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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6a34112 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #61321 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61321) diff --git a/old/61321-0.txt b/old/61321-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 9208233..0000000 --- a/old/61321-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2818 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's New Year's Day, by Edith Wharton and E. C. Caswell - -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/license - - -Title: New Year's Day - (The 'Seventies) - -Author: Edith Wharton - -Illustrator: E. C. Caswell - -Release Date: February 5, 2020 [EBook #61321] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW YEAR'S DAY *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif, MWS and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - - - - OLD NEW YORK - - NEW YEAR’S DAY - - (_The ’Seventies_) - - - By EDITH WHARTON - - - OLD NEW YORK - - FALSE DAWN - THE OLD MAID - THE SPARK - NEW YEAR’S DAY - - THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON - - THE AGE OF INNOCENCE - - SUMMER - - THE REEF - - THE MARNE - - FRENCH WAYS AND THEIR MEANING - - - - - OLD NEW YORK - - NEW YEAR’S DAY - - (_The ’Seventies_) - - BY - - EDITH WHARTON - - AUTHOR OF “THE AGE OF INNOCENCE,” ETC. - - DECORATIONS BY E. C. CASWELL - - [Illustration: colophon] - - D. APPLETON AND COMPANY - - NEW YORK :: LONDON :: MCMXXIV - - COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY - - D. APPLETON AND COMPANY - - - _Copyright, 1923, by The Consolidated Magazines Corporation_ - - (_The Red Book Magazine_) - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - - - - - NEW YEAR’S DAY - - (_The ’Seventies_) - - - - - NEW YEAR’S DAY - - (_The ’Seventies_) - - - - -I - - -“She was _bad_ ... always. They used to meet at the Fifth Avenue Hotel,” -said my mother, as if the scene of the offence added to the guilt of the -couple whose past she was revealing. Her spectacles slanted on her -knitting, she dropped the words in a hiss that might have singed the -snowy baby-blanket which engaged her indefatigable fingers. (It was -typical of my mother to be always employed in benevolent actions while -she uttered uncharitable words.) - -“_They used to meet at the Fifth Avenue Hotel_”; how the precision of -the phrase characterized my old New York! A generation later, people -would have said, in reporting an affair such as Lizzie Hazeldean’s with -Henry Prest: “They met in hotels”--and today who but a few superannuated -spinsters, still feeding on the venom secreted in their youth, would -take any interest in the tracing of such topographies? - -Life has become too telegraphic for curiosity to linger on any given -point in a sentimental relation; as old Sillerton Jackson, in response -to my mother, grumbled through his perfect “china set”: “Fifth Avenue -Hotel? They might meet in the middle of Fifth Avenue nowadays, for all -that anybody cares.” - -But what a flood of light my mother’s tart phrase had suddenly focussed -on an unremarked incident of my boyhood! - -The Fifth Avenue Hotel ... Mrs. Hazeldean and Henry Prest ... the -conjunction of these names had arrested her darting talk on a single -point of my memory, as a search-light, suddenly checked in its -gyrations, is held motionless while one notes each of the unnaturally -sharp and lustrous images it picks out. - -At the time I was a boy of twelve, at home from school for the holidays. -My mother’s mother, Grandmamma Parrett, still lived in the house in West -Twenty-third Street which Grandpapa had built in his pioneering youth, -in days when people shuddered at the perils of living north of Union -Square--days that Grandmamma and my parents looked back to with a joking -incredulity as the years passed and the new houses advanced steadily -Park-ward, outstripping the Thirtieth Streets, taking the Reservoir at a -bound, and leaving us in what, in my school-days, was already a dullish -back-water between Aristocracy to the south and Money to the north. - -Even then fashion moved quickly in New York, and my infantile memory -barely reached back to the time when Grandmamma, in lace lappets and -creaking “_moiré_” used to receive on New Year’s day, supported by her -handsome married daughters. As for old Sillerton Jackson, who, once a -social custom had dropped into disuse, always affected never to have -observed it, he stoutly maintained that the New Year’s day ceremonial -had never been taken seriously except among families of Dutch descent, -and that that was why Mrs. Henry van der Luyden had clung to it, in a -reluctant half-apologetic way, long after her friends had closed their -doors on the first of January, and the date had been chosen for those -out-of-town parties which are so often used as a pretext for absence -when the unfashionable are celebrating their rites. - -Grandmamma, of course, no longer received. But it would have seemed to -her an exceedingly odd thing to go out of town in winter, especially now -that the New York houses were luxuriously warmed by the new hot-air -furnaces, and searchingly illuminated by gas chandeliers. No, thank -you--no country winters for the chilblained generation of prunella -sandals and low-necked sarcenet, the generation brought up in unwarmed -and unlit houses, and shipped off to die in Italy when they proved -unequal to the struggle of living in New York! Therefore Grandmamma, -like most of her contemporaries, remained in town on the first of -January, and marked the day by a family reunion, a kind of supplementary -Christmas--though to us juniors the absence of presents and plum-pudding -made it but a pale and moonlike reflection of the Feast. - -Still, the day was welcome as a lawful pretext for over-eating, -dawdling, and looking out of the window: a Dutch habit still extensively -practised in the best New York circles. On the day in question, however, -we had not yet placed ourselves behind the plate-glass whence it would -presently be so amusing to observe the funny gentlemen who trotted -about, their evening ties hardly concealed behind their overcoat -collars, darting in and out of chocolate-coloured house-fronts on their -sacramental round of calls. We were still engaged in placidly digesting -around the ravaged luncheon table when a servant dashed in to say that -the Fifth Avenue Hotel was on fire. - -Oh, then the fun began--and what fun it was! For Grandmamma’s house was -just opposite the noble edifice of white marble which I associated with -such deep-piled carpets, and such a rich sultry smell of anthracite and -coffee, whenever I was bidden to “step across” for a messenger-boy, or -to buy the evening paper for my elders. - -The hotel, for all its sober state, was no longer fashionable. No one, -in my memory, had ever known any one who went there; it was frequented -by “politicians” and “Westerners,” two classes of citizens whom my -mother’s intonation always seemed to deprive of their vote by ranking -them with illiterates and criminals. - -But for that very reason there was all the more fun to be expected from -the calamity in question; for had we not, with infinite amusement, -watched the arrival, that morning, of monumental “floral pieces” and -towering frosted cakes for the New Year’s day reception across the way? -The event was a communal one. All the ladies who were the hotel’s -“guests” were to receive together in the densely lace-curtained and -heavily chandeliered public parlours, and gentlemen with long hair, -imperials and white gloves had been hastening since two o’clock to the -scene of revelry. And now, thanks to the opportune conflagration, we -were going to have the excitement not only of seeing the Fire Brigade in -action (supreme joy of the New York youngster), but of witnessing the -flight of the ladies and their visitors, staggering out through the -smoke in gala array. The idea that the fire might be dangerous did not -mar these pleasing expectations. The house was solidly built; New York’s -invincible Brigade was already at the door, in a glare of polished -brass, coruscating helmets and horses shining like table-silver; and my -tall cousin Hubert Wesson, dashing across at the first alarm, had -promptly returned to say that all risk was over, though the two lower -floors were so full of smoke and water that the lodgers, in some -confusion, were being transported to other hotels. How then could a -small boy see in the event anything but an unlimited lark? - -Our elders, once reassured, were of the same mind. As they stood behind -us in the windows, looking over our heads, we heard chuckles of -amusement mingled with ironic comment. - -“Oh, my dear, look--here they all come! The New Year ladies! Low neck -and short sleeves in broad daylight, every one of them! Oh, and the fat -one with the paper roses in her hair ... they _are_ paper, my dear ... -off the frosted cake, probably! Oh! Oh! Oh! _Oh!_” - -Aunt Sabina Wesson was obliged to stuff her lace handkerchief between -her lips, while her firm poplin-cased figure rocked with delight. - -“Well, my dear,” Grandmamma gently reminded her, “in my youth we wore -low-necked dresses all day long and all the year round.” - -No one listened. My cousin Kate, who always imitated Aunt Sabina, was -pinching my arm in an agony of mirth. “Look at them scuttling! The -parlours must be full of smoke. Oh, but this one is still funnier; the -one with the tall feather in her hair! Granny, did you wear feathers in -your hair in the daytime? Oh, don’t ask me to believe it! And the one -with the diamond necklace! And all the gentlemen in white ties! Did -Grandpapa wear a white tie at two o’clock in the afternoon?” Nothing was -sacred to Kate, and she feigned not to notice Grandmamma’s mild frown of -reproval. - -“Well, they do in Paris, to this day, at weddings--wear evening clothes -and white ties,” said Sillerton Jackson with authority. “When Minnie -Transome of Charleston was married at the Madeleine to the Duc de....” - -But no one listened even to Sillerton Jackson. One of the party had -abruptly exclaimed: “Oh, there’s a lady running out of the hotel who’s -not in evening dress!” - -The exclamation caused all our eyes to turn toward the person indicated, -who had just reached the threshold; and someone added, in an odd voice: -“Why, her figure looks like Lizzie Hazeldean’s--” - -A dead silence followed. The lady who was not in evening dress paused. -Standing on the door-step with lifted veil, she faced our window. Her -dress was dark and plain--almost conspicuously plain--and in less time -than it takes to tell she had put her hand to her closely-patterned veil -and pulled it down over her face. But my young eyes were keen and -farsighted; and in that hardly perceptible interval I had seen a vision. -Was she beautiful--or was she only someone apart? I felt the shock of a -small pale oval, dark eyebrows curved with one sure stroke, lips made -for warmth, and now drawn up in a grimace of terror; and it seemed as if -the mysterious something, rich, secret and insistent, that broods and -murmurs behind a boy’s conscious thoughts, had suddenly peered out at -me.... As the dart reached me her veil dropped. - -“But it _is_ Lizzie Hazeldean!” Aunt Sabina gasped. She had stopped -laughing, and her crumpled handkerchief fell to the carpet. - -“Lizzie--_Lizzie_?” The name was echoed over my head with varying -intonations of reprobation, dismay and half-veiled malice. - -Lizzie Hazeldean? Running out of the Fifth Avenue Hotel on New Year’s -day with all those dressed-up women? But what on earth could she have -been doing there? No; nonsense! It was impossible.... - -“There’s Henry Prest with her,” continued Aunt Sabina in a precipitate -whisper. - -“With her?” someone gasped; and “_Oh_--” my mother cried with a -shudder. - -The men of the family said nothing, but I saw Hubert Wesson’s face -crimson with surprise. Henry Prest! Hubert was forever boring us -youngsters with his Henry Prest! That was the kind of chap Hubert meant -to be at thirty: in his eyes Henry Prest embodied all the manly graces. -Married? No, thank you! That kind of man wasn’t made for the domestic -yoke. Too fond of ladies’ society, Hubert hinted with his undergraduate -smirk; and handsome, rich, independent--an all-round sportsman, good -horseman, good shot, crack yachtsman (had his pilot’s certificate, and -always sailed his own sloop, whose cabin was full of racing trophies); -gave the most delightful little dinners, never more than six, with -cigars that beat old Beaufort’s; was awfully decent to the younger men, -chaps of Hubert’s age included--and combined, in short, all the -qualities, mental and physical, which make up, in such eyes as Hubert’s, -that oracular and irresistible figure, the man of the world. “Just the -fellow,” Hubert always solemnly concluded, “that I should go straight to -if ever I got into any kind of row that I didn’t want the family to know -about”; and our blood ran pleasantly cold at the idea of our old -Hubert’s ever being in such an unthinkable predicament. - -I felt sorry to have missed a glimpse of this legendary figure; but my -gaze had been enthralled by the lady, and now the couple had vanished in -the crowd. - -The group in our window continued to keep an embarrassed silence. They -looked almost frightened; but what struck me even more deeply was that -not one of them looked surprised. Even to my boyish sense it was clear -that what they had just seen was only the confirmation of something they -had long been prepared for. At length one of my uncles emitted a -whistle, was checked by a severe glance from his wife, and muttered: -“I’ll be damned”; another uncle began an unheeded narrative of a fire at -which he had been present in his youth, and my mother said to me -severely: “You ought to be at home preparing your lessons--a big boy -like you!”--a remark so obviously unfair that it served only to give the -measure of her agitation. - -“I don’t believe it,” said Grandmamma, in a low voice of warning, -protest and appeal. I saw Hubert steal a grateful look at her. - -But nobody else listened: every eye still strained through the window. -Livery-stable “hacks,” of the old blue-curtained variety, were driving -up to carry off the fair fugitives; for the day was bitterly cold, and -lit by one of those harsh New York suns of which every ray seems an -icicle. Into these ancient vehicles the ladies, now regaining their -composure, were being piled with their removable possessions, while -their kid-gloved callers (“So like the White Rabbit!” Kate exulted) -appeared and reappeared in the doorway, gallantly staggering after them -under bags, reticules, bird-cages, pet dogs and heaped-up finery. But to -all this--as even I, a little boy, was aware--nobody in Grandmamma’s -window paid the slightest attention. The thoughts of one and all, with a -mute and guarded eagerness, were still following the movements of those -two who were so obviously unrelated to the rest. The whole -business--discovery, comment, silent visual pursuit--could hardly, all -told, have filled a minute, perhaps not as much; before the sixty -seconds were over, Mrs. Hazeldean and Henry Prest had been lost in the -crowd, and, while the hotel continued to empty itself into the street, -had gone their joint or separate ways. But in my grandmother’s window -the silence continued unbroken. - -“Well, it’s over: here are the firemen coming out again,” someone said -at length. - -We youngsters were all alert at that; yet I felt that the grown-ups lent -but a half-hearted attention to the splendid sight which was New York’s -only pageant: the piling of scarlet ladders on scarlet carts, the -leaping up on the engine of the helmeted flame-fighters, and the -disciplined plunge forward of each pair of broadchested black steeds, -as one after another the chariots of fire rattled off. - -Silently, almost morosely, we withdrew to the drawing-room hearth; -where, after an interval of languid monosyllables, my mother, rising -first, slipped her knitting into its bag, and turning on me with renewed -severity, said: “This racing after fire-engines is what makes you too -sleepy to prepare your lessons”--a comment so wide of the mark that once -again I perceived, without understanding, the extent of the havoc -wrought in her mind by the sight of Mrs. Hazeldean and Henry Prest -coming out of the Fifth Avenue Hotel together. - -It was not until many years later that chance enabled me to relate this -fugitive impression to what had preceded and what came after it. - - - - -II - - -Mrs. Hazeldean paused at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Madison Square. -The crowd attracted by the fire still enveloped her; it was safe to halt -and take breath. - -Her companion, she knew, had gone in the opposite direction. Their -movements, on such occasions, were as well-ordered and as promptly -executed as those of the New York Fire Brigade; and after their -precipitate descent to the hall, the discovery that the police had -barred their usual exit, and the quick: “You’re all right?” to which her -imperceptible nod had responded, she was sure he had turned down -Twenty-third Street toward Sixth Avenue. - -“The Parretts’ windows were full of people,” was her first thought. - -She dwelt on it a moment, and then reflected: “Yes, but in all that -crowd and excitement nobody would have been thinking of _me_!” - -Instinctively she put her hand to her veil, as though recalling that her -features had been exposed when she ran out, and unable to remember -whether she had covered them in time or not. - -“What a fool I am! It can’t have been off my face for more than a -second--” but immediately afterward another disquieting possibility -assailed her. “I’m almost sure I saw Sillerton Jackson’s head in one of -the windows, just behind Sabina Wesson’s. No one else has that -particularly silvery gray hair.” She shivered, for everyone in New York -knew that Sillerton Jackson saw everything, and could piece together -seemingly unrelated fragments of fact with the art of a skilled -china-mender. - -Meanwhile, after sending through her veil the circular glance which she -always shot about her at that particular corner, she had begun to walk -up Broadway. She walked well--fast, but not too fast; easily, assuredly, -with the air of a woman who knows that she has a good figure, and -expects rather than fears to be identified by it. But under this -external appearance of ease she was covered with cold beads of sweat. - -Broadway, as usual at that hour, and on a holiday, was nearly deserted; -the promenading public still slowly poured up and down Fifth Avenue. - -“Luckily there was such a crowd when we came out of the hotel that no -one could possibly have noticed me,” she murmured over again, reassured -by the sense of having the long thoroughfare to herself. Composure and -presence of mind were so necessary to a woman in her situation that they -had become almost a second nature to her, and in a few minutes her thick -uneven heart-beats began to subside and to grow steadier. As if to test -their regularity, she paused before a florist’s window, and looked -appreciatively at the jars of roses and forced lilac, the compact -bunches of lilies-of-the-valley and violets, the first pots of -close-budded azaleas. Finally she opened the shop-door, and after -examining the Jacqueminots and Marshal Niels, selected with care two -perfect specimens of a new silvery-pink rose, waited for the florist to -wrap them in cotton-wool, and slipped their long stems into her muff -for more complete protection. - -“It’s so simple, after all,” she said to herself as she walked on. “I’ll -tell him that as I was coming up Fifth Avenue from Cousin Cecilia’s I -heard the fire-engines turning into Twenty-third Street, and ran after -them. Just what _he_ would have done ... once ...” she ended on a sigh. - -At Thirty-first Street she turned the corner with a quicker step. The -house she was approaching was low and narrow; but the Christmas holly -glistening between frilled curtains, the well-scrubbed steps, the -shining bell and door-knob, gave it a welcoming look. From garret to -basement it beamed like the abode of a happy couple. - -As Lizzie Hazeldean reached the door a curious change came over her. She -was conscious of it at once--she had so often said to herself, when her -little house rose before her: “It makes me feel younger as soon as I -turn the corner.” And it was true even today. In spite of her agitation -she was aware that the lines between her eyebrows were smoothing -themselves out, and that a kind of inner lightness was replacing the -heavy tumult of her breast. The lightness revealed itself in her -movements, which grew as quick as a girl’s as she ran up the steps. She -rang twice--it was her signal--and turned an unclouded smile on her -elderly parlourmaid. - -“Is Mr. Hazeldean in the library, Susan? I hope you’ve kept up the fire -for him.” - -“Oh, yes, ma’am. But Mr. Hazeldean’s not in,” said Susan, returning the -smile respectfully. - -“Not _in_? With his cold--and in this weather?” - -“That’s what I told him, ma’am. But he just laughed--” - -“Just laughed? What do you mean, Susan?” Lizzie Hazeldean felt herself -turning pale. She rested her hand quickly on the hall table. - -“Well, ma’am, the minute he heard the fire-engine, off he rushed like a -boy. It seems the Fifth Avenue Hotel’s on fire: there’s where he’s -gone.” - -The blood left Mrs. Hazeldean’s lips; she felt it shuddering back to her -heart. But a second later she spoke in a tone of natural and -good-humoured impatience. - -“What madness! How long ago--can you remember?” Instantly, she felt the -possible imprudence of the question, and added: “The doctor said he -ought not to be out more than a quarter of an hour, and only at the -sunniest time of the day.” - -“I know that, ma’am, and so I reminded him. But he’s been gone nearly an -hour, I should say.” - -A sense of deep fatigue overwhelmed Mrs. Hazeldean. She felt as if she -had walked for miles against an icy gale: her breath came laboriously. - -“How could you let him go?” she wailed; then, as the parlourmaid again -smiled respectfully, she added: “Oh, I know--sometimes one can’t stop -him. He gets so restless, being shut up with these long colds.” - -“That’s what I _do_ feel, ma’am.” - -Mistress and maid exchanged a glance of sympathy, and Susan felt herself -emboldened to suggest: “Perhaps the outing will do him good,” with the -tendency of her class to encourage favoured invalids in disobedience. - -Mrs. Hazeldean’s look grew severe. “Susan! I’ve often warned you against -talking to him in that way--” - -Susan reddened, and assumed a pained expression. “How can you think it, -ma’am?--me that never say anything to anybody, as all in the house will -bear witness.” - -Her mistress made an impatient movement. “Oh, well, I daresay he won’t -be long. The fire’s over.” - -“Ah--you knew of it too, then, ma’am?” - -“Of the fire? Why, of course. I _saw_ it, even--” Mrs. Hazeldean smiled. -“I was walking home from Washington Square--from Miss Cecilia -Winter’s--and at the corner of Twenty-third Street there was a huge -crowd, and clouds of smoke.... It’s very odd that I shouldn’t have run -across Mr. Hazeldean.” She looked limpidly at the parlourmaid. “But, -then, of course, in all that crowd and confusion....” - -Half-way up the stairs she turned to call back: “Make up a good fire in -the library, please, and bring the tea up. It’s too cold in the -drawing-room.” - -The library was on the upper landing. She went in, drew the two roses -from her muff, tenderly unswathed them, and put them in a slim glass on -her husband’s writing-table. In the doorway she paused to smile at this -touch of summer in the firelit wintry room; but a moment later her frown -of anxiety reappeared. She stood listening intently for the sound of a -latch-key; then, hearing nothing, passed on to her bedroom. - -It was a rosy room, hung with one of the new English chintzes, which -also covered the deep sofa, and the bed with its rose-lined -pillow-covers. The carpet was cherry red, the toilet-table ruffled and -looped like a ball-dress. Ah, how she and Susan had ripped and sewn and -hammered, and pieced together old scraps of lace and ribbon and muslin, -in the making of that airy monument! For weeks after she had done over -the room her husband never came into it without saying: “I can’t think -how you managed to squeeze all this loveliness out of that last cheque -of your stepmother’s.” - -On the dressing-table Lizzie Hazeldean noticed a long florist’s box, one -end of which had been cut open to give space to the still longer stems -of a bunch of roses. She snipped the string, and extracted from the box -an envelope which she flung into the fire without so much as a glance at -its contents. Then she pushed the flowers aside, and after rearranging -her dark hair before the mirror, carefully dressed herself in a loose -garment of velvet and lace which lay awaiting her on the sofa, beside -her high-heeled slippers and stockings of open-work silk. - -She had been one of the first women in New York to have tea every -afternoon at five, and to put off her walking-dress for a tea-gown. - - - - -III - - -She returned to the library, where the fire was beginning to send a -bright blaze through the twilight. It flashed on the bindings of -Hazeldean’s many books, and she smiled absently at the welcome it held -out. A latch-key rattled, and she heard her husband’s step, and the -sound of his cough below in the hall. - -“What madness--what madness!” she murmured. - -Slowly--how slowly for a young man!--he mounted the stairs, and still -coughing came into the library. She ran to him and took him in her -arms. - -“Charlie! How could you? In this weather? It’s nearly dark!” - -His long thin face lit up with a deprecating smile. “I suppose Susan’s -betrayed me, eh? Don’t be cross. You’ve missed such a show! The Fifth -Avenue Hotel’s been on fire.” - -“Yes; I know.” She paused, just perceptibly. “I _didn’t_ miss it, -though--I rushed across Madison Square for a look at it myself.” - -“You did? You were there too? What fun!” The idea appeared to fill him -with boyish amusement. - -“Naturally I was! On my way home from Cousin Cecilia’s....” - -“Ah, of course. I’d forgotten you were going there. But how odd, then, -that we didn’t meet!” - -“If we _had_ I should have dragged you home long ago. I’ve been in at -least half an hour, and the fire was already over when I got there. -What a baby you are to have stayed out so long, staring at smoke and a -fire-engine!” - -He smiled, still holding her, and passing his gaunt hand softly and -wistfully over her head. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve been indoors, safely -sheltered, and drinking old Mrs. Parrett’s punch. The old lady saw me -from her window, and sent one of the Wesson boys across the street to -fetch me in. They had just finished a family luncheon. And Sillerton -Jackson, who was there, drove me home. So you see,--” - -He released her, and moved toward the fire, and she stood motionless, -staring blindly ahead, while the thoughts spun through her mind like a -mill-race. - -“Sillerton Jackson--” she echoed, without in the least knowing what she -said. - -“Yes; he has the gout again--luckily for me!--and his sister’s brougham -came to the Parretts’ to fetch him.” - -She collected herself. “You’re coughing more than you did yesterday,” -she accused him. - -“Oh, well--the air’s sharpish. But I shall be all right presently.... -Oh, those roses!” He paused in admiration before his writing-table. - -Her face glowed with a reflected pleasure, though all the while the -names he had pronounced--“The Parretts, the Wessons, Sillerton -Jackson”--were clanging through her brain like a death-knell. - -“They _are_ lovely, aren’t they?” she beamed. - -“Much too lovely for me. You must take them down to the drawing-room.” - -“No; we’re going to have tea up here.” - -“That’s jolly--it means there’ll be no visitors, I hope?” - -She nodded, smiling. - -“Good! But the roses--no, they mustn’t be wasted on this desert air. -You’ll wear them in your dress this evening?” - -She started perceptibly, and moved slowly back toward the hearth. - -“This evening?... Oh, I’m not going to Mrs. Struthers’s,” she said, -remembering. - -“Yes, you are. Dearest--I want you to!” - -“But what shall you do alone all the evening? With that cough, you won’t -go to sleep till late.” - -“Well, if I don’t, I’ve a lot of new books to keep me busy.” - -“Oh, your books--!” She made a little gesture, half teasing, half -impatient, in the direction of the freshly cut volumes stacked up -beside his student lamp. It was an old joke between them that she had -never been able to believe anyone could really “care for reading.” Long -as she and her husband had lived together, this passion of his remained -for her as much of a mystery as on the day when she had first surprised -him, mute and absorbed, over what the people she had always lived with -would have called “a deep book.” It was her first encounter with a born -reader; or at least, the few she had known had been, like her -stepmother, the retired opera-singer, feverish devourers of circulating -library fiction: she had never before lived in a house with books in it. -Gradually she had learned to take a pride in Hazeldean’s reading, as if -it had been some rare accomplishment; she had perceived that it -reflected credit on him, and was even conscious of its adding to the -charm of his talk, a charm she had always felt without being able to -define it. But still, in her heart of hearts she regarded books as a -mere expedient, and felt sure that they were only an aid to patience, -like jackstraws or a game of patience, with the disadvantage of -requiring a greater mental effort. - -“Shan’t you be too tired to read tonight?” she questioned wistfully. - -“Too tired? Why, you goose, reading is the greatest rest in the -world!--I want you to go to Mrs. Struthers’s, dear; I want to see you -again in that black velvet dress,” he added with his coaxing smile. - -The parlourmaid brought in the tray, and Mrs. Hazeldean busied herself -with the tea-caddy. Her husband had stretched himself out in the deep -armchair which was his habitual seat. He crossed his arms behind his -neck, leaning his head back wearily against them, so that, as she -glanced at him across the hearth, she saw the salient muscles in his -long neck, and the premature wrinkles about his ears and chin. The lower -part of his face was singularly ravaged; only the eyes, those quiet -ironic grey eyes, and the white forehead above them, reminded her of -what he had been seven years before. Only seven years! - -She felt a rush of tears: no, there were times when fate was too cruel, -the future too horrible to contemplate, and the past--the past, oh, how -much worse! And there he sat, coughing, coughing--and thinking God knows -what, behind those quiet half-closed lids. At such times he grew so -mysteriously remote that she felt lonelier than when he was not in the -room. - -“Charlie!” - -He roused himself. “Yes?” - -“Here’s your tea.” - -He took it from her in silence, and she began, nervously, to wonder why -he was not talking. Was it because he was afraid it might make him cough -again, afraid she would be worried, and scold him? Or was it because he -was thinking--thinking of things he had heard at old Mrs. Parrett’s, or -on the drive home with Sillerton Jackson ... hints they might have -dropped ... insinuations ... she didn’t know what ... or of something he -had _seen_, perhaps, from old Mrs. Parrett’s window? She looked across -at his white forehead, so smooth and impenetrable in the lamplight, and -thought: “Oh, God, it’s like a locked door. I shall dash my brains out -against it some day!” - -For, after all, it was not impossible that he had actually seen her, -seen her from Mrs. Parrett’s window, or even from the crowd around the -door of the hotel. For all she knew, he might have been near enough, in -that crowd, to put out his hand and touch her. And he might have held -back, benumbed, aghast, not believing his own eyes.... She couldn’t -tell. She had never yet made up her mind how he would look, how he would -behave, what he would say, if ever he _did_ see or hear anything.... - -No! That was the worst of it. They had lived together for nearly nine -years--and how closely!