"Ask her if I can come in and wait, as I have something of importance to say to her."
She left me standing in the pa.s.sage, a thing that had never before occurred to me in Judith"s establishment, and presently returned with her answer. Would I mind waiting in the dining-room? I entered. The table was littered with sheets of her statistical work and odd bits of silk" and lining. A type-writer stood at one end and a sewing-machine at the other. On the writing-desk by the window, in the midst of a ma.s.s of letters and account-books, rested a large bowl filled with magnificent blooms of white and yellow chrysanthemums. A volume of Dante lay open face downwards on the corner. It did my heart good to see this untidiness, so characteristic of Judith, so familiar, so intimate. She had taken her trouble bravely, I reflected. The ordinary daily task had not been left undone. Through all she had preserved her valiant sanity.
I felt rebuked for my own loss of self-control.
I was about to turn away from the litter of the desk, when my eye caught sight of an envelope bearing a French stamp and addressed in Pasquale"s unmistakable handwriting. As there seemed to be a letter inside, I did not take it up to examine it more closely. The glance was enough to a.s.sure me that it came from Pasquale. Why should he be corresponding with Judith? I walked away puzzled. Was it a justification, a confession, a plea to her as my friend to obtain my forgiveness?
If there is one thing more irritating than another it is to light accidentally upon a mystery affecting oneself in a friend"s correspondence. One can no more probe deeply into it than one can steal the friend"s spoons. It seems an indiscretion to have noticed it, an unpardonable impertinence to subject it to conjecture. In spite of my abhorring the impulse of curiosity, the sweeping, flaunting, swaggering handwriting of Pasquale worried me.
Judith came in, looking much as she had done on the occasion of my last visit, worn and anxious, with a strange expression in her eyes.
"I am sorry to have kept you waiting," she said, extending a lifeless hand.
I raised it to my lips.
"I would have gladly waited all day to see you, Judith," I said.
"Really?"
She laughed in an odd way.
"And idle speech from me to you at the present time would be an outrage," I answered. "I have pa.s.sed through much since I saw you last."
"So have I," said Judith. "More than you imagine. Well," she continued as I bowed my head accepting the rebuke, "what have you got so important to tell me?"
"Much," said I. "In the first place you must be aware of what has happened, for I can"t help seeing there a letter from Pasquale."
She glanced swiftly at the desk and back again at me.
"Yes," she replied, "he is in Paris."
I was amazed at her nonchalance.
"Has he told you nothing?"
"Perhaps Sir Marcus Ordeyne would like to see his letter," she said, ironically.
"You know perfectly well that I would not read it," said I.
Judith laughed again, and rolled her handkerchief into a little ball between her nervous fingers.
"Forgive me," she said. "I like to see the _grand seigneur_ in you now and then. It puts me in mind of happier days. But about Pasquale--the only thing he tells me is that he is not able to execute a commission for me. He told me on the night he drove me home that he was going to Paris, and I asked him to get me some cosmetic. Carmine Badouin, if you want to know. I have got to rouge now before I am fit to be seen in the street. I am quite frank about it."
"Then you know nothing of Carlotta?" I cried.
"Carlotta?"
"She eloped with that double-dyed, d.a.m.ned, infernal villain, the day after I saw you."
Judith looked at me for a moment, then closed her eyes and turned her head away, resting her hand on the table. My indignation waxed hot against the scoundrel. How dare he write casual letters to Judith about Carmine Badouin with his treachery on his conscience? I know the terms of flippant grace in which the knave couched this precious epistle. And I could see Carlotta reading over his shoulder and clapping her hands and cooing: "Oh, that is so funny!"
When I had told Judith the outlines of the story, pacing up and down the little room while she remained motionless by the table, she put out her hand to me, and in a low voice, and with still averted eyes said that she was sorry, deeply sorry. Her tone rang so true and loyal that my heart throbbed with quick appreciation of her high nature, and I wrung her outstretched hand.
