"When you signed the paper, you did not realise that you were doing something you could never undo and that you would be forced to submit to the consequences?"
"I--I didn"t realise anything but that it would kill me to live as I had been living--feeling as if they hated me. And I was so glad and thankful that he seemed kinder. It was as if I had been on the rack, and he turned the screws back, and I was ready to do anything--anything--if I might be taken off. Oh, Betty! you know, don"t you, that--that if he would only have been a little kind--just a little--I would have obeyed him always, and given him everything."
Betty sat and looked at her, with deeply pondering eyes. She was confronting the fact that it seemed possible that one must build a new soul for her as well as a new body. In these days of science and growing sanity of thought, one did not stand helpless before the problem of physical rebuilding, and--and perhaps, if one could pour life into a creature, the soul of it would respond, and wake again, and grow.
"You do not know where he is?" she said aloud. "You absolutely do not know?"
"I never know exactly," Lady Anstruthers answered. "He was here for a few days the week before you came. He said he was going abroad. He might appear to-morrow, I might not hear of him for six months. I can"t help hoping now that it will be the six months."
"Why particularly now?" inquired Betty.
Lady Anstruthers flushed and looked shy and awkward.
"Because of--you. I don"t know what he would say. I don"t know what he would do."
"To me?" said Betty.
"It would be sure to be something unreasonable and wicked," said Lady Anstruthers. "It would, Betty."
"I wonder what it would be?" Betty said musingly.
"He has told lies for years to keep you all from me. If he came now, he would know that he had been found out. He would say that I had told you things. He would be furious because you have seen what there is to see.
He would know that you could not help but realise that the money he made me ask for had not been spent on the estate. He,--Betty, he would try to force you to go away."
"I wonder what he would do?" Betty said again musingly. She felt interested, not afraid.
"It would be something cunning," Rosy protested. "It would be something no one could expect. He might be so rude that you could not remain in the room with him, or he might be quite polite, and pretend he was rather glad to see you. If he was only frightfully rude we should be safer, because that would not be an unexpected thing, but if he was polite, it would be because he was arranging something hideous, which you could not defend yourself against."
"Can you tell me," said Betty quite slowly, because, as she looked down at the carpet, she was thinking very hard, "the kind of unexpected thing he has done to you?" Lifting her eyes, she saw that a troubled flush was creeping over Lady Anstruthers" face.
"There--have been--so many queer things," she faltered. Then Betty knew there was some special thing she was afraid to talk about, and that if she desired to obtain illuminating information it would be well to go into the matter.
"Try," she said, "to remember some particular incident."
Lady Anstruthers looked nervous.
"Rosy," in the level voice, "there has been a particular incident--and I would rather hear of it from you than from him."
Rosy"s lap held little shaking hands.
"He has held it over me for years," she said breathlessly. "He said he would write about it to father and mother. He says he could use it against me as evidence in--in the divorce court. He says that divorce courts in America are for women, but in England they are for men, and--he could defend himself against me."
The incongruity of the picture of the small, faded creature arraigned in a divorce court on charges of misbehaviour would have made Betty smile if she had been in smiling mood.
"What did he accuse you of?"
"That was the--the unexpected thing," miserably.
Betty took the unsteady hands firmly in her own.
"Don"t be afraid to tell me," she said. "He knew you so well that he understood what would terrify you the most. I know you so well that I understand how he does it. Did he do this unexpected thing just before you wrote to father for the money?" As she quite suddenly presented the question, Rosy exclaimed aloud.
"How did you know?" she said. "You--you are like a lawyer. How could you know?"
How simple she was! How obviously an easy prey! She had been unconsciously giving evidence with every word.
"I have been thinking him over," Betty said. "He interests me. I have begun to guess that he always wants something when he professes that he has a grievance."
Then with drooping head, Rosy told the story.
"Yes, it happened before he made me write to father for so much money.
The vicar was ill and was obliged to go away for six months. The clergyman who came to take his place was a young man. He was kind and gentle, and wanted to help people. His mother was with him and she was like him. They loved each other, and they were quite poor. His name was Ffolliott. I liked to hear him preach. He said things that comforted me.
Nigel found out that he comforted me, and--when he called here, he was more polite to him than he had ever been to Mr. Brent. He seemed almost as if he liked him. He actually asked him to dinner two or three times.
After dinner, he would go out of the room and leave us together. Oh, Betty!" clinging to her hands, "I was so wretched then, that sometimes I thought I was going out of my mind. I think I looked wild. I used to kneel down and try to pray, and I could not."
"Yes, yes," said Betty.
