IVDANGER
It was what he had been afraid of on and off for seven years. The wonder was that it hadn't happened before. But, since it had not happened, he had got out of the way of expecting it. The fear of it used to dog him whenever he went to the theater or the opera or out to dine. There had been minutes in Fifth Avenue, or Bond Street, or the Rue de la Paix, as the case might be, when, at the sight of a feather or a scarf or something familiar in a way of walking, his heart and brain seemed to stop their function. He had known himself to stand stock-still, searching wildly for the easy, casual phrases he had prepared—for the purpose of carrying off such a meeting as this, if ever it occurred, only to find that he was mistaken—that it was some one else.
There had been two or three years like that, two or three years in which they had oftenbeen in the same city, perhaps under the same roof; but he had never so much as caught a glimpse of her. In the earlier months that had been a relief. He couldn't have seen her and kept his self-control. He could follow the routine of life only by a system he had invented—a system for shutting her out of his thought, that the sight of her would have wrecked.
Then had come another period in which he felt he could have committed infamies just to see her getting in or out of a carriage, or lunching in a restaurant, or buying something in a shop. There were whole seasons when he knew she was in New York from autumn to spring; and, though he haunted all the places where women who keep in the movement are likely to be found, he never saw her.
He knew he could have discovered her plans and followed her; but he wouldn't do that. Besides, he didn't want to meet her in such a way as to be obliged to speak to her. He wouldn't have known what to say, or by what name to call her. Such an encounter would have annoyed her and made him grotesque. It was more than he asked. He would have been satisfied with a glimpse of her gloved handor her veiled face as she drove in the Park or the Avenue. But he never got it.
After he married, the fear of meeting her came back. It was fear as much for her sake as for his own. He began to understand that the embarrassment wouldn't be all on his side, nor the suffering. He picked that up from the children, as he had picked up so many things, piecing odds and ends of their speeches together. He saw them so rarely now that he attached the greater value to the hints they threw out. He never questioned them about her, but it was natural that they should take a wider range of comment in proportion as they grew older. So he learned that her dread of seeing him was as great as his own of seeing her. It was astonishing that in all those seven years the hazards of New York should not have thrown them together.
And now, at the moment when he might reasonably have felt safest, there she was! That is, she was on the steamer. For seven or eight days they were to be cooped up on the same boat. He could never go on deck or into the saloon without having to pass her. Worse still, she could never go outside hercabin door without the risk of being obliged to make him some sign of recognition. And a sign of recognition betweenthem—why, the thing was absurd! Between them it must be all—or nothing; and it couldn't be either.
He looked at the passenger-list again. Yes; that was her name:Mrs. Theodore Lacon. It was not a name likely to be duplicated. In all human probability it was she. As far as he could gather from the list, she was traveling alone, without so much as the companionship of a maid. He, too, was alone; but, fortunately, his name was inconspicuous:Mr. C. Walker. It was just the sort of name to be overlooked. She might read the list half a dozen times without really seeing it. If she were to notice it, she might easily not reflect that the initial stood for Chipman. It was conceivable that if she didn't actually see him she might not know that he was on the ship at all.
The thought suggested a line of action. He was in his cabin at the time. He could stay there. Looking through the port-hole, he saw that they had not yet passed the Statue of Liberty. While in dock he had kept to hisroom, in order to read letters and avoid the crowd that throngs the deck of an outgoing steamer. There was every likelihood that she hadn't seen him any more than he had seen her. If he kept himself hidden she might never know! He could avoid the decks by day and take his exercise by night. By night, too, he could creep into the smoking-room and get a little change. But he would stay away from the general gathering-places on the ship and spare her what pain he could. That they should meet as strangers was out of the question. That they should meet as social acquaintances was even more so. They had been all to each other—and they had been nothing. No other relation was possible.
So the week passed, and they reached Liverpool. He was purposely among the last to go ashore. In the great shed where the luggage was distributed under initial letters, he was glad to remember that W was so far from L. Nevertheless, he allowed his eye to roam toward section L, but found no one there whom he recognized. He ran over in his mind the various chances that she might not have come. It was no uncommon thing to read in a list ofpassengers the names of people who hadn't sailed. He had done so before.
Later he scanned, as discreetly as he could, the occupants of the special train that was to take them to London. He couldn't see that she was anywhere among them. He sighed, but whether from relief or disappointment he was not sure.
As it was one o'clock, he took his seat in the luncheon-car, making sure in advance that she wasn't there. He had come to the conclusion by this time that she was not on the train at all—that she hadn't been on the steamer. He did not, however, regret his precautions, because—well, because the sense of her proximity had made him feel as he had felt in the days—fourteen years ago now—when the very streets of the city in which she lived were hallowed ground. He had supposed that emotion dead. Probably it was dead. It must be dead. It was merely that, owing to the constraint of the voyage, his nerves were unstrung, inducing the frame of mind in which people see ghosts. Yes, that was it; he had been seeing ghosts. It was not a living thing, this renewed yearning for a sight of her. It was onlythe reflex of something past. It could be explained psychologically. It was the sort of evanescent sentiment inspired by old songs, or by the scent of faded flowers, reviving old joys tenderly, perhaps poignantly, but fleetingly, insubstantially, and only as the wraiths of what they were. Yes, that was it, he repeated to himself as he lunched. It was nothing to be afraid of, nothing incongruous with the fact that he had left a wife and child in New York. It was not an emotion; it was only the echo, the shadow, the memory of an emotion, gone before it could be seized.
And then, suddenly, they were face to face. He was on his way from the luncheon-car to the compartment he shared with two or three men at the other end of the train. She was standing in the corridor, looking out at the vaporous English landscape. Through the mists overlying the flat fields and distant parks trees loomed weirdly, the elms and beeches in full leaf, the oaks just tinged with green. Cottony white clouds drifted overhead; the sun was dimly visible. Now and then a line of hedge was white, or pink and white, with the bursting may.
