With Justine this was the primal verdure. Had she not met Roland Mistrial, she might, and in all probability would, have exhibited constancy in affection, but love would have been uncomprehended still. As it was, she had come into her own; she was confident in it and secure; and now, though by nature she was rebellious enough, as he caught her hand her being went out to him, and as it went it thrilled.
"I love you," he said; and his voice was so flexible that it would have been difficult to deny that he really did. "I will love you always, my whole life through."
The words caressed her so well she could have pointed to the sky and repeated with Dona Sol:
"Regarde: plus de feux, plus de bruit. Tout se tait.La lune tout à l'heure à l'horizon montait:Tandis que tu parlais, sa lumière qui trembleEt ta voix, toutes deux m'allaient au cœur ensemble:Je me sentais joyeuse et calme, ô mon amant!Et j'aurais bien voulu mourir en ce moment."
"Regarde: plus de feux, plus de bruit. Tout se tait.La lune tout à l'heure à l'horizon montait:Tandis que tu parlais, sa lumière qui trembleEt ta voix, toutes deux m'allaient au cœur ensemble:Je me sentais joyeuse et calme, ô mon amant!Et j'aurais bien voulu mourir en ce moment."
But at once some premonition seemed to visit her. "Roland," she murmured, "what if we leave our happiness here?"
And Roland, bending toward her, whispered sagely: "We shall know then where to find it."
New York meanwhile, in its effeminateness, had forgotten the snow, and was listening to the sun. And the day after the return from Aiken, as Roland, in accordance with an agreement of which thelocus sigillihad a kiss for token, went down to knock at Mr. Dunellen's office door, the sky was as fair as it had been in the South. Yet to him it was unobtrusive. His mind was occupied with fancies that had a birth, a little span of life, and which in passing away were succeeded by others as ephemeral as themselves—thoughts about nothing at all that came and went unnoticed: a man he had met in Corfu, and whom a face in the street recalled; the glisten of silk in a window that took him back to Japan;—but beneath them was a purpose settled and dominant, a resolution to trick Fate and outwit it—one which, during the journey from Aiken, had so possessed him that, in attending to the wants of Mrs. Metuchen or in ministering to Justine, at times he had been quasi-somnambulistic, at others wholly vague. But now, as he gave his card to an office-boy, to all outward intent he was confident and at ease; he picked up a paper and affected to lose himself in its columns. Presently the boy returned, and he was ushered into the room which he had previously visited. On this occasion Mr. Dunellen was not seated, but standing, his back to the door. As Roland entered he turned, and the young man stepped forward, his hand outstretched.
To his contentment, and a little also to his surprise, in answer to that outstretched hand Honest Paul extended his, and Roland had the pleasure of holding three apparently docile fingers in his own; but in a moment they withdrew themselves, and he felt called upon to speak.
"Mr. Dunellen," he began, with that confident air a creditor has who comes to claim his due, "Mr. Dunellen, I have ventured to interrupt you again. And again I am a suppliant. But this time it is of your daughter, not of my father, that—"
He hesitated, and well he might. Mr. Dunellen, who had remained standing, and who in so doing had prevented Roland from sitting down, now assumed the suspicious appearance of one who detects an unpleasant smell; his features contracted, and for no other reason, apparently, than that of intimidating the suppliant in his prayer.
But Roland was not to be abashed; he recovered himself, and continued glibly enough: "The matter is this. I am sincerely attached to your daughter, and I am come to ask your consent to our marriage."
"That is the purpose of your visit, is it?"
"It is."
"My daughter is aware of it, I suppose?"
"She is."
"And she consented, did she?"
"Perfectly."
"H'm! My daughter has made a mistake. I told her as much last night. There can be no question of marriage. You will do me the favor to let the matter drop."
"I am hot a rich man, Mr. Dunellen, but—"
"So I am informed. But that has nothing to do with it. There are other things that I take into consideration, and in view of them I insist that this matter be dropped."
"Mr. Dunellen, I love your daughter; I have reason to believe that she cares for me. We became engaged a few days ago. I came here now to ask your consent. If you refuse it, I have at least the right to ask what your objection is."
"Rather unnecessary, don't you think?"
"I cannot imagine, sir, what you mean." And Roland, holding himself unaffectedly straight, without the symptom of a pose, looked the old man in the eyes.
That look Mr. Dunellen returned. "Take a seat," he said; and, motioning Roland to a chair, he sat down himself.
"All this is needless," he announced; "but since you are anxious for an explanation, I will give it. In the first place, when you were at my house you remember that my nephew Dr. Thorold happened in. The other day I mentioned to him that you were at Aiken. He then informed me of a certain incident in your career, one which you have not forgotten, and of which I do not care to speak. I may say, however, that it utterly precludes the possibility of any further intercourse between my daughter and yourself."
And the old man, still gazing at his guest, added: "This explanation should, it seems to me, suffice." But he made no attempt to rise, or to signify that the interview was at an end, and Roland, who was shrewd, interpreted this in his own favor. "He is not altogether positive," he reflected, "but he can be so to-morrow," and with a show of shame that did him credit he hung his head.
"I had thought the incident to which you refer was forgotten," he murmured, penitently enough.
"Forgotten? Do you suppose Thorold forgets? Do you suppose any man could forget a thing like that—a sister's death, a mother's insanity? No, you did not think it was forgotten. What you thought was this: you thought that my nephew would hesitate to speak; and indeed even to me for ten years he has kept silent. But now—there, you need not fear a criminal charge. It was that you feared once, I understand, and it was on that account you went abroad. At this date, of course, no proof is possible; and, even were it otherwise, a charge would not be brought. Linen of that kind is better washed at home."
"Mr. Dunellen, if you could know! It is the regret of my life."
"That I can believe; but I believe also that our natures never vary. We may mould and shape them to our uses, but beneath the surface they remain unchanged. I say this parenthetically. In regard to this incident there are in one particular certain excuses you might allege—youth for instance, inexperience, common attraction, love even. If you did, I could enter into them. I have been young myself, and I have no wish to imply that through the temptations of youth I passed unscathed. The man who asserts he has reminds me of the horseman who declares he has never been thrown. Nor because your victim happened to be my niece am I actuated by retrospective indignation. I am too old for that; and, moreover, the incident is too stale. No: my reason for forbidding my daughter to receive you, as I have done, is this: the man that can seduce a girl, and then, to conceal the effect, permit her to be butchered by a quack, especially when he could have protected her by marriage—that man, Mr. Mistrial, I tell you very plainly, is a scoundrel, and being a scoundrel will never be anything else." And as Honest Paul made this assertion he stood up and nodded affirmatively at his guest.
"You are very hard, Mr. Dunellen."
"I may be, but so is justice."
"If I could tell you all. It was so sudden, so unpremeditated even, at the first idea of a possibility of a catastrophe I lost my head."
"It was your honor you lost."
"Yes, and for years I have tried to recover it."
"That I am glad to learn, and I hope you have succeeded; but—"
"And will you not aid me?"
"In my sight you can never appear an honest man."
At this reproach, Roland, who had sat like Abjection, one hand supporting his head, his eyes lowered and his body bent, sprang to his feet.
