“WHY NOT?” said Mr. Mathews. “It is far too small for a house, too pretty for a
hut, too—unusual—for a cottage.”
“Cottagette, by all means,” said Lois, seating herself on a porch chair. “But it is larger than it looks, Mr. Mathews. How do you like it, Malda?”
I was delighted with it. More than delighted. Here this tiny shell of fresh unpainted wood peeped out from under the trees, the only house in sight except the distant white specks on far off farms, and the little wandering village in the
river-threaded valley. It sat right on the turf,—no road, no path even, and the dark woods shadowed the back windows.
“How about meals?” asked Lois.
“Not two minutes’ walk,” he assured her, and showed us a little furtive path between the trees to the place where meals were furnished.
We discussed and examined and exclaimed, Lois holding her pongee skirts close about her—she
needn’t have been so careful, there wasn’t a speck of dust,—and presently decided to take it.
Never did I know the real joy and peace of living, before that blessed summer at “High Court.” It was a mountain place, easy enough to get to, but strangely big and still and far away when you were there.
The working basis of the establishment was an eccentric woman named Caswell, a sort of musical enthusiast, who had a
summer school of music and the “higher thought.” Malicious persons, not able to obtain accommodations there, called the place “High C.”
I liked the music very well, and kept my thoughts to myself, both high and low, but “The Cottagette” I loved unreservedly. It was so little and new and clean, smelling only of its fresh- planed boards—they hadn’t even stained it.
There was one big room and two little ones in the
tiny thing, though from the outside you wouldn’t have believed it, it looked so small; but small as it was it harbored a miracle—a real bathroom with water piped from mountain springs. Our windows opened into the green shadiness, the soft brownness, the bird- inhabited quiet flower- starred woods. But in front we looked across whole counties—over a far-off river—into another state. Off and down and away—it was like sitting on the roof of something—something
very big.
The grass swept up to the door-step, to the walls— only it wasn’t just grass of course, but such a procession of flowers as I had never imagined could grow in one place.
You had to go quite a way through the meadow, wearing your own narrow faintly marked streak in the grass, to reach the town- connecting road below. But in the woods was a little path, clear and wide, by which we went to meals.
For we ate with the highly thoughtful musicians, and highly musical thinkers, in their central boarding-house nearby. They didn’t call it a boarding-house, which is neither high nor musical; they called it “The Calceolaria.” There was plenty of that growing about, and I didn’t mind what they called it so long as the food was good—which it was, and the prices reasonable— which they were.
The people were extremely interesting—some of them at least; and all of
them were better than the average of summer boarders.
But if there hadn’t been any interesting ones it didn’t matter while Ford Mathews was there. He was a newspaper man, or rather an ex-newspaper man, then becoming a writer for magazines, with books ahead.
He had friends at High Court—he liked music—he liked the place—and he liked us. Lois liked him too, as was quite natural. I’m sure I did.
He used to come up evenings and sit on the porch and talk.
He came daytimes and went on long walks with us. He established his workshop in a most attractive little cave not far beyond us,—the country there is full of rocky ledges and hollows,—and sometimes asked us over to an afternoon tea, made on a gipsy fire.
Lois was a good deal older than I, but not really old at all, and she didn’t look her thirty-five by ten
years. I never blamed her for not mentioning it, and I wouldn’t have done so, myself, on any account. But I felt that together we made a safe and reasonable household. She played beautifully, and there was a piano in our big room. There were pianos in several other little cottages about—but too far off for any jar of sound. When the wind was right we caught little wafts of music now and then; but mostly it was still—blessedly still, about us. And yet that Calceolaria was only two
minutes off—and with raincoats and rubbers we never minded going to it.
We saw a good deal of Ford and I got interested in him, I couldn’t help it. He was big. Not extra big in pounds and inches, but a man with big view and a grip—with purpose and real power. He was going to do things. I thought he was doing them now, but he didn’t—this was all like cutting steps in the ice-wall, he said. It had to be done, but the road was long ahead. And he took an interest in
my work too, which is unusual for a literary man.
Mine wasn’t much. I did embroidery and made designs.
