III
BASIL returned by the last train that night. Next morning he breakfasted in his room, and Teresa did not see him till near noon, when she went into the studio to get a half-finished clay model. They usually worked side by side some hours of the morning, but now Teresa gathered up her materials, with a cool "Good-morning," and went out again. Basil did not answer, but looked up from his drawing-board with a haggard, sombre glance. She noticed that the sheet of paper before him was entirely blank.
Luncheon came and went in perfect silence, except for Teresa's conversation with Ronald, who had lately been promoted to take his dinner at the family board. After luncheon Teresa put Ronald to bed, and went into the studio. There was the blank sheet of paper, over which Basil had spent the morning. From the window she could see him walking up and down in the garden, and she saw the well-known nervous motion of his hands as he threw away a half-smoked cigarette, lit another, and presently threw that away too. The day was cool and clouding over. She lit the fire ready-laid in the big grate, and moved about the room, putting it in order, and clearing away the litter of pipes and cigarette-ends and burnt matches which Basil had left. Then she looked out at him again, irresolute. Basil was capable, she knew, of sulking for a week straight on. It was not now as it had been in the first years of their marriage, when any constraint between them was more pain to him than to herself, when he was always the first to insist on an understanding. But—this was not an ordinary case of sulking. At luncheon he had eaten almost nothing and his eyes looked as though he had not slept. He was suffering.
After a little, she put a white scarf over her head and shoulders and went out to him. He looked at her with that same sombre expression, and when she slipped her hand through his arm he drew away.
"Basil, aren't you making too much of this?" she asked, walking on beside him.
"No," he said curtly.
"It seems to me you are putting on tragedy-airs without much reason."
"Does it?"
"You are trying to bully me."
He made an impatient gesture.
"I'm not. You can do as you damn please. Apparently you have done so. Only if you think it's going to make no difference"
"What difference?"
"Just this—that we won't live together any more."
"Basil! …"
"Yes, I mean it. I shall go away."
"How absurd you are!"
"Perhaps so—but if you think I could endure to live like this You simply don't realise what you've done. You seem to think it's nothing!"
"I'm not aware that I've done anything so frightfully serious."
"No? Well, you've shaken my whole idea of you, my belief in you—that's all. It never occurred to me not to trust you. It never occurred to me But now—I wonder if you've lied to me all along."
"I've never lied to you—never."
"How can I know? How do I know what you are? I don't know you at all. I call that lying—to come back to me with a secret like that, I should never have known, except by accident, that you had had a lover."
"A lover? No."
"Yes! A man doesn't write that sort of letter unless And a man that you barely knew—a stranger—My God, Teresa, what has come to you?"
He stopped short, clenching his fists, deathly pale, the muscles about his mouth twitching violently.
"And you refuse to tell me"
"I haven't refused. I said you had no right to demand that I should tell you. You have your secrets—why shouldn't I have mine?"
"How you talk!" he burst out. "Like the silliest, shallowest sort of a new woman!" 'Rights'! It isn't a question of rights—it's a question of necessity. Some things can be and others can't. Secrets! I've never had a secret from you that counted for anything. And you can't have this sort of a secret from me. You can't, if we're to go on at all. Understand?"
"Don't bully, Basil."
"Bully! … By the Lord, you shall tell me!"
He turned like a flash and his two hands, trembling, closed tight round her throat.
"Basil …." she murmured, looking at him with half-shut eyes, almost smiling.
With as abrupt a movement he released her, flung himself down on the bench under the apple-tree and hid his face on his arms. Teresa stood still and looked at him.
"Basil … I can't understand why you behave in this way. You don't trust me, then, at all, really? There was nothing in that letter to cause all this."
He was silent.
"I've never loved anyone but you."
"All the worse!" He lifted his head and looked at her. "What was it, then, that made you do this? Vanity? I could forgive you if you loved someone else, but this …!"
"Vanity? Perhaps, and perhaps you had something to do with it, Basil."
"I had? What do you mean?"
"You know well enough. You know what happened before I went away. You know how I felt about it—or perhaps you don't know."
"What idiocy!" said Basil savagely. "Do you mean to say that because of that … I don't believe you."
"I'm lying, then?"
"I don't believe that made any real difference to you. How could it? You know well enough it didn't, to me."
"And this doesn't, to me."
"But it does to me! It makes all the difference to me! Don't tell me! you don't care for that man—I know you do."
"Yes, in a way—I am—fond of him. It's true."
"Yes, it's true. And you've written to him."
"Yes. And I've sent a cable to London to find out whether he's dead or alive."
"Yes!"
Basil got up and walked a few steps down the path, and stood still. Teresa wrapped her scarf more closely about her and shivered slightly. A cold wind swept through the orchard; dry leaves came fluttering down from the apple-trees.
"We can't go on," said Basil, hollowly.
"What did you say?" she asked, moving toward him.
"I don't know … but I don't think we can go on. I can't stand this … I shall go away."
"Go away—where?"
"Anywhere. I shall go away from you."
"You mean you'll leave us—Ronald and me?"
"Ronald … yes."
"As you please, Basil."
She turned and went back to the house by another path. There she took her work and shut herself up in her own room. It was cold; the fire was not lit. She shivered, walking up and down the room, but it did not occur to her to light the fire. Her discomfort seemed part of a general past that had enveloped the world. And yet there was a core of warmth somewhere, a thought that caused her a certain exultation. It was absurd of Basil to take this thing so seriously, but she was glad he was absurd in that way—she was thoroughly glad that he cared so much! Only, if he did take it seriously, who knew? She had no intention of being humble about what she had done. Perhaps it had been foolish, but had Basil alone the right to be foolish? Where was his right to sit in judgment upon her? How angry he had been at that word—"right"! Possibly it was a foolish word—they could not theorise about this situation. It was a question of necessity, Basil had said—in other words, of his demand. And he had enforced that demand by a threat … Yes, he might go away—and she could not let him go. Necessity …
She sat down and took up her damp clay, but her fingers were stiff with cold. She shivered, and all of a sudden tears came to her eyes. Why had she hurt Basil so? How had she been able to look at him, to see that he was suffering, and almost rejoice in it? What had come to her? "My God, what has come to you, Teresa?" he had cried. Yes, what? An instinct of cruelty, for one thing. Never before had she deliberately made any person suffer, as she had been conscious of doing just now. A feeling of recklessness, carelessness of herself … Crayven … that day in the forest …
She did not regret it. If Basil suffered for it, she must suffer for it, that was all. Of course she would not let him go. What he demanded she must yield. There was something behind his demand, something more than his own egotism. Necessity …