"There are several forms of honesty," he exclaimed, "and frankness I believe is counted among them. That you evidently possess. Let me emulate you in it. I intend that your daughter shall be my wife. If you don't care to come to the wedding your presence can be dispensed with." And without any show of anger, but with an inclination of the head that was insolent in its deference, he picked up his hat and left the room.
Presently he found himself in the street. "Who is ever as stupid as a wise man?" he queried, and laughed a little to himself—"unless"—and he fell to wondering whether Dunellen could have told his daughter all. On the corner a cab was loitering; he hailed and entered it. A little later he was ringing at the door of Honest Paul's abode.
Yes, Miss Dunellen was at home. And as the servant drew the portière to the drawing-room aside, Roland was visited by that emotion the gambler knows who waits the turning of a card. Another second, and the expression of the girl's face would tell him what the future held. The drawing-room, however, happened to be untenanted, and as he paced its spacious splendors he still wondered was she or was she not informed. In a corner was a landscape signed Courbet—a green ravine shut down by bluest sky. The coloring was so true, it jarred. In another was a statue—a cloaked and hooded figure of Death supporting a naked girl. As he contemplated it, he heard the tinkle of the portière rings. It was she, he knew; he turned, and at once his heart gave an exultant throb; in her eyes was an invitation; he put his arms about her, and for a moment held her so.
She does not know, he told himself, and to her he murmured, "I have come to say good-bye."
"Wait, Roland." She led him to a seat. "Wait; I spoke to father last night; he has some objection—"
"I told you I was poor—"
"It is that, I suppose; he did not say—"
"He will never consent, unless—"
"There, Roland. I know him best." She closed her eyes, and as he gazed at her it seemed to him she had done so to shut some memory out. "It is money with him always; you do not know—" And between her parted lips she drew a breath he heard. "Last night he told me I must never see you again. Hitherto his will has ruled: it is my turn to-day."
With this there came a splendor to her he had never marked before; she looked defiant, and resolute as well. There was strength in her face, and beauty too.
"He is unjust," she added. "It was my duty to tell him, and there my duty ends. I am not a school-girl. I know my mind; better, perhaps, than he knows his own. I have obeyed him always. It is easy to obey, but now I will act for myself."
"He will never give his consent," Roland repeated.
"He may keep it, then."
Within her something seemed to rankle; and as Roland, mindful of the slightest change in her expression, detected this, he wondered what it could portend.
"Sweetheart," he ventured, "I have these two arms; they are all in all for you."
At this Justine awoke at once. "If I did not know it—feel it; if I were not sure of it, do you think I would speak to you as I do? No, Roland. I have something of my own; when we are married, believe me, his consent will come at once."
"It is not his consent I want—you know that; it is yours."
"You have it, Roland; I gave it you among the pines."
"Where is your hat, then? Let us go."
He caught her to him again, then suffered her to leave the room. And as the portière which he had drawn that she might pass fell back into its former folds, for a moment he stood perplexed. Somewhere a screw was loose, he could have sworn. But where? Could it be that Honest Paul was supporting a separate establishment? or did Justine think he wished to mate her to some plutocrat of his choice? The first supposition was manifestly absurd; the second troubled him so little that he turned and occupied himself with the naked girl swooning in the arms of Death.
"I am ready, Roland." It was Justine, bonneted and veiled, buttoning her glove.
"I have a cab," he answered, and followed her to the door.
When Roland and Justine re-entered the drawing-room that afternoon they found Mr. Dunellen there. With him was Guy Thorold.
During the infant days of photography family groups were so much in vogue that anyone with an old album in reach can find them there in plenty. They are faded, no doubt; the cut of the garments is absurd; even the faces seem to have that antique look which is peculiar to the miniatures of people dead and departed: yet the impression they convey is admirably exalting. That gentleman in the wonderful coat must have been magnificent in every sphere of life: his mere pose, his attitude, is convincing as a memoir. And that lady in the camel's-hair shawl—how bewitchingly lovable she surely was! There is her daughter, who might be her niece, so prettily does she seem inclined to behave; and there is the son, a trifle effaced perhaps, yet with the makings of a man manifest even in that effacement. Oh, good people! let us hope you were really as amiable as you look: the picture is all we have of you; even your names are forgot; and truly it were discomforting to have the impression you convey disturbed in its slightest suggestion. We love you best as you are; we prefer you so. I, for one, will have none of that cynicism which hints that had a snap camera caught you unprepared the charm would disappear.
Yet now, in the present instance, as Mr. Dunellen and his nephew stood facing Roland and Justine, a photographer who had happened there could have taken a family group which would in no manner have resembled those which our albums hold.
"I told you last night," Mr. Dunellen was shrieking, "that I forbade you to see that man."
And Justine, raising her veil, answered, "He was not my husband then."
"Husband!" The old man stared at his daughter, his face distorted and livid with rage. "If you—"
But whatever threat he may have intended to make, Thorold interrupted.
"He is married already," he cried; "he is no more your husband than I."
At this announcement Mr. Dunellen let an arm he had outstretched fall to his side; he turned to Thorold, and Justine looked wonderingly in Roland's face.
"What does he mean?" she asked.
Roland shrugged his shoulders, "God knows," he answered. "He must be screwed."
"Youaremarried," Thorold called out. "You needn't attempt to deny it here."
"I don't in the least: this lady has just done me the honor to become my wife."
"But you have another—you told me so yourself."
Roland, who had been really perplexed, could not now conceal a smile. He remembered that he had indeed told Thorold he was married, but he had done so merely as an easy way of diverting the suspicions which that gentleman displayed.
Justine, still looking at him, caught the smile.
"Why don't you speak?" she asked.
"What is there to say?" he answered. "It is false as an obituary."
"Then tell him so."
But for that there was no time. Mr. Dunellen, trained in procedure, had already questioned Thorold, and found that save Mistrial's word he had nothing to grapple on.
"Leave the house, sir," he shouted, and pointed to the door.
"When he goes, father, I go too."
"Then go." And raising his arms above his head as though to invoke the testimony of heaven, he bawled at her, "I disown you."
"There's Christian forbearance," muttered Mistrial; and he might have asserted as much, but Justine had lowered her veil.
"Come," she said.
And as she and her husband passed from the room the old man roared impotently "I disinherit you—you are no longer my child."
"Didn't you tell me he had been used to having his own way?" Roland asked, as he put Justine in the cab; and without waiting for an answer he told the driver to go to the Brunswick, and took a seat at her side.
In certain crises the beauty of an old adage asserts itself even to the stupidest. Roland had taken the bull by the horns and got tossed for his pains; yet even while he was in the air he kept assuring himself that he would land on his feet. The next morning the memory of the old man's anger affected him not at all. Passion, he knew, burns itself out, and its threats subside into ashes. The relentless parent was a spectacle with which the stage had made him so familiar that he needed no prompter's book to tell him that when the curtain fell it would be on a tableau of awaited forgiveness. And even though Mr. Dunellen and the traditional father might differ, yet on the subject of wills and bequests he understood that the legislature had in its wisdom prevented a testator from devising more than one-half his property to the detriment of kith and of kin. If things came to the worst Justine would get five million instead of ten; and five million, though not elastic enough, as Jones had said, to entertain with, still represented an income that sufficed for the necessaries of life. On that score his mind was at rest. Moreover, it was manifestly impossible for Justine's father to live forever: there was an odor of fresh earth about him which to his own keen nostrils long since had betokened the grave; and if meanwhile he chose to keep the purse-strings drawn, Justine had enough from her mother's estate to last till the strings were loosed.
