ASHES.
EMILY’S “adventure” lingered with increasing vagueness for a few days,
then vanished under a sudden pressure of work. When she was once more
at leisure Marlowe came, and she was surprised by the vividness and
persistence with which her stranger returned. She struggled in vain
against the comparisons that were forced upon her. Marlowe seemed to
her a clever “understudy”--“a natural, born, incurable understudy,”
she thought, “and now that I’m experienced enough to be able to
discriminate, how can I help seeing it?” She was weary of the tricks
and the looks of a man whom she now regarded as a trafficker in stolen
bits of other men’s individualities--and his tricks and his looks were
all there was left of him for her.
“Some people--two I want you to meet, came with me--that is, at the
same time,” he said. “Let’s dine with them at Larue’s to-morrow night.”
“Why not to-night? I’ve an engagement to-morrow night. You did not warn
me that you were coming.”
Marlowe looked depressed. “Very well,” he said, “I can arrange it, I
think.”
“Are they Americans--these friends of yours?”
There was a strain in his voice as he answered, which did not escape
Emily’s supersensitive ears. “No--English,” he said. “Lord Kilboggan
and Miss Fenton--the actress. You may have heard of her. She has been
making a hit in the play every one over there is talking about and
running to see--‘The Morals of the Marchioness.’”
“Oh, yes--the play with the title _rôle_ left out.”
“It _is_ pretty ‘thick’--and Miss Fenton was the marchioness. But
she’s not a bit like that in private life. Even Kilboggan gives her a
certificate of good character.”
“_Even_ Kilboggan?”
“He’s such a scoundrel. He blackguards every one. But he’ll amuse you.
He’s witty and good-looking and one of those fascinating financial
mysteries. He has no known source of income, yet he’s always idle,
always well-dressed, and always in funds. He would have been a famous
adventurer if he’d lived a hundred years ago.”
“But as he lives in this practical age, he comes dangerously near to
being a plain ‘dead beat’--is that it?” Emily said this carelessly
enough, but something in her manner made Marlowe wince.
“Oh, wait until you see him. We can’t carry our American ideas among
these English. They look upon work as a greater disgrace than having
a mysterious income. Kilboggan is liked by every one, except women
with daughters to marry off and husbands whose vanity is tempered by
misgivings.”
“And what is your friend doing in Miss Fenton’s train?”
“Well--at first I didn’t know what to make of it. But afterward I saw
that I was probably mistaken. I suppose she tolerates him because he’s
an earl. It’s in the blood.”
“And why do _you_ tolerate him?” Emily’s tone was teasing, but it made
Marlowe wince again.
“I don’t. I went with Denby--the theatrical man over in New
York--several times to see Miss Fenton. He has engaged her for next
season. And Kilboggan was there or joined us at dinner or supper. They
were coming over to Paris at the same time. I thought it might amuse
you to meet them.”
Marlowe’s look and speech were frank, yet instinctively Emily paused
curiously upon his eager certificate of good character to Miss Fenton
in face of circumstances which a man of his experience would regard
as conclusive. Also she was puzzled by the elaborateness of his
explanation. She wished to see Miss Fenton.
They met that evening at Larue’s and dined downstairs. Emily instantly
noted that Marlowe’s description of Kilboggan was accurate. “How can
any one be fooled by these frauds?” she thought. “He carries his
character in his face, as they all do. I suppose the reason they get
on is because the first impression wears away.” Then she passed to her
real interest in the party--Miss Fenton. Her first thought was--“How
beautiful!” Her second thought--“How shallow and stupid!”
Victoria Fenton was tall and thin--obtrusively thin. Her arms and legs
were long, and they and her narrow hips and the great distance from
her chin to the swell of her bosom combined to give her an appearance
of snake-like grace--uncanny, sensuous, morbidly fascinating. Her
features were perfectly regular, her skin like an Amsterdam baby’s,
her eyes deep brown, and her hair heavy ropes of gold. Her eyes seemed
to be brilliant; but when Emily looked again, she saw that they were
dull, and that it was the colouring of her cheeks which made them
seem bright. In the mindless expression of her eyes, in her coarse,
wide mouth and long white teeth, Emily found the real woman. And
she understood why Miss Fenton could say little, and eat and drink
greedily, and still could shine.
But, before Miss Fenton began to exhibit her appetite, Emily had made
another discovery. As she and Marlowe entered Larue’s, Victoria gave
him a look of greeting which a less sagacious woman than she would
not have misunderstood. It was unmistakably the look of potential
proprietorship.
