"I don't suppose you'd do anything; but don't you do it!"
Miss Anna's invitation to Harriet had been written some days before.
She had sent down to the book-store for ten cents' worth of tinted
note paper and to the drugstore for some of Harriet's favorite
sachet powder. Then she put a few sheets of the paper in a dinner
plate and sprinkled the powder over them and set the plate where
the powder could perfume the paper but not the house. Miss Anna
was averse to all odor-bearing things natural or artificial. The
perfect triumph of her nose was to perceive absolutely nothing.
The only trial to her in cooking was the fact that so often she
could not make things taste good without making them smell good.
In the course of time, bending over a sheet of this note paper,
with an expression of high nasal disapproval. Miss Anna had
written the following note:
"A. Hardage, Esq., presents the compliments of the season to Miss
Crane and begs the pleasure of her company to the ball. The
aforesaid Hardage, on account of long intimacy with the specified
Crane, hopes that she (Crane) will not object to riding alone at
night in a one-horse rockaway with no side curtains. Crane to be
hugged on the way if Hardage so desires--and Hardage certainly will
desire. Hardage and Crane to dance at the ball together while
their strength lasts."
Having posted this letter, Miss Anna went off to her orphan and
foundling asylum where she was virgin mother to the motherless,
drawing the mantle of her spotless life around little waifs
straying into the world from hidden paths of shame.
X
It was past one o'clock on the night of the ball.
When dew and twilight had fallen on the green labyrinths of
Marguerite's yard, the faintest, slenderest moon might have been
seen bending over toward the spot out of drapery of violet cloud.
It descended through the secluded windows of Marguerite's room and
attended her while she dressed, weaving about her and leaving with
her the fragrance of its divine youth passing away. Then it
withdrew, having appointed a million stars for torches.
Matching the stars were globe-like lamps, all of one color, all
of one shape, which Marguerite had had swung amid the interlaced
greenery of trees and vines: as lanterns around the gray bark huts
of slow-winged owls; as sun-tanned grapes under the arches of the
vine-covered summer-house; as love's lighthouses above the reefs
of tumbling rose-bushes: all to illumine the paths which led to
nooks and seats. For the night would be very warm; and then
Marguerite--but was she the only one?
The three Marguerites,--grandmother, mother, and
daughter,--standing side by side and dressed each like each as
nearly as was fitting, had awaited their guests. Three high-born
fragile natures, solitary each on the stem of its generation; not
made for blasts and rudeness. They had received their guests with
the graciousness of sincere souls and not without antique
distinction; for in their veins flowed blood which had helped to
make manners gentle in France centuries ago.
The eldest Marguerite introduced some of her aged friends, who had
ventured forth to witness the launching of the frail life-boat, to
the youngest; the youngest Marguerite introduced some of hers to
the eldest; the Marguerite linked between made some of hers known
to her mother and to her child.
Mrs. Conyers arrived early, leaning on the arm of her grandson,
Victor Fielding. To-night she was ennobled with jewels--the old
family jewels of her last husband's family, not of her own.
When the three Marguerites beheld her, a shadow fell on their
faces. The change was like the assumption of a mask behind which
they could efface themselves as ladies and receive as hostesses.
While she lingered, they forebore even to exchange glances lest
feelings injurious to a guest should be thus revealed: so pure in
them was the strain of courtesy that went with proffered
hospitality. (They were not of the kind who invite you to their
houses and having you thus in their power try to pierce you with
little insults which they would never dare offer openly in the
street: verbal Borgias at their own tables and firesides.) The
moment she left them, the three faces became effulgent again.
A little later, strolling across the rooms toward them alone, came
Judge Morris, a sprig of wet heliotrope in his button-hole, plucked
from one of Marguerite's plants. The paraffin starch on his shirt
front and collar and cuffs gave to them the appearance and
consistency of celluloid--it being the intention of his old
laundress to make him indeed the stiffest and most highly polished
gentleman of his high world. His noble face as always a sermon on
kindness, sincerity, and peace; yet having this contradiction, that
the happier it seemed, the sadder it was to look at: as though all
his virtues only framed his great wrong; so that the more clearly
you beheld the bright frame, the more deeply you felt the dark
picture.
