“Yes. It is what no wife can forgive.” She looked at him, clear eyed, intelligent, calm; for the moment without any illusion; and he seemed to feel that, in the light of what she knew of him, she was coolly weighing the danger of the experiment. Never had he seen so cold and lustrous a brow, such limpid clarity of eye, searching, fearless, direct. Then, in an instant, it all seemed to melt into flushed and winsome loveliness; and she was murmuring that she loved him, and asking pardon for even one second’s hesitation.
“It never could be; it is unthinkable,” she whispered. “And it is too late anyway for me — I would love you now, whatever you killed in me. Because I must go on loving you, Jim; for that is the way it is with me, and I know it now. As long as there is life in me I’ll strive for you in my own fashion — even against yourself — to keep you for mine, to please you, to be to you and to the world what you wish me to be — for your honour and your happiness — which also must be my own — the only happiness, now, that I can ever understand.”
He held her in his arms, smoothing the bright hair, touching the white brow with his lips at moments, happy because he was so deeply in love, fearful because of it — and, deep in his soul, miserable, afraid lest aught out of his past life return again to mock her — lest some echo of folly offend her ears — some shadow fall — some phantom of dead days rise from their future hearth to stand between them.
It is that way with a man who has lived idly and irresponsibly, and who has gone lightly about the pleasure of life and not its business. For sometimes there arrives an hour of unbidden clairvoyance — not necessarily a spiritual awakening — but a moment of balanced intelligence and sanity and clear vision. And when it arrives, the road to yesterday suddenly becomes visible for its entire length; and when a man looks back he sees it stretching away behind him, peopled with every shape that has ever traversed it, and every spectre that ever has haunted it.
Sorrow for what need not have been, regret and shame for what had been — and the bitterness of the folly — the knowledge, too late, of what he could have been to the girl he held now in his arms — how he could have met her on more equal terms had he saved his youth and strength and innocence and pride for her alone — how he could have given it unsullied into her keeping. All this Desboro was beginning to realise now. And many men have realised it when the tardy understanding came too late. For what has been is still and will be always; and shall appear here or hereafter, or after that — somewhere, sometime, inevitably, inexorably. There is no such thing as expunging what has been, or of erasing what is to be. All records stand; hope lies only in lengthening the endless chapters — chapters which will not be finished when the sun dies, and the moon fails, and the stars go out forever.
Walking slowly back together, they passed Herrendene in the wing hall, and his fine and somewhat melancholy face lighted up at the encounter.
“I’m so sorry you are going to-day,” said Jacqueline, with all her impulsive and sweet sincerity. “Everybody will miss you and wish you here again.”
“To be regretted is one of the few real pleasures in life,” he said, smiling. His quick eye had rested on Desboro and then reverted to her, and his intuition was warning him with all the brutality and finality of reason that his last hope of her must end.
Desboro said: “I hate to have you go, Herrendene, but I suppose you must.”
“Must you?” echoed Jacqueline, wistful for the moment. But the irresistible radiance of happiness had subtly transfigured her, and Herrendene looked into her eyes and saw the new-born beauty in them, shyly apparent.
“Yes,” he said, “I must be about the business of life — the business of life, Miss Nevers. Everybody is engaged in it; it has many names, but it’s all the same business. You, for example, pass judgment on beautiful things; Desboro, here, is a farmer, and I play soldier with sword and drum. But it’s all the same business — the business of life; and one can work at it or idle through it, but never escape it, because, at the last, every soul in the world must die in harness. And the idlest are the heaviest laden.” He laughed. “That’s quite a sermon, isn’t it, Miss Nevers? And shall I make my adieux now? Were you going anywhere? You see I am leaving Silverwood directly after breakfast — —”
“As though Mr. Desboro and I would go off anywhere and not say good-bye to you!” she exclaimed indignantly, quite unconscious of being too obvious.
