Kitabı oku: «The Adventures of a Widow: A Novel», sayfa 13

"The lady!" repeated Pauline, half under her breath, and with a distinct sneer. "Go on, please, Mr. Barrowe. Did Miss Cragge confess?"

"Miss Cragge did not confess. But she showed such a defiant tendency not to confess – she treated me with such an overbearing pugnaciousness and disdain, that before I had been five minutes in her society I had no doubts whatever as to the real authorship of the shocking article. And now, Mrs. Varick, I wish to offer you my most humble and deferential apologies. I wish to tell you how deeply and sincerely sorry I am for ever having entered into the least controversy with you regarding that most aggressive and venomous female! For, my dear madam, besieged and handicapped though I may be by countless…"

"Don't offer me a word of apology, Mr. Barrowe!" here struck in Pauline, jumping up from her seat and seizing the hand of her guest. "It is quite needless! I owe you more than you owe me! You have told me the name of my enemy, of which I was nearly certain all along." And here Pauline gave the gentleman's bony and cadaverous face one of those glances which those who liked her best thought the most charming.

"I had been told," she went on, with a very winning intonation, "that you have a large, warm heart!"

"Who – who told you that?" murmured Mr. Barrowe, evidently under the spell of his hostess's beauty and grace.

"Mr. Kindelon," Pauline said, gently.

"Kindelon!" exclaimed Mr. Barrowe, "why he is my worst enemy, as – as I fear, my dear madam, that Miss Cragge is yours!"

"Oh, never mind Miss Cragge," said Pauline, with a sweet, quick laugh; "and never mind Mr. Kindelon, either. I have only to talk about you, Mr. Barrowe, and to tell you that I have never yet met a good, true man (for I am certain that you are such) who stood in his own light so persistently as you do. You have an immense talent for quarrelling," she went on, with pretty seriousness. "Neglect it – crush it down – be yourself! Yourself is a very honest and agreeable self to be. I am always on the side of people with good intentions, and I am sure that yours are of the best. A really bitter-hearted man ruffles people, and so do you. But your motives for it are as different from his as malice is different from dyspepsia. I am sure you are going to reform from this hour."

"Reform?" echoed Mr. Barrowe.

Pauline gave a laugh of silver clearness and heartiest mirth. As often happens with us when we are most assailed by care, she forgot all present misery for at least the space of a minute or so.

"Yes," she cried, with a bewitching glee quite her own and by no means lost upon her somewhat susceptible listener, "you are going to conform the Mr. Barrowe of real life to the Mr. Barrowe who writes those brilliant, judicial, and trenchant essays. Oh, I have read them! You need not fancy that I am talking mere foundationless flattery such as you doubtless get from many of those people who … well, who handicap you, you know… And your reformation is to begin at once. I am to be your master. I have a lot of lessons to teach!"

"When are your instructions to begin?" said Mr. Barrowe, with a certain awkward yet positive gallantry. "I am very anxious to receive them."

"Your first intimation of them will be a request to dine with me. Will you accept? – you and your wife of course."

"But my wife is an invalid. She never goes anywhere."

"I hope, however, that she sometimes dines."

"Yes, she dines, poor woman … incidentally."

"Then she will perhaps give me an incidental invitation to break bread… Oh, my dear Mr. Barrowe, what I mean is simply that I want to know you better, and so acquire the right to tell you of a few superficial faults which prevent all the world from recognizing your kindly soul. I…"

But here Pauline paused, for a servant entered with a card. She glanced at the card, and made an actually doleful grimace.

"Mr. Leander Prawle is here," she said to her visitor.

Mr. Barrowe gave a start. "In that case I must go," he said. "I once spoke ill of that young gentleman's most revered poem, and since then he has never deigned to notice me."

"But you will not forget the dinner, and what is to follow," said Pauline, as she shook hands.

"No," Mr. Barrowe protested. "If you cleave my heart in twain I shall try to live the better with the other half of it."

"I should not like to cleave it in twain," said Pauline. "It is too capable and healthy a heart for that. I should only try to make it beat with more temperate strokes… Au revoir, then. If you should meet Mr. Prawle outside, tell him that you are sorry."

