A woman so used--any woman in the world except Virginia--would have cried her wrongs from the house-tops. His persecution of her could not have been hid for long. He felt that he was looking out upon a new world, of whose existence he had been as unaware as the proverbial ostrich. His vindictive malice even had its ridiculous side. He had made an egregious fool of himself.

Heavy as lead was his heart as he entered the house.

Cosmo and Damian, with their coloured ribbons about their fluffy necks, were at play in the hall, dancing about at hide and seek behind the big chairs, while Grim, his own golden collie, sat upon a settle, her feet tucked up like a fashionable lady afraid of a mouse, uttering panting, whining protests against the reckless interlopers. Gaunt called her, and she came down slowly and with quite evident nervousness from her elevation. Cosmo hunched his lovely grey fluffy back into an arch, and spat. His tail became a bottle brush. Grim slunk apologetically by, her tail between her legs.

"Poor old girl," said Gaunt, as he went into the dining-room to lunch.

"You and I are a bit superfluous in this house now, it seems."

He went out that afternoon with the object of meeting Caunter some distance away at a house whose tenant had asked for a new thatch. For the first time in his life he forgot what he had come out for, and wandered by himself until past six o'clock, his whole mind focused upon his domestic affairs, wondering whether any readjustment were possible, and if so, how he should set about it.

Entering the house once more, he suddenly remembered his neglected appointment, and told himself that he would go round to Caunter's house after dinner and apologise. Slowly and heavily he went upstairs, and into his room to change. In the midst of his toilet sounds came to him, low and m.u.f.fled, from the next room. At first he hardly noticed; then he crept close to the door, and listened. What he heard gave him a curious sensation of heat, of hurry, of desperate sympathy, and extraordinary vexation.

His wife was in trouble. He could hear her. The sound of sobbing, the pitiful broken gasps of quite uncontrollable weeping came to him, mingled with the tones, coaxing and low, with which Grover was apparently attempting consolation. What had happened? Had she hurt herself? Had they allowed her to run into any danger? But no! He was at once aware, though how he knew it he could hardly say, that no pain of her own would draw those wild tears, that unrestrained grief from Virginia.

Whatever it was, it must be stopped, or he should go mad. He felt as if his head were on fire--as if he must go out and kill somebody--why was it allowed, that she should be made unhappy? Then he thought of himself--of his own diabolical cruelty! Could she be lamenting because she was slowly but inexorably growing better, because she was to be taken from the doctor's kind hands and surrendered once more to her husband's harsh ones?

The sweat stood upon the forehead of Gaunt of Omberleigh. It seemed to him that never--even in his hot youth--even in the first days of his jilting--had he suffered such torment as this. He rushed from his room into the pa.s.sage, and called aloud to Grover:

"Come here--come out--I want to speak to you!"

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FINAL TEST

--"_I slew Myself in that instant! a ruffian lies Somewhere. Your slave, see, born in his place._"

--Browning.

In the closed room within there was a pause. The sound of weeping died away, as though the master's voice had forced even anguish into the silence of terror. Grover answered him at length in sudden haste, as though anything would be better than to risk his anger. There followed a muttering and murmuring, as though the maid were imploring her mistress to command herself. Gaunt shook with rage and helplessness.

Thereafter the door was softly opened, elaborately closed, and Grover, her own eyes suspiciously red, emerged and stood before him. For one moment he hoped he might have been mistaken. "Was it you making that noise?" he asked thickly; and as she hesitated, he added in haste:

"Give me the truth, please, Grover."

Perhaps something in his voice excited the woman's pity. At any rate, she rejected the way out which his random words had suggested. It had been on her tongue to say yes, it was she--she had conjured up toothache, a fall downstairs, a family bereavement, wondering which would sound the most convincing, and was forced to reject all.

"It was Mrs. Gaunt," she faltered baldly.

"Well, what's the matter? Out with it. What makes her cry like that--eh?"

"She's had bad noos, sir. Noos of her little sister. She's fair broken-hearted--it's awful to see her----" The kind soul's voice failed, and she applied her handkerchief to her quivering mouth.

"Good heavens! The child's not dead, is she?"

"No, sir; but she's in agony, and calling for her sister. They seem to think she can't live, sir--the treatment has made her worse----"

"Mrs. Gaunt's not strong enough to go to London," he broke in, for the first miserable instant conscious only that he could not part with her.

