Chapter III (3)

Presently the nose powderer came down, still cooing, and they went in to luncheon. It was a pleasant meal. The little room was full of sunlight; the Swede, though a poor linguist, was a good waitress; the food was excellent, and the talk, though not brilliant, for it was absorbed by Mrs. Rossiter, was kind and friendly; and Nan had been so many years away that she enjoyed just the sense of intimacy. They were talking about Roger--his health--how hard he worked.

"I really think," said his mother, shaking her head solemnly, "that you and he ought to go abroad. I think it's your duty."

"I'm not sure Roger means to take a holiday at all, Mrs. Rossiter," answered Letitia. "You see, he did take two weeks in the winter when we were married."

"If that may be called a holiday," said Mrs. Lewis. No one noticed her, and Mrs. Rossiter pressed on:

"Not take a holiday! Oh, Letty, he must! You must make him! He'll break down. Remember, he's only twenty-four. The strain at his age-- You agree with me, don't you, Mrs. Lewis? If you had a son of twenty-four, you would not want him to work steadily all the year round?"

"If I had a son," replied Mrs. Lewis, "I should be surprised if he ever found a job. The men of my family have always been out of a job."

There was a ring at the front door and the Swede went to answer it.

"Now that Meta is out of the room, Lett," said her mother, "might I suggest that you never allow her to answer the telephone? She always begins the conversation by stoutly denying that anyone of your name lives here."

Mrs. Rossiter gave a little scream of laughter and a gesture of her hand with the fingers self-consciously crooked.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "how perfect that is! How exact!"

Mrs. Lewis looked at her coldly, as much as to say she had not intended to be, and, as a matter of fact, had not been so humorous as all that.

Then Meta returned to the room, and with the manner of beaming surprise which never left her--except on the rare occasions when she simply burst into tears--she announced that there was a policeman in the hall, come after Mr. Rossiter. At least, this was what she seemed to say; but there was enough doubt about it to keep the two mothers fairly calm, while Letitia ran out of the room to find out the truth

"Do you suppose he's met with some horrible accident?" Mrs. Rossiter asked tremulously.

"More likely to have parked his car somewhere he ought not to have," answered Mrs. Lewis; but Letitia, knowing her well, saw that her secret thought was darker than her words. All three women remained silent after this, listening for some sound from the hall, until Letitia came back. She was holding herself very straight and her face was white.

She came straight to the table and said in a low firm voice, "There is some mistake, of course; but this man has come to arrest Roger."

"To arrest him!" cried his mother. "For what?"

"For murder," answered Letitia simply.

It is only men who break news with slow agony to women--women are more direct in dealing with each other.

Mrs. Rossiter gave a little cry, and then all four were silent, and in the pause Meta came in from the pantry and, deceived, by the quietness, began to clear the side table.

When they were in the sitting room, with the door shut, Letitia told them as much of the story as she had been able to get from the policeman. According to his account, Roger had been not in Albany the night before but in Paterson--yes, he did sometimes go there for the company; but he never stayed there overnight. He had gone to a cheap dance hall--no, not at all like Roger, though he did love dancing--and afterward had gone to supper with a man and woman. She was a concert hall singer, or something of the kind. There had been a row. The man had first gone away in a fury and then put his pride in his pocket and had come back--had drunk a cup of coffee of Roger's brewing--and had dropped dead. The woman had confessed--

"It obviously isn't true," said Nan, and somehow her voice seemed to ring out too loudly.

"Of course not," answered three voices in varying tones; and none of them had the trumpet ring of complete conviction. Nan stared from one to the other, and saw that each was busy with a plan to save him. Well, that perhaps was love--to be more concerned with the dear one's physical safety than with his moral integrity. When the first shock was over, when they had had time to think, they would see as clearly as she did that the whole thing was utterly impossible.

But they were not thinking it over. They were talking about telephoning his office--whether it would be wise, whether the telephone wires could be tapped. Mrs. Rossiter was pleading that something should be done at once, and blocking every action that Letitia suggested. It was finally decided to telephone his office. The telephone was upstairs in her bedroom, and as Letitia opened the sitting-room door she revealed the policeman on a hard William-and-Mary chair in the hall. He had taken off his cap and showed a head of thinning fuzzy blond hair. He looked undressed, out of place, menacing. Mrs. Rossiter was upset by the sight and began to cry. Mrs. Lewis, who hated tears, cast a quick look at her and followed her daughter out of the room.

Nan, left alone with Roger's mother, felt the obligation of attempting comfort. She patted her shoulder.

"Don't cry, dear Mrs. Rossiter. It will turn out to be some stupid mistake."

"Oh, of course, of course, it's a mistake!"

Mrs. Rossiter wiped her eyes bravely and put her handkerchief away. "But he works so hard, Nan; up at seven and never back at home until six--drudgery--and he's so young--so terribly young never to have any fun."

And, more touched by her word picture of facts than by the facts themselves, the tears rose again in her eyes.

"Some people would think it quite a lot of fun to be married to Letitia," said Nan gently.

But Mrs. Rossiter only shook her head, repeating, "It's all my fault--all my fault!"

"How can it be your fault, Mrs. Rossiter?" Nan asked a little sharply.

