but she did not speak it. In the mist-filled room even the bright fire,
the electric lights, had grown strangely dim. Only the roar outside was
real--terribly, threateningly real. Yet the sound was not so much fierce
as lamentable; the voice of Nature mourning the eternal flow and
conflict at the heart of things. Daphne knew well that, mingled with
this primitive, cosmic voice, there was--for Madeleine Verrier--another;
a plaintive, human cry, that was drawing the life out of her breast, the
blood from her veins, like some baneful witchcraft of old. But she dared
not speak of it; she and the doctor who attended Mrs. Verrier dared no
longer name the patient's "obsession" even to each other. They had tried
to combat it, to tear her from this place; with no other result, as it
seemed, than to hasten the death-process which was upon her. Gently, but
firmly, she had defied them, and they knew now that she would always
defy them. For a year past, summer and winter, she had lived in this
apartment facing the Falls; her nurses found her very patient under the
incurable disease which had declared itself; Daphne came to stay with
her when arduous engagements allowed, and Madeleine was always grateful
and affectionate. But certain topics, and certain advocacies, had
dropped out of their conversation--not by Daphne's will. There had been
no spoken recantation; only the prophetess prophesied no more; and of
late, especially when Daphne was not there--so Mrs. Floyd had
discovered--a Roman Catholic priest had begun to visit Mrs. Verrier.
Daphne, moreover, had recently noticed a small crucifix, hidden among
the folds of the loose black dress which Madeleine commonly wore.
* * * * *
Daphne had changed her dress and dismissed her maid. Although it was
May, a wood-fire had been lighted in her room to counteract the chilly
damp of the evening. She hung over it, loth to go back to the
sitting-room, and plagued by a depression that not even her strong will
could immediately shake off. She wished the Boysons had not come. She
supposed that Alfred Boyson would hardly cut her; but she was tolerably
certain that he would not wish his young wife to become acquainted with
her. She scorned his disapproval of her; but she smarted under it. It
combined with Madeleine's strange delusions to put her on the defensive;
to call out all the fierceness of her pride; to make her feel herself
the champion of a sound and reasonable view of life as against weakness
and reaction.
Madeleine's dumb remorse was, indeed, the most paralyzing and baffling
thing; nothing seemed to be of any avail against it, now that it had
finally gained the upper hand. There had been dark times, no doubt, in
the old days in Washington; times when the tragedy of her husband's
death had overshadowed her. But in the intervals, what courage and
boldness, what ardour in the declaration of that new Feminist gospel to
which Daphne had in her own case borne witness! Daphne remembered well
with what feverish readiness Madeleine had accepted her own pleas after
her flight from England; how she had defended her against hostile
criticism, had supported her during the divorce court proceedings, and
triumphed in their result. "You are unhappy? And he deceived you? Well,
then, what more do you want? Free yourself, my dear, free yourself! What
right have you to bear more children to a man who is a liar and a
shuffler? It is our generation that must suffer, for the liberty of
those that come after!"
What had changed her? Was it simply the approach of mortal illness, the
old questioning of "what dreams may come"? Superstition, in fact? As a
girl she had been mystical and devout; so Daphne had heard.
Or was it the death of little Beatty, to whom she was much attached? She
had seen something of Roger during that intermediate Philadelphia stage,
when he and Beatty were allowed to meet at her house; and she had once
or twice astonished and wounded Daphne at that time by sudden
expressions of pity for him. It was she who had sent the cable message
announcing the child's death, wording it as gently as possible, and had
wept in sending it.
"As if I hadn't suffered too!" cried Daphne's angry thought. And she
turned to look at the beautiful miniature of Beatty set in pearls that
stood upon her dressing-table. There was something in the recollection
of Madeleine's sensibility with regard to the child--as in that of her
compassion for the father's suffering--that offended Daphne. It seemed a
reflection upon herself, Beatty's mother, as lacking in softness and
natural feeling.
On the contrary! She had suffered terribly; but she had thought it her
duty to bear it with courage, not to let it interfere with the
development of her life. And as for Roger, was it her fault that he had
made it impossible for her to keep her promise? That she had been forced
to separate Beatty from him? And if, as she understood now from various
English correspondents, it was true that Roger had dropped out of decent
society, did it not simply prove that she had guessed his character
aright, and had only saved herself just in time?
It was as though the sudden presence of Captain Boyson under the same
roof had raised up a shadowy adversary and accuser, with whom she must
go on thus arguing, and hotly defending herself, in a growing
excitement. Not that she would ever stoop to argue with Alfred Boyson
face to face. How could he ever understand the ideals to which she had
devoted her powers and her money since the break-up of her married life?
He could merely estimate what she had done in the commonest, vulgarest
way. Yet who could truthfully charge her with having obtained her
divorce in order thereby to claim any fresh licence for herself? She
looked back now with a cool amazement on that sudden rush of passion
which had swept her into marriage, no less than the jealousy which had
led her to break with Roger. She was still capable of many kinds of
violence; but not, probably, of the violence of love. The influence of
sex and sense upon her had weakened; the influence of ambition had
increased. As in many women of Southern race, the period of hot blood
had passed into a period of intrigue and domination. Her wealth gave her
power, and for that power she lived.
Yes, she was personally desolate, but she had stood firm, and her reward
lay in the fact that she had gathered round her an army of dependents
and followers--women especially--to whom her money and her brains were
indispensable. There on the table lay the plans for a new Women's
College, on the broadest and most modern lines, to which she was soon to
devote a large sum of money. The walls should have been up by now but
for a quarrel with her secretary, who had become much too independent,
and had had to be peremptorily dismissed at a moment's notice. But the
plan was a noble one, approved by the highest authorities; and Daphne,
looking to posterity, anticipated the recognition that she herself might
never live to see. For the rest she had given herself--with
reservations--to the Feminist movement. It was not in her nature to give
herself wholly to anything; and she was instinctively critical of people
who professed to be her leaders, and programmes to which she was
expected to subscribe. Wholehearted devotion, which, as she rightly
said, meant blind devotion, had never been her line; and she had been on
one or two occasions offensively outspoken on the subject of certain
leading persons in the movement. She was not, therefore, popular with
her party, and did not care to be; her pride of money held her apart
from the rank and file, the college girls, and typists, and journalists
who filled the Feminist meetings, and often made themselves, in her
eyes, supremely ridiculous, because of what she considered their silly
provinciality and lack of knowledge of the world.
Yet, of course, she was a "Feminist"--and particularly associated with
those persons in the suffrage camp who stood for broad views on marriage
and divorce. She knew very well that many other persons in the same camp
held different opinions; and in public or official gatherings was always
nervously--most people thought arrogantly--on the look-out for affronts.
Meanwhile, everywhere, or almost everywhere, her money gave her power,
and her knowledge of it was always sweet to her. There was nothing in
the world--no cause, no faith--that she could have accepted "as a little
child." But everywhere, in her own opinion, she stood for Justice;
justice for women as against the old primæval tyranny of men; justice,
of course, to the workman, and justice to the rich. No foolish
Socialism, and no encroaching Trusts! A lucid common sense, so it seemed
to her, had been her cradle-gift.
And with regard to Art, how much she had been able to do! She had
generously helped the public collections, and her own small gallery, at
the house in Newport, was famous throughout England and America. That in
the course of the preceding year she had found among the signatures,
extracted from visitors by the custodian in charge, the name of Chloe
Fairmile, had given her a peculiar satisfaction.
She walked proudly across the room, her head thrown back, every nerve
tense. Let the ignorant and stupid blame her if they chose. She stood
absolved. Memory reminded her, moreover, of a great number of kind and
generous things--private things--that she had done with her money. If
men like Herbert French, or Alfred Boyson, denounced her, there were
many persons who felt warmly towards her--and had cause. As she thought
of them the tears rose in her eyes. Of course she could never make such
things public.
Outside the fog seemed to be lifting a little. There was a silvery light
in the southeast, a gleam and radiance over the gorge. If the moon
struggled through, it would be worth while slipping out after dinner to
watch its play upon the great spectacle. She was careful to cherish in
herself an openness to noble impressions and to the high poetry of
nature and life. And she must not allow herself to be led by the casual
neighbourhood of the Boysons into weak or unprofitable thought.
* * * * *
The Boysons dined at a table, gay with lights and flowers, that should
have commanded the Falls but for the curtain of fog. Niagara, however,
might flout them if it pleased; they could do without Niagara. They were
delighted that the hotel, apparently, contained no one they knew. All
they wanted was to be together, and alone. But the bride was tired by a
long day in the train; her smiles began presently to flag, and by nine
o'clock her husband had insisted on sending her to rest.
