There was a little spindle-supported porch before Honora's front door,
and had she chosen she might have followed the example of her neighbours
and sat there in the evenings. She preferred to watch the life about
her from the window-seat in the little parlour. The word exile suggests,
perhaps, to those who have never tried it, empty wastes, isolation,
loneliness. She had been prepared for these things, and Wylie Street was
a shock to her: in sending her there at this crisis in her life fate
had perpetrated nothing less than a huge practical joke. Next door, for
instance, in the twin house to hers, flaunted in the face of liberal
divorce laws, was a young couple with five children. Honora counted
them, from the eldest ones that ran over her little grass plot on their
way to and from the public school, to the youngest that spent much of
his time gazing skyward from a perambulator on the sidewalk. Six days of
the week, about six o'clock in the evening, there was a celebration in
the family. Father came home from work! He was a smooth-faced young man
whom a fortnight in the woods might have helped wonderfully--a clerk in
the big department store.
He radiated happiness. When opposite Honora's front door he would open
his arms--the signal for a race across her lawn. Sometimes it was the
little girl, with pigtails the colour of pulled molasses candy, who
won the prize of the first kiss: again it was her brother, a year her
junior; and when he was raised it was seen that the seat of his trousers
was obviously double. But each of the five received a reward, and the
baby was invariably lifted out of the perambulator. And finally there
was a conjugal kiss on the spindled porch.
The wife was a roly-poly little body. In the mornings, at the side
windows, Honora heard her singing as she worked, and sometimes the sun
struck with a blinding flash the pan she was in the act of shining.
And one day she looked up and nodded and smiled. Strange indeed was the
effect upon our heroine of that greeting! It amazed Honora herself. A
strange current ran through her and left her hot, and even as she smiled
and nodded back, unbidden tears rose scalding to her eyes. What was it?
Why was it?
She went downstairs to the little bookcase, filled now with volumes that
were not trash. For Hugh's sake, she would try to improve herself this
winter by reading serious things. But between her eyes and the book was
the little woman's smile. A month before, at Newport, how little she
would have valued it.
One morning, as Honora was starting out for her lonely walk--that
usually led her to the bare clay banks of the great river--she ran
across her neighbour on the sidewalk. The little woman was settling the
baby for his airing, and she gave Honora the same dazzling smile.
“Good morning, Mrs. Spence,” she said.
“Good morning,” replied Honora, and in her strange confusion she leaned
over the carriage. “Oh, what a beautiful baby!”
“Isn't he!” cried the little woman. “Of all of 'em, I think he's the
prize. His father says so. I guess,” she added, “I guess it was because
I didn't know so much about 'em when they first began to come. You take
my word for it, the best way is to leave 'em alone. Don't dandle 'em.
It's hard to keep your hands off 'em, but it's right.”
“I'm sure of it,” said Honora, who was very red.
They made a strange contrast as they stood on that new street, with its
new vitrified brick paving and white stone curbs, and new little trees
set out in front of new little houses: Mrs. Mayo (for such, Honora's
cook had informed her, was her name) in a housekeeper's apron and a
shirtwaist, and Honora, almost a head taller, in a walking costume of
dark grey that would have done justice to Fifth Avenue. The admiration
in the little woman's eyes was undisguised.
“You're getting a bill, I hear,” she said, after a moment.
“A bill?” repeated Honora.
“A bill of divorce,” explained Mrs. Mayo.
Honora was conscious of conflicting emotions: astonishment, resentment,
and--most curiously--of relief that the little woman knew it.
“Yes,” she answered.
But Mrs. Mayo did not appear to notice or resent her brevity.
“I took a fancy to you the minute I saw you,” she said. “I can't say as
much for the other Easterner that was here last year. But I made up my
mind that it must be a mighty mean man who would treat you badly.”
Honora stood as though rooted to the pavement. She found a reply
impossible.
“When I think of my luck,” her neighbour continued, “I'm almost ashamed.
We were married on fifteen dollars a week. Of course there have been
trials, we must always expect that; and we've had to work hard,
but--it hasn't hurt us.” She paused and looked up at Honora, and added
contritely: “There! I shouldn't have said anything. It's mean of me
to talk of my happiness. I'll drop in some afternoon--if you'll let
me--when I get through my work,” said the little woman.
“I wish you would,” replied Honora.
She had much to think of on her walk that morning, and new resolutions
to make. Here was happiness growing and thriving, so far as she could
see, without any of that rarer nourishment she had once thought so
necessary. And she had come two thousand miles to behold it.
She walked many miles, as a part of the regimen and discipline to which
she had set herself. Her haunting horror in this place, as she thought
of the colony of which Mr. Beckwith had spoken and of Mrs. Boutwell's
row of French novels, was degeneration. She was resolved to return
to Chiltern a better and a wiser and a truer woman, unstained by the
ordeal. At the outskirts of the town she halted by the river's bank,
breathing deeply of the pure air of the vast plains that surrounded her.
