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Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
“Suspect? I suspect nothing!”
The girl stood looking at her fixedly under dark menacing brows. “I
do, then! I wouldn’t allow myself to before; but all the while I knew
there was another woman.” Between the sentences she drew short
panting breaths, as though with every word speech grew more
difficult. “Mother,” she broke out, “the day I went to Baltimore to see
him the maid who opened the door didn’t want to let me in because
there’d been a woman there two days before who’d made a scene. A
scene—that’s what she said! Isn’t it horrible?” She burst into tears.
Kate Clephane sat stupefied. She could not yet grasp the
significance of the words her daughter was pouring out, and
repeated dully: “You went to Baltimore?” How secret Anne must be,
she thought, not only to have concealed her visit at the time, but
even to have refrained from any allusion to it during their stormy talk
at Rio! How secret, since, even in moments of seeming self-
abandonment, she could refrain from revealing whatever she chose
to keep to herself! More acutely than ever, the mother had the sense
of being at arm’s length from her child.
“Yes, I went to Baltimore,” said Anne, speaking now in a controlled
incisive voice. “I didn’t tell you at the time because you were not well.
It was just after you came back from Meridia, and had that nervous
break-down—you remember? I didn’t want to bother you about my
own affairs. But as soon as I got his letter saying the engagement
was off I jumped into the first train, and went straight to Baltimore to
see him.”
“And you did?” It slipped from Kate irresistibly.
“No. He was away; he’d left. But I didn’t believe it at the time; I
thought the maid-servant had had orders not to let me in....” She
paused. “Mother, it was too horrible; she took me for the woman who
had made the scene. She said I looked just like her.”
Kate gasped: “The negress said so?”
Her question seemed to drop into the silence like a shout; it was as if
she had let fall a platter of brass on a marble floor.
“The negress?” Anne echoed.
Kate Clephane sank down into the depths of her chair as if she had
been withered by a touch. She pressed her elbows against her side
to try to hide the trembling of her body.
“How did you know it was a negress, mother?”
Kate sat helpless, battling with confused possibilities of fear; and in
that moment Anne leapt on the truth.
“It was you, mother—you were the other woman? You went to see
him the day you said you’d been to Meridia?” The girl stood before
her now like a blanched Fury.
“I did go to Meridia!” Kate Clephane declared.
“You went to Baltimore too, then. You went to his house; you saw
him. You were the woman who made the scene.” Anne’s voice had
mounted to a cry; but suddenly she seemed to regain a sense of her
surroundings. At the very moment when Kate Clephane felt the flash
of the blade over her head it was arrested within a hair’s-breadth of
her neck. Anne’s voice sank to a whisper.
“Mother—you did that? It was really you—it was your doing? You’ve
always hated him, then? Hated him enough for that?”
Ah, that blessed word—hated! When the other had trembled in the
very air! The mother, bowed there, her shrunken body drawn in on
itself, felt a faint expanding of the heart.
“No, dear; no; not hate,” she stammered.
“But it was you?” She suddenly understood that, all the while, Anne
had not really believed it. But the moment for pretense was past.
“I did go to see him; yes.”
“To persuade him to break our engagement?”
“Anne—”
“Answer me, please.”
“To ask him—to try to make him see....”
The girl interrupted her with a laugh. “You made him break our
engagement—you did it. And all this time—all these dreadful months
—you let me think it was because he was tired of me!” She sprang to
her mother and caught her by the wrists. Her hot fingers seemed to
burn into Kate’s shivering flesh.
“Look at me, please, mother; no, straight in the eyes. I want to try to
find out which of us you hated most; which of us you most wanted to
see suffer.”
The mother disengaged herself and stood up. “As for suffering—if
you look at me, you’ll see I’ve had my share.”
The girl seemed not to hear. “But why—why—why?” she wailed.
A reaction of self-defence came over Kate Clephane. Anne’s white-
heat of ire seemed to turn her cold, and her self-possession
returned.
“What is it you want me to tell you? I did go to see Major Fenno—
yes. I wanted to speak to him privately; to ask him to reconsider his
decision. I didn’t believe he could make you happy. He came round
to my way of thinking. That’s all. Any mother would have done as
much. I had the right—”
“The right?” Anne shrilled. “What right? You gave up all your rights
over me when you left my father for another man!”
