For some time father and daughter were silent. Eden suppressed her sob, and Mr. Menemon fidgeted nervously in his chair. The funeral across the way, he told himself, would be gayer than this, and for the moment he regretted that he had not taken time by its bang and gone to other lands. Grief was always distressing to him, and the grief of his daughter was torment. The idea that Usselex had been derelict, he put from him. He had an interpretation of his own for the incidents on which he had been called to sit in judgment. Trivialities such as they left him unaffected. His enervation came of an inability to cope with Eden. She treated an argument like a cobweb. And besides, had he not in a spasm of discouragement disclosed a secret which for two decades he had kept close-locked and secure?
Truly, if Eden had come to him with a valid complaint, he would have taken arms in an instant. He was by no means one to suffer a child of his to be treated with contumely. The bit of lignum vitæ which served him for a heart was all in all for her. A real grievance would have enraged him more than anyone else. In spite of his apparent indifference there was much of the she-wolf in his nature. He would have fought for Eden, he would have growled over her, and shown his false teeth at any assailant that might happen that way. But of danger there was not a trace. Listen as he might he could not catch the faintest rumor of advancing foes. And because she had met her husband in the street, because a woman had stared at her and some idiotic note had come into her hands, high-noon must change to night, and laughter into tears.
"She is her mother all over again," the old gentleman muttered. And in his discomfiture he regretted the funeral, the confidence that he had made, and fidgeted nervously in his chair.
And as he fidgeted, glancing obliquely the while at his daughter, and engrossed in the torturing pursuit of some plea that should show her she erred, and bring her to her senses again, Eden's earlier griefs crackled like last year's leaves. In this new revelation they seemed dead indeed. Of her mother she had not the faintest recollection; but there had been moments when a breath, a perfume, something which she had just read, a sudden strain, the intoning of a litany, an interior harmony perhaps, or an emotion, had brought to her a whisper, the sound of her own name; and with it for one second would come the shadowy reminiscence of an anterior caress. For a second only would it remain with her, departing as abruptly as it had come, but leaving her to stroll for hours thereafter through lands where dreams come true. And at such times she was wont to feel that could she but clutch that fleeting second and detain it long enough to catch one further glimpse of the past, the key of memory would be in it, and the past unlocked. But that second was never to be detained; it was from her father only that she was able to learn something of that which was nearest to her heart, and again and again she had sat with him listening to anecdotes, absorbing repetitions and familiar details with a renascent interest and a delight that no other chronicles could arouse. On the subject of her mother she had indeed been insatiable; she had wished to know everything, even to the gowns she preferred and the manner in which she had arranged her hair; and her father had taken evident pleasure in telling of one who had been wife to him and mother to her, and whose life she now learned for the first time he had marred.
Mr. Menemon meanwhile was still in pursuit of the plea; but nothing of any cogency presented itself. In truth he had builded better than he knew. Anger burns itself out; already its force was spent, and the revelation he had made had affected his daughter like a douche. In his ignorance, however, the safest and surest course that occurred to him was to hold his tongue, send for Usselex, and leave him to settle the matter as best he might. This course he was about to adopt, and he got out some paper preparatory to wording the message when a servant appeared with a card on a tray.
He picked it up, glanced at it, and then over at his daughter. She was still leaning against the book-case, her back was turned, and her face hidden in her arms. It seemed probable to him that she was unaware of the servant's presence.
"Very good," he murmured, and motioned the man away. Again he glanced at his daughter, but she had not moved, and noiselessly, that he might not disturb her, he left the room.
Eden indeed had heard nothing. The revelation had been benumbing in its unexpectedness, and as she leaned against the book-case, an immense pity enveloped her, and she forgot her sorrow and herself. Her own distress was trivial perhaps in comparison to what her mother had suffered, and yet surely her father had repented. As she entered the house had she not told herself that for twenty years he had been faithful to a memory. So far back as she could remember, she had seen him compassionate of others, striving, it may be, through the exercise of indulgence to earn some little of it for himself. And should she refuse it now? He had grieved; the stamp of it was on his face. She needed no one to remind her of that, and that grief perhaps had effaced the fault. And if his fault was effaceable, might not her husband's be effaceable as well? If he would but come to her and let her feel that this misstep was one that he regretted, she might yet forgive. It was as good to forgive as it was to forget; and how beautiful the future still might be!
The indignation which had glowed so fiercely subsided; one by one the sparks turned grey; the last one wavered a little and then disappeared. She turned, her sultry eyes still wet, to where her father had sat. And as she turned Mr. Menemon reëntered the room. She made no effort to account for his absence; she was all in all in her present idea, and she went forward to him at once.
"Did she forgive you?" she asked.
"Who?"
"My mother."
Mr. Menemon made no answer, but his face spoke for him.
"Then I will," she cried, and wound her arms about his neck. "I will forgive you for her."
"There is another whom you must forgive as well," he answered, gently.
"But you assured me he had done no wrong."
"Nor has he, I think." He hesitated a second. "Come down-stairs," he added; "we can discuss it better there." And taking her hand in his he led her from the room.
On reaching the parlor below, he drew the portière aside that she might pass, and then, as they say in France, he eclipsed himself. Eden entered unattended. Her father, she supposed, was following her, and she was about to address some remark to him, when before her, in the dim light of twin candelabras, she perceived her husband.
