Her hands clenched. Through the clamoring of her misery, she said to herself: But what did I expect? Did I expect he would embrace me vehemently, make a hideous display of himself, and of me, within doors that might open at any moment? She pressed her colorless lips together and gazed at him with courageous steadfastness. She could not know how pathetic and weary her violet eyes were in the shadow of her bonnet, and how sad. But Jerome saw. He took up his cheroot again, and puffed at it with determination.
“We must be quick,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Jamison, or one of the clerks, may come in at any moment. We must settle things—now.”
“Yes.” Her lips formed the word soundlessly.
“We must go away. Very soon. Before Alfred returns on Saturday.”
She could not speak. Her hands fell, slackened, on her knees. Her face glimmered whitely.
“He must divorce you,” Jerome was saying. “We’ll leave him letters. This is Wednesday. We must leave tomorrow night, or Friday morning, at the latest.”
He spoke without emotion. He flicked the ash from his cheroot. He was looking at her with straight hard eyes, without passion.
Then she said, her voice quite loud and clear in the silence: “No.”
He paused in the very act of putting the cheroot into his mouth. Now all the lines of his face tightened. “Yes,” he said.
She pushed back her bonnet with a distracted hand. “No,” she repeated.
“Why not?” There was no anger in his words, and only the slightest impatience.
“We cannot do that.” She moistened her lips. He saw that she was trembling. “We cannot do so cowardly a thing, so disgraceful a thing.”
He smiled, and the smile was ugly. “And may I ask you, my dear, what you propose as an alternative?”
She tried to speak; she swallowed thickly. But she still gazed at him fixedly. “We must wait until Alfred returns. We must wait—a little. Perhaps a few weeks. We cannot do this to your—father.” Her voice shook. “You must remember that he has been ill, that he is ill. We cannot run away, like criminals. We—owe it to all of them to be honest, to discuss it, to make plans that have dignity and decency.”
He smiled again, even more unpleasantly, as if something she had said amused him. Seeing this, she cried out wildly: “You must understand! Surely you understand? Jerome!”
He leaned back in his chair. She could not know how the crying of his name disturbed him. He spoke firmly: “Please, Amalie. You’ll have the whole damn Bank running in here. Let us be sensible. If we do as you so sentimentally suggest, all hell will break loose in that house. ‘Dignity’? ‘Decency’? Let your imagination dwell on the subject, just for a little. Do you imagine that Alfred and my father will sit down with us in a very civilized manner and discuss our—”
She put up her hand in a wild and defensive gesture, as if to avert a blow. Her expression was sick.
Jerome said, with sudden gentleness: “My darling. You see, yourself, how impossible that is.”
She was silent. For now the whole enormity of the situation struck her as it had not struck her before. She had come as a calamity to that house on the hill. She had come as a pestilence, poisoning the air, disrupting the peace, striking mortally at a dying old gentleman, a crippled, loving boy, an honorable man. She had betrayed them all. In a measure, she had even betrayed Jerome. Had none of them known her, that house would still be tranquil: Mr. Lindsey living out his last days in quietness, Philip continuing his music in undisturbed happiness, Alfred retaining his name with pride and respect. Life would flow in and about them, without horror and shame. Jerome would live there, placidly awaiting his marriage with Sally Tayntor, planning his life.
But now, because of her, they were about to be thrown into everlasting disgrace and misery. It would kill Mr. Lindsey, who trusted and loved her. It would leave an eternal mark on Philip. Alfred would never recover from his humiliation and despair. Jerome’s life was ruined.
She said, in a strange, strained voice, her eyes darkened: “I think it would be best if I went away. Alone.”
Jerome tapped the desk with slow fingers. “You mean, I should follow later?”
She shook her head. “No. I—I could leave a letter for Alfred, saying—” She could not continue. She put her kerchief to her mouth. Then she withdrew, it and went on with increasing steadiness: “I could say I had decided to go away, and beg him not to try to find me. It would—hurt him, immeasurably. But it would not injure him as much as if—”
He got up and came to her and took her cold and flaccid hand. Now she saw his face, moved and compassionate. “My dear,” he said, and for the first time there was emotion in his voice, “you don’t know what you are saying. Do you think I wouldn’t follow you, until I found you?”
