Chapter III: Book I: The Reaping (3)

There was a rumor that White had quarrelled with him about Margaret, that Margaret had herself openly dismissed him, that he was vexed at the loss of the Cabinet place; in short, the usual crop of idle ingenious stories which spring up in the height of a winter season, like a growth of noxious weeds, were in full bloom and strength.

Fox was watching the slow progress of an important bill through the lower House, and busily engaged at the same moment on the Naval Appropriation Bill in which White was intimately concerned, and which offered a wide scope for the surmises of those who were watching the two men. It was an open question whether Fox intended to thwart the Secretary of the Navy or to support his effort to get a larger appropriation. Conscious of the scrutiny to which he was subjected, Fox worked on, with an enigmatical smile, and betrayed nothing of his thoughts or his position.

It was late one Thursday afternoon and he had been speaking on an important matter for more than an hour, endeavoring to close up a question which threatened to be of international significance, and, thoroughly fagged, he finally left the floor of the House amid a tremendous outburst of applause. As usual the galleries had been packed to hear him, and he managed to make his way out with many delays, stopped on all sides by members and personal friends, eager to congratulate him on another great speech.

Once out of the lobby, he was crossing the corridor on his way to a committee-room when he heard his name spoken, and turned, to see Margaret detach herself from a party of fashionables who had been in the Diplomatic Gallery, and come toward him. As they met he was immediately aware of the change in her that a few weeks of absence had made sharply apparent. She was extremely pale and her eyes seemed abnormally large and shining under the brim of her immense picture hat, her elaborate dress only accentuating the slightness of her figure. She held out her hand without smiling. “I want to speak to you,” she said, almost with an air of command, “where can we go?”

He turned, hesitating a moment as to some suitable spot, arrested by the thought that Margaret’s presence there or anywhere, alone with him, would be so much fuel to the fire.

But she solved the problem for him. “Come outside,” she said; “it’s heavenly on the terrace, the sun is setting. Besides, I can’t breathe here in these corridors--heavens, where do they get their tobacco?”

“Not where you buy your Egyptians,” Fox laughed.

She shrugged her shoulders. “The doctor says I mustn’t smoke any more,” she said, “but I shall.”

“The doctor?” Fox cast a startled glance at her white face; “what’s the matter, Margaret?”

“A cigarette heart, I suppose!” she replied laughing, and then as the smile died on her lips an expression of dull misery fell like a veil over her features.

They had crossed the Rotunda together and gone out by the same door where Allestree had waited months before. As they emerged upon the terrace they were enfolded in a radiant atmosphere, the sun was setting, and the whole western façade of the Capitol, the fluted columns of the loggia before the old library rooms, the long rows of shining windows, the magnificent arch of the dome, were bathed in the glowing light which seemed to flood the world. There was still a little snow on the sheltered slopes of the terrace and under the trees, but the promise of spring was in the air and in the deep blue of the sky above them. Margaret stopped abruptly and stood looking down at the panorama at their feet; absorbed in her own emotions, she did not immediately perceive the expression of her companion’s face; it was one of extreme reluctance, of reserve, almost of resentment. He had a man’s hatred of a scene, of being “talked about,” and he knew that such a circumstance as their tête-à-tête at such a time could scarcely escape unnoticed. He was annoyed and disturbed, but for once she was blind to those potent signs.

Keen as Margaret’s perceptions were, she shared with other women the passionate blindness to change in another when her own heart was clamoring to be satisfied; her vision was warped by one aspect of it all; she remembered those moments, long past, of comradeship and sympathy and passion on his part; she remembered and she refused to believe that change was even possible.

The silence for a moment was almost oppressive, then she spoke without trusting herself to meet his eyes. “You have refused two invitations to dinner, and you have quite deserted my evenings and my Sundays,” she said in a low voice.

Slightly embarrassed he began some conventional excuse, but she lifted her hand with a peremptory little gesture. “I know--I quite understand,” she said; “Wicklow has behaved abominably but--am I to suffer, too?”

“My dear Margaret,” he replied, without too deep emotion, “such a possibility is absurd!”

She looked up, searching his face, and her smile was the shadow of itself, pale and suddenly controlled. “You do not mean to accept his hospitality again?” she said, with an effort.

He was deeply annoyed; why must she force this issue upon him? He was capable, at times, of extreme hardness toward others. To-day she was unfortunate enough to jar upon him, to recall too sharply White’s conduct. “I’m not prepared to say,” he replied with some impatience; “can’t we avoid the subject? Tell me of yourself, Margaret, you look tired and pale.”

She bit her lip, a sudden color refuting his charge. “I am very well,” she replied coldly; “I danced until two o’clock this morning; at eleven I received a delegation of Wicklow’s jackdaws; at two I lunched with Madame de Caillou--she is so diplomatic that she only discusses generalities and parrots; she has three--M. de Caillou not included; he belongs to the poodle class. At four I came here with Mrs. O’Neal and Lily Osborne; I give a dinner to-night and then go to the opera. It is much the same to-morrow. Have you a cigarette, William?”

He opened his case and she selected one and lit it; Fox was not smoking. “I presume that it will be in the newspapers to-morrow that I was seen with a cigarette on the terrace talking to the next President,” she remarked dryly; “I mean you to be the candidate,” she added, “Wicklow is playing for it but--” she laughed, blowing the cigarette smoke into rings before her face.

“He will probably be nominated,” Fox rejoined easily; “he has a large following; I shall like to see you in that rôle, Margaret.”

“To see me?” she shrugged her shoulders; “my dear William, do you happen to know what Lily Osborne is doing?”

