Nobody, apparently, was yet astir; not a breakfast tray had yet tinkled
along the dusky corridors when Desboro, descending the stairs in the dim
morning light, encountered Jacqueline coming from the general direction
of the east wing, her arms loaded with freshly cut white carnations.
"Good morning," he whispered, in smiling surprise, taking her and her
carnations into his arms very reverently, almost timidly.
She endured the contact shyly and seriously, as usual, bending her head
aside to avoid his lips.
"Do you suppose," he said laughingly, "that you could ever bring
yourself to kiss me, Jacqueline?"
She did not answer, and presently he released her, saying: "You never
have yet; and now that we're engaged----"
"Engaged!"
"You _know_ we are!"
"Is that what you think, Jim?"
"Certainly! I asked you to marry me----"
"No, dear, _I_ asked _you_. But I wasn't certain you had quite accepted
me----"
"Are you laughing at me?"
"I don't know--I don't know what I am doing any more; laughter and tears
seem so close to each other--sometimes--and I can never be certain which
it is going to be any more."
Her eyes remained grave, but her lips were sweet and humourous as she
stood there on the stairs, her chin resting on the sheaf of carnations
clasped to her breast.
"What is troubling you, Jacqueline?" he asked, after a moment's silence.
"Nothing. If you will hold these flowers a moment I'll decorate you."
He took the fragrant sheaf from her; she selected a magnificent white
blossom, drew the stem through the lapel of his coat, patted the flower
into a position which suited her, regarded the effect critically, then
glanced up out of her winning blue eyes and found him watching her
dreamily.
"I try to realise it, and I can't," he said vaguely. "Can you, dear?"
"Realise what?" she asked, in a low voice.
"That we are engaged."
"Are you so sure of me, Jim?"
"Do you suppose I could live life through without you _now_?"
"I don't know. Try it for two minutes anyway; these flowers must stand
in water. Will you wait here for me?"
He stepped forward to aid her, but she passed him lightly, avoiding his
touch, and sped across the corridor. In a few minutes she returned and
they descended the stairs together, and entered the empty library. She
leaned back against the table, both slender hands resting on the edge
behind her, and gazed out at the sparrows in the snow. And she did not
even appear to notice his arm, which ventured around her waist, or his
lips resting against the lock of bright hair curling on her cheek, so
absorbed she seemed to be in her silent reflections.
After a few moments she said, still looking out of the window: "I must
tell you something now."
"Are you going to tell me that you love me?"
"Yes--perhaps I had better begin that way."
"Then begin, dearest."
"I--I love you."
His arm tightened around her, but she gently released herself.
"There is a--a little more to say, Jim. I love you enough to give you
back your promise."
"My promise!"
"To marry me," she said steadily. "I scarcely knew what I was saying
yesterday--I was so excited, so much in love with you--so fearful that
you might sometime be unhappy if things continued with us as they
threatened to continue. I'm afraid I overvalued myself--made you suspect
that I am more than I really am--or can ever be. Besides, I frightened
you--and myself--unnecessarily. I never could be in any danger of--of
loving you--unwisely. It was not perfectly fair to you to hint such a
thing--because, after all, there is a third choice for you. A worthy
one. For you _could_ let me go my way out of your life, which is already
so full, and which would fill again very easily, even if my absence left
a little void for a while. And if it was any kind of pity you felt for
me--for what I said to you--that stirred you to--ask of me what I begged
you to ask--then I give you back your promise. I have not slept for
thinking over it. I must give it back."
He remained silent for a while, then his arms slipped down around her
body and he dropped on one knee beside her and laid his face close
against her. She had to bend over to hear what he was saying, he spoke
so low and with such difficulty.
"How can you care for me?" he said. "How _can_ you? Don't you understand
what a beast I was--what lesser impulse possessed me----"
"Hush, Jim! Am I different?"
"Good God! Yes!"
"No, dear."
"You don't know what you're saying!"
"_You_ don't know. Do you suppose I am immune to--to the--lesser
love--at moments----"
He lifted his head and looked up at her, dismayed.
"You!"
"I. How else could I understand _you_?"
"Because you are so far above everything unworthy."
