Chapter VI: Book III: XV (1)

Fantastic shapes of heavy leaf-shadows on blinding whiteness. Torrents of blue and lilac and crimson foaming over the branches of unknown trees. Azure distances, snow-peaks, silver reefs, and an unbroken glare of dead-white sunshine merging into a moonlight hardly whiter. Was there never any night, real, black, obliterating, in all these dazzling latitudes in which two desperate women had sought refuge?

They had “travelled.” It had been very interesting; and Anne was better. Certainly she was much better. They were on their way home now, moving at a leisurely pace--what was there to return for?--from one scene of gorgeous unreality to another. And all the while Anne had never spoken--never really spoken! She had simply, a day or two after Mrs. Clephane’s furtive trip to Baltimore, told her mother that her engagement was broken: “by mutual agreement” were the stiff old-fashioned words she used. As no one else, even among their nearest, had been let into the secret of that fleeting bond, there was no one to whom explanations were due; and the girl, her curt confidence to her mother once made, had withdrawn instantly into the rigid reserve she had maintained ever since. Just so, in former days, Kate Clephane had seen old Mrs. Clephane meet calamity. After her favourite daughter’s death the old woman had never spoken her name. And thus with Anne; her soul seemed to freeze about its secret. Even the physical resemblance to old Mrs. Clephane reappeared, and with it a certain asperity of speech, a sharp intolerance of trifles, breaking every now and again upon long intervals of smiling apathy.

During their travels the girl was more than ever attentive to her mother; but her solicitude seemed the result of a lesson in manners inculcated long ago (with the rest of her creed) by old Mrs. Clephane. It was impossible for a creature so young and eager to pass unseeingly through the scenes of their journey; but it was clear that each momentary enthusiasm only deepened the inner pang. And from all participation in that hidden conflict between youth and suffering the mother continued to feel herself shut out.

Nevertheless, she began to imagine that time was working its usual miracle. Anne’s face was certainly less drawn--Anne’s manner perhaps a shade less guarded. Lately she had begun to sketch again ... she had suggested one day their crossing from Rio to Marseilles, continuing their wanderings in the Mediterranean ... had spoken of Egypt and Crete for the winter....

Mrs. Clephane acquiesced, bought guide-books, read up furtively, and tried to temper zeal with patience. It would not do to seem too eager; she held her breath, waiting on her daughter’s moods, and praying for the appearance of the “some one else” whose coming mothers invoke in such contingencies. That very afternoon, sitting on the hotel balcony above a sea of flowers, she had suffered herself to wonder if Anne, who was off on a long riding excursion with a party of young people, might not return with a different look, the clear happy look of the last year’s Anne. The young English planter to whose _hacienda_ they had gone had certainly interested her more than any one they had hitherto met.

The mother, late that evening, was still alone on the balcony when, from behind her, Anne’s shadow fell across the moonlight. The girl dropped into a seat. No, she wasn’t tired--wasn’t hungry--they had supped, on the way back, at a glorious place high up over Rio. Yes, the day had been wonderful; the beauty incredible; and the moonlit descent through the forest.... Anne lapsed into silence, her profile turned from her mother. Perhaps--who could tell? Her silence seemed heavy with promise. Suddenly she put out a hand to Kate.

“Mother, I want to make over all my money to you. It would have been yours if things had been different. It _is_ yours, really; and I don’t want it--I hate it!” Her hand was trembling.

Mrs. Clephane trembled too. “But, Anne--how absurd! What can it matter? What difference can it make?”

“All the difference.” The girl lowered her voice. “It’s because I was too rich that he wouldn’t marry me.” It broke from her in a sob. “I can’t bear it--I can’t bear it!” She stretched her hand to the silver splendours beneath them. “All this beauty and glory in the world--and nothing in me but cold and darkness!”

Kate Clephane sat speechless. She remembered just such flashes of wild revolt in her own youth, when sea and earth and sky seemed joined in a vast conspiracy of beauty, and within her too all was darkness. For months she had been praying for this hour of recovered communion with her daughter; yet now that it had come, now that the barriers were down, she felt powerless to face what was beyond. If it had been any other man! Paralysed by the fact that it was just that one, she continued to sit silent, her hand on Anne’s sunken head.

“Why should you think it’s the money?” she whispered at last, to gain time.

“I know it--I know it! He told Nollie once that nothing would induce him to marry a girl with a fortune. He thought it an impossible position for a poor man.”

“Did he tell _you_ so?”

“Not in so many words. But it was easy to guess. When he wrote to ... to give me back my freedom, he said he’d been mad to think we might marry ... that it was impossible ... there would always be an obstacle between us....” The girl lifted her head, her agonized eyes on her mother’s. “What obstacle could there be but my money?”

Kate Clephane had turned as cold as marble. At the word “obstacle” she stood up, almost pushing the girl from her. In that searching moonlight, what might not Anne read in her eyes?

“Come indoors, dear,” she said.

Anne followed her mechanically. In the high-ceilinged shadowy room Mrs. Clephane sat down in a wooden rocking-chair and the girl stood before her, tall and ghostly in her white linen riding-habit, the dark hair damp on her forehead.

“Come and sit by me, Anne.”

“No. I want you to answer me first--to promise.”

“But, my dear, what you suggest is madness. How can I promise such a thing? And why should it make any difference? Why should any man be humiliated by the fact of marrying a girl with money?”

“Ah, but Chris is different! You don’t know him.”

