CHAPTER XXVII.
HOW MAURICE GAINS ANOTHER POINT; AND HOW TITA CONSENTS TO THINK ABOUT IT; AND HOW MARGARET TELLS A LIE.
For a little while no word is spoken. It seems as if no words are theirs to speak. Rylton, standing on the hearthrug, has nothing to look at save her back, that is so determinedly turned towards him. She is leaning over the plants in one of the windows, pretending to busy herself with their leaves.
"Won't you speak to me?" says Rylton at last.
He goes to her, and so stands that she is forced to let him see her face—a face beautiful, but pale and unkind, and with the eyes so steadfastly lowered. And yet he
"Knows they must be there,
Sweet eyes behind those lashes fair,
That will not raise their rim."
"I have spoken," says Tita.
"When?"
"I said, 'How d'ye do' to you."
"Nonsense" says he; and then, "I don't believe you said even so much. You gave me your hand, that was all; and that you gave reluctantly."
"Well, I can't help it," slowly. "Remember what I told you that last day."
"I don't want to remember anything," says he earnestly. "I want to start afresh—from this hour. And yet—there is one thing I must recall. You said—that last day—there was no love between us—that," slowly, "was not true. There is love on one side, at all events. Tita"—taking a step towards her—"I——"
She makes a sudden, wild gesture, throwing out her hands as if to ward off something.
"Don't!" cries she in a stifled voice. "Don't say it!"
"I must! I will!" says Rylton passionately. "I love you!" There is a dead silence, and in it he says again, "I love you!"
For a moment Tita looks as if she were going to faint; then the light returns to her eyes, the colour to her face.
"First her, then me," says she.
"Will you never forgive that?" asks he. "And it was before I saw you. When I did see you—Tita, do try to believe this much, at all events, that after our marriage I was true to you. I think now, that from the first moment I saw you I loved you. But I did not know it, and——"
"That is not all," says Tita in a low tone.
"I know—about Hescott. I beg your pardon about that. I was mad, I think; but the madness arose out of jealousy. I could not bear to think you were happy with him, _un_happy with me. If I had loved another, would I have cared with whom you were happy?"
"I don't know," says Tita.
There is something so forlorn in the sad little answer—something so forlorn in her whole attitude, indeed—the droop of her head, the sorrowful clasping of her small hands before her—that Rylton's heart burns within him.
"Be just—be just to me," cries he; "give me a chance. I confess I married you for your money. But now that accursed money is all gone (for which I thank heaven), and our positions are reversed. The money now is mine, and I come to you, and fling it at your feet, and implore you from my very soul to forgive me, and take me back."
She still remains silent, and her silence cuts him to the heart.
"What can I say? What can I do to move you?" exclaims he, in a low tone, but one that trembles. "Is your heart dead to me? Have I killed any hope that might have been mine? Is it too late in the day to call myself your lover?"
At this she lifts her hands and covers her face. All at once he knows that she is crying. He goes to her quickly, and lays his arm round her shoulder.
"Let me begin again," says he. "Trust me once more. I know well, Tita, that you do not love me yet, but perhaps in time you will forgive me, and take me to your heart. I am sorry, darling, for every angry word I have ever said to you, but in every one of those angry words there was love for you, and you alone. I thought only of you, only I did not know it. Tita, say you will begin life again with me."
"I—I couldn't go to The Place," says Tita. A shudder shakes her frame. "It was there I first heard—— It was there your mother told me of——"
"I know—I know; and I don't ask you to go there. I think I told you
I had bought a new place. Come there with me."
"Why do you want me to go with you," asks she, lifting her mournful eyes to his, "when you know I do not love you?"
"Yes; I know that." He pauses. "I ask you for many reasons, and not all selfish ones. I ask you for your own sake more than all. The world is cruel, Tita, to a woman who deliberately lives away from her husband; and, besides——"
"I don't care about the world."
"We all care about the world sooner or later, and, besides, you who have been accustomed to money all your life cannot find your present income sufficient for you, and Margaret may marry."
"Oh yes! Yes; I think so." For the first time she shows some animation. "I hope so. You saw them talking together to-day?"
"I did." There is a slight pause, and then: "You are glad for Margaret. You wish everyone"—reproachfully—"to be happy except me."
She shakes her head.
"Give me a kind word before I go," says Rylton earnestly.
"What can I say?"
"Say that you will think of what I have been urging."
"One must think," says she, in a rather refractory tone.
"You promise, then?"