Rents are high in New York, and to those bred in certain of its manors there is a choice between urban palaces and suburban flats. But Paris is less fastidious. In that lovely city a thousand-franc note need not be spent in a day; and in Italy the possibilities of the lira are great.
In view of these things, Roland and his wife one week later took ship and sailed for France.
To those that have suffered certain things there are forms of entertainment which neither amuse nor bore, but which pain. And this evening, as Justine sat in the stalls, the play which was being given, and which, as plays go, was endurable enough, caused her no pleasure, no weariness even, only a longing to get away and be alone. Now and then a shudder visited her, her hand tightened on her fan, and at times she would close her eyes, dull her hearing, and try to fancy that her girlhood was recovered, that she was free again, that she was dead, that her husband was—anything imaginable in fact, save the knowledge that she was there, side-by-side with him, and that presently they would return together to the hideousness of their uptown flat.
She had been married now a little more than two years, and during the latter portion of that time life had held for her that precise dose of misery which is just insufficient to produce uncertainties of thought in a mind naturally exalted. There had indeed been moments in which the possibility of insanity had presented itself, and there had been moments also in which she would have welcomed that possibility as a grateful release: but those moments had passed, the possibility with them; and this evening as she sat in the stalls her outward appearance was much such as it had been two years before. But within, where her heart had been, was a cemetery.
Among our friends and acquaintances there are always those who to our knowledge have tombstones of their own. But there are others that evolve a world—one that glows, subsides, and dies away unknown to any save themselves. The solitudes of space appall; the solitudes of the heart can be as endless as they. In those which Justine concealed, a universe had had its being and its subsidence; a universe with gem-like hopes for stars—one in which the sun had been so eager its rays had made her blind. There had been comets gorgeous and tangential as aspirations ever are; there had been the colorless ether of which dreams are made; and for cosmic matter there was love. But now it was all dispersed; there was nothing left, one altar merely—the petrefaction of a prayer erected long since in the depths of her distress, and which for conscience' sake now and then she tended still.
And now, as the play at which she assisted unrolled before her unseeing eyes, one by one scenes from another drama rose unsummoned in its stead. First was the meeting with Mistrial at Tuxedo, then the episode at Aiken, the marriage that followed, and the banishment that ensued: a banishment, parenthetically, which at the time being she was powerless to understand. Her father's anger had indeed weighed on her; but it was not wholly that—she was too much in love to let it be more than a shadow on her delight; nor was it because of unfamiliar lands: it was that little by little, through incidents originally misunderstood and then more completely grasped, the discovery, avoided yet ever returning, came to her, stayed with her, and made her its own—that the man whom she had loved and the man whom she had married were separate and distinct.
The psychologist of woman has yet to appear, and if he keep us waiting may it not be because every woman he analyzes has a sister who differs from her? The moment he formulates a rule it is over-weighted by exceptions. Woman often varies, the old song says; but not alone in her affections does she do so: she varies in temperament as well. And, after all, is it not the temperament that makes or mars a life? Justine, in discovering that the man she married and the man whom she loved were separate and distinct, instead of being disgusted with herself and with him, as you, madam, might have been, tried her utmost to forget the lover and love the husband that had come in his place. In this effort she had pride for an aid. The humiliation which the knowledge of self-deception brings is great, but when that knowledge becomes common property the humiliation is increased. The world—not the world that ought to be, but the world as it is—is more apt to smile than condole. There may be much joy in heaven over the sinner that repents: on earth the joy is at his downfall. And according to the canons we have made for ourselves, Justine, in listening to the dictates of her heart instead of to those of her father, had sinned, so grievously even that that father had bid her begone from his sight. She was aware of this, and in consequence felt it needful to hold her head the higher. And so for a while she made pride serve as fig-leaf to her nakedness. If abashed at heart, at least the world should be uninformed of that abashment.
This effort on her part Mistrial hindered to the best of his ability. Whether or not he loved her, whether save himself he was capable of loving anyone, who shall say? Men too are difficult to decipher. There were hours when after someécarthe would come to her so penitent, so pleasant to the eye, and seemingly so afflicted at his own misconduct, that Justine found the strength—or the weakness, was it?—to forgive and to forget anew.
During this period they lived not sumptuously, perhaps, but in that large and liberal fashion which requires a ponderable rent-roll to support; and at that time, however Mistrial comported himself elsewhere, in her presence he had the decency to seem considerate, and affectionate as well. But meanwhile, through constant demands, the value of the letter of credit into which he had converted the better part of her mother's estate became impaired. Retrenchment was necessary, and that is never a pleasant thing. The man that passes out of poverty into wealth finds the passage so easy, so Lethean even, that he is apt to forget what poverty was; but when, as sometimes happens, he is obliged to retrace his steps, he walks bare of foot through a path of thorns. To count gold, instead of strewing it, is irritating to anyone not a sage, and Mistrial, who was not a sage, was irritated; and having, a wife within beck and call he vented that irritation on her.
It was at this time that Justine began to feel the full force of the banishment. That her husband was, and in all probability would continue to be, unfaithful to her, was a matter which she ended by accepting with a degree of good sense which is more common than is generally supposed. At first she had been indeed indignant, and when in that indignation her anger developed into a heat that was white and sentiable, Mistrial experienced no remorse whatever, only a desire to applaud. He liked the force and splendor of her arraignment; it took him out of himself; it made him feel that he was appreciated—feared even; that a word from him, and a tempest was loosened or enchained.
But what is there to which we cannot accustom ourselves? Justine ended, not by a full understanding of the fact that man is naturally polygamous; but little by little, through channels undiscerned even by herself, the idea came to her that, if the man she loved could find pleasure in the society of other women, it was because she was less attractive than they. It was this that brought her patience, the more readily even in that, at her first paroxysm, Mistrial, a trifle alarmed lest she might leave him, had caught her in his arms, and sworn in a whisper breathed in her ear, that of all the world he loved her best.
Madam, you who do the present writer the honor to read this page are convinced, he is sure, that your husband would rather his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth than break the vow which bound you to him. But you, madam, have married a man faithful and tried. You know very well with what dismay he tells you of Robinson's scandalous conduct, and you know also how he pities Robinson's poor little wife; yet when, in your sorrow at what that poor little woman has to put up with, you are tempted to go and condole with her, pause, madam—Mrs. Robinson may be equally tempted to condole with You.
There are—in Brooklyn, in Boston, and in other recondite regions—a number of clever people who have been brought up with the idea that Divorce was instituted for just such a thing as this. Yet in one hundred cases out of a hundred-and-one a woman who appeals to the law never does so because her husband has broken a certain commandment. If his derelictions are confined to that particular offence she may bewail, and we all bewail with her; but if she wants the sympathy of judge, of jury, and of newspaper-public too, she must be prepared to allege other grievances. She must show that her husband is unkind, that he is sarcastic, that he is given to big words and short sentences; in brief, that he has developed traits which render life in common no longer to be endured.
