For a long time Corthell sat motionless, looking into the fire. In an adjoining room a clock chimed the half hour of one, and the artist stirred, passing his long fingers across his eyes.
After a long while he rose, and going to the fireplace, leaned an arm against the overhanging shelf, and resting his forehead against it, remained in that position, looking down at the smouldering logs.
"She is unhappy," he murmured at length. "It is not difficult to see that.... Unhappy and lonely. Oh, fool, fool to have left her when you might have stayed! Oh, fool, fool, not to find the strength to leave her now when you should not remain!"
The following evening Corthell called upon Mrs. Jadwin. She was alone, as he usually found her. He had brought a book of poems with him, and instead of passing the evening in the art gallery, as they had planned, he read aloud to her from Rossetti. Nothing could have been more conventional than their conversation, nothing more impersonal. But on his way home one feature of their talk suddenly occurred to him. It struck him as significant; but of what he did not care to put into words. Neither he nor Laura had once spoken of Jadwin throughout the entire evening.
Little by little the companionship grew. Corthell shut his eyes, his ears. The thought of Laura, the recollection of their last evening together, the anticipation of the next meeting filled all his waking hours. He refused to think; he resigned himself to the drift of the current. Jadwin he rarely saw. But on those few occasions when he and Laura's husband met, he could detect no lack of cordiality in the other's greeting. Once even Jadwin had remarked:
"I'm very glad you have come to see Mrs. Jadwin, Corthell. I have to be away so much these days, I'm afraid she would be lonesome if it wasn't for some one like you to drop in now and then and talk art to her."
By slow degrees the companionship trended toward intimacy. At the various theatres and concerts he was her escort. He called upon her two or three times each week. At his studio entertainments Laura was always present. How—Corthell asked himself—did she regard the affair? She gave him no sign; she never intimated that his presence was otherwise than agreeable. Was this tacit acquiescence of hers an encouragement? Was she willing to afficher herself, as a married woman, with a cavalier? Her married life was intolerable, he was sure of that; her husband uncongenial. He told himself that she detested him.
Once, however, this belief was rather shocked by an unexpected and (to him) an inconsistent reaction on Laura's part. She had made an engagement with him to spend an afternoon in the Art Institute, looking over certain newly acquired canvases. But upon calling for her an hour after luncheon he was informed that Mrs. Jadwin was not at home. When next she saw him she told him that she had spent the entire day with her husband. They had taken an early train and had gone up to Geneva Lake to look over their country house, and to prepare for its opening, later on in the spring. They had taken the decision so unexpectedly that she had no time to tell him of the change in her plans. Corthell wondered if she had—as a matter of fact—forgotten all about her appointment with him. He never quite understood the incident, and afterwards asked himself whether or no he could be so sure, after all, of the estrangement between the husband and wife. He guessed it to be possible that on this occasion Jadwin had suddenly decided to give himself a holiday, and that Laura had been quick to take advantage of it. Was it true, then, that Jadwin had but to speak the word to have Laura forget all else? Was it true that the mere nod of his head was enough to call her back to him? Corthell was puzzled. He would not admit this to be true. She was, he was persuaded, a woman of more spirit, of more pride than this would seem to indicate. Corthell ended by believing that Jadwin had, in some way, coerced her; though he fancied that for the few days immediately following the excursion Laura had never been gayer, more alert, more radiant.
But the days went on, and it was easy to see that his business kept Jadwin more and more from his wife. Often now, Corthell knew, he passed the night down town, and upon those occasions when he managed to get home after the day's work, he was exhausted, worn out, and went to bed almost immediately after dinner. More than ever now the artist and Mrs. Jadwin were thrown together.
On a certain Sunday evening, the first really hot day of the year, Laura and Page went over to spend an hour with the Cresslers, and—as they were all wont to do in the old days before Laura's marriage—the party "sat out on the front stoop." For a wonder, Jadwin was able to be present. Laura had prevailed upon him to give her this evening and the evening of the following Wednesday—on which latter occasion she had planned that they were to take a long drive in the park in the buggy, just the two of them, as it had been in the days of their courtship.
