Almost insensibly and without comment Madeleine fell into the habit of
sleeping at night and going abroad with Holt in the daytime. Nor did he
take her to any more dives. They went across the Bay, either to Oakland
or Sausalito, and took long walks, dining at some inn where they were
sure to meet no one they knew. She had asked him to buy her books, as
she did not care to venture either into the bookstores or the
Mercantile Library. She now had a part of her new income to spend as
she chose, and moved into more comfortable rooms, although far from the
fashionable quarter. She was restless and often very nervous but Holt
knew that she drank no longer. There had been another revolution of the
wheel: she would have a large income, freedom impended, the future was
hers to dispose of at will. Her health was excellent; she had regained
her old proud bearing.
"What are you going to do with it?" he asked her abruptly one evening.
They were sitting in the arbor of a restaurant on the water front at
Sausalito and had just finished dinner. The steep promontory rose
behind them a wild forest of oak and pine, madrona and chaparral.
Across the sparkling dark green water San Francisco looked a pale blue
in the twilight and there was a banner of soft pink above her. Lights
were appearing on the military islands, the ferry boats, and yachts.
"You will be free in about a month now. Have you made any plans? You
will not stay here, of course."
"Stay here! I shall leave the day the decree is granted, and I'll never
see California again as long as I live."
"But where shall you go?"
"Oh--it would be interesting to live in Europe."
"Whether you have admitted it to yourself or not you have not the
remotest idea of going to Europe."
"Oh?"
"You are going to Langdon Masters. Nothing in the world could keep you
away from him--or should."
"I wish women smoked. You look so placid. And I am glad you smoke
cigarettes."
"Why not try one?"
"Oh, no!" She looked scandalized. "I never did that--before. The other
was for a purpose, not because I liked it."
"I am used to your line of ratiocination. But you haven't answered my
question."
"Did you ask one?"
"In the form of an assertion, yes."
"You know--the Church forbids marriage after divorce."
"Look here, Madeleine!" Holt brought his fist down on the table with
such violence that she half started to her feet. "Do you mean to tell
me you are going to let any more damn foolishness wreck your life a
second time?"
"You must not speak of the Church in that way."
"Let that pass. I am not going to argue with you. You've argued it all
out with yourself unless I'm much mistaken. Are you going to let
Masters kill himself when you can save him? Are you going to condemn
yourself to a miserably solitary, wandering, aimless life, in which you
are no good to yourself, your Church, or any one on earth--and with a
crime on your soul?"
I--I--haven't admitted to myself what I shall do. It has seemed to me
that when I am free I shall simply go--"
"And straight to Masters. As well for a needle to try to run away from
a magnet."
"Oh, I wonder! I wonder!" But she did not look distressed. Her face was
transfigured as if she saw a vision. But it fell in a moment, that
inner glowing lamp extinguished.
"He may no longer want me. He may have forgotten me. Or if he remembers
it must only be to remind himself that I have ruined his life. He may
hate me."
"That is likely! If he hated you he'd have pulled up long ago. He knows
he still has it in him to make a name for himself, whether he owns a
newspaper or not. If he's gone on making a fool of himself it's because
his longing for you is insupportable; he can forget you in no other
way."
"Can men really love like that?" The inner lamp glowed again.
"A few. Not many, perhaps. Langdon's one of them. Case of a rare whole
being chopped in two by fate and both halves bleeding to death without
the other. There are a few immortal love affairs in the world's
history, and that's just what makes 'em immortal."
She did not answer, but sat staring at the rosy peaceful light above
the fiery city that had burnt out so many lives. Then her face changed
suddenly. It was set and determined, almost hard. He thought she looked
like a beautiful Medusa.
"Yes," she said. "I am going to him. I suppose I have known it all
along. At all events I know it now."
"And what is your plan?"
"I have had no time to make one yet."
"Will you listen to mine?"
"Do not I always listen to you with the greatest respect?" She was the
charming woman again. "Mr. McLane told me that I was to follow your
advice--I have an idea you have engineered this whole affair!--But if
he hadn't--well, I have every reason to be humbly grateful to you. If
this terrible tangle ever unravels I shall owe it to you."