He laughed. “Ask me something easier!”

Margaret stopped in her promenade and looked out over the city; it seemed to float in a golden mirage, all commonplaceness, all familiarity lost in the radiance of the western sky, against which, here and there, a cross-crowned spire thrust its slender, tapering height, or a campanile rose, dark and sharply pictured, above shining roofs. Far off the bells were ringing, sweetly and insistently, an evening chime.

“She is using Wicklow to attain her ends,” Margaret said, a little mocking smile on her pale face; “he is dull and infatuated. I am told she’s in Russian employ and there is information, plenty of it, in his reach. You mark my words, she’ll ruin him--he’ll never be a candidate.”

Fox frowned. “Pardon me,” he said abruptly; “I cannot listen.”

She tossed her cigarette over the terrace and watched it descend, a mere spark in the dusk below, where evening lay in purple shadows. “Forgive me,” she returned lightly, “I forgot--men are such conscientious creatures and I--I’m an unscrupulous wretch, but I’m not cruel, William!”

“Nor I!” he replied, with a slight change of color, “but, Margaret, can’t you see how impossible--”

She laughed bitterly. “I’m very dull,” she remarked.

A shuddering recognition of some new, terrible barrier between them tore her heart. She held out her hand. “Good-by,” she said in a low voice, “I’m going to ask you to dine again--will you come?” her feverishly glowing eyes fixed themselves on his face.

Fox colored again, conscious that he must seem an ill-mannered brute. “Of course I’ll come,” he assented, vexed at himself and touched by the sudden sweetness of her manner.

But her smile was wan; she felt as if the universe moved beneath her feet; as yet the moment was delayed when her wounded heart would refuse to submit, and her whole passionate, sensuous nature rise up to battle for life and love.

VIII

ROSE let the bridle lie loosely on her horse’s neck as they halted at the elbow of the path. Rock Creek, leaping over its gray boulders and flowing between them with little swirls of foam, comes rushing madly past, slips under the trailing branches of a weeping birch and suddenly widening, hushes its tumult and drops placidly below the ford, where, in summer, in a wide shallow basin, the swan and the little white ducks lie. The scene was wild; the untouched forest rose behind them, its bare gray limbs against the sky, the black green of an occasional spruce or cedar breaking the monotony above the brown-leafed earth and closing the long vistas of stripped tree trunks which stand on the shoulder of the hill in serried ranks in the teeth of the north wind, like soldiers, with their faces to the foe. Below, the stream gurgled and murmured; on the farther bank the dense growth of young maples showed here and there a scarlet bud. The air was sweet, redolent with fresh pine and the promise of the spring; overhead the crows were flying by twos and tens and twenties, lost at last in the soft blue distance.

Fox, who was riding with Rose, dismounted and turning back the dead leaves on a sunny slope found a single spray of arbutus. She uttered a little exclamation of pleasure, holding out her hand.

He laughed. “When I was a boy I always found the first wild flowers,” he said; “I knew just where the blood-root grew and the anemone. Since then I’ve been making speeches at the primaries and getting votes for my party. There’s no comparison between the two pursuits!”

She had the arbutus in her hand and gave him a challenging glance; she began to understand him better, but her convictions were too strong to be subdued. “You mean that you’ve given up your life for politics, just to be a part of a machine?”

He assented, still smiling as he remounted, and the horses moved on at a walk.

“I can’t see why you think it noble to be merely a politician,” she persisted.

“Am I?” his amused eyes met hers.

“Yes!” she retorted, “a statesman is above his party, before it; he guides, moves, sways it. You like to call yourself part of a machine! You don’t vote against a bill which concerns the party--that’s being a politician!”

“But I can’t betray my party,” he objected, unmoved.

“You should be independent of it.”

“You can’t judge,” he argued, with his teasing laugh, “your coat is of another color.”

“Well, at least it isn’t Joseph’s!” she exclaimed vexed.

“You think I can’t be trusted?” He pursued the subject with a boyish enjoyment of her red cheek and kindling eye.

“I didn’t mean that--of course party men can be honest, but I don’t call it the highest honesty to vote against your own convictions for any party.”

“Yet that is what I did on a bill the other day,” mused Fox, “because the party opposed it.”

“Was it a good bill?”

“Excellent.”

“And you voted against it when you believed in it?” indignantly.

“I’m the guilty creature,” he replied, laughter in his eyes but his face sober.

Rose bit her lip.

“You see it’s a bad moment to make a split in the party; next year is the Presidential campaign,” he continued provokingly.

She could not restrain her indignation. “Aren’t you ashamed to go against your own conscience for that?” she cried; “it isn’t worthy of you.”

“Then you think better things of me?” he argued softly, “you see a chance for my redemption?”

She looked up and met his glance fully but with a sudden feeling of confusion. “It is because you are meant for so much greater things that I speak,” she said finally; “I think you will be a greater man than you are now at last.”

His manner softened at once, with that subtle gentleness which no man knew better how to use. “Your belief should make me so!” he said gravely; “a man might accomplish much to justify your belief in him!”

She averted her face, her lip trembling. Around her the woodland seemed suddenly transfigured, the tumult of the stream, breaking here in little cataracts, scarcely leaped more wildly than her pulses; before them the long road narrowed in a beautiful perspective where trailing branches locked their spectral arms and the evergreen honeysuckle hung on gray rocks.

Fox leaned forward in his saddle, trying to meet her eyes, but seeing only the soft curve of her cheek and throat. “Will you try to believe in me?” he asked, with that new sweetness of tone which took the sting out of his jests.

