Part 57 (2/2)

Justine's long hospital-discipline made it impossible for her to lose consciousness of the lapse of time, or to let her misery thicken into mental stupor. She could not help thinking and moving; and she presently lifted herself to her feet, turned on the light, and began to prepare for dinner. It would be terrible to face her husband across Mr.

Langhope's pretty dinner-table, and afterward in the charming drawing-room, with its delicate old ornaments and intimate luxurious furniture; but she could not continue to sit motionless in the dark: it was her innermost instinct to pick herself up and go on.

While she dressed she listened anxiously for Amherst's step in the next room; but there was no sound, and when she dragged herself downstairs the drawing-room was empty, and the parlour-maid, after a decent delay, came to ask if dinner should be postponed.

She said no, murmuring some vague pretext for her husband's absence, and sitting alone through the succession of courses which composed the brief but carefully-studied _menu_. When this ordeal was over she returned to the drawing-room and took up a book. It chanced to be a new volume on labour problems, which Amherst must have brought back with him from Westmore; and it carried her thoughts instantly to the mills. Would this disaster poison their work there as well as their personal relation? Would he think of her as carrying contamination even into the task their love had illumined?

The hours went on without his returning, and at length it occurred to her that he might have taken the night train to Hanaford. Her heart contracted at the thought: she remembered--though every nerve shrank from the a.n.a.logy--his sudden flight at another crisis in his life, and she felt obscurely that if he escaped from her now she would never recover her hold on him. But could he be so cruel--could he wish any one to suffer as she was suffering?

At ten o'clock she could endure the drawing-room no longer, and went up to her room again. She undressed slowly, trying to prolong the process as much as possible, to put off the period of silence and inaction which would close in on her when she lay down on her bed. But at length the dreaded moment came--there was nothing more between her and the night.

She crept into bed and put out the light; but as she slipped between the cold sheets a trembling seized her, and after a moment she drew on her dressing-gown again and groped her way to the lounge by the fire.

She pushed the lounge closer to the hearth and lay down, still s.h.i.+vering, though she had drawn the quilted coverlet up to her chin. She lay there a long time, with closed eyes, in a mental darkness torn by sudden flashes of memory. In one of these flashes a phrase of Amherst's stood out--a word spoken at Westmore, on the day of the opening of the Emergency Hospital, about a good-looking young man who had called to see her. She remembered Amherst's boyish burst of jealousy, his sudden relief at the thought that the visitor might have been Wyant. And no doubt it _was_ Wyant--Wyant who had come to Hanaford to threaten her, and who, baffled by her non-arrival, or for some other unexplained reason, had left again without carrying out his purpose.

It was dreadful to think by how slight a chance her first draught of happiness had escaped that drop of poison; yet, when she understood, her inward cry was: ”If it had happened, my dearest need not have suffered!”... Already she was feeling Amherst's pain more than her own, understanding that it was harder to bear than hers because it was at war with all the reflective part of his nature.

As she lay there, her face pressed into the cus.h.i.+ons, she heard a sound through the silent house--the opening and closing of the outer door. She turned cold, and lay listening with strained ears.... Yes; now there was a step on the stairs--her husband's step! She heard him turn into his own room. The throbs of her heart almost deafened her--she only distinguished confusedly that he was moving about within, so close that it was as if she felt his touch. Then her door opened and he entered.

He stumbled slightly in the darkness before he found the switch of the lamp; and as he bent over it she saw that his face was flushed, and that his eyes had an excited light which, in any one less abstemious, might almost have seemed like the effect of wine.

”Are you awake?” he asked.

She started up against the cus.h.i.+ons, her black hair streaming about her small ghostly face.

”Yes.”

He walked over to the lounge and dropped into the low chair beside it.

”I've given that cur a lesson he won't forget,” he exclaimed, breathing hard, the redness deepening in his face.

She turned on him in joy and trembling. ”John!--Oh, John! You didn't follow him? Oh, what happened? What have you done?”

”No. I didn't follow him. But there are some things that even the powers above can't stand. And so they managed to let me run across him--by the merest accident--and I gave him something to remember.”

He spoke in a strong clear voice that had a brightness like the brightness in his eyes. She felt its heat in her veins--the primitive woman in her glowed at contact with the primitive man. But reflection chilled her the next moment.

”But why--why? Oh, how could you? Where did it happen--oh, not in the street?”

As she questioned him, there rose before her the terrified vision of a crowd gathering--the police, newspapers, a hideous publicity. He must have been mad to do it--and yet he must have done it because he loved her!

”No--no. Don't be afraid. The powers looked after that too. There was no one about--and I don't think he'll talk much about it.”

She trembled, fearing yet adoring him. Nothing could have been more unlike the Amherst she fancied she knew than this act of irrational anger which had magically lifted the darkness from his spirit; yet, magically also, it gave him back to her, made them one flesh once more.

And suddenly the pressure of opposed emotions became too strong, and she burst into tears.

She wept painfully, violently, with the resistance of strong natures unused to emotional expression; till at length, through the tumult of her tears, she felt her husband's rea.s.suring touch.

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