The Price She Paid Part 11

Mildred was beside herself with a kind of rage that, because outlet was necessary and because raving against the little general would be absolutely futile, found outlet in self-mockery and reckless sarcasm.

"I understand about the jewels, too," she went on. "They are not mine.

Nothing is mine. Everything, including myself, belongs to him. If I give satisfaction in the position for which I've been hired for my board and clothes, I may continue to eat the general's food and sleep in the general's house and wear the general's jewels and dresses and ride in the general's traps and be waited on by the general's servants.

If I don't like my place or he doesn't like my way of filling it"--she laughed merrily, mockingly--"out I go--into the streets--after the second Mrs. Siddall. And the general will hire a new--" She paused, cast about for a word in vain, appealed to the secretary, "What would you call it, Mr. Harding?"

Harding rose, looking at her with a very soothing tranquillity. "If I were you, Mrs. Siddall," said he, "I should get into the auto and go for a long drive--out to the Bois--out to Versailles--a long, long drive. I should be gone four or five hours at least, and I should look at the thing from all sides. Especially, I'd look at it from HIS standpoint."

Mildred, somewhat quieter, but still mocking, said: "If I should decide to quit, would my expenses be paid back to where I was engaged? I fancy not."

Harding looked grave. "If you had had money enough to pay your own expenses about, would you have married him?" said he. "Isn't he paying--paying liberally, Mrs. Siddall--for ALL he gets?"

Mildred, stung, drew herself up haughtily, gave him a look that reminded him who she was and who he was. But Harding was not impressed.

"You said a moment ago--truly--that we are all in the same boat,"

observed he. "I put those questions to you because I honestly wish to help you--because I wish you not to act foolishly, hastily."

"Thank you, Mr. Harding," said Mildred coldly. And with a slight nod she went, angry and ashamed that she had so unaccountably opened up her secret soul, bared its ugly wounds, before a man she knew so slightly, a man in a position but one remove from menial. However, she took his advice--not as to trying to view the matter from all sides, for she was convinced that there was only the one side, but as to calming herself by a long drive alone in the woods and along quiet roads. When she returned she was under control once more.

She found the general impatiently awaiting her. Many packages had come--from the jewelers, from the furriers, from a shop whose specialty was the thinnest and most delicate of hand-made underwear. The general loved to open and inspect finery for her--loved it more than he loved inspecting finery for himself, because feminine finery was far more attractive than masculine. To whet his pleasure to the keenest she must be there to admire with him, to try on, to exhibit. As she entered the salon where the little man was fussing about among the packages, their glances met. She saw that Harding had told him--at least in discreet outline--of their conversation. She also saw that if she reopened the subject she would find herself straightway whirled out upon a stormy sea of danger that might easily overwhelm her flimsy boat. She silently and sullenly dropped into her place; she ministered to the general's pleasure in packages of finery. But she did not exclaim, or admire, or respond in any way. The honeymoon was over. Her dream of wifehood was dissipated.

She understood now the look she so often had seen on the faces of rich men's poor wives driving in state in Fifth Avenue. That night, as she inspected herself in the gla.s.s while the general's maid for her brushed her long thick hair, she saw the beginnings of that look in her own face. "I don't know just what I am," she said to herself. "But I do know what I am not. I am not a wife."

She sent away the maid, and sat there in the dressing-room before the mirror, waiting, her glance traveling about and noting the profuse and prodigal luxury. In the corner stood a circular rack loaded with dressing-gowns--more than a score of exquisite combinations of silk and lace or silk and chiffon. It so happened that there was nowhere in sight a single article of her apparel or for her toilet that was not bought with the general's money. No, there were some hairpins that she had paid for herself, and a comb with widely separated teeth that she had chanced to see in a window when she was alone one day. Anything else? Yes, a two-franc box of pins. And that was all. Everything else belonged to the general. In the closets, in the trunks--all the general's, part of the trousseau he had paid for. Not an undergarment; not an outer garment; not a hat or a pair of shoes, not a wrap, not a pair of gloves. All, the general's.

He was in the door of the dressing-room--the small wiry figure in rose-silk pajamas. The mustache and imperial were carefully waxed as always, day and night. On the little feet were high-heeled slippers. On the head was a rose-silk Neapolitan nightcap with gay ta.s.sel. The nightcap hid the bald spot from which the lofty toupee had been removed. A grotesque little figure, but not grotesque to her. Through the mask of the vain, boastful little face she saw the general watching her, as she had seen him that afternoon when she came in--the mysterious and terrible personality that had made the vast fortune, that had ridden ruthlessly over friend and foe, over man and woman and child--to the goal of its desires.

"It's late, my dear?" said the little man. "Come to bed."

She rose to obey--she in the general's purchases of filmy nightgown under a pale-pink silk dressing-gown.

He smiled with that curious noiseless mumbling and smacking of the thin lips. She sat down again.

"Don't keep me waiting. It's chilly," he said, advancing toward her.

"I shall sleep in here to-night--on the couch," said she. She was trembling with fright at her own audacity. She could see a fifty-centime piece and a copper dancing before her eyes. She felt horribly alone and weak, but she had no desire to retract the words with which she had thrown down the gauntlet.

The little general halted. The mask dropped; the man, the monster, looked at her. "What's the matter?" said he in an ominously quiet voice.

"Mr. Harding delivered your message to-day," said she, and her steady voice astonished her. "So I am going back home."

He waited, looking steadily at her.

