August, 1902
I
"The marriage law of the new dispensation will be: THOU SHALT NOT
BE UNFAITHFUL--TO THYSELF."
A discreet murmur of approval filled the studio, and through the
haze of cigarette smoke Mrs. Clement Westall, as her husband
descended from his improvised platform, saw him merged in a
congratulatory group of ladies. Westall's informal talks on "The
New Ethics" had drawn about him an eager following of the
mentally unemployed--those who, as he had once phrased it, liked
to have their brain-food cut up for them. The talks had begun by
accident. Westall's ideas were known to be "advanced," but
hitherto their advance had not been in the direction of
publicity. He had been, in his wife's opinion, almost
pusillanimously careful not to let his personal views endanger
his professional standing. Of late, however, he had shown a
puzzling tendency to dogmatize, to throw down the gauntlet, to
flaunt his private code in the face of society; and the relation
of the sexes being a topic always sure of an audience, a few
admiring friends had persuaded him to give his after-dinner
opinions a larger circulation by summing them up in a series of
talks at the Van Sideren studio.
The Herbert Van Siderens were a couple who subsisted, socially,
on the fact that they had a studio. Van Sideren's pictures were
chiefly valuable as accessories to the mise en scene which
differentiated his wife's "afternoons" from the blighting
functions held in long New York drawing-rooms, and permitted her
to offer their friends whiskey-and-soda instead of tea. Mrs. Van
Sideren, for her part, was skilled in making the most of the kind
of atmosphere which a lay-figure and an easel create; and if at
times she found the illusion hard to maintain, and lost courage
to the extent of almost wishing that Herbert could paint, she
promptly overcame such moments of weakness by calling in some
fresh talent, some extraneous re-enforcement of the "artistic"
impression. It was in quest of such aid that she had seized on
Westall, coaxing him, somewhat to his wife's surprise, into a
flattered participation in her fraud. It was vaguely felt, in
the Van Sideren circle, that all the audacities were artistic,
and that a teacher who pronounced marriage immoral was somehow as
distinguished as a painter who depicted purple grass and a green
sky. The Van Sideren set were tired of the conventional color-
scheme in art and conduct.
Julia Westall had long had her own views on the immorality of
marriage; she might indeed have claimed her husband as a
disciple. In the early days of their union she had secretly
resented his disinclination to proclaim himself a follower of the
new creed; had been inclined to tax him with moral cowardice,
with a failure to live up to the convictions for which their
marriage was supposed to stand. That was in the first burst of
propagandism, when, womanlike, she wanted to turn her
disobedience into a law. Now she felt differently. She could
hardly account for the change, yet being a woman who never
allowed her impulses to remain unaccounted for, she tried to do
so by saying that she did not care to have the articles of her
faith misinterpreted by the vulgar. In this connection, she was
beginning to think that almost every one was vulgar; certainly
there were few to whom she would have cared to intrust the
defence of so esoteric a doctrine. And it was precisely at this
point that Westall, discarding his unspoken principles, had
chosen to descend from the heights of privacy, and stand hawking
his convictions at the street-corner!
It was Una Van Sideren who, on this occasion, unconsciously
focussed upon herself Mrs. Westall's wandering resentment. In
the first place, the girl had no business to be there. It was
"horrid"--Mrs. Westall found herself slipping back into the old
feminine vocabulary--simply "horrid" to think of a young girl's
being allowed to listen to such talk. The fact that Una smoked
cigarettes and sipped an occasional cocktail did not in the least
tarnish a certain radiant innocency which made her appear the
victim, rather than the accomplice, of her parents' vulgarities.
Julia Westall felt in a hot helpless way that something ought to
be done--that some one ought to speak to the girl's mother. And
just then Una glided up.
"Oh, Mrs. Westall, how beautiful it was!" Una fixed her with
large limpid eyes. "You believe it all, I suppose?" she asked
with seraphic gravity.
"All--what, my dear child?"
The girl shone on her. "About the higher life--the freer
expansion of the individual--the law of fidelity to one's self,"
she glibly recited.
Mrs. Westall, to her own wonder, blushed a deep and burning
blush.
"My dear Una," she said, "you don't in the least understand what
it's all about!"
Miss Van Sideren stared, with a slowly answering blush. "Don't
YOU, then?" she murmured.
Mrs. Westall laughed. "Not always--or altogether! But I should
like some tea, please."
Una led her to the corner where innocent beverages were
dispensed. As Julia received her cup she scrutinized the girl
more carefully. It was not such a girlish face, after all--
definite lines were forming under the rosy haze of youth. She
reflected that Una must be six-and-twenty, and wondered why she
had not married. A nice stock of ideas she would have as her
dower! If THEY were to be a part of the modern girl's trousseau--
Mrs. Westall caught herself up with a start. It was as though
some one else had been speaking--a stranger who had borrowed her
own voice: she felt herself the dupe of some fantastic mental
ventriloquism. Concluding suddenly that the room was stifling
and Una's tea too sweet, she set down her cup, and looked about
for Westall: to meet his eyes had long been her refuge from every
uncertainty. She met them now, but only, as she felt, in
transit; they included her parenthetically in a larger flight.
