Murder in Any Degree Part 24

"Now she will understand," he thought; "the next time she will not wait."

But each time, though he martyrized his soul in patience, he was forced to bring up the question that would not let him rest.

He could not understand why she did not save him this useless agony.

Sometimes when he wanted to find an excuse he said to himself it was because she felt humiliated that he should still doubt. At other times, he stumbled on explanations that terrified him. Then he remembered with bitterness the promise that he had exacted from her, a promise that, instead of bringing him peace, had left only an endless torment, and forgetting all his protestations he would cry to himself, in a cold perspiration:

"Ah, if she is really lying, how can I ever be sure?"

III

In the eighth year, Madeleine Conti retired from the stage and announced her marriage. After five years of complete happiness she was taken suddenly ill, as the result of exposure to a drenching storm. One afternoon, as he waited by her bedside, talking in broken tones of all that they had been to each other, he said to her in a voice that he tried nervously to school to quietness:

"Madeleine, you know that our life together has been without the slightest shadow from the first. You know we have proved to each other how immense our love has been. In all these years I have grown in maturity and understanding. I regret only one thing, and I have regretted it bitterly, every day--that I once asked you, if--if ever for a moment another man came into your life to hide it from me, to tell me a lie. It was a great mistake. I have never ceased to regret it. Our love has been so above all worldly things that there ought not to be the slightest concealment between us. I release you from that promise. Tell me now the truth. It will mean nothing to me. During the eight years when we were separated there were--there must have been times, times of loneliness, of weakness, when other men came into your life. Weren't there?"

She turned and looked at him steadily, her large eyes seeming larger and more brilliant from the heightened fever of her cheeks. Then she made a little negative sign of her head, still looking at him.

"No, never."

"You don't understand, Madeleine," he said, dissatisfied, "or you are still thinking of what I said to you there in Etretat. That was thirteen years ago. Then I had just begun to love you, I feared for the future, for everything. Now I have tested you, and I have never had a doubt. I know the difference between the flesh and the spirit. I know your two selves; I know how impossible it would have been otherwise. Now you can tell me."

"There is nothing--to tell," she said slowly.

"I expected that you would have other men who loved you about you," he said, feverishly. "I knew it would be so. I swear to you I expected it.

I know why you continue to deny it. It's for my sake, isn't it? I love you for it. But, believe me, in such a moment there ought nothing to stand between us. Madeleine, Madeleine, I beg you, tell me the truth."

She continued to gaze at him fixedly, without turning away her great eyes, as forgetting himself, he rushed on:

"Yes, let me know the truth--that will be nothing now. Besides, I have guessed it. Only I must know one way or the other. All these years I have lived in doubt. You see what it means to me. You must understand what is due me after all our life together. Madeleine, did you lie to me?"

"No."

"Listen," he said, desperately. "You never asked me the same question--why, I never understood--but if you had questioned me I could not have answered truthfully what you did. There, you see, there is no longer the slightest reason why you should not speak the truth."

She half closed her eyes--wearily.

"I have told--the truth."

"Ah, I can't believe it," he cried, carried away. "Oh, cursed day when I told you what I did. It's that which tortures me. You adore me--you don't wish to hurt me, to leave a wound behind, but I swear to you if you told me the truth I should feel a great weight taken from my heart, a weight that has been here all these years. I should know that every corner of your soul had been shown to me, nothing withheld. I should know absolutely, Madeleine, believe me, when I tell you this, when I tell you I must know. Every day of my life I have paid the penalty, I have suffered the doubts of the d.a.m.ned, I have never known an hour's peace! I beg you, I implore you, only let me know the truth; the truth--I must know the truth!"

He stopped suddenly, trembling all over, and held out his hands to her, his face lashed with suffering.

"I have not lied," she said slowly, after a long study. She raised her eyes, feebly made the sign of the cross, and whispered, "I swear it."

Then he no longer held in his tears. He dropped his head, and his body shook with sobs, while from time to time he repeated, "Thank G.o.d, thank G.o.d."