It is such pretty work! I like to draw from flowers and leaves and things about me; conventionalize them sometimes, and sometimes paint them just as they are,
—in soft silk stitches.
All about up here were the lovely small things I needed; and not only these, but the lovely big things that make one feel so strong and able
to do beautiful work.
Here was the friend I lived so happily with, and all this fairy land of sun and shadow, the free immensity of our view, and the dainty comfort of the Cottagette. We never had to think of ordinary things till the soft musical thrill of the Japanese gong stole through the trees, and we trotted off to the Calceolaria.
I think Lois knew before I did.
We were old friends and trusted each other, and she
had had experience too.
“Malda,” she said, “let us face this thing and be rational.” It was a strange thing that Lois should be so rational and yet so musical
—but she was, and that was one reason I liked her so much.
“You are beginning to love Ford Mathews—do you know it?”
I said yes, I thought I was. “Does he love you?”
That I couldn’t say. “It is early yet,” I told her. “He is
a man, he is about thirty I believe, he has seen more of life and probably loved before—it may be nothing more than friendliness with him.”
“Do you think it would be a good marriage?” she asked. We had often talked of love and marriage, and Lois had helped me to form my views—hers were very clear and strong.
“Why yes—if he loves me,” I said. “He has told me quite a bit about his family, good western farming
people, real Americans. He is strong and well—you can read clean living in his eyes and mouth.” Ford’s eyes were as clear as a girl’s, the whites of them were clear. Most men’s eyes, when you look at them critically, are not like that. They may look at you very expressively, but when you look at them, just as features, they are not very nice.
I liked his looks, but I liked him better.
So I told her that as far as I knew it would be a good
marriage—if it was one.
‘How much do you love him?” she asked.
That I couldn’t quite tell,
—it was a good deal,—but I didn’t think it would kill me to lose him.
“Do you love him enough to do something to win him
—to really put yourself out somewhat for that purpose?”
“Why—yes—I think I do. If it was something I approved of. What do you mean?”
Then Lois unfolded her
plan. She had been married,
—unhappily married, in her youth; that was all over and done with years ago; she had told me about it long since; and she said she did not regret the pain and loss because it had given her experience. She had her maiden name again—and freedom. She was so fond of me she wanted to give me the benefit of her experience
—without the pain.
“Men like music,” said Lois; “they like sensible talk; they like beauty of course, and all that,—”
“Then they ought to like you!” I interrupted, and, as a matter of fact they did. I knew several who wanted to marry her, but she said “once was enough.” I don’t think they were “good marriages” though.
“Don’t be foolish, child,” said Lois, “this is serious. What they care for most after all is domesticity. Of course they’ll fall in love with anything; but what they want to marry is a homemaker. Now we are living here in an idyllic sort of way, quite conducive to
falling in love, but no temptation to marriage. If I were you—if I really loved this man and wished to marry him, I would make a home of this place.”
“Make a home?—why it is a home. I never was so happy anywhere in my life. What on earth do you mean, Lois?”
“A person might be happy in a balloon, I suppose,” she replied, “but it wouldn’t be a home. He comes here and sits talking with us, and it’s quiet and feminine and
attractive—and then we hear that big gong at the Calceolaria, and off we go slopping through the wet woods—and the spell is broken. Now you can cook.” I could cook. I could cook excellently. My esteemed Mama had rigorously taught me every branch of what is now called “domestic science;” and I had no objection to the work, except that it prevented my doing anything else. And one’s hands are not so nice when one cooks and washes dishes,—I need nice hands
for my needlework. But if it was a question of pleasing Ford Mathews—
Lois went on calmly. “Miss Caswell would put on a kitchen for us in a minute, she said she would, you know, when we took the cottage. Plenty of people keep house up here,—we can if we want to.”
“But we don’t want to,” I said, “we never have wanted to. The very beauty of the place is that it never had any housekeeping about it. Still, as you say, it would be cosy
on a wet night, we could have delicious little suppers, and have him stay—”
“He told me he had never known a home since he was eighteen,” said Lois.
That was how we came to install a kitchen in the Cottagette. The men put it up in a few days, just a lean- to with a window, a sink and two doors. I did the cooking. We had nice things, there is no denying that; good fresh milk and vegetables particularly, fruit is hard to get in the country, and meat
too, still we managed nicely; the less you have the more you have to manage—it takes time and brains, that’s all.
