The Lamp of Fate Part 2

Her voice rose almost to a scream and simultaneously the nurse came hurrying in from the adjoining room. She threw one glance at the patient, huddled flushed and excited against the pillows, then without more ado she marched up to Hugh and, taking him by the shoulders with her small, capable hands, she pushed him out of the room.

"Do you want to _kill_ your wife?" she demanded in a low voice of concentrated anger. "If so, you're going the right way about it."

The next moment the door closed behind her, and Hugh found himself standing alone on the landing outside it.

Although the scene with her husband did not kill Diane, it went very near it. For some time she was dangerously ill, but at last the combined efforts of doctor and nurse restored her once more to a frail hold upon life, and the resiliency of youth accomplished the rest.

Curiously enough, the remembrance of Hugh's brief visit to her bedside held for her no force of reality. When the fever which had ensued abated, she described the whole scene in detail to Virginie and the nurse as an evil dream which she had had--and pitifully they let her continue in this belief.

Even Hugh himself had been compelled, under protest, to take part in this deception. The doctor, a personal friend of his, had not minced matters.

"You've acted the part of an unmitigated coward, Vallincourt--salving your own fool conscience at your wife's expense. Even if you no longer love her--"

"But I do love her," protested Hugh. "I--I _wors.h.i.+p_ her!"

Jim Lancaster stared. In common with most medical men he was more or less used to the odd vagaries of human nature, but Hugh's att.i.tude struck him as altogether incomprehensible.

"Then what in the name of thunder have you been getting at?" he demanded.

"I both love and hate her," declared Hugh wretchedly.

"That's rot," retorted the other. "It's impossible."

"It's not impossible."

Hugh rose and began pacing backwards and forwards. Lancaster's eyes rested on him thoughtfully. The man had altered during the last few weeks--altered incredibly. He was a stone lighter to start with, and his blond, clear-cut face had the worn look born of mental conflict. His eyes were red-rimmed as though from insufficient sleep.

"It's not impossible." Hugh paused in his restless pacing to and fro. "I love her because I can't help myself. I hate her because I ought never to have married her--never made a woman of her type the mother of my child."

"All mothers are sacred," suggested the doctor quietly.

Hugh seemed not to hear him.

"How long is this pretence to go on, Lancaster?" he demanded irritably.

"What pretence?"

"This pretence that nothing is changed--nothing altered--between my wife and myself?"

"For ever, I hope. So that, after all, there will have been no pretence."

But the appeal of the speech was ineffectual. Hugh looked at the other man unmoved.

"It's no use hoping that you and I can see things from the same standpoint," he added stubbornly. "I've made my decision--laid down the lines of our future life together. I'm only waiting till you, as a medical man, tell me that Diane's health is sufficiently restored for me to inform her."

"No woman is ever in such health that you can break her heart with impunity."

Hugh's light-grey eyes gleamed like steel.

"Will you answer my question?" he said curtly.

Lancaster sprang up.

"Diane is in as good health now as ever she was," he said violently. And strode out of the room.

During the period of her convalescence Diane, attended by Nurse Maynard, had occupied rooms situated in a distant wing of the house, where the invalid was not likely to be disturbed by the coming and going of other members of the household, and it was with almost the excitement of a schoolgirl coming home for the holidays that, when she was at last released from the doctor's supervision, she retook possession of her own room. She superintended joyously the restoration to their accustomed place her various little personal possessions, and finally peeped into her husband's adjoining room, thinking she heard him moving there.

On the threshold she paused irresolutely, conscious of an odd sense of confusion. The room was vacant. But, beyond that, its whole aspect was different somehow, unfamiliar. Her eyes wandered to the dressing-table.

Instead of holding its usual array of silver-backed brushes and polished shaving tackle, winking in the suns.h.i.+ne, it was empty. She stared at it blankly. Then her glance travelled slowly round the room. It had a strangely untenanted look. There was no sign of masculine attire left carelessly about--not a chair or table was a hairbreadth out of its appointed place.

Her hand, resting lightly on the door-handle, gripped it with a sudden tensity. The next moment she had crossed the room and torn open the doors of the great armoire where Hugh kept his clothes. This, too, was empty--shelves and hanger alike. Impulsively she rang the bell and, when a maid appeared in response, demanded to know the meaning of the alteration.

The girl glanced at her with the veiled curiosity of her cla.s.s.

"It was made by Sir Hugh's orders, my lady."

With an effort, Diane hid the sudden tumult of bewilderment and fear that filled her. Her dream! Had it been only a dream? Or had it been an actual happening--that terrible little scene with her husband when, standing rigid and unbending beside her bed, he had told her that the birth of their daughter was a just retribution for a union he regarded as a sin?

Memories of their brief year of marriage came surging over her in a torrent--Catherine's narrow-minded opposition and disapproval, Hugh's own moodiness and irritability and, latterly, his not infrequent censure. There had been times when Diane--rebuked incessantly--had fancied she must be the Scarlet Woman herself, or at least a very near relative. And then had come moments when Hugh, carried away by his ardour, had once more played the lover as he alone knew how, with all the warmth and abandon of those days when he had wooed her in Italy, and Diane would forget her unhappiness and fears in the sure knowledge that she was a pa.s.sionately beloved woman.

But always she was subconsciously aware of a sense of strife--of struggle, as though Hugh loved her in spite of himself, in defiance of some inner mandate of conscience which accused him.

And now, fear mastered her. Her dream had been a reality. And this--this sweeping away from what had been his room of every familiar little personal possession--was the symbol of some new and terribly changed relation between them.

Forcing herself to move composedly while the maid still watched her, she walked slowly out of the room, but the instant the door had closed behind her she flew downstairs to her husband's study and, not pausing to comply with the unwritten law which forbade entrance there without express permission, broke in upon him as he sat at his desk, busily occupied with his morning mail.

"Diane!"

Hugh turned towards her with a cold light of astonished disapproval in his eyes.

"You know I don't like to be interrupted----"

"I know, I know. But I _had_ to come. Something's happened. There's been a mistake. . . . Hugh, they've taken everything out of your room. All your things."

She stood beside him breathlessly awaiting his reply--her pa.s.sionate dark eyes fixed on his face, two patches of brilliant colour showing on the high cheek-bones that bore witness to her Russian origin.

They made a curious contrast--husband and wife. She, a slender thing of fire and flame, hands clenched, lips quivering--woman every inch of her; he, immaculate and composed, his face coldly expressionless, yet with a hint of something warmer, a suppressed glow, beneath the deliberately chill glance of those curious light-grey eyes--the man and bigoted fanatic fighting for supremacy within him.

"Hugh! Answer me! Don't sit staring at me like that!" Diane's voice held a sharpened sound.

At last he spoke, very slowly and carefully.

"There has been no mistake, Diane. Everything that has been done has been with my sanction--by my order. Our marriage has been a culpable mistake. Catherine realised it from the beginning. I only realise my full guilt now that I am punished. But whatever I can do in atonement--reparation, that I have made up my mind to do. The first--the chief thing--is that our married life is at an end."