Book 3 - Chapter 7. "Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Happiness"

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_ BOOK III CHAPTER VII. "LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS"

That night was Honora's soul played upon by the unknown musician of the sleepless hours. Now a mad, ecstatic chorus dinned in her ears and set her blood coursing; and again despair seized her with a dirge. Periods of semiconsciousness only came to her, and from one of these she was suddenly startled into wakefulness by her own words. "I have the right to make of my life what I can." But when she beheld the road of terrors that stretched between her and the shining places, it seemed as though she would never have the courage to fare forth along its way. To look back was to survey a prospect even more dreadful.

The incidents of her life ranged by in procession. Not in natural sequence, but a group here and a group there. And it was given her, for the first time, to see many things clearly. But now she loved. God alone knew what she felt for this man, and when she thought of him the very perils of her path were dwarfed. On returning home that night she had given her maid her cloak, and had stood for a long time immobile,--gazing at her image in the pierglass.

"Madame est belle comme l'Imperatrice d'Autriche!" said the maid at length.

"Am I really beautiful, Mathilde?"

Mathilde raised her eyes and hands to heaven in a gesture that admitted no doubt. Mathilde, moreover, could read a certain kind of history if the print were large enough.

Honora looked in the glass again. Yes, she was beautiful. He had found her so, he had told her so. And here was the testimony of her own eyes. The bloom on the nectarines that came every morning from Mr. Chamberlin's greenhouse could not compare with the colour of her cheeks; her hair was like the dusk; her eyes like the blue pools among the rocks, and touched now by the sun; her neck and arms of the whiteness of sea-foam. It was meet that she should be thus for him and for the love he brought her.

She turned suddenly to the maid.

"Do you love me, Mathilde?" she asked.

Mathilde was not surprised. She was, on the contrary, profoundly touched.

"How can madame ask?" she cried impulsively, and seized Honora's hand. How was it possible to be near madame, and not love her?

"And would you go--anywhere with me?"

The scene came back to her in the night watches. For the little maid had wept and vowed eternal fidelity.

It was not--until the first faint herald of the morning that Honora could bring herself to pronounce the fateful thing that stood between her and happiness, that threatened to mar the perfection of a heaven-born love--Divorce! And thus, having named it resolutely several times, the demon of salvation began gradually to assume a kindly aspect that at times became almost benign. In fact, this one was not a demon at all, but a liberator: the demon, she perceived, stalked behind him, and his name was Notoriety. It was he who would flay her for coquetting with the liberator.

What if she were flayed? Once married to Chiltern, once embarked upon that life of usefulness, once firmly established on ground of her own tilling, and she was immune. And this led her to a consideration of those she knew who had been flayed. They were not few, and a surfeit of publicity is a sufficient reason for not enumerating them here. And during this process of exorcism Notoriety became a bogey, too: he had been powerless to hurt them. It must be true what Chiltern had said that the world was changing. The tragic and the ridiculous here joining hands, she remembered that Reggie Farwell had told her that he had recently made a trip to western New York to inspect a house he had built for a "remarried" couple who were not wholly unknown. The dove-cote, he had called it. The man, in his former marriage, had been renowned all up and down tidewater as a rake and a brute, and now it was an exception when he did not have at least one baby on his knee. And he knew, according to Mr. Farwell, more about infant diet than the whole staff of a maternity hospital.

At length, as she stared into the darkness, dissolution came upon it. The sills of her windows outlined themselves, and a blurred foliage was sketched into the frame. With a problem but half solved the day had surprised her. She marvelled to see that it grew apace, and presently arose to look out upon a stillness like that of eternity: in the grey light the very leaves seemed to be holding their breath in expectancy of the thing that was to come. Presently the drooping roses raised their heads, from pearl to silver grew the light, and comparison ended. The reds were aflame, the greens resplendent, the lawn sewn with the diamonds of the dew.

A little travelling table was beside the window, and Honora took her pen and wrote.

"My dearest, above all created things I love you. Morning has come, and it seems to me that I have travelled far since last I saw you. I have come to a new place, which is neither hell nor heaven, and in the mystery of it you--you alone are real. It is to your strength that I cling, and I know that you will not fail me.

"Since I saw you, Hugh, I have been through the Valley of the Shadow. I have thought of many things. One truth alone is clear-- that I love you transcendently.. You have touched and awakened me into life. I walk in a world unknown.

