About midday Clydesdale, who had returned to his house from a morning
visit to his attorney in Liberty Street, was summoned to the telephone.
"Is that you, Desboro?" he asked.
"Yes. I stopped this morning to speak to your wife a moment, but very
naturally she was not at home to me at such an hour in the morning. I
have just called her on the telephone, but her maid says she has gone
out."
"Yes. She is not very well. I understand she has gone to see Dr. Allen.
But she ought to be back pretty soon. Won't you come up to the house,
Desboro?"
There was a short pause, then Desboro's voice again, in reply:
"I believe I will come up, Clydesdale. And I think I'll talk to you
instead of to your wife."
"Just as it suits you. Very glad to see you anyway. I'll be in the rear
extension fussing about among the porcelains."
"I'll be with you in ten minutes."
* * * * *
In less time than that Desboro arrived, and was piloted through the
house and into the gallery by an active maid. At the end of one of the
aisles lined by glass cases, the huge bulk of Cary Clydesdale loomed,
his red face creased with his eternal grin.
"Hello, Desboro!" he called. "Come this way. I've one or two things here
which will match any of yours at Silverwood, I think."
And, as Desboro approached, Clydesdale strode forward, offering him an
enormous hand.
"Glad to see you," he grinned. "Congratulations on your marriage! Fine
girl, that! I don't know any to match her." He waved a comprehensive
arm. "All this stuff is her arrangement. Gad! But I had it rottenly
displayed. And the collection was full of fakes, too. But she came
floating in here one morning, and what she did to my junk-heap was a
plenty, believe _me_!" And the huge fellow grinned and grinned until
Desboro's sombre face altered and became less rigid.
A maid appeared with a table and a frosted cocktail shaker.
"You'll stop and lunch with us," said Clydesdale, filling two glasses.
"Elena won't be very long. Don't know just what ails her, but she's
nervous and run down. I guess it's the spring that's coming. Well,
here's to all bad men; they need the boost and we don't. Prosit!"
He emptied his glass, set it aside, and from the open case beside him
extracted an exquisite jar of the Kang-He, _famille noire_, done in five
colours during the best period of the work.
"God knows I'm not proud," he said, "but can you beat it, Desboro?"
Desboro took the beautiful jar, and, carefully guarding the cover,
turned it slowly. Birds, roses, pear blossoms, lilies, exquisite in
composition and colour, passed under his troubled eyes. He caressed the
paste mechanically.
"It is very fine," he said.
"Have you anything to beat it?"
"I don't think so."
"How are yours marked?" inquired the big man, taking the jar into his
own enormous paws as lovingly as a Kadiak bear embraces her progeny.
"This magnificent damn thing is a forgery. Look! Here's the mark of the
Emperor Ching-hwa! Isn't that the limit? And the forgery is every bit as
fine as the originals made before 1660--only it happened to be the
fashion in China in 1660 to collect Ching-hwa jars, so the maker of this
piece deliberately forged an earlier date. Can you beat it?"
Desboro smiled as though he were listening; and Clydesdale gingerly
replaced the jar and as carefully produced another.
"Ming!" he said. "Seventeenth century Manchu Tartar. I've some earlier
Ming ranging between 1400 A.D. and 1600; but it can't touch this,
Desboro. In fact, I think the eighteenth century Ming is even finer;
and, as far as that goes, there is magnificent work being done
now--although the occidental markets seldom see it. But--Ming for mine,
every time! How do _you_ feel about it, old top?"
Desboro looked at the vase. The soft beauty of the blue underglaze, the
silvery thickets of magnolia bloom amid which a magnificent,
pheasant-hued phoenix stepped daintily, meant at the moment absolutely
nothing to him.
Nor did the _poudre-bleu_ jar, triumphantly exhibited by the infatuated
owner--a splendid specimen painted on the overglaze. And the weeds and
shells and fiery golden fishes swimming had been dimmed a little by
rubbing, so that the dusky aquatic depths loomed more convincingly.
