The High Heart Part 46

Her foot tapped the floor impatiently.

"You mustn't say things like that to me."

"I'm only saying them, dear Mrs. Brokens.h.i.+re, so that you'll know how they sound. It's what every one else will be saying in a day or two. You can't be what--what you'll be to-morrow, and still keep any one's respect. And so," I hurried on, as she was about to protest, "when he hears what you've done, you won't merely have broken his heart, you'll have killed him just as much as if you'd pulled out a revolver and shot him."

She swung back to the window again. Her foot continued to tap the floor; her fingers twisted and untwisted like writhing living things. I could see her bosom rise and fall rapidly; her breath came in short, hard gasps. When I wasn't expecting it she rounded on me again, with flames in her eyes like those in a small tigress's.

"You're saying all that to frighten me; but--"

"I'm saying it because it's true. If it frightens you--"

"But it doesn't."

"Then I've done neither good nor harm."

"I've a right to be happy."

"Certainly, if you can be happy this way."

"And I can."

"Then there's no more to be said. We can only agree with you. If you can be happy when you've Mr. Brokens.h.i.+re on your mind, as you must have whether he's alive or dead--and if you can be happy when you've desecrated all the things your people and your country look to a woman in your position to uphold--then I don't think any one will say you nay."

"Well, why shouldn't I be happy?" she demanded, as if I was withholding from her something that was her right. "Other women--"

"Yes, Mrs. Brokens.h.i.+re, other women besides you have tried the experiment of Anna Karnina--"

"What's that?"

I gave her the gist of Tolstoi's romance--the woman who is married to an old man and runs away with a young one, living to see him weary of the position in which she places him, and dying by her own act.

As she listened attentively, I went on before she could object to my parable.

"It all amounts to the same thing. There's no happiness except in right; and no right that doesn't sooner or later--sooner rather than later--end in happiness. You've told me more than once you didn't believe that; and if you don't I can't help it."

I fell back in my seat, because for the moment I was exhausted. It was not merely the actual situation that took the strength out of me, but what I dreaded when the man came for his prize from the smoking-car. I might count on Larry Strangways to aid me then, but as yet he had not recognized my struggle by so much as glancing round.

Nor had I known till this minute how much I cared for the little creature before me, or how deeply I pitied the man she was deserting. I could see her as happier conditions would have made her, and him as he might have become if his nature had not been warped by pride. Any impulse to strike back at him had long ago died within me. It might as well have died, since I never had the nerve to act on it, even when I had the chance.

She turned on me again, with unexpected fierceness.

"It doesn't matter whether I believe all those things or not--now. It's too late. I've left home. I've--I've gone away with him."

Though I felt like a spent prize-fighter forced back into the ring, I raised myself in my chair. I even smiled, dimly, in an effort to be encouraging.

"You've left home and you've gone away; but you won't have gone away with him till--till you've actually joined him."

"I've actually joined him already. His things are there beside that chair." She nodded backward. "By the time we've pa.s.sed Providence he'll be--he'll be getting ready to come for me."

I said, more significantly than I really understood: "But we haven't pa.s.sed Providence as yet."

To this she seemingly paid no attention, nor did I give it much myself.

"When he comes," she exclaimed, lyrically, "it will be like a marriage--"

I ventured much as I interrupted.

"No, it will never be like a marriage. There'll be too much that's unholy in it all for anything like a true marriage ever to become possible, not even if death or divorce--and it will probably be the one or the other--were to set you free."

That she found these words arresting I could tell by the stunned way in which she stared.

"Death or divorce!" she echoed, after long waiting. "He--he may divorce me quietly--I hope he will--but--but he won't--he won't die."

"He'll die if you kill him," I declared, grimly. I continued to be grim.

"He may die before long, whether you kill him or not--the chances are that he will. But living or dead, as I've said already, he'll stand between you and anything you look for as happiness--after to-night."

She threw herself back, into the depths of her chair and moaned. Luckily there was no one near enough to observe the act. As we talked in low tones we could not be heard above the rattle of the train, and I think I pa.s.sed as a companion or trained nurse in attendance on a nervous invalid.

"Oh, what's the use?" she exclaimed at last, in a fit of desperation.

"I've done it. It's too late. Every one will know I've gone away--even if I get out at Providence."

I am sorry to have to admit that the suggestion of getting out at Providence startled me. I had been so stupid as not to think of it, even when I had made the remark that we had not as yet pa.s.sed that town. All I had foreseen was the struggle at the end of the journey, when Larry Strangways and I should have to fight for this woman with the powers of darkness, as in medieval legends angels and devils fought over a contested soul.

I took up the idea with an enthusiasm I tried to conceal beneath a smile of engaging sweetness.

"They may know that you've gone away; but they can also know that you've gone away with me."

"With you? You're going to Boston."

"I could wait till to-morrow. If you wanted to get off at Providence I could do it, too."

"But I don't want to. I couldn't let him expect to find me here--and then discover that I wasn't."

"He would be disappointed at that, of course," I reasoned, "but he wouldn't take it as the end of all things. If you got off at Providence there would be nothing irrevocable in that step, whereas there would be in your going on. You could go away with him later, if you found you had to do it; but if you continue to-night you can never come back again. Don't you see? Isn't it worth turning over in your mind a second time--especially as I'm here to help you? If you're meant to be a Madeline Pyne or an Anna Karnina, you'll get another opportunity."

"Oh no, I sha'n't," she sobbed. "If I don't go on to-night, he'll never ask me again."

"He may never ask you again in this way; but isn't it possible that there may eventually be other ways? Don't make me put that into plainer words. Just wait. Let life take charge of it." I seized both her hands.

"Darling Mrs. Brokens.h.i.+re, you don't know yourself. You're too fine to be ruined; you're too exquisite to be just thrown away. Even the hungry, pa.s.sionate love of the man in the smoking-car must see that and know it.

If he comes back here and finds you gone--or imagines that you never came at all--he'll only honor and love you the more, and go on wanting you still. Come with me. Let us go. We can't be far from Providence now.

I can take care of you. I know just what we ought to do. I didn't come here to sit beside you of my own free will; but since I am here doesn't it seem to you as if--as if I had been sent?"

As she was sobbing too unrestrainedly to say anything in words, I took the law into my own hands. The porter had already begun dusting the dirt from the pa.s.sengers who were to descend at Providence on to those who were going to Boston. Making my way up to him, I had the inspiration to say:

"The old lady I'm with isn't quite so well, and we're going to stop here for the night."

He grinned, with a fine show of big white teeth.