"Sorry? But his poem was abominable!"

"All the more reason for you to be magnanimously sorry… Ah, here he is!"

Here Mr. Leander Prawle indeed was, but as he entered the room Mr. Barrowe slipped past him, and with a suddenness that almost prevented his identification on the part of the new-comer…

"Mrs. Varick," exclaimed Leander Prawle, while he pressed the hand of his hostess. "I came here because duty prompted me to come."

"I hope pleasure had a little to do with the matter, Mr. Prawle," said Pauline, while indicating a lounge on which they were both presently seated.

Mr. Prawle looked just as pale as when Pauline had last seen him, just as dark-haired, and just as dark-eyed; but the ironical fatigue had somehow left his visage; there was a totally new expression there.

"I suppose," he began, with his black eyes very fixedly directed upon Pauline's face, "that you have heard of the … the 'Morning Monitor's' outrageous…"

"Yes, Mr. Prawle," Pauline broke in. "I have heard all about it."

"And it has pained you beyond expression!" murmured the young poet. "It must have done so!"

"Naturally," replied Pauline.

"It … it has made me suffer!" asserted the new visitor, laying one slim, white hand upon the region of his heart.

"Really?" was the answer. "That is very nice and sympathetic of you."

Mr. Prawle regarded her with an unrelaxed and very fervid scrutiny. He now spoke in lowered and emotional tones, leaning toward his hearer so that his slender body made quite an exaggerated curve.

"My whole soul," he said, "is brimming with sympathy!"

Pauline conquered her amazement at this entirely unforeseen outburst.

"Thanks very much," she returned. "Sympathy is always a pleasant thing to receive."

Mr. Prawle, still describing his physical curve, gave a great sigh. "Oh, Mrs. Varick," he murmured, "I should like to kill the man who wrote that horrible article."

"Suppose it were a woman," said Pauline.

"Then I should like to kill the woman!.. Mrs. Varick, will you pardon me if I read you … a few lines which indignation com – yes, combined with reverence – actual reverence – inspired me to write after reading those disgraceful statements? The lines are – are addressed to yourself. With – with your permission, I – I will draw them forth."

Without any permission on Pauline's part, however, Mr. Prawle now drew forth the manuscript to which he had referred. His long pale fingers underwent a distinct tremor as he unrolled a large crackling sheet of foolscap. And then, when all, so to speak, was ready, he swept his dark eyes over Pauline's attentive countenance. "Have I your permission?" he falteringly inquired.

"It is granted, certainly, Mr. Prawle."

After a slight pause, and in a tone of sepulchrally monotonous quality, the young gentleman read these lines: —

 
"White soul, what impious voice hath dared to blame
With virulent slander thine unsullied life?
Methinks that now the very stars should blush
In their chaste silver stateliness aloft!
Methinks the immaculate lilies should droop low
For very shame at this coarse obloquy.
The unquarried marble of Pentelicus
Deny its hue of snow, and even the dawn
Forget her stainless birthright for thy sake!
Curséd the hand that wrote of thee such wrong;
Curséd the pen such hand hath basely clasped;
Curséd the actual ink whose…"
 

"My dear Mr. Prawle!" exclaimed Pauline, at this point; "I must beg you not to make me the cause of so terrible a curse! Indeed, I cannot sanction it. I must ask you to read no more."

She was wholly serious. She forgot to look upon the humorous side of Mr. Prawle's action; his poem, so called, addressed her jarred nerves and wounded spirit as a piece of aggravating impudence. The whole event of his visit seemed like a final jeer from the sarcastic episode recently ended.

He regarded her now with a sorrowful astonishment. "You – you wish me to read no more!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, if you please," said Pauline, controlling her impatience as best she could.

"But I – I wrote it especially for you!" he proceeded. "I have put my soul into it! I consider it in many ways the most perfect thing that I have ever done. I intended to include it in my forthcoming volume, 'Moonbeams and Mountain-Peaks,' under the title of 'Her Vindication.' Even the grossly material poetic mind of Arthur Trevor, to whom I read it a few hours ago, admitted its sublimity, its spirituality!"

