East Angels Part 97

"The same old look! Of course they don't; so long as you keep everything going smoothly and everybody comfortable, they don't want to see any; they never will see one till you're in your coffin."

He was still gazing at her. "Arrange your life as you like," he went on, abruptly, "but at least come away from here. You can do that. And I shall insist upon it."

The fear of him that she had felt from the time of entering was increasing. He had never looked quite as he did at this moment; his voice had never had quite these tones before. The long months that had stretched into years had made no difference, then; everything was to be as hard, perhaps harder than ever!

Her fear caused her to answer with something like appeal. "But I do not wish to go away. I like it much better here than I should like being in New York. It is quiet; I am of some use; I am--I am really contented here."

"Since when have you learned to speak so falsely? You are probably afraid of me! You see, and correctly, that I am not to be put off this time, as I was when I came before--put off with a little preaching, a few compliments and exhortations. You are afraid I shall smash the pretty gla.s.s walls you have built up round your sham life here, your charming domestic life, your happy home circle."

"I don't think you have any right to take that tone."

"Yes, I have; the right of our love."

"We must forget that. We are not growing any younger; at least I am not.

Men are different, perhaps."

Winthrop laughed. "Very well done, Margaret. But not well enough. You are trying to pretend that you have outlived it; and that I have. But our two faces contradict that; yours is wasted and drawn, and look at me--have I the appearance of a man who is even moderately happy?"

She had not trusted herself to look at him much; she remembered too vividly Garda's description--"changed," "bitter," "hard." But involuntarily now she did look at him. And she saw all that Garda had described; and more.

"What is it you wish me to do?" she asked, hurriedly.

"Come away from here."

"But where?"

"Anywhere you like.--Where I could see you sometimes."

"No--no."

"Very well, then; anywhere you like. And I won't see you."

"It wouldn't do me any good!" These words burst from her almost unconsciously. She dropped into the nearest chair.

He came and seated himself near her in silence.

"You saw Garda before she went abroad?" she said, beginning again.

"Yes."

"She wished to see you, I know."

"How you say that--how timidly! Garda, at least, is not troubled by timidity."

"Perhaps you will go abroad again yourself?"

"Not to see Mrs. Lucian Spenser! Would you like to have me go?" he added.

"Yes."

"I am very much obliged to you. It's a plan, is it?--you wouldn't have spoken of her otherwise. I see; I am growing older, I'm lonely, I'm sad; perhaps I'm wicked. A 'home,' therefore, is the thing I need--you women think so much of a home--and so you've planned this. It's very ingenious. But unfortunately I don't fall in with it. Don't waste any more time talking of Garda," he said, sharply.

Margaret's head was bent.

"It isn't possible that you have thought I _could_ care for her, Margaret--such a woman as that. Why, you're trembling" (he rose and pulled down her shielding hand), "you're relieved! You have really dreamed, then, that it might happen!"

"It makes me hate myself," he went on, a mist showing itself in his eyes--"to see your unselfishness; you have thought of this because you believe that it would be better for me, that I should be happier. And if you had succeeded, if it could really have come about, how you would have lived up to it! To the very last hour of your life you wouldn't have swerved."

He looked at her; he seemed to be studying her. Then he grew sarcastic again, perhaps on account of her continued silence. "Garda, on her side, is perfectly capable of having a real affection for me for a while--real while it lasts; she hasn't any especial mission on her hands just now, so that would have done very well. You planned it together, I suppose.

You are certainly a wonderful pair! May I ask how far did the plan extend? You would have pampered me up between you (she temporarily); you would have arranged what was 'best' for my life, like two Sunday-school teachers over a case of reform! Once and for all, Margaret, let us put Edgarda Thorne aside; she has nothing whatever to do with the matters that lie between you and me; she is no more to me than an old glove."

