Part 27

"It's so, isn't it? You're engaged and you can't deny it. I knew it!"

"Nothing of the kind, Loretta," she managed to articulate with decision.

The little bird was evidently Mrs. Harrity. But the charwoman's gossip could only have been conjecture, and of course her inquisitor knew nothing definite.

"Well, it's your own fault if it isn't. From what I hear he's just crazy to get you." Loretta paused a moment; she was ferreting for information. She seized Constance by the shoulders and fixed her again with her shrewd gaze. "You can't fool me, Constance Stuart. There's something in the wind. I shan't rest until I find out."

Constance noticed that her cheeks were slightly flushed, and her eyes unnaturally bright. Could she have been drinking? Surely not, or her breath would have betrayed her. Doubtless it was only the excitement of deviltry awakened by feminine curiosity. Then it occurred to Constance to tell her. Was it not best to tell her? Loretta would make her life miserable, so she had intimated, if she concealed the truth. And then again, as she was sacrificing her love for a principle, why conceal from this other struggler the vital conclusion she had reached? It might help, or at least stimulate Loretta. She shrank from disclosing her precious secret, but now that she was interrogated, was it not the simplest, the most straightforward course to confess what had happened and explain her reason?

"Sit down, Loretta, and I will tell you."

The girl obeyed, surveying her with an exultant mien. Constance hesitated a moment. It was not easy to begin. "Mr. Perry and I have talked things over. Yes, Loretta, he did ask me to marry him."

Loretta uttered what resembled a whoop of triumph, partly to celebrate her own perspicacity, partly by way of congratulation. "I felt sure of it. I knew he loved you by the way he was carrying on."

"And I loved him, but I'm not going to marry him. We are to see no more of each other for the present. It would be wrong for me to become his wife."

Loretta stared as though she could not believe her ears. "Wrong? Who says so? You don't mean to tell me you've refused him?"

"Yes," said Constance a little sadly, for the genuineness of the surprise expressed recalled her own perplexity in discerning an adequate reason for the sacrifice.

Loretta gasped. "Well, you are a fool, and no mistake! Refuse a man like that who's crazy to marry you and whom you love! Wrong? What's wrong about it?"

"It's contrary to the law of my church, which forbids a woman who has a husband living from marrying again."

"But he's as good as dead so far as you're concerned," interjected Loretta.

Without heeding this pertinent remark Constance proceeded to state the so-called spiritual objections with succinct fervor. She felt the desire to reiterate aloud their complete potency.

Loretta listened closely, but with obvious bewilderment and disdain. Even now she seemed unable to credit her companion's announcement as genuine.

"If your clergyman won't marry you, get a justice of the peace. That's just as good."

Constance shook her head. "From my point of view remarriage would be sinful--impure."

Loretta leaned back on the lounge where she was sitting and clasped her hands behind her head. She appeared to be at a loss to find words to express her feelings.

"And you mean to tell me that you've let that man go--the man you love and who'd give you a fine home and be a fond husband to you--for such a reason as that?"

"Yes," answered Constance, stanchly.

"Then all I can say is you didn't deserve such luck. He's too good for you."

Loretta's conviction went so deep that she had become grave, and, so to speak, dignified in her language.

"He's too good for any woman I know," Constance felt impelled to assert. "But for both our sakes, all the same, it was my duty not to marry him. Mr. Perry knows my reasons and--and respects them."

Constance had wondered many times what her lover's present emotions were, but she chose to take no less than this for granted.

"If he loves you as much as I guess he does, he must just hate you, Constance Stuart. My! Think of throwing up a chance like that." Then suddenly a thought occurred to Loretta, and leaning forward she asked tensely, "Does _she_ know?"

The suggestion of resentment on Gordon's part had been to Constance like a dash of scalding water. The question just put served as a restorative.

"Mrs. Wilson? It was she who advised me to let him go. She agrees with me entirely."

Loretta looked astonished and disappointed; then she frowned.

"Just because you've been married once? Not if you got a divorce?"

"Never, so long as my husband is alive and we are liable to meet in the flesh."

Constance realized that her phraseology had a clerical sound; still she felt that she had a right to the entire arsenal of the church.

"And she believes that too, does she? Believes that it would be wicked for a good looking, hard-working girl, whose husband had left her in the lurch, and may be dead for all she knows or cares, to get a divorce and marry again? And that's the Church? My! but it's the crankiest thing I ever heard. That's the sort of thing which sets the common folk who use their wits against religion. There's no sense in it. She's a widow; would she refuse to marry again if the right man came along?"

"That's different," said Constance, perceiving that an answer was expected.

