The Pace That Kills Part 7

I.

To those that have suffered certain things there are forms of entertainment which neither amuse nor bore, but which pain. And this evening, as Justine sat in the stalls, the play which was being given, and which, as plays go, was endurable enough, caused her no pleasure, no weariness even, only a longing to get away and be alone. Now and then a shudder visited her, her hand tightened on her fan, and at times she would close her eyes, dull her hearing, and try to fancy that her girlhood was recovered, that she was free again, that she was dead, that her husband was--anything imaginable in fact, save the knowledge that she was there, side-by-side with him, and that presently they would return together to the hideousness of their uptown flat.

She had been married now a little more than two years, and during the latter portion of that time life had held for her that precise dose of misery which is just insufficient to produce uncertainties of thought in a mind naturally exalted. There had indeed been moments in which the possibility of insanity had presented itself, and there had been moments also in which she would have welcomed that possibility as a grateful release: but those moments had pa.s.sed, the possibility with them; and this evening as she sat in the stalls her outward appearance was much such as it had been two years before. But within, where her heart had been, was a cemetery.

Among our friends and acquaintances there are always those who to our knowledge have tombstones of their own. But there are others that evolve a world--one that glows, subsides, and dies away unknown to any save themselves. The solitudes of s.p.a.ce appall; the solitudes of the heart can be as endless as they. In those which Justine concealed, a universe had had its being and its subsidence; a universe with gem-like hopes for stars--one in which the sun had been so eager its rays had made her blind. There had been comets gorgeous and tangential as aspirations ever are; there had been the colorless ether of which dreams are made; and for cosmic matter there was love. But now it was all dispersed; there was nothing left, one altar merely--the petrefaction of a prayer erected long since in the depths of her distress, and which for conscience' sake now and then she tended still.

And now, as the play at which she a.s.sisted unrolled before her unseeing eyes, one by one scenes from another drama rose unsummoned in its stead.

First was the meeting with Mistrial at Tuxedo, then the episode at Aiken, the marriage that followed, and the banishment that ensued: a banishment, parenthetically, which at the time being she was powerless to understand. Her father's anger had indeed weighed on her; but it was not wholly that--she was too much in love to let it be more than a shadow on her delight; nor was it because of unfamiliar lands: it was that little by little, through incidents originally misunderstood and then more completely grasped, the discovery, avoided yet ever returning, came to her, stayed with her, and made her its own--that the man whom she had loved and the man whom she had married were separate and distinct.

The psychologist of woman has yet to appear, and if he keep us waiting may it not be because every woman he a.n.a.lyzes has a sister who differs from her? The moment he formulates a rule it is over-weighted by exceptions. Woman often varies, the old song says; but not alone in her affections does she do so: she varies in temperament as well. And, after all, is it not the temperament that makes or mars a life? Justine, in discovering that the man she married and the man whom she loved were separate and distinct, instead of being disgusted with herself and with him, as you, madam, might have been, tried her utmost to forget the lover and love the husband that had come in his place. In this effort she had pride for an aid. The humiliation which the knowledge of self-deception brings is great, but when that knowledge becomes common property the humiliation is increased. The world--not the world that ought to be, but the world as it is--is more apt to smile than condole.

There may be much joy in heaven over the sinner that repents: on earth the joy is at his downfall. And according to the canons we have made for ourselves, Justine, in listening to the dictates of her heart instead of to those of her father, had sinned, so grievously even that that father had bid her begone from his sight. She was aware of this, and in consequence felt it needful to hold her head the higher. And so for a while she made pride serve as fig-leaf to her nakedness. If abashed at heart, at least the world should be uninformed of that abashment.

This effort on her part Mistrial hindered to the best of his ability.

Whether or not he loved her, whether save himself he was capable of loving anyone, who shall say? Men too are difficult to decipher. There were hours when after some _ecart_ he would come to her so penitent, so pleasant to the eye, and seemingly so afflicted at his own misconduct, that Justine found the strength--or the weakness, was it?--to forgive and to forget anew.

During this period they lived not sumptuously, perhaps, but in that large and liberal fashion which requires a ponderable rent-roll to support; and at that time, however Mistrial comported himself elsewhere, in her presence he had the decency to seem considerate, and affectionate as well. But meanwhile, through constant demands, the value of the letter of credit into which he had converted the better part of her mother's estate became impaired. Retrenchment was necessary, and that is never a pleasant thing. The man that pa.s.ses out of poverty into wealth finds the pa.s.sage so easy, so Lethean even, that he is apt to forget what poverty was; but when, as sometimes happens, he is obliged to retrace his steps, he walks bare of foot through a path of thorns. To count gold, instead of strewing it, is irritating to anyone not a sage, and Mistrial, who was not a sage, was irritated; and having, a wife within beck and call he vented that irritation on her.

