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diff --git a/20443-8.txt b/20443-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..31d4c76 --- /dev/null +++ b/20443-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4938 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letter of the Contract, by Basil King + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Letter of the Contract + +Author: Basil King + +Release Date: January 25, 2007 [EBook #20443] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Illustration: See p. 29 "Can't you see that my heart's breaking, too?" +She looked him in the face, shaking her head, sadly. "No, I can't see +that."] + +----------------------------------------------------------------------- + +THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT + +BY +BASIL KING + +AUTHOR OF +The Inner Shrine + +ILLUSTRATED + +HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS +NEW YORK AND LONDON +MCMXIV + +----------------------------------------------------------------------- + +BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE INNER SHRINE" + +BASIL KING + +THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT. Ill'd +THE WAY HOME. Illustrated +THE WILD OLIVE. Illustrated +THE INNER SHRINE. Illustrated +THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT. Ill'd +LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER. Post 8vo +IN THE GARDEN OF CHARITY. Post 8vo +THE STEPS OF HONOR. Post 8vo +THE GIANT'S STRENGTH. Post 8vo + +----------------------------------------------------------------------- + +HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK +COPYRIGHT, 1914. BY HARPER & BROTHERS +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED AUGUST, 1914 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------- + +CONTENTS + + CHAP. PAGE + + I. TRANSGRESSION 1 + II. RESENTMENT 41 + III. REPROACH 83 + IV. DANGER 134 + V. PENALTY 160 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------- + +ILLUSTRATIONS + +"Can't You See that My Heart's Breaking, Too?" She Looked Him in the +Face, Shaking Her Head, Sadly. "No, I Can't See That" Frontispiece + +He Turned from the Girl to His Wife. "I'm Willing to Explain +Anything You Like--as Far as I Can" Page 26 + +"Oh, Chip, Go Away! I Can't Stand Any More--Now." "Do You Mean +that You'll See Me--Later--when We're in London?" " 155 + +Edith was Standing in the Doorway, the Man Behind Her. "Chip, +Mr. Lacon Knows We Met in England" " 192 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------- + + + + +THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT + +I + +TRANSGRESSION + + +It was strange to think that if, on finishing her coffee in her room, +she had looked in on the children, as she generally did, instead of +going down to the drawing-room to write a note, her whole life might +have been different. "Why didn't I?" was the question she often asked +herself in the succeeding years, only to follow it with the reflection: +"But perhaps it would have happened in any case. Since the fact was +there, I must have come to know it--in the long run." + +The note was an unimportant one. She could have sent it by a servant at +any minute of the day. The very needlessness of writing it at once, so +that her husband could post it as he went to his office, gave to the act +something of the force of fate. + +Everything that morning, when she came to think of it, had something of +the force of fate. Why, on entering the drawing-room, hadn't she gone +straight to her desk, according to her intention, if it wasn't that fate +intervened? As a matter of fact, she went to the oriel window looking +down into Fifth Avenue, with vague thoughts of the weather. It was one +of those small Scotch corner windows that show you both sides of the +street at once. It was so much the favorite conning-spot of the family +that she advanced to it from habit. + +And yet, if she had gone to her desk, that girl might have disappeared +before the lines of the note were penned. As it was, the girl was there, +standing as she had stood on other occasions--three or four, at +least--between the two little iron posts that spaced off the opening for +foot-passengers into the Park. She was looking up at the house in the +way Edith had noticed before--not with the scrutiny of one who wishes to +see, but with the forlorn patience of the unobtrusive creature hoping to +be seen. + +In a neat gray suit of the fashion of 1904 and squirrel furs she was the +more unobtrusive because of a background of light snow. She was +pathetically unobtrusive. Not that she seemed poor; she suggested, +rather, some one lost or dazed or partially blotted out. People glanced +at her as they hurried by. There were some who turned and glanced a +second time. She might have been a person with a sorrow--a love-sorrow. +At that thought Edith's heart went out to her in sympathy. She herself +was so happy, with a happiness that had grown more intense each month, +each week, each day, of her six years of married life, that it filled +her imagination with a blissful, pitying pain to think that other women +suffered. + +The pity was sincere, and the bliss came from the knowledge of her +security. She felt it wonderful to have such a sense of safety as that +she experienced in gazing across the street at the girl's wistful face. +It was like the overpowering thankfulness with which a man on a rock +looks on while others drown. It wasn't callousness; it was only an +appreciation of mercies. She was genuinely sorry for the girl, if the +girl needed sorrow; but she didn't see what she could do to help her. +It was well known that out in that life of New York--and of the world at +large--there were tempests of passion in which lives were wrecked; but +from them she herself was as surely protected by her husband's love as, +in her warm and well-stored house, she was shielded from hunger and the +storm. She accepted this good fortune meekly and as a special +blessedness; but she couldn't help rejoicing all the more in the +knowledge of her security. + +The knowledge of her security gave luxury to the sigh with which she +turned in the course of a few minutes to write her note. The desk stood +under the mirror between the two windows at the end of the small back +drawing-room. The small back drawing-room projected as an ell from the +larger one that crossed the front of the house. She had just reached the +words, "shall have great pleasure in accepting your kind invitation +to--" when she heard her husband's step on the stairs. He was coming up +from his solitary breakfast. She could hear, too, the rustle of the +newspaper in his hand as he ascended, softly and tunelessly whistling. +The sound of that whistling, which generally accompanied his presence +in the house, was more entrancing to her than the trill of nightingales. + +The loneliness her fancy ascribed to the girl over by the Park +emphasized her sense of possession. She raised her head and looked into +the mirror. The miracle of it struck her afresh, that the great, strong +man she saw entering the room, with his brown velvet house-jacket and +broad shoulders and splendid head, should be hers. She herself was a +little woman, of soft curves and dimpling smiles and no particular +beauty; and he had stooped, in his strength and tenderness, to make her +bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, as she had become. And he had +become bone of _her_ bone and flesh of _her_ flesh. She was no more his +than he was hers. That was the great fact. She was no longer content +with the limited formula, "They twain shall be one flesh"; they twain +had become one spirit and one life. + +It was while asserting this to herself, not for the first time, that she +saw him start. He started back from the window--the large central +window--to which he had gone, probably with vague thoughts of the +weather, like herself. It was the manner of his start that chiefly +attracted her attention. After drawing back he peered forward. It was +an absurd thing to think of him; she knew that--of him of all +people!--but one would almost have said that, in his own house, he +shrank from being seen. But there was the fact. There was his +attitude--his tiptoeing--his way of leaning toward the mantelpiece at an +angle from which he could see what was going on in the Park and yet be +protected by the curtain. + +Then it came to her, with a flush that made her tingle all over, that +she was spying on him. He thought her in the children's room up-stairs, +when all the while she was watching him in a mirror. Never in her life +had she known such a rush of shame. Bending her head, she scribbled +blindly, "dinner on Tuesday evening the twenty-fourth at--" She was +compelled by an inner force she didn't understand to glance up at the +mirror again, but, to her relief, he had gone. + +Later she heard him at the telephone. To avoid all appearance of +listening she went to the kitchen to give her orders for the day. On her +return he was in the hall, dressed for going out. Scanning his face, she +thought he looked suddenly care-worn. + +"I've ordered a motor to take me downtown," he explained, as he pulled +on his gloves. He generally took the street-car in Madison Avenue. + +"Aren't you well?" she thought it permissible to ask. + +"Oh yes; I'm all right." + +"Then why--?" + +He made an effort to be casual: "Well, I just thought I would." + +She had decided not to question him--it was a matter of honor or pride +with her, she was not sure which--but while giving him the note to post +she ventured to say, "You're not worried about anything, are you?" + +"Not in the least." He seemed to smother the words by stooping to kiss +her good-by. + +She followed him to the door. "You'd tell me, wouldn't you, if you were +worried?" + +For the second time he stooped and kissed her, again smothering the +words, "Yes, dear; but I'm not." + +She stood staring at the glass door after he had closed it behind him. +"Oh, what is it?" she questioned. Within less than an hour the world had +become peopled with fears, and all she could do was to stare at the +door through which she could still see him dimly. + +She could see him dimly, but plainly, for the curtain of patterned +filet-work hanging flat against the glass was almost transparent from +within the house, though impenetrable from outside. Was it her +imagination that saw him look cautiously round before leaving the +protection of the doorway? Was it her imagination that watched while he +crossed the pavement hurriedly, to spring into the automobile before he +could be observed? Was it only the needless alarm of a foolish woman +that thought him anxious to reach the shelter of the motor lest he +should be approached or accosted? She tried to think so. It was easier +to question her own sanity than to doubt him. She would not doubt him. +She assured herself of that as she returned to her post in the oriel +window. + +The girl in gray was gone, and down the long street, over which there +was a thin glaze of ice, the motor was creeping carefully. She watched +it because he was inside. It was all she should see of him till +nightfall. The whole of the long day must be passed with this strange +new something in her heart--this something that wasn't anything. If he +would only come back for a minute and put his arms about her and let her +look up into his face she would _know_ it wasn't anything. She did know +it; she said so again and again. But if he would only discover that he +had forgotten something--a handkerchief or his cigar-case; that did +happen occasionally.... + +And then it was as if her prayer was to be answered while still on her +lips. Before the vehicle had got so far away as to be indistinguishable +from other vehicles she saw it stop. It stopped and turned. She held her +breath. Slowly, very slowly, it began to creep up the gentle slope +again. She supposed it must be the treacherous ground that made it move +at such a snail's pace. It moved as if the chauffeur or his client were +looking for some one. Gradually it drew up at the curb. It was the curb +toward the Park--and from another of the little openings with iron posts +to space them off appeared the girl in gray. + +She advanced promptly, as if she had been called. At the door of the car +she stood for a few minutes in conversation with the occupant. For one +of the parties at least that method of communication was apparently not +satisfactory, for he stepped out, dismissed the cab, and accompanied the +girl through the little opening into the Park. In a second or two they +were out of sight, down one of the sloping pathways. + + * * * * * + +During the next two months Edith had no explanation of this mystery, nor +did she seek one. After the first days of amazement and questioning she +fell back on what she took to be her paramount duty--to trust. She +argued that if he had seen her in some analogous situation, however +astounding, he would have trusted her to the uttermost; and she must do +the same by him. There were ever so many reasons, she said to herself, +that would not only account for the incident, but do him credit. The +girl might be a stenographer dismissed from his office, asking to be +reinstated; she might be a poor relation making an appeal; she might be +a wretched woman toward whom he was acting on behalf of a friend. Such +cases, and similar cases, arose frequently. + +The wonder was, however, that he never spoke of it. There was that side +to it, too. It induced another order of reflection. He was so much in +the habit of relating to her, partly for her amusement, partly for his +own, all the happenings, both trivial and important, of each day, that +his silence with regard to this one, which surely must be considered +strange--strange, if no more--was noticeable. A wretched woman toward +whom he was acting on behalf of a friend! It surely couldn't, _couldn't_ +be a wretched woman toward whom he was acting, not on behalf of a +friend, but.... + +That it might be all over and done with would make no difference. Of +course it was all over and done with--if it was that. No man could love +a woman as he had loved his wife during the past six or seven years, and +still--But it _wasn't_ that. It never _had_ been that. _If_ it had +been--even before they were married, even before he knew her--But she +would choke that thought back. She would choke everything back that told +against him. She developed the will to trust. She developed a trust that +acted on her doubts like a narcotic--not solving them, but dulling their +poignancy into stupor. + +So March went out, and April passed, and May came in, with leaves on +the trees and tulips in the Park, and children playing on the bits of +greensward. She had walked as far as the Zoo with the two little boys, +and, having left them with their French governess, was on her way home. +People were in the habit of dropping in between four and six, and of +late she had become somewhat dependent on their company. They kept her +from thinking. Their scraps of gossip provided her, when she talked to +her husband, with topics that steered her away from dangerous ground. He +himself had given her a hint that a certain ground was dangerous; and, +though he had done it laughingly, she had grown so sensitive as to see +in his words more perhaps than they meant. She had asked him a question +on some subject--she had forgotten what--quite remote from the mystery +of the girl in gray. Leaning across the table, with amusement on his +lips and in his eyes, he had replied: + +"Don't you remember the warning? + + 'Where the apple reddens + Never pry, + Lest we lose our Edens, + Eve and I.'" + +Inwardly she had staggered from the words as if he had struck her, +though he had no reason to suspect that. In response she merely said, +pensively: "_En sommes nous lá?_" + +"_En sommes nous_--where?" + +"Where the apple reddens." + +"Oh, but everybody's there." + +"You mean all married people." + +"Married and single." + +"But married people _more_ than single." + +"I mean that we all have our illusions, and we'd better keep them as +long as possible. When we don't--" + +"We lose our Edens." + +"Exactly." + +"So that our Edens are no more than a sort of fool's paradise." + +"Ah, no; a sort of wise man's paradise, in which he keeps all he's been +able to rescue from a wicked world." + +She was afraid to go on. She might learn that she and their children and +their home and their happiness had been what _he_ had been able to +rescue from a wicked world--and that wouldn't have appeased her. Her +thoughts would have been of the wicked world from which he had escaped +more than of the paradise in which he had found shelter. She was no holy +Elisabeth, to welcome Tannhäuser back from the Venusberg. That he should +have been in the Venusberg at all could be only a degree less torturing +to her than to know he was there still. + +So she kept away from subjects that would have told her more than she +feared already, taking refuge in themes she had once considered vapid +and inane. To miss nothing, she hurried homeward on that May afternoon, +so as to be beside her tea-table in the drawing-room before any one +appeared. And yet, the minute came when she cast aside all solicitudes +and hesitations. + +Going up the pathway leading to the opening opposite her house, she +noticed a figure standing between the two iron posts. It was not now a +figure in gray, but one in white--in white, with a rose-colored sash, +and carrying a rose-colored parasol. Edith quickened her pace +unconsciously, urged on by fear lest the girl should move away before +she had time to reach her. In spite of a rush of incoherent emotions she +was able to reflect that she was perfectly cool, entirely +self-possessed. She was merely dominated by a need--the need of coming +face to face with this person and seeing who she was. She had no idea +what she herself would do or say, or whether or not she would do or say +anything. That was secondary; it would take care of itself. The +immediate impulse was too imperative to resist. She must at least _see_, +even if nothing came of her doing so. If she had any thought of a +resulting consequence it was in the assumption that her presence as wife +and woman of the world would dispel the noxious thing she had been +striving to combat for the past two months, as the sun dissipates a +miasma. + +But her approaches were careful and courteous. She, too, carried a +parasol, negligently, gracefully, over the shoulder. It served to +conceal her face till she had passed the stranger by a pace or two and +glanced casually backward. She might have done so, however, with full +deliberation, for the woman took no notice of her at all. Her misty, +troubled blue eyes, of which the lids were red as if from weeping, were +fixed on the house across the way. + +Edith saw now that, notwithstanding a certain youthfulness of dress and +bearing, this was a woman, not a girl. She was thirty-five at least, +though the face was of the blond, wistful, Scandinavian type that fades +from pallor to pallor without being perceptibly stamped by time. It was +pallor like that of the white rose after it has passed the perfection of +its bloom and before it has begun to wither. + +Edith paused, still without drawing the misty eyes on herself. + +"Do you know the people in that house?" she asked, at last. + +The woman looked at her, not inquiringly or with much show of +comprehension, but vaguely and as from a distance. Edith repeated the +question. + +The thin, rather bloodless lips parted. The answer seemed to come under +compulsion from a stronger will: "I--I know--" + +"You know the gentleman." + +The pale thin lips parted again. After a second or two there was a +barely audible "Yes." + +"I'm his wife." + +There was no sign on the woman's part either of surprise or of quickened +interest. + +There was only the brief hesitation that preceded all her responses. + +"Are you?" + +"You knew he was married, didn't you?" + +"Oh yes." + +"Have you known him long?" + +"Eleven years." + +"That's longer than I've known him." + +"Oh yes." + +"Do you know how long I've known him?" + +"Oh yes." + +"How do you know?" + +"I remember." + +"What makes you remember?" + +"He told me." + +"Why did he tell you?" + +A glow of animation came into the dazed face. "That's what I don't know. +I didn't care--much. He always said he would marry some day. It had +nothing to do with me. We agreed on that from the first." + +"From the first of--what?" + +"From the first of everything." + +Before putting the next question Edith took time to think. Because she +was so startlingly cool and clear she was aware of feeling like one who +stands with the revolver at her breast or the draught of cyanide in her +hand, knowing that within a few seconds it may be too late to +reconsider. And yet, she had never in her life felt more perfectly +collected. She looked up the street and down the street, and across at +her own house, of which the cheerful windows reflected the May sunshine. +She bowed and smiled to a man on foot. She bowed and smiled two or three +times to people passing in carriages. From the Park she could hear the +shrieks of children on a merry-go-round; she could follow a catchy +refrain from "The Belle of New York" as played by a band at a distance. +Her sang-froid was extraordinary. It was while making the observation to +herself that her question came out, before she had decided whether or +not to utter it. She had no remorse for that, however, since she knew +she couldn't have kept herself from asking it in the end. As well expect +the man staggering to the outer edge of a precipice not to reel over. + +"So it was--everything?" + +In uttering the words she felt oddly shy. She looked down at the +pavement, then, with a flutter of the eyelids, up at the woman. + +But the woman herself showed no such hesitation. + +"Oh yes." + +"And is--still?" + +And then the woman who was not a girl, but who was curiously like a +child, suddenly took fright. Tears came to her eyes; there was a +convulsive movement of the face. Edith could see she was a person who +wept easily. + +"I won't tell you any more." + +The declaration was made in a tone of childish fretfulness. + +Edith grew soothing. "I'm sorry if I've hurt your feelings. Don't mind +speaking, because it doesn't make any difference to me--now." + +The woman stared, the tears wet on her cheeks. "Don't you--love him?" + +Edith was ready with her answer. It came firmly: "No." + +"Didn't you--_ever_?" + +This time Edith considered, answering more slowly. "I don't know. If I +ever did--the thing is so dead--that I don't understand how it could +ever have been alive." + +The woman dried her eyes. "I don't see how you can help it." + +"_You_ can't help it, can you?" Edith smiled, with a sense of her own +superiority. "I suppose that's the reason you come here. I've seen you +before." + +"Have you?" + +"Yes; several times. And that _is_ the reason, isn't it?--because you +can't help loving him." + +The woman's tears began to flow again. "It's because I don't know what +else to do. When he doesn't come any more--" + +"Oh, so he doesn't come." + +"Not unless I make him. When he sees me here--" + +"Well, what then?" + +"He gets angry. He comes to tell me that if I do it again--" + +"I see. But he _comes_. It brings him. That's the main thing, isn't it? +Well, now that you've told me so much, I'll--I'll try to--to send him." +She was struck with a new thought. "If you were to come in now--you +could--you could wait for him." + +The frightened look returned. "Oh, but he'd kill me!" + +"Oh no, he wouldn't." She smiled again, with a sense of her +superiority. "He wouldn't kill you when he knew I didn't care." + +"But _don't_ you care?" + +She shook her head. "No. And I shall never care again. He can do what he +likes. He's free--and so are you. I'd rather he went to you. Eleven +years, did you say? Why, he was your husband long before he was mine." + +"Oh no; he was never my husband. We agreed from the first--" + +"He wasn't your husband according to the strict letter of the contract; +but I don't care anything about that. It's what _I_ call being your +husband. I'd rather you took him back.... Oh, my God! There he is." + +He was standing on the other side of the street watching them. How long +he had been there neither of them knew. Engrossed in the subject between +them, and screened by their sunshades, they hadn't noticed him come +round the corner from Madison Avenue on his way home. He stood leaning +on his stick, stroking an end of his long mustache pensively. He wore a +gray suit and a soft gray felt hat. For a minute or more there was no +change in his attitude, even when the terrified eyes of the women told +him he was observed. As he began to thread his way among the vehicles to +cross the street he displayed neither haste nor confusion. Edith could +see that, though he was pale and grave, he could, even in this +situation, carry himself with dignity. In its way it was something to be +glad of. She herself stood her ground as a man on a sinking ship waits +for the waves to engulf him. + +Reaching the pavement, he ignored his wife to go directly to the woman. + +"What does this mean, Maggie?" + +His tone was not so much stern as reproachful. The faded woman, who was +still trying to make herself young and pretty, quailed at it. + +Edith came to her relief: + +"Isn't that something for _you_ to explain, Chip?" + +He turned to his wife. "I'm willing to explain anything you like, +Edith--as far as I can." + +"I won't ask you how far that is--because I know already everything I +need to know." + +"Everything you need to know--what for?" + +"For understanding my position, I suppose." + +"Your position? Your position is that of my wife." + +"Oh no, it isn't. There's your wife." + +"Don't say that, Edith. That lady would be the first to tell you--" + +"She _has_ been the first to tell me. She's been extremely kind. She's +answered my questions with a frankness--" + +"But _you're_ not kind, Edith. Surely you see that--that mentally she's +not--not like every one else." + +"Oh, quite. I don't think _I_ am now. I doubt if I ever shall be again. +No woman can be mentally like every one else after she's been deceived +as we've been." + +"_She_ hasn't been deceived, Edith; and I should never have deceived you +if--" + +She laughed without mirth. "If you hadn't wanted to keep me in the +dark." + +"No; if I hadn't had responsibilities--" + +"Responsibilities! Do you call _that_"--her glance indicated the woman, +whose misty stare went from the one to the other in a vain effort to +follow what they were saying--"do you call that a responsibility?" + +"I'm afraid I do, Edith." + +"And what about--me?" + +"Hasn't a man more responsibilities than one?" + +"A married man hasn't more wives than one." + +"A married man has to take his life as his life has formed itself. He +was an unmarried man first." + +"Which means, I suppose, that the ties he formed when he was an +unmarried man--" + +"May bind him still--if they're of a certain kind." + +"And yours _are_--of a certain kind." + +"They're of _that_ kind. I haven't been able to free myself from them. +But don't you think we'd better go in? We can hardly talk about such +things out here." + +She bowed to another passing friend. He, too, lifted his hat. When the +friend had gone by she glanced hastily toward the house. + +"No, I can't go in," she said, hurriedly. "I'd rather talk out here." + +"Very well, then. We can take a stroll in the Park?" + +"What? We three?" + +"Oh, she's gone--if that's the only reason." + +Turning, Edith saw the woman with the rose-colored parasol rapidly +descending the path by which she had come. + +[Illustration: He turned from the girl to his wife. "I'm willing to +explain anything you like--as far as I can."] + +"I'd still rather stay out here," she said. "If I were to go in, I think +it would--" + +"Yes? What?" + +"I think it would kill me." + +"Oh, come, Edith. Let's face the thing calmly. Don't let us become +hysterical." + +"_Am_ I hysterical, Chip?" + +"In your own way, yes. Where another woman would make a fuss, you're +unnaturally frozen; but it comes to the same thing. I know that your +heart--" + +"Is breaking. Oh, I don't deny that. But I'd rather it broke here than +indoors. I don't know why, but I can stand it here, with people going +by; whereas in there--" + +"Oh, cut it, Edith, for God's sake! Can't you see that my heart's +breaking, too?" + +She looked him in the face, shaking her head sadly. "No, Chip, I can't +see that. If there had been any danger of it you wouldn't have--" + +"But I couldn't help it. That's what you don't seem to understand." + +"No; I'm afraid I don't." + +"Would you _try_ to understand--if I were to tell you?" + +"I think I know already most of what you'd have to say. She's a woman +whom you knew long before you knew me--and from whom you've never been +able--" + +"She was the daughter of a Swedish Lutheran pastor--dead +now--established in New Jersey. In some way she drifted to the stage. +Her name was Margarethe Kastenskjold. When she went on the stage she +made it Maggie Clare. She had about as much talent for the theater as a +paper doll. When I first knew her she was still getting odd jobs in +third and fourth rate companies. Since then she hasn't played at all." + +"I understand. There's been no need of it. She's quite well dressed." + +"Let me go on, will you, Edith? I was about two or three and twenty +then. She may have been a year or two older. She was living at that time +with Billy Cummings. And somehow it happened--after Billy died--and she +was stranded--" + +She made an appealing gesture. "_Please!