The next day Loring felt unnerved in an absurd manner by that dream. It
kept coming between him and reality. Even after he was wide awake, the
remembered voice of the huge negro saying: "_This is the black knife of
Lur_," gave him a disagreeable shiver. The mental atmosphere of the
house did not tend to soothe him. At breakfast Charlotte was icily
polite, the Judge restrained and taciturn. Sophy did not come down till
after ten. She suggested a ride. This ride also was very trying for them
both. He began with the old arguments. She answered with a sad
listlessness, but with an under note of determination which made him
feel angry and discouraged.
The day was so triumphantly clear after the great wind of yesterday
that it seemed to emphasize their inner gloom.
After luncheon they went for a walk together, and again they had "great
argument about it, and about." They were frightfully unhappy, and one as
determined as the other. Yet Belinda would keep stealing upon Loring's
thought--the Belinda of that ridiculous, odious dream, with her white
breasts peeping through red petals and the tip of her pretty feline
tongue between her teeth. He could hear her saying: "_Didn't I do it
well? Not a drop of blood!_" Damn dreams, anyway!... As if a man hadn't
enough to contend with by day!...
About tea-time the camping-party returned in great spirits. Bobby came
whooping in to his mother's study waving a big branch of scarlet
berries. He stopped short at sight of Loring. A sort of stiffening went
through him. Loring, too, stiffened. Then Bobby came forward. They shook
hands coldly, more like two men than a man and a little boy. When Bobby
went out again, Loring, looking after him, said bitterly:
"There goes one of the chief causes of division between us."
"Never, never have I put him before you!" cried Sophy, with a painful
flush. "Be just to me, Morris; at least be just to me."
He said sullenly:
"You didn't need to 'put him' ... he was always there."
Sophy parted her lips to deny passionately, then closed them again. What
was the use? They must not come to recriminating each other.
"Oh, Morris," she pleaded, a moment later, "let's be kind to each other!
Let's have kindness to remember..."
He gave that short, ugly laugh of his.
"You think you're being kind, eh?"
Chesney's tone--almost his words again! Sophy, too, had her haunting
nightmare.
The third day Loring decided to speak with Judge Macon "man to man." He
asked for a private interview. The Judge gravely ushered him into his
sanctum. As during that first "serious talk" with Sophy, he established
himself in the revolving-chair before his desk. Loring sat to one side.
He was pale and felt abominably nervous. The Judge looked calm and
noncommittal. He waited for Loring to begin.
The young man began rather unfortunately:
"Sophy tells me she's confided in you about this teapot tempest of
ours," he said. "I find it's devilish hard to get a woman to look
sensibly at such things. But you're a man, Judge ..."
"Yes," admitted the Judge imperturbably, as the other paused.
".... You're a man," Loring continued. "You know that these ... a ...
little lapses will occur 'in the best-regulated households'...."
The Judge's face took on suddenly the expression of a Rhadamanthus.
"May I ask what you refer to?" he said starkly.
Loring's smile became a rather foolish grin.
"Why ... a ... this ... a ... this--this.... Oh, hang it all, Judge!
You've surely kissed some pretty woman besides your wife in twenty years
of marriage!"
He was rather startled by the effect of this jocose insinuation. The
Judge suddenly stood up. Wrath and disgust transformed his kindly face.
"I allow no liberties from any man," he said, in his deepest bass.
Loring, also, leaped to his feet. He looked genuinely dismayed and
confounded.
"But ... but ... I meant no liberty...." he stammered.
"Then," said the Judge, in no wise placated, "your idea of what
constitutes a liberty differs fundamentally from mine."
He remained standing.
"Do you mean to say...?" fumbled Loring.
"I mean this," retorted the Judge: "That to the best of my poor ability
I strive to conduct myself according to the teaching of the Christian
faith." (The Judge, like Charlotte, always became Johnsonian when
righteously wrathful.) "The Founder of that Faith pronounced once for
all upon the question that you refer to as a 'little lapse.' He said:
'He that looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery
with her already in his heart.'"
The blood beat into Loring's face. He looked away from the other's
contemptuous eyes. He was too dumfounded to feel resentful at the
moment. Somehow it never occurred to him to doubt the Judge's perfect
sincerity. He was dumfounded just because he believed in it. Here was
actually a man who looked upon strict faithfulness in marriage as
onerous on both sexes.
There is no one so fiercely chaste as the Southerner who believes in the
sanctity of marriage. "Philandering" is not admitted in his code. He
would call it by a plainer and a coarser name.
When Loring had recovered his wits, he apologised profusely and meekly.
But the interview was not a success. The Judge was now too frankly on
Sophy's side in the matter. He thought the whole situation deeply to be
deplored, but he gave, as his judicial opinion, that in such cases the
process of "patching up" was never successful.
Loring left the study, humiliated and downcast. He realised that he had
not only lost Sophy's love but the friendship of a man whom he really
valued. Somehow, though he tried to jeer at the Judge for a
narrow-minded old fossil who had never known the true fire of manhood,
he could not actually do so. Something in him knew that the old
Virginian was every inch a man. The strength of his passions was
apparent in his dark, powerful face. But these passions had been curbed
by a principle--an ideal. And, drearily enough, Loring began to wonder
less at Sophy's present attitude. It was from the loins of men like this
that she had sprung. She came of a race that required chastity in
husbands as well as in wives. What made it all so overwhelming was that
Loring knew well that he "had committed adultery already in his heart."
It was as though his spirit were being arraigned by these people. That
he had only kissed a woman made no difference to them. To them it was
adultery in the heart....