Emily glanced swiftly but stealthily at Marlowe by way of the mirror
behind the table. He was wearing the expression of patient and bored
indifference which had become habitual with him since he had been
associating with Englishmen. Their eyes met in the mirror--“He is
trying to see how I took that woman’s look at him,” she thought,
contemptuously. “But he must have known in advance that she would
betray herself and him. He must have brought me here deliberately
to see it or brought her here to see me--or both.” A little further
reflection, and suspicion became certainty, and her eyelids hid a look
of scorn.
She made herself agreeable to Kilboggan, who proved to be amusing.
As soon as the food and drink came, Victoria neglected Marlowe. He,
after struggling to draw her out and succeeding in getting only dull
or silly commonplaces, became silent and ill-at-ease. He felt that so
far as rousing Emily’s jealousy was concerned, he had failed dismally,
“Victoria is at her worst to-night,” he thought. “She couldn’t make
anybody jealous.” But he had not the acuteness to see that Emily had
penetrated his plan--if he had been thus acute, he would not have tried
such a scheme, desperate though he was.
All he had accomplished was to bring the two women before his eyes
and mind in the sharpest possible contrast, and so increase his own
infatuation for Emily. The climax of his discomfiture came when
Victoria, sated by what she had eaten and inflamed by what she had
drunk, began to scowl jealously at Emily and Kilboggan. But Marlowe
did not observe this; his whole mind was absorbed in Emily. He was not
disturbed by her politeness to Kilboggan; he hardly noted it. He was
revolving her fascinations, her capriciousness, her unreachableness. “I
have laughed at married men,” he said to himself. “They are revenged.
Of all husbands I am the most ridiculous.” And he began to see the
merits of the system of locking women away in harems.
He and she drove to her apartment in silence. He sent away the cab and
joined her at the outside door which the concierge had opened. “Good
night.” She spoke distantly, standing in the doorway as if she expected
him to leave. “I’m afraid I can’t see you to-morrow. Theresa and her
General arrived at the Ritz to-night from Egypt, and I’ve engaged to
lunch and drive and dine with them.”
“I will go up with you,” he said, as if she had not spoken. There
was sullen resolve in his tone, and so busy was he with his internal
commotion that he did not note the danger fire in her eyes. But she
decided that it would not be wise to oppose him there. When they were
in her tiny salon, she seated herself, after a significant glance at
the clock. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the mantel-shelf. He
could look down at her--if she had been standing also, their eyes would
have been upon a level.
“How repellent he looks,” she thought, as she watched him expectantly.
“And just when he needs to appear at his best.”
“Emily,” he began with forced calmness, “the time has come when we must
have a plain talk. It can’t be put off any longer.”
She was sitting with her arms and her loosely-clasped, still gloved
hands upon the table, staring across it into the fire. “I must not
anger him,” she was saying to herself. “The time has passed when a
plain talk would do any good.” Aloud she said: “I’m tired, George--and
not in a good humour. Can’t you----”
Her impatience to be rid of him made him desperate. “I must speak,
Emily, I must,” he replied. “For many months--in fact for nearly a year
of our year and four months--I’ve seen that our plan was a failure.
We’re neither bound nor free, neither married nor single. We--I, at
least--am exposed to--all sorts of temptations. I need you--your
sympathy, your companionship--all the time. I see you only often
enough to tantalise me, to keep me in a turmoil that makes happiness
impossible. And,” he looked at her uneasily, appealingly, “each time I
see you, I find or seem to find that you have drifted further away from
me.”
She did not break the silence--she did not know what to say. To be
frank was to anger him. To evade was impossible.
“Emily,” he went on, “you know that I love you. I wish you to be happy
and I know that you don’t wish me to be miserable. I ask you to give
up, or at least put aside for the time, these ideas of yours. Let us
announce our marriage and try to work out our lives in the way that the
experience of the world has found best. Let us be happy again--as we
were in the beginning.”
His voice vibrated with emotion. She sighed and there were tears in
her eyes and her voice was trembling as she answered: “There isn’t
anything I wouldn’t do, George, to bring back the happiness we had.
But--” she shook her head mournfully, “it is gone, dear.” A tear
escaped and rolled down her cheek. “It’s gone.”
He was deceived by her manner and by his hopes and longings into
believing that he was not appealing in vain; and there came back to him
some of the self-confidence that had so often won for him with women.
