That night was Honora's soul played upon by the unknown musician of the
sleepless hours. Now a mad, ecstatic chorus dinned in her ears and set
her blood coursing; and again despair seized her with a dirge. Periods
of semiconsciousness only came to her, and from one of these she was
suddenly startled into wakefulness by her own words. “I have the right
to make of my life what I can.” But when she beheld the road of terrors
that stretched between her and the shining places, it seemed as though
she would never have the courage to fare forth along its way. To look
back was to survey a prospect even more dreadful.
The incidents of her life ranged by in procession. Not in natural
sequence, but a group here and a group there. And it was given her, for
the first time, to see many things clearly. But now she loved. God alone
knew what she felt for this man, and when she thought of him the very
perils of her path were dwarfed. On returning home that night she
had given her maid her cloak, and had stood for a long time
immobile,--gazing at her image in the pierglass.
“Madame est belle comme l'Imperatrice d'Autriche!” said the maid at
length.
“Am I really beautiful, Mathilde?”
Mathilde raised her eyes and hands to heaven in a gesture that admitted
no doubt. Mathilde, moreover, could read a certain kind of history if
the print were large enough.
Honora looked in the glass again. Yes, she was beautiful. He had found
her so, he had told her so. And here was the testimony of her own
eyes. The bloom on the nectarines that came every morning from Mr.
Chamberlin's greenhouse could not compare with the colour of her cheeks;
her hair was like the dusk; her eyes like the blue pools among the
rocks, and touched now by the sun; her neck and arms of the whiteness of
sea-foam. It was meet that she should be thus for him and for the love
he brought her.
She turned suddenly to the maid.
“Do you love me, Mathilde?” she asked.
Mathilde was not surprised. She was, on the contrary, profoundly
touched.
“How can madame ask?” she cried impulsively, and seized Honora's hand.
How was it possible to be near madame, and not love her?
“And would you go--anywhere with me?”
The scene came back to her in the night watches. For the little maid had
wept and vowed eternal fidelity.
It was not--until the first faint herald of the morning that Honora
could bring herself to pronounce the fateful thing that stood
between her and happiness, that threatened to mar the perfection of a
heaven-born love--Divorce! And thus, having named it resolutely several
times, the demon of salvation began gradually to assume a kindly aspect
that at times became almost benign. In fact, this one was not a demon at
all, but a liberator: the demon, she perceived, stalked behind him, and
his name was Notoriety. It was he who would flay her for coquetting with
the liberator.
What if she were flayed? Once married to Chiltern, once embarked upon
that life of usefulness, once firmly established on ground of her own
tilling, and she was immune. And this led her to a consideration of
those she knew who had been flayed. They were not few, and a surfeit
of publicity is a sufficient reason for not enumerating them here. And
during this process of exorcism Notoriety became a bogey, too: he had
been powerless to hurt them. It must be true what Chiltern had said
that the world was changing. The tragic and the ridiculous here joining
hands, she remembered that Reggie Farwell had told her that he had
recently made a trip to western New York to inspect a house he had built
for a “remarried” couple who were not wholly unknown. The dove-cote, he
had called it. The man, in his former marriage, had been renowned all
up and down tidewater as a rake and a brute, and now it was an exception
when he did not have at least one baby on his knee. And he knew,
according to Mr. Farwell, more about infant diet than the whole staff of
a maternity hospital.
At length, as she stared into the darkness, dissolution came upon it.
The sills of her windows outlined themselves, and a blurred foliage
was sketched into the frame. With a problem but half solved the day had
surprised her. She marvelled to see that it grew apace, and presently
arose to look out upon a stillness like that of eternity: in the grey
light the very leaves seemed to be holding their breath in expectancy
of the thing that was to come. Presently the drooping roses raised their
heads, from pearl to silver grew the light, and comparison ended.
The reds were aflame, the greens resplendent, the lawn sewn with the
diamonds of the dew.
A little travelling table was beside the window, and Honora took her pen
and wrote.
“My dearest, above all created things I love you. Morning has come,
and it seems to me that I have travelled far since last I saw you.
I have come to a new place, which is neither hell nor heaven, and in
the mystery of it you--you alone are real. It is to your strength
that I cling, and I know that you will not fail me.
“Since I saw you, Hugh, I have been through the Valley of the
Shadow. I have thought of many things. One truth alone is clear--
that I love you transcendently.. You have touched and awakened me
into life. I walk in a world unknown.
“There is the glory of martyrdom in this message I send you now.