Usselex was standing bolt upright, in the position of one who has come not to render accounts, but to demand them. In his attitude there was nothing of the repentant sinner, and at sight of him Eden felt herself tricked. She turned in search of her father, but he had gone. Then, seeing herself deserted, and yet disdaining retreat, she summoned the princess air which was ever at her bidding, and crossed the room.
"Why have you left the house?" he began, abruptly.
To this Eden made no answer. She lowered the yellow shade of one candle and busied herself with another.
"Why did you leave me last night?" he continued. And as she made no reply, "Why," he asked, "why are you here?"
But still she was silent. To his questions she was dumb. It was as though she had shut some door between him and her.
"Will you not speak?" he muttered.
And then, for the first time, she looked up at him, measuring him as it were with one chill glance from head to heel. "If I remember rightly," she said, from the tips of her lips, "you left me for your mistress."
"It is false——" Usselex exclaimed. Presumably he was about to make further protest, but the portière was drawn aside and he was interrupted.
As it afterwards appeared, Dugald Maule, on leaving the Usselex house the preceding evening, had gone directly to the Assembly. On arriving, he went up through the ferns to the vestiary, left his coat and hat, and while putting on his gloves, gazed down from the balcony which Lander occupies to the ball-room below.
A quadrille was in progress; a stream of willowy girls, fresh for the better part, well-dressed and exceptionally plain, were moving about the floor. They seemed serene and stupid, chattering amiably through pauses of the dance; and beneath, on the dais, Maule divined the presence of Mrs. Manhattan, Mrs. Hackensack, Mrs. Bouvery, the Coenties, and other ladies of maturer years. He was sure they were smiling and fanning themselves. They always were. And presently, when his gloves were buttoned, he fell to wondering what he was doing there. The incidents of the evening had supplied him with a quantum of thought which he had no desire to dispense in platitude. He was not at all in a mood to mingle with those whose chiefest ambition was to be ornate. In another minute he recovered his coat, and to the surprise of the door-keeper went down through the ferns again. In the memory of man no one before had ever come to a subscription-ball and deserted it two minutes later. He must be ill, Johnson reflected, and went on collecting tickets.
Maule, however, was not in any sense indisposed, and as evidence of it he walked far up Fifth Avenue, and on through the outskirts of the Park. It was his intention, self-avowed and dominant, that he would come to some decision in regard to Eden before that walk was done.
Like many another before and since, he found his brain most active when his legs were in motion. In working up a case for a client, many a time during an entire day he had reviewed dust-bound books of yellow hue, but the one point, the clinching argument that was to arrest attention and win the cause, came to him in the exhilaration of the open air. The inspiration that was to coördinate conflicting data rarely visited him at his desk. It was in the fatigue of the flesh that his mind became clairvoyant. It was then that he found the logic for his brief. And on this particular evening, as he strode along he kept telling himself that in all his practice there had been nothing to him as important as this. It was his own case that he was preparing; and did it result in failure, how could he venture to undertake one in which the interest would be feigned and the recompense coin? If he could not plead his own case and win, then might he take his shingle down.
The facts, such, at least, as they appeared to him, were evangelical in their simplicity. Here was a girl who had given him her heart's first love, a girl who had exalted him into an ideal, and then, suspecting him of infidelity to her, had married the next comer out of pique. No sooner did he have a chance of exchanging speech with her than she confessed that she hated her husband.
"Now," he reflected, "when a woman takes a man sufficiently into her confidence to admit that she hates her husband, that admission is tantamount to an avowal of love for him. Such admission she has made to me. Nothing conceivable could have been more explicit than her words." And at the memory of them he nodded sagaciously to himself. "No other girl," he continued, "no other in all the world, is as desirable as she. St. Denis would have hypothecated his aureole to possess her. As I sat with her to-night I felt mediæval from ears to heel. If our age were a century or two younger I would have carried her off to a crenelated castle, let down the draw-bridge, and defied the law. But my apartment in the Cumberland is hardly a donjon; a hansom is not a vehicle suited to an elopement; Lochinvar is out of fashion; and besides, she would not have gone. No, she would not have gone; so the other objections are immaterial. But then, there are girls who will not go at the asking, but who will come without instigation. And Eden, I take it, is one of them. It was six months before she would so much as let me touch the tips of her fingers; she was afraid of a kiss as of a bee; and at the very moment when I had given her up she threw herself in my arms: it is true, she never repeated the performance, which was a pity; though had it not been for that little affair of mine, we should in all probability be man and wife to-night. After all, it is for the best, I suppose." And again he nodded sagaciously.
"Yes," he repeated, "it is for the best. Someone—Shakspere, Martin Luther, Tupper, or Chauncey Depew—said that there were some good marriages, but none that were delicious; and I daresay that whoever said it was right. Yes, certainly it is for the best. It may be sweet and decorous, as I used to write in my copy-book, to die for one's native land; but I will be shot if it is sweet and decorous to marry for it. And practically that is what it amounts to. Men marry for the sake of others, rarely for their own, and as for women, whatever their reasons may be,plaudite sed cavite, cives! Eden, I am positive, married out of pique. It is nonsense to think that she could have any large affection for a man twice her age; and now that she is not only tired of him, but hates him to boot, he ought to be gentlemanly enough not to play the dog in the manger. No, it isn't that. I will admit that he is well enough in his way, provided that way is out of mine. The difficulty is that he doesn't seem to keep out of hers. Major premiss, then—Eden-hates Usselex. Minor premiss—Usselex keeps her from me. Ergo. Eliminate Usselex, and she is mine. The logic of that is admirable; the only fault with it is that it doesn't give a hint as to the manner in which Usselex is to be eliminated. He may eliminate himself, it is true; but that is a possibility that it is hardly worth while to count on. And, meanwhile, I know Eden well enough to be aware that until he does she will decline to listen to me."
