Part 4

“Oh, to be sure!” exclaimed the other, smiling. “I had forgotten the necessity of that precaution. What _would_ ‘mama and the girls’ say? I think I shall write them an anonymous letter, saying that if madame had been under the impression that her eldest daughter devoted herself wholly to the pursuit of art during the hours of her absence from home, it might have surprised her had she seen the aforesaid young lady this morning come out of the atelier, call a cab, give a number, go to a distant apartment (where she was evidently well known to the concierge, who passed her on to a servant in Russian livery, who as evidently knew her well), enter, by a special passage, a certain room, where she remained shut in for a long time, emerging finally in great haste to drive rapidly in the cab, which she had kept waiting, back to the atelier in time to meet her own carriage, and come innocently home to join the family circle at lunch! Couldn’t I make out a case? And what _would_ the mother and the little sisters say?”

Martha, too, laughed at the picture; but in spite of some discomfiture of feeling to which it gave rise, she had no idea of changing her tactics. The very thought of her mother’s going to work to investigate the princess, and ascertain if she were a proper friend for her daughter, smote the girl to the heart, and she resolved to guard her secret more carefully than ever. She determined that she would ease her conscience for the deception by confessing everything to her brother when he came. This would make it all right.

As Martha drove back to the atelier, after an affectionate _au revoir_ to the princess, she was conscious that something was rankling in her mind. When she came to search for the ground of this feeling, she found it to exist in the confession of love which the princess had made. This knowledge caused Martha to realize that she had not even yet succeeded in putting from her the imaginings by which she had connected her brother and her friend. Before knowing the princess she had always cherished the belief that her brother would sink below her ideal of him if he ever loved a second time. Lately, however, she had imagined the possibility of his telling her, after knowing the princess, that the old love was not the perfect one he had imagined it; and she could fancy herself forgiving him for loving a second time, with the princess as his apology. It had even seemed to her lately so monstrously wrong and cruel that Harold’s life should be wantonly wrecked that she was now prepared to accept a good deal more than would once have seemed possible, in order to see it mended.

Martha, for all her demure appearance, had something that was more or less savage and lawless in her nature, especially where Harold was concerned; and the same feeling, in a lesser degree, dominated her in regard to the princess. She had long ago admitted to herself the fact that Harold had missed his chance of happiness in love; but it was as painful as it was unexpected to her to find that the princess too had loved before. She had known that she had been married, but with very little difficulty she had constructed for herself a theory of that marriage in which the princess had played the part of an innocent victim to circumstance. For instance, she might have been married by her parents in early youth to a man perhaps far older than herself, whom she had never loved, and for whose death she could not have grieved much.

It was a surprise to Martha now to find how entirely she had let this utterly unfounded idea take possession of her. The words of the princess this morning had shattered it to atoms, and in spite of herself she felt strangely heavy-hearted.

VI

AFTER the morning on which Martha had been by accident a witness of the princess’s self-betrayal, there seemed nothing lacking to the complete understanding of the two friends, and their intimacy was now stronger and closer than ever. It was not practicable for Martha to visit the princess very often, as she was compelled to take the time for these visits out of her atelier hours, and both women were too earnest in their work not to begrudge this. Lately they had fallen into the custom of the generality of the students, and went for their midday meal to the _crèmerie_ in the neighborhood, after they had visited first the butcher’s shop, and selected their own mutton-chop or bit of beefsteak; then they had it cooked according to their directions. This, with fresh rolls and baked apples and milk, made an excellent meal, sometimes augmented by potato salad. Martha had been initiated into these mysteries by an American girl whose acquaintance she had made through the latter’s having once offered to help her on with her “josie,” a word which had established an easy footing between them at once.

Martha never exchanged more than a passing remark with the other students, partly because she had, in the beginning, built a sort of barrier around her by her shyness, and, recently, because she felt that her intimacy with the princess, who knew none of the others, set her more than ever apart.

One morning Martha came to the atelier rather late, and showed, moreover, a certain excitement in her movements and expression which she accounted for at lunch-time by telling the princess that her sister’s wedding had been hurried up, and was to take place almost immediately.

There were several good reasons for this; one being that it suited much better the plans of the bridegroom elect, and another that Mrs. Keene, being in rather delicate health, had been urged by her physicians to leave Paris. So, as soon as the wedding was over, she was to go south with the younger girls and their governess; and Martha, who rebelled against being taken from her beloved painting, had a beautiful plan of getting her brother to stay awhile in Paris with her in their mother’s apartment. This she confided to the princess with breathless delight, saying that she had written to Harold about it, and told him to cable her if he were willing. Her friend could see that, with her usual license of imagination, Martha had been making all sorts of plans in connection with this scheme, and she more than suspected that some of these concerned herself.