Mrs. Rossiter glanced over her shoulder to be sure no one had reëntered the room while her nose was in her handkerchief.

"He never was in love with Letitia--not really, you know--not romantically," she said. "And when a young, ardent boy like Roger is tied for life--to an older woman--whom he doesn't really love--what can you expect?"

This view of the case was so unexpected to Nan that she could hardly receive it.

"Letitia believes he loves her," she said.

"Does she?" answered Mrs. Rossiter in a tone that made the question a contradiction. "Or does she only try to believe it? Or it may be she doesn't know what it is to have a man really in love with her. These modern girls--"

"More men have been in love with Letitia than with any girl I ever knew," said Nan firmly. "And unless your son has definitely told you that he does not love her--"

"Of course he hasn't done that," returned his mother, more shocked at the idea than she had been at the suggestion of murder. "He's loyal, poor boy. It wasn't necessary for him to tell me. I know my son, Nan, and I know love. There wasn't a spark--not one--on his side at least. But she never let him alone; every day a telephone or a letter, or even a telegram. He was touched, I suppose, by her devotion. That isn't love, though. I might have saved him. I ought to have spoken out and said, 'Dear boy, you do not love this woman.' I did hint at it several times, but he pretended to think I was in fun. Nan, they were like brother and sister--or, no, more like an old married couple--no romance. If they had been married twenty years, you would have said, 'It's nice to see them so companionable.' Now it's only natural that love should come to him in some wild and terrible form like this--an outlet--the poor child." There were steps in the hall, and she added quickly, "But, of course, I would not have them know I thought the thing possible."

The footsteps belonged to Letitia. She entered, bringing word that Roger had not been at the office; he had been expected about noon from Albany--yes, they had said Albany, but it was only a clerk. They had been expecting to hear from him, but knew nothing of his whereabouts. Letty was too young to look aged by anxiety, but she looked like a water color in process of being washed out. Not only her cheeks but her hair and eyes, and even her skin, seemed to have lost their color. Nan had never seen her friend suffering. She had seen her angry or jealous or wounded, but never like this. Her heart went out to the girl. She managed to get Mrs. Rossiter away to telephone to her son at his club, on the unlikely possibility that he might have stopped there. Left alone with Letty she said:

"My dear, I know just how ugly and painful this is; but do remember that in a few hours it will all be explained and you will be telling it as an amusing story."

"I know, of course," said Letitia, as if she were listening to a platitude; and then she added, "Did you happen to bring any money with you? You see, the banks are closed now."

Nan could hardly believe her ears.

"Yes," she said, "I have; but why should you need it just now?"

"I shan't need it, of course," said Letitia hastily; "but in times like this you think of all sorts of possibilities. If we did have to leave the country at a second's notice--"

Her voice died way under Nan's look of disapproval.

"Would you go with him if he did?" said Nan, wondering how a woman could love a man so much and understand him so little.

"Go with him!" cried Letitia. "I'd hang with him if I could! Oh, Nan, you don't know what it is to love a person as I love Roger! I believe I could be perfectly happy exiled, hunted, poor, in some impossible South Sea island, if I could only have him all to myself. While I was upstairs I put a few things in a bag; I brought it down and left it in the hall, and I thought that you could take it with you when you go. That couldn't excite any suspicion, and then if I have to leave in a hurry--"

Nan could not let her go on like this.

"Letitia," she said in a sharp tone, as if rousing a sleeper, "you simply can't talk like that. You must believe in your husband's innocence. Your face alone would hang him."

"I do believe in it," answered Letitia; "only I can't help seeing some terrible coincidences. There is no one in the world knows more about poisons than Roger does. He is always talking about the Borgias and what they used. And after all, Nan, I was brought up to face facts. There is a streak of weakness in Roger where women are concerned--a certain vanity."

"There is in every man."

"And then, Nan, I love my mother-in-law; but I can't help seeing she did not bring him up right. She spoiled him; not that she made him selfish or self-indulgent--no one could do that to Roger; but she did give him too much confidence in his own ability to arrange any situation. He jumps into anything-- Oh, can't you see how he might easily be led on to do something like this?"

"No," said Nan; "no. I'm not his wife--I never saw him, but I feel sure he did not do this."

Perhaps her manner was more offensive than she meant it to be; but for some reason Letty's rather alarming calm suddenly broke into anger.

"That's impertinent, Nan," she said. "Why should you always think you understand better than anyone else? He's my husband. If you had any delicacy of feeling, you'd admit that if anyone knew the truth about him, I do--not you, who never saw him. It's easy enough for you to come preaching the beauty of perfect faith. Don't you suppose I'd believe in him if I could?" And so on and on. It was as if she hated Nan for believing in him when she didn't.

Nan let her talk for a few minutes, and then at the first pause she got up and walked to the door. "I think I'll go and sit with your mother," she said.

"Don't tell her what I've been saying--don't tell her that I have doubt of Roger."

"You know I would not do that, Letty."

"I don't know what you'd do in your eternal wish to know more about people than anyone else knows."

Nan left the room with a heavy heart. Did she want to be omniscient? Was it impertinent to be surer of a man's innocence than his wife was? Well, if he were innocent, Letitia would never forgive her--that was clear.

