The Cords of Vanity Part 10

she pleaded, with wide eyes; "oh, you don't know how lonely I am. And when you came to me that first night, you--why, you spoke to me as the men I once knew used to speak. There was respect in your voice, and I wanted that so; I hadn't had a man speak to me like that for years, you know, Bobbie. And, boy dear, I was so lonely in my squalid world,--and it seemed as if the world I used to know was calling me-- your world, Bobbie--the world I am shut out from."

"Yes," I said; "I think I understand."

"And I thought for a week--just to peep into it, to be a lady again for an hour or two--why, it didn't seem wicked, then, and I wanted it so much! I--I knew I could trust you, because you were only a boy. And I was hungry--_so_ hungry for a little respect, a little courtesy, such as men don't accord strolling actresses. So I didn't tell you till the very last I was married. I lied to you. Oh, but you don't understand, this stupid, honest boy doesn't understand anything except that I have lied to him!"

"Signorina," I said, again, and I smiled, resolutely, "I think I understand." I took both her hands in mine, and laughed a little.

"But, oh, my dear, my dear," I said, "you should have told me that you loved another man; for you have let me love you for a week, and now I think that I must love you till I die."

"Love him!" she echoed. "Oh, boy dear, boy dear, what a Galahad it is!

I don't think Ned ever cared for anything but Father's money; and I-- why, you have seen him. How _could_ I love him?" she asked, as simply as a child.

I bowed my head. "And yet--" said I. Then I laughed again, somewhat bitterly. "Don't let's tell stories, Mrs. Lethbury," I said; "it is kindly meant, I know, but I remember you now. I even danced with you once, some seven years ago,--yes, at the Green Chalybeate. I remember the night, for a variety of reasons. You are Alfred Van Orden's daughter; your father is a wealthy man, a very wealthy man; and yet, when your--your husband disappeared you followed him--to become a strolling actress. Ah, no, a woman doesn't sacrifice everything for a man in the way you have done, unless she loves him."

I caught my breath. Some unknown 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 a.s.sented, 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 b.u.t.ter 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, s.h.i.+ny b.u.t.tons 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-fas.h.i.+oned, 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d."

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 impa.s.sable 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 compa.s.sionate.

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 pa.s.s 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 Ans.p.a.ch, 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--"

"At twenty-one! Well, certainly, at that age one loves to think of life as being implacable. But you will soon discover that she is merely inconsequential, and that none of her antics are of lasting importance; and you will learn to smile a deal more often than you weep or laugh."

Then we talked of other matters. It was presently settled that Charteris was to take me abroad with him that summer; and with the thorough approval of my mother.

"Mr. Charteris will be of incalculable benefit to you," she told me, "in introducing you to the very best people, all of whom he knows, of course, and besides you are getting to look older than I, and it is unpleasant to have to be always explaining you are only my stepson, particularly as your father never married anybody but me, though, heaven knows, I wish he had. Of course you will be just as wild as your father and your Uncle George. I suppose that is to be expected, and I daresay it will break my heart, but all I ask of you is please to keep out of the newspapers, except of course the social items. And if you _must_ a.s.sociate with abandoned women, please for my sake, Robert, don't have anything to do with those who can prove that they are only misunderstood, because they are the most dangerous kind."

I kissed her. "Dear little mother, I honestly believe that when you get to heaven you will refuse to speak to Mary Magdalen."

"Robert, let us remember the Bible says, 'in my Father's house are many mansions,' and of course n.o.body would think of putting me in the same mansion with her."

It was well-nigh the last conversation I was to hold with my mother; and I was to remember it with an odd tenderness....