Chapter 6

He drew a long breath charged with bitter memories and said between his teeth, rebelling: "I always agreed."

"Can it be? Is it possible?" commented De Gollyer, carefully mastering his expression.

Lightbody, on the new subject of his wrongs, now began to explode with wrath.

"And there's one thing more--one thing that hurts! You know what she eloped in? She eloped in a hat, a big red hat, three white feathers--one hundred and seventy-five dollars. I gave up a winter suit to get it."

He strode over to the grotesquely large hat-box on the slender table, and struck it with his fist.

"Came this morning. Jim, she waited for that hat! Now, that isn't right! That isn't delicate!"

"No, by Jove, it certainly isn't delicate!"

"Domesticity! Ha!" At the moment, with only the long vision of petty tyranny before him, he could have caught her up in his hands and strangled her. "Domesticity! I've had all I want of domesticity!"

Suddenly the eternal fear awakening in him, he turned and commanded authoritatively:

"Never tell!"

"Never!"

De Gollyer, at forty-two, showed a responsive face, invincibly, gravely sympathetic, patiently awaiting his climax, knowing that nothing is so cumulatively dangerous as confession.

Lightbody took up his glass and again approached it to his lips, frowning at the thought of what he had revealed. All at once a fresh impulse caught him, he put down his glass untasted, blurting out:

"Do you want to know one thing more? Do you want to know the truth, the real truth?"

"Gracious heavens, there is something more?"

"I never married her--never in God's world!"

He ceased and suddenly, not to be denied, the past ranged itself before him in its stark verity.

"She married me!"

"Is it possible?"

"She did!"

What had been an impulse suddenly became a certainty.

"As I look back now, I can see it all--quite clear. Do you know how it happened? I called three times--not one time more--three times! I liked her--nothing more. She was an attractive-looking girl--a certain fascination--she always has that--that's the worst of it--but gentle, very gentle."

"Extraordinary!"

"On the third time I called--the third time, mind you," proceeded Lightbody, attacking the table, "as I stood up to say good-by, all at once--the lights went out."

"The lights?"

"When they went on again--I was engaged."

"Great heavens!"

"The old fainting trick."

"Is it possible?"

"I see it all now. A man sees things as they are at such a moment."

He gave a short, disagreeable laugh. "Jim, she had those lights all fixed!"

"Frightful!"

Lightbody, who had stripped his soul in confession, no longer was conscious of shame. He struck the table, punctuating his wrath, and cried:

"And that's the truth! The solemn literal truth! That's my story!"

To confess, it had been necessary to be swept away in a burst of anger. The necessity having ceased, he crossed his arms, quite calm, laughing a low, scornful laugh.

"My dear boy," said De Gollyer, to relieve the tension, "as a matter of fact, that's the way you're all caught."

"I believe it," said Lightbody curtly. He had now an instinctive desire to insult the whole female sex.

"I know--a bachelor knows. The things I have seen and the things I have heard. My dear fellow, as a matter of fact, marriage is all very well for bankers and brokers, unconvicted millionaires, week domestic animals in search of a capable housekeeper, you know, and all that sort of thing, but for men of the world--like ourselves, it's a mistake. Don't do it again, my boy--don't do it."

Lightbody laughed a barking laugh that quite satisfied De Gollyer.

"Husbands--modern social husbands--are excrescences--they don't count. They're mere financial tabulators--nothing more than social sounding-boards."

"Right!" said Lightbody savagely.

"Ah, you like that, do you?" said De Gollyer, pleased. "I do say a good thing occasionally. Social sounding-boards! Why, Jack, in one-half of the marriages in this country--no, by George, in two-thirds--if the inconsequential, tabulating husband should come home to find a letter like this--he'd be dancing a _can-can_!"

Lightbody felt a flood of soul-easing laughter well up within him. He bit his lip and answered:

"No!"

"Yes."

"Pshaw!"

"A _can-can_!"

Lightbody, fearing to betray himself, did not dare to look at the triumphant bachelor. He covered his eyes with his hands and sought to fight down the joyful hysteria that began to shake his whole body. All at once he caught sight of De Gollyer's impish eyes, and, unable longer to contain himself, burst out laughing. The more he laughed at De Gollyer, who laughed back at him, the more uncontrollable he became. Tears came to his eyes and trickled down his cheeks, washing away all illusions and self-deception, leaving only the joy of deliverance, acknowledged at last.

