The Shield of Silence | Page 5

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 you go. You'll--"
"Leave me alone!" Meredith sprang to her feet. "How dare you?"
And again Thornton laughed.
"Dare? You--you little idiot! You'll come with me to-morrow--by God!"
* * * * *
But Meredith did not go with Thornton on the morrow, and if the other took her place she did not seek to know.
The weeks and months dragged on and she was thankful for time to think and plot. It took so much time for one who had never acted before. And then--she knew the worst!
Thornton might return at any time and soon--her child would be born! First terror, then a growing calmness, possessed Meredith. She forgot Thornton in her planning, forgot her own misery and sense of wrong. She did not hate her child