Ludlow stood aside and Cornelia escaped. When she reached her own room,
she had a sense of her failure to take formal leave of him, and she
mechanically blamed herself for that before she blamed herself for
anything else. At first he was altogether to blame, and she heaped the
thought of him with wild reproach and injury; if she had behaved like a
fool, it was because she was trapped into it, and could not help it;
she had to do so. She recalled distinctly, amidst the turmoil, how she
had always kept in mind that a girl who had once let a man, like that
dreadful little wretch, whose name she could not take into her
consciousness, suppose that she could care for him, could not let a man
like Ludlow care for her. If she did, she was wicked, and she knew she
had not done it for she had been on her guard against it. The reasoning
was perfect, and if he had spoiled everything now, he had himself to
thank for it; and she did not pity him. Still she wished she had not
run out of the room; she wished she had behaved with more dignity, and
not been rude; he could laugh at her for that; it was like her behavior
with him from the very beginning; there was something in him that
always made her behave badly with him, like a petulant child. He would
be glad to forget her; he would believe, now, that she was not good
enough for him; and he might laugh; but at least he could not say that
she had ever done or said the least thing to let him suppose that she
cared for him. If she had, she should not forgive herself, and she
should pity him as much as she blamed him now. There was nothing in her
whole conduct that would have warranted her in supposing such a thing,
if she were a man. Cornelia had this comfort, and she clung to it, till
it flashed through her that not being a man, she could not imagine what
the things were that could let a man suppose it. She had never thought
of that before, and it dazed her. Perhaps he had seen all along that
she did care for him, that he had known it in some way unknown and
forever unknowable to her; the way a man knows; and all her disguises
had availed nothing against him. Then, if he had known, he had acted
very deceitfully and very wrongfully, and nothing could excuse him
unless there had been other signs that a girl would recognize, too.
That would excuse him, it would justify him, and she tried to see the
affair with another woman's eyes. She tried to see it with Charmian's
eves, but she knew they were filled with a romantic iridescence that
danced before them and wrapt it in a rainbow mist. Then she tried Mrs.
Westley's eyes, which she knew were friendly to both Ludlow and
herself, and she told her everything in her impassioned revery: all
about that little wretch; all about the first portrait of Charmian and
the likeness they had seen in it; all about what had happened since
Ludlow began to criticise her work again. In the mere preparation for
this review she found another's agency insufferable; she abandoned
herself wildly to a vision which burned itself upon her in mass and
detail, under a light that searched motive and conduct alike, and left
her no refuge from the truth. Then she perceived, how at every moment
since they began those last lessons at Charmain's he must have believed
she cared for him and wished him to care for her. If she had not seen
it too, it was because she was stupid, and she was to blame all the
same. She was blind to what he saw in her, and she had thought because
she was hidden from herself that she was hidden from him.
It was not a question now of whether she cared for him, or not; that
was past all question; but whether she had not led him on to think she
did, and she owned that down to the last moment before he had spoken,
wittingly or unwittingly she had coaxed him to praise her, to console
her, lo make love to her. She was rightly punished, and she was ready
to suffer, but she could not let him suffer the shame of thinking
himself wrong. That was mean, that was cowardly, and whatever she was,
Cornelia was not base, and not afraid. She would have been willing to
follow him into the night, to go to his door, and knock at it, and when
he came, flash out at him, "I did love you, I do love you," and then
run, she did not know where, but somewhere out of the world. But he
might not be there, or some one else might come to the door; the crude,
material difficulties denied her the fierce joy of this exploit, but
she could not rest (she should never really rest again) till she had
done the nearest thing to it that she could. She looked at the little
busy-bee clock ticking away on her bureau and saw that it was half-past
eleven o'clock, and that there was no time to lose, and she sat down
and wrote: "I did care for you. But I can never see you again. I cannot
tell you the reason."
She drew a deep breath when the thing was done, and hurried the scrap
unsigned into an envelope and addressed it to Ludlow. She was in a
frenzy till she could get it out of her hands and into the postal-box
beyond recall. She pulled a shawl over her head and flew down stairs
and out of the door into the street toward the postal-box on the
corner. But before she reached it she thought of a special-delivery
stamp, which should carry the letter to Ludlow the first thing in the
morning, and she pushed on to the druggist's at the corner beyond to
get it. She was aware of the man staring at her, as if she had asked
for arsenic; and she supposed she must have looked strange. This did
not come into her mind till she found herself again at Mrs.
Montgomery's door, where she stood in a panic ecstasy at having got rid
of the letter, which the special stamp seemed to make still more
irrevocable, and tried to fit her night-latch into the lock. The cat,
which had been shut out, crept up from the area, and rubbed with a soft
insinuation against her skirt. She gave a little shriek of terror, and
the door was suddenly pulled open from within.
She threw back her shawl from her head, and under the low-burning
gas-light held aloft by the spelter statuette in the newel post, she
confronted Mr. Dickerson. He had his hat on, and had the air of just
having let himself in; his gripsack stood at his feet.
"Why, Nelie! Miss Saunders! Is that you? Why, where in the world----
Well, this _is_ something like 'Willy, we have missed you'; I've just
come. What was the matter out there? Somebody trying to scare you?
Well, there's nothing to be afraid of now, anyway. How you do pant! But
it becomes you. Yes, it does! You look now just like I've seen you all
the time I've been gone! You didn't answer any of my letters; I don't
know as I could have expected any different. But I did hope---- Nelie,
it's no use! I've got to speak out, and it's now or never; maybe there
won't be another chance. Look here, my girl! I _want_ you--I love you,
Nie! and I always d----"
He had got her hand, and he was drawing her toward him. She struggled
to free herself, but he pulled her closer.
Her heart swelled with a fury of grief for all she had suffered and
lost through him. She thought of what her mother had said she ought to
do if he ever spoke to her again; there came without her agency,
almost, three swift, sharp, electrical blows from the hand she had
freed; she saw him reeling backward with his hand at his face, and then
she was standing in her own room, looking at her ghost in the glass.
Now, if Mr. Ludlow knew, he would surely despise her, and she wished
she were dead indeed: not so much because she had boxed Dickerson's
ears as because she had done what obliged her to do it.