Part 17

"Yes, I do, I do! For some reason, I don't know why, I had got that girl's address, that girl in the box at the Bal Tabarin that night, and I went to her, and she sent me to someone. I knew once and for all that I didn't love you. I knew you were too old for it to be right for you to have a child. I knew it was wrong for me to have a child when I didn't want one and didn't know anything about taking care of one. Don't think I didn't suffer. It wasn't all physical, either. Do you remember the time you took me to buy baby-clothes? I thought I would go crazy--_crazy_! But I knew I had the right to refuse to be a mother against my will!"

He did not try to show her what all his training cried out against her deed. He could not try to indicate the injury that she had most likely done her health. He was too nearly stunned. He only asked:

"You loved him--then?"

"I didn't love you."

"Did you love him?"

"No. I thought I hated him. Later, when I knew I loved him, I even lied to him and told him I didn't love him. I can't forgive myself that. But then, when I did _that_ thing, I only knew what I've told you."

Stainton turned away. She saw him make an effort to straighten himself, but his shoulders bent and his head drooped. He was shuffling toward the door.

Nevertheless, Muriel was now ruthlessly honest.

"But I love him now," she said.

"Yes," said Stainton. His voice was dull.

"When you married me," said Muriel, "I knew nothing--nothing. I was no more fit to be your wife than you, because you knew so much and so little, were fit to be my husband."

Stainton half turned.

"And he?" Jim asked.

"He loves me: you only liked having me."

He turned slowly away again.

She thought that she heard him whisper:

"No child!"

"Oh, yes," she said. "I have lost everything else; but I have lost everything but a child. I only wish I could lose that, but I have a baby, a little dead baby. It will never leave me: it's the little ghost-baby of the woman I never had a chance to be."

He said nothing. He went down to the dining-room, merely for want of going somewhere away from her. He sat there in the darkness until, an hour later, he heard her shut and bolt the bedroom door. He took a candle in his shaking hand and studied in a mirror his gaunt grey face. One of the twin fears that had dominated his earlier life was still with him. She was right; he was growing old.

XX

HUSBAND AND LOVER

At eight o'clock in the morning, when the warm sun beat upon the sea and flooded the rooms of the villa, Stainton, still clad in his travelling clothes, returned to the drawing-room and rang the bell for the maid.

"Go to Mrs. Stainton's room," he said to the maid, who spoke more or less English, "and tell her that, as soon as she is ready to see me, I----"

"But, monsieur----"

"You may add that I won't keep her fifteen minutes."

"But, monsieur, it is since an hour madame is gone out."

"Gone out?" Why had she gone so early and so silently? Had she not tried to conceal her exit, he would have heard her. The natural suspicion flashed through Stainton's mind. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"Madame say you are not to be disturbed."

"Hum. I see. Did she leave any message?"

"But, yes; she leave this note here. She say the note to be given to monsieur only when monsieur demanded her whereabout."

Stainton took the envelope that the girl handed to him and, as the maid left the room, opened it. He was reading it through for the twentieth time when the domestic reappeared.

"A gentleman to see monsieur," she said.

"What gentleman?" asked Stainton, though he guessed the answer to his question.

The maid presented a card.

"Show Captain von Klausen up here," said Jim.

A moment later, husband and lover stood alone together.

"Good-morning," said Stainton.

He held out his hand, and von Klausen, after a swift hesitation, took it.

The Austrian's expression was disturbed. He was unshaven. It was obvious that he, too, had passed a sleepless night. The sight seemed, somehow, to restore his host's self-confidence.

"You will please to pardon for this early intrusion----" von Klausen began.

Stainton smiled.

"You are always so pleasant, Captain," he said, "that you never intrude. Besides, the earlier the better. As it happens, I was just this moment thinking of you."

Von Klausen bowed. There was a brief pause, the Austrian's blue eyes wandering about the room in an endeavour to escape Stainton's glance, and Stainton's eyes fastened thoughtfully upon the Austrian.

"Well?" asked the husband.

Von Klausen coughed.

"Madame is--is----" he started, but stopped short.

"You asked for me. Did you expect to find her up at this time of day?"

