CHAPTER IV
When Edward Blandford found himself alone after his wife had undertakento fulfil his abandoned filial duty at her parents' house, he felt aslight twinge of self-reproach. He could not deny that this was notthe first time he had evaded the sterile Sabbath evenings at hismother-in-law's, or that even at other times he was not in accord withthe cold and colorless sanctity of the family. Yet he remembered thatwhen he picked out from the budding womanhood of North Libertythis pure, scentless blossom, he had endured the privations of itssurroundings with a sense of security in inhaling the atmosphere inwhich it grew, and knowing the integrity of its descent. There was acertain pleasure also in invading this seclusion with human passion; thefirst pressure of her hand when they were kneeling together at familyprayers had the zest without the sin of a forbidden pleasure; the firstkiss he had given her with their heads over the family Bible had fairlyintoxicated him in the thin, rarefied air of their surroundings. Intransplanting this blossom to his own home with the fond belief that itwould eventually borrow the hues and color of his own passion, he hadno further interest in the house he had left behind. When he found,however, that the ancestral influence was stronger than he expected,that the young wife, instead of assimilating to his conditions, hadimported into their little household the rigors of her youthful home,he had been chilled and disappointed. But he could not help alsoremembering that his own boyhood had been spent in an atmosphere likeher own in everything but its sincerity and deep conviction. His fatherhad recognized the business value of placating the narrow tyranny of therespectable well-to-do religious community, and had become a conscioushypocrite and a popular citizen. He had himself been under thatinfluence, and it was partly a conviction of this that had drawn himtowards her as something genuine and real. It occurred to him now forthe first time, as he looked around upon that compromise of their twolives in this chilly artificial home, that it was only natural that shewould prefer the more truthful austerities of her mother's house. Hadshe detected the sham, and did she despise him for it?
These were questions which seemed to bring another self-accusing doubtin his own mind, although, without his being conscious of it, they hadbeen really the outcome of that doubt. He could not help dwelling on thesingular human interest she had taken in Demorest's love affair, andthe utterly unexpected emotion she had shown. He had never seen her ascharmingly illogical, capricious, and bewitchingly feminine. Had he notmade a radical mistake in not giving her a frequent provocation for thisinnocent emotion--in fact, in not taking her out into a world of broadersympathies and experiences? What a household they might have had--ifnecessary in some other town--away from those cramped prejudices andlimitations! What friends she might have been with Dick and his otherworldly acquaintances; what social pleasures--guiltless amusementsfor her pure mind--in theatres, parties, and concerts! Would she haveobjected to them?--had he ever seriously proposed them to her? No! ifshe had objected there would have been time enough to have made thispresent compromise; she would have at least respected and understood hissacrifice--and his friends.
Even the artificial externals of his household had never before sovisibly impressed him. Now that she was no longer in the room it did noteven bear a trace of her habitation, it certainly bore no suggestion ofhis own. Why had he bought that hideous horsehair furniture? To remindher of the old provincial heirlooms of her father's sitting-room. Didit remind her of it? The stiff and stony emptiness of this room hadbeen fashioned upon the decorous respectability of his own father'sparlor--in which his father, who usually spent his slippered leisurein the family sitting-room, never entered except on visits from theminister. It had chilled his own youthful soul--why had he perpetuatedit here?
He could only answer these questions by moodily wandering about thehouse, and regretting he had not gone with her. After a vain attempt toestablish social and domestic relations with the hot-air drum by puttinghis feet upon it--after an equally futile attempt to extract interestfrom the book of sermons by opening its pages at random--he glanced atthe clock and suddenly resolved to go and fetch her. It would remind himof the old times when he used to accompany her from church, and, afterher parents had retired, spend a blissful half-hour alone with her. Withwhat a mingling of fear and childish curiosity she used to accept hisequally timid caresses! Yes, he would go and fetch her; and he wouldrecall it to her in a whisper while they were there.
Filled with this idea, when he changed his clothes again he put on acertain heavy beaver overcoat, on whose shaggy sleeve her little, handhad so often rested when he escorted her from meeting; and he evenselected the gray muffler she had knit for him in the old ante-nuptialdays. It was lying in the half-opened drawer from where she had not longbefore taken her disguising veil.
It was still blowing in sudden, capricious gusts; and when he opened thefront door the wind charged fiercely upon him, as if to drive him back.When he had finally forced his way into the street, a return currentclosed the door as suddenly and sharply behind him as if it had ejectedhim from his home for ever.
He reached the fourth house quickly, and as quickly ran up the steps;his hand was upon the bell when his eye suddenly caught sight of hiswife's pass-key still in the lock. She had evidently forgotten it. Herewas a chance to mischievously banter that habitually careful littlewoman! He slipped it into his pocket and quietly entered the dark butperfectly familiar hall. He reached the staircase without a stumbleand began to ascend softly. Halfway up he heard the sound of his wife'shurried voice and another that startled him. He ascended hastily twosteps, which brought him to the level of the half-opened transom ofthe kitchen. A candle was burning on the kitchen table; he could seeeverything that passed in the room; he could hear distinctly every wordthat was uttered.