She found Mrs. Lewis alone in an upper room. She was standing looking out the window, her arms folded, her body tilted slightly backward, while she crooned sadly to herself. As Nan entered she shook her head slowly at her.

"The poor child," she said.

"Roger or Letty?"

"Oh, both; but, of course, I was thinking of my own."

"Mrs. Lewis, do you believe he's guilty?"

"No, my dear--nor innocent. I don't believe anything. I simply don't know. When you get to be my age, Nan, you will understand that anything is possible; the wicked do the most splendid things at times, and the virtuous do the most awful. I don't know whether Roger did this or not. He may have. It may even have been the right thing to do, although poison--well, I'm surprised Roger descended to that."

With this point of view Nan had some sympathy, although she felt obliged to protest a little.

"You said he was the finest man you had ever known."

"I thought so--I think so still--but what does one know about such people? An utterly different class, a different background. I'm as good a democrat as anybody, but there is something in tradition. Oh, I see you don't know. Well, the father was a plumber. Yes, my dear, little as you might think it, that ruffled marquise downstairs is the widow of a plumber. How do we know what people like that will do or not do when their passions are roused? It nearly killed me to have Letitia marry him."

"I thought you liked the marriage, Mrs. Lewis."

"That's where I blame myself, Nan. I let it get out of my control. I hesitated. I admired the man. He had plenty of money; and of course the mother was delighted to get such a wife for her son, and made it all too terribly easy. And then he was mad about Letty."

"Wasn't she mad about him too?"

Mrs. Lewis shook her head.

"Not at first; but he was always there--always writing and coming. I don't suppose I ever came into the flat in those days without finding a message that Letty was to call--whatever his number was--as soon as she came in. He's a determined man and he meant to get her."

"She is tremendously in love with him now."

Mrs. Lewis sighed.

"Ah, yes, now, poor child--of course. Don't betray me, Nan. Don't let those two downstairs know that I have a doubt. She's a sweet creature--the plumber's widow--though to me irritating; and she wouldn't doubt anyone in the world, let alone her darling son; and, of course, Letitia does not think it possible that her husband can have killed a man, especially for the sake of another woman."

"Have you ever heard a suspicion that there was another woman?" Nan asked.

"No; but then I shouldn't be likely to. We three women are the last people in the world to hear it, even if it were notorious."

Nan was obliged to admit the truth of this; and presently Mrs. Lewis, fearing that her absence might appear unfriendly, decided to go back to the sitting room.

Nan said she was coming, too, but stood a minute staring at the carpet. What was it, she wondered, made her so passionately eager that Roger should be innocent? Was it love of her friend, or pride of opinion, or interest in abstract truth, or interest in a man she had never seen? She had a strange feeling of a bond between her and Roger. As she went slowly down the stairs, her eye fell again upon the police officer, shifting, patient, but uncomfortable on the William-and-Mary chair. A sudden inspiration came to her. She asked to see the warrant.

Well, it was just as she thought--not for Roger at all, but for a man whose last name was Rogers, who lived in a house two away. The number wasn't even right; but that was more the fault of the real-estate company than of the police department. She took the officer outside and showed him his mistake, and finally had the satisfaction of shutting the door forever on that blue-coated figure.

She turned toward the sitting room. To break good news is not always so easy, either. She thought of those three doubters, each one trying to show the others how full her heart was of complete confidence.

Nan opened the door, went in, shut it behind her and leaned on the knob.

"Now, you three," she said, "you've been wonderful in bad times; try to be equally calm in good." They looked up at her, wondering what good news was possible, and she hurried on: "The policeman has gone. The warrant was not for Roger at all."

There was a pause, hardly broken in any real sense by the sound of Mrs. Rossiter repeating that she had always known it could not be true--had always known it could not be Roger.

"Still," said Mrs. Lewis with an amused sidelong glance, "it is a comfort that now the police know it too."

But Nan's eyes had never left her friend's face. Letty did not say a word. She rose and stared straight at Nan, looking at her almost as if she were an enemy. Nan knew that Mrs. Rossiter would forget that she had ever doubted her son--had already forgotten and was crooning her faith and joy. Mrs. Lewis had nothing to forget. She had merely expressed an agnostic attitude; but Letitia had revealed to Nan the very depths of her estimate of her husband--and she had been wrong and Nan right. She would never forgive that.

Except for this change in the relation between the two younger women, in five minutes it was as if the whole incident had never occurred. Mrs. Rossiter was again the devoted mother-in-law, Letitia the happy bride, and Mrs. Lewis was saying, "Which brings us back to the point I was making when the fatal ring came--it is a mistake to let Meta answer either the door or the telephone."

In a little while Mrs. Rossiter announced that she must be going, and Nan was not surprised when Mrs. Lewis, who had had a few minutes alone with her daughter, suggested that Nan should go back with them and spend the night with her.

"But I promised Letty--" she began, and then glancing at her friend she saw that she was expected to accept.

Letitia spoke civilly, kindly, as if she were doing everyone a favor.

"Oh, I let you off," she said. "Mamma is all alone, and I know how you and she enjoy picking all the rest of us to pieces."

Nan hesitated rebelliously. It seemed hard that she was not to see Roger just because she had understood him too well.