So they all three returned to the breakfast room together, where Clydesdale, who had come over from the Hammertons’ for breakfast, was already tramping hungrily around the covered dishes on the sideboard, hot plate in hand, evidently meditating a wholesale assault. He grinned affably as Jacqueline and Desboro came in, and they all helped themselves from the warmers, returning laden to the table with whatever suited their fancy. Other guests, to whom no trays had been sent, arrived one after another to prowl around the browse and join in the conversation if they chose, or sulk, as is the fashion with some perfectly worthy souls at breakfast-tide.
“This thaw settles the skating for good and all,” remarked Reggie Ledyard. “Will you go fishing with me, Miss Nevers? It’s our last day, you know.”
Cairns growled over his grape-fruit: “You can’t make dates with Miss Nevers at the breakfast table. It isn’t done. I was going to ask her to do something with me, anyway.”
“I hate breakfast,” said Van Alstyne. “When I see it I always wish I were dead or that everybody else was. Zooks! This cocktail helps some! Try one, Miss Nevers.”
“There’s reason in your grouch,” remarked Bertie Barkley, with his hard-eyed smile, “considering what Aunt Hannah and I did to you and Helsa at auction last night.”
“Aunt Hannah will live in luxury for a year on it,” added Cairns maliciously. “Doesn’t it make you happy, Stuyve?”
“Oh — blub!” muttered Van Alstyne, hating everybody and himself — and most of all hating to think of his losses and of the lady who caused them. Only the really rich know how card losses rankle.
Cairns glanced banteringly across at Jacqueline. It was his form of wit to quiz her because she neither indulged in cocktails nor cigarettes, nor played cards for stakes. He lifted his eyebrows and tapped the frosted shaker beside him significantly.
“I’ve a new kind of mountain dew, warranted to wake the dead, Miss Nevers. I call it the ‘Aunt Hannah,’ in her honour — honour to whom honour is dew,” he added impudently. “Won’t you let me make you a cocktail?”
“Wait until Aunt Hannah hears how you have honoured her and tempted me,” laughed Jacqueline.
“I never tempted maid or wife
Or suffragette in all my life — —”
sang Ledyard, beating time on Van Alstyne, who silently scowled his displeasure.
Presently Ledyard selected a grape-fruit, with a sour smile at one of Desboro’s cats which had confidently leaped into his lap.
“Is this a zoo den in the Bronx, or a breakfast room, Desboro? I only ask because I’m all over cats.”
Bertie Barkley snapped his napkin at an intrusive yellow pup who was sniffing and wagging at his elbow.
Jacqueline comforted the retreating animal, bending over and crooning in his floppy ear:
“They gotta stop kickin’ my dawg aroun’.”
“What do you care what they do to Jim’s live stock, Miss Nevers?” demanded Ledyard suspiciously.
She laughed, but to her annoyance a warmer colour brightened her cheeks.
“Heaven help us!” exclaimed Reggie. “Miss Nevers is blushing at the breakfast table. Gentlemen, are we done for without even suspecting it? And by that — that” — pointing a furious finger at Desboro— “that!”
“Certainly,” said Desboro, smiling. “Did you imagine I’d ever let Miss Nevers escape from Silverwood?”
Ledyard heaved a sigh of relief: “Gad,” he muttered, “I suspected you both for a moment. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Every man here would have murdered you in turn. Come on, Miss Nevers; you’ve made a big splash with m
e, and I’ll play you a game of rabbit — or anything on earth, if you’ll let me run along beside you.”
“No, I’m driving with Captain Herrendene to the station,” she said; and that melancholy soldier looked up in grateful surprise.
And she did go with him; and everybody came out on the front steps to wish him bon voyage.
“Are you coming back, Miss Nevers?” asked Ledyard, in pretended alarm.
“I don’t know. Is Manila worth seeing, Captain Herrendene?” she asked, laughingly.