"And what's the difference? It's all right to be spliced to another man in three months after the breath is out of the first one's body, as some of them do, but impure to marry again so long as the husband who has dragged you round by the hair of your head is liable to drop in. If it comes to that, and marriages are made in heaven, as the clergy say, what do the dead husbands and wives think about second marriages anyway? I'd be real jealous if I were dead."

"The Church has thought it all out and come to the conclusion that it is the best rule for human society."

Constance spoke with hurried emphasis, hoping to terminate the discussion. She did not desire to argue the matter with Loretta; at the same time she recognized the familiar pertinency of the allusions to dead husbands and wives.

Loretta detected Constance's nervous agitation. "I hate to think it of her," she cried with sudden illumination, "but I believe she has badgered you into it!"

"Nothing of the kind, Loretta. It's my own free choice. Mrs. Wilson simply made clear to me the Church's side."

Loretta sneered. "It's downright cruel, that's what I call it. The Church's side! The Church doesn't recognize divorce, but there's always been ways for the rich--the folk with pull, kings and such--to get the marriages they were tired of pronounced void from the beginning. It was only necessary to show that they had been god-parents to the same child, or were twenty-fifth cousins by affinity, as it's called, or some such tomfoolery. It didn't take Napoleon long when he wished to get rid of Josephine to induce the Catholic Church to declare that they never had been married, though it was a good church wedding before a cardinal. Pshaw! The Church has fooled the people long enough. What we want is justice and common sense."

That same cry for justice, that same appeal to common sense; and from what very different lips! Yet though Constance shrank from the coarseness of the exposition, somehow the naked saliency of the argument was more persuasive than Gordon's subtler plea. Her instinctive compassion for the masses asserted itself. The fact that Loretta should have touched at once the crucial point which Gordon's trained intelligence had emphasized struck her forcibly. And after all, what was she herself but one of the common people? But she said:

"The scandal in Mrs. Wilson's own family has been the greatest grief and mortification to her."

Loretta bridled. "Yes, and when Mrs. Waldo gets her divorce in South Dakota and comes back married again, won't everybody she cares about receive her just the same? In six months she'll be staying in Benham and her mother'll be inviting all the other multi-millionaires to meet her at a big blow-out; see if she don't." She paused, and her eyes took on a crafty look. "What do you suppose she'd say if I were to go back to my man?"

Constance sat bolt upright from apprehension. Loretta's air of mystery, which was accentuated by a whispering tone, conveyed to her the true import of the intimation. Yet she would not seem to understand.

"What do you mean, Loretta?"

"My man; the father of my child. He was in town the other day. He has found out where I am and has been plaguing me to go back to him."

"Did he ask you to marry him?" asked Constance, seeking that solution.

"That's not what he meant. But I've thought of that too--on baby's account. I guess he would if I were set on it. But we're both doing well single, and--" She stopped and laughed sarcastically--"and supposing we didn't like each other and got divorced, I could never marry anyone else."

"No matter about that now, Loretta. Do you love him still?"

"It's love that makes the world go round. There isn't much else worth living for, I guess." She pursed her lips after this enigmatical answer, then suddenly relaxed them in an impetuous outburst. "One thing's sure, Constance Stuart, you don't know what love is or you'd never have sent away Gordon Perry, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law."

"Don't, Loretta," said Constance, imploringly.

"It's true."

"I love him with all my heart. You don't understand."

"Pish! If you'd loved him as a woman loves a man when she does love him, you'd have been married before this. Why, there's times when I feel like going right back to my man, and I'm not what you'd call more than moderately fond of him. If it hadn't been that I didn't want to disappoint her--and you--I'd have done it before this. Now the next time he comes back, I shouldn't wonder if I did." She leaned back again on the sofa with her hands behind her head nodding doggedly, and nursing her intention.

Constance, appalled, went over and sat down beside her. "Oh, but you mustn't, you mustn't! Go to-morrow to see Mrs. Wilson and talk with her. She will give you strength and convince you that unless you marry him such a course would be suicide, a cruel wrong to yourself, dear--you who have done so well."

"I've kept straight chiefly to suit her; but I don't like what she has done to you."

"Please leave me and my affairs out of the question, Loretta. They have nothing to do with your preserving your own self-respect."

"I don't know about that. If she's just like the rest; if that's a sample of the religion and the beauty she prides herself on, I've been fooled, you've been fooled. What's the use of being respectable if, when true love does come, a poor, deserted woman is robbed of it for such a reason as that?"

It surprised Constance that Loretta should take sides so strongly, and she perceived that the girl must have a tenderer feeling for her than she had supposed. This made her all the more anxious to protect her.

