The Man with a Shadow

“You coward!” she hissed again. “It is not Horace North,” said Salis, in a deep voice. “Thank Heaven he does not know of this.”

“Hartley!”

“Yes, Hartley!”

“And North has told you?”

“Nothing!”

He half dragged her down, and kept his grasp upon her shoulder till she was inside the drawing-room and he had closed the window.

“You can go up to your bedroom by the stairs,” he said sternly, “without stealing in like a thief. Had some one told me of this to my face I should have said he lied.”

“There, say what you have to say, and end this scene,” cried Leo, defiantly now.

“I have nothing to say – now,” said Salis sternly.

“Oh, say it! I am not a child.”

“I am under a promise to Mary that I will say nothing now.”

Salis knew that she turned upon him very sharply, but he could not see her face.

“Under a promise to Mary? There, if anything is to be said, say it.”

Salis drew in his breath sharply, and the words came rushing to his lips, but he mastered the passion within him, and walked to the door to open it.

A dim twilight now faintly filled the hall, showing the curate’s figure framed in the doorway. Then he stood aside, holding the way open.

“Go!” he said.

“Sent to bed like a naughty child,” she cried, in a harsh, mocking voice, which feebly hid the anger and defiance by which she was nerved.

Salis made no reply, nor did he speak again for some moments.

“Go to your room,” he said again, more sternly.

Leo made an angry gesture as if she would resist. Then, giving a childish, petulant stamp upon the floor, she walked quickly by him and ascended the stairs, Salis following closely behind.

As they reached the landing, it was to find Mary’s door open, and that the half-helpless invalid had dragged herself there, to stand clinging to the side.

“Leo – Hartley,” she said, in a low, pained voice: “come here.”

“I am sent to bed,” said Leo mockingly; and she was passing on, but Salis caught her by the arm and checked her. Then he led her to the far end of the room before returning to close the door and help Mary to her couch.

“I can speak now,” he said, in a low voice full of passion, but at the same time well under control. “Where have you been?”

“Hartley!” said Mary appealingly.

“Hush, my child,” he replied. “I know what I am saying. I wish to avoid the scandal of this being known to the servants, but your position and mine demand an explanation. Leo Salis, where have you been?”

She turned her handsome, defiant face towards where he stood, and now it was beginning; to be visible in the soft dawn, pale, fierce, and implacable as that of one who has recklessly set every law at defiance and is ready to dare all.

“Where have I been?” she said. “Out!”

“I insist upon a proper reply to my question. I say, where have you been?”

“There!” she cried; “there is no need to fence. You know where I have been?”

“To meet that man Candlish, after promising me that your intercourse with him should be at an end; and, to make things worse, you have stolen from the house in this disgraceful, clandestine way.”

“Is there any need for this?” said Leo sharply. “There, if you wish to know, I have been to Candlish Hall. Sir Thomas is forbidden this house, so you force me to go to him. You knew where I had been.”

“Yes, I knew where you had been,” assented Salis, as Mary looked from one to the other, not knowing what to say.

“Now, answer me a question,” cried Leo fiercely. “Was it Horace North, in his mean, contemptible, jealous spite, who set you to watch me?”

“Leo!” cried Mary, stung to words by her sister’s accusation.

“Silence! What is it to you, you miserable worm?” cried Leo furiously. “My home has been made a purgatory for months past by you and dear Hartley here. Plotting together both of you to make me miserable, to treat me as a little girl, and to check me at every turn. What Hartley did not try, you thought, and suggested to him till my very soul recoiled against you both and your miserable tyranny. I say it was North – the mean wretch – who set you to watch me.”

“Horace North is too true a man to give you a second thought; too stern and upright to speak of you after your cruel treachery to him.”

“It is not true. I was neither cruel nor treacherous to him,” cried Leo.

“He told me nothing. Your acts are growing public, or I should not have known what I know now; and this must have an end.”

“What end?” said Leo shrewishly. “Am I to be confined to my room? Bah! I have had enough of all this. Yes, I have been to see the man I love, and will go again and again.”

“To your disgrace.”

“To my disgrace, or to my death, if I like,” cried Leo fiercely. “I’ll have no more of this humdrum, miserable life, where I must neither move nor stir save as my brother and sister ordain.”

“Have you thought what this means?” said Salis sternly.

“Thought? No. I have no time for thinking. I know.”

The day was dawning fast, and the pale, soft light slanting into Mary’s bedroom at the sides of the curtain, giving to each face a ghastly, livid look.

Salis strode to the window, and snatched the curtain aside before turning to pour out upon his sister’s head the hot vial of his wrath. But as he turned and faced her his anger was swept away by a great flood of pity, and he approached her gently, for he read in the handsome face before him, flushed with defiant, reckless passion, that she had reached a point in her life when a word might turn her to a future of good or one of misery and despair. She gazed at him as if he were her greatest enemy, and then at Mary, to see her hands extended, and a look of tenderness and love in her pitying eyes.

But the time was unpropitious; there had been a scene with her lover an hour before, which had stirred her angry passions to their deepest depth, and then, as she encountered her brother with his stern words of reproach, it seemed to her that the time had come when she must strive for her freedom. Tom Candlish had reproached her for her cowardice, and laughed her obedience to those at home to scorn. He had brutally told her to go and trouble him no more with letter or message, for she was a poor puling thing, and she had returned heartbroken and in misery, for, defiant to all else, she was this man’s slave.

The encounter then had unloosed her angry passions, and flogging herself again and again with her lover’s words, she turned recklessly upon those who were ready to forgive and take her to their breasts.

“Leo, dear Leo, for pity’s sake!” cried Mary wildly. “Come to me, sister. I cannot even crawl to you.”

“And you ask me, worse than worm that you are, to go down on my knees to you; and for what, pray? For the heinous sin of being true to the man I love. There, do you hear me, to the man I love?”