Goldwin was the recipient of the two telegrams. He went first (being
driven rapidly in a cab from his Wall Street place of business) to the
house of Mrs. Diggs.
He remained with her for at least two hours. It was now somewhat late in
the afternoon. He dined at his club, and by eight o'clock in the evening
was ringing the bell of Mrs. Lee's residence.
She was alone, and received him with a freezing manner. "At last you are
here," she said.
"At last," he replied, with careless ambiguity, throwing himself into an
arm-chair, and looking straight at a very comfortable wood-fire that
blazed not far off.
"Did you receive my telegram?"
"I did."
"In time to come to me when it entreated you to come?"
"I received it this afternoon. I have been prevented from making my
appearance until now."
His voice was quite as cold and distant as her own. She went up to his
chair and laid her hand upon its arm.
"Your manner is very abrupt and strange," she said, in greatly softened
tones. "Has anything occurred?"
He turned and met her look. He nodded significantly once or twice
before answering. "Yes, something has occurred, most decidedly. Can't
you guess what it is? If so, you will save me the distress of
explaining."
For several moments she was silent. "I suppose you mean that you have
seen Kate Diggs," she then hazarded.
He nodded again. "I have," he replied.
"Ah!" said Mrs. Lee, with an airy satire. "Then she must have made a
very strong case against me, as the lawyers phrase it."
"Undoubtedly she has," he answered, rising. "I have heard the
prosecution; do you want me to hear the defense?"
"Of course I demand that you shall do so," she exclaimed, "although I
don't at all like the word you describe it by! I have no need whatever
of defending myself."
Goldwin gave one of his rich, mellow laughs. The twinkle had come back
to his eye; all his wonted geniality seemed to reclothe him. And yet his
companion rather felt than saw that it was worn as an ironical disguise.
"Upon my word, I think you have been very hardly treated," he declared.
The sting of the real sarcasm pierced her, then, and she sensibly
recoiled. "You ought to have been allowed the privilege of witnessing
your little scandalous comedy, after you had planned it so cleverly. How
you must have suffered when it all went off in so tame and quiet a way!"
Mrs. Lee, pale and with kindling eyes, slightly stamped one small foot.
The sound wrought by this action was faint, though quite audible.
"You believe all that Kate Diggs has told you!" she exclaimed. "You
think I wanted a public scene. It is not true. I wanted her to be
humiliated by her own conscience at a time when she thought herself most
enviable, most lofty. I had no other motive. It was not revenge. It
never was anything like revenge."
Goldwin's face had sobered, but he made a little shrug of the shoulders,
which was like him at his brisk, mercurial best. He had plainly seen her
falsehood. "Why on earth do you use the word?" he asked.
She recoiled once more. "Use the word?" she half stammered, as if thrown
off her guard by this unexpected thrust. A moment afterward she went on,
with renewed vehemence, all her native drawl flurriedly quickened by
excitement. "I used it because Kate Diggs used it--because she presumed
to say that I brought that poor, suffering, deserted, outraged mother
face to face with her daughter for this reason. I don't doubt that Kate
has invented the same nonsense for you that she tried to foist upon me.
She is very loyal to her friend. She has most probably told you that
Mrs. Twining was always a monster to her daughter, and that she insisted
on having her dead husband buried by charity, in spite of prayers,
supplications, adjurations from the bereaved offspring. For my own part,
I choose utterly to discredit this trumped-up tale. I never heard
anything that resembled it from the feeble lips of the wretched woman
who had lain for weeks in the hospital. I only heard"--
Goldwin here broke in with a voice more hard and stern than any which
Mrs. Lee had known to leave his lips.
"If you will pardon me for saying so, I do not wish to continue as your
listener. If you think my interruption outrageously rude, then let me
admit with frankness that I can not--yes, literally _can_ not--endure
what you now choose to state."
She gave her small, dark head a passionate toss. "You can't endure it,"
she cried, "because you think that woman perfection! You can hear
nothing that is not in her praise. You used to tell me that you thought
Kate Diggs ridiculous; you used to laugh at her as a wild, eccentric
creature. And now you are willing to credit her fictions."