IV

The next day Madeleine Conti had a sudden turn for the worse, which surprised the attendants. Doctor Kimball, the American, doctor, and Pere Francois, who had administered the last rites, were walking together in the little formal garden, where the sun flung short, brilliant shadows of scattered foliage about them.

"She was an extraordinary artist and her life was more extraordinary,"

said Dr. Kimball. "I heard her debut at the Opera Comique. For ten years her name was the gossip of all Europe. Then all at once she meets a man whom no one knows, falls in love, and is transformed. These women are really extraordinary examples of hysteria. Each time I know one it makes me understand the scientific phenomenon of Mary Magdalene. It is really a case of nerve reaction. The moral fever that is the fiercest burns itself out the quickest and seems to leave no trace behind. In this case love came also as a religious conversion. I should say the phenomena were identical."

"She was happy," said the cure, turning to go.

"Yes, it was a great romance."

"A rare one. She adored him. Love is a tide that cleanses all."

"Yet she was of the stage up to the last. You know she would not have her husband in the room at the end."

"She had a great heart," said the cure quietly. "She wished to spare him that suffering."

"She had an extraordinary will," said the doctor, glancing at him quickly. He added, tentatively: "She asked two questions that were curious enough."

"Indeed," said the cure, lingering a moment with his hand on the gate.

"She wanted to know whether persons in a delirium talked of the past and if after death the face returned to its calm."

"What did you say to her about the effects of delirium?" said the cure with his blank face.

"That it was a point difficult to decide," said the doctor slowly.

"Undoubtedly, in a delirium, everything is mixed, the real and the imagined, the memory and the fantasy, actual experience and the inner dream-life of the mind which is so difficult to cla.s.sify. It was after that, that she made her husband promise to see her only when she was conscious and to remain away at the last."

"It is easily understood," said the cure quietly, without change of expression on his face that held the secrets of a thousand confessionals. "As you say, for ten years she had lived a different life. She was afraid that in her delirium some reference to that time might wound unnecessarily the man who had made over her life. She had a great courage. Peace be with her soul."

"Still,"--Doctor Kimball hesitated, as though considering the phrasing of a delicate question; but Father Francois, making a little amical sign of adieu, pa.s.sed out of the garden, and for a moment his blank face was illumined by one of those rare smiles, such as one sees on the faces of holy men; smiles that seem in perfect faith to look upon the mysteries of the world to come.

EVEN THREES

I

Ever since the historic day when a visiting clergyman accomplished the feat of pulling a ball from the tenth tee at an angle of two hundred and twenty-five degrees into the river that is the rightful receptacle for the eighth tee, the Stockbridge golf-course has had seventeen out of the eighteen holes that are punctuated with possible water hazards. The charming course itself lies in the flat of the sunken meadows which the Housatonic, in the few thousand years which are necessary for the proper preparation of a golf-course, has obligingly eaten out of the high, accompanying bluffs. The river, which goes wriggling on its way as though convulsed with merriment, is garnished with luxurious elms and willows, which occasionally deflect to the difficult putting-greens the random slices of certain notorious amateurs.

From the spectacular bluffs of the educated village of Stockbridge nothing can be imagined more charming than the panorama that the course presents on a busy day. Across the soft, green stretches, diminutive caddies may be seen scampering with long buckling-nets, while from the river-banks numerous recklessly exposed legs wave in the air as the more socially presentable portions hang frantically over the swirling current. Occasionally an enthusiastic golfer, driving from the eighth or ninth tees, may be seen to start immediately in headlong pursuit of a diverted ball, the swing of the club and the intuitive leap of the legs forward forming so continuous a movement that the main purpose of the game often becomes obscured to the mere spectator. Nearer, in the numerous languid swales that nature has generously provided to protect the interests of the manufacturers, or in the rippling patches of unmown gra.s.s, that in the later hours will be populated by enthusiastic caddies, desperate groups linger in botanizing att.i.tudes.