Twilight - Julia Frankau (free novels to read .txt) 📗
- Author: Julia Frankau
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Margaret thought the danger was averted, or would be if she could get away without any more explanation. She had obscured the issue. Peter Kennedy would come back and pay all that was asked. Gabriel would never know that it was the second and not the first attempt at blackmailing from which they were suffering. But she underrated his intelligence, he was not at all so easily put off. He got the carriage round and put her in it, enwrapping her with the same care as always. He was very silent, however, as they drove homeward and his expression was inscrutable. She questioned his face but without result, put out her hand and he held it.
“We are not still thinking of Mrs. Roope, Gabriel?”
“Have you seen her since I was here last?” he asked.
“Not until she came up to us this afternoon.” She was glad to be able to answer that truthfully, breathed more freely.
“Nor heard from her?”
“Nor heard from her.”
“How did you know Dr. Kennedy had gone up to town to see her?”
“He told me so this morning. I… I advised him to go.”
“Was this morning the first time you saw him?”
“No, I saw him yesterday. Am I under crossexamination?” She tried to smile, speak lightly, but Gabriel sat up by her side without response. His face was set in harsh lines. She loved him greatly but feared him a little too, and put forth her powers, talking lightly and of light things. He came back to the subject and persisted:
“Why did she send back the post-dated cheque? Had she another given her?”
“I… I suppose so.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like the way you are talking to me.” She pouted, and he relapsed into silence.
When they got back to Carbies she said she must go up and change her dress. She was very shaken by his attitude: she thought his self-control hid incredulity or anger, found herself unable to face either.
He detained her a moment, pleaded with her.
“Margaret, if there is anything behind this… anything you want to tell me…” She escaped from his detaining arm.
“I don’t like my word doubted.”
“You have not given me your word. This is not a second attempt, is it? Why did she force herself upon you? I shall see Kennedy myself tomorrow, find out what is going on.”
“Why should there be anything going on? You are conjuring up ghosts…” Then she weakened, changed. “Gabriel, don’t be so hard, so unlike yourself. I don’t know what has come over you.”
He put his arms about her and spoke hoarsely:
“My darling, my more than treasure. I can’t doubt you, and yet I am riven with doubt. Forgive me, but how can you forgive me if I am wrong? Tell me again, tell me once and for always that nothing has been going on of which I have been kept in ignorance, that you would not, could not have broken your word to me. You look ill, scared… I know now that from the moment I came you have not been yourself, your beautiful candid self. Margaret, crown of my life, sweetheart; darling, speak, tell me. Is there anything I ought to know?” He spoke with ineffable tenderness.
He was bending over her, holding her, her heart beat against his heart; she would have answered had she been able. But when her words came they were no answer to his.
“Darling, how strange you are! There is certainly nothing you ought to know. Let me go and get my things off. How strange that you should doubt me, that you should rather believe that dreadful woman. I have never seen her since you were down here last, nor heard from her….”
Her cheeks flamed and were hidden against his coat, she hated her own disingenuousness. It had been difficult to tell him, now it was impossible. “Let me go.”
He released her and she went over to the lookingglass, adjusted her veil. She had burnt her boats, now there was nothing for it but denial and more denial. Thoughts went in and out of her aching head like forked lightning. He would never know. Peter would arrange, Peter would manage. It was a dreadful thing she had done, dreadful. But she had been driven to it. If the time would come over again… but time never does come over again. She must play her part and play it boldly. She was trembling inside, but outwardly he saw her preening herself before the glass as she talked to him.
“I think we have had enough of Mrs. Roope. You haven’t half admired my frock. I have a great mind not to wear my new teagown tonight. I should resent it being ignored. We ought to go out again until dinner, the afternoon is lovely. I can’t sit on the beach in this, but I need only slip on an old skirt. Shall I put on another skirt? Do you feel in the humour for the beach? I’ve a thousand questions to ask you. I seem to have been down here by myself for an age. I have actually started a book! What do you say to that? I want to tell you about it. What has been decided about the door-plates? What did the parents say when they heard I’d fled?”
“I didn’t see them until the next day.”
“Had they recovered?”
“They were resigned. I promised to bring you back with me on Monday.”
“And now you don’t want to?”
“How can you say that?”
“Did I say it? My mood is frivolous, you mustn’t take me too seriously. The beach… you haven’t answered about the beach. Perhaps you’d rather walk. I don’t mind adventuring this skirt if we walk.”
“You are not too tired?”
“How conventional!”
