It was not long before Mrs. Langdon was announced. There are some women to whom a haggard look is becoming; she is one of them. She was much thinner than when I last saw her; instead of her former restless, petulant, suspicious expression, she now looked tragically sad. "May I trouble you to close the door?" said she, when the servant had withdrawn.
I closed the door.
"I"ve come," she began, without seating herself, "to make you as unhappy, I fear, as I am. I"ve hesitated long before coming. But I am desperate. The one hope I have left is that you and I between us may be able to--to--that you and I may be able to help each other."
I waited.
"I suppose there are people," she went on, "who have never known what it was to--really to care for some one else. They would despise me for clinging to a man after he has shown me that--that his love has ceased."
"Pardon me, Mrs. Langdon," I interrupted. "You apparently think your husband and I are intimate friends. Before you go any further, I must disabuse you of that idea."
She looked at me in open astonishment. "You do not know why my husband has left me?"
"Until a few minutes ago, I did not know that he had left you," I said.
"And I do not wish to know why."
Her expression of astonishment changed to mockery. "Oh!" she sneered. "Your wife has fooled you into thinking it a one-sided affair. Well, I tell you, she is as much to blame as he--more. For he did love me when he married me; did love me until she got him under her spell again."
I thought I understood. "You have been misled, Mrs. Langdon," said I gently, pitying her as the victim of her insane jealousy. "You have--"
"Ask your wife," she interrupted angrily. "Hereafter, you can"t pretend ignorance. For I"ll at least be revenged. She failed utterly to trap him into marriage when she was a poor girl, and--"
"Before you go any further," said I coldly, "let me set you right. My wife was at one time engaged to your husband"s brother, but--"
"Tom?" she interrupted. And her laugh made me bite my lip. "So she told you that! I don"t see how she dared. Why, everybody knows that she and Mowbray were engaged, and that he broke it off to marry me."
All in an instant everything that had been confused in my affairs at home and down town became clear. I understood why I had been pursued relentlessly in Wall Street; why I had been unable to make the least impression on the barriers between Anita and myself. You will imagine that some terrible emotion at once dominated me. But this is not a romance; only the veracious chronicle of certain human beings. My first emotion was--relief that it was not Tom Langdon. "I ought to have known she couldn"t care for _him_," said I to myself. I, contending with Tom Langdon for a woman"s love had always made me shrink. But Mowbray--that was vastly different. My respect for myself and for Anita rose.
"No," said I to Mrs. Langdon, "my wife did not tell me, never spoke of it.
What I said to you was purely a guess of my own. I had no interest in the matter--and haven"t. I have absolute confidence in my wife. I feel ashamed that you have provoked me into saying so." I opened the door.
"I am not going yet," said she angrily. "Yesterday morning Mowbray and she were riding together in the Riverside Drive. Ask her groom."
"What of it?" said I. Then, as she did not rise, I rang the bell. When the servant came, I said: "Please tell Mrs. Blacklock that Mrs. Langdon is in the library--and that I am here, and gave you the message."
As soon as the servant was gone, she said: "No doubt she"ll lie to you.
These women that steal other women"s property are usually clever at fooling their own silly husbands."
"I do not intend to ask her," I replied. "To ask her would be an insult."
She made no comment beyond a scornful toss of the head. We both had our gaze fixed upon the door through which Anita would enter. When she finally did appear, I, after one glance at her, turned--it must have been triumphantly--upon her accuser. I had not doubted, but where is the faith that is not the stronger for confirmation? And confirmation there was in the very atmosphere round that stately, still figure. She looked calmly, first at Mrs. Langdon, then at me.
"I sent for you," said I, "because I thought that you, rather than I, should request Mrs. Langdon to leave your house."
At that Mrs. Langdon was on her feet, and blazing. "Fool!" she flared at me. "Oh, the fools women make of men!" Then to Anita: "You--you--But no, I must not permit you to drag me down to your level. Tell your husband--tell him that you were riding with my husband in the Riverside Drive yesterday."
