IN WHICH FAILURE IS CROWNED BY FAILURE
At one o'clock, when Adams left his office to go home to luncheon--a
custom which he had not allowed himself to neglect since Connie's
illness--he found Mr. Wilberforce just about to enter the building from
the front on Union Square.
"Ah, I've caught you as I meant to," exclaimed the older man, with the
cordial enthusiasm which Adams had always found so delightful. "It's
been so long a time since I had a talk with you that I hope you'll come
out somewhere to lunch?"
"I only wish I could manage it," replied Adams, "but I must look in for
a minute on Mrs. Adams--she's been ill, you know."
He saw the surprise reflected in his companion's face as he had seen it
a little earlier in Laura's; and at the same instant he felt a sensation
of annoyance because of his inability to act upon his impulse of
hospitality. He would have liked to take Mr. Wilberforce home with him;
but remembering the probable quality of the luncheon which awaited him,
he repressed the inclination.
"Is that so? I'm sorry to hear it," remarked the other in the
conventional tone in which Adams' friends always spoke of Connie. "Well,
I'll walk a block or two with you in your direction," he added as they
turned toward Broadway. "Laura told me, by the way, that she was so
fortunate as to have a glimpse of you this morning."
Adams nodded and then looked quickly away from the other's searching
eyes. "Yes, we met rather early in the street," he responded; "she seems
to me to be looking very well, and yet she's altered, somehow--I can't
say exactly how or where."
"Then you've noticed it," returned Mr. Wilberforce, with a sigh, and he
asked almost immediately: "Does she appear to you to be happier than she
was?"
"Happier? Well, perhaps, but I hardly analysed the impression she
produced. There was a change in her, that was all I saw."
"Did she speak to you, I wonder, of her book?"
Adams laughed softly. "She spoke of it to say that she was tired of it,"
he answered, "but that is only the inevitable reaction of youth--it's a
part of the universal rhythm of thought, nothing more."
Mr. Wilberforce shook his head a little doubtfully. "I wish I could feel
so confident," he returned, while a quick impatience--almost a contempt
awoke in Adams' mind. Was it possible that this man beside him, with his
white hairs, his blanched skin, his benign old-world sentiments, was,
like Trent, a mere worshipper of the literary impulse in its outward
accomplishment? Did he love the poet in the woman rather than the woman
in the poet? As Adams turned to look at him, he thought, not without a
certain grim humour, that he beheld another victim to the vice of
sentimentality; and in his mental grouping he placed his companion among
those who, like Connie, were in bondage to the images of their
imaginations.
"And yet even if she should cease to write poems she will always live
one," he added lightly.
"Yes, she will still be herself," agreed Mr. Wilberforce, but his words
carried no conviction of comfort; and when he turned at the corner to
take his car, it was with the air of a man oppressed by the weight of
years.
When Adams reached home he found Connie, dressed in her blue velvet with
the little twinkling aigrette, on the point of starting for an afternoon
drive with her nurse in the Park. The events of the night had been
entirely effaced from her mind by the newer interests of the day; and as
he looked at her in amazement, it seemed to him that she bore a greater
resemblance to the rosy girl he had first loved than she had done for
many weary and heart-sick months. When he left her, presently, to go
back to his office, it was with a feeling of hopefulness which entered
like an infusion of new blood into his veins. The relapse might have
been, after all, less serious than he had at first believed, and
Connie's cure might become soon not only a beautiful dream, but an
accomplished good. He thought of the sacrifices he had made for it--not
begrudgingly, but with a generous thankfulness that he had been
permitted to pay the cost--thought of the sleepless nights, the
neglected work, the nervous exhaustion which had followed on the broken
laws of health. At the moment he regretted none of these things, because
the end, which he already saw foreshadowed in his mental vision, seemed
to him to be only the crowning of his last few weeks. Even the bodily
and moral redemption of Connie appeared no longer difficult in the
illumination of his mood; for his compassion, in absorbing all that was
vital in his nature, seemed possessed suddenly of the effectiveness of a
dynamic force.
