CHAPTER XV
In justice to John Cabot, the spirit-girl Dolores related next an interview between the financier and his wife of which she was told afterward. So she explained to her demon audience when able to proceed.
Three days had passed since that incomprehensible thing misnamed on Earth as “life” had departed the unsightly physical of the young heir. The great surgeon, after having established—to his own satisfaction at least—that the patient had died of “nerve shock” and not of an operation which he pronounced successful in all details, had departed with his check. The servants were recovering from the emotional debauch of the last offices and beginning to think consciously, rather than subconsciously, in terms of tasks.
The governess, immediately on her return from the cemetery where had been consigned to dust her second safe love, had sought the boy’s mother in her boudoir. She had come, she said, to express her appreciation of the many kindnesses heaped upon her and to announce her departure, since her engagement had come to so sudden and sad an end.
Catherine, however, had insisted that she stay on in the house; in a pitiful outburst had clung to her as the one who had been nearest and dearest to the departed lad. Time enough later to decide in what capacity she should remain. Her gentle companionship was “comforting” to the bereaved mother. She must not “desert.”
Dolores had hesitated, riven with doubts. She felt that she should go. Yet she longed to stay. Catherine was suffering from one of the headaches which would seem to have become chronic. Fragrant and pale as a valley-lily in her crepe, she looked a lovely child, dependent upon kindness. Dolores glanced away from the dew-wet eyes and compared her own sense of loss with what a mother’s must be. Although she had not forgotten that brutal anticipation of Jack’s death, hate hurt. Catherine looked in need of forgiveness and she—— She needed to forgive.
She was considering the somewhat vague disposal of her near future when Mr. Cabot knocked. Advised by the set look of his face and his grave manner, she at once excused herself; left them alone. Following is the conversation between them, as reported to her later on.
“This is the first time in several years that you, my wedded lord, have visited my rooms. To what do I owe the rather unusual honor?” Catherine asked.
“To a rather unusual request.”
John did not draw up the chair toward which she had waved him. He stood through the interview—stood or paced from one object to another of the luxurious room. At times he stopped quite near the chaise longue where she sat propped up by cushions, to study her guileless face and the suffering air with which she sniffed a gold bottle of salts.
“The boy is dead, Catherine.”
“Yes, John.”
“I loved the boy.”
“I believe you did. Still, he must have been a great disappointment to a fine specimen like you.”
The compliment was repeated in her appreciative, uplifted gaze. But he felt far from pleased.
“You will oblige me by not referring to Jack’s infirmity again. He was the only creature I’ve had to love since my mother, and I loved him as he was. You and I, Catherine, should be the last to depreciate him for what he symbolized.”
“Symbolized? Oh, don’t tell me that again!”
“Your criticism forces me to remind you. Outwardly our son was the symbol of our malformed union.”
“John, what a grim thought!”
“Grim as the inheritance law—even to the third and fourth generation. He paid the price in his person of our crime in giving him birth. Through our fault, not his own, his body was warped and his temper uncertain. I often remembered when I looked at him—remembered that no amount of love was enough to atone for the wrong we had done him. I, for one, am grateful that we three were spared the greater punishment. So easily, in the sardonic scheme of things, the soul of him, too, might have been warped. But his was as gallant and large and sweet as ever outgrew injustice.”
The implications against herself had turned Catherine to one of the many mirrors conveniently placed.
“How can you take such stern pride in your loyalty? You used to say, you know, that you loved me.”
He, also, studied her reflection.
“I suppose you would call that a self-respecting statement? All right, we’ll give it the benefit of my doubt that it is mere vanity. I did love what I thought you were. But that was taken away, like my mother—like Jack.”
She showed the flurry that caught her up whenever inspired by one of her “brainy” thoughts.
“Has a man a right to think things about a woman which aren’t true, marry her on the strength of them and then blame her for the rest of their unnatural lives because he made a mistake?”
“In our case I had—every right. Have you forgotten the details of our first meeting, Catherine? Your father had invited me to the house really to see you, not the pictures he hoped to sell me. Your mother had selected me, sight unseen, by virtue of my bank account. They helped you to make an impression on me which all of you knew to be false. You were dressed in white, which you afterward told me you never expected to wear again until your funeral. You looked innocent and tender and dependent—all of which you were not. You sat upon a hassock and played with a white Persian kitten—oh, every detail of the studied effect made a lasting impression upon me! You had well-developed claws then, but you held them in far more carefully than did the kitten. Later, I learned, with quite a shock, that you detested cats. Yet you held this one to your cheek and understudied its appeal to the best of your feline ability.”
“Thanks for admitting that I have some sort of ability,” the gentle voice purred.
“You have more than ability. You have positive power.”
“My dear John! But don’t pay me all your stored-up compliments in one visit. Save some and call again.”