_ I know how those things come +about--or I can easily imagine. In your case--I'd--I'd rather not try." +She got the words out somehow without breaking down. + +"All the same, Edith," he went on, "you'll _have_ to try--if you're +going to do me anything like justice. If she hadn't been a refined, +educated sort of girl, entirely at sea in her surroundings, and +stranded--stranded for money, mind you, next door to going to +starve--and no chance of getting a job, because she couldn't act a +little bit--if it hadn't been for all that--" + +"Oh, I know how you'd be generous!" + +"Yes; but you don't know how I came to be a fool." + +"Is there any reason why I _should_ know--now that the fact is there?" + +He looked at her steadily. "Edith! What are you made of?" + +She returned his look. "I think--of stone. Up till to-day I've been a +woman of flesh and blood; but I'm not sure that I am any longer. You +can't kill the heart in a woman's body--and still expect her to _feel_." + +"But, Edith--Edith darling--there's no reason why I _should_ have killed +the heart in your body when I never dreamed of doing you a wrong--that +is, an intentional wrong," he corrected. + +"You knew you were doing _some_ woman a wrong--some future woman, the +woman you'd marry--as far back as when you took up what Billy Cummings +dropped from his dead hands--" + +"Oh, that! That, dear, is nothing but the talk of feminist meetings. Men +are men, and women are women. You can't make one law for them both. +Besides, it's too big a subject to go into now." + +"I'm not trying to. I wasn't thinking of men in general; I was thinking +only of you." + +"But, good Lord, Edith, you don't think I've been better than any one +else, do you?" + +Her forlorn smile made his heart ache. "I _did_ think so. I dare say it +was a mistake." + +"It _was_ a mistake. If you hadn't made it--" + +"But it was at least a mistake one can understand. I could hardly be +expected to take it for granted--whatever men may be, or may have the +right to be--that the man who asked me to marry him--and who made me +love him as I think few men have been loved by women--I could hardly +take it for granted that he was already keeping--and had been keeping +for years--and would keep for years to come--another--" + +He moved impatiently. "But, I tell you, I couldn't get rid of her. I +couldn't shake her off--or pay her off--or do any of the usual things. +It was agreed between us before I married you--_long_ before I married +you--that everything was at an end. But, poor soul, she doesn't know +what an agreement is. There's something lacking in her. She's always +been like a child, and of late years she's been more so. If you knew her +as I do you'd be sorry for her." + +"Oh, I _am_ sorry for her. Her whole mind is ravaged by suffering." + +"I know it's my fault; but it isn't wholly or even chiefly my fault. A +woman like that has no right to suffer. She lost the privilege of +suffering when she became what she is. At any rate, she has no right to +haunt like a shadow the man who's befriended her--" + +"But, I presume, she's befriended _him_. And--and continues to befriend +him--since that's the word." + +He avoided her eyes, looking up the street and whistling tunelessly +beneath his breath. + +"I said--_continues_ to befriend him," she repeated. + +The tuneless whistling went on. She allowed him time to get the full +effect of her meaning. As far as she could see her way, her line of +action depended on his response. When he dodged the question she knew +what she would have to do. + +"Look here, Edith," he said, at last, "the long and short of it is this. +She's on my hands--and I can't abandon her. I must see that she's +provided for, at the very least. Hang it all, she's--she's attached to +me; has been attached to me for more than ten years. I can't ignore +that; now, can I? And she's helpless. How can I desert her? I can't do +it, any more than I could desert a poor old faithful dog--or a baby. Can +I, now?" + +"No; I dare say not." + +"But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll undertake never to see her +again--of my own free will. I'll give you my word of honor--" + +She shook her head. "Oh, I'm not asking for that." + +"Then what do you ask for? Just tell me, and whatever it is--" + +"It's that, since you can't abandon her, you abandon me." + +"_What_?" + +She repeated the words more firmly. + +"_Never_." + +"Then I'm afraid it will be for me to abandon you." She gave him a +little nod. "Good-by." + +She had turned and taken a step or two along the pavement before his +astonishment allowed him to overtake her. + +"Edith, for God's sake, what do you mean? You're not crazy, are you?" + +"Quite possibly I am; I can't tell yet. Or perhaps I _can_ tell. It's +like this," she went on, after an instant's thinking. "A half-hour ago, +while I was talking to that--that poor creature--before you came up--I +was quite aware of being like a woman with a dose of cyanide of +potassium in her hand, and doubting whether or not to take it. Well, I +took it. I took it and I--died. That is, the Edith who was your +wife--died. What survives of her personality is something else. I don't +know what it is yet--it's too soon to say--but it isn't your wife.... +It's--it's something like that." + +"Oh, don't!" he groaned. "Don't talk that way. Come in. You can't stay +out here." + +She looked over at the house again. He thought she shuddered. "I can't +stay out here; but I don't have to go in--there." + +"What do you mean? Where are you going?" + +"Just now I'm going to Aunt Emily's." + +"Very well. I'll send a carriage for you after dinner--if you stay so +late." + +"No; don't do that." + +"Do you mean--?" + +"I mean that I may stay there for two or three days--perhaps longer. +After that I'll--I'll see." + +"You'll see--what?" + +"Where to go next." + +"Oh, come, Edie, let's talk sense. You know I can't allow that." + +She smiled again, with that queer, forlorn smile that seemed to stab +him. "I'm afraid the authority is out of your hands--now." + +He let that pass. + +"Even so, there are the children. Think of them." + +"I _am_ thinking of them--which is why I must hurry away. They'll be +here in a minute; and I--I can't see them yet. I shouldn't be able to +bear it." + +"And do you think you'll be able to bear our being separated for two or +three days, when you _know_ I adore you? Why, you'll break down within +an hour." + +"That's just it. That's why I must hurry. I shall break down within half +an hour. You don't suppose I can go on like this? I'm almost breaking +down now. I must get to Aunt Emily's before--" + +She was interrupted by a cry: "Hello, papa!" + +Up the pathway leading from the Zoo a little white-suited man of five +came prancing and screaming, followed by another of three doing the +same. The French governess marched primly and sedately behind them. + +"You see?" Edith said, quickly. "I must go. I can't see them +to-night--or speak to them--or kiss them--or hear them say their +prayers--or anything. You wouldn't understand; but--but I couldn't bear +it. You must tell them I've gone to spend a few nights with Aunt Emily, +as I did when she was ill. You must say that to the servants, too. Tell +Jenny she needn't send me anything--yet. I have some things there--that +I left the last time--" + +"Oh, you're not going to stay all night," he groaned. "You'll come +back." + +"Very well. If I come back--I come back. It will be so much the better +or so much the worse, as the case may be. If I come back, it will be +because I accept the compromise you make between me and--and your +other--" + +He broke in hastily. "It's not a compromise--and there's no 'other.' If +you could see how far from vital the whole thing is, from a man's point +of view--" + +"Unfortunately, I'm only a woman, and can see it only from a woman's +point of view. So that, if I don't come back, it will be +because--because--the Edith who was your wife is dead beyond +resurrection." + +"But she isn't!" + +"Perhaps not. We must see. I shall know better when I've--I've been away +from you a little." + +"And in the mean time you may be risking your happiness and mine." + +She shot him a reproachful glance. "Do _you_ say that?" + +"Yes, Edith, I do say it. If I've broken the letter of the contract, you +may be transgressing its spirit. Don't forget that. Take care. What I +did, I did because I couldn't help it. You _can_ help it--" + +"Oh no, I can't. That's where you haven't understood me. You say I don't +see things from your point of view, and perhaps I don't. But neither do +you see them from mine. You wonder why I don't go over there"--she +nodded toward the house--"where I had my home--where my children have +theirs--where you and I ... But I can't. That's all I can say. I may do +it some day; I don't know. But just now--I couldn't drag myself up the +steps. It would mean that we were going on as before, when all +that--that sort of thing--seems to me so--so utterly over." + +"You'll feel differently when you've had time to think." + +"Perhaps I shall. And time to think is all I'm asking. You understand +that, don't you? that I'm not making anything definite--yet. If I can +ever come back to you, I will. But if I can't--" + +"Hello, mama! Hello, papa!" The elder boy galloped up. "We've seen the +monkeys. And one great big monkey looked like--" + +"Allô, maman! Allô, papa! N's avons vu les singes--mais des drôles! +Il y en avait un qui--" + +The children caught their father round the knees. Stooping, he put his +arms about them, urging them toward their mother. They were to plead for +him--to be his advocates. + +"Tell mama," he whispered to the older boy, "not to go to Aunt Emily's +to-night. Tell her we can't do without her--that we want her at home." +He turned to the younger. "Dis à maman que tu vas pleurer si elle te +quitte ce soir--qu'il faut qu'elle vienne t'écouler dire la prière." + +But, when he raised himself, Edith was already walking swiftly up the +Avenue. He would have followed her, only that the children seemed to +restrain him, clinging to his knees. All he could do was to watch +her--watch her while the thronging crowds and the shimmering sun-shot +dust of the golden afternoon blotted her from his sight--and the great +city-world out of which he had received her took her back. + + + + +II + +RESENTMENT + + +It was a strange sensation to be free. It was still more strange that it +was not a sensation. It was a kind of numbness. She could only feel that +she didn't feel. In spite of her repeated silent assertions, "I'm free! +I'm free!" any consciousness of change eluded her. + +It was true that there had been a moment like a descent into hell, from +which she thought she must come up another woman. Aunt Emily and the +lawyer had whirled her somewhere in a motor. Veiled as heavily as was +consistent with articulation, she had told a tale that seemed +abominable, though it was no more than a narrative of the facts. It +added to her sense of degradation to learn that one of the cheaper +dailies had published a snapshot of her taken as she was re-entering the +motor to come away. But even the horror of that moment passed, as +something too unreal to be other than a dream, and, except that she and +the children were staying with Aunt Emily instead of in their own home, +all was as before. All was as before to a disappointing degree--to a +degree that maddened her. + +It maddened her because it brought no appeasement to that which for more +than a year had been her dominating motive--to do something to Chip that +would bring home to him a realizing sense of what he had done to her. It +was not that she wanted revenge. She was positive as to that. She wanted +only to make him understand. Hitherto he hadn't understood. She had seen +that in all his letters, right up to the moment when, driven to despair +by what seemed to her his moral obtuseness, she had implored him not to +write again. It was to help him to understand that which he was either +unable or unwilling to understand that she had so resolutely refused to +see him--partly that, and partly Aunt Emily. She would have died if it +hadn't been for Aunt Emily--died or given in; and the mere thought of +giving in frightened her. + +It frightened her chiefly because she possessed the capacity to do it. +In a way it would be easier to do it than not--easier to do it, and yet +impossible to go on with the new situation thus created after it was +done. It would mean being back in the old home and resuming the old +life; there would be what people called a reconciliation. Chip would be +coming and going and whistling tunelessly all over the house. And the +awful thing about it would be that he had it in him to be as happy as if +this horrible thing had never taken place--happier, doubtless, because +it would be behind him. He would not have understood; she would have +ceased trying to make him understand; he would have so little seen the +significance of his own acts as to feel free to do the same thing all +over again. + +So the impulse to go back frightened her with a fear that paralyzed her +longing. If he had said but once: "Edith, I know I've sinned against +you; I know I've made you suffer; I've broken the contract between us; +I'm repentant; forgive me," it might have been different. But he had +said nothing of the kind. His letters, beseeching though they were, only +aggravated her complaint against him. "What else could I do?... The poor +thing clung to me.... As far as it affected my devotion to you it might +have happened in another phase of creation." That was the amazing part +of it, that he should expect her to be content with such an explanation, +that he should try to deprive her of a wife's last poor pitiful +privilege, a sense of indignity. She was not only to condone what he had +done, but as nearly as possible she was to give it her approval. + +As to this aspect of the case she might not have been so clear if it +hadn't been for Aunt Emily. Aunt Emily was very clear. She was clear and +just, without being wholly unsympathetic toward Chip. That is, she +pointed out the fact that Chip did no more than most men would do. He +was no worse than the average. He might even be a little better. But, +according to Aunt Emily, the man didn't live who was worthy of a really +good woman's love. It was foolish for a really good woman to put herself +at the disadvantage of casting her pearls before--well, Aunt Emily was +too much of a lady to say what; it was all the more foolish considering +the quantity of feminine tag-rag and bobtail quite good enough to be +wives. + +Edith couldn't deny that her aunt had kept herself on an enviably high +plane of safety. She had her money to herself, and no heartaches. She +was respected, admired, and feared. By a little circle of adorers, +mostly composed of spinsters younger, poorer, and less advantageously +placed than herself, she was even loved. She was far from lonely; she +was far from having missed the best things in life. She was traveled, +well-read, philanthropic, and broad-minded. She was likewise tall, +stately, and dominant, with an early Victorian face to which a +mid-Victorian wig, kept in place by a band of plaits around the brow, +was not unbecoming. Nevertheless, Aunt Emily was entirely modern, modern +with that up-to-date femininity which with regard to men takes its key +from the bee's impulse toward the drone, stinging him to death once he +has fulfilled his functions. + +It was a help to Edith that Aunt Emily could enter into the sufferings +entailed by an outraged love without being hampered by the weaknesses +inherent in the love itself. She could afford to be detached and +impartial bringing to bear on the situation the interest every +intelligent person takes in drama. For her participation Edith felt she +couldn't be too grateful to a relative on whom she had no urgent claim +beyond the fact that she was now her only one. Aunt Emily's clear vision +might, indeed, be said to have found the way through a tangle of +poignant conditions in which her own poor heart had been able to do +nothing but fumble helplessly. + +It was a way of sorrows, and there had been no choice but to take it. +Chip had to be made to _feel_. Her whole being had become concentrated +on that result. From it she had expected not only realization for him, +but assuagement of longing for herself; and the latter hadn't come. She +could hardly see that anything had come at all. If it were not for Aunt +Emily she wouldn't have perceived that she had won a victory. Chip might +realize now; she didn't know; she probably would never know; it was +perhaps the impossibility of knowing that left her still unsatisfied. So +long as the thing had not yet been done she had enjoyed at least the +relief of action. She was challenging Chip, she was defying him; he was +making her some sort of response, even when it was made in silence. She +was _the_ one and he was _the_ other, and there was an interplay of +forces between them. Now all that was broken off; all that had come to +an end. She was still _the_ one; but there was no other. Where the other +had been there was a blank, an emptiness. Her heart when it cried out to +him produced the queer, creepy effect of a man talking to himself--there +was no one to hear or to answer. There was a needle but no pole; there +was a law of gravitation, but nothing to justify the power of +attraction. + +She was dazed, lost, which was the reason why in the following autumn +she went abroad. She didn't know what else to do. Aunt Emily was rich +and kind; but there were limits to hospitality. One had to feel that +there was a world beneath one's feet, and Europe seemed to be there for +that purpose. Besides, it was easy to travel while the children were so +young. The lawyer conveyed to Chip her intention of taking them, and +returned with the father's consent. She was not bound to ask for this, +but she considered it courteous to do so. If while she did it he chose +to take the opportunity to recognize her continued existence by an +inquiry or a word--well, then, she said to herself with a sob, it was +there for him to make use of. But he didn't take it. He maintained the +silence on which he had fallen back ever since her final peremptory +letter requesting him not to write to her--she wondered if she had made +it more peremptory than she had intended!--and so she sailed away +without so much as a gift from him to the children. She could hardly +bear to look at the shore of the continent that held him as it faded out +of sight, so bitterly she resented what she now called his callousness. + +When the cold weather came she established herself at Cap d'Ail, where +the lofty perch of the hotel above Monaco and the Mediterranean seemed +to lift her into a region of friendly, flowery peace. She enjoyed this +as much as she could enjoy anything. No echo of the past reached her +here, and it was an unexpected relief to be away from Aunt Emily's +bursts of triumph and felicitation. With a book she hardly looked at in +her hand she could sit at her window or on the terrace, soothed +incomprehensibly by the blue-green sweep of the immemorial sea beside +which so many other sad hearts had watched before her own. She felt +herself caught into a fellowship that included not only Hagar and +Hecuba, but myriads of unremembered women whose tears alone might have +filled this vast inland ocean--drawing a comfort that was not wholly +morbid from the reflection that there was an end even to the breaking of +hearts. + +Here in this high, sequestered spot, which nevertheless preserved the +_mondanités_ to which she was accustomed, she would gladly have spent +the winter alone with her children and their governess had there not +arrived at the hotel a woman she had known for many years and who was in +a position oddly similar to her own. At school she had been Gertie +Cottle. In New York she was Mrs. Harry Scadding. She was now Mrs. G. +Cottle Scadding for purposes of exact identification. She also had +"freed herself"; she also had had a snapshot in the cheaper dailies; she +also traveled with two children. It was impossible for Edith not to meet +her and engage in amicable conversations, during which the lady talked +freely of her "case," discussing the merits and demerits of her "co-," +as though that person had been a kind of partner. + +She was a lively young woman, frank and amusing. Moreover, she knew the +people who made up Edith's small world, and Edith was lonely. While the +two sets of children played together the two mothers sat on the terrace +and talked. It was talk in which Edith was chiefly a listener, but a +listener who couldn't deny that she was entertained. She was +uncomfortable only when discerning compatriots appeared, and with +visible nods and smiles rated them as "two of a kind." It was a kind +over which she and Chip had smiled and nodded many a time during their +wanderings in Europe, never thinking that she herself should ever be +classed in the number. + +She had been able to take the situation lightly then--this curious +situation of the "freed" American wife, with or without children, +drifting through Europe, aimless, and generally better off when +friendless. But she began to be sorry for the type. Instead of shrinking +from Gertie in the presence of the discerning compatriots, as she was at +first inclined to do, she made it a point to be seen with her, +championing the sisterhood of loneliness. There were moments when this +association might not have been discreet; but they were also moments in +which--so it seemed to Edith--discretion was not a part of valor. Once +or twice she accompanied her friend to Nice; once or twice to Monte +Carlo. On each of these occasions she found herself in a gathering of +cosmopolitan odds and ends in which she was not at ease; but +championship being new to her, she felt obliged to take its bitter with +its sweet. That it was mostly bitter gave her additional ground of +complaint against Chip. He had driven her to a kind of deterioration, a +deterioration she couldn't define, but of which, as of something noxious +in the atmosphere, she was conscious during every moment spent in her +friend's society. + +She grew fanciful with regard to the other Americans in the hotel. She +imagined they slighted her, or disapproved of her, or watched her course +with misgiving. With a family of good, simple people, who apparently had +nothing to strive for with the restlessness which characterized the +social fag-ends whom she was now in the habit of meeting, she would have +been glad to establish relations; but she never got beyond an occasional +bow or smile, generally over some incident connected with the children. +Of one man she was afraid. She was afraid of him without knowing why, +except that he seemed to watch her rather pityingly. She resented the +pity; she resented his watching her at all. And yet.... + +If he hadn't been a grave man, evidently occupied with grave affairs, +her resentment might have become annoyance. In the circumstances it was +resentment modified by a little gratitude. She hardly understood her +gratitude unless it was for a hint of solicitude in a world where no one +seemed to bother about her any more. He did bother about her. She grew +sure of that. Not for an instant could she think of the quiet, rather +wistful, regard with which she caught him following her or the children +as being meant otherwise than kindly. + +She had no idea who he was. All she could affirm from distant and +somewhat superficial observation was that he was Somebody--Somebody of +position, experience, and judgment--Somebody to respect. She thought, +too, that he must be Somebody of distinction, partly because he looked +it, and partly because he was served by a valet and a secretary +scarcely less distinguished than himself. All three were serious men +well into the forties. The valet was English, the secretary French, the +master American. She would not, however, have taken the last-named for a +fellow-countryman if she had not accidentally heard him speak. In regard +to externals he was as nearly as possible denationalized. He had +evidently lived a long time abroad, though he bore no one country's +special stamp. He roused her curiosity, even while the kind of interest +in herself which she attributed to him--with what she