I LEARN WHAT I HAVE TO DO
I did not sleep very much that night; but it was no longer the frustrate
misery of indecision. I was done with all that, with beating myself
aimlessly against blind bars and running weary circles in the wheel,
with tossing helplessly in a mesh of irresoluble circumstances. I saw
now what I had to do; and the problem was not what the trouble might be,
not even what I must accomplish, but only how I should accomplish it.
The Carucci story might be true wholly, or in part, or practically not
at all; it did not matter. Assuming all of it, if Lady was Miriam, and
Reid had married her when he was not free to do so, she was not his wife
even in law. Whether his wife was now living or dead made no difference.
Lady was not bound to him in theory and certainly not in reality. She
was free to come to me if she chose, and I had only to make her see it.
But I did not for a moment believe that the trouble was so directly her
concern. Mrs. Tabor was insane, or was feared to be: that was beyond a
doubt, and that beyond a doubt was the root and center of it all; that
was what the family had so elaborately striven to conceal, either
because of the nature of her illusion, or because of some scandal in the
events which had brought it about. That was reason enough, granting
their determination to keep it secret, for all that I had seen, from the
midnight alarm, which had driven me out of the house, to Mrs. Tabor's
terror of the alienist; and her absurd suggestion that he himself was
insane clenched the matter. What supported it still more was that if
this were so, then all these honest people had from point to point
spoken the truth; Mr. Tabor had, as he said, trusted me to the edge of
caution; Lady had told the truth in fear, and Reid under pressure;
Sheila had told the truth, only inflated and colored by superstition.
And as I thought over the substance of what she had told me, I wondered
whether by some chance her tale had not been truer than I thought,
nearer than even the others knew to the heart of reality. I would not
take her ghosts too literally; but Mrs. Tabor might have some illusion
of her dead daughter's presence, and I remembered the voice called
Miriam that had spoken in the circle of spirit-seekers. Was there not
surely some connection here?
Yet, however that might be, it all closed round a single need. I cared
nothing, after all, what the shadow might be, except as that concerned
my taking Lady away from it. It would be like her loyalty to feel the
family trouble a bond that she must not selfishly break, and like her
girlhood to dream her mother's delusion a taint that must forbid her
marrying. But she was wrong in both, and to-morrow I should tell her so
and take her away with me. Even if she were right, I should do the same:
I had grown to care for the others, and I was not wholly careless of
humanity; but in the face of this greater matter, family and race and
right itself, if need were, might go to the devil. I was fighting for
her and for myself, and for that wherein we two were one desire.
I fell asleep at last thinking of that, and imagining what I should need
to say and do; and the next morning I went out to Stamford in a curious
mood of deliberation; feeling, on the threshold of crisis, unnaturally
calm and sure; as if I were somehow going with the stream, a small
embodiment of predetermined force, a mouthpiece of the thing which was
to be.
As she had done once before, Sheila opened the door for me. It was very
plain that she was glad of my coming.
"Sure it's Mr. Crosby!" she exclaimed softly. "What's the matter, sir?
You look white and tired like. 'Tis all the world seems upset lately."
"I want to see Miss Tabor, Sheila. Will you tell her that I am here?"
"That's the very thing I'm not to tell her, sir. She said most
particular that she was not to see any one to-day; but--" Sheila frowned
at me forbiddingly, "you sit down an' wait a minute, sir, an' I'll do me
best. I'm a servant-girl no longer--ordhers is nothing to me."
"But, Sheila--" I began nervously.
"But nothin', Mr. Crosby. You sit down an' wait," and she was gone
before I could say another word. I sat in the great room, as if at the
portals of judgment day, every fiber of me keenly alive, and yet my mind
knowing no particular focus of thought. The future gaped before me like
eternity, something too vaguely large for definition or comprehension. I
remember that I kept whispering dryly to myself that man was master of
his fate, and feeling infinitesimally comforted by the sophistry.
The curtains at the door parted, and Lady stood looking into my eyes. I
saw before she spoke that she knew why I had come.