Corthell came to the Cresslers quite as a matter of course. He had dined with the Jadwins at the great North Avenue house and afterwards the three, preferring to walk, had come down to the Cresslers on foot.
But evidently the artist was to see but little of Laura Jadwin that evening. She contrived to keep by her husband continually. She even managed to get him away from the others, and the two, leaving the rest upon the steps, sat in the parlour of the Cresslers' house, talking.
By and by Laura, full of her projects, exclaimed:
"Where shall we go? I thought, perhaps, we would not have dinner at home, but you could come back to the house just a little—a little bit—early, and you could drive me out to the restaurant there in the park, and we could have dinner there, just as though we weren't married just as though we were sweethearts again. Oh, I do hope the weather will be fine."
"Oh," answered Jadwin, "you mean Wednesday evening. Dear old girl, honestly, I—I don't believe I can make it after all. You see, Wednesday—"
Laura sat suddenly erect.
"But you said," she began, her voice faltering a little, "you said—"
"Honey, I know I did, but you must let me off this time again."
She did not answer. It was too dark for him to see her face; but, uneasy at her silence, he began an elaborate explanation. Laura, however, interrupted. Calmly enough, she said:
"Oh, that's all right. No, no, I don't mind. Of course, if you are busy."
"Well, you see, don't you, old girl?"
"Oh, yes, yes, I see," she answered. She rose.
"I think," she said, "we had better be going home. Don't you?"
"Yes, I do," he assented. "I'm pretty tired myself. I've had a hard day's work. I'm thirsty, too," he added, as he got up. "Would you like to have a drink of water, too?"
She shook her head, and while he disappeared in the direction of the Cresslers' dining-room, she stood alone a moment in the darkened room looking out into the street. She felt that her cheeks were hot. Her hands, hanging at her sides, shut themselves into tight fists.
"What, you are all alone?" said Corthell's voice, behind her.
She turned about quickly.
"I must be going," he said. "I came to say good night." He held out his hand.
"Good night," she answered, as she gave him hers. Then all at once she added:
"Come to see me again—soon, will you? Come Wednesday night."
And then, his heart leaping to his throat, Corthell felt her hand, as it lay in his, close for an instant firmly about his fingers.
"I shall expect you Wednesday then?" she repeated.
He crushed her hand in his grip, and suddenly bent and kissed it.
"Good night," she said, quietly. Jadwin's step sounded at the doorway.
"Good night," he whispered, and in another moment was gone.
During these days Laura no longer knew herself. At every hour she changed; her moods came and went with a rapidity that bewildered all those who were around her. At times her gaiety filled the whole of her beautiful house; at times she shut herself in her apartments, denying herself to every one, and, her head bowed upon her folded arms, wept as though her heart was breaking, without knowing why.
For a few days a veritable seizure of religious enthusiasm held sway over her. She spoke of endowing a hospital, of doing church work among the "slums" of the city. But no sooner had her friends readjusted their points of view to suit this new development than she was off upon another tangent, and was one afternoon seen at the races, with Mrs. Gretry, in her showiest victoria, wearing a great flaring hat and a bouquet of crimson flowers.
She never repeated this performance, however, for a new fad took possession of her the very next day. She memorised the role of Lady Macbeth, built a stage in the ballroom at the top of the house, and, locking herself in, rehearsed the part, for three days uninterruptedly, dressed in elaborate costume, declaiming in chest tones to the empty room:
"'The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the entrance of Duncan under my battlements.'"
Then, tiring of Lady Macbeth, she took up Juliet, Portia, and Ophelia; each with appropriate costumes, studying with tireless avidity, and frightening Aunt Wess' with her declaration that "she might go on the stage after all." She even entertained the notion of having Sheldon Corthell paint her portrait as Lady Macbeth.
As often as the thought of the artist presented itself to her she fought to put it from her. Yes, yes, he came to see her often, very often. Perhaps he loved her yet. Well, suppose he did? He had always loved her. It was not wrong to have him love her, to have him with her. Without his company, great heavens, her life would be lonely beyond words and beyond endurance. Besides, was it to be thought, for an instant, that she, she, Laura Jadwin, in her pitch of pride, with all her beauty, with her quick, keen mind, was to pine, to droop to fade in oblivion and neglect? Was she to blame? Let those who neglected her look to it. Her youth was all with her yet, and all her power to attract, to compel admiration.
