CHAPTER VIII.

The rain showed no signs of abating, but Alfred Wimple was chilly and hungry. Moreover, he was tired of the _tête-à-tête_ in the shed, and he had a dull curiosity to hear the result of Aunt Anne’s visit to town. It was certain to provide some sort of excitement for the evening. If she had brought back money he would reap the benefit of it; if she had not, he could at least make her suffer, and to watch her suffer would provide him a satisfaction over which he gloated more and more with every experience of it. He buttoned his coat, turned up the bottoms of his trousers, and looked for his umbrella; then he hesitated a moment and looked out at the weather. He hated rain.

“I wish I had thought to bring myself an umbrella,” his companion said; “it’s a long way across. Joe Pook is over at the King’s Head with his cart, and he’ll drive me back; but it’s a good bit to there.”

Alfred Wimple coughed.

“I can’t let you have mine”—and he held it firmly; “my chest is not strong.”

“I wasn’t saying it for that,” she answered; “I was only thinking it was a pity I didn’t bring one. Good-bye; you’ll take care of yourself, won’t you?”

“I will try,” he said, in his most sombre manner, as though he felt it to be an important undertaking. “Good-bye, Caroline.”

Before they were many yards apart she turned and went after him. Her jacket was already wet with rain; her black straw hat was shining. There was an anxious excitement in her manner.

“Alfred”—she put her hand on his shoulder and looked at his face while she spoke—“you care about me really, don’t you?”

“Why do you ask that now?” he asked severely.

“I don’t know. Mother said once that you had love for nothing but yourself. It isn’t true, is it? Sometimes I think I would have done better if I had married Albert Spark. I believe he’s fonder of me now than you are.”

He looked impatient and at a loss what to do. He could not understand unselfish love; self-protection was his own strongest feeling; everything else was merely a means, a weapon to be used in attaining it.

“You mustn’t keep me in the rain,” he said; “the old woman will be back by this time. Why do you think I don’t care for you?”

“I don’t know,” and as she spoke the tears came into her eyes; “I think it was because you just let me go in the rain and didn’t see that I’d get wet through. It doesn’t matter, but I’d like you to have seen it.”

“You are stronger than I am. It is dangerous for me to get wet: I came out in the rain to meet you.”

“And then, perhaps I oughtn’t to say it, but you took the money and didn’t offer me a shilling to keep for myself.”

“I didn’t know you wanted it. You can’t expect me to go without anything in my pocket?”

“No,” and she burst into tears; “it’s only sometimes I get dissatisfied,” she added apologetically.

“You should have done it in the shed. You ought not to keep me here in the rain. You know that.”

“No, I oughtn’t; you go on, dear”—there was sudden repentance in her voice. “Just kiss me and say you are fond of me again.” He leaned over her, and for a moment his eyes flashed, as he kissed her with a loathsome eagerness that left the woman’s heart more hungry than before.

“I am fond of you,” he said; “you know I am fond of you—when I see you. But I can’t come to Liphook to be dunned for money.”

“I always do the best I can to get things for you; and if I have plenty of work I’ll take care it’s more comfortable, if you’ll only come. There, go now, Alfred dear. I don’t want to keep you in the wet. It’s only that we have been married these four years, and, somehow, we never seem to have got any good of it yet.” She put her arms round his neck for a moment “I am awful fond of you,” she said, and turned away.