admitted were the +most shadowy of reasons--hurt her pride. It hurt it in a manner to make +her the more resolute in going her own way. + +Not that it was a really reprehensible way. The worst that could be said +of it was that it brought her into contacts and promiscuities from which +she should have been kept free. Even so no great harm had been done, +especially in the case of a woman with her knowledge of the world. None +had been so much as threatened until the arrival on the scene of a young +Frenchman, a friend of Mrs. Scadding's. Edith then found it necessary to +submit to an introduction with daily, almost hourly, hazards of +encounter. + +He was a young Frenchman like many hundreds of his kind, who might have +been a finished sketch in sepia. Sepia would have done justice to the +even tan of his complexion, to the soft-brown of his eyes, of his hair, +of his mustache, and rendered the rich chestnut which was oftener than +not his choice for clothes. Gertie flirted with him outrageously--there +was no other phrase for it. It was the kind of flirting one was obliged +to consider innocent, since the alternative would have been too +appalling. Edith opted for the innocent construction, lending an abashed +countenance to the situation out of loyalty to the sisterhood of +loneliness. It was a countenance that grew more abashed whenever, in the +process of lending it, her eye met that of the man who had constituted +himself, she was convinced, her silent guardian. + +Fortunately, Mrs. G. Cottle Scadding took herself off to Italy, the +young Frenchman disappearing at the same time. It was a new proof to +Edith of the depth of need to which she had come down that she missed +them. She missed their frivolity and inconsequentiality because they +were the only interests she had. She was thrown back, therefore, on her +own desolation and on her memories of Chip. + +She made the discovery with some alarm that Chip was becoming to her +more and more the center of a group of memories. She was losing him. +That is, she was losing him as an actuality; she was losing him as the +pivot round which her life had swung, even since her knowledge of his +great treason. She was no more appalled by the loss than by the +perception of her own volatility. + +It was a perception that deepened when, some fortnight after Gertie's +departure, the young Frenchman reappeared. "He's come back on my +account," was Edith's instant reflection. She was indignant; and yet +something else stirred in her that was not indignation, and to which she +was afraid to give a name. Perhaps there was no name to give it. As far +as she could analyze its elements, they lay in the twin facts that she +was still young enough to be attractive to men and to find pleasure in +her attractiveness. It was a pleasure that raised its head timidly, +apologetically; but it raised it none the less. + +It was a new and terrifying thought that Chip might not always be the +only man in her life. She had dedicated herself to him so entirely that +it was difficult to accept the idea that any part of her might have been +held in reserve for future possibilities. That her life should have been +blasted was bad enough; but that it should renew its vigor and put forth +shoots for a second bloom was frightful. Yet there was the fact that +such things happened. Women in her position even married again. _She_ +might marry again. She never would--of course! But remarriage was among +the potentialities of the new conditions she had achieved. The full +comprehension of this liberty filled her with dismay. + +Up to the present the knowledge that she possessed it had been theoretic +only. The young Frenchman brought home to her the fact that she could +act on it if she were ever so inclined. Not that he asked her to do so. +He had only reached the point of inviting her to dine with him at Monte +Carlo and look in at the gaming afterward. She declined this invitation +gently and without rancor toward him; but, in the idiom she used in +talking with him, it gave her to think. + +It gave her to realize also. The moment was rich in revelations +concerning herself. She discovered she was a woman whom a relatively +strange man might invite to dine with him alone. She had passed out of +the fellowship of Hagar and Hecuba to enter that of Mrs. G. Cottle +Scadding. This had happened, she hardly knew how. She discovered, +moreover, that now that it had happened, she was scarcely shocked. +Somehow it seemed in the nature of things--these curious new things she +had created for herself--that she should be invited in this way to +Ciro's and that there might be similar incidents to follow. She +certainly was not shocked. Deep down in her heart something--was it +something feminine? or was it something broadly human?--was secretly +shamefully flattered. She couldn't blame the young fellow. She couldn't +blame Gertie--very much. She might blame herself for being drawn into +Gertie's company, and yet what other course could she have taken? She +had known Gertie since they were school-girls. When all was said and +done Gertie was as good as she--in whatever met the eye. One divorced +woman could hardly draw her skirts away from another. The longer she +reflected the more clearly she saw that she couldn't have done anything +but what she had done without becoming in her own eyes a hypocrite or a +prude, and so she had laid herself open to hearing those words, spoken +ever so respectfully, with a sympathy no American could have approached: + +"Madame is so lonely. Madame is too much by herself. Wouldn't it +_distraire_ Madame to dine to-night, let us say, at Ciro's, or the Hotel +de Paris, and look in at the Casino afterward? Madame is always so sad." + +The man was too insignificant for her wrath, but not so insignificant +that he couldn't be a warning. He was a warning that even if he failed +to touch her heart it was by no means certain that another man might not +succeed; and not long afterward a man did. + +That was Sir Noel Ordway. She had met him almost at once after moving to +Cannes. She moved to Cannes practically on the advice of the +distinguished stranger who continued to follow her with eyes of +brooding concern. That is, what he said amounted to advice. It was, in a +measure, to show him that she appreciated an interest in which there was +an element that touched her profoundly that she accepted it. + +She met him suddenly at one of the many turnings in the long flight of +steps that descend from the hotel at Cap d'Ail to the station, and what +there is in the way of town. She had never come abruptly face to face +with him before. She knew she colored and betrayed a ridiculous +self-consciousness. He, on his part, was unruffled and sedate, lifting +his hat with the somewhat rigid dignity that characterized all his +movements. + +"Mrs. Chipman Walker, I think." + +She acknowledged the words by a slight inclination. He mentioned his own +name, which she knew already. + +"I've just been seeing some friends of yours," he went on, calmly, "at +Cannes. I've been lunching with the Misses Partridge." + +"Oh, they're there?" It was to say something, no matter what, to cover +up her absurd confusion that she added, "They're friends of my aunt's." + +"I, too, have the pleasure of knowing Miss Winfield, which will perhaps +excuse my self-introduction." She answered this by another slight +inclination, while he continued: "The Misses Partridge asked me to say +that they would be glad to see you, if you could ever make it convenient +to go over. They wished me to add that they'd come to see you, but that, +unfortunately, neither is quite well enough. You'd find them at the +Villa Victoire, on the Route de Fréjus." + +She was murmuring something to the effect that she would go at once, +when he said in a tone that struck her as significant: + +"It's very pleasant at Cannes--more so than here." + +She didn't resent this, perhaps because her need was too great. Besides, +there was something about him--it might have been the tenderness of a +man who himself knew what suffering was--that put him outside the region +of resentments. She only said: "Indeed? Why?" + +"You'll see that when you go. For one thing, it's further removed from +the atmosphere that comes up to us from--down there." He pointed toward +Monte Carlo. "In that way it's--healthier." + +She knew that as she thanked him and passed on she smiled, and that she +did so from lightness of heart. Certainly her heart was less heavy. It +was less heavy because of his kindness, because of this indication that +some one cared what became of her. She felt so forsaken that almost +anybody's kindness would have had the same effect, almost anybody's care +for her welfare; and so she came to respond to the appeal of Noel +Ordway. + +He sat beside her the first Sunday she lunched at the Villa Victoire. +The Misses Partridge "knew every one." Of few people in either +hemisphere could the expression be used with no more exaggeration. +Possessing little in the way of means, less in that of accomplishments, +and nothing at all in the line of looks, they had formed a vast circle +of acquaintance, chiefly by a hearty, unaffected interest in each +individual personality. No one, however unimportant, was ever forgotten +by them. Miss Rosamond, who looked like a coachman, spent her time in +correspondence, rounding up absent friends; Miss Gladys, who was thin +and angular, coursed whatever neighborhood they happened to be in, +getting the nice people to come and see them. For reasons not always +clear to the superficial the nice people came and sent others. No two +ladies ever received so many letters of introduction, or wrote them. +Their Sunday luncheons at Cannes were as famous as their Sunday dinners +in New York. + +In New York Edith had fought shy of them, mainly because Chip didn't do +them justice. He spoke of them flippantly as "those two old flyaways," +and would never go to their house. For this reason she herself went +rarely, though when she did she got a perception of broad social +inclusiveness which Chip could hardly appreciate. It was the only house +she knew of in which there were no "sets," and where one met the most +interesting people of all walks in life. She often wondered hew the +Misses Partridge, with their slight resources, physical and material, +accomplished it, envying them somewhat their success. She wondered less, +and envied them less, after she had seen them at Cannes. + +Miss Rosamond's deep bass voice, the perfect expression of her red face +and man-like way of dressing, were the first influence in winning her. +"My dear, there's the very hotel for you close beside us, where we could +see you all the time. We stay there ourselves when we're opening and +closing the villa. Big garden for the children--runs right down to the +sea--and nothing but nice people of your own kind." + +Edith couldn't help the suspicion that the distinguished stranger at Cap +d'Ail had inspired Miss Partridge's solicitude, but neither did she +resent this. Miss Gladys accompanied her to the hotel in question, to +bring her personal powers to bear on the proprietor, and to help in the +selection of rooms, so that next day Edith was able to move over. In +this way it happened that on the following Sunday she found herself +seated beside Sir Noel Ordway. + +The luncheon party was again a collection of cosmopolitan odds and +ends--but with a difference. There was a foreign royalty with his +morganatic wife, the American wife of an English peer, two or three +notable Russians, a French painter of international fame, together with +some half-dozen English and Americans of no importance, among whom +Edith classed herself and the young Englishman beside her. + +Between him and her the friendship ripened rapidly and unexpectedly. It +was so unexpectedly that it took her off her guard. It was beyond all +the possibilities her imagination could foresee that he should fall in +love with her--a woman who had had her tragic experience, of no great +beauty, the mother of two children. It was, in fact, through the +children that he made his approaches, in as far as he made them +intentionally. She judged that he didn't do that, that he was caught +unawares, like herself. He had merely expressed a "liking for kids," and +offered to take the youngsters for an outing in his motor-car on the +following day. The kids were to go with their governess; but when he +drove up to the door, and Edith had come out to see them off, it seemed +ridiculous that she shouldn't accompany them. Besides, the governess was +young and pretty, necessitating an elderly person for purposes of +propriety. It was partly, too, in thoughtlessness that Edith yielded to +his persuasion and, putting on a thick coat, jumped in with the rest. + +He acted as his own chauffeur, and they drove up the new road through +the Esterels. Edith sat beside him, and as they talked little she was +able to observe him to better effect than on the previous day. She took +him to be a year or two younger than herself, tall and slight, with a +stoop he had probably acquired at Eton. She had understood from Miss +Partridge that he was delicate; and he looked it. The circumstance had +kept him from entering the army or going into diplomacy, sending him to +the Riviera for his winters. He was blue-eyed and blond, with a ragged +mustache too thin to conceal the rather pathetic line of the mouth. A +long, thin nose, with an upper lip so short that the flash of teeth was +visible even when the mouth was in repose, gave him the appearance of an +extremely aristocratic rodent. + +The drive was repeated a day or two later, and longer excursions came +after that--to St. Raphael, to Valescure, and as far away as Mentone and +the Gorges du Loup. Edith couldn't help liking the young man, first for +his kindness to the children, and then for himself. For himself she +liked him because he was so simple, straightforward, and sincere. + +He grew confidential as time went on, telling her of his home, his +mother, his sisters, his duties as squire and lord of the manor, and the +bore it was to be kept out of a profession and away from England at the +very moment of the hunting. He formed the habit of dropping in so +frequently to tea with her, in the little sun-pavilion of the hotel, +that she fancied the Misses Partridge, who were friends of Lady +Ordway's, began to look uneasy. She wondered if they had given the young +man all the information concerning her that was his due. + +She made up her mind to ask. Once the fact was recognized it would be a +safeguard, in that any possibilities of their being other than friends +would be out of the way. He gave her the opportunity one afternoon in +March by asking where she thought of going after she left Cannes. The +children and the governess had had tea with them, but had strolled into +the garden. Other occupants of the sun-pavilion had also wandered out +among the pansy-beds and the blossoming mimosas. Edith took her time +before answering. + +"I don't know," she said at last. "It's so hard for me to make plans. +You see, there's nothing to hinder me from going to Sweden, +Switzerland, or Spain; and when that's the case you're indifferent about +going anywhere." She waited a few seconds before saying, "You know about +me, don't you?" + +"Rather," he said, promptly. "I've known that all along." + +The reply was so downright that she was sorry she had raised the +subject. He seemed to imply that as far as he was concerned the +peculiarities in her situation were of no importance. As she was obliged +to say something, she could only express a measure of relief. + +"I'm glad of that. I hoped Miss Partridge would tell you." + +He startled her by saying, with the bluntness that was curiously, but +characteristically, at variance with the hesitations of his general +manner: + +"You could get married again, couldn't you?" + +"Oh no." She blushed helplessly. + +"Oh, but you could." + +She struggled to keep to the ground of mere discussion. "I could +legally; but I never should." + +"Why?" + +"Oh, for a lot of reasons I can't talk about." + +"Then what did you do it for?" + +She managed a smile, even if it was a forced and feeble one. She +understood what he meant by "it." + +"I don't have to explain that, do I?" + +"No, I suppose not." She hoped he was going to drop the subject, when he +lifted his head to look at her with his rather pathetic blue eyes, "Oh, +but I say, you're not serious in thinking you wouldn't, are you?" + +"Perfectly serious. I should never look on the matter as admitting +discussion." + +"Oh, but it does, you know." + +"Not for me." + +"Well, it might not for you, and yet might for--for other people." + +She still forced an unsteady smile. "That's something I don't have to +worry about, at any rate. I've given up thinking of other people's +opinions." + +"I don't mean other people in general--only in particular." + +"I don't know any other people--in particular." + +"Yes, you do. You know me." + +"I only know you--like that." She snapped her fingers so as to give him +an idea of the entirely transitory nature of their acquaintance. + +"That isn't the way I know you." + +"Oh, you don't know me at all. You couldn't. You're too young. I belong +to another generation in point of time, and to ages ago in the matter of +experience." + +"How old _are_ you?" + +She told him. + +"You're eighteen months older than I; but that's nothing. My mother was +four _years_ older than my father--nearer five. That sort of thing often +runs in families." + +She sprang up. "There's Chippie tramping all over that flower--bed. How +_can_ Miss Chesley?" + +The negligence of Miss Chesley enabled her to make her escape, and when +he rejoined her in the garden he accepted the diversion her ingenuity +had found. In a short time he took his leave with no more display of +emotion than on previous occasions. + +But he left her troubled and shaken. He left her with the feeling that +the foundations of life, as she was leading it, were insecure. Where +she had thought she was strong and determined she began to see she was +weak and irresolute. She began to see herself as a woman with such an +instinctive need of protection that sooner or later she would accept +it--from some one. If from any one, why not from this man? She liked +him; she was sure of his goodness and kindness. He was already fond of +the children, and the children of him. Moreover, she could be a mother +to him, and he needed mothering, as any one could see. It might not be a +romantic marriage, but it could easily be an ideal one, as far as +anything ideal still lay within the range of her possibilities. It could +be ideal in the sense of a sincere affection both on his side and hers, +and a common life for perhaps higher aims than she had lived with Chip. + +It would doubtless be the final stage to the process of making Chip +understand. She wouldn't marry--she couldn't--without some inner +reference to him, without a vital reference to him. If she did marry he +would know at last to what he had forced her. He would have forced her +to looking to another man for what she should have had from him--and +then he would be repentant. Surely he would be repentant then! If he +wasn't he would never be. All her efforts would have become in vain. She +would feel that for any good she had accomplished she might as well have +stayed with him. That thought choked her with its implication of agony +escaped--and bliss forfeited. + +But it was looking too far ahead. Everything was looking too far ahead. +Noel Ordway had not asked her to marry him--and might never do so. She +might have scared him off. She hoped she had. That would be simpler. She +was not so inexperienced as to be without the knowledge that marriage +with him would raise as many difficulties as it would settle--perhaps +more. The day came when she had to point that out to him. + +But it did not come at once. Nearly a week passed without his return. +For Edith it was a week of some disappointment, and a good deal of +relief. If she wasn't the happier for his absence, she was more at ease. +She could be at ease till the time came for moving on in one direction +or another, when she would be oppressed anew with the sense of her +helplessness. It became clearer to her that if she married at all it +would be to be taken care of. + +The question was put formally before her at a moment when she was least +expecting it. It was an afternoon late in March when she was struggling +along the Boulevard du Midi, in the teeth of a warm west wind. On her +left children played in the sands or threw sticks or bruised flowers +into the huge breakers to see them rolled shoreward. On her right the +palms in the villa gardens bowed their heads eastward, while the mimosas +tossed their yellow branches wildly. Before her the Esterels formed a +jagged line of indigo flecked with red, above which masses of stormy +orange cloud broke along the edges into pink. It was still far from the +hour of sunset, though the glamour of sunset was gathering in the air. + +She heard his step behind her scarcely an instant before he spoke. + +"Oh, I say, Mrs. Walker, I want you to marry me." + +The statement was so startling that in spite of all her preparatory +discussion with herself, she turned on him tragically. "For God's sake, +why?" + +"Well, because I'm awfully fond of you, you know." + +His expression touched her. There was no mistaking the kindliness in his +eyes, or the look of rather wan beseeching in his thin, pinched face. In +his golfing suit of Harris tweed he was not an unattractive figure, even +if he wasn't handsome. + +Again her words had little relation to the things she had thought of +beforehand. Her heart was so much with him that she spoke with an +emotion she had never shown to him before. + +"Even if you are, don't you see, dear friend, that you can't marry me?" + +"Oh, but I can, you know." + +She looked about her for a refuge where they could talk, finding it in a +rough shelter designed for the protection of nurses watching children +playing on the sands. It was empty for the moment, except for a tiny, +bare-legged girl of three or four crooning over a big doll. Edith led +the way. "Come over here." They sat down on a bench hacked with initials +and cleanly dirty with sand. The little girl at the other end of the +bench rolled her big eyes toward them with indifference, continuing to +croon to her doll: + +"Dors, mon enfant; dors, dors; ta mère est allée au bal.... Dors, mon +enfant, dors; ta mère est au théâtre.... Tais-toi; tais-toi; ta mère +dîne au restaurant.... Dors, ma chérie, dors." + +Edith plunged into her subject as soon as they were seated and turned +toward each other. "Tell me. If you married a divorced woman, wouldn't +your whole position in England be--be different?" + +"I shouldn't care anything about that." + +"That's not what I'm asking you. I'm asking you if there wouldn't be +ways in which it would be hard for you?" + +The honesty in his eyes pierced her like a pain. "I shouldn't be +thinking about that, you know. I should be thinking about you." + +"Well, then, aren't there ways in which it would be hard for me?" + +"Not any harder than it is now. It's pretty hard, isn't it?" + +The tears sprang into her eyes, but she knew she must control herself. +"Yes; but it's in the way of the ills I know. The ills I know not of +might be worse." + +"Oh, well, they wouldn't be that, you know." + +"What about your people?" She sprang the question on him suddenly. + +"They'd be all right--in time." + +The qualification was like a stab. She spoke proudly. "I'm afraid I +couldn't wait for that." + +"You wouldn't have to wait for anything. They'd jolly well have to put +up with what I decided to do. I've got all the say, you know. I'm the +head of the family." + +"Yes, _you_ might look at it in that way; but you can easily see what it +would be to me to enter a family where I wasn't wanted." + +"That's a bit strong," he corrected. "They'd want you right enough, once +they knew you. It would only be the--the fact of--the--" + +She helped him out. "The divorce." + +He nodded and finished. "That they'd jib at. Even then--" + +"Oh, please don't think I'm blaming them. I should do exactly the same, +in their case." + +"They're really not half bad, you know," he tried to explain. "Mother's +an awfully decent sort, and so is Di. Aggie's a bit cattish. But then +she'll soon be married. Fellow named Jenkins, in the Guards. And then," +he added, irrelevantly, "you're an American." + +"Which is another disadvantage." + +"No," he said, with emphasis. "The other way round when it comes to +a--a--" He stumbled at the word, but faced it eventually: "When it comes +to a divorce, you know." + +She looked at him mistily. "No, I don't know. Aren't a divorced +Englishwoman and a divorced American in very much the same position?" + +He hastened to reassure her. "Oh, Lord, no. Not in England they wouldn't +be. A divorced Englishwoman--well, she's in rather a hole, you know; +whereas a divorced American woman--that's natural." + +"I see," she responded, slowly. "It's not considered quite so bad." + +"Oh, not half so bad. One expects an American woman to be divorced--or +something." + +She couldn't be annoyed with him because he was so honest and ingenuous. +She merely said, "So they'd think me the rule rather than the +exception." + +"They'd just think you were American, and let it go at that. Besides," +he continued, earnestly, "when a woman's only been married in +America--" + +"She's been hardly married at all. Is that what they'd think in +England?" + +"Well, if they'd ever seen the chap around--But when they haven't, you +know--" + +"They can't believe in him." + +"Oh, I don't say that. But--well, they wouldn't think anything about +him." + +She shifted her ground slightly. "But you'd think about him, wouldn't +you?" + +"Me? Why should _I_?" + +"Because I'd married him before I'd married you--for one thing." + +"Oh, but I shouldn't go into that, you know. That would be over and done +with." + +"Would it?" + +"Well, wouldn't it?" + +She mused silently, while the little girl with the bare legs continued +to croon to her doll with a kind of chant: + +"Dors, mon enfant, dors.... Ta mère ne reviendra plus ce soir.... Elle +dîne avec le beau monsieur que tu as vu.... Elle te dira bonne nuit +demain.... Dors; sois sage--et dors" + +"Even if it were over and done with," Edith said at last, "the fact +would remain--supposing I married you--that your wife had had a life in +which you possessed no share--a very living life, I assure you--and that +her memories of that life were perhaps the most vital thing about her." + +"Oh, but I say!" he protested. "That's the very reason I'm so fond of +you. I can see all that already. I shouldn't interfere with it, you +know. It's what makes the difference between you and other women. It's +like the difference between--" He sought for a simile. "It's like the +difference between a book that's been written and printed, and has +something in it, and a silly blank book." + +Her eyes filled with tears. "I wonder if you have the least idea of what +you're saying?" + +He sought for a more effective figure of speech. "If you were walking +about your place, and found something wounded, you'd want to take it +home and tend it, wouldn't you, till you'd put it to rights again? And +the more you tended it the fonder of it you'd be. But you wouldn't stop +to ask whether a boy had thrown a stone at it or whether it had been +attacked by its mate. You'd let all that alone--and just tend it." + +Her tears were coursing freely now beneath her veil. "Is that really the +way you feel about me?" + +He grew apologetic. "Oh, I don't mean any Good Samaritan business, don't +you know? If I could look after you a bit you'd do the same by me. I'm +thinking of that, too. Look here," he pursued, confidentially, but +coloring; "I'll tell you something, if you won't think me an ass. I +could have married two or three girls--oh, more than that!