hope. It was useless to argue further at this time, and he knew it. He
arose to go. She arose also.
Then a sudden, irresistible impulse came over him. Scarce knowing what
he did, nor the reason why he did it, he seized her in his arms and
crushed her to him.
She fought him in silence; with all her strength she strove to break
from his encircling arms--that held her only the tighter, while his
face drew slowly nearer hers. Her breath came in fierce gasps, as
closer and closer he pressed her--his lips ever nearer and nearer to
her own.
"Let me go!" she panted. "Let me go!"
But he only smiled. The perfume from her hair, the warmth of her body,
the intoxication from her person were working their due. He was only a
man--and she was only a woman.
He kissed her on the lips fiercely--once--twice--a score of
times--straining her to him with an intensity that left her helpless.
"You coward!--you coward!--you coward!" she kept repeating.
And every time he kissed her more fiercely than the last.
Then, suddenly as he had seized her, he loosed her and stepped back--so
suddenly, indeed, she swayed and almost fell.
"You beast! you miserable beast!" she breathed, wiping away his kisses.
He laughed, a low mocking laugh.
"Did you call Amherst a beast?" he asked.
"You miserable beast!" she repeated.
"Who has a better right?" he queried.
"You miserable beast," she said again.
"Who has a better right to kiss you than your husband? Your lover?" he
sneered.
"Go!" she cried, pointing to the door. "Go! and never speak to me
again."
"Why all these melodramatics?" he inquired. "What have I done that is
wrong--how have I offended?"
"I have asked you to leave the house," she answered. "If you go quietly
at once well and good. If you do not"--laying her hand on the button in
the wall behind her--"I shall ring for Tompkins and bid him summon the
police."
"Still melodramatic!" he laughed.
She pressed the button.
"You shall decide whether the butler shows you out or summons an
officer," she replied.
Tompkins appeared in the doorway and waited.
She looked calmly at Lorraine, and Lorraine looked at her--then he held
out his hand.
"Good-bye!" he said.
"Good-bye!" she answered, and turned away.
He took a step toward her, and dropped his voice so that Tompkins could
not hear.
"And I'm not so sure _now_ that I want a divorce," he said--"and _you_
can't get one."
Her only reply was the slightest shrug of the shoulders and an
expressive motion of her hands--she did not even take the trouble to
turn her head.
And after a second's hesitation, Lorraine faced about and strode away.
VIII
THE SUMMONS
A month went by and Lorraine made no move to obtain a divorce--neither
did he appear to seek a reconciliation. At first Society was aghast
with wonder, then it gradually accepted the course as one of Lorraine's
eccentricities of character. At the beginning he had made no secret
of his purpose to institute suit whenever personal service could be
obtained on her--although he was of course aware that personal service
was not necessary in such a case. He had a rather Quixotic idea of
the matter, it seemed. Now when he was given the opportunity, and
had openly expressed his intention to proceed forthwith, he suddenly
veered off and became non-committal and non-communicative--even to his
intimate friends.
They did not know--no one knew from him--that he had offered
reconciliation and that Stephanie had refused it. On this he was
absolutely silent. He had been injured enough before all the world
without giving it fresh food for gossip in this new injury that was
almost as searing to his pride as the other. To have his wife run off
with another man was humiliating enough, but to have his offer to
forget and forgive, and to reinstate calmly declined, was mortifying to
the last degree. Even to Cameron he could not bring himself to confess
such a shameful thing.
And the more he brooded over it, the greater seemed the wrong and the
more he grew to hate--not Stephanie, but Amherst. Amherst's was the
injury: if he had not led her astray there never would have been the
scandal--and her love would not have been lost. No--Stephanie was not
to blame! It was Amherst! Amherst had entered his home and had robbed
him of his dearest possessions--his wife and his wife's love; made of
him a mock and a jest--a thing despised or pitied, as the case might
be. He imagined that he was the butt of all Society--the forsaken
husband at whom they were laughing slyly for his incompetence in not
protecting his own.
But instead of confiding his notion to Cameron or to some other friend,
as he was wont to do, he buried it deep in his heart--and fed upon it
until it became the main-spring of his life: to square accounts with
Amherst. And as Amherst grew the blacker to him, Stephanie grew the
whiter--until finally he even acquitted her of all voluntary wrong. She
was Amherst's victim, as much as himself.
