VII
She was able to keep track of Trenton’s movements through Irene, who got her information from John. Grace and Trenton were holding strictly to their agreement not to see each other. Once, as she waited for the traffic to break at Washington and Meridian Streets, Trenton passed in a car. Craig was driving and Trenton, absorbed in a sheaf of papers, didn’t lift his head. He was so near for a fleeting second that she could have touched him. This, then, was to be the way of it, their paths steadily diverging; or if they met it would be as strangers who had ceased to have any message for each other.
Sadie’s baby was born in August and Roy manifested an unexpected degree of paternal pride in his offspring. The summer wore on to September. Now and then as she surveyed herself in the mirror it seemed to Grace that she was growing old and that behind her lay a long life-time, crowded with experience. She felt herself losing touch with the world. Miss Reynolds, with all her kindness, was exacting. Grace saw no young people and her amusements were few. Irene, who watched her with a keenly critical eye, remarked frequently upon her good looks, declaring that she was growing handsomer all the time.
“You won’t really reach perfection till you’re forty,” said Irene, “and have some gray in your raven tresses. I’ll look like a fat yellow cucumber when I’m forty!”
Unless all signs failed Irene and John were deeply in love with each other—the old story of the attraction of apparently irreconcilable natures.
“I’ve told John everything—all about Tommy, of course, to give him a chance to escape,” Irene confided. “But I didn’t jar him a bit. That man’s faith would make a good woman of Jezabel. John’s already got some little jobs—secretaryships of corporations that Judge Sanders threw his way. He thinks we can be married early next year and I’m studying real estate ads. I’ve got enough money to make a payment on a bungalow as far from Shipley’s as a nickel will carry me and there’ll be a cow and a few choice hens. Back to nature for me, dearie!”
“Oh, it’s just marvelous!” cried Grace. “You and John are bound to reach the high places. You’ve got just the qualities John needs to help him get on. When he goes into politics after while you’ll be a big asset.”
“I think I might like a few years in Washington,” Irene replied meditatively. “I’ve already joined up with a woman’s political club to learn how to fool ’em all the time!”
“Isn’t that just like you!”
“But, Grace——”
“Yes; Irene.”
“I love John.” Irene’s eyes filled with tears. “I’ve talked so much foolish nonsense to you about men, and you must have thought me hard and sordid. I wouldn’t want you to think I married John just to escape from myself. He’s the grandest man in the world, and I’d die before I’d injure him, or cause him a second’s heartache. You do believe that, don’t you?”
“Yes; and it’s dear and beautiful. I’m so glad for both of you! I hope—I know, you will be happy!”
A few days later Grace met John in the street and he turned and walked with her a little way.
“I guess Irene’s told you? Well, I want to tell you, too!” he said with his broadest smile.
“Well, I didn’t need to be told, John! I saw it coming. And I congratulate you both with all my heart.”
“Yes; I knew you’d be glad, Grace,” he said; then his face grew grave. “You see Irene was troubled a lot—well about little mistakes she’d made. She was mighty fine about that. When I found I loved her and she loved me, nothing else made any difference. And she’s so strong and fine and splendid you just know it was never in her heart to do wrong!”
“Yes, John,” Grace replied, touched by his simple earnestness, his fine tolerance, his anxiety that she should know that Irene had withheld nothing of her past that could ever cast a shadow upon their happiness.
Late in September Miss Reynolds proposed to Grace that they go to Colorado to look at the mountains. The architect could be relied on to watch the construction of the club house and Miss Reynolds insisted that Grace had earned a vacation.
They established themselves in a hotel that commanded a view of a great valley with snowy summits beyond and Grace tramped and rode and won a measurable serenity of spirit. Miss Reynolds may have thought that amid new scenes the girl would forget Trenton, but the look that came into Grace’s eyes at times discouraged the hope. Then one evening, as they sat in the hotel office reading their mail Miss Reynolds laid a Denver newspaper on Grace’s knee and quietly pointed to a headline: “Death of Mary Graham Trenton.”
The end had come suddenly in the sanitarium where Mrs. Trenton had been under treatment. Her husband, the dispatch stated, was with her when she died.
“She seemed ill when she was at my house,” remarked Miss Reynolds; “she was frightfully nervous and seemed to be constantly forcing herself. That tired look in her eyes gave the impression of dissipation. I’m ashamed to say it but I really thought she might be addicted to drugs.”
“I’m sorry,” Grace murmured, numbed, bewildered by the news. She had never taken the reports of Mrs. Trenton’s illness seriously, believing Ward’s wife was feigning illness to arouse her husband’s pity—perhaps in the hope of reawakening his love. It had never occurred to her that she might die.
As soon as possible Grace excused herself and went to her room, where she flung herself on the bed and lay for a long time in the dark, pondering. In spite of their agreement not to write she had hoped constantly to hear from him; and his silence she had interpreted as meaning that he had found it easy to forget. She now attributed his silence to the remorse that had probably assailed him when he found that Mrs. Trenton was hopelessly ill.