The Second Latchkey Part 31

"But if you had, it would have been a relief----"

"No. Because I--I hadn't heard the truth. I didn't understand at all. I thought you had done _one_ unscrupulous thing. I didn't dream your whole life was--what it is. I loved you as much as ever. It would have broken my heart if you----"

"But now that you don't love me, it wouldn't break your heart."

"I don't seem to have any heart," Annesley sighed. "It feels as if it had crumbled to dust. But it would break my life if you ended yours. If anything could be worse than what is, it would be that."

"Very well, you can rid yourself of me in another way," the man answered.

"You can denounce me--give me up to 'justice.' If you hand over the Malindore diamond to Ruthven Smith and tell him how you got it----"

"You must know I wouldn't do that!"

"Why not?"

"Because I--couldn't."

"It needn't spoil your life. No one could blame you. I would tell the story of how I deceived you. You could free yourself--get a divorce----"

"Don't!" the girl cut him short. "I'm not thinking of myself. I'm thinking of you. I can't love you again, and I wouldn't if I could, now that I--know. You're a different man. The one I loved doesn't exist and never did; yet you've told me your secret, and I'm bound to keep it. I don't need to stop and reflect about that. But as for what's to become of me, and how we're to manage not to let people guess that everything's changed, I don't know! I must think. I must think all to-night, until to-morrow. Perhaps by that time I can decide. Now--I beg of you to go and leave me--this moment. I can't bear any more and live."

He stood looking at her, but she turned her head away with a petulant gesture of repulsion; and lest her eyes might feel the call of his she covered them with her hands. Her hopelessness, her loathing of him enclosed her like a wall of ice.

"So! The dream's over!" he said. "'This woman to this man'! What a farce--what a tragedy!"

When she looked up again he had gone and the door between their rooms was shut.

The moon no longer lit the high window. With Knight's going darkness fell.

CHAPTER XX

THE PLAN

Annesley sat as Knight had left her for a long time--minutes, perhaps, or hours. But at last she was very tired and very cold, so tired that she threw herself weakly on the bed, in her dressing-gown, because she couldn't sit up. All through the rest of the dark hours she lay s.h.i.+vering, and did not even trouble to roll herself in the warm down coverlet spread lightly over the bed.

It seemed right, somehow, that she should be cold and miserable physically. She did not care or wish to be comfortable.

Over and over again she asked herself: "What shall I do? What is to become of me--of both of us?" She tried to pray, but her heart was too hard toward the man who had trampled on her life and love for his own cruel purposes. It seemed to her that G.o.d would not hear a prayer sent up in such a mood; yet she did not want to soften her heart toward the sinner.

Because it had been so full of forgiveness before he poisoned the chalice with the bitter stream of confession, it was the more impossible to forgive now. It even seemed to Annesley that it would be monstrous to forgive, in the ordinary, human sense of the word, a man who was a living lie.

If there were room for thanksgiving in her wretchedness, it lay in the fact that her love had died a swift and sudden death. Had she gone on loving in spite of all, such love, she thought, must have brought death into her soul.

She did not know how to name her husband now. Even in thinking of him she would not call him "Knight."

What a mockery the name had been! How he must have laughed to know that she was fool enough to believe him a knight of chivalry, who had come like St. George to rescue her from the dragon!

She knew at last that the name he had not wished her to see in the parish register was Michael Donaldson. That meant, she supposed, that her name was Donaldson, too; a name he had dragged through the mire.

He pretended to love her. But such a man could not speak the truth.

He had tried to excuse himself in every way. To talk of love and its purifying influence was only one of these ways. He would not even have confessed if he had not fallen into the mistake of thinking she understood that he was a thief, or head of a gang of thieves.

He seemed almost to boast of what he was.... Oh, how horrible life had become, and how she wished that it were over! She wondered if it would be wicked to pray that her heart might stop beating to-night.

Yet morning came and her heart beat on. She did not even feel very ill, only weak, with a wiry throbbing of each separate nerve in her head. She had meant to use the quiet hours to decide what must be done next, but always, when she had tried to pin her mind to the question, it had escaped like a fluttering moth, and turned to self-pity, or to calling up pictures of the past which brought tears to her eyes.

Now the time was upon her when realities must be faced. Before seven o'clock it was light, but neither she nor Knight were accustomed to early tea, and there was more than an hour to spare before they would be called by Parker.

The girl sat up s.h.i.+vering, though the room, heated by steam, had not grown bitterly cold when the grate fire died. She looked, heavy-eyed, toward her husband's closed door. They must talk things over, and make some plan.

She hated the very word "plan" since his story of the trick he had played at the Savoy. She hated the necessity to talk with him; but it _was_ a necessity. They ought to arrange something for the future--the blank and hateful future--before Parker came, and daily life began. There would be many things to settle, questions to ask and answer; a sort of hideous campaign would have to be mapped out in details not one of which defined itself clearly in her tired brain.

"It's no use," she said to herself. "I can't think, after all, until I see him again. Perhaps he will make some suggestions, and I can accept or refuse. But I _can't_ go to his door and call him."

As she hesitated, Knight--who was a knight no longer in her eyes--opened the door, very softly, not to disturb her if she slept. In the morning light which paled the uncurtained window their eyes met.

Annesley slipped off the bed and stood up, cloaking her bare white neck with her hair. Suddenly she felt that he was a strange man who had no right to be in her room. He was not the husband she had loved with a beautiful and sacred love.

"I won't come if you'd rather I didn't," he said. "I only looked in to see if you were awake. I thought if you were, and if you could stand it, it would be best to--talk about what's to be done." He spoke quietly, standing at the door. He was dressed for the day, as if nothing had happened; and Annesley felt dimly resentful because he looked bathed and well-groomed, his black hair smooth and carefully brushed; altogether his usual self, except that he was pale and grave.

"You had better come in, I suppose," the girl replied, grudgingly. "I was thinking, too, that we must talk. Let us--get it over."

"You haven't been to bed, I see," he said, his eyes lingering on her sadly. It flashed through Annesley's mind that it was as if he were looking for the last time at the sweetness and happiness of life. But her heart did not soften. It was his fault that there was no longer any happiness or sweetness left in their lives.

"No, I haven't been to bed," she returned. "But it doesn't matter. I am not ill. Please let us not waste time in discussing me. There are other things."

"Yes, there are other things," he agreed. "But we'll not begin to talk of them until you have got into bed and covered yourself up. You're as white as marble."

"I don't want----" she began; but he cut her short.

"What will Parker think if she finds your bed hasn't been slept in?"

"Oh, very well!" Annesley a.s.sented, impatiently. "I must get used to tricks!"

"Perhaps not," said Knight. "I've been thinking of ways and means. Have you? Because if there's anything you feel you would like to do, you've only to tell me."

"I haven't been able to think," she confessed.

"Well, then, I'll tell you what I've thought."

Annesley had now crept into bed; and before she could protest Knight had carefully covered her with the down quilt. Having done this, he drew a chair near, yet not too near, and sat down. It was as if he recognized her right to keep him at a distance.

"You said last night," he began, "that you didn't mean to denounce me. If you've changed your mind, I shan't blame you; I deserve it. All I ask is that you grant me time to warn certain persons who would go down if I went down, and give them time to make a bolt. Madalena de Santiago is one. I'm pretty sure that out of spite she put Ruthven Smith on to looking for the diamond, but I don't want to punish her. Evidently she--or whoever it was--didn't have much information to give, or the man wouldn't have backed down and apologized. I should like to find out exactly what he had to go upon. But if you've changed your mind, it's not worth while to bother about that----"

"I have not changed my mind," Annesley said.