Part 42 (1/2)
”I never guessed until that night. Then, as soon as I got over the first awful shock, I realized he was a madman. He talked incoherently--raved--shouted--threatened me with horrible things. I can't speak of them. Later, he quieted down a little, but that was after he had come down into the cabin to--to drug himself.... It was very terrible--that tiny, pitching cabin, with the swinging, smoking lamp, and the madman sitting there, muttering to himself over the gla.s.s in which the morphine was dissolving.... It happened three times before the wreck; I thought I should go out of my own mind.”
She shuddered, her face tragic and pitiful.
”Poor girl!” he murmured inadequately.
”And that--that was why you were searching the beach so closely!”
”Yes--for the other fellow. I--didn't find him.”
A moment later she said thoughtfully: ”It was the man you saw watching me on the beach, I think.”
”I a.s.sumed as much. Drummond had a lot of money, I fancy--enough to hire a desperate man to do almost anything.... The wages of sin--”
”Don't!” she begged. ”Don't make me think of that!”
”Forgive me,” he said.
For a little she sat, head bowed, brooding.
”Hugh!” she cried, looking up to search his face narrowly--”Hugh, you've not been pretending--?”
”Pretending?” he repeated, thick-witted.
”Hugh, I could never forgive you if you'd been pretending. It would be too cruel.... Ah, but you haven't been! Tell me you haven't!”
”I don't understand.... Pretending what?”
”Pretending you didn't know who I was--pretending to fall in love with me just because you were sorry for me, to make me think it was _me_ you loved and not the woman you felt bound to take care of, because you'd--you had--”
”Mary, listen to me,” he interrupted. ”I swear I didn't know you.
Perhaps you don't understand how wonderfully you've changed. It's hard for me to believe you can be one with the timid and distracted little girl I married that rainy night. You're nothing like.... Only, that night on the stage, as _Joan Thursday_, you _were_ that girl again. Max told me it was make-up; I wouldn't believe him; to me you hadn't changed at all; you hadn't aged a day.... But that morning when I saw you first on the Great South Beach--I never dreamed of a.s.sociating you with my wife. Do you realize I had never seen you in full light--never knew the colour of your hair?... Dear, I didn't know, believe me. It was you who bewitched me--not the wife for whose sake I fought against what I thought infatuation for you. I loved--I love you only, you as you are--not the poor little girl of the Commercial House.”
”Is it true?” she questioned sadly, incredulous.
”It is true, Mary. I love you.”
”I have loved you always,” she said softly between barely parted lips--”always, Hugh. Even when I thought you dead.... I did believe that you were drowned out there, Hugh! You know that, don't you?”
”I have never for an instant questioned it.”
”It wouldn't be like you to, my dear; it wouldn't be you, my Hugh....
But even then I loved the memory of you.... You don't know what you have meant in my life, Hugh. Always, always you have stood for all that was fine and strong and good and generous--my gentlest man, my knight _sans peur et sans reproche_.... No other man I ever knew--no, let me say it!--ever measured up to the standard you had set for me to wors.h.i.+p.
But, Hugh--you'll understand, won't you?--about the others--?”
”Please,” he begged--”please don't harrow yourself so, Mary!”
”No; I must tell you.... The world seemed so empty and so lonely, Hugh: my Galahad gone, never to return to me.... I tried to lose myself in my work, but it wasn't enough. And those others came, beseeching me, and--and I liked them. There was none like you, but they were all good men of their kind, and I liked them. They made love to me and--I was starving for affection, Hugh. I was made to love and to be loved. Each time I thought to myself: 'Surely this time it is true; now at last am I come into my kingdom. It can't fulfil my dreams, for I have known the bravest man, but'--”