“You have that most potent of acquisitive forces, unassailable egotism. I used to look into the faces of the painted parasites riding along Fifth Avenue in their cars and wonder why so much was laid at their feet. That was before I learned—you.”
“To think that you, John, should learn anything from me!”
“Egotism is the most acquiring force in the world. All great men have it, but in them it is covered or excused by their greatness. All women successful with men have it to the degree of a sort of hypnotism. They blind men to what they are with the bright light of what they think they are. You, for instance, think so well of yourself that one needs strong lenses to see your faults. I used to hope that you’d dim some day—have a doubt of yourself. But you never did. You are all strength in your egotism.”
Hard words they were, yet sadly spoken. During them the beautiful subject had wavered between pique and pleasure. At their finish, she offered her child-sweet laugh.
“After this, I can refuse you nothing. Name the rather unusual favor which you say you have come to ask!”
“I wish you, Catherine, to get a divorce.”
“You—you want a divorce?”
Astonishment overcame both pique and pleasure.
“The boy was our only link. Now that he is gone, free me. You may have the money—as much of it as you want. I can make more. Of late I’ve had literally forced on me plenty of that which is my value in your eyes. I’ll try to meet any demands you make. You see, I assume that you have no reason other than money for keeping up this pretense longer.”
“So, it has come to this?”
Both face and form relaxed as she coaxed the cushions to give her greater comfort. The astonishment in her eyes had been replaced by shrewdness; that, in turn, by mild amusement. But the golden lines of her eye-brows were arched, as always when she was at mental tension.
“Do you intend this request, my hitherto immaculate John, to be taken as a confession of guilt?”
“Guilt?”
The one repeated word, weighted by disgust, was the whole of his denial.
“Whence—where—how, then, a divorce, without cause? Are we not citizens of the supposedly respectable commonwealth of New York?”
“There is Reno.”
“Reno!” As if from force of her emphasis, Catherine sprang up from her lounge, crossed the room and faced him. “So you’ve been calculating on Reno? A nice, chivalrous plan—for me to endure such tedium and long-suffering to oblige you with a divorce! Four days’ train travel from New York and six months’ residence in a Wild West town in the kind of hotel that has only one bath to a floor and wouldn’t know what you meant by à la carte if you spelled it backward and translated it into Indian. My dear husband, what could you offer that would repay me for one of those awful exiles in Nevada’s make-believe metropolis?”
“What sum has d’Elie named?”
“John! Are you trying to insult me?”
“No, Catherine. I am trying to settle with you.”
For a tight-strung moment man and wife regarded each the other, he not unkindly, she with twisting lips. The next, she turned and herself began to glide from object to object of the room, as if she too were strange to them. When she again stopped before him, her face had beautified. She laid a hand upon his arm.
“Tell me, why a divorce, dear?”
“Why not a divorce?” His eyes held forbiddingly on the clutch of her polish-pointed fingers. “Let’s not go into unnecessary explanations. I understand something of your ambitions and shall be glad to help you achieve them. You will wear a title well—one thing that I could never give you. And you’ll do better, I am sure, with a man whose devotion is for hire.”
“A beautiful sentiment, as Clarke Shayle would say,” she commented. “It is fortunate that I didn’t marry you for any supposed amiability. As for yourself?”
“As for myself——” He flung off the hand that still clung, a note of passion in his voice. “Has your memory utterly failed you, Catherine? Can’t you or won’t you remember what I used to be? Once I tried to make you understand something of what I hoped from life and love. Do you suppose that it has been comfortable for me to appear a stone man? You don’t want me. Let me find a life—perhaps even love—for myself. Oh, Catherine, you used at least to seem kind in the early days! Try to be a little kind again.”
“Just kind enough to free you. And she?”
Certainly there was no promise in the bite of her response or the curiosity with which she eyed the emotion on his face.
In reply to her question, John Cabot simply looked at her—a warning look, known and feared on the Street.
“This lady with whom you hope to find life and love—did she suggest the plan to lay me on the shelf?” Catherine inquired. “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, they say. Of course I can’t blame her for wishing to take advantage of poor Jack’s death by——”
“That will do, Catherine.” He voiced the warning look. “There is no other woman in my life.”
As if relieved of an unhappy suspicion, she lifted a smile of the self-believing sort which ten years before would have blinded him to the lies behind her lips.
“Then why,” she asked, “suggest the Union Pacific—the road to Reno? How can you, a mere husband, feel sure that you know your wife’s heart? I defy the laws of Nevada or any other state to give you the key. What if I should say that I still do want you?”
“You cannot say that and speak the truth.”
In his positiveness she saw that her past power to beguile him indeed was gone. But no ineffectualness on that account depressed her, as proved by the light laugh with which she returned to the pleasanter assurances of her mirror.
