So mused Mr. Maule; then, having reached the end of his tether, he turned back again in the direction of his home.
The next morning, however, the plan of campaign which he had been devising was not a whit more tangible to him than it had been during his midnight stroll. He drank some coffee hopefully, and tried to lose himself in a damp copy of the Times. But in vain. The coffee brought him no comfort, and through the columns of the paper came the sultriness of Eden's eyes. The obituary of a famous general failed to detain his attention. The intelligence that an emperor was moribund lent no zest to the day. Mechanically his eyes scanned the Court Calendar; a case in which he was to appear was numbered therein, but he let it pass unnoticed. And presently, finding himself occupied in memorizing the advertisement of a new soap, he tossed the paper from him and started on his way down town.
It was late when he reached his office. In the corner of the room a fat little man sat patiently twirling his thumbs, and on a desk were a number of letters.
"What do you want?" Maule asked. His voice was gruff and inhospitable.
The fat little man started, and then fumbled in a pocket. "Dere was dot morhgige – " he began.
"Come again, then," Maule interrupted; "I am busy."
"Dot morhgige – " the little man persisted.
"Go to hell with your mortgage," Maule shouted, and slammed a door in his face.
This rite accomplished, he felt better. The brutality which he had displayed to the corpulent dwarf pleasured him. He only regretted that the man had not insisted further, that he might have kicked him down the stairs. What was a mortgage to him, forsooth, when he had Eden for a goal? The episode, trivial though it was, had stirred his pulse and left the effect of a tonic. He smiled, and opened his letters. As he read them his clerk appeared. With him he consulted for a minute and then started for court. On his return there was the little fat man again, and beating a tatoo on the window was Reginald Maule, ex-Minister to France.
"Well, Uncle Regy," he exclaimed, "how are you? Mr. Driscoll," he called out to the clerk, "attend to that Dutch beast, will you? Uncle Regy, step this way."
He led Mr. Maule into the inner office and graciously accepted a cigar. He was in great good-humor again. While in court a luminous idea had visited him, a plan of campaign which he proposed to elaborate at his ease. It was alluring as spring, and instinct with promises of success. Already he roamed in dreams forecast.
"Dugald," the uncle began, "I did not see you at the Matriarch's, last night."
Until recently Maule had not seen his uncle for several years. But during these years the uncle had not changed. He had the same agreeable manner, the same way of seating himself, the same sarcastic fold about his lips which Maule remembered of old. Even the cut of his waistcoat was unaltered. Apparently nothing had happened to him; he had contented himself with continuing to be.
"No," the nephew answered, and flicked the ashes from his cigar. "No, something else turned up and – "
"Exactly. If I had met you there I should not have come here. Now, I want a word with you in regard to the estate. Are you busy?" And the ex-Minister settled himself in his chair with the air of a man confident that, whatever else might demand attention, his own affairs would take precedence.
Thereupon, for some little time, nephew and uncle discussed matters of personal and common interest; and when at last these matters had been satisfactorily determined, the afternoon had begun to wane. At last the ex-Minister stood up to go.
"By the way," he said, his hand on the door, "who was it that Petrus Menemon's daughter married? I looked for her last night. When I saw her at the opera I could have sworn it was her mother. Same type, same eyes, same carriage of the head. She made me feel twenty years younger, I give you my word she did."
"She is pretty," Maule answered, negligently.
"Pretty? She is more intoxicating than the dream of a fallen angel. She is better looking than her mother. Hum, hum. You don't see such women in France. What did you say her name is?"
"She married a man named Usselex."
"Usselex? What Usselex?"
"What Usselex I can't tell you. But there seems to be only one, and she caught him. He has more money than Incoul, Jerolomon, and Bleecker Bleecker put together."
"You don't mean John Usselex, the banker?"
"Oh, but I do, though."
The ex-Minister opened the door and looked out into the outer room, then, assured that no one was listening, he resumed his former seat, crossed his legs, and meditatively beat his knee. In his face was an expression which a psychologist would have admired, a commingling of the vatic and the amused, accentuated by sarcasm.
"Well, what of it?" Maule asked shortly, perplexed at the mummery.
