The Letter of the Contract

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[Illustration: See p. 29 "Can't you see that my heart's breaking, too?"
She looked him in the face, shaking her head, sadly. "No, I can't see
that."]

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THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT

BY
BASIL KING

AUTHOR OF
The Inner Shrine

ILLUSTRATED

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMXIV

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BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE INNER SHRINE"

BASIL KING

THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT. Ill'd
THE WAY HOME. Illustrated
THE WILD OLIVE. Illustrated
THE INNER SHRINE. Illustrated
THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT. Ill'd
LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER. Post 8vo
IN THE GARDEN OF CHARITY. Post 8vo
THE STEPS OF HONOR. Post 8vo
THE GIANT'S STRENGTH. Post 8vo

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HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1914. BY HARPER & BROTHERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED AUGUST, 1914

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CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. TRANSGRESSION 1
II. RESENTMENT 41
III. REPROACH 83
IV. DANGER 134
V. PENALTY 160

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ILLUSTRATIONS

"Can't You See that My Heart's Breaking, Too?" She Looked Him in the
Face, Shaking Her Head, Sadly. "No, I Can't See That" Frontispiece

He Turned from the Girl to His Wife. "I'm Willing to Explain
Anything You Like--as Far as I Can" Page 26

"Oh, Chip, Go Away! I Can't Stand Any More--Now." "Do You Mean
that You'll See Me--Later--when We're in London?" " 155

Edith was Standing in the Doorway, the Man Behind Her. "Chip,
Mr. Lacon Knows We Met in England" " 192

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THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT

I

TRANSGRESSION

It was strange to think that if, on finishing her coffee in her room,
she had looked in on the children, as she generally did, instead of
going down to the drawing-room to write a note, her whole life might
have been different. "Why didn't I?" was the question she often asked
herself in the succeeding years, only to follow it with the reflection:
"But perhaps it would have happened in any case. Since the fact was
there, I must have come to know it--in the long run."

The note was an unimportant one. She could have sent it by a servant at
any minute of the day. The very needlessness of writing it at once, so
that her husband could post it as he went to his office, gave to the act
something of the force of fate.

Everything that morning, when she came to think of it, had something of
the force of fate. Why, on entering the drawing-room, hadn't she gone
straight to her desk, according to her intention, if it wasn't that fate
intervened? As a matter of fact, she went to the oriel window looking
down into Fifth Avenue, with vague thoughts of the weather. It was one
of those small Scotch corner windows that show you both sides of the
street at once. It was so much the favorite conning-spot of the family
that she advanced to it from habit.

And yet, if she had gone to her desk, that girl might have disappeared
before the lines of the note were penned. As it was, the girl was there,
standing as she had stood on other occasions--three or four, at
least--between the two little iron posts that spaced off the opening for
foot-passengers into the Park. She was looking up at the house in the
way Edith had noticed before--not with the scrutiny of one who wishes to
see, but with the forlorn patience of the unobtrusive creature hoping to
be seen.

In a neat gray suit of the fashion of 1904 and squirrel furs she was the
more unobtrusive because of a background of light snow. She was
pathetically unobtrusive. Not that she seemed poor; she suggested,
rather, some one lost or dazed or partially blotted out. People glanced
at her as they hurried by. There were some who turned and glanced a
second time. She might have been a person with a sorrow--a love-sorrow.
At that thought Edith's heart went out to her in sympathy. She herself
was so happy, with a happiness that had grown more intense each month,
each week, each day, of her six years of married life, that it filled
her imagination with a blissful, pitying pain to think that other women
suffered.

The pity was sincere, and the bliss came from the knowledge of her
security. She felt it wonderful to have such a sense of safety as that
she experienced in gazing across the street at the girl's wistful face.
It was like the overpowering thankfulness with which a man on a rock
looks on while others drown. It wasn't callousness; it was only an
appreciation of mercies. She was genuinely sorry for the girl, if the
girl needed sorrow; but she didn't see what she could do to help her.
It was well known that out in that life of New York--and of the world at
large--there were tempests of passion in which lives were wrecked; but
from them she herself was as surely protected by her husband's love as,
in her warm and well-stored house, she was shielded from hunger and the
storm. She accepted this good fortune meekly and as a special
blessedness; but she couldn't help rejoicing all the more in the
knowledge of her security.

