Chapter VII: Book II: I (1)

IT was early in the following December before Mrs. Allestree again came face to face with the situation which was so intimately connected, though in such different ways, with the happiness of two members of her family, her son and her nephew. The long months that had intervened, however, had not dulled her remembrance of that vivid scene in Margaret’s bedroom, or lessened the degree of her secret sympathy--which was in exact opposition to her judgment.

It was a long time indeed before she could recur to that scene without a poignant feeling of guilt; her conscience pinched her with self-righteousness; she had found the mote in her sister’s eye without seeing the beam in her own, she had judged without experience. However, after awhile, this sensitiveness was enveloped in a thicker moral coating, and she began again to view the affair with horror. The two little White children were constant spectacles in the parks with their two French nurses and their general air of bewildered desolation; it was perfectly well known that Estelle had raised a terrible outcry for her mother and refused to be comforted, in spite of the conscientious efforts of poor old Mrs. White who, whatever her faults, was sincere in her devotion to the two poor little waifs of wealth.

Mr. White, meanwhile, had created fresh scandal by his open devotion to Lily Osborne, and would probably have been still more outrageous if that astute young woman had not judiciously absented herself from the city at the very moment when society had reached the limit of its endurance; but her disappearance from the surface scarcely arrested White’s downward career; he was plunging deeper and deeper, and there were many rumors of scandals connected with his administration which would lead to his dismissal from the Cabinet. Some secret information from the Navy Department had found its way into the hands of a foreign government, and the way of its passage through White’s careless hands to Lily Osborne’s and from hers to the representative of the foreign power was unfortunately made altogether too plain to be ignored except on the surface of things, to hush scandal.

December found Washington a little aghast; Congress had just re-assembled, Wicklow White had somewhat hastily resigned, almost on the date which, in the previous year, had seen the retirement of Wingfield, and one of the ambassadors had been as hastily recalled, clearing the atmosphere of an international situation with the accustomed scapegoat! That the Cabinet would have to be reorganized was evident, and Berkman’s prophecy of eight months before was apparently on the eve of fulfilment. The very atmosphere, surcharged with excitement, seemed to breathe the name of William Fox; only those who knew the secret of Margaret’s divorce, which had just been granted in Omaha, divined the fatal combination of circumstances.

Fox had been absent for months in his own state, taking part in a campaign of unusual bitterness and importance, and his remarkable powers of organization, his keen policy, his magnetic eloquence, had carried all before him. There had been, in fact, a storm of applause; every newspaper in the country had discussed him as a possible candidate for the Presidency in the following year, his own party with triumphant confidence, and the opposing faction with reluctant admission of his great strength. If anything had delayed his invitation to take a seat in the Cabinet, it was openly hinted to be the jealousy of the Administration and an uncertainty whether such a position would conveniently shelve him or increase his popularity.

To those who knew the whole truth Fox’s position was almost tragic, but the man had returned more than usually brilliant and untiring.

Rose had sailed for Europe in the previous June in charge of an elderly cousin and Aunt Hannah, and no one knew the secret of that parting or the cost of it to Fox; no one indeed even surmised it but old Mrs. Allestree.

The last six months had been trying ones to her and she was meditating upon them, sitting before the open fire in her drawing-room, her tea-table at her elbow, waiting for Robert.

She measured the tea into the old Canton tea-pot, she looked at the lamp under the kettle, and then she turned back to her knitting, working fast without looking at it, counting stitches now and then and making an elaborate pattern with incredible swiftness, her knitting needles flashing in and out as the work slipped from one to the other and back again. The glow of the fire played on her face and showed the soft lines there, the alert bright eyes, the snowy hair on the temples. The clock struck six and she looked up expecting Robert, but instead her parlormaid opened the door to admit Mrs. O’Neal.

“Why, Martha, I’m delighted to see you! It’s such a bitter evening I didn’t expect a call. Sit down and have a cup of my tea.”

“I don’t take much tea now, I hear that it’s bad for the complexion; but you can give me some hot water and lemon, Jane,” replied her visitor, seating herself with a rustle of silks and a rattle of chains which made a distinct sensation in the quiet room.

Mrs. Allestree poured out the hot water and put in the lemon. “I’m eighty-one,” she remarked, with a queer little smile, “and I’ve rather forgotten my complexion.”

“A mistake, my dear Jane,” replied Mrs. O’Neal calmly, taking the steaming cup and slipping back her sables; “I keep young by constant attention to such details; I have my face massaged every day, and even study my bonnets and veils with that point in view.”

Mrs. Allestree cast a covert glance at the vibrating head under the large, flaring bonnet with its cascade of ostrich feathers and said nothing, instead she knitted violently.

“I suppose you’ve heard the news?” Mrs. O’Neal remarked, after she had sipped the hot water with a slightly wry face; “Margaret White has returned.”

Mrs. Allestree dropped a knitting needle. “When?” she exclaimed rather hastily, while she tried to recover the fugitive.

“Yesterday; she’s taken the apartment that she had last spring.” Mrs. O’Neal mentioned one of the more expensive but quiet apartment houses; “have you any idea how much alimony she got?”

“Good heavens, no!” exclaimed Mrs. Allestree; “Gerty wrote me that White was disposed to be very liberal, and he ought to be!”

Mrs. O’Neal nodded. “He’ll marry Lily Osborne, of course, and I shall cut them dead.”

“I should hope so!”