She followed the flight, and it carried her to a corner to which
Una had withdrawn--one of the palmy nooks to which Mrs. Van
Sideren attributed the success of her Saturdays. Westall, a
moment later, had overtaken his look, and found a place at the
girl's side. She bent forward, speaking eagerly; he leaned back,
listening, with the depreciatory smile which acted as a filter to
flattery, enabling him to swallow the strongest doses without
apparent grossness of appetite. Julia winced at her own
definition of the smile.
On the way home, in the deserted winter dusk, Westall surprised
his wife by a sudden boyish pressure of her arm. "Did I open
their eyes a bit? Did I tell them what you wanted me to?" he
asked gaily.
Almost unconsciously, she let her arm slip from his. "What I
wanted--?"
"Why, haven't you--all this time?" She caught the honest wonder
of his tone. "I somehow fancied you'd rather blamed me for not
talking more openly--before-- You've made me feel, at times, that
I was sacrificing principles to expediency."
She paused a moment over her reply; then she asked quietly: "What
made you decide not to--any longer?"
She felt again the vibration of a faint surprise. "Why--the wish
to please you!" he answered, almost too simply.
"I wish you would not go on, then," she said abruptly.
He stopped in his quick walk, and she felt his stare through the
darkness.
"Not go on--?"
"Call a hansom, please. I'm tired," broke from her with a sudden
rush of physical weariness.
Instantly his solicitude enveloped her. The room had been
infernally hot--and then that confounded cigarette smoke--he had
noticed once or twice that she looked pale--she mustn't come to
another Saturday. She felt herself yielding, as she always did,
to the warm influence of his concern for her, the feminine in her
leaning on the man in him with a conscious intensity of
abandonment. He put her in the hansom, and her hand stole into
his in the darkness. A tear or two rose, and she let them fall.
It was so delicious to cry over imaginary troubles!
That evening, after dinner, he surprised her by reverting to the
subject of his talk. He combined a man's dislike of
uncomfortable questions with an almost feminine skill in eluding
them; and she knew that if he returned to the subject he must
have some special reason for doing so.
"You seem not to have cared for what I said this afternoon. Did
I put the case badly?"
"No--you put it very well."
"Then what did you mean by saying that you would rather not have
me go on with it?"
She glanced at him nervously, her ignorance of his intention
deepening her sense of helplessness.
"I don't think I care to hear such things discussed in public."
"I don't understand you," he exclaimed. Again the feeling that
his surprise was genuine gave an air of obliquity to her own
attitude. She was not sure that she understood herself.
"Won't you explain?" he said with a tinge of impatience.
Her eyes wandered about the familiar drawing-room which had been
the scene of so many of their evening confidences. The shaded
lamps, the quiet-colored walls hung with mezzotints, the pale
spring flowers scattered here and there in Venice glasses and
bowls of old Sevres, recalled, she hardly knew why, the apartment
in which the evenings of her first marriage had been passed--a
wilderness of rosewood and upholstery, with a picture of a Roman
peasant above the mantel-piece, and a Greek slave in "statuary
marble" between the folding-doors of the back drawing-room. It
was a room with which she had never been able to establish any
closer relation than that between a traveller and a railway
station; and now, as she looked about at the surroundings which
stood for her deepest affinities--the room for which she had left
that other room--she was startled by the same sense of
strangeness and unfamiliarity. The prints, the flowers, the
subdued tones of the old porcelains, seemed to typify a
superficial refinement that had no relation to the deeper
significances of life.
Suddenly she heard her husband repeating his question.
"I don't know that I can explain," she faltered.
He drew his arm-chair forward so that he faced her across the
hearth. The light of a reading-lamp fell on his finely drawn
face, which had a kind of surface-sensitiveness akin to the
surface-refinement of its setting.
"Is it that you no longer believe in our ideas?" he asked.
"In our ideas--?"
"The ideas I am trying to teach. The ideas you and I are
supposed to stand for." He paused a moment. "The ideas on which
our marriage was founded."
The blood rushed to her face. He had his reasons, then--she was
sure now that he had his reasons! In the ten years of their
marriage, how often had either of them stopped to consider the
ideas on which it was founded? How often does a man dig about
the basement of his house to examine its foundation? The
foundation is there, of course--the house rests on it--but one
lives abovestairs and not in the cellar. It was she, indeed, who
in the beginning had insisted on reviewing the situation now and
then, on recapitulating the reasons which justified her course,
on proclaiming, from time to time, her adherence to the religion
of personal independence; but she had long ceased to feel the
need of any such ideal standards, and had accepted her marriage
as frankly and naturally as though it had been based on the
primitive needs of the heart, and needed no special sanction to
explain or justify it.
