“To Monkswood!” he repeated, suddenly sitting erect and looking at her fixedly. “That is easily answered——never!”
“Oh Reginald, you can’t mean it! Do you not wish to see Alice or your boy?”
“We will not speak of Alice, if you please,” he said gravely. “I have nothing to say to her; but you must manage that I shall see the boy somehow, Helen,” he added eagerly. “Could you get him up here for a few days? I’m off to Norway with Fordyce the end of the month.”
“I am quite sure that Alice would never allow him out of her sight, and I will never have him here without his mother. Do you mean me to understand that you will not suffer me to speak to you about her?” she asked hotly.
“I do. Not even with you, Helen, my more than sister, will I discuss my wife—that was.”
“Then,” exclaimed Helen with rising indignation, “things are at a deadlock. Alice will not speak of you to anyone, you will not suffer me to mention her name, and neither of you will have anything to say to the other. I know I could reconcile you both, were you not so inconceivably proud and stiff-necked.”
“Look here, Helen,” he said, rising and beginning to pace about the room, “I know you mean well and kindly, but take my advice and leave us alone. We get on best apart. Our marriage was a tremendous blunder; we both know that now. I have endeavoured to forget that I have ever had a wife. Alice and I are utter strangers. As her guardian, I have taken excellent care of her interests, and studied her comfort and happiness as far as it is in my power; but as her husband” (and he emphasized the word), “I have done with her.”
Hitherto he had been walking up and down the room, but as he concluded he came to a full stop before Mrs. Mayhew, who, rising and stretching out her plump white hands towards him with a gesture of dismay, said:
“Are you mad, Reginald, to talk like this? You do not know what you are saying. It is very easy to repudiate your wife to me; but when you do it publicly what will people say? Have you thought of that? What would you yourself say of a young couple who married for love, separated almost in their honeymoon, the husband to go to India, the wife to shut herself up in the country?”
“I would say nothing,” he interrupted. “Why should I?”