Chapter IX: Book III: I (2)

“Look, Beverly,” she said, “you and I have to spend many months alone together, and if we are to make a success of matrimony we must be companions, and to be companions we must have similar tastes. Now I’ll make a bargain with you: I’ll try to like horses if you’ll try to like books. On pleasant days I’ll ride and drive with you, and when it storms we’ll read together here in the library. I am sure you will like it after a time. If you find it tiresome to read to yourself I’ll read aloud. I don’t mind, and then we can talk it over.”

“All right,” said Beverly. “Anything you say. What’s that you’re reading now?”

“Heine’s prose. He is wonderful—such a style and such sardonic wit, and such exquisite thoughts. I’ll begin all over again. Now light a cigar and make yourself comfortable.”

For a half hour she read aloud, and then Mr. Peele remarked,—

“Hang it! The skating is spoiled for a week.”

“Oh, Beverly, you haven’t been listening.”

“Well, I don’t like it very much. He skips around so. Besides, I always did hate Germans. Give me America every time.”

“Well, read something American then,” said Patience, crossly.

“You find something and read it to me. I like to hear your voice, even if I can’t keep my mind on it. Wait a while though. I guess I’ll go and see how the stable is getting on.”

He bent down to kiss his wife, but she was once more absorbed, and did not see him. He snatched the book from her with an oath and flung it across the room. She sprang to her feet with flashing eyes, pushed him aside with no gentle hand, and ran after the book.

“You sha’n’t read that book!” he cried. “The idea of forgetting your husband for a book—_a book_! You are a lovely wife! You are a disgrace to the name! You would rather read than kiss your husband! I’ll lock this room up, damned if I don’t.”

“I’ll go and live with Miss Beale and do Temperance work,” sobbed Patience. “I won’t live with you.”

“Oh, you won’t—what? What did I marry you for? My God! What did I marry you for? My life is hell, for I’m no fool. I know you don’t love me. You married me for my money.”

“I wish I had,” she exclaimed passionately, then controlled herself. “I hope we are not going to squabble in the usual commonplace way. I shall not, at any rate. If you lose your temper, you can have the quarrel all to yourself. I shall not pay any attention to you. Now go out to the stable and cool off, and when you come back I’ll read something else to you.”

“Do you love me?”

“Oh, yes—yes.”

And Beverly disappeared, slamming the door behind him.

“I wonder if any one on earth has such a temper,” she thought. “And people believe that vulgarity and lack of control are confined to the lower classes! What is the matter with civilisation anyhow? I can only explain my own remarkable aberration in this way: youthful love is a compound of curiosity, a surplus of vitality, and inherited sentimentalism. It is likely to arrive just after the gamut of children’s diseases has run its course. Of course the disease is merely a complacent state of the system until the germ arrives, which same is the first attractive and masterful man. All diseases run their course, however. I could not be more insensible to Beverly Peele’s dead ancestors out in the vault than I am to him. No woman is capable of loving at nineteen. She is nothing but an overgrown child, a chaos of emotions and imagination. There ought to be a law passed that no woman could marry until she was twenty-eight. Then, perhaps a few of us would feel less like—Well, there is nothing to do but make the best of it, regard life as a highly seasoned comedy, in which one is little more than a spectator, after all—and at present I have Heine.”

Beverly did not return for an hour. When he did she rose at once, and running her eye along the shelves, selected a volume of Webster’s Speeches.

“You like politics,” she said; “and all of us should read the great works of our great men. I’ll read the famous Seventh of March Speech.”

And she did, Beverly listening with considerable attention. When she had finished he remarked enthusiastically,—

“Do you know what that speech has made me make up my mind to do? I’m going to run for the Senate, and make speeches like that myself.”

Patience merely stared at him. She wondered if he were really something more than a fool; if there was a sort of post-graduate course.

“What makes you look at me like that? Don’t you think I can?”

“Well—” She hardly knew what to say.

“Well! Is that the way you encourage a fellow? You are a nice wife. Here my father has been at me all my life to do something, and just as soon as I make up my mind, my wife laughs at me.”

“I didn’t laugh at you.”

“Well, it’s all the same. If I never do anything, it’ll be your fault.”

“Go to the Senate just as fast as ever you can get there. And you might as well spend the rest of the day studying Webster; but suppose you read to yourself for a while: my throat is tired.”

“I don’t like to read to myself.”

“Well, anyhow, I hear Lawson coming. Luncheon is ready.”

The table in the dining-room had been divested of its leaves, and the young couple sat only a few feet apart. The room had once been a banqueting-hall. It was very large and dark. The white light filtered meagrely through the small panes. The wind moaned through the naked elms.

“The country is awfully dull in winter,” remarked Patience. “I wish we were in town.”

“That’s a beautiful speech to make to a husband. I don’t mind so long as you are here.”

“Of course I am deeply flattered,” and she smiled upon him. There seemed nothing else to do.

“Damn it!” cried Beverly, “this steak is as thin as a plate and burnt to a cinder. Patience, I do wish you’d give some of your attention to housekeeping and less to books. It is your place to see that things are properly cooked, now that Honora is gone.”