"No, dear. If I were, you would only have angered and frightened me--not
made me sorry for us both. Because women and men are something alike at
moments; only, somehow, women seem to realise that--somehow--they are
guardians of--of something--of civilisation, perhaps. And it is their
instinct to curb and silence and ignore whatever unworthy threatens it
or them. It is that way with us, Jim."
She looked out of the window at the sky and the trees, and stood
thinking for a while. Then: "Did you suppose it is always easy for a
girl in love--whose instinct is to love--and to give? Especially such a
girl as I am, especially when she is so dreadfully afraid that her lover
may think her cold-blooded--self-seeking--perhaps a--a schemer----"
She covered her face with her hand--the quick, adorable gesture he knew
so well.
"I--_did_ ask you to marry me," she said, in a stifled voice, "but I am
not a schemer; my motive was not self-interest. It was for you I asked
it, Jim, far more than for myself--or I never could have found the
courage--perhaps not even the wish. Because, somehow, I am too proud to
wish for anything that is not offered."
As he said nothing, she broke out suddenly with a little sob of protest
in her voice: "I am _not_ a self-seeking, calculating woman! I am not
naturally cold and unresponsive! I am--inclined to be--otherwise. And
you had better know it. But you won't believe it, I am afraid, because
I--I have never responded to--to you."
Tears fell between her fingers over the flushed cheeks. She spoke with
increasing effort: "You don't understand; and I can't explain--except to
say that to be demonstrative seemed unworthy in me."
He put his arms around her shoulders very gently; she rested her
forehead against his shoulder.
"Don't think me calculating and cold-blooded--or a fool," she whispered.
"Probably everybody kisses or is kissed. I know it as well as you do.
But I haven't the--effrontery--to permit myself--such emotions. I
couldn't, Jim. I'd hate myself. And I thought of that, too, when I asked
you to marry me. Because if you had refused--and--matters had gone
on--you would have been sorry for me sooner or later--or perhaps hated
me. Because I would have been--been too much ashamed of myself to
have--loved you--unwisely."
He stood with head bent, listening; and, as he listened, the comparison
between this young girl and himself forced itself into his unwilling
mind--how that all she believed and desired ennobled her, and how what
had always governed him had made of him nothing more admirable than what
he was born, a human animal. For what he began as he still was--only
cleverer.
What else was he--except a trained animal, sufficiently educated to keep
out of jail? What had he done with his inheritance? His body was sane
and healthy; he had been at pains to cultivate that. How was it with his
mind? How was it with his spiritual beliefs? Had he cultivated and added
to either? He had been endowed with a brain. Had he made of it anything
except an instrument for idle caprice and indolent passions to play
upon?
"Do you understand me now?" she whispered, touching wet lashes with her
handkerchief.
He replied impetuously, hotly; her hands dropped from her face and she
looked up at him with sweet, confused eyes, blushing vividly under his
praise of her.
He spoke of himself, too, with all the quick, impassioned impulse of
youthful emotion, not sparing himself, promising better things, vowing
them before the shrine of her innocence. Yet, a stronger character might
have registered such vows in silence. And his fervour and incoherence
left her mute; and after he had ceased to protest too much she stood
quiet for a while, striving to search herself so that nothing unworthy
should remain--so that heart and soul should be clean under the magic
veil of happiness descending before her enraptured eyes.
Gently his arms encircled her; her clasped hands rested on his shoulder,
and she gazed out at the blue sky and sun-warmed snow as at a corner of
paradise revealed.
Later, when the household was astir, she went out with him into the
greenhouse, where the enchanted stillness of growing things thrilled
her, and the fragrance and sunlight made the mystery of love and its
miracle even more exquisitely unreal to her.
At first they did not speak; her hand lay loosely in his, her blue eyes
remained remote; and together they slowly paced the long, glass-sheeted
galleries between misty, scented mounds of bloom, to and fro, under the
flood of pallid winter sunshine, pale as the yellow jasmine flowers
overhead.
After a while a fat gardener came into one of the further wings.
Presently the sound of shovelled coal from the furnace-pit aroused them
from their dream; and they looked at each other gravely.
After a moment, he said: "Does it make a difference to you, Jacqueline,
what I was before I knew you?"
