"Yes, I'll go—this very afternoon," said Whitney more loudly, turning his face toward the door through which came a faint feminine rustling—the froufrou of the finest, softest silk and finest, softest linen.
He looked attentively at his wife as she crossed the threshold—looked with eyes that saw mercilessly but indifferently, the eyes of those who are out of the game of life, out for good and all, and so care nothing about it. He noted in her figure—in its solidity, its settledness—the signs of age the beauty doctors were still almost successful in keeping out of that masklike face which was their creation rather than nature's; he noted the rough-looking red of that hair whose thinness was not altogether concealed despite the elaborate care with which it was arranged to give the impression of careless abundance. He noted her hands; his eyes did not linger there, for the hands had the wrinkles and hollows and age marks which but for art would have been in the face, and they gave him a feeling—he could not have defined it, but it made him shudder. His eyes rested again upon her face, with an expression of pity that was slightly satirical. This struggle of hers seemed so petty and silly to him now; how could any human being think any other fact important when the Great Fact hung from birth threateningly over all?
"You feel worse to-day, dear?" said she, in the tones that sound carefully attuned to create an impression of sympathy. Hers had now become the mechanically saccharine voice which sardonic time ultimately fastens upon the professionally sympathetic to make them known and mocked of all, even of the vainest seekers after sympathy.
"On the contrary, I feel better," he drawled, eyes half-shut. "No pain at all. But—horribly weak, as if I were going to faint in a minute or two—and I don't give a damn for anything." There was a personal fling in that last word, an insinuation that he knew her state of mind toward him, and reciprocated.
"Well, to-morrow Janet and her baby will be here," said Mrs. Whitney, and her soothing tones seemed to stimulate him by irritation. "Then we'll all go down to Saint X together, if you still wish it."
"Don't take that tone with me, I tell you!" he said with some energy in his drawl. "Don't talk to me as if you were hanging over my deathbed lying to me about my going to live!" And he closed his eyes, and his breath made his parted, languid lips flutter.
"Mr. Vagen," said Matilda, in her tone of sweet graciousness, "may I trouble you to go and—"
"Go to the devil, Vagen," said Charles, starting up again that slow stream of fainting words and sentences. "Anywhere to get you out of the room so you won't fill the flapping ears of your friends with gossip about Whitney and his wife. Though why she should send you out I can't understand. If you and the servants don't hear what's going on, you make up and tattle worse than what really happens."
Mrs. Whitney gave Vagen a look of sweet resignation and Vagen responded with an expression which said: "I understand. He is very ill. He is not responsible. I admire your ladylike patience." As Whitney's eyes were closed he missed this byplay.
"Here, Vagen—before you go," he drawled, waving a weary hand toward the table at his elbow. "Here's a check for ten thousand. You don't deserve it, for you've used your position to try to get rich on the sly. But inasmuch as I was 'on to' you, and dropped hints that made you lose, I've no hard feelings. Then, too, you did no worse than any other would have done in your place. A man's as good, and as bad, as he has the chance to be. So take it. I've not made my will yet, and as I may not be able to, I give you the money now. You'll find the check in this top drawer, and some other checks for the people near me. I suppose they'll expect something—I've got 'em into the habit of it. Take 'em and run along and send 'em off right away."