The Letter of the Contract

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She grew fanciful with regard to the other Americans in the hotel. She
imagined they slighted her, or disapproved of her, or watched her course
with misgiving. With a family of good, simple people, who apparently had
nothing to strive for with the restlessness which characterized the
social fag-ends whom she was now in the habit of meeting, she would have
been glad to establish relations; but she never got beyond an occasional
bow or smile, generally over some incident connected with the children.
Of one man she was afraid. She was afraid of him without knowing why,
except that he seemed to watch her rather pityingly. She resented the
pity; she resented his watching her at all. And yet....

If he hadn't been a grave man, evidently occupied with grave affairs,
her resentment might have become annoyance. In the circumstances it was
resentment modified by a little gratitude. She hardly understood her
gratitude unless it was for a hint of solicitude in a world where no one
seemed to bother about her any more. He did bother about her. She grew
sure of that. Not for an instant could she think of the quiet, rather
wistful, regard with which she caught him following her or the children
as being meant otherwise than kindly.

She had no idea who he was. All she could affirm from distant and
somewhat superficial observation was that he was Somebody--Somebody of
position, experience, and judgment--Somebody to respect. She thought,
too, that he must be Somebody of distinction, partly because he looked
it, and partly because he was served by a valet and a secretary
scarcely less distinguished than himself. All three were serious men
well into the forties. The valet was English, the secretary French, the
master American. She would not, however, have taken the last-named for a
fellow-countryman if she had not accidentally heard him speak. In regard
to externals he was as nearly as possible denationalized. He had
evidently lived a long time abroad, though he bore no one country's
special stamp. He roused her curiosity, even while the kind of interest
in herself which she attributed to him--with what she admitted were the
most shadowy of reasons--hurt her pride. It hurt it in a manner to make
her the more resolute in going her own way.

Not that it was a really reprehensible way. The worst that could be said
of it was that it brought her into contacts and promiscuities from which
she should have been kept free. Even so no great harm had been done,
especially in the case of a woman with her knowledge of the world. None
had been so much as threatened until the arrival on the scene of a young
Frenchman, a friend of Mrs. Scadding's. Edith then found it necessary to
submit to an introduction with daily, almost hourly, hazards of
encounter.

He was a young Frenchman like many hundreds of his kind, who might have
been a finished sketch in sepia. Sepia would have done justice to the
even tan of his complexion, to the soft-brown of his eyes, of his hair,
of his mustache, and rendered the rich chestnut which was oftener than
not his choice for clothes. Gertie flirted with him outrageously--there
was no other phrase for it. It was the kind of flirting one was obliged
to consider innocent, since the alternative would have been too
appalling. Edith opted for the innocent construction, lending an abashed
countenance to the situation out of loyalty to the sisterhood of
loneliness. It was a countenance that grew more abashed whenever, in the
process of lending it, her eye met that of the man who had constituted
himself, she was convinced, her silent guardian.

Fortunately, Mrs. G. Cottle Scadding took herself off to Italy, the
young Frenchman disappearing at the same time. It was a new proof to
Edith of the depth of need to which she had come down that she missed
them. She missed their frivolity and inconsequentiality because they
were the only interests she had. She was thrown back, therefore, on her
own desolation and on her memories of Chip.

She made the discovery with some alarm that Chip was becoming to her
more and more the center of a group of memories. She was losing him.
That is, she was losing him as an actuality; she was losing him as the
pivot round which her life had swung, even since her knowledge of his
great treason. She was no more appalled by the loss than by the
perception of her own volatility.

It was a perception that deepened when, some fortnight after Gertie's
departure, the young Frenchman reappeared. "He's come back on my
account," was Edith's instant reflection. She was indignant; and yet
something else stirred in her that was not indignation, and to which she
was afraid to give a name. Perhaps there was no name to give it. As far
as she could analyze its elements, they lay in the twin facts that she
was still young enough to be attractive to men and to find pleasure in
her attractiveness. It was a pleasure that raised its head timidly,
apologetically; but it raised it none the less.

