The Wheel of Life Part 24

Was it merely the trick of pathos again, he wondered, or did the weariness in her voice sound as true as sorrow? Was she, indeed, as Laura so ardently believed, capable of larger means, of finer issues, and was her very audacity of speech but a kind of wild mourning for the soul that she had killed? A month ago he would not have asked himself the question, but his feeling for Laura had brought with it, though unconsciously, a deeper feeling for life.

"All the same I wouldn't bore myself if I were you," he returned, "and I don't think frankly men are worth it."

She laughed with an impatient jerk of her head. "Oh, it's easy to moralise," she remarked, "but I have enough of that, you know, from Laura."

"From Laura? Then she is with me?"

"She thinks so, but what does she know of life--she has never lived.

Why, she isn't even in the world with us, you see." A tender little laugh escaped her. "I've even seen her," she added gayly, "read Plotinus at her dressmaker's. She says he helps her to stand the trying on."

The picture amused him, and he allowed his fancy to play about it for a moment. "I can't conceive of her surrendering to the vanities," he said at last.

"You can't?" Gerty's tone had softened, though she still spoke merrily.

"Well, I call no woman safe until she's dead."

His imagination, always eager in pursuit of the elusive possibility, sprang suddenly in the train of her suggestion, and he felt the sting of a dangerous pleasure in his blood.

"Do you mean that it is only her outward circ.u.mstances, her worldly ignorance, that has kept her so wonderfully indifferent?" he asked.

"So she is indifferent?" enquired Gerty with a smile.

"To me--yes."

"Oh, I didn't know that--I suspected--" her pause was tantalising, and she drew it out with an enjoyment that was almost wicked.

"You suspected--" he repeated the words with the nervous irritation which always seized him in moments of excitement.

"I honestly believed," she gave it to him with barely suppressed amus.e.m.e.nt, "that she really disliked you."

His curiosity changed suddenly to anger, and he remembered, while he choked back an impulsive exclamation, the rage for mastery he had once felt when he found a horse whose temper had more than matched his own.

"Did she tell you so?" he demanded hotly.

"Oh, dear, no--she wouldn't for the world."

"Then you're wrong," he said with dogged resolution; "I can make her like me or not just as I choose."

"You can?" she looked lovely but incredulous.

"Why do you doubt it?"

"Because--oh, because you are too different. Do you know--and this is as secret as the grave--if I thought Laura really cared for you it would drive me to despair. But she won't--she couldn't--you aren't half--you aren't one hundredth part good enough, you know."

In spite of his smile she saw that there was a tinge of annoyance in the look he fixed upon her. "By Jove, I thought you rather liked me!" he exclaimed.

"I do--I love you--I always have." She stretched out her hand until the tips of her fingers rested upon his arm. "You are quite and entirely good enough for me, my dear, but I'm not Laura, and strange as it may seem I honestly care a little more for her than for myself. So if you are really obliged to fall in love again, suppose you let it be with me?"

"With you?" He met her charming eyes with his ironic smile. "Oh, I couldn't--I was brought up on your kind, and perfect as you are, you would only give me the tiresome, familiar society affair. There isn't any mystery about you. I know your secret."

"Well, at least you didn't learn it from Madame Alta," she retorted.

"From Madame Alta! Pshaw! she was never anything but a vocal instrument."

"Do you remember the way she sang this?" asked Gerty; and springing to her feet she fell into an exaggerated mimicry of the prima donna's pose, while she trilled out a languishing pa.s.sage from "Faust." "I always laughed when she got to that scene," she added, coming back to the couch, "because when she grew sentimental she reminded me of a love-sick sheep."

"Then why do you resurrect her ghost?" he demanded. "So far as I am concerned she might have lived in the last century."

"And yet how mad you used to be about her."

"'Mad'--that's just the word. I was." He drew out his watch, glanced at it, and rose to his feet with an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of dismay, "Why, you've actually made me forget that we aren't living in eternity," he said.

"I'll be awfully late for dinner and it's every bit your fault."

"But think of me," gasped Gerty, already moving in the direction of her bedroom, "I dine at Ninety-first Street, and I must get into a gown that laces in the back." She darted out with a bird-like flutter; and running quickly down the staircase, he hurried from the house and into a pa.s.sing cab. During the short drive to his rooms his thoughts were exclusively engrossed with the necessity of making a rapid change and framing a suitable apology for his hostess. The annoyance of the rush served more effectually to banish Laura than any amount of determined opposition would have done.

CHAPTER VI

THE FINER VISION

So far as Connie was concerned the trip South had been, to all outward appearance at least, entirely successful. Adams had watched her bloom back into something of her girlish prettiness, and day by day, in the quiet little Florida village to which they had gone, the lines of nervous exhaustion had faded slowly from her face. For the first two weeks she had been content to lie motionless in the balmy air beneath the pines, while she had yielded herself to the silence with a resignation almost pathetic in its childish helplessness. But with her returning vigour the old ache for excitement awoke within her, and to stifle her craving for the drug which Adams had denied her, she had turned at last to the immoderate use of wine. So, hopelessly but with unfailing courage, he had brought her again to New York where he had placed her in the charge of a specialist in obscure diseases of the nerves.

