mrs. keene’s apartment on the place de la madeleine was a scene of joyful commotion and confusion. the small breakfast which followed the wedding was an informal affair; and though it was supposed that only the nearest personal friends were present, the rooms were cheerfully crowded, and the uniforms made a show and glitter. the charming girls who were permitted to be their sister’s bridesmaids were the object of much notice and attention; and when the company had risen from the table, the eldest sister, who was so much the least pretty and vivacious, was scarcely missed from the room. a few people inquired for the bride’s brother, who had also disappeared; but as he was a stranger to every one, the fact of his absence was little noticed.
martha, when she went to look for harold, found him in his own room, smoking.{81}
“i knew it was you,” he said, as she came in, closing the door behind her. “i thought you would come to look me up; but why did you? i’m poor company for anybody to-day. well,” he added, with a short, deep breath, “thank the lord, that’s over! when you get married, martha, i want you to elope. i’ve no business at a wedding. i feel that i have cast an evil eye on alice and victor.”
“oh, harold, i was thinking of you more than of them all the time,” said martha, earnestly. “it did seem absolute cruelty to have required it of you. how could mama!”
concentrated as her tone and manner were, she was doubtful whether they even penetrated the consciousness of her companion, who, with his chair tipped backward, his frock-coat thrown open, with a ruthless disregard of the smart gardenia which ornamented its lapel, and his hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets, was smoking vigorously, and looking away from her out of the window.
martha had come here in the ardent hope of giving comfort, and she felt a little hurt. she smothered the feeling back into her heart, however, as she said:{82}
“i knew it was anguish to you, standing there and going through that ceremony.”
he turned, and looked at her.
“well, rather!” he said, with a short laugh, still keeping the cigar in his mouth, and talking with his teeth clenched upon it. then he turned his face toward the window again; but his glance was so vague that martha felt that he saw some picture in his mind, rather than the scene below. “the service was the same,” he said, clasping his hands behind his head, and narrowing his eyes as if to get the perspective. “the music was the same—and those roses! and that was not all. vivid as she always is to me in every other respect, i have not always been able to hold on to her voice; but to-day i heard it perfectly, saying, ‘i, sophia, take thee, harold,’ and all the rest.”
he got up suddenly, threw his cigar into the grate, and walked across the room.
“oh, poor harold!” martha said, her voice thick with tears.
the effect of her words was instantaneous. he turned suddenly, and showed in both face and figure a swiftly summoned and effectual calm.{83}
“my dear girl,” he said quickly, “you don’t suppose i’m posing for an injured husband, i hope? i have suffered, of course; but with a man certain kinds of suffering get to be a business. to speak of it seems like talking shop. it’s detestable to be talking it to you now; but the truth is, this wedding affair has nearly knocked me out. i could have gone on keeping up the bluff, of course, and talked the usual bosh with the wedding-guests in yonder; but i found i had a contract with myself that had to be seen to. it has cost me something to smooth out and harden down my thoughts and feelings about my own life; but i had got the thing done. this wedding business, however, upheaved it all. when i found that i was actually sinking into the mushy swamp of self-pity, i thought it was about time to come away, and steady up my nerve a bit. i’m all right now, however, and i see clear again. the thing’s over, and no harm is done.”
martha’s eyes followed him wistfully as he turned to the dressing-table, picked up a brush, and smoothed the swart surface of his thick, dark hair, brushed some specks of dust from his coat, and carefully straightened the injured flower.{84}
“shall we go back?” he said. “we may be missed.”
“don’t go quite yet. no one will think about us,” she said; and then she added doubtfully: “may i talk to you a little, harold?”
“certainly, my dear. talk all you want,” he answered, sitting down; “only there’s nothing to say.”
“where is she? i’ve so often longed to know.”
“i haven’t the least idea. she asked me not to follow her movements, and i never have.”
“then you do not even know whether she is living or dead?”
“yes; i know that much. she is not dead. i feel her in the world. if she went out of it, i believe i should know it. besides, i would have been informed of that. she spoke of it, and said so.”
there was a moment’s pause, which martha broke.
“will you tell me this,” she said, “whether you are as hopeless about it all as you were when i last spoke to you of it?”
“exactly as hopeless. when a thing is ab{85}solute, my dear, it doesn’t have degrees. i have never been anything else than hopeless since the hour of my last interview with her. she told me then,” he said, with a sort of cold conciseness, “that her first wish was to set me absolutely free. she said she wanted me to marry again. she said that just as soon as we had lived apart the time required by law for a divorce, she wanted me to get it. she said she was sorry there was no way to get it sooner. she said, also, that she would take back her maiden name.”
he got up, thrust his hands into his pockets, and, walking over to the window, stood there for a moment. then he turned suddenly, and came and stood in front of martha, looking her directly in the eyes. she saw by that look that he was calm and steady, and so she ventured to question him a little further.
“do you know whom she lives with?” she asked.
“with an aunt, whose life, as she told me, is utterly out of the world that we knew together. she said that, on this account, there was good reason to hope that we would never meet again.{86}”
martha, who felt that this subject might not be spoken of between them again, continued to question him as he stood and looked down at her with a perfect consciousness of self-possession.
“was she so beautiful?” she asked.
“yes,” he said.
“and are you still unchanged in giving her the supreme place that you did give her from the moment you first saw her?”
“yes,” he said again.