It was a new and terrifying thought that Chip might not always be the
only man in her life. She had dedicated herself to him so entirely that
it was difficult to accept the idea that any part of her might have been
held in reserve for future possibilities. That her life should have been
blasted was bad enough; but that it should renew its vigor and put forth
shoots for a second bloom was frightful. Yet there was the fact that
such things happened. Women in her position even married again. _She_
might marry again. She never would--of course! But remarriage was among
the potentialities of the new conditions she had achieved. The full
comprehension of this liberty filled her with dismay.

Up to the present the knowledge that she possessed it had been theoretic
only. The young Frenchman brought home to her the fact that she could
act on it if she were ever so inclined. Not that he asked her to do so.
He had only reached the point of inviting her to dine with him at Monte
Carlo and look in at the gaming afterward. She declined this invitation
gently and without rancor toward him; but, in the idiom she used in
talking with him, it gave her to think.

It gave her to realize also. The moment was rich in revelations
concerning herself. She discovered she was a woman whom a relatively
strange man might invite to dine with him alone. She had passed out of
the fellowship of Hagar and Hecuba to enter that of Mrs. G. Cottle
Scadding. This had happened, she hardly knew how. She discovered,
moreover, that now that it had happened, she was scarcely shocked.
Somehow it seemed in the nature of things--these curious new things she
had created for herself--that she should be invited in this way to
Ciro's and that there might be similar incidents to follow. She
certainly was not shocked. Deep down in her heart something--was it
something feminine? or was it something broadly human?--was secretly
shamefully flattered. She couldn't blame the young fellow. She couldn't
blame Gertie--very much. She might blame herself for being drawn into
Gertie's company, and yet what other course could she have taken? She
had known Gertie since they were school-girls. When all was said and
done Gertie was as good as she--in whatever met the eye. One divorced
woman could hardly draw her skirts away from another. The longer she
reflected the more clearly she saw that she couldn't have done anything
but what she had done without becoming in her own eyes a hypocrite or a
prude, and so she had laid herself open to hearing those words, spoken
ever so respectfully, with a sympathy no American could have approached:

"Madame is so lonely. Madame is too much by herself. Wouldn't it
_distraire_ Madame to dine to-night, let us say, at Ciro's, or the Hotel
de Paris, and look in at the Casino afterward? Madame is always so sad."

The man was too insignificant for her wrath, but not so insignificant
that he couldn't be a warning. He was a warning that even if he failed
to touch her heart it was by no means certain that another man might not
succeed; and not long afterward a man did.

That was Sir Noel Ordway. She had met him almost at once after moving to
Cannes. She moved to Cannes practically on the advice of the
distinguished stranger who continued to follow her with eyes of
brooding concern. That is, what he said amounted to advice. It was, in a
measure, to show him that she appreciated an interest in which there was
an element that touched her profoundly that she accepted it.

She met him suddenly at one of the many turnings in the long flight of
steps that descend from the hotel at Cap d'Ail to the station, and what
there is in the way of town. She had never come abruptly face to face
with him before. She knew she colored and betrayed a ridiculous
self-consciousness. He, on his part, was unruffled and sedate, lifting
his hat with the somewhat rigid dignity that characterized all his
movements.

"Mrs. Chipman Walker, I think."

She acknowledged the words by a slight inclination. He mentioned his own
name, which she knew already.

"I've just been seeing some friends of yours," he went on, calmly, "at
Cannes. I've been lunching with the Misses Partridge."

"Oh, they're there?" It was to say something, no matter what, to cover
up her absurd confusion that she added, "They're friends of my aunt's."

"I, too, have the pleasure of knowing Miss Winfield, which will perhaps
excuse my self-introduction." She answered this by another slight
inclination, while he continued: "The Misses Partridge asked me to say
that they would be glad to see you, if you could ever make it convenient
to go over. They wished me to add that they'd come to see you, but that,
unfortunately, neither is quite well enough. You'd find them at the
Villa Victoire, on the Route de Frejus."

She was murmuring something to the effect that she would go at once,
when he said in a tone that struck her as significant:

"It's very pleasant at Cannes--more so than here."

She didn't resent this, perhaps because her need was too great. Besides,
there was something about him--it might have been the tenderness of a
man who himself knew what suffering was--that put him outside the region
of resentments. She only said: "Indeed? Why?"

