The Letter of the Contract

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Two such days at least there were during that month of June. Glancing
casually over his left shoulder as he marched one afternoon with head
bent and back turned toward the east, Chip saw that which a few minutes
before had been but the misty edge of the sky transformed into a range
of ineffable white peaks. The unexpectedness with which the glistering
spectacle appeared made his heart leap. It was like a celestial
vision--like a view of the ramparts of the Heavenly City. He clutched
the stone top of the balustrade beside which he stood, seeking terms
with which to make the moment indelible in his memory. Nothing came to
him but a few broken, obvious words--sublime!--inviolate!--eternal! and
such like.

What he chiefly felt was his inadequacy for even gazing on the sight,
much less for recording it, when he became aware that in the crowding of
people to the edge of the terrace the stranger was standing near him. It
was an opportunity not to be missed.

"Ca, c'est merveilleux, n'est-ce pas, monsieur?"

The words were banal, but they would serve to break the ice.

"Yes; and it becomes more marvelous the oftener it appears. I've never
seen it more beautiful than to-day; but perhaps that's because I've seen
it so many times."

Chip was disappointed to be answered in English, and especially in the
English of an American. It brought the man too near for confidence. They
might easily find themselves involved in a host of common acquaintances,
a fact that would preclude intimate talk. Had he been a Russian the
remoteness of each from the other's world would have made the exchange
of secrets--perhaps of secret griefs--a possibility. Not so with a man
whom one might meet the next time one entered a club in New York. Such a
man might even be.... But he dismissed that alarming thought as out of
the question. Edith wasn't at Berne. If she had been he would have seen
her. He would not inquire at the hotel, nor at any other hotel; but he
knew that in so small a town he must have had a glimpse of her
somewhere. While it was conceivable that her husband might have come to
Berne leaving her elsewhere, this was not the sort of man she would
have married. The type to appeal to her would be something like his
own--of course!

Nevertheless, as he had begun the conversation, he felt that in courtesy
he must go on with it. He did so by pointing with his stick to what he
took to be the highest summit of the range, and saying: "I suppose
that's the Jungfrau."

The stranger moved nearer him. "No, you're too far to the west. That's
the Breithorn. There's the Jungfrau"--he, too, pointed with his
stick--"sentineled by the Eiger and the Moench."

He went on to indicate the Wetterhorn, the Schreckhorn, the Blumlisalp,
the Finsteraarhorn, and the Ebnefluh. They were like a row of shining
spiritual presences manifesting themselves to an unbelieving world.

For the moment they served their turn in helping Chip Walker to subjects
of conversation with his fellow-countryman, in whom he had lost some
interest because he was a fellow-countryman.

"You know a lot about Switzerland, don't you?" he observed, as the
stranger, still pointing with his stick and naming names--the
Silberhorn, the Gletschhorn, the Schneehorn, the Niesen, the
Bettfluh--that impressed the imagination with the force of the great
white peaks themselves, resolved the panorama into its minor elements.

The stick came down and the explanation ceased. "I've lived a good deal
abroad," was the response, given quietly. "You, too, haven't you?"

With the question they turned for the first time and looked each other
in the eyes. While Chip explained that he had spent his early years in
France or Italy or England, according to the interests of his parents,
he was inwardly remarking that the gray face, with its stiff lines, its
compressed lips, its unmoving expression, and its stamp of suffering,
was really sympathetic. Something in the composure of the manner and the
measured way of speaking imposed this new acquaintance on him as a
superior. Instinctively he said "sir" to him, as to an elder, though the
difference in their ages could not have been more than seven or eight
years. It flattered him somewhat, too, that the man who kept aloof from
others should make an exception of him and welcome his advances. They
parted with the tacit understanding that for the future, in the routine
of the hotel, they should be on speaking terms.

There was, however, no further meeting between them till after dinner on
the following evening. Turning from the purchase of stamps at the
concierge's desk, Chip saw his new acquaintance, wearing an Inverness
cloak over his dinner-jacket, and a soft felt hat, lighting a cigar.
There was an exchange of nods. On the older man's lips there was a ghost
of a smile. It seemed friendly. He spoke:

"You don't want to smoke a cigar in the little park? It's rather
pleasant there, with a full moon like this."