The knowledge of her security gave luxury to the sigh with which she
turned in the course of a few minutes to write her note. The desk stood
under the mirror between the two windows at the end of the small back
drawing-room. The small back drawing-room projected as an ell from the
larger one that crossed the front of the house. She had just reached the
words, "shall have great pleasure in accepting your kind invitation
to--" when she heard her husband's step on the stairs. He was coming up
from his solitary breakfast. She could hear, too, the rustle of the
newspaper in his hand as he ascended, softly and tunelessly whistling.
The sound of that whistling, which generally accompanied his presence
in the house, was more entrancing to her than the trill of nightingales.

The loneliness her fancy ascribed to the girl over by the Park
emphasized her sense of possession. She raised her head and looked into
the mirror. The miracle of it struck her afresh, that the great, strong
man she saw entering the room, with his brown velvet house-jacket and
broad shoulders and splendid head, should be hers. She herself was a
little woman, of soft curves and dimpling smiles and no particular
beauty; and he had stooped, in his strength and tenderness, to make her
bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, as she had become. And he had
become bone of _her_ bone and flesh of _her_ flesh. She was no more his
than he was hers. That was the great fact. She was no longer content
with the limited formula, "They twain shall be one flesh"; they twain
had become one spirit and one life.

It was while asserting this to herself, not for the first time, that she
saw him start. He started back from the window--the large central
window--to which he had gone, probably with vague thoughts of the
weather, like herself. It was the manner of his start that chiefly
attracted her attention. After drawing back he peered forward. It was
an absurd thing to think of him; she knew that--of him of all
people!--but one would almost have said that, in his own house, he
shrank from being seen. But there was the fact. There was his
attitude--his tiptoeing--his way of leaning toward the mantelpiece at an
angle from which he could see what was going on in the Park and yet be
protected by the curtain.

Then it came to her, with a flush that made her tingle all over, that
she was spying on him. He thought her in the children's room up-stairs,
when all the while she was watching him in a mirror. Never in her life
had she known such a rush of shame. Bending her head, she scribbled
blindly, "dinner on Tuesday evening the twenty-fourth at--" She was
compelled by an inner force she didn't understand to glance up at the
mirror again, but, to her relief, he had gone.

Later she heard him at the telephone. To avoid all appearance of
listening she went to the kitchen to give her orders for the day. On her
return he was in the hall, dressed for going out. Scanning his face, she
thought he looked suddenly care-worn.

"I've ordered a motor to take me downtown," he explained, as he pulled
on his gloves. He generally took the street-car in Madison Avenue.

"Aren't you well?" she thought it permissible to ask.

"Oh yes; I'm all right."

"Then why--?"

He made an effort to be casual: "Well, I just thought I would."

She had decided not to question him--it was a matter of honor or pride
with her, she was not sure which--but while giving him the note to post
she ventured to say, "You're not worried about anything, are you?"

"Not in the least." He seemed to smother the words by stooping to kiss
her good-by.

She followed him to the door. "You'd tell me, wouldn't you, if you were
worried?"

For the second time he stooped and kissed her, again smothering the
words, "Yes, dear; but I'm not."

She stood staring at the glass door after he had closed it behind him.
"Oh, what is it?" she questioned. Within less than an hour the world had
become peopled with fears, and all she could do was to stare at the
door through which she could still see him dimly.

She could see him dimly, but plainly, for the curtain of patterned
filet-work hanging flat against the glass was almost transparent from
within the house, though impenetrable from outside. Was it her
imagination that saw him look cautiously round before leaving the
protection of the doorway? Was it her imagination that watched while he
crossed the pavement hurriedly, to spring into the automobile before he
could be observed? Was it only the needless alarm of a foolish woman
that thought him anxious to reach the shelter of the motor lest he
should be approached or accosted? She tried to think so. It was easier
to question her own sanity than to doubt him. She would not doubt him.
She assured herself of that as she returned to her post in the oriel
window.