Lois likes to do housework, but it spoils her hands for practicing, so she can’t; and I was perfectly willing to do it—it was all in the interest of my own heart. Ford certainly enjoyed it. He dropped in often, and ate things with undeniable relish. So I was pleased, though it did interfere with my work a good deal. I always work best in the
morning; but of course housework has to be done in the morning too; and it is astonishing how much work there is in the littlest kitchen. You go in for a minute, and you see this thing and that thing and the other thing to be done, and your minute is an hour before you know it.
When I was ready to sit down the freshness of the morning was gone somehow. Before, when I woke up, there was only the clean wood smell of the house, and then the blessed out-of-doors: now I always
felt the call of the kitchen as soon as I woke. An oil stove will smell a little, either in or out of the house; and soap, and—well you know if you cook in a bedroom how it makes the room feel differently? Our house had been only bedroom and parlor before.
We baked too—the baker’s bread was really pretty poor, and Ford did enjoy my whole wheat, and brown, and especially hot rolls and gems. It was a pleasure to feed him, but it did heat up the house, and
me. I never could work much—at my work—baking days. Then, when I did get to work, the people would come with things,—milk or meat or vegetables, or children with berries; and what distressed me most was the wheelmarks on our meadow. They soon made quite a road—they had to of course, but I hated it—I lost that lovely sense of being on the last edge and looking over—we were just a bead on a string like other houses. But it was quite true that I loved this man, and would
do more than this to please him. We couldn’t go off so freely on excursions as we used, either; when meals are to be prepared someone has to be there, and to take in things when they come. Sometimes Lois stayed in, she always asked to, but mostly I did. I couldn’t let her spoil her summer on my account. And Ford certainly liked it.
He came so often that Lois said she thought it would look better if we had an older person with us; and that her mother could come
if I wanted her, and she could help with the work of course. That seemed reasonable, and she came. I wasn’t very fond of Lois’s mother, Mrs. Fowler, but it did seem a little conspicuous, Mr. Mathews eating with us more than he did at the Calceolaria. There were others of course, plenty of them dropping in, but I didn’t encourage it much, it made so much more work. They would come in to supper, and then we would have musical evenings. They offered to help me wash
dishes, some of them, but a new hand in the kitchen is not much help, I preferred to do it myself; then I knew where the dishes were.
Ford never seemed to want to wipe dishes; though I often wished he would.
So Mrs. Fowler came. She and Lois had one room, they had to,—and she really did a lot of the work, she was a very practical old lady.
Then the house began to be noisy. You hear another person in a kitchen more than you hear yourself, I
think,—and the walls were only boards. She swept more than we did too. I don’t think much sweeping is needed in a clean place like that; and she dusted all the time; which I know is unnecessary. I still did most of the cooking, but I could get off more to draw, out-of- doors; and to walk. Ford was in and out continually, and, it seemed to me, was really coming nearer. What was one summer of interrupted work, of noise and dirt and smell and constant meditation on what to eat
next, compared to a lifetime of love? Besides—if he married me—I should have to do it always, and might as well get used to it.
Lois kept me contented, too, telling me nice things that Ford said about my cooking. “He does appreciate it so,” she said.
One day he came around early and asked me to go up Hugh’s Peak with him. It was a lovely climb and took all day. I demurred a little, it was Monday, Mrs. Fowler thought it was cheaper to
have a woman come and wash, and we did, but it certainly made more work.
“Never mind,” he said, “what’s washing day or ironing day or any of that old foolishness to us? This is walking day—that’s what it is.” It was really, cool and sweet and fresh,—it had rained in the night,—and brilliantly clear.
“Come along!” he said. “We can see as far as Patch Mountain I’m sure. There’ll never be a better day.”
“Is anyone else going?” I
asked.
“Not a soul. It’s just us.
Come.”
I came gladly, only suggesting—“Wait, let me put up a lunch.”
“I’ll wait just long enough for you to put on knickers and a short skirt,” said he. “The lunch is all in the basket on my back. I know how long it takes for you women to ‘put up’ sandwiches and things.”