"No."
"I was only wondering what you really think of me."
"You know already, Jim."
He shook his head slowly.
"Jim! Of course you know!" she insisted hotly. "What you may have been
before I knew you I refuse to consider. Anyway, it was _you_--part of
you--and belongs to me now! Because I choose to make it mine--all that
you were and are--good and evil! For I won't give up one atom of
you--even to the devil himself!"
He tried to laugh: "What a fierce little partisan you are," he said.
"Very--where it concerns you," she said, unsmiling.
"Dear--I had better tell you now; you may hear things about me----"
"I won't listen to them!"
"No; but one sometimes hears without listening. People may say things.
They _will_ say things. I wish I could spare you. If I had known--if I
had only known--that you were in the world----"
"Don't, Jim! It--it isn't best for me to hear. It doesn't concern me,"
she insisted excitedly. "And if anybody dares say one word to me----"
"Wait, dear. All I want to be sure of is that you _do_ love me enough
to--to go on loving me. I want to be certain, and I want you to be
certain before you are a bride----"
She was growing very much excited, and suddenly near to tears, for the
one thing that endangered her self-control seemed to be his doubt of
her.
"There is nothing that I haven't forgiven you," she said. "Nothing!
There is nothing I won't forgive--except--one thing----"
"What?"
"I can't say it. I can't even think it. All I know is that _now_ I
couldn't forgive it." Suddenly she became perfectly quiet.
"I know what you mean," he said.
"Yes. It is what no wife can forgive." She looked at him, clear eyed,
intelligent, calm; for the moment without any illusion; and he seemed to
feel that, in the light of what she knew of him, she was coolly weighing
the danger of the experiment. Never had he seen so cold and lustrous a
brow, such limpid clarity of eye, searching, fearless, direct. Then, in
an instant, it all seemed to melt into flushed and winsome loveliness;
and she was murmuring that she loved him, and asking pardon for even one
second's hesitation.
"It never could be; it is unthinkable," she whispered. "And it is too
late anyway for me--I would love you now, whatever you killed in me.
Because I must go on loving you, Jim; for that is the way it is with me,
and I know it now. As long as there is life in me I'll strive for you in
my own fashion--even against yourself--to keep you for mine, to please
you, to be to you and to the world what you wish me to be--for your
honour and your happiness--which also must be my own--the only
happiness, now, that I can ever understand."
He held her in his arms, smoothing the bright hair, touching the white
brow with his lips at moments, happy because he was so deeply in love,
fearful because of it--and, deep in his soul, miserable, afraid lest
aught out of his past life return again to mock her--lest some echo of
folly offend her ears--some shadow fall--some phantom of dead days rise
from their future hearth to stand between them.
It is that way with a man who has lived idly and irresponsibly, and who
has gone lightly about the pleasure of life and not its business. For
sometimes there arrives an hour of unbidden clairvoyance--not
necessarily a spiritual awakening--but a moment of balanced intelligence
and sanity and clear vision. And when it arrives, the road to yesterday
suddenly becomes visible for its entire length; and when a man looks
back he sees it stretching away behind him, peopled with every shape
that has ever traversed it, and every spectre that ever has haunted it.
Sorrow for what need not have been, regret and shame for what had
been--and the bitterness of the folly--the knowledge, too late, of what
he could have been to the girl he held now in his arms--how he could
have met her on more equal terms had he saved his youth and strength and
innocence and pride for her alone--how he could have given it unsullied
into her keeping. All this Desboro was beginning to realise now. And
many men have realised it when the tardy understanding came too late.
For what has been is still and will be always; and shall appear here or
hereafter, or after that--somewhere, sometime, inevitably, inexorably.
There is no such thing as expunging what has been, or of erasing what is
to be. All records stand; hope lies only in lengthening the endless
chapters--chapters which will not be finished when the sun dies, and the
moon fails, and the stars go out forever.
* * * * *
Walking slowly back together, they passed Herrendene in the wing hall,
and his fine and somewhat melancholy face lighted up at the encounter.
"I'm _so_ sorry you are going to-day," said Jacqueline, with all her
impulsive and sweet sincerity. "Everybody will miss you and wish you
here again."
