The Letter of the Contract Part 3

"Oh, she's gone--if that's the only reason."

Turning, Edith saw the woman with the rose-colored parasol rapidly descending the path by which she had come.

[Ill.u.s.tration: He turned from the girl to his wife. "I'm willing to explain anything you like--as far as I can."]

"I'd still rather stay out here," she said. "If I were to go in, I think it would--"

"Yes? What?"

"I think it would kill me."

"Oh, come, Edith. Let's face the thing calmly. Don't let us become hysterical."

"_Am_ I hysterical, Chip?"

"In your own way, yes. Where another woman would make a fuss, you're unnaturally frozen; but it comes to the same thing. I know that your heart--"

"Is breaking. Oh, I don't deny that. But I'd rather it broke here than indoors. I don't know why, but I can stand it here, with people going by; whereas in there--"

"Oh, cut it, Edith, for G.o.d's sake! Can't you see that my heart's breaking, too?"

She looked him in the face, shaking her head sadly. "No, Chip, I can't see that. If there had been any danger of it you wouldn't have--"

"But I couldn't help it. That's what you don't seem to understand."

"No; I'm afraid I don't."

"Would you _try_ to understand--if I were to tell you?"

"I think I know already most of what you'd have to say. She's a woman whom you knew long before you knew me--and from whom you've never been able--"

"She was the daughter of a Swedish Lutheran pastor--dead now--established in New Jersey. In some way she drifted to the stage.

Her name was Margarethe Kastenskjold. When she went on the stage she made it Maggie Clare. She had about as much talent for the theater as a paper doll. When I first knew her she was still getting odd jobs in third and fourth rate companies. Since then she hasn't played at all."

"I understand. There's been no need of it. She's quite well dressed."

"Let me go on, will you, Edith? I was about two or three and twenty then. She may have been a year or two older. She was living at that time with Billy c.u.mmings. And somehow it happened--after Billy died--and she was stranded--"

She made an appealing gesture. "_Please!_ I know how those things come about--or I can easily imagine. In your case--I'd--I'd rather not try."

She got the words out somehow without breaking down.

"All the same, Edith," he went on, "you'll _have_ to try--if you're going to do me anything like justice. If she hadn't been a refined, educated sort of girl, entirely at sea in her surroundings, and stranded--stranded for money, mind you, next door to going to starve--and no chance of getting a job, because she couldn't act a little bit--if it hadn't been for all that--"

"Oh, I know how you'd be generous!"

"Yes; but you don't know how I came to be a fool."

"Is there any reason why I _should_ know--now that the fact is there?"

He looked at her steadily. "Edith! What are you made of?"

She returned his look. "I think--of stone. Up till to-day I've been a woman of flesh and blood; but I'm not sure that I am any longer. You can't kill the heart in a woman's body--and still expect her to _feel_."

"But, Edith--Edith darling--there's no reason why I _should_ have killed the heart in your body when I never dreamed of doing you a wrong--that is, an intentional wrong," he corrected.

"You knew you were doing _some_ woman a wrong--some future woman, the woman you'd marry--as far back as when you took up what Billy c.u.mmings dropped from his dead hands--"

"Oh, that! That, dear, is nothing but the talk of feminist meetings. Men are men, and women are women. You can't make one law for them both.

Besides, it's too big a subject to go into now."

"I'm not trying to. I wasn't thinking of men in general; I was thinking only of you."

"But, good Lord, Edith, you don't think I've been better than any one else, do you?"

Her forlorn smile made his heart ache. "I _did_ think so. I dare say it was a mistake."

"It _was_ a mistake. If you hadn't made it--"

"But it was at least a mistake one can understand. I could hardly be expected to take it for granted--whatever men may be, or may have the right to be--that the man who asked me to marry him--and who made me love him as I think few men have been loved by women--I could hardly take it for granted that he was already keeping--and had been keeping for years--and would keep for years to come--another--"

He moved impatiently. "But, I tell you, I couldn't get rid of her. I couldn't shake her off--or pay her off--or do any of the usual things.

It was agreed between us before I married you--_long_ before I married you--that everything was at an end. But, poor soul, she doesn't know what an agreement is. There's something lacking in her. She's always been like a child, and of late years she's been more so. If you knew her as I do you'd be sorry for her."

"Oh, I _am_ sorry for her. Her whole mind is ravaged by suffering."

"I know it's my fault; but it isn't wholly or even chiefly my fault. A woman like that has no right to suffer. She lost the privilege of suffering when she became what she is. At any rate, she has no right to haunt like a shadow the man who's befriended her--"

"But, I presume, she's befriended _him_. And--and continues to befriend him--since that's the word."

He avoided her eyes, looking up the street and whistling tunelessly beneath his breath.

"I said--_continues_ to befriend him," she repeated.

The tuneless whistling went on. She allowed him time to get the full effect of her meaning. As far as she could see her way, her line of action depended on his response. When he dodged the question she knew what she would have to do.

"Look here, Edith," he said, at last, "the long and short of it is this.

She's on my hands--and I can't abandon her. I must see that she's provided for, at the very least. Hang it all, she's--she's attached to me; has been attached to me for more than ten years. I can't ignore that; now, can I? And she's helpless. How can I desert her? I can't do it, any more than I could desert a poor old faithful dog--or a baby. Can I, now?"

"No; I dare say not."

"But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll undertake never to see her again--of my own free will. I'll give you my word of honor--"

She shook her head. "Oh, I'm not asking for that."

"Then what do you ask for? Just tell me, and whatever it is--"

"It's that, since you can't abandon her, you abandon me."

"_What_?"