The veins in Masters"s forehead were swelling with the effort he was making to hide his indignation.
"I have been at great pains to be released from the obligation of testifying," I answered, "because I have not wished to injure her, because, above all," I added, "I have not wished to injure you."
We had remained standing during this conversation, but when I said this--and in saying it I tried to make Masters feel that I was sorry for him--he turned away a little and sank sideways upon a chair. He leaned one arm on the back of it, bowing his head upon his hand, and after a moment"s pause turned to me again; his face was white now.
"If that is your reason for not testifying I am obliged to you," he said. "But which is your real reason--to spare Neaera or to spare me?"
"I have no more reason for sparing Neaera than that she is a woman; I have every reason for sparing you."
Masters looked at me inquiringly.
"I have nothing to conceal from you," I continued.
"Then tell me just what happened," answered Masters.
I took a seat and so did Ariston, and thought for a moment how I could tell the facts in so far as they concerned the attempt at rescue without disclosing Neaera"s designs upon myself. I confined myself to the part she played when I gave Chairo"s message to Balbus.
"Might not this have been done by Neaera," asked Masters, "in compliance with a prior understanding with Chairo?"
"I cannot believe," said I, "that there was any such understanding; indeed, I am convinced that if Neaera was not herself the cause of Chairo"s capture, she was a party to it." I told then the story of the tampering with Chairo"s carriage.
"Could not this, too, have been a part of the plot?" pleaded Masters desperately.
"A part of Neaera"s plot, not a part of Chairo"s. No one can talk ten minutes with Chairo now without being convinced that his first object was to get possession of Lydia; the political intrigue in the latest stage of the affair became altogether a secondary matter."
"Neaera was not," interrupted Ariston, "pleased with the role Lydia played in the matter. At one time there was no small intimacy between Chairo and Neaera; Neaera is not a woman to see her place taken by another without vindictiveness. In preventing the escape of Chairo she was serving a double purpose; she kept the issue alive, and she satisfied a personal pique."
Masters looked at me as though to learn my opinion on this view.
"I gathered this: from a few words Neaera dropped after she had set me free," I said; "she told me that all Chairo wanted was Lydia."
Masters jumped up from his chair.
"Then you would have me believe," said he, "that my wife is a vixen!"
At this I jumped up too.
"Masters," I said, "I have told you the facts because I felt you were ent.i.tled to them. If you cannot stand hearing the facts you should not have asked for them."
There was a moment when it seemed doubtful whether we might not come to blows; but the flash went out of Masters"s eye as he looked at me, and presently he held out his hand to me and said:
"I am sure you have intended to render me a service, and I suppose in the end"--he paused a moment as he shook my hand, and added--"in the end it will prove to be so."
Then, taking up his cap and cloak, he said:
"At any rate there need be no hard feeling between myself and Chairo, but I am a little dazed by what I have heard, and so I shall ask you both to keep this interview confidential for a time. In a few days I shall know better just how to act."
CHAPTER XXII
"TREASONS, STRATAGEMS, AND SPOILS"
But as Masters walked homeward his irresolution disappeared. He saw that his love for Neaera and his _amour propre_ had blinded him to the real significance of the testimony elicited by the investigating committee.
Taking together the unanimity of this testimony, the breaking down of Chairo"s carriage, the _tendresse_ that Neaera had certainly once entertained for Chairo, the duplicity with which he had over and over again heard Neaera charged, certain ambiguities in some of her own statements, and this last barefaced appeal to me, there could be no more doubt. He rehea.r.s.ed the interview at which he had asked her to marry him; he had been trapped by a show of indignation and a tearful eye.
By the time he reached his rooms his mind was made up. He sat down and wrote the following letter:
"DEAR NEAERA: I am afraid that the facts which have come to my knowledge leave no doubt as to your being responsible for the attack on the House of Detention. You are charged, too, with having tampered with Chairo"s carriage in order to prevent his escape with Lydia. Shall I investigate this matter, or would it not perhaps be better for you to turn over the leaf and start a clean page somewhere else? I am prepared to do what is needful in order to make this easy to you, and send you by the messenger who hands this to you money for your immediate necessities. Should you wish your mother to accompany you, I shall provide for her also. Meanwhile, of course, we can arrange to undo the marriage that was somewhat hastily celebrated.
"Yours,
"MASTERS."
Neaera was not far from New York. She and her mother were both occupying a cottage belonging to Masters in New Jersey, behind the Palisades. Her mother was a widow and a cipher. She had been a helpless spectator of her daughter"s too brilliant adventures, and was accustomed to sudden changes.
When Neaera received Masters"s letter she sent word to him she would be in New York that night. Masters on receiving the message packed a small portmanteau and went to Boston, leaving word with his aunt, who kept house for him, to receive Neaera should she arrive.