After escorting her upstairs Captain Boyson returned to the veranda,
which was brightly lit up, in order to read some letters that were still
unopened in his pocket. But before he began upon them he was seized once
more by the wizardry of the scene. Was that indistinct glimmer in the
far distance--that intenser white on white--the eternal cloud of spray
that hangs over the Canadian Fall? If so, the fog was indeed yielding,
and the full moon behind it would triumph before long. On the other
hand, he could no longer see the lights of the bridge at all; the
rolling vapour choked the gorge, and the waiter who brought him his
coffee drily prophesied that there would not be much change under
twenty-four hours.
He fell back upon his letters, well pleased to see that one among them
came from Herbert French, with whom the American officer had maintained
a warm friendship since the day of a certain consultation in French's
East-End library. The letter was primarily one of congratulation,
written with all French's charm and sympathy; but over the last pages of
it Boyson's face darkened, for they contained a deplorable account of
the man whom he and French had tried to save.
The concluding passage of the letter ran as follows:
"You will scarcely wonder after all this that we see him very
seldom, and that he no longer gives us his confidence. Yet both
Elsie and I feel that he cares for us as much as ever. And, indeed,
poor fellow, he himself remains strangely lovable, in spite of what
one must--alas!--believe as to his ways of life and the people with
whom he associates. There is in him, always, something of what
Meyers called 'the imperishable child.' That a man who might have
been so easily led to good has been so fatally thrust into evil is
one of the abiding sorrows of my life. How can I reproach him for
his behaviour? As the law stands, he can never marry; he can never
have legitimate children. Under the wrong he has suffered, and, no
doubt, in consequence of that illness in New York, when he was
badly nursed and cared for--from which, in fact, he has never
wholly recovered--his will-power and nerve, which were never very
strong, have given way; he broods upon the past perpetually, and on
the loss of his child. Our poor Apollo, Boyson, will soon have lost
himself wholly, and there is no one to help.
"Do you ever see or hear anything of that woman? Do you know what
has become of her? I see you are to have a Conference on your
Divorce Laws--that opinion and indignation are rising. For Heaven's
sake, do something! I gather some appalling facts from a recent
Washington report. One in twelve of all your marriages dissolved! A
man or a woman divorced in one state, and still bound in another!
The most trivial causes for the break-up of marriage, accepted and
acted upon by corrupt courts, and reform blocked by a phalanx of
corrupt interests! Is it all true? An American correspondent of
mine--a lady--repeats to me what you once said, that it is the
women who bring the majority of the actions. She impresses upon me
also the remarkable fact that it is apparently only in a minority
of cases that a woman, when she has got rid of her husband, marries
someone else. It is not passion, therefore, that dictates many of
these actions; no serious cause or feeling, indeed, of any kind;
but rather an ever-spreading restlessness and levity, a readiness
to tamper with the very foundations of society, for a whim, a
nothing!--in the interests, of ten, of what women call their
'individuality'! No foolish talk here of being 'members one of
another'! We have outgrown all that. The facilities are always
there, and the temptation of them. 'The women--especially--who do
these things,' she writes me, 'are moral anarchists. One can appeal
to nothing; they acknowledge nothing. Transformations infinitely
far-reaching and profound are going on among us."
"'_Appeal to nothing!_' And this said of women, by a woman! It was
of _men_ that a Voice said long ago: 'Moses, because of the
hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives'--on
just such grounds apparently--trivial and cruel pretexts--as your
American courts admit. 'But _I_ say unto you!--_I say unto
you!_'...
"Well, I am a Christian priest, incapable, of course, of an
unbiassed opinion. My correspondent tries to explain the situation
a little by pointing out that your women in America claim to be the
superiors of your men, to be more intellectual, better-mannered,
more refined. Marriage disappoints or disgusts them, and they
impatiently put it aside. They break it up, and seem to pay no
penalty. But you and I believe that they will pay it!--that there
are divine avenging forces in the very law they tamper with--and
that, as a nation, you must either retrace some of the steps taken,
or sink in the scale of life.
"How I run on! And all because my heart is hot within me for the
suffering of one man, and the hardness of one woman!"
Boyson raised his eyes. As he did so he saw dimly through the mist the
figure of a lady, veiled, and wrapped in a fur cloak, crossing the
farther end of the veranda. He half rose from his seat, with an
exclamation. She ran down the steps leading to the road and disappeared
in the fog.
Boyson stood looking after her, his mind in a whirl.
The manager of the hotel came hurriedly out of the same door by which
Daphne Floyd had emerged, and spoke to a waiter on the veranda, pointing
in the direction she had taken.
Boyson heard what was said, and came up. A short conversation passed
between him and the manager. There was a moment's pause on Boyson's
part; he still held French's letter in his hand. At last, thrusting it
into his pocket, he hurried to the steps whereby Daphne had left the
hotel, and pursued her into the cloud outside.
The fog was now rolling back from the gorge, upon the Falls, blotting
out the transient gleams which had seemed to promise a lifting of the
veil, leaving nothing around or beneath but the white and thunderous
abyss.
CHAPTER XI
Daphne's purpose in quitting the hotel had been to find her way up the
river by the road which runs along the gorge on the Canadian side, from
the hotel to the Canadian Fall. Thick as the fog still was in the gorge
she hoped to find some clearer air beyond it. She felt oppressed and
stifled; and though she had told Madeleine that she was going out in
search of effects and spectacle, it was in truth the neighbourhood of
Alfred Boyson which had made her restless.
The road was lit at intervals by electric lamps, but after a time she
found the passage of it not particularly easy. Some repairs to the
tramway lines were going on higher up, and she narrowly escaped various
pitfalls in the shape of trenches and holes in the roadway, very
insufficiently marked by feeble lamps. But the stir in her blood drove
her on; so did the strangeness of this white darkness, suffused with
moonlight, yet in this immediate neighbourhood of the Falls,
impenetrable. She was impatient to get through it; to breathe an
unembarrassed air.
The roar at her left hand grew wilder. She had reached a point some
distance from the hotel, close to the jutting corner, once open, now
walled and protected, where the traveller approaches nearest to the edge
of the Canadian Fall. She knew the spot well, and groping for the wall,
she stood breathless and spray-beaten beside the gulf.
Only a few yards from her the vast sheet of water descended. She could
see nothing of it, but the wind of its mighty plunge blew back her hair,
and her mackintosh cloak was soon dripping with the spray. Once, far
away, above the Falls, she seemed to perceive a few dim lights along the
bend of the river; perhaps from one of the great power-houses that tame
to man's service the spirits of the water. Otherwise--nothing! She was
alone with the perpetual challenge and fascination of the Falls.
As she stood there she was seized by a tragic recollection. It was from
this spot, so she believed, that Leopold Verrier had thrown himself
over. The body had been carried down through the rapids, and recovered,
terribly injured, in the deep eddying pool which the river makes below
them. He had left no letter or message of any sort behind him. But the
reasons for his suicide were clearly understood by a large public, whose
main verdict upon it was the quiet "What else could he do?"
Here, then, on this very spot, he had stood before his leap. Daphne had
heard him described by various spectators of the marriage. He had been,
it seemed, a man of sensitive temperament, who should have been an
artist and was a man of business; a considerable musician, and something
of a poet; proud of his race and faith and himself irreproachable, yet
perpetually wounded through his family, which bore a name of ill-repute
in the New York business world; passionately grateful to his wife for
having married him, delighting in her beauty and charm, and foolishly,
abjectly eager to heap upon her and their child everything that wealth
could buy.
"It was Madeleine's mother who made it hopeless," thought Daphne. "But
for Mrs. Fanshaw--it might have lasted."
And memory called up Mrs. Fanshaw, the beautifully dressed woman of
fifty, with her pride of wealth and family, belonging to the strictest
sect of New York's social _élite_, with her hard, fastidious face, her
formidable elegance and self-possession. How she had loathed the
marriage! And with what a harpy-like eagerness had she seized on the
first signs of Madeleine's discontent and _ennui_; persuaded her to come
home; prepared the divorce; poisoned public opinion. It was from a last
interview with Mrs. Fanshaw that Leopold Verrier had gone straight to
his death. What was it that she had said to him?
Daphne lingered on the question; haunted, too, by other stray
recollections of the dismal story--the doctor driving by in the early
morning who had seen the fall; the discovery of the poor broken body;
Madeleine's blanched stoicism, under the fierce coercion of her mother;
and that strong, silent, slow-setting tide of public condemnation, which
in this instance, at least, had avenged a cruel act.
But at this point Daphne ceased to think about her friend. She found
herself suddenly engaged in a heated self-defence. What comparison could
there be between her case and Madeleine's?
