There were doctors' offices on the first floor and Madeleine climbed
wearily the two flights to her room. Her muscles felt as tired as her
spirit, but she had an odd fancy that her skeleton was of fine flexible
steel and not only indestructible but tenacious and dominant. It defied
the worst she could do to organs and soul.
She unlocked her door and lit the gas jet. It was a decent room, large,
with the bed in an alcove, and little uglier than those grim double
parlors of her past that she had graced so often. But her own rooms at
the hotel had been beautiful and luxurious. They had sheltered and
pampered her body for five years, and her father's house was a stately
mansion, refurnished, with the exception of old colonial pieces, after
the grand tour in Europe. This room, although clean and sufficiently
equipped, was sordid and commonplace, and the bed was as hard as the
horsehair furniture. Her body as well as her aesthetic sense had
rebelled more than once.
But she would never return; although she guessed that the complete
dissociation from her old life and its tragic reminders had more than a
little to do with the loathing for drink that had gradually possessed
her. She had not admitted it to Holt, but it required a supreme effort
of will to take a glass of hot whiskey and water at night, the taste
disguised as much as possible by lime juice, and another in the
daytime. She had no desire to reform! And she longed passionately to
drown not only her heart but her pride. Now that her system was
refusing its demoralizing drug she felt that horror of her descent only
possible to a woman who has inherited and practised all the refinements
of civilization. She longed to return to those first months of degraded
oblivion, and could not!
The champagne or brandy she was forced to order in the dives she
haunted, in order to secure a table, merely gave her tone for the
moment.
Her nerves were less affected than her spirits. She had hours of such
black depression that only the faint glimmering star of religion kept
her from suicide. She had longer seasons for thought on Masters and his
ruin--and of the hours they had spent together. One night she went out
to Dolores and sat in the dark little church until dawn. She had
nothing of the saint in her and felt no impulse to emulate Concha
Arguello, who had become the first nun in California; moreover, Razanov
had died an honorable death through no fault of his or his Concha's.
She and Langdon Masters were lost souls and must expiate their sins in
the eyes of the world that heaped on their heads its pitiless scorn.
Madeleine threw off her hat and dropped into the armchair, oblivious of
its bumps. She began to cry quietly with none of her former hysteria.
Holt was nearer to Masters than any one she knew, and she was grateful
that he had not seen her in her hours of supreme degradation. If he
ever saw Masters again he would tell him of her downfall, of
course--and the reason for it; but at least he could paint no horrible
concrete picture. For the first time she felt thankful that she had not
sunk lower; been compelled, indeed, against her will, to retrace her
steps. She even regretted the hideous episode of the ferry boat,
although she had welcomed the exposure at the time. Her pride was
lifting its battered head, and although she felt no remorse, and was
without hope, and her unclouded consciousness foreshadowed long years
of spiritual torment and longing with not a diversion to lighten the
gloom, she possessed herself more nearly that night than since Holt had
given her what she had believed to be her death blow.
If she could only die. But death was no friend of hers.