THE FULFILLING OF THE LAW
Three years had passed since Boston society was shaken to its depths by
hearing of the elopement of one of its adored and admired favorites.
Most people were left frankly baffled by the shock, and could offer
neither excuse nor explanation. Mrs. Philip Morley was universally
loved, and her husband was universally liked and respected, yet this
inexplicable thing had happened,--and society slowly got on its feet
again, dazed by the blow it had received, rubbed its bewildered eyes,
and continued to love the wife and like the husband. Of course there
were the inevitable few who “always suspected something queer about the
girl.” Miss Milton expressed surprise only that Mrs. Morley had not
disgraced herself and her poor husband sooner. “I have often noticed,”
she proclaimed solemnly, “that girls who have not been brought up in
Boston are very apt to do something queer sooner or later. That young
woman had too good manners. She was unlike Boston people. I always knew
she’d drag the Morley name in the mud.” The only people who did not
discuss and wonder and exclaim were the two most interested,--Philip
Morley and Mary Elton. After the long interview in which he was told
the truth, Edith’s name was never mentioned between them. Philip had
understood his wife, and did not need Mary’s assurances that Edith had
not an evil trait in her nature. “Don’t I know that?” he had said,
his tense face drawn with suffering. “The poor child was not like a
human being, for all her lovable human qualities. She was like some
wonderful and mysterious force of nature,--electricity, or the rushing
torrent,--waiting for the hand of man to control and make the best use
of it. Perhaps it was my fault that I did not know how to handle such a
strange and subtle element.”
“It was her parents’ fault that they made her what she was!” Mary
cried, with an angry sob accentuating her scorn. “I am sure that she
started life a human child like the rest of us, only with more goodness
and sweetness and beauty than is the lot of most,--and what did that
Southern father and Catholic mother do to her, but divest her of her
individuality, tear out her soul and make her over again, a mechanical
doll to obey the strongest will! She is not responsible for her acts.
I can only thank Fortune, that having been deprived of the possibility
of doing and thinking for herself, the power of suffering keenly and
feeling deeply was taken from her also.”
“Oh, what will be her end!” Philip had groaned, covering his eyes from
the mental picture they had conjured out of his imagination.
“I suppose--for her sake--you will divorce her,” Mary said, with
evident disgust. “That hound will think he is showing Southern
chivalry by marrying her. From my point of view it doesn’t matter one
iota whether she is divorced or not,--whether she is his wife or his
mistress. It is all the same. She doesn’t want to be either.”
Philip pushed back his chair abruptly. “If you ever hear anything from
Edith, or about her, please let me know, Mary. My life is broken in
two, but that is not so bad as the feeling that I unconsciously broke
hers. I did not understand--I loved her so tremendously at first,--and
then, slowly, it came to me that there was nothing to love--nothing
to hate.” His voice dropped. “It--it was terrible! Poor, radiant,
beautiful Edith! My poor ill-omened opal! What a life,--Heavens, what a
life!--and perhaps my fault.”
Mary stood beside him, calm and white. “No, Philip, mine. I brought you
together. I encouraged your marriage; and, worse than all, I refused
to give help and sympathy when it would have saved her life. I have
been wicked and stupid, and I deserve to suffer as I _shall_ suffer.
Oh, I shall, never fear.” Her mouth quavered, but she bit her lips into
subjection again. “I had more power over Edith than any other living
creature; and I was selfish and blind and did not use it for her good.
I shall be remorseful all my life; but some day she will come back,--it
will be to me that she will come,--and then you’ll see whether I’ll
help her!” There was courage in her voice, but hopelessness in her eyes.
Philip had gone his way, and taken up his ruined life and tried
to piece it together again. He faced the world, in silence but in
strength, and the dignity of his life and the strenuousness of his
work silenced alike whispers of gossip and whines of pity. He saw few
people outside of his business, his politics, his family, and his one
perfectly understanding friend. From her he received the old incentive
to being and doing which he had thought was lost to him forever, and
their friendship was too true and close to be heedful of the censures
of Mrs. Grundy,--whose home is in Boston, though she sometimes goes
away to pay visits.
Mary, meanwhile, was taking a sardonic satisfaction in what she called
“fulfilling her destiny.” She became absorbed in charities and immersed
in good works; clubs, classes, and committees took most of her time;
and in becoming the chief manager of a vacation house for over-worked
shop-girls, Mary declared she had attained her apotheosis.