But she had touched her horse lightly and he shot ahead, trotting down the long road, his rider swaying and bending slightly to avoid an occasional sweeping bough. Fox followed quickly, and overtaking her, the two horses galloped together while their riders relapsed for a while into a significant silence.

“Did you know that my portrait is nearly finished?” Rose said at last; “I think that Robert has painted it out and in again just five times.”

“It isn’t in the least like you,” retorted Fox sharply, “he has made a failure.”

“Oh, no, every one likes it!” protested Rose.

“Not at all,” said Fox; more calmly; “I don’t--neither does Allestree.”

“He has too high a standard for his work,” she replied laughing, “but I hoped you liked it.”

“No picture of you could ever please me,” he retorted significantly; “when I shut my eyes I can still see your face. Allestree’s wits have been wool-gathering; he has made an image, nothing more--he--”

Rose interrupted laughing. “Please don’t tell father; he likes it, and Mrs. Vermilion was so pleased that she and Mr. Vermilion have ordered life-sized portraits of the entire family, _en masse_ and singly; Robert’s fortune is made.”

“The Vermilions are parvenus,” said Fox, with a shrug; “poor Bob!”

“And why poor Bob?” she objected lightly; “it seems to me the greatest good fortune.”

“Does it?” Fox looked down at the creek musingly; “and yet I say, ‘poor Bob.’”

She colored, scarcely conscious of the cause of her blush, unless Fox’s dreamy sympathy for Allestree touched a responsive chord in her own bosom when she remembered how lightly she had thought of him and his unspoken but candid devotion to her; a little thing, a word, a gesture reproached her with ingratitude, for how easily she had passed over all those years and forgotten Allestree in the charm of his cousin’s presence! Then she remembered all the stories she had heard of Fox’s love for Margaret Ward before she married White; steadily as she had tried to forget them, to cease to think of his past where it touched another woman’s life, the stories suddenly took tangible shape and it seemed to her that Margaret was concerned with his existence and she--a mere intruder. Rose, whose heart had been hitherto as untouched as a child’s, shrank with infinite shyness and reluctance from those old dead leaves of passion which had never yet sullied the whiteness of her soul.

Some intuition, perhaps, of her feeling warned him, for he began to tell her stories of his boyhood and gradually spoke of his home, his dead mother, his father who had been a distinguished jurist, and so, little by little, won her from her mood. His gentleness, his kindling speech, the tenderness of his eyes thrilled her again with that wonderful attraction which was part of the man’s genius and which even his enemies found incontrovertible.

He told her of his mother’s gentleness, her profound religion, her meekness compared with his father’s fierce severity, an Old Testament Christian who beat his boys if they did not go to church three times on Sunday and also to meeting on Thursday nights. “And out of that home I grew up a heathen and a publican,” he said with a smile.

Rose looked steadily before her; far off the road dwindled, and she saw Sandy racing a squirrel to a tree. “How can you?” she said at last, in a low voice.

“Confess it?” He leaned forward and touched her hand; “will you convert me?”

She looked up, their eyes met with the shock of sudden feeling. Her lip trembled like a child’s. “I’m not wise enough,” she replied simply; “you would end by laughing at me!”

His face sobered. “Am I so utterly unworthy?” he demanded.

She was silent; the water rushed and murmured beside them, and the still bright atmosphere seemed to palpitate with some great mystery; were all barriers really disappearing and a new sweet understanding emerging from the challenge of their two opposing temperaments? Her heart trembled and beat fast at the thought; it was so wild, so improbable, so dangerously sweet. Then she made one great effort to master her emotions, to be herself. She schooled herself to meet his eyes again, with that new subtle sweetness of expression in them, that delicate understanding of her mood which frightened her!

“Who am I that I should judge?” she said tremulously, with a charming smile, full of youth, simplicity, unconscious confession.

Something in the very girlishness and purity of her face, and her unguarded mood smote Fox with sudden humility; he felt himself the veriest worldling and sinner compared with her. What right had he to thrust his life into hers? His hand closed over hers with unconscious force. “Who are you?” he repeated passionately, “my guardian angel.”

Rose smiled; there were tears in her eyes but his emotion had the effect of crystallizing hers, she understood her own heart at last, and with a woman’s intuition began to hide it; she withdrew her hand gently and the horses went on.

Neither spoke; both had been deeply moved and there was a new happiness in mere companionship. It was one of those rare moments, in the higher relations between man and woman, when a new situation emerges from the old, a more beautiful understanding is established, and the exquisite gentleness of his mood was a revelation to her of a phase of his character which she had only dimly perceived.

The road had left the creek now and following the rising ground lay through a growth of stunted cedars; the stillness was broken suddenly by the full sweet note of a robin.

Rose turned with kindling eyes. “Hark!” she exclaimed softly; “doesn’t that make you think of apple-blossoms? There must be periwinkles somewhere!”

The spell was broken and he smiled, turning to look back for the singer. At the same moment Sandy stopped and pricked his ears.

There was a full sound in the air, a throbbing and buzz of some machine and a big motor-car swung suddenly around the curve and bore down upon them. The road was narrow and both riders had to turn out on to the short turf beside the cedars. The car came on, and then abruptly slackening its speed it stopped a few yards beyond them and some one called to them.

Rose looked back startled and met Margaret’s eyes. Mrs. White was leaning on the door of the car and beckoning to them, her great crimson hat flaming against the dark background. Meanwhile Louis Berkman had slipped down from the farther side and came up to Rose smiling, hat in hand.

“I feel myself as fortunate as Balaam’s ass,” he said gayly, “since I, too, have met an angel in the way!”