She looked at his hand. Then it seemed to her that her heart broke. She pressed her face to the back of his hand and tears burst from her eyes. She said with frantic but controlled passion: “O Jerome. Tell me you love me! Tell me you have not changed! Tell me that, or I shall really die!”
Forgetting everything now but this poor woman, Jerome took her face in his hands and kissed, her on her shaking mouth. She put her arms about his neck and he felt their frenzied and clinging strength. He looked into her drenched eyes, so imploring, so vulnerable in their anguish.
With his lips moving against hers, he said: “My darling, my love.”
Her arms fell from his neck. He wiped away her tears with infinite tenderness. He smoothed the tendrils of her hair which had escaped from her bonnet. He said: “Let me take care of this, Amalie, my dearest. You must understand this is the only way, our leaving together, almost at once. Believe me, it is the kindest way. It—it will be a shock, I admit. But if we are not there to be reproached, to be reviled, matters will settle themselves more quickly.”
She whispered, still gazing at him despairingly: “Your own life, Jerome. I have ruined it. The Bank—you have made a place here. Now I have destroyed everything for you.”
He made himself smile indulgently. “My foolish darling. I stayed here only because of you. I shall leave it quite joyfully because of you.”
But her burning thoughts still held her. “Your father—it win kill him, Jerome.”
“I think not,” he replied, with more confidence than he felt. “After all, he never—interfered. It may be somewhat of a shock, I admit. But he’s a tough old patrician, and after a little he will be glad that we are happy. And we are going to be happy, you know.”
“But how could you be happy, forever cut off from your father? He will never see you again! We’ll have made that impossible for him. How will you live, Jerome? I know how hard it is to live!” The wildness was back in her voice, and the frenzied hopelessness.
“Oh, come, come,” he said, glancing uneasily at the doors. “I am not helpless, or a child. And I am a portrait painter, of sorts. I could have sold dozens. Besides, I still have a little money, and we could live in France, on almost nothing. The future doesn’t frighten me in the least. Not if you are with me,” and he bent again and kissed her.
But this time she did not respond. Her lips were lifeless under his. She pushed him away, after a moment.
“And Alfred,” she said, wringing her hands. “How could we do that to him?”
His brows drew together. “It seems,” he said, with vicious lightness, “that we have already done a great deal to him.”
The blood rushed to her face. She stood up, holding the back of her chair. But he had become excited at the mention of the man he hated. “Do you think I care for that pedant, that Cromwellian bigot, that stick? This will well repay him for years of stuffiness and righteousness!”
But she had become very still. “You are cruel,” she said, staring at him motionlessly. “You are stupid. But they are the same thing. In spite of all your erudite conversations with your father, I have heard your cruelty and your stupidity, under all your fine words. I thought it did not matter. But I see that it does, after
all.”
He was incredulous. He could only stand there in silence.
But she was not seeing him now. She was remembering the night when Alfred had told her of his loneliness. She was remembering his moved, changed expression, his trust, his unconscious pathos, the touch of his hand, almost humble in its simplicity, her understanding that he had never spoken so to anyone before, his gratitude that he could speak and have her sympathy, his happiness in his belief that he had discovered a friend. She had come perilously close to loving him then, in her compassion and in her sudden knowledge of his integrity and unaffected and hidden desire for the affection of others.
Jerome was alarmed at Amalie’s expression, and he momentarily lost his anger against her for what she had said. He took a step towards her, but she stepped backwards, away from him.
“You have always hated Alfred,” she exclaimed. “You never understood him, or cared to understand him. You jeered at him, deliberately misinterpreted everything he ever said; you attempted, always, to make him appear a fool. And then, when you had deceived yourself into believing that the man of straw you had created was the real man, you despised him. But you have never deceived others.”