Which, only to a certain extent, was true. Amherst had led her
astray--but she had gone willingly, and with never a thought of the
husband who was too weak or too heedless to hold her to propriety and
duty.
And though he nursed his wrath to keep it warm, he did not
venture--yet--to intrude on Stephanie again. He went his usual way; and
with the craft of his passion he was changed only in one respect:--upon
the subject of his married life, its past and its future, concerning
which he had once been so voluble, he now never spoke.
And unless he spoke first, no one could speak to him. Though every one
marvelled exceedingly--and many expressed their marvel to one another
in becoming or unbecoming fashion, depending on the respective point of
view and the respective disposition of the expressor--usually a woman.
Stephanie, meanwhile, went her way with the same air of contemptuous
indifference that she had shown on the Club-house piazza the afternoon
of her reappearance.
At first, Society had resented it--a few resented it actively--but soon
they began to soften a bit, and not to be quite blind when she was
in the vicinity. Stephanie Lorraine was of unimpeachable birth. Her
ancestors had been in Society as long as there was any Society to be
in--except aborigines; and if one, under such circumstances, assumes
an attitude of superiority, the general herd will follow in time--even
though the way be through the avenue of the Divorce Court.
The difficulty in the case was that Mrs. Postlewaite and Mrs.
Porterfield--the "Queen P's," as they were called--were a trifle
recalcitrant. They ruled Society and they had not approved of
Stephanie's doings even before she married. She had been quite too
disregardful of conventions. Her affair with Amherst was shameful
enough, they averred, but when it had culminated in the elopement,
they were outraged beyond words--figuratively speaking, that is; there
was no paucity and little repression of language in the actual. And
when she suddenly returned, without a warning or even an intimation,
and came up to the Club-house in the most casual manner--as though
she had done _nothing! nothing! nothing!_ they were enraged at her
"effrontery." It was the end of their reign, they saw, unless she were
made to pay penance for her offence in sackcloth and ashes. The younger
set would defy their authority--they were near to defying it now, with
their new-fangled ideas and disregard for every convention that stood
for the old order.
They might overlook some things, even though they were bizarre and
questionable, but Stephanie's offence was beyond the pale. If she were
permitted to come back to all her old privileges, and to go unpunished
by Society for her crime against it, then the reign of the dissolute
and depraved had begun. And they shook their heads gravely, and with
much decision resolved that it must not be.
So they let their decision be known and set quickly to work. It was
acquiesced in by almost all elders and by those who naturally follow
the leaders. Of the others, the majority thought that there was no
haste in the matter, and composed themselves and awaited developments.
The few who were independent, and accustomed to do as they pleased,
were uninfluenced by the rest--but they waited also. And those that
the Queen P's had thought would receive Stephanie with open arms--the
fast members of the younger set--held off, and even edged away. They
realized that the Lorraine affair had made their own conduct all
the more marked, and they were afraid to take her up. As one of
them put it: "A fellow feeling's all right--but we're not running
an eleemosynary institution at this stage of the game." The degrees
of intimacy, moreover, could be gauged by the manner of salutation.
Some did not speak at all--some spoke only when it could not be
avoided--some spoke when the occasion required--some spoke always but
with a certain reserve--some spoke naturally, but went no further--some
were as they had always been--friends.
And Stephanie met them in kind.
Gladys Chamberlain, Elaine Croyden, Dorothy Tazewell, Margaret
Middleton, Helen Burleston, Sophia Westlake, and a few others among
the women, were her friends. Pendleton, Burgoyne, Croyden, Mortimer,
Fitzgerald, Devereux, Westlake, Devonshire and a score of others among
the men. There is never a dearth of men where the woman is a beauty
and well-born--that she is also a woman with a past only adds to her
attractiveness.
To but one person, other than her mother, did Stephanie reveal the
incident of Lorraine's visit--and then not until some time thereafter.
It was one evening when she and Pendleton had dined together alone at
her home--Mrs. Mourraille being out of town for several days--and were
sitting afterward in the piazza-room in the moonlight.