So it was that within a few minutes they found themselves seated side by
side on one of the benches of the terraced promenade where they had met
on the previous day. Though the row of shining spiritual presences had
withdrawn, the valley was spanned by a Velvety luminosity, through which
the lights of the lower town shone like stars reflected in water. The
talk was of the conference. The stranger spoke of himself:

"I've been interested in the various methods of international
communication for many years. In fact, I've made some slight study of
them. When the authorities were good enough to appoint me on this
commission I was glad to serve."

"Quite so," Chip murmured, politely.

"It's an attractive little town, too--one of the few capitals in Europe
that remain characteristic of their countries, and nothing else--wholly
or nearly unaffected by the current of life outside. But," he went on,
unexpectedly, "I wonder what a man like you can see in it--to remain
here so long?"

Chip was startled, but he managed to say: "It isn't that I see anything
in particular. I'm--"

"Waiting?"

The query was perfectly courteous. It implied no more than a casual
curiosity--hardly that.

"No; resting," Chip answered, with forced firmness.

"Ah, it's certainly a good place for resting." Then, after a pause:
"You're married, I think you said."

Chip didn't remember having said so, and replied to that effect. The
stranger was unperturbed.

"No? But you are?" By way of pressing the question, he added, with a
glance at Chip through the moonlight: "Aren't you?"

"I've a wife and little boy in New York," Walker answered, soberly.

"Ah!" There was no emphasis on this exclamation. It signified merely
that a certain point in their mutual understanding had been reached. "A
happy marriage must be a great--safeguard."

The tone was of a man making a moral reflection calmly, but Chip was
startled again. It was his turn to stare through the moonlight, where
the length of the bench lay between them. He felt that he was being
challenged, but that he must not betray himself too soon. "Safeguard
against what, sir?"

There was a faint laugh, or what might have been a laugh had there been
amusement in it. "Against everything from which a married man needs
protection."

Chip would have dropped the subject but for that sense that a challenge
was being thrown him before which he could not back down. Nevertheless,
he determined to keep from committing himself as long as possible. "I'm
not sure that I know what you mean."

The stranger seemed to examine the burning end of his cigar. "Oh,
nothing but the obvious things--pursuing another man's wife, for
instance. A man who's happily married doesn't do that."

There was no aggression in the tone, and yet Chip felt a curious chill.
Who was this man, and what the devil was he driving at? It was all he
could do to answer coolly, knocking the ash off the end of his own
cigar: "And yet, I've known of such cases."

"Oh, so have I. But there was always a screw loose somewhere--I mean, a
screw loose in what we're assuming to be the happy marriages."

"Are there any happy marriages?--permanently happy, that is?"

The response was surprisingly direct: "That's what I hoped you'd be able
to tell _me_."

"Then you don't know, sir?"

Again the response was surprisingly direct: "I don't know, because I'm
not happily married." A second later he added: "But other people may
be."

So they were going to exchange secrets, after all. "But you _are_
married, sir?" To clear the air, he felt himself obliged to add:
"Happily or unhappily."

"I married a lady who had divorced her husband." In the silence that
followed it seemed to Chip that he could hear the murmur of the almost
soundless river below. Somehow the sound of the river was all he could
think of. Quietly moving, low-voiced couples paced up and down the
promenade, and from the music-pavilion in the distance came the whine
and shiver of the Mattiche. "In divorce," the measured voice resumed,
"there are some dangerous risks. It's a dangerous risk for a man to
divorce his wife. It's a more dangerous risk for a woman to divorce her
husband. But to marry a divorced husband or a divorced wife is the most
dangerous risk of all."

Chip's voice was thick and dry. "May I ask, sir, on what you base
your--your opinion?"

"Chiefly on the principle that, no matter how successfully the dead are
buried, they may come back again as ghosts. No one can keep them from
doing that."

"And--and I presume, sir, that you held this theory when you married?"

"I held it _as_ a theory; I didn't know it as a fact."

Chip felt obliged to struggle onward. "And do I understand you to be
telling me now that the ghosts _have_ come back?"

"Perhaps you could as easily tell me."

It was a minute or more before Chip was able to say, in a voice he tried
to keep firm: "If they have come back, you're not more haunted by them
than--than any one else."

"So I understand."

The brief responses had the effect of dragging him forward. "And would
it be fair to ask why you say that?--that you understand?"

"Oh, quite fair. It's partly because you are here."

"Then you think I ought to go away?"

"I think--since you ask me--that you oughtn't to have come."

"I came--to rest."