Except for the hours which he spent in his office, he hardly left her side for a minute day or night, and the strain of the close watching, the sleepless responsibility, had produced in him that quivering sensitiveness which made his self-control a bodily as well as a mental effort. Yet through it all he had never relaxed in the fervour of his compa.s.sion--had never paused even to question if the battle were not useless--if Connie herself were worth the sacrifice--until, almost to his surprise, there had come at last a result which, in the beginning, he had neither expected nor desired. A closer reconciliation with life, a stronger indifference to the mere outward show of possession, a deeper consciousness of the reality that lay beyond, above and beneath the manifold illusions--these things had become a part of his mental att.i.tude; and with this widening vision he had felt the flow in himself of that vast, universal pity which has in it more than the sweetness, and something of the anguish of mortal love. In looking at Connie he saw not her alone, but all humanity--saw the little griefs and the little joys of living creatures as they were reflected in the mirror of her small bared soul. Though he had schooled himself for sacrifice he found presently that he had entertained unawares the angel of peace--for it was during these terrible weeks that the happiness at which Gerty Bridewell had wondered possessed his heart.

On the afternoon of Trent's visit, Adams left his office a little earlier than usual, for he had promised Connie that he would take her to see a new ballet at her favourite music hall. When he reached his house she was already dressed, and while he changed his clothes in his dressing-room, she fluttered restlessly about the upper floor, looking remarkably fresh and pretty in a gown of delicate blossom pink. From a little distance the faint discolour of her skin, the withered lines about her mouth and temples were lost in a general impression of rosy fairness; and as he watched her hurried movements, through the door of her bedroom, Adams found it almost impossible to a.s.sociate this sparkling beauty with the half-frenzied creature he had nursed two weeks ago. One of her "spells of joy," as she called them was evidently upon her; and even as he accepted thankfully the startling change in her appearance, there shot into his mind an acute suspicion as to the immediate cause.

"Connie," he said, standing in front of her with his hair brush in his hand, "will you give me your word of honour that you have taken nothing to-day except your proper medicine?"

A quick resentment showed in her eyes, but she veiled it a moment afterward by a cunning expression of injured innocence. "Why, how could I?" she asked, in a hurt voice, "the nurse was with me."

It was true, he knew--the nurse had been with her all day, and yet as he looked more closely at her animated face and brilliant eyes the suspicion hardened to absolute conviction in his mind. The change from the fragile weakness of the morning to this palpitating eagerness could mean only the one thing, he knew--Connie had found some secret way to gratify her craving and the inevitable reaction would set in before many hours.

Turning away again he finished his dressing to the accompaniment of her high-pitched ceaseless prattle. Her conversation was empty and almost inconsequent, filled with rambling descriptions of the newest gowns, with broken bits of intimate personal gossip, but the very rush of words which came from her served to create an atmosphere of merriment at dinner. A little later at the music hall she insisted upon talking to Adams in exaggerated whispers, until the pointless jokes she made about the arms or the legs of the dancers, sent her into convulsions of noiseless hysterical laughter. Through it all Adams sat patiently wondering whether he suffered more from the boredom of the ballet or from the neuralgia caused by a draught which blew directly on the back of his neck. That the show amused Connie was sufficient reason for sticking it out until the end, but there were moments during the long evening, when he felt, as he sat with his blank gaze fixed upon the glancing red legs on the stage, that every stifled yawn was but an unuttered exclamation of profanity.

"Now really and truly was it worth it?" he asked, with a laugh, when they stood again at their own door.

"But didn't you think it lovely?" enquired Connie, irritably, as she entered the hall and paused a moment under the electric light. The excitement had faded from her face, leaving it parched and wan as from a burned out fire, and the sinister blue shadows had leaped out in the hollows beneath her eyes.

"I think you were," he answered merrily, following her as she turned away and went slowly up the staircase.

A smile at the compliment flickered for an instant upon her lips; then as she reached her bedroom, her strength failed her utterly, and with a little moaning cry she swayed forward and fell in a huddled pink heap upon the floor. As he lifted her she begged piteously for wine--brandy--for anything which would drive away the terrible faintness.

"It is like falling into a gulf," she cried, "I am slipping away and I can't hold myself--"

He measured a dose of cognac and gave it to her with a little water, but when, after swallowing it eagerly, she begged for more, he shook his head and began undressing her as he would have undressed a child. A touch at the bell, he knew, would bring her maid, but a powerful delicacy constrained him as he was about to ring; these were scenes whose very hideousness made them sacred, and with Connie's distracted raving in his ears, he became suddenly thankful for the absolute loneliness, for the empty house around him. As she lay upon the bed where he had placed her, looking, he thought even then, like a crushed blossom in her gown of pale pink chiffon, he bent over her in an anguish of pity which oppressed him like a physical weight. The very hatred in her eyes as she looked up at him made the burden of his sympathy the heavier to bear. Had she loved him it might have been easier for her, but he knew now that in her sanest days she felt no stronger sentiment for him than tolerant grat.i.tude. And during her frantic nights the violence of her detestation was but an added torture. There were times even, and this was so now, when she sought by bodily force to gain possession of the drug which she had hidden under the carpet or beneath the pillows of the couch, and in order to control her struggles, he was obliged to resort to his greater physical strength. After this she looked up and cursed him with a wonderful florid, almost oriental splendour of language, while throwing off his coat, he brushed from him the hanging shreds of the torn pink chiffon gown.

At seven o'clock in the morning when the nurse came to relieve him, he was still sitting, as he had sat all night, in a chair beside Connie's bed.