The ex-Minister leaned forward and for four or five minutes addressed his nephew in a monotone. As he spoke Maule's perplexity changed to surprise, then to bewilderment, and ultimately into jubilation. "Are you positive of this?" he exclaimed. "Tell me that you are. You must be positive!"
"I give you the facts – "
"I am off, then;" and he sprang from his seat. "I haven't a minute to lose," he added; and taking his uncle by the arm he led him from the office.
In the outer room the corpulent dwarf still sat. "Dere was dot morhgige – " he stammered.
"Accepted," Maule shouted, and turned to the clerk. "Look over the papers, will you? If they are right, get a check ready. As for you, my slim friend," he said to the German, "remember that business men have business hours." And laughing as though he had said something insultingly original, he hurried down the stairs, and jumping into a hansom, he presently rolled up town.
In a trifle over half an hour he was at Eden's door. "There is no time like the present," he told himself, as he rang the bell. But when, in answer to his ring, a servant appeared, he learned that Eden was not at home.
"Does Mrs. Usselex dine out, do you know?" Maule asked.
"I don't think Mrs. Usselex is coming back, sir," was the answer.
"You mean that Mrs. Usselex will not return until late, I suppose."
To this the man made no reply; he scratched the end of his nose reflectively. In his face was an expression that arrested Maule's attention.
"What do you mean?" he asked, a sudden suspicion entering his mind.
But still the man made no answer. He raised his arms, the elbows crooked, and assumed the appearance of an idiot.
"It is worth five dollars," Maule continued. "Here they are;" and with that he extended a bill of the nation, which the servant took, and then, glancing over his shoulder, whispered:
"Mrs. Usselex has gone to her father's, sir. I distrust something's hup."
"That man ought to be dismissed," Maule decided, as he hurried down the steps. "I say, cabby," he called to the hansom; "Second Avenue and Stuyvesant Square."
"Damn it all," he muttered, as he seated himself in the vehicle. "I am afraid I am late for the ball."
It took the hansom but a few minutes to reach its destination, and presently the door of Mr. Menemon's house was opened. As Maule entered he caught the sound of Eden's voice. "I want to see Mrs. Usselex," he said, and without waiting for a reply, he pushed the portière aside.
"It is false," he heard Usselex exclaim.
For a second Maule hesitated. He would have preferred to have found Eden alone. Indeed, the possibility of encountering her husband had not occurred to him; but he felt that it was too late to recede, and visited by that prescience which comes to the alert, he divined that the blow which he intended to strike must be struck then or never. He let the portière fall, and taking his courage in both hands, he stepped forward. As he did so, Eden, in annoyance at the intrusion, moved back, and Usselex, with a query on his tongue, turned to him. But before the latter could frame his words, Maule had spoken.
"Mr. Usselex," he said, with the air of one ventilating a conventional platitude, "are you aware that a man who insults a woman is a coward?"
At this speech Eden's hands fluttered like falling leaves; she made as would she speak, but Usselex motioned to her to be silent, and flicking a speck of dust from his sleeve as though the speck represented the reproof, he answered in a tone as conventional as Maule's. "And are you aware, sir, that a man who permits himself to interfere between husband and wife is – "
But whatever he may have intended to say, the sentence remained unfinished. Maule did not wait for its completion. He advanced yet nearer to where Usselex stood, he looked him in the face, and without raising his voice, he said: "This lady, Mr. Usselex, is not your wife, nor are you her husband." Then, turning to Eden, he added with the grace of a knight-errant, "Miss Menemon, allow me to present my congratulations."
The old legends tell of disputants ossified by one glance of Jove's avenging stare; and when Maule made his melodramatic announcement, both Usselex and Eden stood transfixed and motionless with surprise. Of the little group Maule alone preserved any semblance of animation. The palms of his hands were moist, and he felt unable to control one of the muscles of his face. But his emotion was not apparent. Outwardly he was perfectly self-possessed, and admonished by that instinct which at times warns us that every trace of feeling should be disguised, he succeeded in heightening the illusion by means of his moustache, to which he proceeded to give a negligent twirl.