"To be regretted is one of the few real pleasures in life," he said,
smiling. His quick eye had rested on Desboro and then reverted to her,
and his intuition was warning him with all the brutality and finality of
reason that his last hope of her must end.
Desboro said: "I hate to have you go, Herrendene, but I suppose you
must."
"Must you?" echoed Jacqueline, wistful for the moment. But the
irresistible radiance of happiness had subtly transfigured her, and
Herrendene looked into her eyes and saw the new-born beauty in them,
shyly apparent.
"Yes," he said, "I must be about the business of life--the business of
life, Miss Nevers. Everybody is engaged in it; it has many names, but
it's all the same business. You, for example, pass judgment on beautiful
things; Desboro, here, is a farmer, and I play soldier with sword and
drum. But it's all the same business--the business of life; and one can
work at it or idle through it, but never escape it, because, at the
last, every soul in the world must die in harness. And the idlest are
the heaviest laden." He laughed. "That's quite a sermon, isn't it, Miss
Nevers? And shall I make my adieux now? Were you going anywhere? You see
I am leaving Silverwood directly after breakfast----"
"As though Mr. Desboro and I would go off anywhere and not say good-bye
to _you_!" she exclaimed indignantly, quite unconscious of being too
obvious.
So they all three returned to the breakfast room together, where
Clydesdale, who had come over from the Hammertons' for breakfast, was
already tramping hungrily around the covered dishes on the sideboard,
hot plate in hand, evidently meditating a wholesale assault. He grinned
affably as Jacqueline and Desboro came in, and they all helped
themselves from the warmers, returning laden to the table with whatever
suited their fancy. Other guests, to whom no trays had been sent,
arrived one after another to prowl around the browse and join in the
conversation if they chose, or sulk, as is the fashion with some
perfectly worthy souls at breakfast-tide.
"This thaw settles the skating for good and all," remarked Reggie
Ledyard. "Will you go fishing with me, Miss Nevers? It's our last day,
you know."
Cairns growled over his grape-fruit: "You can't make dates with Miss
Nevers at the breakfast table. It isn't done. I was going to ask her to
do something with me, anyway."
"I hate breakfast," said Van Alstyne. "When I see it I always wish I
were dead or that everybody else was. Zooks! This cocktail helps some!
Try one, Miss Nevers."
"There's reason in your grouch," remarked Bertie Barkley, with his
hard-eyed smile, "considering what Aunt Hannah and I did to you and
Helsa at auction last night."
"Aunt Hannah will live in luxury for a year on it," added Cairns
maliciously. "Doesn't it make you happy, Stuyve?"
"Oh--blub!" muttered Van Alstyne, hating everybody and himself--and most
of all hating to think of his losses and of the lady who caused them.
Only the really rich know how card losses rankle.
Cairns glanced banteringly across at Jacqueline. It was his form of wit
to quiz her because she neither indulged in cocktails nor cigarettes,
nor played cards for stakes. He lifted his eyebrows and tapped the
frosted shaker beside him significantly.
"I've a new kind of mountain dew, warranted to wake the dead, Miss
Nevers. I call it the 'Aunt Hannah,' in her honour--honour to whom
honour is dew," he added impudently. "Won't you let me make you a
cocktail?"
"Wait until Aunt Hannah hears how you have honoured her and tempted me,"
laughed Jacqueline.
"I never tempted maid or wife
Or suffragette in all my life----"
sang Ledyard, beating time on Van Alstyne, who silently scowled his
displeasure.
Presently Ledyard selected a grape-fruit, with a sour smile at one of
Desboro's cats which had confidently leaped into his lap.
"Is this a zoo den in the Bronx, or a breakfast room, Desboro? I only
ask because I'm all over cats."
Bertie Barkley snapped his napkin at an intrusive yellow pup who was
sniffing and wagging at his elbow.
Jacqueline comforted the retreating animal, bending over and crooning in
his floppy ear:
"They gotta stop kickin' my dawg aroun'."
"What do _you_ care what they do to Jim's live stock, Miss Nevers?"
demanded Ledyard suspiciously.
She laughed, but to her annoyance a warmer colour brightened her cheeks.