We were off in ten minutes, light-footed and happy: and the day was all
that could be asked. He brought a perfect lunch, too, and had made it all himself. I confess it tasted better to me than my own cooking; but perhaps that was the climb.
When we were nearly down we stopped by a spring on a broad ledge, and supped, making tea as he liked to do out-of-doors. We saw the round sun setting at one end of a world view, and the round moon rising at the other; calmly shining each on each.
And then he asked me to be his wife.
We were very happy. “But there’s a condition!”
said he all at once, sitting up straight and looking very fierce. “You mustn’t cook!”
“What!” said I. “Mustn’t cook?”
“No,” said he, “you must give it up—for my sake.”
I stared at him dumbly. “Yes, I know all about it,”
he went on, “Lois told me. I’ve seen a good deal of Lois
—since you’ve taken to
cooking. And since I would talk about you, naturally I learned a lot. She told me how you were brought up, and how strong your domestic instincts were— but bless your artist soul, dear girl, you have some others!” Then he smiled rather queerly and murmured, “surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.”
“I’ve watched you, dear, all summer;” he went on, “it doesn’t agree with you.
“Of course the things taste
good—but so do my things! I’m a good cook myself. My father was a cook, for years
—at good wages. I’m used to it you see.
“One summer when I was hard up I cooked for a living
—and saved money instead of starving.”
“O ho!” said I, “that accounts for the tea—and the lunch!”
“And lots of other things,” said he. “But you haven’t done half as much of your lovely work since you started this kitchen business,
and— you’ll forgive me, dear—it hasn’t been as good. Your work is quite too good to lose; it is a beautiful and distinctive art, and I don’t want you to let it go. What would you think of me if I gave up my hard long years of writing for the easy competence of a well-paid cook!”
I was still too happy to think very clearly. I just sat and looked at him. “But you want to marry me?” I said.
“I want to marry you, Malda,—because I love you
—because you are young and strong and beautiful— because you are wild and sweet and—fragrant, and— elusive, like the wild flowers you love. Because you are so truly an artist in your special way, seeing beauty and giving it to others. I love you because of all this, because you are rational and highminded and capable of friendship,—and in spite of your cooking!”
“But—how do you want to live?”
“As we did here—at
first,” he said. “There was peace, exquisite silence. There was beauty—nothing but beauty. There were the clean wood odors and flowers and fragrances and sweet wild wind. And there was you—your fair self, always delicately dressed, with white firm fingers sure of touch in delicate true work. I loved you then. When you took to cooking it jarred on me. I have been a cook, I tell you, and I know what it is. I hated it—to see my woodflower in a kitchen. But Lois told me about how
you were brought up to it and loved it, and I said to myself, ‘I love this woman; I will wait and see if I love her even as a cook.’ And I do, Darling: I withdraw the condition. I will love you always, even if you insist on being my cook for life!”
“O I don’t insist!” I cried. “I don’t want to cook—I want to draw! But I thought
—Lois said—How she has misunderstood you!”
“It is not true, always, my dear,” said he, “that the way to a man’s heart is through
his stomach; at least it’s not the only way. Lois doesn’t know everything, she is young yet! And perhaps for my sake you can give it up. Can you, sweet?”
Could I? Could I? Was there ever a man like this?
TURNED
IN HER soft-carpeted, thick- curtained, richly furnished chamber, Mrs. Marroner lay sobbing on the wide, soft bed.
She sobbed bitterly, chokingly, despairingly; her shoulders heaved and shook convulsively; her hands were tight-clenched; she had forgotten her elaborate dress, the more elaborate bedcover; forgotten her dignity, her self-control, her pride. In her mind was an overwhelming, unbelievable horror, an immeasurable loss, a turbulent, struggling mass of emotion.
In her reserved, superior, Boston-bred life she had never dreamed that it would be possible for her to feel so
many things at once, and with such trampling intensity.
She tried to cool her feelings into thoughts; to stiffen them into words; to control herself—and could not. It brought vaguely to her mind an awful moment in the breakers at York Beach, one summer in girlhood, when she had been swimming under water and could not find the top.
