The discovery of his wife’s infidelity was so swift, so convincing,
so utterly unexpected that every mental function seemed to stop.
Garford stood still, a long moment, doing absolutely nothing. Then
his whole body was seized with a confusing fever; his heart seemed
to swell within him and to leap against its walls. In a flash, his
head cleared as though swept by a gust of wind. He felt a tingling,
throbbing sensation throughout his body, accompanying this abrupt
mental clarity; all other sounds without him ceased. It was as
though only one thing existed, something which echoed through his
brain--one question: “What am I going to do?”
If he had gone in, he would have killed them, then and there, under
his hands, one after the other, blindly, unreasoningly, in brute
instinct, without knowing just what he was doing. Only a door stood
between him and a crime. At this moment, the bell rang. On such
trivialities destinies turn. The shrill, piercing sound recalled
him to the outer world. He was able to add to the obsessing
question in the hollow of his consciousness one other thought:
“Some one is coming.” Registering two perceptions, he became again
a reasoning man. He withdrew softly, mounted to the mezzanine floor
of the apartment, and went out.
When he had, in some measure, recovered control over his reason,
the first emotion was one of complete stupefaction. Why had she
done this? He had given her everything. He had given her even the
sacrifice of his deepest ambitions without ever reproaching her.
And he had been rewarded by the lowest deceit.
“Has a woman no gratitude?” he asked himself, in man’s eternal
miscomprehension of feminine motives.
This was the one thing he could not comprehend. He could not
forbid her loving another. This was something in the domain of
the instincts which might conceivably happen. But he had a right
to demand that she should not strike him in his private honor.
At first, no other thought came to him than that his wife loved
the man whose voice he had recognized. That she could have been
actuated by any other emotion was too horrible to contemplate. Yet
he could not comprehend the choice.
“She loves him--Reggie Bowden--Bowden, of all men! How is it
possible?” he kept repeating to himself.
Of all the men who surrounded her and paid her court, the discovery
that he had been betrayed for young Bowden wounded him most. For
Bowden was of the type he particularly detested, a trifler in all
things, drifting through life on a family name, a smiling face
and a well-groomed body, social jester and leader of cotillions,
a tyrant of the ballroom. That this man could be preferred to
him curiously enough humiliated him more than if her choice had
been one who was her intellectual equal. The more he analyzed
the situation, the more a tormenting doubt returned. A hundred
trivial incidents of the past thronged to his memory with a new
significance until he felt he should go mad unless he knew the
truth.
In three months, it lay before him in its multiplied, shameful
detail--not only the present but the past, the record of her
first marriage and even before. He went to the friends who, he
remembered, had dropped vague hints and forced from them what
they knew or suspected. Then, for the first time, it flashed
over how his name had been bandied about, a thing of mockery and
light contempt, even to the point that he might have been held
cognizant, and he said to himself in dull rage: “I was wrong; I
should have killed her--that would have been my justification.”
During these three months there were moments when he felt himself
perilously close to the borders of his sanity. Added to the
disillusion and melancholy of the artist, the blow to the man
himself had been so crushing and so penetrating that every illusion
had gone as completely from his mental outlook as though, at a
stroke, all colors had been lifted from the visible world. Only one
thought upheld him--the idea of vengeance and the cleansing of his
name. When he was completely satisfied with his investigations, he
left ostensibly on a hunting-trip, returned to New York secretly,
and advised by his detectives, came to his apartment-building at
night.
He tried the door with his latch-key and found it barred. He
mounted to the mezzanine floor, tried the door, and found it
locked. At that hour, the servants would have left the apartment.
He descended, had himself taken up by the service elevator and
entered by the kitchen. He knew where he would find them. On the
second floor was a little salon which gave into his wife’s bedroom,
from which it formed the only exit. They had just returned from the
opera; the young man’s coat and hat were on a chair, the odor of a
cigar in the corridors.
Bowden was alone, in an armchair by the little lamp, skimming a
paper while waiting for Mrs. Garford to return from her bedroom.
All at once a sense of something unusual in the air made him lower
his paper and glance up. At his side, the husband was standing.
He started to his feet with a smothered exclamation, but a hand
restrained him.
“Not a sound; I want to give her a surprise.”
There was a smile on Garford’s lips as he laid his finger across
them in warning, but this smile terrified the lover. He felt
himself trapped, unable to warn the woman, forced helplessly to
await the moment of her reëntry and the shock of her surprise. He
did not make a sound because he still hoped and because he was a
coward. The two men remained thus a full five minutes, without
moving, awaiting her return. All at once, from the further room,
a light voice began to hum an aria of the evening, broke off, and
called out:
“Getting impatient?”