Maule had reached the upper part of the Avenue. The night was chill and clear as our December nights are apt to be. There was a foretaste of snow in the air, and in that foretaste a tonic. And suddenly the cathedral loomed, huge, yet unsteepled, as though the designers had lost heart in its carcass and faith as well. The sky seemed remote and unneighborly. In the background the moon glinted in derision, and directly overhead was a splatter of callous stars.
The scene did not divert the channel of his thoughts. He walked steadily on, leaving behind him the dogma that time had fossilized and man had forgot. He was indifferent to creeds. The apathy of the stars told him nothing of worlds to which our own is unknown. In the derision of the moon he did not see the sneer of a sphere that is dead. The foretaste of snow in the air brought him no memory of the summer that had gone, and when he reached the park the leafless trees that spring would regarment left him unimpressed. The identity of birth and death, the aimlessness of all we undertake, were matters to which he had never given a thought. And had the beggar who presently accosted him been a thinker capable of explaining that life is an exhalation, that we respire, aspire, and expire, unconscious as is the tree of the futility of it all, Dugald Maule would have dismissed him with the same indifferent shrug. He was instinct with aims that end with self. His mind was centered on Eden, and until he solved the problem she had suggested, he had no thought of time that life devours or of time that devours life.
And as he tried to devise some form of campaign, suddenly he was visited by an idea which he grasped and detained. It was, that if Eden hated her husband a cause for that hatred must exist, and could he but discover it he would then have something tangible wherewith to work. Certainly, he told himself, it could not be money; nor did Usselex look like a man that drank. "I wonder," he mused, "whether it can be that he treats her badly. H'm. I know very little about Usselex. He may be Chesterfield one hour and Sykes the next. There are plenty of men of that stamp. If he is, that poor little thing deserves consolation. No, it can hardly be that—Eden is too high-spirited to submit to brutality. She would leave him at once, and everyone would approve. Whereas, if Usselex has got himself entangled by some woman, Eden, out of sheer pride, would remain where she is. Nothing can be more galling than the pity which is manifested for a woman whose husband disports himself abroad. It is shameful, the world says; and inwardly the world thinks, when a woman wins a man and fails to hold him, the fault is not his, but hers. Eden understands that, of course, and if there is a woman in the matter, that is the reason why she continues to reside on the sunnyside of Fifth Avenue. But then, it may not be that. I may be miles away. Though if it is, nothing could be more favorable. It would be becoming of Eden to keep her misfortune to herself, but it would be unwomanly on her part not to desire revenge; and what better revenge could she have against the man whom she married out of pique than in the arms of the man by whom that pique was excited? But, bah! All this is pure conjecture. I haven't a fact to go on. I know little or nothing of Usselex, and I doubt very much whether Eden would be willing to supply me with any information. The only thing for me to do is to cull a few facts, season them to suit her taste, and serve hot. At this stage a false step would be fatal. I must be careful of my cookery. To-morrow, in the absence of facts, I will see what I can do in the way of condiments;et alors, en route pour Cythère."
So mused Mr. Maule; then, having reached the end of his tether, he turned back again in the direction of his home.
The next morning, however, the plan of campaign which he had been devising was not a whit more tangible to him than it had been during his midnight stroll. He drank some coffee hopefully, and tried to lose himself in a damp copy of theTimes. But in vain. The coffee brought him no comfort, and through the columns of the paper came the sultriness of Eden's eyes. The obituary of a famous general failed to detain his attention. The intelligence that an emperor was moribund lent no zest to the day. Mechanically his eyes scanned the Court Calendar; a case in which he was to appear was numbered therein, but he let it pass unnoticed. And presently, finding himself occupied in memorizing the advertisement of a new soap, he tossed the paper from him and started on his way down town.
It was late when he reached his office. In the corner of the room a fat little man sat patiently twirling his thumbs, and on a desk were a number of letters.
"What do you want?" Maule asked. His voice was gruff and inhospitable.
The fat little man started, and then fumbled in a pocket. "Dere was dot morhgige——" he began.
"Come again, then," Maule interrupted; "I am busy."
"Dot morhgige—" the little man persisted.
"Go to hell with your mortgage," Maule shouted, and slammed a door in his face.
This rite accomplished, he felt better. The brutality which he had displayed to the corpulent dwarf pleasured him. He only regretted that the man had not insisted further, that he might have kicked him down the stairs. What was a mortgage to him, forsooth, when he had Eden for a goal? The episode, trivial though it was, had stirred his pulse and left the effect of a tonic. He smiled, and opened his letters. As he read them his clerk appeared. With him he consulted for a minute and then started for court. On his return there was the little fat man again, and beating a tatoo on the window was Reginald Maule, ex-Minister to France.
"Well, Uncle Regy," he exclaimed, "how are you? Mr. Driscoll," he called out to the clerk, "attend to that Dutch beast, will you? Uncle Regy, step this way."