The mother locked her hands about the chair-arms. She sat looking down at the bare brick floor of the room, and at Anne’s two feet, slim and imperious, planted just before her in an attitude of challenge, of resistance. She did not dare to raise her eyes higher. “_I don’t know him!_” she repeated to herself.

“Mother, answer me--you’ve got to answer me!” The girl’s low-pitched voice had grown shrill; her swaying tall white presence seemed to disengage some fiery fluid. Kate Clephane suddenly recalled the baby Anne’s lightning-flashes of rage, and understood what reserves of violence still underlay her daughter’s calm exterior.

“How can I answer? I know what you’re suffering--but I can’t pretend to think that what you propose would make any difference.”

“You don’t think it was the money?”

Kate Clephane drew a deep breath, and clasped the chair-arms tighter. “No.”

“What _was_ it, then?” Anne had once more sunk on her knees beside her mother. “I can’t bear not to know. I can’t bear it an hour longer,” she gasped out.

“It’s hard, dear ... I know how hard....” Kate put her arms about the shuddering body.

“What shall I do, mother? I’ve written, and he doesn’t answer. I’ve written three times. And yet I know--”

“You know?”

“He _did_ love me, mother.”

“Yes, dear.”

“And there wasn’t any one else; I know that too.”

“Yes.”

“No one else that he cared about ... or who had any claim.... I asked him that before I promised to marry him.”

“Then, dear, there’s nothing more to say--or to do. You can only conclude that he gave you back your freedom because he wanted his.”

“But it was all so quick! How can anybody love one day, and not the next?”

Kate winced. “It does happen so--sometimes.”

“I don’t believe it--not of him and me! And there _was_ the money; I know that. Mother, let me try; let me tell him that you’ve agreed to take it all back; that I shall have only the allowance you choose to make me.”

Mrs. Clephane again sat silent, with lowered head. She had not foreseen this torture.

“Don’t you think, dear, as you’ve written three times and had no answer, that you’d better wait? Better try to forget?”

The girl shook herself free and stood up with a tragic laugh. “You don’t know me either, mother!”

That word was crueller than the other; the mother shrank from it as if she had received a blow.

“I do know that, in such cases, there’s never any remedy but one. If your courage fails you, there’s your pride.”

“My pride? What’s pride, if one cares? I’d do anything to get him back. I only want you to do what I ask!”

Kate Clephane rose to her feet also. Her own pride seemed suddenly to start up from its long lethargy, and she looked almost defiantly at her defiant daughter.

“I can’t do what you ask.”

“You won’t?”

“I can’t.”

“You want me to go on suffering, then? You want to kill me?” The girl was close to her, in a white glare of passion. “Ah, it’s true--why should you care what happens to me? After all, we’re only strangers to each other.”

Kate Clephane’s first thought was: “I mustn’t let her see how it hurts--” not because of the fear of increasing her daughter’s suffering, but to prevent her finding out how she could inflict more pain. Anne, at that moment, looked as if the discovery would have been exquisite to her.

The mother dared not speak; she feared her whole agony would break from her with her first word. The two stood facing each other for a moment; then Mrs. Clephane put her hand out blindly. But the girl turned from it with a fierce “Don’t!” that seemed to thrust her mother still farther from her, and swept out of the room without a look.

XVI.

Anne had decreed that they should return home; and they returned.

The day after the scene at Rio the girl had faltered out an apology, and the mother had received it with a silent kiss. After that neither had alluded to the subject of their midnight talk. Anne was as solicitous as ever for her mother’s comfort and enjoyment, but the daughter had vanished in the travelling companion. Sometimes, during those last weary weeks of travel, Kate Clephane wondered if any closer relation would ever be possible between them. But it was not often that she dared to look ahead. She felt like a traveller crawling along a narrow ledge above a precipice; a glance forward or down might plunge her into the depths.

As they drew near New York she recalled her other return there, less than a year before, and the reckless confidence with which she had entered on her new life. She recalled her first meeting with her daughter, her sense of an instant understanding on the part of each, and the way her own past had fallen from her at the girl’s embrace.

Now Anne seemed remoter than ever, and it was the mother’s past which had divided them. She shuddered at the fatuity with which she had listened to Enid Drover and Fred Landers when they assured her that she had won her daughter’s heart. “She’s taken a tremendous fancy to you--” Was it possible that that absurd phrase had ever satisfied her? But daughters, she said to herself, don’t take a fancy to their mothers! Mothers and daughters are part of each other’s consciousness, in different degrees and in a different way, but still with the mutual sense of something which has always been there. A real mother is just a habit of thought to her children.

Well--this mother must put up with what she had, and make the most of it. Yes; for Anne’s sake she must try to make the most of it, to grope her own way and the girl’s through this ghastly labyrinth without imperilling whatever affection Anne still felt for her. So a conscientious chaperon might have reasoned--and what more had Kate Clephane the right to call herself?

They reached New York early in October. None of the family were in town; even Fred Landers, uninformed of the exact date of their return, was off shooting with Horace Maclew in South Carolina. Anne had wanted their arrival to pass unperceived; she told her mother that they would remain in town for a day or two, and then decide where to spend the rest of the autumn. On the steamer they languidly discussed alternatives; but, from the girl’s inability to decide, the mother guessed that she was waiting for something--probably a letter. “She’s written to him after all; she expects to find the answer when we arrive.”