--if I'd +wanted to. But I could see what they were after. It wasn't me--not by a +long shot. It was the place--Foljambe--it's really quite a decent place, +you know--right in the shires--and the hunting. They'd have thought it +awful luck to have to clear out of England every year, just when the +hunting begins--and stick in this bally hole--or go to Egypt. But you +wouldn't." As she said nothing for the minute, he insisted, "Would you, +now?" + +She shook her head musingly. "No, I shouldn't." + +He looked relieved. "Well, that's just it. That's just what I thought." +He colored more deeply, with a hectic spot in each cheek. "Life isn't +all beer and skittles to me, don't you know--and you'd be the kind of +thing I haven't got, don't you know?" He leaned toward her beseechingly. +"Do you see now?" + +"I think I do. You mean that we'd mutually take care of each other." + +"Well, that's what it would amount to--not to say any more about my +being so awfully fond of you. You won't forget that." + +She smiled through her tears. "Oh no; I'm not likely to forget it. I +wish I could tell you--" + +But she broke off because she could say no more, struggling to her feet. +He agreed to her request that she should have time to think his proposal +over, and also that he should let her return alone to the hotel, +remaining in the shelter with the crooning child long after she had gone +away. + +But once she was out in the wind again she found it difficult to give +the matter concentrated thought. Much as she had been moved while he +talked to her, the emotion seemed to be blown away by the strong air of +reality. It was like the crying in which she had sometimes indulged +herself at a play, and which left no aftermath of sadness. She could +hardly tell what aftermath had been left by Noel Ordway's words; but as +far as she could judge it had everything in it to touch her and appeal +to her, except the possible. And yet so much that was impossible had +happened to her already, who knew but that the next incredible thing +would be that she should become mistress of Foljambe Park? Why not? +Since the haven was open to her, and Chip had left the poor little craft +of her life to toss in a sea too strong for it, why not creep into any +refuge that would receive her? She would certainly be driven sooner or +later into some such port--then why not into this? + +She hurried homeward between the thundering breakers on the one hand and +the tossing palms on the other, her mind in a state of storm. In the +garden, as she passed toward the hotel, she saw Miss Chesley with the +children, but she couldn't stop and speak to them. She hurried. She +wanted the protection of her room, of quiet, of the accessories to +mental peace. Perhaps when she got these she should be able to +think--and decide; so she hurried on. + +To avoid the main hall, where people might speak to her, she took the +short cut through the sun-pavilion, which would bring her nearer to the +stairs. But on throwing open the door she stood still on the threshold +with a little soundless gasp. "Oh!" + +He came toward her sedately, the glimmer of a smile on the stamped +gravity of his face. "I took the liberty of waiting for you. I couldn't +bring myself to go back to Cap d'Ail without knowing how you were." + +As he held her hand he seemed to bend over her with what she had already +described to herself as a brooding concern. She knew she was blushing +foolishly and that her knees were trembling under her; and yet, +curiously enough, the little craft of her life seemed suddenly to find +itself in quiet waters, ranged round by protecting hills. She was +confused and sorry and glad and afraid all in one instant. Nothing but +the habit of the hostess, which was so strong in her, enabled her to +capture a conventional tone and say the obvious thing: + +"I'm so glad you waited. Won't you sit down, and let me ring for tea?" + + + + +III + +REPROACH + + +Chip had never really noticed her until on that Sunday morning in June +it suddenly struck him that she was trying to get a word with him alone. +He had seen her, of course. She had been at Mountain Brook--which was +the name of Emery Bland's place in New Hampshire--every time he had gone +there; but, her quality being unobtrusive, he had paid her no attention. +Furthermore, both Bland and Mrs. Bland, being emphatic in personality +and talkative, he had been the more easily led to ignore this reticent +girl, whose function was apparently limited to seeing her aunt provided +with a shawl, or her uncle with a cigar, at the right opportunities. If +he thought of her at all, it was as of the living spirit of the +furniture. The tables and chairs became animate in her, and articulate; +but her claim to recognition had never gone beyond the necessity for a +hand-shake or a smile. When he did take her hand--on arriving, or on +coming down-stairs in the morning--he received an impression of +something soft and slim and tender; but the moment of pleasure was +always too fleeting for conscious registration. Similarly, when, from a +polite instinct to include her in the conversation, he smiled vaguely in +her direction, he received a look gentle and beaming and almost +apologetic in return; but it was never more to him than if the dimly +lustrous surfaces of Mrs. Bland's nice Sheraton had suddenly become +responsive. She made no demand; and he offered no more than she asked. + +Perhaps the fact that the girl was not really the niece of either Mr. or +Mrs. Bland had something to do with his tendency to treat her as a +negligible quantity. Mrs. Bland had explained the situation to him +during his first visit to Mountain Brook. + +"Lily isn't our niece at all," she had said, in a tone which seemed to +reproach Lily with an inadvertance. "She's no relation to us whatever. +We don't know who she is. She doesn't even know herself. Since you +insist," she continued, as though Chip had been pressing for +information, "we got her out of an orphanage, the year we built this +house. Mr. Bland seemed to think the house ought to have something young +in it; and so--" + +"You might have had a dog," Chip said, dryly. + +"You needn't laugh. It wasn't _my_ desire to adopt a child. I simply +yielded to Mr. Bland, as I do in everything. The only stipulation I made +was that she should call us uncle and aunt. I couldn't bear to be called +mother by a child who wasn't my own; but Mr. Bland is so odd that he +wouldn't have cared. I dare say you've noticed how odd he is." + +Chip could see that Bland might be odd from his wife's point of view. He +was the self-made man who had shed the traces of self-making. Mrs. Bland +was fond of describing herself as a self-made woman; but the stages of +the process by which she had "turned herself out" were visible. She +would have been disappointed had it not been so. Having confessed from +youth upward that her ambition was "to make the most of herself," there +had never, in her case, been any question of the _ars celare artem_. She +belonged to a number of women's clubs of which the avowed object was +"self-improvement," and attended such classes on "current events" as +would keep her posted on the problems of the day without the bore of +reading the papers. As a self-made woman she also looked the part, +dressing for breakfast as she would like to be found in the afternoon, +with but slight variation for dinner. In her full panoply of plum or +dove color she suggested one of those knights eternally in armor who +decorate baronial halls. Chip considered it probable that Emery Bland +would never have chosen her as the life-long complement to himself had +he not taken that step while he was still an obscure "up-state" country +lawyer, and she the dignified young school-teacher who stood for +"cultivation" in their little town. Cultivation had always been to Mrs. +Bland what hunting is to the rider to hounds--the zest was in the chase. +The zest was in the chase, and the quarry but an excuse for the run. +Over hedges of lectures, and ditches of "talks," and through +turnip-fields of serious, ponderous women like herself, green even in +winter, and after being touched by frost, Mrs. Bland kept on in full +career, with "cultivation" scudding ahead like a fox she never caught a +glimpse of, and which her hounds tracked only by the scent. It was +splendid exercise, and helped her to feel in the movement. If she failed +to notice that her husband had long ago run the fleet animal to earth, +and affixed the mask as an adornment to his home, it was only because +their views of life were different. + +No one would now suppose that there had been a time in Emery Bland's +life when it had been his aim also to "cultivate himself," and when he +had actually used the phrase. Between the debonair, experienced New York +lawyer, so much in demand for cases requiring discretion and so capable +of dealing with them--between him and the farmer's boy he had been there +was no more resemblance than between a living word and the dead root out +of which it has been coined. In Emery Bland's case the word was not only +living, but pliant, eloquent, and arresting to ear and eye. He was one +of those men who overlook nothing that can be counted as +self-expression, from their dress to the sound of their syllables. +Superficially genial, but essentially astute, he had made everything +grist that came to his mill, flourishing on it not only in the +financial sense, but also in that of character. It was said that he knew +as many life histories as a doctor or a priest, and generally the more +dramatic ones. The experience had clearly made him cynical, but tolerant +also, and human, with a tendency, as far as he was personally concerned, +to being morally strait-laced. He had seen so much of the picturesque +side of life that he could appreciate the prosaic, which, in Chip's +explanation, was why he could stand by Mrs. Bland. Other people's +surfeits of champagne and ortolans had assured his own taste for plain +roast beef. But he himself ordered the porcelain on which his simple +fare was served, and the wines by which it was accompanied, drunk from +fine old Irish or Bohemian glass. + +Chip took this in by degrees. His first acquaintance with a man who was +to exercise some influence on his future was purely professional. He had +gone to him as an offset to Aunt Emily. If the results of this move were +indirect--since Aunt Emily had won the victory--they became apparent in +time. They became apparent when in Chip's bruised heart, where +everything healthy seemed to have been stunned, a slight curiosity began +to awaken concerning his new friend's personality. + +He came to consider him a friend by accident--the accident of a club, +where, finding themselves sitting down to dine at the same moment, they +had taken the same table. Primarily, it was an opportunity to adjust +some loose ends of Chip's domestic affairs; incidentally, they stumbled +on a common hobby in Victorian English politics. There was no subject on +which Emery Bland was better informed, with a learning that covered the +whole long stretch from Lord Melbourne to Lord Salisbury, and which he +could garnish with anecdote _ad libitum_. It was a kind of conversation +of which Chip, who had been brought up partly in England, rarely got a +taste in New York, and for which Bland, on his side, didn't often find +an interested listener. Something like an intimacy thus sprang up, but +an intimacy of the kind common among men who have little or no point of +contact out of office hours or away from the neutral ground of the club. +Within these limits the meetings had already been numerous before it +occurred to Chip--more or less idly--that while Bland knew too much of +his sad background, he knew nothing of Bland's. An occasional reference +revealed the lawyer as a married man, but beyond that basic fact their +acquaintance had no more attachment to the main social structure of life +than a floating island of moss and flowers has to the system of +geological strata. It was Bland himself who took the first step in the +direction of closer association. + +"Well, how are you getting on?" + +He asked the question while slipping into the seat opposite Chip as the +latter lunched at the club, where they met most frequently. + +"Oh, so so." + +"H'm. So so. _That's_ what you call it." + +The tone implied reproach or reproof or expostulation. Chip kept his +eyes on his knife and fork. + +"Well, what do _you_ call it?" + +"Oh, I'm not obliged to give it a name. I hear other people do that." + +"And what do other people say--since you seem to want me to ask the +question?" + +"I do. I think you ought to know. They say it's a pity." + +Chip took on the defiant air of a bad boy. "They can say it--and go to +blazes." + +"They'll say it, all right. Don't you worry about that. But I rather +think that you'll do the going to blazes--at this rate." + +Chip raised his haggard eyes. "Well, why not? What is there any better +than blazes for me to go to? Besides, it isn't so awful--when you've got +nothing else." + +"Oh, rot, Walker! I'm ashamed of you. I can imagine a man of your type +doing almost anything else but taking to drink." + +Chip shrugged his shoulders with the habit acquired in French schools. +"On fait ce que l'on peut. I had three resources left to me--wine, +woman, and song. For song I've no ear; for woman--well, that's all over; +so it came down to Hobson's choice." + +"Hobson's choice be blowed! Walker's choice! And you've just time enough +left to cast about for a set of alternatives. Why, I've seen scores of +men in your fix; and of some of them it was the salvation." + +"And what was it of the others?" + +"Hell. But it was a hell of their own making." + +"All right. I'm willing to accept the word. It's a hell of _my_ own +making--but it's hell, just the same." + +"But, good Lord! man, even if it is hell, you don't want to wallow in +it." + +Chip smiled ruefully. "Oh, I like it. Kind of penance. I like it as +medieval sinners used to like a hair shirt." + +"Yes; but the hair shirt was kept out of sight. You're parading your +penance, as you call it, before the world. See here, Walker, why don't +you come up and spend the weekend with me in New Hampshire? My wife +would like to have you. To-day is Friday, and I go up to-morrow morning. +A Sunday in the country would do you good." + +Chip refused, but he long remembered why he retracted his refusal. It +was the look of his apartment when he returned to it that night. It was +an apartment in a house at the corner of Madison Avenue and a street in +the Thirties, dedicated to the use of well-to-do bachelors. It had been +a slight mitigation in the collapse of life as he had built it up, that +rooms in so comfortable a refuge should have been free for him. He had +furnished them with some care; and after his first distress had worn +off a little had found a measure of lawless satisfaction in a return to +the old unmarried ways. + +But on this particular evening the aspect of the place appalled him from +the minute he turned his latch-key in the lock. Under the stimulus of +Bland's counsels he had come home early, which was in itself a mistake. +It was scarcely nine o'clock. There was an hour or an hour and a half to +pass before he could think of going to bed. Any such interval as that +was always the hardest feature in the day for him. But what smote him +specially now was the air of emptiness and loneliness. It met him as an +odor in the stale smell of the cigar he had smoked on coming up-town +from the office, and which still lingered in the rooms. He had forgotten +to open a window, and the house valet, whose duty it was to "tidy up," +had evidently gone out. + +In the small hall into which Chip entered there was a bookcase with but +two or three odds and ends of books in it, for his habits of reading had +dropped away from him with everything else. In the sitting-room one +brown shoe stood on the hearth-rug before the empty fireplace; the +other on the center-table, a collar and necktie beside it. The soiled +shirt he had thrown off lay on the couch, a sleeve dragging on the +floor. On the mantelpiece, which he had at first consecrated as a shrine +for the photographs of Edith and the children, and flanked by two silver +candlesticks like an altar, there had intruded an open box of perfectos, +an ash-tray that still held the butt-end of a cigar, and an empty +tumbler smelling of whisky. There were traces of cigar ashes +everywhere--on the arms of the easy-chairs, on the rugs, and on the +terra-cotta tiles of the hearth. For the rest the room was a litter of +newspapers, as the bedroom which opened off it was a litter of clothes. + +He was not disorderly; he was only careless, and incapable of creating +order for himself. Disorder shocked him profoundly. He always sat down +in the midst of it, helpless, but with a sense of inner misery. And so +he sat down in it now. "My God!" he said to himself, summing up in the +ejaculation all the wretchedness he had wrought, or that had been +wrought, about him. + +It was at such minutes that his mind reverted to Edith, with renewed +stupefaction over what she had done. Stupefaction was the word. +Reflection on the subject only left him the more hopelessly bewildered. +If she hadn't loved him her course might have been explicable. As it +was, he found himself driven to a choice between mental aberration on +her part and a witch's spell, inclining to the latter--with the witch in +the guise of Aunt Emily. + +Not that he absolved himself. He made no attempt to do that. But he +looked upon his offense as of the kind that naturally calls for mercy +rather than severity. What was the letter of the contract in comparison +with the spirit?--and he had kept the spirit sacredly. Of course he had +done wrong. Who in thunder, he asked, impatiently, ever denied that? But +how many men had not done wrong in the same way? Very few, was his +answer. The answer was the essence of his defense--a defense which, +according to all the laws of human nature and common sense, Edith should +have accepted. That she shouldn't accept it, or couldn't, or wouldn't, +passed his comprehension. + +As a rule, he tried not to think of it. He tried not to think of it by +filling up the time with something else. When there had been nothing +else to fill up the time he had stupefied himself with drink. He drank +at first, not because he liked drinking, but because it dulled his +brain, his heart. It didn't excite him; on the contrary, it brought him +to a state of lethargy which, if he was at the club, made him willing to +go home, or, if he was at home, made it possible for him to go to bed +and sleep. It was only within a month or so that he had begun to suspect +that other people noticed it; and even then he hadn't been sure until +Bland had told him so that day. + +He had, consequently, come back to his room in the possession of his +faculties, but with a feeling of something unfulfilled that emphasized +his desolation. He perceived then that a habit was beginning to form in +him with a tenacity which it might be difficult to counteract. After +all, would anything be gained by counteracting it? He had known fellows +who drank themselves to death; and except in the last dreadful stages it +hadn't been so bad. They had certainly got their fun out of it, even if +in the end they paid high. He was paying high--and perhaps getting +nothing at all. Wouldn't it be better if he went off this minute +somewhere, and made a night of it?--made a night which would be but the +beginning of a long succession of nights of the same kind? Then when he +was ruined beyond recovery, or in his grave, Edith would know what she +had done to him. He had tried every other way of bringing it home to her +but that. That might succeed where argument had failed. She couldn't +have a mind so much astray as not to be sorry when she saw, or heard of, +the wreck she would have made of him. + +It was worth thinking of, and he sat and thought of it. He tried to +conjure up the picture of himself as really besotted--he was not +besotted as yet, even when the worst was said!--degraded, revolting. He +rose to take a cigar, to help his imagination in the task to which he +had set it, but he remembered that the cigar suggested a whisky-and-soda +to go with it, and there was a bottle of Old Piper in the cupboard. He +fell back into his seat again with the longing unsatisfied, but he +continued his dream. It was so pleasant a dream--that is, there were so +many advantages to the course he thought of taking, that he ended by +springing to his feet and saying, almost aloud, "By God, I'll do it." + +The resolution being formed, there was a large selection of ways and +means of putting it into execution. He could do this or that. He could +go here or there. It was a bewilderment of choice that saved him. He sat +down again. + +No; when it came to the point he wasn't equal to it. It was not the end +he shrank from, but the means--the places to which he would have to go, +the people he would have to consort with. He knew just enough of them to +be sickened in advance. It was with a sense of fleeing to escape that he +hurried to the telephone and called up Emery Bland, asking to be allowed +to accept his invitation. + +He arrived at Mountain Brook late on an afternoon in early June, just as +the sun, hovering above the point of its setting, was throwing an almost +horizontal light on the northern and western slopes of Monadnock. The +mountain raised its majestic mass as the last and successful effort of a +tumbling, climbing wilderness of hills. Scattered amid the +upward-sweeping stretches of maple and oak, groves of spruce and pine +had the effect of passing rain-clouds. In the clear air, against the +clear sky, every tree-top on the indented ridges stood out like a little +pinnacle, till with a long, downward curve, both gracious and grandiose, +the mountainside fell to the edge of a gem-like, broken-shored lake. It +was a world extraordinarily green and clean. Its cleanness was even more +amazing than its greenness. The unsullied freshness of a new creation +seemed to lie on it all day long. It was a world which suggested no past +and boded no future. Its transparent air, in which there was not a shred +of atmosphere, its high lights, and long shadows, and restful, +clambering woods, and singing birds, and sweet, strong winds were like +those of some perpetual, paradisical present, with no story to tell, and +none that would ever be enacted. It was a world in which Nature seemed +to hold herself aloof from man, refusing to be tamed by him, rejecting +his caress, keeping herself serene, inviolate, making his presence +incongruous with her sanctity. + +It was this incongruity that struck Chip first of all. Not that there +were any of the unapproachable grandeurs of the Alps or the Selkirks, +nor anything that towered or terrified or overawed. All the hilly +woodland was smiling and friendly--but remote. Man might buy a piece of +ground and camp on it; but if he had sensibilities he would remain +conscious of an essence that eluded him, the real thing--withdrawn. He +could be on the spot, but he could never be of it--not any more than he +could give his dwelling the air of springing from the soil. + +Chip noticed that, too--the intrusive aspect of any kind of roof that +man could make to cover him, unless it were a wigwam. Emery Bland had +tried to temper this resentment of the landscape to what was not +indigenous to itself by making the lines of his shelter as simple and as +straight as possible. He was from the first apologetic to the Spirit of +the Mountain, as who would say, "Hang it all, you've tempted me here, +but I'll outrage you as little as I can." So he perched his long, white +house, Italian in style if it had style at all, on the top of a knoll +whence he could look far into green depths, with nothing in the way of +excrescence but a tile-paved open-air dining-room at one end, and a +shady spot of similar construction at the other, getting his effects +from proportion. Something in the way of lawn and garden he was obliged +to have, and Mrs. Bland had insisted on a pergola. He fought the pergola +for a year or two, but Mrs. Bland had had her way. A country house +without a pergola, she said, was something she had never heard of. A +_sine quâ non_ was what she called it. So beyond the square of lawn with +its border of flowers the pergola stretched its row of trim white wooden +Doric pillars, while over the latticed roof and through it hung bine and +vine, grape, wistaria, and kadsu. Below the pergola the land broke to a +brook that gurgled through copses of alder, tangles of wild raspberry, +and clumps of blueberry and goldenrod, carrying the waters of the lake +to the Ashuelot, which bore them to the Connecticut, which swept them +southward, till quietly, and almost as unobserved by the human eye as +when they rose in the bosom of the hills, they fell into the sea. + +As there was no other guest, Chip was allowed to do as he pleased. What +he pleased was chiefly to sit in the pergola, where the mauve petals of +the wistaria were dropping about him, and fill his gaze with the mystic +peace of the mountain. On Sunday morning the three Blands went to +church, leaving him in sole possession of this green, cool world, with +its quality of interpenetrating purity. He took a volume of some +ambassador's "Recollections" from his host's shelves of Victorian +memoirs; but he never opened it. He also took a cigar, but he didn't +smoke. He only looked--looked without effort, almost without +consciousness--up into the high wonderlands of peace, whence whatever +was brooding there seemed to steal into his soul and cleanse it. It was +this sense of cleansing that he carried back as a sort of possession to +New York--that and the fact imparted by Mrs. Bland during the afternoon, +regarded as unimportant, and yet retained, that Lily Bland was not their +niece. + +He returned to Mountain Brook twice during that summer, and in June of +the