As soon as they discovered him, the Marguerites with a common
impulse linked their arms endearingly. Six little white feet came
regimentally forward; each of six little white hands made
individual forward movements to be the first to lie within his
palm; six velvet eyes softened and glistened.
Miss Anna came with Harriet; Professor Hardage came alone;
Barbee--burgeoning Alcibiades of the ballroom--came with
Self-Confidence. He strolled indifferently toward the eldest
Marguerite, from whom he passed superiorly to the central one; by
that time the third had vanished.
Isabel came with the Osborns: George soon to be taken secretly home
by Rowan; Kate (who had forced herself to accompany him despite her
bereavement), lacerated but giving no sign even to Isabel, who
relieved the situation by attaching herself momentarily to her
hostesses.
"Mamma," protested Marguerite, with indignant eyes, "do you wish
Isabel to stand here and eclipse your daughter? Station her on the
far side of grandmother, and let the men pass this way first!"
The Merediths were late. As they advanced to pay their respects,
Isabel maintained her composure. An observer, who had been told to
watch, might have noticed that when Rowan held out his hand, she
did not place hers in it; and that while she did not turn her face
away from his face, her eyes never met his eyes. She stood a
little apart from the receiving group at the moment and spoke to
him quickly and awkwardly:
"As soon as you can, will you come and walk with me through the
parlors? Please do not pay me any more attention. When the
evening is nearly over, will you find me and take me to some place
where we may not be interrupted? I will explain."
Without waiting for his assent, she left him, and returned with a
laugh to the side of Marguerite, who was shaking a finger
threateningly at her.
It was now past one o'clock: guests were already leaving.
When Rowan went for Isabel, she was sitting with Professor Hardage.
They were not talking; and her eyes had a look of strained
expectancy. As soon as she saw him, she rose and held out her hand
to Professor Hardage; then without speaking and still without
looking at him, she placed the tips of her fingers on the elbow of
his sleeve. As they walked away, she renewed her request in a low
voice: "Take me where we shall be undisturbed."
They left the rooms. It was an interval between the dances: the
verandas were crowded. They passed out into the yard. Along the
cool paths, college boys and college girls strolled by in couples,
not caring who listened to their words and with that laughter of
youth, the whole meaning of which is never realized save by those
who hear it after they have lost it. Older couples sat here and
there in quiet nooks--with talk not meant to be heard and with
occasional laughter so different.
They moved on, seeking greater privacy. Marguerite's lamps were
burnt out--brief flames as measured by human passion. But overhead
burnt the million torches of the stars. How brief all human
passion measured by that long, long light!
He stopped at last:
"Here?"
She placed herself as far as possible from him.
The seat was at the terminus of a path in the wildest part of
Marguerite's garden. Overhead against the trunk of a tree a
solitary lantern was flickering fitfully. It soon went out. The
dazzling lights of the ballroom, glimmering through boughs and
vines, shot a few rays into their faces. Music, languorous,
torturing the heart, swelled and died on the air, mingled with the
murmurings of eager voices. Close around them in the darkness was
the heavy fragrance of perishing blossoms--earth dials of
yesterday; close around them the clean sweetness of fresh
ones--breath of the coming morn. It was an hour when the heart,
surrounded by what can live no more and by what never before has
lived, grows faint and sick with yearnings for its own past and
forlorn with the inevitableness of change--the cruelty of all
change.
For a while silence lasted. He waited for her to speak; she tried
repeatedly to do so. At length with apparent fear that he might
misunderstand, she interposed an agitated command:
"Do not say anything."
A few minutes later she began to speak to him, still struggling for
her self-control.
"I do not forget that to-night I have been acting a part, and that
I have asked you to act a part with me. I have walked with you and
I have talked with you, and I am with you now to create an
impression that is false; to pretend before those who see us that
nothing is changed. I do not forget that I have been doing this
thing which is unworthy of me. But it is the first time--try not
to believe it to be my character. I am compelled to tell you that
it is one of the humiliations you have forced upon me."
"I have understood this," he said hastily, breaking the silence she
had imposed upon him.
