"When I'm down already? Surely you can see, Miss Goucher, that I've
touched the bottom?" Miss Goucher did not reply. "I'll go myself at
once," I added formally. "Thank you, Miss Goucher."
Gertrude was waiting in the small Georgian reception room, whose
detailed correctness had been due to her own; waiting without any vulgar
pretense at entire composure. She was walking slowly about, her color
was high, and it startled me to find her so little altered. Not a day
seemed to have added itself; she looked under thirty, though I knew her
to be thirty-five; she was even handsomer than I had chosen to remember.
Even in her present unusual restlessness, the old distinction, the old
patrician authority was hers. Her spirit imposed itself, as always; one
could take Gertrude only as she wished to be taken--seriously--humbly
grateful if exempted from disdain. Gertrude never spoke for herself
alone; she was at all times representative--almost symbolic. Homage met
in her not a personal gratitude, but the approval of a high, unbroken
tradition. She accepted it graciously, without obvious egotism, not as
due to her as a temporal being, but as due--under God--to that timeless
entity, her class. I am not satirizing Gertrude; I am praising her. She,
more than any person I have ever known, made of her perishing substance
the temple of a completely realized ideal.
It was, I am forced to assume, because I had failed in entire respect
for and submission to this ideal that she had finally abandoned me. It
was not so much incompatibility of temperament as incompatibility of
worship. She had removed a hallowed shrine from a felt indifference and
a possible contamination. That was all, but it was everything. And as I
walked into the reception room I saw that the shrine was still
beautiful, faultlessly tended, and ready for any absolute but dignified
sacrifice.
"Gertrude," I began, "it's splendid of you to overlook my inexcusable
rudeness of yesterday! I'm very grateful."
"I have not forgiven you," she replied, with casual indignation--just
enough for sincerity and not a shade too much for art. "Don't imagine
it's pleasant for me to be here. I should hardly have risked your
misinterpreting it, if any other course had seemed possible."
"You might simply have waited," I said. "It was my intention to call
this evening, if only to ask after your health."
"I could not have received you," said Gertrude.
"You find it less difficult here?"
"Less humiliating. I'm not, at least, receiving a husband who wishes to
plead for reconciliation--on intolerable grounds."
"May I offer you a chair? Better still--why not come to the study? We're
so much less likely to be disturbed."
She accepted my suggestion with a slight nod, and herself led the way.
"Now, Gertrude," I resumed, when she had consented to an easy-chair and
had permitted me to close the door, "whatever the situation and
misunderstandings between us, can't we discuss them"--and I ventured a
smile--"more informally, in a freer spirit?"
She caught me up. "Freer! But I understand--less disciplined. How very
like you, Ambrose. How unchanged you are."
"And you, Gertrude! It's a compliment you should easily forgive."
She preferred to ignore it. "Miss Blake," she announced, "has just been
with me for an hour."
She waited the effect of this. The effect was considerable, plunging me
into dark amazement and conjecture. Not daring to make the tiniest guess
as to the result of so fantastic an interview, I was left not merely
tongue-tied but brain-tied. Gertrude saw at once that she had beggared
me and could now at her leisure dole out the equal humiliation of alms
withheld or bestowed.
"Given your curious social astigmatism and her curious mixed charm--so
subtle and so deeply uncivilized--I can see, of course, why she has
bewitched you," said Gertrude reflectively, and paused. "And I can see,"
she continued, musing, as if she had adopted the stage convention of
soliloquy, "why you have just failed to capture her imagination. For you
have failed--but you can hardly be aware how completely."
"Whether or not I'm aware," I snapped, "seems negligible! Susan feels
she must leave me, and she'll probably act with her usual promptness. Is
that what she called to tell you?"
"Partly," acknowledged Gertrude, resuming then her soliloquy: "You've
given her--as you would--a ridiculous education. She seems to have
instincts, impulses, which--all things considered--might have bloomed if
cultivated. As it is, you found her crude, and, in spite of all the
culture you've crammed upon her, you've left her so. She's
emancipated--that is, public; she's thrown away the locks and keys of
her mind. I grant she has one. But apparently no one has even suggested
to her that the essence of being rare, of being fine, is knowing what to
omit, what to reject, what to conceal. I find my own people,
Ambrose--and they're the _right_ people, the only ones worth finding--by
feeling secure with them; I can trust them not to go too far. They have
decorum, taste. Oh, I admit we're upholding a lost cause! You're a
deserter from it--and Miss Blake doesn't even suspect its existence.
Still"--with a private smile--"her crudity had certain immediate
advantages this morning."
Ignoring rarity, fineness, I sank to the indecorum of a frankly human
grin. "In other words, Gertrude, Susan omitted so little, went so much
too far, that she actually forced you for once to get down to brass
tacks!"
Gertrude frowned. "She stripped herself naked before a stranger--if
that's what you mean."
"With the result, Gertrude?"
"Ah, that's why I'm here--as a duty I owe myself. I'm bound to say my
suspicions were unjust--to Miss Blake, at least. I'll even go beyond
that----"
"Careful, Gertrude! Evil communications corrupt good manners."
"Yes," she responded quickly, rising, "they do--always; that's why I'm
not here to stay. But all I have left for you, Ambrose, is this: I'm
convinced now that in one respect I've been quite wrong. Miss Blake
convinced me this morning that her astounding telegram had at least one
merit. It happened to be true. I _should_ either live with you or set
you free. I've felt this myself, from time to time, but divorce, for
many reasons...." She paused, then added: "However, it seems inevitable.
If you wish to divorce me, you have legal grounds--desertion; I even
advise it, and I shall make no defense. As for your amazing ward--make
your mind quite easy about her. If any rumors should annoy you, they'll
not come from me. And I shall speak to Lucette." She moved to the door,
opening it slowly. "That's all, I think, Ambrose?"
"It's not even a beginning," I cried.
"Think of it, rather, as an ending."
"Impossible! I--I'm abashed, Gertrude! What you propose is out of the
question. Why not think better of returning here? The heydey's past for
both of us. My dream--always a wild dream--is passing; and I can promise
sincere understanding and respect."
"I could not promise so easily," said Gertrude; "nor so much. No; don't
come with me," she added. "I know my way perfectly well alone."
Nevertheless, I went with her to the front door, as I ought, in no
perfunctory spirit. It was more than a courteous habit; it was a genuine
tribute of admiration. I admired her beauty, her impeccable bearing, her
frock, her furs, her intellect, the ease and distinction of her triumph.
She left me crushed; yet it was a privilege to have known her--to have
wooed her, won her, lost her; and now to have received my _coup de
grace_ from her competent, disdainful hands. I wished her well, knowing
the wish superfluous. In this, if nothing else, she resembled Susan--she
did not need me; she could stand alone. It was her tragedy, in the
French classic manner, that she must. Would it also in another manner,
in a deeper and--I can think of no homelier word--more cosmic sense,
prove to be Susan's?
But my own stuffy problem drama, whether tragic or absurd, had now
reached a crisis and developed its final question: How in the absence of
Susan to stand at all?