When Corthell came to see her on the Wednesday evening in question, Laura said to him, after a few moments, conversation in the drawing-room:
"Oh, you remember the picture you taught me to appreciate—the picture of the little pool in the art gallery, the one you called 'Despair'? I have hung it in my own particular room upstairs—my sitting-room—so as to have it where I can see it always. I love it now. But," she added, "I am not sure about the light. I think it could be hung to better advantage." She hesitated a moment, then, with a sudden, impulsive movement, she turned to him.
"Won't you come up with me, and tell me where to hang it?"
They took the little elevator to the floor above, and Laura led the artist to the room in question—her "sitting-room," a wide, airy place, the polished floor covered with deep skins, the walls wainscotted half way to the ceiling, in dull woods. Shelves of books were everywhere, together with potted plants and tall brass lamps. A long "Madeira" chair stood at the window which overlooked the park and lake, and near to it a great round table of San Domingo mahogany, with tea things and almost diaphanous china.
"What a beautiful room," murmured Corthell, as she touched the button in the wall that opened the current, "and how much you have impressed your individuality upon it. I should have known that you lived here. If you were thousands of miles away and I had entered here, I should have known it was yours—and loved it for such."
"Here is the picture," she said, indicating where it hung. "Doesn't it seem to you that the light is bad?"
But he explained to her that it was not so, and that she had but to incline the canvas a little more from the wall to get a good effect.
"Of course, of course," she assented, as he held the picture in place. "Of course. I shall have it hung over again to-morrow."
For some moments they remained standing in the centre of the room, looking at the picture and talking of it. And then, without remembering just how it had happened, Laura found herself leaning back in the Madeira chair, Corthell seated near at hand by the round table.
"I am glad you like my room," she said. "It is here that I spend most of my time. Often lately I have had my dinner here. Page goes out a great deal now, and so I am left alone occasionally. Last night I sat here in the dark for a long time. The house was so still, everybody was out—even some of the servants. It was so warm, I raised the windows and I sat here for hours looking out over the lake. I could hear it lapping and washing against the shore—almost like a sea. And it was so still, so still; and I was thinking of the time when I was a little girl back at Barrington, years and years ago, picking whortle-berries down in the 'water lot,' and how I got lost once in the corn—the stalks were away above my head—and how happy I was when my father would take me up on the hay wagon. Ah, I was happy in those days—just a freckled, black-haired slip of a little girl, with my frock torn and my hands all scratched with the berry bushes."
She had begun by dramatising, but by now she was acting—acting with all her histrionic power at fullest stretch, acting the part of a woman unhappy amid luxuries, who looked back with regret and with longing towards a joyous, simple childhood. She was sincere and she was not sincere. Part of her—one of those two Laura Jadwins who at different times, but with equal right called themselves "I," knew just what effect her words, her pose, would have upon a man who sympathised with her, who loved her. But the other Laura Jadwin would have resented as petty, as even wrong, the insinuation that she was not wholly, thoroughly sincere. All that she was saying was true. No one, so she believed, ever was placed before as she was placed now. No one had ever spoken as now she spoke. Her chin upon one slender finger, she went on, her eyes growing wide:
"If I had only known then that those days were to be, the happiest of my life.... This great house, all the beauty of it, and all this wealth, what does it amount to?" Her voice was the voice of Phedre, and the gesture of lassitude with which she let her arms fall into her lap was precisely that which only the day before she had used to accompany Portia's plaint of
–my little body is a-weary of this great world.
Yet, at the same time, Laura knew that her heart was genuinely aching with real sadness, and that the tears which stood in her eyes were as sincere as any she had ever shed.
"All this wealth," she continued, her head dropping back upon the cushion of the chair as she spoke, "what does it matter; for what does it compensate? Oh, I would give it all gladly, gladly, to be that little black-haired girl again, back in Squire Dearborn's water lot; with my hands stained with the whortle-berries and the nettles in my fingers—and my little lover, who called me his beau-heart and bought me a blue hair ribbon, and kissed me behind the pump house."
