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diff --git a/old/267-h.htm.2021-01-28 b/old/267-h.htm.2021-01-28 new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7dc572b --- /dev/null +++ b/old/267-h.htm.2021-01-28 @@ -0,0 +1,4289 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> + <head> + <title> + The Touchstone, by Edith Wharton + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} +.smcap {font-variant:small-caps;} +.blk {margin:1% 8% 1% 8% ;} +.nind {text-indent:0%;} +.r {text-align:right;margin-right:50%; } +.c {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;} +</style> + </head> + <body> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Touchstone, by Edith Wharton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Touchstone + +Author: Edith Wharton + +Release Date: July 12, 2008 [EBook #267] +[Last updated: September 4, 2017] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TOUCHSTONE *** + + + + +Produced by Judith Boss, and David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h1> + THE TOUCHSTONE + </h1> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <h2> + By Edith Wharton + </h2> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <blockquote> + <p class="toc"> + <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VII </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VIII </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> IX </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> X </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> XI </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XII </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XIII </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIV </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + </blockquote> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <h2> + I + </h2> +<div class="blk"> + <p class="nind"> + <span class="smcap">“Professor Joslin,</span> who, as our readers are doubtless aware, is engaged in + writing the life of Mrs. Aubyn, asks us to state that he will be greatly + indebted to any of the famous novelist’s friends who will furnish him with + information concerning the period previous to her coming to England. Mrs. + Aubyn had so few intimate friends, and consequently so few regular + correspondents, that letters will be of special value. Professor Joslin’s + address is 10 Augusta Gardens, Kensington, and he begs us to say that he + will promptly return any documents entrusted to him.” + </p> +</div> + <p class="nind"> + <span class="smcap">Glennard</span> dropped the <i>Spectator</i> and sat looking into the fire. The club was + filling up, but he still had to himself the small inner room, with its + darkening outlook down the rain-streaked prospect of Fifth Avenue. It was + all dull and dismal enough, yet a moment earlier his boredom had been + perversely tinged by a sense of resentment at the thought that, as things + were going, he might in time have to surrender even the despised privilege + of boring himself within those particular four walls. It was not that he + cared much for the club, but that the remote contingency of having to give + it up stood to him, just then, perhaps by very reason of its + insignificance and remoteness, for the symbol of his increasing + abnegations; of that perpetual paring-off that was gradually reducing + existence to the naked business of keeping himself alive. It was the + futility of his multiplied shifts and privations that made them seem + unworthy of a high attitude; the sense that, however rapidly he eliminated + the superfluous, his cleared horizon was likely to offer no nearer view of + the one prospect toward which he strained. To give up things in order to + marry the woman one loves is easier than to give them up without being + brought appreciably nearer to such a conclusion. + </p> + <p> + Through the open door he saw young Hollingsworth rise with a yawn from the + ineffectual solace of a brandy-and-soda and transport his purposeless + person to the window. Glennard measured his course with a contemptuous + eye. It was so like Hollingsworth to get up and look out of the window + just as it was growing too dark to see anything! There was a man rich + enough to do what he pleased—had he been capable of being pleased—yet + barred from all conceivable achievement by his own impervious dulness; + while, a few feet off, Glennard, who wanted only enough to keep a decent + coat on his back and a roof over the head of the woman he loved Glennard, + who had sweated, toiled, denied himself for the scant measure of + opportunity that his zeal would have converted into a kingdom—sat + wretchedly calculating that, even when he had resigned from the club, and + knocked off his cigars, and given up his Sundays out of town, he would + still be no nearer attainment. + </p> + <p> + The <i>Spectator</i> had slipped to his feet and as he picked it up his eye fell + again on the paragraph addressed to the friends of Mrs. Aubyn. He had read + it for the first time with a scarcely perceptible quickening of attention: + her name had so long been public property that his eye passed it + unseeingly, as the crowd in the street hurries without a glance by some + familiar monument. + </p> + <p> + “Information concerning the period previous to her coming to England....” + The words were an evocation. He saw her again as she had looked at their + first meeting, the poor woman of genius with her long pale face and + short-sighted eyes, softened a little by the grace of youth and + inexperience, but so incapable even then of any hold upon the pulses. When + she spoke, indeed, she was wonderful, more wonderful, perhaps, than when + later, to Glennard’s fancy at least, the consciousness of memorable things + uttered seemed to take from even her most intimate speech the perfect + bloom of privacy. It was in those earliest days, if ever, that he had come + near loving her; though even then his sentiment had lived only in the + intervals of its expression. Later, when to be loved by her had been a + state to touch any man’s imagination, the physical reluctance had, + inexplicably, so overborne the intellectual attraction, that the last + years had been, to both of them, an agony of conflicting impulses. Even + now, if, in turning over old papers, his hand lit on her letters, the + touch filled him with inarticulate misery.... + </p> + <p> + “She had so few intimate friends... that letters will be of special + value.” So few intimate friends! For years she had had but one; one who in + the last years had requited her wonderful pages, her tragic outpourings of + love, humility, and pardon, with the scant phrases by which a man evades + the vulgarest of sentimental importunities. He had been a brute in spite + of himself, and sometimes, now that the remembrance of her face had faded, + and only her voice and words remained with him, he chafed at his own + inadequacy, his stupid inability to rise to the height of her passion. His + egoism was not of a kind to mirror its complacency in the adventure. To + have been loved by the most brilliant woman of her day, and to have been + incapable of loving her, seemed to him, in looking back, the most derisive + evidence of his limitations; and his remorseful tenderness for her memory + was complicated with a sense of irritation against her for having given + him once for all the measure of his emotional capacity. It was not often, + however, that he thus probed the past. The public, in taking possession of + Mrs. Aubyn, had eased his shoulders of their burden. There was something + fatuous in an attitude of sentimental apology toward a memory already + classic: to reproach one’s self for not having loved Margaret Aubyn was a + good deal like being disturbed by an inability to admire the Venus of + Milo. From her cold niche of fame she looked down ironically enough on his + self-flagellations.... It was only when he came on something that belonged + to her that he felt a sudden renewal of the old feeling, the strange dual + impulse that drew him to her voice but drove him from her hand, so that + even now, at sight of anything she had touched, his heart contracted + painfully. It happened seldom nowadays. Her little presents, one by one, + had disappeared from his rooms, and her letters, kept from some + unacknowledged puerile vanity in the possession of such treasures, seldom + came beneath his hand.... + </p> + <p> + “Her letters will be of special value—” Her letters! Why, he must + have hundreds of them—enough to fill a volume. Sometimes it used to + seem to him that they came with every post—he used to avoid looking + in his letter-box when he came home to his rooms—but her writing + seemed to spring out at him as he put his key in the door—. + </p> + <p> + He stood up and strolled into the other room. Hollingsworth, lounging away + from the window, had joined himself to a languidly convivial group of men + to whom, in phrases as halting as though they struggled to define an + ultimate idea, he was expounding the cursed nuisance of living in a hole + with such a damned climate that one had to get out of it by February, with + the contingent difficulty of there being no place to take one’s yacht to + in winter but that other played-out hole, the Riviera. From the outskirts + of this group Glennard wandered to another, where a voice as different as + possible from Hollingsworth’s colorless organ dominated another circle of + languid listeners. + </p> + <p> + “Come and hear Dinslow talk about his patent: admission free,” one of the + men sang out in a tone of mock resignation. + </p> + <p> + Dinslow turned to Glennard the confident pugnacity of his smile. “Give it + another six months and it’ll be talking about itself,” he declared. “It’s + pretty nearly articulate now.” + </p> + <p> + “Can it say papa?” someone else inquired. + </p> + <p> + Dinslow’s smile broadened. “You’ll be deuced glad to say papa to <i>it</i> a year + from now,” he retorted. “It’ll be able to support even you in affluence. + Look here, now, just let me explain to you—” + </p> + <p> + Glennard moved away impatiently. The men at the club—all but those + who were “in it”—were proverbially “tired” of Dinslow’s patent, and + none more so than Glennard, whose knowledge of its merits made it loom + large in the depressing catalogue of lost opportunities. The relations + between the two men had always been friendly, and Dinslow’s urgent offers + to “take him in on the ground floor” had of late intensified Glennard’s + sense of his own inability to meet good luck half way. Some of the men who + had paused to listen were already in evening clothes, others on their way + home to dress; and Glennard, with an accustomed twinge of humiliation, + said to himself that if he lingered among them it was in the miserable + hope that one of the number might ask him to dine. Miss Trent had told him + that she was to go to the opera that evening with her rich aunt; and if he + should have the luck to pick up a dinner-invitation he might join her + there without extra outlay. + </p> + <p> + He moved about the room, lingering here and there in a tentative + affectation of interest; but though the men greeted him pleasantly no one + asked him to dine. Doubtless they were all engaged, these men who could + afford to pay for their dinners, who did not have to hunt for invitations + as a beggar rummages for a crust in an ash-barrel! But no—as + Hollingsworth left the lessening circle about the table an admiring youth + called out—“Holly, stop and dine!” + </p> + <p> + Hollingsworth turned on him the crude countenance that looked like the + wrong side of a more finished face. “Sorry I can’t. I’m in for a beastly + banquet.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard threw himself into an arm-chair. Why go home in the rain to + dress? It was folly to take a cab to the opera, it was worse folly to go + there at all. His perpetual meetings with Alexa Trent were as unfair to + the girl as they were unnerving to himself. Since he couldn’t marry her, + it was time to stand aside and give a better man the chance—and his + thought admitted the ironical implication that in the terms of expediency + the phrase might stand for Hollingsworth. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II + </h2> +<p> +<span class="smcap">He</span> dined alone and walked home to his rooms in the rain. As he turned into + Fifth Avenue he caught the wet gleam of carriages on their way to the + opera, and he took the first side street, in a moment of irritation + against the petty restrictions that thwarted every impulse. It was + ridiculous to give up the opera, not because one might possibly be bored + there, but because one must pay for the experiment. + </p> + <p> + In his sitting-room, the tacit connivance of the inanimate had centred the + lamp-light on a photograph of Alexa Trent, placed, in the obligatory + silver frame, just where, as memory officiously reminded him, Margaret + Aubyn’s picture had long throned in its stead. Miss Trent’s features + cruelly justified the usurpation. She had the kind of beauty that comes of + a happy accord of face and spirit. It is not given to many to have the + lips and eyes of their rarest mood, and some women go through life behind + a mask expressing only their anxiety about the butcher’s bill or their + inability to see a joke. With Miss Trent, face and mind had the same high + serious contour. She looked like a throned Justice by some grave + Florentine painter; and it seemed to Glennard that her most salient + attribute, or that at least to which her conduct gave most consistent + expression, was a kind of passionate justice—the intuitive feminine + justness that is so much rarer than a reasoned impartiality. Circumstances + had tragically combined to develop this instinct into a conscious habit. + She had seen more than most girls of the shabby side of life, of the + perpetual tendency of want to cramp the noblest attitude. Poverty and + misfortune had overhung her childhood and she had none of the pretty + delusions about life that are supposed to be the crowning grace of + girlhood. This very competence, which gave her a touching reasonableness, + made Glennard’s situation more difficult than if he had aspired to a + princess bred in the purple. Between them they asked so little—they + knew so well how to make that little do—but they understood also, + and she especially did not for a moment let him forget, that without that + little the future they dreamed of was impossible. + </p> + <p> + The sight of her photograph quickened Glennard’s exasperation. He was sick + and ashamed of the part he was playing. He had loved her now for two + years, with the tranquil tenderness that gathers depth and volume as it + nears fulfilment; he knew that she would wait for him—but the + certitude was an added pang. There are times when the constancy of the + woman one cannot marry is almost as trying as that of the woman one does + not want to. + </p> + <p> + Glennard turned up his reading-lamp and stirred the fire. He had a long + evening before him and he wanted to crowd out thought with action. He had + brought some papers from his office and he spread them out on his table + and squared himself to the task.... + </p> + <p> + It must have been an hour later that he found himself automatically + fitting a key into a locked drawer. He had no more notion than a + somnambulist of the mental process that had led up to this action. He was + just dimly aware of having pushed aside the papers and the heavy calf + volumes that a moment before had bounded his horizon, and of laying in + their place, without a trace of conscious volition, the parcel he had + taken from the drawer. + </p> + <p> + The letters were tied in packets of thirty or forty. There were a great + many packets. On some of the envelopes the ink was fading; on others, + which bore the English post-mark, it was still fresh. She had been dead + hardly three years, and she had written, at lengthening intervals, to the + last.... + </p> + <p> + He undid one of the earlier packets—little notes written during + their first acquaintance at Hillbridge. Glennard, on leaving college, had + begun life in his uncle’s law office in the old university town. It was + there that, at the house of her father, Professor Forth, he had first met + the young lady then chiefly distinguished for having, after two years of a + conspicuously unhappy marriage, returned to the protection of the paternal + roof. + </p> + <p> + Mrs. Aubyn was at that time an eager and somewhat tragic young woman, of + complex mind and undeveloped manners, whom her crude experience of + matrimony had fitted out with a stock of generalizations that exploded + like bombs in the academic air of Hillbridge. In her choice of a husband + she had been fortunate enough, if the paradox be permitted, to light on + one so signally gifted with the faculty of putting himself in the wrong + that her leaving him had the dignity of a manifesto—made her, as it + were, the spokeswoman of outraged wifehood. In this light she was + cherished by that dominant portion of Hillbridge society which was least + indulgent to conjugal differences, and which found a proportionate + pleasure in being for once able to feast openly on a dish liberally + seasoned with the outrageous. So much did this endear Mrs. Aubyn to the + university ladies that they were disposed from the first to allow her more + latitude of speech and action than the ill-used wife was generally + accorded in Hillbridge, where misfortune was still regarded as a + visitation designed to put people in their proper place and make them feel + the superiority of their neighbors. The young woman so privileged combined + with a kind of personal shyness an intellectual audacity that was like a + deflected impulse of coquetry: one felt that if she had been prettier she + would have had emotions instead of ideas. She was in fact even then what + she had always remained: a genius capable of the acutest generalizations, + but curiously undiscerning where her personal susceptibilities were + concerned. Her psychology failed her just where it serves most women and + one felt that her brains would never be a guide to her heart. Of all this, + however, Glennard thought little in the first year of their acquaintance. + He was at an age when all the gifts and graces are but so much + undiscriminated food to the ravening egoism of youth. In seeking Mrs. + Aubyn’s company he was prompted by an intuitive taste for the best as a + pledge of his own superiority. The sympathy of the cleverest woman in + Hillbridge was balm to his craving for distinction: it was public + confirmation of his secret sense that he was cut out for a bigger place. + It must not be understood that Glennard was vain. Vanity contents itself + with the coarsest diet; there is no palate so fastidious as that of + self-distrust. To a youth of Glennard’s aspirations the encouragement of a + clever woman stood for the symbol of all success. Later, when he had begun + to feel his way, to gain a foothold, he would not need such support; but + it served to carry him lightly and easily over what is often a period of + insecurity and discouragement. + </p> + <p> + It would be unjust, however, to represent his interest in Mrs. Aubyn as a + matter of calculation. It was as instinctive as love, and it missed being + love by just such a hair-breadth deflection from the line of beauty as had + determined the curve of Mrs. Aubyn’s lips. When they met she had just + published her first novel, and Glennard, who afterward had an ambitious + man’s impatience of distinguished women, was young enough to be dazzled by + the semi-publicity it gave her. It was the kind of book that makes elderly + ladies lower their voices and call each other “my dear” when they + furtively discuss it; and Glennard exulted in the superior knowledge of + the world that enabled him to take as a matter of course sentiments over + which the university shook its head. Still more delightful was it to hear + Mrs. Aubyn waken the echoes of academic drawing-rooms with audacities + surpassing those of her printed page. Her intellectual independence gave a + touch of comradeship to their intimacy, prolonging the illusion of college + friendships based on a joyous interchange of heresies. Mrs. Aubyn and + Glennard represented to each other the augur’s wink behind the Hillbridge + idol: they walked together in that light of young omniscience from which + fate so curiously excludes one’s elders. + </p> + <p> + Husbands who are notoriously inopportune, may even die inopportunely, and + this was the revenge that Mr. Aubyn, some two years after her return to + Hillbridge, took upon his injured wife. He died precisely at the moment + when Glennard was beginning to criticise her. It was not that she bored + him; she did what was infinitely worse—she made him feel his + inferiority. The sense of mental equality had been gratifying to his raw + ambition; but as his self-knowledge defined itself, his understanding of + her also increased; and if man is at times indirectly flattered by the + moral superiority of woman, her mental ascendency is extenuated by no such + oblique tribute to his powers. The attitude of looking up is a strain on + the muscles; and it was becoming more and more Glennard’s opinion that + brains, in a woman, should be merely the obverse of beauty. To beauty Mrs. + Aubyn could lay no claim; and while she had enough prettiness to + exasperate him by her incapacity to make use of it, she seemed invincibly + ignorant of any of the little artifices whereby women contrive to palliate + their defects and even to turn them into graces. Her dress never seemed a + part of her; all her clothes had an impersonal air, as though they had + belonged to someone else and been borrowed in an emergency that had + somehow become chronic. She was conscious enough of her deficiencies to + try to amend them by rash imitations of the most approved models; but no + woman who does not dress well intuitively will ever do so by the light of + reason, and Mrs. Aubyn’s plagiarisms, to borrow a metaphor of her trade, + somehow never seemed to be incorporated with the text. + </p> + <p> + Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair. + The fame that came to Mrs. Aubyn with her second book left Glennard’s + imagination untouched, or had at most the negative effect of removing her + still farther from the circle of his contracting sympathies. We are all + the sport of time; and fate had so perversely ordered the chronology of + Margaret Aubyn’s romance that when her husband died Glennard felt as + though he had lost a friend. + </p> + <p> + It was not in his nature to be needlessly unkind; and though he was in the + impregnable position of the man who has given a woman no more definable + claim on him than that of letting her fancy that he loves her, he would + not for the world have accentuated his advantage by any betrayal of + indifference. During the first year of her widowhood their friendship + dragged on with halting renewals of sentiment, becoming more and more a + banquet of empty dishes from which the covers were never removed; then + Glennard went to New York to live and exchanged the faded pleasures of + intercourse for the comparative novelty of correspondence. Her letters, + oddly enough, seemed at first to bring her nearer than her presence. She + had adopted, and she successfully maintained, a note as affectionately + impersonal as his own; she wrote ardently of her work, she questioned him + about his, she even bantered him on the inevitable pretty girl who was + certain before long to divert the current of his confidences. To Glennard, + who was almost a stranger in New York, the sight of Mrs. Aubyn’s writing + was like a voice of reassurance in surroundings as yet insufficiently + aware of him. His vanity found a retrospective enjoyment in the sentiment + his heart had rejected, and this factitious emotion drove him once or + twice to Hillbridge, whence, after scenes of evasive tenderness, he + returned dissatisfied with himself and her. As he made room for himself in + New York and peopled the space he had cleared with the sympathies at the + disposal of agreeable and self-confident young men, it seemed to him + natural to infer that Mrs. Aubyn had refurnished in the same manner the + void he was not unwilling his departure should have left. But in the + dissolution of sentimental partnerships it is seldom that both associates + are able to withdraw their funds at the same time; and Glennard gradually + learned that he stood for the venture on which Mrs. Aubyn had + irretrievably staked her all. It was not the kind of figure he cared to + cut. He had no fancy for leaving havoc in his wake and would have + preferred to sow a quick growth of oblivion in the spaces wasted by his + unconsidered inroads; but if he supplied the seed it was clearly Mrs. + Aubyn’s business to see to the raising of the crop. Her attitude seemed + indeed to throw his own reasonableness into distincter relief: so that + they might have stood for thrift and improvidence in an allegory of the + affections. + </p> + <p> + It was not that Mrs. Aubyn permitted herself to be a pensioner on his + bounty. He knew she had no wish to keep herself alive on the small change + of sentiment; she simply fed on her own funded passion, and the luxuries + it allowed her made him, even then, dimly aware that she had the secret of + an inexhaustible alchemy. + </p> + <p> + Their relations remained thus negatively tender till she suddenly wrote + him of her decision to go abroad to live. Her father had died, she had no + near ties in Hillbridge, and London offered more scope than New York to + her expanding personality. She was already famous and her laurels were yet + unharvested. + </p> + <p> + For a moment the news roused Glennard to a jealous sense of lost + opportunities. He wanted, at any rate, to reassert his power before she + made the final effort of escape. They had not met for over a year, but of + course he could not let her sail without seeing her. She came to New York + the day before her departure, and they spent its last hours together. + Glennard had planned no course of action—he simply meant to let + himself drift. They both drifted, for a long time, down the languid + current of reminiscence; she seemed to sit passive, letting him push his + way back through the overgrown channels of the past. At length she + reminded him that they must bring their explorations to an end. He rose to + leave, and stood looking at her with the same uncertainty in his heart. He + was tired of her already—he was always tired of her—yet he was + not sure that he wanted her to go. + </p> + <p> + “I may never see you again,” he said, as though confidently appealing to + her compassion. + </p> + <p> + Her look enveloped him. “And I shall see you always—always!” + </p> + <p> + “Why go then—?” escaped him. + </p> + <p> + “To be nearer you,” she answered; and the words dismissed him like a + closing door. + </p> + <p> + The door was never to reopen; but through its narrow crack Glennard, as + the years went on, became more and more conscious of an inextinguishable + light directing its small ray toward the past which consumed so little of + his own commemorative oil. The reproach was taken from this thought by + Mrs. Aubyn’s gradual translation into terms of universality. In becoming a + personage she so naturally ceased to be a person that Glennard could + almost look back to his explorations of her spirit as on a visit to some + famous shrine, immortalized, but in a sense desecrated, by popular + veneration. + </p> + <p> + Her letters, from London, continued to come with the same tender + punctuality; but the altered conditions of her life, the vistas of new + relationships disclosed by every phrase, made her communications as + impersonal as a piece of journalism. It was as though the state, the + world, indeed, had taken her off his hands, assuming the maintenance of a + temperament that had long exhausted his slender store of reciprocity. + </p> + <p> + In the retrospective light shed by the letters he was blinded to their + specific meaning. He was not a man who concerned himself with literature, + and they had been to him, at first, simply the extension of her brilliant + talk, later the dreaded vehicle of a tragic importunity. He knew, of + course, that they were wonderful; that, unlike the authors who give their + essence to the public and keep only a dry rind for their friends, Mrs. + Aubyn had stored of her rarest vintage for this hidden sacrament of + tenderness. Sometimes, indeed, he had been oppressed, humiliated almost, + by the multiplicity of her allusions, the wide scope of her interests, her + persistence in forcing her superabundance of thought and emotion into the + shallow receptacle of his sympathy; but he had never thought of the + letters objectively, as the production of a distinguished woman; had never + measured the literary significance of her oppressive prodigality. He was + almost frightened now at the wealth in his hands; the obligation of her + love had never weighed on him like this gift of her imagination: it was as + though he had accepted from her something to which even a reciprocal + tenderness could not have justified his claim. + </p> + <p> + He sat a long time staring at the scattered pages on his desk; and in the + sudden realization of what they meant he could almost fancy some + alchemistic process changing them to gold as he stared. He had the sense + of not being alone in the room, of the presence of another self observing + from without the stirring of subconscious impulses that sent flushes of + humiliation to his forehead. At length he stood up, and with the gesture + of a man who wishes to give outward expression to his purpose—to + establish, as it were, a moral alibi—swept the letters into a heap + and carried them toward the grate. But it would have taken too long to + burn all the packets. He turned back to the table and one by one fitted + the pages into their envelopes; then he tied up the letters and put them + back into the locked drawer. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III + </h2> +<p> +<span class="smcap">It</span> was one of the laws of Glennard’s intercourse with Miss Trent that he + always went to see her the day after he had resolved to give her up. There + was a special charm about the moments thus snatched from the jaws of + renunciation; and his sense of their significance was on this occasion so + keen that he hardly noticed the added gravity of her welcome. + </p> + <p> + His feeling for her had become so vital a part of him that her nearness + had the quality of imperceptibly readjusting his point of view, so that + the jumbled phenomena of experience fell at once into a rational + perspective. In this redistribution of values the sombre retrospect of the + previous evening shrank to a mere cloud on the edge of consciousness. + Perhaps the only service an unloved woman can render the man she loves is + to enhance and prolong his illusions about her rival. It was the fate of + Margaret Aubyn’s memory to serve as a foil to Miss Trent’s presence, and + never had the poor lady thrown her successor into more vivid relief. + </p> + <p> + Miss Trent had the charm of still waters that are felt to be renewed by + rapid currents. Her attention spread a tranquil surface to the + demonstrations of others, and it was only in days of storm that one felt + the pressure of the tides. This inscrutable composure was perhaps her + chief grace in Glennard’s eyes. Reserve, in some natures, implies merely + the locking of empty rooms or the dissimulation of awkward encumbrances; + but Miss Trent’s reticence was to Glennard like the closed door to the + sanctuary, and his certainty of divining the hidden treasure made him + content to remain outside in the happy expectancy of the neophyte. + </p> + <p> + “You didn’t come to the opera last night,” she began, in the tone that + seemed always rather to record a fact than to offer a reflection on it. + </p> + <p> + He answered with a discouraged gesture. “What was the use? We couldn’t + have talked.” + </p> + <p> + “Not as well as here,” she assented; adding, after a meditative pause, “As + you didn’t come I talked to Aunt Virginia instead.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah!” he returned, the fact being hardly striking enough to detach him + from the contemplation of her hands, which had fallen, as was their wont, + into an attitude full of plastic possibilities. One felt them to be hands + that, moving only to some purpose, were capable of intervals of serene + inaction. + </p> + <p> + “We had a long talk,” Miss Trent went on; and she waited again before + adding, with the increased absence of stress that marked her graver + communications, “Aunt Virginia wants me to go abroad with her.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard looked up with a start. “Abroad? When?” + </p> + <p> + “Now—next month. To be gone two years.” + </p> + <p> + He permitted himself a movement of tender derision. “Does she really? + Well, I want you to go abroad with <i>me</i>—for any number of years. Which + offer do you accept?” + </p> + <p> + “Only one of them seems to require immediate consideration,” she returned, + with a smile. + </p> + <p> + Glennard looked at her again. “You’re not thinking of it?” + </p> + <p> + Her gaze dropped and she unclasped her hands. Her movements were so rare + that they might have been said to italicize her words. “Aunt Virginia + talked to me very seriously. It will be a great relief to mother and the + others to have me provided for in that way for two years. I must think of + that, you know.” She glanced down at her gown which, under a renovated + surface, dated back to the first days of Glennard’s wooing. “I try not to + cost much—but I do.” + </p> + <p> + “Good Lord!” Glennard groaned. + </p> + <p> + They sat silent till at length she gently took up the argument. “As the + eldest, you know, I’m bound to consider these things. Women are such a + burden. Jim does what he can for mother, but with his own children to + provide for it isn’t very much. You see, we’re all poor together.” + </p> + <p> + “Your aunt isn’t. She might help your mother.” + </p> + <p> + “She does—in her own way.” + </p> + <p> + “Exactly—that’s the rich relation all over! You may be miserable in + any way you like, but if you’re to be happy you’ve got to be so in her way—and + in her old gowns.” + </p> + <p> + “I could be very happy in Aunt Virginia’s old gowns,” Miss Trent + interposed. + </p> + <p> + “Abroad, you mean?” + </p> + <p> + “I mean wherever I felt that I was helping. And my going abroad will + help.” + </p> + <p> + “Of course—I see that. And I see your considerateness in putting its + advantages negatively.” + </p> + <p> + “Negatively?” + </p> + <p> + “In dwelling simply on what the going will take you from, not on what it + will bring you to. It means a lot to a woman, of course, to get away from + a life like this.” He summed up in a disparaging glance the background of + indigent furniture. “The question is how you’ll like coming back to it.” + </p> + <p> + She seemed to accept the full consequences of his thought. “I only know I + don’t like leaving it.” + </p> + <p> + He flung back sombrely, “You don’t even put it conditionally then?” + </p> + <p> + Her gaze deepened. “On what?” + </p> + <p> + He stood up and walked across the room. Then he came back and paused + before her. “On the alternative of marrying me.” + </p> + <p> + The slow color—even her blushes seemed deliberate—rose to her + lower lids; her lips stirred, but the words resolved themselves into a + smile and she waited. + </p> + <p> + He took another turn, with the thwarted step of the man whose nervous + exasperation escapes through his muscles. + </p> + <p> + “And to think that in fifteen years I shall have a big practice!” + </p> + <p> + Her eyes triumphed for him. “In less!” + </p> + <p> + “The cursed irony of it! What do I care for the man I shall be then? It’s + slaving one’s life away for a stranger!” He took her hands abruptly. + “You’ll go to Cannes, I suppose, or Monte Carlo? I heard Hollingsworth say + to-day that he meant to take his yacht over to the Mediterranean—” + </p> + <p> + She released herself. “If you think that—” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t. I almost wish I did. It would be easier, I mean.” He broke off + incoherently. “I believe your Aunt Virginia does, though. She somehow + connotes Hollingsworth and the Mediterranean.” He caught her hands again. + “Alexa—if we could manage a little hole somewhere out of town?” + </p> + <p> + “Could we?” she sighed, half yielding. + </p> + <p> + “In one of those places where they make jokes about the mosquitoes,” he + pressed her. “Could you get on with one servant?” + </p> + <p> + “Could you get on without varnished boots?” + </p> + <p> + “Promise me you won’t go, then!” + </p> + <p> + “What are you thinking of, Stephen?” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know,” he stammered, the question giving unexpected form to his + intention. “It’s all in the air yet, of course; but I picked up a tip the + other day—” + </p> + <p> + “You’re not speculating?” she cried, with a kind of superstitious terror. + </p> + <p> + “Lord, no. This is a sure thing—I almost wish it wasn’t; I mean if I + can work it—” He had a sudden vision of the comprehensiveness of the + temptation. If only he had been less sure of Dinslow! His assurance gave + the situation the base element of safety. + </p> + <p> + “I don’t understand you,” she faltered. + </p> + <p> + “Trust me, instead!” he adjured her, with sudden energy; and turning on + her abruptly, “If you go, you know, you go free,” he concluded. + </p> + <p> + She drew back, paling a little. “Why do you make it harder for me?” + </p> + <p> + “To make it easier for myself,” he retorted. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IV + </h2> +<p> +<span class="smcap">Glennard</span>, the next afternoon, leaving his office earlier than usual, + turned, on his way home, into one of the public libraries. + </p> + <p> + He had the place to himself at that closing hour, and the librarian was + able to give an undivided attention to his tentative request for letters—collections + of letters. The librarian suggested Walpole. + </p> + <p> + “I meant women—women’s letters.” + </p> + <p> + The librarian proffered Hannah More and Miss Martineau. + </p> + <p> + Glennard cursed his own inarticulateness. “I mean letters to—to some + one person—a man; their husband—or—” + </p> + <p> + “Ah,” said the inspired librarian, “Eloise and Abailard.” + </p> + <p> + “Well—something a little nearer, perhaps,” said Glennard, with + lightness. “Didn’t Merimee—” + </p> + <p> + “The lady’s letters, in that case, were not published.” + </p> + <p> + “Of course not,” said Glennard, vexed at his blunder. + </p> + <p> + “There are George Sand’s letters to Flaubert.