LUPÉ’S CHAINS ARE BROKEN
One of the most harassed and uneasy men in these stormy days was
Jerry Barclay. He had arrived at a point in his career where he stood
arrested and uncertain between diverging paths. His infatuation for
Mercedes drew him to her like a magnet and sent him from her in
troubled distress, not knowing what to do, longing for his freedom and
sometimes wondering whether he would marry her if he had his freedom.
He thought she loved him as other women had done, and he often wondered
if he really loved her. In the sudden glimpses of clairvoyance which
come to souls swayed by passion, he saw life with Mercedes as a coldly
splendid waste in which he wandered, lonely and bereft of comfort.
Shaken from his bondage by one of these moments of clear sight, he felt
a conviction that he did not love her, declared himself free of her
enchantments, and at the first glance of invitation in her eyes, the
first beckoning gesture of her hand, was back at her side, as much her
slave as ever.
He pushed June from his mind in these days, saw her seldom, and then
showed that cold constraint of manner which the artless and unsubtile
man assumes to the woman toward whom he knows his conduct to be mean
and unworthy. June lay heavy on his conscience. The thought of her and
what she was enduring made him feel ashamed and guilty. And he was
angry that he should feel this way--angry with June, against whom he
seemed to have a special grievance.
He argued with himself that he was under no obligation to her. He had
never made any binding declaration to her, and he had honestly told
her that he was not free to marry. How many men would have done that?
If she was so unsophisticated as to take the few sentimental remarks
he had made as a serious plighting of vows it was not his fault. He
affected to have forgotten the remarks. Even in thinking to himself
he assumed the air of one who finds it too trivial a matter for
remembrance. But the truth was that every sentence was clear in his
mind, and the recollection of the pure and honest feeling of that year
stung him with an unfamiliar sense of shame.
In his heart he knew that of the three women who had played so
prominent a part in his life, June was the one he had really loved.
There were moments now, when, deep in the bottom of his consciousness,
he felt that he loved her still. The clairvoyant glimpses of a life
with her were very different. But he was not free! Why, he said to
himself with a magnanimous air, why waste her life by encouraging her
in fruitless hopes? Mercedes was quite a different person. She could
take care of herself.
They were certainly troublous times for Jerry. He had a man’s hatred
of a scene and the interviews he had with Mrs. Newbury were now always
scenes. He left her presence sore and enraged with the fury of her
taunts, or humiliated by the more intolerable outbursts of tears and
pleadings, into which she sometimes broke.
He felt with a sort of aggrieved protest that after nearly ten years
of devotion Lupé ought to be more reasonable. Jerry was confidently
sure that, as he expressed it, he had “shown himself very much of a
gentleman” where Lupé was concerned. He had been gentle and forbearing
with her. Long after his affection had died he had been patient with
her exactions and borne her upbraidings. He had kept a promise that
had been made in the first madness of their infatuation and that many
men would have regarded as ridiculous. In his behavior to his mistress
Jerry saw himself a knight of chivalry. He did not tell himself that
the main ingredient of his chivalry was a secret but acute fear of
the violent woman whom his neglect had rendered desperate. She had
threatened that she would kill herself. Once or twice of late, in what
he called her “tantrums,” she had threatened to kill him. After these
interviews Jerry went from her presence chilled and sobered. She was in
despair and he knew it and knew her. Some day Lupé might keep her word.
One afternoon in October he had stopped in at the Newbury house to pay
one of those brief visits which had replaced the long stolen interviews
of the past. He had met Newbury down town in the morning and been told
that Lupé was not feeling well. She had lately suffered from headaches,
an unknown ailment for her. Newbury was worried; he wanted her to have
the doctor, for she really looked bad and seemed very much out of
spirits.
Jerry found her looking exceedingly white and very quiet. She had
evidently been ill and showed the marks of suffering. He was relieved
to see that she was in a fairly tranquil state of mind, with no
intention of making a scene. In fact, to his secret joy he found that
he could keep the conversation on the impersonal, society plane upon
which he had often before attempted to maintain it, invariably without
success. But Lupé to-day had evidently no spirit to quarrel or to weep.
She sat in a large arm-chair in an attitude of listless weariness, her
skin looking whiter, her hair and eyes blacker than usual. She had lost
in weight and though in her thirty-seventh year was as handsome as she
had ever been.
Jerry kept one eye on the clock. If he could get away early enough he
was going to see a new horse Black Dan had just given Mercedes. A year
of practice had made him very expert in bringing interviews with Lupé
to an abrupt end, leaving her too quickly to give her time to change
from the serenity of general conversation to the hysterical note of
rage and grievance.
