Chapter 23

A LADY IN THE DUSK

Halfway between the turbid currents of the lower city and the more swiftly running streams to the northward sits Washington Square, an isle of rest amid the tides of humanity which lap its shores.

Here is the true gateway to the city--below it the polyglot of Europe; above, the amalgam which makes America. It is a neighborhood of traditions which speak in the aspect of the solidly built row of houses facing to the south, breasting the living surge, its front unbroken. This park, with its stretch of green, its dusky maples and shaded benches, afforded asylum to Markham, the painter, who liked to come when the day's work was over and watch the shadows fall across the square, creeping slowly up the walls of the Arch, bringing into higher relief the rosy tints on cornice and medallion which remained animate a moment against the purple filigree beyond, a thing of joy and of beauty, a symbol of eternal freedom. He was never sure whether it was more wonderful then, or when a moment later the golden glory gone from its cap, it stood silent amid the roar of the city wrapped in pallid dignity at the end of the glittering Avenue. That Avenue was a symbol, too. It meant the world to which Markham had returned after his glimpse of Elysium, a world not too kind, already laughing perhaps at his secret and Hermia's.

His problem still puzzled him. He had had no word from Olga Tcherny, though he had sought her in Alençon and Trouville. She had gone to Paris, he had been informed, but he had not been able to find her there in her usual haunts.

Nor had he succeeded in finding Hermia, though he had left no stone unturned in the search. He had watched the hotel registers, inquired at her bankers, and scanned the sailing lists in vain. Had the earth engulfed them both they could not have more mysteriously disappeared.

Cables to New York had been unavailing, and at last, his time growing short, he had sailed from Cherbourg, a sadder but no wiser man. A call at the Challoner house at the upper end of the Avenue had only produced the information that the person he so eagerly sought had not yet returned, and that, in default of instructions to the contrary, her mail was forwarded, as before, to Paris. There was nothing for it but to wait, and Markham became aware that love, in addition to being all the things that he and Hermia had described it, was a grievous hunger which would feed upon no food but itself. He was quite wretched, painted abominably by day and prowled in the streets by night, his disembodied spirit off among the highways of Vagabondia.

November came, and still no letter nor any word of her. He was desperate. Her silence, at first only disappointing, now became ominous. Whatever their misunderstandings in the last hour of their pilgrimage, he deserved something better of her than this. Here in New York it already seemed difficult to visualize her. He could see nothing but the belled cap and coarse stockings of Yvonne, the "woman orchestra." They filled his eye as her essence filled his heart. The broadcloth and beaver of her metropolitan sisters puzzled and dismayed him. He had only seen her once in town and then she had resembled nothing so much as a flippant cherub in skirts--an example of how New York taught the young female idea to shoot. It hadn't been the kind of shooting he had liked. Thimble Island had individualized her--differently; Westport had given her color; but it was Normandy that had completed the human document. She was Hermia, that was all! But here in New York, with Vagabondia but a memory, he was not sure that he would know her. The Avenue was full of young female ideas in the process of shooting, all dressed very much alike, all flippant, all cherubic, and he scanned them with a new interest, wondering at the lapse of circumstance which somehow could not be bridged. Yvonne tailor made! The thing was impossible.

And yet he found it necessary to realize that here in New York it was to be no Yvonne that he would find. Her silence, too, now advised him that she was to be upon the defensive, all her armor bristling with commonplace, against which the flight of his quiver of memorabilia might be dented in vain. How was she thinking of him yonder? In what terms? Did she think of him at all? His questions had even descended to that low condition. He had had such a little share in her life after all, her real life in the cities, which laid its impress with such certainty on those who were its children. He saw the marks of it all about him, the thing one called "good form," the undercurrent of strife for social honor, the corrugated brow of envy, the pomp and circumstance of spilled riches--ah! here was where his shoe would pinch him the most. For Hermia Challoner was wealthy beyond the touch of Midas. If the Westport house or her taste in automobiles had not been green in his memory, it only remained to him to view the stately splendor of the Challoner mansion up town to be reminded that his vagabond companion of a week rightfully belonged to another world in which he was only a reluctant and somewhat captious visitor. Her riches bewildered him. They obtruded unbearably, proclaiming their importance in terms which there was no denying. Vagabondia, it seemed, was a forgotten country.