"Of course I still believe in our ideas!" she exclaimed.
"Then I repeat that I don't understand. It was a part of your
theory that the greatest possible publicity should be given to
our view of marriage. Have you changed your mind in that
respect?"
She hesitated. "It depends on circumstances--on the public one
is addressing. The set of people that the Van Siderens get about
them don't care for the truth or falseness of a doctrine. They
are attracted simply by its novelty."
"And yet it was in just such a set of people that you and I met,
and learned the truth from each other."
"That was different."
"In what way?"
"I was not a young girl, to begin with. It is perfectly
unfitting that young girls should be present at--at such times--
should hear such things discussed--"
"I thought you considered it one of the deepest social wrongs
that such things never ARE discussed before young girls; but that
is beside the point, for I don't remember seeing any young girl
in my audience to-day--"
"Except Una Van Sideren!"
He turned slightly and pushed back the lamp at his elbow.
"Oh, Miss Van Sideren--naturally--"
"Why naturally?"
"The daughter of the house--would you have had her sent out with
her governess?"
"If I had a daughter I should not allow such things to go on in
my house!"
Westall, stroking his mustache, leaned back with a faint smile.
"I fancy Miss Van Sideren is quite capable of taking care of
herself."
"No girl knows how to take care of herself--till it's too late."
"And yet you would deliberately deny her the surest means of
self-defence?"
"What do you call the surest means of self-defence?"
"Some preliminary knowledge of human nature in its relation to
the marriage tie."
She made an impatient gesture. "How should you like to marry
that kind of a girl?"
"Immensely--if she were my kind of girl in other respects."
She took up the argument at another point.
"You are quite mistaken if you think such talk does not affect
young girls. Una was in a state of the most absurd exaltation--"
She broke off, wondering why she had spoken.
Westall reopened a magazine which he had laid aside at the
beginning of their discussion. "What you tell me is immensely
flattering to my oratorical talent--but I fear you overrate its
effect. I can assure you that Miss Van Sideren doesn't have to
have her thinking done for her. She's quite capable of doing it
herself."
"You seem very familiar with her mental processes!" flashed
unguardedly from his wife.
He looked up quietly from the pages he was cutting.
"I should like to be," he answered. "She interests me."
II
If there be a distinction in being misunderstood, it was one
denied to Julia Westall when she left her first husband. Every
one was ready to excuse and even to defend her. The world she
adorned agreed that John Arment was "impossible," and hostesses
gave a sigh of relief at the thought that it would no longer be
necessary to ask him to dine.
There had been no scandal connected with the divorce: neither
side had accused the other of the offence euphemistically
described as "statutory." The Arments had indeed been obliged to
transfer their allegiance to a State which recognized desertion
as a cause for divorce, and construed the term so liberally that
the seeds of desertion were shown to exist in every union. Even
Mrs. Arment's second marriage did not make traditional morality
stir in its sleep. It was known that she had not met her second
husband till after she had parted from the first, and she had,
moreover, replaced a rich man by a poor one. Though Clement
Westall was acknowledged to be a rising lawyer, it was generally
felt that his fortunes would not rise as rapidly as his
reputation. The Westalls would probably always have to live
quietly and go out to dinner in cabs. Could there be better
evidence of Mrs. Arment's complete disinterestedness?
If the reasoning by which her friends justified her course was
somewhat cruder and less complex than her own elucidation of the
matter, both explanations led to the same conclusion: John Arment
was impossible. The only difference was that, to his wife, his
impossibility was something deeper than a social
disqualification. She had once said, in ironical defence of her
marriage, that it had at least preserved her from the necessity
of sitting next to him at dinner; but she had not then realized
at what cost the immunity was purchased. John Arment was
impossible; but the sting of his impossibility lay in the fact
that he made it impossible for those about him to be other than
himself. By an unconscious process of elimination he had
excluded from the world everything of which he did not feel a
personal need: had become, as it were, a climate in which only
his own requirements survived. This might seem to imply a
deliberate selfishness; but there was nothing deliberate about
Arment. He was as instinctive as an animal or a child. It was
this childish element in his nature which sometimes for a moment
unsettled his wife's estimate of him. Was it possible that he
was simply undeveloped, that he had delayed, somewhat longer than
is usual, the laborious process of growing up? He had the kind
of sporadic shrewdness which causes it to be said of a dull man
that he is "no fool"; and it was this quality that his wife found
most trying. Even to the naturalist it is annoying to have his
deductions disturbed by some unforeseen aberrancy of form or
function; and how much more so to the wife whose estimate of
herself is inevitably bound up with her judgment of her husband!