“Very clever,” said Jerome softly. “So I am a contemptible man, without honor or pity or sensibility. I have attacked a hero, out of sheer malice. It is very noble and edifying to hear these sentiments from you. But, of course, you have completely forgotten that you married him for brazenly mercenary reasons, exchanging yourself boldly for what he could give you.
“And now you have the audacity to call me cruel and stupid. Don’t you think the same epithets apply to you also?”
Her face had become pinched and gray. But she regarded him without wavering.
“Yes,” she said clearly. “We are both disgusting wretches. It will be better for Alfred never to see either of us again.”
He leaned back against the desk and smiled affably. “And that, my pet, is what I have been attempting to tell you.”
They looked at each other now without love or passion, only with understanding. Jerome was wryly amused. But he was also secretly and deeply alarmed at Amalie’s color, at the stark agony in her eyes.
“Is it settled, then, that we must go away at once?” he asked.
She was twisting her bonnet strings in her tremulous hands. “No,” she said. “We must first talk to Alfred. We must tell him. We must make him see that he is not suffering any loss in my going.”
Jerome pursed his lips and stared into space. “And you intend to tell him just as soon as he returns?”
The ribbons were tight and drawn, over her fingers. “If your father shows improvement—yes. The proper occasion must present itself. It will.”
“I presume,” he suggested sardonically, “that you will first inform me of the ‘proper occasion’ so I can brace myself? Or will this delightful conversation take place between you—and your husband—in the privacy of your bedroom?”
Amalie’s face appeared to dwindle, to diminish. But she answered quietly: “I will tell you. It may be only a few days, it may be a few weeks.”
“And in the meantime, you will maintain the most amiable relations with my family and with your husband?”
He shook his head. “My darling, isn’t that too much to ask of me? I have a nervous constitution. I don’t enjoy the prospect of sitting on a pile of dynamite with the fuse hissing somewhere off in obscurity.”
Then he added, with virulent disagreeableness: “Or perhaps you would prefer something else? You would prefer, perhaps, to forget and to continue your life as before, in my father’s house? Is that the secret alternative in your mind?”
Amalie uttered a faint exclamation. But Jerome had become excited again. He came close to her, and she retreated still a few more steps. “Well, let me tell you, my dear, everything is not in your own hands. I have a few ideas of my own. You are not going to make a fool of me.”
He turned and went abruptly to his desk. He flung the half-smoked cheroot into his wastebasket, lit another. It infuriated him that his hands were uncertain.
“Perhaps you think it might be pleasant to deceive your noble husband on other—occasions, with me as your compliant accomplice. Perhaps I have underestimated your cleverness, my pet.”
Amalie did not stir. She might not have heard him at all. She only gazed at him with intensely purple eyes.
“Or,” he continued, with cold violence, “you would think it most obliging of me if I removed myself permanently from your vicinity, and never returned to my father’s house?”
He waited. But she did not speak. He studied her intently for a long procession of moments. Then he exclaimed: “Amalie! My darling! Forgive me. I know what I have been saying is not true. But you have failed to consider me in the least.”
The bonnet strings fell from her fingers. She put her hands over her face.
He did not know what to do. He rubbed his forehead miserably. He wanted to take her in his arms, but that seemed impossible just now.
“Why won’t you trust my judgment?” he pleaded. “I am stronger than you, my dearest. See here,” he added, with sudden animation, “I have another plan. If you are so determined to be ‘honorable,’ why do you not go away first and stay with a friend of mine in New York, or go to Saratoga for a few days? In the meantime, I will talk to Alfred myself and thereafter join you? In this way you will be spared all—unpleasantness—and I assure you that I am quite capable of managing the situation alone.”
She dropped her hands. Her cheeks were streaked with tears. “Thank you, Jerome,” she whispered. “Oh, thank you! But I cannot do that. I cannot run away like a thief. I owe this last thing to Alfred.”
She looked blindly about for her reticule. It was on the chair she had left. She picked it up. Then she turned to Jerome, imploringly. “Please, please,” she murmured. And flung out her hand.