The girl in gray was gone, and down the long street, over which there
was a thin glaze of ice, the motor was creeping carefully. She watched
it because he was inside. It was all she should see of him till
nightfall. The whole of the long day must be passed with this strange
new something in her heart--this something that wasn't anything. If he
would only come back for a minute and put his arms about her and let her
look up into his face she would _know_ it wasn't anything. She did know
it; she said so again and again. But if he would only discover that he
had forgotten something--a handkerchief or his cigar-case; that did
happen occasionally....

And then it was as if her prayer was to be answered while still on her
lips. Before the vehicle had got so far away as to be indistinguishable
from other vehicles she saw it stop. It stopped and turned. She held her
breath. Slowly, very slowly, it began to creep up the gentle slope
again. She supposed it must be the treacherous ground that made it move
at such a snail's pace. It moved as if the chauffeur or his client were
looking for some one. Gradually it drew up at the curb. It was the curb
toward the Park--and from another of the little openings with iron posts
to space them off appeared the girl in gray.

She advanced promptly, as if she had been called. At the door of the car
she stood for a few minutes in conversation with the occupant. For one
of the parties at least that method of communication was apparently not
satisfactory, for he stepped out, dismissed the cab, and accompanied the
girl through the little opening into the Park. In a second or two they
were out of sight, down one of the sloping pathways.

* * * * *

During the next two months Edith had no explanation of this mystery, nor
did she seek one. After the first days of amazement and questioning she
fell back on what she took to be her paramount duty--to trust. She
argued that if he had seen her in some analogous situation, however
astounding, he would have trusted her to the uttermost; and she must do
the same by him. There were ever so many reasons, she said to herself,
that would not only account for the incident, but do him credit. The
girl might be a stenographer dismissed from his office, asking to be
reinstated; she might be a poor relation making an appeal; she might be
a wretched woman toward whom he was acting on behalf of a friend. Such
cases, and similar cases, arose frequently.

The wonder was, however, that he never spoke of it. There was that side
to it, too. It induced another order of reflection. He was so much in
the habit of relating to her, partly for her amusement, partly for his
own, all the happenings, both trivial and important, of each day, that
his silence with regard to this one, which surely must be considered
strange--strange, if no more--was noticeable. A wretched woman toward
whom he was acting on behalf of a friend! It surely couldn't, _couldn't_
be a wretched woman toward whom he was acting, not on behalf of a
friend, but....

That it might be all over and done with would make no difference. Of
course it was all over and done with--if it was that. No man could love
a woman as he had loved his wife during the past six or seven years, and
still--But it _wasn't_ that. It never _had_ been that. _If_ it had
been--even before they were married, even before he knew her--But she
would choke that thought back. She would choke everything back that told
against him. She developed the will to trust. She developed a trust that
acted on her doubts like a narcotic--not solving them, but dulling their
poignancy into stupor.

So March went out, and April passed, and May came in, with leaves on
the trees and tulips in the Park, and children playing on the bits of
greensward. She had walked as far as the Zoo with the two little boys,
and, having left them with their French governess, was on her way home.
People were in the habit of dropping in between four and six, and of
late she had become somewhat dependent on their company. They kept her
from thinking. Their scraps of gossip provided her, when she talked to
her husband, with topics that steered her away from dangerous ground. He
himself had given her a hint that a certain ground was dangerous; and,
though he had done it laughingly, she had grown so sensitive as to see
in his words more perhaps than they meant. She had asked him a question
on some subject--she had forgotten what--quite remote from the mystery
of the girl in gray. Leaning across the table, with amusement on his
lips and in his eyes, he had replied:

"Don't you remember the warning?

'Where the apple reddens
Never pry,
Lest we lose our Edens,
Eve and I.'"

Inwardly she had staggered from the words as if he had struck her,
though he had no reason to suspect that. In response she merely said,
pensively: "_En sommes nous la?_"

"_En sommes nous_--where?"

"Where the apple reddens."

"Oh, but everybody's there."

"You mean all married people."

"Married and single."

"But married people _more_ than single."