He did not utter a cry or sound; he did not even tremble. He remainedso rigid and motionless, clutching the banisters with his stiffenedfingers, that when he did attempt to move, all life, as well as all thathad made life possible to him, seemed to have died from him forever. There was no nervous illusion, no dimming of his senses; he saweverything with a hideous clarity of perception. By some diabolicalinstantaneous photography of the brain, little actions, peculiarities,touches of gesture, expression and attitude never before noted by him inhis wife, were clearly fixed and bitten in his consciousness. He saw thecolor of his friend's overcoat, the reddish tinge of his wife's brownhair, till then unnoticed; in that supreme moment he was aware of asudden likeness to her mother; but more terrible than all, there seemedto be a nameless sympathetic resemblance that the guilty pair had toeach other in gesture and movement as of some unhallowed relationshipbeyond his ken. He knew not how long he stood there without breath,without reflection, without one connected thought. He saw her suddenlyput her hand on the handle of the door. He knew that in another momentthey would pass almost before him. He made a convulsive effort to move,with an inward cry to God for support, and succeeded in staggering withoutstretched palms against the wall, down the staircase, and blindlyforward through the hall to the front door. As yet he had been able toformulate only one idea--to escape before them, for it seemed to himthat their contact meant the ruin of them both, of that house, of allthat was near to him--a catastrophe that struck blindly at his wholevisible world. He had reached the door and opened it at the moment thatthe handle of the kitchen-door was turned. He mechanically fell backbehind the open door that hid him, while it let the cruel light glimmerfor a moment on their clasped figures. The door slipped from hisnerveless fingers and swung to with a dull sound. Crouching still in thecorner, he heard the quick rush of hurrying feet in the darkness, sawthe door open and Demorest glide out--saw her glance hurriedly afterhim, close the door, and involve herself and him in the blackness of thehall. Her dress almost touched him in his corner; he could feel thenear scent of her clothes, and the air stirred by her figure retreatingtowards the stairs; could hear the unlocking of a door above and thevoice of her mother from the landing, his wife's reply, the slow fadingof her footsteps on the stairs
and overhead, the closing of a door, andall was quiet again. Still stooping, he groped for the handle of thedoor, opened it, and the next moment reeled like a drunken man down thesteps into the street.
It was well for him that a fierce onset of wind and sleet at thatinstant caught him savagely--stirred his stagnated blood into action,and beat thought once more into his brain. He had mechanically turnedtowards his own home; his first effort of recovering will hurriedhim furiously past it and into a side street. He walked rapidly, butundeviatingly on to escape observation and secure some solitude for hisreturning thoughts. Almost before he knew it he was in the open fields.
The idea of vengeance had never crossed his mind. He was neither aphysical nor a moral coward, but he had never felt the merely animalfury of disputed animal possession which the world has chosen torecognize as a proof of outraged sentiment, nor had North Libertyaccepted the ethics that an exchange of shots equalized a transferredaffection. His love had been too pure and too real to be moved likethe beasts of the field, to seek in one brutal passion compensation foranother. Killing--what was there to kill? All that he had to live forhad been already slain. With the love that was in him--in them--alreadydead at his feet, what was it to him whether these two hollow livesmoved on and passed him, or mingled their emptiness elsewhere? Only letthem henceforth keep out of his way!
For in his first feverish flow of thought--the reaction to his benumbedwill within and the beating sleet without--he believed Demorest astreacherous as his wife. He recalled his sudden and unexpected intrusioninto the buggy only a few hours before, his mysterious confidences, hisassurance of Joan's favorable reception of his secret, and her consentto the Californian trip. What had all this meant if not that Demorestwas using him, the husband, to assist his intrigue, and carry the newsof his presence in the town to her? And this boldness, this assurance,this audacity of conception was like Demorest! While only certainpassages of the guilty meeting he had just seen and overheard weredistinctly impressed on his mind, he remembered now, with hideousand terrible clearness, all that had gone before. It was part of thedisturbed and unequal exaltation of his faculties that he dwelt moreupon this and his wife's previous deceit and manifest hypocrisy, thanupon the actual evidence he had witnessed of her unfaithfulness. Thecorroboration of the fact was stronger to him than the fact itself. Heunderstood the coldness, the uncongeniality now--the simulated increaseof her aversion to Demorest--her journeys to Boston and Hartford tosee her relatives, her acquiescence to his frequent absences; not anincident, not a characteristic of her married life was inconsistent withher guilt and her deceit. He went even back to her maidenhood: how didhe know this was not the legitimate sequence of other secret schoolgirlescapades. The bitter worldly light that had been forced upon his simpleingenuous nature had dazzled and blinded him. He passed from fatuouscredulity to equally fatuous distrust.