"There is the glory of martyrdom in this message I send you now. You must not come to me again until I send for you. I cannot, I will not trust myself or you. I will keep this love which has come to me undefiled. It has brought with it to me a new spirit, a spirit with a scorn for things base and mean. Though it were my last chance in life, I would not see you if you came. If I thought you would not understand what I feel, I could not love you as I do.

"I will write to you again, when I see my way more clearly. I told you in the garden before you spoke that I was going away. Do not seek to know my plans. For the sake of the years to come, obey me.

"HONORA."

She reread the letter, and sealed it. A new and different exaltation had come to her--begotten, perhaps, in the act of writing. A new courage filled her, and now she contemplated the ordeal with a tranquillity that surprised her. The disorder and chaos of the night were passed, and she welcomed the coming day, and those that were to follow it. As though the fates were inclined to humour her impatience, there was a telegram on her breakfast tray, dated at New York, and informing her that her husband would be in Newport about the middle of the afternoon. His western trip was finished a day earlier than he expected. Honora rang her bell.

"Mathilde, I am going away."

"Oui, madame."

"And I should like you to go with me."

"Oui, madame."

"It is only fair that you should understand, Mathilde. I am going away alone. I am not--coming back."

The maid's eyes filled with sudden tears.

"Oh, madame," she cried, in a burst of loyalty, "if madame will permit me to stay with her!"

Honora was troubled, but her strange calmness did not forsake her. The morning was spent in packing, which was a simple matter. She took only such things as she needed, and left her dinner-gowns hanging in the closets. A few precious books of her own she chose, but the jewellery her husband had given her was put in boxes and laid upon the dressing-table. In one of these boxes was her wedding ring. When luncheon was over, an astonished and perturbed butler packed the Leffingwell silver and sent it off to storage.

There had been but one interruption in Honora's labours. A note had arrived--from him--a note and a box. He would obey her! She had known he would understand, and respect her the more. What would their love have been, without that respect? She shuddered to think. And he sent her this ring, as a token of that love, as undying as the fire in its stones. Would she wear it, that in her absence she might think of him? Honora kissed it and slipped it on her finger, where it sparkled. The letter was beneath her gown, though she knew it by heart. Chiltern had gone at last: he could not, he said, remain in Newport and not see her.

At midday she made but the pretence of a meal. It was not until afterwards, in wandering through the lower rooms of this house, become so dear to her, that agitation seized her, and a desire to weep. What was she leaving so precipitately? and whither going? The world indeed was wide, and these rooms had been her home. The day had grown blue-grey, and in the dining room the gentle face seemed to look down upon her compassionately from the portrait. The scent of the roses overpowered her. As she listened, no sound brake the quiet of the place.

Would Howard never come? The train was in--had been in ten minutes. Hark, the sound of wheels! Her heart beating wildly, she ran to the windows of the drawing-room and peered through the lilacs. Yes, there he was, ascending the steps.

"Mrs. Spence is out, I suppose," she heard him say to the butler, who followed with his bag.

"No, sir, she's is the drawing-room."

The sight of him, with his air of satisfaction and importance, proved an unexpected tonic to her strength. It was as though he had brought into the room, marshalled behind him, all the horrors of her marriage, and she marvelled and shuddered anew at the thought of the years of that sufferance.

"Well, I'm back," he said, "and we've made a great killing, as I wrote you. They were easier than I expected."

He came forward for the usual perfunctory kiss, but she recoiled, and it was then that his eye seemed to grasp the significance of her travelling suit and veil, and he glanced at her face.

"What's up? Where are you going?" he demanded. "Has anything happened?"

"Everything," she said, and it was then, suddenly, that she felt the store of her resolution begin to ebb, and she trembled. "Howard, I am going away."

He stopped short, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his checked trousers.

"Going away," he repeated. "Where?"

"I don't know," said Honora; "I'm going away."

As though to cap the climax of tragedy, he smiled as he produced his cigarette case. And she was swept, as it were, by a scarlet flame that deprived her for the moment of speech.

"Well," he said complacently, "there's no accounting for women. A case of nerves--eh, Honora? Been hitting the pace a little too hard, I guess." He lighted a match, blissfully unaware of the quality of her look. "All of us have to get toned up once in a while. I need it myself. I've had to drink a case of Scotch whiskey out West to get this deal through. Now what's the name of that new boat with everything on her from a cafe to a Stock Exchange? A German name."

