At the front door he bowed her out, repeating cordially: “And about a date for Anne’s wedding as soon as you and she are absolutely decided, remember I’m completely at your service.”
The door closed, and she found herself in the street.
XXIV.
SHE turned away from the Rectory and walked aimlessly up Madison Avenue. It was a warm summer-coloured October day. At Fifty-ninth Street she turned into the Park and wandered on over the yellowing leaf-drifts of the ramble. In just such a state of blind bewilderment she had followed those paths on the day when she had first caught sight of Chris Fenno and Lilla Gates in the twilight ahead of her. That was less than a year ago, and she looked back with amazement at the effect which that chance encounter had had on her. She seemed hardly to be suffering more now than she had suffered then. It had seemed unbearable, impossible, at the moment, that Chris Fenno should enter, even so episodically, so remotely, into her new life; and here he was, ensconced in its very centre, in complete possession of it.
She tried to think the situation out; but, as always, her trembling thoughts recoiled, just as she had seen Dr. Arklow’s recoil.
Every one to whom she had tried to communicate her secret without betraying it had had the same instantaneous revulsion. “Not that—don’t tell me that!” their averted eyes, their shrinking voices seemed to say. It was too horrible for any ears.
How then was she to obey Dr. Arklow’s bidding and impart the secret to Anne? He had said it as positively as if he were handing down a commandment from Sinai: “The daughter must be told.”
How easy to lay down abstract rules for other people’s guidance: “The daughter” was just an imaginary person—a convenient conversational pawn. But Kate Clephane’s daughter—her own Anne! She closed her eyes and tried to face the look in Anne’s as the truth dawned on her.
“You—you, mother? The mother I’ve come to adore—the mother I can’t live without, even with all my other happiness? You?”
Yes—perhaps that would be the worst of it, the way Anne would look at her and say “You?” For, once the girl knew the truth, her healthy youth might so revolt from Chris’s baseness, Chris’s duplicity, that the shock of the discovery would be its own cure. But when the blow had fallen, when Anne’s life had crashed about her, and the ruins been cleared away—what then of her mother? Why, her mother would be buried under those ruins; her life would be over; but a hideous indestructible image of her would remain, overshadowing, darkening the daughter’s future.