Chapter 19: The Buttons Off the Foils

Outwardly she was the calmer of the two. She stood upright and motionless; he was restless and fidgety, as if uneasy both in mind and body. She kept her eyes fixed steadily upon his face; he showed a disposition to elude her searching glance. When she spoke her tone was cool and even.

“You have accused me of playing the hypocrite. It is true, I have. I have allowed the world to regard me as a spinster, when I was a married woman; as free when I was bound. I have told you that I should have ceased before this to play the hypocrite, if it had not been for you. You have--pretended--to doubt it. Well, you are that kind of man. And it is because you are that kind of man that I am constrained to ask if you wish me now to cease to play the hypocrite and save Jim Baker’s life?”

“Is not that a question for your consideration rather than for mine?”

“You propose to place the responsibility upon my shoulders!”

“Would you rather it were on mine?”

“That is where it properly belongs.”

“In dealing with you I am at a serious disadvantage, since you are a woman and I am a man. The accident of our being of different sexes prevents my expressing myself with adequate precision.”

“You appear to be anxious to take refuge even when there is nothing behind which you can hide. The difference in our sexes has never prevented you from saying to me exactly what you pleased, how you pleased--you know it. Nor do I intend to allow your manhood to shelter you. Mr Morice, the time for fencing’s past. When life and death are hanging in the balance, words are weightless. I ask you again, do you intend to save Jim Baker’s life?”

“I have yet to learn that it is in imminent peril.”

“Then acquire that knowledge now from me. I am informed that if someone is not discovered, on whom the onus of guilt can be indubitably fixed, the probabilities are that Jim Baker will be hanged for murder.”

“And you suggest that I should discover that--unhappy person?”

“I ask you if you do not think the discovery ought to be made, to save that wretched creature?”

“What I am anxious to get at, before I commit myself to an answer is this--presuming that I think the discovery should be made, do you suggest that it should be made by you or by me?”

“Mr Morice, I will make my meaning plainer, if the thing be possible. When--that night--in the wood it happened, I thought that it was done for me. I still think that might have been the motive; partly, I confess, because I cannot conceive of any other, though the misapprehension was as complete as it was curious. I did not require that kind of service--God forbid! And, therefore, thinking this--that I was, though remotely, the actual cause--it appears to me that I was, and am, unable to speak, lest it would seem that I was betraying one whose intention was to render me a service.”

“For all I understand of what you’re saying you might be talking in an unknown tongue. You speak of the futility of fencing, when you do nothing else but fence! To the point, if you please. What service do you suppose was intended to be rendered you that night in Cooper’s Spinney?”

There was a perceptible pause before she answered, as if she were endeavouring to summon all her courage to her aid.

“Mr Morice, when you killed my husband, did you not do it for me?”

His countenance, as she put this question, would have afforded an excellent subject for a study in expression. His jaw dropped open, his pipe falling unnoticed to the ground; his eyes seemed to increase in magnitude; the muscles of his face became suddenly rigid--indeed the rigidity of his whole bearing suggested a paralytic seizure. For some seconds he seemed to have even ceased to breathe. Then he gave a long gasping breath, and with in his attitude still some of that unnatural rigidity, he gave her question for question.