Masters was unwilling to subject himself to a scene with Neaera. While his messenger was away evidence had been presented to him which left no doubt as to Neaera having tampered with Chairo"s carriage; and this was more than sufficient as a last straw. He felt he had been unaccountably weak in his previous personal encounters with her and that she was now counting upon this weakness. It is not easy for a man to turn a woman out of his house, nor to hand over to the authorities a political refugee who has entrusted herself to his care. To keep Neaera in his rooms under the circ.u.mstances would have been consistent neither with what he owed the state nor with what he owed himself. He trusted, therefore, to Neaera"s intelligence to conclude from his departure that his decision was irrevocable.
Meanwhile, Lydia had left Tyringham and returned to New York. This had not happened without considerable negotiation, for it had been part of the understanding upon which Chairo had been released on parole that Lydia was to remain away from New York. The intention of this arrangement was to prevent Chairo from further compromising Lydia, pending the determination of his case. But Lydia had been of late so much disturbed by Chairo"s letters that she had come to a decision which she proceeded at once, if possible, to carry out, and as a first step toward doing so, it was indispensable that she should go to New York.
She sent, therefore, to Irene the letter from Chairo which had particularly exercised her and asked Irene whether, under the circ.u.mstances, she could not once more be received at the cloister, no longer as a Demetrian but as one in retreat, in order that she might concert with Irene and other members of the council as to the course she proposed to pursue.
The letter from Chairo--or rather the extract from it--which she sent to Irene ran as follows:
"I could ask no one but you to believe how differently my own acts appear to me when I looked back upon them some weeks ago with the glamour that self-deception threw around them and when I hear them to-day coldly recited in the witness box. During the examination I have asked myself whether the witnesses I have heard testifying before the investigating committee were really telling about me, or were not rather telling of events which have happened only in a nightmare. And when I push my self-examination further, I see that the difference lies in this: At the time I prepared our forces for violence I was thinking of myself; now, I am thinking of you.
"I do not disguise from myself that the story narrated by more than a dozen witnesses regarding my actions prior to your acceptance of the mission, condemns me to an extent that makes the pa.s.sage of an amnesty bill--so far as I am concerned--difficult if not impossible. The question, therefore, arises, What am I to do? I am perfectly prepared to take my punishment myself, but it almost makes me die to think that I am dragging you with me into disgrace.
I have thought that probably I am at this moment the chief difficulty in the way of a conclusion of this business; that if I were not fighting for my own release, the others would be pardoned easily enough. I would willingly bear the brunt of it all were it not for you. My perplexity is, that in fighting for you I am fighting also for myself."
Irene discussed the possibility of Lydia"s return to the cloister with her colleagues, and the extract from Chairo"s letter was read to them.
Masters, also, was consulted; for his effort to defend Neaera"s reputation had enlisted him against Chairo on the side of the cult, and he had, therefore, been occasionally admitted to their counsels. It was finally decided that in view of Chairo"s present att.i.tude--the sincerity of which very few were disposed to doubt--and in view of the course Lydia proposed to adopt, she should be readmitted to retreat in the cloister, though it was deemed wise to give as little publicity to this return as possible.
Masters, however, had told Neaera of it, and when Neaera arrived at Masters"s rooms to find that he had left New York, her agile and vindictive mind immediately set itself to a combination of "treasons, stratagems, and spoils," in which somehow or another she wanted Lydia and Chairo to play a part--a part that would give some satisfaction to her spite. Then, too, there was somewhere in her mind the possibility that if, as she understood, Chairo was hard pressed, and if, as she hoped, Lydia was to any degree alienated from him through the influence of the cloister, Chairo might be induced to share her evils with her.
There were chapters in their past that he might not find it distasteful to rehea.r.s.e.
Neaera on arriving in New York found Masters"s aunt fussily desirous to be useful to her, and yet very anxious at the thought that she was harboring a political runaway. Neaera had arrived after dark, so veiled as to escape recognition. She was nerved for an encounter with Masters, in which she was by feminine dexterity to dissipate the suspicions to which he had fallen too easy a prey, and the news that he was gone had for first effect to make her restlessly anxious to do something. She therefore asked whether two notes could be delivered by private messenger that night, one to Lydia and one to Chairo. After inquiry, arrangements were made to do this, and Neaera sat down to contrive her little plot. The first part of it was simple enough. She wrote to Lydia that she had come to New York at great personal risk expressly to see her on a matter of vital importance, and asked her to come the next morning punctually at ten. To Chairo she showed less solicitude: she confined herself to the bare statement of her whereabouts, and that she would be alone next morning at a quarter past ten till half past. The messenger was directed not to wait for an answer to either note.
The next morning, punctually at ten, Lydia, to Neaera"s delight, was shown into Masters"s study.
"I had to see you," said Neaera, kissing her. She dismissed the aunt, begging her not to admit any other persons without announcing them, and put Lydia down on a sofa. She sat next to Lydia and took her hand.