He didn't recognize the lady who barred his way along the narrow passage. As she stood with one arm on the brass rail that crossed the window he could see an ungloved hand; but it might have been any hand. She wore a long brown coat, rather shapeless, reaching to the hem of her dress, while a large hat, about which a green veil looped and drooped irregularly, entirely concealing the head, helped to make her, as he stood waiting for her to move, a mere feminine figure without personality.
It was the sense that some one desired to pass that caused her to turn slightly, glancing up at him sidewise. Even so, he couldn't see all of her face—not much more than the forehead and the eyes. But the eyes seemed to come alive as he looked down into them, like sapphires under slowly growing light. When she turned, her movements had the deliberation of bewilderment. She might have been just wakened in a place she didn't know.
"Chip!" There was another half-minute of incredulous gazing before she said anything more. "What are you doing here?"
He felt the necessity of explaining his presence. "I was on the boat. I didn't know—"
"That I was on it, too?"
"I—I did know that," he stammered, "after we sailed. Not before. It was the name in the list—"
"But I never saw you. There weren't many passengers. I was always on deck."
Her distress betrayed itself in the trembling of her voice, in the shifting of her color, and in the beating of the ungloved hand upon the gloved one.
He felt his own confusion passing. It was so natural to be with her, so right. His voice grew steadier as he said:
"I didn't go about very much. I was afraid—"
She nodded, speaking hastily. "I understand. It was kind of you. And you're—alone?"
He cursed himself for coloring, but he couldn't help it. He had a wife and child in New York! He saw that she wanted to recognize that fact from the first. She wanted to put that boy and his mother between them. Her husband and child stood between them, too. He took that cue in answering.
"Yes; I've run over hurriedly on business. And are you alone, too?"
She glanced toward the empty compartment where her bags were stowed in the overhead racks, and her books and illustrated papers lay on the cushions. "I'm on my way to join my—" It was her turn to color.
He nodded quickly, to show that he understood.
"He's in Biarritz," she hurried on, for the sake of saying something. "I'm to meet him in Paris. I wasn't coming over at all this spring. I wanted to stay with the children at Towers—"
It was a safe subject. "How were the children when you left?"
"Tom was all right; but Chippie has been having the same old trouble with his tonsils. They'll have to be cut again."
"I thought so the last time I saw him. And he's growing too fast for his strength, poor little chap. I notice," he added, gazing at her more intently than he had as yet permitted himself to do, "that he begins to look like you."
She smiled for the first time. "Oh, butIthink he looks likeyou."
"No; Tom takes after me. He's a Walker. Chippie's—"
"A darling," she broke in. "But he's not strong. Ever since he had the scarlet fever—"
"Yes, I know. But it might have been worse. We might have lost him. Do you remember the night—?"
She put her hand to her eyes as if to shut out the vision of it. "Oh, that awful night! And you were more afraid than I was. Mothers are braver than fathers at times like that."
"It was watching the fight he put up. Gad, he was plucky, the poor little chap! And he was only three, wasn't he?"
"Three and five months."
"And he'll be eleven his next birthday. How the years fly! By the way, won't it soon be time for Tom to be going to boarding-school?"
They were being pushed and jostled by guards and passengers. Between sentences it was necessary to make room for some one going or coming. She was obliged to step back into her compartment. Having taken the seat in the corner by the window, she motioned with her hand toward that in the opposite corner by the door. In this way they were separated by the length and width of the compartment,the distance marking the other gulf between them.
She continued to talk of the children, looking at first into the cavernous obscurity of Crewe station, through which they were dashing, and then at the open country. The children, with their needs, their ailments, their future careers, could not but be the natural theme between them. It lasted while they passed Nuneaton, Rugby, and Stafford, and were well on their way to London. Suddenly he risked a question:
"Do they—understand?"
She was plainly agitated that he should disturb the ashes that buried their past. Her eyes shot him one piteous, appealing glance, after which they returned to the passing landscape. "Tom understands," she said, at last. "Chippie takes it for granted."
"Takes it for granted—how?"
"Just as they both did—till Tom began to get a little more experience. It seemed to them quite the ordinary thing to have"—she hesitated and colored—"to have two fathers."
He winced, but risked another question:
"What makes you think that Tom's discovered it to be unusual?"
"Because he's said so."
"In what way? Do you mind telling me?"
"I'd rathernottell you."
"But if I insist?"
"You'll insist at the risk of having your feelings hurt."
"Oh, that!" A shrug of his shoulders and a wry smile expressed his indifference to such a result. "Did he ask you anything?"
She nodded, without turning from the window.
"Won't you tell me what it was? It would help me in my future dealing with the boy."
She continued to gaze out at the park-like fields, from which the mists had risen. "He asked me if you had done anything bad."
"And you told him—?"
"I told him that I didn't understand—that perhaps I'd never understood."
"Thank you for putting it like that. But you did understand, you know—perfectly. You mustn't have it on your conscience that—"
"Oh, we can't help the things we've got on our consciences. There's no way of shuffling away from them."
He allowed some minutes to pass before saying gently: "You're happy?"
She spoke while watching a flock of sheep trotting clumsily up a hillside from the noise of the train. "And you?"
"Oh, I'm as happy as—well, as I deserve to be. I'm notunhappy." A pause gave emphasis to his question when he said, almost repeating her tone: "And you?"
"I suppose I ought to say the same." A dozen or twenty rooks alighting on an elm engaged her attention before she added: "I've norightto be unhappy."
"One can be unhappy without a right."
"Yes; but one forfeits sympathy."
"Do you need sympathy?"
She answered hurriedly: "No, not at all."
"I do."
His words were so low that it was permissible for her not to hear them. Perhaps she meant at first to make use of this privilege, but when a minute or more had gone by she said: "What for?"