“Oh, dear. I don’t know anything about cooking, or housekeeping, either.”

“Well, then, I’d be much obliged if you’d learn as quickly as possible. Take this steak out,” he said to the maid, “and bring some cold beef or ham. Damn it! I might have known that when Honora went away I’d have nothing fit to eat, with this new cook.”

But Patience refused to continue the conversation, and when the ham and beef came he ate of them with such relish that his good-nature returned as speedily as it had departed.

During the afternoon the scene of the morning was repeated with variations, and the same might be said of the two following days. Then came an interval of sleighing and skating. Then rain turned the snow to slush, and once again Beverly exhibited the characteristics of a caged tiger.

“I shall have nervous prostration before the winter is over,” thought Patience, who was still determined to take the situation humorously, still refused to face her former self. “I do wish the family would come back, mother-in-law and all.”

Occasionally, despite Beverly’s indignant protests, she went to town for the day, and shopped or paid calls with Hal. On one occasion they went to see Rosita. That “beautiful young prima donna of ever increasing popularity” wore black gauze over gold-coloured tights, and acted and sang and danced and allured with consummate art. The opera house was two-thirds crowded with men, although there was the usual matinée contingent of girls and young married women.

“Well,” thought Patience, “she’s way ahead of me, for she’s made a success of herself, at least, and is not bothered with scruples and regrets.”

The winter dragged along as slowly as if time had lamed the old man, then fallen asleep. The relations between Patience and Beverly became very strained. His frequent tempers were alternated by sulks. He was genuinely unhappy, for limited as he was, mentally and spiritually, he was very human; and in his primitive way he loved his wife.

Patience’s resolution to go through life as a cynical humourist, deaf and blind to the great wants of her nature, died hard, but it died at last. Monotony accentuated fact, and the time came when pretence failed her, and she visibly shrank from his lightest caress. The tide of horror and loathing had risen slowly, but definitely. He threatened to kill her, to commit suicide, to get a divorce; but his threats did not disturb her. He was too weak to kill himself, too proud to make himself ridiculous in the divorce courts, and too much in love to put her beyond his reach. What sustained her was the hope that his passion would die a natural death, and that they would then go their diverse ways as other married people did,—that had come to seem to her the most blessed meaning of the holy state of matrimony. Then she could enjoy her books, and he would permit her to spend the winters in New York, or in travel.

Beverly’s affections, however, showed no sign of dissolution.

VI

One afternoon in March, Patience, glancing out of the library window, saw Hal coming up the lawn from the path that led down the slope to the station. She suppressed a war-whoop with which she and Rosita had been used to awake the echoes of the Californian hills, opened the window, and vaulted out.

“Well,” cried Miss Peele, as Patience ran toward her, “you do look glad to see me, sure enough. Bev can’t be very exciting, for you don’t look as if it were me particularly—just somebody. Oh, matrimony! matrimony! I envy the women that have solved the problem in some other way—the journalists and artists, and authors and actresses, and even the suffragists, God rest them. Hello, there’s Bev. He looks as if he were about to cry. What have you been doing to him?”

“I left him writing an order for some new kind of horse-feed,” said Patience, indifferently. Her husband stood at the window, staring gloomily at the beaming faces. When the girls entered the room he had gone.

“He looks as if he had just been let out of the dark room. Do you beat him? What do you suppose my mother will say?”

“Oh, I suppose he’s bored too. You see it’s nearly three months now. I tried to make him read, but after the third day he went to sleep.”

Hal drew a low chair to the fire, close to the one Patience occupied. She laughed merrily.

“Fancy your trying to make Bev intellectual! That would be a good subject for a one-act farce. Well, I’ve come up here to tell you something, and to talk it over. I, too, am contemplating matrimony.”

“Oh, don’t!” cried Patience.

“I believe that is usually the advice of married people, but the world goes on marrying itself just the same. But my problem is much more complicated than the average, for there are two men in the question.”

“Two? You don’t mean to say you don’t know your own mind?”

“That is exactly the fact in the case. You remember Reginald Wynne? Well, Patience, I do like that man. I never liked any man one tenth as much. I might say he’s the only serious man I’ve ever met, the only one, to put it in another way, that I ever could take seriously as a man. He has brains—he’s a lawyer, you know, and they say very fine things of him—and he is so kind, and _strong_. When I am with him I don’t feel frivolous and worldly and one of a dozen. If I have any better nature and any apology for a brain, they are on top then. He is the last sort of man I ever thought I’d fall in love with, but it takes us some years to become acquainted with ourselves, doesn’t it? I do respect him so, and it is such a novel sensation. He even makes me read. Fancy! And I’ve even promised him that I won’t read any more French novels, excepting those he selects, nor smoke cigarettes. So, you see, I am in love.

“But, Patience,” she continued with tragic emphasis, “he hasn’t a red—and I know I’d be miserable, poor. When papa saw which way the wind was blowing, he took me into the library and told me that although he made fifty thousand dollars a year, we spent nearly all of it, and that he should not have much to leave besides his life insurance—one hundred thousand—which of course would go to mamma. It is a matter of honour never to sell this place, and the revenue from the farm—which is to go to Beverly—would keep it up in a small way. The town house is to be May’s and mine; but what will that amount to? May and I have always pretty well understood that if we want to keep on having the things that habit has made a necessity to us, we must marry rich men! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”

“Well, the other man?”