He led Mr. Maule into the inner office and graciously accepted a cigar. He was in great good-humor again. While in court a luminous idea had visited him, a plan of campaign which he proposed to elaborate at his ease. It was alluring as spring, and instinct with promises of success. Already he roamed in dreams forecast.
"Dugald," the uncle began, "I did not see you at the Matriarch's, last night."
Until recently Maule had not seen his uncle for several years. But during these years the uncle had not changed. He had the same agreeable manner, the same way of seating himself, the same sarcastic fold about his lips which Maule remembered of old. Even the cut of his waistcoat was unaltered. Apparently nothing had happened to him; he had contented himself with continuing to be.
"No," the nephew answered, and flicked the ashes from his cigar. "No, something else turned up and——"
"Exactly. If I had met you there I should not have come here. Now, I want a word with you in regard to the estate. Are you busy?" And the ex-Minister settled himself in his chair with the air of a man confident that, whatever else might demand attention, his own affairs would take precedence.
Thereupon, for some little time, nephew and uncle discussed matters of personal and common interest; and when at last these matters had been satisfactorily determined, the afternoon had begun to wane. At last the ex-Minister stood up to go.
"By the way," he said, his hand on the door, "who was it that Petrus Menemon's daughter married? I looked for her last night. When I saw her at the opera I could have sworn it was her mother. Same type, same eyes, same carriage of the head. She made me feel twenty years younger, I give you my word she did."
"She is pretty," Maule answered, negligently.
"Pretty? She is more intoxicating than the dream of a fallen angel. She is better looking than her mother. Hum, hum. You don't see such women in France. What did you say her name is?"
"She married a man named Usselex."
"Usselex? What Usselex?"
"What Usselex I can't tell you. But there seems to be only one, and she caught him. He has more money than Incoul, Jerolomon, and Bleecker Bleecker put together."
"You don't mean John Usselex, the banker?"
"Oh, but I do, though."
The ex-Minister opened the door and looked out into the outer room, then, assured that no one was listening, he resumed his former seat, crossed his legs, and meditatively beat his knee. In his face was an expression which a psychologist would have admired, a commingling of the vatic and the amused, accentuated by sarcasm.
"Well, what of it?" Maule asked shortly, perplexed at the mummery.
The ex-Minister leaned forward and for four or five minutes addressed his nephew in a monotone. As he spoke Maule's perplexity changed to surprise, then to bewilderment, and ultimately into jubilation. "Are you positive of this?" he exclaimed. "Tell me that you are. You must be positive!"
"I give you the facts—"
"I am off, then;" and he sprang from his seat. "I haven't a minute to lose," he added; and taking his uncle by the arm he led him from the office.
In the outer room the corpulent dwarf still sat. "Dere was dot morhgige—" he stammered.
"Accepted," Maule shouted, and turned to the clerk. "Look over the papers, will you? If they are right, get a check ready. As for you, my slim friend," he said to the German, "remember that business men have business hours." And laughing as though he had said something insultingly original, he hurried down the stairs, and jumping into a hansom, he presently rolled up town.
In a trifle over half an hour he was at Eden's door. "There is no time like the present," he told himself, as he rang the bell. But when, in answer to his ring, a servant appeared, he learned that Eden was not at home.
"Does Mrs. Usselex dine out, do you know?" Maule asked.
"I don't think Mrs. Usselex is coming back, sir," was the answer.
"You mean that Mrs. Usselex will not return until late, I suppose."
To this the man made no reply; he scratched the end of his nose reflectively. In his face was an expression that arrested Maule's attention.
"What do you mean?" he asked, a sudden suspicion entering his mind.
But still the man made no answer. He raised his arms, the elbows crooked, and assumed the appearance of an idiot.
"It is worth five dollars," Maule continued. "Here they are;" and with that he extended a bill of the nation, which the servant took, and then, glancing over his shoulder, whispered:
"Mrs. Usselex has gone to her father's, sir. I distrust something's hup."
"That man ought to be dismissed," Maule decided, as he hurried down the steps. "I say, cabby," he called to the hansom; "Second Avenue and Stuyvesant Square."
"Damn it all," he muttered, as he seated himself in the vehicle. "I am afraid I am late for the ball."
It took the hansom but a few minutes to reach its destination, and presently the door of Mr. Menemon's house was opened. As Maule entered he caught the sound of Eden's voice. "I want to see Mrs. Usselex," he said, and without waiting for a reply, he pushed the portière aside.
"It is false," he heard Usselex exclaim.
For a second Maule hesitated. He would have preferred to have found Eden alone. Indeed, the possibility of encountering her husband had not occurred to him; but he felt that it was too late to recede, and visited by that prescience which comes to the alert, he divined that the blow which he intended to strike must be struck then or never. He let the portière fall, and taking his courage in both hands, he stepped forward. As he did so, Eden, in annoyance at the intrusion, moved back, and Usselex, with a query on his tongue, turned to him. But before the latter could frame his words, Maule had spoken.
"Mr. Usselex," he said, with the air of one ventilating a conventional platitude, "are you aware that a man who insults a woman is a coward?"