I stepped between her and Anita. "My wife will not answer you," said I. "I hope, Madam, you will spare us the necessity of a painful scene. But leave you must--at once."
She looked wildly round, clasped her hands, suddenly burst into tears.
If she had but known, she could have had her own way after that, without any attempt from me to oppose her. For she was evidently unutterably wretched--and no one knew better than I the sufferings of unreturned love.
But she had given me up; slowly, sobbing, she left the room, I opening the door for her and closing it behind her.
"I almost broke down myself," said I to Anita. "Poor woman! How can you be so calm? You women in your relations with each other are--a mystery."
"I have only contempt for a woman who tries to hold a man when he wishes to go," said Anita, with quiet but energetic bitterness. "Besides"--she hesitated an instant before going on--"Gladys deserves her fate. She doesn"t really care for him. She"s only jealous of him. She never did love him."
"How do you know?" said I sharply, trying to persuade myself it was not an ugly suspicion in me that lifted its head and shot out that question.
"Because he never loved her," she replied. "The feeling a woman has for a man or a man for a woman, without any response, isn"t love, isn"t worthy the name of love. It"s a sort of baffled covetousness. Love means generosity, not greediness." Then--"Why do you not ask me whether what she said is true?"
The change in her tone with that last sentence, the strange, ominous note in it, startled me,
"Because," replied I, "as I said to her, to ask my wife such a question would be to insult her. If you were riding with him, it was an accident."
As if my rude repulse of her overtures and my keeping away from her ever since would not have justified her in almost anything.
She flushed the dark red of shame, but her gaze held steady and unflinching upon mine. "It was not altogether by accident," she said. And I think she expected me to kill her.
When a man admits and respects a woman"s rights where he is himself concerned, he either is no longer interested in her or has begun to love her so well that he can control the savage and selfish instincts of pa.s.sion. If Mowbray Langdon had been there, I might have killed them both; but he was not there, and she, facing me without fear, was not the woman to be suspected of the stealthy and traitorous.
"It was he that you meant when you warned me you cared for another man?"
said I, so quietly that I wondered at myself; wondered what had become of the "Black Matt" who had used his fists almost as much as his brains in fighting his way up.
"Yes," she said, her head down now.
A long pause.
"You wish to be free?" I asked, and my tone must have been gentle.
"I wish to free you," she replied slowly and deliberately.
There was a long silence. Then I said: "I must think it all out. I once told you how I felt about these matters. I"ve greatly changed my mind since our talk that night in the Willoughby; but my prejudices are still with me.
Perhaps you will not be surprised at that--you whose prejudices have cost me so dear."
I thought she was going to speak. Instead she turned away, so that I could no longer see her face.
"Our marriage was a miserable mistake," I went on, struggling to be just and judicial, and to seem calm. "I admit it now. Fortunately, we are both still young--you very young. Mistakes in youth are never fatal. But, Anita, do not blunder out of one mistake into another. You are no longer a child, as you were when I married you. You will be careful not to let judgments formed of him long ago decide you for him as they decided you against me."
"I wish to be free," she said, each word coming with an effort, "as much on your account as on my own." Then, and it seemed to me merely a truly feminine attempt to shirk responsibility, she added, "I am glad my going will be a relief to you."
"Yes, it will be a relief," I confessed. "Our situation has become intolerable." I had reached my limit of self-control. I put out my hand.
"Good-by," I said.
If she had wept, it might have modified my conviction that everything was at an end between us. But she did not weep. "Can you ever forgive me?" she asked.
"Let"s not talk of forgiveness," said I, and I fear my voice and manner were gruff, as I strove not to break down. "Let"s try to forget." And I touched her hand and hastened away.
When two human beings set out to misunderstand each other, how fast and far they go! How shut-in we are from each other, with only halting means of communication that break down under the slightest strain!