I
When the clergyman had gone, the bride turned.
Before her was an open window before which was the open sea. In the air
was a tropical languor, a savour of brine, the scent of lilies, the
sound of mandolins that are far away. Below, in the garden, were masses
of scarlet, high heaps of geranium blooms. A bit beyond was the Caprian
blue of the San Diego Bay. There, a yacht rode, white and spacious. The
yacht belonged to her husband who was beside her. She turned again and
as passionately he embraced her; she coloured.
For the moment, as they stood there, they seemed so sheerly dissimilar
that they might have come of alien races, from different zones.
He, with his fair hair, his fair skin, his resolute and aggressive
face, was typically Anglo-Saxon. She, with her delicate features,
her dense black hair, and disquieting eyes, looked like a Madrilene
Madonna--one of those fascinating and slightly shocking creations of
seventeenth-century art that more nearly resemble infantas serenaded
by caballeros than queens of the sky. There was a deeper contrast. He
appeared frankly material; she, all soul.
Leisurely she freed herself.
“One might know,” she began, then paused. A smile completed the
sentence.
He smiled too.
“Yes, Leilah, one might know that however I hold you to me, I never can
hold you enough.”
“And I! I could be held by you forever.”
On the door came a tap, rapid and assured. A page entered, the
preoccupation of the tip in his face, in his hand a platter of letters.
The man, taking the letters, dismissed him.
“Miss Ogston,” he continued. “From your father, confound him. It is
the last time he will address you in that fashion. Miss Ogston,” he
repeated. “From the Silverstairs, I fancy. Gulian Verplank. There is
but one for me.”
He looked at his watch. “The launch from the yacht will be here
shortly.”
“When do we start?”
“Whenever you like. The Marquesas will keep. Bora-Bora will be the
same whenever we get there. Only----”
“Only what?”
“I am in love with you, not with hotels.”
“Let us go then. There will be a moon to-night?”
“A new one, a honeymoon, a honeymoon begun.”
“Gulian! As if it could end!”
In pronouncing the “u” in his name her mouth made the sketch of a kiss.
“You would not wish it to?” he asked.
“When I die, perhaps, and even then only to be continued hereafter.
Heaven would not be heaven without you.”
She spoke slowly, with little pauses, in a manner that differed from
his own mode of speech, which was quick and forceful.
Verplank turned to the letter that had been addressed to him, and which
he still held. Without opening it, he tore it into long, thin strips.
It was, he knew from the imprint, a communication of no importance;
but, at the moment, the action seemed a reply to her remark. It served
to indicate his complete indifference to everything and everyone save
her only. Afterward, with a regret that was to be eternal, she wished
he had done the same with hers.
Yet, pleased at the time, she smiled.
“Gulian, you do love me, but I wonder do you love me as absolutely as I
love you?”
Verplank, with a gesture that was familiar to him, closed and opened a
hand.
“I do not know. But while I think you cannot love me more wholly than I
love you, I do know that to me you are the unique.”
Leilah moved to where he stood.
“Gulian, and you to me. You are the only one.” She moved closer.
Raising her hands, she put them on his shoulders. “Tell me, shall you
be long away?”
“An hour or two. Apropos, would you care to leave before dinner?”
“Yes.”
“We will dine on board, then. Is there anything in particular you would
like?”
“Yes, lilies, plenty of lilies; and pineapples; and the sound of your
voice.”
Lifting her hands from his shoulders to his face, she drew it to her
own. Their lips met longly. With the savour of her about him, Verplank
passed out.
Idly Leilah turned. Before her the sea lay, a desert of blue. Below,
on the beach, it broke with a boom in high white waves which, in
retreating, became faintly mauve. The spectacle charmed her. But other
scenes effaced it; sudden pictures of the Marquesas; the long flight
southward; the brief, bright days; the nights that would be briefer
still. Pleasurably for a while these things detained her. Idly again
she turned.
On the table were the letters. One was from an intimate friend, Violet
Silverstairs, a New York girl who had married an Englishman, and who
since then had resided abroad. The other was--or appeared to be--from
Matlack Ogston.
Matlack Ogston was Leilah’s father. That a father should write to a
daughter is only natural. But that this father should write surprised
her, as already it had surprised Verplank. When he mentioned whom
the letter was from she had thought he must be in error. Now, as she
opened it, she found that he had been. Her father had not written. The
envelope contained a second envelope addressed to another person. This
envelope had formerly been sealed and since been opened. It held three
letters in an unknown hand.
She began at one of them. More exactly, she began, as some women do
begin, at the end. The signature startled. At once, as she turned to
the initial sentences, she experienced the curious and unenviable
sensation of falling from an inordinate height, and it was not with
any idea that the sensation would cease, but rather with the craving to
know, which in certain crises of the emotions becomes more unendurable
than any uncertainty can be, that she read the rest of the first
letter; after it, the second letter, and the third.
Then, as truth stared at her and she at truth, so monstrous was its
aspect that, with one shuddering intake of the breath, life withered
within her, light vanished without.