"I don't know," said Honora. She had answered automatically.

To the imminent peril of one of the frailest of Mrs. Forsythe's chairs, he sat down on it, placed his hands on his knees, flung back his head, and blew the smoke towards the ceiling. Still she stared at him, as in a state of semi-hypnosis.

"Instead of going off to one of those thousand-dollar-a-minute doctors, let me prescribe for you," he said. "I've handled some nervous men in my time, and I guess nervous women aren't much different. You've had these little attacks before, and they blow over--don't they? Wing owes me a vacation. If I do say it myself, there are not five men in New York who would have pulled off this deal for him. Now the proposition I was going to make to you is this: that we get cosey in a cabin de luxe on that German boat, hire an automobile on the other side, and do up Europe. It's a sort of a handicap never to have been over there."

"Oh, you're making it very hard for me, Howard," she cried. "I might have known that you couldn't understand, that you never could understand--why I am going away. I've lived with you all this time, and you do not know me any better than you know--the scrub-woman. I'm going away from you--forever."

In spite of herself, she ended with an uncontrollable sob.

"Forever!" he repeated, but he continued to smoke and to look at her without any evidences of emotion, very much as though he had received an ultimatum in a business transaction. And then there crept into his expression something of a complacent pity that braced her to continue. "Why?" he asked.

"Because--because I don't love you. Because you don't love me. You don't know what love is--you never will."

"But we're married," he said. "We get along all right."

"Oh, can't you see that that makes it all the worse!" she cried. "I can stand it no longer. I can't live with you--I won't live with you. I'm of no use to you--you're sufficient unto yourself. It was all a frightful mistake. I brought nothing into your life, and I take nothing out of it. We are strangers--we have always been so. I am not even your housekeeper. Your whole interest in life is in your business, and you come home to read the newspapers and to sleep! Home! The very word is a mockery. If you had to choose between me and your business you wouldn't hesitate an instant. And I--I have been starved. It isn't your fault, perhaps, that you don't understand that a woman needs something more than dinner-gowns and jewels and--and trips abroad. Her only possible compensation for living with a man is love. Love--and you haven't the faintest conception of it. It isn't your fault, perhaps. It's my fault for marrying you. I didn't know any better."

She paused with her breast heaving. He rose and walked over to the fireplace and flicked his ashes into it before he spoke. His calmness maddened her.

"Why didn't you say something about this before?" he asked.

"Because I didn't know it--I didn't realize it--until now."

"When you married me," he went on, "you had an idea that you were going to live in a house on Fifth Avenue with a ballroom, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Honora. "I do not say I am not to blame. I was a fool. My standards were false. In spite of the fact that my aunt and uncle are the most unworldly people that ever lived--perhaps because of it--I knew nothing of the values of life. I have but one thing to say in my defence. I thought I loved you, and that you could give me--what every woman needs."

"You were never satisfied from the first," he retorted. "You wanted money and position--a mania with American women. I've made a success that few men of my age can duplicate. And even now you are not satisfied when I come back to tell you that I have money enough to snap my fingers at half these people you know."

"How," asked Honora, "how did you make it?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

She turned away from him with a gesture of weariness.

"No, you wouldn't understand that, either, Howard."

It was not until then that he showed feeling.

"Somebody has been talking to you about this deal. I'm not surprised. A lot of these people are angry because we didn't let them in. What have they been saying?" he demanded.

Her eyes flashed.

"Nobody has spoken to me on the subject," she said. "I only know what I have read, and what you have told me. In the first place, you deceived the stockholders of these railways into believing their property was worthless, and in the second place, you intend to sell it to the public for much more than it is worth."

At first he stared at her in surprise. Then he laughed.

"By George, you'd make something of a financier yourself, Honora," he exclaimed. And seeing that she did not answer, continued: "Well, you've got it about right, only it's easier said than done. It takes brains. That's what business is--a survival of the fittest. If you don't do the other man, he'll do you." He opened the cigarette case once more. "And now," he said, "let me give you a little piece of advice. It's a good motto for a woman not to meddle with what doesn't concern her. It isn't her business to make the money, but to spend it; and she can usually do that to the queen's taste."

"A high ideal?" she exclaimed.

"You ought to have some notion of where that ideal came from," he retorted. "You were all for getting rich, in order to compete with these people. Now you've got what you want--"

"And I am going to throw it away. That is like a woman, isn't it?"

