V.
Mrs. Percival proved very pretty. It is more gracious to begin with this
declaration, instead of saying that, in the first place, she proved very
silly. It took a long day to arrive at the end of her silliness, and the
two ladies at Posilippo, even after a week had passed, suspected that
they had only skirted its edges. Kate Theory had not spent half an hour
in her company before she gave a little private sigh of relief; she felt
that a situation which had promised to be embarrassing was now quite
clear, was even of a primitive simplicity. She would spend with her
sister-in-law, in the coming time, one week in the year; that was all
that was mortally possible. It was a blessing that one could see exactly
what she was, for in that way the question settled itself. It would have
been much more tiresome if Agnes had been a little less obvious; then
she would have had to hesitate and consider and weigh one thing against
another. She was pretty and silly, as distinctly as an orange is yellow
and round; and Kate Theory would as soon have thought of looking to her
to give interest to the future as she would have thought of looking to
an orange to impart solidity to the prospect of dinner. Mrs. Percival
travelled in the hope of meeting her American acquaintance, or of making
acquaintance with such Americans as she did meet, and for the purpose
of buying mementos for her relations. She was perpetually adding to her
store of articles in tortoise-shell, in mother-of-pearl, in olive-wood,
in ivory, in filigree, in tartan lacquer, in mosaic; and she had a
collection of Roman scarfs and Venetian beads, which she looked over
exhaustively every night before she went to bed. Her conversation
bore mainly upon the manner in which she intended to dispose of these
accumulations. She was constantly changing about, among each other, the
persons to whom they were respectively to be offered. At Borne one of
the first things she said to her husband after entering the Coliseum had
been: “I guess I will give the ivory work-box to Bessie and the Roman
pearls to Aunt Harriet!” She was always hanging over the travellers’
book at the hotel; she had it brought up to her, with a cup of
chocolate, as soon as she arrived. She searched its pages for the
magical name of New York, and she indulged in infinite conjecture as to
who the people were--the name was sometimes only a partial cue--who had
inscribed it there. What she most missed in Europe, and what she most
enjoyed, were the New Yorkers; when she met them she talked about the
people in their native city who had “moved” and the streets they had
moved to. “Oh, yes, the Drapers are going up town, to Twenty-fourth
Street, and the Vanderdeckens are going to be in Twenty-third Street,
right back of them. My uncle, Henry Piatt, thinks of building round
there.” Mrs. Percival Theory was capable of repeating statements like
these thirty times over,--of lingering on them for hours. She talked
largely of herself, of her uncles and aunts, of her clothes--past,
present, and future. These articles, in especial, filled her horizon;
she considered them with a complacency which might have led you to
suppose that she had invented the custom of draping the human form. Her
main point of contact with Naples was the purchase of coral; and all the
while she was there the word “set”--she used it as if every one would
understand--fell with its little, flat, common sound upon the ears of
her sisters-in-law, who had no sets of anything. She cared little for
pictures and mountains; Alps and Apennines were not productive of
New Yorkers, and it was difficult to take an interest in Madonnas who
flourished at periods when, apparently, there were no fashions, or, at
any rate, no trimmings.
I speak here not only of the impression she made upon her husband’s
anxious sisters, but of the judgment passed on her (he went so far
as that, though it was not obvious how it mattered to him) by Raymond
Benyon. And this brings me at a jump (I confess it’s a very small one)
to the fact that he did, after all, go back to Posilippo. He stayed away
for nine days, and at the end of this time Percival Theory called upon
him, to thank him for the civility he had shown his kinswomen. He went
to this gentleman’s hotel, to return his visit, and there he found Miss
Kate, in her brother’s sitting-room. She had come in by appointment from
the villa, and was going with the others to seek the royal palace, which
she had not yet had an opportunity to inspect It was proposed (not by
Kate), and presently arranged, that Captain Benyon should go with
them, and he accordingly walked over marble floors for half an hour,
exchanging conscious commonplaces with the woman he loved. For
this truth had rounded itself during those nine days of absence; he
discovered that there was nothing particularly sweet in his life when
once Kate Theory had been excluded from it He had stayed away to keep
himself from falling in love with her; but this expedient was in itself
illuminating, for he perceived that, according to the vulgar adage, he
was locking the stable door after the horse had been stolen. As he
paced the deck of his ship and looked toward Posilippo, his tenderness
crystallized; the thick, smoky flame of a sentiment that knew itself
forbidden and was angry at the knowledge, now danced upon the fuel of
his good resolutions. The latter, it must be said, resisted, declined
to be consumed. He determined that he would see Kate Theory again, for
a time, just sufficient to bid her good-by, and to add a little
explanation. He thought of his explanation very lovingly, but it may
not strike the reader as a happy inspiration. To part from her dryly,
abruptly, without an allusion to what he might have said if everything
had been different,--that would be wisdom, of course, that would be
virtue, that would be the line of a practical man, of a man who kept
himself well in hand. But it would be virtue terribly unrewarded,--it
would be virtue too austere for a person who sometimes flattered himself
that he had taught himself stoicism. The minor luxury tempted him
irresistibly, since the larger--that of happy love--was denied him; the
luxury of letting the girl know that it would not be an accident--oh,
not at all--that they should never meet again. She might easily think it
was, and thinking it was would doubtless do her no harm. But this would
n’t give him his pleasure,--the Platonic satisfaction of expressing to
her at the same time his belief that they might have made each other
happy, and the necessity of his renunciation. That, probably, wouldn’t
hurt her either, for she had given him no proof whatever that she cared
for him. The nearest approach to it was the way she walked beside him
now, sweet and silent, without the least reference to his not having
been back to the villa. The place was cool and dusky, the blinds were
drawn, to keep out the light and noise, and the little party wandered
through the high saloons, where precious marbles and the gleam of
gilding and satin made reflections in the rich dimness. Here and there
the cicerone, in slippers, with Neapolitan familiarity, threw open a
shutter to show off a picture on a tapestry. He strolled in front with
Percival Theory and his wife, while this lady, drooping silently from
her husband’s arm as they passed, felt the stuff of the curtains and
the sofas. When he caught her in these experiments, the cicerone, in
expressive deprecation, clasped his hands and lifted his eyebrows;
whereupon Mrs. Theory exclaimed to her husband, “Oh, bother his old
king!” It was not striking to Captain Benyon why Percival Theory had
married the niece of Mr. Henry Piatt. He was less interesting than his
sisters,--a smooth, cool, correct young man, who frequently took out
a pencil and did a little arithmetic on the back of a letter. He
sometimes, in spite of his correctness, chewed a toothpick, and he
missed the American papers, which he used to ask for in the most
unlikely places. He was a Bostonian converted to New York; a very
special type.