At this speech Eden's hands fluttered like falling leaves; she made as would she speak, but Usselex motioned to her to be silent, and flicking a speck of dust from his sleeve as though the speck represented the reproof, he answered in a tone as conventional as Maule's. "And are you aware, sir, that a man who permits himself to interfere between husband and wife is—"
But whatever he may have intended to say, the sentence remained unfinished. Maule did not wait for its completion. He advanced yet nearer to where Usselex stood, he looked him in the face, and without raising his voice, he said: "This lady, Mr. Usselex, is not your wife, nor are you her husband." Then, turning to Eden, he added with the grace of a knight-errant, "Miss Menemon, allow me to present my congratulations."
The old legends tell of disputants ossified by one glance of Jove's avenging stare; and when Maule made his melodramatic announcement, both Usselex and Eden stood transfixed and motionless with surprise. Of the little group Maule alone preserved any semblance of animation. The palms of his hands were moist, and he felt unable to control one of the muscles of his face. But his emotion was not apparent. Outwardly he was perfectly self-possessed, and admonished by that instinct which at times warns us that every trace of feeling should be disguised, he succeeded in heightening the illusion by means of his moustache, to which he proceeded to give a negligent twirl.
And as he twirled it Eden seemed to recover from her stupor. To her face, which had been blanched, the color returned. In her eyes came a gleam as from a reflection caught from without. Her lips moved, and she glanced from accuser to accused. And as she glanced, dumb and ineffectual of speech, Mr. Menemon crossed the room.
"What is it you say?" he asked.
It was evident at once that of the scene—which if long in the telling had in reality not outlasted a moment—he had stood as witness.
"What is it you say?" he repeated.
"I say that this man is a bigamist." And as Maule spoke he tossed his head as though inviting possible contradiction. "I say," he continued, "that Mr. John Usselex has a wife living in Paris."
Mr. Menemon smoothed the back of his head reflectively. "Dear me!" he said; "that may all be. I daresay there are hundreds of John Usselexes. You don't expect them to remain bachelors because one of their name-sake gets married, do you?" And with that he nodded and turned with a smile to his daughter. "He can't expect that, Eden, can he?"
But Eden's eyes were fixed on Usselex. Her attention was wholly centered in him. Seemingly her father's words were unheeded. And the old gentleman turned again to Maule.
"What evidence have you that this John Usselex is the John Usselex of whom you speak?" he asked; and with the hand with which he had smoothed the back of his head, he now began to caress his chin.
But before Maule could answer, Eden caught her father by the arm. "His face!" she whispered quickly. "You can see it in his face." She pointed to him; in her eyes was conviction, and in her voice no tremor of doubt. "Look at him," she cried; "it is he."
Usselex turned to her in a manner which to those present was uninterpretable, then his eyes sought Mr. Menemon's, and finally he lowered them to the ground. His attitude was tantamount to admission, and as such Eden construed it.
"Thank God!" she exclaimed. "O God! I thank you. I am free." She still clutched her father's arm, and Maule made a movement toward her.
"Yes," he said, as he did so, "yes, Miss Menemon——"
But before he could reach her, Usselex barred the way. "By what right, sir—" he began, very firmly, but Eden interrupted him.
"I told you once that I thought Miss Bolten was interested in him. Let me tell you now he is in love with me."
"Eden, Eden—" her father murmured, reprovingly. Into Usselex' face came an expression that a demon might have envied. For a second he fronted Maule, his hand clenched. Then the fingers loosened again. The demon was transformed into a quiet, self-possessed man, that looked like a monk, a trifle valetudinarian at that.
"Madam," he said, "when a woman speaks in that way to the man whose name she bears, there is but one thing for him to do, and that is to withdraw." He bowed, and without further comment left the room.
"I don't bear your name," Eden called after him, but he had gone. "I don't bear your name; I throw it to the mud from which it sprang."
"And you are right, Miss Menemon," Maule echoed. "You are right to do so." And again he moved to her.
"Don't touch me," the girl cried; she was trembling. Evidently the excitement had been too much for her. "Don't touch me," she repeated; and drawing from him as from a distasteful thing, she added, with a look of scorn that an insulted princess might have exhibited: "Though you have not a lackey's livery, you have a lackey's heart."
"Eden, I beg of you—" Mr. Menemon began. But the girl had turned her back, and divining the uselessness of any admonition, the old gentleman addressed himself to Maule. "You will permit me to say, sir," he continued, "that whatever your motive may have been, and whatever evidence you may have, your announcement might have been conveyed a trifle less unceremoniously. I bid you good afternoon."
"But——"
"I bid you good afternoon."
Maule twirled his moustache for a second, and then, with a glance at Eden, he too left the room.
Hardly had he gone, when Eden threw herself on a lounge. In her ears was the roar of water displaced. The flooring turned from red to black. Then all was still; she had fainted.
As Eden, through thunderclaps, and zig-zagged flames of light, groped back to consciousness again, it was with the intuition that some calamity was waiting to greet her. Into the depths of her being, a voice which refused to be hushed had been whispering, "Come." And Eden, clinging to the fringes of night, strove to still the call. But the phantom of things that were persisted and overcame her; it loomed abruptly, with arms outstretched, forcing her against her will, to reason with that in which no reason was.