"Heaven help us!" exclaimed Reggie. "Miss Nevers is blushing at the
breakfast table. Gentlemen, _are_ we done for without even suspecting
it? And by that--that"--pointing a furious finger at Desboro--"_that_!"
"Certainly," said Desboro, smiling. "Did you imagine I'd ever let Miss
Nevers escape from Silverwood?"
Ledyard heaved a sigh of relief: "Gad," he muttered, "I suspected you
both for a moment. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Every man here would have
murdered you in turn. Come on, Miss Nevers; you've made a big splash
with me, and I'll play you a game of rabbit--or anything on earth, if
you'll let me run along beside you."
"No, I'm driving with Captain Herrendene to the station," she said; and
that melancholy soldier looked up in grateful surprise.
And she did go with him; and everybody came out on the front steps to
wish him _bon voyage_.
"Are you coming back, Miss Nevers?" asked Ledyard, in pretended alarm.
"I don't know. Is Manila worth seeing, Captain Herrendene?" she asked,
laughingly.
"If you sail for Manila with that tin soldier I'll go after you in a
hydroplane!" called Reggie after them, as the car rolled away. He added
frankly, for everybody's benefit: "I hate any man who even looks at her,
and I don't care who knows it. But what's the use? Going to night-school
might help me, but I doubt it. No; she's for a better line of goods than
the samples at Silverwood. She shines too far above us. Mark that, James
Desboro! And take what comfort you can in your reflected glory. For had
she not been the spotlight, you'd look exactly like the rest of us. And
that isn't flattering anybody, I'm thinking."
It was to be the last day of the party. Everybody was leaving directly
after luncheon, and now everybody seemed inclined to do nothing in
particular. Mrs. Clydesdale came over from the Hammerton's. The air was
soft and springlike; the snow in the fields was melting and full of
golden pools. People seemed to be inclined to stroll about outdoors
without their hats; a lively snowball battle began between Cary
Clydesdale on one side and Cairns and Reggie Ledyard on the other--and
gradually was participated in by everybody except Aunt Hannah, who
grimly watched it from the library window. But her weather eye never
left Mrs. Clydesdale.
She was still standing at the window when somebody entered the library
behind her, and somebody else followed. She knew who they were; the
curtains screened her. For one second the temptation to listen beset
her, but she put it away with a sniff, and had already turned to
disclose herself when she heard Mrs. Clydesdale say something that
stiffened her into a rigid silence.
What followed stiffened her still more--and there were only a few words,
too--only:
"For God's sake, what are you thinking of?" from Desboro; and from Elena
Clydesdale:
"This has got to end--I can't stand it, Jim----"
"Stand what?"
"Him! And what you are doing!"
"Be careful! Do you want people to overhear us?" he said, in a low voice
of concentrated anger.
"Then where----"
"I don't know. Wait until these people leave----"
"To-night?"
"How can we see each other to-night!"
"Cary is going to New York----"
Voices approaching through the hall warned him:
"All right, to-night," he said, desperately. "Go out into the hall."
"To-night, Jim?"
"Yes."
She turned and walked out into the hall. He heard her voice calmly
joining in the chatter now approaching, and, without any reason, he
walked to the window. And found Mrs. Hammerton there.
Astonishment and anger left him dumb and scarlet to the roots of his
hair.
"It isn't my fault," she hissed. "You and that other fool had already
committed yourselves before I could stir to warn you. What do I care for
your vile little intrigues, anyway! I don't have to listen behind
curtains to learn what anybody could have seen at the Metropolitan
Opera----"
"You are absolutely mistaken----"
"No doubt, James. But whether I am or not makes absolutely no difference
to me--or to Jacqueline Nevers----"
"What do you mean by that?"
"What I say, exactly. It will make no difference to Jacqueline, because
you are going to keep your distance."
"Do you think so?"
"If you don't keep away from her I'll tell her a few things. Listen to
me very carefully, James. You think I'm fond of you, don't you? Well, I
am. But I've taken a fancy to Jacqueline Nevers that--well, if I were
not childless I might feel it less deeply. I've put my arms around her
once and for all. Now do you understand?"