“Is it settled when you leave Naples?” Benyon asked of Kate Theory.
“I think so; on the twenty-fourth. My brother has been very kind; he
has lent us his carriage, which is a large one, so that Mildred can lie
down. He and Agnes will take another; but, of course, we shall travel
together.”
“I wish to Heaven I were going with you?” Captain Benyon said. He had
given her the opportunity to respond, but she did not take it; she
merely remarked, with a vague laugh, that of course he couldn’t take his
ship over the Apennines. “Yes, there is always my ship,” he went on. “I
am afraid that in future it will carry me far away from you.”
They were alone in one of the royal apartments; their companions had
passed, in advance of them, into the adjoining room. Benyon and his
fellow-visitor had paused beneath one of the immense chandeliers of
glass, which in the clear, colored gloom (through it one felt the strong
outer light of Italy beating in) suspended its twinkling drops from the
decorated vault. They looked round them confusedly, made shy for the
moment by Benyon’s having struck a note more serious than any that had
hitherto souuded between them, looked at the sparse furniture, draped
in white overalls, at the scagiiola floor, in which the great cluster of
crystal pendants seemed to shine again.
“You are master of your ship. Can’t you sail it as you like?” Kate
Theory asked, with a smile.
“I am not master of anything. There is not a man in the world less free.
I am a slave. I am a victim.”
She looked at him with kind eyes; something in his voice suddenly made
her put away all thought of the defensive airs that a girl, in certain
situations, is expected to assume. She perceived that he wanted to make
her understand something, and now her only wish was to help him to say
it. “You are not happy,” she murmured, simply, her voice dying away in a
kind of wonderment at this reality.
The gentle touch of the words--it was as if her hand had stroked his
cheek--seemed to him the sweetest thing he had ever known. “No, I am not
happy, because I am not free. If I were--if I were, I would give up my
ship. I would give up everything, to follow you. I can’t explain; that
is part of the hardness of it. I only want you to know it,--that if
certain things were different, if everything was different, I might tell
you that I believe I should have a right to speak to you. Perhaps some
day it will change; but probably then it will be too late. Meanwhile, I
have no right of any kind. I don’t want to trouble you, and I don’t ask
of you--anything! It is only to have spoken just once. I don’t make
you understand, of course. I am afraid I seem to you rather a
brute,--perhaps even a humbug. Don’t think of it now,--don’t try to
understand. But some day, in the future, remember what I have said to
you, and how we stood here, in this strange old place, alone! Perhaps it
will give you a little pleasure.”
Kate Theory began by listening to him with visible eagerness; but in a
moment she turned away her eyes. “I am very sorry for you,” she said,
gravely.
“Then you do understand enough?”
“I shall think of what you have said, in the future.”
Benyon’s lips formed the beginning of a word of tenderness, which he
instantly suppressed; and in a different tone, with a bitter smile and a
sad shake of the head, raising his arms a moment and letting them fall,
he said: “It won’t hurt any one, your remembering this!”
“I don’t know whom you mean.” And the girl, abruptly, began to walk to
the end of the room. He made no attempt to tell her whom he meant, and
they proceeded together in silence till they overtook their companions.
There were several pictures in the neighboring room, and Percival Theory
and his wife had stopped to look at one of them, of which the cicerone
announced the title and the authorship as Benyon came up. It was a
modern portrait of a Bourbon princess, a woman young, fair, handsome,
covered with jewels. Mrs. Percival appeared to be more struck with it
than with anything the palace had yet offered to her sight, while her
sister-in-law walked to the window, which the custodian had opened, to
look out into the garden. Benyon noticed this; he was conscious that
he had given the girl something to reflect upon, and his ears burned a
little as he stood beside Mrs. Percival and looked up, mechanically, at
the royal lady. He already repented a little of what he had said, for,
after all, what was the use? And he hoped the others wouldn’t observe
that he had been making love.
“Gracious, Percival! Do you see who she looks like?” Mrs. Theory said to
her husband.