“If you sail for Manila with that tin soldier I’ll go after you in a hydroplane!” called Reggie after them, as the car rolled away. He added frankly, for everybody’s benefit: “I hate any man who even looks at her, and I don’t care who knows it. But what’s the use? Going to night-school might help me, but I doubt it. No; she’s for a better line of goods than the samples at Silverwood. She shines too far above us. Mark that, James Desboro! And take what comfort you can in your reflected glory. For had she not been the spotlight, you’d look exactly like the rest of us. And that isn’t flattering anybody, I’m thinking.”
It was to be the last day of the party. Everybody was leaving directly after luncheon, and now everybody seemed inclined to do nothing in particular. Mrs. Clydesdale came over from the Hammerton’s. The air was soft and springlike; the snow in the fields was melting and full of golden pools. People seemed to be inclined to stroll about outdoors without their hats; a lively snowball battle began between Cary Clydesdale on one side and Cairns and Reggie Ledyard on the other — and gradually was participated in by everybody except Aunt Hannah, who grimly watched it from the library window. But her weather eye never left Mrs. Clydesdale.
She was still standing at the window when somebody entered the library behind her, and somebody else followed. She knew who they were; the curtains screened her. For one second the temptation to listen beset her, but she put it away with a sniff, and had already turned to disclose herself when she heard Mrs. Clydesdale say something that stiffened her into a rigid silence.
What followed stiffened her still more — and there were only a few words, too — only:
“For God’s sake, what are you thinking of?” from Desboro; and from Elena Clydesdale:
“This has got to end — I can’t stand it, Jim — —”
“Stand what?”
“Him! And what you are doing!”
“Be careful! Do you want people to overhear us?” he said, in a low voice of concentrated anger.
“Then where — —”
“I don’t know. Wait until these people leave — —”
“To-night?”
“How can we see each other to-night!”
“Cary is going to New York — —”
Voices approaching through the hall warned him:
“All right, to-night,” he said, desperately. “Go out into the hall.”
“To-night, Jim?”
“Yes.”
She turned and walked out into the hall. He heard her voice calmly joining in the chatter now approaching, and, without any reason, he walked to the window. And found Mrs. Hammerton there.
Astonishment and anger left him dumb and scarlet to the roots of his hair.
“It isn’t my fault,” she hissed. “You and that other fool had already committed yourselves before I could stir to warn you. What do I care for your vile little intrigues, anyway! I don’t have to listen behind curtains to learn what anybody could have seen at the Metropolitan Opera — —”
“You are absolutely mistaken — —”
“No doubt, James. But whether I am or not makes absolutely no difference to me — or to Jacqueline Nevers — —”
“What do you mean by that?”
“What I say, exactly. It will make no difference to Jacqueline, because you are going to keep your distance.”
“Do you think so?”
“If you don’t keep away from her I’ll tell her a few things. Listen to me very carefully, James. You think I’m fond of you, don’t you? Well, I am. But I’ve taken a fancy to Jacqueline Nevers that — well, if I were not childless I might feel it less deeply. I’ve put my arms around her once and for all. Now do you understand?”
“I tell you,” he said steadily, “you are mistaken in believing — —”
“Very well. Granted. What of it? One dirty little intrigue more or less doesn’t alter what you are and have been. The plain point of the matter is this, James: you are not fit to aspire seriously to Jacqueline Nevers. Are you? I ask you, now, honestly; are you?”
“Does that concern you?”
She fairly snapped her teeth and her eyes sparkled:
“Yes; it concerns me! Keep away! I warn you — you and the rest of the Jacks and Reggies and similar assorted pups. Your hunting ground is elsewhere.”
A sort of cold fury possessed him: “You had better not say anything to Miss Nevers about what you overheard in this room,” he said in a colourless voice.
“I’ll use my own judgment,” she retorted tartly.
“Use mine. It is perhaps better. Don’t interfere.”
“Don’t be a fool, James.”
“Will you listen to me — —”
“About Elena Clydesdale?” she asked maliciously.
“There is nothing to tell about her.”
“Naturally. I never heard the Desboros were blackguards — only a trifle airy, James — a trifle gallant! Dear child, don’t anger me. You know it wouldn’t be well for you.”