"You'll see that when you go. For one thing, it's further removed from
the atmosphere that comes up to us from--down there." He pointed toward
Monte Carlo. "In that way it's--healthier."

She knew that as she thanked him and passed on she smiled, and that she
did so from lightness of heart. Certainly her heart was less heavy. It
was less heavy because of his kindness, because of this indication that
some one cared what became of her. She felt so forsaken that almost
anybody's kindness would have had the same effect, almost anybody's care
for her welfare; and so she came to respond to the appeal of Noel
Ordway.

He sat beside her the first Sunday she lunched at the Villa Victoire.
The Misses Partridge "knew every one." Of few people in either
hemisphere could the expression be used with no more exaggeration.
Possessing little in the way of means, less in that of accomplishments,
and nothing at all in the line of looks, they had formed a vast circle
of acquaintance, chiefly by a hearty, unaffected interest in each
individual personality. No one, however unimportant, was ever forgotten
by them. Miss Rosamond, who looked like a coachman, spent her time in
correspondence, rounding up absent friends; Miss Gladys, who was thin
and angular, coursed whatever neighborhood they happened to be in,
getting the nice people to come and see them. For reasons not always
clear to the superficial the nice people came and sent others. No two
ladies ever received so many letters of introduction, or wrote them.
Their Sunday luncheons at Cannes were as famous as their Sunday dinners
in New York.

In New York Edith had fought shy of them, mainly because Chip didn't do
them justice. He spoke of them flippantly as "those two old flyaways,"
and would never go to their house. For this reason she herself went
rarely, though when she did she got a perception of broad social
inclusiveness which Chip could hardly appreciate. It was the only house
she knew of in which there were no "sets," and where one met the most
interesting people of all walks in life. She often wondered hew the
Misses Partridge, with their slight resources, physical and material,
accomplished it, envying them somewhat their success. She wondered less,
and envied them less, after she had seen them at Cannes.

Miss Rosamond's deep bass voice, the perfect expression of her red face
and man-like way of dressing, were the first influence in winning her.
"My dear, there's the very hotel for you close beside us, where we could
see you all the time. We stay there ourselves when we're opening and
closing the villa. Big garden for the children--runs right down to the
sea--and nothing but nice people of your own kind."

Edith couldn't help the suspicion that the distinguished stranger at Cap
d'Ail had inspired Miss Partridge's solicitude, but neither did she
resent this. Miss Gladys accompanied her to the hotel in question, to
bring her personal powers to bear on the proprietor, and to help in the
selection of rooms, so that next day Edith was able to move over. In
this way it happened that on the following Sunday she found herself
seated beside Sir Noel Ordway.

The luncheon party was again a collection of cosmopolitan odds and
ends--but with a difference. There was a foreign royalty with his
morganatic wife, the American wife of an English peer, two or three
notable Russians, a French painter of international fame, together with
some half-dozen English and Americans of no importance, among whom
Edith classed herself and the young Englishman beside her.

Between him and her the friendship ripened rapidly and unexpectedly. It
was so unexpectedly that it took her off her guard. It was beyond all
the possibilities her imagination could foresee that he should fall in
love with her--a woman who had had her tragic experience, of no great
beauty, the mother of two children. It was, in fact, through the
children that he made his approaches, in as far as he made them
intentionally. She judged that he didn't do that, that he was caught
unawares, like herself. He had merely expressed a "liking for kids," and
offered to take the youngsters for an outing in his motor-car on the
following day. The kids were to go with their governess; but when he
drove up to the door, and Edith had come out to see them off, it seemed
ridiculous that she shouldn't accompany them. Besides, the governess was
young and pretty, necessitating an elderly person for purposes of
propriety. It was partly, too, in thoughtlessness that Edith yielded to
his persuasion and, putting on a thick coat, jumped in with the rest.