Arment's shrewdness did not, indeed, imply any latent
intellectual power; it suggested, rather, potentialities of
feeling, of suffering, perhaps, in a blind rudimentary way, on
which Julia's sensibilities naturally declined to linger. She so
fully understood her own reasons for leaving him that she
disliked to think they were not as comprehensible to her husband.
She was haunted, in her analytic moments, by the look of
perplexity, too inarticulate for words, with which he had
acquiesced to her explanations.
These moments were rare with her, however. Her marriage had been
too concrete a misery to be surveyed philosophically. If she had
been unhappy for complex reasons, the unhappiness was as real as
though it had been uncomplicated. Soul is more bruisable than
flesh, and Julia was wounded in every fibre of her spirit. Her
husband's personality seemed to be closing gradually in on her,
obscuring the sky and cutting off the air, till she felt herself
shut up among the decaying bodies of her starved hopes. A sense
of having been decoyed by some world-old conspiracy into this
bondage of body and soul filled her with despair. If marriage
was the slow life-long acquittal of a debt contracted in
ignorance, then marriage was a crime against human nature. She,
for one, would have no share in maintaining the pretence of which
she had been a victim: the pretence that a man and a woman,
forced into the narrowest of personal relations, must remain
there till the end, though they may have outgrown the span of
each other's natures as the mature tree outgrows the iron brace
about the sapling.
It was in the first heat of her moral indignation that she had
met Clement Westall. She had seen at once that he was
"interested," and had fought off the discovery, dreading any
influence that should draw her back into the bondage of
conventional relations. To ward off the peril she had, with an
almost crude precipitancy, revealed her opinions to him. To her
surprise, she found that he shared them. She was attracted by
the frankness of a suitor who, while pressing his suit, admitted
that he did not believe in marriage. Her worst audacities did
not seem to surprise him: he had thought out all that she had
felt, and they had reached the same conclusion. People grew at
varying rates, and the yoke that was an easy fit for the one
might soon become galling to the other. That was what divorce
was for: the readjustment of personal relations. As soon as
their necessarily transitive nature was recognized they would
gain in dignity as well as in harmony. There would be no farther
need of the ignoble concessions and connivances, the perpetual
sacrifice of personal delicacy and moral pride, by means of which
imperfect marriages were now held together. Each partner to the
contract would be on his mettle, forced to live up to the highest
standard of self-development, on pain of losing the other's
respect and affection. The low nature could no longer drag the
higher down, but must struggle to rise, or remain alone on its
inferior level. The only necessary condition to a harmonious
marriage was a frank recognition of this truth, and a solemn
agreement between the contracting parties to keep faith with
themselves, and not to live together for a moment after complete
accord had ceased to exist between them. The new adultery was
unfaithfulness to self.
It was, as Westall had just reminded her, on this understanding
that they had married. The ceremony was an unimportant
concession to social prejudice: now that the door of divorce
stood open, no marriage need be an imprisonment, and the contract
therefore no longer involved any diminution of self-respect. The
nature of their attachment placed them so far beyond the reach of
such contingencies that it was easy to discuss them with an open
mind; and Julia's sense of security made her dwell with a tender
insistence on Westall's promise to claim his release when he
should cease to love her. The exchange of these vows seemed to
make them, in a sense, champions of the new law, pioneers in the
forbidden realm of individual freedom: they felt that they had
somehow achieved beatitude without martyrdom.
This, as Julia now reviewed the past, she perceived to have been
her theoretical attitude toward marriage. It was unconsciously,
insidiously, that her ten years of happiness with Westall had
developed another conception of the tie; a reversion, rather, to
the old instinct of passionate dependency and possessorship that
now made her blood revolt at the mere hint of change. Change?
Renewal? Was that what they had called it, in their foolish
jargon? Destruction, extermination rather--this rending of a
myriad fibres interwoven with another's being! Another? But he
was not other! He and she were one, one in the mystic sense
which alone gave marriage its significance. The new law was not
for them, but for the disunited creatures forced into a mockery
of union. The gospel she had felt called on to proclaim had no
bearing on her own case. . . . She sent for the doctor and told
him she was sure she needed a nerve tonic.
She took the nerve tonic diligently, but it failed to act as a
sedative to her fears. She did not know what she feared; but
that made her anxiety the more pervasive. Her husband had not
reverted to the subject of his Saturday talks. He was unusually
kind and considerate, with a softening of his quick manner, a
touch of shyness in his consideration, that sickened her with new
fears. She told herself that it was because she looked badly--
because he knew about the doctor and the nerve tonic--that he
showed this deference to her wishes, this eagerness to screen her
from moral draughts; but the explanation simply cleared the way
for fresh inferences.
The week passed slowly, vacantly, like a prolonged Sunday. On
Saturday the morning post brought a note from Mrs. Van Sideren.