"I will admit both, also," said Pauline, whose mood grew less and less tolerant of this self-poised fatuity. "Only, I must add, Mr. Prawle, that it would have been better taste for you to have left this exasperating affair untouched by your somewhat saintly muse. And I shall furthermore request that you do not include the lines in your 'Moonbeams and Hill-Tops,' or" —

"Mountain-Peaks!" corrected Mr. Prawle, rising with a visible shudder. "Oh, Mrs. Varick," he went on, "I see with great pain that you are a most haughty and ungenerous lady! You – you have smitten me with a fearful disappointment! I came here brimming with the loftiest human sympathy! I believed that to-day would be a turning-point in my existence. I confidently trusted that after hearing my poem there would be no further obstacle in my career of greatness!"

Pauline now slowly left her seat. Unhappy as she was, there could be no resisting such magnificent opportunities of amusement as were now presented to her.

"Your career of greatness?" she quietly repeated. "Did I hear you properly, Mr. Prawle?"

Her guest was refolding his manuscript with an aggrieved and perturbed air. As he put the paper within a breast-pocket he rolled his dark eyes toward Pauline with infinite solemnity.

"You doubt, then," he exclaimed, "that I am born to be great – supremely great? Ah, there is no need for me to put that question now! I had thought otherwise before … when you smiled upon me, when you seemed to have read my poems, to be familiar with my growing fame!"

"You mistake," said Pauline: "I never meant to show you that I had read your poems. If I smiled upon you, Mr. Prawle, it was from courtesy only."

"Horrible!" ejaculated the young poet. He clasped his hands together in a somewhat theatrically despairing way, and for an instant lowered his head. "I – I thought that you were prepared to indorse, to assist my genius!" he soon proceeded, levelling a look of strong appeal at Pauline. "I thought that you had separated my poetic veracity from the sham of Trevor and Corson! I – I thought, Mrs. Varick, that in you I had found a true worshipper!"

Pauline was at last amused. "I usually reserve my worship for divinities, Mr. Prawle," she said, "and I have found but a few of these in all the history of literature."

"I see!" cried her companion, "you mean that I am not a genius!"

"I did not say so. But you have given me no proof of it."

"No proof of it! What was the poem I have just read?"

"It was … well, it was resonant. But I objected to it, as I have told you, on personal grounds." As she went on, Pauline tried to deal with a rather insubordinate smile of keen, sarcastic enjoyment.

"So you really think," she continued, "that you possess absolute genius?"

"I am certain of it!" cried Mr. Prawle.

"That is a very pleasant mental condition."

"Do you doubt it?.. Ah! I see but too plainly that you do!"

"Frankly," said Pauline, "I do."

Mr. Prawle flung both his hands towards the ceiling. "It is Kindelon's work," he cried, with an effect of very plaintive lamentation. "Kindelon is among those who yet oppose me."

"Mr. Kindelon is not responsible for my opinions," said Pauline. "However, you probably have other opponents?"

"Their name is legion! But why should I care? Do you join their ranks?.. Well, Shelley almost died because of being misunderstood! I had hoped that you would assist me in – yes, in the publication of my book of poems, Mrs. Varick. I do not mean that I wrote to you, for this reason, the poem which you have just refused to hear me read. Far from it! I only mean that I have cherished the idea of securing in you a patron. Yes, a patron! I am without means to bring forth 'Moonbeams and Mountain-Peaks.' And I had hoped that after hearing me read what I have already told you is my most nobly able creation, you would … consent, as a lover of art, of genius, of…"

"I understand," said Pauline. "You wish me to assist you in the publication of your volume." She was smiling, though a trifle wearily. "Well, Mr. Prawle, I will do it."

"You will do it!"

"Yes. You shall have whatever cheque you write me for…" She approached Prawle and laid her hand upon his arm. "But you must promise me to destroy 'Her Vindication' – not even to think of publishing it. Do you?"

"Yes … if you insist."

"I do insist… Well, as I said, write to me for the amount required."