She said, "But I want so much to see Roger."

Mrs. Lewis glanced at her. It was not like a girl to be so obstinate. Of course, poor Letty wanted her husband to herself after a shock like this.

"Roger will keep," she said firmly.

She went into the hall and picked up her scarf from the companion chair to that on which the policeman had sat. As she did so her eye fell upon a bag standing as if ready for a journey.

"Is that your bag, Nan?" she asked, trying to remember if the plan had ever been that Nan was to spend the night.

"No," said Letitia in a quick sharp voice; "that's something of mine."

And then, without the least warning, the front door opened and Roger himself walked in--walked in without any idea that he had been a murderer, arrested, extradited, defended and freed since he had last seen his own house.

He was just as Nan knew he would be. She didn't care anything about his mere beauty. It was that fine firm mouth of his--just like the photograph. How could anyone imagine that a man with a mouth like that--

He greeted his wife, his mother, his mother-in-law casually, and came straight to Nan.

"So this is Nan--at last," he said, and he stooped and kissed her cheek.

Well, Nan said to herself, she had a right to that; but she saw Letty's brow contract; and Mrs. Lewis, who perhaps saw it, too, hurried her toward the car. Roger protested.

"But you're not taking Nan! I came home early especially to see her. I did not even go back to the office for fear of being detained." But, of course, his lonely protest accomplished nothing, and as he opened the front door for the three departing women, he asked, "When am I to see you, Nan?"

Nan looked up at him very sweetly and said "Never." She said it lightly, but she knew it was the bitter truth. She knew Letitia. Letitia would never permit a second meeting.

Just as she got into the car she heard him call, "Oh, isn't this your bag?" and she heard Letty answer:

"No, it's mine. It represents one of Nan's abandoned ideas."

THE RETURN TO NORMALCY

Strange, unnatural conventions were growing up about divorce, Cora reflected. The world expected you to appear as completely indifferent to a man when once your decree was granted as it had assumed you to be uniquely devoted to him as long as the marriage tie held. Here she was, sitting at her ease in her little apartment; she had bitten her toast, poured out her coffee, opened her mail--a dinner invitation, a letter from her architect about the plans for her new house, a bill for her brocade slippers, an announcement of a picture exhibition, and-- As she moved the last envelope from its position on the morning newspaper her eye fell for the first time on the account of Valentine Bing's illness.

"It was said at the Unitarian Hospital, where Mr. Bing was taken late last night, that his condition was serious."

A sketch--almost obituary--of him followed: "Valentine Bing was born in 1880 at St. Albans, a small town on Lake Erie. He began life as a printer. At twenty-one he became editor of the St. Albans Courier. In 1907 he came to New York." She glanced along rapidly. "Great consolidation of newspaper syndicate features--large fortune--three times married--the last time to Miss Cora Enderby, of the prominent New York family, from whom he was divorced in Paris in October of this year." Nothing was said about the two other wives; that seemed natural enough to Cora. But it did not seem natural that this man, who for two years had made or marred every instant of her life, was ill--dying, perhaps; and that she like any other stranger should read of it casually in her morning paper.

She did not often think kindly of Valentine--she tried not to think of him at all--but now her thoughts went back to their first romance. In those days--she was barely twenty--she had been in conflict with her family, who represented all that was conservative in old New York. She had wanted work, a career. She had gone to see Valentine in his office, armed with a letter of introduction. He was a tall red-haired man, long armed and large fisted, with intense blue eyes, clouded like lapis lazuli; he was either ugly or rather beautiful, according as you liked a sleek or rugged masculinity. For an instant she had had an impression--the only time she ever did have it--that he was a silent being.

She had told her little story. "And as I really don't know much about writing," she ended, "I thought--"

"You thought you'd like to do newspaper work," he interrupted with a sort of shout.

He explained to her how newspaper writing was the most difficult of all--the only kind that mattered. What was the object of writing anyhow? To tell something, wasn't it? Well, in newspaper work-- On and on he went, the torrent of his ideas sparkling and leaping like a mountain brook. She was aware that she stimulated him. She learned later that he was grateful for stimulation, particularly from women.

Almost immediately afterward, it seemed to her, he was insisting that she should marry him. At first she refused, and when her own resistance had been broken down her family's stood out all the more firmly.

They regarded two divorces and a vulgar newspaper syndicate as insurmountable obstacles. But a family had very little chance against Bing, and he and Cora were married within a few months of their first meeting.

On looking back at it she felt that she soon lost not his love but his interest. He would always, she thought, have retained a sincere affection for her if she had been content to remain the patient springboard from which he leaped off into space. But she wasn't content with any such rôle. She wanted to be the stimulus--the excitement of his life. And so they had quarreled and quarreled and quarreled for two horrible years which had just ended in their divorce.

And now he, so vital, so egotistical, so dominating, was dying; and she, the pale slim girl whose charm to him had been the joy of conquering her, was alive and well and happy. It would annoy Valentine to know that she was happy--fairly happy--without him.

She wondered whether she should call up the hospital, or go there herself to inquire about him. Wasn't it possible that he would send for her? After all, it was only the other day that she was his wife. And at that instant the telephone rang.