Would dear Julia ask Mr. Westall to come half an hour earlier
than usual, as there was to be some music after his "talk"?
Westall was just leaving for his office when his wife read the
note. She opened the drawing-room door and called him back to
deliver the message.
He glanced at the note and tossed it aside. "What a bore! I
shall have to cut my game of racquets. Well, I suppose it can't
be helped. Will you write and say it's all right?"
Julia hesitated a moment, her hand stiffening on the chair-back
against which she leaned.
"You mean to go on with these talks?" she asked.
"I--why not?" he returned; and this time it struck her that his
surprise was not quite unfeigned. The discovery helped her to
find words.
"You said you had started them with the idea of pleasing me--"
"Well?"
"I told you last week that they didn't please me."
"Last week? Oh--" He seemed to make an effort of memory. "I
thought you were nervous then; you sent for the doctor the next
day."
"It was not the doctor I needed; it was your assurance--"
"My assurance?"
Suddenly she felt the floor fail under her. She sank into the
chair with a choking throat, her words, her reasons slipping away
from her like straws down a whirling flood.
"Clement," she cried, "isn't it enough for you to know that I
hate it?"
He turned to close the door behind them; then he walked toward
her and sat down. "What is it that you hate?" he asked gently.
She had made a desperate effort to rally her routed argument.
"I can't bear to have you speak as if--as if--our marriage--were
like the other kind--the wrong kind. When I heard you there, the
other afternoon, before all those inquisitive gossiping people,
proclaiming that husbands and wives had a right to leave each
other whenever they were tired--or had seen some one else--"
Westall sat motionless, his eyes fixed on a pattern of the
carpet.
"You HAVE ceased to take this view, then?" he said as she broke
off. "You no longer believe that husbands and wives ARE
justified in separating--under such conditions?"
"Under such conditions?" she stammered. "Yes--I still believe
that--but how can we judge for others? What can we know of the
circumstances--?"
He interrupted her. "I thought it was a fundamental article of
our creed that the special circumstances produced by marriage
were not to interfere with the full assertion of individual
liberty." He paused a moment. "I thought that was your reason
for leaving Arment."
She flushed to the forehead. It was not like him to give a
personal turn to the argument.
"It was my reason," she said simply.
"Well, then--why do you refuse to recognize its validity now?"
"I don't--I don't--I only say that one can't judge for others."
He made an impatient movement. "This is mere hair-splitting.
What you mean is that, the doctrine having served your purpose
when you needed it, you now repudiate it."
"Well," she exclaimed, flushing again, "what if I do? What does
it matter to us?"
Westall rose from his chair. He was excessively pale, and stood
before his wife with something of the formality of a stranger.
"It matters to me," he said in a low voice, "because I do NOT
repudiate it."
"Well--?"
"And because I had intended to invoke it as"--
He paused and drew his breath deeply. She sat silent, almost
deafened by her heart-beats.
--"as a complete justification of the course I am about to take."
Julia remained motionless. "What course is that?" she asked.
He cleared his throat. "I mean to claim the fulfilment of your
promise."
For an instant the room wavered and darkened; then she recovered
a torturing acuteness of vision. Every detail of her
surroundings pressed upon her: the tick of the clock, the slant
of sunlight on the wall, the hardness of the chair-arms that she
grasped, were a separate wound to each sense.
"My promise--" she faltered.
"Your part of our mutual agreement to set each other free if one
or the other should wish to be released."
She was silent again. He waited a moment, shifting his position
nervously; then he said, with a touch of irritability: "You
acknowledge the agreement?"
The question went through her like a shock. She lifted her head
to it proudly. "I acknowledge the agreement," she said.
"And--you don't mean to repudiate it?"
A log on the hearth fell forward, and mechanically he advanced
and pushed it back.
"No," she answered slowly, "I don't mean to repudiate it."
There was a pause. He remained near the hearth, his elbow
resting on the mantel-shelf. Close to his hand stood a little
cup of jade that he had given her on one of their wedding
anniversaries. She wondered vaguely if he noticed it.
"You intend to leave me, then?" she said at length.
His gesture seemed to deprecate the crudeness of the allusion.
"To marry some one else?"
Again his eye and hand protested. She rose and stood before him.
"Why should you be afraid to tell me? Is it Una Van Sideren?"
He was silent.
"I wish you good luck," she said.
III
She looked up, finding herself alone. She did not remember when
or how he had left the room, or how long afterward she had sat
there. The fire still smouldered on the hearth, but the slant of
sunlight had left the wall.
Her first conscious thought was that she had not broken her word,
that she had fulfilled the very letter of their bargain. There
had been no crying out, no vain appeal to the past, no attempt at
temporizing or evasion. She had marched straight up to the guns.
Now that it was over, she sickened to find herself alive. She
looked about her, trying to recover her hold on reality. Her
identity seemed to be slipping from her, as it disappears in a
physical swoon. "This is my room--this is my house," she heard
herself saying. Her room? Her house? She could almost hear the
walls laugh back at her.
