Chapter XVI—IN THE WILDERNESS
NORMA went down to dinner resolved to present a scornful front to public opinion. She found the effort taxed her strength. During the night her courage deserted her. The cold glitter of triumph in her mother's eyes had been intolerable. Her father, generally regarded with contemptuous indifference, had goaded her beyond endurance with his futile upbraiding. Aline had arrived, white-faced and questioning, and had established herself by Jimmie's bedside. Norma shrank from the ordeal of the daily meeting with her and the explanation that would inevitably come. She dreaded the return of Morland, uncertain of her own intentions. As she tossed about on her pillow, she loathed the idea of the marriage. Innermost sex had spoken for one passionate moment, and its message still vibrated. She knew that time might dull the memory; she knew that her will might one day triumph over such things as sex and sentiment; but she must have a breathing space, a period of struggle, of reflection, above all, of disassociation from present surroundings. If she sold herself, it must be in the accustomed cold atmosphere of brain and heart. Not now, when her head burned and flaming swords were piercing her through and through. And last, and chief of all her dreads, was the wounded man now sleeping beneath that roof. Father, mother, Aline, Morland—these, torture though it were, she could still steel her nerves to meet; but him, never. He had done what no other man in the wide world had done. He had awakened the sleeping, sacredest inmost of her, and he had dealt it a deadly wound. If she could have consumed him and all the memories surrounding him with fire, as she had consumed the garment stained with his blood, she would have done so in these hours of misery. And fierce among the bewildering conflict of emotions that raged through the long night was one that filled her with overwhelming disgust—a horrible, almost grotesque jealousy of the dead girl.
In the morning, exhausted, she resolved on immediate flight. In the little village of Penwyrn on the Cornish coast, her aunt Janet Hardacre led a remote, Quakerish existence. The reply to a telegram before she left her room assured Norma of a welcome. By eleven o'clock she had left Heddon Court and was speeding westwards without a word to Jimmie or Aline.
Morland returned in the afternoon, and after a whisky and soda to brace his nerves, at once sought Jimmie, who roused himself with an effort to greet his visitor.
“Getting on famously, I hear,” said Morland, with forced airiness. “So glad. We'll have you on your feet in a day or two.”
“I hope to be able to travel back to London to-morrow.”
“To-morrow?”
“Yes,” said Jimmie, with a curious smile. “I fear I have outstayed my welcome.”
“Not a bit of it,” said Morland, seating himself at the foot of the bed. “We'll put all that right. But you will give one a little time, won't you? You mustn't think you've been altogether left. I ran up to town at once to see my solicitors—not my usual people, you know, but some others, devilish smart fellows at this sort of thing. They'll see that nothing gets into the beastly papers.”
“I don't see that it matters much,” said Jimmie. “