Demos Part 71

'You could defend yourself by declaring me infamous?'

Did he know the meaning of that flash across her face? Only when the words were uttered did their full significance strike Adela herself.

'You could defend yourself by saying that I lied against you?'

He regarded her from beneath his eyebrows as she repeated the question.

In the silence which followed he seated himself on the chair nearest to him. Adela too sat down.

For more than a quarter of an hour they remained thus, no word exchanged. Then Adela rose and approached her husband.

'If I order the carriage,' she said softly, 'will you come with me at once to Belwick?'

He gave no answer. He was sitting with his legs crossed, the will held over his knee.

'I am sorry you have this trial,' she continued, 'deeply sorry. But you have won, I know you have won!'

He turned his eyes in a direction away from her, hesitated, rose.

'Get your things on.'

He was going to the door.

'Richard!'

She held her hand for the parchment.

'You can't trust me to the bottom of the stairs?' he asked bitterly.

She all but laughed with glad confidence.

'Oh, I will trust you!'

CHAPTER XXV

Adela and her husband did not return from Belwick till eight o'clock in the evening. In the first place Mr. Yottle had to be sent for from a friend's house in the country, where he was spending Sunday; then there was long waiting for a train back to Agworth. The Rodmans, much puzzled to account for the disorder, postponed dinner. Adela, however, dined alone, and but slightly, though she had not eaten since breakfast. Then fatigue overcame her. She slept an unbroken sleep till sunrise.

On going down next morning she found 'Arry alone in the dining-room; he was standing at the window with hands in pocket, and, after a glance round, averted his face again, a low growl his only answer to her morning salutation. Mr. Rodman was the next to appear. He shook hands as usual. In his 'I hope you are well?' there was an accent of respectful sympathy. Personally, he seemed in his ordinary spirits. He proceeded to talk of trifles, but in such a tone as he might have used had there been grave sickness in the house. And presently, with yet lower voice and a smile of good-humoured resignation, he said--

'Our journey, I fear, must be postponed.'

Adela smiled, not quite in the same way, and briefly a.s.sented.

'Alice is not very well,' Rodman then remarked. 'I advised her to have breakfast upstairs. I trust you excuse her?'

Mutimer made his appearance. He just nodded round, and asked, as he seated himself at table--

'Who's been letting Freeman loose? He's running about the garden.'

The dog furnished a topic for a few minutes' conversation, then there was all but unbroken silence to the end of the meal. Richard's face expressed nothing in particular, unless it were a bad night. Rodman kept up his smile, and, eating little himself, devoted himself to polite waiting upon Adela. When he rose from the table, Richard said to his brother--

'You'll go down as usual. I shall be at the office in half-an-hour.'

Adela presently went to the drawing-room. She was surprised to find Alice sitting there. Mrs. Rodman had clearly not enjoyed the unbroken rest which gave Adela her appearance of freshness and calm; her eyes were swollen and red, her lips hung like those of a fretful child that has tired itself with sobbing, her hair was carelessly rolled up, her attire slatternly. She sat in sullen disorder. Seeing Adela, she dropped her eyes, and her lips drew themselves together. Adela hesitated to approach her, but was moved to do so by sheer pity.

'I'm afraid you've had a bad night,' she said kindly.

'Yes, I suppose I have,' was the ungracious reply.

Adela stood before her for a moment, but could find nothing else to say.

She was turning when Alice looked up, her red eyes almost glaring, her breast shaken with uncontrollable pa.s.sion.

'I think you might have had some consideration,' she exclaimed. 'If you didn't care to speak a word for yourself, you might have thought about others. What are we to do, I. should like to know?'

Adela was struck with consternation. She had been prepared for petulant bewailing, but a vehement outburst of this kind was the last thing she could have foreseen, above all to have it directed against herself.

'What do you mean, Alice?' she said with pained surprise.

'Why, it's all your doing, I suppose,' the other pursued, in the same voice. 'What right had you to let him go off in that way without saying a word to us? If the truth was known, I expect you were at the bottom of it; he wouldn't have been such a fool, whatever he says. What right had you, I'd like to know?'

Adela calmed herself as she listened. Her surprise at the attack was modified and turned into another channel by Alice's words.

'Has Richard told you what pa.s.sed between us?' she inquired. It cost her nothing to speak with unmoved utterance; the difficulty was not to seem too indifferent.

'He's told us as much as he thought fit. His duty! I like that! As if you couldn't have stopped him, if you'd chosen! You might have thought of other people.'

'Did he tell you that I tried to stop him?' Adela asked, with the same quietness of interrogation.

'Why, did you?' cried Alice, looking up scornfully.

'No.'

'Of course not! Talk about duty! I should think that was plain enough duty. I only wish he'd come to me with his talk about duty. It's a duty to rob people, I suppose? Oh, I understand _him_ well enough. It's an easy way of getting out of his difficulties; as well lose his money this way as any other. He always thinks of himself first, trust him! He'll go down to New Wanley and make a speech, no doubt, and show off--with his duty and all the rest of it! What's going to become of me? You'd no right to let him go before telling us.'

'You would have advised him to say nothing about the will?'

'Advised him!' she laughed angrily. 'I'd have seen if I couldn't do something more than advise.'

'I fear you wouldn't have succeeded in making your brother act dishonourably,' Adela replied.

It was the first sarcasm that had ever pa.s.sed her lips, and as soon as it was spoken she turned to leave the room, fearful lest she might say things which would afterwards degrade her in her own eyes. Her body quivered. As she reached the door Rodman opened it and entered. He bowed to let her pa.s.s, searching her face the while.

When she was gone he approached to Alice, whom he had at once observed:

'What have you been up to?' he asked sternly.