The Disinterested Married Man
There was a house-party at Puddlewood, and all the kinsfolk and friends
who haunted Bellingdown were there.
"Who's seen Nina?" asked the duchess.
"No one," answered Waltheof laconically.
"Too bad, when she's so entertaining," said the duke. "I always say
there's no one like Nina. I say, Doody, don't I say there's nobody like
Nina?"
"Everybody knows what you think of Mrs. Darling," affirmed the duchess
calmly. "But I do wonder what she looks like!"
Charlotte Grey had been to Bath, but had not succeeded in seeing the
recluse. She got as far as Delphine, and that was all.
"_Madame ne recoit personne_," said the French maid.
"Nibbetts has been, too," said Kitty Bellingdown. "And he was equally
unsuccessful."
"I thought she'd have seen you," ventured the duchess.
"I thought so, too; but it appears not," returned Kneedrock gloomily.
Meanwhile the Carleigh split-up had occurred, but the fact had not yet
reached this bureau of family and friendly counsel.
Strolling ruminantly on the promenade at Nice, Caryll's heart turned
thirstily toward the giver of oblivion.
"I don't care what she looks like, I must see her," he said, and he left
by that night's Paris _rapide_.
On the journey to Bath he did a great deal of thinking. He hadn't been
happy for weeks--not since the night Mrs. Veynol came so suddenly into
his paradise in Madeira.
It is idle for a man to hope to keep his perfect balance in a desperate
flirtation with his own mother-in-law. One might as well contemplate
tight-rope feats on a newly thrown and, consequently, not firm rope.
Carleigh realized that he hadn't made any manner of success of the task.
And the worst of it was that his wife didn't in the least care.
When Sibylla had killed her daughter's betrothal, the daughter had
rebelled slightly. She had been pale--but she appeared happy.
Now, however, when the marriage had gone under, she exhibited neither
reluctance nor grief. She did not resent losing her husband in the
least. She only yawned and said: "Why don't you bolt with mama?" and
then read further.
It was all very distressing--exceedingly distressing. But now he was
nearing Bath and Nina. And that meant consolation.
Nina, receiving his card, experienced a rush of vivid anticipation. Is
there any situation so piquant as that of meeting the man one did not
marry after he has "hashed it" with another woman?
Her embargo had been lifted that morning, and the precious new
skin--partly Gerald's, partly her own--which the specialist had worked
so hard to foster into beauty was at last firm enough to stand the gaze
of the most critical of all judges--the man that one might have married.
Carleigh, waiting in the drawing-room, was far more nervous than she
was. He had been told that she was horribly disfigured, and he expected
to find her so.
Now he could hear her step in the passage. She was outside there in the
chill hall. Then the latch clicked, the portiere swung, and--he was
rising to touch Nina Darling's hand again.
After all these months! The bedroom and the bandages rushed back upon
his memory, and he was prepared to need self-control when he should look
up. But when he did look up he saw, with a curious jump in his heart,
that she was not scarred.
Then in the same instant that he realized she was unchanged he knew
himself to be greatly changed--branded on brow as well as in soul. And
he felt that through and through.
He took her hand--both hands--in his and gazed thirstily into her
eyes--a serene violet-blue.
"I've blundered, too," he said as a greeting. "I've made an unhappy
marriage, too, now. I have more sympathy for you than I had. But _she_
never plays with guns, unfortunately."
He laughed, really quite gaily, for he was awfully glad to feel her hand
in his again. And she laughed as well.
"It's funny how people talk, isn't it?" she said. "Of course I never had
anything to do with it; but people like to talk--after all these years,
too. It was just an accident."
And it was just the other day that she had insisted the reverse. But
that was to another man--a different type of man.
He laughed and put his arm about her. "Kiss me, dear," he said. "I'm so
very unhappy."
If she had averted her head he would have been her slave afresh; but she
didn't avert her head. Instead she kissed him placidly--so placidly that
he almost started.
"You see you're married now," she told him and drew her hand out of his
and went and sat down.
He felt stunned and sick. It was as if there was no bottom anywhere for
a little. But then he remembered.
"Nina," he said, calling her again that which in all the fervor of his
nomenclature during the passionate, passed-by period he had so often
voiced. "Nina, I've come to ask a great kindness at your hands--two, in
fact."
She sat quiet, staring at him with those lash-veiled eyes that had
driven him and so many, many others not quite mad; and, had the lesson
he had spent months conning in such a hell as may exist amid our earthly
surroundings been a bit less bitter and thorough, he must have felt that
near-madness course in his veins again. But he was seared so that no
near-madness was for him any more.
"How you've changed!" she observed, not seeming to notice his speech,
and speaking herself in a certain tone of absolute childlike wonder,
which was not the least of the weapons in her arsenal of personal
persuasion. "Why, you've lines across your forehead--at your age, too!