"Clydesdale," said Desboro in a low voice, "I want to say one or two
things to you. Another time it would give me pleasure to go over these
porcelains with you. Do you mind my interrupting you?"
The big man grinned.
"Shoot," he said, replacing the "powder-blue" and carefully closing and
locking the case. Then, dropping the keys into his pocket, he came over
to where Desboro was seated beside the flimsy folding card-table, shook
the cocktail shaker, offered to fill Desboro's glass, and at a gesture
of refusal refilled his own.
"This won't do a thing to my appetite," he remarked genially. "Go ahead,
Desboro." And he settled himself to listen, with occasional furtive,
sidelong glances at his beloved porcelains.
Desboro said: "Clydesdale, you and I have known each other for a number
of years. We haven't seen much of each other, except at the club, or
meeting casually here and there. It merely happened so; if accident had
thrown us together, the chances are that we would have liked each
other--perhaps sought each other's company now and then--as much as men
do in this haphazard town, anyway. Don't you think so?"
Clydesdale nodded.
"But we have been on perfectly friendly terms, always--with one
exception," said Desboro.
"Yes--with one exception. But that is all over now----"
"I am afraid it isn't."
Clydesdale's grin remained unaltered when he said: "Well, what the
hell----" and stopped abruptly.
"It's about that one exception of which I wish to speak," continued
Desboro, after a moment's thought. "I don't want to say very much--just
one or two things which I hope you already know and believe. And all I
have to say is this, Clydesdale; whatever I may have been--whatever I
may be now, that sort of treachery is not in me. I make no merit of
it--it may be mere fastidiousness on my part which would prevent me from
meditating treachery toward an acquaintance or a friend."
Clydesdale scrutinised him in silence.
"Never, since Elena was your wife, have I thought of her except as your
wife."
Clydesdale only grinned.
"I want to be as clear as I can on this subject," continued the other,
"because--and I must say it to you--there have been rumours
concerning--me."
"And concerning _her_," said Clydesdale simply. "Don't blink matters,
Desboro."
"No, I won't. The rumours have included her, of course. But what those
rumours hint, Clydesdale, is an absolute lie. I blame myself in a
measure; I should not have come here so often--should not have continued
to see Elena so informally. I _was_ in love with her once; I did ask her
to marry me. She took you. Try to believe me, Clydesdale, when I tell
you that though for me there did still linger about her that
inexplicable charm which attracted me, which makes your wife so
attractive to everybody, never for a moment did it occur to me not to
acquiesce in the finality of her choice. Never did I meditate any wrong
toward you or toward her. I _did_ dangle. That was where I blame
myself. Because where a better man might have done it uncriticised, I
was, it seems, open to suspicion."
"You're no worse than the next," said Clydesdale in a deep growl.
"Hell's bells! I don't blame _you_! And there would have been nothing to
it anyway if Elena had not lost her head that night and bolted. I was
rough with you all right; but you behaved handsomely; and I knew where
the trouble was. Because, Desboro, my wife dislikes me."
"I thought----"
"No! Let's have the truth, damn it! _That's_ the truth! My wife dislikes
me. It may be that she is crazy about you; I don't know. But I am
inclined to think--after these months of hell, Desboro--that she really
is not crazy about you, or about any man; that it is only her dislike of
me that possesses her to--to deal with me as she has done."
He was still grinning, but his heavy lower lip twitched, and suddenly
the horror of it broke on Desboro--that this great, gross, red-faced
creature was suffering in every atom of his unwieldy bulk; that the
fixed grin was covering anguish; that the man's heart was breaking
there, now, where he sat, the _rictus mortis_ stamped on his quivering
face.
"Clydesdale," he said, unsteadily, "I came here meaning to say only what
I have said--that you never had anything to doubt in me--but that
rumours still coupled my name with Elena's. That was all I meant to say.
