CHAPTER IV

THE MARTYR

A fortnight later light was thrown on Blackburn's perplexity by a shrewd question from Mrs. Timberlake. For days he had been groping in darkness, and now, in one instant, it seemed to him that his discovery leaped out in a veritable blaze of electricity. How could he have gone on in ignorance? How could he have stumbled, with unseeing eyes, over the heart of the problem?

"David," said the housekeeper bluntly, "don't you think that this thing has been going on long enough?" They were in the library, and before putting the question, she had closed the door and even glanced suspiciously at the windows.

"This thing?" He looked up from his newspaper, with the vague idea that she was about to discourse upon our diplomatic correspondence with Germany.

"I am not talking about the President's notes." Her voice had grown rasping. "He may write as many as he pleases, if they will make the Germans behave themselves without our having to go to war. What I mean is the way Mary is eating her heart out. Haven't you noticed it?"

"I have been worried about her for some time." He laid the paper down on the desk. "But I haven't been able to discover what is the matter."

"If you had asked me two months ago, I could have told you it was about that young fool Alan."

"About Wythe? Why, I thought she and Wythe were particularly devoted." If he were sparring for time, there was no hint of it in his manner. It really looked, the housekeeper told herself grimly, as if he had not seen the thing that was directly before his eyes until she had pointed it out to him.

"They were," she answered tartly, "at one time."

"Well, what is the trouble now? A lovers' quarrel?"

It was a guiding principle with Mrs. Timberlake that when her conscience drove her she never looked at her road; and true to this intemperate practice, she plunged now straight ahead. "The trouble is that Alan has been making a fool of himself over Angelica." It was the first time that she had implied the faintest criticism of his wife, and as soon as she had uttered the words, her courage evaporated, and she relapsed into her attitude of caustic reticence. Even her figure, in its rusty black, looked shrunken and huddled.

"So that is it!" His voice was careless and indifferent. "You mean he has been flattered because she has let him read his plays to her?"

"He hasn't known when to stop. If something isn't done, he will go on reading them for ever."

"Well, if Angelica enjoys them?"

"But it makes Mary very unhappy. Can't you see that she is breaking her heart over it?"

"Angelica doesn't know." He might have been stating a fact about one of the belligerent nations.

"Oh, of course." She grasped at the impersonal note, but it escaped her. "If she only knew, she could so easily stop it."

"So you think if someone were to mention it?"

"That is why I came to you. I thought you might manage to drop a word that would let Angelica see how much it is hurting Mary. She wouldn't want to hurt Mary just for the sake of a little amusement. The plays can't be so very important, or they would be on the stage, wouldn't they?"

"Could you tell her, do you think?" It was the first time he had ever attempted to evade a disagreeable duty, and the question surprised her.

"Angelica wouldn't listen to a word I said. She'd just think I'd made it up, and I reckon it does look like a tempest in a teapot."

He met this gravely. "Well, it is natural that she shouldn't take a thing like that seriously."

"Yes, it's natural." She conceded the point ungrudgingly. "I believe Angelica would die before she would do anything really wrong."

If he accepted this in silence, it was not because the tribute to Angelica's character appeared to him to constitute an unanswerable argument. During the weeks when he had been groping his way to firmer ground, he had passed beyond the mental boundaries in which Angelica and her standards wore any longer the aspect of truth. He knew them to be not only artificial, but false; and Mrs. Timberlake's praise was scarcely more than a hollow echo from the world that he had left. That Angelica, who would lie and cheat for an advantage, could be held, through mere coldness of nature, to be above "doing anything really wrong," was a fallacy which had once deluded his heart, but failed now to convince his intelligence. Once he had believed in the sacred myth of her virtue; now, brought close against the deeper realities, he saw that her virtue was only a negation, and that true goodness must be, above all things, an affirmation of spirit.

"I'll see what I can do," he said, and wondered why the words had not worn threadbare.

"You mean you'll speak to Angelica?" Her relief rasped his nerves.

"Yes, I'll speak to Angelica."

"Don't you think it would be better to talk first to Mary?"

Before replying, he thought over this carefully. "Perhaps it would be better. Will you tell her that I'd like to see her immediately?"

She nodded and went out quickly, and it seemed to him that the door had barely closed before it opened again, and Mary came in with a brave step and a manner of unnatural alertness and buoyancy.