They reached the house and went upstairs to their respective apartments. Everything in Anne’s establishment was as discreetly ordered as in a club; each lady found her correspondence in her sitting-room, and Kate Clephane, while she glanced indifferently over her own letters, sat with an anguished heart wondering what message awaited Anne.

They met at dinner, and she fancied the girl looked paler and more distant than usual. After dinner the two went to Kate’s sitting-room. Aline had already laid out some of the presents they had brought home: a Mexican turquoise ornament for Lilla, an exotic head-band of kingfishers’ feathers for Nollie, an old Spanish chronicle for Fred Landers. Mother and daughter turned them over with affected interest; then talk languished, and Anne rose and said goodnight.

On the threshold she paused. “Mother, I was odious to you that night at Rio.”

Kate started up with an impulsive gesture. “Oh, my darling, what does that matter? It was all forgotten long ago.”

“I haven’t forgotten it. I’m more and more ashamed of what I said. But I was dreadfully unhappy....”

“I know, dear, I know.”

The girl still stood by the door, clutching the knob in an unconscious hand. “I wanted to tell you that now I’m cured--quite cured.” Her smile was heart-breaking. “I didn’t follow your advice; I wrote to him. I told him--I pretended--that you were going to accept my plan of giving you back the money, and that I should have only a moderate allowance, so that he needn’t feel any inequality ... any sense of obligation....”

Kate listened with lowered head. “Perhaps you were right to write to him.”

“Yes, I was right,” Anne answered with a faint touch of self-derision. “For now I know. It was not the money; he has told me so. I’ve had a letter.”

“Ah--”

“I’m dismissed,” said the girl with an abrupt laugh.

“What do you mean, dear, when you say I was right?”

“I mean that there was another woman.” Anne came close to her, with the same white vehement face as she had shown during their nocturnal talk at Rio.

Kate’s heart stood still. “Another woman?”

“Yes. And you made me feel that you’d always suspected it.”

“No, dear ... really....”

“You _didn’t_?” She saw the terrible flame of hope rekindling in Anne’s eyes.

“Not--not about any one in particular. But of course, with a man ... a man like that....” (Should she go on, or should she stop?)

Anne was upon her with a cry. “_Mother, what kind of a man?_”

Fool that she was, not to have foreseen the consequences of such a slip! She sat before her daughter like a criminal under cross-examination, feeling that whatever word she chose would fatally lead her deeper into the slough of avowal.

Anne repeated her question with insistence. “You knew him before I did,” she added.

“Yes; but it’s so long ago.”

“But what makes you suspect him now?”

“Suspect? I suspect nothing!”

The girl stood looking at her fixedly under dark menacing brows. “I do, then! I wouldn’t allow myself to before; but all the while I knew there was another woman.” Between the sentences she drew short panting breaths, as though with every word speech grew more difficult. “Mother,” she broke out, “the day I went to Baltimore to see him the maid who opened the door didn’t want to let me in because there’d been a woman there two days before who’d made a scene. A scene--that’s what she said! Isn’t it horrible?” She burst into tears.

Kate Clephane sat stupefied. She could not yet grasp the significance of the words her daughter was pouring out, and repeated dully: “You went to Baltimore?” How secret Anne must be, she thought, not only to have concealed her visit at the time, but even to have refrained from any allusion to it during their stormy talk at Rio! How secret, since, even in moments of seeming self-abandonment, she could refrain from revealing whatever she chose to keep to herself! More acutely than ever, the mother had the sense of being at arm’s length from her child.

“Yes, I went to Baltimore,” said Anne, speaking now in a controlled incisive voice. “I didn’t tell you at the time because you were not well. It was just after you came back from Meridia, and had that nervous break-down--you remember? I didn’t want to bother you about my own affairs. But as soon as I got his letter saying the engagement was off I jumped into the first train, and went straight to Baltimore to see him.”

“And you did?” It slipped from Kate irresistibly.

“No. He was away; he’d left. But I didn’t believe it at the time; I thought the maid-servant had had orders not to let me in....” She paused. “Mother, it was too horrible; she took me for the woman who had made the scene. She said I looked just like her.”

Kate gasped: “The negress said so?”

Her question seemed to drop into the silence like a shout; it was as if she had let fall a platter of brass on a marble floor.

“The negress?” Anne echoed.

Kate Clephane sank down into the depths of her chair as if she had been withered by a touch. She pressed her elbows against her side to try to hide the trembling of her body.

“How did you know it was a negress, mother?”

Kate sat helpless, battling with confused possibilities of fear; and in that moment Anne leapt on the truth.

“It was _you_, mother--_you_ were the other woman? You went to see him the day you said you’d been to Meridia?” The girl stood before her now like a blanched Fury.

“I _did_ go to Meridia!” Kate Clephane declared.

“You went to Baltimore too, then. You went to his house; you saw him. You were the woman who made the scene.” Anne’s voice had mounted to a cry; but suddenly she seemed to regain a sense of her surroundings. At the very moment when Kate Clephane felt the flash of the blade over her head it was arrested within a hair’s-breadth of her neck. Anne’s voice sank to a whisper.

“Mother--you did that? It was really you--it was your doing? You’ve always hated him, then? Hated him enough for that?”

Ah, that blessed word--_hated_! When the other had trembled in the very air! The mother, bowed there, her shrunken body drawn in on itself, felt a faint expanding of the heart.

“No, dear; no; not hate,” she stammered.

“But it _was_ you?” She suddenly understood that, all the while, Anne had not really believed it. But the moment for pretense was past.

