# The Young Wife (Mathers)

Extracted from The Pictorial Review, 1902 Feb, pp. 5, 7, 9, 11, 19. Title and page decorations may be omitted.
THE YOUNG WIFE
By HELEN MATHERS

### CHAPTER I.
#### In the Park.

“And youth puts in
A glad sweet time
Nor recks of winter.”
“There goes the New Lady Teazle.”
“What beautiful young people they are,” said the woman. “They dazzle one's eyes.”
“Yes—youth to youth—age to age,” said the man. “Ah! these roomy years of youth—what a gorgeous, splendid garden. Neighbors in the country, weren't they? Seem to have got nearer in town. But, really—Falaise on that box-seat! There's no doubt that Percy has behaved badly. He should have wiped the slate clean before he married. It's not the behavior of a gentleman——”
“Oh! I'm not sure it matters about his being a gentleman—but he must be a man. Who cares for conduct nowadays. I heard Upthorne say the other day that character was of importance only for men, (and more especially women) whose livelihood was dependent on it—and he had more than enough money for his needs. And to call her the New Lady Teazle is ridiculous. Where are Sir Benjamin Backbite and Mrs. Candour, and the rest of that witty, delightful crew? If Sheridan returned to earth he would not know the Josephs from the Charles Surfaces! All the zest of conversation is gone now that we are careful to shut our mouths about our neighbor's misconduct, so that they may ignore ours! In short, society is one huge sheep-pen, in which the blackest are reckoned the whitest, and get the most fun!”
“You exaggerate. Well, to my mind, Percy's a fool. Beauty is what a man can very well do without (or ignore) in his wife. But her ladyship is going the right way to make Percy genuinely in love with her! She shuts her eyes, takes her pleasures abroad; there's nothing binds a man so securely to his home as to meet his wife often in society, where she is as charming to him as to her other acquaintances.”
“Yes—there's a great deal in that. Anything that averts the awful duet (or duel) of everlasting propinquity must be salutary. It's a very great mistake for any woman to fix the idea of her unalterable virtue in her husband's mind. Men are gregarious; where one goes, others flock.”
“But how came Percy Winter in that galère? No man has been more pursued by women—or more dexterous in evading the matrimonial yoke—and then—Falaise!”
“Yes. When the aisle is free, suitors will block it, but when the object of pursuit is at the altar, has retired into the vestry with one woman, the crowd usually departs—mostly without breaking windows—and Falaise has broken none—on the contrary, she has taken the girl to her bosom, and is teaching her bridge!”
“How did it happen?”
“Idleness. Country. Falaise abroad. A lovely rustic, eager to see life. And Percy, if twenty years older, is very charming. 'Not too much of anything,'—said a profound epicure—'in food, or in love, or in any good thing of life'—well, Percy has followed that recipe—and is younger at heart than you, mon ami. And she's happy. Look at her bloom, hear her laugh! So long as a man tells a woman that he loves her for one hour out of the twenty-four, she supports with equanimity the thought that he is kissing another, or others, the remaining twenty-three. It is when he neglects that one hour, she finds she can't support his faults—it's his absence that brings them home to her!”
“Now—Barbara—”
“I suppose it's the light and shade of character that make a bad man so fascinating—and the one who is an irritant, and annoyance, acts as a mustard plaster—the merely good one is a soporific! And undoubtedly the reason why unsatisfactory men are so loved is that they don't demand so high a standard of conduct in women as the higher type does!”
“Then if that's the case, you ought to love me—but you don't.”
“No. I value your affection too much to run the risk of losing it. The point is—does Percy love her?”
“I should say not, or he would not allow her a Jack Patterson.”
“That's where he is so wise. A woman can always be trusted with a young man—he hasn't had time to grow thoroughly wicked! Here comes the coach. Falaise is growing stout. It's one long struggle with her between gluttony and her waist, and as there are a thousand ways of gratifying the palate, and only one waist, naturally her figure goes to the wall. When your hands feel a temptation to spray over your person, the game is up. Look at half the rich women driving about town—either they should build their barouches deeper, or make their figures shallower.”