She heard a suave voice saying, "Is that Mrs. Bing? Mrs. Enderby-Bing? This is Doctor Creighton, at the Unitarian."

Half an hour later she was at the hospital. She had expected to be hurried at once to Valentine's bedside. Instead a little reception room was indicated. At the door a figure was standing, head raised, hands clasped behind the back. It was Thorpe, Valentine's servant.

"In here, madam," he said, opened the door for her, and closed it, shutting her in.

The sight of him destroyed the last remnant of Cora's self-control. He seemed like a little bit of Valentine himself. Thorpe had been with them on their honeymoon; she could see him waiting at the gate under the turquoise dome of the Grand Central Station, with their bags about his feet, and their tickets in his hand--so cool and competent in contrast to their own excitement that first day.

She hurried into the room. It is not to be expected that a hospital should waste sun and air on mere visitors, and yet the reception room, painted a cold gray and dimly lighted by a shaft, was depressing. Some logical interior decorator had hung one large Braun photograph on the wall. It was a copy of the Lesson in Anatomy.

Cora sat down and covering her face with her hands began to cry. A kind voice said in her ear, "I'm afraid you've had bad news."

Looking up Cora saw that a middle-aged woman was sitting beside her, a woman with comfortably flowing lines and large soft brown eyes and hair beginning to turn gray.

"I'm afraid my husband is dying," answered Cora simply. She thought it better not to mention divorce to a person who seemed like the very genius of the family.

"Why, you poor child," said the other, "you don't look old enough to have a husband."

"I'm twenty-four," replied Cora. "It's almost three years since I was married."

"Of course," said the other. "It's just because I'm getting old that everyone seems so young to me."

She smiled and Cora found herself smiling too. There was something comforting in the presence of the older woman; Cora felt assured that she knew her way about in all simple human crises like birth and illness and death.

Suddenly as they talked Cora saw the face of her companion stiffen; Thorpe was ushering in another woman, sleek headed, with a skin like white satin, wrapped in a mink cloak. Evidently the newcomer was painfully known to Cora's friend, though the mink-clad lady gave no sign. She sat down, holding the blank beauty of her face unruffled by the least expression; and as she did so Doctor Creighton entered.

"Mrs. Bing," he said. All three women rose. The doctor glanced at a paper held in the palm of his hand.

"Mrs. Johnson-Bing, Mrs. Moore-Bing, Mrs. Enderby-Bing."

Even in her wild eagerness to know what the doctor had to tell them of Valentine's condition Cora was aware of the excitement of at last seeing those two others. Phrases that Valentine had used about them came back to her: "A cold-hearted unfaithful Juno"--she in the mink coat. "She was so relentlessly domestic"--Cora glanced at her new friend. Yes, she was domestic--almost motherly. Cora's friendly feeling toward her remained intact; but toward Hermione--Mrs. Moore-Bing--who had so deceived and embittered Valentine, her hatred flamed as it had flamed when Valentine first told her the story.

How could she stand there, so calm, drooping her thick white eyelids and moving her shoulders about in a way that made you aware that under the mink coat they were as white as blanc mange. "She must know," Cora thought, "that I know everything there is to know about her. Valentine had no reserves about it. And Margaret, from whom she took him; and Thorpe, whose testimony in the divorce case--" Instinctively she took a step nearer to Margaret, as if wishing to form an alliance against Hermione.

Meantime the doctor was speaking rapidly, apologetically: "You must forgive me, ladies. I might have arranged this better, but time is short. You must help me. Mr. Bing's condition is serious--very serious. He keeps demanding that his wife come and nurse him. He believes we are keeping her from him. His temperature is going up, he is exciting himself more and more. We must give him what he wants, but--" The doctor paused and looked inquiringly from one to the other.

Mrs. Johnson-Bing smiled her quiet maternal smile. "Poor Valentine," she said; "he was always like that when he was ill."

There was a pause.

"But you don't help," said the doctor. "You don't tell me which one it is that he wants."

"Well," said Mrs. Moore-Bing in her cool drawl, "as I'm the only one who left him against his will I'm probably the only one he wants back again."

Cora would not even glance in the direction of such a woman. She had been kept silent heretofore by the trembling of her chin, but now she managed to enunciate: "Mr. Bing and I were divorced only a few months ago. Until October, you see, I was his wife."

The logic of this, or perhaps his own individual preference for a slim elegant young woman, evidently influenced the doctor. He nodded quickly.

"If you'll come with me, then--" he began, and turned toward the door, but there Thorpe was standing, and he did not move.

"If you'd excuse me, sir," he said, "am I right in thinking it will be bad for Mr. Bing if we mistake his wish in this matter?"

"Yes, I'd like to get it right," said the doctor.

"Then, sir, may I say it's not Mrs. Enderby-Bing that he wants, sir?"

"What makes you think that?" said Doctor Creighton.

"I could hardly explain it, sir. Twenty years of being with Mr. Bing--"

There was an awkward pause. The obvious thing to do was to ask Thorpe who it was Bing did want, and something in the poise of Thorpe's head suggested that he was just waiting to set the whole matter straight, when hurried footsteps were heard in the hall, and a nurse entered--an eager panting young woman. She beckoned to Creighton and they spoke a few seconds apart. Then he turned back to the group with brightened face.

