Chapter Seventeen.
For a few seconds Jill sat mute, too thoroughly taken by surprise even to move. No lurking suspicion had ever entered her pure, wholesome, unspoilt mind that any man could so insult a decent woman. Even then it struck her that in some way she must have unconsciously given him an opening. How else would he have dared to make love to her, and to seem so assured that his love would be returned?
She drew herself away from him, not violently, but with a cold displeasure that carried more weight than any fierce resentment could have done, and in a voice that trembled slightly with repressed anger exclaimed as she rose and faced him,—
“Mr Markham, you have insulted me past forgiveness. If any action or word of mine has led you to speak as you have done I deplore it with my whole heart—I couldn’t feel more humiliated even if such were the case; I feel so abjectly debased as it is. How dare you imply that I do not get on with my husband? I love him with the whole force of my being. I doubt if you could understand or appreciate such love as ours.”
“I doubt it too,” he sneered. “My love is not of the kind that can so readily efface itself. You are rather unreasonable, I think; a man can’t help his feelings. Some women would take it as a compliment.”
“I am sorry for the sort of women you seem acquainted with,” she answered rather sadly. “You have formed a very low opinion of the sex. It is not a compliment that you have paid me, and you know it. Don’t say anything more please; I decline to discuss that, or any other subject with you. I must request you to leave my rooms, and never to enter them again. You have made further intercourse an impossibility, and our past friendship something to be remembered only with regret.”
“Don’t say that,” he began pleadingly; but Jill cut him short.
“Please understand that I am quite in earnest,” she said. “When Jack comes home I shall explain to him what has happened; it is well that he should understand the true character of his friend. I can never thank heaven sufficiently that my husband is both a man of honour, and a gentleman.”
“For that matter so should I have been if I had met you first,” he answered gloomily. “You are rather hard on me, Jill. Perhaps I have been too precipitate; but I love you so madly, and to-day you seemed so sad, and sweet, and lonely, that I wanted to comfort you.”
“Enough!” exclaimed Jill excitedly. “If you don’t go I shall ask Mr Thompkins to come and protect me from further indignity. How contemptible you are!—how mean! Why don’t you insult me when my husband is at home? The sight of you is hateful to me. Why won’t you go?”
“I will,” he answered quietly, “as you wish it. I do not want to frighten you; but remember—always remember that I love you with all my heart.”
Jill stood quite still and watched him as he gravely quitted her presence, and then listened dully to his footsteps clattering down the stairs. When they died away along the narrow passage and she heard the street door bang behind him she put her hand to her forehead in a dazed kind of way, and glanced vaguely round the little room seeing nothing but Markham’s cynical face with the ugly expression in his eyes that was in the painted eyes of the canvas on the easel. Her glance travelled to the portrait, and rested there for a moment. The sight of it seemed to rouse her into action, and, with a catch in her voice that sounded like an angry sob, she took up a brush, and in a few vigorous strokes painted the whole thing out again as she would have liked to blot the incident from her memory.
To Jill the fact that Markham loved her was anything but a congratulatory matter. The red blood surged to her temples in a flood of indignant colour at the mere thought of such an outrage to her wifehood. She was very angry; her calmness and self-possession had entirely deserted her leaving her excited and wholly unlike herself. She did not expect St. John home for some time; he had told her not to wait tea, he should be late; and so she seated herself in the big chair by the window to watch for his return, too upset to think of getting tea for herself, too miserable to feel the need of it. St. John was not very late however. He had promised Thompkins to be back by six, and at a few minutes to the hour he arrived. Jill saw him coming but she did not move. She remained where she was until she heard his footstep on the stairs, then she rose and walking quickly to the door threw it open. He was going into the bedroom to change his coat for the old one he did his work in. Jill called to him softly, but he went on as though he had not heard. She set her lips tightly and followed him, determined to clear up the misunderstanding that existed between them at any cost, and to tell him what had occurred during the afternoon.
“Jack,” she said, “I want to talk to you.”
“Sorry,” he answered, “but I haven’t time. I have a lot of work to do.”
His manner was anything but encouraging. At another time she would have turned away and allowed the breach to widen, but to-day she was sick of quarrelling about nothing, and longed for a complete reconciliation, and so she persevered.
“You are not very kind to me, dear,” she said. “I think the work can wait a few minutes longer, and what I have to say is most important. I have had a very unpleasant experience to-day, Jack, and feel quite worried and upset about it—if you only knew how worried I am sure you would give me your attention.”
St. John turned towards her, an expression of surprise on his face. He was in his shirt sleeves, and looked handsome, bad-tempered and ill at ease, his afternoon with Evie had apparently not conduced to exhilaration of spirits.
“What on earth can be worrying you?” he exclaimed. “Didn’t Markham turn up?”
“Yes, he turned up,” answered Jill sharply. “That is the trouble. I had to send him away again. You, who knew him so intimately, had no right to leave me alone with such a man—no right to introduce me to him at all. He insulted me—he actually tried to make love to me.”
She broke off abruptly. Her voice shook a little, and she put up a hand to her burning face. St. John swore. He dropped the jacket he was holding on to the floor, and began struggling fiercely into his outdoor coat again. Jill watched him anxiously. Then she laid a restraining hand upon his arm.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Find him and—give him a lesson.”
He looked so fierce and determined that Jill felt frightened. She was nervous and unstrung with the excitement of the afternoon, and she trembled slightly as she clung tenaciously to his arm.
“Let him alone,” she cried quickly. “I will not have my name dragged into any dispute. We have done with him; that is enough. The matter must end there.”
“That is all very well,” he retorted, “but do you suppose I am going to stand quietly by and allow any cad to make love to my wife?”
“If you had not stood quietly by it might never have happened,” she answered. “I don’t quite know what it is we have been quarrelling about, but I do know that lately we have drifted apart, and he noticed it—he said so. He thought that I had found out that our marriage had been a mistake.”
She looked up to meet St. John’s gaze riveted upon her face, with an expression in his eyes that puzzled her, it was so unlike anything she had seen in them before. He looked as a man might look when someone he has loved and trusted deals him a blow on the face, so stern and white and miserable, and so full of an unspeakable shame.
“Jack,” she half-whispered, “what is it? What is the matter, dear?”
“Forgive me,” he cried brokenly, “If I have misjudged you; but I thought—as Markham thinks. And, my God, I think so still.”
Jill drew away from him, wounded into silence by what she heard. For a few moments she stood irresolute, struck motionless with an anguish too deep for words; then with a half articulate cry she tottered forward, and fell, a forlorn little bundle, at his feet St. John stooped swiftly, and gathering her up, laid her tenderly upon the bed, and, bending over her with a face even whiter than her own, stared down, awed and humbled, at the motionless, unconscious form.
He was almost too stunned at first to realise that there was anything serious the matter; but it gradually dawned upon him that she ought not to be allowed to lie there as she was without calling in some assistance, and so, not pausing to put on his coat, he ran out of the bedroom on to the landing, and stood there in his shirt sleeves, in terrified and breathless anxiety.
“Thompkins!” he cried excitedly. “Thompkins!”
“Hallo!” answered a voice from the bottom of the stairs, a voice of calm and unruffled serenity.
“For God’s sake run for the doctor,” St. John called back.
There was silence for a few seconds; then the street door was opened and banged to again, and St. John returned to the room to watch by his wife and wait.