“Well, of course Lily’s footing was slippery enough at the best and this passes endurance. Mrs. Wingfield told me that it is absolutely certain that she got money from Von Groten for some kind of information; Lily has no conscience and she’s only half an American, thank Heaven! Mrs. Wingfield says she saw the check--”

“Martha, that woman will say anything!”

Mrs. O’Neal shrugged her shoulders. “So does everybody! If Margaret had only let her get into society she wouldn’t have been so bitter now that she’s got her chance; I often think that it pays to be polite to these parvenus! I only hope Margaret doesn’t expect me to hold her up until this blows over.”

Mrs. Allestree smiled involuntarily. “I can’t imagine Margaret in the light of a suppliant,” she said quietly.

“A mere _façon de parler_, of course, on my part,” Mrs. O’Neal retorted; “but, Jane, this is all a bad business, it will have to be patched up, but--” she set down her cup and looked earnestly at Mrs. Allestree--“Jane, does she mean to marry your nephew?”

Mrs. Allestree dropped her knitting and held up both hands. “Heaven knows, not I!” she replied; “of course she can’t be in the fashion unless she marries again.”

“But to marry Fox! That will create a perfect _furore_. Did you know he’s been offered the portfolio of State?”

A quiver of excitement passed over Mrs. Allestree’s pale face. “Actually--or only metaphorically, Martha?”

“Actually, to-day--I had it from two Cabinet officers.”

Mrs. Allestree’s hands fell on her knitting, and she sat looking into the fire. What a nightmare of a complication! To marry Margaret would ruin him, yet not to marry her--

“It isn’t generally known yet that he may marry Margaret; if he does--” Mrs. O’Neal held up her hands this time, and her plumes trembled.

“I don’t know anything about it, Martha,” Mrs. Allestree said judiciously.

Martha O’Neal looked at her shrewdly and smiled, but she changed the subject as she gathered up her furs again preparatory to departure. “Lily Osborne is reported to have made twenty thousand at bridge at the Hot Springs,” she observed casually; “I wish I didn’t entertain an awful doubt of her integrity.”

Mrs. Allestree looked up weakly. “You can’t mean she cheats at cards?”

Mrs. O’Neal laughed. “She’d be caught at that, my dear, and ostracized. She only happens to know who to fleece, you can see how rich she grows.”

“I heard; Gerty told me that Senator Turkman had advised her judiciously in placing some money in mining shares and there has been a rise; Lily told her.”

“Humph!” ejaculated Mrs. O’Neal, finally catching the other end of her sable boa; “it’s rather odd, isn’t it, that Senator Turkman didn’t make any money for himself at the same time? He’s terribly embarrassed.”

Mrs. Allestree leaned back in her chair and laughed silently. “Martha,” she said finally, “you’re a sinner and a publican, let me alone! I haven’t heard so much gossip in a year.”

“My dear Jane,” retorted the other woman dryly, “you live under a hill.”

II

IN the midst of these eddying swirls of gossip, little muddy pools in the thin ice on which he trod, William Fox made his way with singular self-absorption. Even the vortex of the political campaign had not succeeded in decentralizing his thoughts, and he could not now lose sight of the impending climax.

The clamor of applause, the proffered Cabinet portfolio, which was not without significance as an effort on the part of the Administration to bind him to its interests and avert his candidacy in the ensuing year, all fell short of their effect. Such brilliant prospects were indeed stultified to his mental vision by the chilling knowledge that he must soon outrage the feelings of his friends and reanimate his enemies. There were moments when the future which lay before him loomed so black and unfriendly that he could not endure the thought, and he found it well nigh impossible to picture himself playing the rôle of lover and husband to the woman who had twice thwarted his life; first by her careless rejection of his love and then by her determined demand upon his honor. He should marry her, but beyond that bald fact his mind refused to go. He had erred and he would resolutely pay the cost and it would be heavy. He realized that, realized the probable collapse of his career, the long years of building up which must follow, the impossibility of living down the scandal of such a marriage under such circumstances.

He knew that Margaret was in town, but he had not yet gone to see her; it seemed impossible that he should go. Yet the plain actualities of the case could not be denied. He was aware, however, of a feeling of keen thankfulness that the House, under pressure of some special business, was sitting late, and that the organization of committees and the hundred other calls involved him in such a round of duty that he could well excuse delay.

Yet when the House rose one day at five o’clock, and he had time to go to see Margaret, he went instead on foot to Allestree’s studio. He had seen but little of his cousin in the past few months; perhaps because he was haunted with a secret dread that Rose would finally marry Allestree, and he hated the thought, with all a lover’s selfishness.

The snow was falling fast and the streets were sheeted in white when he and Sandy approached the old house on the corner, and he noticed that the windows of Lerwick’s curiosity-shop were coated thick with frost. A bright light in the upper window assured him that the painter was still at work, and stamping the snow from his feet he ascended the narrow stair to the studio.

Allestree, in his shirt sleeves, was engaged in putting away some old canvases and cleaning up his workshop, and was somewhat startled by the unexpected entrance of Sandy and his master.

“I hardly thought to find you here so late,” Fox remarked as he greeted him, “but I saw the light and came up.”

“I was house cleaning,” Allestree explained; “I can’t trust the janitor in here until I put things in shape. Besides, mother is away and there’s no hurry about going home.”

