The Adventures of a Widow Part 27

"Really? I thought you were at pretty _close_ quarters with each other, judging from her account of the row."

"There was no _row_!" declared Pauline, drawing herself up very finely.

"What did she accuse me of saying, please?"

"Oh, I forget. She said you abused her like a pickpocket for not liking the man you're engaged to."

Pauline shrugged her shoulders, in the manner of one who thinks better of the angry mood, and handsomely abjures it. "Positively, Courtlandt,"

she said, "I begin to think you had no purpose whatever in coming here to-day."

His sombre brown eyes began to sparkle, though quite faintly, as he now fixed them upon her. "I certainly had one purpose," he said. She saw that his right hand had thrust itself into the breast of his coat, as though it searched there for something. "I wanted to show you this, as I imagined that you don't see the horrid little sheet called 'The Morning Monitor,'" he proceeded.

"'The Morning Monitor'!" faltered Pauline, with a sudden grievous premonition, as she watched her cousin draw forth a folded newspaper.

"No, I never heard of it."

"It has evidently heard of you," he answered. "I never read the vilely personal little affair. But a kind friend showed me this issue of to-day. Just glance at the second column on the second page--the one which is headed 'The Adventures of a Widow'--and tell me what you think of it."

Pauline took the newspaper with unsteady hand. She sank into her chair again, and began to read the column indicated. The journal which she now held was one of recent origin in New York, and it marked the lowest ebb of scandalous newspaper license. It had secured an enormous circulation; it was already threatening to make its editor a Croesus. It traded, in the most unblushing way, upon the curiosity of its subscribers for a knowledge of the peccadilloes, imprudences, and general private histories of prominent or wealthy citizens. It was a ferret that prowled, prodded, bored, insinuated. It was utterly lawless, utterly libellous. It left not even Launcelot brave nor Galahad pure. It was one of those detestable opportunities which this nineteenth century, notwithstanding a thousand evidences of progress, thrusts into the hands of cynics and pessimists to rail against the human nature of which they themselves are the most melancholy product. It had had suits brought against it, but the n.o.ble sale of its copies rendered its heroic continuation possible. Truth, crushed to earth, may rise again, but scurrilous slander, in the shape of "The Morning Monitor," remained capably erect. It fed and throve on its own dire poison.

Pauline soon found herself reading, with misty eyes and indignant heart-beats, a kind of baleful biography of herself, in which her career, from her rash early marriage until her recent entertainment of certain guests, was mercilessly parodied, ridiculed, vilified. These pages will not chronicle in any unsavory details what she read. It was an article of luridly intemperate style, dissolute grammar, and gaudy rhetoric. It bit as a brute bites, and stung as a wasp stings, without other reason that that of low, dull spleen. It mentioned no other name than Kindelon's, but it shot from that one name a hundred petty shafts of malign innuendo.

"Oh, this is horrible!" at length moaned Pauline. She flung the paper down; the tears had begun to stream from her eyes. "What shall I do against so hideous an attack?"

Courtlandt was at her side in an instant. He caught her hand, and the heat of his own was like that of fever.

"Do but one thing!" he said, with a vehemence all the more startling because of his usual unvaried composure. "Break away from this folly once and forever! You know that I love you--that I have loved you for years! Don't tell me that you don't know it, for at the best you've only taught yourself to forget it! I've never _said_ that I loved you before, but what of that? You have seen the truth a hundred times--in my sober way of showing it! I've never thought that you returned the feeling; I don't even fancy so now. But I'm so fond of you, Pauline, that I want you to be my wife, merely liking and respecting me. I hate to shame myself by even speaking of your money, but you can sign that all away to some hospital to-morrow, if you please--you can get it all together and throw it into the North River, as far as I am concerned! Send Kindelon adrift--jilt him! On my soul I beg this of you for your own future happiness more than anything else! I don't say that it will be a square or right thing to do. But it will save you from the second horrible mistake of your life! You made one, that death saved you from. But this will be worse. It will last your lifetime. Kindelon isn't of your _monde_, and never can be. There is so much in that. I am not speaking like a sn.o.b. But he has no more sense of the proprieties, the nice externals, the way of doing all those thousand trifling things, which, trifling as they are, make up three-quarters of actual existence, than if he were an Indian, a Bedouin, or a gypsy! Before Heaven, Pauline, if I thought such a marriage could bring you happiness, I'd give you up without a murmur! I'm not fool enough to die, or pine, or even mope because of any woman on the globe not caring for me! But now, by giving me the right to guard you--by making me so grateful to you that only the rest of my life can fitly show my grat.i.tude, you will escape calamity, distress, and years of remorse!"

It had hardly seemed to her, at first, as if Courtlandt were really speaking; this intensity was so entirely uncharacteristic of him; these rapid tones and spirited glances were so remote from his accustomed personality. Yet by degrees she recognized not alone the quality of the change, but its motive and source. She could not but feel tenderly toward him then. She was a woman, and he had told her that he loved her; this bore its inevitable condoning results.