"Stephanie," said he--after a pause, and apropos of nothing--dropping
his cigarette into the ash tray on the taboret between them and
lighting another, "what do you make out of Lorraine--isn't his conduct
exceedingly queer?"
"In what way?" she asked.
"In not applying for a divorce."
"Is that an exhibition of queerness on his part?" she smiled.
"It is--he never does the natural thing. What would be idiotic in a
sensible chap is just what one expects from him. That Saturday at
the Club-house--afterward, you know--he was going to begin action on
Monday. And Sunday you had the peculiar scene in the Park where he
threatened you with its immediate filing and so on--yet since that day
no one has ever heard him mention divorce."
"Rather an unusual time for Harry to hold to one opinion!" she laughed.
"I should say a change is long overdue." And when Pendleton looked
at her with a puzzled air she added: "He told me he would not get a
divorce--and that I could not. I'm waiting for him to change his mind
again and to file his papers. I am advised that once filed they cannot
be withdrawn without my consent, and that I am permitted to press for a
decision."
"He told you that Sunday in the Park?" he exclaimed.
"No--it was somewhat later in the week. He came here, and--offered
to--take me back--to forget and forgive. And I declined."
"You declined?" he marvelled. "Did you appreciate what you were
throwing away, Stephanie?"
"Yes--a worthless man, for one thing," she replied.
"And what else?" he asked, leaning a bit forward.
"A life-time of incompatibility and discord."
"And what else?"
"The opportunity for Society to overlook my--sin," she answered.
He nodded. "Just so--and you choose against Society. Was it wise,
Stephanie; was it wise, do you think?"
"What do _you_ think it was, Montague?" she asked with an intimate
little smile.
"I think it was very foolish," he replied promptly; then added--"from
the point of expediency."
"And very wise from the point of happiness and myself--_n'est ce pas_?"
she smiled.
"Yes," he said; "unquestionably, yes--but few would have had the
courage to refuse."
"Let me tell you about it," she broke in. She disliked praise even from
her best friends, and she feared Pendleton would not remember. "Mother
was dreadfully disappointed, I fear--though she has not mentioned the
matter since. It was the expedient way, of course; it would minimize
the scandal, and things would go along pretty much as before. That is
just the difficulty. I couldn't return to the old way. I could not
endure it for a moment--not even long enough to make a show at the
reconciliation so that I might purchase Society's forgetfulness. No,
not even if I could be assured, before going back to him, of ultimately
being divorced."
"I understand," he said.
"You always understand, Montague," she replied. "You're the most
satisfactory of friends."
He made a deprecatory gesture. He was as averse as she to praise.
"You were about to tell of the Lorraine offer?" he reminded her.
And she told him all--not withholding even the final scene.
"I am not surprised," he remarked, when she had finished. "It is just
what one might expect from Lorraine. He was not too strong-minded to
start with, and this affair seems to have put him entirely to the bad.
He is keeping his own counsel now, however, which is suspicious. As you
say, he is long overdue for a change of mind, and it doesn't seem to be
forthcoming. How does he act when he sees you--if you've noticed?"
"It is rather queer but I haven't seen him since that afternoon.
Possibly because I've been at the Club very rarely--not over a
half-dozen times, I should say--you were with me on the most of them."
"At least he has been quiescent," Pendleton added--"and sticking to
business, I hear, most assiduously. In that respect your coming back
seems to have steadied him."
"I'm glad to have done him some good indirectly," she smiled.
"He still is just a boy," said Pendleton, "despite his thirty years.
He has always had his own way, with nothing to settle him until this
came--and it completely unsettled him. So much so that very few of
the men had much sympathy for him. It went to you, Stephanie, instead.
In fact, the men had the matter right from the very first; they knew
Lorraine, they knew Amherst, and they knew--other things, as well."
"And the women?" she asked.
"Oh, damn the women!" he replied.--"I beg your pardon, Stephanie--but
it is Mrs. Postlewaite and Mrs. Porterfield and all their kind, I
mean. A small number are discriminating and broad minded, like Gladys
Chamberlain and Elaine Croyden and Sophia Westlake and a few more. They
are friends--the rest are worthless bundles of dress goods--manikins,
if you please, pulled this way and that by the fetish of the
commonplace and the proper."
