Part 96 (2/2)
I am afraid few men of her own age would have resisted her; for voice and speech and all burning, melting, and winning; and then, so reasonable, lads; she did not stipulate for constancy.
But Alfred turned round to her blus.h.i.+ng and sorrowful. ”For shame!” he said; ”this is not love: you abuse that sacred word. Indeed, if you had ever really loved, you would have pitied me and Julia long ago, and respected our love; and saved us by giving me my freedom long ago. I am not a fool: do you think I don't know that you are my jailer, and the cunningest and most dangerous of them all?”
”You cruel, ungrateful!” she sobbed.
”No; I am not ungrateful either,” said he more gently. ”You have always come between me and that kind of torture which most terrifies vulgar souls: and I thank you for it. Only if you had also pitied the deeper anguish of my heart, I should thank you more still. As it is, I forgive you for the share you have had in blasting my happiness for life; and n.o.body shall ever know what you have been mad enough in an unguarded moment to say; but for pity's sake talk no more of love, to mock my misery.”
Mrs. Archbold was white with ire long before he had done this sentence.
”You insolent creature,” said she; ”you spurn my love; you shall feel my hate.”
”So I conclude,” said he coldly: ”such love as yours is hard by hate.”
”It is,” said she: ”and I know how I'll combine the two. To-day I loved you, and you spurned me; ere long you shall love me and I'll despise you; and not spurn you.”
”I don't understand you,” said Alfred, feeling rather uneasy.
”What,” said she, ”don't you see how the superior mind can fascinate the inferior? Look at Frank Beverley--how he follows you about and fawns on you like a little dog.”
”I prefer his sort of affection to yours.”
”A gentleman and a man would have kept that to himself; but you are neither one nor the other; or you would have taken my offer, and then run away from me the next day, you fool. A man betrays a woman; he doesn't insult her. Ah, you admire Frank's affection; well, you shall imitate it. You couldn't love me like a man; you shall love me like a dog.”
”How will you manage that, pray?” he inquired with a sneer.
”I'll drive you mad.”
She hissed this fiendish threat out between her white teeth.
”Ay, sir,” she said, ”hitherto your reason has only encountered men. You shall see now what an insulted woman can do. A lunatic you shall be ere long, and then I'll make you love me, dote on me, follow me about for a smile: and then I'll leave off hating you, and love you once more, but not the way I did five minutes ago.”
At this furious threat Alfred ground his teeth, and said, ”Then I give you my honour that the moment I see my reason the least shaken, I'll kill you: and so save myself from the degradation of being your lover on any terms.”
”Threaten your own s.e.x with that,” said the Archbold contemptuously; ”you may kill me whenever you like; and the sooner the better. Only, if you don't do it very quickly, you shall be my property, my brain-sick, love-sick slave.”
CHAPTER XLI
AFTER a defiance so bitter and deadly, Alfred naturally drew away from his inamorata. But she, boiling with love and hate, said bitterly, ”We need not take Mr. Rooke into our secrets. Come, sir, your arm!”
He stuck it out ungraciously, and averted his head; she took it, suppressed with difficulty a petty desire to pinch, and so walked by his side. He was as much at his ease as if promenading jungles with a panther. She felt him quiver with repugnance under her soft hand; and prolonged the irritating contact. She walked very slowly, and told him with much meaning she was waiting for a signal. ”Till then,” said she, ”we will keep one another company;” biting the word with her teeth as it went out.
By-and-by a window was opened in the asylum, and a table-cloth hung out.
Mrs. Archbold pointed it out to Alfred; he stared at it; and after that she walked him rapidly home in silence. But, as soon as the door was double-locked on him, she whispered triumphantly in his ear--
”Your mother-in-law was expected to-day; that signal was to let me know she was gone.”
”My mother-in-law!” cried the young man, and tried in vain to conceal his surprise and agitation.
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