“I suppose there are people,” she went on, “who have never known what it
was to--really to care for some one else. They would despise me for
clinging to a man after he has shown me that--that his love has ceased.”
“Pardon me, Mrs. Langdon,” I interrupted. “You apparently think your
husband and I are intimate friends. Before you go any further, I must
disabuse you of that idea.”
She looked at me in open astonishment. “You do not know why my husband has
left me?”
“Until a few minutes ago, I did not know that he had left you,” I said.
“And I do not wish to know why.”
Her expression of astonishment changed to mockery. “Oh!” she sneered. “Your
wife has fooled you into thinking it a one-sided affair. Well, I tell you,
she is as much to blame as he--more. For he did love me when he married me;
did love me until she got him under her spell again.”
I thought I understood. “You have been misled, Mrs. Langdon,” said I
gently, pitying her as the victim of her insane jealousy. “You have--”
“Ask your wife,” she interrupted angrily. “Hereafter, you can't pretend
ignorance. For I'll at least be revenged. She failed utterly to trap him
into marriage when she was a poor girl, and--”
“Before you go any further,” said I coldly, “let me set you right. My wife
was at one time engaged to your husband's brother, but--”
“Tom?” she interrupted. And her laugh made me bite my lip. “So she told you
that! I don't see how she dared. Why, everybody knows that she and Mowbray
were engaged, and that he broke it off to marry me.”
All in an instant everything that had been confused in my affairs at
home and down town became clear. I understood why I had been pursued
relentlessly in Wall Street; why I had been unable to make the least
impression on the barriers between Anita and myself. You will imagine that
some terrible emotion at once dominated me. But this is not a romance;
only the veracious chronicle of certain human beings. My first emotion
was--relief that it was not Tom Langdon. “I ought to have known she
couldn't care for _him_,” said I to myself. I, contending with Tom
Langdon for a woman's love had always made me shrink. But Mowbray--that
was vastly different. My respect for myself and for Anita rose.
“No,” said I to Mrs. Langdon, “my wife did not tell me, never spoke of it.
What I said to you was purely a guess of my own. I had no interest in the
matter--and haven't. I have absolute confidence in my wife. I feel ashamed
that you have provoked me into saying so.” I opened the door.
“I am not going yet,” said she angrily. “Yesterday morning Mowbray and she
were riding together in the Riverside Drive. Ask her groom.”
“What of it?” said I. Then, as she did not rise, I rang the bell. When the
servant came, I said: “Please tell Mrs. Blacklock that Mrs. Langdon is in
the library--and that I am here, and gave you the message.”
As soon as the servant was gone, she said: “No doubt she'll lie to you.
These women that steal other women's property are usually clever at fooling
their own silly husbands.”
“I do not intend to ask her,” I replied. “To ask her would be an insult.”
She made no comment beyond a scornful toss of the head. We both had
our gaze fixed upon the door through which Anita would enter. When she
finally did appear, I, after one glance at her, turned--it must have been
triumphantly--upon her accuser. I had not doubted, but where is the faith
that is not the stronger for confirmation? And confirmation there was in
the very atmosphere round that stately, still figure. She looked calmly,
first at Mrs. Langdon, then at me.
“I sent for you,” said I, “because I thought that you, rather than I,
should request Mrs. Langdon to leave your house.”
At that Mrs. Langdon was on her feet, and blazing. “Fool!” she flared at
me. “Oh, the fools women make of men!” Then to Anita: “You--you--But no, I
must not permit you to drag me down to your level. Tell your husband--tell
him that you were riding with my husband in the Riverside Drive yesterday.”
I stepped between her and Anita. “My wife will not answer you,” said I. “I
hope, Madam, you will spare us the necessity of a painful scene. But leave
you must--at once.”
She looked wildly round, clasped her hands, suddenly burst into tears.
If she had but known, she could have had her own way after that, without
any attempt from me to oppose her. For she was evidently unutterably
wretched--and no one knew better than I the sufferings of unreturned love.
But she had given me up; slowly, sobbing, she left the room, I opening the
door for her and closing it behind her.