Mrs. Clephane rose with uncertain steps, and moved toward the
door of her bedroom. On the threshold she paused and turned
toward her daughter. Strength had come back to her with the thought
that after all the only thing that mattered was to prevent this
marriage. And that she might still do.
“The right of a friend, then, Anne. Won’t you even allow me that?
You’ve treated me as a friend since you asked me to come back.
You’ve trusted me, or seemed to. Trust me now. I did what I did
because I knew you ought not to marry Major Fenno. I’ve known him
for a great many years. I knew he couldn’t make you happy—make
any woman happy. Some men are not meant to marry; he’s one of
them. I know enough of his history to know that. And you see he
recognized that I was right—”
Anne was still staring at her with the same fixed implacable brows.
Then her face broke up into the furrows of young anguish, and she
became again a helpless grief-tossed girl, battling blindly with her
first sorrow. She flung up her arms, buried her head in them, and
sank down by the sofa. Kate watched her for a moment, hesitating;
then she stole up and laid an arm about the bowed neck. But Anne
shook her off and sprang up.
“No—no—no!” she cried. They stood facing each other, as on that
other cruel night.
“You don’t know me; you don’t understand me. What right have you
to interfere with my happiness? Won’t you please say nothing more
now? It was my own fault to imagine that we could ever live together
like mother and daughter. A relation like that can’t be improvised in a
day.” She flung a tragic look at her mother. “If you’ve suffered, I
suppose it was my fault for asking you to make the experiment.
Excuse me if I’ve said anything to hurt you. But you must leave me
to manage my life in my own way.” She turned toward the door.
“Goodnight—my child,” Kate whispered.
 XVII.
TWO days later Fred Landers returned.
Mrs. Clephane had sent a note begging him to call her up as soon as
he arrived. When his call came she asked if she might dine with him
that night, and he replied that she ought to have come without
asking. Anne, he supposed, would honour him too?
No, she answered; Anne, the day before, had gone down to the
Drovers’ on Long Island. She would probably be away for a few
days. And would Fred please ask no one else to dine? He assured
her that such an idea would never have occurred to him.
He received her in the comfortable shabby drawing-room which he
had never changed since his mother and an old-maid sister had
vanished from it years before. He indulged his own tastes in the
library upstairs, leaving this chintzy room, with its many armchairs,
the Steinway piano and the family Chippendale, much as Kate had
known it when old Mrs. Landers had given her a bridal dinner. The
memory of that dinner, and of Mrs. Landers, large, silvery,
demonstrative, flashed through Mrs. Clephane’s mind. She saw
herself in an elaborately looped gown, proudly followed by her
husband, and enclosed in her hostess’s rustling embrace, while her
present host, crimson with emotion and admiration, hung shyly
behind his mother; and the memory gave her a pang of self-pity.
In the middle of the room she paused and looked about her. “It feels
like home,” she said, without knowing what she was saying.
A flush almost as agitated as the one she remembered mounted to
Landers’s forehead. She saw his confusion and pleasure, and was
remotely touched by them.
“You see, I’m homeless,” she explained with a faint smile.
“Homeless?”
“Oh, I can’t remember when I was ever anything else. I’ve been a
wanderer for so many years.”
“But not any more,” he smiled.
The double mahogany doors were thrown open. Landers, with his
stiff little bow, offered her an arm, and they passed into a dusky
flock-papered dining-room which seemed to borrow most of its
lighting from the sturdy silver and monumental cut-glass of the
dinner-table. A bunch of violets, compact and massive, lay by her
plate. Everything about Fred Landers was old-fashioned, solid and
authentic. She sank into her chair with a sense of its being a place of
momentary refuge. She did not mean to speak till after dinner—then
she would tell him everything she thought. “How delicious they are!”
she murmured, smelling the violets.
In the library, after dinner, Landers settled her in his deepest
armchair, moved the lamp away, pressed a glass of old Chartreuse
on her, and said: “And now, what’s wrong?”
The suddenness and the perspicacity of the question took her by
surprise. She had imagined he would leave the preliminaries to her,
or at any rate beat about the subject in a clumsy effort to get at it.
