"What more likely?"
"If you think so," replied Virginia with shaking voice, "please don"t let Mrs. Ferris come. I did not ask--you must not think I asked the doctor--for company or complained of loneliness. I am----" she could not go on.
"Have I your word that if I allow you to go about as you like you will make no attempt to leave me?"
"Would you take my word?" she cried vehemently; then checked herself, and seemed to hold herself quiet by an act of will.
"The doctor told me that you ought not to be distressed, that perfect rest was necessary for you," said Gaunt, rising abruptly from his seat.
"Don"t upset yourself, I didn"t mean to bully. I will take it for granted that you will do as I wish, now that you know what my wishes are. Good afternoon."
She did not answer. She had turned her face inwards to the pillow, and her slight shoulders were shaking. He stood a moment, contemplating her in dark vexation. Then he went out of the room, annoyed with himself, but still more annoyed with her.
His mind was chaotic. He had just been wondering what he could do with her--how deal with the preposterous situation he had himself created--and hardly had the thoughts formed themselves before he was found threatening her with penalties in case she should attempt to disembarra.s.s him of her presence. Dimly he descried the reason of this apparent inconsistency. It was that he knew her to be spiritually free of him. He could not bear that she should be actually free as well.
After all, he had married her. He had his rights. He was her husband.
But, Oh, ye G.o.ds, what a child she was--how easily cowed, how shrinking and timid and all the other things that he hated!
From the bottom of his heart he wished that he had never set eyes upon her.
The following morning the post-bag, when it was brought to him at breakfast time, contained two letters for Virginia. One was addressed in the unformed, sprawling hand which he knew to be Pansy"s. The other was inscribed with a flowing, ornamental script which once had power to illuminate the world for him, and now produced in his fermenting mind the most curious mixture of rage, bitterness, and gratification.
He had determined yesterday to abandon his cruel intention of overlooking his wife"s correspondence. His perusal of Pansy"s letter had been enough. This sight of his mother-in-law"s writing, however, touched him upon the corrupt spot in his heart, and shook his resolution.
He laid the letter down among his own, before Grover, who waited near, had seen the address. The letter from Pansy he handed to her as it was, and joyfully it was received by its lawful recipient when it arrived upstairs upon her breakfast tray, the sanct.i.ty of its seal inviolate.
When he was alone, Gaunt leaned forward, his elbows propped upon the table, and held Mrs. Mynors" envelope in the steam of the spirit kettle which stood upon the silver tray.
It was easily opened. He drew forth the contents with a detestable eagerness, and read as follows:
_My dearest girl,--_
_This is the first moment that I have felt able to write to you, so great have been my sufferings, so keen my humiliation over this mercenary marriage of yours. I feel as if I had been living in a nightmare ever since that fatal day when I went to town to meet the inhuman monster who almost blighted my young life, and has now fastened his claws into you instead._
_Oh, Virginia! Sooner--far sooner--would I have gone to the workhouse than be obliged to think of you in Gaunt"s power! But you knew that!
Again and again did I a.s.sure you, did I not, how far I was from demanding this sacrifice at your hands? How is he using you? That is the question that forces itself upon me every hour--that keeps me awake at night with the horrors! Your letter to Pansy was more or less rea.s.suring, I must own. Perhaps, when he finds how useful and domestic you are, he may be kinder than my fears suggest?_
_Meantime, I miss you every moment. You will know how I have always detested the petty meannesses of life, the half-pounds of cooking b.u.t.ter, the sc.r.a.ps for the stock-pot, the way the coal disappears, the price of fish--all the endless, nauseating haggling over pence! To this you have left me, after all that I have suffered. After the shattering blows of the death of my first-born, my widowhood, our ruin--you have taken the hand of a man who can give you life"s good things, and you have left me to the slavery which you found so unbearable. But I must not reproach you, for you may be already suffering for your mistake. Do write me a few lines, and tell me frankly how he is treating you?_
_If I am wrong, if he is behaving kindly to you, it will be such a relief to know it. He may, of course, actually have fallen in love with your looks. You are, as all declare, absurdly like me. If this should be so, I know, my darling daughter, that you will use your opportunity to help me. You must see that the allowance secured to me is wretchedly inadequate. 300 a year is impossible. It will mean an existence of continual debt. 400--that is, a hundred pounds a quarter--might be conceivable. It is the very lowest upon which one should be called upon to live. If Gaunt is inclined to be indulgent--if you have managed to get on his blind side--do strike while the iron is hot, and have this matter arranged for me, won"t you?_
_It is not as if I asked for riches. Think of what I have been used to? Think of me here in this odious little town, non-existent as far as the county is concerned--Me, Mrs. Bernard Mynors--a prouder name than that of many a peer. Think of this in your luxury, and spare a little pity for your wretched mother._
Virginia Mynors.