"I value your sympathy very much, dear, but it won't help me--it'll only make me dreadfully unhappy if you do wrong."

Loretta looked at her keenly. Then she took out a small phial, similar to that which Constance had observed on another occasion, and swallowed a pellet ostentatiously.

"If you are troubled with the blues these are the things to take. They brace one splendid."

"What are they, Loretta?"

"If you promise to take some right along, I'll tell you." But she evidently was not eager to disclose her secret, for she promptly replaced the phial in her pocket and said, "I'll make a bargain with you, Constance. If you'll marry Gordon Perry, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law, I'll keep straight."

Constance flushed. "But I can't, dear. It's all settled."

"He will come back if you only whistle. You know that."

Constance let her eyes fall. She feared that it was too true. But she could not afford to be pensive. She must be both resolute and resourceful, for the future of this erring sister seemed to be hanging in the balance.

"I can never marry Mr. Perry, Loretta. But----"

"I thought better things of you, Constance. Oh! well then I'll go back to my man."

"If you should do such a thing it would break Mrs. Wilson's heart."

This seemed to Constance in her perplexity the most hopeful appeal, and she was right, for Loretta was obviously impressed by the remark.

"Would it?" she asked. She looked down at her large hands and let them rise and fall in her lap like one nervously touched by sentiment.

"I do not know of anything which would distress her more," continued Constance.

After a moment Loretta said, "He's away now. He won't be on this route again for another four months. So there isn't any danger just yet." She shrugged her shoulders. Then she rose, adding, "I guess I'll go to bed," which was plainly an intimation that this was to be the limit of her present concession.

Constance was relieved, not only that immediate danger was averted, but that the tie which bound Loretta to Mrs. Wilson, however temporarily strained, was still strong and compelling. She rejoiced to think that they were warned, so that they could now keep a closer watch and leave nothing undone to save her from further degeneration. She dismissed the subject by making some inquiries in regard to Loretta's last case. The girl's responses were to the point and brisk, but she did not resume her seat, and evidently had no intention of remaining. Presently she got as far as the door, where she stood discussing for a few moments with her hand on the knob. When at last she opened it and was in the act of departing, she turned her head and uttered this parting shot, which indicated what was still uppermost in her thoughts:

"I guess that you never really loved Gordon Perry, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law, or you couldn't have done it."

This taunt lingered in Constance's mind, though she denied the impeachment to herself. Was it not indeed true, as Loretta said, that it is love which makes the world go round? Only for the sake of righteousness was she justified as a healthy, breathing woman in stifling this instinct. If Loretta in the future were to marry some one other than the father of her child both the Church and Mrs. Wilson would rejoice because the mere ceremony of marriage had been lacking in the first relation; yet she herself was forbidden to marry the man she loved because she was tied to a faithless husband by the mere husk of marriage.

She saw Loretta but two or three times before her convalescence was complete and she had assumed her duties as Mrs. Wilson's secretary, for Loretta was sent for again shortly, and was only at home in the interval between her engagements. But Constance gave Mrs. Wilson forthwith an inkling of Loretta's state of mind, though she tried to believe that the girl's wanton threat was a mere passing ebullition due to resentment of her reason for refusing Gordon. Nevertheless she did not altogether like the expression of her eyes; it suggested excitement, and predominance of that boldness which, though typical, had been much in abeyance during the period of her regeneration. She remembered, too, the bottle of pellets, which indicated that she was taking some drug. So, though she could not believe that she was seriously considering such an abhorrent proceeding, she felt it her duty to put Mrs. Wilson on her guard. They both agreed, however, that the culprit must be handled gingerly and not too much made of the occurrence. Accordingly Mrs. Wilson straightway wrote to Loretta, but her letter was a missive of interest and encouragement, not of reproach or alarm. She deplored in it that she had lately seen but little of her ward, owing to the latter's popularity as a nurse, and urged her to call on her at the first opportunity. She sent her also one or two pretty toilet articles for herself and some new frocks for her baby. Constance said nothing, however, to Mrs. Wilson as to Loretta's attitude toward the church regarding remarriage after divorce, for she could not bear to renew the subject with her patroness. It was settled forever, and her spirit craved peace.