"David, do you really think we are going to have war?" It was an awkward evasion, but she had not learned either to evade or equivocate gracefully.

"I think we are about to break off diplomatic relations----"

"And that means war, doesn't it?"

"Who knows?" He made a gesture of impatience. "You are trying to climb up on the knees of the gods."

"I want to go," she replied breathlessly, "whether we have war or not, I want to go to France. Will you help me?"

"Of course I will help you."

"I mean will you give me money?"

"I will give you anything I've got. It isn't so much as it used to be."

"It will be enough for me. I want to go at once--next week--to-morrow."

He looked at her attentively, his grave, lucid eyes ranging thoughtfully over her strong, plain face, which had grown pale and haggard, over her boyish figure, which had grown thin and wasted.

"Mary," he said suddenly, "what is the trouble? Is it an honest desire for service or is it--the open door?"

For a minute she looked at him with frightened eyes; then breaking down utterly, she buried her face in her hands and turned from him. "Oh, David, I must get away! I cannot live unless I get away!"

"From Briarlay?"

"From Briarlay, but most of all--oh, most of all," she brought this out with passion, "from Alan!"

"Then you no longer care for him?"

Instead of answering his question, she dashed the tears from her eyes, and threw back her head with a gesture that reminded him of the old boyish Mary. "Will you let me go, David?"

"Not until you have told me the truth."

"But what is the truth?" She cried out, with sudden anger. "Do you suppose I am the kind of woman to talk of a man's being 'taken away,' as if he were a loaf of bread to be handed from one woman to another? If he had ever been what I believed him, do you imagine that any one could have 'taken' him? Is there any man on earth who could have taken me from Alan?"

"What has made the trouble, Mary?" He put the question very slowly, as if he were weighing every word that he uttered.

She flung the pretense aside as bravely as she had dashed the tears from her eyes. "Of course I have known all along that she was only flirting--that she was only playing the game----"

"Then you think that the young fool has been taking Angelica too seriously?"

At this her anger flashed out again. "Seriously enough to make me break my engagement!"

"All because he likes to read his plays to her?"

"All because he imagines her to be misunderstood and unhappy and ill-treated. Oh, David, will you never wake up? How much longer are you going to walk about the world in your sleep? No one has said a breath against Angelica--no one ever will--she isn't that kind. But unless you wish Alan to be ruined, you must send him away."

"Isn't she the one to send him away?"

"Then go to her. Go to her now, and tell her that she must do it to-day."

"Yes, I will tell her that." Even while he spoke the words which would have once wrung his heart, he was visited by that strange flashing sense of unreality, of the insignificance and transitoriness of Angelica's existence. Like Mrs. Timberlake's antiquated standards of virtue, she belonged to a world which might vanish while he watched it and leave him still surrounded by the substantial structure of life.

"Then tell her now. I hear her in the hall," said Mary brusquely, as she turned away.

"It is not likely that she will come in here," he answered, but the words were scarcely spoken before Angelica's silvery tones floated to them.

"David, may I come in? I have news for you." An instant later, as Mary went out, with her air of arrogant sincerity, a triumphant figure in grey velvet passed her in the doorway.

"I saw Robert and Cousin Charles a moment ago, and they told me that we had really broken off relations with Germany----"

She had not meant to linger over the news, but while she was speaking, he crossed the room and closed the door gently behind her.

"Don't you think now we have done all that is necessary?" she demanded triumphantly. "Cousin Charles says we have vindicated our honour at last."

Blackburn smiled slightly. The sense of unreality, which had been vague and fugitive a moment before, rolled over and enveloped him. "It is rather like refusing to bow to a man who has murdered one's wife."

A frown clouded her face. "Oh, I know all you men are hoping for war, even Alan, and you would think an artist would see things differently."

"Do you think Alan is hoping for it?"

"Aren't you every one except Cousin Charles? Robert told me just now that Virginia is beginning to boil over. He believes the country will force the President's hand. Oh, I wonder if the world will ever be sane and safe again?"

He was watching her so closely that he appeared to be drinking in the sound of her voice and the sight of her loveliness; yet never for an instant did he lose the feeling that she was as ephemeral as a tinted cloud or a perfume.

"Angelica," he said abruptly, "Mary has just told me that she has broken her engagement to Alan."

Tiny sparks leaped to her eyes. "Well, I suppose they wouldn't have been happy together----"

"Do you know why she did it?"