But she perceived that, awkward and almost timorous as he
remained in smaller ways, the mere habit of life had given him a
certain self-assurance at important moments. It was she who now
felt a tremor of reluctance. How could she tell him—what could she
tell him?
“Well, you know, I really am homeless,” she began. “Or at least, in
remaining where I am I’m forfeiting my last shred of self-respect.
Anne has told me that her experiment has been a mistake.”
“What experiment?”
“Having me back.”
“Is that what she calls it—an experiment?”
Mrs. Clephane nodded.
Fred Landers stood leaning against the mantelpiece, an unlit cigar in
his hand. His face expressed perplexity and perturbation. “I don’t
understand. What has happened? She seemed to adore you.”
“Yes; as a visitor; a chaperon; a travelling companion.”
“Well—that’s not so bad to begin with.”
“No; but it has nothing on earth to do with the real relation between a
mother and daughter.”
“Oh, that—”
It was her turn to flush. “You agree with Anne, then, that I’ve forfeited
all right to claim it?”
He seemed embarrassed. “What do you mean by claiming it?”
She hesitated a moment; then she began. It was not the story she
had meant to tell; she had hardly opened her lips before she
understood that it would be as impossible to tell that to Fred Landers
as to Anne. For an instant, as he welcomed her to the familiar house,
so full of friendly memories, she had had the illusion of nearness to
him, the sense of a brotherly reassuring presence. But as she began
to speak of Chris every one else in her new life except her daughter
became remote and indistinct to her. She supposed it could not be
otherwise. She had chosen to cast her lot elsewhere, and now,
coming back after so many years, she found the sense of intimacy
and confidence irreparably destroyed. What did she really know of
the present Fred Landers, or he of her? All she found herself able to
say was that when she had heard that Anne meant to marry Chris
Fenno she had thought it her duty to try to prevent the marriage; and
that the girl had guessed her interference and could not forgive her.
She elaborated on this, lingering over the relatively insignificant
details of her successive talks with her daughter in the attempt to
delay the moment when Landers should begin to question her.
She saw that he was deeply disturbed, but perhaps not altogether
sorry. He had never liked Chris, she knew, and the news of the
engagement was clearly a shock to him. He said he had seen and
heard nothing of Fenno since Anne and her mother had left.
Landers, who could not recall that either Horace Maclew or Lilla had
ever mentioned him, had concluded that the young man was no
longer a member of their household, and probably not even in
Baltimore. If he were, Lilla would have been sure to keep her hold on
him; he was too useful a diner and dancer to be lost sight of—and
much more in Lilla’s line, one would have fancied, than in Anne’s.
Kate Clephane winced at the unconscious criticism. “He gave me his
word that he would go,” she said with a faint sigh of relief.
Fred Landers continued to lean meditatively against the chimney-
piece.
“You said nothing at all to Anne herself at the time?” he asked, after
another interval.
“No. Perhaps I was wrong; but I was afraid to. I felt I didn’t know her
well enough—yet.”
Instantly she saw how he would interpret her avowal, and her colour
rose again. She must have felt, then, that she knew Major Fenno
better; the inference was inevitable.
“You found it easier to speak to Fenno?”
She hesitated. “I cared so much less for what he felt.”
“Of course,” he sighed. “And you knew damaging things about him?
Evidently, since he broke the engagement when you told him to.”
Again she faltered. “I knew something of his past life—enough to be
sure he wasn’t the kind of husband for Anne. I made him understand
it. That’s all.”
“Ah. Well, I’m not surprised. I suspected he was trying for her, and I
own I hated the idea. But now I suppose there’s no help for it—”
“No help?” She looked up in dismay.
“Well—is there? To be so savage with you she must be pretty well
determined to have him back. How the devil are you going to stop
it?”
“I can’t. But you—oh, Fred, you must!”—Her eyes clung imploringly
to his troubled face.
“But I don’t know anything definite! If there is anything—anything one
can really take hold of—you’ll have to tell me. I’ll do all I can; but if I
interfere without good reason, I know it will only make Anne more
determined. Have you forgotten what the Clephanes are like?”