following year. It was during this last visit that the girl who had +been to him hitherto no more than the living element of the background +gave him the impression that she was seeking an opportunity to speak to +him. + +Throughout Saturday it had been an impression almost too faint to be +recorded; but it was significant to him that on Sunday morning she +didn't go to church. She shared the house with him, therefore, a fact of +which he was scarcely aware till he saw her in possession of the +pergola. With a book in her hand she had established herself in a chair +not far from that which by preference he had made his own. The act +roused his curiosity; but when he, too, had taken a book and strolled +out to join her, she didn't keep him in suspense. + +She closed her novel as he approached, looking up at him with simple +directness. "I've something to tell you." + +Behind the attention he gave to these words he registered the +observation that when you looked at her--which he had rarely done--you +saw she was pretty. Her white skin had a luminosity like that of satin, +and the mouth was sweet with a timid, apologetic tenderness. The glances +one got from her were almost too fleeting to show the color of the eyes, +but he knew they must be blue. Her hair had been striking to him from +the first, chiefly because it was of that hue for which there is no +English word, but which the French call _cendré_--ashen--something +between flaxen and brown, but with no relation to either--that might +have been bleached by a "treatment" only for its unmistakable gleam of +life. It waved naturally over the brows from a central parting, and +massed itself into a great coil behind. She was dressed simply in white +linen, with a belt of "watered" blue silk, and neat, pointed cuffs of +the same material. + +Instinctively he knew that what she had to tell him must be important, +for otherwise she would not have come out of the shy depths into which, +like the Spirit of the Mountain, her life seemed to be withdrawn. What +it could be he was unable even to guess at. He smiled, however, and, +taking a casual tone so as not to strike too strong a note at first, he +said, as he sat down, "Have you?" + +She continued to speak with the same simple directness. "It's about some +one you used to know." + +He grew more grave. "Indeed? I should hardly have supposed that you +could know any one--whom I _used_ to know?" + +"I do. I know--You won't mind my speaking right out, will you?" + +"Of course not. Say anything you like." + +"Well, I know Miss Maggie Clare." + +"Great God!" He sank deeper into his wicker arm-chair, throwing one leg +over the other. He seemed to shrink away and to look up at her from +under his brows. + +The shy serenity of her bearing was undisturbed. "I've got a message to +you from her." + +He was unable to keep the note of resentment out of his voice. "What?" + +"She's very ill. I think she's going to die. She thinks so herself. She +wants to know if--if you'd go and see her." + +He slipped down deeper into his chair, his chin sunk into his fist. It +was quite like the act of cowering. It was long before he spoke. When he +did so the tone of resentment was more bitter. "Does she realize what +she's done to me?" + +"I think she does. In fact, it's the only thing she does realize very +clearly now. She talks of it continually, in her dreamy way--but a way +that's quite heartbreaking. I really think that if you were to see +her--" + +He looked up under his lids and brows as she hesitated. "Well?" The +tone was as savage as courtesy would let him make it. + +"That you'd forgive her." + +His body bounded to an upright attitude, his hands thrust deep into +pockets. "No." If the word had been louder it would have been a shout. +"I shall never forgive her." + +There was no change in her sweet reasonableness. "I don't see what you +gain by that." + +"I gain this much--that I don't do it." + +"I still can't see that it makes your situation any better, while it +makes hers a good deal worse." + +"If hers is worse, mine _is_ better. The woman deliberately wrecked my +life after I'd been kind to her--for years." + +"The poor thing didn't do it deliberately, Mr. Walker. She did it +because she couldn't help it--because she loved you so." + +He shook himself impatiently. "Ah, what kind of love is that?" + +The audacity of her response--the curious audacity of shyness--seemed to +him extraordinary only when, later, he thought it over. "I dare say it +isn't a very high kind of love--but there was no question of its being +that--from the first. Was there?" + +"All the more reason then why she should have kept where she belonged." + +"Yes, of course. And yet it's difficult for love to keep itself where it +belongs when it's very--very consuming." + +He leaned back in his chair, eying her. If he spoke roughly it was only +because she had roused all his emotions on his own behalf, as well as a +faint subconscious interest in herself. "Look here, Miss Bland. How much +do you know about this?" + +"Oh, I know all about it," she assured him, hurrying to explain, in +answer to something she saw in his face: "Uncle Emery didn't tell me. I +read it first in the papers--you remember there was a lot of talk about +it in the papers--and then every one was talking of it. I couldn't help +knowing. Uncle Emery," she added, "only told me one tiny little thing, +which couldn't do any one any harm." + +"And that was--?" + +"Miss Clare's address. I asked him for it when I found that I--that I +wanted to go and see her." + +"And why on earth should you want to go and see her--a young girl like +you?" + +Her blush was like a color from outside reflected in the soft luster of +her skin as a tint of sunset may be caught by the petals of certain +white flowers. + +"I had a reason. It wasn't doing any one any harm," she repeated, "not +even you." In further self-defense she added: "Uncle Emery didn't +disapprove, and I've never told Aunt Zena. But I've always been glad I +went--very." + +"Why?" + +"Because she's a sort of charge of Uncle Emery's, for one thing--since +you've put her in his care. I help _him_ a little bit. And then the +sister she lives with--you knew we'd got her to live with her sister, +didn't you?--isn't very kind to her. It's just the money. And then," she +continued, the soft color deepening, "I had another reason--more +personal--that I'd rather not say anything about." + +"I can't imagine anything in the whole bad business that could be +personal to you." + +"No, of course you can't. It's only personal by association--by +imagination, probably." She made nothing clearer by adding: "You know +I'm not really Uncle Emery's niece, or Aunt Zena's." + +He nodded. + +"I don't know who my mother was. But whoever she was--I'm sorry for +her." + +He began to get her idea. "You're probably quite wrong," he said, +kindly; "and until you know you're right I shouldn't let fancies of that +sort run away with me." + +"Oh, I don't. And yet you can see that when I meet any one like Maggie +Clare--well, I don't feel superior to her. It's like being a +gipsy--George Eliot's Fedalma, for instance--adopted by a kind family, +but knowing she's a gipsy just the same." + +He brought his knowledge of the world to bear on her. "I assure you +you're not in the least like that kind of gipsy." + +"Neither was Fedalma like her kind; and yet when she could do something +for them she went to them and did it." + +"How old are you?" he said, abruptly, asking the same question which but +a few weeks before Noel Ordway had put to Edith, and in much the same +way. + +"We call it twenty-three--because we keep my birthday on the date on +which Uncle Emery and Aunt Zena took me; but I must be nearer +twenty-five." + +He looked at her more attentively than he had ever done. She was not +really shy; she wasn't even reserved; but she was repressed--repressed +as any one might be who lived under the weight of Mrs. Bland's +protesting, grudging kindliness. It came back to him now, the tone in +which she had said, a year earlier, that she couldn't be called mother +by a child who didn't belong to her. How that must have been "rubbed in" +to the poor girl before him! Other things, too, came back to him, +especially on Bland's part certain stolen moments of tenderness toward +the girl, that had been interrupted in Chip's presence by a peremptory +voice, saying, "Now, Emery, don't spoil the child," or "Lily, dear, +_can't_ you find anything better to do than tease your uncle?" In it all +Chip had found two subjects of wonderment: first, the strange egoism of +this middle-aged woman who could see nothing in the expansion of her +husband's affections but what was stolen from herself; and then, the +extraordinary freak of marital loyalty that could keep a man like Emery +Bland, with his refinement and his knowledge of the world, true to a +woman whom he had once loved, no doubt, in a youthful way, but who was +now his inferior by every token of character. A good enough woman she +was of her kind; but it was no more her husband's kind than it was that +of the gods immortal. What was the secret that kept these unequal +yoke-fellows together, sympathetic, and tolerably happy, when he and +Edith, who were made for each other, had by some force of mutual +expulsion been thrust apart? Bland himself was of the type which, in the +language that was almost more familiar to him than English, Chip would +have called _charmeur_; and yet he deferred to this second-rate woman, +and considered her, and even loved her in a placid, steady-going way, +submitting at times to her dictation. Chip couldn't understand it. If he +himself had been married to Mrs. Bland--But that was unthinkable. What +wasn't unthinkable, and yet became the more bewildering the more he +tried to work the problem out, was that he himself had failed to keep +for his own the woman who suited him in every respect, whose love he +possessed and who possessed his, who was happy with him and he with her, +while Emery Bland had contrived to make the most of the estimable but +rather coarse-grained lady who sat at the head of his table, and have a +truly enviable life with her. No one could be more keenly aware of the +lady's shortcomings, which lay within the realm of taste and +intelligence, than Bland himself. What was his secret? Was it a +principle, or was it nothing but a lucky accident? Was it something in a +cast of character or a tenet of a creed, or was it what any one could +emulate? + +These thoughts and questions passed rapidly through Chip's mind, not for +the first time, during the two or three minutes in which there was no +sound about them but the murmur of the brook, the humming of insects, +and the whisper of the summer wind through millions of trees. + +He reverted to Maggie Clare, the timbre of his voice again growing +harder. "What's the matter with her?" + +She was singularly gentle. "I suppose it could be described most +accurately as a broken heart." + +He flushed hotly. "Oh, don't say that," he cried, as if he had been +stung. + +"I shouldn't say it if it didn't answer your question." + +"_I_ didn't break her heart," he declared, in sharp aggressiveness of +self-defense. + +"Oh no. Even she doesn't think so. The poor thing hasn't much mind left, +as you know; but what she has is concentrated on that point--that you +were not to blame in anything. Please don't think that I'm in any way +hinting at such an accusation." + +He looked at her stupidly. "Then if her heart's broken, what's broken +it?" + +"The circumstances, I suppose. You don't seem to understand that the +poor soul must long ago have reached a point where her love for you was +absolutely the only thing she had." + +Again he seemed to shake himself, as though to rid his body of something +that had fastened on it. "I never _asked_ her to love me like that. I +never _wanted_ it." + +She smiled, faintly and sweetly. "Oh, well, that wouldn't make any +difference. Love gives itself. It doesn't wait for permission. I should +think you'd have known that." + +He leaned forward, an arm resting on one knee. While he reflected he +broke into the tuneless, almost inaudible, whistling Edith used to know +so well. "I said I'd never see her again," he muttered, as the result of +his meditation. + +"May I ask if that was a promise to any one, or if it was something you +just said to yourself and about which you'd have a right to change your +mind?" + +He continued to mutter. "I said it to--to my wife." + +"As a promise? Please forgive me for asking. I shouldn't, only that the +request of a dying woman--" + +"I said it," he admitted, unwillingly; "but it wasn't exactly a promise. +My wife said--" He stopped and bit his lip. "She said she didn't care." + +"You can't go by that. Of course she did care." + +"Then if she cared, I'd let twenty women die, whoever they were--" + +She rose with dignity. "That must be for you to decide, Mr. Walker. I've +given you the message I was charged with. It isn't a matter in which I +could venture to urge you." + +He, too, rose. "You do urge me," he said in a tone of complaint, "by +thinking that I ought to go." + +She looked him timidly, but steadily, in the eyes. "I'm not so sure that +I do. The whole thing is too sacred to your own inner life for me to +have an opinion. You must do what you think right, and Maggie Clare--" + +"The woman ruined me," he cried, desperately. + +"And must she bear all the responsibility of that?" + +The words were accompanied by one of her swift, half-frightened smiles; +but she didn't wait for an answer. Before Chip could begin to stammer +out an explanation that would give his point of view she was passing +rapidly up the pathway, bordered with irises and peonies and +bleeding-hearts, toward the house. + +But when he returned to town he went to see Maggie Clare. He went, and +went again. The experience became, in its way, the most poignant in his +life. He had not much knowledge of death and even less of sickness. The +wasted face and the sunken, burning eyes wrought in him a kind of +terror. It was with an effort that he could take the long thin hand, +that already had the chill of the grave in its limp fingers, into his +own. As for kissing those bloodless lips, so eager, so strained, which +he could see was what she wanted him to do, he was unable to bring +himself to it. Luckily he was not obliged to talk, since her mind +couldn't follow coherent sentences. It was enough for her to have him +sit by the bed while she worked her hands gropingly toward him, saying, +"Oh, Chip! oh, Chip!" and murmuring broken things in Swedish. It was +incredible to him that this poor worn thing, this living shadow, that +had exhausted everything but its passion for himself, had once been a +woman whom he loved. + +He was glad when she died and could be buried, so that he might consider +that episode as ended--if there was ever an end to anything in this +cursed life! And yet the occurrence brought him another kind of shock. +In the death of one who for years had been so closely associated with +his thoughts it was as if his own death had begun. He grew uneasy, +morbid. Such occupations as he found to fill the hours when he was not +at work grew insufficient. He came to hate the clubs, the restaurants, +the theaters, and such social gatherings as he was now invited to. There +was an evening when from sheer boredom he went home to his rooms as +early as eight o'clock--and the bottle of Old Piper came out of its +hiding-place. + +The real struggle followed on that. He had not so far forgotten Emery +Eland's warning as to cease to put up a fight; but he saw now that the +fight would be a hard one. There was again a period in which he weighed +the advantages of "going to the bad" with all sails set against a life +of useless respectability. Going to the bad had the more to recommend it +since he knew that Edith was in New York. His downfall might bring her +back to him, in some such way, from some such motive of saving or pity, +as that by which he himself had been brought to Maggie Clare. + +The argument being in favor of Old Piper, Old Piper supported it. Chip +never forgot an evening when, as he staggered down the steps of the club +toward the taxi that had been called for him, he met Emery Bland, who +was coming up. He would have dodged the lawyer without recognition had +it not been for the latter's kindly touch on his arm, while a voice of +distress said: "Ah, poor old chap, what's this?" + +He had just wit enough left to stammer: "Edith's in New York. Go and +tell her how you saw me." + +With that he staggered on, knowing that he almost fell into the waiting +vehicle. + +Worse days ensued--for nearly a week. Worse still might have followed +had they not been cut short suddenly. They were cut short by a note +which bore the signature, Lily Bland. It was a simple note, containing +nothing but the request that he should come and see her on one of a +choice of evenings which she named. He took the first one, which was +that of the day of the note's arrival. + +He had hardly seen her since their talk at Mountain Brook in the +previous June. He had not gone again that summer to New Hampshire, and +on the two or three occasions on which he had visited Bland's house in +town she seemed to have retreated once more to her old place as the +spirit of the furniture. He had made efforts to get nearer her, but she +seemed to elude his approaches. + +He knew she would not have summoned him without having something grave +to say, and saw that his surmises were correct by her method of +receiving him. She was not in the drawing-room, but in Emery Bland's +library, with a background of bindings of red and blue and green and +gold, a few Brangwyn and Meryon etchings, and one brilliant, sinister +spot of color by Félicien Rops. There was a fire in the monumental +fireplace, and as he entered, a log was just breaking in the middle and +spluttering, across the tall, richly wrought French dog-irons. + +It was the room of the successful New-Yorker who delights in giving +himself all the indulgences of taste of which his youth has been +deprived. The girl, dressed simply in some light stuff, and scarcely +_décolletée_, seemed somewhat lost in the spaciousness of her +surroundings. She made no pretense at preliminary social small talk, +going straight to her point. She did this by a repetition of the words +with which she had opened the similar conversation at Mountain Brook. +"I've something to tell you." Having said this while they were shaking +hands, she went on as soon as they were seated in the firelight: + +"At least Uncle Emery had something to tell you, and I asked him to let +me do it." + +"Why?" He put the question rather blankly. + +"Because I thought I could do it better." But she caught herself up at +once. "No; not better. Of course, I can't do that. Only--only I _wanted_ +him to let me do it." + +Chip's heart bounded. Edith was in New York. She had heard of his +condition. She was coming back to him. He was to have his reward for +taking pity on Maggie Clare. His tongue and lips were parched as he +forced out the words: + +"Then it's good news--or you wouldn't want to break it?" + +She was not visibly perturbed. Rather, she was pensive, sitting with an +elbow resting on the arm of her chair, the hand raised so as to lay a +forefinger on her cheek. "Don't you think that we often make news good +or bad by our way of taking it?" + +"That's asking me a question, when you've got information to give me. +What have you to tell me, Miss Bland?" + +"I've something to tell you that will give you a great shock; so that I +don't want to say it till I know you're prepared." + +"Oh, prepared! Is one ever prepared? For God's sake, Miss Bland, what is +it? Is one of the children hurt? Is one of them dead?" + +"That would be a great grief. I said that this would be a great shock. +There's a difference--and one _can_ be prepared." + +"Well, I am. Please don't keep me in suspense. Do tell me." + +She sat now with hands folded in her lap, looking at him quietly. "No, +you're not prepared." + +"Tell me what to do and I'll do it," he said, nervously, "only don't +torture me." + +"One is prepared," she said, tranquilly, "by remembering beforehand +one's own strength--by knowing that there's nothing one can't bear, and +bear nobly." + +"All right; all right; I'll do that. Now please go on." + +"But _will_ you?" + +"Will I what?" + +"Will you try to say to yourself: I'm a man, and I'm equal to this. It +can't knock me down; it can't even stagger me. I'll take it in the +highest way. I sha'n't let it degrade me or send me for help to +degrading things--" + +He flung his hands outward. "Yes, yes. I know what you're driving at. I +promise. Only, for God's sake, tell me. Is it about--?" + +"It's about Mrs. Walker." + +"Yes, so I supposed. But what is it? Is she ill? Oh, she isn't dead?" + +The cry made her eyes smart, but she kept control of her voice. + +"No, she's not dead. She's not even ill. She's perfectly well, so I +understand. But she's been--" The horror in his face, the way in which +he leaned forward as though he would spring at her, warned her that he +knew what was coming. She gave him time to get himself in hand by rising +and taking the two or three paces to the fireplace, where she stood with +a hand on the mantel-board, which was above her head, while she gazed +into the embers. "She's been--married." + +She didn't turn round. She knew by all the subtle unnamed senses that he +was huddled in his big arm-chair in a state of collapse. For the minute +there was nothing to say or do. Since the iron had to enter into his +soul, it was better that it should be like this. It was better that it +should be like this--with her there to keep him such company as one +human being can keep for another at such an hour--better than if he were +to learn it in the solitude of his own rooms, or in the unsustaining +frigidity of a lawyer's office. She knew she didn't count for much, +except for the fact--a detail only--that she was _with_ him in every +nerve that helped her to sensation and every faculty she possessed. + +So, after the minutes had passed--ten, perhaps, or fifteen--instinct +told her when to speak again. She did it without changing the position +in which she stood, or turning for a glance toward him. + +"You won't forget your promise?" + +He spoke with the vacant, suffering tone of a sick child, or of a person +so sunk into wretchedness as to find it hard to come up out of it. + +"What?" + +She repeated the words. "You won't forget your promise?" + +His tone was still vacant--vacant and afflicted. + +"What promise?" + +"That you'd remember you're strong enough to bear it nobly." + +"But I'm not." + +She turned partly. He was bent over in a crushed, stupid attitude, his +hands hanging limply between his knees. "Oh, Mr. Walker!" + +He raised his forlorn eyes. "Why did you want to tell me?" + +"Because I wanted to say _that_. I was afraid, if any one else did it, +they'd leave it out." + +He gazed at her long with a dull, unintelligent, unseeing expression. +When he spoke he was like a man who tries to get his wits together after +delirium or unconsciousness. "Do you think I am--strong enough?" + +"I _know_ you are." + +He lumbered to his feet, staggering heavily to the chimney-piece, where +he, too, laid his hands upon the mantel-board, which was just on a level +with his height, bowing his forehead upon them. As he did so she moved +away. Seeing his broad shoulders heave, and fearing she heard something +smothered--was it a groan or a sob?