“Never mind, Rose,” interposed Margaret laughing; “Louis is a poet and he’s had a terrible experience, he isn’t quite himself!”

“I don’t in the least mind being called an angel; I rather like it,” Rose retorted with amusement; “it is only a little startling. What has happened, Mr. Berkman?”

“Nothing of the least importance,” he answered, a trifle stiffly; “only Mrs. White is laughing at me.”

Margaret still leaned on the door of the motor-car, her face as white as paper against her flame-colored hat, but her laugh was light and careless; the fierce pain tugging at her heart demanded a mask and she wore it gayly and well. “He went to the White House last night,” she exclaimed maliciously.

“What new form of insanity overtook you, Berkman?” asked Fox; “went to a crush?--and it wasn’t compulsory either!”

“Oh, I’ve repented,” Berkman retorted, with a harsh laugh; “I’ll never be taken alive again!”

“What happened?” Rose asked, laughing softly, her hand on her saddle and the reins hanging loose while the horse cropped the dry turf and dead leaves.

Margaret’s laugh interrupted again. “Let me tell them, Louis,” she said.

Berkman shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of assent, coloring a little in spite of himself.

“He got an invitation without the cabalistic sign,” Margaret began, her eyes dancing, “and, in the ignorance of his soul, he went. He was an hour and a half getting in,--you know how they come--two and two--like the couples that left the ark. They had to keep on the carpet; he says one of the ushers kept shouting: ‘move on--keep on the carpet, don’t scratch the floors!’ Louis, did you wear hobnails or sabots?”

“I wish I’d worn overshoes!” he retorted disgustedly; “fancy it--I’ve been received at Buckingham Palace and in Berlin and Vienna; it’s the first time I was ever told ‘to keep off the grass!’”

“Your own fault!” laughed Margaret, “you should have come to me. He never got into the Blue Room at all! Tell us what you saw in the East Room, Louis?” she mocked.

“What I saw?” Berkman drew a deep breath of indignation; “a damned lot of goats like myself; the sheep were figuratively roped off in sacred precincts--I saw you going to supper.”

“Served you right!” laughed Fox; “no sane person goes without the open sesame--unless forced to. What will happen when your personality is revealed? You can trust Margaret for that. You’ll be invited to lunch.”

“Sha’n’t go!” said Berkman angrily.

“Hoity-toity! you’ll have to!” cried Margaret teasingly, “it’s in the nature of a police summons, you know!”

“I’ll get out of jurisdiction! I’ll go hang myself,” Berkman retorted, with a reluctant laugh; and then to Rose: “I’ve just seen your portrait, Miss Temple, and it seems Allestree has established his fame; it is beautiful, as it should be.”

“I’m so glad you like it,” she replied; “Mr. Fox has just been abusing it.”

“He’s a notorious unbeliever!” said Berkman; “don’t mind him; it’s inspired. Mrs. Vermilion hopes to look like it!”

“With the immortal bonnet?” said Fox laughing, but with a glance which perceived every detail of Rose’s beautiful young face and figure radiant in the sunshine.

Margaret saw it; a shudder of perception passed over her and she drew back into her corner of the motor-car with a little sigh of agony, dragged from her very heart, but happily unnoticed. Her whole being rebelled against fate, against submission, against loss!

Berkman was still laughing, uncovered, at Rose’s bridle, and Fox sat listening, idly amused. The clear atmosphere cut every detail out,--the low growth of cedars, the sweeping slope of the dun colored hill behind it, the dark ribbon of woods in the hollow where the creek flowed unseen, the long vista of the road which seemed to meet the sky.

Margaret called to them. “Good-bye,” she said, “I’m engaged to receive the _canaille_--as Madame de Caillou calls it--at five. Come, Louis, or else we’ll send you to the East Room again.”

“The gods forbid!” he exclaimed, and ran to the motor amid more gay laughter.

A moment later Margaret’s white face smiled at them as she was whirled away.

IX

MARGARET leaned over the glass show-counter in Daddy Lerwick’s curiosity-shop and looked down at the pathetic medley within.

Her figure, in its usual elaborate elegance, was in sharp contrast to the dingy surroundings. The fine camel’s-hair shawls hung up behind her, the old velvet curtain with its tapestry border, the moth-eaten furs, the tarnished Mexican sombrero, the ancient horse-pistols, the innumerable curious articles which heaped every corner of the room, down to the chintz curtain, screening the rear end of the shop in a weak-minded and fluttering way, formed a patchwork background.

In the case was an ivory fan of antique workmanship which had drifted here at last, carrying with it a history which might frame many a tale, and with it a tortoise-shell comb, with a top eight inches high, some gold link cuff buttons, a string of pearls that had clasped the throat of a beauty in 1776, but lay now, pale and lustreless and forgotten, the price, perhaps, of a week’s lodging or of a grave, God knows!

But Margaret was interested in a bracelet set with topaz, still beautiful, still radiant, still warm with a life’s history. She passed the stones to and fro between her slender fingers, pricing them with careless indifference. The romance and the sorrow of it would have touched Rose Temple and sent her shuddering from the purchase. To Margaret they signified nothing but jewels and the value of jewels, for her life of selfish ease, of social prominence, her endless quest for pleasure, had nearly atrophied those finer and more tender emotions of sympathy and love for her fellow creatures.

Daddy Lerwick himself waited on her. He was a short, thickset man with the face of an underdone pudding, his gray whiskers attached like wings below the ears. His small dull eyes seemed to observe little, but he was notorious for driving a shrewd bargain and nothing really escaped him.