Something had come between them, some summer cloud or thunderstorm. Try as they would during the remainder of the day they could not break through or see each other as clearly as before. Margaret talked frivolously, or seriously, rallied, jested with him. He struggled to keep up with her, to take his tone from hers, to be natural. But both of them were acutely aware of failure, of artificiality. The walk, the dinner, the short evening failed to better the situation. When they bade each other good-night he made one more effort.
“You find it impossible to forgive me?” “There is nothing I would not forgive you. That’s the essential difference between us,” she answered lightly.
“There is no essential difference; don’t say it.”
“The day has been something of a failure, don’t you think? But then so was the day when you cut yourself shaving.” She maintained the flippant tone. “That came right. Perhaps tomorrow when we meet we shall find each other wholly adorable again.” She would not be serious, was light, frivolous to the last. “Good-night. Don’t paint devils, don’t see ghosts. Tomorrow everything may be as before. Kiss me good-night. Sleep well!” He kissed her, hesitated, kept her in the shelter of his arms:
“Margaret…” She freed herself:
“No. I know that tone. It means more questions. You ought to have lived in the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Don’t you wish you could put me on the rack? There is a touch of the inquisitor about you. I never noticed it before… Good-night!”
MARGARET slept ill that night. Round and round in her unhappy mind swirled the irrefutable fact that she had lied to her lover, and that he knew she had lied. Broken her promise, her oath; and he knew that she was forsworn. She passionately desired his respect; in all things he had been on his knees before her. If he were no longer there she would find the change of attitude difficult to endure. Yet in the watches of the night she clung to the hope that he could know nothing definitely. He might suspect or divine, but he could not know. She counted on Peter Kennedy, trusted that when the five hundred pounds were paid the woman would be satisfied, would go quietly away, that nothing more would ever be heard of her.
Wednesday next they were to be married. She told herself that if she had lost anything she would regain it then. Perhaps she would tell him, but not until after she had re-won him. She knew her power. If, too, she distrusted it, sensing something in him incorruptible and granite-hard, she took faint and feverish consolation by reminding herself that it was night-time, when all troubles look their worst. She resolutely refused to consider the permanent loss of that which she now knew she valued more than life itself. The possibility intruded, but she would not look.
In short snatches of troubled sleep she lived again through the scenes of the afternoon, saw him doubt, heard him question, gave flippant answers. In oases of wakefulness she felt his arms about her, and the restrained kisses that were like vows; conjured up thrilled moments when she knew how well he loved her. She began to dread those nightmare sleeps, and to force herself to keep awake. At four o’clock she consoled herself that it would soon be daylight. At five o’clock, after a desperate short nightmare of estrangement from which she awoke, quick-pulsed and pallid, she got up and put on a dressinggown, drew up the blind, and opened wide the window. She watched the slow dawn and in the darkness heard the breakers on the stony beach. Nature calmed and quieted her. She began to think her fears had been foolish, to believe that she had not only played for safety but secured it, that the coming day would bring her the Gabriel she knew best, the humble and adoring lover. She pictured their coming together, his dear smile and restored confidence. He would have forgotten yesterday. The dawn she was watching illumined and lightened the sky. Soon the sun would rise grandly, already his place was roseate-hued. “Red sky in the morning is the shepherd’s warning,” runs the old proverb. But Margaret had never heard, or had forgotten it. To her the roseate dawn was all promise. The day before them should be exquisite as yesterday, and weld them with its warmth. She would withhold nothing from him, nothing of her love. Then peace would fall between them? and the renewal of love? At six o’clock she pulled down the blinds and went back to bed again, where for two hours she slept dreamlessly. Stevens woke her with the inevitable tea.
“It can’t be morning yet? It is hardly light.” She struggled with her drowsiness. “I don’t hear rain, do I?”
“There’s no saying what you hear, but it’s raining sure enough, a miserable morning for May.”
“May! But it is nearly June!”
“I’m not gainsaying the calendar.”
“Pull up the blind.”
A short time before she had gazed on a roseate dawn, now rain was driving pitilessly across the landscape, and all the sky was grey. No longer could she hear the breakers on the shore. All she heard was the rain. Stevens shut the window.
“You’d best not be getting up early. There’s nothing to get up for on a morning like this. It’s not as if you was in the habit of going to church.” Margaret was conscious of depression. Stevens’s grumbling kept it at bay, and she detained her on one excuse or another; tried to extract humour from her habitual dissatisfaction.
“It will be like this all day, you see if it isn’t. The rain is coming down straight, too, and the smoke’s blowing all ways.” She changed the subject abruptly, as maids will, intent on her duties. “I’ll have to be getting out your clothes. What do you think you’ll wear?”
“I meant to try my new whipcord.”
“With the wheat-ear hat! What’s the
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