"I tell you," he said steadily, "you are mistaken in believing----"
"Very well. Granted. What of it? One dirty little intrigue more or less
doesn't alter what you are and have been. The plain point of the matter
is this, James: you are not fit to aspire seriously to Jacqueline
Nevers. Are you? I ask you, now, honestly; are you?"
"Does that concern you?"
She fairly snapped her teeth and her eyes sparkled:
"Yes; it concerns me! Keep away! I warn you--you and the rest of the
Jacks and Reggies and similar assorted pups. Your hunting ground is
elsewhere."
A sort of cold fury possessed him: "You had better not say anything to
Miss Nevers about what you overheard in this room," he said in a
colourless voice.
"I'll use my own judgment," she retorted tartly.
"Use mine. It is perhaps better. Don't interfere."
"Don't be a fool, James."
"Will you listen to me----"
"About Elena Clydesdale?" she asked maliciously.
"There is nothing to tell about her."
"Naturally. I never heard the Desboros were blackguards--only a trifle
airy, James--a trifle gallant! Dear child, don't anger me. You know it
wouldn't be well for you."
"I ask you merely to mind your business."
"That I shall do. My life's business is Jacqueline. You yourself made
her so----" Malice indescribable snapped in her tiny black eyes, and she
laughed harshly. "You made that motherless girl my business. Ask
yourself if you've ever, inadvertently, done as decent a thing?"
"Do you understand that I wish to marry her?" he asked, white with
passion.
"_You!_ What do I care what your patronising intentions may be? And,
James, if you drive me to it----" she fairly glared at him, "--I'll
destroy even your acquaintanceship with her. And I possess the means to
do it!"
"Try it!" he motioned with dry lips.
A moment later the animated chatter of young people filled the room, and
among them sounded Jacqueline's voice.
"Oh!" she said, laughing, when she saw Mrs. Hammerton and Desboro coming
from the embrasure of the window. "Have you been flirting again, Aunt
Hannah!"
"Yes," said the old lady grimly, "and I think I've taken him into camp."
"Then it's my turn," said Jacqueline. "Come on, Mr. Desboro, you can't
escape me. I'm going to beat you a game of rabbit!"
Everybody drifted into the billiard-room at their heels, and found them
already at their stations on either side of the pool table, each one
covering the side pocket with left hand spread wide. Jacqueline had the
cue-ball; it lay on the cloth in front of her, and her slim right hand
covered it.
"Ready?" she asked of Desboro.
"Ready," he said, watching her.
She made a feint; he sprang to the left; she shot the ball toward the
right corner pocket, missed, carromed, and tried to recover it; but
Desboro's arm shot out across the cloth and he seized it and shot it at
her left corner pocket. It went in with a plunk!
"One for Jim!" said Reggie gravely, and, picking up a cue, scored with a
button overhead.
"Plunk!" went the ball again into the same pocket; and Jacqueline gave a
little cry of dismay as Desboro leaned far over the table, threatening,
feinting, moving the ball so fast she could scarcely follow his hand.
Then she thought she saw the crisis coming, sprang toward the left
corner pocket, gave a cry of terror, and plunk! went the ball into her
side pocket.
Flushed, golden hair in pretty disorder, she sprang back on guard again,
and the onlookers watched the movement of her hands, fascinated by their
grace and beauty as she defended her side of the table and, finally,
snatched the ball from the very jaws of the right corner.
It was a breathless, exciting game, even for rabbit, and was fought to a
furious finish; but she went down to defeat, and Desboro came around the
table to condole with her, and together they stepped aside to leave the
arena free for Katharine Frere and Reggie.
"I'm so sorry, dear," he said under his breath.
"It's what I want, Jim. Never let me take the lead again--in anything."
His laugh was not genuine. He glanced across the room and saw Aunt
Hannah pretending not to watch him. Near her stood Elena Clydesdale
beside her husband, making no such pretence.
He said in a low voice: "Jacqueline, would you marry me as soon as I can
get a license--if I asked you to do it?"
She blushed furiously; then walked over to the window and gazed out,
dismayed and astounded. He followed.
"Will you, dear? I have the very best of reasons for asking you."
"Could you tell me the reasons, Jim?" she asked, still dazed.
