MARGARET, leaning a little on Gertrude English, stopped her with
a slight pressure on her arm, and shading her eyes with her free
hand stood gazing down the long vista of the sunlit avenue. A final
recognition of the contrast between realities and the dreams which
had changed and warped her life came upon her with a shock which made
familiar objects seem strange and distorted. A shudder of anguish shook
her slight frame and stole the blood from her lip; stripped at last of
all illusions, facing the immutable laws of life, she felt as though
she had been thrust out into the streets homeless, and naked, and
ashamed; a wrecked soul to wander henceforth up and down on the face of
the earth and find no place. How strange, how different from yesterday!
The tremulous love, the hope half justified, the unscrupulous,
unflinching desire for happiness--where were they? Gone, shrivelled,
dead! And she was not dreaming, she was wide awake, this was life, life
with its inexorable bonds, its laws, its justice, its cruel requitals,
all else had been a dream! Happiness--what was it? A phantom of some
man’s imagination, the flaming sword of the angel at the Garden of Eden.
Before her lay the busy, beautiful thoroughfare, alive with carriages
and motor-cars, with gay people, children, old women and perambulators.
The sun had already swept away all but a few vestiges of snow; it was
one of those spring days which come to us in December. At her very
feet were some pansies blooming hardily. Away at the north, between
long rows of houses, across the intervening circle, she saw the street
ascending the hill, caught the white outlines of the high buildings on
the heights, the deep blue of the sky.
Yesterday and to-day, oh, God!
She walked on, unconscious of the curious glances which followed her
slight, elegant figure, her small pinched face under the great hat with
its toppling plumes; unaware, too, that women leaned forward in passing
carriages, looked eagerly and sank back into the friendly shelter, glad
to escape the necessity of recognition until some one should decide
upon the proper course,--rehabilitation or oblivion.
Gerty, shrewd and watchful, saw and made mental notes. She decided
swiftly who should be struck off the list when Margaret’s star rose
again; no court chamberlain ever drew lines tighter than she at that
moment because, in her pity and her affection, she resented every
slight with bitter zeal.
Margaret, meanwhile, walked on, regaining her self control with an
effort, her large, melancholy eyes gazing dreamily ahead of her.
“Gerty,” she said at last, “do you suppose any one is ever really
happy?”
“Oh, mercy, yes!” retorted that matter-of-fact young woman, in great
astonishment, “I am often! There are so many nice things in the world,
Margaret, and when one has money--” Miss English drew a long breath; it
expressed her thought.
Margaret smiled bitterly. “Is that the sum total, Gerty? Is there
nothing else?”
“Oh, yes, of course, but not to have to pinch and work and reason, just
to be vulgarly downright rich once! I shouldn’t ask much else,” said
Gerty ecstatically.
“You have no imagination, Gerty,” Margaret replied, “that’s been my
curse, I’ve imagined myself into a fool’s paradise! As for money--I’ve
had it all my life, it never gave me anything I wanted.”
“Oh, Margaret!” Miss English almost sobbed, “think of all you’ve had,
of all you’ve got, of all you’re going to have!” she added incoherently.
“Of all I’m going to have?” Margaret repeated, with a strange smile;
“my dear Gerty, the prospect is certainly blinding. Thank you!”
Gerty stared. She did not understand, and she dared not press the
question; she could not but perceive the cold agony in Margaret’s eye.
Their walk had brought them to a little triangle between the streets,
and as they crossed above it, a child’s voice cried out after them with
a shrill little note of joy. “Oh, mamma, there’s mamma!”
Gerty felt the hand on her arm tighten, and the shiver which ran
through the figure at her side was almost as perceptible. They both
turned and looking across the grass-plot saw two French nurses, a
child in a carriage and Estelle running toward them, her small face
flushing with eagerness, her pale hair streaming in the breeze. She
came swiftly, reached them and, with the first unchecked impulse of
her life, flung her arms around her mother. “Mamma, mamma!” she cried,
“I’ve wanted you so much!”
Margaret looked at her strangely for a moment, then her lips twitched
and tears came into her eyes, as she stooped down and clasped the child
close. For the first time the instinct of maternity spoke; she had
seen, too, a strange vague likeness to herself in the small, upturned
face, one of those fleeting glimpses that come in a look. “Did you
really want me, Estelle?” she asked gently, submitting to the child’s
wild joy with a new surprised tenderness.
“Oh, mamma, you’re coming home?” Estelle sobbed, clinging to her;
“you’re coming back to us? Oh, where have you been, mamma?”