She was seated that afternoon at her desk in the sitting-room upstairs
when she heard the tinkle of the door-bell, and remembered her
neighbour's promise to call. With something of a pang she pushed back
her chair. Since the episode of the morning, the friendship of the
little woman had grown to have a definite value; for it was no small
thing, in Honora's situation, to feel the presence of a warm heart
next door. All day she had been thinking of Mrs. Mayo and her strange
happiness, and longing to talk with her again, and dreading it. And
while she was bracing herself for the trial Mathilde entered with a
card.
“Tell Mrs. Mayo I shall be down in a minute,” she said.
It was not a lady, Mathilde replied, but a monsieur.
Honora took the card. For a long time she sat staring at it, while
Mathilde waited. It read:
Mr. Peter Erwin.
“Madame will see monsieur?”
A great sculptor once said to the statesman who was to be his model:
“Wear your old coat. There is as much of a man in the back of his
old coat, I think, as there is in his face.” As Honora halted on the
threshold, Peter was standing looking out of the five-foot plate-glass
window, and his back was to her.
She was suddenly stricken. Not since she had been a child, not even in
the weeks just passed, had she felt that pain. And as a child, self-pity
seized her--as a lost child, when darkness is setting in, and the will
fails and distance appalls. Scalding tears welled into her eyes as she
seized the frame of the door, but it must have been her breathing that
he heard. He turned and crossed the room to her as she had known he
would, and she clung to him as she had so often done in days gone by
when, hurt and bruised, he had rescued and soothed her. For the moment,
the delusion that his power was still limitless prevailed, and her faith
whole again, so many times had he mended a world all awry.
He led her to the window-seat and gently disengaged her hands from his
shoulders and took one of them and held it between his own. He did not
speak, for his was a rare intuition; and gradually her hand ceased
to tremble, and the uncontrollable sobs that shook her became less
frequent.
“Why did you come? Why did you come?” she cried.
“To see you, Honora.”
“But you might have--warned me.”
“Yes,” he said, “it's true, I might.”
She drew her hand away, and gazed steadfastly at his face.
“Why aren't you angry?” she said. “You don't believe in what I have
done--you don't sympathize with it--you don't understand it.”
“I have come here to try,” he said.
She shook her head.
“You can't--you can't--you never could.”
“Perhaps,” he answered, “it may not be so difficult as you think.”
Grown calmer, she considered this. What did he mean by it? to imply a
knowledge of herself?
“It will be useless,” she said inconsequently.
“No,” he said, “it will not be useless.”
She considered this also, and took the broader meaning that such acts
are not wasted.
“What do you intend to try to do?” she asked.
He smiled a little.
“To listen to as much as you care to tell me, Honora.”
She looked at him again, and an errant thought slipped in between her
larger anxieties. Wherever he went, how extraordinarily he seemed to
harmonize with his surroundings. At Silverdale, and in the drawing-room
of the New York house, and in the little parlour in this far western
town. What was it? His permanence? Was it his power? She felt that, but
it was a strange kind of power--not like other men's. She felt, as she
sat there beside him, that his was a power more difficult to combat.
That to defeat it was at once to make it stronger, and to grow weaker.
She summoned her pride, she summoned her wrongs: she summoned the
ego which had winged its triumphant flight far above his kindly,
disapproving eye. He had the ability to make her taste defeat in the
very hour of victory. And she knew that, when she fell, he would be
there in his strength to lift her up.
“Did--did they tell you to come?” she asked.
“There was no question of that, Honora. I was away when--when they
learned you were here. As soon as I returned, I came.”
“Tell me how they feel,” she said, in a low voice.
“They think only of you. And the thought that you are unhappy
overshadows all others. They believe that it is to them you should have
come, if you were in trouble instead of coming here.”
“How could I?” she cried. “How can you ask? That is what makes it so
hard, that I cannot be with them now. But I should only have made them
still more unhappy, if I had gone. They would not have understood--they
cannot understand who have every reason to believe in marriage, why
those to whom it has been a mockery and a torture should be driven to
divorce.”
“Why divorce?” he said.
“Do you mean--do you mean that you wish me to give you the reasons why I
felt justified in leaving my husband?”
“Not unless you care to,” he replied. “I have no right to demand them.
I only ask you to remember, Honora, that you have not explained these
reasons very clearly in your letters to your aunt and uncle. They do not
understand them. Your uncle was unable, on many accounts, to come here;
and he thought that--that as an old friend, you might be willing to talk
to me.”
“I can't live with--with my husband,” she cried. “I don't love him, and
he doesn't love me. He doesn't know what love is.”
Peter Erwin glanced at her, but she was too absorbed then to see the
thing in his eyes. He made no comment.
“We haven't the same tastes, nor--nor the same way of looking at
things--the same views about making money--for instance. We became
absolute strangers. What more is there to say?” she added, a little
defiantly.