Fiercely she found herself going through the list of Roger's crimes; his
idleness, treachery and deceit; his lack of any high ideals; his bad
influence on the child; his luxurious self-indulgent habits, the lies he
had told, the insults he had offered her. By now the story had grown to
a lurid whole in her imagination, based on a few distorted facts, yet
radically and monstrously untrue. Generally, however, when she dwelt
upon it, it had power to soothe any smart of conscience, to harden any
yearning of the heart, supposing she felt any. And by now she had almost
ceased to feel any.
But to-night she was mysteriously shaken and agitated. As she clung to
the wall, which alone separated her from the echoing gulf beyond, she
could not prevent herself from thinking of Roger, Roger as he was when
Alfred Boyson introduced him to her, when they first married, and she
had been blissfully happy; happy in the possession of such a god-like
creature, in the envy of other women, in the belief that he was growing
more and more truly attached to her.
Her thoughts broke abruptly. "He married me for money!" cried the inward
voice. Then she felt her cheeks tingling as she remembered her
conversation with Madeleine on that very subject--how she had justified
what she was now judging--how plainly she had understood and condoned
it.
"That was my inexperience! Besides, I knew nothing then of Chloe
Fairmile. If I had--I should never have done it."
She turned, startled. Steps seemed to be approaching her, of someone as
yet invisible. Her nerves were all on edge, and she felt suddenly
frightened. Strangers of all kinds visit and hang about Niagara; she was
quite alone, known to be the rich Mrs. Floyd; if she were attacked--set
upon----
The outline of a man's form emerged; she heard her name, or rather the
name she had renounced.
"I saw you come in this direction, Mrs. Barnes. I knew the road was up
in some places, and I thought in this fog you would allow me to warn you
that walking was not very safe."
The voice was Captain Boyson's; and they were now plain to each other as
they stood a couple of yards apart. The fog, however, was at last
slightly breaking. There was a gleam over the nearer water; not merely
the lights, but the span of the bridge had begun to appear.
Daphne composed herself with an effort.
"I am greatly obliged to you," she said in her most freezing manner.
"But I found no difficulty at all in getting through, and the fog is
lifting."
With a stiff inclination she turned in the direction of the hotel, but
Captain Boyson stood in her way. She saw a face embarrassed yet
resolved.
"Mrs. Barnes, may I speak to you a few minutes?"
Daphne gave a slight laugh.
"I don't see how I can prevent it. So you didn't follow me, Captain
Boyson, out of mere regard for my personal safety?"
"If I hadn't come myself I should have sent someone," he replied
quietly. "The hotel people were anxious. But I wished to come myself. I
confess I had a very strong desire to speak to you."
"There seems to be nothing and no one to interfere with it," said
Daphne, in a tone of sarcasm. "I should be glad, however, with your
permission, to turn homeward. I see Mrs. Boyson is here. You are, I
suppose, on your wedding journey?"
He moved out of her path, said a few conventional words, and they walked
on. A light wind had risen and the fog was now breaking rapidly. As it
gave way, the moonlight poured into the breaches that the wind made; the
vast black-and-silver spectacle, the Falls, the gorge, the town
opposite, the bridge, the clouds, began to appear in fragments,
grandiose and fantastical.
Daphne, presently, seeing that Boyson was slow to speak, raised her
eyebrows and attempted a remark on the scene. Boyson interrupted her
hurriedly.
"I imagine, Mrs. Barnes, that what I wish to say will seem to you a
piece of insolence. All the same, for the sake of our former friendship,
I would ask you to bear with me."
"By all means!"
"I had no idea that you were in the hotel. About half an hour ago, on
the veranda, I opened an English letter which arrived this evening. The
news in it gave me great concern. Then I saw you appear, to my
astonishment, in the distance. I asked the hotel manager if it were
really you. He was about to send someone after you. An idea occurred to
me. I saw my opportunity--and I pursued you."
"And here I am, at your mercy!" said Daphne, with sudden sharpness. "You
have left me no choice. However, I am quite willing."
The voice was familiar yet strange. There was in it the indefinable
hardening and ageing which seemed to Boyson to have affected the whole
personality. What had happened to her? As he looked at her in the dim
light there rushed upon them both the memory of those three weeks by the
seaside years before, when he had fallen in love with her, and she had
first trifled with, and then repulsed him.
"I wished to ask you a question, in the name of our old friendship; and
because I have also become a friend--as you know--of your husband."
He felt, rather than saw, the start of anger in the woman beside him.
"Captain Boyson! I cannot defend myself, but I would ask you to
recognize ordinary courtesies. I have now no husband."
"Of your husband," he repeated, without hesitation, yet gently. "By the
law of England at least, which you accepted, and under which you became
a British subject, you are still the wife of Roger Barnes, and he has
done nothing whatever to forfeit his right to your wifely care. It is
indeed of him and of his present state that I beg to be allowed to speak
to you."
He heard a little laugh beside him--unsteady and hysterical.
"You beg for what you have already taken. I repeat, I am at your mercy.
An American subject, Captain Boyson, knows nothing of the law of
England. I have recovered my American citizenship, and the law of my
country has freed me from a degrading and disastrous marriage!"
"While Roger remains bound? Incapable, at the age of thirty, of marrying
again, unless he renounces his country--permanently debarred from home
and children!"
His pulse ran quick. It was a strange adventure, this, to which he had
committed himself!
"I have nothing to do with English law, nothing whatever! It is unjust,
monstrous. But that was no reason why I, too, should suffer!"
"No reason for patience? No reason for pity?" said the man's voice,
betraying emotion at last. "Mrs. Barnes, what do you know of Roger's
present state?"
"I have no need to know anything."
"It matters nothing to you? Nothing to you that he has lost health, and
character, and happiness, his child, his home, everything, owing to your
action?"
"Captain Boyson!" she cried, her composure giving way, "this is
intolerable, outrageous! It is humiliating that you should even expect
me to argue with you. Yet," she bit her lip, angry with the agitation
that would assail her, "for the sake of our friendship to which you
appeal, I would rather not be angry. What you say is monstrous!" her
voice shook. "In the first place, I freed myself from a man who married
me for money."
"One moment! Do you forget that from the day you left him Roger has
never touched a farthing of your money? That he returned everything to
you?"
"I had nothing to do with that; it was his own folly."
"Yes, but it throws light upon his character. Would a mere
fortune-hunter have done it? No, Mrs. Barnes!--that view of Roger does
not really convince you, you do not really believe it."
She smiled bitterly.
"As it happens, in his letters to me after I left him, he amply
confessed it."
"Because his wish was to make peace, to throw himself at your feet. He
accused himself, more than was just. But you do not really think him
mercenary and greedy, you _know_ that he was neither! Mrs. Barnes, Roger
is ill and lonely."
"His mode of life accounts for it."
"You mean that he has begun to drink, has fallen into bad company. That
may be true. I cannot deny it. But consider. A man from whom everything
is torn at one blow; a man of not very strong character, not accustomed
to endure hardness.--Does it never occur to you that you took a
frightful responsibility?"
"I protected myself--and my child."
He breathed deep.
"Or rather--did you murder a life--that God had given you in trust?"
He paused, and she paused also, as though held by the power of his will.
They were passing along the public garden that borders the road; scents
of lilac and fresh leaf floated over the damp grass; the moonlight was
growing in strength, and the majesty of the gorge, the roar of the
leaping water all seemed to enter into the moral and human scene, to
accent and deepen it.
Daphne suddenly clung to a seat beside the path, dropped into it.
"Captain Boyson! I--I cannot bear this any longer."
"I will not reproach you any more," he said, quietly. "I beg your
pardon. The past is irrevocable, but the present is here. The man who
loved you, the father of your child, is alone, ill, poor, in danger of
moral ruin, because of what you have done. I ask you to go to his aid.
But first let me tell you exactly what I have just heard from England."
He repeated the greater part of French's letter, so far as it concerned
Roger.
"He has his mother," said Daphne, when he paused, speaking with evident
physical difficulty.
"Lady Barnes I hear had a paralytic stroke two months ago. She is
incapable of giving advice or help."
"Of course, I am sorry. But Herbert French----"
"No one but a wife could save him--no one!" he repeated with emphasis.
"I am _not_ his wife!" she insisted faintly. "I released myself by
American law. He is nothing to me." As she spoke she leant back against
the seat and closed her eyes. Boyson saw clearly that excitement and
anger had struck down her nervous power, that she might faint or go into
hysterics. Yet a man of remarkable courtesy and pitifulness towards
women was not thereby moved from his purpose. He had his chance; he
could not relinquish it. Only there was something now in her attitude
which recalled the young Daphne of years ago; which touched his heart.
He sat down beside her.
