CHAPTER VI.

The night was dark and cheerless. It was one of those murky November nights when one seems to see and breathe through a dusky gauze. The road from Ivy Lodge to Whitford was not lighted. At a long distance before her, Castalia saw a red, glowing speck, which she knew to be the lamp over the chemist's shop, kept by Mr. Barker, her landlord. After that, a few street lamps glimmered, and the town of Whitford had fairly begun.

It was not late, and yet most of the shops were shut, and the streets very silent and deserted. Castalia strained her eyes onward through the darkness, and presently saw her husband's figure come into the circle of faint light made by a street lamp, traverse it, and disappear again into the shade. She had walked so quickly in her excitement as to have overtaken him sooner than she had expected. Whither was he going?

She slunk along in the shadow of the houses, frightened at the faint sound of her own footfall on the flagstones, starting nervously at every noise, hurrying across the lighted spaces in front of the few shops that remained open with averted face and beating heart, fearing to be noticed by those within. But never once did she falter in her purpose of following her husband. She would have been turned back by no obstacle short of one which defied her physical powers to pass it.

Algernon was now nearing Maxfield's house. The shutters of the shop were closed, but the door was still open, and a light streamed from it on to the pavement. Castalia followed, watching breathlessly. Her husband passed the shop, went on a pace or two, stopped at the private door, and rang the bell. She could see the action of his arm as he raised it. The door was opened without much delay, and Algernon went in.

Castalia stood still, trying to collect her thoughts and determine on her course of action. What should she do? Her husband might be an hour—hours—in that house. She could not stand there in the street. An impulse came upon her to make herself known—to go in and tax Algernon with perfidy and deception then and there. But she checked the impulse. It would have been a desperate step. Algernon might never forgive her. It might be possible for her to reach a pitch of rage and jealousy which would make her deaf to any such considerations—careless as to the consequences of her actions if she could but gratify the imperious passion of the moment. She was dimly conscious that this might be possible; but for the present she had sufficient control over her own actions to pause and deliberate. There she stood, alone at night, in Whitford High Street—stealthily, trembling, and wretched—she, Castalia Kilfinane! Who would believe it? What would her uncle feel if he could see her now, or guess what she was enduring?

The idea came into her mind—floating like a waif on the current of indignant misery that seemed to flood all her spirit—that there might be hundreds of human beings whom she had seen and thought happy smarting with some secret wound like her own, and living lives the half of which was never known to the world. Castalia had never been apt to let her imagination busy itself with the sorrows of others, and at this moment the conception had no softening effect. It only added an extra flavour of bitterness and rebellion to her sufferings. It was too cruel. Why should such things be? And what had she done to merit so much unhappiness? She shivered a little as a breeze from the river came bringing with it the clammy breath of the marsh mists—the white cloud-kraken that Minnie Bodkin had so often watched from her window.

How long Castalia remained standing at her post she could never reckon; she was conscious only of burning pain of mind, and of a determination not to shrink from her purpose because of the pain. A footstep came sounding along the quiet street and startled her. She shrank back as far as she could, pressing her shoulder close against the wall, and uncertain whether to walk on or remain still. It was a man who came towards her, turning from a narrow street opening into the High Street, which Castalia knew to be Lady Lane. He walked with a very rapid step, hanging his head, and looking neither to the right nor to the left. Castalia was, perhaps, the only dweller in Whitford who would not have recognised the figure as being that of David Powell, the Methodist preacher.

As Powell neared Castalia, he seemed to become aware of her presence by some sixth sense, for to all appearance he had not looked towards her. The truth was, that all his outward perceptions were habitually disregarded by him, except such as carried with them some suggestion of helpfulness and sympathy. A fashionable lady might have stood facing him during a long sermon in chapel, or in the open fields, and (unless she had displayed signs of "grace") he would have taken no heed of her—would not have been able to tell the colour of her garments. But let the same woman be tearful, ragged, sick, or injured, and no observation could be more rapid and comprehensive than David Powell's, to convey all needful particulars of her state and requirements. So this night, as he passed along the quiet Whitford streets, the few persons he had met hitherto were to him as shadows. But when the vague outline of a woman's form made itself a blot of blacker shadow in the darkness, those accustomed sentinels, his senses, gave the spirit notice of a fellow-creature in want, possibly of bread, certainly of sympathy.

He stopped within a few paces of Castalia, and perceived by that time that she was well and warmly clad, and that her trouble, whatever it was, could not be alleviated by alms. In her desire to avoid notice, she shrank away more and more almost crouching down against the wall. It occurred to Powell that she might be ill. "Are you suffering?" he asked, in a low musical voice. "Can I help you?"

Finding that she did not reply, he advanced a step farther, and was stretching out his hand to touch her on the shoulder, when, driven to bay, she raised herself up to her full height, and answered quickly and resentfully, "No; I am not ill. I am waiting for some one."