"I don't question that. I'm only struck by--by the long arm of
coincidence."

"That is, you believe I had another motive?"

With a gesture he seemed to wave this aside. "That's hardly my affair.
You're here; and, since you are, I'd rather--"

"Yes?"

"I'd rather you didn't hurry away."

He rose on saying this, apparently with the intention of going back to
the hotel. Chip remained seated. He smoked mechanically, without knowing
what he did. Questions rose to his lips and died there. Was Edith in
Berne? Had she seen him? Was she keeping out of his way? Was she being
kept out of his way? Was she suffering? Was it through her that he had
been recognized? The fact that he _had_ been recognized brought with it
a kind of humiliation. The humiliation was the greater because of the
way in which he had singled out this man and approached him. During all
those days of studying the stranger with respectful discretion, seeking
an opportunity to address him, the stranger, without deigning him a
look, had known perfectly well who he was and had been imputing motives
to his presence. The reference to the long arm of coincidence was
stinging. Because it was so he tried to muster his dignity.

"I've no intention of hurrying away," he began; "but--"

"If you like, I'll put it this way," the measured voice broke in,
courteously. "If you have time to wait a little longer I should be glad
if you'd do it."

"Would there be any point to that?"

"I think you might trust me not to make the request if there were not."
He added presently: "It's a wise policy to let sleeping dogs lie; but
when they've once been roused, they've got to be quieted."

"Quieted--how?"

"I can't tell you that as yet. I may have some vague idea concerning the
process; I've none at all as to the result."

Chip was not sure that the stranger said good night. He knew he lifted
his hat and moved away. He watched him as, with stately, unhastening
step, he walked down the promenade, the Inverness cape and soft felt hat
silhouetted in the moonlight.

For the next forty-eight hours Walker hung about the hotel like a
culprit. He would have sacrificed even a glimpse of Edith to feel free
to go away. He couldn't go away while the other man's plans remained
enigmatical; but he wished he hadn't come. He felt his position
undignified, grotesque, like that of a boy detected in some bit of silly
daring.

Two days later they met again on the terrace of the Kleine Schanze. It
was not an accidental meeting. The stranger had walked directly up to
Chip to say:

"The lady to whom we were referring the other night--"

But Chip was still on his guard. "Did I refer to a lady?"

"Perhaps not. But I did. And that lady is ill. You may be interested to
know it. She was ill when she arrived in Paris from London ten days
ago."

"Then she's here."

"She's here. That's why I'm taking your time in asking you to remain."

Chip forced the next question with some difficulty: "Does she--does she
want to--to see me?"

"She hasn't said so."

"Has she--said anything about me at all?"

"That, I think, I must leave you to learn later. But I should like you
to know at once that I'm not keeping you here without a motive."

The stately figure moved on, leaving Chip to guess blindly at the
possibilities in store.

More days passed--nearly a week. Chip spent much of his time in the
Kleine Schanze, noticing that the distinguished stranger frequented it
less. Idleness would have got on his nerves, and Berne begun to bore
him, had it not been for the knowledge that he was under the same roof
with Edith. That gave him patience. It was the kind of comfort a man or
a woman finds in being near the prison where some loved one is shut up
in a cell.

It was again an afternoon when the shining spiritual presences were
making themselves visible--not with the gleaming suddenness with which
they had appeared ten days before, but slowly, with vague wonders, as if
finding it hard to bring themselves within mortal ken. Rounding the
corner of the promenade at the end remote from the hotel, at a point
from which he had the whole line of the bluff and the green depths of
the valley and the slopes of the Gurten and the curtain of Alpine mist
in one superb _coup d'oeil_, Chip saw a great white shoulder baring
itself luminously in the eastern sky. For long minutes that was all. It
might have been one of the gates of pearl of which he had heard tell.

It was the sort of thing from which no earth-dweller could take his
eyes. He stood leaning on his stick, his cigar smoldering in his left
hand. He couldn't see that the clouds lifted or that the mists rolled
away; he only grew aware that what seemed like a gate became a bastion,
and what seemed like a bastion rose into a tower, and that out of the
tower and in the midst of the tower and round about the tower white
pinnacles glistened in white air. Nothing had happened that he could
define, beyond a heightening of his own capacity to see. Nothing on that
horizon seemed to emerge or to recede: looking wrought the wonder; he
either saw or he didn't see; and just now he saw. He thought of
something he had heard or read--he had forgotten where: "Immediately
there fell from his eyes as it had been scales." That, apparently, was
the process, while the spiritual presences ranged themselves slowly
within his vision--row upon row, peak upon peak, dome upon dome,
serried, ghostly--white against a white sky, white in white air.