"At last," he said, "Mr. Bing has spoken the first name. It is Margaret."

Cora caught a glimpse of Thorpe quietly bowing to himself--as much as to say, "Just what I had expected."

Mrs. Johnson-Bing rose.

"My name is Margaret," she said, and left the room with the doctor.

Hermione rose, too, hunching her cape into place. "Well," she said without taking the least notice of Thorpe, who was opening the door for her, "that's one chore you and I don't have to do. He was bad enough healthy--sick he must be the limit."

Cora did not so much ignore Hermione as she conveyed in her manner as she turned to Thorpe that everyone must know that whoever might be the object of Mrs. Moore-Bing's conversation it could not be herself.

"Tell me, Thorpe," she said, "what do you think of Mr. Bing's condition?"

"Mr. Bing is ill, madam--very ill," Thorpe answered immediately; "but not so ill as the doctors think."

"No?" said Cora in some surprise.

"No, madam. Mr. Bing, if I might use the expression, yields himself up to illness; this assists him to recover."

He opened the door for her at this point, and she went out of it.

She returned home not so emotionally upset but more depressed than before. There was a core of bitterness in her feeling that had not been there when she went to the hospital, and at first she found it difficult to discover the reason for this. Was it anxiety at Valentine's illness? No, for he was a little better than she had feared. Was it the realization that those two former wives, who had always seemed to her like shadows, were, in fact, living beings like herself? No, for they had turned out to be more unattractive, more utterably unsuitable to Valentine than she had imagined. It was true that her taste, her sheltered selectiveness--a passion which many well-brought-up women mistake for morality--was outraged at being in the same room with Hermione, but there was a certain satisfaction in finding her to be worse even than Valentine's highly colored descriptions of her. And as for Margaret, she felt no jealousy of her, even though she had been chosen. No one could be jealous of any woman so kind, so old and so badly dressed.

It came to her gradually as she moved about her room, unable to look at her plans, unable to read, unable to do anything but encourage the toothache at her heart, which was like a memory of all her later relations with Valentine. The reason was Thorpe--Thorpe's instant conviction that it was not she whom Valentine wanted. Why was he so sure? He had been right; Thorpe was always right. For twenty years he had made it his business to know what Valentine wanted. That was Thorpe's idea of the function of a good servant. He had always quietly and consistently followed his line, while the wives had followed others. Margaret had been concerned with what was best for Valentine; Hermione had thought entirely of what was most agreeable to herself; Cora had cared only to preserve the romance of her love. Thorpe's specialty was knowing what at the moment Valentine wished for, and then in getting it. Thorpe had survived all three.

Cora could understand a sick man having a fancy to be nursed by Margaret, but Thorpe's conviction that she, Cora, could not be the wife called for had a deeper and more lasting significance. That was the thought that made her heart ache.

She tried to take up her life where she had left it that morning, but everything had paled in interest--even her new house. She had bought a little corner of land, within the city limits but near the river, surrounded by trees. She saw wonderful possibilities--a walled garden and a river view within twenty minutes of the theaters. She recognized certain disadvantages--the proximity of a railroad track, and the fact that the neighborhood was still unkempt; she enjoyed the idea of being a pioneer. But now, though the plans were lying on the table, she did not open them. It was as if that hour in the hospital had married her again to Valentine, and there was no vividness left in the rest of life.

For ten days the bulletins continued to be increasingly favorable, and then--a sign that convalescence had set in--they ceased entirely.

Cora found the silence trying. With the great question of life or death answered there was so much else that she wanted to know--whether he had been permanently weakened by his illness; whether he would now be starting on one of his long-projected trips--to China or the South Seas. China had always fired his imagination. Twice during her short marriage they had had their trunks packed for China. Had he been softened, or frightened, or in any way changed by the great adventure of almost dying?

There was one person who could tell her all these things, and that was Margaret. Without exactly formulating a plan Cora went to the hospital one day and inquired about him. The girl at the desk answered as if Valentine were already a personage of the hospital.

"He's getting along splendidly now. His wife's with him."

"I wonder," Cora heard herself saying, "whether Mrs. Bing would see me for a minute."

She retired, rather frightened at her temerity, to the reception room, where the Lesson in Anatomy still dominated the wall. "Margaret won't mind," she kept telling herself. "She's so kind, and, anyhow, she's more like his mother than his wife." It was on this maternal quality that Cora depended.

There was a footstep in the hall. A statuesque figure molded into blue serge stood in the doorway--bare-headed with shiny bronze-colored hair elaborately looped and curled. It was Hermione.

"You wanted to see me?" she asked in her drawling, reconstructed voice. She did not at once recognize Cora.

"No," said Cora, "I certainly did not want to see you. I thought it was Mrs. Johnson-Bing who was here."

"Margaret?" replied Hermione. She drooped her thick eyelids and smiled, as if the name itself were comic--she never broke her beautiful mask with a laugh.

"No, that didn't last long. He bounced Margaret as soon as he got over being delirious."

"And was it then that he sent for you?" asked Cora with an edge to her voice that a Damascus blade might have envied.