“oh, harold,” exclaimed the girl, “i sometimes think it might have turned out differently if the marriage had not been so rash and sudden.”
he took a seat near her, and continued to look at her as he said:
“it could have made no difference to me. you don’t fully understand it, martha. it is impossible that you should. i knew, the day i met her, that i had been set apart and saved for her. i know it now. it was the kind of gravitation that comes once in a life.”
“then you do not regret it?”
“for myself, not in the least. she was my wife for a month. what i have gone through since is a small price to pay for that. but{87} when i think of what it has cost her—that most delicate of women—to face the odium of it—that superb woman’s life shadowed by the vulgarity of a suddenly ruptured marriage; and—deeper than that!—to have her best life maimed forever—god! i curse the day that i was born!”
“and what has she brought on you, i’d like to know?” cried martha. “it was she who cast you off—not you her. ah, harold, if she had been the woman she should have been, she never could have done it!”
he looked at her with some impatience in his glance.
“whether she was the woman she should have been or not is a thing that neither concerns nor interests me. she was the woman i loved. the whole thing is in that.”
“and the woman you still love? is that true, harold?”
“true as death,” he said; “but what does it all matter? your relentlessness is the friend’s natural feeling. it shows how bootless it is to give account. i care more for your opinion than any other, but even your scorn does not signify to me here. it misses the point. the only pride that is involved is pride{88} in my own immutability. love ought always to be a regeneration,” he went on, as if putting into shape the thoughts that were rising out of the recent chaos in his mind. “it’s easy enough to keep true when the love, the joy, the equal give and take, go on unbroken. it’s when a man actually turns and walks out of heaven, and the gates shut behind him forever, that he finds out the stuff that’s in him. sometimes, when i think about it, i try to fancy what would be my humiliation if i found i had grown to love her less.”
martha was silent a moment. then she said, as if urged by the necessity of speaking out, for this once, all that she had so long kept back:
“suppose, after you get the divorce, you should hear that she was married?”
“i’m braced to bear that, if it comes,” he said. “i know it is possible, but i don’t fear it. i may, of course, be wrong; but i don’t believe, with what has been between us, that she could ever be the wife of another man while i lived. she might think so. she might even try—go part of the way; but i never felt more secure of anything than that she would find herself unable to do it.{89}”
“then do you think that she possibly still cares for you?”
“no; i’m not a fool. she made that point sufficiently plain. didn’t she tell me, in the downright, simple words, that she did not love me—had never loved me—had found out it was all a mistake? i believe she meant it absolutely. i believe it was true. you don’t suppose, if i doubted it, i’d have given her up as i have done?”
“oh, harold, what was it all about, that quarrel that you had? could you bear to tell me?”
“there’s nothing to tell. we thought we were perfectly suited, perfectly sympathetic. our feelings had stood every test but marriage. when it came to that, they failed. it was a case of non-adjustment of feelings—different points of view—different natures, perhaps. i saw facing me the demand that i should change myself, root and branch, and become a different creature from what god had made me. this i could not do. i might have pretended and acted, but she was not the woman to tolerate the wretched puppet of a man which that would have made of me. her changing was a thing i never thought of.{90} i was never mean enough to think that a woman was bound to sacrifice her individuality in marriage. why should a wife surrender that sacred citadel any more than a husband? how odious should i feel myself, if i had ever taken that position in the slightest degree! and shams were out of the question with us. neither of us could have tolerated anything uncandid—anything that smacked of a tacit convention.”
there was a moment’s pause, and then martha broke out impulsively:
“i can’t help thinking that it might have been prevented. it may be that you were too proud. have you ever thought that?”
“no,” he said, with a certain grimness. “i have never taken that view of the case. she made it so entirely plain that she wanted to be rid of me at once and forever—that there was no room for reflection on that point. if there is a man alive who could have held her bound after her words to me, i hope i may never make his acquaintance.”
the appearance of agitation which had marked the beginning of the interview was now utterly gone from harold. he spoke deliberately, and as if with a certain satisfac{91}tion in the sense of getting his thoughts into form.
again there was a pause. then martha said, speaking very low:
“but, harold, you are doing without love.”
“i have had it,” he answered, “and what has been is mine, to keep forever. i have lost my wife, but the greatness, the exaltation, of my love increases. i have learned that love is subjective and independent. a renunciation is only an episode in it. i deserve no pity. no, martha; never fall into the mistake of pitying me. i should pity you from my heart if i thought you would miss what i have had; and the gods may be lenient to as sweet a soul as yours. you may have the joy, some day, without the renunciation.”
“i don’t want it! i wouldn’t have it!” cried the girl, vehemently. “no one will ever love me, and i wouldn’t have them to. it would break my heart. it makes me seem ridiculous even to speak of it. i want you to have love and joy. that is all i ask.”
“well, i’ve had it. be satisfied. of the two of us,—except that you have hope, which i have not,—you are the one to be pitied.”
“oh, harold, don’t! unless you want to{92} break my heart outright, don’t talk to me about being happy. i want happiness for you: i’ve got no use for it.”
she got up as she spoke, and moved toward him. harold stood up, too, and bent to kiss her. demonstrations between them were unusual, and it was a very martha-like instinct that made her now so incline her head as to receive his caress upon her hair.
“we will go back to the others now,” said harold. “thank you, martha.”
so together they went back to the wedding-party.
