by Frank Norris
Suddenly she bent her head quickly, listening intently. Then she drew a deep breath, murmuring “At last, at last!”
For the sound of a footstep in the vestibule was unmistakable. He had come after all. But so late, so late! No, she could not be gracious at once; he must be made to feel how deeply he had offended; he must sue humbly, very humbly, for pardon. The servant’s step sounded in the hall on the way towards the front door.
“I am in here, Matthew,” she called. “In the library. Tell him I am in here.”
She cast a quick glance at herself in the mirror close at hand, touched her hair with rapid fingers, smoothed the agitation from her forehead, and sat down in a deep chair near the fireplace, opening a book, turning her back towards the door.
She heard him come in, but did not move. Even as he crossed the floor she kept her head turned away. The footsteps paused near at hand. There was a moment’s silence. Then slowly Laura, laying down her book, turned and faced him.
“With many very, very happy returns of the day,” said Sheldon Corthell, as he held towards her a cluster of deep-blue violets.
Laura sprang to her feet, a hand upon her cheek, her eyes wide and flashing.
“You?” was all she had breath to utter. “You?”
The artist smiled as he laid the flowers upon the table. “I am going away again to-morrow,” he said, “for always, I think. Have I startled you? I only came to say good-by — and to wish you a happy birthday.”
“Oh you remembered!” she cried. “You remembered! I might have known you would.”
But the revulsion had been too great. She had been wrong after all. Jadwin had forgotten. Emotions to which she could put no name swelled in her heart and rose in a quick, gasping sob to her throat. The tears sprang to her eyes. Old impulses, forgotten impetuosities whipped her on.
“Oh, you remembered, you remembered!” she cried again, holding out both her hands.
He caught them in his own.
“Remembered!” he echoed. “I have never forgotten.”
“No, no,” she replied, shaking her head, winking back the tears. “You don’t understand. I spoke before I thought. You don’t understand.”
“I do, believe me, I do,” he exclaimed. “I understand you better than you understand yourself.”
Laura’s answer was a cry.
“Oh, then, why did you ever leave me — you who did understand me? Why did you leave me only because I told you to go? Why didn’t you make me love you then? Why didn’t you make me understand myself?” She clasped her hands tight together upon her breast; her words, torn by her sobs, came all but incoherent from behind her shut teeth. “No, no!” she exclaimed, as he made towards her. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me! It is too late.”
“It is not too late. Listen — listen to me.”
“Oh, why weren’t you a man, strong enough to know a woman’s weakness? You can only torture me now. Ah, I hate you! I hate you!”
“You love me! I tell you, you love me!” he cried, passionately, and before she was aware of it she was in his arms, his lips were against her lips, were on her shoulders, her neck.
“You love me!” he cried. “You love me! I defy you to say you do not.”
“Oh, make me love you, then,” she answered. “Make me believe that you do love me.”
“Don’t you know,” he cried, “don’t you know how I have loved you? Oh, from the very first! My love has been my life, has been my death, my one joy, and my one bitterness. It has always been you, dearest, year after year, hour after hour. And now I’ve found you again. And now I shall never, never let you go.”
“No, no! Ah, don’t, don’t!” she begged. “I implore you. I am weak, weak. Just a word, and I would forget everything.”
“And I do speak that word, and your own heart answers me in spite of you, and you will forget — forget everything of unhappiness in your life—”
“Please, please,” she entreated, breathlessly. Then, taking the leap: “Ah, I love you, I love you!”
“ — Forget all your unhappiness,” he went on, holding her close to him. “Forget the one great mistake we both made. Forget everything, everything, everything but that we love each other.”
“Don’t let me think, then,” she cried. “Don’t let me think. Make me forget everything, every little hour, every little moment that has passed before this day. Oh, if I remembered once, I would kill you, kill you with my hands! I don’t know what I am saying,” she moaned, “I don’t know what I am saying. I am mad, I think. Yes — I — it must be that.” She pulled back from him, looking into his face with wide-opened eyes.
“What have I said, what have we done, what are you here for?”
“To take you away,” he answered, gently, holding her in his arms, looking down into her eyes. “To take you far away with me. To give my whole life to making you forget that you were ever unhappy.”
“And you will never leave me alone — never once?”
“Never, never once.”
She drew back from him, looking about the room with unseeing eyes, her fingers plucking and tearing at the lace of her dress; her voice was faint and small, like the voice of a little child.
“I — I am afraid to be alone. Oh, I must never be alone again so long as I shall live. I think I should die.”
“And you never shall be; never again. Ah, this is my birthday, too, sweetheart. I am born again to-night.”
Laura clung to his arm; it was as though she were in the dark, surrounded by the vague terrors of her girlhood. “And you will always love me, love me, love me?” she whispered. “Sheldon, Sheldon, love me always, always, with all your heart and soul and strength.”
Tears stood in Corthell’s eyes as he answered:
“God forgive whoever — whatever has brought you to this pass,” he said.
And, as if it were a realisation of his thought, there suddenly came to the ears of both the roll of wheels upon the asphalt under the carriage porch and the trampling of iron-shod hoofs.