"Bear with me, Mrs. Barnes, for a few moments, while I put it as it
appears to another mind. You became first jealous of Roger, for very
small reason, then tired of him. Your marriage no longer satisfied
you--you resolved to be quit of it; so you appealed to laws of which, as
a nation, we are ashamed, which all that is best among us will, before
long, rebel against and change. Our State system permits them--America
suffers. In this case--forgive me if I put it once more as it appears to
me--they have been used to strike at an Englishman who had absolutely no
defence, no redress. And now you are free; he remains bound--so long, at
least, as you form no other tie. Again I ask you, have you ever let
yourself face what it means to a man of thirty to be cut off from lawful
marriage and legitimate children? Mrs. Barnes! you know what a man is,
his strength and his weakness. Are you really willing that Roger should
sink into degradation in order that you may punish him for some offence
to your pride or your feeling? It may be too late! He may, as French
fears, have fallen into some fatal entanglement; it may not be possible
to restore his health. He may not be able"--he hesitated, then brought
the words out firmly--"to forgive you. Or again, French's anxieties
about him may be unfounded. But for God's sake go to him! Once on
English ground you are his wife again as though nothing had happened.
For God's sake put every thing aside but the thought of the vow you once
made to him! Go back! I implore you, go back! I promise you that no
happiness you have ever felt will be equal to the happiness that step
would bring you, if only you are permitted to save him."
Daphne was by now shaking from head to foot. The force of feeling which
impelled him so mastered her that when he gravely took her hand she did
not withdraw it. She had a strange sense of having at last discovered
the true self of the quiet, efficient, unpretending man she had known
for so long and cast so easily aside. There was shock and excitement in
it, as there is in all trials of strength between a man and a woman. She
tried to hate and despise him, but she could not achieve it. She longed
to answer and crush him, but her mind was a blank, her tongue refused
its office. Surprise, resentment, wounded feeling made a tumult and
darkness through which she could not find her way.
She rose at last painfully from her seat.
"This conversation must end," she said brokenly. "Captain Boyson, I
appeal to you as a gentleman, let me go on alone."
He looked at her sadly and stood aside. But as he saw her move
uncertainly toward a portion of the road where various trenches and pits
made walking difficult, he darted after her.
"Please!" he said peremptorily, "this bit is unsafe."
He drew her hand within his arm and guided her. As he did so he saw that
she was crying; no doubt, as he rightly guessed, from shaken nerves and
wounded pride; for it did not seem to him that she had yielded at all.
But this time he felt distress and compunction.
"Forgive me!" he said, bending over her. "But think of what I have
said--I beg of you! Be kind, be merciful!"
She made various attempts to speak, and at last she said, "I bear you no
malice. But you don't understand me, you never have."
He offered no reply. They had reached the courtyard of the hotel. Daphne
withdrew her hand. When she reached the steps she preceded him without
looking back, and was soon lost to sight.
Boyson shook his head, lit a cigar, and spent some time longer pacing up
and down the veranda. When he went to his wife's room he found her
asleep, a vision of soft youth and charm. He stood a few moments looking
down upon her, wondering in himself at what he had done. Yet he knew
very well that it was the stirring and deepening of his whole being
produced by love that had impelled him to do it.
Next morning he told his wife.
"Do you suppose I produced _any_ effect?" he asked her anxiously. "If
she really thinks over what I said, she _must_ be touched! unless she's
made of flint. I said all the wrong things--but I _did_ rub it in."
"I'm sure you did," said his wife, smiling. Then she looked at him with
a critical tenderness.
"You dear optimist!" she cried, and slipped her hand into his.
"That means you think I behaved like a fool, and that my appeal won't
move her in the least?"
The face beside him saddened.
"Dear, dear optimist!" she repeated, and pressed his hand. He urged an
explanation of her epithet. But she only said, thoughtfully:
"You took a great responsibility!"
"Towards her?"
She shook her head.
"No--towards him!"
Meanwhile Daphne was watching beside a death-bed. On her return from her
walk she had been met by the news of fresh and grave symptoms in Mrs.
Verrier's case. A Boston doctor arrived the following morning. The
mortal disease which had attacked her about a year before this date had
entered, so he reported, on its last phase. He talked of a few
days--possibly hours.
The Boysons departed, having left cards of inquiry and sympathy, of
which Mrs. Floyd took no notice. Then for Daphne there followed a
nightmare of waiting and pain. She loved Madeleine Verrier, as far as
she was capable of love, and she jealously wished to be all in all to
her in these last hours. She would have liked to feel that it was she
who had carried her friend through them; who had nobly sustained her in
the dolorous past. To have been able to feel this would have been as
balm moreover to a piteously wounded self-love, to a smarting and bitter
recollection, which would not let her rest.
But in these last days Madeleine escaped her altogether. A thin-faced
priest arrived, the same who had been visiting the invalid at intervals
for a month or two. Mrs. Verrier was received into the Roman Catholic
Church; she made her first confession and communion; she saw her mother
for a short, final interview, and her little girl; and the physical
energy required for these acts exhausted her small store. Whenever
Daphne entered her room Madeleine received her tenderly; but she could
speak but little, and Daphne felt herself shut out and ignored. What she
said or thought was no longer, it seemed, of any account. She resented
and despised Madeleine's surrender to what she held to be a decaying
superstition; and her haughty manner toward the mild Oratorian whom she
met occasionally on the stairs, or in the corridor, expressed her
disapproval. But it was impossible to argue with a dying woman. She
suffered in silence.
As she sat beside the patient, in the hours of narcotic sleep, when she
relieved one of the nurses, she went often through times of great
bitterness. She could not forgive the attack Captain Boyson had made
upon her; yet she could not forget it. It had so far roused her moral
sense that it led her to a perpetual brooding over the past, a perpetual
re-statement of her own position. She was most troubled, often, by
certain episodes in the past, of which, she supposed Alfred Boyson knew
least; the corrupt use she had made of her money; the false witnesses
she had paid for; the bribes she had given. At the time it had seemed to
her all part of the campaign, in the day's work. She had found herself
in a _milieu_ that demoralized her; her mind had become like "the dyer's
hand, subdued to what it worked in." Now, she found herself thinking in
a sudden terror, "If Alfred Boyson knew so and so!" or, as she looked
down on Madeleine's dying face, "Could I even tell Madeleine that?" And
then would come the dreary thought, "I shall never tell her anything any
more. She is lost to me--even before death."
She tried to avoid thinking of Roger; but the memory of the scene with
Alfred Boyson did, in truth, bring him constantly before her. An inner
debate began, from which she could not escape. She grew white and ill
with it. If she could have rushed away from it, into the full stream of
life, have thrown herself into meetings and discussion, have resumed her
place as the admired and flattered head of a particular society, she
could easily have crushed and silenced the thoughts which tormented her.
But she was held fast. She could not desert Madeleine Verrier in death;
she could not wrench her own hand from this frail hand which clung to
it; even though Madeleine had betrayed the common cause, had yielded at
last to that moral and spiritual cowardice which--as all freethinkers
know--has spoiled and clouded so many death-beds. Daphne--the skimmer of
many books--remembered how Renan--_sain et sauf_--had sent a challenge
to his own end, and defying the possible weakness of age and sickness,
had demanded to be judged by the convictions of life, and not by the
terrors of death. She tried to fortify her own mind by the recollection.
* * * * *
The first days of June broke radiantly over the great gorge and the
woods which surround it. One morning, early, between four and five
o'clock, Daphne came in, to find Madeleine awake and comparatively at
ease. Yet the preceding twenty-four hours had been terrible, and her
nurses knew that the end could not be far off.
The invalid had just asked that her couch might be drawn as near to the
window as possible, and she lay looking towards the dawn, which rose in
fresh and windless beauty over the town opposite and the white splendour
of the Falls. The American Fall was still largely in shadow; but the
light struck on the fresh green of Goat Island and leaped in tongues of
fire along the edge of the Horseshoe, turning the rapids above it to
flame and sending shafts into the vast tower of spray that holds the
centre of the curve. Nature was all youth, glitter and delight; summer
was rushing on the gorge; the mingling of wood and water was at its
richest and noblest.
Madeleine turned her face towards the gorge, her wasted hands clasped on
her breast. She beckoned Daphne with a smile, and Daphne knelt down
beside her.
"The water!" said the whispering voice; "it was once so terrible. I am
not afraid--now."
"No, darling. Why should you be?"
"I know now, I shall see him again."
Daphne was silent.
"I hoped it, but I couldn't be certain. That was so awful. Now--I am
certain."
"Since you became a Catholic?"
She made a sign of assent.
