The Odd Women Part 85

'No one writes to you?' the listener finally inquired.

'I am expecting to hear from them,' was Widdowson's answer, as he sat in the usual position, head hanging forward and hands clasped between his knees.

'To hear what?'

'I think I shall be sent for.'

'Sent for? To make it up?'

'She is going to give birth to a child.'

Lady Horrocks nodded twice thoughtfully, and with a faint smile.

'How did you find this out?'

'I have known it long enough. Her sister Virginia told me before they went away. I had a suspicion all at once, and I forced her to tell me.'

'And if you are sent for shall you go?'

Widdowson seemed to mutter an affirmative, and added,--

'I shall hear what she has to tell me, as she promised.'

'Is it--is it possible--?'

The lady's question remained incomplete. Widdowson, though he understood it, vouchsafed no direct answer. Intense suffering was manifest in his face, and at length he spoke vehemently.

'Whatever she tells me--how can I believe it? When once a woman has lied how can she ever again be believed? I can't be sure of anything.'

'All that fibbing,' remarked Lady Horrocks, 'has an unpleasant look. No denying it. She got entangled somehow. But I think you had better believe that she pulled up just in time.'

'I have no love for her left,' he went on in a despairing voice. 'It all perished in those frightful days. I tried hard to think that I still loved her. I kept writing letters--but they meant nothing--or they only meant that I was driven half crazy by wretchedness. I had rather we lived on as we have been doing. It's miserable enough for me, G.o.d knows; but it would be worse to try and behave to her as if I could forget everything. I know her explanation won't satisfy me. Whatever it is I shall still suspect her. I don't know that the child is mine. It may be. Perhaps as it grows up there will be a likeness to help me to make sure. But what a life! Every paltry trifle will make me uneasy; and if I discovered any fresh deceit I should do something terrible.

You don't know how near I was--'

He shuddered and hid his face.

'The Oth.e.l.lo business won't do,' said Lady Horrocks not unkindly. 'You couldn't have gone on together, of course; you had to part for a time.

Well, that's all over; take it as something that couldn't be helped.

You were behaving absurdly, you know; I told you plainly; I guessed there'd be trouble. You oughtn't to have married at all, that's the fact; it would be better for most of us if we kept out of it. Some marry for a good reason, some for a bad, and mostly it all comes to the same in the end. But there, never mind. Pull yourself together, dear boy. It's all nonsense about not caring for her. Of course you're eating your heart out for want of her. And I'll tell you what I think: it's very likely Monica was pulled up just in time by discovering--you understand?--that she was more your wife than any one else's. Something tells me that's how it was. Just try to look at it in that way. If the child lives she'll be different. She has sowed her wild oats--why shouldn't a woman as well as a man? Go down to Clevedon and forgive her. You're an honest man, and it isn't every woman--never mind. I could tell you stories about people--but you wouldn't care to hear them. Just take things with a laugh--we _all_ have to. Life's as you take it: all gloom or moderately s.h.i.+ny.'

With much more to the same solacing effect. For the time Widdowson was perchance a trifle comforted; at all events, he went away with a sense of grat.i.tude to Lady Horrocks. And when he had left the house he remembered that not even a civil formality with regard to Sir William had fallen from his lips. But Sir William's wife, for whatever reason, had also not once mentioned the baronet's name.

Only a few days pa.s.sed before Widdowson received the summons he was expecting. It came in the form of a telegram, bidding him hasten to his wife; not a word of news added. At the time of its arrival he was taking his afternoon walk; this delay made it doubtful whether he could get to Paddington by six-twenty, the last train which would enable him to reach Clevedon that night. He managed it, with only two or three minutes to spare.

Not till he was seated in the railway carriage could he fix his thoughts on the end of the journey. An inexpressible repugnance then affected him; he would have welcomed any disaster to the train, any injury which might prevent his going to Monica at such a time. Often, in antic.i.p.ation, the event which was now come to pa.s.s had confused and darkened his mind; he loathed the thought of it. If the child, perhaps already born, were in truth his, it must be very long before he could regard it with a shadow of paternal interest; uncertainty, to which he was condemned, would in all likelihood make it an object of aversion to him as long as he lived.

He was at Bristol by a quarter past nine, and had to change for a slow train, which by ten o'clock brought him to Yatton, the little junction for Clevedon. It was a fine starry night, but extremely cold. For the few minutes of detention he walked restlessly about the platform. His chief emotion was now a fear lest all might not go well with Monica.

