The Letter of the Contract Part 10

"And that was--?"

"Miss Clare's address. I asked him for it when I found that I--that I wanted to go and see her."

"And why on earth should you want to go and see her--a young girl like you?"

Her blush was like a color from outside reflected in the soft l.u.s.ter of her skin as a tint of sunset may be caught by the petals of certain white flowers.

"I had a reason. It wasn't doing any one any harm," she repeated, "not even you." In further self-defense she added: "Uncle Emery didn't disapprove, and I've never told Aunt Zena. But I've always been glad I went--very."

"Why?"

"Because she's a sort of charge of Uncle Emery's, for one thing--since you've put her in his care. I help _him_ a little bit. And then the sister she lives with--you knew we'd got her to live with her sister, didn't you?--isn't very kind to her. It's just the money. And then," she continued, the soft color deepening, "I had another reason--more personal--that I'd rather not say anything about."

"I can't imagine anything in the whole bad business that could be personal to you."

"No, of course you can't. It's only personal by a.s.sociation--by imagination, probably." She made nothing clearer by adding: "You know I'm not really Uncle Emery's niece, or Aunt Zena's."

He nodded.

"I don't know who my mother was. But whoever she was--I'm sorry for her."

He began to get her idea. "You're probably quite wrong," he said, kindly; "and until you know you're right I shouldn't let fancies of that sort run away with me."

"Oh, I don't. And yet you can see that when I meet any one like Maggie Clare--well, I don't feel superior to her. It's like being a gipsy--George Eliot's Fedalma, for instance--adopted by a kind family, but knowing she's a gipsy just the same."

He brought his knowledge of the world to bear on her. "I a.s.sure you you're not in the least like that kind of gipsy."

"Neither was Fedalma like her kind; and yet when she could do something for them she went to them and did it."

"How old are you?" he said, abruptly, asking the same question which but a few weeks before Noel Ordway had put to Edith, and in much the same way.

"We call it twenty-three--because we keep my birthday on the date on which Uncle Emery and Aunt Zena took me; but I must be nearer twenty-five."

He looked at her more attentively than he had ever done. She was not really shy; she wasn't even reserved; but she was repressed--repressed as any one might be who lived under the weight of Mrs. Bland's protesting, grudging kindliness. It came back to him now, the tone in which she had said, a year earlier, that she couldn't be called mother by a child who didn't belong to her. How that must have been "rubbed in"

to the poor girl before him! Other things, too, came back to him, especially on Bland's part certain stolen moments of tenderness toward the girl, that had been interrupted in Chip's presence by a peremptory voice, saying, "Now, Emery, don't spoil the child," or "Lily, dear, _can't_ you find anything better to do than tease your uncle?" In it all Chip had found two subjects of wonderment: first, the strange egoism of this middle-aged woman who could see nothing in the expansion of her husband's affections but what was stolen from herself; and then, the extraordinary freak of marital loyalty that could keep a man like Emery Bland, with his refinement and his knowledge of the world, true to a woman whom he had once loved, no doubt, in a youthful way, but who was now his inferior by every token of character. A good enough woman she was of her kind; but it was no more her husband's kind than it was that of the G.o.ds immortal. What was the secret that kept these unequal yoke-fellows together, sympathetic, and tolerably happy, when he and Edith, who were made for each other, had by some force of mutual expulsion been thrust apart? Bland himself was of the type which, in the language that was almost more familiar to him than English, Chip would have called _charmeur_; and yet he deferred to this second-rate woman, and considered her, and even loved her in a placid, steady-going way, submitting at times to her dictation. Chip couldn't understand it. If he himself had been married to Mrs. Bland--But that was unthinkable. What wasn't unthinkable, and yet became the more bewildering the more he tried to work the problem out, was that he himself had failed to keep for his own the woman who suited him in every respect, whose love he possessed and who possessed his, who was happy with him and he with her, while Emery Bland had contrived to make the most of the estimable but rather coa.r.s.e-grained lady who sat at the head of his table, and have a truly enviable life with her. No one could be more keenly aware of the lady's shortcomings, which lay within the realm of taste and intelligence, than Bland himself. What was his secret? Was it a principle, or was it nothing but a lucky accident? Was it something in a cast of character or a tenet of a creed, or was it what any one could emulate?

These thoughts and questions pa.s.sed rapidly through Chip's mind, not for the first time, during the two or three minutes in which there was no sound about them but the murmur of the brook, the humming of insects, and the whisper of the summer wind through millions of trees.

He reverted to Maggie Clare, the timbre of his voice again growing harder. "What's the matter with her?"

She was singularly gentle. "I suppose it could be described most accurately as a broken heart."

He flushed hotly. "Oh, don't say that," he cried, as if he had been stung.

"I shouldn't say it if it didn't answer your question."

"_I_ didn't break her heart," he declared, in sharp aggressiveness of self-defense.