“Not if we both wish it, and will it, and try for it, Emily.”
“It’s gone,” she repeated, “gone. We can’t call it back.”
“Why do you say that, dear?”
“Don’t ask me. I can’t be untruthful with you, and telling the truth
would only rouse the worst in us both. You know, George, that I
wouldn’t be hopeless about it, if there were any hope. We’ve drifted
apart. We can go on as we are now--friends. Or we can--can--drift still
further--apart. But we can’t come together again.”
“Those are very serious words, my dear,” he said, trying to hide his
anger. “Don’t you think you owe me an explanation?”
“Please, George--let me write it to you, if you must have it. Spare me.
It is so hard to speak honestly. Please!”
“If you can find the courage to speak, I can find the patience to
listen,” he said with sarcasm. “As we are both intelligent and
sensible, I don’t think you need be alarmed about there being a
‘scene.’ What is the matter, Emily? Let us clear the air.”
“We’ve changed--that’s all. I’m not regretting what we did. I wouldn’t
give it up for anything. But--we’ve changed.”
“_I_ have not changed. I’m the same now as then, except that I
appreciate you more than I did at first. Month by month you’ve grown
dearer to me. And----”
“Well, then, it is I who have changed,” she interrupted, desperately.
“It’s not strange, is it, George? I was, in a way, inexperienced
when we were married, though I didn’t think so. And life looks very
different to me now.” She could not go on without telling him that she
had found him out, without telling him how he had shrivelled and shrunk
until the garb of the ideal in which she had once clothed him was now a
giant’s suit upon a pigmy--pitiful, ridiculous. “How can I help it that
my mind has changed? I thought so and so--I no longer think so and so.
Put yourself in my place, dear--the same thing might have happened to
you about me.”
Many times the very same ideas had formed in his mind as he had
exhausted his interest in one woman after another. They were familiar
to him--these ideas. And how they mocked him now! It seemed incredible
that he, hitherto always the one who had broken it off, should be in
this humiliating position.
“It’s all due to that absurd plan of ours,” he said bitterly. “If
we had gone about marriage in a sensible way, we should have grown
together. As it is, you’ve exaggerated trifles into mountains and are
letting them crush our happiness to death.” His tone became an appeal.
“Emily--my dear--my wife--you must not!”
She did not answer. “If we’d lived together I’d have found him out just
the same--more quickly,” she thought. “And either I’d have degraded
myself through timidity and dependence, or else I’d have left him.”
“You admit that our plan has been a failure?” he went on.
She nodded.
“Then we must take the alternative.”
She grew pale and looked at him with dread in her eyes--the universal
human dread of finalities.
“We must try my plan,” he said. “We must try married life in the way
that has succeeded--at least in some fashion--far oftener than it has
failed.”
“Oh!” She felt relieved, but also she regretted that he had not spoken
as she feared he would speak. She paused to gather courage, turned her
face almost humbly up to him, and said: “I wish I could, George. But
don’t urge me to do that. Let us go on as we are, until--until--Let us
wait. Let us----”
He threw back his head haughtily. The patience of his vanity was worn
through. “No,” he said. “That would be folly. It must be settled one
way or the other, Emily.” He looked at her, his courage quailing before
the boldness of his words. But he saw that she was white and trembling,
and misunderstood it. He said to himself: “She must be firmly dealt
with. She’s giving in--a woman always does in the last ditch.”
“No,” he repeated. “The door must be either open or shut. Either I am
your husband, or I go out of your life.”
“You _can’t_ mean that, George?” She was so agitated that she rose and
came round the table to face him. “Why shouldn’t we wait--and hope? We
still care each for the other, and--it hurts, oh, how it _hurts_--even
to think of you as out of my life.”
He believed that she was yielding. He put his hand on her arm.
“Dearest, there has been too much indecision already. You must choose
between your theories and our happiness. Which will you take? You must
choose here and now. Shall I go or stay?”
She went slowly back to her chair and sat down and again stared into
the fire. “To-morrow,” she said at last. “I will decide to-morrow.”
“No--to-night--now.” He went to her and sat beside her. He put his arm
around her. “I love you--I love you,” he said in a low tone, kissing
her. “You--my dearest--how can you be so cruel? Love is best. Let us be
happy.”
At the clasp of his arm and the touch of his lips, once so potent to
thrill her, she grew cold all over.
