Part 35 (1/2)
”By Jove, you _are_ on the high rope to-night.”
”Now, about this money?” And she wiped her eyes, and blew her nose.
”You've proved to me that you must have it. You've shown that you wouldn't shrink from any--from any ordeal in order to get it.”
He looked round with reawakened interest.
”I do want it most d.a.m.nably, or of course I wouldn't have asked you for it.”
”Then for this once I suppose I must give it to you.”
”Jane! Do you really mean it?”
”Yes. I'll give it you, if you'll tell me that you understand--if you'll promise that this shall be the very last time.... But with or without the promise, it will be useless to apply to me again.”
”There's my hand on it.”
He promised freely and readily.
XVIII
Next day she was too tired to get up for the morning service, but she went to St. Saviour's church in the evening.
More and more she loved the quiet hours spent in church. Here, and only here, she was safely shut up in the world of her own thoughts, and could feel certain that the thread of ideas would not be snapped by a rough voice, or her nerves be shaken by the unantic.i.p.ated violence of some fresh misfortune. And St. Saviour's was even more restful at night than in the daytime.
She listened automatically to the beautiful opening prayer; and then she retired deep into herself.
Except for the chancel, the building was dimly lighted. The roof and the empty galleries were almost hidden by shadows; lamps reflected themselves feebly from the dark wood-work; and the people, sitting wide apart from one another in the spa.r.s.ely occupied pews, seemed vague black figures and not strong living men and women.
Each time that she rose, she looked from the semi-darkness towards the brilliant light of the chancel--at the white surplices and the s.h.i.+ning faces of the choir, the golden tubes of the organ, and the soft radiance that flashed from the bra.s.s of the altar rails. But all the while, whether she sat down or stood up, her thoughts were struggling in darkness and vainly seeking for the faintest glimmer of light.
She thought of her husband and of the shop. He was holding her, would hold her as a tied and gagged prisoner surrounded with the dark chaos that he had caused. How could she save herself--or him? He concealed facts from her; he told her lies; he never let her hear of a difficulty until it was too late to find any means of escape.
And she thought of the destruction of her whole lifework. She saw it certainly approaching--the only possible end to such a partners.h.i.+p. All that she had laboriously constructed was to be stupidly beaten down.
The splendid old business would infallibly be ruined. No business, however firmly established, can withstand the double attack of gross mismanagement and reckless depletion of its funds. As she thought of it, those words of her inveterately active rival echoed and re-echoed. A leak, and no chance of stopping the leak--disaster foreseen, but not to be averted. The leak was too great. All hands at the pumps would not save the s.h.i.+p.
A new and if possible more poignant bitterness filled her mind. It was another long-drawn agony that lay before her; and it seemed to her, looking back at the older pain, that this was almost worse. Confusion, entanglement, darkness--no light, no hope, no chance of opening the track that leads from chaos to security. Bitter, oh, most bitter--to taste the failure one has not deserved, to work wisely and be frustrated by folly, to watch pa.s.sively while all that one has created and believed to be permanent is slowly demolished and obliterated.
Quite automatically, she had stood up again, and was looking towards the brightly illuminated choir. They were singing the appointed psalms now; and, as half consciously she listened to each chanted verse, the words wove themselves into the burden of her thoughts....
... ”They have compa.s.sed me about also
... and fought against me without cause.”
Altogether without cause. There was the pity of it. If only he would curb his insensate greed, put some check or limit to his excesses, the business would soon recover from the shaking he had given it; and then there would be enough to maintain him in idleness for the rest of his days. She would work for him, if he would but let her.
... ”For the love that I had unto them, lo, they take now my contrary part.”
Yes, in all things he would frustrate her efforts.