He withdrew his gaze only because the people, ever eager for this
spectacle which they had seen all their lives, crowded to the parapet.
As the children were still in school, it was a quiet throng, elderly and
sedate. Leaning on the balustrade, all faces turned one way, they
fringed the promenade, leaving the broad, paved spaces empty.

For this reason Chip's eye caught the more quickly at the other end of
the terrace the figures of a man and a woman who stood back from the
line of gazers. They were almost in profile toward himself, the man's
erect, stately form allowing the fact that a woman was clinging to his
arm to be just perceptible. It required no such movement as that of a
few minutes later--a movement by which the woman came more fully into
view--for Chip to recognize Edith.

_His_ Edith, _his wife_, clinging to another man's arm, clinging to her
husband's arm, clinging to the arm of a husband who was not himself,
dependent on him, supported by him, possessed by him, coming and going
with him, living and eating with him, bearing him children, sharing with
him whatever was most intimate, directed by him and dominated by
him!--yet, all the while, in everything that could make two beings one
except that stroke of the pen called law, _his wife_!

How had it come about? What had he done, what had she done, to make this
hideous topsyturvydom a fact? He put his hand to his forehead like a man
dazed; but he withdrew it quickly. His forehead was wet and clammy. He
was shaken, transpierced. He saw now that, in all the three years since
he had heard she was married, he hadn't really known it. Perhaps it was
his imagination that was at fault--perhaps his incapacity for believing
what wasn't under his very eyes--perhaps his own success in keeping the
dreadful fact at a distance--_but he hadn't really known it_. Nothing
could have brought it home to him like this--this glimpse of her
intimate association with the other man, and her dependence upon him.

His first impulse was to get out of their sight, to hide, to find some
place where he could grasp the appalling fact in silence and seclusion.
Second thoughts reminded him that there was a situation to be faced and
that he might as well face it now as at any other time. What sort of
situation it would be he couldn't guess; but he was sure that behind the
immobile mask of the other man's grave face there was something that
would be worth the penetration. He would give him a chance. He would go
forward to meet them. No, he wouldn't go forward to meet them; he would
wait for them where he stood. No, he wouldn't wait for them where he
stood; he would slip into the little rotunda close beside him--a little
rotunda generally occupied by motherly Bernese women, but which for the
moment the commanding spectacle outside had emptied.

It was a little open rotunda, with seats all round and a rude table in
the middle. In sitting down he placed himself as nearly as possible in
full view, but with his face toward the mountains. It gave him a
preoccupied air to be seen relighting his cigar. It was thus optional
with the couple who began to advance along the promenade to pass him by
or to pause and address him.

Nothing but a shadow warned him of their approach.

"Chip--"

He turned. Edith was standing in the doorway, the man behind her. The
haggard pallor of her face and the feverishness of her eyes reminded
Chip of the morning little Tom was born. He was on his feet--silent. He
couldn't even breathe her name. It was the less necessary since she
herself hastened to speak:

"Chip, Mr. Lacon knows we met in England. I told him as soon as I
reached Paris; I didn't want him not to know. And now he wants us all to
meet--I don't know why."

Since he had to say something, he uttered the first words that came to
him: "Was there any harm in it--our meeting? Mr. Lacon knows we have
children--and things to talk over."

"Oh, it isn't only that," she said, excitedly. "It's more. I don't know
what--but I know it's more."

He looked puzzled. "More in what way?"

"More in this way," said the measured voice, that had lost no shade of
its self-control. "I understand that Edith feels she has made a
mistake--that you've both made a mistake--"

[Illustration: Edith was standing in the doorway, the man behind her.
"Chip, Mr. Lacon knows we met in England."]

"I never said so," she interrupted, hurriedly.

Lacon smiled, as nearly as his saddened face could smile. "I didn't say
you said so," he corrected, gently. "I said I understood. There's a
difference. And, since I do understand, I feel it right to offer you--to
offer you both--"

Exhaustion compelled her to drop into a seat. "What are you going to
say?"

"Nothing that can hurt you, I hope--or--or Mr. Walker, either. Suppose
we all sit down?"