Something in her voice touched him; or it might have been that he was fonder of her than he supposed, for as he went by the pathway that poor Aunt Anne had hurried along, bowed down with insult and despair, only twenty minutes before, there was a less sullen expression than usual on his face. He thought of the clinging hands and tearful eyes, and the undisguised love written on her face, with something like satisfaction. He would settle down with her, once he possessed the money. He liked the idea of it; it would be good to be waited upon by her, to go abroad with her perhaps, to buy comfort and luxury, and to feel her hanging about him. He lingered in thought over her caresses; he remembered Aunt Anne’s and shuddered. He had said truly enough that he could not bear the latter much longer; toleration had grown to endurance, endurance to dislike, and dislike to loathing. He was sensible of even being beneath the same roof with her; her voice irritated him, her touch produced a feeling that was almost fear. Every step he made now towards the house that contained her was reluctant and almost shrinking. He could just bear life with her if she gave him good food and comfort and money he could not obtain elsewhere; but unless she gave him these things, which he counted worth any price that could be paid, he felt it would be impossible to stay with her longer. Warmth and idleness and comfort were gods to him; but his loathing for the poor soul who had struggled for months to give them to him was developing into horror. He waited, doggedly, day after day for Sir William Rammage’s death. When that happened he would seize the money that would be hers and, without mercy, leave her to her fate; he and Caroline could easily keep out of her reach. If she would not give him the money he would make life impossible for her to bear. He had not the least intention of murdering her, but in imagination he often put his hands round her throat, and all his fingers felt her life growing still beneath them. He resented everything she did: her voice, her footstep, her tender, wrinkled face; he felt as if her winking left eye were driving him mad—as if there were poison in her breath. He considered her life an offence against him, except as a means of giving him money. When once she had done that, when she had given him the thousands for which he had married her, he wanted her for ever out of his sight, and underground; he gloated in imagination over the deepness of the grave into which he would have her put, and the silence and darkness that would surround her.

He was at the bottom of the dip. He reflected, with triumph, that it was too late for any question of going to the station to meet the half-past six o’clock train. He thought of the rain that would fall upon her as she drove to the cottage. He wondered if she had left her cloak behind, and imagined the cold and pain she would suffer without it. He could see her in the open cart, bending her head and shoulders beneath the grey storm, carrying the bag that contained the dinner for him, and he imagined the bulging condition in which the bag would return. If she had not brought back all he considered necessary for his comfort, she would tremble to see him, and he would not spare her one single pang. He was among the firs and larches, within sight of the cottage windows. He hated to think that she was behind them—that almost immediately he would be in the same room with her, sitting opposite to her at table. He thought of himself as a martyr, and of her as a loathsome burden, a presence that had no right to be inflicted on him; one that he would be justified in using any means within his power to remove. His feeling for her had grown in intensity till it threatened to burst the bonds of reserve and silence in which he had wrapped himself. It was only with an effort that he could keep in all the lashing words that hatred could suggest. He went up the pathway, as slowly as she herself had done, and walked round the house under the verandah. Unknowingly, in putting the easy-chair back into its place, Aunt Anne had pushed aside a little bit of the dining-room curtain. He looked in and saw the table laid, the candles burning, and the bowl of primroses; they were a sign that she had returned, and had not returned empty-handed. He noticed that only one place was laid, and he wondered vaguely what it meant. He thought of Aunt Anne’s face, and a sickening feeling came over him. If it had only been a girl’s face to which he was going in, a young woman who would come to meet him, and put her arms round his neck, and call him endearing names, instead of the old woman, shrivelled and wrinkled, to whom in a moment or two he would have to submit himself? He went towards the front door, vaguely determining that he would make her miserable that night. He had a right to everything she could give, but she had no right to intrude herself upon his sight, and he would make her feel it.

There was a click at the gate. Some one had entered the garden from the road. He stopped. A boy came up to him through the darkness.

“Wimple? A telegram, sir. There is sixpence for porterage.” He felt in his pocket among the silver the woman had given him in the shed; he found a sixpence, and the boy departed. He opened the yellow envelope, and stood still for a moment, with the telegram in his hand. He guessed what it meant. He took a match from his pocket, struck a light, and, protecting it from the wind with his hat, read:

“Died at five o’clock from sudden attack.”

He screwed it up into a ball and put it carefully into his pocket. His feeling for Aunt Anne changed in a moment: he felt that for this one evening, at any rate, he would endure her—he would even be civil—since it was through her that he was about to gain all he wanted. He looked up at the cottage before he entered it with the almost pleasant feeling with which a prisoner sometimes looks at his cell before he departs into freedom. Aunt Anne was sitting by the drawing-room fire; he lingered by the doorway.

