The Letter of the Contract
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Basil King >> The Letter of the Contract
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"Well, I am. Please don't keep me in suspense. Do tell me."
She sat now with hands folded in her lap, looking at him quietly. "No,
you're not prepared."
"Tell me what to do and I'll do it," he said, nervously, "only don't
torture me."
"One is prepared," she said, tranquilly, "by remembering beforehand
one's own strength--by knowing that there's nothing one can't bear, and
bear nobly."
"All right; all right; I'll do that. Now please go on."
"But _will_ you?"
"Will I what?"
"Will you try to say to yourself: I'm a man, and I'm equal to this. It
can't knock me down; it can't even stagger me. I'll take it in the
highest way. I sha'n't let it degrade me or send me for help to
degrading things--"
He flung his hands outward. "Yes, yes. I know what you're driving at. I
promise. Only, for God's sake, tell me. Is it about--?"
"It's about Mrs. Walker."
"Yes, so I supposed. But what is it? Is she ill? Oh, she isn't dead?"
The cry made her eyes smart, but she kept control of her voice.
"No, she's not dead. She's not even ill. She's perfectly well, so I
understand. But she's been--" The horror in his face, the way in which
he leaned forward as though he would spring at her, warned her that he
knew what was coming. She gave him time to get himself in hand by rising
and taking the two or three paces to the fireplace, where she stood with
a hand on the mantel-board, which was above her head, while she gazed
into the embers. "She's been--married."
She didn't turn round. She knew by all the subtle unnamed senses that he
was huddled in his big arm-chair in a state of collapse. For the minute
there was nothing to say or do. Since the iron had to enter into his
soul, it was better that it should be like this. It was better that it
should be like this--with her there to keep him such company as one
human being can keep for another at such an hour--better than if he were
to learn it in the solitude of his own rooms, or in the unsustaining
frigidity of a lawyer's office. She knew she didn't count for much,
except for the fact--a detail only--that she was _with_ him in every
nerve that helped her to sensation and every faculty she possessed.
So, after the minutes had passed--ten, perhaps, or fifteen--instinct
told her when to speak again. She did it without changing the position
in which she stood, or turning for a glance toward him.
"You won't forget your promise?"
He spoke with the vacant, suffering tone of a sick child, or of a person
so sunk into wretchedness as to find it hard to come up out of it.
"What?"
She repeated the words. "You won't forget your promise?"
His tone was still vacant--vacant and afflicted.
"What promise?"
"That you'd remember you're strong enough to bear it nobly."
"But I'm not."
She turned partly. He was bent over in a crushed, stupid attitude, his
hands hanging limply between his knees. "Oh, Mr. Walker!"
He raised his forlorn eyes. "Why did you want to tell me?"
"Because I wanted to say _that_. I was afraid, if any one else did it,
they'd leave it out."
He gazed at her long with a dull, unintelligent, unseeing expression.
When he spoke he was like a man who tries to get his wits together after
delirium or unconsciousness. "Do you think I am--strong enough?"
"I _know_ you are."
He lumbered to his feet, staggering heavily to the chimney-piece, where
he, too, laid his hands upon the mantel-board, which was just on a level
with his height, bowing his forehead upon them. As he did so she moved
away. Seeing his broad shoulders heave, and fearing she heard something
smothered--was it a groan or a sob?--she slipped out of the room,
closing the door behind her.
But when, some twenty minutes later, he himself came forth, his head
bent, perhaps to hide his red eyes and his convulsed visage, he found
her at the door of the dining-room, with a cup of tea in her hand.
"Drink this," she said, with gentle command.
He declined it with a shake of his head and an impatient wave of the
hand.
"Yes, do," she insisted. "It's nice and hot. I'll have one, too."
Obediently he went into the dining-room. He drank the tea standing and
in silence, in two or three gulps, while she, standing likewise, made a
feint of pouring a cup for herself. He left without a good-night, beyond
a hard, speechless wringing of her hand on his way to the door.