“But they're very happy!”
“I'd rather be miserable. Bridge is Falaise's Anti-Fat, still it reduces her less than——'
“Percy's balance at his bank.”
“But she's awfully fascinating—all 'frills, curls, kisses, smiles and tantrums'—the Josephine type of woman who has no intellectual pursuits whatever, but is so delightfully feminine and limited that all men love her dearly for her folly! That she doesn't really care for Percy—and I shrewdly suspect his wife does—is one more to Falaise.”
“I don't agree with you. 'If she be not fair for me'—lots of men feel like that—I know I do.”
“Do they? I was reading the other day the love letters of a certain Marquise to her husband during his fifteen years' captivity. The man was the lowest type of scoundrel—she an angel—and after he had heaped every outrage possible on her, and finally accused her of infidelity, she wrote: 'If you are capable of poniarding me under the present circumstances it would be a happiness to me not to exist longer.' Scrawled on the margin of this piteous letter by its unworthy recipient, we find the reflection: 'Quelle platitude, grand Dieu! Quelle platitude!' That is what every one of you men would say—if you dared.”
“She wrote too often—she bored him. You rarely write to me—and you never bore me!”
“I wish I could say the same for you. Well, I always thought Mohammed misunderstood the male human heart when he promised to the faithful throughout eternity a fresh houri every day. He should have said if they could catch them. Why has golf caught on? Because the ball has gone we know not where, and we mean to find it. We should never walk after it with such eagerness if we knew where it was—it is the doubt and the search that enthral us. How dull a black and white and gray crowd is! This season is like an Irish wake with the whisky left out.”
“Yes, but it saves the color-blind woman from making an exhibition of herself. The lunatics in that respect now walk clothed, and in their right minds.”
“But that does not make up for the dulness. We have no use even for our social Post Office—Mrs. Warren—to whom we used to go for the lost, stolen and strayed of society, sure at one time or another to be found in her drawing-room!”
“Ha, ha! Did you ever hear the story about the two men, apparently strangers to each other, who were about to fight a duel? One said, 'I am sure 1 have met you before.' 'To which the other replied, 'Then it must have been at Mrs. Warren's!'”
“That sounds like truth. Isn't that Mrs. White over there? How ill she looks! And she was so pretty and nice ... but since she became a Stock Exchange woman ... it's worse than bridge—all those girls just growing up, too, and White's a dear—and her financier such a brute—how could such men get into society if the women. didn't gamble, and on such a huge scale? It is possible to get out of one's dressmaker's clutches—even to be ruined decently, over bridge—but the Stock Exchange for a woman may mean the blackest of black dishonor.”
“Well—thank God, Barbara, you've kept clear of the whole plot.”
“Yes. But it has been dull.”
“And take my word for it, the others have their dull moments too. Else why do they invariably end up by becoming dévotee? Because they have lived, and didn't think much of it; it's those who haven't lived who credit vice with a joy it never possessed!”
“I wonder? But at least with every year my demands become less and my charity grows. What is it, this inner yielding of the spirit—is it age?—is it chilled blood?—is it the nearing of the end of the journey?—seeing what we could not at a distance? And death is only painful to those who are left behind.”
“You've got the blues. It's all this beastly weather.”
“Dick, don't you think life is like holding a stall at a bazaar, infinite worry and trouble—and the end? A few articles displayed for sale—and a grinning weary woman to sell them—and no buyers! Or like an elegant saloon to furnish and arrange—and we plan everything—and think how nice it looks—and a crowd comes in, and mixes it all up, and nothing is where we meant it to be—and oh! the breakages!”
“Lunch time,” said the man, jumping up. “Ah! here comes Lady Teazle. How warm and quick her smile is ... she likes you, and may want you for her friend yet....”