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah!” Glennard hesitated. “Was she—were they—?” He chafed at + his own ignorance of the sentimental by-paths of literature. + </p> + <p> + “If you want love-letters, perhaps some of the French eighteenth century + correspondences might suit you better—Mlle. Aisse or Madame de + Sabran—” + </p> + <p> + But Glennard insisted. “I want something modern—English or American. + I want to look something up,” he lamely concluded. + </p> + <p> + The librarian could only suggest George Eliot. + </p> + <p> + “Well, give me some of the French things, then—and I’ll have + Merimee’s letters. It was the woman who published them, wasn’t it?” + </p> + <p> + He caught up his armful, transferring it, on the doorstep, to a cab which + carried him to his rooms. He dined alone, hurriedly, at a small restaurant + near by, and returned at once to his books. + </p> + <p> + Late that night, as he undressed, he wondered what contemptible impulse + had forced from him his last words to Alexa Trent. It was bad enough to + interfere with the girl’s chances by hanging about her to the obvious + exclusion of other men, but it was worse to seem to justify his weakness + by dressing up the future in delusive ambiguities. He saw himself sinking + from depth to depth of sentimental cowardice in his reluctance to renounce + his hold on her; and it filled him with self-disgust to think that the + highest feeling of which he supposed himself capable was blent with such + base elements. + </p> + <p> + His awakening was hardly cheered by the sight of her writing. He tore her + note open and took in the few lines—she seldom exceeded the first + page—with the lucidity of apprehension that is the forerunner of + evil. + </p> + <p> + “My aunt sails on Saturday and I must give her my answer the day after + to-morrow. Please don’t come till then—I want to think the question + over by myself. I know I ought to go. Won’t you help me to be reasonable?” + </p> + <p> + It was settled, then. Well, he would be reasonable; he wouldn’t stand in + her way; he would let her go. For two years he had been living some other, + luckier man’s life; the time had come when he must drop back into his own. + He no longer tried to look ahead, to grope his way through the endless + labyrinth of his material difficulties; a sense of dull resignation closed + in on him like a fog. + </p> + <p> + “Hullo, Glennard!” a voice said, as an electric-car, late that afternoon, + dropped him at an uptown corner. + </p> + <p> + He looked up and met the interrogative smile of Barton Flamel, who stood + on the curbstone watching the retreating car with the eye of a man + philosophic enough to remember that it will be followed by another. + </p> + <p> + Glennard felt his usual impulse of pleasure at meeting Flamel; but it was + not in this case curtailed by the reaction of contempt that habitually + succeeded it. Probably even the few men who had known Flamel since his + youth could have given no good reason for the vague mistrust that he + inspired. Some people are judged by their actions, others by their ideas; + and perhaps the shortest way of defining Flamel is to say that his + well-known leniency of view was vaguely divined to include himself. Simple + minds may have resented the discovery that his opinions were based on his + perceptions; but there was certainly no more definite charge against him + than that implied in the doubt as to how he would behave in an emergency, + and his company was looked upon as one of those mildly unwholesome + dissipations to which the prudent may occasionally yield. It now offered + itself to Glennard as an easy escape from the obsession of moral problems, + which somehow could no more be worn in Flamel’s presence than a surplice + in the street. + </p> + <p> + “Where are you going? To the club?” Flamel asked; adding, as the younger + man assented, “Why not come to my studio instead? You’ll see one bore + instead of twenty.” + </p> + <p> + The apartment which Flamel described as his studio showed, as its one + claim to the designation, a perennially empty easel; the rest of its space + being filled with the evidences of a comprehensive dilettanteism. Against + this background, which seemed the visible expression of its owner’s + intellectual tolerance, rows of fine books detached themselves with a + prominence, showing them to be Flamel’s chief care. + </p> + <p> + Glennard glanced with the eye of untrained curiosity at the lines of + warm-toned morocco, while his host busied himself with the uncorking of + Apollinaris. + </p> + <p> + “You’ve got a splendid lot of books,” he said. + </p> + <p> + “They’re fairly decent,” the other assented, in the curt tone of the + collector who will not talk of his passion for fear of talking of nothing + else; then, as Glennard, his hands in his pockets, began to stroll + perfunctorily down the long line of bookcases—“Some men,” Flamel + irresistibly added, “think of books merely as tools, others as tooling. + I’m between the two; there are days when I use them as scenery, other days + when I want them as society; so that, as you see, my library represents a + makeshift compromise between looks and brains, and the collectors look + down on me almost as much as the students.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard, without answering, was mechanically taking one book after + another from the shelves. His hands slipped curiously over the smooth + covers and the noiseless subsidence of opening pages. Suddenly he came on + a thin volume of faded manuscript. + </p> + <p> + “What’s this?” he asked, with a listless sense of wonder. + </p> + <p> + “Ah, you’re at my manuscript shelf. I’ve been going in for that sort of + thing lately.” Flamel came up and looked over his shoulders. “That’s a bit + of Stendhal—one of the Italian stories—and here are some + letters of Balzac to Madame Commanville.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard took the book with sudden eagerness. “Who was Madame + Commanville?” + </p> + <p> + “His sister.” He was conscious that Flamel was looking at him with the + smile that was like an interrogation point. “I didn’t know you cared for + this kind of thing.” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t—at least I’ve never had the chance. Have you many + collections of letters?” + </p> + <p> + “Lord, no—very few. I’m just beginning, and most of the interesting + ones are out of my reach. Here’s a queer little collection, though—the + rarest thing I’ve got—half a dozen of Shelley’s letters to Harriet + Westbrook. I had a devil of a time getting them—a lot of collectors + were after them.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard, taking the volume from his hand, glanced with a kind of + repugnance at the interleaving of yellow cris-crossed sheets. “She was the + one who drowned herself, wasn’t she?” + </p> + <p> + Flamel nodded. “I suppose that little episode adds about fifty per cent. + to their value,” he said, meditatively. + </p> + <p> + Glennard laid the book down. He wondered why he had joined Flamel. He was + in no humor to be amused by the older man’s talk, and a recrudescence of + personal misery rose about him like an icy tide. + </p> + <p> + “I believe I must take myself off,” he said. “I’d forgotten an + engagement.” + </p> + <p> + He turned to go; but almost at the same moment he was conscious of a + duality of intention wherein his apparent wish to leave revealed itself as + a last effort of the will against the overmastering desire to stay and + unbosom himself to Flamel. + </p> + <p> + The older man, as though divining the conflict, laid a detaining pressure + on his arm. + </p> + <p> + “Won’t the engagement keep? Sit down and try one of these cigars. I don’t + often have the luck of seeing you here.” + </p> + <p> + “I’m rather driven just now,” said Glennard, vaguely. He found himself + seated again, and Flamel had pushed to his side a low stand holding a + bottle of Apollinaris and a decanter of cognac. + </p> + <p> + Flamel, thrown back in his capacious arm-chair, surveyed him through a + cloud of smoke with the comfortable tolerance of the man to whom no + inconsistencies need be explained. Connivance was implicit in the air. It + was the kind of atmosphere in which the outrageous loses its edge. + Glennard felt a gradual relaxing of his nerves. + </p> + <p> + “I suppose one has to pay a lot for letters like that?” he heard himself + asking, with a glance in the direction of the volume he had laid aside. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, so-so—depends on circumstances.” Flamel viewed him + thoughtfully. “Are you thinking of collecting?” + </p> + <p> + Glennard laughed. “Lord, no. The other way round.” + </p> + <p> + “Selling?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, I hardly know. I was thinking of a poor chap—” + </p> + <p> + Flamel filled the pause with a nod of interest. + </p> + <p> + “A poor chap I used to know—who died—he died last year—and + who left me a lot of letters, letters he thought a great deal of—he + was fond of me and left ’em to me outright, with the idea, I suppose, that + they might benefit me somehow—I don’t know—I’m not much up on + such things—” he reached his hand to the tall glass his host had + filled. + </p> + <p> + “A collection of autograph letters, eh? Any big names?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, only one name. They’re all letters written to him—by one + person, you understand; a woman, in fact—” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, a woman,” said Flamel, negligently. + </p> + <p> + Glennard was nettled by his obvious loss of interest. “I rather think + they’d attract a good deal of notice if they were published.” + </p> + <p> + Flamel still looked uninterested. “Love-letters, I suppose?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, just—the letters a woman would write to a man she knew well. + They were tremendous friends, he and she.” + </p> + <p> + “And she wrote a clever letter?” + </p> + <p> + “Clever? It was Margaret Aubyn.” + </p> + <p> + A great silence filled the room. It seemed to Glennard that the words had + burst from him as blood gushes from a wound. + </p> + <p> + “Great Scott!” said Flamel, sitting up. “A collection of Margaret Aubyn’s + letters? Did you say <i>you</i> had them?” + </p> + <p> + “They were left me—by my friend.” + </p> + <p> + “I see. Was he—well, no matter. You’re to be congratulated, at any + rate. What are you going to do with them?” + </p> + <p> + Glennard stood up with a sense of weariness in all his bones. “Oh, I don’t + know. I haven’t thought much about it. I just happened to see that some + fellow was writing her life—” + </p> + <p> + “Joslin; yes. You didn’t think of giving them to him?” + </p> + <p> + Glennard had lounged across the room and stood staring up at a bronze + Bacchus who drooped his garlanded head above the pediment of an Italian + cabinet. “What ought I to do? You’re just the fellow to advise me.” He + felt the blood in his cheek as he spoke. + </p> + <p> + Flamel sat with meditative eye. “What do you <i>want</i> to do with them?” he + asked. + </p> + <p> + “I want to publish them,” said Glennard, swinging round with sudden energy—“If + I can—” + </p> + <p> + “If you can? They’re yours, you say?” + </p> + <p> + “They’re mine fast enough. There’s no one to prevent—I mean there + are no restrictions—” he was arrested by the sense that these + accumulated proofs of impunity might precisely stand as the strongest + check on his action. + </p> + <p> + “And Mrs. Aubyn had no family, I believe?” + </p> + <p> + “No.” + </p> + <p> + “Then I don’t see who’s to interfere,” said Flamel, studying his + cigar-tip. + </p> + <p> + Glennard had turned his unseeing stare on an ecstatic Saint Catherine + framed in tarnished gilding. + </p> + <p> + “It’s just this way,” he began again, with an effort. “When letters are as + personal as—as these of my friend’s.... Well, I don’t mind telling + you that the cash would make a heap of difference to me; such a lot that + it rather obscures my judgment—the fact is if I could lay my hand on + a few thousands now I could get into a big thing, and without appreciable + risk; and I’d like to know whether you think I’d be justified—under + the circumstances....” He paused, with a dry throat. It seemed to him at + the moment that it would be impossible for him ever to sink lower in his + own estimation. He was in truth less ashamed of weighing the temptation + than of submitting his scruples to a man like Flamel, and affecting to + appeal to sentiments of delicacy on the absence of which he had + consciously reckoned. But he had reached a point where each word seemed to + compel another, as each wave in a stream is forced forward by the pressure + behind it; and before Flamel could speak he had faltered out—“You + don’t think people could say... could criticise the man....” + </p> + <p> + “But the man’s dead, isn’t he?” + </p> + <p> + “He’s dead—yes; but can I assume the responsibility without—” + </p> + <p> + Flamel hesitated; and almost immediately Glennard’s scruples gave way to + irritation. If at this hour Flamel were to affect an inopportune + reluctance—! + </p> + <p> + The older man’s answer reassured him. “Why need you assume any + responsibility? Your name won’t appear, of course; and as to your + friend’s, I don’t see why his should, either. He wasn’t a celebrity + himself, I suppose?” + </p> + <p> + “No, no.” + </p> + <p> + “Then the letters can be addressed to Mr. Blank. Doesn’t that make it all + right?” + </p> + <p> + Glennard’s hesitation revived. “For the public, yes. But I don’t see that + it alters the case for me. The question is, ought I to publish them at + all?” + </p> + <p> + “Of course you ought to.” Flamel spoke with invigorating emphasis. “I + doubt if you’d be justified in keeping them back. Anything of Margaret + Aubyn’s is more or less public property by this time. She’s too great for + any one of us. I was only wondering how you could use them to the best + advantage—to yourself, I mean. How many are there?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, a lot; perhaps a hundred—I haven’t counted. There may be + more....” + </p> + <p> + “Gad! What a haul! When were they written?” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know—that is—they corresponded for years. What’s the + odds?” He moved toward his hat with a vague impulse of flight. + </p> + <p> + “It all counts,” said Flamel, imperturbably. “A long correspondence—one, + I mean, that covers a great deal of time—is obviously worth more + than if the same number of letters had been written within a year. At any + rate, you won’t give them to Joslin? They’d fill a book, wouldn’t they?” + </p> + <p> + “I suppose so. I don’t know how much it takes to fill a book.” + </p> + <p> + “Not love-letters, you say?” + </p> + <p> + “Why?” flashed from Glennard. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, nothing—only the big public is sentimental, and if they <i>were</i>—why, + you could get any money for Margaret Aubyn’s love-letters.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard was silent. + </p> + <p> + “Are the letters interesting in themselves? I mean apart from the + association with her name?” + </p> + <p> + “I’m no judge.” Glennard took up his hat and thrust himself into his + overcoat. “I dare say I sha’n’t do anything about it. And, Flamel—you + won’t mention this to anyone?” + </p> + <p> + “Lord, no. Well, I congratulate you. You’ve got a big thing.” Flamel was + smiling at him from the hearth. + </p> + <p> + Glennard, on the threshold, forced a response to the smile, while he + questioned with loitering indifference—“Financially, eh?” + </p> + <p> + “Rather; I should say so.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard’s hand lingered on the knob. “How much—should you say? You + know about such things.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, I should have to see the letters; but I should say—well, if + you’ve got enough to fill a book and they’re fairly readable, and the book + is brought out at the right time—say ten thousand down from the + publisher, and possibly one or two more in royalties. If you got the + publishers bidding against each other you might do even better; but of + course I’m talking in the dark.” + </p> + <p> + “Of course,” said Glennard, with sudden dizziness. His hand had slipped + from the knob and he stood staring down at the exotic spirals of the + Persian rug beneath his feet. + </p> + <p> + “I’d have to see the letters,” Flamel repeated. + </p> + <p> + “Of course—you’d have to see them....” Glennard stammered; and, + without turning, he flung over his shoulder an inarticulate “Good-by....” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + V + </h2> +<p> +<span class="smcap">The</span> little house, as Glennard strolled up to it between the trees, seemed + no more than a gay tent pitched against the sunshine. It had the crispness + of a freshly starched summer gown, and the geraniums on the veranda + bloomed as simultaneously as the flowers in a bonnet. The garden was + prospering absurdly. Seed they had sown at random—amid laughing + counter-charges of incompetence—had shot up in fragrant defiance of + their blunders. He smiled to see the clematis unfolding its punctual wings + about the porch. The tiny lawn was smooth as a shaven cheek, and a crimson + rambler mounted to the nursery-window of a baby who never cried. A breeze + shook the awning above the tea-table, and his wife, as he drew near, could + be seen bending above a kettle that was just about to boil. So vividly did + the whole scene suggest the painted bliss of a stage setting, that it + would have been hardly surprising to see her step forward among the + flowers and trill out her virtuous happiness from the veranda-rail. + </p> + <p> + The stale heat of the long day in town, the dusty promiscuity of the + suburban train were now but the requisite foil to an evening of scented + breezes and tranquil talk. They had been married more than a year, and + each home-coming still reflected the freshness of their first day + together. If, indeed, their happiness had a flaw, it was in resembling too + closely the bright impermanence of their surroundings. Their love as yet + was but the gay tent of holiday-makers. + </p> + <p> + His wife looked up with a smile. The country life suited her, and her + beauty had gained depth from a stillness in which certain faces might have + grown opaque. + </p> + <p> + “Are you very tired?” she asked, pouring his tea. + </p> + <p> + “Just enough to enjoy this.” He rose from the chair in which he had thrown + himself and bent over the tray for his cream. “You’ve had a visitor?” he + commented, noticing a half-empty cup beside her own. + </p> + <p> + “Only Mr. Flamel,” she said, indifferently. + </p> + <p> + “Flamel? Again?” + </p> + <p> + She answered without show of surprise. “He left just now. His yacht is + down at Laurel Bay and he borrowed a trap of the Dreshams to drive over + here.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard made no comment, and she went on, leaning her head back against + the cushions of her bamboo-seat, “He wants us to go for a sail with him + next Sunday.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard meditatively stirred his tea. He was trying to think of the most + natural and unartificial thing to say, and his voice seemed to come from + the outside, as though he were speaking behind a marionette. “Do you want + to?” + </p> + <p> + “Just as you please,” she said, compliantly. No affectation of + indifference could have been as baffling as her compliance. Glennard, of + late, was beginning to feel that the surface which, a year ago, he had + taken for a sheet of clear glass, might, after all, be a mirror reflecting + merely his own conception of what lay behind it. + </p> + <p> + “Do you like Flamel?” he suddenly asked; to which, still engaged with her + tea, she returned the feminine answer—“I thought you did.” + </p> + <p> + “I do, of course,” he agreed, vexed at his own incorrigible tendency to + magnify Flamel’s importance by hovering about the topic. “A sail would be + rather jolly; let’s go.” + </p> + <p> + She made no reply and he drew forth the rolled-up evening papers which he + had thrust into his pocket on leaving the train. As he smoothed them out + his own countenance seemed to undergo the same process. He ran his eye + down the list of stocks and Flamel’s importunate personality receded + behind the rows of figures pushing forward into notice like so many + bearers of good news. Glennard’s investments were flowering like his + garden: the dryest shares blossomed into dividends, and a golden harvest + awaited his sickle. + </p> + <p> + He glanced at his wife with the tranquil air of the man who digests good + luck as naturally as the dry ground absorbs a shower. “Things are looking + uncommonly well. I believe we shall be able to go to town for two or three + months next winter if we can find something cheap.” + </p> + <p> + She smiled luxuriously: it was pleasant to be able to say, with an air of + balancing relative advantages, “Really, on the baby’s account I shall be + almost sorry; but if we do go, there’s Kate Erskine’s house... she’ll let + us have it for almost nothing....” + </p> + <p> + “Well, write her about it,” he recommended, his eyes travelling on in + search of the weather report. He had turned to the wrong page; and + suddenly a line of black characters leapt out at him as from an ambush. + </p> +<div class="blk"> + <p class="c"> + “‘Margaret Aubyn’s Letters.’</p> +<p> Two volumes. Out to-day. First edition of + five thousand sold out before leaving the press. Second edition ready next + week. The Book Of The Year....” + </p> +</div> + <p> + He looked up stupidly. His wife still sat with her head thrown back, her + pure profile detached against the cushions. She was smiling a little over + the prospect his last words had opened. Behind her head shivers of sun and + shade ran across the striped awning. A row of maples and a privet hedge + hid their neighbor’s gables, giving them undivided possession of their + leafy half-acre; and life, a moment before, had been like their plot of + ground, shut off, hedged in from importunities, impenetrably his and hers. + Now it seemed to him that every maple-leaf, every privet-bud, was a + relentless human gaze, pressing close upon their privacy. It was as though + they sat in a brightly lit room, uncurtained from a darkness full of + hostile watchers.... His wife still smiled; and her unconsciousness of + danger seemed, in some horrible way, to put her beyond the reach of + rescue.... + </p> + <p> + He had not known that it would be like this. After the first odious weeks, + spent in preparing the letters for publication, in submitting them to + Flamel, and in negotiating with the publishers, the transaction had + dropped out of his consciousness into that unvisited limbo to which we + relegate the deeds we would rather not have done but have no notion of + undoing. From the moment he had obtained Miss Trent’s promise not to sail + with her aunt he had tried to imagine himself irrevocably committed. After + that, he argued, his first duty was to her—she had become his + conscience. The sum obtained from the publishers by Flamel’s adroit + manipulations and opportunely transferred to Dinslow’s successful venture, + already yielded a return which, combined with Glennard’s professional + earnings, took the edge of compulsion from their way of living, making it + appear the expression of a graceful preference for simplicity. It was the + mitigated poverty which can subscribe to a review or two and have a few + flowers on the dinner-table. And already in a small way Glennard was + beginning to feel the magnetic quality of prosperity. Clients who had + passed his door in the hungry days sought it out now that it bore the name + of a successful man. It was understood that a small inheritance, cleverly + invested, was the source of his fortune; and there was a feeling that a + man who could do so well for himself was likely to know how to turn over + other people’s money. + </p> + <p> + But it was in the more intimate reward of his wife’s happiness that + Glennard tasted the full flavor of success. Coming out of conditions so + narrow that those he offered her seemed spacious, she fitted into her new + life without any of those manifest efforts at adjustment that are as sore + to a husband’s pride as the critical rearrangement of the bridal + furniture. She had given him, instead, the delicate pleasure of watching + her expand like a sea-creature restored to its element, stretching out the + atrophied tentacles of girlish vanity and enjoyment to the rising tide of + opportunity. And somehow—in the windowless inner cell of his + consciousness where self-criticism cowered—Glennard’s course seemed + justified by its merely material success. How could such a crop of + innocent blessedness have sprung from tainted soil? + </p> + <p> + Now he had the injured sense of a man entrapped into a disadvantageous + bargain. He had not known it would be like this; and a dull anger gathered + at his heart. Anger against whom? Against his wife, for not knowing what + he suffered? Against Flamel, for being the unconscious instrument of his + wrong-doing? Or against that mute memory to which his own act had suddenly + given a voice of accusation? Yes, that was it; and his punishment + henceforth would be the presence, the unescapable presence, of the woman + he had so persistently evaded. She would always be there now. It was as + though he had married her instead of the other. It was what she had always + wanted—to be with him—and she had gained her point at last.... + </p> + <p> + He sprang up, as though in an impulse of flight.... The sudden movement + lifted his wife’s lids, and she asked, in the incurious voice of the woman + whose life is enclosed in a magic circle of prosperity—“Any news?” + </p> + <p> + “No—none—” he said, roused to a sense of immediate peril. The + papers lay scattered at his feet—what if she were to see them? He + stretched his arm to gather them up, but his next thought showed him the + futility of such concealment. The same advertisement would appear every + day, for weeks to come, in every newspaper; how could he prevent her + seeing it? He could not always be hiding the papers from her.... Well, and + what if she did see it? It would signify nothing to her, the chances were + that she would never even read the book.... As she ceased to be an element + of fear in his calculations the distance between them seemed to lessen and + he took her again, as it were, into the circle of his conjugal + protection.... Yet a moment before he had almost hated her!... He laughed + aloud at his senseless terrors.... He was off his balance, decidedly. + </p> + <p> + “What are you laughing at?” she asked. + </p> + <p> + He explained, elaborately, that he was laughing at the recollection of an + old woman in the train, an old woman with a lot of bundles, who couldn’t + find her ticket.... But somehow, in the telling, the humor of the story + seemed to evaporate, and he felt the conventionality of her smile. He + glanced at his watch, “Isn’t it time to dress?” + </p> + <p> + She rose with serene reluctance. “It’s a pity to go in. The garden looks + so lovely.” + </p> + <p> + They lingered side by side, surveying their domain. There was not space in + it, at this hour, for the shadow of the elm-tree in the angle of the + hedge; it crossed the lawn, cut the flower-border in two, and ran up the + side of the house to the nursery window. She bent to flick a caterpillar + from the honey-suckle; then, as they turned indoors, “If we mean to go on + the yacht next Sunday,” she suggested, “oughtn’t you to let Mr. Flamel + know?” + </p> + <p> + Glennard’s exasperation deflected suddenly. “Of course I shall let him + know. You always seem to imply that I’m going to do something rude to + Flamel.” + </p> + <p> + The words reverberated through her silence; she had a way of thus leaving + one space in which to contemplate one’s folly at arm’s length. Glennard + turned on his heel and went upstairs. As he dropped into a chair before + his dressing-table he said to himself that in the last hour he had sounded + the depths of his humiliation and that the lowest dregs of it, the very + bottom-slime, was the hateful necessity of having always, as long as the + two men lived, to be civil to Barton Flamel. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VI + </h2> +<p> +<span class="smcap">The</span> week in town had been sultry, and the men, in the Sunday emancipation + of white flannel and duck, filled the deck-chairs of the yacht with their + outstretched apathy, following, through a mist of cigarette-smoke, the + flitting inconsequences of the women. The party was a small one—Flamel + had few intimate friends—but composed of more heterogeneous atoms + than the little pools into which society usually runs. The reaction from + the chief episode of his earlier life had bred in Glennard an uneasy + distaste for any kind of personal saliency. Cleverness was useful in + business; but in society it seemed to him as futile as the sham cascades + formed by a stream that might have been used to drive a mill. He liked the + collective point of view that goes with the civilized uniformity of + dress-clothes, and his wife’s attitude implied the same preference; yet + they found themselves slipping more and more into Flamel’s intimacy. Alexa + had once or twice said that she enjoyed meeting clever people; but her + enjoyment took the negative form of a smiling receptivity; and Glennard + felt a growing preference for the kind of people who have their thinking + done for them by the community. + </p> + <p> + Still, the deck of the yacht was a pleasant refuge from the heat on shore, + and his wife’s profile, serenely projected against the changing blue, lay + on his retina like a cool hand on the nerves. He had never been more + impressed by the kind of absoluteness that lifted her beauty above the + transient effects of other women, making the most harmonious face seem an + accidental collocation of features. + </p> + <p> + The ladies who directly suggested this comparison were of a kind + accustomed to take similar risks with more gratifying results. Mrs. + Armiger had in fact long been the triumphant alternative of those who + couldn’t “see” Alexa Glennard’s looks; and Mrs. Touchett’s claims to + consideration were founded on that distribution of effects which is the + wonder of those who admire a highly cultivated country. The third lady of + the trio which Glennard’s fancy had put to such unflattering uses, was + bound by circumstances to support the claims of the other two. This was + Mrs. Dresham, the wife of the editor of the <i>Radiator</i>. Mrs. Dresham was a + lady who had rescued herself from social obscurity by assuming the role of + her husband’s exponent and interpreter; and Dresham’s leisure being + devoted to the cultivation of remarkable women, his wife’s attitude + committed her to the public celebration of their remarkableness. For the + conceivable tedium of this duty, Mrs. Dresham was repaid by the fact that + there were people who took <i>her</i> for a remarkable woman; and who in turn + probably purchased similar distinction with the small change of her + reflected importance. As to the other ladies of the party, they were + simply the wives of some of the men—the kind of women who expect to + be talked to collectively and to have their questions left unanswered. + </p> + <p> + Mrs. Armiger, the latest embodiment of Dresham’s instinct for the + remarkable, was an innocent beauty who for years had distilled dulness + among a set of people now self-condemned by their inability to appreciate + her. Under Dresham’s tutelage she had developed into a “thoughtful woman,” + who read his leaders in the <i>Radiator</i> and bought the books he recommended. + When a new novel appeared, people wanted to know what Mrs. Armiger thought + of it; and a young gentleman who had made a trip in Touraine had recently + inscribed to her the wide-margined result of his explorations. + </p> + <p> + Glennard, leaning back with his head against the rail and a slit of + fugitive blue between his half-closed lids, vaguely wished she wouldn’t + spoil the afternoon by making people talk; though he reduced his annoyance + to the minimum by not listening to what was said, there remained a latent + irritation against the general futility of words. + </p> + <p> + His wife’s gift of silence seemed to him the most vivid commentary on the + clumsiness of speech as a means of intercourse, and his eyes had turned to + her in renewed appreciation of this finer faculty when Mrs. Armiger’s + voice abruptly brought home to him the underrated potentialities of + language. + </p> + <p> + “You’ve read them, of course, Mrs. Glennard?” he heard her ask; and, in + reply to Alexa’s vague interrogation—“Why, the ‘Aubyn Letters’—it’s + the only book people are talking of this week.” + </p> + <p> + Mrs. Dresham immediately saw her advantage. “You <i>haven’t</i> read them? How + very extraordinary! As Mrs. Armiger says, the book’s in the air; one + breathes it in like the influenza.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard sat motionless, watching his wife. + </p> + <p> + “Perhaps it hasn’t reached the suburbs yet,” she said, with her unruffled + smile. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, <i>do</i> let me come to you, then!” Mrs. Touchett cried; “anything for a + change of air! I’m positively sick of the book and I can’t put it down. + Can’t you sail us beyond its reach, Mr. Flamel?” + </p> + <p> + Flamel shook his head. “Not even with this breeze. Literature travels + faster than steam nowadays. And the worst of it is that we can’t any of us + give up reading; it’s as insidious as a vice and as tiresome as a virtue.” + </p> + <p> + “I believe it <i>is</i> a vice, almost, to read such a book as the ‘Letters,’” + said Mrs. Touchett. “It’s the woman’s soul, absolutely torn up by the + roots—her whole self laid bare; and to a man who evidently didn’t + care; who couldn’t have cared. I don’t mean to read another line; it’s too + much like listening at a keyhole.” + </p> + <p> + “But if she wanted it published?” + </p> + <p> + “Wanted it? How do we know she did?” + </p> + <p> + “Why, I heard she’d left the letters to the man—whoever he is—with + directions that they should be published after his death—” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t believe it,” Mrs. Touchett declared. + </p> + <p> + “He’s dead then, is he?” one of the men asked. + </p> + <p> + “Why, you don’t suppose if he were alive he could ever hold up his head + again, with these letters being read by everybody?” Mrs. Touchett + protested. “It must have been horrible enough to know they’d been written + to him; but to publish them! No man could have done it and no woman could + have told him to—” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, come, come,” Dresham judicially interposed; “after all, they’re not + love-letters.” + </p> + <p> + “No—that’s the worst of it; they’re unloved letters,” Mrs. Touchett + retorted. + </p> + <p> + “Then, obviously, she needn’t have written them; whereas the man, poor + devil, could hardly help receiving them.” + </p> + <p> + “Perhaps he counted on the public to save him the trouble of reading + them,” said young Hartly, who was in the cynical stage. + </p> + <p> + Mrs. Armiger turned her reproachful loveliness to Dresham. “From the way + you defend him, I believe you know who he is.” + </p> + <p> + Everyone looked at Dresham, and his wife smiled with the superior air of + the woman who is in her husband’s professional secrets. Dresham shrugged + his shoulders. + </p> + <p> + “What have I said to defend him?” + </p> + <p> + “You called him a poor devil—you pitied him.” + </p> + <p> + “A man who could let Margaret Aubyn write to him in that way? Of course I + pity him.” + </p> + <p> + “Then you <i>must</i> know who he is,” cried Mrs. Armiger, with a triumphant air + of penetration. + </p> + <p> + Hartly and Flamel laughed and Dresham shook his head. “No one knows; not + even the publishers; so they tell me at least.” + </p> + <p> + “So they tell you to tell us,” Hartly astutely amended; and Mrs. Armiger + added, with the appearance of carrying the argument a point farther, “But + even if <i>he’s</i> dead and <i>she’s</i> dead, somebody must have given the letters to + the publishers.” + </p> + <p> + “A little bird, probably,” said Dresham, smiling indulgently on her + deduction. + </p> + <p> + “A little bird of prey then—a vulture, I should say—” another + man interpolated. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, I’m not with you there,” said Dresham, easily. “Those letters + belonged to the public.” + </p> + <p> + “How can any letters belong to the public that weren’t written to the + public?” Mrs. Touchett interposed. + </p> + <p> + “Well, these were, in a sense. A personality as big as Margaret Aubyn’s + belongs to the world. Such a mind is part of the general fund of thought. + It’s the penalty of greatness—one becomes a monument historique. + Posterity pays the cost of keeping one up, but on condition that one is + always open to the public.” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t see that that exonerates the man who gives up the keys of the + sanctuary, as it were.” + </p> + <p> + “Who <i>was</i> he?” another voice inquired. + </p> + <p> + “Who was he? Oh, nobody, I fancy—the letter-box, the slit in the + wall through which the letters passed to posterity....” + </p> + <p> + “But she never meant them for posterity!” + </p> + <p> + “A woman shouldn’t write such letters if she doesn’t mean them to be + published....” + </p> + <p> + “She shouldn’t write them to such a man!” Mrs. Touchett scornfully + corrected. + </p> + <p> + “I never keep letters,” said Mrs. Armiger, under the obvious impression + that she was contributing a valuable point to the discussion. + </p> + <p> + There was a general laugh, and Flamel, who had not spoken, said, lazily, + “You women are too incurably subjective. I venture to say that most men + would see in those letters merely their immense literary value, their + significance as documents. The personal side doesn’t count where there’s + so much else.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, we all know you haven’t any principles,” Mrs. Armiger declared; and + Alexa Glennard, lifting an indolent smile, said: “I shall never write you + a love-letter, Mr. Flamel.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard moved away impatiently. Such talk was as tedious as the buzzing + of gnats. He wondered why his wife had wanted to drag him on such a + senseless expedition.... He hated Flamel’s crowd—and what business + had Flamel himself to interfere in that way, standing up for the + publication of the letters as though Glennard needed his defence?... + </p> + <p> + Glennard turned his head and saw that Flamel had drawn a seat to Alexa’s + elbow and was speaking to her in a low tone. The other groups had + scattered, straying in twos along the deck. It came over Glennard that he + should never again be able to see Flamel speaking to his wife without the + sense of sick mistrust that now loosened his joints.... + </p> + <p> + Alexa, the next morning, over their early breakfast, surprised her husband + by an unexpected request. + </p> + <p> + “Will you bring me those letters from town?” she asked. + </p> + <p> + “What letters?” he said, putting down his cup. He felt himself as + helplessly vulnerable as a man who is lunged at in the dark. + </p> + <p> + “Mrs. Aubyn’s. The book they were all talking about yesterday.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard, carefully measuring his second cup of tea, said, with + deliberation, “I didn’t know you cared about that sort of thing.” + </p> + <p> + She was, in fact, not a great reader, and a new book seldom reached her + till it was, so to speak, on the home stretch; but she replied, with a + gentle tenacity, “I think it would interest me because I read her life + last year.” + </p> + <p> + “Her life? Where did you get that?” + </p> + <p> + “Someone lent it to me when it came out—Mr. Flamel, I think.” + </p> + <p> + His first impulse was to exclaim, “Why the devil do you borrow books of + Flamel? I can buy you all you want—” but he felt himself + irresistibly forced into an attitude of smiling compliance. “Flamel always + has the newest books going, hasn’t he? You must be careful, by the way, + about returning what he lends you. He’s rather crotchety about his + library.