Prawle momentarily smiled, as if from extreme gratitude. And then the smile abruptly faded from his pale face. "I will promise!" he declared. "But … oh, it is so horrible to think that you help me from no real appreciation of my great gifts – that you do so only from charity!"

"Charity is not by any means a despicable virtue."

"From a great millionaire to a poor poet – yes! The poet has a sensitive soul! He wants to be loved for his verses, for his inspiration, if he is a true poet like myself!"

"And you believe yourself a true poet, Mr. Prawle?"

"I?"

It is impossible to portray the majesty of Mr. Prawle's monosyllabic pronoun. "If I am not great," he enunciated slowly, "then no one has been or ever will be great. I have a divine mission. A truly and positively divine mission."

Pauline gave a little inscrutable nod. "A divine mission is a very nice thing to have. I hope you will execute it."

"I shall execute it!" cried Mr. Prawle. "All the poets, on every side of me, are singing about The Past. I, and I alone, sing of The Future. I set evolution to music … what other poet has done that? I wrest from Buckle, Spencer, Tyndall, Huxley – from all the grand modern thinkers, in fact – their poetic and yet rationalistic elements! If you had heard my poem to yourself through– if you had had the patience, I – I may add, the kindliness, to hear it through, you would have seen that my terminus was in accord with the prevailing theories of Herbert Spencer's noble philosophy…"

"Shall I ever cling to or love Herbert Spencer again?" thought Pauline, "when I see him made the shibboleth of such intellectual charlatans as this?"

"In accord," continued Mr. Prawle, "with everything that is progressive and unbigoted. I finished with an allusion to the Religion of Humanity. I usually do, in all my poems. That is what makes them so unique, so incomparable!"

Pauline held out her hand in distinct token of farewell.

"Belief in one's self is a very saving quality," she said. "I congratulate you upon it."

Mr. Prawle shrank offendedly toward the door. "You dismiss me!" he burst forth. "After I have bared my inmost soul to you, you dismiss me!"

Pauline tossed her head, either from irritation or semi-diversion. "Ah, you take too much for granted!" she said, withdrawing her hand.

Mr. Prawle had raised himself to his full height. "I refuse your assistance!" he ejaculated. "You offer it as you would offer it to a pensioner – a beggar! And you —you, have assumed the right of entertaining and fostering literary talent! I scarcely addressed you at your last reception … I waited. I supposed that in spite of Kindelon's known enmity, some of your guests must have told you how immense were my deserts – how they transcended the morbid horrors of Rufus Corson, and the glaring superficialities of Arthur Trevor. But I discover, plainly enough, that you are impervious to all intellectual greatness of claim. I will accept no aid from you! – none whatever! But one day, when the name of Leander Prawle is a shining and a regnant one, you will perhaps remember how miserably you failed to value his merits, and shrink with shame at the thought of your own pitiable misjudgment!.."

"Thank Heaven that monstrosity of literary vanity has removed itself!" thought Pauline, a little later, when Leander Prawle had been heard very decisively to close the outer hall-door. "And now I must dwell no longer on trifles – I must concern myself with far weightier matters."

The coming marriage to Kindelon on the morrow seemed to her fraught with untold incentive for reflection. "But I will not reflect," she soon determined. "I will at once try to see Mrs. Dares, and let her reflect for me. She is so wise, so capable, so admirable! I have consented because I love! Let her, if she shall so decide, dissuade me because of experiences weightier than even my own past bitter ones!"

The hour of her resolved visit to Mrs. Dares had now arrived. In a certain way she congratulated herself upon the distracting tendency of both Mr. Barrowe's and Mr. Prawle's visits. "They have prevented me," she mused, "from dwelling too much upon my own unhappy situation. Mr. Barrowe is a very sensible fool, and Mr. Prawle is a very foolish fool. They are both, in their way, taunting and satiric radiations from the dying bonfire of my own rash ambition. They are both reminders to me that I, after all, am the greatest and most conspicuous fool. Some other woman, more sensible and clever than I, will perhaps seek to establish in New York a social movement where intellect and education are held above the last Anglomaniac coaching-drive to Central Park, or the last vulgarly-select cotillon at Delmonico's. But it will be decades hence. I don't know how many … but it will be decades… All is over, now. I face a new life; I have ended with my salon. Only one result has come of it – Ralph Kindelon. Thank Heaven, he is a substantial result, though all the rest are shadow and illusion!"