"Partly for the penalties I've had to pay, but chiefly for deserving them."
It seemed to him that her profile grew pensive.Though it detached itself clearly enough against the pane, it was a soft profile, a little blurred in the outline, with delicate curves of nose and lips and chin—the profile to go with dimpling smiles and a suffused sweetness. It pained him to notice that, though the suffused sweetness and the dimpling smiles were still as he remembered them, they didn't keep out of her face certain lines that had not been there when he saw her last.
"I think I ought to tell you," she said, after long reflection, "that I understand that sort of sympathy better now than I did some years ago. One grows more tolerant, if that's the right word, as one grows older."
"Does that mean that if certain things were to do again—you wouldn't do them?"
She took on an air of dignity. "That's something I can't talk about."
"But you think about it."
"Even so, I couldn't discuss it—with you."
"But I'm the very one with whom youcoulddiscuss it. Between us the conversation would be what lawyers call privileged."
She looked round at him for the first timesince entering the compartment. "Is anything privileged between you and me?"
"Isn't everything?"
"I don't see how."
"We've been man and wife—"
"That's the very reason. No two people seem to me so far apart as those who've been man and wife—and aren't so any longer."
"And yet, in a way, no two are so near together."
Her eyes were full of mute questioning. He made no attempt to approach her, but in leaning across the upholstered arm of his seat he seemed to overcome some of the distance between them.
"No two are so near together," he went on, "for the very reason that when they're separated outwardly they're bound the more closely by the things of the heart and the soul and the spirit. After all, those are the ties that count. The legal dissolving of bonds and making of new ones is only superficial. It hasn't put you and me asunder—not the you and me," he hurried on, as something in her expression and attitude seemed to indicate dissent, "not the you and me that are really essential. No courtand no judge could dissolve the union we entered into when you were twenty-one and I was twenty-seven, and our two lives melted into each other like the flowing together of two streams. Neither judge nor court can resolve into their original waters the rivers that have already become one."
She smiled faintly, perhaps bitterly. "Doesn't your figure of speech carry you too far? In our case the judge and the court were only incidental. What really dissolved our union was—"
"I know what you're going to say. And itwasagainst the letter of the contract. Of course. I've never denied that, have I? But in every true marriage there's something over and above the letter of the contract—to which the letter of the contract is as nothing. And if ever there was a true marriage, Edith, ours was."
"Stop!" Her little figure became erect. Her eyes, which up to the present he had been comparing to forget-me-nots, as he used to do, now shone like blue-fired winter stars. "Stop, Chip."
"Why?"
"Because I ask you to."
"But why should you ask me to, when I'm only stating facts? Itisa fact, isn't it? that our marriage was a true one in every sense in which a marriagecanbe true, till other people—no, let me go on!—till other people—your Aunt Emily most of all—advised you to exact your pound of flesh and the strict rigor of the law. I gave you your pound of flesh, Edith, right off the heart; so that if atonement could be made in that way—"
"Chip,willyou tell me what good there is in bringing this up now? You're married to some one else, and so am I. We can't go back, because we've burned the bridges behind us—"
"But it's something to know that we'd go back if we could."
"I haven't said so."
"True."
He fell silent because of the impossibility of speech. He made no move to go. To sit with her in this way, without speaking, was like an obliteration of the last seven years, reducing them to a nightmare. It was a shock to him, therefore, when she pointed to a distant spire on a hill, saying:
"There's Harrow. We shall be in London in half an hour."
In London in half an hour, and this brief renewal of what never should have been interrupted would be ended! He recalled similar journeys with her over this very bit of line, when the arrival in London had been but the beginning of long delightful days together. And now he might not see her for another seven years; he might never see her any more. It was unnatural, incredible, impossible; and yet the facts precluded any rebellion on his part against them. Even if she were willing to rebel he couldn't do it—with a wife and boy in New York. He had married again on purpose to satisfy his longing for a child—a family. He felt very tenderly toward them, the little chap and his mother; but he was clear as to the fact that he felt tenderly toward them, pityingly tender, largely because when face to face with Edith he wished to God that they had never been part of his life. And doubtless she felt the same toward her Mr. Lacon and the child of that union. But she would never admit it—not directly, at any rate. He might gather itfrom hints, or read it between the lines; but he could never make her say so. Why should she say so? What good would it do? Were she to confess to him that she hated the man toward whom she was traveling, he would experience an unholy satisfaction—but, after all, it would be unholy.
In the end he could find no simpler relief to his feelings than to take down her belongings from the overhead racks.
"I'll just run along and pick up my own traps," he explained, "and come back to see you properly looked after."
Though she assured him of her ability to look after herself, he felt at liberty to ridicule her pretensions. "You must have changed a great deal if you can do that," he declared, as he handed down a roll of rugs strapped with a shawl-strap.
"I have changed a great deal."
"I don't see it. I can't see that you've changed at all—essentially."
"Oh, but it's essentially that Iamchanged. Superficially I may be more or less the same—a little older; but within I'm another woman." She took advantage of the fact that his backwas turned to her, as he disentangled the handles of parasols and umbrellas from the network above, to say further: "Perhaps—since we've met in this unexpected way—and talked—possibly a little too frankly—it may be well if I remind you that you'd still be confronted with that fact—that I'm another woman—even if our bridges weren't burned behind us." He decided to let that pass without discussion, and because he said nothing she added: "And I dare say I should find you another man. So don't let us be too sorry, Chip, or think that if we hadn't done what wehavedone—"
Though he still stood with his back to her, lifting down a heavy bag with a black canvas covering, he could hear a catch in her voice that almost amounted to a sob. Because there was something in himself dangerously near responding to this appeal, he uttered the first words that came to him:
"Hello! Here's a thing I recognize. Didn't you have this—?"
As he stood holding the bag awkwardly before her she inclined her head.
"One of your wedding presents, wasn't it?"
