Chapter XV: The Downward Path

She stood erect, facing him. Her face was very pale, but her eyes were quite unflinching. There was about her a majesty of demeanour that might have deterred a less determined man than Uncle Edward. But he stood upon his own ground and grappled with the situation quite undismayed. He was moreover very angry.

"You young hussy!" he said, bringing out his words with immense emphasis. "How dare you have your lover here? Thought you were safe, eh? Thought I shouldn't know? Oh, you're like the rest of 'em, crafty as an eel. What's the meaning of it, eh? What have you got to say for yourself?"

She did not attempt to answer him. Where her mother would have been loud in self-justification, she uttered not a word. Only, after a moment or two, she turned slowly and sat down at the writing-table, leaning her chin on her hand as one spent. Even so, there was an aloofness in her attitude that conveyed to the wrathful old man beside her an unpleasant sense of being at a disadvantage.

He stood looking down at her, grievously resentful, striving to select a weapon sharp enough to pierce her calm.

"I thought you were to be trusted," he said. "Goodness knows why! You didn't seem to have any leaven of your mother about you. But I see now I was wrong. You are just your mother over again. But if you think you are going to pursue an intrigue with that aristocratic blackguard in my house, you're very much mistaken. No doubt I'm very old-fashioned and strait-laced. But there it is. I object. I object strongly. The man's a liar and a thief and a scoundrel. Don't you know it, eh? Haven't you found him out yet?"

He stopped so pointedly for an answer that she could not maintain her silence longer. She moved a little, turned her head slightly, without raising her eyes, and spoke.

"I know him very well. But--forgive me, Uncle Edward!--I can't discuss him with you. I--I am sorry you thought it necessary to insult him."

"Insult him!" Uncle Edward's anger boiled afresh. "Didn't I catch the hound making love to you? Here in my house where I have lived decently and respectably for over fifty years! Didn't I catch him, I say--he a well-known profligate and you a married woman? Didn't I actually hear him trying to tempt you from your husband and your duty? And you were calmly permitting it. Look here, young woman! I've been too kind to you. That's the fact of the matter. You've had too much liberty, too much indulgence, too much of your own way. You married in a hurry against my judgment. But--by heaven--since you are married, you shall stick to your bargain! You take a pen now--do you hear?--and a sheet of paper, and write to your husband this minute, and ask him to come and join you here! I won't be surety for you any longer. Tell him to come to-morrow!"

But Maud only stiffened as she sat making no movement to comply. She looked like a marble statue of Despair.

Uncle Edward came a little nearer to her. He was not accustomed to being set at nought. Most people regarded him as formidable even when he was in a comparatively genial mood.

"Are you going to do as I tell you?" he said.

She glanced up at him momentarily. "I think," she said, "we will wait till to-morrow."

He stamped a furious foot. "Will we, indeed, madam! Well, you may wait as long as you please; but I tell you this: If you don't write that letter--instantly, I shall go straight to the post-office found the corner and send your husband a telegram to summon him at once. He will be here by the morning, if I know him. And then I shall tell him exactly why I sent for him. So now you can take your choice. Which is it to be?"

He had moved her at last. Maud rose to her feet with a suddenness that was almost suggestive of panic. "You would never do such a thing!" she said. "You could not be so--so wickedly cruel!"

He snapped his jaws like an angry terrier. "Oh, that would be wicked, would it? You have some odd ideas of morals; that's all I can say. But wicked or cruel, it's what I mean to do. So take your choice, and be quick about it! For I shan't go back on what I've said. When a woman starts on the downward path, she usually takes it at a run; and I won't be responsible. So which is it to be? Your letter or my telegram? Make up your mind! Which?"

His manner was almost menacing. She stood facing with an awful sense of impotence growing at her heart. To summon Jake herself was a proceeding that she could not for a moment contemplate, but the bare thought of Uncle Edward's alternative pierced like a poisoned knife. She felt again that dreadful trapped feeling of former days. The liberty she had enjoyed of late made it all the more terrible.

"I can't decide anything just now," she said at last, and she knew that her voice trembled painfully. "Please--please let us wait a little! There is really no need to send for Jake. Lord Saltash has gone, and he will not come back."

"Don't tell me!" said Uncle Edward truculently. "Even if he doesn't, how am I to be sure that you won't take it into your head to go to him? No, my niece, I've heard too much. Why, he'd have had his arm round you in another second. I know--I saw. If I'd waited another three seconds, he'd have been kissing you. And not for the first time, I'll be bound."

The hot colour rushed to Maud's face; she turned sharply aside.

"Ha! That touches you, does it?" snarled Uncle Edward, with ferocious triumph. "I guessed as much. Now which is it to be? Are you going to write that letter?"

It was hopeless to carry the discussion further. A burning wave of anger went through her, anger that buoyed her up above despair, stimulating her to a fierce rebellion. She drew herself to her full height and faced him with supreme defiance.

"I will not write that letter!" she said. "I will not be forced into a false position. If you are tired of me, I will go. I will not stay--in any case--to be insulted!"

