III
“Virginia! Do you mean that Rogers actually approached you in the matter?”
Mrs. Le Garde moved uneasily under the scorching light in her husband’s eyes. It was a new experience to see anything but tenderness in his face, but she respected him for the look she resented.
“He had to consult some one, of course. You have given no attention to things of late.” Her voice was irritatingly even. “Papa always said you had no head for business.”
“Your father was an honest man, Virginia,” cried her husband, desperately. “He would have been the last person in the world to attempt to increase his gains dishonestly.”
“I see nothing dishonest about it,” said Virginia, coldly. “I really think, Roderick, under all the circumstances, it would have been more appropriate if you had learned something about money in the last seven years—besides how to spend it.”
Nothing dishonest!
“Don’t you understand,” demanded Le Garde, in a terrible voice, “that the ‘commission’ you paid Rogers was blackmail, the price of his ‘news’ and his silence?”
Mrs. Le Garde shrugged her shoulders.
Roderick rose dumbly. He knew all that he need. The room whirled round him. How he made his way out of the house he did not know. Had he served seven years—for this? The fair house of his life, built up on the insubstantial foundations of a woman’s silence and her sweet looks, was tumbling about his ears. She whom he had made his wife, who wore the name he honored though it was his own, whom he had worshipped as woman never yet was worshipped, had failed in common honesty, and taunted him with the life he had led for her sake. She had betrayed him into a shameful position. That restitution was an easy matter and might be a secret one did not make the case less hard. He could have defended her had she been disgraced in the world’s eyes, but how might he defend her from himself?
It was a raw November night. As he went swiftly on, he felt the river-mists sweep soft against his face. He wrung his helpless hands. “Oh, God! It is dishonor! What shall I do? What shall I do?”
No help in the murky sky above him; none in the home whose lights lay behind; none in the river that rushed along beneath the bluff—that was the refuge of a coward and a shirk. Had he not already shirked too much in life?
What must he do? He tried to think collectedly, but in his pain he could not. There were visions before his eyes. He saw Virginia as she had seemed to him seven years ago—five years—yesterday—to-night. Was it true that he had never really seen her till to-night?
Oh, that brave, lost youth of his! His strong, light-hearted youth, with its poverty, its pride, and its blessed, blessed freedom! If he could but go back to it, and feel himself his own man once more, with his life before him to be lived as he had planned it. How was it that he had become entangled with a soul so alien to his own? And what did a man do when he reached a point from which he could not go back, yet loathed to go forward?
He tramped on and on through the drizzling November darkness. Gradually the tumult in his heart was stilled. He became aware that the air was cold, that he was splashed with mud and rain, that he had no hat, and wore only thin evening clothes. He turned at last, his teeth chattering in his head, and plodded back.
Two things grew clear before his mind—he must settle with Macomb to-morrow, and he must henceforth assume the control of John Fenley’s affairs which he had hitherto nominally possessed. Thank Heaven for the gift of work!
And Virginia?
Who was it who said that for our sins there was all forgiveness, but our mistakes even infinite mercy could not pardon? Virginia was a mistake of his; that was all. It was safer to blame himself, not her—not her. That way lay madness.
Perhaps she, too, had found herself mistaken. Was that the secret he sometimes fancied he saw stirring behind the curtain of her placid eyes? If so, God pity them; and God help him to play the part he had to play.
He had reached his own threshold, and his latch-key faltered in the door. As he stepped into the wide hall, a curious figure in the disarray of his fastidious attire, he caught the odor of roses—they were Maréchal Niels—floating out of the drawing-room. The rooms were warm and bright and sweet, but their cheer seemed to him oppressive, and he sickened at the faint perfume of the roses.
His wife came and put the portière aside, standing with one white, lifted arm outlined against its heavy folds. Virginia always wore simple evening dress at home for her husband. She had been heard to say that it was one of the amenities that made domestic life endurable.
“How long you have been out!” she said, in just her usual sweet, unhurried voice, ignoring his dishevelled aspect. “I am afraid you are quite chilled through.”
He looked at her an instant curiously—this exquisite piece of flesh and blood that was his second self for time and eternity—realizing that he did not understand her, had never understood her, could never hope nor desire to do so again. Then he gathered himself together to make the first speech in the part he had appointed hereafter to play—that rôle of devoted husband, whose cues he knew by heart. As he spoke he was shivering slightly, but surely that was because of the raw outer air.
“What a charming pose!” he said. “Did I ever tell you that throughout Homer ‘white-armed’ is used as a synonyme for beautiful?”