That evening Eden and her husband dined alone. But it was not till
coffee was served and the servants left the room that either of them had
an opportunity of exchanging speech on matters other than such as were
of passing interest. For the rout which both were to attend that night
Eden had already prepared. It was the initial Matriarch's of the season,
and rumor had it that it was to be a very smart affair. On this occasion
the waiters, it was understood, were to be in livery; and an attempt had
been made to give the rooms something of the aspect and aroma which
appertains to a private house. As a consequence those of the gentler sex
who were bidden had given some thought to their frocks, while those who
were not had garmented themselves in their stoutest mantles of
indifference.
On receiving the large bit of cardboard on which the invitation was
engraved, Eden had at first determined to word and dispatch a regret.
Entertainments of that kind had ceased to appeal to her. At gatherings
of similar nature which she attended she had long since divided the male
element into the youths who wished to seem older than they looked, and
the mature individuals who wished to appear younger than they were;
while as for the women, they reminded her of Diogenes looking for a man.
On receiving the invitation she had, therefore, determined to send a
regret, but on mentioning the circumstance to her husband he had
expressed the desire that she should accept. He liked to have her
admired, and moreover, though the function itself might be tiresome,
still she owed some duty to society, and there were few easier ways in
which that duty could be performed. Accordingly an acceptance was sent,
and as a reward of that heroism Usselex had brought her a plastron of
opals.
That plastron she now wore. Her gown, which was cut a trifle lower on
the back than on the neck, was of a hue that suggested the blending of
sulphur and of salmon. Her arms were cased in _Suede_, into which she
had rolled that part of the glove which covers the hand. Save for the
wedding-token her fingers were ringless. She had nothing about her
throat. But from shoulder to shoulder, from breast to girdle, was a
cuirass of gems, flecked with absinthe and oscillant with flame. It was
barbaric in splendor, Roman in beauty; it startled and captivated. And
in it Eden looked the personified spirit of Bysance, a dream that had
taken form. Her husband let his eyes have all their will of her. Even
the butler was dazzled.
During the progress of the meal the presence of that person and of his
underlings prevented any conversation of reportable interest. But while
the courses were being served Eden noticed that her husband was in an
unusually sprightly mood. He touched on one topic of the day, presently
on another, and left that for a third. To each he gave a new aspect. It
was as though he were tossing crystal balls. Now, when an educated man
is not a pedant he can in discoursing about nothing at all exert a very
palpable influence. Mr. Usselex talked like a philosopher who has seen
the world. To many a woman there is nothing more wearisome than the
conversation of a man who has nothing to desire and nothing to fear.
That man is usually her husband. But with Eden it was different. She
listened with the pleasure of a convalescent. She was just issuing from
the little nightmare of the afternoon, and as he spoke, now and then she
interrupted with some fancy of her own; but all the while deep down in
the fibres of her being she felt a smart of self-reproach that mingled
with exultation. Her suspicions had vanished. They had been born of the
dusk and creatures of it. And she looked down through the opals into her
heart and over at her husband and smiled.
The butler and his underlings had departed. The meal was done. Usselex
smiled too. He left his seat and went behind her. He drew her head back,
bent over, and kissed her on the lips; then mirroring his eyes in hers,
he kissed her again, drew a chair to her side, and took her hand in his.
"Look at me, Eden," he said. "I love your eyes. Speak to me. I love
your voice. They say that at twenty a man loves best. They are wrong.
Youth is inconstant. It is with age a man learns what love can be. Do
you not think I know? Look at me and tell me. Eden, joy frightens.
Sometimes I wonder that I had the courage to ask you to be my wife.
Sometimes I fear you think me too old. Sometimes I fear you may regret.
But you must never regret. Any man you might have met could be more
attractive than I, but no one could care for you more; no one. Tell me;
you believe that, do you not?"
And Eden, turning her head with the motion of a swan, answered, "I know
it."
"Eden," he continued, "my life has not been pleasant. I have told you
little of it. In the lives of everyone there are incidents that are best
left buried. If I have been reticent it has not been from lack of
confidence; it has been because I feared to distress you. For years I
did not understand; the reason of pain is seldom clear. At times I
thought my strength overtaxed. I accused fate; it had been wilful to me.