Two things seemed strange to Chip after that evening--the one, that the
fight with Old Piper was ended; and the other, that in the matter of
Edith's marriage, once the immediate shock had spent its strength, he
bowed to the accomplished fact with a docility he himself could not
understand. As for the fight with Old Piper, there was no longer a
reason for waging it. In the new situation Old Piper had lost its
appeal, from sheer inadequacy to meet the new need. The fact of the
marriage he contrived to keep at a distance. He could do this the more
easily because it was so monstrous. It was so monstrous that the mind
refused to take it in, and he made no attempt to force himself. He asked
neither whom she had married nor why she had married, nor anything else
about her. It was a measure of safety. As long as he didn't know he was
able to create a pretended fool's paradise of ignorance which, in his
state of mind, was none the less a fool's paradise for being a pretense.
Even a fool's paradise was a protection. If it hadn't been for the
children, he might not have heard so much as the man's name.
The children called him "papa Lacon." Chip was obliged to swallow that.
They spoke of him simply and spontaneously, taking "papa Lacon" as a
matter of course. They varied the appellation now and then by calling
him "our other papa."
It had been intimated to him, not long after the second marriage, that
he might see the children with reasonable frequency, through the good
offices of Mr. and Mrs. Bland. He soon saw that the arrangements were
really in charge of Lily Bland, who brought the children to her house,
and took them home again. Chip saw them in the library.
The first meeting was embarrassing. Tom was nearly eight, and Chippie on
the way to six. They entered the library together, dressed alike in
blouses and knickerbockers, their caps in their hands. They approached
slowly to where he had taken up a position he tried to make nonchalant,
standing on the hearth-rug with his hands behind him. He felt curiously
culpable before them, like a convict being visited by his friends in
jail. He felt childish, too, as though they were older than, and
superior to, himself. The childishness was shown in his standing on his
guard, determined not to be the first to make the advances. He wouldn't
be even the first to speak.
They came forward slowly, with an air judicial and detached. Tom's eyes
observed him more closely than his brother's, who looked about the room.
Tom, as the elder, seemed to feel the responsibility of the meeting to
be on his shoulders. He came to a halt, on reaching the end of the
library table, Chippie by his side.
"Hello, papa."
"Hello, Tom."
Encouraged by this exchange of greetings, Chippie also spoke up. "Hello,
papa."
"Hello, Chippie."
There followed a few seconds during which the interview threatened to
hang fire there, when the protest in Chip's hot heart--which was
essentially paternal--broke out almost angrily:
"Aren't you going to kiss me?"
It was Tom who pointed out the unreasonableness of emotion in making
this demand. His brows went up in an expression of surprise, which
hinted at protest on his own part. "Well, you're not sitting down."
Of course! It was obviously impossible for two little mites to kiss a
man of that height at that distance. Chip dropped into an arm-chair,
waiting jealously for the two dutiful little pecks that might pass as
spontaneous, and then throwing his big arms about his young ones in a
desperate embrace. After that the ice was broken, and, with the aid of
the games and the picture-books provided by Lily Bland, the meeting
could go forward to a glorious termination in ice-cream. Now and then
there were difficult questions or observations, but they were never
pressed unduly for reply.
"Papa, why don't you live with us any more?"
"Papa, shall we have another papa after this one?"
"Papa, our other papa has a funny nose."
"Papa, are you our real papa, or is papa Lacon?"
In general it was Chippie who put these questions or made the remarks.
Tom seemed to understand already that the situation was delicate, and
had moments of puzzled gravity.
But, taking one thing with another, the occasion passed off well, as did
similar meetings through the rest of that winter and whenever they were
possible--which was not often--in the summer that followed. It was a joy
to Chip when they began again in the autumn, with a promise of
regularity. But that joy, too, was short-lived.
It was his second time of seeing them after the general return to town.
Tom was hanging on his shoulder, while Chippie was seated on his knee.
Chippie was again the spokesman.
"We've got a baby sister at our house."
It seemed to Chip as if all the blood in his body rushed back to his
heart and stayed there. He felt dizzy, sick. The walls of his fool's
paradise were dissolved as mist, revealing a picture he had seen twice
already, each time with an upleaping of the primal and the fatherly in
him; but now ... Edith had been lying in bed, wan, bright-eyed, happy,
with a little fuzzy head just peeping at her breast!
He put the boy from off his knee. Tom seemed to divine something and
stole away. For a second or two both lads watched him--Chippie looking
up straight into his face, Tom gazing from the distant line of the
bookcase, with his habitual expression of troubled perplexity. Chip
managed to speak at last, getting out the words in a fairly natural
tone.