“And I won't fail her. It's the only thing we poor women can do, to help one another.”

### CHAPTER II.

“Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibers of the human heart.”
“Good heavens, Livy! Has Tiffany's upset itself in here? Or have you turned the place into a mart for all the jewelers, silk manufacturers, curiosity dealers and milliners in town?”
“You dear boy,” cried Percy's young wife, rushing at him. “Come and look at some of the things Percy and I have been buying!”
“Your river forgot-me-nots matched your eyes far better,” grumbled Jack, scarcely glancing at the riviére of great turquoises and diamonds she held out towards him. “It's all like a dream, Jack,” she cried, joyously pushing the hair back from her forehead. “Two months ago, there was I dreading the butcher's bill, wearing a shabby old frock that I had made myself, not a soul to speak to——”
“Except me.”
“Poor papa's tempers the only distraction——”
“Which you could always get away from if you liked, and you had your garden:
“A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot, fringed pool, ferned grot!
The veriest school
Of peace, and yet the fool
Contends that God is not.
Not God! in gardens? when the eve is cool?
I'm very sure God walks in mine.”
“And you mean to say that you don't miss it?—that all these manufactured things make you happy!”
“They wouldn't”—and she blushed shyly—“but for Percy. Oh! Jack, isn't it curious how the people you are living with set the tune? You may be a genius or a hero, but if those at home don't think so, a blight settles on your self-respect, and you end by thinking the world must be wrong and they right! Even a sorry fellow, exalted by his home circle into a splendid creature, may come at last not only to think himself, but in a way be one. His wings may really grow, because he is so often assured that they are there, and Percy is so sweet to me that he actually makes me good! Much as I value all he gives me, I value him most of all!”
“Humph!”
“Jack, poverty and sordid worry turn you into a savage. Did you ever know any one so completely keep her virtues in the background as I did at home? If he had not come, I should have been a hard, bitter-tongued shrew before I was twenty!”
Jack groaned. How much longer a woman stayed in a fool's paradise than a man! Aloud he said, “Why weren't you on the box-seat of Percy's coach yesterday?”
“Jack! My husband and Falaise Conroy are such old friends, and people of that age have so much in common; not that I mean Percy old—I like a man to be old, but not a woman; and to tell you a secret I feel that she has a claim upon me—for I'm sure she wanted to marry Percy herself!”
“A pity she didn't.”
“Jack, you're cross. Look at this scarab, and that parasol handle. Life's lovely—just lovely! I've got everything I wanted—even to having an old friend like you about the place—for I confess that though I like the things and amusements, the people in town bore me. And they have such funny ways. At my afternoon reception last week a lady sent up word to me by one of the men that she had not time to come up stairs—she had only looked in for some tea!”
“Beautifully characteristic of the manners of the day. I don't wonder at people making friends of the lower orders—there's so much more heart in 'em. But, my dear girl,” he glanced around helplessly at the amazing litter of laces, fans, furs, bibelots, silks, jewels and a thousand other necessities of a woman of fashion—“for Heaven's sake don't be vulgar,” he added, and lifted an armful of costly finery from an easy chair, and sank down on it.
“Oh!” cried Livy in a rage, “if I was a poor country girl, I was rich in friends—richer far than in town—and, of course, I send presents to every one of them. Some are for myself. Jack,” she added in a gentler tone, and caught up a foam of cambric and held it to her cheek
“Perhaps I do know,” he said grimly. “Oh, yes, the screen is down at last, and the wives and the others face each other, and their weapons must be the same!”
“Poor boy! I always thought it so hard on you men that nowadays you wear no frills. For when you did, you were such pretty fellows! Jack, I'm growing very fond of bridge, and it's so fascinating. It's like whist, and do you remember how you laughed when I said it was the only game of cards I cared for, as I could talk all the time? What are you glowering about now?”