It was traits of this description that Mistrial unexpectedly developed, and it was during their development that the sense of banishment visited Justine. She was unable to make further transference of her affections; the lover had disappeared; the husband she had tried to love in his place had gone as well. For sole companion she had a man who had worn a mask and dropped it; where he had been considerate, he was selfish; when he spoke, it was to find fault; now that he could no longer throw her money out of the windows, he threw his amiability in its stead. By day he was taciturn, insultingly dumb; at night he was drunk.
Mistrial had served his novitiate where thepochardis rare. It is we that drink, and with us the English, the Slavs, and Teutons; but in the East and among the Latins sobriety is less a matter of habit than of instinct. And in lands where man prefers to keep his head clear, Mistrial, at that age, which is one of the most impressionable of all, had seen no reason to lose his own. But presently the small irritations of enforced economy affected his manners, and his habits as well. He took to absinthe in the morning, and, as he happened to be in France, he drank at night that brutal brandy they give you there. Not continuously, it is true. There were days when the man for whom Justine had forsaken her home returned so completely she could almost fancy he had never gone. Then, without a word of warning, at the very moment when Faith was gaining fresh foothold, the tragi-comedy would be renewed; he was off again, no one knew whither, returning only when the candle had been utterly consumed.
Such things are enough to affect any woman's patience, and Justine's became wholly warped. It was unaccountable to her that he could treat her as he did. She watched the gradual transformation of the perfect lover into the perfect beast with a species of sorrow—a dual sorrow in whose component parts there was pity for herself and for him as well.
The idea that he had married her uniquely because of her father's wealth, that he was impatient to get it, and that when he got it he would squander all he could on other women, occurred to her only in the remotest ways, and then only through some expression which, in his exasperation of the diminishing bank account and the unreasonable time which it took her father to forgive her, fell from him now and then by chance. For Mistrial had indeed counted on that forgiveness. He had even counted on receiving it by cable, of finding that it had preceded and awaited them before their ship reached France. And when, to use an idiom of that land, it made itself expected, he was confident that the longer it delayed the completer it would be. At the utmost he had not dreamed that the old man would detain it more than a few months; but when twenty-four went by, and not only no forgiveness was manifest, but through his own improvidence the funds ran low,—so low, in fact, that unless forgiveness were presently forthcoming they would be in straits indeed,—he dictated a letter, penitent and humble, one in which impending poverty stood out as clearly as though it had been engraved, and which it revolted her to send. Its inspiration, however, must have been patent to Mr. Dunellen, for that gentlemen's reply, expressed in the third person, was to the effect that if his daughter returned to him he would provide for her as he had always done, but in no other circumstances could he assist.
Had Justine been anyone but herself she might have acted on the invitation: but the tone of it hurt her; she was annoyed at having permitted herself to send the letter Mistrial had dictated, and to which this was the reply. Her pride was up—all the more surely because she knew her father had been right; and there is just this about pride—as a matter of penitence it forces us to suffer those consequences of our own wrongdoing which through a simple confession it were easy to escape. To Justine such confession was impossible. She had left her father in the full certainty that he was wrong, and when she found he was not, death to her were preferable to any admission of the grievousness of her own mistake.
At this juncture Mistrial's aunt assisted at the funeral of a sister spinster, sat in a draught, caught cold in her throat, and, the glottis enlarging, strangled one night in her bed. By her will the St. Nicholas Hospital received the bulk of her property. The rest of her estate was divided among relatives; to her nephew Roland Mistrial—3d no longer—was bequeathed the princely sum of ten thousand dollars in cash. At the news of this munificence Roland swore and grit his teeth. Had his circumstances been different it is probable that the ten thousand, together with some enduring insult, he would have flung after her to the eternal purgatory where he prayed she had gone. As it was, the modicity of the bequest sobered him. Through some impalpable logic he had counted but little on any inheritance at all; he had indeed hoped vaguely that she might die and leave him what she had; and it may even be that, had he learned that her will was in his favor, and had a suitable opportunity presented itself, in some perfectly decorous manner he would have hastened his aunt's demise. But concerning her will he had no information; moreover, during his visit to the States the old lady saw as little of him as she could help; and when she did see him, in spite of gout and the ailments of advancing years there was such a rigidity in her manner that the nephew told himself she might live long enough to see him hanged. As a consequence he had expected nothing. But when the news of her death reached him, together with the intelligence that instead of the competence he might possibly have had he was mentioned merely to the tune of ten thousand dollars,—this outrage, in conjunction with Dunellen's relentlessness, sobered him to that degree, that for a day and a night he gave himself to a debauch of thought. From this orgy he issued with clearer mind. It may be—though the idea advanced is one that can only be hazarded—it may be that had his aunt disposed of her estate in his favor he would there and then have washed his hands of the job he had undertaken, and left his wife to her own devices. As it was, he saw that, to keep his head above water, the only possible plank was one that Mr. Dunellen might send in his reach; and it was with the knowledge that before the present scanty windfall disappeared some conquest of Honest Paul's affection should be attempted that he determined to return to New York. Once there again, who knew what might happen? Surely, if the preceding year Mr. Dunellen had strength for violence, to the naked eye he was even then manifestly infirm. There was no gainsaying the matter—he at least would not live very long. As to the disposition of his property after death Mistrial was still assured. Whatever his attitude might be for the present, in the end he could not wholly disinherit Justine—at least one-half the property must come to her. On that fact Mistrial would have staked his life; after all, it was the one hope he had left; and an ultimate hope, we all know, is the thing we part with last.
Thereupon he recovered himself. He became amiable and considerate—a change of demeanor which gave Justine a chill. She consented nevertheless to the return trip, and the day after arriving called at her father's house. When she got back to the hotel where they had put up Mistrial was waiting for her. In answer to his questions she told him that her father was willing to receive her, but her alone. "You must take your choice," he had said, she repeated—"You must take your choice."
"And what is that choice?" Mistrial had asked.
"I have made it," she answered, "and by it I will abide."
But at this he had expostulated; and when, seeing at last what he meant—understanding that he would have her feign a compliance for the sake of coin which at her father's death she could come back and share with him—when, divining the infamy of his thought, she refused, he had struck her in the face.
Because a man is not Chesterfield, it does not follow he is Sykes. Mistrial had never struck a woman before, and in this initial assault it is probable that he was actuated less by a desire to punish than by that force which overmasters him who has ceased to be master of himself. By instinct he was not a gentleman; for some time past he had not even taken the trouble to appear one; yet at that moment, dancing in derision before him, he saw the letters that form the monosyllable Cad. The sense of abasement he displayed was so immediate and sincere, that Justine, who, trembling with anger and disgust, stood staring in his face, read it there and understood. Instead of separating them forever, the blow reunited their hands. During the week that followed they were nearer to each other than they had been for months before. The reconciliation was seemingly complete. Mistrial made himself the lover again, and Justine permitted herself to be wooed. They left their hotel and found a flat—a furnished apartment in the neighborhood of Central Park; and there the storm departing placed a rainbow in its stead.
