CHAPTER XVII
About midday Clydesdale, who had returned to his house from a morningvisit to his attorney in Liberty Street, was summoned to the telephone.
"Is that you, Desboro?" he asked.
"Yes. I stopped this morning to speak to your wife a moment, but verynaturally she was not at home to me at such an hour in the morning. Ihave just called her on the telephone, but her maid says she has goneout."
"Yes. She is not very well. I understand she has gone to see Dr. Allen.But she ought to be back pretty soon. Won't you come up to the house,Desboro?"
There was a short pause, then Desboro's voice again, in reply:
"I believe I will come up, Clydesdale. And I think I'll talk to youinstead of to your wife."
"Just as it suits you. Very glad to see you anyway. I'll be in the rearextension fussing about among the porcelains."
"I'll be with you in ten minutes."
* * * * *
In less time than that Desboro arrived, and was piloted through thehouse and into the gallery by an active maid. At the end of one of theaisles lined by glass cases, the huge bulk of Cary Clydesdale loomed,his red face creased with his eternal grin.
"Hello, Desboro!" he called. "Come this way. I've one or two things herewhich will match any of yours at Silverwood, I think."
And, as Desboro approached, Clydesdale strode forward, offering him anenormous hand.
"Glad to see you," he grinned. "Congratulations on your marriage! Finegirl, that! I don't know any to match her." He waved a comprehensivearm. "All this stuff is her arrangement. Gad! But I had it rottenlydisplayed. And the collection was full of fakes, too. But she camefloating in here one morning, and what she did to my junk-heap was aplenty, believe _me_!" And the huge fellow grinned and grinned untilDesboro's sombre face altered and became less rigid.
A maid appeared with a table and a frosted cocktail shaker.
"You'll stop and lunch with us," said Clydesdale, filling two glasses."Elena won't be very long. Don't know just what ails her, but she'snervous and run down. I guess it's the spring that's coming. Well,here's to all bad men; they need the boost and we don't. Prosit!"
He emptied his glass, set it aside, and from the open case beside himextracted an exquisite jar of the Kang-He, _famille noire_, done in fivecolours during the best period of the work.
"God knows I'm not proud," he said, "but can you beat it, Desboro?"
Desboro took the beautiful jar, and, carefully guarding the cover,turned it slowly. Birds, roses, pear blossoms, lilies, exquisite incomposition and colour, passed under his troubled eyes. He caressed thepaste mechanically.
"It is very fine," he said.
"Have you anything to beat it?"
"I don't think so."
"How are yours marked?" inquired the big man, taking the jar into hisown enormous paws as lovingly as a Kadiak bear embraces her progeny."This magnificent damn thing is a forgery. Look! Here's the mark of theEmperor Ching-hwa! Isn't that the limit? And the forgery is every bit asfine as the originals made before 1660--only it happened to be thefashion in China in 1660 to collect Ching-hwa jars, so the maker of thispiece deliberately forged an earlier date. Can you beat it?"
Desboro smiled as though he were listening; and Clydesdale gingerlyreplaced the jar and as carefully produced another.
"Ming!" he said. "Seventeenth century Manchu Tartar. I've some earlierMing ranging between 1400 A.D. and 1600; but it can't touch this,Desboro. In fact, I think the eighteenth century Ming is even finer;and, as far as that goes, there is magnificent work being donenow--although the occidental markets seldom see it. But--Ming for mine,every time! How do _you_ feel about it, old top?"
Desboro looked at the vase. The soft beauty of the blue underglaze, thesilvery thickets of magnolia bloom amid which a magnificent,pheasant-hued phoenix stepped daintily, meant at the moment absolutelynothing to him.
Nor did the _poudre-bleu_ jar, triumphantly exhibited by the infatuatedowner--a splendid specimen painted on the overglaze. And the weeds andshells and fiery golden fishes swimming had been dimmed a little byrubbing, so that the dusky aquatic depths loomed more convincingly.