Fox expressed surprise at his aunt’s absence at this season, and Allestree explained further that she had gone to Orange to visit a younger sister who was ill there; a fact which the nephew of both had forgotten.

“I’ve intended to go to see Aunt Jane every day,” Fox remarked, seating himself on the end of Allestree’s brass wood-box and looking at the general disorder with an absent eye, “but I’ve been busy and--” he laughed bitterly--“she has let me know pretty plainly that she doesn’t approve of me.”

“A sure sign of her devotion,” retorted Allestree dryly; “she is always taking sides when her affections are involved. I’ve often thought you were more after her own heart than I, William.”

“God help her, I hope not!” Fox exclaimed with such abrupt passion that his cousin stared.

“I heard this morning that you had been offered the State Department,” he said quietly; “are congratulations in order?”

The other man laughed with great bitterness. “My dear Robert,” he replied, “I’ve been offered the moon, but being merely mundane I can’t pull it down.”

“Well, I’m not sure that the Cabinet is even desirable for you! I’ve known it to quietly swallow up more than one bit of Presidential timber,” Allestree observed, turning his attention to the canvases he was tying together with unsteady fingers.

“Desirable or not, I have refused it,” Fox said curtly.

There was a pause; Allestree put away some boxes and collected his scattered brushes. Fox, looking about the studio with a moody glance, observed that a curtain was drawn before the little tea-table where Rose had made tea, and the chair in which she had posed was gone. He was not at a loss to understand these signs, and he recalled the whole little scene, with its air of domesticity, their gayety, the tender beauty of her drooping profile as she bent over her tea-cups, he even remembered how the light from the alcohol lamp glowed softly on her face and caught the golden tints in her hair. He stifled a groan. The whole covetous passion of his soul had surged up at the thought, and he was to see her married at last to this good, harmless, slow cousin who was so worthy of her because of his clean unspotted life and his honest love! He glanced keenly at Allestree and saw the haggard trouble of his face, the lines on his brow and about his mouth, with almost a pang of joy. There was no assurance of happiness here, only a kindred trouble. The hard element of his personal feeling melted a little, and he turned to the painter with renewed friendliness. “You have heard of the Temples?” he said guardedly; “is the old man out of his troubles, and has Rose returned?”

Allestree shook his head, avoiding his eye. “The judge is still in the quagmire; he was miserably imposed upon and I fancy there is nothing left but his salary. He has been making gigantic efforts to save that old house; you know it’s mortgaged, and he seems ill and worn, though he goes regularly to court.”

“Who holds the mortgage?” Fox asked absently.

Allestree named a large trust company, and began an eager search behind his easels, apparently excluding Rose from his reply. But Fox was not done. “And his daughter?” he said, in a low voice, caressing Sandy who had laid his head upon his knee as a gentle reminder that it was time to go.

“She is still in Paris; she wrote my mother that she was succeeding very well with her lessons and hoped for the best.” Allestree’s voice betrayed his extreme reluctance to produce even these hard facts.

Fox rose abruptly and going to the window thrust aside the curtain and looked out. The storm had increased and the street light opposite shone behind a dazzling whirl of snow-flakes which were swept before the wind and hurled themselves against the pane in a wild rush of blinding white.

Fox turned away and began to walk to and fro, his hands plunged into his pockets and his head sunk on his breast. Allestree glancing at him once or twice was shocked by the drawn grayness of his face, the absolute despair in his dark, deep-set eyes. At last he looked up with a bitter smile. “Good God!” he exclaimed abruptly, “if I were only coward enough to shoot myself!”

“A very unprofitable move,” remarked his cousin coldly, “and it leaves the blame to others.”

Fox nodded. “Precisely,” he said, “and to a woman. But, my dear Allestree, if you want to create a hell for a man, find one who loves a young lovely untried girl with all his soul, and then force him to marry another woman!”

His cousin bit his lip, the color rushing over his face. “No easy matter, I fancy,” he said; “you couldn’t make the man do it; he’d back out at last!”

Fox gave him a strange look; he had never intended to make such an admission to Allestree, it had been wrung from him by the stress of his own feeling and now he would not recall it. “You think so? You think it cannot be done? The shooting would be preferable,” he added grimly, “but, unhappily, a man’s honor lives after him.”

His cousin turned sharply and held out his hand; the gesture was involuntary. “Upon my soul, William, I’m sorry for you!” he exclaimed, with much feeling.

Fox took his hand and wrung it. “You’ll make her happy, Allestree!” he exclaimed with profound emotion; “she’ll marry you.”

Allestree smiled sadly. “She’s refused me,” he said, with a tone of finality which carried conviction if not relief.

Fox turned away with a smothered groan, and groping for his hat and coat went out without another word.

At that moment the tumult of his heart repudiated every other claim and demanded happiness with an unscrupulous passion which excelled Margaret’s own.

III

IT was the following evening that Margaret rose restlessly and looked out of the window of her little hotel drawing-room. She knew that the House had risen at five, she had telephoned twice to ascertain that fact, and her note of the morning should have brought Fox straight from the Capitol.

It was now almost six o’clock, the streets were lighted and thronged with people, some hurrying home from office or shopping, others still on those endless social rounds which had once been the orbit of Margaret’s life. She thought of that existence now, its brilliance, its flattery, its hollowness, with a shudder. Between the two periods of her life there was a chasm. It had been only a few months, but those months had been years in her emotional existence, and her stormy soul struggling through the depths of it had worn away the body which with her seemed but the beautiful ephemeral garment of a wild spirit. When it was over, the divorce with its hideous publicity, its sordid details, its piercing accusations, and freedom had come to her with almost blinding reality, she had declared that she should rebuild her life, forget all, be happy--happy!