"I used to feel that if I could only have one friend, just one, I could bear it better. Once I said something like that to Nigel. He only shrugged his shoulders and sneered when I said it. But afterwards I knew he had remembered. One evening, when he had asked Mr. Ffolliott to dinner, he led him to talk about religion. Oh, Betty! It made my blood turn cold when he began. I knew he was doing it for some wicked reason.
I knew the look in his eyes and the awful, agreeable smile on his mouth.
When he said at last, "If you could help my poor wife to find comfort in such things," I began to see. I could not explain to anyone how he did it, but with just a sentence, dropped here and there, he seemed to tell the whole story of a silly, selfish, American girl, thwarted in her vulgar little ambitions, and posing as a martyr, because she could not have her own way in everything. He said once, quite casually, "I"m afraid American women are rather spoiled." And then he said, in the same tolerant way--"A poor man is a disappointment to an American girl.
America does not believe in rank combined with lack of fortune." I dared not defend myself. I am not clever enough to think of the right things to say. He meant Mr. Ffolliott to understand that I had married him because I thought he was grand and rich, and that I was a disappointed little spiteful shrew. I tried to act as if he was not hurting me, but my hands trembled, and a lump kept rising in my throat. When we returned to the drawing-room, and at last he left us together, I was praying and praying that I might be able to keep from breaking down."
She stopped and swallowed hard. Betty held her hands firmly until she went on.
"For a few minutes, I sat still, and tried to think of some new subject--something about the church or the village. But I could not begin to speak because of the lump in my throat. And then, suddenly, but quietly, Mr. Ffolliott got up. And though I dared not lift my eyes, I knew he was standing before the fire, quite near me. And, oh! what do you think he said, as low and gently as if his voice was a woman"s.
I did not know that people ever said such things now, or even thought them. But never, never shall I forget that strange minute. He said just this:
""G.o.d will help you. He will. He will."
"As if it was true, Betty! As if there was a G.o.d--and--He had not forgotten me. I did not know what I was doing, but I put out my hand and caught at his sleeve, and when I looked up into his face, I saw in his kind, good eyes, that he knew--that somehow--G.o.d knows how--he understood and that I need not utter a word to explain to him that he had been listening to lies."
"Did you talk to him?" Betty asked quietly.
"He talked to me. We did not even speak of Nigel. He talked to me as I had never heard anyone talk before. Somehow he filled the room with something real, which was hope and comfort and like warmth, which kept my soul from shivering. The tears poured from my eyes at first, but the lump in my throat went away, and when Nigel came back I actually did not feel frightened, though he looked at me and sneered quietly."
"Did he say anything afterwards?"
"He laughed a little cold laugh and said, "I see you have been seeking the consolation of religion. Neurotic women like confessors. I do not object to your confessing, if you confess your own backslidings and not mine.""
"That was the beginning," said Betty speculatively. "The unexpected thing was the end. Tell me the rest?"
"No one could have dreamed of it," Rosy broke forth. "For weeks he was almost like other people. He stayed at Stornham and spent his days in shooting. He professed that he was rather enjoying himself in a dull way. He encouraged me to go to the vicarage, he invited the Ffolliotts here. He said Mrs. Ffolliott was a gentlewoman and good for me. He said it was proper that I should interest myself in parish work. Once or twice he even brought some little message to me from Mr. Ffolliott."
It was a pitiably simple story. Betty saw, through its relation, the unconsciousness of the easily allured victim, the adroit leading on from step to step, the ordinary, natural, seeming method which arranged opportunities. The two had been thrown together at the Court, at the vicarage, the church and in the village, and the hawk had looked on and bided his time. For the first time in her years of exile, Rosy had begun to feel that she might be allowed a friend--though she lived in secret tremor lest the normal liberty permitted her should suddenly be s.n.a.t.c.hed away.
"We never talked of Nigel," she said, twisting her hands. "But he made me begin to live again. He talked to me of Something that watched and would not leave me--would never leave me. I was learning to believe it.
Sometimes when I walked through the wood to the village, I used to stop among the trees and look up at the bits of sky between the branches, and listen to the sound in the leaves--the sound that never stops--and it seemed as if it was saying something to me. And I would clasp my hands and whisper, "Yes, yes," "I will," "I will." I used to see Nigel looking at me at table with a queer smile in his eyes and once he said to me--"You are growing young and lovely, my dear. Your colour is improving. The counsels of our friend are of a salutary nature." It would have made me nervous, but he said it almost good-naturedly, and I was silly enough even to wonder if it could be possible that he was pleased to see me looking less ill. It was true, Betty, that I was growing stronger. But it did not last long."