The parting with Gordon had been exceedingly painful for Constance, but
she had not wavered. The circumstance that they were in the street had
been a serviceable protection, for it forced upon the interview a
restraint which must have been lacking had they been indoors. She was
enabled to keep her lover at bay, and to meet his protestations of
devotion and dismay with the answer that she had made up her mind. At
the outset she had explained to him in a few words that she had become
convinced that marriage would be inconsistent with her highest
spiritual duty and hence must be renounced. Her responses to his
arguments and impetuous questions were brief and substantially a
repetition of her plea that it was incumbent on them for the good of
civilization to stifle their love. He did most of the talking, she
listened, and under the influence of her resolution rebuffed him gently
from time to time, trying to make plain to him that separation was
inevitable. When they had reached Lincoln Chambers she felt it
advisable for both their sakes that he should not enter, but that they
should part with as little excitement as possible. Of what avail an
emotional scene such as would be sure to take place were she to let him
in? So she had bidden him good-by then and there, informing him that
she was to become Mrs. Wilson's secretary. She had permitted herself
finally one last hand clasp and the luxury of saying, "May God bless
you, Gordon. You have been the truest friend a woman ever had. I wish
you might be more. Good-by." Then she had fled, leaving him standing
aghast and still refusing to believe that she could be in earnest.
After she was alone she was free to weep, and weep she did, divining,
perhaps, that the surest way to drown her grief was to let sorrow have
sway for the moment. When she faced life on the morrow, quiet and
resolute, she could not help thinking of the Catholic Sisters of
Charity whom she was in the habit of seeing on the street, whose faces
so constantly suggested that they had dispensed with earthly happiness.
But her elastic nature demanded that she should seek earthly happiness
still, and she found herself protesting against the thought that her
renunciation might sadden the remainder of her life. Was not her
sacrifice for the welfare of society? If so, it behooved her to behold
in it a real blessing over which she should rejoice. If it were not a
cause for congratulation, a real escape from evil, she was simply
worshipping a fetich as Gordon had declared. It was no case of
preference for spiritual over mundane things, but of a choice of what
was best for her as a human being. Hence she ought to find fresh zest
in life itself, not wait for future rewards.
So she sought to deaden her senses to every thought or memory of
Gordon, and to take up her new life as a quickening privilege. The
first thing to do was to regain the complete use of her eyes, and for
this patient idleness during several months would be necessary.
Therefore, without demur, she lived up to her promise to Mrs. Wilson by
accepting the funds necessary for her support until such time as she
should be able to assume the full duties of her position. Mrs. Wilson
made this easier for her by sending her to investigate diverse
philanthropic and sociological appeals and employing her on a variety
of errands. The present secretary had agreed to remain until Constance
could take her place, and was glad to delegate such duties as the
latter could perform. Accordingly Constance reported daily for
instructions and had the run of the office appropriated to the
secretary's use, a pretty room furnished with a convenient but artistic
desk, a typewriter and all the paraphernalia for the despatch of a
large correspondence. She longed for the day to arrive when this room
would be hers, and she could devote herself unreservedly to the
furtherance of Mrs. Wilson's wide interests.
One evening, some fortnight after the parting between Constance and
Gordon, Loretta came bouncing into Constance's apartment. She had been
employed in one place as a nurse during that period, but had completed
her engagement the day before. She appeared to be in good spirits, and
Constance noticed that she had on a new hat and jacket more gaudy than
was her custom, as though she had spent her earnings promptly and
freely. Moreover she looked knowing. The cause of this last
manifestation was disclosed when, after a few preliminary greetings,
she exclaimed:
"And so you've left Gordon Perry, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law!"
"Yes. It wouldn't have been fair to Mr. Perry to ask him to wait.
Besides, Mrs. Wilson has invited me to become her private secretary.
Miss Perkins is going to be married."
Loretta cocked her head on one side and winked an eye. She appeared
amused by this plausible explanation, which apparently was not news to
her.
"I guess somebody else is going to be married too."
Constance felt uncomfortable; she scented mischief. But there was
nothing to do but look innocent.
"A little bird told me to-day that you had only to nod your head to
become Mrs. Gordon Perry, Esq." Enjoying the look of confusion which
this bold sally evoked, Loretta approached Constance and peered
mockingly into her face.
"It's so, isn't it? You're engaged and you can't deny it. I knew it!"
"Nothing of the kind, Loretta," she managed to articulate with decision.
The little bird was evidently Mrs. Harrity. But the charwoman's gossip
could only have been conjecture, and of course her inquisitor knew
nothing definite.
"Well, it's your own fault if it isn't. From what I hear he's just
crazy to get you." Loretta paused a moment; she was ferreting for
information. She seized Constance by the shoulders and fixed her again
with her shrewd gaze. "You can't fool me, Constance Stuart. There's
something in the wind. I shan't rest until I find out."