“He has appeared on the scene lately. He is not the usual alternative by any means, for he is very attractive in his way. He has the manners of the man of the world, a _fin de siècle_ brain, and the devil in his eye. He is rather good-looking and tremendously good form. And, my dear, he has three cold millions. Think what I should be with three millions! Fancy me in Boston on three or four hundred dollars a month. Oh, Patience, what shall I do?” And Hal, the most undemonstrative of women, laid her head on Patience’s knee and sobbed bitterly.

“I had to come to see you, Patience,” she continued after a moment. “I have no one else; I could never have said a word of this to mamma or May. And I like you better than any one in the world except Reginald Wynne. And you seem to understand things. Do tell me what to do.”

“Do this: Be true to your ideals. If love means, and has always meant more to you than anything else in the world, marry Reginald Wynne. If money and power and luxury are the very essentials of happiness to you, marry the other man. No temporary aberration can permanently divert one’s paramount want from its natural course. As soon as the novelty has gone, the ego swings back to its old point of view as surely as water does that has been temporarily dammed. There is only one thing that persists, and that is the ideal,—that habit of mind which is bred of heredity and environment, even where care or consciousness is lacking. It is as relentless and pitiless as the law of cause and effect. I believe it would outlive a very leprosy of the soul. And it makes no difference whether that ideal be great or small, high or low, its hold is precisely the same, for it is individuality itself. Rosita is happy because she has realised her ideal. Miss Tremont was happy because she lived up to hers. Miss Beale was supremely satisfied with herself when she let a man die whom she might have saved by smirching her ideals. The religionists are happy generally, not through communion with the presiding deity, as they imagine, but because they have arbitrarily created a sort of spiritual Blackstone whom they delight to obey. The author is happy when he toils, even without hope of reward. Martyrs have known ecstasy—But one could go on for a week. Don’t marry Wynne if you feel that you would be unhappy in poverty after the first few months; and if you feel that great wealth without love would be misery, don’t marry the other.”

“Oh, I could like Latimer Burr well enough,” said Hal, staring gloomily at the fire; “and after a time I suppose I’d forget. You see, I have been in love so short a time that the wrench would be a good deal less violent than the wrench from luxury—I’d soon get over it, I expect. But I do like him—I never thought I could feel like this.”

Patience fondled the sleek head, but she was not in a mood to feel in sympathy with love. The only thing that to her seemed of paramount importance was to fix a clear eye on the future.

“You see,” she said, “the present is ever with us, and the past recedes farther and farther. If the rich man can give you what you most want, time will make you forget the very sensation of love. If you marry Wynne and the love goes, you will have equal difficulty to recall it, and nothing to compensate in the present.”

“I’m not afraid that it would go; but I know that I should be thoroughly miserable poor, and make him miserable too. I do love it all so—all that money means—why, one can’t even be well groomed without money. It has gone to make up nine-tenths of my composition; the other tenth is only a bit of miserable wax. But I love this new feeling, and I never believed that anything could be so sweet. Oh, dear; I’ll have to dry up. Here comes Bev.”

“Remember this,” said Patience, “and let it console you: however you feel or are torn, you’ll do one thing only,—follow along the line of least resistance.”

Beverly entered and kissed his sister affectionately. Her back was to the light, and he did not notice her swollen eyes.

“Well, you are looking hilarious,” she remarked in her usual flippant tones. “Has Tammany gone lame, or Mrs. Langtry refused to take her five bars?”

“My wife doesn’t love me!” Beverly had brooded upon his wrongs for two months. Hal’s words were as a match to a mine.

“Oh!” exclaimed Patience, springing to her feet, “don’t let us have a scene for Hal’s benefit. Do cultivate a little good taste, if good sense is too far beyond you.”

Her words were not soothing, and Beverly exploded in one of his most violent passions. He tore up and down the room, banging his fist alternately on the table, the mantel, and the books, and once he hit the panel of a door so heavy a blow that it sprang. Patience sat down and turned her back. Hal endeavoured to stop him; but he had found a listener, and would discharge his mind of its accumulated virus. He told the tale of the winter in spasmodic gusts, hung and fringed with oaths. Finally he flung himself out of the room, shouting all the way across the hall.

For a moment there was an intense and meaning silence between the two women; then Hal stood up and laid her palms to her head.

“Patience!” she said, “Patience! this is awful. What have I done? Oh, does it really mean anything? I have seen Bev go into tempers all my life—but—Tell me, please—does this really mean anything—”

“Whether it does or does not it need not worry you beyond warning you against mistakes on your own account. I married with my eyes open, and I can take care of myself. Don’t marry your rich man unless you like him well enough to pretend to like him a good deal more. If you do, you’ll end by loathing him and yourself—and what is more, he’ll know it.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think I am as intense as you are—but what do you suppose makes Beverly such a wild animal? We are none of us like that, and never have been, as far as I know, although some of the old boys were pretty gay, not to say lawless. But for two or three generations we seem to have been a fairly well-conducted lot. Beverly is almost a freak.”