"I couldn't be uncertain--I _couldn't_!" she added with fervour, looking
strangely at Daphne. And Daphne understood that no voice less positive
or self-confident than that of Catholicism, no religion less well
provided with tangible rites and practices, could have lifted from the
spirit the burden of that remorse which had yet killed the body.
A little later Madeleine drew her down again.
"I couldn't talk, Daphne--I was afraid; but I've written to you, just
bit by bit, as I had strength. Oh, Daphne----!"
Then voice and strength failed her. Her eyes piteously followed her
friend for a little, and then closed.
She lingered through the day; and at night when the June starlight was
on the gorge, she passed away, with the voice of the Falls in her dying
ears. A tragic beauty--"beauty born of murmuring sound--had passed into
her face;" and that great plunge of many waters, which had been to her
in life the symbol of anguish and guilt, had become in some mysterious
way the comforter of her pain, the friend of her last sleep.
A letter was found for Daphne in the little box beside her bed.
It ran thus:
DAPHNE, DARLING,--
"It was I who first taught you that we may follow our own lawless
wills, and that marriage is something we may bend or break as we
will. But, oh! it is not so. Marriage is mysterious and wonderful;
it is the supreme test of men and women. If we wrong it, and
despise it, we mutilate the divine in ourselves.
"Oh, Daphne! it is a small thing to say 'Forgive!' Yet it means the
whole world.--
"And you can still say it to the living. It has been my anguish
that I could only say it to the dead.... Daphne, good-bye! I have
fought a long, long fight, but God is master--I bless--I adore----"
Daphne sat staring at the letter through a mist of unwilling tears. All
its phrases, ideas, preconceptions, were unwelcome, unreal to her,
though she knew they had been real to Madeleine.
Yet the compulsion of the dead was upon her, and of her scene with
Boyson. What they asked of her--Madeleine and Alfred Boyson--was of
course out of the question; the mere thought of that humiliating word
"forgiveness" sent a tingle of passion through her. But was there no
third course?--something which might prove to all the world how full of
resource and generosity a woman may be?
She pondered through some sleepless hours; and at last she saw her way
plain.
Within a week she had left New York for Europe.
CHAPTER XII
The ship on which Daphne travelled had covered about half her course. On
a certain June evening Mrs. Floyd, walking up and down the promenade
deck, found her attention divided between two groups of her
fellow-travellers; one taking exercise on the same deck as herself; the
other, a family party, on the steerage deck, on which many persons in
the first class paused to look down with sympathy as they reached the
dividing rail aft.
The group on the promenade deck consisted of a lady and gentleman, and a
boy of seven. The elders walked rapidly; holding themselves stiffly
erect, and showing no sign of acquaintance with anyone on board. The
child dragged himself wearily along behind them, looking sometimes from
side to side at the various people passing by, with eyes no less furtive
than his mother's. She was a tall and handsome woman, with extravagantly
marine clothes and much false hair. Her companion, a bulky and
ill-favoured man, glanced superciliously at the ladies in the deck
chairs, bestowing always a more attentive scrutiny than usual on a very
pretty girl, who was lying reading midway down, with a white lace scarf
draped round her beautiful hair and the harmonious oval of her face.
Daphne, watching him, remembered that she had see him speaking to the
girl--who was travelling alone--on one or two occasions. For the rest,
they were a notorious couple. The woman had been twice divorced, after
misdoings which had richly furnished the newspapers; the man belonged to
a financial class with which reputable men of business associate no more
than they are obliged. The ship left them severely alone; and they
retaliated by a manner clearly meant to say that they didn't care a
brass farthing for the ship.
The group on the steerage deck was of a very different kind. It was made
up of a consumptive wife, a young husband and one or two children. The
wife's malady, recently declared, had led to their being refused
admission to the States. They had been turned back from the emigrant
station on Ellis Island, and were now sadly returning to Liverpool. But
the courage of the young and sweet-faced mother, the devotion of her
Irish husband, the charm of her dark-eyed children, had roused much
feeling in an idle ship, ready for emotion. There had been a collection
for them among the passengers; a Liverpool shipowner, in the first
class, had promised work to the young man on landing; the mother was to
be sent to a sanatorium; the children cared for during her absence. The
family made a kind of nucleus round which whatever humanity--or whatever
imitation of it--there was on board might gather and crystallize. There
were other mournful cases indeed to be studied on the steerage deck, but
none in which misfortune was so attractive.
As she walked up and down, or sat in the tea room catching fragments of
the conversation round her, Daphne was often secretly angered by the
public opinion she perceived, favourable in the one case, hostile in the
other. How ignorant and silly it was--this public opinion. As to
herself, she was soon aware that a few people on board had identified
her and communicated their knowledge to others. On the whole, she felt
herself treated with deference. Her own version of her story was clearly
accepted, at least by the majority; some showed her an unspoken but
evident sympathy, while her wealth made her generally interesting. Yet
there were two or three in whom she felt or fancied a more critical
attitude; who looked at her coolly, and seemed to avoid her. Bostonian
Pharisees, no doubt!--ignorant of all those great expansions of the
female destiny that were going forward.
The fact was--she admitted it--that she was abnormally sensitive. These
moral judgments, of different sorts, of which she was conscious,
floating as it were in the life around her, which her mind isolated and
magnified, found her smarting and sore, and would not let her be. Her
irritable pride was touched at every turn; she hardly knew why. She was
not to be judged by anybody; she was her own defender and her own judge.
If she was no longer a symbolic and sympathetic figure--like that young
mother among her children--she had her own claims. In the secrecy of the
mind she fiercely set them out.
The days passed, however, and as she neared the English shores her
resistance to a pursuing thought became fainter. It was, of course,
Boyson's astonishing appeal to her that had let loose the Avenging
Goddesses. She repelled them with scorn; yet all the same they hurtled
round her. After all, she was no monster. She had done a monstrous thing
in a sudden brutality of egotism; and a certain crude state of law and
opinion had helped her to do it, had confused the moral values and
falsified her conscience. But she was not yet brutalized. Moreover, do
what she would, she was still in a world governed by law; a world at the
heart of which broods a power austere and immutable; a power which man
did not make, which, if he clash with it, grinds him to powder. Its
manifestations in Daphne's case were slight, but enough. She was not
happy, that certainly was clear. She did not suppose she ever would be
happy again. Whatever it was--just, heroic, or the reverse--the action
by which she had violently changed her life had not been a success,
estimated by results. No other man had attracted her since she had cast
Roger off; her youth seemed to be deserting her; she saw herself in the
glass every morning with discontent, even a kind of terror; she had lost
her child. And in these suspended hours of the voyage, when life floats
between sky and sea, amid the infinity of weaves, all that she had been
doing since the divorce, her public "causes" and triumphs, the
adulations with which she had been surrounded, began to seem to her
barren and futile. No, she was not happy; what she had done had not
answered; and she knew it.
* * * * *
One night, a night of calm air and silvery sea, she hung over the ship's
side, dreaming rather miserably. The ship, aglow with lights, alive with
movement, with talk, laughter and music, glided on between the stars and
the unfathomable depths of the mid-Atlantic. Nothing, to north and
south, between her and the Poles; nothing but a few feet of iron and
timber between her and the hungry gulfs in which the highest Alp would
sink from sight. The floating palace, hung by Knowledge above Death,
just out of Death's reach, suggested to her a number of melancholy
thoughts and images. A touch of more than Arctic cold stole upon her,
even through this loveliness of a summer night; she felt desperately
unhappy and alone.
From the saloon came a sound of singing:
_"An die Lippen wollt' ich pressen
Deine kleine weisse Hand,
Und mit Thränen sie benetzen
Deine kleine weisse Hand."_
The tears came to her eyes. She remembered that she, too, had once felt
the surrender and the tenderness of love.
Then she brushed the tears away, angry with herself and determined to
brood no more. But she looked round her in vain for a companion who
might distract her. She had made no friends on board, and though she had
brought with her a secretary and a maid, she kept them both at arm's
length, and they never offered their society without an invitation.
What was she going to do? And why was she making this journey?
Because the injustice and absurdity of English law had distorted and
besmirched her own perfectly legitimate action. They had given a handle
to such harsh critics as Alfred Boyson. But she meant somehow to put
herself right; and not only herself, but the great cause of woman's
freedom and independence. No woman, in the better future that is coming,
shall be forced either by law or opinion to continue the relations of
marriage with a man she has come to despise. Marriage is merely
proclaimed love; and if love fails, marriage has no further meaning or
_raison d'être_; it comes, or should come, automatically to an end. This
is the first article in the woman's charter, and without it marriage
itself has neither value nor sanctity. She seemed to hear sentences of
this sort, in her own voice, echoing about windy halls, producing waves
of emotion on a sea of strained faces--women's faces, set and pale, like
that of Madeleine Verrier. She had never actually made such a speech,
but she felt she would like to have made it.
