“What could we have planned?” asked Jagger, on whose horizon a ray of light was breaking, though he was still suspicious, still half-hostile because of the confidence of the girl’s rebuke.
“We could have told him we were going to be married,” she said, “and you could have left the rest to me.” Perhaps the cold note that crept into her voice again was intended to screen the wave of colour that swept over her face, which Jagger never saw because he was gazing at a possibility. “I should have told him that he’d have to make you a partner, seeing that you were going to be my husband, and that it was my property and partly my money.”
She ended haltingly, because her coldness was disappearing and she was drawing near to the starting point that she had planned before they met; also because she began to wonder if there had been anything bold and unmaidenly in her explanation.
Half timidly she stole a glance at Jagger’s face, and the look she saw there stopped all further utterance.
“And do you think I’d truckle to a man like Baldwin Briggs for all t’ partnerships i’ t’ world?” he broke in hotly. “Would I sell my soul to the devil for money? It’s bad enough to work for a man like him for wages; but to share t’ responsibility for all his thieving underhanded ways is a thing I wouldn’t have for all t’ brass i’ t’ Bank of England. Me a partner with Baldwin Briggs! I’ll beg i’ t’ streets first!”
He drove the stick into the ground in his temper, and Nancy froze for a moment, and then a wave of hot anger and humiliation swept over her.
“So that’s your love, is it?” she cried. “It’s to humble me and turn me away with your foot that you’ve come here! Thank God I’ve found you out before it was too late! Aye, and God forgive me ’at I should have lowered myself to talk o’ marrying you, only to be scorned and spat at. To tell me to my face that I’d have you sell your soul to the devil! I hate you, Jagger Drake! Get you gone before I sell my soul to the devil and do you a mischief! Get you gone, I say!”
If only the tears had come then, all might have been well; but the springs were parched,—dried up by the heat of her indignation, and it was fire and not moisture that shone in her eyes. Jagger faced the storm, and like Lot’s wife when the ashes of Sodom fell on her, was turned to stone. Too late he remembered his father’s caution, the torrent of his temper had passed the sluice-gates and could not be recalled though its force was spent. For a few moments he remained immovable whilst the fierce anger of the girl he loved expended itself in words that battered and dulled his senses without reaching his understanding; then with a groan he turned away like a fool, and stumbled up the hillside to the road.
Yet though his spirits were heavy as lead, it was upon the girl and not him that the catastrophe fell with crushing weight. Bitterly as he cursed the fate that had parted them again in anger, he was too sure of his love for her, too convinced of her love for him, to doubt that the hour of their reconciliation was only delayed; and the thought that was uppermost in his mind as he neared his home was of his father’s kindly scorn—a scorn that cut across the soul sometimes like the lash of a whip.
Nancy read the situation more truly, though perhaps she did not read it at all, but just listened to the malevolent inward voice that told her the breach was widened beyond repair at last.