"TREASONS, STRATAGEMS, AND SPOILS"
But as Masters walked homeward his irresolution disappeared. He saw that
his love for Neaera and his _amour propre_ had blinded him to the real
significance of the testimony elicited by the investigating committee.
Taking together the unanimity of this testimony, the breaking down of
Chairo's carriage, the _tendresse_ that Neaera had certainly once
entertained for Chairo, the duplicity with which he had over and over
again heard Neaera charged, certain ambiguities in some of her own
statements, and this last barefaced appeal to me, there could be no more
doubt. He rehearsed the interview at which he had asked her to marry
him; he had been trapped by a show of indignation and a tearful eye.
By the time he reached his rooms his mind was made up. He sat down and
wrote the following letter:
"DEAR NEAERA: I am afraid that the facts which have come to my
knowledge leave no doubt as to your being responsible for the
attack on the House of Detention. You are charged, too, with having
tampered with Chairo's carriage in order to prevent his escape with
Lydia. Shall I investigate this matter, or would it not perhaps be
better for you to turn over the leaf and start a clean page
somewhere else? I am prepared to do what is needful in order to
make this easy to you, and send you by the messenger who hands this
to you money for your immediate necessities. Should you wish your
mother to accompany you, I shall provide for her also. Meanwhile,
of course, we can arrange to undo the marriage that was somewhat
hastily celebrated.
"Yours,
"MASTERS."
Neaera was not far from New York. She and her mother were both occupying
a cottage belonging to Masters in New Jersey, behind the Palisades. Her
mother was a widow and a cipher. She had been a helpless spectator of
her daughter's too brilliant adventures, and was accustomed to sudden
changes.
When Neaera received Masters's letter she sent word to him she would be
in New York that night. Masters on receiving the message packed a small
portmanteau and went to Boston, leaving word with his aunt, who kept
house for him, to receive Neaera should she arrive.
Masters was unwilling to subject himself to a scene with Neaera. While
his messenger was away evidence had been presented to him which left no
doubt as to Neaera having tampered with Chairo's carriage; and this was
more than sufficient as a last straw. He felt he had been unaccountably
weak in his previous personal encounters with her and that she was now
counting upon this weakness. It is not easy for a man to turn a woman
out of his house, nor to hand over to the authorities a political
refugee who has entrusted herself to his care. To keep Neaera in his
rooms under the circumstances would have been consistent neither with
what he owed the state nor with what he owed himself. He trusted,
therefore, to Neaera's intelligence to conclude from his departure that
his decision was irrevocable.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, Lydia had left Tyringham and returned to New York. This had
not happened without considerable negotiation, for it had been part of
the understanding upon which Chairo had been released on parole that
Lydia was to remain away from New York. The intention of this
arrangement was to prevent Chairo from further compromising Lydia,
pending the determination of his case. But Lydia had been of late so
much disturbed by Chairo's letters that she had come to a decision which
she proceeded at once, if possible, to carry out, and as a first step
toward doing so, it was indispensable that she should go to New York.
She sent, therefore, to Irene the letter from Chairo which had
particularly exercised her and asked Irene whether, under the
circumstances, she could not once more be received at the cloister, no
longer as a Demetrian but as one in retreat, in order that she might
concert with Irene and other members of the council as to the course she
proposed to pursue.
The letter from Chairo--or rather the extract from it--which she sent to
Irene ran as follows:
"I could ask no one but you to believe how differently my own acts
appear to me when I looked back upon them some weeks ago with the
glamour that self-deception threw around them and when I hear them
to-day coldly recited in the witness box. During the examination I
have asked myself whether the witnesses I have heard testifying
before the investigating committee were really telling about me, or
were not rather telling of events which have happened only in a
nightmare. And when I push my self-examination further, I see that
the difference lies in this: At the time I prepared our forces for
violence I was thinking of myself; now, I am thinking of you.
"I do not disguise from myself that the story narrated by more than
a dozen witnesses regarding my actions prior to your acceptance of
the mission, condemns me to an extent that makes the passage of an
amnesty bill--so far as I am concerned--difficult if not
impossible. The question, therefore, arises, What am I to do? I am
perfectly prepared to take my punishment myself, but it almost
makes me die to think that I am dragging you with me into disgrace.
I have thought that probably I am at this moment the chief
difficulty in the way of a conclusion of this business; that if I
were not fighting for my own release, the others would be pardoned
easily enough. I would willingly bear the brunt of it all were it
not for you. My perplexity is, that in fighting for you I am
fighting also for myself."
Irene discussed the possibility of Lydia's return to the cloister with
her colleagues, and the extract from Chairo's letter was read to them.
Masters, also, was consulted; for his effort to defend Neaera's
reputation had enlisted him against Chairo on the side of the cult, and
he had, therefore, been occasionally admitted to their counsels. It was
finally decided that in view of Chairo's present attitude--the sincerity
of which very few were disposed to doubt--and in view of the course
Lydia proposed to adopt, she should be readmitted to retreat in the
cloister, though it was deemed wise to give as little publicity to this
return as possible.
Masters, however, had told Neaera of it, and when Neaera arrived at
Masters's rooms to find that he had left New York, her agile and
vindictive mind immediately set itself to a combination of "treasons,
stratagems, and spoils," in which somehow or another she wanted Lydia
and Chairo to play a part--a part that would give some satisfaction to
her spite. Then, too, there was somewhere in her mind the possibility
that if, as she understood, Chairo was hard pressed, and if, as she
hoped, Lydia was to any degree alienated from him through the influence
of the cloister, Chairo might be induced to share her evils with her.
