第44章

Just like a good, sentimental woman.Not philanthropy without expense, but philanthropy at the expense both, of his fortune and of his position as a master.To use his brain and his life for those ungrateful people who derided his benefactions as either contributions to "the conscience fund" or as indirect attempts at public bribery! He could not conceal his impatience--though he did not venture to put it into words.

"If we--if you and I, John," she hurried on, leaning toward him in her earnestness, "had something like that to live for, it might come to be very different with us--and--I'm thinking of Gardiner most of all.This'll ruin him some day.No one, NOONE, can lead this kind of life without being dragged down, without becoming selfish and sordid and cruel.""You don't understand," he said curtly, without looking at her.

"I never heard of such--such sentimentalism."She winced and was silent, sat watching his bold, strong profile.

Presently she said in a changed, strange, strained voice: "What I asked to see you for was--John, won't you put the prices--at least where they were at the beginning of this dreadful winter?""Oh--I see!" he exclaimed."You've been listening to the lies about me.""READING," she said, her eyes flashing at the insult in the accusation that she had let people attack him to her.

"Well, reading then," he went on, wondering what he had said that angered her.And he made an elaborate explanation--about "the necessity of meeting fixed charges" which he himself had fixed, about "fair share of prosperity," "everything more expensive," "the country better able to pay," "every one doing as we are," and so on.

She listened closely; she had not come ignorant of the subject, and she penetrated his sophistries.When he saw her expression, saw he had failed to convince her, into, his eyes came the look she understood well--the look that told her she would only infuriate him and bruise herself by flinging herself against the iron of his resolve.

"You must let me attend to my own business," he ended, his tone good-natured, his eyes hard.

She sat staring into the fire for several minutes--from her eyes looked a will as strong as his.Then she rose and, her voice lower than before but vibrating, said: "All round us--here in New York--all over this country--away off in Europe--I can see them--I can feel them--SUFFERING! As you yourself said, it's HORRIBLY cold!" She drew herself up and faced him, a light in her eyes before which he visibly shrank."Yes, it's YOURbusiness.But it shan't be mine or MY boy's!"And she left the room.In the morning she returned to Dawn Hill and arranged her affairs so that she would be free to go.Not since the spring day, nearly nine years before, when she began that Vergil lesson which ended in a lesson in the pitilessness of consequences that was not yet finished, had her heart been so light, so hopeful.In vain she reminded herself that the doing of this larger duty, so imperative, nevertheless endangered her father and mother."They will be proud that I'm doing it," she assured herself.

"For Gardiner's sake, as well as for mine, they'll be glad Iseparated him and myself from this debased life.They will--they MUST, since it is right!" And already she felt the easing of the bonds that had never failed to cut deeper into the living flesh whenever she had ventured to hope that she was at last growing used to them.

"Free!" she said to herself exultantly.She dared to exult, but she did not dare to express to herself the hopes, the wild, incredible hopes, which the very thought of freedom set to quivering deep down in her, as the first warmth makes the life toss in its slumber in the planted seed.

On Friday she came up to New York late in the afternoon, and in the evening went to the opera--for a last look round.As the lights were lowering for the rise of the curtain on the second act, Leonora and her husband entered the box.She had forgotten inviting them.She gave Leonora the chair in front and took the one behind--Millicent Rowland, whom she herself brought, had the other front seat.As her chair was midway between the two, she was seeing across Leonora's shoulders.Presently Dumont came in and took the chair behind Leonora's and leaned forward, his chin almost touching the slope of her neck as he talked to her in an undertone, she greatly amused or pretending to be.

The light from the stage fell across Leonora's bosom, fell upon a magnificent string of graduated pearls clasped with a huge solitaire beyond question the string the jeweler's clerk had blunderingly shown her.And there was Dumont's heavy, coarse profile outlined against Leonora's cheek and throat, her cynical, sensuous profile showing just beyond.

Open sprang a hundred doors of memory; into Pauline's mind was discharged avalanche after avalanche of dreadful thoughts."No!

No!" she protested."How infamous to think such things of my best friend!" But she tried in vain to thrust suspicions, accusations, proofs, back into the closets.Instead, she sank under the flood of them--sick and certain.

When the lights went up she said: "I'm feeling badly all at once.I'm afraid I'll have to take you home, Milly.""Are you ill, dear?" asked Leonora.

"Oh, no--just faint," she replied, in a voice which she succeeded in making fairly natural.