"Yes; I shall think."
"Until to-morrow, then," says he, holding out his hand.
"To-morrow?"
She looks troubled.
"Yes; to-morrow. Don't forbid me to come to-morrow."
He presses her hand.
The troubled look still rests upon her face as she turns away from him, having bidden him good-bye. The last memory of her he takes away with him is of a little slender figure standing at the window, with her hands clasped behind her back. She does not look back at him.
* * * * *
"Well?" says Margaret, coming into the room half an hour later. "Why, what a little snowflake you are! Come up to the fire and warm those white cheeks. Was it Maurice made you look like that? I shall scold him. What did he say to you?"
"He wants me to go back to him."
"Yes?" anxiously.
"Well—— That's all."
"But you, dearest?"
"Oh, I can't bear to think of it!" cries Tita, in a miserable tone.
At this Margaret feels hope dying within her. Beyond question she has again refused to be reconciled to him. Margaret is so fond of the girl that it goes to her very heart to see her thus wilfully (as she believes) throwing away her best chance of happiness in this world.
"Tita, have you well considered what you are doing? A woman separated from her husband, no matter how free from blame she may be, is always regarded with coldness by——"
"Oh, yes! I know," impatiently. "He has been saying all that."
"And, after all, what has Maurice done that you should be so hard with him? Many a man has loved another woman before his marriage. That old story——"
"It isn't that," says Tita suddenly. "It is"—she lays her hands on Margaret's shoulders, and regards her earnestly and with agitation—"it is that I fear myself."
"You fear"—uncertainly—"that you don't love him?"
"Pshaw!" says Tita, letting her go, and rising to her feet, as though to sit still is impossible to her. "What a speech from you to me—you, who know all! Love him! I am sure about that, at all events. I know I don't."
"Are you so sure?"
"Positive—positive!"
"What? Not even one doubt?"
"Not one."
"What is your fear, then?" asks Margaret.
"That even if I went back to him, took up my old position, asked his guests to our house, and so on, that sooner or later I should quarrel with him a second time, and then this dreadful work would have to be done all over again."
"That would rest in your own hands. Of course, it is a risk, if, indeed, you mean what you say, Tita"—watching her closely—"that you do not care for Maurice. But"—anxiously—"at all events, you do not care for anyone else?"
"No—no—no" petulantly—"why should I? I think all men more trouble than they are worth."
"If that is so, and you are heart-whole, I think it your positive duty to live with your husband," says Margaret, with decision. "How can you hesitate, Tita? Are the vows you uttered at the altar nothing to you? Many a woman lives with a bad husband through conscientious motives, and——"
"I don't believe it," says Tita, who is evidently in one of her most wayward moods. "They go on living with their horrid husbands because they are afraid of what people will say about them. You know you said something about it yourself just now, and so did—he; something about the world being disagreeable to any woman, however good, who is separated from the man she married."
Margaret gives up the argument.
"Well," says she, smiling, "at all events, Maurice isn't a horrid husband."
"You say that because he isn't yours," with a shrug.
"Come back here, you bad child," says Margaret, laughing now, "and listen to me for a little while longer. You know, Tita, darling, that I have your interest, and yours only, at heart. Promise me you will at least think of what Maurice proposes."
"Oh, I've promised him that," says Tita, frowning.
"You have?" cries Margaret. "Oh, you good girl! Come! that's right. And so you parted not altogether at war? How glad I am! And he—he was glad, too. He"—anxiously—"he said——"
"He said he was coming again to-morrow," with apparent disgust.
"To get your answer?"
"Oh, I suppose so! I don't know, I'm sure," with such a sharp gesture as proves to Margaret her patience has come to an end. "Let us forget it—put it from us—while we can." She laughs nervously. "You see what a temper I have! He will repent his bargain, I think—if I do consent. Come, let us talk of something else, Meg—of you."
"Of me?"
"What better subject? Tell me what Colonel Neilson was saying to you in that window this evening," pointing to the one farthest off.
"Nothing—nothing at all. He is so stupid," says Margaret, blushing crimson. "He really never sees me without proposing all over again, as if there was any good in it."
"And what did you say this time?"
Margaret grows confused.
"Really, dearest, I was so taken up thinking of you and Maurice," says she, with a first (and most flagrant) attempt at dissimulation, "that I believe I forgot to—to—say anything."
Tita gives way to a burst of irrepressible laughter.
"I like that," says she. "Well, at all events, by your own showing, you didn't say no."