--and nothing that she knew of him, or had -observed in him, enabled her to forecast exactly what, in that -particular case, his state of mind and his attitude would be. In his -profession, she knew, he was celebrated for his shrewdness and insight; -in personal matters he often seemed, to her alert mind, oddly -absent-minded and indifferent. Yet that might be merely his instinctive -way of saving his strength for things he considered more important. -There were times when she was sure he was quite deliberate and -self-controlled enough to feel in one way and behave in another: perhaps -even to have thought out a course in advance--just as, at the first bad -symptoms of illness, he had calmly made his will, and planned everything -about her future, the house and the servants.... No, she couldn’t tell; -there always hung over her the thin glittering menace of a danger she -could neither define nor localize--like that avenging lightning which -groped for the lovers in the horrible poem he had once read aloud to her -(what a choice!) on a lazy afternoon of their wedding journey, as they -lay stretched under Italian stone-pines. - -The maid came in to draw the curtains and light the lamps. The fire -glowed, the scent of the roses drifted on the warm air, and the clock -ticked out the minutes, and softly struck a half hour, while Mrs. -Hazeldean continued to ask herself, as she so often had before: “Now, -what would be the _natural_ thing for me to say?” - -And suddenly the words escaped from her, she didn’t know how: “I wonder -you didn’t see me coming out of the hotel--for I actually squeezed my -way in.” - -Her husband made no answer. Her heart jumped convulsively; then she -lifted her eyes and saw that he was asleep. How placid his face -looked--years younger than when he was awake! The immensity of her -relief rushed over her in a warm glow, the counterpart of the icy sweat -which had sent her chattering homeward from the fire. After all, if he -could fall asleep, fall into such a peaceful sleep as that--tired, no -doubt, by his imprudent walk, and the exposure to the cold--it meant, -beyond all doubt, beyond all conceivable dread, that he knew nothing, -had seen nothing, suspected nothing: that she was safe, safe, safe! - -The violence of the reaction made her long to spring to her feet and -move about the room. She saw a crooked picture that she wanted to -straighten, she would have liked to give the roses another tilt in their -glass. But there he sat, quietly sleeping, and the long habit of -vigilance made her respect his rest, watching over it as patiently as if -it had been a sick child’s. - -She drew a contented breath. Now she could afford to think of his outing -only as it might affect his health; and she knew that this sudden -drowsiness, even if it were a sign of extreme fatigue, was also the -natural restorative for that fatigue. She continued to sit behind the -tea-tray, her hands folded, her eyes on his face, while the peace of the -scene entered into her, and held her under brooding wings. - - - - -IV - - -At Mrs. Struthers’s, at eleven o’clock that evening, the long over-lit -drawing-rooms were already thronged with people. - -Lizzie Hazeldean paused on the threshold and looked about her. The habit -of pausing to get her bearings, of sending a circular glance around any -assemblage of people, any drawing-room, concert-hall or theatre that she -entered, had become so instinctive that she would have been surprised -had anyone pointed out to her the unobservant expression and careless -movements of the young women of her acquaintance, who also looked about -them, it is true, but with the vague unseeing stare of youth, and of -beauty conscious only of itself. - -Lizzie Hazeldean had long since come to regard most women of her age as -children in the art of life. Some savage instinct of self-defence, -fostered by experience, had always made her more alert and perceiving -than the charming creatures who passed from the nursery to marriage as -if lifted from one rose-lined cradle into another. “Rocked to -sleep--that’s what they’ve always been,” she used to think sometimes, -listening to their innocuous talk during the long after-dinners in hot -drawing-rooms, while their husbands, in the smoking-rooms below, -exchanged ideas which, if no more striking, were at least based on more -direct experiences. - -But then, as all the old ladies said, Lizzie Hazeldean had always -preferred the society of men. - -The man she now sought was not visible, and she gave a little sigh of -ease. “If only he has had the sense to stay away!” she thought. - -She would have preferred to stay away herself; but it had been her -husband’s whim that she should come. “You know you always enjoy yourself -at Mrs. Struthers’s--everybody does. The old girl somehow manages to -have the most amusing house in New York. Who is it who’s going to sing -tonight?... If you don’t go, I shall know it’s because I’ve coughed two -or three times oftener than usual, and you’re worrying about me. My dear -girl, it will take more than the Fifth Avenue Hotel fire to kill -_me_.... My heart’s feeling unusually steady.... Put on your black -velvet, will you?--with these two roses....” - -So she had gone. And here she was, in her black velvet, under the -glitter of Mrs. Struthers’s chandeliers, amid all the youth and good -looks and gaiety of New York; for, as Hazeldean said, Mrs. Struthers’s -house was more amusing than anybody else’s, and whenever she opened her -doors the world flocked through them. - -As Mrs. Hazeldean reached the inner drawing-room the last notes of a -rich tenor were falling on the attentive silence. She saw Campanini’s -low-necked throat subside into silence above the piano, and the clapping -of many tightly-fitting gloves was succeeded by a general movement, and -the usual irrepressible outburst of talk. - -In the breaking-up of groups she caught a glimpse of Sillerton Jackson’s -silvery crown. Their eyes met across bare shoulders, he bowed -profoundly, and she fancied that a dry smile lifted his moustache. “He -doesn’t usually bow to me as low as that,” she thought apprehensively. - -But as she advanced into the room her self-possession returned. Among -all these stupid pretty women she had such a sense of power, of knowing -almost everything better than they did, from the way of doing her hair -to the art of keeping a secret! She felt a thrill of pride in the slope -of her white shoulders above the black velvet, in the one curl escaping -from her thick chignon, and the slant of the gold arrow tipped with -diamonds which she had thrust in to retain it. And she had done it all -without a maid, with no one cleverer than Susan to help her! Ah, as a -woman she knew her business.... - - * * * * * - -Mrs. Struthers, plumed and ponderous, with diamond stars studding her -black wig like a pin-cushion, had worked her resolute way back to the -outer room. More people were coming in; and with her customary rough -skill she was receiving, distributing, introducing them. Suddenly her -smile deepened; she was evidently greeting an old friend. The group -about her scattered, and Mrs. Hazeldean saw that, in her cordial -absent-minded way, and while her wandering hostess-eye swept the rooms, -she was saying a confidential word to a tall man whose hand she -detained. They smiled at each other; then Mrs. Struthers’s glance turned -toward the inner room, and her smile seemed to say: “You’ll find her -there.” - -The tall man nodded. He looked about him composedly, and began to move -toward the centre of the throng, speaking to everyone, appearing to have -no object beyond that of greeting the next person in his path, yet -quietly, steadily pursuing that path, which led straight to the inner -room. - -Mrs. Hazeldean had found a seat near the piano. A good-looking youth, -seated beside her, was telling her at considerable length what he was -going to wear at the Beauforts’ fancy-ball. She listened, approved, -suggested; but her glance never left the advancing figure of the tall -man. - -Handsome? Yes, she said to herself; she had to admit that he was -handsome. A trifle too broad and florid, perhaps; though his air and his -attitude so plainly denied it that, on second thoughts, one agreed that -a man of his height had, after all, to carry some ballast. Yes; his -assurance made him, as a rule, appear to people exactly as he chose to -appear; that is, as a man over forty, but carrying his years carelessly, -an active muscular man, whose blue eyes were still clear, whose fair -hair waved ever so little less thickly than it used to on a low sunburnt -forehead, over eyebrows almost silvery in their blondness, and blue eyes -the bluer for their thatch. Stupid-looking? By no means. His smile -denied that. Just self-sufficient enough to escape fatuity, yet so cool -that one felt the fundamental coldness, he steered his way through life -as easily and resolutely as he was now working his way through Mrs. -Struthers’s drawing-rooms. - -Half-way, he was detained by a tap of Mrs. Wesson’s red fan. Mrs. -Wesson--surely, Mrs. Hazeldean reflected, Charles had spoken of Mrs. -Sabina Wesson’s being with her mother, old Mrs. Parrett, while they -watched the fire? Sabina Wesson was a redoubtable woman, one of the few -of her generation and her clan who had broken with tradition, and gone -to Mrs. Struthers’s almost as soon as the Shoe-Polish Queen had bought -her house in Fifth Avenue, and issued her first challenge to society. -Lizzie Hazeldean shut her eyes for an instant; then, rising from her -seat, she joined the group about the singer. From there she wandered on -to another knot of acquaintances. - -“Look here: the fellow’s going to sing again. Let’s get into that corner -over there.” - -She felt ever so slight a touch on her arm, and met Henry Prest’s -composed glance. - -A red-lit and palm-shaded recess divided the drawing-rooms from the -dining-room, which ran across the width of the house at the back. Mrs. -Hazeldean hesitated; then she caught Mrs. Wesson’s watchful glance, -lifted her head with a smile and followed her companion. - -They sat down on a small sofa under the palms, and a couple, who had -been in search of the same retreat, paused on the threshold, and with an -interchange of glances passed on. Mrs. Hazeldean smiled more vividly. - -“Where are my roses? Didn’t you get them?” Prest asked. He had a way of -looking her over from beneath lowered lids, while he affected to be -examining a glove-button or contemplating the tip of his shining boot. - -“Yes, I got them,” she answered. - -“You’re not wearing them. I didn’t order those.” - -“No.” - -“Whose are they, then?” - -She unfolded her mother-of-pearl fan, and bent above its complicated -traceries. - -“Mine,” she pronounced. - -“Yours? Well, obviously. But I suppose someone sent them to you?” - -“_I_ did.” She hesitated a second. “I sent them to myself.” - -He raised his eyebrows a little. “Well, they don’t suit you--that washy -pink! May I ask why you didn’t wear mine?” - -“I’ve already told you.... I’ve often asked you never to send flowers -... on the day....” - -“Nonsense. That’s the very day.... What’s the matter? Are you still -nervous?” - -She was silent for a moment; then she lowered her voice to say: “You -ought not to have come here tonight.” - -“My dear girl, how unlike you! You _are_ nervous.” - -“Didn’t you see all those people in the Parretts’ window?” - -“What, opposite? Lord, no; I just took to my heels! It was the deuce, -the back way being barred. But what of it? In all that crowd, do you -suppose for a moment--” - -“My husband was in the window with them,” she said, still lower. - -His confident face fell for a moment, and then almost at once regained -its look of easy arrogance. - -“Well--?” - -“Oh, nothing--as yet. Only I ask you ... to go away now.” - -“Just as you asked me not to come! Yet _you_ came, because you had the -sense to see that if you didn’t ... and I came for the same reason. Look -here, my dear, for God’s sake don’t lose your head!” - -The challenge seemed to rouse her. She lifted her chin, glanced about -the thronged room which they commanded from their corner, and nodded and -smiled invitingly at several acquaintances, with the hope that some one -of them might come up to her. But though they all returned her greetings -with a somewhat elaborate cordiality, not one advanced toward her -secluded seat. - -She turned her head slightly toward her companion. “I ask you again to -go,” she repeated. - -“Well, I will then, after the fellow’s sung. But I’m bound to say you’re -a good deal pleasanter--” - -The first bars of “_Salve, Dimora_” silenced him, and they sat side by -side in the meditative rigidity of fashionable persons listening to -expensive music. She had thrown herself into a corner of the sofa, and -Henry Prest, about whom everything was discreet but his eyes, sat apart -from her, one leg crossed over the other, one hand holding his folded -opera-hat on his knee, while the other hand rested beside him on the -sofa. But an end of her tulle scarf lay in the space between them; and -without looking in his direction, without turning her glance from the -singer, she was conscious that Prest’s hand had reached and drawn the -scarf toward him. She shivered a little, made an involuntary motion as -though to gather it about her--and then desisted. As the song ended, he -bent toward her slightly, said: “Darling” so low that it seemed no more -than a breath on her cheek, and then, rising, bowed, and strolled into -the other room. - -She sighed faintly, and, settling herself once more in her corner, -lifted her brilliant eyes to Sillerton Jackson, who was approaching. “It -_was_ good of you to bring Charlie home from the Parretts’ this -afternoon.” She held out her hand, making way for him at her side. - -“Good of me?” he laughed. “Why, I was glad of the chance of getting him -safely home; it was rather naughty of _him_ to be where he was, I -suspect.” She fancied a slight pause, as if he waited to see the effect -of this, and her lashes beat her cheeks. But already he was going on: -“Do you encourage him, with that cough, to run about town after -fire-engines?” - -She gave back the laugh. - -“I don’t discourage him--ever--if I can help it. But it _was_ foolish of -him to go out today,” she agreed; and all the while she kept on asking -herself, as she had that afternoon, in her talk with her husband: “Now, -what would be the _natural_ thing for me to say?” - -Should she speak of having been at the fire herself--or should she not? -The question dinned in her brain so loudly that she could hardly hear -what her companion was saying; yet she had, at the same time, a queer -feeling of his never having been so close to her, or rather so closely -intent on her, as now. In her strange state of nervous lucidity, her -eyes seemed to absorb with a new precision every facial detail of -whoever approached her; and old Sillerton Jackson’s narrow mask, his -withered pink cheeks, the veins in the hollow of his temples, under the -carefully-tended silvery hair, and the tiny blood-specks in the white of -his eyes as he turned their cautious blue gaze on her, appeared as if -presented under some powerful lens. With his eyeglasses dangling over -one white-gloved hand, the other supporting his opera-hat on his knee, -he suggested, behind that assumed carelessness of pose, the patient -fixity of a naturalist holding his breath near the crack from which some -tiny animal might suddenly issue--if one watched long enough, or gave -it, completely enough, the impression of not looking for it, or dreaming -it was anywhere near. The sense of that tireless attention made Mrs. -Hazeldean’s temples ache as if she sat under a glare of light even -brighter than that of the Struthers’ chandeliers--a glare in which each -quiver of a half-formed thought might be as visible behind her forehead -as the faint lines wrinkling its surface into an uncontrollable frown of -anxiety. Yes, Prest was right; she was losing her head--losing it for -the first time in the dangerous year during which she had had such -continual need to keep it steady. - -“What is it? What has happened to me?” she wondered. - -There had been alarms before--how could it be otherwise? But they had -only stimulated her, made her more alert and prompt; whereas tonight -she felt herself quivering away into she knew not what abyss of -weakness. What was different, then? Oh, she knew well enough! It was -Charles ... that haggard look in his eyes, and the lines of his throat -as he had leaned back sleeping. She had never before admitted to herself -how ill she thought him; and now, to have to admit it, and at the same -time not to have the complete certainty that the look in his eyes was -caused by illness only, made the strain unbearable. - -She glanced about her with a sudden sense of despair. Of all the people -in those brilliant animated groups--of all the women who called her -Lizzie, and the men who were familiars at her house--she knew that not -one, at that moment, guessed, or could have understood, what she was -feeling.... Her eyes fell on Henry Prest, who had come to the surface a -little way off, bending over the chair of the handsome Mrs. Lyman. “And -_you_ least of all!” she thought. “Yet God knows,” she added with a -shiver, “they all have their theories about me!” - -“My dear Mrs. Hazeldean, you look a little pale. Are you cold? Shall I -get you some champagne?” Sillerton Jackson was officiously suggesting. - -“If you think the other women look blooming! My dear man, it’s this -hideous vulgar overhead lighting....” She rose impatiently. It had -occurred to her that the thing to do--the “natural” thing--would be to -stroll up to Jinny Lyman, over whom Prest was still attentively bending. -_Then_ people would see if she was nervous, or ill--or afraid! - -But half-way she stopped and thought: “Suppose the Parretts and Wessons -_did_ see me? Then my joining Jinny while he’s talking to her will -look--how will it look?” She began to regret not having had it out on -the spot with Sillerton Jackson, who could be trusted to hold his tongue -on occasion, especially if a pretty woman threw herself on his mercy. -She glanced over her shoulder as if to call him back; but he had turned -away, been absorbed into another group, and she found herself, instead, -abruptly face to face with Sabina Wesson. Well, perhaps that was better -still. After all, it all depended on how much Mrs. Wesson had seen, and -what line she meant to take, supposing she _had_ seen anything. She was -not likely to be as inscrutable as old Sillerton. Lizzie wished now that -she had not forgotten to go to Mrs. Wesson’s last party. - -“Dear Mrs. Wesson, it was so kind of you--” - -But Mrs. Wesson was not there. By the exercise of that mysterious -protective power which enables a woman desirous of not being waylaid to -make herself invisible, or to transport herself, by means imperceptible, -to another part of the earth’s surface, Mrs. Wesson, who, two seconds -earlier, appeared in all her hard handsomeness to be bearing straight -down on Mrs. Hazeldean, with a scant yard of clear _parquet_ between -them--Mrs. Wesson, as her animated back and her active red fan now -called on all the company to notice, had never been there at all, had -never seen Mrs. Hazeldean (“_Was_ she at Mrs. Struthers’s last Sunday? -How odd! I must have left before she got there--“), but was busily -engaged, on the farther side of the piano, in examining a picture to -which her attention appeared to have been called by the persons nearest -her. - -“Ah, how _life-like_! That’s what I always feel when I see a -Meissonier,” she was heard to exclaim, with her well-known instinct for -the fitting epithet. - -Lizzie Hazeldean stood motionless. Her eyes dazzled as if she had -received a blow on the forehead. “So _that’s_ what it feels like!” she -thought. She lifted her head very high, looked about her again, tried to -signal to Henry Prest, but saw him still engaged with the lovely Mrs. -Lyman, and at the same moment caught the glance of young Hubert Wesson, -Sabina’s eldest, who was standing in disengaged expectancy near the -supper-room door. - -Hubert Wesson, as his eyes met Mrs. Hazeldean’s, crimsoned to the -forehead, hung back a moment, and then came forward, bowing low--again -that too low bow! “So _he_ saw me too,” she thought. She put her hand -on his arm with a laugh. “Dear me, how ceremonious you are! Really, I’m -not as old as that bow of yours implies. My dear boy, I hope you want to -take me in to supper at once. I was out in the cold all the afternoon, -gazing at the Fifth Avenue Hotel fire, and I’m simply dying of hunger -and fatigue.” - -There, the die was cast--she had said it loud enough for all the people -nearest her to hear! And she was sure now that it was the right, the -“natural” thing to do. - -Her spirits rose, and she sailed into the supper-room like a goddess, -steering Hubert to an unoccupied table in a flowery corner. - -“No--I think we’re very well by ourselves, don’t you? Do you want that -fat old bore of a Lucy Vanderlow to join us? If you _do_, of course ... -I can see she’s dying to ... but then, I warn you, I shall ask a young -man! Let me see--shall I ask Henry Prest? You see he’s hovering! No, it -_is_ jollier with just you and me, isn’t it?” She leaned forward a -little, resting her chin on her clasped hands, her elbows on the table, -in an attitude which the older women thought shockingly free, but the -younger ones were beginning to imitate. - -“And now, some champagne, please--and _hot_ terrapin!... But I suppose -you were at the fire yourself, weren’t you?” she leaned still a little -nearer to say. - -The blush again swept over young Wesson’s face, rose to his forehead, -and turned the lobes of his large ears to balls of fire (“It looks,” she -thought, “as if he had on huge coral earrings.”). But she forced him to -look at her, laughed straight into his eyes, and went on: “Did you ever -see a funnier sight than all those dressed-up absurdities rushing out -into the cold? It looked like the end of an Inauguration Ball! I was so -fascinated that I actually pushed my way into the hall. The firemen were -furious, but they couldn’t stop me--nobody can stop me at a fire! You -should have seen the ladies scuttling downstairs--the fat ones! Oh, but -I beg your pardon; I’d forgotten that you admire ... avoirdupois. No? -But ... Mrs. Van ... so stupid of me! Why, you’re actually blushing! I -assure you, you’re as red as your mother’s fan--and visible from as -great a distance! Yes, please; a little more champagne....” - -And then the inevitable began. She forgot the fire, forgot her -anxieties, forgot Mrs. Wesson’s affront, forgot everything but the -amusement, the passing childish amusement, of twirling around her little -finger this shy clumsy boy, as she had twirled so many others, old and -young, not caring afterward if she ever saw them again, but so absorbed -in the sport, and in her sense of knowing how to do it better than the -other women--more quietly, more insidiously, without ogling, bridling or -grimacing--that sometimes she used to ask herself with a shiver: “What -was the gift given to me for?” Yes; it always amused her at first: the -gradual dawn of attraction in eyes that had regarded her with -indifference, the blood rising to the face, the way she could turn and -twist the talk as though she had her victim on a leash, spinning him -after her down winding paths of sentimentality, irony, caprice ... and -leaving him, with beating heart and dazzled eyes, to visions of an -all-promising morrow.... “My only accomplishment!” she murmured to -herself as she rose from the table followed by young Wesson’s -fascinated gaze, while already, on her own lips, she felt the taste of -cinders. - -“But at any rate,” she thought, “he’ll hold his tongue about having seen -me at the fire.” - - - - -V - - -She let herself in with her latch-key, glanced at the notes and letters -on the hall-table (the old habit of allowing nothing to escape her), and -stole up through the darkness to her room. - -A fire still glowed in the chimney, and its light fell on two vases of -crimson roses. The room was full of their scent. - -Mrs. Hazeldean frowned, and then shrugged her shoulders. It had been a -mistake, after all, to let it appear that she was indifferent to the -flowers; she must remember to thank Susan for rescuing them. She began -to undress, hastily yet clumsily, as if her deft fingers were all -thumbs; but first, detaching the two faded pink roses from her bosom, -she put them with a reverent touch into a glass on the toilet-table. -Then, slipping on her dressing-gown, she stole to her husband’s door. It -was shut, and she leaned her ear to the keyhole. After a moment she -caught his breathing, heavy, as it always was when he had a cold, but -regular, untroubled.... With a sigh of relief she tiptoed back. Her -uncovered bed, with its fresh pillows and satin coverlet, sent her a -rosy invitation; but she cowered down by the fire, hugging her knees and -staring into the coals. - -“So _that’s_ what it feels like!” she repeated. - -It was the first time in her life that she had ever been deliberately -“cut”; and the cut was a deadly injury in old New York. For Sabina -Wesson to have used it, consciously, deliberately--for there was no -doubt that she had purposely advanced toward her victim--she must have -done so with intent to kill. And to risk that, she must have been sure -of her facts, sure of corroborating witnesses, sure of being backed up -by all her clan. - -Lizzie Hazeldean had her clan too--but it was a small and weak one, and -she hung on its outer fringe by a thread of little-regarded cousinship. -As for the Hazeldean tribe, which was larger and stronger (though -nothing like the great organized Wesson-Parrett _gens_, with half New -York and all Albany at its back)--well, the Hazeldeans were not much to -be counted on, and would even, perhaps, in a furtive negative way, be -not too sorry (“if it were not for poor Charlie”) that poor Charlie’s -wife should at last be made to pay for her good looks, her popularity, -above all for being, in spite of her origin, treated by poor Charlie as -if she were one of them! - -Her origin was, of course, respectable enough. Everybody knew all about -the Winters--she had been Lizzie Winter. But the Winters were very small -people, and her father, the Reverend Arcadius Winter, the sentimental -over-popular Rector of a fashionable New York church, after a few -seasons of too great success as preacher and director of female -consciences, had suddenly had to resign and go to Bermuda for his -health--or was it France?--to some obscure watering-place, it was -rumoured. At any rate, Lizzie, who went with him (with a crushed -bed-ridden mother), was ultimately, after the mother’s death, fished out -of a girls’ school in Brussels--they seemed to have been in so many -countries at once!--and brought back to New York by a former -parishioner of poor Arcadius’s, who had always “believed in him,” in -spite of the Bishop, and who took pity on his lonely daughter. - -The parishioner, Mrs. Mant, was “one of the Hazeldeans.” She was a rich -widow, given to generous gestures which she was often at a loss how to -complete; and when she had brought Lizzie Winter home, and sufficiently -celebrated her own courage in doing so, she did not quite know what step -to take next. She had fancied it would be pleasant to have a clever -handsome girl about the house; but her housekeeper was not of the same -mind. The spare-room sheets had not been out of lavender for twenty -years--and Miss Winter always left the blinds up in her room, and the -carpet and curtains, unused to such exposure, suffered accordingly. Then -young men began to call--they called in numbers. Mrs. Mant had not -supposed that the daughter of a clergyman--and a clergyman “under a -cloud”--would expect visitors. She had imagined herself taking Lizzie -Winter to Church Fairs, and having the stitches of her knitting picked -up by the young girl, whose “eyes were better” than her benefactress’s. -But Lizzie did not know how to knit--she possessed no useful -accomplishments--and she was visibly bored by Church Fairs, where her -presence was of little use, since she had no money to spend. Mrs. Mant -began to see her mistake; and the discovery made her dislike her -protégée, whom she secretly regarded as having intentionally misled her. - -In Mrs. Mant’s life, the transition from one enthusiasm to another was -always marked by an interval of disillusionment, during which, -Providence having failed to fulfill her requirements, its existence was -openly called into question. But in this flux of moods there was one -fixed point: Mrs. Mant was a woman whose life revolved about a bunch of -keys. What treasures they gave access to, what disasters would have -ensued had they been forever lost, was not quite clear; but whenever -they were missed the household was in an uproar, and as Mrs. Mant would -trust them to no one but herself, these occasions were frequent. One of -them arose at the very moment when Mrs. Mant was recovering from her -enthusiasm for Miss Winter. A minute before, the keys had been there, in -a pocket of her work-table; she had actually touched them in hunting for -her buttonhole-scissors. She had been called away to speak to the -plumber about the bath-room leak, and when she left the room there was -no one in it but Miss Winter. When she returned, the keys were gone. -The house had been turned inside out; everyone had been, if not accused, -at least suspected; and in a rash moment Mrs. Mant had spoken of the -police. The housemaid had thereupon given warning, and her own maid -threatened to follow; when suddenly the Bishop’s hints recurred to Mrs. -Mant. The Bishop had always implied that there had been something -irregular in Dr. Winter’s accounts, besides the other unfortunate -business.... - -Very mildly, she had asked Miss Winter if she might not have seen the -keys, and “picked them up without thinking.” Miss Winter permitted -herself to smile in denying the suggestion; the smile irritated Mrs. -Mant; and in a moment the floodgates were opened. She saw nothing to -smile at in her question--unless it was of a kind that Miss Winter was -already used to, prepared for ... with that sort of background ... her -unfortunate father.... - -“Stop!” Lizzie Winter cried. She remembered now, as if it had happened -yesterday, the abyss suddenly opening at her feet. It was her first -direct contact with human cruelty. Suffering, weakness, frailties other -than Mrs. Mant’s restricted fancy could have pictured, the girl had -known, or at least suspected; but she had found as much kindness as -folly in her path, and no one had ever before attempted to visit upon -her the dimly-guessed shortcomings of her poor old father. She shook -with horror as much as with indignation, and her “Stop!” blazed out so -violently that Mrs. Mant, turning white, feebly groped for the bell. - -And it was then, at that very moment, that Charles Hazeldean came -in--Charles Hazeldean, the favourite nephew, the pride of the tribe. -Lizzie had seen him only once or twice, for he had been absent since her -return to New York. She had thought him distinguished-looking, but -rather serious and sarcastic; and he had apparently taken little notice -of her--which perhaps accounted for her opinion. - -“Oh, Charles, dearest Charles--that you should be here to hear such -things said to me!” his aunt gasped, her hand on her outraged heart. - -“What things? Said by whom? I see no one here to say them but Miss -Winter,” Charles had laughed, taking the girl’s icy hand. - -“Don’t shake hands with her! She has insulted me! She has ordered me to -keep silence--in my own house. ‘Stop!’ she said, when I was trying, in -the kindness of my heart, to get her to admit privately.... Well, if -she prefers to have the police....” - -“I do! I ask you to send for them!” Lizzie cried. - -How vividly she remembered all that followed: the finding of the keys, -Mrs. Mant’s reluctant apologies, her own cold acceptance of them, and -the sense on both sides of the impossibility of continuing their life -together! She had been wounded to the soul, and her own plight first -revealed to her in all its destitution. Before that, despite the ups and -downs of a wandering life, her youth, her good looks, the sense of a -certain bright power over people and events, had hurried her along on a -spring tide of confidence; she had never thought of herself as the -dependent, the beneficiary, of the persons who were kind to her. Now she -saw herself, at twenty, a penniless girl, with a feeble discredited -father carrying his snowy head, his unctuous voice, his edifying manner -from one cheap watering-place to another, through an endless succession -of sentimental and pecuniary entanglements. To him she could be of no -more help than he to her; and save for him she was alone. The Winter -cousins, as much humiliated by his disgrace as they had been puffed-up -by his triumphs, let it be understood, when the breach with Mrs. Mant -became known, that they were not in a position to interfere; and among -Dr. Winter’s former parishioners none was left to champion him. Almost -at the same time, Lizzie heard that he was about to marry a Portuguese -opera-singer and be received into the Church of Rome; and this crowning -scandal too promptly justified his family. - -The situation was a grave one, and called for energetic measures. -Lizzie understood it--and a week later she was engaged to Charles -Hazeldean. - -She always said afterward that but for the keys he would never have -thought of marrying her; while he laughingly affirmed that, on the -contrary, but for the keys she would never have looked at _him_. - -But what did it all matter, in the complete and blessed understanding -which was to follow on their hasty union? If all the advantages on both -sides had been weighed and found equal