Chapter IX: Part THREE: Aspirations (3)

Milly hated it, instinctively. Jack must paint no more such pictures for love or for money, if their life were not to end in disaster. Did he know what he had done with this Russian woman?... Where were they, anyway?

She looked up at the silent _manoir_. The green blinds were drawn to shut out the western sun. Milly knew the long, high room with its timbered ceiling which Madame Saratoff had restored and furnished in English style, and where, for the most part, she lived. The two were there together now--she was sure of it. A new and fiercer emotion swept Milly towards the house: she would discover them in their shame, in their cruel selfishness. But she stopped on the stairs, suffocated by her passion. She felt their presence just above her with a physical sense of pain, but she lacked the strength to go forward. A terrible sense of weakness in face of her defeat made her tremble. Her heart was broken, she said; what mattered it now what they did. She had no doubts: all was revealed as if she saw them in each other's arms. No man could have discovered the secret of a woman's inmost being, if she had not voluntarily yielded to him the key....

After a time she left the place, slipped out through the garden-gate into the green field behind the _manoir_ and wandered unseeingly along the hedge, and at length flung herself down on the ground, sobbing. She was alone, so utterly alone. The one in whose hands she had put her whole life had betrayed her and deserted her. It was worse than death. They were there in that dim, silent room, in the utmost intimacy, and she lay here outside, robbed and abandoned.... She rose to get farther away from the place, when she heard steps approaching on the other side of the hedge. Kneeling close to the ground, she could see through the thick roots of the hedge and watch the two as they came up the lane. It was her husband and the Russian woman. They were not closeted in the house. She had been wrong. They had been for a stroll after his work, and were coming back now for their tea, silently and companionably, side by side. For the merest moment Milly had a sense of relief: it might not be true what her heart had said, after all. But almost at once she knew that it made no difference just what their relations were or had been.

She could read their faces as they came slowly towards her,--the Russian woman's slanting glance from covered eyes of hateful content as she looked at the artist. The "one who eats what she wants!"... They walked very slowly, as if full of thoughts and weary with the day. Bragdon's head was high, his glance fell far off across the fields, his mind intent on something within, his brow slightly contracted as in stern resolve. He was pale, and he seemed to his wife older, much older than she remembered. He was a man, not the careless boy she had married so many, many years ago, and her heart tightened anew with intolerable pain.... His glance fell to the expectant face of his companion, and both smiled with profound intimacy as at a meeting where words are needless.... Milly's hand grasped the prickly vines of the hedge, and she held herself still until they had passed. No, it made no difference to her now what they thought or did. She knew.

She fled. She heard her name faintly through the din of rushing blood in her ears, but she stumbled across the field out into the lane, towards the sea. There followed the most atrocious hour Milly was ever to know in her life, while she wandered aimlessly to and fro on the lonely beach. Her marriage was over--that thought returned like a mournful chant in the storm of blind feeling. Latterly she had come to take her husband as a matter of course, as a part of the married life of a woman. Though she had said to Nettie Gilbert, "I'm as much in love with Jack as when I married him," and believed it, she hadn't been. But now that another had dared to take her husband from her, if only for a few days or hours, she was outraged. She persistently focussed her whole anguish upon this foreign creature with her vampire mouth, though she might know in the depth of her heart that her quarrel was not with the Russian or any woman, but with fate.... She kept repeating to herself,--"He doesn't love me any longer. He loves her--_her_!... He will be hers now--for a time. They are all like that,--artists. It's _bourgeois_ to love one woman always." So Womanhood from the beginning of time seemed outraged in her person.

Had she not joyfully "given up everything for him," as all women did for the men they loved? (Even her worldly prospects when she married the penniless artist began to seem to her brighter than they really had been.) Had she not, at any rate, given _herself_ to him, first, and always, and only? And borne him a child in pain and danger? What more could woman do? He was her debtor for eternity, as every man was to the woman who gave herself to him. And four years had barely passed before another one plucked him easily from her side!... Women were cheated always in the game of life because of their hearts, fated unfairly in the primal scheme of things. Marion Reddon knew--she probably had had _her_ experiences. But at least she had the child.