"Already she is better," he thought, hopefully; "I see it in her
face--in her hands even, and when she is entirely cured the craving for
excitement will leave her and we shall be at peace again. Peace will be
very like happiness," he said to himself, and then, with the framing of
the sentence, he stopped in his walk and smiled. "Peace is happiness,"
he added after a moment, "for certainly pleasure is not." With the words
he remembered the bitter misery of Connie who had lived for joy
alone--the utter disenchantment of Arnold Kemper, who had made gratified
impulse the fulfilling of his law of life. Back and forth swung the
oscillation between fugitive desire and outward possession--between the
craving of emptiness and the satiety of fulfilment--and yet where was
the happiness of those who lived for happiness alone? Where was even the
mere animal contentment? "Is it only when one says to Fate 'take
this--and this as well--take everything and leave me nothing. I can do
without'--that one really comes into the fulness of one's inheritance of
joy? Was this what Christ meant when he said to His disciples 'Seek ye
first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things
shall be added unto you?' In renunciation was there, after all, not the
loss of one's individual self, but the gain of an abundance of life."
The afternoon passed almost before he was aware of it, and when he
finished his work and drew on his overcoat, he saw, as he glanced
through his office window, that it was already dusk. As he reached the
entrance to the elevator, he found Perry Bridewell awaiting him inside,
and he kept, with an effort, his too evident surprise from showing in
his face.
"Why, this is a treat that doesn't happen often!" he exclaimed with
heartiness.
"I was passing and found you were still here, so I dropped in to walk up
with you," explained Perry, but there was a note in his voice which
caused the other to glance at him quickly with a start.
"Are you ill, old man?" asked Adams, for Perry appeared at his first
look to have gone deadly white. "Is there anything that I can do? Would
you like to come up and talk things over?"
Perry shook his head with a smile which cast a sickly light over his
large, handsome face. "Oh, I'm perfectly well," he responded, "I need to
stretch my legs a bit, that's all."
"You do look as if you wanted exercise," commented Adams, as they left
the building; "too much terrapin has put your liver wrong, I guess."
At the corner, they passed a news-stand, and as Adams stopped for his
evening paper, he noticed again the nervous agony which afflicted Perry
during the brief delay.
"Look here, what's up, now?" he enquired, holding his paper in his hand
when they started on again, "are you in any trouble and can I help to
get you out? I'll do anything you like except play the gallant, and I
only draw the line at that because of my temperamental disability. So,
something _is_ wrong?" he added gayly, "for you haven't even observed
the pretty woman ahead there in the pea-green bonnet."
"Oh, I'm not in any mess just now," replied Perry, with a big,
affectionate shake like that of a wet Newfoundland dog.
Adams threw a keener glance at him. "No scrape about a woman, then?" he
asked, with the tolerant sympathy which had made him so beloved by his
own sex.
"Oh, Lord, no," ejaculated Perry, with a fervour too convincing to be
assumed.
"And you haven't lost in Wall Street?"
"On the other hand I made a jolly deal."
"Well, I give it up," remarked Adams cheerfully; then as he spoke, the
glare from an electric light fell full upon the headlines of the folded
paper in his hand, and he came to a halt so sudden that Perry, falling
back to keep step with him, felt himself spinning like a wound up top.
"My God!" said Adams, in a voice so low that it barely reached Perry's
ears. An instant later a quick animal passion--the passion of the
enraged male--entered into his tone and he walked quickly across the
pavement to the sheltering dusk of a cross street. "May God damn him for
this!" he cried in a hoarse whisper.
Following rapidly in his footsteps, Perry caught up behind him, and made
an impulsive, nerveless clutch at the unfolded paper. "I knew you'd see
it; so I wanted to be along with you," he said in a voice like that of a
tragic schoolboy.
Adams turned to him immediately, with a restraint which had succeeded
his first quivering exclamation. "So you knew that Brady's wife meant
to sue for a divorce?" he asked.
Perry bowed his head--in the supreme crisis of experience he had always
found the simple truth to be invested with the dignity of an elaborate
lie. "I had heard it rumoured," was what he said.
"And that my wife--"
"I'll swear I never believed it," broke in Perry, with a violent
assurance.
From the emotion in his voice one would have supposed him, rather than
Adams, to be the injured husband; and the fact was that he probably
suffered more at the instant than he had ever done in the whole course
of his comfortable life.