by judicious advisers, harmony -more complete could hardly have been predicted. As a matter of fact, the -advisers, had they been judicious, would probably have found only -elements of discord in the characters concerned. Charles Hazeldean was -by nature an observer and a student, brooding and curious of mind: -Lizzie Winter (as she looked back at herself)--what was she, what would -she ever be, but a quick, ephemeral creature, in whom a perpetual and -adaptable activity simulated mind, as her grace, her swiftness, her -expressiveness simulated beauty? So others would have judged her; so, -now, she judged herself. And she knew that in fundamental things she was -still the same. And yet she had satisfied him: satisfied him, to all -appearances, as completely in the quiet later years as in the first -flushed hours. As completely, or perhaps even more so. In the early -months, dazzled gratitude made her the humbler, fonder worshipper; but -as her powers expanded in the warm air of comprehension, as she felt -herself grow handsomer, cleverer, more competent and more companionable -than he had hoped, or she had dreamed herself capable of becoming, the -balance was imperceptibly reversed, and the triumph in his eyes when -they rested on her. - -The Hazeldeans were conquered; they had to admit it. Such a brilliant -recruit to the clan was not to be disowned. Mrs. Mant was left to nurse -her grievance in solitude, till she too fell into line, carelessly but -handsomely forgiven. - -Ah, those first years of triumph! They frightened Lizzie now as she -looked back. One day, the friendless defenceless daughter of a -discredited man; the next, almost, the wife of Charlie Hazeldean, the -popular successful young lawyer, with a good practice already assured, -and the best of professional and private prospects. His own parents were -dead, and had died poor; but two or three childless relatives were -understood to be letting their capital accumulate for his benefit, and -meanwhile in Lizzie’s thrifty hands his earnings were largely -sufficient. - -Ah, those first years! There had been barely six; but even now there -were moments when their sweetness drenched her to the soul.... Barely -six; and then the sharp re-awakening of an inherited weakness of the -heart that Hazeldean and his doctors had imagined to be completely -cured. Once before, for the same cause, he had been sent off, suddenly, -for a year of travel in mild climates and distant scenes; and his first -return had coincided with the close of Lizzie’s sojourn at Mrs. Mant’s. -The young man felt sure enough of the future to marry and take up his -professional duties again, and for the following six years he had led, -without interruption, the busy life of a successful lawyer; then had -come a second breakdown, more unexpectedly, and with more alarming -symptoms. The “Hazeldean heart” was a proverbial boast in the family; -the Hazeldeans privately considered it more distinguished than the -Sillerton gout, and far more refined than the Wesson liver; and it had -permitted most of them to survive, in valetudinarian ease, to a ripe old -age, when they died of some quite other disorder. But Charles Hazeldean -had defied it, and it took its revenge, and took it savagely. - -One by one, hopes and plans faded. The Hazeldeans went south for a -winter; he lay on a deck-chair in a Florida garden, and read and -dreamed, and was happy with Lizzie beside him. So the months passed; and -by the following autumn he was better, returned to New York, and took up -his profession. Intermittently but obstinately, he had continued the -struggle for two more years; but before they were over husband and wife -understood that the good days were done. - -He could be at his office only at lengthening intervals; he sank -gradually into invalidism without submitting to it. His income dwindled; -and, indifferent for himself, he fretted ceaselessly at the thought of -depriving Lizzie of the least of her luxuries. - -At heart she was indifferent to them too; but she could not convince him -of it. He had been brought up in the old New York tradition, which -decreed that a man, at whatever cost, must provide his wife with what -she had always “been accustomed to”; and he had gloried too much in her -prettiness, her elegance, her easy way of wearing her expensive dresses, -and his friends’ enjoyment of the good dinners she knew how to order, -not to accustom her to everything which could enhance such graces. Mrs. -Mant’s secret satisfaction rankled in him. She sent him Baltimore -terrapin, and her famous clam broth, and a dozen of the old Hazeldean -port, and said “I told you so” to her confidants when Lizzie was -mentioned; and Charles Hazeldean knew it, and swore at it. - -“I won’t be pauperized by her!” he declared; but Lizzie smiled away his -anger, and persuaded him to taste the terrapin and sip the port. - -She was smiling faintly at the memory of the last passage between him -and Mrs. Mant when the turning of the bedroom door-handle startled her. -She jumped up, and he stood there. The blood rushed to her forehead; his -expression frightened her; for an instant she stared at him as if he had -been an enemy. Then she saw that the look in his face was only the -remote lost look of excessive physical pain. - -She was at his side at once, supporting him, guiding him to the nearest -armchair. He sank into it, and she flung a shawl over him, and knelt at -his side while his inscrutable eyes continued to repel her. - -“Charles ... Charles,” she pleaded. - -For a while he could not speak; and she said to herself that she would -perhaps never know whether he had sought her because he was ill, or -whether illness had seized him as he entered her room to question, -accuse, or reveal what he had seen or heard that afternoon. - -Suddenly he lifted his hand and pressed back her forehead, so that her -face lay bare under his eyes. - -“Love, love--you’ve been happy?” - -“_Happy?_” The word choked her. She clung to him, burying her anguish -against his knees. His hand stirred weakly in her hair, and gathering -her whole strength into the gesture, she raised her head again, looked -into his eyes, and breathed back: “And you?” - -He gave her one full look; all their life together was in it, from the -first day to the last. His hand brushed her once more, like a blessing, -and then dropped. The moment of their communion was over; the next she -was preparing remedies, ringing for the servants, ordering the doctor to -be called. Her husband was once more the harmless helpless captive that -sickness makes of the most dreaded and the most loved. - - - - -VI - - -It was in Mrs. Mant’s drawing-room that, some half-year later, Mrs. -Charles Hazeldean, after a moment’s hesitation, said to the servant -that, yes, he might show in Mr. Prest. - -Mrs. Mant was away. She had been leaving for Washington to visit a new -protégée when Mrs. Hazeldean arrived from Europe, and after a rapid -consultation with the clan had decided that it would not be “decent” to -let poor Charles’s widow go to an hotel. Lizzie had therefore the -strange sensation of returning, after nearly nine years, to the house -from which her husband had triumphantly rescued her; of returning -there, to be sure, in comparative independence, and without danger of -falling into her former bondage, yet with every nerve shrinking from all -that the scene revived. - -Mrs. Mant, the next day, had left for Washington; but before starting -she had tossed a note across the breakfast-table to her visitor. - -“Very proper--he was one of Charlie’s oldest friends, I believe?” she -said, with her mild frosty smile. Mrs. Hazeldean glanced at the note, -turned it over as if to examine the signature, and restored it to her -hostess. - -“Yes. But I don’t think I care to see anyone just yet.” - -There was a pause, during which the butler brought in fresh -griddle-cakes, replenished the hot milk, and withdrew. As the door -closed on him, Mrs. Mant said, with a dangerous cordiality: “No one -would misunderstand your receiving an old friend of your husband’s ... -like Mr. Prest.” - -Lizzie Hazeldean cast a sharp glance at the large empty mysterious face -across the table. They _wanted_ her to receive Henry Prest, then? Ah, -well ... perhaps she understood.... - -“Shall I answer this for you, my dear? Or will you?” Mrs. Mant pursued. - -“Oh, as you like. But don’t fix a day, please. Later--” - -Mrs. Mant’s face again became vacuous. She murmured: “You must not shut -yourself up too much. It will not do to be morbid. I’m sorry to have to -leave you here alone--” - -Lizzie’s eyes filled: Mrs. Mant’s sympathy seemed more cruel than her -cruelty. Every word that she used had a veiled taunt for its -counterpart. - -“Oh, you mustn’t think of giving up your visit--” - -“My dear, how can I? It’s a _duty_. I’ll send a line to Henry Prest, -then.... If you would sip a little port at luncheon and dinner we should -have you looking less like a ghost....” - - * * * * * - -Mrs. Mant departed; and two days later--the interval was “decent”--Mr. -Henry Prest was announced. Mrs. Hazeldean had not seen him since the -previous New Year’s day. Their last words had been exchanged in Mrs. -Struthers’s crimson boudoir, and since then half a year had elapsed. -Charles Hazeldean had lingered for a fortnight; but though there had -been ups and downs, and intervals of hope when none could have -criticised his wife for seeing her friends, her door had been barred -against everyone. She had not excluded Henry Prest more rigorously than -the others; he had simply been one of the many who received, day by day, -the same answer: “Mrs. Hazeldean sees no one but the family.” - -Almost immediately after her husband’s death she had sailed for Europe -on a long-deferred visit to her father, who was now settled at Nice; but -from this expedition she had presumably brought back little comfort, for -when she arrived in New York her relations were struck by her air of -ill-health and depression. It spoke in her favour, however; they were -agreed that she was behaving with propriety. - -She looked at Henry Prest as if he were a stranger: so difficult was it, -at the first moment, to fit his robust and splendid person into the -region of twilight shades which, for the last months, she had inhabited. -She was beginning to find that everyone had an air of remoteness; she -seemed to see people and life through the confusing blur of the long -crape veil in which it was a widow’s duty to shroud her affliction. But -she gave him her hand without perceptible reluctance. - -He lifted it toward his lips, in an obvious attempt to combine gallantry -with condolence, and then, half-way up, seemed to feel that the occasion -required him to release it. - -“Well--you’ll admit that I’ve been patient!” he exclaimed. - -“Patient? Yes. What else was there to be?” she rejoined with a faint -smile, as he seated himself beside her, a little too near. - -“Oh, well ... of course! I understood all that, I hope you’ll believe. -But mightn’t you at least have answered my letters--one or two of them?” - -She shook her head. “I couldn’t write.” - -“Not to anyone? Or not to me?” he queried, with ironic emphasis. - -“I wrote only the letters I had to--no others.” - -“Ah, I see.” He laughed slightly. “And you didn’t consider that letters -to _me_ were among them?” - -She was silent, and he stood up and took a turn across the room. His -face was redder than usual, and now and then a twitch passed over it. -She saw that he felt the barrier of her crape, and that it left him -baffled and resentful. A struggle was still perceptibly going on in him -between his traditional standard of behaviour at such a meeting, and -primitive impulses renewed by the memory of their last hours together. -When he turned back and paused before her his ruddy flush had paled, and -he stood there, frowning, uncertain, and visibly resenting the fact that -she made him so. - -“You sit there like a stone!” he said. - -“I feel like a stone.” - -“Oh, come--!” - -She knew well enough what he was thinking: that the only way to bridge -over such a bad beginning was to get the woman into your arms--and talk -afterward. It was the classic move. He had done it dozens of times, no -doubt, and was evidently asking himself why the deuce he couldn’t do it -now.... But something in her look must have benumbed him. He sat down -again beside her. - -“What you must have been through, dearest!” He waited and coughed. “I -can understand your being--all broken up. But I know nothing; remember, -I know nothing as to what actually happened....” - -“Nothing happened.” - -“As to--what we feared? No hint--?” - -She shook her head. - -He cleared his throat before the next question. “And you don’t think -that in your absence he may have spoken--to anyone?” - -“Never!” - -“Then, my dear, we seem to have had the most unbelievable good luck; and -I can’t see--” - -He had edged slowly nearer, and now laid a large ringed hand on her -sleeve. How well she knew those rings--the two dull gold snakes with -malevolent jewelled eyes! She sat as motionless as if their coils were -about her, till slowly his tentative grasp relaxed. - -“Lizzie, you know”--his tone was discouraged--“this is morbid....” - -“Morbid?” - -“When you’re safe out of the worst scrape ... and free, my darling, -_free_! Don’t you realize it? I suppose the strain’s been too much for -you; but I want you to feel that now--” - -She stood up suddenly, and put half the length of the room between them. - -“Stop! Stop! Stop!” she almost screamed, as she had screamed long ago at -Mrs. Mant. - -He stood up also, darkly red under his rich sunburn, and forced a smile. - -“Really,” he protested, “all things considered--and after a separation -of six months!” She was silent. “My dear,” he continued mildly, “will -you tell me what you expect me to think?” - -“Oh, don’t take that tone,” she murmured. - -“What tone?” - -“As if--as if--you still imagined we could go back--” - -She saw his face fall. Had he ever before, she wondered, stumbled upon -an obstacle in that smooth walk of his? It flashed over her that this -was the danger besetting men who had a “way with women”--the day came -when they might follow it too blindly. - -The reflection evidently occurred to him almost as soon as it did to -her. He summoned another propitiatory smile, and drawing near, took her -hand gently. “But I don’t want to go back.... I want to go forward, -dearest.... Now that at last you’re free.” - -She seized on the word as if she had been waiting for her cue. “Free! -Oh, that’s it--_free_! Can’t you see, can’t you understand, that I mean -to stay free?” - -Again a shadow of distrust crossed his face, and the smile he had begun -for her reassurance seemed to remain on his lips for his own. - -“But of course! Can you imagine that I want to put you in chains? I want -you to be as free as you please--free to love me as much as you choose!” -He was visibly pleased with the last phrase. - -She drew away her hand, but not unkindly. “I’m sorry--I _am_ sorry, -Henry. But you don’t understand.” - -“What don’t I understand?” - -“That what you ask is quite impossible--ever. I can’t go on ... in the -old way....” - -She saw his face working nervously. “In the old way? You mean--?” -Before she could explain he hurried on with an increasing majesty of -manner: “Don’t answer! I see--I understand. When you spoke of freedom -just now I was misled for a moment--I frankly own I was--into thinking -that, after your wretched marriage, you might prefer discreeter ties ... -an apparent independence which would leave us both.... I say _apparent_, -for on my side there has never been the least wish to conceal.... But if -I was mistaken, if on the contrary what you wish is ... is to take -advantage of your freedom to regularize our ... our attachment....” - -She said nothing, not because she had any desire to have him complete -the phrase, but because she found nothing to say. To all that concerned -their common past she was aware of offering a numbed soul. But her -silence evidently perplexed him, and in his perplexity he began to lose -his footing, and to flounder in a sea of words. - -“Lizzie! Do you hear me? If I was mistaken, I say--and I hope I’m not -above owning that at times I _may_ be mistaken; if I was--why, by God, -my dear, no woman ever heard me speak the words before; but here I am to -have and to hold, as the Book says! Why, hadn’t you realized it? Lizzie, -look up--! _I’m asking you to marry me._” - -Still, for a moment, she made no reply, but stood gazing about her as if -she had the sudden sense of unseen presences between them. At length she -gave a faint laugh. It visibly ruffled her visitor. - -“I’m not conscious,” he began again, “of having said anything -particularly laughable--” He stopped and scrutinized her narrowly, as -though checked by the thought that there might be something not quite -normal.... Then, apparently reassured, he half-murmured his only French -phrase: “_La joie fait peur_ ... eh?” - -She did not seem to hear. “I wasn’t laughing at you,” she said, “but -only at the coincidences of life. It was in this room that my husband -asked me to marry him.” - -“Ah?” Her suitor appeared politely doubtful of the good taste, or the -opportunity, of producing this reminiscence. But he made another call on -his magnanimity. “Really? But, I say, my dear, I couldn’t be expected to -know it, could I? If I’d guessed that such a painful association--” - -“Painful?” She turned upon him. “A painful association? Do you think -that was what I meant?” Her voice sank. “This room is sacred to me.” - -She had her eyes on his face, which, perhaps because of its -architectural completeness, seemed to lack the mobility necessary to -follow such a leap of thought. It was so ostensibly a solid building, -and not a nomad’s tent. He struggled with a ruffled pride, rose again to -playful magnanimity, and murmured: “Compassionate angel!” - -“Oh, compassionate? To whom? Do you imagine--did I ever say anything to -make you doubt the truth of what I’m telling you?” - -His brows fretted: his temper was up. “_Say_ anything? No,” he -insinuated ironically; then, in a hasty plunge after his lost -forbearance, added with exquisite mildness: “Your tact was perfect ... -always. I’ve invariably done you that justice. No one could have been -more thoroughly the ... the lady. I never failed to admire your -good-breeding in avoiding any reference to your ... your other life.” - -She faced him steadily. “Well, that other life _was_ my life--my only -life! Now you know.” - -There was a silence. Henry Prest drew out a monogrammed handkerchief and -passed it over his dry lips. As he did so, a whiff of his eau de Cologne -reached her, and she winced a little. It was evident that he was seeking -what to say next; wondering, rather helplessly, how to get back his lost -command of the situation. He finally induced his features to break again -into a persuasive smile. - -“Not your _only_ life, dearest,” he reproached her. - -She met it instantly. “Yes; so you thought--because I chose you -should.” - -“You chose--?” The smile became incredulous. - -“Oh, deliberately. But I suppose I’ve no excuse that you would not -dislike to hear.... Why shouldn’t we break off now?” - -“Break off ... this conversation?” His tone was aggrieved. “Of course -I’ve no wish to force myself--” - -She interrupted him with a raised hand. “Break off for good, Henry.” - -“For good?” He stared, and gave a quick swallow, as though the dose were -choking him. “For good? Are you really--? You and I? Is this serious, -Lizzie?” - -“Perfectly. But if you prefer to hear ... what can only be painful....” - -He straightened himself, threw back his shoulders, and said in an -uncertain voice: “I hope you don’t take me for a coward.” - -She made no direct reply, but continued: “Well, then, you thought I -loved you, I suppose--” - -He smiled again, revived his moustache with a slight twist, and gave a -hardly perceptible shrug. “You ... ah ... managed to produce the -illusion....” - -“Oh, well, yes: a woman _can_--so easily! That’s what men often forget. -You thought I was a lovelorn mistress; and I was only an expensive -prostitute.” - -“Elizabeth!” he gasped, pale now to the ruddy eyelids. She saw that the -word had wounded more than his pride, and that, before realizing the -insult to his love, he was shuddering at the offence to his taste. -Mistress! Prostitute! Such words were banned. No one reproved coarseness -of language in women more than Henry Prest; one of Mrs. Hazeldean’s -greatest charms (as he had just told her) had been her way of -remaining, “through it all,” so ineffably “the lady.” He looked at her -as if a fresh doubt of her sanity had assailed him. - -“Shall I go on?” she smiled. - -He bent his head stiffly. “I am still at a loss to imagine for what -purpose you made a fool of me.” - -“Well, then, it was as I say. I wanted money--money for my husband.” - -He moistened his lips. “For your husband?” - -“Yes; when he began to be so ill; when he needed comforts, luxury, the -opportunity to get away. He saved me, when I was a girl, from untold -humiliation and wretchedness. No one else lifted a finger to help -me--not one of my own family. I hadn’t a penny or a friend. Mrs. Mant -had grown sick of me, and was trying to find an excuse to throw me over. -Oh, you don’t know what a girl has to put up with--a girl alone in the -world--who depends for her clothes, and her food, and the roof over her -head, on the whims of a vain capricious old woman! It was because _he_ -knew, because he understood, that he married me.... He took me out of -misery into blessedness. He put me up above them all ... he put me -beside himself. I didn’t care for anything but that; I didn’t care for -the money or the freedom; I cared only for him. I would have followed -him into the desert--I would have gone barefoot to be with him. I would -have starved, begged, done anything for him--_anything_.” She broke off, -her voice lost in a sob. She was no longer aware of Prest’s -presence--all her consciousness was absorbed in the vision she had -evoked. “It was _he_ who cared--who wanted me to be rich and independent -and admired! He wanted to heap everything on me--during the first years -I could hardly persuade him to keep enough money for himself.... And -then he was taken ill; and as he got worse, and gradually dropped out of -affairs, his income grew smaller, and then stopped altogether; and all -the while there were new expenses piling up--nurses, doctors, travel; -and he grew frightened; frightened not for himself but for me.... And -what was I to do? I had to pay for things somehow. For the first year I -managed to put off paying--then I borrowed small sums here and there. -But that couldn’t last. And all the while I had to keep on looking -pretty and prosperous, or else he began to worry, and think we were -ruined, and wonder what would become of me if he didn’t get well. By the -time you came I was desperate--I would have done anything, anything! He -thought the money came from my Portuguese stepmother. She really was -rich, as it happens. Unluckily my poor father tried to invest her money, -and lost it all; but when they were first married she sent a thousand -dollars--and all the rest, all you gave me, I built on that.” - -She paused pantingly, as if her tale were at an end. Gradually her -consciousness of present things returned, and she saw Henry Prest, as if -far off, a small indistinct figure looming through the mist of her -blurred eyes. She thought to herself: “He doesn’t believe me,” and the -thought exasperated her. - -“You wonder, I suppose,” she began again, “that a woman should dare -confess such things about herself--” - -He cleared his throat. “About herself? No; perhaps not. But about her -husband.” - -The blood rushed to her forehead. “About her husband? But you don’t dare -to imagine--?” - -“You leave me,” he rejoined icily, “no other inference that I can see.” -She stood dumbfounded, and he added: “At any rate, it certainly explains -your extraordinary coolness--pluck, I used to think it. I perceive that -I needn’t have taken such precautions.” - -She considered this. “You think, then, that he knew? You think, perhaps, -that I knew he did?” She pondered again painfully, and then her face lit -up. “He never knew--never! That’s enough for me--and for you it doesn’t -matter. Think what you please. He was happy to the end--that’s all I -care for.” - -“There can be no doubt about your frankness,” he said with pinched -lips. - -“There’s no longer any reason for not being frank.” - -He picked up his hat, and studiously considered its lining; then he took -the gloves he had laid in it, and drew them thoughtfully through his -hands. She thought: “Thank God, he’s going!” - -But he set the hat and gloves down on a table, and moved a little nearer -to her. His face looked as ravaged as a reveller’s at daybreak. - -“You--leave positively nothing to the imagination!” he murmured. - -“I told you it was useless--” she began; but he interrupted her: -“Nothing, that is--if I believed you.” He moistened his lips again, and -tapped them with his handkerchief. Again she had a whiff of the eau de -Cologne. “But I don’t!” he proclaimed. “Too many memories ... too many -... proofs, my dearest ...” He stopped, smiling somewhat convulsively. -She saw that he imagined the smile would soothe her. - -She remained silent, and he began once more, as if appealing to her -against her own verdict: “I know better, Lizzie. In spite of everything, -_I know you’re not that kind of woman_.” - -“I took your money--” - -“As a favour. I knew the difficulties of your position.... I understood -completely. I beg of you never again to allude to--all that.” It dawned -on her that anything would be more endurable to him than to think he had -been a dupe--and one of two dupes! The part was not one that he could -conceive of having played. His pride was up in arms to defend her, not -so much for her sake as for his own. The discovery gave her a baffling -sense of helplessness; against that impenetrable self-sufficiency all -her affirmations might spend themselves in vain. - -“No man who has had the privilege of being loved by you could ever for a -moment....” - -She raised her head and looked at him. “You have never had that -privilege,” she interrupted. - -His jaw fell. She saw his eyes pass from uneasy supplication to a cold -anger. He gave a little inarticulate grunt before his voice came back to -him. - -“You spare no pains in degrading yourself in my eyes.” - -“I am not degrading myself. I am telling you the truth. I needed money. -I knew no way of earning it. You were willing to give it ... for what -you call the privilege....” - -“Lizzie,” he interrupted solemnly, “don’t go on! I believe I enter into -all your feelings--I believe I always have. In so sensitive, so -hypersensitive a nature, there are moments when every other feeling is -swept away by scruples.... For those scruples I only honour you the -more. But I won’t hear another word now. If I allowed you to go on in -your present state of ... nervous exaltation ... you might be the first -to deplore.... I wish to forget everything you have said.... I wish to -look forward, not back....” He squared his shoulders, took a deep -breath, and fixed her with a glance of recovered confidence. “How little -you know me if you believe that I could fail you _now_!” - -She returned his look with a weary steadiness. “You are kind--you mean -to be generous, I’m sure. But don’t you see that I _can’t_ marry you?” - -“I only see that, in the natural rush of your remorse--” - -“Remorse? Remorse?” She broke in with a laugh. “Do you imagine I feel -any remorse? I’d do it all over again tomorrow--for the same object! I -got what I wanted--I gave him that last year, that last good year. It -was the relief from anxiety that kept him alive, that kept him happy. -Oh, he _was_ happy--I know that!” She turned to Prest with a strange -smile. “I do thank you for that--I’m not ungrateful.” - -“You ... you ... _ungrateful_? This ... is really ... indecent....” He -took up his hat again, and stood in the middle of the room as if waiting -to be waked from a bad dream. - -“You are--rejecting an opportunity--” he began. - -She made a faint motion of assent. - -“You do realize it? I’m still prepared to--to help you, if you -should....” She made no answer, and he continued: “How do you expect to -live--since you have chosen to drag in such considerations?” - -“I don’t care how I live. I never wanted the money for myself.” - -He raised a deprecating hand. “Oh, don’t--_again_! The woman I had meant -to....” Suddenly, to her surprise, she saw a glitter of moisture on his -lower lids. He applied his handkerchief to them, and the waft of scent -checked her momentary impulse of compunction. That Cologne water! It -called up picture after picture with a hideous precision. “Well, it was -worth it,” she murmured doggedly. - -Henry Prest restored his handkerchief to his pocket. He waited, glanced -about the room, turned back to her. - -“If your decision is final--” - -“Oh, final!” - -He bowed. “There is one thing more--which I should have mentioned if you -had ever given me the opportunity of seeing you after--after last New -Year’s day. Something I preferred not to commit to writing--” - -“Yes?” she questioned indifferently. - -“Your husband, you are positively convinced, had no idea ... that day -...?” - -“None.” - -“Well, others, it appears, had.” He paused. “Mrs. Wesson saw us.” - -“So I supposed. I remember now that she went out of her way to cut me -that evening at Mrs. Struthers’s.” - -“Exactly. And she was not the only person who saw us. If people had not -been disarmed by your husband’s falling ill that very day you would have -found yourself--ostracized.” - -She made no comment, and he pursued, with a last effort: “In your grief, -your solitude, you haven’t yet realized what your future will be--how -difficult. It is what I wished to guard you against--it was my purpose -in asking you to marry me.” He drew himself up and smiled as if he were -looking at his own reflection in a mirror, and thought favourably of it. -“A man who has had the misfortune to compromise a woman is bound in -honour--Even if my own inclination were not what it is, I should -consider....” - -She turned to him with a softened smile. Yes, he had really brought -himself to think that he was proposing to marry her to save her -reputation. At this glimpse of the old hackneyed axioms on which he -actually believed that his conduct was based, she felt anew her -remoteness from the life he would have drawn her back to. - -“My poor Henry, don’t you see how far I’ve got beyond the Mrs. Wessons? -If all New York wants to ostracize me, let it! I’ve had my day ... no -woman has more than one. Why shouldn’t I have to pay for it? I’m ready.” - -“Good heavens!” he murmured. - -She was aware that he had put forth his last effort. The wound she had -inflicted had gone to the most vital spot; she had prevented his being -magnanimous, and the injury was unforgivable. He was glad, yes, actually -glad now, to have her know that New York meant to cut her; but, strive -as she might, she could not bring herself to care either for the fact, -or for his secret pleasure in it. Her own secret pleasures were beyond -New York’s reach and his. - -“I’m sorry,” she reiterated gently. He bowed, without trying to take -her hand, and left the room. - -As the door closed she looked after him with a dazed stare. “He’s right, -I suppose; I don’t realize yet--” She heard the shutting of the outer -door, and dropped to the sofa, pressing her hands against her aching -eyes. At that moment, for the first time, she asked herself what the -next day, and the next, would be like.... - -“If only I cared more about reading,” she moaned, remembering how vainly -she had tried to acquire her husband’s tastes, and how gently and -humorously he had smiled at her efforts. “Well--there are always cards; -and when I get older, knitting and patience, I suppose. And if everybody -cuts me I shan’t need any evening dresses. That will be an economy, at -any rate,” she concluded with a little shiver. - - - - -VII - - -“She was _bad_ ... always. They used to meet at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.” - -I must go back now to this phrase of my mother’s--the phrase from which, -at the opening of my narrative, I broke away for a time in order to -project more vividly on the scene that anxious moving vision of Lizzie -Hazeldean: a vision in which memories of my one boyish glimpse of her -were pieced together with hints collected afterward. - -When my mother uttered her condemnatory judgment I was a young man of -twenty-one, newly graduated from Harvard, and at home again under the -family roof in New York. It was long since I had heard Mrs. Hazeldean -spoken of. I had been away, at school and at Harvard, for the greater -part of the interval, and in the holidays she was probably not -considered a fitting subject of conversation, especially now that my -sisters came to the table. - -At any rate, I had forgotten everything I might ever have picked up -about her when, on the evening after my return, my cousin