Chapter VIII: The Warning

Half an hour later Maud stood in her bedroom, waiting. The window was wide open, and the night-air blew in cold and pure, with a scent of dew-drenched roses and the salt of the sea behind. There was a large moth in the room. It had been attracted thither by the light of the candles, but it seemed to be dashing to and fro now in a wild search for freedom. She watched its futile efforts with a vague pity. But she was powerless to help it. Every moment it was circling closer and closer to the flame and would probably perish there in the end. She supposed it didn't matter. It was born to die in any case, and surely death was kinder than life. She had often thought so.

If she could have chosen death in that moment instead of this numb waiting for an ordeal which she felt would be beyond her strength, she believed she would not have hesitated. This continual battling against a will so immeasurably stronger than her own was wearing her down. The bare thought of an open conflict made her sick. And that an open conflict was before her she felt convinced. He had not chosen to confound her in the presence of Capper, but she knew that the reckoning was only deferred. She had come to know him as a man of unerring justice, and she had long ceased to hope for mercy from him.

Ah! She heard his step at last, and turned, bracing herself. The moth was flitting dizzily round and round the candle. Her eyes followed it fascinated.

Suddenly it made a headlong dash for the flame, there came a sharp crackle, and then the dull thud of its fall upon the floor. A great shudder caught her, almost convulsed her. And in the same instant the door that intervened between her room and Jake's opened; and he stood before her.

She faced him stiffly in utter silence. One glimpse she had of his face, and only one; for she could not look again. The red-brown eyes were alight with a fire that seemed to consume her even from afar. She stood and numbly waited.

He came straight to her. "So," he said, "you have decided to make a fool of me, have you?"

His voice was very low, but it had in it the sound as of an angry animal. There was something of the animal in his pose also, something from which her whole being shrank affrighted.

Yet she was not without courage. She forced herself to a certain calmness. "Will you tell me what you mean?" she said.

He made a slight gesture that seemed to cry aloud of a savagery scarcely restrained. "I guess you can do that," he said. "What do I mean? Tell me!"

She drew back from him with an instinctive movement of recoil, but on the instant, as though she had stepped into a trap, his hands came out and caught her by the wrists. He held her firmly before him.

"Tell me!" he reiterated.

But she took refuge in silence. She had no words.

He held her so for many seconds, and she knew that during those seconds his eyes remained immovably fixed upon her. She made no attempt to resist him. She knew beyond all question that resistance would be worse than useless. But she refused with mute determination to meet his eyes. Crush her, conquer her, as he would, he should not force his way past every barrier unopposed. Her submission was physical but not mental. She had always held back from him her soul.

He spoke at length, and still in his voice she heard that terrible, deep menace as of a savage force that gathered and gathered under the thinning surface of his civilization. "I reckon you think I'm easier to fool than I am. Old friends must have their privileges. Ain't that so? And if they include a little genteel love-making, where's the harm? Who is to raise any objection? Not the husband who has been too big an oaf ever to make love to you in his life! The husband who just takes what he wants and leaves what's over for the lover! He should be the last person to interfere, I reckon. Ain't that so?"

She shivered in his hold, but she spoke no word. Had they not always been utterly at variance with one another? How could she hope to make him see anything but evil now that his brutal passions were aroused? How could she ever attempt to convince him that he alone was responsible for the fact that temptation had become even possible to her?

And so she stood in silence while the dreadful force of the man mounted and mounted, menacing her.

He waited for several seconds for some response from her; then, at last, as she made none, he moved, drew her locked wrists behind her, forcing her slowly back till her face was turned up to his gaze.

She felt the scorching fire of the eyes she would not meet, and in a moment her whole body seemed to burn in a furnace of shame. The hot blood stung her from head to foot, pricking every vein. Crimson and quivering, she hung there in his hold, waiting.

"So you won't speak to me?" he said. "Won't even try to defend yourself? Well, maybe you're wise. Maybe explanations would do more harm than good. I know well enough how it is with you. You've got to the pitch of enduring me like a loathsome but incurable disease. You never reflected, did you, that in so doing you were making your own hell? You hate me, but you don't realize that the thing you hate is not me at all but a brute of your own creation. And because of that--p'raps it's a natural consequence--you've come to prefer another man's love to mine."

His hold was tightening upon her; she felt herself being drawn to him, felt the warmth of his body like the glow of an open fire. And a sudden wild wave of rebellion went through her, goading her into action at last. She had never resisted him before; she resisted him now fiercely, passionately, striving with all her strength to free herself from that pitiless hold.

"You never offered me love," she panted, straining back from him even while he mastered her. "Love--love--is a very different thing!"

Her voice went into a gasp that was almost a cry. He was holding her crushed to him in a grip that nearly suffocated her. His eyes blazed down into hers, terrible in their intensity, cruelly, appallingly bright. The savage in him had leapt free of all shackles at last, and had her utterly at his mercy.

"Well?" he said, speaking with lips drawn back, showing his set teeth. "And what is love--as defined by you--and Saltash? Something peculiarly holy?"

The taunt pierced her like a knife, with a pain so unbearable that for the moment she was almost beside herself. For an instant she winced from that intolerable thrust; but only for an instant. The next with a furious wrench she freed one hand and struck him--struck him across his grim, menacing mouth.

