Chapter 2

He was standing on the other side of the street watching them. How long he had been there neither of them knew. Engrossed in the subject between them, and screened by their sunshades, they hadn't noticed him come round the corner from Madison Avenue on his way home. He stood leaning on his stick, stroking an end of his long mustache pensively. He wore a gray suit and a soft gray felt hat. For a minute or more there was no change in his attitude, even when the terrified eyes of the women told him he was observed. As he began to thread his way among the vehicles to cross the street he displayed neither haste nor confusion. Edith could see that, though he was pale and grave, he could, even in this situation, carry himself with dignity. In its way it was something to be glad of. She herself stood her ground as a man on a sinking ship waits for the waves to engulf him.

Reaching the pavement, he ignored his wife to go directly to the woman.

"What does this mean, Maggie?"

His tone was not so much stern as reproachful. The faded woman, who was still trying to make herself young and pretty, quailed at it.

Edith came to her relief:

"Isn't that something for _you_ to explain, Chip?"

He turned to his wife. "I'm willing to explain anything you like, Edith--as far as I can."

"I won't ask you how far that is--because I know already everything I need to know."

"Everything you need to know--what for?"

"For understanding my position, I suppose."

"Your position? Your position is that of my wife."

"Oh no, it isn't. There's your wife."

"Don't say that, Edith. That lady would be the first to tell you--"

"She _has_ been the first to tell me. She's been extremely kind. She's answered my questions with a frankness--"

"But _you're_ not kind, Edith. Surely you see that--that mentally she's not--not like every one else."

"Oh, quite. I don't think _I_ am now. I doubt if I ever shall be again. No woman can be mentally like every one else after she's been deceived as we've been."

"_She_ hasn't been deceived, Edith; and I should never have deceived you if--"

She laughed without mirth. "If you hadn't wanted to keep me in the dark."

"No; if I hadn't had responsibilities--"

"Responsibilities! Do you call _that_"--her glance indicated the woman, whose misty stare went from the one to the other in a vain effort to follow what they were saying--"do you call that a responsibility?"

"I'm afraid I do, Edith."

"And what about--me?"

"Hasn't a man more responsibilities than one?"

"A married man hasn't more wives than one."

"A married man has to take his life as his life has formed itself. He was an unmarried man first."

"Which means, I suppose, that the ties he formed when he was an unmarried man--"

"May bind him still--if they're of a certain kind."

"And yours _are_--of a certain kind."

"They're of _that_ kind. I haven't been able to free myself from them. But don't you think we'd better go in? We can hardly talk about such things out here."

She bowed to another passing friend. He, too, lifted his hat. When the friend had gone by she glanced hastily toward the house.

"No, I can't go in," she said, hurriedly. "I'd rather talk out here."

"Very well, then. We can take a stroll in the Park?"

"What? We three?"

"Oh, she's gone--if that's the only reason."

Turning, Edith saw the woman with the rose-colored parasol rapidly descending the path by which she had come.

"I'd still rather stay out here," she said. "If I were to go in, I think it would--"

"Yes? What?"

"I think it would kill me."

"Oh, come, Edith. Let's face the thing calmly. Don't let us become hysterical."

"_Am_ I hysterical, Chip?"

"In your own way, yes. Where another woman would make a fuss, you're unnaturally frozen; but it comes to the same thing. I know that your heart--"

"Is breaking. Oh, I don't deny that. But I'd rather it broke here than indoors. I don't know why, but I can stand it here, with people going by; whereas in there--"

"Oh, cut it, Edith, for God's sake! Can't you see that my heart's breaking, too?"

She looked him in the face, shaking her head sadly. "No, Chip, I can't see that. If there had been any danger of it you wouldn't have--"

"But I couldn't help it. That's what you don't seem to understand."

"No; I'm afraid I don't."

"Would you _try_ to understand--if I were to tell you?"