At these words, Bowden felt the blood running out of his veins.
Then there came the rustle of a dress and Louise, in an Oriental
negligée of gold, blended with greens and reds, came lightly to the
door.
Garford had placed himself so that he could observe Bowden’s
actions in the reflection of a mirror, while turning his back to
him. The young man’s hand went up in frantic warning.
At the sight of her husband, she stood transfixed, unable to move
or utter a sound, and the color went out of her face so abruptly
that the dabs of rouge on her cheeks stood hideously out.
“Quite a surprise, isn’t it?” Garford said with a laugh.
She murmured something inaudible.
“What! You don’t kiss me?”
She looked at him a moment, looked at Bowden, and came slowly
across the yellow Chinese rug, a long moment when she felt her
knees sagging under her.
“He knows!” she said to herself. “Will he strangle me?”
And she reached him and offered up her cold lips. He kissed them.
At the moment his arms touched her she could not repress a shudder.
“What’s the matter?” he said, looking at her.
“You frightened me,” she said, in a whisper, her hand to her
heart, for the test had been almost beyond her strength.
“What! I frightened you?”
“You know sudden surprises affect me like this,” she said, trying
to recover her wits.
“You don’t ask me why I have come,” he said quietly.
“Bad news?” she forced herself to say.
“You might call it that.”
This gave Bowden his opportunity. He rose hastily.
“I hope it’s not serious,” he said glibly. “If you’ll permit me--”
He offered his hand. “I know you wish to talk this over alone. Mrs.
Garford, I hope your headache will be better to-morrow. It was a
shame to miss that last act.”
He had quite recovered himself with the prospect of a flight that
providentially opened to him. He bowed a little doubtfully to
Garford, but the husband nodded and sat down. Bowden exchanged
glances with the wife, slipped on his coat, and took up his hat.
The woman looked at him in terror; she saw to the bottom of
his soul and comprehended that he was deserting her. Garford,
meanwhile, had risen, gone to the table and turned, his arms
folded, leaning against its side.
Bowden made a final bow and went to the door. Almost immediately he
came back.
“Why, it’s locked!”
“What’s that?” said Garford, lifting his head.
“Why, it’s locked!” said Bowden, who felt the room beginning to
reel about him.
“Yes; I locked it.”
Despite the uncanny sense of terror which began to creep over him,
the young man managed to blurt out:
“But why--what does this mean?”
The woman, who understood by this time that she was fighting for
her life, joined in his remonstrances.
“Dan--are you crazy--you can’t act this way--what do you mean?”
Garford returned to the chair, and this nervous shifting did not
escape her, or the straining of his clasped fingers held against
his lips as he answered, with forced calm:
“You should know.”
She tried, while gaining time, to turn it off lightly while
assuming an attitude of frankness:
“Surely, you don’t object to Mr. Bowden’s coming in here for a
nightcap and a cigar! You are not as prudish as that, and if you
were, you know I have done it a hundred times; that would be too
ridiculous, Dan! You aren’t going to make a scene over this!”
“Is that all you have to say to me--that I should know,” he asked,
when she had finished.
She bit her lip, tried to answer, and succeeded only in staring at
him. She also began to be horribly afraid.
“And you, Mr. Bowden?”
The young fellow had an answer ready, glib on his tongue, but, at
the look in the husband’s eyes, it vanished. In the palms of his
hands the perspiration began to rise. Before the avenging dignity
in the glance of this man whom he had so many times smiled at in
the satisfied disdain of the social freebooter, he felt himself
all at once insignificant, as a chip of wood swept under a great
surf. She understood that she could expect no help from him and
desperately began to counterfeit anger.
“I will not be insulted like this,” she cried furiously. “I demand
that you open that door and end this absurd, this humiliating
scene. I----”
“Stop!” he said roughly, and she comprehended how completely he
dominated the scene by the cold weakness, the powerless sense of
inaction which fell on her at the sound of his voice. “Tell Mr.
Bowden what I laid down to you as the rules of our marriage.”
“What do you mean?” she stammered.
“Tell him what I have told you I expected from you as my due.”
“But I don’t understand why--why----”
“Tell him.”
“Why, you said, you said,” she faltered, “in case either of us
found--no--no, this is too absurd----”
“Either of us found we had come to love another,” he took up; “go
on.”
“That we should tell the other,” she said, hardly able to get the
words out.
“Honestly and loyally,” he broke in, “and that there should be no
restraint on this liberty of choice as there could be no deceit out
of respect for the other. Is that right?”
She nodded, staring at his arms and great hands, fearing their
brute strength.