Patience crossed the room, and lifting down a volume of Darwin’s “Descent of Man” read from the chapter on Civilised Nations:—

“‘With mankind some of the worst dispositions which
occasionally, without any assignable cause, make their
appearance in families, may perhaps be reversions to a savage
state from which we are not removed by very many generations.’”

VII

Two weeks later Patience received a letter from Hal which induced no surprise.

The die is cast [it read]. Reginald Wynne has gone back to
Boston, and I am going to marry Latimer Burr. On the first of
April we sail for Europe—mamma and May and I—to get our
things.

Don’t imagine that I am doing the novel-heroine act, and
sprinkling my pillow o’ nights. I did feel terribly, and I’ll
never love any other man; but the thing is done, and done for
the best, and that is the end of it. What you said about
following along the line of least resistance is as sure as love
and fate and a good many other things; for what Latimer Burr can
give me I want more than what Reginald Wynne can give me, and it
drew me like a magnet. And the other thing you said is equally
true,—that the only joy in life is to pursue your ideals to the
bitter end. Mine are not lofty, but they are _me_, and that is
all there is to it. I shall not weep it out, because I’ve no
beauty to lose, and weeping does no earthly good, anyway. If it
would give Wynne Burr’s fortune I’d drown New York.

We’ll be back on the first of June. We’re only going over to
order things. I wish you joy of Honora. It’s too bad Bev is so
much in love with you, or you might switch him off on to her.
Oh, Patience, dear, you don’t know how much I’ve thought about
you. It hurts me _hard_ to think that you are unhappy. I feel as
guilty as a murderer, but really I thought you’d get along. So
many women had been in love with Bev, I thought you would be,
too. I don’t think it had ever occurred to me that women
sometimes had a soul. If I had known as much then as I do now
I’d have done all I could to keep you apart, for Beverly Peele
certainly has not the attenuated ghost of a soul.

But Patience, dear, do stand it out. Don’t, _don’t_ get a
divorce. Remember that all over the world women are as miserable
as you are, and as I might be if I would let myself go. Now, at
least, you have compensations; and when I am married I’ll do
everything I can to make life gay and pleasant for you; but
don’t make a horrid vulgar newspaper scandal and leave yourself
without resources. This world is a pretty good place after all
when you are on top, but it must be hell underneath.

Lovingly HAL.

VIII

The day Mrs. Peele and her daughters sailed for France Mr. Peele and his niece returned to the Manor. Honora kissed Patience on either cheek.

“Oh, I am so glad to come back to my lovely room, and to see you, Patience dear,” she said wearily. “We have had such a gay winter, and I am so tired. Dear me, how fresh and sweet you look in that white frock. I just long to get into thin things.”

When Mr. Peele came up in the evening he narrowed his lids as he kissed Patience, and regarded her critically. “Well, how does Beverly wear in a three months’ _tête-à-tête_?” he asked. “Gad! I shouldn’t care to try it.”

“Oh,” she said flushing, “we didn’t talk much. He had the farm and the horses to attend to, you know, and I had the library. Oh, I am so glad you have that library.”

He laughed aloud, with the harsh notes of a voice unused to such music.

“I see you have had a Paul and Virginia time, as Hal would say. I’m sorry you’ve put your foot in it, for even you can’t make anything of him; but make the best of it. Don’t leave him—Hal has told me something, you see. It was best that she should. There must be no scandal. If he makes too great a nuisance of himself come to me; and if he cuts off your allowance at any time just let me know, and I’ll see that you have all the money you want. He doesn’t own the farm. I like you. You’re a clever woman. If you’d been my daughter I’d have been proud of you.”

And whether he really found pleasure in his daughter-in-law’s society, or whether he merely thought it politic to lighten her burden, from that time until the return of the family he devoted his evenings to her. He was deeply read, and Patience, after years of mental loneliness, was grateful for his companionship, although personally he antagonised her. He was a mentality without heart or soul, and she knew that he would sacrifice her as readily as he accepted her if it better suited his purpose.

She clung to Honora during the day and read aloud to her in the Tea House, while that devoted young Catholic embroidered for the village church or sewed for the poor of her beloved priest. Father O’Donovan, a young man with a healthy serious face and a clear eye, frequently joined them. Every morning the girls rode or sailed. Beverly frequently made one of the party, and Patience and Honora exercised all their tact to keep him in good humour. In the evening he played duets with his cousin. Her touch was as light and hollow as an avalanche of icicles from the roof, he pounded the piano as if it were a prize fighter’s chest.

One evening Patience did not go downstairs until a few moments before dinner was announced. As she entered the library she saw that a stranger stood at the window with Mr. Peele. The priest was present, and she shook hands with him before going over to greet the stranger and her father-in-law. While she was agreeing with him that Honora in her white robe and blue sash looked exactly like an angel, the man at the window turned, and she recognised Mr. Field. She ran forward and held out her hand.

“Oh! Oh!” she cried. “I’m so glad to see you again. I’ve wanted and wanted to.”

