Chapter XII Rhoda and Margaret
When Rhoda returned from Ditsworthy, she stated briefly that a doctor had seen Mr. Bowden and declared there was no immediate cause for uneasiness. David, however, proposed to stop for the night and help his mother.
The women supped silently—each angered with the other; and then happened that which loosed the flood-gates of Rhoda’s passion and precipitated a deed which, since the recent meeting in the wood, she had strongly considered. She had changed her mind with regard to David; and now, instead, it had come to her as a reasonable thing to attack Margaret directly. But she hesitated to do so until the latter unconsciously provoked her. Rhoda had not spoken to David of the meeting with Madge and Bartley Crocker; but now David’s wife returned to the subject and awoke anger in Rhoda, so that she lost self-control and spilled out all the bitterness of her mind.
“Since your father’s not in danger, one has time for one’s own thoughts again,” said Madge, “and they are dark enough for the minute. You looked terrible surprised in Dennycoombe wood a bit ago, and you was terrible rude to me; but why for I don’t know. You puzzle me sometimes, Rhoda. Can’t you even feel that ’tis sad the man who loved you so well be going so far ways off?”
“The sooner the better.”
“You’re heartless, I do believe.”
“You make up for it, if I am.”
“I suppose you’re shocked because I kissed him. Did you tell David? I lay he didn’t pull a very long face about it. But what’s come over me? To think of me talking in this loud, wild way! Forgive me, Rhoda. I meant nothing. You can’t help being what you are, and feeling what you feel, any more than I can. I’m not myself to-night. I shall miss him cruel, and I don’t care who knows it.”
The other kept silence. Her colour had gone and her breast was rising and falling rapidly. Anger put a strain on her lungs and called for air.
“Oh, Rhoda,” cried Madge feebly, “why didn’t you take him? Nobody will ever love you like that again; and nobody will ever understand you so well as Bartley did. You were a fool—a fool not to take him. Now look at it—your life all useless and nowhere to turn, unless you come to Tavistock with us. Think better of it even now. Go to him to-morrow; keep him here afore ’tis too late and he’s gone.”
Then the other rose to her feet, and spoke slowly, and crushed the slighter creature for ever.
“So you’ve sunk to that! You can dare to sit there and say that openly to me. I’m to marry him—I’m to drag myself through the dirt of that man’s life, so that you can have him always at your elbow!!”
Margaret stared, and in her turn grew pale.
“What are you saying or thinking?” she cried. “Are you out of your mind?”
“If I am, I’ve had enough to make me. But I’m sane enough—for my brother’s sake. I’ve kept sane all these cruel, cursed months, while you’ve gone your way, and forgotten yourself, and disgraced his name. Hear me, I say! Don’t you shout, for I can shout louder than you. What I tell be God’s truth; and if you don’t confess it, I’ll do it for you. D’you think I don’t know what men are? Nine in ten be of the same beastly pattern; and this man’s the worst of all, for he’s a liar and a thief, and he came to me with his false tales, but his mind was always running on you; and he came to David and pretended to be his friend and—and—”
She caught her breath and Margaret spoke swiftly.
“What do you accuse me of?”
“I accuse you of being unfaithful and untrue to my brother; and right well you know it is so. I’ve watched—I know—and I’m not the only one. My sister Dorcas—clever enough in evil she be—she knows it too. And belike a many others among that knave’s friends, for he’s the sort to rob a woman of her all, and then laugh to men about it. Maybe all the world knows it but David’s self. I say you’ve sinned against my brother, and I say he must know it—now—now—afore he begins at Tavistock. And, please God, he’ll put you away from him, and choose rather to live his life maimed alone, than with a foul wretch like you under his roof.”
“These are hideous lies—you’re dreaming—you’re mad to say such things. You—you to come to an honest wife with this filthy story! ’Tis you shall be cast out—’tis you.—Oh, my God! to think that I should hear such words uttered against me by another woman!”
Madge’s brief flash of fight died even as she spoke. She was not fashioned to carry the battle with a high hand. She began to think of her husband.
“You shall say this to David and see where you find yourself,” she continued. “Is not a man’s wife nearer to him than a sister? Will he believe you rather than me? Will he believe Dorcas rather than Bartley Crocker himself? That you—you, Rhoda, of all women, could sting me so! That you—you we thought so pure and clean as newly-fallen snow—could invent such a thing! That you, who know me so well and my love and worship of David.... Oh, Rhoda, I’m sorry for you!”
“Be sorry for yourself. Well—and too well—I know you. I had to spy. I ban’t ashamed of it. There was nothing else but to tell him and let him spy. And I couldn’t do that till I knew. ’Tis all of a piece—all clear to any human mind—foul or fair. God judge me if I was quick to think evil. I was slow to do it. I fought not to believe it. I tried heart and soul not to see it. But you took good care I should see it. Wasn’t you always after him? Didn’t you meet him in secret places scores of times? How could I not see? And him coming to me; and you pretending to want me to take him. Yet ’twas no pretence neither, for ’twould have suited you both well enough. And David, working day and night, and trusting you, and always ready at a word to pleasure you. That proud of you and hungry for your happiness— But it’s ended now. It ended to-day when I saw you in the wood. Not that I’ve not seen you kissing him afore—fawning on his hand, by God! I’ve watched—yes—and seen enough to know all I didn’t see. And he’s going to know it too—David. He’s got to know for his own honour’s sake, and he shall.”