A rainbow, however, is not a fixture, and this one went its way. While Justine closed her eyes Mistrial's were alert. He had no intention of suffering her to be disinherited, and though it was well enough to rely on the courts it was better still not to be forced to do so. Rather than run an avoidable risk he would have abandoned his wife, and forced her through that abandonment to return to her father's house, convinced that afterwards he could win her together with the estate back again to him. Meanwhile another interview could not in any way jeopardize the chances to which he clung. On the contrary, it might be highly serviceable. Mr. Dunellen, he had learned, was much broken; he had given up his practice, the the world even, everything in fact save perhaps the devil that was in him, and sat uncompanioned in the desolate and spacious emptiness of his house. It was only natural that he should wish to coerce his daughter into obedience; yet now that he saw she was steadfast, her pride unhumbled still, it was not improbable that he would yield; it was presumable even that he was then waiting, weak of heart, prepared at her next advance to welcome and forgive.
Of these things Mistrial made his wife aware, and it was then that the rainbow departed. His arguments were as revolting as the cynicism they exhaled. But she made no attempt to combat them. Since she had seen her father she had felt a sorrow for him that Mistrial's altered demeanor had given her time to heed. She knew that his attitude was due to her defiance of his express commands, but she had no reason to suppose that he had any other objection to her husband than such as his poverty might have caused or instinctive antipathy might bring. But now, her own experience aiding, she knew that he had been right; and, as he seemed feeble and dispassionate, in answer to Mistrial's arguments she tied her bonnet-strings and went. It was early in the afternoon when she started, it was night when she returned.
Mistrial had been waiting for her, and when she entered the room in which he sat he rose eagerly and aided her with her wrap. He was impatient, she could see; and she was impatient also.
"Why did you not tell me of Guy's sister?" she began, at once.
And as he answered nothing she continued: "Years ago I knew of what she died; it was only to-day I learned that it was you who murdered her."
"It is a lie."
"Oh, protest. I knew you would."
"From whom is it you heard this thing? Not from your father, I am sure." As Mistrial spoke he gazed at her inquisitorially with shrewd, perplexing eyes.
"What does it matter?" she answered. Her head was thrown back, her lips compressed. "What does it matter since the charge is true?"
"But it is false," he cried; "it is a wanton lie. Your father never could have stated it."
"Ah, but he did, though; and Guy was there to substantiate what he said."
"Guy!" As he pronounced her cousin's name there came into his face an expression which she knew and which she had learned to dread. "Madam, you mean your lover, I suppose. And it is hisipse dixityou accept in preference to mine?"
"Mistrial, you know he is not my lover."
"I know he was in love with you, and you with him."
"So he was; so he is, I think; and it was not until this night I saw my own mistake."
"Voilà!" said Roland, suddenly calmed. He paused a second, and after eying the polish of his finger-nails, affected to flick a speck of dust from his sleeve. "Your cousin is mad," he added.
"He is sane as—" and Justine hesitated for a simile.
"His mother, you mean. Were you never aware that insanity is hereditary? If his sister—presupposing that the accusation which he formulates against me was originally advanced by her—if his sister—whom, by the way, I never saw but once—if his sister accused me of complicity, then she suffered from the hereditary taint as well. If I was guilty of what your cousin charges, why was I not arrested, tried, and sentenced? But are you such a dolt you cannot see that Guy is mad—mad not only by nature, but crazed by jealousy as well. You say you know he loves you. You have even the candor to admit that you love him! Now ask yourself what would any impartial hearer deduce from statements such as yours?"
"My father was an impartial hearer, and he—"
"But how is it possible to be so blind? Can you not see that your cousin has prejudiced him against me? I said, impartial hearer. But let the matter drop. I tell you the charge is false; believe it or not, as you prefer. There is, however, just this in the matter: if the charge is made again, I will have your cousin under arrest. You forget that there is such a thing as libel still."
Again he paused, and strove to collect himself; there was a design in the carpet which appeared to interest him very much, but presently he looked up again.
"Now tell me," he said, "what did your father say?"
"Nothing, save what he said before."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing that you would care to hear." Her eyes roamed from the neighbourly ceiling over to him and back again. "He said," she added, "that if I persisted in living with you his money would go to my child, if I had one; if I had none, then to Guy."
"Were you alone with him when he said this, or was Guy, as you call him, there?"
"No, I was alone with him; Guy came later."
"And is he aware of this provision?"
For all response Justine shrugged her shoulders.
"Does he know it, I ask you?"
"He does not," she answered. "Father told me that he never would, until the will was read."
"H'm." And for a moment Mistrial mused. Then presently he smiled—yet was it a smile?—a look that an hallucinated monk in a medieval abbey might have seen on that imaginary demon who, flitting by him, the forefinger outstretched, whispered as he vanished through the wall, "Thou art damned, dear friend! thou art damned!" "H'm," he repeated; "and in view of the provisions of your father's will, will you tell me why is it that you are without a child?"
As he spoke he had arisen, and, smiling still, though now as were he questioning her in regard to the state of the weather, he looked into her eyes. She had drawn yet further back into the chair in which she sat; a deadly sickness overcame her; to her head there mounted the nausea of each one of his many misdeeds. The memory of the blow of the week before, one which, despite her seeming forbearance, had not ceased to rankle, returned to her; and with it, one after another in swift succession, she rememorated the offences of the past. But soon she too was on her feet and fronted him. "Why is it I am without a child?" she repeated. Her voice was low and clear, and between each word she permitted a little pause to intervene. "Why is it?"
The subtlety of his reproach battening on nerves already overwrought was exciting her as nothing had done before. "It is you," she cried, "who are to blame. What have you done with your youth? What have you done with your manhood? Look at me, Roland Mistrial! If I have borne you no child it is because monsters never engender." As she spoke, with one gesture she tore her bodice down. Her breast, palpitant with health and anger too, heaving at the sheer injustice of his reproach, confronted and confuted him. "It is there that women have their strength; tell me, if you can, what have you done with yours?"
And thereat, with a look a princess might give to a lackey who had dared to question her, she turned and left him where he stood.
The next day he tried to make his peace with her. In this he succeeded, or flattered himself he had, for subsequently she consented to accompany him to the play. And as she sat in the stalls it was of these things that she thought.
The information which Mistrial gleaned concerning the provisions of his father-in-law's will was bitter in his mouth. On the morrow he gave some time to thought—he read too a little. The taunt which Justine had flung at him, bit; and with the idea of dulling the hurt and of ministering also to his own refreshment, he consulted a book which treated of certain conditions of the nervous system, and a work on medical jurisprudence as well. But literature of that kind is notoriously unsatisfactory. It may suggest, yet the questions which it prompts remain unanswered. Roland put the volumes down: they were productions of genius, no doubt, but to him they were nothing more. From the pursuit of exact knowledge he turned and looked out into the street.
The hour then was midway in one of those green afternoons which we are apt to fancy the adjunct of lands we never see, and as he looked he saw astride a bay hunter a man ambling cautiously over the stones. From the roofs opposite a breath of lilacs came, and a breeze that was neither cool nor warm loitered on its way from the river beyond. Mistrial let the breeze, the fragrance, the fulfilment of spring, pass unnoticed. The bay hunter had caught his eye: it seemed to him that an argument with an imperative horse was just the thing he needed most, and a little later he secured a cob from a stable on the street above.