Hubert -Wesson--now towering above me as a pillar of the Knickerbocker Club, and -a final authority on the ways of the world--suggested our joining her at -the opera. - -“Mrs. Hazeldean? But I don’t know her. What will she think?” - -“That it’s all right. Come along. She’s the jolliest woman I know. We’ll -go back afterward and have supper with her--jolliest house I know.” -Hubert twirled a self-conscious moustache. - -We were dining at the Knickerbocker, to which I had just been elected, -and the bottle of Pommery we were finishing disposed me to think that -nothing could be more fitting for two men of the world than to end their -evening in the box of the jolliest woman Hubert knew. I groped for my -own moustache, gave a twirl in the void, and followed him, after -meticulously sliding my overcoat sleeve around my silk hat as I had seen -him do. - -But once in Mrs. Hazeldean’s box I was only an overgrown boy again, -bathed in such blushes as used, at the same age, to visit Hubert, -forgetting that I had a moustache to twirl, and knocking my hat from the -peg on which I had just hung it, in my zeal to pick up a programme she -had not dropped. - -For she was really too lovely--too formidably lovely. I was used by now -to mere unadjectived loveliness, the kind that youth and spirits hang -like a rosy veil over commonplace features, an average outline and a -pointless merriment. But this was something calculated, accomplished, -finished--and just a little worn. It frightened me with my first glimpse -of the infinity of beauty and the multiplicity of her pit-falls. What! -There were women who need not fear crow’s-feet, were more beautiful for -being pale, could let a silver hair or two show among the dark, and -their eyes brood inwardly while they smiled and, chatted? But then no -young man was safe for a moment! But then the world I had hitherto known -had been only a warm pink nursery, while this new one was a place of -darkness, perils and enchantments.... - -It was the next day that one of my sisters asked me where I had been the -evening before, and that I puffed out my chest to answer: “With Mrs. -Hazeldean--at the opera.” My mother looked up, but did not speak till -the governess had swept the girls off; then she said with pinched lips: -“Hubert Wesson took you to Mrs. Hazeldean’s box?” - -“Yes.” - -“Well, a young man may go where he pleases. I hear Hubert is still -infatuated; it serves Sabina right for not letting him marry the -youngest Lyman girl. But don’t mention Mrs. Hazeldean again before your -sisters.... They say her husband never knew--I suppose if he _had_ she -would never have got old Miss Cecilia Winter’s money.” And it was then -that my mother pronounced the name of Henry Prest, and added that -phrase about the Fifth Avenue Hotel which suddenly woke my boyish -memories.... - -In a flash I saw again, under its quickly-lowered veil, the face with -the exposed eyes and the frozen smile, and felt through my grown-up -waistcoat the stab to my boy’s heart and the loosened murmur of my soul; -felt all this, and at the same moment tried to relate that former face, -so fresh and clear despite its anguish, to the smiling guarded -countenance of Hubert’s “jolliest woman I know.” - -I was familiar with Hubert’s indiscriminate use of his one adjective, -and had not expected to find Mrs. Hazeldean “jolly” in the literal -sense: in the case of the lady he happened to be in love with the -epithet simply meant that she justified his choice. Nevertheless, as I -compared Mrs. Hazeldean’s earlier face to this one, I had my first -sense of what may befall in the long years between youth and maturity, -and of how short a distance I had travelled on that mysterious journey. -If only she would take me by the hand! - -I was not wholly unprepared for my mother’s comment. There was no other -lady in Mrs. Hazeldean’s box when we entered; none joined her during the -evening, and our hostess offered no apology for her isolation. In the -New York of my youth every one knew what to think of a woman who was -seen “alone at the opera”; if Mrs. Hazeldean was not openly classed with -Fanny Ring, our one conspicuous “professional,” it was because, out of -respect for her social origin, New York preferred to avoid such -juxtapositions. Young as I was, I knew this social law, and had guessed, -before the evening was over, that Mrs. Hazeldean was not a lady on whom -other ladies called, though she was not, on the other hand, a lady whom -it was forbidden to mention to other ladies. So I did mention her, with -bravado. - -No ladies showed themselves at the opera with Mrs. Hazeldean; but one or -two dropped in to the jolly supper announced by Hubert, an entertainment -whose jollity consisted in a good deal of harmless banter over broiled -canvas-backs and celery, with the best of champagne. These same ladies I -sometimes met at her house afterward. They were mostly younger than -their hostess, and still, though precariously, within the social pale: -pretty trivial creatures, bored with a monotonous prosperity, and -yearning for such unlawful joys as cigarettes, plain speaking, and a -drive home in the small hours with the young man of the moment. But -such daring spirits were few in old New York, their appearances -infrequent and somewhat furtive. Mrs. Hazeldean’s society consisted -mainly of men, men of all ages, from her bald or grey-headed -contemporaries to youths of Hubert’s accomplished years and raw novices -of mine. - -A great dignity and decency prevailed in her little circle. It was not -the oppressive respectability which weighs on the reformed _déclassée_, -but the air of ease imparted by a woman of distinction who has wearied -of society and closed her doors to all save her intimates. One always -felt, at Lizzie Hazeldean’s, that the next moment one’s grandmother and -aunts might be announced; and yet so pleasantly certain that they -wouldn’t be. - -What is there in the atmosphere of such houses that makes them so -enchanting to a fastidious and imaginative youth? Why is it that “those -women” (as the others call them) alone know how to put the awkward at -ease, check the familiar, smile a little at the over-knowing, and yet -encourage naturalness in all? The difference of atmosphere is felt on -the very threshold. The flowers grow differently in their vases, the -lamps and easy-chairs have found a cleverer way of coming together, the -books on the table are the very ones that one is longing to get hold of. -The most perilous coquetry may not be in a woman’s way of arranging her -dress but in her way of arranging her drawing-room; and in this art Mrs. -Hazeldean excelled. - -I have spoken of books; even then they were usually the first objects to -attract me in a room, whatever else of beauty it contained; and I -remember, on the evening of that first “jolly supper,” coming to an -astonished pause before the crowded shelves that took up one wall of the -drawing-room. What! The goddess read, then? She could accompany one on -those flights too? Lead one, no doubt? My heart beat high.... - -But I soon learned that Lizzie Hazeldean did not read. She turned but -languidly even the pages of the last Ouida novel; and I remember seeing -Mallock’s _New Republic_ uncut on her table for weeks. It took me no -long time to make the discovery: at my very next visit she caught my -glance of surprise in the direction of the rich shelves, smiled, -coloured a little, and met it with the confession: “No, I can’t read -them. I’ve tried--I _have_ tried--but print makes me sleepy. Even novels -do....” “They” were the accumulated treasures of English poetry, and a -rich and varied selection of history, criticism, letters, in English, -French and Italian--she spoke these languages, I knew--books evidently -assembled by a sensitive and widely-ranging reader. We were alone at the -time, and Mrs. Hazeldean went on in a lower tone: “I kept just the few -he liked best--my husband, you know.” It was the first time that Charles -Hazeldean’s name had been spoken between us, and my surprise was so -great that my candid cheek must have reflected the blush on hers. I had -fancied that women in her situation avoided alluding to their husbands. -But she continued to look at me, wistfully, humbly almost, as if there -were something more that she wanted to say, and was inwardly entreating -me to understand. - -“He was a great reader: a student. And he tried so hard to make me read -too--he wanted to share everything with me. And I _did_ like -poetry--some poetry--when he read it aloud to me. After his death I -thought: ‘There’ll be his books. I can go back to them--I shall find him -there.’ And I tried--oh, so hard--but it’s no use. They’ve lost their -meaning ... as most things have.” She stood up, lit a cigarette, pushed -back a log on the hearth. I felt that she was waiting for me to speak. -If life had but taught me how to answer her, what was there of her story -I might not have learned? But I was too inexperienced; I could not shake -off my bewilderment. What! This woman whom I had been pitying for -matrimonial miseries which seemed to justify her seeking solace -elsewhere--this woman could speak of her husband in such a tone! I had -instantly perceived that the tone was not feigned; and a confused sense -of the complexity--or the chaos--of human relations held me as -tongue-tied as a schoolboy to whom a problem beyond his grasp is -suddenly propounded. - -Before the thought took shape she had read it, and with the smile which -drew such sad lines about her mouth, had continued gaily: “What are you -up to this evening, by the way? What do you say to going to the “Black -Crook” with your cousin Hubert and one or two others? I have a box.” - -It was inevitable that, not long after this candid confession, I should -have persuaded myself that a taste for reading was boring in a woman, -and that one of Mrs. Hazeldean’s chief charms lay in her freedom from -literary pretensions. The truth was, of course, that it lay in her -sincerity; in her humble yet fearless estimate of her own qualities and -short-comings. I had never met its like in a woman of any age, and -coming to me in such early days, and clothed in such looks and -intonations, it saved me, in after years, from all peril of meaner -beauties. - -But before I had come to understand that, or to guess what falling in -love with Lizzie Hazeldean was to do for me, I had quite unwittingly and -fatuously done the falling. The affair turned out, in the perspective of -the years, to be but an incident of our long friendship; and if I touch -on it here it is only to illustrate another of my poor friend’s gifts. -If she could not read books she could read hearts; and she bent a -playful yet compassionate gaze on mine while it still floundered in -unawareness. - -I remember it all as if it were yesterday. We were sitting alone in her -drawing-room, in the winter twilight, over the fire. We had reached--in -her company it was not difficult--the degree of fellowship when friendly -talk lapses naturally into a friendlier silence, and she had taken up -the evening paper while I glowered dumbly at the embers. One little -foot, just emerging below her dress, swung, I remember, between me and -the fire, and seemed to hold her all in the spring of its instep.... - -“Oh,” she exclaimed, “poor Henry Prest--“. She dropped the paper. “His -wife is dead--poor fellow,” she said simply. - -The blood rushed to my forehead: my heart was in my throat. She had -named him--named him at last, the recreant lover, the man who had -“dishonoured” her! My hands were clenched: if he had entered the room -they would have been at his throat.... - -And then, after a quick interval, I had again the humiliating -disheartening sense of not understanding: of being too young, too -inexperienced, to know. This woman, who spoke of her deceived husband -with tenderness, spoke compassionately of her faithless lover! And she -did the one as naturally as the other, not as if this impartial charity -were an attitude she had determined to assume, but as if it were part of -the lesson life had taught her. - -“I didn’t know he was married,” I growled between my teeth. - -She meditated absently. “Married? Oh, yes; when was it? The year after -...” her voice dropped again ... “after my husband died. He married a -quiet cousin, who had always been in love with him, I believe. They had -two boys.--You knew him?” she abruptly questioned. - -I nodded grimly. - -“People always thought he would never marry--he used to say so himself,” -she went on, still absently. - -I burst out: “The--hound!” - -“_Oh!_” she exclaimed. I started up, our eyes met, and hers filled with -tears of reproach and understanding. We sat looking at each other in -silence. Two of the tears overflowed, hung on her lashes, melted down -her cheeks. I continued to stare at her shamefacedly; then I got to my -feet, drew out my handkerchief, and tremblingly, reverently, as if I had -touched a sacred image, I wiped them away. - -My love-making went no farther. In another moment she had contrived to -put a safe distance between us. She did not want to turn a boy’s head; -long since (she told me afterward) such amusements had ceased to excite -her. But she did want my sympathy, wanted it overwhelmingly: amid the -various feelings she was aware of arousing, she let me see that -sympathy, in the sense of a moved understanding, had always been -lacking. “But then,” she added ingenuously, “I’ve never really been -sure, because I’ve never told anyone my story. Only I take it for -granted that, if I haven’t, it’s _their_ fault rather than mine....” She -smiled half-deprecatingly, and my bosom swelled, acknowledging the -distinction. “And now I want to tell _you_--” she began. - -I have said that my love for Mrs. Hazeldean was a brief episode in our -long relation. At my age, it was inevitable that it should be so. The -“fresher face” soon came, and in its light I saw my old friend as a -middle-aged woman, turning grey, with a mechanical smile and haunted -eyes. But it was in the first glow of my feeling that she had told me -her story; and when the glow subsided, and in the afternoon light of a -long intimacy I judged and tested her statements, I found that each -detail fitted into the earlier picture. - -My opportunities were many; for once she had told the tale she always -wanted to be retelling it. A perpetual longing to relive the past, a -perpetual need to explain and justify herself--the satisfaction of these -two cravings, once she had permitted herself to indulge them, became the -luxury of her empty life. She had kept it empty--emotionally, -sentimentally empty--from the day of her husband’s death, as the -guardian of an abandoned temple might go on forever sweeping and tending -what had once been the god’s abode. But this duty performed, she had no -other. She had done one great--or abominable--thing; rank it as you -please, it had been done heroically. But there was nothing in her to -keep her at that height. Her tastes, her interests, her conceivable -occupations, were all on the level of a middling domesticity; she did -not know how to create for herself any inner life in keeping with that -one unprecedented impulse. - -Soon after her husband’s death, one of her cousins, the Miss Cecilia -Winter of Washington Square to whom my mother had referred, had died -also, and left Mrs. Hazeldean a handsome legacy. And a year or two later -Charles Hazeldean’s small estate had undergone the favourable change -that befell New York realty in the ’eighties. The property he had -bequeathed to his wife had doubled, then tripled, in value; and she -found herself, after a few years of widowhood, in possession of an -income large enough to supply her with all the luxuries which her -husband had struggled so hard to provide. It was the peculiar irony of -her lot to be secured from temptation when all danger of temptation was -over; for she would never, I am certain, have held out the tip of her -finger to any man to obtain such luxuries for her own enjoyment. But if -she did not value her money for itself, she owed to it--and the service -was perhaps greater than she was aware--the power of mitigating her -solitude, and filling it with the trivial distractions without which she -was less and less able to live. - -She had been put into the world, apparently, to amuse men and enchant -them; yet, her husband dead, her sacrifice accomplished, she would have -preferred, I am sure, to shut herself up in a lonely monumental -attitude, with thoughts and pursuits on a scale with her one great hour. -But what was she to do? She had known of no way of earning money except -by her graces; and now she knew no way of filling her days except with -cards and chatter and theatre-going. Not one of the men who approached -her passed beyond the friendly barrier she had opposed to me. Of that I -was sure. She had not shut out Henry Prest in order to replace him--her -face grew white at the suggestion. But what else was there to do, she -asked me; what? The days had to be spent somehow; and she was incurably, -disconsolately sociable. - -So she lived, in a cold celibacy that passed for I don’t know what -licence; so she lived, withdrawn from us all, yet needing us so -desperately, inwardly faithful to her one high impulse, yet so incapable -of attuning her daily behaviour to it! And so, at the very moment when -she ceased to deserve the blame of society, she found herself cut off -from it, and reduced to the status of the “fast” widow noted for her -jolly suppers. - -I bent bewildered over the depths of her plight. What else, at any stage -of her career, could she have done, I often wondered? Among the young -women now growing up about me I find none with enough imagination to -picture the helpless incapacity of the pretty girl of the ’seventies, -the girl without money or vocation, seemingly put into the world only to -please, and unlearned in any way of maintaining herself there by her own -efforts. Marriage alone could save such a girl from starvation, unless -she happened to run across an old lady who wanted her dogs exercised -and her _Churchman_ read aloud to her. Even the day of painting -wild-roses on fans, of colouring photographs to “look like” miniatures, -of manufacturing lamp-shades and trimming hats for more fortunate -friends--even this precarious beginning of feminine independence had not -dawned. It was inconceivable to my mother’s generation that a -portionless girl should not be provided for by her relations until she -found a husband; and that, having found him, she should have to help him -to earn a living, was more inconceivable still. The self-sufficing -little society of that vanished New York attached no great importance to -wealth, but regarded poverty as so distasteful that it simply took no -account of it. - -These things pleaded in favour of poor Lizzie Hazeldean, though to -superficial observers her daily life seemed to belie the plea. She had -known no way of smoothing her husband’s last years but by being false to -him; but once he was dead, she expiated her betrayal by a rigidity of -conduct for which she asked no reward but her own inner satisfaction. As -she grew older, and her friends scattered, married, or were kept away -from one cause or another, she filled her depleted circle with a less -fastidious hand. One met in her drawing-room dull men, common men, men -who too obviously came there because they were not invited elsewhere, -and hoped to use her as a social stepping-stone. She was aware of the -difference--her eyes said so whenever I found one of these newcomers -installed in my arm-chair--but never, by word or sign, did she admit it. -She said to me once: “You find it duller here than it used to be. It’s -my fault, perhaps; I think I knew better how to draw out my old -friends.” And another day: “Remember, the people you meet here now come -out of kindness. I’m an old woman, and I consider nothing else.” That -was all. - -She went more assiduously than ever to the theatre and the opera; she -performed for her friends a hundred trivial services; in her eagerness -to be always busy she invented superfluous attentions, oppressed people -by offering assistance they did not need, verged at times--for all her -tact--on the officiousness of the desperately lonely. At her little -suppers she surprised us with exquisite flowers and novel delicacies. -The champagne and cigars grew better and better as the quality of the -guests declined; and sometimes, as the last of her dull company -dispersed, I used to see her, among the scattered ash-trays and liqueur -decanters, turn a stealthy glance at her reflection in the mirror, with -haggard eyes which seemed to ask: “Will even _these_ come back -tomorrow?” - -I should be loth to leave the picture at this point; my last vision of -her is more satisfying. I had been away, travelling for a year at the -other end of the world; the day I came back I ran across Hubert Wesson -at my club. Hubert had grown pompous and heavy. He drew me into a -corner, and said, turning red, and glancing cautiously over his -shoulder: “Have you seen our old friend Mrs. Hazeldean? She’s very ill, -I hear.” - -I was about to take up the “I hear”; then I remembered that in my -absence Hubert had married, and that his caution was probably a tribute -to his new state. I hurried at once to Mrs. Hazeldean’s; and on her -door-step, to my surprise, I ran against a Catholic priest, who looked -gravely at me, bowed and passed out. - -I was unprepared for such an encounter, for my old friend had never -spoken to me of religious matters. The spectacle of her father’s career -had presumably shaken whatever incipient faith was in her; though in her -little-girlhood, as she often told me, she had been as deeply impressed -by Dr. Winter’s eloquence as any grown-up member of his flock. But now, -as soon as I laid eyes on her, I understood. She was very ill, she was -visibly dying; and in her extremity, fate, not always kind, had sent her -the solace which she needed. Had some obscure inheritance of religious -feeling awaked in her? Had she remembered that her poor father, after -his long life of mental and moral vagabondage, had finally found rest -in the ancient fold? I never knew the explanation--she probably never -knew it herself. - -But she knew that she had found what she wanted. At last she could talk -of Charles, she could confess her sin, she could be absolved of it. -Since cards and suppers and chatter were over, what more blessed barrier -could she find against solitude? All her life, henceforth, was a long -preparation for that daily hour of expansion and consolation. And then -this merciful visitor, who understood her so well, could also tell her -things about Charles: knew where he was, how he felt, what exquisite -daily attentions could still be paid to him, and how, with all -unworthiness washed away, she might at last hope to reach him. Heaven -could never seem strange, so interpreted; each time that I saw her, -during the weeks of her slow fading, she was more and more like a -traveller with her face turned homeward, yet smilingly resigned to await -her summons. The house no longer seemed lonely, nor the hours tedious; -there had even been found for her, among the books she had so often -tried to read, those books which had long looked at her with such -hostile faces, two or three (they were always on her bed) containing -messages from the world where Charles was waiting. - -Thus provided and led, one day she went to him. - - -THE END - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's New Year's Day, by Edith Wharton and E. C. 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C. Caswell - -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/license - - -Title: New Year's Day - (The 'Seventies) - -Author: Edith Wharton - -Illustrator: E. C. Caswell - -Release Date: February 5, 2020 [EBook #61321] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW YEAR'S DAY *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif, MWS and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" summary="" -style="border:3px outset gray;padding:.25em;"> -<tr><td class="c"> -<a href="#I">CHAPTER I,</a> -<a href="#II">II,</a> -<a href="#III">III,</a> -<a href="#IV">IV,</a> -<a href="#V">V,</a><br /> -<a href="#VI">VI,</a> -<a href="#VII">VII.</a> -</td></tr> -</table> - -<p class="c"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="333" height="500" alt="[Image -of the book's cover unavailable.]" /> -</p> - -<p class="c"> -<img src="images/inside-cover.jpg" alt="" title="[Image -of the inside-cover unavailable.]" /> -</p> - -<p class="cbu">OLD NEW YORK</p> - -<p class="c"> <b> <br /><big>FALSE DAWN</big><br /><br /> -(<i>The ’Forties</i>)</b><br /><br /><br /> -<span class="un">By EDITH WHARTON</span></p> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><td>OLD NEW YORK</td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">False Dawn</span></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">The Old Maid</span></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">The Spark</span></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">New Year’s Day</span></td></tr> -<tr><td>THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON</td></tr> -<tr><td>THE AGE OF INNOCENCE</td></tr> -<tr><td>SUMMER</td></tr> -<tr><td>THE REEF</td></tr> -<tr><td>THE MARNE</td></tr> -<tr><td>FRENCH WAYS AND THEIR MEANING</td></tr> -</table> - -<h1><big> -OLD NEW YORK<br /></big> -<br /> -NEW YEAR’S DAY<br /> -<br /> -(<i>The ’Seventies</i>)</h1> - -<p class="cb"> -BY<br /> -<br /> -EDITH WHARTON<br /> -<br /> -AUTHOR OF “THE AGE OF INNOCENCE,” ETC.<br /> -<br /> -DECORATIONS BY E. C. CASWELL<br /> -<br /><br /> -<img src="images/colophon.jpg" -width="75" -alt="" -/><br /> -<br /><br /> -D. APPLETON AND COMPANY<br /> -<br /> -NEW YORK :: LONDON :: MCMXXIV<br /> -COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY<br /> -D. APPLETON AND COMPANY<br /> -<br /><small> -<i>Copyright, 1923, by The Consolidated Magazines Corporation</i><br /> - -(<i>The Red Book Magazine</i>)<br /> -<br /> -PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</small></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_1" id="page_1">{1}</a></span> </p> - -<h2>NEW YEAR’S DAY<br /> -(<i>The ’Seventies</i>)</h2> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_2" id="page_2">{2}</a></span> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_3" id="page_3">{3}</a></span> </p> - -<h2>NEW YEAR’S DAY<br /> -(<i>The ’Seventies</i>)</h2> - -<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">“S</span>HE was <i>bad</i> ... always. They used to meet at the Fifth Avenue Hotel,” -said my mother, as if the scene of the offence added to the guilt of the -couple whose past she was revealing. Her spectacles slanted on her -knitting, she dropped the words in a hiss that might have singed the -snowy baby-blanket which engaged her indefatigable fingers. (It was -typical of my mother to be always employed in benevolent actions while -she uttered uncharitable words.)<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_4" id="page_4">{4}</a></span></p> - -<p>“<i>They used to meet at the Fifth Avenue Hotel</i>”; how the precision of -the phrase characterized my old New York! A generation later, people -would have said, in reporting an affair such as Lizzie Hazeldean’s with -Henry Prest: “They met in hotels”—and today who but a few superannuated -spinsters, still feeding on the venom secreted in their youth, would -take any interest in the tracing of such topographies?</p> - -<p>Life has become too telegraphic for curiosity to linger on any given -point in a sentimental relation; as old Sillerton Jackson, in response -to my mother, grumbled through his perfect “china set”: “Fifth Avenue -Hotel? They might meet in the middle of Fifth Avenue nowadays, for all -that anybody cares.”</p> - -<p>But what a flood of light my mother’s tart phrase had suddenly focussed -on an<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_5" id="page_5">{5}</a></span> unremarked incident of my boyhood!</p> - -<p>The Fifth Avenue Hotel ... Mrs. Hazeldean and Henry Prest ... the -conjunction of these names had arrested her darting talk on a single -point of my memory, as a search-light, suddenly checked in its -gyrations, is held motionless while one notes each of the unnaturally -sharp and lustrous images it picks out.</p> - -<p>At the time I was a boy of twelve, at home from school for the holidays. -My mother’s mother, Grandmamma Parrett, still lived in the house in West -Twenty-third Street which Grandpapa had built in his pioneering youth, -in days when people shuddered at the perils of living north of Union -Square—days that Grandmamma and my parents looked back to with a joking -incredulity as the years passed and the new houses advanced steadily<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_6" id="page_6">{6}</a></span> -Park-ward, outstripping the Thirtieth Streets, taking the Reservoir at a -bound, and leaving us in what, in my school-days, was already a dullish -back-water between Aristocracy to the south and Money to the north.</p> - -<p>Even then fashion moved quickly in New York, and my infantile memory -barely reached back to the time when Grandmamma, in lace lappets and -creaking “<i>moiré</i>” used to receive on New Year’s day, supported by her -handsome married daughters. As for old Sillerton Jackson, who, once a -social custom had dropped into disuse, always affected never to have -observed it, he stoutly maintained that the New Year’s day ceremonial -had never been taken seriously except among families of Dutch descent, -and that that was why Mrs. Henry van der Luyden had clung to it, in a -reluctant half-apologetic<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_7" id="page_7">{7}</a></span> way, long after her friends had closed their -doors on the first of January, and the date had been chosen for those -out-of-town parties which are so often used as a pretext for absence -when the unfashionable are celebrating their rites.</p> - -<p>Grandmamma, of course, no longer received. But it would have seemed to -her an exceedingly odd thing to go out of town in winter, especially now -that the New York houses were luxuriously warmed by the new hot-air -furnaces, and searchingly illuminated by gas chandeliers. No, thank -you—no country winters for the chilblained generation of prunella -sandals and low-necked sarcenet, the generation brought up in unwarmed -and unlit houses, and shipped off to die in Italy when they proved -unequal to the struggle of living in New York! Therefore Grandmamma, -like most of her con<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_8" id="page_8">{8}</a></span>temporaries, remained in town on the first of -January, and marked the day by a family reunion, a kind of supplementary -Christmas—though to us juniors the absence of presents and plum-pudding -made it but a pale and moonlike reflection of the Feast.</p> - -<p>Still, the day was welcome as a lawful pretext for over-eating, -dawdling, and looking out of the window: a Dutch habit still extensively -practised in the best New York circles. On the day in question, however, -we had not yet placed ourselves behind the plate-glass whence it would -presently be so amusing to observe the funny gentlemen who trotted -about, their evening ties hardly concealed behind their overcoat -collars, darting in and out of chocolate-coloured house-fronts on their -sacramental round of calls. We were still engaged in placidly digesting -around the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_9" id="page_9">{9}</a></span> ravaged luncheon table when a servant dashed in to say that -the Fifth Avenue Hotel was on fire.</p> - -<p>Oh, then the fun began—and what fun it was! For Grandmamma’s house was -just opposite the noble edifice of white marble which I associated with -such deep-piled carpets, and such a rich sultry smell of anthracite and -coffee, whenever I was bidden to “step across” for a messenger-boy, or -to buy the evening paper for my elders.</p> - -<p>The hotel, for all its sober state, was no longer fashionable. No one, -in my memory, had ever known any one who went there; it was frequented -by “politicians” and “Westerners,” two classes of citizens whom my -mother’s intonation always seemed to deprive of their vote by ranking -them with illiterates and criminals.</p> - -<p>But for that very reason there was all<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_10" id="page_10">{10}</a></span> the more fun to be expected from -the calamity in question; for had we not, with infinite amusement, -watched the arrival, that morning, of monumental “floral pieces” and -towering frosted cakes for the New Year’s day reception across the way? -The event was a communal one. All the ladies who were the hotel’s -“guests” were to receive together in the densely lace-curtained and -heavily chandeliered public parlours, and gentlemen with long hair, -imperials and white gloves had been hastening since two o’clock to the -scene of revelry. And now, thanks to the opportune conflagration, we -were going to have the excitement not only of seeing the Fire Brigade in -action (supreme joy of the New York youngster), but of witnessing the -flight of the ladies and their visitors, staggering out through the -smoke in gala array. The idea that the fire<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_11" id="page_11">{11}</a></span> might be dangerous did not -mar these pleasing expectations. The house was solidly built; New York’s -invincible Brigade was already at the door, in a glare of polished -brass, coruscating helmets and horses shining like table-silver; and my -tall cousin Hubert Wesson, dashing across at the first alarm, had -promptly returned to say that all risk was over, though the two lower -floors were so full of smoke and water that the lodgers, in some -confusion, were being transported to other hotels. How then could a -small boy see in the event anything but an unlimited lark?