“Is that your husband?” Corthell’s quick eye took in Laura’s disarranged coiffure, one black lock low upon her neck, the roses at her shoulder crushed and broken, and the bright spot on either cheek.
“Is that your husband?”
“My husband — I don’t know.” She looked up at him with unseeing eyes. “Where is my husband? I have no husband. You are letting me remember,” she cried, in terror. “You are letting me remember. Ah, no, no, you don’t love me! I hate you!”
Quickly he bent and kissed her.
“I will come for you to-morrow evening,” he said. “You will be ready then to go with me?”
“Ready then? Yes, yes, to go with you anywhere.”
He stood still a moment, listening. Somewhere a door closed. He heard the hoofs upon the asphalt again.
“Good-by,” he whispered. “God bless you! Good-by till to-morrow night.” And with the words he was gone. The front door of the house closed quietly.
Had he come back again? Laura turned in her place on the long divan at the sound of a heavy tread by the door of the library.
Then an uncertain hand drew the heavy curtain aside. Jadwin, her husband, stood before her, his eyes sunken deep in his head, his face dead white, his hand shaking. He stood for a long instant in the middle of the room, looking at her. Then at last his lips moved:
“Old girl.... Honey.”
Laura rose, and all but groped her way towards him, her heart beating, the tears streaming down her face.
“My husband, my husband!”
Together they made their way to the divan, and sank down upon it side by side, holding to each other, trembling and fearful, like children in the night.
“Honey,” whispered Jadwin, after a while. “Honey, it’s dark, it’s dark. Something happened.... I don’t remember,” he put his hand uncertainly to his head, “I can’t remember very well; but it’s dark — a little.”
“It’s dark,” she repeated, in a low whis
per. “It’s dark, dark. Something happened. Yes. I must not remember.”
They spoke no further. A long time passed. Pressed close together, Curtis Jadwin and his wife sat there in the vast, gorgeous room, silent and trembling, ridden with unnamed fears, groping in the darkness.
And while they remained thus, holding close by one another, a prolonged and wailing cry rose suddenly from the street, and passed on through the city under the stars and the wide canopy of the darkness.
“Extra, oh-h-h, extra! All about the Smash of the Great Wheat Corner! All about the Failure of Curtis Jadwin!”
CONCLUSION
The evening had closed in wet and misty. All day long a chill wind had blown across the city from off the lake, and by eight o’clock, when Laura and Jadwin came down to the dismantled library, a heavy rain was falling.
Laura gave Jadwin her arm as they made their way across the room — their footsteps echoing strangely from the uncarpeted boards.
“There, dear,” she said. “Give me the valise. Now sit down on the packing box there. Are you tired? You had better put your hat on. It is full of draughts here, now that all the furniture and curtains are out.”
“No, no. I’m all right, old girl. Is the hack there yet?”
“Not yet. You’re sure you’re not tired?” she insisted. “You had a pretty bad siege of it, you know, and this is only the first week you’ve been up. You remember how the doctor—”
“I’ve had too good a nurse,” he answered, stroking her hand, “not to be fine as a fiddle by now. You must be tired yourself, Laura. Why, for whole days there — and nights, too, they tell me — you never left the room.”
She shook her head, as though dismissing the subject.
“I wonder,” she said, sitting down upon a smaller packing-box and clasping a knee in her hands, “I wonder what the West will be like. Do you know I think I am going to like it, Curtis?”
“It will be starting in all over again, old girl,” he said, with a warning shake of his head. “Pretty hard at first, I’m afraid.”
She laughed an almost contemptuous note.
“Hard! Now?” She took his hand and laid it to her cheek.
“By all the rules you ought to hate me,” he began. “What have I done for you but hurt you and, at last, bring you to—”
But she shut her gloved hand over his mouth.
“Stop!” she cried. “Hush, dear. You have brought me the greatest happiness of my life.”
Then under her breath, her eyes wide and thoughtful, she murmured:
“A capitulation and not a triumph, and I have won a victory by surrendering.”
“Hey — what?” demanded Jadwin. “I didn’t hear.”
“Never mind,” she answered. “It was nothing. ‘The world is all before us where to choose,’ now, isn’t it? And this big house and all the life we have led in it was just an incident in our lives — an incident that is closed.”
“Looks like it, to look around this room,” he said, grimly. “Nothing left but the wall paper. What do you suppose are in these boxes?”
“They’re labelled ‘books and portieres.’”
“Who bought ’em I wonder? I’d have thought the party who bought the house would have taken them. Well, it was a wrench to see the place and all go so dirt cheap, and the ‘Thetis’, too, by George! But I’m glad now. It’s as though we had lightened ship.” He looked at his watch. “That hack ought to be here pretty soon. I’m glad we checked the trunks from the house; gives us more time.”
“Oh, by the way,” exclaimed Laura, all at once opening her satchel. “I had a long letter from Page this morning, from New York. Do you want to hear what she has to say? I’ve only had time to read part of it myself. It’s the first one I’ve had from her since their marriage.”
He lit a cigar.
“Go ahead,” he said, settling himself on the box. “What does Mrs. Court have to say?”