She had lowered her head again, and sat desolately staring at the
floor. With the little wood-fire playing on the hearth, and this honest
kindly man looking down at her, how safe and homelike the room
seemed! Yet her real self was not in it at all, but blown about on a
lonely wind of anguish, outside in the night. And so it would always
be, she supposed.
“Won’t you tell me exactly what there is against him?” she heard
Landers repeat.
The answer choked in her throat. Finally she brought out: “Oh, I don’t
know ... women ... the usual thing.... He’s light....”
“But is it all just hearsay? Or have you proof—proof of any one
particular rotten thing?”
“Isn’t his giving up and going away sufficient proof?”
“Not if he comes back now when she sends for him.”
The words shot through her like a stab. “Oh, but she mustn’t—she
can’t!”
“You’re fairly sure he will come if she does?”
Kate Clephane put up her hands and pressed them against her ears.
She could not bear to hear another question. What had been the use
of coming to Fred Landers? He had no help to give her, and his
insight had only served to crystallize her hazy terrors. She rose
slowly from her armchair and held out her hand with a struggling
smile.
“You’re right. I suppose there’s nothing more to do.”
“But you’re not going?”
“Yes; I’m tired. And I want to be by myself—to think. I must decide
about my own future.”
“Your own future? Oh, nonsense! Let all this blow over. Wait till Anne
comes back. The chief thing, of course, is that you should stay with
her, whatever happens.”
She put her hand in his. “Goodbye, Fred. And thank you.”
“I’ll do all I can, you know,” he said, as he followed her down the
stairs. “But you mustn’t desert Anne.”
The taxi he had called carried her back to her desolate house.
 XVIII.
HER place was beside Anne—that was all she had got out of Fred
Landers. And in that respect she was by no means convinced that
her instinct was not surer than his, that she was not right in agreeing
with her daughter that their experiment had been a failure.
Yet, even if it had, she could not leave Anne now; not till she had
made sure there was no further danger from Chris. Ah—if she were
once certain of that, it would perhaps be easiest and simplest to go!
But not till then.
She did not know when Anne was coming back; no word had come
from her. Mrs. Clephane had an idea that the house-keeper knew;
but she could not ask the house-keeper. So for another twenty-four
hours she remained on, with a curious sense of ghostly unconcern,
while she watched Aline unpack her trunks and “settle” her into her
rooms for the winter.
It was on the third day that Nollie Tresselton telephoned. She was in
town, and asked if she might see Mrs. Clephane at once. The very
sound of her voice brought reassurance; and Kate Clephane sat
counting the minutes till she appeared.
She had come up from the Drovers’, as Kate had guessed; and she
brought an embarrassed message of apology from Anne. “She
couldn’t write—she’s too upset. But she’s so sorry for what she said
... for the way she said it. You must try to forgive her....”
“Oh, forgive her—that’s nothing!” the mother cried, her eyes
searching the other’s face. But Nollie’s vivid features were obscured
by the embarrassment of the message she had brought. She looked
as if she were tangled in Anne’s confusion.
“That’s nothing,” Kate Clephane repeated. “I hurt her horribly too—I
had to. I couldn’t expect her to understand.”
Mrs. Tresselton looked relieved. “Ah, you do see that? I knew you
would! I told her so—” She hesitated, and then went on, with a slight
tremor in her voice: “Your taking it in that way will make it all so much
easier—”
But she stopped again, and Kate, with a sinking heart, stood up.
“Nollie; she wants me to go?”
“No, no! How could you imagine it? She wants you to look upon this
house as yours; she has always wanted it.”
“But she’s not coming back to it?”
The younger woman laid a pleading hand on Mrs. Clephane’s arm.
“Aunt Kate—you must be patient. She feels she can’t; not now, at
any rate.”
“Not now? Then it’s she who hasn’t forgiven?”
“She would, you know—oh, so gladly!—she’d never think again of
what’s happened. Only she fears—”
“Fears?”
“Well—that your feeling about Chris is still the same....”
Mrs. Clephane caught at the hand that lay on her arm. “Nollie! She
knows where he is? She’s seen him?”
“No; but she means to. He’s been very ill—he’s had a bad time since
the engagement was broken. And that makes her feel still more
strongly—” The younger woman broke off and looked at Mrs.