She had expected at once some message from Fox, some sign of sympathy, but when none came she interpreted his silence by her own heart; he was loth, she thought, to show too much joy at once. They could wait! How sweet it was to think that once again they had their lives before them; they were still young, the world had potent possibilities of happiness for them. The sheer joy of the thought drove the blood to her heart; she could not breathe sometimes but lay panting, her head thrown back on her pillows and her arms flung wide and helpless, until Gerty came and with trembling hand administered restoratives and threw up the windows. They called them heart attacks but it did not matter, nothing mattered now; she would begin all over again. Her old life had slipped from her, as though its shackles, having been stricken off, had left no scar. She had been in Washington a week, but she had not asked to see her children; she could not, the thought of them sent a shiver through her; they were the visible and actual links which bound her to the past, the past which her soul loathed.

She had waited eagerly for Fox, aware that he was in the city before her arrival, and when he did not come she still attributed his absence to a reluctance to be too soon to claim her. That he loved her she never doubted, and her heart trembled at the thought of that meeting which must come at last, with all its sweetness, its fulfilment, after her long waiting. That morning she had written him and now she watched the clock, carelessly aware that Gerty English was also watching it, and that the girl seemed disconcerted and awkward with her work over Margaret’s letters and books.

But to Margaret everything outside of that one absorbing fact was of little moment; what Gerty thought of no consequence at all, for while she had made only half a confidante of the girl, turning to her in uncontrollable moments and then relapsing again into reserve, she was actually indifferent to the nature and extent of Gerty’s knowledge; the little secretary seemed to her as unimportant as any other parasite upon the lives of the more fortunate.

Margaret went openly to the window therefore, and drew aside the curtains to watch the long brilliantly lighted street, where the snow lay yet in white drifts between the muddy slush of traffic, and she returned openly to the fire to look at the clock on the mantel. At first the delay had been almost sweet, she liked to dwell upon the thought of seeing him, of being happy again, but at last it grew irksome and she paced nervously to and fro, her hands clasped behind her head, scarcely vouchsafing an answer to Gerty’s occasional questions.

Time passed; it was nearly half past six before her maid came in to announce a visitor and Margaret turned, hiding herself a little in the shadow of the curtain that she might see him first when he entered.

As the door finally opened to admit Fox, Gerty English rose rather hastily and retreated to one of the other rooms, with her arms full of books and papers, and he found himself face to face at last with Margaret.

There was an eloquent silence; he was painfully aware of the change in her, that the delicate hollows in her cheeks were sharpened while her eyes seemed larger and more brilliant, and there was a wistfulness, a soft tremulous happiness and expectation in her expression which touched him to the heart. She had never looked so young, so fragile and so gentle since those old days when as half child, half woman, he had loved her. That dead love lying between them now made an impassable barrier, she could as little rekindle it as she could reclaim a fallen star. Some dim, half interpreted perception of this chilled her heart and stayed the passionate greeting on her lips; she stood a moment looking at him, terribly aware of the calmness of his bearing, his pallor, his dark troubled eye which neither kindled nor blenched at the sight of her, but met hers with a studied gentleness which expressed neither joy nor reluctance. A keen pang of dread tore her heart, but the next instant joy, wild, almost childish joy at the sight of him, welled up and swept away her doubts.

“Oh, William!” she exclaimed with trembling lips, holding out both hands, “at last, at last! It has been eons since we met!”

“And you look ill,” he replied kindly, “Margaret, I hoped to see you well again. How is this?”

Her eyes sought his face, eager, feverish, questioning; her heart trembled, was this all?--this stilted, quiet, commonplace greeting? She checked the cry of reproach which rose to her white lips, and smiled--a wan and pallid smile. “I’m quite well,” she replied with sudden calm; “you forget the months have been long and troubled ones; I suppose I grow old!”

“I never saw you look younger, more as you used to look ten years ago,” he exclaimed involuntarily.

“Do I?” there was a tremulous note of eagerness in her voice, and a faint blush passed over her face, but she evaded his hand, which he had stretched out again to clasp hers, and went quietly to a shaded corner where neither lamplight nor firelight fell too sharply on her. “Sit down, William, and tell me about yourself.”

He obeyed her mechanically, unconscious that his manner had betrayed anything, but aware of a sudden indefinable change in her, a restraint and repression. “There is nothing to tell,” he said, with some impatience; “the old story--primaries, conventions, a stormy campaign and finally, as you know, my re-election is assured, if I care for it!” he added, a hard new note of indifference in his voice.

She heard it and leaned forward a little on her cushions, trying to read his face, studying every fine and classic outline of the strong head, the brow, the deep-set brilliant eye, the thin-lipped sensitive mouth, the clean shaven, strong jaw and chin. It was his face; how often she had dreamed about it and dreamed of it as turned to her with the glow of love and joy on it, but how pale it was, how hard, how resolute!

“I knew the campaign was hotly contested, but I never doubted your success,” she said simply; “you know I always believed in you.”

He turned sharply and looked at her. “What is the matter, Margaret? You are not yourself.”

