“Didn’t care?”
She nodded silently.
“For God’s sake, what made you think that?”
“Oh—everything!”
“Everything? When? How?”
She was doing her best to convey the impression that it didn’t matter.
“Everything—always—in New York—at Atlantic City—there especially! And
lately—”
“Yes? Lately?”
“Lately—at Taplow.”
“But at Taplow—how? In Heaven’s name—how?”
“Oh, I was in and out of your room.”
“So I understand; but what of that?”
“Nothing; nothing; only—only what I saw.”
“Well, what did you see?”
Instead of answering this question at once she shifted her ground.
“If you cared—as you say—why didn’t you tell some one?”
“Tell some one? Who could I tell?”
“Oh, any one. Lady Rideover, for one. She’d made a promise not to mention
me; but you hadn’t.”
“But why should I have mentioned you when I never supposed she had any
notion—”
“But you see that’s it. If you’d cared—so much—you’d have done it—to one
of your sisters or the other. But you didn’t—not to either; and so they
got the idea—”
“Yes? What idea did they get? Go on. Tell me.”
I noticed that she was twisting and untwisting her fingers, and that she
had begun throwing me quick, nervous glances through the half-light.
“It’s no use telling you, because it doesn’t matter. That is, it doesn’t
matter now. Everything’s—arranged.”
“We’ll talk about that later. I want to know what idea Mabel and Evelyn
got.”
“They didn’t get it exactly. They were only beginning to get it when I
made them understand that I was going back to be—Oh, why do you make me
talk about it? Why do you bring it all up now, when it can’t do any good?”
To get at the facts I was obliged to speak with the severity one uses
toward a difficult child.
“I want you to tell me what idea Mabel and Evelyn got.”
“Isn’t it perfectly evident what idea they’d get? Any one would get it
when you—when you never said a word—not the least, little, confidential
word—and you so ill!—and blind!—and to your own sisters!—and that Miss
Farley there!”
I passed over the reference to Miss Farley because I couldn’t see what it
meant. I had enough to do in seizing the new suggestion that had come to
me.
“They didn’t think—they couldn’t have thought—that there was nothing on
my side.”
“And everything on mine. That’s precisely the inference they drew. Girls
do go about, you know, giving people to understand that men—”
“But not girls like you.”
“Yes, girls like me; or sufficiently like me. And so I had—in sheer
self-respect—to let Lady Rideover see that there was nothing in it of the
kind of thing she thought, and that I was actually going home to be—”
“But didn’t she see? Didn’t she know? Didn’t everybody see? Didn’t
everybody know?”
In the two brief sentences that came out with something like a groan she
threw tremendous emphasis on the first word.
“Nobody knew! Nobody saw!”
There was a similar emphasis on the penultimate word in my response.
“Did you ask them?”
She flashed back at me: “I did—almost. At times like that—if it’s so—some
one generally knows it from—from the person who’s expecting to be
brimming over with his secret.” She laughed again, lightly, nervously.
“But in this instance nobody did.”
“You asked them?”
“Practically. I forgot everything I used to consider pride and—and I
sounded them.”
“You sounded whom?”
“Oh, the people who knew you best—and who knew me—Annette, Esther
Coningsby, Ralph—any one to whom I thought you might have betrayed
yourself by a word. But it was just as with Evelyn and Lady Rideover. You
had practically not mentioned my name. Hilda Grace told me she tried to
sound you—that Sunday at Rosyth.”
“Well?”
“I’m only quoting her, mind you. She said she didn’t get”—there was
a repetition of that nervous laugh—“she said she didn’t get—any
satisfaction. And so—”
I tried to take a reasonable tone. “But how could I tell you or anybody
else before I’d confessed to you who I was and where you’d first seen me?”
“Exactly. I quite understand that—now that you’ve said what you’ve said
to-night. It’s where the past makes us pay—”
“For what I used to be.”
“Oh, you’re not the only one,” she declared, in a curious, offhand tone.
“It’s for what I used to be, too.”
I found it difficult to follow her. “What you used to be? I don’t
understand you.”
“You know about me—how I’ve been engaged to one man after another—and
broken the engagements.”
“Because you were trying to find the right one.”
“It wasn’t only that. I thought of myself; I didn’t think of them. I let
them offer me everything they had to give—and pretended to accept it—just
to experiment—to play with—and now—now I’m—I’m caught!”
“Caught—in what way?”
She tossed her hands outward in a little, exasperated gesture.
“I can’t do the same thing again. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be
sane.”
“The same thing? Do tell me what you mean.”
“It’s—it’s one of the same men. I’m—I’m caught. It’s what mother—and
Elsie Coningsby—and other people who could talk to me plainly—told me
would happen some day. I’m—I’m punished. And I can’t do the same thing
the second time.”
It was still to escape from the yawning hell into which I felt myself
going down that I said, stupidly, “Why can’t you?”
“Because I can’t. It’s what I said just now. It wouldn’t be sane. I’ve
made a kind of history for myself. If I were to do the same thing again
it wouldn’t merely seem cruel, it would seem crazy.”
“But if you don’t care for him?”
“I do—in a way. He’s been so good and kind and patient and everything!
And even if I didn’t care for him at all it would be just the same—after
what I’ve let him think—the second time.”
I could see her reasoning, if reasoning it was, though it was not the
uppermost thought in my mind. As a matter of fact, I was repeating her
statement as to “one of the same men.” Which one of them was it? There
had been three—the one she didn’t trust—the one she couldn’t have lived
with—and the one who was only very nice. It would make such a difference
which one it proved to be that I was afraid to ask her.
I burst out, desperately: “Oh, but why did you—let him think it—the
second time?”
“I don’t know. It happened by degrees—by writing—in letters—and I didn’t
see how far I was going. It was a kind of reaction.”
“Reaction from what?”
She looked at me wildly. “From you, I think. As far as I remember it
became definite at Taplow.”
“When you were actually seeing me every day?”
“That was the reason. It was seeing you so cheerful and full of jokes—and
not missing—not missing any one—nor ever mentioning them—not to a soul.
It just convinced me of what I’d been sure of before—ever since the time
at Atlantic City—that you didn’t—that you never had.... And so when he
suggested it in one of his letters—I don’t know what made me!—but I
didn’t say it was impossible.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, who knows?—or something like that. And then he cabled—but
I didn’t cable back—I only wrote—trying to say no—but not saying it
decidedly enough.... And so it’s gone on—he writing and cabling both—and
I only writing, but letting him think—just little by little—and not
seeing how far I was being swept along.”