“What are you going to do?” he broke forth suddenly one evening, when he found himself temporarily alone with her. “You are going to do something. I see it in your eyes.”
He had been for some time watching her from behind his newspaper, while she, with an unread book upon her lap, had, in fact, been thinking deeply and putting to herself serious questions.
Her answer made him stir rather uncomfortably.
“I am going to write to my father to ask him to come to England.”
So this was what she had been preparing to spring upon him. He laughed insolently.
“To ask him to come here?”
“With your permission.”
“With mine? Does an American father-in-law wait for permission?”
“Is there any practical reason why you should prefer that he should NOT come?”
He left his seat and walked over to her.
“Yes. Your sending for him is a declaration of war.”
“It need not be so. Why should it?”
“In this case I happen to be aware that it is. The choice is your own, I suppose,” with ready bravado, “that you and he are prepared to face the consequences. But is Rosalie, and is your mother?”
“My father is a business man and will know what can be done. He will know what is worth doing,” she answered, without noticing his question. “But,” she added the words slowly, “I have been making up my mind—before I write to him—to say something to you—to ask you a question.”
He made a mock sentimental gesture.
“To ask me to spare my wife, to `remember that she is the mother of my child’?”
She passed over that also.
“To ask you if there is no possible way in which all this unhappiness can be ended decently.”
“The only decent way of ending it would be that there should be no further interference. Let Rosalie supply the decency by showing me the consideration due from a wife to her husband. The place has been put in order. It was not for my benefit, and I have no money to keep it up. Let Rosalie be provided with means to do it.”
As he spoke the words he realised that he had opened a way for embarrassing comment. He expected her to remind him that Rosalie had not come to him without money. But she said nothing about the matter. She never said the things he expected to hear.
“You do not want Rosalie for your wife,” she went on “but you could treat her courteously without loving her. You could allow her the privileges other men’s wives are allowed. You need not separate her from her family. You could allow her father and mother to come to her and leave her free to go to them sometimes. Will you not agree to that? Will you not let her live peaceably in her own simple way? She is very gentle and humble and would ask nothing more.”
“She is a fool!” he exclaimed furiously. “A fool! She will stay where she is and do as I tell her.”
“You knew what she was when you married her. She was simple and girlish and pretended to be nothing she was not. You chose to marry her and take her from the people who loved her. You broke her spirit and her heart. You would have killed her if I had not come in time to prevent it.”
“I will kill her yet if you leave her,” his folly made him say.
“You are talking like a feudal lord holding the power of life and death in his hands,” she said. “Power like that is ancient history. You can hurt no one who has friends—without being punished.”
It was the old story. She filled him with the desire to shake or disturb her at any cost, and he did his utmost. If she was proposing to make terms with him, he would show her whether he would accept them or not. He let her hear all he had said to himself in his worst moments—all that he had argued concerning what she and her people would do, and what his own actions would be—all his intention to make them pay the uttermost farthing in humiliation if he could not frustrate them. His methods would be definite enough. He had not watched his wife and Ffolliott for weeks to no end. He had known what he was dealing with. He had put other people upon the track and they would testify for him. He poured forth unspeakable statements and intimations, going, as usual, further than he had known he should go when he began. Under the spur of excitement his imagination served him well. At last he paused.
“Well,” he put it to her, “what have you to say?”
“I?” with the remote intent curiosity growing in her eyes. “I have nothing to say. I am leaving you to say things.”
“You will, of course, try to deny–-” he insisted.
“No, I shall not. Why should I?”
“You may assume your air of magnificence, but I am dealing with uncomfortable factors.” He stopped in spite of himself, and then burst forth in a new order of rage. “You are trying some confounded experiment on me. What is it?”
She rose from her chair to go out of the room, and stood a moment holding her book half open in her hand.
“Yes. I suppose it might be called an experiment,” was her answer. “Perhaps it was a mistake. I wanted to make quite sure of something.”
“Of what?”
“I did not want to leave anything undone. I did not want to believe that any man could exist who had not one touch of decent feeling to redeem him. It did not seem human.”
White dints showed themselves about his nostrils.
“Well, you have found one,” he cried. “You have a lashing tongue, by God, when you choose to let it go. But I could teach you a good many things, my girl. And before I have done you will have learned most of them.”
But though he threw himself into a chair and laughed aloud as she left him, he knew that his arrogance and bullying were proving poor weapons, though they had done him good service all his life. And he knew, too, that it was mere simple truth that, as a result of the intellectual, ethical vagaries he scathingly derided—she had actually been giving him a sort of chance to retrieve himself, and that if he had been another sort of man he might have taken it.
CHAPTER XLIV
A FOOTSTEP
It was cold enough for fires in halls and bedrooms, and Lady Anstruthers often sat over hers and watched the glowing bed of coals with a fixed thoughtfulness of look. She was so sitting when her sister went to her room to talk to her, and she looked up questioningly when the door closed and Betty came towards her.
“You have come to tell me something,” she said.
A slight shade of anxiousness showed itself in her eyes, and Betty sat down by her and took her hand. She had come because what she knew was that Rosalie must be prepared for any step taken, and the time had arrived when she must not be allowed to remain in ignorance even of things it would be unpleasant to put into words.
“Yes,” she answered. “I want to talk to you about something I have decided to do. I think I must write to father and ask him to come to us.”
Rosalie turned white, but though her lips parted as if she were going to speak, she said nothing.
“Do not be frightened,” Betty said. “I believe it is the only thing to do.”
“I know! I know!”
Betty went on, holding the hand a little closer. “When I came here you were too weak physically to be able to face even the thought of a struggle. I saw that. I was afraid it must come in the end, but I knew that at that time you could not bear it. It would have killed you and might have killed mother, if I had not waited; and until you were stronger, I knew I must wait and reason coolly about you—about everything.”