She smiled. “No,” she admitted, looking at him with an enigmatical expression, “no, I am not myself; the old Margaret is dead--and buried! Not even Mrs. Wingfield would know me; I burnt up my last red hat yesterday, William.”

He answered her smile involuntarily, but his eyes remained grave, almost stern. He turned abruptly, holding out his hand. “Margaret,” he said, “I came--of course you know it--to ask you to be my wife.”

She drew a long breath and was silent, her eyes on his face; she was wonderfully calm.

“It seems to me that the sooner it is over the better for both of us,” he went on hurriedly; “there will, of course, be some talk; we must face it together.”

Without answering him she bent over and picked up a half sheet of the morning newspaper from the floor, and after glancing at it, held it out to him. “There is an article there about you,” she said in a low voice; “it says you have refused the State Department; is that true?”

He put the paper aside with a little impatience. “Of course it’s true,” he said; “I refused it three days ago.”

She was again silent for an instant while she folded the paper into plaits. “Why did you refuse it?” she asked.

Fox moved sharply and turned his face away, looking at the fire. “That does not concern us, Margaret,” he said gravely; “our marriage is the only question now; I--”

She interrupted him. “Tell me,” she insisted, “it’s my right to know; this had something to do with me, with the prospect of--of your marrying Wicklow’s divorced wife, I know it! Tell me the truth.”

“Of what avail?” he retorted with evident reluctance, his cheek red.

“I have a right to know,” she reiterated.

He smiled bitterly. “The situation is quite clear, isn’t it? I can’t take White’s place in the Cabinet and White’s wife; it would be monstrous.”

She leaned back in her chair, shading her face with her thin hand which trembled slightly, she tried to speak, but her dry lips refused to move. His manner, no less than his words, had ruthlessly torn away the last shreds of her self-deception, and her poor shivering soul shuddered at this revelation of the hardness in him, the eternal note of egoism. How plain it was, how simple, how inexorable! The man’s love had died, and hers had fed itself upon a chimera, a phantasm of her imagination, a dream of the past! Her hand trembled so that she let it fall in her lap and averted her face.

Something of the anguish she felt reached him; he perceived her thought without knowing that he had laid bare his heart to her, and he felt a pang of remorse for his words, though she had wrung them from him with a woman’s besotted madness, a woman’s wild determination to probe her own agony to the core.

“It is of no consequence to me, Margaret,” he said kindly; “I shall give it all up and go away with you; we must build it up from the beginning again. Only it is best to have it over.”

She smiled faintly, looking into the fire which had fallen from the andirons and lay in red coals on the broad hearth. “Tell me,” she said abruptly, turning her full gaze on him, “I have been away and I do not know--where is Rose Temple? Is she still in Paris?”

There was a striking change in his face as though his features, made of potter’s clay, had suddenly fixed themselves into the shape of a mask, stern and unchanging in its finality. “Yes, she’s in Paris,” he replied, with strong reluctance to speak of her; “I know nothing else. You can ask Allestree.”

“Ah, then I suppose it will end happily at last,” Margaret said softly; “she will marry Allestree; I always thought so.”

Fox rose abruptly and walked to the fire, standing a moment looking down at its fallen embers, his back toward her. She could not see his face, but in the covetous agony of her soul she needed no sight, she knew! A gray shadow passed over her own features, her eyes closed, she shivered from head to foot.

After a moment of terrible silence he turned. “When can we be married, Margaret?” he demanded, with passionate haste; “it must be soon, it cannot be too soon!”

She rose, looking slighter and more frail than ever. “No, it cannot be too soon; I will decide, I have no preparations to make,” she added, with a little, mocking smile; “I’m sorry, William, I’ll be but a sober bride; you should have married a young girl and had a grand wedding with a flourish of trumpets.”

“Which I hate,” he said bluntly, “as you know.”

“As I know?” she laughed a little wildly; “I have known very little! You must go now; I--I’m not very strong yet, and the excitement--”

“Has been too much,” he said kindly, “I’ll come again to-morrow--you can tell me then; it can’t be too soon.”

“What an ardent lover!” she said, her lips trembling, “I’m proud of you, William, you do famously, I--I--” she broke off and suddenly laying her thin white hands lightly on his shoulders she kissed his cheek, turned, evaded his touch, and bursting into uncontrollable weeping ran from the room.

IV

MARGARET, leaning a little on Gertrude English, stopped her with a slight pressure on her arm, and shading her eyes with her free hand stood gazing down the long vista of the sunlit avenue. A final recognition of the contrast between realities and the dreams which had changed and warped her life came upon her with a shock which made familiar objects seem strange and distorted. A shudder of anguish shook her slight frame and stole the blood from her lip; stripped at last of all illusions, facing the immutable laws of life, she felt as though she had been thrust out into the streets homeless, and naked, and ashamed; a wrecked soul to wander henceforth up and down on the face of the earth and find no place. How strange, how different from yesterday! The tremulous love, the hope half justified, the unscrupulous, unflinching desire for happiness--where were they? Gone, shrivelled, dead! And she was not dreaming, she was wide awake, this was life, life with its inexorable bonds, its laws, its justice, its cruel requitals, all else had been a dream! Happiness--what was it? A phantom of some man’s imagination, the flaming sword of the angel at the Garden of Eden.