"I think I know already most of what you'd have to say. She's a woman whom you knew long before you knew me--and from whom you've never been able--"

"She was the daughter of a Swedish Lutheran pastor--dead now--established in New Jersey. In some way she drifted to the stage. Her name was Margarethe Kastenskjold. When she went on the stage she made it Maggie Clare. She had about as much talent for the theater as a paper doll. When I first knew her she was still getting odd jobs in third and fourth rate companies. Since then she hasn't played at all."

"I understand. There's been no need of it. She's quite well dressed."

"Let me go on, will you, Edith? I was about two or three and twenty then. She may have been a year or two older. She was living at that time with Billy Cummings. And somehow it happened--after Billy died--and she was stranded--"

She made an appealing gesture. "_Please!_ I know how those things come about--or I can easily imagine. In your case--I'd--I'd rather not try." She got the words out somehow without breaking down.

"All the same, Edith," he went on, "you'll _have_ to try--if you're going to do me anything like justice. If she hadn't been a refined, educated sort of girl, entirely at sea in her surroundings, and stranded--stranded for money, mind you, next door to going to starve--and no chance of getting a job, because she couldn't act a little bit--if it hadn't been for all that--"

"Oh, I know how you'd be generous!"

"Yes; but you don't know how I came to be a fool."

"Is there any reason why I _should_ know--now that the fact is there?"

He looked at her steadily. "Edith! What are you made of?"

She returned his look. "I think--of stone. Up till to-day I've been a woman of flesh and blood; but I'm not sure that I am any longer. You can't kill the heart in a woman's body--and still expect her to _feel_."

"But, Edith--Edith darling--there's no reason why I _should_ have killed the heart in your body when I never dreamed of doing you a wrong--that is, an intentional wrong," he corrected.

"You knew you were doing _some_ woman a wrong--some future woman, the woman you'd marry--as far back as when you took up what Billy Cummings dropped from his dead hands--"

"Oh, that! That, dear, is nothing but the talk of feminist meetings. Men are men, and women are women. You can't make one law for them both. Besides, it's too big a subject to go into now."

"I'm not trying to. I wasn't thinking of men in general; I was thinking only of you."

"But, good Lord, Edith, you don't think I've been better than any one else, do you?"

Her forlorn smile made his heart ache. "I _did_ think so. I dare say it was a mistake."

"It _was_ a mistake. If you hadn't made it--"

"But it was at least a mistake one can understand. I could hardly be expected to take it for granted--whatever men may be, or may have the right to be--that the man who asked me to marry him--and who made me love him as I think few men have been loved by women--I could hardly take it for granted that he was already keeping--and had been keeping for years--and would keep for years to come--another--"

He moved impatiently. "But, I tell you, I couldn't get rid of her. I couldn't shake her off--or pay her off--or do any of the usual things. It was agreed between us before I married you--_long_ before I married you--that everything was at an end. But, poor soul, she doesn't know what an agreement is. There's something lacking in her. She's always been like a child, and of late years she's been more so. If you knew her as I do you'd be sorry for her."

"Oh, I _am_ sorry for her. Her whole mind is ravaged by suffering."

"I know it's my fault; but it isn't wholly or even chiefly my fault. A woman like that has no right to suffer. She lost the privilege of suffering when she became what she is. At any rate, she has no right to haunt like a shadow the man who's befriended her--"

"But, I presume, she's befriended _him_. And--and continues to befriend him--since that's the word."

He avoided her eyes, looking up the street and whistling tunelessly beneath his breath.

"I said--_continues_ to befriend him," she repeated.

The tuneless whistling went on. She allowed him time to get the full effect of her meaning. As far as she could see her way, her line of action depended on his response. When he dodged the question she knew what she would have to do.

"Look here, Edith," he said, at last, "the long and short of it is this. She's on my hands--and I can't abandon her. I must see that she's provided for, at the very least. Hang it all, she's--she's attached to me; has been attached to me for more than ten years. I can't ignore that; now, can I? And she's helpless. How can I desert her? I can't do it, any more than I could desert a poor old faithful dog--or a baby. Can I, now?"