"I was sure that it was you," she said at last. "Sheila told me that a
young man was down-stairs, and that she could not get him to go away."
"She told me," I said, "that you did not wish to see me. Was that true?"
Lady sank wearily into a chair. "Sheila should not have let you in," she
said. "I was afraid that you might come here; and you know that it was
wrong of you to come. You know that as well as I do."
She spoke monotonously, with pauses between the words, leaning back
along the deep chair. The last few days must have been hard ones for
her. She was very pale, the little blue veins in her temples distinct
and clearly lined. It tore me to see her so; and for a moment I wondered
if I had done well to come, and felt a wave of that uncomfortable
reaction which meets one on the threshold of a test; for a moment only,
then I knew that even though I tired her the more, it was a price that
we must pay for her sake as well as mine. No good ever comes of half
understandings.
"No, I don't know that," I said slowly. "You don't believe that I'm
altogether selfish, or that I would come now, when I know that many
things have distressed you, to give you any further reason for
distress."
She leaned forward, one white hand raised. "Please," she said, "I am not
sure--not really sure--why you have come. But I am certain of this, that
you have made a mistake in coming. There's nothing on earth that you can
do to help us just now--there's nothing anybody can do--there's nothing
anybody can do."
"Oh, things aren't so bad as that." I knew that I was only temporizing,
and raged inwardly at myself.
Lady's eyes dropped, and one hand played nervously with a loop of the
chain that hung about her neck.
"I don't believe you can understand just how bad they are. The worst of
it is that I can't tell you--oh, it wasn't fair of you to come
to-day"--her voice broke ever so little, and her eyes brimmed with
unshed tears--"I'm tired and disheartened, and I want advice and
comfort--no, don't come near me--I can't tell you anything--there's
nothing I can tell to anybody in the world."
I was standing before her. "No, I can't comfort you now," I said. "I'm
here to ask you things, and perhaps to hurt you very much. But you
mustn't think I've come carelessly. I came because I had to--because
there are things I have to understand to go on living."
Her eyes were frightened, but she settled herself back as if to meet
whatever blow my questioning might give. "I don't think that you are
very generous to-day," she said; and her voice grew harder than I had
ever heard it. "Neither shall I answer anything that I may not. But--but
perhaps you are right--perhaps there are some things that you should
know. Please say what you have to say and have it done."
"You told me once," I began gently, "that your name was Margaret. Was
that true?"
"True?" she wrinkled her brow. "Of course it was true." It was evidently
not a question that she had expected.
"Then who is Miriam?"
"Oh, I told you the truth then. Do you doubt it? Why should you ask
these things again?"
I paused. Certainly she was not to hear that ugly story if it were not
true and I could in any way prevent it.
"It may seem very strange to you," said I, "but some day I will tell you
all about it. I have to know this now: Do you mean that it is true you
have a sister, that her name is Miriam, and that she is--that she was
Doctor Reid's wife?" The question was out at last, and my heart stopped
for the answer.
"Why, yes," she answered, in the same disinterested tone, as if she were
telling dry facts in distant history--"Miriam married Walter when he
came back from studying abroad. She only lived about a year. They had a
little girl, you know, that lived not more than about an hour. I think
if she had lived, Miriam would have lived too. But it was too much for
her to bear. She died three days after her baby died."
The unshed tears were falling now, falling quietly in the mere physical
relief of tender sorrow. Every rigid line of tragedy and pain had
disappeared, and her trouble came upon her naturally, like sleep, a
relaxation and a rest after hot-eyed days. I did not even feel any
sorrow for her, so full was I of the new certainty that we were free.
Very reverently I came closer to her, and like a child she turned to me
and hid her face against my shoulder. So we rested for a space. I do not
think that either of us had any definite thought--only that peace
wrapped us like a garment and that the tension of the past few weeks had
somehow vanished away. At last Lady drew herself quietly from me, half
smiling as she brushed away her tears.