But I'll say more. I'm sorry that things are not going well with you and
Elena. I would do anything in the world that lay within my power to help
make yours a happy marriage. But--marriages all seem to go wrong. For
years--witnessing what I have--what everybody among our sort of people
cannot choose but witness--I made up my mind that marriage was no good."
He passed his hand slowly over his eyes; waited a moment, then:
"But I was wrong. That's what the matter is--that is how the matter lies
between the sort of people we are and marriage. It is _we_ who are
wrong; there's nothing wrong about marriage, absolutely nothing. Only
many of us are not fit for it. And some of us take it as a preventive,
as a moral medicine--as though anybody could endure an eternal dosing!
And some of us seek it as a refuge--a refuge from every ill, every
discomfort, every annoyance and apprehension that assails the human
race--as though the institution of marriage were a vast and fortified
storehouse in which everything we have ever lacked and desired were
lying about loose for us to pick up and pocket."
He bent forward across the table and began to play absently with his
empty glass.
"Marriage is all right," he said. "But only those fit to enter possess
the keys to the magic institution. And they find there what they
expected. The rest of us jimmy our way in, and find ourselves in an
empty mansion, Clydesdale."
For a long while they sat there in silence; Desboro fiddling with his
empty glass, the other, motionless, his ponderous hands clasped on his
knees. At length, Desboro spoke again: "I do not know how it is with
you, but I am not escaping anything that I have ever done."
"I'm getting mine," said Clydesdale heavily.
After a few moments, what Desboro had said filtered into his brain; and
he turned and looked at the younger man.
"Have these rumours----" he began. And Desboro nodded:
"These rumours--or others. _These_ happen not to have been true."
"That's tough on _her_," said Clydesdale gravely.
"That's where it is toughest on us. I think we could stand anything
except that _they_ should suffer through us. And the horrible part of it
is that we never meant to--never dreamed that we should ever be held
responsible for the days we lived so lightly--gay, careless,
irresponsible days--God! Is there any punishment to compare with it,
Clydesdale?"
"None."
Desboro rose and stood with his hand across his forehead, as though it
ached.
[Illustration: "'Jacqueline--my wife--is the result of a different
training'"]
"You and Elena and I are products of the same kind of civilisation.
Jacqueline--my wife--is the result of a different training in a very
different civilisation."
"And the rottenness of ours is making her ill."
Desboro nodded. After a moment he stirred restlessly.
"Well," he said, "I must go to the office. I haven't been there yet."
Clydesdale got onto his feet.
"Won't you stay?"
"No."
"As you wish. And--I'm sorry, Desboro. However, you have a better chance
than I--to make good. My wife--dislikes me."
He went as far as the door with his guest, and when Desboro had departed
he wandered aimlessly back into the house and ultimately found himself
among his porcelains once more--his only refuge from a grief and care
that never ceased, never even for a moment eased those massive shoulders
of their dreadful weight.
From where he stood, he heard the doorbell sounding distantly. Doubtless
his wife had returned. Doubtless, too, as long as there was no guest,
Elena would prefer to lunch alone in her own quarters, unless she had an
engagement to lunch at the Ritz or elsewhere.
He had no illusion that she desired to see him, or that she cared
whether or not he inquired what her physician had said; but he closed
and locked his glass cases once more and walked heavily into the main
body of the house and descended to the door.
To the man on duty there he said: "Did Mrs. Clydesdale come in?"
"Yes, sir."
"Thank you."
He hesitated, turned irresolutely, and remounted the stairs. To a maid
passing he said:
"Is Mrs. Clydesdale lunching at home?"
"Yes, sir. Mrs. Clydesdale is not well, sir."
"Has she gone to her room?"
"Yes, sir."
"Please go to her and say that I am sorry and--and inquire if there is
anything I can do."
The maid departed and the master of the house wandered into the
music-room--perhaps because Elena's tall, gilded harp was there--the
only thing in the place that ever reminded him of her, or held for him
anything of her personality.