--she slipped out of the room, +closing the door behind her. + +But when, some twenty minutes later, he himself came forth, his head +bent, perhaps to hide his red eyes and his convulsed visage, he found +her at the door of the dining-room, with a cup of tea in her hand. +"Drink this," she said, with gentle command. + +He declined it with a shake of his head and an impatient wave of the +hand. + +"Yes, do," she insisted. "It's nice and hot. I'll have one, too." + +Obediently he went into the dining-room. He drank the tea standing and +in silence, in two or three gulps, while she, standing likewise, made a +feint of pouring a cup for herself. He left without a good-night, beyond +a hard, speechless wringing of her hand on his way to the door. + +Two things seemed strange to Chip after that evening--the one, that the +fight with Old Piper was ended; and the other, that in the matter of +Edith's marriage, once the immediate shock had spent its strength, he +bowed to the accomplished fact with a docility he himself could not +understand. As for the fight with Old Piper, there was no longer a +reason for waging it. In the new situation Old Piper had lost its +appeal, from sheer inadequacy to meet the new need. The fact of the +marriage he contrived to keep at a distance. He could do this the more +easily because it was so monstrous. It was so monstrous that the mind +refused to take it in, and he made no attempt to force himself. He asked +neither whom she had married nor why she had married, nor anything else +about her. It was a measure of safety. As long as he didn't know he was +able to create a pretended fool's paradise of ignorance which, in his +state of mind, was none the less a fool's paradise for being a pretense. +Even a fool's paradise was a protection. If it hadn't been for the +children, he might not have heard so much as the man's name. + +The children called him "papa Lacon." Chip was obliged to swallow that. +They spoke of him simply and spontaneously, taking "papa Lacon" as a +matter of course. They varied the appellation now and then by calling +him "our other papa." + +It had been intimated to him, not long after the second marriage, that +he might see the children with reasonable frequency, through the good +offices of Mr. and Mrs. Bland. He soon saw that the arrangements were +really in charge of Lily Bland, who brought the children to her house, +and took them home again. Chip saw them in the library. + +The first meeting was embarrassing. Tom was nearly eight, and Chippie on +the way to six. They entered the library together, dressed alike in +blouses and knickerbockers, their caps in their hands. They approached +slowly to where he had taken up a position he tried to make nonchalant, +standing on the hearth-rug with his hands behind him. He felt curiously +culpable before them, like a convict being visited by his friends in +jail. He felt childish, too, as though they were older than, and +superior to, himself. The childishness was shown in his standing on his +guard, determined not to be the first to make the advances. He wouldn't +be even the first to speak. + +They came forward slowly, with an air judicial and detached. Tom's eyes +observed him more closely than his brother's, who looked about the room. +Tom, as the elder, seemed to feel the responsibility of the meeting to +be on his shoulders. He came to a halt, on reaching the end of the +library table, Chippie by his side. + +"Hello, papa." + +"Hello, Tom." + +Encouraged by this exchange of greetings, Chippie also spoke up. "Hello, +papa." + +"Hello, Chippie." + +There followed a few seconds during which the interview threatened to +hang fire there, when the protest in Chip's hot heart--which was +essentially paternal--broke out almost angrily: + +"Aren't you going to kiss me?" + +It was Tom who pointed out the unreasonableness of emotion in making +this demand. His brows went up in an expression of surprise, which +hinted at protest on his own part. "Well, you're not sitting down." + +Of course! It was obviously impossible for two little mites to kiss a +man of that height at that distance. Chip dropped into an arm-chair, +waiting jealously for the two dutiful little pecks that might pass as +spontaneous, and then throwing his big arms about his young ones in a +desperate embrace. After that the ice was broken, and, with the aid of +the games and the picture-books provided by Lily Bland, the meeting +could go forward to a glorious termination in ice-cream. Now and then +there were difficult questions or observations, but they were never +pressed unduly for reply. + +"Papa, why don't you live with us any more?" + +"Papa, shall we have another papa after this one?" + +"Papa, our other papa has a funny nose." + +"Papa, are you our real papa, or is papa Lacon?" + +In general it was Chippie who put these questions or made the remarks. +Tom seemed to understand already that the situation was delicate, and +had moments of puzzled gravity. + +But, taking one thing with another, the occasion passed off well, as did +similar meetings through the rest of that winter and whenever they were +possible--which was not often--in the summer that followed. It was a joy +to Chip when they began again in the autumn, with a promise of +regularity. But that joy, too, was short-lived. + +It was his second time of seeing them after the general return to town. +Tom was hanging on his shoulder, while Chippie was seated on his knee. +Chippie was again the spokesman. + +"We've got a baby sister at our house." + +It seemed to Chip as if all the blood in his body rushed back to his +heart and stayed there. He felt dizzy, sick. The walls of his fool's +paradise were dissolved as mist, revealing a picture he had seen twice +already, each time with an upleaping of the primal and the fatherly in +him; but now ... Edith had been lying in bed, wan, bright-eyed, happy, +with a little fuzzy head just peeping at her breast! + +He put the boy from off his knee. Tom seemed to divine something and +stole away. For a second or two both lads watched him--Chippie looking +up straight into his face, Tom gazing from the distant line of the +bookcase, with his habitual expression of troubled perplexity. Chip +managed to speak at last, getting out the words in a fairly natural +tone. + +"Look here, boys; I can't stay to-day. I've got a--I've got a pain. Just +play by yourselves till Miss Bland comes for you. Be good boys, now, and +don't touch any of Mr. Bland's things." + +He was hurrying to the door when Chippie interrupted him. "Where have +you got a pain, papa?" + +He tapped himself on the heart. "Here, Chippie, here; and I hope you may +never have anything so awful." + +As he went down the steps he found himself saying: "Will this +crucifixion never end? Have I deserved it? Was the crime so terrible +that I must be tortured by degrees like this?" + +He was unable to answer his questions, or even to think. His mind seemed +to go blank till as he tramped down the street he came again to the +consciousness that he was speaking inwardly. + +"Damn her! Damn her! She's nothing to me any more." + +He was shocked, but he repeated the imprecation. He repeated it because +it shocked him. It struck at what he held to be most sacred. It profaned +his holy of holies, and left it bare to sacrilege. It gave him a fierce, +perverted joy to feel that she whom he would have loved to shield with +everything that was most tender was now exposed to his cursing. It was +rifling his own sanctuary and trampling its treasures in the streets. + +He had never had a sanctuary but in her. Other people's temples were to +him not so much objects of contempt as of dim, vague astonishment. Such +words as righteousness and sacrament and Saviour had no place in his +speech. Edith had been the holiest thing he knew. She was both shrine +and goddess. Now that the shrine had been proven empty, and the goddess +irrevocably flown, he got an impious satisfaction from battering down +the altars and blaspheming the deity to whom they had been raised. + +"Damn her! Damn her!" + +He repeated the curse at intervals till he reached his rooms, the +hateful rooms that he rarely visited at this hour of the day. He was +not, however, thinking of their hatefulness now, as he had come with an +intention. + +There was a fire laid in the fireplace, and he lighted it. When it was +crackling sufficiently he drew Edith's photograph from its frame and, +after gazing at it long and bitterly, tossed it into the blaze. He +watched it blister and writhe as though it had been a living thing. The +flame seized on it slowly and unwillingly, biting at the edges in a +curling wreath of blue, and eating its way inward only by degrees. But +it ate its way. It ate its way till the whole lovely person +disappeared--first the hands, and then the bosom, and then the throat +and the features. The sweet eyes still gazed up at him when everything +else was gone. + +He had hoped to get relief by this bit of ritual, but none came. When +that which had been the semblance of his wife was no more than a little +swollen rectangle of black ash, and the fire itself was dying down, he +threw himself into a chair. + +The reaction was not long in setting in. It set in with a voice that +might have come from without, but which he nevertheless recognized as +his own: + +"You fool! Oh, you fool! What difference does this make to your love for +her? You know you love her, and that you will never cease loving her, +and that what you envy her is--the child." + +What you envy her is--the child! He pondered on this. It was like an +accusation. The admission of it--when admission came--was the point of +departure in his heart of a new conscious yearning. + + + + +IV + +DANGER + + +It was what he had been afraid of on and off for seven years. The wonder +was that it hadn't happened before. But, since it had not happened, he +had got out of the way of expecting it. The fear of it used to dog him +whenever he went to the theater or the opera or out to dine. There had +been minutes in Fifth Avenue, or Bond Street, or the Rue de la Paix, as +the case might be, when, at the sight of a feather or a scarf or +something familiar in a way of walking, his heart and brain seemed to +stop their function. He had known himself to stand stock-still, +searching wildly for the easy, casual phrases he had prepared--for the +purpose of carrying off such a meeting as this, if ever it occurred, +only to find that he was mistaken--that it was some one else. + +There had been two or three years like that, two or three years in which +they had often been in the same city, perhaps under the same roof; but +he had never so much as caught a glimpse of her. In the earlier months +that had been a relief. He couldn't have seen her and kept his +self-control. He could follow the routine of life only by a system he +had invented--a system for shutting her out of his thought, that the +sight of her would have wrecked. + +Then had come another period in which he felt he could have committed +infamies just to see her getting in or out of a carriage, or lunching in +a restaurant, or buying something in a shop. There were whole seasons +when he knew she was in New York from autumn to spring; and, though he +haunted all the places where women who keep in the movement are likely +to be found, he never saw her. + +He knew he could have discovered her plans and followed her; but he +wouldn't do that. Besides, he didn't want to meet her in such a way as +to be obliged to speak to her. He wouldn't have known what to say, or by +what name to call her. Such an encounter would have annoyed her and made +him grotesque. It was more than he asked. He would have been satisfied +with a glimpse of her gloved hand or her veiled face as she drove in +the Park or the Avenue. But he never got it. + +After he married, the fear of meeting her came back. It was fear as much +for her sake as for his own. He began to understand that the +embarrassment wouldn't be all on his side, nor the suffering. He picked +that up from the children, as he had picked up so many things, piecing +odds and ends of their speeches together. He saw them so rarely now that +he attached the greater value to the hints they threw out. He never +questioned them about her, but it was natural that they should take a +wider range of comment in proportion as they grew older. So he learned +that her dread of seeing him was as great as his own of seeing her. It +was astonishing that in all those seven years the hazards of New York +should not have thrown them together. + +And now, at the moment when he might reasonably have felt safest, there +she was! That is, she was on the steamer. For seven or eight days they +were to be cooped up on the same boat. He could never go on deck or into +the saloon without having to pass her. Worse still, she could never go +outside her cabin door without the risk of being obliged to make him +some sign of recognition. And a sign of recognition between _them_--why, +the thing was absurd! Between them it must be all--or nothing; and it +couldn't be either. + +He looked at the passenger-list again. Yes; that was her name: _Mrs. +Theodore Lacon_. It was not a name likely to be duplicated. In all human +probability it was she. As far as he could gather from the list, she was +traveling alone, without so much as the companionship of a maid. He, +too, was alone; but, fortunately, his name was inconspicuous: _Mr. C. +Walker_. It was just the sort of name to be overlooked. She might read +the list half a dozen times without really seeing it. If she were to +notice it, she might easily not reflect that the initial stood for +Chipman. It was conceivable that if she didn't actually see him she +might not know that he was on the ship at all. + +The thought suggested a line of action. He was in his cabin at the time. +He could stay there. Looking through the port-hole, he saw that they had +not yet passed the Statue of Liberty. While in dock he had kept to his +room, in order to read letters and avoid the crowd that throngs the deck +of an outgoing steamer. There was every likelihood that she hadn't seen +him any more than he had seen her. If he kept himself hidden she might +never know! He could avoid the decks by day and take his exercise by +night. By night, too, he could creep into the smoking-room and get a +little change. But he would stay away from the general gathering-places +on the ship and spare her what pain he could. That they should meet as +strangers was out of the question. That they should meet as social +acquaintances was even more so. They had been all to each other--and +they had been nothing. No other relation was possible. + +So the week passed, and they reached Liverpool. He was purposely among +the last to go ashore. In the great shed where the luggage was +distributed under initial letters, he was glad to remember that W was so +far from L. Nevertheless, he allowed his eye to roam toward section L, +but found no one there whom he recognized. He ran over in his mind the +various chances that she might not have come. It was no uncommon thing +to read in a list of passengers the names of people who hadn't sailed. +He had done so before. + +Later he scanned, as discreetly as he could, the occupants of the +special train that was to take them to London. He couldn't see that she +was anywhere among them. He sighed, but whether from relief or +disappointment he was not sure. + +As it was one o'clock, he took his seat in the luncheon-car, making sure +in advance that she wasn't there. He had come to the conclusion by this +time that she was not on the train at all--that she hadn't been on the +steamer. He did not, however, regret his precautions, because--well, +because the sense of her proximity had made him feel as he had felt in +the days--fourteen years ago now--when the very streets of the city in +which she lived were hallowed ground. He had supposed that emotion dead. +Probably it was dead. It must be dead. It was merely that, owing to the +constraint of the voyage, his nerves were unstrung, inducing the frame +of mind in which people see ghosts. Yes, that was it; he had been seeing +ghosts. It was not a living thing, this renewed yearning for a sight of +her. It was only the reflex of something past. It could be explained +psychologically. It was the sort of evanescent sentiment inspired by old +songs, or by the scent of faded flowers, reviving old joys tenderly, +perhaps poignantly, but fleetingly, insubstantially, and only as the +wraiths of what they were. Yes, that was it, he repeated to himself as +he lunched. It was nothing to be afraid of, nothing incongruous with the +fact that he had left a wife and child in New York. It was not an +emotion; it was only the echo, the shadow, the memory of an emotion, +gone before it could be seized. + +And then, suddenly, they were face to face. He was on his way from the +luncheon-car to the compartment he shared with two or three men at the +other end of the train. She was standing in the corridor, looking out at +the vaporous English landscape. Through the mists overlying the flat +fields and distant parks trees loomed weirdly, the elms and beeches in +full leaf, the oaks just tinged with green. Cottony white clouds drifted +overhead; the sun was dimly visible. Now and then a line of hedge was +white, or pink and white, with the bursting may. + +He didn't recognize the lady who barred his way along the narrow +passage. As she stood with one arm on the brass rail that crossed the +window he could see an ungloved hand; but it might have been any hand. +She wore a long brown coat, rather shapeless, reaching to the hem of her +dress, while a large hat, about which a green veil looped and drooped +irregularly, entirely concealing the head, helped to make her, as he +stood waiting for her to move, a mere feminine figure without +personality. + +It was the sense that some one desired to pass that caused her to turn +slightly, glancing up at him sidewise. Even so, he couldn't see all of +her face--not much more than the forehead and the eyes. But the eyes +seemed to come alive as he looked down into them, like sapphires under +slowly growing light. When she turned, her movements had the +deliberation of bewilderment. She might have been just wakened in a +place she didn't know. + +"Chip!" There was another half-minute of incredulous gazing before she +said anything more. "What are you doing here?" + +He felt the necessity of explaining his presence. "I was on the boat. I +didn't know--" + +"That I was on it, too?" + +"I--I did know that," he stammered, "after we sailed. Not before. It was +the name in the list--" + +"But I never saw you. There weren't many passengers. I was always on +deck." + +Her distress betrayed itself in the trembling of her voice, in the +shifting of her color, and in the beating of the ungloved hand upon the +gloved one. + +He felt his own confusion passing. It was so natural to be with her, so +right. His voice grew steadier as he said: + +"I didn't go about very much. I was afraid--" + +She nodded, speaking hastily. "I understand. It was kind of you. And +you're--alone?" + +He cursed himself for coloring, but he couldn't help it. He had a wife +and child in New York! He saw that she wanted to recognize that fact +from the first. She wanted to put that boy and his mother between them. +Her husband and child stood between them, too. He took that cue in +answering. + +"Yes; I've run over hurriedly on business. And are you alone, too?" + +She glanced toward the empty compartment where her bags were stowed in +the overhead racks, and her books and illustrated papers lay on the +cushions. "I'm on my way to join my--" It was her turn to color. + +He nodded quickly, to show that he understood. + +"He's in Biarritz," she hurried on, for the sake of saying something. +"I'm to meet him in Paris. I wasn't coming over at all this spring. I +wanted to stay with the children at Towers--" + +It was a safe subject. "How were the children when you left?" + +"Tom was all right; but Chippie has been having the same old trouble +with his tonsils. They'll have to be cut again." + +"I thought so the last time I saw him. And he's growing too fast for his +strength, poor little chap. I notice," he added, gazing at her more +intently than he had as yet permitted himself to do, "that he begins to +look like you." + +She smiled for the first time. "Oh, but _I_ think he looks like _you_." + +"No; Tom takes after me. He's a Walker. Chippie's--" + +"A darling," she broke in. "But he's not strong. Ever since he had the +scarlet fever--" + +"Yes, I know. But it might have been worse. We might have lost him. Do +you remember the night--?" + +She put her hand to her eyes as if to shut out the vision of it. "Oh, +that awful night! And you were more afraid than I was. Mothers are +braver than fathers at times like that." + +"It was watching the fight he put up. Gad, he was plucky, the poor +little chap! And he was only three, wasn't he?" + +"Three and five months." + +"And he'll be eleven his next birthday. How the years fly! By the way, +won't it soon be time for Tom to be going to boarding-school?" + +They were being pushed and jostled by guards and passengers. Between +sentences it was necessary to make room for some one going or coming. +She was obliged to step back into her compartment. Having taken the seat +in the corner by the window, she motioned with her hand toward that in +the opposite corner by the door. In this way they were separated by the +length and width of the compartment, the distance marking the other +gulf between them. + +She continued to talk of the children, looking at first into the +cavernous obscurity of Crewe station, through which they were dashing, +and then at the open country. The children, with their needs, their +ailments, their future careers, could not but be the natural theme +between them. It lasted while they passed Nuneaton, Rugby, and Stafford, +and were well on their way to London. Suddenly he risked a question: + +"Do they--understand?" + +She was plainly agitated that he should disturb the ashes that buried +their past. Her eyes shot him one piteous, appealing glance, after which +they returned to the passing landscape. "Tom understands," she said, at +last. "Chippie takes it for granted." + +"Takes it for granted--how?" + +"Just as they both did--till Tom began to get a little more experience. +It seemed to them quite the ordinary thing to have"--she hesitated and +colored--"to have two fathers." + +He winced, but risked another question: + +"What makes you think that Tom's discovered it to be unusual?" + +"Because he's said so." + +"In what way? Do you mind telling me?" + +"I'd rather _not_ tell you." + +"But if I insist?" + +"You'll insist at the risk of having your feelings hurt." + +"Oh, that!" A shrug of his shoulders and a wry smile expressed his +indifference to such a result. "Did he ask you anything?" + +She nodded, without turning from the window. + +"Won't you tell me what it was? It would help me in my future dealing +with the boy." + +She continued to gaze out at the park-like fields, from which the mists +had risen. "He asked me if you had done anything bad." + +"And you told him--?" + +"I told him that I didn't understand--that perhaps I'd never +understood." + +"Thank you for putting it like that. But you did understand, you +know--perfectly. You mustn't have it on your conscience that--" + +"Oh, we can't help the things we've got on our consciences. There's no +way of shuffling away from them." + +He allowed some minutes to pass before saying gently: "You're happy?" + +She spoke while watching a flock of sheep trotting clumsily up a +hillside from the noise of the train. "And you?" + +"Oh, I'm as happy as--well, as I deserve to be. I'm not _un_happy." A +pause gave emphasis to his question when he said, almost repeating her +tone: "And you?" + +"I suppose I ought to say the same." A dozen or twenty rooks alighting +on an elm engaged her attention before she added: "I've no _right_ to be +unhappy." + +"One can be unhappy without a right." + +"Yes; but one forfeits sympathy." + +"Do you need sympathy?" + +She answered hurriedly: "No, not at all." + +"I do." + +His words were so low that it was permissible for her not to hear them. +Perhaps she meant at first to make use of this privilege, but when a +minute or more had gone by she said: "What for?" + +"Partly for the penalties I've had to pay, but chiefly for deserving +them." + +It seemed to him that her profile grew pensive. Though it detached +itself clearly enough against the pane, it was a soft profile, a little +blurred in the outline, with delicate curves of nose and lips and +chin--the profile to go with dimpling smiles and a suffused sweetness. +It pained him to notice that, though the suffused sweetness and the +dimpling smiles were still as he remembered them, they didn't keep out +of her face certain lines that had not been there when he saw her last. + +"I think I ought to tell you," she said, after long reflection, "that I +understand that sort of sympathy better now than I did some years ago. +One grows more tolerant, if that's the right word, as one grows older." + +"Does that mean that if certain things were to do again--you wouldn't do +them?" + +She took on an air of dignity. "That's something I can't talk about." + +"But you think about it." + +"Even so, I couldn't discuss it--with you." + +"But I'm the very one with whom you _could_ discuss it. Between us the +conversation would be what lawyers call privileged." + +She looked round at him for the first time since entering the +compartment. "Is anything privileged between you and me?" + +"Isn't everything?" + +"I don't see how." + +"We've been man and wife--" + +"That's the very reason. No two people seem to me so far apart as those +who've been man and wife--and aren't so any longer." + +"And yet, in a way, no two are so near together." + +Her eyes were full of mute questioning. He made no attempt to approach +her, but in leaning across the upholstered arm of his seat he seemed to +overcome some of the distance between them. + +"No two are so near together," he went on, "for the very reason that +when they're separated outwardly they're bound the more closely by the +things of the heart and the soul and the spirit. After all, those are +the ties that count. The legal dissolving of bonds and making of new +ones is only superficial. It hasn't put you and me asunder--not the you +and me," he hurried on, as something in her expression and attitude +seemed to indicate dissent, "not the you and me that are really +essential. No court and no judge could dissolve the union we entered +into when you were twenty-one and I was twenty-seven, and our two lives +melted into each other like the flowing together of two streams. Neither +judge nor court can resolve into their original waters the rivers that +have already become one." + +She smiled faintly, perhaps bitterly. "Doesn't your figure of speech +carry you too far? In our case the judge and the court were only +incidental. What really dissolved our union was--" + +"I know what you're going to say. And it _was_ against the letter of the +contract. Of course. I've never denied that, have I? But in every true +marriage there's something over and above the letter of the contract--to +which the letter of the contract is as nothing. And if ever there was a +true marriage, Edith, ours was." + +"Stop!" Her little figure became erect. Her eyes, which up to the +present he had been comparing to forget-me-nots, as he used to do, now +shone like blue-fired winter stars. "Stop, Chip." + +"Why?" + +"Because I ask you to." + +"But why should you ask me to, when I'm only stating facts? It _is_ a +fact, isn't it? that our marriage was a true one in every sense in which +a marriage _can_ be true, till other people--no, let me go on!