"Oh, Chip, go away! I can't stand any more--now." "Do you mean that you'll see me--later--when we're in London?""Oh, Chip, go away! I can't stand any more—now." "Do you mean that you'll see me—later—when we're in London?"
She found voice to say: "It's my dressing-case. Mama gave it to me."
"And didn't I break a bottle in it once?"
She tried to catch his tone of casual reminiscence. "It's still broken."
"And isn't this the bag that got the awful bang that time we raised a row about it when we landed in New York? A silver box stove in, or something of that sort?"
She succeeded in smiling, though she knew the smile was ghastly. "It's still stove in."
"Gad, think of my remembering that!"
He meant the remark to be easy, if not precisely jocose; but the trivial, intimate details wrung a cry from her: "Oh, Chip, go away! I can't stand any more—now."
He pressed his advantage, standing over her, the black bag still in his hands, as she cowered in the corner, pulling down her veil. "'Now'! 'Now'! Do you mean that you'll see me—later—when we're in London?"
The veil hid her face, but she pressed her clasped hands against her lips as if to keep back all words.
"Do you mean that, Edith?" he insisted.
Her breath came in little sobs. She spokeas if the words forced themselves out in spite of her efforts to repress them: "I'm—I'm staying at the Ritz. I shall be there for—for some days—till—till—he sends for me."
"Good. I'm at the Piccadilly. I shall come to-morrow at eleven."
Before she could withdraw her implied permission he was in the corridor on the way to his own compartment; but at Euston he was beside her door, ready to help her down. Amid the noise and bustle of finding her luggage and having it put on a taxi-cab, there was no opportunity for her to speak. He took care, besides, that there should be none. She was actually seated in the vehicle before she was able to say to him, as he stood at the open window to ask if she had everything she required:
"Oh, Chip, about to-morrow—"
"At eleven," he said, hastily. "I make it eleven because if it's fine we might run down and have the day at Maidenhead."
She caught at a straw. If she couldn't shelve him, a day in the country, in the open air, would be less dangerous than one in London. And perhaps in the end she might shelve him. Atany rate, she could temporize. "I've never been at Maidenhead."
"And lunch at Skindle's isn't at all bad."
"I've never been at Skindle's."
"And after lunch we'll go out on the river—the Clieveden woods, you know—and all that."
"I've never seen the Clieveden woods."
"Then that's settled. At eleven. All right, driver; go on."
But she stretched her hands toward him. "Oh, Chip, don't come! I'm afraid. What's the good? Since we've burned our bridges—"
He had just time to say: "Even without bridges, there are wings. At eleven, then. All right, driver; go on. The Ritz Hotel."
VPENALTY
He went to Berne because she had let slip the name of that place during the afternoon at Maidenhead. It was the only hint of the kind she threw out during the afternoons—four in all—they passed together. He forgot the connection in which they came, but he retained the words: "He may have to go to Berne."
Hewas between them as an awesome presence, never mentioned otherwise than allusively. His name was too sinister to speak. Each thought of him unceasingly, in silence, and with anguish; but, as far as possible, they kept him out of their intercourse. It was enough to know that he was there, a fearful authority in the background, able to summon her from this brief renewal of old happiness, as Pluto could recall Eurydice.
It was the supremacy of this power, whichthey themselves had placed in his hands, that in the end drove Chip Walker to wondering what he was like.
"Whatishe like?" he found the force to ask.
She looked distressed. "He's a good man."
He nerved himself to come to a point at which he had long been aiming: "Look here, Edith! Why did you marry him?"
"Do you mean, why did I marry him in particular, or why did I marry any one?"
"I mean both."
"Oh, I don't know. There—there seemed to be reasons."
That was at Tunbridge Wells—in the twilight, on the terrace of the old Calverly Hotel. They were sitting under a great hawthorn in full bloom. The air was sweet with the scent of it. It was sweet, too, with the scent of flowers and of new-mown hay. In a tree at the edge of the terrace a blackbird was singing to a faint crescent moon. There was still enough daylight to show the shadows deepening toward Bridge and over Broadwater Down, while on the sloping crest of Bishop's Down Common human figures appeared of gigantic size as they towered through the gloaming.
Edith was pouring the after-dinner coffee. It was the first time they had dined together. On the other days she had made it a point to be back in London before nightfall; but she had so far yielded to him now as to be willing to wait for a later train.
"What sort of reasons?" he urged.
"Oh, I don't know," she said again, pensively, dropping a lump of sugar into his coffee-cup. She added, while passing the cup to him: "It isn't so easy for a woman to be—to be drifting about—especially with two children."
"But why should you have drifted about, when you knew that at a sign from you—?"
She went on as if he hadn't spoken. "And when I saw you had dismantled the house and other people were living in it—I couldn't help seeing that, you know, in driving by—"
"But, good God, Edith, you wouldn't have come back to me?"
She stirred her own coffee slowly. "N-no."
"Does that mean no or yes?"
"Oh, it means no. That is"—she reflected long—"if Ihadgone back to you I should have been sorry."
"You would have considered it a weakness—a surrender—"
She nodded. "Something like that."
"And you really had stopped—caring anything about me?"
"It wasn't that so much as—so much as that I couldn't get over my resentment." She seemed to have found the explanatory word. "That was it," she continued, with more decision. "That's what I felt: resentment—a terrible resentment. Whatever compromise I thought of, that resentment against you for—for doing what you did—blocked the way. If I'd gone back I should have taken it with me."
"But you don't seem to suffer from it now. Or am I wrong?"
She answered promptly: "No; you're right. That's the strange part of it. After I married—it left me. It was as if old scores were wiped out. That isn't precisely what I felt," she hastened to add; "and yet, it was somethinglikethat."
"You'd got even."
She shook her head doubtfully. "N-no. I don't mean that. But the past seemed to be dissolved—not to exist for me any more."