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, I’m always very careful,” she said, with a touch of competence that + struck him; and she added, as he caught up his hat: “Don’t forget the + letters.” + </p> + <p> + Why had she asked for the book? Was her sudden wish to see it the result + of some hint of Flamel’s? The thought turned Glennard sick, but he + preserved sufficient lucidity to tell himself, a moment later, that his + last hope of self-control would be lost if he yielded to the temptation of + seeing a hidden purpose in everything she said and did. How much Flamel + guessed, he had no means of divining; nor could he predicate, from what he + knew of the man, to what use his inferences might be put. The very + qualities that had made Flamel a useful adviser made him the most + dangerous of accomplices. Glennard felt himself agrope among alien forces + that his own act had set in motion.... + </p> + <p> + Alexa was a woman of few requirements; but her wishes, even in trifles, + had a definiteness that distinguished them from the fluid impulses of her + kind. He knew that, having once asked for the book, she would not forget + it; and he put aside, as an ineffectual expedient, his momentary idea of + applying for it at the circulating library and telling her that all the + copies were out. If the book was to be bought it had better be bought at + once. He left his office earlier than usual and turned in at the first + book-shop on his way to the train. The show-window was stacked with + conspicuously lettered volumes. “Margaret Aubyn” flashed back at him in + endless repetition. He plunged into the shop and came on a counter where + the name reiterated itself on row after row of bindings. It seemed to have + driven the rest of literature to the back shelves. He caught up a copy, + tossing the money to an astonished clerk who pursued him to the door with + the unheeded offer to wrap up the volumes. + </p> + <p> + In the street he was seized with a sudden apprehension. What if he were to + meet Flamel? The thought was intolerable. He called a cab and drove + straight to the station where, amid the palm-leaf fans of a perspiring + crowd, he waited a long half-hour for his train to start. + </p> + <p> + He had thrust a volume in either pocket and in the train he dared not draw + them out; but the detested words leaped at him from the folds of the + evening paper. The air seemed full of Margaret Aubyn’s name. The motion of + the train set it dancing up and down on the page of a magazine that a man + in front of him was reading.... + </p> + <p> + At the door he was told that Mrs. Glennard was still out, and he went + upstairs to his room and dragged the books from his pocket. They lay on + the table before him like live things that he feared to touch.... At + length he opened the first volume. A familiar letter sprang out at him, + each word quickened by its glaring garb of type. The little broken phrases + fled across the page like wounded animals in the open.... It was a + horrible sight.... A battue of helpless things driven savagely out of + shelter. He had not known it would be like this.... + </p> + <p> + He understood now that, at the moment of selling the letters, he had + viewed the transaction solely as it affected himself: as an unfortunate + blemish on an otherwise presentable record. He had scarcely considered the + act in relation to Margaret Aubyn; for death, if it hallows, also makes + innocuous. Glennard’s God was a god of the living, of the immediate, the + actual, the tangible; all his days he had lived in the presence of that + god, heedless of the divinities who, below the surface of our deeds and + passions, silently forge the fatal weapons of the dead. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VII + </h2> +<p> +<span class="smcap">A knock</span> roused him and looking up he saw his wife. He met her glance in + silence, and she faltered out, “Are you ill?” + </p> + <p> + The words restored his self-possession. “Ill? Of course not. They told me + you were out and I came upstairs.” + </p> + <p> + The books lay between them on the table; he wondered when she would see + them. She lingered tentatively on the threshold, with the air of leaving + his explanation on his hands. She was not the kind of woman who could be + counted on to fortify an excuse by appearing to dispute it. + </p> + <p> + “Where have you been?” Glennard asked, moving forward so that he + obstructed her vision of the books. + </p> + <p> + “I walked over to the Dreshams for tea.” + </p> + <p> + “I can’t think what you see in those people,” he said with a shrug; + adding, uncontrollably—“I suppose Flamel was there?” + </p> + <p> + “No; he left on the yacht this morning.” + </p> + <p> + An answer so obstructing to the natural escape of his irritation left + Glennard with no momentary resource but that of strolling impatiently to + the window. As her eyes followed him they lit on the books. + </p> + <p> + “Ah, you’ve brought them! I’m so glad,” she exclaimed. + </p> + <p> + He answered over his shoulder, “For a woman who never reads you make the + most astounding exceptions!” + </p> + <p> + Her smile was an exasperating concession to the probability that it had + been hot in town or that something had bothered him. + </p> + <p> + “Do you mean it’s not nice to want to read the book?” she asked. “It was + not nice to publish it, certainly; but after all, I’m not responsible for + that, am I?” She paused, and, as he made no answer, went on, still + smiling, “I do read sometimes, you know; and I’m very fond of Margaret + Aubyn’s books. I was reading ‘Pomegranate Seed’ when we first met. Don’t + you remember? It was then you told me all about her.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard had turned back into the room and stood staring at his wife. “All + about her?” he repeated, and with the words remembrance came to him. He + had found Miss Trent one afternoon with the novel in her hand, and moved + by the lover’s fatuous impulse to associate himself in some way with + whatever fills the mind of the beloved, had broken through his habitual + silence about the past. Rewarded by the consciousness of figuring + impressively in Miss Trent’s imagination he had gone on from one anecdote + to another, reviving dormant details of his old Hillbridge life, and + pasturing his vanity on the eagerness with which she received his + reminiscences of a being already clothed in the impersonality of + greatness. + </p> + <p> + The incident had left no trace in his mind; but it sprang up now like an + old enemy, the more dangerous for having been forgotten. The instinct of + self-preservation—sometimes the most perilous that man can exercise—made + him awkwardly declare—“Oh, I used to see her at people’s houses, + that was all;” and her silence as usual leaving room for a multiplication + of blunders, he added, with increased indifference, “I simply can’t see + what you can find to interest you in such a book.” + </p> + <p> + She seemed to consider this intently. “You’ve read it, then?” + </p> + <p> + “I glanced at it—I never read such things.” + </p> + <p> + “Is it true that she didn’t wish the letters to be published?” + </p> + <p> + Glennard felt the sudden dizziness of the mountaineer on a narrow ledge, + and with it the sense that he was lost if he looked more than a step + ahead. + </p> + <p> + “I’m sure I don’t know,” he said; then, summoning a smile, he passed his + hand through her arm. “I didn’t have tea at the Dreshams, you know; won’t + you give me some now?” he suggested. + </p> + <p> + That evening Glennard, under pretext of work to be done, shut himself into + the small study opening off the drawing-room. As he gathered up his papers + he said to his wife: “You’re not going to sit indoors on such a night as + this? I’ll join you presently outside.” + </p> + <p> + But she had drawn her armchair to the lamp. “I want to look at my book,” + she said, taking up the first volume of the “Letters.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard, with a shrug, withdrew into the study. “I’m going to shut the + door; I want to be quiet,” he explained from the threshold; and she nodded + without lifting her eyes from the book. + </p> + <p> + He sank into a chair, staring aimlessly at the outspread papers. How was + he to work, while on the other side of the door she sat with that volume + in her hand? The door did not shut her out—he saw her distinctly, + felt her close to him in a contact as painful as the pressure on a bruise. + </p> + <p> + The sensation was part of the general strangeness that made him feel like + a man waking from a long sleep to find himself in an unknown country among + people of alien tongue. We live in our own souls as in an unmapped region, + a few acres of which we have cleared for our habitation; while of the + nature of those nearest us we know but the boundaries that march with + ours. Of the points in his wife’s character not in direct contact with his + own, Glennard now discerned his ignorance; and the baffling sense of her + remoteness was intensified by the discovery that, in one way, she was + closer to him than ever before. As one may live for years in happy + unconsciousness of the possession of a sensitive nerve, he had lived + beside his wife unaware that her individuality had become a part of the + texture of his life, ineradicable as some growth on a vital organ; and he + now felt himself at once incapable of forecasting her judgment and + powerless to evade its effects. + </p> + <p> + To escape, the next morning, the confidences of the breakfast-table, he + went to town earlier than usual. His wife, who read slowly, was given to + talking over what she read, and at present his first object in life was to + postpone the inevitable discussion of the letters. This instinct of + protection in the afternoon, on his way uptown, guided him to the club in + search of a man who might be persuaded to come out to the country to dine. + The only man in the club was Flamel. + </p> + <p> + Glennard, as he heard himself almost involuntarily pressing Flamel to come + and dine, felt the full irony of the situation. To use Flamel as a shield + against his wife’s scrutiny was only a shade less humiliating than to + reckon on his wife as a defence against Flamel. + </p> + <p> + He felt a contradictory movement of annoyance at the latter’s ready + acceptance, and the two men drove in silence to the station. As they + passed the bookstall in the waiting-room Flamel lingered a moment and the + eyes of both fell on Margaret Aubyn’s name, conspicuously displayed above + a counter stacked with the familiar volumes. + </p> + <p> + “We shall be late, you know,” Glennard remonstrated, pulling out his + watch. + </p> + <p> + “Go ahead,” said Flamel, imperturbably. “I want to get something—” + </p> + <p> + Glennard turned on his heel and walked down the platform. Flamel rejoined + him with an innocent-looking magazine in his hand; but Glennard dared not + even glance at the cover, lest it should show the syllables he feared. + </p> + <p> + The train was full of people they knew, and they were kept apart till it + dropped them at the little suburban station. As they strolled up the + shaded hill, Glennard talked volubly, pointing out the improvements in the + neighborhood, deploring the threatened approach of an electric railway, + and screening himself by a series of reflex adjustments from the imminent + risk of any allusion to the “Letters.” Flamel suffered his discourse with + the bland inattention that we accord to the affairs of someone else’s + suburb, and they reached the shelter of Alexa’s tea-table without a + perceptible turn toward the dreaded topic. + </p> + <p> + The dinner passed off safely. Flamel, always at his best in Alexa’s + presence, gave her the kind of attention which is like a beaconing light + thrown on the speaker’s words: his answers seemed to bring out a latent + significance in her phrases, as the sculptor draws his statue from the + block. Glennard, under his wife’s composure, detected a sensibility to + this manoeuvre, and the discovery was like the lightning-flash across a + nocturnal landscape. Thus far these momentary illuminations had served + only to reveal the strangeness of the intervening country: each fresh + observation seemed to increase the sum-total of his ignorance. Her + simplicity of outline was more puzzling than a complex surface. One may + conceivably work one’s way through a labyrinth; but Alexa’s candor was + like a snow-covered plain where, the road once lost, there are no + landmarks to travel by. + </p> + <p> + Dinner over, they returned to the veranda, where a moon, rising behind the + old elm, was combining with that complaisant tree a romantic enlargement + of their borders. Glennard had forgotten the cigars. He went to his study + to fetch them, and in passing through the drawing-room he saw the second + volume of the “Letters” lying open on his wife’s table. He picked up the + book and looked at the date of the letter she had been reading. It was one + of the last... he knew the few lines by heart. He dropped the book and + leaned against the wall. Why had he included that one among the others? Or + was it possible that now they would all seem like that...? + </p> + <p> + Alexa’s voice came suddenly out of the dusk. “May Touchett was right—it + <i>is</i> like listening at a key-hole. I wish I hadn’t read it!” + </p> + <p> + Flamel returned, in the leisurely tone of the man whose phrases are + punctuated by a cigarette, “It seems so to us, perhaps; but to another + generation the book will be a classic.” + </p> + <p> + “Then it ought not to have been published till it had become a classic. + It’s horrible, it’s degrading almost, to read the secrets of a woman one + might have known.” She added, in a lower tone, “Stephen <i>did</i> know her—” + </p> + <p> + “Did he?” came from Flamel. + </p> + <p> + “He knew her very well, at Hillbridge, years ago. The book has made him + feel dreadfully... he wouldn’t read it... he didn’t want me to read it. I + didn’t understand at first, but now I can see how horribly disloyal it + must seem to him. It’s so much worse to surprise a friend’s secrets than a + stranger’s.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, Glennard’s such a sensitive chap,” Flamel said, easily; and Alexa + almost rebukingly rejoined, “If you’d known her I’m sure you’d feel as he + does....” + </p> + <p> + Glennard stood motionless, overcome by the singular infelicity with which + he had contrived to put Flamel in possession of the two points most + damaging to his case: the fact that he had been a friend of Margaret + Aubyn’s, and that he had concealed from Alexa his share in the publication + of the letters. To a man of less than Flamel’s astuteness it must now be + clear to whom the letters were addressed; and the possibility once + suggested, nothing could be easier than to confirm it by discreet + research. An impulse of self-accusal drove Glennard to the window. Why not + anticipate betrayal by telling his wife the truth in Flamel’s presence? If + the man had a drop of decent feeling in him, such a course would be the + surest means of securing his silence; and above all, it would rid Glennard + of the necessity of defending himself against the perpetual criticism of + his wife’s belief in him.... + </p> + <p> + The impulse was strong enough to carry him to the window; but there a + reaction of defiance set in. What had he done, after all, to need defence + and explanation? Both Dresham and Flamel had, in his hearing, declared the + publication of the letters to be not only justifiable but obligatory; and + if the disinterestedness of Flamel’s verdict might be questioned, + Dresham’s at least represented the impartial view of the man of letters. + As to Alexa’s words, they were simply the conventional utterance of the + “nice” woman on a question already decided for her by other “nice” women. + She had said the proper thing as mechanically as she would have put on the + appropriate gown or written the correct form of dinner-invitation. + Glennard had small faith in the abstract judgments of the other sex; he + knew that half the women who were horrified by the publication of Mrs. + Aubyn’s letters would have betrayed her secrets without a scruple. + </p> + <p> + The sudden lowering of his emotional pitch brought a proportionate relief. + He told himself that now the worst was over and things would fall into + perspective again. His wife and Flamel had turned to other topics, and + coming out on the veranda, he handed the cigars to Flamel, saying, + cheerfully—and yet he could have sworn they were the last words he + meant to utter!—“Look here, old man, before you go down to Newport + you must come out and spend a few days with us—mustn’t he, Alexa?” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VIII + </h2> +<p> +<span class="smcap">Glennard</span> had, perhaps unconsciously, counted on the continuance of this + easier mood. He had always taken pride in a certain robustness of fibre + that enabled him to harden himself against the inevitable, to convert his + failures into the building materials of success. Though it did not even + now occur to him that what he called the inevitable had hitherto been the + alternative he happened to prefer, he was yet obscurely aware that his + present difficulty was one not to be conjured by any affectation of + indifference. Some griefs build the soul a spacious house—but in + this misery of Glennard’s he could not stand upright. It pressed against + him at every turn. He told himself that this was because there was no + escape from the visible evidences of his act. The “Letters” confronted him + everywhere. People who had never opened a book discussed them with + critical reservations; to have read them had become a social obligation in + circles to which literature never penetrates except in a personal guise. + </p> + <p> + Glennard did himself injustice, it was from the unexpected discovery of + his own pettiness that he chiefly suffered. Our self-esteem is apt to be + based on the hypothetical great act we have never had occasion to perform; + and even the most self-scrutinizing modesty credits itself negatively with + a high standard of conduct. Glennard had never thought himself a hero; but + he had been certain that he was incapable of baseness. We all like our + wrong-doings to have a becoming cut, to be made to order, as it were; and + Glennard found himself suddenly thrust into a garb of dishonor surely + meant for a meaner figure. + </p> + <p> + The immediate result of his first weeks of wretchedness was the resolve to + go to town for the winter. He knew that such a course was just beyond the + limit of prudence; but it was easy to allay the fears of Alexa who, + scrupulously vigilant in the management of the household, preserved the + American wife’s usual aloofness from her husband’s business cares. + Glennard felt that he could not trust himself to a winter’s solitude with + her. He had an unspeakable dread of her learning the truth about the + letters, yet could not be sure of steeling himself against the suicidal + impulse of avowal. His very soul was parched for sympathy; he thirsted for + a voice of pity and comprehension. But would his wife pity? Would she + understand? Again he found himself brought up abruptly against his + incredible ignorance of her nature. The fact that he knew well enough how + she would behave in the ordinary emergencies of life, that he could count, + in such contingencies, on the kind of high courage and directness he had + always divined in her, made him the more hopeless of her entering into the + torturous psychology of an act that he himself could no longer explain or + understand. It would have been easier had she been more complex, more + feminine—if he could have counted on her imaginative sympathy or her + moral obtuseness—but he was sure of neither. He was sure of nothing + but that, for a time, he must avoid her. Glennard could not rid himself of + the delusion that by and by his action would cease to make its + consequences felt. He would not have cared to own to himself that he + counted on the dulling of his sensibilities: he preferred to indulge the + vague hypothesis that extraneous circumstances would somehow efface the + blot upon his conscience. In his worst moments of self-abasement he tried + to find solace in the thought that Flamel had sanctioned his course. + Flamel, at the outset, must have guessed to whom the letters were + addressed; yet neither then nor afterward had he hesitated to advise their + publication. This thought drew Glennard to him in fitful impulses of + friendliness, from each of which there was a sharper reaction of distrust + and aversion. When Flamel was not at the house, he missed the support of + his tacit connivance; when he was there, his presence seemed the assertion + of an intolerable claim. + </p> + <p> + Early in the winter the Glennards took possession of the little house that + was to cost them almost nothing. The change brought Glennard the immediate + relief of seeing less of his wife, and of being protected, in her + presence, by the multiplied preoccupations of town life. Alexa, who could + never appear hurried, showed the smiling abstraction of a pretty woman to + whom the social side of married life has not lost its novelty. Glennard, + with the recklessness of a man fresh from his first financial imprudence, + encouraged her in such little extravagances as her good sense at first + resisted. Since they had come to town, he argued, they might as well enjoy + themselves. He took a sympathetic view of the necessity of new gowns, he + gave her a set of furs at Christmas, and before the New Year they had + agreed on the obligation of adding a parlour-maid to their small + establishment. + </p> + <p> + Providence the very next day hastened to justify this measure by placing + on Glennard’s breakfast-plate an envelope bearing the name of the + publishers to whom he had sold Mrs. Aubyn’s letters. It happened to be the + only letter the early post had brought, and he glanced across the table at + his wife, who had come down before him and had probably laid the envelope + on his plate. She was not the woman to ask awkward questions, but he felt + the conjecture of her glance, and he was debating whether to affect + surprise at the receipt of the letter, or to pass it off as a business + communication that had strayed to his house, when a check fell from the + envelope. It was the royalty on the first edition of the letters. His + first feeling was one of simple satisfaction. The money had come with such + infernal opportuneness that he could not help welcoming it. Before long, + too, there would be more; he knew the book was still selling far beyond + the publisher’s previsions. He put the check in his pocket and left the + room without looking at his wife. + </p> + <p> + On the way to his office the habitual reaction set in. The money he had + received was the first tangible reminder that he was living on the sale of + his self-esteem. The thought of material benefit had been overshadowed by + his sense of the intrinsic baseness of making the letters known; now he + saw what an element of sordidness it added to the situation and how the + fact that he needed the money, and must use it, pledged him more + irrevocably than ever to the consequences of his act. It seemed to him, in + that first hour of misery, that he had betrayed his friend anew. + </p> + <p> + When, that afternoon, he reached home earlier than usual, Alexa’s + drawing-room was full of a gayety that overflowed to the stairs. Flamel, + for a wonder, was not there; but Dresham and young Hartly, grouped about + the tea-table, were receiving with resonant mirth a narrative delivered in + the fluttered staccato that made Mrs. Armiger’s conversation like the + ejaculations of a startled aviary. + </p> + <p> + She paused as Glennard entered, and he had time to notice that his wife, + who was busied about the tea-tray, had not joined in the laughter of the + men. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, go on, go on,” young Hartly rapturously groaned; and Mrs. Armiger met + Glennard’s inquiry with the deprecating cry that really she didn’t see + what there was to laugh at. “I’m sure I feel more like crying. I don’t + know what I should have done if Alexa hadn’t been home to give me a cup of + tea. My nerves are in shreds—yes, another, dear, please—” and + as Glennard looked his perplexity, she went on, after pondering on the + selection of a second lump of sugar, “Why, I’ve just come from the + reading, you know—the reading at the Waldorf.” + </p> + <p> + “I haven’t been in town long enough to know anything,” said Glennard, + taking the cup his wife handed him. “Who has been reading what?” + </p> + <p> + “That lovely girl from the South—Georgie—Georgie what’s her + name—Mrs. Dresham’s protegee—unless she’s <i>yours</i>, Mr. Dresham! + Why, the big ball-room was <i>packed</i>, and all the women were crying like + idiots—it was the most harrowing thing I ever heard—” + </p> + <p> + “What <i>did</i> you hear?” Glennard asked; and his wife interposed: “Won’t you + have another bit of cake, Julia? Or, Stephen, ring for some hot toast, + please.” Her tone betrayed a polite satiety of the topic under discussion. + Glennard turned to the bell, but Mrs. Armiger pursued him with her lovely + amazement. + </p> + <p> + “Why, the ‘Aubyn Letters’—didn’t you know about it? The girl read + them so beautifully that it was quite horrible—I should have fainted + if there’d been a man near enough to carry me out.” + </p> + <p> + Hartly’s glee redoubled, and Dresham said, jovially, “How like you women + to raise a shriek over the book and then do all you can to encourage the + blatant publicity of the readings!” + </p> + <p> + Mrs. Armiger met him more than half-way on a torrent of self-accusal. “It + <i>was</i> horrid; it was disgraceful. I told your wife we ought all to be + ashamed of ourselves for going, and I think Alexa was quite right to + refuse to take any tickets—even if it was for a charity.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh,” her hostess murmured, indifferently, “with me charity begins at + home. I can’t afford emotional luxuries.” + </p> + <p> + “A charity? A charity?” Hartly exulted. “I hadn’t seized the full beauty + of it. Reading poor Margaret Aubyn’s love-letters at the Waldorf before + five hundred people for a charity! <i>What</i> charity, dear Mrs. Armiger?” + </p> + <p> + “Why, the Home for Friendless Women—” + </p> + <p> + “It was well chosen,” Dresham commented; and Hartly buried his mirth in + the sofa-cushions. + </p> + <p> + When they were alone Glennard, still holding his untouched cup of tea, + turned to his wife, who sat silently behind the kettle. “Who asked you to + take a ticket for that reading?” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know, really—Kate Dresham, I fancy. It was she who got it + up.” + </p> + <p> + “It’s just the sort of damnable vulgarity she’s capable of! It’s loathsome—it’s + monstrous—” + </p> + <p> + His wife, without looking up, answered gravely, “I thought so too. It was + for that reason I didn’t go. But you must remember that very few people + feel about Mrs. Aubyn as you do—” + </p> + <p> + Glennard managed to set down his cup with a steady hand, but the room + swung round with him and he dropped into the nearest chair. “As I do?” he + repeated. + </p> + <p> + “I mean that very few people knew her when she lived in New York. To most + of the women who went to the reading she was a mere name, too remote to + have any personality. With me, of course, it was different—” + </p> + <p> + Glennard gave her a startled look. “Different? Why different?” + </p> + <p> + “Since you were her friend—” + </p> + <p> + “Her friend!” He stood up impatiently. “You speak as if she had had only + one—the most famous woman of her day!” He moved vaguely about the + room, bending down to look at some books on the table. “I hope,” he added, + “you didn’t give that as a reason, by the way?” + </p> + <p> + “A reason?” + </p> + <p> + “For not going. A woman who gives reasons for getting out of social + obligations is sure to make herself unpopular or ridiculous. + </p> + <p> + The words were uncalculated; but in an instant he saw that they had + strangely bridged the distance between his wife and himself. He felt her + close on him, like a panting foe; and her answer was a flash that showed + the hand on the trigger. + </p> + <p> + “I seem,” she said from the threshold, “to have done both in giving my + reason to you.” + </p> + <p> + The fact that they were dining out that evening made it easy for him to + avoid Alexa till she came downstairs in her opera-cloak. Mrs. Touchett, + who was going to the same dinner, had offered to call for her, and + Glennard, refusing a precarious seat between the ladies’ draperies, + followed on foot. The evening was interminable. The reading at the + Waldorf, at which all the women had been present, had revived the + discussion of the “Aubyn Letters” and Glennard, hearing his wife + questioned as to her absence, felt himself miserably wishing that she had + gone, rather than that her staying away should have been remarked. He was + rapidly losing all sense of proportion where the “Letters” were concerned. + He could no longer hear them mentioned without suspecting a purpose in the + allusion; he even yielded himself for a moment to the extravagance of + imagining that Mrs. Dresham, whom he disliked, had organized the reading + in the hope of making him betray himself—for he was already sure + that Dresham had divined his share in the transaction. + </p> + <p> + The attempt to keep a smooth surface on this inner tumult was as endless + and unavailing as efforts made in a nightmare. He lost all sense of what + he was saying to his neighbors and once when he looked up his wife’s + glance struck him cold. + </p> + <p> + She sat nearly opposite him, at Flamel’s side, and it appeared to Glennard + that they had built about themselves one of those airy barriers of talk + behind which two people can say what they please. While the reading was + discussed they were silent. Their silence seemed to Glennard almost + cynical—it stripped the last disguise from their complicity. A throb + of anger rose in him, but suddenly it fell, and he felt, with a curious + sense of relief, that at bottom he no longer cared whether Flamel had told + his wife or not. The assumption that Flamel knew about the letters had + become a fact to Glennard; and it now seemed to him better that Alexa + should know too. + </p> + <p> + He was frightened at first by the discovery of his own indifference. The + last barriers of his will seemed to be breaking down before a flood of + moral lassitude. How could he continue to play his part, to keep his front + to the enemy, with this poison of indifference stealing through his veins? + He tried to brace himself with the remembrance of his wife’s scorn. He had + not forgotten the note on which their conversation had closed. If he had + ever wondered how she would receive the truth he wondered no longer—she + would despise him. But this lent a new insidiousness to his temptation, + since her contempt would be a refuge from his own. He said to himself + that, since he no longer cared for the consequences, he could at least + acquit himself of speaking in self-defence. What he wanted now was not + immunity but castigation: his wife’s indignation might still reconcile him + to himself. Therein lay his one hope of regeneration; her scorn was the + moral antiseptic that he needed, her comprehension the one balm that could + heal him.... + </p> + <p> + When they left the dinner he was so afraid of speaking that he let her + drive home alone, and went to the club with Flamel. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IX + </h2> +<p> +<span class="smcap">He</span> rose next morning with the resolve to know what Alexa thought of him. + It was not anchoring in a haven, but lying to in a storm—he felt the + need of a temporary lull in the turmoil of his sensations. + </p> + <p> + He came home late, for they were dining alone and he knew that they would + have the evening together. When he followed her to the drawing-room after + dinner he thought himself on the point of speaking; but as she handed him + his coffee he said, involuntarily: “I shall have to carry this off to the + study, I’ve got a lot of work to-night.” + </p> + <p> + Alone in the study he cursed his cowardice. What was it that had withheld + him? A certain bright unapproachableness seemed to keep him at arm’s + length. She was not the kind of woman whose compassion could be + circumvented; there was no chance of slipping past the outposts; he would + never take her by surprise. Well—why not face her, then? What he + shrank from could be no worse than what he was enduring. He had pushed + back his chair and turned to go upstairs when a new expedient presented + itself. What if, instead of telling her, he were to let her find out for + herself and watch the effect of the discovery before speaking? In this way + he made over to chance the burden of the revelation. + </p> + <p> + The idea had been suggested by the sight of the formula enclosing the + publisher’s check. He had deposited the money, but the notice accompanying + it dropped from his note-case as he cleared his table for work. It was the + formula usual in such cases and revealed clearly enough that he was the + recipient of a royalty on Margaret Aubyn’s letters. It would be impossible + for Alexa to read it without understanding at once that the letters had + been written to him and that he had sold them.... + </p> + <p> + He sat downstairs till he heard her ring for the parlor-maid to put out + the lights; then he went up to the drawing-room with a bundle of papers in + his hand. Alexa was just rising from her seat and the lamplight fell on + the deep roll of hair that overhung her brow like the eaves of a temple. + Her face had often the high secluded look of a shrine; and it was this + touch of awe in her beauty that now made him feel himself on the brink of + sacrilege. + </p> + <p> + Lest the feeling should dominate him, he spoke at once. “I’ve brought you + a piece of work—a lot of old bills and things that I want you to + sort for me. Some are not worth keeping—but you’ll be able to judge + of that. There may be a letter or two among them—nothing of much + account, but I don’t like to throw away the whole lot without having them + looked over and I haven’t time to do it myself.” + </p> + <p> + He held out the papers and she took them with a smile that seemed to + recognize in the service he asked the tacit intention of making amends for + the incident of the previous day. + </p> + <p> + “Are you sure I shall know which to keep?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, quite sure,” he answered, easily—“and besides, none are of much + importance.” + </p> + <p> + The next morning he invented an excuse for leaving the house without + seeing her, and when he returned, just before dinner, he found a visitor’s + hat and stick in the hall. The visitor was Flamel, who was in the act of + taking leave. + </p> + <p> + He had risen, but Alexa remained seated; and their attitude gave the + impression of a colloquy that had prolonged itself beyond the limits of + speech. Both turned a surprised eye on Glennard and he had the sense of + walking into a room grown suddenly empty, as though their thoughts were + conspirators dispersed by his approach. He felt the clutch of his old + fear. What if his wife had already sorted the papers and had told Flamel + of her discovery? Well, it was no news to Flamel that Glennard was in + receipt of a royalty on the “Aubyn Letters.”... + </p> + <p> + A sudden resolve to know the worst made him lift his eyes to his wife as + the door closed on Flamel. But Alexa had risen also, and bending over her + writing-table, with her back to Glennard, was beginning to speak + precipitately. + </p> + <p> + “I’m dining out to-night—you don’t mind my deserting you? Julia + Armiger sent me word just now that she had an extra ticket for the last + Ambrose concert. She told me to say how sorry she was that she hadn’t two—but + I knew <i>you</i> wouldn’t be sorry!” She ended with a laugh that had the effect + of being a strayed echo of Mrs. Armiger’s; and before Glennard could speak + she had added, with her hand on the door, “Mr. Flamel stayed so late that + I’ve hardly time to dress. The concert begins ridiculously early, and + Julia dines at half-past seven—” + </p> + <p> + Glennard stood alone in the empty room that seemed somehow full of an + ironical consciousness of what was happening. “She hates me,” he murmured. + “She hates me....” + </p> + <p> + The next day was Sunday, and Glennard purposely lingered late in his room. + When he came downstairs his wife was already seated at the + breakfast-table. She lifted her usual smile to his entrance and they took + shelter in the nearest topic, like wayfarers overtaken by a storm. While + he listened to her account of the concert he began to think that, after + all, she had not yet sorted the papers, and that her agitation of the + previous day must be ascribed to another cause, in which perhaps he had + but an indirect concern. He wondered it had never before occurred to him + that Flamel was the kind of man who might very well please a woman at his + own expense, without need of fortuitous assistance. If this possibility + cleared the outlook it did not brighten it. Glennard merely felt himself + left alone with his baseness. + </p> + <p> + Alexa left the breakfast-table before him and when he went up to the + drawing-room he found her dressed to go out. + </p> + <p> + “Aren’t you a little early for church?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + She replied that, on the way there, she meant to stop a moment at her + mother’s; and while she drew on her gloves, he fumbled among the + knick-knacks on the mantel-piece for a match to light his cigarette. + </p> + <p> + “Well, good-by,” she said, turning to go; and from the threshold she + added: “By the way, I’ve sorted the papers you gave me. Those that I + thought you would like to keep are on your study-table.” She went + downstairs and he heard the door close behind her. + </p> + <p> + She had sorted the papers—she knew, then—she <i>must</i> know—and + she had made no sign! + </p> + <p> + Glennard, he hardly knew how, found himself once more in the study. On the + table lay the packet he had given her. It was much smaller—she had + evidently gone over the papers with care, destroying the greater number. + He loosened the elastic band and spread the remaining envelopes on his + desk. The publisher’s notice was among them. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + X + </h2> +<p> +<span class="smcap">His</span> wife knew and she made no sign. Glennard found himself in the case of + the seafarer who, closing his eyes at nightfall on a scene he thinks to + put leagues behind him before day, wakes to a port-hole framing the same + patch of shore. From the kind of exaltation to which his resolve had + lifted him he dropped to an unreasoning apathy. His impulse of confession + had acted as a drug to self-reproach. He had tried to shift a portion of + his burden to his wife’s shoulders and now that she had tacitly refused to + carry it, he felt the load too heavy to be taken up again. + </p> + <p> + A fortunate interval of hard work brought respite from this phase of + sterile misery. He went West to argue an important case, won it, and came + back to fresh preoccupations. His own affairs were thriving enough to + engross him in the pauses of his professional work, and for over two + months he had little time to look himself in the face. Not unnaturally—for + he was as yet unskilled in the subtleties of introspection—he + mistook his temporary insensibility for a gradual revival of moral health. + </p> + <p> + He told himself that he was recovering his sense of proportion, getting to + see things in their true light; and if he now thought of his rash appeal + to his wife’s sympathy it was as an act of folly from the consequences of + which he had been saved by the providence that watches over madmen. He had + little leisure to observe Alexa; but he concluded that the common-sense + momentarily denied him had counselled her uncritical acceptance of the + inevitable. If such a quality was a poor substitute for the passionate + justness that had once seemed to characterize her, he accepted the + alternative as a part of that general lowering of the key that seems + needful to the maintenance of the matrimonial duet. What woman ever + retained her abstract sense of justice where another woman was concerned? + Possibly the thought that he had profited by Mrs. Aubyn’s tenderness was + not wholly disagreeable to his wife. + </p> + <p> + When the pressure of work began to lessen, and he found himself, in the + lengthening afternoons, able to reach home somewhat earlier, he noticed + that the little drawing-room was always full and that he and his wife + seldom had an evening alone together. When he was tired, as often + happened, she went out alone; the idea of giving up an engagement to + remain with him seemed not to occur to her. She had shown, as a girl, + little fondness for society, nor had she seemed to regret it during the + year they had spent in the country. He reflected, however, that he was + sharing the common lot of husbands, who proverbially mistake the early + ardors of housekeeping for a sign of settled domesticity. Alexa, at any + rate, was refuting his theory as inconsiderately as a seedling defeats the + gardener’s expectations. An undefinable change had come over her. In one + sense it was a happy one, since she had grown, if not handsomer, at least + more vivid and expressive; her beauty had become more communicable: it was + as though she had learned the conscious exercise of intuitive attributes + and now used her effects with the discrimination of an artist skilled in + values. To a dispassionate critic (as Glennard now rated himself) the art + may at times have been a little too obvious. Her attempts at lightness + lacked spontaneity, and she sometimes rasped him by laughing like Julia + Armiger; but he had enough imagination to perceive that, in respect of the + wife’s social arts, a husband necessarily sees the wrong side of the + tapestry. + </p> + <p> + In this ironical estimate of their relation Glennard found himself + strangely relieved of all concern as to his wife’s feelings for Flamel. + From an Olympian pinnacle of indifference he calmly surveyed their + inoffensive antics. It was surprising how his cheapening of his wife put + him at ease with himself. Far as he and she were from each other they yet + had, in a sense, the tacit nearness of complicity. Yes, they were + accomplices; he could no more be jealous of her than she could despise + him. The jealousy that would once have seemed a blur on her whiteness now + appeared like a tribute to ideals in which he no longer believed.... + </p> + <p> + Glennard was little given to exploring the outskirts of literature. He + always skipped the “literary notices” in the papers and he had small + leisure for the intermittent pleasures of the periodical. He had therefore + no notion of the prolonged reverberations which the “Aubyn Letters” had + awakened in the precincts of criticism. When the book ceased to be talked + about he supposed it had ceased to be read; and this apparent subsidence + of the agitation about it brought the reassuring sense that he had + exaggerated its vitality. The conviction, if it did not ease his + conscience, at least offered him the relative relief of obscurity: he felt + like an offender taken down from the pillory and thrust into the soothing + darkness of a cell. + </p> + <p> + But one evening, when Alexa had left him to go to a dance, he chanced to + turn over the magazines on her table, and the copy of the Horoscope, to + which he settled down with his cigar, confronted him, on its first page, + with a portrait of Margaret Aubyn. It was a reproduction of the photograph + that had stood so long on his desk. The desiccating air of memory had + turned her into the mere abstraction of a woman, and this unexpected + evocation seemed to bring her nearer than she had ever been in life. Was + it because he understood her better? He looked long into her eyes; little + personal traits reached out to him like caresses—the tired droop of + her lids, her quick way of leaning forward as she spoke, the movements of + her long expressive hands. All that was feminine in her, the quality he + had always missed, stole toward him from her unreproachful gaze; and now + that it was too late life had developed in him the subtler perceptions + which could detect it in even this poor semblance of herself. For a moment + he found consolation in the thought that, at any cost, they had thus been + brought together; then a flood of shame rushed over him. Face to face with + her, he felt himself laid bare to the inmost fold of consciousness. The + shame was deep, but it was a renovating anguish; he was like a man whom + intolerable pain has roused from the creeping lethargy of death.... + </p> + <p> + He rose next morning to as fresh a sense of life as though his hour of + mute communion with Margaret Aubyn had been a more exquisite renewal of + their earlier meetings. His waking thought was that he must see her again; + and as consciousness affirmed itself he felt an intense fear of losing the + sense of her nearness. But she was still close to him; her presence + remained the sole reality in a world of shadows. All through his working + hours he was re-living with incredible minuteness every incident of their + obliterated past; as a man who has mastered the spirit of a foreign tongue + turns with renewed wonder to the pages his youth has plodded over. In this + lucidity of retrospection the most trivial detail had its significance, + and the rapture of recovery was embittered to Glennard by the perception + of all that he had missed. He had been pitiably, grotesquely stupid; and + there was irony in the thought that, but for the crisis through which he + was passing, he might have lived on in complacent ignorance of his loss. + It was as though she had bought him with her blood.... + </p> + <p> + That evening he and Alexa dined alone. After dinner he followed her to the + drawing-room. He no longer felt the need of avoiding her; he was hardly + conscious of her presence. After a few words they lapsed into silence and + he sat smoking with his eyes on the fire. It was not that he was unwilling + to talk to her; he felt a curious desire to be as kind as possible; but he + was always forgetting that she was there. Her full bright presence, + through which the currents of life flowed so warmly, had grown as tenuous + as a shadow, and he saw so far beyond her— + </p> + <p> + Presently she rose and began to move about the room. She seemed to be + looking for something and he roused himself to ask what she wanted. + </p> + <p> + “Only the last number of the Horoscope. I thought I’d left it on this + table.” He said nothing, and she went on: “You haven’t seen it?” + </p> + <p> + “No,” he returned coldly. The magazine was locked in his desk. + </p> + <p> + His wife had moved to the mantel-piece. She stood facing him and as he + looked up he met her tentative gaze. “I was reading an article in it—a + review of Mrs. Aubyn’s letters,” she added, slowly, with her deep, + deliberate blush. + </p> + <p> + Glennard stooped to toss his cigar into the fire. He felt a savage wish + that she would not speak the other woman’s name; nothing else seemed to + matter. “You seem to do a lot of reading,” he said. + </p> + <p> + She still earnestly confronted him. “I was keeping this for you—I + thought it might interest you,” she said, with an air of gentle + insistence. + </p> + <p> + He stood up and turned away. He was sure she knew that he had taken the + review and he felt that he was beginning to hate her again. + </p> + <p> + “I haven’t time for such things,” he said, indifferently. As he moved to + the door he heard her take a precipitate step forward; then she paused and + sank without speaking into the chair from which he had risen. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XI + </h2> +<p> +<span class="smcap">As</span> Glennard, in the raw February sunlight, mounted the road to the + cemetery, he felt the beatitude that comes with an abrupt cessation of + physical pain. He had reached the point where self-analysis ceases; the + impulse that moved him was purely intuitive. He did not even seek a reason + for it, beyond the obvious one that his desire to stand by Margaret + Aubyn’s grave was prompted by no attempt at a sentimental reparation, but + rather by the vague need to affirm in some way the reality of the tie + between them. + </p> + <p> + The ironical promiscuity of death had brought Mrs. Aubyn back to share the + narrow hospitality of her husband’s last lodging; but though Glennard knew + she had been buried near New York he had never visited her grave. He was + oppressed, as he now threaded the long avenues, by a chilling vision of + her return. There was no family to follow her hearse; she had died alone, + as she had lived; and the “distinguished mourners” who had formed the + escort of the famous writer knew nothing of the woman they were committing + to the grave. Glennard could not even remember at what season she had been + buried; but his mood indulged the fancy that it must have been on some + such day of harsh sunlight, the incisive February brightness that gives + perspicuity without warmth. The white avenues stretched before him + interminably, lined with stereotyped emblems of affliction, as though all + the platitudes ever uttered had been turned to marble and set up over the + unresisting dead. Here and there, no doubt, a frigid urn or an insipid + angel imprisoned some fine-fibred grief, as the most hackneyed words may + become the vehicle of rare meanings; but for the most part the endless + alignment of monuments seemed to embody those easy generalizations about + death that do not disturb the repose of the living. Glennard’s eye, as he + followed the way indicated to him, had instinctively sought some low mound + with a quiet headstone. He had forgotten that the dead seldom plan their + own houses, and with a pang he discovered the name he sought on the + cyclopean base of a granite shaft rearing its aggressive height at the + angle of two avenues. + </p> + <p> + “How she would have hated it!” he murmured. + </p> + <p> + A bench stood near and he seated himself. The monument rose before him + like some pretentious uninhabited dwelling; he could not believe that + Margaret Aubyn lay there. It was a Sunday morning and black figures moved + among the paths, placing flowers on the frost-bound hillocks. Glennard + noticed that the neighboring graves had been thus newly dressed; and he + fancied a blind stir of expectancy through the sod, as though the bare + mounds spread a parched surface to that commemorative rain. He rose + presently and walked back to the entrance of the cemetery. Several + greenhouses stood near the gates, and turning in at the first he asked for + some flowers. + </p> + <p> + “Anything in the emblematic line?” asked the anaemic man behind the + dripping counter. + </p> + <p> + Glennard shook his head. + </p> + <p> + “Just cut flowers? This way, then.” The florist unlocked a glass door and + led him down a moist green aisle. The hot air was choked with the scent of + white azaleas, white lilies, white lilacs; all the flowers were white; + they were like a prolongation, a mystical efflorescence, of the long rows + of marble tombstones, and their perfume seemed to cover an odor of decay. + The rich atmosphere made Glennard dizzy. As he leaned in the doorpost, + waiting for the flowers, he had a penetrating sense of Margaret Aubyn’s + nearness—not the imponderable presence of his inner vision, but a + life that beat warm in his arms.... + </p> + <p> + The sharp air caught him as he stepped out into it again. He walked back + and scattered the flowers over the grave. The edges of the white petals + shrivelled like burnt paper in the cold; and as he watched them the + illusion of her nearness faded, shrank back frozen. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XII + </h2> +<p> +<span class="smcap">The</span> motive of his visit to the cemetery remained undefined save as a final + effort of escape from his wife’s inexpressive acceptance of his shame. It + seemed to him that as long as he could keep himself alive to that shame he + would not wholly have succumbed to its consequences. His chief fear was + that he should become the creature of his act. His wife’s indifference + degraded him; it seemed to put him on a level with his dishonor. Margaret + Aubyn would have abhorred the deed in proportion to her pity for the man. + The sense of her potential pity drew him back to her. The one woman knew + but did not understand; the other, it sometimes seemed, understood without + knowing. + </p> + <p> + In its last disguise of retrospective remorse, his self-pity affected a + desire for solitude and meditation. He lost himself in morbid musings, in + futile visions of what life with Margaret Aubyn might have been. There + were moments when, in the strange dislocation of his view, the wrong he + had done her seemed a tie between them. + </p> + <p> + To indulge these emotions he fell into the habit, on Sunday afternoons, of + solitary walks prolonged till after dusk. The days were lengthening, there + was a touch of spring in the air, and his wanderings now usually led him + to the Park and its outlying regions. + </p> + <p> + One Sunday, tired of aimless locomotion, he took a cab at the Park gates + and let it carry him out to the Riverside Drive. It was a gray afternoon + streaked with east wind. Glennard’s cab advanced slowly, and as he leaned + back, gazing with absent intentness at the deserted paths that wound under + bare boughs between grass banks of premature vividness, his attention was + arrested by two figures walking ahead of him. This couple, who had the + path to themselves, moved at an uneven pace, as though adapting their gait + to a conversation marked by meditative intervals. Now and then they + paused, and in one of these pauses the lady, turning toward her companion, + showed Glennard the outline of his wife’s profile. The man was Flamel. + </p> + <p> + The blood rushed to Glennard’s forehead. He sat up with a jerk and pushed + back the lid in the roof of the hansom; but when the cabman bent down he + dropped into his seat without speaking. Then, becoming conscious of the + prolonged interrogation of the lifted lid, he called out—“Turn—drive + back—anywhere—I’m in a hurry—” + </p> + <p> + As the cab swung round he caught a last glimpse of the two figures. They + had not moved; Alexa, with bent head, stood listening. + </p> + <p> + “My God, my God—” he groaned. + </p> + <p> + It was hideous—it was abominable—he could not understand it. + The woman was nothing to him—less than nothing—yet the blood + hummed in his ears and hung a cloud before him. He knew it was only the + stirring of the primal instinct, that it had no more to do with his + reasoning self than any reflex impulse of the body; but that merely + lowered anguish to disgust. Yes, it was disgust he felt—almost a + physical nausea. The poisonous fumes of life were in his lungs. He was + sick, unutterably sick.... + </p> + <p> + He drove home and went to his room. They were giving a little dinner that + night, and when he came down the guests were arriving. He looked at his + wife: her beauty was extraordinary, but it seemed to him the beauty of a + smooth sea along an unlit coast. She frightened him. + </p> + <p> + He sat late that night in his study. He heard the parlor-maid lock the + front door; then his wife went upstairs and the lights were put out. His + brain was like some great empty hall with an echo in it; one thought + reverberated endlessly.... At length he drew his chair to the table and + began to write. He addressed an envelope and then slowly re-read what he + had written. + </p> +<div class="blk"> + <p class="nind"><span class="smcap">“<i>My dear Flamel</i>,”</span></p> + <p><i> + “Many apologies for not sending you sooner the enclosed check, which + represents the customary percentage on the sale of the Letters.”</i> + </p> + <p><i> + “Trusting you will excuse the oversight,</i> + </p> + <p class="r"> + <i>“Yours truly</i>, +<br /> +<span class="smcap"><i>“Stephen Glennard.”</i></span> + </p> +</div> + <p> + He let himself out of the darkened house and dropped the letter in the + post-box at the corner. + </p> + <p> + The next afternoon he was detained late at his office, and as he was + preparing to leave he heard someone asking for him in the outer room. He + seated himself again and Flamel was shown in. + </p> + <p> + The two men, as Glennard pushed aside an obstructive chair, had a moment + to measure each other; then Flamel advanced, and drawing out his + note-case, laid a slip of paper on the desk. + </p> + <p> + “My dear fellow, what on earth does this mean?” Glennard recognized his + check. + </p> + <p> + “That I was remiss, simply. It ought to have gone to you before.” + </p> + <p> + Flamel’s tone had been that of unaffected surprise, but at this his accent + changed and he asked, quickly: “On what ground?” + </p> + <p> + Glennard had moved away from the desk and stood leaning against the + calf-backed volumes of the bookcase. “On the ground that you sold Mrs. + Aubyn’s letters for me, and that I find the intermediary in such cases is + entitled to a percentage on the sale.” + </p> + <p> + Flamel paused before answering. “You find, you say. It’s a recent + discovery?” + </p> + <p> + “Obviously, from my not sending the check sooner. You see I’m new to the + business.” + </p> + <p> + “And since when have you discovered that there was any question of + business, as far as I was concerned?” + </p> + <p> + Glennard flushed and his voice rose slightly. “Are you reproaching me for + not having remembered it sooner?” + </p> + <p> + Flamel, who had spoken in the rapid repressed tone of a man on the verge + of anger, stared a moment at this and then, in his natural voice, + rejoined, good-humoredly, “Upon my soul, I don’t understand you!” + </p> + <p> + The change of key seemed to disconcert Glennard. “It’s simple enough—” + he muttered. + </p> + <p> + “Simple enough—your offering me money in return for a friendly + service? I don’t know what your other friends expect!” + </p> + <p> + “Some of my friends wouldn’t have undertaken the job. Those who would have + done so would probably have expected to be paid.” + </p> + <p> + He lifted his eyes to Flamel and the two men looked at each other. Flamel + had turned white and his lips stirred, but he held his temperate note. “If + you mean to imply that the job was not a nice one, you lay yourself open + to the retort that you proposed it. But for my part I’ve never seen, I + never shall see, any reason for not publishing the letters.” + </p> + <p> + “That’s just it!” + </p> + <p> + “What—?” + </p> + <p> + “The certainty of your not seeing was what made me go to you. When a man’s + got stolen goods to pawn he doesn’t take them to the police-station.” + </p> + <p> + “Stolen?” Flamel echoed. “The letters were stolen?” + </p> + <p> + Glennard burst into a coarse laugh. “How much longer do you expect me to + keep up that pretence about the letters? You knew well enough they were + written to me.” + </p> + <p> + Flamel looked at him in silence. “Were they?” he said at length. “I didn’t + know it.” + </p> + <p> + “And didn’t suspect it, I suppose,” Glennard sneered. + </p> + <p> + The other was again silent; then he said, “I may remind you that, + supposing I had felt any curiosity about the matter, I had no way of + finding out that the letters were written to you. You never showed me the + originals.” + </p> + <p> + “What does that prove? There were fifty ways of finding out. It’s the kind + of thing one can easily do.” + </p> + <p> + Flamel glanced at him with contempt. “Our ideas probably differ as to what + a man can easily do. It would not have been easy for me.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard’s anger vented itself in the words uppermost in his thought. “It + may, then, interest you to hear that my wife <i>does</i> know about the letters—has + known for some months....” + </p> + <p> + “Ah,” said the other, slowly. Glennard saw that, in his blind clutch at a + weapon, he had seized the one most apt to wound. Flamel’s muscles were + under control, but his face showed the undefinable change produced by the + slow infiltration of poison. Every implication that the words contained + had reached its mark; but Glennard felt that their obvious intention was + lost in the anguish of what they suggested. He was sure now that Flamel + would never have betrayed him; but the inference only made a wider outlet + for his anger. He paused breathlessly for Flamel to speak. + </p> + <p> + “If she knows, it’s not through me.” It was what Glennard had waited for. + </p> + <p> + “Through you, by God? Who said it was through you? Do you suppose I leave + it to you, or to anybody else, for that matter, to keep my wife informed + of my actions? I didn’t suppose even such egregious conceit as yours could + delude a man to that degree!” Struggling for a foothold in the small + landslide of his dignity, he added, in a steadier tone, “My wife learned + the facts from me.” + </p> + <p> + Flamel received this in silence. The other’s outbreak seemed to have + reinforced his self-control, and when he spoke it was with a deliberation + implying that his course was chosen. “In that case I understand still less—” + </p> + <p> + “Still less—?” + </p> + <p> + “The meaning of this.” He pointed to the check. “When you began to speak I + supposed you had meant it as a bribe; now I can only infer it was intended + as a random insult. In either case, here’s my answer.” + </p> + <p> + He tore the slip of paper in two and tossed the fragments across the desk + to Glennard. Then he turned and walked out of the office. + </p> + <p> + Glennard dropped his head on his hands. If he had hoped to restore his + self-respect by the simple expedient of assailing Flamel’s, the result had + not justified his expectation. The blow he had struck had blunted the edge + of his anger, and the unforeseen extent of the hurt inflicted did not + alter the fact that his weapon had broken in his hands. He saw now that + his rage against Flamel was only the last projection of a passionate + self-disgust. This consciousness did not dull his dislike of the man; it + simply made reprisals ineffectual. Flamel’s unwillingness to quarrel with + him was the last stage of his abasement. + </p> + <p> + In the light of this final humiliation his assumption of his wife’s + indifference struck him as hardly so fatuous as the sentimental + resuscitation of his past. He had been living in a factitious world + wherein his emotions were the sycophants of his vanity, and it was with + instinctive relief that he felt its ruins crash about his head. + </p> + <p> + It was nearly dark when he left his office, and he walked slowly homeward + in the complete mental abeyance that follows on such a crisis. He was not + aware that he was thinking of his wife; yet when he reached his own door + he found that, in the involuntary readjustment of his vision, she had once + more become the central point of consciousness. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XIII + </h2> +<p> +<span class="smcap">It</span> had never before occurred to him that she might, after all, have missed + the purport of the document he had put in her way. What if, in her hurried + inspection of the papers, she had passed it over as related to the private + business of some client? What, for instance, was to prevent her concluding + that Glennard was the counsel of the unknown person who had sold the + “Aubyn Letters.” The subject was one not likely to fix her attention—she + was not a curious woman. + </p> + <p> + Glennard at this point laid down his fork and glanced at her between the + candle-shades. The alternative explanation of her indifference was not + slow in presenting itself. Her head had the same listening droop as when + he had caught sight of her the day before in Flamel’s company; the + attitude revived the vividness of his impression. It was simple enough, + after all. She had ceased to care for him because she cared for someone + else. + </p> + <p> + As he followed her upstairs he felt a sudden stirring of his dormant + anger. His sentiments had lost all their factitious complexity. He had + already acquitted her of any connivance in his baseness, and he felt only + that he loved her and that she had escaped him. This was now, strangely + enough, his dominating thought: the consciousness that he and she had + passed through the fusion of love and had emerged from it as + incommunicably apart as though the transmutation had never taken place. + Every other passion, he mused, left some mark upon the nature; but love + passed like the flight of a ship across the waters. + </p> + <p> + She sank into her usual seat near the lamp, and he leaned against the + chimney, moving about with an inattentive hand the knick-knacks on the + mantel. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly he caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. She was looking + at him. He turned and their eyes met. + </p> + <p> + He moved across the room and stood before her. + </p> + <p> + “There’s something that I want to say to you,” he began in a low tone. + </p> + <p> + She held his gaze, but her color deepened. He noticed again, with a + jealous pang, how her beauty had gained in warmth and meaning. It was as + though a transparent cup had been filled with wine. He looked at her + ironically. + </p> + <p> + “I’ve never prevented your seeing your friends here,” he broke out. “Why + do you meet Flamel in out-of-the-way places? Nothing makes a woman so + cheap—” + </p> + <p> + She rose abruptly and they faced each other a few feet apart. + </p> + <p> + “What do you mean?” she asked. + </p> + <p> + “I saw you with him last Sunday on the Riverside Drive,” he went on, the + utterance of the charge reviving his anger. + </p> + <p> + “Ah,” she murmured. She sank into her chair again and began to play with a + paper-knife that lay on the table at her elbow. + </p> + <p> + Her silence exasperated him. + </p> + <p> + “Well?” he burst out. “Is that all you have to say?” + </p> + <p> + “Do you wish me to explain?” she asked, proudly. + </p> + <p> + “Do you imply I haven’t the right to?” + </p> + <p> + “I imply nothing. I will tell you whatever you wish to know. I went for a + walk with Mr. Flamel because he asked me to.” + </p> + <p> + “I didn’t suppose you went uninvited. But there are certain things a + sensible woman doesn’t do. She doesn’t slink about in out-of-the-way + streets with men. Why couldn’t you have seen him here?” + </p> + <p> + She hesitated. “Because he wanted to see me alone.” + </p> + <p> + “Did he, indeed? And may I ask if you gratify all his wishes with equal + alacrity?” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know that he has any others where I am concerned.” She paused + again and then continued, in a lower voice that somehow had an under-note + of warning. “He wished to bid me good-by. He’s going away.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard turned on her a startled glance. “Going away?” + </p> + <p> + “He’s going to Europe to-morrow. He goes for a long time. I supposed you + knew.” + </p> + <p> + The last phrase revived his irritation. “You forget that I depend on you + for my information about Flamel. He’s your friend and not mine. In fact, + I’ve sometimes wondered at your going out of your way to be so civil to + him when you must see plainly enough that I don’t like him.” + </p> + <p> + Her answer to this was not immediate. She seemed to be choosing her words + with care, not so much for her own sake as for his, and his exasperation + was increased by the suspicion that she was trying to spare him. + </p> + <p> + “He was your friend before he was mine. I never knew him till I was + married. It was you who brought him to the house and who seemed to wish me + to like him.” + </p> + <p> + Glennard gave a short laugh. The defence was feebler than he had expected: + she was certainly not a clever woman. + </p> + <p> + “Your deference to my wishes is really beautiful; but it’s not the first + time in history that a man has made a mistake in introducing his friends + to his wife. You must, at any rate, have seen since then that my + enthusiasm had cooled; but so, perhaps, has your eagerness to oblige me.” + </p> + <p> + She met this with a silence that seemed to rob the taunt of half its + efficacy. + </p> + <p> + “Is that what you imply?” he pressed her. + </p> + <p> + “No,” she answered with sudden directness. “I noticed some time ago that + you seemed to dislike him, but since then—” + </p> + <p> + “Well—since then?” + </p> + <p> + “I’ve imagined that you had reasons for still wishing me to be civil to + him, as you call it.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah,” said Glennard, with an effort at lightness; but his irony dropped, + for something in her voice made him feel that he and she stood at last in + that naked desert of apprehension where meaning skulks vainly behind + speech. + </p> + <p> + “And why did you imagine this?” The blood mounted to his forehead. + “Because he told you that I was under obligations to him?” + </p> + <p> + She turned pale. “Under obligations?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, don’t let’s beat about the bush. Didn’t he tell you it was I who + published Mrs. Aubyn’s letters? Answer me that.” + </p> + <p> + “No,” she said; and after a moment which seemed given to the weighing of + alternatives, she added: “No one told me.” + </p> + <p> + “You didn’t know then?” + </p> + <p> + She seemed to speak with an effort. “Not until—not until—” + </p> + <p> + “Till I gave you those papers to sort?” + </p> + <p> + Her head sank. + </p> + <p> + “You understood then?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes.” + </p> + <p> + He looked at her immovable face. “Had you suspected—before?” was + slowly wrung from him. + </p> + <p> + “At times—yes—” Her voice dropped to a whisper. + </p> + <p> + “Why? From anything that was said—?” + </p> + <p> + There was a shade of pity in her glance. “No one said anything—no + one told me anything.” She looked away from him. “It was your manner—” + </p> + <p> + “My manner?” + </p> + <p> + “Whenever the book was mentioned. Things you said—once or twice—your + irritation—I can’t explain—” + </p> + <p> + Glennard, unconsciously, had moved nearer. He breathed like a man who has + been running. “You knew, then, you knew”—he stammered. The avowal of + her love for Flamel would have hurt him less, would have rendered her less + remote. “You knew—you knew—” he repeated; and suddenly his + anguish gathered voice. “My God!” he cried, “you suspected it first, you + say—and then you knew it—this damnable, this accursed thing; + you knew it months ago—it’s months since I put that paper in your + way—and yet you’ve done nothing, you’ve said nothing, you’ve made no + sign, you’ve lived alongside of me as if it had made no difference—no + difference in either of our lives. What are you made of, I wonder? Don’t + you see the hideous ignominy of it? Don’t you see how you’ve shared in my + disgrace? Or haven’t you any sense of shame?” + </p> + <p> + He preserved sufficient lucidity, as the words poured from him, to see how + fatally they invited her derision; but something told him they had both + passed beyond the phase of obvious retaliations, and that if any chord in + her responded it would not be that of scorn. + </p> + <p> + He was right. She rose slowly and moved toward him. + </p> + <p> + “Haven’t you had enough—without that?” she said, in a strange voice + of pity. + </p> + <p> + He stared at her. “Enough—?” + </p> + <p> + “Of misery....” + </p> + <p> + An iron band seemed loosened from his temples. “You saw then...?” he + whispered. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, God——oh, God——” she sobbed. She dropped + beside him and hid her anguish against his knees. They clung thus in + silence, a long time, driven together down the same fierce blast of shame. + </p> + <p> + When at length she lifted her face he averted his. Her scorn would have + hurt him less than the tears on his hands. + </p> + <p> + She spoke languidly, like a child emerging from a passion of weeping. “It + was for the money—?” + </p> + <p> + His lips shaped an assent. + </p> + <p> + “That was the inheritance—that we married on?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes.” + </p> + <p> + She drew back and rose to her feet. He sat watching her as she wandered + away from him. + </p> + <p> + “You hate me,” broke from him. + </p> + <p> + She made no answer. + </p> + <p> + “Say you hate me!” he persisted. + </p> + <p> + “That would have been so simple,” she answered with a strange smile. She + dropped into a chair near the writing-table and rested a bowed forehead on + her hand. + </p> + <p> + “Was it much—?” she began at length. + </p> + <p> + “Much—?” he returned, vaguely. + </p> + <p> + “The money.” + </p> + <p> + “The money?” That part of it seemed to count so little that for a moment + he did not follow her thought. + </p> + <p> + “It must be paid back,” she insisted. “Can you do it?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, yes,” he returned, listlessly. “I can do it.” + </p> + <p> + “I would make any sacrifice for that!” she urged. + </p> + <p> + He nodded. “Of course.” He sat staring at her in dry-eyed self-contempt. + “Do you count on its making much difference?” + </p> + <p> + “Much difference?” + </p> + <p> + “In the way I feel—or you feel about me?” + </p> + <p> + She shook her head. + </p> + <p> + “It’s the least part of it,” he groaned. + </p> + <p> + “It’s the only part we can repair.” + </p> + <p> + “Good heavens! If there were any reparation—” He rose quickly and + crossed the space that divided them. “Why did you never speak?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + “Haven’t you answered that yourself?” + </p> + <p> + “Answered it?” + </p> + <p> + “Just now—when you told me you did it for me.” She paused a moment + and then went on with a deepening note—“I would have spoken if I + could have helped you.” + </p> + <p> + “But you must have despised me.” + </p> + <p> + “I’ve told you that would have been simpler.” + </p> + <p> + “But how could you go on like this—hating the money?” + </p> + <p> + “I knew you would speak in time. I wanted you, first, to hate it as I + did.” + </p> + <p> + He gazed at her with a kind of awe. “You’re wonderful,” he murmured. “But + you don’t yet know the depths I’ve reached.” + </p> + <p> + She raised an entreating hand. “I don’t want to!” + </p> + <p> + “You’re afraid, then, that you’ll hate me?” + </p> + <p> + “No—but that you’ll hate <i>me</i>. Let me understand without your telling + me.” + </p> + <p> + “You can’t. It’s too base. I thought you didn’t care because you loved + Flamel.” + </p> + <p> + She blushed deeply. “Don’t—don’t—” she warned him. + </p> + <p> + “I haven’t the right to, you mean?” + </p> + <p> + “I mean that you’ll be sorry.” + </p> + <p> + He stood imploringly before her. “I want to say something worse—something + more outrageous. If you don’t understand <i>this</i> you’ll be perfectly + justified in ordering me out of the house.” + </p> + <p> + She answered him with a glance of divination. “I shall understand—but + you’ll be sorry.” + </p> + <p> + “I must take my chance of that.” He moved away and tossed the books about + the table. Then he swung round and faced her. “Does Flamel care for you?” + he asked. + </p> + <p> + Her flush deepened, but she still looked at him without anger. “What would + be the use?” she said with a note of sadness. + </p> + <p> + “Ah, I didn’t ask <i>that</i>,” he penitently murmured. + </p> + <p> + “Well, then—” + </p> + <p> + To this adjuration he made no response beyond that of gazing at her with + an eye which seemed now to view her as a mere factor in an immense + redistribution of meanings. + </p> + <p> + “I insulted Flamel to-day. I let him see that I suspected him of having + told you. I hated him because he knew about the letters.” + </p> + <p> + He caught the spreading horror of her eyes, and for an instant he had to + grapple with the new temptation they lit up. Then he said, with an effort—“Don’t + blame him—he’s impeccable. He helped me to get them published; but I + lied to him too; I pretended they were written to another man... a man who + was dead....” + </p> + <p> + She raised her arms in a gesture that seemed to ward off his blows. + </p> + <p> + “You <i>do</i> despise me!” he insisted. + </p> + <p> + “Ah, that poor woman—that poor woman—” he heard her murmur. + </p> + <p> + “I spare no one, you see!” he triumphed over her. She kept her face + hidden. + </p> + <p> + “You do hate me, you do despise me!” he strangely exulted. + </p> + <p> + “Be silent!” she commanded him; but he seemed no longer conscious of any + check on his gathering purpose. + </p> + <p> + “He cared for you—he cared for you,” he repeated, “and he never told + you of the letters—” + </p> + <p> + She sprang to her feet. “How can you?” she flamed. “How dare you? <i>That</i>—!” + </p> + <p> + Glennard was ashy pale. “It’s a weapon... like another....” + </p> + <p> + “A scoundrel’s!” + </p> + <p> + He smiled wretchedly. “I should have used it in his place.” + </p> + <p> + “Stephen! Stephen!” she cried, as though to drown the blasphemy on his + lips. She swept to him with a rescuing gesture. “Don’t say such things. I + forbid you! It degrades us both.” + </p> + <p> + He put her back with trembling hands. “Nothing that I say of myself can + degrade you. We’re on different levels.” + </p> + <p> + “I’m on yours, whatever it is!” + </p> + <p> + He lifted his head and their gaze flowed together. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XIV + </h2> +<p> +<span class="smcap">The</span> great renewals take effect as imperceptibly as the first workings of + spring. Glennard, though he felt himself brought nearer to his wife, was + still, as it were, hardly within speaking distance. He was but laboriously + acquiring the rudiments of their new medium of communication; and he had + to grope for her through the dense fog of his humiliation, the distorting + vapor against which his personality loomed grotesque and mean. + </p> + <p> + Only the fact that we are unaware how well our nearest know us enables us + to live with them. Love is the most impregnable refuge of self-esteem, and + we hate the eye that reaches to our nakedness. If Glennard did not hate + his wife it was slowly, sufferingly, that there was born in him that + profounder passion which made his earlier feeling seem a mere commotion of + the blood. He was like a child coming back to the sense of an enveloping + presence: her nearness was a breast on which he leaned. + </p> + <p> + They did not, at first, talk much together, and each beat a devious track + about the outskirts of the subject that lay between them like a haunted + wood. But every word, every action, seemed to glance at it, to draw toward + it, as though a fount of healing sprang in its poisoned shade. If only + they might cut away through the thicket to that restoring spring! + </p> + <p> + Glennard, watching his wife with the intentness of a wanderer to whom no + natural sign is negligible, saw that she had taken temporary refuge in the + purpose of renouncing the money. If both, theoretically, owned the + inefficacy of such amends, the woman’s instinctive subjectiveness made her + find relief in this crude form of penance. Glennard saw that she meant to + live as frugally as possible till what she deemed their debt was + discharged; and he prayed she might not discover how far-reaching, in its + merely material sense, was the obligation she thus hoped to acquit. Her + mind was fixed on the sum originally paid for the letters, and this he + knew he could lay aside in a year or two. He was touched, meanwhile, by + the spirit that made her discard the petty luxuries which she regarded as + the signs of their bondage. Their shared renunciations drew her nearer to + him, helped, in their evidence of her helplessness, to restore the full + protecting stature of his love. And still they did not speak. + </p> + <p> + It was several weeks later that, one afternoon by the drawing-room fire, + she handed him a letter that she had been reading when he entered. + </p> + <p> + “I’ve heard from Mr. Flamel,” she said. + </p> + <p> + Glennard turned pale. It was as though a latent presence had suddenly + become visible to both. He took the letter mechanically. + </p> + <p> + “It’s from Smyrna,” she said. “Won’t you read it?” + </p> + <p> + He handed it back. “You can tell me about it—his hand’s so + illegible.” He wandered to the other end of the room and then turned and + stood before her. “I’ve been thinking of writing to Flamel,” he said. + </p> + <p> + She looked up. + </p> + <p> + “There’s one point,” he continued, slowly, “that I ought to clear up. I + told him you’d known about the letters all along; for a long time, at + least; and I saw it hurt him horribly. It was just what I meant to do, of + course; but I can’t leave him to that false impression; I must write him.” + </p> + <p> + She received this without outward movement, but he saw that the depths + were stirred. At length she returned, in a hesitating tone, “Why do you + call it a false impression? I did know.