“She looks like a woman who has run up a big bill at Tiffany’s,” this
gentleman answered.
“She looks like my sister-in-law; the eyes, the mouth, the way the
hair’s done,--the whole thing.”
“Which do you mean? You have got about a dozen.”
“Why, Georgina, of course,--Georgina Roy. She’s awfully like.”
“Do you call _her_ your sister-in-law?” Percival Theory asked. “You must
want very much to claim her.”
“Well, she’s handsome enough. You have got to invent some new name,
then. Captain Benyon, what do you call your brother-in-law’s second
wife?” Mrs. Percival continued, turning to her neighbor, who still stood
staring at the portrait. At first he had looked without seeing; then
sight, and hearing as well, became quick. They were suddenly peopled
with thrilling recognitions. The Bourbon princess--the eyes, the mouth,
the way the hair was done; these things took on an identity, and the
gaze of the painted face seemed to fasten itself to his own. But who in
the world was Georgina Roy, and what was this talk about sisters-in-law?
He turned to the little lady at his side a countenance unexpectedly
puzzled by the problem she had airily presented to him.
“Your brother-in-law’s second wife? That’s rather complicated.”
“Well, of course, he need n’t have married again?” said Mrs. Percival,
with a small sigh.
“Whom did he marry?” asked Benyon, staring.
Percival Theory had turned away. “Oh, if you are going into her
relationships!” he murmured, and joined his sister at the brilliant
window, through which, from the distance, the many-voiced uproar of
Naples came in.
“He married first my sister Dora, and she died five years ago. Then he
married _her_,” and Mrs. Percival nodded at the princess.
Benyon’s eyes went back to the portrait; he could see what she meant--it
stared out at him. “Her? Georgina?”
“Georgina Gressie. Gracious, do you know her?”
It was very distinct--that answer of Mrs. Percival’s, and the question
that followed it as well. But he had the resource of the picture; he
could look at it, seem to take it very seriously, though it danced up
and down before him. He felt that he was turning red, then he felt that
he was turning pale. “The brazen impudence!” That was the way he
could speak to himself now of the woman he had once loved, and whom he
afterwards hated, till this had died out, too. Then the wonder of it was
lost in the quickly growing sense that it would make a difference
for him,--a great difference. Exactly what, he didn’t see yet; only a
difference that swelled and swelled as he thought of it, and caught up,
in its expansion, the girl who stood behind him so quietly, looking into
the Italian garden.
The custodian drew Mrs. Percival away to show her another princess,
before Benyon answered her last inquiry. This gave him time to recover
from his first impulse, which had been to answer it with a negative;
he saw in a moment that an admission of his acquaintance with Mrs. Roy
(Mrs. Roy!--it was prodigious!) was necessarily helping him to learn
more. Besides, it needn’t be compromising. Very likely Mrs. Percival
would hear one day that he had once wanted to marry her. So, when he
joined his companions a minute later he remarked that he had known Miss
Gressie years before, and had even admired her considerably, but had
lost sight of her entirely in later days. She had been a great beauty,
and it was a wonder that she had not married earlier. Five years ago,
was it? No, it was only two. He had been going to say that in so long a
time it would have been singular he should not have heard of it. He had
been away from New York for ages; but one always heard of marriages and
deaths. This was a proof, though two years was rather long. He led Mrs.
Percival insidiously into a further room, in advance of the others,
to whom the cicerone returned. She was delighted to talk about her
“connections,” and she supplied him with every detail He could trust
himself now; his self-possession was complete, or, so far as it was
wanting, the fault was that of a sudden gayety which he could not, on
the spot, have accounted for. Of course it was not very flattering to
them--Mrs. Percivals own people--that poor Dora’s husband should have
consoled himself; but men always did it (talk of widows!) and he
had chosen a girl who was--well, very fine-looking, and the sort of
successor to Dora that they needn’t be ashamed of. She had been awfully
admired, and no one had understood why she had waited so long to marry.
She had had some affair as a girl,--an engagement to an officer in the
army,--and the man had jilted her, or they had quarrelled, or something
or other. She was almost an old maid,--well, she was thirty, or very
nearly,--but she had done something good now. She was handsomer than
ever, and tremendously stylish. William Roy had one of the biggest
incomes in the city, and he was quite affectionate. He had been
intensely fond of Dora--he often spoke of her still, at least to her
own relations; and her portrait, the last time Mrs. Percival was in his
house (it was at a party, after his marriage to Miss Gressie), was still
in the front parlor.. Perhaps by this time he had had it moved to the
back; but she was sure he would keep it somewhere, anyway. Poor Dora
had had no children; but Georgina was making that all right,--she had
a beautiful boy. Mrs. Percival had what she would have called quite a
pleasant chat with Captain Benyon about Mrs. Roy. Perhaps _he_ was the
officer--she never thought of that? He was sure he had never jilted her?
And he had never quarrelled with a lady? Well, he must be different from
most men.
He certainly had the air of being so, before he parted that afternoon
with Kate Theory. This young lady, at least, was free to think him
wanting in that consistency which is supposed to be a distinctively
masculine virtue. An hour before, he had taken an eternal farewell
of her, and now he was alluding to future meetings, to future visits,
proposing that, with her sister-in-law, she should appoint an early day
for coming to see the “Louisiana.” She had supposed she understood him,
but it would appear now that she had not understood him at all. His
manner had changed, too. More and more off his guard, Raymond Benyon
was not aware how much more hopeful an expression it gave him, his
irresistible sense that somehow or other this extraordinary proceeding
of his wife’s would set him free. Kate Theory felt rather weary and
mystified,--all the more for knowing that henceforth Captain Benyon’s
variations would be the most important thing in life for her.