"I mean that we all have our illusions, and we'd better keep them as
long as possible. When we don't--"

"We lose our Edens."

"Exactly."

"So that our Edens are no more than a sort of fool's paradise."

"Ah, no; a sort of wise man's paradise, in which he keeps all he's been
able to rescue from a wicked world."

She was afraid to go on. She might learn that she and their children and
their home and their happiness had been what _he_ had been able to
rescue from a wicked world--and that wouldn't have appeased her. Her
thoughts would have been of the wicked world from which he had escaped
more than of the paradise in which he had found shelter. She was no holy
Elisabeth, to welcome Tannhaeuser back from the Venusberg. That he should
have been in the Venusberg at all could be only a degree less torturing
to her than to know he was there still.

So she kept away from subjects that would have told her more than she
feared already, taking refuge in themes she had once considered vapid
and inane. To miss nothing, she hurried homeward on that May afternoon,
so as to be beside her tea-table in the drawing-room before any one
appeared. And yet, the minute came when she cast aside all solicitudes
and hesitations.

Going up the pathway leading to the opening opposite her house, she
noticed a figure standing between the two iron posts. It was not now a
figure in gray, but one in white--in white, with a rose-colored sash,
and carrying a rose-colored parasol. Edith quickened her pace
unconsciously, urged on by fear lest the girl should move away before
she had time to reach her. In spite of a rush of incoherent emotions she
was able to reflect that she was perfectly cool, entirely
self-possessed. She was merely dominated by a need--the need of coming
face to face with this person and seeing who she was. She had no idea
what she herself would do or say, or whether or not she would do or say
anything. That was secondary; it would take care of itself. The
immediate impulse was too imperative to resist. She must at least _see_,
even if nothing came of her doing so. If she had any thought of a
resulting consequence it was in the assumption that her presence as wife
and woman of the world would dispel the noxious thing she had been
striving to combat for the past two months, as the sun dissipates a
miasma.

But her approaches were careful and courteous. She, too, carried a
parasol, negligently, gracefully, over the shoulder. It served to
conceal her face till she had passed the stranger by a pace or two and
glanced casually backward. She might have done so, however, with full
deliberation, for the woman took no notice of her at all. Her misty,
troubled blue eyes, of which the lids were red as if from weeping, were
fixed on the house across the way.

Edith saw now that, notwithstanding a certain youthfulness of dress and
bearing, this was a woman, not a girl. She was thirty-five at least,
though the face was of the blond, wistful, Scandinavian type that fades
from pallor to pallor without being perceptibly stamped by time. It was
pallor like that of the white rose after it has passed the perfection of
its bloom and before it has begun to wither.

Edith paused, still without drawing the misty eyes on herself.

"Do you know the people in that house?" she asked, at last.

The woman looked at her, not inquiringly or with much show of
comprehension, but vaguely and as from a distance. Edith repeated the
question.

The thin, rather bloodless lips parted. The answer seemed to come under
compulsion from a stronger will: "I--I know--"

"You know the gentleman."

The pale thin lips parted again. After a second or two there was a
barely audible "Yes."

"I'm his wife."

There was no sign on the woman's part either of surprise or of quickened
interest.

There was only the brief hesitation that preceded all her responses.

"Are you?"

"You knew he was married, didn't you?"

"Oh yes."

"Have you known him long?"

"Eleven years."

"That's longer than I've known him."

"Oh yes."

"Do you know how long I've known him?"

"Oh yes."

"How do you know?"

"I remember."

"What makes you remember?"

"He told me."

"Why did he tell you?"

A glow of animation came into the dazed face. "That's what I don't know.
I didn't care--much. He always said he would marry some day. It had
nothing to do with me. We agreed on that from the first."

"From the first of--what?"

"From the first of everything."