"Oh, no--no: certainly not. Pardon me. I forgot the hour."

"Ah, you often forget the hour, don't you, Captain?"

The Austrian braced himself. He raised his chin defiantly. He met the issue directly.

"You refer," he asked, "to my late call of last evening--yes?"

"More or less. I am rather curious about that call."

"Sir, there is nothing about it to excite your curiosity. You asked me to call. There is nothing of my call that you may not learn from your wife."

"No doubt. Of course not; but it may be that I prefer to ask you."

Von Klausen was in a corner. Anger he could have met with anger, but here was something that he did not comprehend.

"I can answer no question," he said, stiffly, "that you have not asked of Mrs. Stainton."

"How do you know that I haven't asked her?"

"I do not know that you have."

"You are sure of that?"

"What do you wish to say, Mr. Stainton?"

"I mean: are you sure that you haven't seen her since you left here last night?"

The Austrian's face expressed a bewilderment that Stainton could not mistrust.

"How is that possible?" inquired von Klausen.

"Oh, of course!" Stainton, convinced, shrugged his shoulders. "However, I do want to make a few inquiries of you."

"Then I prefer to wait until your wife descends, so that you may make them in her presence."

Stainton still held in his left hand the letter that Muriel had addressed to him. He tapped it upon the knuckles of his right hand.

"I am afraid," he said, "that I can't conveniently wait so long. Captain von Klausen, are you in love with my wife?"

The Austrian rose precipitately. His blond moustache bristled.

"Sir!" said he.

"I merely wanted to know."

"At your question I am amazed, sir."

"Oh, I really had a good reason for asking."

"In my country no reason suffices for such a question."

"Hum. Well, you see, neither my wife nor I belong to your country, and you are not in your country now. However, there is no need for you to get excited, Captain. I am sorry if I seem to have intruded on your confidence with a lady; but, to tell you the truth, as my wife has admitted that she is in love with you, I was not unnaturally somewhat curious to discover whether you reciprocated her affection."

Von Klausen's eyes protruded. This husband was, obviously, mad. He might have been driven mad by his discovery. The discovery seemed a thing accomplished. With a great in-taking of breath, the Austrian made answer:

"You have loved your wife. Why should _I_ be ashamed to say that I love her?"

If von Klausen expected an explosion, he was disappointed.

"Well," said Stainton, calmly, "that is one way of looking at it."

"Please?"

"Never mind. You say you love her?"

"Yes."

Stainton looked at him narrowly, from under heavy brows. He regularly tapped his knuckles with the envelope.

"For a day?" he asked.

"Sir?"

"I mean: is this a world-without-end business so far as you are concerned, or is it one of your little amusements by the way?"

The Austrian clenched his teeth.

"Do you mean to insult me, sir?"

"I assure you that I mean nothing of the sort."

"Then you insult your wife!"

"Not at all. I am sorry that you should suppose I could think ill of her."

"If you do not think ill of her, you have no right to ask such a question as this which you have asked."

"It's not impossible that I should be a trifle interested, you know."

"I cannot understand, sir, how you can have the calmness----"

"Why not? She is my wife, you see. What I want to know is whether you are genuinely, sincerely in love with her. You know what I mean. As between man and man now: is this a for-ever-and-ever affair with you?"

The Austrian's bewilderment found vent in a long sigh.

"It is," said he.

"Good," said Stainton. He thrust his hands into his trousers' pockets and bent forward. "If I let her get a divorce from me, will you marry her?" he asked.

"Do you make a joke?"

"I don't consider this a joking matter, Captain. I ask you a frank question and I want a frank answer."

Von Klausen doubted his ears, but he replied:

"I would desire nothing better, but my faith forbids."

"You're sincere in that?"

"Absolutely."

"I mean about your faith, you know."

"Whatever else may be charged against me, sir, heresy or infidelity may not be charged."

"Have a cigar," said Stainton.