Before her lay the busy, beautiful thoroughfare, alive with carriages and motor-cars, with gay people, children, old women and perambulators. The sun had already swept away all but a few vestiges of snow; it was one of those spring days which come to us in December. At her very feet were some pansies blooming hardily. Away at the north, between long rows of houses, across the intervening circle, she saw the street ascending the hill, caught the white outlines of the high buildings on the heights, the deep blue of the sky.

Yesterday and to-day, oh, God!

She walked on, unconscious of the curious glances which followed her slight, elegant figure, her small pinched face under the great hat with its toppling plumes; unaware, too, that women leaned forward in passing carriages, looked eagerly and sank back into the friendly shelter, glad to escape the necessity of recognition until some one should decide upon the proper course,--rehabilitation or oblivion.

Gerty, shrewd and watchful, saw and made mental notes. She decided swiftly who should be struck off the list when Margaret’s star rose again; no court chamberlain ever drew lines tighter than she at that moment because, in her pity and her affection, she resented every slight with bitter zeal.

Margaret, meanwhile, walked on, regaining her self control with an effort, her large, melancholy eyes gazing dreamily ahead of her. “Gerty,” she said at last, “do you suppose any one is ever really happy?”

“Oh, mercy, yes!” retorted that matter-of-fact young woman, in great astonishment, “I am often! There are so many nice things in the world, Margaret, and when one has money--” Miss English drew a long breath; it expressed her thought.

Margaret smiled bitterly. “Is that the sum total, Gerty? Is there nothing else?”

“Oh, yes, of course, but not to have to pinch and work and reason, just to be vulgarly downright rich once! I shouldn’t ask much else,” said Gerty ecstatically.

“You have no imagination, Gerty,” Margaret replied, “that’s been my curse, I’ve imagined myself into a fool’s paradise! As for money--I’ve had it all my life, it never gave me anything I wanted.”

“Oh, Margaret!” Miss English almost sobbed, “think of all you’ve had, of all you’ve got, of all you’re going to have!” she added incoherently.

“Of all I’m going to have?” Margaret repeated, with a strange smile; “my dear Gerty, the prospect is certainly blinding. Thank you!”

Gerty stared. She did not understand, and she dared not press the question; she could not but perceive the cold agony in Margaret’s eye.

Their walk had brought them to a little triangle between the streets, and as they crossed above it, a child’s voice cried out after them with a shrill little note of joy. “Oh, mamma, there’s mamma!”

Gerty felt the hand on her arm tighten, and the shiver which ran through the figure at her side was almost as perceptible. They both turned and looking across the grass-plot saw two French nurses, a child in a carriage and Estelle running toward them, her small face flushing with eagerness, her pale hair streaming in the breeze. She came swiftly, reached them and, with the first unchecked impulse of her life, flung her arms around her mother. “Mamma, mamma!” she cried, “I’ve wanted you so much!”

Margaret looked at her strangely for a moment, then her lips twitched and tears came into her eyes, as she stooped down and clasped the child close. For the first time the instinct of maternity spoke; she had seen, too, a strange vague likeness to herself in the small, upturned face, one of those fleeting glimpses that come in a look. “Did you really want me, Estelle?” she asked gently, submitting to the child’s wild joy with a new surprised tenderness.

“Oh, mamma, you’re coming home?” Estelle sobbed, clinging to her; “you’re coming back to us? Oh, where have you been, mamma?”

Margaret kissed her and rose, putting her off a little; she saw that people were looking at them, and a slow dull flush rose to her forehead. “Yes, I’m coming,” she said with an effort; “I’ll--I’ll come to-morrow, Estelle, and ask Grandmother White to let me take you for a while. You must be good, child; don’t cry, mamma can’t bear it!”

“Come now, mamma!” Estelle wailed, holding her dress with desperate fingers and calling to her little brother who still clung to his nurse, staring as if he saw a stranger.

The two French women were huddled together, not sure of their instructions and obviously alarmed. Margaret looked over at them and gently detached Estelle’s fingers from her draperies. “I’ll come to-morrow,” she said more firmly; “now run and play.”

But the child caught at her skirts again, still sobbing; she had felt her mother’s arms about her, and half the dread and fear of desertion which had hung over her, half the talk of the nurses which had frightened her, was swept away; she had a mother. “Oh, mamma,” she sobbed, “take me with you--I won’t make any noise!”

Margaret bent and kissed her again, her strange, wild look almost frightening poor Gerty who stood completely discomfited and at a loss, her honest blue eyes full of tears. “There, there!” the mother whispered, “I’m glad you love me, Estelle, I’m coming, coming soon. Oh, Gerty, go home with her!” she added suddenly, “take her away--I--I can’t bear it!”

Gerty obeyed with a pale face. She bent down and whispered to Estelle, kissed and cajoled and threatened until the child let go her mother’s skirt and began to cling to the girl whom she really knew far more intimately, for the good-hearted little secretary had spent many an hour in that gloomy, magnificent nursery. Gerty’s hands shook but she held the child, told her about some lovely things she was going to bring her, a doll, a fairy-book, a toy which ran about the floor of its own accord.

In the midst of it Margaret turned and fled; she had not dared to go to the little boy, although, quite unacquainted with his mother, he was merely staring in a dull, infantile way, his finger in his mouth, ready, no doubt, to raise a sympathetic wail if his sister’s grief warranted a chorus.

The mother, whose rights in the children had been settled by the courts at six months in the year if she desired it, went on blindly along the sunny avenue which seemed now to mock her with its gayety. She turned sharply away from a crowded circle into another street, hardly conscious where she went, but bent upon escape, oblivion, silence.