"H'm! Not to exist for you any more!"
"I saidseemed. That's what bewildered me—from the beginning: things I thought I felt—or thought I didn't feel—for a while—only to find later that it wasn't—wasn'tso." She went on with difficulty. "For instance—that day—that day at the Park—I thought that everything was killed within me. But it wasn't. It came alive again."
"But not so much alive that you wanted to come back to me."
"Alive—in a different way."
"What sort of different way?"
Her eyes became appealing. "Oh, what's the good of talking of it now?"
"Because you haven't told me what I asked—why you married him—why you married any one."
She turned the query against himself: "Why didyou?"
"I didn't till after you did. I wouldn't have done it then if—if I hadn't been so—well, to put it plainly, so damned lonely."
She gave him one of the smiles that stabbed him. "Well, then? Doesn't that answer your question?"
He thought it did, and for a while they listened to the blackbird's song in silence. It was their last talk. They parted at the door of the Ritz with the intention of spending the next day in Windsor Forest—or some other romantic wood; but within a few minutes she had telephoned him that the summons had arrived. Next morning she left for Paris.
And so he went to Berne. He hadn't meant to go there when he said good-by to her at Victoria. He had no intention of following her or putting himself in her way. He had purposely asked nothing of her plans, or so much as the date of her return to America. He had not precisely made up his mind that they were parting for good, but he was too stunned to forecast the future. He was stunned and sickened. He was stunned and sickened and disconsolate to a degree beyond anything he had thought possible in life. If it hadn't been for the bit of business that had brought him to London he would hardly have had courage enough to get through the days.
But, the business coming to an end, he was stranded. There was nothing to do but go back to the wife and child whose existencehe never remembered except with a pang of self-reproach. He meant to go back to them—but not yet. It was too soon. Edith was too much with him. The fact that her physical presence was withdrawn made her spiritually the more pervasive. The afterglow of their days together couldn't fade otherwise than slowly, like light when the sun goes down.
So, when he should have been going to New York, he went to Berne. It was not really in the hope of being face to face with her again or of having speech with her. Even if she came there the dread presence would come with her and keep them apart. But Berne was a little place, a quiet place, restful, soothing, a haunt of ancient peace. It had struck him, on former visits there, that on this spot ignored by the tourist, who changes trains subterraneously, consecrated to old sturdiness and modern wisdom, serenely heedless of the blatant and the up-to-date, a bruised spirit might heal itself in a seclusion cheered by green hills and distant snowy ranges. It was such solitude that, in the first place, he sought now. If in addition he could see the shadow of Edith passingby—no more!—he felt that he would soon be inwardly strong again.
At Berne there is a hotel known chiefly to wise travelers—a hotel of old wines, old silver, old traditions, handed down from father to son, and from the son to the son's son. Standing on the edge of the bluff which the city crowns, it dominates from its windows and terraces the valley of the Aar. Swift and unruffled, the river glides through the meadows like a sinuous ice-green serpent. Beyond the river and behind the pastoral slopes of the Gurten hangs a curtain of mist, which lifts at times to display the line of the Bernese Oberland, from the Wetterhorn to the Bettfluh.
It is a hotel with which the learned people who sit in international conferences and settle difficult questions are familiar. It was sheltering a conference when Chip Walker arrived. Each of the nations had appointed three distinguished men to consult with three distinguished men from each of the other nations on possible modifications in the rules of the Postal Union when the use of aeroplanes became general in that service. The distinguished men met officially in a great room of the Bundespalast;but unofficially they could be seen strolling along the arcaded medieval streets, or feeding the civic bears with carrots at the bear-pit, or reading or smoking or sipping coffee and liqueurs in the fine semicircular hall of the hotel. They were French, or Austrian, or Russian, or German, or English, or Danish, or Dutch, as the case might be. There were also some Americans. The great national types were more or less easy to discern—except the Americans. That is, Chip Walker could see no one whom he could recognize offhand as a fellow-countryman. Three gentlemanly, jovial Englishmen were easily made out, because, in Walker's phrase, they "flocked by themselves" and in the intervals of sitting in the Bundespalast complained that Berne had no golf-links. They also dressed for dinner and dined in the restaurant. A few others did the same. But the majority of the distinguished men preferred to spend the evening in the costumes they had worn all day, and, with their wives—there were eight or ten dumpy, dowdy, smiling little wives—were content with thetable d'hote. Indeed, the popularity of thetable d'hotesifted the simple, scholarly professors of Gottingen, Freiburg,or Geneva from the representatives of the larger and more sophisticated social world, leaving the latter to eat in the restaurant,à la carte.
In this way Chip came to observe a man of some distinction who took his meals at a small table alone and kept to himself. He was a man who would have been noticeable anywhere, if it were for no more than the dignified gravity of his manner and the correctness of his dress. Not only did he wear what was impeccably the right thing for the right occasion, but his movements were of the sedate precision that never displaces a button. As straight and slim and erect as a guardsman, he was nevertheless stamped all over as a civilian. From the lines in his gray, clean-shaven face of regular profile, and the silvery touches in his hair, Chip judged him to be fifty years old. He puzzled the analyst of nationalities—though, as Chip put it to himself, it was clear he must belong to one of the peoples who were chic. He was, therefore, either English or French or Russian or Austrian or American. There was a bare chance of his being a Dane or a Swede. When he spoke to a waiter or a passing acquaintance,it was in so low a tone that Walker couldn't detect the language he used. All one could affirm from distant and superficial observation was that he was Somebody—Somebody of position, experience, and judgment—Somebody to respect.
That, perhaps, was the secret of Walker's curiosity—that he respected him. He would have liked to talk to him—not precisely to ask his advice, but to lay before him some of the difficulties that were inchoate in his soul. He had an idea that this man with the grave, suffering face—yes, there was suffering in his face, as one could see on closer inspection!—would understand them.