* * * * *
When he had been at Sweet-Waters a week, something happened that
absolutely staggered him. He felt, when he read a certain item in a
letter from his mother, as though he had received a violent blow in the
midriff. He had ridden down to the station at mail-time, and opened
this letter on his way back. The portion of its contents that so undid
him ran as follows:
"What I am going to tell you now, my dear boy, is a family secret as
yet. Eleanor is delighted. I reserve my opinion. I wish to hear what
_you_ think on the subject. Of course, from a worldly standpoint the
match is a very brilliant one for Belinda...." For _Belinda_?... Loring
held the letter nearer his eyes. He thought that he must have read the
name wrong. His mother's writing was not always easy to read. No. It was
plain enough this time. The word was "Belinda." His eyes gulped the
following pages. "She seems in high spirits--but then her spirits are
always high. But I must explain. She is engaged to Lewis Cuthbridge. He
was in your set at Harvard, he tells me. He is certainly what people
would call very handsome, and, as you know, the Cuthbridges are
extremely rich. But I don't care for that kind of good looks myself. He
is too red and white and black for a man in your old mother's opinion. I
like a more distinguished type...."
"God! Get on ... get on ... get on!..." Loring was raging in his mind.
His eyes glanced avidly ahead. He read: "They certainly seem very much
in love with each other. Belinda, I think, shows all her feelings far
too openly. They make a very striking couple. But haven't I heard that
Lewis Cuthbridge was rather 'wild'? I surely have that impression. I
should have preferred a more settled character for Belinda. Some one of
mature opinions--a professional man, steady in his habits...."
"Get on ... _get on_ ... can't you?..." Loring's thought was urging
angrily again. He skipped ahead.
"What gives me the greatest concern, though, is that the whole affair is
to be so hurried. They are to be married at Christmas, and go straight
to India. It seems that Belinda is very anxious to see the East. But the
engagement will not be announced until the last part of November. I am
most anxious to talk with you about this young man," _et cetera, et
cetera_.
Loring crammed the letter into his pocket. The glare of the sunlight on
the sheet of white paper had set reddish spots dancing before his eyes.
He rode on in a wild flare of outraged protest for half a mile, the
horse going as it willed, at a lazy walk. Suddenly it snorted and
leaped forward, feeling the jab of spurs in its sides. It ran away
indignantly for quite a mile. Then Loring pulled it in, and again they
subsided to a dawdling foot pace.
The spurs had been jabbed into Poor Aleck because Loring had suddenly
thought of Cuthbridge's too red mouth under its too black moustache....
Of this mouth and of Belinda's....
"Engaged"!... The little devil!... So this was her way of paying him
off!... The callous, revengeful little devil!... But then it couldn't be
allowed.... He knew too much about Lewis Cuthbridge to think for a
moment of allowing him to marry one of the women of his family....
Belinda might not be a blood-relation, but that made no difference. It
must be put a stop to--at once--at once! He would write his mother. His
head spun. He felt as though some one had his brain in a sling and were
whirling it round and round.
When he reached the house, he went up to his own room, locked the door,
and, dropping into a chair, pulled out the crushed letter and read it
over. Then he jumped up and began striding to and fro in a blind fury.
The crash of a chair that he flung out of his way startled him into
self-realisation. He recalled Griffeth's warning after that last
outbreak in Newport, and sat down again, battling for self-control. And
boiling up in him with his wild rage came the old, mad passion for the
girl. Those lips--those lips that he had made his own at such
cost!--given to that low blackguard!... Pah! The things he knew of the
brute!... And now ... now.... Perhaps at this very minute.... Oh, he
understood how men could beat women!... He could have dragged Belinda
out of that hound's arms by the hair of her head--and beaten her with
his fists!... He remembered Griffeth's words again, and again got some
sort of hold upon himself....
Morals are more a matter of geography than we like to admit. Loring, an
indifferent member of Christianised society, would have made a very
respectable Mohammedan.
* * * * *
He withstood for two days the gnawing, racking desire to go and see for
himself just "how things were." Then he gave in. He told Sophy that he
had decided to go away and think over this crisis between them by
himself. Sophy, who had also heard from Mrs. Loring of Belinda's
engagement, understood quite well why he was leaving so suddenly.
Something in her was glad and sad both at this knowledge. "It is the
end," she thought. And endings are always sad. It is said that prisoners
of many years leave their cells with a certain regret. Convalescents
often have this queer nostalgia on quitting the sick-room. Sophy had
known far more sorrow than joy in her marriage with Loring, and yet it
was with a mysterious, indescribable, contradictory pain that she held
up her cheek for his farewell kiss. He said that he would see her again
in two or three weeks. But she felt utterly sure that this was their
final parting. Very pale, she held his hand in both hers.
"I wish you all good ... all good, Morris," she whispered. "Whatever
comes ... you know that, don't you?"
"I think so ... yes. I know it," he said unsteadily.
The carriage was waiting for him. There was no one else about. She went
down the old stone steps of the portico, and stood there while he got
in. She was not going to drive to the station with him. Neither of them
wanted to say good-by in public. As he took his seat, she put out her
hand and tucked in the rug which had slipped. He caught this kind hand
and his face broke into a shamed wretchedness. One of the horses plunged
impatiently. Their hands were torn apart.
As he drove off and Sophy was left standing alone in the autumn
sunlight, they both felt as those in old times must have felt when the
sword was pulled from a wound and death came as a relief with the gush
of blood. It was like death in many ways, this parting; but it was also
an unspeakable relief.