"Do I know why?" She looked at him inquiringly. "How could I know? She has not told me."

"Has Alan said anything to you about it?"

"Why, yes, he told me that she had broken it."

"And did he tell you why?"

She was becoming irritated by the cross examination. "No, why should he tell me? It is their affair, isn't it? Now, if that is all, I must go. Alan has brought the first act of a new play, and he wants my opinion."

The finishing thrust was like her, for she could be bold enough when she was sure of her weapons. Even now, though he knew her selfishness, it was incredible to him that she should be capable of destroying Mary's happiness when she could gain nothing by doing it. Of course if there were some advantage----

"Alan can wait," he said bluntly. "Angelica, can't you see that this has gone too far, this nonsense of Alan's?"

"This nonsense?" She raised her eyebrows. "Do you call his plays nonsense?"

"I call his plays humbug. What must stop is his folly about you. When Mary goes, you must send him away."

Her smile was like the sharp edge of a knife. "So it is Alan now? It was poor Roane only yesterday."

"It is poor Roane to-day as much as it ever was. But Alan must stop coming here."

"And why, if I may ask?"

"You cannot have understood, or you would have stopped it."

"I should have stopped what?"

He met her squarely. "Alan's infatuation--for he is infatuated, isn't he?"

"Do you mean with me?" Her indignant surprise almost convinced him of her ignorance. "Who has told you that?"

She was holding a muff of silver fox, and she gazed down at it, stroking the fur gently, while she waited for him to answer. He noticed that her long slender fingers--she had the hand as well as the figure of one of Botticelli's Graces--were perfectly steady.

"That was the reason that Mary broke her engagement," he responded.

"Did she tell you that?"

"Yes, she told me. She said she knew that you had not meant it--that Alan had lost his head----"

Her voice broke in suddenly with a gasp of outraged amazement. "And you ask me to send Alan away because you are jealous? You ask me this--after--after----" Her attitude of indignant virtue was so impressive that, for a moment, he found himself wondering if he had wronged her--if he had actually misunderstood and neglected her?

"You must see for yourself, Angelica, that this cannot go on."

"You dare to turn on me like this!" She cried out so clearly that he started and looked at the door in apprehension. "You dare to accuse me of ruining Mary's happiness--after all I have suffered--after all I have stood from you----"

As her voice rose in its piercing sweetness, it occurred to him for the first time that she might wish to be overheard, that she might be making this scene less for his personal benefit than for its effect upon an invisible audience. It was the only time he had ever known her to sacrifice her inherent fastidiousness, and descend to vulgar methods of warfare, and he was keen enough to infer that the prize must be tremendous to compensate for so evident a humiliation.

"I accuse you of nothing," he said, lowering his tone in the effort to reduce hers to a conversational level. "For your own sake, I ask you to be careful."

But he had unchained the lightning, and it flashed out to destroy him. "You dare to say this to me--you who refused to send Miss Meade away though I begged you to----"

"To send Miss Meade away?" The attack was so unexpected that he wavered before it. "What has Miss Meade to do with it?"

"You refused to send her away. You positively refused when I asked you."

"Yes, I refused. But Miss Meade is Letty's nurse. What has she to do with Mary and Alan?"

"Oh, are you still trying to deceive me?" For an instant he thought she was going to burst into tears. "You knew you were spending too much time in the nursery--that you went when Cousin Matty was not there--Alan heard you admit it--you knew that I wanted to stop it, and you refused--you insisted----"

But his anger had overpowered him now, and he caught her arm roughly in a passionate desire to silence the hideous sound of her words, to thrust back the horror that she was spreading on the air--out into the world and the daylight.

"Stop, Angelica, or----"

Suddenly, without warning, she shrieked aloud, a shriek that seemed to his ears to pierce, not only the ceiling, but the very roof of the house. As he stood there, still helplessly holding her arm, which had grown limp in his grasp, he became aware that the door opened quickly and Alan came into the room.

"I heard a cry--I thought----"

Angelica's eyes were closed, but at the sound of Alan's voice, she raised her lids and looked at him with a frightened and pleading gaze.

"I cried out. I am sorry," she said meekly. Without glancing at Blackburn, she straightened herself, and walked, with short, wavering steps, out of the room.

For a minute the two men faced each other in silence; then Alan made an impetuous gesture of indignation and followed Angelica.