He took her hand, smiling, but regarded her with the keen gaze she so well remembered.

“Bless my soul,” he said, “but you have changed. It is not too much to say that you have improved. Even the freckles have gone, I see. I thought I was to make a newspaper woman of you. I felt rather cross when you married. But this life certainly agrees with you. You look quite the _grande dame_—quite—ah! Good evening, sir,” as Beverly entered and was presented. Mr. Field darted a glance from one to the other, his mouth twitching sardonically.

He sat at Patience’s right during dinner, and they talked constantly. Beverly was sulky, and said nothing. Mr. Peele rarely talked at table, even to Patience. Honora and the priest conversed in a solemn undertone. It is doubtful if two courses had been served before the terrible old man understood the situation.

“There’s tragedy brewing here,” he thought, grimly. “That fellow has the temper of a fiend in the skull of a fool, and this girl is not the compound I take her to be if she lives a lie very long for the sake of champagne and truffles. I’d give a good deal to foresee the outcome. Unless I’m all wrong there’ll be a two column story on the first page of the ‘Day’ some fine morning. Well, she’ll have its support, right or wrong. She’s a brick, and he’s the sort of fellow a man always wants to kick.—What is that?” he asked of the priest, who had begun a story that suddenly appealed to Mr. Field’s editorial instinct.

“A physician over at Mount Vernon, who stands very high in his profession, has been accused of poisoning his wife. She died in great agony, and her mother insisted upon a post-mortem. Her stomach was full of strychnine. He maintains that she threatened to commit suicide repeatedly, and that he is innocent; but opinion is against him, and people seem to think that the jury will convict him. I knew both, and I feel positive of his innocence.”

“Undoubtedly he is innocent,” said Mr. Field. “No physician of ordinary cleverness would bungle like that. Strychnine! absurd! Why, there are poisons known to all physicians and chemists which absolutely defy analysis. I don’t doubt that more than one doctor has put his wife out of the way, and the world none the wiser.”

“Is that true?” said Patience, eagerly, leaning forward. Her curious mind leapt at any new fact. “What are they like?”

“That I can’t say. That is a little secret known to the fraternity only, although I don’t doubt they give their friends the benefit of their knowledge occasionally. Indubitably a large proportion of murderers are never discovered—unless they discover themselves, like the guilty pair in ‘Thérèse Raquin.’”

“Oh, they belonged to the cruder order of civilisation,” said Patience, lightly. “I am sure that if I committed a murder, I should not be bothered by conscience if I had felt myself justified in committing it. It seems to me that if the development of the intellect means anything it means the casting out of inherited prejudices. Of course I don’t believe in murder,” she continued, carried away as ever by the pleasure of abstract reasoning, “but if a man of the world and of brains, after due deliberation, makes way with a person who is fatal to his happiness or his career, then I think he must have sufficient development of mental muscle to scorn remorse. The highest intelligences are anarchistic.”

“Undoubtedly there are those that have reached that point of civilisation,” said Mr. Field, “but for my part, I have not. Although I keep abreast of this extraordinary generation, my roots are planted pretty far down in the old one. But assuredly if I did feel the disposition to murder, and succumbed, I’d cover up my tracks.”

“Do these poisons give pain? Are they mineral or vegetable?”

As Mr. Field was about to answer, a peculiar expression crossed his face, and Patience, following his eyes, looked at Beverly. Her husband was staring at her with his heavy brows together, the corners of his mouth drawn down in an ugly sneer. To her horror and disgust she felt the blood fly to her hair. At the same time she became conscious that Mr. Peele, the priest, and Honora were exchanging glances of surprise. Beverly gave an abrupt unpleasant laugh, and pushing his chair violently back, left the room. Patience glanced appealingly about, then dropped her glance to her plate. She felt as if the floor were dissolving beneath her feet.

IX

A week later, after a pleasant morning in the Tea House with Honora and Father O’Donovan, she left it to go to the library. As she turned the corner of the house she saw Beverly standing close to one of the windows.

“What are you doing there?” she asked in surprise.

His brows were lowered and his skin looked black, as it always did when his angry passions were risen.

“I’ve been watching you and that priest,” he said savagely, following her as she retreated hastily out of earshot of the people in the Tea House. “I saw you exchanging glances with him! Now I know why you want to know so much about poisons—”

“Are you insane?” she cried. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“No, I’m not insane—by God! You’re in love with that priest, and I know it. But I’m on the watch—”

“Oh,—you—you—” stammered Patience. She could not speak. Her face was crimson with anger and disgust. In her husband’s eyes she was an image of guilt. He burst into a sneering laugh.

“You think I’m a fool, I suppose, because I don’t know anything about books. But a woman said once that I had the instincts of the devil, and I’ve no idea of—”

Patience found her tongue. “You poor fool,” she said. “It was ridiculous of me to pay any attention whatever to you; but I am not used to being insulted, even by you. And remember that I am not used to any display of imagination in you. As for _love_—” the scorn with which she uttered the word made even him wince—“do not worry. You have made me loathe the thing. I could not fall in love with a god. Don’t have the least fear that I shall be unfaithful to you. I couldn’t!”

