"They"re on their honeymoon?" asked the faint voice, after a just perceptible pause.
Daphne a.s.sented. "She seems a pretty little thing."
Madeleine Verrier opened her tired eyes to look at Daphne. Mrs.
Floyd--as Daphne now called herself--was dressed in deep black. The costly gown revealed a figure which had recently become substantial, and the face on which the electric light shone had nothing left in it of the girl, though Daphne Floyd was not yet thirty. The initial beauty of complexion was gone; so was the fleeting prettiness of youth. The eyes were as splendid as ever, but combined with the increased paleness of the cheeks, the greater prominence and determination of the mouth, and a certain austerity in the dressing of the hair, which was now firmly drawn back from the temples round which it used to curl, and worn high, _a la Marquise_, they expressed a personality--a formidable personality--in which self-will was no longer graceful, and power no longer magnetic. Madeleine Verrier gazed at her friend in silence. She was very grateful to Daphne, often very dependent on her. But there were moments when she shrank from her, when she would gladly never have seen her again. Daphne was still erect, self-confident, militant; whereas Madeleine knew herself vanquished--vanquished both in body and soul.
Certain inner miseries and discomforts had been set vibrating by the name of Captain Boyson.
"You won"t want to see him or come across him?" she said abruptly.
"Who? Alfred Boyson? I am not afraid of him in the least. He may say what he pleases--or think what he pleases. It doesn"t matter to me."
"When did you see him last?"
Daphne hesitated a moment. "When he came to ask me for certain things which had belonged to Beatty."
"For Roger? I remember. It must have been painful."
"Yes," said Daphne unwillingly, "it was. He was very unfriendly. He always has been--since it happened. But I bore him no malice"--the tone was firm--"and the interview was short."
"----" The half inaudible word fell like a sigh from Madeleine"s lips as she closed her eyes again to shut out the light which teased them. And presently she added, "Do you ever hear anything now--from England?"
"Just what I might expect to hear--what more than justifies all that I did."
Daphne sat rigid on her chair, her hands crossed on her lap. Mrs.
Verrier did not pursue the conversation.
Outside the fog grew thicker and darker. Even the lights on the bridge were now engulfed. Daphne began to shiver in her fur cloak. She put out a cold hand and took one of Mrs. Verrier"s.
"Dear Madeleine! Indeed, indeed, you ought to let me move you from this place. Do let me! There"s the house at Stockbridge all ready. And in July I could take you to Newport. I must be off next week, for I"ve promised to take the chair at a big meeting at Buffalo on the 29th. But I can"t bear to leave you behind. We could make the journey quite easy for you. That new car of mine is very comfortable."
"I know it is. But, thank you, dear, I like this hotel; and it will be summer directly."
Daphne hesitated. A strong protest against "morbidness" was on her lips, but she did not speak it. In the mist-filled room even the bright fire, the electric lights, had grown strangely dim. Only the roar outside was real--terribly, threateningly real. Yet the sound was not so much fierce as lamentable; the voice of Nature mourning the eternal flow and conflict at the heart of things. Daphne knew well that, mingled with this primitive, cosmic voice, there was--for Madeleine Verrier--another; a plaintive, human cry, that was drawing the life out of her breast, the blood from her veins, like some baneful witchcraft of old. But she dared not speak of it; she and the doctor who attended Mrs. Verrier dared no longer name the patient"s "obsession" even to each other. They had tried to combat it, to tear her from this place; with no other result, as it seemed, than to hasten the death-process which was upon her. Gently, but firmly, she had defied them, and they knew now that she would always defy them. For a year past, summer and winter, she had lived in this apartment facing the Falls; her nurses found her very patient under the incurable disease which had declared itself; Daphne came to stay with her when arduous engagements allowed, and Madeleine was always grateful and affectionate. But certain topics, and certain advocacies, had dropped out of their conversation--not by Daphne"s will. There had been no spoken recantation; only the prophetess prophesied no more; and of late, especially when Daphne was not there--so Mrs. Floyd had discovered--a Roman Catholic priest had begun to visit Mrs. Verrier.
