Honora had given orders that the carriage was to wait at the door. The servants might suspect, but that was all. Her maid had been discreet. She drew down her veil as she descended the steps, and told the coachman to drive to the station.
It was raining. Leaning forward from under the hood as the horses started, she took her last look at the lilacs.
CHAPTER VIII. IN WHICH THE LAW BETRAYS A HEART
It was still raining when she got into a carriage at Boston and drove under the elevated tracks, through the narrow, slippery business streets, to the hotel. From the windows of her room, as the night fell, she looked out across the dripping foliage of the Common. Below her, and robbed from that sacred ground, were the little granite buildings that housed the entrances to the subway, and for a long time she stood watching the people crowding into these. Most of them had homes to go to! In the gathering gloom the arc-lights shone, casting yellow streaks on the glistening pavement; wagons and carriages plunged into the maelstrom at the corner; pedestrians dodged and slipped; lightnings flashed from overhead wires, and clanging trolley cars pushed their greater bulk through the mass. And presently the higher toned and more ominous bell of an ambulance sounded on its way to the scene of an accident.
It was Mathilde who ordered her dinner and pressed her to eat. But she had no heart for food. In her bright sitting-room, with the shades tightly drawn, an inexpressible loneliness assailed her. A large engraving of a picture of a sentimental school hung on the wall: she could not bear to look at it, and yet her eyes, from time to time, were fatally drawn thither. It was of a young girl taking leave of her lover, in early Christian times, before entering the arena. It haunted Honora, and wrought upon her imagination to such a pitch that she went into her bedroom to write.
For a long time nothing more was written of the letter than “Dear Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary”: what to say to them?
“I do not know what you will think of me. I do not know, to-night,
what to think of myself. I have left Howard. It is not because he
was cruel to me, or untrue. He does not love me, nor I him. I
cannot expect you, who have known the happiness of marriage, to
realize the tortures of it without love. My pain in telling you
this now is all the greater because I realize your belief as to the
sacredness of the tie—and it is not your fault that you did not
instil that belief into me. I have had to live and to think and to
suffer for myself. I do not attempt to account for my action, and I
hesitate to lay the blame upon the modern conditions and atmosphere
in which I lived; for I feel that, above all things, I must be
honest with myself.
“My marriage with Howard was a frightful mistake, and I have grown
slowly to realize it, until life with him became insupportable.
Since he does not love me, since his one interest is his business,
my departure makes no great difference to him.
“Dear Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom, I realize that I owe you much
—everything that I am. I do not expect you to understand or to
condone what I have done. I only beg that you will continue to
—love your niece,
“HONORA.”
She tried to review this letter. Incoherent though it were and incomplete, in her present state of mind she was able to add but a few words as a postscript. “I will write you my plans in a day or two, when I see my way more clearly. I would fly to you—but I cannot. I am going to get a divorce.”
She sat for a time picturing the scene in the sitting-room when they should read it, and a longing which was almost irresistible seized her to go back to that shelter. One force alone held her in misery where she was,—her love for Chiltern; it drew her on to suffer the horrors of exile and publicity. When she suffered most, his image rose before her, and she kissed the ring on her hand. Where was he now, on this rainy night? On the seas?