CHAPTER XIII

FROM OUT THE SHADOW

Jacqueline brushed the cards to one side, coughed over the ether bottle again and lit another cigarette. The girl settled herself, snuffling on the edge of the bed and wiped her eyes. When she looked up the woman was leering at her contemptuously.

"S'pose you think you're beautiful, don't you?" she demanded scornfully, slurring huskily over the words. "S'pose you think you see why anybody'd grow tired of me, but you're different, eh? Let me tell you, m'girl, when I was your age, if anybody'd put us side by side, there's no man in the world would ha' looked at you twice!"

And she glared at her as if daring her to deny it.

"Not a man in the world!" she repeated, proudly, fixing her bleared eyes on the girl's fresh, young face. "Why, my lovers used to tell that----But that's not what I wanted to tell you! Let me see! What was it?" her eyes wandered and she frowned. The ether was sweeping over her in waves. "Oh, yes! I wanted to tell you that's it's all right 'bout your husband. Don't pay any attention to this rot about being true to him. Nobody cares anything 'bout husbands! Husbands are no good! No good! I could have a dozen husbands!" Her head sank and she waved her hand feebly as if dismissing the whole tribe of married men. The mumbled words died away in incoherencies.

The girl watched her a little frightened.

"You were going to tell me a story," she reminded her timidly.

Jacqueline sat bolt upright, her eyes blazing with senseless anger.

"Of course, I am!" she snapped. "You shut up and le' me tell it my own way an' maybe it'll do you some good!" Marie shrank back and glanced nervously at the door.

"But that's all light!" the woman assured her generously. "You didn't mean anything wrong. I'm going t' tell you why you better not go'way and leave your boy like I did...."

She bowed her head again for a moment and, spurred by the drug, her memory slowly unfolded the panorama of her past. All its happiness, all its sorrow, misery and despair came back to her. As she told the tale her voice was sometimes harsh and indifferent and sometimes only a drunken mumble. Again it was faintly vibrant with the ghost of a lost emotion, or the knife-thrust of reawakened grief cut off the words in her throat. And the simple girl on the bed leaned forward and listened with glistening eyes and hectic cheeks....

"Twenty-five--twenty-six--I don't know how many years ago--I lived in a big house not many miles from this place," she began, slowly. "I was the only child and I don't remember much about my father and mother. They died young. It was a small place and I didn't know much about life--but I learned plenty afterwards.

"You're a peasant," she went on with harsh contempt. "You don't know anything about how girls like I was, are brought up. When I was sixteen I knew only two young men more than to bow to when I met them. One was named Noel--I'd known him all my life--and the other's name was--Louis!" The liquid word came gratingly off her tongue.

"He was older than Noel and he was one of these grave, dignified young men, all wrapped up in his work. He was a lawyer and I guess he was a pretty good one. Everybody seemed to think so. Well, anyway, we fell in love with each other, and I married him before I was nineteen. Maybe the other one loved me, too," she added, carelessly "He tried to kill himself a little while after I married his friend.

"After our honeymoon we took a house in Paris, where his work was. He was ambitious and wanted to be a Deputy Attorney. I didn't see much of him after we settled down, because he was giving so much time to his work, but I didn't care much--then. I loved him so and--I had something else to think about. And when _he_ came I was the happiest girl in Paris. He was the prettiest, little, dark-eyed----" The sentence ended in a choke and she put out her hand for the ether bottle....

"For a while the baby was everything to me, but he couldn't be always. I wanted my husband. I liked fun and a gay time, but he was always too busy--too busy!--until I grew angry at him. He thought that the baby and the little that I saw of him in the evening occasionally were all that I needed.

"Sometimes when he was working in his study I used to go in and try to talk to him and get him to tell me what he was doing. I wanted to be more in his life. He always laughed and said that I wouldn't understand and--then he'd turn me out.

"I begged him to take me to the theater, to the carnival, to the country--anywhere for life and amusement--but he never had time. I used to cry myself to sleep at night.

"One evening he brought home a young man to dinner with him. They were very happy. My husband had saved the young man in some case or other--he never took the trouble to tell me, or I forget what it was. He was a witty, handsome fellow, and that was the merriest dinner I ever had.

"The young man--his name was Albert--seemed to have a pretty good time himself, for he came often after that. I suppose my fool of a husband," she grated the word viciously, "thought that he was coming all the time to show his gratitude! One afternoon while he was there, I wanted to go driving and he asked Albert to take me--so he could go on with his d----d work!

"That's the way he discovered how to keep me amused and without interfering with his own plans. Albert was always my escort after that, and the more my husband neglected me the angrier I grew. He didn't have brains enough to know that no man devotes his time to a married woman out of gratitude to her husband.

"Albert was always respectful--oh, yes, always respectful! But he could tell a lot with his eyes, and the more enraged I was with my husband the more I listened to what his eyes were saying. Once, in a carriage, he picked up my gloves and kissed them again and again. But he never spoke a word of love or put a disrespectful finger on me. Oh, he knew women, he did! He knew women!" she chuckled, tipsily.

