"Don't you--don't you make me forget myself;" she cried, breathlessly.
"It seems to me," observed Page, quietly, "that you've done that long
since, yourself."
Laura flung the crop down and folded her arms.
"Now," she cried, her eyes blazing and rivetted upon Page's. "Now, just
what do you mean? Sit down," she commanded, flinging a hand towards a
chair, "sit down, and tell me just what you mean by all this."
But Page remained standing. She met her sister's gaze without wavering.
"Do you want me to believe," she answered, "that it made no difference
to you that Mr. Corthell's match safe was here?"
"Not the least," exclaimed Laura. "Not the least."
"Then why did you search for it so when you came in? I was not asleep
all of the time. I saw you."
"Because," answered Laura, "because--I--because--" Then all at once she
burst out afresh: "Have I got to answer to you for what I do? Have I
got to explain? All your life long you've pretended to judge your
sister. Now you've gone too far. Now I forbid it--from this day on.
What I do is my affair; I'll ask nobody's advice. I'll do as I please,
do you understand?" The tears sprang to her eyes, the sobs strangled in
her throat. "I'll do as I please, as I please," and with the words she
sank down in the chair by her desk and struck her bare knuckles again
and again upon the open lid, crying out through her tears and her sobs,
and from between her tight-shut teeth: "I'll do as I please, do you
understand? As I please, as I please! I will be happy. I will, I will,
I will!"
"Oh, darling, dearest--" cried Page, running forward. But Laura, on her
feet once more, thrust her back.
"Don't touch me," she cried. "I hate you!" She put her fists to her
temples and, her eyes closed, rocked herself to and fro. "Don't you
touch me. Go away from me; go away from me. I hate you; I hate you all.
I hate this house, I hate this life. You are all killing me. Oh, my
God, if I could only die!"
She flung herself full length upon the couch, face downward. Her sobs
shook her from head to foot.
Page knelt at her side, an arm about her shoulder, but to all her
sister's consolations Laura, her voice muffled in her folded arms, only
cried:
"Let me alone, let me alone. Don't touch me."
For a time Page tried to make herself heard; then, after a moment's
reflection, she got up and drew out the pin in Laura's hat. She took
off the hat, loosened the scarf around Laura's neck, and then deftly,
silently, while her sister lay inert and sobbing beneath her hands,
removed the stiff, tight riding-habit. She brought a towel dipped in
cold water from the adjoining room and bathed Laura's face and hands.
But her sister would not be comforted, would not respond to her
entreaties or caresses. The better part of an hour went by; Page,
knowing her sister's nature, in the end held her peace, waiting for the
paroxysm to wear itself out.
After a while Laura's weeping resolved itself into long, shuddering
breaths, and at length she managed to say, in a faint, choked voice:
"Will you bring me the cologne from my dressing-table, honey? My head
aches so."
And, as Page ran towards the door, she added: "And my hand mirror, too.
Are my eyes all swollen?"
And that was the last word upon the subject between the two sisters.
But the evening of the same day, between eight and nine o'clock, while
Laura was searching the shelves of the library for a book with which to
while away the long evening that she knew impended, Corthell's card was
brought to her.
"I am not at home," she told the servant. "Or--wait," she added. Then,
after a moment's thought, she said: "Very well. Show him in here."
Laura received the artist, standing very erect and pale upon the great
white rug before the empty fireplace. Her hands were behind her back
when he came in, and as he crossed the room she did not move.
"I was not going to see you at first," she said. "I told the servant I
was not at home. But I changed my mind--I wanted to say something to
you."
He stood at the other end of the fireplace, an elbow upon an angle of
the massive mantel, and as she spoke the last words he looked at her
quickly. As usual, they were quite alone. The heavy, muffling curtain
of the doorway shut them in effectually.
"I have something to say to you," continued Laura. Then, quietly
enough, she said:
"You must not come to see me any more."
