Part 27 (1/2)
”Bless my soul!” murmured Mr. Fogo, cowering more closely.
”This country teems with extraordinary people!”
He held his breath as the deeper voice answered--
”Had I thought--”
”Stop! I know what you would say, and it is untrue. Be frank as I am. You had half-guessed my secret, and were bound to convince yourself: and why? Shall I tell you, or will you copy my candour and speak for yourself?”
Dead silence followed this question. After some seconds the woman's voice resumed--
”Ah! all men are cowards. Well, I will tell you. Your question implied yet another, and it was, Do I, hating my husband, love you?”
”Geraldine!”
”Do you still wish that question answered? I will do you that favour also: Listen: for the life of me--I don't know.”
And the speaker laughed--a laugh full of amused tolerance, as though her confession had left her a careless spectator of its results.
Mr. Fogo shuddered.
”In heaven's name, Geraldine, don't mock me!”
”But it is true. How _should_ I know? You have talked to me, read me your verses--and, indeed, I think them very beautiful. You have with comparative propriety, because in verse, invited me to fly with thee to a desolate isle in the Southern Sea--wherever that is--and forgetting my shame and likewise blame, while you do the same with name and fame and its laurel-leaf, go to moral grief on a coral reef--”
”Geraldine, you are torturing me.”
”Do I not quote correctly? My point is this:--A woman will listen to talk, but she admires action. Prove that you are ready, not to fly to a coral reef, but to do me one small service, and you may have another answer.”
”Name it.”
Mr. Fogo, peering through the bushes as one fascinated, saw an extremely beautiful woman confronting an extremely pale youth, and fancied also that he saw a curious flash of contempt pa.s.s over the woman's features as she answered--
”Really unless you kill the Admiral next time he makes a pun, I do not know that just now I need such a service. By to-morrow, though, or the next day, I may think of one. Until then”--she held out her hand--”wait patiently, and be kind to Sophia.”
Mr. Moggridge started as though stung by a snake; but, recollecting himself, imprinted a kiss upon the proffered fingers. Again Mrs.
Goodwyn-Sandys laughed with unaffected mirth, and again the hidden witness saw that curious gleam of scorn--only now, as the young man bent his head, it was not dissembled.
They were gone. Mr. Fogo sank back against the bushes, drew a long breath, and pa.s.sed his hand nervously over his eyes; but though the scene had pa.s.sed as a dream, the laugh still rang in his ears.
”It is a judgment on me!” muttered the poor man--”a judgment!
They are all alike.”
Curiously enough, his next reflection appeared to contradict this view of the s.e.x.
”An extraordinary woman! But every fresh person I meet in this place is more eccentric than the last. Let me see,” he continued, checking off the list on his fingers; ”there's Caleb, and that astounding Admiral, and the Twins, and Tamsin--”
Mr. Fogo stared very hard at the water for some seconds.