Then the wife descended and sat with companionship of her thoughts. She lived through many hours of poignant grief. Again and again she fell away stricken by her own heart; but she returned as often to the theme; she strove to pierce the problem and see what her sister-in-law could mean. How was it possible that such transparent innocence as Margaret's could from any standpoint look so vile? The bitterest enemy was powerless to throw one shadow over her friendship with Bartley Crocker; and yet here was her brother's sister frenzied with this fearful idea, and speaking of it as a fact proved beyond question. Rhoda believed in it as surely as she believed in her own life. She was prepared to stake her future and David's love for her upon it. She was going to separate Margaret from David, or herself from David, forever. One or other event must inevitably happen.
A thousand plans of action rushed through the wife's brain, and their number defeated their varied purposes. Her native timidity served her ill now. She did nothing but sit and think and reconstruct the past. She remembered all the meetings with Bartley and their many plots and plans to win Rhoda for him. She recollected the most intimate conversations, when her nature or his formed the subject of their speech. She had once kissed his hand in a sudden impulse, when he announced the means to cure her mother. But she did not recall a single perilous or dangerous pass between them; for indeed no such thing had ever existed. Their regard was based on close and lifelong understanding and friendship. There never had been a reciprocal passage of passion, even in the days of her freedom. Her regard was the regard of an ordinary woman for her favourite brother--an affection absolutely untinged by any conscious sexual emotion whatsoever. Even at that, she had not loved him as Rhoda loved David. She was not cast in the great mould of Rhoda--great if unfinished.
At waste of night she began to perceive that she could be no match for Rhoda. Her instinct of self-preservation inclined her first to David, then to Bartley, and then to her father's home. She determined at last to rest until day, and sought her bed. She lighted a match in the dark after a sleepless hour. It went out before she could reach a candle, and she was struck by the trivial phenomenon that, long after the match was extinguished, its light shone in her eyeballs and throbbed in the gloom like fiery rings until the impression waned. She rose an hour before dawn and dressed and descended. Then she went out and breathed the chill morning wind. As yet it was quite dark. Looking up, she saw that a candle burned in Rhoda's room. Some subtle psychological instinct crushed her spirit before the spectacle of that woman's steadfast and unsleeping watch. An impulse to get away from Rhoda overpowered Margaret. She returned, fetched her sun-bonnet, and hastened off without any fixed purpose of destination.
When David's sister came down before six o'clock, the house was empty. She, too, had passed through storms; she also had faltered at the hour when life's pulses beat lowest and midnight sets its dead weight upon human hearts. She had longed to rise and get into the air; but she was determined not to lose sight of Margaret until David came home. Yet for a time she had lost consciousness and slept awhile at edge of dawn. And during those fitful slumbers, Margaret had departed.
The day found Rhoda assured of her own action, though the result of it she could not foretell; but thus to have thrust matters upon their climax was a relief to her, and she felt only interested further to learn the extent of David's future sufferings and her power to lessen them.
That Margaret had disappeared did not much astonish her. She doubted not that her sister-in-law was gone to have the first speech with David. Rhoda reviewed her own knowledge of facts and prepared her own statement. She perceived that she herself must come vilely out of it, as a spy and informer; but she kept her intentions and object in view, and believed that, suffer as he must, David would not lose sight of her motives. Her only desire was that her brother's home might be cleansed--at any cost to its inhabitants. She thirsted to speak to David and hear his voice.
Yet, when she saw him coming alone through the morning, her thoughts flashed along another train, and she held her peace until a more fitting time for speech. And this she did because she guessed that something vital had happened to Margaret--something which must justify her attitude and sweep away the last shadow of doubt.
Then her brother surprised her mightily; for, when she told him that Margaret had gone from the house before daylight, he seemed but little astonished to hear it.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SEARCH