She had heard once of Edith from a Boston friend who proved her right
to be popularly considered a Bohemian by living in Charles Street,
whence all but she had fled. This dauntless soul had gone to Italy soon
after Edith’s disappearance, and had one day found herself in a small
shop in Florence trying to make the man understand that she wished
to buy a pair of smoked glasses, when who should come in but Edith
Morley. “For a moment,” she wrote, “I stopped thinking, and in that
moment I rushed up to the dear creature and kissed her, just from pure
nervousness! She didn’t seem a bit surprised, nor a bit disconcerted.
She was the perfect lady she always was,--and, if anything, prettier
than ever. She asked with absolute naturalness about every one in
Boston,--you particularly,--and might have been traveling with Cook for
a chaperone, if it hadn’t been for one thing. She didn’t ask me to call
on her, and when she walked out of the shop with her goddess step, that
worm of a Lorimer crawled out of a crack in the pavement and joined
her.”
A condensed version of this meeting was sent by Mary to Philip; but,
true to the vows in their first interview, Edith’s name was not spoken
between them.
So the first three years of Edith’s absence passed. One afternoon in
January, Mary was sitting alone by the library fire. When her face was
in repose it showed lines of grief and hopelessness sad to see in a
woman of thirty. The mask of cheerfulness and courage with which she
faced and deceived the unthinking portion of her world, was laid aside
when she looked boldly into the past and future, as she was doing now.
A blazing fire images sad pictures, even though its snaps and crackles
are cheerful, and its warmth and light comforting. Mary’s meditations
were interrupted by the entrance of Philip Morley, cold and brisk from
a quick walk.
“You’re just the excuse I wanted for a cup of tea,” she said, as she
rang the bell. “I am feeling frightfully guilty over my failure to be
at a committee meeting this afternoon, and I really hadn’t the face to
reward myself with refreshments; but the case is different now. You
look half frozen, and politeness demands that I share your tea.” He
settled himself the other side of the fire, and waited silently till
the tea was made and the servant had gone. Then he said abruptly,--
“Why do you go in for so many charities, Mary? Do they really interest
you, or do you drug yourself with activities merely to kill thought?
You used to laugh so at the strenuousness of charity workers, yet here
you are one yourself.”
“Well, I laugh at myself,” Mary exclaimed bitterly. “Between ourselves,
most of my good works bore me to death; but unfortunately I have a
pretty good head for organizing,--so having failed in everything else,
I naturally wish to do something I can succeed in.”
“In what have you failed, Mary?”
“In the greatest vocation there is in life,--in friendship.” Her
face--with its disguise still thrown aside--retained its look of
hopeless tragedy, and her straight brows almost met.
“You must not say that!” Philip cried. “It is morbid and untrue. If it
had not been for you I should have sunk to earth under my burdens, but
I scorned to be a coward where a woman could show me such an example of
courage.”
“Don’t, Philip,--don’t, don’t!” Mary cried weakly. “I don’t deserve
it. You make me feel dreadfully.”
But Philip had risen, and stood in front of her, decided and relentless.
“Mary, five years ago you made me listen to you without interruption.
Now you must do the same for me. The time has come when I have got to
speak.”
She looked up at him, dreading and beseeching, but his expression of
determination conquered hers of appeal.
“Mary, five years ago you told me something that has affected my whole
life and my whole character more than you can know, more than I myself
realized at first. I would to Heaven you could tell me the same thing
now, since I was blind fool enough then not to be able to say to you
what I cannot help saying now.”
She put out her hands in dumb protest, but he paid no heed.
“Mary, I love you with all my heart and all my strength, and you
must and shall learn to say over again to me now what you were brave
enough to tell me once before. I have loved you, consciously and
completely, for nearly three years, but I could not speak before. I
know now that I have loved you always, but without realizing it. You
are my second self,--no, my first self, my better self. Whatever I
have done, whatever I may become, is _yours_, _yours_ utterly. I have
no thoughts that are not due to you, no wishes, no ambitions that are
not yours. When I was almost crushed to earth, and seemed to have
lost the power not only to do, but to feel, it was your strength, the
power of your principle that gave me a new start. Oh, Mary! The joy of
finding a rudder when I was adrift! The satisfaction of being steered
by conviction, instead of blown by every wind! It is to you I owe
everything.”
Mary looked up at him with trembling lips, the light of happiness
transfiguring her face into the semblance of real beauty.
“Are you speaking the truth?” she whispered. “You are not saying this
because of--of what I told you five years ago?”
The childlike appeal in her face made him kneel by her side and put a
protecting arm around the self-reliant back that had never yet bent
under its burdens.
“Mary, my dearest,” he whispered gently, “my whole life shall prove
that we were made for one another from the beginning. Perhaps we shall
realize it all the more for the suffering we have shared in the past.
We shall begin our lives over again side by side, happy and rich in
accomplishment, if you can give me back a little of the love I give to
you.”
