MR. FORBES was obliged to go that morning to Boston, to remain
until the following evening. He did not see his wife before he
left--had not seen her since the interview in the library. She had
locked herself in her room, and he was not the man to hammer on a
sulking woman’s door.
Several men he knew were in his car, and he talked with them until
the train reached Boston. There he was engrossed; he had barely time
to snatch a few hours for sleep, none for thought. But the next day,
after taking his chair in the train for New York, and observing that
he knew no one in the car, he became aware that the heart within him
was heavy. He and his wife had quarrelled before, for she had a hot
Southern temper, and he was by no means without gunpowder of his own;
but none of their disputes had left behind it the flavour of this. That
she should tolerate such a man as Bosworth, had disappointed him; that
she should espouse his pretensions to their only child, filled him with
disgust and something like terror; and her snobbery sickened him. But
what had stabbed into the quick of his heart were her final words. He
repeated them again and again, hoping to dull their edge.
Moreover, she had never let the night set its ugly seal on their
quarrels. Her tempers were soon over, and she had invariably come to
him and commanded or coaxed for reconciliation, as her mood dictated.
He had steered safely through the first trying years of matrimony, and
it appalled him to think that perhaps an unreckoned future lay before
them both.
When he entered his house something struck him as out of the common. A
servant had fetched his portmanteau from the cab. It suddenly occurred
to Mr. Forbes that the man had ostentatiously evaded his eye.
He walked toward the stair, hesitated, then turned.
“Is Mrs. Forbes well?” he asked; and he found that he was making an
effort to control his voice.
The man flushed and hung his head. “Mrs. Forbes and Miss Augusta
sailed for Europe this afternoon, sir. There’s a letter for you on the
mantel-piece in the library.”
Mr. Forbes did not trust himself to say, “Ah!” As he turned the knob
of the library door his hand trembled. He entered, and locked the door
behind him.
He opened the letter at once and read it.
“I think you did not understand on Monday night that I was in
earnest,” it ran. “I am so much in earnest that I shall not stay here
to bicker with you. That we have never done. I do not wish to run the
risk of speaking again as I spoke the last time we were together. I
know that I hurt you, and I am very sorry. If I did not believe that
you were entirely wrong in the stand you have taken, I should not
think of taking any decisive step in the matter myself; for it hurts
me to hurt you--please believe that. But I feel sure that as soon
as you are alone and think it over calmly, you will see that your
opposition is hardly warrantable, and that the wishes of your wife and
daughter are worthy of serious consideration. If we remained to renew
the subject constantly you would not give it this consideration; there
would be an undignified and regrettable war of words every day.
“This is what I have made up my mind to do: if you persist in refusing
your consent--which I cannot believe--I shall, on the tenth day of
March, turn over all my own property to the Duke: my houses in Newport
and Asheville, my horses and yacht, and my jewels. Two days later they
will marry. I stand pledged to these two people that they shall marry,
and nothing will induce me to break my word.
“I sail to-day with Augusta on the _Brétagne_; I go to Paris
first to order the trousseau. My address will be the ‘Bristol’; but
I shall only be in Paris a week. From there I shall go to London--to
the ‘Bristol.’ The Duke and Fletcher Cuyler sail to-day on the
_Majestic_.
“I am afraid I have expressed myself brutally. My head aches. I am
very nervous. I can hardly get my thoughts together, with all this
hurry and confusion, and the unhappy knowledge that I am displeasing
you. But this cloud that has fallen between us can be brushed aside;
we can be happy again, and at once. It only rests with you.
“VIRGINIA.
“I have told Harriet to make a plausible explanation of our abrupt
departure. She has a talent for that sort of thing. No one need know
that there has been the slightest difference of opinion.”
Mr. Forbes dropped the letter to the floor, and leaned forward, his
elbows digging into his knees, his hands pressed to his head.
He stared at the carpet His face was as white as if someone had struck
him a blow in a vital part. The tears gathered slowly in his eyes and
rolled over his cheeks. Suddenly his hands covered his face; and sobs
shook him from head to foot.
“What have I loved?” he thought. “What have I loved? Have I been in a
fool’s paradise for twenty-two years? Oh, my God!”
This woman had been the pre-eminent consideration of the best years
of his life. He had loved her supremely. He had been faithful to her.
He had poured millions at her feet, delighted to gratify her love of
splendour and power. And never had a man seemed more justified. She had
half lived in his arms. She had been his comrade and friend, a source
of sympathy and repose and diversion and happiness that had never
failed him; for nearly a quarter of a century. And now she had sold
him, trodden in the dirt his will, his pride, his heart, that she might
finger a coronet which could never be hers, but gloat over the tarnish
on her fingers.
He sat there for many hours. Dinner was announced, but he paid no
heed. He reviewed his married life. It had seemed to him very nearly
perfect. It lost nothing in the retrospect. He doubted if many men were
as happy as he had been, if many women had as much to give to a man as
Virginia Forbes. And now it had come to a full stop; to be resumed,
pitted and truncated, in another chapter. The delight of being petted
and spoiled and adored by a man whom all men respected, the love and
communion upon which she had seemed passionately dependent, were chaff
in the scale against her personal and social vanities.
Life had been very kind to him. Money, position, influential friends
had been his birthright. His talents had been recognised in his early
manhood. He had turned his original thousands into millions. No man in
the United States stood higher in the public estimation, nor could have
had a wider popularity, had he chosen to send his magnetism to the
people. No American was more hospitably received abroad. Probably no
man living was the object of more kindly envy. And yet he sat alone in
his magnificent house and asked himself, “For what were mortals born?”
His heart ached so that he could have torn it out and trampled on it.
And the gall that bit the raw wound was the knowledge that he must go
on loving this woman so long as life was in him.