“You must go to him,” was the reply.
“Go—I—” repeated Phemie.
“Yes, he will never come back if you do not—never; and you owe it to me,” went on the wretched woman, “to do what I ask. I told you this morning I had forgiven you long ago, but it was not the truth. I thought it was then; but I must have been mistaken. If you go, and bring him back, and keep him from cursing me, I will forgive you—I will kiss the ground you walk on—I will love you as I have hated you. Go!”
“What shall I say to him?” asked Mrs. Stondon.
“What you like. You used to be able to wind him round your finger, try your power now. Go, go, for God’s sake, before he hears about it from any other person—go.”
Phemie rose and stood irresolute, then—“It is not fitting I should do this thing,” she said. “I will write to him if you like, or I will telegraph to my uncle to go to him direct, but you ask too much of me, Georgina, you do indeed. Basil is certain to return to see his child, and then you can tell him about—about—the accident. I cannot interfere between man and wife.”
“Cannot you?—give me the medicine, or wine, or water, or something; and let me speak out my mind. Have you never interfered between us?” she went on, after swallowing the wine Phemie poured out for her. “Have I not felt you stepping between us every hour since my marriage. Did you not lay it on him as a curse—that he should never love any one as he loved you. Did not you, and has not the curse stuck? Has he ever loved another since—has he ever loved me?” and the unloved wife broke out into a fit of such passionate weeping as took Phemie totally by surprise.
“Dear Georgina,” she began soothingly, but the other interrupted her with—“You need not try to smooth the matter over; if it had not been for you he might have loved me (I have been lying thinking over it all while you were out of the room), but as it was, he never loved me, and he will hate me now. He will say I did it, and perhaps he will say true. Whatever he wished Harry not to do I encouraged Harry to do, and now—and now—he will never speak to me again; he never will.”
“He will not be so cruel, so unmanly,” Phemie said; but Georgina answered, “Ah! you do not know Basil Stondon, he can be both when he likes,” and she buried her face in the pillows, and sobbed aloud.
“I will go to him,” Phemie murmured; her soul travelled back at that instant over the years, to the days when Basil had been cruel and unmanly towards her, and she accepted the errand which was now put upon her, as she would any other that had arisen out of the mad foolishness of that wretchedly happy time. “If I were to telegraph though to him to return, as Harry was ill, and then break it to him on his return, would it not do as well as my going?”