"They are not fictions," said Goldwin. "All she told me to-day was pure
truth. Don't try any longer to shake my credence of it. Your efforts
will not avail, I assure you."
Mrs. Lee shivered. She put both hands up to her face, pressing them
there for a moment, and then suddenly removed them. She set her dark
eyes on Goldwin's face; they were glittering moistly.
"You think I edged that woman on, to serve purposes of revenge," she
faltered. "Well, Stuart, if I did so, what was my real reason?"
Goldwin was drawing something from an inner side-pocket of his
evening-coat. "Truly," he said, in dry, tepid tones, "I have no idea."
He fidgeted with the required something while he thus spoke. The next
moment he had produced it. It was a slim packet of letters.
"I want to give you these," he said, with a brief, formal bow.
He handed her the packet. She examined it for several minutes.
"My letters," she murmured.
"Your letters," he answered, with a slight repetition of his recent bow.
She thrust the packet into her bosom. "You ... you have _kept_ all
these?" she questioned, after hiding them.
"Yes," he said.
"And you give them back to me now," she pursued, "with a meaning? Well,
with what meaning?"
Goldwin walked quietly toward the doorway that led into the adjacent
hall. "Oh, if you want the meaning put brutally," he said, using a tone
and demeanor of much suavity, "I ... I--well, I am tired."
"Tired?" she repeated. Her next sentence was a sort of gasp. "You--you
hate me for what I have done!"
"I did not say that." His foot was almost on the threshold of the door
while he spoke.
"Stuart!" she exclaimed, hurrying toward him. The lithe symmetry of her
shape was very beautiful now; her worst detractor could not have said
otherwise. She felt that the man whom she loved was leaving her forever.
She put a hand on either of his shoulders. She tried to look into his
eyes while he averted his own.
"Will you leave me like this?" she went on. "You knew me long before you
knew _her_! Don't let us quarrel. I--I confess everything. I--I have
been very foolish. But you won't be too harsh with me--you will forgive,
will you not?"
He did not answer her. He removed her hands. Then he receded from her.
"Stuart!" she still appealed.
"I have given you back your letters," he responded, standing quite near
the threshold.
"Tell me one thing--do you love her? Is it because you love her that you
want to part from me? I--I have scarcely seen you for weeks. You once
said that a day wasn't a day unless you had seen me. Do you remember?
I've been stupid. But you won't mind so much when you've let me explain
more. Don't go quite yet. Stay a moment, and" ...
He had passed quietly from her sight. She waited until she heard the
clang of the outer hall door. Then she understood what a knell it meant.
The alienation must now be life-long. She had made him despise her, and
she could never win him back. Seated before the fire, that snapped and
flashed as if in jeering glee at her own misery, she wept tears that had
a real pathos in them--the pathos of a repulsed love. She had never
believed herself at fault in her conduct toward Claire. Jealousy had
speedily blackened the filial act of her rival, but in any case the
story, as Mrs. Twining told it, would have roused her conviction that
this desertion had been a most unnatural and cruel one. So esteeming it,
she had played the part of castigator. She was not sure that she would
have done very differently if Claire had not been at all an object of
her hatred. She had not found the least difficulty in persuading herself
that it was wholly a moral deed to use with vengeful intent knowledge
which she would have been justified in using with an intent merely
punitory.
But now she had wrecked all her own future by seeking to destroy
Claire's. Mrs. Twining had broken faith and betrayed her. The passion
which she felt for Goldwin was an irrecoverable one. Her detestation of
the woman who had caused their ceaseless parting grew as she wept over
the ruin of her hopes, and mingled its ferocious heat with the more
human tenderness of her tears. She passed a lurid hour, there in her
little picturesque parlor; she was in spiritual sympathy, so to speak,
with its Oriental equipments. She could have understood some of those
clandestine assassinations which the poisoned draught, the stealthy
bow-string, and the ambushed scimitar have bequeathed to history and
legend. Her past pietistic fervors had left her with no memento of
consolation. A stormy turbulence had taken hold of her mental being, and
shaken it as a blast will shake a bough. In her sorrow she was still a
woman; in her hate she was something grossly below it.
