby.

A strong wind blew through the open window and she shivered. She had
brought no warm wrap with her. Hannay laid his overcoat over her knees
and about her body. His large hands moved gently, wrapping it close.
She thanked him and tried to smile. And when he saw her smile, Hannay was
sorry for the things he had thought and said of her. His voice when he
spoke to her vibrated tenderly. She resigned herself to his hands. Grief
made her passive now.

Hannay sank back in the far corner and left her to her grief. He covered
his eyes with his hands that he might not see her. Poor Hannay hoped
that, if he removed his painful presence, she would allow herself the
relief of tears.

But no tears fell from under her closed eyelids. Her soul was withdrawn
behind them into the darkness where the body's pang ceased, and there was
help. She started when the train stopped at Scarby Station.

As they stopped at the hotel there came upon her that reminiscence which
is foreknowledge and the sense of destiny.

A woman was coming down the staircase as they entered. She did not see
her at first. She would not have seen her at all if Hannay had not taken
her arm and drawn her aside into the shelter of a doorway. Then, as the
woman passed out, she saw that it was Lady Cayley.

She looked helplessly at Hannay. Her eyes said, "Where is he?" She
wondered where, in what room, she should find her husband.

She found him upstairs in the room that had been their bridal chamber. He
lay on their bridal bed, motionless and senseless. There was a deep flush
on one side of his face, one corner of his mouth was slightly drawn, and
one eyelid drooped. He was paralysed down his left side.

His lips moved mechanically as he breathed, and his breath came with a
deep grating sound. His left arm was stretched outside, upon the blanket.
A nurse stood at the head of the bed. She moved as Anne entered and gave
place to her. Anne put out her hand and touched his arm, caressing it.

The nurse said, "There has been no change." She lifted his arm by the
wrist and laid it in his wife's hand that she might see that he was
paralysed.

And Anne sat still by the bedside, staring at her husband's face, and
holding his heavy arm in her hand, as if she could thus help him to bear
the weight of it.

Hannay gave one look at her as she sat there. He said something to the
nurse and went out of the room. The woman followed him.

After they went Anne bowed her head and laid it on the pillow beside her
husband's, with her cheek against his cheek. She stayed so for a moment.
Then she lifted her head and looked about her. Her eyes took note of
trifles. She saw that the blankets were drawn straight over his body, as
if over the body of a dead man. The pillow-cases and the end of the
sheet, which was turned down over the blankets, were clean and
creaseless.

He could not move. He was paralysed. They had not told her that.

She saw that he wore a clean white nightshirt of coarse cotton. It must
have been lent by one of the people of the hotel. His illness must have
come upon him last night, when he was still up and dressed. They must
have carried him in here, and laid him in the clean bed. Everything about
him was very white and clean. She was glad.

She sat there till the nurse came back again. She had to move away from
him then. It hurt her to see the woman bending over his bed, looking at
him, to see, her hands touching him.

A bell rang somewhere in the hotel. Hannay came in and told her that
there was luncheon in the sitting-room. She shook her head. He put his
hand on her shoulder and spoke to her as if she had been a child. She
must eat, he said; she would be no good if she did not eat. She got up
and followed him. She ate and drank whatever he gave her. Then she went
back to her husband, and watched beside him while the nurse went to her
meal. The terrible thing was that she could do nothing for him. She could
only wait and watch. The nurse came back in half an hour, and they sat
there together, all the afternoon, one on each side of the bed, waiting
and watching.

Towards evening the doctor, who had come at midnight and in the morning,
came again. He looked at Anne keenly and kindly, and his manner seemed
to her to say that there was no hope. He made experiments. He brought
a lighted candle and held it to the patient's eyes, and said that the
pupils were still contracted. The nurse said nothing. She looked at Anne
and she looked at the doctor, and when he went away, she made a sign to
Anne to keep back while she followed him. Anne heard them talking
together in low voices outside the door, and her heart ached with fear
of what he would say to her presently.

He sent for her, and she came to him in the sitting-room. He said, "There
is no change." Her brain reeled and righted itself. She had thought he
was going to say "There is no hope."

"Will he get better?" she said.

"I cannot tell you."

The doctor seated himself and prepared to deal long and leisurely with
the case.

"It's impossible to say. He _may_ get better. He may even get well. But
I should do wrong if I let you hope too much for that."

"You can give _no_ hope?" she said, thinking that she uttered his real
thought.

"I don't say that. I only say that the chances are not--exclusively--in
favour of recovery."

"The chances?"