In her uncarpeted, thin- curtained, poorly furnished chamber on the top floor, Gerta Petersen lay sobbing on the narrow, hard bed.
She was of larger frame than her mistress, grandly built and strong; but all her proud young womanhood was prostrate now, convulsed with agony, dissolved in tears. She did not try to control herself. She wept for two.
If Mrs. Marroner suffered more from the wreck and ruin of a longer love— perhaps a deeper one; if her tastes were finer, her ideals loftier; if she bore the pangs of bitter jealousy and outraged pride, Gerta had personal shame to meet, a hopeless future, and a looming present which filled her with unreasoning terror.
She had come like a meek young goddess into that perfectly ordered house, strong, beautiful, full of good will and eager obedience, but ignorant and
childish—a girl of eighteen.
Mr. Marroner had frankly admired her, and so had his wife. They discussed her visible perfections and as visible limitations with that perfect confidence which they had so long enjoyed. Mrs. Marroner was not a jealous woman. She had never been jealous in her life
—till now.
Gerta had stayed and learned their ways. They had both been fond of her. Even the cook was fond of her. She was what is called
“willing,” was unusually teachable and plastic; and Mrs. Marroner, with her early habits of giving instruction, tried to educate her somewhat.
“I never saw anyone so docile,” Mrs. Marroner had often commented. “It is perfection in a servant, but almost a defect in character. She is so helpless and confiding.”
She was precisely that; a tall, rosy-cheeked baby; rich womanhood without, helpless infancy within. Her
braided wealth of dead-gold hair, her grave blue eyes, her mighty shoulders, and long, firmly moulded limbs seemed those of a primal earth spirit; but she was only an ignorant child, with a child’s weakness.
When Mr. Marroner had to go abroad for his firm, unwillingly, hating to leave his wife, he had told her he felt quite safe to leave her in Gerta’s hands—she would take care of her.
“Be good to your mistress, Gerta,” he told the
girl that last morning at breakfast. “I leave her to you to take care of. I shall be back in a month at latest.”
Then he turned, smiling, to his wife. “And you must take care of Gerta, too,” he said. “I expect you’ll have her ready for college when I get back.”
This was seven months ago. Business had delayed him from week to week, from month to month. He wrote to his wife, long, loving, frequent letters; deeply regretting the delay,
explaining how necessary, how profitable it was; congratulating her on the wide resources she had; her well-filled, well-balanced mind; her many interests.
“If I should be eliminated from your scheme of things, by any of those ‘acts of God’ mentioned on the tickets, I do not feel that you would be an utter wreck,” he said. “That is very comforting to me. Your life is so rich and wide that no one loss, even a great one, would wholly cripple you. But nothing of the sort is
likely to happen, and I shall be home again in three weeks—if this thing gets settled. And you will be looking so lovely, with that eager light in your eyes and the changing flush I know so well—and love so well! My dear wife! We shall have to have a new honeymoon— other moons come every month, why shouldn’t the mellifluous kind?”
He often asked after “little Gerta,” sometimes enclosed a picture postcard to her, joked his wife about her laborious efforts to educate
“the child,” was so loving and merry and wise—
All this was racing through Mrs. Marroner’s mind as she lay there with the broad, hemstitched border of fine linen sheeting crushed and twisted in one hand, and the other holding a sodden handkerchief.
She had tried to teach Gerta, and had grown to love the patient, sweet- natured child, in spite of her dullness. At work with her hands, she was clever, if not quick, and could keep small
accounts from week to week. But to the woman who held a Ph.D., who had been on the faculty of a college, it was like baby- tending.
Perhaps having no babies of her own made her love the big child the more, though the years between them were but fifteen.
To the girl she seemed quite old, of course; and her young heart was full of grateful affection for the patient care which made her feel so much at home in this
new land.
And then she had noticed a shadow on the girl’s bright face. She looked nervous, anxious, worried. When the bell rang she seemed startled, and would rush hurriedly to the door. Her peals of frank laughter no longer rose from the area gate as she stood talking with the always admiring tradesmen.
Mrs. Marroner had labored long to teach her more reserve with men, and flattered herself that her
words were at last effective. She suspected the girl of homesickness; which was denied. She suspected her of illness, which was denied also. At last she suspected her of something which could not be denied.