"No, sir. She said you'd say so--that's what she's crying about,"

replied Grover, fairly breaking down, and turning away.

The man's face was white. "Stay where you are--wait--I am going in to see her," he muttered. Grover made a movement, but shrank back again.

It was not for her to interfere with what her master chose to do.

The opening door brought Virginia to attention. She had been lying face downward upon the sofa, which stood near the fire they always lit in the evening. With a bound she was on her feet, and when she saw him she gave a gasp of terrified surprise; then, with extraordinary swiftness, her mood changed.

"It is you, is it?" she said in a voice that was hardly audible, so husky was it with violent weeping. "Come and look! Come and see what you have done. Oh, indeed you have got your wish! You have made me suffer. Never in all your life can you have had to endure anything like the torment--I say the torment--that I am undergoing now!" She stood before him, defiant, tense with the force of the feeling in her, wringing her little weak hands, clenching them over her labouring breast. "Oh, why didn't I go on, why didn't I stay there at my post--working, starving, loving them, till I dropped? If she had to die, she could at least have had me with her. I could have been sure that all was done that could be done. She wouldn't have had to die crying for a sister that never came. Oh!" she burst out with a final effort of uncontrollable emotion, all the more distressing because it could but just be heard, "why was I ever born to know such agony as this? I thought G.o.d would let me bear it all--not her--not that little thing! Oh, Pansy, Pansy, _Pansy_!"

She dropped again upon her sofa--her face hidden in the cushions, trying to stifle the tearing sobs. Her husband made a gesture of despair. He came near. He would have knelt beside her, but he dared not. He was so overwhelmed with what he was feeling, and the impossibility of expressing any of it, that for a moment he was choked and could not speak. When he did, the curb he was using made his voice sullen and without expression.

"Virginia, I am sorry. Let me help you. Please show me your letter, or tell me what is in it."

Something unwonted--something she did not expect--must have spoken in his repressed voice. She sat up, wiping away the blinding tears, and tried to speak to him, but failed for weeping. At last, feeling that her voice could not be controlled, she drew out a letter from the front of her frock and held it to him.

He took it, warm from its late contact with her; and the thought made him for a moment dizzy, so that words and lines swam before his eyes.

He read it through.

There was silence. When he had got to the end, he raised his heavy lids and looked at her. Her face was now set, almost fierce. The dove-like sweetness of her changeful eyes was gone. They showed like a stormy sea.

"You want to go?" he almost whispered.

She laughed bitterly. That she, Virginia the martyr, could laugh like that! He reeled mentally with this fresh surprise of womanhood.

"_Want to go?_ I _am_ going," she said deliberately, her huskiness giving almost the effect of hissing. "I have borne enough.

Now I don't care what happens. I am going to Pansy. If you try to prevent me, I will scream and rouse the house. I will call upon your butler to protect me; I will say you are mad, as I believe you are! But somehow I will go to her. Then, afterwards, when I come back, you may do as you like. You may cut me to pieces with a knife, and I won't complain! But now I am rebel! Now you can't keep me! I am not afraid of you any more!"

There were a thousand things to say, each more hopeless, each more futile than the other. He could not say them. In profound humiliation he took what she gave him, he accepted it all. A long moment ticked past after her pa.s.sionate challenge. Then he spoke humbly.

"Virginia--would it console you to go--to-night?"

She staggered on her feet as if his words overthrew her; then again she laughed in derision. "To-night? Ah, but, of course, you are mocking!"

"As G.o.d hears me, I am not. There is an express which stops at Derby at nine o'clock. You have an hour in which to pack and eat some dinner.

Grover must go with you--you will want her when you get to London. I will call her now." He spoke with his watch in his hand.

Virgie caught her breath. She looked at him uncertainly....

Once, as a small child, during a visit to London, her father had taken her with him upon a visit to the Law Courts. They had been in court when sentence was pa.s.sed upon a prisoner. She had completely forgotten the crime and what its punishment was to be; but as she looked at her husband, she recalled the expression of the prisoner in the dock, whose doom had just been p.r.o.nounced.

"For the first time--I thank you," she muttered chokingly.

Gaunt went to the door. With his hand upon the handle, he turned back.

"Promise me that you will now control yourself," he said frigidly. "No more wild weeping. You have cried yourself hoa.r.s.e."