“I did go to see him; yes.”

“To persuade him to break our engagement?”

“Anne--”

“Answer me, please.”

“To ask him--to try to make him see....”

The girl interrupted her with a laugh. “You made him break our engagement--you did it. And all this time--all these dreadful months--you let me think it was because he was tired of me!” She sprang to her mother and caught her by the wrists. Her hot fingers seemed to burn into Kate’s shivering flesh.

“Look at me, please, mother; no, straight in the eyes. I want to try to find out which of us you hated most; which of us you most wanted to see suffer.”

The mother disengaged herself and stood up. “As for suffering--if you look at me, you’ll see I’ve had my share.”

The girl seemed not to hear. “But why--why--why?” she wailed.

A reaction of self-defence came over Kate Clephane. Anne’s white-heat of ire seemed to turn her cold, and her self-possession returned.

“What is it you want me to tell you? I did go to see Major Fenno--yes. I wanted to speak to him privately; to ask him to reconsider his decision. I didn’t believe he could make you happy. He came round to my way of thinking. That’s all. Any mother would have done as much. I had the right--”

“The right?” Anne shrilled. “What right? You gave up all your rights over me when you left my father for another man!”

Mrs. Clephane rose with uncertain steps, and moved toward the door of her bedroom. On the threshold she paused and turned toward her daughter. Strength had come back to her with the thought that after all the only thing that mattered was to prevent this marriage. And that she might still do.

“The right of a friend, then, Anne. Won’t you even allow me that? You’ve treated me as a friend since you asked me to come back. You’ve trusted me, or seemed to. Trust me now. I did what I did because I knew you ought not to marry Major Fenno. I’ve known him for a great many years. I knew he couldn’t make you happy--make any woman happy. Some men are not meant to marry; he’s one of them. I know enough of his history to know that. And you see he recognized that I was right--”

Anne was still staring at her with the same fixed implacable brows. Then her face broke up into the furrows of young anguish, and she became again a helpless grief-tossed girl, battling blindly with her first sorrow. She flung up her arms, buried her head in them, and sank down by the sofa. Kate watched her for a moment, hesitating; then she stole up and laid an arm about the bowed neck. But Anne shook her off and sprang up.

“No--no--no!” she cried. They stood facing each other, as on that other cruel night.

“You don’t know me; you don’t understand me. What right have you to interfere with my happiness? Won’t you please say nothing more now? It was my own fault to imagine that we could ever live together like mother and daughter. A relation like that can’t be improvised in a day.” She flung a tragic look at her mother. “If you’ve suffered, I suppose it was my fault for asking you to make the experiment. Excuse me if I’ve said anything to hurt you. But you must leave me to manage my life in my own way.” She turned toward the door.

“Goodnight--my child,” Kate whispered.

XVII.

Two days later Fred Landers returned.

Mrs. Clephane had sent a note begging him to call her up as soon as he arrived. When his call came she asked if she might dine with him that night, and he replied that she ought to have come without asking. Anne, he supposed, would honour him too?

No, she answered; Anne, the day before, had gone down to the Drovers’ on Long Island. She would probably be away for a few days. And would Fred please ask no one else to dine? He assured her that such an idea would never have occurred to him.

He received her in the comfortable shabby drawing-room which he had never changed since his mother and an old-maid sister had vanished from it years before. He indulged his own tastes in the library upstairs, leaving this chintzy room, with its many armchairs, the Steinway piano and the family Chippendale, much as Kate had known it when old Mrs. Landers had given her a bridal dinner. The memory of that dinner, and of Mrs. Landers, large, silvery, demonstrative, flashed through Mrs. Clephane’s mind. She saw herself in an elaborately looped gown, proudly followed by her husband, and enclosed in her hostess’s rustling embrace, while her present host, crimson with emotion and admiration, hung shyly behind his mother; and the memory gave her a pang of self-pity.

In the middle of the room she paused and looked about her. “It feels like home,” she said, without knowing what she was saying.

A flush almost as agitated as the one she remembered mounted to Landers’s forehead. She saw his confusion and pleasure, and was remotely touched by them.

“You see, I’m homeless,” she explained with a faint smile.

“Homeless?”

“Oh, I can’t remember when I was ever anything else. I’ve been a wanderer for so many years.”

“But not any more,” he smiled.

The double mahogany doors were thrown open. Landers, with his stiff little bow, offered her an arm, and they passed into a dusky flock-papered dining-room which seemed to borrow most of its lighting from the sturdy silver and monumental cut-glass of the dinner-table. A bunch of violets, compact and massive, lay by her plate. Everything about Fred Landers was old-fashioned, solid and authentic. She sank into her chair with a sense of its being a place of momentary refuge. She did not mean to speak till after dinner--then she would tell him everything she thought. “How delicious they are!” she murmured, smelling the violets.

In the library, after dinner, Landers settled her in his deepest armchair, moved the lamp away, pressed a glass of old Chartreuse on her, and said: “And now, what’s wrong?”

The suddenness and the perspicacity of the question took her by surprise. She had imagined he would leave the preliminaries to her, or at any rate beat about the subject in a clumsy effort to get at it. But she perceived that, awkward and almost timorous as he remained in smaller ways, the mere habit of life had given him a certain self-assurance at important moments. It was she who now felt a tremor of reluctance. How could she tell him--what could she tell him?

“Well, you know, I really _am_ homeless,” she began. “Or at least, in remaining where I am I’m forfeiting my last shred of self-respect. Anne has told me that her experiment has been a mistake.”

