A Duel. Richard Marsh
What was he doing there? What could have brought him to that neighbourhood? She had taken it for granted that he had long since returned to London. Even Mrs. Macconichie's--supposing he was still there, which seemed unlikely--was a good twelve miles away. She was conscious that he was not alone in the trap. Who his companion was she had not noticed; she had not time.
The vehicle drew rapidly level with the tree on which she rested. She decided that she might venture to peep again, and was just doing so when the horse shied so violently that the cart was almost overturned. Recovering itself, apparently getting the bit between its teeth, it bolted like a thing possessed, and vanished from her sight, though not before she had nearly convinced herself that the man with her husband--the one who was driving--was Dr. Twelves. She had only seen him from the back, and then had had but occasional glimpses through intervening trees for half-a-dozen seconds, but she was almost sure that it was he. There was, however, just a possibility that she was mistaken, and it was that possibility which worried her. She would have liked to have been certain, either one way or the other. Then, in the case of the worst, she might have been prepared.
For the juxtaposition could but mean trouble for her. She was too clear-sighted to delude herself with the notion that the doctor was anxious to be a friend of hers. He had, to outward seeming, accepted the situation; probably, in part, because, as she herself put it, she was no ordinary woman; and partly because, under the circumstances, considering the part which he himself had played, he did not see what else there was for him to do. Let him, however, learn how wholly baseless was her claim to occupy the place which she had arrogated to herself, and she did not for a moment doubt that he would use that knowledge to oust her from it in the shortest possible space of time.
The only two points on which she had her doubts were: Was it really the doctor who was driving Gregory Lamb? and, if so, had Gregory Lamb given him cause to even suspect the relation in which she stood to him? On a third point there was no doubt--the dogcart had been moving from, not towards the house, so that in any case the peril was not actually approaching her now.
Another thought suddenly occurred to her, one which set her heart beating faster than was altogether agreeable. The doctor and her husband might have been to the house already, in which case danger might be awaiting her return to what she had learned to call her home.
That was a question which might be quickly resolved--she would resolve it quickly. She started off homewards then and there, telling herself as she went that, whatever had happened, or might happen, they should only be rid of her on terms of her own.
It turned out that, so far, nothing had happened; to that extent, at least, her agitation had been uncalled for. No one had been near the house since she had left it; nothing had happened which was in any way out of the common. The relief she felt at learning even so much showed how real she had imagined the danger was. With some vague idea of subjecting him to cross-examination and learning if he had suspicions of her of any sort or kind, so soon as she had removed her hat she paid a visit to Cuthbert Grahame's room.
As usual, he lay immobile between the sheets, preserving that death-in-life rigidity which, it seemed, was to continue his condition to the end. The sight of him struck in her an unwonted note.
"Don't you get tired of lying there?--especially on a day like this, when the sun is shining and the breeze is stealing among the trees and flowers?"
She did not strike a responsive note in him. He was silent for some seconds, then he asked, in his strange, far-away voice, which was like a husky whisper--
"Aren't you well?"
"Oh yes, I'm well enough. I'm only wondering if you're not tired of being ill. It seems to me that you might as well be dead as keep on lying there with only your voice alive--and that's pretty nearly done for."
She had returned to her more familiar mood.
"Tired!--tired!" He repeated the word twice, then after an interval went on: "What's the use of being tired of what has to be? I'm tired of you, but it seems you have to be--so what's the use?"
"I don't see why you need be tired of me. I'm no more to you than a chair or table."
"You're my wife."
"Your wife! It's because I'm your wife that I'm likely to get tired instead of you. I'm not a helpless statue--I'm a woman; I don't want a dead log--I want a man."
"I was once a man."
"You a man!"
"Seems queer, doesn't it?"
"I don't believe it."
"Yet I was, physically, not a bad sample of a man. Now the Lord knows what I am!--a husk, I suppose. There's a man inside me somewhere still."
"You look as if there were, and you sound it."
She laughed, not pleasantly. It was one of her defects that her laughter seldom had a pleasant sound, as if it were only the spirit of malice which had power to move her to mirth.
"You've confessed why you married me. Do you know why I wanted to marry you, or any one? I'd have married your friend Nannie if she'd agreed, but she refused point-blank."
"Is that true?"
"Quite. It was only when she persisted in her refusal that the doctor thought of the woman he'd found in a ditch. Since anything in the shape of a woman would serve he hauled you up the stairs." She was still. She was standing in her favourite position by the open window, looking out at the woods on the slope of the hill. "Shall I tell you why, when already looking into hell--and I had a good look, I promise you!--I wanted to marry any one?"
"I know."
"Who told you?"
"Dr. Twelves."
"He seems to have imparted to you a good deal of useful information. What did he tell you?"
"That you'd made a will in some one's favour, which you wanted to break, and that was the easiest way to break it."
"Did he tell you who the some one was?"
"No."
"It was a woman. Do you hear--it was a woman!"
"I hear."
"A young woman--younger than you and prettier. Prettier? My God! You're not bad-looking in a way, but there's a streak of the vulgar in you now. No one could ever mistake you for a lady. You're one of the blowzy sort; you'll become impossible; hard-featured; flame-coloured cheeks; bold, staring eyes; huge, unwieldy, gross. She!--she's the most perfect woman God ever made, and she'll only improve as the years go by."
"I've met that kind of woman before."
"Not you. She's not to be found in the sort of society in which you've moved."
"She's to be found in the penny novelettes--never out of them. You and your perfect women! In spite of her perfection you don't seem to have found her all milk and honey, or you wouldn't have been so keen to break that will of yours."
"Do you know why I wanted to break it?"
"Some silly nonsense. Because she tried to scratch your eyes out, I daresay--serve you right if she did."
"Because she wouldn't marry me."
"Because----!" She stopped to burst into noisy, strident laughter. "She must have been a fool. I should have thought any one would have married you if you'd made it worth their while."
"I told you that she was not the kind of woman you have ever met; she's clean beyond your understanding. Put your hand underneath my pillow--gently. You'll find a case; take it out."
Isabel looked at him, hesitating, as if in doubt of his meaning, then she did as he had told her. He was propped up on a nicely graduated series of pillows. As she withdrew her hand, the case between her fingers, she dragged one of the pillows with it right from under the one on which his head reposed, so that, denuded of its support, his head fell back. In a second he began to choke before her eyes. His face grew bluer and bluer; the veins stood out