</p> - -<p>Our elders, once reassured, were of the same mind. As they stood behind -us in the windows, looking over our heads, we heard chuckles of -amusement mingled with ironic comment.</p> - -<p>“Oh, my dear, look—here they all come!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_12" id="page_12">{12}</a></span> The New Year ladies! Low neck -and short sleeves in broad daylight, every one of them! Oh, and the fat -one with the paper roses in her hair ... they <i>are</i> paper, my dear ... -off the frosted cake, probably! Oh! Oh! Oh! <i>Oh!</i>”</p> - -<p>Aunt Sabina Wesson was obliged to stuff her lace handkerchief between -her lips, while her firm poplin-cased figure rocked with delight.</p> - -<p>“Well, my dear,” Grandmamma gently reminded her, “in my youth we wore -low-necked dresses all day long and all the year round.”</p> - -<p>No one listened. My cousin Kate, who always imitated Aunt Sabina, was -pinching my arm in an agony of mirth. “Look at them scuttling! The -parlours must be full of smoke. Oh, but this one is still funnier; the -one with the tall feather in her hair! Granny, did you wear feathers<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_13" id="page_13">{13}</a></span> in -your hair in the daytime? Oh, don’t ask me to believe it! And the one -with the diamond necklace! And all the gentlemen in white ties! Did -Grandpapa wear a white tie at two o’clock in the afternoon?” Nothing was -sacred to Kate, and she feigned not to notice Grandmamma’s mild frown of -reproval.</p> - -<p>“Well, they do in Paris, to this day, at weddings—wear evening clothes -and white ties,” said Sillerton Jackson with authority. “When Minnie -Transome of Charleston was married at the Madeleine to the Duc de....”</p> - -<p>But no one listened even to Sillerton Jackson. One of the party had -abruptly exclaimed: “Oh, there’s a lady running out of the hotel who’s -not in evening dress!”</p> - -<p>The exclamation caused all our eyes to turn toward the person indicated, -who<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_14" id="page_14">{14}</a></span> had just reached the threshold; and someone added, in an odd voice: -“Why, her figure looks like Lizzie Hazeldean’s—”</p> - -<p>A dead silence followed. The lady who was not in evening dress paused. -Standing on the door-step with lifted veil, she faced our window. Her -dress was dark and plain—almost conspicuously plain—and in less time -than it takes to tell she had put her hand to her closely-patterned veil -and pulled it down over her face. But my young eyes were keen and -farsighted; and in that hardly perceptible interval I had seen a vision. -Was she beautiful—or was she only someone apart? I felt the shock of a -small pale oval, dark eyebrows curved with one sure stroke, lips made -for warmth, and now drawn up in a grimace of terror; and it seemed as if -the mysterious something, rich, secret and insistent, that broods and -murmurs be<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_15" id="page_15">{15}</a></span>hind a boy’s conscious thoughts, had suddenly peered out at -me.... As the dart reached me her veil dropped.</p> - -<p>“But it <i>is</i> Lizzie Hazeldean!” Aunt Sabina gasped. She had stopped -laughing, and her crumpled handkerchief fell to the carpet.</p> - -<p>“Lizzie—<i>Lizzie</i>?” The name was echoed over my head with varying -intonations of reprobation, dismay and half-veiled malice.</p> - -<p>Lizzie Hazeldean? Running out of the Fifth Avenue Hotel on New Year’s -day with all those dressed-up women? But what on earth could she have -been doing there? No; nonsense! It was impossible....</p> - -<p>“There’s Henry Prest with her,” continued Aunt Sabina in a precipitate -whisper.</p> - -<p>“With her?” someone gasped; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_16" id="page_16">{16}</a></span> “<i>Oh</i>—” my mother cried with a -shudder.</p> - -<p>The men of the family said nothing, but I saw Hubert Wesson’s face -crimson with surprise. Henry Prest! Hubert was forever boring us -youngsters with his Henry Prest! That was the kind of chap Hubert meant -to be at thirty: in his eyes Henry Prest embodied all the manly graces. -Married? No, thank you! That kind of man wasn’t made for the domestic -yoke. Too fond of ladies’ society, Hubert hinted with his undergraduate -smirk; and handsome, rich, independent—an all-round sportsman, good -horseman, good shot, crack yachtsman (had his pilot’s certificate, and -always sailed his own sloop, whose cabin was full of racing trophies); -gave the most delightful little dinners, never more than six, with -cigars that beat old Beaufort’s; was awfully decent to the younger men, -chaps of Hubert’s age in<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_17" id="page_17">{17}</a></span>cluded—and combined, in short, all the -qualities, mental and physical, which make up, in such eyes as Hubert’s, -that oracular and irresistible figure, the man of the world. “Just the -fellow,” Hubert always solemnly concluded, “that I should go straight to -if ever I got into any kind of row that I didn’t want the family to know -about”; and our blood ran pleasantly cold at the idea of our old -Hubert’s ever being in such an unthinkable predicament.</p> - -<p>I felt sorry to have missed a glimpse of this legendary figure; but my -gaze had been enthralled by the lady, and now the couple had vanished in -the crowd.</p> - -<p>The group in our window continued to keep an embarrassed silence. They -looked almost frightened; but what struck me even more deeply was that -not one of them looked surprised. Even to my boy<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_18" id="page_18">{18}</a></span>ish sense it was clear -that what they had just seen was only the confirmation of something they -had long been prepared for. At length one of my uncles emitted a -whistle, was checked by a severe glance from his wife, and muttered: -“I’ll be damned”; another uncle began an unheeded narrative of a fire at -which he had been present in his youth, and my mother said to me -severely: “You ought to be at home preparing your lessons—a big boy -like you!”—a remark so obviously unfair that it served only to give the -measure of her agitation.</p> - -<p>“I don’t believe it,” said Grandmamma, in a low voice of warning, -protest and appeal. I saw Hubert steal a grateful look at her.</p> - -<p>But nobody else listened: every eye still strained through the window. -Livery-stable “hacks,” of the old blue-curtained<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_19" id="page_19">{19}</a></span> variety, were driving -up to carry off the fair fugitives; for the day was bitterly cold, and -lit by one of those harsh New York suns of which every ray seems an -icicle. Into these ancient vehicles the ladies, now regaining their -composure, were being piled with their removable possessions, while -their kid-gloved callers (“So like the White Rabbit!” Kate exulted) -appeared and reappeared in the doorway, gallantly staggering after them -under bags, reticules, bird-cages, pet dogs and heaped-up finery. But to -all this—as even I, a little boy, was aware—nobody in Grandmamma’s -window paid the slightest attention. The thoughts of one and all, with a -mute and guarded eagerness, were still following the movements of those -two who were so obviously unrelated to the rest. The whole -business—discovery, comment, silent visual pursuit<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_20" id="page_20">{20}</a></span>—could hardly, all -told, have filled a minute, perhaps not as much; before the sixty -seconds were over, Mrs. Hazeldean and Henry Prest had been lost in the -crowd, and, while the hotel continued to empty itself into the street, -had gone their joint or separate ways. But in my grandmother’s window -the silence continued unbroken.</p> - -<p>“Well, it’s over: here are the firemen coming out again,” someone said -at length.</p> - -<p>We youngsters were all alert at that; yet I felt that the grown-ups lent -but a half-hearted attention to the splendid sight which was New York’s -only pageant: the piling of scarlet ladders on scarlet carts, the -leaping up on the engine of the helmeted flame-fighters, and the -disciplined plunge forward of each pair of broad<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_21" id="page_21">{21}</a></span>chested black steeds, -as one after another the chariots of fire rattled off.</p> - -<p>Silently, almost morosely, we withdrew to the drawing-room hearth; -where, after an interval of languid monosyllables, my mother, rising -first, slipped her knitting into its bag, and turning on me with renewed -severity, said: “This racing after fire-engines is what makes you too -sleepy to prepare your lessons”—a comment so wide of the mark that once -again I perceived, without understanding, the extent of the havoc -wrought in her mind by the sight of Mrs. Hazeldean and Henry Prest -coming out of the Fifth Avenue Hotel together.</p> - -<p>It was not until many years later that chance enabled me to relate this -fugitive impression to what had preceded and what came after it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_22" id="page_22">{22}</a></span></p> - -<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">M</span>RS. HAZELDEAN paused at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Madison Square. -The crowd attracted by the fire still enveloped her; it was safe to halt -and take breath.</p> - -<p>Her companion, she knew, had gone in the opposite direction. Their -movements, on such occasions, were as well-ordered and as promptly -executed as those of the New York Fire Brigade; and after their -precipitate descent to the hall, the discovery that the police had -barred their usual exit, and the quick: “You’re all right?” to which her -imperceptible nod had responded, she was sure he had turned down<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_23" id="page_23">{23}</a></span> -Twenty-third Street toward Sixth Avenue.</p> - -<p>“The Parretts’ windows were full of people,” was her first thought.</p> - -<p>She dwelt on it a moment, and then reflected: “Yes, but in all that -crowd and excitement nobody would have been thinking of <i>me</i>!”</p> - -<p>Instinctively she put her hand to her veil, as though recalling that her -features had been exposed when she ran out, and unable to remember -whether she had covered them in time or not.</p> - -<p>“What a fool I am! It can’t have been off my face for more than a -second—” but immediately afterward another disquieting possibility -assailed her. “I’m almost sure I saw Sillerton Jackson’s head in one of -the windows, just behind Sabina Wesson’s. No one else has that -particularly silvery gray hair.” She shivered, for<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_24" id="page_24">{24}</a></span> everyone in New York -knew that Sillerton Jackson saw everything, and could piece together -seemingly unrelated fragments of fact with the art of a skilled -china-mender.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, after sending through her veil the circular glance which she -always shot about her at that particular corner, she had begun to walk -up Broadway. She walked well—fast, but not too fast; easily, assuredly, -with the air of a woman who knows that she has a good figure, and -expects rather than fears to be identified by it. But under this -external appearance of ease she was covered with cold beads of sweat.</p> - -<p>Broadway, as usual at that hour, and on a holiday, was nearly deserted; -the promenading public still slowly poured up and down Fifth Avenue.</p> - -<p>“Luckily there was such a crowd when<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_25" id="page_25">{25}</a></span> we came out of the hotel that no -one could possibly have noticed me,” she murmured over again, reassured -by the sense of having the long thoroughfare to herself. Composure and -presence of mind were so necessary to a woman in her situation that they -had become almost a second nature to her, and in a few minutes her thick -uneven heart-beats began to subside and to grow steadier. As if to test -their regularity, she paused before a florist’s window, and looked -appreciatively at the jars of roses and forced lilac, the compact -bunches of lilies-of-the-valley and violets, the first pots of -close-budded azaleas. Finally she opened the shop-door, and after -examining the Jacqueminots and Marshal Niels, selected with care two -perfect specimens of a new silvery-pink rose, waited for the florist to -wrap them in cotton-wool, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_26" id="page_26">{26}</a></span> slipped their long stems into her muff -for more complete protection.</p> - -<p>“It’s so simple, after all,” she said to herself as she walked on. “I’ll -tell him that as I was coming up Fifth Avenue from Cousin Cecilia’s I -heard the fire-engines turning into Twenty-third Street, and ran after -them. Just what <i>he</i> would have done ... once ...” she ended on a sigh.</p> - -<p>At Thirty-first Street she turned the corner with a quicker step. The -house she was approaching was low and narrow; but the Christmas holly -glistening between frilled curtains, the well-scrubbed steps, the -shining bell and door-knob, gave it a welcoming look. From garret to -basement it beamed like the abode of a happy couple.</p> - -<p>As Lizzie Hazeldean reached the door a curious change came over her. She -was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_27" id="page_27">{27}</a></span> conscious of it at once—she had so often said to herself, when her -little house rose before her: “It makes me feel younger as soon as I -turn the corner.” And it was true even today. In spite of her agitation -she was aware that the lines between her eyebrows were smoothing -themselves out, and that a kind of inner lightness was replacing the -heavy tumult of her breast. The lightness revealed itself in her -movements, which grew as quick as a girl’s as she ran up the steps. She -rang twice—it was her signal—and turned an unclouded smile on her -elderly parlourmaid.</p> - -<p>“Is Mr. Hazeldean in the library, Susan? I hope you’ve kept up the fire -for him.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, ma’am. But Mr. Hazeldean’s not in,” said Susan, returning the -smile respectfully.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_28" id="page_28">{28}</a></span></p> - -<p>“Not <i>in</i>? With his cold—and in this weather?”</p> - -<p>“That’s what I told him, ma’am. But he just laughed—”</p> - -<p>“Just laughed? What do you mean, Susan?” Lizzie Hazeldean felt herself -turning pale. She rested her hand quickly on the hall table.</p> - -<p>“Well, ma’am, the minute he heard the fire-engine, off he rushed like a -boy. It seems the Fifth Avenue Hotel’s on fire: there’s where he’s -gone.”</p> - -<p>The blood left Mrs. Hazeldean’s lips; she felt it shuddering back to her -heart. But a second later she spoke in a tone of natural and -good-humoured impatience.</p> - -<p>“What madness! How long ago—can you remember?” Instantly, she felt the -possible imprudence of the question, and added: “The doctor said he -ought not to be out more than a quarter of an hour,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_29" id="page_29">{29}</a></span> and only at the -sunniest time of the day.”</p> - -<p>“I know that, ma’am, and so I reminded him. But he’s been gone nearly an -hour, I should say.”</p> - -<p>A sense of deep fatigue overwhelmed Mrs. Hazeldean. She felt as if she -had walked for miles against an icy gale: her breath came laboriously.</p> - -<p>“How could you let him go?” she wailed; then, as the parlourmaid again -smiled respectfully, she added: “Oh, I know—sometimes one can’t stop -him. He gets so restless, being shut up with these long colds.”</p> - -<p>“That’s what I <i>do</i> feel, ma’am.”</p> - -<p>Mistress and maid exchanged a glance of sympathy, and Susan felt herself -emboldened to suggest: “Perhaps the outing will do him good,” with the -tendency of her class to encourage favoured invalids in disobedience.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_30" id="page_30">{30}</a></span></p> - -<p>Mrs. Hazeldean’s look grew severe. “Susan! I’ve often warned you against -talking to him in that way—”</p> - -<p>Susan reddened, and assumed a pained expression. “How can you think it, -ma’am?—me that never say anything to anybody, as all in the house will -bear witness.”</p> - -<p>Her mistress made an impatient movement. “Oh, well, I daresay he won’t -be long. The fire’s over.”</p> - -<p>“Ah—you knew of it too, then, ma’am?”</p> - -<p>“Of the fire? Why, of course. I <i>saw</i> it, even—” Mrs. Hazeldean smiled. -“I was walking home from Washington Square—from Miss Cecilia -Winter’s—and at the corner of Twenty-third Street there was a huge -crowd, and clouds of smoke.... It’s very odd that I shouldn’t have run -across Mr. Hazeldean.” She looked limpidly at the parlourmaid.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_31" id="page_31">{31}</a></span> “But, -then, of course, in all that crowd and confusion....”</p> - -<p>Half-way up the stairs she turned to call back: “Make up a good fire in -the library, please, and bring the tea up. It’s too cold in the -drawing-room.”</p> - -<p>The library was on the upper landing. She went in, drew the two roses -from her muff, tenderly unswathed them, and put them in a slim glass on -her husband’s writing-table. In the doorway she paused to smile at this -touch of summer in the firelit wintry room; but a moment later her frown -of anxiety reappeared. She stood listening intently for the sound of a -latch-key; then, hearing nothing, passed on to her bedroom.</p> - -<p>It was a rosy room, hung with one of the new English chintzes, which -also covered the deep sofa, and the bed with its rose-lined -pillow-covers. The carpet was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_32" id="page_32">{32}</a></span> cherry red, the toilet-table ruffled and -looped like a ball-dress. Ah, how she and Susan had ripped and sewn and -hammered, and pieced together old scraps of lace and ribbon and muslin, -in the making of that airy monument! For weeks after she had done over -the room her husband never came into it without saying: “I can’t think -how you managed to squeeze all this loveliness out of that last cheque -of your stepmother’s.”</p> - -<p>On the dressing-table Lizzie Hazeldean noticed a long florist’s box, one -end of which had been cut open to give space to the still longer stems -of a bunch of roses. She snipped the string, and extracted from the box -an envelope which she flung into the fire without so much as a glance at -its contents. Then she pushed the flowers aside, and after rearranging -her dark hair before the mirror, carefully dressed<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_33" id="page_33">{33}</a></span> herself in a loose -garment of velvet and lace which lay awaiting her on the sofa, beside -her high-heeled slippers and stockings of open-work silk.</p> - -<p>She had been one of the first women in New York to have tea every -afternoon at five, and to put off her walking-dress for a tea-gown.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_34" id="page_34">{34}</a></span></p> - -<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span>HE returned to the library, where the fire was beginning to send a -bright blaze through the twilight. It flashed on the bindings of -Hazeldean’s many books, and she smiled absently at the welcome it held -out. A latch-key rattled, and she heard her husband’s step, and the -sound of his cough below in the hall.</p> - -<p>“What madness—what madness!” she murmured.</p> - -<p>Slowly—how slowly for a young man!—he mounted the stairs, and still -coughing came into the library. She ran to him and took him in her -arms.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_35" id="page_35">{35}</a></span></p> - -<p>“Charlie! How could you? In this weather? It’s nearly dark!”</p> - -<p>His long thin face lit up with a deprecating smile. “I suppose Susan’s -betrayed me, eh? Don’t be cross. You’ve missed such a show! The Fifth -Avenue Hotel’s been on fire.”</p> - -<p>“Yes; I know.” She paused, just perceptibly. “I <i>didn’t</i> miss it, -though—I rushed across Madison Square for a look at it myself.”</p> - -<p>“You did? You were there too? What fun!” The idea appeared to fill him -with boyish amusement.</p> - -<p>“Naturally I was! On my way home from Cousin Cecilia’s....”</p> - -<p>“Ah, of course. I’d forgotten you were going there. But how odd, then, -that we didn’t meet!”</p> - -<p>“If we <i>had</i> I should have dragged you home long ago. I’ve been in at -least half<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_36" id="page_36">{36}</a></span> an hour, and the fire was already over when I got there. -What a baby you are to have stayed out so long, staring at smoke and a -fire-engine!”</p> - -<p>He smiled, still holding her, and passing his gaunt hand softly and -wistfully over her head. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve been indoors, safely -sheltered, and drinking old Mrs. Parrett’s punch. The old lady saw me -from her window, and sent one of the Wesson boys across the street to -fetch me in. They had just finished a family luncheon. And Sillerton -Jackson, who was there, drove me home. So you see,—”</p> - -<p>He released her, and moved toward the fire, and she stood motionless, -staring blindly ahead, while the thoughts spun through her mind like a -mill-race.</p> - -<p>“Sillerton Jackson—” she echoed, without in the least knowing what she -said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_37" id="page_37">{37}</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yes; he has the gout again—luckily for me!—and his sister’s brougham -came to the Parretts’ to fetch him.”</p> - -<p>She collected herself. “You’re coughing more than you did yesterday,” -she accused him.</p> - -<p>“Oh, well—the air’s sharpish. But I shall be all right presently.... -Oh, those roses!” He paused in admiration before his writing-table.</p> - -<p>Her face glowed with a reflected pleasure, though all the while the -names he had pronounced—“The Parretts, the Wessons, Sillerton -Jackson”—were clanging through her brain like a death-knell.</p> - -<p>“They <i>are</i> lovely, aren’t they?” she beamed.</p> - -<p>“Much too lovely for me. You must take them down to the drawing-room.”</p> - -<p>“No; we’re going to have tea up here.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_38" id="page_38">{38}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>“That’s jolly—it means there’ll be no visitors, I hope?”</p> - -<p>She nodded, smiling.</p> - -<p>“Good! But the roses—no, they mustn’t be wasted on this desert air. -You’ll wear them in your dress this evening?”</p> - -<p>She started perceptibly, and moved slowly back toward the hearth.</p> - -<p>“This evening?... Oh, I’m not going to Mrs. Struthers’s,” she said, -remembering.</p> - -<p>“Yes, you are. Dearest—I want you to!”</p> - -<p>“But what shall you do alone all the evening? With that cough, you won’t -go to sleep till late.”</p> - -<p>“Well, if I don’t, I’ve a lot of new books to keep me busy.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, your books—!” She made a little gesture, half teasing, half -impatient, in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_39" id="page_39">{39}</a></span> direction of the freshly cut volumes stacked up -beside his student lamp. It was an old joke between them that she had -never been able to believe anyone could really “care for reading.” Long -as she and her husband had lived together, this passion of his remained -for her as much of a mystery as on the day when she had first surprised -him, mute and absorbed, over what the people she had always lived with -would have called “a deep book.” It was her first encounter with a born -reader; or at least, the few she had known had been, like her -stepmother, the retired opera-singer, feverish devourers of circulating -library fiction: she had never before lived in a house with books in it. -Gradually she had learned to take a pride in Hazeldean’s reading, as if -it had been some rare accomplishment; she had perceived that it -reflected credit on him, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_40" id="page_40">{40}</a></span> was even conscious of its adding to the -charm of his talk, a charm she had always felt without being able to -define it. But still, in her heart of hearts she regarded books as a -mere expedient, and felt sure that they were only an aid to patience, -like jackstraws or a game of patience, with the disadvantage of -requiring a greater mental effort.</p> - -<p>“Shan’t you be too tired to read tonight?” she questioned wistfully.</p> - -<p>“Too tired? Why, you goose, reading is the greatest rest in the -world!—I want you to go to Mrs. Struthers’s, dear; I want to see you -again in that black velvet dress,” he added with his coaxing smile.</p> - -<p>The parlourmaid brought in the tray, and Mrs. Hazeldean busied herself -with the tea-caddy. Her husband had stretched himself out in the deep -armchair which was his habitual seat. He crossed his arms<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_41" id="page_41">{41}</a></span> behind his -neck, leaning his head back wearily against them, so that, as she -glanced at him across the hearth, she saw the salient muscles in his -long neck, and the premature wrinkles about his ears and chin. The lower -part of his face was singularly ravaged; only the eyes, those quiet -ironic grey eyes, and the white forehead above them, reminded her of -what he had been seven years before. Only seven years!</p> - -<p>She felt a rush of tears: no, there were times when fate was too cruel, -the future too horrible to contemplate, and the past—the past, oh, how -much worse! And there he sat, coughing, coughing—and thinking God knows -what, behind those quiet half-closed lids. At such times he grew so -mysteriously remote that she felt lonelier than when he was not in the -room.</p> - -<p>“Charlie!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_42" id="page_42">{42}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>He roused himself. “Yes?”</p> - -<p>“Here’s your tea.”</p> - -<p>He took it from her in silence, and she began, nervously, to wonder why -he was not talking. Was it because he was afraid it might make him cough -again, afraid she would be worried, and scold him? Or was it because he -was thinking—thinking of things he had heard at old Mrs. Parrett’s, or -on the drive home with Sillerton Jackson ... hints they might have -dropped ... insinuations ... she didn’t know what ... or of something he -had <i>seen</i>, perhaps, from old Mrs. Parrett’s window? She looked across -at his white forehead, so smooth and impenetrable in the lamplight, and -thought: “Oh, God, it’s like a locked door. I shall dash my brains out -against it some day!”</p> - -<p>For, after all, it was not impossible that he had actually seen her, -seen her from<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_43" id="page_43">{43}</a></span> Mrs. Parrett’s window, or even from the crowd around the -door of the hotel. For all she knew, he might have been near enough, in -that crowd, to put out his hand and touch her. And he might have held -back, benumbed, aghast, not believing his own eyes.... She couldn’t -tell. She had never yet made up her mind how he would look, how he would -behave, what he would say, if ever he <i>did</i> see or hear anything....</p> - -<p>No! That was the worst of it. They had lived together for nearly nine -years—and how closely!—and nothing that she knew of him, or had -observed in him, enabled her to forecast exactly what, in that -particular case, his state of mind and his attitude would be. In his -profession, she knew, he was celebrated for his shrewdness and insight; -in personal matters he<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_44" id="page_44">{44}</a></span> often seemed, to her alert mind, oddly -absent-minded and indifferent. Yet that might be merely his instinctive -way of saving his strength for things he considered more important. -There were times when she was sure he was quite deliberate and -self-controlled enough to feel in one way and behave in another: perhaps -even to have thought out a course in advance—just as, at the first bad -symptoms of illness, he had calmly made his will, and planned everything -about her future, the house and the servants.... No, she couldn’t tell; -there always hung over her the thin glittering menace of a danger she -could neither define nor localize—like that avenging lightning which -groped for the lovers in the horrible poem he had once read aloud to her -(what a choice!) on a lazy afternoon of their wedding journey,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_45" id="page_45">{45}</a></span> as they -lay stretched under Italian stone-pines.</p> - -<p>The maid came in to draw the curtains and light the lamps. The fire -glowed, the scent of the roses drifted on the warm air, and the clock -ticked out the minutes, and softly struck a half hour, while Mrs. -Hazeldean continued to ask herself, as she so often had before: “Now, -what would be the <i>natural</i> thing for me to say?”</p> - -<p>And suddenly the words escaped from her, she didn’t know how: “I wonder -you didn’t see me coming out of the hotel—for I actually squeezed my -way in.”</p> - -<p>Her husband made no answer. Her heart jumped convulsively; then she -lifted her eyes and saw that he was asleep. How placid his face -looked—years younger than when he was awake! The immensity of her -relief rushed over her in a warm glow, the counterpart of the icy sweat<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_46" id="page_46">{46}</a></span> -which had sent her chattering homeward from the fire. After all, if he -could fall asleep, fall into such a peaceful sleep as that—tired, no -doubt, by his imprudent walk, and the exposure to the cold—it meant, -beyond all doubt, beyond all conceivable dread, that he knew nothing, -had seen nothing, suspected nothing: that she was safe, safe, safe!</p> - -<p>The violence of the reaction made her long to spring to her feet and -move about the room. She saw a crooked picture that she wanted to -straighten, she would have liked to give the roses another tilt in their -glass. But there he sat, quietly sleeping, and the long habit of -vigilance made her respect his rest, watching over it as patiently as if -it had been a sick child’s.</p> - -<p>She drew a contented breath. Now she could afford to think of his outing -only as it might affect his health; and she knew<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_47" id="page_47">{47}</a></span> that this sudden -drowsiness, even if it were a sign of extreme fatigue, was also the -natural restorative for that fatigue. She continued to sit behind the -tea-tray, her hands folded, her eyes on his face, while the peace of the -scene entered into her, and held her under brooding wings.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_48" id="page_48">{48}</a></span></p> - -<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span>T Mrs. Struthers’s, at eleven o’clock that evening, the long over-lit -drawing-rooms were already thronged with people.</p> - -<p>Lizzie Hazeldean paused on the threshold and looked about her. The habit -of pausing to get her bearings, of sending a circular glance around any -assemblage of people, any drawing-room, concert-hall or theatre that she -entered, had become so instinctive that she would have been surprised -had anyone pointed out to her the unobservant expression and careless -movements of the young women of her acquaintance, who also looked about -them,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_49" id="page_49">{49}</a></span> it is true, but with the vague unseeing stare of youth, and of -beauty conscious only of itself.</p> - -<p>Lizzie Hazeldean had long since come to regard most women of her age as -children in the art of life. Some savage instinct of self-defence, -fostered by experience, had always made her more alert and perceiving -than the charming creatures who passed from the nursery to marriage as -if lifted from one rose-lined cradle into another. “Rocked to -sleep—that’s what they’ve always been,” she used to think sometimes, -listening to their innocuous talk during the long after-dinners in hot -drawing-rooms, while their husbands, in the smoking-rooms below, -exchanged ideas which, if no more striking, were at least based on more -direct experiences.