Part 31 (1/2)

Durrance did not answer her, and she resented his silence. She knew nothing whatever of his plans; she was unaware whether he meant to break his engagement with Ethne or to hold her to it, and curiosity consumed her. It might be a very long time before she saw him again, and all that long time she must remain tortured with doubts.

”You distrust me?” she said defiantly, and with a note of anger in her voice.

Durrance answered her quite gently:--

”Have I no reason to distrust you? Why did you tell me of Captain Willoughby's coming? Why did you interfere?”

”I thought you ought to know.”

”But Ethne wished the secret kept. I am glad to know, very glad. But, after all, you told me, and you were Ethne's friend.”

”Yours, too, I hope,” Mrs. Adair answered, and she exclaimed: ”How could I go on keeping silence? Don't you understand?”

”No.”

Durrance might have understood, but he had never given much thought to Mrs. Adair, and she knew it. The knowledge rankled within her, and his simple ”no” stung her beyond bearing.

”I spoke brutally, didn't I?” she said. ”I told you the truth as brutally as I could. Doesn't that help you to understand?”

Again Durrance said ”No,” and the monosyllable exasperated her out of all prudence, and all at once she found herself speaking incoherently the things which she had thought. And once she had begun, she could not stop. She stood, as it were, outside of herself, and saw that her speech was madness; yet she went on with it.

”I told you the truth brutally on purpose. I was so stung because you would not see what was so visible had you only the mind to see. I wanted to hurt you. I am a bad, bad woman, I suppose. There were you and she in the room talking together in the darkness; there was I alone upon the terrace. It was the same again to-day. You and Ethne in the room, I alone upon the terrace. I wonder whether it will always be so. But you will not say--you will not say.” She struck her hands together with a gesture of despair, but Durrance had no words for her. He walked silently along the garden path towards the stile, and he quickened his pace a little, so that Mrs. Adair had to walk fast to keep up with him.

That quickening of the pace was a sort of answer, but Mrs. Adair was not deterred by it. Her madness had taken hold of her.

”I do not think I would have minded so much,” she continued, ”if Ethne had really cared for you; but she never cared more than as a friend cares, just a mere friend. And what's friends.h.i.+p worth?” she asked scornfully.

”Something, surely,” said Durrance.

”It does not prevent Ethne from shrinking from her friend,” cried Mrs.

Adair. ”She shrinks from you. Shall I tell you why? Because you are blind. She is afraid. While I--I will tell you the truth--I am glad.

When the news first came from Wadi Halfa that you were blind, I was glad; when I saw you in Hill Street, I was glad; ever since, I have been glad--quite glad. Because I saw that she shrank. From the beginning she shrank, thinking how her life would be hampered and fettered,” and the scorn of Mrs. Adair's voice increased, though her voice itself was sunk to a whisper. ”I am not afraid,” she said, and she repeated the words pa.s.sionately again and again. ”I am not afraid. I am not afraid.”

To Durrance it seemed that in all his experience nothing so horrible had ever occurred as this outburst by the woman who was Ethne's friend, nothing so unforeseen.

”Ethne wrote to you at Wadi Halfa out of pity,” she went on, ”that was all. She wrote out of pity; and, having written, she was afraid of what she had done; and being afraid, she had not courage to tell you she was afraid. You would not have blamed her, if she had frankly admitted it; you would have remained her friend. But she had not the courage.”

Durrance knew that there was another explanation of Ethne's hesitations and timidities. He knew, too, that the other explanation was the true one. But to-morrow he himself would be gone from the Salcombe estuary, and Ethne would be on her way to the Irish Channel and Donegal. It was not worth while to argue against Mrs. Adair's slanders. Besides, he was close upon the stile which separated the garden of The Pool from the fields. Once across that stile, he would be free of Mrs. Adair. He contented himself with saying quietly:--

”You are not just to Ethne.”

At that simple utterance the madness of Mrs. Adair went from her. She recognised the futility of all that she had said, of her boastings of courage, of her detractions of Ethne. Her words might be true or not, they could achieve nothing. Durrance was always in the room with Ethne, never upon the terrace with Mrs. Adair. She became conscious of her degradation, and she fell to excuses.

”I am a bad woman, I suppose. But after all, I have not had the happiest of lives. Perhaps there is something to be said for me.” It sounded pitiful and weak, even in her ears; but they had reached the stile, and Durrance had turned towards her. She saw that his face lost something of its sternness. He was standing quietly, prepared now to listen to what she might wish to say. He remembered that in the old days when he could see, he had always a.s.sociated her with a dignity of carriage and a reticence of speech. It seemed hardly possible that it was the same woman who spoke to him now, and the violence of the contrast made him ready to believe that there must be perhaps something to be said on her behalf.

”Will you tell me?” he said gently.

”I was married almost straight from school. I was the merest girl. I knew nothing, and I was married to a man of whom I knew nothing. It was my mother's doing, and no doubt she thought that she was acting for the very best. She was securing for me a position of a kind, and comfort and release from any danger of poverty. I accepted what she said blindly, ignorantly. I could hardly have refused, indeed, for my mother was an imperious woman, and I was accustomed to obedience. I did as she told me and married dutifully the man whom she chose. The case is common enough, no doubt, but its frequency does not make it easier of endurance.”

”But Mr. Adair?” said Durrance. ”After all, I knew him. He was older, no doubt, than you, but he was kind. I think, too, he cared for you.”