What he had thought would be the triumphant climax of his appeal made
every nerve in her body cry out in protest against a future spent
with him. She would have pushed him away, if she had not pitied him
and wished not to offend him. “Don’t ask me to decide to-night,” she
pleaded. “Please!”
“But you have decided, dearest. We shall be happy. We shall----”
She gradually drew away from him, and to the surface of her expression
rose that iron inflexibility, usually so completely concealed by her
beauty and gentleness and sweetness. “If I must decide--if you force
me to decide, then--George, my heart is aching with the past, aching
with the loneliness that stares horribly from the future. But I cannot,
I cannot do as you ask.” And she burst into tears, sobbing as if her
heart were breaking. “I cannot,” she repeated. “I must not.”
All the ugliness which years of unbridled indulgence of his vanity had
bred in him was roused by her words. Such insolence from a woman, one
of the sex that had been his willing, yielding instrument to amusement,
and that woman his wife! But he had talked so freely to her of his
alleged beliefs in the equality of the sexes, he had urged and boasted
and professed so earnestly, that he did not dare unmask himself.
Instead, with an effort at self-control that whitened his lips, he
said: “You no doubt have reasons for this--this remarkable attitude.
Might I venture to inquire what they are? I do not fancy the idea of
being condemned unheard.”
“Unheard? _I_--condemn _you_ unheard! George, do not be unjust to me.
You know--you must know--that there was not a moment when my heart
was not pleading your cause. Do you think I have not suffered as I saw
my love being murdered--my love which I held sacred while you were
outraging and desecrating it.”
“It is incredible!” he exclaimed. “Emily, who has been lying to you
about me? Who has been poisoning your mind against me?”
“You--George.” She said it quietly, sadly. “No one else in all this
world could have destroyed you with me.”
“I do not understand,” he protested. But his eyes shifted rapidly, then
turned away from her full gaze, fixed upon him without resentment or
anger, with only sorrow and a desire to spare him pain.
“I could remind you of several things--you remember them, do you
not? But they were not the real cause. It was, I think, the little
things--it always is the little things, like drops of water wearing
away the stone. And they wore away the feeling I had for you--carried
it away grain by grain. Forgive me, George--.” The tears were streaming
down her face. “I loved you--you were my life--I have lost you. And
I’m alone--and a woman. No, no--don’t misunderstand my crying--my love
is dead. Sometimes I think I ought to hate you for killing it. But I
don’t.”
“Thank you,” he said, springing to his feet. His lips were drawn
back in a sneer and he was shaking with anger. He took up his hat
and coat. “I shall not intrude longer.” He bowed with mock respect.
“Good-night--good-_bye_.”
“George!” She started up. “We must not part, with you in anger against
me.”
He gave her a furious look and left the apartment. “What a marriage!”
he said to himself. “Bah! She’ll send me a note in the morning.” But
this prophecy was instantly faced with the memory of her expression as
she gave her decision.
And Emily did not send for him. She tore up in the morning the note she
rose in the night to write.
The next evening while she and the Waylands were dining at the Ritz,
Victoria Fenton came in with Kilboggan and sat where Emily could study
her at leisure.
“Isn’t that a beautiful woman?” she said to Theresa.
“Yes--a gorgeous animal,” Theresa replied, after a critical survey.
“And how she does love food!”
Emily was grateful.
“She looks rather common too,” Theresa continued. “What a bad face the
fellow she’s with has.”
Emily tried to extract comfort out of these confirmations of her
opinion of the couple she was blaming for Marlowe’s forcing the
inevitable issue at a most inopportune time. But her spirits refused to
rise. “It’s of no use to deny it,” she said to herself, with a sick and
sinking heart. “I shall miss him dreadfully. What can take his place?”
She wished to be alone; the dinner seemed an interminable prospect, was
an hour and a half of counted and lingering minutes. When the coffee
was served she announced a severe headache, insisted on going at once
and alone, would permit escort only to a cab. As she went she seemed
to be passing, deserted and forlorn, through a world of comrades and
lovers--men two and two, women two and two, men and women together in
pairs or in parties. Out in the Champs Elysees, stars and soft, warm
air, and love-inviting shadows among the trees; here and there the
sudden dazzling blaze of the lights of a café chantant, and music;
a multitude of cabs rolling by, laughter or a suggestion of romance
floating in the wake of each. “Hide yourself!” the city and the night
were saying to her, “Hide your heartache! Nobody cares, nobody wishes
to see!”
And she hastened to hide herself, to lie stunned in the beat of a black
and bitter sea.