He came to the conclusion that he was a Russian, though he had an early opportunity to find out. As he stood one day by the concierge's desk the stranger entered, paused, spoke a few words inaudible to Walker, and passed on. It was a simple matter to ask his name of the one man who knew every name in the hotel, and he was on the point of doing so. He had already begun: "Voulez vous bien me dire—?" when he stopped. On the whole he preferred his own speculations. In the long, idle hoursthey gave him something to think of that took his mind from dwelling on his own entangled affairs.
He counted, too, on the hazards of hotel life throwing them one day together. He was already on speaking or nodding terms with most of the distinguished men whom he could address in a common language. This had come about by the simple means of propinquity on the terrace or in the semicircular hall. He soon saw, however, that no diligence in frequenting these places of reunion would help him with the stately stranger whose interest he desired to win. The gentleman took the air elsewhere.
For contiguous to the terrace of the hotel is a little public park called the Kleine Schanze—haunt of well-behaved Bernese children, of motherly Bernese housewives supplied with knitting and the gossip of the town, of Bernese patriarchs in search of gentle exercise and sunshine. This little park possesses a music-pavilion, a duck-pond, a monument to the Postal Union of 1876, many pretty pathways, and an incomparable promenade. The incomparable promenade has also an incomparable view onthose days when the Spirit of the Alps permits it to be visible.
Two such days at least there were during that month of June. Glancing casually over his left shoulder as he marched one afternoon with head bent and back turned toward the east, Chip saw that which a few minutes before had been but the misty edge of the sky transformed into a range of ineffable white peaks. The unexpectedness with which the glistering spectacle appeared made his heart leap. It was like a celestial vision—like a view of the ramparts of the Heavenly City. He clutched the stone top of the balustrade beside which he stood, seeking terms with which to make the moment indelible in his memory. Nothing came to him but a few broken, obvious words—sublime!—inviolate!—eternal! and such like.
What he chiefly felt was his inadequacy for even gazing on the sight, much less for recording it, when he became aware that in the crowding of people to the edge of the terrace the stranger was standing near him. It was an opportunity not to be missed.
"Ça, c'est merveilleux, n'est-ce pas, monsieur?"
The words were banal, but they would serve to break the ice.
"Yes; and it becomes more marvelous the oftener it appears. I've never seen it more beautiful than to-day; but perhaps that's because I've seen it so many times."
Chip was disappointed to be answered in English, and especially in the English of an American. It brought the man too near for confidence. They might easily find themselves involved in a host of common acquaintances, a fact that would preclude intimate talk. Had he been a Russian the remoteness of each from the other's world would have made the exchange of secrets—perhaps of secret griefs—a possibility. Not so with a man whom one might meet the next time one entered a club in New York. Such a man might even be.... But he dismissed that alarming thought as out of the question. Edith wasn't at Berne. If she had been he would have seen her. He would not inquire at the hotel, nor at any other hotel; but he knew that in so small a town he must have had a glimpse of her somewhere. While it was conceivable that her husband might have come to Berne leaving her elsewhere, this was not thesort of man she would have married. The type to appeal to her would be something like his own—of course!
Nevertheless, as he had begun the conversation, he felt that in courtesy he must go on with it. He did so by pointing with his stick to what he took to be the highest summit of the range, and saying: "I suppose that's the Jungfrau."
The stranger moved nearer him. "No, you're too far to the west. That's the Breithorn. There's the Jungfrau"—he, too, pointed with his stick—"sentineled by the Eiger and the Mönch."
He went on to indicate the Wetterhorn, the Schreckhorn, the Blumlisalp, the Finsteraarhorn, and the Ebnefluh. They were like a row of shining spiritual presences manifesting themselves to an unbelieving world.
For the moment they served their turn in helping Chip Walker to subjects of conversation with his fellow-countryman, in whom he had lost some interest because he was a fellow-countryman.
"You know a lot about Switzerland, don't you?" he observed, as the stranger, still pointingwith his stick and naming names—the Silberhorn, the Gletschhorn, the Schneehorn, the Niesen, the Bettfluh—that impressed the imagination with the force of the great white peaks themselves, resolved the panorama into its minor elements.
The stick came down and the explanation ceased. "I've lived a good deal abroad," was the response, given quietly. "You, too, haven't you?"
With the question they turned for the first time and looked each other in the eyes. While Chip explained that he had spent his early years in France or Italy or England, according to the interests of his parents, he was inwardly remarking that the gray face, with its stiff lines, its compressed lips, its unmoving expression, and its stamp of suffering, was really sympathetic. Something in the composure of the manner and the measured way of speaking imposed this new acquaintance on him as a superior. Instinctively he said "sir" to him, as to an elder, though the difference in their ages could not have been more than seven or eight years. It flattered him somewhat, too, that the man who kept aloof from others should make an exceptionof him and welcome his advances. They parted with the tacit understanding that for the future, in the routine of the hotel, they should be on speaking terms.
There was, however, no further meeting between them till after dinner on the following evening. Turning from the purchase of stamps at the concierge's desk, Chip saw his new acquaintance, wearing an Inverness cloak over his dinner-jacket, and a soft felt hat, lighting a cigar. There was an exchange of nods. On the older man's lips there was a ghost of a smile. It seemed friendly. He spoke:
"You don't want to smoke a cigar in the little park? It's rather pleasant there, with a full moon like this."
So it was that within a few minutes they found themselves seated side by side on one of the benches of the terraced promenade where they had met on the previous day. Though the row of shining spiritual presences had withdrawn, the valley was spanned by a Velvety luminosity, through which the lights of the lower town shone like stars reflected in water. The talk was of the conference. The stranger spoke of himself:
"I've been interested in the various methods of international communication for many years. In fact, I've made some slight study of them. When the authorities were good enough to appoint me on this commission I was glad to serve."