She stood up, a dull ache in every bone. The silence of the room
frightened her. She remembered, now, having heard the front door
close a long time ago: the sound suddenly re-echoed through her
brain. Her husband must have left the house, then--her HUSBAND?
She no longer knew in what terms to think: the simplest phrases
had a poisoned edge. She sank back into her chair, overcome by a
strange weakness. The clock struck ten--it was only ten o'clock!
Suddenly she remembered that she had not ordered dinner . . . or
were they dining out that evening? DINNER--DINING OUT--the old
meaningless phraseology pursued her! She must try to think of
herself as she would think of some one else, a some one
dissociated from all the familiar routine of the past, whose
wants and habits must gradually be learned, as one might spy out
the ways of a strange animal. . .
The clock struck another hour--eleven. She stood up again and
walked to the door: she thought she would go up stairs to her
room. HER room? Again the word derided her. She opened the
door, crossed the narrow hall, and walked up the stairs. As she
passed, she noticed Westall's sticks and umbrellas: a pair of his
gloves lay on the hall table. The same stair-carpet mounted
between the same walls; the same old French print, in its narrow
black frame, faced her on the landing. This visual continuity
was intolerable. Within, a gaping chasm; without, the same
untroubled and familiar surface. She must get away from it
before she could attempt to think. But, once in her room, she
sat down on the lounge, a stupor creeping over her. . .
Gradually her vision cleared. A great deal had happened in the
interval--a wild marching and countermarching of emotions,
arguments, ideas--a fury of insurgent impulses that fell back
spent upon themselves. She had tried, at first, to rally, to
organize these chaotic forces. There must be help somewhere, if
only she could master the inner tumult. Life could not be broken
off short like this, for a whim, a fancy; the law itself would
side with her, would defend her. The law? What claim had she
upon it? She was the prisoner of her own choice: she had been
her own legislator, and she was the predestined victim of the
code she had devised. But this was grotesque, intolerable--a mad
mistake, for which she could not be held accountable! The law
she had despised was still there, might still be invoked . . .
invoked, but to what end? Could she ask it to chain Westall to
her side? SHE had been allowed to go free when she claimed her
freedom--should she show less magnanimity than she had exacted?
Magnanimity? The word lashed her with its irony--one does not
strike an attitude when one is fighting for life! She would
threaten, grovel, cajole . . . she would yield anything to keep
her hold on happiness. Ah, but the difficulty lay deeper! The
law could not help her--her own apostasy could not help her. She
was the victim of the theories she renounced. It was as though
some giant machine of her own making had caught her up in its
wheels and was grinding her to atoms. . .
It was afternoon when she found herself out-of-doors. She walked
with an aimless haste, fearing to meet familiar faces. The day
was radiant, metallic: one of those searching American days so
calculated to reveal the shortcomings of our street-cleaning and
the excesses of our architecture. The streets looked bare and
hideous; everything stared and glittered. She called a passing
hansom, and gave Mrs. Van Sideren's address. She did not know
what had led up to the act; but she found herself suddenly
resolved to speak, to cry out a warning. it was too late to save
herself--but the girl might still be told. The hansom rattled up
Fifth Avenue; she sat with her eyes fixed, avoiding recognition.
At the Van Siderens' door she sprang out and rang the bell.
Action had cleared her brain, and she felt calm and self-
possessed. She knew now exactly what she meant to say.
The ladies were both out . . . the parlor-maid stood waiting for
a card. Julia, with a vague murmur, turned away from the door
and lingered a moment on the sidewalk. Then she remembered that
she had not paid the cab-driver. She drew a dollar from her
purse and handed it to him. He touched his hat and drove off,
leaving her alone in the long empty street. She wandered away
westward, toward strange thoroughfares, where she was not likely
to meet acquaintances. The feeling of aimlessness had returned.
Once she found herself in the afternoon torrent of Broadway,
swept past tawdry shops and flaming theatrical posters, with a
succession of meaningless faces gliding by in the opposite
direction. . .
A feeling of faintness reminded her that she had not eaten since
morning. She turned into a side street of shabby houses, with
rows of ash-barrels behind bent area railings. In a basement
window she saw the sign LADIES' RESTAURANT: a pie and a dish of
doughnuts lay against the dusty pane like petrified food in an
ethnological museum. She entered, and a young woman with a weak
mouth and a brazen eye cleared a table for her near the window.
The table was covered with a red and white cotton cloth and
adorned with a bunch of celery in a thick tumbler and a salt-
cellar full of grayish lumpy salt. Julia ordered tea, and sat a
long time waiting for it. She was glad to be away from the noise
and confusion of the streets. The low-ceilinged room was empty,
and two or three waitresses with thin pert faces lounged in the
background staring at her and whispering together. At last the
tea was brought in a discolored metal teapot. Julia poured a cup
and drank it hastily. It was black and bitter, but it flowed
through her veins like an elixir. She was almost dizzy with
exhilaration. Oh, how tired, how unutterably tired she had been!