When ultimately, without knowing who she was; when, conscious only of
an objective self struggling in darkness with the intangible and the
void, when then life and light returned, she was on the floor, the
monster peering at her.
She disowned it, disavowed it. But beside her on the floor the letters
lay. There was its lair. It had sprung from them, and always from them
it would be peering at her, driving her mad with its blighting eyes,
unless----
She got on her hands and knees, and from them to her feet. Her body
ached from the fall, and her head was throbbing. With the idea that
smelling salts, or some cologne water which she had, might help her,
she went and fetched them from an adjoining room. They were not of much
use, she found, though presently she could think more clearly, and in
a little while she was considering the possibility that had loomed.
In certain conditions the soul gets used to monsters. It makes itself
at home with what it must. Her soul, she thought, might also. But even
as she thought it, she knew she never could. She knew that even were
she able to succeed in blinding herself to this thing by day, at night
it would crawl to her, sit at her side, pluck at her sleeve, wake her,
and cry: “Behold me!”
It would cry it at her until she cried it at him. Then inevitably it
would kill her.
She had been seated, bathing her head with cologne. Now fear,
helplessness, the consciousness of both possessed her. They impelled
her to act. She stood up. She looked about the room. Filled with
flowers and sunshine, it said nothing. Beyond was the sea. It called to
her. It told her that in a rowboat she could drift and be lost. It told
her that that night she could throw herself from the yacht. The blue
expanse, the high white waves, the little mauve ripples invited.
The room, though, with its flowers and sunshine, deterred. To throw
herself from the yacht meant that she would have to wait. It meant
more. It meant that she would have to see him. It meant that she would
have to feign and pretend. These things she could not do.
There remained the rowboat. Yet, in some way, now, the sea seemed less
inviting. At the thought of its embrace and of its depths she shrank.
To die, to cease any more to be, to succumb like the heroines of the
old tragedies to fate, at the idea of that, her young soul revolted.
There must be some other course.
She looked from the window. Beneath, before the ocean, a motor was
passing. The whirr of it prompting, flight occurred to her, an escape
to some spot that would engulf her as surely as the waves. Hesitatingly
she considered it. But there was nothing else. Moreover, if she were to
go, she must go at once.
She turned, crossed the room, stooped, gathered the letters, and seated
herself at the table. There she put the letters in another envelope
which she addressed to Verplank. While writing his name, her hand
trembled, it shook on the paper drops of ink. These she tried to blot,
and made a smear.
Trembling still, she got up, went to the telephone, and attempted to
speak. At first, too overcome to do so, she leaned against the wall. It
did not seem possible that she could do this thing. But she must, she
knew. At last, with an effort, she spoke.
“When does the next train leave San Diego? One moment. Have my servants
sent to me; my servants, yes, and--and order a motor.”
Again she leaned against the wall. The room had become intolerable.
Into the languors of the air a suffocation had entered, and it was
unconsciously, in a condition semi-somnambulistic that she found
herself considering the pink of the ceiling, then the rose-leaves woven
in the green of the carpet, the dull red of the table-cover, the darker
red of a tassel, the tall vase that stood on the table and in which
were taller lilies.
There, beneath them was the monster. Its vibrations, disseminating
through the room, were silhouetted on the walls. She could not see
them, but she could feel them. They choked her.
But now her servants appeared. Nervously, with an irritability so
foreign to her, that they eyed each other uncertainly, she gave them
hurried commands. These obeyed and the porters summoned, she passed,
choking still, from this room, the secrets of which the walls detained.
It was perhaps preordered that they should do so. Long later, in
looking back, she realised that destiny then was having its say
with her, and realised also why. At the time, however, she was
ignorant of two incidents, which, after the fashion of the apparently
insignificant, subsequently became the reverse.
One incident had the porters for agent; the other was effected by a
maid who supervened. The porters, in removing the luggage, collided
with the table. The inkstand, the tall vase with the taller lilies,
were upset; the vase, spilling water and flowers, fell broken on the
floor; from the stand, ink rippled on the red of the cloth, on the
darker red of the tassels, on the envelope which Leilah had directed to
Verplank. These things, a maid, summoned by the crash, removed.
When Verplank returned, the table was bare.
He did not notice. What he alone noticed was Leilah’s absence. She
is below, he told himself. Then precisely as she had summoned her
servants, he summoned his.
“Roberts,” he said presently to a man. “Find Mrs. Verplank. Then get my
things together. We start at once.”
For a moment the man considered the master. At once civilly but
stolidly he spoke:
“Mrs. Verplank has gone, sir.”
Verplank, who had turned on his heel, turned back.
“What?”
“The hotel is full of it, sir. When I found that Mrs. Verplank was
leaving, I----”
“What!” Verplank, in angry amazement, repeated.
“Mrs. Verplank is taking the limited, sir. It was the clerk who told
me.”
Then, for a moment, the master considered the man. At the simple
statement his mind had become like a sea in a storm. A whirlwind tossed
his thoughts.
But Leilah was still too near, her caresses were too recent for him to
be able to realise that she had actually gone, and the fact that he
could not realise it disclosed itself in those words which all have
uttered, all at least before whom the inexplicable has sprung:
“It is impossible!”