"Look here, boys; I can't stay to-day. I've got a--I've got a pain. Just
play by yourselves till Miss Bland comes for you. Be good boys, now, and
don't touch any of Mr. Bland's things."
He was hurrying to the door when Chippie interrupted him. "Where have
you got a pain, papa?"
He tapped himself on the heart. "Here, Chippie, here; and I hope you may
never have anything so awful."
As he went down the steps he found himself saying: "Will this
crucifixion never end? Have I deserved it? Was the crime so terrible
that I must be tortured by degrees like this?"
He was unable to answer his questions, or even to think. His mind seemed
to go blank till as he tramped down the street he came again to the
consciousness that he was speaking inwardly.
"Damn her! Damn her! She's nothing to me any more."
He was shocked, but he repeated the imprecation. He repeated it because
it shocked him. It struck at what he held to be most sacred. It profaned
his holy of holies, and left it bare to sacrilege. It gave him a fierce,
perverted joy to feel that she whom he would have loved to shield with
everything that was most tender was now exposed to his cursing. It was
rifling his own sanctuary and trampling its treasures in the streets.
He had never had a sanctuary but in her. Other people's temples were to
him not so much objects of contempt as of dim, vague astonishment. Such
words as righteousness and sacrament and Saviour had no place in his
speech. Edith had been the holiest thing he knew. She was both shrine
and goddess. Now that the shrine had been proven empty, and the goddess
irrevocably flown, he got an impious satisfaction from battering down
the altars and blaspheming the deity to whom they had been raised.
"Damn her! Damn her!"
He repeated the curse at intervals till he reached his rooms, the
hateful rooms that he rarely visited at this hour of the day. He was
not, however, thinking of their hatefulness now, as he had come with an
intention.
There was a fire laid in the fireplace, and he lighted it. When it was
crackling sufficiently he drew Edith's photograph from its frame and,
after gazing at it long and bitterly, tossed it into the blaze. He
watched it blister and writhe as though it had been a living thing. The
flame seized on it slowly and unwillingly, biting at the edges in a
curling wreath of blue, and eating its way inward only by degrees. But
it ate its way. It ate its way till the whole lovely person
disappeared--first the hands, and then the bosom, and then the throat
and the features. The sweet eyes still gazed up at him when everything
else was gone.
He had hoped to get relief by this bit of ritual, but none came. When
that which had been the semblance of his wife was no more than a little
swollen rectangle of black ash, and the fire itself was dying down, he
threw himself into a chair.
The reaction was not long in setting in. It set in with a voice that
might have come from without, but which he nevertheless recognized as
his own:
"You fool! Oh, you fool! What difference does this make to your love for
her? You know you love her, and that you will never cease loving her,
and that what you envy her is--the child."
What you envy her is--the child! He pondered on this. It was like an
accusation. The admission of it--when admission came--was the point of
departure in his heart of a new conscious yearning.
IV
DANGER
It was what he had been afraid of on and off for seven years. The wonder
was that it hadn't happened before. But, since it had not happened, he
had got out of the way of expecting it. The fear of it used to dog him
whenever he went to the theater or the opera or out to dine. There had
been minutes in Fifth Avenue, or Bond Street, or the Rue de la Paix, as
the case might be, when, at the sight of a feather or a scarf or
something familiar in a way of walking, his heart and brain seemed to
stop their function. He had known himself to stand stock-still,
searching wildly for the easy, casual phrases he had prepared--for the
purpose of carrying off such a meeting as this, if ever it occurred,
only to find that he was mistaken--that it was some one else.
There had been two or three years like that, two or three years in which
they had often been in the same city, perhaps under the same roof; but
he had never so much as caught a glimpse of her. In the earlier months
that had been a relief. He couldn't have seen her and kept his
self-control. He could follow the routine of life only by a system he
had invented--a system for shutting her out of his thought, that the
sight of her would have wrecked.
Then had come another period in which he felt he could have committed
infamies just to see her getting in or out of a carriage, or lunching in
a restaurant, or buying something in a shop. There were whole seasons
when he knew she was in New York from autumn to spring; and, though he
haunted all the places where women who keep in the movement are likely
to be found, he never saw her.