Lines that I can see even from here."
"Never mind," he said; and then some impulse led him to go over and
kneel beside her, conscious only of an acute wonder as to what would
come next. "Never mind, dear girl, listen to me."
She put her hand upon his head. "And white hairs," she pursued, tracing
them with an astonished finger. "At your age, too. One--five. Why, I can
count eight."
"Never mind," he repeated, pulling down the impertinent finger and
wondering as he did so that its fresh imprisonment left him so
pitifully, piteously unthrilled. "Never mind--I don't care what I look
like any more.
"It's all so futile--life is so empty--things seem to me so very, very
trivial. What are wrinkles beside things--untellable things--that stone
one's immortality and make one wish that on the Judgment Day God Himself
wouldn't know!"
Even as he spoke he caught himself questioning whether she believed
him--whether his words stirred any feeling in her.
She dropped her eyes and pulled her hand free.
"I know what you mean," she said in a toneless voice. "I had such
secrets, too. But they're not what people fancy them to be. People think
I killed my husband; but I didn't. I did what you've done--what we all
do. I killed myself."
He looked at her. It was such a pitiless, relentless glare--that into
which her words thrust his consciousness.
"I can't believe that yours were like mine," he said miserably. "No one
can ever have done what I have done. Yes, you're right--and it has
killed me."
She didn't seem greatly interested.
"But I didn't come to talk of that," he exclaimed quickly. "I came to
ask of you two things. Will you grant them?"
She turned her head, leaving only her profile showing. "Certainly not,"
she said. "I will grant you nothing."
"You mustn't say that. You don't know what I'm asking."
"You're married," she told him, "and I won't have a thing to do with
you. I hate the love-making of married men. It's dangerous, too, for
they always talk."
That dull, heavy red that had been crimson before he took on chains
stole over his face.
"I'll tell you without asking, then," he said. "It may not be the great
and tremendous thing to you that it is to me. I think, perhaps, that you
may even laugh."
"Very likely," she assented.
He rose and went to the chimney-piece and stood there, striving for
greater quietude. It was a long moment--minutes long.
Then, finally, he threw over his shoulder, "Nina, you must hear me. I'm
going away. I'm going to cut it all. Suetonius was pretty bad, but you
can be tracked by a mother-in-law until life becomes hideous. I--"
"But everybody knew why your betrothal was called off," she said with
simple finality; "and then you deliberately married the girl even after
that."
"I know--I know--I know," he cried in irritation; "but those things must
be written in the Book of Fate. Some curses must be launched beyond
recall. At any rate, it's done. We both know that."
"Yes, we know that," she agreed simply.
"And now I am going away, and I'm not sure that I shall ever return. But
I want an object in going, and I would rather have it something in
connection with you than anything else on earth. I've thought what I
want to do, and I wish you'd give me permission to do it.
"Of course there was a man you loved, and of course you love him yet.
Equally of course he accounts for everything, and of course he's still
alive or you'd be a better woman. If he was dead he'd have a hold over
you that would keep you straight."
"How funny for you to know all that!" she exclaimed, opening her eyes
very wide. "You certainly have been learning." Then she broke forth into
laughter. "And if it were the duke now!"
"Don't laugh," he cried angrily. "I tell you I'm in earnest. I know that
there's a man, and that he's somewhere. Well, then, I want to go where
he is, and to see him face to face, and to try to right whatever
separates you. I've got to get away--and far away--and I'll be able to
build some sort of respect for myself if I know that I've a good purpose
and a clean mission."
She wasn't laughing now. He was very much in earnest, and she had caught
some of his seriousness. It was contagious.
"I understand what persons like you and me can suffer, and how much they
need help, and how the mock of love unfulfilled can drive them into
hideous rocks and sink them in a seething whirlpool of temptations. I
can read your life like a book now--can read it by the lurid light of
my own burning wreck. And so I know that whatever might happen you would
be forgivable. And it's what I know--what I have learned--that I want to
tell him. And whatever is wrong--if he believes it--if I can make him
believe--However, it--" And there he stopped--broke off abruptly.
Nina was staring at him hard.
He had spoken so fast and in such a passion of pleading that he appeared
to be for the moment breathless. She sat there before him in the low
chair she had chosen, and her eyes were fixed on him.
He had poured forth the last phrases with his head bowed and his hands
gripping the edge of the velvet-draped shelf behind him.
It was she who spoke next.
"There is no one for you to go to," she said--"no one in all the wide
world. As to my husband, it was a kind of accident. But really I didn't
care if it hadn't been. All my crimes are against myself. I've injured
no one else. Do you understand?"