“Yes, sir, it does seem most unusual.”
Verplank had spoken less to the man than to himself, and for a moment
stood engrossed in that futilest of human endeavours, the effort to
read a riddle of which the only Œdipus is time.
At once all the imaginable causes that could have contributed to
it danced before him and vanished. He told himself that Leilah’s
disappearance might be an attempt at some hide-and-go-seek which
shortly would end. But he knew her to be incapable of such nonsense.
Immediately he decided that his servant was in error, and that she was
then on the yacht. If not, then, clearly she had gone mad, or else----
But there are certain hypotheses which certain intellects decline
to stomach. Yet the letter from her father recurring to him, he did
consider the possibility that she might have gone because of some
secret of his bachelor life. Anything may be distorted. Unfolded by her
father, these secrets, which in themselves were not very dark, might
be made to look infernal, and could readily be so made by this man who
was not only just the one to do it, but who would have an object in so
doing. Always he had been inimical to Verplank, and this, the abandoned
bridegroom then felt, not on his account, but because of his father.
The latter, Effingham Verplank, had been a great catch, and a great
beau. His charm had been myrrh and cassia--and nightshade, as well--to
many women, among others to an aunt of Leilah, Hilda Hemingway, whose
husband had called him out, called him abroad, rather, where the too
charming Verplank waited until Hemingway fired, and then shot in the
air. He considered that the gentlemanly thing to do. He was, perhaps,
correct. But perhaps, too, it was hardly worth while to go abroad to
do it. Yet, however that may be, the attitude of the injured husband,
while no doubt equally correct, was less debonair. He obtained a
divorce.
The matter created an enormous scandal, in the sedater days when New
York society was a small and early family party and scandals were
passing rare. But, like everything else, it was forgotten, even, and
perhaps particularly by the parties directly concerned. Hemingway
married again; the precarious Hilda married also; the too charming
Verplank vacated the planet, and his widow went a great deal into the
world.
This lady had accepted the scandal, as she had accepted many another,
with a serenity that was really beautiful. But, then, her seductive
husband had always seemed to her so perfectly irresistible, so created
to conquer, that--as their son afterward found it necessary to
explain--it no more occurred to her to sit in judgment on his victims,
than it occurred to her to sit on him. With not only philosophic
wisdom, but in the true spirit of Christian charity, she overlooked it
all.
The culminant episode in the matter--the death of the volatile
Verplank--took place at an hour when his son was too young to be more
than aware that his father had been taken away in a box. Leilah was
even less advanced. It was years before she learned of her aunt’s
delinquencies. When she did, that lady had also passed away, as had
previously passed a child of hers, one that, perhaps, did not belong to
her first husband, and, certainly not to her second, the result being
that, in default of other heirs, she left a fortune to Leilah, whose
mother had left her another.
When her mother died, Leilah was in the nursery. Her father, who
thereafter abandoned her to servants and governesses, she seldom saw.
When she did see him, he ignored her completely. It was a way he had.
He ignored also and quite as completely the son of the deadly Verplank.
To make up for it, or it may be to make trouble, the boy’s mother never
regarded Leilah otherwise than with that smile of sweet approbation
with which she gratified all the world--all the world, that is, save
those only who were not in hers. Among the gratified were the Arlington
girls, two beauties, of whom the elder, Violet, was Leilah’s closest
friend.
It was at Newport, at Violet’s wedding to Silverstairs, a young
Englishman who had followed her from Europe, and who at once took
her back there; it was at this ceremony, in which Leilah participated
as bridesmaid, and Verplank as best man, it was then that both became
aware of a joint desire. It seemed to them that they were born to love
each other, to love always, forever. Forever!--in a world where all
things must end, and do. But the eagerness of it was upon them. Leilah
wrote to her father. Verplank wrote to him also.
Matlack Ogston ignored Verplank’s letter as invariably he had ignored
Verplank. His daughter’s he promptly returned. Across it was scrawled
one word. That word was No.
Interests more commonplace had meanwhile transported Verplank from
Newport to San Francisco. Informed of the veto, which to Leilah was
an incentive and to him an affront, he had wired her to meet him at
Coronado, this resort in Southern California which together they had
been preparing to leave.
The night previous, on a yacht chartered at the Golden Gate, Verplank
had arrived. It was by train, the next morning, that Leilah had come.
The wedding followed. Before them lay a world of delight.
This was hardly an hour since. Now, like a bubble, abruptly that world
had burst.
Yet why?
In that query was the riddle which impotently Verplank was trying to
solve. With a clutch at a possible solution, he turned to his servant:
“Roberts, get a motor. If Mrs. Verplank is not on the yacht, I will
take a special, and follow her.”
“Yes, sir. Shall you wish me to go with you?”
“No, stay here until you hear from me. At any moment Mrs. Verplank may
return.”
* * * * *
But Leilah did not return. Nor did the special, in which Verplank
followed, overtake her. The first intelligence of her that reached him
was the announcement of her engagement to another man.