“Well, Lupé,” he said, rising and going to her side, “I must be going.
I’m glad you’re so much better. You ought to take more exercise.”
He took her hand and smiling down at her pressed it. She looked at him
with her somber eyes, large and melancholy in their darkened sockets.
The look was tragic and with alarm he attempted to draw his hand away.
But she held it, drew it against her bosom, and bowed her face on his
arm.
“Oh, Jerry,” she almost groaned, “is this you and I?”
“Of course, dear,” he said glibly, patting her lightly on the shoulder
with his free hand. “You’ll be all right soon if you’ll take more
exercise. You’re just a little bit inclined to the lazy--all you
Spanish women are.”
She made no answer and he could feel her body trembling.
“Come, Lupé,” he said with a touch of urgency in his voice, “I must go,
my dear girl. I’ve got something to do at half-past four.”
“Are you going to Miss Gracey’s?” she said without moving or loosening
her hold of his hand.
“Oh, Lupé, dear,” he answered impatiently, “don’t let’s get on
those subjects to-day. I’ve had such a nice time here with you this
afternoon, just because you’ve been pleasant, and quiet and reasonable.
Now don’t spoil it all by beginning to fight and find fault.”
She raised her head but still held his hand pressed against her heart.
“I’m not going to fight,” she said in a low tone, “my fighting days are
over.”
“That’s the most sensible thing that I’ve heard you say for a long
time. You’ve just worn yourself out by the way you’ve stormed and
raged. That’s why you’ve felt so sick. It isn’t worth while.”
“No, I suppose not.” She looked up at him with eyes of gloomy
tenderness, and opening her fingers one by one let him draw his hand
away.
“You’re going to Miss Gracey’s?” she said again.
He averted his head with a quick movement of impatience.
“Please tell me,” she pleaded, “I’m not bad tempered to-day.”
“Well, yes, since you say so, I _am_ going there. But there’s no
necessity to get excited about it. You know, Lupé, we’ve known each
other a long, long time.”
He paused, furtively watching her, on the alert to fly if she showed
the symptoms of storm he knew so well. But she remained passive, almost
apathetic. The thought crossed his mind that she must have been much
sicker than Newbury had imagined, and a gust of pity for her stirred in
him. He bent down and kissed her heavy hair.
“You know,” he said gently, “when years roll by as they have with us
changes come. But we’ll always be friends, won’t we, Lupé?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “always is a long word. But I’ll always love
you. That’s my punishment for my sins.”
The clock chimed the half-hour and Jerry patted her again on the
shoulder. It was as bad to have Lupé talk of her sins as it was to have
her upbraid him with his.
“I’ll see you again soon,” he said brightly, “but I must fly now. Take
good care of yourself. Try and be more cheerful and go out more. Fresh
air’s the thing for you.”
When he had put on his coat in the hall he appeared at the open doorway
and smiled a last good-by at her. She was sitting in the arm-chair in
the same listless attitude. She nodded to him without smiling, and he
was again struck by her unusual pallor and the darkness of her eyes.
“She’s really been sick,” he said to himself as he ran down the steps,
for he was late. “Poor Lupé! How hard she takes everything!”
The next afternoon he was summoned from his office by a message that a
woman wanted to see him in the hall outside. He went out wondering and
found Pancha, the Mexican servant maid who had been in Mrs. Newbury’s
service since her marriage and was in the secret of their liaison.
After the fashion of her race the woman wore a black shawl over her
head in place of a hat, and her face between its folds was drawn and
pale. In a few broken sentences she told him that her mistress was
desperately ill; something terrible had happened to her in the night.
It was hard to grasp her meaning, for she spoke very poor English and
Jerry had no Spanish, but he learned enough to know that Lupé was
undoubtedly in a serious state. With the assurance that he would come
as soon as he could he sent the woman away and went back into the
office.
Half an hour later he started for the Newbury house. He was
alarmed and chilled. He could not picture Lupé--a woman of superb
physique--stricken down in twenty-four hours. She had been pale and
listless but otherwise well yesterday. Pancha, who was not used to
sickness, had probably been frightened and had exaggerated. Thus he
tried to lift the weight which had suddenly fallen on his heart. He no
longer loved Lupé, but he “did not want anything to happen to her,” he
thought to himself as he approached the door.
Here at the curb he saw two doctors’ buggies, and, at the sight, his
sense of alarm increased. There was no question about it; something
serious was evidently the matter.
He asked for Newbury and after a moment’s wait in the hall saw the door
into the sitting-room open and that gentleman issue forth, closing
the door on a murmur of male voices. Newbury looked an aged man, gray
and haggard. Without any greeting, evidently too distraught by sudden
calamity to wonder how Jerry had heard the bad news, he said in a low
voice:
“They’re holding a consultation in there”--his sunken eyes dwelt on the
young man’s and he shook his head. “No hope, none. She can’t possibly
get well. They don’t think she’ll live more than a day or two.”