“My dear Martha,” she said, with a penetrating look into her friend’s eager eyes, “give it up at once, on the spot, if you have been making any plans to introduce your brother to me!”

“Oh, _why_?” said Martha, in tones of the keenest regret.

“Because, my dear, it is out of the question. If you knew how sick to death I am of men, you would not ask it. Please, if you love me, don’t speak of it again.”

This, of course, was final, and Martha was compelled to bear her disappointment with what patience she could summon. She got a promise from the princess, however, that she would come to the wedding, which was to take place in the American church. At least this would give her the satisfaction of feeling in the future that her friend had seen her brother, and she hoped she might contrive in some way that the latter should see the princess, since it was now decreed that the intercourse could go no further.

Great as Martha’s disappointment was, she forced herself to recognize the fact that, as things were, it might be all for the best that these two should not meet. She could imagine but one result of that meeting, and that, under existing circumstances, might be disastrous to both. Neither of them had fully confided in her, but both of them had told her plainly that a second love was the thing which they most strongly repudiated. In Harold’s case, she knew that this feeling was one that his conscience, no less than his heart, ordained; and in the case of the princess, she somehow felt that it was the same.

The princess, for some reason, did not tell Martha what a notable exception to her rule she made in going to this wedding. The fact was, she had never been to any wedding since her own; and it may have been that fact which accounted for the state of intense excitement which she was in as she drove alone in her carriage through the streets of Paris to the church in the Avenue de l’Alma.

As she got out, and instructed her coachman where to wait, this inward excitement showed in every rapid movement and word. Afterward, when she entered the church, and walked, with a definiteness of manner which would seem to have indicated a prearranged plan, straight down the left-hand aisle to the choir-stalls, her face was flushed and her eyes were brilliant. It was early, and few people had come as yet.

The princess wore a long, dark cloak, which concealed her figure, and on her large hat, which hid the outline of her head, a rather thick Russian veil was fastened, so that her features were scarcely distinguishable.

There was a shaded corner near the organ, behind the chorister-stalls, that was quite screened from the congregation, and so situated as to be almost out of view from the chancel also, if one chose to protect one’s self behind the great pillar that stood there. The day was dark and cloudy, but the chancel was brilliant with lighted candles. The princess with firm confidence walked to this place, and took her seat. She did not seem to care whether the church was filling up or not. She scarcely noticed when some people came and took the seats near her. In these moments she was so lost in thoughts and reminiscences that the furious beating of her heart almost suffocated her.

When, from just behind her, a great organ-note swelled forth, and filled the church with tremulous vibrations, the princess gave a little fluttered start. No one was near enough to observe this, however, or to see the crouching back into her seat which followed it. The music seemed to heighten her emotion, and she trembled visibly. She quite lost count of time, and did not know how long it was before she saw a clergyman enter the chancel and stand there, waiting. Then, as two officers in rich uniforms came and took their places in front of him, the sonorous chords of the old familiar Mendelssohn march swelled from the organ, and the heart within her seemed to stop and sink. It was the sound and influence to which, in perfect joy, she had walked to her own wedding.

She knew that the bridal procession was coming up the aisle, but she did not turn her head to get a view into the church. She felt the people about her rise to their feet, but she sat still. Her trembling limbs would not have held her up; but she did not even know that she was trembling. She knew only that she was waiting--that all her heart and all her soul were wrapped in a bewildering suspense until the coming of what was very near her now. They passed close to her, the girls in their white dresses, and the officers in their glittering uniforms, and stood in divided ranks, leaving the space between them clear.

Into this space, directly in front of the clergyman, there now advanced a woman covered with a cloud of gauzy tulle. She leaned upon the arm of the only man in the party who was not in uniform.

It was on this figure that the princess fastened her eyes, never once removing them until the short ceremony had come to an end. The bride was a shapeless blur. The bridesmaids were a billowy cloud. The officers were mere dazzles of color and gold lace. One object there was that cut its way into her consciousness with acute distinctness--the dark-clad,

clearly outlined figure and pale profile of the man who stood waiting to give the bride.

When the music ceased, and the minister told the congregation that they were assembled to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony, it was another man and woman that she thought of; and so through all the solemn charge and searching questioning that followed.

When the minister asked, “Who giveth this woman to be married?” and the man that she had been watching gave up his companion with a slight inclination of the head, and moved aside, the gaze of the princess still followed and rested on him. When, a moment later, a strange foreign voice said painstakingly, “I, Victor, take thee, Alice, to my wedded wife,” what she heard, in natural and familiar English utterance was this: “I, Harold, take thee, Sophia, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I plight thee my troth.” And it was her own voice which made answer: “I, Sophia, take thee, Harold.”