He produced his cigar-case, gave the Austrian a cigar, held a steady match while his guest secured a light, and then, with a cigar between his teeth, began to walk rapidly up and down the room, puffing quietly, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Look here," he said. "I am the kind of man that lives to look ahead and prepare for all contingencies. I do not always succeed, but I see no harm in trying. Well. When I first began to think about this thing, I said I would be prepared for the worst, if the worst came. I remembered your prejudices, and I had a fellow do some research work for me at the Bibliothèque Nationale, and yesterday I spent some time in the seminary library at Avignon. My dear fellow, you haven't got a leg to stand on."

"No leg?"

"Not in your objections to divorce and remarriage."

"The Church----"

"Was founded by, or at any rate pretends allegiance to, Jesus of Nazareth. Now, Jesus of Nazareth is reported to have said--it's not certain--something that may seem to bear out your theories; but that something which may be twisted to your way was said just about two thousand years ago to a small, outlying, semi-barbarous province. Are you going to try to apply it to civilisation to-day?"

The Austrian had philosophically seated himself in the chair against which Jim had leaned the night before.

"I apply the Sermon on the Mount," said von Klausen.

"Do you? I didn't think you did. But we'll pass that. Your faith bases its argument on the interpretation of that text made by the Early Church, and the Christian Fathers interpreted it in just about two dozen different ways."

"So?" said von Klausen: he would humour this lunatic.

"In the first place, at the beginning of the Christian Era marriage in Rome was a private partnership that the parties could dissolve by mutual consent, or by one notifying the other, as in any other partnership; that was part of Roman law, and for centuries neither the Church nor its Fathers disputed that law. In all the history of the first phase of Christianity in Rome you can't find one time when the whole Church accepted the idea that marriage was indissoluble. Once or twice the Church tried to get the law to require the Church's sanction before decree of divorce would be legally valid, but that was not a denial of divorce; it was a recognition and an endeavour to capture the control and exploitation of divorces."

"That matters nothing," said von Klausen. "These things were determined otherwise. With all my heart I wish not, but they were."

"How? The Church began by having nothing to do with marriages. Weddings were not held in the churches and so of course marriage was not considered a sacrament. I can give you chapter and verse for everything I say. About the only early council that tried to interfere with the law was the Council of 416, or some time near that. It tried to make Rome abolish divorce, but no emperor listened to it till early in the ninth century--Charlemagne, and he practised divorce himself. Only a little earlier--I think it was in 870--the Church officially allowed dissolution of marriage. In the Middle Ages the episcopal courts allowed divorce and were supported by the popes."

"Did you not find that the Council of Trent declared marriage indissoluble?"

"I expected to, but I didn't. All it said was that if anyone said the Church erred in regarding marriage as indissoluble, _anathema sit_. The Council of Trent seems to have been trying to patch up a peace with the Eastern Church, which never did regard marriage as indissoluble." He shook his head at von Klausen, smiling gravely, "You see, it won't do," he said.

"You have not quoted the Fathers," the Austrian almost mockingly said.

"I can. I took care of that. I can go back to St. Paul: he allowed divorce when a husband and wife had religious differences. Chrysostom tolerated divorce. So did Justin Martyr and Tertullian. Origen was so afraid of women that he--he mutilated himself, but he allowed divorce for certain causes, and when he condemned it in certain phases, he was careful to say that he was 'debating' rather than affirming."

"St. Augustine is the authority in this matter."

"And no one other person ever said so many contradictory things about it. Why, he thought his marriage was almost as wrong as his affairs without marriage. He considered the social evil a necessity and wouldn't condemn downright polygamy. In one place he admits divorce for adultery; in another he merely 'doubts' if there is any other good cause, and in the third he won't have it at all. When he finally gets down to bed-rock, he says that the text on which the anti-divorce people take their stand is so hazy that anybody is justified in making a mistake."

Stainton paused to relight his cigar.

"But you are talking of divorce," said von Klausen, "not of remarriage."

"Remarriage follows logically," Jim responded. "The one flows from the other."

Von Klausen shrugged.

