I did not move, but stood within the reach of his arm, fixing my eyes full upon him as I spoke. He could not bear an honest gaze; he stared at me with impotent fury, but he dared not resist me. I saw his terror at the thought of summoning his brother, and how he lowered his voice and drew back his hand at the very mention of the Rector’s name.
“You are a bold young lady—but I like your spirit,” he said, with a scowl which belied his words. “Well, I consent that you shall keep the papers—that is to say, I trust them to your honor;—shall I have your decision to-morrow?”
“I cannot tell—I must have time,” I said, growing nervous at last, and drawing nearer the door; “have you ever mentioned this?—does Mr. Southcote know?”
“You will not tell him?” cried Saville fiercely, starting and following me, “you will not be so foolish as to show him your hand before the play begins? I knew women were fools in business, but I did not expect this from you—from you, Mrs. Southcote! you do not mean to pretend you are so loving and true a wife. No, I am not a likely person to have mentioned it—I know my man too well; small evidence I should have had, if it had ever come to his knowledge—I will not permit you to risk my papers in Edgar South—in Harry Southern’s hands.”
As he advanced upon me, I retreated—as he grew vehement, I threw the door open and walked hastily away—he followed me with great strides, yet restrained by a strange cowardice which I knew how to take advantage of—and when his sister suddenly appeared from the next room, he stopped short, and threw a look of cowardly threatening, and yet entreaty upon me. “Do not let him follow me,” I whispered to her—but I knew they would take care of that—and though I managed to leave the house at a decorous pace, whenever I got into the lane I began to run. I had always been swift-footed from a child—now I flew along the solitary lane, scarcely feeling that I touched the ground, holding the papers close under my mantle. When I came to Cottiswoode, flushed, and eager, and breathless, I did not pause even to throw back my hood, but hastened to the library. There was no one there—I hurried out disappointed, and asked for Mr. Southcote. He had gone out some time ago, I was told, and had left a message for me with Alice. I ran upstairs—the message was that he was suddenly called to Cambridge, and could not expect to return till late at night—and he hoped I would not think of waiting up for him—it was sure to be very late when he came home.
I cannot tell, indeed, whether I was most relieved or disappointed to hear this; though I think the latter—yet now, at least, I would have time to think over this tale, to try if it was a fable, a monstrous invention, or if it could be true. It was late, and I got little leisure till baby was asleep, but when he was laid down to his rest, and Alice left the room, I sat down by her little table and unfolded my papers. My heart beat loud while I read them over—my fears sickened me. I had no longer the presence of Saville before me, strengthening me in disbelief and opposition. Alas, poor perverse fool! this was a fit conclusion to all the misery I had made; this long year of troubles ever since my marriage I had been bitterly and cruelly resenting the discovery that my husband was Edgar Southcote—now how gladly would I have hailed, how wildly rejoiced in, an assurance that he had indeed a title to that name. The more I examined, the more I pondered, the more my fears grew upon me. If Edgar was an unwitting, involuntary impostor—the thought was terrible—and still more terrible it was to think that Cottiswoode would then be mine. I thought I could have borne to leave a wrongful inheritance with him, had it been pure loss to both of us; but that I should be “righted” by his downfall—ah, that was a justice I had not dreamed of! I could not rest—I wanted to do something immediately to settle this question; but that it was so late, I think I would have followed him to Cambridge—but that was not to be thought of now; so I wandered up and down from the library to my own room, always returning to the letters—and tried to conceal from myself how the hours went on, and how the household was going to rest. I still hoped that I might have gone to him at once on his return, and it was only when Alice, with a sleepy face, came calling me to baby, that I yielded at last, and went to bed, but not to sleep. Through all the dreary midnight hours after that I lay still and listened, hearing every sound, and supposing a hundred times over that I heard him return. Now and then I started up after a few moments’ sleep, and went to the door to look out and listen—but there was still the dull light burning in the hall, the silence in the house, the drowsy stir of the man who waited for his master below—then my restlessness made my baby restless also, and I had to occupy myself with him, and subdue my anxiety for his sake. It was a dreary night; but I had nothing for it but to submit—lying still, sleeping in snatches, dreaming, thinking—thoughts that ran into dreams, and longing, as only watchers long, for the morning light.
THE NINTH DAY.
I WAS astir by dawn; but before even Alice came to me I was aware that my husband had not returned. The sleepy light in the hall still burned through the early morning darkness, and the watcher still stirred the fire, which had not gone out all night. When I made sure of this I hastened down to relieve the man from his uncomfortable vigil, and on my way met Mrs. Templeton, newly roused, who began immediately to assure me that “something very particular must have detained master—it was a thing he had never done before all his life,—but she hoped I would not be uneasy, for he’d be sure not to stay from home an hour longer than he could help.” I do not know how it was, but this speech of the housekeeper’s roused me into unreasonable anger. I was offended that any one should suppose my husband’s conduct wanted defence to me; or worse still, that any one should presume to know him better than I did. I answered briefly, that I was aware Mr. Southcote had business to detain him, and hastened to my room to complete my dress. Almost unconsciously to myself, I put on a dark, warm travelling dress; the morning was brisk, frosty, and cheerful, and for the moment I was roused with the stimulus of having something to do. Somehow, even his absence and the long watch of the night did not dismay me—all at once it occurred to me, not how miserable, but how foolish our discords were; the ordinary view—the common sense of the matter flashed upon me with a sudden light. I blushed for myself, yet I was roused; half-a-dozen frank words on either side, I suddenly thought, would set us right at once. I moved about my room with a quickened step, a sentiment of freedom; Saville’s papers, my own fears, all the dismay and anxiety of the night, united, I cannot tell how, to give an impulse of hearty and courageous resistance to my mind. There was something to do; I forgot my own guilt in the matter, and all the deeper feelings which were concerned. I thought of it all with impatience, as I have sometimes thought of the entanglements of a novel, which a spark of good sense would dispel in a moment—I forgot—though I was about the last person in the world to whom such a forgetfulness should have been possible—that good sense could not restore love, nor heal the bitterness of wounded affection. I determined for my own part not to lose a moment, not even to think it over, but to go direct to my husband at once, and say those same half-dozen sensible, frank, good-humored words which should put an end to it all; strange enough, my mind never misgave me as to the result.
I breakfasted in tolerably good spirits. I made no account of the anxious looks of Alice; I was occupied with thinking of everything we could do, of the world of possibilities which lay before us, if we were but right with one another; how I could have lulled myself into ease so long, I cannot tell. I awoke out of it all with a start and cry when I heard the great clock strike twelve, and looking out—out of my lonely chamber window, out of my new dreams—saw the broad country lying under the broad, full, truthful sunshine; the morning mists dispersed and broken, and the day come to its noon.
Noon! my bright figments perished in a moment: he had not come home, he had not written nor sent any message; had he forsaken me, as I forsook him?