"Then let it pass," she cried nervously. "It is enough that I have
been obliged to observe my own hypocrisies, and that I have asked
you to countenance and to conceal them."
He offered no response. And in a little while she went on:
"I ought to tell you one thing more. Last week I made all my
arrangements to go away at once, for the summer, for a long time.
I did not expect to see you again. Two or three times I started to
the station. I have stayed until now because it seemed best after
all to speak to you once more. This is my reason for being here
to-night; and it is the only apology I can offer to myself or to
you for what I am doing."
There was a sad and bitter vehemence in her words; she quivered
with passion.
"Isabel," he said more urgently, "there is nothing I am not
prepared to tell you."
When she spoke again, it was with difficulty and everything seemed
to hang upon her question:
"Does any one else know?"
His reply was immediate:
"No one else knows."
"Have you every reason to believe this?"
"I have every reason to believe this."
"You kept your secret well," she said with mournful irony. "You
reserved it for the one person whom it could most injure: my
privilege is too great!"
"It is true," he said.
She turned and looked at him. She felt the depth of conviction
with which he spoke, yet it hurt her. She liked his dignity and
his self-control, and would not have had them less; yet she
gathered fresh bitterness from the fact that he did not lose them.
But to her each moment disclosed its new and uncontrollable
emotions; as words came, her mind quickly filled again with the
things she could not say. She now went on:
"I am forced to ask these questions, although I have no right to
ask them and certainly I have no wish. I have wanted to know
whether I could carry out the plan that has seemed to me best for
each of us. If others shared your secret, I could not do this. I
am going away--I am going in the morning. I shall remain away a
long time. Since we have been seen together here to-night as
usual, no one suspects now that for us everything has become
nothing. While I am away, no one can have the means of finding
this out. Before I return, there will be changes--there may be
many changes. If we meet with indifference then, it will be
thought that we have become indifferent, one of us, or both of us:
I suppose it will be thought to be you. There will be comment,
comment that will be hard to stand; but this will be the quietest
way to end everything--as far as anything can ever be ended."
"Whatever you wish! I leave it all to you."
She did not pause to heed his words:
"This will spare me the linking of my name with yours any further
just now; it will spare me all that I should suffer if the matter
which estranges us should be discovered and be discussed. It will
save me hereafter, perhaps, from being pointed out as a woman who
so trusted and was so deceived. It may shield my life altogether
from some notoriety: I could be grateful for that!"
She was thinking of her family name, and of the many proud eyes
that were turned upon her in the present and out of the past.
There was a sting for her in the remembrance and the sting passed
into her concluding words:
"I do not forget that when I ask you to do all this, I, who am not
given to practising deception, am asking you to go on practising
yours. I am urging you to shirk the consequences of your
wrong-doing--to enjoy in the world an untarnished name after you
have tarnished your life. Do not think I forget that! Still I beg
you to do as I say. This is another of the humiliations you have
led me to: that although I am separated from you by all that once
united us, I must remain partner with you in the concealment of a
thing that would ruin you if it were known."
She turned to him as though she experienced full relief through her
hard and cruel words:
"Do I understand, then, that this is to be buried away by you--and
by me--from the knowledge of the world?"
"No one else has any right to know it. I have told you that."
"Then that is all!"
She gave a quick dismissal to the subject, so putting an end to the
interview.
She started to rise from her seat; but impulses, new at the
instant, checked her: all the past checked her, all that she was
herself and all that he had been to her.
Perhaps what at each moment had angered her most was the fact that
she was speaking, not he. She knew him to be of the blood of
silent men and to have inherited their silence. This very trait of
his had rendered association with him so endearing. Love had been
so divinely apart from speech, either his or her own: most intimate
for having been most mute. But she knew also that he was capable
of speech, full and strong and quick enough upon occasion; and her
heart had cried out that in a lifetime this was the one hour when
he should not have given way to her or allowed her to say a
word--when he should have borne her down with uncontrollable
pleading.
It was her own work that confronted her and she did not recognize
it. She had exhausted resources to convince him of her
determination to cast him off at once; to render it plain that
further parley would to her be further insult. She had made him
feel this on the night of his confession; in the note of direct
repulse she sent him by the hand of a servant in her own house the
following afternoon; by returning to him everything that he had
ever given her; by her refusal to acknowledge his presence this
evening beyond laying upon him a command; and by every word that
she had just spoken. And in all this she had thought only of what
she suffered, not of what he must be suffering.