This officer, on his ship in the bay, lingered very late on deck that
night,--lingered there, indeed, under the warm southern sky, in which
the stars glittered with a hot, red light, until the early dawn began to
show. He smoked cigar after cigar, he walked up and down by the hour, he
was agitated by a thousand reflections, he repeated to himself that
it made a difference,--an immense difference; but the pink light had
deepened in the east before he had discovered in what the diversity
consisted. By that time he saw it clearly,--it consisted in Georgina’s
being in his power now, in place of his being in hers. He laughed as he
sat there alone in the darkness at the thought of what she had done. It
had occurred to him more than once that she would do it,--he believed
her capable of anything; but the accomplished fact had a freshness of
comicality. He thought of Mr. William Roy, of his big income, of his
being “quite affectionate,” of his blooming son and heir, of his having
found such a worthy successor to poor Mrs. Dora. He wondered whether
Georgina had happened to mention to him that she had a husband living,
but was strongly of the belief that she had not. Why should she, after
all? She had neglected to mention it to so many others. He had thought
he knew her, in so many years,--that he had nothing more to learn about
her; but this ripe stroke revived his sense of her audacity. Of course
it was what she had been waiting for, and if she had not done it sooner
it was because she had hoped he would be lost at sea in one of his long
cruises and relieve her of the necessity of a crime. How she must hate
him to-day for not having been lost, for being alive, for continuing to
put her in the wrong! Much as she hated him, however, his own loathing
was at least a match for hers. She had done him the foulest of
wrongs,--she had ravaged his life. That he should ever detest in this
degree a woman whom he had once loved as he loved her, he would not have
thought possible in his innocent younger years. But he would not have
thought it possible then that a woman should be such a cold-blooded
devil as she had been. His love had perished in his rage,--his blinding,
impotent rage at finding that he had been duped, and measuring his
impotence. When he learned, years before, from Mrs. Portico, what she
had done with her baby, of whose entrance into life she herself had
given him no intimation, he felt that he was face to face with a full
revelation of her nature. Before that it had puzzled him; it had amazed
him; his relations with her were bewildering, stupefying. But when,
after obtaining, with difficulty and delay, a leave of absence from
Government, and betaking himself to Italy to look for the child and
assume possession of it, he had encountered absolute failure and
defeat,--then the case presented itself to him more simply. He perceived
that he had mated himself with a creature who just happened to be
a monster, a human exception altogether. That was what he could n’t
pardon--her conduct about the child; never, never, never! To him she
might have done what she chose,--dropped him, pushed him out into
eternal cold, with his hands fast tied,--and he would have accepted
it, excused her almost, admitted that it had been his business to mind
better what he was about. But she had tortured him through the poor
little irrecoverable son whom he had never seen, through the heart
and the vitals that she had not herself, and that he had to have, poor
wretch, for both of them!
All his efforts for years had been to forget these horrible months, and
he had cut himself off from them so that they seemed at times to belong
to the life of another person. But to-night he lived them over again;
he retraced the different gradations of darkness through which he had
passed, from the moment, so soon after his extraordinary marriage, when
it came over him that she already repented, and meant, if possible, to
elude all her obligations. This was the moment when he saw why she had
reserved herself--in the strange vow she extracted from him--an
open door for retreat; the moment, too, when her having had such an
inspiration (in the midst of her momentary good faith, if good faith it
had ever been) struck him as a proof of her essential depravity. What he
had tried to forget came back to him: the child that was not his child
produced for him when he fell upon that squalid nest of peasants in
the Genoese country; and then the confessions, retractations,
contradictions, lies, terrors, threats, and general bottomless, baffling
baseness of every one in the place. The child was gone; that had been
the only definite thing. The woman who had taken it to nurse had a
dozen different stories,--her husband had as many,--and every one in the
village had a hundred more. Georgina had been sending money,--she had
managed, apparently, to send a good deal,--and the whole country seemed
to have been living on it and making merry. At one moment the baby
had died and received a most expensive burial; at another he had been
intrusted (for more healthy air, Santissima Madonna!) to the woman’s
cousin in another village. According to a version, which for a day or
two Benyon had inclined to think the least false, he had been taken by
the cousin (for his beauty’s sake) to Genoa (when she went for the first
time in her life to the town to see her daughter in service there), and
had been confided for a few hours to a third woman, who was to keep him
while the cousin walked about the streets, but who, having no child of
her own, took such a fancy to him that she refused to give him up, and
a few days later left the place (she was a Pisana) never to be heard
of more. The cousin had forgotten her name,--it had happened six months
before. Benyon spent a year looking up and down Italy for his child,
and inspecting hundreds of swaddled infants, impenetrable candidates for
recognition. Of course he could only get further and further from real
knowledge, and his search was arrested by the conviction that it was
making him mad. He set his teeth and made up his mind (or tried to) that
the baby had died in the hands of its nurse. This was, after all, much
the likeliest supposition, and the woman had maintained it, in the hope
of being rewarded for her candor, quite as often as she had asseverated
that it was still, somewhere, alive, in the hope of being remunerated
for her good news. It may be imagined with what sentiments toward his
wife Benyon had emerged from this episode. To-night his memory went
further back,--back to the beginning and to the days when he had had
to ask himself, with all the crudity of his first surprise, what in the
name of wantonness she had wished to do with him. The answer to
this speculation was so old,--it had dropped so ont of the line of
recurrence,--that it was now almost new again. Moreover, it was only
approximate, for, as I have already said, he could comprehend such
conduct as little at the end as at the beginning. She had found herself
on a slope which her nature forced her to descend to the bottom. She did
him the honor of wishing to enjoy his society, and she did herself
the honor of thinking that their intimacy--however brief--must have a
certain consecration. She felt that, with him, after his promise (he
would have made any promise to lead her on), she was secure,--secure
as she had proved to be, secure as she must think herself now. That
security had helped her to ask herself, after the first flush of passion
was over, and her native, her twice-inherited worldliness had bad time
to open its eyes again, why she should keep faith with a man whose
deficiencies (as a husband before the world--another affair) had been
so scientifically exposed to her by her parents. So she had simply
determined not to keep faith; and her determination, at least, she did
keep.