She walked away, leaving Beverly trembling and speechless. When she reached her room she locked the doors and sobbed wildly.

“Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?” she thought. “I can’t stand it any longer. I believe I really would kill him if I stayed. I feel as if my nature were in ruins. I hate myself! I loathe myself! I’ll leave this very day!”

But she had said the same thing many times. Why does a woman hesitate long before she leaves the man who has made life shocking to her? Indolence, abhorrence of scandal, shame to confess that she has made a failure of her life, above all, lack of private fortune and the uncertainty of self-support. For whatever the so-called advanced woman may preach, woman has in her the instinct of dependence on man, transmitted through the ages, and a sexual horror of the arena. Patience let the days slip by, hoping, as women will, that the problem would solve itself, that Beverly Peele would die, or become indifferent, or that she would drift naturally into some other sphere.

X

Mrs. Peele and the girls returned with the June roses; the house was filled with guests at once. The Cuban had gone to his islands for the summer, and May chose to wear the willow and occasionally to weep upon Patience’s unsympathetic shoulder; but as frequently she consoled herself with the transient flirtation. Hal, apparently, was her old gay self. She did not mention Wynne’s name, and Patience was equally reticent.

“I should be the last to remind any woman of what she wished to forget,” she thought. “And love—what does it amount to anyhow? If He came I believe I should hate him, because once I felt something like passion for him too.”

She had looked forward with some curiosity to meeting Latimer Burr. He also had been in Paris. He followed his lady home on the next steamer, and immediately upon his return came to Peele Manor. Patience did not meet him until dinner. She sat beside him, and at once became acutely aware that he was a man of superlative physical magnetism. She proscribed him accordingly—magnetism was a repellent force at this stage of her development. She was rather surprised that she could feel it again, so completely had Beverly’s evaporated.

Burr was a tall heavily built man about forty years old. He carried himself and wore his clothes as only a New York man can. His face was florid and well modelled, his mouth and half closed eyes sensual. But his voice and manners were charming. He appeared to be deeply in love with Hal, and his voice became a caress when he spoke to her. Patience did not like his type, but she forgave him individually because he was fond of Hal and appeared to possess brains.

She fell into conversation with him, and his manner would have led her to believe that while she spoke neither Hal nor any other woman existed. To this Patience gave little attention: she had met that manner before; it was pleasant, and she missed it when lacking; but she had practised it too often herself to feel more than its passing fascination. His eyes, however, were more insistently eloquent than his manner, and their eloquence was of the order that induced discomposure.

Patience at times looked very lovely, and she was at her best to-night. Her white skin was almost transparent, and the wine had touched her cheeks with pink. The sadness of her spirit had softened her eyes. Her gown of peacock blue gauze fitted her round elastic figure very firmly, and her bare throat and neck and arms were statuesque. She had by no means the young married woman look, but she had some time since acquired an “air,” much to Hal’s satisfaction. To all appearances she was a girl, but her figure was womanly. Although about five feet six, and built on a more generous plan than the average New York woman, she walked with all their spring and lightness of foot. Her round waist looked smaller than it was; she never laced. Lately she had discovered that she “had an arm,” as Hal would have phrased it, and the discovery had given her such satisfaction that she had forgotten her troubles for the hour, and sent for a dressmaker to take the sleeves out of her evening gowns.

Mr. Burr also discovered it, and murmured his approval as caressingly as were he addressing his prospective bride.

“The milk-white woman!” he ejaculated softly. “The milk-white woman!”

“Can’t you get any farther?” asked Patience. “If you were a poet now, that would make a good first line for a rhapsody—to Hal, for instance.”

He laughed indulgently. “How awfully bright you are. I am afraid of you.” But he did not look in the least afraid. “You are to be my sister, you know. We must become friends at once.”

“And flattery is the quickest and surest way of establishing the fraternal relation? Well, you are quite right; but just look at my hair for a change, will you?” (She felt as if her skin must be covered with red spots.) “Or my profile. They are also good points.”

“They are exquisite. I have rarely seen a woman so beautiful.”

“Dear! Dear! How relieved you must be to feel that you can keep your hand in without straying too far from Peele Manor. And there is also Honora.”

“I don’t admire Miss Mairs. She is too tall, and her nose is too long.”

“Poor dear Honora! But how well you understand women! What tact! I like you so much better than I did before.”

He laughed again in his indulgent way. “You mustn’t guy me. It is your fault if I pay you too many compliments. You are a very fascinating woman.”

“You are wonderfully entertaining. What must you be when you are in love! What do you and Hal talk about?”

“Isn’t Hal a dear little girl? I do love her. I never loved a woman so much in my life—never proposed before. She is so bright. She keeps me amused all the time. I always said I’d never marry a woman that didn’t amuse me, and I’ve kept my word. It isn’t so much what she says, don’t you know, as the way she says it. Dear little girl!”

On this subject they could agree, and Patience kept him to it as long as possible.

