III
IT was the following evening that Margaret rose restlessly and looked out of the window of her little hotel drawing-room. She knew that the House had risen at five, she had telephoned twice to ascertain that fact, and her note of the morning should have brought Fox straight from the Capitol.
It was now almost six o’clock, the streets were lighted and thronged with people, some hurrying home from office or shopping, others still on those endless social rounds which had once been the orbit of Margaret’s life. She thought of that existence now, its brilliance, its flattery, its hollowness, with a shudder. Between the two periods of her life there was a chasm. It had been only a few months, but those months had been years in her emotional existence, and her stormy soul struggling through the depths of it had worn away the body which with her seemed but the beautiful ephemeral garment of a wild spirit. When it was over, the divorce with its hideous publicity, its sordid details,its piercing accusations, and freedom had come to her with almost blinding reality, she had declared that she should rebuild her life, forget all, be happy—happy!
She had expected at once some message from Fox, some sign of sympathy, but when none came she interpreted his silence by her own heart; he was loth, she thought, to show too much joy at once. They could wait! How sweet it was to think that once again they had their lives before them; they were still young, the world had potent possibilities of happiness for them. The sheer joy of the thought drove the blood to her heart; she could not breathe sometimes but lay panting, her head thrown back on her pillows and her arms flung wide and helpless, until Gerty came and with trembling hand administered restoratives and threw up the windows. They called them heart attacks but it did not matter, nothing mattered now; she would begin all over again. Her old life had slipped from her, as though its shackles, having been stricken off, had left no scar. She had been in Washington a week, but she had not asked to see her children; she could not, the thought of them sent a shiver through her; they were the visible and actual links which bound her to the past, the past which her soul loathed.
She had waited eagerly for Fox, aware that he was in the city before her arrival, and when he did not come she still attributed his absence to a reluctance to be too soon to claim her. That he loved her she never doubted, and her heart trembled at the thought of that meeting which must come at last, with all its sweetness, its fulfilment, after her long waiting. That morning she had written him and now she watched the clock, carelessly aware that Gerty English was also watching it, and that the girl seemed disconcerted and awkward with her work over Margaret’s letters and books.
But to Margaret everything outside of that one absorbing fact was of little moment; what Gerty thought of no consequence at all, for while she had made only half a confidante of the girl, turning to her in uncontrollable moments and then relapsing again into reserve, she was actually indifferent to the nature and extent of Gerty’s knowledge; the little secretary seemed to her as unimportant as any other parasite upon the lives of the more fortunate.
Margaret went openly to the window therefore, and drew aside the curtains to watch the long brilliantly lighted street, where the snow lay yet in white drifts between the muddy slush of traffic, and she returned openly to the fire to look at the clockon the mantel. At first the delay had been almost sweet, she liked to dwell upon the thought of seeing him, of being happy again, but at last it grew irksome and she paced nervously to and fro, her hands clasped behind her head, scarcely vouchsafing an answer to Gerty’s occasional questions.
Time passed; it was nearly half past six before her maid came in to announce a visitor and Margaret turned, hiding herself a little in the shadow of the curtain that she might see him first when he entered.
As the door finally opened to admit Fox, Gerty English rose rather hastily and retreated to one of the other rooms, with her arms full of books and papers, and he found himself face to face at last with Margaret.
There was an eloquent silence; he was painfully aware of the change in her, that the delicate hollows in her cheeks were sharpened while her eyes seemed larger and more brilliant, and there was a wistfulness, a soft tremulous happiness and expectation in her expression which touched him to the heart. She had never looked so young, so fragile and so gentle since those old days when as half child, half woman, he had loved her. That dead love lying between them now made an impassable barrier, she could as little rekindle it asshe could reclaim a fallen star. Some dim, half interpreted perception of this chilled her heart and stayed the passionate greeting on her lips; she stood a moment looking at him, terribly aware of the calmness of his bearing, his pallor, his dark troubled eye which neither kindled nor blenched at the sight of her, but met hers with a studied gentleness which expressed neither joy nor reluctance. A keen pang of dread tore her heart, but the next instant joy, wild, almost childish joy at the sight of him, welled up and swept away her doubts.
“Oh, William!” she exclaimed with trembling lips, holding out both hands, “at last, at last! It has been eons since we met!”
“And you look ill,” he replied kindly, “Margaret, I hoped to see you well again. How is this?”
Her eyes sought his face, eager, feverish, questioning; her heart trembled, was this all?—this stilted, quiet, commonplace greeting? She checked the cry of reproach which rose to her white lips, and smiled—a wan and pallid smile. “I’m quite well,” she replied with sudden calm; “you forget the months have been long and troubled ones; I suppose I grow old!”
“I never saw you look younger, more as youused to look ten years ago,” he exclaimed involuntarily.
“Do I?” there was a tremulous note of eagerness in her voice, and a faint blush passed over her face, but she evaded his hand, which he had stretched out again to clasp hers, and went quietly to a shaded corner where neither lamplight nor firelight fell too sharply on her. “Sit down, William, and tell me about yourself.”