"I had one of the first editions of every new book. There were flowers every day. He had me in a box at the opening of every new play. Once I mentioned that I would like to have some real white heather to make birthday favors. I didn't see him for four days and then he came out to the house with a trunk-load, nearly. He had gone to Scotland for it. D'you ever have a lover'd do that for you?" she demanded, with a fierce frown.

"You bet you didn't!" she went on proudly, while Marie was trying to imagine Anatole en route for Scotland. "That's the kind of lovers I had!

"Well, one Sunday I wanted my husband to go to Fontainebleau with me and he wouldn't do it. That was the finish! Albert saw something--for he began to make love to me. When I felt his first kiss on my hand, I started! I was about to jerk it away, when I remembered how my husband had treated me and I let him go on. Ah! he knew how to make love!" she declared, with the admiration of a savant.

"When I returned to my husband that night, I was frightened! I knew that I cared for Albert more than I should and I wanted him to protect me. When I tried to talk to him he told me to run along and play with Albert! And I did! I went! I went! I went! I----" The voice trailed off into a sob. She buried her face in her arms for a few moments and the table shook. The girl on the bed was in a semi-hypnotic trance and did not stir. When Jacqueline raised her head her face was set in its usual stony mask.

"When I came back that night," her voice was hard and high, "I was no longer a pure woman. I crept into bed and wept, afraid that my husband would question me when he came to say good-night. He didn't come. He was thinking about one of his problems and forgot it. All my remorse was gone in a moment. I didn't think of him or my boy. I was mad--crazy! I gave myself up to Albert without a thought of the future!

"But it didn't last long!" she wagged her head solemnly. "My husband came home too early one night and found us in my room. Never should ha' been there! Never! Never, never! But I thought I hated him so much that I wanted to be untrue to him in his own house. Well, when he opened the door he just stood there and looked at us for a minute and didn't say a word. Then he went off down the hall toward his study. We ran down-stairs and out of the house and----" She stopped, her eyes wavering and her face wrinkling, as the absinthe or the ether apparently sketched a humorous picture on her mind.

"Hee! Hee!" she cackled hysterically. "I'll bet he was surprised when he came back! Hee, hee, hee! I never thought of that! Hee, hee, hee! Ha, ha, ha! I never--ha, ha, ha!" And she rocked back and forth in uncanny mirth until the laughter changed to sobs. Then she stiffened suddenly and tried to glare at Marie with watery eyes.

"What you laughing at? S'there anything funny?" she demanded, belligerently. The frightened girl, who had not made a sound, began a stammering protest. She was too much fascinated by the evil story and its creepy narrator to think of rushing out of the room.

"'S all right! All right! But don't do it again," Jacqueline warned her. "Now, le' me see! Oh, yes! Well, Albert and I went down South and bought a little place in the country and lived there for a long time. Happy? No, I wasn't happy! I wanted my boy. My boy! My boy!" And again she burst into tears.

"I hadn't been there but a little more than a year," she went on, snuffling and wiping her eyes, "when I told him I couldn't live without my baby and I was going to ask my husband to forgive me. He begged me not to do it, and for months I was afraid to try. At last, he took pneumonia and died.

"I wrote three letters to my husband, asking Aim to see me, and he never answered. That made me all the more afraid to meet him, and I don't think I would ever have had the courage if I had not overheard a conversation between two men in a café one evening. They had just come from Paris. They were lawyers, and one of them was wondering at my husband's strength. He said that my boy had been dangerously ill, and that my husband was beside his bed all night, but in Court every day as usual.

"When I heard that my baby might be dying I nearly swooned; and, before I had recovered, the two men were gone. I called a cab and drove to the railway station as fast as I could, and within a few hours I was in Paris. Nearly all of my fear of my husband was gone in my grief about my baby and I hurried to the house where we had lived as fast as a horse could go. When I got there I found that he had moved to Passy shortly after I--I left him. It was late in the evening when I found the place."

Jacqueline paused and her head sank slowly on to the table. After a few moments she sat up and reached feverishly for the ether bottle.

"The--hugh!--maid knew--hugh! hugh--knew, me," she coughed, "but I begged her to tell my husband that a woman wanted to see him, without giving him my name. When he came in he tried to put me out of the house without listening to me. I groveled at his feet and begged him to let me see my boy! I told him how I had suffered and how bitterly I had repented the wrong I had done him, and for a time I thought he would yield and forgive me. But when I told him that my lover was dead he thought that was the only reason that I had returned to him and he went mad with rage. In spite of my tears and struggles he pushed me out of the house and--and--and--I had lost--my boy--forever!..."

"You remember that, d'you hear?" she demanded. "You can kill a man, and if you've any sort of reason everybody may forgive. But if you're untrue to your husband--it doesn't make any difference how much reason you have--every-body'll kick you...."