"Well, sir," she exclaimed sharply, "what is there that I … My God!
You!… Back from the dead! Back from the dead!" she wailed.
"Nay. Back from sickness and wounds; back from captivity. Many a message have I sent you, Helen, during the long years; little did I think to find you thus."
Apathy and listlessness no longer held her in bondage; the full horror of the irrevocable gripped her. Tied for ever to a brute whom she despised and hated, sacrificed to no purpose; whilst here, alive and well, stood the man to whom in ardent youth she had plighted her undisciplined heart. The thought maddened her. And as she struggled to choke back this overwhelming rush of feeling, her husband's unwelcome entrance broke the tension of a scene the strain of which was past bearing.
Surely it was in an evil moment for himself that her husband entered that room. In a clumsy effort to propitiate his wife's guest, the unfortunate man laid his hand on the head of the visitor's dog, and with vicious side-snap the animal bit his hand to the bone.
No consideration had the wife for her husband's sufferings, no trace of sympathy did she show, as, with an oath, he hurried from the room to bind up the ugly wound—her whole being was centred in the man before her. And her very heart stood still when her stunned ears realised that that man was now saying farewell. Lamentations and entreaties were of no avail. "There remained nothing else for a man of honour to do," he said. All these years he had been faithful to her; all these years no other woman had entered his thoughts. Had she been as true to him as he had ever been to her, the dearest wish of his heart would have been fulfilled. Nay, had he come home to find her a widow, even so all might yet perhaps have been well. But now, when, with his own eyes, he had seen what, manner of man she had preferred to him, the old love was killed—killed by her act.
The clatter of his departing horse's feet rang loud in her ears; and now, great as of old had been her detestation of the man to whom she was tied, it was but a feeble flame in comparison with the furnace of hate that began to rage in her heart. Daily and hourly the anguish of the "might have been" tormented her. Incessantly the words her lover had spoken seethed in her brain: "If even you had been a widow," he had said. "A widow?" … Ever to the same word her thoughts returned—"a widow." What if he were to die now? If only…! Then she thought of the bitten hand. Was it not more than likely that the dog was mad when, unprovoked, it bit a man? And if it were mad … But assuredly it was mad! She would ask old Elspeth. Who so wise as Elspeth, who so skilled as she in the treatment of wounds? And if she could cure wounds, why … perhaps…! Did not wounds sometimes refuse to heal, and did not the patient sometimes gradually sink and die without anybody being to blame?
But no comfort was found in Elspeth—no help. Surely the woman was in her dotage. Fool! Why did the feckless old idiot not know that the dog must have been mad? The man was drinking heavily now, goaded by grim terror of that very thing, and sodden with drink. Body and soul the old nurse was hers, she believed. Then, what so easy to make as a mistake in her treatment of the wound—to dress it with an irritating salve instead of with a healing one? what so easy as to inflame a mind already stricken by fear and maddened by drink? Must she speak more plainly the thing that had arisen in her mind?
* * * * *
Day followed day, and soon rumour spread and grew to certainty that of a surety the dog was mad that had bitten the master. From his room, they said, came the sound of ravings and of shouts. Folk spoke below their breath of how it was said he foamed at the mouth, and few dared venture near.
At last there came a night when Elspeth's son crept stealthily by the back stairs to aid his mother in holding down the sick man in the paroxysms of his madness; and the guilty wife, cowering alone in her room, stopped her ears lest awful sounds should reach them.