Perhaps some late instantaneous recognition of this flashed upon
her as she started to leave him--as she looked at him sitting
there, his face turned toward her in stoical acceptance of his
fate. There was something in the controlled strength of it that
touched her newly. She may have realized that if he had not been
silent, if he had argued, defended himself, pleaded, she would have
risen and walked back to the house without a word. It turned her
nature toward him a little, that he placed too high a value upon
her dismissal of him not to believe it irrevocable.
Yet it hurt her: she was but one woman in the world; could the
thought of this have made it easier for him to let her go away now
without a protest?
The air of the summer night grew unbearable for sweetness about
her. The faint music of the ballroom had no pity for her. There
young eyes found joy in answering eyes, passed on and found joy in
others and in others. Palm met palm and then palms as soft and
then palms yet softer. Some minutes before, the laughter of
Marguerite in the shrubbery quite close by had startled Isabel.
She had distinguished a voice. Now Marguerite's laughter reached
her again--and there was a different voice with hers. Change!
change! one put away, the place so perfectly filled by another.
A white moth of the night wandered into Rowan's face searching its
features; then it flitted over to her and searched hers, its wings
fanning and clinging to her lips; and then it passed on, pursuing
amid mistakes and inconstancies its life-quest lasting through a
few darknesses.
Fear suddenly reached down into her heart and drew up one question;
and she asked that question in a voice low and cold and guarded:
"Sometime, when you ask another woman to marry you, will you think
it your duty to tell her?"
"I will never ask any other woman."
"I did not inquire for your intention; I asked what you would
believe to be your duty."
"It will never become my duty. But if it should, I would never
marry without being true to the woman; and to be true is to tell
the truth."
"You mean that you would tell her?"
"I mean that I would tell her."
After a little silence she stirred in her seat and spoke, all her
anger gone:
"I am going to ask you, if you ever do, not to tell her as you have
told me--after it is too late. If you cannot find some way of
letting her know the truth before she loves you, then do not tell
her afterward, when you have won her life away from her. If there
is deception at all, then it is not worse to go on deceiving her
than it was to begin to deceive her. Tell her, if you must, while
she is indifferent and will not care, not after she has given
herself to you and will then have to give you up. But what can
you, a man, know what it means to a woman to tell her this! How
can you know, how can you ever, ever know!"
She covered her face with her hands and her voice broke with tears.
"Isabel--"
"You have no right to call me by my name, and I have no right to
hear it, as though nothing were changed between us."
"I have not changed."
"How could you tell me! Why did you ever tell me!" she cried
abruptly, grief breaking her down.
"There was a time when I did not expect to tell you. I expected to
do as other men do."
"Ah, you would have deceived me!" she exclaimed, turning upon him
with fresh suffering. "You would have taken advantage of my
ignorance and have married me and never have let me know! And you
would have called that deception love and you would have called
yourself a true man!"
"But I did not do this! It was yourself who helped me to see that
the beginning of morality is to stop lying and deception."
"But if you had this on your conscience already, what right had you
ever to come near me?"
"I had come to love you!"
"Did your love of me give you the right to win mine?"
"It gave me the temptation."
"And what did you expect when you determined to tell me this? What
did you suppose such a confession would mean to me? Did you
imagine that while it was still fresh on your lips, I would smile
in your face and tell you it made no difference? Was I to hear you
speak of one whose youth and innocence you took away through her
frailties, and then step joyously into her place? Was this the
unfeeling, the degraded soul you thought to be mine? Would I have
been worthy even of the poor love you could give me, if I had done
that?"
"I expected you to marry me! I expected you to forgive. I have
this at least to remember: I lost you honestly when I could have
won you falsely."
"Ah, you have no right to seek any happiness in what is all sadness
to me! And all the sadness, the ruin of everything, comes from
your wrong-doing."
"Remember that my wrong-doing did not begin with me. I bear my
share: it is enough: I will bear no more."
