A Duel
Mrs. Matthewson entered the little parlour, where she had met Trafford,
for the purpose of keeping another appointment--one that she had not
wanted to make and which she had not yet dared refuse. When she visited
her son, she knew the name of the man who, under his direction, was
hunting down Theodore Wing’s mother, but she did not know the man. Now
she was to meet him face to face. She was afraid, and she bore herself
with the air of a queen about to grant a favour to her humblest subject.
Cranston felt her imperiousness in the very air as he entered, and
rebel as he would, it daunted him and took a share of his bravado from
him. She returned his salutation, but with the evident purpose not to
aid him in the slightest in the delivery of his errand.
“I regret the necessity,” he said, “of troubling you.”
She bowed stiffly, but without other answer. He apparently had not
struck the line of least resistance.
“I have been employed,” he began, “upon the Wing murder case.” Then, at
the look in her eyes, as if of all things on earth the Wing murder case
had the least possible interest to her, he added desperately: “Among
those who employed me were your sons.”
“Then you should report to them.” These were the first words she had
spoken and the tone was beyond measure forbidding, but they were at
the least words and a recognition that she was taking part in the
interview. As such they helped the man who, in spite of his experience,
was floundering woefully.
“I thought it in your interest that I should first report to you,” he
said.
“There’s nothing in which any one can serve me in the Wing murder
case,” she said, not sparing herself even the word “murder.”
He looked at her as if he would say that that was a very proper bluff
for her to put up, but that he knew the facts and was not to be fooled
thereby.
“In doing thoroughly my work,” he floundered on; “it has been
impossible for me to overlook the remarkable paper left by Judge
Parlin.”
Even as she caught the full import of his words, she had a
consciousness of the hopeless bungling of this man, in comparison with
the other man, Trafford. No less surely had Trafford told her that he
had learned the history of her early life; but he had, with a natural
instinct, taken from the telling every sting that was not ineffaceable.
This man was so intent upon the telling as not to have a thought for
her.
She made no acknowledgment, save that frigid bend of the head that was
less acknowledgment than repulsion, and which he felt as disdain. It
stung him to more brutal speech than he had intended:
“You would have me, perhaps, report my discoveries in that connection
to your sons.”
If he had expected her to shrink or lose self-control, his was the
disappointment. She had lived too long with the possibility of meeting
thus her past, to allow it to come with the shock of the unexpected.
There had been no hour for forty years when these words might not be
spoken to her. She did not even make the mistake of showing irritation
in her answer:
“I would know why you have sought this interview, that it may be ended.
As to the results of your employment, they concern your employers, not
me.”
“I know who was the mother of Theodore Wing.” He spoke somewhat
insistently, and not without a touch of menace in his voice. He had
foreseen an easier task. He had a sense of personal wrong, in that she
was making it so hard for him.
“It is her secret,” she said, with just enough force to betoken
impersonal indignation; “neither you nor the world have the right to
drag it to the surface.”
“I am willing it should remain a secret,” he answered.
“Then you should never have told any one you knew it.”
“You are the only one I have told,” he said; “and that was necessary.”
Clearly he expected her to ask, “Necessary to what?” but she did not
make the mistake. She remained silent and left him to reknit the broken
strand of discourse.
“The moment of real danger to her will come,” he said, after waiting
vainly for her to speak, until waiting became a palpable embarrassment;
“when Wing’s murderer is put on trial.” Then, as with a sudden change
of his line of attack, he continued: “Have you ever thought why your
sons employed me in this case?”
“No; nor cared,” she said.
He had expected her to deny that she had known.
“Because they know who the murderer is.”
It was a relief to the tension upon her that she could show resentment
without personal defence.
“Your remark is insulting,” she said. “I do not know the object of this
visit, but whatever it is, that remark must be withdrawn before it can
proceed.”
“It is the last remark you should desire withdrawn, madam,” he said,
with a calm significance of utterance; “for it is true.”