"G.o.d bless you, Judith," I cried, fervently. "Bless you for your sweet sympathy. Be sorry for me only as for a man who has pa.s.sed through the horrors of delirium. But for me as I stand before you now, I ask you not to be sorry. I have come to bring you, if I can, dear Judith, a measure of gladness, perhaps of happiness."
She wrenched herself free from me, and a terrified cry of "Marcus!"
checked my dithyrambic appeal. She shrank away so that a great corner of the dining-table separated us, and she stared at me as though my words hats been the affrighting utterance of a madman.
"Marcus! What do you mean?" she cried, with an unnatural shrillness in her voice.
"I mean," said I, "I mean--I mean that "crushed by three days" pressure, my three days" love lies slain." Time has withered him at the root. I have buried him deep in unconsecrated ground, like a vampire, with a stake through his heart. And I have come back to you, Judith, humbly to crave your forgiveness and your love--to tell you I have changed, dear--to offer you all I have in the world if you will but take it--to give you my life, my daily, hourly devotion. My G.o.d!" I cried, "don"t you believe me?"
She still stared at me in a frightened way, leaning heavier on the table. Her lips twitched before they could frame the words,
"Yes, I believe you. You have never lied to me."
"Then in the name of love and heaven," I cried, "why do you look at me like that?"
She trembled, evidently suppressing something with intense effort, whether bitter laughter, indignation or a pa.s.sionate outburst I could not tell.
"You ask why?" she said, unsteadily. "Because you seem like the angel of the flaming vengeance."
At these astounding words it was my turn to look amazed.
"Vengeance?" I echud. "What wrong have you done me or any living creature? Come, my dear," and I moved nearer by seating myself on the corner of the table, close to the type-writer, and leaning towards her, "let us look at this thing soberly. If ever a man had need of woman I have need of you. I can live alone no longer. We must share one home henceforth together. We can snap our fingers at the world, you and I.
If you have anything to say against the proposal, let us discuss it calmly."
Judith"s slender figure vibrated like a cord strung to breaking-point.
Her voice vibrated.
"Yes, let us discuss it calmly. But not here. The sight of you sitting in the middle of my life, between the sewing-machine and the type-writer, is getting on my nerves. Let us go into the drawing-room.
There is an atmosphere of calm there--" her voice quavered in a queer little choke--"of sabbatical calm."
I slid quickly from the table and put my arm round her waist.
"Tell me, Judith, what is amiss with you."
She broke away from me roughly, thrusting me back.
"Nothing. A woman"s nothing, if you understand what that means. Come into the drawing-room."
I opened the door; she pa.s.sed out and I followed her along the pa.s.sage.
She preceded me into the drawing-room, and I stayed for a moment to close the door, fumbling with the handle which has been loose for some months. When I turned and had made a couple of steps forward, I halted involuntarily under the shock of a considerable surprise.
We were not alone. Standing on the hearth-rug, his hands behind his back, his brows bent on me benevolently was a man in clerical attire. He looked ostentatiously, exaggeratedly clerical. His clerical frock-coat was of inordinate length; his boots were aggravatingly clump-soled; by a very large white tie, masking the edges of a turned-down collar, he proclaimed himself Evangelical. An otherwise clean-shaven florid face was adorned with brown side-whiskers growing rather long. A bald, shiny head topped a fringe of brown hair.
I stared at this unexpected gentleman for a second or two, and then, recovering my self-possession, looked enquiringly at Judith.
"Sir Marcus," she said, "let me introduce my husband, Mr. Rupert Mainwaring."
Her husband! This benevolent Evangelical parson her husband! But the brilliant gallant who had dazzled her eyes? The dissolute scoundrel that had wrecked her life? Where was he? Dumfounded, I managed to bow politely enough, but my stupefaction was covered by Judith rushing across the room and uttering a strange sound which resolved itself into a shrill, hysterical laugh as she reached the door which she opened and slammed behind her. I heard her scream hysterically in the pa.s.sage; then the slam of another door; and the silence told me that she had shut herself in her bedroom. Disregarding the new husband"s presence, I rang the bell, and the servant who had left her kitchen on hearing the scream entered immediately.