“Livy,” said Jack, sitting up with energy, “you are one of those rare people who undervalue their beauty to the extent of being vain, and what will Percy say if you lose your good looks? Just listen. This is what bridge will do for you. Bridge channels a woman's face, wilts her, scorches her, makes her unprincipled; willing to rob her own child to pay her debts of honor—honor! Bridge finds a woman, and leaves garbage. Even if Percy can afford to pay for two sets of gambling debts——”
“Two!” cried Livy, “and pray who is the other?”
Hugh colored and cursed himself for a fool.
“Doesn't he play himself?”
“No. And he did not seem to wish Falaise to teach me either.”
“So she taught you? O-oh! Well, drop it, Livy, and while you're about it, drop her.”
Livy hesitated. “She is very kind—but somehow—don't you think every man Jack and woman Jill of us has his aura? And that a person may not even look at, or say one word to you, and yet you know he is all right, and another will single you out to be everything that's kind, yet you feel in your bones he is all wrong? It is the aura or spiritual atmosphere of the person, that can't lie, if only your perceptions are true enough to feel and know it.”
“And if they warn you against Mrs. Conroy so much the better,” said Jack, grimly. “Now Barbara Crichton is another pair of shoes—in the world, not of it—and you couldn't have a safer guide.”
“I like her; but she's so clever! Why should she notice a country girl like me? But I understand all she says. It bites. What the others say slithers off my mind. It sometimes strikes me that these society women don't want you to understand what they mean!”
“And if the men try to explain themselves they are impertinent. The only time they are genuine is after dinner,” said Jack. “Then their minds revert to the natural—to the true proportion of things, and they are oblivious of, or indifferent to, the false. And so the man speaks the truth. And Percy does'nt drink——”
“Jack, you are hateful—and envious. Manners were in vogue when Percy was born, and he outshines all other men as easily as——”
“These gauds outshine a simple country house, and an honest man's devotion. It's true I couldn't turn your morning-room into a heaped-up bazaar——”
“Into which you shall come no more,” cried Livy warmly, “and where you have no business at this moment. It seems to me that all the lacqueys fall over each other in their haste to show you up.”
“Impudent varlets,” grumbled Jack.
“And it's quite extraordinary how you are always asked to the same houses for week-ends! You are going to the Annandale's on Friday?”
“Tea”
“And, of course, Falaise Conroy is going. Couldn't you take her off Percy's hands sometimes—and leave him to me?”
“No, I can't!”
“Poor thing—to be as old as that—quite forty—and she must have been so pretty once!”
“Percy seems to think her pretty now!”
“Ah!” cried Livy, eagerly, “that is because he is so kind hearted—he hates wounding any one's feelings.”
“It's to be hoped he'll never hurt yours.”
“Nor I his,” cried Livy, with spirit.
“Then perhaps some one else has a monopoly of making him miserable,” said Jack, disentangling his foot from a length of lace into which he had angrily thrust it. “Any way, I'd have paid you a better compliment than to look as he does.”
“But he is happy,” cried Livy, very pale, but with head in the air. “And surely I ought to know!”
“The holidays of miserable men are sadder than the burial days of kings,” said Jack concisely; “but I always said, and always shall maintain, that the richer the man, the more truly wretched he is. The rich have discovered thousands of fresh ways of making money, but have not yet learned the best mode of enjoying it. Now, it's the other way round with a woman. So long as she has carte-blanche to walk into any good shop in town and order every blessed thing she does, or does not want, she's happy.”
“I suppose you'll say next that I married Percy because he could give me all—this?” cried Livy indignantly; “I didn't know if he were rich or poor when I first saw him, yet I was ready to follow him round the world before I had known him a week. I sometimes wish—I wish—that he could lose all his money, that I might prove how much I love him!”
“Well,” said Jack grimly, and thinking of Falaise's huge gambling debts, “you may have your wish yet. Have you a goldsmith or dressmaker behind that screen by the door? I thought I saw it move.”
