The Essential James Branch Cabell Collection. James Branch Cabell
force kept tugging down the corners of my mouth, in a manner that hampered speech; moreover, nothing seemed worth talking about. I had lost her. That was the one thing which mattered.
"Why, of course, I went with him," she assented, a shade surprised; "he was my husband, you know. But as for loving,--no, I don't think Ned ever really loved me," she reflected, with puckering brows. "He took that money for--for another woman, if you remember. But he is fond of me, and--and he _needs_ me."
I did not say anything; and after a little she went on, with a quick lift of speech.
"Oh, what a queer life we have led since then! You can't imagine it, my dear. He has been a tavern-keeper, a drummer,--everything! Why, last summer we sold rugs and Turkish things in Atlantic City! But he is always afraid of meeting someone who knows him, and--and he drinks too much. So we have not got on in the world, Ned and I; and now, after three years, I'm the leading lady of the Imperial Dramatic Company, and he is the manager. I forgot, though,--he is advance-agent this week, for he didn't dare stay in Fairhaven, lest some of the men at Mr. Charteris's should recognize him, you know. He came back only this evening--"
She paused for a moment; a wistful quaver crept into her speech. "Oh, it's queer, it's queer, Bobbie! Sometimes--sometimes when I have time to think, say on long Sunday afternoons, I remember my old life, every bit of it,--oh, I do remember such strange little details! I remember the designs on the bread and butter plates, and all the silver things on my desk, and the plank by my door that always creaked and somehow never got fixed, and the big, shiny buttons on the coachman's coat,-- just trifles like that. And--and they hurt, they hurt, Bobbie, those little, unimportant things! They--grip my throat."
She laughed, not very mirthfully. "Then I am like the old lady in the nursery rhyme, and say, Surely, this can't be I. But it is I, boy dear,--a strolling actress, a barn-stormer! Isn't it queer, Bobbie? But, oh, you don't know half--"
I was remembering many things. I remembered Lethbury, a gross man, superfluously genial, whom I had never liked, although I recalled my admiration of his whiskers. I recollected young Amelia Van Orden, not come to her full beauty then, the bud of girlhood scarce slipped; and I remembered very vividly the final crash, the nine days' talk over Lethbury's flight in the face of certain conviction,--by his father-in- law's advice (as some said) who had furnished and forfeited heavy bail for the absconder. Oh, the brave woman who had followed! Oh, the brave, foolish woman! And, for the action's recompense, he was content to exhibit her to yokels, to make of her beauty an article of traffic. Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven. And then hope blazed.
"Your husband," I said, quickly, "he does not love you? He--he is not faithful to you?"
"No," she answered; "there is a Miss Fortescue--she plays second parts--"
"Ah, my dear, my dear!" I cried, with a shaking voice; "come away, Signorina,--come away with me! He _doesn't_ need you,--and, oh, my dear, I need you so! You can get your divorce and marry me. Ah, Signorina, come away,--come away from this squalid life that is killing you, to the world you are meant for, to the life you hunger for! Come back to the clean, lighthearted world you love, the world that is waiting to pet and caress you just as it used to do,--our world, Signorina! You don't belong here with--with the Fortescues. You belong to us."
I sprang to my feet. "Come now!" said I. "There's Anne Charteris; she is a good woman, if ever lived one. She used to know you, too, didn't she? Well, then, come with me to her, dearest--and tonight! You shall see your father tomorrow. Your father--why, think how that old man loves you, how he has longed for you, his only daughter, all these years. And I?" I spread out my hands, in the tiniest, impotent gesture. "I love you," I said, simply. "I cannot do without you, heart's dearest."
Impulsively, she rested both hands upon my breast; then bowed her head a little. The nearness of her seemed to shake in my blood, to catch at my throat, and my hands, lifted for a moment, trembled with desire of her.
"You don't understand," she said. "I am a Catholic--my mother was one, you know. There is no divorce for us. And--and besides, I'm not modern. I am very old-fashioned, I suppose, in my ideas. Do you know," she asked, with a smile upon the face which lifted confidingly toward me, "I--I _really_ believe the world was made in six days; and that the whale swallowed Jonah, and that there is a real purgatory and a hell of fire and brimstone. You don't, do you, Bobbie? But I do,--and I promised to stay with him till death parted us, you know, and I must do it. I am all he has. He would get even worse without me. I--oh, boy dear, boy dear, I love you so!" And her voice broke, in a great, choking sob.
"A promise--a promise made by an ungrown girl to a brute--a thief--!"
"No, dear," she answered, quietly; "a promise made to God."
And looking into her face, I saw love there, and anguish, and determination. It seemed monstrous, but of a sudden I knew with a dull surety; she loved me, but she thought she had no right to love me; she would not go with me. She would go with that drunken, brutish thief.
And I suddenly recalled certain clever women--Alicia Wade, Pauline Ashmeade, Cynthia Chaytor--the women of that world wherein I was novitiate; beyond question, they would raise delicately penciled eyebrows to proclaim this woman a fool--and to wonder.
They would be right, I thought. She was only a splendid, tender-hearted, bright-eyed fool, the woman that I loved. My heart sickened as her folly rose between us, an impassable barrier. I hated it; and I revered it.
Thus we two stood silent for a time. The wind murmured above in the maples, lazily, ominously. Then the gate clicked, with a vicious snap that pierced the silence like the report of a distant rifle. "That is probably Ned," she said wearily. "I had forgotten they close the barrooms earlier on Saturday nights. So good-bye, Bobbie. You--you may kiss me, if you like."
So for a moment our lips met. Afterward I caught her hands in mine, and gripped them close to my breast, looking down into her eyes. They glinted in the moonlight, deep pools of sorrow, and tender--oh, unutterably tender and compassionate.
But I found no hope there. I lifted her hand to my lips, and left her alone in the garden.
3
Lethbury was fumbling at the gate.
"Such nuishance," he complained, "havin' gate won't unlock. Latch mus' got los'--po' li'l latch," murmured Mr. Lethbury, plaintively--"all 'lone in cruel worl'!"
I opened the gate for him, and stood aside to let him pass toward his wife.
9.
_He Puts His Tongue in His Cheek_
It was not long before John Charteris knew of the entire affair, for in those days I had few concealments from him: and the little wizened man brooded awhile over my misery, with an odd wistfulness.
"I remember Amelia Van Orden perfectly," he said--"now. I ought to have recognized her. Only, she was never, in her best days, the paragon you depict. She sang, I recollect; people made quite a to-do over her voice. But she was very, very stupid, and used to make loud shrieking noises when she was amused, and was generally reputed to be 'fast.' I never investigated. Even so, there was not any real doubt as to her affair, in any event, with Anton von Anspach, after that night the sleigh broke down--"
"Oh, spare me all those ancient Lichfield scandals! She is an angel, John, if there was ever one."
"In your eyes, doubtless! So your heart is broken. Yet do you not realize that not a month ago you were heartbroken over Stella Musgrave? Child, I repeat, I envy you this perpetual unhappiness, for I have lost, as you will presently lose, the capacity of being quite miserable."
"But, John, it seems as if there were nothing left to live for, now--"