He knew he could have discovered her plans and followed her; but he
wouldn't do that. Besides, he didn't want to meet her in such a way as
to be obliged to speak to her. He wouldn't have known what to say, or by
what name to call her. Such an encounter would have annoyed her and made
him grotesque. It was more than he asked. He would have been satisfied
with a glimpse of her gloved hand or her veiled face as she drove in
the Park or the Avenue. But he never got it.
After he married, the fear of meeting her came back. It was fear as much
for her sake as for his own. He began to understand that the
embarrassment wouldn't be all on his side, nor the suffering. He picked
that up from the children, as he had picked up so many things, piecing
odds and ends of their speeches together. He saw them so rarely now that
he attached the greater value to the hints they threw out. He never
questioned them about her, but it was natural that they should take a
wider range of comment in proportion as they grew older. So he learned
that her dread of seeing him was as great as his own of seeing her. It
was astonishing that in all those seven years the hazards of New York
should not have thrown them together.
And now, at the moment when he might reasonably have felt safest, there
she was! That is, she was on the steamer. For seven or eight days they
were to be cooped up on the same boat. He could never go on deck or into
the saloon without having to pass her. Worse still, she could never go
outside her cabin door without the risk of being obliged to make him
some sign of recognition. And a sign of recognition between _them_--why,
the thing was absurd! Between them it must be all--or nothing; and it
couldn't be either.
He looked at the passenger-list again. Yes; that was her name: _Mrs.
Theodore Lacon_. It was not a name likely to be duplicated. In all human
probability it was she. As far as he could gather from the list, she was
traveling alone, without so much as the companionship of a maid. He,
too, was alone; but, fortunately, his name was inconspicuous: _Mr. C.
Walker_. It was just the sort of name to be overlooked. She might read
the list half a dozen times without really seeing it. If she were to
notice it, she might easily not reflect that the initial stood for
Chipman. It was conceivable that if she didn't actually see him she
might not know that he was on the ship at all.
The thought suggested a line of action. He was in his cabin at the time.
He could stay there. Looking through the port-hole, he saw that they had
not yet passed the Statue of Liberty. While in dock he had kept to his
room, in order to read letters and avoid the crowd that throngs the deck
of an outgoing steamer. There was every likelihood that she hadn't seen
him any more than he had seen her. If he kept himself hidden she might
never know! He could avoid the decks by day and take his exercise by
night. By night, too, he could creep into the smoking-room and get a
little change. But he would stay away from the general gathering-places
on the ship and spare her what pain he could. That they should meet as
strangers was out of the question. That they should meet as social
acquaintances was even more so. They had been all to each other--and
they had been nothing. No other relation was possible.
So the week passed, and they reached Liverpool. He was purposely among
the last to go ashore. In the great shed where the luggage was
distributed under initial letters, he was glad to remember that W was so
far from L. Nevertheless, he allowed his eye to roam toward section L,
but found no one there whom he recognized. He ran over in his mind the
various chances that she might not have come. It was no uncommon thing
to read in a list of passengers the names of people who hadn't sailed.
He had done so before.
Later he scanned, as discreetly as he could, the occupants of the
special train that was to take them to London. He couldn't see that she
was anywhere among them. He sighed, but whether from relief or
disappointment he was not sure.
As it was one o'clock, he took his seat in the luncheon-car, making sure
in advance that she wasn't there. He had come to the conclusion by this
time that she was not on the train at all--that she hadn't been on the
steamer. He did not, however, regret his precautions, because--well,
because the sense of her proximity had made him feel as he had felt in
the days--fourteen years ago now--when the very streets of the city in
which she lived were hallowed ground. He had supposed that emotion dead.
Probably it was dead. It must be dead. It was merely that, owing to the
constraint of the voyage, his nerves were unstrung, inducing the frame
of mind in which people see ghosts. Yes, that was it; he had been seeing
ghosts. It was not a living thing, this renewed yearning for a sight of
her. It was only the reflex of something past. It could be explained
psychologically. It was the sort of evanescent sentiment inspired by old
songs, or by the scent of faded flowers, reviving old joys tenderly,
perhaps poignantly, but fleetingly, insubstantially, and only as the
wraiths of what they were. Yes, that was it, he repeated to himself as
he lunched. It was nothing to be afraid of, nothing incongruous with the
fact that he had left a wife and child in New York. It was not an
emotion; it was only the echo, the shadow, the memory of an emotion,
gone before it could be seized.