“Your husband committed no--flagrant offence against you?” he inquired.
“That would have made him human, at least,” she cried. “It would have
proved that he could feel--something. No, all he cares for in the world
is to make money, and he doesn't care how he makes it. No woman with an
atom of soul can live with a man like that.”
If Peter Erwin deemed this statement a trifle revolutionary, he did not
say so.
“So you just--left him,” he said.
“Yes,” said Honora. “He didn't care. He was rather relieved than
otherwise. If I had lived with him till I died, I couldn't have made him
happy.”
“You tried, and failed,” said Peter.
She flushed.
“I couldn't have made him happier,” she declared, correcting herself.
“He has no conception of what real happiness is. He thinks he is
happy,-he doesn't need me. He'll be much more--contented without me. I
have nothing against him. I was to blame for marrying him, I know. But
I have only one life to live, and I can't throw it away, Peter, I
can't. And I can't believe that a woman and a man were intended to live
together without love. It is too horrible. Surely that isn't your idea
of marriage!”
“My idea of marriage isn't worth very much, I'm afraid,” he said. “If
I talked about it, I should have to confine myself to theories and--and
dreams.”
“The moment I saw your card, Peter, I knew why you had come here,” she
said, trying to steady her voice. “It was to induce me to go back to my
husband. You don't know how it hurts me to give you pain. I love you--I
love you as I love Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary. You are a part of me. But
oh, you can't understand! I knew you could not. You have never made any
mistakes--you have never lived. It is useless. I won't go back to him.
If you stayed here for weeks you could not make me change my mind.”
He was silent.
“You think that I could have prevented--this, if I had been less
selfish,” she said.
“Where you are concerned, Honora, I have but one desire,” he answered,
“and that is to see you happy--in the best sense of the term. If I could
induce you to go back and give your husband another trial, I should
return with a lighter heart. You ask me whether I think you have been
selfish. I answer frankly that I think you have. I don't pretend to say
your husband has not been selfish also. Neither of you have ever tried,
apparently, to make your marriage a success. It can't be done without an
honest effort. You have abandoned the most serious and sacred enterprise
in the world as lightly as though it had been a piece of embroidery. All
that I can gather from your remarks is that you have left your husband
because you have grown tired of him.”
“Yes,” said Honora, “and you can never realize how tired, unless you
knew him as I did. When love dies, it turns into hate.”
He rose, and walked to the other end of the room, and turned.
“Could you be induced,” he said, “for the sake of your aunt and uncle,
if not for your own, to consider a legal separation?”
For an instant she stared at him hopelessly, and then she buried her
face in her hands.
“No,” she cried. “No, I couldn't. You don't know what you ask.”
He went to her, and laid his hand lightly on her shoulder.
“I think I do,” he said.
There was a moment's tense silence, and then she got to her feet and
looked at him proudly.
“Yes,” she cried, “it is true. And I am not ashamed of it. I have
discovered what love is, and what life is, and I am going to take them
while I can.”
She saw the blood slowly leave his face, and his hands tighten. It was
not until then that she guessed at the depth of his wound, and knew that
it was unhealed. For him had been reserved this supreme irony, that he
should come here to plead for her husband and learn from her own lips
that she loved another man. She was suddenly filled with awe, though he
turned away from her that she might not see his face: And she sought in
vain for words. She touched his hand, fearfully, and now it was he who
trembled.
“Peter,” she exclaimed, “why do you bother with me? I--I am what I am. I
can't help it. I was made so. I cannot tell you that I am sorry for what
I have done--for what I am going to do. I will not lie to you--and you
forced me to speak. I know that you don't understand, and that I caused
you pain, and that I shall cause--them pain. It may be selfishness--I
don't know. God alone knows. Whatever it is, it is stronger than I. It
is what I am. Though I were to be thrown into eternal fire I would not
renounce it.”
She looked at him again, and her breath caught. While she had been
speaking, he had changed. There was a fire in his eyes she had never
seen before, in all the years she had known him.
“Honora,” he said quietly, “the man who has done this is a scoundrel.”
She stared at him, doubting her senses, her pupils wide with terror.
“How dare you, Peter! How dare you!” she cried.
“I dare to speak the truth,” he said, and crossed the room to where his
hat was lying and picked it up. She watched him as in a trance. Then he
came back to her.
“Some day, perhaps, you will forgive me for saying that, Honora. I hope
that day will come, although I shall never regret having said it. I have
caused you pain. Sometimes, it seems, pain is unavoidable. I hope you
will remember that, with the exception of your aunt and uncle, you have
no better friend than I. Nothing can alter that friendship, wherever you
go, whatever you do. Goodby.”
He caught her hand, held it for a moment in his own, and the door had
closed before she realized that he had gone. For a few moments she stood
motionless where he had left her, and then she went slowly up the stairs
to her own room....