It had beckoned me to pleasant places; when I reached them the meadows
disappeared, the intervales were quagmires, and the palace I had espied
was a prison, with a sword for bolt. I accused justice as I had accused
fate. Eden, men are not always sincere. There are people who do wrong,
who injure, wantonly, in sport. And so I accused justice: I had expected
it to be human; but justice is straight as a bayonet, and her breasts
are of stone. It was long before I understood, but when I saw you I did.
What I had suffered was needful; it was a preparation for you. No,
justice is never human, but sometimes it is divine."
He had been speaking in a monotone, his voice sinking at times into a
whisper, as though he feared some other than herself might hear his
words. Eden's hand still lay within his own, and now he stood up and led
her, waist-encircled, to the outer room. There they found other seats,
and for a moment both were silent.
"If I have not questioned you," Eden said, at last, "it has been for a
woman's reason. I am content. Had you a grief, I would demand to share
it with you. It would be my right, would it not? But of what has gone
before I prefer to remain in ignorance. It is not that I am incurious.
It is that I prefer to think of your life as I think of my own, that its
beginning was our wedding-day. I too am some times afraid. There are
things of which I also have been reticent. I remember once thinking that
to be happy was a verb that had no present tense. I do not think so
now," she added, after a moment; and to her exquisite lips the smile
returned. "There are so many things I want to tell," she continued.
"Before I met you I thought myself in love. Oh, but I did, though. And
it was not until after I had known you that I found that which I had
taken for love was not love at all. How did I know? Well--you see,
because that is not love which goes. And that went. It was for the man I
cared, not the individual. At the time I did not understand, nor did I
until you came. Truly I don't see why I should speak of this. Every
girl, I fancy, experiences the same thing. But when you came life seemed
larger. You brought with you new currents. Do you know what I thought?
People said I married you for money. I married you because--what do you
suppose, now? Because I loved you? But at that time I told myself I had
done with love. No, it was not so much for that as because I was
ambitious for us both. It was because I thought Wall Street too small
for such as you. It was because I discerned in you that power which
coerces men. It was because I believed in the future; it was because I
trusted you. Yes, it was for that, and yet this afternoon--What is it,
Harris?"
A servant had entered the room, bearing a letter on a tray.
"A letter for you, sir," he said.
Usselex took the note, opened the envelope, which he tossed on the
table, and possessed himself of the contents.
"Is the messenger waiting?" he asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Very good. Say I will be there immediately."
The man bowed and left the room.
"I am sorry, Eden--"
"What is it?"
"Nothing of any moment--a matter of business to which I must attend." He
glanced at the clock. "It is after ten," he added. "You will not want to
leave for Delmonico's before half-past eleven, will you? Very good; I
will be back long before then." He had risen from his seat, and now he
bent over and took her hand in his. "I am sorry I have to go. It is so
seldom we have an evening together. And I had counted on this."
Eden raised a finger warningly. "If you are not back in time," she said,
"I will send for Arnswald and go with him."
"I can trust him with you," he answered, and left the room. In a moment
he returned, hat in hand. "By the way, Eden, I forgot to ask--you have
sent out cards, have you not?"
"Yes, the world is informed that Mrs. John Usselex is at home on
Saturdays."
"Would you mind sending that announcement to some one whom you don't
know? It's just for the civility of the thing."
"Certainly. Who is it?"
"A Mrs. Feverill."
"Feverill? Mrs. Feverill." Eden contracted her eyebrows. "Where have I
heard that name before?"
"I don't think you have ever heard it."
Eden laughed. "She wears blue velvet, I am sure; but I will send the
card. Where does she live?"
Usselex bent over and touched her forehead with his lips. "That is good
of you," he said. "She will take it very kindly." And with that he moved
to the door.
"But what is the address?" Eden called after him.
"The Ranleigh," he answered; and from the hall he added, in a louder
tone, "I will be back in less than an hour."
"The Ranleigh," she repeated to herself. "The Ranleigh!" And then
suddenly the wall of the room parted like a curtain; to her ears came a
cry of violins, dominated and accentuated by a blare of brass. Mrs.
Manhattan was at her elbow. Behind her was Jones; beneath was a woman,
her face turned to hers. She caught the motion of Mrs. Manhattan's fan.