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, but I implied you didn’t care.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah!” + </p> + <p> + He still stood looking down on her. “Don’t you want me to set that right?” + he tentatively pursued. + </p> + <p> + She lifted her head and fixed him bravely. “It isn’t necessary,” she said. + </p> + <p> + Glennard flushed with the shock of the retort; then, with a gesture of + comprehension, “No,” he said, “with you it couldn’t be; but I might still + set myself right.” + </p> + <p> + She looked at him gently. “Don’t I,” she murmured, “do that?” + </p> + <p> + “In being yourself merely? Alas, the rehabilitation’s too complete! You + make me seem—to myself even—what I’m not; what I can never be. + I can’t, at times, defend myself from the delusion; but I can at least + enlighten others.” + </p> + <p> + The flood was loosened, and kneeling by her he caught her hands. “Don’t + you see that it’s become an obsession with me? That if I could strip + myself down to the last lie—only there’d always be another one left + under it!—and do penance naked in the market-place, I should at + least have the relief of easing one anguish by another? Don’t you see that + the worst of my torture is the impossibility of such amends?” + </p> + <p> + Her hands lay in his without returning pressure. “Ah, poor woman, poor + woman,” he heard her sigh. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t pity her, pity me! What have I done to her or to you, after all? + You’re both inaccessible! It was myself I sold.” + </p> + <p> + He took an abrupt turn away from her; then halted before her again. “How + much longer,” he burst out, “do you suppose you can stand it? You’ve been + magnificent, you’ve been inspired, but what’s the use? You can’t wipe out + the ignominy of it. It’s miserable for you and it does <i>her</i> no good!” + </p> + <p> + She lifted a vivid face. “That’s the thought I can’t bear!” she cried. + </p> + <p> + “What thought?” + </p> + <p> + “That it does her no good—all you’re feeling, all you’re suffering. + Can it be that it makes no difference?” + </p> + <p> + He avoided her challenging glance. “What’s done is done,” he muttered. + </p> + <p> + “Is it ever, quite, I wonder?” she mused. He made no answer and they + lapsed into one of the pauses that are a subterranean channel of + communication. + </p> + <p> + It was she who, after awhile, began to speak with a new suffusing + diffidence that made him turn a roused eye on her. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t they say,” she asked, feeling her way as in a kind of tender + apprehensiveness, “that the early Christians, instead of pulling down the + heathen temples—the temples of the unclean gods—purified them + by turning them to their own uses? I’ve always thought one might do that + with one’s actions—the actions one loathes but can’t undo. One can + make, I mean, a wrong the door to other wrongs or an impassable wall + against them....” Her voice wavered on the word. “We can’t always tear + down the temples we’ve built to the unclean gods, but we can put good + spirits in the house of evil—the spirits of mercy and shame and + understanding, that might never have come to us if we hadn’t been in such + great need....” + </p> + <p> + She moved over to him and laid a hesitating hand on his. His head was bent + and he did not change his attitude. She sat down beside him without + speaking; but their silences now were fertile as rain-clouds—they + quickened the seeds of understanding. + </p> + <p> + At length he looked up. “I don’t know,” he said, “what spirits have come + to live in the house of evil that I built—but you’re there and + that’s enough for me. It’s strange,” he went on after another pause, “she + wished the best for me so often, and now, at last, it’s through her that + it’s come to me. But for her I shouldn’t have known you—it’s through + her that I’ve found you. Sometimes, do you know?—that makes it + hardest—makes me most intolerable to myself. Can’t you see that it’s + the worst thing I’ve got to face? I sometimes think I could have borne it + better if you hadn’t understood! I took everything from her—everything—even + to the poor shelter of loyalty she’d trusted in—the only thing I + could have left her!—I took everything from her, I deceived her, I + despoiled her, I destroyed her—and she’s given me <i>you</i> in return!” + </p> + <p> + His wife’s cry caught him up. “It isn’t that she’s given <i>me</i> to you—it + is that she’s given you to yourself.” She leaned to him as though swept + forward on a wave of pity. “Don’t you see,” she went on, as his eyes hung + on her, “that that’s the gift you can’t escape from, the debt you’re + pledged to acquit? Don’t you see that you’ve never before been what she + thought you, and that now, so wonderfully, she’s made you into the man she + loved? <i>That’s</i> worth suffering for, worth dying for, to a woman—that’s + the gift she would have wished to give!” + </p> + <p> + “Ah,” he cried, “but woe to him by whom it cometh. What did I ever give + her?” + </p> + <p> + “The happiness of giving,” she said. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Touchstone, by Edith Wharton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TOUCHSTONE *** + +***** This file should be named 267-h.htm or 267-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/267/ + +Produced by Judith Boss, and David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + +THE TOUCHSTONE +By Edith Wharton + + + +I + + +Professor Joslin, who, as our readers are doubtless aware, is +engaged in writing the life of Mrs. Aubyn, asks us to state that +he will be greatly indebted to any of the famous novelist's +friends who will furnish him with information concerning the +period previous to her coming to England. Mrs. Aubyn had so few +intimate friends, and consequently so few regular correspondents, +that letters will be of special value. Professor Joslin's address +is 10 Augusta Gardens, Kensington, and he begs us to say that he +will promptly return any documents entrusted to him." + +Glennard dropped the Spectator and sat looking into the fire. The +club was filling up, but he still had to himself the small inner +room, with its darkening outlook down the rainstreaked prospect of +Fifth Avenue. It was all dull and dismal enough, yet a moment +earlier his boredom had been perversely tinged by a sense of +resentment at the thought that, as things were going, he might in +time have to surrender even the despised privilege of boring +himself within those particular four walls. It was not that he +cared much for the club, but that the remote contingency of having +to give it up stood to him, just then, perhaps by very reason of +its insignificance and remoteness, for the symbol of his +increasing abnegations; of that perpetual paring-off that was +gradually reducing existence to the naked business of keeping +himself alive. It was the futility of his multiplied shifts and +privations that made them seem unworthy of a high attitude; the +sense that, however rapidly he eliminated the superfluous, his +cleared horizon was likely to offer no nearer view of the one +prospect toward which he strained. To give up things in order to +marry the woman one loves is easier than to give them up without +being brought appreciably nearer to such a conclusion. + +Through the open door he saw young Hollingsworth rise with a yawn +from the ineffectual solace of a brandy-and-soda and transport his +purposeless person to the window. Glennard measured his course +with a contemptuous eye. It was so like Hollingsworth to get up +and look out of the window just as it was growing too dark to see +anything! There was a man rich enough to do what he pleased--had +he been capable of being pleased--yet barred from all conceivable +achievement by his own impervious dulness; while, a few feet off, +Glennard, who wanted only enough to keep a decent coat on his back +and a roof over the head of the woman he loved, Glennard, who had +sweated, toiled, denied himself for the scant measure of +opportunity that his zeal would have converted into a kingdom--sat +wretchedly calculating that, even when he had resigned from the +club, and knocked off his cigars, and given up his Sundays out of +town, he would still be no nearer attainment. + +The Spectator had slipped to his feet and as he picked it up his +eye fell again on the paragraph addressed to the friends of Mrs. +Aubyn. He had read it for the first time with a scarcely +perceptible quickening of attention: her name had so long been +public property that his eye passed it unseeingly, as the crowd in +the street hurries without a glance by some familiar monument. + +"Information concerning the period previous to her coming to +England. . . ." The words were an evocation. He saw her again as +she had looked at their first meeting, the poor woman of genius +with her long pale face and short-sighted eyes, softened a little +by the grace of youth and inexperience, but so incapable even then +of any hold upon the pulses. When she spoke, indeed, she was +wonderful, more wonderful, perhaps, than when later, to Glennard's +fancy at least, the conscious of memorable things uttered seemed +to take from even her most intimate speech the perfect bloom of +privacy. It was in those earliest days, if ever, that he had come +near loving her; though even then his sentiment had lived only in +the intervals of its expression. Later, when to be loved by her +had been a state to touch any man's imagination, the physical +reluctance had, inexplicably, so overborne the intellectual +attraction, that the last years had been, to both of them, an +agony of conflicting impulses. Even now, if, in turning over old +papers, his hand lit on her letters, the touch filled him with +inarticulate misery. . . . + +"She had so few intimate friends . . . that letters will be of +special value." So few intimate friends! For years she had had +but one; one who in the last years had requited her wonderful +pages, her tragic outpourings of love, humility, and pardon, with +the scant phrases by which a man evades the vulgarest of +sentimental importunities. He had been a brute in spite of +himself, and sometimes, now that the remembrance of her face had +faded, and only her voice and words remained with him, he chafed +at his own inadequacy, his stupid inability to rise to the height +of her passion. His egoism was not of a kind to mirror its +complacency in the adventure. To have been loved by the most +brilliant woman of her day, and to have been incapable of loving +her, seemed to him, in looking back, the most derisive evidence of +his limitations; and his remorseful tenderness for her memory was +complicated with a sense of irritation against her for having +given him once for all the measure of his emotional capacity. It +was not often, however, that he thus probed the past. The public, +in taking possession of Mrs. Aubyn, had eased his shoulders of +their burden. There was something fatuous in an attitude of +sentimental apology toward a memory already classic: to reproach +one's self for not having loved Margaret Aubyn was a good deal +like being disturbed by an inability to admire the Venus of Milo. +From her cold niche of fame she looked down ironically enough on +his self-flagellations. . . . It was only when he came on +something that belonged to her that he felt a sudden renewal of +the old feeling, the strange dual impulse that drew him to her +voice but drove him from her hand, so that even now, at sight of +anything she had touched, his heart contracted painfully. It +happened seldom nowadays. Her little presents, one by one, had +disappeared from his rooms, and her letters, kept from some +unacknowledged puerile vanity in the possession of such treasures, +seldom came beneath his hand. . . . + +"Her letters will be of special value--" Her letters! Why, he +must have hundreds of them--enough to fill a volume. Sometimes it +used to seem to him that they came with every post--he used to +avoid looking in his letter-box when he came home to his rooms-- +but her writing seemed to spring out at him as he put his key in +the door--. + +He stood up and strolled into the other room. Hollingsworth, +lounging away from the window, had joined himself to a languidly +convivial group of men to whom, in phrases as halting as though +they struggled to define an ultimate idea, he was expounding the +cursed nuisance of living in a hole with such a damned climate +that one had to get out of it by February, with the contingent +difficulty of there being no place to take one's yacht to in +winter but that other played-out hole, the Riviera. From the +outskirts of this group Glennard wandered to another, where a +voice as different as possible from Hollingsworth's colorless +organ dominated another circle of languid listeners. + +"Come and hear Dinslow talk about his patent: admission free," one +of the men sang out in a tone of mock resignation. + +Dinslow turned to Glennard the confident pugnacity of his smile. +"Give it another six months and it'll be talking about itself," he +declared. "It's pretty nearly articulate now." + +"Can it say papa?" someone else inquired. + +Dinslow's smile broadened. "You'll be deuced glad to say papa to +IT a year from now," he retorted. "It'll be able to support even +you in affluence. Look here, now, just let me explain to you--" + +Glennard moved away impatiently. The men at the club--all but +those who were "in it"--were proverbially "tired" of Dinslow's +patent, and none more so than Glennard, whose knowledge of its +merits made it loom large in the depressing catalogue of lost +opportunities. The relations between the two men had always been +friendly, and Dinslow's urgent offers to "take him in on the +ground floor" had of late intensified Glennard's sense of his own +inability to meet good luck half way. Some of the men who had +paused to listen were already in evening clothes, others on their +way home to dress; and Glennard, with an accustomed twinge of +humiliation, said to himself that if he lingered among them it was +in the miserable hope that one of the number might ask him to +dine. Miss Trent had told him that she was to go to the opera +that evening with her rich aunt; and if he should have the luck to +pick up a dinner-invitation he might join her there without extra +outlay. + +He moved about the room, lingering here and there in a tentative +affectation of interest; but though the men greeted him pleasantly +no one asked him to dine. Doubtless they were all engaged, these +men who could afford to pay for their dinners, who did not have to +hunt for invitations as a beggar rummages for a crust in an ash- +barrel! But no--as Hollingsworth left the lessening circle about +the table an admiring youth called out--"Holly, stop and dine!" + +Hollingsworth turned on him the crude countenance that looked like +the wrong side of a more finished face. "Sorry I can't. I'm in +for a beastly banquet." + +Glennard threw himself into an arm-chair. Why go home in the rain +to dress? It was folly to take a cab to the opera, it was worse +folly to go there at all. His perpetual meetings with Alexa Trent +were as unfair to the girl as they were unnerving to himself. +Since he couldn't marry her, it was time to stand aside and give a +better man the chance--and his thought admitted the ironical +implication that in the terms of expediency the phrase might stand +for Hollingsworth. + + + +II + + +He dined alone and walked home to his rooms in the rain. As he +turned into Fifth Avenue he caught the wet gleam of carriages on +their way to the opera, and he took the first side street, in a +moment of irritation against the petty restrictions that thwarted +every impulse. It was ridiculous to give up the opera, not +because one might possibly be bored there, but because one must +pay for the experiment. + +In his sitting-room, the tacit connivance of the inanimate had +centred the lamp-light on a photograph of Alexa Trent, placed, in +the obligatory silver frame, just where, as memory officiously +reminded him, Margaret Aubyn's picture had long throned in its +stead. Miss Trent's features cruelly justified the usurpation. +She had the kind of beauty that comes of a happy accord of face +and spirit. It is not given to many to have the lips and eyes of +their rarest mood, and some women go through life behind a mask +expressing only their anxiety about the butcher's bill or their +inability to see a joke. With Miss Trent, face and mind had the +same high serious contour. She looked like a throned Justice by +some grave Florentine painter; and it seemed to Glennard that her +most salient attribute, or that at least to which her conduct gave +most consistent expression, was a kind of passionate justice--the +intuitive feminine justness that is so much rarer than a reasoned +impartiality. Circumstances had tragically combined to develop +this instinct into a conscious habit. She had seen more than most +girls of the shabby side of life, of the perpetual tendency of +want to cramp the noblest attitude. Poverty and misfortune had +overhung her childhood and she had none of the pretty delusions +about life that are supposed to be the crowning grace of girlhood. +This very competence, which gave her a touching reasonableness, +made Glennard's situation more difficult than if he had aspired to +a princess bred in the purple. Between them they asked so little-- +they knew so well how to make that little do--but they understood +also, and she especially did not for a moment let him forget, that +without that little the future they dreamed of was impossible. + +The sight of her photograph quickened Glennard's exasperation. He +was sick and ashamed of the part he was playing. He had loved her +now for two years, with the tranquil tenderness that gathers depth +and volume as it nears fulfilment; he knew that she would wait for +him--but the certitude was an added pang. There are times when +the constancy of the woman one cannot marry is almost as trying as +that of the woman one does not want to. + +Glennard turned up his reading-lamp and stirred the fire. He had +a long evening before him and he wanted to crowd out thought with +action. He had brought some papers from his office and he spread +them out on his table and squared himself to the task. . . . + +It must have been an hour later that he found himself +automatically fitting a key into a locked drawer. He had no more +notion than a somnambulist of the mental process that had led up +to this action. He was just dimly aware of having pushed aside +the papers and the heavy calf volumes that a moment before had +bounded his horizon, and of laying in their place, without a trace +of conscious volition, the parcel he had taken from the drawer. + +The letters were tied in packets of thirty or forty. There were a +great many packets. On some of the envelopes the ink was fading; +on others, which bore the English post-mark, it was still fresh. +She had been dead hardly three years, and she had written, at +lengthening intervals, to the last. . . . + +He undid one of the earlier packets--little notes written during +their first acquaintance at Hillbridge. Glennard, on leaving +college, had begun life in his uncle's law office in the old +university town. It was there that, at the house of her father, +Professor Forth, he had first met the young lady then chiefly +distinguished for having, after two years of a conspicuously +unhappy marriage, returned to the protection of the paternal roof. + +Mrs. Aubyn was at that time an eager and somewhat tragic young +woman, of complex mind and undeveloped manners, whom her crude +experience of matrimony had fitted out with a stock of +generalizations that exploded like bombs in the academic air of +Hillbridge. In her choice of a husband she had been fortunate +enough, if the paradox be permitted, to light on one so signally +gifted with the faculty of putting himself in the wrong that her +leaving him had the dignity of a manifesto--made her, as it were, +the spokeswoman of outraged wifehood. In this light she was +cherished by that dominant portion of Hillbridge society which was +least indulgent to conjugal differences, and which found a +proportionate pleasure in being for once able to feast openly on a +dish liberally seasoned with the outrageous. So much did this +endear Mrs. Aubyn to the university ladies that they were disposed +from the first to allow her more latitude of speech and action +than the ill-used wife was generally accorded in Hillbridge, where +misfortune was still regarded as a visitation designed to put +people in their proper place and make them feel the superiority of +their neighbors. The young woman so privileged combined with a +kind of personal shyness an intellectual audacity that was like a +deflected impulse of coquetry: one felt that if she had been +prettier she would have had emotions instead of ideas. She was in +fact even then what she had always remained: a genius capable of +the acutest generalizations, but curiously undiscerning where her +personal susceptibilities were concerned. Her psychology failed +her just where it serves most women and one felt that her brains +would never be a guide to her heart. Of all this, however, +Glennard thought little in the first year of their acquaintance. +He was at an age when all the gifts and graces are but so much +undiscriminated food to the ravening egoism of youth. In seeking +Mrs. Aubyn's company he was prompted by an intuitive taste for the +best as a pledge of his own superiority. The sympathy of the +cleverest woman in Hillbridge was balm to his craving for +distinction: it was public confirmation of his secret sense that +he was cut out for a bigger place. It must not be understood that +Glennard was vain. Vanity contents itself with the coarsest diet; +there is no palate so fastidious as that of self-distrust. To a +youth of Glennard's aspirations the encouragement of a clever +woman stood for the symbol of all success. Later, when he had +begun to feel his way, to gain a foothold, he would not need such +support; but it served to carry him lightly and easily over what +is often a period of insecurity and discouragement. + +It would be unjust, however, to represent his interest in Mrs. +Aubyn as a matter of calculation. It was as instinctive as love, +and it missed being love by just such a hair-breadth deflection +from the line of beauty as had determined the curve of Mrs. +Aubyn's lips. When they met she had just published her first +novel, and Glennard, who afterward had an ambitious man's +impatience of distinguished women, was young enough to be dazzled +by the semi-publicity it gave her. It was the kind of book that +makes elderly ladies lower their voices and call each other "my +dear" when they furtively discuss it; and Glennard exulted in the +superior knowledge of the world that enabled him to take as a +matter of course sentiments over which the university shook its +head. Still more delightful was it to hear Mrs. Aubyn waken the +echoes of academic drawing-rooms with audacities surpassing those +of her printed page. Her intellectual independence gave a touch +of comradeship to their intimacy, prolonging the illusion of +college friendships based on a joyous interchange of heresies. +Mrs. Aubyn and Glennard represented to each other the augur's wink +behind the Hillbridge idol: they walked together in that light of +young omniscience from which fate so curiously excludes one's +elders. + +Husbands who are notoriously inopportune, may even die +inopportunely, and this was the revenge that Mr. Aubyn, some two +years after her return to Hillbridge, took upon his injured wife. +He died precisely at the moment when Glennard was beginning to +criticise her. It was not that she bored him; she did what was +infinitely worse--she made him feel his inferiority. The sense of +mental equality had been gratifying to his raw ambition; but as +his self-knowledge defined itself, his understanding of her also +increased; and if man is at times indirectly flattered by the +moral superiority of woman, her mental ascendency is extenuated by +no such oblique tribute to his powers. The attitude of looking up +is a strain on the muscles; and it was becoming more and more +Glennard's opinion that brains, in a woman, should be merely the +obverse of beauty. To beauty Mrs. Aubyn could lay no claim; and +while she had enough prettiness to exasperate him by her +incapacity to make use of it, she seemed invincibly ignorant of +any of the little artifices whereby women contrive to palliate +their defects and even to turn them into graces. Her dress never +seemed a part of her; all her clothes had an impersonal air, as +though they had belonged to someone else and been borrowed in an +emergency that had somehow become chronic. She was conscious +enough of her deficiencies to try to amend them by rash imitations +of the most approved models; but no woman who does not dress well +intuitively will ever do so by the light of reason, and Mrs. +Aubyn's plagiarisms, to borrow a metaphor of her trade, somehow +never seemed to be incorporated with the text. + +Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her +hair. The fame that came to Mrs. Aubyn with her second book left +Glennard's imagination untouched, or had at most the negative +effect of removing her still farther from the circle of his +contracting sympathies. We are all the sport of time; and fate +had so perversely ordered the chronology of Margaret Aubyn's +romance that when her husband died Glennard felt as though he had +lost a friend. + +It was not in his nature to be needlessly unkind; and though he +was in the impregnable position of the man who has given a woman +no more definable claim on him than that of letting her fancy that +he loves her, he would not for the world have accentuated his +advantage by any betrayal of indifference. During the first year +of her widowhood their friendship dragged on with halting renewals +of sentiment, becoming more and more a banquet of empty dishes +from which the covers were never removed; then Glennard went to +New York to live and exchanged the faded pleasures of intercourse +for the comparative novelty of correspondence. Her letters, oddly +enough, seemed at first to bring her nearer than her presence. +She had adopted, and she successfully maintained, a note as +affectionately impersonal as his own; she wrote ardently of her +work, she questioned him about his, she even bantered him on the +inevitable pretty girl who was certain before long to divert the +current of his confidences. To Glennard, who was almost a +stranger in New York, the sight of Mrs. Aubyn's writing was like a +voice of reassurance in surroundings as yet insufficiently aware +of him. His vanity found a retrospective enjoyment in the +sentiment his heart had rejected, and this factitious emotion +drove him once or twice to Hillbridge, whence, after scenes of +evasive tenderness, he returned dissatisfied with himself and her. +As he made room for himself in New York and peopled the space he +had cleared with the sympathies at the disposal of agreeable and +self-confident young men, it seemed to him natural to infer that +Mrs. Aubyn had refurnished in the same manner the void he was not +unwilling his departure should have left. But in the dissolution +of sentimental partnerships it is seldom that both associates are +able to withdraw their funds at the same time; and Glennard +gradually learned that he stood for the venture on which Mrs. +Aubyn had irretrievably staked her all. It was not the kind of +figure he cared to cut. He had no fancy for leaving havoc in his +wake and would have preferred to sow a quick growth of oblivion in +the spaces wasted by his unconsidered inroads; but if he supplied +the seed it was clearly Mrs. Aubyn's business to see to the +raising of the crop. Her attitude seemed indeed to throw his own +reasonableness into distincter relief: so that they might have +stood for thrift and improvidence in an allegory of the +affections. + +It was not that Mrs. Aubyn permitted herself to be a pensioner on +his bounty. He knew she had no wish to keep herself alive on the +small change of sentiment; she simply fed on her own funded +passion, and the luxuries it allowed her made him, even then, +dimly aware that she had the secret of an inexhaustible alchemy. + +Their relations remained thus negatively tender till she suddenly +wrote him of her decision to go abroad to live. Her father had +died, she had no near ties in Hillbridge, and London offered more +scope than New York to her expanding personality. She was already +famous and her laurels were yet unharvested. + +For a moment the news roused Glennard to a jealous sense of lost +opportunities. He wanted, at any rate, to reassert his power +before she made the final effort of escape. They had not met for +over a year, but of course he could not let her sail without +seeing her. She came to New York the day before her departure, +and they spent its last hours together. Glennard had planned no +course of action--he simply meant to let himself drift. They both +drifted, for a long time, down the languid current of +reminiscence; she seemed to sit passive, letting him push his way +back through the overgrown channels of the past. At length she +reminded him that they must bring their explorations to an end. +He rose to leave, and stood looking at her with the same +uncertainty in his heart. He was tired of her already--he was +always tired of her--yet he was not sure that he wanted her to go. + +"I may never see you again," he said, as though confidently +appealing to her compassion. + +Her look enveloped him. "And I shall see you always--always!" + +"Why go then--?" escaped him. + +"To be nearer you," she answered; and the words dismissed him like +a closing door. + +The door was never to reopen; but through its narrow crack +Glennard, as the years went on, became more and more conscious of +an inextinguishable light directing its small ray toward the past +which consumed so little of his own commemorative oil. The +reproach was taken from this thought by Mrs. Aubyn's gradual +translation into terms of universality. In becoming a personage +she so naturally ceased to be a person that Glennard could almost +look back to his explorations of her spirit as on a visit to some +famous shrine, immortalized, but in a sense desecrated, by popular +veneration. + +Her letters, from London, continued to come with the same tender +punctuality; but the altered conditions of her life, the vistas of +new relationships disclosed by every phrase, made her +communications as impersonal as a piece of journalism. It was as +though the state, the world, indeed, had taken her off his hands, +assuming the maintenance of a temperament that had long exhausted +his slender store of reciprocity. + +In the retrospective light shed by the letters he was blinded to +their specific meaning. He was not a man who concerned himself +with literature, and they had been to him, at first, simply the +extension of her brilliant talk, later the dreaded vehicle of a +tragic importunity. He knew, of course, that they were wonderful; +that, unlike the authors who give their essence to the public and +keep only a dry rind for their friends, Mrs. Aubyn had stored of +her rarest vintage for this hidden sacrament of tenderness. +Sometimes, indeed, he had been oppressed, humiliated almost, by +the multiplicity of her allusions, the wide scope of her +interests, her persistence in forcing her superabundance of +thought and emotion into the shallow receptacle of his sympathy; +but he had never thought of the letters objectively, as the +production of a distinguished woman; had never measured the +literary significance of her oppressive prodigality. He was +almost frightened now at the wealth in his hands; the obligation +of her love had never weighed on him like this gift of her +imagination: it was as though he had accepted from her something +to which even a reciprocal tenderness could not have justified his +claim. + +He sat a long time staring at the scattered pages on his desk; and +in the sudden realization of what they meant he could almost fancy +some alchemistic process changing them to gold as he stared. He +had the sense of not being alone in the room, of the presence of +another self observing from without the stirring of subconscious +impulses that sent flushes of humiliation to his forehead. At +length he stood up, and with the gesture of a man who wishes to +give outward expression to his purpose--to establish, as it were, +a moral alibi--swept the letters into a heap and carried them +toward the grate. But it would have taken too long to burn all +the packets. He turned back to the table and one by one fitted +the pages into their envelopes; then he tied up the letters and +put them back into the locked drawer. + + + +III + + +It was one of the laws of Glennard's intercourse with Miss Trent +that he always went to see her the day after he had resolved to +give her up. There was a special charm about the moments thus +snatched from the jaws of renunciation; and his sense of their +significance was on this occasion so keen that he hardly noticed +the added gravity of her welcome. + +His feeling for her had become so vital a part of him that her +nearness had the quality of imperceptibly readjusting his point of +view, so that the jumbled phenomena of experience fell at once +into a rational perspective. In this redistribution of values the +sombre retrospect of the previous evening shrank to a mere cloud +on the edge of consciousness. Perhaps the only service an unloved +woman can render the man she loves is to enhance and prolong his +illusions about her rival. It was the fate of Margaret Aubyn's +memory to serve as a foil to Miss Trent's presence, and never had +the poor lady thrown her successor into more vivid relief. + +Miss Trent had the charm of still waters that are felt to be +renewed by rapid currents. Her attention spread a tranquil +surface to the demonstrations of others, and it was only in days +of storm that one felt the pressure of the tides. This +inscrutable composure was perhaps her chief grace in Glennard's +eyes. Reserve, in some natures, implies merely the locking of +empty rooms or the dissimulation of awkward encumbrances; but Miss +Trent's reticence was to Glennard like the closed door to the +sanctuary, and his certainty of divining the hidden treasure made +him content to remain outside in the happy expectancy of the +neophyte. + +"You didn't come to the opera last night," she began, in the tone +that seemed always rather to record a fact than to offer a +reflection on it. + +He answered with a discouraged gesture. "What was the use? We +couldn't have talked." + +"Not as well as here," she assented; adding, after a meditative +pause, "As you didn't come I talked to Aunt Virginia instead." + +"Ah!" he returned, the fact being hardly striking enough to detach +him from the contemplation of her hands, which had fallen, as was +their wont, into an attitude full of plastic possibilities. One +felt them to be hands that, moving only to some purpose, were +capable of intervals of serene inaction. + +"We had a long talk," Miss Trent went on; and she waited again +before adding, with the increased absence of stress that marked +her graver communications, "Aunt Virginia wants me to go abroad +with her." + +Glennard looked up with a start. "Abroad? When?" + +"Now--next month. To be gone two years." + +He permitted himself a movement of tender derision. "Does she +really? Well, I want you to go abroad with ME--for any number of +years. Which offer do you accept?" + +"Only one of them seems to require immediate consideration," she +returned, with a smile. + +Glennard looked at her again. "You're not thinking of it?" + +Her gaze dropped and she unclasped her hands. Her movements were +so rare that they might have been said to italicize her words. +"Aunt Virginia talked to me very seriously. It will be a great +relief to mother and the others to have me provided for in that +way for two years. I must think of that, you know." She glanced +down at her gown which, under a renovated surface, dated back to +the first days of Glennard's wooing. "I try not to cost much--but +I do." + +"Good Lord!" Glennard groaned. + +They sat silent till at length she gently took up the argument. +"As the eldest, you know, I'm bound to consider these things. +Women are such a burden. Jim does what he can for mother, but +with his own children to provide for it isn't very much. You see, +we're all poor together." + +"Your aunt isn't. She might help your mother." + +"She does--in her own way." + +"Exactly--that's the rich relation all over! You may be miserable +in any way you like, but if you're to be happy you've got to be so +in her way--and in her old gowns." + +"I could be very happy in Aunt Virginia's old gowns," Miss Trent +interposed. + +"Abroad, you mean?" + +"I mean wherever I felt that I was helping. And my going abroad +will help." + +"Of course--I see that. And I see your considerateness in putting +its advantages negatively." + +"Negatively?" + +"In dwelling simply on what the going will take you from, not on +what it will bring you to. It means a lot to a woman, of course, +to get away from a life like this." He summed up in a disparaging +glance the background of indigent furniture. "The question is how +you'll like coming back to it." + +She seemed to accept the full consequences of his thought. "I +only know I don't like leaving it." + +He flung back sombrely, "You don't even put it conditionally +then?" + +Her gaze deepened. "On what?" + +He stood up and walked across the room. Then he came back and +paused before her. "On the alternative of marrying me." + +The slow color--even her blushes seemed deliberate--rose to her +lower lids; her lips stirred, but the words resolved themselves +into a smile and she waited. + +He took another turn, with the thwarted step of the man whose +nervous exasperation escapes through his muscles. + +"And to think that in fifteen years I shall have a big practice!" + +Her eyes triumphed for him. "In less!" + +"The cursed irony of it! What do I care for the man I shall be +then? It's slaving one's life away for a stranger!" He took her +hands abruptly. "You'll go to Cannes, I suppose, or Monte Carlo? +I heard Hollingsworth say to-day that he meant to take his yacht +over to the Mediterranean--" + +She released herself. "If you think that--" + +"I don't. I almost wish I did. It would be easier, I mean." He +broke off incoherently. "I believe your Aunt Virginia does, +though. She somehow connotes Hollingsworth and the +Mediterranean." He caught her hands again. "Alexa--if we could +manage a little hole somewhere out of town?" + +"Could we?" she sighed, half yielding. + +"In one of those places where they make jokes about the +mosquitoes," he pressed her. "Could you get on with one servant?" + +"Could you get on without varnished boots?" + +"Promise me you won't go, then!" + +"What are you thinking of, Stephen?" + +"I don't know," he stammered, the question giving unexpected form +to his intention. "It's all in the air yet, of course; but I +picked up a tip the other day--" + +"You're not speculating?" she cried, with a kind of superstitious +terror. + +"Lord, no. This is a sure thing--I almost wish it wasn't; I mean +if I can work it--" He had a sudden vision of the +comprehensiveness of the temptation. If only he had been less +sure of Dinslow! His assurance gave the situation the base +element of safety. + +"I don't understand you," she faltered. + +"Trust me, instead!" he adjured her, with sudden energy; and +turning on her abruptly, "If you go, you know, you go free," he +concluded. + +She drew back, paling a little. "Why do you make it harder for +me?" + +"To make it easier for myself," he retorted. + + + +IV + + +Glennard, the next afternoon, leaving his office earlier than +usual, turned, on his way home, into one of the public libraries. + +He had the place to himself at that closing hour, and the +librarian was able to give an undivided attention to his tentative +request for letters--collections of letters. The librarian +suggested Walpole. + +"I meant women--women's letters." + +The librarian proffered Hannah More and Miss Martineau. + +Glennard cursed his own inarticulateness. "I mean letters to--to +some one person--a man; their husband--or--" + +"Ah," said the inspired librarian, "Eloise and Abailard." + +"Well--something a little nearer, perhaps," said Glennard, with +lightness. "Didn't Merimee--" + +"The lady's letters, in that case, were not published." + +"Of course not," said Glennard, vexed at his blunder. + +"There are George Sand's letters to Flaubert." + +"Ah!" Glennard hesitated. "Was she--were they--?" He chafed at +his own ignorance of the sentimental by-paths of literature. + +"If you want love-letters, perhaps some of the French eighteenth +century correspondences might suit you better--Mlle. Aisse or +Madame de Sabran--" + +But Glennard insisted. "I want something modern--English or +American. I want to look something up," he lamely concluded. + +The librarian could only suggest George Eliot. + +"Well, give me some of the French things, then--and I'll have +Merimee's letters. It was the woman who published them, wasn't +it?" + +He caught up his armful, transferring it, on the doorstep, to a +cab which carried him to his rooms. He dined alone, hurriedly, at +a small restaurant near by, and returned at once to his books. + +Late that night, as he undressed, he wondered what contemptible +impulse had forced from him his last words to Alexa Trent. It was +bad enough to interfere with the girl's chances by hanging about +her to the obvious exclusion of other men, but it was worse to +seem to justify his weakness by dressing up the future in delusive +ambiguities. He saw himself sinking from depth to depth of +sentimental cowardice in his reluctance to renounce his hold on +her; and it filled him with self-disgust to think that the highest +feeling of which he supposed himself capable was blent with such +base elements. + +His awakening was hardly cheered by the sight of her writing. He +tore her note open and took in the few lines--she seldom exceeded +the first page--with the lucidity of apprehension that is the +forerunner of evil. + +"My aunt sails on Saturday and I must give her my answer the day +after to-morrow. Please don't come till then--I want to think the +question over by myself. I know I ought to go. Won't you help me +to be reasonable?" + +It was settled, then. Well, he would be reasonable; he wouldn't +stand in her way; he would let her go. For two years he had been +living some other, luckier man's life; the time had come when he +must drop back into his own. He no longer tried to look ahead, to +grope his way through the endless labyrinth of his material +difficulties; a sense of dull resignation closed in on him like a +fog. + +"Hullo, Glennard!" a voice said, as an electric-car, late that +afternoon, dropped him at an uptown corner. + +He looked up and met the interrogative smile of Barton Flamel, who +stood on the curbstone watching the retreating car with the eye of +a man philosophic enough to remember that it will be followed by +another. + +Glennard felt his usual impulse of pleasure at meeting Flamel; but +it was not in this case curtailed by the reaction of contempt that +habitually succeeded it. Probably even the few men who had known +Flamel since his youth could have given no good reason for the +vague mistrust that he inspired. Some people are judged by their +actions, others by their ideas; and perhaps the shortest way of +defining Flamel is to say that his well-known leniency of view was +vaguely divined to include himself. Simple minds may have +resented the discovery that his opinions were based on his +perceptions; but there was certainly no more definite charge +against him than that implied in the doubt as to how he would +behave in an emergency, and his company was looked upon as one of +those mildly unwholesome dissipations to which the prudent may +occasionally yield. It now offered itself to Glennard as an easy +escape from the obsession of moral problems, which somehow could +no more be worn in Flamel's presence than a surplice in the +street. + +"Where are you going? To the club?" Flamel asked; adding, as the +younger man assented, "Why not come to my studio instead? You'll +see one bore instead of twenty." + +The apartment which Flamel described as his studio showed, as its +one claim to the designation, a perennially empty easel; the rest +of its space being filled with the evidences of a comprehensive +dilettanteism. Against this background, which seemed the visible +expression of its owner's intellectual tolerance, rows of fine +books detached themselves with a prominence, showing them to be +Flamel's chief care. + +Glennard glanced with the eye of untrained curiosity at the lines +of warm-toned morocco, while his host busied himself with the +uncorking of Apollinaris. + +"You've got a splendid lot of books," he said. + +"They're fairly decent," the other assented, in the curt tone of +the collector who will not talk of his passion for fear of talking +of nothing else; then, as Glennard, his hands in his pockets, +began to stroll perfunctorily down the long line of bookcases-- +"Some men," Flamel irresistibly added, "think of books merely as +tools, others as tooling. I'm between the two; there are days +when I use them as scenery, other days when I want them as +society; so that, as you see, my library represents a makeshift +compromise between looks and brains, and the collectors look down +on me almost as much as the students." + +Glennard, without answering, was mechanically taking one book +after another from the shelves. His hands slipped curiously over +the smooth covers and the noiseless subsidence of opening pages. +Suddenly he came on a thin volume of faded manuscript. + +"What's this?" he asked, with a listless sense of wonder. + +"Ah, you're at my manuscript shelf. I've been going in for that +sort of thing lately." Flamel came up and looked over his +shoulders. "That's a bit of Stendhal--one of the Italian stories-- +and here are some letters of Balzac to Madame Commanville." + +Glennard took the book with sudden eagerness. "Who was Madame +Commanville?" + +"His sister." He was conscious that Flamel was looking at him +with the smile that was like an interrogation point. "I didn't +know you cared for this kind of thing." + +"I don't--at least I've never had the chance. Have you many +collections of letters?" + +"Lord, no--very few. I'm just beginning, and most of the +interesting ones are out of my reach. Here's a queer little +collection, though--the rarest thing I've got--half a dozen of +Shelley's letters to Harriet Westbrook. I had a devil of a time +getting them--a lot of collectors were after them." + +Glennard, taking the volume from his hand, glanced with a kind of +repugnance at the interleaving of yellow cris-crossed sheets. +"She was the one who drowned herself, wasn't she?" + +Flamel nodded. "I suppose that little episode adds about fifty +per cent. to their value," he said, meditatively. + +Glennard laid the book down. He wondered why he had joined +Flamel. He was in no humor to be amused by the older man's talk, +and a recrudescence of personal misery rose about him like an icy +tide. + +"I believe I must take myself off," he said. "I'd forgotten an +engagement." + +He turned to go; but almost at the same moment he was conscious of +a duality of intention wherein his apparent wish to leave revealed +itself as a last effort of the will against the overmastering +desire to stay and unbosom himself to Flamel. + +The older man, as though divining the conflict, laid a detaining +pressure on his arm. + +"Won't the engagement keep? Sit down and try one of these cigars. +I don't often have the luck of seeing you here." + +"I'm rather driven just now," said Glennard, vaguely. He found +himself seated again, and Flamel had pushed to his side a low +stand holding a bottle of Apollinaris and a decanter of cognac. + +Flamel, thrown back in his capacious arm-chair, surveyed him +through a cloud of smoke with the comfortable tolerance of the man +to whom no inconsistencies need be explained. Connivance was +implicit in the air. It was the kind of atmosphere in which the +outrageous loses its edge. Glennard felt a gradual relaxing of +his nerves. + +"I suppose one has to pay a lot for letters like that?" he heard +himself asking, with a glance in the direction of the volume he +had laid aside. + +"Oh, so-do--depends on circumstances." Flamel viewed him +thoughtfully. "Are you thinking of collecting?" + +Glennard laughed. "Lord, no. The other way round." + +"Selling?" + +"Oh, I hardly know. I was thinking of a poor chap--" + +Flamel filled the pause with a nod of interest. + +"A poor chap I used to know--who died--he died last year--and who +left me a lot of letters, letters he thought a great deal of--he +was fond of me and left 'em to me outright, with the idea, I +suppose, that they might benefit me somehow--I don't know--I'm not +much up on such things--" he reached his hand to the tall glass +his host had filled. + +"A collection of autograph letters, eh? Any big names?" + +"Oh, only one name. They're all letters written to him--by one +person, you understand; a woman, in fact--" + +"Oh, a woman," said Flamel, negligently. + +Glennard was nettled by his obvious loss of interest. "I rather +think they'd attract a good deal of notice if they were +published." + +Flamel still looked uninterested. "Love-letters, I suppose?" + +"Oh, just--the letters a woman would write to a man she knew well. +They were tremendous friends, he and she." + +"And she wrote a clever letter?" + +"Clever? It was Margaret Aubyn." + +A great silence filled the room. It seemed to Glennard that the +words had burst from him as blood gushes from a wound. + +"Great Scott!" said Flamel, sitting up. "A collection of Margaret +Aubyn's letters? Did you say YOU had them?" + +"They were left me--by my friend." + +"I see. Was he--well, no matter. You're to be congratulated, at +any rate. What are you going to do with them?" + +Glennard stood up with a sense of weariness in all his bones. +"Oh, I don't know. I haven't thought much about it. I just +happened to see that some fellow was writing her life--" + +"Joslin; yes. You didn't think of giving them to him?" + +Glennard had lounged across the room and stood staring up at a +bronze Bacchus who drooped his garlanded head above the pediment +of an Italian cabinet. "What ought I to do? You're just the +fellow to advise me." He felt the blood in his cheek as he spoke. + +Flamel sat with meditative eye. "What do you WANT to do with +them?" he asked. + +"I want to publish them," said Glennard, swinging round with +sudden energy--"If I can--" + +"If you can? They're yours, you say?" + +"They're mine fast enough. There's no one to prevent--I mean +there are no restrictions--" he was arrested by the sense that +these accumulated proofs of impunity might precisely stand as the +strongest check on his action. + +"And Mrs. Aubyn had no family, I believe?" + +"No." + +"Then I don't see who's to interfere," said Flamel, studying his +cigar-tip. + +Glennard had turned his unseeing stare on an ecstatic Saint +Catherine framed in tarnished gilding. + +"It's just this way," he began again, with an effort. "When +letters are as personal as--as these of my friend's. . . . Well, +I don't mind telling you that the cash would make a heap of +difference to me; such a lot that it rather obscures my judgment-- +the fact is if I could lay my hand on a few thousands now I could +get into a big thing, and without appreciable risk; and I'd like +to know whether you think I'd be justified--under the +circumstances. . . ." He paused, with a dry throat. It seemed to +him at the moment that it would be impossible for him ever to sink +lower in his own estimation. He was in truth less ashamed of +weighing the temptation than of submitting his scruples to a man +like Flamel, and affecting to appeal to sentiments of delicacy on +the absence of which he had consciously reckoned. But he had +reached a point where each word seemed to compel another, as each +wave in a stream is forced forward by the pressure behind it; and +before Flamel could speak he had faltered out--"You don't think +people could say . . . could criticise the man. . . ." + +"But the man's dead, isn't he?" + +"He's dead--yes; but can I assume the responsibility without--" + +Flamel hesitated; and almost immediately Glennard's scruples gave +way to irritation. If at this hour Flamel were to affect an +inopportune reluctance--! + +The older man's answer reassured him. "Why need you assume any +responsibility? Your name won't appear, of course; and as to your +friend's, I don't see why his should, either. He wasn't a +celebrity himself, I suppose?" + +"No, no." + +"Then the letters can be addressed to Mr. Blank. Doesn't that +make it all right?" + +Glennard's hesitation revived. "For the public, yes. But I don't +see that it alters the case for me. The question is, ought I to +publish them at all?" + +"Of course you ought to." Flamel spoke with invigorating +emphasis. "I doubt if you'd be justified in keeping them back. +Anything of Margaret Aubyn's is more or less public property by +this time. She's too great for any one of us. I was only +wondering how you could use them to the best advantage--to +yourself, I mean. How many are there?" + +"Oh, a lot; perhaps a hundred--I haven't counted. There may be +more. . . ." + +"Gad! What a haul! When were they written?" + +"I don't know--that is--they corresponded for years. What's the +odds?" He moved toward his hat with a vague impulse of flight. + +"It all counts," said Flamel, imperturbably. "A long +correspondence--one, I mean, that covers a great deal of time--is +obviously worth more than if the same number of letters had been +written within a year. At any rate, you won't give them to +Joslin? They'd fill a book, wouldn't they?" + +"I suppose so. I don't know how much it takes to fill a book." + +"Not love-letters, you say?" + +"Why?" flashed from Glennard. + +"Oh, nothing--only the big public is sentimental, and if they +WERE--why, you could get any money for Margaret Aubyn's love- +letters." + +Glennard was silent. + +"Are the letters interesting in themselves? I mean apart from the +association with her name?" + +"I'm no judge." Glennard took up his hat and thrust himself into +his overcoat. "I dare say I sha'n't do anything about it. And, +Flamel--you won't mention this to anyone?" + +"Lord, no. Well, I congratulate you. You've got a big thing." +Flamel was smiling at him from the hearth. + +Glennard, on the threshold, forced a response to the smile, while +he questioned with loitering indifference--"Financially, eh?" + +"Rather; I should say so." + +Glennard's hand lingered on the knob. "How much--should you say? +You know about such things." + +"Oh, I should have to see the letters; but I should say--well, if +you've got enough to fill a book and they're fairly readable, and +the book is brought out at the right time--say ten thousand down +from the publisher, and possibly one or two more in royalties. If +you got the publishers bidding against each other you might do +even better; but of course I'm talking in the dark." + +"Of course," said Glennard, with sudden dizziness. His hand had +slipped from the knob and he stood staring down at the exotic +spirals of the Persian rug beneath his feet. + +"I'd have to see the letters," Flamel repeated. + +"Of course--you'd have to see them. . . ." Glennard stammered; +and, without turning, he flung over his shoulder an inarticulate +"Good-by. . . ." + + + +V + + +The little house, as Glennard strolled up to it between the trees, +seemed no more than a gay tent pitched against the sunshine. It +had the crispness of a freshly starched summer gown, and the +geraniums on the veranda bloomed as simultaneously as the flowers +in a bonnet. The garden was prospering absurdly. Seed they had +sown at random--amid laughing counter-charges of incompetence--had +shot up in fragrant defiance of their blunders. He smiled to see +the clematis unfolding its punctual wings about the porch. The +tiny lawn was smooth as a shaven cheek, and a crimson rambler +mounted to the nursery-window of a baby who never cried. A breeze +shook the awning above the tea-table, and his wife, as he drew +near, could be seen bending above a kettle that was just about to +boil. So vividly did the whole scene suggest the painted bliss of +a stage setting, that it would have been hardly surprising to see +her step forward among the flowers and trill out her virtuous +happiness from the veranda-rail. + +The stale heat of the long day in town, the dusty promiscuity of +the suburban train were now but the requisite foil to an evening +of scented breezes and tranquil talk. They had been married more +than a year, and each home-coming still reflected the freshness of +their first day together. If, indeed, their happiness had a flaw, +it was in resembling too closely the bright impermanence of their +surroundings. Their love as yet was but the gay tent of holiday- +makers. + +His wife looked up with a smile. The country life suited her, and +her beauty had gained depth from a stillness in which certain +faces might have grown opaque. + +"Are you very tired?" she asked, pouring his tea. + +"Just enough to enjoy this." He rose from the chair in which he +had thrown himself and bent over the tray for his cream. "You've +had a visitor?" he commented, noticing a half-empty cup beside her +own. + +"Only Mr. Flamel," she said, indifferently. + +"Flamel? Again?" + +She answered without show of surprise. "He left just now. His +yacht is down at Laurel Bay and he borrowed a trap of the Dreshams +to drive over here." + +Glennard made no comment, and she went on, leaning her head back +against the cushions of her bamboo-seat, "He wants us to go for a +sail with him next Sunday." + +Glennard meditatively stirred his tea. He was trying to think of +the most natural and unartificial thing to say, and his voice +seemed to come from the outside, as though he were speaking behind +a marionette. "Do you want to?" + +"Just as you please," she said, compliantly. No affectation of +indifference could have been as baffling as her compliance. +Glennard, of late, was beginning to feel that the surface which, a +year ago, he had taken for a sheet of clear glass, might, after +all, be a mirror reflecting merely his own conception of what lay +behind it. + +"Do you like Flamel?" he suddenly asked; to which, still engaged +with her tea, she returned the feminine answer--"I thought you +did." + +"I do, of course," he agreed, vexed at his own incorrigible +tendency to magnify Flamel's importance by hovering about the +topic. "A sail would be rather jolly; let's go." + +She made no reply and he drew forth the rolled-up evening papers +which he had thrust into his pocket on leaving the train. As he +smoothed them out his own countenance seemed to undergo the same +process. He ran his eye down the list of stocks and Flamel's +importunate personality receded behind the rows of figures pushing +forward into notice like so many bearers of good news. Glennard's +investments were flowering like his garden: the dryest shares +blossomed into dividends, and a golden harvest awaited his sickle. + +He glanced at his wife with the tranquil air of the man who +digests good luck as naturally as the dry ground absorbs a shower. +"Things are looking uncommonly well. I believe we shall be able +to go to town for two or three months next winter if we can find +something cheap." + +She smiled luxuriously: it was pleasant to be able to say, with an +air of balancing relative advantages, "Really, on the baby's +account I shall be almost sorry; but if we do go, there's Kate +Erskine's house . . . she'll let us have it for almost nothing. . . ." + +"Well, write her about it," he recommended, his eyes travelling on +in search of the weather report. He had turned to the wrong page; +and suddenly a line of black characters leapt out at him as from +an ambush. + +"'Margaret Aubyn's Letters.' Two volumes. Out to-day. First +edition of five thousand sold out before leaving the press. +Second edition ready next week. THE BOOK OF THE YEAR. . . ." + +He looked up stupidly. His wife still sat with her head thrown +back, her pure profile detached against the cushions. She was +smiling a little over the prospect his last words had opened. +Behind her head shivers of sun and shade ran across the striped +awning. A row of maples and a privet hedge hid their neighbor's +gables, giving them undivided possession of their leafy half-acre; +and life, a moment before, had been like their plot of ground, +shut off, hedged in from importunities, impenetrably his and hers. +Now it seemed to him that every maple-leaf, every privet-bud, was +a relentless human gaze, pressing close upon their privacy. It +was as though they sat in a brightly lit room, uncurtained from a +darkness full of hostile watchers. . . . His wife still smiled; +and her unconsciousness of danger seemed, in some horrible way, to +put her beyond the reach of rescue. . . . + +He had not known that it would be like this. After the first +odious weeks, spent in preparing the letters for publication, in +submitting them to Flamel, and in negotiating with the publishers, +the transaction had dropped out of his consciousness into that +unvisited limbo to which we relegate the deeds we would rather not +have done but have no notion of undoing. From the moment he had +obtained Miss Trent's promise not to sail with her aunt he had +tried to imagine himself irrevocably committed. After that, he +argued, his first duty was to her--she had become his conscience. +The sum obtained from the publishers by Flamel's adroit +manipulations and opportunely transferred to Dinslow's successful +venture, already yielded a return which, combined with Glennard's +professional earnings, took the edge of compulsion from their way +of living, making it appear the expression of a graceful +preference for simplicity. It was the mitigated poverty which can +subscribe to a review or two and have a few flowers on the dinner- +table. And already in a small way Glennard was beginning to feel +the magnetic quality of prosperity. Clients who had passed his +door in the hungry days sought it out now that it bore the name of +a successful man. It was understood that a small inheritance, +cleverly invested, was the source of his fortune; and there was a +feeling that a man who could do so well for himself was likely to +know how to turn over other people's money. + +But it was in the more intimate reward of his wife's happiness +that Glennard tasted the full flavor of success. Coming out of +conditions so narrow that those he offered her seemed spacious, +she fitted into her new life without any of those manifest efforts +at adjustment that are as sore to a husband's pride as the +critical rearrangement of the bridal furniture. She had given +him, instead, the delicate pleasure of watching her expand like a +sea-creature restored to its element, stretching out the atrophied +tentacles of girlish vanity and enjoyment to the rising tide of +opportunity. And somehow--in the windowless inner cell of his +consciousness where self-criticism cowered--Glennard's course +seemed justified by its merely material success. How could such a +crop of innocent blessedness have sprung from tainted soil? + + + +Now he had the injured sense of a man entrapped into a +disadvantageous bargain. He had not known it would be like this; +and a dull anger gathered at his heart. Anger against whom? +Against his wife, for not knowing what he suffered? Against +Flamel, for being the unconscious instrument of his wrong-doing? +Or against that mute memory to which his own act had suddenly +given a voice of accusation? Yes, that was it; and his punishment +henceforth would be the presence, the unescapable presence, of the +woman he had so persistently evaded. She would always be there +now. It was as though he had married her instead of the other. +It was what she had always wanted--to be with him--and she had +gained her point at last. . . . + +He sprang up, as though in an impulse of flight. . . . The sudden +movement lifted his wife's lids, and she asked, in the incurious +voice of the woman whose life is enclosed in a magic circle of +prosperity--"Any news?" + +"No--none--" he said, roused to a sense of immediate peril. The +papers lay scattered at his feet--what if she were to see them? +He stretched his arm to gather them up, but his next thought +showed him the futility of such concealment. The same +advertisement would appear every day, for weeks to come, in every +newspaper; how could he prevent her seeing it? He could not +always be hiding the papers from her. . . . Well, and what if she +did see it? It would signify nothing to her, the chances were +that she would never even read the book. . . . As she ceased to +be an element of fear in his calculations the distance between +them seemed to lessen and he took her again, as it were, into the +circle of his conjugal protection. . . . Yet a moment before he +had almost hated her! . . . He laughed aloud at his senseless +terrors. . . . He was off his balance, decidedly. + +"What are you laughing at?" she asked. + +He explained, elaborately, that he was laughing at the +recollection of an old woman in the train, an old woman with a lot +of bundles, who couldn't find her ticket. . . . But somehow, in +the telling, the humor of the story seemed to evaporate, and he +felt the conventionality of her smile. He glanced at his watch, +"Isn't it time to dress?" + +She rose with serene reluctance. "It's a pity to go in. The +garden looks so lovely." + +They lingered side by side, surveying their domain. There was not +space in it, at this hour, for the shadow of the elm-tree in the +angle of the hedge; it crossed the lawn, cut the flower-border in +two, and ran up the side of the house to the nursery window. She +bent to flick a caterpillar from the honey-suckle; then, as they +turned indoors, "If we mean to go on the yacht next Sunday," she +suggested, "oughtn't you to let Mr. Flamel know?" + +Glennard's exasperation deflected suddenly. "Of course I shall +let him know. You always seem to imply that I'm going to do +something rude to Flamel." + +The words reverberated through her silence; she had a way of thus +leaving one space in which to contemplate one's folly at arm's +length. Glennard turned on his heel and went upstairs. As he +dropped into a chair before his dressing-table he said to himself +that in the last hour he had sounded the depths of his humiliation +and that the lowest dregs of it, the very bottom-slime, was the +hateful necessity of having always, as long as the two men lived, +to be civil to Barton Flamel. + + + +VI + + +THE week in town had been sultry, and the men, in the Sunday +emancipation of white flannel and duck, filled the deck-chairs of +the yacht with their outstretched apathy, following, through a +mist of cigarette-smoke, the flitting inconsequences of the women. +The part was a small one--Flamel had few intimate friends--but +composed of more heterogeneous atoms than the little pools into +which society usually runs. The reaction from the chief episode +of his earlier life had bred in Glennard an uneasy distaste for +any kind of personal saliency. Cleverness was useful in business; +but in society it seemed to him as futile as the sham cascades +formed by a stream that might have been used to drive a mill. He +liked the collective point of view that goes with the civilized +uniformity of dress-clothes, and his wife's attitude implied the +same preference; yet they found themselves slipping more and more +into Flamel's intimacy. Alexa had once or twice said that she +enjoyed meeting clever people; but her enjoyment took the negative +form of a smiling receptivity; and Glennard felt a growing +preference for the kind of people who have their thinking done for +them by the community. + +Still, the deck of the yacht was a pleasant refuge from the heat +on shore, and his wife's profile, serenely projected against the +changing blue, lay on his retina like a cool hand on the nerves. +He had never been more impressed by the kind of absoluteness that +lifted her beauty above the transient effects of other women, +making the most harmonious face seem an accidental collocation of +features. + +The ladies who directly suggested this comparison were of a kind +accustomed to take similar risks with more gratifying results. +Mrs. Armiger had in fact long been the triumphant alternative of +those who couldn't "see" Alexa Glennard's looks; and Mrs. +Touchett's claims to consideration were founded on that +distribution of effects which is the wonder of those who admire a +highly cultivated country. The third lady of the trio which +Glennard's fancy had put to such unflattering uses, was bound by +circumstances to support the claims of the other two. This was +Mrs. Dresham, the wife of the editor of the Radiator. Mrs. +Dresham was a lady who had rescued herself from social obscurity +by assuming the role of her husband's exponent and interpreter; +and Dresham's leisure being devoted to the cultivation of +remarkable women, his wife's attitude committed her to the public +celebration of their remarkableness. For the conceivable tedium +of this duty, Mrs. Dresham was repaid by the fact that there were +people who took HER for a remarkable woman; and who in turn +probably purchased similar distinction with the small change of +her reflected importance. As to the other ladies of the party, +they were simply the wives of some of the men--the kind of women +who expect to be talked to collectively and to have their +questions left unanswered. + +Mrs. Armiger, the latest embodiment of Dresham's instinct for the +remarkable, was an innocent beauty who for years had distilled +dulness among a set of people now self-condemned by their +inability to appreciate her. Under Dresham's tutelage she had +developed into a "thoughtful woman," who read his leaders in the +Radiator and bought the books he recommended. When a new novel +appeared, people wanted to know what Mrs. Armiger thought of it; +and a young gentleman who had made a trip in Touraine had recently +inscribed to her the wide-margined result of his explorations. + +Glennard, leaning back with his head against the rail and a slit +of fugitive blue between his half-closed lids, vaguely wished she +wouldn't spoil the afternoon by making people talk; though he +reduced his annoyance to the minimum by not listening to what was +said, there remained a latent irritation against the general +futility of words. + +His wife's gift of silence seemed to him the most vivid commentary +on the clumsiness of speech as a means of intercourse, and his +eyes had turned to her in renewed appreciation of this finer +faculty when Mrs. Armiger's voice abruptly brought home to him the +underrated potentialities of language. + +"You've read them, of course, Mrs. Glennard?" he heard her ask; +and, in reply to Alexa's vague interrogation--"Why, the 'Aubyn +Letters'--it's the only book people are talking of this week." + +Mrs. Dresham immediately saw her advantage. "You HAVEN'T read +them? How very extraordinary! As Mrs. Armiger says, the book's +in the air; one breathes it in like the influenza." + +Glennard sat motionless, watching his wife. + +"Perhaps it hasn't reached the suburbs yet," she said, with her +unruffled smile. + +"Oh, DO let me come to you, then!" Mrs. Touchett cried; "anything +for a change of air! I'm positively sick of the book and I can't +put it down. Can't you sail us beyond its reach, Mr. Flamel?" + +Flamel shook his head. "Not even with this breeze. Literature +travels faster than steam nowadays. And the worst of it is that +we can't any of us give up reading; it's as insidious as a vice +and as tiresome as a virtue." + +"I believe it IS a vice, almost, to read such a book as the +'Letters,'" said Mrs. Touchett. "It's the woman's soul, +absolutely torn up by the roots--her whole self laid bare; and to +a man who evidently didn't care; who couldn't have cared. I don't +mean to read another line; it's too much like listening at a +keyhole." + +"But if she wanted it published?" + +"Wanted it? How do we know she did?" + +"Why, I heard she'd left the letters to the man--whoever he is-- +with directions that they should be published after his death--" + +"I don't believe it," Mrs. Touchett declared. + +"He's dead then, is he?" one of the men asked. + +"Why, you don't suppose if he were alive he could ever hold up his +head again, with these letters being read by everybody?" Mrs. +Touchett protested. "It must have been horrible enough to know +they'd been written to him; but to publish them! No man could +have done it and no woman could have told him to--" + +"Oh, come, come," Dresham judicially interposed; "after all, +they're not love-letters." + +"No--that's the worst of it; they're unloved letters," Mrs. +Touchett retorted. + +"Then, obviously, she needn't have written them; whereas the man, +poor devil, could hardly help receiving them." + +"Perhaps he counted on the public to save him the trouble of +reading them," said young Hartly, who was in the cynical stage. + +Mrs. Armiger turned her reproachful loveliness to Dresham. "From +the way you defend him, I believe you know who he is." + +Everyone looked at Dresham, and his wife smiled with the superior +air of the woman who is in her husband's professional secrets. +Dresham shrugged his shoulders. + +"What have I said to defend him?" + +"You called him a poor devil--you pitied him." + +"A man who could let Margaret Aubyn write to him in that way? Of +course I pity him." + +"Then you MUST know who he is," cried Mrs. Armiger, with a +triumphant air of penetration. + +Hartly and Flamel laughed and Dresham shook his head. "No one +knows; not even the publishers; so they tell me at least." + +"So they tell you to tell us," Hartly astutely amended; and Mrs. +Armiger added, with the appearance of carrying the argument a +point farther, "But even if HE'S dead and SHE'S dead, somebody +must have given the letters to the publishers." + +"A little bird, probably," said Dresham, smiling indulgently on +her deduction. + +"A little bird of prey then--a vulture, I should say--" another +man interpolated. + +"Oh, I'm not with you there," said Dresham, easily. "Those +letters belonged to the public." + +"How can any letters belong to the public that weren't written to +the public?" Mrs. Touchett interposed. + +"Well, these were, in a sense. A personality as big as Margaret +Aubyn's belongs to the world. Such a mind is part of the general +fund of thought. It's the penalty of greatness--one becomes a +monument historique. Posterity pays the cost of keeping one up, +but on condition that one is always open to the public." + +"I don't see that that exonerates the man who gives up the keys of +the sanctuary, as it were." + +"Who WAS he?" another voice inquired. + +"Who was he? Oh, nobody, I fancy--the letter-box, the slit in the +wall through which the letters passed to posterity. . . ." + +"But she never meant them for posterity!" + +"A woman shouldn't write such letters if she doesn't mean them to +be published. . . ." + +"She shouldn't write them to such a man!" Mrs. Touchett scornfully +corrected. + +"I never keep letters," said Mrs. Armiger, under the obvious +impression that she was contributing a valuable point to the +discussion. + +There was a general laugh, and Flamel, who had not spoken, said, +lazily, "You women are too incurably subjective. I venture to say +that most men would see in those letters merely their immense +literary value, their significance as documents. The personal +side doesn't count where there's so much else." + +"Oh, we all know you haven't any principles," Mrs. Armiger +declared; and Alexa Glennard, lifting an indolent smile, said: "I +shall never write you a love-letter, Mr. Flamel." + +Glennard moved away impatiently. Such talk was as tedious as the +buzzing of gnats. He wondered why his wife had wanted to drag him +on such a senseless expedition. . . . He hated Flamel's crowd-- +and what business had Flamel himself to interfere in that way, +standing up for the publication of the letters as though Glennard +needed his defence? . . . + +Glennard turned his head and saw that Flamel had drawn a seat to +Alexa's elbow and was speaking to her in a low tone. The other +groups had scattered, straying in twos along the deck. It came +over Glennard that he should never again be able to see Flamel +speaking to his wife without the sense of sick mistrust that now +loosened his joints. . . . + + +Alexa, the next morning, over their early breakfast, surprised her +husband by an unexpected request. + +"Will you bring me those letters from town?" she asked. + +"What letters?" he said, putting down his cup. He felt himself as +helplessly vulnerable as a man who is lunged at in the dark. + +"Mrs. Aubyn's. The book they were all talking about yesterday." + +Glennard, carefully measuring his second cup of tea, said, with +deliberation, "I didn't know you cared about that sort of thing." + +She was, in fact, not a great reader, and a new book seldom +reached her till it was, so to speak, on the home stretch; but she +replied, with a gentle tenacity, "I think it would interest me +because I read her life last year." + +"Her life? Where did you get that?" + +"Someone lent it to me when it came out--Mr. Flamel, I think." + +His first impulse was to exclaim, "Why the devil do you borrow +books of Flamel? I can buy you all you want--" but he felt +himself irresistibly forced into an attitude of smiling +compliance. "Flamel always has the newest books going, hasn't he? +You must be careful, by the way, about returning what he lends +you. He's rather crotchety about his library." + +"Oh, I'm always very careful," she said, with a touch of +competence that struck him; and she added, as he caught up his +hat: "Don't forget the letters." + +Why had she asked for the book? Was her sudden wish to see it the +result of some hint of Flamel's? The thought turned Glennard +sick, but he preserved sufficient lucidity to tell himself, a +moment later, that his last hope of self-control would be lost if +he yielded to the temptation of seeing a hidden purpose in +everything she said and did. How much Flamel guessed, he had no +means of divining; nor could he predicate, from what he knew of +the man, to what use his inferences might be put. The very +qualities that had made Flamel a useful adviser made him the most +dangerous of accomplices. Glennard felt himself agrope among +alien forces that his own act had set in motion. . . . + +Alexa was a woman of few requirements; but her wishes, even in +trifles, had a definiteness that distinguished them from the