You must not come to me again until I send for you. I cannot, I
will not trust myself or you. I will keep this love which has come
to me undefiled. It has brought with it to me a new spirit, a
spirit with a scorn for things base and mean. Though it were my
last chance in life, I would not see you if you came. If I thought
you would not understand what I feel, I could not love you as I do.
“I will write to you again, when I see my way more clearly. I told
you in the garden before you spoke that I was going away. Do not
seek to know my plans. For the sake of the years to come, obey me.
“HONORA.”
She reread the letter, and sealed it. A new and different exaltation
had come to her--begotten, perhaps, in the act of writing. A new courage
filled her, and now she contemplated the ordeal with a tranquillity that
surprised her. The disorder and chaos of the night were passed, and she
welcomed the coming day, and those that were to follow it. As though the
fates were inclined to humour her impatience, there was a telegram
on her breakfast tray, dated at New York, and informing her that her
husband would be in Newport about the middle of the afternoon. His
western trip was finished a day earlier than he expected. Honora rang
her bell.
“Mathilde, I am going away.”
“Oui, madame.”
“And I should like you to go with me.”
“Oui, madame.”
“It is only fair that you should understand, Mathilde. I am going away
alone. I am not--coming back.”
The maid's eyes filled with sudden tears.
“Oh, madame,” she cried, in a burst of loyalty, “if madame will permit
me to stay with her!”
Honora was troubled, but her strange calmness did not forsake her. The
morning was spent in packing, which was a simple matter. She took only
such things as she needed, and left her dinner-gowns hanging in the
closets. A few precious books of her own she chose, but the jewellery
her husband had given her was put in boxes and laid upon the
dressing-table. In one of these boxes was her wedding ring. When
luncheon was over, an astonished and perturbed butler packed the
Leffingwell silver and sent it off to storage.
There had been but one interruption in Honora's labours. A note had
arrived--from him--a note and a box. He would obey her! She had known he
would understand, and respect her the more. What would their love have
been, without that respect? She shuddered to think. And he sent her this
ring, as a token of that love, as undying as the fire in its stones.
Would she wear it, that in her absence she might think of him? Honora
kissed it and slipped it on her finger, where it sparkled. The letter
was beneath her gown, though she knew it by heart. Chiltern had gone at
last: he could not, he said, remain in Newport and not see her.
At midday she made but the pretence of a meal. It was not until
afterwards, in wandering through the lower rooms of this house, become
so dear to her, that agitation seized her, and a desire to weep. What
was she leaving so precipitately? and whither going? The world
indeed was wide, and these rooms had been her home. The day had grown
blue-grey, and in the dining room the gentle face seemed to look down
upon her compassionately from the portrait. The scent of the roses
overpowered her. As she listened, no sound brake the quiet of the place.
Would Howard never come? The train was in--had been in ten minutes.
Hark, the sound of wheels! Her heart beating wildly, she ran to the
windows of the drawing-room and peered through the lilacs. Yes, there he
was, ascending the steps.
“Mrs. Spence is out, I suppose,” she heard him say to the butler, who
followed with his bag.
“No, sir, she's is the drawing-room.”
The sight of him, with his air of satisfaction and importance, proved an
unexpected tonic to her strength. It was as though he had brought into
the room, marshalled behind him, all the horrors of her marriage, and
she marvelled and shuddered anew at the thought of the years of that
sufferance.
“Well, I'm back,” he said, “and we've made a great killing, as I wrote
you. They were easier than I expected.”
He came forward for the usual perfunctory kiss, but she recoiled, and it
was then that his eye seemed to grasp the significance of her travelling
suit and veil, and he glanced at her face.
“What's up? Where are you going?” he demanded. “Has anything happened?”
“Everything,” she said, and it was then, suddenly, that she felt the
store of her resolution begin to ebb, and she trembled. “Howard, I am
going away.”
He stopped short, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his checked
trousers.
“Going away,” he repeated. “Where?”
“I don't know,” said Honora; “I'm going away.”
As though to cap the climax of tragedy, he smiled as he produced his
cigarette case. And she was swept, as it were, by a scarlet flame that
deprived her for the moment of speech.
“Well,” he said complacently, “there's no accounting for women. A
case of nerves--eh, Honora? Been hitting the pace a little too hard,
I guess.” He lighted a match, blissfully unaware of the quality of her
look. “All of us have to get toned up once in a while. I need it myself.
I've had to drink a case of Scotch whiskey out West to get this deal
through. Now what's the name of that new boat with everything on her
from a cafe to a Stock Exchange? A German name.”