After dinner Burr went with Mr. Peele into the library. Patience, passing through the room, found them talking earnestly upon the great question of the day,—the financial future of the country. She paused a moment, then sat down. To her surprise she found that Burr was master of his subject, and possessed of a gift of words which fell little short of eloquence.

The argument lasted an hour, during which Patience sat with her elbows on the table, her chin on her folded hands, her eager eyes glancing from one to the other. Occasionally she smiled responsively as Burr made some felicitous phrase. When the discussion was over, Mr. Peele left the room. Burr arose at once and seated himself beside her.

“I never talked so well,” he said. “You inspired me;” and he took her hand in the matter-of-fact manner she knew so well.

“You talked quite as well before you saw me—”

“I knew you were there—”

“Kindly let me have my hand. I have only two—”

“Nonsense! Let me hold your hand. I want to! I am going to—Why are you—”

“Haven’t you Hal’s hand?”

“Oh, my God! You don’t expect me to go through life holding one woman’s hand? Hal is the most fascinating woman in the world, and I love her—but I want you to let me love you, too.”

“It is quite immaterial to me whether you love me or not; and, I think, if you want plain English, that you are a scoundrel.”

“Oh, come, come. You—_you_—must know more of the world than to talk like that. Why am I a scoundrel?” He looked much amused.

“You are engaged to one woman and are making love to another.”

“Well, what of that so long as she doesn’t know it? I shall be the most uxorious and indulgent of husbands—but faithful—that is not to be expected.”

“You must have great confidence in me. Suppose I describe this scene and conversation to Hal?”

“You will not,—not out of regard for me, but because you love Hal—dear little girl! And you are one of the few women devoid of the cat instincts. That long-legged girl, now, has a whole tiger inside of her, but you have only the faults of the big woman. I hope you have their weaknesses.”

“Well, you shall never know if I have. Please let go my hand.”

He flung it from him. “Oh, well,” he said, haughtily, “I hoped we should be friends, but if you will have it otherwise, so be it;” and he stalked out, and devoted himself to Hal for the rest of the evening.

XI

“Funny world,” thought Patience. She shrugged her beautiful young shoulders cynically, and went forth to do her duty by the guests. As she passed out of the front door to join some one of the scattered groups on the lawns, she heard a voice which made her pause and tap her forehead with her finger. It was a rich deep voice, with a vibration in it, and a light suggestion of brogue. She turned to the drawing-room, whence it came. A man in riding clothes was talking to Mrs. Peele, who was listening with a bend of the head that meant much to Patience’s trained eye. The man had an athletic nervous figure, suggestive of great virility and suppressed force, although it was carried with a fine repose. The thick black hair on his large finely shaped head glinted here and there with silver. His profile was aquiline, delicately cut and very strong, his mouth, under the slight moustache, neither full nor thin, and both mobile and firm, the lips beautifully cut. The eyes, deeply set, were not large, and were of an indefinite blue grey, but piercing, restless, kind, and humourous. There were lines about them, and a deep line on one side of his mouth. His lean face had a touch of red on its olive. He might have been anywhere between thirty-five and forty.

Patience recognised him and trembled a little, but with excitement, not passion. She had understood herself for once when she had said that in her present conditions she was incapable of love. Beverly Peele would have to go down among the memories before his wife could shake her spirit free, and turn with swept brain and clear eyes to even a conception of the love whose possibilities dwelt within her.

But she was fully alive to the picturesqueness of meeting this man once more, and suddenly became possessed of the spirit of adventure. There must be some sort of sequel to that old romance.

She withdrew to the shadow of a tree, where she could watch the drawing-room through the window. Burr entered, slapped the visitor on the back, and bore him away to the dining-room, presumably to have a drink. When they returned, Mr. Peele was in the room. He shook hands with the stranger more heartily than was his wont. In a few moments he crossed over to the library, and Patience, seeing that her early hero would be held in conversation for some time to come, followed her father-in-law and asked casually who the visitor was.

“Oh, that’s Bourke, Garan Bourke, the legal idol,” sarcastically, “of Westchester County. In truth he’s a brilliant lawyer enough, and one of the rising men at the New York bar, although he will go off his head occasionally and take criminal cases. I don’t forgive him that, if he _is_ always successful. However, we all have our little fads. I suppose he can’t resist showing his power over a jury. I heard an enthusiastic youngster assert the other day that Bourke whips up a jury’s grey matter into one large palpitating batter, then moulds it with the tips of his fingers while the jury sits with mouth open and spinal marrow paralysed. Personally, I like him well enough, and rather hoped he and Hal would fancy each other. But he doesn’t seem to be a marrying man. You’d better go over and meet him. He’ll just suit you.”

Patience returned to her post. Burr had disappeared, Bourke was talking to half a dozen women. In a few moments he rose to go. Patience went hastily across the lawns to the narrow avenue of elms by the driveway. No two were billing and cooing in its shadows, and Beverly was in bed with a nervous headache.

The moon was large and very brilliant. One could have read a newspaper as facilely as by the light of an electric pear. As Bourke rode to the main avenue a woman came toward him. He had time to think her very beautiful and of exceeding grace before she surprised him by laying her hand on his horse’s neck.

“Well?” she said, looking up and smiling as he reined in.