--till +other people--your Aunt Emily most of all--advised you to exact your +pound of flesh and the strict rigor of the law. I gave you your pound of +flesh, Edith, right off the heart; so that if atonement could be made in +that way--" + +"Chip, _will_ you tell me what good there is in bringing this up now? +You're married to some one else, and so am I. We can't go back, because +we've burned the bridges behind us--" + +"But it's something to know that we'd go back if we could." + +"I haven't said so." + +"True." + +He fell silent because of the impossibility of speech. He made no move +to go. To sit with her in this way, without speaking, was like an +obliteration of the last seven years, reducing them to a nightmare. It +was a shock to him, therefore, when she pointed to a distant spire on a +hill, saying: + +"There's Harrow. We shall be in London in half an hour." + +In London in half an hour, and this brief renewal of what never should +have been interrupted would be ended! He recalled similar journeys with +her over this very bit of line, when the arrival in London had been but +the beginning of long delightful days together. And now he might not see +her for another seven years; he might never see her any more. It was +unnatural, incredible, impossible; and yet the facts precluded any +rebellion on his part against them. Even if she were willing to rebel he +couldn't do it--with a wife and boy in New York. He had married again on +purpose to satisfy his longing for a child--a family. He felt very +tenderly toward them, the little chap and his mother; but he was clear +as to the fact that he felt tenderly toward them, pityingly tender, +largely because when face to face with Edith he wished to God that they +had never been part of his life. And doubtless she felt the same toward +her Mr. Lacon and the child of that union. But she would never admit +it--not directly, at any rate. He might gather it from hints, or read +it between the lines; but he could never make her say so. Why should she +say so? What good would it do? Were she to confess to him that she hated +the man toward whom she was traveling, he would experience an unholy +satisfaction--but, after all, it would be unholy. + +In the end he could find no simpler relief to his feelings than to take +down her belongings from the overhead racks. + +"I'll just run along and pick up my own traps," he explained, "and come +back to see you properly looked after." + +Though she assured him of her ability to look after herself, he felt at +liberty to ridicule her pretensions. "You must have changed a great deal +if you can do that," he declared, as he handed down a roll of rugs +strapped with a shawl-strap. + +"I have changed a great deal." + +"I don't see it. I can't see that you've changed at all--essentially." + +"Oh, but it's essentially that I _am_ changed. Superficially I may be +more or less the same--a little older; but within I'm another woman." +She took advantage of the fact that his back was turned to her, as he +disentangled the handles of parasols and umbrellas from the network +above, to say further: "Perhaps--since we've met in this unexpected +way--and talked--possibly a little too frankly--it may be well if I +remind you that you'd still be confronted with that fact--that I'm +another woman--even if our bridges weren't burned behind us." He decided +to let that pass without discussion, and because he said nothing she +added: "And I dare say I should find you another man. So don't let us be +too sorry, Chip, or think that if we hadn't done what we _have_ done--" + +Though he still stood with his back to her, lifting down a heavy bag +with a black canvas covering, he could hear a catch in her voice that +almost amounted to a sob. Because there was something in himself +dangerously near responding to this appeal, he uttered the first words +that came to him: + +"Hello! Here's a thing I recognize. Didn't you have this--?" + +As he stood holding the bag awkwardly before her she inclined her head. + +"One of your wedding presents, wasn't it?" + +[Illustration: "Oh, Chip, go away! I can't stand any more--_now_." +"Do you mean that you'll see me--later--when we're in London?"] + +She found voice to say: "It's my dressing-case. Mama gave it to me." + +"And didn't I break a bottle in it once?" + +She tried to catch his tone of casual reminiscence. "It's still broken." + +"And isn't this the bag that got the awful bang that time we raised a +row about it when we landed in New York? A silver box stove in, or +something of that sort?" + +She succeeded in smiling, though she knew the smile was ghastly. "It's +still stove in." + +"Gad, think of my remembering that!" + +He meant the remark to be easy, if not precisely jocose; but the +trivial, intimate details wrung a cry from her: "Oh, Chip, go away! I +can't stand any more--_now_." + +He pressed his advantage, standing over her, the black bag still in his +hands, as she cowered in the corner, pulling down her veil. "'Now'! +'Now'! Do you mean that you'll see me--later--when we're in London?" + +The veil hid her face, but she pressed her clasped hands against her +lips as if to keep back all words. + +"Do you mean that, Edith?" he insisted. + +Her breath came in little sobs. She spoke as if the words forced +themselves out in spite of her efforts to repress them: "I'm--I'm +staying at the Ritz. I shall be there for--for some days--till--till--he +sends for me." + +"Good. I'm at the Piccadilly. I shall come to-morrow at eleven." + +Before she could withdraw her implied permission he was in the corridor +on the way to his own compartment; but at Euston he was beside her door, +ready to help her down. Amid the noise and bustle of finding her luggage +and having it put on a taxi-cab, there was no opportunity for her to +speak. He took care, besides, that there should be none. She was +actually seated in the vehicle before she was able to say to him, as he +stood at the open window to ask if she had everything she required: + +"Oh, Chip, about to-morrow--" + +"At eleven," he said, hastily. "I make it eleven because if it's fine we +might run down and have the day at Maidenhead." + +She caught at a straw. If she couldn't shelve him, a day in the country, +in the open air, would be less dangerous than one in London. And perhaps +in the end she might shelve him. At any rate, she could temporize. +"I've never been at Maidenhead." + +"And lunch at Skindle's isn't at all bad." + +"I've never been at Skindle's." + +"And after lunch we'll go out on the river--the Clieveden woods, you +know--and all that." + +"I've never seen the Clieveden woods." + +"Then that's settled. At eleven. All right, driver; go on." + +But she stretched her hands toward him. "Oh, Chip, don't come! I'm +afraid. What's the good? Since we've burned our bridges--" + +He had just time to say: "Even without bridges, there are wings. At +eleven, then. All right, driver; go on. The Ritz Hotel." + + + + +V + +PENALTY + + +He went to Berne because she had let slip the name of that place during +the afternoon at Maidenhead. It was the only hint of the kind she threw +out during the afternoons--four in all--they passed together. He forgot +the connection in which they came, but he retained the words: "He may +have to go to Berne." + +_He_ was between them as an awesome presence, never mentioned otherwise +than allusively. His name was too sinister to speak. Each thought of him +unceasingly, in silence, and with anguish; but, as far as possible, they +kept him out of their intercourse. It was enough to know that he was +there, a fearful authority in the background, able to summon her from +this brief renewal of old happiness, as Pluto could recall Eurydice. + +It was the supremacy of this power, which they themselves had placed in +his hands, that in the end drove Chip Walker to wondering what he was +like. + +"What _is_ he like?" he found the force to ask. + +She looked distressed. "He's a good man." + +He nerved himself to come to a point at which he had long been aiming: +"Look here, Edith! Why did you marry him?" + +"Do you mean, why did I marry him in particular, or why did I marry any +one?" + +"I mean both." + +"Oh, I don't know. There--there seemed to be reasons." + +That was at Tunbridge Wells--in the twilight, on the terrace of the old +Calverly Hotel. They were sitting under a great hawthorn in full bloom. +The air was sweet with the scent of it. It was sweet, too, with the +scent of flowers and of new-mown hay. In a tree at the edge of the +terrace a blackbird was singing to a faint crescent moon. There was +still enough daylight to show the shadows deepening toward Bridge and +over Broadwater Down, while on the sloping crest of Bishop's Down Common +human figures appeared of gigantic size as they towered through the +gloaming. + +Edith was pouring the after-dinner coffee. It was the first time they +had dined together. On the other days she had made it a point to be back +in London before nightfall; but she had so far yielded to him now as to +be willing to wait for a later train. + +"What sort of reasons?" he urged. + +"Oh, I don't know," she said again, pensively, dropping a lump of sugar +into his coffee-cup. She added, while passing the cup to him: "It isn't +so easy for a woman to be--to be drifting about--especially with two +children." + +"But why should you have drifted about, when you knew that at a sign +from you--?" + +She went on as if he hadn't spoken. "And when I saw you had dismantled +the house and other people were living in it--I couldn't help seeing +that, you know, in driving by--" + +"But, good God, Edith, you wouldn't have come back to me?" + +She stirred her own coffee slowly. "N-no." + +"Does that mean no or yes?" + +"Oh, it means no. That is"--she reflected long--"if I _had_ gone back to +you I should have been sorry." + +"You would have considered it a weakness--a surrender--" + +She nodded. "Something like that." + +"And you really had stopped--caring anything about me?" + +"It wasn't that so much as--so much as that I couldn't get over my +resentment." She seemed to have found the explanatory word. "That was +it," she continued, with more decision. "That's what I felt: +resentment--a terrible resentment. Whatever compromise I thought of, +that resentment against you for--for doing what you did--blocked the +way. If I'd gone back I should have taken it with me." + +"But you don't seem to suffer from it now. Or am I wrong?" + +She answered promptly: "No; you're right. That's the strange part of it. +After I married--it left me. It was as if old scores were wiped out. +That isn't precisely what I felt," she hastened to add; "and yet, it was +something _like_ that." + +"You'd got even." + +She shook her head doubtfully. "N-no. I don't mean that. But the past +seemed to be dissolved--not to exist for me any more." + +"H'm! Not to exist for you any more!" + +"I said _seemed_. That's what bewildered me--from the beginning: things +I thought I felt--or thought I didn't feel--for a while--only to find +later that it wasn't--wasn't _so_." She went on with difficulty. "For +instance--that day--that day at the Park--I thought that everything was +killed within me. But it wasn't. It came alive again." + +"But not so much alive that you wanted to come back to me." + +"Alive--in a different way." + +"What sort of different way?" + +Her eyes became appealing. "Oh, what's the good of talking of it now?" + +"Because you haven't told me what I asked--why you married him--why you +married any one." + +She turned the query against himself: "Why did _you_?" + +"I didn't till after you did. I wouldn't have done it then if--if I +hadn't been so--well, to put it plainly, so damned lonely." + +She gave him one of the smiles that stabbed him. "Well, then? Doesn't +that answer your question?" + +He thought it did, and for a while they listened to the blackbird's song +in silence. It was their last talk. They parted at the door of the Ritz +with the intention of spending the next day in Windsor Forest--or some +other romantic wood; but within a few minutes she had telephoned him +that the summons had arrived. Next morning she left for Paris. + +And so he went to Berne. He hadn't meant to go there when he said +good-by to her at Victoria. He had no intention of following her or +putting himself in her way. He had purposely asked nothing of her plans, +or so much as the date of her return to America. He had not precisely +made up his mind that they were parting for good, but he was too stunned +to forecast the future. He was stunned and sickened. He was stunned and +sickened and disconsolate to a degree beyond anything he had thought +possible in life. If it hadn't been for the bit of business that had +brought him to London he would hardly have had courage enough to get +through the days. + +But, the business coming to an end, he was stranded. There was nothing +to do but go back to the wife and child whose existence he never +remembered except with a pang of self-reproach. He meant to go back to +them--but not yet. It was too soon. Edith was too much with him. The +fact that her physical presence was withdrawn made her spiritually the +more pervasive. The afterglow of their days together couldn't fade +otherwise than slowly, like light when the sun goes down. + +So, when he should have been going to New York, he went to Berne. It was +not really in the hope of being face to face with her again or of having +speech with her. Even if she came there the dread presence would come +with her and keep them apart. But Berne was a little place, a quiet +place, restful, soothing, a haunt of ancient peace. It had struck him, +on former visits there, that on this spot ignored by the tourist, who +changes trains subterraneously, consecrated to old sturdiness and modern +wisdom, serenely heedless of the blatant and the up-to-date, a bruised +spirit might heal itself in a seclusion cheered by green hills and +distant snowy ranges. It was such solitude that, in the first place, he +sought now. If in addition he could see the shadow of Edith passing +by--no more!--he felt that he would soon be inwardly strong again. + +At Berne there is a hotel known chiefly to wise travelers--a hotel of +old wines, old silver, old traditions, handed down from father to son, +and from the son to the son's son. Standing on the edge of the bluff +which the city crowns, it dominates from its windows and terraces the +valley of the Aar. Swift and unruffled, the river glides through the +meadows like a sinuous ice-green serpent. Beyond the river and behind +the pastoral slopes of the Gurten hangs a curtain of mist, which lifts +at times to display the line of the Bernese Oberland, from the +Wetterhorn to the Bettfluh. + +It is a hotel with which the learned people who sit in international +conferences and settle difficult questions are familiar. It was +sheltering a conference when Chip Walker arrived. Each of the nations +had appointed three distinguished men to consult with three +distinguished men from each of the other nations on possible +modifications in the rules of the Postal Union when the use of +aeroplanes became general in that service. The distinguished men met +officially in a great room of the Bundespalast; but unofficially they +could be seen strolling along the arcaded medieval streets, or feeding +the civic bears with carrots at the bear-pit, or reading or smoking or +sipping coffee and liqueurs in the fine semicircular hall of the hotel. +They were French, or Austrian, or Russian, or German, or English, or +Danish, or Dutch, as the case might be. There were also some Americans. +The great national types were more or less easy to discern--except the +Americans. That is, Chip Walker could see no one whom he could recognize +offhand as a fellow-countryman. Three gentlemanly, jovial Englishmen +were easily made out, because, in Walker's phrase, they "flocked by +themselves" and in the intervals of sitting in the Bundespalast +complained that Berne had no golf-links. They also dressed for dinner +and dined in the restaurant. A few others did the same. But the majority +of the distinguished men preferred to spend the evening in the costumes +they had worn all day, and, with their wives--there were eight or ten +dumpy, dowdy, smiling little wives--were content with the _table +d'hote_. Indeed, the popularity of the _table d'hote_ sifted the simple, +scholarly professors of Gottingen, Freiburg, or Geneva from the +representatives of the larger and more sophisticated social world, +leaving the latter to eat in the restaurant, _à la carte_. + +In this way Chip came to observe a man of some distinction who took his +meals at a small table alone and kept to himself. He was a man who would +have been noticeable anywhere, if it were for no more than the dignified +gravity of his manner and the correctness of his dress. Not only did he +wear what was impeccably the right thing for the right occasion, but his +movements were of the sedate precision that never displaces a button. As +straight and slim and erect as a guardsman, he was nevertheless stamped +all over as a civilian. From the lines in his gray, clean-shaven face of +regular profile, and the silvery touches in his hair, Chip judged him to +be fifty years old. He puzzled the analyst of nationalities--though, as +Chip put it to himself, it was clear he must belong to one of the +peoples who were chic. He was, therefore, either English or French or +Russian or Austrian or American. There was a bare chance of his being a +Dane or a Swede. When he spoke to a waiter or a passing acquaintance, +it was in so low a tone that Walker couldn't detect the language he +used. All one could affirm from distant and superficial observation was +that he was Somebody--Somebody of position, experience, and +judgment--Somebody to respect. + +That, perhaps, was the secret of Walker's curiosity--that he respected +him. He would have liked to talk to him--not precisely to ask his +advice, but to lay before him some of the difficulties that were +inchoate in his soul. He had an idea that this man with the grave, +suffering face--yes, there was suffering in his face, as one could see +on closer inspection!--would understand them. + +He came to the conclusion that he was a Russian, though he had an early +opportunity to find out. As he stood one day by the concierge's desk the +stranger entered, paused, spoke a few words inaudible to Walker, and +passed on. It was a simple matter to ask his name of the one man who +knew every name in the hotel, and he was on the point of doing so. He +had already begun: "Voulez vous bien me dire--?" when he stopped. On +the whole he preferred his own speculations. In the long, idle hours +they gave him something to think of that took his mind from dwelling on +his own entangled affairs. + +He counted, too, on the hazards of hotel life throwing them one day +together. He was already on speaking or nodding terms with most of the +distinguished men whom he could address in a common language. This had +come about by the simple means of propinquity on the terrace or in the +semicircular hall. He soon saw, however, that no diligence in +frequenting these places of reunion would help him with the stately +stranger whose interest he desired to win. The gentleman took the air +elsewhere. + +For contiguous to the terrace of the hotel is a little public park +called the Kleine Schanze--haunt of well-behaved Bernese children, of +motherly Bernese housewives supplied with knitting and the gossip of the +town, of Bernese patriarchs in search of gentle exercise and sunshine. +This little park possesses a music-pavilion, a duck-pond, a monument to +the Postal Union of 1876, many pretty pathways, and an incomparable +promenade. The incomparable promenade has also an incomparable view on +those days when the Spirit of the Alps permits it to be visible. + +Two such days at least there were during that month of June. Glancing +casually over his left shoulder as he marched one afternoon with head +bent and back turned toward the east, Chip saw that which a few minutes +before had been but the misty edge of the sky transformed into a range +of ineffable white peaks. The unexpectedness with which the glistering +spectacle appeared made his heart leap. It was like a celestial +vision--like a view of the ramparts of the Heavenly City. He clutched +the stone top of the balustrade beside which he stood, seeking terms +with which to make the moment indelible in his memory. Nothing came to +him but a few broken, obvious words--sublime!--inviolate!--eternal! and +such like. + +What he chiefly felt was his inadequacy for even gazing on the sight, +much less for recording it, when he became aware that in the crowding of +people to the edge of the terrace the stranger was standing near him. It +was an opportunity not to be missed. + +"Ça, c'est merveilleux, n'est-ce pas, monsieur?" + +The words were banal, but they would serve to break the ice. + +"Yes; and it becomes more marvelous the oftener it appears. I've never +seen it more beautiful than to-day; but perhaps that's because I've seen +it so many times." + +Chip was disappointed to be answered in English, and especially in the +English of an American. It brought the man too near for confidence. They +might easily find themselves involved in a host of common acquaintances, +a fact that would preclude intimate talk. Had he been a Russian the +remoteness of each from the other's world would have made the exchange +of secrets--perhaps of secret griefs--a possibility. Not so with a man +whom one might meet the next time one entered a club in New York. Such a +man might even be.... But he dismissed that alarming thought as out of +the question. Edith wasn't at Berne. If she had been he would have seen +her. He would not inquire at the hotel, nor at any other hotel; but he +knew that in so small a town he must have had a glimpse of her +somewhere. While it was conceivable that her husband might have come to +Berne leaving her elsewhere, this was not the sort of man she would +have married. The type to appeal to her would be something like his +own--of course! + +Nevertheless, as he had begun the conversation, he felt that in courtesy +he must go on with it. He did so by pointing with his stick to what he +took to be the highest summit of the range, and saying: "I suppose +that's the Jungfrau." + +The stranger moved nearer him. "No, you're too far to the west. That's +the Breithorn. There's the Jungfrau"--he, too, pointed with his +stick--"sentineled by the Eiger and the Mönch." + +He went on to indicate the Wetterhorn, the Schreckhorn, the Blumlisalp, +the Finsteraarhorn, and the Ebnefluh. They were like a row of shining +spiritual presences manifesting themselves to an unbelieving world. + +For the moment they served their turn in helping Chip Walker to subjects +of conversation with his fellow-countryman, in whom he had lost some +interest because he was a fellow-countryman. + +"You know a lot about Switzerland, don't you?" he observed, as the +stranger, still pointing with his stick and naming names--the +Silberhorn, the Gletschhorn, the Schneehorn, the Niesen, the +Bettfluh--that impressed the imagination with the force of the great +white peaks themselves, resolved the panorama into its minor elements. + +The stick came down and the explanation ceased. "I've lived a good deal +abroad," was the response, given quietly. "You, too, haven't you?" + +With the question they turned for the first time and looked each other +in the eyes. While Chip explained that he had spent his early years in +France or Italy or England, according to the interests of his parents, +he was inwardly remarking that the gray face, with its stiff lines, its +compressed lips, its unmoving expression, and its stamp of suffering, +was really sympathetic. Something in the composure of the manner and the +measured way of speaking imposed this new acquaintance on him as a +superior. Instinctively he said "sir" to him, as to an elder, though the +difference in their ages could not have been more than seven or eight +years. It flattered him somewhat, too, that the man who kept aloof from +others should make an exception of him and welcome his advances. They +parted with the tacit understanding that for the future, in the routine +of the hotel, they should be on speaking terms. + +There was, however, no further meeting between them till after dinner on +the following evening. Turning from the purchase of stamps at the +concierge's desk, Chip saw his new acquaintance, wearing an Inverness +cloak over his dinner-jacket, and a soft felt hat, lighting a cigar. +There was an exchange of nods. On the older man's lips there was a ghost +of a smile. It seemed friendly. He spoke: + +"You don't want to smoke a cigar in the little park? It's rather +pleasant there, with a full moon like this." + +So it was that within a few minutes they found themselves seated side by +side on one of the benches of the terraced promenade where they had met +on the previous day. Though the row of shining spiritual presences had +withdrawn, the valley was spanned by a Velvety luminosity, through which +the lights of the lower town shone like stars reflected in water. The +talk was of the conference. The stranger spoke of himself: + +"I've been interested in the various methods of international +communication for many years. In fact, I've made some slight study of +them. When the authorities were good enough to appoint me on this +commission I was glad to serve." + +"Quite so," Chip murmured, politely. + +"It's an attractive little town, too--one of the few capitals in Europe +that remain characteristic of their countries, and nothing else--wholly +or nearly unaffected by the current of life outside. But," he went on, +unexpectedly, "I wonder what a man like you can see in it--to remain +here so long?" + +Chip was startled, but he managed to say: "It isn't that I see anything +in particular. I'm--" + +"Waiting?" + +The query was perfectly courteous. It implied no more than a casual +curiosity--hardly that. + +"No; resting," Chip answered, with forced firmness. + +"Ah, it's certainly a good place for resting." Then, after a pause: +"You're married, I think you said." + +Chip didn't remember having said so, and replied to that effect. The +stranger was unperturbed. + +"No? But you are?" By way of pressing the question, he added, with a +glance at Chip through the moonlight: "Aren't you?" + +"I've a wife and little boy in New York," Walker answered, soberly. + +"Ah!" There was no emphasis on this exclamation. It signified merely +that a certain point in their mutual understanding had been reached. "A +happy marriage must be a great--safeguard." + +The tone was of a man making a moral reflection calmly, but Chip was +startled again. It was his turn to stare through the moonlight, where +the length of the bench lay between them. He felt that he was being +challenged, but that he must not betray himself too soon. "Safeguard +against what, sir?" + +There was a faint laugh, or what might have been a laugh had there been +amusement in it. "Against everything from which a married man needs +protection." + +Chip would have dropped the subject but for that sense that a challenge +was being thrown him before which he could not back down. Nevertheless, +he determined to keep from committing himself as long as possible. "I'm +not sure that I know what you mean." + +The stranger seemed to examine the burning end of his cigar. "Oh, +nothing but the obvious things--pursuing another man's wife, for +instance. A man who's happily married doesn't do that." + +There was no aggression in the tone, and yet Chip felt a curious chill. +Who was this man, and what the devil was he driving at? It was all he +could do to answer coolly, knocking the ash off the end of his own +cigar: "And yet, I've known of such cases." + +"Oh, so have I. But there was always a screw loose somewhere--I mean, a +screw loose in what we're assuming to be the happy marriages." + +"Are there any happy marriages?--permanently happy, that is?" + +The response was surprisingly direct: "That's what I hoped you'd be able +to tell _me_." + +"Then you don't know, sir?" + +Again the response was surprisingly direct: "I don't know, because I'm +not happily married." A second later he added: "But other people may +be." + +So they were going to exchange secrets, after all. "But you _are_ +married, sir?" To clear the air, he felt himself obliged to add: +"Happily or unhappily." + +"I married a lady who had divorced her husband." In the silence that +followed it seemed to Chip that he could hear the murmur of the almost +soundless river below. Somehow the sound of the river was all he could +think of. Quietly moving, low-voiced couples paced up and down the +promenade, and from the music-pavilion in the distance came the whine +and shiver of the Mattiche. "In divorce," the measured voice resumed, +"there are some dangerous risks. It's a dangerous risk for a man to +divorce his wife. It's a more dangerous risk for a woman to divorce her +husband. But to marry a divorced husband or a divorced wife is the most +dangerous risk of all." + +Chip's voice was thick and dry. "May I ask, sir, on what you base +your--your opinion?" + +"Chiefly on the principle that, no matter how successfully the dead are +buried, they may come back again as ghosts. No one can keep them from +doing that." + +"And--and I presume, sir, that you held this theory when you married?" + +"I held it _as_ a theory; I didn't know it as a fact." + +Chip felt obliged to struggle onward. "And do I understand you to be +telling me now that the ghosts _have_ come back?" + +"Perhaps you could as easily tell me." + +It was a minute or more before Chip was able to say, in a voice he tried +to keep firm: "If they have come back, you're not more haunted by them +than--than any one else." + +"So I understand." + +The brief responses had the effect of dragging him forward. "And would +it be fair to ask why you say that?