“I don't know,” said Honora. She had answered automatically.
To the imminent peril of one of the frailest of Mrs. Forsythe's chairs,
he sat down on it, placed his hands on his knees, flung back his head,
and blew the smoke towards the ceiling. Still she stared at him, as in a
state of semi-hypnosis.
“Instead of going off to one of those thousand-dollar-a-minute doctors,
let me prescribe for you,” he said. “I've handled some nervous men in my
time, and I guess nervous women aren't much different. You've had these
little attacks before, and they blow over--don't they? Wing owes me a
vacation. If I do say it myself, there are not five men in New York who
would have pulled off this deal for him. Now the proposition I was going
to make to you is this: that we get cosey in a cabin de luxe on that
German boat, hire an automobile on the other side, and do up Europe.
It's a sort of a handicap never to have been over there.”
“Oh, you're making it very hard for me, Howard,” she cried. “I
might have known that you couldn't understand, that you never could
understand--why I am going away. I've lived with you all this time, and
you do not know me any better than you know--the scrub-woman. I'm going
away from you--forever.”
In spite of herself, she ended with an uncontrollable sob.
“Forever!” he repeated, but he continued to smoke and to look at her
without any evidences of emotion, very much as though he had received
an ultimatum in a business transaction. And then there crept into his
expression something of a complacent pity that braced her to continue.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because--because I don't love you. Because you don't love me. You don't
know what love is--you never will.”
“But we're married,” he said. “We get along all right.”
“Oh, can't you see that that makes it all the worse!” she cried. “I can
stand it no longer. I can't live with you--I won't live with you. I'm of
no use to you--you're sufficient unto yourself. It was all a frightful
mistake. I brought nothing into your life, and I take nothing out of
it. We are strangers--we have always been so. I am not even your
housekeeper. Your whole interest in life is in your business, and you
come home to read the newspapers and to sleep! Home! The very word is a
mockery. If you had to choose between me and your business you wouldn't
hesitate an instant. And I--I have been starved. It isn't your fault,
perhaps, that you don't understand that a woman needs something more
than dinner-gowns and jewels and--and trips abroad. Her only possible
compensation for living with a man is love. Love--and you haven't the
faintest conception of it. It isn't your fault, perhaps. It's my fault
for marrying you. I didn't know any better.”
She paused with her breast heaving. He rose and walked over to the
fireplace and flicked his ashes into it before he spoke. His calmness
maddened her.
“Why didn't you say something about this before?” he asked.
“Because I didn't know it--I didn't realize it--until now.”
“When you married me,” he went on, “you had an idea that you were going
to live in a house on Fifth Avenue with a ballroom, didn't you?”
“Yes,” said Honora. “I do not say I am not to blame. I was a fool. My
standards were false. In spite of the fact that my aunt and uncle are
the most unworldly people that ever lived--perhaps because of it--I
knew nothing of the values of life. I have but one thing to say in my
defence. I thought I loved you, and that you could give me--what every
woman needs.”
“You were never satisfied from the first,” he retorted. “You wanted
money and position--a mania with American women. I've made a success
that few men of my age can duplicate. And even now you are not satisfied
when I come back to tell you that I have money enough to snap my fingers
at half these people you know.”
“How,” asked Honora, “how did you make it?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
She turned away from him with a gesture of weariness.
“No, you wouldn't understand that, either, Howard.”
It was not until then that he showed feeling.
“Somebody has been talking to you about this deal. I'm not surprised. A
lot of these people are angry because we didn't let them in. What have
they been saying?” he demanded.
Her eyes flashed.
“Nobody has spoken to me on the subject,” she said. “I only know what I
have read, and what you have told me. In the first place, you deceived
the stockholders of these railways into believing their property was
worthless, and in the second place, you intend to sell it to the public
for much more than it is worth.”
At first he stared at her in surprise. Then he laughed.
“By George, you'd make something of a financier yourself, Honora,” he
exclaimed. And seeing that she did not answer, continued: “Well, you've
got it about right, only it's easier said than done. It takes brains.
That's what business is--a survival of the fittest. If you don't do the
other man, he'll do you.” He opened the cigarette case once more. “And
now,” he said, “let me give you a little piece of advice. It's a good
motto for a woman not to meddle with what doesn't concern her. It isn't
her business to make the money, but to spend it; and she can usually do
that to the queen's taste.”
“A high ideal?” she exclaimed.
