CHAPTER XIX.

In about a quarter of an hour after reading that letter, Algernon called to the servants to know if their mistress had come back. He did not ring as usual, but went to the door of the kitchen and spoke to both the women, saying that he was uneasy at Mrs. Errington's absence, and did not like to go to the office without seeing her. He said two or three times, how strange it was that his wife should have wandered out in that way; and plainly showed considerable anxiety about her. Both the women remarked how pale and upset their master looked. "Oh, it's enough to wear out anybody the way she goes on," said Lydia. "Poor young man! A nice way to welcome him home!"

"Ah," returned Polly, the cook, shaking her head, "I'm afraid there's going to be awful trouble with missus, poor thing. I believe she's half out of her mind with jealousy. Just think how she's been going on about Miss Maxfield. Why 'tis all over the place. And they say old Max is going to law against her, or something. But I can't but pity her, poor thing."

"Oh! they say worse of her than being out of her mind with jealousy," returned Lydia. "Don't you know what Mrs. Ravell's housemaid told her young man at the grocer's?" Et cetera, et cetera.

The discussion was checked in full career by their master returning to say that he should not go to the office until he had seen Mrs. Errington, and that he was then going to Whit Meadow to look for her. He went out past the kitchen and through the garden at the back of the house.

He looked about him when he got to the garden gate. Nothing to be seen but damp green meadow, leaden sky, and leaden river. Where was Castalia? A thought shot into his mind, swift and keen as an arrow—had she thrown herself into the Whit? And, if she had, what a load of his cares would be drowned with her! He walked a few paces towards the town, then turned and looked in the opposite direction. For as far as he could see, there was not a human being on the meadow-path. His eyes were very good and he used them eagerly, scanning all the space of Whit Meadow within their range of vision. At length he caught sight of something moving among a clump of low bushes—blackberry bushes and dog-roses, a tangle of leafless spikes now, although in the summer they would be fresh and fragrant, and the holiday haunt of little merry children—which grew on a sloping part of the bank between him and the Whit. He walked straight towards it, and as he drew nearer, became satisfied that the moving figure was that of his wife. He recognised a dark tartan shawl which she wore. It was not bright enough to be visible at a long distance; but as he advanced he became sure that he knew it. In a few minutes the husband and wife stood face to face.

"This is a nice reception to give me," said Algernon, in a hard, cold voice, after they had looked at each other for a second, and Castalia had remained silent and still. In truth, she was physically unable to speak to him in that first moment of meeting. Her heart throbbed so that every beat of it seemed like an angry blow threatening her life.

"Why do you wander out alone in this way? Why do you conduct yourself like a mad woman? Though, indeed, perhaps you are not so wrong there; madness might excuse your conduct. Nothing else can."

"I couldn't stay in that house. I should have died there. Everything in every room reminded me of you."

She answered so faintly that he had to strain his ear to hear her, and her colourless lips trembled as the lips tremble of a person trying to keep back tears. But her eyes were quite dry.

Algernon was pale, with the peculiar ghastly pallor of a fresh ruddy complexion. His blue eyes had a glitter in them like ice, not fire; and there was a set, sarcastic, bitter smile on his mouth.

"Look here, Castalia; we had better understand one another at once. I shall begin by telling you what I have resolved upon, and what I have done, and you will then have to obey me implicitly. There must be no sort of discussion or hesitation. Come back to the house with me at once."

She shook her head quickly. "No! no! Tell me here—out here by ourselves, where no one can hear us. I cannot bear to go into that house yet."

"Pshaw! What intolerable fooling! Well, here be it. I have no time to waste. I have seen your uncle. Don't interrupt me! He has promised to get us out of this cursed place, and to find a post for me abroad as consul. I had to exercise a good deal of persistence and ability to bring him to that point, but to that point I have brought him. We must keep him to it, and be active. My lady will move heaven and earth—or t'other place and earth, which is more in her line—to thwart us. Now, when it is necessary to keep things here as smooth as possible, to arouse no suspicion that we may be off at a moment's notice, to hold out hopes of everything being settled by Lord Seely's help, what do I find? I find that you have gone to a man who is a creditor of mine, who is not over fond of me to begin with, and have grossly and outrageously insulted him and his daughter! Just as if you had ingeniously cast about for the most effectual means of doing me a mischief. I found this letter on the table. He threatens to ruin me, and he can do it. If my name is posted, my bills protested, and a public hullabaloo made about them and other matters, your uncle's influence will hardly suffice to get me the berth I want in the face of the opposition newspapers' bellowing on the subject. Your uncle is but small beer in London at best. But that much he might have managed, if you hadn't behaved in this maniacal way."

"And how have you behaved? Oh, Ancram, Ancram, I would not have believed—I could not——" She burst into tears, and sank down on the damp grass, covering her face with her hands, and shaking with sobs.

"Listen! Castalia! Do you hear me?" said her husband, shaking her lightly by the arm.

She did not answer, but continued to cry convulsively, rocking herself to and fro.

Algernon stood looking down upon her with folded arms. "Upon my soul!" he said, after a minute, and with a contemptuous little nod of the head, which expressed an unbounded sense of the hopeless imbecility of the woman at his feet, and of his own long-suffering tolerance towards her, "Upon my life and soul, Castalia, I have never even heard of anyone so outrageously unreasonable as you are. Your jealousy—we may as well speak plainly—your jealousy has passed the bounds of sanity. But, as I told you, I am not going to argue with you. I am going to give directions for your guidance, since it is quite clear you are unable to guide yourself. In the first place——for God's sake stop that noise!" he cried, a sudden fierce irritation piercing through his self-restraint. "In the first place, you must make a full, free, and humble apology to Rhoda Maxfield!"

