The Whirlpool Part 54

He flung the sc.r.a.p of paper aside and laughed. Of all natural explanations, this, of course, had never occurred to him. Yesterday's telegram told of Mrs. Larkfield's serious condition, and Sibyl had started at once for Weymouth, expecting to meet him there. One word of hers to the servant and he would simply have followed her. But Sibyl saw no necessity for that word. She was always reserved with domestics.

By the messenger, he despatched a reply. He would be at Weymouth as soon as possible.

He incurred the risk of appearing to run away; but that mattered little. Sibyl could hardly return before her mother's burial, and by going yonder to see her he escaped the worse danger, probably the certainty, of arrest before any possible meeting with her in London.

Dreading this more than ever, he made ready in a few minutes; the telegraph boy had hardly left the building before Hugh followed. A glance at the timetables had shown him that, if he travelled by the Great-Western, he could reach Weymouth at five minutes past four; whereas the first train he could catch at Waterloo would not bring him to his destination until half an hour later; on the other hand, he could get away from London by the South-Western forty minutes sooner than by the other line, and this decided him. Yesterday, Waterloo had been merely the more convenient station on account of his business in town; today he chose it because he had to evade arrest on a charge of homicide. So comforted was he by the news from Sibyl, that he could reflect on this joke of destiny, and grimly smile at it.

At the end of his journey he betook himself to an hotel, and immediately sent a message to Sibyl. Before her arrival he had swallowed meat and drink. He waited for her in a private room, which looked seaward. The sight of the blue Channel, the smell of salt breezes, made his heart ache. He was standing at the window, watching a steamer that had just left port, when Sibyl entered; he turned and looked at her in silence.

'What are these mysterious movements?' she asked, coming forward with a smile. 'Why did you alter your mind yesterday?'

'I wasn't well.'

He could say nothing more, yet. Sibyl's face was so tranquil, and she seemed so glad to rejoin him, that his tongue refused to utter any alarming word; and the more he searched her countenance, the more detestable did it seem that he should insult her by the semblance of a doubt.

'Not well? Indeed, you look dreadfully out of sorts. How long had I been gone when you got home again?'

'An hour or two. But tell me first about your mother. She died before you came?'

'Very soon after they sent the telegram.'

Gravely, but with no affectation of distress, she related the circ.u.mstances; making known, finally, that Mrs. Larkfield had died intestate.

'You are quite sure of that?' asked Hugh, with an eagerness which surprised her.

'Quite. Almost with her last breath she talked about it, and said that she _must_ make her will. And she had spoken of it several times lately. The people there knew all about her affairs. She kept putting it off--and as likely as not she wished the money to be mine, after all. I am sure she must have felt that she owed me something.'

Carnaby experienced a profound relief. Sibyl was now provided for, whatever turn his affairs might take. She had seated herself by the window, and, with her gloved hands crossed upon her lap, was gazing absently towards the sea. How great must be _her_ relief! thought Hugh.

And still he looked at her smooth, pure features; at her placid eyes, in which, after all, he seemed to detect a little natural sadness; and the accusation in his mind a.s.sumed so grotesque an incredibility that he asked himself how he should dare to hint at it.

'Sibyl----'

'Isn't there something you haven't told me?' she said, regarding him with anxiety, when he had just uttered her name and then averted his look. 'I never saw you look so ill.'

'Yes, dear, there is something.'

It was not often he spoke so gently. Sibyl waited, one of her hands clasping the other, and her lips close set.

'I was at Wimbledon last night--at Redgrave's.'

He paused again, for the last word choked him. Unless it were a tremor of the eyelids, no movement betrayed itself in Sibyl's features; yet their expression had grown cold, and seemed upon the verge of a disdainful wonder. The pupils of her eyes insensibly dilated, as though to challenge scrutiny and defy it.

'What of that?' she said, when his silence urged her to speak.

'Something happened between us. We quarrelled.'

Her lips suddenly parted, and he heard her quick breath; but the look that followed was of mere astonishment, and in a moment, before she spoke, it softened in a smile.

'This is your dreadful news? You quarrelled--and he is going to withdraw from the business. Oh, my dear boy, how ridiculous you are! I thought all sorts of horrible things. Were you afraid I should make an outcry? And you have worried yourself into illness about _this_? Oh, foolish fellow!'

Before she ceased, her voice was broken with laughter--a laugh of extravagant gaiety, of mocking mirth, that brought the blood to her face and shook her from head to foot. Only when she saw that her husband's gloom underwent no change did this merriment cease. Then, with abrupt gravity, which was almost annoyance, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with moisture and her cheeks flushed, she asked him----

'Isn't that it?'

'Worse than that,' Hugh answered.

But he spoke more freely, for he no longer felt obliged to watch her countenance. His duty now was to soften the outrage involved in repeating Mrs. Maskell's fiction by making plain his absolute faith in her, and to contrive his story so as to omit all mention of a third person's presence at the fatal interview.

'Then do tell me and have done!' exclaimed Sibyl, almost petulantly.

'We quarrelled--and I struck him--and the blow was fatal.'

'Fatal?--you mean he was killed?'

The blood vanished from her face, leaving pale horror.

'A terrible accident--a blow that happened to--I couldn't believe it till the doctor came and said he was dead.'

'But tell me more. What led to it? How could you strike Mr. Redgrave?'

Sibyl had all at once subdued her voice to an excessive calmness. Her hands were trembling; she folded them again upon her lap. Every line of her face, every muscle of her body, declared the constraint in which she held herself. This, said Hugh inwardly, was no more than he had expected; disaster made n.o.ble proof of Sibyl's strength.

'I'll tell you from the beginning.'

He recounted faithfully the incidents at Waterloo Station, and the beginning of Mrs. Maskell's narrative in the cab. At the disclosure of her relations with Redgrave, he was interrupted by a short, hard laugh.

'I couldn't help it, Hugh. That woman!--why, you have always said you were sure to meet her somewhere. Housekeeper at Mr. Redgrave's! We know what the end of that would be!'

Sibyl talked rapidly, in an excited chatter--the kind of utterance never heard upon her lips.

'It was strange,' Hugh continued. 'Seems to have been mere chance. Then she began to say that she had learnt some of Redgrave's secrets--about people who came and went mysteriously. And then--Sibyl, I can't speak the words. It was the foulest slander that she could have invented. She meant to drive me mad, and she succeeded--curse her!'

Drops of anguish stood upon his forehead. He sprang up and crossed the room. Turning again, he saw his wife gazing at him, as if in utmost perplexity.

'Hugh, I don't in the least understand you. What _was_ the slander?

Perhaps I am stupid--but----'

He came near, but could not look her in the eyes.

'My dearest'--his voice shook--'it was an infamous lie about _you_--that _you_ had been there----'

'Why, of course I have! You know that I have.'

'She meant more than that. She said you had been there secretly--at night----'

Hugh Carnaby--the man who had lived as high-blooded men do live, who had laughed by the camp-fire or in the club smoking-room at many a Rabelaisian story and capped it with another, who hated mock modesty, was all for honest openness between man and woman--stood in guilty embarra.s.sment before his own wife's face of innocence. It would have been a sheer impossibility for him to ask her where and how she spent a certain evening last winter; Sibyl, now as ever, was his ideal of chaste womanhood. He scorned himself for what he had yet to tell.

Sibyl was gazing at him, steadily, inquiringly.

'She made you believe this?' fell upon the silence, in her softest, clearest tones.