He sprang up, and as he reached it, the door on the other side softly closed.
“Eavesdroppers!” he said; “but there was nothing to hear, save that you loved your lord. And after all—after all——”
“What?”
“It is sometimes safer for a woman to love her husband than for him to love her. What, Livy, tears? And for how many years have I tried to bring smiles to your face?... How do you do, Mr. Winter? No luncheon, thanks. I was on the point of leaving.”

### CHAPTER III.

She was a woman versed in the world as sailor in his compass.
“And how is the new Lady Teazle this morning?” inquired Mrs. Conroy.
“She is well,” said Winter, briefly; “young people are always well.”
“Percy, you were a fool to take a young wife. I always told you you could not afford it.”
“Not while you play bridge,” he said.
“It's the only thing that keeps me down,” she retorted.
“It wrinkles more than it reduces you,” he said, his cold eyes resting on the pretty, faded face—and thinking of a very different one, fresh as the morning.
“I, too, was young once,” said Falaise, who had at times an amazing lègéreté of mind that astonished her lovers.
“Girls are flowers of life,” he said, as if thinking aloud.
“And older, more experienced women are the fruit,” snapped Falaise. “You can't eat a flower.”
“It is possible to feast through the eyes,” said Winter, who was acknowledged to be a man of fastidious taste.
“A feast that others also can enjoy,” said Mrs. Conroy, significantly. “Jack Patterson, for example; why couldn't you let the child alone? You men are such brutes; the moment you see a young girl's lovely face, you want to own it; you wipe out her graces as with a sponge, for girlish beauty never comes back. And at your age—to be made ridiculous—by a black-haired, blue-eyed rustic!”
“You mistake—her surroundings only were rustic. She comes of the very best blood. You must have observed in her the clear address that distinguishes birth from plebeian origin, the rulers from the ruled. And in cataloguing her charms, you forget her skin—apple blossom against the sable of her hair and lashes.”
“Oh! she drinks no wine,” said Falaise, with a sneer; “pure vanity, 'to keep her color fine.'”
“Jack is a good lad,” said Winter. “But you have omitted my wife's greatest charm—her heart—the kindest heart in the whole world. She is a living contradiction to the axiom that there is only one thing a human being is safe never to repeat, something kind about somebody else. He will keep the secret virtuously—horses will not draw it from him, but the fleer, the jeer, the unkind word come trippingly nineteen to the dozen. Now did you ever hear my wife say a word of scandal about any one?”
“Oh! she'll mend of that. When she finds every tongue clacking about her—she'll clack too.”
“Then she will only have me to hear her. I am taking her in my yacht on a tour around the world—she has enjoyed the only tolerable month of the year—June—and, never having traveled, the idea delights her.”
“You are going away,” screamed Falaise, “after the infamous way you have treated me—leaving me to face all my debts and worries alone?”
“Falaise, I have given you enough money to keep a dozen families in luxury, and it has been as water spilled on the ground. I will not wrong my wife.”
“Say it out,” cried Falaise furiously, “that you love the fool, and want to be rid of me.”
“Yes, I love my wife. If her beauty caught, it is her mind and heart that fixed me unalterably——”
“Suppose I tell her——”
“Falaise! But you will have to prove it.”
“No, it is for you to disprove. And your visits here——”
“Only at your urgent request, as to-day——”
“Your putting me instead of your wife on the box seat of the coach——”
“Olivia insisted on it—she thinks youth should give way to age——”
“Age! I suffocate .... Percy, you shall smart for this.”
“So long as she doesn't, I'm happy. Come, Falaise, let us talk sense. You propose to give yourself away to my wife—incidentally to a world that prefers to pass by what it does not choose to see, and deeply resents the rude tocsin that summons it to look. Olivia will recover. Even in the country it sometimes happens that a man has an affaire before he marries—and she has not walked through life with those beautiful eyes of hers shut. Poverty teaches much.”