He walked about the room impatiently. "Of course I might lie to you," he went on; "I might say that if you persist in your present course--keeping me entirely off, separating your life utterly from mine--I should go to the bad. But it wouldn't be true; I shall not go to the bad, unless becoming hard and disagreeable is that. Later, if you still go on in this way, I shall become callous and selfish probably--self-indulgent. I shall never be vicious or low-lived, I hope; but I am not a woman, I can't live on air--as you will do. Don't see me at fifty-five--I'll give you _that_ advice! For _you_ will always remain the same; with the exception of growing paler and thinner, you'll be the same till you die; and I really think it would be a greater blow to you than even what we're bearing now to find me like that--selfish, fond of my ease, slow to disturb myself for anybody, mightily taken up with my dinner!--But you don't believe in the least what I am saying to you; I can't bring it before you. I love you--love you at this moment with every fibre of my being." He sat down and folded his arms doggedly. "But I shall not stay sentimental; no man does after a certain age, though women always expect it, as you expect it now."

"What do you intend to do?" he continued, as she did not answer any of this.

"Just what I have been doing."

"You have no mercy, then?" He looked at her with angry gloom.

"If I can bear it, surely you can."

"No, that doesn't follow. Women are better than men; in some things they are stronger. But that's because they are sustained--the ones of your nature at least--by their terrible love of self-sacrifice; I absolutely believe there are women who _like_ to be tortured!"

"Yes--sometimes we like it," answered the woman he spoke to, a beautiful, mysterious, exalted expression showing itself for a moment in her eyes.

He sprang from his chair. But the look of his face as he came towards her, frightened her, brought her back to the actual present; moving hurriedly, she put her hand upon the cord of the bell.

"No, not that, that's cruel, that humiliates me--don't, don't. See, it isn't necessary, I shall be perfectly quiet and reasonable now. Here are two chairs; come and sit down. Now listen. I will do all that is proper here--see the people, and make a little visit; then I will go back to New York. After that, in due time, you must tell them that you are tired of Florida, that you need a change; you certainly do need a change, as a plain matter-of-fact; and I see no reason, in any case, for your spending your entire life here. Of course it will be an uphill undertaking to get Aunt Katrina started; she will believe that it would kill her instantly. But it won't kill her; she is stronger than she thinks. As for Lanse, he can make the journey up as well as he made it down; he's certainly no worse. Both of them, if you are firm, will end by doing as you wish, because you are indispensable to their comfort.

The thing is that you _must_ hold firm. Once established in New York, or near there, I could see you now and then--I mean see you all; Lanse would ask nothing better than to have me about again. I speak in all honor, Margaret--I'm not a vile hypocrite, whatever else I may be. I am growing older; see, I will take your view of that, you are growing older too; why shouldn't we, then, see each other in this way at intervals?

where would be the harm? It would brighten our lives a little; and as for the 'home' you wished me to have, its good influences and all that, I could find them there."

"I shall never see you again," Margaret answered, strangely. She had not seated herself in the chair he had placed for her; she stood with her hand resting upon its back.

"What do you mean?"

"All you have said I believe; I believe you would keep to it, carry it out. But with me it would be different--it would be too much pain; I would far rather not see you at all. I love you too much," she added. A burning blush covered her face and throat as she met his eyes. Then it faded suddenly to so deathly a white that his old fear rushed back upon him. He had almost forgotten this fear in the lapse of time; but these terrible waves of color and of pallor, these overwhelming emotions that made her unable to stand--they brought back to him the old conviction, "She has no strength, she will not be able to endure it; she will die!"

He took her in his arms and laid her down upon the cushions of a couch, made sick at heart as he did so by the lightness of her weight. Anything but that--that she should go from earth forever; anything but that!

As he bent over her, his heart full of his dread, she looked up; she saw his fear.

"Why--I am not dying," she said, rea.s.suringly, smiling for an instant with almost a mother's sweetness; "it is nothing,--only the faintness that very often seizes me; it has been so all my life, it amounts to nothing. And now will you go? And promise me not to come back?"

"Margaret--that is too much."

"It is the only way; surely I have shown you--told you--in all its shame, my weakness." And again came the burning blush.

He had knelt down beside her. "Weakness!" He bowed his head upon her hand.

"Go," she repeated softly.