"Well, I suppose I ought to be very much obliged to you," replied Adams,
with an agonised irony to the injustice of which Perry was perfectly
indifferent, "but I can't see that it matters much so long as the thing
is true."
"But it's a lie," protested Perry with energy. "I mean the whole damned
business."
"What isn't?" demanded Adams bitterly, as he stuffed the crumpled paper
into the pocket of his coat. Then, stopping again as they reached a
crossing, he held out his hand and enclosed Perry's in a cordial grip.
"I'm very grateful to you," he said; "but if you don't mind, I think
I'll walk about a bit alone. I've got to think things over." He
hesitated a moment and then added quietly, "I know you'll stand by me
whatever comes?"
"Stand by you!" gasped Perry, and the sincere response of his whole
impressionable nature brought two large, round tear drops to his eyes;
"by Jove! I'd stand it for you!"
For an instant Adams looked at him in silence, while his familiar smile
flickered about his mouth. Then he reached out his hand for another
grip, before he turned away and walked rapidly into the dim light of the
cross street.
"I must walk about and think things out a bit," he found himself saying
presently in his thoughts; "there's a tangle somewhere--I can't pull it
out."
Stopping under a light he drew the newspaper from his pocket, but as he
unfolded it, one of Connie's wild letters to Brady flashed before his
eyes; and crushing the open sheet in his hand, he flung it from him out
into the gutter. The darkness afforded what seemed to him a physical
shelter for his rage, and as he turned toward it, he felt his first
blind instinct for violent action give place to a kind of emotional
chaos, in which he could barely hear the thunder of his own thoughts. He
knew neither what he believed nor what he suffered; his power to will
and his power to think were alike suspended, and he was conscious only
of a curious deadness of sensation, amid which his ironic devil,
standing apart, asked with surprise why he did not suffer more--why his
anger was not the greater, his restraint the less? His philosophy, at
the moment, had turned to quicksand beneath his feet; and it was this
utter failure of himself which forced upon him the anguish of
readjustment, the frenzied striving after a clearer mental vision. As he
hurried breathlessly along the narrow, dimly lighted street into which
he had turned, he felt instinctively that he was groping blindly for
some way back into his former illumination, for some finer knowledge of
spirit, which at present he did not appear to possess. Not to act upon
brute impulse, but to listen in agony until he heard the voice of reason
above the storm of his passion--until he heard the soul speaking beyond
the senses--this was the one urgent need he felt himself to be aware
of--the one intelligent purpose that remained with him through his
flight.
"No--I have failed and it is all over," was the first distinct thought
that he framed. "By her own act she has put the last barrier between us.
She is my wife no longer, for, through herself, she has brought disgrace
upon us both." Again he remembered the sacrifices he had made for her,
not with the generous rejoicing of the morning, but with a fierce
bitterness which was like a bodily hurt. "She is no longer my wife," he
repeated; "nor am I her husband--for by her own sin she has made me
free." Yet the word carried no conviction to his conscience, and he
knew, in spite of his assurance, that nothing had happened since
yesterday to change the relations between Connie and himself--that if he
had pitied her then there was only the double reason why he should pity
her now. Had this added wrong made her less helpless? had it put moral
fibre into her heart? "All this had happened yesterday--had happened
even six months ago, yet last night I sat by her bed--I was filled with
sympathy--and was it only because I was in ignorance then of something
which I know now? Yesterday I sacrificed for her both my rest and my
work, but was she worthier of pity at that hour than she is at this. She
has not changed since, nor has the thing which I have just discovered;
it is only I who am different because it is I alone who have come into
knowledge of the evil."
He thought of the hideousness of it all--of the punishment that awaited
her, of her convulsed face, of her violent gestures, and even of the
pale pink chiffon gown, which made her resemble a crushed blossom as she
lay upon the bed. That was only last night, and yet in the reality of
experience a thousand years had intervened in his soul since then.
