Margot had ceased crying now, and her face was very white and calm; it looked rigid in the faint candle-light that shone across the bed.
"Do not be angry," she said. "We are controlled by something inside of us; there are powers in us that we cannot fight against."
"There is nothing we cannot fight against," I said pa.s.sionately. "The doctrine of predestination is the devil"s own doctrine. It is the doctrine set up by the sinner to excuse his sin; it is the coward"s doctrine. Understand me, Margot, I love you, but I am not a weak fool.
There must be an end of this folly. Perhaps you are playing with me, acting like a girl, testing me. Let us have no more of it."
She said:
"I only do what I must."
Her tone turned me cold. Her set face frightened me, and angered me, for there was a curious obstinacy in it. I left the room abruptly, and did not return. That night I had no sleep.
I am not a coward, but I find that I am inclined to fear that which fears me. I dread an animal that always avoids me silently more than an animal that actually attacks me. The thing that runs from me makes me shiver, the thing that creeps away when I come near wakes my uneasiness.
At this time there rose up in me a strange feeling towards Margot.
The white, fair child I had married was at moments--only at moments--horrible to me. I felt disposed to shun her. Something within cried out against her. Long ago, at the instant of our introduction, an unreasoning sensation that could only be called dread had laid hold upon me. That dread returned from the night of our explanation, returned deepened and added to. It prompted me to a suggestion which I had no sooner made than I regretted it. On the morning following I told Margot that in future we had better occupy separate rooms. She a.s.sented quietly, but I thought a furtive expression of relief stole for a moment into her face.
I was deeply angered with her and with myself; yet, now that I knew beyond question my wife"s physical terror of me, I was-half afraid of her. I felt as if I could not bring myself to lie long hours by her side in the darkness, by the side of a woman who was shrinking from me, who was watching me when I could not see her. The idea made my very flesh creep.
Yet I hated myself for this shrinking of the body, and sometimes hated her for rousing it. A hideous struggle was going on within me--a struggle between love and impotent anger and despair, between the lover and the master. For I am one of the old-fashioned men who think that a husband ought to be master of his wife as well as of his house.
How could I be master of a woman I secretly feared? My knowledge of myself spurred me through acute irritation almost to the verge of madness.
All calm was gone. I was alternately gentle to my wife and almost ferocious towards her, ready to fall at her feet and worship her or to seize her and treat her with physical violence. I only restrained myself by an effort.
My variations of manner did not seem to affect her. Indeed, it sometimes struck me that she feared me more when I was kind to her than when I was harsh.
And I knew, by a thousand furtive indications, that her horror of me was deepening day by day. I believe she could hardly bring herself to be in a room alone with me, especially after nightfall.
One evening, when we were dining, the butler, after placing dessert upon the table, moved to leave us. She turned white, and, as he reached the door, half rose, and called him back in a sharp voice.
"Symonds!" she said.
"Yes, ma"am?"
"You are going?"
The fellow looked surprised.
"Can I get you anything, ma"am?"
She glanced at me with an indescribable uneasiness. Then she leaned back in her chair with an effort, and pressed her lips together.
"No," she said.
As the man went out and shut the door, she looked at me again from under her eyelids; and finally her eyes travelled from me to a small, thin-bladed knife, used for cutting oranges, that lay near her plate, and fixed themselves on it. She put out her hand stealthily, drew it towards her, and kept her hand over it on the table. I took an orange from a dish in front of me.
"Margot," I said, "will you pa.s.s me that fruit-knife?"
She obviously hesitated.
"Give me that knife," I repeated roughly, stretching out my hand.
She lifted her hand, left the knife upon the table, and at the same time, springing up, glided softly out of the room and closed the door behind her.
That evening I spent alone in the smoking-room, and, for the first time, she did not come to bid me good-night.
I sat smoking my cigar in a tumult of furious despair and love. The situation was becoming intolerable. It could not be en-dured. I longed for a crisis, even for a violent one. I could have cried aloud that night for a veritable tragedy. There were moments when I would almost have killed the child who mysteriously eluded and defied me. I could have wreaked a cruel vengeance upon the body for the sin of the mind. I was terribly, mortally distressed.