He turned abruptly away from her, and for a moment did not speak. Then
at last, his voice low, he faced her again and asked:
"Have I offended?"
She shook her head.
"No," he said, quietly. "No, I knew it was not that." There was a long
silence. The artist looked at the floor his hand slowly stroking the
back of one of the big leather chairs.
"I knew it must come," he answered, at length, "sooner or later. You
are right--of course. I should not have come back to America. I should
not have believed that I was strong enough to trust myself. Then"--he
looked at her steadily. His words came from his lips one by one, very
slowly. His voice was hardly more than a whisper. "Then, I am--never to
see you--again... Is that it?"
"Yes."
"Do you know what that means for me?" he cried. "Do you realise--" he
drew in his breath sharply. "Never to see you again! To lose even the
little that is left to me now. I--I--" He turned away quickly and
walked to a window and stood a moment, his back turned, looking out,
his hands clasped behind him. Then, after a long moment, he faced
about. His manner was quiet again, his voice very low.
"But before I go," he said, "will you answer me, at least, this--it can
do no harm now that I am to leave you--answer me, and I know you will
speak the truth: Are you happy, Laura?"
She closed her eyes.
"You have not the right to know."
"You are not happy," he declared. "I can see it, I know it. If you
were, you would have told me so.... If I promise you," he went on. "If
I promise you to go away now, and never to try to see you again, may I
come once more--to say good-by?"
She shook her head.
"It is so little for you to grant," he pleaded, "and it is so
incalculably much for me to look forward to in the little time that yet
remains. I do not even ask to see you alone. I will not harass you with
any heroics."
"Oh, what good will it do," she cried, wearily, "for you to see me
again? Why will you make me more unhappy than I am? Why did you come
back?"
"Because," he answered, steadily, "because I love you more than"--he
partly raised a clenched fist and let it fall slowly upon the back of
the chair, "more than any other consideration in the world."
"Don't!" she cried. "You must not. Never, never say that to me again.
Will you go--please?"
"Oh, if I had not gone from you four years ago!" he cried. "If I had
only stayed then! Not a day of my life since that I have not regretted
it. You could have loved me then. I know it, I know it, and, God
forgive me, but I know you could love me now--"
"Will you go?" she cried.
"I dare you to say you could not," he flashed out
Laura shut her eyes and put her hands over her ears. "I could not, I
could not," she murmured, monotonously, over and over again. "I could
not, I could not."
She heard him start suddenly, and opened her eyes in time to see him
come quickly towards her. She threw out a defensive hand, but he caught
the arm itself to him and, before she could resist, had kissed it again
and again through the interstices of the lace sleeve. Upon her bare
shoulder she felt the sudden passion of his lips.
A quick, sharp gasp, a sudden qualm of breathlessness wrenched through
her, to her very finger tips, with a fierce leap of the blood, a wild
bound of the heart.
She tore back from him with a violence that rent away the lace upon her
arm, and stood off from him, erect and rigid, a fine, delicate,
trembling vibrating through all her being. On her pale cheeks the
colour suddenly flamed.
"Go, go," was all she had voice to utter.
"And may I see you once more--only once?"
"Yes, yes, anything, only go, go--if you love me!"
He left the room. In another moment she heard the front door close.
"Curtis," said Laura, when next she saw her husband, "Curtis, you could
not--stay with me, that last time. Remember? When we were to go for a
drive. Can you spend this evening with me? Just us two, here at
home--or I'll go out with you. I'll do anything you say." She looked at
him steadily an instant. "It is not--not easy for a woman to ask--for
me to ask favours like this. Each time I tell myself it will be the
last. I am--you must remember this, Curtis, I am--perhaps I am a little
proud. Don't you see?"
They were at breakfast table again. It was the morning after Laura had
given Corthell his dismissal. As she spoke Jadwin brought his hand down
upon the table with a bang.
"You bet I will," he exclaimed; "you bet I'll stay with you to-night.