He obeyed her mechanically, unconscious that his manner had betrayed anything, but aware of a sudden indefinable change in her, a restraint and repression. “There is nothing to tell,” he said, with some impatience; “the old story—primaries, conventions, a stormy campaign and finally, as you know, my re-election is assured, if I care for it!” he added, a hard new note of indifference in his voice.
She heard it and leaned forward a little on her cushions, trying to read his face, studying every fine and classic outline of the strong head, the brow, the deep-set brilliant eye, the thin-lipped sensitive mouth, the clean shaven, strong jaw and chin. It was his face; how often she had dreamed about it and dreamed of it as turned to her with the glow of love and joy on it, but how pale it was, how hard, how resolute!
“I knew the campaign was hotly contested, but I never doubted your success,” she said simply; “you know I always believed in you.”
He turned sharply and looked at her. “What is the matter, Margaret? You are not yourself.”
She smiled. “No,” she admitted, looking at him with an enigmatical expression, “no, I am not myself; the old Margaret is dead—and buried! Not even Mrs. Wingfield would know me; I burnt up my last red hat yesterday, William.”
He answered her smile involuntarily, but his eyes remained grave, almost stern. He turned abruptly, holding out his hand. “Margaret,” he said, “I came—of course you know it—to ask you to be my wife.”
She drew a long breath and was silent, her eyes on his face; she was wonderfully calm.
“It seems to me that the sooner it is over the better for both of us,” he went on hurriedly; “there will, of course, be some talk; we must face it together.”
Without answering him she bent over and picked up a half sheet of the morning newspaper from the floor, and after glancing at it, held it out to him. “There is an article there about you,” she said in a low voice; “it says you have refused the State Department; is that true?”
He put the paper aside with a little impatience. “Of course it’s true,” he said; “I refused it three days ago.”
She was again silent for an instant while she folded the paper into plaits. “Why did you refuse it?” she asked.
Fox moved sharply and turned his face away, looking at the fire. “That does not concern us, Margaret,” he said gravely; “our marriage is the only question now; I—”
She interrupted him. “Tell me,” she insisted, “it’s my right to know; this had something to do with me, with the prospect of—of your marrying Wicklow’s divorced wife, I know it! Tell me the truth.”
“Of what avail?” he retorted with evident reluctance, his cheek red.
“I have a right to know,” she reiterated.
He smiled bitterly. “The situation is quite clear, isn’t it? I can’t take White’s place in the Cabinet and White’s wife; it would be monstrous.”
She leaned back in her chair, shading her face with her thin hand which trembled slightly, she tried to speak, but her dry lips refused to move. His manner, no less than his words, had ruthlessly torn away the last shreds of her self-deception, and her poor shivering soul shuddered at this revelationof the hardness in him, the eternal note of egoism. How plain it was, how simple, how inexorable! The man’s love had died, and hers had fed itself upon a chimera, a phantasm of her imagination, a dream of the past! Her hand trembled so that she let it fall in her lap and averted her face.
Something of the anguish she felt reached him; he perceived her thought without knowing that he had laid bare his heart to her, and he felt a pang of remorse for his words, though she had wrung them from him with a woman’s besotted madness, a woman’s wild determination to probe her own agony to the core.
“It is of no consequence to me, Margaret,” he said kindly; “I shall give it all up and go away with you; we must build it up from the beginning again. Only it is best to have it over.”
She smiled faintly, looking into the fire which had fallen from the andirons and lay in red coals on the broad hearth. “Tell me,” she said abruptly, turning her full gaze on him, “I have been away and I do not know—where is Rose Temple? Is she still in Paris?”
There was a striking change in his face as though his features, made of potter’s clay, had suddenly fixed themselves into the shape of a mask,stern and unchanging in its finality. “Yes, she’s in Paris,” he replied, with strong reluctance to speak of her; “I know nothing else. You can ask Allestree.”
“Ah, then I suppose it will end happily at last,” Margaret said softly; “she will marry Allestree; I always thought so.”
Fox rose abruptly and walked to the fire, standing a moment looking down at its fallen embers, his back toward her. She could not see his face, but in the covetous agony of her soul she needed no sight, she knew! A gray shadow passed over her own features, her eyes closed, she shivered from head to foot.
After a moment of terrible silence he turned. “When can we be married, Margaret?” he demanded, with passionate haste; “it must be soon, it cannot be too soon!”
She rose, looking slighter and more frail than ever. “No, it cannot be too soon; I will decide, I have no preparations to make,” she added, with a little, mocking smile; “I’m sorry, William, I’ll be but a sober bride; you should have married a young girl and had a grand wedding with a flourish of trumpets.”
“Which I hate,” he said bluntly, “as you know.”
“As I know?” she laughed a little wildly; “I have known very little! You must go now; I—I’m not very strong yet, and the excitement—”
“Has been too much,” he said kindly, “I’ll come again to-morrow—you can tell me then; it can’t be too soon.”
“What an ardent lover!” she said, her lips trembling, “I’m proud of you, William, you do famously, I—I—” she broke off and suddenly laying her thin white hands lightly on his shoulders she kissed his cheek, turned, evaded his touch, and bursting into uncontrollable weeping ran from the room.