All at once holding his sides, he found a little breath and cried combustibly:

"A _can-can_!"

Suddenly, with one impulse, they locked arms and pirouetted about the room, flinging out destructive legs, hugging each other with bear-like hugs as they had done in college days of triumph. Exhausted at last, they reeled apart, and fell breathless into opposite chairs. There was a short moment of weak, physical silence, and then Lightbody, shaking his head, said solemnly:

"Jim--Jim, that's the first real genuine laugh I've had in six vast years!"

"My boy, it won't be the last."

"You bet it won't!" Lightbody sprang up, as out of the ashen cloak of age the young Faust springs forth. "To-morrow--do you hear, to-morrow we're off for Morocco!"

"By way of Paris?" questioned De Gollyer, who likewise gained a dozen years of youthfulness.

"Certainly by way of Paris."

"With a dash of Vienna?"

"Run it off the map!"

"Good old Jack! You're coming back, my boy, you're coming strong!"

"Am I? Just watch!" Dancing over to the desk, he seized a dozen heavy books:

"'Evolution and Psychology,' 'Burning Questions!' 'Woman's Position in Tasmania!' Aha!"

One by one, he flung them viciously over his head, reckoning not the crash with which they fell. Then with the same _pas de ballet_ he descended on the hat-box and sent it from his boot crashing over the piano. Before De Gollyer could exclaim, he was at the closet, working havoc with the boxes of cigars.

"Here, I say," said De Gollyer laughing, "look out, those are cigars!"

"No, they're not," said Lightbody, pausing for a moment. Then, seizing two boxes, he whirled about the room holding them at arms' length, scattering them like the sparks of a pin-wheel, until with a final motion he flung the emptied boxes against the ceiling, and, coming to an abrupt stop, shot out a mandatory forefinger, and cried:

"Jim, you dine with me!"

"The fact is--"

"No buts, no excuses! Break all engagements! To-night we celebrate!"

"Immense!"

"Round up the boys--all the boys--the old crowd. I'm middle-aged, am I?"

"By George," said De Gollyer, in free admiration, "you're getting into form, my boy, excellent form. Fine, fine, very fine!"

"In half an hour at the Club."

"Done."

"Jim?"

"Jack!"

They precipitated themselves into each other's arms. Lightbody, as delirious as a young girl at the thought of her first ball, cried:

"Paris, Vienna, Morocco--two years around the world!"

"On my honor!"

Rapidly Lightbody, impatient for the celebration, put De Gollyer into his coat and armed him with his cane.

"In half an hour, Jim. Get Budd, get Reggie Longworth, and, I say, get that little reprobate of a Smithy, will you?"

"Yes, by George."

At the door, De Gollyer, who, when he couldn't leave on an epigram, liked to recall the best thing he had said, turned:

"Never again, eh, old boy?"

"Never," cried Lightbody, with the voice of a cannon.

"No social sounding-board for us, eh?"

"Never again!"

"You do like that, don't you? I say a good thing now and then, don't I?"

Lightbody, all eagerness, drove him down the hall, crying:

"Round 'em up--round them all up! I'll show them if I've come back!"

When he had returned, waltzing on his toes to the middle of the room, he stopped and flung out his arms in a free gesture, inhaling a delicious breath. Then, whistling busily, he went to a drawer in the book-shelves and came lightly back, his arms crowded with time-tables, schedules of steamers, maps of various countries. All at once, remembering, he seized the telephone and, receiving no response, rang impatiently.

"Central--hello--hello! Central, why don't you answer? Central, give me--give me--hold up, wait a second!" He had forgotten the number of his own club. In communication at last, he heard the well-modulated accents of Rudolph--Rudolph who recognized his voice after six years. It gave him a little thrill, this reminder of the life he was entering once more. He ordered one of the dinners he used to order, and hung up the receiver, with a smile and a little tightening about his heart at the entry he, the prodigal, would make that night at the Club.