“What experiment?”

“Having me back.”

“Is that what she calls it--an experiment?”

Mrs. Clephane nodded.

Fred Landers stood leaning against the mantelpiece, an unlit cigar in his hand. His face expressed perplexity and perturbation. “I don’t understand. What has happened? She seemed to adore you.”

“Yes; as a visitor; a chaperon; a travelling companion.”

“Well--that’s not so bad to begin with.”

“No; but it has nothing on earth to do with the real relation between a mother and daughter.”

“Oh, _that_--”

It was her turn to flush. “You agree with Anne, then, that I’ve forfeited all right to claim it?”

He seemed embarrassed. “What do you mean by claiming it?”

She hesitated a moment; then she began. It was not the story she had meant to tell; she had hardly opened her lips before she understood that it would be as impossible to tell that to Fred Landers as to Anne. For an instant, as he welcomed her to the familiar house, so full of friendly memories, she had had the illusion of nearness to him, the sense of a brotherly reassuring presence. But as she began to speak of Chris every one else in her new life except her daughter became remote and indistinct to her. She supposed it could not be otherwise. She had chosen to cast her lot elsewhere, and now, coming back after so many years, she found the sense of intimacy and confidence irreparably destroyed. What did she really know of the present Fred Landers, or he of her? All she found herself able to say was that when she had heard that Anne meant to marry Chris Fenno she had thought it her duty to try to prevent the marriage; and that the girl had guessed her interference and could not forgive her. She elaborated on this, lingering over the relatively insignificant details of her successive talks with her daughter in the attempt to delay the moment when Landers should begin to question her.

She saw that he was deeply disturbed, but perhaps not altogether sorry. He had never liked Chris, she knew, and the news of the engagement was clearly a shock to him. He said he had seen and heard nothing of Fenno since Anne and her mother had left. Landers, who could not recall that either Horace Maclew or Lilla had ever mentioned him, had concluded that the young man was no longer a member of their household, and probably not even in Baltimore. If he were, Lilla would have been sure to keep her hold on him; he was too useful a diner and dancer to be lost sight of--and much more in Lilla’s line, one would have fancied, than in Anne’s.

Kate Clephane winced at the unconscious criticism. “He gave me his word that he would go,” she said with a faint sigh of relief.

Fred Landers continued to lean meditatively against the chimney-piece.

“You said nothing at all to Anne herself at the time?” he asked, after another interval.

“No. Perhaps I was wrong; but I was afraid to. I felt I didn’t know her well enough--yet.”

Instantly she saw how he would interpret her avowal, and her colour rose again. She must have felt, then, that she knew Major Fenno better; the inference was inevitable.

“You found it easier to speak to Fenno?”

She hesitated. “I cared so much less for what he felt.”

“Of course,” he sighed. “And you knew damaging things about him? Evidently, since he broke the engagement when you told him to.”

Again she faltered. “I knew something of his past life--enough to be sure he wasn’t the kind of husband for Anne. I made him understand it. That’s all.”

“Ah. Well, I’m not surprised. I suspected he was trying for her, and I own I hated the idea. But now I suppose there’s no help for it--”

“No help?” She looked up in dismay.

“Well--is there? To be so savage with you she must be pretty well determined to have him back. How the devil are you going to stop it?”

“I can’t. But _you_--oh, Fred, you must!”--Her eyes clung imploringly to his troubled face.

“But I don’t know anything definite! If there _is_ anything--anything one can really take hold of--you’ll have to tell me. I’ll do all I can; but if I interfere without good reason, I know it will only make Anne more determined. Have you forgotten what the Clephanes are like?”

She had lowered her head again, and sat desolately staring at the floor. With the little wood-fire playing on the hearth, and this honest kindly man looking down at her, how safe and homelike the room seemed! Yet her real self was not in it at all, but blown about on a lonely wind of anguish, outside in the night. And so it would always be, she supposed.

“Won’t you tell me exactly what there is against him?” she heard Landers repeat.

The answer choked in her throat. Finally she brought out: “Oh, I don’t know ... women ... the usual thing.... He’s light....”

“But is it all just hearsay? Or have you proof--proof of any one particular rotten thing?”

“Isn’t his giving up and going away sufficient proof?”

“Not if he comes back now when she sends for him.”

The words shot through her like a stab. “Oh, but she mustn’t--she can’t!”

“You’re fairly sure he will come if she does?”

Kate Clephane put up her hands and pressed them against her ears. She could not bear to hear another question. What had been the use of coming to Fred Landers? He had no help to give her, and his insight had only served to crystallize her hazy terrors. She rose slowly from her armchair and held out her hand with a struggling smile.

“You’re right. I suppose there’s nothing more to do.”

“But you’re not going?”

“Yes; I’m tired. And I want to be by myself--to think. I must decide about my own future.”

“Your own future? Oh, nonsense! Let all this blow over. Wait till Anne comes back. The chief thing, of course, is that you should stay with her, whatever happens.”

She put her hand in his. “Goodbye, Fred. And thank you.”

“I’ll do all I can, you know,” he said, as he followed her down the stairs. “But you mustn’t desert Anne.”

The taxi he had called carried her back to her desolate house.

XVIII.

Her place was beside Anne--that was all she had got out of Fred Landers. And in that respect she was by no means convinced that her instinct was not surer than his, that she was not right in agreeing with her daughter that their experiment had been a failure.