Margaret kissed her and rose, putting her off a little; she saw
that people were looking at them, and a slow dull flush rose to her
forehead. “Yes, I’m coming,” she said with an effort; “I’ll--I’ll come
to-morrow, Estelle, and ask Grandmother White to let me take you for a
while. You must be good, child; don’t cry, mamma can’t bear it!”
“Come now, mamma!” Estelle wailed, holding her dress with desperate
fingers and calling to her little brother who still clung to his nurse,
staring as if he saw a stranger.
The two French women were huddled together, not sure of their
instructions and obviously alarmed. Margaret looked over at them and
gently detached Estelle’s fingers from her draperies. “I’ll come
to-morrow,” she said more firmly; “now run and play.”
But the child caught at her skirts again, still sobbing; she had
felt her mother’s arms about her, and half the dread and fear of
desertion which had hung over her, half the talk of the nurses which
had frightened her, was swept away; she had a mother. “Oh, mamma,” she
sobbed, “take me with you--I won’t make any noise!”
Margaret bent and kissed her again, her strange, wild look almost
frightening poor Gerty who stood completely discomfited and at a
loss, her honest blue eyes full of tears. “There, there!” the mother
whispered, “I’m glad you love me, Estelle, I’m coming, coming soon.
Oh, Gerty, go home with her!” she added suddenly, “take her away--I--I
can’t bear it!”
Gerty obeyed with a pale face. She bent down and whispered to Estelle,
kissed and cajoled and threatened until the child let go her mother’s
skirt and began to cling to the girl whom she really knew far more
intimately, for the good-hearted little secretary had spent many an
hour in that gloomy, magnificent nursery. Gerty’s hands shook but she
held the child, told her about some lovely things she was going to
bring her, a doll, a fairy-book, a toy which ran about the floor of its
own accord.
In the midst of it Margaret turned and fled; she had not dared to go
to the little boy, although, quite unacquainted with his mother, he
was merely staring in a dull, infantile way, his finger in his mouth,
ready, no doubt, to raise a sympathetic wail if his sister’s grief
warranted a chorus.
The mother, whose rights in the children had been settled by the courts
at six months in the year if she desired it, went on blindly along
the sunny avenue which seemed now to mock her with its gayety. She
turned sharply away from a crowded circle into another street, hardly
conscious where she went, but bent upon escape, oblivion, silence.
The child’s cry had touched her chilled and starving heart; she saw her
life revealed; she had thrust away the ties of nature, the demands of
natural love and duty in her mad pursuit of happiness; she had lost all
and gained nothing.
She put up a shaking hand and drew down her veil; her lips were dry
and parched, it was difficult to breathe, she had to relax her pace.
Another corner brought her to an abrupt and horrified pause. She came
face to face with Mrs. O’Neal at a moment when she felt that she could
least abide the sight of any one. But with the shock of recognition her
scattered senses recovered themselves, her nerves vibrated again, she
summoned back her will.
“Margaret!” exclaimed the old lady, pausing, with her skirts gathered
up and her foot on her carriage-step, just the shadow of surprised
restraint in her manner, the indefinable change that greets the altered
social scale; “I’m--I’m delighted to see you! And how are you, my dear?”
“Well,” Margaret replied, with an odd little laugh, for her quick ear
had caught the note; “don’t I look so?”
The bird of paradise on Mrs. O’Neal’s hat trembled. “No,” she said
flatly, “you don’t; you need building up, you should go to the country
for awhile. I’m due at bridge now or I should make you get in and drive
with me.”
“Thank you, I couldn’t,” Margaret replied, with forced calm; “I wish
you luck at cards instead.”
Mrs. O’Neal glanced at her coachman, stiff and expressionless upon the
box, then she leaned over and put a gentle hand on the younger woman’s
arm. “My dear, I congratulate you,” she murmured, “you’re lucky to be
free; I was so shocked to read this morning that Mr. White had married
Lily Osborne yesterday.”
Margaret suppressed her start of surprise. “Has he?” she said, “I
forgot to read the paper, and Gerty misses everything except the
ninety-eight cent bargains.”
“Yesterday--in New York!” said Mrs. O’Neal tragically; “I hope you’ve
got the children.”
Margaret quietly withdrew her arm. “Thanks, yes,” she said; “I’m afraid
you’ll be late for your bridge.”
* * * * *
As she walked on, her heart sank. Lily Osborne--of course she had
known it would be so! But if anything happened to her and Mrs. White
died--poor Estelle!