Business can go to the devil! And we won't go out either; we'll stay
right here. You get something to read to me, and we'll have one of our
old evenings again. We--"
All at once Jadwin paused, laid down his knife and fork, and looked
strangely to and fro about the room.
"We'll have one of our old evenings again," he repeated, slowly.
"What is it, Curtis?" demanded his wife. "What is the matter?"
"Oh--nothing," he answered.
"Why, yes there was. Tell me."
"No, no. I'm all right now," he returned, briskly enough.
"No," she insisted. "You must tell me. Are you sick?"
He hesitated a moment. Then:
"Sick?" he queried. "No, indeed. But--I'll tell you. Since a few days
I've had," he put his fingers to his forehead between his eyes, "I've
had a queer sensation right there. It comes and goes."
"A headache?"
"N-no. It's hard to describe. A sort of numbness. Sometimes it's as
though there was a heavy iron cap--a helmet on my head. And sometimes
it--I don't know it seems as if there were fog, or something or other,
inside. I'll take a good long rest this summer, as soon as we can get
away. Another month or six weeks, and I'll have things ship-shape and
so as I can leave them. Then we'll go up to Geneva, and, by Jingo, I'll
loaf." He was silent for a moment, frowning, passing his hand across
his forehead and winking his eyes. Then, with a return of his usual
alertness, he looked at his watch.
"Hi!" he exclaimed. "I must be off. I won't be home to dinner to-night.
But you can expect me by eight o'clock, sure. I promise I'll be here on
the minute."
But, as he kissed his wife good-by, Laura put her arms about his neck.
"Oh, I don't want you to leave me at all, ever, ever! Curtis, love me,
love me always, dear. And be thoughtful of me and kind to me. And
remember that you are all I have in the world; you are father and
mother to me, and my dear husband as well. I know you do love me; but
there are times--Oh," she cried, suddenly "if I thought you did not
love me--love me better than anything, anything--I could not love you;
Curtis, I could not, I could not. No, no," she cried, "don't interrupt.
Hear me out. Maybe it is wrong of me to feel that way, but I'm only a
woman, dear. I love you but I love Love too. Women are like that; right
or wrong, weak or strong, they must be--must be loved above everything
else in the world. Now go, go to your business; you mustn't be late.
Hark, there is Jarvis with the team. Go now. Good-by, good-by, and I'll
expect you at eight."
True to his word, Jadwin reached his home that evening promptly at the
promised hour. As he came into the house, however, the door-man met him
in the hall, and, as he took his master's hat and stick, explained that
Mrs. Jadwin was in the art gallery, and that she had said he was to
come there at once.
Laura had planned a little surprise. The art gallery was darkened. Here
and there behind the dull-blue shades a light burned low. But one of
the movable reflectors that were used to throw a light upon the
pictures in the topmost rows was burning brilliantly. It was turned
from Jadwin as he entered, and its broad cone of intense white light
was thrown full upon Laura, who stood over against the organ in the
full costume of "Theodora."
For an instant Jadwin was taken all aback.
"What the devil!" he ejaculated, stopping short in the doorway.
Laura ran forward to him, the chains, ornaments, and swinging pendants
chiming furiously as she moved.
"I did surprise you, I did surprise you," she laughed. "Isn't it
gorgeous?" She turned about before him, her arms raised. "Isn't it
superb? Do you remember Bernhardt--and that scene in the Emperor
Justinian's box at the amphitheatre? Say now that your wife isn't
beautiful. I am, am I not?" she exclaimed defiantly, her head raised.
"Say it, say it."
"Well, what for a girl!" gasped Jadwin, "to get herself up--"
"Say that I am beautiful," commanded Laura.
"Well, I just about guess you are," he cried.
"The most beautiful woman you have ever known?" she insisted. Then on
the instant added: "Oh, I may be really as plain as a kitchen-maid, but
you must believe that I am not. I would rather be ugly and have you
think me beautiful, than to be the most beautiful woman in the world
and have you think me plain. Tell me--am I not the most beautiful woman
you ever saw?"