Daphne, moreover, had recently noticed a small crucifix, hidden among the folds of the loose black dress which Madeleine commonly wore.
Daphne had changed her dress and dismissed her maid. Although it was May, a wood-fire had been lighted in her room to counteract the chilly damp of the evening. She hung over it, loth to go back to the sitting-room, and plagued by a depression that not even her strong will could immediately shake off. She wished the Boysons had not come. She supposed that Alfred Boyson would hardly cut her; but she was tolerably certain that he would not wish his young wife to become acquainted with her. She scorned his disapproval of her; but she smarted under it. It combined with Madeleine"s strange delusions to put her on the defensive; to call out all the fierceness of her pride; to make her feel herself the champion of a sound and reasonable view of life as against weakness and reaction.
Madeleine"s dumb remorse was, indeed, the most paralyzing and baffling thing; nothing seemed to be of any avail against it, now that it had finally gained the upper hand. There had been dark times, no doubt, in the old days in Washington; times when the tragedy of her husband"s death had overshadowed her. But in the intervals, what courage and boldness, what ardour in the declaration of that new Feminist gospel to which Daphne had in her own case borne witness! Daphne remembered well with what feverish readiness Madeleine had accepted her own pleas after her flight from England; how she had defended her against hostile criticism, had supported her during the divorce court proceedings, and triumphed in their result. "You are unhappy? And he deceived you? Well, then, what more do you want? Free yourself, my dear, free yourself! What right have you to bear more children to a man who is a liar and a shuffler? It is our generation that must suffer, for the liberty of those that come after!"
What had changed her? Was it simply the approach of mortal illness, the old questioning of "what dreams may come"? Superst.i.tion, in fact? As a girl she had been mystical and devout; so Daphne had heard.
Or was it the death of little Beatty, to whom she was much attached? She had seen something of Roger during that intermediate Philadelphia stage, when he and Beatty were allowed to meet at her house; and she had once or twice astonished and wounded Daphne at that time by sudden expressions of pity for him. It was she who had sent the cable message announcing the child"s death, wording it as gently as possible, and had wept in sending it.
"As if I hadn"t suffered too!" cried Daphne"s angry thought. And she turned to look at the beautiful miniature of Beatty set in pearls that stood upon her dressing-table. There was something in the recollection of Madeleine"s sensibility with regard to the child--as in that of her compa.s.sion for the father"s suffering--that offended Daphne. It seemed a reflection upon herself, Beatty"s mother, as lacking in softness and natural feeling.
On the contrary! She had suffered terribly; but she had thought it her duty to bear it with courage, not to let it interfere with the development of her life. And as for Roger, was it her fault that he had made it impossible for her to keep her promise? That she had been forced to separate Beatty from him? And if, as she understood now from various English correspondents, it was true that Roger had dropped out of decent society, did it not simply prove that she had guessed his character aright, and had only saved herself just in time?
It was as though the sudden presence of Captain Boyson under the same roof had raised up a shadowy adversary and accuser, with whom she must go on thus arguing, and hotly defending herself, in a growing excitement. Not that she would ever stoop to argue with Alfred Boyson face to face. How could he ever understand the ideals to which she had devoted her powers and her money since the break-up of her married life?
He could merely estimate what she had done in the commonest, vulgarest way. Yet who could truthfully charge her with having obtained her divorce in order thereby to claim any fresh licence for herself? She looked back now with a cool amazement on that sudden rush of pa.s.sion which had swept her into marriage, no less than the jealousy which had led her to break with Roger. She was still capable of many kinds of violence; but not, probably, of the violence of love. The influence of s.e.x and sense upon her had weakened; the influence of ambition had increased. As in many women of Southern race, the period of hot blood had pa.s.sed into a period of intrigue and domination. Her wealth gave her power, and for that power she lived.
