First she would finish her affairs, make her will, and burn her letters. She had neglected to change the testament she had signed when she became Peter Cheever's wife, and took a pride in making him her sole heir. It would be ridiculous to make him such a post-mortem gift now, now that he had not only money enough, but a wife that satisfied him, and a child.
She wondered whom to leave her money to. Jim Dyckman's name kept recurring to her and she smiled at that, for he had more money than he could use. Besides, the mention of his name in her will would confirm the public belief in their intrigue. She had nobody to inflict her inheritance upon but a few relatives, mostly rich enough. She decided to establish a fund for her own orphans, the children of other women whom she had adopted.
Making a will is in sort a preliminary death. Making hers, Charity felt herself already gone, and looked back at life with a finality as from beyond the grave. It was a frightful thing to review her journey from a lofty angel's-eye view.
Her existence looked very petty. Now that her hope and her senses were ended, she felt a grudge against the world that she had got so little out of. She had tried to be a good woman, and her altruism had won her such a bad name that if Dr. Mosely should preach her funeral sermon he would feel that he had revealed a wonderful spirit of forbearance in leaving it unmentioned that she was an abandoned divorcee.
If she had been actually guilty of an intrigue with Jim Dyckman Dr. Mosely would have forgiven her even more warmly, because it was a woman taken in actual adultery who was forgiven, while Charity had tactlessly fought the charge and demanded vindication instead of winsomely appealing for pity.
By a roundabout road of self-surrender she had come to the same destination that she might have reached by the straight path of self-indulgence. She was perilously near to resolving that she had been a fool not to have taken happiness, physical happiness, first. A grand red passion seemed so much more beautiful than a petty blue asceticism.
When she got home from the will-making session with McNiven she began to go over her papers and close the books of her years. She attacked old heaps of bundles of her husband's letters and telegrams, and burned them with difficulty in her fireplace.
She felt no temptation to glance over them, though her lip curled in a grimace of sardonic disgust to consider how much Peter Cheever had been to her and how little he was to her now. The first parcels she burned were addressed to “Miss Charity Coe.” How far off it seemed since she had been called “Miss”!
She had been a girl when Cheever's written and spoken words inflamed her. They blazed now as she had blazed. Into that holocaust had gone her youth, her illusions, her virginity, her bridehood, her wifely trust. And all that was left was a black char.
She came upon letters from Jim Dyckman, also, a few. She flung them into the fire with the rest. He had had nothing from her except friendship and girlish romance and a grass-widow's belated affection. Crimson thoughts stole through her dark heart like the lithe blazes interlacing the letters; she wondered if she would have done better to have followed desire and taken love instead of solitude.