XXIV

It was a great relief to Constance when at last she was once more self-supporting. Her eyes appeared to be as strong as ever, and she found her new work congenial and absorbing. She was not merely Mrs. Wilson's stenographer, but her factotum, expected to exercise a general superintendence over her employer's philanthropic and social concerns, to attend to details, and, through tactful personal interviews, to act as a domestic buffer. The change from the practical severity of a law office, with its dusty shelves of volumes uniformly bound in sheep, its plain furniture and heterogeneous clientage, to her present surroundings was both stimulating and startling. Stimulating because it catered to her yearning for contact with æsthetic influences to have the run of this superb house and to be brought into daily familiar association with all sorts of lavish expenditure in aid of beautiful effects and beneficent purposes. Startling because the true quality of the luxury aimed at was unknown to her until she became a constant eye-witness. In both Mrs. Wilson's and her brother Carleton Howard's establishments a major-domo presided over the purely domestic relations, engaging the numerous servants, and endeavoring to maintain such a competent staff below stairs as to ensure delicious, superabundant food and neat, noiseless service which should emulate as far as possible the automatic impersonality of male and female graven images. All the appointments of the house were captivating; the pantry closets bristled with beautiful cut glass and delicate, superbly decorated china; flowers in great profusion and variety were brought three times a week from Carleton Howard's private nurseries to be tastefully arranged by a maid whose special duty it was to attend to this and to see that those not needed for the decoration of the house should be sent to the destinations indicated by Mrs. Wilson through her secretary--hospitals, friends in affliction or with birthdays, and the like. The spacious bathrooms were lined with artistic tiles; electric lights had been adjusted in the chambers so as to provide perfect facilities for reading in bed; once a week an attendant called to wind all the clocks in the house. Mrs. Wilson's personal appetite was not keen, yet exacting. Her breakfast was served in her own room, and, unless she had company, her other meals were apt to be slight in substance, but were invariably of a delicate, distinguished character as regards appearance if not ingredients. Her steward had instructions that the dinner table should be garnished with flowers and the most luscious specimens of the fruits of the season, though she were alone. When she had guests these effects were amplified, and her mind was constantly on the alert to provide novelty for her entertainments. During the first season of Constance's employment, music between the courses--a harpist, a quartette of violinists, an orchestra--happened to be the favorite special feature of her dinner parties.

That first winter Mrs. Wilson had the influenza and went to Florida for a month for recuperation, carrying her secretary with her. The journey was made in Mr. Howard's private car, and the suite which they occupied at the elaborate modern hotel where they stopped was the most select to be obtained. The spectacle at this winter resort for restless multi-millionaires was another bewildering experience for Constance. The display of toilets and diamonds at night in the vast ornate dining-room was dazzling and almost grotesque in its competitive features. Mrs. Wilson preserved her distinction by a rich simplicity of costume. She had left her most striking gowns at home, and she let Constance perceive that her sensibilities took umbrage at this public cockatoo emulation of wealth. She was even conspicuously simple in regard to her food, as though she wished to shun unmistakably being confounded with the conglomeration of socially aspiring patrons, whose antics jarred on her conceptions of beauty. But Constance could not avoid the reflection that profuse, if not prodigal, expenditure was typical of her companion no less than of them, and that the distinction was simply one of taste. What impressed her was that so many people in the land had merely to sign a check to command what they desired, and that the mania for novel and special comforts, and unique or gorgeous possessions was in the air. On their way home Mrs. Wilson spent a few days in New York shopping, having directed Constance to communicate in advance with several dealers whose business it was to dispose of artistic masterpieces. She bought two pictures at a cost of twenty-five thousand dollars apiece, an antique collar of pearls, and several minor treasures. At the same time she took advantage of the occasion to grant an interview to two persons, a man and a woman, who had solicited her aid in behalf of separate educational charities. To each of these enterprises, after proper consideration, she sent her subscription for five thousand dollars.

Undoubtedly the chief purpose of Mrs. Wilson's stay in New York was to see her daughter. After a three months' residence in South Dakota, Lucille had obtained a divorce on the ground of cruelty, and had promptly married her admirer, Bradbury Nicholson, son of the president of the Chemical Trust. Mrs. Wilson had declined to attend the wedding, which took place in Sioux City three days after the final decree had been entered--a very quiet affair. Lucille had notified her mother that it was to occur, but was not surprised that she did not take the journey. She and her husband had spent four months in Europe to let people get accustomed to the idea that she was no longer Mrs. Clarence Waldo, and recently they had taken up their residence in New York. Her new husband had three millions of his own, and, as Lucille complacently expressed the situation to her mother, society had received them exactly as if nothing had happened.

"I told you how it would be, Mamma," she said. "Everybody understands that Clarence and I were mismated. I am radiantly happy, and, as for your granddaughter, she could not be fonder of Bradbury if he were her own father. He has bought a thousand dollar pony for her. All the Nicholson connection and my old friends have been giving us dinners, which shows that we can't be disapproved of very strongly."