For a long time she refused to believe it, waiting. Then she had to believe it, but schooled herself to patience and understanding. “The poor child,” she said. “She is here without a mother—she is so foolish and yielding—I must not be too stern with her.”
And she tried to win the girl’s confidence with wise, kind words.
But Gerta had literally thrown herself at her feet and begged her with streaming tears not to turn her away. She would admit nothing, explain nothing; but frantically promised to work for Mrs. Marroner as long as she lived—if only she would keep her.
Revolving the problem carefully in her mind, Mrs. Marroner thought she would keep her, at least for the
present. She tried to repress her sense of ingratitude in one she had so sincerely tried to help, and the cold, contemptuous anger she had always felt for such weakness.
“The thing to do now,” she said to herself, “is to see her through this safely. The child’s life should not be hurt any more than is unavoidable. I will ask Dr. Bleet about it—what a comfort a woman doctor is! I’ll stand by the poor, foolish thing till it’s over, and then get her back to
Sweden somehow with her baby. How they do come where they are not wanted— and don’t come where they are wanted!” And Mrs. Marroner, sitting alone in the quiet, spacious beauty of the house, almost envied Gerta.
Then came the deluge.
She had sent the girl out for needed air toward dark. The late mail came; she took it in herself. One letter for her—her husband’s letter. She knew the postmark, the stamp, the kind of
typewriting. She impulsively kissed it in the dim hall. No one would suspect Mrs. Marroner of kissing her husband’s letters—but she did, often.
She looked over the others. One was for Gerta, and not from Sweden. It looked precisely like her own. This struck her as a little odd, but Mr. Marroner had several times sent messages and cards to the girl. She laid the letter on the hall table and took hers to her room.
“My poor child,” it began. What letter of hers had been sad enough to warrant that?
“I am deeply concerned at the news you send.” What news to so concern him had she written? “You must bear it bravely, little girl. I shall be home soon, and will take care of you, of course. I hope there is no immediate anxiety—you do not say. Here is money, in case you need it. I expect to get home in a month at latest. If you have to go, be sure to leave your address at my office. Cheer up—be brave—I will
take care of you.”
The letter was typewritten, which was not unusual. It was unsigned, which was unusual. It enclosed an American bill— fifty dollars. It did not seem in the least like any letter she had ever had from her husband, or any letter she could imagine him writing. But a strange, cold feeling was creeping over her, like a flood rising around a house.
She utterly refused to admit the ideas which began to bob and push about
outside her mind, and to force themselves in. Yet under the pressure of these repudiated thoughts she went downstairs and brought up the other letter—the letter to Gerta. She laid them side by side on a smooth dark space on the table; marched to the piano and played, with stern precision, refusing to think, till the girl came back. When she came in, Mrs. Marroner rose quietly and came to the table. “Here is a letter for you,” she said.
The girl stepped forward eagerly, saw the two lying
together there, hesitated, and looked at her mistress.
“Take yours, Gerta. Open it, please.”
The girl turned frightened eyes upon her.
“I want you to read it, here,” said Mrs. Marroner.
“Oh, ma’am——No!
Please don’t make me!” “Why not?”
There seemed to be no reason at hand, and Gerta flushed more deeply and opened her letter. It was long; it was evidently
puzzling to her; it began “My dear wife.” She read it slowly.
“Are you sure it is your letter?” asked Mrs. Marroner. “Is not this one yours? Is not that one— mine?”
She held out the other letter to her.
“It is a mistake,” Mrs. Marroner went on, with a hard quietness. She had lost her social bearings somehow; lost her usual keen sense of the proper thing to do. This was not
life, this was a nightmare.
“Do you not see? Your letter was put in my envelope and my letter was put in your envelope. Now we understand it.”
But poor Gerta had no antechamber to her mind; no trained forces to preserve order while agony entered. The thing swept over her, resistless, overwhelming. She cowered before the outraged wrath she expected
; and from some hidden cavern that wrath arose and swept over her in pale flame.
“Go and pack your trunk,” said Mrs. Marroner. “You will leave my house to- night. Here is your money.”
