XIV.

XIV.

AS Kate Clephane drove up late that night to the house in Fifth Avenue she seemed to be reliving all her former anguished returns there, real or imaginary, from the days when she had said to herself: “Shall I never escape?” to those others when, from far off, she had dreamed of the hated threshold, and yearned for it, and thought: “Shall I never get back?”

She had said she might be late in returning, and had begged that no one should stay up for her. Her wish, as usual, had been respected, and she let herself into the hushed house, put out the lights, and stole up past the door where Anne lay sleeping her last young sleep.

Ah, that thought of Anne’s awakening! The thought of seeing Anne’s face once again in all its radiant unawareness, and then assisting helpless at the darkening of its light! How would the blow fall? Suddenly and directly, or gradually, circuitously? Would the girl learn her fate on the instant, or be obliged to piece it together, bit by bit, through all the slow agonies of conjecture? What pretext would Chris give for the break? He was skilled enough in evasions and subterfuges—but what if he had decided to practise them on Anne’s mother,and not on Anne? What if the word he had given were already forfeited? What assurance had any promise of his ever conveyed?

Kate Clephane sat in her midnight room alone with these questions. She had forgotten to go to bed, she had forgotten to undress. She sat there, in her travelling dress and hat, as she had stepped from the train: it was as if this house which people called her own were itself no more than the waiting-room of a railway station where she was listening for the coming of another train that was to carry her—whither?

Ah, but she had forgotten—forgotten that she had him in her power! She had said to him: “I’ve got the means to beat you in the end,” and he had bowed his head to the warning and given his word. Why, the mere threat that she would tell his mother had thrown him on her mercy—what would it be if she were to threaten to tell Anne? She knew him ... under all his emancipated airs, his professed contempt for traditions and conformities, lurked an uneasy fear of being thought less than his own romantic image of himself.... No; even if his designs on Anne were wholly interested, it would kill him to have her know. There was no danger there.

The bitterness of death was passed; yes—but the bitterness of what came after? What of the time to come, when mother and daughter were left facing each other like two ghosts in a gray world of disenchantment?Well, the girl was young—time would help—they would travel.... Ah, no; her tortured nerves cried out that there could not be, in any woman’s life, another such hour as the one she had just lived through!

Toward dawn she roused herself, undressed, and crawled into bed; and there she lay in the darkness, sharpening her aching wits for the continuation of the struggle.

“A telegram—” Aline always said it with the same slightly ironic intonation, as if it were still matter of wonder and amusement to her that any one should be in such haste to communicate with her mistress. Mrs. Clephane, in sables and pearls, with a great house at her orders, was evidently a more considerable person than the stray tenant of the little third-floor room at the Hôtel de Minorque, and no one was more competent to measure the distance between them than Aline. But still—a telegram!

Kate opened the envelope with bloodless fingers. “I am going.” That was all—there was not even a signature. He had kept his word; and he wanted her to know it.

She felt the loosening of the cords about her heart; a deep breath of relief welled up in her. He had kept his word.

There was a tap on the door, and Anne, radiant, confident, came in.

“You’ve had a telegram? Not about Aunt Janey—”

Aunt Janey? For a second Kate could not remember, could not associate the question with anything related to the last hours. Then she collected herself, just in time to restrain a self-betraying clutch at the telegram. With a superhuman effort at composure she kept her hands from moving, and left the message lying, face up, on the coverlet between herself and Anne. Yet what if Anne were to read theBaltimoreabove the unsigned words?

“No; it’s not about Aunt Janey.” She made a farther effort at recollection. “The fact is, the aunts had a panic ... an absurd panic.... Aunt Janey’s failed a good deal, of course; it’s the beginning of the end. But there’s no danger of anything sudden—not the least.... I’m glad I went, though; it comforted them to see me.... And it was really rather wrong of me not to have been before.”

Ah, now, at last she remembered, and how thankfully, that she had, after all, been to Meridia; had, automatically, after leaving Chris, continued her journey, surprised and flattered the aunts by her unannounced appearance, and spent an hour with them before taking the train back to New York. She had had the wit, at the time, to see how useful such an alibi might be, and then, in the disorder of her dreadful vigil, had forgotten about it till Anne’s question recalled her to herself. The complete gapin her memory frightened her, and made her feel more than ever unfitted to deal with what might still be coming—what must be coming.

Anne still shed about her the reflected radiance of her bliss. “I’m so glad it’s all right—so glad you went. And of course, dear, you didn’t tell them anything, did you?”

“Tell them anything—?”

“About me.” The lids dropped, the lashes clasped her vision. How could her mother have forgotten?—that flutter of the lids seemed to say.

“Darling! But of course not.” Kate Clephane brought the words out with dry lips. Her hand stole out to Anne’s, then drew back, affecting to pick up the telegram. She could not put her hand in her daughter’s just yet.

The girl sat down beside her on the bed. “I want it to be our secret, remember—just yours and mine—till he comes next week. He can’t get away before.”

Ah, thank God for that! The mother remembered now that Anne had told her this during their first talk—the talk of which, at the time, no details had remained in her shattered mind. Now, as she listened, those details came back, bit by bit, phantasmagorically mingled.

No one was to be told of the engagement; no, not even Nollie Tresselton; not till Chris came to New York. And that was not to be for another week. He could not get away sooner, and Anne had decreedthat he must see her mother before their betrothal was made public. “I suppose I’m absurdly out-of-date—but I want it to be like that,” the girl had said; and Kate Clephane understood that it was out of regard for her, with the desire to “situate” her again, and once for all, as the head of the house, that her daughter had insisted on this almost obsolete formality, had stipulated that her suitor should ask Mrs. Clephane’s consent in the solemn old-fashioned way.

The girl bent nearer, her radiance veiled in tenderness. “If you knew, mother, how I want you to like him—” ah, the familiar cruel words!—“You did, didn’t you, in old times, when you used to know him so well? Though he says he was just a silly conceited boy then, and wonders that anybody could endure his floods of nonsense....”

Ah, God, how long would it go on? Kate Clephane again reached out her hand, and this time clasped her daughter’s with a silent nod of assent. Speech was impossible. She moistened her parched lips, but no sound came from them; and suddenly she felt everything slipping away from her in a great gulf of oblivion.

“Mother! You’re ill—you’re over-tired....” She was just aware, through the twilight of her faintness, that Anne’s arm was under her, that Anne was ringing the bell and moistening her forehead.

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