The cry of the child pursued her. Until now she had thought only of
herself, of her own misery, but the touch, the voice of the little girl
had reached her very soul; after lying dormant and unknown all those
years it was awakening, awakening to a reality so dreadful that it was
appalled, without hope, desolate. And shame, the shame of a woman’s
heart swept over her and shook her being to its depths. The humiliation
which comes upon a woman when she knows, by some overwhelming
perception, that her love is not fully returned; she felt as if she had
stripped her soul naked and left it lying in the dust at Fox’s feet.
She walked on; agony winged her feet and she could not be still; she
avoided the places which she knew, and turned down strange streets and
byways. She had no thought of time. It grew late, the short winter day
drew to its close; still she walked on. While her strength endured
she went on,--it seemed as if pursuing fate drove her. She was not
physically strong, yet she was walking beyond the endurance of most
women.
As the twilight gathered and the lights began to start up here
and there, she turned, with a dim realization of her unfamiliar
surroundings and her sudden complete exhaustion. It was St. Thomas’
Day, four days to Christmas; she had no recognition of it, but, looking
up, her eye caught the lighted vestibule of a church, and she saw some
women going in to vespers; an impulse made her follow them. The heavy
doors swung easily inward, and conscious only of the shelter, the
chance for rest, a moment to collect her thoughts, she passed in.
The service was nearly concluded, but she paid no heed to that; moving
quietly across the aisle and finding a dark corner, she sat down
wearily, and crossing her arms upon the back of the pew in front of
her hid her face upon them. Mere physical weariness had brought a
dull relief to the gnawing pain at her heart; it clouded her brain
too, as weariness sometimes does, and she found the horrible vivid
thoughts which had tormented her slipping softly away into a haze of
forgetfulness; her mind seemed a mere blur.
The soft organ tones swelling through the dim church harmonized with
her mood; she lost herself, lost the agony of those past hours, and
rested there, inert, helpless, without power to think. She was scarcely
conscious of what passed around her, her throbbing head felt heavy on
her slender arms, and she listened, in a vague way, to the music, aware
at last of a stillness, then the rustle and stir of people settling
themselves back in the long pews. She stirred herself, turning her face
upon her arms.
A voice penetrated the stillness, a voice with that vibrant quality of
youth and passionate self-confidence.
“‘_The wages of sin is death!_’”
Margaret started and raised her head. Her eyes, blinded by the sudden
light in the chancel, flickered a moment and she passed her hand across
them; at last she saw quite plainly a young strong face, with a tense
eager look, white against the dark finishings of the pulpit; she caught
the dazzling white of his surplice, the vivid scarlet of the hood which
showed on his shoulders.
“‘_The wages of sin is death!_’” He repeated it, giving out his text in
a voice which was resonant with feeling.
Margaret sat back in her corner, gazing at him with fixed, helpless
eyes, her very soul dazed under the force of revelation which was
coming to her swiftly, overwhelmingly. The revelation of her own life,
not of God. As yet she framed no thought of that awful Presence, found
no interpretation of the tumult in her own soul, but she knew, at last,
that she had sinned. Sinned against herself, her womanhood, her honor,
her self-respect, sinned against the man she had married, against the
children she had borne, and, at last--oh, God!--against the man she
loved.
_The wages of sin is death._
She rose, rose with an effort of will for her knees shook under her,
and drawing herself together, summoning all her strength and her pride
to hide the agony which was devouring her heart, she drew down her veil
and slipped out unnoticed, silent, like a shadow. Once at the door,
beyond the ring of that terrible young voice, she paused and steadied
herself by laying her hand on a pillar of the portico.
It was now very dark; the electric lights at the corner only made the
space where she stood more shadowy and secure; the air was chill,
damp, penetrating, and she shivered. A horrible sense of homelessness
and misery swept over her; she had cast herself out of a home, she had
deserted her children for the love of a man who--oh, God!--who loved
her not. She who had dreamed of happiness, lived for it, fought for
it, sinned for it, who would have purchased it at the cost of heaven
itself, had found at last, not happiness but her own soul.
_The wages of sin is death!_
She wrung her hands in silent agony; was there no escape? She had
no belief but, at last, she felt that the very devils believed and
trembled. Was not God pursuing her with vengeance? Who else?
V
AT last the tumult of passion subsided and Margaret, still leaning on
the pillar of the church portico, looked out with bewildered eyes.
Again an overwhelming weakness swept over her and wiped out some of the
vivid misery.