What was she going to do? No doubt Roger would resent her coming--would
probably refuse to see her, as she had once refused to see him. Well,
she must try and act with dignity and common sense; she must try and
persuade him to recognize her good faith, and to get him to listen to
what she proposed. She had her plan for Roger's reclamation, and was
already in love with it. Naturally, she had never meant permanently to
hurt or injure Roger! She had done it for his good as well as her own.
Yet even as she put this plea forward in the inner tribunal of
consciousness, she knew that it was false.
_"You have murdered a life!"_ Well, that was what prejudiced and
hide-bound persons like Alfred Boyson said, and no doubt always would
say. She could not help it; but for her own dignity's sake, that moral
dignity in which she liked to feel herself enwrapped, she would give as
little excuse for it as possible.
Then, as she stood looking eastward, a strange thought struck her. Once
on that farther shore and she would be Roger's wife again--an English
subject, and Roger's wife. How ridiculous, and how intolerable! When
shall we see some real comity of nations in these matters of
international marriage and divorce?
She had consulted her lawyers in New York before starting; on Roger's
situation first of all, but also on her own. Roger, it seemed, might
take certain legal steps, once he was aware of her being again on
English ground. But, of course, he would not take them. "It was never me
he cared for--only Beatty!" she said to herself with a bitter
perversity. Still the thought of returning within the range of the old
obligations, the old life, affected her curiously. There were hours,
especially at night, when she felt shut up with thoughts of Roger and
Beatty--her husband and her child--just as of old.
How, in the name of justice, was she to blame for Roger's illness? Her
irritable thoughts made a kind of grievance against him of the attack of
pneumonia which she was told had injured his health. He must have
neglected himself in some foolish way. The strongest men are the most
reckless of themselves. In any case, how was it her fault?
One night she woke up suddenly, in the dawn, her heart beating
tumultuously. She had been dreaming of her meeting--her possible
meeting--with Roger. Her face was flushed, her memory confused. She
could not recall the exact words or incidents of the dream, only that
Roger had been in some way terrible and terrifying.
And as she sat up in her berth, trying to compose herself, she recalled
the last time she had seen him at Philadelphia--a painful scene--and his
last broken words to her, as he turned back from the door to speak
them:--
"As to Beatty, I hold you responsible! She is my child, no less than
yours. You shall answer to me! Remember that!"
Answer to him? Beatty was dead--in spite of all that love and science
could do. Involuntarily she began to weep as she remembered the child's
last days; the little choked cry, once or twice, for "Daddy!" followed,
so long as life maintained its struggle, by a childish anger that he did
not come. And then the silencing of the cry, and the last change and
settling in the small face, so instinct already with feeling and
character, so prophetic of the woman to be.
A grief, of course, never to be got over; but for which she, Daphne,
deserved pity and tenderness, not reproaches. She hardened herself to
meet the coming trial.
* * * * *
She arrived in London in the first week of July, and her first act was
to post a letter to Herbert French, addressed to his East-End vicarage,
a letter formally expressed and merely asking him to give the writer
"twenty minutes' conversation on a subject of common interest to us
both." The letter was signed "Daphne Floyd," and a stamped envelope
addressed to "Mrs. Floyd" was enclosed. By return of post she received a
letter from a person unknown to her, the curate, apparently, in charge
of Mr. French's parish. The letter informed her that her own
communication had not been forwarded, as Mr. French had gone away for a
holiday after a threat of nervous breakdown in consequence of overwork;
and business letters and interviews were being spared him as much as
possible. "He is, however, much better, I am glad to say, and if the
subject on which you wish to speak to him is really urgent, his present
address is Prospect House, St. Damian's, Ventnor. But unless it is
urgent it would be a kindness not to trouble him with it until he
returns to town, which will not be for another fortnight."
Daphne walked restlessly up and down her hotel sitting-room. Of course
the matter was urgent. The health of an East-End clergyman--already, it
appeared, much amended--was not likely to seem of much importance to a
woman of her temperament, when it stood in the way of her plans.
But she would not write, she would go. She had good reason to suppose
that Herbert French would not welcome a visit from her; he might indeed
very easily use his health as an excuse for not seeing her. But she must
see him.
By mid-day she was already on her way to the Isle of Wight. About five
o'clock she arrived at Ventnor, where she deposited maid and luggage.
She then drove out alone to St. Damian's, a village a few miles north,
through a radiant evening. The twinkling sea was alive with craft of all
sizes, from the great liner leaving its trail of smoke along the
horizon, to the white-sailed yachts close upon the land. The woods of
the Undercliff sank softly to the blues and purple, the silver streaks
and gorgeous shadows of the sea floor. The lights were broad and rich.
After a hot day, coolness had come and the air was delightful.
But Daphne sat erect, noticing nothing but the relief of the lowered
temperature after her hot and tiresome journey. She applied herself
occasionally to natural beauty, as she applied herself to music or
literature, but it is not to women of her type that the true passion of
it--"the soul's bridegroom"--comes. And she was absorbed in thinking how
she should open her business to Herbert French.
Prospect House turned out to be a detached villa standing in a garden,
with a broad view of the Channel. Daphne sent her carriage back to the
inn and climbed the steep drive which led up to the verandaed house. The
front garden was empty, but voices--voices, it seemed, of children--came
from behind the house where there was a grove of trees.
"Is Mr. Herbert French at home?" she asked of the maid who answered her
bell.
The girl looked at her doubtfully.
"Yes, ma'am--but he doesn't see visitors yet. Shall I tell Mrs. French?
She's in the garden with the children."
"No, thank you," said Daphne, firmly. "It's Mr. French I have come to
see, and I am sure that he will wish to see me. Will you kindly give him
my card? I will come in and wait."
And she brushed past the maid, who was intimidated by the visitor's
fashionable dress and by the drooping feathers of her Paris hat, in
which the sharp olive-skinned face with its magnificent eyes was
picturesquely framed. The girl gave way unwillingly, showed Mrs. Floyd
into a small study looking on the front garden, and left her.
* * * * *
"Elsie!" cried Herbert French, springing from the low chair in which he
had been lounging in his shirt-sleeves with a book when the parlour-maid
found him, "Elsie!"
His wife, who was at the other end of the lawn, playing with the
children, the boy on her back and a pair of girl twins clinging to her
skirts, turned in astonishment and hurried back to him.
"Mrs. Floyd?" They both looked at the card in bewilderment. "Who is it?
Mrs. Floyd?"
Then French's face changed.
"What is this lady like?" he asked peremptorily of the parlour-maid.
"Well, sir, she's a dark lady, dressed very smart----"
"Has she very black eyes?"
"Oh yes, sir!"
"Young?"
The girl promptly replied in the negative, qualifying it a moment
afterward by a perplexed "Well, I shouldn't say so, sir."
French thought a moment.
"Thank you. I will come in."
He turned to his wife with a rapid question, under his breath. "Where is
Roger?"
Elsie stared at him, her colour paling.
"Herbert!--it can't--it can't----"
"I suspect it is--Mrs. Barnes," said French slowly. "Help me on with my
coat, darling. Now then, what shall we do?"
"She can't have come to force herself on him!" cried his wife
passionately.
"Probably she knows nothing of his being here. Did he go for a walk?"
"Yes, towards Sandown. But he will be back directly."
A quick shade of expression crossed French's face, which his wife knew
to mean that whenever Roger was out by himself there was cause for
anxiety. But the familiar trouble was immediately swallowed up in the
new and pressing one.
"What can that woman have come to say?" he asked, half of himself, half
of his wife, as he walked slowly back to the house. Elsie had conveyed
the children to their nurse, and was beside him.
"Perhaps she repents!" The tone was dry and short; it flung a challenge
to misdoing.
"I doubt it! But Roger?" French stood still, pondering. "Keep him,
darling--intercept him if you can. If he must see her, I will come out.
But we mustn't risk a shock."
They consulted a little in low voices. Then French went into the house
and Elsie came back to her children. She stood thinking, her fine face,
so open-browed and purely lined, frowning and distressed.
* * * * *
"You wished to see me, Mrs. Barnes?"
French had closed the door of the study behind him and stood without
offering to shake hands with his visitor, coldly regarding her.
Daphne rose from her seat, reddening involuntarily.
"My name is no longer what you once knew it, Mr. French. I sent you my
card."
French made a slight inclination and pointed to the chair from which she
had risen.
"Pray sit down. May I know what has brought you here?"
Daphne resumed her seat, her small hands fidgeting on her parasol.