[Illustration: "In the rose dusk of the drawn curtains, he stood beside
it"]
Now, in the rose dusk of the drawn curtains, he stood beside it, not
touching it--never dreaming of touching it without permission, any more
than he would have touched his wife.
Somebody knocked; he turned, and the maid came forward.
"Mrs. Clydesdale desires to see you, sir."
He stared for a second, then his heart beat heavily with alarm.
"Where is Mrs. Clydesdale?"
"In her bedroom, sir."
"Unwell?"
"Yes, sir."
"In _bed_?"
"I think so, sir. Mrs. Clydesdale's maid spoke to me."
"Very well. Thank you."
He went out and mounted the stairs, striding up silently to the hall
above, where his wife's maid quietly opened the door for him, then went
away to her own little chintz-lined den.
Elena was lying on her bed in a frilly, lacy, clinging thing of rose
tint. The silk curtains had been drawn, but squares of sunlight
quartered them, turning the dusk of the pretty room to a golden gloom.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him as he advanced.
"I'm terribly sorry," he said; and his heavy voice shook in spite of
him.
She motioned toward the only armchair--an ivory-covered affair, the cane
bottom covered by a rose cushion.
"Bring it here--nearer," she said.
He did so, and seated himself beside the bed cautiously.
She lay silent after that; once or twice she pressed the palms of both
hands over her eyes as though they pained her, but when he ventured to
inquire, she shook her head. It was only when he spoke of calling up Dr.
Allen again that she detained him in his chair with a gesture:
"Wait! I've got to tell you something! I don't know what you will
do about it. You've had trouble enough--with me. But this
is--is--unspeakable----"
"What on earth is the matter? Aren't you ill?" he began.
"Yes; that, too. But--there is something else. I thought it had made me
ill--but----" She began to shiver, and he laid his hand on hers and
found it burning.
"I tell you Allen ought to come at once----" he began again.
"No, no, no! You don't know what you're talking about. I--I'm
frightened--that's what is the matter! That's one of the things that's
the matter. Wait a moment. I'll tell you. I'll _have_ to tell you, now.
I suppose you'll--divorce me."
There was a silence; then:
"Go on," he said, in his heavy, hopeless voice.
She moistened her lips with her tongue:
"It's--my fault. I--I did not care for you--that is how it--began. No;
it began before that--before I knew you. And there were two men. You
remember them. They were the rage with our sort--like other fads, for a
while--such as marmosets, and--things. One of these things was the poet,
Orrin Munger. He called himself a Cubist--whatever that may be. The
other was the writer, Adalbert Waudle."
Clydesdale's grin was terrible.
"No," she said wearily, "I was only a more venturesome fool than other
women who petted them--nothing worse. They went about kissing women's
hands and reading verses to them. Some women let them have the run of
their boudoirs--like any poodle. Then there came that literary and
semi-bohemian bal-masque in Philadelphia. It was the day before the
Assembly. I was going on for that, but mother wouldn't let me go on away
earlier for the bal-masque. So--I went."
"What?"
"I lied. I pretended to be stopping with the Hammertons in Westchester.
And I bribed my maid to lie, too. But I went."
"Alone?"
"No. Waudle went with me."
"Good God, Elena!"
"I know. I was simply insane. I went with him to that ball and
left before the unmasking. Nobody knew me. So I went to the
Bellevue-Stratford for the night. I--I never dreamed that _he_ would go
there, too."
"Did he?"
"Yes. He had the rooms adjoining. I only knew it when--when I awoke in
the dark and heard him tapping on the door and calling in that thick,
soft voice----" She shuddered and clenched her hands, closing her
feverish eyes for a moment.
Her husband stared at her, motionless in his chair.