</p> - -<p>But then, as all the old ladies said, Liz<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_50" id="page_50">{50}</a></span>zie Hazeldean had always -preferred the society of men.</p> - -<p>The man she now sought was not visible, and she gave a little sigh of -ease. “If only he has had the sense to stay away!” she thought.</p> - -<p>She would have preferred to stay away herself; but it had been her -husband’s whim that she should come. “You know you always enjoy yourself -at Mrs. Struthers’s—everybody does. The old girl somehow manages to -have the most amusing house in New York. Who is it who’s going to sing -tonight?... If you don’t go, I shall know it’s because I’ve coughed two -or three times oftener than usual, and you’re worrying about me. My dear -girl, it will take more than the Fifth Avenue Hotel fire to kill -<i>me</i>.... My heart’s feeling unusually steady.... Put on your black -velvet, will you?—with these two roses....<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_51" id="page_51">{51}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>So she had gone. And here she was, in her black velvet, under the -glitter of Mrs. Struthers’s chandeliers, amid all the youth and good -looks and gaiety of New York; for, as Hazeldean said, Mrs. Struthers’s -house was more amusing than anybody else’s, and whenever she opened her -doors the world flocked through them.</p> - -<p>As Mrs. Hazeldean reached the inner drawing-room the last notes of a -rich tenor were falling on the attentive silence. She saw Campanini’s -low-necked throat subside into silence above the piano, and the clapping -of many tightly-fitting gloves was succeeded by a general movement, and -the usual irrepressible outburst of talk.</p> - -<p>In the breaking-up of groups she caught a glimpse of Sillerton Jackson’s -silvery crown. Their eyes met across bare shoulders, he bowed -profoundly, and she fan<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_52" id="page_52">{52}</a></span>cied that a dry smile lifted his moustache. “He -doesn’t usually bow to me as low as that,” she thought apprehensively.</p> - -<p>But as she advanced into the room her self-possession returned. Among -all these stupid pretty women she had such a sense of power, of knowing -almost everything better than they did, from the way of doing her hair -to the art of keeping a secret! She felt a thrill of pride in the slope -of her white shoulders above the black velvet, in the one curl escaping -from her thick chignon, and the slant of the gold arrow tipped with -diamonds which she had thrust in to retain it. And she had done it all -without a maid, with no one cleverer than Susan to help her! Ah, as a -woman she knew her business....</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p>Mrs. Struthers, plumed and ponderous, with diamond stars studding her -black<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_53" id="page_53">{53}</a></span> wig like a pin-cushion, had worked her resolute way back to the -outer room. More people were coming in; and with her customary rough -skill she was receiving, distributing, introducing them. Suddenly her -smile deepened; she was evidently greeting an old friend. The group -about her scattered, and Mrs. Hazeldean saw that, in her cordial -absent-minded way, and while her wandering hostess-eye swept the rooms, -she was saying a confidential word to a tall man whose hand she -detained. They smiled at each other; then Mrs. Struthers’s glance turned -toward the inner room, and her smile seemed to say: “You’ll find her -there.”</p> - -<p>The tall man nodded. He looked about him composedly, and began to move -toward the centre of the throng, speaking to everyone, appearing to have -no object beyond that of greeting the next person<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_54" id="page_54">{54}</a></span> in his path, yet -quietly, steadily pursuing that path, which led straight to the inner -room.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Hazeldean had found a seat near the piano. A good-looking youth, -seated beside her, was telling her at considerable length what he was -going to wear at the Beauforts’ fancy-ball. She listened, approved, -suggested; but her glance never left the advancing figure of the tall -man.</p> - -<p>Handsome? Yes, she said to herself; she had to admit that he was -handsome. A trifle too broad and florid, perhaps; though his air and his -attitude so plainly denied it that, on second thoughts, one agreed that -a man of his height had, after all, to carry some ballast. Yes; his -assurance made him, as a rule, appear to people exactly as he chose to -appear; that is, as a man over forty, but carrying his years carelessly, -an active muscular man, whose<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_55" id="page_55">{55}</a></span> blue eyes were still clear, whose fair -hair waved ever so little less thickly than it used to on a low sunburnt -forehead, over eyebrows almost silvery in their blondness, and blue eyes -the bluer for their thatch. Stupid-looking? By no means. His smile -denied that. Just self-sufficient enough to escape fatuity, yet so cool -that one felt the fundamental coldness, he steered his way through life -as easily and resolutely as he was now working his way through Mrs. -Struthers’s drawing-rooms.</p> - -<p>Half-way, he was detained by a tap of Mrs. Wesson’s red fan. Mrs. -Wesson—surely, Mrs. Hazeldean reflected, Charles had spoken of Mrs. -Sabina Wesson’s being with her mother, old Mrs. Parrett, while they -watched the fire? Sabina Wesson was a redoubtable woman, one of the few -of her generation and her clan who had broken with tradition, and gone -to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_56" id="page_56">{56}</a></span> Mrs. Struthers’s almost as soon as the Shoe-Polish Queen had bought -her house in Fifth Avenue, and issued her first challenge to society. -Lizzie Hazeldean shut her eyes for an instant; then, rising from her -seat, she joined the group about the singer. From there she wandered on -to another knot of acquaintances.</p> - -<p>“Look here: the fellow’s going to sing again. Let’s get into that corner -over there.”</p> - -<p>She felt ever so slight a touch on her arm, and met Henry Prest’s -composed glance.</p> - -<p>A red-lit and palm-shaded recess divided the drawing-rooms from the -dining-room, which ran across the width of the house at the back. Mrs. -Hazeldean hesitated; then she caught Mrs. Wesson’s watchful glance, -lifted her head with a smile and followed her companion.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_57" id="page_57">{57}</a></span></p> - -<p>They sat down on a small sofa under the palms, and a couple, who had -been in search of the same retreat, paused on the threshold, and with an -interchange of glances passed on. Mrs. Hazeldean smiled more vividly.</p> - -<p>“Where are my roses? Didn’t you get them?” Prest asked. He had a way of -looking her over from beneath lowered lids, while he affected to be -examining a glove-button or contemplating the tip of his shining boot.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I got them,” she answered.</p> - -<p>“You’re not wearing them. I didn’t order those.”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“Whose are they, then?”</p> - -<p>She unfolded her mother-of-pearl fan, and bent above its complicated -traceries.</p> - -<p>“Mine,” she pronounced.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_58" id="page_58">{58}</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yours? Well, obviously. But I suppose someone sent them to you?”</p> - -<p>“<i>I</i> did.” She hesitated a second. “I sent them to myself.”</p> - -<p>He raised his eyebrows a little. “Well, they don’t suit you—that washy -pink! May I ask why you didn’t wear mine?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve already told you.... I’ve often asked you never to send flowers -... on the day....”</p> - -<p>“Nonsense. That’s the very day.... What’s the matter? Are you still -nervous?”</p> - -<p>She was silent for a moment; then she lowered her voice to say: “You -ought not to have come here tonight.”</p> - -<p>“My dear girl, how unlike you! You <i>are</i> nervous.”</p> - -<p>“Didn’t you see all those people in the Parretts’ window?”</p> - -<p>“What, opposite? Lord, no; I just<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_59" id="page_59">{59}</a></span> took to my heels! It was the deuce, -the back way being barred. But what of it? In all that crowd, do you -suppose for a moment—”</p> - -<p>“My husband was in the window with them,” she said, still lower.</p> - -<p>His confident face fell for a moment, and then almost at once regained -its look of easy arrogance.</p> - -<p>“Well—?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, nothing—as yet. Only I ask you ... to go away now.”</p> - -<p>“Just as you asked me not to come! Yet <i>you</i> came, because you had the -sense to see that if you didn’t ... and I came for the same reason. Look -here, my dear, for God’s sake don’t lose your head!”</p> - -<p>The challenge seemed to rouse her. She lifted her chin, glanced about -the thronged room which they commanded from their corner, and nodded and -smiled<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_60" id="page_60">{60}</a></span> invitingly at several acquaintances, with the hope that some one -of them might come up to her. But though they all returned her greetings -with a somewhat elaborate cordiality, not one advanced toward her -secluded seat.</p> - -<p>She turned her head slightly toward her companion. “I ask you again to -go,” she repeated.</p> - -<p>“Well, I will then, after the fellow’s sung. But I’m bound to say you’re -a good deal pleasanter—”</p> - -<p>The first bars of “<i>Salve, Dimora</i>” silenced him, and they sat side by -side in the meditative rigidity of fashionable persons listening to -expensive music. She had thrown herself into a corner of the sofa, and -Henry Prest, about whom everything was discreet but his eyes, sat apart -from her, one leg crossed over the other, one hand holding his folded -opera-hat on his<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_61" id="page_61">{61}</a></span> knee, while the other hand rested beside him on the -sofa. But an end of her tulle scarf lay in the space between them; and -without looking in his direction, without turning her glance from the -singer, she was conscious that Prest’s hand had reached and drawn the -scarf toward him. She shivered a little, made an involuntary motion as -though to gather it about her—and then desisted. As the song ended, he -bent toward her slightly, said: “Darling” so low that it seemed no more -than a breath on her cheek, and then, rising, bowed, and strolled into -the other room.</p> - -<p>She sighed faintly, and, settling herself once more in her corner, -lifted her brilliant eyes to Sillerton Jackson, who was approaching. “It -<i>was</i> good of you to bring Charlie home from the Parretts’ this -afternoon.” She held out her hand, making way for him at her side.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_62" id="page_62">{62}</a></span></p> - -<p>“Good of me?” he laughed. “Why, I was glad of the chance of getting him -safely home; it was rather naughty of <i>him</i> to be where he was, I -suspect.” She fancied a slight pause, as if he waited to see the effect -of this, and her lashes beat her cheeks. But already he was going on: -“Do you encourage him, with that cough, to run about town after -fire-engines?”</p> - -<p>She gave back the laugh.</p> - -<p>“I don’t discourage him—ever—if I can help it. But it <i>was</i> foolish of -him to go out today,” she agreed; and all the while she kept on asking -herself, as she had that afternoon, in her talk with her husband: “Now, -what would be the <i>natural</i> thing for me to say?”</p> - -<p>Should she speak of having been at the fire herself—or should she not? -The question dinned in her brain so loudly that she could hardly hear -what her companion was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_63" id="page_63">{63}</a></span> saying; yet she had, at the same time, a queer -feeling of his never having been so close to her, or rather so closely -intent on her, as now. In her strange state of nervous lucidity, her -eyes seemed to absorb with a new precision every facial detail of -whoever approached her; and old Sillerton Jackson’s narrow mask, his -withered pink cheeks, the veins in the hollow of his temples, under the -carefully-tended silvery hair, and the tiny blood-specks in the white of -his eyes as he turned their cautious blue gaze on her, appeared as if -presented under some powerful lens. With his eyeglasses dangling over -one white-gloved hand, the other supporting his opera-hat on his knee, -he suggested, behind that assumed carelessness of pose, the patient -fixity of a naturalist holding his breath near the crack from which some -tiny animal might suddenly issue—if one watched<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_64" id="page_64">{64}</a></span> long enough, or gave -it, completely enough, the impression of not looking for it, or dreaming -it was anywhere near. The sense of that tireless attention made Mrs. -Hazeldean’s temples ache as if she sat under a glare of light even -brighter than that of the Struthers’ chandeliers—a glare in which each -quiver of a half-formed thought might be as visible behind her forehead -as the faint lines wrinkling its surface into an uncontrollable frown of -anxiety. Yes, Prest was right; she was losing her head—losing it for -the first time in the dangerous year during which she had had such -continual need to keep it steady.</p> - -<p>“What is it? What has happened to me?” she wondered.</p> - -<p>There had been alarms before—how could it be otherwise? But they had -only stimulated her, made her more alert and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_65" id="page_65">{65}</a></span> prompt; whereas tonight -she felt herself quivering away into she knew not what abyss of -weakness. What was different, then? Oh, she knew well enough! It was -Charles ... that haggard look in his eyes, and the lines of his throat -as he had leaned back sleeping. She had never before admitted to herself -how ill she thought him; and now, to have to admit it, and at the same -time not to have the complete certainty that the look in his eyes was -caused by illness only, made the strain unbearable.</p> - -<p>She glanced about her with a sudden sense of despair. Of all the people -in those brilliant animated groups—of all the women who called her -Lizzie, and the men who were familiars at her house—she knew that not -one, at that moment, guessed, or could have understood, what she was -feeling.... Her eyes fell on<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_66" id="page_66">{66}</a></span> Henry Prest, who had come to the surface a -little way off, bending over the chair of the handsome Mrs. Lyman. “And -<i>you</i> least of all!” she thought. “Yet God knows,” she added with a -shiver, “they all have their theories about me!”</p> - -<p>“My dear Mrs. Hazeldean, you look a little pale. Are you cold? Shall I -get you some champagne?” Sillerton Jackson was officiously suggesting.</p> - -<p>“If you think the other women look blooming! My dear man, it’s this -hideous vulgar overhead lighting....” She rose impatiently. It had -occurred to her that the thing to do—the “natural” thing—would be to -stroll up to Jinny Lyman, over whom Prest was still attentively bending. -<i>Then</i> people would see if she was nervous, or ill—or afraid!</p> - -<p>But half-way she stopped and thought: “Suppose the Parretts and Wessons -<i>did</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_67" id="page_67">{67}</a></span> see me? Then my joining Jinny while he’s talking to her will -look—how will it look?” She began to regret not having had it out on -the spot with Sillerton Jackson, who could be trusted to hold his tongue -on occasion, especially if a pretty woman threw herself on his mercy. -She glanced over her shoulder as if to call him back; but he had turned -away, been absorbed into another group, and she found herself, instead, -abruptly face to face with Sabina Wesson. Well, perhaps that was better -still. After all, it all depended on how much Mrs. Wesson had seen, and -what line she meant to take, supposing she <i>had</i> seen anything. She was -not likely to be as inscrutable as old Sillerton. Lizzie wished now that -she had not forgotten to go to Mrs. Wesson’s last party.</p> - -<p>“Dear Mrs. Wesson, it was so kind of you<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_68" id="page_68">{68}</a></span>—”</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Wesson was not there. By the exercise of that mysterious -protective power which enables a woman desirous of not being waylaid to -make herself invisible, or to transport herself, by means imperceptible, -to another part of the earth’s surface, Mrs. Wesson, who, two seconds -earlier, appeared in all her hard handsomeness to be bearing straight -down on Mrs. Hazeldean, with a scant yard of clear <i>parquet</i> between -them—Mrs. Wesson, as her animated back and her active red fan now -called on all the company to notice, had never been there at all, had -never seen Mrs. Hazeldean (“<i>Was</i> she at Mrs. Struthers’s last Sunday? -How odd! I must have left before she got there—“), but was busily -engaged, on the farther side of the piano, in examining a picture to -which her attention appeared to have been called by the persons nearest -her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_69" id="page_69">{69}</a></span></p> - -<p>“Ah, how <i>life-like</i>! That’s what I always feel when I see a -Meissonier,” she was heard to exclaim, with her well-known instinct for -the fitting epithet.</p> - -<p>Lizzie Hazeldean stood motionless. Her eyes dazzled as if she had -received a blow on the forehead. “So <i>that’s</i> what it feels like!” she -thought. She lifted her head very high, looked about her again, tried to -signal to Henry Prest, but saw him still engaged with the lovely Mrs. -Lyman, and at the same moment caught the glance of young Hubert Wesson, -Sabina’s eldest, who was standing in disengaged expectancy near the -supper-room door.</p> - -<p>Hubert Wesson, as his eyes met Mrs. Hazeldean’s, crimsoned to the -forehead, hung back a moment, and then came forward, bowing low—again -that too low bow! “So <i>he</i> saw me too,” she thought.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_70" id="page_70">{70}</a></span> She put her hand -on his arm with a laugh. “Dear me, how ceremonious you are! Really, I’m -not as old as that bow of yours implies. My dear boy, I hope you want to -take me in to supper at once. I was out in the cold all the afternoon, -gazing at the Fifth Avenue Hotel fire, and I’m simply dying of hunger -and fatigue.”</p> - -<p>There, the die was cast—she had said it loud enough for all the people -nearest her to hear! And she was sure now that it was the right, the -“natural” thing to do.</p> - -<p>Her spirits rose, and she sailed into the supper-room like a goddess, -steering Hubert to an unoccupied table in a flowery corner.</p> - -<p>“No—I think we’re very well by ourselves, don’t you? Do you want that -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_71" id="page_71">{71}</a></span>fat old bore of a Lucy Vanderlow to join us? If you <i>do</i>, of course ... -I can see she’s dying to ... but then, I warn you, I shall ask a young -man! Let me see—shall I ask Henry Prest? You see he’s hovering! No, it -<i>is</i> jollier with just you and me, isn’t it?” She leaned forward a -little, resting her chin on her clasped hands, her elbows on the table, -in an attitude which the older women thought shockingly free, but the -younger ones were beginning to imitate.</p> - -<p>“And now, some champagne, please—and <i>hot</i> terrapin!... But I suppose -you were at the fire yourself, weren’t you?” she leaned still a little -nearer to say.</p> - -<p>The blush again swept over young Wesson’s face, rose to his forehead, -and turned the lobes of his large ears to balls of fire (“It looks,” she -thought, “as if he had on huge coral earrings.”). But she forced him to -look at her, laughed straight into his eyes, and went on: “Did you ever -see a funnier sight than all those dressed-up<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_72" id="page_72">{72}</a></span> absurdities rushing out -into the cold? It looked like the end of an Inauguration Ball! I was so -fascinated that I actually pushed my way into the hall. The firemen were -furious, but they couldn’t stop me—nobody can stop me at a fire! You -should have seen the ladies scuttling downstairs—the fat ones! Oh, but -I beg your pardon; I’d forgotten that you admire ... avoirdupois. No? -But ... Mrs. Van ... so stupid of me! Why, you’re actually blushing! I -assure you, you’re as red as your mother’s fan—and visible from as -great a distance! Yes, please; a little more champagne....”</p> - -<p>And then the inevitable began. She forgot the fire, forgot her -anxieties, forgot Mrs. Wesson’s affront, forgot everything but the -amusement, the passing childish amusement, of twirling around her little -finger this shy clumsy boy, as she had<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_73" id="page_73">{73}</a></span> twirled so many others, old and -young, not caring afterward if she ever saw them again, but so absorbed -in the sport, and in her sense of knowing how to do it better than the -other women—more quietly, more insidiously, without ogling, bridling or -grimacing—that sometimes she used to ask herself with a shiver: “What -was the gift given to me for?” Yes; it always amused her at first: the -gradual dawn of attraction in eyes that had regarded her with -indifference, the blood rising to the face, the way she could turn and -twist the talk as though she had her victim on a leash, spinning him -after her down winding paths of sentimentality, irony, caprice ... and -leaving him, with beating heart and dazzled eyes, to visions of an -all-promising morrow.... “My only accomplishment!” she murmured to -herself as she rose from the table followed by young<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_74" id="page_74">{74}</a></span> Wesson’s -fascinated gaze, while already, on her own lips, she felt the taste of -cinders.</p> - -<p>“But at any rate,” she thought, “he’ll hold his tongue about having seen -me at the fire.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_75" id="page_75">{75}</a></span>”</p> - -<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span>HE let herself in with her latch-key, glanced at the notes and letters -on the hall-table (the old habit of allowing nothing to escape her), and -stole up through the darkness to her room.</p> - -<p>A fire still glowed in the chimney, and its light fell on two vases of -crimson roses. The room was full of their scent.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Hazeldean frowned, and then shrugged her shoulders. It had been a -mistake, after all, to let it appear that she was indifferent to the -flowers; she must remember to thank Susan for rescuing them. She began -to undress, hastily yet clumsily, as if her deft fingers were all<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_76" id="page_76">{76}</a></span> -thumbs; but first, detaching the two faded pink roses from her bosom, -she put them with a reverent touch into a glass on the toilet-table. -Then, slipping on her dressing-gown, she stole to her husband’s door. It -was shut, and she leaned her ear to the keyhole. After a moment she -caught his breathing, heavy, as it always was when he had a cold, but -regular, untroubled.... With a sigh of relief she tiptoed back. Her -uncovered bed, with its fresh pillows and satin coverlet, sent her a -rosy invitation; but she cowered down by the fire, hugging her knees and -staring into the coals.</p> - -<p>“So <i>that’s</i> what it feels like!” she repeated.</p> - -<p>It was the first time in her life that she had ever been deliberately -“cut”; and the cut was a deadly injury in old New York. For Sabina -Wesson to have used it, con<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_77" id="page_77">{77}</a></span>sciously, deliberately—for there was no -doubt that she had purposely advanced toward her victim—she must have -done so with intent to kill. And to risk that, she must have been sure -of her facts, sure of corroborating witnesses, sure of being backed up -by all her clan.</p> - -<p>Lizzie Hazeldean had her clan too—but it was a small and weak one, and -she hung on its outer fringe by a thread of little-regarded cousinship. -As for the Hazeldean tribe, which was larger and stronger (though -nothing like the great organized Wesson-Parrett <i>gens</i>, with half New -York and all Albany at its back)—well, the Hazeldeans were not much to -be counted on, and would even, perhaps, in a furtive negative way, be -not too sorry (“if it were not for poor Charlie”) that poor Charlie’s -wife should at last be made to pay for her good looks, her popularity,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_78" id="page_78">{78}</a></span> -above all for being, in spite of her origin, treated by poor Charlie as -if she were one of them!</p> - -<p>Her origin was, of course, respectable enough. Everybody knew all about -the Winters—she had been Lizzie Winter. But the Winters were very small -people, and her father, the Reverend Arcadius Winter, the sentimental -over-popular Rector of a fashionable New York church, after a few -seasons of too great success as preacher and director of female -consciences, had suddenly had to resign and go to Bermuda for his -health—or was it France?—to some obscure watering-place, it was -rumoured. At any rate, Lizzie, who went with him (with a crushed -bed-ridden mother), was ultimately, after the mother’s death, fished out -of a girls’ school in Brussels—they seemed to have been in so many -countries at once!—and brought<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_79" id="page_79">{79}</a></span> back to New York by a former -parishioner of poor Arcadius’s, who had always “believed in him,” in -spite of the Bishop, and who took pity on his lonely daughter.</p> - -<p>The parishioner, Mrs. Mant, was “one of the Hazeldeans.” She was a rich -widow, given to generous gestures which she was often at a loss how to -complete; and when she had brought Lizzie Winter home, and sufficiently -celebrated her own courage in doing so, she did not quite know what step -to take next. She had fancied it would be pleasant to have a clever -handsome girl about the house; but her housekeeper was not of the same -mind. The spare-room sheets had not been out of lavender for twenty -years—and Miss Winter always left the blinds up in her room, and the -carpet and curtains, unused to such exposure, suffered accordingly. Then -young men began to call—they called in<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_80" id="page_80">{80}</a></span> numbers. Mrs. Mant had not -supposed that the daughter of a clergyman—and a clergyman “under a -cloud”—would expect visitors. She had imagined herself taking Lizzie -Winter to Church Fairs, and having the stitches of her knitting picked -up by the young girl, whose “eyes were better” than her benefactress’s. -But Lizzie did not know how to knit—she possessed no useful -accomplishments—and she was visibly bored by Church Fairs, where her -presence was of little use, since she had no money to spend. Mrs. Mant -began to see her mistake; and the discovery made her dislike her -protégée, whom she secretly regarded as having intentionally misled her.</p> - -<p>In Mrs. Mant’s life, the transition from one enthusiasm to another was -always marked by an interval of disillusionment, during which, -Providence having failed to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_81" id="page_81">{81}</a></span> fulfill her requirements, its existence was -openly called into question. But in this flux of moods there was one -fixed point: Mrs. Mant was a woman whose life revolved about a bunch of -keys. What treasures they gave access to, what disasters would have -ensued had they been forever lost, was not quite clear; but whenever -they were missed the household was in an uproar, and as Mrs. Mant would -trust them to no one but herself, these occasions were frequent. One of -them arose at the very moment when Mrs. Mant was recovering from her -enthusiasm for Miss Winter. A minute before, the keys had been there, in -a pocket of her work-table; she had actually touched them in hunting for -her buttonhole-scissors. She had been called away to speak to the -plumber about the bath-room leak, and when she left the room there was -no one in it but Miss Win<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_82" id="page_82">{82}</a></span>ter. When she returned, the keys were gone. -The house had been turned inside out; everyone had been, if not accused, -at least suspected; and in a rash moment Mrs. Mant had spoken of the -police. The housemaid had thereupon given warning, and her own maid -threatened to follow; when suddenly the Bishop’s hints recurred to Mrs. -Mant. The Bishop had always implied that there had been something -irregular in Dr. Winter’s accounts, besides the other unfortunate -business....</p> - -<p>Very mildly, she had asked Miss Winter if she might not have seen the -keys, and “picked them up without thinking.” Miss Winter permitted -herself to smile in denying the suggestion; the smile irritated Mrs. -Mant; and in a moment the floodgates were opened. She saw nothing to -smile at in her question—unless it was of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_83" id="page_83">{83}</a></span> a kind that Miss Winter was -already used to, prepared for ... with that sort of background ... her -unfortunate father....</p> - -<p>“Stop!” Lizzie Winter cried. She remembered now, as if it had happened -yesterday, the abyss suddenly opening at her feet. It was her first -direct contact with human cruelty. Suffering, weakness, frailties other -than Mrs. Mant’s restricted fancy could have pictured, the girl had -known, or at least suspected; but she had found as much kindness as -folly in her path, and no one had ever before attempted to visit upon -her the dimly-guessed shortcomings of her poor old father. She shook -with horror as much as with indignation, and her “Stop!” blazed out so -violently that Mrs. Mant, turning white, feebly groped for the bell.</p> - -<p>And it was then, at that very moment,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_84" id="page_84">{84}</a></span> that Charles Hazeldean came -in—Charles Hazeldean, the favourite nephew, the pride of the tribe. -Lizzie had seen him only once or twice, for he had been absent since her -return to New York. She had thought him distinguished-looking, but -rather serious and sarcastic; and he had apparently taken little notice -of her—which perhaps accounted for her opinion.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Charles, dearest Charles—that you should be here to hear such -things said to me!” his aunt gasped, her hand on her outraged heart.</p> - -<p>“What things? Said by whom? I see no one here to say them but Miss -Winter,” Charles had laughed, taking the girl’s icy hand.</p> - -<p>“Don’t shake hands with her! She has insulted me! She has ordered me to -keep silence—in my own house. ‘Stop!’ she said, when I was trying, in -the kindness of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_85" id="page_85">{85}</a></span> my heart, to get her to admit privately.... Well, if -she prefers to have the police....”</p> - -<p>“I do! I ask you to send for them!” Lizzie cried.</p> - -<p>How vividly she remembered all that followed: the finding of the keys, -Mrs. Mant’s reluctant apologies, her own cold acceptance of them, and -the sense on both sides of the impossibility of continuing their life -together! She had been wounded to the soul, and her own plight first -revealed to her in all its destitution. Before that, despite the ups and -downs of a wandering life, her youth, her good looks, the sense of a -certain bright power over people and events, had hurried her along on a -spring tide of confidence; she had never thought of herself as the -dependent, the beneficiary, of the persons who were kind to her. Now she -saw herself, at twenty, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_86" id="page_86">{86}</a></span> penniless girl, with a feeble discredited -father carrying his snowy head, his unctuous voice, his edifying manner -from one cheap watering-place to another, through an endless succession -of sentimental and pecuniary entanglements. To him she could be of no -more help than he to her; and save for him she was alone. The Winter -cousins, as much humiliated by his disgrace as they had been puffed-up -by his triumphs, let it be understood, when the breach with Mrs. Mant -became known, that they were not in a position to interfere; and among -Dr. Winter’s former parishioners none was left to champion him. Almost -at the same time, Lizzie heard that he was about to marry a Portuguese -opera-singer and be received into the Church of Rome; and this crowning -scandal too promptly justified his family.