It was at this time that Justine began to feel the full force of the banishment. That her husband was, and in all probability would continue to be, unfaithful to her, was a matter which she ended by accepting with a degree of good sense which is more common than is generally supposed.

At first she had been indeed indignant, and when in that indignation her anger developed into a heat that was white and sentiable, Mistrial experienced no remorse whatever, only a desire to applaud. He liked the force and splendor of her arraignment; it took him out of himself; it made him feel that he was appreciated--feared even; that a word from him, and a tempest was loosened or enchained.

But what is there to which we cannot accustom ourselves? Justine ended, not by a full understanding of the fact that man is naturally polygamous; but little by little, through channels undiscerned even by herself, the idea came to her that, if the man she loved could find pleasure in the society of other women, it was because she was less attractive than they. It was this that brought her patience, the more readily even in that, at her first paroxysm, Mistrial, a trifle alarmed lest she might leave him, had caught her in his arms, and sworn in a whisper breathed in her ear, that of all the world he loved her best.

Madam, you who do the present writer the honor to read this page are convinced, he is sure, that your husband would rather his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth than break the vow which bound you to him. But you, madam, have married a man faithful and tried. You know very well with what dismay he tells you of Robinson's scandalous conduct, and you know also how he pities Robinson's poor little wife; yet when, in your sorrow at what that poor little woman has to put up with, you are tempted to go and condole with her, pause, madam--Mrs. Robinson may be equally tempted to condole with You.

There are--in Brooklyn, in Boston, and in other recondite regions--a number of clever people who have been brought up with the idea that Divorce was inst.i.tuted for just such a thing as this. Yet in one hundred cases out of a hundred-and-one a woman who appeals to the law never does so because her husband has broken a certain commandment. If his derelictions are confined to that particular offence she may bewail, and we all bewail with her; but if she wants the sympathy of judge, of jury, and of newspaper-public too, she must be prepared to allege other grievances. She must show that her husband is unkind, that he is sarcastic, that he is given to big words and short sentences; in brief, that he has developed traits which render life in common no longer to be endured.

It was traits of this description that Mistrial unexpectedly developed, and it was during their development that the sense of banishment visited Justine. She was unable to make further transference of her affections; the lover had disappeared; the husband she had tried to love in his place had gone as well. For sole companion she had a man who had worn a mask and dropped it; where he had been considerate, he was selfish; when he spoke, it was to find fault; now that he could no longer throw her money out of the windows, he threw his amiability in its stead. By day he was taciturn, insultingly dumb; at night he was drunk.

Mistrial had served his novitiate where the _pochard_ is rare. It is we that drink, and with us the English, the Slavs, and Teutons; but in the East and among the Latins sobriety is less a matter of habit than of instinct. And in lands where man prefers to keep his head clear, Mistrial, at that age, which is one of the most impressionable of all, had seen no reason to lose his own. But presently the small irritations of enforced economy affected his manners, and his habits as well. He took to absinthe in the morning, and, as he happened to be in France, he drank at night that brutal brandy they give you there. Not continuously, it is true. There were days when the man for whom Justine had forsaken her home returned so completely she could almost fancy he had never gone. Then, without a word of warning, at the very moment when Faith was gaining fresh foothold, the tragi-comedy would be renewed; he was off again, no one knew whither, returning only when the candle had been utterly consumed.

Such things are enough to affect any woman's patience, and Justine's became wholly warped. It was unaccountable to her that he could treat her as he did. She watched the gradual transformation of the perfect lover into the perfect beast with a species of sorrow--a dual sorrow in whose component parts there was pity for herself and for him as well.