Then, seizing a map of Morocco in one hand and a schedule of sailings in the other, he sat down to plan, chanting over and over, "Paris, Vienna, Morocco, India, Paris, Vienna--"

At this moment, unnoticed by him, the doors moved noiselessly and Mrs. Lightbody entered; a woman full of appealing movements in her lithe body, and of quick, decisive perceptions in the straight, gray glance of her eyes. She held with one hand a cloak fastened loosely about her throat. On her head was the hat with the three white feathers.

A minute passed while she stood, rapidly seizing every indication that might later assist her. Then she moved slightly and said in a voice of quiet sadness:

"Jackie."

"Great God!"

Lightbody, overturning chair and table, sprang up--recoiling as one recoils before an avenging specter. In his convulsive fingers were the time-tables, clinging like damp lily pads.

"Jackie, I couldn't do it. I couldn't abandon you. I've come back." Gently, seeming to move rather than to walk, advancing with none of the uncertainty that was in her voice, she cried, with a little break: "Forgive me!"

"No, no, never!"

He retreated behind a chair, fury in his voice, weak at the thought of the floating, entangling scarf, and the perfume he knew so well. Then, recovering himself, he cried brutally:

"Never! You have given me my freedom. I'll keep it! Thanks!"

With a gradual motion, she loosened her filmy cloak and let it slip from the suddenly revealed shoulders and slender body.

"No, no, I forbid you!" he cried. Anger--animal, instinctive anger--began to possess him. He became brutal as he felt himself growing weak.

"Either you go out or I do!"

"You will listen."

"What? To lies?"

"When you have heard me, you will understand, Jack."

"There is nothing to be said. I have not the slightest intention of taking back--"

"Jack!"

Her voice rang out with sudden impressiveness: "I swear to you I have not met him, I swear to you I came back of my own free will, because I could not meet him, because I found that it was you--you only--whom I wanted!"

"That is a lie!"

She recoiled before the wound in his glance. She put her long white hand over her heart, throwing all of herself into the glance that sought to conquer him.

"I swear it," she said simply.

"Another lie!"

"Jack!"

It was a physical rage that held him now, a rage divided against itself--that longed to strike down, to crush, to stifle the thing it coveted. He had almost a fear of himself. He cried:

"If you don't go, I'll--I'll--"

Suddenly he found something more brutal than a blow, something that must drive her away, while yet he had the strength of his passion. He crossed his arms, looking at her with a cold look.

"I'll tell you why you came back. You went to him for just one reason. You thought he had more money than I had. You came back when you found he hadn't."

He saw her body quiver and it did him good.

"That ends it," she said, hardly able to speak. She dropped her head hastily, but not before he had seen the tears.

"Absolutely."

In a moment she would be gone. He felt all at once uneasy, ashamed--she seemed so fragile.

"My cloak--give me my cloak," she said, and her voice showed that she accepted his verdict.

He brought the cloak to where she stood wearily, and put it on her shoulders, stepping back instantly.

"Good-by."

It was said more to the room than to him.

"Good-by," he said dully.

She took a step and then raised her eyes to his.

"That was more than you had a right to say, even to me," she said without reproach in her voice.

He avoided her look.

"You will be sorry. I know you," she said with pity for him. She went toward the door.

"I am sorry," he said impulsively. "I shouldn't have said it."

"Thank you," she said, stopping and returning a little toward him.

He drew back as though already he felt her arms about him.

"Don't," she said, smiling a tired smile. "I'm not going to try that."

Her instinct had given her possession of the scene. He felt it and was irritated.

"Only let us part quietly--with dignity," she said, "for we have been happy together for six years." Then she said rapidly:

"I want you to know that I shall do nothing to dishonor your name. I am not going to him. That is ended."

An immense curiosity came to him to learn the reason of this strange avowal. But he realized it would never do for him to ask it.

"Good-by, Jackie," she said, having waited a moment. "I shall not see you again."

He watched her leaving with the same moving grace with which she had come. All at once he found a way of evasion.

"Why don't you go to him?" he said harshly.

She stopped but did not turn.

"No," she said, shaking her head. And again she dared to continue toward the door.

"I shall not stand in your way," he said curtly, fearing only that she would leave. "I will give you a divorce. I don't deny a woman's liberty."

She turned, saying:

"Do you allow a woman liberty to know her own mind?"