"I wished to come and consult with you, Mr. French. I had heard a
distressing account of--of Roger, from a friend in America."
"I see," said French, on whom a sudden light dawned. "You met Boyson at
Niagara--that I knew--and you are here because of what he said to you?"
"Yes, partly." The speaker looked round the room, biting her lip, and
French observed her for a moment. He remembered the foreign vivacity and
dash, the wilful grace of her youth, and marvelled at her stiffened,
pretentious air, her loss of charm. Instinctively the saint in him knew
from the mere look of her that she had been feeding herself on egotisms
and falsehoods, and his heart hardened. Daphne resumed:
"If Captain Boyson has given you an account of our interview, Mr.
French, it was probably a one-sided one. However, that is _not_ the
point. He _did_ distress me very much by his account, which I gather
came from you--of--of Roger, and although, of course, it is a very
awkward matter for me to move in, I still felt impelled for old times'
sake to come over and see whether I could not help you--and his other
friends--and, of course, his mother----"
"His mother is out of the question," interrupted French. "She is, I am
sorry to say, a helpless invalid."
"Is it really as bad as that? I hoped for better news. Then I apply to
you--to you chiefly. Is there anything that I could do to assist you, or
others, to----"
"To save him?" French put in the words as she hesitated.
Daphne was silent.
"What is your idea?" asked French, after a moment. "You heard, I
presume, from Captain Boyson that my wife and I were extremely anxious
about Roger's ways and habits; that we cannot induce him, or, at any
rate, we have not yet been able to induce him, to give up drinking; that
his health is extremely bad, and that we are sometimes afraid that there
is now some secret in his life of which he is ashamed?"
"Yes," said Daphne, fidgeting with a book on the table. "Yes, that is
what I heard."
"And you have come to suggest something?"
"Is there no way by which Roger can become as free as I now am!" she
said suddenly, throwing back her head.
"By which Roger can obtain his divorce from you--and marry again? None,
in English law."
"But there is--in Colonial law." She began to speak hurriedly and
urgently. "If Roger were to go to New Zealand, or to Australia, he
could, after a time, get a divorce for desertion. I know he could--I
have inquired. It doesn't seem to be certain what effect my action--the
American decree, I mean--would have in an English colony. My lawyers are
going into it. But at any rate there is the desertion and then"--she
grew more eager--"if he married abroad--in the Colony--the marriage
would be valid. No one could say a word to him when he returned to
England."
French looked at her in silence. She went on--with the unconscious
manner of one accustomed to command her world, to be the oracle and
guide of subordinates:--
"Could we not induce him to go? Could you not? Very likely he would
refuse to see me; and, of course, he has, most unjustly to me, I think,
refused to take any money from me. But the money might be provided
without his knowing where it came from. A young doctor might be sent
with him--some nice fellow who would keep him amused and look after him.
At Heston he used to take a great interest in farming. He might take up
land. I would pay anything--anything! He might suppose it came from some
friend."
French smiled sadly. His eyes were on the ground. She bent forward.
"I beg of you, Mr. French, not to set yourself against me! Of
course"--she drew herself up proudly--"I know what you must think of my
action. Our views are different, irreconcilably different. You probably
think all divorce wrong. We think, in America, that a marriage which has
become a burden to either party is no marriage, and ought to cease. But
that, of course"--she waved a rhetorical hand--"we cannot discuss. I do
not propose for a moment to discuss it. You must allow me my national
point of view. But surely we can, putting all that aside, combine to
help Roger?"
"To marry again?" said French, slowly. "It can't, I fear, be done--what
you propose--in the time. I doubt whether Roger has two years to live."
Daphne started.
"Roger!--to live?" she repeated, in horror. "What is really the matter?
Surely nothing more than care and a voyage could set right?"
French shook his head.
"We have been anxious about him for some time. That terrible attack of
septic pneumonia in New York, as we now know, left the heart injured and
the lungs weakened. He was badly nursed, and his state of mind at the
time--his misery and loneliness--left him little chance. Then the
drinking habit, which he contracted during those wretched months in the
States, has been of course sorely against him. However, we hoped against
hope--Elsie and I--till a few weeks ago. Then someone, we don't know
who, made him go to a specialist, and the verdict is--phthisis; not very
advanced, but certain and definite. And the general outlook is not
favourable."
Daphne had grown pale.
"We must send him away!" she said imperiously. "We must! A voyage, a
good doctor, a dry climate, would save him, of course they would! Why,
there is nothing necessarily fatal now in phthisis! Nothing! It is
absurd to talk as though there were."
Again French looked at her in silence. But as she had lost colour, he
had gained it. His face, which the East End had already stamped, had
grown rosy, his eyes sparkled.
"Oh, do say something! Tell me what you suggest?" cried Daphne.
"Do you really wish me to tell you what I suggest?"
Daphne waited, her eyes first imploring, then beginning to shrink. He
bent forward and touched her on the arm.
"Go, Mrs. Barnes, and ask your husband's forgiveness! What will come of
it I do not know. But you, at least, will have done something to set
yourself right--with God."
The Christian and the priest had spoken; the low voice in its intensity
had seemed to ring through the quiet sun-flooded room. Daphne rose,
trembling with resentment and antagonism.
"It is you, then, Mr. French, who make it impossible for me to
discuss--to help. I shall have to see if I can find some other means of
carrying out my purpose."
There was a voice outside. Daphne turned.
"Who is that?"
French ran to the glass door that opened on the veranda, and trying for
an ordinary tone, waved somebody back who was approaching from without.
Elsie came quickly round the corner of the house, calling to the
new-comer.
But Daphne saw who it was and took her own course. She, too, went to the
window, and, passing French, she stepped into the veranda.
"Roger!"
A man hurried through the dusk. There was an exclamation, a silence. By
this time French was on the lawn, his wife's quivering hand in his.
Daphne retreated slowly into the study and Roger Barnes followed her.
"Leave them alone," said French, and putting an arm round his wife he
led her resolutely away, out of sound and sight.
* * * * *
Barnes stood silent, breathing heavily and leaning on the back of a
chair. The western light from a side window struck full on him. But
Daphne, the wave of excitement spent, was not looking at him. She had
fallen upon a sofa, her face was in her hands.
"What do you want with me?" said Roger at last. Then, in a sudden heat,
"By God, I never wished to see you again!"
Daphne's muffled voice came through her fingers.
"I know that. You needn't tell me so!"
Roger turned away.
"You'll admit it's an intrusion?" he said fiercely. "I don't see what
you and I have got to do with each other now."
Daphne struggled for self-control. After all, she had always managed him
in the old days. She would manage him now.
"Roger--I--I didn't come to discuss the past. That's done with. But--I
heard things about you--that----"
"You didn't like?" he laughed. "I'm sorry, but I don't see what you have
to do with them."
Daphne's hand fidgeted with her dress, her eyes still cast down.
"Couldn't we talk without bitterness? Just for ten minutes? It was from
Captain Boyson that I heard----"
"Oh, Boyson, was that it? And he got his information from French--poor
old Herbert. Well, it's quite true. I'm no longer fit for your--or
his--or anybody's society."
He threw himself into an arm-chair, calmly took a cigarette out of a box
that lay near, and lit it. Daphne at last ventured to look at him. The
first and dominant impression was of something shrunken and diminished.
His blue flannel suit hung loose on his shoulders and chest, his
athlete's limbs. His features had been thinned and graved and scooped by
fever and broken nights; all the noble line and proportion was still
there, but for one who had known him of old the effect was no longer
beautiful but ghastly. Daphne stared at him in dismay.
He on his side observed his visitor, but with a cooler curiosity. Like
French he noticed the signs of change, the dying down of brilliance and
of bloom. To go your own way, as Daphne had done, did not seem to
conduce to a woman's good looks.
At last he threw in a dry interrogation.
"Well?"
"I came to try and help you," Daphne broke out, turning her head away,
"to ask Mr. French what I could do. It made me unhappy----"
"Did it?" He laughed again. "I don't see why. Oh, you needn't trouble
yourself. Elsie and Herbert are awfully good to me. They're all I want,
or at any rate," he hesitated a moment, "they're all I _shall_
want--from now on. Anyway, you know there'd be something grotesque in
your trying your hand at reforming me."
"I didn't mean anything of the kind!" she protested, stung by his tone.
"I--I wanted to suggest something practical--some way by which you
might--release yourself from me--and also recover your health."
"Release myself from you?" he repeated. "That's easier said than done.
Did you mean to send me to the Colonies--was that your idea?"
His smile was hard to bear. But she went on, choking, yet determined.
"That seems to be the only way--in English law. Why shouldn't you take
it? The voyage, the new climate, would probably set you up again. You
need only be away a short time."
