She had known for years the miserable mistake of her choice of White, she had grovelled in the dust of repentance, but there had been one drop of honey in the cup of gall, one saving grace in the situation; she was sure that Fox still loved her, that he would be true to her. No other woman had been set up in her shrine. She knew how deep the hurt had been, and she had fondly believed that she alone could heal it. Through all those arid years, those years of gayety, of luxury, of false happiness and false show, she had hugged her secret to her heart; Fox still loved her!
And now? What had she read in the kindled sympathy of that look at Rose Temple? She bit her lip, staring into the mirror with haggard eyes. Could he give her up? She, who knew so much of the brutal egotism of which a man can be capable, she who had seen such a nature as White’s revealed in the scorching intimacy of married life,—dared she picture Fox as unselfish enough to be still true to her, to content himself with comforting her wretchedness when love and youth and beauty—beauty such as she had never worn—might be his? Her sore heart throbbed passionately in her bosom. She had expiated her mistake, she had suffered for her fault, she had a right to be happy! She would be happy; it is the eternal cry of the human soul. “Every pitifullest whipster,” says Carlyle, “seeks happiness, a happiness impossible even for the gods.” And Margaret’s wilful soul cried out for happiness; why should it not be hers? She was shackled, it was true, with fetters of her own forging, but—the eager thought of liberty darted through her mind like an arrow—others had been so bound and were now free, others were making new lives out of the old, and the ease with which such ties can be dissolved was not the least of her temptations.
Her glance fell suddenly on the child, Estelle, playing soberly with the amethyst beads which she had begged for. The little girl had learned to be quiet; if she was noisy or in the way she was immediately dismissed to the nursery, and she had her lesson by heart; she was making no noise but a soft crooning sound as she fondled the beads. Her hair was flaxen, her face dull and not pretty, her eyes like her father’s. Margaret shuddered and averted her gaze; how cruel that she should look like him! And the baby, only two years old but already like him; she felt it her curse, the retribution of her loveless marriage, that these two living and visible links to bind her to her vows were both like the man she had married without love and without respect, because she could not give up her life and its luxuries to be poor. A marriage with Fox then would have meant the renunciation of everything which seemed to her essential to existence, it would have combined the miseries of cheap living and self-denial, of small and hideous economies, which made her shudder even to contemplate; she had always been a sybarite. Brought up by an extravagant, pleasure-loving mother, by a father who had spent all to live well, Margaret had been unable to conceive anything more horrible than genteel poverty, and White had offered her a dazzling vista of wealth, position, social success. She was very young, raw, untried, and the temptation had been too great.
As she sat there, idly, at her toilet-table, surrounded by all the beautiful and splendid luxuries of a boudoir which had been fitted up with reckless expense to meet her whims and self-indulgences, she remembered with keen self-contempt her excitement over her own magnificent wedding, her tour through France and Italy in a motor-car which had cost a fortune; then a keen pang wrung her heart as she remembered the boy they had killed in the little crooked Italian village and the people who had stoned them! She had felt it then as a cruel prognostication of ill luck, a terrible beginning of her married life and now, whenever she closed her eyes, she could see again the narrow street, the brown Italian houses, that seemed ready to topple over on them, the children playing, the vivid sky above—then the cry, the awful scene, the child’s dead face. She shuddered; so had her gilded dream of happiness ended; a cry, a rush of misery, and now her sore heart to hide, the dance of death to go on to the end unless—again came the haunting thought; it had beset her lately, tempted her, teased her. It was so easy, it would be so easy to break the bonds, and who could blame her? To be happy!
“Mamma, it broke!” Estelle cried suddenly, with a quivering lip, “I didn’t do it!”
Margaret turned and looked at her. “No matter,” she said strangely, “it broke easily, didn’t it, Estelle? Thank heaven, one can break chains!”
As she spoke there was a knock at her door, and White himself entered. He was not a large man but his face was broad and heavy, his hair had been light but was now gray above the ears, and his jaws were slightly purpled by high living. There were some who thought him distinguished, chiefly those who always perceive a halo around officialdom and wealth. Actually he belonged to that type of man who has been in clubs, political and social, from boyhood, who has unlimited money, a mighty egotism and the unfailing preference for his neighbor’s wife. Meeting Margaret’s challenging glance he paused near the door, his hand on a chair, and looked at her with a cold fixed eye which neither changed nor wavered as he spoke.
“I have something to say to you,” he began in a hard dry tone; “it seems to me about time to speak out. I don’t know what’s come over you; you’re clever enough, but you seem to forget that I’m a public man. You were absolutely rude at the reception this afternoon, and your whims are intolerable. It’s all very annoying! If I choose to open my house to the public I expect my wife to accept the rôle and then to play it to the end.”
Margaret looked at him. “I fail to understand you,” she said ironically; “is this a lecture?”
“You may call it what you please,” he retorted angrily, walking to and fro; “you know well enough!”