"I have been very silly," she whispered, "but it's all over now. It was
good of you to let me cry," and she reached her hand toward me with a
gesture so intimately grateful that my love fairly broke its bounds, and
I caught it almost fiercely in my own.
"Lady, Lady dearest," I cried, "can't you see what it all means? Oh, my
dear, you must see. I love you. That is all I know in the world, and
nothing else matters or can matter."
"No, no--you must not--" she drew back from me frightened. "You must not
tell me that. You have no right--and you are spoiling it all."
"Don't you love me?" I persisted.
Lady raised her eyes sadly. "There can be no such thing for you and me.
I have told you why."
"What have you told me?"
"I've told you that even if I did--care for you--that I could not let
myself care--that I can only see you even, when you treat me as a
friend, and only as a friend."
"You told me once, I remember, that there was some one else. I think now
that you were mistaken. There neither is nor can be any one else."
"But there is." The words were scarcely audible, and her eyes were
turned away from me.
"I know perhaps what you mean. I didn't know at the time--but I think I
do now. Do you mean that the some one else, the person who stands
between you and me, is your mother?"
Lady looked past me blankly. "My mother?" she questioned.
"You must see that I have to know the real truth now," I said. "You can
surely trust me; and I am trying for something that means more than
life. Lady, you must answer me fairly. Is it not because of your mother
that you say these things?"
"What do you know of my mother?"
"I know," I answered as gently as I could, "that you all believe she is
temporarily unbalanced; that Doctor Immanuel Paulus has declared her
insane."
Lady had gone very white again.
"Yes, that is the reason," she said.
"But," I cried, "that is no reason at all! If you feared that my
intimacy would betray this trouble you all guard as a secret--why, you
see I know that now; and surely you can not doubt in your heart that I
would guard any secret of yours more sacredly than anything in the
world. Why has it anything to do with us?" I was speaking eagerly, with
that foolish burst of argumentative logic which a lover fondly imagines
potent, hurling breathless words against the impregnability of
conviction.
"No," said Lady softly. "You are wrong, because you still do not know.
There is no taint of insanity in the family; we are not afraid of that.
Mother was taken out of herself by a great shock, not by inheritance."
"Yes," I said, "by the shock of your sister's death. I know that."
"Then you know almost everything," said Lady, "except perhaps--except
the reason that mother gives for my sister's death--her marriage."
We were both of us for a long time silent.
"You see, it is no question of the truth." She went on at last, in that
terribly distant and even voice. "It is true to her--and very
dreadful--so that it is dangerous for her even to remember. That is why
she shrinks from Walter; that is why I keep her wedding-ring." She
touched the chain that hung about her neck. "And that is why--do you
understand now?"
I nodded wordlessly, for the world seemed coming to an end. Then, thank
God, I looked into the eyes of my love; and behind their despair I read
appeal, the ageless call of a woman's heart to the one man of her faith.
And then I had taken her in my arms. I held her close and the fragrance
of her hair was in my nostrils, and soft arms had crept around my neck,
bending my head to meet the upturned face.
"Oh, Laurie, you will be kind to me," she said at last. "I can never do
it all alone. You must help--oh, my dear, I have needed you so."
"It will be right. You know that it is right," I whispered.
"You must find the way, then, dear-- I have thought so long that it was
wrong to tell you that even now I can't tell what is right. Only--God
doesn't let some things be unless He means them--but I can't see the
way. You must find it now, for her and us too."
What feeling I had of another presence I do not know; but half uneasily
I turned. Between the curtains of the doorway stood Mrs. Tabor, her
hands raised above her head gripped the curtains as if for support, so
that she seemed rather to hang there than to stand; her eyes looked
through and beyond us vacantly, and the pretty old-young face was
twisted like a tragic mask. Then the curtains dropped before her, and
from the hall came the gasp of a stifling sob. Lady was out of my arms
and away as if I had not been there. Her cool voice pleaded for a moment
with the rising hysteria without. Then all sound died, and I was left
utterly alone; the silence of the great room about me, and before my
mind the world of reality and the battle still to fight.