For the moment she was benumbed, out-wearied with effort and enervated by the strain and depletion of force. She wished herself unconscious again, and looked back into the absence of sentiency from which she had issued, as a pilgrim reëntering the desert may recall the groves of Mekka and the silence of the Khabian tomb. It had been less a swoon to her than a foretaste of peace, the antithesis of life compressed into a second; and she longed for a repetition of the sudden suffocation of its embrace. But memory had got its baton back, and the incidents of the hour trooped before her gaze. She could not be free of them; they beat at her heart, filling her thoughts to fulfillment itself. In their onslaught they brought her new strength, the courage that comes to the oppressed; and rising from the lounge on which she had fallen, she left her father and his ministrations, and redescended into the past with anger for aigrette and hatred for spur.
It was the room that she had occupied during her girlhood to which she then went, and in the presence of the familiar walls, something reminded her of the days in which she had believed that the ignoble bore a stigma on their brow, that infamy of thought or deed left a visible sign. She recalled the old legends with which her childhood had been charmed, the combats of heroes with monsters, the struggles of lords with lies. In those days indeed, evil had been to her an abstraction, a figure of speech beckoned out of the remotest past, and unencounterable as the giant bat that darkened the nights of prehistoric time. Then had come a nearer acquaintance with it, the shudders that chronicles brought, and the intimations of the fabliaux; but still it had been distant, a belonging of the past incompetent of survival. And it was not until within recent years that she learned that it had indeed survived. Even then the tidings that reached her had as much consistency to her mind as the news of cholera in Singapore. She could not picture that Orient port, and the cholera she was sure would never attack her in her father's house.
And now suddenly she was contaminated. She felt as one may feel who had been lured into a lazar of lepers. Turn which way she might she could never wash herself clean. She was degraded in her own sight, and tricked by those whom she had trusted best. And no issue, not one. The dishonor into which she had been trapped was a thing that clamored for redress, and to that clamoring of her heart no answer was vouchsafed. "O God," she moaned, "is justice dead? Where are the thunderbolts you used to wield? Have you wearied of vengeance? have you left it, Jehovah, to us?"
Her forehead was throbbing as it had never throbbed before. Above it each individual hair seemed to be turning red. Her sultry eyes were dilated; she was quivering from shoulder to heel. And as in her restless anger she paced the room, before her on the wall glowed the device her own hands had made—Keep Yourself Pure. For a second she stared at it, the color mounting and retreating from her cheeks, and suddenly she tore it down and trampled it under foot.
"Vengeance is there," she cried; and without even the hesitation of a hesitation she bent over a table, and finding a sheet of paper, she scrawled across it—In telling you of Maule's love for me I omitted to tell you of my own for Adrian.This she addressed and then rang the bell.
And as she stood waiting for a servant to come, there was a rap on the door and her father entered. He looked at her for an instant and rubbed his hands. "It is chilly here, Eden," he said; "had you not better come down-stairs?"
"Is it worth while? It must be late. Where is Parker? has she not come with my things?"
"Yes; it is almost six o'clock. Parker—"
"Six! I thought it was midnight. How long have I been here?"
"Three or four minutes at most. I had a note to write. So soon as I could do so I followed you at once. You are quite yourself again, Eden, are you not?"
"I can understand," mused Eden, "that there are years that count double when there are moments that prolong themselves as have these." "Yes," she answered, aloud. "I am better. I will come with you."
She picked up the message she had written and left the room. In the hallway was the servant for whom she had rung. "Take this to Fifth Avenue," she said. "There is no answer, but see that it is delivered in person."
"It is pleasanter here, is it not, Eden?" Mr. Menemon asked, when they reached the sitting-room. "It makes one think of old times, doesn't it? Do you remember—" And Mr. Menemon rambled on with some anecdote of days long past.
Eden gazed at him wonderingly. His words passed her by unheeded. It was bewildering to her that he could accept the tragedy so lightly, and as he spoke she kept repeating to herself that Virginius was part of a world long dead and derided. Truly, she could not understand. He seemed conscious of no wrong doing. The position in which she was placed excited him so little that he was able to discourse in platitudes. She was not wife nor maid nor widow, and for the man who had taken her from her home and inflicted on her a wrong that merited the penitentiary, her father expressed no indignation, no sorrow even. He did not even attempt to condole with her. And it was to him she had turned. Truly, she was helpless indeed. Yet still she gazed at him, expectant of some sudden outbreak, some storm of anger which, though it parodied her own, would at least be in unison with it. Her fingers were restless and her mouth was parched, a handkerchief which she held she twisted into coils, it seemed to her that were no word of sympathy forthcoming she would suffocate, as the traveler in the desert gasps beneath the oppression of fair and purple skies.
And still Mr. Menemon rambled on. "I should have gone to his funeral," he said, "had you not come in. He is to be buried in Washington I hear. Well, well! he was a brave man and a staunch friend. Yes, he was all of that. Really, Eden, I ought to have gone. I suppose they will escort the body to the station. Did you hear the drums when you went up-stairs? It makes a man of my age feel that his turn may be next."
Mr. Menemon crossed the room and looked out of the window. "See, Eden," he continued; "there must be a whole regiment. Not his own, though. The better part of that went down at Gettysburg. You remember, don't you——"
With this Mr. Menemon turned with a haste he strove to conceal. "It's almost dinner time," he added, inconsequently. "I will just change my coat." And immediately he left the room.
For a moment Eden thought she heard his voice in the hall. Then all was still again. She was wholly alone. She envied her father's friend who lay in some catafalque across the square. And presently the sense of desolation grew so acute that she threw herself prostrate on the lounge, and clasping a cushion in her arms, she buried her face in its silk.