--that you understand?" + +"Oh, quite fair. It's partly because you are here." + +"Then you think I ought to go away?" + +"I think--since you ask me--that you oughtn't to have come." + +"I came--to rest." + +"I don't question that. I'm only struck by--by the long arm of +coincidence." + +"That is, you believe I had another motive?" + +With a gesture he seemed to wave this aside. "That's hardly my affair. +You're here; and, since you are, I'd rather--" + +"Yes?" + +"I'd rather you didn't hurry away." + +He rose on saying this, apparently with the intention of going back to +the hotel. Chip remained seated. He smoked mechanically, without knowing +what he did. Questions rose to his lips and died there. Was Edith in +Berne? Had she seen him? Was she keeping out of his way? Was she being +kept out of his way? Was she suffering? Was it through her that he had +been recognized? The fact that he _had_ been recognized brought with it +a kind of humiliation. The humiliation was the greater because of the +way in which he had singled out this man and approached him. During all +those days of studying the stranger with respectful discretion, seeking +an opportunity to address him, the stranger, without deigning him a +look, had known perfectly well who he was and had been imputing motives +to his presence. The reference to the long arm of coincidence was +stinging. Because it was so he tried to muster his dignity. + +"I've no intention of hurrying away," he began; "but--" + +"If you like, I'll put it this way," the measured voice broke in, +courteously. "If you have time to wait a little longer I should be glad +if you'd do it." + +"Would there be any point to that?" + +"I think you might trust me not to make the request if there were not." +He added presently: "It's a wise policy to let sleeping dogs lie; but +when they've once been roused, they've got to be quieted." + +"Quieted--how?" + +"I can't tell you that as yet. I may have some vague idea concerning the +process; I've none at all as to the result." + +Chip was not sure that the stranger said good night. He knew he lifted +his hat and moved away. He watched him as, with stately, unhastening +step, he walked down the promenade, the Inverness cape and soft felt hat +silhouetted in the moonlight. + +For the next forty-eight hours Walker hung about the hotel like a +culprit. He would have sacrificed even a glimpse of Edith to feel free +to go away. He couldn't go away while the other man's plans remained +enigmatical; but he wished he hadn't come. He felt his position +undignified, grotesque, like that of a boy detected in some bit of silly +daring. + +Two days later they met again on the terrace of the Kleine Schanze. It +was not an accidental meeting. The stranger had walked directly up to +Chip to say: + +"The lady to whom we were referring the other night--" + +But Chip was still on his guard. "Did I refer to a lady?" + +"Perhaps not. But I did. And that lady is ill. You may be interested to +know it. She was ill when she arrived in Paris from London ten days +ago." + +"Then she's here." + +"She's here. That's why I'm taking your time in asking you to remain." + +Chip forced the next question with some difficulty: "Does she--does she +want to--to see me?" + +"She hasn't said so." + +"Has she--said anything about me at all?" + +"That, I think, I must leave you to learn later. But I should like you +to know at once that I'm not keeping you here without a motive." + +The stately figure moved on, leaving Chip to guess blindly at the +possibilities in store. + +More days passed--nearly a week. Chip spent much of his time in the +Kleine Schanze, noticing that the distinguished stranger frequented it +less. Idleness would have got on his nerves, and Berne begun to bore +him, had it not been for the knowledge that he was under the same roof +with Edith. That gave him patience. It was the kind of comfort a man or +a woman finds in being near the prison where some loved one is shut up +in a cell. + +It was again an afternoon when the shining spiritual presences were +making themselves visible--not with the gleaming suddenness with which +they had appeared ten days before, but slowly, with vague wonders, as if +finding it hard to bring themselves within mortal ken. Rounding the +corner of the promenade at the end remote from the hotel, at a point +from which he had the whole line of the bluff and the green depths of +the valley and the slopes of the Gurten and the curtain of Alpine mist +in one superb _coup d'oeil_, Chip saw a great white shoulder baring +itself luminously in the eastern sky. For long minutes that was all. It +might have been one of the gates of pearl of which he had heard tell. + +It was the sort of thing from which no earth-dweller could take his +eyes. He stood leaning on his stick, his cigar smoldering in his left +hand. He couldn't see that the clouds lifted or that the mists rolled +away; he only grew aware that what seemed like a gate became a bastion, +and what seemed like a bastion rose into a tower, and that out of the +tower and in the midst of the tower and round about the tower white +pinnacles glistened in white air. Nothing had happened that he could +define, beyond a heightening of his own capacity to see. Nothing on that +horizon seemed to emerge or to recede: looking wrought the wonder; he +either saw or he didn't see; and just now he saw. He thought of +something he had heard or read--he had forgotten where: "Immediately +there fell from his eyes as it had been scales." That, apparently, was +the process, while the spiritual presences ranged themselves slowly +within his vision--row upon row, peak upon peak, dome upon dome, +serried, ghostly--white against a white sky, white in white air. + +He withdrew his gaze only because the people, ever eager for this +spectacle which they had seen all their lives, crowded to the parapet. +As the children were still in school, it was a quiet throng, elderly and +sedate. Leaning on the balustrade, all faces turned one way, they +fringed the promenade, leaving the broad, paved spaces empty. + +For this reason Chip's eye caught the more quickly at the other end of +the terrace the figures of a man and a woman who stood back from the +line of gazers. They were almost in profile toward himself, the man's +erect, stately form allowing the fact that a woman was clinging to his +arm to be just perceptible. It required no such movement as that of a +few minutes later--a movement by which the woman came more fully into +view--for Chip to recognize Edith. + +_His_ Edith, _his wife_, clinging to another man's arm, clinging to her +husband's arm, clinging to the arm of a husband who was not himself, +dependent on him, supported by him, possessed by him, coming and going +with him, living and eating with him, bearing him children, sharing with +him whatever was most intimate, directed by him and dominated by +him!--yet, all the while, in everything that could make two beings one +except that stroke of the pen called law, _his wife_! + +How had it come about? What had he done, what had she done, to make this +hideous topsyturvydom a fact? He put his hand to his forehead like a man +dazed; but he withdrew it quickly. His forehead was wet and clammy. He +was shaken, transpierced. He saw now that, in all the three years since +he had heard she was married, he hadn't really known it. Perhaps it was +his imagination that was at fault--perhaps his incapacity for believing +what wasn't under his very eyes--perhaps his own success in keeping the +dreadful fact at a distance--_but he hadn't really known it_. Nothing +could have brought it home to him like this--this glimpse of her +intimate association with the other man, and her dependence upon him. + +His first impulse was to get out of their sight, to hide, to find some +place where he could grasp the appalling fact in silence and seclusion. +Second thoughts reminded him that there was a situation to be faced and +that he might as well face it now as at any other time. What sort of +situation it would be he couldn't guess; but he was sure that behind the +immobile mask of the other man's grave face there was something that +would be worth the penetration. He would give him a chance. He would go +forward to meet them. No, he wouldn't go forward to meet them; he would +wait for them where he stood. No, he wouldn't wait for them where he +stood; he would slip into the little rotunda close beside him--a little +rotunda generally occupied by motherly Bernese women, but which for the +moment the commanding spectacle outside had emptied. + +It was a little open rotunda, with seats all round and a rude table in +the middle. In sitting down he placed himself as nearly as possible in +full view, but with his face toward the mountains. It gave him a +preoccupied air to be seen relighting his cigar. It was thus optional +with the couple who began to advance along the promenade to pass him by +or to pause and address him. + +Nothing but a shadow warned him of their approach. + +"Chip--" + +He turned. Edith was standing in the doorway, the man behind her. The +haggard pallor of her face and the feverishness of her eyes reminded +Chip of the morning little Tom was born. He was on his feet--silent. He +couldn't even breathe her name. It was the less necessary since she +herself hastened to speak: + +"Chip, Mr. Lacon knows we met in England. I told him as soon as I +reached Paris; I didn't want him not to know. And now he wants us all to +meet--I don't know why." + +Since he had to say something, he uttered the first words that came to +him: "Was there any harm in it--our meeting? Mr. Lacon knows we have +children--and things to talk over." + +"Oh, it isn't only that," she said, excitedly. "It's more. I don't know +what--but I know it's more." + +He looked puzzled. "More in what way?" + +"More in this way," said the measured voice, that had lost no shade of +its self-control. "I understand that Edith feels she has made a +mistake--that you've both made a mistake--" + +[Illustration: Edith was standing in the doorway, the man behind her. +"Chip, Mr. Lacon knows we met in England."] + +"I never said so," she interrupted, hurriedly. + +Lacon smiled, as nearly as his saddened face could smile. "I didn't say +you said so," he corrected, gently. "I said I understood. There's a +difference. And, since I do understand, I feel it right to offer you--to +offer you both--" + +Exhaustion compelled her to drop into a seat. "What are you going to +say?" + +"Nothing that can hurt you, I hope--or--or Mr. Walker, either. Suppose +we all sit down?" + +He followed his own suggestion with a dignity almost serene. Chip took +mechanically the seat from which he had just risen. It offered him the +resource of looking more directly at the range of glistening peaks than +at either of his two companions. + +"The point for our consideration is this," Lacon resumed, as calmly as +if he were taking part in a meeting at the Bundespalast. "Admitting that +you've both made a mistake, is there any possibility of retracing your +steps?--or must you go on paying the penalty?" + +Chip spoke without turning his eyes from the mountains: "What do you +mean by--the penalty?" + +"I suppose I mean the necessity of making four people unhappy instead of +two." + +"That is," Chip went on, "there are two who must be unhappy in any +case." + +"Precisely. There are two for whom there's _no_ escape. Whatever happens +now, nothing can save _them_. But, since that is so, the question arises +whether it wouldn't be, let us say, a greater economy of human material +if the other two--" + +Edith looked mystified. "I don't know what you mean. Which are the two +who must be unhappy in any case?" + +Chip answered quietly, without turning his head: "He's one; my--my wife +is the other." + +"Oh!" With something between a sigh and a gasp she fell back against a +pillar of the rotunda. + +"It's the sort of economy of human material," Chip went on, his eye +following the lines of the Wetterhorn up and down, "that a man achieves +in saving himself from a sinking ship and leaving his wife and children +to drown--assuming that he can't rescue them." + +"The comparison isn't quite exact," Lacon replied, courteously. +"Wouldn't it rather be that if a man can save only one of two women, he +nevertheless does what he can?" + +Edith still looked bewildered. "I don't know what you're talking about, +either of you. What is it? Why are we here? Am I one of the two women to +be saved?" + +"The suggestion is," Chip said, dryly, "that Mr. Lacon wouldn't oppose +your divorcing him, while my--my present wife might divorce me; after +which you and I could marry again. Isn't that it, sir?" + +The older man nodded assent. "It's well to use plain English when we +can." + +Chip continued to measure the Wetterhorn with his eye. "Rather comic the +whole thing would be, wouldn't it?" + +"Possibly," Lacon replied, imperturbably. "But we've accepted the comic +in the institution of marriage, we Americans. It's too late for us to +attempt to take it without its possibilities of opera bouffe." + +"But aren't there laws?" Edith asked. + +Again Lacon's lips glimmered with the ghost of a smile. "Yes; but +they're very complacent laws. They reduce marriage to the legal +permission for two persons to live together as man and wife as long as +mutually agreeable; but the license is easily rescinded--and renewed." + +"But surely marriage is more than that," she protested. + +Lacon's ghost of a smile persisted. "Haven't we proved that it +isn't?--for us, at any rate. Hesitation to use our freedom in the future +would only stultify our action in the past. If we go in for an +institution with qualities of opera bouffe isn't it well to do it +light-heartedly?--or as light-heartedly as we can." + +Edith looked at him reproachfully. "Should you be doing it +light-heartedly?" + +"I said as light-heartedly as we can." + +"What makes you think that Chip and I--I mean," she corrected, with some +confusion, "Mr. Walker and I--want to do it at all?" + +"Isn't that rather evident?" + +"I didn't know it was." + +Chip glanced at them over his shoulder. It seemed to him that Lacon's +look was one of pity. + +"You met in England," the latter said, displaying a hesitation unusual +in him, "with something--something more than pleasure, as I judge; +and--and Mr. Walker is here." + +"Yes, by accident," she declared, hurriedly. "It was by accident in +England, too." + +He lifted his fine white hand in protest. "Oh, I'm not blaming you. On +the contrary, nothing could be more natural than that you should both +feel as I--I imagine you do. You're the wife of his youth--he's the +husband of yours. The best things you've ever had in your two lives are +those you've had in common. That you should want to bridge over the +past, and, if possible, go back--" + +"We've burned our bridges," she interrupted, quickly. + +"Even burned bridges can be rebuilt if there's the will to do it. The +whole question turns on the will. If you have that I want you to +understand that I shall not be--be an obstacle to the--to the +reconstruction." + +"Don't you _care_?" + +"That's not the question. We've already assumed the fact that my +caring--as well as that of a certain other person whom Mr. Walker would +have to consider--is secondary. It's too late to do anything for +us--assuming that she understands, or may come to understand, the +position as I do. Your refusing happiness for yourselves in order to +stand by us, or even to stand by the children--the younger children, I +mean--wouldn't do us any good. On the contrary, as far as I'm concerned, +if there could be any such thing as mitigation--" + +He broke off. Seeing the immobile features swept as by convulsion, Chip +took up the sentence: "It would be that Edith should feel free." + +"Precisely." + +"And her not feeling free would involve the continuance of--the +penalty." + +"In its extreme form." He regained control of himself. "That the +penalty should be abrogated altogether is out of the question. Some of +us must go on paying it--all four of us, indeed, to some degree. And +yet, any relief for one would be some relief for all. Do you see what I +mean?" + +The question was addressed to Edith specially. + +"I'm not sure that I do," she replied, looking at him wistfully. "Is it +this?--that, assuming what you do assume, it would be easier for you if +I--I went away?" + +"I shouldn't put it in just those words, I only mean that what's +hardest for you is hardest for me. I couldn't hold you to the letter of +one contract if you were keeping the spirit of another. Do you see now?" + +She didn't answer at once, so that Chip intervened: "Hasn't some one +said--Shakespeare or some one--that the letter killeth? It seems to me +I've heard that." + +"You probably have. Some one has said it. But He also added, as a +balancing clause, 'The Spirit giveth life.' That's the vital part of it. +To find out where the spirit is in our present situation is the question +now." + +She looked at him tearfully. "Well, _where_ is it?" + +He rose quietly. "That's for you and Mr. Walker to discover for +yourselves. I've gone as far as I dare." + +"You're not going away?" she asked, hastily. + +He smiled at them both. For the first time in Chip's acquaintance with +him it was a positive smile. "I think you'll most easily find your way +alone." + +"Oh no. Wait!" she begged; but he had already lifted his hat in his +stately way and begun to walk back toward the hotel. + +Then came the bliss of being alone together. In spite of everything, +they felt that. Edith leaned across the rude table, her hands clasped +upon it. She spoke rapidly, as if to make full use of the time. + +"Oh, Chip, what are we to do?" + +He too leaned across the table, his arms folded upon it, the extinct +cigar still between his fingers. He gazed deep into her eyes. "It's a +chance. It will never come again. Shall we take it?--or let it go?" + +"Could you take it, if I did?" + +"Could you--if I did?" + +She tried to reflect. "It's the spirit," she said, haltingly, after a +minute. "Oughtn't we to get at that?--just as he said. We've had so much +of--of the letter." + +"Ah, but what _is_ the spirit? How _do_ you get at it? That's the +point." + +She tried to reflect further--further and harder and faster. "Wouldn't +it be--what we _feel_?" + +"What we feel is that--that we love each other, isn't it?--that we love +each other as much as we did years ago--more!--more! Isn't that it?" + +She nodded. "Yes, more--oh, much more! And yet--" + +"Yes?" he said, eagerly. "Yes? And what, then?" + +"And yet--oh, Chip, I feel something else!" She leaned still further +toward him, as if to annihilate the slight distance between them. "Don't +you?" + +"Something else--how?" + +"Something else--higher--as if our loving each other wasn't the thing of +most importance. I thought it was. All these years--I mean +latterly--I've thought it was. When we met in England I was sure it was. +Since I've been back with him I've felt that I would have died gladly +just to have one more day with you, like those at Maidenhead and +Tunbridge Wells. But now--oh, Chip, I don't know _what_ to say!" + +"Is it because he's been so generous?" + +She shook her head. "Not altogether. No; I don't think it's that at all. +He's more than generous; he's tender. You can't think how tender he +is--and always has been--with me and with the children. That's why I +married him--why I thought I could find a sort of rest with him. You see +that, don't you?--without judging me too harshly. He's that kind. I'm +used to it with him. He can't help being generous. I knew he would be +when I told him we'd met in England. I told him because I couldn't do +anything else. It was a way of talking about you--even if it was only +that way. But, oh, Chip, if I left him now and went back to you--" + +"Yes, darling? What?" He spoke huskily, covering both her hands with one +of his and crushing them. "If you left him now and came back to +me--what?" + +She hurried on. "And then there's--there's the other woman. We mustn't +forget _her_. What's her name, Chip?" + +"Lily. She was Lily Bland." + +"Yes, yes; of course. I knew that. And she loves you? But how could she +help loving you? I'd hate her if she didn't. Curiously enough I don't +hate her now. I wonder why? I suppose it's because I'm so sorry for her. +She's a sweet woman, isn't she?" + +He answered, with head averted. "She's as noble in her way as--as this +man is in his." + +"That's just what I thought. I used to see her when she came to our +house to call for the children. It never occurred to me that you'd +marry her. If it had I don't know what I should have--But it's no use +going back to that now. What would you do about her, Chip, if we decided +to--to take the chance that's opened up--?" + +"I don't know. I've never thought about it. I--I suppose she'd let me +go--just as he's letting you go--if I put it to her in the right way." + +"And what would be the right way?" + +"Oh, Lord, Edith, don't ask me. How do _I_ know? I should have to tell +her--the truth." + +"And what would happen then?--to her I mean." + +"I've no idea. She'd bear up against it. She's that sort of person. But +then, inwardly, she'd very likely break her heart." + +"Oh, Chip, is it worth while? Think!" + +"I _am_ thinking." + +"Is it the spirit? That's the thing to find out." + +He shook his head sadly. "I don't know how to tell." + +"But suppose I do? Would you trust to me? Would you believe that the +thing I felt to be right for me was the right thing for us both?" + +"I think I should." + +"Well, then, listen. It's this way. You know, Chip, I love you." She had +his hand now in both of hers, twisting her fingers nervously in and out +between his. "I don't have to tell you, do I? I love you. Oh, how I love +you! It's as if the very heart had gone out of my body into yours. And +yet, Chip--oh, don't be angry--it seems to me that if I left him now and +went back to you I should become something vile. It _isn't_ because he's +so noble and good. No, it isn't that. And it isn't just the idea of +passing from one man to another and back again. We _have_ turned +marriage into opera bouffe, we Americans, and we might as well take it +as we've made it. It isn't that at all. It's--it's exactly what you said +just now: it's like a man swimming away from a sinking ship, and leaving +his wife and children to drown, because he can't rescue them. Better a +thousand times to go down with them, isn't it? You may call it waste of +human material, if you like, and yet--well, you know what I mean. I +should be leaving him to drown and you'd be leaving her to drown; and, +even though we _can't_ give them happiness by standing by, yet it's some +satisfaction just to _stand_ by. Isn't that it? Isn't that the spirit?" + +He withdrew his hand from hers to cover his eyes with it. He spoke +hoarsely: "It may be. I--I think it is." + +"But, _if_ it is, then the spirit of the contract is different now from +what it would have been--well, you know when. Then it meant that I +should have stood by _you_--forgiven you, if that's the word--and shown +myself truly your wife, for better or for worse. I didn't understand +that. I only knew about the better. I didn't see that a man and a woman +might take each other for worse--and still be true. If I had seen +it--oh, what a happy woman I should have been to-day, and in all these +years in which I haven't been happy at all! That was the spirit of the +contract then, I suppose--but now it's different. It confuses me a +little. Doesn't it confuse you?" + +"Perhaps." + +"Let me take your hand again; I can talk to you better like that. +Now--_now_--we've undertaken new responsibilities. We've involved +others. We've let them involve themselves. We can't turn our back upon +them, can we? No. I thought that's what you'd say. We can't. The +contract we've made with them must come before the one we made with each +other. We're bound, not only in law but in honor. Aren't we?" + +He made some inarticulate sign of assent. + +"And I suppose that's what he meant by the penalty--the penalty in its +extreme form: that we've put ourselves where we can't keep the higher +contract, the complete one, we made together--because we're bound by one +lower and incomplete, to which we've got to be faithful. Isn't that the +spirit _now_, don't you think?" + +Again he muttered something inarticulately assenting. + +"Well, then, Chip, I'm going." She rose with the words. + +"No, no; not yet." He caught her hand in both of his, holding it as he +leaned across the table. + +"Yes, Chip, now. What do we gain by my staying? We see the thing we've +got to do--and we must do it. We must begin on the instant. If I were to +stay a minute longer now, it would be--it would be for things we've +recognized as no longer permissible. I'm going. I'm going now!" + +There was something in her face that induced him to relax his hold. She +withdrew her hand slowly, her eyes on his. + +"Aren't you going to say good-by?" + +She shook her head, from the little doorway of the rotunda. "No. What's +the use? What good-by is possible between you and me? I'm--I'm just +going." + +And she was gone. + +With a quick movement he sprang to the opening between two of the small +pillars. "Edith!" She turned. "Edith! Come here. Come here, for God's +sake! Only one word more." + +She came back slowly, not to the door, but to the opening through which +he leaned, his knee on the seat inside. "What is it?" + +He got possession of her hand. "Tell me again that quotation he gave +us." + +She repeated it: "'The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.'" + +"Good, isn't it? I suppose it _is_ from Shakespeare?" + +"I don't know. I'll ask him--I'll look it up. If ever I see you again +I'll tell you." + +"I wish you would, because--because, if it gives us _life_, perhaps +it'll carry us along." + +With a quick movement he drew her to him and kissed her passionately on +the lips. + +A minute later he had sunk back on the seat out of which he had sprung. +He knew she was disappearing through the crowd that, satiated with +gazing, was sauntering away from the parapet. But he made no attempt to +follow her with so much as a glance. Slowly, vaguely, mistily, like a +man tired of the earthly vision, he was letting his eyes roam along the +line of shining spiritual presences. + +THE END + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Letter of the Contract, by Basil King + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT *** + +***** This file should be named 20443-8.txt or 20443-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/4/4/20443/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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