And as he twirled it Eden seemed to recover from her stupor. To her face, which had been blanched, the color returned. In her eyes came a gleam as from a reflection caught from without. Her lips moved, and she glanced from accuser to accused. And as she glanced, dumb and ineffectual of speech, Mr. Menemon crossed the room.
"What is it you say?" he asked.
It was evident at once that of the scene – which if long in the telling had in reality not outlasted a moment – he had stood as witness.
"What is it you say?" he repeated.
"I say that this man is a bigamist." And as Maule spoke he tossed his head as though inviting possible contradiction. "I say," he continued, "that Mr. John Usselex has a wife living in Paris."
Mr. Menemon smoothed the back of his head reflectively. "Dear me!" he said; "that may all be. I daresay there are hundreds of John Usselexes. You don't expect them to remain bachelors because one of their name-sake gets married, do you?" And with that he nodded and turned with a smile to his daughter. "He can't expect that, Eden, can he?"
But Eden's eyes were fixed on Usselex. Her attention was wholly centered in him. Seemingly her father's words were unheeded. And the old gentleman turned again to Maule.
"What evidence have you that this John Usselex is the John Usselex of whom you speak?" he asked; and with the hand with which he had smoothed the back of his head, he now began to caress his chin.
But before Maule could answer, Eden caught her father by the arm. "His face!" she whispered quickly. "You can see it in his face." She pointed to him; in her eyes was conviction, and in her voice no tremor of doubt. "Look at him," she cried; "it is he."
Usselex turned to her in a manner which to those present was uninterpretable, then his eyes sought Mr. Menemon's, and finally he lowered them to the ground. His attitude was tantamount to admission, and as such Eden construed it.
"Thank God!" she exclaimed. "O God! I thank you. I am free." She still clutched her father's arm, and Maule made a movement toward her.
"Yes," he said, as he did so, "yes, Miss Menemon – "
But before he could reach her, Usselex barred the way. "By what right, sir – " he began, very firmly, but Eden interrupted him.
"I told you once that I thought Miss Bolten was interested in him. Let me tell you now he is in love with me."
"Eden, Eden – " her father murmured, reprovingly. Into Usselex' face came an expression that a demon might have envied. For a second he fronted Maule, his hand clenched. Then the fingers loosened again. The demon was transformed into a quiet, self-possessed man, that looked like a monk, a trifle valetudinarian at that.
"Madam," he said, "when a woman speaks in that way to the man whose name she bears, there is but one thing for him to do, and that is to withdraw." He bowed, and without further comment left the room.
"I don't bear your name," Eden called after him, but he had gone. "I don't bear your name; I throw it to the mud from which it sprang."
"And you are right, Miss Menemon," Maule echoed. "You are right to do so." And again he moved to her.
"Don't touch me," the girl cried; she was trembling. Evidently the excitement had been too much for her. "Don't touch me," she repeated; and drawing from him as from a distasteful thing, she added, with a look of scorn that an insulted princess might have exhibited: "Though you have not a lackey's livery, you have a lackey's heart."
"Eden, I beg of you – " Mr. Menemon began. But the girl had turned her back, and divining the uselessness of any admonition, the old gentleman addressed himself to Maule. "You will permit me to say, sir," he continued, "that whatever your motive may have been, and whatever evidence you may have, your announcement might have been conveyed a trifle less unceremoniously. I bid you good afternoon."
"But – "
"I bid you good afternoon."
Maule twirled his moustache for a second, and then, with a glance at Eden, he too left the room.
Hardly had he gone, when Eden threw herself on a lounge. In her ears was the roar of water displaced. The flooring turned from red to black. Then all was still; she had fainted.
XI
As Eden, through thunderclaps, and zig-zagged flames of light, groped back to consciousness again, it was with the intuition that some calamity was waiting to greet her. Into the depths of her being, a voice which refused to be hushed had been whispering, "Come." And Eden, clinging to the fringes of night, strove to still the call. But the phantom of things that were persisted and overcame her; it loomed abruptly, with arms outstretched, forcing her against her will, to reason with that in which no reason was.
