The Shield of Silence | Page 5

Thornton to England--he was often obliged to go there on prolonged
business--but she never repeated the experiment.
While it was comparatively easy to play her difficult rôle in her home,
it was unbearable among her husband's people, who complicated
matters by assuming that she must, of necessity, be honoured and
uplifted by the alliance she had made.
After the return from England Thornton abandoned his puritanical life
and returned to the easy ways of his bachelor days.
Meredith knew perfectly well what was going on, but she had her own
income and lived her own detached and barren life, so she clung to
what seemed to her the last shred of duty she owed to her marriage
ties--she served in her husband's home as hostess, and by her mere
presence she avoided betraying him to the scorn of those who could not
know all, and so might not judge justly.
Then the crisis came that shocked Meredith into consciousness and
forced her to act, for the first time in her life, independently.
Thornton was about to go, again, to England. The day before he sailed
he came into his wife's sitting room, where she lay upon a couch,
suffering from a severe headache.
She never mentioned her pain or loneliness, and to Thornton's careless
glance she appeared as she always did--pale, cold, and self-centred.
"Well, I sail at noon to-morrow!" he said, seating himself astride a
chair, folding his arms and settling his chin on them.

"Yes? Is there anything particular that you want me to look after in
your absence?"
Meredith barely raised her eyes. Her pain was intense, but Thornton
saw only indifference and an unconscious insolence in the words, tone,
and languid glance.
Never before in his life had he been balked and defied and resented as
he was by the pretty creature before him. The devil rose in him--and
generally Thornton rode his devil with courage and control, but
suddenly it reared, and he was thrown!
"Do you know," he said--and he looked handsome and powerful in his
white clothes; he was splendidly correct in every detail--"there are
times when I think you forget that you are my wife."
"I try to." Like all quiet people Meredith could shatter one's poise at
times by her daring. She looked so small and defiant as she lay
there--so secure!
"Suppose I commanded you to come with me to-morrow? Made my
rightful demand after this hellish year--what would you do?"
Thornton's chin projected; his mouth smiled, not pleasantly, and his
eyes held Meredith's with a light that frightened her. She sat up.
"Of course I should refuse to go with you," she replied, "and I do not
acknowledge any rights of yours except those that I give you. You
apparently overlook the fact that--I make no claims."
"Claims?" Thornton laughed, and the sound had a dangerous note that
startled Meredith. "Claims? Good Lord! That's quaintly delicious. You
don't know men, my dear. It would be a deed of charity to--inform you.
Claims, indeed! You drove me, when you might have held me, and you
talk claims."
"I did not want to hold you--after I knew that you had never really been
mine." Meredith's words were shaken by an emotion beyond Thornton's

comprehension; they further aroused the brute in him.
"This comes of locks and bars!" he sneered, recalling Doris's
expression, "but, damn it all, unless you were more fool than most girls
you might have saved yourself."
To this Meredith made no reply, but she crouched on the couch and
gathered her knees in her arms as if clinging to the only support at her
disposal.
"See here!" Thornton bent forward and his eyes blazed. "I'm going to
give you a last chance. You'll come with me to-morrow and have done
with this infernal rot or I'll take the woman with me who has made life
possible, in the past, for you and me. What do you say?"
Horror and repulsion grew in Meredith's eyes. She went deadly white
and stretched her hands wide as if shielding herself from something
defiling.
"Go!" she gasped. "Go with her! By so doing I will not have to explain;
I will be free to return--to Doris."
"So!" And now Thornton got up and paced the floor; "having
foresworn every duty you owe me, having driven me to what you
choose to call wrong, you pack your nice, clean little soul in your bag
and go back to pose as--as--what in God's name will you pose as?
You!"
Meredith shrank back. She was conscious now of her danger.
"Well, then!" Thornton came close and laughed down upon the
shrinking form--her terror further roused the brute in him; all that was
decent and fine in him--and both were there--fell into darkness; "you'll
pay, by heaven! before