Starvecrow Farm Part 36

She had her riposte ready.

"And wisely!" she answered, "and wisely! How wisely you have proved to me to-day--you,"--with scorn equal to his own--"who are willing to sacrifice me, a helpless woman, on the mere chance of saving your child! Who are willing to send me, a woman of your blood, to prison and to shame, to herd--you have said it yourself--with such vile women as prisons hold! And that on the mere chance of saving your son! For shame, Captain Clyne, for shame!"

"You are wasting time," he answered. "You have eight minutes."

"You are determined that I shall go?"

"Or speak."

"Will you not hear," she asked slowly, "what I have to say on my side?

What reason I have for not speaking? What excuse? What extenuation of my conduct?"

"No," he replied. "Your reasons for speaking or not speaking, your conduct or misconduct, are nothing to me. I am thinking of my child."

"And not at all of me?"

"No."

"Yet listen," she said, with something approaching menace in her tone, "for you will think of me! You will think of me--presently! When it is too late, Captain Clyne, you will remember that I stood before you, that I was alone and helpless, and you would not hear my reasons nor my excuses. You will remember that I was a girl, abandoned by all, left alone among strangers and spies, without friend or adviser."

"I," he said, coldly interrupting her, "was willing to advise you. But you took your own path. You know that."

"I know," she retorted with sudden pa.s.sion, "that you were willing to insult me! That you were willing to set me, because I had committed an act of folly, as low as the lowest! So low that all men were the same to me! So low that I might be handed like a carter's daughter who had misbehaved herself, to the first man who was willing to cover her disgrace. That! that was your way of helping me and advising me!"

"In two minutes," he said in measured accents, "the time will be up!"

He appeared to be quite unmoved by her reproaches. His manner was as cold, as repellant, as harsh as ever. But he was not so entirely untouched by her appeal as he wished her to think. For the time, indeed, his heart was numbed by anxiety, his breast was rendered insensible by the grip of suspense. But the barbed arrows of her reproaches stuck and remained. And presently the wounds would smart and rankle, troubling his conscience, if not his heart. It is possible that he had already a suspicion of this. If so, it only deepened his rage and his hostility.

With the same pitiless composure, he repeated:

"In two minutes. There is still time, but no more than time."

"You have told me that you do not wish to hear my reasons?"

"For silence? I do not."

"They will not turn you," her voice shook under the maddening sense of his injustice, "whatever they are?"

"No," he answered, "they will not. And having said that I have said all that I propose to say."

"You condemn me unheard?"

"I condemn you? No, the law will condemn you, if you are condemned."

"Then I, too," she answered, with a beating heart--for indignation almost choked her--"have said all that I propose to say. All!"

"Think! Think, girl!" he cried.

She was silent.

He closed his watch with a sharp, clicking sound, and put it in his fob.

"You will not speak?" he said.

"No!"

Then pa.s.sion, long restrained, long kept under, swept him away. He took a stride forward, and before she guessed what he would be at, he had seized her wrist, gripping it cruelly.

"But you shall!--you shall!" he cried. His face full of pa.s.sion was close to hers, he pressed her a pace backwards. "You vixen! Speak now!" he cried. "Speak!"

"Let me go!" she cried.

"Speak or I will force it from you. Where is he?"

"I will never speak!" she panted, struggling with him, and trying to s.n.a.t.c.h her arm from him. "I will never speak! You coward! Let me go!"

"Speak or I will break your wrist," he hissed.

He was hurting her horribly.

But, "Never! Never! Never!" She shrieked the word at him, her face white with rage and pain, her eyes blazing. "Never, you coward. You coward! Let me go!"

He let her go then--too late remembering himself. He stepped back.

Breathing hard, she leant against the table, and nursed her bruised wrist in the other hand. Her face, an instant before white, now flamed with anger. Never, never since she was a little child had she been so treated, so handled! Every fibre in her was in revolt. But she did not speak. She only, rocking herself slightly to and fro, scathed him with her eyes. The coward! The coward!

And he was as yet too angry--though he had remembered himself and released her--to feel much shame for what he had done. He was too wrapt in the boy and his object to think soberly of anything else. He went, his hand shaking a little, his face disordered by the outbreak, to the bell and rang it. As he turned again,

"Your ruin be on your own head!" he cried.

And he looked at her, hating her, hating her rebellious bearing.

He saw in her, with her glowing cheeks and eyes bright with fury, the murderess of his boy. What else, since, if it was not her plan, she covered it? Since, if it was not her deed, she would not stay it? She must be one of those feminine monsters, those Brinvilliers, blonde and innocent to the eye, whom pa.s.sion degraded to the lowest! Whom a cursed infatuation made suddenly most base, driving them to excesses and crimes.

While she, her breast boiling with indignation, her heart bursting with the sense of bodily outrage, of bodily pain, forgot the anguish he was suffering. She forgot the provocation that had exasperated him to madness, that had driven him to violence. She saw in him a cowardly bully, a man cruel, without shame or feeling. She fully believed now that he had flogged a seaman to death. Why not, since he had so treated her? Why not, since it was clear that there was no torture to which he would not resort, if he dared, to wring from her the secret he desired?

And a torrent of words, a flood of scathing reproaches and fierce home-truths, rose to her lips. But she repressed them. To complain was to add to her humiliation, to augment her shame. To protest was to stoop lower. And strung to the highest pitch of animosity they remained confronting one another in silence, until the door opened and Justice h.o.r.n.yold entered, followed by his clerk. After these Nadin, Bishop, Mr. Sutton, and two or three more trooped in until the room was half full of people.

It was clear that they had had their orders below, and knew what to expect; for all looked grave, and some nervous. Even h.o.r.n.yold betrayed by his air, half sheepish and half pompous, that he was not quite comfortable.

"The young lady has not spoken?" he said.

"No," Clyne answered, breathing quickly. He could not in a moment return to his ordinary self. "She refuses to speak."

"You have laid before her reasons?"

He averted his eyes.

"I have said all I can," he muttered sullenly. "I have a.s.sured myself that she is privy to this matter, and I withdraw the informal undertaking which I gave a fortnight ago that she should be forthcoming if wanted. Unless, therefore, you are satisfied with the landlord's bail--but that is for you."