Yes, she was personally desolate, but she had stood firm, and her reward lay in the fact that she had gathered round her an army of dependents and followers--women especially--to whom her money and her brains were indispensable. There on the table lay the plans for a new Women"s College, on the broadest and most modern lines, to which she was soon to devote a large sum of money. The walls should have been up by now but for a quarrel with her secretary, who had become much too independent, and had had to be peremptorily dismissed at a moment"s notice. But the plan was a n.o.ble one, approved by the highest authorities; and Daphne, looking to posterity, antic.i.p.ated the recognition that she herself might never live to see. For the rest she had given herself--with reservations--to the Feminist movement. It was not in her nature to give herself wholly to anything; and she was instinctively critical of people who professed to be her leaders, and programmes to which she was expected to subscribe. Wholehearted devotion, which, as she rightly said, meant blind devotion, had never been her line; and she had been on one or two occasions offensively outspoken on the subject of certain leading persons in the movement. She was not, therefore, popular with her party, and did not care to be; her pride of money held her apart from the rank and file, the college girls, and typists, and journalists who filled the Feminist meetings, and often made themselves, in her eyes, supremely ridiculous, because of what she considered their silly provinciality and lack of knowledge of the world.
Yet, of course, she was a "Feminist"--and particularly a.s.sociated with those persons in the suffrage camp who stood for broad views on marriage and divorce. She knew very well that many other persons in the same camp held different opinions; and in public or official gatherings was always nervously--most people thought arrogantly--on the look-out for affronts.
Meanwhile, everywhere, or almost everywhere, her money gave her power, and her knowledge of it was always sweet to her. There was nothing in the world--no cause, no faith--that she could have accepted "as a little child." But everywhere, in her own opinion, she stood for Justice; justice for women as against the old primaeval tyranny of men; justice, of course, to the workman, and justice to the rich. No foolish Socialism, and no encroaching Trusts! A lucid common sense, so it seemed to her, had been her cradle-gift.
And with regard to Art, how much she had been able to do! She had generously helped the public collections, and her own small gallery, at the house in Newport, was famous throughout England and America. That in the course of the preceding year she had found among the signatures, extracted from visitors by the custodian in charge, the name of Chloe Fairmile, had given her a peculiar satisfaction.
She walked proudly across the room, her head thrown back, every nerve tense. Let the ignorant and stupid blame her if they chose. She stood absolved. Memory reminded her, moreover, of a great number of kind and generous things--private things--that she had done with her money. If men like Herbert French, or Alfred Boyson, denounced her, there were many persons who felt warmly towards her--and had cause. As she thought of them the tears rose in her eyes. Of course she could never make such things public.
Outside the fog seemed to be lifting a little. There was a silvery light in the southeast, a gleam and radiance over the gorge. If the moon struggled through, it would be worth while slipping out after dinner to watch its play upon the great spectacle. She was careful to cherish in herself an openness to n.o.ble impressions and to the high poetry of nature and life. And she must not allow herself to be led by the casual neighbourhood of the Boysons into weak or unprofitable thought.
The Boysons dined at a table, gay with lights and flowers, that should have commanded the Falls but for the curtain of fog. Niagara, however, might flout them if it pleased; they could do without Niagara. They were delighted that the hotel, apparently, contained no one they knew. All they wanted was to be together, and alone. But the bride was tired by a long day in the train; her smiles began presently to flag, and by nine o"clock her husband had insisted on sending her to rest.
After escorting her upstairs Captain Boyson returned to the veranda, which was brightly lit up, in order to read some letters that were still unopened in his pocket. But before he began upon them he was seized once more by the wizardry of the scene. Was that indistinct glimmer in the far distance--that intenser white on white--the eternal cloud of spray that hangs over the Canadian Fall? If so, the fog was indeed yielding, and the full moon behind it would triumph before long. On the other hand, he could no longer see the lights of the bridge at all; the rolling vapour choked the gorge, and the waiter who brought him his coffee drily prophesied that there would not be much change under twenty-four hours.
He fell back upon his letters, well pleased to see that one among them came from Herbert French, with whom the American officer had maintained a warm friendship since the day of a certain consultation in French"s East-End library. The letter was primarily one of congratulation, written with all French"s charm and sympathy; but over the last pages of it Boyson"s face darkened, for they contained a deplorable account of the man whom he and French had tried to save.