"Oh no. Even she doesn't think so. The poor thing hasn't much mind left, as you know; but what she has is concentrated on that point--that you were not to blame in anything. Please don't think that I'm in any way hinting at such an accusation."

He looked at her stupidly. "Then if her heart's broken, what's broken it?"

"The circ.u.mstances, I suppose. You don't seem to understand that the poor soul must long ago have reached a point where her love for you was absolutely the only thing she had."

Again he seemed to shake himself, as though to rid his body of something that had fastened on it. "I never _asked_ her to love me like that. I never _wanted_ it."

She smiled, faintly and sweetly. "Oh, well, that wouldn't make any difference. Love gives itself. It doesn't wait for permission. I should think you'd have known that."

He leaned forward, an arm resting on one knee. While he reflected he broke into the tuneless, almost inaudible, whistling Edith used to know so well. "I said I'd never see her again," he muttered, as the result of his meditation.

"May I ask if that was a promise to any one, or if it was something you just said to yourself and about which you'd have a right to change your mind?"

He continued to mutter. "I said it to--to my wife."

"As a promise? Please forgive me for asking. I shouldn't, only that the request of a dying woman--"

"I said it," he admitted, unwillingly; "but it wasn't exactly a promise.

My wife said--" He stopped and bit his lip. "She said she didn't care."

"You can't go by that. Of course she did care."

"Then if she cared, I'd let twenty women die, whoever they were--"

She rose with dignity. "That must be for you to decide, Mr. Walker. I've given you the message I was charged with. It isn't a matter in which I could venture to urge you."

He, too, rose. "You do urge me," he said in a tone of complaint, "by thinking that I ought to go."

She looked him timidly, but steadily, in the eyes. "I'm not so sure that I do. The whole thing is too sacred to your own inner life for me to have an opinion. You must do what you think right, and Maggie Clare--"

"The woman ruined me," he cried, desperately.

"And must she bear all the responsibility of that?"

The words were accompanied by one of her swift, half-frightened smiles; but she didn't wait for an answer. Before Chip could begin to stammer out an explanation that would give his point of view she was pa.s.sing rapidly up the pathway, bordered with irises and peonies and bleeding-hearts, toward the house.

But when he returned to town he went to see Maggie Clare. He went, and went again. The experience became, in its way, the most poignant in his life. He had not much knowledge of death and even less of sickness. The wasted face and the sunken, burning eyes wrought in him a kind of terror. It was with an effort that he could take the long thin hand, that already had the chill of the grave in its limp fingers, into his own. As for kissing those bloodless lips, so eager, so strained, which he could see was what she wanted him to do, he was unable to bring himself to it. Luckily he was not obliged to talk, since her mind couldn't follow coherent sentences. It was enough for her to have him sit by the bed while she worked her hands gropingly toward him, saying, "Oh, Chip! oh, Chip!" and murmuring broken things in Swedish. It was incredible to him that this poor worn thing, this living shadow, that had exhausted everything but its pa.s.sion for himself, had once been a woman whom he loved.

He was glad when she died and could be buried, so that he might consider that episode as ended--if there was ever an end to anything in this cursed life! And yet the occurrence brought him another kind of shock.

In the death of one who for years had been so closely a.s.sociated with his thoughts it was as if his own death had begun. He grew uneasy, morbid. Such occupations as he found to fill the hours when he was not at work grew insufficient. He came to hate the clubs, the restaurants, the theaters, and such social gatherings as he was now invited to. There was an evening when from sheer boredom he went home to his rooms as early as eight o'clock--and the bottle of Old Piper came out of its hiding-place.

The real struggle followed on that. He had not so far forgotten Emery Eland's warning as to cease to put up a fight; but he saw now that the fight would be a hard one. There was again a period in which he weighed the advantages of "going to the bad" with all sails set against a life of useless respectability. Going to the bad had the more to recommend it since he knew that Edith was in New York. His downfall might bring her back to him, in some such way, from some such motive of saving or pity, as that by which he himself had been brought to Maggie Clare.

The argument being in favor of Old Piper, Old Piper supported it. Chip never forgot an evening when, as he staggered down the steps of the club toward the taxi that had been called for him, he met Emery Bland, who was coming up. He would have dodged the lawyer without recognition had it not been for the latter's kindly touch on his arm, while a voice of distress said: "Ah, poor old chap, what's this?"

He had just wit enough left to stammer: "Edith's in New York. Go and tell her how you saw me."

With that he staggered on, knowing that he almost fell into the waiting vehicle.

Worse days ensued--for nearly a week. Worse still might have followed had they not been cut short suddenly. They were cut short by a note which bore the signature, Lily Bland. It was a simple note, containing nothing but the request that he should come and see her on one of a choice of evenings which she named. He took the first one, which was that of the day of the note's arrival.