“I ask you merely to mind your business.”
“That I shall do. My life’s business is Jacqueline. You yourself made her so — —” Malice indescribable snapped in her tiny black eyes, and she laughed harshly. “You made that motherless girl my business. Ask yourself if you’ve ever, inadvertently, done as decent a thing?”
“Do you understand that I wish to marry her?” he asked, white with passion.
“You! What do I care what your patronising intentions may be? And, James, if you drive me to it — —” she fairly glared at him, “ — I’ll destroy even your acquaintanceship with her. And I possess the means to do it!”
“Try it!” he motioned with dry lips.
A moment later the animated chatter of young people filled the room, and among them sounded Jacqueline’s voice.
“Oh!” she said, laughing, when she saw Mrs. Hammerton and Desboro coming from the embrasure of the window. “Have you been flirting again, Aunt Hannah!”
“Yes,” said the old lady grimly, “and I think I’ve taken him into camp.”
“Then it’s my turn,” said Jacqueline. “Come on, Mr. Desboro, you can’t escape me. I’m going to beat you a game of rabbit!”
Everybody drifted into the billiard-room at their heels, and found them already at their stations on either side of the pool table, each one covering the side pocket with left hand spread wide. Jacqueline had the cue-ball; it lay on the cloth in front of her, and her slim right hand covered it.
“Ready?” she asked of Desboro.
“Ready,” he said, watching her.
She made a feint; he sprang to the left; she shot the ball toward the right corner pocket, missed, carromed, and tried to recover it; but Desboro’s arm shot out across the cloth and he seized it and shot it at her left corner pocket. It went in with a plunk!
“One for Jim!” said Reggie gravely, and, picking up a cue, scored with a button overhead.
“Plunk!” went the ball again into the same pocket; and Jacqueline gave a little cry of dismay as Desboro leaned far over the table, threatening, feinting, moving the ball so fast she could scarcely follow his hand. Then she thought she saw the crisis coming, sprang toward the left corner pocket, gave a cry of terror, and plunk! went the ball into her side pocket.
Flushed, golden hair in pretty disorder, she sprang back on guard again, and the onlookers watched the movement of her hands, fascinated by their grace and beauty as she defended her side of the table and, finally, snatched the ball from t
he very jaws of the right corner.
It was a breathless, exciting game, even for rabbit, and was fought to a furious finish; but she went down to defeat, and Desboro came around the table to condole with her, and together they stepped aside to leave the arena free for Katharine Frere and Reggie.
“I’m so sorry, dear,” he said under his breath.
“It’s what I want, Jim. Never let me take the lead again — in anything.”
His laugh was not genuine. He glanced across the room and saw Aunt Hannah pretending not to watch him. Near her stood Elena Clydesdale beside her husband, making no such pretence.
He said in a low voice: “Jacqueline, would you marry me as soon as I can get a license — if I asked you to do it?”
She blushed furiously; then walked over to the window and gazed out, dismayed and astounded. He followed.
“Will you, dear? I have the very best of reasons for asking you.”
“Could you tell me the reasons, Jim?” she asked, still dazed.
“I had rather not — if you don’t mind. Will you trust me when I say it is better for us to marry quietly and at once?”
She looked up at him dumbly, the scarlet slowly fading from brow and cheek.
“Do you trust me?” he repeated.
“Yes — I trust you.”
“Will you marry me, then, as soon as I can arrange for it?”
She was silent.
“Will you?” he urged.
“Jim — darling — I wanted to be equipped — I wanted to have some pretty things, in order to — to be at my very best — for you. A girl is a bride only once in her life; a man remembers her as she came to him first.”
“Dearest, as I saw you first, so I will always think of you.”
“Oh, Jim! In that black gown and cuffs and collar!”
“You don’t understand men, dear. No coronation robe ever could compete with that dress in my affections. You always are perfect; I never saw you when you weren’t bewitching — —”
“But, dear, there are other things — —”
“We’ll buy them together!”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 654