A hard clutch was on her heart. He was there--the Harold who had made that vow to her; and she, Sophia, was here, in life, not death! “Till death us do part,” they had both of them sworn, and they had let life part them! The terrible wrong of it all rushed over her. The reasons which had made that parting seem to her right before now vanished into air. She felt that crime alone could ever link one of them to another. She felt that this separation between them was in itself a crime, and she who had done it the chief of criminals.

All this she felt with terrifying force, but a feeling stronger than even any of these had taken possession of her--a want and longing had awakened in her heart which strained it almost intolerably. She looked at the bride’s brother, standing there intensely still, in an attitude of complete repose, and a feeling that he was hers, and hers alone took possession of her. She grew reckless of appearances, and stood up in her place, with her face turned full toward him. She heard the clergyman’s stern behest that man put not asunder those whom God hath joined, and she heard him pronounce that they were man and wife, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Her heart said a solemn amen.

Imagination lingered on these thrilling thoughts while the blessing was pronounced and the service ended; and then the little procession, the bride and bridegroom at its head, and the figure that she watched at his mother’s side behind them, passed her and went down the aisle, while the familiar music was playing, to which she had walked from the altar a blissfully happy wife--and she was left alone!

The organist quickly closed the organ, and hurried away. The people near her moved off too; and still she sat there motionless, feeling herself deserted and most miserable. A boy, putting out the candles, roused her to consciousness, and somehow she got out of the place.

VII

MRS. KEENE’S apartment on the Place de la Madeleine was a scene of joyful commotion and confusion. The small breakfast which followed the wedding was an informal affair; and though it was supposed that only the nearest personal friends were present, the rooms were cheerfully crowded, and the uniforms made a show and glitter. The charming girls who were permitted to be their sister’s bridesmaids were the object of much notice and attention; and when the company had risen from the table, the eldest sister, who was so much the least pretty and vivacious, was scarcely missed from the room. A few people inquired for the bride’s brother, who had also disappeared; but as he was a stranger to every one, the fact of his absence was little noticed.

Martha, when she went to look for Harold, found him in his own room, smoking.

“I knew it was you,” he said, as she came in, closing the door behind her. “I thought you would come to look me up; but why did you? I’m poor company for anybody to-day. Well,” he added, with a short, deep breath, “thank the Lord, that’s over! When you get married, Martha, I want you to elope. I’ve no business at a wedding. I feel that I have cast an evil eye on Alice and Victor.”

“Oh, Harold, I was thinking of you more than of them all the time,” said Martha, earnestly. “It did seem absolute cruelty to have required it of you. How _could_ mama!”

Concentrated as her tone and manner were, she was doubtful whether they even penetrated the consciousness of her companion, who, with his chair tipped backward, his frock-coat thrown open, with a ruthless disregard of the smart gardenia which ornamented its lapel, and his hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets, was smoking vigorously, and looking away from her out of the window.

Martha had come here in the ardent hope of giving comfort, and she felt a little hurt. She smothered the feeling back into her heart, however, as she said:

“I knew it was anguish to you, standing there and going through that ceremony.”

He turned, and looked at her.

“Well, rather!” he said, with a short laugh, still keeping the cigar in his mouth, and talking with his teeth clenched upon it. Then he turned his face toward the window again; but his glance was so vague that Martha felt that he saw some picture in his mind, rather than the scene below. “The service was the same,” he said, clasping his hands behind his head, and narrowing his eyes as if to get the perspective. “The music was the same--and those roses! And that was not all. Vivid as she always is to me in every other respect, I have not always been able to hold on to her voice; but to-day I heard it perfectly, saying, ‘I, Sophia, take thee, Harold,’ and all the rest.”

He got up suddenly, threw his cigar into the grate, and walked across the room.

“Oh, poor Harold!” Martha said, her voice thick with tears.

The effect of her words was instantaneous. He turned suddenly, and showed in both face and figure a swiftly summoned and effectual calm.

“My dear girl,” he said quickly, “you don’t suppose I’m posing for an injured husband, I hope? I have suffered, of course; but with a man certain kinds of suffering get to be a business. To speak of it seems like talking shop. It’s detestable to be talking it to you now; but the truth is, this wedding affair has nearly knocked me out. I could have gone on keeping up the bluff, of course, and talked the usual bosh with the wedding-guests in yonder; but I found I had a contract with myself that had to be seen to. It has cost me something to smooth out and harden down my thoughts and feelings about my own life; but I had got the thing done. This wedding business, however, upheaved it all. When I found that I was actually sinking into the mushy swamp of self-pity, I thought it was about time to come away, and steady up my nerve a bit. I’m all right now, however, and I see clear again. The thing’s over, and no harm is done.”