"I had rather not--if you don't mind. Will you trust me when I say it is
better for us to marry quietly and at once?"
She looked up at him dumbly, the scarlet slowly fading from brow and
cheek.
"Do you trust me?" he repeated.
"Yes--I trust you."
"Will you marry me, then, as soon as I can arrange for it?"
She was silent.
"Will you?" he urged.
"Jim--darling--I wanted to be equipped--I wanted to have some pretty
things, in order to--to be at my very best--for you. A girl is a bride
only once in her life; a man remembers her as she came to him first."
"Dearest, as I saw you first, so I will always think of you."
"Oh, Jim! In that black gown and cuffs and collar!"
"You don't understand men, dear. No coronation robe ever could compete
with that dress in my affections. You always are perfect; I never saw
you when you weren't bewitching----"
"But, dear, there are other things----"
"We'll buy them together!"
"Jim, _must_ we do it this way? I don't mean that I wished for any
ostentation----"
"I did! I would have wished for a ceremony suited to your beauty
and----"
"No, no! I didn't expect----"
"But I did--damn it!" he said between his teeth. "I wished it; I
expected it. Don't you think I know what a girl ought to have? Indeed I
do, Jacqueline. And in New York town another century will never see a
bride to compare with you! But, my darling, I cannot risk it!"
"Risk it?"
"Don't ask me any more."
"No."
"And--will you do it--for my sake?"
"Yes."
There was a silence between them; he lighted a cigarette, turned coolly
around, and glanced across the room. Elena instantly averted her gaze.
Mrs. Hammerton sustained his pleasant inspection with an unchanging
stare almost insolent.
After a moment he smiled at her. It was a mistake to do it.
* * * * *
After luncheon, Elena Clydesdale found an opportunity for a word with
him.
"Will you remember that you have an engagement to-night?" she said in a
guarded voice.
"I shall break it," he replied.
"What!"
"This is going to end here and now! Your business is with your husband.
He's a decent fellow; he's devoted to you. I won't even discuss it with
you. Break with him if you want to, but don't count on me!"
"I can't break with him unless I can count on you. Are you going to lie
to me, Jim?"
"You can call it what you like. But if you break with him it will end
our friendship."
"I tell you I've _got_ to break with him. I've got to do it now--at
once!"
"Why?"
"Because--because I've got to. I can't go on fencing with him."
"Oh!"
She crimsoned and set her little white teeth.
"I've got to leave him or be what--I won't be!"
"Then break with him," he said contemptuously, "and give a decent man
another chance in life!"
"I can't--unless you----"
"Good God! I'd sooner cut my throat. My sympathy is for your husband.
You're convicting yourself, I tell you! I've always had a dim idea that
he was all right. Now I know it--and my obligations to you are ended."
"Then--you leave me--to him? Answer me, Jim. You refuse to stand between
me and my--my degradation? Is that what you mean to do? Knowing I have
no other means of escaping it except through you--except by defying the
world with you!"
She broke off with a sob.
"Elena," he said, "your one salvation in this world is to have children!
It will mean happiness and honour for you both--mutual respect, and, if
not romantic love, at least a cordial understanding and mutual
toleration. If you have such a chance, don't throw it away. Your husband
is a slow, intelligent, kind, and patient man, who has borne much from
you because he is honestly in love with you. Don't mistake his
consideration for weakness, his patience for acquiescence. What kindness
you have pretended to show him recently has given him courage. He is
trying to make good because he believes that he can win you. This is
clear reason; it is logic, Elena."
She turned on him in a flash of tears and exasperation.
"Logic! Do you think a woman wants that?" she stammered. "Do you think a
woman arrives at any conclusion through the kind of reasoning that
satisfies men? What difference does what you say make to me, when I hate
_him_ and I love _you_? How does your logic help me to escape what
is--is abhorrent to me! Do you suppose your reasoning makes it more
endurable? Oh, Jim! For heaven's sake don't leave me to that--that man!
Let me come here this evening after he has gone, and try to explain to
you how I----"
"No."
"You won't!"
"No. I am going to town with Mrs. Hammerton and Miss Nevers on the
evening train. And some day I am going to marry Miss Nevers."