The Melody of Death · Chapter 10 (2/2)

She did not again refer to the circumstances under which the injury had been sustained. This was not the time nor the place to discuss that.

“There is an excellent nurse spoilt in you,” he said when she had finished.

“I am afraid there is an excellent man spoilt in you,” she answered in a low voice, “and I am rather inclined to think that I have done the spoiling.”

“Please get that out of your head altogether,” he said almost roughly. “A man is what he makes himself: you know the tag⁠—the evil you do by two and two you answer for one by one; and even if you had any part in the influencing of my life for evil, I am firstly and lastly responsible.”

“I am not so sure of that,” said she.

She had made him a little sling in which to rest his arm.

“You married me because you loved me, because you gave to me all that a right-thinking woman would hold precious and sacred and because you expected me to give something in return. I have given you nothing. I humiliated you at the very outset by telling you why I had married you. You have the dubious satisfaction of knowing that I bear your name. You have, perhaps, half a suspicion that you live with one who is everlastingly critical of your actions and your intentions. Have I no responsibilities?”

There was a long silence, then she said⁠—

“Whatever you wish me to do I will always do.”

“I wish you to be happy, that is all,” he replied.

His voice was of the same hard, metallic tone which she had noted before.

She flushed a little. It had been an effort for her to say what she had, and he had rebuffed her. He was within his rights, she thought.

She left him, and did not see him till the morning when they met at breakfast. They exchanged a few words of greeting, and both turned their attention to their newspapers. Edith read hers in silence, read the one column which meant so much to her from end to end twice, then she laid the paper down.

“I see,” she said, “that our burglars rifled the Bank of the Northern Provinces last night.”

“So I read,” he said, without raising his eyes from his paper.

“And that one of them was shot by the armed guard of the bank.”

“I’ve also seen that,” said her husband.

“Shot,” she repeated, and looked at his bandaged arm.

He nodded.

“I think my paper is a later edition than yours,” he said gently. “The man that was shot was killed. They found his body in a taxicab. His name is not given, but I happen to know that it was a very pleasant florid gentleman named Persh. Poor fellow,” he mused, “it was poetic justice.”

“Why?” she asked.

“He did this,” said Gilbert Standerton, and pointed to his arm with a grim smile.