The concluding pa.s.sage of the letter ran as follows:
"You will scarcely wonder after all this that we see him very seldom, and that he no longer gives us his confidence. Yet both Elsie and I feel that he cares for us as much as ever. And, indeed, poor fellow, he himself remains strangely lovable, in spite of what one must--alas!--believe as to his ways of life and the people with whom he a.s.sociates. There is in him, always, something of what Meyers called "the imperishable child." That a man who might have been so easily led to good has been so fatally thrust into evil is one of the abiding sorrows of my life. How can I reproach him for his behaviour? As the law stands, he can never marry; he can never have legitimate children. Under the wrong he has suffered, and, no doubt, in consequence of that illness in New York, when he was badly nursed and cared for--from which, in fact, he has never wholly recovered--his will-power and nerve, which were never very strong, have given way; he broods upon the past perpetually, and on the loss of his child. Our poor Apollo, Boyson, will soon have lost himself wholly, and there is no one to help.
"Do you ever see or hear anything of that woman? Do you know what has become of her? I see you are to have a Conference on your Divorce Laws--that opinion and indignation are rising. For Heaven"s sake, do something! I gather some appalling facts from a recent Washington report. One in twelve of all your marriages dissolved! A man or a woman divorced in one state, and still bound in another!
The most trivial causes for the break-up of marriage, accepted and acted upon by corrupt courts, and reform blocked by a phalanx of corrupt interests! Is it all true? An American correspondent of mine--a lady--repeats to me what you once said, that it is the women who bring the majority of the actions. She impresses upon me also the remarkable fact that it is apparently only in a minority of cases that a woman, when she has got rid of her husband, marries someone else. It is not pa.s.sion, therefore, that dictates many of these actions; no serious cause or feeling, indeed, of any kind; but rather an ever-spreading restlessness and levity, a readiness to tamper with the very foundations of society, for a whim, a nothing!--in the interests, of ten, of what women call their "individuality"! No foolish talk here of being "members one of another"! We have outgrown all that. The facilities are always there, and the temptation of them. "The women--especially--who do these things," she writes me, "are moral anarchists. One can appeal to nothing; they acknowledge nothing. Transformations infinitely far-reaching and profound are going on among us."
""_Appeal to nothing!_" And this said of women, by a woman! It was of _men_ that a Voice said long ago: "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives"--on just such grounds apparently--trivial and cruel pretexts--as your American courts admit. "But _I_ say unto you!--_I say unto you!_"...
"Well, I am a Christian priest, incapable, of course, of an unbia.s.sed opinion. My correspondent tries to explain the situation a little by pointing out that your women in America claim to be the superiors of your men, to be more intellectual, better-mannered, more refined. Marriage disappoints or disgusts them, and they impatiently put it aside. They break it up, and seem to pay no penalty. But you and I believe that they will pay it!--that there are divine avenging forces in the very law they tamper with--and that, as a nation, you must either retrace some of the steps taken, or sink in the scale of life.
"How I run on! And all because my heart is hot within me for the suffering of one man, and the hardness of one woman!"
Boyson raised his eyes. As he did so he saw dimly through the mist the figure of a lady, veiled, and wrapped in a fur cloak, crossing the farther end of the veranda. He half rose from his seat, with an exclamation. She ran down the steps leading to the road and disappeared in the fog.
Boyson stood looking after her, his mind in a whirl.
The manager of the hotel came hurriedly out of the same door by which Daphne Floyd had emerged, and spoke to a waiter on the veranda, pointing in the direction she had taken.
Boyson heard what was said, and came up. A short conversation pa.s.sed between him and the manager. There was a moment"s pause on Boyson"s part; he still held French"s letter in his hand. At last, thrusting it into his pocket, he hurried to the steps whereby Daphne had left the hotel, and pursued her into the cloud outside.
The fog was now rolling back from the gorge, upon the Falls, blotting out the transient gleams which had seemed to promise a lifting of the veil, leaving nothing around or beneath but the white and thunderous abyss.
CHAPTER XI