"What do you mean?"

She came back until he almost could have touched her, standing looking into his eyes with a wistful, searching glance, clasping and unclasping her tense fingers.

"Jack," she said, "you never really cared."

"So it is all my fault!" he cried, snapping his arms together, sure now that she would stay.

"Yes, it is."

"What!" he cried in a rage--already it was a different rage--"didn't I give you anything you wanted, everything I had, all my time, all--"

"All but yourself," she said quietly; "you were always cold."

"I!"

"You were! You were!" she said sharply, annoyed at the contradiction. But quickly remembering herself, she continued with only a regretful sadness in her voice:

"Always cold, always matter-of-fact. Bob of the head in the morning, jerk of the head at night. When I was happy over a new dress or a new hat you never noticed it--until the bill came in. You were always matter-of-fact, absolutely confident I was yours, body and soul."

"By George, that's too much!" he cried furiously. "That's a fine one. I'm to blame--of course I'm to blame!"

She drew a step away from him, and said:

"Listen! No, listen quietly, for when I've told you I shall go."

Despite himself, his anger vanished at her quiet command.

"If I listen," he thought, "it's all over."

He still believed he was resisting, only he wanted to hear as he had never wanted anything else--to learn why she was not going to the other man.

"Yes, what has happened is only natural," she said, drawing her eyebrows a little together and seeming to reason more with herself. "It had to happen before I could really be sure of my love for you. You men know and choose from the knowledge of many women. A woman, such as I, coming to you as a girl, must often and often ask herself if she would still make the same choice. Then another man comes into her life and she makes of him a test to know once and for all the answer to her question. Jack, that was it. That was the instinct that drove me to try if I _could_ leave you--the instinct I did not understand then, but that I do now, when it's too late."

"Yes, she is clever," he thought to himself, listening to her, desiring her the more as he admired what he did not credit. He felt that he wanted to be convinced and with a last angry resistance, said:

"Very clever, indeed!"

She looked at him with her clear, gray look, a smile in her eyes, sadness on her lips.

"You know it is true."

He did not reply. Finally he said bruskly:

"And when did--did the change come to you?"

"In the carriage, when every turn of the wheel, every passing street, was rushing me away from you. I thought of you--alone--lost--and suddenly I knew. I beat with my fists on the window and called to the coachman like a madman. I don't know what I said. I came back."

She stopped, pressing back the tears that had started on her eyelids at the memory. She controlled herself, gave a quick little nod, without offering her hand, went toward the door.

"What! I've got to call her back!" He said it to himself, adding furiously: "Never!"

He let her go to the door itself, vowing he would not make the advance.

When the door was half open, something in him cried: "Wait!"

She closed the door softly, but she did not immediately turn round. The palms of her hands were wet with the cold, frightened sweat of that awful moment. When she returned, she came to him with a wondering, timid, girlish look in her eyes.

"Oh, Jack, if you only could!" she said, and then only did she put out her hands and let her fingers press over his heart.

The next moment she was swept up in his arms, shrinking and very still.

All at once he put her from him and said roughly:

"What was his name?"

"No, no!"

"Give me his name," he said miserably. "I must know it."

"No--neither now nor at any other time," she said firmly, and her look as it met his had again all the old domination. "That is my condition."

"Ah, how weak I have been," he said to himself, with a last bitter, instinctive revolt. "How weak I am."

She saw and understood.

"We must be generous," she said, changing her voice quickly to gentleness. "He has been pained enough already. He alone will suffer. And if you knew his name it would only make you unhappy."

He still rebelled, but suddenly to him came a thought which at first he was ashamed to express.

"He doesn't know?"

She lied.

"No."

"He's still waiting--there?"

"Yes."

"Ah, he's waiting," he said to himself.

A gleam of vanity, of triumph over the discarded, humiliated one, leaped up fiercely within him and ended all the lingering, bitter memories.

"Then you care?" she said, resting her head on his shoulder that he might not see she had read such a thought.

"Care?" he cried. He had surrendered. Now it was necessary to be convinced. "Why, when I received your letter I--I was wild. I wanted to do murder."

"Jackie!"

"I was like a madman--everything was gone--nothing was left."

"Oh, Jack, how I have made you suffer!"