“What--what--is it?” stammered Jerry, horror-stricken. “What’s happened
to her?”
“A paralytic stroke. She had it early in the evening. Pancha found her
lying on the sofa like a person resting, but she was paralyzed and
couldn’t speak. That was what the headaches meant and we were such
fools we didn’t think anything of them.”
“Is she conscious? Does she know?” Jerry asked, not knowing what to
say, his whole being flooded with a sense of repulsion and dread.
“I think so and so does Pancha. The doctors don’t. She can’t speak or
move but her eyes look full of life and intelligence, and once or twice
she’s tried to smile.”
A soft footfall on the stairs above caught their ears and they looked
up. The Mexican woman was descending, her eyes on Jerry. Newbury cried
at her in Spanish, his voice suddenly hoarse with a muffled agony of
fear. She shook her head and answered in the same language, speaking at
some length. Newbury translated:
“She’s told Lupé that you’re here and thinks she wants to see you. She
says she’s tried to speak, and, as far as she can follow, she’s under
the impression that Lupé’s asked for you.”
It was a hateful suggestion to Jerry. He was shocked enough already
without having to suffer seeing Lupé in this unfamiliar state. He
detested sad things and kept them out of his life with the utmost care.
But Newbury and the woman were watching him. He realized that they
both expected him to go. Deep down in the inner places of his soul the
thought that Lupé could not speak passed with a vibration of relief.
They followed Pancha up the softly carpeted stairs and along the
passage. The woman passed through a doorway, making a gesture for them
to wait, then put her head out and beckoned them in.
The darkness of evening had fallen and the large room was well-lighted.
By the bed two gas jets, burning under ground-glass globes, threw a
brilliant light over the sick woman. She was lying straight and stark
on her back, the bed-clothes smooth over the undulations of her body
and raised into points by her feet. Spreading over the pillow beside
her, like the shadow of death waiting to cover her, was her hair, a
black, dense mass, crossing the bed and falling over its edge. Her face
was as white as the pillow, her eyes staring straight before her with
a stern, frowning look. A stillness reigned in the room; death was
without the door waiting to get in.
Newbury went toward her. Jerry hung back gazing fearfully at her. She
was invested with a strange, alien terror, a being half initiated into
awful mysteries. The inflexible sternness of her face did not soften as
her husband bent over her and said gently:
“Dearest, Jerry came to see how you were. He’s here. Would you like to
see him?”
She gave a low sound, undoubtedly an affirmative. Pancha, who was at
the foot of the bed, enunciated a quick phrase in Spanish. Newbury
stepped aside and beckoned Jerry forward. As her lover came within her
line of vision her eyes softened, the stiffened lips expanded with
difficulty into a slight smile.
“Of course she knows you,” Newbury said in a choked whisper. “Oh, my
poor Lupé!”
His voice broke and he turned away convulsed and walked to the window.
With the Mexican woman watching him from the foot-board, Jerry bent
down and kissed her very softly on the forehead and both eyes. She made
an effort to lift her face to his caress like a child, and as he drew
back her eyes dwelt on his, full of the somber and unquenchable passion
that had killed her. He tried to speak to her but found it impossible.
Memories of the old days rushed upon him--of her resistance to his
fiery wooing, of the first years of their intimacy and the tortures of
her conscience that her love could never deaden, and now this ending
amid the ruins of her anguish and his hard coldness.
He turned and groped his way out of the room. On the stairs Newbury
joined him, touched beyond measure at the sight of his grief. With
assurances that he would be up in the morning to inquire, Jerry escaped
from the house and fled into the night, now dark and full of the chill
of fog.
He could not sleep, and in the morning walked up to the house before
breakfast for news. The servant at the door told him that Mrs. Newbury
was dead, having passed away quietly without renewal of consciousness
or speech as the day was dawning.
Without a word he turned from the door and walked down the street
to where a car line crossed it. Standing on the corner waiting for
the car, he was accosted by a boy selling the morning papers, and
mechanically, without consciousness of his action, he bought one.
In the same mazed state he opened it and looked at the front page. The
first paragraph that met his eye was an announcement that the rumored
strike of a great ore-body of astounding richness in the Cresta Plata
was confirmed. The excitement in Virginia was intense, the mine being
regarded as second only to the Con. Virginia. “This,” concluded the
paragraph, “will raise the fortunes of the Gracey boys far above the
six naught mark, well up on the list of bonanza millionaires.”