The Dominant Strain Part 16

The nonchalance was only apparent, however. Lorimer had sought Beatrix, that day, much in the mood in which the naughty boy turns his back to receive his allotted caning. The bad half-hour was bound to come; it was best to have it over as soon as possible. Lorimer had gone to bed, the night before, in a state of maudlin cheeriness. He had wakened, that morning, feeling a heavy weight in his head and a heavier one on his conscience. He had an unnecessarily clear recollection of Beatrix's face as it had looked to him, the one sharply-outlined fact across a misty distance peopled with vague shadows. The eyes had been hurt and angry; but the lips showed only loving disappointment. All the morning long, he had pondered upon the matter; but by noon he had made his decision. The meeting was inevitable, so what was the use of trying to put it off?

"Well, Sidney?" Beatrix said steadily, as soon as the last guest had made her nervous, chattering exit.

With some degree of care, he had prepared his defensive argument; but it had lost all its force and fervor by reason of the half-hour spent in the roomful of women. Now he made a hasty effort to reconstruct it, and failed.

"I am sorry," he said, with simple humility.

Unconsciously, each had taken the best method to disarm the other.

Before scornful, angry denunciation, he could have burst out into voluble explanation and defence which, in its turn, would have antagonized Beatrix beyond any possibility of relenting. For the unpardonable sin, forgiveness must be a free gift. Confronted by excuses, Beatrix would have been unyielding. In the face of his humility, she hesitated to speak the final condemnation, and instinct taught her that feminine reproaches were worse than futile in the face of a real crisis.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Can't you make any sort of an excuse for yourself, Sidney?' she demanded"]

"How did you happen to do it, Sidney?" she asked quietly, as she seated herself again beside the deserted tea table and began absently setting the disordered cups into straight rows.

He raised his eyes from the carpet.

"Because I was a brute," he said briefly.

Methodically she sorted out the spoons in two little piles. Then, pus.h.i.+ng them together into a disorderly heap, she started to her feet and faced him.

"Can't you make any sort of an excuse for yourself, Sidney?" she demanded, and there was a desperate ring to her words.

He shook his head.

"I can't see any," he replied, after an interval. Suddenly he laughed harshly. "Unless you count total depravity," he added.

She ignored the laugh.

"I suppose you know, then, what this means," she said slowly, so slowly that it seemed as if each word caught in her throat.

His face whitened and he started to speak; but his voice failed him. He bowed in silence.

"I am sorry," she went on, while the cords in her clasped hands stood out like bits of rattan; "perhaps I am more sorry than you are; but there seems to be nothing else that I can do. Last night was the tragedy of my life; to-day is the hardest, the longest day I have ever spent. But--"

Bending forward, he took up one of the spoons from the table and looked at it intently for a moment. Under his mustache his lips worked nervously, and Beatrix saw the moisture gather in great drops upon his forehead. Fortunately she could not see his eyes, for their long lashes veiled them. It was better so; she could hold herself more steady. There was a certain mercilessness in the way she waited for him to break the silence.

"Is it final?" he asked at length. "I wish you would give me another chance, Beatrix."

"I have given you too many, as it is," she replied sadly.

He looked up at her, too much startled now to care whether or not she saw the tell-tale tears.

"How do you mean?"

"That last night only confirmed what I have been suspecting and dreading." This time, there came the scornful note he had so feared.

He dropped his eyes again, and accepted the condemnation in silence. If she knew the whole truth, there was no need of arguing with her over the details. The spoon snapped in two in his hands. He rose and tossed the fragments into the fire.

"Where are you going?" Beatrix asked.

"Straight to the devil." His accent was hard, but perfectly quiet, the accent of a desperate man, not of a reckless boy.

Up to the last moment, she had expected that he would seek to justify himself, would ask her to explain her decision and to modify it. This grim, silent acceptance of his fate terrified her. It seemed to throw upon her shoulders all the responsibility of an action which in itself was right, yet possibly burdened with consequences dangerous to another.

For herself, for the killing of her own great love, Beatrix never wavered. It was her own affair and concerned herself alone. But she knew that Lorimer loved her, and all at once she realized that her sudden rejection of his love was bound to bring forth bitter fruit. During the time it took him to cross the floor, she was swiftly weighing her duty to herself against her duty to her neighbor. She was bound to send him away; but was she equally bound to send him away like a beaten dog, without a word of explanation or of pity?

"Sidney?"

He had reached the door; but, at her call, he hesitated and looked back.

"You understand why I am doing this?"

"Yes," he said bitterly; "I understand only too well."

"And you think I am justified?"

He faced about squarely.

"Good G.o.d, Beatrix, when you have stabbed a man to death, don't grind the knife round and round, and ask him if he feels it! Let him make as plucky an exit as he can."

His words broke the strain she had put upon herself.

"I didn't mean--I didn't suppose--" she faltered. Then she dropped into a chair and covered her face with her hands.

Lorimer turned to the door again, halted irresolutely, then went back to her side.

"I can't go away and leave you like this, dear girl," he said, as he bent over her. "It isn't going to be easy for either of us; it is bound to leave a terrible scar on our lives. But, if it is the only thing you can do: at least, can't we say a decent good-by to each other?"

She took down her hands, drew a long breath and looked up at him; but she was unable to meet the look in his eyes, the loving, hungry look which she had learned to know so well.

"We have loved each other, dear girl. I have been better and stronger for your love. I only wish it might have lasted, for in time it might have made me quite steady. But I am glad I have had so much. Whatever the future has for me, at least I have had something in the past."

The hardness had left his tone, and the pa.s.sionate, bitter ring. There was nothing now but the note of utter sadness. Beatrix trembled for herself, for the fate of her resolve, as she heard it.

"But I couldn't hold you, Sidney."

"No, dear; perhaps not. But you held me more than you knew. You only saw the times I slipped; you never had any idea of the times I nearly went under, and pulled myself up again for your sake. If it hadn't been for you and Thayer, for Thayer before I ever saw you, dear, I should have gone under long ago. Now Thayer will have it all to do."

There was no reproach in his voice. He seemed to be merely stating the fact, not entirely for her ears, but as if he were trying to accustom himself to the thought of all which it implied. Suddenly his shoulders straightened; his tone grew resonant; his words came more rapidly.

"It is in my blood, Beatrix. My mother was weak, and I am weaker still.

I know the danger; I see it and I tell myself that I must fight shy of it. For a while I do fight shy of it, till I get off my guard and think I am quite safe. The next thing I know, it has cropped out again, and I haven't the nerve to face it and knock it over. It knocks me over, instead, and each knock is just a little harder than the one before it has been. I realize it, and I try to down it; but that's all the good it does. I am weak, Beatrix, weak and selfish. I honestly think it is harder for me to keep steady than it would be for Thayer, or even for Bobby. The taint is in me. I don't mean that it is any excuse for my making a brute of myself; but, if there is any pity in G.o.d, he must give a little bit of it to us fellows, born weak, realizing our weakness and truly meaning to fight it, and yet giving in to it again and again."

"There is pity in G.o.d, Sidney," she said drearily; "but pity can't do any good in a case like this. You need help, not pity."

"The help of man?" he asked bitterly. "Who will give it? They are too busy saving themselves."

"There is only one man who can help you."