“Well?” he stammered, lifting his hat.

“I am too heavy to ride before you now.”

He stared at her perplexedly, but made no reply.

“Still if I were up a tree—literally, you know—and a band of terrible demons were shouting at a man beside a corpse—”

“What?” he said. “Not you?—not you? That homely fascinating little girl—no, it cannot be possible—”

“Oh, yes,” lifting her chin, coquettishly. “I have improved, and grown, you see. I was more than delighted when I saw you through the window. It was rather absurd, but I disliked the idea of going in to meet you conventionally—”

He laid his hand strongly on hers, and she treated him with a passivity denied to Latimer Burr.

“I am going to tie up my horse and talk to you a while, may I?” America and the law had not crowded all the romance out of his Irish brain, and he was keenly alive to the adventure. He had forgotten her name long since, and it did not occur to him that this lovely impulsive girl was the property of another man; but although he had lived too long, nor yet long enough, to lose his heart to the first flash of magnetism from a pretty woman, yet his blood was thrilled by the commingling of spirituality and deviltry in the face of this high-bred girl who cared to give the flavour of romance to their acquaintance. He saw that she was clever, and he had no intention of making a fool of himself; but he was quite willing to follow whither she cared to lead. And it was night and the moon was high; the leaves sang in a crystal sea; a creek murmured somewhere; the frogs chanted their monotonous recitative to the hushed melodies and discords of the night world; the deep throbbing of steamboats came from the river.

He tied his horse to a tree, and they entered the avenue.

“You told me that it was a small world, and that we should probably meet again,” she said; “and I never doubted that we should.”

“Oh, I never did either,” he exclaimed. He was racking his brains to recall the conversation which had passed between them a half dozen years ago, and for the life of him could not remember a word; but he was a man of resource.

“I am glad that it is at night,” he continued, “even if the scene is not so charming as Carmel Valley from that old tower. How beautiful the ocean looked from there, and what a jolly ride we had in the pine woods!”

She understood perfectly, and grinned in the dark.

“Ah! I remember I gave you some advice,” he exclaimed with suspicious abruptness. “I thought afterward that it was great presumption on my part.”

“I wonder if you had an ideal of your own in mind when you spoke?”

“An ideal?” He cursed his memory and floundered hopelessly. Even his Irish wit for once deserted him.

“Oh, I hoped you had not forgotten it. Why, I have made a little ‘Night Thoughts’ of what you said, and it has been one of the strongest forces in my development. Shall I repeat it to you?”

“Oh, please.” He was blushing with pleasure, but sore perplexed.

And she repeated his comments and advice, word for word.

“Is it possible that you remember all that? I am deeply flattered.” And he was, in fact.

“What more natural than that I should remember? I was a lonely little waif, full of dreams and vague ideals, and with much that was terrible in my actual life. I had never talked with a young man before—a man of seventy was my only experience of your sex, barring boys, that don’t count. And you swooped down into my life in the most picturesque manner possible, and talked as no one in my little world was capable of talking. So, you see, it is not so remarkable that I retain a vivid impression of you and your words. I was frightfully in love with you.”

“Oh—were you? Were you?” He was very much at sea. It was true that she had paid him the most subtle tribute one mind can pay to another, but her very audacity would go to prove that she was a brilliant coquette. He had a keen sense of the ridiculous, and he was still a little afraid of her. He took refuge on the broad impersonal shore of flirtation, where the boat is ever dancing on the waves.

“If you felt obliged to use the past tense you might have left that last unsaid.”

“Oh, there are a thousand years between fifteen and twenty-one. I am quite another person, as you see.”

“You are merely an extraordinary child developed; and you have carried your memory along with you.”

“Oh, yes, the memory is there, and the tablets are pretty full; but never mind me. I want to know if your ideals are as strong now as I am sure they were then—if any one in this world manages to hold onto his ideals when circumstances don’t happen to coddle them.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I’m afraid I haven’t thought much about them since that night. I doubt if I’d given too much thought to them before. Deep in every man’s brain is an ideal of some sort, I imagine, but it is seldom he sits down and analyses it out. He knows when he’s missed it and locked the gates behind him, and perhaps, occasionally, he knows when he’s found it—or something approximating it. We are all the victims of that terrible thing called Imagination, which, I sometimes think, is the sudden incursion of a satirical Deity. I have not married—why, I can hardly say. Perhaps because there has been some vague idea that if I waited long enough I might meet the one woman; but partly, also, because I have had no very great desire to marry. I keep bachelor’s hall over on the Sound, and the life is very jolly and free of small domestic details. There are so many women that give you almost everything you want—or at least four or five will make up a very good whole—that I have never yet faced the tremendous proposition of going through life expecting one woman to give me everything my nature and mind demand. But there are such women, I imagine,” he added abruptly, trying to see her face in one of the occasional splashes of moonlight.

“A very clever woman—Mrs. Lafarge; perhaps you know her—said to me the other day, that many men and women of strong affinity took a good deal of spirituality with them into marriage, but soon forgot all about it—matrimony is so full of reiterant details, and everything becomes so matter of course. Do you think that is true?”