“You are home, then?” he said. There was something exalted in his voice, that at another time would have made her look up at him lovingly, as he expected to see her do now. But, instead, she answered coldly and without any words of greeting—

“Yes, Alfred, I am home.”

“What did you do in town?” She winked haughtily and did not speak. “What did you do?” he repeated.

“I did a great deal, and learned many things of which I will tell you when you have finished your dinner. It is quite ready—you will be good enough to go to it, Alfred.”

He looked at her searchingly, and felt a little uneasiness.

“Are you coming?” he asked, seeing that she did not move.

“No, I have dined; but I trust you will be satisfied with what I have provided for you,” she said coldly. Something in her manner forced him reluctantly to obey. He went into the dining-room; she shut the door that led into it and waited in the drawing-room. Jane came in after she had served the sole, and drew down the blinds and arranged the curtains and threw some wood on the fire.

“There is only one candle left,” she said, “till the two in the dining-room are done with.”

“It is quite sufficient; you can light it and put it on the table. As soon as you have finished waiting upon Mr. Wimple you will go upstairs and do what I have told you”—and she was left alone again. While she looked at the fire she could almost imagine Alfred Wimple eating his sole; she knew when it was finished; she listened while Jane entered and pushed his plate through the buttery-hatch; she heard the chicken arrive, and imagined Alfred Wimple solemnly carving it. Her heart beat faster as he went on towards the end of his feast; she was impatient for the crisis to begin. At last he rose from the table, opened the door, and stood looking at her curiously. She rose too and waited, facing him, on the rug.

“Did you bring a paper from town, Anne?” he asked, without a word of gratitude for his dainty dinner.

“Yes, I brought some papers; but you will not require them.” She hesitated a moment, and then went on firmly, “I wish you to know, Alfred, that you are about to leave this house never to enter it again.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, and fastened his eyes on her with only a little more expression in them than usual.

“I mean that I know everything.”

“Have you seen my uncle?” he asked, betraying no surprise and not moving from the doorway.

“He is in Scotland for a fortnight—but I know everything. I know that you have insulted and defamed me.” She spoke in a low voice and so calmly that he looked at her as if he thought she did not understand the meaning of her own words. “Till I met you,” she went on, “I bore an unsullied name and reputation.”

“What have I done to your name and reputation?” he asked, and closed his lips as though he were almost stupefied with silence. But he went a step towards her, with a shrinking, defensive movement. She retreated towards the table on which the candle stood, a flickering witness of the scene between them—a scene full of shame and suffering and unconfessed fear for her, and of cruelty and loathing and bewilderment for him; but for both strangely destitute of fire and passion.

“You have ruined both,” she said. “You have dared to make a pretence of marriage with me, though you were married already to an inferior person whom you had known at your lodgings.”

“Who told you this?”

“I shall not tell you my informant, but I know everything. You will retire from my presence this evening and never enter it again.”

“It is not true,” he said shortly, and made another step towards her, and again she retreated.

“It is true. To-morrow I shall go to Liphook and expose your infamous behaviour.”

“If you dare,” he said, almost fiercely, and then, suddenly, he changed his note. “I was obliged to do it, Anne,” he added, as if he had suddenly seen that the game was up, and lying would serve him nothing. “But I was fond of you; I told you there were many difficulties the night I asked you to marry me.”

“No, Alfred”—and for the first time her lips quivered—“you were not fond of me, even then. You were under the impression that you would get the money Sir William Rammage had left me in his will.”

“What should I know about his will?”

“You were aware of its contents. You went to him in regard to the instructions. I have heard everything from his own lips.” He was silent for a moment, and still there was no expression in his dull eyes.

“Rammage could not tell you that I was married,” he said presently. “Where did you get that ridiculous story from?”

“It is not a ridiculous story. You have married a common dressmaker, and you presumed after that to insult and impose on me.”