“TI will take her my bank book,” said Falaise, trembling with passion; “she shall see your checks——”
“The privilege of an old friend,” said Percy airily, “to help a lady in her little gambles ... if that were to be relied on as incriminatory evidence, I fear half the men in society would be in the same boat.”
“But I shall have had my revenge,” cried Falaise, visibly staggered by his coolness.
“I never knew revenge pay a woman's debts yet,” he said.
“Patterson can't pay hers. But there is always one who kisses, and one who pays.”
“I mean to do both.”
“And you think I am going to sit quietly down, tormented by duns and sneering acquaintances, to whom I can't pay my gambling debts, while you—you—I, Falaise—a deserted woman! Don't you know that while it is your wife's misfortune if you leave her, it is your crime if you abandon me?”
“I was a free man before I married, Falaise, and you were a free woman. I have been true to my wife—I shall continue to be so. My mistake has been in remaining on friendly terms with you, and assisting you with money. But I did not wish to soil my wife's mind and up to now the world has been kind, and told her nothing!”
“I shall not be so complaisant,” said Falaise, tearing at the lace on her wrapper, with furious hands. “I will see her—I will tell her everything—and you may take her twice round the world before she will have forgotten it.”
“She will come to me, and I will tell her the truth.”
“Yes, but things will never be the same between you again. These young people have no mercy—and how will your cheques look, given to me since your marriage?”
“Come, let us drop heroics—tell me how much it will take to clear you? Give up bridge—and when we come back in a year's time, look my wife in the face, knowing that you have no more tried to injure her, than she has you.”
“She took you from me!” flashed out Falaise, but she was clearly thinking, and to some purpose.
“She knew nothing about you. Probably she would have shown me the door if she had. How much, Falaise?”
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
“You must be mad ... you've had ten thousand in the last six months.”
“Nevertheless, I cannot do with less. Either your Olivia is, or is not, worth it.”
Percy got up, and took one or two turns round the room. He was a man of quick thought, and rapid decision.
“Yes,” he said, deliberately, “I think it is worth it—to get rid of a woman like you, and keep from your touch a woman like my wife.”
He sat down at a writing table, and drew out a cheque book.
“I see you came prepared,” she said, torn between rage and greed.
“Yes. I keep my alms for you, and my heart for Olivia,” he said, as he began to fill in the cheque. “I have post-dated it ten days,” he added. “By that time we shall be gone. If you attempt to get at my wife before we leave, I warn you that I shall stop the cheque.”
He took his hat, and went out without farewell. The cheque seemed to look her in the face like a bone flung to an outcast dog in the street.
For a moment a great horror seized her of this cursed gambling, which placed scores of well-born women like herself at the mercy of men, and that had at last even broken down Percy's exquisite courtesy toward women; she covered her face with her hands, and tears of shame rushed to her eyes.
At that moment a knock came at the boudoir door, and she sprang up, and passed quickly into her bedroom, that she might not be seen.
“I thought Mrs. Conroy was here,” she heard a footman say; then there was the rustle of a woman's dress, and she softly closed the door, and set about obliterating the traces of her tears.
Olivia, for it was she, moved feverishly about the room, obviously in a state of great excitement, presently stooping to pick up a glove that had fallen beside the writing-table—had she not herself chosen that, and its fellow, for Percy, the preceding day? As she laid it down on the writing-table, his bold handwriting arrested her attention, and almost unconsciously she read the cheque through. So he gave his wife jewels and laces, and to the woman he loved, twenty thousand dollars at a time ... Olivia had come here to demand the truth from Falaise ... to show her the shameful, anonymous letter received an hour ago and she found this ... she was answered already.... What need was there of a vulgar scene of upbraiding, of a hateful, degrading quarrel of two women over one man? She would go away, and leave them free. As to the letter, she had it by heart ... hurriedly she slipped it into a blank envelope, not pausing to address it, and with swift steps crossed the room, and passed out of it, just as the other door opened, and Mrs. Conroy came in, looking round in surprise at the empty room.
