"It is pleasanter here, is it not, Eden?" Mr. Menemon asked, when they
reached the sitting-room. "It makes one think of old times, doesn't it?
Do you remember--" And Mr. Menemon rambled on with some anecdote of days
long past.
Eden gazed at him wonderingly. His words passed her by unheeded. It was
bewildering to her that he could accept the tragedy so lightly, and as
he spoke she kept repeating to herself that Virginius was part of a
world long dead and derided. Truly, she could not understand. He seemed
conscious of no wrong doing. The position in which she was placed
excited him so little that he was able to discourse in platitudes. She
was not wife nor maid nor widow, and for the man who had taken her from
her home and inflicted on her a wrong that merited the penitentiary, her
father expressed no indignation, no sorrow even. He did not even attempt
to condole with her. And it was to him she had turned. Truly, she was
helpless indeed. Yet still she gazed at him, expectant of some sudden
outbreak, some storm of anger which, though it parodied her own, would
at least be in unison with it. Her fingers were restless and her mouth
was parched, a handkerchief which she held she twisted into coils, it
seemed to her that were no word of sympathy forthcoming she would
suffocate, as the traveler in the desert gasps beneath the oppression of
fair and purple skies.
And still Mr. Menemon rambled on. "I should have gone to his funeral,"
he said, "had you not come in. He is to be buried in Washington I hear.
Well, well! he was a brave man and a staunch friend. Yes, he was all of
that. Really, Eden, I ought to have gone. I suppose they will escort the
body to the station. Did you hear the drums when you went up-stairs? It
makes a man of my age feel that his turn may be next."
Mr. Menemon crossed the room and looked out of the window. "See, Eden,"
he continued; "there must be a whole regiment. Not his own, though. The
better part of that went down at Gettysburg. You remember, don't
you----"
With this Mr. Menemon turned with a haste he strove to conceal. "It's
almost dinner time," he added, inconsequently. "I will just change my
coat." And immediately he left the room.
For a moment Eden thought she heard his voice in the hall. Then all was
still again. She was wholly alone. She envied her father's friend who
lay in some catafalque across the square. And presently the sense of
desolation grew so acute that she threw herself prostrate on the lounge,
and clasping a cushion in her arms, she buried her face in its silk.
From the square beyond came a muffled roll, and on her shoulder the
touch of a hand. It was her father, she was sure. She half turned, her
cheeks wet with tears. "What is it?" she sobbed. "Father----"
"It is I, Eden." And through a rift of understanding there filtered the
sound of Usselex's voice. With the flutter of a bird surprised, she
looked up. She started, and would have risen, but the hand weighed her
down. She tried to move, and raising her arm as though to shield her
eyes from some distasteful sight, suddenly she extended it, and motioned
him back.
"Eden," he began.
"Don't speak to me!" she cried; and shaking herself from his hold, she
stood up and dashed the tears away. "Don't speak to me!" she repeated;
"and if anywhere within the purlieus of your being there is a spark of
shame, leave me, and never----"
"Eden, you are unjust."
"Ah, I am unjust, am I not? I am unjust, because I believed in you. I am
unjust, because I discover you in some coarse intrigue, I am unjust,
because I thought myself your wife. I am unjust, am I? Did you get my
note? Is it for that that you are here?"
"Eden, if you will listen a moment----"
"I have listened too long. Where is my father? Why is it you pursue me
here? Are you not satisfied with your work? You meet a girl who only
wishes to trust, and before her eyes you unroll a panorama of deceit.
Oh! you chose her well----"
"It cannot be that you believe that man, Eden----"
"The man I believed was you. What matters the testimony of others when I
find myself deceived----"
"Eden, you have deceived yourself. Last night I told you there were
things I had not wished to tell, not from lack of confidence, but
because----"
"Because you knew that did I hear them I would go."
"No, not that; but because I did not wish to cause you pain."
"Yes, protest. My father said you would. But the protest comes too
late. Besides, I do not care to listen."
And thereat she made a movement as though to leave the room. But this
Usselex prevented. He planted himself very firmly before her. His
attitude was arrestive as an obelisk and uncircuitable as a labyrinth.
Attention was his to command, and he claimed it with a gesture.
"You shall not go," he said; "you shall hear me."
She stepped back to elude him, but he caught her by the wrist.
"Look at me," he continued. "It took fifty years to make my hair gray;
one day has made it white."
Eden succeeded in disengaging herself from his grasp, and she succeeded
the more easily in that a servant unobserved by her, yet seen by
Usselex, had entered the room. He loosed his hold at once and glanced at
the man.
"What is it?" he asked. "No one rang."
"A letter, sir," the man answered; "it was to be delivered to you."
Usselex took the note and held it unexamined in his hand. Eden caught a
glimpse of the superscription. The writing was her own. It was, she
knew, the note which she had dispatched a half hour before. Meanwhile
the servant had withdrawn.
"When I came home this afternoon," Usselex continued, "and found that
you had gone, I could not understand----"
"You might have gone to the Ranleigh for information. Let me pass!"
"Why to the Ranleigh? surely----"
"To Mrs. Feverill, then, since you wish me to be explicit. Let me pass,
I say."
"It was of her I wished to tell you----"
"Was it, indeed? You were considerate enough, however, not to do so."
"Let me tell you now?"
"Rather let me go. I prefer your reticence to your confidence."
"Eden----"
"No, I have no need to learn more of your mistress----"
Usselex stepped aside. "She is my daughter," he said, sadly. "Go, since
you wish to."
--"Nor of your wife," she added, as he spoke.
"I have no other wife than you," he answered, and with the note which he
held in his hand he toyed despondently. As yet he had not so much as
glanced at the address.
Something, a light, an intonation, and influence undiscerned yet
sentiable, stayed her steps. She halted in passing and looked him in the
face. And he, seeing that she hesitated, repeated with an accent sincere
as that which is heard in the voice of the moribund, "No other wife than
you."
"You say that Mrs. Feverill is your daughter?" she exclaimed. It may be
that the average woman, conscious of her own mobility, is more
inattentive of the past than of the present. But however that may be,
the assurance which Eden had just received seemed to affect her less
than the preceding announcement. "You say that she is your daughter,"
she repeated. "Why, you told me--You said--"
"I have told you nothing. Will you sit a moment and let me tell you
now?"
Coerced and magnetized, the girl moved back and sank down again on the
lounge. Usselex still toyed absently with the note, and as he too found
a seat, for the first time she recalled its contents. Then a shudder
beset her.
"I ought perhaps," he began, "to have been franker in this matter. But
my excuse, if it be one, is that I was dissuaded by your father. Before
I ventured to ask you to marry me, I told my story to him, and he
counselled silence. What I say to you now he will substantiate. Shall I
ring and ask him to come here?"
His words reached her from inordinate distances, across preceding days,
and out of and through the note which he held in his hand; and with them
came the acutest pain. "He is telling the truth," she reflected, "and I
deserve to die."
"Shall I ring?" he repeated.