fluid +impulses of her kind. He knew that, having once asked for the +book, she would not forget it; and he put aside, as an ineffectual +expedient, his momentary idea of applying for it at the +circulating library and telling her that all the copies were out. +If the book was to be bought it had better be bought at once. He +left his office earlier than usual and turned in at the first +book-shop on his way to the train. The show-window was stacked +with conspicuously lettered volumes. "Margaret Aubyn" flashed +back at him in endless repetition. He plunged into the shop and +came on a counter where the name reiterated itself on row after +row of bindings. It seemed to have driven the rest of literature +to the back shelves. He caught up a copy, tossing the money to an +astonished clerk who pursued him to the door with the unheeded +offer to wrap up the volumes. + +In the street he was seized with a sudden apprehension. What if +he were to meet Flamel? The thought was intolerable. He called a +cab and drove straight to the station where, amid the palm-leaf +fans of a perspiring crowd, he waited a long half-hour for his +train to start. + +He had thrust a volume in either pocket and in the train he dared +not draw them out; but the detested words leaped at him from the +folds of the evening paper. The air seemed full of Margaret +Aubyn's name. The motion of the train set it dancing up and down +on the page of a magazine that a man in front of him was reading. . . . + +At the door he was told that Mrs. Glennard was still out, and he +went upstairs to his room and dragged the books from his pocket. +They lay on the table before him like live things that he feared +to touch. . . . At length he opened the first volume. A familiar +letter sprang out at him, each word quickened by its glaring garb +of type. The little broken phrases fled across the page like +wounded animals in the open. . . . It was a horrible sight. . . . +A battue of helpless things driven savagely out of shelter. He +had not known it would be like this. . . . + +He understood now that, at the moment of selling the letters, he +had viewed the transaction solely as it affected himself: as an +unfortunate blemish on an otherwise presentable record. He had +scarcely considered the act in relation to Margaret Aubyn; for +death, if it hallows, also makes innocuous. Glennard's God was a +god of the living, of the immediate, the actual, the tangible; all +his days he had lived in the presence of that god, heedless of the +divinities who, below the surface of our deeds and passions, +silently forge the fatal weapons of the dead. + + + +VII + + +A knock roused him and looking up he saw his wife. He met her +glance in silence, and she faltered out, "Are you ill?" + +The words restored his self-possession. "Ill? Of course not. +They told me you were out and I came upstairs." + +The books lay between them on the table; he wondered when she +would see them. She lingered tentatively on the threshold, with +the air of leaving his explanation on his hands. She was not the +kind of woman who could be counted on to fortify an excuse by +appearing to dispute it. + +"Where have you been?" Glennard asked, moving forward so that he +obstructed her vision of the books. + +"I walked over to the Dreshams for tea." + +"I can't think what you see in those people," he said with a +shrug; adding, uncontrollably--"I suppose Flamel was there?" + +"No; he left on the yacht this morning." + +An answer so obstructing to the natural escape of his irritation +left Glennard with no momentary resource but that of strolling +impatiently to the window. As her eyes followed him they lit on +the books. + +"Ah, you've brought them! I'm so glad," she exclaimed. + +He answered over his shoulder, "For a woman who never reads you +make the most astounding exceptions!" + +Her smile was an exasperating concession to the probability that +it had been hot in town or that something had bothered him. + +"Do you mean it's not nice to want to read the book?" she asked. +"It was not nice to publish it, certainly; but after all, I'm not +responsible for that, am I?" She paused, and, as he made no +answer, went on, still smiling, "I do read sometimes, you know; +and I'm very fond of Margaret Aubyn's books. I was reading +'Pomegranate Seed' when we first met. Don't you remember? It was +then you told me all about her." + +Glennard had turned back into the room and stood staring at his +wife. "All about her?" he repeated, and with the words +remembrance came to him. He had found Miss Trent one afternoon +with the novel in her hand, and moved by the lover's fatuous +impulse to associate himself in some way with whatever fills the +mind of the beloved, had broken through his habitual silence about +the past. Rewarded by the consciousness of figuring impressively +in Miss Trent's imagination he had gone on from one anecdote to +another, reviving dormant details of his old Hillbridge life, and +pasturing his vanity on the eagerness with which she received his +reminiscences of a being already clothed in the impersonality of +greatness. + +The incident had left no trace in his mind; but it sprang up now +like an old enemy, the more dangerous for having been forgotten. +The instinct of self-preservation--sometimes the most perilous +that man can exercise--made him awkwardly declare--"Oh, I used to +see her at people's houses, that was all;" and her silence as +usual leaving room for a multiplication of blunders, he added, +with increased indifference, "I simply can't see what you can find +to interest you in such a book." + +She seemed to consider this intently. "You've read it, then?" + +"I glanced at it--I never read such things." + +"Is it true that she didn't wish the letters to be published?" + +Glennard felt the sudden dizziness of the mountaineer on a narrow +ledge, and with it the sense that he was lost if he looked more +than a step ahead. + +"I'm sure I don't know," he said; then, summoning a smile, he +passed his hand through her arm. "I didn't have tea at the +Dreshams, you know; won't you give me some now?" he suggested. + +That evening Glennard, under pretext of work to be done, shut +himself into the small study opening off the drawing-room. As he +gathered up his papers he said to his wife: "You're not going to +sit indoors on such a night as this? I'll join you presently +outside." + +But she had drawn her armchair to the lamp. "I want to look at my +book," she said, taking up the first volume of the "Letters." + +Glennard, with a shrug, withdrew into the study. "I'm going to +shut the door; I want to be quiet," he explained from the +threshold; and she nodded without lifting her eyes from the book. + +He sank into a chair, staring aimlessly at the outspread papers. +How was he to work, while on the other side of the door she sat +with that volume in her hand? The door did not shut her out--he +saw her distinctly, felt her close to him in a contact as painful +as the pressure on a bruise. + +The sensation was part of the general strangeness that made him +feel like a man waking from a long sleep to find himself in an +unknown country among people of alien tongue. We live in our own +souls as in an unmapped region, a few acres of which we have +cleared for our habitation; while of the nature of those nearest +us we know but the boundaries that march with ours. Of the points +in his wife's character not in direct contact with his own, +Glennard now discerned his ignorance; and the baffling sense of +her remoteness was intensified by the discovery that, in one way, +she was closer to him than ever before. As one may live for years +in happy unconsciousness of the possession of a sensitive nerve, +he had lived beside his wife unaware that her individuality had +become a part of the texture of his life, ineradicable as some +growth on a vital organ; and he now felt himself at once incapable +of forecasting her judgment and powerless to evade its effects. + +To escape, the next morning, the confidences of the breakfast- +table, he went to town earlier than usual. His wife, who read +slowly, was given to talking over what she read, and at present +his first object in life was to postpone the inevitable discussion +of the letters. This instinct of protection in the afternoon, on +his way uptown, guided him to the club in search of a man who +might be persuaded to come out to the country to dine. The only +man in the club was Flamel. + +Glennard, as he heard himself almost involuntarily pressing Flamel +to come and dine, felt the full irony of the situation. To use +Flamel as a shield against his wife's scrutiny was only a shade +less humiliating than to reckon on his wife as a defence against +Flamel. + +He felt a contradictory movement of annoyance at the latter's +ready acceptance, and the two men drove in silence to the station. +As they passed the bookstall in the waiting-room Flamel lingered a +moment and the eyes of both fell on Margaret Aubyn's name, +conspicuously displayed above a counter stacked with the familiar +volumes. + +"We shall be late, you know," Glennard remonstrated, pulling out +his watch. + +"Go ahead," said Flamel, imperturbably. "I want to get something--" + +Glennard turned on his heel and walked down the platform. Flamel +rejoined him with an innocent-looking magazine in his hand; but +Glennard dared not even glance at the cover, lest it should show +the syllables he feared. + +The train was full of people they knew, and they were kept apart +till it dropped them at the little suburban station. As they +strolled up the shaded hill, Glennard talked volubly, pointing out +the improvements in the neighborhood, deploring the threatened +approach of an electric railway, and screening himself by a series +of reflex adjustments from the imminent risk of any allusion to +the "Letters." Flamel suffered his discourse with the bland +inattention that we accord to the affairs of someone else's +suburb, and they reached the shelter of Alexa's tea-table without +a perceptible turn toward the dreaded topic. + +The dinner passed off safely. Flamel, always at his best in +Alexa's presence, gave her the kind of attention which is like a +beaconing light thrown on the speaker's words: his answers seemed +to bring out a latent significance in her phrases, as the sculptor +draws his statue from the block. Glennard, under his wife's +composure, detected a sensibility to this manoeuvre, and the +discovery was like the lightning-flash across a nocturnal +landscape. Thus far these momentary illuminations had served only +to reveal the strangeness of the intervening country: each fresh +observation seemed to increase the sum-total of his ignorance. +Her simplicity of outline was more puzzling than a complex +surface. One may conceivably work one's way through a labyrinth; +but Alexa's candor was like a snow-covered plain where, the road +once lost, there are no landmarks to travel by. + +Dinner over, they returned to the veranda, where a moon, rising +behind the old elm, was combining with that complaisant tree a +romantic enlargement of their borders. Glennard had forgotten the +cigars. He went to his study to fetch them, and in passing +through the drawing-room he saw the second volume of the "Letters" +lying open on his wife's table. He picked up the book and looked +at the date of the letter she had been reading. It was one of the +last . . . he knew the few lines by heart. He dropped the book +and leaned against the wall. Why had he included that one among +the others? Or was it possible that now they would all seem like +that . . .? + +Alexa's voice came suddenly out of the dusk. "May Touchett was +right--it IS like listening at a key-hole. I wish I hadn't read +it!" + +Flamel returned, in the leisurely tone of the man whose phrases +are punctuated by a cigarette, "It seems so to us, perhaps; but to +another generation the book will be a classic." + +"Then it ought not to have been published till it had become a +classic. It's horrible, it's degrading almost, to read the +secrets of a woman one might have known." She added, in a lower +tone, "Stephen DID know her--" + +"Did he?" came from Flamel. + +"He knew her very well, at Hillbridge, years ago. The book has +made him feel dreadfully . . . he wouldn't read it . . . he didn't +want me to read it. I didn't understand at first, but now I can +see how horribly disloyal it must seem to him. It's so much worse +to surprise a friend's secrets than a stranger's." + +"Oh, Glennard's such a sensitive chap," Flamel said, easily; and +Alexa almost rebukingly rejoined, "If you'd known her I'm sure +you'd feel as he does. . . ." + +Glennard stood motionless, overcome by the singular infelicity +with which he had contrived to put Flamel in possession of the two +points most damaging to his case: the fact that he had been a +friend of Margaret Aubyn's, and that he had concealed from Alexa +his share in the publication of the letters. To a man of less +than Flamel's astuteness it must now be clear to whom the letters +were addressed; and the possibility once suggested, nothing could +be easier than to confirm it by discreet research. An impulse of +self-accusal drove Glennard to the window. Why not anticipate +betrayal by telling his wife the truth in Flamel's presence? If +the man had a drop of decent feeling in him, such a course would +be the surest means of securing his silence; and above all, it +would rid Glennard of the necessity of defending himself against +the perpetual criticism of his wife's belief in him. . . . + +The impulse was strong enough to carry him to the window; but +there a reaction of defiance set in. What had he done, after all, +to need defence and explanation? Both Dresham and Flamel had, in +his hearing, declared the publication of the letters to be not +only justifiable but obligatory; and if the disinterestedness of +Flamel's verdict might be questioned, Dresham's at least +represented the impartial view of the man of letters. As to +Alexa's words, they were simply the conventional utterance of the +"nice" woman on a question already decided for her by other "nice" +women. She had said the proper thing as mechanically as she would +have put on the appropriate gown or written the correct form of +dinner-invitation. Glennard had small faith in the abstract +judgments of the other sex; he knew that half the women who were +horrified by the publication of Mrs. Aubyn's letters would have +betrayed her secrets without a scruple. + +The sudden lowering of his emotional pitch brought a proportionate +relief. He told himself that now the worst was over and things +would fall into perspective again. His wife and Flamel had turned +to other topics, and coming out on the veranda, he handed the +cigars to Flamel, saying, cheerfully--and yet he could have sworn +they were the last words he meant to utter!--"Look here, old man, +before you go down to Newport you must come out and spend a few +days with us--mustn't he, Alexa?" + + + +VIII + + +Glennard had, perhaps unconsciously, counted on the continuance of +this easier mood. He had always taken pride in a certain +robustness of fibre that enabled him to harden himself against the +inevitable, to convert his failures into the building materials of +success. Though it did not even now occur to him that what he +called the inevitable had hitherto been the alternative he +happened to prefer, he was yet obscurely aware that his present +difficulty was one not to be conjured by any affectation of +indifference. Some griefs build the soul a spacious house--but in +this misery of Glennard's he could not stand upright. It pressed +against him at every turn. He told himself that this was because +there was no escape from the visible evidences of his act. The +"Letters" confronted him everywhere. People who had never opened +a book discussed them with critical reservations; to have read +them had become a social obligation in circles to which literature +never penetrates except in a personal guise. + +Glennard did himself injustice. it was from the unexpected +discovery of his own pettiness that he chiefly suffered. Our +self-esteem is apt to be based on the hypothetical great act we +have never had occasion to perform; and even the most self- +scrutinizing modesty credits itself negatively with a high +standard of conduct. Glennard had never thought himself a hero; +but he had been certain that he was incapable of baseness. We all +like our wrong-doings to have a becoming cut, to be made to order, +as it were; and Glennard found himself suddenly thrust into a garb +of dishonor surely meant for a meaner figure. + +The immediate result of his first weeks of wretchedness was the +resolve to go to town for the winter. He knew that such a course +was just beyond the limit of prudence; but it was easy to allay +the fears of Alexa who, scrupulously vigilant in the management of +the household, preserved the American wife's usual aloofness from +her husband's business cares. Glennard felt that he could not +trust himself to a winter's solitude with her. He had an +unspeakable dread of her learning the truth about the letters, yet +could not be sure of steeling himself against the suicidal impulse +of avowal. His very soul was parched for sympathy; he thirsted +for a voice of pity and comprehension. But would his wife pity? +Would she understand? Again he found himself brought up abruptly +against his incredible ignorance of her nature. The fact that he +knew well enough how she would behave in the ordinary emergencies +of life, that he could count, in such contingencies, on the kind +of high courage and directness he had always divined in her, made +him the more hopeless of her entering into the torturous +psychology of an act that he himself could no longer explain or +understand. It would have been easier had she been more complex, +more feminine--if he could have counted on her imaginative +sympathy or her moral obtuseness--but he was sure of neither. He +was sure of nothing but that, for a time, he must avoid her. +Glennard could not rid himself of the delusion that by and by his +action would cease to make its consequences felt. He would not +have cared to own to himself that he counted on the dulling of his +sensibilities: he preferred to indulge the vague hypothesis that +extraneous circumstances would somehow efface the blot upon his +conscience. In his worst moments of self-abasement he tried to +find solace in the thought that Flamel had sanctioned his course. +Flamel, at the outset, must have guessed to whom the letters were +addressed; yet neither then nor afterward had he hesitated to +advise their publication. This thought drew Glennard to him in +fitful impulses of friendliness, from each of which there was a +sharper reaction of distrust and aversion. When Flamel was not at +the house, he missed the support of his tacit connivance; when he +was there, his presence seemed the assertion of an intolerable +claim. + +Early in the winter the Glennards took possession of the little +house that was to cost them almost nothing. The change brought +Glennard the immediate relief of seeing less of his wife, and of +being protected, in her presence, by the multiplied preoccupations +of town life. Alexa, who could never appear hurried, showed the +smiling abstraction of a pretty woman to whom the social side of +married life has not lost its novelty. Glennard, with the +recklessness of a man fresh from his first financial imprudence, +encouraged her in such little extravagances as her good sense at +first resisted. Since they had come to town, he argued, they +might as well enjoy themselves. He took a sympathetic view of the +necessity of new gowns, he gave her a set of furs at Christmas, +and before the New Year they had agreed on the obligation of +adding a parlour-maid to their small establishment. + +Providence the very next day hastened to justify this measure by +placing on Glennard's breakfast-plate an envelope bearing the name +of the publishers to whom he had sold Mrs. Aubyn's letters. It +happened to be the only letter the early post had brought, and he +glanced across the table at his wife, who had come down before him +and had probably laid the envelope on his plate. She was not the +woman to ask awkward questions, but he felt the conjecture of her +glance, and he was debating whether to affect surprise at the +receipt of the letter, or to pass it off as a business +communication that had strayed to his house, when a check fell +from the envelope. It was the royalty on the first edition of the +letters. His first feeling was one of simple satisfaction. The +money had come with such infernal opportuneness that he could not +help welcoming it. Before long, too, there would be more; he knew +the book was still selling far beyond the publisher's previsions. +He put the check in his pocket and left the room without looking +at his wife. + +On the way to his office the habitual reaction set in. The money +he had received was the first tangible reminder that he was living +on the sale of his self-esteem. The thought of material benefit +had been overshadowed by his sense of the intrinsic baseness of +making the letters known; now he saw what an element of sordidness +it added to the situation and how the fact that he needed the +money, and must use it, pledged him more irrevocably than ever to +the consequences of his act. It seemed to him, in that first hour +of misery, that he had betrayed his friend anew. + +When, that afternoon, he reached home earlier than usual, Alexa's +drawing-room was full of a gayety that overflowed to the stairs. +Flamel, for a wonder, was not there; but Dresham and young Hartly, +grouped about the tea-table, were receiving with resonant mirth a +narrative delivered in the fluttered staccato that made Mrs. +Armiger's conversation like the ejaculations of a startled aviary. + +She paused as Glennard entered, and he had time to notice that his +wife, who was busied about the tea-tray, had not joined in the +laughter of the men. + +"Oh, go on, go on," young Hartly rapturously groaned; and Mrs. +Armiger met Glennard's inquiry with the deprecating cry that +really she didn't see what there was to laugh at. "I'm sure I +feel more like crying. I don't know what I should have done if +Alexa hadn't been home to give me a cup of tea. My nerves are in +shreds--yes, another, dear, please--" and as Glennard looked his +perplexity, she went on, after pondering on the selection of a +second lump of sugar, "Why, I've just come from the reading, you +know--the reading at the Waldorf." + +"I haven't been in town long enough to know anything," said +Glennard, taking the cup his wife handed him. "Who has been +reading what?" + +"That lovely girl from the South--Georgie--Georgie what's her +name--Mrs. Dresham's protegee--unless she's YOURS, Mr. Dresham! +Why, the big ball-room was PACKED, and all the women were crying +like idiots--it was the most harrowing thing I ever heard--" + +"What DID you hear?" Glennard asked; and his wife interposed: +"Won't you have another bit of cake, Julia? Or, Stephen, ring for +some hot toast, please." Her tone betrayed a polite satiety of +the topic under discussion. Glennard turned to the bell, but Mrs. +Armiger pursued him with her lovely amazement. + +"Why, the "Aubyn Letters"--didn't you know about it? The girl +read them so beautifully that it was quite horrible--I should have +fainted if there'd been a man near enough to carry me out." + +Hartly's glee redoubled, and Dresham said, jovially, "How like you +women to raise a shriek over the book and then do all you can to +encourage the blatant publicity of the readings!" + +Mrs. Armiger met him more than half-way on a torrent of self- +accusal. "It WAS horrid; it was disgraceful. I told your wife we +ought all to be ashamed of ourselves for going, and I think Alexa +was quite right to refuse to take any tickets--even if it was for +a charity." + +"Oh," her hostess murmured, indifferently, "with me charity begins +at home. I can't afford emotional luxuries." + +"A charity? A charity?" Hartly exulted. "I hadn't seized the +full beauty of it. Reading poor Margaret Aubyn's love-letters at +the Waldorf before five hundred people for a charity! WHAT +charity, dear Mrs. Armiger?" + +"Why, the Home for Friendless Women--" + +"It was well chosen," Dresham commented; and Hartly buried his +mirth in the sofa-cushions. + +When they were alone Glennard, still holding his untouched cup of +tea, turned to his wife, who sat silently behind the kettle. "Who +asked you to take a ticket for that reading?" + +"I don't know, really--Kate Dresham, I fancy. It was she who got +it up." + +"It's just the sort of damnable vulgarity she's capable of! It's +loathsome--it's monstrous--" + +His wife, without looking up, answered gravely, "I thought so too. +It was for that reason I didn't go. But you must remember that +very few people feel about Mrs. Aubyn as you do--" + +Glennard managed to set down his cup with a steady hand, but the +room swung round with him and he dropped into the nearest chair. +"As I do?" he repeated. + +"I mean that very few people knew her when she lived in New York. +To most of the women who went to the reading she was a mere name, +too remote to have any personality. With me, of course, it was +different--" + +Glennard gave her a startled look. "Different? Why different?" + +"Since you were her friend--" + +"Her friend!" He stood up impatiently. "You speak as if she had +had only one--the most famous woman of her day!" He moved vaguely +about the room, bending down to look at some books on the table. +"I hope," he added, "you didn't give that as a reason, by the +way?" + +"A reason?" + +"For not going. A woman who gives reasons for getting out of +social obligations is sure to make herself unpopular or +ridiculous. + +The words were uncalculated; but in an instant he saw that they +had strangely bridged the distance between his wife and himself. +He felt her close on him, like a panting foe; and her answer was a +flash that showed the hand on the trigger. + +"I seem," she said from the threshold, "to have done both in +giving my reason to you." + + +The fact that they were dining out that evening made it easy for +him to avoid Alexa till she came downstairs in her opera-cloak. +Mrs. Touchett, who was going to the same dinner, had offered to +call for her, and Glennard, refusing a precarious seat between the +ladies' draperies, followed on foot. The evening was +interminable. The reading at the Waldorf, at which all the women +had been present, had revived the discussion of the "Aubyn +Letters" and Glennard, hearing his wife questioned as to her +absence, felt himself miserably wishing that she had gone, rather +than that her staying away should have been remarked. He was +rapidly losing all sense of proportion where the "Letters" were +concerned. He could no longer hear them mentioned without +suspecting a purpose in the allusion; he even yielded himself for +a moment to the extravagance of imagining that Mrs. Dresham, whom +he disliked, had organized the reading in the hope of making him +betray himself--for he was already sure that Dresham had divined +his share in the transaction. + +The attempt to keep a smooth surface on this inner tumult was as +endless and unavailing as efforts made in a nightmare. He lost +all sense of what he was saying to his neighbors and once when he +looked up his wife's glance struck him cold. + +She sat nearly opposite him, at Flamel's side, and it appeared to +Glennard that they had built about themselves one of those airy +barriers of talk behind which two people can say what they please. +While the reading was discussed they were silent. Their silence +seemed to Glennard almost cynical--it stripped the last disguise +from their complicity. A throb of anger rose in him, but suddenly +it fell, and he felt, with a curious sense of relief, that at +bottom he no longer cared whether Flamel had told his wife or not. +The assumption that Flamel knew about the letters had become a +fact to Glennard; and it now seemed to him better that Alexa +should know too. + +He was frightened at first by the discovery of his own +indifference. The last barriers of his will seemed to be breaking +down before a flood of moral lassitude. How could he continue to +play his part, to keep his front to the enemy, with this poison of +indifference stealing through his veins? He tried to brace +himself with the remembrance of his wife's scorn. He had not +forgotten the note on which their conversation had closed. If he +had ever wondered how she would receive the truth he wondered no +longer--she would despise him. But this lent a new insidiousness +to his temptation, since her contempt would be a refuge from his +own. He said to himself that, since he no longer cared for the +consequences, he could at least acquit himself of speaking in +self-defence. What he wanted now was not immunity but +castigation: his wife's indignation might still reconcile him to +himself. Therein lay his one hope of regeneration; her scorn was +the moral antiseptic that he needed, her comprehension the one +balm that could heal him. . . . + +When they left the dinner he was so afraid of speaking that he let +her drive home alone, and went to the club with Flamel. + + + +IX + + +HE rose next morning with the resolve to know what Alexa thought +of him. It was not anchoring in a haven, but lying to in a storm-- +he felt the need of a temporary lull in the turmoil of his +sensations. + +He came home late, for they were dining alone and he knew that +they would have the evening together. When he followed her to the +drawing-room after dinner he thought himself on the point of +speaking; but as she handed him his coffee he said, involuntarily: +"I shall have to carry this off to the study, I've got a lot of +work to-night." + +Alone in the study he cursed his cowardice. What was it that had +withheld him? A certain bright unapproachableness seemed to keep +him at arm's length. She was not the kind of woman whose +compassion could be circumvented; there was no chance of slipping +past the outposts; he would never take her by surprise. Well--why +not face her, then? What he shrank from could be no worse than +what he was enduring. He had pushed back his chair and turned to +go upstairs when a new expedient presented itself. What if, +instead of telling her, he were to let her find out for herself +and watch the effect of the discovery before speaking? In this +way he made over to chance the burden of the revelation. + +The idea had been suggested by the sight of the formula enclosing +the publisher's check. He had deposited the money, but the notice +accompanying it dropped from his note-case as he cleared his table +for work. It was the formula usual in such cases and revealed +clearly enough that he was the recipient of a royalty on Margaret +Aubyn's letters. It would be impossible for Alexa to read it +without understanding at once that the letters had been written to +him and that he had sold them. . . . + +He sat downstairs till he heard her ring for the parlor-maid to +put out the lights; then he went up to the drawing-room with a +bundle of papers in his hand. Alexa was just rising from her seat +and the lamplight fell on the deep roll of hair that overhung her +brow like the eaves of a temple. Her face had often the high +secluded look of a shrine; and it was this touch of awe in her +beauty that now made him feel himself on the brink of sacrilege. + +Lest the feeling should dominate him, he spoke at once. "I've +brought you a piece of work--a lot of old bills and things that I +want you to sort for me. Some are not worth keeping--but you'll +be able to judge of that. There may be a letter or two among +them--nothing of much account, but I don't like to throw away the +whole lot without having them looked over and I haven't time to do +it myself." + +He held out the papers and she took them with a smile that seemed +to recognize in the service he asked the tacit intention of making +amends for the incident of the previous day. + +"Are you sure I shall know which to keep?" + +"Oh, quite sure," he answered, easily--"and besides, none are of +much importance." + +The next morning he invented an excuse for leaving the house +without seeing her, and when he returned, just before dinner, he +found a visitor's hat and stick in the hall. The visitor was +Flamel, who was in the act of taking leave. + +He had risen, but Alexa remained seated; and their attitude gave +the impression of a colloquy that had prolonged itself beyond the +limits of speech. Both turned a surprised eye on Glennard and he +had the sense of walking into a room grown suddenly empty, as +though their thoughts were conspirators dispersed by his approach. +He felt the clutch of his old fear. What if his wife had already +sorted the papers and had told Flamel of her discovery? Well, it +was no news to Flamel that Glennard was in receipt of a royalty on +the "Aubyn Letters." . . . + +A sudden resolve to know the worst made him lift his eyes to his +wife as the door closed on Flamel. But Alexa had risen also, and +bending over her writing-table, with her back to Glennard, was +beginning to speak precipitately. + +"I'm dining out to-night--you don't mind my deserting you? Julia +Armiger sent me word just now that she had an extra ticket for the +last Ambrose concert. She told me to say how sorry she was that +she hadn't two--but I knew YOU wouldn't be sorry!" She ended with +a laugh that had the effect of being a strayed echo of Mrs. +Armiger's; and before Glennard could speak she had added, with her +hand on the door, "Mr. Flamel stayed so late that I've hardly time +to dress. The concert begins ridiculously early, and Julia dines +at half-past seven--" + +Glennard stood alone in the empty room that seemed somehow full of +an ironical consciousness of what was happening. "She hates me," +he murmured. "She hates me. . . ." + + +The next day was Sunday, and Glennard purposely lingered late in +his room. When he came downstairs his wife was already seated at +the breakfast-table. She lifted her usual smile to his entrance +and they took shelter in the nearest topic, like wayfarers +overtaken by a storm. While he listened to her account of the +concert he began to think that, after all, she had not yet sorted +the papers, and that her agitation of the previous day must be +ascribed to another cause, in which perhaps he had but an indirect +concern. He wondered it had never before occurred to him that +Flamel was the kind of man who might very well please a woman at +his own expense, without need of fortuitous assistance. If this +possibility cleared the outlook it did not brighten it. Glennard +merely felt himself left alone with his baseness. + +Alexa left the breakfast-table before him and when he went up to +the drawing-room he found her dressed to go out. + +"Aren't you a little early for church?" he asked. + +She replied that, on the way there, she meant to stop a moment at +her mother's; and while she drew on her gloves, he fumbled among +the knick-knacks on the mantel-piece for a match to light his +cigarette. + +"Well, good-by," she said, turning to go; and from the threshold +she added: "By the way, I've sorted the papers you gave me. Those +that I thought you would like to keep are on your study-table." +She went downstairs and he heard the door close behind her. + +She had sorted the papers--she knew, then--she MUST know--and she +had made no sign! + +Glennard, he hardly knew how, found himself once more in the +study. On the table lay the packet he had given her. It was much +smaller--she had evidently gone over the papers with care, +destroying the greater number. He loosened the elastic band and +spread the remaining envelopes on his desk. The publisher's +notice was among them. + + + +X + + +His wife knew and she made no sign. Glennard found himself in the +case of the seafarer who, closing his eyes at nightfall on a scene +he thinks to put leagues behind him before day, wakes to a port- +hole framing the same patch of shore. From the kind of exaltation +to which his resolve had lifted him he dropped to an unreasoning +apathy. His impulse of confession had acted as a drug to self- +reproach. He had tried to shift a portion of his burden to his +wife's shoulders and now that she had tacitly refused to carry it, +he felt the load too heavy to be taken up again. + +A fortunate interval of hard work brought respite from this phase +of sterile misery. He went West to argue an important case, won +it, and came back to fresh preoccupations. His own affairs were +thriving enough to engross him in the pauses of his professional +work, and for over two months he had little time to look himself +in the face. Not unnaturally--for he was as yet unskilled in the +subtleties of introspection--he mistook his temporary +insensibility for a gradual revival of moral health. + +He told himself that he was recovering his sense of proportion, +getting to see things in their true light; and if he now thought +of his rash appeal to his wife's sympathy it was as an act of +folly from the consequences of which he had been saved by the +providence that watches over madmen. He had little leisure to +observe Alexa; but he concluded that the common-sense momentarily +denied him had counselled her uncritical acceptance of the +inevitable. If such a quality was a poor substitute for the +passionate justness that had once seemed to characterize her, he +accepted the alternative as a part of that general lowering of the +key that seems needful to the maintenance of the matrimonial duet. +What woman ever retained her abstract sense of justice where +another woman was concerned? Possibly the thought that he had +profited by Mrs. Aubyn's tenderness was not wholly disagreeable to +his wife. + +When the pressure of work began to lessen, and he found himself, +in the lengthening afternoons, able to reach home somewhat +earlier, he noticed that the little drawing-room was always full +and that he and his wife seldom had an evening alone together. +When he was tired, as often happened, she went out alone; the idea +of giving up an engagement to remain with him seemed not to occur +to her. She had shown, as a girl, little fondness for society, +nor had she seemed to regret it during the year they had spent in +the country. He reflected, however, that he was sharing the +common lot of husbands, who proverbially mistake the early ardors +of housekeeping for a sign of settled domesticity. Alexa, at any +rate, was refuting his theory as inconsiderately as a seedling +defeats the gardener's expectations. An undefinable change had +come over her. In one sense it was a happy one, since she had +grown, if not handsomer, at least more vivid and expressive; her +beauty had become more communicable: it was as though she had +learned the conscious exercise of intuitive attributes and now +used her effects with the discrimination of an artist skilled in +values. To a dispassionate critic (as Glennard now rated himself) +the art may at times have been a little too obvious. Her attempts +at lightness lacked spontaneity, and she sometimes rasped him by +laughing like Julia Armiger; but he had enough imagination to +perceive that, in respect of the wife's social arts, a husband +necessarily sees the wrong side of the tapestry. + +In this ironical estimate of their relation Glennard found himself +strangely relieved of all concern as to his wife's feelings for +Flamel. From an Olympian pinnacle of indifference he calmly +surveyed their inoffensive antics. It was surprising how his +cheapening of his wife put him at ease with himself. Far as he +and she were from each other they yet had, in a sense, the tacit +nearness of complicity. Yes, they were accomplices; he could no +more be jealous of her than she could despise him. The jealousy +that would once have seemed a blur on her whiteness now appeared +like a tribute to ideals in which he no longer believed. . . . + + +Glennard was little given to exploring the outskirts of +literature. He always skipped the "literary notices" in the +papers and he had small leisure for the intermittent pleasures of +the periodical. He