The cob was docile enough, affecting once only to regard a sewer-grating in the bridle-path as a strange, unhallowed thing which it was needful to avoid. But the initial shy was the last. The spur gave him such a nip that during the remainder of the ride, whatever distasteful object he may have encountered, he gave no outward evidence of abhorrence. He had an easy canter, a long and swinging trot; and now on one, now on the other, they passed through and out of the Park, and on beyond the brand-new edifices that line Seventh Avenue, to that scantier outlying district where the Harlem begins and the city ends. And here as he was about to turn he noticed a gig such as physicians affect. In it was a negro driving, and at his side sat Justine's cousin, Guy.
"H'm!" mused Mistrial; "judging by the locality, his patients must be the last people in the city." At the moment the feebleness of the jest pleasured him; then simultaneously the unforgotten hatred crackled in his breast. At each one of the important epochs of his life that man had stood in his way. It was he that had forced him from college at the moment when honors were within his reach. It was he that had kept him from his father's side at the time when he might have saved his father's estate. It was he that had come between Dunellen and himself at the hour when he could have persuaded Justine's father to give him Justine's hand. It was he that had forced him to elope with her. It was because of him that he was now enjoying the small miseries of the shabby genteel. It was he, unless Providence now intervened, who would inherit the wealth he had toiled to make his own. And it was he who the day before had again crossed and halted in his path.
These premises, however colored, were logical enough in this—the natural deduction sprang out and greeted the eye. And, as they flashed before him, Mistrial saw himself rinsing out each one in blood squeezed from Thorold's throat. In the fury which suddenly beset him he could have found the strength, the courage it may be, to have torn him from the gig in which he sat, to have trampled on him with horse's hoofs, bent over and beat him as he writhed on the ground, and exulted and jubilated in the doing of it. Then indeed, though he swung for it, the ultimate victory would be his. If he stamped Thorold out of existence, though his own went with it, he would not have suffered wholly in vain; in facing the gallows he would have the joy of knowing that even were he prevented from bathing in the Dunellen millions, so was Thorold too.
But when he looked out from himself his enemy had disappeared. A woman in an open landau passed and bowed. Mechanically Mistrial raised his hat. To every intent and purpose he was self-possessed—occupied, if at all, but with those threads of fancy that float in and out the mind. As he raised his hat, he smiled; the woman might have thought herself the one it gave him the greatest pleasure to salute. Her carriage had not advanced the jump of a cat before he had forgotten that she lived. But no one can turn his brain into a stage, create for it, and feel a drama such as he had without some outward manifestation, be it merely a strangled oath. On the horse he rode his knees had tightened, he gave a dig with the spur, and went careering down the street. In that part of New York you are at liberty to cover a mile in two minutes. Roland covered thirty squares at breakneck speed.
Presently he drew the animal in and suffered him to walk. During the run he had had no time to think; he had been occupied only in keeping the horse he rode out of the way of vehicles, and in preventing that possible cropper which comes when we expect it least. But as the cob began to walk, the present returned to him with a rush. About the animal's neck the fretting of the reins had produced a lather; the breeze had died away. Mistrial felt overheated too, and he drew out a handkerchief and wiped his face. Even while he drew it from his pocket an idea came to him, fluttered for a second as ideas will, and before he got the handkerchief back it had gone, leaving him just a trifled dazed. But in a moment he called to it, and at his bidding it returned. It was minute, barely fledged as yet; but as the horse jogged on, little by little it expanded, and to such an extent that before he reached the park its pinions stretched from earth to sky. Whoso is visited with inspirations knows with what diabolical swiftness they can enlarge and grow. When Mistrial put the horse back in the stable the idea which at first he had but dimly intercepted possessed him utterly. It succeeded even in detaining his step: he walked up the street instead of down; at a crossing he hesitated; night had come, and as he loitered there, suddenly the whole avenue was bright as day. The vengeance which not an hour before he could have wreaked on Thorold seemed now remote and paltry too. There need be no shedding of blood, no scandal, no newspaper notoriety, no police, no coroner to sit upon a corpse, no jury to bring a verdict in. There need be nothing of this: a revenge of that order was in bad taste, ill-judged as well. To make a man really suffer, sudden death was as a balm in comparison to some subtle torment that should gnaw at the springs of life, retreat a moment, and then returning make them ache again, and still again, forever his whole life through. The French woman is not so ill-advised when she pitches a cup of vitriol in her betrayer's face. In Spain, in Italy even, they stab; the deed is done; the culprit has had no chance to experience anger, pain even, or remorse. He is dead. The curtain falls. But a revenge that blasts and corrodes, one that leaves the victim living, sound in body and in limb, and yet consumed by an inextinguishable regret, burning with tortures from which he can never escape—a thing like that is the work, not of an apprentice, but of a master in crime. Yet when the victim receives that cup of vitriol, not from another's hands, but from his own; when he has been lured into devastating his own self;—it is no longer a question of either apprentice or of master: it is the artist that has been at work. To gain the Dunellen millions was to Mistrial a matter of paramount importance; but to gain them through the instrumentality of the man whom he hated as no one ever hates to-day, particularly when that man was the one to whom those millions were provisionally bequeathed, when he was one whom Mistrial—justly or unjustly, it matters not—fancied and believed was plotting for them; to gain them, not only through him, but through his unwitting, unintentional agency, through an act which, so soon as he learned its purport, all his life through he would regret and curse;—no, that were indeed a revenge and a reparation too. And as he thought of it there entered his eyes a look perplexing and enervating—that look which demons share with sphinxes and the damned.
During the two years which Mistrial had passed in the society of his wife, opportunities of studying her there had been in plenty. He knew her to be docile and headstrong; weak, if at all, but with that weakness that comes of lassitude; violent when provoked, prone to forgive, sensitive, impulsive, yet obdurate; in brief, the type of woman that may be entreated, but never coerced. He knew her faults so well he could have enumerated them one after the other on his finger-tips: her qualities, however, had impressed him less; it may be that he had accepted them as a matter of course. He was aware that she was honest; he had noticed that she was capable of much self-sacrifice; of other characteristics he had given little heed. It goes without the telling, that in regard to what is known as jealousy he had not suffered even an evanescent disquietude. And that night and during the morning that followed, as he occupied himself in nursing the idea which had visited him on horseback, that particular fact occurred to him more than once. But one does not need to be a conspirator to understand that the steadiest virtue is as susceptible of vice as iron is of rust.
Justine had announced that her cousin was still in love with her; she had announced with equal distinctness that she recognized her own mistake; while for himself he was convinced that she no longer cared. To these things he added certain deductions which his experience of men and women permitted him to draw; and had the result they presented been made to order, it could not have fitted more perfectly into the scheme which he had devised.
It was then high noon. Through the window came the irresistible breath of a rose in bloom. As he left the house it surrounded him in the street. He smiled a greeting at it. "I have spring in my favor," he mused, and presently boarded a car.
