Amherst, at the challenge, remained silent, while a slow red crept to his cheek-bones.
“Haven’t I told you by—by what I’ve done?” he said slowly.
“No—what you’ve done has covered up what you thought; and I’ve helped you cover it—I’m to blame too! But it was not for this that we…that we had that half-year together…not to sink into connivance and evasion! I don’t want another hour of sham happiness. I want the truth from you, whatever it is.”
He stood motionless, staring moodily at the floor. “Don’t you see that’s my misery—that I don’t know myself?”
“You don’t know…what you think of me?”
“Good God, Justine, why do you try to strip life naked? I don’t know what’s been going on in me these last weeks–-“
“You must know what you think of my motive…for doing what I did.”
She saw in his face how he shrank from the least allusion to the act about which their torment revolved. But he forced himself to raise his head and look at her. “I have never—for one moment—questioned your motive—or failed to see that it was justified…under the circumstances….”
“Oh, John—John!” she broke out in the wild joy of hearing herself absolved; but the next instant her subtle perceptions felt the unconscious reserve behind his admission.
“Your mind justifies me—not your heart; isn’t that your misery?” she said.
He looked at her almost piteously, as if, in the last resort, it was from her that light must come to him. “On my soul, I don’t know…I can’t tell…it’s all dark in me. I know you did what you thought best…if I had been there, I believe I should have asked you to do it…but I wish to God–-“
She interrupted him sobbingly. “Oh, I ought never to have let you love me! I ought to have seen that I was cut off from you forever. I have brought you wretchedness when I would have given my life for you! I don’t deserve that you should forgive me for that.”
Her sudden outbreak seemed to restore his self-possession. He went up to her and took her hand with a quieting touch.
“There is no question of forgiveness, Justine. Don’t let us torture each other with vain repinings. Our business is to face the thing, and we shall be better for having talked it out. I shall be better, for my part, for having told Mr. Langhope. But before I go I want to be sure that you understand the view he may take…and the effect it will probably have on our future.”
“Our future?” She started. “No, I don’t understand.”
Amherst paused a moment, as if trying to choose the words least likely to pain her. “Mr. Langhope knows that my marriage was…unhappy; through my fault, he no doubt thinks. And if he chooses to infer that…that you and I may have cared for each other…before…and that it was because there was a chance of recovery that you–-“
“Oh–-“
“We must face it,” he repeated inflexibly. “And you must understand that, if there is the faintest hint of this kind, I shall give up everything here, as soon as it can be settled legally—God, how Tredegar will like the job!—and you and I will have to go and begin life over again…somewhere else.”
For an instant a mad hope swelled in her—the vision of escaping with him into new scenes, a new life, away from the coil of memories that bound them down as in a net. But the reaction of reason came at once—she saw him cut off from his chosen work, his career destroyed, his honour clouded, above all—ah, this was what wrung them both!—his task undone, his people flung back into the depths from which he had lifted them. And all through her doing—all because she had clutched at happiness with too rash a hand! The thought stung her to passionate activity of mind—made her resolve to risk anything, dare anything, before she involved him farther in her own ruin. She felt her brain clear gradually, and the thickness dissolve in her throat.
“I understand,” she said in a low voice, raising her eyes to his.
“And you’re ready to accept the consequences? Think again before it’s too late.”
She paused. “That is what I should like…what I wanted to ask you…the time to think.”
She saw a slight shade cross his face, as if he had not expected this failure of courage in her; but he said quietly: “You don’t want me to go today?”
“Not today—give me one more day.”
“Very well.”
She laid a timid hand on his arm. “Please go out to Westmore as usual—as if nothing had happened. And tonight…when you come back…I shall have decided.”
“Very well,” he repeated.
“You’ll be gone all day?”
He glanced at his watch. “Yes—I had meant to be; unless–-“
“No; I would rather be alone. Goodbye,” she said, letting her hand slip softly along his coat-sleeve as he turned to the door. XXXVIII
AT half-past six that afternoon, just as Amherst, on his return from the mills, put the key into his door at Hanaford, Mrs. Ansell, in New York, was being shown into Mr. Langhope’s library.
As she entered, her friend rose from his chair by the fire, and turned on her a face so disordered by emotion that she stopped short with an exclamation of alarm.
“Henry—what has happened? Why did you send for me?”
“Because I couldn’t go to you. I couldn’t trust myself in the streets—in the light of day.”
“But why? What is it?—Not Cicely–-?”
He struck both hands upward with a comprehensive gesture. “Cicely—everyone—the whole world!” His clenched fist came down on the table against which he was leaning. “Maria, my girl might have been saved!”
Mrs. Ansell looked at him with growing perturbation. “Saved—Bessy’s life? But how? By whom?”
“She might have been allowed to live, I mean—to recover. She was killed, Maria; that woman killed her!”
Mrs. Ansell, with another cry of bewilderment, let herself drop helplessly into the nearest chair. “In heaven’s name, Henry—what woman?”
He seated himself opposite to her, clutching at his stick, and leaning his weight heavily on it—a white dishevelled old man. “I wonder why you ask—just to spare me?”
Their eyes met in a piercing exchange of question and answer, and Mrs. Ansell tried to bring out reasonably: “I ask in order to understand what you are saying.”
“Well, then, if you insist on keeping up appearances—my daughter-in-law killed my daughter. There you have it.” He laughed silently, with a tear on his reddened eye-lids.
Mrs. Ansell groaned. “Henry, you are raving—I understand less and less.”
“I don’t see how I can speak more plainly. She told me so herself, in this room, not an hour ago.”
“She told you? Who told you?”
“John Amherst’s wife. Told me she’d killed my child. It’s as easy as breathing—if you know how to use a morphia-needle.”