A long silence followed. She spoke at last, checking her tears:
"And so this is the end of my dream! This is what life has brought
me to! And what have I done to deserve it? To leave home, to shun
friends, to dread scandal, to be misjudged, to bear the burden of
your secret and share with you its shame, to see my years stretch
out before me with no love in them, no ambitions, no ties--this is
what life has brought me, and what have I done to deserve it?"
As her tears ceased, her eyes seemed to be looking into a future
that lacked the relief of tears. As though she were already passed
far on into it and were looking back to this moment, she went on,
speaking very slowly and sadly:
"We shall not see each other again in a long time, and whenever we
do, we shall be nothing to each other and we shall never speak of
this. There is one thing I wish to tell you. Some day you may
have false thoughts of me. You may think that I had no deep
feeling, no constancy, no mercy, no forgiveness; that it was easy
to give you up, because I never loved you. I shall have enough to
bear and I cannot bear that. So I want to tell you that you will
never know what my love for you was. A woman cannot speak till she
has the right; and before you gave me the right, you took it away.
For some little happiness it may bring me hereafter let me tell you
that you were everything to me, everything! If I had taught myself
to make allowances for you, if I had seen things to forgive in you,
what you told me would have been only one thing more and I might
have forgiven. But all that I saw in you I loved. Rowan, and I
believed that I saw everything. Remember this, if false thoughts
of me ever come to you! I expect to live a long time: the memory
of my love of you will be the sorrow that will keep me alive."
After a few moments of silent struggle she moved nearer.
"Do not touch me," she said; "remember that what love makes dear,
it makes sacred."
She put out a hand in the darkness and, closing her eyes over
welling tears, passed it for long remembrance over his features:
letting the palm lie close against his forehead with her fingers in
his hair; afterward pressing it softly over his eyes and passing it
around his neck. Then she took her hand away as though fearful of
an impulse. Then she put her hand out again and laid her fingers
across his lips. Then she took her hand away, and leaning over,
laid her lips on his lips:
"Good-by!" she murmured against his face, "good-by! good-by!
good-by!"
Mrs. Conyers had seen Rowan and Isabel together in the parlors
early in the evening. She had seen them, late in the evening, quit
the house. She had counted the minutes till they returned and she
had marked their agitation as they parted. The closest association
lasting from childhood until now had convinced her of the
straightforwardness of Isabel's character; and the events of the
night were naturally accepted by her as evidences of the renewal of
relationship with Rowan, if not as yet of complete reconciliation.
She herself had encountered during the evening unexpected slights
and repulses. Her hostesses had been cool, but she expected them
to be cool: they did not like her nor she them. But Judge Morris
had avoided her; the Hardages had avoided her; each member of the
Meredith family had avoided her; Isabel had avoided her; even
Harriet, when once she crossed the rooms to her, had with an
incomprehensible flare of temper turned her back and sought refuge
with Miss Anna. She was very angry.
But overbalancing the indignities of the evening was now this
supreme joy of Isabel's return to what she believed to be Isabel's
destiny. She sent her grandson home that she might have the drive
with the girl alone. When Isabel, upon entering the carriage, her
head and eyes closely muffled in her shawl, had withdrawn as far as
possible into one corner and remained silent on the way, she
refrained from intrusion, believing that she understood the
emotions dominating her behavior.
The carriage drew up at the door. She got out quickly and passed
to her room--with a motive of her own.
Isabel lingered. She ascended the steps without conscious will.
At the top she missed her shawl: it had become entangled in the
fringe of a window strap, had slipped from her bare shoulders as
she set her foot on the pavement, and now lay in the track of the
carriage wheels. As she picked it up, an owl flew viciously close
to her face. What memories, what memories came back to her! With
a shiver she went over to a frame-like opening in the foliage on
one side of the veranda and stood looking toward the horizon where
the moon had sunk on that other night--that first night of her
sorrow. How long it was since then!
At any other time she would have dreaded the parting which must
take place with her grandmother: now what a little matter it seemed!
As she tapped and opened the door, she put her hand quickly before
her eyes, blinded by the flood of light which streamed out into the
dark hall. Every gas-jet was turned on--around the walls, in the
chandelier; and under the chandelier stood her grandmother,
waiting, her eyes fixed expectantly on the door, her countenance
softened with returning affection, the fire of triumph in her eyes.
