Banked Fires Part 30

"I couldn't. It is so uncomfortable!"

In the growing darkness, he was again mastered by the evil thoughts which had possessed him in the moments preceding the catastrophe. Their isolation produced a host of ungoverned impulses. As the evening advanced his manner changed, growing suggestive of possession; his manner became more tender.

"You will always remember tonight!--there will never be another like it in your life," he whispered, leaning towards her and stealing her hand.

"You have been horribly frightened, haven't you?"

"I am more hopeful now, thinking of the morning," she returned, her soft breath on his cheek. "It is only the snakes I fear!"

Dalton drew her into his arms. "I shan't let you think of snakes, you pretty little thing! At last I have you close. You have tantalised me with your loveliness every day, till Fate has given you to me!" his lips found hers and pressed them roughly. "Wake up, sleeping Princess! see, this night is ours. Let me love you as I want to. Let me teach you how to love!"

Joyce seemed paralysed in his arms. She lay as still as death under his kisses as though mesmerised and dreaming. Emboldened by her silence Dalton continued to caress her with increasing ardour, till Joyce, coming suddenly to her senses, was seized with panic and horror.

"Who are you?" she cried in a frenzy of fear, struggling to escape. It seemed she was entrapped by some human monster in the doctor's likeness, against whom she was powerless to struggle.

"Why do you ask? You know me well--don't be foolis.h.!.+ Won't you let me love you?"

"Love me?--like this?--Do you forget I am married?" she gasped, still struggling to escape. "Let me go. I hate you for daring to touch me--to kiss me. I hate you! How dare you do it!" Joyce had never known such terrifying moments, even worse than when the building seemed falling about her ears. The horrors of the night were multiplying a thousandfold, now that the doctor had failed her and gone mad.

Dalton made several efforts to pacify her, thinking he had only to deal with a phase of childishness, but found her unmistakably determined to break away from him.

"Stop it, and listen to me," he said angrily. "You want it all your own way, but it is my turn now. Why did you lead me on and tempt me, if you meant to back out in the end? I could have kissed you twenty times, but refrained for reasons you would not understand. Now when those reasons are finally swept aside and I am ready to be your lover, you pretend to be surprised."

"Surprised! I am horrified! I thought so well of you--I believed you would respect me, not treat me as you might--Mrs. Fox for instance! Let me go, you coward and bully!--I have trusted you and treated you as a brother--for this?--you unspeakable cad!"

Dalton released her instantly, and she burst into tears, crying as though her heart would break. "Honor warned me, but I would not listen!"

he heard her say amid her sobs.

"What did Honor warn you about?" he asked sternly.

"She said," Joyce sobbed, "to go 'easy with my favours'--that you were 'a man--like most----'"

"Did Honor say that? and why?"

"Because--she thought I was being foolish to--to become so--friendly--with you--when I am a married woman. She was right! I have been a fool!" A fresh outburst of weeping.

"Did she say that because of her contempt for me, or because you are a wife?" he pressed.

"I--don't know. All I know is that she was right and I should have listened to her warning; now I shall never, never respect myself again."

"I see no reason why you shouldn't," said Dalton, a sense of humour overcoming his wrath. "You've done nothing but tell me in polite language to go to the devil."

"You kissed me!"

"What of it? Many women in your position are kissed, and they are in no wise cast down," he laughed sardonically.

"I feel degraded--I feel unfit to kiss my own, dear little baby again!"

"You should have thought of all that when you were so anxious to charm me," he returned cruelly.

"You are a beast, and the most hateful man I know!" She made an attempt in the gloom to crawl away to some distance from him and his rug, but he ordered her to stay where she was, adding,

"I shan't trouble you again. You have nothing to fear from me."

"I don't want to share the same rug!--I wish I was a mile away!"

"The rug has done you no harm. If you prefer it, I'll s.h.i.+ft off it. The best thing you can do is to go to sleep."

"I couldn't with this sin on my conscience."

"What sin?" he asked repressing his impatience with difficulty.

"This sin against my husband."

"You have committed none. If my kissing you was a sin, mine is the conscience to be troubled; but it was slain quite a long time ago," he added with a short laugh.

"I am not joking," she said angrily. "How do you suppose I can face my husband knowing that I have behaved so as to make another man kiss me?"

What a child she seemed!

There was no doubting her distress, and Dalton exhausted every argument in his attempt to understand her att.i.tude of mind. "What do you want me to do?" he asked finally. "If an apology is of any use, I apologise humbly for behaving as I did. I grant you, I am a perfect specimen of a cad. If it will do you any good, tell your husband all about it when you get back, and send him round to give me a horse-whipping. I promise I shall not injure a hair of his head."

"He is much more likely to shoot you."

"Even so. He is perfectly welcome to. I am not in love with my life.

Only let him do it by stealth so that they don't hang him afterwards."

Joyce cried again hopelessly, till Dalton felt himself a sort of criminal.

"Please don't! I cannot tell you how sorry I am to have upset you so. I had no idea you would take it like this. There are so many women who----"

"Like Mrs. Fox?" she interrupted scornfully.

"Perhaps. I don't know much of Mrs. Fox. She doesn't appeal to me."

"You couldn't offer me a worse insult than to think that I might be like her!"

"I am sorry. Forgive me, will you?"

"I cannot forgive myself for my blindness and folly!"

Joyce spoke as though she were s.h.i.+vering, and Dalton was stricken with concern. "You are cold?" he asked anxiously.

Her teeth chattered. In December the nights in Bengal are often bitter, and Joyce had left her driving cloak in the car. Dalton immediately divested himself of his coat and made her wear it. His manner having returned to the professional, she was no longer afraid of him, so obeyed meekly.

"Now the rug," said he. And she was wrapped to her ears in the rug, after which he left her to herself for the night. Both listened to the patter of the rain as it fell on the _debris_ around them, and, eventually overcome with fatigue, Joyce dropped off to sleep.

CHAPTER XV