She laid down the fifty- dollar bill. She put with it a month’s wages. She had no shadow of pity for those anguished eyes, those tears which she heard drop on the floor.
“Go to your room and pack,” said Mrs. Marroner. And Gerta, always obedient, went.
Then Mrs. Marroner went to hers, and spent a time she
never counted, lying on her face on the bed.
But the training of the twenty-eight years which had elapsed before her marriage; the life at college, both as student and teacher; the independent growth which she had made, formed a very different background for grief from that in Gerta’s mind.
After a while Mrs. Marroner arose. She administered to herself a hot bath, a cold shower, a vigorous rubbing. “Now I
can think,” she said.
First she regretted the sentence of instant banishment. She went upstairs to see if it had been carried out. Poor Gerta! The tempest of her agony had worked itself out at last as in a child, and left her sleeping, the pillow wet, the lips still grieving, a big sob shuddering itself off now and then.
Mrs. Marroner stood and watched her, and as she watched she considered the helpless sweetness of the
face; the defenseless, unformed character; the docility and habit of obedience which made her so attractive—and so easily a victim. Also she thought of the mighty force which had swept over her; of the great process now working itself out through her; of how pitiful and futile seemed any resistance she might have made.
She softly returned to her own room, made up a little fire, and sat by it, ignoring her feelings now, as she had before ignored her thoughts.
Here were two women and a man. One woman was a wife; loving, trusting, affectionate. One was a servant; loving, trusting, affectionate: a young girl, an exile, a dependent; grateful for any kindness; untrained, uneducated, childish. She ought, of course, to have resisted temptation; but Mrs. Marroner was wise enough to know how difficult temptation is to recognize when it comes in the guise of friendship and from a source one does not suspect.
Gerta might have done
better in resisting the grocer’s clerk; had, indeed, with Mrs. Marroner’s advice, resisted several. But where respect was due, how could she criticize? Where obedience was due, how could she refuse—with ignorance to hold her blinded—until too late?
As the older, wiser woman forced herself to understand and extenuate the girl’s misdeed and foresee her ruined future, a new feeling rose in her heart, strong, clear, and overmastering; a sense of
measureless condemnation for the man who had done this thing. He knew. He understood. He could fully foresee and measure the consequences of his act. He appreciated to the full the innocence, the ignorance, the grateful affection, the habitual docility, of which he deliberately took advantage.
Mrs. Marroner rose to icy peaks of intellectual apprehension, from which her hours of frantic pain seemed far indeed removed. He had done this thing under
the same roof with her—his wife. He had not frankly loved the younger woman, broken with his wife, made a new marriage. That would have been heart-break pure and simple. This was something else.
That letter, that wretched, cold, carefully guarded, unsigned letter: that bill—far safer than a check—these did not speak of affection. Some men can love two women at one time. This was not love.
Mrs. Marroner’s sense of
pity and outrage for herself, the wife, now spread suddenly into a perception of pity and outrage for the girl. All that splendid, clean young beauty, the hope of a happy life, with marriage and motherhood; honorable independence, even—these were nothing to that man. For his own pleasure he had chosen to rob her of her life’s best joys.
He would “take care of her” said the letter? How? In what capacity?
And then, sweeping over
both her feelings for herself, the wife, and Gerta, his victim, came a new flood, which literally lifted her to her feet. She rose and walked, her head held high. “This is the sin of man against woman,” she said. “The offense is against womanhood. Against motherhood. Against—the child.”
She stopped.
The child. His child. That, too, he sacrificed and injured
—doomed to degradation.
Mrs. Marroner came of
stern New England stock. She was not a Calvinist, hardly even a Unitarian, but the iron of Calvinism was in her soul: of that grim faith which held that most people had to be damned “for the glory of God.”
Generations of ancestors who both preached and practiced stood behind her; people whose lives had been sternly moulded to their highest moments of religious conviction. In sweeping bursts of feeling they achieved “conviction,” and afterward they lived and
died according to that conviction.
When Mr. Marroner reached home, a few weeks later, following his letters too soon to expect an answer to either, he saw no wife upon the pier, though he had cabled; and found the house closed darkly. He let himself in with his latch-key, and stole softly upstairs, to surprise his wife.
