"Well," he resumed, "and what was your farmer like?" Then, suddenly--lifting his eyes--"Did he make love to you?"
She coloured hotly, and threw back her head.
"And if he did, it was no one"s fault!--neither his nor mine. He wasn"t a bad fellow!--and he wanted some one to look after his children."
"Naturally. Quite content also to look after mine!" said Fenwick, with a laugh which startled her--resuming his agitated walk, a curious expression of satisfaction, triumph even, on his dark face. "So _you_ found yourself in a false position?"
He stopped to look at her, and his smile hurt her sorely. But she had made up her mind to a long patience, and she struggled on.
"It was partly that made me come home--that, and other things."
"What other things?"
"Things--I saw--in some of the papers about you," she said, with difficulty.
"What--that I was a flat failure?--a quarrelsome a.s.s, and that kind of thing? You began to pity me?"
"Oh, John, don"t talk to me like that?" She held out her hands to him in appealing misery. "I was _sorry_, I tell you!--I saw how I"d behaved to you. I thought if you hadn"t been getting on, perhaps it was my fault. It upset me altogether!"
But he didn"t relent. He stood still--fiercely interrogative--his hands in his pockets, on the other side of the table.
"And what else was there?"
Phoebe choked back her tears.
"There was a woman--who came to live near us--who had been a maid--"
She hesitated.
"Please go on!"
"Maid to Madame de Pastourelles"--she said, hastily, stumbling over the French name.
He exclaimed:
"In Ontario!"
"She married a man she had been engaged to for years; he"d been making a home for her out there. I liked her directly I saw her; and she was too delicate for the life; she came in the fall, and the winter tried her dreadfully. I used to go in to nurse her--she was very much alone--and she told me all about herself--and about--"
"Madame?"
Phoebe nodded, her eyes swimming again in tears.
"And you found out you"d been mistaken?"
She nodded again.
"You see--she talked about her to me a great deal. Of course I--I never said anything. She"d been with her fifteen years--and she just worshipped her. And she told me about her bad husband--how she"d nursed him, and that--and how he died last year!"
A wild colour leapt into Fenwick"s cheeks.
"And you began to think--there might be a false position--there too--between her and me?"
His cruel, broken words stung her intolerably. She sprang up, looking at him fiercely.
"And if I did, it wasn"t all selfishness. Can"t you understand, I might have been afraid for her--and you--as well as for myself?"
He moved again to the window, and stood with head bent, twisting his lip painfully.
"And to-day you"ve seen her?" he said, still looking out.
"Yes--she was very, very kind," said Phoebe, humbly.
He paused a moment, then broke out--
"And now you see--what you did!--what a horrible thing!--for the most ridiculous reasons! But after you"d left me--in that way--you couldn"t expect me to give her up--her friendship--all I had. For nine or ten years, if I prospered at all, I tell you it was her doing--because she upheld me--because she inspired me--because her mere existence shamed me out of doing--well, what I could never have resisted, but for her.
If I ever did good work, it was her doing--if I have been faithful to you, in spite of everything, it was her doing too!"
He sank down upon the window-seat--his face working. And suddenly Phoebe was at his knees.
"Oh, John--John--forgive me!--do, John!--try and forgive me!" She caught his hands in hers, kissing them, bathing them with her tears.
"John, we _can_ begin again!--we"re not so old. You"ll have a long rest--and I"ll work for you night and day. We"ll go abroad with some of my money. Don"t you know how you always said, if you could study abroad a bit, what good it"d do you? We"ll go, won"t we? And you"ll paint as well as ever--you"ll get everything back. Oh, John! don"t hate me!--don"t hate me! I"ve loved you always--always--even when I was so mad and cruel to you. Every night in Canada, I used to long for it to be morning--and then in the morning I longed for it to be night.
Nothing was any good to me, or any pleasure--without you. But at first, I was just in despair--I thought I"d lost you for ever--could never, never come back. And then afterwards--when I wanted to come back--when I knew I"d been wicked--I didn"t know how to do it--how to face it. I was frightened--frightened of what you"d say to me--how you"d look!"
She paused, her arms flung round him, her tear-stained face upraised.
In her despair, and utter sincerity, she was once more beautiful--with a tragic beauty of character and expression, not lost for one moment upon the man beside her.
He laid his right hand on her head amid the ma.s.ses of her fair hair, and held it there, forcing her head back a little, studying her in a bitter pa.s.sion--the upper lip drawn back a little over the teeth, which held and tormented the lower.
"Twelve years!" he said, slowly, after a minute, his eyes plunging into hers--"twelve years! What do you know of me now?--or I of you?
I should offend you twenty times a day. And--perhaps--it might be the same with me."
Phoebe released herself, and laid her head against his knee.
"John!--take me back--take me back!"
"Why did you torture me?" he said, hoa.r.s.ely. "You sent me Carrie six weeks ago--and then swept her away again."
She cried out. "It was the merest accident!" And volubly--abjectly--she explained.
He listened to her, but without seeming to understand--his own mind working irrelevantly all the time. And presently he interrupted her.
"Besides--I"m unhinged--I"m not fit to have women dependent on me. I can"t answer for myself. Yesterday--if that picture had come at eight o"clock instead of seven--it would have been too late!"
His voice altered strangely.
Phoebe fell back upon the floor, huddled together--staring at him.
"What do you mean?"