“The stones are good stones,” he commented, clasping his fat creased hands on the case in an attitude which displayed the solitaire on his little finger, “and the price very low, madam.”

Margaret laughed, her eyes haggard again. “You get them second-hand,” she observed carelessly; “who brought these?”

He looked at her without surprise and unclasped his hands. “I have the name,” he said; “the law requires that we take the name, but I don’t think they ever give the right one, and we don’t tell it--usually. It was a young girl, madam, quite a young girl.”

“Never mind!” Margaret dropped the chain, her mood changing. “I really didn’t want to know,” she said with a shrug, “why should I? I don’t know why I asked. I’ll take the gold cigarette-case, if you can get the monogram off, and the tea-pot. Bring them over and I’ll send the check.”

The man bowed and rubbed his hands. He knew Margaret very well and profited largely by her careless and profuse use of money. Knowing the world too, as he did, and the people in it, he thought her more wretched than the girl who had traded the bracelet, or the owner of the gold cigarette-case who, he happened to know, had since shot himself and now lay in an unmarked grave. Daddy Lerwick, indeed, knew more than was good for him but, perhaps, not more than many others who stand thus at the gateway between the upper stratum of gilded pleasure and the lower stratum of sordid misery, and receive the tolls!

Meanwhile, unconscious of his eyes and certainly proudly disdainful of his thoughts, the society beauty, the Cabinet minister’s wife, trailed through the dingy shop and passed out by the side door, which Lerwick opened for her, to the stairs of Allestree’s studio. As she ascended, the cloud which had rested on her face slightly cleared and her expression grew more decisive; the desolate misery of her heart had taken a more concrete form, she had arrived at last at a resolution. She had reached a point where she must resist or die. Her bruised heart throbbed with continuous pain and she was proudly aware that she was losing all--losing it, too, without an apparent struggle. She, Margaret, who had always borne herself proudly and defiantly to the world, was she to be a mendicant asking the alms of love and asking it in vain?

She swept on, crossed the landing under Aunt Hannah’s accustomed window, and thrusting aside the portière entered upon a tableau of the artist and his two new clients, Mrs. and Miss Vermilion, and her enemy, Mrs. Wingfield. The two older women stout, tightly laced, gorgeously over-dressed, the younger, slender and well done by the best French art and with that indescribable air of disdain which, commonly assumed by the parvenu to be the sign manual of birth and breeding, might be called the bar sinister of society. At the sight of Margaret, however, she unbent with an alacrity which was as amazing as it was sudden.

“Dear Mrs. White,” she chirped, “do come and advise me; mamma wants me painted, and really I can’t choose a pose! I saw a picture of the Duchess of Leinster which was lovely, but Mr. Allestree says he never copies even attitudes! Isn’t it confusing?”

Margaret shrugged one shoulder and held out two fingers to the elder women. “Try Aphrodite rising from the sea,” she suggested with a provoking drawl, “I dare say Bobby can do waves, he’s admirable on flesh tints.”

The girl colored furiously and bit her lip. It was impossible to know where to meet Mrs. White, she reflected, without daring to provoke another catastrophe by retaliation.

But Mrs. Wingfield had felt the sting of Margaret’s rudeness too often. She moved to the door with the rustle of silk draperies. “I hear Mr. Fox is to marry Miss Temple,” she said pointedly, looking Margaret full in the face.

“And I heard that Mr. Wingfield was to get the mission to Brazil,” retorted Margaret unmoved.

Mrs. Wingfield’s cheek crimsoned and the feathers on her bonnet trembled. “Nothing of the sort! You don’t mean to tell me you heard that?”

Margaret shrugged her shoulders again. “One hears everything, you know!” she said, with a dangerous smile.

Mrs. Wingfield breathed hard and opened her lips, but Mrs. Vermilion was a wiser if a duller woman; she laid a restraining hand on her arm and propelled her gently but firmly toward the exit.

“You’re coming to my ball next week, Mrs. White?” she ventured with a propitiating smile.

“Oh, is it next week?” drawled Margaret, with elevated brows, “I never know. Little Miss English keeps my books; if she didn’t I should go to the wrong place every night and forget the White House.”

“I thought your memory more accommodating,” Mrs. Wingfield retaliated pointedly; “I remember when you forgot to come to my dinner after you’d accepted.”

Margaret laughed. “Did I?” she said, “I’m evidently a sinner. Tell Mr. Wingfield that I heard who wrote in those corrections in that paragraph of the message--but I really can’t tell.”

Mrs. Wingfield turned away with a red cheek.

“Margaret!” remonstrated Allestree sharply, as the three women withdrew, “how can you? Good Lord, talk about the brutality of men! Women are Malays and North American Indians--you have no mercy! I’m blushing all over now at the thought of it!”

She laughed, her short, even white teeth set close together, her eyes sparkling. “Wasn’t I horrid?” she said, “I haven’t any manners and they hate me.”

“I should think they would!” he replied warmly, “Margaret, why do you do such things? It isn’t like you, it isn’t--”

“Well bred!” she concluded dryly, “I know it. The other night, too, I did something that horrified Wicklow. We were dining at Mrs. O’Neal’s; I knelt, and kissed the cardinal’s ring. Wicklow was wild; he seemed to have an A. P. A. nightmare at once. It was all in the New York papers yesterday,” Margaret laughed again, resting her arms on the back of the carved chair where Rose had sat.

Allestree laid down his brushes; he had been working on a sketch of Margaret herself, and, lighting a cigarette, he passed his case to her. She took one mechanically and lit it at his. As the spark flamed up between them, he caught the hollowness of her eyes, the startling pallor of her face.