He was silent, while she, in turn, speechlessly pleaded with him. Then, when she saw that he would not soften towards her, or understand, she went to the door and left the room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Dr. Willis Hawley regarded Amalie with kindly and concerned worry. He leaned back in his chair. He had pushed aside a vase of early roses from his own old garden, and the warm study was permeated with the sweet and overpowering fragrance.
The physician was an elderly man, with a brown face and a thin white beard, and with curiously alive eyes the color of old amber. He was not only physician to the Lindseys, but a friend of many years. He was especially fond of Amalie, for he was a bachelor and had a considerable taste in women.
He said regretfully: “Well, now we know definitely.” He added, with more cheerfulness: “But there is plenty of time, you know, Miss Amalie. You are still young. Twenty-three it is, isn’t it? Of course, I have always believed that it is best for a woman to have her children between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three, when she is at her most vigorous and can take a joy in her offspring. Older, women are less—flexible, not only physically, but mentally. And flexibility, I have discovered, is absolutely necessary if one is to endure the riotous company of children.”
He smiled at the woman opposite him, but his eyes were still anxious.
“But should you have your first child at twenty-five, that is not too late. Your family, then, will be necessarily small, for the hazards of childbirth should not be undertaken indiscriminately after thirty. There are many who disagree with me, but unfortunately, perhaps, the facts are in favor of my opinion. Tumors, various ailments of many kinds, beset a middle-aged woman, in her early thirties, and make childbirth distressingly hazardous.”
Amalie tried to smile. The doctor’s keen eye detected her profound exhaustion and illness. He said, more gravely: “But there is a much more serious matter than this disappointment, which is temporary, I hope. You are not well. I have noticed, upon my visits to Miss Dorothea, that you have been failing, my poor child. It is not anemia, nor any organic trouble, I am certain. I mig
ht even say that the root of the affliction is unhappiness. But that, of course, is preposterous.” He tapped his fingers tentatively on his desk, but the shrewdness of his gaze did not diminish.
Amalie forced herself to say: “I—I am not unhappy. But I am very tired.”
“Of course, of course! I know how devotedly you have cared for old William, and now for Miss Dorothea. But I may tell you frankly that Miss Dorothea is in no danger. Middle-aged ladies are frequently petulant and demanding, and reek with hypochondria. I have sometimes thought that ladies between the ages of thirty-five and fifty ought to retire to some nonsectarian convent and there await the time when they have recovered their equanimity.” He laughed richly. “So, you must not worry unduly about Miss Dorothea. I might even suggest a masterful neglect of her, for your own good. The air, the sun, quiet walks and drives, visits to good friends, simple meals, sleep—all these will restore your health. For,” he added, with fresh gravity, “you are not well. I am afraid that, if you do not take care, you may become extremely ill.”
“I do not intend to die, dear Dr. Hawley,” said Amalie, with a smile which struck the doctor with fresh apprehension for her.
“Oh, certainly not, certainly not! You have a most robust constitution. But you have been much too confined.” He rose as Amalie rose. “I have a tonic for you, my dear child. But it will be of no benefit unless you take better care of yourself.”
He walked to the buggy with her. He noticed how feeble was her step, and how her head drooped, and how uncertain her hands were as he assisted her into the vehicle. He must talk to Alfred, he reflected. The girl was extremely ill. Her color was quite dreadful, and he, Dr. Hawley, did not like the mauve swellings beneath her eyes. He shook his head slightly. Some hideous malaise of the body or of the spirit was tormenting her, and he suspected the latter. He remembered seeing her on the village streets before her marriage to Alfred Lindsey, and he had profoundly admired her dauntless carriage, her upflung head, her shining eyes and vividly pale complexion. She possessed none of these things now. She moved as if broken, too listless, too exhausted. It was very puzzling, very disturbing. He knew Alfred well, and thought him an honorable, just man with hidden attributes of kindness and fidelity. Had something happened to that marriage?