“To tell you a secret,” said Cahusac, “I saw the clay feet of the idol long ago. A good fellow in his way--the average sensual man.”
“The discovery must be killing her,” said Hugh. “I wonder why she did not tell you before you started.”
“I don’t pretend to know. She had her reasons. I am quite satisfied. I could never put her into the dull category of common women. And to think that that man--Cahusac, he can’t believe it of her. Some infernal villainy is at work.”
He broke forth again. Cahusac quietly listened out the torrent of indignation. It held elements of the rhapsodic that interested him.
They returned through the town. Hugh rushed into the telegraph office and despatched a message:--
“I hope you have done nothing rash,” said Cahusac, who had waited for him outside.
“I’ve told him that I am coming. I must go back straight, Cahusac. It is treating you miserably. But you see I can’t go on. I must see him--put a stop to this infamous business--drag him to his knees before his wife.”
“Take a sober man’s advice, Colman,” said the other, “and have it out with Mrs. Merriam first.”
Hugh’s eyes flashed and his lips curled in a smile beneath his moustache. Superfluous counsel! His heart hungered for her. There was a spice of irony in his thanks.
A few hours later Cahusac accompanied him to the railway station. The final adieux came.
“I owe you a great debt of gratitude, Cahusac,” said Hugh.
“I have enjoyed every minute of the holiday,” replied the other heartily.
“So have I. It has made a fresh man of me. I can face this now, thanks to you. If it had come on top of all the rest, I believe it would have floored me. A man is only capable of a certain amount of convulsion at a time.”
They parted, and the great P. L. M. train carried Hugh swiftly northwards. He had spoken truly. He was under a deep obligation to the quiet, kind-hearted man whose calm judgment and equable nature formed a complete sedative to the fever of his mind, whose companionship was a cool hand on a hot brow. A great need of expansion had been the reaction from the intense restraint of the month preceding his trial. His thoughts paid Cahusac grateful tribute.
A study of time-tables suddenly brought him to realisation of the date. It was the anniversary of his wedding day. The first. It was scarcely credible. The disastrous twelvemonth, viewed in retrospect, seemed a space of many years. The memory of the first wedded kiss of Minna’s young ripe lips came faintly as if from a far past, yet not without a spasm of revulsion; the memory of a _succubus_. Elemental sex feelings, determining hatred, bend a man’s judgment of a woman to elemental fierceness. For this reason often are women beaten. He tried to shake off the haunting sense of her caresses--to bury her existence in oblivion. But she was too essential a factor in this ruin of lives amongst which he was walking. What had become of her? He clenched his hands together, and wished that she was dead.