MRS. LAITHE IS ENLIGHTENED
He stood just inside the door, hat in hand, regarding the scene with a
look that was troubled yet cool. She felt her way cautiously back to a
chair, afraid of fainting, and grasped it for support. Finding that her
hand still clutched the dagger, she dropped it with a shudder of
disgust.
Ewing shrewdly noted where the dagger fell, then his eyes flashed to
Teevan. There was a stain of blood on the silken shirt, and the little
man was staring down at this, incredulous.
"By God! she meant it!" he muttered. Then his eyes rose to meet Ewing's,
and a look of sudden malignance blazed into them.
"So you've come!" The cry, like the look, was full of hate. "You've come
in time, you whelp! Now you'll hear something you might have heard that
first night when I had to fuddle you with tales of a seizure. Now you'll
know----"
But the woman started toward him with a suddenness that broke his
speech.
"If you tell him he'll kill you--" The words came with a quick,
whispering intensity, and there was a rapt, almost rejoicing look on her
face, as of one eager for the deed.
Teevan looked scornfully to Ewing again, but was chilled by a certain
sharp, cold light in his eyes, the look of one alert and ready. His
words gave meaning to this look.
"If you tell me, I'll kill you," said Ewing. The sentence was evenly
uttered, and the tone was low, almost deferential, but the intention was
not to be mistaken.
Teevan laughed, flourishing a gesture of scorn for the threat.
"I'm no coward"--but he broke off, waiting, watching, with fear in his
eyes.
"I'll take this," said Ewing. He lifted the portrait tenderly from the
chair and thrust it under his arm with a protecting movement. Teevan
stared at this with an air of fine disdain, but did not speak.
The woman had been waiting for his words with parted lips. Now she
breathed a long, trembling sigh of relief and turned to Ewing.
"You see, he has nothing to say. Let us go."
He opened the door for her and closed it after them without looking
again at Teevan.
"There's a reason why I can't do it for you now," he said, as they went
down the stairs. She wondered what he could mean, but was too little
alive to ask. When they reached the street she became at once interested
in a belated laborer going home with a loosely tied bundle over his
shoulder, odds and ends of small boards, refuse from some building. He
whistled in a tired way as he trudged on, not looking at them. She felt
pleased at the thought that his wife was going to have wood with which
to cook the poor fellow's supper. The dark was fast gathering, but
children still romped in the street. An elderly stout man passed, his
hat off, wielding a palm-leaf fan. She was surprised at this, for the
outer air had fallen on her with icy clutch, making her draw the scarf
more closely about her.
Ewing would have left her at her door, but she urged him to go in. She
took him to sit in the unlighted library, and there, when he could no
longer see her face, he was astounded to hear her talk of her girlhood,
her schooldays, of the few people they knew in common, of Piersoll's new
book, of her brother's ranch life; of a score of little gossipy matters
that would occur to the untroubled mind in a twilight chat. But when he
rose to go after a little time, she was in an instant wild panic of
protest, seizing one of his hands with a convulsive grip. He covered her
poor hand with his own and regarded her with pity. She lifted her face
to him with a sudden wild entreaty for shelter. "Oh, stay with
me--stay--stay--and comfort me. I am so ill, and I--I would comfort
you." He soothed her as best he could, protesting that he would stay,
and in a few moments she was talking cheerfully of Kensington and of
Virginia. She tried to amuse him with tales of Virginia's childhood--how
she had been such a droll and merry little creature. She still retained
his hand, gripping it with an intensity through which he could feel the
quivering of her whole body.
Only once did she refer to Teevan. "Please don't see him again," she
urged. "Promise me, promise never to let him tell you--anything. Please,
please promise that!"
Believing she pleaded for herself, he felt that old longing to lift her
in his arms and show her there without words how little she had to fear.
But he controlled himself to answer simply, "I promise; I'll never let
him speak to me again. Don't be afraid; he shall never say anything to
me."
Her father came in presently, grumbling about the lack of light as he
stumbled against a chair. He let it be known that he had returned to the
city in some alarm about her, inspired by a letter from her aunt. She
hastily assured him that she was well--never better. But he demurred at
her remaining longer in town.
"You'll have to get out, daughter. It's beastly unpleasant doing those
slum things in summer. You need life and gayety. You come with me and
dance, play bridge, swim, sail--enjoy yourself with your own kind for a
while. You're going on Tom Neville's yacht to-morrow. He's to pick us up
about noon with Randy Teevan."
"Will he be there?" she asked.
"He will, and he'll be one of a jolly crowd that will 'liven you up.
Here's Clarence--he must come, too."
Her brother had felt his way through the darkness, and before she
guessed his intention he had found one of the electric lights and turned
it on. She shrank back with a strange, smothered cry, under the sudden
light, her hand before her face as if to ward off invisible horrors, her
eyes staring at them under it, wild with appeal. They were speechless
for the moment, alarmed by her manifest illness, her frightened, haggard
face, in which the fever raged. Her brother was the first to speak,
going to her and taking the blind, defending hand she had put out. She
clung to him when she felt his touch, but turned her face away.
"See here, Nell," he began, in tones of savage decision, "no yachting
trip for you, my girl. 'Twon't do, governor, you can see that for
yourself. But I'll tell you what she's going to do--she's going to pack
up and go back to the mountains with me and stay there till she's well."
She still clung to him, drawing his arms around her with an effect of
hiding.
"Yes, yes, that's it--let's go there--out where there's room. It's
stifling here. Have you noticed how curiously stifling it is? Too many
people, dead people and live people, and all hobnobbing. We must get
away, brother."