For the moment she was benumbed, out-wearied with effort and enervated by the strain and depletion of force. She wished herself unconscious again, and looked back into the absence of sentiency from which she had issued, as a pilgrim reëntering the desert may recall the groves of Mekka and the silence of the Khabian tomb. It had been less a swoon to her than a foretaste of peace, the antithesis of life compressed into a second; and she longed for a repetition of the sudden suffocation of its embrace. But memory had got its baton back, and the incidents of the hour trooped before her gaze. She could not be free of them; they beat at her heart, filling her thoughts to fulfillment itself. In their onslaught they brought her new strength, the courage that comes to the oppressed; and rising from the lounge on which she had fallen, she left her father and his ministrations, and redescended into the past with anger for aigrette and hatred for spur.
It was the room that she had occupied during her girlhood to which she then went, and in the presence of the familiar walls, something reminded her of the days in which she had believed that the ignoble bore a stigma on their brow, that infamy of thought or deed left a visible sign. She recalled the old legends with which her childhood had been charmed, the combats of heroes with monsters, the struggles of lords with lies. In those days indeed, evil had been to her an abstraction, a figure of speech beckoned out of the remotest past, and unencounterable as the giant bat that darkened the nights of prehistoric time. Then had come a nearer acquaintance with it, the shudders that chronicles brought, and the intimations of the fabliaux; but still it had been distant, a belonging of the past incompetent of survival. And it was not until within recent years that she learned that it had indeed survived. Even then the tidings that reached her had as much consistency to her mind as the news of cholera in Singapore. She could not picture that Orient port, and the cholera she was sure would never attack her in her father's house.
And now suddenly she was contaminated. She felt as one may feel who had been lured into a lazar of lepers. Turn which way she might she could never wash herself clean. She was degraded in her own sight, and tricked by those whom she had trusted best. And no issue, not one. The dishonor into which she had been trapped was a thing that clamored for redress, and to that clamoring of her heart no answer was vouchsafed. "O God," she moaned, "is justice dead? Where are the thunderbolts you used to wield? Have you wearied of vengeance? have you left it, Jehovah, to us?"
Her forehead was throbbing as it had never throbbed before. Above it each individual hair seemed to be turning red. Her sultry eyes were dilated; she was quivering from shoulder to heel. And as in her restless anger she paced the room, before her on the wall glowed the device her own hands had made —Keep Yourself Pure. For a second she stared at it, the color mounting and retreating from her cheeks, and suddenly she tore it down and trampled it under foot.
"Vengeance is there," she cried; and without even the hesitation of a hesitation she bent over a table, and finding a sheet of paper, she scrawled across it —In telling you of Maule's love for me I omitted to tell you of my own for Adrian. This she addressed and then rang the bell.
And as she stood waiting for a servant to come, there was a rap on the door and her father entered. He looked at her for an instant and rubbed his hands. "It is chilly here, Eden," he said; "had you not better come down-stairs?"
"Is it worth while? It must be late. Where is Parker? has she not come with my things?"
"Yes; it is almost six o'clock. Parker – "
"Six! I thought it was midnight. How long have I been here?"
"Three or four minutes at most. I had a note to write. So soon as I could do so I followed you at once. You are quite yourself again, Eden, are you not?"
"I can understand," mused Eden, "that there are years that count double when there are moments that prolong themselves as have these." "Yes," she answered, aloud. "I am better. I will come with you."
She picked up the message she had written and left the room. In the hallway was the servant for whom she had rung. "Take this to Fifth Avenue," she said. "There is no answer, but see that it is delivered in person."
XII
"It is pleasanter here, is it not, Eden?" Mr. Menemon asked, when they reached the sitting-room. "It makes one think of old times, doesn't it? Do you remember – " And Mr. Menemon rambled on with some anecdote of days long past.
Eden gazed at him wonderingly. His words passed her by unheeded. It was bewildering to her that he could accept the tragedy so lightly, and as he spoke she kept repeating to herself that Virginius was part of a world long dead and derided. Truly, she could not understand. He seemed conscious of no wrong doing. The position in which she was placed excited him so little that he was able to discourse in platitudes. She was not wife nor maid nor widow, and for the man who had taken her from her home and inflicted on her a wrong that merited the penitentiary, her father expressed no indignation, no sorrow even. He did not even attempt to condole with her. And it was to him she had turned. Truly, she was helpless indeed. Yet still she gazed at him, expectant of some sudden outbreak, some storm of anger which, though it parodied her own, would at least be in unison with it. Her fingers were restless and her mouth was parched, a handkerchief which she held she twisted into coils, it seemed to her that were no word of sympathy forthcoming she would suffocate, as the traveler in the desert gasps beneath the oppression of fair and purple skies.