"No; I dare say not."

"But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll undertake never to see her again--of my own free will. I'll give you my word of honor--"

She shook her head. "Oh, I'm not asking for that."

"Then what do you ask for? Just tell me, and whatever it is--"

"It's that, since you can't abandon her, you abandon me."

"_What_?"

She repeated the words more firmly.

"_Never_."

"Then I'm afraid it will be for me to abandon you." She gave him a little nod. "Good-by."

She had turned and taken a step or two along the pavement before his astonishment allowed him to overtake her.

"Edith, for God's sake, what do you mean? You're not crazy, are you?"

"Quite possibly I am; I can't tell yet. Or perhaps I _can_ tell. It's like this," she went on, after an instant's thinking. "A half-hour ago, while I was talking to that--that poor creature--before you came up--I was quite aware of being like a woman with a dose of cyanide of potassium in her hand, and doubting whether or not to take it. Well, I took it. I took it and I--died. That is, the Edith who was your wife--died. What survives of her personality is something else. I don't know what it is yet--it's too soon to say--but it isn't your wife.... It's--it's something like that."

"Oh, don't!" he groaned. "Don't talk that way. Come in. You can't stay out here."

She looked over at the house again. He thought she shuddered. "I can't stay out here; but I don't have to go in--there."

"What do you mean? Where are you going?"

"Just now I'm going to Aunt Emily's."

"Very well. I'll send a carriage for you after dinner--if you stay so late."

"No; don't do that."

"Do you mean--?"

"I mean that I may stay there for two or three days--perhaps longer. After that I'll--I'll see."

"You'll see--what?"

"Where to go next."

"Oh, come, Edie, let's talk sense. You know I can't allow that."

She smiled again, with that queer, forlorn smile that seemed to stab him. "I'm afraid the authority is out of your hands--now."

He let that pass.

"Even so, there are the children. Think of them."

"I _am_ thinking of them--which is why I must hurry away. They'll be here in a minute; and I--I can't see them yet. I shouldn't be able to bear it."

"And do you think you'll be able to bear our being separated for two or three days, when you _know_ I adore you? Why, you'll break down within an hour."

"That's just it. That's why I must hurry. I shall break down within half an hour. You don't suppose I can go on like this? I'm almost breaking down now. I must get to Aunt Emily's before--"

She was interrupted by a cry: "Hello, papa!"

Up the pathway leading from the Zoo a little white-suited man of five came prancing and screaming, followed by another of three doing the same. The French governess marched primly and sedately behind them.

"You see?" Edith said, quickly. "I must go. I can't see them to-night--or speak to them--or kiss them--or hear them say their prayers--or anything. You wouldn't understand; but--but I couldn't bear it. You must tell them I've gone to spend a few nights with Aunt Emily, as I did when she was ill. You must say that to the servants, too. Tell Jenny she needn't send me anything--yet. I have some things there--that I left the last time--"

"Oh, you're not going to stay all night," he groaned. "You'll come back."

"Very well. If I come back--I come back. It will be so much the better or so much the worse, as the case may be. If I come back, it will be because I accept the compromise you make between me and--and your other--"

He broke in hastily. "It's not a compromise--and there's no 'other.' If you could see how far from vital the whole thing is, from a man's point of view--"

"Unfortunately, I'm only a woman, and can see it only from a woman's point of view. So that, if I don't come back, it will be because--because--the Edith who was your wife is dead beyond resurrection."

"But she isn't!"

"Perhaps not. We must see. I shall know better when I've--I've been away from you a little."

"And in the mean time you may be risking your happiness and mine."

She shot him a reproachful glance. "Do _you_ say that?"