He stopped suddenly with the roaring of water before him. In the furiousfollowing of his rapid thought through storm and darkness he had come,he knew not how, upon the bank of the swollen river, whose endangeredbridge Demorest had turned from that evening. A few steps more and hewould have fallen into it. He drew nearer and looked at it with vaguecuriosity. Had he come there with any definite intention? The thoughtsobered without frightening him. There was always THAT culminationpossible, and to be considered coolly.
He turned and began to retrace his steps. On his way thither he had beenfighting the elements step by step; now they seemed to him to have takenpossession of him and were hurrying him quickly away. But where? and towhat? He was always thinking of the past. He had wandered he knew nothow long, always thinking of that. It was the future he had to consider.What was to be done?
He had heard of such cases before; he had read of them in newspapersand talked of them with cold curiosity. But they were of worldly, sinfulpeople, of dissolute men whose characters he could not conceive--ofsilly, vain, frivolous, and abandoned women whom he had never even met.But Joan--O God! It was the first time since his mute prayer on thestaircase that the Divine name had been wrested from his lips. It camewith his wife's--and his first tears! But the wind swept the one awayand dried the others upon his hot cheeks.
It had ceased to rain, and the wind, which was still high, had shiftedmore to the north and was bitterly cold. He could feel the roadwaystiffening under his feet. When he reached the pavement of the outskirtsonce more he was obliged to take the middle of the street, to avoid thetreacherous films of ice that were beginning to glaze the sidewalks. Yetthis very inclemency, added to the usual Sabbath seclusion, had left thestreets deserted. He was obliged to proceed more slowly, but he met noone and could pursue his bewildering thoughts unchecked. As he passedbetween the lines of cold, colorless houses, from which all light andlife had vanished, it seemed to him that their occupants were deadas his love, or had fled their ruined houses as he had. Why should heremain? Yet what was his duty now as a man--as a Christian? His eye fellon the hideous facade of the church he was passing--her church! He gavea bitter laugh and stumbled on again.
With one of the gusts he fancied he heard a familiar sound--the rattlingof buggy wheels over the stiffening road. Or was it merely the fancifulecho of an idea that only at that moment sprung up in his mind? If itwas real it came from the street parallel with the one he was in. Whocould be driving out at this time? What other buggy than his own couldbe found to desecrate this Christian Sabbath? An irresistible thoughtimpelled him at the risk of recognition to quicken his pace and turn thecorner as Richard Demorest drove up to the Independence Hotel, sprangfrom his buggy, throwing the reins over the dashboard, and disappearedinto the hotel!
Blandford stood still, but for an instant only. He had been wanderingfor an hour aimlessly, hopelessly, without consecutive idea, coherentthought or plan of action; without the faintest inspiration orsuggestion of escape from his bewildering torment, without--he had begunto fear--even the power to conceive or the will to execute; when a wildidea flashed upon him with the rattle of his buggy wheels. And evenas Demorest disappeared into the hotel, he had conceived his plan andexecuted it. He crossed the street swiftly, leaped into his buggy,lifted the reins and brought down the whip simultaneously, and the nextinstant was dashing down the street in the direction of the Warensboroturnpike. So sudden was the action that by the time the astonished hallporter had rushed into the street, horse and buggy had already vanishedin the darkness.
Presently it began to snow. So lightly at first that it seemed a merepassing whisper to the ear, the brush of some viewless insect upon thecheek, or the soft tap of unseen fingers on the shoulders. But by thetime the porter returned from his hopeless and invisible chase ofthe "runaway," he came in out of a swarming cloud of whirling flakes,blinded and whitened. There was a hurried consultation with thelandlord, the exhibition of much imperious energy and some bank-notesfrom Demorest, and with a glance at the clock that marked the expiringlimit of the Puritan Sabbath, the landlord at last consented. By thetime the falling snow had muffled the street from the indiscreet clamorof Sabbath-breaking hoofs, the landlord's noiseless sledge was at thedoor and Demorest had departed.
The snow fell all that night; with fierce gusts of wind that moaned inthe chimneys of North Liberty and sorely troubled the Sabbath sleep ofits decorous citizens; with deep, passionless silences, none theless fateful, that softly precipitated a spotless mantle of mercifulobliteration equally over their precise or their straying footprints,that would have done them good to heed and to remember; and when morningbroke upon a world of week-day labor, it was covered as far as theireyes could reach as with a clear and unwritten tablet, on which theymight record their lives anew. Near the wreck of the broken bridge onthe Warensboro turnpike an overturned buggy lay imbedded in the driftand debris of the river hurrying silently towards the sea, and a horsewith fragments of broken and icy harness still clinging to him was foundstanding before the stable-door of Edward Blandford. But to any furtherknowledge of the fate of its owner, North Liberty awoke never again.
> PART II