“I’ve left him, and I shall not go back. It would be impossible to exaggerate. I haven’t enough imagination.”
“Do you mean that he—beats you?” Mrs. Winstone hesitated over the ugly word. She did so hate the ugly things of life, even mere words. She felt nothing of the morbid curiosity another woman might have felt, but as long as she could not escape this confidence, better have it over as soon as possible.
“No. For some reason he has not—yet. He locks me in a room and snaps a whip at me by the hour, promising that at a given moment it shall cut through my skin. Why he has not cut me to ribbons, I don’t know, except that he enjoys tormenting me mentally, and defers the other pleasure. He has practised every other form of mental torture he has been able to conceive. He wakes me up twenty times a night, flashing a light before my eyes, or shrieking in my ear. He makes me sit up in bed and listen to the most awful stories, and the bloodcurdling ones are not the worst. He threatens to pinch me from head to foot, but so far merely pretends to —”
“For heaven’s sake hush! I can’t listen to such things. How does he treat you before the servants?”
“Oh, always amiably.”
“I thought so. You haven’t a leg to stand on so far as the law is concerned. He’d deny everything blandly, and you would be set down as an hysteric.”
“I think he is insane.”
“Possibly. That may be the explanation of Harold France. But that will do you no good, either, so long as he is able to hide it. Two alienists must see him in a condition that is, unmistakably, insanity, and sign a certificate to that effect. Only a short time ago the husband of an American friend of mine acted at times in such an eccentric manner that there was no doubt in the minds of those who saw him as to his state. But he fooled the doctors. She feared for her life, and two of her brothers had to come over and inveigle him on board an ocean liner—in the United States, it seems, they are not so particular. And quite right in this case, for the man is now raving.”
“Do you mean to say that the laws of England will not take care of me?”
“Not unless you can persuade him to beat you before the servants. Then you might get a separation—not a divorce without infidelity. I think you had best go back to Nevis.”