The next instant he remembered again, with a throb of exhilaration that
he was free. By her own act she had given him back his freedom--she had
returned him to his life and to his work. As for her if she chose to
fall back into her old bondage, who was there in heaven or on earth that
could hold him to account? Every law that had been made by man since the
beginning of law was upon his side; and every law declared to him that
he was free. Free! The word went like the intoxication of joy to his
head; then, even while the exhilaration lasted, he shivered and came
abruptly to a halt.
From the light of the crossing a woman had come close to him and touched
him upon the arm, making her immemorial appeal with a sickening coquetry
in her terrible eyes. She was, doubtless, but the ordinary creature of
her class, yet coming as she did upon the brief rapture of his recovered
liberty, she appeared as a visible answer to the question he had asked
his soul. He shook his head and walked on a few steps; then coming back
again he gave her the money that was in his pocket.
"Is this the message?" he put to himself as he turned away. "Is this
the message, or is it only the ugly hallucination of my nerves?" With an
effort he sought to shake the image from him, but in spite of his closed
mind it still seemed to him that he saw Connie's future looking back at
him from the woman's terrible eyes. "And yet what have I to do with that
woman or she with Connie?" he demanded. "I have so far as I am aware
never injured either in my life, nor by any act of mine have I helped to
make my wife what she is to-day--one with that creature in the street
and with her kind. The law acquits me. Religion acquits me. My own
conscience acquits me more than all." But the argument was vain and
empty so long as he saw Connie's future revealed to him through the eyes
of the harlot he had left at the crossing. The helplessness of
ignorance, of the will that desired to will the good, came over him at
the moment and he could have cried aloud in his terror because his soul
had reached the boundaries between its angel and its devil. In his
decision he appeared to himself to stand absolutely solitary and
detached--put away from all help from humanity or from human creeds. The
law courts told him nothing, nor did religion--then, at the instant of
his sharpest despair of knowledge, there came back to him, as in a
vision of light, the scene two thousand years ago in Bethany at the
house of Simon the leper. The people passing about him in the street
became suddenly but shadows, even the noise of the cars no longer broke
in confusion upon his ears; and in the midst of the silence in which he
stood, he heard the Voice as Simon had heard it then: "I have somewhat
to say unto thee."
A moment afterward the vision was gone, and he looked round him dazed by
the flashing of the lights. "What does it matter about my life which is
almost over?" he asked. "I will help Connie, so far as I have strength,
to bear her sin against me--and as for the rest it is nothing to me any
more." Then, as the resolution took shape in his mind, he was conscious
of a feeling of restfulness, of a relief so profound that it pervaded
him to the smallest fibre of his being. The whole situation had changed
at the instant; his offended honour was no longer offended, nor was his
righteous anger still righteous. Though the naked truth must face him in
all its brutishness, he knew, from the feeling within him, that by an
act of thought, which was not an act, he had drawn the sting of the
poisoned arrow from his wound. Not only had the bitterness passed from
his shame, but there had come, with the relinquishment of the idea of
personal wrong, a swift rush of exaltation, like a strong wind, through
his soul. Almost unconsciously he had yielded his will into the hands of
God, and immediately, as in the prophecy "all these things had been
added" unto the rest.
Turning at once he walked rapidly in the direction of his house, while a
clock in a tower across the way pointed to the stroke of nine o'clock.
The bodily exertion had begun to wear upon him during the last few
minutes. His feet ached and there was a bruised feeling in all his
muscles. When he came at last to his own door the sensation of fatigue
had blotted out the acuteness of his perceptions.
The lights were blazing in the hall; there was evidently an unusual
commotion among the servants; and as he entered, Connie's nurse came to
meet him with a white and startled face.
"Have you seen Mrs. Adams?" she asked hastily. "She separated from me in
a shop and though I searched for her for hours, I could not find her."
For a breathless pause he stared at her in bewildered horror; then his
eyes fell upon a note lying conspicuously on the hall table, and he took
it up and tore it open before he answered. The words on the paper were
few, and after reading them, he folded the sheet again and replaced it
in the envelope. For an instant longer he still hesitated, swallowing
down the sensation of dryness in his throat.
"She will not come back to-night," he said quietly at last; "she has
gone away for a few days."
Then turning from the vacant curiosity in the assembled faces, he went
into his study and shut himself alone in the room in which the memory of
his dead child still lived.