He followed his own suggestion with a dignity almost serene. Chip took
mechanically the seat from which he had just risen. It offered him the
resource of looking more directly at the range of glistening peaks than
at either of his two companions.

"The point for our consideration is this," Lacon resumed, as calmly as
if he were taking part in a meeting at the Bundespalast. "Admitting that
you've both made a mistake, is there any possibility of retracing your
steps?--or must you go on paying the penalty?"

Chip spoke without turning his eyes from the mountains: "What do you
mean by--the penalty?"

"I suppose I mean the necessity of making four people unhappy instead of
two."

"That is," Chip went on, "there are two who must be unhappy in any
case."

"Precisely. There are two for whom there's _no_ escape. Whatever happens
now, nothing can save _them_. But, since that is so, the question arises
whether it wouldn't be, let us say, a greater economy of human material
if the other two--"

Edith looked mystified. "I don't know what you mean. Which are the two
who must be unhappy in any case?"

Chip answered quietly, without turning his head: "He's one; my--my wife
is the other."

"Oh!" With something between a sigh and a gasp she fell back against a
pillar of the rotunda.

"It's the sort of economy of human material," Chip went on, his eye
following the lines of the Wetterhorn up and down, "that a man achieves
in saving himself from a sinking ship and leaving his wife and children
to drown--assuming that he can't rescue them."

"The comparison isn't quite exact," Lacon replied, courteously.
"Wouldn't it rather be that if a man can save only one of two women, he
nevertheless does what he can?"

Edith still looked bewildered. "I don't know what you're talking about,
either of you. What is it? Why are we here? Am I one of the two women to
be saved?"

"The suggestion is," Chip said, dryly, "that Mr. Lacon wouldn't oppose
your divorcing him, while my--my present wife might divorce me; after
which you and I could marry again. Isn't that it, sir?"

The older man nodded assent. "It's well to use plain English when we
can."

Chip continued to measure the Wetterhorn with his eye. "Rather comic the
whole thing would be, wouldn't it?"

"Possibly," Lacon replied, imperturbably. "But we've accepted the comic
in the institution of marriage, we Americans. It's too late for us to
attempt to take it without its possibilities of opera bouffe."

"But aren't there laws?" Edith asked.

Again Lacon's lips glimmered with the ghost of a smile. "Yes; but
they're very complacent laws. They reduce marriage to the legal
permission for two persons to live together as man and wife as long as
mutually agreeable; but the license is easily rescinded--and renewed."

"But surely marriage is more than that," she protested.

Lacon's ghost of a smile persisted. "Haven't we proved that it
isn't?--for us, at any rate. Hesitation to use our freedom in the future
would only stultify our action in the past. If we go in for an
institution with qualities of opera bouffe isn't it well to do it
light-heartedly?--or as light-heartedly as we can."

Edith looked at him reproachfully. "Should you be doing it
light-heartedly?"

"I said as light-heartedly as we can."

"What makes you think that Chip and I--I mean," she corrected, with some
confusion, "Mr. Walker and I--want to do it at all?"

"Isn't that rather evident?"

"I didn't know it was."

Chip glanced at them over his shoulder. It seemed to him that Lacon's
look was one of pity.

"You met in England," the latter said, displaying a hesitation unusual
in him, "with something--something more than pleasure, as I judge;
and--and Mr. Walker is here."

"Yes, by accident," she declared, hurriedly. "It was by accident in
England, too."

He lifted his fine white hand in protest. "Oh, I'm not blaming you. On
the contrary, nothing could be more natural than that you should both
feel as I--I imagine you do. You're the wife of his youth--he's the
husband of yours. The best things you've ever had in your two lives are
those you've had in common. That you should want to bridge over the
past, and, if possible, go back--"

"We've burned our bridges," she interrupted, quickly.

"Even burned bridges can be rebuilt if there's the will to do it. The
whole question turns on the will. If you have that I want you to
understand that I shall not be--be an obstacle to the--to the
reconstruction."

"Don't you _care_?"

"That's not the question. We've already assumed the fact that my
caring--as well as that of a certain other person whom Mr. Walker would
have to consider--is secondary. It's too late to do anything for
us--assuming that she understands, or may come to understand, the
position as I do. Your refusing happiness for yourselves in order to
stand by us, or even to stand by the children--the younger children, I
mean--wouldn't do us any good. On the contrary, as far as I'm concerned,
if there could be any such thing as mitigation--"

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