By the time Benyon turned in he had satisfied himself, as I say,
that Georgina was now in his power; and this seemed to him such an
improvement in his situation that he allowed himself (for the next ten
days) a license which made Kate Theory almost as happy as it made her
sister, though she pretended to understand it far less. Mildred sank to
her rest, or rose to fuller comprehensions, within the year, in the Isle
of Wight, and Captain Benyon, who had never written so many letters as
since they left Naples, sailed westward about the same time as the sweet
survivor. For the “Louisiana” at last was ordered home.
VI.
Certainly, I will see you if you come, and you may appoint any day or
hour you like. I should have seen you with pleasure any time these last
years. Why should we not be friends, as we used to be? Perhaps we shall
be yet. I say “perhaps” only, on purpose,--because your note is rather
vague about your state of mind. Don’t come with any idea about making me
nervous or uncomfortable. I am not nervous by nature, thank Heaven,
and I won’t--I positively won’t (do you hear, dear Captain Benyon?)--be
uncomfortable. I have been so (it served me right) for years and years;
but I am very happy now. To remain so is the very definite intention of,
yours ever,
Georgina Roy.
This was the answer Benyon received to a short letter that he despatched
to Mrs. Roy after his return to America. It was not till he had been
there some weeks that he wrote to her. He had been occupied in various
ways: he had had to look after his ship; he had had to report at
Washington; he had spent a fortnight with his mother at Portsmouth, N.
H.; and he had paid a visit to Kate Theory in Boston. She herself was
paying visits, she was staying with various relatives and friends. She
had more color--it was very delicately rosy--than she had had of old, in
spite of her black dress; and the effect of looking at him seemed to him
to make her eyes grow still prettier. Though sisterless now, she was not
without duties, and Benyon could easily see that life would press hard
on her unless some one should interfere. Every one regarded her as
just the person to do certain things. Every one thought she could do
everything, because she had nothing else to do. She used to read to the
blind, and, more onerously, to the deaf. She looked after other people’s
children while the parents attended anti-slavery conventions.
She was coming to New York later to spend a week at her brother’s, but
beyond this she didn’t know what she should do. Benyon felt it to be
awkward that he should not be able, just now, to tell her; and this
had much to do with his coming to the point, for he accused himself of
having rather hung fire. Coming to the point, for Benyon, meant writing
a note to Mrs. Roy (as he must call her), in which he asked whether she
would see him if he should present himself. The missive was short; it
contained, in addition to what I have noted, little more than the remark
that he had something of importance to say to her. Her reply, which we
have just read, was prompt. Benyon designated an hour, and the next
day rang the doorbell of her big modern house, whose polished windows
seemed to shine defiance at him.
As he stood on the steps, looking up and down the straight vista of the
Fifth Avenue, he perceived that he was trembling a little, that _he_
was nervous, if she was not. He was ashamed of his agitation, and he
addressed himself a very stern reprimand. Afterwards he saw that what
had made him nervous was not any doubt of the goodness of his cause,
but his revived sense (as he drew near her) of his wife’s hardness,--her
capacity for insolence. He might only break himself against that, and
the prospect made him feel helpless. She kept him waiting for a long
time after he had been introduced; and as he walked up and down her
drawing-room, an immense, florid, expensive apartment, covered with
blue satin, gilding, mirrors and bad frescos, it came over him as a
certainty that her delay was calculated. She wished to annoy him, to
weary him; she was as ungenerous as she was unscrupulous. It never
occurred to him that in spite of the bold words of her note, she, too,
might be in a tremor, and if any one in their secret bad suggested that
she was afraid to meet him, he would have laughed at this idea. This
was of bad omen for the success of his errand; for it showed that he
recognized the ground of her presumption,--his having the superstition
of old promises. By the time she appeared, he was flushed,--very angry.
She closed the door behind her, and stood there looking at him, with the
width of the room between them.