"Clydesdale," said Desboro in a low voice, "I want to say one or twothings to you. Another time it would give me pleasure to go over theseporcelains with you. Do you mind my interrupting you?"
The big man grinned.
"Shoot," he said, replacing the "powder-blue" and carefully closing andlocking the case. Then, dropping the keys into his pocket, he came overto where Desboro was seated beside the flimsy folding card-table, shookthe cocktail shaker, offered to fill Desboro's glass, and at a gestureof refusal refilled his own.
"This won't do a thing to my appetite," he remarked genially. "Go ahead,Desboro." And he settled himself to listen, with occasional furtive,sidelong glances at his beloved porcelains.
Desboro said: "Clydesdale, you and I have known each other for a numberof years. We haven't seen much of each other, except at the club, ormeeting casually here and there. It merely happened so; if accident hadthrown us together, the chances are that we would have liked eachother--perhaps sought each other's company now and then--as much as mendo in this haphazard town, anyway. Don't you think so?"
Clydesdale nodded.
"But we have been on perfectly friendly terms, always--with oneexception," said Desboro.
"Yes--with one exception. But that is all over now----"
"I am afraid it isn't."
Clydesdale's grin remained unaltered when he said: "Well, what thehell----" and stopped abruptly.
"It's about that one exception of which I wish to speak," continuedDesboro, after a moment's thought. "I don't want to say very much--justone or two things which I hope you already know and believe. And all Ihave to say is this, Clydesdale; whatever I may have been--whatever Imay be now, that sort of treachery is not in me. I make no merit ofit--it may be mere fastidiousness on my part which would prevent me frommeditating treachery toward an acquaintance or a friend."
Clydesdale scrutinised him in silence.
"Never, since Elena was your wife, have I thought of her except as yourwife."
Clydesdale only grinned.
"I want to be as clear as I can on this subject," continued the other,"because--and I must say it to you--there have been rumoursconcerning--me."
"And concerning _her_," said Clydesdale simply. "Don't blink matters,Desboro."
"No, I won't. The rumours have included her, of course. But what thoserumours hint, Clydesdale, is an absolute lie. I blame myself in ameasure; I should not have come here so often--should not have continuedto see Elena so informally. I _was_ in love with her once; I did ask herto marry me. She took you. Try to believe me, Clydesdale, when I tellyou that though for me there did still linger about her thatinexplicable charm which attracted me, which makes your wife soattractive to everybody, never for a moment did it occur to me not toacquiesce in the finality of her choice. Never did I meditate any wrongtoward you or toward her. I _did_ dangle. That was where I blamemyself. Because where a better man might have done it uncriticised, Iwas, it seems, open to suspicion."
"You're no worse than the next," said Clydesdale in a deep growl."Hell's bells! I don't blame _you_! And there would have been nothing toit anyway if Elena had not lost her head that night and bolted. I wasrough with you all right; but you behaved handsomely; and I knew wherethe trouble was. Because, Desboro, my wife dislikes me."
"I thought----"
"No! Let's have the truth, damn it! _That's_ the truth! My wife dislikesme. It may be that she is crazy about you; I don't know. But I aminclined to think--after these months of hell, Desboro--that she reallyis not crazy about you, or about any man; that it is only her dislike ofme that possesses her to--to deal with me as she has done."
He was still grinning, but his heavy lower lip twitched, and suddenlythe horror of it broke on Desboro--that this great, gross, red-facedcreature was suffering in every atom of his unwieldy bulk
; that thefixed grin was covering anguish; that the man's heart was breakingthere, now, where he sat, the _rictus mortis_ stamped on his quiveringface.
"Clydesdale," he said, unsteadily, "I came here meaning to say only whatI have said--that you never had anything to doubt in me--but thatrumours still coupled my name with Elena's. That was all I meant to say.But I'll say more. I'm sorry that things are not going well with you andElena. I would do anything in the world that lay within my power to helpmake yours a happy marriage. But--marriages all seem to go wrong. Foryears--witnessing what I have--what everybody among our sort of peoplecannot choose but witness--I made up my mind that marriage was no good."