Clephane compassionately, as if trying to make her understand the
hopelessness of the struggle. “Aunt Kate, really ... what’s the use?”
“The use? Where is he, Nollie? Here—now—in New York?”
Mrs. Tresselton was silent; the pity in her gaze had turned to a
guarded coolness. Of course Nollie couldn’t understand—never
would! Of course they were all on Anne’s side. Kate Clephane stood
looking helplessly about her. The memory of old scenes under that
same roof—threats, discussions, dissimulations and inward revolts—
arose within her, and she felt on her shoulders the whole oppression
of the past.
“Don’t think,” Nollie continued, her expression softening, “that Anne
hasn’t tried to understand ... to make allowances. The boy you knew
must have been so different from the Major Fenno we all like and
respect—yes, respect. He’s ‘made good’, you see. It’s not only his
war record, but everything since. He’s worked so hard—done so well
at his various jobs—and Anne’s sure that if he had the chance he
would make himself a name in the literary world. All that naturally
makes it more difficult for her to understand your objection—or your
way of asserting it.”
Mrs. Clephane lifted imploring eyes to her face. “I don’t expect Anne
to understand; not yet. But you must try to, Nollie; you must help
me.”
“I want to, Aunt Kate.” The young woman stood before her,
affectionately perplexed. “If there’s anything ... anything really wrong
... you ought to tell me.”
“I do tell you,” Kate panted.
“Well—what is it?”
Silence fell—always the same silence. Kate glanced desperately
about the imprisoning room. Every panel and moulding of its walls,
every uncompromising angle or portly curve of its decorous furniture,
seemed equally leagued against her, forbidding her, defying her, to
speak.
“Ask Fred Landers,” she said, at bay.
“But I have; I saw him on my way here. And he says he doesn’t know
—that you wouldn’t explain.”
“Why should I have to explain? I’ve said Major Fenno ought not to
marry Anne. I’ve known him longer than any of you. Isn’t it likely that
I know him better?”
The words came from her precipitate and shrill; she felt she was
losing all control of her face and voice, and lifted her handkerchief to
her lips to hide their twitching.
“Aunt Kate—!” Nollie Tresselton gasped it out on a new note of
terror; then she too fell silent, slowly turning her eyes away.
In that instant Kate Clephane saw that she had guessed, or if not,
was at least on the point of guessing; and fresh alarm possessed the
mother. She tried to steady herself, to raise new defences against
this new danger. “Some men are not meant to marry: they’re sure to
make their wives unhappy. Isn’t that reason enough? It’s a question
of character. In those ways, I don’t believe character ever changes.
That’s all.”
“That’s all.” The word was said. She had been challenged again, and
had again shrunk away from the challenge.
Nollie Tresselton drew a deep breath of relief. “After knowing him so
well as a boy, you naturally don’t want to say anything more; but you
think they’re unsuited to each other.”
“Yes—that’s it. You do see?”
The younger woman considered; then she took Mrs. Clephane by
the hand. “I do see. And I’ll try to help—to persuade Anne to put off
deciding. Perhaps after she’s seen him it will be easier....”
Nollie was again silent, and Mrs. Clephane understood that,
whatever happened, the secret of Chris’s exact whereabouts was to
be kept from her. She thought: “Anne’s afraid to have me meet him
again,” and there was a sort of fierce satisfaction in the thought.
Nollie was gathering up her wrap and hand-bag. She had to get back
to Long Island, she said; Kate understood that she meant to return to
the Drovers’. As she reached the door a last impulse of avowal
seized the older woman. What if, by giving Nollie a hint of the truth,
she could make sure of her support and thus secure Anne’s safety?
But what argument against the marriage would be more efficacious
on Nollie’s lips than on her own? One only—the one that no one
must ever use. The terror lest Nollie, possessed of that truth, and
sickened by it, should after all reveal it in a final effort to prevent the
marriage, prevailed over Mrs. Clephane’s other fears. Once Nollie
knew, Anne would surely get to know; the horror of that possibility
sealed the mother’s lips.
Nollie, from the threshold, still looked at her wistfully, expectantly, as
if half-awaiting the confession; but Mrs. Clephane held out her hand
without a word.

