The Odd Women Part 59

'No, on Tuesday--I think.'

'My--Mr. Widdowson is going to take me away from London.'

'Away?'

She told him the circ.u.mstances. Bevis kept his eyes upon her face, with a look of rapt adoration which turned at length to pain and woeful perplexity.

'You have been married a year,' he murmured. 'Oh, if I had met you before that! What a cruel fate that we should know each other only when there was no hope!'

The man revealed himself in this dolorous sentimentality. His wonted blitheness and facetiousness, his healthy features, his supple, well-built frame, suggested that when love awoke within him he would express it with virile force. But he trembled and blushed like a young girl, and his accents fell at last into a melodious whining.

He raised the gloved fingers to his lips. Monica bent her face away, deadly pale, with closed eyes.

'Are we to part to-day, and never again see each other?' he went on.

'Say that you love me! Only say that you love me!'

'You despise me for coming to you like this.'

'Despise you?'

In a sudden rapture he folded his arms about her.

'Say that you love me!'

He kissed away the last syllable of her whispered reply.

'Monica!--what is there before us? How can I leave you?'

Yielding herself for the moment in a faintness that threatened to subdue her, she was yet able, when his caresses grew wild with pa.s.sion, to put back his arms and move suddenly away. He sprang up, and they stood speechless. Again he drew near.

'Take me away with you!' Monica then cried, clasping her hands together. 'I can't live with _him_. Let me go with you to France.'

Bevis's blue eyes widened with consternation.

'Dare you--dare you do that?' he stammered.

'Dare I? What courage is needed? How _dare_ I remain with a man I hate?'

'You must leave him. Of course you must leave him.'

'Oh, before another day has pa.s.sed!' sobbed Monica. 'It is wrong even to go back to-day. I love you, and in that there is nothing to be ashamed of; but what bitter shame to be living with _him_, practising hypocrisy. He makes me hate myself as much as I hate _him_.'

'Has he behaved brutally to you, dearest?'

'I have nothing to accuse him of, except that he persuaded me to marry him--made me think that I could love him when I didn't know what love meant. And now he wishes to get me away from all the people I know because he is jealous of every one. And how can I blame him? Hasn't he cause for jealousy? I am deceiving him--I have deceived him for a long time, pretending to be a faithful wife when I have often wished that he might die and release me. It is I who am to blame. I ought to have left him. Every woman who thinks of her husband as I do ought to go away from him. It is base and wicked to stay there--pretending--deceiving--'

Bevis came towards her and took her in his arms.

'You love me?' she panted under his hot kisses. 'You will take me away with you?'

'Yes, you shall come. We mustn't travel together, but you shall come--when I am settled there--'

'Why can't I go with you?'

'My own darling, think what it would mean if our secret were discovered--'

'Discovered? But how can we think of that? How can I go back there, with your kisses on my lips? Oh, I must live somewhere in secret until you go, and then--I have put aside the few things that I want to take.

I could never have continued to live with him even if you hadn't said you love me. I was obliged to pretend that I agreed to everything, but I will beg and starve rather than bear that misery any longer. Don't you love me enough to face whatever may happen?'

'I love you with all my soul, Monica! Sit down again, dearest; let us talk about it, and see what we can do.'

He half led, half carried, her to a couch, and there, holding her embraced, gave way to such amorous frenzy that again Monica broke from him.

'If you love me,' she said in tones of bitter distress, 'you will respect me as much as before I came to you. Help me--I am suffering so dreadfully. Say at once that I shall go away with you, even if we travel as strangers. If you are afraid of it becoming known I will do everything to prevent it. I will go back and live there until Tuesday, and come away only at the last hour, so that no one will ever suspect where--I don't care how humbly I live when we are abroad. I can have lodgings somewhere in the same town, or near, and you will come--'

His hair disordered, his eyes wild, quivering throughout with excitement, he stood as if pondering possibilities.

'Shall I be a burden to you?' she asked in a faint voice. 'Is the expense more than you--'

'No, no, no! How can you think of such a thing? But it would be so much better if you could wait here until I--Oh, what a wretched thing to have to seem so cowardly to you! But the difficulties are so great, darling. I shall be a perfect stranger in Bordeaux. I don't even speak the language at all well. When I reach there I shall be met at the station by one of our people, and--just think, how could we manage? You know, if it were discovered that I had run away with you, it would damage my position terribly. I can't say what might happen. My darling, we shall have to be very careful. In a few weeks it might all be managed very easily. I would write to you to some address, and as soon as ever I had made arrangements--'

Monica broke down. The unmanliness of his tone was so dreadful a disillusion. She had expected something so entirely different--swift, virile pa.s.sion, eagerness even to antic.i.p.ate her desire of flight, a strength, a courage to which she could abandon herself, body and soul.

She broke down utterly, and wept with her hands upon her face.

Bevis, in sympathetic distraction, threw himself on his knees before, clutching at her waist.

'Don't, don't!' he wailed. 'I can't bear that! I will do as you wish, Monica. Tell me some place where I can write to you. Don't cry, darling--don't--'

She went to the couch again, and rested her face against the back, sobbing. For a time they exchanged mere incoherences. Then pa.s.sion seized upon both, and they clung together, mute, motionless.

'To-morrow I shall leave him,' whispered Monica, when at length their eyes met. 'He will be away in the morning, and I can take what I need.

Tell me where I shall go to, dear--to wait until you are ready. No one will ever suspect that we have gone together. He knows I am miserable with him; he will believe that I have found some way of supporting myself in London. Where shall I live till Tuesday?'

Bevis scarcely listened to her words. The temptation of the natural man, basely selfish, was strengthening its hold upon him.

'Do you love me? Do you really love me?' he replied to her, with thick, agitated utterance.

'Why should you ask that? How can you doubt it?'

'If you really love me---'

His face and tones frightened her.

'Don't make me doubt _your_ love! If I have not perfect trust in you what will become of me?'

Yet once more she drew resolutely away from him. He pursued, and held her arms with violence.

'Oh, I am mistaken in you!' Monica cried in fear and bitterness. 'You don't know what love means, as _I_ feel it. You won't speak, you won't think, of our future life together--'