The idea that he had married her uniquely because of her father's wealth, that he was impatient to get it, and that when he got it he would squander all he could on other women, occurred to her only in the remotest ways, and then only through some expression which, in his exasperation of the diminishing bank account and the unreasonable time which it took her father to forgive her, fell from him now and then by chance. For Mistrial had indeed counted on that forgiveness. He had even counted on receiving it by cable, of finding that it had preceded and awaited them before their ship reached France. And when, to use an idiom of that land, it made itself expected, he was confident that the longer it delayed the completer it would be. At the utmost he had not dreamed that the old man would detain it more than a few months; but when twenty-four went by, and not only no forgiveness was manifest, but through his own improvidence the funds ran low,--so low, in fact, that unless forgiveness were presently forthcoming they would be in straits indeed,--he dictated a letter, penitent and humble, one in which impending poverty stood out as clearly as though it had been engraved, and which it revolted her to send. Its inspiration, however, must have been patent to Mr. Dunellen, for that gentlemen's reply, expressed in the third person, was to the effect that if his daughter returned to him he would provide for her as he had always done, but in no other circ.u.mstances could he a.s.sist.

Had Justine been anyone but herself she might have acted on the invitation: but the tone of it hurt her; she was annoyed at having permitted herself to send the letter Mistrial had dictated, and to which this was the reply. Her pride was up--all the more surely because she knew her father had been right; and there is just this about pride--as a matter of penitence it forces us to suffer those consequences of our own wrongdoing which through a simple confession it were easy to escape. To Justine such confession was impossible. She had left her father in the full certainty that he was wrong, and when she found he was not, death to her were preferable to any admission of the grievousness of her own mistake.

At this juncture Mistrial's aunt a.s.sisted at the funeral of a sister spinster, sat in a draught, caught cold in her throat, and, the glottis enlarging, strangled one night in her bed. By her will the St. Nicholas Hospital received the bulk of her property. The rest of her estate was divided among relatives; to her nephew Roland Mistrial--3d no longer--was bequeathed the princely sum of ten thousand dollars in cash.

At the news of this munificence Roland swore and grit his teeth. Had his circ.u.mstances been different it is probable that the ten thousand, together with some enduring insult, he would have flung after her to the eternal purgatory where he prayed she had gone. As it was, the modicity of the bequest sobered him. Through some impalpable logic he had counted but little on any inheritance at all; he had indeed hoped vaguely that she might die and leave him what she had; and it may even be that, had he learned that her will was in his favor, and had a suitable opportunity presented itself, in some perfectly decorous manner he would have hastened his aunt's demise. But concerning her will he had no information; moreover, during his visit to the States the old lady saw as little of him as she could help; and when she did see him, in spite of gout and the ailments of advancing years there was such a rigidity in her manner that the nephew told himself she might live long enough to see him hanged. As a consequence he had expected nothing. But when the news of her death reached him, together with the intelligence that instead of the competence he might possibly have had he was mentioned merely to the tune of ten thousand dollars,--this outrage, in conjunction with Dunellen's relentlessness, sobered him to that degree, that for a day and a night he gave himself to a debauch of thought. From this orgy he issued with clearer mind. It may be--though the idea advanced is one that can only be hazarded--it may be that had his aunt disposed of her estate in his favor he would there and then have washed his hands of the job he had undertaken, and left his wife to her own devices. As it was, he saw that, to keep his head above water, the only possible plank was one that Mr. Dunellen might send in his reach; and it was with the knowledge that before the present scanty windfall disappeared some conquest of Honest Paul's affection should be attempted that he determined to return to New York. Once there again, who knew what might happen? Surely, if the preceding year Mr. Dunellen had strength for violence, to the naked eye he was even then manifestly infirm. There was no gainsaying the matter--he at least would not live very long. As to the disposition of his property after death Mistrial was still a.s.sured. Whatever his att.i.tude might be for the present, in the end he could not wholly disinherit Justine--at least one-half the property must come to her. On that fact Mistrial would have staked his life; after all, it was the one hope he had left; and an ultimate hope, we all know, is the thing we part with last.

Thereupon he recovered himself. He became amiable and considerate--a change of demeanor which gave Justine a chill. She consented nevertheless to the return trip, and the day after arriving called at her father's house. When she got back to the hotel where they had put up Mistrial was waiting for her. In answer to his questions she told him that her father was willing to receive her, but her alone. "You must take your choice," he had said, she repeated--"You must take your choice."

"And what is that choice?" Mistrial had asked.

"I have made it," she answered, "and by it I will abide."

But at this he had expostulated; and when, seeing at last what he meant--understanding that he would have her feign a compliance for the sake of coin which at her father's death she could come back and share with him--when, divining the infamy of his thought, she refused, he had struck her in the face.

Because a man is not Chesterfield, it does not follow he is Sykes.

