"As a promise? Please forgive me for asking. I shouldn't, only that the
request of a dying woman--"
"I said it," he admitted, unwillingly; "but it wasn't exactly a promise.
My wife said--" He stopped and bit his lip. "She said she didn't care."
"You can't go by that. Of course she did care."
"Then if she cared, I'd let twenty women die, whoever they were--"
She rose with dignity. "That must be for you to decide, Mr. Walker. I've
given you the message I was charged with. It isn't a matter in which I
could venture to urge you."
He, too, rose. "You do urge me," he said in a tone of complaint, "by
thinking that I ought to go."
She looked him timidly, but steadily, in the eyes. "I'm not so sure that
I do. The whole thing is too sacred to your own inner life for me to
have an opinion. You must do what you think right, and Maggie Clare--"
"The woman ruined me," he cried, desperately.
"And must she bear all the responsibility of that?"
The words were accompanied by one of her swift, half-frightened smiles;
but she didn't wait for an answer. Before Chip could begin to stammer
out an explanation that would give his point of view she was passing
rapidly up the pathway, bordered with irises and peonies and
bleeding-hearts, toward the house.
But when he returned to town he went to see Maggie Clare. He went, and
went again. The experience became, in its way, the most poignant in his
life. He had not much knowledge of death and even less of sickness. The
wasted face and the sunken, burning eyes wrought in him a kind of
terror. It was with an effort that he could take the long thin hand,
that already had the chill of the grave in its limp fingers, into his
own. As for kissing those bloodless lips, so eager, so strained, which
he could see was what she wanted him to do, he was unable to bring
himself to it. Luckily he was not obliged to talk, since her mind
couldn't follow coherent sentences. It was enough for her to have him
sit by the bed while she worked her hands gropingly toward him, saying,
"Oh, Chip! oh, Chip!" and murmuring broken things in Swedish. It was
incredible to him that this poor worn thing, this living shadow, that
had exhausted everything but its passion for himself, had once been a
woman whom he loved.
He was glad when she died and could be buried, so that he might consider
that episode as ended--if there was ever an end to anything in this
cursed life! And yet the occurrence brought him another kind of shock.
In the death of one who for years had been so closely associated with
his thoughts it was as if his own death had begun. He grew uneasy,
morbid. Such occupations as he found to fill the hours when he was not
at work grew insufficient. He came to hate the clubs, the restaurants,
the theaters, and such social gatherings as he was now invited to. There
was an evening when from sheer boredom he went home to his rooms as
early as eight o'clock--and the bottle of Old Piper came out of its
hiding-place.
The real struggle followed on that. He had not so far forgotten Emery
Eland's warning as to cease to put up a fight; but he saw now that the
fight would be a hard one. There was again a period in which he weighed
the advantages of "going to the bad" with all sails set against a life
of useless respectability. Going to the bad had the more to recommend it
since he knew that Edith was in New York. His downfall might bring her
back to him, in some such way, from some such motive of saving or pity,
as that by which he himself had been brought to Maggie Clare.
The argument being in favor of Old Piper, Old Piper supported it. Chip
never forgot an evening when, as he staggered down the steps of the club
toward the taxi that had been called for him, he met Emery Bland, who
was coming up. He would have dodged the lawyer without recognition had
it not been for the latter's kindly touch on his arm, while a voice of
distress said: "Ah, poor old chap, what's this?"
He had just wit enough left to stammer: "Edith's in New York. Go and
tell her how you saw me."
With that he staggered on, knowing that he almost fell into the waiting
vehicle.
Worse days ensued--for nearly a week. Worse still might have followed
had they not been cut short suddenly. They were cut short by a note
which bore the signature, Lily Bland. It was a simple note, containing
nothing but the request that he should come and see her on one of a
choice of evenings which she named. He took the first one, which was
that of the day of the note's arrival.
He had hardly seen her since their talk at Mountain Brook in the
previous June. He had not gone again that summer to New Hampshire, and
on the two or three occasions on which he had visited Bland's house in
town she seemed to have retreated once more to her old place as the
spirit of the furniture. He had made efforts to get nearer her, but she
seemed to elude his approaches.