"Ah," said Corthell, quickly and earnestly, "that is the secret. It was love—even the foolish boy and girl love—love that after all made your life sweet then."
She let her hands fall into her lap, and, musing, turned the rings back and forth upon her fingers.
"Don't you think so?" he asked, in a low voice.
She bent her head slowly, without replying. Then for a long moment neither spoke. Laura played with her rings. The artist, leaning forward in his chair, looked with vague eyes across the room. And no interval of time since his return, no words that had ever passed between them, had been so fraught with significance, so potent in drawing them together as this brief, wordless moment.
At last Corthell turned towards her.
"You must not think," he murmured, "that your life is without love now. I will not have you believe that."
But she made no answer.
"If you would only see," he went on. "If you would only condescend to look, you would know that there is a love which has enfolded your life for years. You have shut it out from you always. But it has been yours, just the same; it has lain at your door, it has looked—oh, God knows with what longing!—through your windows. You have never stirred abroad that it has not followed you. Not a footprint of yours that it does not know and cherish. Do you think that your life is without love? Why, it is all around you—all around you but voiceless. It has no right to speak, it only has the right to suffer."
Still Laura said no word. Her head turned from him, she looked out of the window, and once more the seconds passed while neither spoke. The clock on the table ticked steadily. In the distance, through the open window, came the incessant, mournful wash of the lake. All around them the house was still. At length Laura sat upright in her chair.
"I think I will have this room done over while we are away this summer," she said. "Don't you think it would be effective if the wainscotting went almost to the ceiling?"
He glanced critically about the room.
"Very," he answered, briskly. "There is no background so beautiful as wood."
"And I might finish it off at the top with a narrow shelf."
"Provided you promised not to put brass 'plaques' or pewter kitchen ware upon it."
"Do smoke," she urged him. "I know you want to. You will find matches on the table."
But Corthell, as he lit his cigarette, produced his own match box. It was a curious bit of antique silver, which he had bought in a Viennese pawnshop, heart-shaped and topped with a small ducal coronet of worn gold. On one side he had caused his name to be engraved in small script. Now, as Laura admired it, he held it towards her.
"An old pouncet-box, I believe," he informed her, "or possibly it held an ointment for her finger nails." He spilled the matches into his hand. "You see the red stain still on the inside; and—smell," he added, as she took it from him. "Even the odour of the sulphur matches cannot smother the quaint old perfume, distilled perhaps three centuries ago."
An hour later Corthell left her. She did not follow him further than the threshold of the room, but let him find his way to the front door alone.
When he had gone she returned to the room, and for a little while sat in her accustomed place by the window overlooking the park and the lake. Very soon after Corthell's departure she heard Page, Landry Court, and Mrs. Wessels come in; then at length rousing from her reverie she prepared for bed. But, as she passed the round mahogany table, on her way to her bedroom, she was aware of a little object lying upon it, near to where she had sat.
"Oh, he forgot it," she murmured, as she picked up Corthell's heart-shaped match box. She glanced at it a moment, indifferently; but her mind was full of other things. She laid it down again upon the table, and going on to her own room, went to bed.
Jadwin did not come home that night, and in the morning Laura presided at breakfast table in his place. Landry Court, Page, and Aunt Wess' were there; for occasionally nowadays, when the trio went to one of their interminable concerts or lectures, Landry stayed over night at the house.
"Any message for your husband, Mrs. Jadwin?" inquired Landry, as he prepared to go down town after breakfast. "I always see him in Mr. Gretry's office the first thing. Any message for him?"
"No," answered Laura, simply.
"Oh, by the way," spoke up Aunt Wess', "we met that Mr. Corthell on the corner last night, just as he was leaving. I was real sorry not to get home here before he left. I've never heard him play on that big organ, and I've been wanting to for ever so long. I hurried home last night, hoping I might have caught him before he left. I was regularly disappointed."
"That's too bad," murmured Laura, and then, for obscure reasons, she had the stupidity to add: "And we were in the art gallery the whole evening. He played beautifully."
Towards eleven o'clock that morning Laura took her usual ride, but she had not been away from the house quite an hour before she turned back.