</p> - -<p>The situation was a grave one, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_87" id="page_87">{87}</a></span> called for energetic measures. -Lizzie understood it—and a week later she was engaged to Charles -Hazeldean.</p> - -<p>She always said afterward that but for the keys he would never have -thought of marrying her; while he laughingly affirmed that, on the -contrary, but for the keys she would never have looked at <i>him</i>.</p> - -<p>But what did it all matter, in the complete and blessed understanding -which was to follow on their hasty union? If all the advantages on both -sides had been weighed and found equal by judicious advisers, harmony -more complete could hardly have been predicted. As a matter of fact, the -advisers, had they been judicious, would probably have found only -elements of discord in the characters concerned. Charles Hazeldean was -by nature an observer and a student, brooding and curious of mind: -Lizzie Winter (as she looked back at her<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_88" id="page_88">{88}</a></span>self)—what was she, what would -she ever be, but a quick, ephemeral creature, in whom a perpetual and -adaptable activity simulated mind, as her grace, her swiftness, her -expressiveness simulated beauty? So others would have judged her; so, -now, she judged herself. And she knew that in fundamental things she was -still the same. And yet she had satisfied him: satisfied him, to all -appearances, as completely in the quiet later years as in the first -flushed hours. As completely, or perhaps even more so. In the early -months, dazzled gratitude made her the humbler, fonder worshipper; but -as her powers expanded in the warm air of comprehension, as she felt -herself grow handsomer, cleverer, more competent and more companionable -than he had hoped, or she had dreamed herself capable of becoming, the -balance was imperceptibly reversed, and the tri<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_89" id="page_89">{89}</a></span>umph in his eyes when -they rested on her.</p> - -<p>The Hazeldeans were conquered; they had to admit it. Such a brilliant -recruit to the clan was not to be disowned. Mrs. Mant was left to nurse -her grievance in solitude, till she too fell into line, carelessly but -handsomely forgiven.</p> - -<p>Ah, those first years of triumph! They frightened Lizzie now as she -looked back. One day, the friendless defenceless daughter of a -discredited man; the next, almost, the wife of Charlie Hazeldean, the -popular successful young lawyer, with a good practice already assured, -and the best of professional and private prospects. His own parents were -dead, and had died poor; but two or three childless relatives were -understood to be letting their capital accumulate for his benefit, and -meanwhile in Lizzie’s thrifty hands his earnings were largely -sufficient.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_90" id="page_90">{90}</a></span></p> - -<p>Ah, those first years! There had been barely six; but even now there -were moments when their sweetness drenched her to the soul.... Barely -six; and then the sharp re-awakening of an inherited weakness of the -heart that Hazeldean and his doctors had imagined to be completely -cured. Once before, for the same cause, he had been sent off, suddenly, -for a year of travel in mild climates and distant scenes; and his first -return had coincided with the close of Lizzie’s sojourn at Mrs. Mant’s. -The young man felt sure enough of the future to marry and take up his -professional duties again, and for the following six years he had led, -without interruption, the busy life of a successful lawyer; then had -come a second breakdown, more unexpectedly, and with more alarming -symptoms. The “Hazeldean heart” was a proverbial boast in the fam<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_91" id="page_91">{91}</a></span>ily; -the Hazeldeans privately considered it more distinguished than the -Sillerton gout, and far more refined than the Wesson liver; and it had -permitted most of them to survive, in valetudinarian ease, to a ripe old -age, when they died of some quite other disorder. But Charles Hazeldean -had defied it, and it took its revenge, and took it savagely.</p> - -<p>One by one, hopes and plans faded. The Hazeldeans went south for a -winter; he lay on a deck-chair in a Florida garden, and read and -dreamed, and was happy with Lizzie beside him. So the months passed; and -by the following autumn he was better, returned to New York, and took up -his profession. Intermittently but obstinately, he had continued the -struggle for two more years; but before they were over husband and wife -understood that the good days were done.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_92" id="page_92">{92}</a></span></p> - -<p>He could be at his office only at lengthening intervals; he sank -gradually into invalidism without submitting to it. His income dwindled; -and, indifferent for himself, he fretted ceaselessly at the thought of -depriving Lizzie of the least of her luxuries.</p> - -<p>At heart she was indifferent to them too; but she could not convince him -of it. He had been brought up in the old New York tradition, which -decreed that a man, at whatever cost, must provide his wife with what -she had always “been accustomed to”; and he had gloried too much in her -prettiness, her elegance, her easy way of wearing her expensive dresses, -and his friends’ enjoyment of the good dinners she knew how to order, -not to accustom her to everything which could enhance such graces. Mrs. -Mant’s secret satisfaction rankled in him. She sent him Baltimore<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_93" id="page_93">{93}</a></span> -terrapin, and her famous clam broth, and a dozen of the old Hazeldean -port, and said “I told you so” to her confidants when Lizzie was -mentioned; and Charles Hazeldean knew it, and swore at it.</p> - -<p>“I won’t be pauperized by her!” he declared; but Lizzie smiled away his -anger, and persuaded him to taste the terrapin and sip the port.</p> - -<p>She was smiling faintly at the memory of the last passage between him -and Mrs. Mant when the turning of the bedroom door-handle startled her. -She jumped up, and he stood there. The blood rushed to her forehead; his -expression frightened her; for an instant she stared at him as if he had -been an enemy. Then she saw that the look in his face was only the -remote lost look of excessive physical pain.</p> - -<p>She was at his side at once, supporting him, guiding him to the nearest -armchair.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_94" id="page_94">{94}</a></span> He sank into it, and she flung a shawl over him, and knelt at -his side while his inscrutable eyes continued to repel her.</p> - -<p>“Charles ... Charles,” she pleaded.</p> - -<p>For a while he could not speak; and she said to herself that she would -perhaps never know whether he had sought her because he was ill, or -whether illness had seized him as he entered her room to question, -accuse, or reveal what he had seen or heard that afternoon.</p> - -<p>Suddenly he lifted his hand and pressed back her forehead, so that her -face lay bare under his eyes.</p> - -<p>“Love, love—you’ve been happy?”</p> - -<p>“<i>Happy?</i>” The word choked her. She clung to him, burying her anguish -against his knees. His hand stirred weakly in her hair, and gathering -her whole strength into the gesture, she raised her head again,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_95" id="page_95">{95}</a></span> looked -into his eyes, and breathed back: “And you?”</p> - -<p>He gave her one full look; all their life together was in it, from the -first day to the last. His hand brushed her once more, like a blessing, -and then dropped. The moment of their communion was over; the next she -was preparing remedies, ringing for the servants, ordering the doctor to -be called. Her husband was once more the harmless helpless captive that -sickness makes of the most dreaded and the most loved.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_96" id="page_96">{96}</a></span></p> - -<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span>T was in Mrs. Mant’s drawing-room that, some half-year later, Mrs. -Charles Hazeldean, after a moment’s hesitation, said to the servant -that, yes, he might show in Mr. Prest.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mant was away. She had been leaving for Washington to visit a new -protégée when Mrs. Hazeldean arrived from Europe, and after a rapid -consultation with the clan had decided that it would not be “decent” to -let poor Charles’s widow go to an hotel. Lizzie had therefore the -strange sensation of returning, after nearly nine years, to the house -from which her husband had tri<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_97" id="page_97">{97}</a></span>umphantly rescued her; of returning -there, to be sure, in comparative independence, and without danger of -falling into her former bondage, yet with every nerve shrinking from all -that the scene revived.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mant, the next day, had left for Washington; but before starting -she had tossed a note across the breakfast-table to her visitor.</p> - -<p>“Very proper—he was one of Charlie’s oldest friends, I believe?” she -said, with her mild frosty smile. Mrs. Hazeldean glanced at the note, -turned it over as if to examine the signature, and restored it to her -hostess.</p> - -<p>“Yes. But I don’t think I care to see anyone just yet.”</p> - -<p>There was a pause, during which the butler brought in fresh -griddle-cakes, replenished the hot milk, and withdrew. As the door -closed on him, Mrs. Mant said,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_98" id="page_98">{98}</a></span> with a dangerous cordiality: “No one -would misunderstand your receiving an old friend of your husband’s ... -like Mr. Prest.”</p> - -<p>Lizzie Hazeldean cast a sharp glance at the large empty mysterious face -across the table. They <i>wanted</i> her to receive Henry Prest, then? Ah, -well ... perhaps she understood....</p> - -<p>“Shall I answer this for you, my dear? Or will you?” Mrs. Mant pursued.</p> - -<p>“Oh, as you like. But don’t fix a day, please. Later—”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mant’s face again became vacuous. She murmured: “You must not shut -yourself up too much. It will not do to be morbid. I’m sorry to have to -leave you here alone—”</p> - -<p>Lizzie’s eyes filled: Mrs. Mant’s sympathy seemed more cruel than her -cruelty.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_99" id="page_99">{99}</a></span> Every word that she used had a veiled taunt for its -counterpart.</p> - -<p>“Oh, you mustn’t think of giving up your visit—”</p> - -<p>“My dear, how can I? It’s a <i>duty</i>. I’ll send a line to Henry Prest, -then.... If you would sip a little port at luncheon and dinner we should -have you looking less like a ghost....”</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p>Mrs. Mant departed; and two days later—the interval was “decent”—Mr. -Henry Prest was announced. Mrs. Hazeldean had not seen him since the -previous New Year’s day. Their last words had been exchanged in Mrs. -Struthers’s crimson boudoir, and since then half a year had elapsed. -Charles Hazeldean had lingered for a fortnight; but though there had -been ups and downs, and intervals of hope when none could have -criticised his<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_100" id="page_100">{100}</a></span> wife for seeing her friends, her door had been barred -against everyone. She had not excluded Henry Prest more rigorously than -the others; he had simply been one of the many who received, day by day, -the same answer: “Mrs. Hazeldean sees no one but the family.”</p> - -<p>Almost immediately after her husband’s death she had sailed for Europe -on a long-deferred visit to her father, who was now settled at Nice; but -from this expedition she had presumably brought back little comfort, for -when she arrived in New York her relations were struck by her air of -ill-health and depression. It spoke in her favour, however; they were -agreed that she was behaving with propriety.</p> - -<p>She looked at Henry Prest as if he were a stranger: so difficult was it, -at the first moment, to fit his robust and splendid<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_101" id="page_101">{101}</a></span> person into the -region of twilight shades which, for the last months, she had inhabited. -She was beginning to find that everyone had an air of remoteness; she -seemed to see people and life through the confusing blur of the long -crape veil in which it was a widow’s duty to shroud her affliction. But -she gave him her hand without perceptible reluctance.</p> - -<p>He lifted it toward his lips, in an obvious attempt to combine gallantry -with condolence, and then, half-way up, seemed to feel that the occasion -required him to release it.</p> - -<p>“Well—you’ll admit that I’ve been patient!” he exclaimed.</p> - -<p>“Patient? Yes. What else was there to be?” she rejoined with a faint -smile, as he seated himself beside her, a little too near.</p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_102" id="page_102">{102}</a></span></p> -<p>“Oh, well ... of course! I understood all that, I hope you’ll believe. -But mightn’t you at least have answered my letters—one or two of them?”</p> - -<p>She shook her head. “I couldn’t write.”</p> - -<p>“Not to anyone? Or not to me?” he queried, with ironic emphasis.</p> - -<p>“I wrote only the letters I had to—no others.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, I see.” He laughed slightly. “And you didn’t consider that letters -to <i>me</i> were among them?”</p> - -<p>She was silent, and he stood up and took a turn across the room. His -face was redder than usual, and now and then a twitch passed over it. -She saw that he felt the barrier of her crape, and that it left him -baffled and resentful. A struggle was still perceptibly going on in him -between his traditional standard of behaviour at such a meeting, and -primitive impulses renewed by the memory of their<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_103" id="page_103">{103}</a></span> last hours together. -When he turned back and paused before her his ruddy flush had paled, and -he stood there, frowning, uncertain, and visibly resenting the fact that -she made him so.</p> - -<p>“You sit there like a stone!” he said.</p> - -<p>“I feel like a stone.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, come—!”</p> - -<p>She knew well enough what he was thinking: that the only way to bridge -over such a bad beginning was to get the woman into your arms—and talk -afterward. It was the classic move. He had done it dozens of times, no -doubt, and was evidently asking himself why the deuce he couldn’t do it -now.... But something in her look must have benumbed him. He sat down -again beside her.</p> - -<p>“What you must have been through, dearest!” He waited and coughed. “I<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_104" id="page_104">{104}</a></span> -can understand your being—all broken up. But I know nothing; remember, -I know nothing as to what actually happened....”</p> - -<p>“Nothing happened.”</p> - -<p>“As to—what we feared? No hint—?”</p> - -<p>She shook her head.</p> - -<p>He cleared his throat before the next question. “And you don’t think -that in your absence he may have spoken—to anyone?”</p> - -<p>“Never!”</p> - -<p>“Then, my dear, we seem to have had the most unbelievable good luck; and -I can’t see—”</p> - -<p>He had edged slowly nearer, and now laid a large ringed hand on her -sleeve. How well she knew those rings—the two dull gold snakes with -malevolent jewelled eyes! She sat as motionless as if their<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_105" id="page_105">{105}</a></span> coils were -about her, till slowly his tentative grasp relaxed.</p> - -<p>“Lizzie, you know”—his tone was discouraged—“this is morbid....”</p> - -<p>“Morbid?”</p> - -<p>“When you’re safe out of the worst scrape ... and free, my darling, -<i>free</i>! Don’t you realize it? I suppose the strain’s been too much for -you; but I want you to feel that now—”</p> - -<p>She stood up suddenly, and put half the length of the room between them.</p> - -<p>“Stop! Stop! Stop!” she almost screamed, as she had screamed long ago at -Mrs. Mant.</p> - -<p>He stood up also, darkly red under his rich sunburn, and forced a smile.</p> - -<p>“Really,” he protested, “all things considered—and after a separation -of six months!” She was silent. “My dear,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_106" id="page_106">{106}</a></span>” he continued mildly, “will -you tell me what you expect me to think?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, don’t take that tone,” she murmured.</p> - -<p>“What tone?”</p> - -<p>“As if—as if—you still imagined we could go back—”</p> - -<p>She saw his face fall. Had he ever before, she wondered, stumbled upon -an obstacle in that smooth walk of his? It flashed over her that this -was the danger besetting men who had a “way with women”—the day came -when they might follow it too blindly.</p> - -<p>The reflection evidently occurred to him almost as soon as it did to -her. He summoned another propitiatory smile, and drawing near, took her -hand gently. “But I don’t want to go back.... I want to go forward, -dearest.... Now that at last you’re free.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_107" id="page_107">{107}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>She seized on the word as if she had been waiting for her cue. “Free! -Oh, that’s it—<i>free</i>! Can’t you see, can’t you understand, that I mean -to stay free?”</p> - -<p>Again a shadow of distrust crossed his face, and the smile he had begun -for her reassurance seemed to remain on his lips for his own.</p> - -<p>“But of course! Can you imagine that I want to put you in chains? I want -you to be as free as you please—free to love me as much as you choose!” -He was visibly pleased with the last phrase.</p> - -<p>She drew away her hand, but not unkindly. “I’m sorry—I <i>am</i> sorry, -Henry. But you don’t understand.”</p> - -<p>“What don’t I understand?”</p> - -<p>“That what you ask is quite impossible—ever. I can’t go on ... in the -old way....”</p> - -<p>She saw his face working nervously.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_108" id="page_108">{108}</a></span> “In the old way? You mean—?” -Before she could explain he hurried on with an increasing majesty of -manner: “Don’t answer! I see—I understand. When you spoke of freedom -just now I was misled for a moment—I frankly own I was—into thinking -that, after your wretched marriage, you might prefer discreeter ties ... -an apparent independence which would leave us both.... I say <i>apparent</i>, -for on my side there has never been the least wish to conceal.... But if -I was mistaken, if on the contrary what you wish is ... is to take -advantage of your freedom to regularize our ... our attachment....”</p> - -<p>She said nothing, not because she had any desire to have him complete -the phrase, but because she found nothing to say. To all that concerned -their common past she was aware of offering a numbed<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_109" id="page_109">{109}</a></span> soul. But her -silence evidently perplexed him, and in his perplexity he began to lose -his footing, and to flounder in a sea of words.</p> - -<p>“Lizzie! Do you hear me? If I was mistaken, I say—and I hope I’m not -above owning that at times I <i>may</i> be mistaken; if I was—why, by God, -my dear, no woman ever heard me speak the words before; but here I am to -have and to hold, as the Book says! Why, hadn’t you realized it? Lizzie, -look up—! <i>I’m asking you to marry me.</i>”</p> - -<p>Still, for a moment, she made no reply, but stood gazing about her as if -she had the sudden sense of unseen presences between them. At length she -gave a faint laugh. It visibly ruffled her visitor.</p> - -<p>“I’m not conscious,” he began again, “of having said anything -particularly laughable—” He stopped and scruti<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_110" id="page_110">{110}</a></span>nized her narrowly, as -though checked by the thought that there might be something not quite -normal.... Then, apparently reassured, he half-murmured his only French -phrase: “<i>La joie fait peur</i> ... eh?”</p> - -<p>She did not seem to hear. “I wasn’t laughing at you,” she said, “but -only at the coincidences of life. It was in this room that my husband -asked me to marry him.”</p> - -<p>“Ah?” Her suitor appeared politely doubtful of the good taste, or the -opportunity, of producing this reminiscence. But he made another call on -his magnanimity. “Really? But, I say, my dear, I couldn’t be expected to -know it, could I? If I’d guessed that such a painful association—”</p> - -<p>“Painful?” She turned upon him. “A painful association? Do you think -that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_111" id="page_111">{111}</a></span> was what I meant?” Her voice sank. “This room is sacred to me.”</p> - -<p>She had her eyes on his face, which, perhaps because of its -architectural completeness, seemed to lack the mobility necessary to -follow such a leap of thought. It was so ostensibly a solid building, -and not a nomad’s tent. He struggled with a ruffled pride, rose again to -playful magnanimity, and murmured: “Compassionate angel!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, compassionate? To whom? Do you imagine—did I ever say anything to -make you doubt the truth of what I’m telling you?”</p> - -<p>His brows fretted: his temper was up. “<i>Say</i> anything? No,” he -insinuated ironically; then, in a hasty plunge after his lost -forbearance, added with exquisite mildness: “Your tact was perfect ... -always. I’ve invariably done you that justice. No one could have been -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_112" id="page_112">{112}</a></span>more thoroughly the ... the lady. I never failed to admire your -good-breeding in avoiding any reference to your ... your other life.”</p> - -<p>She faced him steadily. “Well, that other life <i>was</i> my life—my only -life! Now you know.”</p> - -<p>There was a silence. Henry Prest drew out a monogrammed handkerchief and -passed it over his dry lips. As he did so, a whiff of his eau de Cologne -reached her, and she winced a little. It was evident that he was seeking -what to say next; wondering, rather helplessly, how to get back his lost -command of the situation. He finally induced his features to break again -into a persuasive smile.</p> - -<p>“Not your <i>only</i> life, dearest,” he reproached her.</p> - -<p>She met it instantly. “Yes; so you thought—because I chose you -should.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_113" id="page_113">{113}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>“You chose—?” The smile became incredulous.</p> - -<p>“Oh, deliberately. But I suppose I’ve no excuse that you would not -dislike to hear.... Why shouldn’t we break off now?”</p> - -<p>“Break off ... this conversation?” His tone was aggrieved. “Of course -I’ve no wish to force myself—”</p> - -<p>She interrupted him with a raised hand. “Break off for good, Henry.”</p> - -<p>“For good?” He stared, and gave a quick swallow, as though the dose were -choking him. “For good? Are you really—? You and I? Is this serious, -Lizzie?”</p> - -<p>“Perfectly. But if you prefer to hear ... what can only be painful....”</p> - -<p>He straightened himself, threw back his shoulders, and said in an -uncertain voice: “I hope you don’t take me for a coward.”</p> - -<p>She made no direct reply, but con<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_114" id="page_114">{114}</a></span>tinued: “Well, then, you thought I -loved you, I suppose—”</p> - -<p>He smiled again, revived his moustache with a slight twist, and gave a -hardly perceptible shrug. “You ... ah ... managed to produce the -illusion....”</p> - -<p>“Oh, well, yes: a woman <i>can</i>—so easily! That’s what men often forget. -You thought I was a lovelorn mistress; and I was only an expensive -prostitute.”</p> - -<p>“Elizabeth!” he gasped, pale now to the ruddy eyelids. She saw that the -word had wounded more than his pride, and that, before realizing the -insult to his love, he was shuddering at the offence to his taste. -Mistress! Prostitute! Such words were banned. No one reproved coarseness -of language in women more than Henry Prest; one of Mrs. Hazeldean’s -greatest charms (as he had just told her) had been her way of -remaining,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_115" id="page_115">{115}</a></span> “through it all,” so ineffably “the lady.” He looked at her -as if a fresh doubt of her sanity had assailed him.</p> - -<p>“Shall I go on?” she smiled.</p> - -<p>He bent his head stiffly. “I am still at a loss to imagine for what -purpose you made a fool of me.”</p> - -<p>“Well, then, it was as I say. I wanted money—money for my husband.”</p> - -<p>He moistened his lips. “For your husband?”</p> - -<p>“Yes; when he began to be so ill; when he needed comforts, luxury, the -opportunity to get away. He saved me, when I was a girl, from untold -humiliation and wretchedness. No one else lifted a finger to help -me—not one of my own family. I hadn’t a penny or a friend. Mrs. Mant -had grown sick of me, and was trying to find an excuse to throw me over. -Oh, you don’t know what a girl has to put up <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_116" id="page_116">{116}</a></span>with—a girl alone in the -world—who depends for her clothes, and her food, and the roof over her -head, on the whims of a vain capricious old woman! It was because <i>he</i> -knew, because he understood, that he married me.... He took me out of -misery into blessedness. He put me up above them all ... he put me -beside himself. I didn’t care for anything but that; I didn’t care for -the money or the freedom; I cared only for him. I would have followed -him into the desert—I would have gone barefoot to be with him. I would -have starved, begged, done anything for him—<i>anything</i>.” She broke off, -her voice lost in a sob. She was no longer aware of Prest’s -presence—all her consciousness was absorbed in the vision she had -evoked. “It was <i>he</i> who cared—who wanted me to be rich and independent -and admired! He wanted to heap every<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_117" id="page_117">{117}</a></span>thing on me—during the first years -I could hardly persuade him to keep enough money for himself.... And -then he was taken ill; and as he got worse, and gradually dropped out of -affairs, his income grew smaller, and then stopped altogether; and all -the while there were new expenses piling up—nurses, doctors, travel; -and he grew frightened; frightened not for himself but for me.... And -what was I to do? I had to pay for things somehow. For the first year I -managed to put off paying—then I borrowed small sums here and there. -But that couldn’t last. And all the while I had to keep on looking -pretty and prosperous, or else he began to worry, and think we were -ruined, and wonder what would become of me if he didn’t get well. By the -time you came I was desperate—I would have done anything, anything! He -thought the money<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_118" id="page_118">{118}</a></span> came from my Portuguese stepmother. She really was -rich, as it happens. Unluckily my poor father tried to invest her money, -and lost it all; but when they were first married she sent a thousand -dollars—and all the rest, all you gave me, I built on that.”</p> - -<p>She paused pantingly, as if her tale were at an end. Gradually her -consciousness of present things returned, and she saw Henry Prest, as if -far off, a small indistinct figure looming through the mist of her -blurred eyes. She thought to herself: “He doesn’t believe me,” and the -thought exasperated her.</p> - -<p>“You wonder, I suppose,” she began again, “that a woman should dare -confess such things about herself—”</p> - -<p>He cleared his throat. “About herself? No; perhaps not. But about her -husband.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_119" id="page_119">{119}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>The blood rushed to her forehead. “About her husband? But you don’t dare -to imagine—?”</p> - -<p>“You leave me,” he rejoined icily, “no other inference that I can see.” -She stood dumbfounded, and he added: “At any rate, it certainly explains -your extraordinary coolness—pluck, I used to think it. I perceive that -I needn’t have taken such precautions.”</p> - -<p>She considered this. “You think, then, that he knew? You think, perhaps, -that I knew he did?” She pondered again painfully, and then her face lit -up. “He never knew—never! That’s enough for me—and for you it doesn’t -matter. Think what you please. He was happy to the end—that’s all I -care for.”</p> - -<p>“There can be no doubt about your frankness,” he said with pinched -lips.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_120" id="page_120">{120}</a></span></p> - -<p>“There’s no longer any reason for not being frank.”</p> - -<p>He picked up his hat, and studiously considered its lining; then he took -the gloves he had laid in it, and drew them thoughtfully through his -hands. She thought: “Thank God, he’s going!”</p> - -<p>But he set the hat and gloves down on a table, and moved a little nearer -to her. His face looked as ravaged as a reveller’s at daybreak.</p> - -<p>“You—leave positively nothing to the imagination!” he murmured.</p> - -<p>“I told you it was useless—” she began; but he interrupted her: -“Nothing, that is—if I believed you.” He moistened his lips again, and -tapped them with his handkerchief. Again she had a whiff of the eau de -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_121" id="page_121">{121}</a></span>Cologne. “But I don’t!” he proclaimed. “Too many memories ... too many -... proofs, my dearest ...” He stopped, smiling somewhat convulsively. -She saw that he imagined the smile would soothe her.</p> - -<p>She remained silent, and he began once more, as if appealing to her -against her own verdict: “I know better, Lizzie. In spite of everything, -<i>I know you’re not that kind of woman</i>.”</p> - -<p>“I took your money—”</p> - -<p>“As a favour. I knew the difficulties of your position.... I understood -completely. I beg of you never again to allude to—all that.” It dawned -on her that anything would be more endurable to him than to think he had -been a dupe—and one of two dupes! The part was not one that he could -conceive of having played. His pride was up in arms to defend her, not -so much for her sake as for his own. The discovery gave her a baffling -sense of helplessness; against that impene<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_122" id="page_122">{122}</a></span>trable self-sufficiency all -her affirmations might spend themselves in vain.</p> - -<p>“No man who has had the privilege of being loved by you could ever for a -moment....”</p> - -<p>She raised her head and looked at him. “You have never had that -privilege,” she interrupted.</p> - -<p>His jaw fell. She saw his eyes pass from uneasy supplication to a cold -anger. He gave a little inarticulate grunt before his voice came back to -him.</p> - -<p>“You spare no pains in degrading yourself in my eyes.”</p> - -<p>“I am not degrading myself. I am telling you the truth. I needed money. -I knew no way of earning it. You were willing to give it ... for what -you call the privilege....”</p> - -<p>“Lizzie,” he interrupted solemnly, “don’t go on! I believe I enter into -all<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_123" id="page_123">{123}</a></span> your feelings—I believe I always have. In so sensitive, so -hypersensitive a nature, there are moments when every other feeling is -swept away by scruples.... For those scruples I only honour you the -more. But I won’t hear another word now. If I allowed you to go on in -your present state of ... nervous exaltation ... you might be the first -to deplore.... I wish to forget everything you have said.... I wish to -look forward, not back....” He squared his shoulders, took a deep -breath, and fixed her with a glance of recovered confidence. “How little -you know me if you believe that I could fail you <i>now</i>!”</p> - -<p>She returned his look with a weary steadiness. “You are kind—you mean -to be generous, I’m sure. But don’t you see that I <i>can’t</i> marry you?