The Letter of the Contract Part 15

In the end he could find no simpler relief to his feelings than to take down her belongings from the overhead racks.

"I'll just run along and pick up my own traps," he explained, "and come back to see you properly looked after."

Though she a.s.sured him of her ability to look after herself, he felt at liberty to ridicule her pretensions. "You must have changed a great deal if you can do that," he declared, as he handed down a roll of rugs strapped with a shawl-strap.

"I have changed a great deal."

"I don't see it. I can't see that you've changed at all--essentially."

"Oh, but it's essentially that I _am_ changed. Superficially I may be more or less the same--a little older; but within I'm another woman."

She took advantage of the fact that his back was turned to her, as he disentangled the handles of parasols and umbrellas from the network above, to say further: "Perhaps--since we've met in this unexpected way--and talked--possibly a little too frankly--it may be well if I remind you that you'd still be confronted with that fact--that I'm another woman--even if our bridges weren't burned behind us." He decided to let that pa.s.s without discussion, and because he said nothing she added: "And I dare say I should find you another man. So don't let us be too sorry, Chip, or think that if we hadn't done what we _have_ done--"

Though he still stood with his back to her, lifting down a heavy bag with a black canvas covering, he could hear a catch in her voice that almost amounted to a sob. Because there was something in himself dangerously near responding to this appeal, he uttered the first words that came to him:

"h.e.l.lo! Here's a thing I recognize. Didn't you have this--?"

As he stood holding the bag awkwardly before her she inclined her head.

"One of your wedding presents, wasn't it?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Oh, Chip, go away! I can't stand any more--_now_."

"Do you mean that you'll see me--later--when we're in London?"]

She found voice to say: "It's my dressing-case. Mama gave it to me."

"And didn't I break a bottle in it once?"

She tried to catch his tone of casual reminiscence. "It's still broken."

"And isn't this the bag that got the awful bang that time we raised a row about it when we landed in New York? A silver box stove in, or something of that sort?"

She succeeded in smiling, though she knew the smile was ghastly. "It's still stove in."

"Gad, think of my remembering that!"

He meant the remark to be easy, if not precisely jocose; but the trivial, intimate details wrung a cry from her: "Oh, Chip, go away! I can't stand any more--_now_."

He pressed his advantage, standing over her, the black bag still in his hands, as she cowered in the corner, pulling down her veil. "'Now'!

'Now'! Do you mean that you'll see me--later--when we're in London?"

The veil hid her face, but she pressed her clasped hands against her lips as if to keep back all words.

"Do you mean that, Edith?" he insisted.

Her breath came in little sobs. She spoke as if the words forced themselves out in spite of her efforts to repress them: "I'm--I'm staying at the Ritz. I shall be there for--for some days--till--till--he sends for me."

"Good. I'm at the Piccadilly. I shall come to-morrow at eleven."

Before she could withdraw her implied permission he was in the corridor on the way to his own compartment; but at Euston he was beside her door, ready to help her down. Amid the noise and bustle of finding her luggage and having it put on a taxi-cab, there was no opportunity for her to speak. He took care, besides, that there should be none. She was actually seated in the vehicle before she was able to say to him, as he stood at the open window to ask if she had everything she required:

"Oh, Chip, about to-morrow--"

"At eleven," he said, hastily. "I make it eleven because if it's fine we might run down and have the day at Maidenhead."

She caught at a straw. If she couldn't shelve him, a day in the country, in the open air, would be less dangerous than one in London. And perhaps in the end she might shelve him. At any rate, she could temporize.

"I've never been at Maidenhead."

"And lunch at Skindle's isn't at all bad."

"I've never been at Skindle's."

"And after lunch we'll go out on the river--the Clieveden woods, you know--and all that."

"I've never seen the Clieveden woods."

"Then that's settled. At eleven. All right, driver; go on."

But she stretched her hands toward him. "Oh, Chip, don't come! I'm afraid. What's the good? Since we've burned our bridges--"

He had just time to say: "Even without bridges, there are wings. At eleven, then. All right, driver; go on. The Ritz Hotel."

V

PENALTY

He went to Berne because she had let slip the name of that place during the afternoon at Maidenhead. It was the only hint of the kind she threw out during the afternoons--four in all--they pa.s.sed together. He forgot the connection in which they came, but he retained the words: "He may have to go to Berne."

_He_ was between them as an awesome presence, never mentioned otherwise than allusively. His name was too sinister to speak. Each thought of him unceasingly, in silence, and with anguish; but, as far as possible, they kept him out of their intercourse. It was enough to know that he was there, a fearful authority in the background, able to summon her from this brief renewal of old happiness, as Pluto could recall Eurydice.

It was the supremacy of this power, which they themselves had placed in his hands, that in the end drove Chip Walker to wondering what he was like.

"What _is_ he like?" he found the force to ask.

She looked distressed. "He's a good man."

He nerved himself to come to a point at which he had long been aiming: "Look here, Edith! Why did you marry him?"

"Do you mean, why did I marry him in particular, or why did I marry any one?"

"I mean both."

"Oh, I don't know. There--there seemed to be reasons."

That was at Tunbridge Wells--in the twilight, on the terrace of the old Calverly Hotel. They were sitting under a great hawthorn in full bloom.

The air was sweet with the scent of it. It was sweet, too, with the scent of flowers and of new-mown hay. In a tree at the edge of the terrace a blackbird was singing to a faint crescent moon. There was still enough daylight to show the shadows deepening toward Bridge and over Broadwater Down, while on the sloping crest of Bishop's Down Common human figures appeared of gigantic size as they towered through the gloaming.