Mistrial had never struck a woman before, and in this initial a.s.sault it is probable that he was actuated less by a desire to punish than by that force which overmasters him who has ceased to be master of himself. By instinct he was not a gentleman; for some time past he had not even taken the trouble to appear one; yet at that moment, dancing in derision before him, he saw the letters that form the monosyllable Cad. The sense of abas.e.m.e.nt he displayed was so immediate and sincere, that Justine, who, trembling with anger and disgust, stood staring in his face, read it there and understood. Instead of separating them forever, the blow reunited their hands. During the week that followed they were nearer to each other than they had been for months before. The reconciliation was seemingly complete. Mistrial made himself the lover again, and Justine permitted herself to be wooed. They left their hotel and found a flat--a furnished apartment in the neighborhood of Central Park; and there the storm departing placed a rainbow in its stead.

A rainbow, however, is not a fixture, and this one went its way. While Justine closed her eyes Mistrial's were alert. He had no intention of suffering her to be disinherited, and though it was well enough to rely on the courts it was better still not to be forced to do so. Rather than run an avoidable risk he would have abandoned his wife, and forced her through that abandonment to return to her father's house, convinced that afterwards he could win her together with the estate back again to him.

Meanwhile another interview could not in any way jeopardize the chances to which he clung. On the contrary, it might be highly serviceable. Mr.

Dunellen, he had learned, was much broken; he had given up his practice, the the world even, everything in fact save perhaps the devil that was in him, and sat uncompanioned in the desolate and s.p.a.cious emptiness of his house. It was only natural that he should wish to coerce his daughter into obedience; yet now that he saw she was steadfast, her pride unhumbled still, it was not improbable that he would yield; it was presumable even that he was then waiting, weak of heart, prepared at her next advance to welcome and forgive.

Of these things Mistrial made his wife aware, and it was then that the rainbow departed. His arguments were as revolting as the cynicism they exhaled. But she made no attempt to combat them. Since she had seen her father she had felt a sorrow for him that Mistrial's altered demeanor had given her time to heed. She knew that his att.i.tude was due to her defiance of his express commands, but she had no reason to suppose that he had any other objection to her husband than such as his poverty might have caused or instinctive antipathy might bring. But now, her own experience aiding, she knew that he had been right; and, as he seemed feeble and dispa.s.sionate, in answer to Mistrial's arguments she tied her bonnet-strings and went. It was early in the afternoon when she started, it was night when she returned.

Mistrial had been waiting for her, and when she entered the room in which he sat he rose eagerly and aided her with her wrap. He was impatient, she could see; and she was impatient also.

"Why did you not tell me of Guy's sister?" she began, at once.

And as he answered nothing she continued: "Years ago I knew of what she died; it was only to-day I learned that it was you who murdered her."

"It is a lie."

"Oh, protest. I knew you would."

"From whom is it you heard this thing? Not from your father, I am sure."

As Mistrial spoke he gazed at her inquisitorially with shrewd, perplexing eyes.

"What does it matter?" she answered. Her head was thrown back, her lips compressed. "What does it matter since the charge is true?"

"But it is false," he cried; "it is a wanton lie. Your father never could have stated it."

"Ah, but he did, though; and Guy was there to substantiate what he said."

"Guy!" As he p.r.o.nounced her cousin's name there came into his face an expression which she knew and which she had learned to dread. "Madam, you mean your lover, I suppose. And it is his _ipse dixit_ you accept in preference to mine?"

"Mistrial, you know he is not my lover."

"I know he was in love with you, and you with him."

"So he was; so he is, I think; and it was not until this night I saw my own mistake."

"_Voila!_" said Roland, suddenly calmed. He paused a second, and after eying the polish of his finger-nails, affected to flick a speck of dust from his sleeve. "Your cousin is mad," he added.

"He is sane as--" and Justine hesitated for a simile.

"His mother, you mean. Were you never aware that insanity is hereditary?

If his sister--presupposing that the accusation which he formulates against me was originally advanced by her--if his sister--whom, by the way, I never saw but once--if his sister accused me of complicity, then she suffered from the hereditary taint as well. If I was guilty of what your cousin charges, why was I not arrested, tried, and sentenced? But are you such a dolt you cannot see that Guy is mad--mad not only by nature, but crazed by jealousy as well. You say you know he loves you.

You have even the candor to admit that you love him! Now ask yourself what would any impartial hearer deduce from statements such as yours?"

"My father was an impartial hearer, and he--"