by Frank Norris
Little by little the companionship grew. Corthell shut his eyes, his ears. The thought of Laura, the recollection of their last evening together, the anticipation of the next meeting filled all his waking hours. He refused to think; he resigned himself to the drift of the current. Jadwin he rarely saw. But on those few occasions when he and Laura’s husband met, he could detect no lack of cordiality in the other’s greeting. Once even Jadwin had remarked:
“I’m very glad you have come to see Mrs. Jadwin, Corthell. I have to be away so much these days, I’m afraid she would be lonesome if it wasn’t for some one like you to drop in now and then and talk art to her.”
By slow degrees the companionship trended toward intimacy. At the various theatres and concerts he was her escort. He called upon her two or three times each week. At his studio entertainments Laura was always present. How — Corthell asked himself — did she regard the affair? She gave him no sign; she never intimated that his presence was otherwise than agreeable. Was this tacit acquiescence of hers an encouragement? Was she willing to afficher herself, as a married woman, with a cavalier? Her married life was intolerable, he was sure of that; her husband uncongenial. He told himself that she detested him.
Once, however, this belief was rather shocked by an unexpected and (to him) an inconsistent reaction on Laura’s part. She had made an engagement with him to spend an afternoon in the Art Institute, looking over certain newly acquired canvases. But upon calling for her an hour after luncheon he was informed that Mrs. Jadwin was not at home. When next she saw him she told him that she had spent the entire day with her husband. They had taken an early train and had gone up to Geneva Lake to look over their country house, and to prepare for its opening, later on in the spring. They had taken the decision so unexpectedly that she had no time to tell him of the change in her plans. Corthell wondered if she had — as a matter of fact — forgotten all about her appointment with him. He never quite understood the incident, and afterwards asked himself whether or no he could be so sure, after all, of the estrangement between the husband and wife. He guessed it to be possible that on this occasion Jadwin had suddenly decided to give himself a holiday, and that Laura had been quick to take advantage of it. Was it true, then, that Jadwin had but to speak the word to have Laura forget all else? Was it true that the mere nod of his head was enough to call her back to him? Corthell was puzzled. He would not admit this to be true. She was, he was persuaded, a woman of more spirit, of more pride than this would seem to indicate. Corthell ended by believing that Jadwin had, in some way, coerced her; though he fancied that for the few days immediately following the excursion Laura had never been gayer, more alert, more radiant.
But the days went on, and it was easy to see that his business kept Jadwin more and more from his wife. Often now, Corthell knew, he passed the night down town, and upon those occasions when he managed to get home after the day’s work, he was exhausted, worn out, and went to bed almost immediately after dinner. More than ever now the artist and Mrs. Jadwin were thrown together.
On a certain Sunday evening, the first really hot day of the year, Laura and Page went over to spend an hour with the Cresslers, and — as they were all wont to do in the old days before Laura’s marriage — the party “sat out on the front stoop.” For a wonder, Jadwin was able to be present. Laura had prevailed upon him to give her this evening and the evening of the following Wednesday — on which latter occasion she had planned that they were to take a long drive in the park in the buggy, just the two of them, as it had been in the days of their courtship.
Corthell came to the Cresslers quite as a matter of course. He had dined with the Jadwins at the great North Avenue house and afterwards the three, preferring to walk, had come down to the Cresslers on foot.
But evidently the artist was to see but little of Laura Jadwin that evening. She contrived to keep by her husband continually. She even managed to get him away from the others, and the two, leaving the rest upon the steps, sat in the parlour of the Cresslers’ house, talking.
By and by Laura, full of her projects, exclaimed:
“Where shall we go? I thought, perhaps, we would not have dinner at home, but you could come back to the house just a little — a little bit — early, and you could drive me out to the restaurant there in the park, and we could have dinner there, just as though we weren’t married just as though we were sweethearts again. Oh, I do hope the weather will be fine.”
“Oh,” answered Jadwin, “you mean Wednesday evening. Dear old girl, honestly, I — I don’t believe I can make it after all. You see, Wednesday—”
Laura sat suddenly erect.
“But you said,” she began, her voice faltering a little, “you said—”
“Honey, I know I did, but you must let me off this time again.”
She did not answer. It was too dark for him to see her face; but, uneasy at her silence, he began an elaborate explanation. Laura, however, interrupted. Calmly enough, she said:
“Oh, that’s all right. No, no, I don’t mind. Of course, if you are busy.”
“Well, you see, don’t you, old girl?”
“Oh, yes, yes, I see,” she answered. She rose.
“I think,” she said, “we had better be going home. Don’t you?”
“Yes, I do,” he assented. “I’m pretty tired myself. I’ve had a hard day’s work. I’m thirsty, too,” he added, as he got up. “Would you like to have a drink of water, too?”
She shook her head, and while he disappeared in the direction of the Cresslers’ dining-room, she stood alone a moment in the darkened room looking out into the street. She felt that her cheeks were hot. Her hands, hanging at her sides, shut themselves into tight fists.
“What, you are all alone?” said Corthell’s voice, behind her.
She turned about quickly.