No wife was there.
He rang the bell. No servant answered it.
He turned up light after
light; searched the house from top to bottom ; it was utterly empty. The kitchen wore a clean, bald, unsympathetic aspect. He left it and slowly mounted the stair, completely dazed. The whole house was clean, in perfect order, wholly vacant.
One thing he felt perfectly sure of—she knew.
Yet was he sure? He must not assume too much. She might have been ill. She might have died. He started to his feet. No, they would
have cabled him. He sat down again.
For any such change, if she had wanted him to know, she would have written. Perhaps she had, and he, returning so suddenly, had missed the letter. The thought was some comfort. It must be so. He turned to the telephone, and again hesitated. If she had found out—if she had gone
—utterly gone, without a word—should he announce it himself to friends and family?
He walked the floor; he searched everywhere for some letter, some word of explanation. Again and again he went to the telephone—and always stopped. He could not bear to ask: “Do you know where my wife is?”
The harmonious, beautiful rooms reminded him in a dumb, helpless way of her; like the remote smile on the face of the dead. He put out the lights; could not bear the darkness; turned them all on again.
It was a long night——
In the morning he went early to the office. In the accumulated mail was no letter from her. No one seemed to know of anything unusual. A friend asked after his wife—“Pretty glad to see you, I guess?” He answered evasively.
About eleven a man came to see him; John Hill, her lawyer. Her cousin, too. Mr. Marroner had never liked him. He liked him less now, for Mr. Hill merely handed him a letter, remarked, “I
was requested to deliver this to you personally,” and departed, looking like a person who is called on to kill something offensive.
“I have gone. I will care for Gerta. Good-bye. Marion.”
That was all. There was no date, no address, no postmark; nothing but that.
In his anxiety and distress he had fairly forgotten Gerta and all that. Her name aroused in him a sense of rage. She had come between him and his wife. She had
taken his wife from him. That was the way he felt.
At first he said nothing, did nothing; lived on alone in his house, taking meals where he chose. When people asked him about his wife he said she was traveling—for her health. He would not have it in the newspapers. Then, as time passed, as no enlightenment came to him, he resolved not to bear it any longer, and employed detectives. They blamed him for not having put them on the track earlier, but set to work, urged to the
utmost secrecy.
What to him had been so blank a wall of mystery seemed not to embarrass them in the least. They made careful inquiries as to her “past,” found where she had studied, where taught, and on what lines; that she had some little money of her own, that her doctor was Josephine L. Bleet, M.D., and many other bits of information.
As a result of careful and prolonged work, they finally told him that she had
resumed teaching under one of her old professors; lived quietly, and apparently kept boarders; giving him town, street, and number, as if it were a matter of no difficulty whatever.
He had returned in early spring. It was autumn before he found her.
A quiet college town in the hills, a broad, shady street, a pleasant house standing in its own lawn, with trees and flowers about it. He had the address in his hand, and the number
showed clear on the white gate. He walked up the straight gravel path and rang the bell. An elderly servant opened the door.
“Does Mrs. Marroner live here?”
“No, sir.”
“This is number twenty- eight?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who does live here?” “Miss Wheeling, sir.”
Ah! Her maiden name. They had told him, but he
had forgotten.
He stepped inside. “I would like to see her,” he said.
He was ushered into a still parlor, cool and sweet with the scent of flowers, the flowers she had always loved best. It almost brought tears to his eyes. All their years of happiness rose in his mind again; the exquisite beginnings; the days of eager longing before she was really his; the deep, still beauty of her love.
Surely she would forgive
him—she must forgive him. He would humble himself; he would tell her of his honest remorse—his absolute determination to be a different man.
Through the wide doorway there came in to him two women. One like a tall Madonna, bearing a baby in her arms.
Marion, calm, steady, definitely impersonal; nothing but a clear pallor to hint of inner stress.
Gerta, holding the child as a bulwalk, with a new
intelligence in her face, and her blue, adoring eyes fixed on her friend—not upon him.
He looked from one to the other dumbly.
And the woman who had been his wife asked quietly:
“What have you to say to us?”