Whether he could believe what she had to tell him or not, it would be worse if she were to die before he could hear her exculpation. The anguish of remorse would seize upon him.

Alone in his compartment, he did not sit down, but stamped backwards and forwards on the floor, and before the train stopped he jumped out.

No cab was procurable; he left his bag at the station, and hastened with all speed in the direction that he remembered. But very soon the crossways had confused him. As he met no one whom he could ask to direct him, he had to knock at a door. Streaming with perspiration, he came at length within sight of his own house. A church clock was striking eleven.

Alice and Virginia were both standing in the hall when the door was opened; they beckoned him into a room.

'Is it over?' he asked, staring from one to the other with his dazzled eyes.

'At four this afternoon,' answered Alice, scarce able to articulate. 'A little girl.'

'She had to have chloroform,' said Virginia, who looked a miserable, lifeless object, and shook like one in an ague.

'And all's well?'

'We think so--we hope so,' they stammered together.

Alice added that the doctor was to make another call to-night. They had a good nurse. The infant seemed healthy, but was a very, very little mite, and had only made its voice heard for a few minutes.

'She knows you sent for me?'

'Yes. And we have something to give you. You were to have this as soon as you arrived.'

Miss Madden handed him a sealed envelope; then both the sisters drew away, as if fearing the result of what they had done. Widdowson just glanced at the unaddressed missive and put it into his pocket.

'I must have something to eat,' he said, wiping his forehead. 'When the doctor comes I'll see him.'

This visit took place while he was engaged on his supper. On coming down from the patient the doctor gave him an a.s.surance that things were progressing 'fairly well'; the morning, probably, would enable him to speak with yet more confidence. Widdowson had another brief conversation with the sisters, then bade them good-night, and went to the room that had been prepared for him. As he closed the door he heard a thin, faint wail, and stood listening until it ceased; it came from a room on the floor below.

Having brought himself with an effort to open the envelope he had received, he found several sheets of notepaper, one of them, remarked immediately, in a man's writing. At this he first glanced, and the beginning showed him that it was a love-letter written to Monica. He threw it aside and took up the other sheets, which contained a long communication from his wife; it was dated two months ago. In it Monica recounted to him, with scrupulous truthfulness, the whole story of her relations with Bevis.

'I only make this confession'--so she concluded--'for the sake of the poor child that will soon be born. The child is yours, and ought not to suffer because of what I did. The enclosed letter will prove this to you, if anything can. For myself I ask nothing. I don't think I shall live. If I do I will consent to anything you propose. I only ask you to behave without any pretence; if you cannot forgive me, do not make a show of it. Say what your will is, and that shall be enough'.

He did not go to bed that night. There was a fire in the room, and he kept it alight until daybreak, when he descended softly to the hall and let himself out of the house.

In a fierce wind that swept from the north-west down the foaming Channel, he walked for an hour or two, careless whither the roads directed him. All he desired was to be at a distance from that house, with its hideous silence and the faint cry that could scarcely be called a sound. The necessity of returning, of spending days there, was an Oppression which held him like a nightmare.

Monica's statement he neither believed nor disbelieved; he simply could not make up his mind about it. She had lied to him so resolutely before; was she not capable of elaborate falsehood to save her reputation and protect her child? The letter from Bevis might have been a result of conspiracy between them.

That Bevis was the man against whom his jealousy should have been directed at first astounded him. By now he had come to a full perception of his stupidity in never entertaining such a thought. The revelation was equivalent to a second offence just discovered; for he found it impossible to ignore his long-cherished suspicion of Barfoot, and he even surmised the possibility of Monica's having listened to love-making from that quarter previously to her intimacy with Bevis. He loathed the memory of his life since marriage; and as for pardoning his wife, he could as soon pardon and smile upon the author of that accursed letter from Bordeaux.

But go back to the house he must. By obeying his impulse, and straightway returning to London, he might be the cause of a fatal turn in Monica's illness. Constraint of bare humanity would keep him here until his wife was out of danger. But he could not see her, and as soon as possible he must escape from such unendurable circ.u.mstances.

Re-entering at half-past eight, he was met by Alice, who seemed to have slept as little as he himself had done. They went into the dining-room.

'She has been inquiring about you,' began Miss Madden timorously.

'How is she?'

'Not worse, I believe. But so very weak. She wishes me to ask you--'