“I won’t say anything about your reading my letters,” she said, “because you say it was by mistake. The only thing I will say is that you have no right to question me. I have never read any of your letters, by mistake or otherwise, but——”
She flung the taunt at him, and saw his face darken. Well, if there was to be a row she did not mind much. Her rage at being found out, and the pain of losing Ally at the same time, made her like some fierce animal that turns to bay and longs to fight. It would not be an open scandal—she knew that instinctively. Let him do his worst!
He interrupted before she could accuse him further.
“That is beside the point. You will not go down to see the Greville off.”
“I will!”
He caught her by the arm, his fingers closing like iron on the white flesh, and with his other hand he brought the wet towel down heavily across her bare shoulders. She was right in saying that it was the equivalent of a rope-end—it had been tightly wrung out, and it fell heavier than a rope. The long red weals followed each cut, and she set her teeth under the pain.
He had not said a word more, and she did not cry out. It never occurred to her to struggle, for she was like a child in his grip, and it would but have completed her humiliation. The hot anger and grief in her heart swelled up and choked her, and the temper he had justly feared blinded him. The first he knew of the weight of his own blows was his wife slipping quietly to his feet, her bruised shoulders a sickening witness to his strength.
He lifted her and laid her in bed again, drawing the sheet over her up to her neck. Then he closed the shutters and barred out the dreadful daylight, and before he left he mechanically sprinkled her face with water and saw the colour coming back to her lips. Di was too strong to swoon like other women—she had never gone off like this before, except—except at Agra when the child died. He was not sorry as yet; he did not feel anything except a grim satisfaction that she would not attempt to see the Greville off now.
He finished dressing and ordered his own pony, riding off in the cool of the morning to the town. He had not heard, as his wife had, of the cruiser’s probable departure at daybreak, for her information had come from Mrs. Ritchie Stern the day before, and in Lewin’s letter he had not been sure when they would go—at least, he had said he was not sure. When Major Churton rode on to the wharf the first reaction came over him and took the momentary form of disappointment, for fading out of the harbour, her smoke a trail on the horizon, was the cruiser, and he saw that he was too late. Then the other view of what he had done rose before him, and the blind passion that had driven him into immediate revenge on the person nearest at hand seemed to die out with the Greville’s smoke trail. He should have dealt with the man first, not with that poor woman, whose hinted accusations were true enough when one was cool to listen to them. He had been too angry to heed, and his conscience did not accuse him of vices more than other men’s, while it had seemed to him that she was worse than many wives. He had been unjust to begin with—brutal to end with. In his stupid rage he had let Lewin go scot free, while the woman bore the brunt of it. His eyes followed the Greville over the edge of the horizon with the keener humiliation because he was a strong man with the reserve which many years had taught him, and it was bitter to realise himself in the wrong. He had believed in his own manliness at least; now he felt that he despised himself, and he was too honest to prevaricate.
There were not many people on the wharf, for Captain Stern’s movements had been left uncertain until the last moment. Mrs. Ritchie Stern and Mrs. Lewin were standing together close to the water’s edge, as if unanimously they had pressed after the ship as far as they dared. Their ponies were held at a little distance, Liscarton’s vagaries making it unsafe to take him very near the unguarded edge of the quay. The Commissioner was there too, and Arthur White and Brissy Nugent, no one else. It was White who saw the motionless figure of the O.C.T. first, and rode up to him.