Constance noticed that her cheeks were slightly flushed, and her eyes
unnaturally bright. Could she have been drinking? Surely not, or her
breath would have betrayed her. Doubtless it was only the excitement
of deviltry awakened by feminine curiosity. Then it occurred to
Constance to tell her. Was it not best to tell her? Loretta would
make her life miserable, so she had intimated, if she concealed the
truth. And then again, as she was sacrificing her love for a
principle, why conceal from this other struggler the vital conclusion
she had reached? It might help, or at least stimulate Loretta. She
shrank from disclosing her precious secret, but now that she was
interrogated, was it not the simplest, the most straightforward course
to confess what had happened and explain her reason?
"Sit down, Loretta, and I will tell you."
The girl obeyed, surveying her with an exultant mien. Constance
hesitated a moment. It was not easy to begin. "Mr. Perry and I have
talked things over. Yes, Loretta, he did ask me to marry him."
Loretta uttered what resembled a whoop of triumph, partly to celebrate
her own perspicacity, partly by way of congratulation. "I felt sure of
it. I knew he loved you by the way he was carrying on."
"And I loved him, but I'm not going to marry him. We are to see no
more of each other for the present. It would be wrong for me to become
his wife."
Loretta stared as though she could not believe her ears. "Wrong? Who
says so? You don't mean to tell me you've refused him?"
"Yes," said Constance a little sadly, for the genuineness of the
surprise expressed recalled her own perplexity in discerning an
adequate reason for the sacrifice.
Loretta gasped. "Well, you are a fool, and no mistake! Refuse a man
like that who's crazy to marry you and whom you love! Wrong? What's
wrong about it?"
[Illustration: "Refuse a man like that who's crazy to marry you!"]
"It's contrary to the law of my church, which forbids a woman who has a
husband living from marrying again."
"But he's as good as dead so far as you're concerned," interjected
Loretta.
Without heeding this pertinent remark Constance proceeded to state the
so-called spiritual objections with succinct fervor. She felt the
desire to reiterate aloud their complete potency.
Loretta listened closely, but with obvious bewilderment and disdain.
Even now she seemed unable to credit her companion's announcement as
genuine.
"If your clergyman won't marry you, get a justice of the peace. That's
just as good."
Constance shook her head. "From my point of view remarriage would be
sinful--impure."
Loretta leaned back on the lounge where she was sitting and clasped her
hands behind her head. She appeared to be at a loss to find words to
express her feelings.
"And you mean to tell me that you've let that man go--the man you love
and who'd give you a fine home and be a fond husband to you--for such a
reason as that?"
"Yes," answered Constance, stanchly.
"Then all I can say is you didn't deserve such luck. He's too good for
you."
Loretta's conviction went so deep that she had become grave, and, so to
speak, dignified in her language.
"He's too good for any woman I know," Constance felt impelled to
assert. "But for both our sakes, all the same, it was my duty not to
marry him. Mr. Perry knows my reasons and--and respects them."
Constance had wondered many times what her lover's present emotions
were, but she chose to take no less than this for granted.
"If he loves you as much as I guess he does, he must just hate you,
Constance Stuart. My! Think of throwing up a chance like that." Then
suddenly a thought occurred to Loretta, and leaning forward she asked
tensely, "Does _she_ know?"
The suggestion of resentment on Gordon's part had been to Constance
like a dash of scalding water. The question just put served as a
restorative.
"Mrs. Wilson? It was she who advised me to let him go. She agrees
with me entirely."
Loretta looked astonished and disappointed; then she frowned.
"Just because you've been married once? Not if you got a divorce?"
"Never, so long as my husband is alive and we are liable to meet in the
flesh."
Constance realized that her phraseology had a clerical sound; still she
felt that she had a right to the entire arsenal of the church.
"And she believes that too, does she? Believes that it would be wicked
for a good looking, hard-working girl, whose husband had left her in
the lurch, and may be dead for all she knows or cares, to get a divorce
and marry again? And that's the Church? My! but it's the crankiest
thing I ever heard. That's the sort of thing which sets the common
folk who use their wits against religion. There's no sense in it.
She's a widow; would she refuse to marry again if the right man came
along?"
"That's different," said Constance, perceiving that an answer was
expected.
"And what's the difference? It's all right to be spliced to another
man in three months after the breath is out of the first one's body, as
some of them do, but impure to marry again so long as the husband who
has dragged you round by the hair of your head is liable to drop in.
If it comes to that, and marriages are made in heaven, as the clergy
say, what do the dead husbands and wives think about second marriages
anyway? I'd be real jealous if I were dead."
"The Church has thought it all out and come to the conclusion that it
is the best rule for human society."
Constance spoke with hurried emphasis, hoping to terminate the
discussion. She did not desire to argue the matter with Loretta; at
the same time she recognized the familiar pertinency of the allusions
to dead husbands and wives.