“I must be going,” he said. “I came to say good night.” He held out his hand.
“Good night,” she answered, as she gave him hers. Then all at once she added:
“Come to see me again — soon, will you? Come Wednesday night.”
And then, his heart leaping to his throat, Corthell felt her hand, as it lay in his, close for an instant firmly about his fingers.
“I shall expect you Wednesday then?” she repeated.
He crushed her hand in his grip, and suddenly bent and kissed it.
“Good night,” she said, quietly. Jadwin’s step sounded at the doorway.
“Good night,” he whispered, and in another moment was gone.
During these days Laura no longer knew herself. At every hour she changed; her moods came and went with a rapidity that bewildered all those who were around her. At times her gaiety filled the whole of her beautiful house; at times she shut herself in her apartments, denying herself to every one, and, her head bowed upon her folded arms, wept as though her heart was breaking, without knowing why.
For a few days a veritable seizure of religious enthusiasm held sway over her. She spoke of endowing a hospital, of doing church work among the “slums” of the city. But no sooner had her friends readjusted their points of view to suit this new development than she was off upon another tangent, and was one afternoon seen at the races, with Mrs. Gretry, in her showiest victoria, wearing a great flaring hat and a bouquet of crimson flowers.
She never repeated this performance, however, for a new fad took possession of her the very next day. She memorised the role of Lady Macbeth, built a stage in the ballroom at the top of the house, and, locking herself in, rehearsed the part, for three days uninterruptedly, dressed in elaborate costume, declaiming in chest tones to the empty room:
“‘The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the entrance of Duncan under my battlements.’”
Then, tiring of Lady Macbeth, she took up Juliet, Portia, and Ophelia; each with appropriate costumes, studying with tireless avidity, and frightening Aunt Wess’ with her declaration that “she might go on the stage after all.” She even entertained the notion of havi
ng Sheldon Corthell paint her portrait as Lady Macbeth.
As often as the thought of the artist presented itself to her she fought to put it from her. Yes, yes, he came to see her often, very often. Perhaps he loved her yet. Well, suppose he did? He had always loved her. It was not wrong to have him love her, to have him with her. Without his company, great heavens, her life would be lonely beyond words and beyond endurance. Besides, was it to be thought, for an instant, that she, she, Laura Jadwin, in her pitch of pride, with all her beauty, with her quick, keen mind, was to pine, to droop to fade in oblivion and neglect? Was she to blame? Let those who neglected her look to it. Her youth was all with her yet, and all her power to attract, to compel admiration.
When Corthell came to see her on the Wednesday evening in question, Laura said to him, after a few moments, conversation in the drawing-room:
“Oh, you remember the picture you taught me to appreciate — the picture of the little pool in the art gallery, the one you called ‘Despair’? I have hung it in my own particular room upstairs — my sitting-room — so as to have it where I can see it always. I love it now. But,” she added, “I am not sure about the light. I think it could be hung to better advantage.” She hesitated a moment, then, with a sudden, impulsive movement, she turned to him.
“Won’t you come up with me, and tell me where to hang it?”
They took the little elevator to the floor above, and Laura led the artist to the room in question — her “sitting-room,” a wide, airy place, the polished floor covered with deep skins, the walls wainscotted half way to the ceiling, in dull woods. Shelves of books were everywhere, together with potted plants and tall brass lamps. A long “Madeira” chair stood at the window which overlooked the park and lake, and near to it a great round table of San Domingo mahogany, with tea things and almost diaphanous china.
“What a beautiful room,” murmured Corthell, as she touched the button in the wall that opened the current, “and how much you have impressed your individuality upon it. I should have known that you lived here. If you were thousands of miles away and I had entered here, I should have known it was yours — and loved it for such.”
“Here is the picture,” she said, indicating where it hung. “Doesn’t it seem to you that the light is bad?”
But he explained to her that it was not so, and that she had but to incline the canvas a little more from the wall to get a good effect.
“Of course, of course,” she assented, as he held the picture in place. “Of course. I shall have it hung over again to-morrow.”
For some moments they remained standing in the centre of the room, looking at the picture and talking of it. And then, without remembering just how it had happened, Laura found herself leaning back in the Madeira chair, Corthell seated near at hand by the round table.
“I am glad you like my room,” she said. “It is here that I spend most of my time. Often lately I have had my dinner here. Page goes out a great deal now, and so I am left alone occasionally. Last night I sat here in the dark for a long time. The house was so still, everybody was out — even some of the servants. It was so warm, I raised the windows and I sat here for hours looking out over the lake. I could hear it lapping and washing against the shore — almost like a sea. And it was so still, so still; and I was thinking of the time when I was a little girl back at Barrington, years and years ago, picking whortle-berries down in the ‘water lot,’ and how I got lost once in the corn — the stalks were away above my head — and how happy I was when my father would take me up on the hay wagon. Ah, I was happy in those days — just a freckled, black-haired slip of a little girl, with my frock torn and my hands all scratched with the berry bushes.”