"After he told me and I thought about it, I decided to submit, but just now I saw that I couldn't. I don't know what possesses me. I don't know what I'm going to do, or how I'm going to do it. But it's all over between us." She said this rapidly, fluently, in a decisive way, quite foreign to her character as she had thought it.

"You are coming to bed, where you belong," said he quietly.

"No," replied she, pressing herself against her chair as if force were being used to drag her from it. She cast about for something that would make yielding impossible. "You are--repulsive to me."

He looked at her without change of countenance. Said he: "Come to bed.

I ask you for the last time."

There was no anger in his voice, no menace either open or covert; simply finality--the last word of the man who had made himself feared and secure in the mining-camps where the equation of personal courage is straightway applied to every situation. Mildred s.h.i.+vered. She longed to yield, to stammer out some excuse and obey him. But she could not; nor was she able to rise from her chair. She saw in his hard eyes a look of astonishment, of curiosity as to this unaccountable defiance in one who had seemed docile, who had apparently no alternative but obedience. He was not so astonished at her as she was at herself. "What is to become of me?" her terror-stricken soul was crying. "I must do as he says--I must--yet I cannot!" And she looked at him and sat motionless.

He turned away, moved slowly toward the door, halted at the threshold to give her time, was gone. A fit of trembling seized her; she leaned forward and rested her arms upon the dressing-table or she would have fallen from the chair to the floor. Yet, even as her fear made her sick and weak, she knew that she would not yield.

The cold drove her to the couch, to lie under half a dozen of the dressing-gowns and presently to fall into a sleep of exhaustion. When she awoke after what she thought was a few minutes of unconsciousness, the clamor of traffic in the Rue de Rivoli startled her. She started up, glanced at the clock on the chimneypiece. It was ten minutes past nine! When, by all the rules governing the action of the nerves, she ought to have pa.s.sed a wakeful night she had overslept more than an hour. Indeed, she had had the first sound and prolonged sleep that had come to her since the honeymoon began; for until then she had slept alone all her life and the new order had almost given her chronic insomnia. She rang for her maid and began to dress. The maid did not come. She rang again and again; apparently the bell was broken. She finished dressing and went out into the huge, grandly and gaudily furnished salon. Harding was at a carved old-gold and lacquer desk, writing. As she entered he rose and bowed.

"Won't you please call one of the servants?" said she. "I want my coffee. I guess the bell in my room is broken. My maid doesn't answer."

"No, the bell is not broken," said Harding.

She looked at him questioningly.

"The general has issued an order that nothing is to be done in this apartment, and nothing served, unless he personally authorizes it."

Mildred paled, drew herself up in what seemed a gesture of haughtiness but was an effort to muster her strength. To save herself from the humiliation of a breakdown before him, she hastily retreated by the way she had come. After perhaps a quarter of an hour she reappeared in the salon; she was now dressed for the street. Harding looked up from his writing, rose and bowed gravely. Said she:

"I am going out for a walk. I'll be back in an hour or so."

"One moment," said Harding, halting her as she was opening the door into the public hall. "The general has issued an order that if you go out, you are not to be allowed to return."

Her hand fell from the k.n.o.b. With flas.h.i.+ng eyes she cried, "But that is impossible!"

"It is his orders," said Harding, in his usual quiet manner. "And as he pays the bills he will be obeyed."

She debated. Against her will, her trembling hand sought the k.n.o.b again. Against her will, her weak arm began to draw the door open.

Harding came toward her, stood before her and looked directly into her eyes. His eyes had dread and entreaty in them, but his voice was as always when he said:

"You know him, Mrs. Siddall."

"Yes," she said.

"The reason he has got ALL he wanted--whatever he wanted--is that he will go to any length. Every other human being, almost, has a limit, beyond which they will not go--a physical fear or a moral fear or a fear of public opinion. But the general--he has no limit."

"Yes," she said. And deathly pale and almost staggering she drew open the door and went out into the public hall.

"For G.o.d's sake, Mrs. Siddall!" cried Harding, in great agitation.

"Come in quickly. They are watching--they will tell him! Are you mad?"

"I think I must be," said she. "I am sick with fear. I can hardly keep from dropping down here in a faint. Yet--" a strange look, a mingling of abject terror and pa.s.sionate defiance, gave her an aspect quite insane--"I am going. Perhaps I, too, have no limit."

And she went along the corridor, past a group of gaping and frightened servants, down the stairway and out by the private entrance for the grand apartments of the hotel in the Rue Raymond de l'Isle. She crossed the Rue de Rivoli and entered the Tuileries Gardens. It was only bracingly cool in the suns.h.i.+ne of that winter day. She seated herself on a chair on the terrace to regain her ebbed strength. Hardly had she sat down when the woman collector came and stood waiting for the two sous for the chair. Mildred opened her bag, found two coins.

She gave the coppers to the woman. The other--all the money she had--was the fifty-centime piece.

"But the bag--I can get a good deal for that," she said aloud.

"I beg your pardon--I didn't catch that."

She came back to a sense of her surroundings. Stanley Baird was standing a few feet away, smiling down at her. He was, if possible, even more attractively dressed than in the days when he hovered about her, hoping vague things of which he was ashamed and trying to get the courage to put down his sn.o.bbishness and marry her because she so exactly suited him. He was wearing a new kind of collar and tie, striking yet in excellent quiet taste. Also, his face and figure had filled out just enough--he had been too thin in the former days. But he was now entered upon that period of the fearsome forties when, unless a man amounts to something, he begins to look insignificant. He did not amount to anything; he was therefore paling and waning as a personality.