All at once she had remembered something. She returned homeward, now urging Crusader to a flying gallop, now curbing him to his slowest ambling walk. That which had so abruptly presented itself to her mind was the fact that Corthell's match box—his name engraved across its front—still lay in plain sight upon the table in her sitting-room—the peculiar and particular place of her privacy.
It was so much her own, this room, that she had given orders that the servants were to ignore it in their day's routine. She looked after its order herself. Yet, for all that, the maids or the housekeeper often passed through it, on their way to the suite beyond, and occasionally Page or Aunt Wess' came there to read, in her absence. The family spoke of the place sometimes as the "upstairs sitting-room," sometimes simply as "Laura's room."
Now, as she cantered homeward, Laura had it vividly in her mind that she had not so much as glanced at the room before leaving the house that morning. The servants would not touch the place. But it was quite possible that Aunt Wess' or Page—
Laura, the blood mounting to her forehead, struck the horse sharply with her crop. The pettiness of the predicament, the small meanness of her situation struck across her face like the flagellations of tiny whips. That she should stoop to this! She who had held her head so high.
Abruptly she reined in the horse again. No, she would not hurry. Exercising all her self-control, she went on her way with deliberate slowness, so that it was past twelve o'clock when she dismounted under the carriage porch.
Her fingers clutched tightly about her crop, she mounted to her sitting-room and entered, closing the door behind her.
She went directly to the table, and then, catching her breath, with a quick, apprehensive sinking of the heart, stopped short. The little heart-shaped match box was gone, and on the couch in the corner of the room Page, her book fallen to the floor beside her, lay curled up and asleep.
A loop of her riding-habit over her arm, the toe of her boot tapping the floor nervously, Laura stood motionless in the centre of the room, her lips tight pressed, the fingers of one gloved hand drumming rapidly upon her riding-crop. She was bewildered, and an anxiety cruelly poignant, a dread of something she could not name, gripped suddenly at her throat.
Could she have been mistaken? Was it upon the table that she had seen the match box after all? If it lay elsewhere about the room, she must find it at once. Never had she felt so degraded as now, when, moving with such softness and swiftness as she could in her agitation command, she went here and there about the room, peering into the corners of her desk, searching upon the floor, upon the chairs, everywhere, anywhere; her face crimson, her breath failing her, her hands opening and shutting.
But the silver heart with its crown of worn gold was not to be found. Laura, at the end of half an hour, was obliged to give over searching. She was certain the match box lay upon the mahogany table when last she left the room. It had not been mislaid; of that she was now persuaded.
But while she sat at the desk, still in habit and hat, rummaging for the fourth time among the drawers and shelves, she was all at once aware, even without turning around, that Page was awake and watching her. Laura cleared her throat.
"Have you seen my blue note paper, Page?" she asked. "I want to drop a note to Mrs. Cressler, right away."
"No," said Page, as she rose from the couch. "No, I haven't seen it." She came towards her sister across the room. "I thought, maybe," she added, gravely, as she drew the heart-shaped match box from her pocket, "that you might be looking for this. I took it. I knew you wouldn't care to have Mr. Jadwin find it here."
Laura struck the little silver heart from Page's hand, with a violence that sent it spinning across the room, and sprang to her feet.
"You took it!" she cried. "You took it! How dare you! What do you mean? What do I care if Curtis should find it here? What's it to me that he should know that Mr. Corthell came up here? Of course he was here."
But Page, though very pale, was perfectly calm under her sister's outburst.
"If you didn't care whether any one knew that Mr. Corthell came up here," she said, quietly, "why did you tell us this morning at breakfast that you and he were in the art gallery the whole evening? I thought," she added, with elaborate blandness, "I thought I would be doing you a service in hiding the match box."
"A service! You! What have I to hide?" cried Laura, almost inarticulate. "Of course I said we were in the art gallery the whole evening. So we were. We did—I do remember now—we did come up here for an instant, to see how my picture hung. We went downstairs again at once. We did not so much as sit down. He was not in the room two minutes."
"He was here," returned Page, "long enough to smoke half a dozen times." She pointed to a silver pen tray on the mahogany table, hidden behind a book rack and littered with the ashes and charred stumps of some five or six cigarettes.