"Quite so," Chip murmured, politely.
"It's an attractive little town, too—one of the few capitals in Europe that remain characteristic of their countries, and nothing else—wholly or nearly unaffected by the current of life outside. But," he went on, unexpectedly, "I wonder what a man like you can see in it—to remain here so long?"
Chip was startled, but he managed to say: "It isn't that I see anything in particular. I'm—"
"Waiting?"
The query was perfectly courteous. It implied no more than a casual curiosity—hardly that.
"No; resting," Chip answered, with forced firmness.
"Ah, it's certainly a good place for resting." Then, after a pause: "You're married, I think you said."
Chip didn't remember having said so, and replied to that effect. The stranger was unperturbed.
"No? But you are?" By way of pressing the question, he added, with a glance at Chip through the moonlight: "Aren't you?"
"I've a wife and little boy in New York," Walker answered, soberly.
"Ah!" There was no emphasis on this exclamation. It signified merely that a certain point in their mutual understanding had been reached. "A happy marriage must be a great—safeguard."
The tone was of a man making a moral reflection calmly, but Chip was startled again. It was his turn to stare through the moonlight, where the length of the bench lay between them. He felt that he was being challenged, but that he must not betray himself too soon. "Safeguard against what, sir?"
There was a faint laugh, or what might have been a laugh had there been amusement in it. "Against everything from which a married man needs protection."
Chip would have dropped the subject but for that sense that a challenge was being thrownhim before which he could not back down. Nevertheless, he determined to keep from committing himself as long as possible. "I'm not sure that I know what you mean."
The stranger seemed to examine the burning end of his cigar. "Oh, nothing but the obvious things—pursuing another man's wife, for instance. A man who's happily married doesn't do that."
There was no aggression in the tone, and yet Chip felt a curious chill. Who was this man, and what the devil was he driving at? It was all he could do to answer coolly, knocking the ash off the end of his own cigar: "And yet, I've known of such cases."
"Oh, so have I. But there was always a screw loose somewhere—I mean, a screw loose in what we're assuming to be the happy marriages."
"Are there any happy marriages?—permanently happy, that is?"
The response was surprisingly direct: "That's what I hoped you'd be able to tellme."
"Then you don't know, sir?"
Again the response was surprisingly direct: "I don't know, because I'm not happily married."A second later he added: "But other people may be."
So they were going to exchange secrets, after all. "But youaremarried, sir?" To clear the air, he felt himself obliged to add: "Happily or unhappily."
"I married a lady who had divorced her husband." In the silence that followed it seemed to Chip that he could hear the murmur of the almost soundless river below. Somehow the sound of the river was all he could think of. Quietly moving, low-voiced couples paced up and down the promenade, and from the music-pavilion in the distance came the whine and shiver of the Mattiche. "In divorce," the measured voice resumed, "there are some dangerous risks. It's a dangerous risk for a man to divorce his wife. It's a more dangerous risk for a woman to divorce her husband. But to marry a divorced husband or a divorced wife is the most dangerous risk of all."
Chip's voice was thick and dry. "May I ask, sir, on what you base your—your opinion?"
"Chiefly on the principle that, no matter how successfully the dead are buried, they maycome back again as ghosts. No one can keep them from doing that."
"And—and I presume, sir, that you held this theory when you married?"
"I held itasa theory; I didn't know it as a fact."
Chip felt obliged to struggle onward. "And do I understand you to be telling me now that the ghostshavecome back?"
"Perhaps you could as easily tell me."
It was a minute or more before Chip was able to say, in a voice he tried to keep firm: "If they have come back, you're not more haunted by them than—than any one else."
"So I understand."
The brief responses had the effect of dragging him forward. "And would it be fair to ask why you say that?—that you understand?"
"Oh, quite fair. It's partly because you are here."
"Then you think I ought to go away?"
"I think—since you ask me—that you oughtn't to have come."
"I came—to rest."
"I don't question that. I'm only struck by—by the long arm of coincidence."
"That is, you believe I had another motive?"
With a gesture he seemed to wave this aside. "That's hardly my affair. You're here; and, since you are, I'd rather—"
"Yes?"
"I'd rather you didn't hurry away."
He rose on saying this, apparently with the intention of going back to the hotel. Chip remained seated. He smoked mechanically, without knowing what he did. Questions rose to his lips and died there. Was Edith in Berne? Had she seen him? Was she keeping out of his way? Was she being kept out of his way? Was she suffering? Was it through her that he had been recognized? The fact that hehadbeen recognized brought with it a kind of humiliation. The humiliation was the greater because of the way in which he had singled out this man and approached him. During all those days of studying the stranger with respectful discretion, seeking an opportunity to address him, the stranger, without deigning him a look, had known perfectly well who he was and had been imputing motives to his presence. The reference to the long arm of coincidencewas stinging. Because it was so he tried to muster his dignity.
"I've no intention of hurrying away," he began; "but—"
"If you like, I'll put it this way," the measured voice broke in, courteously. "If you have time to wait a little longer I should be glad if you'd do it."
"Would there be any point to that?"
"I think you might trust me not to make the request if there were not." He added presently: "It's a wise policy to let sleeping dogs lie; but when they've once been roused, they've got to be quieted."
"Quieted—how?"
"I can't tell you that as yet. I may have some vague idea concerning the process; I've none at all as to the result."
Chip was not sure that the stranger said good night. He knew he lifted his hat and moved away. He watched him as, with stately, unhastening step, he walked down the promenade, the Inverness cape and soft felt hat silhouetted in the moonlight.
For the next forty-eight hours Walker hung about the hotel like a culprit. He would havesacrificed even a glimpse of Edith to feel free to go away. He couldn't go away while the other man's plans remained enigmatical; but he wished he hadn't come. He felt his position undignified, grotesque, like that of a boy detected in some bit of silly daring.