From the square beyond came a muffled roll, and on her shoulder the touch of a hand. It was her father, she was sure. She half turned, her cheeks wet with tears. "What is it?" she sobbed. "Father——"
"It is I, Eden." And through a rift of understanding there filtered the sound of Usselex's voice. With the flutter of a bird surprised, she looked up. She started, and would have risen, but the hand weighed her down. She tried to move, and raising her arm as though to shield her eyes from some distasteful sight, suddenly she extended it, and motioned him back.
"Eden," he began.
"Don't speak to me!" she cried; and shaking herself from his hold, she stood up and dashed the tears away. "Don't speak to me!" she repeated; "and if anywhere within the purlieus of your being there is a spark of shame, leave me, and never——"
"Eden, you are unjust."
"Ah, I am unjust, am I not? I am unjust, because I believed in you. I am unjust, because I discover you in some coarse intrigue, I am unjust, because I thought myself your wife. I am unjust, am I? Did you get my note? Is it for that that you are here?"
"Eden, if you will listen a moment——"
"I have listened too long. Where is my father? Why is it you pursue me here? Are you not satisfied with your work? You meet a girl who only wishes to trust, and before her eyes you unroll a panorama of deceit. Oh! you chose her well——"
"It cannot be that you believe that man, Eden——"
"The man I believed was you. What matters the testimony of others when I find myself deceived——"
"Eden, you have deceived yourself. Last night I told you there were things I had not wished to tell, not from lack of confidence, but because——"
"Because you knew that did I hear them I would go."
"No, not that; but because I did not wish to cause you pain."
"Yes, protest. My father said you would. But the protest comes too late. Besides, I do not care to listen."
And thereat she made a movement as though to leave the room. But this Usselex prevented. He planted himself very firmly before her. His attitude was arrestive as an obelisk and uncircuitable as a labyrinth. Attention was his to command, and he claimed it with a gesture.
"You shall not go," he said; "you shall hear me."
She stepped back to elude him, but he caught her by the wrist.
"Look at me," he continued. "It took fifty years to make my hair gray; one day has made it white."
Eden succeeded in disengaging herself from his grasp, and she succeeded the more easily in that a servant unobserved by her, yet seen by Usselex, had entered the room. He loosed his hold at once and glanced at the man.
"What is it?" he asked. "No one rang."
"A letter, sir," the man answered; "it was to be delivered to you."
Usselex took the note and held it unexamined in his hand. Eden caught a glimpse of the superscription. The writing was her own. It was, she knew, the note which she had dispatched a half hour before. Meanwhile the servant had withdrawn.
"When I came home this afternoon," Usselex continued, "and found that you had gone, I could not understand——"
"You might have gone to the Ranleigh for information. Let me pass!"
"Why to the Ranleigh? surely——"
"To Mrs. Feverill, then, since you wish me to be explicit. Let me pass, I say."
"It was of her I wished to tell you——"
"Was it, indeed? You were considerate enough, however, not to do so."
"Let me tell you now?"
"Rather let me go. I prefer your reticence to your confidence."
"Eden——"
"No, I have no need to learn more of your mistress——"
Usselex stepped aside. "She is my daughter," he said, sadly. "Go, since you wish to."
—"Nor of your wife," she added, as he spoke.
"I have no other wife than you," he answered, and with the note which he held in his hand he toyed despondently. As yet he had not so much as glanced at the address.
Something, a light, an intonation, and influence undiscerned yet sentiable, stayed her steps. She halted in passing and looked him in the face. And he, seeing that she hesitated, repeated with an accent sincere as that which is heard in the voice of the moribund, "No other wife than you."
"You say that Mrs. Feverill is your daughter?" she exclaimed. It may be that the average woman, conscious of her own mobility, is more inattentive of the past than of the present. But however that may be, the assurance which Eden had just received seemed to affect her less than the preceding announcement. "You say that she is your daughter," she repeated. "Why, you told me—You said—"
"I have told you nothing. Will you sit a moment and let me tell you now?"
Coerced and magnetized, the girl moved back and sank down again on the lounge. Usselex still toyed absently with the note, and as he too found a seat, for the first time she recalled its contents. Then a shudder beset her.
"I ought perhaps," he began, "to have been franker in this matter. But my excuse, if it be one, is that I was dissuaded by your father. Before I ventured to ask you to marry me, I told my story to him, and he counselled silence. What I say to you now he will substantiate. Shall I ring and ask him to come here?"
His words reached her from inordinate distances, across preceding days, and out of and through the note which he held in his hand; and with them came the acutest pain. "He is telling the truth," she reflected, "and I deserve to die."
"Shall I ring?" he repeated.
She started and shook her head. "No, no," she replied. "Go on."
"I thank you," Usselex returned. "I can understand that enough has occurred to shake your confidence. In the circumstances, it is good of you to be willing to receive my unsupported word. But bear with me a moment. You will see, I think, that I have done no wrong."
As he spoke she had but one thought, to repossess herself of the note. Could she but get it and tear it and set it aflame, out of the cinders life might re-arise.