She drank a second cup, blacker and bitterer, and now her mind
was once more working clearly. She felt as vigorous, as
decisive, as when she had stood on the Van Siderens' door-step--
but the wish to return there had subsided. She saw now the
futility of such an attempt--the humiliation to which it might
have exposed her. . . The pity of it was that she did not know
what to do next. The short winter day was fading, and she
realized that she could not remain much longer in the restaurant
without attracting notice. She paid for her tea and went out
into the street. The lamps were alight, and here and there a
basement shop cast an oblong of gas-light across the fissured
pavement. In the dusk there was something sinister about the
aspect of the street, and she hastened back toward Fifth Avenue.
She was not used to being out alone at that hour.
At the corner of Fifth Avenue she paused and stood watching the
stream of carriages. At last a policeman caught sight of her and
signed to her that he would take her across. She had not meant
to cross the street, but she obeyed automatically, and presently
found herself on the farther corner. There she paused again for
a moment; but she fancied the policeman was watching her, and
this sent her hastening down the nearest side street. . . After
that she walked a long time, vaguely. . . Night had fallen, and
now and then, through the windows of a passing carriage, she
caught the expanse of an evening waistcoat or the shimmer of an
opera cloak. . .
Suddenly she found herself in a familiar street. She stood still
a moment, breathing quickly. She had turned the corner without
noticing whither it led; but now, a few yards ahead of her, she
saw the house in which she had once lived--her first husband's
house. The blinds were drawn, and only a faint translucence
marked the windows and the transom above the door. As she stood
there she heard a step behind her, and a man walked by in the
direction of the house. He walked slowly, with a heavy middle-
aged gait, his head sunk a little between the shoulders, the red
crease of his neck visible above the fur collar of his overcoat.
He crossed the street, went up the steps of the house, drew forth
a latch-key, and let himself in. . .
There was no one else in sight. Julia leaned for a long time
against the area-rail at the corner, her eyes fixed on the front
of the house. The feeling of physical weariness had returned,
but the strong tea still throbbed in her veins and lit her brain
with an unnatural clearness. Presently she heard another step
draw near, and moving quickly away, she too crossed the street
and mounted the steps of the house. The impulse which had
carried her there prolonged itself in a quick pressure of the
electric bell--then she felt suddenly weak and tremulous, and
grasped the balustrade for support. The door opened and a young
footman with a fresh inexperienced face stood on the threshold.
Julia knew in an instant that he would admit her.
"I saw Mr. Arment going in just now," she said. "Will you ask
him to see me for a moment?"
The footman hesitated. "I think Mr. Arment has gone up to dress
for dinner, madam."
Julia advanced into the hall. "I am sure he will see me--I will
not detain him long," she said. She spoke quietly,
authoritatively, in the tone which a good servant does not
mistake. The footman had his hand on the drawing-room door.
"I will tell him, madam. What name, please?"
Julia trembled: she had not thought of that. "Merely say a
lady," she returned carelessly.
The footman wavered and she fancied herself lost; but at that
instant the door opened from within and John Arment stepped into
the hall. He drew back sharply as he saw her, his florid face
turning sallow with the shock; then the blood poured back to it,
swelling the veins on his temples and reddening the lobes of his
thick ears.
It was long since Julia had seen him, and she was startled at the
change in his appearance. He had thickened, coarsened, settled
down into the enclosing flesh. But she noted this insensibly:
her one conscious thought was that, now she was face to face with
him, she must not let him escape till he had heard her. Every
pulse in her body throbbed with the urgency of her message.
She went up to him as he drew back. "I must speak to you," she
said.
Arment hesitated, red and stammering. Julia glanced at the
footman, and her look acted as a warning. The instinctive
shrinking from a "scene" predominated over every other impulse,
and Arment said slowly: "Will you come this way?"
He followed her into the drawing-room and closed the door.
Julia, as she advanced, was vaguely aware that the room at least
was unchanged: time had not mitigated its horrors. The contadina
still lurched from the chimney-breast, and the Greek slave
obstructed the threshold of the inner room. The place was alive
with memories: they started out from every fold of the yellow
satin curtains and glided between the angles of the rosewood
furniture. But while some subordinate agency was carrying these
impressions to her brain, her whole conscious effort was centred
in the act of dominating Arment's will. The fear that he would
refuse to hear her mounted like fever to her brain. She felt her
purpose melt before it, words and arguments running into each
other in the heat of her longing. For a moment her voice failed
her, and she imagined herself thrust out before she could speak;
but as she was struggling for a word, Arment pushed a chair
forward, and said quietly: "You are not well."