On that note her heart became centred, and she hurried back to the hotel and began aimlessly to gather her clothes together and throw them into the trunks. She must take her child and leave at once. She did not want to see him again.... But where should she go--how? Jack always arranged everything for her: she couldn't even make out a time-table or buy a railroad ticket. Marriage had made her dependent--she would have to learn.

At this moment Bragdon entered the room. His face still wore the stern expression she had noted, which gave him the look of age.

"What are you doing?" he demanded abruptly.

"Don't you see--packing!"

"What for?... I've cabled home for more money--I'm going to stay here and paint."

She thought swiftly to herself that the Other had persuaded him to do what he had refused to do for her. She made no reply, but continued to put things blindly into the trunk.

XI

CRISIS

When two human beings--above all when man and wife--meet at such tense moments, one of Virgil's beneficent clouds should descend upon them, hiding all, and they should be wafted apart to remote places, there to abide until once more a sense of the proportion and the harmony in this mundane system has taken possession of them, and they have become, if not gods and goddesses, at least reasonable human beings. The least the historian can do under the circumstances is to imitate Virgil and draw a merciful veil between the cruel battle-field and all profane eyes. The more so as few of the hot words then uttered, the sharp agony displayed, the giving and the baring of wounds have any real effect upon the result. What is done counts, and that is about all, always.

It might be that afterwards Milly derived some deeper understanding of herself, of her husband, and of the married way of life from the agony she then experienced. It might be that the young artist, headstrong in his first triumphant mastery, the first achievement of his whole being, entertained, for some moments at least, the idea of cutting the knot then and there and taking his freedom which he had surrendered at the altar, choosing what might seem to him then spiritual life instead of prolonged death. The blood was in his head, the scent of delirious deeds which he knew now that he could do. But he was an honest and loyal young American, no matter what he had done: he could not hesitate long. One glance at the sleeping form of his small child, dependent upon him for the best in life, probably settled the matter.

In the calm of the still night it _was_ settled--and by him.

* * * * *

The little colony of the Hotel du Passage were genuinely concerned over the hurried departure of the Bragdons, who were much liked. All--but one--were at the pier that September morning to wish them farewell and good luck and much happiness. It was understood that family matters had recalled them unexpectedly to the States. Too bad! Bragdon was a promising chap, the great painter pronounced at _déjeuner_,--willing to work, intelligent, with his own ideas. Had any one seen Madame Saratoff's portrait? He had kept very quiet about that--perhaps it had not come off. Well, he needed years of hard work, which he wouldn't get in America, worse luck. With a sigh he went to his day's task of completing the thirty-seventh edition of the well-known landscape,--"Beside the Bay at Klerac," with a fresh variation of four colored sails on the horizon instead of three....

And meanwhile the slow train to Paris was carrying a man, who having climbed his hill and looked upon the promised land from afar, must turn his back for the present upon all its glories and await Opportunity.

XII

"COME HOME"

It is a long and tiresome journey in a second-class compartment from the farther end of Brittany to Paris, even under the best of circumstances. To Jack Bragdon and Milly, with the vivid memory of their personal wreck on that rocky coast, it was monotonously painful. They dared not ask each other,--"What next?" At first Milly thought there could be no next, though she was really glad not to be making this journey alone with her child, as she had expected to do. To the man who sat in the opposite corner with closed eyes and set lips, it seemed to matter little for the present what the next step was to be.

Happily an impersonal fate settled this for them. Bragdon found at the bankers in Paris an answer to his appeal for funds. The curt cable read, without the aid of code,--"Come Home." Probably that would have been the wisest thing to do in any case. But it would have meant a hard struggle with himself to turn his back so quickly upon the promised land of accomplishment. Now it was beyond his power to do otherwise, unless he were willing to force Milly and the child to starve on what he could make. If that had ever been possible, it surely was not any longer.

So with the last of the hoard he bought their tickets, and all three sailed for New York on the next steamer.