had therefore no notion of the prolonged +reverberations which the "Aubyn Letters" had awakened in the +precincts of criticism. When the book ceased to be talked about +he supposed it had ceased to be read; and this apparent subsidence +of the agitation about it brought the reassuring sense that he had +exaggerated its vitality. The conviction, if it did not ease his +conscience, at least offered him the relative relief of obscurity: +he felt like an offender taken down from the pillory and thrust +into the soothing darkness of a cell. + +But one evening, when Alexa had left him to go to a dance, he +chanced to turn over the magazines on her table, and the copy of +the Horoscope, to which he settled down with his cigar, confronted +him, on its first page, with a portrait of Margaret Aubyn. It was +a reproduction of the photograph that had stood so long on his +desk. The desiccating air of memory had turned her into the mere +abstraction of a woman, and this unexpected evocation seemed to +bring her nearer than she had ever been in life. Was it because +he understood her better? He looked long into her eyes; little +personal traits reached out to him like caresses--the tired droop +of her lids, her quick way of leaning forward as she spoke, the +movements of her long expressive hands. All that was feminine in +her, the quality he had always missed, stole toward him from her +unreproachful gaze; and now that it was too late life had +developed in him the subtler perceptions which could detect it in +even this poor semblance of herself. For a moment he found +consolation in the thought that, at any cost, they had thus been +brought together; then a flood of shame rushed over him. Face to +face with her, he felt himself laid bare to the inmost fold of +consciousness. The shame was deep, but it was a renovating +anguish; he was like a man whom intolerable pain has roused from +the creeping lethargy of death. . . . + +He rose next morning to as fresh a sense of life as though his +hour of mute communion with Margaret Aubyn had been a more +exquisite renewal of their earlier meetings. His waking thought +was that he must see her again; and as consciousness affirmed +itself he felt an intense fear of losing the sense of her +nearness. But she was still close to him; her presence remained +the sole reality in a world of shadows. All through his working +hours he was re-living with incredible minuteness every incident +of their obliterated past; as a man who has mastered the spirit of +a foreign tongue turns with renewed wonder to the pages his youth +has plodded over. In this lucidity of retrospection the most +trivial detail had its significance, and the rapture of recovery +was embittered to Glennard by the perception of all that he had +missed. He had been pitiably, grotesquely stupid; and there was +irony in the thought that, but for the crisis through which he was +passing, he might have lived on in complacent ignorance of his +loss. It was as though she had bought him with her blood. . . . + +That evening he and Alexa dined alone. After dinner he followed +her to the drawing-room. He no longer felt the need of avoiding +her; he was hardly conscious of her presence. After a few words +they lapsed into silence and he sat smoking with his eyes on the +fire. It was not that he was unwilling to talk to her; he felt a +curious desire to be as kind as possible; but he was always +forgetting that she was there. Her full bright presence, through +which the currents of life flowed so warmly, had grown as tenuous +as a shadow, and he saw so far beyond her-- + +Presently she rose and began to move about the room. She seemed +to be looking for something and he roused himself to ask what she +wanted. + +"Only the last number of the Horoscope. I thought I'd left it on +this table." He said nothing, and she went on: "You haven't seen +it?" + +"No," he returned coldly. The magazine was locked in his desk. + +His wife had moved to the mantel-piece. She stood facing him and +as he looked up he met her tentative gaze. "I was reading an +article in it--a review of Mrs. Aubyn's letters," she added, +slowly, with her deep, deliberate blush. + +Glennard stooped to toss his cigar into the fire. He felt a +savage wish that she would not speak the other woman's name; +nothing else seemed to matter. "You seem to do a lot of reading," +he said. + +She still earnestly confronted him. "I was keeping this for you-- +I thought it might interest you," she said, with an air of gentle +insistence. + +He stood up and turned away. He was sure she knew that he had +taken the review and he felt that he was beginning to hate her +again. + +"I haven't time for such things," he said, indifferently. As he +moved to the door he heard her take a precipitate step forward; +then she paused and sank without speaking into the chair from +which he had risen. + + + +XI + + +As Glennard, in the raw February sunlight, mounted the road to the +cemetery, he felt the beatitude that comes with an abrupt +cessation of physical pain. He had reached the point where self- +analysis ceases; the impulse that moved him was purely intuitive. +He did not even seek a reason for it, beyond the obvious one that +his desire to stand by Margaret Aubyn's grave was prompted by no +attempt at a sentimental reparation, but rather by the vague need +to affirm in some way the reality of the tie between them. + +The ironical promiscuity of death had brought Mrs. Aubyn back to +share the narrow hospitality of her husband's last lodging; but +though Glennard knew she had been buried near New York he had +never visited her grave. He was oppressed, as he now threaded the +long avenues, by a chilling vision of her return. There was no +family to follow her hearse; she had died alone, as she had lived; +and the "distinguished mourners" who had formed the escort of the +famous writer knew nothing of the woman they were committing to +the grave. Glennard could not even remember at what season she +had been buried; but his mood indulged the fancy that it must have +been on some such day of harsh sunlight, the incisive February +brightness that gives perspicuity without warmth. The white +avenues stretched before him interminably, lined with stereotyped +emblems of affliction, as though all the platitudes ever uttered +had been turned to marble and set up over the unresisting dead. +Here and there, no doubt, a frigid urn or an insipid angel +imprisoned some fine-fibred grief, as the most hackneyed words may +become the vehicle of rare meanings; but for the most part the +endless alignment of monuments seemed to embody those easy +generalizations about death that do not disturb the repose of the +living. Glennard's eye, as he followed the way indicated to him, +had instinctively sought some low mound with a quiet headstone. +He had forgotten that the dead seldom plan their own houses, and +with a pang he discovered the name he sought on the cyclopean base +of a granite shaft rearing its aggressive height at the angle of +two avenues. + +"How she would have hated it!" he murmured. + +A bench stood near and he seated himself. The monument rose +before him like some pretentious uninhabited dwelling; he could +not believe that Margaret Aubyn lay there. It was a Sunday +morning and black figures moved among the paths, placing flowers +on the frost-bound hillocks. Glennard noticed that the +neighboring graves had been thus newly dressed; and he fancied a +blind stir of expectancy through the sod, as though the bare +mounds spread a parched surface to that commemorative rain. He +rose presently and walked back to the entrance of the cemetery. +Several greenhouses stood near the gates, and turning in at the +first he asked for some flowers. + +"Anything in the emblematic line?" asked the anaemic man behind +the dripping counter. + +Glennard shook his head. + +"Just cut flowers? This way, then." The florist unlocked a glass +door and led him down a moist green aisle. The hot air was choked +with the scent of white azaleas, white lilies, white lilacs; all +the flowers were white; they were like a prolongation, a mystical +efflorescence, of the long rows of marble tombstones, and their +perfume seemed to cover an odor of decay. The rich atmosphere +made Glennard dizzy. As he leaned in the doorpost, waiting for +the flowers, he had a penetrating sense of Margaret Aubyn's +nearness--not the imponderable presence of his inner vision, but a +life that beat warm in his arms. . . . + +The sharp air caught him as he stepped out into it again. He +walked back and scattered the flowers over the grave. The edges +of the white petals shrivelled like burnt paper in the cold; and +as he watched them the illusion of her nearness faded, shrank back +frozen. + + + +XII + + +The motive of his visit to the cemetery remained undefined save as +a final effort of escape from his wife's inexpressive acceptance +of his shame. It seemed to him that as long as he could keep +himself alive to that shame he would not wholly have succumbed to +its consequences. His chief fear was that he should become the +creature of his act. His wife's indifference degraded him; it +seemed to put him on a level with his dishonor. Margaret Aubyn +would have abhorred the deed in proportion to her pity for the +man. The sense of her potential pity drew him back to her. The +one woman knew but did not understand; the other, it sometimes +seemed, understood without knowing. + +In its last disguise of retrospective remorse, his self-pity +affected a desire for solitude and meditation. He lost himself in +morbid musings, in futile visions of what life with Margaret Aubyn +might have been. There were moments when, in the strange +dislocation of his view, the wrong he had done her seemed a tie +between them. + +To indulge these emotions he fell into the habit, on Sunday +afternoons, of solitary walks prolonged till after dusk. The days +were lengthening, there was a touch of spring in the air, and his +wanderings now usually led him to the Park and its outlying +regions. + +One Sunday, tired of aimless locomotion, he took a cab at the Park +gates and let it carry him out to the Riverside Drive. It was a +gray afternoon streaked with east wind. Glennard's cab advanced +slowly, and as he leaned back, gazing with absent intentness at +the deserted paths that wound under bare boughs between grass +banks of premature vividness, his attention was arrested by two +figures walking ahead of him. This couple, who had the path to +themselves,moved at an uneven pace, as though adapting their gait +to a conversation marked by meditative intervals. Now and then +they paused, and in one of these pauses the lady, turning toward +her companion, showed Glennard the outline of his wife's profile. +The man was Flamel. + +The blood rushed to Glennard's forehead. He sat up with a jerk +and pushed back the lid in the roof of the hansom; but when the +cabman bent down he dropped into his seat without speaking. Then, +becoming conscious of the prolonged interrogation of the lifted +lid, he called out--"Turn--drive back--anywhere--I'm in a hurry--" + +As the cab swung round he caught a last glimpse of the two +figures. They had not moved; Alexa, with bent head, stood +listening. + +"My God, my God--" he groaned. + +It was hideous--it was abominable--he could not understand it. +The woman was nothing to him--less than nothing--yet the blood +hummed in his ears and hung a cloud before him. He knew it was +only the stirring of the primal instinct, that it had no more to +do with his reasoning self than any reflex impulse of the body; +but that merely lowered anguish to disgust. Yes, it was disgust +he felt--almost a physical nausea. The poisonous fumes of life +were in his lungs. He was sick, unutterably sick. . . . + +He drove home and went to his room. They were giving a little +dinner that night, and when he came down the guests were arriving. +He looked at his wife: her beauty was extraordinary, but it seemed +to him the beauty of a smooth sea along an unlit coast. She +frightened him. + +He sat late that night in his study. He heard the parlor-maid +lock the front door; then his wife went upstairs and the lights +were put out. His brain was like some great empty hall with an +echo in it; one thought reverberated endlessly. . . . At length +he drew his chair to the table and began to write. He addressed +an envelope and then slowly re-read what he had written. + + +"MY DEAR FLAMEL" + +"Many apologies for not sending you sooner the enclosed check, +which represents the customary percentage on the sale of the +Letters." + +"Trusting you will excuse the oversight, + "Yours truly, + "STEPHEN GLENNARD." + + +He let himself out of the darkened house and dropped the letter in +the post-box at the corner. + + +The next afternoon he was detained late at his office, and as he +was preparing to leave he heard someone asking for him in the +outer room. He seated himself again and Flamel was shown in. + +The two men, as Glennard pushed aside an obstructive chair, had a +moment to measure each other; then Flamel advanced, and drawing +out his note-case, laid a slip of paper on the desk. + +"My dear fellow, what on earth does this mean?" Glennard +recognized his check. + +"That I was remiss, simply. It ought to have gone to you before." + +Flamel's tone had been that of unaffected surprise, but at this +his accent changed and he asked, quickly: "On what ground?" + +Glennard had moved away from the desk and stood leaning against +the calf-backed volumes of the bookcase. "On the ground that you +sold Mrs. Aubyn's letters for me, and that I find the intermediary +in such cases is entitled to a percentage on the sale." + +Flamel paused before answering. "You find, you say. It's a +recent discovery?" + +"Obviously, from my not sending the check sooner. You see I'm new +to the business." + +"And since when have you discovered that there was any question of +business, as far as I was concerned?" + +Glennard flushed and his voice rose slightly. "Are you +reproaching me for not having remembered it sooner?" + +Flamel, who had spoken in the rapid repressed tone of a man on the +verge of anger, stared a moment at this and then, in his natural +voice, rejoined, good-humoredly, "Upon my soul, I don't understand +you!" + +The change of key seemed to disconcert Glennard. "It's simple +enough--" he muttered. + +"Simple enough--your offering me money in return for a friendly +service? I don't know what your other friends expect!" + +"Some of my friends wouldn't have undertaken the job. Those who +would have done so would probably have expected to be paid." + +He lifted his eyes to Flamel and the two men looked at each other. +Flamel had turned white and his lips stirred, but he held his +temperate note. "If you mean to imply that the job was not a nice +one, you lay yourself open to the retort that you proposed it. +But for my part I've never seen, I never shall see, any reason for +not publishing the letters." + +"That's just it!" + +"What--?" + +"The certainty of your not seeing was what made me go to you. +When a man's got stolen goods to pawn he doesn't take them to the +police-station." + +"Stolen?" Flamel echoed. "The letters were stolen?" + +Glennard burst into a coarse laugh. "How much longer to you +expect me to keep up that pretence about the letters? You knew +well enough they were written to me." + +Flamel looked at him in silence. "Were they?" he said at length. +"I didn't know it." + +"And didn't suspect it, I suppose," Glennard sneered. + +The other was again silent; then he said, "I may remind you that, +supposing I had felt any curiosity about the matter, I had no way +of finding out that the letters were written to you. You never +showed me the originals." + +"What does that prove? There were fifty ways of finding out. +It's the kind of thing one can easily do." + +Flamel glanced at him with contempt. "Our ideas probably differ +as to what a man can easily do. It would not have been easy for +me." + +Glennard's anger vented itself in the words uppermost in his +thought. "It may, then, interest you to hear that my wife DOES +know about the letters--has known for some months. . . ." + +"Ah," said the other, slowly. Glennard saw that, in his blind +clutch at a weapon, he had seized the one most apt to wound. +Flamel's muscles were under control, but his face showed the +undefinable change produced by the slow infiltration of poison. +Every implication that the words contained had reached its mark; +but Glennard felt that their obvious intention was lost in the +anguish of what they suggested. He was sure now that Flamel would +never have betrayed him; but the inference only made a wider +outlet for his anger. He paused breathlessly for Flamel to speak. + +"If she knows, it's not through me." It was what Glennard had +waited for. + +"Through you, by God? Who said it was through you? Do you +suppose I leave it to you, or to anybody else, for that matter, to +keep my wife informed of my actions? I didn't suppose even such +egregious conceit as yours could delude a man to that degree!" +Struggling for a foothold in the small landslide of his dignity, +he added, in a steadier tone, "My wife learned the facts from me." + +Flamel received this in silence. The other's outbreak seemed to +have reinforced his self-control, and when he spoke it was with a +deliberation implying that his course was chosen. "In that case I +understand still less--" + +"Still less--?" + +"The meaning of this." He pointed to the check. "When you began +to speak I supposed you had meant it as a bribe; now I can only +infer it was intended as a random insult. In either case, here's +my answer." + +He tore the slip of paper in two and tossed the fragments across +the desk to Glennard. Then he turned and walked out of the +office. + +Glennard dropped his head on his hands. If he had hoped to +restore his self-respect by the simple expedient of assailing +Flamel's, the result had not justified his expectation. The blow +he had struck had blunted the edge of his anger, and the +unforeseen extent of the hurt inflicted did not alter the fact +that his weapon had broken in his hands. He saw now that his rage +against Flamel was only the last projection of a passionate self- +disgust. This consciousness did not dull his dislike of the man; +it simply made reprisals ineffectual. Flamel's unwillingness to +quarrel with him was the last stage of his abasement. + +In the light of this final humiliation his assumption of his +wife's indifference struck him as hardly so fatuous as the +sentimental resuscitation of his past. He had been living in a +factitious world wherein his emotions were the sycophants of his +vanity, and it was with instinctive relief that he felt its ruins +crash about his head. + +It was nearly dark when he left his office, and he walked slowly +homeward in the complete mental abeyance that follows on such a +crisis. He was not aware that he was thinking of his wife; yet +when he reached his own door he found that, in the involuntary +readjustment of his vision, she had once more become the central +point of consciousness. + + + +XIII + + +It had never before occurred to him that she might, after all, +have missed the purport of the document he had put in her way. +What if, in her hurried inspection of the papers, she had passed +it over as related to the private business of some client? What, +for instance, was to prevent her concluding that Glennard was the +counsel of the unknown person who had sold the "Aubyn Letters." +The subject was one not likely to fix her attention--she was not a +curious woman. + +Glennard at this point laid down his fork and glanced at her +between the candle-shades. The alternative explanation of her +indifference was not slow in presenting itself. Her head had the +same listening droop as when he had caught sight of her the day +before in Flamel's company; the attitude revived the vividness of +his impression. It was simple enough, after all. She had ceased +to care for him because she cared for someone else. + +As he followed her upstairs he felt a sudden stirring of his +dormant anger. His sentiments had lost all their factitious +complexity. He had already acquitted her of any connivance in his +baseness, and he felt only that he loved her and that she had +escaped him. This was now, strangely enough, his dominating +thought: the consciousness that he and she had passed through the +fusion of love and had emerged from it as incommunicably apart as +though the transmutation had never taken place. Every other +passion, he mused, left some mark upon the nature; but love passed +like the flight of a ship across the waters. + +She sank into her usual seat near the lamp, and he leaned against +the chimney, moving about with an inattentive hand the knick- +knacks on the mantel. + +Suddenly he caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. She was +looking at him. He turned and their eyes met. + +He moved across the room and stood before her. + +"There's something that I want to say to you," he began in a low +tone. + +She held his gaze, but her color deepened. He noticed again, with +a jealous pang, how her beauty had gained in warmth and meaning. +It was as though a transparent cup had been filled with wine. He +looked at her ironically. + +"I've never prevented your seeing your friends here," he broke +out. "Why do you meet Flamel in out-of-the-way places? Nothing +makes a woman so cheap--" + +She rose abruptly and they faced each other a few feet apart. + +"What do you mean?" she asked. + +"I saw you with him last Sunday on the Riverside Drive," he went +on, the utterance of the charge reviving his anger. + +"Ah," she murmured. She sank into her chair again and began to +play with a paper-knife that lay on the table at her elbow. + +Her silence exasperated him. + +"Well?" he burst out. "Is that all you have to say?" + +"Do you wish me to explain?" she asked, proudly. + +"Do you imply I haven't the right to?" + +"I imply nothing. I will tell you whatever you wish to know. I +went for a walk with Mr. Flamel because he asked me to." + +"I didn't suppose you went uninvited. But there are certain +things a sensible woman doesn't do. She doesn't slink about in +out-of-the-way streets with men. Why couldn't you have seen him +here?" + +She hesitated. "Because he wanted to see me alone." + +"Did he, indeed? And may I ask if you gratify all his wishes with +equal alacrity?" + +"I don't know that he has any others where I am concerned." She +paused again and then continued, in a lower voice that somehow had +an under-note of warning. "He wished to bid me good-by. He's +going away." + +Glennard turned on her a startled glance. "Going away?" + +"He's going to Europe to-morrow. He goes for a long time. I +supposed you knew." + +The last phrase revived his irritation. "You forget that I depend +on you for my information about Flamel. He's your friend and not +mine. In fact, I've sometimes wondered at your going out of your +way to be so civil to him when you must see plainly enough that I +don't like him." + +Her answer to this was not immediate. She seemed to be choosing +her words with care, not so much for her own sake as for his, and +his exasperation was increased by the suspicion that she was +trying to spare him. + +"He was your friend before he was mine. I never knew him till I +was married. It was you who brought him to the house and who +seemed to wish me to like him." + +Glennard gave a short laugh. The defence was feebler than he had +expected: she was certainly not a clever woman. + +"Your deference to my wishes is really beautiful; but it's not the +first time in history that a man has made a mistake in introducing +his friends to his wife. You must, at any rate, have seen since +then that my enthusiasm had cooled; but so, perhaps, has your +eagerness to oblige me." + +She met this with a silence that seemed to rob the taunt of half +its efficacy. + +"Is that what you imply?" he pressed her. + +"No," she answered with sudden directness. "I noticed some time +ago that you seemed to dislike him, but since then--" + +"Well--since then?" + +"I've imagined that you had reasons for still wishing me to be +civil to him, as you call it." + +"Ah," said Glennard, with an effort at lightness; but his irony +dropped, for something in her voice made him feel that he and she +stood at last in that naked desert of apprehension where meaning +skulks vainly behind speech. + +"And why did you imagine this?" The blood mounted to his +forehead. "Because he told you that I was under obligations to +him?" + +She turned pale. "Under obligations?" + +"Oh, don't let's beat about the bush. Didn't he tell you it was I +who published Mrs. Aubyn's letters? Answer me that." + +"No," she said; and after a moment which seemed given to the +weighing of alternatives, she added: "No one told me." + +"You didn't know then?" + +She seemed to speak with an effort. "Not until--not until--" + +"Till I gave you those papers to sort?" + +Her head sank. + +"You understood then?" + +"Yes." + +He looked at her immovable face. "Had you suspected--before?" was +slowly wrung from him. + +"At times--yes--" Her voice dropped to a whisper. + +"Why? From anything that was said--?" + +There was a shade of pity in her glance. "No one said anything-- +no one told me anything." She looked away from him. "It was your +manner--" + +"My manner?" + +"Whenever the book was mentioned. Things you said--once or twice-- +your irritation--I can't explain--" + +Glennard, unconsciously, had moved nearer. He breathed like a man +who has been running. "You knew, then, you knew"--he stammered. +The avowal of her love for Flamel would have hurt him less, would +have rendered her less remote. "You knew--you knew--" he +repeated; and suddenly his anguish gathered voice. "My God!" he +cried, "you suspected it first, you say--and then you knew it-- +this damnable, this accursed thing; you knew it months ago--it's +months since I put that paper in your way--and yet you've done +nothing, you've said nothing, you've made no sign, you've lived +alongside of me as if it had made no difference--no difference in +either of our lives. What are you made of, I wonder? Don't you +see the hideous ignominy of it? Don't you see how you've shared +in my disgrace? Or haven't you any sense of shame?" + +He preserved sufficient lucidity, as the words poured from him, to +see how fatally they invited her derision; but something told him +they had both passed beyond the phase of obvious retaliations, and +that if any chord in her responded it would not be that of scorn. + +He was right. She rose slowly and moved toward him. + +"Haven't you had enough--without that?" she said, in a strange +voice of pity. + +He stared at her. "Enough--?" + +"Of misery. . . ." + +An iron band seemed loosened from his temples. "You saw then . . .?" +he whispered. + +"Oh, God----oh, God----" she sobbed. She dropped beside him and +hid her anguish against his knees. They clung thus in silence, a +long time, driven together down the same fierce blast of shame. + +When at length she lifted her face he averted his. Her scorn +would have hurt him less than the tears on his hands. + +She spoke languidly, like a child emerging from a passion of +weeping. "It was for the money--?" + +His lips shaped an assent. + +"That was the inheritance--that we married on?" + +"Yes." + +She drew back and rose to her feet. He sat watching her as she +wandered away from him. + +"You hate me," broke from him. + +She made no answer. + +"Say you hate me!" he persisted. + +"That would have been so simple," she answered with a strange +smile. She dropped into a chair near the writing-table and rested +a bowed forehead on her hand. + +"Was it much--?" she began at length. + +"Much--?" he returned, vaguely. + +"The money." + +"The money?" That part of it seemed to count so little that for a +moment he did not follow her thought. + +"It must be paid back," she insisted. "Can you do it?" + +"Oh, yes," he returned, listlessly. "I can do it." + +"I would make any sacrifice for that!" she urged. + +He nodded. "Of course." He sat staring at her in dry-eyed self- +contempt. "Do you count on its making much difference?" + +"Much difference?" + +"In the way I feel--or you feel about me?" + +She shook her head. + +"It's the least part of it," he groaned. + +"It's the only part we can repair." + +"Good heavens! If there were any reparation--" He rose quickly +and crossed the space that divided them. "Why did you never +speak?" he asked. + +"Haven't you answered that yourself?" + +"Answered it?" + +"Just now--when you told me you did it for me." She paused a +moment and then went on with a deepening note--"I would have +spoken if I could have helped you." + +"But you must have despised me." + +"I've told you that would have been simpler." + +"But how could you go on like this--hating the money?" + +"I knew you would speak in time. I wanted you, first, to hate it +as I did." + +He gazed at her with a kind of awe. "You're wonderful," he +murmured. "But you don't yet know the depths I've reached." + +She raised an entreating hand. "I don't want to!" + +"You're afraid, then, that you'll hate me?" + +"No--but that you'll hate ME. Let me understand without your +telling me." + +"You can't. It's too base. I thought you didn't care because you +loved Flamel." + +She blushed deeply. "Don't--don't--" she warned him. + +"I haven't the right to, you mean?" + +"I mean that you'll be sorry." + +He stood imploringly before her. "I want to say something worse-- +something more outrageous. If you don't understand THIS you'll be +perfectly justified in ordering me out of the house." + +She answered him with a glance of divination. "I shall +understand--but you'll be sorry." + +"I must take my chance of that." He moved away and tossed the +books about the table. Then he swung round and faced her. "Does +Flamel care for you?" he asked. + +Her flush deepened, but she still looked at him without anger. +"What would be the use?" she said with a note of sadness. + +"Ah, I didn't ask THAT," he penitently murmured. + +"Well, then--" + +To this adjuration he made no response beyond that of gazing at +her with an eye which seemed now to view her as a mere factor in +an immense redistribution of meanings. + +"I insulted Flamel to-day. I let him see that I suspected him of +having told you. I hated him because he knew about the letters." + +He caught the spreading horror of her eyes, and for an instant he +had to grapple with the new temptation they lit up. Then he said, +with an effort--"Don't blame him--he's impeccable. He helped me +to get them published; but I lied to him too; I pretended they +were written to another man . . . a man who was dead. . . ." + +She raised her arms in a gesture that seemed to ward off his +blows. + +"You DO despise me!" he insisted. + +"Ah, that poor woman--that poor woman--" he heard her murmur. + +"I spare no one, you see!" he triumphed over her. She kept her +face hidden. + +"You do hate me, you do despise me!" he strangely exulted. + +"Be silent!" she commanded him; but he seemed no longer conscious +of any check on his gathering purpose. + +"He cared for you--he cared for you," he repeated, "and he never +told you of the letters--" + +She sprang to her feet. "How can you?" she flamed. "How dare +you? THAT--!" + +Glennard was ashy pale. "It's a weapon . . . like another. . . ." + +"A scoundrel's!" + +He smiled wretchedly. "I should have used it in his place." + +"Stephen! Stephen!" she cried, as though to drown the blasphemy +on his lips. She swept to him with a rescuing gesture. "Don't +say such things. I forbid you! It degrades us both." + +He put her back with trembling hands. "Nothing that I say of +myself can degrade you. We're on different levels." + +"I'm on yours, whatever it is!" + +He lifted his head and their gaze flowed together. + + + +XIV + + +The great renewals take effect as imperceptibly as the first +workings of spring. Glennard, though he felt himself brought +nearer to his wife, was still, as it were, hardly within speaking +distance. He was but laboriously acquiring the rudiments of their +new medium of communication; and he had to grope for her through +the dense fog of his humiliation, the distorting vapor against +which his personality loomed grotesque and mean. + +Only the fact that we are unaware how well our nearest know us +enables us to live with them. Love is the most impregnable refuge +of self-esteem, and we hate the eye that reaches to our nakedness. +If Glennard did not hate his wife it was slowly, sufferingly, that +there was born in him that profounder passion which made his +earlier feeling seem a mere commotion of the blood. He was like a +child coming back to the sense of an enveloping presence: her +nearness was a breast on which he leaned. + +They did not, at first, talk much together, and each beat a +devious track about the outskirts of the subject that lay between +them like a haunted wood. But every word, every action, seemed to +glance at it, to draw toward it, as though a fount of healing +sprang in its poisoned shade. If only they might cut away through +the thicket to that restoring spring! + +Glennard, watching his wife with the intentness of a wanderer to +whom no natural sign is negligible, saw that she had taken +temporary refuge in the purpose of renouncing the money. If both, +theoretically, owned the inefficacy of such amends, the woman's +instinctive subjectiveness made her find relief in this crude form +of penance. Glennard saw that she meant to live as frugally as +possible till what she deemed their debt was discharged; and he +prayed she might not discover how far-reaching, in its merely +material sense, was the obligation she thus hoped to acquit. Her +mind was fixed on the sum originally paid for the letters, and +this he knew he could lay aside in a year or two. He was touched, +meanwhile, by the spirit that made her discard the petty luxuries +which she regarded as the signs of their bondage. Their shared +renunciations drew her nearer to him, helped, in their evidence of +her helplessness, to restore the full protecting stature of his +love. And still they did not speak. + +It was several weeks later that, one afternoon by the drawing-room +fire, she handed him a letter that she had been reading when he +entered. + +"I've heard from Mr. Flamel," she said. + +Glennard turned pale. It was as though a latent presence had +suddenly become visible to both. He took the letter mechanically. + +"It's from Smyrna," she said. "Won't you read it?" + +He handed it back. "You can tell me about it--his hand's so +illegible." He wandered to the other end of the room and then +turned and stood before her. "I've been thinking of writing to +Flamel," he said. + +She looked up. + +"There's one point," he continued, slowly, "that I ought to clear +up. I told him you'd known about the letters all along; for a +long time, at least; and I saw it hurt him horribly. It was just +what I meant to do, of course; but I can't leave him to that false +impression; I must write him." + +She received this without outward movement, but he saw that the +depths were stirred. At length she returned, in a hesitating +tone, "Why do you call it a false impression? I did know." + +"Yes, but I implied you didn't care." + +"Ah!" + +He still stood looking down on her. "Don't you want me to set +that right?" he tentatively pursued. + +She lifted her head and fixed him bravely. "It isn't necessary," +she said. + +Glennard flushed with the shock of the retort; then, with a +gesture of comprehension, "No," he said, "with you it couldn't be; +but I might still set myself right." + +She looked at him gently. "Don't I," she murmured, "do that?" + +"In being yourself merely? Alas, the rehabilitation's too +complete! You make me seem--to myself even--what I'm not; what I +can never be. I can't, at times, defend myself from the delusion; +but I can at least enlighten others." + +The flood was loosened, and kneeling by her he caught her hands. +"Don't you see that it's become an obsession with me? That if I +could strip myself down to the last lie--only there'd always be +another one left under it!--and do penance naked in the market- +place, I should at least have the relief of easing one anguish by +another? Don't you see that the worst of my torture is the +impossibility of such amends?" + +Her hands lay in his without returning pressure. "Ah, poor woman, +poor woman," he heard her sigh. + +"Don't pity her, pity me! What have I done to her or to you, +after all? You're both inaccessible! It was myself I sold." + +He took an abrupt turn away from her; then halted before her +again. "How much longer," he burst out, "do you suppose you can +stand it? You've been magnificent, you've been inspired, but +what's the use? You can't wipe out the ignominy of it. It's +miserable for you and it does HER no good!" + +She lifted a vivid face. "That's the thought I can't bear!" she +cried. + +"What thought?" + +"That it does her no good--all you're feeling, all you're +suffering. Can it be that it makes no difference?" + +He avoided her challenging glance. "What's done is done," he +muttered. + +"Is it ever, quite, I wonder?" she mused. He made no answer and +they lapsed into one of the pauses that are a subterranean channel +of communication. + +It was she who, after awhile, began to speak with a new suffusing +diffidence that made him turn a roused eye on her. + +"Don't they say," she asked, feeling her way as in a kind of +tender apprehensiveness, "that the early Christians, instead of +pulling down the heathen temples--the temples of the unclean gods-- +purified them by turning them to their own uses? I've always +thought one might do that with one's actions--the actions one +loathes but can't undo. One can make, I mean, a wrong the door to +other wrongs or an impassable wall against them. . . ." Her voice +wavered on the word. "We can't always tear down the temples we've +built to the unclean gods, but we can put good spirits in the +house of evil--the spirits of mercy and shame and understanding, +that might never have come to us if we hadn't been in such great +need. . . ." + +She moved over to him and laid a hesitating hand on his. His head +was bent and he did not change his attitude. She sat down beside +him without speaking; but their silences now were fertile as rain- +clouds--they quickened the seeds of understanding. + +At length he looked up. "I don't know," he said, "what spirits +have come to live in the house of evil that I built--but you're +there and that's enough for me. It's strange," he went on after +another pause, "she wished the best for me so often, and now, at +last, it's through her that it's come to me. But for her I +shouldn't have known you--it's through her that I've found you. +Sometimes, do you know?--that makes it hardest--makes me most +intolerable to myself. Can't you see that it's the worst thing +I've got to face? I sometimes think I could have borne it better +if you hadn't understood! I took everything from her--everything-- +even to the poor shelter of loyalty she'd trusted in--the only +thing I could have left her!--I took everything from her, I +deceived her, I despoiled her, I destroyed her--and she's given me +YOU in return!" + +His wife's cry caught him up. "It isn't that she's given ME to +you--it is that she's given you to yourself." She leaned to him +as though swept forward on a wave of pity. "Don't you see," she +went on, as his eyes hung on her, "that that's the gift you can't +escape from, the debt you're pledged to acquit? Don't you see +that you've never before been what she thought you, and that now, +so wonderfully, she's made you into the man she loved? THAT'S +worth suffering for, worth dying for, to a woman--that's the gift +she would have wished to give!" + +"Ah," he cried, "but woe to him by whom it cometh. What did I +ever give her?" + +"The happiness of giving," she said. + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Touchstone by Edith Wharton diff --git a/old/touch10.zip b/old/touch10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..87cb8d7 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/touch10.zip |