Sense returned to the unhappy creature ere her servants discovered her or knew that the mysterious visitor had departed.
'It cannot be! It cannot have happened—it is too dreadful—too cruel!' she repeated to herself again and again; but could she doubt the tenor of the letter she had seen and read—the letter in her husband's own handwriting? 'Oh, Heaven!' she murmured; 'our days together have been so blithesome and so happy, even when their brightest hours were clouded by a separation to come; but Oh, not such a separation as this! What have I done that God deems me so unworthy—that I am tortured, punished thus?'
'There is scarcely in the whole sad world,' it is said, 'and in the woeful scale of mental suffering, aught sadder than the helpless struggle of a poor human heart against a crushing load of misery, strengthening itself in its despair, taking courage from the extremity of its wretchedness in the frenzied whispers of reassurance.'
Thus did Maude continue to whisper to herself: 'It cannot be—it cannot be!'
She passed her hot hand several times across her throbbing forehead; her brain was too confused—too unable yet to grapple with this disillusion, the miserable situation, and with all the new and sudden horrors of her false and now degraded position in the world—in society, and in life!
She had heard stories; she had vague ideas of the temptations to which young men—young officers more than all—are subjected; and Jack might have been the victim of some hour of weakness, or evil, or treachery.
Holding by the bannisters, she ascended to her bedroom—their room, as it was but one short hour ago—and there on every hand were souvenirs of Jack which had once seemed so strange amid the appurtenances of her toilet; the slippers she had worked for him were under the dressing-table; his razors and brushes lay thereon; his pipes littered the mantelpiece; and his portmanteaux and helmet-case, ready for Egypt, stood in a corner.
Novels Maude had read, plays she had seen, stories she had heard of, in which concealed marriages and other horrors had been amply detailed; and in the heart of one of these episodes she now found herself, as they crowded on her memory with bewildering force and pain.
She strove to think, to gather her thoughts, in vain. Jack could not be so vile, and yet there was that letter—that horrible letter!
'If this woman is his wife—what then am I? Oh, horror and misery—horror and misery!' thought Maude, covering her face with her tremulous hands, while the hot tears gushed between her slender fingers.
Was all this happening to her or to some one else? She almost doubted her own identity—the evidence of her senses. A moment or two she lingered at a window wistfully looking over the landscape, which she had often viewed from thence with Jack's arm round her, and her head on his shoulder, watching dreamily the light of the setting sun falling redly on the long wavy slope of the lovely Pentlands, or the nearer hills of Braid, so green and pastoral, the scene of Johnnie of Braidislee's doleful hunting in the ancient time, and where in a lone and wooded hollow lies the dreary Hermitage beside the Burn, haunted, it is said, in the present day by the unquiet spirit of the beautiful Countess of Stair, the victim of a double and repudiated marriage, and whose wrongs were of the days when George IV. was king; and now as Maude looked, the farewell rays of the sun were fading out on the summit of bluff Blackford, the haunt of Scott's boyhood, and then the sober hues of twilight followed. Of the hill he wrote:
'Blackford! on whose uncultured breast
A truant boy I sought the nest,
Or listed as I lay at rest;
While rose on breezes thin
The murmur of the city crowd:
And from his steeple jangling loud
St. Giles's mingling din.'
'All is over and ended—God help me!' wailed the girl many times as she wrung her white and slender hands, and yet prepared nervously and quickly to take measures that were stern and determined. There seemed to be a strange loneliness in the sunset landscape as she turned from it, and thought how beautiful, yet cruel and terrible, the world of life can be, and choking sobs rose in her throat.
Should she await Jack's return—face him out and demand an explanation? No, a thousand times no; there seemed degradation in receiving one. Her resolution was taken; she would leave now and for ever, and now with the coming night a long journey to London was to be faced—to London, where she would quickly be lost to all the world that knew her once.
Jack would not be home (home!) for hours yet, but no time was to be lost, and action of any kind was grateful to her tortured spirit.
She quickly dressed herself for travelling; reckoned over what was in her purse, and what was in her desk, and for more than an hour sat writing—writing endless and incoherent letters of farewell and upbraiding—letters which she tore in minute fragments by the score, as none of them seemed suitable to the awful occasion. At last she feverishly ended one; placed it in an envelope, addressed it—oh how tremulously!—and placed it on the toilet table, where he was sure to find it when she would be far away.
'I now know all—all about "Maggie!"' ran the letter. ('Who the devil is Maggie?' thought the terrified and bewildered Jack when he did come, to peruse it.)
'You cannot forget that I once loved you—that I love you still, when—oh, my God!—I have no right to do so, nor can you forget the misery that obliges me to take this step and leave you. Oh, Jack! Jack!
'God forgive you, but you have broken my heart!
'When you read this, Jack, I shall be gone—gone to London or elsewhere—to where you shall never be able to follow or to trace me in my hiding place.
'The horrors of a public scandal must be avoided; but how, and however cautious our mode of action?'
'I shall never see you more—never from this evening; never again hope for a renewal of happiness; and yet with all your perfidy, Jack, your memory will always be most precious to me, and I only fear I shall always love you too well!'
Much more in the same incoherent style followed.
Time was short; she moved about noiselessly. She drew sharply off her bracelet and brooch, which were gifts of Jack's; she did more; she drew off her wedding ring with its keeper, her engagement ring also, and placed them in another envelope; she put a few necessary garments and toilet appurtenances into a travelling-bag, stole from the house, found a cab, and ordered the man to drive her at once to the railway station for London.
It was night, now, and the silent suburbs had been left behind, and the cab, swift and well-horsed, and all unlike a London 'crawler,' bowled through the busy streets that were flooded with light.
She was off—the die was cast! Nothing occurred to hinder or delay her, nor did she wish for any such thing at that time.
It was not too late to return; but why should she return—and to whom?—'Maggie's' husband? and she set her little teeth firmly and defiantly, as she was driven along the platform of the Waverley Station, with the city lights towering high in the air above her, and where the train that was to bear her away was all in readiness for starting.
A new but unnatural kind of life seemed opening up to her, and under her thick Shetland veil her hot tears welled freely. Until she was quite alone now, she knew not what a feature Jack had been in her life, what an influence his presence had upon her; and now their days of earnest and peaceful love were over, and his whispers of endearment would fall upon her ear no more. Withal, she had a stunned feeling, and she began to accept her present position as if it was the result of something that had happened long, long ago, with a kind of desperate resignation and grim indifference as to what her own future might bring forth.