He acted as his own chauffeur, and they drove up the new road through
the Esterels. Edith sat beside him, and as they talked little she was
able to observe him to better effect than on the previous day. She took
him to be a year or two younger than herself, tall and slight, with a
stoop he had probably acquired at Eton. She had understood from Miss
Partridge that he was delicate; and he looked it. The circumstance had
kept him from entering the army or going into diplomacy, sending him to
the Riviera for his winters. He was blue-eyed and blond, with a ragged
mustache too thin to conceal the rather pathetic line of the mouth. A
long, thin nose, with an upper lip so short that the flash of teeth was
visible even when the mouth was in repose, gave him the appearance of an
extremely aristocratic rodent.

The drive was repeated a day or two later, and longer excursions came
after that--to St. Raphael, to Valescure, and as far away as Mentone and
the Gorges du Loup. Edith couldn't help liking the young man, first for
his kindness to the children, and then for himself. For himself she
liked him because he was so simple, straightforward, and sincere.

He grew confidential as time went on, telling her of his home, his
mother, his sisters, his duties as squire and lord of the manor, and the
bore it was to be kept out of a profession and away from England at the
very moment of the hunting. He formed the habit of dropping in so
frequently to tea with her, in the little sun-pavilion of the hotel,
that she fancied the Misses Partridge, who were friends of Lady
Ordway's, began to look uneasy. She wondered if they had given the young
man all the information concerning her that was his due.

She made up her mind to ask. Once the fact was recognized it would be a
safeguard, in that any possibilities of their being other than friends
would be out of the way. He gave her the opportunity one afternoon in
March by asking where she thought of going after she left Cannes. The
children and the governess had had tea with them, but had strolled into
the garden. Other occupants of the sun-pavilion had also wandered out
among the pansy-beds and the blossoming mimosas. Edith took her time
before answering.

"I don't know," she said at last. "It's so hard for me to make plans.
You see, there's nothing to hinder me from going to Sweden,
Switzerland, or Spain; and when that's the case you're indifferent about
going anywhere." She waited a few seconds before saying, "You know about
me, don't you?"

"Rather," he said, promptly. "I've known that all along."

The reply was so downright that she was sorry she had raised the
subject. He seemed to imply that as far as he was concerned the
peculiarities in her situation were of no importance. As she was obliged
to say something, she could only express a measure of relief.

"I'm glad of that. I hoped Miss Partridge would tell you."

He startled her by saying, with the bluntness that was curiously, but
characteristically, at variance with the hesitations of his general
manner:

"You could get married again, couldn't you?"

"Oh no." She blushed helplessly.

"Oh, but you could."

She struggled to keep to the ground of mere discussion. "I could
legally; but I never should."

"Why?"

"Oh, for a lot of reasons I can't talk about."

"Then what did you do it for?"

She managed a smile, even if it was a forced and feeble one. She
understood what he meant by "it."

"I don't have to explain that, do I?"

"No, I suppose not." She hoped he was going to drop the subject, when he
lifted his head to look at her with his rather pathetic blue eyes, "Oh,
but I say, you're not serious in thinking you wouldn't, are you?"

"Perfectly serious. I should never look on the matter as admitting
discussion."

"Oh, but it does, you know."

"Not for me."

"Well, it might not for you, and yet might for--for other people."

She still forced an unsteady smile. "That's something I don't have to
worry about, at any rate. I've given up thinking of other people's
opinions."

"I don't mean other people in general--only in particular."

"I don't know any other people--in particular."

"Yes, you do. You know me."

"I only know you--like that." She snapped her fingers so as to give him
an idea of the entirely transitory nature of their acquaintance.

"That isn't the way I know you."

"Oh, you don't know me at all. You couldn't. You're too young. I belong
to another generation in point of time, and to ages ago in the matter of
experience."

"How old _are_ you?"

She told him.

"You're eighteen months older than I; but that's nothing. My mother was
four _years_ older than my father--nearer five. That sort of thing often
runs in families."

She sprang up. "There's Chippie tramping all over that flower--bed. How
_can_ Miss Chesley?"

The negligence of Miss Chesley enabled her to make her escape, and when
he rejoined her in the garden he accepted the diversion her ingenuity
had found. In a short time he took his leave with no more display of
emotion than on previous occasions.