Loretta detected Constance's nervous agitation. "I hate to think it of
her," she cried with sudden illumination, "but I believe she has
badgered you into it!"
"Nothing of the kind, Loretta. It's my own free choice. Mrs. Wilson
simply made clear to me the Church's side."
Loretta sneered. "It's downright cruel, that's what I call it. The
Church's side! The Church doesn't recognize divorce, but there's
always been ways for the rich--the folk with pull, kings and such--to
get the marriages they were tired of pronounced void from the
beginning. It was only necessary to show that they had been
god-parents to the same child, or were twenty-fifth cousins by
affinity, as it's called, or some such tomfoolery. It didn't take
Napoleon long when he wished to get rid of Josephine to induce the
Catholic Church to declare that they never had been married, though it
was a good church wedding before a cardinal. Pshaw! The Church has
fooled the people long enough. What we want is justice and common
sense."
That same cry for justice, that same appeal to common sense; and from
what very different lips! Yet though Constance shrank from the
coarseness of the exposition, somehow the naked saliency of the
argument was more persuasive than Gordon's subtler plea. Her
instinctive compassion for the masses asserted itself. The fact that
Loretta should have touched at once the crucial point which Gordon's
trained intelligence had emphasized struck her forcibly. And after
all, what was she herself but one of the common people? But she said:
"The scandal in Mrs. Wilson's own family has been the greatest grief
and mortification to her."
Loretta bridled. "Yes, and when Mrs. Waldo gets her divorce in South
Dakota and comes back married again, won't everybody she cares about
receive her just the same? In six months she'll be staying in Benham
and her mother'll be inviting all the other multi-millionaires to meet
her at a big blow-out; see if she don't." She paused, and her eyes
took on a crafty look. "What do you suppose she'd say if I were to go
back to my man?"
Constance sat bolt upright from apprehension. Loretta's air of
mystery, which was accentuated by a whispering tone, conveyed to her
the true import of the intimation. Yet she would not seem to
understand.
"What do you mean, Loretta?"
"My man; the father of my child. He was in town the other day. He has
found out where I am and has been plaguing me to go back to him."
"Did he ask you to marry him?" asked Constance, seeking that solution.
"That's not what he meant. But I've thought of that too--on baby's
account. I guess he would if I were set on it. But we're both doing
well single, and--" She stopped and laughed sarcastically--"and
supposing we didn't like each other and got divorced, I could never
marry anyone else."
"No matter about that now, Loretta. Do you love him still?"
"It's love that makes the world go round. There isn't much else worth
living for, I guess." She pursed her lips after this enigmatical
answer, then suddenly relaxed them in an impetuous outburst. "One
thing's sure, Constance Stuart, you don't know what love is or you'd
never have sent away Gordon Perry, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law."
"Don't, Loretta," said Constance, imploringly.
"It's true."
"I love him with all my heart. You don't understand."
"Pish! If you'd loved him as a woman loves a man when she does love
him, you'd have been married before this. Why, there's times when I
feel like going right back to my man, and I'm not what you'd call more
than moderately fond of him. If it hadn't been that I didn't want to
disappoint her--and you--I'd have done it before this. Now the next
time he comes back, I shouldn't wonder if I did." She leaned back
again on the sofa with her hands behind her head nodding doggedly, and
nursing her intention.
Constance, appalled, went over and sat down beside her. "Oh, but you
mustn't, you mustn't! Go to-morrow to see Mrs. Wilson and talk with
her. She will give you strength and convince you that unless you marry
him such a course would be suicide, a cruel wrong to yourself,
dear--you who have done so well."
"I've kept straight chiefly to suit her; but I don't like what she has
done to you."
"Please leave me and my affairs out of the question, Loretta. They
have nothing to do with your preserving your own self-respect."
"I don't know about that. If she's just like the rest; if that's a
sample of the religion and the beauty she prides herself on, I've been
fooled, you've been fooled. What's the use of being respectable if,
when true love does come, a poor, deserted woman is robbed of it for
such a reason as that?"
It surprised Constance that Loretta should take sides so strongly, and
she perceived that the girl must have a tenderer feeling for her than
she had supposed. This made her all the more anxious to protect her.
"I value your sympathy very much, dear, but it won't help me--it'll
only make me dreadfully unhappy if you do wrong."
Loretta looked at her keenly. Then she took out a small phial, similar
to that which Constance had observed on another occasion, and swallowed
a pellet ostentatiously.
"If you are troubled with the blues these are the things to take. They
brace one splendid."
"What are they, Loretta?"
"If you promise to take some right along, I'll tell you." But she
evidently was not eager to disclose her secret, for she promptly
replaced the phial in her pocket and said, "I'll make a bargain with
you, Constance. If you'll marry Gordon Perry, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law,
I'll keep straight."