He nodded dumbly, feeling rather blank.
"There is no 'man' in my life," she went on. "I never have 'loved' as
women are supposed to love. I've just liked men--liked them as
such--that was all."
She paused briefly, looking at him, expecting some word; but he was
silent.
"I've never been really bad," she continued. "I've never wanted to be
bad. But I like to be kissed, and I've been so unhappy through just
sheer loneliness that I could only remember a few of the commandments,
and the marriage service not at all."
Sir Caryll Carleigh stood very still there, trying to read her meaning
in her face, but failing.
"Pretty nearly every one thinks I was in love with Kneedrock," she
pursued presently. "You may ask him about that if you like. And they
think that we made way with poor Darling between us. But they are
wrong."
She paused again, in doubt whether or not to say more--whether or not to
tell the truth--the whole truth--as she had never told it before.
Carleigh neither urged nor encouraged, but of her own free will she
decided. It was due him in a way, and frank confession might probably be
the best thing for her. She had carried the burden alone now for five
years, always growing heavier, and the temptation to share it was too
much for her.
"He was cleaning his gun, you see"--that was how she began it; just that
simply--"and a cartridge shell stuck in the barrel. He tried to get it
out, and then he held it--the gun, I mean--and asked me to try--with a
sharp thing, you know. He thought that it was an empty shell and so did
I. But it wasn't. That was all."
Carleigh shivered ever so slightly. "You cannot say that you didn't kill
him, then," he declared.
She pursed her lips a bit thoughtfully. Already she felt better. She had
not misjudged the effect--she _was_ relieved.
"No; because of course I did. But, on the other hand, of course I
didn't. Anyhow, it mattered very little. I was so mad over life and
living that his death seemed a very small event to me. I couldn't
remember a thing at first.
"The shot seemed to have stunned my memory. But it all came back
later--horridly. The scene, I mean. Yet the event--the fact that poor
Darling was gone--appeared of so little importance. And I foolishly
expected the world to see it as I did."
"But the world didn't?"
"No"--she shook her head quite seriously--"the world chose to talk, and
has talked ever since. So very stupidly, too."
Carleigh felt dazed. Nina's viewpoint was very puzzling at times.
"And yet I understand," he said, seizing on the most obvious end of the
tangle. "I don't suppose I'd--you see I have been so close to
desperation myself--I don't suppose I'd care, either, if--" But he got
no further.
Nina hooked her fingers together tightly behind her head.
"I wouldn't think such thoughts if I were you," she said quite gravely.
"You know if you do, the chance comes, and then you do something--and
God--only God--will ever measure you by what you really did mean."
Then she looked at him very intently and went on with great
impressiveness both of tone and emphasis: "I did give a most awful jab
with that sharp thing, and the cartridge exploded and killed my husband,
and--I was glad. So, of course, I _am_ a murderess at heart. Don't you
see?"
"Yes, I see," said Carleigh somberly.
"And that was my crime," she continued--"that I wanted to do it. And the
results haven't mattered so much. What matters is that _I wanted to do
it_. That's all that matters. All that can ever matter."
"I understand," said the man, his voice so low that the words were
barely articulate.
There was a long, grim silence which grew oppressive.
"It's years ago, is it not?" he asked then.
"Five years," she answered. "It's not a pretty story, is it? How the
duchess enjoys telling it! What she knows and what she thinks. And she's
my great-aunt. Fancy what fun it has afforded the rest of the world!"
"That is unworthy of you," Carleigh rebuked under his breath--"to rail
about the horror that has blighted your life. I can't laugh over
horrors. They turn me cold in the night."
"Ah, but I've grown used to mine," she returned lightly. "And besides,
it wasn't so bad as what followed--as the realizing that I could never
be clean again. I wonder if all those who've sinned as I have sinned are
trying to fill an empty life as I've been trying!"
He moved to a seat, sank down and clutched his head between his hands.
"But love wasn't killed in you--you find pleasure in men. It has been in
me."
She whirled in her seat so suddenly that he started.
"Good Heavens!" she cried, "you don't fancy that I get any real joy out
of flirting, do you? Why, it's only to pass the time. I never forget for
one second. I--I couldn't."
There was another silence--briefer, this time--and then Carleigh rose, a
bit heavily.
"You're horribly human, you know," he said. "I don't know what to say or
what to do. I know only that I long more than ever for you. You--you
couldn't care for me again, I suppose?"
She began to laugh. "Oh, you very manlike man!" she cried. "As if I
didn't know that was what you came for. No; I couldn't ever care for
you. No; not possibly."
There was a tap on the door and the housemaid entered with a card for
Nina, who knew whose name it bore before she glanced at it.
"Certainly, Wilson," she said; "show Mr. Andrews in at once."