The sound of his voice steadied her. It was neither kind nor
unkind--a voice that suspended judgment, rather, awaiting
unforeseen developments. She supported herself against the back
of the chair and drew a deep breath. "Shall I send for
something?" he continued, with a cold embarrassed politeness.
Julia raised an entreating hand. "No--no--thank you. I am quite
well."
He paused midway toward the bell and turned on her. "Then may I
ask--?"
"Yes," she interrupted him. "I came here because I wanted to see
you. There is something I must tell you."
Arment continued to scrutinize her. "I am surprised at that," he
said. "I should have supposed that any communication you may
wish to make could have been made through our lawyers."
"Our lawyers!" She burst into a little laugh. "I don't think
they could help me--this time."
Arment's face took on a barricaded look. "If there is any
question of help--of course--"
It struck her, whimsically, that she had seen that look when some
shabby devil called with a subscription-book. Perhaps he thought
she wanted him to put his name down for so much in sympathy--or
even in money. . . The thought made her laugh again. She saw
his look change slowly to perplexity. All his facial changes
were slow, and she remembered, suddenly, how it had once diverted
her to shift that lumbering scenery with a word. For the first
time it struck her that she had been cruel. "There IS a question
of help," she said in a softer key: "you can help me; but only by
listening. . . I want to tell you something. . ."
Arment's resistance was not yielding. "Would it not be easier
to--write?" he suggested.
She shook her head. "There is no time to write . . . and it
won't take long." She raised her head and their eyes met. "My
husband has left me," she said.
"Westall--?" he stammered, reddening again.
"Yes. This morning. Just as I left you. Because he was tired
of me."
The words, uttered scarcely above a whisper, seemed to dilate to
the limit of the room. Arment looked toward the door; then his
embarrassed glance returned to Julia.
"I am very sorry," he said awkwardly.
"Thank you," she murmured.
"But I don't see--"
"No--but you will--in a moment. Won't you listen to me?
Please!" Instinctively she had shifted her position putting
herself between him and the door. "It happened this morning,"
she went on in short breathless phrases. "I never suspected
anything--I thought we were--perfectly happy. . . Suddenly he
told me he was tired of me . . . there is a girl he likes better. . .
He has gone to her. . ." As she spoke, the lurking anguish
rose upon her, possessing her once more to the exclusion of every
other emotion. Her eyes ached, her throat swelled with it, and
two painful tears burnt a way down her face.
Arment's constraint was increasing visibly. "This--this is very
unfortunate," he began. "But I should say the law--"
"The law?" she echoed ironically. "When he asks for his
freedom?"
"You are not obliged to give it."
"You were not obliged to give me mine--but you did."
He made a protesting gesture.
"You saw that the law couldn't help you--didn't you?" she went
on. "That is what I see now. The law represents material
rights--it can't go beyond. If we don't recognize an inner law . . .
the obligation that love creates . . . being loved as well as
loving . . . there is nothing to prevent our spreading ruin
unhindered . . . is there?" She raised her head plaintively,
with the look of a bewildered child. "That is what I see now . . .
what I wanted to tell you. He leaves me because he's tired . . .
but I was not tired; and I don't understand why he is. That's
the dreadful part of it--the not understanding: I hadn't realized
what it meant. But I've been thinking of it all day, and things
have come back to me--things I hadn't noticed . . . when you and
I. . ." She moved closer to him, and fixed her eyes on his with
the gaze that tries to reach beyond words. "I see now that YOU
didn't understand--did you?"
Their eyes met in a sudden shock of comprehension: a veil seemed
to be lifted between them. Arment's lip trembled.
"No," he said, "I didn't understand."
She gave a little cry, almost of triumph. "I knew it! I knew
it! You wondered--you tried to tell me--but no words came. . .
You saw your life falling in ruins . . . the world slipping from
you . . . and you couldn't speak or move!"
She sank down on the chair against which she had been leaning.
"Now I know--now I know," she repeated.
"I am very sorry for you," she heard Arment stammer.
She looked up quickly. "That's not what I came for. I don't
want you to be sorry. I came to ask you to forgive me . . . for
not understanding that YOU didn't understand. . . That's all I
wanted to say." She rose with a vague sense that the end had
come, and put out a groping hand toward the door.
Arment stood motionless. She turned to him with a faint smile.
"You forgive me?"
"There is nothing to forgive--"
"Then will you shake hands for good-by?" She felt his hand in
hers: it was nerveless, reluctant.
"Good-by," she repeated. "I understand now."
She opened the door and passed out into the hall. As she did so,
Arment took an impulsive step forward; but just then the footman,
who was evidently alive to his obligations, advanced from the
background to let her out. She heard Arment fall back. The
footman threw open the door, and she found herself outside in the
darkness.
The End of The Reckoning