if only you could come back—come back!’
But she had no one in the world. She was merely his possession to do with as he liked.
Upstairs in her room, Eleanor heard the song with its sinister mockery, and something died in her heart for ever. Her pride, her most cherished possession, was beaten to the ground. She was frightened—frightened of being in this big house—frightened of being alone with him.
The tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she made no effort to repress them.
Then, at last, in a panic that he might come again, she climbed off the big downy bed.
Feverishly, desperately, she crossed to the telephone in her room. A silence had fallen in the drawing-room, and she knew her husband’s uncanny gift for discovering everything that went on in the house. But she must do it—she must! In a queer, fluttering voice she asked for a number. She hung up the receiver and sat still, the heart of her beating madly. Derek Capel. Queer that she should think of him now. But they had known each other since childhood, and Derek had said when she married that if ever she needed a friend …
The telephone bell rang stridently. She stared at it a moment, almost as if she expected an apparition to issue from its mouthpiece. Then with trembling hands she took the receiver again.
Derek Capel’s manservant answered the ’phone; and in answer to her low-voiced inquiry he informed her that his master was not in; he would not be back until later.
She replaced the receiver with a sense of utter, wild desolation.
Derek! He was so strong, so self-reliant. She needed someone. After a long moment she went to her writing-table, and feverishly scribbled a note to him.
‘Come round … some time tonight. Derek, you must. I’m frightened—frightened of him. I’ve got a feeling that something dreadful is going to happen tonight. My husband has—oh, I cannot tell you. He is a brute. He is not fit to live. If I had the courage I believe I would kill him myself.’
She folded up the letter in haste, and put it in an envelope and addressed it to Derek. If she hurried downstairs now she would catch the gardener, and he would take it and keep silent for a few shillings.
On tiptoe she sped down the stairs, the letter in her hand. The broad staircase turned rather abruptly to face Professor Appleby’s study door. She had expected the door to be closed as usual, but as she came round a blaze of light struck her like a blow.
It seemed to Eleanor Appleby then that her heart stopped beating.
For seated at the table with an ugly look on his white face was her husband, and kneeling at his side, pleading with him with tears in her eyes was a woman.
THE silence that had fallen a few minutes earlier in the house had been occasioned by the cessation of Professor Appleby’s playing, and his strolling into his study next door. He closed the door very carefully, and turned to find Vera, with flushed face, regarding him with an odd light of triumph in her brown eyes.
She crossed to him with a peculiar feline grace that had once attracted him, and placed her arms round his neck.
‘My dear—oh, my dear!’ she whispered. ‘I’ve wanted to see you alone—oh, so much. And you’ve kept me at arm’s length. You’ve been so cruel.’
He suffered her caresses, and his vanity was pleased by the mad heaving of her bosom against his shirt front. The girl was evidently distrait. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, and whereas, at their first wooing, she had given herself timidly, fearfully, she now sought for his caresses with wanton eagerness.
Professor Appleby did not at once repulse her: nevertheless there was a cruel glint in his eyes. He had brought her to the dust, and he was fully determined to deal the final blow.
Together they crossed to his desk, and the professor sat down, while she knelt beside him, talking to him excitedly and a little incoherently. Formerly she had been rather like the slave girl who suffers her master’s caresses in silence. But now her stress of mind—her very real need—engendered in her a new boldness.
‘You do love me a little—just a little?’ she said repeatedly. ‘Say you do. Hold me in your arms like you used to.’
Professor Appleby sat with broad, stooping shoulders, staring through his monocle, and wondering. It baffled his ingenuity to guess what she wanted from him.
He turned to her at last, and asked her point-blank.
The false gaiety dropped from her, and her hand went up instinctively to her bosom. Now that the crucial moment had come she was afraid. But she had to speak to him—she must.
‘It’s something very important, sir,’ she said, and her voice sounded like a voice in an empty cathedral. ‘If you don’t help me, I’ll—oh, it’ll be my ruin.’
Professor Appleby started.
Before he could speak the woman threw her arms around his neck and whispered something. It confirmed the professor’s suspicion, and he struggled to throw her arms from him, his face thunderous in its rage.
‘What! You dare to tell me it is I, you—you you—’ He stopped for a word. Rising to his feet he shook her off, and crossed savagely to the door. ‘Get out! Pack your things and get out, you wanton. Don’t let me see your face again.’
She faced him, and now she was a virago with flashing eyes and white-streaked face, albeit her voice was pitched low.
‘You made me what I am. You! You—no one else! Oh, yes; you pretend not to believe me. But will that doll-faced wife of yours believe? Will the world believe when they see your—’
He turned with a hiss, his hand upraised to check her, his face black as thunder.
She fell to whimpering, awed and frightened by his aspect.
After a pause Professor Appleby crossed to his chair again and slumped into it. The first thunder-struck surprise was giving way to ferocious cruelty. He’d make her suffer for it. She threw herself to her knees and clasped her arms round him, pleading, cajoling, bursting alternately into fresh sobs.
‘Won’t you—come away with me?’ she begged almost in a whisper. ‘I’ll work for you—slave for you all my life. I’ll do what that doll-faced wife of yours could never do; I’ll make you love me. It’s not money I want, it’s—’
He burst into a ferocious laugh at that, and shook her off.
‘It’s neither that you’ll get from me, my dear Vera,’ he said in his coldest tones. ‘Not a penny piece—nothing, except orders to quit at the end of the week.’
With a terrified gasp she looked at him.
And in his leering eyes she read the truth. He meant it, every word. She struggled to her feet and backed away, staring at him almost fearfully. This was the man to whom she had given herself. And he was as remorseless now in his hatred of her as he had been in his desire.
‘You—you can’t send me out with nothing,’ she whispered.
‘I can, and will,’ he said in his coldest tone. ‘You will leave at the end of the week with a week’s wages.’
‘But what shall I do?’ she gasped. ‘I can’t face the disgrace, I—’ And then suddenly rage transfigured her, and she stamped her foot.
‘You monster! You vile brute!’ she cried in low, tense tones. ‘I’d like to kill you. Oh, if only I could see you die before my eyes now—dying in agonies, I’d be satisfied. Such men as you shouldn’t be allowed to live. I—’
Her voice trailed off in a sob. There was a gathering storm in Professor Appleby’s eyes that caused her to quail a little.