“I must find out where he is.” It was Kate’s first thought after the door
had closed on her visitor. If he were in New York—and he evidently
was—she, Kate Clephane, must run him down, must get speech with
him, before he had been able to see her daughter.
But how was she to set about it? Fred Landers did not even know if
he were still with Horace Maclew or not—for the mere fact of
Maclew’s not alluding to him while they were together meant nothing,
less than nothing. And even if he had left the Maclews, the chances
were that Lilla knew where he was, and had already transmitted
Anne’s summons.
Mrs. Clephane consulted the telephone book, but of course in vain.
Then, after some hesitation, she rang up Horace Maclew’s house in
Baltimore. No one was there, but she finally elicited from the servant
who answered the telephone that Mrs. Maclew was away on a motor
trip. Perhaps Mr. Maclew could be reached at his country-place....
Kate tried the country-place, but Mr. Maclew had gone to Chicago.
The sense of loneliness and helplessness closed in on her more
impenetrably than ever. Night came, and Aline reminded her that she
had asked to have her dinner brought up on a tray. Solitary meals in
John Clephane’s dining-room were impossible to her.
“I don’t want any dinner.”
Aline’s look seemed to say that she knew why, and her mistress
hastily emended: “Or just some bouillon and toast. Whatever’s ready
—”
She sat down to it without changing her dress. Every gesture, every
act, denoting intimacy with that house, or the air of permanence in
her relation to it, would also have been impossible. Again she had
the feeling of sitting in a railway station, waiting for a train to come in.
But now she knew for what she was waiting.
At the close of her brief meal Aline entered briskly with fruit and
coffee. Her harsh face illuminated with curiosity, she handed her
mistress a card. “The gentleman is downstairs. He hopes Madame
will excuse the hour.” Her tone seemed to imply: “Madame, in this
case, will excuse everything!” and Kate cast a startled glance at the
name.
He had come to her, then—had come of his own accord! She felt
dizzy with relief and fear. Fear uppermost—yes; was she not always
afraid of him?
 XIX.
CHRIS FENNO stood in the drawing-room. The servant who
received him had turned on a blast of lamps and wall-lights, and in
the hard overhead glare he looked drawn and worn, like a man
recovering from severe illness. His clothes, too, Kate fancied, were
shabbier; everything in his appearance showed a decline, a defeat.
She had not much believed in his illness when Nollie spoke of it; the
old habit of incredulity was too strong in her. But now his appearance
moved her. She felt herself responsible, almost guilty. But for her
folly, she thought, he might have been standing before her with a
high head, on easy terms with the world.
“You’ve been ill!” she exclaimed.
His gesture brushed that aside. “I’m well now, thanks.” He looked her
in the face and added: “May we have a few minutes’ talk?”
She faltered: “If you think it necessary.” Inwardly she had already
begun to tremble. When his blue eyes turned to that harsh slate-
gray, and the two perpendicular lines deepened between his brows,
she had always trembled.
“You’ve made it necessary,” he retorted, his voice as harsh as his
eyes.
“I?”
“You’ve broken our compact. It’s not my doing. I stuck to my side of
it.” He flung out the short sentences like blows.
Her heart was beating so wildly that she could not follow what he
said. “What do you mean?” she stammered.
“That you agreed to help me if I gave up Anne. God knows what your
idea of helping me was. To me it meant only one thing: your keeping
quiet, keeping out of the whole business, and trusting me to carry out
my side of the bargain—as I did. I broke our engagement, chucked
my job, went away. And you? Instead of keeping out of it, of saying
nothing, you’ve talked against me, insinuated God knows what, and
then refused to explain your insinuations. You’ve put me in such a
position that I’ve got to take back my word to you, or appear to your
daughter and your family as a man who has run away because he
knew he couldn’t face the charge hanging over him.”
It was only in the white-heat of anger that he spoke with such
violence, and at such length; he seemed spent, and desperately at
bay, and the thought gave Kate Clephane courage.
“Well—can you face it?” she asked.
His expression changed, as she had so often seen it change. From
menace it passed to petulance and then became almost pleading in
its perplexity. She said to herself: “It’s the first time I’ve ever been
brave with him, and he doesn’t know how to take it.” But even then
she felt the precariousness of the advantage. His ready wit had so
often served him instead of resolution. It served him now.