“What in the world is it, Margaret?” he asked sharply; “you’re ill.”

She turned and looked over her shoulder into the mirror. “Do I look so?” Something she saw in her own image, in the deeply shadowed eyes, the sharpened curve of the cheeks startled her. “What a fright I grow to be! No wonder that Vermilion girl stared. What an Aphrodite she’d make--in French corsets and a trail!” Margaret laughed silently.

Then catching a look on Allestree’s face which she read too easily. “Were you born proper, Bobby?” she said, knocking the ashes from her cigarette, “or did you achieve it, or was it thrust upon you?”

“I can’t paint you in this mood, Margaret,” he said dryly, “you wouldn’t look like yourself; you’d remind me of a malicious elf.”

She leaned her elbow on the chair back again, resting her chin in the hollow of her hand. “There!” she said, “I told William Fox that you’d make me the imp to Rose’s angel.”

“I’d like to make you what you are, a fascinating, wilful woman with no heart at all!” he retorted.

“No heart!” she laughed, tossing her cigarette away; “that’s true, Bobby, I’ve no heart!”

As she spoke she moved over to Rose’s portrait which still rested on an easel in the corner. It was a magnificent piece of work, the artist had dreamed his heart into it; the young head symbolized youth, purity, hope. The figure had the simplicity and loveliness of some beautiful Greek inspiration when the art of Greece was young. Margaret stood looking at it in silence, herself unaware of the sharp contrast between the pictured youth and enthusiasm of this girl and her own slim beauty, her subtly charming and unhappy face, which seemed to have lost that magic touch which is like a breath from the Elysian fields, the presence of belief, of hope, most of all of love. She turned at last and met Allestree’s thoughtful glance. “Bobby,” she said briefly, “you’re a fool.”

He smiled. “What else, oh, mine enemy?” he asked.

“Everything;” Margaret threw out both hands with a gesture which seemed to appeal to earth and heaven; “a blind fool, Bobby! You love her, she probably loves you, and yet you stand by and let her go! Fool, fool!” Margaret drew her brows down, her cheeks flaming:

“‘He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who fears to put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all!’”

she quoted defiantly.

Allestree lighted another cigarette. “My dear Margaret,” he said, “let me show you this sketch of my mother.”

Margaret bit her lip and stood watching as he turned over two or three sketches. As he did so her quick eye caught familiar outlines. “So, that is Lily Osborne?” she said, with a hard little laugh; “I’m not sensitive, Bobby, let me see it. Did you know the latest gossip about her?”

Allestree shook his head. “Spare me!” he said smiling.

“Not a bit of it, you deserve no quarter!” Margaret took the sketch and looked at it, ignoring the one of Mrs. Allestree; “it’s good,” she commented with amusement; “how fine and full blooded she looks, and reptilian. The gossip is that she’s caused the recall of the Russian Ambassador; she’s been telling tales out of school, the female diplomatist, you know! What did you do, by the way, when she met Rose here?”

“Oh, we got on,” said Allestree laughing; “what of it?”

“You haven’t heard?” Margaret laughed; “Rose went there to one of madame’s small and earlies; you know the kind? It seems they played bridge and Rose didn’t understand it was for money; imagine a lamb in the hands of wolves! Poor little simpleton! Well, Lily told her at last that she owed two hundred. Rose fled home, and the judge--” Margaret laughed and shrugged her shoulders. “Old Testament Christian, you know! He sent the check but he told Rose to cut her dead.”

“I knew there was something; Rose never told me, but they speak,” he rejoined, “the way you women do! In spite of your shrugs, Margaret, you know the ethics of the thing were abominable; it’s swindling.”

Margaret continued to laugh. “My dear Bobby,” she said, “Rose isn’t sixteen and we all play bridge; I lost six hundred last night; she should have known. It’s tiresome to be a madonna on a pillar!”

“Still Rose was right,” he said bluntly.

“Oh, granted!” Margaret touched his arm lightly; “and you love her!”

Allestree made an impatient movement. “Don’t torture me, Margaret!” he said sharply.

She whirled around and held out both hands, her eyes moist. “I’m a brute, Bobby!” she cried; “forgive me--I always say the wrong thing unless some one sets me a copy; let’s talk about Mahomet’s coffin!”

X

WITH Margaret things had reached a crisis long before that culminating moment of remorseful emotion in Allestree’s studio; at last the realities of life--as they appear separated from its pleasures and its follies--were forced upon her. Too young at the time of her marriage to comprehend its full significance, as a mere act of barter and exchange, she had never seriously anticipated her position as White’s wife; it had been shrouded in a nebulous haze of gratified vanity, of pleasures and indulgences, for she was glad to shirk the thought of it. Her awakening, therefore, had been accompanied with a shock of horror and disgust.

White had been kind to her at first; even the most common and violent of brute creatures is often kind to its chosen mate, and he was proud of her beauty, determined to get the value of his money out of her social distinction; but her capricious temper, her bitter tongue and her indifference soon had their natural effect. His kindness wore itself out and when angry he could be tolerably brutal, for his temper, at best, was coarse and exacting. She had come at last to look upon the beautiful house, the lavish display, the sumptuous living as so much gilded misery, and, possessing no talisman to give her contentment, her stormy nature spent itself in rebellion and in a growing regret for her own folly. She saw, at last, in Fox all the qualities which she most admired; her mind answered his with a subtilty, a kindred sympathy which seemed to assure her of his love, to justify her assumption that his feeling had never changed. In her eager pursuit of happiness she had thought to purchase it first with beauty, then with money and now with love--the beggar’s price! It was the absorbing impulse of her being; religion she had none, except the religion of self-indulgence. Standing on the brink of disaster she still demanded happiness; it was her creed, her gospel, her divine right. The temptation of it, too, pursued her; how easy to obtain a divorce from Wicklow, a word almost and it was done! It was true that there would be a great scandal but, after all, the scandal could only add a zest to her social success; she was young, beautiful, distinguished, and if she broke the shackles that bound her could she not begin all over again? Intoxicating dream,--how full of temptation it was, of alluring sweetness! After all, does not the devil appear to us in the shape of an angel of light?