"The most beautiful I ever saw," he repeated, fervently. "But--Lord,
what will you do next? Whatever put it into your head to get into this
rig?"
"Oh, I don't know. I just took the notion. You've seen me in every one
of my gowns. I sent down for this, this morning, just after you left.
Curtis, if you hadn't made me love you enough to be your wife, Laura
Dearborn would have been a great actress. I feel it in my finger tips.
Ah!" she cried, suddenly flinging up her head till the pendants of the
crown clashed again. "I could have been magnificent. You don't believe
it. Listen. This is Athalia--the queen in the Old Testament, you
remember."
"Hold on," he protested. "I thought you were this Theodora person."
"I know--but never mind. I am anything I choose. Sit down; listen. It's
from Racine's 'Athalie,' and the wicked queen has had this terrible
dream of her mother Jezabel. It's French, but I'll make you see."
And "taking stage," as it were, in the centre of the room, Laura began:
"Son ombre vers mon lit a paru se baisser Et moi, je lui tendais les
mains pour l'embrasser; Mais je n'ai plus trouve q'un horrible melange
D'os et de chair meurtris et traines dans la fange, Des lambeaux pleins
de sang, et des membres affreux Que les chiens d'evorants se
disputaient entre eux."
"Great God!" exclaimed Jadwin, ignorant of the words yet, in spite of
himself, carried away by the fury and passion of her rendering.
Laura struck her palms together.
"Just what 'Abner' says," she cried. "The very words."
"Abner?"
"In the play. I knew I could make you feel it."
"Well, well," murmured her husband, shaking his head, bewildered even
yet. "Well, it's a strange wife I've got here."
"When you've realised that," returned Laura, "you've just begun to
understand me."
Never had he seen her gayer. Her vivacity was bewildering.
"I wish," she cried, all at once, "I wish I had dressed as 'Carmen,'
and I would have danced for you. Oh, and you could have played the air
for me on the organ. I have the costume upstairs now. Wait! I will, I
will! Sit right where you are--no, fix the attachment to the organ
while I'm gone. Oh, be gay with me to-night," she cried, throwing her
arms around him. "This is my night, isn't it? And I am to be just as
foolish as I please."
With the words she ran from the room, but was back in an incredibly
short time, gowned as Bizet's cigarette girl, a red rose in her black
hair, castanets upon her fingers.
Jadwin began the bolero.
"Can you see me dance, and play at the same time?"
"Yes, yes. Go on. How do you know anything about a Spanish dance?"
"I learned it long ago. I know everything about anything I choose,
to-night. Play, play it _fast_."
She danced as though she would never tire, with the same force of
passion that she had thrown into Athalie. Her yellow skirt was a flash
of flame spurting from the floor, and her whole body seemed to move
with the same wild, untamed spirit as a tongue of fire. The castanets
snapped like the crackling of sparks; her black mantilla was a hovering
cloud of smoke. She was incarnate flame, capricious and riotous,
elusive and dazzling.
Then suddenly she tossed the castanets far across the room and dropped
upon the couch, panting and laughing.
"There," she cried, "now I feel better. That had to come out. Come over
here and sit by me. Now, maybe you'll admit that I can dance too."
"You sure can," answered Jadwin, as she made a place for him among the
cushions. "That was wonderful. But, at the same time, old girl, I
wouldn't--wouldn't--"
"Wouldn't what?"
"Well, do too much of that. It's sort of over-wrought--a little, and
unnatural. I like you best when you are your old self, quiet, and calm,
and dignified. It's when you are quiet that you are at your best. I
didn't know you had this streak in you. You are that excitable
to-night!"
"Let me be so then. It's myself, for the moment whatever it is. But now
I'll be quiet. Now we'll talk. Have you had a hard day? Oh, and did
your head bother you again?"
