"One of "em"s the famous Mrs. Paxton, who----"
"I know."
"Met her last autumn at----" He rose suddenly to his feet, and advanced to meet the two women. "h.e.l.lo, there! Glad to see you."
Mrs. Paxton"s cool demure face broke into a delighted smile.
"Why, Harry!" she exclaimed. "Miss Coles, let me introduce Mr.
Colemain."
A moment later Harry had dragged me forward (literally) and I was being introduced. Miss Coles had very beautiful brown eyes, very white teeth, and a very deep dimple.
"Why," said Harry, "shouldn"t all you good people dine with me?"
"Why not?" exclaimed Mrs. Paxton.
I started to say that I had a pressing engagement, discovered Miss Coles" exceedingly beautiful eyes lifted to mine, and saw upon her face an expression of the most alluring mockery, and so--"Why not?" said I.
We had a long and a merry dinner. I felt defiant of life, a man without responsibilities, who owed nothing and to whom nothing was owed.
After dinner we went strolling in the moonlight. Harry and Mrs. Paxton strolled in one direction, Miss Coles and I in another.
Miss Coles looked very beautiful, and she wore an expression of childlike proprietorship which was very becoming to her.
"Why are you _Miss_ Coles?" I asked.
"I"m not--really." Her voice was little more than a whisper. "It"s more fun to be _Miss_ while the divorce is pending. I"m from California--n.o.body knows me here."
"And you"re getting a divorce?"
She nodded slowly. And then with a flash of engaging frankness: "No, I"m not," she said; "_he_ is."
"Oh!"
We strolled on in silence for a moment, and then as if by agreement came to a sudden halt and looked at each other.
Then she laughed softly, her head tilted back, and her round bare throat showing very white in the moonlight.
I threw my cigar into a bed of scarlet flowers.
x.x.xIV
I had pa.s.sed through one of those stages of mental and spiritual depression during which a man does not even ask forgiveness of himself for any of his acts. If "Miss" Coles had wished me to marry her I would have done so; but the suggestion was never made by either of us.
We parted, a little gloomily, but not unhappily, and before there was even a breath of scandal. It was just after she heard that her husband had secured his decree against her. That hard cold fact, that proof of things which no woman likes to have proved against her, seemed to sober her, you may say, and bring her up with a round turn. From now on she was going to be good, she said. No. I mustn"t blame myself for anything. Everything was her fault. Everything always had been. I was ashamed too? She was glad of that. We"d always be good friends.
Why, yes! From a friend, yes--if he was really as rich as all that.
It would help her to look around, to get her bearings for the new and better life. It had been a frightfully expensive winter. It had been sweet of me to keep her rooms so full of flowers. She loved flowers. . . . Oh, n.o.body was hurt much, and n.o.body but us anyway.
Reform is a great thing. I learned from Harry that the very night I left Palm Beach she lost all the money I had "conveyed" to her at gambling, and only the other day she ran off with a man I know very well indeed--and a married man at that. I hope she won"t talk too much in the first few weeks of her infatuation.
I reached New York feeling like the cad that I suppose I am. But it was pretty bitter hearing about Lucy, and the baby. At least I had kept faith longer than she had. I wondered if she once more loved her husband. Did I hope so? Yes, of course, in the same way that you express conventional horror when you hear of the latest famine in China.
Well, for better for worse, I was a free man again. Free--if it is free to be tormented by remorse, to feel cheap, futile, a waster--a thing of no account to anyone. If this is freedom it isn"t good to be free. No man is happy who comes and goes as he pleases. There must be responsibilities to shoulder, and ties which bind him. If he lives for himself alone and for what, in the first glad bursts of unattachment he imagines to be pleasure, a day will come when the acid of self-contempt begins to corrode him.
I determined to go to France, via London for I needed clothes, and if I had a definite place it was to volunteer as a nurse in the American hospital. So I took out a pa.s.sport, and engaged my pa.s.sage.
A few days later, while crossing from Madison Avenue to Fifth, I found myself suddenly face to face with Hilda. She averted her head and tried to pa.s.s without being recognized, but I called her name, and she stopped short and turned back.
"It"s just to ask how you are getting on, Hilda."
"I"ve just left Mrs. Fulton," she said; "I"m going home."
"Home?"
"England."
"You don"t mean it! But why?"
"Oh," she said, "it"s all gotten on my nerves--the war. I want to help. I"ve saved enough money to take me over, and to keep me if I have to look round a bit."
"I"m going over, too," I said.
"To help?"
"Oh, Hilda, I don"t know. I _hope_ so."
"Oh, I hope so, too, Mr. Mannering."
"But, Hilda, I want to talk to you. There may not be another chance.
Where are you going _now_?"
"I"m staying with friends till I sail."
"Well, tell them you"re going for a motor ride with another friend, and to dine somewhere along the Sound, will you?"
"Oh, I couldn"t, not very well."
"Hilda," I said, "there are so many things I want to know, and only you can tell me about Stamford--about last winter--is it true that Mrs.
Fulton is going----?"
"Yes, she is."
We were silent for a moment. Then she spoke. "Do you still----?"
"No, I don"t _think_ so, Hilda."
"Then I"ll come--if you want me to, and think I ought. But if any of your friends----?"