The principles of successful enterprise may be summarized as consisting of a minute regard for details, and an apparent absence of zeal. Mistrial's many mistakes had taught him the one and trained him in the other. When the car he had taken reached the Gilsey House, he alighted, hailed a four-wheeler, stationed it in such a manner that it commanded a view of the adjacent street, coached the driver in regard to a signal he might give, entered the cab, lit a cigarette, and prepared to wait.
In that neighborhood there are four or five basement houses of the style that is affectioned by milliners, dentists, and physicians. One of these particularly claimed Mistrial's attention. He saw a woman in gray enter it, and almost simultaneously a woman come out; then a man leading a child went in; and in a little while the first woman reappeared. Mistrial glanced at his watch; it lacked a minute of one. "He has a larger practice than I thought," he reflected. The woman in gray had now nearly reached the cab in which he sat, and from sheer force of habit he was preparing to scrutinize her as she passed, when the door of the house reopened and Thorold appeared on the step. He looked up the street, then down. He had his hat on, and his every-day air. In a second Mistrial had drawn the curtain and was peering through the opening at the side. He saw Thorold leave the step and turn toward Fifth Avenue; he signalled to the driver, and the cab moved on.
At the corner Thorold turned again, the cab at his heels, and Mistrial saw that the physician was moving in the direction of Madison Square. It occurred to him that Thorold might be going to Mr. Dunellen's, and on the block below, as the latter crossed the asphalt, he made sure of it. But opposite the Brunswick the cab stopped; Thorold was entering the restaurant.
Cold chicken looks attractive in print. A minute or two later, as Mistrial examined the bill of fare, he ordered some for himself; he ordered also a Demidorf salad,—a compound of artichokes' hearts and truffles, familiarly known as Half-Mourning,—and until the waiter returned hid himself behind a paper. Thorold meanwhile, who was seated at an adjoining table, must have ordered something which required longer preparation, for Mistrial finished the salad before the physician was served. But Mistrial was in no hurry; he had a pint of claret brought him, and sipped it leisurely. Now and then he glanced over at Thorold, and twice he caught his eye. At last Thorold called for his bill. Mistrial paid his own, and presently followed him out into the street. When both reached the sidewalk, Mistrial, who was a trifle in the rear, touched him on the arm.
"Thorold," he said; and the physician turned, but there was nothing engaging in his attitude: he held his head to one side, about his lips was a compression, a contraction in his eyes; one arm was pendent, the other pressed to his waistcoat, and the shoulder of that arm was slightly raised. He looked querulous and annoyed—a trifle startled, too.
"Thorold," Mistrial repeated, "give me a moment, will you?"
The physician raised the arm that he had pressed against his waistcoat, and, with four fingers straightened and the fifth askew, stroked an imaginary whisker.
"It is about Justine," Mistrial continued. "She is out of sorts; I want you to see her."
"Ah!" And Thorold looked down and away.
"Yes, I had intended to speak to Dr. McMasters; but when by the merest chance I saw you in there I told myself that, whatever our differences might be, there was no one who would understand the case more readily than you."
As Mistrial spoke he imitated the discretion of his enemy; he looked down and away. The next moment, however, both were gazing into each other's face.
"H'm." Thorold, as he stared, seemed to muse. "I saw her the other day," he said, at last; "she looked well enough then."
"But can't a person look well and yet be out of sorts?"
Mistrial was becoming angry, and he showed it. It was evident, however, that his irritation was caused less by the man to whom he spoke than by the physician whom he was seeking to consult. This Thorold seemed to grasp, for he answered perplexedly:
"After what has happened I don't see very well how I can go to your house."
"Look here, Thorold: the past is over and done with—ill done, you will say, and I admit it. Be that as it may, it has gone. At the same time there is no reason why any shadow of it should fall on Justine. She is really in need of some one's advice. Can you not give it to her?"
"Certainly," Thorold answered, "I can do that;" and he looked very sturdy as he said it. "Only—"
"Only what? If you can't go as a friend, at least you might go as a physician."
Thorold's hand had slid from his cheek to his chin, and he nibbled reflectively at a finger-nail.
"Very good," he said; "I will go to her. Is she to be at home this afternoon?"
"The evening would be better, I think. Unless, of course—" and Mistrial made a gesture as though to imply that, if Thorold's evening were engaged, a visit in the afternoon might be attempted.
But the suggestion presumably was acceptable. Thorold drew out a note-book, at which he glanced.
"And I say," Mistrial continued, "I wish—you see, it is a delicate matter; Justine is very sensitive—I wish you wouldn't say you met me. Just act as though—"
"Give yourself no uneasiness, sir." Thorold had replaced the note-book and looked up again in Mistrial's face. "I never mention your name." And thereat, with a toss of the head, he dodged an omnibus and crossed the street.
For a moment Mistrial gazed after him, then he turned, and presently he was ordering a glass of brandy at the Brunswick bar.
It was late that night when he reached his home. During the days that followed he had no fixed hours at all. Several times he entered the apartment with the smallest amount of noise that was possible, and listened at the sitting-room door. At last he must have heard something that pleased him, for as he sought his own room he smiled. "Maintenant, mon cher, je te tiens."
The next day he surprised Justine by informing her that he intended to pay a visit to a relative. He was gone a week.
That night the stars, dim and distant, were scattered like specks of frost on some wide, blue window-pane. At intervals a shiver of wheels crunching the resistant snow stirred the lethargy of the street, and at times a rumble accentuated by the chill of winter mounted gradually, and passed on in diminishing vibrations. Within, a single light, burning scantily, diffused through the room the drowsiness of a spell. In the bed was Justine, her eyes dilated, her face attenuated and pinched. One hand that lay on the coverlid was clinched so tightly that the nails must have entered the flesh. Presently she moaned, and a trim little woman issued from a corner with the noiseless wariness of a rat. As she passed before the night-light, the silhouette of a giantess, fabulously obese, jumped out and vanished from the wall. For a moment she scrutinized her charge, burrowing into her, as it were, with shrewd yet kindly eyes. Again a moan escaped the sufferer, the wail of one whose agony is lancinating—one that ascended in crescendos and terminated in a cry of such utter helplessness, and therewith of such insistent pain, that the nurse caught the hand that lay on the coverlid, and unlocking the fingers stroked and held it in her own. "There, dear heart—there, I know."
Ah, yes, she knew very well. She had not passed ten years of her existence tending women in travail for the fun of it. And as she took Justine's hand and stroked it, she knew that in a little while the agony, acuter still, would lower her charge into that vestibule of death where Life appears. Whether or not Justine was to cross that silent threshold, whether happily she would find it barred, whether it would greet and keep her and hold her there, whether indeed it would let the child go free, an hour would tell, or two at most.
But there were preparations to be made. The nurse left the bed and moved out into the hall. In a room near by, Mistrial, occupied with some advertisements in thePost, sat companioned by a physician who was reading a book which he had written himself. At the footfall of the nurse the latter left the room. Presently he returned. "Everything is going nicely," he announced, and placidly resumed his seat.
It was the fourth time in two hours that he had made that same remark. Mistrial said nothing. He was gazing through the paper he held at the wall opposite, and out of it into the future beyond.
