XVI
FOX had not seen Rose alone since that night, now some weeks distant, when, after a bitter struggle with himself, he had definitely accepted the inexorable fact of Margaret’s demand upon him. To injure a woman, however unwittingly, seemed to him contemptible, even when he secretly raged against the injustice of her claims and repudiated them in his heart with something akin to savage anger. It had been a bitter experience, a shock to his egotism, to his infatuated belief in himself, that belief which comes sometimes to genius with the force of absolute conviction.
The adjournment of Congress had left him more at liberty than usual and he was anxious to leave the city, yet to do so would be interpreted as flight. He had purposely absented himself from White’s house, and Margaret, understanding his mood, had refrained from communicating with him, but he was instinctively aware that she was unshaken in her resolution, and the news of theopen rupture came to him almost as a relief; it was over, and it was useless to indulge in vague hopes and futile thoughts of escape from his responsibility; he must meet the fate that his folly and selfishness had invited, and with it the wreck of his own happiness! And he was a strong willed, selfish man; it was well nigh impossible to yield to such a course, to give up, to let Rose go just when it seemed most possible to win her. As for Margaret, the manner in which he thought of her, the wretched obstinacy with which her fate entangled his, argued ill indeed for her future hope of happiness if he married her. If he yielded that reluctant assent to the situation, if he accepted the claim she made upon him, it might be a bare and cruel fate for both. He was himself unaware of the impossibility of concealment, that his final indifference would be more cruel, more deadly than present repudiation. He thought, instead, of himself, of the wreck of a dream which had filled his soul with the beautiful and tender amenities of love and loyalty and protection; he forgot that a man can hide his heart as little as the leopard can change his spots, and that a woman can suffer more in its revelation than she would from physical brutality.
All this while the thought of Rose came to himwith cruel regret. There were hours, between daylight and dawn, when he walked the floor battling with his own soul, battling with the irresistible desire to go to her, to tell her that he loved her, no matter what happened; let the universe crumble, let her despise him for his weakness, if she would, but to tell her the truth! It seemed to him supremely worth the cost.
It was late in the afternoon of one of those perfect spring days when the cherry trees are white with bloom behind the garden walls and all the parks are full of robins. Fox had left his work in his vacant committee-room at the Capitol, and crossing the city was walking westward with no companion but Sandy. The desire to see Rose had crystallized in his heart even while he struggled against it, and he turned almost unconsciously in the direction of her home. He had heard that very morning of the rumors, now numerous and substantial, of Judge Temple’s financial losses; one man had told him that the judge was on the brink of ruin, and the thought of distress and sorrow coming to her stung Fox with renewed misery. As he came in sight of the modest old house with its ivy mantled wall and its white door, with the half moon of triangular panes above it, and its fluted white pilasters oneither side, he looked up over it with the feeling of a man who had shut the gate of Paradise in his own face. He had intended to pass it, crossing on the street below, but at the corner Sandy stopped and pricked his ears and then dashed forward with a joyous bark of greeting, and his master knew that he was betrayed.
Rose had just mounted her horse at her own door and was dismissing the negro who had held the reins. The sun shone full in her face and made a nimbus of her soft bright hair, while her slim figure in the saddle looked more youthful than ever. She had recognized Sandy and greeted him with a kindly word as he leaped at her stirrup, and seeing his master behind him, she held in her restless horse and waited quietly, only a slight deepening of the color in her cheeks indicating the tumult in her heart. She had schooled herself for the moment and even in the shock of unexpected meeting her training held good; she was more composed than he was, as she answered his greeting. But, at a glance, he saw the change in her, the reserve in her eyes, the slightness of her smile, and taking offense at what seemed to him an injustice, he overlooked the fact that it was the baldest, the most pitiful acting of one who had never dissembled before in her life.
“It’s too perfect a day to be indoors,” she said, with a lightness of tone which shocked her own ears; “I am going down by the speedway to see the river and that soft haze which I know is lying over on the Virginia shore; in the afternoon sun it looks like a mirage.”
“I don’t think I should enjoy the sight,” Fox said dryly; “life has been too much of a mirage to me lately.”
She looked down at him, the sun illuminating her beautiful eyes. “Life?” she repeated, with sudden girlish enthusiasm; “isn’t it what we make it? We owe it to ourselves—that moral responsibility.”
He laughed with bitterness; her childishness struck him with renewed force; she could never understand his impossible situation; she would condemn him, and he deserved it! “Moral responsibility!” he repeated, with sudden fury, “what cant it is. I’d be willing to cast it all into Hades for one moment of liberty from these wretched shackles which ‘make cowards of us all!’ No living man can control his life where it touches another’s.”
She shrank instinctively, with a sharp moral recoil, from his impassioned words, coloring deeply. Her hands trembled as she held thebridle, and even that slight motion made her horse swerve, eager to be off. Intuition, swift and unerring, interpreted his words and his sudden stress of feeling. “Pardon me,” she said simply, “I did not mean to set myself up as a judge. I suppose I’m very ignorant of such matters and—I would rather be so,” she added with gentle dignity.
He looked at her deeply touched. “My God, Rose,” he murmured, “leave me; if you stay a moment longer I must speak, and you will never forgive me!”
