Then it occurred to her that all she could hope to accomplish by admitting her intention was the ruin of his last hour alone with her. He was happier, gayer, than usual. But his age was evident in his voice, his gestures. Linda marveled at her coldness, her ruthless disregard of Arnaud's claim on her, of his affection as deep as Pleydon's, perhaps no less fine but not so imperative. Yet Arnaud had had over twenty years of her life, the best; and she had never deceived him about the quality of her gift. It was right, now, for Dodge to have the remainder. But whether it were right or wrong, there was no failure of her determination to go to Pleydon in the vindication of her existence.
She delayed speaking to Arnaud until, suddenly, breakfast was over. He seldom went to the law office where he had been a partner, but stayed about the lower floor of his house, in the library or directing small outside undertakings. Either that or he left, late, for the Historical Society, with which his connection and interest were uninterrupted. As Linda passed him in the hall he was fumbling in the green bag that accompanied all his journeyings into the city; and she gathered that he intended to make one of his occasional sallies. She proceeded above, to her room, where with steady hands she pinned on her hat. It would be impossible to take any additional clothes, and she'd have to content herself with something ready-made until she could order others in the establishment of her living with Dodge. Her close-fitting jacket, gloves, and a short cape of sables were collected; she gazed finally, thoughtfully, about the room, and then, with a subdued whisper of skirts, descended the stair. Arnaud was in the library, bending over the table that bore his accumulation of papers and serious journals. A lingering impulse to speak was overborne by the memory of what, lately, she had endured—she saw him at the dusty end of that long corridor through which she had monotonously journeyed, denied of her one triumph, lost in inconsequential shadows—and she continued firmly to the door which closed behind her with a normal mute smoothness, an inanimate silence.
XXXVIII
The maid who admitted Linda to Pleydon's apartment, first replying, “Yes, Mrs. Hallet. No, Mrs. Hallet,” to her questions, continued in fuller sentences expressing a triumph of sympathy over mere correctness. She lingered at the door of the informal drawing-room, imparting the information that Mr. Pleydon had become very irregular indeed about his meals, and that his return for lunch was uncertain. Something, however, would be prepared for her. Linda acknowledged this briefly. Often, with Mr. Pleydon at home, he wouldn't so much as look at his dinner. Times, too, it seemed as though he had been in the studio all night. He went out but seldom now, and rarely remained away for more than an hour or two. Linda heard this without an indication of responsive interest, and the servant, returning abruptly from the excursion into humanity, disappeared.
She was glad to have this opportunity alone to accustom herself to a novel position. But she was once more annoyingly calm. Annoyingly, she reiterated; the fervor of her anger, which at the same time had been bitterly cold, had lessened. She was practically normal. She regarded this, the loss of her unprecedented emotion, in the light of a fraud on her sanguine decision. Linda had counted on its support, its generous irresistible tide, to carry her through the remainder of her life with the exhilaration she had so largely missed.
Here in Dodge's room she was as placid, almost, as though she were in the library at home. That customary term took its place in her thoughts before she recognized that, with her, it had shifted. However, it was unimportant—home had never been a magical word to her; it belonged in the vast category which, of such universal weight, left her unstirred. She resembled those Eastern people restlessly and perpetually moving across sandy deserts as they exhausted, one after another, widely separated scanty oases.
She studied the objects around her with the pleased recognition that they were unique, valuable, and in faultless taste. Then she fell to wondering at the difference had Dodge been poor: she would have come to him, Linda knew, just the same. But, she admitted frankly, it would have been uncomfortable. Perhaps that—actual poverty, actual deprivation—was what her character needed. A popular sentiment upheld such a view; she decided it was without foundation. There was no reason why beauty, finely appropriate surroundings, should damage the spirit.
Her mind turned to an examination of her desertion of Arnaud, but she could find no trace of conventional regret; of what, she felt, her sensation ought to be. The instinctive revolt from oblivion was an infinitely stronger reality than any allegiance to abstract duty. She was consumed by the passionate need to preserve the integrity of being herself. The word selfish occurred to her but to be met unabashed by the query, why not? Selfishness was a reproach applied by those who failed to get what they wanted to all who succeeded. Linda wasn't afraid of public opinion, censure; she didn't shrink even from the injury to her husband. What Dodge would think, however, was hidden from her.