Mary closed her eyes for a second, as if to nerve herself for her
reply. Then she rose, and clasped her hands behind her. “Philip, I
should like to make you realize, if it won’t make you unhappy in the
future, how my love for you has simply saved my life. It has been my
absorbing passion, my dream, yet my one reality. I haven’t dared to
think you cared for me--in the same way I have cared for you. It is
incredible. I’m so ugly, you know,” and she laughed as she had done
five years before. Then she looked at him with the motherly protection
he loved. “You _dear_ boy,” she went on, “you dear blessed old Philip!
You’ve given me enough happiness now to last me the rest of my life.
It’s like an inexhaustible deposit in a bank,--the sense of your love.
I shall keep drawing cheques on it,--and then perhaps some morning I’ll
hear that I’ve overdrawn my account, and that I’m bankrupt.”
“There’ll always be plenty more, dear,” Philip said tenderly. “My
heart is wholly yours, and I never realized before what a large heart I
had!”
“Oh, but _I_ knew!” Mary exclaimed, laughing happily. Then she grew
suddenly serious. “Philip, I’ve got to hurt you--I’ve got to seem
Quixotic and unreasonable, but after a while you’ll understand and
forgive, and perhaps even thank me.” She looked at him squarely but
gently. “I have loved you since I knew what it meant to love any one,
and I shall keep on loving you till my teeth drop out and my hair turns
gray. I do believe, now for the first time--that you care for me, and
the thought makes me inexpressibly happy, but I can _never_, _never_
marry you.”
Long experience had taught Philip not to exclaim at Mary’s vehement
statements, so he said quietly, “I thought you were above conventional
scruples. Besides, a legal divorce makes re-marriage with the--the one
who has not broken any vows, entirely lawful and proper.”
“Oh, I am not afraid of doing anything unlawful!” Mary cried, “and
certainly I should be doing quite the conventional and usual thing in
marrying a divorcé who is above reproach morally. I am not posing as a
model for others. I am not laying down laws for society. I merely say
that you are asking me to do something from which my whole moral nature
shrinks as an act of selfishness and disloyalty, although the impulsive
natural _me_ longs to jump into your arms and remain there always,
without fear or reproach.”
“Then follow your impulse, Mary,” he begged passionately. “Your heart
is leading you right this time, your conscience has become morbid and
diseased. There is not a living soul who could blame you for taking and
giving the happiness we have both so nearly missed. Prove yourself a
woman, dearest, not a thinking machine. Love is a matter of feeling,
not of cold analysis. Forget that you are a Bostonian, and for once
follow your inclinations, which are true and right.” He held out his
arms, but Mary only shook her head dumbly, and her dry lips formed the
words “I can’t.”
“Ah, you don’t really know what love is!” Philip cried cruelly,
striding over to the fireplace and turning his back on Mary’s quivering
look of appeal.
“Oh, yes I do. Love is the fulfilling of the law, Philip,” she almost
whispered. “St. Paul was not a Bostonian, he was a man of the world
and he knew what he was talking about. Oh, don’t you suppose I realize
that any definition of love sounds sententious and unfeeling!” she
interrupted herself stormily. “But by _law_ I don’t mean anything
legal. I merely mean that the only love worth giving is the fulfilling
of one’s own law of life, and if I married you I should be false to
myself and treacherous to Edith. Try to understand me, Philip. Don’t
make things harder than they _must_ be.”
She sank wearily into a chair, and obedient to her mood, he took his
old place on the other side of the fire.
“If things were different, Philip, I would rather be your wife than
anything else in the world,” she continued. “So far as we two are
concerned, I should be glad to live with you on any terms, legal or
illegal,--but you see the pity of it is there never _are_ only two
persons concerned. If I married you, I should be doing just what I
blame others for doing,--regarding my case as exceptional and making
excuses for what should not be excused. If I married you, I should
not blame any of the working girls I try to help and influence, for
doing what would be the equivalent of such an act in their own class.
My deed would give the lie to my words. It seems to me that mistakes
should be as punishable as sins, and we ought to be just as unable
to escape from their consequences. You committed the great error of
marrying Edith Dudley. I made the greater one of encouraging you, and
we must both pay the price of that error.”
“We have paid it,” he broke in vehemently. “We have paid it with
bitterness and sorrow. It is unjust for the consequences of a mistake
to be everlasting.”
“Philip, the consequences of a mistake _would_ be everlasting if I
married you. I could not look at Edith’s picture, I could not even
in imagination meet her loving smile and think, ‘She will come home
some day and turn to me for help, and I shall be in her home, married
to her husband, and shall have to close her own door in her face.’