The first emotion her presence excited was a quick sense of the strange
fact that, after all these years of loneliness, such a magnificent
person should be his wife. For she was magnificent, in the maturity of
her beauty, her head erect, her complexion splendid, her auburn tresses
undimmed, a certain plenitude in her very glance. He saw in a moment
that she wished to seem to him beautiful, she had endeavored to dress
herself to the best effect. Perhaps, after all, it was only for this she
had delayed; she wished to give herself every possible touch. For some
moments they said nothing; they had not stood face to face for nearly
ten years, and they met now as adversaries. No two persons could
possibly be more interested in taking each other’s measure. It scarcely
belonged to Georgina, however, to have too much the air of timidity;
and after a moment, satisfied, apparently, that she was not to receive a
broadside, she advanced, slowly rubbing her jewelled hands and smiling.
He wondered why she should smile, what thought was in her mind. His
impressions followed each other with extraordinary quickness of pulse,
and now he saw, in addition to what he had already perceived, that she
was waiting to take her cue,--she had determined on no definite line.
There was nothing definite about her but her courage; the rest would
depend upon him. As for her courage, it seemed to glow in the beauty
which grew greater as she came nearer, with her eyes on his and her
fixed smile; to be expressed in the very perfume that accompanied her
steps. By this time he had got still a further impression, and it was
the strangest of all. She was ready for anything, she was capable of
anything, she wished to surprise him with her beauty, to remind him that
it belonged, after all, at the bottom of everything, to him. She was
ready to bribe him, if bribing should be necessary. She had carried on
an intrigue before she was twenty; it would be more, rather than less,
easy for her, now that she was thirty. All this and more was in her
cold, living eyes, as in the prolonged silence they engaged themselves
with his; but I must not dwell upon it, for reasons extraneous to the
remarkable fact She was a truly amazing creature.
“Raymond!” she said, in a low voice, a voice which might represent
either a vague greeting or an appeal.
He took no heed of the exclamation, but asked her why she had
deliberately kept him waiting,--as if she had not made a fool enough of
him already. She could n’t suppose it was for his pleasure he had come
into the house.
She hesitated a moment,--still with her smile. “I must tell you I have
a son,--the dearest little boy. His nurse happened to be engaged for the
moment, and I had to watch him. I am more devoted to him than you might
suppose.”
He fell back from her a few steps. “I wonder if you are insane,” he
murmured.
“To allude to my child? Why do you ask me such questions then? I tell
you the simple truth. I take every care of this one. I am older and
wiser. The other one was a complete mistake; he had no right to exist.”
“Why didn’t you kill him then with your own hands, instead of that
torture?”
“Why did n’t I kill myself? That question would be more to the point You
are looking wonderfully well,” she broke off in another tone; “had n’t
we better sit down?”
“I did n’t come here for the advantage of conversation,” Benyon
answered. And he was going on, but she interrupted him--
“You came to say something dreadful, very likely; though I hoped you
would see it was better not But just tell me this before you begin. Are
you successful, are you happy? It has been so provoking, not knowing
more about you.”
There was something in the manner in which this was said that caused him
to break into a loud laugh; whereupon she added,--
“Your laugh is just what it used to be. How it comes back to me! You
_have_ improved in appearance,” she went on.
She had seated herself, though he remained standing; and she leaned back
in a low, deep chair, looking up at him, with her arms folded. He stood
near her and over her, as it were, dropping his baffled eyes on her,
with his hand resting on the corner of the chimney-piece. “Has it never
occurred to you that I may deem myself absolved from the promise made
you before I married you?”
“Very often, of course. But I have instantly dismissed the idea. How can
you be ‘absolved’? One promises, or one doesn’t. I attach no meaning
to that, and neither do you.” And she glanced down to the front of her
dress.
Benyon listened, but he went on as if he had not heard her. “What I came
to say to you is this: that I should like your consent to my bringing a
suit for divorce against you.”
“A suit for divorce? I never thought of that.”
“So that I may marry another woman. I can easily obtain a divorce on the
ground of your desertion.”
She stared a moment, then her smile solidified, as it were, and she
looked grave; but he could see that her gravity, with her lifted
eyebrows, was partly assumed. “Ah, you want to marry another woman!” she
exclaimed, slowly, thoughtfully. He said nothing, and she went on: “Why
don’t you do as I have done?”
“Because I don’t want my children to be--”
Before he could say the words she sprang up, checking him with a cry.
“Don’t say it; it is n’t necessary! Of course I know what you mean; but
they won’t be if no one knows it.”
“I should object to knowing it myself; it’s enough for me to know it of
yours.”
“Of course I have been prepared for your saying that”
“I should hope so!” Benyon exclaimed. “You may be a bigamist if it
suits you, but to me the idea is not attractive. I wish to marry--” and,
hesitating a moment, with his slight stammer, he repeated, “I wish to
marry--”
“Marry, then, and have done with it!” cried Mrs. Roy.
He could already see that he should be able to extract no consent from
her; he felt rather sick. “It’s extraordinary to me that you should n’t
be more afraid of being found out,” he said after a moment’s reflection.
“There are two or three possible accidents.”
“How do you know how much afraid I am? I have thought of every accident,
in dreadful nights. How do you know what my life is, or what it has been
all these miserable years?”
“You look wasted and worn, certainly.”
“Ah, don’t compliment me!” Georgina exclaimed. “If I had never known
you--if I had not been through all this--I believe I should have been
handsome. When did you hear of my marriage? Where were you at the time?”
“At Naples, more than six months ago, by a mere chance.”
“How strange that it should have taken you so long! Is the lady a
Neapolitan? They don’t mind what they do over there.”