Beyond, in a canvas forest, stood a man, open-mouthed, raising and
lowering his right arm at regular intervals. And between the shiver of
violins and the shudder of trumpets, she heard some one saying, "Mrs.
Feverill, that is--rather fly. Stops at the Ranleigh." At once the music
swooned. The opera-house dissolved into mist, and Eden was in a
carriage, eying through the open window the cut of a passer's gown. In
her lap were some flowers; she raised them to her face, and as she put
them down again, a cab drove past, bearing her husband and the woman who
was considered fly. And this was the woman he wished her to receive! She
caught and pinioned her forehead in her hands. In the distance the
shadow of the afternoon loomed again, but this time more monstrous and
potent than before. And nearer and nearer it came--blacker than hate and
more appalling than shame; in a moment it would be on her; she would be
shrouded in it for evermore, and no defense--not one.
"No, no," she murmured. Her hands left her forehead. She clutched her
throat as though to tear some invisible grasp away. "No, no," she
murmured, "it cannot be."
"Look at me, Eden," some one was saying; "look at me; I love your eyes.
Youth is inconstant. It is with age--"
It was her husband reassuring her even in his absence. "Speak to me; I
love your voice." And memory, continuing its office of mercy, served as
aegis and exorcised advancing night. In her nervousness at the parried
attack, she left her seat and paced the room, the opals glittering on
her waist. "But he told me," she mused, "he told me that the woman's
husband was in trouble--that he was endeavoring to aid them both. What
did I hear when I first met him? There was a clerk or someone in his
office, a man whom he trusted who deceived him, who was imprisoned, and
to whose people he then furnished means for support. It is criminal for
me to doubt him as I have. Do I not know him to be generous? have I not
found him sincere?"
She shook out a fold of her frock impatiently. "A child frightened at
momentary solitude was never more absurd than I." For a little space
she continued her promenade up and down the room, leaving at each turn
some fringe of suspicion behind. And presently the entire fabric seemed
to leave her. To the corners of her mouth the smile returned. She went
back to the sofa and was about to resume her former seat when her eyes
fell on the envelope which her husband had tossed on the table.
Mechanically she picked it up and glanced at the superscription. The
writing was thin as hair, but the lettering was larger than is usual,
abrupt and angular. To anyone else it would have suggested nothing
particular, save, perhaps, the idea that it had been formed with the
point of a tack; but to Eden it was luminous with intimations. Into the
palms of her hands came a sudden moisture, the color left her cheeks,
for a second she stood irresolute, the envelope in her trembling hold,
then, as though coerced by another than herself, she ran to a bell and
rang it.
In a moment the butler appeared. To conceal her agitation Eden had gone
to the piano. There were some loose sheets of music on the lid and
these she pretended to examine. "Is that you, Harris?" she asked,
without turning her head. "Harris, that man that brought the note for
Mr. Usselex this evening was the one that came on Monday with the note
for Mr. Arnswald, was it not?"
"I beg pardon, ma'am."
Eden reconstructed the question and repeated it.
"It was a young person, ma'am," Harris answered. "A lady's maid, most
likely. She was here before on Monday evening, just before dinner,
ma'am. She brought a letter and said there was no answer. I gave it to
Mr. Usselex."
"To Mr. Arnswald, you mean."
"No, ma'am; it was for Mr. Usselex."
Eden clutched at the piano. Through the sheet of music which she held
she saw that note again. The handwriting was identical with the one on
the envelope. But each word it contained was a separate flame, and each
flame was burning little round holes in her heart and eating it away. It
was very evident to her now. She had been tricked from the first. She
had been lied to and deceived. It behooved her now to be very cool. It
was on business indeed that he had left her! Unconsciously she recalled
Mrs. Manhattan's aphorism about business and other men's wives, and to
her mouth, which the smile had deserted, came a sneer.
He is with her now, she told herself; well, let him be. In a sudden gust
of anger she tore the sheet of music in two, and tossing it from her,
turned.
At the door the butler still stood, awaiting her commands.
"You may go," she said, shortly. The shadow which twice that day she had
eluded was before her. But she made no effort now to escape. It was
welcome. She eyed it a moment. Her teeth were set, her muscles
contracted. Then grasping it as Vulcan did, she forged it into steel.
