Marriage a la mode by Mrs. Humphry Ward (best book club books TXT) 📖

a side window struck full on him. But Daphne, the wave of excitement spent, was not looking at him. She had fallen upon a sofa, her face was in her hands.

"What do you want with me?" said Roger at last. Then, in a sudden heat, "By God, I never wished to see you again!"

Daphne's muffled voice came through her fingers.

"I know that. You needn't tell me so!"

Roger turned away.

"You'll admit it's an intrusion?" he said fiercely. "I don't see what you and I have got to do with each other now."

Daphne struggled for self-control. After all, she had always managed him in the old days. She would manage him now.

"Roger--I--I didn't come to discuss the past. That's done with. But--I heard things about you--that----"

"You didn't like?" he laughed. "I'm sorry, but I don't see what you have to do with them."

Daphne's hand fidgeted with her dress, her eyes still cast down.

"Couldn't we talk without bitterness? Just for ten minutes? It was from Captain Boyson that I heard----"

"Oh, Boyson, was that it? And he got his information from French--poor old Herbert. Well, it's quite true. I'm no longer fit for your--or his--or anybody's society."

He threw himself into an arm-chair, calmly took a cigarette out of a box that lay near, and lit it. Daphne at last ventured to look at him. The first and dominant impression was of something shrunken and diminished. His blue flannel suit hung loose on his shoulders and chest, his athlete's limbs. His features had been thinned and graved and scooped by fever and broken nights; all the noble line and proportion was still there, but for one who had known him of old the effect was no longer beautiful but ghastly. Daphne stared at him in dismay.

He on his side observed his visitor, but with a cooler curiosity. Like French he noticed the signs of change, the dying down of brilliance and of bloom. To go your own way, as Daphne had done, did not seem to conduce to a woman's good looks.

At last he threw in a dry interrogation.

"Well?"

"I came to try and help you," Daphne broke out, turning her head away, "to ask Mr. French what I could do. It made me unhappy----"

"Did it?" He laughed again. "I don't see why. Oh, you needn't trouble yourself. Elsie and Herbert are awfully good to me. They're all I want, or at any rate," he hesitated a moment, "they're all I _shall_ want--from now on. Anyway, you know there'd be something grotesque in your trying your hand at reforming me."

"I didn't mean anything of the kind!" she protested, stung by his tone. "I--I wanted to suggest something practical--some way by which you might--release yourself from me--and also recover your health."

"Release myself from you?" he repeated. "That's easier said than done. Did you mean to send me to the Colonies--was that your idea?"

His smile was hard to bear. But she went on, choking, yet determined.

"That seems to be the only way--in English law. Why shouldn't you take it? The voyage, the new climate, would probably set you up again. You need only be away a short time."

He looked at her in silence a moment, fingering his cigarette.

"Thank you," he said at last, "thank you. And I suppose you offered us money? You told Herbert you would pay all expenses? Oh, don't be angry! I didn't mean anything uncivil. But," he raised himself with energy from his lounging position, "at the same time, perhaps you ought to know that I would sooner die a thousand times over than take a single silver sixpence that belonged to you!"

Their eyes met, his quite calm, hers sparkling with resentment and pain.

"Of course I can't argue with you if you meet me in that tone," she said passionately. "But I should have thought----"

"Besides," he interrupted her, "you say it is the only way. You are quite mistaken. It is not the only way. As far as freeing me goes, you could divorce me to-morrow--here--if you liked. I have been unfaithful to you. A strange way of putting it--at the present moment--between you and me! But that's how it would appear in the English courts. And as to the 'cruelty'--that wouldn't give _you_ any trouble!"

Daphne had flushed deeply. It was only by a great effort that she maintained her composure. Her eyes avoided him.

"Mrs. Fairmile?" she said in a low voice.

He threw back his head with a sound of scorn.

"Mrs. Fairmile! You don't mean to tell me, Daphne, to my face, that you ever believed any of the lies--forgive the expression--that you, and your witnesses, and your lawyers told in the States--that you bribed those precious newspapers to tell?"

"Of course I believed it!" she said fiercely. "And as for lies, it was you who began them."

"You _believed_ that I had betrayed you with Chloe Fairmile?" He raised himself again, fixing his strange deep-set gaze upon her.

"I never said----"

"No! To that length you didn't quite go. I admit it. You were able to get your way without it." He sank back in his chair again. "No, my remark had nothing to do with Chloe. I have never set eyes on her since I left you at Heston. But--there was a girl, a shop-girl, a poor little thing, rather pretty. I came across her about six months ago--it doesn't matter how. She loves me, she was awfully good to me, a regular little brick. Some day I shall tell Herbert all about her--not yet--though, of course, he suspects. She'd serve your purpose, if you thought it worth while. But you won't----"

"You're--living with her--now?"

