Part 28 (2/2)

”Archelaus!...” she breathed, sliding her hand across his eyes; ”don't look like that.... To please me!” She pulled his head towards her and dropped light kisses on his lids to charm the expression out of his eyes, but he remained impa.s.sive. She was in a condition when wiles leave a certain kind of man very untouched, and hate for Ishmael, not any charm left for him in her, urged his cunning love-making.

”I can't go on weth it,” he declared; ”it's no good, Phoebe. What does life hold for I now? Last week I was down in the mine when there was a fall of rock, and for a bit we thought we'd never get out, and I said to myself what did it matter?... it'll only save I the trouble of doen it for myself.”

”Archelaus!...”

”I put the barrel of my gun against my head t'other day and pulled the trigger, but it missed fire. And then I dedn't try again, because I thought all of a sudden that I must see you once more, Phoebe, and tell 'ee plain all about it--what you and that husband of yours have driven a man to.”

”Don't talk to me about Ishmael! At least he's a good man, so he is, and we're neither of us fit to live along of him!”

”Good, is he? Yes; but is he the man for 'ee? Do 'ee ever feel your lil'

heart beating the quicker against his? If he'm a man, why don't 'ee tell him everything and let him kick me out, eh?”

”You know I can't tell him--that I couldn't ever.”

”He'll knaw when I'm dead, because I'll lave word to show all men how one brother took everything in life from another.... He'll knaw then.”

”I don't believe you; I don't believe anyone would be so wicked, even you.”

”Ah! there's things in life even you don't knaw anything about, though you'm so wicked yourself,” said Archelaus grimly; ”but you too 'll knaw a bit more by-and-bye. I won't be able to keep off it for long, Phoebe. Maybe it'll take me suddenly when I'm here one day. You'll hear my life-blood running away, lil' 'un, and think for a minute it's water drippen' somewhere. Or perhaps I'll just take a rope and hang myself, and you'll hear I choken'. I saw a man hung in Australy once for stealen' another man's gold, and he took an awful time to die, he did.

You could hear the choken' of him loud as bellows....” Phoebe had turned sickly pale, she screamed out, and thrust him away from her.

”Katie!” she called. Archelaus went to the door and shouted into the kitchen. ”Your missus is feelen' faint,” he informed the maids. ”I just looked into the parlour and saw her lyen' all wisht like.” Katie bustled past with an odd look at him, and Phoebe was taken up to bed.

She was better again next day, but she feared after that to leave her room, and in spite of Ishmael's protests stayed in bed, pleading that she felt giddy whenever she stood up. Twice Archelaus came to the house and had to be content with calling to her through the door, and each time she replied she was not well enough to see him.

He began to fume that his hidden delight of torment, which in his distorted mind was part of his scheme for revenge against Ishmael, was being thwarted; and day by day as he brooded to himself, his thoughts ever on the same theme, the end of all his anger and her fear began to loom, as he had planned. It was chance that eventually played into his hands, but the will and the cunning that made him ripe to catch at it were his already.

CHAPTER II

THE Pa.s.sAGE

Phoebe lay in her big bed, her arms straight out upon the coverlet, listless palms upwards, her eyes closed, and her dim thoughts--the unformed blind thoughts of a resentful child--her only company. A week earlier Ishmael had been called up to Devon to see his mother, who had taken a turn for the worse: she had died a few hours after his arrival; he had had to stay and see to the funeral, and was not due back till that evening. John-James was in the fields and the maids were all in the dairy, working hard to finish the b.u.t.ter for market. Phoebe did not mind--for the first time in her life she preferred to be alone; she found it more and more difficult to control herself in the presence of others, to hide or account for the terror that possessed her. Only when she thought of the little life that in another month she would have brought into the world, that would be nestling against her, did she feel a glow of comfort. Nothing disturbed her joy in that, which she had perforce to pretend was the cause of her depression. As she lay now, with the wrongs done to her and by her stirring in her slow bewildered brain, she banished them by thoughts of that which was to be hers--that solace so far sweeter than the little animals with which she had hitherto filled her days. Poor Wanda, who from much petting had grown to fawn on her almost as much as upon Ishmael, was neglected now, and did not even stretch her woolly length beside the bed, but roamed, alone and melancholy, in the pa.s.sage, waiting for the well-known loved footstep of her master.

Phoebe curved over in bed, and began to pretend to herself, as when a small child she had been wont to do for the first hour in bed every evening--planning small pleasures, triumphs over the other children she knew--and as when a girl she had been used to lie and imagine thrilling episodes with some dream lover. Now she pretended her baby had already come and was lying beside her; she bunched a fold of bedclothes to make her pretence the more real, and lay cuddling it, her eyes closed so that the sense of sight should not dissipate her dreams. No man had any part in her vision of the future with her baby; it was to be hers alone, and she pictured a blissful period when she played with it, dressed and undressed it, lived for it. Somehow she imagined that all her difficulties would cease with its birth, and both the torment of Archelaus and the presence of Ishmael, which now left her so unstirred it wearied her, faded away. Although she told herself she hated men and the harm they did, she hoped her child would be a boy, because she was of the type of woman, even as Annie had been, that always wants a boy.

She kept her eyes shut and caressed the bundle she had made beside her, and tried to forget her physical condition and her mental worry in the joy she was forecasting.

”Phoebe ... lil' 'un ... I'm come,” said a voice from the other side of her bedroom door. Her lids flew up; a great spasm of terror shot through her, making her sick and setting her heart pounding. She saw the last warm glow of the evening in the square of sky, its light tingeing the white bedroom with fire; she saw the bundle in the curve of her arm was only a roll of sheet and blanket whose striped edge of pink and blue somehow for an irrational moment engaged her attention, so vivid had her dreaming been, so incongruous was this sudden recall. Then she turned over in bed towards the door, panic in her breast, and her whole body swept by the hot waves of fear. She had locked the door, as she always did now, but the tones, soft as they were, had power to frighten her even through the stout wood.

She lay silent, hoping he would think she was asleep, not making a sound.

”I do want to see 'ee that bad,” came the voice. She paid no heed, but clenched her hands under the bedclothes; her heart had settled into an even thunderous beating that to her ears almost deafened the voice that provoked its action.

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