CHAPTER XXIV.
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett was seated at the piano, idly striking chords that seemed to vibrate with the melancholy of her mood. It was Tuesday evening, and her husband had gone to his club to attend to several matters that required settlement before his departure. They were to sail for Europe early on the following morning, and Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s revery was one of mingled apprehension and regret. Her mind assured her that the exile before her was the best possible solution of a problem that had forced itself upon her; her heart revolted against the thought of a difficult but imperative step that she must take. She had sent a note that morning to Richard Stoughton, telling him that she was to leave for Europe on Wednesday and that she would be glad to see him in the evening, if he was at leisure. The messenger had returned with an answer to her note that had filled her with surprise and consternation.
“I will call this evening,” Richard had written, “not to say adieu to you, but to bid us both bon voyage. I am overjoyed at the outlook.”
What these enigmatical words meant she had been unable to determine. He seemed to imply that he, too, was to sail for Europe in the morning. If that were the case, she realized that she had a hard task before her. Her instinct told her that it would be fatally unwise for them to make the voyage together. In the first place, the presence of Richard Stoughton on the steamer would look very queer to Percy-Bartlett. Surely the increase of his jealousy was not the line of treatment likely to restore her husband to health. Furthermore, she longed for rest and peace. She had rebelled in her heart at first against the idea of running away from the one great pleasure of her life, the comradeship of Richard Stoughton; but later on her mood had changed, and she had begun to take a melancholy satisfaction in the thought that if absence might mean pain and longing it would also beget its own anæsthetic.
And now she sat awaiting Richard’s coming, her heart beating feverishly, her face pale and her eyes restless and brilliant. She had determined, if the worst came to the worst, that she would ask him to make a great sacrifice for her on the altar of friendship. She had not reached this decision without a struggle. It would be so pleasant to have him with her on the voyage! She had grown to take so much pleasure in his companionship that it seemed almost sacrilege to place any obstacle in the path of events that conspired to prolong their intimacy. And it was chance, not design, that was responsible for the fact—if it were a fact—that they were to sail for the Old World together. But Mrs. Percy-Bartlett was too clever a woman to allow the tempting fallacies that beset her mind to long have sway. She realized that it is very easy to find arguments to defend and justify almost any course of action; but she still retained her confidence in that vague, indefinable, but insistent guide that is generally called conscience, and when she was weary of inward debate she always fell back on it for the final word, the motive-power that should carry her in the right direction. In this instance, conscience whispered to her that either Richard Stoughton or herself must remain in New York when the Majestic left the pier in the morning. That it would be well nigh impossible for her to make a change in her plans without undergoing many embarrassing questions from her husband, she well knew. Her ultimate hope lay in Richard Stoughton’s unselfishness. If he cared for her “in the right way,” as she put it to herself, he would alter his movements for her sake.
The portière was pushed back, and a servant announced “Mr. Stoughton.” Richard entered the music-room, a flush of pleasure and excitement on his cheeks and the joy of youthful enthusiasm in his eyes.
As she gave him her hand it felt as cold as marble in his grasp, and he saw that her face was pale and her expression one of apprehension rather than delight.
“Something is worrying you,” he said, as he seated himself where he could look into her face. “Did you not understand my note?”
She smiled sadly. “I fear that I did,” she answered in a low voice. “You sail on the Majestic to-morrow morning?”
“Yes.”
“I am very sorry,” she faltered, feeling that it was harder to obey the voice of conscience than she had thought it would be.
The light in his face died out and he looked at her with mingled surprise and regret.
“I had thought,” he said, almost bitterly, “that you would be pleased to have me for a fellow-traveller.”
How could she explain to him her feelings in the matter? His very youth made it difficult. It would be so easy for him to misunderstand her. At that moment she felt that she was years older than this man whose birthday was in the same month as her own. And in his presence it was harder to make the sacrifice she had determined upon than it had appeared to be an hour before. She looked up at him shyly. His face had grown pale and the smile had died away from his lips. A woman never knows how much she really cares for a man until she is obliged to ask of him a great renunciation for her sake. It is in the nature of a generous and affectionate woman to confer favors, not to plead for them.
The silence in the room had grown embarrassing. She turned and almost impatiently struck a few sombre chords on the piano. She feared that he would see the tears that had gathered in her eyes.
Richard arose and walked to the farther end of the room, then turned and approached her. Her golden-brown hair, the whiteness of her neck, and the rounded outlines of her shoulders thrilled him with mingled delight and despair. He was vaguely conscious of the fact that this woman was asking of him a sacrifice that he would find it hard to make. He understood her well enough to realize that in his own inherent generosity she was placing a confidence that demanded on his part both reticence and renunciation. She had said that she was sorry that they were to be companions on an ocean voyage. Feverishly his mind endeavored to grasp the full significance of her words. He could not at that moment weigh them in all their bearings, but it was enough that she had expressed regret at the coincidence that had turned their faces toward Europe at the same moment. It would be cruel, unnecessary, to make her explain herself more fully. One thought overshadowed all others in his mind. If she did not care for him,—why should he mince words?—did not love him, she would not admit that she was sorry that he was to be by her side for so long a time. She had confessed to him that the shadow of self-distrust was on her soul. He could not ask for more. All men may be selfish, but at a great crisis there are those who can be chivalric.
Richard reseated himself and looked at her mournfully.
“You have a favor to ask of me,” he ventured after a time.
She turned and glanced at him, with a gleam of merriment in her changeful eyes.
“You sometimes seem to me to have clairvoyant power,” she remarked. “Yes, I have a request to make—but it seems so selfish of me! It is the hardest thing I ever had to do.”
He arose and stood looking down into her face.
“Please don’t feel that it is difficult,” he said gently. “I think I know what you would ask. If you wish, I will put off my departure until Saturday. No, don’t thank me. I shall find my reward in the thought that—that”—
He hesitated, and she raised her face until their eyes met. He bent toward her.
“In the thought that you may realize how hard it is for me to let you go.”
He had taken both her hands, and the tears in her eyes made it well-nigh impossible for her to see how close his lips were to hers.
“You are a noble fellow,” she whispered.
Richard was torn with the tempest of love and desperation that filled his soul. The incense of her hair, the warm caress of her breath as it touched his face, the sad, white misery of her trembling lips seemed to madden him. He hesitated an instant, while the spirits of light and darkness warred within him. Then a strange thing happened. He heard, as though the speaker stood close to his ear, the ringing voice of the preacher who had stirred his soul amid the solemn shadows of a church some weeks before, and it seemed to say: “Be true to your manhood; for the light that is within you is divine.”
Richard turned on the instant, unconscious that his overwrought nerves had worked what seemed at the moment to be a miracle. White and trembling, he sank into the chair by the side of the sobbing woman, whose icy hand still rested wearily in his.
As he had turned, it had seemed to him that the portières at the end of the room were falling into place, as though they had been suddenly disturbed; but as he looked at them again, hanging heavy and quiet in the shadows, he felt that the fever that had caused him to hear a stranger’s voice had cast its delirious witchery upon his vision. But the truth was that his ears had played him false, while his eyes had not.