"Yes, Edith, I do say it. If I've broken the letter of the contract, you may be transgressing its spirit. Don't forget that. Take care. What I did, I did because I couldn't help it. You _can_ help it--"

"Oh no, I can't. That's where you haven't understood me. You say I don't see things from your point of view, and perhaps I don't. But neither do you see them from mine. You wonder why I don't go over there"--she nodded toward the house--"where I had my home--where my children have theirs--where you and I ... But I can't. That's all I can say. I may do it some day; I don't know. But just now--I couldn't drag myself up the steps. It would mean that we were going on as before, when all that--that sort of thing--seems to me so--so utterly over."

"You'll feel differently when you've had time to think."

"Perhaps I shall. And time to think is all I'm asking. You understand that, don't you? that I'm not making anything definite--yet. If I can ever come back to you, I will. But if I can't--"

"Hello, mama! Hello, papa!" The elder boy galloped up. "We've seen the monkeys. And one great big monkey looked like--"

"Allô, maman! Allô, papa! N's avons vu les singes--mais des drôles! Il y en avait un qui--"

The children caught their father round the knees. Stooping, he put his arms about them, urging them toward their mother. They were to plead for him--to be his advocates.

"Tell mama," he whispered to the older boy, "not to go to Aunt Emily's to-night. Tell her we can't do without her--that we want her at home." He turned to the younger. "Dis à maman que tu vas pleurer si elle te quitte ce soir--qu'il faut qu'elle vienne t'écouler dire la prière."

But, when he raised himself, Edith was already walking swiftly up the Avenue. He would have followed her, only that the children seemed to restrain him, clinging to his knees. All he could do was to watch her--watch her while the thronging crowds and the shimmering sun-shot dust of the golden afternoon blotted her from his sight--and the great city-world out of which he had received her took her back.

II

RESENTMENT

It was a strange sensation to be free. It was still more strange that it was not a sensation. It was a kind of numbness. She could only feel that she didn't feel. In spite of her repeated silent assertions, "I'm free! I'm free!" any consciousness of change eluded her.

It was true that there had been a moment like a descent into hell, from which she thought she must come up another woman. Aunt Emily and the lawyer had whirled her somewhere in a motor. Veiled as heavily as was consistent with articulation, she had told a tale that seemed abominable, though it was no more than a narrative of the facts. It added to her sense of degradation to learn that one of the cheaper dailies had published a snapshot of her taken as she was re-entering the motor to come away. But even the horror of that moment passed, as something too unreal to be other than a dream, and, except that she and the children were staying with Aunt Emily instead of in their own home, all was as before. All was as before to a disappointing degree--to a degree that maddened her.

It maddened her because it brought no appeasement to that which for more than a year had been her dominating motive--to do something to Chip that would bring home to him a realizing sense of what he had done to her. It was not that she wanted revenge. She was positive as to that. She wanted only to make him understand. Hitherto he hadn't understood. She had seen that in all his letters, right up to the moment when, driven to despair by what seemed to her his moral obtuseness, she had implored him not to write again. It was to help him to understand that which he was either unable or unwilling to understand that she had so resolutely refused to see him--partly that, and partly Aunt Emily. She would have died if it hadn't been for Aunt Emily--died or given in; and the mere thought of giving in frightened her.

It frightened her chiefly because she possessed the capacity to do it. In a way it would be easier to do it than not--easier to do it, and yet impossible to go on with the new situation thus created after it was done. It would mean being back in the old home and resuming the old life; there would be what people called a reconciliation. Chip would be coming and going and whistling tunelessly all over the house. And the awful thing about it would be that he had it in him to be as happy as if this horrible thing had never taken place--happier, doubtless, because it would be behind him. He would not have understood; she would have ceased trying to make him understand; he would have so little seen the significance of his own acts as to feel free to do the same thing all over again.

So the impulse to go back frightened her with a fear that paralyzed her longing. If he had said but once: "Edith, I know I've sinned against you; I know I've made you suffer; I've broken the contract between us; I'm repentant; forgive me," it might have been different. But he had said nothing of the kind. His letters, beseeching though they were, only aggravated her complaint against him. "What else could I do?... The poor thing clung to me.... As far as it affected my devotion to you it might have happened in another phase of creation." That was the amazing part of it, that he should expect her to be content with such an explanation, that he should try to deprive her of a wife's last poor pitiful privilege, a sense of indignity. She was not only to condone what he had done, but as nearly as possible she was to give it her approval.