And yet her voice was almost stern as she now said to him, rising, and repelling the hand by which he still strove to clasp her own,--

"I think you admitted that if I broke my engagement with Ralph Kindelon it would not be--I use your own words, Court--the square or right thing to do.... Well, I shall not do it! There, I hope you are satisfied."

He looked at her with a surpa.s.sing pain. His hands, while they hung at his sides, knotted themselves. "Oh, Pauline," he exclaimed, "I am _not_ satisfied!"

She met his look steadily. The tears in her eyes had vanished, though those already shed glistened on her cheeks. "Very well. I am sorry. I love Ralph Kindelon. I mean to be his wife."

"You meant to be Varick's wife."

"It is horrible for you to bring that up!" she cried. "Here I commit no mistake. He is a man of men! He loves me, and I love him. Do you know anything against him--outside of the codes and creeds that would exclude him from one of Aunt Cynthia's dancing-cla.s.ses?"

"I know this against him; he is not true. He is not to be trusted. He rings wrong. He is not a gentleman--in the sense quite outside of Aunt Cynthia's definition."

"It is false!" exclaimed Pauline, crimsoning. "Prove to me," she went on, with fleet fire, "that he is not true--not to be trusted. I dare you to prove it."

He walked slowly toward the door. "It is an intuition," he said. "I can't prove it. I could as soon tell you who wrote that villainous thing in the newspaper there."

Pauline gave a laugh of coldest contempt. "Oh," she cried, "in a moment more you will be saying that _he_ wrote it!"

Courtlandt shook his head. The gesture conveyed, in some way, an excessive and signal sadness.

"In a moment more," he answered, "I shall be saying nothing to you. And I don't know that I shall ever willingly come into your presence again.

Good-by."

Pauline gave no answer, sinking back into her seat as he disappeared.

Her eye lighted upon the fallen newspaper while she did so. Its half-crumpled folds made her forget that her cousin was departing. She suddenly sprang up again, and caught the sheet from the floor. A fire was blazing near by. She hurried toward the grate, intending to destroy the printed abomination.

But, pausing half-way, she once more burst into tears. A recollection cut her to the heart of how futile would be any attempt, now, to destroy the atrocious wrong itself. That must live and work its unmerited ill.

"And to this dark ending," she thought, with untold dejection, "has come my perfectly honest ambition--my fair and proper and wholesome plan!"

And then, abruptly, her tearful eyes began to sparkle, while a bright, mirthless smile touched her lips.

"But I can at least have my retort," she decided. "_He_ will help me--stand by me in this miserable emergency. I will send for him,--yes, I will send for Ralph at once! He will do just as I dictate, and I know what I _shall_ dictate! Miss Cragge wrote that base screed, and Miss Cragge shall suffer accordingly!"

XIV.

She sent for Kindelon at once, but before her message could possibly have reached the office of the "Asteroid," he presented himself.

He had recently seen the article, and told her so with a lover-like tenderness that she found balsamic, if not precisely curative.

"It is fiendish," he at length said, "and if I thought any man had done it I would thrash him into confessing so. But I am nearly sure that a woman did it."

"Miss Cragge?"

"Yes."

"You can't thrash her, Ralph. But you can punish her."

"How?"

"Through your own journal--the 'Asteroid.' You can show the world just what a virago she is."

"No," he replied, after a reflective pause, "that can't be."

"Can't be!" exclaimed Pauline, almost hysterically reproachful. "The 'Asteroid' can call the 'Herald,' the 'Times' and the 'Tribune' every possible bad name; it can fly at the throats of politicians whom it doesn't indorse; it can seethe and hiss like a witch's caldron in editorials about some recent regretted measure at Albany! But when I ask it to defend me against slanderous ridicule it refuses--it"--

"Ah," cried Kindelon, interrupting her, "it refuses because it is powerless to defend you."

"Powerless!"

"_Qui s'excuse s'accuse._ Any attempted vindication would be merely to direct the public eye still more closely upon this matter. All evil things hold within themselves the germ of their own destruction. Let this villainy die a natural death, Pauline; to fight it will be to perpetuate its power. In the meanwhile I can probably gain a clue to its authorship. But I do not promise, mind. No, I do not promise!"

"And this is all!" faltered Pauline. "Oh, Ralph, according to your argument, every known wrong should be endured because of the notoriety which attaches to the redressing of it."

He looked very troubled and very compa.s.sionate as he answered her. "The notoriety is in many cases of no importance, my love. If I were coa.r.s.ely a.s.sailed, for instance, I should not hesitate to openly confront my a.s.sailant. But with a pure woman it is different; and with _some_ pure women--yourself I quote as a most shining example of these latter--it is unspeakably different! The chast.i.ty of some names is so perfect that any touch whatever will soil it."