He followed her, a cunning look in his eyes. His hands were shaking. ‘It’s – it’s all right, eh?’ he said again. ‘I burnt them myself.’
‘Oh!’
She went on into the study, sinking into a big armchair. Her face was dead white and her whole body drooped with fatigue. She thought to herself: ‘If only I could go to sleep now and never, never wake up again!’
Richard was watching her. His glance, shy, furtive, kept coming and going. She noticed nothing. She was beyond noticing.
‘It went off quite all right, eh?’
‘I’ve told you so.’
‘You’re sure they were the right papers? Did you look?’
‘No.’
‘But then –’
‘I’m sure, I tell you. Don’t bother me, Richard. I can’t bear any more tonight.’
Richard shifted nervously.
‘No, no. I see.’
He fidgeted about the room. Presently he came over to her, laid a hand on her shoulder. She shook it off.
‘Don’t touch me.’ She tried to laugh. ‘I’m sorry, Richard. My nerves are on edge. I feel I can’t bear to be touched.’
‘I know. I understand.’
Again he wandered up and down.
‘Theo,’ he burst out suddenly. ‘I’m damned sorry.’
‘What?’ She looked up, vaguely startled. ‘I oughtn’t to have let you go there at this time of night. I never dreamed that you’d be subjected to any – unpleasantness.’
‘Unpleasantness?’ She laughed. The word seemed to amuse her. ‘You don’t know! Oh, Richard, you don’t know!’
‘I don’t know what?’
She said very gravely, looking straight in front of her: ‘What this night has cost me.’
‘My God! Theo! I never meant – You – you did that, for me? The swine! Theo – Theo – I couldn’t have known. I couldn’t have guessed. My God!’
He was kneeling by her now stammering, his arms round her, and she turned and looked at him with faint surprise, as though his words had at last really penetrated to her attention.
‘I – I never meant –’
‘You never meant what, Richard?’
Her voice startled him.
‘Tell me. What was it that you never meant?’
‘Theo, don’t let us speak of it. I don’t want to know. I want never to think of it.’
She was staring at him, wide awake now, with every faculty alert. Her words came clear and distinct:
‘You never meant – What do you think happened?’
‘It didn’t happen, Theo. Let’s say it didn’t happen.’
And still she stared, till the truth began to come to her.
‘You think that –’
‘I don’t want –’
She interrupted him: ‘You think that Vincent Easton asked a price for those letters? You think that I – paid him?’
Richard said weakly and unconvincingly: ‘I – I never dreamed he was that kind of man.’
‘Didn’t you?’ She looked at him searchingly. His eyes fell before hers. ‘Why did you ask me to put on this dress this evening? Why did you send me there alone at this time of night? You guessed he – cared for me. You wanted to save your skin – save it at any cost – even at the cost of my honour.’ She got up.
‘I see now. You meant that from the beginning – or at least you saw it as a possibility, and it didn’t deter you.’
‘Theo –’
‘You can’t deny it. Richard, I thought I knew all there was to know about you years ago. I’ve known almost from the first that you weren’t straight as regards the world. But I thought you were straight with me.’
‘Theo –’
‘Can you deny what I’ve just been saying?’
He was silent, in spite of himself. ‘Listen, Richard. There is something I must tell you. Three days ago when this blow fell on you, the servants told you I was away – gone to the country. That was only partly true. I had gone away with Vincent Easton –’
Richard made an inarticulate sound. She held out a hand to stop him. ‘Wait. We were at Dover. I saw a paper – I realized what had happened. Then, as you know, I came back.’
She paused.
Richard caught her by the wrist. His eyes burnt into hers. ‘You came back – in time?’
Theo gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘Yes, I came back, as you say, “in time”, Richard.’
Her husband relinquished his hold on her arm. He stood by the mantelpiece, his head thrown back. He looked handsome and rather noble.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I can forgive.’
‘I cannot.’
The two words came crisply. They had the semblance and the effect of a bomb in the quiet room. Richard started forward, staring, his jaw dropped with an almost ludicrous effect.
‘You – er – what did you say, Theo?’
‘I said I cannot forgive! In leaving you for another man. I sinned – not technically, perhaps, but in intention, which is the same thing. But if I sinned, I sinned through love. You, too, have not been faithful to me since our marriage. Oh, yes, I know. That I forgave, because I really believed in your love for me. But the thing you have done tonight is different. It is an ugly thing, Richard – a thing no woman should forgive. You sold me, your own wife, to purchase safety!’
She picked up her wrap and turned towards the door. ‘Theo,’ he stammered out, ‘where are you going?’
She looked back over her shoulder at him.
‘We all have to pay in this life, Richard. For my sin I must pay in loneliness. For yours – well, you gambled with the thing you love, and you have lost it!’
‘You are going?’
She drew a long breath.
‘To freedom. There is nothing to bind me here.’
He heard the door shut. Ages passed, or was it a few minutes? Something fluttered down outside the window – the last of the magnolia petals, soft, fragrant.
Chapter 18
The Lonely God
‘The Lonely God’ was first published in Royal Magazine, July 1926.
He stood on a shelf in the British Museum, alone and forlorn amongst a company of obviously more important deities. Ranged round the four walls, these greater personages all seemed to display an overwhelming sense of their own superiority. The pedestal of each was duly inscribed with the land and race that had been proud to possess him. There was no doubt of their position; they were divinities of importance and recognized as such.