"Yes. The chances." The doctor looked at her, considering whether she
were a woman who could bear the truth. Her eyes assured him that she
could. "I don't say he won't recover. It's this way," said he. "There's
a clot somewhere on the brain. If it absorbs completely he may get
well--perfectly well."

"And if it does not absorb?"

"He may remain as he is, paralysed down the left side. The paralysis may
be only partial. He may recover the use of one limb and not the other.
But he will be paralysed. Partially or completely."

She pictured it.

"Ah--but," she said, laying hold on hope again, "he will not die?"

"Well--there may be further lesions--in which case--"

"He will die?"

"He may die. He may die any moment."

She accepted it, abandoning hope.

"Will there be any return of consciousness? Will he know me?"

"I'm afraid not. If consciousness returns we may begin to hope. As it
is, I don't want you to make up your mind to the worst. There are two
things in his favour. He has evidently a sound constitution. And he has
lived--up till now--Mr. Hannay tells me, a rather unusually temperate
life. That is so?"

"Yes. He was most abstemious. Always--always. Why?"

The doctor recalled his eyes from their examination of Mrs. Majendie's
face. It was evident that there were some truths which she could not
bear.

"My dear Mrs. Majendie, there is no _why_, of course. That is in his
favour. There seems to have been nothing in his previous history which
would predispose to the attack."

"Would a shock--predispose him?"

"A shock?"

"Any very strong emotion--"

"It might. Certainly. If it was recent. Mr. Hannay told me that he--that
you--had had a sudden bereavement. How long ago was that?"

"A month--nearly five weeks."

"Ah--so long ago as that? No, I think it would hardly be likely. If there
had been any recent violent emotion--"

"It would account for it?"

"Yes, yes, it might account for it."

"Thank you."

He was touched by her look of agony. "If there is anything else I can--"

"No. Thank you very much. That is all I wanted to know."

She went back into the sick-room. She stayed there all evening, and they
brought her food to her there. She stayed, watching for the sign of
consciousness that would give hope. But there was no sign.

The nurse went to bed at nine o'clock. Anne had insisted on sitting up
that night. Hannay slept in the next room, on a sofa, within call.

When they had left her alone with her husband, she knelt down beside his
bedside and prayed. And as she knelt, with her bowed head near to that
body sleeping its strange and terrible sleep, she remembered nothing but
that she had once loved him; she was certain of nothing but that she
loved him still. His body was once more dear and sacred to her as in her
bridal hour. She did not ask herself whether it were paying the penalty
of its sin; her compassion had purged him of his sin. She had no memory
for the past. It seemed to her that all her life and all her suffering
were crowded into this one hour while she prayed that his soul might come
back and speak to her, and that his body might not die. The hour trampled
under it that other hour when she had knelt by the loathed bridal bed,
wrestling for her own spiritual life. She had no life of her own to pray
for now. She prayed only that he might live.

And though she knew not whether her prayer were answered she knew that it
was heard.




CHAPTER XXXIX


It was the evening of the third day. There was no change in Majendie.

Dr. Gardner had been sent for. He had come and gone. He had confirmed the
Scarby doctor's opinion, with a private leaning to the side of hope.
Hannay, who had waited to hear his verdict, was going back to Scale
early the next morning. Mrs. Majendie had been in her husband's room all
day, and he had seen little of her.

He was sitting alone by the fire after dinner, trying to read a paper,
when she came in. Her approach was so gentle that he was unaware of it
till she stood beside him. He started to his feet, mumbling an apology
for his bewilderment. He pulled up an arm-chair to the fire for her,
wandered uneasily about the room for a minute or two, and would have left
it, had she not called him back to her.

"Don't go, Mr. Hannay. I want to speak to you."

He turned, with an air of frustrated evasion, and remained, a supremely
uncomfortable presence.

"Have you time?" she asked.

"Plenty. All my time is at your disposal."

"You have been very kind--"

"My dear Mrs. Majendie--"

"I want you to be kinder still. I want you to tell me the truth."

"The truth--" Hannay tried to tighten his loose face into an expression
of judicial reserve.

"Yes, the truth. There's no kindness in keeping things from me."

"My dear Mrs. Majendie, I'm keeping nothing from you, I assure you. The
doctors have told me no more than they have told you."

"I know. It's not that."

"What is it that's troubling you?"

"Did you see Walter before he came here?"

"Yes."

"Did you see him on Friday night?"

"Yes."

"Was he perfectly well then?"

"Er--yes--he was well. Quite well."

Anne turned her sorrowful eyes upon him.

"No. There was something wrong. What was it?"