“What a fool I was to leave that cheque out,” she said to herself; and, ringing the bell sharply, she asked who it was that had been shown up, and had left almost immediately?
“Mrs. Winter.”
Falaise, left alone, trembled, and walked over to the writing-table, where lay Mr. Winter's glove, and beside it the cheque, and on the cheque an open envelope containing a letter.

### CHAPTER IV.

“Un Chèvalier nien doutez pas, Doit férir haut, et parler bas.”
“Marie, will you go down stairs, and ask Thomas to tell Mr. Winter that my head aches, and I do not require any luncheon? Also, that I am not to be disturbed. I will ring if I want anything.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Marie darkened the room, helped her mistress out of her gown, brought a white wrap, marveling at the trembling of the limbs it covered, then, having heaped the sofa with pillows and placed eau de Cologne on a little table close by, softly withdrew.
Livy sprang up, and locked the door after her, then the one leading to her husband's dressing-room, and stood listening for the knock that, almost immediately came.
“Olivia,” said her husband, but she made no answer.
He called her name again, asking to be let in, but at last he went away, and she blessed the good breeding that had never allowed him to intrude on her privacy, unless very sure of a welcome, and she had shown a like delicacy in her attitude toward him.
It had seemed a long minute of waiting to Percy before he went down to the dining-room, disturbed in mind at this new development that followed on a most harassing and annoying morning. Could it be that Olivia had heard anything? ... from some good-natured friend? ... or had that boy, Jack, who loved her, and hated him, blurted it out?
After making a pretence at luncheon, he went into the library, where he had left her writing notes when he went out that morning. Close to her chair, a crumpled envelope lay on the ground, and mechanically he picked it up, and saw it was addressed to his wife, and had “Private” written in one corner. The writing, obviously feigned, slanted backward, but struck him as familiar ... where had he seen it before?... He remembered now, it was that of a valet lately dismissed from his house for flagrant dishonesty, who had been with him some years ... he had refused the scamp a character, and this was evidently his dastardly revenge—an anonymous letter.
He sighed. How impossible it is to get away from our ill-doing, or to confine its effects to our own selves ... he must wait till she opened the door of her own accord ... poor Livy! but yesterday so happy in all her gay possessions ... and, better than that, she loved him more than all the gewgaws he had given her ... he had heard her say so when he entered behind the screen, and he had gone away lest she suspected him of eavesdropping ... it had been the happiest moment of his life ... and to-day, to-day ... he went toward the grand staircase, the servants were all below-stairs at dinner, only two aching hearts above—hers and his....
Suddenly he saw her descending toward him, saw her before she saw him, a figure strange and unfamiliar to that house, for she wore the gown in which he had seen her first, a flowered muslin, of which the roses had faded to pink with much washing, and on her head was the simplest straw hat to be found in her wardrobe. There was no rings on her hands, save a wedding one—gloves had not been thought of in her haste. As she set her foot on the last shallow stair, he stepped out from behind a statue, and faced her.
“Livy,” he said, “where are you going?”
She swerved away from him as if he had been pitch, and said——
“That is my business.”
“No, it is mine.”
She was so tall that she almost stood level with him, and so beautiful that it seemed to him he had never really seen her before, so amazing were the blue of her eyes, the white of her skin, and the sable wings of her splendid hair.
“I am going to my father,” she said, and the look in her eyes hurt him. “There are worse things in life than to be poor and shabby. I only take away from your house the one fetter that I would gladly break if it would give me back my freedom; yours you never lost.”
“You shall go if you will,” he said, gravely, “but first you will hear what I have to say,” and he made a motion of his hand toward the library.