She must go home--home! The word brought a dull pang of anguish, she
had no right to a home, for she had broken up her own and orphaned her
children. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the thoughts which
stormed back, at a word, to assault her poor fagged brain again. Then
the soft sweet notes of the recessional came out to her and she knew
that in a few moments the dispersing congregation would find her there;
summoning all her flagging energies she stepped down into the street
and turning westward was suddenly apprised of the fact that she had
been in the old church so often visible from the windows of Allestree’s
studio. The discovery brought her a feeling of relief; she was near
the studio and she could go there and telephone for a cab to take her
back to the hotel. Losing herself in the shadows of the darkest side
of the poorly lighted street, she hurried toward the old building on
the corner and saw, with relief, the light still shining in Allestree’s
window as well as in the curiosity-shop below.
She crossed the street and trying the side door found the latch down.
In another moment she was toiling wearily up the old stairs, clinging
to the balustrade with an absolute need of its support.
To her surprise the studio was empty; she called to Allestree,
supposing him to be, perhaps, in his storeroom above, but there was no
answer and she sank down in the nearest chair, too weary and helpless
to frame her thoughts. An open fire was burning low on the hearth, and
a half smoked cigarette lay on the mantel edge. He had evidently gone
out for a moment and would soon return. Margaret roused herself and
looked about her with a wretched feeling of strangeness and separation
from her own life. She seemed suddenly detached, a mere onlooker where
once she had been the centre of the stage. There had stood the portrait
of her, and there the picture of Rose; both were gone! She even noticed
that the little tea-table was pushed away, and divined Allestree’s
secret feeling. She knew every detail of the room, the tapestries, the
worn Turkey rug, Robert’s old cigarette-case. It was intolerable;
she rose, and going to the table, where the telephone stood, saw
Allestree’s portfolio and the pen and ink. She would leave a line to
explain her visit before she called a cab, and she opened the portfolio
to look for a scrap of paper; as she did so her eye fell on the page of
a letter written in old Mrs. Allestree’s clear hand; unconsciously she
read the lines before her:
“Margaret has broken up Fox’s happiness twice, once when she broke her
own engagement to him, and now in separating him from Rose--”
She closed the book sharply, suddenly aware of what she did and deeply
shamed by it, but the thought of the personal dishonesty of her
heedless act was lost in the sharper pang of realization; she saw at
last the light in which her actions had appeared to others. She stood
still, her face frozen, and a cry sprang to her lips from the depths
of hidden passion, the cry of some mortally wounded wild creature who
faces death alone. She knew it, she did not need to be told it, but
others knew it too! It was the bitter drop in her cup of gall; the wild
anguish which swept away all other realities, even the desire for life,
amazed her. For one moment she hated Rose with all the strength of her
undisciplined soul, the next a great wave of humiliation submerged her
being. She turned, forgetting the telephone, forgetting everything
but a desire to escape the meeting with Allestree, groped her way to
the door like a blind woman and went down stairs. At the foot she
hesitated; a step in the street made her fear to meet Robert at the
door, and she turned and plunged into the curiosity-shop. She found
herself behind the chintz curtain, in the place which evidently served
as a living-room for Daddy Lerwick, and she saw a table spread for
supper, while the scent of garlic streamed from a pot on the stove.
Hurrying across the room she lifted the curtain and entered the shop.
Daddy Lerwick was leaning on the counter talking to a young girl and
passing a necklace back and forth in his fat hands. At the sound of
Margaret’s step they both turned and looked at her in surprise, a
surprise which gave place on his part to servile courtesy. But Margaret
scarcely noticed him; instead she saw the pale, worn face of the
girl, the pinched misery of her look as she glanced at the stones in
Lerwick’s coarse fingers. Margaret’s eyes following hers, lighted, too,
on the jewels; it was a topaz necklace, the mate to the bracelet which
she had prized so long ago. The intuition of misery, the sixth sense
of the soul which--no longer atrophied with selfishness--had suddenly
awakened within her, divined the secret. She read the suspended bargain
in Lerwick’s eye, the hopeless anguish in the girl’s. It was only an
instant; the thought came to her like the opening of a dungeon door
on the glare of midday. Then she drew back to avoid an encounter with
two more customers who had entered the shop and who began at once to
ask the prices of the objects in the windows. Lerwick went forward to
answer them; the girl leaned on the counter, hiding her face in her
hands; a shiver of misery passed over her and Margaret saw it. Moved by
an impulse, as inexplicable as it was unnatural, she touched the shabby
sleeve. “What is the matter?” she asked softly.
The young woman looked up startled, but only for an instant, the next
the dull misery of her look closed over her face like a mask, though
her lip trembled. “He’s offered me fifteen dollars,” she faltered;
“I--I suppose I’ll have to take it.”
Margaret quietly put out her hand. “Will you sell it to me?” she said;
“I will give more and you will not have to give your name.”
The girl’s cheek crimsoned; she hesitated and gathered the necklace
into her hands; the gesture was pathetic, it bespoke the actual pang of
parting with an old keepsake.