He glanced at her, and then at his watch.

"See here, Honora, I ought to go over to Mr. Wing's. I wired him I'd be there at four-thirty."

"Don't let me keep you," she replied.

"By gad, you are pale!" he said. "What's got into the women these days? They never used to have these confounded nerves. Well, if you are bent on it, I suppose there's no use trying to stop you. Go off somewhere and take a rest, and when you come back you'll see things differently."

She held out her hand.

"Good-by, Howard," she said. "I wanted you to know that I didn't--bear you any ill-will--that I blame myself as much as you. More, if anything. I hope you will be happy--I know you will. But I must ask you to believe me when I say that I shan't come back. I--I am leaving all the valuable things you gave me. You will find them on my dressing-table. And I wanted to tell you that my uncle sent me a little legacy from my father-an unexpected one--that makes me independent."

He did not take her hand, but was staring at her now, incredulously.

"You mean you are actually going?" he exclaimed.

"Yes."

"But--what shall I say to Mr. Wing? What will he think?"

Despite the ache in her heart, she smiled.

"Does it make any difference what Mr. Wing thinks?" she asked gently. "Need he know? Isn't this a matter which concerns us alone? I shall go off, and after a certain time people will understand that I am not coming back."

"But--have you considered that it may interfere with my prospects?" he asked.

"Why should it? You are invaluable to Mr. Wing. He can't afford to dispense with your services just because you will be divorced. That would be ridiculous. Some of his own associates are divorced."

"Divorced!" he cried, and she saw that he had grown pasty white. "On what grounds? Have you been--"

He did not finish.

"No," she said, "you need fear no scandal. There will be nothing in any way harmful to your--prospects."

"What can I do?" he said, though more to himself than to her. Her quick ear detected in his voice a note of relief. And yet, he struck in her, standing helplessly smoking in the middle of the floor, chords of pity.

"You can do nothing, Howard," she said. "If you lived with me from now to the millennium you couldn't make me love you, nor could you love me--the way I must be loved. Try to realize it. The wrench is what you dread. After it is over you will be much more contented, much happier, than you have been with me. Believe me."

His next remark astonished her.

"What's the use of being so damned precipitate?" he demanded.

"Precipitate!"

"Because I can stand it no longer. I should go mad," she answered.

He took a turn up and down the room, stopped suddenly, and stared at her with eyes that had grown smaller. Suspicion is slow to seize the complacent. Was it possible that he had been supplanted?

Honora, with an instinct of what was coming, held up her head. Had he been angry, had he been a man, how much humiliation he would have spared her!

"So you're in love!" he said. "I might have known that something was at the bottom of this."

She took account of and quivered at the many meanings behind his speech--meanings which he was too cowardly to voice in words.

"Yes," she answered, "I am in love--in love as I never hoped to be--as I did not think it possible to be. My love is such that I would go through hell fire for the sake of it. I do not expect you to believe me when I tell you that such is not the reason why I am leaving you. If you had loved me with the least spark of passion, if I thought I were in the least bit needful to you as a woman and as a soul, as a helper and a confidante, instead of a mere puppet to advertise your prosperity, this would not--could not--have happened. I love a man who would give up the world for me to-morrow. I have but one life to live, and I am going to find happiness if I can."

She paused, afire with an eloquence that had come unsought. But her husband only stared at her. She was transformed beyond his recognition. Surely he had not married this woman! And, if the truth be told, down in his secret soul whispered a small, congratulatory voice. Although he did not yet fully realize it, he was glad he had not.

Honora, with an involuntary movement, pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.

"Good-by, Howard," she said. "I--I did not expect you to understand. If I had stayed, I should have made you miserably unhappy."

He took her hand in a dazed manner, as though he knew not in the least what he was doing. He muttered something and found speech impossible. He gulped once, uncomfortably. The English language had ceased to be a medium. Great is the force of habit! In the emergency he reached for his cigarette case.

Honora had given orders that the carriage was to wait at the door. The servants might suspect, but that was all. Her maid had been discreet. She drew down her veil as she descended the steps, and told the coachman to drive to the station.

It was raining. Leaning forward from under the hood as the horses started, she took her last look at the lilacs. _

Read next: Book 3: Chapter 8. In Which The Law Betrays A Heart

Read previous: Book 3: Chapter 6. Clio, Or Thalia?

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