"As a matter of fact he didn't; it was Thorpe who sent for me," said Hermione. "Thorpe had a wholesome recollection that I used to keep Val in order. Nice little job, keeping Val in order. Ever tried it? No, I remember Thorpe said that wasn't your line."

Cora would have given a good deal to know just how Thorpe had characterized her line, but not even curiosity could make her address an unnecessary word to the coarse, cold woman before her. She was not jealous as she understood the word, but the disgust she felt for Hermione included Valentine, too, and made her hate him for the moment with an intimate disturbing warmth.

Hermione went on: "And, after all, as I said to Val yesterday, what does it matter to me whether he gets well or not? It takes too much vitality--making him mind. I'm through. I'm off for Palm Beach to-morrow. Thorpe's taking him home."

"It's amiable of you--to come and go as Thorpe orders."

Hermione moved her eloquent shoulders. "Oh, Thorpe and I understand each other."

"I knew Thorpe understood you," said Cora insolently.

But the woman was insensitive to anything but a bludgeon, for she answered, "I understand Thorpe too. All he objects to is wives. He's like the--whatever it is, you know--that fishes in troubled waters."

Cora merely moved past her and went away. It wasn't until she was outside that she took in how pleasant had been the unconscious suggestion behind Hermione's last words. Thorpe objected to wives. That was why he had not sent for her--she wasn't a mother like Margaret; nor a vice, like Hermione. She was a wife. The story-teller, the magic builder of castles that is in everyone, suddenly made for Cora a splendid scene, in which she, reunited to Valentine, was dismissing Thorpe.

Ten days later she took title to her new property and her architects filed the plans. Both events were announced in the newspapers.

That very morning her telephone rang, and Thorpe's voice--a voice so associated with all her emotional life that her nerves trembled even before her mind recognized it--was heard saying, "I'm telephoning for Mr. Bing, madam. Mr. Bing would be pleased if you could make it convenient to stop in and see him this afternoon."

"Tell Mr. Bing I'm sorry. I can't," answered Cora promptly. She was not a Hermione to come and go at Thorpe's invitation. And then just to show that she was not spiteful she added, "I hope Mr. Bing is better."

"Yes, madam," said Thorpe, "he's better, but he hasn't thoroughly regained his strength. He tests it every day."

Cora hung up the receiver. Her thought was, "He can't test it on me." She was aware of a certain self-satisfaction in having been able so firmly to refuse, to set her will against Valentine's. In old times she had been weak in yielding to every wish and opinion that he had expressed, until she had almost ceased to be a person. Of course in this case her ability to refuse had been strengthened by the incredible impertinence of allowing Thorpe to be the one to communicate Valentine's invitation. A few minutes later the telephone rang again. This time she let the servant answer it, and when the woman came to her with interested eyes and said that Mr. Bing was on the wire Cora answered without a quaver, "Say I'm out."

But she knew Valentine well enough to know she was not going to get off so easily as that. He kept steadily calling until at last, chance, or perhaps Cora's own wish, directed that he should catch her at the telephone.

He must see her; it was about this new house of hers. Her heart beat so she could hardly breathe, while Valentine ran on as of old:

"It's folly, Cora, absolute folly! Why didn't you consult me before you bought? You can't live there--the railroad on one side and a gas tank on the other. Besides, the railroad is going to enlarge its yards; in two years you'll have switching engines in your drawing-room."

On and on, giving her no chance to answer him, during the ten minutes he kept her at the telephone. Yet when she hung up the receiver she found she had spoken one important word: she had promised to come and see him late the following afternoon. She had made him beg; she had refused to come that day, she had put it off; she had, in fact, teased him as much as was consistent with ultimately agreeing to do what he wanted. Before she did agree the impertinence of Thorpe was explained. Valentine had simply told him to get her on the telephone. Of course he had meant to speak to her himself. Thorpe was an idiot--overzealous. Cora had her own view about that, but she let it pass. Thorpe feared her, and Thorpe knew what was to be feared. He knew that if she once entered that house she might never be allowed to leave it.

"No," she said to herself the next day, as she tried various hats, and with hands that shook a little put on the dangling earrings that Valentine had given her in Madrid, "it will be Thorpe who will leave."

If there was fear in Thorpe's heart he did not betray it when he opened the door and led her upstairs to the library. The room was empty.

"Mr. Bing has been expecting you for sometime, madam," he said.

The slight reproach was agreeable to Cora. She had waited long enough for Valentine in old times, and sometimes he had not turned up at all.

The room was familiar to her. They had not been much in New York during their brief marriage, but she had spent part of the previous winter in this house. She had left her own imprint in the decorations. Valentine used his house as he might use a hotel--asking nothing but that it should be convenient for the purposes of his stay. Cora had been greeted on her first arrival by hideous tasseled gold cushions and imitation Japanese lamp shades; remnants, she believed, of Hermione's taste. She had instantly banished them, and now she saw with pleasure that the shades of her own choosing were still on the lamps. Everything had remained as she had arranged it; he had seen that her way was best. A wood fire was burning on the hearth--not the detestable gas logs which Hermione had left behind her. She found herself wondering for the first time what Hermione had found--what Margaret had left. Then she remembered that Valentine had not bought the house in the simple days of Margaret's reign; he had had a small apartment far uptown and at first Margaret had had no servant.