She rose to dismiss him--rose haughtily and uncompromisingly, as if
she had not the slightest suspicion of the drift of his purpose. There
was a dangerous gleam in her eye; one that should have been a warning
to the man, telling him to shield himself in some way and not carry
out the threatened purpose. To this woman, that purpose was a cause
of almost mastering terror, but this the will behind it controlled,
leaving her seemingly strong to master the situation. He was compelled
to decide quickly, yet with knowledge that anything that was tinctured
with apology was a weakening of his position.
“I am not implying guilt on their part,” he said; “nor am I speaking
of knowledge that would be proof in court, but of that moral knowledge
which makes one certain in mind, without being able to give evidence
to justify such certainty. To make a public accusation based on such
knowledge, would be to do the greatest wrong.”
She remained standing, seemingly weighing this remark. In reality
she was feeling the keen disappointment of having lost excuse for
terminating the interview which she had supposed was hers.
“I am averse,” she said, “to discussing questions bearing on this
murder. I condemn the crime. Beyond that, it has no interest to me.”
She knew that in thus speaking she was weakening the position she had
taken at first. It was the natural sequence of having the ground cut
from under her by Cranston’s half-apology. The other eagerly seized the
opening presented:
“Until Mr. Wing’s murderer is discovered and punished, nothing and no
one in any way connected with his past will be spared. I have said that
I know who is his mother.”
She had resumed her seat and again had herself under full control, but
with some loss of vantage.
“What one man has discovered,” she said, “any other man may discover.
The mere fact that it can be discovered, is the end of secrecy.”
“There are innumerable things that can be discovered,” he said,
“compared with the number of people who can discover them. There are
hundreds who would like to know this one matter, but among them not
more than one who knows how to find it out. If his mouth is closed, the
secret is as safe as if it did not exist.”
“The mere knowledge that a secret exists is revelation,” she answered.
“A man who will sell himself once, simply waits a higher bidder to sell
himself again.”
“Possibly, if in concealing the identity of this woman, one concealed a
fact bearing upon the discovery of the murderer. I can assure you that
her identity has no bearing whatever upon the other question.”
“Then why not let it drop into the oblivion from which you have dragged
it?”
She knew the danger of exchanging question and answer with him,
but human endurance has its limit, and even she could not carry
indifference beyond the breaking point. Still, she was not unconscious
of the gleam of satisfaction in his face.
“Because,” he said, “this woman has grown strong, powerful, and rich.
Safety is doubly precious to her. There is no reason why she should
not pay for it.”
“You mean,” she said, and her eyes snapped, “blackmail!”
She had not been the active partner for thirty-five years of a
politician who had climbed from obscurity to the control of the State,
without knowing what this word meant, nor without knowing the infinite
deeps that yawn for the man or woman who shows the first sign of
weakness to the blackmailer.
“You are mistaken,” he said. He was on ground now that he had gone over
in his mind again and again, in his preparation for this interview.
“The essence of blackmail is threat. I make no threat. I have not said
that I will expose you, if you do not pay me. I expressly disclaim any
such intention. But safety is worth something to you; you are rich and
have high social position. I offer you protection in your riches and
position, and, for giving it, I ought to have recompense--simply a fair
equivalent for what I do. Nothing more; but that much is fair; I think
you cannot deny its fairness.”
He knew he was sliding off into inanity; that all had been said that
he purposed saying, and that he was simply repeating himself and
repeating himself weakly. He stopped and waited her answer.
On her part she held herself under restraint, resolved not to interrupt
him until he had said all he had to say. His change from impersonal to
personal, which he thought she did not notice, simply impressed her as
unimportant. She felt fully the weakness and embarrassment of his final
words, and even with the stress under which she waited, his feeble
maudlinism affected her with a sense of pity.
“Have you finished?” she asked, when he spoke no further.
“I think there should be no need of saying more,” he answered.
She did not even bend in assent to his proposition. She simply pointed
to the door, and said:
“Then you may go!”