“What are you going to do—what do you want me to do?” he asked, almost curiously.

“I shall not treat you with the severity you deserve, but you will leave this house to-night and never enter it again.”

“I should go to Liphook. You would not like that, Anne.”

“Alfred,” she said indignantly, “I could not accept shame and degradation, even from a man I love. Besides, I have no longer any love for you. You will not dare to offer me that. Every moment that you stay in my presence is an insult. I must insist on your leaving this house at once.”

“Where am I to go?” he asked, still curiously.

“That is for your consideration. You and I are apart.”

“I have no money,” he said, too much astonished, though he made no sign of it, to fight her fairly.

“You have sufficient money for your present necessities, Alfred. You must not think that you can deceive me any longer. I know everything about you.”

Suddenly an idea occurred to him, and he asked, in a manner that was almost a threat, though it had no effect upon her—

“Have you been to Liphook?”

“I shall not tell you where I have been, Alfred; I have discovered your baseness, and that is sufficient. I know that our marriage was a mockery, that you dared to offer me what you had already given to another woman. You will go back to her, and at once. You came to me solely for my money, and of that you will not have one penny piece.”

Still he stood looking at her speechlessly, while with each word she said his loathing for her increased and his anger grew more difficult to control. His lips parted and showed his teeth, white and clenched together.

“I will have the money yet; and you shall suffer,” he said.

“You will not,” she answered, with a determined wink. “I have taken care of that.”

“You have left it to me.”

For a moment she was silent; then a light broke upon her, and she spoke quickly.

“Alfred,” she said, “I know now why you put your name in my will without mentioning the relationship in which I supposed you stood to me, and why you did not put my name in yours, but only said that you left everything to your wife. You were deliberately insulting me, and deceiving me most cruelly even then, on the day I thought most sacred.”

“I thought you were fond of me,” he said, as if he had not heard her last speech. For a moment she could not answer him. Only a few hours before, and the deceptions of which she had known him then to be guilty had but made him dearer to her. She had loved him with all her own strength, and supposed him to possess it. She had idealized him with her own goodness, till she had mistaken it for his. It had never occurred to her that any comfort she gathered in through him was but her own feeling returning to soothe her a little with its beauty. Now all the glamour had vanished, she loathed and shrank from him, just as he had done from her. It was like a death agony.

“I was fond of you,” she said. “I loved you more than all the world, and I would have given you my life, I would have worked for your daily bread. I wanted nothing in the world but you, Alfred; but I am undeceived. You must go; you must leave me, and at once. I have desired Jane to pack your things——”

“I shall stay,” he said, in a tone that made her look up quickly. “I do not mean to go until I have the money that old Rammage has left you.”

“You will not have one penny piece of it,” she answered.

“I will,” he said, with a quiet, determined look she knew well in his dull eyes. “He has left it to you, and you have left it to me. I mean to have it.”

“It is no use trying to intimidate me, Alfred,” she said; “it is too late. To-morrow I shall make another disposition of my property.”

“No, you will not,” he said; “for I shall not let you out of my sight till you are dead, and you will be dead soon.”

“You will gain nothing by that, Alfred. William Rammage also will make another disposition of his property to-morrow, for I told him of our marriage.”

“No, he will not, Anne” and he looked at her with awful triumph—“for he is dead already.”

“Dead already? You are trying to hoodwink me, Alfred; and if it is true it will not alter my intention or prevent me from carrying it out,” she answered, determined not to let him know that her promised wealth had vanished. There was a sound of footsteps, and then the back door closed. Aunt Anne quaked when she heard it, for she knew that Jane had gone home without coming to say the usual good-night. He heard it, too, and his tone altered in a moment.

“You will have no chance of altering your intention, Anne,” he said, and went another step towards her.

“Why?” she asked, with a fearless wink.

“Because you shall not live to do it”—and he went still a little nearer; but she did not quail for a moment. “Do you hear?” and he showed his teeth while he spoke, “you shall not live to do it.”