Before that letter, Gaunt sat with clenched hands. The veins in his forehead swelled. How right he had been--how fatally exact in his forecast as far as the mother was concerned! How far was he right, after all, about the daughter?
Could that letter of hers to Pansy have conceivably been written as a blind--in case he should read it? No. That was not possible--at least it was not possible that Pansy"s letter to her sister could have been the result of any kind of premeditation. Besides, the doctor"s evidence of his wife"s starved condition. Yet here were reproaches for the girl who had been obstinately bent upon a mercenary marriage--a sacrifice which she seemed to have made against her mother"s pleadings!
How did the rest of the letter harmonise with the outburst of maternal agony which began it? His lip curled, ever more and more, until all his teeth showed, as he read once more the suggestion that, if he had been successfully hoodwinked, he might be bled for an extra hundred a year!
As he sat, staring at the paper, he knew one thing certainly. _He must see the reply to that letter._ Moreover, Virginia must write it under the impression that he would _not_ see it.
He hardly knew himself as he carefully resealed the envelope, and satisfied himself that it bore no signs of having been tampered with.
In that moment he felt that he recked neither of his honour nor of his manhood. He had no scruples. One thing only stood out in his mind as essential. He must know how far his wife was victim and martyr, how far a designing girl.
If she was, as her mother declared her to be--mercenary, then there were ways, plenty of ways, in which she might do penance for such fault. But, if it were true that she had been sacrificed for pure love, that her unselfishness was so wonderful, so unheard-of, that she really had laid down her all upon the altar of family affection--why, then, what would happen? He asked himself desperately, what _could_ happen? The only solution that occurred to him at the moment was that he should hang himself.
When Virginia"s tea went upstairs that afternoon, her mother"s letter lay upon the tray, as though it had arrived by the second post. With it was a note from Gaunt, to the effect that he was sorry to have to be out that afternoon. An accident had happened on the estate--a large tree had fallen, most unexpectedly, and the huge trunk had blocked the course of the trout-stream, and the water was flooding a meadow. He hoped to look in upon her that evening on his return. Then, below his initials:
_For the future I waive my right to inspect your correspondence._
It was late when he came in, wet to the knees and tired out. He had a bath, changed for the evening, and then, before going downstairs, rapped on the door of communication between his own room and Virginia"s.
Grover was not there, so there was n.o.body to see that the bride turned as white as a sheet. She had not known, for certain, that his room adjoined her own.
"Come in," she faltered. He pushed the door wide.
She was on a sofa, in the window, and the late evening light shone through her hair as she turned to him that face which might have been an angel"s. It was the face that had stood for him for so many years as the expression of treachery incarnate. Now it gave him the most extraordinary sensation.
For the first time in their mutual acquaintance she did not smile. Her look as she faced him was grave and cold. It seemed that at last his repeated insults had quenched her timid impulse to friendliness. The thought affected him profoundly.
"I hope you haven"t been too lonely this afternoon?" he asked haltingly, standing in the doorway.
"No, not at all. Mrs. Ferris came to see me."
"Ha! How did you like her?"
"She seems very kind." The tone was entirely noncommittal. It seemed to say, "Whether I liked her or not is no concern of yours."
"H"m! Did she say anything about taking you out in the motor?"
"Yes."
"What did you say?"
"I said I would rather not go."
"You would rather not go?"
She turned her eyes away from him, out to the garden, and did not speak. He remembered what he had said the previous day, and guessed how it must have hurt her, if she were really what he was beginning to believe.
His next words were utterly unpremeditated. "I"ll buy a car and take you out myself."