Margaret saw it. “Come, come with me,” she said and led her back
through the door to the studio entrance; she no longer feared to meet
Allestree; a new impulse stirred her heart.
Under the light there she opened her purse and hastily counted her
money, she had a little over a hundred dollars in small bills.
Hurriedly thrusting a dollar or two back into her pocketbook, she
pressed the remainder into her companion’s hands, saying at the same
time: “Keep your necklace, I do not want it; I only wished to help you
save it.”
The young stranger looked at her in dull amazement, stunned by the
incomprehensible sympathy and generosity when she had long since ceased
to look for either. She drew a long shuddering breath. “Oh, I can’t
take so much!” she gasped out, “you--you must keep the necklace!”
Margaret regarded her sadly. “Child,” she replied, “I’m more unhappy
than you are; I do not want either the money or the necklace; keep them
both!”
“Do you really mean it?” the girl whispered, her eyes fastened on the
face opposite in absolute wonder and doubt; “you really mean to give me
all this--and you want nothing?”
Margaret smiled with stiff lips. “Nothing!”
The pinched, childlike features of the stranger quivered; it seemed as
if the frozen sensibilities were melting under this touch of common
humanity. Suddenly she burst into an agony of tears, slipping down upon
the stairs, her slender shabby figure racked with sobs. “He heard me!”
she cried, “there is a God!”
Margaret looked at her strangely. “Do you think so?” she asked vaguely,
with parched lips, “do you believe in God?”
“Yes,” the girl cried, clasping her hands, “I prayed--oh, God, how I
prayed! It seemed as if He didn’t hear me, no help came and I couldn’t
pay; I couldn’t pay, and they didn’t believe me any more because I’d
failed--you don’t know, you’ve never failed like that! I thought God
didn’t care, that He had forgotten--but now--” she rose from her knees,
her face still wet with tears but singularly changed, “I shan’t have
to do it!” she cried, “here’s enough to begin all over again, I can go
on, I’m saved! He heard! Don’t you believe it? Don’t you see it must be
so?” she persisted, unconsciously catching at Margaret’s draperies and
her thin toil-worn hand closing on their richness.
“For you, yes,” the older woman replied slowly; “good heavens, I never
knew how much money meant before!” she murmured, passing her hand over
her eyes again, “and you think--God heard you--_God?_”
“He sent you!” the girl cried, exultantly, wildly happy; “oh, yes, I’m
sure of it--oh, God bless you!”
A strange expression passed over Margaret’s face. She leaned back
against the wall, pressing her hand to her heart. Then, as the girl
still sobbed softly, she touched her shoulder. “Open the door,” she
said quietly, “I--I must go, can you help me? I’m a little dizzy.”
The young woman sprang to her and put out her arm eagerly. “Let me help
you; oh, I’d do anything for you!”
Margaret smiled, a wan little smile that made her haggard brilliant
face weirdly sad. “It is nothing. There, the air from the outside makes
me well again, this place is choking!”
The stranger walked with her to the corner, eager to help her, to call
a cab, to put her on the cars, but as Margaret’s faintness passed she
refused, putting aside her protests with firm dismissal. “No, no, I can
go home,” she said bravely; “good-bye, I’m glad I could help you.”
“Oh, let me go with you, let me do something!” the girl appealed to her
eagerly.
But Margaret dismissed her and they parted, the young stranger hurrying
away down a narrow by-street while her benefactress walked slowly
toward the nearest avenue. But she had gone only a few steps when she
turned and looked after the shabby figure, which was only a short
distance from her. A vivid recollection of that cry that God had heard
her prayer, the absolute conviction of it, swept over the stricken
woman, and moved by an impulse which she did not pause to question,
Margaret ran after the girl through the gathering mist and overtook
her, breathless. She turned with a frightened look, full of dread, no
doubt, that she must yet give up the miraculously acquired wealth, and
she started when Margaret laid a thin, ungloved hand on her arm.
“I wanted to ask you,” she began,--and then changed the sentence
swiftly into a command,--“pray for me to-night! You believe there is a
God--perhaps He’ll hear you again!”
“Indeed I will!” the girl cried, bewildered; “oh, I wish--”
But the unfinished speech was lost; Margaret had turned and swiftly
disappeared again into the folds of the mist; like a shadow the girl
saw her vanishing into deeper shadows; something uncanny and marvellous
seemed to lurk in the very thought of her beautiful haggard face, the
wildness of her smile, and the young woman hurried away, hugging her
treasure close, almost persuaded that she had talked face to face with
a being from another world.