About her on either side were wastes of black, and in the goaf, by way
of clearing, but one thing was discernible, the fealty of Adrian. To
save her from pain he had taken the letter on himself; he had accepted
her contempt that he might assure her peace of mind. Through the dismal
farce which had been played at her expense his loyalty constituted the
one situation which was deserving of praise. With a gesture she
dismissed her husband; it was as though he had ceased to exist. It was
not him that she had espoused; it was a figure garbed in fine words. She
had detected the travesty, the mask had fallen, with the actor she was
done. She had never been mated, and now she was divorced. And as she
stood, her hands clenched and pendant, the currents of her thought
veering from master to clerk, the portiere furthermost from her was
drawn aside, the butler appeared an instant in the doorway, he mumbled a
name, Dugald Maule entered the room, and the portiere fell back.
"I made sure of finding you," he announced jauntily, as he approached.
He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips. In his button-hole
was a flower, and in his breath the odor of _Creme de Menthe_. It was
evident that he had just dined. "Your man tells me that Mr. Usselex is
not at home," he continued. "I fancied he might be going to the
assembly too. I see that you are. You look like a queen of old time. No,
but you are simply stunning."
He stepped back that he might the better enjoy the effect. Eden had sunk
on the lounge again. In and out from her skirt a white slipper,
butterflied with gold, moved restlessly.
"But you are pale," he added. "What is it?" He had scanned her face--its
pallor was significant to him; but it was the nervousness of the slipper
that prompted the question. To his thinking there was nothing more
talkative than the foot of a pretty woman.
Eden shrugged her shoulders. "I didn't expect you," she said; "I am sure
that I wouldn't have received you if I had."
"Ah, that is hardly gracious now."
"Besides, your reputation is deplorable."
"No one has any reputation, nowadays," Maule answered, with the air of a
man describing the state of the weather. "You hear the most scandalous
things about everyone. Who has been talking against me? A woman, I
wager. Do you know what hell is paved with?"
"Not with your good intentions, I am positive."
"It is paved with women's tongues. That is what it is paved with. What
am I accused of now?"
"As if I knew or cared. In my opinion you are depraved, and that is
sufficient."
"Why do you call me depraved? You are not fair. Depravity is synonymous
with the unnatural. Girls in short frocks don't interest me. Never yet
have I loitered in the boudoir of a cocotte. Corydon was not a gentleman
whom I would imitate. Neither was Narcissus. On the other hand, I like
refined women. I have an unquestionable admiration for a pretty face.
What man whose health is good has not? If capacity for such admiration
constitutes depravity, then depraved I am." He paused. "H'm," he
muttered to himself, "there's nothing of the Joseph about me."
But he might have continued his speech aloud. Eden had ceased to hear,
her thoughts were far away. He looked at her inquiringly.
"Something is the matter," he said at last. "What has happened?"
Eden aroused herself ever so little from her reverie. "Nothing," she
answered. "I wish you would go away."
"Something _is_ the matter," he insisted. "Tell me what is troubling
you. Who is there to whom you can turn more readily than to me? Eden,
you forget so easily. For months I was at your side. And abruptly, a
rumor, a whisper, a wind that passes took you from me. Eden, _I_ have
not changed. Nor have you ceased to preside over my life. It is idle and
useless enough, I know. With your aid it would have been less valueless,
I think; but such as it is, it is wholly yours. Tell me, what it is that
troubles you."
And Eden, influenced either by the caress of the words or that longing
which in moments of mental anguish forces us to voice the affliction,
though it be but to a wall, looked in his face and answered:
"A hole has been dug in my heart, and in that hole is hate."
"Hate? Why, hate is a mediaeval emotion; you don't know what it means."
And as he spoke he told himself she was mad.
"Do I not? Ah, do I not?" She beat a measure on her knee with her
fingers, and her eyes roamed from Maule to the ceiling and then far into
space. "There is one whom I think of now; could I see him smitten with
agony such as no mortal ever felt before, his eyes filled with spectres,
his brain aflame--could I see that and know it to be my work, I should
lie down glad and willing, and die of delight."