A wish to know if Valentine had kept a paper cutter she had given him--lapis lazuli, the color of his eyes--made her get up and go to the desk. Yes, it was there, but something else was there, too: an unframed photograph propped against a paper weight--the photograph of a woman.

She bent cautiously to look at it, as one bends to examine the spot where the trembling of the grass suggests the presence of a venomous serpent. It was the picture of a slender woman with heavy dark hair and long slanting eyes, the cruelty of her high cheek bones softened by the sweet drooping curve of her mouth. A terrible and fascinating woman. Then as the light struck across the surface of the picture she saw it was a glossy print for reproduction. It might mean business--a feature for the syndicate--not love.

She was sitting far away from the desk when, a minute or two later, Valentine entered--Valentine a little thinner than before, but no less vital. He greeted her as if they had parted yesterday, or rather he did not greet her at all. He simply began to talk to her as he came into the room. He had a roll of blue prints in his hand.

"Now, my dear girl, these plans of yours--have you thought them over at all?... You practically made them? But don't you see what you've done--sacrificed everything to a patio. A patio--only good for hot weather, when you'll never be here anyhow. The whole comfort of the house arranged for the season you'll be away. They are without exception the most ridiculous plans-- Oh! Yes, I sent down for a copy of them at once. I'm glad I did. If I hadn't--"

"But, Valentine," she interrupted--she knew by experience that you were forced to interrupt Valentine if you wished to speak at all--"it is my house, you know."

"And that's why I want it to be right for you," he answered. "But we'll get it right--never fear."

"It's exactly what I want as it is," she returned, and she heard with a mixture of disgust and fear that the old tone of false determination was creeping into her voice.

"It isn't at all what you want," he said. "You only imagine it is, Cora."

"Valentine, I've thought it all out with the greatest care."

"But it's absurd--you won't like it. Do listen to reason. Don't be obstinate."

Obstinate--the old accusation.

"That's what you always say when I insist on doing anything my own way."

"But your way is wrong. Now just listen to me, my dear girl--"

It was, to the identical phrases, the quarrel of their whole short turbulent married life. He had always made her feel that she was pig-headed and unreasonable not to yield at once to his superior knowledge of her own inmost wishes. The trouble was that the turmoil and the fighting slowly extinguished her own wishes--they weren't changed, they were killed--so that after a little while she was left gallantly defending a corpse; she ceased to care what happened; whereas Valentine's poignant interest grew with each word he uttered--and he uttered a great many--until he seemed to burn with an almost religious conviction that she must not do the thing in the way she wanted to do it.

It always ended the same way: "Now, my dear girl, don't be so obstinate." Was she obstinate? she wondered; and as she wondered Valentine rushed in like an army through a breach in the wall. He was doing it now.

"All I ask," he was saying, "is that you should look at the set of plans I had my man draw--he's a real architect--not a bungalow wizard like that fellow you employed. Now you might at least do that--it isn't much to ask that you should just look at them. Oh, well, you'll see they call for another piece of land, but honestly, Cora, I cannot let you settle on that switching yard, that you picked out--"

She could not refuse to look at his plans; in fact, she was not a little touched by the idea that he had taken such an infinity of trouble for her.

And at this instant Thorpe entered. Valentine shouted at him to get that other roll of plans from his room.

"Yes, sir," said Thorpe, "directly; but the message has come that the steamer is docking and I've sent for a taxi, sir."

Valentine collected himself. "Oh, yes, the steamer," he said, and then he glanced at Cora. "I don't think I'll go to the steamer, Thorpe."

Cora's heart rose; she knew that look, that tone; he did not want to go. She looked at Thorpe; not a muscle of his face had changed, and yet she knew he was in opposition.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Would you have any objection if I went to the dock? I doubt if the princess will understand the American customs without assistance, sir."

There was a little pause.

"The princess?" said Cora.

Valentine waved toward the photograph on the desk. "She's coming--Hungarian princess. Great stuff, if she's as per invoice. I'm sending her to China for the syndicate. Hun to Hun, you know. Good idea, isn't it? Thorpe told me about her. He lived with her uncle when he was ambassador in London; the uncle, you know, not Thorpe--though why not?"

Valentine rose. The recital of the facts in the case of the princess had revived his interest in her.

"I'll just go and grasp her by the hand. We've got her transportation for the Coast this evening, and she may not relish starting at once, unless it's put just right. I'll show her it's the best thing for her to do. Her last cable suggested she wished to linger in New York, but she would enjoy it more on her way back. I'll explain that to her. It won't take a minute. You'll wait, won't you? Stay and dine with me. I'm alone. Or no; I see by Thorpe's face that I have someone to dinner."

"Indeed, you have, sir.'

"Who is it? I don't remember."

"Mrs. Johnson-Bing, sir."

"Oh, Margaret--good old Margaret--so it is." Thorpe and Cora, a little embarrassed for him, averted their eyes, but Valentine was not embarrassed at all. "You have no idea how good she was to me when I was at the hospital. And I wasn't very grateful--out of my head, you know. I thought I ought to tell her-- You'll wait, Cora; just give you time to look over my plans, and when I come back I'll tell you about the land I bought for you. Well, I have an option on it--"