He passed his hand slowly over his eyes; waited a moment, then:
"But I was wrong. That's what the matter is--that is how the matter liesbetween the sort of people we are and marriage. It is _we_ who arewrong; there's nothing wrong about marriage, absolutely nothing. Onlymany of us are not fit for it. And some of us take it as a preventive,as a moral medicine--as though anybody could endure an eternal dosing!And some of us seek it as a refuge--a refuge from every ill, everydiscomfort, every annoyance and apprehension that assails the humanrace--as though the institution of marriage were a vast and fortifiedstorehouse in which everything we have ever lacked and desired werelying about loose for us to pick up and pocket."
He bent forward across the table and began to play absently with hisempty glass.
"Marriage is all right," he said. "But only those fit to enter possessthe keys to the magic institution. And they find there what theyexpected. The rest of us jimmy our way in, and find ourselves in anempty mansion, Clydesdale."
For a long while they sat there in silence; Desboro fiddling with hisempty glass, the other, motionless, his ponderous hands clasped on hisknees. At length, Desboro spoke again: "I do not know how it is withyou, but I am not escaping anything that I have ever done."
"I'm getting mine," said Clydesdale heavily.
After a few moments, what Desboro had said filtered into his brain; andhe turned and looked at the younger man.
"Have these rumours----" he began. And Desboro nodded:
"These rumours--or others. _These_ happen not to have been true."
"That's tough on _her_," said Clydesdale gravely.
"That's where it is toughest on us. I think we could stand anythingexcept that _they_ should suffer through us. And the horrible part of itis that we never meant to--never dreamed that we should ever be heldresponsible for the days we lived so lightly--gay, careless,irresponsible days--God! Is there any punishment to compare with it,Clydesdale?"
"None."
Desboro rose and stood with his hand across his forehead, as though itached.
"'Jacqueline--my wife--is the result of a differenttraining'"]
"You and Elena and I are products of the same kind of civilisation.Jacqueline--my wife--is the result of a different training in a verydifferent civilisation."
"And the rottenness of ours is making her ill."
Desboro nodded. After a moment he stirred restlessly.
"Well," he said, "I must go to the office. I haven't been there yet."
Clydesdale got onto his feet.
"Won't you stay?"
"No."
"As you wish. And--I'm sorry, Desboro. However, you have a better chancethan I--to make good. My wife--dislikes me."
He went as far as the door with his guest, and when Desboro had departedhe wandered aimlessly back into the house and ultimately found himselfamong his porcelains once more--his only refuge from a grief and carethat never ceased, never even for a moment eased those massive shouldersof their dreadful weight.
From where he stood, he heard the doorbell sounding distantly. Doubtlesshis wife had returned. Doubtless, too, as long as there was no guest,Elena would prefer to lunch alone in her own quarters, unless she had anengagement to lunch at the Ritz or elsewhere.
He had no illusion that she desired to see him, or that she caredwhether or not he inquired what her physician had said; but he closedand locked his glass cases once more and walked heavily into the mainbody of the house and descended to the door.
To the man on duty there he said: "Did Mrs. Clydesdale come in?"
"Yes, sir."
"Thank you."
He hesitated, turned irresolutely, and remounted the stairs. To a maidpassing he said:
"Is Mrs. Clydesdale lunching at home?"
"Yes, sir. Mrs. Clydesdale is not well, sir."
"Has she gone to her room?"
"Yes, sir."
"Please go to her and say that I am sorry and--and inquire if there isanything I can do."
The maid departed and the master of the house wandered into themusic-room--perhaps because Elena's tall, gilded harp was there--theonly thing in the place that ever reminded him of her, or held for himanything of her personality.