She had begun by dramatising, but by now she was acting — acting with all her histrionic power at fullest stretch, acting the part of a woman unhappy amid luxuries, who looked back with regret and with longing towards a joyous, simple childhood. She was sincere and she was not sincere. Part of her — one of those two Laura Jadwins who at different times, but with equal right called themselves “I,” knew just what effect her words, her pose, would have upon a man who sympathised with her, who loved her. But the other Laura Jadwin would have resented as petty, as even wrong, the insinuation that she was not wholly, thoroughly sincere. All that she was saying was true. No one, so she believed, ever was placed before as she was placed now. No one had ever spoken as now she spoke. Her chin upon one slender finger, she went on, her eyes growing wide:
“If I had only known then that those days were to be, the happiest of my life.... This great house, all the beauty of it, and all this wealth, what does it amount to?” Her voice was the voice of Phedre, and the gesture of lassitude with which she let her arms fall into her lap was precisely that which only the day before she had used to accompany Portia’s plaint of
— my little body is a-weary of this great world.
Yet, at the same time, Laura knew that her heart was genuinely aching with real sadness, and that the tears which stood in her eyes were as sincere as any she had ever shed.
“All this wealth,” she continued, her head dropping back upon the cushion of the chair as she spoke, “what does it matter; for what does it compensate? Oh, I would give it all gladly, gladly, to be that little black-haired girl again, back in Squire Dearborn’s water lot; with my hands stained with the whortle-berries and the nettles in my fingers — and my little lover, who called me his beau-heart and bought me a blue hair ribbon, and kissed me behind the pump house.”
“Ah,” said Corthell, quickly and earnestly, “that is the secret. It was love — even the foolish boy and girl love — love that after all made your life sweet then.”
She let her hands fall into her lap, and, musing, turned the rings back and forth upon her fingers.
“Don’t you think so?” he asked, in a low voice.
She bent her head slowly, without replying. Then for a long moment neither spoke. Laura played with her rings. The artist, leaning forward in his chair, looked with vague eyes across the room. And no interval of time since his return, no words that had ever passed between them, had been so fraught with significance, so potent in drawing them together as this brief, wordless moment.
At last Corthell turned towards her.
“You must not think,” he murmured, “that your life is without love now. I will not have you believe that.”
But she made no answer.
“If you would only see,” he went on. “If you would only condescend to look, you would know that there is a love which has enfolded your life for years. You have shut it out from you always. But it has been yours, just the same; it has lain at your door, it has looked — oh, God knows with what longing! — through your windows. You have never stirred abroad that it has not followed you. Not a footprint of yours that it does not know and cherish. Do you think that your life is without love? Why, it is all around you — all around you but voiceless. It has no right to speak, it only has the right to suffer.”
Still Laura said no word. Her head turned from him, she looked out of the window, and once more the seconds passed while neither spoke. The clock on the table ticked steadily. In the distance, through the open window, came the incessant, mournful wash of the lake. All around them the house was still. At length Laura sat upright in her chair.
“I think I will have this room done over while we are away this summer,” she said. “Don’t you think it would be effective if the wainscotting went almost to the ceiling?”
He glanced critically about the room.
“Very,” he answered, briskly. “There is no background so beautiful as wood.”
“And I might finish it off at the top with a narrow shelf.”
“Provided you promised not to put brass ‘plaques’ or pewter kitchen ware upon it.”
“Do smoke,” she urged him. “I know you want to. You will find matches on the table.”
But Corthell, as he lit his cigarette, produced his own match box. It was a curious bit of
antique silver, which he had bought in a Viennese pawnshop, heart-shaped and topped with a small ducal coronet of worn gold. On one side he had caused his name to be engraved in small script. Now, as Laura admired it, he held it towards her.
“An old pouncet-box, I believe,” he informed her, “or possibly it held an ointment for her finger nails.” He spilled the matches into his hand. “You see the red stain still on the inside; and — smell,” he added, as she took it from him. “Even the odour of the sulphur matches cannot smother the quaint old perfume, distilled perhaps three centuries ago.”
An hour later Corthell left her. She did not follow him further than the threshold of the room, but let him find his way to the front door alone.
When he had gone she returned to the room, and for a little while sat in her accustomed place by the window overlooking the park and the lake. Very soon after Corthell’s departure she heard Page, Landry Court, and Mrs. Wessels come in; then at length rousing from her reverie she prepared for bed. But, as she passed the round mahogany table, on her way to her bedroom, she was aware of a little object lying upon it, near to where she had sat.
“Oh, he forgot it,” she murmured, as she picked up Corthell’s heart-shaped match box. She glanced at it a moment, indifferently; but her mind was full of other things. She laid it down again upon the table, and going on to her own room, went to bed.
Jadwin did not come home that night, and in the morning Laura presided at breakfast table in his place. Landry Court, Page, and Aunt Wess’ were there; for occasionally nowadays, when the trio went to one of their interminable concerts or lectures, Landry stayed over night at the house.
“Any message for your husband, Mrs. Jadwin?” inquired Landry, as he prepared to go down town after breakfast. “I always see him in Mr. Gretry’s office the first thing. Any message for him?”