There were chapters in their past that he might not find it distasteful
to rehearse.
Neaera on arriving in New York found Masters's aunt fussily desirous to
be useful to her, and yet very anxious at the thought that she was
harboring a political runaway. Neaera had arrived after dark, so veiled
as to escape recognition. She was nerved for an encounter with Masters,
in which she was by feminine dexterity to dissipate the suspicions to
which he had fallen too easy a prey, and the news that he was gone had
for first effect to make her restlessly anxious to do something. She
therefore asked whether two notes could be delivered by private
messenger that night, one to Lydia and one to Chairo. After inquiry,
arrangements were made to do this, and Neaera sat down to contrive her
little plot. The first part of it was simple enough. She wrote to Lydia
that she had come to New York at great personal risk expressly to see
her on a matter of vital importance, and asked her to come the next
morning punctually at ten. To Chairo she showed less solicitude: she
confined herself to the bare statement of her whereabouts, and that she
would be alone next morning at a quarter past ten till half past. The
messenger was directed not to wait for an answer to either note.
The next morning, punctually at ten, Lydia, to Neaera's delight, was
shown into Masters's study.
"I had to see you," said Neaera, kissing her. She dismissed the aunt,
begging her not to admit any other persons without announcing them, and
put Lydia down on a sofa. She sat next to Lydia and took her hand.
"I am afraid you don't like me," she said.
"On the contrary," answered Lydia, "I like you, but I differ from you."
"Yes, I know; we differ on almost everything; on the cult, on state
employment, on personal liberty, etc., etc., but then, we have one thing
in common, we are both women."
Lydia looked a little puzzled. This abstract conversation was not what
she had been prepared by Neaera's note to expect.
"I am not at all sure," she said, "that it is not just about womanhood
that we differ most."
"Lydia!" answered Neaera reproachfully.
"I did not mean to wound you," said Lydia quickly. "There is so much
room for honest difference of opinion that I do not undertake to set my
opinion against yours, or indeed anyone's. But is it not dangerous for
you to be here?"
Neaera smiled consciously, and said:
"I am not thinking of that. I came to see you because I felt you ought
to be put right, and I want to do right; in the first place, you will be
misled if you believe the wicked falsehoods that are being circulated in
order to put the whole blame for what has occurred upon me. I should
never have left New York of my own will. Masters forced me to go, and I
am occupying his cottage at Englewood. I am prepared at any time to
return to New York and set things right, and I can; I can testify to the
message sent by Chairo, to my efforts to induce Balbus to give up the
attempt at rescue, to Balbus's refusal to listen to me, to his having
arrested Xenos and bound him, to my having released Xenos--and Xenos
will, I am sure, if I ask him, confirm my testimony. This will set
Chairo right before the committee; only I don't want to see Chairo. He
has been imploring me for an interview. I don't want to complicate
things; you have suffered enough, you shall not suffer any more through
me----"
Lydia was about to rise and leave the room; she would not by word or
gesture admit the inference to be drawn from Neaera's words--admit the
possibility of inconstancy on the part of Chairo; but at the moment she
was about to rise a ring was heard at the door, and presently the aunt
appeared excitedly, and announced that Chairo was there. Neaera jumped
up and shut the door.
"You must not see him here," she said to Lydia. "Come into this room,"
and she beckoned her into an adjoining parlor, separated from the study
only by a curtain. Lydia, who was under a promise not to meet Chairo,
had no option but to follow Neaera, but she followed with a cheek
flushed with indignation. She sat stiffly in a chair while Neaera left
her to receive Chairo. She heard the door of the study open and
Neaera's voice in the adjoining room say:
"Chairo, my poor Chairo!"
Then she buried her face in her hands and her fingers in her ears so
that she should not be an unwilling listener. She would be staunch to
her faith in Chairo, for this was the one rock under the shelter of
which in the shifting and stormy skies she felt there was any longer any
safety for her.
Lydia heard in spite of herself Neaera's cooing treble and the rich
vibrating notes of Chairo's voice; she heard them laugh once, and then
there came what seemed to be a silence that was terrible to her. Later,
the voices resumed again. She passed a half hour of anguish, striving to
listen and striving not to hear, and during that half hour she thought
she heard the voices in the adjoining room pass through every gamut of
emotion; they were sometimes raised as though each was striving to outdo
the other, then they would sink into silence again. Would it never come
to an end--this interview between the man she loved and a woman she
despised? At last she heard a door close; she removed her hands from her
head and tried to look composed.
Neaera came to her with her cheeks flushed.
"Did you hear anything?" asked she.
Lydia arose.
"I have been here too long," said Lydia. "You have nothing else to say,
I think," and she moved out of the parlor into the study and was moving
out of the study into the hall when Neaera stopped her, and said:
"You are not mistaking Chairo's visit, are you?" There was the prettiest
little dimple in Neaera's cheek as she said this. "Nothing but
politics," she added, and the dimple deepened.
"Good-by," said Lydia, without holding out her hand.
Neaera burst out now into a little laugh, for Lydia had passed her and
was at the door.
"Nothing but politics," laughed Neaera, as Lydia shut the door behind
her.