And then, suddenly, they were face to face. He was on his way from the
luncheon-car to the compartment he shared with two or three men at the
other end of the train. She was standing in the corridor, looking out at
the vaporous English landscape. Through the mists overlying the flat
fields and distant parks trees loomed weirdly, the elms and beeches in
full leaf, the oaks just tinged with green. Cottony white clouds drifted
overhead; the sun was dimly visible. Now and then a line of hedge was
white, or pink and white, with the bursting may.
He didn't recognize the lady who barred his way along the narrow
passage. As she stood with one arm on the brass rail that crossed the
window he could see an ungloved hand; but it might have been any hand.
She wore a long brown coat, rather shapeless, reaching to the hem of her
dress, while a large hat, about which a green veil looped and drooped
irregularly, entirely concealing the head, helped to make her, as he
stood waiting for her to move, a mere feminine figure without
personality.
It was the sense that some one desired to pass that caused her to turn
slightly, glancing up at him sidewise. Even so, he couldn't see all of
her face--not much more than the forehead and the eyes. But the eyes
seemed to come alive as he looked down into them, like sapphires under
slowly growing light. When she turned, her movements had the
deliberation of bewilderment. She might have been just wakened in a
place she didn't know.
"Chip!" There was another half-minute of incredulous gazing before she
said anything more. "What are you doing here?"
He felt the necessity of explaining his presence. "I was on the boat. I
didn't know--"
"That I was on it, too?"
"I--I did know that," he stammered, "after we sailed. Not before. It was
the name in the list--"
"But I never saw you. There weren't many passengers. I was always on
deck."
Her distress betrayed itself in the trembling of her voice, in the
shifting of her color, and in the beating of the ungloved hand upon the
gloved one.
He felt his own confusion passing. It was so natural to be with her, so
right. His voice grew steadier as he said:
"I didn't go about very much. I was afraid--"
She nodded, speaking hastily. "I understand. It was kind of you. And
you're--alone?"
He cursed himself for coloring, but he couldn't help it. He had a wife
and child in New York! He saw that she wanted to recognize that fact
from the first. She wanted to put that boy and his mother between them.
Her husband and child stood between them, too. He took that cue in
answering.
"Yes; I've run over hurriedly on business. And are you alone, too?"
She glanced toward the empty compartment where her bags were stowed in
the overhead racks, and her books and illustrated papers lay on the
cushions. "I'm on my way to join my--" It was her turn to color.
He nodded quickly, to show that he understood.
"He's in Biarritz," she hurried on, for the sake of saying something.
"I'm to meet him in Paris. I wasn't coming over at all this spring. I
wanted to stay with the children at Towers--"
It was a safe subject. "How were the children when you left?"
"Tom was all right; but Chippie has been having the same old trouble
with his tonsils. They'll have to be cut again."
"I thought so the last time I saw him. And he's growing too fast for his
strength, poor little chap. I notice," he added, gazing at her more
intently than he had as yet permitted himself to do, "that he begins to
look like you."
She smiled for the first time. "Oh, but _I_ think he looks like _you_."
"No; Tom takes after me. He's a Walker. Chippie's--"
"A darling," she broke in. "But he's not strong. Ever since he had the
scarlet fever--"
"Yes, I know. But it might have been worse. We might have lost him. Do
you remember the night--?"
She put her hand to her eyes as if to shut out the vision of it. "Oh,
that awful night! And you were more afraid than I was. Mothers are
braver than fathers at times like that."
"It was watching the fight he put up. Gad, he was plucky, the poor
little chap! And he was only three, wasn't he?"
"Three and five months."
"And he'll be eleven his next birthday. How the years fly! By the way,
won't it soon be time for Tom to be going to boarding-school?"
They were being pushed and jostled by guards and passengers. Between
sentences it was necessary to make room for some one going or coming.
She was obliged to step back into her compartment. Having taken the seat
in the corner by the window, she motioned with her hand toward that in
the opposite corner by the door. In this way they were separated by the
length and width of the compartment, the distance marking the other
gulf between them.
She continued to talk of the children, looking at first into the
cavernous obscurity of Crewe station, through which they were dashing,
and then at the open country. The children, with their needs, their
ailments, their future careers, could not but be the natural theme
between them. It lasted while they passed Nuneaton, Rugby, and Stafford,
and were well on their way to London. Suddenly he risked a question:
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