“I almost broke down myself,” said I to Anita. “Poor woman! How can you be
so calm? You women in your relations with each other are--a mystery.”
“I have only contempt for a woman who tries to hold a man when he wishes
to go,” said Anita, with quiet but energetic bitterness. “Besides”--she
hesitated an instant before going on--“Gladys deserves her fate. She
doesn't really care for him. She's only jealous of him. She never did love
him.”
“How do you know?” said I sharply, trying to persuade myself it was not an
ugly suspicion in me that lifted its head and shot out that question.
“Because he never loved her,” she replied. “The feeling a woman has for
a man or a man for a woman, without any response, isn't love, isn't
worthy the name of love. It's a sort of baffled covetousness. Love means
generosity, not greediness.” Then--“Why do you not ask me whether what she
said is true?”
The change in her tone with that last sentence, the strange, ominous note
in it, startled me,
“Because,” replied I, “as I said to her, to ask my wife such a question
would be to insult her. If you were riding with him, it was an accident.”
As if my rude repulse of her overtures and my keeping away from her ever
since would not have justified her in almost anything.
She flushed the dark red of shame, but her gaze held steady and unflinching
upon mine. “It was not altogether by accident,” she said. And I think she
expected me to kill her.
When a man admits and respects a woman's rights where he is himself
concerned, he either is no longer interested in her or has begun to love
her so well that he can control the savage and selfish instincts of
passion. If Mowbray Langdon had been there, I might have killed them both;
but he was not there, and she, facing me without fear, was not the woman to
be suspected of the stealthy and traitorous.
“It was he that you meant when you warned me you cared for another man?”
said I, so quietly that I wondered at myself; wondered what had become of
the “Black Matt” who had used his fists almost as much as his brains in
fighting his way up.
“Yes,” she said, her head down now.
A long pause.
“You wish to be free?” I asked, and my tone must have been gentle.
“I wish to free you,” she replied slowly and deliberately.
There was a long silence. Then I said: “I must think it all out. I once
told you how I felt about these matters. I've greatly changed my mind since
our talk that night in the Willoughby; but my prejudices are still with me.
Perhaps you will not be surprised at that--you whose prejudices have cost
me so dear.”
I thought she was going to speak. Instead she turned away, so that I could
no longer see her face.
“Our marriage was a miserable mistake,” I went on, struggling to be just
and judicial, and to seem calm. “I admit it now. Fortunately, we are both
still young--you very young. Mistakes in youth are never fatal. But, Anita,
do not blunder out of one mistake into another. You are no longer a child,
as you were when I married you. You will be careful not to let judgments
formed of him long ago decide you for him as they decided you against me.”
“I wish to be free,” she said, each word coming with an effort, “as much
on your account as on my own.” Then, and it seemed to me merely a truly
feminine attempt to shirk responsibility, she added, “I am glad my going
will be a relief to you.”
“Yes, it will be a relief,” I confessed. “Our situation has become
intolerable.” I had reached my limit of self-control. I put out my hand.
“Good-by,” I said.
If she had wept, it might have modified my conviction that everything was
at an end between us. But she did not weep. “Can you ever forgive me?” she
asked.
“Let's not talk of forgiveness,” said I, and I fear my voice and manner
were gruff, as I strove not to break down. “Let's try to forget.” And I
touched her hand and hastened away.
When two human beings set out to misunderstand each other, how fast and far
they go! How shut-in we are from each other, with only halting means of
communication that break down under the slightest strain!
As I was leaving the house next morning, I gave Sanders this note for her:
“I have gone to live at the Downtown Hotel. When you have decided what
course to take, let me know. If my 'rights' ever had any substance, they
have starved away to such weak things that they collapse even as I try to
set them up. I hope your freedom will give you happiness, and me peace.”
“You are ill, sir?” asked my old servant, my old friend, as he took the
note.
“Stay with her, Sanders, as long as she wishes,” said I, ignoring his
question. “Then come to me.”
His look made me shake hands with him. As I did it, we both remembered the
last time we had shaken hands--when he had the roses for my home-coming
with my bride. It seemed to me I could smell those roses.