He stood still, irresolutely. Her voice and accent struck him with surprise, he recognised them as belonging to a person of a different class from any he had expected. How came such a lady to be alone at that hour, standing in the cold street? At length he said, gently, "If I may advise you, it would be well for you to go home. The person who keeps you waiting in the street in such weather, and at this hour, must surely be very thoughtless. Can I not assist you? I am David Powell, a poor preacher of the Word. You need have no fear of me."

"No; please to go away. I am not at all afraid. Go away, go away!" she added with an imperative emphasis, for she began to fear lest her husband should come out of the house, hear the sound of her voice, and find her there. Powell obeyed her, and walked slowly away. There was, in truth, so far as he knew, no reason to fear that any evil could happen to the woman in Whitford High Street, except the evil of standing so long in the cold, raw weather. It had now begun to rain; a fine drizzling rain, that was very chill.

When he had walked some distance along the High Street, and was close to the turning that led to Mrs. Thimbleby's house, he stopped and looked back. Almost at the same moment he saw a man come out of Maxfield's house, and advance along the street towards him. Then, at rather a long interval, the cloaked lady began to move onward also, but without overtaking the man, or apparently trying to do so. It was a strange adventure, and one entirely unparalleled in Powell's experience of the little town; and after he had reached his lodgings he could not, for a long time, divert his thoughts from dwelling on it.

Meanwhile, Algernon, unconscious of the watcher behind him, proceeded straight onward to the post-office. Then he turned up the narrow passage or entry in which was the side door that gave access to his private office. Castalia did not follow him beyond the mouth of the entry. Standing there and listening, she heard the sharp sound of a match being struck, then the turning of a key, and a door softly opened and shut.

It then struck Castalia for the first time that this unexpected visit to the office afforded an opportunity for her to reach home without her husband's discovering her absence. She had not considered before how this was to be accomplished; and, indeed, had Algernon returned directly to Ivy Lodge from Maxfield's house it would have been impossible.

She now saw this, and hastened back along the road, in a tremor at her narrow escape; for, although the impulse had crossed her mind to declare herself, and boldly enter Maxfield's house in quest of her husband, that was a very different matter from being suddenly discovered against her will. In the latter case she would, as she well knew, have been at an immense disadvantage with her husband, who, instead of being accused, would become accuser.

Nothing short, indeed, of the passion of jealousy within her would have given her strength to combat her husband. This was the only way in which her idolatrous admiration, her very love for him, could be turned into a weapon against him.

"I could bear anything else! Anything else!" she said to herself. "But to be fooled and deceived, and put aside for that girl——!" A great hot wave of passion seemed to flow through her whole body as she thought of Rhoda. "Let the servants see me! What do I care?" she said recklessly. At that moment she would not have heeded if the whole town had seen her, and known her errand into Whitford, and its result. She rang loudly at the bell of Ivy Lodge, and walked in past the servant, with a white face and glittering eyes.

"Isn't master coming?" stammered the girl, staring at her mistress.

"I don't know. Go to bed. I don't want you."

There was something in her face which checked further speech on Lydia's part. Lydia was fairly frightened. She crept away to the garret, where Polly was already sleeping soundly, and vainly tried to rouse her fellow-servant, to feel some interest in her account of how missus had stalked into the house by herself like a ghost, and had ordered her off to bed, and to get up a discussion as to missus's strange goings on altogether of late.

Castalia went to her own room, uncertain whether to undress and go to bed or to remain up and confront her husband when he should return. One dominant desire had been growing in her heart for many days past, and had now become a force overwhelming all smaller motives, and drawing them resistlessly into its strong current. This dominant desire was to be revenged—not on her husband, but on Rhoda Maxfield. And it might be that by waiting and watching yet awhile, by concealing from Ancram the discovery she had that night made, she might be enabled more effectually to strike at her rival. If Ancram knew, he would try to shield Rhoda. He would put the thing in such a light before the world as to elicit sympathy for Rhoda and make her (Castalia) appear ridiculous or obnoxious. He had the gift to do such things when it pleased him. But Rhoda should not escape. No; she would keep her own counsel yet awhile longer.

When Algernon came home about midnight, letting himself into the house with a private key which he carried, he found his wife asleep, or seeming to sleep, and congratulating himself on escaping the querulous catechism as to where he had been, and what he had been doing, which he would have to endure had Castalia been awake on his return. As he crossed the bedchamber to his dressing-room, she moved, and put up one hand to screen her eyes from the light.

"Don't let me disturb you, Cassy," he said. "I have been detained very late. I am going downstairs again—there is a spark of fire in the dining-room—to have one cigar before I turn in. Go to sleep again."

He bent down to kiss her, but she kept her face obstinately buried in the pillow. So he took her left hand, which hung down, and lightly touched it with his lips, saying, "Poor sleepy Cassy!" and went away.

And then she raised her thin left hand, on which her wedding-ring hung loosely, and passionately kissed it where her husband's lips had rested, and burst into a storm of crying, until she fairly sobbed herself to sleep.