"Don't tell Mrs. Postlewaite!" laughed Stephanie. "She would have a
fit."
"It might do her some good if she had. I despise those people who are
so smug and self satisfied in their assumed superiority that they
think their _ipse dixit_ inflates the social balloon. It's a positive
pleasure to have some one kick a hole in it just to show them they're
wrong."
"As I did, you mean," said she. "However, it would have been quite as
effective had I made another sort of kick. I punctured the balloon, all
right, but its entangling folds may stifle me. At least they are pretty
stifling at present. It would be a small matter if I were a man--a man
can do things and be none the worse for them; but I'm a woman--and
it is a powerful big undertaking, Montague, for a woman to kick the
social balloon. Generally the balloon flies back and overwhelms her."
"It's not going to overwhelm you," he insisted.
"Not if you and the rest of my friends can prevent--and I think you
can," she replied. "I am fortunate in my friends--that is where I'm
very, very lucky."
He smiled sympathetically. He knew what she did not:--the Governors
of the Country Club were meeting that night and her resignation as a
member would likely be requested.
The Queen P's and _their_ allies had accomplished so much of their
plans for her punishment. The majority of the Board was made up of men
who sought to be popular, and who kow-towed to Mrs. Postlewaite and her
clique as the ultimate authority. The popular thing was to run with the
sentiment, and so they were running. The few younger members were sure
to vote against it, but they would be too weak in numbers to control.
He would not tell her, however, for something might yet intervene to
prevent--the want of a quorum; the want of a sufficient majority; the
want of anything would cause the matter to be postponed.
As an echo to his thoughts came her next remark.
"I have considered, Montague, that it might be well if I were to resign
from the Country Club," she said. "I know that almost all the women
members are violently opposed to me, and it seems scarcely just to the
few friends I have there for me to put them on the defensive and oblige
them to make a fight. The Queen P's are hot against me, and they can
render it exceedingly unpleasant for the meager opposition, if they
are so minded--and I think we may assume that they are. What would you
advise?"
For a while he was silent--his fingers playing slowly over the arm of
his chair. He was disposed to answer no--she should not be forced into
resigning, at this late day, by all the sentiment the infernal women
could muster. Had she acted promptly on her return it would have been
entirely voluntary; now it savored too much of compulsion, and yet
without any one bearing the responsibility. On the other hand, if she
permitted the Club to _demand_ her resignation, she did not make the
actual opposition any more violent, while all those who opposed such
radical action--and he knew their number was not small--would naturally
be favorable, in a greater or less degree, to her cause. In other
words, she would stand to lose none and to gain many.
"What would you advise me to do, Montague?" she repeated.
"I would advise you not to resign. Hold on--and let them do the
resigning for you, if the Governors are so minded."
"You mean you would let them request my resignation?"
He nodded. "It will make you friends--assuredly it will lose you none.
That is where a woman has the advantage over a man. A Club can kick
a man out and no one ever questions its justice--but it is different
with a woman. She is entitled to something more than mere justice--a
certain courtesy and consideration must always be hers, together
with a proper regard for her sex. Mere justice to a woman becomes
injustice--and injustice always reacts on itself."
"You are considering the matter only as it affects me," Stephanie
insisted, "while I'm concerned as to the way it affects my friends.
What ought I do out of regard for _them_, is the question."
"Whatever is best for yourself," he answered. "They are friends, you
know."
"But I don't know what is best--moreover, for myself I don't care a
rap one way or the other. It is nothing to me to belong to their Club,
or to chatter small talk and scandal, to lunch and dine and go to the
horse-show, and fancy I'm having a glorious time. I'm not a debutante
any longer. I've seen enough of life to know the shallows--and Society
is the shallowest of them all."
"Yes you do care, Stephanie," he said. "You think that you don't, and
all that, but everyone cares for them to a greater or less extent.
It's only a matter of degree--life is made up of degrees, and social
amenities, their obligations and duties are a part of life."
"I suppose you're right," she admitted, "but, just at present, mine are
in an infinitesimal degree," and she crossed her knees and leaned back
in content. "At this moment I haven't a care in the world."
"Miss Philosopher!" he smiled.