She at length remembered the letters that he had returned to her, and
drew them forth from her bosom. For a moment the anguish of loss gained
mastery in her soul, and she held the packet clasped between both hands,
her eyes blinded to any sight of them, and her frame convulsed with
racking, internal sobs. She knew that she must read them all over again,
and thus replunge into coverts of memory whose very charm and fragrance
would deepen her despair. To re-peruse each letter would be like prying
open the slab of a grave.
A sudden impulse assailed her as the violence of her grief subsided. She
rose, and raised the letters in one hand, meaning to hurl them into the
opposite blaze, and thus spare herself, while the destructive mood
lasted, fresh future pangs. But at this moment her glance lighted on the
packet itself. It was of moderate thickness, and tied together by a
strip of ordinary cord. Inside the cincture so made, and held there
insecurely by one sharp corner, a folded paper had caught, which seemed
foreign to the remaining contents. Mrs. Lee disengaged this paper,
opened it, and cast her tear-blurred eyes, carelessly enough at first,
over some written lines which she had immediate certainty were not her
own.
But presently a little cry left her lips. She turned the page with a
rapid jerk, searching for a signature. She did not find any, but found
merely two initials instead. She dropped into her seat again, and with a
fire in her dark eyes that seemed to have quickly dried their last trace
of moisture, she read, pausing over nearly every word, and pondering
every sentence, a letter which ran thus:--
_Friday._
DEAR MR. GOLDWIN,--I think that I meant all the harsh treatment
I gave you last evening. When I recall what my feelings then
were, I am certain that my indignation was quite sincere. But
very much has happened since then to change me, and to change
my surroundings as well. I suppose I am in a most reckless mood
while I write these lines: my head is hot, and my hands are
cold, and tremble so that the words I am shaping have a
strange, unfamiliar look, as though I myself were not writing
them at all. Well, for that matter, the same woman whom you
lately parted from is not writing them. Another woman has taken
her place. She is a wayward, desperate sort of creature; she is
a coward, an ingrate, a worthless and feeble egotist.
But this new identity of mine will last. I have made up my mind
to take a bold step, and nothing can now deter me. I shall not
be explicit; at some
other time I will send for you and tell you everything. You
shall hear my reasons for acting as I propose to act. I don't
claim that they are strong or good reasons, and yet I feel that
they contain a certain propulsion--they push me on. My marriage
has been an irreparable mistake; I can't go back and live the
last year over again; I can't repossess my yesterdays. Hence, I
have become willful and headstrong about my to-morrows. If I
had ever really loved Herbert, all would now be so different!
But I have never loved anybody who is now living. There you
have a frigid confession. You never roused in me anything but a
decided liking; that other woman--the woman who called herself
by my name a few hours ago--used to disapprove a good deal that
there is about you. But my new self will doubtless pass over
these faults very indulgently; she will have enough of her own
to account for. Still, she can never do more than think you
good company. I fancy that when I was a very young child nature
locked up a certain cell of my heart, and then threw away the
key where no one can ever find it.
I mean to go abroad, very secretly, after the sale of certain
property and chattels shall have put me in possession of the
needed funds. It will be a flight--and a flight from more than
you are yet aware of. If we meet abroad--say in Paris--I may
even stoop to discuss with you that question of a divorce. It
is horrible for me to write these words. It is sin, and I feel
the stab of it. But surely Herbert deserves to be rid of me,
and perhaps he will come in time to value his freedom. I should
want him to have the right of marrying again. Would not that
be a possible arrangement? I know almost nothing of the law on
these points.
It does not now seem conceivable that I should ever become your
wife after I had ceased to be his. I have had enough of
marriage without love. But if you should prevail with me, it
would be only because of your great wealth, and the ease and
distinction that are now slipping away from me. You see I am
hideously candid; I don't mince matters ... where would be the
use?
Do not answer this, but destroy it immediately. In regard to
the last request, I count with perfect confidence upon your
honor. Were it not that I did so, I should never send you this
imprudent, daring, perilous scrawl.
Do not come to me until I send for you. I cannot tell how long
that will be.