"In the rose dusk of the drawn curtains, he stood besideit"]
Now, in the rose dusk of the drawn curtains, he stood beside it, nottouching it--never dreaming of touching it without permission, any morethan he would have touched his wife.
Somebody knocked; he turned, and the maid came forward.
"Mrs. Clydesdale desires to see you, sir."
He stared for a second, then his heart beat heavily with alarm.
"Where is Mrs. Clydesdale?"
"In her bedroom, sir."
"Unwell?"
"Yes, sir."
"In _bed_?"
"I think so, sir. Mrs. Clydesdale's maid spoke to me."
"Very well. Thank you."
He went out and mounted the stairs, striding up silently to the hallabove, where his wife's maid quietly opened the door for him, then wentaway to her own little chintz-lined den.
Elena was lying on her bed in a frilly, lacy, clinging thing of rosetint. The silk curtains had been drawn, but squares of sunlightquartered them, turning the dusk of the pretty room to a golden gloom.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him as he advanced.
"I'm terribly sorry," he said; and his heavy voice shook in spite ofhim.
She motioned toward the only armchair--an ivory-covered affair, the canebottom covered by a rose cushion.
"Bring it here--nearer," she said.
He did so, and seated himself beside the bed cautiously.
She lay silent after that; once or twice she pressed the palms of bothhands over her eyes as though they pained her, but when he ventured toinquire, she shook her head. It was only when he spoke of calling up Dr.Allen again that she detained him in his chair with a gesture:
"Wait! I've got to tell you something! I don't know what you willdo about it. You've had trouble enough--with me. But thisis--is--unspeakable----"
"What on earth is the matter? Aren't you ill?" he began.
"Yes; that, too. But--there is something else. I thought it had made meill--but----" She began to shiver, and he laid his hand on hers andfound it burning.
"I tell you Allen ought to come at once----" he began again.
"No, no, no! You don't know what you're talking about. I--I'mfrightened--that's what is the matter! That's one of the things that'sthe matter. Wait a moment. I'll tell you. I'll _have_ to tell you, now.I suppose you'll--divorce me."
There was a silence; then:
"Go on," he said, in his heavy, hopeless voice.
She moistened her lips with her tongue:
"It's--my fault. I--I did not care for you--that is how it--began. No;it began before that--before I knew you. And there were two men. Youremember them. They were the rage with our sort--like other fads, for awhile--such as marmosets, and--things. One of these things was the poet,Orrin Munger. He called himself a Cubist--whatever that may be. Theother was the writer, Adalbert Waudle."
Clydesdale's grin was terrible.
"No," she said wearily, "I was only a more venturesome fool than otherwomen who petted them--nothing worse. They went about kissing women'shands and reading verses to them. Some women let them have t
he run oftheir boudoirs--like any poodle. Then there came that literary andsemi-bohemian bal-masque in Philadelphia. It was the day before theAssembly. I was going on for that, but mother wouldn't let me go on awayearlier for the bal-masque. So--I went."
"What?"
"I lied. I pretended to be stopping with the Hammertons in Westchester.And I bribed my maid to lie, too. But I went."
"Alone?"
"No. Waudle went with me."
"Good God, Elena!"
"I know. I was simply insane. I went with him to that ball andleft before the unmasking. Nobody knew me. So I went to theBellevue-Stratford for the night. I--I never dreamed that _he_ would gothere, too."
"Did he?"
"Yes. He had the rooms adjoining. I only knew it when--when I awoke inthe dark and heard him tapping on the door and calling in that thick,soft voice----" She shuddered and clenched her hands, closing herfeverish eyes for a moment.
Her husband stared at her, motionless in his chair.