“‘My dearest sister,’” began Laura. “‘Here we are, Landry and I, in New York at last. Very tired and mussed after the ride on the cars, but in a darling little hotel where the proprietor is head cook and everybody speaks French. I know my accent is improving, and Landry has learned any quantity of phrases already. We are reading George Sand out loud, and are making up the longest vocabulary. To-night we are going to a concert, and I’ve found out that there’s a really fine course of lectures to be given soon on “Literary Tendencies,” or something like that. Quel chance. Landry is intensely interested. You’ve no idea what a deep mind he has, Laura — a real thinker.
“‘But here’s really a big piece of news. We may not have to give up our old home where we lived when we first came to Chicago. Aunt Wess’ wrote the other day to say that, if you were willing, she would rent it, and then sublet all the lower floor to Landry and me, so we could have a real house over our heads and not the under side of the floor of the flat overhead. And she is such an old dear, I know we could all get along beautifully. Write me about this as soon as you can. I know you’ll be willing, and Aunt Wess, said she’d agree to whatever rent you suggested.
“‘We went to call on Mrs. Cressler day before yesterday. She’s been here nearly a fortnight by now, and is living with a maiden sister of hers in a very beautiful house fronting Central Park (not so beautiful as our palace on North Avenue. Never, never will I forget that house). She will probably stay here now always. She says the very sight of the old neighbourhoods in Chicago would be more than she could bear. Poor Mrs. Cressler! How fortunate for her that her sister’ — and so on, and so on,” broke in Laura, hastily.
“Read it, read it,” said Jadwin, turning sharply away. “Don’t skip a line. I want to hear every word.”
“That’s all there is to it,” Laura returned. “‘We’ll be back,’” she went on, turning a page of the letter, “‘in about three weeks, and Landry will take up his work in that railroad office. No more speculating for him, he says. He talks of Mr. Jadwin continually. You never saw or heard of such devotion. He says that Mr. Jadwin is a genius, the greatest financier in the country, and that he knows he could have won if they all hadn’t turned against him that day. He never gets tired telling me that Mr. Jadwin has been a father to him — the kindest, biggest-hearted man he ever knew—’”
Jadwin pulled his mustache rapidly.
“Pshaw, pish, nonsense — little fool!” he blustered.
“He simply worshipped you from the first, Curtis,” commented Laura. “Even after he knew I was to marry you. He never once was jealous, never once would listen to a word against you from any one.”
“Well — well, what else does Mrs. Court say?”
“‘I am glad to hear,’” read Laura, “‘that Mr. Gretry did not fail, though Landry tells me he must have lost a great deal of money. Landry tells me that eighteen brokers’ houses failed in Chicago the day after Mr. Gretry suspended. Isabel sent us a wedding present — a lovely medicine chest full of homoeopathic medicines, little pills and things, you know. But, as Landry and I are never sick and both laugh at homoeopathy, I declare I don’t know just what we will do with it. Landry is as careful of me as though I were a wax doll. But I do wish he would think more of his own health. He never will wear his mackintosh in rainy weather. I’ve been studying his tastes so carefully. He likes French light opera better than English, and bright colours in his cravats, and he simply adores stuffed tomatoes.
“‘We both send our love, and Landry especially wants to be remembered to Mr. Jadwin. I hope this letter will come in time for us to wish you both bon voyage and bon succes. How splendid of Mr. Jadwin to have started his new business even while he was convalescent! Landry says he knows he will make two or three more fortunes in the next few years.
“‘Good-by, Laura, dear. Ever your loving sister,
“‘PAGE COURT.
“‘P.S. — I open this letter again to tell you that we met Mr. Corthell on the street yesterday. He sails for Europe to-day.’”
“Oh,” said Jad
win, as Laura put the letter quickly down, “Corthell — that artist chap. By the way, whatever became of him?”
Laura settled a comb in the back of her hair.
“He went away,” she said. “You remember — I told you — told you all about it.”
She would have turned away her head, but he laid a hand upon her shoulder.
“I remember,” he answered, looking squarely into her eyes, “I remember nothing — only that I have been to blame for everything. I told you once — long ago — that I understood. And I understand now, old girl, understand as I never did before. I fancy we both have been living according to a wrong notion of things. We started right when we were first married, but I worked away from it somehow and pulled you along with me. But we’ve both been through a great big change, honey, a great big change, and we’re starting all over again.... Well, there’s the carriage, I guess.”
They rose, gathering up their valises.
“Hoh!” said Jadwin. “No servants now, Laura, to carry our things down for us and open the door, and it’s a hack, old girl, instead of the victoria or coupe.”
“What if it is?” she cried. “What do ‘things,’ servants, money, and all amount to now?”
As Jadwin laid his hand upon the knob of the front door, he all at once put down his valise and put his arm about his wife. She caught him about the neck and looked deep into his eyes a long moment. And then, without speaking, they kissed each other.
In the outer vestibule, he raised the umbrella and held it over her head.
“Hold it a minute, will you, Laura?” he said.
He gave it into her hand and swung the door of the house shut behind him. The noise woke a hollow echo throughout all the series of empty, denuded rooms. Jadwin slipped the key in his pocket.