“I have no information to give you beyond what I just said,” Benyon
rejoined. “My life does n’t in the least regard you.”
“Ah, but it does from the moment I refuse to let you divorce me.”
“You refuse?” Benyon said softly.
“Don’t look at me that way! You have n’t advanced so rapidly as I used
to think you would; you haven’t distinguished yourself so much,” she
went on, irrelevantly.
“I shall be promoted commodore one of these days,” Benyon answered.
“You don’t know much about it, for my advancement has already been very
exceptionally rapid.” He blushed as soon as the words were out of his
mouth. She gave a light laugh on seeing it; but he took up his hat and
added: “Think over a day or two what I have proposed to you. Think of
the temper in which I ask it.”
“The temper?” she stared. “Pray, what have you to do with temper?” And
as he made no reply, smoothing his hat with his glove, she went on:
“Years ago, as much as you please I you had a good right, I don’t deny,
and you raved, in your letters, to your heart’s content That’s why
I would n’t see you; I did n’t wish to take it full in the face. But
that’s all over now, time is a healer, you have cooled off, and by your
own admission you have consoled yourself. Why do you talk to me about
temper! What in the world have I done to you, but let you alone?”
“What do you call this business?” Benyon asked, with his eye flashing
all over the room.
“Ah, excuse me, that doesn’t touch you,--it’s my affair. I leave you
your liberty, and I can live as I like. If I choose to live in this way,
it may be queer (I admit it is, awfully), but you have nothing to say
to it. If I am willing to take the risk, you may be. If I am willing to
play such an infernal trick upon a confiding gentleman (I will put it as
strongly as you possibly could), I don’t see what you have to say to it
except that you are tremendously glad such a woman as that is n’t known
to be your wife!” She had been cool and deliberate up to this time; but
with these words her latent agitation broke out “Do you think I have
been happy? Do you think I have enjoyed existence? Do you see me
freezing up into a stark old maid?”
“I wonder you stood out so long!” said Benyon.
“I wonder I did. They were bad years.”
“I have no doubt they were!”
“You could do as you pleased,” Georgina went on. “You roamed about the
world; you formed charming relations. I am delighted to hear it from
your own lips. Think of my going back to my father’s house--that family
vault--and living there, year after year, as Miss Gressie! If you
remember my father and mother--they are round in Twelfth Street, just
the same--you must admit that I paid for my folly!”
“I have never understood you; I don’t understand you now,” said Benyon.
She looked at him a moment. “I adored you.”
“I could damn you with a word!” he went on.
The moment he had spoken she grasped his arm and held up her other hand,
as if she were listening to a sound outside the room. She had evidently
had an inspiration, and she carried it into instant effect She swept
away to the door, flung it open, and passed into the hall, whence her
voice came back to Benyon as she addressed a person who was apparently
her husband. She had heard him enter the house at his habitual hour,
after his long morning at business; the closing of the door of the
vestibule had struck her ear. The parlor was on a level with the hall,
and she greeted him without impediment. She asked him to come in and be
introduced to Captain Benyon, and he responded with due solemnity. She
returned in advance of him, her eyes fixed upon Benyon and lighted
with defiance, her whole face saying to him, vividly: “Here is your
opportunity; I give it to you with my own hands. Break your promise and
betray me if you dare! You say you can damn me with a word: speak the
word and let us see!”
Benyon’s heart beat faster, as he felt that it was indeed a chance; but
half his emotion came from the spectacle--magnificent in its way--of her
unparalleled impudence. A sense of all that he had escaped in not
having had to live with her rolled over him like a wave, while he looked
strangely at Mr. Roy, to whom this privilege had been vouchsafed. He saw
in a moment his successor had a constitution that would carry it.
Mr. Roy suggested squareness and solidity; he was a broadbased,
comfortable, polished man, with a surface in which the rank tendrils
of irritation would not easily obtain a foothold. He had a broad,
blank face, a capacious mouth, and a small, light eye, to which, as
he entered, he was engaged in adjusting a double gold-rimmed glass.
He approached Benyon with a prudent, civil, punctual air, as if he
habitually met a good many gentlemen in the course of business, and
though, naturally, this was not that sort of occasion he was not a man
to waste time in preliminaries. Benyon had immediately the impression
of having seen him--or his equivalent--a thousand times before. He was
middle-aged, fresh-colored, whiskered, prosperous, indefinite. Georgina
introduced them to each other. She spoke of Benyon as an old friend whom
she had known long before she had known Mr. Roy, who had been very kind
to her years ago, when she was a girl.
“He’s in the navy. He has just come back from a long cruise.”
Mr. Hoy shook hands,--Benyon gave him his before he knew it,--said he
was very happy, smiled, looked at Benyon from head to foot, then at
Georgina, then round the room, then back at Benyon again,--at Benyon,
who stood there, without sound or movement, with a dilated eye, and a
pulse quickened to a degree of which Mr. Roy could have little idea.
Georgina made some remark about their sitting down, but William Roy
replied that he had n’t time for that,--if Captain Benyon would excuse
him. He should have to go straight into the library, and write a note to
send back to his office, where, as he just remembered, he had neglected
to give, in leaving the place, an important direction.
“You can wait a moment, surely,” Georgina said. “Captain Benyon wants so
much to see you.”
“Oh, yes, my dear; I can wait a minute, and I can come back.”
