第31章 ON THE WESTERN CIRCUIT(9)

'Eh?Nonsense!'

'I can't!'she insisted,with miserable,sobbing hardihood.'I--I--didn't write those letters,Charles!I only told HER what to write!

And not always that!But I am learning,O so fast,my dear,dear husband!And you'll forgive me,won't you,for not telling you before?'She slid to her knees,abjectly clasped his waist and laid her face against him.

He stood a few moments,raised her,abruptly turned,and shut the door upon her,rejoining Edith in the drawing-room.She saw that something untoward had been discovered,and their eyes remained fixed on each other.

'Do I guess rightly?'he asked,with wan quietude.'YOU were her scribe through all this?'

'It was necessary,'said Edith.

'Did she dictate every word you ever wrote to me?'

'Not every word.'

'In fact,very little?'

'Very little.'

'You wrote a great part of those pages every week from your own conceptions,though in her name!'

'Yes.'

'Perhaps you wrote many of the letters when you were alone,without communication with her?'

'I did.'

He turned to the bookcase,and leant with his hand over his face;and Edith,seeing his distress,became white as a sheet.

'You have deceived me--ruined me!'he murmured.

'O,don't say it!'she cried in her anguish,jumping up and putting her hand on his shoulder.'I can't bear that!'

'Delighting me deceptively!Why did you do it--WHY did you!'

'I began doing it in kindness to her!How could I do otherwise than try to save such a simple girl from misery?But I admit that Icontinued it for pleasure to myself.'

Raye looked up.'Why did it give you pleasure?'he asked.

'I must not tell,'said she.

He continued to regard her,and saw that her lips suddenly began to quiver under his scrutiny,and her eyes to fill and droop.She started aside,and said that she must go to the station to catch the return train:could a cab be called immediately?

But Raye went up to her,and took her unresisting hand.'Well,to think of such a thing as this!'he said.'Why,you and I are friends--lovers--devoted lovers--by correspondence!'

'Yes;I suppose.'

'More.'

'More?'

'Plainly more.It is no use blinking that.Legally I have married her--God help us both!--in soul and spirit I have married you,and no other woman in the world!'

'Hush!'

'But I will not hush!Why should you try to disguise the full truth,when you have already owned half of it?Yes,it is between you and me that the bond is--not between me and her!Now I'll say no more.

But,O my cruel one,I think I have one claim upon you!'

She did not say what,and he drew her towards him,and bent over her.

'If it was all pure invention in those letters,'he said emphatically,'give me your cheek only.If you meant what you said,let it be lips.It is for the first and last time,remember!'

She put up her mouth,and he kissed her long.'You forgive me?'she said crying.

'Yes.'

'But you are ruined!'

'What matter!'he said shrugging his shoulders.'It serves me right!'

She withdrew,wiped her eyes,entered and bade good-bye to Anna,who had not expected her to go so soon,and was still wrestling with the letter.Raye followed Edith downstairs,and in three minutes she was in a hansom driving to the Waterloo station.

He went back to his wife.'Never mind the letter,Anna,to-day,'he said gently.'Put on your things.We,too,must be off shortly.'

The simple girl,upheld by the sense that she was indeed married,showed her delight at finding that he was as kind as ever after the disclosure.She did not know that before his eyes he beheld as it were a galley,in which he,the fastidious urban,was chained to work for the remainder of his life,with her,the unlettered peasant,chained to his side.

Edith travelled back to Melchester that day with a face that showed the very stupor of grief;her lips still tingling from the desperate pressure of his kiss.The end of her impassioned dream had come.

When at dusk she reached the Melchester station her husband was there to meet her,but in his perfunctoriness and her preoccupation they did not see each other,and she went out of the station alone.

She walked mechanically homewards without calling a fly.Entering,she could not bear the silence of the house,and went up in the dark to where Anna had slept,where she remained thinking awhile.She then returned to the drawing-room,and not knowing what she did,crouched down upon the floor.

'I have ruined him!'she kept repeating.'I have ruined him;because I would not deal treacherously towards her!'

In the course of half an hour a figure opened the door of the apartment.

'Ah--who's that?'she said,starting up,for it was dark.

'Your husband--who should it be?'said the worthy merchant.

'Ah--my husband!--I forgot I had a husband!'she whispered to herself.

'I missed you at the station,'he continued.'Did you see Anna safely tied up?I hope so,for 'twas time.'

'Yes--Anna is married.'

Simultaneously with Edith's journey home Anna and her husband were sitting at the opposite windows of a second-class carriage which sped along to Knollsea.In his hand was a pocket-book full of creased sheets closely written over.Unfolding them one after another he read them in silence,and sighed.

'What are you doing,dear Charles?'she said timidly from the other window,and drew nearer to him as if he were a god.

'Reading over all those sweet letters to me signed "Anna,"'he replied with dreary resignation.

Autumn 1891.