“What can you tell me!” she said, and her voice was like a moan. “I know—I know. And Jack knew too; everybody knew but me. But he wouldn't tell me; real love never harms what it loves, but I see now why he hated you.”
Her husband led her by a fold of her dress into the library and shut the door.
“What was in that letter?” he said, and she grew calmer; his agony of mind was so visible in voice and eye.
She told him, word for word—few words—coarse words—burnt in for all time on her mind.
“And you believed it?” he said; “you would not give me the benefit of a doubt?”
“I think the horror, the shock of it, drove me mad ... I went straight off to her ... and her boudoir was empty, but in it were your glove, and your cheque ... then I knew it was all true. Oh! we might have been so happy ... people talk about the waste of this and that—it's the waste of love that sickens one. Surely it is as bad to be a monopolist in love, as the man who sweeps thousands of struggling men and women workers into his net, and sweats them all! Many a man keeps baskets full of love beside him, full in his starving wife's sight, and parts with it piece by piece—to other women. I have seen it in the country ... it was my poor mother's lot ... but I never thought it would be mine! 'She doesn't please me.' says the man—'therefore let her go!' The marriage service is a page to be laughed over—and thrown aside”—and Livy laughed wildly.
“Listen,” said Winter, “I was Mrs. Conroy's lover, or banker—which you please—before my marriage. I have been her banker, but not her lover, since. I did not wish you to know the story—and this morning I bribed her with money to pay her gambling debts, that you never might know it.'”
“Then you ought to have married her—not me. Oh! I know there are unprincipled men in the world, but I didn't think nice men did these things—men like you.”
“But you believe me, Livy?”
“I don't know ... I said to Jack yesterday that life was lovely but now it's ... broken.”
She turned away, and the look in her eyes rived his heart. It is a horrible responsibility to take away a happy, trusting child, and leave a seared, enlightened woman in its place. “It's the waste,” she went on sadly, “love costs nothing—and it's the most beautiful thing in life——”
“But I did love you, Livy,” he cried, “I do. I am not a young man—I know my own mind. I never asked, I have never wanted any woman in the world for my wife but you. When I saw you—so simple, so brave, so sincere—making the best of everything—uttering no complaint—not one word of malice—of envy for more fortunate women—O! had I known that such a child was growing up in the country to make my life's happiness, I would have behaved differently.”
“But, twenty thousand dollars!” she exclaimed. “Father and I lived all the year round on twelve hundred a year! And often I have been ashamed of my extravagance here!”
“You! you, poor little soul—nearly all you bought, you gave to others—while her mad folly——”
“O!” cried Livy, “I didn't know there was a woman in the world worth twenty thousand dollars!”
“If I had a million, I would put it down gladly for you,” said Percy. “If I lost one”—he took her hand, and kissed it—“I know, from your own lips, that you would love me just the same!”
“When did you hear me say that?”
“Yesterday—I came in when you were talking to Patterson, and went out again—behind the screen.”
The girl trembled violently, and he drew her into his arms, and held her there.
“It's the easiest thing in the world to go beyond one's self—it's the coming back that is such awful agony,” she whispered.
A knock came at the door, and Percy put her in a deep arm-chair out of sight before he said, “Come in.”
When the man had gone, he broke the seal of the envelope, and over the top of the enclosure showed the cheque he had given to Falaise.
“Dear Percy” (ran the missive)—“I return the cheque. Women are accorded the delightful privilege of bankruptcy nowadays, and I shall fully avail myself of it, marry Tony, and live abroad. Pray explain to the New Lady Teazle that a banker and a lover are two very different persons—and in your person never really amalgamated before your marriage; and that you have never. for one moment, been anything but my banker since. Wishing you both great luck on your little trip round the world, I am,
“Yours sincerely, “Falaise Conroy.”
When Livy had read it, she sighed, then smiled, and put her arms round her husband's neck, and kissed him.
“Oh, these great ladies!” she said, then went up stairs to change her frock.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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