Martha’s eyes followed him wistfully as he turned to the dressing-table, picked up a brush, and smoothed the swart surface of his thick, dark hair, brushed some specks of dust from his coat, and carefully straightened the injured flower.

“Shall we go back?” he said. “We may be missed.”

“Don’t go quite yet. No one will think about us,” she said; and then she added doubtfully: “May I talk to you a little, Harold?”

“Certainly, my dear. Talk all you want,” he answered, sitting down; “only there’s nothing to say.”

“Where is she? I’ve so often longed to know.”

“I haven’t the least idea. She asked me not to follow her movements, and I never have.”

“Then you do not even know whether she is living or dead?”

“Yes; I know that much. She is not dead. I feel her in the world. If she went out of it, I believe I should know it. Besides, I would have been informed of that. She spoke of it, and said so.”

There was a moment’s pause, which Martha broke.

“Will you tell me this,” she said, “whether you are as hopeless about it all as you were when I last spoke to you of it?”

“Exactly as hopeless. When a thing is absolute, my dear, it doesn’t have degrees. I have never been anything else than hopeless since the hour of my last interview with her. She told me then,” he said, with a sort of cold conciseness, “that her first wish was to set me absolutely free. She said she wanted me to marry again. She said that just as soon as we had lived apart the time required by law for a divorce, she wanted me to get it. She said she was sorry there was no way to get it sooner. She said, also, that she would take back her maiden name.”

He got up, thrust his hands into his pockets, and, walking over to the window, stood there for a moment. Then he turned suddenly, and came and stood in front of Martha, looking her directly in the eyes. She saw by that look that he was calm and steady, and so she ventured to question him a little further.

“Do you know whom she lives with?” she asked.

“With an aunt, whose life, as she told me, is utterly out of the world that we knew together. She said that, on this account, there was good reason to hope that we would never meet again.”

Martha, who felt that this subject might not be spoken of between them again, continued to question him as he stood and looked down at her with a perfect consciousness of self-possession.

“Was she so beautiful?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“And are you still unchanged in giving her the supreme place that you did give her from the moment you first saw her?”

“Yes,” he said again.

“Oh, Harold,” exclaimed the girl, “I sometimes think it might have turned out differently if the marriage had not been so rash and sudden.”

He took a seat near her, and continued to look at her as he said:

“It could have made no difference to me. You don’t fully understand it, Martha. It is impossible that you should. I knew, the day I met her, that I had been set apart and saved for her. I know it now. It was the kind of gravitation that comes once in a life.”

“Then you do not regret it?”

“For myself, not in the least. She was my wife for a month. What I have gone through since is a small price to pay for that. But when I think of what it has cost her--that most delicate of women--to face the odium of it--that superb woman’s life shadowed by the vulgarity of a suddenly ruptured marriage; and--deeper than that!--to have her best life maimed forever--God! I curse the day that I was born!”

“And what has she brought on you, I’d like to know?” cried Martha. “It was she who cast you off--not you her. Ah, Harold, if she had been the woman she should have been, she never could have done it!”

He looked at her with some impatience in his glance.

“Whether she was the woman she should have been or not is a thing that neither concerns nor interests me. She was the woman I loved. The whole thing is in that.”

“And the woman you still love? Is that true, Harold?”

“True as death,” he said; “but what does it all matter? Your relentlessness is the friend’s natural feeling. It shows how bootless it is to give account. I care more for your opinion than any other, but even your scorn does not signify to me here. It misses the point. The only pride that is involved is pride in my own immutability. Love ought always to be a regeneration,” he went on, as if putting into shape the thoughts that were rising out of the recent chaos in his mind. “It’s easy enough to keep true when the love, the joy, the equal give and take, go on unbroken. It’s when a man actually turns and walks out of heaven, and the gates shut behind him forever, that he finds out the stuff that’s in him. Sometimes, when I think about it, I try to fancy what would be my humiliation if I found I had grown to love her less.”

Martha was silent a moment. Then she said, as if urged by the necessity of speaking out, for this once, all that she had so long kept back:

“Suppose, after you get the divorce, you should hear that she was married?”

“I’m braced to bear that, if it comes,” he said. “I know it is possible, but I don’t fear it. I may, of course, be wrong; but I don’t believe, with what has been between us, that she could ever be the wife of another man while I lived. She might think so. She might even try--go part of the way; but I never felt more secure of anything than that she would find herself unable to do it.”

“Then do you think that she possibly still cares for you?”