“You ought to have some notion of where that ideal came from,” he
retorted. “You were all for getting rich, in order to compete with these
people. Now you've got what you want--”
“And I am going to throw it away. That is like a woman, isn't it?”
He glanced at her, and then at his watch.
“See here, Honora, I ought to go over to Mr. Wing's. I wired him I'd be
there at four-thirty.”
“Don't let me keep you,” she replied.
“By gad, you are pale!” he said. “What's got into the women these days?
They never used to have these confounded nerves. Well, if you are bent
on it, I suppose there's no use trying to stop you. Go off somewhere and
take a rest, and when you come back you'll see things differently.”
She held out her hand.
“Good-by, Howard,” she said. “I wanted you to know that I didn't--bear
you any ill-will--that I blame myself as much as you. More, if anything.
I hope you will be happy--I know you will. But I must ask you to believe
me when I say that I shan't come back. I--I am leaving all the valuable
things you gave me. You will find them on my dressing-table. And
I wanted to tell you that my uncle sent me a little legacy from my
father-an unexpected one--that makes me independent.”
He did not take her hand, but was staring at her now, incredulously.
“You mean you are actually going?” he exclaimed.
“Yes.”
“But--what shall I say to Mr. Wing? What will he think?”
Despite the ache in her heart, she smiled.
“Does it make any difference what Mr. Wing thinks?” she asked gently.
“Need he know? Isn't this a matter which concerns us alone? I shall
go off, and after a certain time people will understand that I am not
coming back.”
“But--have you considered that it may interfere with my prospects?” he
asked.
“Why should it? You are invaluable to Mr. Wing. He can't afford to
dispense with your services just because you will be divorced. That
would be ridiculous. Some of his own associates are divorced.”
“Divorced!” he cried, and she saw that he had grown pasty white. “On
what grounds? Have you been--”
He did not finish.
“No,” she said, “you need fear no scandal. There will be nothing in any
way harmful to your--prospects.”
“What can I do?” he said, though more to himself than to her. Her quick
ear detected in his voice a note of relief. And yet, he struck in her,
standing helplessly smoking in the middle of the floor, chords of pity.
“You can do nothing, Howard,” she said. “If you lived with me from now
to the millennium you couldn't make me love you, nor could you love
me--the way I must be loved. Try to realize it. The wrench is what you
dread. After it is over you will be much more contented, much happier,
than you have been with me. Believe me.”
His next remark astonished her.
“What's the use of being so damned precipitate?” he demanded.
“Precipitate!”
“Because I can stand it no longer. I should go mad,” she answered.
He took a turn up and down the room, stopped suddenly, and stared at
her with eyes that had grown smaller. Suspicion is slow to seize the
complacent. Was it possible that he had been supplanted?
Honora, with an instinct of what was coming, held up her head. Had he
been angry, had he been a man, how much humiliation he would have spared
her!
“So you're in love!” he said. “I might have known that something was at
the bottom of this.”
She took account of and quivered at the many meanings behind his
speech--meanings which he was too cowardly to voice in words.
“Yes,” she answered, “I am in love--in love as I never hoped to be--as I
did not think it possible to be. My love is such that I would go through
hell fire for the sake of it. I do not expect you to believe me when I
tell you that such is not the reason why I am leaving you. If you had
loved me with the least spark of passion, if I thought I were in the
least bit needful to you as a woman and as a soul, as a helper and a
confidante, instead of a mere puppet to advertise your prosperity, this
would not--could not--have happened. I love a man who would give up the
world for me to-morrow. I have but one life to live, and I am going to
find happiness if I can.”
She paused, afire with an eloquence that had come unsought. But her
husband only stared at her. She was transformed beyond his recognition.
Surely he had not married this woman! And, if the truth be told, down in
his secret soul whispered a small, congratulatory voice. Although he did
not yet fully realize it, he was glad he had not.
Honora, with an involuntary movement, pressed her handkerchief to her
eyes.
“Good-by, Howard,” she said. “I--I did not expect you to understand. If
I had stayed, I should have made you miserably unhappy.”
He took her hand in a dazed manner, as though he knew not in the least
what he was doing. He muttered something and found speech impossible.
He gulped once, uncomfortably. The English language had ceased to be a
medium. Great is the force of habit! In the emergency he reached for his
cigarette case.
Honora had given orders that the carriage was to wait at the door. The
servants might suspect, but that was all. Her maid had been discreet.
She drew down her veil as she descended the steps, and told the coachman
to drive to the station.
It was raining. Leaning forward from under the hood as the horses
started, she took her last look at the lilacs.