The long way

by Mary Imlay Taylor

He was greeted with the sting of sleet in his face and the sudden shock of unprecedented cold roused him from the stupor of despair into which he had fallen. He was without coat or hat and his thin evening clothes felt like so much paper in the gale. For an instant he hesitated, half inclined to go back, and then the same impulse that had driven him out returned with overwhelming force. He must find a way out of it, he must force Rachel to accept her freedom; he could no longer hold her to her bargain and feel that by the very act of her marriage she had made him a miserable creature ready to seek shelter behind a woman rather than face the man against whom he had planned an injury as cowardly as it was base. He had traveled so far upon that long road that it seemed incredible that he had ever deliberately chosen it, that his moral turpitude had been so great that he had not recognized that his waywardness could never prevail against the eternal principles of right and wrong, and that his sins would only invoke an inevitable and complete retribution, that he would be crushed at last beneath the weight of that edifice which he had erected in the days of his transgressions. He believed vaguely in God and for a moment he almost cried out incoherently to that Supreme Being Who had created him and against Whom he had deliberately sinned. But there seemed to be no ear, even the Eternal One, that could hear him through the blasts of that fearful storm, and, smitten alike with cold and despair, he plunged forward into a space that seemed to be limited to a frozen circle of white, in which he turned around and around, and which never expanded beyond the ring that his dazed senses made in the mist of the tempest. Yet the one idea that survived the whirlpool of his mood was the desire to see Rachel, to beg her to forgive him, to set her free, even if by that one act of renunciation he wiped out forever the desire of life.

With this thought in his heart he turned and made his way blindly across the terrace, and the greatest snow-storm of many seasons, driving around the northeast corner, enfolded him deeply and softly in its heavy flakes.

XXII

It was much later in the evening when Charter finally escaped from Colonel Sedley and, under a pretext of looking out at the weather, made his way into the conservatory. The whole party of dinner guests had been much chagrined an hour before by the astounding news that they were snow-bound.

The predictions of Mrs. Billop's weather-man had been startlingly fulfilled, and had Sidney not escaped as he did, not even overshoes and a taxicab would have sufficed to get him home. The snow had drifted so heavily that no conveyances were at hand and even the telephone had gone quietly out of commission. There was nothing to do, as Astry said, but to stay the night with them. But this arrangement, accepted with more or less laughter and uneasiness by the others, was not to Charter's taste. He had found the evening bad enough as it was without prolonging it until morning, and he escaped from the drawing-room with the frank intention of taking French leave. He was too hardy a soldier to dread even the extreme cold, and he went now to the door of the conservatory to ascertain the depth of the drifts before he started. The frost had affected the electric system sufficiently to blot out many of the lamps and the shadowy aisles of the conservatory showed only an occasional light. A disgruntled parrot sat on the stem of the banana tree, but not even he uttered a sound as Charter passed on his way to the vestibule. As he opened the door, the cold seemed to pounce upon him and he saw nothing but a vast sheet of unbroken snow and sleet. But the tempest had ceased and the clouds were clearing away from a sky that was brilliant with stars.

He thought of Rachel with a vision of the old, low-ceiled room with the glow of the fire behind her graceful figure and the sorrow, the sweetness, the subtle tenderness in her face. Involuntarily he clenched his hand; what right had that fellow to hold her? He turned, deeply incensed at the thought and determined to get his overcoat and go down to the city. He was already back in the conservatory before he encountered his host.

Astry had just discovered that Billop had gone home in a taxicab hours ago and he was looking for Belhaven. A game of bridge had kept him in the drawing-room until the usual hour for the breaking up of the gathering and he had supposed that Belhaven and Billop were still in the house. It was impossible to telephone to Rachel now to ascertain where her husband was and Astry had taken the last chance of finding him either in the library or the conservatory. Instead, he found Charter coming back from the door alone. A sudden recollection of Eva's statement that Charter and Rachel loved each other startled Astry with a new and swift suspicion. Had Charter anything to do with Belhaven's absence? But the young officer's face, though grave, was quite composed. Astry looked at him thoughtfully.

"You're going to have the south room, Charter," he said easily, "next to Sedley. I hope he won't bore you to death; he snores like a Corliss engine."

"If you don't mind, I won't stay," Charter replied, a little awkwardly. "I'm used to roughing it, you know, and it isn't snowing now."

"Oh, but we couldn't think of it. The snow's knee-deep and not even the tram is moving. I can't allow it; besides, you know, the Van Citterses are staying."