When friends should turn to me with raised eyebrows and with the
unspoken comment, ‘I thought you did not believe in divorced people
marrying again,’ I _could_ not be untruthful enough to say, ‘but my
case is different. This is a moral marriage.’ Dear Philip, it is harder
than you know to say all this--caring for you as I do. I feel like a
drunkard delivering a temperance lecture. I long so to be completely
yours, yet I know so well we should neither of us be happy in so
selfish a union.”
“Mary, you are wrong,--your ideas are twisted; trust your heart, and
your judgment will follow.”
“No. You are wrong, dear,” and she shook her head sadly. “You cannot
escape from your marriage with Edith. It is part of your life, and by
ignoring it you cannot forget it. I am bound by every tie of loyalty
and remorse to remain true to her. I must be ready when she comes back.”
“But who knows that she will ever come back?” Philip burst out. “Her
husband is with her. You are sacrificing your life to a fanatical
delusion. And even if you can stand this dreadful dead life you are
leading, what will become of me?”
Mary smiled and stretched out her hand to him. “You used to admire my
clear-sightedness and to think I could see into the future as well as
interpret the present. Let me be Cassandra for a minute.” She tightened
her grasp on his, and met his gaze with a courageous smile.
“I see you at first rebellious, then submissive, and finally triumphing
with me in the sense that we care enough for each other to sacrifice
our selfish selves to the highest truth in each other. You will care
enough for me to be strong and vigorous in action. The conviction
that you are doing what is right will be a living help and support,
and you will make me prouder than ever of loving you,--proudest of
all in being loved by you.” Her voice lowered. “I see our poor Edith
drifting,--drifting,--tired of life,--her husband tiring of her, till
some day she becomes conscious of my thoughts and wishes pulling and
tugging her towards me; and then she will come back to me, and I
shall try to make up to her for her ruined life, and I shall then at
last feel worthy to be loved by you. As for me myself”--Mary suddenly
dropped her head in her hands and burst into the uncontrolled sobs of
a child. “Here I am talking like a dried-up old prig, when my heart is
just bursting, and I can’t silence the voice inside that cries out for
the right to love and be loved! Oh, my dearest,--it has been so many,
many years!”
Philip’s arms were around her, and she clung to him with the
desperation of one who feels the waves closing over her. “This is the
last time,--the _only_ time,” she whispered. “To-morrow we shall play
our parts as usual. We shall face the footlights, and we shall forget
that we have been behind the scenes. And perhaps, after we are dead,
we may be able to wash off the paint and powder,” she added, trying to
smile underneath her tears.
“Is this really your final answer?” Philip asked, his eyes and saddened
lips giving eloquence to his few words.
“It must be, dear. You will come to see that it is the only end. It
could have been different, but it is too late. ‘It once might have
been, once only.’”
Philip’s arms dropped to his side with a gesture of finality, as he
said quietly, “I believe in you so absolutely that I may come to
believe that you are right in this as in all else. If that time ever
arrives, I will come back and take what strength and comfort I can from
your friendship, and you may trust me never again to open the chapter
you are now closing. If I do not return, it will be because I am too
weak to trust myself,” and he turned away.
“You must learn to have the courage of my convictions,” Mary said,
with a trembling smile, “for I am a coward, though confident,--and you
are brave, though unconvinced.” She held out her hand. “Au revoir. You
will return, my friend. I hope it too much not to believe it.” He left
the room, not trusting himself to speak again. She kept her control
till she heard the front door close. Then she clenched her teeth with
angry grief. “If I am doomed to act a part all my life, it shall be a
melodramatic part for once!”
She took from her desk a photograph of Edith, and gazed passionately at
the passionless face. The girl’s thoughtful eyes were shaded by a large
white hat; a soft feather boa fell back from her bare neck, on which
lay Philip’s opal necklace. Suddenly Mary tore the picture across and
flung it into the blaze. “You have ruined my life!” she ranted wildly,
and flung herself on the sofa prepared to weep her heart out. But the
doorbell rang, inopportunely enough, and by the time the maid came
upstairs her mistress was idly poking at a piece of charred paper in
the fireplace.
“It’s a lady from the Associated Charities wants to know if she can
speak to you a minute about Mrs. O’Connell,” the maid said tentatively.
Mary gave her hair a quick smoothing with her hand and shook herself
into shape like a dog. Then she faced the footlights once more. “Show
her up,” she said, rather wearily.
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Transcriber’s Notes
In the .txt version, surrounding characters have been used to indicate
_Italics_, and small caps have been rendered as ALL CAPS.
Contractions written as two words have been joined into one.
Inconsistent hyphenation has been retained.