“You did not tell that to Mr. Bowden,” he continued.
Bowden, who felt himself cornered, advanced, and said with a last
show of courage:
“Mr. Garford, I don’t understand this scene in the least and I must
insist--_insist_, do you hear--that you open that door.”
Garford rose, and, though his voice still maintained a certain
calm, his hands twitched at his sides, as he said,
“Bowden, you don’t think this was an accident, do you?”
“Why, what--what do you mean?”
“I _know_!”
As he said this for the first time, the rage in his soul came
thronging into the exclamation. He caught at a chair to steady
himself. Bowden recoiled in terror; the woman, shrieking, flung
herself at the feet of her husband, crying:
“Don’t kill me, Dan; don’t kill me!”
He stood swaying under the shock of her body against his knees,
recovering his self-control, with a smile of contempt at the young
coward shrinking against the wall, a moment that paid him back for
the humiliation of months.
“I am not going to kill you--not yet,” he said slowly. “Get up!”
She obeyed.
“This man is your lover, then?”
She looked at him, did not dare to equivocate, and bent her head in
acquiescence.
“That is so, isn’t it, Bowden?” he said, without doing him the
honor to look at him.
“Yes.”
“That is all that is necessary,” he said; but the shock of the
answers had been so intense that it was a moment before he could
continue. “I shall trouble you only a moment. The case is quite
plain. I am the third. You would have saved us all this if you had
come to me openly.”
Then she understood his object. She put out her hands frantically.
“You’re going to divorce me,” she cried hysterically.
Bowden, by the table, still weak from the imminence of the horror
which passed, took out his handkerchief and began to mop his brow.
“No. In our set whatever happens, we do not fasten that stain upon
the woman,” Garford said. “You will divorce me--and at once. The
cause will be desertion. After which, within forty-eight hours you
will marry this man. These are my _orders_!”
“Marry--marry _him_!” she cried, suddenly perceiving the pitfall.
“But I don’t want--you can force a divorce--but you can’t----” Her
voice broke. “You can’t do that!”
Bowden, aghast before the prospect, cried:
“Absurd--no, no--absurd!”
“What!” said Garford, in a voice like thunder; “do you mean to say
you don’t love him?”
She looked at her lover, bit her lip, started to speak, and all
at once sat down, crossing her arms and looking at her husband as
though she could murder him. She saw in a flash the completeness
of his revenge, and she admired him that he could be so strong.
Bowden, who did not seize the significance of the question as
quickly as the woman, saw only the ridicule that would face him in
a marriage with a woman whose intrigues had been common gossip. The
fear of ridicule gave him a touch of courage which nothing else
could have aroused. He broke out furiously:
“This is too ridiculous--and it’s none of your business!”
“Bowden, look out!” said Garford, beginning to grow hot. “Do you
mean to tell me that when I eliminate myself you refuse to marry
her?”
“I refuse,” he said doggedly; at which the woman swung about,
mortally humiliated, and gave him a look of undying hatred.
“You refuse?” said Garford between his teeth.
“I do.”
“Then, just what have you been doing here, Mr. Bowden?” he said
slowly, and gradually, with his eyes on the other, his feet crept
over the rug. All at once he saw red, caught the young man as he
turned to escape, and, his hands at his throat, bent him backward
over the table as though he had been a straw. Louise, even at such
a moment with the dread of society before her eyes, was shrieking:
“Don’t kill him; don’t kill him, Dan!”
Bowden’s eyes began to bulge and his face to go purple. He made a
frantic sign of surrender and fell choking to the floor.
“Well?” said Garford.
“I will--anything--anything!”
“Within forty-eight hours after my name is freed, you marry this
woman! What she does from then on will be on your name--not mine.”
He looked a moment, even with a fierce leap of triumph, at the
cringing body of the man who had humiliated him in his secret
pride. “I’m not going to take any promises from you--but I think
you understand now what I will do if my orders are not carried out
to the hour!” And as Bowden made no answer, he put out his foot in
a crowning insult and stirred the abject body. “Do you?”
“Yes; yes!”
“Good!” He turned to the woman, who had waited this outcome in
stubborn terror. “I have made certain investigations. Would you
like your future husband to know what I know?”
“Quite unnecessary,” she said, looking down.
“That means you will do exactly as I say.”
She nodded.
“As for what you are thinking,” he said, with a final quixotic
disdain, “don’t worry. You will not need for money. The day after
your marriage, I will settle my income on you.” And as she looked
up with a start she couldn’t restrain, he added, with a scornful
gesture of his thumb at Bowden: “I am buying him for you--to keep
my name clean!”