CHAPTER X.
With bursting brain, stunned with unanalyzed pain and bewilderment, as yet but half comprehending the wild words he has unwittingly heard, Armstrong strides blindly onward, trying to fly, to escape from the fever of his heart, from the sound of the wailing childish voice that has tolled the death-knell of his peace.
He does not care, does not know whither he goes, for the path before him is misty and blurred in the gleaming moonlight, his eyes are dim with fury and anguish. He rolls heavily against an old seaman tottering home from the public-house, and with an oath closes on him; they struggle for a moment, until Armstrong, staggering backward, loses his footing, and falls from the elevated edge of the esplanade to the soft sand skirting the sea, some ten feet below. The physical shock sobers him; he remains where he has fallen, crouching on the shore, his haggard face buried in his hands. Presently he bursts into a low discordant laugh and homely disjointed soliloquy:
"Tom Armstrong, Tom Armstrong, my man, you've made a mess of it at last! It has been pretty plain sailing with you all your life; but now you must take in your canvas, for you've come to grief at last—you've come to grief—to grief—to grief! Oh, fool—fool—fool that I have been! Pip-headed idiot, I deserve my fate!"
And then he falls into silence again, and goes over, day by day, hour by hour, the short sunny spell of his one love-dream. Every look, every word, every smile, every kiss he lives through again with the lurid lamp of truth and disillusion hanging overhead. A fierce brute-like passion seizes him, he springs to his feet with flaming eyes and distorted face.
"Confusion seize her for a hypocrite," he shouts—"a consummate, lying hypocrite! How dare she blind me as she has done? How dare she debase me in my own eyes, and make my life unbearable? What had I done to her, the jade? Only loved her—only loved her better than my life! Oh, how can such women be? Have they no soul, no heart, no conscience? How could she look me in the face with those clear pure eyes, black perjury lodging in her breast all the time, as she has done every day since I married her? How she has lied to me—how she has lied with her lips, with her eyes, with her smile, with every motion of her body, morning, noon, and night! Confusion seize her!"
He dashes on again for miles and miles along the sleeping coast, muttering and gasping, trying to stanch the gaping wound of his love and pride, until the fading moonlight meets the rosy glow of dawn and dies in her embrace; and then, at last thoroughly worn out, he sinks again to rest, his face white and set, the storm of his passion stilled forever, all wrath and bitterness gone from his breast, only pity, remorse, and infinite melancholy dwellers therein. Reason has reasserted her sway, and many dark things are light to him now.
The problem which Addie weakly tried to solve some hours before is clear as day to him she has wronged, and he pities her as sincerely as he pities himself.
"Poor little soul!" he thinks drearily. "Heaven help her, how she must have suffered! And what pluck she must have! Poor little Addie! What chance had she against us all—against my brutish obstinacy and desire, against her greedy, selfish kindred, her miserable surroundings—what chance had she? Not one to stand by her, to save her from me—not even the memory of a lover, I feel sure—not even that! And I called her a hypocrite, a liar, instead of a martyr, a heroine! I have wished her ill because she made her sacrifice without a murmur, nobly, unselfishly; because she sought to build my happiness on the wreck of her own; because she smiled in my face when her heart was perhaps breaking! Oh, forgive me, forgive me, dear; and Heaven teach me how to deal with you gently, unselfishly, tenderly to the end!"
He sits for a full hour without moving, buried in deep thought, mapping out his life and hers, which, alas, is still bound to his till death! And then he rises, undresses, takes a plunge off the rock against which he has been leaning, swims out half a mile to sea, returns, and, much refreshed and quite composed, dresses and walks back to the town, from which he has wandered many miles due west.