Witness for the Defence Part 42

"Then something broke," she resumed. "I felt weak and numbed. I dragged myself to my room. I went to bed. Does that sound very horrible to you?

I had one clear thought only. It was over. It was all over. I slept."

She leaned back in her chair, her hands dropped to her side, her eyes closed. "Yes I did actually sleep."

A clock ticking upon the mantelshelf seemed to grow louder and louder in the silence of the library. The sound of it forced itself upon Thresk. It roused Stella. She opened her eyes. In front of her Thresk was standing, his face grave and very pitiful.

"Now answer me truly," said Stella, and leaning forward she fixed her eyes upon him. "If you still loved me, would you, knowing this story, refuse to marry me?"

Thresk looked back across the years of her unhappy life and saw her as the sport of a malicious destiny.

"No," he said, "I should not."

"Then why shouldn't d.i.c.k marry me?"

"Because he doesn't know this story."

Stella nodded her head.

"Yes. There's the flaw in my appeal to you, I know. You are quite right.

I should have told him. I should tell him now," and suddenly she dropped on her knees before Thresk, the tears burst from her eyes, and in a voice broken with pa.s.sion she cried:

"But I daren't--not yet. I have tried to--oh, more than once. Believe that, Henry! You must believe it! But I couldn't. I hadn't the courage.

You will give me a little time, won't you? Oh, not long. I will tell him of my own free will--very soon, Henry. But not now--not now."

The sound of her sobbing and the sight of her distress wrung Thresk's heart. He lifted her from the ground and held her.

"There's another way, Stella," he said gently.

"Oh, I know," she answered. She was thinking of the little bottle with the tablets of veronal which stood by her bed, not for the first time that night. She did not stop to consider whether Thresk, too, had that way in his mind. It came to her so naturally; it was so easy, so simple a way. She never thought that she misunderstood. She had come to the end of the struggle; the battle had gone against her; she recognised it; and now, without complaint, she bowed her head for the final blow. The inherited habit of submission taught her that the moment had come for compliance and gave her the dignity of patience. "Yes, I suppose that I must take that way," she said, and she walked towards the chair over which she had thrown her wrap. "Good-night, Henry."

But before she had thrown the cloak about her shoulders Thresk stood between her and the window. He took the cloak from her hands.

"There have been too many mistakes, Stella, between you and me. There must be no more. Here are we--until to-night strangers, and because we were strangers, and never knew it, spoiling each other's lives."

Stella looked at him in bewilderment. She had taught Thresk that night unimagined truths about herself. She was now to learn something of the inner secret man which the outward trappings of success concealed. He led her to a sofa and placed her at his side.

"You have said a good many hard things to me, Stella," he said with a smile--"most of them true, but some untrue. And the untrue things you wouldn't have said if you had ever chanced to ask yourself one question: why I really missed my steamer at Bombay."

Stella Ballantyne was startled. She made a guess but faltered in the utterance of it, so ill it fitted with her estimate of him.

"You missed it on purpose?"

"Yes. I didn't come to Chitipur on any sentimental journey"; and he told how he had seen her portrait in Jane Repton's drawing-room and learnt of the misery of her marriage.

"I came to fetch you away."

And again Stella stared at him.

"You? You pitied me so much? Oh, Henry!"

"No. I wanted you so much. It's quite true that I sacrificed everything for success. I don't deny that it is well worth having. But Jane Repton said something to me in Bombay so true--you can get whatever you want if you want it enough, but you cannot control the price you will have to pay. I know, my dear, that I paid too big a price. I trampled down something better worth having."

Stella rose suddenly to her feet.

"Oh, if I had known that on the night in Chitipur! What a difference it would have made!" She turned swiftly to him. "Couldn't you have told me?"

"I hadn't a chance. I hadn't five minutes with you alone. And you wouldn't have believed me if I had had the chance. I left my pipe behind me in order to come back and tell you. I had only the time then to tell you that I would write."

"Yes, yes," she answered, and again the cry burst from her: "What a difference it would have made! Merely to have known that you really wanted me!"

She would never have taken that rifle from the corner and searched for the cartridges, that she might kill herself! Whether she had consented or not to go away and ruin Thresk's future she would have had a little faith wherewith to go on and face the world. If she had only known! But up on the top of Bignor Hill a blow had been struck under which her faith had reeled and it had never had a chance of recovery. She laughed harshly.

The heart of her tragedy was now revealed to her. She saw herself the sport of G.o.ds who sat about like cruel louts torturing a helpless animal and laughing stupidly at its sufferings. She turned again to Thresk and held out her hand.

"Thank you. You would have ruined yourself for me."

"Ruin's a large word," he answered, and still holding her hand he drew her down again. She yielded reluctantly. She might misread his character, but when the feelings and emotions were aroused she had the unerring insight of her s.e.x. She was warned by it now. She looked at Thresk with startled eyes.

"Why have you told me all this?" she asked in suspense, ready for flight.

"I want to prepare you. There's a way out of the trouble--the honest way for both of us: to make a clean breast of it together and together take what follows."

She was on her feet and away from him in a second.

"No, no," she cried in alarm, and Thresk mistook the cause of the alarm.

"You can't be tried again, Stella. That's over. You have been acquitted."

She temporised.

"But you?"

"I?" and he shrugged his shoulders. "I take the consequences. I doubt if they would be so very heavy. There would be some sympathy. And afterwards--it would be as though you had slipped down from Chitipur to Bombay and joined me as I had planned. We can make the best of our lives together."

There was so much sincerity in his manner, so much simplicity she could not doubt him; and the immensity of the sacrifice he was prepared to make overwhelmed her. It was not merely scandal and the Divorce Court which he was ready to brave now. He had gone beyond the plan contemplated at Bombay. He was willing to go hand in hand with her into the outer darkness, laying down all that he had laboured for unsparingly.

"You would do that for me?" she said. "Oh, you put me to shame!" and she covered her face with her hands.

"You give up your struggle for a footing in the world--that's what you want, isn't it?" He pleaded, and she drew her hands away from her face.

He believed that? He imagined that she was fighting just for a name, a position in the world? She stared at him in amazement, and forced herself to understand. Since he himself had cared for her enough to remain unmarried, since the knowledge of the mistake which he had made had grown more bitter with each year, he had fallen easily into that other error that she had never ceased to care too.

"We'll make something of our lives, never fear," he was saying. "But to marry this man for his position, and he not knowing--oh, my dear, I know how you are driven--but it won't do! It won't do!"

She stood in silence for a little while. One by one he had torn her defences down. She could hardly bear the gentleness upon his face and she turned away from him and sat down upon a chair a little way off.

"Stand there, Henry," she said. A strange composure had succeeded her agitation. "I must tell you something more which I had meant to hide from you--the last thing which I have kept back. It will hurt you, I am afraid."

There came a change upon Thresk's face. He was steeling himself to meet a blow.

"Go on."