"Really, Laura," Page remarked. "Really, you manage very awkwardly, it seems to me."
Laura caught her riding-crop in her right hand
"Don't you—don't you make me forget myself;" she cried, breathlessly.
"It seems to me," observed Page, quietly, "that you've done that long since, yourself."
Laura flung the crop down and folded her arms.
"Now," she cried, her eyes blazing and rivetted upon Page's. "Now, just what do you mean? Sit down," she commanded, flinging a hand towards a chair, "sit down, and tell me just what you mean by all this."
But Page remained standing. She met her sister's gaze without wavering.
"Do you want me to believe," she answered, "that it made no difference to you that Mr. Corthell's match safe was here?"
"Not the least," exclaimed Laura. "Not the least."
"Then why did you search for it so when you came in? I was not asleep all of the time. I saw you."
"Because," answered Laura, "because—I—because—" Then all at once she burst out afresh: "Have I got to answer to you for what I do? Have I got to explain? All your life long you've pretended to judge your sister. Now you've gone too far. Now I forbid it—from this day on. What I do is my affair; I'll ask nobody's advice. I'll do as I please, do you understand?" The tears sprang to her eyes, the sobs strangled in her throat. "I'll do as I please, as I please," and with the words she sank down in the chair by her desk and struck her bare knuckles again and again upon the open lid, crying out through her tears and her sobs, and from between her tight-shut teeth: "I'll do as I please, do you understand? As I please, as I please! I will be happy. I will, I will, I will!"
"Oh, darling, dearest—" cried Page, running forward. But Laura, on her feet once more, thrust her back.
"Don't touch me," she cried. "I hate you!" She put her fists to her temples and, her eyes closed, rocked herself to and fro. "Don't you touch me. Go away from me; go away from me. I hate you; I hate you all. I hate this house, I hate this life. You are all killing me. Oh, my God, if I could only die!"
She flung herself full length upon the couch, face downward. Her sobs shook her from head to foot.
Page knelt at her side, an arm about her shoulder, but to all her sister's consolations Laura, her voice muffled in her folded arms, only cried:
"Let me alone, let me alone. Don't touch me."
For a time Page tried to make herself heard; then, after a moment's reflection, she got up and drew out the pin in Laura's hat. She took off the hat, loosened the scarf around Laura's neck, and then deftly, silently, while her sister lay inert and sobbing beneath her hands, removed the stiff, tight riding-habit. She brought a towel dipped in cold water from the adjoining room and bathed Laura's face and hands.
But her sister would not be comforted, would not respond to her entreaties or caresses. The better part of an hour went by; Page, knowing her sister's nature, in the end held her peace, waiting for the paroxysm to wear itself out.
After a while Laura's weeping resolved itself into long, shuddering breaths, and at length she managed to say, in a faint, choked voice:
"Will you bring me the cologne from my dressing-table, honey? My head aches so."
And, as Page ran towards the door, she added: "And my hand mirror, too. Are my eyes all swollen?"
And that was the last word upon the subject between the two sisters.
But the evening of the same day, between eight and nine o'clock, while Laura was searching the shelves of the library for a book with which to while away the long evening that she knew impended, Corthell's card was brought to her.
"I am not at home," she told the servant. "Or—wait," she added. Then, after a moment's thought, she said: "Very well. Show him in here."
Laura received the artist, standing very erect and pale upon the great white rug before the empty fireplace. Her hands were behind her back when he came in, and as he crossed the room she did not move.
"I was not going to see you at first," she said. "I told the servant I was not at home. But I changed my mind—I wanted to say something to you."
He stood at the other end of the fireplace, an elbow upon an angle of the massive mantel, and as she spoke the last words he looked at her quickly. As usual, they were quite alone. The heavy, muffling curtain of the doorway shut them in effectually.
"I have something to say to you," continued Laura. Then, quietly enough, she said:
"You must not come to see me any more."
He turned abruptly away from her, and for a moment did not speak. Then at last, his voice low, he faced her again and asked:
"Have I offended?"
She shook her head.
"No," he said, quietly. "No, I knew it was not that." There was a long silence. The artist looked at the floor his hand slowly stroking the back of one of the big leather chairs.