Castalia started to her feet and confronted him. "Never!" she said. "I will never do it!"

"I told you I was not going to argue with you. I am giving you your orders. A full, free, and humble—very humble—apology to Rhoda Maxfield is our one chance of softening her father. And if you have any sense or conscience left, you must know that Rhoda richly deserves every apology you can make her."

"You think so, do you?"

"Yes; I think so. She is a thoroughly good and charming girl. The only crime she has ever committed against you is being young and pretty. And if you quarrel with every woman who is so, you will find the battle a rather unequal one." He could not resist the sneer. He detested Castalia at that moment. Her whole nature, her violence, her passionate jealousy, her no less passionate love, her piteous grief, her demands on some sentiment in himself, which he knew to be non-existent; every turn of her body, every tone of her voice, were at that moment intensely repulsive to him.

The poor thing was stung into such pain by his taunt that she scarcely knew what she said or what she did.

"Oh, I know," she cried, "that you care more for her than for me! A pink-and-white face, that's all you value! More than wife, or—or—anything in the world. More than the honour of a gentleman. She's a devil; a sly, sleek little devil! She has got your love away from me. She has made you tell lies, and be cruel to me. But I'll expose her to all the world."

"What, in the name of all that's incomprehensible, has put this craze into your head against Rhoda Maxfield? It's the wildest thing!"

"Oh, Ancram! you can't deceive me any longer. I know—I have seen. She came on the sly to see you at the office. You used to go to her when you told me you had to be busy at the office. I watched you, I followed you all down Whitford High Street one night, and found out that you were cheating me."

"Ha! And you also opened my desk at the office, and took out letters and papers! Do you know what people are called who do such things?" said Algernon, now in a white heat of anger.

She drew back and looked at him. "Yes," she said, "I know."

"Have you no shame, then? No common sense? You attack a young lady—yes, a lady! A far better lady than you are!—of whom you take it into your head to be jealous, merely because she is pretty and admired by everybody. By me amongst the everybodies. Why not? I didn't lose my eyesight when I married you. You talk about my not loving you——! Do you think you go the way to make me do anything but detest the sight of you? You disgrace me in the town. You disgrace me before my clerk in the office. You and your relations persecuted me into marrying you, and now you haven't even the decency to behave like a rational being, but make yourself a laughing-stock, and me a butt for contemptuous pity in having tied myself to such a woman. One would have thought you would try to make some amends for the troubles I have been plunged into by my marriage."

She put her hands up one to each side of her head, and held them there tightly pressed. "Ancram," she said, "do you detest the sight of me?"

"You've tried your best to make me."

"Have you no spark of kindness or affection for me in your heart—not one?"

"Come, Castalia, let us have done with this! I thoroughly dislike and object to 'scenes' of any kind. You have a taste for them, unfortunately. What you have to do now is to do as I bid you, and try to make your peace by begging Rhoda's pardon, and so trying to undo a little of the mischief your insane temper has caused."

"Ancram, say one kind word to me!"

"Good God, Castalia! How can you be so exasperatingly childish?"

"One word! Say you love me a little still! Say you did love me when you married me! Don't let me believe that I have been a miserable dupe all along."

She no longer refused point-blank to obey him. She was bending into her old attitude of submission to his wishes. His ascendancy over her was paramount still. But she had made herself thoroughly obnoxious to him, and must be punished. Algernon's resentments were neither quick nor numerous, but they were lasting. His distaste for certain temperaments was profound. Castalia's intensity of emotion, and her ungoverned way of showing it, roused a sense of antagonism in him, which came nearer to passion than anything he had ever felt. With the sure instinct of cruelty, he confronted her wild, eager, supplicating face with a hard, cold, sarcastic smile, and a slight shrug. A blow from his hand would have been tender by comparison. Then he pulled out his watch and said, "How long do you intend this performance to last?" in the quietest voice in the world. And all the while he was in a white heat of anger, as I have said.

"Oh, Ancram! Oh, Ancram!" she cried. Then with a sudden change of tone, she said, "Will you promise me one thing? Will you swear never to see Rhoda Maxfield again? If you will do that, I will—I will—try to forgive you."

"To forgive me! Then you really have lost your senses?"

"No; I wish I had! I would rather be mad than know what I know. But think, Ancram, think well before you refuse me! This one thing is all I ask. Never see or speak to her, or write to her again—not even when I am dead! Swear it. I think if you swore it you would keep to it, wouldn't you? This one poor thing for all I have borne, for all I am willing to bear. I'll take that as a proof that you don't love her best. I'll be content with that. I'll give up everything else in the whole world. Only do this one thing for me, Ancram; I beg it on my knees!"

She did, indeed, fall on her knees as she spoke, and stretched out her clasped hands towards him. For one second their eyes met, then he turned his way and said, as quietly as ever, "I am going to Mr. and Miss Maxfield at once, with the most effectual apology which could be offered to them—namely, that you are a maniac, and in any case not responsible for your actions, nor to be treated like a rational being."

She staggered up to her feet. "Very well," she gasped out, "then I shall not spare you—nor her. I have had a letter from my uncle. He has told me what you accused me of. I went to the office. That man there told me the same. The notes that I paid away to Ravell—you 'wondered'—you were 'uneasy!' Why, you gave me them yourself. Oh, Ancram, how could you have the heart? I wish I was dead!"

"I wish to God you were!"

She was standing close to the edge of the steep, slippery bank; and when he said these words she staggered and, with a little heart-broken moan, put out her hand to clutch at him, groping like a blind person. He shook off her grasp with a sudden rough movement, and the next instant she was deep in the dark ice-cold water.