Yet, even if it had, she could not leave Anne now; not till she had made sure there was no further danger from Chris. Ah--if she were once certain of that, it would perhaps be easiest and simplest to go! But not till then.

She did not know when Anne was coming back; no word had come from her. Mrs. Clephane had an idea that the house-keeper knew; but she could not ask the house-keeper. So for another twenty-four hours she remained on, with a curious sense of ghostly unconcern, while she watched Aline unpack her trunks and “settle” her into her rooms for the winter.

It was on the third day that Nollie Tresselton telephoned. She was in town, and asked if she might see Mrs. Clephane at once. The very sound of her voice brought reassurance; and Kate Clephane sat counting the minutes till she appeared.

She had come up from the Drovers’, as Kate had guessed; and she brought an embarrassed message of apology from Anne. “She couldn’t write--she’s too upset. But she’s so sorry for what she said ... for the way she said it. You must try to forgive her....”

“Oh, forgive her--that’s nothing!” the mother cried, her eyes searching the other’s face. But Nollie’s vivid features were obscured by the embarrassment of the message she had brought. She looked as if she were tangled in Anne’s confusion.

“That’s nothing,” Kate Clephane repeated. “I hurt her horribly too--I had to. I couldn’t expect her to understand.”

Mrs. Tresselton looked relieved. “Ah, you do see that? I knew you would! I told her so--” She hesitated, and then went on, with a slight tremor in her voice: “Your taking it in that way will make it all so much easier--”

But she stopped again, and Kate, with a sinking heart, stood up. “Nollie; she wants me to go?”

“No, no! How could you imagine it? She wants you to look upon this house as yours; she has always wanted it.”

“But she’s not coming back to it?”

The younger woman laid a pleading hand on Mrs. Clephane’s arm. “Aunt Kate--you must be patient. She feels she can’t; not now, at any rate.”

“Not now? Then it’s _she_ who hasn’t forgiven?”

“She would, you know--oh, so gladly!--she’d never think again of what’s happened. Only she fears--”

“Fears?”

“Well--that your feeling about Chris is still the same....”

Mrs. Clephane caught at the hand that lay on her arm. “Nollie! She knows where he is? She’s seen him?”

“No; but she means to. He’s been very ill--he’s had a bad time since the engagement was broken. And that makes her feel still more strongly--” The younger woman broke off and looked at Mrs. Clephane compassionately, as if trying to make her understand the hopelessness of the struggle. “Aunt Kate, really ... what’s the use?”

“The use? Where is he, Nollie? Here--now--in New York?”

Mrs. Tresselton was silent; the pity in her gaze had turned to a guarded coolness. Of course Nollie couldn’t understand--never would! Of course they were all on Anne’s side. Kate Clephane stood looking helplessly about her. The memory of old scenes under that same roof--threats, discussions, dissimulations and inward revolts--arose within her, and she felt on her shoulders the whole oppression of the past.

“Don’t think,” Nollie continued, her expression softening, “that Anne hasn’t tried to understand ... to make allowances. The boy you knew must have been so different from the Major Fenno we all like and respect--yes, respect. He’s ‘made good’, you see. It’s not only his war record, but everything since. He’s worked so hard--done so well at his various jobs--and Anne’s sure that if he had the chance he would make himself a name in the literary world. All that naturally makes it more difficult for her to understand your objection--or your way of asserting it.”

Mrs. Clephane lifted imploring eyes to her face. “I don’t expect Anne to understand; not yet. But you must try to, Nollie; you must help me.”

“I want to, Aunt Kate.” The young woman stood before her, affectionately perplexed. “If there’s anything ... anything really wrong ... you ought to tell me.”

“I _do_ tell you,” Kate panted.

“Well--what is it?”

Silence fell--always the same silence. Kate glanced desperately about the imprisoning room. Every panel and moulding of its walls, every uncompromising angle or portly curve of its decorous furniture, seemed equally leagued against her, forbidding her, defying her, to speak.

“Ask Fred Landers,” she said, at bay.

“But I have; I saw him on my way here. And he says he doesn’t know--that you wouldn’t explain.”

“Why should I have to explain? I’ve said Major Fenno ought not to marry Anne. I’ve known him longer than any of you. Isn’t it likely that I know him better?”

The words came from her precipitate and shrill; she felt she was losing all control of her face and voice, and lifted her handkerchief to her lips to hide their twitching.

“Aunt Kate--!” Nollie Tresselton gasped it out on a new note of terror; then she too fell silent, slowly turning her eyes away.

In that instant Kate Clephane saw that she had guessed, or if not, was at least on the point of guessing; and fresh alarm possessed the mother. She tried to steady herself, to raise new defences against this new danger. “Some men are not meant to marry: they’re sure to make their wives unhappy. Isn’t that reason enough? It’s a question of character. In those ways, I don’t believe character ever changes. That’s all.”

“That’s all.” The word was said. She had been challenged again, and had again shrunk away from the challenge.

Nollie Tresselton drew a deep breath of relief. “After knowing him so well as a boy, you naturally don’t want to say anything more; but you think they’re unsuited to each other.”

“Yes--that’s it. You do see?”

The younger woman considered; then she took Mrs. Clephane by the hand. “I do see. And I’ll try to help--to persuade Anne to put off deciding. Perhaps after she’s seen him it will be easier....”

Nollie was again silent, and Mrs. Clephane understood that, whatever happened, the secret of Chris’s exact whereabouts was to be kept from her. She thought: “Anne’s afraid to have me meet him again,” and there was a sort of fierce satisfaction in the thought.

