Part 38 (1/2)
Waymark stared at him.
”Cacti, what's the matter with you?” he exclaimed, overcome with fear, in spite of his strong self-command. ”Are you ill? Do you know what you're saying?”
Julian rose and made an effort to control himself.
”I know what I'm saying, Waymark I've only just heard it. She has come back home from somewhere--only just now--she seems to have been drinking. It happened in the middle of the day, whilst I was at the hospital. She gave her in charge to a policeman in the street, and a brooch was found on her.”
”A brooch found on her? Your wife's?”
”Yes. When she came in, she railed at me like a fury, and charged me with the most monstrous things. I can't and won't go back there to-night! I shall go mad if I hear her voice. I will walk about the streets till morning.”
”And you tell me that Ida Starr is in custody?”
”She is. My wife accuses her of stealing several things.”
”And you believe this?” asked Waymark, under his voice, whilst his thoughts pictured Ida's poverty, of which he had known nothing, and led him through a long train of miserable sequences.
”I don't know. I can't say. She says that Ida confessed, and, gave the brooch up at once. But her devilish malice is equal to anything. I see into her character as I never did before. Good G.o.d, if you could have seen her face as she told me! And Ida, Ida! I am afraid of myself, Waymark. If I had stayed to listen another moment, I should have struck her. It seemed as if every vein was bursting. How am I ever to live with her again? I dare not! I should kill her in some moment of madness! What will happen to Ida?”
He flung himself upon the couch, and burst into tears. Sobs convulsed him; he writhed in an anguish of conflicting pa.s.sions. Waymark seemed scarcely to observe him, standing absorbed in speculation and the devising of a course to be pursued.
”I must go to the police-station,” he said at length, when the violence of the paroxysm had pa.s.sed and left Julian in the still exhaustion of despair. ”You, I think, had better stay here. Is there any danger of her coming to seek you?”
Julian made a motion with his hand, otherwise lay still, his pale face turned upwards.
”I shall be back very quickly,” Waymark added, taking his hat. Then, turning back for a moment, ”You mustn't give way like this, old fellow; this is horrible weakness. Dare I leave you alone?”
Julian stretched out his hand, and Waymark pressed it.
CHAPTER XXIV
JUSTICE
Waymark received from the police a confirmation of all that Julian had said, and returned home. Julian still lay on the couch, calmer, but like one in despair. He begged Waymark to let him remain where he was through the night, declaring that in any case sleep was impossible for him, and that perhaps he might try to pa.s.s the hours in reading. They talked together for a time; then Waymark lay down on the bed and shortly slept.
He was to be at the police court in the morning. Julian would go to the hospital as usual.
”Shall you call at home on your way?” Waymark asked him.
”No.”
”But what do you mean to do?”
”I must think during the day. I shall come to-night, and you will tell me what has happened.”
So they parted, and Waymark somehow or other whiled away the time till it was the hour for going to the court. He found it difficult to realise the situation; so startling and brought about so suddenly.
Julian had been the first to put into words the suspicion of them both, that it was all a deliberate plot of Harriet's; but he had not been able to speak of his own position freely enough to let Waymark understand the train of circ.u.mstances which could lead Harriet to such resoluteness of infamy. Waymark doubted. But for the unfortunate fact of Ida's secret necessities, he could perhaps scarcely have entertained the thought of her guilt. What was the explanation of her being without employment? Why had she hesitated to tell him, as soon as she lost her work? Was there not some mystery at the bottom of this, arguing a lack of complete frankness on Ida's part from the first?
The actual pain caused by Ida's danger was, strange to say, a far less important item in his state of mind than the interest which the situation inspired. Through the night he had thought more of Julian than of Ida. What he had for some time suspected had now found confirmation; Julian was in love with Ida, in love for the first time, and under circ.u.mstances which, as Julian himself had said, might well suffice to change his whole nature. Waymark had never beheld such terrible suffering as that depicted on his friend's face during those hours of talk in the night. Something of jealousy had been aroused in him by the spectacle; not jealousy of the ordinary gross kind, but rather a sense of humiliation in the thought that he himself had never experienced, was perhaps incapable of, such pa.s.sion as racked Julian in every nerve. This was the pa.s.sion which Ida was worthy of inspiring, and Waymark contrasted it with his own feelings on the previous day, and now since the calamity had fallen. He had to confess that there was even an element of relief in the sensations the event had caused in him. He had been saved from himself; a position of affairs which had become intolerable was got rid of without his own exertion. Whatever might now happen, the old state of things would never be restored.