"Suffer? Yes, I have suffered!" Overcome by the returning pain of the memory, he dropped into a chair, trying to control his voice. "Yes, I have suffered!"

"Forgive me!" she said, slipping on her knees beside him, and burying her head in his lap.

"I was out of my head--I don't know what I did, what I said. It was as though a bomb had exploded. My life was wrecked, shattered--nothing left."

He felt the grief again, even more acutely. He suffered for what he had suffered.

"Jack, I never really could have _abandoned_ you," she cried bitterly. She raised her eyes toward him and suddenly took notice of the time-tables that lay clutched in his hands. "Oh, you were going away!"

He nodded, incapable of speech.

"You were running away?"

"I was running away--to forget--to bury myself!"

"Oh, Jack!"

"There was nothing here. It was all a blank! I was running away--to bury myself!"

At the memory of that miserable hopeless moment, in which he had resolved on flight, the tears, no longer to be denied, came dripping down his cheeks.

THE LIE

I

For some time they had ceased to speak, too oppressed with the needless anguish of this their last night. At their feet the tiny shining windows of Etretat were dropping back into the night, as though sinking under the rise of that black, mysterious flood that came luminously from the obscure regions of the faint sky. Overhead, the swollen August stars had faded before the pale flush that, toward the lighthouse on the cliff, heralded the red rise of the moon.

He held himself a little apart, the better to seize every filmy detail of the strange woman who had come inexplicably into his life, watching the long, languorous arms stretched out into an impulsive clasp, the dramatic harmony of the body, the brooding head, the soft, half-revealed line of the neck. The troubling alchemy of the night, that before his eyes slowly mingled the earth with the sea and the sea with the sky, seemed less mysterious than this woman whose body was as immobile as the stillness in her soul.

All at once he felt in her, whom he had known as he had known no other, something unknown, the coming of another woman, belonging to another life, the life of the opera and the multitude, which would again flatter and intoxicate her. The summer had passed without a doubt, and now, all at once, something new came to him, indefinable, colored with the vague terror of the night, the fear of other men who would come thronging about her, in the other life, where he could not follow.

Around the forked promontory to the east, the lights of the little packet-boat for England appeared, like the red cinder in a pipe, slipping toward the horizon. It was the signal for a lover's embrace, conceived long ago in fancy and kept in tenderness.

"Madeleine," he said, touching her arm. "There it is--our little boat."

"Ah! _le p'tit bateau_--with its funny red and green eyes."

She turned and raised her lips to his; and the kiss, which she did not give but permitted, seemed only fraught with an ineffable sadness, the end of all things, the tearing asunder and the numbness of separation. She returned to her pose, her eyes fixed on the little packet, saying:

"It's late."

"Yes."

"It goes fast."

"Very."

They spoke mechanically, and then not at all. The dread of the morning was too poignant to approach the things that must be said. Suddenly, with the savage directness of the male to plunge into the pain which must be undergone, he began:

"It was like poison--that kiss."

She turned, forgetting her own anguish in the pain in his voice, murmuring, "Ben, my poor Ben."

"So you will go--to-morrow," he said bitterly, "back to the great public that will possess you, and I shall remain--here, alone."

"It must be so."

He felt suddenly an impulse he had not felt before, an instinct to make her suffer a little. He said brutally:

"But you want to go!"

She did not answer, but, in the obscurity, he knew her large eyes were searching his face. He felt ashamed of what he had said, and yet because she made no protestation, he persisted:

"You have left off your jewels, those jewels you can't do without."

"Not to-night."

"You who are never happy without them--why not to-night?"

As, carried away by the jealousy of what lay beyond, he was about to continue, she laid her fingers on his lips, with a little brusk, nervous movement of her shoulders.

"Don't--you don't understand."

But he understood and he resented the fact that she should have put aside the long undulating rope of pearls, the rings of rubies and emeralds that seemed as natural to her dark beauty as the roses to the spring. He had tried to understand her woman's nature, to believe that no memory yet lingered about them, to accept without question what had never belonged longed to their life together, and remembering what he had fought down he thought bitterly:

"She has changed me more than I have changed her. It is always so."

She moved a little, her pose, with instinctive dramatic sense, changing with her changing mood.