Nollie was gathering up her wrap and hand-bag. She had to get back to Long Island, she said; Kate understood that she meant to return to the Drovers’. As she reached the door a last impulse of avowal seized the older woman. What if, by giving Nollie a hint of the truth, she could make sure of her support and thus secure Anne’s safety? But what argument against the marriage would be more efficacious on Nollie’s lips than on her own? One only--the one that no one must ever use. The terror lest Nollie, possessed of that truth, and sickened by it, should after all reveal it in a final effort to prevent the marriage, prevailed over Mrs. Clephane’s other fears. Once Nollie knew, Anne would surely get to know; the horror of that possibility sealed the mother’s lips.

Nollie, from the threshold, still looked at her wistfully, expectantly, as if half-awaiting the confession; but Mrs. Clephane held out her hand without a word.

* * * * *

“I must find out where he is.” It was Kate’s first thought after the door had closed on her visitor. If he were in New York--and he evidently was--she, Kate Clephane, must run him down, must get speech with him, before he had been able to see her daughter.

But how was she to set about it? Fred Landers did not even know if he were still with Horace Maclew or not--for the mere fact of Maclew’s not alluding to him while they were together meant nothing, less than nothing. And even if he had left the Maclews, the chances were that Lilla knew where he was, and had already transmitted Anne’s summons.

Mrs. Clephane consulted the telephone book, but of course in vain. Then, after some hesitation, she rang up Horace Maclew’s house in Baltimore. No one was there, but she finally elicited from the servant who answered the telephone that Mrs. Maclew was away on a motor trip. Perhaps Mr. Maclew could be reached at his country-place.... Kate tried the country-place, but Mr. Maclew had gone to Chicago.

The sense of loneliness and helplessness closed in on her more impenetrably than ever. Night came, and Aline reminded her that she had asked to have her dinner brought up on a tray. Solitary meals in John Clephane’s dining-room were impossible to her.

“I don’t want any dinner.”

Aline’s look seemed to say that she knew why, and her mistress hastily emended: “Or just some bouillon and toast. Whatever’s ready--”

She sat down to it without changing her dress. Every gesture, every act, denoting intimacy with that house, or the air of permanence in her relation to it, would also have been impossible. Again she had the feeling of sitting in a railway station, waiting for a train to come in. But now she knew for what she was waiting.

At the close of her brief meal Aline entered briskly with fruit and coffee. Her harsh face illuminated with curiosity, she handed her mistress a card. “The gentleman is downstairs. He hopes Madame will excuse the hour.” Her tone seemed to imply: “Madame, in this case, will excuse _everything_!” and Kate cast a startled glance at the name.

He had come to her, then--had come of his own accord! She felt dizzy with relief and fear. Fear uppermost--yes; was she not always afraid of him?

XIX.

Chris Fenno stood in the drawing-room. The servant who received him had turned on a blast of lamps and wall-lights, and in the hard overhead glare he looked drawn and worn, like a man recovering from severe illness. His clothes, too, Kate fancied, were shabbier; everything in his appearance showed a decline, a defeat.

She had not much believed in his illness when Nollie spoke of it; the old habit of incredulity was too strong in her. But now his appearance moved her. She felt herself responsible, almost guilty. But for her folly, she thought, he might have been standing before her with a high head, on easy terms with the world.

“You’ve been ill!” she exclaimed.

His gesture brushed that aside. “I’m well now, thanks.” He looked her in the face and added: “May we have a few minutes’ talk?”

She faltered: “If you think it necessary.” Inwardly she had already begun to tremble. When his blue eyes turned to that harsh slate-gray, and the two perpendicular lines deepened between his brows, she had always trembled.

“You’ve made it necessary,” he retorted, his voice as harsh as his eyes.

“I?”

“You’ve broken our compact. It’s not my doing. I stuck to my side of it.” He flung out the short sentences like blows.

Her heart was beating so wildly that she could not follow what he said. “What do you mean?” she stammered.

“That you agreed to help me if I gave up Anne. God knows what your idea of helping me was. To me it meant only one thing: your keeping quiet, keeping out of the whole business, and trusting me to carry out my side of the bargain--as I did. I broke our engagement, chucked my job, went away. And you? Instead of keeping out of it, of saying nothing, you’ve talked against me, insinuated God knows what, and then refused to explain your insinuations. You’ve put me in such a position that I’ve got to take back my word to you, or appear to your daughter and your family as a man who has run away because he knew he couldn’t face the charge hanging over him.”

It was only in the white-heat of anger that he spoke with such violence, and at such length; he seemed spent, and desperately at bay, and the thought gave Kate Clephane courage.

“Well--_can_ you face it?” she asked.

His expression changed, as she had so often seen it change. From menace it passed to petulance and then became almost pleading in its perplexity. She said to herself: “It’s the first time I’ve ever been brave with him, and he doesn’t know how to take it.” But even then she felt the precariousness of the advantage. His ready wit had so often served him instead of resolution. It served him now.

“You do mean to make the charge, then?” he retorted.

She stood silent, feeling herself defeated, and at the same time humiliated that their angry thoughts should have dragged them down to such a level.

“Don’t sneer--” she faltered.

“Sneer? At what? I’m in dead earnest--can’t you see it? You’ve ruined me--or very nearly. I’m not speaking now of my feelings; that would make _you_ sneer, probably. At any rate, this is no time for discussing them. I’m merely putting my case as a poor devil who has to earn his living, a man who has his good name to defend. On both counts you’ve done me all the harm you could.”

