The Dark House | Page 4

ready cash and would be glad of a small loan. Only temporary, of course. Wouldn't have dreamed of asking, but meeting such an old friend in such affluent circumstances----
So the eighth birthday had been forgotten. Robert himself could not have explained why grief should have driven him to his father's cigars-box. Perhaps it was just a beau geste of defiance, or a reminder that one day he too would be grown up and free. At any rate, it was still a very large cigar. Though he puffed at it painstakingly, blowing the smoke far out of the window so as to escape detection, the result was not encouraging. The exquisite mauve-grey ash was indeed less than a quarter of an inch long when his sense of wrong and injustice deepened to an overwhelming despair. It was not only that even Christine had failed him--everything was failing him. The shabby plot of rising ground opposite, which justified Dr. Stonehouse's contention that he looked out over open country, had become immersed in a loathsome mist, greenish in hue, in which it heaved and rolled and undulated like an uneasy reptile. The house likewise heaved, and Robert had to lean hard against the lintel of the window to prevent himself from falling out. A strange sensation of uncertainty--of internal disintegration--obsessed him, and there was a cold moisture gathering on his face. He felt that at any moment anything might happen. He didn't care. He wanted to die, anyhow. They had forgotten him, but when he was dead they would be sorry. His father would give him a beautiful funeral, and Christine would say, "We can't afford it, Jim," and there would be another awful scene.
In the next room Edith and Christine were talking as they rolled up the Axminster carpet which, since the bailiff had no claim on it, was to go to the pawnbroker's to appease the butcher. The door stood open, and he could hear Edith's bitter, resentful voice raised in denunciation.
"I don't know why I stand it. If my poor dear father, Sir Godfrey, knew what I was enduring, he would rise from the grave. Never did I think I should have to go through such humiliation. My sisters say I ought to leave him--that I am wanting in right feeling, but I can't help it. I am faithful by nature. I remember my promises at the altar--even if Jim forgets his----"
"He didn't promise to keep his temper or out of debt," Christine said.
Edith sniffed loudly.
"Or away from other women. Oh, it's no good, Christine, I know what I know. There's always some other woman in the background. Only yesterday I found a letter from Mrs. Saxburn--that red-haired vixen he brought home to tea when there wasn't money in the house to buy bread. I tell you he doesn't know what faithfulness means."
Robert, rising for a moment above his own personal anguish, clenched his fist. It was all very well--he might hate his father, Christine might hate him, though he knew she didn't, but Edith had no right. She was an outsider--a bounder----
"He is faithful to his ideal," Christine answered. "He is always looking for it and thinking he has found it. And except for Constance he has always been mistaken."
"Thank you."
"I wasn't thinking of you," Christine explained. "There have been so many of them--and all so terribly expensive--never cheap or common----"
They were dragging the carpet out into the landing. Their voices sounded louder and more distinct.
"I could bear almost everything but his temper," Edith persisted breathlessly. "He's like a madman----"
"He's ill--sometimes I think he's very ill----"
"Oh, you've always got an excuse for him, Christine. You never see him as he really is. I can't think why you didn't marry him yourself. I'm sure he asked you. Jim couldn't be alone with a woman ten minutes without proposing. And everyone knows how fond you are of him and of that tiresome child----"
Robert Stonehouse gasped. The earth reeled under his feet. The stump of the cigar rolled off the windowsill, and he himself tumbled from his chair and was sick--convulsively, hideously sick. For a moment he remained huddled on the floor, half unconscious, and then very slowly the green, soul-destroying mist receded and he found Christine bending over him, wiping his face, with her pocket-Handkerchief.
"Robert, darling, why didn't you call out?"
"He's been smoking," Edith's voice declared viciously from somewhere in the background. "I can smell it. The horrid little boy----"
"I didn't--I didn't----" He kept his feet with an enormous effort, scowling at her. He lied shamelessly, as a matter of course and without the faintest sense of guilt. Everyone lied. They had to. Christine knew that as well as anyone. Not that lying was of the slightest use. His father's temper fed on itself and was independent alike of fact or