"No. I broke with her a fortnight ago, after I'd seen those doctors. She made me see them, poor little soul. Then I went to say good-bye to her, and she," his voice shook a little, "she took it hard. But it's all right. I'm not going to risk her life, or saddle her with a dying man. She's with her sister. She'll get over it."

He turned his head towards the window, his eyes pursued the white sails on the darkening blue outside.

"It's been a bad business, but it wasn't altogether my fault. I saved her from someone else, and she saved me, once or twice, from blowing my brains out."

"What did the doctors say to you?" asked Daphne, brusquely, after a pause.

"They gave me about two years," he said, indifferently, turning to knock off the end of his cigarette. "That doesn't matter." Then, as his eyes caught her face, a sudden animation sprang into his. He drew his chair nearer to her and threw away his cigarette. "Look here, Daphne, don't let's waste time. We shall never see each other again, and there are a number of things I want to know. Tell me everything you can remember about Beatty that last six months--and about her illness, you understand--never mind repeating what you told Boyson, and he told me. But there's lots more, there must be. Did she ever ask for me? Boyson said you couldn't remember. But you must remember!"

He came closer still, his threatening eyes upon her. And as he did so, the dark presence of ruin and death, of things damning and irrevocable, which had been hovering over their conversation, approached with him--flapped their sombre wings in Daphne's face. She trembled all over.

"Yes," she said, faintly, "she did ask for you."

"Ah!" He gave a cry of delight. "Tell me--tell me at once--everything--from the beginning!"

And held by his will, she told him everything--all the piteous story of the child's last days--sobbing herself; and for the first time making much of the little one's signs of remembering her father, instead of minimizing and ignoring them, as she had done in the talk with Boyson. It was as though for the first time she were trying to stanch a wound instead of widening it.

He listened eagerly. The two heads--the father and mother--drew closer; one might have thought them lovers still, united by tender and sacred memories.

But at last Roger drew himself away. He rose to his feet.

"I'll forgive you much for that!" he said with a long breath. "Will you write it for me some day--all you've told me?"

She made a sign of assent.

"Well, now, you mustn't stay here any longer. I suppose you've got a carriage? And we mustn't meet again. There's no object in it. But I'll remember that you came."

She looked at him. In her nature the great deeps were breaking up. She saw him as she had seen him in her first youth. And, at last, what she had done was plain to her.

With a cry she threw herself on the floor beside him. She pressed his hand in hers.

"Roger, let me stay! Let me nurse you!" she panted. "I didn't understand. Let me be your friend! Let me help! I implore--I implore you!"

He hesitated a moment, then he lifted her to her feet decidedly, but not unkindly.

"What do you mean?" he said, slowly. "Do you mean that you wish us to be husband and wife again? You are, of course, my wife, in the eye of English law, at this moment."

"Let me try and help you!" she pleaded again, breaking into bitter tears. "I didn't--I didn't understand!"

He shook his head.

"You can't help me. I--I'm afraid I couldn't bear it. We mustn't meet. It--it's gone too deep."

He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked away to the window. She stood helplessly weeping.

When he returned he was quite composed again.

"Don't cry so," he said, calmly. "It's done. We can't help it. And don't make yourself too unhappy about me. I've had awful times. When I was ill in New York--it was like hell. The pain was devilish, and I wasn't used to being alone, and nobody caring a damn, and everybody believing me a cad and a bully. But I got over that. It was Beatty's death that hit me so hard, and that I wasn't there. It's that, somehow, I can't get over--that you did it--that you could have had the heart. It would always come between us. No, we're better apart. But I'll tell you something to comfort you. I've given up that girl, as I've told you, and I've given up drink. Herbert won't believe it, but he'll find it is so. And I don't mean to die before my time. I'm going out to Switzerland directly. I'll do all the correct things. You see, when a man _knows_ he's going to die, well," he turned away, "he gets uncommonly curious as to what's going to come next."

He walked up and down a few turns. Daphne watched him.

"I'm not pious--I never was. But after all, the religious people profess to know something about it, and nobody else does. Just supposing it were true?"

He stopped short, looking at her. She understood perfectly that he had Beatty in his mind.

"Well, anyhow, I'm going to live decently for the rest of my time--and die decently. I'm not going to throw away chances. And don't trouble yourself about money. There's enough left to carry me through. Good-bye, Daphne!" He held out his hand to her.

She took it, still dumbly weeping. He looked at her with pity.

"Yes, I know, you didn't understand what you were doing. But you