“I had to stop this marriage.”

“Very well. I agreed to that. I did what I’d promised. Couldn’t you let it alone?”

“No. Because Anne wouldn’t. She wanted to ask you to come back. She saw I couldn’t bear it--she suspected me of knowing something. She insisted.”

“And you sacrificed my good name rather--”

“Oh, I’d sacrifice anything. You’d better understand that.”

“I do understand it. That’s why I’m here. To tell you I consider that what you’ve done has freed me from my promise.”

She stretched out her hands as if to catch him back. “Chris--no, stay! You can’t! You can’t! You know you can’t!”

He stood leaning against the chimney-piece, his arms crossed, his head a little bent and thrust forward, in the attitude of sullen obstinacy that she knew so well. And all at once in her own cry she heard the echo of other cries, other entreaties. She saw herself in another scene, stretching her arms to him in the same desperate entreaty, with the same sense of her inability to move him, even to reach him. Her tears overflowed and ran down.

“You don’t mean you’ll tell her?” she whispered.

He kept his dogged attitude. “I’ve got to clear myself--somehow.”

“Oh, don’t tell her, don’t tell her! Chris, don’t tell her!”

As the cry died on her lips she understood that, in uttering it, she had at last cast herself completely on his mercy. For it was not impossible that, if other means failed, he would risk justifying himself to Anne by revealing the truth. There were times when he was reckless enough to risk anything. And if Kate were right in her conjecture--if he had the audacity he affected--then his hold over her was complete, and he knew it. If any one else told Anne, the girl’s horror would turn her from him at once. But what if he himself told her? All this flashed on Kate Clephane in the same glare of enlightenment.

There was a long silence. She had sunk into a chair and hidden her face in her hands. Presently, through the enveloping cloud of her misery, she felt his nearness, and a touch on her shoulder.

“Kate--won’t you try to understand; to listen quietly?”

She lifted her eyes and met his fugitively. They had lost their harshness, and were almost frightened. “I was angry when I came here--a man would be,” he continued. “But what’s to be gained by our talking to each other in this way? You were awfully kind to me in old times; I haven’t forgotten. But is that a reason for being so hard on me now? I didn’t bring this situation on myself--you’re my witness that I didn’t. But here it is; it’s a fact; we’ve got to face it.”

She lowered her eyes and voice to whisper painfully: “To face Anne’s love for you?”

“Yes.”

“Her determination--?”

“Her absolute determination.”

His words made her tremble again; there had always been moments when his reasonableness alarmed her more than his anger, because she knew that, to be so gentle, he must be certain of eventually gaining his point. But she gathered resolution to say: “And if I take back my threats, as you call them? If I take back all I’ve said--‘clear’ you entirely? That’s what you want, I understand? If I promise that,” she panted, “will you promise too--promise me to find a way out?”

His hand fell from her shoulder, and he drew back a step. “A way out--now? But there isn’t any.”

Mrs. Clephane stood up. She remembered wondering long ago--one day when he had been very tender--how cruel Chris could be. The conjecture, then, had seemed whimsical, almost morbid; now she understood that she had guessed in him from the outset this genius for reaching, at the first thrust, to the central point of his antagonist’s misery.

“You’ve seen my daughter, then?”

“I’ve seen her--yes. This morning. It was she who sent me here.”

“If she’s made up her mind, why did she send you?”

“To tell you how she’s suffering. She thinks, you know--” He wavered again for a second or two, and then brought out: “She’s very unhappy about the stand you take. She thinks you ought to say something to ... to clear up....”

“What difference will it make, if she means to marry you?”

“Why--the immense difference of her feeling for _you_. She’s dreadfully hurt ... she’s very miserable....”

“But absolutely determined?”

Again he made an embarrassed gesture of acquiescence.

Kate Clephane stood looking about the rich glaring room. She felt like a dizzy moth battering itself to death against that implacable blaze. She closed her lids for an instant.

“I shall tell her, then; I shall tell her the truth,” she said suddenly.

He stood in the doorway, his hard gaze upon her. “Well, tell her--do tell her; if you want never to see her again,” he said.

XX.

He must have been very sure of her not acting on his final challenge, or he would not have dared to make it. That was the continuous refrain of Kate Clephane’s thoughts as the train carried her down to Long Island the next morning.

“He’s convinced I shall never tell her; but what if I do?” The thought sustained her through the long sleepless night, and gave her the strength and clearness of mind to decide that she must at once see Anne, however little her daughter might desire the meeting. After all, she still had that weapon in her depleted armoury: she could reveal the truth.

At the station she found one of the Drover motors, and remembered with a start that it was a Saturday, and that she would probably come upon a large house-party at her sister-in-law’s. But to her relief she learned that the motor had only brought a departing visitor to the up-train. She asked to be driven back in it, and in a few moments was rolling between the wrought-iron gates and down the long drive to the house. The front door stood open, and she went into the hall. The long oak tables were so laden with golf-sticks, tennis racquets and homespun garments that she saw she had been right in guessing she would encounter a houseful. But it was too late to turn back; and besides, what did the other people matter? They might, if they were numerous enough, make it easier for her to isolate herself with Anne.

The hall seemed empty; but as she advanced she saw a woman’s figure lazily outstretched in a deep armchair before the fire. Lilla Maclew rose from the chair to greet her.