He looked at her in silence a moment, fingering his cigarette.
"Thank you," he said at last, "thank you. And I suppose you offered us
money? You told Herbert you would pay all expenses? Oh, don't be angry!
I didn't mean anything uncivil. But," he raised himself with energy from
his lounging position, "at the same time, perhaps you ought to know that
I would sooner die a thousand times over than take a single silver
sixpence that belonged to you!"
Their eyes met, his quite calm, hers sparkling with resentment and pain.
"Of course I can't argue with you if you meet me in that tone," she said
passionately. "But I should have thought----"
"Besides," he interrupted her, "you say it is the only way. You are
quite mistaken. It is not the only way. As far as freeing me goes, you
could divorce me to-morrow--here--if you liked. I have been unfaithful
to you. A strange way of putting it--at the present moment--between you
and me! But that's how it would appear in the English courts. And as to
the 'cruelty'--that wouldn't give _you_ any trouble!"
Daphne had flushed deeply. It was only by a great effort that she
maintained her composure. Her eyes avoided him.
"Mrs. Fairmile?" she said in a low voice.
He threw back his head with a sound of scorn.
"Mrs. Fairmile! You don't mean to tell me, Daphne, to my face, that you
ever believed any of the lies--forgive the expression--that you, and
your witnesses, and your lawyers told in the States--that you bribed
those precious newspapers to tell?"
"Of course I believed it!" she said fiercely. "And as for lies, it was
you who began them."
"You _believed_ that I had betrayed you with Chloe Fairmile?" He raised
himself again, fixing his strange deep-set gaze upon her.
"I never said----"
"No! To that length you didn't quite go. I admit it. You were able to
get your way without it." He sank back in his chair again. "No, my
remark had nothing to do with Chloe. I have never set eyes on her since
I left you at Heston. But--there was a girl, a shop-girl, a poor little
thing, rather pretty. I came across her about six months ago--it doesn't
matter how. She loves me, she was awfully good to me, a regular little
brick. Some day I shall tell Herbert all about her--not yet--though, of
course, he suspects. She'd serve your purpose, if you thought it worth
while. But you won't----"
"You're--living with her--now?"
"No. I broke with her a fortnight ago, after I'd seen those doctors. She
made me see them, poor little soul. Then I went to say good-bye to her,
and she," his voice shook a little, "she took it hard. But it's all
right. I'm not going to risk her life, or saddle her with a dying man.
She's with her sister. She'll get over it."
He turned his head towards the window, his eyes pursued the white sails
on the darkening blue outside.
"It's been a bad business, but it wasn't altogether my fault. I saved
her from someone else, and she saved me, once or twice, from blowing my
brains out."
"What did the doctors say to you?" asked Daphne, brusquely, after a
pause.
"They gave me about two years," he said, indifferently, turning to knock
off the end of his cigarette. "That doesn't matter." Then, as his eyes
caught her face, a sudden animation sprang into his. He drew his chair
nearer to her and threw away his cigarette. "Look here, Daphne, don't
let's waste time. We shall never see each other again, and there are a
number of things I want to know. Tell me everything you can remember
about Beatty that last six months--and about her illness, you
understand--never mind repeating what you told Boyson, and he told me.
But there's lots more, there must be. Did she ever ask for me? Boyson
said you couldn't remember. But you must remember!"
He came closer still, his threatening eyes upon her. And as he did so,
the dark presence of ruin and death, of things damning and irrevocable,
which had been hovering over their conversation, approached with
him--flapped their sombre wings in Daphne's face. She trembled all over.
"Yes," she said, faintly, "she did ask for you."
"Ah!" He gave a cry of delight. "Tell me--tell me at
once--everything--from the beginning!"
And held by his will, she told him everything--all the piteous story of
the child's last days--sobbing herself; and for the first time making
much of the little one's signs of remembering her father, instead of
minimizing and ignoring them, as she had done in the talk with Boyson.
It was as though for the first time she were trying to stanch a wound
instead of widening it.
He listened eagerly. The two heads--the father and mother--drew closer;
one might have thought them lovers still, united by tender and sacred
memories.
But at last Roger drew himself away. He rose to his feet.
"I'll forgive you much for that!" he said with a long breath. "Will you
write it for me some day--all you've told me?"
She made a sign of assent.
"Well, now, you mustn't stay here any longer. I suppose you've got a
carriage? And we mustn't meet again. There's no object in it. But I'll
remember that you came."
She looked at him. In her nature the great deeps were breaking up. She
saw him as she had seen him in her first youth. And, at last, what she
had done was plain to her.
With a cry she threw herself on the floor beside him. She pressed his
hand in hers.
"Roger, let me stay! Let me nurse you!" she panted. "I didn't
understand. Let me be your friend! Let me help! I implore--I implore
you!"
He hesitated a moment, then he lifted her to her feet decidedly, but not
unkindly.
"What do you mean?" he said, slowly. "Do you mean that you wish us to be
husband and wife again? You are, of course, my wife, in the eye of
English law, at this moment."
"Let me try and help you!" she pleaded again, breaking into bitter
tears. "I didn't--I didn't understand!"
He shook his head.
"You can't help me. I--I'm afraid I couldn't bear it. We mustn't meet.
It--it's gone too deep."
He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked away to the window. She
stood helplessly weeping.
When he returned he was quite composed again.
"Don't cry so," he said, calmly. "It's done. We can't help it. And don't
make yourself too unhappy about me. I've had awful times. When I was ill
in New York--it was like hell. The pain was devilish, and I wasn't used
to being alone, and nobody caring a damn, and everybody believing me a
cad and a bully. But I got over that. It was Beatty's death that hit me
so hard, and that I wasn't there. It's that, somehow, I can't get
over--that you did it--that you could have had the heart. It would
always come between us. No, we're better apart. But I'll tell you
something to comfort you. I've given up that girl, as I've told you, and
I've given up drink. Herbert won't believe it, but he'll find it is so.
And I don't mean to die before my time. I'm going out to Switzerland
directly. I'll do all the correct things. You see, when a man _knows_
he's going to die, well," he turned away, "he gets uncommonly curious as
to what's going to come next."
He walked up and down a few turns. Daphne watched him.
"I'm not pious--I never was. But after all, the religious people profess
to know something about it, and nobody else does. Just supposing it were
true?"
He stopped short, looking at her. She understood perfectly that he had
Beatty in his mind.
"Well, anyhow, I'm going to live decently for the rest of my time--and
die decently. I'm not going to throw away chances. And don't trouble
yourself about money. There's enough left to carry me through. Good-bye,
Daphne!" He held out his hand to her.
She took it, still dumbly weeping. He looked at her with pity.
"Yes, I know, you didn't understand what you were doing. But you see,
Daphne, marriage is----" he sought rather painfully for his words, "it's
a big thing. If it doesn't make us, it ruins us; I didn't marry you for
the best of reasons, but I was very fond of you--honour bright! I loved
you in my way, I should have loved you more and more. I should have been
a decent fellow if you'd stuck to me. I had all sorts of plans; you
might have taught me anything. I was a fool about Chloe Fairmile, but
there was nothing in it, you know there wasn't. And now it's all rooted
up and done with. Women like to think such things can be mended, but
they can't--they can't, indeed. It would be foolish to try."
Daphne sank upon a chair and buried her face in her hands. He drew a
long and painful breath. "I'm afraid I must go," he said waveringly.
"I--I can't stand this any longer. Good-bye, Daphne, good-bye."
She only sobbed, as though her life dissolved in grief. He drew near to
her, and as she wept, hidden from him, he laid his hand a moment on her
shoulder. Then he took up his hat.
"I'm going now," he said in a low voice. "I shan't come back till you
have gone."
She heard him cross the room, his steps in the veranda. Outside, in the
summer dark, a figure came to meet him. French drew Roger's arm into
his, and the two walked away. The shadows of the wooded lane received
them.
A woman came quickly into the room.
Elsie French looked down upon the sobbing Daphne, her own eyes full of
tears, her hands clasped.
"Oh, you poor thing!" she said, under her breath. "You poor thing!" And
she knelt down beside her and folded her arms round her.
So from the same heart that had felt a passionate pity for the victim,
compassion flowed out on the transgressor. For where others feel the
tragedy of suffering, the pure in heart realize with an infinitely
sharper pain the tragedy of guilt.
THE END
* * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Amiel's Journal (translated)
Miss Bretherton
Robert Elsmere
The History of David Grieve
Marcella
Sir George Tressady
Helbeck of Bannisdale
Eleanor
Lady Rose's Daughter
The Marriage of William Ashe
Agatha
Fenwick's Career
Milly and Olly
The Testing of Diana Mallory