He knew she would not have summoned him without having something grave
to say, and saw that his surmises were correct by her method of
receiving him. She was not in the drawing-room, but in Emery Bland's
library, with a background of bindings of red and blue and green and
gold, a few Brangwyn and Meryon etchings, and one brilliant, sinister
spot of color by Félicien Rops. There was a fire in the monumental
fireplace, and as he entered, a log was just breaking in the middle and
spluttering, across the tall, richly wrought French dog-irons.
It was the room of the successful New-Yorker who delights in giving
himself all the indulgences of taste of which his youth has been
deprived. The girl, dressed simply in some light stuff, and scarcely
_décolletée_, seemed somewhat lost in the spaciousness of her
surroundings. She made no pretense at preliminary social small talk,
going straight to her point. She did this by a repetition of the words
with which she had opened the similar conversation at Mountain Brook.
"I've something to tell you." Having said this while they were shaking
hands, she went on as soon as they were seated in the firelight:
"At least Uncle Emery had something to tell you, and I asked him to let
me do it."
"Why?" He put the question rather blankly.
"Because I thought I could do it better." But she caught herself up at
once. "No; not better. Of course, I can't do that. Only--only I _wanted_
him to let me do it."
Chip's heart bounded. Edith was in New York. She had heard of his
condition. She was coming back to him. He was to have his reward for
taking pity on Maggie Clare. His tongue and lips were parched as he
forced out the words:
"Then it's good news--or you wouldn't want to break it?"
She was not visibly perturbed. Rather, she was pensive, sitting with an
elbow resting on the arm of her chair, the hand raised so as to lay a
forefinger on her cheek. "Don't you think that we often make news good
or bad by our way of taking it?"
"That's asking me a question, when you've got information to give me.
What have you to tell me, Miss Bland?"
"I've something to tell you that will give you a great shock; so that I
don't want to say it till I know you're prepared."
"Oh, prepared! Is one ever prepared? For God's sake, Miss Bland, what is
it? Is one of the children hurt? Is one of them dead?"
"That would be a great grief. I said that this would be a great shock.
There's a difference--and one _can_ be prepared."
"Well, I am. Please don't keep me in suspense. Do tell me."
She sat now with hands folded in her lap, looking at him quietly. "No,
you're not prepared."
"Tell me what to do and I'll do it," he said, nervously, "only don't
torture me."
"One is prepared," she said, tranquilly, "by remembering beforehand
one's own strength--by knowing that there's nothing one can't bear, and
bear nobly."
"All right; all right; I'll do that. Now please go on."
"But _will_ you?"
"Will I what?"
"Will you try to say to yourself: I'm a man, and I'm equal to this. It
can't knock me down; it can't even stagger me. I'll take it in the
highest way. I sha'n't let it degrade me or send me for help to
degrading things--"
He flung his hands outward. "Yes, yes. I know what you're driving at. I
promise. Only, for God's sake, tell me. Is it about--?"
"It's about Mrs. Walker."
"Yes, so I supposed. But what is it? Is she ill? Oh, she isn't dead?"
The cry made her eyes smart, but she kept control of her voice.
"No, she's not dead. She's not even ill. She's perfectly well, so I
understand. But she's been--" The horror in his face, the way in which
he leaned forward as though he would spring at her, warned her that he
knew what was coming. She gave him time to get himself in hand by rising
and taking the two or three paces to the fireplace, where she stood with
a hand on the mantel-board, which was above her head, while she gazed
into the embers. "She's been--married."
She didn't turn round. She knew by all the subtle unnamed senses that he
was huddled in his big arm-chair in a state of collapse. For the minute
there was nothing to say or do. Since the iron had to enter into his
soul, it was better that it should be like this. It was better that it
should be like this--with her there to keep him such company as one
human being can keep for another at such an hour--better than if he were
to learn it in the solitude of his own rooms, or in the unsustaining
frigidity of a lawyer's office. She knew she didn't count for much,
except for the fact--a detail only--that she was _with_ him in every
nerve that helped her to sensation and every faculty she possessed.
So, after the minutes had passed--ten, perhaps, or fifteen--instinct
told her when to speak again. She did it without changing the position
in which she stood, or turning for a glance toward him.
"You won't forget your promise?"
He spoke with the vacant, suffering tone of a sick child, or of a person
so sunk into wretchedness as to find it hard to come up out of it.
"What?"