And with that boldly, with the carriage of an outraged princess, she swept by him and out of the room, leaving him staring after her in a fury too great to express itself before the closing of the door.

Up to her room she went, outwardly calm, inwardly raging. All the old hot rebellion against destiny had awaked within her. It had died down of late, soothed into quiescence by the peaceful solitude in which she had been living. But now it had sprung afresh to quivering life. Her freedom from bondage had given her new strength. She would not be bound again hand and foot, and thrust back into the old bitter slavery. It was too much, too much. She had her life to live. It was hers, not Jake's. She had a right to do with it as she would.

With hands that trembled she began to pack. Uncle Edward had made it impossible for her to stay. If he had not set her feet upon the downward path, he had sped her upon it with an impetus that drove her irresistibly. She worked in a fever, not pausing for thought, conscious but of the one urgent desire to be gone, to escape--she had scarcely begun to think whither.

No one came near her during those evening hours. The daylight waned, and she realized that it was nearing the dinner hour. Then suddenly it came to her that she could not face her uncle again. She must make some excuse.

Her work was done; she rang the bell.

After a pause Martha came to her. There was a scared look on the woman's face. She seemed half-afraid to meet Maud's eyes.

"Did you ring, ma'am?" she enquired.

"Yes." With an effort Maud made reply. "Is--is my uncle in?"

"He's just come in and gone upstairs to dress for dinner, ma'am," Martha told her.

"Ah!" Maud's heart contracted a little. "He has been out some time?" she said.

"Yes, ma'am, a long time. He seems a bit out of temper about something," Martha's round eyes suddenly conveyed sympathy that shone out to Maud like a beacon in the darkness. "I shouldn't take much notice of him, ma'am," she said. "He often says what he don't mean when he's in one of his tantrums. He'll be better in the morning."

Again that awful sense of impotence assailed Maud. She leaned her head against the door-post, closing her eyes for a second. What would the morning bring forth? The thought turned her sick.

"Is there anything as I can do, ma'am?" asked Martha.

"Yes." Abruptly Maud pulled herself together. A sudden resolution had sprung up within her. She could not face another storm such as that through which she had just come. Above all she could not face the morrow and its possibilities in this house. She turned back into the room, and took half a sovereign from the table. "Martha," she said, "I have packed everything up, and I am going away. I want you, please, to call a cab now, at once, to take me away before my uncle comes downstairs. I will write him a note while you are gone. Please, please, Martha, be as quick as you can!"

The sympathy in Martha's eyes became a sort of tragic friendliness. "I knew as you wouldn't stay, ma'am," she said, "not after the way he hollered at you. I wouldn't myself in your place, ma'am; no, that I wouldn't. But you see, I've been with him so long. I don't mind his rough ways. I'll go at once, and thank you kindly, ma'am. It won't take me five minutes. But, mind you, I think he'll be sorry to lose you."

"I can't help that," Maud made answer. "It is quite impossible for me to stay. He will know why. But I will write him a note all the same."

And when Martha had gone, she sat down and scribbled two notes.

The first she addressed to her uncle:

"DEAR UNCLE EDWARD,

"I do not think you will be greatly surprised at my leaving you. After what has passed, I could not stay. I am very sorry for what has happened, but I suppose it had to be. I wish I could thank you for all your kindness to me, but I know this is not the time. So I will only say good-bye.

"Yours,
"MAUD."

The second note consisted of one sentence only, "I am going to my mother. Maud." And when she had written it she picked up a tiny packet of tissue-paper that lay beside her and dropped it into the envelope with the note. She addressed the envelope to Lord Saltash, Burchester Castle, and later she sealed and registered it, stopping at a post-office to send it on its way. She believed it would reach its destination almost as soon as he did. And that packet--that tiny object wrapped in tissue-paper--would convey its own message. No further words were needed.

She herself went for the night to a small hotel in a back-street that was not far from her uncle's house. There would be a train in the early morning. She would not travel by night. Something held her back, some instinct she did not attempt to fathom. But she believed that Charlie would travel by the night-train, and she did not want to see him again until he had received that packet. Afterwards--well, the afterwards would rest with him.

Her sleep was fitful and troubled that night, broken repeatedly by the persistent chime of a church-clock. Towards morning she slept and dreamed again that strangely haunting dream of the flower-decked altar and the red, shining lamp above. For a space she held herself aloof from the dream, refusing to yield to it. But at length it seemed to her that someone came and took her hand, drawing her forward, and she had no choice.

Straight into the wondrous glow she went, and presently she knelt before those flowers of dazzling purity. The quiet hand still held hers in a calm and comforting grasp. She felt that she would have been frightened but for that sustaining hold.

And then suddenly she saw that the candles also were burning upon the altar, knew that she was kneeling there with Jake, heard a voice above their heads very low and clear that seemed to be speaking to their hearts:--"Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." ...

And turning she found Jake's eyes upon her, alight with adoration....

She awoke with a gasping cry to a seething, passionate regret. Because in those first wild moments she knew with an awful certainty that her feet were set upon the downward path, and she could never turn back again.