Pauline soon afterwards started on foot for the residence of Mrs. Dares. It was nearly dusk. She had determined to set before this good and trusted woman every detail of her present discomfort, and while confessing her matrimonial promise as regarded the marriage with Kindelon on the morrow, to exhort counsel, advice, guidance, justification. Being a woman, and having made up her mind, justification may have been the chief stimulus of her devout pilgrimage.

The great bustling city was in shadow as she rang the bell at Mrs. Dares's residence.

A strange, ominous, miserable fear was upon her while she did so. She could not account for it; she strove to shake it off. She remembered her own reflections: "All is over now. I face a new life."

But she could not dismiss the brooding dread while she waited the answer of her summons at Mrs. Dares's door.

XV

The tidy young negress opened the door soon afterwards. Pauline asked for Mrs. Dares. The answer came that Mrs. Dares was at home.

"I wish to see her alone," said Pauline.

"Miss Cora's got a gent'man in the back room," came the answer, "but there's nobody right here."

Between "right here" and the "back room," Pauline was soon shown the difference. As she sat in a little prettily-furnished apartment, awaiting the appearance of Mrs. Dares, she readily apprehended that some sort of a chamber lay behind. This was, reasonably, the Dareses' dining-room. But she heard voices from beyond the rough decorative woollen tapestry which intervened in heavy concealing folds.

At first, seated quietly and thinking of just what she should say to Mrs. Dares, Pauline quite disregarded these voices.

"I shall tell the plain, unvarnished truth," she reflected. "I shall not leave a single detail. I shall trust her judgment absolutely."

A moment later she started, with a recognizing sense that she had heard a familiar tone from one of the voices behind the tapestry. Evidently a man was speaking. She rose from her seat. She had approached the curtain instinctively before realizing her act. A new impulse made her withdraw several steps from it. But the voice had been Kindelon's, and she now clearly heard Kindelon speak again.

"Cora!" she heard him say, "there are certain wrongs for which no reparations can be given. I know that the wrong I have done you is of this sort. I don't attempt to exculpate myself. I don't know why I came here to bid you this farewell. It was kind of you to consent to see me. Hundreds of other women would have refused, under like conditions. But you have often said that you loved me, and I suppose you love me still. For this reason you may find some sort of consolation hereafter in the thought that I have made an ambitious marriage which will place me high in the esteem of the world, which will give my talents a brilliant chance, which will cause men and women to point to me as a man who has achieved a fine and proud success… Good-by, Cora… Let me take your hand once – just once – before I go. I'll grant you that I've behaved like a scamp. I'll grant everything that can be said in my own disfavor. Good heavens! don't look at me in that horribly reproachful way, you – you make me willing to renounce this marriage wholly! Cora, I will do so if you'll pardon the past! I'll come back to you, I'll devote my future life to you! only tell me that you forgive and forget!"

"No, no," Pauline now heard a struggling and seemingly agonized voice reply. "There is no undoing what you have done. Keep your promise to her, as you have broken your faith with me. I do not say that my love is dead yet; I think it will not die for a long time … perhaps not for years. But my respect is wholly dead… I will not touch your hand; I will not even remain longer in your presence. I – I have no vengeful feeling toward you. I wish you all future happiness. If you shine hereafter as your talents deserve, I shall hear of your fame, your triumph, with no shadow of bitterness in my soul. And my chief hope, my chief anxiety, will be for the woman whom you have married. I know her enough to know that she is full of good impulses, full of true and fine instincts. You will go to her with an aching conscience and a stained honor. But I pray that after she has lifted you into that place which you seek to gain through her, she may never know you as I have known you – never wake to my anguish of disappointment – never realize my depths of disillusion!"

Pauline waited to hear no more. She thrust aside the drapery of the doorway and passed into the next room.

