XXVI
“Closer and Closer Swam the Thundercloud”
Eve was very sorry for her husband after that tragical scene in the study; but what profiteth a jealous wife’s sorrow if she is unconvinced; if heart and brain are still racked with doubts and angry questionings, while her calmness, her submission are only on the surface, the subterranean fires still burning?
Vansittart took a high hand with the woman he loved. There must be no more quarrels, he told himself. He could not control his tongue even in his own interests, if she were to goad him any further. In their next encounter the secret would explode. He could not live this slave’s life forever. It was not in him to go on prevaricating and fencing with the truth.
He told her, gently but firmly, that she must torment him no more with false imaginings. If she could not believe in his fidelity it would be wiser for them to part. Better to be miserable asunder, than to live together in an atmosphere of distrust.
At this hint of parting she flamed up, her doubt changed for a moment to conviction.
“Part!” she cried. “Perhaps that is what you would like?”
“I would like anything better than this madness, Eve,” he answered wearily. “We cannot be worse than utterly wretched, and we are that now, and shall be as long as you harbour unworthy suspicions.”
His face looked like truth, his voice rang true. She flung herself on her knees beside his chair, and clasped and cried over his hand.
“I will not torment you. I will not plague and torture myself any more,” she sobbed. “It is only because I love you too much, and a breath makes me fear I may lose you. I will trust you, Jack, in spite of your mysteriousness, in spite of your refusing to show me that letter, which I had a right to see, a right as your wife. No husband should receive a letter from any woman which he dare not show his wife.”
“I did not choose to show you that letter.”
“Well, you did not choose, perhaps. It was temper, I dare say. I was like the children who are refused a thing because they don’t ask properly. I did not ask properly, and you snubbed me, and treated me as a child. But I won’t be Fatima again, Jack. If there is a blue chamber in your life, I won’t tease you for the key.”
“That’s my own good wife. Remember how happy we were at Bexley Hill, Eve, in our courting days, when you knew me so little and trusted me so much. Surely after two years of wedlock you should trust me more and not less—two years in which you and I have been all the world to each other.”
“Yes, yes, I was foolish. I hate myself for my mad jealousy. You have found the ugly spot in my character, Jack. I did not know it was there.”
“Shall I be angry with my love for loving me too well?” he said, as he folded the slender form to his heart.
How slender, how ethereal she was, the tall slip of a girl whose graceful shape had never developed matronly solidity. A thrill of fear ran through him at the thought of her fragility, too frail a sapling to stand firm against the storms of life.
“God keep her from knowing the truth,” he prayed dumbly, as she hung upon his breast. “It would break her heart.”
After this there came a halcyon interval. Eve was convinced that she was beloved, and what more could a woman want in this world? There was only one thing that stood in the way of perfect peace. Vansittart had business in the City on two other mornings, and those disappearances Citywards worried her. The City, as Sefton had said, was not in her husband’s line.
When she questioned him about the business that drew him eastward he answered lightly that he went to his stockbroker’s to make some small changes in his investments. That very lightness of his, which was meant to spare her a serious anxiety, awakened her suspicions. The actual cause of Vansittart’s unusual interest in the money market was sufficiently serious. A panic had occurred in some South American Railway Stock from which some part of his income was derived, and he was watching the market and the tide of affairs in Brazil, waiting the hour when it might be needful to sell out and snatch the remnant of his capital, or the turn of the tide which should justify his holding on and hoping for a renewal of the good days gone.
To this end he went to his stockbroker’s every day, and heard the latest news, the last opinions, dawdling in the office, hearing the wise men of the East and their counsel. The hazards, the suspense, excited him. He grew interested in the money market, and felt all the gambler’s keenness. The City drew him like the loadstone rock that took the nails out of Sinbad’s ship. It was better than Monte Carlo. A third of his fortune trembled in the balance.
He would not tell Eve the whole truth, believing that it would worry her into a fever. She would exaggerate this fear as she had exaggerated her jealous doubts. She would foresee beggary, and dream of houselessness and starvation. He did not know that to a woman money-troubles are the lightest of all woes. A husband suspected of infidelity, a child down with measles, will afflict the average woman more than the loss of a fortune.
Sophy was enjoying herself to her uttermost capacity of enjoyment. This was life indeed. It was the last week of the season, the week before Goodwood, and there was a sense of the end of all things in the air. A good many of the