"You hear that, dad? She'll go back with me. How soon, Nell?--I say, how
soon?" he repeated, for she had not seemed to hear him.
"How soon?" She raised her eyes to them with sudden intelligence, then
sprang wildly to her feet.
"Oh, soon, at once!--Well, not to-night, perhaps,"--she sank back
again--"but to-morrow, next day. We'll all go. Mr. Ewing is going." Her
eyes rested on Ewing a moment, then, with a difficult smile, she turned
to her brother. "And Virgie must go, too. Telegraph her to-night. She'll
make us gay, she'll make us--as we used to be. We couldn't go without
Virgie. She will--comfort us."
"She'll go, too, Sis. It's all right. I'll telegraph. But what are you
afraid of? You'll be a well woman there in a month."
"Afraid--I afraid?" She looked up at him in wonder. "I don't know. Oh,
yes I do. Why, I just tried to kill--I've just killed--killed a hundred
people--killed----"
"Good Lord--there--she's fainted! Get some water and a drop of brandy,
dad!"
"Poor child--it's so fearfully unpleasant," murmured Bartell as he came
back with a glass and decanter. "It's that tenement house thing that's
got on her nerves."
"An unpleasant business," returned his father, "all that rot--mighty
unpleasant!"
Ewing waited in the outer room until he heard the broken murmur of her
voice and knew that she had recovered. Then he went quickly out, the
portrait under his arm. He had the feeling that it had been contaminated
by Teevan's touch.
He began dismantling his studio that night. He stopped in the work once
to look out over the roofs, glowing luridly under a half moon. This was
because the pleading of the woman still rang in his ears--"Don't let him
tell you anything"--and the whole entreating look of her flashed back to
him. Then the big, slow tears of pity gathered in his eyes to set the
chimney pots dancing before him.
"If only I hadn't owed him money!" he muttered, beside himself with pity
and hatred.
It was not until the day before they started West that Mrs. Laithe
learned the secret of this pity of Ewing's that had so puzzled her.
Alden Teevan begged a moment with her in the afternoon of that day, and
she, sunk in the languor of her sickness, received him where she lay, in
her own sitting-room.
He swept her with a long, knowing look as he entered, reading, she saw,
the truth about her condition.
"I'd gladly go with you, Nell," he began--"let my own walls close at the
same time." But she would have no bald admissions.
"I'm not going, Alden--I'm only a bit run down. I shall pick up in a
month out there." He detected her insincerity but only smiled in a hurt
way.
"That's one of your rules of the game, isn't it, to keep up the
pretense? Of course I can't expect you to break rules for me." She faced
him stanchly, looking denial.
"But I must tell you something," he went on quickly, "something horrible
and absurd and unbelievable." She listened, and grew faint in an agony
of unbelief, while he told her what had inspired Ewing's behavior the
night before. She made him repeat it, testing each detail, weighing its
credibility against Ewing's inexperience; dazedly trying to see herself
as he must see her now. Alden Teevan regarded her with quickening
sympathy.
"It wasn't a pretty thing to do, Nell, but I saw he had some deviltry
afoot, and I got it from him--I half choked and half wheedled it from
him. Fortunately he was drunk or I couldn't have got it either way. But
now you know. It began, as nearly as I could gather, one night last
spring when Ewing saw you leaving the house. The vain little fool
guessed he'd seen you, and told him the tale about a woman who'd been
harassing him because he was trying to break off an affair with her."
"I remember----"
"And then last night----"
"Last night--ah, last night!" She laughed weakly, recalling the scene
that had met Ewing's eyes, perceiving what he must have thought. "I'd
have done it for you," she heard him say again, and shuddered. She
recalled, too, her own later urging, "Never let him tell you anything."
How pitiful she must have seemed to him, and how monstrous! She laughed
again wildly, suddenly struck by the cunning of this satire on truth.
Alden Teevan recalled her from the picture.
"It was like him, wasn't it, Nell?--like both of them--like him to say
it, and like the other to believe. But the harm can be undone. You can
explain--a word or two."
She stared at him in sudden consternation. It had flashed upon her that
no half truth would satisfy Ewing. She knew she would be unequal to any
adequate fiction; she would falter and he would see to the heart of her
lie. She must let him think as he did--or blacken his dearest memory.
But to Alden Teevan she only said:
"Ah, yes--a word will explain--and I'm so grateful to you." She was
wondering then if she were glad or sorry that he had told her. She might
have lived out her time without knowing, she thought.
"Of course, if you'd like me to tell him, Nell----"
"No, no, Alden, thank you; but that's for me."
They had not spoken Ewing's name, but his concern in the matter, the
meaning of his faith in the woman, was a matter that seemed to lie open
to them both. Alden Teevan had assumed it and she had made no denial.
His recognition of it colored his leave-taking.
"All happiness for you, Nell. The game ought to be worth playing with
you--and with him. You both live so hard." He found it difficult to say
as little, there was such gratitude and such misery in her eyes as they
fell before his, trying to veil at least a part of what she felt. But he
left her so.
She lay a long time trying to realize Ewing in this new light. She had
never read anything in his eyes but the fullest devotion, and yet for
months he had believed this sinister thing. She caught again his young,
sorry, protesting look, and the poignancy of it brought her tears.
There came into the tenderness she had felt for him something of awe for
his unquestioning allegiance, a thing that had not wavered under the
worst he could believe. Then the monstrous absurdity of what he did
believe came upon her once more and she laughed; but her tears still
fell. And so, with laughter and tears, she set him up anew in her heart,
her beloved child and her terrible master. She was glad now that she
knew. It made him more to her. And the time would be so short.