Cora uttered a swift and smothered cry. Kindelon gave a terrible start. Then a silence followed. It seemed to Pauline a most appreciable silence. She meant and wished to break it, yet her speech kept defying her will, and resisted her repeated effort at due control. But at length she said, looking straight at Kindelon, —

"I have heard – I did not mean to hear – I don't want you to say a single word – there is nothing for you to say. I simply appear before you – before you both! I – I think that is enough. I know every thing now. You … must have been certain that if I had previously known – that if you had not told me a falsehood I … I … should never…"

And then poor Pauline reeled giddily, putting forth both hands in a piteous, distraught way… When Kindelon caught her she had already lost consciousness…

The sense of blank was a most acute one when she awoke. Her first clear thought was, "How long have I been unconscious?" … And then came remembrance, and with remembrance the pain of a deep-piercing hurt.

No one was near by except Mrs. Dares. Pauline lay upon a lounge; she felt the yielding of cushions beneath her head and shoulders. Her first audible sign of revived consciousness was a little tremulous laugh.

"That's you, Mrs. Dares?" she then said. "I – I must have fainted. How funny of me! I – I never fainted before."

Mrs. Dares put both arms about her, and kissed her twice, thrice, on the cheek.

"My poor, dear, unhappy lady!" she said. "I am sorry – so miserably sorry."

Pauline repeated her tremulous laugh. She was beginning to feel the reassertion of physical strength. "I – I came here to see only you, Mrs. Dares," she now said, "but it was fated otherwise. And … and yet it has all been better – far better." Here she laughed again, and a little hysterically. "Oh, how superb a failure I've made of it, haven't I? I thought the 'Morning Monitor' had dealt me my last coup. But one other still remained!"

She lay silent for some little time, after this, and when Mrs. Dares presently spoke to her the lids which had dropped over her eyes did not lift themselves. It was so sweet, so tender, so exquisitely gentle a voice that it brought not the slightest exciting consequences.

"He is greatly to blame. I do not excuse him any more than you will. But you must not think the worst of him. You must think him weak, but you must not think him entirely base. I look at his conduct with impartial eyes. I try to look at everybody with impartial eyes. He was far below you in the social scale – that is the phrase which means inferiority nowadays, and I am afraid it will mean inferiority for many a year to come. He had engaged himself to my dear Cora. He meant to marry her. Then he met you. Everything about you dazzled and charmed him. It was yourself as much as your position, your wealth, your importance. He cared for you; he was enchanted by you; his nature is not a deep nature, though his intellect is large and keen. He is almost the typical Irishman, this Kindelon – the Irishman who, in statesmanship, in governance, in administrative force, has left poor Ireland what she is to-day. He meant well, but he had not enough morale to make this well-meaning active and cogent. The temptation came, and he yielded at once. There was no premeditated dishonor. The strain was put upon him and he could not bear the strain – that is all. Such men as he never can bear such a strain. There was not a hint of coldbloodedness in his conduct – there was none of the fortune-hunter's deliberate method. There was, indeed, no method at all; there was nothing except an inherent moral feebleness. Brilliant as he is, exceptional as he is, he can no more help consent and acquiescence in any matter which concerns his personal, selfish desires, than the chameleon can help taking the tints of what surrounds it. And I do not believe that he knows, at this hour, whether he loves you or my poor Cora the best. That is he – that is Kindelon – that is the fascinating, distressing race that he represents. He loved you both; his big, expansive Irish heart was quite capable of doing that. But his insecure, precarious conscience was incapable of pointing to him the one straight, imperative path. Hence your own sorrow, my dear, ill-used lady, and hence the sorrow of my poor unfortunate Cora!"

Pauline's eyes slowly unclosed as Mrs. Dares's last words were spoken.

"You speak like a sybil!" she murmured.

"But you speak too late. If I had only talked with you a little sooner! I should have been so prepared for such words then! Now they only come to me like mockery and … and sarcasm!"

Again Mrs. Dares stooped and kissed her.

"God knows," she said, "that I mean them for neither!"

"God help me from believing that you do!" answered Pauline. She raised herself, and flung both arms about Mrs. Dares's neck, while a sudden paroxysm of sobs overmastered and swayed her.