He did not reply for a moment, but looked at her with a slight smile. She knew what he was thinking. Walter was the bacteriologist and occupied a subordinate position; he would hardly have the impudence to make himself a nuisance to the upper officials of the Colony.
“It’s no good deceiving yourself, Charlie,” she said earnestly. “If Walter has made up his mind to bring an action nothing that you or anybody else can say will have the slightest influence.”
His face once more grew heavy and sulky.
“Is it his idea to make me corespondent?”
“At first it was. At last I managed to get him to consent to let me divorce him.”
“Oh, well, that’s not so terrible.” His manner relaxed again and she saw the relief in his eyes. “That seems to me a very good way out. After all, it’s the least a man can do, it’s the only decent thing.”
“But he makes a condition.”
He gave her an inquiring glance and he seemed to reflect.
“Of course I’m not a very rich man, but I’ll do anything in my power.”
Kitty was silent. Charlie was saying things which she would never have expected him to say. And they made it difficult for her to speak. She had expected to blurt it out in one breath, held in his loving arms, with her burning face hid on his breast.
“He agrees to my divorcing him if your wife will give him the assurance that she will divorce you.”
“Anything else?”
Kitty could hardly find her voice.
“And—it’s awfully hard to say, Charlie, it sounds dreadful—if you’ll promise to marry me within a week of the decrees being made absolute.”
XXV
For a moment he was silent. Then he took her hand again and pressed it gently.
“You know, darling,” he said, “whatever happens we must keep Dorothy out of this.”
She looked at him blankly.
“But I don’t understand. How can we?”
“Well, we can’t only think of ourselves in this world. You know, other things being equal, there’s nothing in the world I’d love more than to marry you. But it’s quite out of the question. I know Dorothy: nothing would induce her to divorce me.”
Kitty was becoming horribly frightened. She began to cry again. He got up and sat down beside her with his arm round her waist.
“Try not to upset yourself, darling. We must keep our heads.”
“I thought you loved me …”
“Of course I love you,” he said tenderly. “You surely can’t have any doubt of that now.”
“If she won’t divorce you Walter will make you corespondent.”
He took an appreciable time to answer. His tone was dry.
“Of course that would ruin my career, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t do you much good. If the worst came to the worst I should make a clean breast of it to Dorothy; she’d be dreadfully hurt and wretched, but she’d forgive me.” He had an idea. “I’m not sure if the best plan wouldn’t be to make a clean breast of it anyhow. If she went to your husband I daresay she could persuade him to hold his tongue.”
“Does that mean you don’t want her to divorce you?”
“Well, I have got my boys to think of, haven’t I? And naturally I don’t want to make her unhappy. We’ve always got on very well together. She’s been an awfully good wife to me, you know.”
“Why did you tell me that she meant nothing to you?”
“I never did. I said I wasn’t in love with her. We haven’t slept together for years except now and then, on Christmas Day for instance, or the day before she was going home or the day she came back. She isn’t a woman who cares for that sort of thing. But we’ve always been excellent friends. I don’t mind telling you that I depend on her more than anyone has any idea of.”
“Don’t you think it would have been better to leave me alone then?”
She found it strange that with terror catching her breath she could speak so calmly.
“You were the loveliest little thing I’d seen for years. I just fell madly in love with you. You can’t blame me for that.”
“After all, you said you’d never let me down.”
“But, good God, I’m not going to let you down. We’ve got in an awful scrape and I’m going to do everything that’s humanly possible to get you out of it.”
“Except the one obvious and natural thing.”
He stood up and returned to his own chair.
“My dear, you must be reasonable. We’d much better face the situation frankly. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but really I must tell you the truth. I’m very keen on my career. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be a Governor one of these days, and it’s a damned soft job to be a Colonial Governor. Unless we can hush this up I don’t stand a dog’s chance. I may not have to leave the service, but there’ll always be a black mark against me. If I do have to leave the service then I must go into business in China, where I know people. In either case my only chance is for Dorothy to stick to me.”
“Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?”
The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly.
“Oh, my dear, it’s rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he’s in love with you.”
“Didn’t you mean them?”
“At the moment.”
“And what’s to happen to me if Walter divorces me?”
“If we really haven’t a leg to stand on of course we won’t defend. There shouldn’t be any publicity and people are pretty broad-minded nowadays.”
For the first time Kitty thought of her mother. She shivered. She looked again at Townsend. Her pain now was tinged with resentment.
“I’m sure you’d have no difficulty in bearing any inconvenience that I had to suffer,” she said.
“We’re not going to get much further by saying disagreeable things to one another,” he answered.
She gave a cry of despair. It