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_124" id="page_124">{124}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>“I only see that, in the natural rush of your remorse—”</p> - -<p>“Remorse? Remorse?” She broke in with a laugh. “Do you imagine I feel -any remorse? I’d do it all over again tomorrow—for the same object! I -got what I wanted—I gave him that last year, that last good year. It -was the relief from anxiety that kept him alive, that kept him happy. -Oh, he <i>was</i> happy—I know that!” She turned to Prest with a strange -smile. “I do thank you for that—I’m not ungrateful.”</p> - -<p>“You ... you ... <i>ungrateful</i>? This ... is really ... indecent....” He -took up his hat again, and stood in the middle of the room as if waiting -to be waked from a bad dream.</p> - -<p>“You are—rejecting an opportunity—” he began.</p> - -<p>She made a faint motion of assent.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_125" id="page_125">{125}</a></span></p> - -<p>“You do realize it? I’m still prepared to—to help you, if you -should....” She made no answer, and he continued: “How do you expect to -live—since you have chosen to drag in such considerations?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t care how I live. I never wanted the money for myself.”</p> - -<p>He raised a deprecating hand. “Oh, don’t—<i>again</i>! The woman I had meant -to....” Suddenly, to her surprise, she saw a glitter of moisture on his -lower lids. He applied his handkerchief to them, and the waft of scent -checked her momentary impulse of compunction. That Cologne water! It -called up picture after picture with a hideous precision. “Well, it was -worth it,” she murmured doggedly.</p> - -<p>Henry Prest restored his handkerchief to his pocket. He waited, glanced -about the room, turned back to her.</p> - -<p>“If your decision is final<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_126" id="page_126">{126}</a></span>—”</p> - -<p>“Oh, final!”</p> - -<p>He bowed. “There is one thing more—which I should have mentioned if you -had ever given me the opportunity of seeing you after—after last New -Year’s day. Something I preferred not to commit to writing—”</p> - -<p>“Yes?” she questioned indifferently.</p> - -<p>“Your husband, you are positively convinced, had no idea ... that day -...?”</p> - -<p>“None.”</p> - -<p>“Well, others, it appears, had.” He paused. “Mrs. Wesson saw us.”</p> - -<p>“So I supposed. I remember now that she went out of her way to cut me -that evening at Mrs. Struthers’s.”</p> - -<p>“Exactly. And she was not the only person who saw us. If people had not -been disarmed by your husband’s falling ill that very day you would have -found yourself—ostracized.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_127" id="page_127">{127}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>She made no comment, and he pursued, with a last effort: “In your grief, -your solitude, you haven’t yet realized what your future will be—how -difficult. It is what I wished to guard you against—it was my purpose -in asking you to marry me.” He drew himself up and smiled as if he were -looking at his own reflection in a mirror, and thought favourably of it. -“A man who has had the misfortune to compromise a woman is bound in -honour—Even if my own inclination were not what it is, I should -consider....”</p> - -<p>She turned to him with a softened smile. Yes, he had really brought -himself to think that he was proposing to marry her to save her -reputation. At this glimpse of the old hackneyed axioms on which he -actually believed that his conduct was based, she felt anew her -remoteness from the life he would have drawn her back to.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_128" id="page_128">{128}</a></span></p> - -<p>“My poor Henry, don’t you see how far I’ve got beyond the Mrs. Wessons? -If all New York wants to ostracize me, let it! I’ve had my day ... no -woman has more than one. Why shouldn’t I have to pay for it? I’m ready.”</p> - -<p>“Good heavens!” he murmured.</p> - -<p>She was aware that he had put forth his last effort. The wound she had -inflicted had gone to the most vital spot; she had prevented his being -magnanimous, and the injury was unforgivable. He was glad, yes, actually -glad now, to have her know that New York meant to cut her; but, strive -as she might, she could not bring herself to care either for the fact, -or for his secret pleasure in it. Her own secret pleasures were beyond -New York’s reach and his.</p> - -<p>“I’m sorry,” she reiterated gently. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_129" id="page_129">{129}</a></span> bowed, without trying to take -her hand, and left the room.</p> - -<p>As the door closed she looked after him with a dazed stare. “He’s right, -I suppose; I don’t realize yet—” She heard the shutting of the outer -door, and dropped to the sofa, pressing her hands against her aching -eyes. At that moment, for the first time, she asked herself what the -next day, and the next, would be like....</p> - -<p>“If only I cared more about reading,” she moaned, remembering how vainly -she had tried to acquire her husband’s tastes, and how gently and -humorously he had smiled at her efforts. “Well—there are always cards; -and when I get older, knitting and patience, I suppose. And if everybody -cuts me I shan’t need any evening dresses. That will be an economy, at -any rate,” she concluded with a little shiver.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_130" id="page_130">{130}</a></span></p> - -<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">“S</span>HE was <i>bad</i> ... always. They used to meet at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.”</p> - -<p>I must go back now to this phrase of my mother’s—the phrase from which, -at the opening of my narrative, I broke away for a time in order to -project more vividly on the scene that anxious moving vision of Lizzie -Hazeldean: a vision in which memories of my one boyish glimpse of her -were pieced together with hints collected afterward.</p> - -<p>When my mother uttered her condemnatory judgment I was a young man of -twenty-one, newly graduated from Har<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_131" id="page_131">{131}</a></span>vard, and at home again under the -family roof in New York. It was long since I had heard Mrs. Hazeldean -spoken of. I had been away, at school and at Harvard, for the greater -part of the interval, and in the holidays she was probably not -considered a fitting subject of conversation, especially now that my -sisters came to the table.</p> - -<p>At any rate, I had forgotten everything I might ever have picked up -about her when, on the evening after my return, my cousin Hubert -Wesson—now towering above me as a pillar of the Knickerbocker Club, and -a final authority on the ways of the world—suggested our joining her at -the opera.</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Hazeldean? But I don’t know her. What will she think?”</p> - -<p>“That it’s all right. Come along. She’s the jolliest woman I know. We’ll -go<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_132" id="page_132">{132}</a></span> back afterward and have supper with her—jolliest house I know.” -Hubert twirled a self-conscious moustache.</p> - -<p>We were dining at the Knickerbocker, to which I had just been elected, -and the bottle of Pommery we were finishing disposed me to think that -nothing could be more fitting for two men of the world than to end their -evening in the box of the jolliest woman Hubert knew. I groped for my -own moustache, gave a twirl in the void, and followed him, after -meticulously sliding my overcoat sleeve around my silk hat as I had seen -him do.</p> - -<p>But once in Mrs. Hazeldean’s box I was only an overgrown boy again, -bathed in such blushes as used, at the same age, to visit Hubert, -forgetting that I had a moustache to twirl, and knocking my hat from the -peg on which I had just hung<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_133" id="page_133">{133}</a></span> it, in my zeal to pick up a programme she -had not dropped.</p> - -<p>For she was really too lovely—too formidably lovely. I was used by now -to mere unadjectived loveliness, the kind that youth and spirits hang -like a rosy veil over commonplace features, an average outline and a -pointless merriment. But this was something calculated, accomplished, -finished—and just a little worn. It frightened me with my first glimpse -of the infinity of beauty and the multiplicity of her pit-falls. What! -There were women who need not fear crow’s-feet, were more beautiful for -being pale, could let a silver hair or two show among the dark, and -their eyes brood inwardly while they smiled and, chatted? But then no -young man was safe for a moment! But then the world I had hitherto known -had been only a warm pink nursery, while<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_134" id="page_134">{134}</a></span> this new one was a place of -darkness, perils and enchantments....</p> - -<p>It was the next day that one of my sisters asked me where I had been the -evening before, and that I puffed out my chest to answer: “With Mrs. -Hazeldean—at the opera.” My mother looked up, but did not speak till -the governess had swept the girls off; then she said with pinched lips: -“Hubert Wesson took you to Mrs. Hazeldean’s box?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Well, a young man may go where he pleases. I hear Hubert is still -infatuated; it serves Sabina right for not letting him marry the -youngest Lyman girl. But don’t mention Mrs. Hazeldean again before your -sisters.... They say her husband never knew—I suppose if he <i>had</i> she -would never have got old Miss Cecilia Winter’s money.” And it was then -that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_135" id="page_135">{135}</a></span> my mother pronounced the name of Henry Prest, and added that -phrase about the Fifth Avenue Hotel which suddenly woke my boyish -memories....</p> - -<p>In a flash I saw again, under its quickly-lowered veil, the face with -the exposed eyes and the frozen smile, and felt through my grown-up -waistcoat the stab to my boy’s heart and the loosened murmur of my soul; -felt all this, and at the same moment tried to relate that former face, -so fresh and clear despite its anguish, to the smiling guarded -countenance of Hubert’s “jolliest woman I know.”</p> - -<p>I was familiar with Hubert’s indiscriminate use of his one adjective, -and had not expected to find Mrs. Hazeldean “jolly” in the literal -sense: in the case of the lady he happened to be in love with the -epithet simply meant that she justified his choice. Nevertheless, as I -compared Mrs. Hazel<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_136" id="page_136">{136}</a></span>dean’s earlier face to this one, I had my first -sense of what may befall in the long years between youth and maturity, -and of how short a distance I had travelled on that mysterious journey. -If only she would take me by the hand!</p> - -<p>I was not wholly unprepared for my mother’s comment. There was no other -lady in Mrs. Hazeldean’s box when we entered; none joined her during the -evening, and our hostess offered no apology for her isolation. In the -New York of my youth every one knew what to think of a woman who was -seen “alone at the opera”; if Mrs. Hazeldean was not openly classed with -Fanny Ring, our one conspicuous “professional,” it was because, out of -respect for her social origin, New York preferred to avoid such -juxtapositions. Young as I was, I knew this social law, and had guessed, -before the evening was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_137" id="page_137">{137}</a></span> over, that Mrs. Hazeldean was not a lady on whom -other ladies called, though she was not, on the other hand, a lady whom -it was forbidden to mention to other ladies. So I did mention her, with -bravado.</p> - -<p>No ladies showed themselves at the opera with Mrs. Hazeldean; but one or -two dropped in to the jolly supper announced by Hubert, an entertainment -whose jollity consisted in a good deal of harmless banter over broiled -canvas-backs and celery, with the best of champagne. These same ladies I -sometimes met at her house afterward. They were mostly younger than -their hostess, and still, though precariously, within the social pale: -pretty trivial creatures, bored with a monotonous prosperity, and -yearning for such unlawful joys as cigarettes, plain speaking, and a -drive home in the small<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_138" id="page_138">{138}</a></span> hours with the young man of the moment. But -such daring spirits were few in old New York, their appearances -infrequent and somewhat furtive. Mrs. Hazeldean’s society consisted -mainly of men, men of all ages, from her bald or grey-headed -contemporaries to youths of Hubert’s accomplished years and raw novices -of mine.</p> - -<p>A great dignity and decency prevailed in her little circle. It was not -the oppressive respectability which weighs on the reformed <i>déclassée</i>, -but the air of ease imparted by a woman of distinction who has wearied -of society and closed her doors to all save her intimates. One always -felt, at Lizzie Hazeldean’s, that the next moment one’s grandmother and -aunts might be announced; and yet so pleasantly certain that they -wouldn’t be.</p> - -<p>What is there in the atmosphere of such<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_139" id="page_139">{139}</a></span> houses that makes them so -enchanting to a fastidious and imaginative youth? Why is it that “those -women” (as the others call them) alone know how to put the awkward at -ease, check the familiar, smile a little at the over-knowing, and yet -encourage naturalness in all? The difference of atmosphere is felt on -the very threshold. The flowers grow differently in their vases, the -lamps and easy-chairs have found a cleverer way of coming together, the -books on the table are the very ones that one is longing to get hold of. -The most perilous coquetry may not be in a woman’s way of arranging her -dress but in her way of arranging her drawing-room; and in this art Mrs. -Hazeldean excelled.</p> - -<p>I have spoken of books; even then they were usually the first objects to -attract me in a room, whatever else of beauty it<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_140" id="page_140">{140}</a></span> contained; and I -remember, on the evening of that first “jolly supper,” coming to an -astonished pause before the crowded shelves that took up one wall of the -drawing-room. What! The goddess read, then? She could accompany one on -those flights too? Lead one, no doubt? My heart beat high....</p> - -<p>But I soon learned that Lizzie Hazeldean did not read. She turned but -languidly even the pages of the last Ouida novel; and I remember seeing -Mallock’s <i>New Republic</i> uncut on her table for weeks. It took me no -long time to make the discovery: at my very next visit she caught my -glance of surprise in the direction of the rich shelves, smiled, -coloured a little, and met it with the confession: “No, I can’t read -them. I’ve tried—I <i>have</i> tried—but print makes me sleepy. Even novels -do....” “They” were the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_141" id="page_141">{141}</a></span> accumulated treasures of English poetry, and a -rich and varied selection of history, criticism, letters, in English, -French and Italian—she spoke these languages, I knew—books evidently -assembled by a sensitive and widely-ranging reader. We were alone at the -time, and Mrs. Hazeldean went on in a lower tone: “I kept just the few -he liked best—my husband, you know.” It was the first time that Charles -Hazeldean’s name had been spoken between us, and my surprise was so -great that my candid cheek must have reflected the blush on hers. I had -fancied that women in her situation avoided alluding to their husbands. -But she continued to look at me, wistfully, humbly almost, as if there -were something more that she wanted to say, and was inwardly entreating -me to understand.</p> - -<p>“He was a great reader: a student.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_142" id="page_142">{142}</a></span> And he tried so hard to make me read -too—he wanted to share everything with me. And I <i>did</i> like -poetry—some poetry—when he read it aloud to me. After his death I -thought: ‘There’ll be his books. I can go back to them—I shall find him -there.’ And I tried—oh, so hard—but it’s no use. They’ve lost their -meaning ... as most things have.” She stood up, lit a cigarette, pushed -back a log on the hearth. I felt that she was waiting for me to speak. -If life had but taught me how to answer her, what was there of her story -I might not have learned? But I was too inexperienced; I could not shake -off my bewilderment. What! This woman whom I had been pitying for -matrimonial miseries which seemed to justify her seeking solace -elsewhere—this woman could speak of her husband in such a tone! I had -instantly<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_143" id="page_143">{143}</a></span> perceived that the tone was not feigned; and a confused sense -of the complexity—or the chaos—of human relations held me as -tongue-tied as a schoolboy to whom a problem beyond his grasp is -suddenly propounded.</p> - -<p>Before the thought took shape she had read it, and with the smile which -drew such sad lines about her mouth, had continued gaily: “What are you -up to this evening, by the way? What do you say to going to the “Black -Crook” with your cousin Hubert and one or two others? I have a box.”</p> - -<p>It was inevitable that, not long after this candid confession, I should -have persuaded myself that a taste for reading was boring in a woman, -and that one of Mrs. Hazeldean’s chief charms lay in her freedom from -literary pretensions. The truth was, of course, that it lay in her -sin<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_144" id="page_144">{144}</a></span>cerity; in her humble yet fearless estimate of her own qualities and -short-comings. I had never met its like in a woman of any age, and -coming to me in such early days, and clothed in such looks and -intonations, it saved me, in after years, from all peril of meaner -beauties.</p> - -<p>But before I had come to understand that, or to guess what falling in -love with Lizzie Hazeldean was to do for me, I had quite unwittingly and -fatuously done the falling. The affair turned out, in the perspective of -the years, to be but an incident of our long friendship; and if I touch -on it here it is only to illustrate another of my poor friend’s gifts. -If she could not read books she could read hearts; and she bent a -playful yet compassionate gaze on mine while it still floundered in -unawareness.</p> - -<p>I remember it all as if it were yester<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_145" id="page_145">{145}</a></span>day. We were sitting alone in her -drawing-room, in the winter twilight, over the fire. We had reached—in -her company it was not difficult—the degree of fellowship when friendly -talk lapses naturally into a friendlier silence, and she had taken up -the evening paper while I glowered dumbly at the embers. One little -foot, just emerging below her dress, swung, I remember, between me and -the fire, and seemed to hold her all in the spring of its instep....</p> - -<p>“Oh,” she exclaimed, “poor Henry Prest—“. She dropped the paper. “His -wife is dead—poor fellow,” she said simply.</p> - -<p>The blood rushed to my forehead: my heart was in my throat. She had -named him—named him at last, the recreant lover, the man who had -“dishonoured” her! My hands were clenched: if he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_146" id="page_146">{146}</a></span> entered the room -they would have been at his throat....</p> - -<p>And then, after a quick interval, I had again the humiliating -disheartening sense of not understanding: of being too young, too -inexperienced, to know. This woman, who spoke of her deceived husband -with tenderness, spoke compassionately of her faithless lover! And she -did the one as naturally as the other, not as if this impartial charity -were an attitude she had determined to assume, but as if it were part of -the lesson life had taught her.</p> - -<p>“I didn’t know he was married,” I growled between my teeth.</p> - -<p>She meditated absently. “Married? Oh, yes; when was it? The year after -...” her voice dropped again ... “after my husband died. He married a -quiet cousin, who had always been in love with him, I believe. They had -two boys.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_147" id="page_147">{147}</a></span>—You knew him?” she abruptly questioned.</p> - -<p>I nodded grimly.</p> - -<p>“People always thought he would never marry—he used to say so himself,” -she went on, still absently.</p> - -<p>I burst out: “The—hound!”</p> - -<p>“<i>Oh!</i>” she exclaimed. I started up, our eyes met, and hers filled with -tears of reproach and understanding. We sat looking at each other in -silence. Two of the tears overflowed, hung on her lashes, melted down -her cheeks. I continued to stare at her shamefacedly; then I got to my -feet, drew out my handkerchief, and tremblingly, reverently, as if I had -touched a sacred image, I wiped them away.</p> - -<p>My love-making went no farther. In another moment she had contrived to -put a safe distance between us. She did not want to turn a boy’s head; -long since (she<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_148" id="page_148">{148}</a></span> told me afterward) such amusements had ceased to excite -her. But she did want my sympathy, wanted it overwhelmingly: amid the -various feelings she was aware of arousing, she let me see that -sympathy, in the sense of a moved understanding, had always been -lacking. “But then,” she added ingenuously, “I’ve never really been -sure, because I’ve never told anyone my story. Only I take it for -granted that, if I haven’t, it’s <i>their</i> fault rather than mine....” She -smiled half-deprecatingly, and my bosom swelled, acknowledging the -distinction. “And now I want to tell <i>you</i>—” she began.</p> - -<p>I have said that my love for Mrs. Hazeldean was a brief episode in our -long relation. At my age, it was inevitable that it should be so. The -“fresher face” soon came, and in its light I saw my old friend as a -middle-aged woman, turning<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_149" id="page_149">{149}</a></span> grey, with a mechanical smile and haunted -eyes. But it was in the first glow of my feeling that she had told me -her story; and when the glow subsided, and in the afternoon light of a -long intimacy I judged and tested her statements, I found that each -detail fitted into the earlier picture.</p> - -<p>My opportunities were many; for once she had told the tale she always -wanted to be retelling it. A perpetual longing to relive the past, a -perpetual need to explain and justify herself—the satisfaction of these -two cravings, once she had permitted herself to indulge them, became the -luxury of her empty life. She had kept it empty—emotionally, -sentimentally empty—from the day of her husband’s death, as the -guardian of an abandoned temple might go on forever sweeping and tending -what had once been the go<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_150" id="page_150">{150}</a></span>d’s abode. But this duty performed, she had no -other. She had done one great—or abominable—thing; rank it as you -please, it had been done heroically. But there was nothing in her to -keep her at that height. Her tastes, her interests, her conceivable -occupations, were all on the level of a middling domesticity; she did -not know how to create for herself any inner life in keeping with that -one unprecedented impulse.</p> - -<p>Soon after her husband’s death, one of her cousins, the Miss Cecilia -Winter of Washington Square to whom my mother had referred, had died -also, and left Mrs. Hazeldean a handsome legacy. And a year or two later -Charles Hazeldean’s small estate had undergone the favourable change -that befell New York realty in the ’eighties. The property he had -bequeathed to his wife had doubled,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_151" id="page_151">{151}</a></span> then tripled, in value; and she -found herself, after a few years of widowhood, in possession of an -income large enough to supply her with all the luxuries which her -husband had struggled so hard to provide. It was the peculiar irony of -her lot to be secured from temptation when all danger of temptation was -over; for she would never, I am certain, have held out the tip of her -finger to any man to obtain such luxuries for her own enjoyment. But if -she did not value her money for itself, she owed to it—and the service -was perhaps greater than she was aware—the power of mitigating her -solitude, and filling it with the trivial distractions without which she -was less and less able to live.</p> - -<p>She had been put into the world, apparently, to amuse men and enchant -them; yet, her husband dead, her sacrifice ac<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_152" id="page_152">{152}</a></span>complished, she would have -preferred, I am sure, to shut herself up in a lonely monumental -attitude, with thoughts and pursuits on a scale with her one great hour. -But what was she to do? She had known of no way of earning money except -by her graces; and now she knew no way of filling her days except with -cards and chatter and theatre-going. Not one of the men who approached -her passed beyond the friendly barrier she had opposed to me. Of that I -was sure. She had not shut out Henry Prest in order to replace him—her -face grew white at the suggestion. But what else was there to do, she -asked me; what? The days had to be spent somehow; and she was incurably, -disconsolately sociable.</p> - -<p>So she lived, in a cold celibacy that passed for I don’t know what -licence; so she lived, withdrawn from us all, yet need<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_153" id="page_153">{153}</a></span>ing us so -desperately, inwardly faithful to her one high impulse, yet so incapable -of attuning her daily behaviour to it! And so, at the very moment when -she ceased to deserve the blame of society, she found herself cut off -from it, and reduced to the status of the “fast” widow noted for her -jolly suppers.</p> - -<p>I bent bewildered over the depths of her plight. What else, at any stage -of her career, could she have done, I often wondered? Among the young -women now growing up about me I find none with enough imagination to -picture the helpless incapacity of the pretty girl of the ’seventies, -the girl without money or vocation, seemingly put into the world only to -please, and unlearned in any way of maintaining herself there by her own -efforts. Marriage alone could save such a girl from starvation, unless -she hap<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_154" id="page_154">{154}</a></span>pened to run across an old lady who wanted her dogs exercised -and her <i>Churchman</i> read aloud to her. Even the day of painting -wild-roses on fans, of colouring photographs to “look like” miniatures, -of manufacturing lamp-shades and trimming hats for more fortunate -friends—even this precarious beginning of feminine independence had not -dawned. It was inconceivable to my mother’s generation that a -portionless girl should not be provided for by her relations until she -found a husband; and that, having found him, she should have to help him -to earn a living, was more inconceivable still. The self-sufficing -little society of that vanished New York attached no great importance to -wealth, but regarded poverty as so distasteful that it simply took no -account of it.</p> - -<p>These things pleaded in favour of poor<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_155" id="page_155">{155}</a></span> Lizzie Hazeldean, though to -superficial observers her daily life seemed to belie the plea. She had -known no way of smoothing her husband’s last years but by being false to -him; but once he was dead, she expiated her betrayal by a rigidity of -conduct for which she asked no reward but her own inner satisfaction. As -she grew older, and her friends scattered, married, or were kept away -from one cause or another, she filled her depleted circle with a less -fastidious hand. One met in her drawing-room dull men, common men, men -who too obviously came there because they were not invited elsewhere, -and hoped to use her as a social stepping-stone. She was aware of the -difference—her eyes said so whenever I found one of these newcomers -installed in my arm-chair—but never, by word or sign, did she admit it. -She said to me once: “You find it duller<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_156" id="page_156">{156}</a></span> here than it used to be. It’s -my fault, perhaps; I think I knew better how to draw out my old -friends.” And another day: “Remember, the people you meet here now come -out of kindness. I’m an old woman, and I consider nothing else.” That -was all.</p> - -<p>She went more assiduously than ever to the theatre and the opera; she -performed for her friends a hundred trivial services; in her eagerness -to be always busy she invented superfluous attentions, oppressed people -by offering assistance they did not need, verged at times—for all her -tact—on the officiousness of the desperately lonely. At her little -suppers she surprised us with exquisite flowers and novel delicacies. -The champagne and cigars grew better and better as the quality of the -guests declined; and sometimes, as the last of her dull company -dispersed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_157" id="page_157">{157}</a></span> I used to see her, among the scattered ash-trays and liqueur -decanters, turn a stealthy glance at her reflection in the mirror, with -haggard eyes which seemed to ask: “Will even <i>these</i> come back -tomorrow?”</p> - -<p>I should be loth to leave the picture at this point; my last vision of -her is more satisfying. I had been away, travelling for a year at the -other end of the world; the day I came back I ran across Hubert Wesson -at my club. Hubert had grown pompous and heavy. He drew me into a -corner, and said, turning red, and glancing cautiously over his -shoulder: “Have you seen our old friend Mrs. Hazeldean? She’s very ill, -I hear.”</p> - -<p>I was about to take up the “I hear”; then I remembered that in my -absence Hubert had married, and that his caution was probably a tribute -to his new state.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_158" id="page_158">{158}</a></span> I hurried at once to Mrs. Hazeldean’s; and on her -door-step, to my surprise, I ran against a Catholic priest, who looked -gravely at me, bowed and passed out.</p> - -<p>I was unprepared for such an encounter, for my old friend had never -spoken to me of religious matters. The spectacle of her father’s career -had presumably shaken whatever incipient faith was in her; though in her -little-girlhood, as she often told me, she had been as deeply impressed -by Dr. Winter’s eloquence as any grown-up member of his flock. But now, -as soon as I laid eyes on her, I understood. She was very ill, she was -visibly dying; and in her extremity, fate, not always kind, had sent her -the solace which she needed. Had some obscure inheritance of religious -feeling awaked in her? Had she remembered that her poor father, after -his long life of mental and moral<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_159" id="page_159">{159}</a></span> vagabondage, had finally found rest -in the ancient fold? I never knew the explanation—she probably never -knew it herself.</p> - -<p>But she knew that she had found what she wanted. At last she could talk -of Charles, she could confess her sin, she could be absolved of it. -Since cards and suppers and chatter were over, what more blessed barrier -could she find against solitude? All her life, henceforth, was a long -preparation for that daily hour of expansion and consolation. And then -this merciful visitor, who understood her so well, could also tell her -things about Charles: knew where he was, how he felt, what exquisite -daily attentions could still be paid to him, and how, with all -unworthiness washed away, she might at last hope to reach him. Heaven -could never seem strange, so interpreted; each time that I<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_160" id="page_160">{160}</a></span> saw her, -during the weeks of her slow fading, she was more and more like a -traveller with her face turned homeward, yet smilingly resigned to await -her summons. The house no longer seemed lonely, nor the hours tedious; -there had even been found for her, among the books she had so often -tried to read, those books which had long looked at her with such -hostile faces, two or three (they were always on her bed) containing -messages from the world where Charles was waiting.</p> - -<p>Thus provided and led, one day she went to him.</p> - -<p class="fint">THE END</p> - -<p class="c"> -<img src="images/inside-back-cover.jpg" alt="" title="[Image -of the inside-back-cover unavailable.]" /> -</p> - -<hr class="full" /> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's New Year's Day, by Edith Wharton and E. C. 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