And still Mr. Menemon rambled on. "I should have gone to his funeral," he said, "had you not come in. He is to be buried in Washington I hear. Well, well! he was a brave man and a staunch friend. Yes, he was all of that. Really, Eden, I ought to have gone. I suppose they will escort the body to the station. Did you hear the drums when you went up-stairs? It makes a man of my age feel that his turn may be next."
Mr. Menemon crossed the room and looked out of the window. "See, Eden," he continued; "there must be a whole regiment. Not his own, though. The better part of that went down at Gettysburg. You remember, don't you – "
With this Mr. Menemon turned with a haste he strove to conceal. "It's almost dinner time," he added, inconsequently. "I will just change my coat." And immediately he left the room.
For a moment Eden thought she heard his voice in the hall. Then all was still again. She was wholly alone. She envied her father's friend who lay in some catafalque across the square. And presently the sense of desolation grew so acute that she threw herself prostrate on the lounge, and clasping a cushion in her arms, she buried her face in its silk.
From the square beyond came a muffled roll, and on her shoulder the touch of a hand. It was her father, she was sure. She half turned, her cheeks wet with tears. "What is it?" she sobbed. "Father – "
"It is I, Eden." And through a rift of understanding there filtered the sound of Usselex's voice. With the flutter of a bird surprised, she looked up. She started, and would have risen, but the hand weighed her down. She tried to move, and raising her arm as though to shield her eyes from some distasteful sight, suddenly she extended it, and motioned him back.
"Eden," he began.
"Don't speak to me!" she cried; and shaking herself from his hold, she stood up and dashed the tears away. "Don't speak to me!" she repeated; "and if anywhere within the purlieus of your being there is a spark of shame, leave me, and never – "
"Eden, you are unjust."
"Ah, I am unjust, am I not? I am unjust, because I believed in you. I am unjust, because I discover you in some coarse intrigue, I am unjust, because I thought myself your wife. I am unjust, am I? Did you get my note? Is it for that that you are here?"
"Eden, if you will listen a moment – "
"I have listened too long. Where is my father? Why is it you pursue me here? Are you not satisfied with your work? You meet a girl who only wishes to trust, and before her eyes you unroll a panorama of deceit. Oh! you chose her well – "
"It cannot be that you believe that man, Eden – "
"The man I believed was you. What matters the testimony of others when I find myself deceived – "
"Eden, you have deceived yourself. Last night I told you there were things I had not wished to tell, not from lack of confidence, but because – "
"Because you knew that did I hear them I would go."
"No, not that; but because I did not wish to cause you pain."
"Yes, protest. My father said you would. But the protest comes too late. Besides, I do not care to listen."
And thereat she made a movement as though to leave the room. But this Usselex prevented. He planted himself very firmly before her. His attitude was arrestive as an obelisk and uncircuitable as a labyrinth. Attention was his to command, and he claimed it with a gesture.
"You shall not go," he said; "you shall hear me."
She stepped back to elude him, but he caught her by the wrist.
"Look at me," he continued. "It took fifty years to make my hair gray; one day has made it white."
Eden succeeded in disengaging herself from his grasp, and she succeeded the more easily in that a servant unobserved by her, yet seen by Usselex, had entered the room. He loosed his hold at once and glanced at the man.
"What is it?" he asked. "No one rang."
"A letter, sir," the man answered; "it was to be delivered to you."
Usselex took the note and held it unexamined in his hand. Eden caught a glimpse of the superscription. The writing was her own. It was, she knew, the note which she had dispatched a half hour before. Meanwhile the servant had withdrawn.
"When I came home this afternoon," Usselex continued, "and found that you had gone, I could not understand – "
"You might have gone to the Ranleigh for information. Let me pass!"