The child’s cry had touched her chilled and starving heart; she saw her life revealed; she had thrust away the ties of nature, the demands of natural love and duty in her mad pursuit of happiness; she had lost all and gained nothing.

She put up a shaking hand and drew down her veil; her lips were dry and parched, it was difficult to breathe, she had to relax her pace. Another corner brought her to an abrupt and horrified pause. She came face to face with Mrs. O’Neal at a moment when she felt that she could least abide the sight of any one. But with the shock of recognition her scattered senses recovered themselves, her nerves vibrated again, she summoned back her will.

“Margaret!” exclaimed the old lady, pausing, with her skirts gathered up and her foot on her carriage-step, just the shadow of surprised restraint in her manner, the indefinable change that greets the altered social scale; “I’m--I’m delighted to see you! And how are you, my dear?”

“Well,” Margaret replied, with an odd little laugh, for her quick ear had caught the note; “don’t I look so?”

The bird of paradise on Mrs. O’Neal’s hat trembled. “No,” she said flatly, “you don’t; you need building up, you should go to the country for awhile. I’m due at bridge now or I should make you get in and drive with me.”

“Thank you, I couldn’t,” Margaret replied, with forced calm; “I wish you luck at cards instead.”

Mrs. O’Neal glanced at her coachman, stiff and expressionless upon the box, then she leaned over and put a gentle hand on the younger woman’s arm. “My dear, I congratulate you,” she murmured, “you’re lucky to be free; I was so shocked to read this morning that Mr. White had married Lily Osborne yesterday.”

Margaret suppressed her start of surprise. “Has he?” she said, “I forgot to read the paper, and Gerty misses everything except the ninety-eight cent bargains.”

“Yesterday--in New York!” said Mrs. O’Neal tragically; “I hope you’ve got the children.”

Margaret quietly withdrew her arm. “Thanks, yes,” she said; “I’m afraid you’ll be late for your bridge.”

* * * * *

As she walked on, her heart sank. Lily Osborne--of course she had known it would be so! But if anything happened to her and Mrs. White died--poor Estelle!

The cry of the child pursued her. Until now she had thought only of herself, of her own misery, but the touch, the voice of the little girl had reached her very soul; after lying dormant and unknown all those years it was awakening, awakening to a reality so dreadful that it was appalled, without hope, desolate. And shame, the shame of a woman’s heart swept over her and shook her being to its depths. The humiliation which comes upon a woman when she knows, by some overwhelming perception, that her love is not fully returned; she felt as if she had stripped her soul naked and left it lying in the dust at Fox’s feet.

She walked on; agony winged her feet and she could not be still; she avoided the places which she knew, and turned down strange streets and byways. She had no thought of time. It grew late, the short winter day drew to its close; still she walked on. While her strength endured she went on,--it seemed as if pursuing fate drove her. She was not physically strong, yet she was walking beyond the endurance of most women.

As the twilight gathered and the lights began to start up here and there, she turned, with a dim realization of her unfamiliar surroundings and her sudden complete exhaustion. It was St. Thomas’ Day, four days to Christmas; she had no recognition of it, but, looking up, her eye caught the lighted vestibule of a church, and she saw some women going in to vespers; an impulse made her follow them. The heavy doors swung easily inward, and conscious only of the shelter, the chance for rest, a moment to collect her thoughts, she passed in.

The service was nearly concluded, but she paid no heed to that; moving quietly across the aisle and finding a dark corner, she sat down wearily, and crossing her arms upon the back of the pew in front of her hid her face upon them. Mere physical weariness had brought a dull relief to the gnawing pain at her heart; it clouded her brain too, as weariness sometimes does, and she found the horrible vivid thoughts which had tormented her slipping softly away into a haze of forgetfulness; her mind seemed a mere blur.

The soft organ tones swelling through the dim church harmonized with her mood; she lost herself, lost the agony of those past hours, and rested there, inert, helpless, without power to think. She was scarcely conscious of what passed around her, her throbbing head felt heavy on her slender arms, and she listened, in a vague way, to the music, aware at last of a stillness, then the rustle and stir of people settling themselves back in the long pews. She stirred herself, turning her face upon her arms.

A voice penetrated the stillness, a voice with that vibrant quality of youth and passionate self-confidence.

“‘_The wages of sin is death!_’”

Margaret started and raised her head. Her eyes, blinded by the sudden light in the chancel, flickered a moment and she passed her hand across them; at last she saw quite plainly a young strong face, with a tense eager look, white against the dark finishings of the pulpit; she caught the dazzling white of his surplice, the vivid scarlet of the hood which showed on his shoulders.

“‘_The wages of sin is death!_’” He repeated it, giving out his text in a voice which was resonant with feeling.

Margaret sat back in her corner, gazing at him with fixed, helpless eyes, her very soul dazed under the force of revelation which was coming to her swiftly, overwhelmingly. The revelation of her own life, not of God. As yet she framed no thought of that awful Presence, found no interpretation of the tumult in her own soul, but she knew, at last, that she had sinned. Sinned against herself, her womanhood, her honor, her self-respect, sinned against the man she had married, against the children she had borne, and, at last--oh, God!--against the man she loved.

