Chapter XLI

After leaving Alexandra that morning Maggy had driven to Woolf's club. They had arranged to lunch together at some restaurant, but instead he bore her off to her flat, scarcely vouchsafing a word to her on the way. That he was in a towering rage she could see plainly enough. The reason for it she could not guess. He was apt to lose his temper. At such times she would tactfully wait until he had calmed down. Now, however, she was hungry and wanted her lunch, so she naturally asked for it.

"Where did you think of going for lunch?"

To her surprise he burst out violently: "Lunch be damned! You'll have lunch by yourself in future."

"What's the matter? What have I done?" she asked, placably enough.

"I've found you out, that's all."

Not another word could she extract from him until they were in the flat. Coaxing and gentleness only made him more morose. She began to feel afraid. What she could not see, because she did not know that the stage had lost quite a convincingly bombastic actor in Woolf, was that much of his anger was assumed; nor did she know that he was spoiling for a quarrel and that he had found a very good handle upon which to hang one. So blinded was she by her devotion that, except for the fact that since his return she had seen less of him than usual, she had not observed a certain weariness in his manner toward her. She did not at all know what he meant by saying he had found her out. Hoping to placate him by a show of affection she made an attempt to kiss him. But he repulsed her.

"I've had enough of that," he scowled. "It's all shammed, and it comes easy to you, my girl. I was up here half-an-hour ago and I saw your dressing-case."

"Well," she rejoined, "you've seen it before, haven't you?"

"Not with a sheet of headed notepaper sticking out of it--Purton Towers, that swine Chalfont's place!"

Maggy's face cleared. She thought she knew now what the storm portended and how to weather it.

"Oh, is that all?" she said lightly. "I took it to wrap my toothbrush in, you goose! I was going to tell you about it all, but I forgot because I was so happy at having you back."

"A likely story! You expect me to believe you forgot to admit you've been carrying on with Chalfont!"

"Oh, Fred!" she cried, horrified at the allegation.

"Well, let's have your expurgated version of it."

"I went there for Christmas with Lexie. And the Honorable Mrs. Pardiston, his aunt, was there too. We went to church, and there was a Christmas tree and a children's party. It was all quite proper and perfectly glorious. Lord Chalfont wouldn't do anything that was underhand."

"Of course you're bound to say that for your own sake. Look here, Maggy, you needn't tell me lies. I won't swallow them. You know perfectly well that if I'd known he'd asked you down to his rotten place I'd have stopped your going."

"I did think of that, Fred," she admitted; "but then I knew there was no harm in it, and if I hadn't gone Lexie wouldn't have been able to, either; and I wasn't looking forward to spending Christmas alone here. No flesh and blood girl could resist a square invitation like that. Why didn't you take me abroad with you if you couldn't trust me? I haven't asked you questions about where you've been or what you did while you were away. Besides, if it comes to that, husbands and wives often pay visits apart."

"Do you consider yourself particularly qualified to give an opinion about the habits of married people?" he sneered.

"That's a caddish thing to fling in my face," she cried indignantly.

Woolf flinched a little under her flashing eyes.

"This quarrel's getting vulgar," he retorted uneasily.

"It's of your making. Look me in the face, Fred, and you'll see I couldn't tell you a lie. Look at me, please."

He did so reluctantly.

"On my solemnest word of honor, on my awful love for you," she said with terrible earnestness, "I swear to you, Fred, that never once have I been unfaithful to you, even in thought."

"Never seen Chalfont in town, I suppose?" It was a chance shot, but Woolf saw that it had struck home. "Oh, so you have!" he followed up quickly. "Well--upon my word! That means, before I went away."

"Yes. You shan't say I'm deceiving you. I went to him to borrow some diamonds for Lexie."

The astonishing avowal staggered him.

"That's a pretty admission!" he laughed satirically. "Gentlemen are not in the habit of lending girls diamonds for nothing!"

"Oh, what do you know what _gentlemen_ do?" she retorted, losing control of her temper.

Had she deliberately tried to wound his self-esteem she could have chosen no better way. Inadvertently she had touched on the raw. Woolf would not have admitted it for the world, but deep down in his consciousness he knew that he was not a gentleman and had no pretensions to be called one. What galled him more than all was that Maggy, whose status would have been considered a grade lower than his own, must have detected the social difference between himself and a man like Chalfont. Accidentally she found the vulnerable chink in his armor of swagger and carefully acquired polish.

"That will do," he said, getting up and flushing darkly. "It's a bit too thick when a girl of your class sets up to criticise a man of mine. I'm not a gentleman? Very well, that ends it between you and me."

The stark finality of his words and manner made her tremble all over.

"You mean--Oh, my God, Fred, you can't mean you're done with me?"

"That's about it.... You've got nothing to complain of. You'll be better off with Chalfont."

She ran to him and held him.

