He shrugged his shoulders and went on almost brutally:
” You and Gabriel well, it was no grande passion, was it … at least on your side.”
I was so angry that I was unable to speak for a few seconds “Marriages of convenience are as one would expect them to be, convenient,” he continued in what I can only call an insolent tone. ” It was a pity though that Gabriel took his life before the death of his father … from your point of view, of course.”
” I … I do not understand you,” I said.
“I am sure you do. Had he died after Sir Matthew, so much of that which he inherited from his father would have been yours…. Lady Rockwell instead of plain Mrs…. and there would have been other compensations. It must have been a great blow to you, and yet … you are the perfectly composed yet sorrowing widow.”
” I think you are trying to insult me.”
He laughed, but his eyes flashed angrily. ” I looked on him as my brother,” he said. ” There are only five years between us. I could see what you had done to him. He thought you were perfect. He should have enjoyed his illusion for a little longer. He would not have lived very many years.”
“What are you talking about?”
” Do you think I accept his death … just like that? Do you think I believe that he killed himself because of his weak heart? He had known about that for years. Why did he marry and then do this thing? Why?
There has to be a reason. There always has to be a reason. Following so soon after his marriage, it is logical to believe that it had something to do with that event. I could see what he thought of you.
I could imagine the effect disillusion would have on him. “
“What do you mean by disillusion?”
” That you would know better than I. Gabriel was sensitive to a degree. If he discovered that he had been married . not for love … he would think life was no longer worth living. and so …”
” This is monstrous ! You seem to think that he found me in the gutter, that he lifted me out of squalor. You are quite mistaken. I knew nothing of his father’s precious house and title when I married him. He told me none of these things.”
“Why did you marry him? For love? He seized me suddenly by the shoulders and put his face close to mine. ” You were not in love with Gabriel. Were you? Answer me. ” He shook me a little. I felt my fury rising against him, against his arrogance, against his certainty that he understood all.
” How dare you !” I cried. ” Take your hands off me at once!”
He obeyed and laughed again. ” At least I’ve shaken you out of your serenity,” he said. ” No,” he added, ” you were never what I should call in love with Gabriel.”
” It may be,” I answered curtly, ” that your knowledge of such an emotion is slight. People who love themselves so deeply, as you evidently do, are rarely able to understand the affection which some are able to give to others.”
I tamed from him and walked away, my eyes on the ground, wary of any jutting stone which might trip me.
He made no attempt to follow me, for which I was grateful. I was trembling with rage.
So he was suggesting that I had married Gabriel for his money and the title which would eventually go with it; worse still, he believed that Gabriel had discovered this and that it had driven him to take his life. So in his eyes I was not only a fortune-huntress but a murderess.
I left the ruins behind me and hurried towards the house.
Why had I married Gabriel? I kept asking myself. No, it was not love.
I had married him for pity’s sake . and perhaps because I had longed to escape from the gloom of Glen House.
In that moment I wanted nothing so much as to finish with this phase of my life. I wanted to put the Abbey, the Revels and the whole Rockwell family behind me for ever. Simon Redvers had done this to me, but I could not help wondering whether he had whispered his suspicions to the others and that they believed him.
As I entered the house I saw Ruth; she had come from the garden and carried a basket full of red rcsea, which reminded me of those which she had put in our room on our return from the honeymoon, and how pleased Gabriel had been with them. I thought of his pale delicate face flushed with pleasure, and I could not bear to remember Simon Redvers’s hideous insinuation.
” Ruth,” I said on impulse, ” I’ve been thinking about my future. I don’t think I should stay here … indefinitely.”
She inclined her head and looked at the roses instead of me.
” So,” I went on, ” I will go back to my father’s house while I make my plans.”
” You know you always have a home here, if you wish it,” she replied.
“Yes, I know. But here there is this unhappy memory.”
She laid her hand on my arm.
“We shall all have that, but I understand. You came here and almost immediately it happened. It is for you to decide.”
I thought of Simon Redvers’s cynical, eyes and my anger threatened to choke me.
“I have decided,” I said.
“I shall write to my father to-night telling him I am coming. I expect to leave before the end of the week.”
Jemmy Bell was at the station to meet me, and while we drove to Glen House through those narrow lanes, and when I caught a glimpse of our moors, I could almost believe that I had dozed on the journey home from school and had imagined all that had happened to me between then and now.
It was so like the other occasion. Fanny greeted me while Jemmy took the trap round to the stables.
” Still thin as a rake,” was Fanny’s greeting; and her lips were tight and self-congratulatory; I knew she was thinking:
Well, I didn’t hope for much from that marriage.
My father was in the hall, and he embraced me, a little less absentmindedly than usual.
” My poor child,” he said, ” this has been terrible for you.”
Then he put his hands on my shoulders and drew back to look at me.
There was sympathy in his eyes and I felt that for the first time there was a bond between us.
” You’re home now,” he said. ” We’ll look after you.”
“Thank you. Father.”
Fanny cut in with: “Warming-pan’s in your bed. There’s been mist lately.”
I realised that I was receiving an unusually warm welcome. When I went up to my room, I stood at the window looking out to the moor, and was poignantly reminded of Gabriel and Friday. Why had I thought I could forget in Glen House more easily than I could at I slipped into the familiar pattern. There were meals with my father, when we both sought to find a topic for conversation. He did not speak very often of Gabriel, being deter mined, I was sure, not to raise the painful subject. So we were both delighted when those meals were over.
Two weeks after my arrival he went away again and came home melancholy.
I felt I could not endure to live much longer in this house.
I rode and walked and once made my way to the spot where I found Friday and Gabriel, but the memory was now so painful that I decided I would not ride that way again. I must stop thinking of Gabriel and Friday if I were ever to be completely at peace again.
I think it was on that day that I made up my mind to rearrange my life.
I was after all a young widow with some means. I could set up a house, engage a few servants and live a completely different life from that which I had lived with my father or my husband.
I wished that I had some real friend to advise me. If Uncle Dick had been at home I should have been able to confide in him. I had written to him to tell him that I was now a widow, but letters between us would always be inadequate.
I toyed with the idea of taking a sea trip. I might arrange to meet him in some port and tell him all that had happened to me. But even while I was considering this idea a possibility had occurred to me which excited me and made me feel that all the plans which had half formed in my mind would be cast aside if this were indeed true.