XIII
Frida seated herself in her misery on the ice-worn boulder where threeminutes earlier Bertram had been sitting. Her face was buried in herbloodless hands. All the world grew blank to her.
Monteith, for his part, sat down a little way off with folded arms onanother sarsen-stone, fronting her. The strange and unearthly scenethey had just passed through impressed him profoundly. For the first fewminutes a great horror held him. But his dogged Scottish nature stillbrooded over his wrongs, in spite of the terrible sight he had sounexpectedly evoked. In a way, he felt he had had his revenge; for hadhe not drawn upon his man, and fired at him and killed him? Still, afterthe fever and torment of the last few days, it was a relief to find,after all, he was not, as this world would judge, a murderer. Man andcrime were alike mere airy phantoms. He could go back now to the inn andexplain with a glib tongue how Mr. Ingledew had been hurriedly calledaway to town on important business. There was no corpse on the moor,no blabbing blood to tell the story of his attempted murder: nobodyanywhere, he felt certain in his own stolid soul, would miss themysterious Alien who came to them from beyond the distant abyss ofcenturies. With true Scotch caution, indeed, even in the midst of hiswrath, Robert Monteith had never said a word to any one at Brackenhurstof how his wife had left him. He was too proud a man, if it came tothat, to acknowledge what seemed to him a personal disgrace, tillcircumstances should absolutely force such acknowledgment upon him. Hehad glossed it over meanwhile with the servants and neighbours by sayingthat Mrs. Monteith had gone away with the children for their accustomedholiday as always in August. Frida had actually chosen the day appointedfor their seaside journey as the fittest moment for her departure withBertram, so his story was received without doubt or inquiry. He hadbottled up his wrath in his own silent soul. There was still room,therefore, to make all right again at home in the eyes of the world--ifbut Frida was willing. So he sat there long, staring hard at his wifein speechless debate, and discussing with himself whether or not to maketemporary overtures of peace to her.
In this matter, his pride itself fought hard with his pride. That is thewont of savages. Would it not be better, now Bertram Ingledew had fairlydisappeared for ever from their sphere, to patch up a hollow truce for atime at least with Frida, and let all things be to the outer eyeexactly as they had always been? The bewildering and brain-staggeringoccurrences of the last half-hour, indeed, had struck deep and far intohis hard Scotch nature. The knowledge that the man who had stolenhis wife from him (as he phrased it to himself in his curious belatedmediaeval phraseology) was not a real live man of flesh and blood atall, but an evanescent phantom of the twenty-fifth century, made him allthe more ready to patch up for the time-being a nominal reconciliation.His nerves--for even HE had nerves--were still trembling to the corewith the mystic events of that wizard morning; but clearer and clearerstill it dawned upon him each moment that if things were ever to be setright at all they must be set right then and there, before he returnedto the inn, and before Frida once more went back to their children. Tobe sure, it was Frida's place to ask forgiveness first, and make thefirst advances. But Frida made no move. So after sitting there long,salving his masculine vanity with the flattering thought that after allhis rival was no mere man at all, but a spirit, an avatar, a thing ofpure imagination, he raised his head at last and looked inquiringlytowards Frida.
"Well?" he said slowly.
Frida raised her head from her hands and gazed across at him scornfully.
"I was thinking," Monteith began, feeling his way with caution, but witha magnanimous air, "that perhaps--after all--for the children's sake,Frida--"
With a terrible look, his wife rose up and fronted him. Her face was redas fire; her heart was burning. She spoke with fierce energy. "RobertMonteith," she said firmly, not even deigning to treat him as one whohad once been her husband, "for the children's sake, or for my own sake,or for any power on earth, do you think, poor empty soul, after I'vespent three days of my life with HIM, I'd ever spend three hours againwith YOU? If you do, then this is all: murderer that you are, youmistake my nature."
And turning on her heel, she moved slowly away towards the far edge ofthe moor with a queenly gesture.
Monteith followed her up a step or two. She turned and waved him back.He stood glued to the ground, that weird sense of the supernatural oncemore overcoming him. For some seconds he watched her without speaking aword. Then at last he broke out. "What are you going to do, Frida?" heasked, almost anxiously.
Frida turned and glanced back at him with scornful eyes. Her mien wasresolute. The revolver with which he had shot Bertram Ingledew lay closeby her feet, among the bracken on the heath, where Monteith had flungit. She picked it up with one hand, and once more waved him backward.
"I'm going to follow him," she answered solemnly, in a very cold voice,"where YOU have sent him. But alone by myself: not here, before you."And she brushed him away, as he tried to seize it, with regal dignity.
Monteith, abashed, turned back without one word, and made his way tothe inn in the little village. But Frida walked on by herself, in theopposite direction, across the open moor and through the purple heath,towards black despair and the trout-ponds at Broughton.
THE END
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