The Adventures of a Widow Part 31

The coming marriage to Kindelon on the morrow seemed to her fraught with untold incentive for reflection. "But I will not reflect," she soon determined. "I will at once try to see Mrs. Dares, and let her reflect for me. She is so wise, so capable, so admirable! I have consented because I love! Let her, if she shall so decide, dissuade me because of experiences weightier than even my own past bitter ones!"

The hour of her resolved visit to Mrs. Dares had now arrived. In a certain way she congratulated herself upon the distracting tendency of both Mr. Barrowe's and Mr. Prawle's visits. "They have prevented me,"

she mused, "from dwelling too much upon my own unhappy situation. Mr.

Barrowe is a very sensible fool, and Mr. Prawle is a very foolish fool.

They are both, in their way, taunting and satiric radiations from the dying bonfire of my own rash ambition. They are both reminders to me that I, after all, am the greatest and most conspicuous fool. Some other woman, more sensible and clever than I, will perhaps seek to establish in New York a social movement where intellect and education are held above the last Anglomaniac coaching-drive to Central Park, or the last vulgarly-select _cotillon_ at Delmonico's. But it will be decades hence.

I don't know how many ... but it will be decades.... All is over, now. I face a new life; I have ended with my _salon_. Only one result has come of it--Ralph Kindelon. Thank Heaven, he is a substantial result, though all the rest are shadow and illusion!"

Pauline soon afterwards started on foot for the residence of Mrs. Dares.

It was nearly dusk. She had determined to set before this good and trusted woman every detail of her present discomfort, and while confessing her matrimonial promise as regarded the marriage with Kindelon on the morrow, to exhort counsel, advice, guidance, justification. Being a woman, and having made up her mind, justification may have been the chief stimulus of her devout pilgrimage.

The great bustling city was in shadow as she rang the bell at Mrs.

Dares's residence.

A strange, ominous, miserable fear was upon her while she did so. She could not account for it; she strove to shake it off. She remembered her own reflections: "All is over now. I face a new life."

But she could not dismiss the brooding dread while she waited the answer of her summons at Mrs. Dares's door.

XV.

The tidy young negress opened the door soon afterwards. Pauline asked for Mrs. Dares. The answer came that Mrs. Dares was at home.

"I wish to see her alone," said Pauline.

"Miss Cora's got a gent'man in the back room," came the answer, "but there's n.o.body right here."

Between "right here" and the "back room," Pauline was soon shown the difference. As she sat in a little prettily-furnished apartment, awaiting the appearance of Mrs. Dares, she readily apprehended that some sort of a chamber lay behind. This was, reasonably, the Dareses'

dining-room. But she heard voices from beyond the rough decorative woollen tapestry which intervened in heavy concealing folds.

At first, seated quietly and thinking of just what she should say to Mrs. Dares, Pauline quite disregarded these voices.

"I shall tell the plain, unvarnished truth," she reflected. "I shall not leave a single detail. I shall trust her judgment absolutely."

A moment later she started, with a recognizing sense that she had heard a familiar tone from one of the voices behind the tapestry. Evidently a man was speaking. She rose from her seat. She had approached the curtain instinctively before realizing her act. A new impulse made her withdraw several steps from it. But the voice had been Kindelon's, and she now clearly heard Kindelon speak again.

"Cora!" she heard him say, "there are certain wrongs for which no reparations _can_ be given. I know that the wrong I have done you is of this sort. I don't attempt to exculpate myself. I don't know why I came here to bid you this fare-Pwell. It was kind of you to consent to see me. Hundreds of other women would have refused, under like conditions.

But you have often said that you loved me, and I suppose you love me still. For this reason you may find some sort of consolation hereafter in the thought that I have made an ambitious marriage which will place me high in the esteem of the world, which will give my talents a brilliant chance, which will cause men and women to point to me as a man who has achieved a fine and proud success.... Good-by, Cora.... Let me take your hand once--just once--before I go. I'll grant you that I've behaved like a scamp. I'll grant everything that can be said in my own disfavor. Good heavens! don't look at me in that horribly reproachful way, you--you make me willing to renounce this marriage wholly! Cora, I will do so if you'll pardon the past! I'll come back to you, I'll devote my future life to you! only tell me that you forgive and forget!"

"No, no," Pauline now heard a struggling and seemingly agonized voice reply. "There is no undoing what you have done. Keep your promise to _her_, as you have broken your faith with _me_. I do not say that my love is dead yet; I think it will not die for a long time ... perhaps not for years. But my respect is wholly dead.... I will not touch your hand; I will not even remain longer in your presence. I--I have no vengeful feeling toward you. I wish you all future happiness. If you shine hereafter as your talents deserve, I shall hear of your fame, your triumph, with no shadow of bitterness in my soul. And my chief hope, my chief anxiety, will be for the woman whom you have married. I know her enough to know that she is full of good impulses, full of true and fine instincts. You will go to her with an aching conscience and a stained honor. But I pray that after she has lifted you into that place which you seek to gain through her, she may never know you as I have known you--never wake to my anguish of disappointment--never realize my depths of disillusion!"