Had Hermia forgotten? Was his idyl, the one dream of his life, to end in waking? Was Hermia's mad excursion but another item in the long list of entertainments by means of which she exacted from life payment in diversion which she considered her due? Had he, Markham, been but an incident in this entertainment, a humble second-liner like Luigi Fabiani, who broke stones upon his mighty brother and caught the infant Stella when she was hurled at him? The thought was unpleasant to him, and did his lady no honor--so he dismissed it with reservations. But, whatever unction he laid to his soul, the truth would not be downed that two months had elapsed since that parting in the railway station at Sées during which time he had neither heard from nor of her.

One comfort he had when hope was at low ebb--the vision of a pale face at a trap-door, its eyes wide in concern--Hermia's face when Olga's fowling piece was discharged; two comforts--the memory of the roses of Père Guégou! Both gave him joy--and reconciled him to her present intolerance which time and an ardor which knew no abating must wipe away. If it hadn't been for Olga!

This was a most exasperating _if_, a heart-wracking _if_, an _if_ that made him pause among the ruins of his ancient friendship. He could not believe that it was altogether to chance that he and Hermia owed Olga's discovery of their strange intimacy. In his infatuation he had forgotten that the Château de Cahors was near Alençon and that here was a spot which should at any costs have been avoided. Hermia must have known, too, and yet it seems they had both rushed to their danger with heedlessness which deserved no better fate. But their pursuit and the certainty with which Olga provided the culminating drama created a belief, in his own mind, at least, that had he and Hermia been in Kamschatka, their discomfiture would have been just as surely accomplished. If Olga's motives still remained shrouded in mystery, it was clear that her object had been to bring their companionship to an end, and this she had done, though not precisely in the way she had planned. Hermia hadn't believed that rot about La Croix and Compiègne. Olga had overshot the mark. Her pleasantry with the loaded shotgun had been better aimed and her frightened game had fallen. It angered him to think how ruthless had been her plan, mediæval in its simplicity, and how successful she had been in carrying it out. As to her motives--Hermia had insisted that Olga wanted to marry him! Olga and he!

With a muttered word Markham rose from his bench and made his way toward the Arch. Its phase of splendor had passed, for the dusk had fallen swiftly, but its bulk loomed in ghostly grandeur, a solemn sentinel at the meeting place of East and West. The street lights were winking merrily and brougham and limousine passed beneath it, moving rapidly northward. With the setting of the sun a chill had fallen on the wonderful day of Indian summer and people moved briskly on their homeward way. Markham buttoned his light overcoat across his chest and bent his steps in the direction of his apartment, when at the corner of the Avenue he found his way blocked by a solitary female person fashionable attire who for some reason was laughing gaily.

He stopped, awakened suddenly to the fact that the lady of his dreams was before him.

"O Monsieur Philidor!" she laughed. "Well met, upon my word! Have you waited for me long?"

"Olga!"

"The same--flushed with victory over the passing years, joyous, too, at the sight of you. I counted on finding you here."

"I'm delighted--but how--"

"I know your habits, my dear. You always loved to prowl. And there used to be a time, you know, when we prowled together."

He found himself glad to see her--so glad that he forgot how angry he was.

"Let's prowl then," he said, and turned his steps southward again.

"I suppose you know I've been hunting for you."

"Yes."

She volunteered no more.

"When did you get back?" he asked slowly.

"Tuesday. I wasted no time, you see, in looking for you. I've just come from the studio."

"You might have seen me in Normandy if you had cared to."

"Oh, I saw quite enough of you there," she said dryly. "Besides, I knew what you wanted. I wasn't ready to talk to you. I am now."

He laughed uneasily, sparring for wind.

"What have you to say to me?"

"Much. I've been thinking, John. Curious, isn't it? Wearing, too. Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy. Is beauty's ensign yet crimson in my cheeks?"

"If you weren't sure of it you wouldn't ask me," he laughed. "Why didn't you want to see me?"

"I didn't say I didn't want to see you. I merely suggested that I didn't think it wise to."

"Why not?"

"You might not have understood my point of view. You mayn't now. I think I was a trifle bewildered over there. Now I'm clear again," She paused, her gaze focusing quickly, "O John, what a mess you've made of my ideals!"

"I?" he muttered stupidly, but he knew what she meant. "What have I to do with your ideals, Olga?"

"Nothing--except that you gave them birth and then destroyed them. It's infanticide--nothing less," she said slowly.