"Yes," persisted Jim. "Jerome declared against a second marriage after the death of the first husband or wife, but your faith doesn't follow him, does it? The Fathers differed in this just as they did in everything else connected with the subject. The early bishops publicly blessed the remarriage of at least one woman that had divorced her husband on the ground of adultery. Epiphanius said that if a divorced person remarried the Church would absolve him from blame. It was weakness, he said, and I suppose it is, but the Church would tolerate the weakness and wouldn't reject him from its rites or its salvation. Origen didn't approve of remarriage, but he said that it was no more than mere technical adultery, and the furthest that St. Augustine himself could go was to have 'grave doubts' about it."

The Austrian, despite his nervousness, had shown an intellectual interest in Stainton's exposition, but the interest was only intellectual.

"It makes no matter what they said the Church should do," he insisted; "it is what the Church has done. The Church has made marriage a sacrament."

"Doesn't the Church rule that a marriage can be consummated only by an act of the flesh?"

"Yes."

"Then how can what is done by the flesh be a sacrament?"

"I do not know. I know that it is. The Church, whether early or late, has spoken and it has said that marriage is a sacrament indissoluble save by the death of the husband or the wife."

Stainton put down his cigar.

"Captain," he said, "you are in earnest, aren't you?"

The Austrian flushed, but did not flinch.

"I am," said he.

"You love her?"

"I do."

"Truly?"

"With heart and soul, both."

"And there is no changing your faith?"

"No way."

"There isn't any short-cut, any quick trail over the mountain, any bridle-path? A fellow cannot get an Indulgence--nothing of that sort?"

"I wish--I wish deeply that one might; but--no."

"No," said Jim with a little sigh, "I suppose not nowadays. I looked that up, too. Public opinion is pretty strong, and as wrong as usual." He seemed to shake the subject from him. "And," he ended, "now that I have bored you with my cheap pedantry, I remember that I have been a bad host: I have not asked you your errand."

What change was coming over the madman now?

"My errand?" asked von Klausen.

"Exactly. You come here at about 9 A.M., and I take up your valuable time with a discussion of ecclesiastical polity. What was it that you wanted to see me about?"

What the Austrian had wanted he had long since learned. He had no sooner left the villa on the night previous than he began to doubt whether his supposition that Stainton was unsuspicious was quite so well founded as he had at first imagined. He recalled a certain constraint in the husband's deportment, and then he imagined other tokens that had not been displayed. In the end, he decided to return to Muriel's home at the earliest possible moment, discover whether there were any real danger and, if there was, face its consequences. Now, however he learned that Muriel had made some sort of confession to Stainton and that Stainton had received that confession in a manner inexplicable to von Klausen. Confronted with Jim's abrupt question, he did not know what to say, and so he found himself saying:

"I should like to see Mrs. Stainton."

Stainton whistled.

"I wish you could," he answered. "Indeed, indeed, I wish you could, my boy; but I am sorry to say that it is out of the question."

"You forbid it?" Von Klausen wished that these confounded Americans could be brought to see the simplicity of settling complex difficulties by the code of honour.

"I didn't say that I forbade it; I said it was out of the question. I meant that it was out of the question."

The Austrian bent forward, hot anger in his eyes.

"Do you dare to deprive her of her liberty?" he asked.

"On the contrary, my dear sir, she has taken her liberty. She has gone away."

The thing seemed incredible to von Klausen:

"Away from Marseilles?"

Stainton nodded.

"That's it," he agreed.

There shot through von Klausen's mind the thought that this lunatic had killed her. If so, he would surely kill the lunatic or be killed in the attempt.

"I don't believe it," he said. "I believe that you are----"

"Captain von Klausen, I have learned all that I want to know about your religious faith, and I am not in the slightest degree interested in the question of your other beliefs. I say to you that my wife has gone away, and I am afraid that, whether you like it or not, you are obliged, for the present, to accept my word."

"I will not accept your word!"

"Pardon me, but I don't see what else you can very well do. Of course, you might watch the house, but the Corniche gets very hot by midday."

"You joke. You can joke about such a thing!"

"I have never been so serious as I am now."

Stainton emphasised his words with a gesture of his left hand, in which he held the now crumpled letter.

"That letter!" said von Klausen with sudden inspiration. "It is from her!"

"It is."

"Ah, you have intercepted a letter from her to me!"