"_Mrs._ Philosopher, you mean!" she corrected.
"Your pardon!" said he. "For the moment, I quite forgot."
"It might be well to forget it forever," she reflected.
"I am very willing," he replied, regarding her with indulgent eyes.
She gave him a quick glance, then looked away and a dreamy expression
shone in her eyes.
"Montague," she said presently. "Is there no way that I can procure a
divorce?"
"I'm afraid not," he answered very kindly--"unless Lorraine permits it.
He has offered you a home and to take you back, and you have refused;
so that disposes of desertion or non-support. And if you try to convict
him of having been--indiscreet--he can set up your own indiscretion as
a defense."
"Isn't incompatibility of temper a ground for divorce?" she asked.
"Yes, but it would not apply in your case, if he opposed the suit."
"It all rests with him then," she remarked, with a shrug of denuded
shoulders. "Unless he wishes to be free of me, I must stay bound. It
doesn't seem quite just--and it's _very_ irksome."
"It is entirely just," he said, "but it _is_ irksome to you--and
foolish in him to hold you. However, it is his right and he alone is
the judge. The sensible thing would be for him to divorce you on the
ground of desertion. It would accomplish the result with a minimum of
unpleasantness for you both."
"Then it would be the first time that he ever did the sensible thing,
when he could do the reverse," she remarked.
"Aren't you a little bitter?" he smiled.
"Bitter!" she said thoughtfully. "Probably I am. I can't pardon him for
his supineness, his silly disregard of my danger. I may be wrong--may
be doing him a deep injustice--but I shall never forgive him for
letting me sink into Amherst's clutches. A pretty mess I have made of
my life so far!" she commented, with a sarcastic little laugh.
He leaned forward and took her hand--and she let him take it.
"Don't, dear!" he entreated, with all the tenderness of the strong
man. "It is not such a mess as you think. It will work out for your
advantage--it has already done so--you're free of both Lorraine and
Amherst. Isn't that something?"
"If I _were_ free of Lorraine I think I should be satisfied; it would
be worth everything else--but I'm not."
"Not legally free, but free in fact," he answered. "And you'll be
legally free also in a short time--a very short time. Lorraine's
present mind can't last much longer, Stephanie."
"I hope you're a true prophet," said she, withdrawing her hand--as
Tompkins appeared to light the candles in their big glass shades.
"I wish I were as certain of something else as I am of that," he
reflected slowly, studying the coal of his cigarette, but watching her
face with deliberately avowed surreptitiousness.
And she observed it and inferred what he meant, and her pulses beat
a trifle faster, but beyond a smile, which she contrived to be
half-puzzled, half-questioning, and wholly fascinating, she made no
answer.
She was lovelier now, he thought, than he had ever seen her. Her
figure, in its clinging narrow evening gown, had rounded into the most
adorable curves, though retaining all its youthful slenderness. Two
years ago she had suggested what to-night she was--a glorious woman.
And the flawless face, ordinarily so cold in its beauty, was soft and
tender as he had never thought to see it. He bent over and deliberately
looked her in the eyes--and she, from the recess of her chair, knowing
that he would come no further, calmly looked him back. Neither
spoke--yet the one told a purpose formed, and the other did not warn
him to desist.
"Do you realize just how lovely you are?" he asked.
"Yes," she smiled. "I have my eyes and my mirrors--and an admiring
maid."
"But you haven't----" he began--and broke off. He was about to say "you
haven't a husband to tell you."
And she guessed his words instantly--but not his exact meaning.
"'I haven't a husband to tell me,' you were going to say. Why didn't
you say it? It would have been no more than the truth."
"I was not thinking of Lorraine as the husband," he replied.
She gave a little gasp of surprise at its unexpectedness--a gasp that
ended, however, in a smile and a shake of the ruddy head.
"Please give me a cigarette," she said, extending her hand.
He drew out his case and offered it to her.
"Is this all that I may give you now?" he asked.
"All!" she replied, passing a match across the tip. "All--now.... What
is it, Tompkins?" as the butler appeared in the doorway and bowed.
"The telephone, madam!" monotoned Tompkins.
"Did you get the name?" she asked.
"The Homoeopathic Hospital, madam; they want to speak to you at once."