He groped for a word, stammered and was silent.

She examined him curiously, then smiled.

"Silence? Confession!"

"I've nothing to confess." And then desperately. "Appearances are--were against us. If you've spoken of that--you've done a great mischief--an irreparable wrong--to--to Hermia."

She was laughing again, silently, inwardly, her head bent.

"Oh, as to that, I'll relieve your anxiety at once," she said at last. "It was to rich a secret to tell too quickly--too good a story--and then the embroideries--I had to think of those. No, I have not told it, John,--not yet. You see, after I left you, I changed my mind about things. Your rural _amourette_ is still a secret, _mon ami_."

He gasped a sigh of relief. How could he ever have believed it of her? He laughed lightly with an air of carelessness.

"You wouldn't tell. I knew that. You're not that sort, Olga--"

"Not so fast, my poor friend," she put in quickly. "I've said that your indiscretion was still a secret, but I still reserve the right to tell it here in New York if the humor seizes me."

"Nonsense," he laughed. "I simply don't believe you would."

She shrugged.

"I have told you the truth. I mean what I say. I shall tell what I know, unless--"

She paused. Her moment was not yet.

"Unless?" he questioned.

"Unless I find reasons why I shouldn't," she finished provokingly.

"Meaning--what?" he persisted.

He regarded her for a moment in silence, quickly joining in her laughter.

"Oh, what's the use of making such a lot of fuss over a thing? It was imprudent, indiscreet of us, if you like. Hermia and I met by accident. I was tramping it--as you know. I asked her if she didn't want to go along, and she did. Simplest thing in the world. We waved convention aside. Nothing odd about that. We're doing it every day."

"Oh, are we?"

"Yes. The laws of convention were only made as props and crutches for the crooked. If you're straight, you don't need 'em."

"Still," she mused sweetly, "society must be protected. Who is to tell which of us is straight and which crooked? Even if we were crooked, you know, neither of us would be willing t admit it."

"But it's a question not so much of my wisdom--as of Hermia's. You'll admit--"

"I admit nothing," she said quickly. "You've surprised, shocked and grieved me beyond words, both of you, also made me feel a trifle foolish. My judgment is shaken to the earth. Here I've been holding you up as a kind of paragon, a fossilized _Galahad_, with a horizon just at your elbows, to find you touring France, _faisant l'aimable_ with a frolicsome scapegrace in a bolero jacket."

"I would remind you," he broke in stiffly, "that you're speaking of Hermia Challoner."

"Oh, I'm quite aware of it," with a careless wave of her hand. "And as to Hermia's wisdom--life has taught me this--that a woman may be clever, she may be intuitive, she may be skillful, but she's never wise. And so I say--I'm shocked, John Markham, outraged and shocked beyond expression."

"Oh, you're the limit, Olga," he blurted out.

"Simply because I adhere to the traditions of my sex, because I adhere to the memory of my friendships. I like you, John Markham, your simplicity has always appealed to me. And now that you add gallantry to your more sober charms I confess you're quite irresistible."

Markham stopped short.

"I can't have you talking like this," he said quietly. "I don't mind what you say of me, of course, but your choice of words is not fortunate. Miss Challoner and I--"

"Spare your breath," she said, turning on him swiftly. "I'm no fool. I've lived in the world. If Hermia Challoner chooses to lay herself open to criticism that's her lookout. I'll say what I please of her. She has earned that retribution. Talk as you will of your own virtues and hers you'd never succeed in convincing anyone of your innocence--me least of all. What's the use of beating around the bush. I can see through a millstone--if it has a hole in it. Hermia Challoner--"

"Silence!" His fingers gripper her arm and she stopped, ready to scream with the pain of it. "You're insulting the woman I love. Do you hear?" he whispered through set lips. "I'll hear no more of it here--or elsewhere? We traveled together, that is all. My God--that you should dare!" He stopped suddenly, peering through the dusk at her face which still smiled, though the pain of her arm gave her agony, and then he relaxed with a laugh. "You don't mean it, I know. It isn't worthy of you. Why, Olga, you are her friend. You know her intimately--body and soul. You can't believe it. You don't--"

"I do," fiercely. "I _do_ believe it--more's the pity."

They had stopped and were facing each other, bayonets crossed. The city roared about them, but they did not hear it. He dominated her, masterful. She fought back silently, a thing of nerves and passion only, but she did not flinch, though he had already wounded her mortally.