"Then listen to me now. What I said--that his actions prove that he
cares for you as much as ever--is true. But--you might come upon him in
a condition where he would not recognize you, or was morose from too
much drink or too little; and for the moment he would hate you, either
because you reminded him too forcibly of what he had been and was, or
because it degraded him further to be seen by you in such a state. He
could make himself excessively disagreeable sober. Drunk, panic
stricken, reckless, I should think he might achieve a masterpiece in
that line that would make you feel like ten cents.... This is my plan.
I'll go on at once and prepare him. Get him down to his home in
Virginia on one pretence or another, sober him up by degrees, and then
tell him all you have been through for his sake, and that as soon as
you are free you will come to him. He'll be a little more like himself
by that time and can stand having you look at him.... It'll be no easy
task at first; and I'll have to taper him off to prevent any blow to
his heart. There may be relapses, and the whole thing to do over; but I
shall use the talisman of your name as soon as he is in a condition to
understand, and shall succeed in the end. Once let the idea take hold
of him that he can have you at last and it is only a question of time."
She made no reply for a moment. She sat with her eyes on his as he
spoke. At first they had opened widely, melted and flashed. But they
narrowed slowly. As he finished she turned her profile toward him and
he had never seen a cameo look harder.
"That would be an easy way out," she said. "But it does not appeal to
me. Nothing easy appeals to me these days. I'll fight my own battles
and overcome my own obstacles. Besides, he's mine. He shall owe nothing
to any one but to me. I'll find him and cure him myself."
"But you'll have a hard time finding him. He disappears for weeks at a
time. Even Tom Lacey might not be able to help you."
"I'll find him."
"You may have to haunt the most abominable places."
"You seem to forget that I have haunted a good many abominable places.
And if they are good enough for him they are good enough for me."
"New York has the worst set of roughs in the world. Our hoodlums are
lambs beside them."
"I have no fear of anything but not finding him in time."
"But that is not the worst. You should not see him in that state. You
might find him literally in the gutter. He might be a sight you never
could forget. No matter what you made of him you never could obliterate
such a hideous memory. And he might say things to you that your
outraged pride would never forgive."
"I can forget anything I choose. Nor could anything he said, nor
anything he may have become, horrify me. Don't you think I have
pictured all that? I think of him every moment and I am not a coward. I
have imagined things that may be worse than the reality."
"Hardly. But there is another danger. You might kidnap him and get him
sobered up, only to lose him again. He might be so overcome with shame
that he would cut loose and hide where you would never find him.
Remember, his pride was as great as yours."
"I'd track him to the ends of the earth. He's mine and I'll have him."
Holt stared at her for a moment in perplexity, then laughed. "You are a
liberal education, Madeleine. Just as I think I really know you at last
you break out in a new place. Masters will have an interesting life.
You must be a sort of continued-in-our-next story for any one who has
the right to love and live with you. But for any one else who has loved
you it must be death and damnation."
She stole a glance at him, wondering if he loved her. If he did he had
never made a sign, and at the moment he seemed to be appraising her
with his sharp cool blue eyes.
"I was thinking of the doctor," he said calmly. "Although, of course,
there must have been a good many in a more or less idiotic state over
the reigning toast."
"The reigning toast!... Well, I'll never be that again. But it won't
matter if--when--You are to promise me you will not write to him!"
"Oh, yes, I promise." Holt had been rapidly formulating his own plans.
"But you'll let me give you a letter to Lacey? It's a wild goose chase
but a little advice might help."
"I should have asked you for a line to Mr. Lacey. I don't wish to waste
time if I can help it."
He rose. "Well, there's a pile of blank paper and a soft pencil waiting
for me. I've an editorial to write on the low-lived politics of San
Francisco, and another on the increasing number of murders in our fair
city. Look at the fog sailing in through the Golden Gate, pushing
itself along like the prow of a ship. You'll never see anything as
beautiful as California again. But I suppose that worries you a lot."
She smiled, a little mysterious smile, but she did not reply, and they
walked down to the ferry slip in silence.