"You may remember," he continued, "what I said of myself, 'things have not always been pleasant with me.' You knew as a child what it is to lose a mother, but think what it must be to have a mother and have that mother ignore your existence. Such a thing is hard, is it not? But of her I will not speak; she is dead, poor woman; I hope she never suffered as have I. The people by whom I was brought up I looked upon as my parents. They had been paid to adopt me. When I discovered that, I was old enough to make my own living. With that view I came to this country. New York was different then. I should not care to land here now and attempt to make a fortune without a penny to start with. But it is true, I was young. I was a fair linguist, a rarity in those days, and it was not long before I found a situation. When I had a little money put by, I learned of an opening in Boston, and started in business there for myself. Shortly after I became acquainted with a girl. She was very beautiful; more so, I thought, than anyone I had ever seen. So soon as I was in a position to marry she became my wife. We lived together for three years. During that time I thought her affection as unwavering as my own. She was an excellent musician, and much sought after, not alone because of her talent, but because of her beauty as well. The entertainments which she frequented I was often unable to attend. But I was glad to have her go without me. I was proud of the admiration which she aroused. One evening she left me, and did not return. For some time her disappearance was unexplained. Ultimately I discovered that she was in New York. She had deserted me for another man. I followed her and obtained a divorce. Afterwards the man deserted her as she had deserted me. Then she went abroad. Of her life there I can only judge by hearsay. I believe that at one time she figured in an opera troupe. Now and then she wrote, asking for money; but latterly she has ceased. It is a surprise to me that she calls herself by my name. Perhaps she has done so because she heard that I had prospered. The reflection of that prosperity may have been of advantage to her. That, however, can easily be stopped. But I am sorry, Eden, that you should have learned of it. Even the children do not know; they think her dead. When she deserted me, I left them with their grand-parents. In so doing I sought to separate myself from everything connected with her, and I stipulated that I would provide for their maintenance on condition that they were kept in ignorance of their mother's existence and of mine. Some years ago, however, first the grandfather, then the grandmother, died. I was obliged to appear more prominently. My daughter had married; I took her husband into my employ. It was of him I spoke the other day."
He hesitated and paused, his eyes fixed in hers. The phrases had come from him haltingly, one by one, but each he had dowered with an accent that carried conviction with it. With the note which he held in his hand, he still toyed abstractedly.
"You understand now, do you not?" he asked. "You understand and forgive?"
And Eden, as one who has weathered a storm and sees shipwreck imminent in port bowed her head. "It is truth," she told herself. "If he reads that note, he will kill me."
"You understand now, do you not?" he repeated. His voice was sonorous and caressing as an anthem, and he bent nearer that he might see her face.
"Too late!" she answered.
"No, Eden, not that. Look at me. You must not hide your eyes. In all the world there are none as fair as they. Look at me, Eden. Tell me that you forgive. I have pained you, I know; I have been stupid; but the pain has been unwitting and the stupidity born of love. Look at me, Eden. See," he continued, and bent at her side, "See, I ask forgiveness on my knees. Can you not give it me?"
"To you, yes, but never to myself." She spoke hoarsely, in a voice unlike her own; her eyes were not in his, they were staring at something in his hand, and as she stared, she seemed to shrink. The muscles of her face were rigid. And Usselex, perplexed at the fixidity of her gaze, followed the direction which her eyes had taken and saw that they rested on the note which he still held, crumpled and forgotten. For a second he looked at it wonderingly, "Why, it is from you," he exclaimed.
In that second, Eden, with the prescience that is said to visit those that drown, went forward and back, into the past and into the future as well. Amid her scattered yesterdays she groped for a promise. Of the unanswering morrows she called for release, and as her husband stood up, preparing to read what she had written, she felt herself the depository of shame.
The next instant she was at his side. "Give it me," she murmured. Her voice trembled a little, but she strove to render it assured. "Give it me," she pleaded.
Usselex turned to her at once. "Certainly, if you wish it," he said. "What is it about?"
He held the note to her, and she, with an affected air of indifference, took it from him and tossed it into the grate.
"Nothing," she answered, and then, as though ashamed of the falsehood, she looked him bravely in the face. "It was about your clerk."
"Adrian?" he asked. And as she nodded, tremulous still and unprepared for further questions, he added, "I hope you like him."
"You hope I like him?"
"Yes, he is my son."
Eden's hands went to her throat and her eyes to the grate. The note was already in a blaze.
"Yes," Usselex continued, "I have a bit of news for you. He is engaged to Miss Bolton. For a long time her parents objected, but last night they consented. It may be because he was at the opera with you. How small people can be!" he added. "She is a nice girl, though. Adrian told me this morning that he tried to speak to you about her the night I dined with Governor Blanchford, but that you did not seem interested."
"God in Heaven!" gasped Eden, beneath her breath. "If these are your punishments, what then are your rewards?"
Usselex had led her to a seat and taken her unresisting hand in his. For some little time he talked to her, very gently, as it behooves the strong to address the weak. And as he spoke, Mr. Menemon entered, and seeing them hand-locked and side-by-side, he smiled cheerily to himself with the air of a man who learns that all is well.
Usselex stood up at once, but for a little space Eden sat very still, surprised as February at a violet, then rising, she went forward to the window and looked out at the night. From the square beyond came the beat of drums, and on the breeze was borne to her the shrill treble of retreating fifes. And as she loitered at the window, conscious only of a sense of happiness such as she had never known before, her father called to her. She turned at his bidding. In the opposite doorway a servant stood.
"Dinner is served," he said.
And presently Mr. Menemon, as was his custom, mumbled a grace and thanksgiving to God.