“And you think when I am dead that you will go and spend my money with the woman at Liphook?”

“Yes,” he said; “I like her, and I loathe you.” He drew the word out as if he gloated over the sound of it, and an awful look came into his eyes again.

“Heaven has frustrated your design,” she said. “Alfred, if you kill me you will gain nothing by it, and the law will punish you. William Rammage has burnt his will. He burnt it to-day before my eyes, when he heard that I had disgraced my family and my name by a marriage with you.”

“Burnt it!” He clenched his hands, and struggled to control himself. “Then I shall go; I shall go—when it suits me. I only wanted your money. A young man does not marry an old woman for anything but money, Anne. You are loathsome—loathsome and unwholesome,” he repeated, watching the effect of every word upon her—“and I have loathed being with you. I shall go to the other woman. She is my wife; I like her—she is young, not old and loathsome like you. I only married you for the sake of your money.” Aunt Anne never moved an inch; she only watched him steadily, as slowly he brought out his sentences, pausing between each one. “You have kept me from her all these months,” he went on, concentrating himself on every word he said; “and now you have taken from me the money I deserved for being with you—for being with a wrinkled, withered old woman.”

She did not move or speak. For a moment he showed his teeth again, then slowly lifted his hands.

“Anne,” he said, with a fiendish look in his eyes, but with the calm gravity of a just avenger, “I am going to strangle you”—and he went nearer and bent over her. He had no intention of carrying out his threat, it was a luxury he dared not afford himself, but he wanted to torture and frighten her till she quailed before him. For only one moment was his desire satisfied.

“If you dare to touch me——” she said, and a shriek burst from her. There was the sound of a door opening and of footsteps entering.

“Jane!” shouted Aunt Anne, “Jane!”

Jane opened the door and looked in.

“If you please, ma’am, I heard Mr. Knox, the policeman, go by, and you said you wanted him.”

Alfred Wimple stared at her in astonishment, and his face blanched. Aunt Anne recovered her self-possession in a moment, though she trembled from head to foot.

“If you will ask him to stay in the kitchen, I will speak to him,” she said. Then she turned to Alfred Wimple again.

“You will only get yourself laughed at,” he said.

She was silent a moment; she saw what was in his thoughts and took advantage of it.

“You do not deserve my clemency,” she said, “but I will extend it to you, provided you go from the house this minute. If you do not I shall take measures to punish you.”

He was trembling, and could not speak.

She opened the door. “Jane,” she called, “get Mr. Wimple’s portmanteau; have you put everything into it?”

“Everything but the slippers. It’s raining, ma’am,” Jane added, not in the least understanding what was going on. But Aunt Anne had shut the door, and turned to Alfred Wimple again.

“Now you will go,” she said.

“I cannot go in the rain,” he answered, and made a sound in his throat; “you know how bad my cough is. You cannot turn me out in this weather. I was angry just now; but I did not mean it. I was only trying to frighten you.”

“You will go immediately,” she said; “you shall not remain another hour under my roof.”

“It will kill me to go in this rain,” he said doggedly.

“You would have killed me when you thought you would get William Rammage’s money by it; and just now you threatened me, Alfred. You are not fit to remain another hour in the same house with the woman you have wronged, and you shall not. Your coat is in the hall, ready for you”—and she went towards the door. “You will go this very moment, and you will never venture to come near me again.”

“I have been coughing all day,” he almost pleaded, utterly confounded by the turn things had taken.

“I brought you some lozenges from London, before I knew all your baseness”—and she fumbled in her pocket. “Here they are, and you can take them with you.” She put them down before him on the table, and went slowly out to the kitchen. “Officer,” she said, “I will not detain you about the wood this evening. I want you to walk with Mr. Wimple as far as Steggall’s, and see him into a waggonette; and there,” she added, in a low voice, “is a half-crown to recompense you for your trouble.”

“It’s very wet, ma’am; is the gentleman obliged to go to-night?”