Her lip trembled like a child’s, but her clear eyes were full of a grave condemnation; yet she was deeply moved; he had never called her by her name before, and the sound of it upon his lips, the very way in which it was uttered voiced his heart; she could not close her ears to it, no matter how much she struggled with herself, and she did struggle, determined to hide her own pang of anguished regret. For a moment neither spoke, then she leaned slightly from her saddle and held out her hand. “Let us part friends,” she said in a voice of restraint.
He did not take her hand; he groaned. “I cannot!” he exclaimed with renewed bitterness; “do not offer a sop to a starving man!”
Her horse plunged and she grasped the bridle again with both hands. Her face changed so completely that it seemed to him a strange face. He could not read it but he believed that, in her heart, she condemned him, that he appeared to her in the guise of Mephistopheles himself. Yet, as she turned and looked back at him, there was an expression in her eyes at once inscrutable and beautiful; he could never be sure how far it confessed her heart. Had she loved him? It was impossible to know, and he stood mute watching her slight figure outlined against the sun as she galloped down the long quiet street, under an arcade of new green, wreathed here and there with the bloom of the tulip trees, narrowing at last to an arched vista of luminous sky above blue distant hills; its stillness and its new thick foliage shutting from view, at once of mind and eye, the city life which enfolded it, and was shut out by its gracious gift of leafage, which hid long rows of houses or clothed them with imaginary beauty.
Fox stood still, rooted to the spot, his mind darkened by the fierce tumult of feeling which clamored against fate and against Margaret. She had broken with him long ago, what right had she to thrust herself into his life? Then the picture of her in her forlorn grief, in her appealto him, came back with an abruptness which wrung a groan from his lips. What man, so placed as he, could fling her unhappy love in her face?
And Rose? What she believed of him, shaping her thoughts by that stern old moralist her father, it was not difficult to imagine!
He started to self-consciousness as Sandy, tired of waiting, suddenly jumped up and pawed his arm. Coming to himself again he flushed hotly at the discovery that some chance passers-by were staring at him, and whistling to the dog he walked rapidly away, the battle still raging in his soul with bitterness.
Meanwhile Rose had turned her horse’s head through less frequented streets toward the White Lot, and galloping through the bridle paths around the ellipse, she turned and crossing the street rode down to the speedway, the sun shining athwart her path and the river lying before her a sheet of silver.
As she had anticipated, a soft haze floated on the farther shore, the sun seemed to turn the very mist to gold, and through this glowing, impalpable atmospheric vapor she saw the beautiful swelling hills, half fledged in tenderest green, the shadows purple, the distances melting into the sky itself. Across the river a flock of birds wingedtheir flight, vanishing at last into the heart of the west.
The long white road stretched smooth and bare to the water’s edge, she heard the tide lap the sand, and the sharp hoofbeats of her horse rang clear. It was almost deserted; some social function had drawn the tide of carriages and motors elsewhere; a few stragglers passed her, but she galloped on. Behind her the city dropped away into silence, the foliage in the open spaces of the park and the White House grounds almost hiding the public buildings and clothing the whole with a sylvan aspect. Some children paddled at the water’s edge; a boy cast his net; the prattle of their voices came up through the clear soft air.
Rose checked her horse and sat looking across the river, shading her eyes with her hand. The sight of Fox, the sound of his voice had unnerved her. She had thought herself strong enough to dismiss him from her mind, to live down that dream, that idle futile dream, but she found that she had not counted the cost, that she had suffered a serious hurt. Already Rose’s inner mind began to question her own judgment. She knew nothing of the circumstances; had she a right to condemn him? Secretly she blamed Margaret; what woman does not blame the other woman alittle? What woman does not know that the other’s charming ways, her skill, her beauty, may have captured the unwary male creature almost against his will and certainly against his better judgment? Eve would never have blamed Adam in her heart if there had been any one for Adam to flirt with, but therein lay Eve’s profound superiority over her descendants—she was the only woman!
But Rose knew Margaret, knew her charm, her subtilty, her daring, and she battled with herself, trying to beat down her secret condemnation of the woman only. She was a stern little moralist, and she tried to be just; Fox must be to blame also, for was not Margaret married? The enormity of his offense could not be excused; besides, as she reflected, with a gnawing pain at her heart, of what avail to argue? If the divorce was granted—and it would be, beyond a doubt—Fox would marry Margaret.
Her lips tightened, her hands grasped the bridle again, and she galloped on, a wave of misery sweeping over her young soul, blotting out the bright contentment of her life, her natural cheerfulness. Suddenly she thought of that day a year ago, how happy she had been! She remembered it, a bright beautiful day, and she and Mrs.Allestree and Robert had driven out to Rock Creek Park and she had found some wood violets. A few months, and her old life had been blotted out, her happiness clouded; even her affection for her father seemed overshadowed, her whole being preoccupied and absorbed with this new misery. Was this then what men called love? Alack, she wished that she had never met the little blind god, or meeting him, had passed unscathed!
She turned her horse’s head and rode slowly back; the scent of flowers, of sweet new grass, of the fresh turned earth came to her, and the sweet treble note of a song-sparrow, but the world would never be quite the same again; she had met life face to face and learned one of its profound lessons. The young purity of her soul refused to accept it as a common lot, and it was characteristic of the sweetness of her temperament that, however she suffered, she did not blame Fox for having deliberately won her love, but she shrank, with almost physical repugnance, from the thought of him as the lover of a married woman. The judge’s lessons had gone even deeper than he knew.