"I am not in the habit of reading my wife's personal letters to other people--when she writes any. This note is addressed to me, and it is this note that tells me of her departure."

"It tells you where she is going?"

"It tells me that and more. It tells me that she is sorry for a wound she thinks she has inflicted on my feelings, and she proposed to look for rest in a certain secluded place."

The Austrian's blue eyes brightened.

"A secluded place?" he repeated, excitedly.

"Exactly; but I shall not tell you its name. I shall keep that to myself until I have had another interview with my wife."

The Captain looked closely at Stainton.

"You mean to follow and chastise her?" he asked.

"There," said Stainton, quietly, "I think we reach a point where the matter becomes entirely my own affair."

XXI

THE MAN AND HIS GOD

If you look in your Baedeker's "Southern France," you will find, in very small type, on page 479, the following brief paragraph:

"From Aubagne or Auriol to the Ste. Baume. From Aubagne an omnibus (5 fr.) plies four times weekly via (3 M.) Gémenos to the (4 hrs.) Hôtellerie (see below). From Auriol an omnibus (50 c.) plies to the (5½ M.) St. Zacherie (Lion d'Or), whence we have still 8 M. of bad road (carr. 10-20 fr.) to the Hôtellerie de la Ste. Baume, situated on the plateau or Plan d'Aulps, 3/4 hr. below the grotto. The E. portion of the plateau is occupied by a virgin *Forest with fine trees--The Ste. Baume is, according to tradition, the grotto to which Mary Magdalen retired to end her days; it has been transformed into a chapel and is still a frequented pilgrim resort. It has given its name to the mountains among which it lies."

So much for Baedeker. But Baedeker either does not know everything, or else, like a really good traveller, he keeps to himself, lest tourists spoil, some of the best things that he has seen. The plateau above which hangs the cave that tradition describes as The Magdalen's last residence is, in fact, as far out of the world as if its first tenant had tried to climb as near to Heaven as she could before she quitted the earth altogether, and so far as the wandering American is concerned, it might quite as well be across the celestial border.

Yet it was to the Ste. Baume that Muriel had gone, and that she had written to her husband. For Muriel, too, had passed a night of wracking reflection, and the dim dawn had found her clear upon one resolve.

The anger that had been kindled by Stainton's accusation slowly died away. She saw that, though he had assumed her love for von Klausen to have carried her so much farther than she had indeed been carried, the difference was only of degree; and, though she was far from condemning herself, she knew that her husband would, even knowing all, condemn her because he would judge her by the standards of that ancient fallacy which sees wrong not in the deed but in the desire.

She was clear in her own mind as to the course that she had pursued, but she was equally clear that Jim had acted as truly in conformance with his lights as she had with hers. She recognised as she had never before recognised those qualities in Jim which, she felt, should have at least won from her a less recriminative tone than she had, the night before, assumed toward him. She remembered the evening when she had promised herself to him in that long ago and far away New York--how tall and strong and fine he had seemed, how virile and yet how much the master, of his fate and of himself as well. She remembered how he had crushed her to his breast--how she had responded. She was changed. She was sure that she was changed for the better. But what was it that had changed her? That night in New York the miracle had happened. Were miracles of such short life?

In an agony of endeavour she set herself to recalling his thousand little kindnesses, and each one seemed to rise at her summons to point its accusing finger at her anger. Why couldn't she have been gentler to him? She was at a loss for the answer. She told herself that, in character, he was unscalable heights above her. She was ashamed of her anger, ashamed of her hatred; she regarded him, in her self-abasement, as something even of a saint, yet love him she could not: the thought of any physical contact with him made her shiver.

Franz von Klausen she knew that she did love and would always love. She was married to Jim, and Franz himself said that marriage was a sacrament. Where, then, was the occult power of the sacrament that it could not hold her heart? She could not, in honesty, live with Jim as his wife; according to von Klausen's standard, she could not in moral rectitude live with von Klausen. What was left for her but to run away?

Thus it was that she arrived at her decision. In her primal impulses she was still only a young animal that had been caught in the marriage trap, that had torn herself free, and that now, wounded and bleeding, wanted to hide and suffer alone.