“Yes”—and, winking sternly, she opened the street door wide. “Yes, he is obliged to go to-night.” With a puzzled air Jane picked up the portmanteau. Alfred Wimple took it from her with sulky reluctance. For a moment they all stood looking out at the blackness of the fir-trees and listened to the falling rain. Aunt Anne turned to the little hat-stand in the hall. “Here is an umbrella, Alfred,” she said, “and you have your lozenges. Good-night, officer”—and she did not say another word. Alfred Wimple gave her a long look of cowed and baffled hatred, as he went out, followed by the policeman. She shut the door, double-locked it, and drew the bolts at the top and bottom—it was the last sound that Wimple heard as he left the cottage.

For a moment she stood still, listening to his footsteps; she waited to hear the click of the gate as it shut behind them. Then, with a strange, dazed manner, as if she were not quite sure that she was awake, she went back to the drawing-room.

“If you please, ma’am,” asked the servant, “isn’t Mr. Wimple coming back to-night?—for you won’t like being left alone, and I don’t know what to do about mother.”

“You can go to her,” Aunt Anne answered. A desperate longing to be alone was upon her; she wanted to think quietly, and it seemed impossible to do so while any one remained beneath the same roof with her. She was impatient for a spell of loneliness before she died. She felt that she was going to die, that she had heard her death-sentence in the shed beyond the valley. There was no gainsaying it—shame and agony were going to kill her. But first she wanted to be alone, to realize all that had happened, and how it had come about. She remembered suddenly, but only for a moment, that Alfred had stated that Sir William Rammage was dead. It was untrue, of course—Alfred could not have known. Besides, William Rammage’s life or death concerned her no longer; in his money she took no further interest. She only wanted to be alone and to think. “You can go to your mother, Jane,” she repeated; “I wish to be left alone; I have a predilection for solitude.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the girl answered hesitatingly—“and you said I was to remind you about the wages; I wouldn’t, only mother’s bad.”

“I will pay them.” She opened her purse and counted out the few silver coins left in it. “I must remain a sixpence in your debt; this is all the change I have for the moment.” She put her empty purse down on the table, and knew that she had not a penny left in the world. For a moment she was silent; she looked puzzled, as if she were doing a mental sum. Then she looked up. “Jane,” she said, “you can take the remains of the chicken and the sole to your mother, and anything else that was left from dinner. I shall not require it.” She dreaded seeing the things that Alfred Wimple had touched. She felt that, even down to the smallest detail, she must rid herself of all that had had to do with her life of shame and disgrace, and there was not much time left her in which to do it. She must begin at once: when she had made her life clean and spotless again she would look up and meet death unabashed.

“I am ready, ma’am,” Jane said presently, and looked in, with her basket on her arm. Aunt Anne got up and followed her to the back door, in order to see that it was made fast. She shook with fear when she beheld the night. Under that sky and through the darkness Alfred Wimple was making his way to Liphook. The very air seemed to have pollution in it. She retreated thankfully to the covering of the cottage; but the stillness appalled her, once she was wholly alone in it. She stood in the hall for a moment and listened: there was not a sound. She waited for a moment at the foot of the stairs and remembered Alfred’s room above, from which every trace of him had been removed, but she had not courage to mount the stairs. She went back into the little drawing-room and shut the door, and taking up her empty purse from beside the candlestick put it into her pocket. As in the morning, her hand touched something that should not be there; but she knew what it was this time, and pulled it out quickly. It was the blue tie that she had kissed in the train. With almost a cry of horror, as if it were a deadly snake, she threw it on the fire and held it down with the poker, as William Rammage had held down his burning will. As she did so her eyes caught the wedding-ring on her left hand; in a moment she had pulled it off her trembling finger and put it in the fire too. The flame blazed and smouldered and died away, and her excitement with it. But she had not strength to rise from the floor on which she had been kneeling; she pulled the cushion down from the back of the easy-chair, and sank, a miserable heap, upon the rug.

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