She unclosed her eyes wearily: "That was all--except--the other one--thelittle one with the frizzy hair--Munger. He saw me there. He knew thatWaudle had the adjoining rooms. So then, very early, I came back to NewYork, badly scared, and met my maid at the station and pretended tomother that I had just arrived from Westchester. And that night I wentback to the Assembly. But--ever since that night I--I have been--payingmoney to Adalbert Waudle. Not much before I married you, because I hadvery little to pay. But all my allowance has gone that way--andnow--now he wants more. And I haven't it. And I'm sick----"
The terrible expression on her husband's face frightened her, and, for amoment, she faltered. But there was more to tell, and she must tell itthough his unchained wrath destroy her.
"You'll have to wait until I finish," she muttered. "There's more--andworse. Because he came here the night I--went to Silverwood. He saw meleave the house; he unsealed and read the note I left on the librarytable for you. He knows what I said--about Jim Desboro. He knows I wentto him. And he is trying to make me pay him--to keep it out of the--the_Tattler_."
Clydesdale's congested face was awful; she looked into it, thought thatshe read her doom. But the courage of despair forced her on.
"There is worse--far worse," she said with dry lips. "I had no money togive; he wished to keep the seven thousand which was his share of whatyou paid for the forged porcelains. He came to me and made me understandthat if you insisted on his returning that money he would write me upfor the _Tattler_ and disgrace me so that you would divorce me. I--Imust be honest with you at such a time as this, Cary. I wouldn't havecared if--if Jim Desboro would have married me afterward. But he hadceased to care for me. He--was in love with--Miss Nevers; or she waswith him. And I disliked her. But--I was low enough to go to her in mydire extremity and--and ask her to pronounce those forged porcelainsgenuine--so that you would keep them. And I did it--meaning to bribeher."
Clydesdale's expression was frightful.
"Yes--I did this thing. And worse. I--I wish you'd kill me after I tellyou! I--something she said--in the midst of my anguish andterror--something about Jim Desboro, I think--I am not sure--seemed todrive me insane. And she was married to him all the while, and I didn'tknow it. And--to drive her away from him, I--I made her understandthat--that I was--his--mistress----"
"Good God!"
"Wait--for God's sake, wait! I don't care what you do to me afterward.Only--only tell that woman I wasn't--tell her I never was. Promise methat, whatever you are going to do to me--promise me you'll tell herthat I never was any man's mistress! Because--because--I am--ill. Andthey say--Dr. Allen says I--I am going to--to have a baby."
The man reared upright and stood swaying there, ashy faced, his visagedistorted. Suddenly the features were flooded with rushing crimson; hedropped on his knees and caught her in his arms with a groan; and sheshut her eyes, thinking the world was ending.
After a long while she opened them, still half stunned with terror; sawhis quivering lips resting on her tightly locked hands; stared for awhile, striving to comprehend his wet face and his caress.
And, after a while, timidly, uncertainly, wondering, she ventured towithdraw one hand, still watching him with fascinated eyes.
She had always feared him physically--feared his bulk, and his massivestrength, and his grin. Otherwise, she had held him in intellectualcontempt.
Very cautiously, very gently, she withdrew her hand, watching him allthe while. He had not annihilated her. What did he mean to do with thiswoman who had hated him and who now was about to disgrace him? What didhe mean to do? What was he doing now--with his lips quivering againsther other hand, all wet with his tears?
"Cary?" she said.
He lifted a passion-marred visage; and there seemed for a momentsomething noble in the high poise of his ugly head. And, without knowingwhat she was doing, or why, she slowly lifted her free hand and let itrest lightly on his massive shoulder. And, as she looked into his eyes,a strange expression began to dawn in her own--and it became strangerand stranger--something he had never before seen there--something sobewildering, so wonderful, that his heart seemed to cease.
Suddenly her eyes filled and her face flushed from throat to hair andthe next instant she swayed forward, was caught, and crushed to hisbreast.
"Oh!" she wept ceaselessly. "Oh, oh, Cary! I didn't know--I didn't know.I--I want to be a--a good mother. I'll try to be better; I'll try to bebetter. You are so good--you are so good to me--so kind--so kind--toprotect me--after what I've done--after what I've done!"