_The wages of sin is death._

She rose, rose with an effort of will for her knees shook under her, and drawing herself together, summoning all her strength and her pride to hide the agony which was devouring her heart, she drew down her veil and slipped out unnoticed, silent, like a shadow. Once at the door, beyond the ring of that terrible young voice, she paused and steadied herself by laying her hand on a pillar of the portico.

It was now very dark; the electric lights at the corner only made the space where she stood more shadowy and secure; the air was chill, damp, penetrating, and she shivered. A horrible sense of homelessness and misery swept over her; she had cast herself out of a home, she had deserted her children for the love of a man who--oh, God!--who loved her not. She who had dreamed of happiness, lived for it, fought for it, sinned for it, who would have purchased it at the cost of heaven itself, had found at last, not happiness but her own soul.

_The wages of sin is death!_

She wrung her hands in silent agony; was there no escape? She had no belief but, at last, she felt that the very devils believed and trembled. Was not God pursuing her with vengeance? Who else?

V

AT last the tumult of passion subsided and Margaret, still leaning on the pillar of the church portico, looked out with bewildered eyes. Again an overwhelming weakness swept over her and wiped out some of the vivid misery.

She must go home--home! The word brought a dull pang of anguish, she had no right to a home, for she had broken up her own and orphaned her children. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the thoughts which stormed back, at a word, to assault her poor fagged brain again. Then the soft sweet notes of the recessional came out to her and she knew that in a few moments the dispersing congregation would find her there; summoning all her flagging energies she stepped down into the street and turning westward was suddenly apprised of the fact that she had been in the old church so often visible from the windows of Allestree’s studio. The discovery brought her a feeling of relief; she was near the studio and she could go there and telephone for a cab to take her back to the hotel. Losing herself in the shadows of the darkest side of the poorly lighted street, she hurried toward the old building on the corner and saw, with relief, the light still shining in Allestree’s window as well as in the curiosity-shop below.

She crossed the street and trying the side door found the latch down. In another moment she was toiling wearily up the old stairs, clinging to the balustrade with an absolute need of its support.

To her surprise the studio was empty; she called to Allestree, supposing him to be, perhaps, in his storeroom above, but there was no answer and she sank down in the nearest chair, too weary and helpless to frame her thoughts. An open fire was burning low on the hearth, and a half smoked cigarette lay on the mantel edge. He had evidently gone out for a moment and would soon return. Margaret roused herself and looked about her with a wretched feeling of strangeness and separation from her own life. She seemed suddenly detached, a mere onlooker where once she had been the centre of the stage. There had stood the portrait of her, and there the picture of Rose; both were gone! She even noticed that the little tea-table was pushed away, and divined Allestree’s secret feeling. She knew every detail of the room, the tapestries, the worn Turkey rug, Robert’s old cigarette-case. It was intolerable; she rose, and going to the table, where the telephone stood, saw Allestree’s portfolio and the pen and ink. She would leave a line to explain her visit before she called a cab, and she opened the portfolio to look for a scrap of paper; as she did so her eye fell on the page of a letter written in old Mrs. Allestree’s clear hand; unconsciously she read the lines before her:

“Margaret has broken up Fox’s happiness twice, once when she broke her own engagement to him, and now in separating him from Rose--”

She closed the book sharply, suddenly aware of what she did and deeply shamed by it, but the thought of the personal dishonesty of her heedless act was lost in the sharper pang of realization; she saw at last the light in which her actions had appeared to others. She stood still, her face frozen, and a cry sprang to her lips from the depths of hidden passion, the cry of some mortally wounded wild creature who faces death alone. She knew it, she did not need to be told it, but others knew it too! It was the bitter drop in her cup of gall; the wild anguish which swept away all other realities, even the desire for life, amazed her. For one moment she hated Rose with all the strength of her undisciplined soul, the next a great wave of humiliation submerged her being. She turned, forgetting the telephone, forgetting everything but a desire to escape the meeting with Allestree, groped her way to the door like a blind woman and went down stairs. At the foot she hesitated; a step in the street made her fear to meet Robert at the door, and she turned and plunged into the curiosity-shop. She found herself behind the chintz curtain, in the place which evidently served as a living-room for Daddy Lerwick, and she saw a table spread for supper, while the scent of garlic streamed from a pot on the stove. Hurrying across the room she lifted the curtain and entered the shop.

Daddy Lerwick was leaning on the counter talking to a young girl and passing a necklace back and forth in his fat hands. At the sound of Margaret’s step they both turned and looked at her in surprise, a surprise which gave place on his part to servile courtesy. But Margaret scarcely noticed him; instead she saw the pale, worn face of the girl, the pinched misery of her look as she glanced at the stones in Lerwick’s coarse fingers. Margaret’s eyes following hers, lighted, too, on the jewels; it was a topaz necklace, the mate to the bracelet which she had prized so long ago. The intuition of misery, the sixth sense of the soul which--no longer atrophied with selfishness--had suddenly awakened within her, divined the secret. She read the suspended bargain in Lerwick’s eye, the hopeless anguish in the girl’s. It was only an instant; the thought came to her like the opening of a dungeon door on the glare of midday. Then she drew back to avoid an encounter with two more customers who had entered the shop and who began at once to ask the prices of the objects in the windows. Lerwick went forward to answer them; the girl leaned on the counter, hiding her face in her hands; a shiver of misery passed over her and Margaret saw it. Moved by an impulse, as inexplicable as it was unnatural, she touched the shabby sleeve. “What is the matter?” she asked softly.