What were ethics compared with her inalienable right to be happy? The thought of it made her draw a keen breath of relief. Free!--She alone knew the value of that word.

The children crossed her mind only occasionally; Estelle was more and more like her father every day, and as for the baby? Margaret had only vague conceptions of his possibilities; she had seen but little of him since his birth, except in his nurse’s arms, but she had recognized that odious likeness to the Whites. Of course old Mrs. White would take them; she adored them, and Margaret felt that she knew more about them than she did. After a while when they grew up--but Margaret could not afford to dwell upon it. They were associated with her misery, her captivity, as she chose to call it, and she could not love them; she shrank, indeed, from the thought of them, and the responsibility that their existence had thrust upon her, as so many links in her chains.

She returned from her interview with Allestree in a curious frame of mind. Her unreasonable discourtesy to the Vermilions and Mrs. Wingfield--people who really only hovered on the edge of her horizon--her insistent attacks upon Allestree’s sore heart, had all been prompted by her own feverish misery. Once alone in her room she went to the mirror, and holding up one of the candelabra, gazed long and fixedly at her own reflection, asking over again the question she had asked herself on the night of Mrs. O’Neal’s dinner. Had she lost her beauty? Was the potency of her spell destroyed in some mysterious way? Hideous thought--was she growing old?

She saw, indeed, all that she had seen in Allestree’s mirror, and more; the misery that looked out of her own eyes frightened her, and there were more delicate lines than there had been on that previous occasion, or else the light was stronger. This was the reason then of the senseless stare of Miss Vermilion’s china blue eyes--Margaret wondered vaguely why girls of that sort always had china blue eyes?

She set down the candelabrum, and sinking into a chair by the open fire began to brood over her troubles, forgetful that she must be dressed soon for her own reception; it was the night when her weekly guests assembled at those already famous evenings. Her thoughts reverted to Fox; the remembrance of his love for her was like the sudden fragrance of violets in a desolate place.

He had loved her; it never seemed possible for a moment that a word, a sign, could not reanimate his passion, as a breath of air will strike fire from the smouldering embers. Now, too, she could appreciate and understand his love; she was no longer a raw slip of a girl or a stiff little Puritan like Rose Temple! But she knew the barrier which existed between them; never by a word or a sign had Fox trespassed against White’s hospitality, he would never urge her to desert her husband, but if she were free--

She rose and began to walk about the room, touching first one object and then another with restless fingers; the thought of freedom was like wine, it went to her brain; the vision of the divorce court, the lawyers, the judges, the newspapers, floated into space. She stretched her clasped hands high above her head and drew a long breath, her soul almost shouted for joy. Freedom!

It was, next to happiness, the desired of the gods! And after all did not one involve the other, was not one absolutely essential to the other?

She wondered, with a smile, why they talked so much cant about marriage and divorce? Had they suffered as she had suffered they would rejoice, as she did, at the thought that there were divorces, that one could be free again!

Free--good heavens! Not to see him every day, not to hear his voice, with that mean, trivial rasp in it, not to be one of his chattels!

And Rose? Margaret did not allow herself to dwell too long upon that vision of the girl’s young figure, her fair, animated face against the background of the cedars and the sky. Was she jealous of her? That was an ignominy too deep to contemplate without bitter self-abasement; she refused to believe it! The shuddering certainty which had drained the life-blood from lip and cheek became now, on reflection, a fancy of her feverish brain. Such a raw, simple creature as Rose was no mate for William Fox; that indisputable attraction of opposites, which is one of the laws of nature, for a moment lost its significance in her eyes; she would not believe it. It was not quite natural for her, though, to take this view, even for a moment, for a woman, as a rule, has less faith in the endurance of a man’s love than he has in it himself, because she has usually discovered that the heart of the ordinary male creature is uncommonly like a pigeon-cote!

She was determined to forget all these things; she walked to and fro battling with herself, her restless hands sometimes at her throat and sometimes clasped behind her head. The strong passion of rebellion which shook her being amazed even herself. She would never give him up! She could not--to Rose or to any one; her starved heart cried out against surrender and defeat, he was hers--_hers_.

Her maid’s knock at the door startled her, she stopped short and passed her hands over her eyes, her face burned; she no longer lacked color, her cheeks had the flush of fever. The girl, coming in to dress her, was surprised by her high colored beauty, the brilliance of her eyes, and began to lay out the gown and its accessories with nervous fingers, half expecting one of Margaret’s wild bursts of temper. But her mistress seemed only concerned with her toilet; one gown after another was tried on and rejected until at last she was arrayed in a shimmering dress of violet and silver which was as delicate as the tints of the sky at moonrise. She allowed no ornament on her white neck and arms except a single diamond star which clasped the ribbon around her throat.