"No, things were a little easier down town to-day. But that queer
feeling in my head did come back as I was coming home--and my head
aches a little now, besides."
"Your head aches!" she exclaimed. "Let me do something for it. And I've
been making it worse with all my foolishness."
"No, no; that's all right," he assured her. "I tell you what we'll do.
I'll lie down here a bit, and you play something for me. Something
quiet. I get so tired down there in La Salle Street, Laura, you don't
know."
And while he stretched out at full length upon the couch, his wife, at
the organ, played the music she knew he liked best--old songs, "Daisy
Dean," "Lord Lovell," "When Stars Are in the Quiet Sky," and "Open Thy
Lattice to Me."
When at length she paused, he nodded his head with pleasure.
"That's pretty," he said. "Ah, that is blame pretty. Honey, it's just
like medicine to me," he continued, "to lie here, quiet like this, with
the lights low, and have my dear girl play those old, old tunes. My old
governor, Laura, used to play that 'Open the Lattice to me,' that and
'Father, oh, Father, Come Home with me Now'--used to play 'em on his
fiddle." His arm under his head, he went on, looking vaguely at the
opposite wall. "Lord love me, I can see that kitchen in the old
farmhouse as plain! The walls were just logs and plaster, and there
were upright supports in each corner, where we used to measure our
heights--we children. And the fireplace was there," he added, gesturing
with his arm, "and there was the wood box, and over here was an old
kind of dresser with drawers, and the torty-shell cat always had her
kittens under there. Honey, I was happy then. Of course I've got you
now, and that's all the difference in the world. But you're the only
thing that does make a difference. We've got a fine place and a mint of
money I suppose--and I'm proud of it. But I don't know.... If they'd
let me be and put us two--just you and me--back in the old house with
the bare floors and the rawhide chairs and the shuck beds, I guess we'd
manage. If you're happy, you're happy; that's about the size of it. And
sometimes I think that we'd be happier--you and I--chumming along
shoulder to shoulder, poor an' working hard, than making big money an'
spending big money, why--oh, I don't know ... if you're happy, that's
the thing that counts, and if all this stuff," he kicked out a careless
foot at the pictures, the heavy hangings, the glass cabinets of
bibelots, "if all this stuff stood in the way of it--well--it could go
to the devil! That's not poetry maybe, but it's the truth."
Laura came over to where her husband lay, and sat by him, and took his
head in her lap, smoothing his forehead with her long white hands.
"Oh, if I could only keep you like this always," she murmured. "Keep
you untroubled, and kind, and true. This is my husband again. Oh, you
are a man, Curtis; a great, strong, kind-hearted man, with no little
graces, nor petty culture, nor trivial fine speeches, nor false sham,
imitation polish. I love you. Ah, I love you, love you, dear!"
"Old girl!" said Jadwin, stroking her hand.
"Do you want me to read to you now?" she asked.
"Just this is pretty good, it seems to me."
As he spoke, there came a step in the hall and a knock.
Laura sat up, frowning.
"I told them I was not to be disturbed," she exclaimed under her
breath. Then, "Come in," she called.
"Mr. Gretry, sir," announced the servant. "Said he wished to see you at
once, sir."
"Tell him," cried Laura, turning quickly to Jadwin, "tell him you're
not at home--that you can't see him."
"I've got to see him," answered Jadwin, sitting up. "He wouldn't come
here himself unless it was for something important."
"Can I come in, J.?" spoke the broker, from the hall. And even through
the thick curtains they could hear how his voice rang with excitement
and anxiety.
"Can I come in? I followed the servant right up, you see. I know--"
"Yes, yes. Come in," answered Jadwin. Laura, her face flushing, threw a
fold of the couch cover over her costume as Gretry, his hat still on
his head, stepped quickly into the room.
Jadwin met him half way, and Laura from her place on the couch heard
the rapidly spoken words between the general and his lieutenant.