“Will he believe it? Never! May God strike me here afore you, and kill me slow the awfullest way that ever woman died, if by thought or deed I’ve been false to him.”
“Ah! Even so the man talked, and he’s alive yet. But the A’mighty won’t forget either of you. You add lies to lies as he did. But I know they’re lies. You needn’t talk as if I was a fool; I know him well enough—none better. Did such as him—lecherous-minded beast that he was—dance about in lonely woods and secret places with you for nothing? If an angel from heaven told me you was honest I’d not believe it. And I’m stronger than you think—stronger far than you—with David, I mean. He knows I’m single-minded, anyway. He knows I’ve got no thought or hope in the whole world except his good. He knows right well that I’ve been a kind sister to you, and never done anything but strive for your happiness as well as his. Till now—till now. And he’ll believe me; for he knows that I couldn’t lie if I was tortured for speaking the truth. And I am tortured—tortured as never a woman was tortured yet. But he’s got to hear it; and he shall hear it afore that man goes. And, as for you, whether he believes me or you, God’s my eternal judge but I’ll never ope my mouth to you again as long as I live.”
She said no more and went up to her room. Margaret waited a while and then followed her; but Rhoda’s door was locked and she refused to answer when the other spoke.
Then the wife descended and sat with companionship of her thoughts. She lived through many hours of poignant grief. Again and again she fell away stricken by her own heart; but she returned as often to the theme; she strove to pierce the problem and see what her sister-in-law could mean. How was it possible that such transparent innocence as Margaret’s could from any standpoint look so vile? The bitterest enemy was powerless to throw one shadow over her friendship with Bartley Crocker; and yet here was her brother’s sister frenzied with this fearful idea, and speaking of it as a fact proved beyond question. Rhoda believed in it as surely as she believed in her own life. She was prepared to stake her future and David’s love for her upon it. She was going to separate Margaret from David, or herself from David, forever. One or other event must inevitably happen.
A thousand plans of action rushed through the wife’s brain, and their number defeated their varied purposes. Her native timidity served her ill now. She did nothing but sit and think and reconstruct the past. She remembered all the meetings with Bartley and their many plots and plans to win Rhoda for him. She recollected the most intimate conversations, when her nature or his formed the subject of their speech. She had once kissed his hand in a sudden impulse, when he announced the means to cure her mother. But she did not recall a single perilous or dangerous pass between them; for indeed no such thing had ever existed. Their regard was based on close and lifelong understanding and friendship. There never had been a reciprocal passage of passion, even in the days of her freedom. Her regard was the regard of an ordinary woman for her favourite brother—an affection absolutely untinged by any conscious sexual emotion whatsoever. Even at that, she had not loved him as Rhoda loved David. She was not cast in the great mould of Rhoda—great if unfinished.
At waste of night she began to perceive that she could be no match for Rhoda. Her instinct of self-preservation inclined her first to David, then to Bartley, and then to her father’s home. She determined at last to rest until day, and sought her bed. She lighted a match in the dark after a sleepless hour. It went out before she could reach a candle, and she was struck by the trivial phenomenon that, long after the match was extinguished, its light shone in her eyeballs and throbbed in the gloom like fiery rings until the impression waned. She rose an hour before dawn and dressed and descended. Then she went out and breathed the chill morning wind. As yet it was quite dark. Looking up, she saw that a candle burned in Rhoda’s room. Some subtle psychological instinct crushed her spirit before the spectacle of that woman’s steadfast and unsleeping watch. An impulse to get away from Rhoda overpowered Margaret. She returned, fetched her sun-bonnet, and hastened off without any fixed purpose of destination.
When David’s sister came down before six o’clock, the house was empty. She, too, had passed through storms; she also had faltered at the hour when life’s pulses beat lowest and midnight sets its dead weight upon human hearts. She had longed to rise and get into the air; but she was determined not to lose sight of Margaret until David came home. Yet for a time she had lost consciousness and slept awhile at edge of dawn. And during those fitful slumbers, Margaret had departed.
The day found Rhoda assured of her own action, though the result of it she could not foretell; but thus to have thrust matters upon their climax was a relief to her, and she felt only interested further to learn the extent of David’s future sufferings and her power to lessen them.
That Margaret had disappeared did not much astonish her. She doubted not that her sister-in-law was gone to have the first speech with David. Rhoda reviewed her own knowledge of facts and prepared her own statement. She perceived that she herself must come vilely out of it, as a spy and informer; but she kept her intentions and object in view, and believed that, suffer as he must, David would not lose sight of her motives. Her only desire was that her brother’s home might be cleansed—at any cost to its inhabitants. She thirsted to speak to David and hear his voice.
Yet, when she saw him coming alone through the morning, her thoughts flashed along another train, and she held her peace until a more fitting time for speech. And this she did because she guessed that something vital had happened to Margaret—something which must justify her attitude and sweep away the last shadow of doubt.
Then her brother surprised her mightily; for, when she told him that Margaret had gone from the house before daylight, he seemed but little astonished to hear it.