"How dare you say that?" she cried. "How dare you? How dare you?"

She struck him afresh with each repetition, so stung to frenzy was she by that sneer. But when the sudden realization that he stood to endure her blows without the smallest attempt to check or avoid them came upon her, the spirit went out of her. She became passive again, trembling from head to foot, so that but for his upholding arms she must have fallen.

"Let me go!" she whispered voicelessly. "Let me go!"

He was still gazing at her, but his look had changed. His eyes still burned, but they no longer threatened. Rather she read in them a slow-gathering wonder, as of a man who has picked up some strange substance of which he does not know the value or properties.

He held her awhile longer, and then very gradually he let her go.

She drew away from him, her bosom heaving, her lips panting, and leaned upon the dressing-table for support. She had withstood him indeed, but it had cost her every inch of her strength.

She did not know how she endured his silence. It seemed to pierce every nerve, while he still stood observing her, as it were appraising her.

Then at length very slowly he spoke. "I take back what I said about Saltash. I see I was wrong."

He paused a moment. She had made a sharp gesture of surprise, but she spoke no word. He went on.

"I realize--now--that you do not know what love is. If you did, you wouldn't be so--ashamed. Maybe you never will know. It isn't given to all of us--not that sort. But let me tell you this! Your friendship--or whatever you call it--with Saltash must end. There must be no more letters--no more secret meetings. Saltash is not a white man. I believe in your own heart you know it. Trust him, and he will let you down,--sure."

He spoke with sombre force. She heard him in utter silence, her head bent, still striving to call back her vanished strength.

He came a step nearer to her. "Maybe you think you can hoodwink me--disobey me, and I shan't know. You haven't a very great opinion of my intellect, I guess. But--you may take it from me--I shall know. And if you try to deceive me, you will repent it. You wouldn't fancy life on a lone ranch with not a soul but me to speak to--and all the dishes to wash?" A grim note that was not without a hint of humour crept into his voice. "That's what it will mean, my girl, if you don't obey your husband now. I'm a man of my word, and I think you know it."

He was standing close to her. She felt the vitality of the man, encompassing her, enthralling her. Her brief resistance was over. The very heart of her felt too tired to beat. He had not forcibly quelled her rebellion, yet in some fashion he had taken from her the power to rebel.

He waited for her to speak, but still she could not. Only after a moment or two she drew back from him again and sat down in a chair by the table. He had delivered his ultimatum. There seemed nothing more to be said.

She wished dully that he would go. Surely he could see that the game was his, that she had ceased to move or to attempt to counter that final stroke! Yet he still stood motionless, almost as if he were waiting for something.

Suddenly he spoke again with an odd, restrained vehemence; she felt that he spoke in spite of himself. "That's a prospect that doesn't attract you, I reckon. You've no use for me, never have had--save once. My love is just an insult to you. You even call it by another name. But I tell you this," his voice deepened with a strong vibration that affected her very strangely, gripping her close attention, "whatever it is, it's a driving force that I can't restrain. It may be an obsession, it may be a curse; but there is no getting away from it. It simply is and it has got to be. And if any man ever dares to come between us--you had better mark what I say--I'll shoot him!"

He spoke with a fatalism that sank deep into her soul. It was no savage threat, but the clear pronouncement of a man who knew exactly what he would do under given circumstances. And she was sure in that moment, absolutely sure, that no dread of consequences would deter him.

She did not answer him; there was nothing to say. But there swept over her another dreadful wave of apprehension such as had caught her in the summer-house an hour before, turning her cold from head to foot. What would he say if he knew what had passed between them--if he knew that their lips had met?

She pictured him selecting his weapon with the deadly determination that had inspired his words, saw the cruel set of the mouth, the ruthless glitter of the savage eyes; and she shivered, shivered uncontrollably, convulsively, as one in the grip of an ague.

He saw the shiver; he could not fail to see it, and his attitude changed a little. A measure of softening came into it, even a tinge of kindliness.

"There, you're overwrought," he said. "It's time you got to bed. Reckon you understand me, so we'll give the matter a rest."

He turned with the words, turned in his sturdy, purposeful fashion and went back to his room.

She did not watch him go, but she listened with straining ears for the closing of the door between them. It did not come to her. There was to be no relief from his presence that night. The door remained half-open.

She sat on motionless for a moment or two, listening in a numb, hopeless fashion to his quiet, methodical movements.

She got up sharply at length and began with quivering speed to undress, not daring to linger lest she should have to meet again the straight, unsparing scrutiny of those terribly bright eyes.

Once only, and that just at the last, did she stay a moment and stoop over a small dark object on the floor--something she fancied she had dropped. But the next instant a wild fit of trembling seized her, she stood up again, feeling giddy, physically sick. The thing on the floor was the charred remnant of the moth that had fluttered impotent wings to escape but so short a time before. It lay there shrivelled, lifeless, the wings that had beaten so madly for freedom shattered and consumed in the flame.

She caught her hand to her throat. What evil Fate had decreed that such things should be? Even the tiniest thread of life could not escape the seething whirlpool of destruction.

Sick at heart, she turned and extinguished the candle that had wrought so cruel a doom. The moonlight shone whitely into the room. She went to the window and pulled down the blind; then trembling, she crept to bed. And the darkness covered her soul.