The change in tone and manner startled him, trained as he was to
surprises. He had foreseen a storm and indignation, and was prepared
to treat that as simulated. This impressed him as genuine--so genuine
that he was forced to ask himself hastily if he could have made any
mistake, and this notwithstanding he was absolutely certain of all the
facts.
“But----” he began, hesitatingly.
“Go!” she said, permitting no further utterance, now that he had
said what he had come to say. A passionate joy in her ability to
deal harshly with him, regardless of the personal risk to herself
in so doing, seized her. She had not subjected her line of action
to the scrutiny of judgment. For once thoroughly a woman, in that
she discarded the masculine caution which she had cultivated as a
habit, she gave head to instinct, which carried her past all doubt,
all weighing of chances, to the least dangerous course that, in her
situation, was open to her.
Almost an insane fury to send one final shaft that should sting in the
breast of this woman seized this man who, by all of his traditions,
should have held himself the better together, the farther his plans
miscarried. Moving toward the door, he cried:
“Shall I report to my employers--your sons?”
To this she had the single word, “Go!”
When he was gone, she did not break under the relaxation of strain; but
rather held herself more proudly, as if to do otherwise would be to
admit to herself, the most important individual concerned, the danger
in which she stood. Under the calm surface, raged a storm of irritable
impatience, aroused by the thought that time must elapse before she
could be called upon to face publicly the charges this man would make.
She wanted to do it, at this moment. It seemed as if she must rush
forth and cry:
“See; here am I--I, against whom this thing is charged! Look on me and
feast your eyes on me and roll the sweet morsel under your tongue! Of
course, you believe it; want to believe it; but I dare you to say other
than that it is a slander!”
If she could have done this, it seemed to her that she would have
happiness again; but to wait; not to know when the blow would fall; to
hold herself ready to meet it at any instant and to have no power to
hasten it,--that was the madness of the situation, that the terror it
had for her.
She rose and stood before a long mirror and looked at herself; as if
to see if this was a different manner of woman than she who had stood
there the day before. To her eyes, looking into the reflected depths of
the room, her own image was representative of the world, and in facing
it she seemed to taste something of that defiance of public knowledge
of the scandal for which she so longed.
No thought disturbed her of her future relations to her husband or
sons. For more than a third of a century, the lives of her husband and
herself had flowed together, each relying on the other, each confident
in the other. Breakage was not possible or to be thought of. He would
not even ask her of this matter, and while that very fact would lay on
her the greater weight of responsibility to tell him, the necessity did
not put her under that fear which would have been the greatest burden
to an ordinary woman. By this she did not mean that he would not feel
the wound--feel it cruelly; but they had passed the crown of the road,
their way lay downward, and she had no more doubt of him than she
would have had of herself, if to him and not to her the parentage of
Theodore Wing were brought home.
Her bulwark with the public would be the loyalty of her husband and
sons, and if it smacked of selfishness and unfeeling to rely on them
and not give a fair portion of thought to the suffering which would
be hidden by their calm exterior, it must be remembered that during
the entire period of her wife- and mother-hood she had lived with this
thing, which had grown dimmer and dimmer as the years receded, until it
had come to have for her, and it seemed to her necessarily for these
others, a different aspect than it would have borne in the days before
she had given to husband and children the pledge of her long devotion.
Before these years she would have reasoned of her husband’s attitude
toward such a tale from the sense of outrage, not tempered by long
possession and intimate association. No, she had no fear there, save
of the inward sense of humiliation under which she had gone to her
son’s office, and for fighting which she now faced her own reflection,
as representative of the world of public opinion. She had become
accustomed to make demands of the world, not requests, and the world
had yielded. It should do so still. This thing had not destroyed the
years of loyalty and work that buttressed her present position. It
should not do so. She stood there to make her defiance, and the world
should heed. But oh, the waiting! The waiting! That was the cruelty of
the situation.