Two days later they met again on the terrace of the Kleine Schanze. It was not an accidental meeting. The stranger had walked directly up to Chip to say:
"The lady to whom we were referring the other night—"
But Chip was still on his guard. "Did I refer to a lady?"
"Perhaps not. But I did. And that lady is ill. You may be interested to know it. She was ill when she arrived in Paris from London ten days ago."
"Then she's here."
"She's here. That's why I'm taking your time in asking you to remain."
Chip forced the next question with some difficulty: "Does she—does she want to—to see me?"
"She hasn't said so."
"Has she—said anything about me at all?"
"That, I think, I must leave you to learn later. But I should like you to know at once that I'm not keeping you here without a motive."
The stately figure moved on, leaving Chip to guess blindly at the possibilities in store.
More days passed—nearly a week. Chip spent much of his time in the Kleine Schanze, noticing that the distinguished stranger frequented it less. Idleness would have got on his nerves, and Berne begun to bore him, had it not been for the knowledge that he was under the same roof with Edith. That gave him patience. It was the kind of comfort a man or a woman finds in being near the prison where some loved one is shut up in a cell.
It was again an afternoon when the shining spiritual presences were making themselves visible—not with the gleaming suddenness with which they had appeared ten days before, but slowly, with vague wonders, as if finding it hard to bring themselves within mortal ken. Rounding the corner of the promenade at the end remote from the hotel, at a point from which he had the whole line of the bluff and the green depths of the valley and the slopes of the Gurtenand the curtain of Alpine mist in one superbcoup d'œil, Chip saw a great white shoulder baring itself luminously in the eastern sky. For long minutes that was all. It might have been one of the gates of pearl of which he had heard tell.
It was the sort of thing from which no earth-dweller could take his eyes. He stood leaning on his stick, his cigar smoldering in his left hand. He couldn't see that the clouds lifted or that the mists rolled away; he only grew aware that what seemed like a gate became a bastion, and what seemed like a bastion rose into a tower, and that out of the tower and in the midst of the tower and round about the tower white pinnacles glistened in white air. Nothing had happened that he could define, beyond a heightening of his own capacity to see. Nothing on that horizon seemed to emerge or to recede: looking wrought the wonder; he either saw or he didn't see; and just now he saw. He thought of something he had heard or read—he had forgotten where: "Immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales." That, apparently, was the process, while the spiritual presences ranged themselves slowlywithin his vision—row upon row, peak upon peak, dome upon dome, serried, ghostly—white against a white sky, white in white air.
He withdrew his gaze only because the people, ever eager for this spectacle which they had seen all their lives, crowded to the parapet. As the children were still in school, it was a quiet throng, elderly and sedate. Leaning on the balustrade, all faces turned one way, they fringed the promenade, leaving the broad, paved spaces empty.
For this reason Chip's eye caught the more quickly at the other end of the terrace the figures of a man and a woman who stood back from the line of gazers. They were almost in profile toward himself, the man's erect, stately form allowing the fact that a woman was clinging to his arm to be just perceptible. It required no such movement as that of a few minutes later—a movement by which the woman came more fully into view—for Chip to recognize Edith.
HisEdith,his wife, clinging to another man's arm, clinging to her husband's arm, clinging to the arm of a husband who was not himself, dependent on him, supported by him, possessedby him, coming and going with him, living and eating with him, bearing him children, sharing with him whatever was most intimate, directed by him and dominated by him!—yet, all the while, in everything that could make two beings one except that stroke of the pen called law,his wife!
How had it come about? What had he done, what had she done, to make this hideous topsyturvydom a fact? He put his hand to his forehead like a man dazed; but he withdrew it quickly. His forehead was wet and clammy. He was shaken, transpierced. He saw now that, in all the three years since he had heard she was married, he hadn't really known it. Perhaps it was his imagination that was at fault—perhaps his incapacity for believing what wasn't under his very eyes—perhaps his own success in keeping the dreadful fact at a distance—but he hadn't really known it. Nothing could have brought it home to him like this—this glimpse of her intimate association with the other man, and her dependence upon him.
His first impulse was to get out of their sight, to hide, to find some place where he couldgrasp the appalling fact in silence and seclusion. Second thoughts reminded him that there was a situation to be faced and that he might as well face it now as at any other time. What sort of situation it would be he couldn't guess; but he was sure that behind the immobile mask of the other man's grave face there was something that would be worth the penetration. He would give him a chance. He would go forward to meet them. No, he wouldn't go forward to meet them; he would wait for them where he stood. No, he wouldn't wait for them where he stood; he would slip into the little rotunda close beside him—a little rotunda generally occupied by motherly Bernese women, but which for the moment the commanding spectacle outside had emptied.
It was a little open rotunda, with seats all round and a rude table in the middle. In sitting down he placed himself as nearly as possible in full view, but with his face toward the mountains. It gave him a preoccupied air to be seen relighting his cigar. It was thus optional with the couple who began to advance along the promenade to pass him by or to pause and address him.
Nothing but a shadow warned him of their approach.
"Chip—"
He turned. Edith was standing in the doorway, the man behind her. The haggard pallor of her face and the feverishness of her eyes reminded Chip of the morning little Tom was born. He was on his feet—silent. He couldn't even breathe her name. It was the less necessary since she herself hastened to speak:
"Chip, Mr. Lacon knows we met in England. I told him as soon as I reached Paris; I didn't want him not to know. And now he wants us all to meet—I don't know why."
Since he had to say something, he uttered the first words that came to him: "Was there any harm in it—our meeting? Mr. Lacon knows we have children—and things to talk over."
"Oh, it isn't only that," she said, excitedly. "It's more. I don't know what—but I know it's more."
He looked puzzled. "More in what way?"
"More in this way," said the measured voice, that had lost no shade of its self-control. "I understand that Edith feels she has made a mistake—that you've both made a mistake—"