Neither of them were aware of the soft opening and closing of the front door, neither saw the figure which halted for a moment in the doorway behind them, in time to catch the last speech which fell from Brewster’s lips and witness the salutation which concluded it; neither of them heard the muffled, almost noiseless footsteps as the figure withdrew as silently as it had come and disappeared in the further recesses of the house.
Chapter III.
The Blow
In his little den at the rear of the house Storm closed the door softly before, with shaking fingers, he sought the chain of the low light upon his desk. Then, dropping into a chair beside it, he raised clenched fists to his head as though to beat out the hideous confirmation which drummed at his brain.
It was true! His wife had betrayed him, That soft, pliant, docile thing of pink and white flesh which in his fatuous idolatry he had believed imbued with the soul of loyalty had slipped airily from his grasp, given herself, her love to another!—Love! What did she know of love or loyalty? This creature whom he had honored had dragged, was dragging his name in the dust, setting him aside as an unimportant factor, a mere dispenser of bounty to be cajoled and tolerated for his generosity, his protection, while she indulged her desires for fresh admiration, new conquests!
Curiously enough, his enmity was not active against the man he believed to be his rival. Brewster, for the moment, was a secondary consideration in his eyes; had it not been he it would have been another. The woman was to blame!
How blind she must think him! How easily she had fallen into the first simple trap he had laid for her feet! How in her fancied security, she must be laughing at him! The little acts of wifely forethought and service, evidences of which surrounded him even there in his sanctum, were but as particles of sand thrown in his eyes! His humidor freshly filled, his golf sticks of last year cleaned and laid out across the table that he might choose which ones to take to the country club for the opening of the new season!—Faugh! Did she hope by such puerile trivialities as these to prolong his unquestioning faith in her.
Against his will, the past came thronging to his mind in ever-changing scenes which he strove in vain to shut out. That summer at Bar Harbor, the moonlit nights, the little, golden-haired maid just out of school. . . . How fast and furious his wooing had been! The dim, rustling, crowded church, the Easter lilies which banked the altar—God! he could smell their cloying fragrance now!—that radiant, fairy-like white figure moving slowly toward him down the aisle . . . .
Storm groaned, and involuntarily covered his eyes as other pictures formed before his mental vision. Their honeymoon at the Hot Springs, that brilliant first season in town, and then her sudden illness and the dark weeks during which he had feared that she would be taken from him and he had crouched in impotent supplication before the door he might not enter. Than that exultant moment when he learned that his prayers had been answered, that she would live; poor fool, what thanks he had given!
Her convalescence had seemed to draw them more closely, tenderly together even than before; and pitilessly, mockingly his thoughts ranged through the quiet, happy years which had followed in the planning and beautifying of their home; this home which she had desecrated!
Brewster’s words rang in his ears. “You have made me the happiest man in the world! I shall always remember my hour here to-night with you—” And then that adoring salutation, that impassioned kissing of her hands!