After a long and painful self-communion, I resolved to make another wild effort to set things right before it was too late; and when the clock chimed the half-hour after ten I went upstairs softly to her bedroom and turned the handle of the door, meaning to enter, to catch Margot in my arms, tell her how deep my love for her was, how she injured me by her base fears, and how she was driving me back from the gentleness she had given me to the cruelty, to the brutality, of my first nature.
The door resisted me: it was locked. I paused a moment, and then tapped gently. I heard a sudden rustle within, as if someone hurried across the floor away from the door, and then Margot"s voice cried sharply:
"Who"s that? Who is there?" "Margot, it is I. I wish to speak to you--to say good-night."
"Good-night," she said. "But let me in for a moment." There was a silence--it seemed to me a long one; then she answered:
"Not now, dear; I--I am so tired." "Open the door for a moment." "I am very tired. Good-night." The cold, level tone of her voice--for the anxiety had left it after that first sudden cry--roused me to a sudden fury of action. I seized the handle of the door and pressed with all my strength. Physically I am a very powerful man--my anger and despair gave me a giant"s might. I burst the lock, and sprang into the room. My impulse was to seize Margot in my arms and crush her to death, it might be, in an embrace she could not struggle against. The blood coursed like molten fire through my veins. The l.u.s.t of love, the l.u.s.t of murder even, perhaps, was upon me. I sprang impetuously into the room.
No candles were alight in it. The blinds were up, and the chill moonbeams filtered through the small lattice panes. By the farthest window, in the yellowish radiance, was huddled a white thing.
A sudden cold took hold upon me. All the warmth in me froze up.
I stopped where I was and held my breath.
That white thing, seen thus uncertainly, had no semblance to humanity.
It was animal wholly. I could have believed for the moment that a white cat crouched from me there by the curtain, waiting to spring.
What a strange illusion that was! I tried to laugh at it afterwards, but at the moment horror stole through me--horror, and almost awe.
All desire of violence left me. Heat was dead; I felt cold as stone. I could not even speak a word.
Suddenly the white thing moved. The curtain was drawn sharply; the moonlight was blotted out; the room was plunged in darkness--a darkness in which that thing could see!
I turned and stole out of the room. I could have fled, driven by the nameless fear that was upon me.
Only when the morning dawned did the man in me awake, and I cursed myself for my cowardice.
The following evening we were asked to dine out with some neighbours, who lived a few miles off in a wonderful old Norman castle near the sea. During the day neither of us had made the slightest allusion to the incidents of the previous night. We both felt it a relief to go into society, I think. The friends to whom we went--Lord and Lady Melchester--had a large party staying with them, and we were, I believe, the only outsiders who lived in the neighbourhood. One of their guests was Professor Black, whose name I have already mentioned--a little, dry, thin, acrid man, with thick black hair, innocent of the comb, and pursed, straight lips. I had met him two or three times in London, and as he had only just arrived at the castle, and scarcely knew his fellow-visitors there, he brought his wine over to me when the ladies left the dining-room, and entered into conversation. At the moment I was glad, but before we followed the women I would have given a year--I might say years--of my life not to have spoken to him, not to have heard him speak that night.
How did we drift into that fatal conversation? I hardly remember. We talked first of the neighbourhood, then swayed away to books, then to people. Yes, that was how it came about. The Professor was speaking of a man whom we both knew in town, a curiously effeminate man, whose every thought and feeling seemed that of a woman. I said I disliked him, and condemned him for his woman"s demeanour, his woman"s mind; but the Professor thereupon joined issue with me.
"Pity the fellow, if you like," he uttered, in his rather strident voice; "but as to condemning him, I would as soon condemn a tadpole for not being a full-grown frog. His soul is beyond his power to manage, or even to coerce, you may depend upon it."
Having sipped his port, he drew a little nearer to me, and slightly dropped his voice.
"There would be less censure of individuals in this world," he said, "if people were only a little more thoughtful. These souls are like letters, and sometimes they are sealed up in the wrong envelope. For instance, a man"s soul may be put into a woman"s body, or _vice versa_.