As to this aspect of the case she might not have been so clear if it hadn't been for Aunt Emily. Aunt Emily was very clear. She was clear and just, without being wholly unsympathetic toward Chip. That is, she pointed out the fact that Chip did no more than most men would do. He was no worse than the average. He might even be a little better. But, according to Aunt Emily, the man didn't live who was worthy of a really good woman's love. It was foolish for a really good woman to put herself at the disadvantage of casting her pearls before--well, Aunt Emily was too much of a lady to say what; it was all the more foolish considering the quantity of feminine tag-rag and bobtail quite good enough to be wives.

Edith couldn't deny that her aunt had kept herself on an enviably high plane of safety. She had her money to herself, and no heartaches. She was respected, admired, and feared. By a little circle of adorers, mostly composed of spinsters younger, poorer, and less advantageously placed than herself, she was even loved. She was far from lonely; she was far from having missed the best things in life. She was traveled, well-read, philanthropic, and broad-minded. She was likewise tall, stately, and dominant, with an early Victorian face to which a mid-Victorian wig, kept in place by a band of plaits around the brow, was not unbecoming. Nevertheless, Aunt Emily was entirely modern, modern with that up-to-date femininity which with regard to men takes its key from the bee's impulse toward the drone, stinging him to death once he has fulfilled his functions.

It was a help to Edith that Aunt Emily could enter into the sufferings entailed by an outraged love without being hampered by the weaknesses inherent in the love itself. She could afford to be detached and impartial bringing to bear on the situation the interest every intelligent person takes in drama. For her participation Edith felt she couldn't be too grateful to a relative on whom she had no urgent claim beyond the fact that she was now her only one. Aunt Emily's clear vision might, indeed, be said to have found the way through a tangle of poignant conditions in which her own poor heart had been able to do nothing but fumble helplessly.

It was a way of sorrows, and there had been no choice but to take it. Chip had to be made to _feel_. Her whole being had become concentrated on that result. From it she had expected not only realization for him, but assuagement of longing for herself; and the latter hadn't come. She could hardly see that anything had come at all. If it were not for Aunt Emily she wouldn't have perceived that she had won a victory. Chip might realize now; she didn't know; she probably would never know; it was perhaps the impossibility of knowing that left her still unsatisfied. So long as the thing had not yet been done she had enjoyed at least the relief of action. She was challenging Chip, she was defying him; he was making her some sort of response, even when it was made in silence. She was _the_ one and he was _the_ other, and there was an interplay of forces between them. Now all that was broken off; all that had come to an end. She was still _the_ one; but there was no other. Where the other had been there was a blank, an emptiness. Her heart when it cried out to him produced the queer, creepy effect of a man talking to himself--there was no one to hear or to answer. There was a needle but no pole; there was a law of gravitation, but nothing to justify the power of attraction.

She was dazed, lost, which was the reason why in the following autumn she went abroad. She didn't know what else to do. Aunt Emily was rich and kind; but there were limits to hospitality. One had to feel that there was a world beneath one's feet, and Europe seemed to be there for that purpose. Besides, it was easy to travel while the children were so young. The lawyer conveyed to Chip her intention of taking them, and returned with the father's consent. She was not bound to ask for this, but she considered it courteous to do so. If while she did it he chose to take the opportunity to recognize her continued existence by an inquiry or a word--well, then, she said to herself with a sob, it was there for him to make use of. But he didn't take it. He maintained the silence on which he had fallen back ever since her final peremptory letter requesting him not to write to her--she wondered if she had made it more peremptory than she had intended!--and so she sailed away without so much as a gift from him to the children. She could hardly bear to look at the shore of the continent that held him as it faded out of sight, so bitterly she resented what she now called his callousness.