“You do mean to make the charge, then?” he retorted.
She stood silent, feeling herself defeated, and at the same time
humiliated that their angry thoughts should have dragged them down
to such a level.
“Don’t sneer—” she faltered.
“Sneer? At what? I’m in dead earnest—can’t you see it? You’ve
ruined me—or very nearly. I’m not speaking now of my feelings; that
would make you sneer, probably. At any rate, this is no time for
discussing them. I’m merely putting my case as a poor devil who has
to earn his living, a man who has his good name to defend. On both
counts you’ve done me all the harm you could.”
“I had to stop this marriage.”
“Very well. I agreed to that. I did what I’d promised. Couldn’t you let it
alone?”
“No. Because Anne wouldn’t. She wanted to ask you to come back.
She saw I couldn’t bear it—she suspected me of knowing something.
She insisted.”
“And you sacrificed my good name rather—”
“Oh, I’d sacrifice anything. You’d better understand that.”
“I do understand it. That’s why I’m here. To tell you I consider that
what you’ve done has freed me from my promise.”
She stretched out her hands as if to catch him back. “Chris—no,
stay! You can’t! You can’t! You know you can’t!”
He stood leaning against the chimney-piece, his arms crossed, his
head a little bent and thrust forward, in the attitude of sullen
obstinacy that she knew so well. And all at once in her own cry she
heard the echo of other cries, other entreaties. She saw herself in
another scene, stretching her arms to him in the same desperate
entreaty, with the same sense of her inability to move him, even to
reach him. Her tears overflowed and ran down.
“You don’t mean you’ll tell her?” she whispered.
He kept his dogged attitude. “I’ve got to clear myself—somehow.”
“Oh, don’t tell her, don’t tell her! Chris, don’t tell her!”
As the cry died on her lips she understood that, in uttering it, she had
at last cast herself completely on his mercy. For it was not
impossible that, if other means failed, he would risk justifying himself
to Anne by revealing the truth. There were times when he was
reckless enough to risk anything. And if Kate were right in her
conjecture—if he had the audacity he affected—then his hold over
her was complete, and he knew it. If any one else told Anne, the
girl’s horror would turn her from him at once. But what if he himself
told her? All this flashed on Kate Clephane in the same glare of
enlightenment.
There was a long silence. She had sunk into a chair and hidden her
face in her hands. Presently, through the enveloping cloud of her
misery, she felt his nearness, and a touch on her shoulder.
“Kate—won’t you try to understand; to listen quietly?”
She lifted her eyes and met his fugitively. They had lost their
harshness, and were almost frightened. “I was angry when I came
here—a man would be,” he continued. “But what’s to be gained by
our talking to each other in this way? You were awfully kind to me in
old times; I haven’t forgotten. But is that a reason for being so hard
on me now? I didn’t bring this situation on myself—you’re my witness
that I didn’t. But here it is; it’s a fact; we’ve got to face it.”
She lowered her eyes and voice to whisper painfully: “To face Anne’s
love for you?”
“Yes.”
“Her determination—?”
“Her absolute determination.”
His words made her tremble again; there had always been moments
when his reasonableness alarmed her more than his anger, because
she knew that, to be so gentle, he must be certain of eventually
gaining his point. But she gathered resolution to say: “And if I take
back my threats, as you call them? If I take back all I’ve said—‘clear’
you entirely? That’s what you want, I understand? If I promise that,”
she panted, “will you promise too—promise me to find a way out?”
His hand fell from her shoulder, and he drew back a step. “A way out
—now? But there isn’t any.”
Mrs. Clephane stood up. She remembered wondering long ago—
one day when he had been very tender—how cruel Chris could be.
The conjecture, then, had seemed whimsical, almost morbid; now
she understood that she had guessed in him from the outset this
genius for reaching, at the first thrust, to the central point of his
antagonist’s misery.
“You’ve seen my daughter, then?”
“I’ve seen her—yes. This morning. It was she who sent me here.”
“If she’s made up her mind, why did she send you?”
“To tell you how she’s suffering. She thinks, you know—” He
wavered again for a second or two, and then brought out: “She’s
very unhappy about the stand you take. She thinks you ought to say
something to ... to clear up....”