Before putting the next question Edith took time to think. Because she
was so startlingly cool and clear she was aware of feeling like one who
stands with the revolver at her breast or the draught of cyanide in her
hand, knowing that within a few seconds it may be too late to
reconsider. And yet, she had never in her life felt more perfectly
collected. She looked up the street and down the street, and across at
her own house, of which the cheerful windows reflected the May sunshine.
She bowed and smiled to a man on foot. She bowed and smiled two or three
times to people passing in carriages. From the Park she could hear the
shrieks of children on a merry-go-round; she could follow a catchy
refrain from "The Belle of New York" as played by a band at a distance.
Her sang-froid was extraordinary. It was while making the observation to
herself that her question came out, before she had decided whether or
not to utter it. She had no remorse for that, however, since she knew
she couldn't have kept herself from asking it in the end. As well expect
the man staggering to the outer edge of a precipice not to reel over.

"So it was--everything?"

In uttering the words she felt oddly shy. She looked down at the
pavement, then, with a flutter of the eyelids, up at the woman.

But the woman herself showed no such hesitation.

"Oh yes."

"And is--still?"

And then the woman who was not a girl, but who was curiously like a
child, suddenly took fright. Tears came to her eyes; there was a
convulsive movement of the face. Edith could see she was a person who
wept easily.

"I won't tell you any more."

The declaration was made in a tone of childish fretfulness.

Edith grew soothing. "I'm sorry if I've hurt your feelings. Don't mind
speaking, because it doesn't make any difference to me--now."

The woman stared, the tears wet on her cheeks. "Don't you--love him?"

Edith was ready with her answer. It came firmly: "No."

"Didn't you--_ever_?"

This time Edith considered, answering more slowly. "I don't know. If I
ever did--the thing is so dead--that I don't understand how it could
ever have been alive."

The woman dried her eyes. "I don't see how you can help it."

"_You_ can't help it, can you?" Edith smiled, with a sense of her own
superiority. "I suppose that's the reason you come here. I've seen you
before."

"Have you?"

"Yes; several times. And that _is_ the reason, isn't it?--because you
can't help loving him."

The woman's tears began to flow again. "It's because I don't know what
else to do. When he doesn't come any more--"

"Oh, so he doesn't come."

"Not unless I make him. When he sees me here--"

"Well, what then?"

"He gets angry. He comes to tell me that if I do it again--"

"I see. But he _comes_. It brings him. That's the main thing, isn't it?
Well, now that you've told me so much, I'll--I'll try to--to send him."
She was struck with a new thought. "If you were to come in now--you
could--you could wait for him."

The frightened look returned. "Oh, but he'd kill me!"

"Oh no, he wouldn't." She smiled again, with a sense of her
superiority. "He wouldn't kill you when he knew I didn't care."

"But _don't_ you care?"

She shook her head. "No. And I shall never care again. He can do what he
likes. He's free--and so are you. I'd rather he went to you. Eleven
years, did you say? Why, he was your husband long before he was mine."

"Oh no; he was never my husband. We agreed from the first--"

"He wasn't your husband according to the strict letter of the contract;
but I don't care anything about that. It's what _I_ call being your
husband. I'd rather you took him back.... Oh, my God! There he is."

He was standing on the other side of the street watching them. How long
he had been there neither of them knew. Engrossed in the subject between
them, and screened by their sunshades, they hadn't noticed him come
round the corner from Madison Avenue on his way home. He stood leaning
on his stick, stroking an end of his long mustache pensively. He wore a
gray suit and a soft gray felt hat. For a minute or more there was no
change in his attitude, even when the terrified eyes of the women told
him he was observed. As he began to thread his way among the vehicles to
cross the street he displayed neither haste nor confusion. Edith could
see that, though he was pale and grave, he could, even in this
situation, carry himself with dignity. In its way it was something to be
glad of. She herself stood her ground as a man on a sinking ship waits
for the waves to engulf him.

Reaching the pavement, he ignored his wife to go directly to the woman.

"What does this mean, Maggie?"

His tone was not so much stern as reproachful. The faded woman, who was
still trying to make herself young and pretty, quailed at it.

Edith came to her relief:

"Isn't that something for _you_ to explain, Chip?"

He turned to his wife. "I'm willing to explain anything you like,
Edith--as far as I can."

"I won't ask you how far that is--because I know already everything I
need to know."

"Everything you need to know--what for?"

"For understanding my position, I suppose."

"Your position? Your position is that of my wife."

"Oh no, it isn't. There's your wife."

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