Benyon saw, accordingly, that he was waiting, and that Georgina was
waiting too. Each was waiting for him to say something, though they were
waiting for different things. Mr. Roy put his hands behind him,
balanced himself on his toes, hoped that Captain Benyon had enjoyed
his cruise,--though he should n’t care much for the navy himself,--and
evidently wondered at the stolidity of his wife’s visitor. Benyon knew
he was speaking, for he indulged in two or three more observations,
after which he stopped. But his meaning was not present to our hero.
This personage was conscious of only one thing, of his own momentary
power,--of everything that hung on his lips; all the rest swam before
him; there was vagueness in his ears and eyes. Mr. Roy stopped, as I
say, and there was a pause, which seemed to Benyon of tremendous length.
He knew, while it lasted, that Georgina was as conscious as himself that
he felt his opportunity, that he held it there in his hand, weighing it
noiselessly in the palm, and that she braved and scorned, or, rather,
that she enjoyed, the danger. He asked himself whether he should be able
to speak if he were to try, and then he knew that he should not, that
the words would stick in his throat, that he should make sounds that
would dishonor his cause. There was no real choice or decision, then, on
Benyon’s part; his silence was after all the same old silence, the fruit
of other hours and places, the stillness to which Georgina listened,
while he felt her eager eyes fairly eat into his face, so that his
cheeks burned with the touch of them. The moments stood before him in
their turn; each one was distinct. “Ah, well,” said Mr. Roy, “perhaps I
interrupt,--I ‘ll just dash off my note” Benyon knew that he was rather
bewildered, that he was making a pretext, that he was leaving the room;
knew presently that Georgina again stood before him alone.
“You are exactly the man I thought you!” she announced, as joyously as
if she had won a bet.
“You are the most horrible woman I can imagine. Good God! if I _had_ had
to live with you!” That is what he said to her in answer.
Even at this she never flushed; she continued to smile in triumph. “He
adores me--but what’s that to you? Of course you have all the future,”
she went on; “but I know you as if I had made you!”
Benyon reflected a moment “If he adores you, you are all right. If
our divorce is pronounced, you will be free, and then he can marry you
properly, which he would like ever so much better.”
“It’s too touching to hear you reason about it. Fancy me telling such a
hideous story--about myself--me--_me_!” And she touched her breasts with
her white fingers.
Benyon gave her a look that was charged with all the sickness of his
helpless rage. “You--_you_!” he repeated, as he turned away from her and
passed through the door which Mr. Roy had left open.
She followed him into the hall, she was close behind him; he moved
before her as she pressed. “There was one more reason,” she said. “I
would n’t be forbidden. It was my hideous pride. That’s what prevents me
now.”
“I don’t care what it is,” Benyon answered, wearily, with his hand on
the knob of the door.
She laid hers on his shoulder; he stood there an instant feeling it,
wishing that her loathsome touch gave him the right to strike her to the
earth,--to strike her so that she should never rise again.
“How clever you are, and intelligent always,--as you used to be; to
feel so perfectly and know so well, without more scenes, that it’s
hopeless--my ever consenting! If I have, with you, the shame of having
made you promise, let me at least have the profit!”
His back had been turned to her, but at this he glanced round. “To hear
you talk of shame--!”
“You don’t know what I have gone through; but, of course, I don’t ask
any pity from you. Only I should like to say something kind to you
before we part I admire you, esteem you: I don’t many people! Who will
ever tell her, if you don’t? How will she ever know, then? She will be
as safe as I am. You know what that is,” said Georgina, smiling.
He had opened the door while she spoke, apparently not heeding her,
thinking only of getting away from her forever. In reality he heard
every word she said, and felt to his marrow the lowered, suggestive
tone in which she made him that last recommendation. Outside, on the
steps--she stood there in the doorway--he gave her his last look. “I
only hope you will die. I shall pray for that!” And he descended into
the street and took his way.
It was after this that his real temptation came. Not the temptation to
return betrayal for betrayal; that passed away even in a few days,
for he simply knew that he couldn’t break his promise, that it imposed
itself on him as stubbornly as the color of his eyes or the stammer of
his lips; it had gone forth into the world to live for itself, and was
far beyond his reach or his authority. But the temptation to go through
the form of a marriage with Kate Theory, to let her suppose that he was
as free as herself, and that their children, if they should have any,
would, before the law, have a right to exist,--this attractive idea held
him fast for many weeks, and caused him to pass some haggard nights and
days. It was perfectly possible she might learn his secret, and that,
as no one could either suspect it or have an interest in bringing it to
light, they both might live and die in security and honor. This vision
fascinated him; it was, I say, a real temptation. He thought of other
solutions,--of telling her that he was married (without telling her
to whom), and inducing her to overlook such an accident, and content
herself with a ceremony in which the world would see no flaw. But after
all the contortions of his spirit it remained as clear to him as before
that dishonor was in everything but renunciation. So, at last, he
renounced. He took two steps which attested ths act to himself. He
addressed an urgent request to the Secretary of the Navy that he might,
with as little delay as possible, be despatched on another long voyage;
and he returned to Boston to tell Kate Theory that they must wait. He
could explain so little that, say what he would, he was aware that he
could not make his conduct seem natural, and he saw that the girl
only trusted him,--that she never understood. She trusted without
understanding, and she agreed to wait. When the writer of these pages
last heard of the pair they were waiting still.