“You are right. I hope you are as grateful as I am that I can’t. I’d be bored to extinction with the ordinary state called ‘marital bliss,’ either with a man who doted upon me or one upon whom I doted. Fact is——” Bending closer to the glass, she focused into the twin pair of eyes a look of assured capability, “I never did care for you. Lately I quite dislike you. You are, you know, superior. I don’t wish to be superior myself and I resent people who are. There now! You say you like honesty—won’t you give me a good mark?”
With one of her unaccountable transitions, her manner changed from frank spite to pathos. Brushing her hand across her eyes, as if to hide from him any sign of the feeling to which she had declared herself immune, she crossed to the window and leaned, looking out, against the effective background of its bronze hanging.
“No, my only husband—the answer is no.” The cynicism in what she said was weakened by the way she said it. “I’m sorry to refuse any little request of yours, but I cannot give you up. And I don’t think, really, that you have been quite nice. Since the challenge was to come from you, you might have been heroic enough to let me name the weapons—swords or pistols, you know—that impossible Reno or New York. Don’t you think yourself that you have added insult to injury?”
He did not dignify the appeal with a reply. He was about to go; had bowed to her formally and was crossing to the door.
“John, dear.”
Her quavery cry stopped him on the threshold.
She followed him and stood with her gold-gloried head hung low over her twisting hands. “You say I have lost all kindness, John. I think you have. You are not what you used to be, any more than am I. You haven’t had a thought for me in what you ask. Perhaps a man cannot realize what it means to a woman to—to be faced with a demand like yours of to-day. For me to divorce you for deserting me—to admit to our world that you have tired of me—— Even supposing there is nothing to me but what you say, don’t you know that would crucify my vanity? But there is more to me, John. I once was that kitten-girl you thought me. At times—even yet—I have my softer feelings. I am used to compliments and I—I am hurt to the heart by your insult.”
John did not take advantage of her pause. He continued to wait and wonder.
“I see far less beautiful women than I being understood and appreciated,” she continued after a quivering sigh. “Is it too much that I ask to be endured? And yet, I don’t want to ask that—I really don’t. I want you to be happy, but—— Oh, John, why couldn’t you have waited until I’d recovered? What with the accident and poor Jack’s death and the funeral and now this, I feel that I’ve had almost more than I can stand. To-day my head aches until——”
Again she paused. And again he did not speak.
“Dr. Shayle says that I ought to go away somewhere for a change of air and scene,” she continued after a moment, in a lower, more pathetic voice. “I was hesitating, in my mistaken viewpoint, feeling that I shouldn’t leave you in the house alone just at this time. But after what you’ve said to me I see that you’d be glad to have me go. I’ll start to-morrow for—for somewhere—anywhere.”
Soon her sobs allowed her to add: “And I’ll think things over while I’m gone, dear. Perhaps, when I get used to your idea, it won’t sound so brutal as it does to-day. I just might come to see it more your way. Or perhaps you will miss me enough to—to——”
He realized that she was giving him every chance, but still failed to improve it.
With only a reproachful glance for his lack of generosity, she changed the subject. “I want to speak to you about one thing in particular. It’s Miss Trent. As you may know, I have conceived an unusual affection for her. I don’t feel that we should send a young creature of her beauty and fatal charm out into the world again. On account of her devotion to Jackie and the wonderfully good influence she exerted over him, I feel the responsibility of seeing her safely settled, either with us or elsewhere. She is really quite refined. And how her looks came out in that evening dress I—we gave her! For one, I don’t intend that the he-wolves outside shall get on the trail again of a girl who was so dear to our—our boy.”
“Your sentiments do you proud, Catherine.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, John. You may think I have no heart, but there are people who wouldn’t agree with you. Dolores, for instance. I show her every day my appreciation for what she did for Jack.”
“And I intend to show mine,” John inserted quietly, “by some suitable arrangement and provision. Jack’s last request was that I look out for her. I, too, have a high opinion of Miss Trent.”
“Then do, John, unbend toward her! You treat her—really—like a servant in the house. It offends my finer sensibilities to see how afraid the poor thing is of you. You can’t doubt her devotion to the boy. Try to realize, as I do, that her heart is aching for him almost as much as our own. Be kinder to her while I’m gone, won’t you, John?”
“Don’t worry. I shall be kind to her.”
“I do thank you for that promise. You’re a dear. I should have worried for fear you’d hurt her hyper-sensitive feelings in some way—as—as you’ve hurt mine. You see, she has agreed to stay on in the house at least until I get back. I’ve made her believe that I need someone above Morrison to look after things in my place.”
“In that case,” said John, “I shall move to one of the clubs.”
“Oh, no,” she protested. “Dolores would suspect that you had been driven out of your home and be most uncomfortable. It isn’t at all necessary for you to go.”
“Pardon me. I think it is.”
He left her, disappointed and dismayed. The “mere husband” of her accusation, he felt he must have misunderstood his wife. That affection for him should outweigh her cupidity seemed incredible. And yet what else could have prompted her refusal of his “rather unusual” request?