She unclosed her eyes wearily: "That was all--except--the other one--the
little one with the frizzy hair--Munger. He saw me there. He knew that
Waudle had the adjoining rooms. So then, very early, I came back to New
York, badly scared, and met my maid at the station and pretended to
mother that I had just arrived from Westchester. And that night I went
back to the Assembly. But--ever since that night I--I have been--paying
money to Adalbert Waudle. Not much before I married you, because I had
very little to pay. But all my allowance has gone that way--and
now--now he wants more. And I haven't it. And I'm sick----"
The terrible expression on her husband's face frightened her, and, for a
moment, she faltered. But there was more to tell, and she must tell it
though his unchained wrath destroy her.
"You'll have to wait until I finish," she muttered. "There's more--and
worse. Because he came here the night I--went to Silverwood. He saw me
leave the house; he unsealed and read the note I left on the library
table for you. He knows what I said--about Jim Desboro. He knows I went
to him. And he is trying to make me pay him--to keep it out of the--the
_Tattler_."
Clydesdale's congested face was awful; she looked into it, thought that
she read her doom. But the courage of despair forced her on.
"There is worse--far worse," she said with dry lips. "I had no money to
give; he wished to keep the seven thousand which was his share of what
you paid for the forged porcelains. He came to me and made me understand
that if you insisted on his returning that money he would write me up
for the _Tattler_ and disgrace me so that you would divorce me. I--I
must be honest with you at such a time as this, Cary. I wouldn't have
cared if--if Jim Desboro would have married me afterward. But he had
ceased to care for me. He--was in love with--Miss Nevers; or she was
with him. And I disliked her. But--I was low enough to go to her in my
dire extremity and--and ask her to pronounce those forged porcelains
genuine--so that you would keep them. And I did it--meaning to bribe
her."
Clydesdale's expression was frightful.
"Yes--I did this thing. And worse. I--I wish you'd kill me after I tell
you! I--something she said--in the midst of my anguish and
terror--something about Jim Desboro, I think--I am not sure--seemed to
drive me insane. And she was married to him all the while, and I didn't
know it. And--to drive her away from him, I--I made her understand
that--that I was--his--mistress----"
"Good God!"
"Wait--for God's sake, wait! I don't care what you do to me afterward.
Only--only tell that woman I wasn't--tell her I never was. Promise me
that, whatever you are going to do to me--promise me you'll tell her
that I never was any man's mistress! Because--because--I am--ill. And
they say--Dr. Allen says I--I am going to--to have a baby."
The man reared upright and stood swaying there, ashy faced, his visage
distorted. Suddenly the features were flooded with rushing crimson; he
dropped on his knees and caught her in his arms with a groan; and she
shut her eyes, thinking the world was ending.
After a long while she opened them, still half stunned with terror; saw
his quivering lips resting on her tightly locked hands; stared for a
while, striving to comprehend his wet face and his caress.
And, after a while, timidly, uncertainly, wondering, she ventured to
withdraw one hand, still watching him with fascinated eyes.
She had always feared him physically--feared his bulk, and his massive
strength, and his grin. Otherwise, she had held him in intellectual
contempt.
Very cautiously, very gently, she withdrew her hand, watching him all
the while. He had not annihilated her. What did he mean to do with this
woman who had hated him and who now was about to disgrace him? What did
he mean to do? What was he doing now--with his lips quivering against
her other hand, all wet with his tears?
"Cary?" she said.
He lifted a passion-marred visage; and there seemed for a moment
something noble in the high poise of his ugly head. And, without knowing
what she was doing, or why, she slowly lifted her free hand and let it
rest lightly on his massive shoulder. And, as she looked into his eyes,
a strange expression began to dawn in her own--and it became stranger
and stranger--something he had never before seen there--something so
bewildering, so wonderful, that his heart seemed to cease.
Suddenly her eyes filled and her face flushed from throat to hair and
the next instant she swayed forward, was caught, and crushed to his
breast.
"Oh!" she wept ceaselessly. "Oh, oh, Cary! I didn't know--I didn't know.
I--I want to be a--a good mother. I'll try to be better; I'll try to be
better. You are so good--you are so good to me--so kind--so kind--to
protect me--after what I've done--after what I've done!"