"Now we're in for it!" Gretry exclaimed.
"Yes--well?" Jadwin's voice was as incisive and quick as the fall of an
axe.
"I've just found out," said Gretry, "that Crookes and his crowd are
going to take hold to-morrow. There'll be hell to pay in the morning.
They are going to attack us the minute the gong goes."
"Who's with them?"
"I don't know; nobody does. Sweeny, of course. But he has a gang back
of him--besides, he's got good credit with the banks. I told you you'd
have to fight him sooner or later."
"Well, we'll fight him then. Don't get scared. Crookes ain't the Great
Mogul."
"Holy Moses, I'd like to know who is, then."
"_I_ am. And he's got to know it. There's not room for Crookes and me
in this game. One of us two has got to control this market. If he gets
in my way, by God, I'll smash him!"
"Well, then, J., you and I have got to do some tall talking to-night.
You'd better come down to the Grand Pacific Hotel right away. Court is
there already. It was him, nervy little cuss, that found out about
Crookes. Can you come now, at once? Good evening, Mrs. Jadwin. I'm
sorry to take him from you, but business is business."
No, it was not. To the wife of the great manipulator, listening with a
sinking heart to this courier from the front, it was battle. The Battle
of the Streets was again in array. Again the trumpet sounded, again the
rush of thousands of feet filled all the air. Even here, here in her
home, her husband's head upon her lap, in the quiet and stillness of
her hour, the distant rumble came to her ears. Somewhere, far off there
in the darkness of the night, the great forces were manoeuvring for
position once more. To-morrow would come the grapple, and one or the
other must fall--her husband or the enemy. How keep him to herself when
the great conflict impended? She knew how the thunder of the captains
and the shoutings appealed to him. She had seen him almost leap to his
arms out of her embrace. He was all the man she had called him, and
less strong, less eager, less brave, she would have loved him less.
Yet she had lost him again, lost him at the very moment she believed
she had won him back.
"Don't go, don't go," she whispered to him, as he kissed her good-by.
"Oh, dearest, don't go! This was my evening."
"I must, I must, Laura. Good-by, old girl. Don't keep me--see, Sam is
waiting."
He kissed her hastily twice.
"Now, Sam," he said, turning toward the broker.
"Good night, Mrs. Jadwin."
"Good-by, old girl."
They turned toward the door.
"You see, young Court was down there at the bank, and he noticed that
checks--"
The voices died away as the hangings of the entrance fell to place. The
front door clashed and closed.
Laura sat upright in her place, listening, one fist pressed against her
lips.
There was no more noise. The silence of the vast empty house widened
around her at the shutting of the door as the ripples widen on a pool
with the falling of the stone. She crushed her knuckles tighter and
tighter over her lips, she pressed her fingers to her eyes, she slowly
clasped and reclasped her hands, listening for what she did not know.
She thought of her husband hurrying away from her, ignoring her, and
her love for him in the haste and heat of battle. She thought of
Corthell, whom she had sent from her, forever, shutting his love from
out her life.
Crushed, broken, Laura laid herself down among the cushions, her face
buried in her arm. Above her and around her rose the dimly lit gallery,
lowering with luminous shadows. Only a point or two of light
illuminated the place. The gold frames of the pictures reflected it
dully; the massive organ pipes, just outlined in faint blurs of light,
towered far into the gloom above. The whole place, with its half-seen
gorgeous hangings, its darkened magnificence, was like a huge, dim
interior of Byzantium.
Lost, beneath the great height of the dome, and in the wide reach of
the floor space, in her foolish finery of bangles, silks, high comb,
and little rosetted slippers, Laura Jadwin lay half hidden among the
cushions of the couch. If she wept, she wept in silence, and the
muffling stillness of the lofty gallery was broken but once, when a
cry, half whisper, half sob, rose to the deaf, blind darkness:
"Oh, now I am alone, alone, alone!"