Pauline waited to hear no more. She thrust aside the drapery of the doorway and pa.s.sed into the next room.

Cora uttered a swift and smothered cry. Kindelon gave a terrible start.

Then a silence followed. It seemed to Pauline a most appreciable silence. She meant and wished to break it, yet her speech kept defying her will, and resisted her repeated effort at due control. But at length she said, looking straight at Kindelon,--

"I have heard--I did not mean to hear--I don't want you to say a single word--there is nothing for you to say. I simply appear before you--before you both! I--I think that is enough. I know every thing now.

You ... must have been certain that if I had previously known--that if you had not told me a falsehood I ... I ... should never...."

And then poor Pauline reeled giddily, putting forth both hands in a piteous, distraught way.... When Kindelon caught her she had already lost consciousness....

The sense of blank was a most acute one when she awoke. Her first clear thought was, "How long have I been unconscious?" ... And then came remembrance, and with remembrance the pain of a deep-piercing hurt.

No one was near by except Mrs. Dares. Pauline lay upon a lounge; she felt the yielding of cushions beneath her head and shoulders. Her first audible sign of revived consciousness was a little tremulous laugh.

"That's you, Mrs. Dares?" she then said. "I--I must have fainted. How funny of me! I--I never fainted before."

Mrs. Dares put both arms about her, and kissed her twice, thrice, on the cheek.

"My poor, dear, unhappy lady!" she said. "I am sorry--so miserably sorry."

Pauline repeated her tremulous laugh. She was beginning to feel the rea.s.sertion of physical strength. "I--I came here to see only you, Mrs.

Dares," she now said, "but it was fated otherwise. And ... and yet it has all been better--far better." Here she laughed again, and a little hysterically. "Oh, how superb a failure I've made of it, haven't I? I thought the 'Morning Monitor' had dealt me my last _coup_. But one other still remained!"

She lay silent for some little time, after this, and when Mrs. Dares presently spoke to her the lids which had dropped over her eyes did not lift themselves. It was so sweet, so tender, so exquisitely gentle a voice that it brought not the slightest exciting consequences.

"He is greatly to blame. I do not excuse him any more than you will. But you must not think the worst of him. You must think him weak, but you must not think him entirely base. I look at his conduct with impartial eyes. I try to look at everybody with impartial eyes. He was far below you in the social scale--that is the phrase which means inferiority nowadays, and I am afraid it will mean inferiority for many a year to come. He had engaged himself to my dear Cora. He meant to marry her.

Then he met you. Everything about you dazzled and charmed him. It was yourself as much as your position, your wealth, your importance. He cared for you; he was enchanted by you; his nature is not a deep nature, though his intellect is large and keen. He is almost the typical Irishman, this Kindelon--the Irishman who, in statesmanship, in governance, in administrative force, has left poor Ireland what she is to-day. He meant well, but he had not enough _morale_ to make this well-meaning active and cogent. The temptation came, and he yielded at once. There was no premeditated dishonor. The strain was put upon him and he could not bear the strain--that is all. Such men as he never can bear such a strain. There was not a hint of coldbloodedness in his conduct--there was none of the fortune-hunter's deliberate method. There was, indeed, no method at all; there was nothing except an inherent moral feebleness. Brilliant as he is, exceptional as he is, he can no more help consent and acquiescence in any matter which concerns his personal, selfish desires, than the chameleon can help taking the tints of what surrounds it. And I do not believe that he knows, at this hour, whether he loves you or my poor Cora the best. That is he--that is Kindelon--that is the fascinating, distressing race that he represents.

He loved you both; his big, expansive Irish heart was quite capable of doing that. But his insecure, precarious conscience was incapable of pointing to him the one straight, imperative path. Hence your own sorrow, my dear, ill-used lady, and hence the sorrow of my poor unfortunate Cora!"

Pauline's eyes slowly unclosed as Mrs. Dares's last words were spoken.

"You speak like a sybil!" she murmured.

"But you speak too late. If I had only talked with you a little sooner!

I should have been so prepared for such words _then_! Now they only come to me like mockery and ... and sarcasm!"

Again Mrs. Dares stooped and kissed her.

"G.o.d knows," she said, "that I mean them for neither!"

"G.o.d help me from believing that you do!" answered Pauline. She raised herself, and flung both arms about Mrs. Dares's neck, while a sudden paroxysm of sobs overmastered and swayed her.

XVI.

By a little after nine o'clock, this same evening, Pauline was driven in a carriage to her own residence.

She alighted with excellent composure, rang the bell and was promptly admitted.

But she had no sooner entered the hall than she found herself face to face with Courtlandt.

He was in evening dress; he looked thoroughly his old self-contained self. Pauline pa.s.sed at once into the little reception-room just off the hall. Courtlandt followed her. She sank into a chair, slowly untying the strings of her bonnet. A brisk fire crackled on the hearth; she stared into it.