A sudden impulse assailed her as the violence of her grief subsided. She rose, and raised the letters in one hand, meaning to hurl them into the opposite blaze, and thus spare herself, while the destructive mood lasted, fresh future pangs. But at this moment her glance lighted on the packet itself. It was of moderate thickness, and tied together by a strip of ordinary cord. Inside the cincture so made, and held there insecurely by one sharp corner, a folded paper had caught, which seemed foreign to the remaining contents. Mrs. Lee disengaged this paper, opened it, and cast her tear-blurred eyes, carelessly enough at first, over some written lines which she had immediate certainty were not her own.
But presently a little cry left her lips. She turned the page with a rapid jerk, searching for a signature. She did not find any, but found merely two initials instead. She dropped into her seat again, and with a fire in her dark eyes that seemed to have quickly dried their last trace of moisture, she read, pausing over nearly every word, and pondering every sentence, a letter which ran thus:—
Friday.
Dear Mr. Goldwin,—I think that I meant all the harsh treatment I gave you last evening. When I recall what my feelings then were, I am certain that my indignation was quite sincere. But very much has happened since then to change me, and to change my surroundings as well. I suppose I am in a most reckless mood while I write these lines: my head is hot, and my hands are cold, and tremble so that the words I am shaping have a strange, unfamiliar look, as though I myself were not writing them at all. Well, for that matter, the same woman whom you lately parted from is not writing them. Another woman has taken her place. She is a wayward, desperate sort of creature; she is a coward, an ingrate, a worthless and feeble egotist.
But this new identity of mine will last. I have made up my mind to take a bold step, and nothing can now deter me. I shall not be explicit; at some other time I will send for you and tell you everything. You shall hear my reasons for acting as I propose to act. I don't claim that they are strong or good reasons, and yet I feel that they contain a certain propulsion—they push me on. My marriage has been an irreparable mistake; I can't go back and live the last year over again; I can't repossess my yesterdays. Hence, I have become willful and headstrong about my to-morrows. If I had ever really loved Herbert, all would now be so different! But I have never loved anybody who is now living. There you have a frigid confession. You never roused in me anything but a decided liking; that other woman—the woman who called herself by my name a few hours ago—used to disapprove a good deal that there is about you. But my new self will doubtless pass over these faults very indulgently; she will have enough of her own to account for. Still, she can never do more than think you good company. I fancy that when I was a very young child nature locked up a certain cell of my heart, and then threw away the key where no one can ever find it.
I mean to go abroad, very secretly, after the sale of certain property and chattels shall have put me in possession of the needed funds. It will be a flight—and a flight from more than you are yet aware of. If we meet abroad—say in Paris—I may even stoop to discuss with you that question of a divorce. It is horrible for me to write these words. It is sin, and I feel the stab of it. But surely Herbert deserves to be rid of me, and perhaps he will come in time to value his freedom. I should want him to have the right of marrying again. Would not that be a possible arrangement? I know almost nothing of the law on these points.
It does not now seem conceivable that I should ever become your wife after I had ceased to be his. I have had enough of marriage without love. But if you should prevail with me, it would be only because of your great wealth, and the ease and distinction that are now slipping away from me. You see I am hideously candid; I don't mince matters ... where would be the use?
Do not answer this, but destroy it immediately. In regard to the last request, I count with perfect confidence upon your honor. Were it not that I did so, I should never send you this imprudent, daring, perilous scrawl.
Do not come to me until I send for you. I cannot tell how long that will be.
C. H.
Before Mrs. Lee refolded the letter which contained these words, she had read them through certainly five successive times.
Not until then had she made up her mind just what to do. She would put the letter in an envelope, and direct this, very legibly, to Herbert Hollister. Her determination was as fixed as fate....
When her guests had all departed, on the afternoon of this same day, Claire slowly walked the spacious drawing-rooms for at least twenty minutes, with her eyes bent upon the floor.
She felt literally hunted down. The end had come; the clock had struck twelve, and her fineries were rags, her coach-and-four was a pumpkin and mice. She had carried it off well until the very last; she was sure of this, and the surety gave her, even now, a bitter pleasure. She had no doubt that the coming of her mother, with imperative demands of support and countenance, would mean a return of all the old taunts and gibes. If Claire's wealthful life of to-day had been destined to continue, this prospect would have opened a less dreary vista; as it was, she foresaw only a dropping back into the former ruts and sloughs of maternal acrimony and intolerance. The history of her past would in a manner repeat itself. There would be poverty again, or something closely akin to it; there would be the mother's unpardoning disapprobation of her child's ill-favored lot. For one marked difference, Herbert would be present, as a fresh, assertive force. And what a miserably adverse force it must prove! To exist with him would be hard enough, now, under any circumstances. But if he felt perpetually the shadow and weight of this second gloomy and heavy personality, what new hostile traits might not his depression, his impatience, his revolt develop?
Claire tried to take a very calm survey of the whole potential consequence. In so doing she regarded the advent of her mother as one factor that consorted with other untoward agencies; the central knot of the tangle would be wrought of several tough and stubborn threads. There could be no unraveling it. 'But the knot could be cut,' she thought, silently continuing her metaphor, as she paced the stately rooms.
It sent a thrill of actual terror to her when she reflected how the knot could be cut. To the feet that have set their tread on slippery ways, evil can do much downward work by a gentle push. Claire felt herself lapsing, now....
What if she wrote to Stuart Goldwin a letter very different from the one she had already written him, and which was then hid under the fleecy laces that clad her bosom? What if she told him that she must fly from it all?—the love that she had outraged by cold hypocrisy, the keen if mute reproaches that would be punishment and torture alike, the thrusts and innuendoes from a tongue whose venom had poisoned her childhood, the tarnish in place of splendor, the dullness in place of brilliance, the obscurity in place of prominence, the service in place of mastery—perhaps even the toil in place of ease?