She had unclasped from around her neck the diamond necklace of old
family jewels, and held it in the pool of her rosy palms, as though
it were a mass of clear separate raindrops rainbow-kindled. It was
looped about the tips of her two upright thumbs; part of it had
slipped through the palms and flashed like a pendent arc of light
below.
The necklace was an heirloom; it had started to grow in England of
old; it had grown through the generations of the family in the New
World.
It had begun as a ring--given with the plighting of troth; it had
become ear-rings; it had become a pendant; it had become a tiara;
it had become part of a necklace; it had become a necklace--completed
circlet of many hopes.
As Isabel entered Mrs. Conyers started forward, smiling, to clasp
it around her neck as the expression of her love and pleasure; then
she caught sight of Isabel's face, and with parted lips she stood
still.
Isabel, white, listless, had sunk into the nearest chair, and now
said, quietly and wearily, noticing nothing:
"Grandmother, do not get up to see me off in the morning. My trunk
is packed; the others are already at the station. All my
arrangements are made. I'll say good-by to you now," and she stood
up.
Mrs. Conyers stood looking at her. Gradually a change passed over
her face; her eyes grew dull, the eyelids narrowed upon the balls;
the round jaws relaxed; and instead of the smile, hatred came
mysteriously out and spread itself rapidly over her features: true
horrible revelation. Her fingers tightened and loosened about the
necklace until it was forced out through them, until it glided,
crawled, as though it were alive and were being strangled and were
writhing. She spoke with entire quietness:
"After all that I have seen to-night, are you not going to marry
Rowan?"
Isabel stirred listlessly as with remembrance of a duty:
"I had forgotten, grandmother, that I owe you an explanation. I
found, after all, that I should have to see Rowan again: there was
a matter about which I was compelled to speak with him. That is
all I meant by being with him to-night: everything now is ended
between us."
"And you are going away without giving me the reason of all this?"
Isabel gathered her gloves and shawl together and said with simple
distaste:
"Yes."
As she did so, Mrs. Conyers, suddenly beside herself with aimless
rage, raised one arm and hurled the necklace against the opposite
wall of the room. It leaped a tangled braid through the air and as
it struck burst asunder, and the stones scattered and rattled along
the floor and rolled far out on the carpet.
She turned and putting up a little white arm, which shook as though
palsied, began to extinguish the lights. Isabel watched her a
moment remorsefully:
"Good night, grandmother, and good-by. I am sorry to go away and
leave you angry."
As she entered her room, gray light was already creeping in through
the windows, left open to the summer night. She went mournfully to
her trunk. The tray had been lifted out and placed upon a chair
near by. The little tops to the divisions of the tray were all
thrown back, and she could see that the last thing had been packed
into its place. Her hand satchel was open on her bureau, and she
could see the edge of a handkerchief and the little brown wicker
neck of a cologne bottle. Beside the hand satchel were her purse,
baggage checks, and travelling ticket: everything was in readiness.
She looked at it all a long time:
"How can I go away? How can I, how can I?"
She went over to her bed. The sheet had been turned down, the
pillow dented for her face. Beside the pillow was a tiny
reading-stand and on this was a candle and a book--with thought of
her old habit of reading after she had come home from pleasures
like those of to-night--when they were pleasures. Beside the book
her maid had set a little cut-glass vase of blossoms which had
opened since she put them there--were just opening now.
"How can I read? How can I sleep?"
She crossed to a large window opening on the lawn in the rear of
the house--and looked for the last time out at the gray old pines
and dim blue, ever wintry firs. Beyond were house-tops and
tree-tops of the town; and beyond these lay the country--stretching
away to his home. Soon the morning light would be crimsoning the
horizon before his window.
"How can I stay?" she said. "How can I bear to stay?"
She recalled her last words to him as they parted:
"Remember that you are forgotten!"
She recalled his reply:
"Forget that you are remembered!"
She sank down on the floor and crossed her arms on the window sill
and buried her face on her arms. The white dawn approached,
touched her, and passed, and she did not heed.