But he left her troubled and shaken. He left her with the feeling that
the foundations of life, as she was leading it, were insecure. Where
she had thought she was strong and determined she began to see she was
weak and irresolute. She began to see herself as a woman with such an
instinctive need of protection that sooner or later she would accept
it--from some one. If from any one, why not from this man? She liked
him; she was sure of his goodness and kindness. He was already fond of
the children, and the children of him. Moreover, she could be a mother
to him, and he needed mothering, as any one could see. It might not be a
romantic marriage, but it could easily be an ideal one, as far as
anything ideal still lay within the range of her possibilities. It could
be ideal in the sense of a sincere affection both on his side and hers,
and a common life for perhaps higher aims than she had lived with Chip.

It would doubtless be the final stage to the process of making Chip
understand. She wouldn't marry--she couldn't--without some inner
reference to him, without a vital reference to him. If she did marry he
would know at last to what he had forced her. He would have forced her
to looking to another man for what she should have had from him--and
then he would be repentant. Surely he would be repentant then! If he
wasn't he would never be. All her efforts would have become in vain. She
would feel that for any good she had accomplished she might as well have
stayed with him. That thought choked her with its implication of agony
escaped--and bliss forfeited.

But it was looking too far ahead. Everything was looking too far ahead.
Noel Ordway had not asked her to marry him--and might never do so. She
might have scared him off. She hoped she had. That would be simpler. She
was not so inexperienced as to be without the knowledge that marriage
with him would raise as many difficulties as it would settle--perhaps
more. The day came when she had to point that out to him.

But it did not come at once. Nearly a week passed without his return.
For Edith it was a week of some disappointment, and a good deal of
relief. If she wasn't the happier for his absence, she was more at ease.
She could be at ease till the time came for moving on in one direction
or another, when she would be oppressed anew with the sense of her
helplessness. It became clearer to her that if she married at all it
would be to be taken care of.

The question was put formally before her at a moment when she was least
expecting it. It was an afternoon late in March when she was struggling
along the Boulevard du Midi, in the teeth of a warm west wind. On her
left children played in the sands or threw sticks or bruised flowers
into the huge breakers to see them rolled shoreward. On her right the
palms in the villa gardens bowed their heads eastward, while the mimosas
tossed their yellow branches wildly. Before her the Esterels formed a
jagged line of indigo flecked with red, above which masses of stormy
orange cloud broke along the edges into pink. It was still far from the
hour of sunset, though the glamour of sunset was gathering in the air.

She heard his step behind her scarcely an instant before he spoke.

"Oh, I say, Mrs. Walker, I want you to marry me."

The statement was so startling that in spite of all her preparatory
discussion with herself, she turned on him tragically. "For God's sake,
why?"

"Well, because I'm awfully fond of you, you know."

His expression touched her. There was no mistaking the kindliness in his
eyes, or the look of rather wan beseeching in his thin, pinched face. In
his golfing suit of Harris tweed he was not an unattractive figure, even
if he wasn't handsome.

Again her words had little relation to the things she had thought of
beforehand. Her heart was so much with him that she spoke with an
emotion she had never shown to him before.

"Even if you are, don't you see, dear friend, that you can't marry me?"

"Oh, but I can, you know."

She looked about her for a refuge where they could talk, finding it in a
rough shelter designed for the protection of nurses watching children
playing on the sands. It was empty for the moment, except for a tiny,
bare-legged girl of three or four crooning over a big doll. Edith led
the way. "Come over here." They sat down on a bench hacked with initials
and cleanly dirty with sand. The little girl at the other end of the
bench rolled her big eyes toward them with indifference, continuing to
croon to her doll:

"Dors, mon enfant; dors, dors; ta mere est allee au bal.... Dors, mon
enfant, dors; ta mere est au theatre.... Tais-toi; tais-toi; ta mere
dine au restaurant.... Dors, ma cherie, dors."

Edith plunged into her subject as soon as they were seated and turned
toward each other. "Tell me. If you married a divorced woman, wouldn't
your whole position in England be--be different?"

"I shouldn't care anything about that."

"That's not what I'm asking you. I'm asking you if there wouldn't be
ways in which it would be hard for you?"

The honesty in his eyes pierced her like a pain. "I shouldn't be
thinking about that, you know. I should be thinking about you."

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