"Lie, if you like to me, John Markham. Lie to me. It's your duty. Lie like a gentleman. But you can't make me believe you. I'm no fool. I'll say what I like of her--or of you, when I choose, where I choose--"

"I won't believe you."

"You must. It has come to that," she went on, whispering. "I've given you the best of me, the very best, what no man has had of me, affection, strong and tender, friendship, clean and wholesome. I gave gladly. I'm not sorry. They were sweeter even than the love in my breast which stifled--which still stifles me."

"Olga!"

The suppressed passion of her confession startled him. Her half-closed eyes burned through the dusk, then paled again.

"It's true," she went on haltingly. "I love you. My love--I'm proud of it--prouder of it than of anything I've ever been or known--because it's sweet and clean. That's why I can look you in the eyes and tell you so. Why shouldn't I? What is my woman's pride beside that other pride? I have not stopped--as she has--to conquer."

"Sh--!"

"She stooped to conquer. I'm glad--glad--it shows the difference between us. It weighs us one against the other. You shall know. One day you shall know. You'll tire of her. It's always the ending of a conquest like that."

"You're mad," he whispered, aghast.

She threw up her hands and pressed them to her breast a moment. Then, with a quivering intake of the breath, the tension broke, and her hands dropped to her sides, her laughter jarring him strangely.

"Curious, isn't it?" he heard her saying. "You're the last man in the world I would have dreamed of. I used to laugh at you, you know. You were so _gauche_ and _so_ ill-mannered. I took you up as a sort of game. It amused me to try and see what could be made of you. If you'd made love to me, I would have laughed at you. But you didn't. Why didn't you, John? It would have saved us all such a lot of trouble."

Her mockery set him more at ease. He saw a refuge and took it.

"I think you're not quite so mad--as mischievous," he said boldly. "Your loves are too frequent to cause your friends much concern--least of all the one you honor with your present professions. I'm not woman-wise, Olga. And I'm not honey-mouthed. I hope you won't mind if I say I don't believe you."

Her smile vanished.

"You will--in time," she said quickly. "So will--Hermia." She paused, and then, her fingers on his arm, her eyes to his.

"Have you--? Has she--? You wouldn't _marry_ her, John?"

Her tone was soft, but the inference had the ominous sibilance of a whip-lash, which swirled in the air and circled over Hermia, too. He chose his words deliberately.

"She's the sweetest, cleanest, purest woman I've ever known."

She shrugged and drew away. Whatever she felt, no sound escaped her. He followed toward the lights of the Avenue, aware that a crisis in his affairs of some sort had been reached and passed. His companion walked more and more rapidly, setting the pace which outdid the slow movement of his wits.

But he caught up with her presently and took her by the arm.

"Olga, forgive me. You maddened me. I wanted you to know--that Hermia was not what you thought she was. You lower your own standards--can't you see--when you lower hers? She's only a girl--thoughtless, a thing of impulses only--mad impulses if you like--but clean, Olga,--like a child. You've only to look at her and see--"

"I did look at her--and see," she said through her teeth.

He stopped her by main force.

"You've got to listen! Do you hear? It was I who put her in this false position. I who must get her out of it. I owe her that and you owe it to me."

He released her and went on more quietly. "I'm no _Galahad_ and I make no pretences to virtue, but I'm no rake or despoiler of women either. I dare you to doubt it. You didn't doubt it--there--in the studio. You can't doubt it now. Women of your sort--and hers--are inviolable."

Her lids flickered and fell.

"A girl--Olga, a mere child. Think! What is this love of yours that feeds on hatred--on uncleanness Love is made of gentler stuff-beautifies, uplifts--not destroys."

Her head was bent and her face was hidden under her wide hat, but her whisper came to him quite clearly.

"_You_--tell _me_--what love is? _You!_"

When she raised her head her lips were smiling softly, and she moved forward slowly, he at her side. They had reached the Avenue. A motor he had not observed stood near.

"We part here I think. It's _adieu_, John."

"No," he muttered.

"Oh, yes, it is." And then with a gay laugh which was her best defence--"Too bad we couldn't have hit it off, isn't it? I would have liked it awfully. I give you my word you've never seemed nearly so interesting as at this moment of discomposure. There's a charm in your awkwardness, John,--a native charm. Good night. I go alone."

He followed her a few paces but she reached the machine before him and was whisked away.