Since that day, the previous spring, on which he had set out to visit a relative, many things had happened, yet but few that were of importance to him. On his return from the trip, during one fleeting second, for the first time since he had known Justine, it seemed to him that she avoided his eyes. To this, in other circumstances, he would have given no thought whatever; as matters were, it made him feel that his excursion should not be regarded as time ill-spent. Whether it had been wholly serviceable to his project, he could not at the time decide. He waited, however, very patiently, but he seldom waited within the apartment walls. At that period he developed a curious facility for renewing relations with former friends. Once he took a run to Chicago with an Englishman he had known in Japan; and once, with the brother of a lady who had married into the Baxter branch of the house of Mistrial, he went on a fishing trip to Canada. These people he did not bring to call on his wife. He seemed to act as though solitude were grateful to her. Save Mrs. Metuchen, Thorold at that time was her only visitor, and the visits of that gentleman Mistrial encouraged in every way that he could devise. Through meetings that, parenthetically, were more frequent on the stair or in the hallway than anywhere else, the two men, through sheer force of circumstances, dropped into an exchange of salutations—remarks about the weather, reciprocal inquiries on the subject of each other's health, which, wholly formal on Thorold's part, were from Mistrial always civil and aptly put. After all, was he not the host? and was it not for him to show particular courtesy to anyone whom his wife received?
To her, meanwhile, his attitude was little short of perfection itself. He was considerate, foresighted, and unobtrusive—a course of conduct which frightened her a little. Two or three months after he had struck her in the face she made—à proposof nothing at all—an announcement which brought a trace of color to her cheeks.
The following afternoon he happened to be entering the house as Dr. Thorold was leaving it. Instead of greeting him in the nice and amiable fashion which he had adopted, and which Thorold had ended by accepting as a matter of course, he halted and looked at the physician through half-closed eyes. Thorold nodded, cavalierly enough it is true, and was about to pass on; but this Mistrial prevented. He planted himself squarely in his way, and stuck his hands in his pockets.
"Mrs. Mistrial has no further need of you," he said. "Send your bill to me."
He spoke from the tips of his lips, with the air and manner of one dismissing a lackey. At the moment nothing pertinent could have occurred to Thorold. He stared at Mistrial, dumbly perplexed, and plucked at his cuff. Mistrial nodded as who should say, "Put that in your pipe;" and before Thorold recovered his self-possession he had passed up the stairs and on and out of sight.
It was then that season in which July has come and is going. The city was hot; torrid at noonday, sultry and enervating at night. Fifth Avenue and the adjacent precincts were empty. Each one of the brown-stone houses had a Leah-like air of desertion. The neighborhood of Madison and of Union Squares was peopled by men with large eyes and small feet, by women so deftly painted that, like Correggio, they could have exclaimed, "Anch' io son pittore." In brief, the Southern invasion had begun, and New York had ceased to be habitable.
But Newport has charms of its own; and to that lovely city by the water Mistrial induced his wife; and there, until summer had departed, and autumn too, they rested and waited. During those months he was careful of her: so pleasantly so, so studious of what she did and of what she ate, that for the first time since the honeymoon she might have, had she tried, felt at ease with him again. But there were things that prevented this—faith destroyed and the regret of it. Oh, indeed she had regrets in plenty; some even for her father; and, unknown to Mistrial, once or twice she wrote him such letters as a daughter may write. She had never been in sympathy with him; as a child he had coerced her needlessly; when she was older he had preached; later, divining that lack of sympathy, he had striven through kindlier ways to counteract it. But he had failed; and Justine, aiding in the endeavor, had failed as well. When father and child do not stand hand-in-hand a fibre is wanting that should be there.
In December Mistrial and his wife returned to town. A date was approaching, and there was thelayetteto be prepared. Hour after hour Justine's fingers sped. The apartment became a magazine of swaddling-clothes. One costume in particular, a worsted sack that was not much larger than a coachman's glove, duplicated and repeated itself in varying and tender hues. Occasionally Mistrial would pick one up and examine it furtively. To his vagabond fancy it suggested a bag in which gold would be.
But now the hour was reached. And as Mistrial sat staring into the future, the goal to which he had striven kept looming nearer and ever nearer yet. Only the day before he had learned that Dunellen was failing. And what a luxury it would be to him when the old man died and the will was read! Such a luxury did it appear, that unconsciously he manifested his contentment by that sound the glutton makes at the mention of delicious food.
His companion—the physician—turned and nodded. "I know what you are thinking about," he announced; and with the rapt expression of a seer, half to Mistrial, half to the ceiling, "It is always the case," he continued; "I never knew a father yet that did not wonder what the child would be; and the mothers, oh! the mothers! Some of them know all about it beforehand: they want a girl, and a girl it will be; or they want a boy, and a boy they are to have. I remember one dear, good soul who was so positive she was to have a boy that she had all the linen marked with the name she had chosen for him. H'm. It turned out to be twins—both girls. And I remember—"
But Mistrial had ceased to listen. He was off again discounting the inheritance in advance—discounting, too, the diabolism of his revenge. The latter, indeed, was unique, and withal so grateful, that now the consummation was at hand it fluttered his pulse like wine. He had ravened when first he learned the tenour of the will, and his soul had been bitter; but no sooner had this thing occurred to him than it resolved itself into a delight. To his disordered fancy its provisions held both vitriol and opopanax—the one for Thorold, the other for himself.
The doctor meanwhile was running on as doctors do. "Yes," Mistrial heard him say, "she was most unhappy; no woman likes a rival, and when that rival is her own maid, matters are not improved. For my part, the moment I saw how delicate she was, I thought, though I didn't dare to say so, I thought her husband had acted with great forethought. The maid was strong as an ox, and in putting her in the same condition as his wife he had simply and solely supplied her with a wet-nurse. But then, at this time particularly, women are so unreasonable. Not your good lady—a sweeter disposition—"
Whatever encomium he intended to make remained unfinished. From the room beyond a cry filtered; he turned hastily and disappeared. The cry subsided; but presently, as though in the interval the sufferer had found new strength or new torture, it rose more stridently than before. And as the rumor of it augmented and increased, a phrase of the physician's returned to Mistrial. "Everything is going very nicely," he told himself, and began to pace the floor.
A fraction of an hour passed, a second, and a third. The cry now had changed singularly; it had lost its penetrating volume, it had sunk into the rasping moan of one dreaming in a fever. Suddenly that ceased, the silence was complete, and Mistrial, a trifle puzzled, moved out into the hall. There he caught again the murmur of her voice. This time she was talking very rapidly, in a continuous flow of words. From where he stood Mistrial could not hear what she was saying, and he groped on tip-toe down the hall. As he reached the door of the room in which she was, the sweet and heavy odor of chloroform came out and met him there; but still the flow of words continued uninterruptedly, one after the other, with the incoherence of a nightmare monologuing in a corpse. Then, without transition, in the very middle of a word, a cry of the supremest agony rang out, drowning another, which was but a vague complaint.
"It's a boy," the nurse exclaimed.
And Justine through a rift of consciousness caught and detained the speech. "So much the better," she moaned; "he will never give birth."