Nothing could have been more perfect than her manner to her guests. It was one of those occasions, growing constantly more rare, when White had no reason to complain. She was charming to all, from the most distinguished to the most socially obscure, she forgot her prejudices, she even forgot to snub her husband’s political protégés--to their infinite and undisguised relief--and to her own particular coterie she was the old, charming, inimitable Margaret. As on the occasion of her musicale, men predominated, and among those men were all the notables at the capital. Speaking several languages, Margaret had made her house a Mecca for all Europeans; it was an open secret that she espoused the cause of the Russian ambassador against his secret enemy, Lily Osborne, and espoused it with a zeal which caused a whispered sensation in official circles. It was an anxious question what Mrs. White might not dare to do, for it was believed that she would pause at nothing in her determination to defeat Mrs. Osborne. Yet it was never hinted that she concerned herself even remotely with White’s devotion to the fair _divorcée_. Her indifference to her husband was a fact too generally accepted to cause even a ripple in the stream.

There had been much secret comment on her changed and haggard looks, but her dryadlike loveliness to-night silenced every whisper, and her gayety, her ease, her clever, reckless talk proclaimed her the same Margaret they had always known and loved and feared, whose wit was as keen as it was cruel.

Mrs. O’Neal was the first to bid her good-night. The old lady in her gorgeous panoply of silk and velvet tottered on, like an ancient war-horse answering the bugle call, her white head vibrating as she talked. Still athirst for social power and success, no one was a keener judge of achievements, and she patted Margaret’s hand.

“My dear,” she whispered, “you’re the most charming creature in the world when you choose! I’m old enough to tell you.”

“I can never equal you,” Margaret retorted lightly, “even when I choose!”

“There! It was worth the risk to get the compliment!” the older woman laughed back; “and your husband, he looked most distinguished to-night, and those dear children--I saw them in the park! Be good, my child, and you’ll be happy!” and she smiled complacently at the axiom as she moved away, a figure of ancient gayety in tight shoes and costly stays. An hour later when her maid had taken her to pieces, she presented a spectacle at once instructive and amazing.

Following Mrs. O’Neal’s exit, the accepted signal for departure, Margaret’s guests began to flow past her in a steady stream, stopping a moment for the individual farewells or congratulations on the pleasures of a brilliant evening. She was standing just inside the ballroom door alone, for White had been summoned unexpectedly to the White House a half-hour previously, his departure adding to the zest of gossip and speculation upon the political situation. Margaret’s slim figure in its shimmering dress, her animated face, the peculiar charm of her smile, had never been more observed; she was beautiful. Those who had questioned it, those who had been only half convinced and those who had denied it, were alike overwhelmed with its manifestation. It seemed as if the intangibility of her much disputed charm had vanished and her beauty had taken a visible shape, was crystallized and purified by some fervent emotion which made her spirit illuminate it as the light shines through an alabaster lamp.

One by one they pressed her hand and passed on, feeling the inspiration of her glance; one white haired diplomat bent gracefully and kissed her fingers, an involuntary tribute which brought a faint blush to her cheek.

Fox was among the last to approach, and as he did so she stopped him with a slight but imperative gesture. “Stay a moment, William,” she murmured, with almost a look of appeal, “I want to speak to you.”

Thus admonished he turned back, conscious that by so doing he startled a glance of comprehension in the eyes of Louis Berkman, who was following him, which annoyed him for Margaret’s sake. He went over to the fireplace and stood watching the falling embers while the remaining guests made their adieux, then as the rustle and murmur of their departure grew more distant and lost itself in the rooms beyond, he turned and saw her coming down the long room alone and was startled by the extreme youthfulness and fragility of her appearance, and by the discovery, which came to him with the shock of surprise, that her radiant aspect had slipped from her with her departing guests, that her face was colorless and pinched, though her eyes were still feverishly bright.

“It was good of you to stay,” she said, coming to the fire and holding out her hands to the blaze; “how cold it is for the first of April. Sit down, William, and let me send for wine and cigarettes; you look tired.”

He raised a deprecating hand. “No more hospitality,” he said firmly; “you’ve done enough; you’ve lost all your color now.”

“Except what I put on with a brush,” she said dryly, clasping her hands and letting her long white arms hang down before her as she looked across at him with a keen glance. “I know--you’ve eaten nothing here since Wicklow broke his word and the rest of it. You won’t eat his bread!”

Fox colored. “Should I be here in that case?” he asked.

She shook her head, glancing at the fire. “You can’t fool me--I understand.”

“Come, I must go,” he said firmly; “it is very late and you look wearied to death. You must be, you were absolutely the life of it to-night; you should have heard old de Caillou rhapsodize!”

“Did I do well--did I look my best?” she asked, her lip quivering like a child’s, her eyes still on the fire.

“You were your own happy self!” he replied.

She looked up, her slight figure swaying a little as she wrung her hands together; the tears rained down her cheeks. “Billy,” she sobbed, “I’m wretched--I--I can’t stand it any longer, it will kill me!”

XI

FOX stood aghast at the force, the agony, the abandon of Margaret’s confession. Any presentiment which might have warned him had been disarmed by her previous gayety.

Almost unconsciously his hand met hers, which was stretched out in a mute appeal. He drew her to a chair. “Sit down,” he said, in an unsteady voice, with an impotent impulse of resistance; “try to calm yourself! This is dreadful!”

She obeyed him mechanically; sinking into the great armchair and turning her face against it, she continued to weep, her whole delicate frame shaken and quivering with her emotion.

Fox stood still holding her hand and looking down at her in deep perplexity. He was intuitively aware of the extreme peril and delicacy of the situation for them both, only too certain of her wild and unguarded impulses, and that moment--more supremely than ever--revealed to him the absolute demise of his own passion. He tried to quiet her, speaking a few gentle and soothing words, sharply conscious of their inadequacy.