"You can't believe there's anything like that," she cried piteously. "Why, he wouldn't look at me--not in that way. He knows I belong to you. If he thinks of me at all it's as he would of the little East-end children that people take down into the country for a day. He's a lord and I'm just common Maggy, and he condescended to be kind to me. Believe me, Fred, believe me, or I--I shall die. I can't live without you. You know I can't!"

Woolf did believe her. Although he hated Chalfont and his exclusiveness, which had once been the means of humbling him, he knew well enough that because of that very exclusiveness he would be punctilious in his attitude toward Maggy. He did not make the mistake of comparing Maggy's position with that of Mrs. Lambert. The latter was a woman of some social standing, separated from her husband. What did genuinely enrage Woolf was that Chalfont should be so contemptuous of his, Woolf's, relations with Maggy that he could be friendly with her in spite of them. It meant that he was ignored. It was inconceivable to him that Chalfont's attitude toward her was largely dictated by a touching respect for her personality, and pity that she should be associated with such a man as himself.

"Don't make a scene," was his unmoved rejoinder. "We can settle things quite quietly if you'll be sensible."

Maggy felt a fierce desire to scream and laugh and cry and so break her nightmare by noise. The cataclysm had come upon her so suddenly; the break seemed so imminent; her hold over Woolf so frail. She seemed to have held him by a thread and that thread had now snapped. Her sensation was one of absolute shipwreck. She experienced the very paralysis of actual drowning, the throbbing of pulses in her head, the suffocation in her throat, the sense of being entirely submerged. And just as the drowning person is said to survey the past with startling clearness so she now had a rapid mental vista of her brief season of love and the desolation that would follow it if Woolf meant what he said.

"I'm _not_ sensible," she pleaded. "You can't give me up for such a little thing as that. Oh, you're cruel, cruel!"

"If you're going to be hysterical I shan't stop."

His unrelenting manner had a steadying effect on her. Tortured, but silent, she stared at him. Could this be the man whom she had been able to soften and cajole with a mere pose of her body; the man who had taken possession of her with such controlling ardor that she was oblivious of the very details of her capitulation; the man whom she had loved with such devastating vehemence? She could see by the utterly unmoved expression of his face that it was impossible to stir his pity. There might be a bare chance of exciting his passion, but a new-born delicacy of feeling in her prevented an appeal to that side of his nature. She made a strong effort to keep a hold on herself.

"I won't be hysterical," she said. "But--I can't understand why you're going on like this. You loved me before you went abroad. What has happened since?"

His eyes shifted from her face.

"What has happened since?" she repeated.

Woolf would not answer her. He got up and went to her little inlaid bureau, picked up a pen, squared his elbows and began writing something. Quivering with emotion, her breast heaving, her breath coming in gasping sobs, she stood where she was, incurious as to what he was doing. Presently he turned, and placed a piece of paper on the table.

"You can stay on here till the end of the quarter," he said. "After that I shall sublet it. And here"--he pushed the paper toward her--"is a little present for you."

She took a stumbling step toward him, arms outstretched, her poor face working.

"Fred! Don't go!" she shrieked.

But he had got to the door. He would go. Nothing she could say or do would stop him. She had just enough presence of mind left not to follow him. Even in that moment of distress she had the sublime unselfishness to refrain from making a scene beyond the privacy of the flat--on his account.

She tottered back to the table, clutching at it for support, stared down at the slip of paper he had left there--paper with a pretty lacy pattern, and read:

"_Pay to_ Miss Delamere ... _or order_ Twenty-five pounds."

The words danced before her eyes like little black mocking devils.... _Twenty-five pounds_! The price which Woolf thought sufficient to buy her off!

Mad now, she scrawled her name on the back of the cheque, caught up her hat and ran downstairs into the street. At the corner there generally stood a miserable woman with a baby, selling flowers. She was there now. Maggy was a regular customer of hers. She thrust the cheque upon her.

"It's signed on the back. Take it--oh, take it!" she said wildly, closed the dumfounded woman's fingers on the cheque, and sped on.

She went fast, walking aimlessly, conscious of nothing but the desire for movement. She wanted to lose herself, to forget herself. Of the things around her she saw nothing, heard nothing. Her processes of thought seemed to be exhausted. Her brain was a mere reservoir of utter hopelessness.

Yet, all the while, it was insensibly driving her in a given direction. In a dull way she realized this when she found herself in the street where Woolf lived. She had never been there since the day of that eventful lunch with him, seven months ago. The memory of it had a clarifying effect on her troubled mind. It calmed her frenzy. She asked herself what she meant to do, but could find no answer. She had not consciously intended going to his house. All motive for doing so was absent. Yet she could not pass it.

She rang the bell, and when the door was opened enquired for Woolf.

"Mr. Woolf is not in, miss," said the servant; "but Lady Susan is, if you would like to see her."

Maggy, still mentally benumbed, entered and followed her.